Cæsar Cascabel/Part 1/Chapter II

CHAPTER II. THE CASCABEL FAMILY.
CASCABEL!—A name, you might say, “pealed and chimed on all the tongues of fame,” throughout the five parts of the globe, and “other localities,” proudly added the man who bore that patronymic so honorably.

Cæsar Cascabel, a native of Pontorson, right in the heart of Normandy, was a master in all the dodges, knacks, and trickeries of Norman folks. But, sharp and knowing as he was, he had remained an honest man, and it were not right to confound him with the too often suspicious members of the juggling confraternity; in him, humbleness of birth and professional irregularities were fully redeemed by the private virtues of the head of the family circle.

At this period, Mr. Cascabel looked his age, forty-five, not a day more or less. A child of the road in the full acceptation of the word, his only cradle had been the pack that his father shouldered as he tramped along from fairs to markets throughout Normandy. His mother having died shortly after his coming into the world, he had been very opportunely adopted by a traveling troupe on the death of his father, a few years after. With them he spent his youth in tumbles, contortions and somersaults, his head down and his feet in the air. Then he became in turn a clown, a gymnast, an acrobat, a Hercules at country fairs,—until the time when, the father of three children, he appointed himself manager of the little family he had brought out conjointly with Mrs. Cascabel, nee Cornelia Vadarasse, all the way from Martigues in Provence (France).

An intelligent and ingenious man, if on the one hand his muscle and his skill were above the common, his moral worth was in no way inferior to his physical abilities. True, a rolling stone gathers no moss; but, at least, it rubs against the rough knobs on the road, it gets polished, its angles are smoothed off, it grows round and shiny. Even so, in the course of the twenty-five years that he had been rolling along, Cæser Cascabel had rubbed so hard, had got so thoroughly polished and rounded off, that he knew about all that can be known of life, felt surprised at nothing, wondered at nothing. By dint of roughing it through Europe from fair to fair, and acclimatizing himself quite as readily in America as in the Dutch or the Spanish Colonies, he wellnigh understood all languages, and spoke them more or less accurately, “even those he did not know,” as he used to say, for it was no trouble to him to express his meaning by gestures whenever his power of speech failed him.

Cæser Cascabel was a trifle above the middle height; his body was muscular; his limbs were “well oiled”; his lower jaw, somewhat protruding, indicated energy; his head was large, and shagged over with bushy hair, his skin marbled by the sun of every clime, tanned by the squalls of every sea; he wore a mustache cut short at the ends, and half-length whiskers shaded his ruddy cheeks; his nose was rather full; he had blue eyes glowing with life and very keen, with a look of kindness in them; his mouth would have boasted thirty-three teeth still, had he got one put in, Before the public, he was a real Frederic Lemaitre, a tragedian with grand gestures, affected poses, and oratorical sentences, but in private, a very simple, very natural man, who doted on his wife and children.

Blessed with a constitution that could stand anything, although his advancing years now forbade him all acrobatic performances, he was still wonderful in those displays of strength that “require biceps.” He was possessed, moreover, of extraordinary talent in that branch of the showman's profession, the science of the engastrimuth or ventriloquism, a science which goes back a good many centuries if, as Bishop Eustachius asserts, the pythoness of Edon was nothing more than a ventriloquist. At his will his vocal apparatus slipped down from his throat to his stomach. You wonder if he could have sung a duet, all by himself? Well, you had better not have challenged him to!

To give one last stroke to this picture, let us notice that Cæser Cascabel had a weakness for the great conquerors of history in general, and for Napoleon in particular. Yes! He did love the hero of the first Empire just as much as he hated his “tormentors,” those sons of Hudson Lowe, those abominable John Bulls. Napoleon! That was “the man for him!” Wherefore he had never consented to perform before the Queen of England, “although she had requested him to do so through her first Steward of the Household,” a statement he had made so earnestly and so repeatedly that he had eventually acquired a belief in it, himself.

