The Old Mountebank

Everywhere the holiday crowd was parading, spread out, merry making.
It was one of those festivals on which mountebanks, tricksters, animal
trainers and itinerant merchants had long been relying, to compensate
for the dull seasons of the year.

On such days it seems to me the people forget all, sadness and work;
they become children. For the little ones, it is a day of leave, the
horror of the school put off twenty-four hours. For the grown-ups,
it is an armistice, concluded with the malevolent forces of life, a
respite in the universal contention and struggle.

The man of the world himself, and even he who is occupied with
spiritual tasks, with difficulty escape the influence of this popular
jubilee. They absorb, without volition, their part of the atmosphere
of devil-may-care. As for me, I never fail, like a true Parisian, to
inspect all the booths that flaunt themselves in these solemn epochae.

They made, in truth, a formidable gathering: they bawled, bellowed,
howled. It was a mingling of cries, of blaring of brass and bursting of
rockets. The clowns and the simpletons convulsed the features of their
swarthy faces, hardened by wind, rain, and sun; they hurled forth,
with the assurance of comedians certain of their wares, witticisms
and pleasantries of a humor solid and heavy as that of Moliere.
The Hercules, proud of the enormousness of their limbs, without
forehead, without cranium, stalked majestically about under fleshings
fresh washed for the occasion. The dancers, pretty as fairies or as
princesses, leapt and cavorted under the flare of lanterns which filled
their skirts with sparkles.

All was light, dust, shouting, joy, tumult; some spent, others gained,
the one and the other equally joyful. Children clung to their mothers'
skirts to obtain a sugar-stick, or climbed upon their fathers'
shoulders the better to see a conjurer dazzling as a god. And spread
over all, dominating every odor, was a smell of frying, which was the
incense of the festival.

At the end, at the extreme end of the row of booths, as if, ashamed, he
had exiled himself from all these splendors, I saw an old mountebank,
stooped, decrepit, emaciated, a ruin of a man, leaning against one of
the pillars of his hut, more wretched than that of the most besotted
barbarian, the distress of which two candle ends, guttering and
smoking, lighted up only too well.

Everywhere was joy, gain, revelry; everywhere certainty of the morrow's
bread; everywhere the frenetic outbursts of vitality. Here, absolute
misery, misery bedecked, to crown the horror, in comic tatters, where
necessity, rather than art, produced the contrast. He was not laughing,
the wretched one! He was not weeping, he was not dancing, he was not
gesticulating, he was not crying. He was singing no song, gay or
grievous, he was imploring no one. He was mute and immobile. He had
renounced, he had withdrawn. His destiny was accomplished.

But what a deep, unforgettable look he cast over the crowd and the
lights, the moving stream of which was stemmed a few yards from his
repulsive wretchedness! I felt my throat clutched by the terrible hand
of hysteria, and it seemed as though glances were clouded by rebellious
tears that would not fall.

What was to be done? What good was there in asking the unfortunate
what curiosity, what marvel had he to show within those barefaced
shades, behind that threadbare curtain? In truth, I dared not; and,
although the reason for my timidity will make you laugh, I confess that
I was afraid of humiliating him. At length, I had resolved to drop a
coin while passing his boards, in the hope that he would divine my
purpose, when a great backwash of people, produced by I know not what
disturbance, carried me far away.

And leaving, obsessed by the sight, I sought to analyze my sudden
sadness, and I said: "I have just seen the image of the aged man of
letters, who has survived the generation of which he was the brilliant
entertainer; of the old poet, friendless, without family, without
child, degraded by his misery and by public ingratitude, into whose
booth a forgetful world no longer wants to go!"