Mobile was a city that was generally quite disdained by impresarii. There was only one theatre. It had been let to the tragedian Barrett, who was to appear six days after me. All that remained was a miserable place, so small that I know of nothing that can be compared to it. We were playing La Dame aux Camélias. When Marguerite Gautier orders supper to be served, the servants who were to bring in the table ready laid tried to get it in through the door. But this was impossible. Nothing could be more comical than to see those unfortunate servants adopt every expedient.
The public laughed. Among the laughter of the spectators was one that became contagious. A negro of twelve or fifteen, who had got in somehow, was standing on a chair, and with his two hands holding on to his knees, his body bent, head forward, mouth open, he was laughing with such a shrill and piercing tone, and with such even continuity, that I caught it too. I had to go out while a portion of the back scenery was being removed to allow the table to be brought in.
I returned somewhat composed, but still under the domination of suppressed laughter. We were sitting round the table, and the supper was drawing to a close as usual. But just as the servants were entering to remove the table, one of them caught the scenery, which had been badly adjusted by the scene-shifters in their haste, and the whole back scene fell on our heads. As the scenery was nearly all made of paper in those days, it did not fall on our heads and remain there, but round our necks, and we had to remain in that position without being able to move. Our heads having gone through the paper, our appearance was most comical and ridiculous. The young nigger’s laughter started again more piercing than ever, and this time my suppressed laughter ended in a crisis that left me without any strength.
The money paid for admission was returned to the public. It exceeded fifteen thousand francs.
This city was an unlucky one for me, and came very near proving fatal during the third visit I paid to it, as I will narrate in the second volume of these Memoirs.
That very night we left Mobile for Atlanta, where, after playing La Dame aux Camélias, we left again the same evening for Nashville.
We stayed an entire day at Memphis, and gave two performances there.
At one in the morning we left for Louisville. During the journey from Memphis to Louisville we were awakened by the sound of a fight, by oaths and cries. I opened the door of my railway carriage, and recognised the voices. Jarrett came out at the same time. We went towards the spot whence the noise came—to the small platform, where the two combatants, Captain Hayné and Marcus Mayer, were fighting with revolvers in their hands. Marcus Mayer’s eye was out of its orbit, and blood covered the face of Captain Hayné. I threw myself without a moment’s reflection between the two madmen, who, with that brutal but delightful courtesy of North Americans, stopped their fight.
We were beginning the dizzy round of the smaller towns, arriving at three, four, and sometimes six o’clock in the evening, and leaving immediately after the play. I only left my car to go to the theatre, and returned as soon as the play was over to retire to my elegant but diminutive bedroom. I sleep well on the railway. I felt an immense pleasure travelling in that way at high speed, sitting outside on the small platform, or rather reclining in a rocking-chair, gazing on the ever-changing spectacle of American plains and forests that passed before me. Without stopping we went through Louisville, Cincinnati for the second time, Columbus, Dayton, Indianapolis, St. Joseph, where one gets the best beer in the world, and where, when I was obliged to go to an hotel on account of repairs to one of the wheels of the car, a drunken dancer at a big ball given in the hotel seized me in the corridor leading to my room. This brutal fellow caught hold of me just as I was getting out of the elevator, and dragged me off with cries like those of a wild animal finding its prey after five days of enforced hunger. My dog, mad with excitement on hearing me scream, bit his legs severely, and that aroused the drunken man to the point of fury. It was with the greatest difficulty that I was delivered from the clutches of this demoniac. Supper was served. What a supper! Fortunately the beer was light both in colour and consistency, and enabled me to swallow the dreadful things that were served up.
The ball lasted all night, accompanied by revolver shots.