CHAPTER VIII.
NOT ONLY HAPPINESS, BUT PROSPERITY.
What true things are told in stories! The burnt scar of the invisiblefiend who has touched you is remorse for a wicked thought. In Gwynplaineevil thoughts never ripened, and he had therefore no remorse. Sometimeshe felt regret.
Vague mists of conscience.
What was this?
Nothing.
Their happiness was complete--so complete that they were no longer evenpoor.
From 1680 to 1704 a great change had taken place.
It happened sometimes, in the year 1704, that as night fell on somelittle village on the coast, a great, heavy van, drawn by a pair ofstout horses, made its entry. It was like the shell of a vesselreversed--the keel for a roof, the deck for a floor, placed on fourwheels. The wheels were all of the same size, and high as wagon wheels.Wheels, pole, and van were all painted green, with a rhythmicalgradation of shades, which ranged from bottle green for the wheels toapple green for the roofing. This green colour had succeeded in drawingattention to the carriage, which was known in all the fair grounds asThe Green Box. The Green Box had but two windows, one at each extremity,and at the back a door with steps to let down. On the roof, from a tubepainted green like the rest, smoke arose. This moving house was alwaysvarnished and washed afresh. In front, on a ledge fastened to the van,with the window for a door, behind the horses and by the side of an oldman who held the reins and directed the team, two gipsy women, dressedas goddesses, sounded their trumpets. The astonishment with which thevillagers regarded this machine was overwhelming.
This was the old establishment of Ursus, its proportions augmented bysuccess, and improved from a wretched booth into a theatre. A kind ofanimal, between dog and wolf, was chained under the van. This was Homo.The old coachman who drove the horses was the philosopher himself.
Whence came this improvement from the miserable hut to the Olympiccaravan?
From this--Gwynplaine had become famous.
It was with a correct scent of what would succeed amongst men that Ursushad said to Gwynplaine,--
"They made your fortune."
Ursus, it may be remembered, had made Gwynplaine his pupil. Unknownpeople had worked upon his face; he, on the other hand, had worked onhis mind, and behind this well-executed mask he had placed all that hecould of thought. So soon as the growth of the child had rendered himfitted for it, he had brought him out on the stage--that is, he hadproduced him in front of the van.
The effect of his appearance had been surprising. The passers-by wereimmediately struck with wonder. Never had anything been seen to becompared to this extraordinary mimic of laughter. They were ignorant howthe miracle of infectious hilarity had been obtained. Some believed itto be natural, others declared it to be artificial, and as conjecturewas added to reality, everywhere, at every cross-road on the journey, inall the grounds of fairs and fetes, the crowd ran after Gwynplaine.Thanks to this great attraction, there had come into the poor purse ofthe wandering group, first a rain of farthings, then of heavy pennies,and finally of shillings. The curiosity of one place exhausted, theypassed on to another. Rolling does not enrich a stone but it enriches acaravan; and year by year, from city to city, with the increased growthof Gwynplaine's person and of his ugliness, the fortune predicted byUrsus had come.
"What a good turn they did you there, my boy!" said Ursus.
This "fortune" had allowed Ursus, who was the administrator ofGwynplaine's success, to have the chariot of his dreamsconstructed--that is to say, a caravan large enough to carry a theatre,and to sow science and art in the highways. Moreover, Ursus had beenable to add to the group composed of himself, Homo, Gwynplaine, and Dea,two horses and two women, who were the goddesses of the troupe, as wehave just said, and its servants. A mythological frontispiece was, inthose days, of service to a caravan of mountebanks.
"We are a wandering temple," said Ursus.
These two gipsies, picked up by the philosopher from amongst thevagabondage of cities and suburbs, were ugly and young, and were called,by order of Ursus, the one Phoebe, and the other Venus.
For these read Fibi and Vinos, that we may conform to Englishpronunciation.
Phoebe cooked; Venus scrubbed the temple.
Moreover, on days of performance they dressed Dea.
Mountebanks have their public life as well as princes, and on theseoccasions Dea was arrayed, like Fibi and Vinos, in a Florentinepetticoat of flowered stuff, and a woman's jacket without sleeves,leaving the arms bare. Ursus and Gwynplaine wore men's jackets, and,like sailors on board a man-of-war, great loose trousers. Gwynplainehad, besides, for his work and for his feats of strength, round his neckand over his shoulders, an esclavine of leather. He took charge of thehorses. Ursus and Homo took charge of each other.
Dea, being used to the Green Box, came and went in the interior of thewheeled house, with almost as much ease and certainty as those who saw.
The eye which could penetrate within this structure and its internalarrangements might have perceived in a corner, fastened to the planks,and immovable on its four wheels, the old hut of Ursus, placed onhalf-pay, allowed to rust, and from thenceforth dispensed the labour ofrolling as Ursus was relieved from the labour of drawing it.