And still, Mr. Cascabel was no circus manager; no Franconi was he with a troupe of horsemen and women, of clowns and jugglers. By no means. He was merely a showman, performing on the public commons in the open air when the weather was fine, and under a tent when it rained. At this business, of which he had known the ups and downs for a quarter of a century, he had earned, as we know, the goodly lump sum just now put away in the safe with the combination lock.

What labor, what toils, what misery at times, had gone to the making up of this sum! The hardest was now over. The Cascabels were preparing to return to Europe. After they had crossed the United States, they would take passage on a French or an American vessel,—an English one—no, never!

As to that, Cæser Cascabel never let himself be beaten by anything. Obstacles were a myth for him. Difficulties, at most, did turn up on his path; but, extricating, disentangling himself through life was his speciality. He had gladly repeated the words of the Duke of Dantzic, one of the marshals of his great man:

“You make a hole for me, and I'll make my way through it.”

And many indeed were the holes he had wriggled through!

“Mrs. Cascabel, née Cornelia Vadarasse, a genuine native of Provence, the unequaled clairvoyant of things to come, the queen of electrical women, adorned with all the charms of her sex, graced with all the virtues that are a mother's pride, the champion of the great female tournaments to which Chicago challenged the ‘first athletes of the universe.’”

Such were the terms in which Mr. Cascabel usually introduced his wife to the public. Twenty years before, he had married her in New York. Had he taken his father's advice in the matter? He had not! Firstly, he said, because his father had not consulted him in reference to his own wedding, and, secondly, because the worthy man was no longer on this planet. And the thing had been done in a very simple way, I can tell you, and without any of those preliminary formalities which, in Europe, prove such drawbacks to the speedy union of two beings predestined for one another.

One evening, at Barnum's theater in Broadway, where he was one of the spectators, Cæsar Cascabel was dazzled by the charms, the agility and the strength shown in horizontal bar exercises by a young French acrobat, Mlle. Cornelia Vadarasse.

Associating his own talents with those of this graceful performer, of their two lives making but one, foreseeing yonder in the future a family of little Cascabels worthy of their father and mother, all this appeared as if mapped out before the honest showman's eye. Rushing behind the scenes between two acts, introducing himself to Cornelia Vadarasse with the fairest proposals in view of the wedding of a Frenchman and a Frenchwoman; then, eyeing a respectable clergyman in the audience, hauling him off to the green-room and asking him to bless the union of so well-matched a couple, that is all that was needed in that happy land of the United States of America. Do those life-contracts, sealed with full steam on, turn out the worse for it? Be the answer what it may, the union of Cascabel and Cornelia Vadarasse was to be one of the happiest ever celebrated in this nether world.

At the time when our story begins, Mrs. Cascabel was forty years old. She had a fine figure, rather stoutish perhaps, dark hair, dark eyes, a smiling mouth, and, like her husband, a good show of teeth. As to her uncommon muscular strength, she had proved it in those memorable Chicago encounters, where she had won a “Chignon of honor” as a prize. Let us add that Cornelia still loved her husband as she did on the first day, feeling as she did an unshakable trust, an absolute faith in the genius of this extraordinary man, one of the most remarkable beings ever produced by Normandy.

The first-born of our itinerant performers was a boy, John, now nineteen years old. If he did not take after his parents with regard to muscle or to the performances of a gymnast, an acrobat or a clown, he showed his true blood by a wonderfully dexterous hand and an eye ever sure of its aim, two gifts that made him a graceful, elegant juggler. Nor was his success marred with self-conscious pride. He was a gentle, thoughtful youth with blue eyes, and dark-complexioned like his mother. Studious and reserved, he sought to improve himself wherever and whenever he could. Though not ashamed of his parents' profession, he felt there was something better to do than performing in public, and he looked forward to giving up the craft as soon as he would be in France. At the same time his genuine love for his father and his mother prompted him to keep extremely reserved on this subject; indeed, besides, what prospects had he of making another position for himself in the world?

