We give him a seat on an empty bag, and the concert recommences.
Singers, with some pretence to a voice, try hard to carry off their sentimental or grandiloquent ditties, but it is the motley repertoire of absurdity and ridicule that meets with the success of the evening: the songs of Montmartre, artistes' refrains, fertile in spicy nonsense. We mark time by tapping our empty plates with the back of the hand. The noisy merriment is intensified when we come to the chorus.
With frenzied enthusiasm the squadron shouts out the chorus of Hervé's Turcs—
Nous, nous sommes les soldats
Et nous marchons au pas,
Plus souvent au trépas....
And now Charensac comes forward.
"Make way for the Ambassador of Auvergne," barks out Varlet.
"Quite right, I am from Auvergne, and I'm going to dance the bourrée."
He dances it, all alone. Some of the audience, making a humming sound with their hands, the rest whistling or else beating time with cans and gamelles, form an improvised orchestra, half Spanish, half negro. The dancer's big round face, flanked with little tufts of black whiskers, lights up. He is both the Auvergnat and his betrothed—advancing, receding, seeming to escape from himself. When you think he is utterly exhausted, he still finds it possible to shout out in joyous accents—
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, a collection for 'l'artisse.'"
And he mimics in succession a lion-tamer and a lady walking the tight rope. The sous rain down into his képi.