Like the sketch, the tale is more easily defined than the short-story. Whether long or short, the tale—as I have just pointed out—is always the simple narration of an incident, or a succession of incidents, without regard to plot-complication and its consequent dénouement. The story of a thrilling lion-hunt, the recovery of a lost child, the adventures of a hero under strange skies, or the patient loyalty of an old servitor, might any one of them be its theme—that and nothing more.
How much a fictional masterpiece suffers in translation none knows so well as he who enjoys its beauties in the original. How much more then must it lose when one attempts to rehearse its story in brief synopsis. Yet we may come to some understanding of Coppée’s typical variety by such an examination of three of his short pieces, besides “The Substitute,” which is given in full in translation.
“At Table” is one of the author’s characteristic sketches. It is about twenty-five hundred words long. Fourteen are at table, the guests of “madame la comtesse”—“four young women in full toilette, and ten men belonging to the aristocracy of blood or of merit.” With that pictorial gift which is the literary sketch-artist’s first possession, we are shown the whole scene—“jewels, decorations of honor or of nobility, the atmosphere of good living in the high hall,” the glittering table, the noiseless service, the expanding social spirit as the collation advances, the “snapping of bright words,” and everything that made the dinner “charming as well as sumptuous.”
“Now, at that same table, at the lower end, in the most modest place, a man still young ... a man of reverie and imagination ... sat silent.” “He was plunged in a bath of optimism; it seemed good to him that there should be, sometimes and somewhere in the weary world, beings almost happy.” “But when the Dreamer had before him on his plate a portion of the monstrous turbot, the light odor of the sea evoked in his mind a picture of the Breton fisher folk, by grace of whose dangers this delectation came to the feasters.”
Thus his fancy wanders on, vividly rebuilding the varied scenes peopled by those whose labors, painful often and ill-requited, made possible the revelry that night. The contrast stands out, white against black, and leads at last to this mixed conclusion: Softly and stubbornly he repeats to himself as he looks once again at the guests as, replete, they arise from table:
“Yes; they are within their rights. But do they know, do they comprehend, that their luxury is made from many miseries? Do they think of it sometimes? Do they think of it as often as they should? Do they think of it?”
Rarely does Coppée approach so closely to making a preachment; but we need only to follow his gentle reflections—so far removed from haranguing, from bitterness—to feel the utter sincerity of this heart that so passionately loved “the people.”
“Two Clowns” is a sketch of a different type—less aggressively moral, its conclusion more subtly enforced, and possessing more of the narrative quality of the tale. It is a dual sketch—a sketch of contrasts.
We are standing before the tent of some strolling acrobats. To lure the bystanders to the performance a clown receives the rain of pretended buffets from the hands of the ring-master—quite in the manner we all know. Now an aged crone among the onlookers is seen to be weeping. On being questioned she wails out the story that she has recognized in this wretched clown her only son. Having robbed his master, he had been sent away to sea, the father had died, and now after having heard nothing of the scapegrace for years she discovers in the buffeted clown her only child. But suddenly the old woman realizes that she is telling the intimate sorrows of her heart to the gaping crowd, and with gesture abrupt and imperious she pushes aside her listeners and disappears in the night.