“With pleasure,” said Mme. Riçois, filling her glass again in honor of the alliance.
CHAPTER IV
THROUGH THE COUNTRY FAIR
The camping-party and the Grojeans were doing the fair. At the foot of the platform, before the circus door, an open-mouthed circle listened to the girl-clown dressed as Pierrette. All around, under the burning sun, tents had been set up, painted in bright colors. Groaning trombones proclaimed the wrestlers and the bearded woman. Other mountebanks farther on attracted the public toward their own side-shows. To the notes of an orchestrion, wooden horses turned rigidly against a cotton-print background, spangled with mirrors. Cries and laughter were heard above all the rumbling of the drums. Far and wide rose the discordant noise, especially that of the market for domestic animals, where the high “do” of squealing pigs quite mastered the muffled bass of the oxen.
Everywhere there was something to see. But the Pierrette was so pretty that the public disdained the rest and thronged around her, fascinated by her air of good-fellowship, and her young, fresh laughter.
“Now’s the time! Now’s the time!” the Pierrette cried, while, behind her on the platform, circus-riders and clowns, and the master in person, Signor Perbaccho, listened gravely to her. “Come in! Come in! Let us show you an animal that has been well trained—but not without difficulty, for he is stupid enough to make soup of smoked beetles!
“Oh, you needn’t think it just happened!” the Pierrette ran on, making gestures with her stick. “To begin with, such animals exist only in Paris—Paris on the Seine, you understand; a big village where all the pebbles are diamonds and the trees are gold, but you don’t dig potatoes there! To live there your loafers have to become sculptors and painters and musicians. Their heads are as empty as their stomachs! Mesdames et messieurs, I am going to show you one of those animals. Don’t throw him anything, I beseech you—no bread-crusts, no cabbage-leaves; he ate yesterday! Attention! Here he comes! Come hither, my fly-killer! Come when you are called.”
There were bursts of laughter as the Pierrette stretched out her arm and seized a man by the ear, whirling him around and bringing him, ashamed enough, to face the public. She might have been a marquise disguised as a soubrette, playing in comedy with a clumsy rustic. The man turned red as a tomato.
“Have you made your bread-winner shine to-day? Did you scrub it with pumice powder? Answer!” said the Pierrette.
“Yes!” grunted the man, shaking his head like a bear.
“Let’s see!”