All these things being of common repute, they naturally came to my mind as I stood, watching the shadows lengthen on the grass of the old garden in the golden afternoon. Presently, from a private entrance, some children and some older persons appeared. The theater was for child actors only, and one of them—a floury baker’s boy,—came to the iron gate, and acted as gate-keeper. To him I paid the few copper coins asked for admittance, and entered.
Others followed me, chiefly working people and serving-men and women, but there were some of a class not 13 often seen at these cheap, open-air performances. One man I recognized—Lafarge, an actor of the Comédie Française, and, I think, the poorest actor who ever played in the House of Molière. Something, I know not what, excited suspicion of this man in my mind—I could but wonder what he was doing there. He had a hang-dog countenance, and was almost as ugly as I.
Presently, whom should I see bustling about, and evidently the manager of the enterprise, but Jacques Haret! I own I was astonished to find him doing anything but eating and drinking and riding at somebody else’s expense—but there he was, actually at work, and that, too, in a very intelligent manner. There was no doubt about his intelligence, although he was known as a scamp of the first water. His intelligence had not kept him from gambling away a fine patrimony in the Low Countries, where his family had once been great.
He was the handsomest dog imaginable, in spite of all the cardinal sins looking out of his eyes—and he retained certain outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual graces which he had never had since I knew him. I will say of him though, that he was not a coward, nor did I ever hear him utter one word of railing against fate—but what a rascal he was!
As soon as his eye fell upon me he came across the grass and greeted me by clapping me on the back. He wore a shabby old laced coat, woolen stockings, broken shoes, and a splendid velvet hat and feathers; this last probably picked up at random—which some people call stealing. Now, I have never known a specimen of rascal-gentleman like Jacques Haret who could not always 14 stand and sit at ease with all men. I, Babache, an honest fellow, often feel abashed in the presence of the great. I am thinking, if I am too friendly they will remember my origin and think me impudent—and if I be not friendly enough, I fear I am thought to forget whence I sprang. But Jacques Haret and men like him are at their ease with kings and beggars alike. There is certainly something in being born to ride in a coach, even if the coach be gambled away or drunk up.
Jacques Haret greeted me cordially, as I say, but with good-natured condescension. He began to tell me that he had the finest child actress in his troupe he had ever seen. “So tragic, so moving, so graceful, so droll, so natural; she could, in two years more, wrest the laurels from the brow of Mademoiselle Lecouvreur herself!” So he declared, again whacking me on the back.
I was not much interested in his child actress, but bluntly asked him how he got the use of Madame Riano’s garden.
“The easiest thing in the world,” he said, laughing. “I went to her—proved that in 1456 one Jacques Haret, my ancestor, had married into the noble family of Kirkpatrick, and on the strength of that relationship asked to set up my theater here. She agreed promptly, only stipulating that she should see and hear nothing of it. I told her she could not see without looking, nor hear without listening, and she screeched out laughing and told me to go my ways and try to be respectable.”
“I hope you have taken Madame Riano’s advice,” I said dryly.
“In truth I have been obliged to. There are too 15 many fellows like me in Paris now. I can no longer get clothes and food and wine by telling a merry tale and singing a ribald song. And, besides, I got a hint from Cardinal Fleury, that old busybody, who manages a good deal more than the king’s conscience.”