Then, there was the second boy, the last but one of the children, the contortionist of the troupe. He was really the logical joint-product of the Cascabel couple. Twelve years old, as nimble as a cat, as handy as a monkey, as lively as an eel, a little three-foot-six clown who had tumbled into this world heels over head, so his father said, a real gamin as ready-witted as full of fun and frolic, and a good heart withal, sometimes deserving of a thump on his head, but taking it with a grin, for it was never a very hard one.

It was stated above that the eldest scion of the Cascabels was called John. Whence came this name? The mother had insisted upon it in memory of one of her grand-uncles, Jean Vadarasse, a sailor from Marseilles, who had been eaten by the Caribbean islanders, an exploit she was proud of. To be sure, the father who had the good luck to have been christened Cæser, would have preferred another name, one better known in history and more in accordance with his secret admiration for warriors. But he was unwilling to thwart his wife's wishes on the advent of their first-born, and he had accepted the name John, promising himself to make up for it, should a second heir be born to him.

This event came to pass, and the second son was called Alexander, after having a narrow escape of being named Hamilcar, Attila, or Hannibal. For shortness sake, however, he was familiarly known as Sander.

After the first and the second boy, the family circle was joined by a little girl who received the name of Napoleona, in honor of the martyr at St. Helena, although Mrs. Cascabel would have loved to call her Hersilla.

Napoleona was now eight years old. She was a pretty child, with every promise of growing to be a handsome girl, and a handsome girl she did become. Fair and rosy, with a bright, animated countenance, graceful and clever, she had mastered the art of tight-rope walking; her tiny feet seemed to glide along the wire for play, as though the little sylph had had wings to bear her up.

It were idle to say Napoleona was the spoilt child of the family. She was worshipped by all, and she was fit to be. Her mother fondly cherished the thought that she would make a grand match some day. Is not that one of the contingencies of these people's nomadic life? Why might not Napoleona, grown up into a handsome young girl, come across a prince who would fall in love with her, and marry her?

“Just as in fairytales?” Mr. Cascabel would suggest, his turn of mind being more practical than his wife's.

“No, Cæser, just as in real life.”

“Alas, Cornelia, the time is gone when kings married shepherdesses, and, my word! in these days of ours, I have yet to know that shepherdesses would consent to marry kings!”

Such was the Cascabel family, father, mother and three children. It might have been better perhaps, if a fourth olive branch had increased the number, seeing there are certain human-pyramid exercises in which the artists climb on top of each other in even numbers. But this fourth member did not appear.

Luckily, Clovy was there, the very man to lend a hand on extraordinary occasions.

In truth, Clovy was the complement of the Cascabels. He was not one of the show, he was one of the family; and he had every claim to the membership, an American though he was by birth. He was one of those poor wretches, one of those “nobody's children,” born Heaven knows where,—they hardly know it themselves,—brought up by charity, fed as luck will have it, and taking the right road in life, if they happen to be rightly inclined, if their innate sense of what is good enables them to resist the evil examples and the evil promptings of their miserable surroundings. And should we not feel some pity for these unfortunates if, in the majority of cases, they are led to evil deeds, and come to an evil end?

Such was not the case with Ned Harley, on whom Mr. Cascabel had thought it funny to bestow the name of Clovy. And why? First, because he had as much spare fat about him as a dried clove; second, because he was engaged to receive, during the “parades,” a greater number of five-fingered stingers than any cruciferous shrub could produce of cloves in a year!

Two years before, when Mr. Cascabel lighted upon him, in his round through the States, the unfortunate man was at death's door through starvation. The troupe of acrobats, to which he belonged, had just broken up, the manager having run away. With them, he was in the “minstrels,” a sad business, even when it manages to pay, or nearly so, for the food of the wretch who plies it! Daubing your face with boot-blacking, “niggering” yourself, as they say; putting on a black coat and pants, a white vest and necktie; then singing stupid songs whilst scraping on a ludicrous fiddle in company with four or live outcasts of your kin, what a position that is in society! Well, Ned Harley had just lost that social position; and he was but too happy to meet Providence on his path, in the person of Mr. Cascabel.

