The Ways of Men [26]
To my astonishment the performance was received in complete silence. `Poor Calve,' I heard an old friend of my mother's murmur. `Her voice used to be so nice, and now it's all gone!' Taking in the situation at a glance, I threw my voice well up into my nose and started off on a well-known provincial song, in the shrill falsetto of our peasant women. The effect was instantaneous! Long before the end the performance was drowned in thunders of applause. Which proves that to be popular a singer must adapt herself to her audience."
Luncheon over, we repaired for cigarettes and coffee to an upper room, where Calve was giving Dagnan-Bouveret some sittings for a portrait, and lingered there until four o'clock, when our hostess left us for her siesta, and a "break" took those who cared for the excursion across the valley to inspect the ruins of a Roman bath. A late dinner brought us together again in a small dining room, the convalescents having eaten their simple meal and disappeared an hour before. During this time, another transformation had taken place in our mercurial hostess! It was the Calve of Paris, Calve the witch, Calve the CAPITEUSE, who presided at the dainty, flower-decked table and led the laughing conversation.
A few notes struck on a guitar by one of the party, as we sat an hour later on the moonlit terrace, were enough to start off the versatile artist, who was in her gayest humor. She sang us stray bits of opera, alternating her music with scenes burlesqued from recent plays. No one escaped her inimitable mimicry, not even the "divine Sarah," Calve giving us an unpayable impersonation of the elderly TRAGEDIENNE as Lorenzaccio, the boy hero of Alfred de Musset's drama. Burlesquing led to her dancing some Spanish steps with an abandon never attempted on the stage! Which in turn gave place to an imitation of an American whistling an air from CARMEN, and some "coon songs" she had picked up during her stay at New York. They, again, were succeeded by a superb rendering of the imprecation from Racine's CAMILLE, which made her audience realize that in gaining a soprano the world has lost, perhaps, its greatest TRAGEDIENNE.
At eleven o'clock the clatter of hoofs in the court warned us that the pleasant evening had come to an end. A journalist EN ROUTE for Paris was soon installed with me in the little omnibus that was to take us to the station, Calve herself lighting our cigars and providing the wraps that were to keep out the cool night air.
As we passed under the low archway of the entrance amid a clamor of "adieu" and "au revoir," the young Frenchman at my side pointed up to a row of closed windows overhead. "Isn't it a lesson," he said, "for all of us, to think of the occupants of those little rooms, whom the generosity and care of that gracious artist are leaning by such pleasant paths back to health and courage for their toilsome lives?"
Chapter 11 - A Cry For Fresh Air
"ONCE upon a time," reads the familiar nursery tale, while the fairies, invited by a king and queen to the christening of their daughter, were showering good gifts on the baby princess, a disgruntled old witch, whom no one had thought of asking to the ceremony, appeared uninvited on the scene and revenged herself by decreeing that the presents of the good fairies, instead of proving beneficial, should bring only trouble and embarrassment to the royal infant.
A telling analogy might be drawn between that unhappy princess over whose fate so many youthful tears have been shed, and the condition of our invention-ridden country; for we see every day how the good gifts of those nineteenth century fairies, Science and Industry, instead of proving blessings to mankind, are being turned by ignorance and stupidity into veritable afflictions.
If a prophetic gentleman had told Louis Fourteenth's shivering courtiers - whom an iron etiquette forced on winter mornings into the (appropriately named) Galerie des Glaces, stamping their silk-clad feet and blowing
Luncheon over, we repaired for cigarettes and coffee to an upper room, where Calve was giving Dagnan-Bouveret some sittings for a portrait, and lingered there until four o'clock, when our hostess left us for her siesta, and a "break" took those who cared for the excursion across the valley to inspect the ruins of a Roman bath. A late dinner brought us together again in a small dining room, the convalescents having eaten their simple meal and disappeared an hour before. During this time, another transformation had taken place in our mercurial hostess! It was the Calve of Paris, Calve the witch, Calve the CAPITEUSE, who presided at the dainty, flower-decked table and led the laughing conversation.
A few notes struck on a guitar by one of the party, as we sat an hour later on the moonlit terrace, were enough to start off the versatile artist, who was in her gayest humor. She sang us stray bits of opera, alternating her music with scenes burlesqued from recent plays. No one escaped her inimitable mimicry, not even the "divine Sarah," Calve giving us an unpayable impersonation of the elderly TRAGEDIENNE as Lorenzaccio, the boy hero of Alfred de Musset's drama. Burlesquing led to her dancing some Spanish steps with an abandon never attempted on the stage! Which in turn gave place to an imitation of an American whistling an air from CARMEN, and some "coon songs" she had picked up during her stay at New York. They, again, were succeeded by a superb rendering of the imprecation from Racine's CAMILLE, which made her audience realize that in gaining a soprano the world has lost, perhaps, its greatest TRAGEDIENNE.
At eleven o'clock the clatter of hoofs in the court warned us that the pleasant evening had come to an end. A journalist EN ROUTE for Paris was soon installed with me in the little omnibus that was to take us to the station, Calve herself lighting our cigars and providing the wraps that were to keep out the cool night air.
As we passed under the low archway of the entrance amid a clamor of "adieu" and "au revoir," the young Frenchman at my side pointed up to a row of closed windows overhead. "Isn't it a lesson," he said, "for all of us, to think of the occupants of those little rooms, whom the generosity and care of that gracious artist are leaning by such pleasant paths back to health and courage for their toilsome lives?"
Chapter 11 - A Cry For Fresh Air
"ONCE upon a time," reads the familiar nursery tale, while the fairies, invited by a king and queen to the christening of their daughter, were showering good gifts on the baby princess, a disgruntled old witch, whom no one had thought of asking to the ceremony, appeared uninvited on the scene and revenged herself by decreeing that the presents of the good fairies, instead of proving beneficial, should bring only trouble and embarrassment to the royal infant.
A telling analogy might be drawn between that unhappy princess over whose fate so many youthful tears have been shed, and the condition of our invention-ridden country; for we see every day how the good gifts of those nineteenth century fairies, Science and Industry, instead of proving blessings to mankind, are being turned by ignorance and stupidity into veritable afflictions.
If a prophetic gentleman had told Louis Fourteenth's shivering courtiers - whom an iron etiquette forced on winter mornings into the (appropriately named) Galerie des Glaces, stamping their silk-clad feet and blowing