These last had been hastily summoned by their friends who had first perceived the mysterious little funeral procession, without priest, crucifix, or lighted tapers, and taken it for granted that there must be something uncanny about it.
They were about to follow up the shower of stones by a charge upon the group assembled round the open grave, when de Sigognac, outraged at this brutal assault, whipped out his sword, and rushed upon them impetuously, striking some with the flat of the blade, and threatening others with the point; while the tyrant, who had leaped out of the grave at the first alarm, seized one of the cross pieces of the improvised bier, and followed the baron into the thick of the crowd, raining blows right and left among their cowardly assailants; who, though they far outnumbered the little band of comedians, fled before the vigorous attack of de Sigognac and Hérode, cursing and swearing, and shouting out violent threats as they withdrew. Poor Matamore’s humble obsequies were completed without further hindrance. When the first spadeful of earth fell upon his body the pedant, with great tears slowly rolling down his cheeks, bent reverently over the grave and sighed out, “Alas! poor Matamore!” little thinking that he was, using the very words of Hamlet, prince of Denmark, when he apostrophized the skull of Yorick, an ancient king’s jester, in the famous tragedy of one Shakespeare—a poet of great renown in England, and protégé of Queen Elizabeth.
The grave was filled up in silence, and the tyrant—after having trampled down the snow for some distance around it, so that its exact whereabouts might not be easy to find in case the angry peasants should come back to disturb it—said as they turned away, “Now let us get out of this place as fast as we can; we have nothing more to do here, and the sooner we quit it the better. Those brutes that attacked us may return with reinforcements—indeed I think it more than likely that they will—in which case your sword, my dear baron, and my stick might not be enough to scatter them again. We don’t want to kill any of them, and have the cries of widows and orphans resounding in our ears; and besides, it might be awkward for us if we were obliged to do it in self-defence, and then were hauled up before the local justice of peace to answer for it.”
There was so much good sense in this advice that it was unanimously agreed to follow it, and in less than an hour, after having settled their account at the inn, they, were once more upon the road.
CHAPTER VII.
CAPTAIN FRACASSE
The comedians pushed forward at first as rapidly as the strength of their horse—resuscitated by a night’s rest in a comfortable stable, and a generous feed of oats—would allow; it being important to put a good distance between themselves and the infuriated peasants who had been repulsed by de Sigognac and the tyrant. They plodded on for more than two leagues in profound silence, for poor Matamore’s sad fate weighed heavily upon their hearts, and each one thought, with a shudder, that the day might come when he too would die, and be buried secretly and in haste, in some lonely and neglected spot by the roadside, wherever they chanced to be, and there abandoned by his comrades.
At last Blazius, whose tongue was scarcely ever at rest, save when he slept, could restrain it no longer, and began to expatiate upon the mournful theme of which all were thinking, embellishing his discourse with many apt quotations, apothegms and maxims, of which in his role of pedant he had an ample store laid up in his memory. The tyrant listened in silence, but with such a scowling, preoccupied air that Blazius finally observed it, and broke off his eloquent disquisition abruptly to inquire what he was cogitating so intently.
“I am thinking about Milo, the celebrated Crotonian,” he replied, “who killed a bullock with one blow of his fist, and devoured it in a single day. I always have admired that exploit particularly, and I feel as if I could do as much myself to-day.”
“But as bad luck will have it,” said Scapin, putting in his oar, “the bullock is wanting.”
“Yes,” rejoined the tyrant, “I, alas! have only the fist and the stomach. Oh! thrice happy the ostrich, that, at a pinch, makes a meal of pebbles, bits of broken glass, shoe-buttons, knife-handles, belt-buckles, or any such-like delicacies that come in its way, which the poor, weak, human stomach cannot digest at all. At this moment I feel capable of swallowing whole that great mass of scenery and decorations in the chariot yonder. I feel as if I had as big a chasm in me as the grave I dug this morning for poor Matamore, and as if I never could get enough to fill it. The ancients were wise old fellows; they knew what they were about when they instituted the feasts that always followed their funerals, with abundance of meats and all sorts of good things to eat, washed down with copious draughts of wine, to the honour of the dead and the great good of the living. Ah! if we only had the wherewithal now to follow their illustrious example, and accomplish worthily that philosophical rite, so admirably calculated to stay the tears of mourners and raise their drooping spirits.”