It happened just then that the latter had lately dismissed the artist who generally played the clown in the parade scenes. Will it ever be believed? This clown had passed himself off as an American, and was in reality of English origin! A John Bull in the troupe! A countryman of those heartless tormentors who—The rest of the story is known. One day, by mere chance, Mr. Cascabel heard of the intruder's nationality.

“Mr. Waldurton,” said he to him, “since you are an Englishman, you'll take yourself off this very moment, or else it's not my hand on your face you shall get, a clown though you be!”

And a clown though he was, it is the tip of a boot he would have felt if he had not disappeared instantly.

It was then that Clovy stepped into the vacant berth. The late “minstrel” now engaged himself as a “man of all work”; he would perform on the boards, groom the horses, or, just as readily, do the kitchen work, whenever the mistress needed a helping hand. Naturally, he spoke French, but with a very strong accent.

He still was, on the whole, a simple-minded fellow, though now five-and-thirty years of age, as full of mirth when he gratified the public with his drolleries as he was melancholy in private life. He was rather inclined to view things on their dark side; and, to be candid, that was not to be wondered at, for it would have been hard for him to look upon himself as one of the favored ones here below. With his tapering head, his long-drawn face, his yellowish hair, his round, sheepish eyes, his phenomenal nose on which he was able to place half a dozen pairs of spectacles, a great source of laughter,—his flabby ears, his long neck like a stork's, his thin body stuck up on skeleton legs, he looked indeed a strange being. Still, he was not a man to complain, unless—this was his favorite way of qualifying a statement,—unless ill-luck gave him cause to complain. In addition, ever since his joining the Cascabels, he had become greatly attached to the good people, and they, on their part, could not have done without their Clovy.

Such was, if it may be put thus, the human element in this itinerant troupe.

As to the animal element, it was represented by two fine dogs, a spaniel—a first-rate hunter and a reliable watch-dog for the house on wheels—and a clever, intelligent poodle, sure to become a member of the “Institute,” whenever the intellectual powers of the canine race are rewarded in France on a par with those of men.

Next to the two dogs, it is right we should introduce to the public a little ape that proved a worthy rival of Clovy himself when they vied with one another in distorting their faces, and puzzled the spectators as to who should carry off the palm. Then, there was a parrot, Jako, a native of Java, who talked and prattled and sang and jabbered ten hours out of twelve, thanks to the teaching of his friend Sander. Lastly two horses, two good old horses, drew the wagon, and God knows if their legs, somewhat stiffened with years, had been stretched out over the miles and miles they had measured across country.

And, should you care to know the names of these two good steeds? One was called Vermont like Mr. Delamarre's winning horse, the other Gladiator like Count de Lagrange's.

Yes, they bore those names so famous on the French turf; yet they never had a thought of getting themselves entered for the Paris Grand Prix.

As to the dogs, they were called: the spaniel, Wagram, the poodle, Marengo; and, no need to tell who the godfather was to whom they were indebted for those renowned historical names.

The ape—why, he had been christened John Bull, for the simple reason that he was ugly.

What can be done? We must overlook this mania of Mr. Cascabel's, proceeding as it did, after all, from a patriotic sentiment which is very pardonable—even though at an epoch when such strong feelings are but little justified.

“Were it possible,” he would say sometimes, “not to worship the man who exclaimed under a shower of bullets: ‘Follow the white feather on my hat; you will ever find it, etc?’”

And, when he would be reminded that it was Henry IV who had uttered those beautiful words:

“That may be,” he would reply; “but Napoleon could have said as much!”

César Cascabel/Première partie/Chapitre II