This hut, in a corner at the back, to the right of the door, served asbedchamber and dressing-room to Ursus and Gwynplaine. It now containedtwo beds. In the opposite corner was the kitchen.
The arrangement of a vessel was not more precise and concise than thatof the interior of the Green Box. Everything within it was in itsplace--arranged, foreseen, and intended.
The caravan was divided into three compartments, partitioned from eachother. These communicated by open spaces without doors. A piece of stufffell over them, and answered the purpose of concealment. The compartmentbehind belonged to the men, the compartment in front to the women; thecompartment in the middle, separating the two sexes, was the stage. Theinstruments of the orchestra and the properties were kept in thekitchen. A loft under the arch of the roof contained the scenes, and onopening a trap-door lamps appeared, producing wonders of light.
Ursus was the poet of these magical representations; he wrote thepieces. He had a diversity of talents; he was clever at sleight of hand.Besides the voices he imitated, he produced all sorts of unexpectedthings--shocks of light and darkness; spontaneous formations of figuresor words, as he willed, on the partition; vanishing figures inchiaroscuro; strange things, amidst which he seemed to meditate,unmindful of the crowd who marvelled at him.
One day Gwynplaine said to him,--
"Father, you look like a sorcerer!"
And Ursus replied,--
"Then I look, perhaps, like what I am."
The Green Box, built on a clear model of Ursus's, contained thisrefinement of ingenuity--that between the fore and hind wheels thecentral panel of the left side turned on hinges by the aid of chains andpulleys, and could be let down at will like a drawbridge. As it droppedit set at liberty three legs on hinges, which supported the panel whenlet down, and which placed themselves straight on the ground like thelegs of a table, and supported it above the earth like a platform. Thisexposed the stage, which was thus enlarged by the platform in front.
This opening looked for all the world like a "mouth of hell," in thewords of the itinerant Puritan preachers, who turned away from it withhorror. It was, perhaps, for some such pious invention that Solon kickedout Thespis.
For all that Thespis has lasted much longer than is generally believed.The travelling theatre is still in existence. It was on those stages onwheels that, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they performedin England the ballets and dances of Amner and Pilkington; in France,the pastorals of Gilbert Colin; in Flanders, at the annual fairs, thedouble choruses of Clement, called Non Papa; in Germany, the "Adam andEve" of Theiles; and, in Italy, the Venetian exhibitions of Animucciaand of Cafossis, the "Silvae" of Gesualdo, the "Prince of Venosa," the"Satyr" of Laura Guidiccioni, the "Despair of Philene," the "Death
ofUgolina," by Vincent Galileo, father of the astronomer, which VincentGalileo sang his own music, and accompanied himself on his _viol degamba_; as well as all the first attempts of the Italian opera which,from 1580, substituted free inspiration for the madrigal style.
The chariot, of the colour of hope, which carried Ursus, Gwynplaine, andtheir fortunes, and in front of which Fibi and Vinos trumpeted likefigures of Fame, played its part of this grand Bohemian and literarybrotherhood. Thespis would no more have disowned Ursus than Congriowould have disowned Gwynplaine.
Arrived at open spaces in towns or villages, Ursus, in the intervalsbetween the too-tooing of Fibi and Vinos, gave instructive revelationsas to the trumpetings.
"This symphony is Gregorian," he would exclaim. "Citizens and townsmen,the Gregorian form of worship, this great progress, is opposed in Italyto the Ambrosial ritual, and in Spain to the Mozarabic ceremonial, andhas achieved its triumph over them with difficulty."
After which the Green Box drew up in some place chosen by Ursus, andevening having fallen, and the panel stage having been let down, thetheatre opened, and the performance began.
The scene of the Green Box represented a landscape painted by Ursus; andas he did not know how to paint, it represented a cavern just as well asa landscape. The curtain, which we call drop nowadays, was a checkedsilk, with squares of contrasted colours.
The public stood without, in the street, in the fair, forming asemicircle round the stage, exposed to the sun and the showers; anarrangement which made rain less desirable for theatres in those daysthan now. When they could, they acted in an inn yard, on which occasionsthe windows of the different stories made rows of boxes for thespectators. The theatre was thus more enclosed, and the audience a morepaying one. Ursus was in everything--in the piece, in the company, inthe kitchen, in the orchestra. Vinos beat the drum, and handled thesticks with great dexterity. Fibi played on the _morache_, a kind ofguitar. The wolf had been promoted to be a utility gentleman, andplayed, as occasion required, his little parts. Often when they appearedside by side on the stage--Ursus in his tightly-laced bear's skin, Homowith his wolf's skin fitting still better--no one could tell which wasthe beast. This flattered Ursus.