"Ah!" said one of the servants; "I wish I knew how to act! it would just suit me to be able to earn a hundred francs."
"I had engaged my two artists for a month, at sixty francs each," said Floridor; "that's pretty high, but we have to pay for real talent."
"Can't you get anybody to take their places?"
"Who, pray? I have made a tyrant of the wigmaker, and a confidant of the carpenter's apprentice, who has a magnificent voice. I have persuaded the constable's wife to play the princesses, and I have made an ingénue of the cooper's widow; those are all I've been able to find in the town; but they do very well, they're jewels. As for myself, I act when it's necessary; but, as I have to prompt too, I can't take any long rôles. I have a well-supplied wardrobe: three Spanish costumes, with which the last rope-dancer paid his bill at the wine shop; an old lawyer's gown to make tunics with; two otter-skin caps to serve for turbans, and some curtains I bought at Grenoble to make into cloaks. We were to have opened day after to-morrow, with Phèdre and Le Devin du Village. In Phèdre, the carpenter was to do Aricie, because we have only two women; but he's a nice-looking boy, with no beard, and he'd have done very well. As for the other two confidants, Ismène and Panope, I intended to declaim their rôles from the prompter's box. We should have given Le Devin du Village without music, but that makes it all the prettier; the actors speak instead of singing, and it goes very well; I've seen it given so in many places. What a success we would have had! My Colin was to do Hippolyte; and my noble father would have been magnificent as Thésée. The wigmaker was cast for Théramène; the fellow has his lines at his tongue's end, he doesn't shave a customer that he doesn't recite 'em; and Hippolyte must needs have the catarrh, and Thésée get into a row at a wine shop! How am I to get out of the scrape? Oh! if some great actor from Paris or some foreign country would happen to stop here—one of those men who travel so much! But they never come to Voreppe!"
"Supper is served, messieurs," said the maid-servant.
"Your trouble won't interfere with your supper, I take it, Monsieur Floridor," said a tradesman.
"No, indeed. I shall eat my supper as a matter of habit, but I have no appetite. This calamity has cut off my arms and legs."
"But not his tongue," observed Ménard, in an undertone, as he prepared to take his place at the table; when Dubourg, stalking majestically forward, halted in front of him and declaimed, waving his right arm about as if he were trying to swim:
"'Oui, puisque je retrouve un ami so fidèle,
Ma fortune va prendre une face nouvelle;
Et déjà mon courroux semble s'être adouci
Depuis qu'elle a pris soin de nous rejoindre ici.'"[C]
[C] Aye, since I find a friend so leal and true,
Methinks my fortune speedily will change;
Even now my wrath seems sensibly allayed,
Since she hath taken steps to join us here.