M. Houcke is a type, a true child of the stage. He has [p199] five or six brothers scattered through the world, all managers of riding establishments. His father, under the name of Leonard, was formerly proprietor of the Deux-Cirques before the Franconi. He has taken M. Loyal’s place in the ring in Russia, Germany, and Scandinavia. This will tell you, if [p200] heredity is not an empty word, that he is gifted with a large amount of professional genius.
Moreover—and this does not spoil it—Houcke is very knowing. His choice of the name of Skobelef, as the hero of his last military fête, appears to me an excellent proof of this acuteness. You may vainly search contemporary history without finding the name of any other victorious general who would command the sympathy of the Parisians. . . .
Skobelef and Plevna, the Russians and the Turks! Houcke had grasped his pantomime. The chief outlines of the plot were quickly arranged, and M. Thomas, the former decorator of the Théâtre Français and the Opera Comique, Houcke’s right hand man left for Russia, with a great deal of money in his pockets to buy weapons, costumes, sledges, moujiks, drovskies, and snow.
He returned with all Russia in his trunks.
CHARIOT RACES AT THE HIPPODROME.
Picture to yourself, from one end of the arena to the other, a parquet floor laid down, over which sledges and skaters glided as though upon the Neva. In the first tableau the parqueterie represented a high road, a post-station in the steppe. The orchestra, which had reinforced its musicians by a choir of genuine moujiks, was suspended above the buildings of the Isba. The good people sang with those deep voices which Agrenieff had already enabled us to hear, in their national songs, some years previously at the Trocadero. They were placed in a suitably decorated gallery, and when, accompanied by bells, the moujiks chanted their national hymn—
Bojé tsara krani
Silni der jarni