Mathias Sandorf/Page 10

Mathias Sandorf - II,1

CHAPTER I. PESCADE AND MATIFOU.
years after the events related in the prologue of this history, on the 24th of May, 1882, there was a holiday at Ragusa, one of the chief towns of the Dalmatian provinces.

Dalmatia is a narrow tongue of land lying between the southern Dinaric Alps, Herzegovina and the Adriatic. It is just large enough to hold a population of from four to five hundred thousand, with a little squeezing.

A fine race are these Dalmatians, sober in an arid country where arable land is rare, proud amid the many political vicissitudes they have undergone, haughty toward Austria, which gained it by the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1815, and honest toward all, so much so that the country can be called, according to a beautiful expression reported by M. Yriarte, “the land of the lockless doors.”

Dalmatia is divided into four circles, and these are subdivided into districts; the circles are those of Zara, Spalato, Cattaro, and Ragusa. The governor-general resides at Zara, the capital of the province, where the Diet meets, of which many members form Part of the Upper House at Vienna.

Times are much changed since the sixteenth century, when Uscoques, fugitive Turks at war with the Mussulmans as well as the Christians, with the Sultan as well as the Venetian Republic, were the terror of the sea. But the Uscoques have disappeared, and traces of them are no longer to be found in Carniola. The Adriatic is now as safe as any other part of the poetical Mediterranean.

Ragusa, or rather the small state of Ragusa, has been republican for centuries, even before Venice—that is to say, since the ninth century. It was only in 1808 that a decree of Napoleon united it, the year following, to the Kingdom of Illyria and made of it a duchy for Marshal Marmont. In the ninth century Ragusan vessels, which plowed every sea of the Levant, had the monopoly of the trade with the infidels—a monopoly granted them by the Holy See—and Ragusa, in consequence, was of great importance among the small republics of Southern Europe. In these days Ragusa is famous for still nobler things, and. the reputation of its scientists, the renown of its writers, and the taste of its artists have given it the name of the Sclavonic Athens.

The modern shipping trade must have harbors where there is a good anchorage, and water deep enough to receive vessels of large tonnage. Ragusa has no such harbor. The basin is narrow, crowded with rocks at the water level, and hardly large enough to admit small coasters and fishing-boats.

Fortunately about a mile and a half to the north, on one of the indentations of the Bay of Ombla Fumera, a caprice of nature has formed an excellent harbor adapted for all the needs of modern navigation. This is at Gravosa, and the harbor is, perhaps, the best on the Dalmatian coast. It has water enough even for war ships; there are several yards for repairing and building ships; and there the large mail boats can put in with which the immediate future is to endow the waters of the world. It follows, therefore, that the road from Ragusa to Gravosa has become a regular boulevard, planted with magnificent trees, bordered with charming villas, frequented by the population of the town, which in 1882 amounted to from 16.000 to 17,000 inhabitants.

On this 24th of May, about four o'clock on a beautiful spring afternoon, the Ragusans were crowding in great numbers toward Gravosa. In that suburb—for Gravosa, being built at the gates of the town, may well be called such—a local fair was in progress with the usual games and sports, traveling booths, music and dancing in the open air, quacks, acrobats and entertainers, from whose shouts, and songs, and instruments there arose a tremendous uproar along the streets and jetties.

For a stranger it afforded an excellent opportunity for studying the various types of the Sclave race and the mixture of Bohemians of all kinds. In addition to the traveling showman who had come to the fair to make money out of the curiosity of the locals, the country folk and mountaineers had thronged in to take part in the public rejoicings. The women were in great numbers, girls from Ragusa, peasants from the neighborhood, fish-women from the coast. Some were in dresses approaching the latest fashions of Western Europe; others were in dresses which varied with each district, at least in detail, white bodices embroidered on the arms and breast, cloaks of many colors, waistband with thousands of silver pins—quite a mosaic, in which the colors were as confusing as in a Persian carpet—white bonnet over hair tied up with many-colored ribbons, the “okronga” surmounted by he veil, which hung down behind like the puskul of the Oriental turban, leggings and shoes, fixed to the feet with plaited straw. And with all this elaborate rig-out, a heap of jewels in the form of bracelets, collars or pieces of silver arranged in a hundred ways as ornaments for the neck, the arms, the breast, and the waist. Jewelry, too, was conspicuous in the dress of the men, whose clothes were edged with bright colored embroideries.

But among all the Ragusan costumes which even the seamen of the port wore gracefully, those of the commissionaires—a privileged corporation—were of a kind to attract special notice. These porters were regular Orientals with turban, jacket, waistcoat, belt, large Turkish trousers, and slippers. They would not have disgraced the quays of Galata, or the Tophane at Constantinople.

The fair was in full swing. The booths were doing a roaring trade. There was an additional attraction provided which was bound to bring a crowd together: this was the launch of a trabacolo, a sort of craft peculiar to the Adriatic, rigged with two masts and two sails bent to a yard top and bottom by the upper and lower bolt-ropes.

The launch was to take place at six o'clock in the evening, and the hull of the trabacolo, with the shores already cleared away, was only waiting for the key to be knocked away to glide into the sea. But up to the present the mountebanks, wandering minstrels and acrobats had been in full work amusing the public by their talents or agility.

The musicians drew the most spectators, and among them the guzlars, or players on the guzla, were the best patronized. Accompanying themselves on their strange instruments, they sung in guttural tones the songs of their country, and they were well worth stopping to hear.

The guzla used by these virtuosos of the street has several strings stretched on a long frame, and it is simply scraped with a bow. There is no risk of the singers failing for want of a note, for they go in search of them high and low, as much in their heads as in their chests.

One of the singers—a huge fellow, yellow of skin and brown of hair, holding between his knees the guzla, which looked like a cello grown thin—was singing with much mimicry and gesture a canzonet of which the following is almost a literal translation: <"p> “When gay the song comes ringing,  The song of the gypsy girl, Mark well the work she's flinging To help the words she's singing!     Oh beware   Of the gypsy girl! “Too far away from her you stay,   And then her love-lit eyes grow tender And 'neath their veiling lashes say,   ‘Come nearer, love and I'll surrender!’ “When gay the song comes ringing,   The song of the gypsy girl, Mark well the look she's flinging To help the words she's singing!     Oh take care   Of the gypsy girl!”

After this the singer with his wooden bowl in his hand went round the ring and made a collection of a few coppers. But the take seemed to be rather poor, and he returned to his place to soften his auditors with the second couplet of his canzonet: “When full the gaze of her glorious eyes Meets yours, and all their witchcraft lends her Your heart she wins as her rightful prize, She'll keep it and she'll ne'er surrender! “When gay the song comes ringing, The song of the gypsy girl, Mark well the look she's flinging, To help the words she's singing! Oh beware Of the gypsy girl!”

A man of from fifty to fifty-five was listening to the song of the Bohemians; but, being little sensible to such poetical seductions, his purse had hitherto remained unopened; and he was about to move off, when the young lady who accompanied him stopped him and said:

“Father, I have no money with me. Will you give that man something?”

And that is why the guzlar received four or five kreutzers which he would not have had without the girl's intervention, Not that her father, who was very rich, was mean enough to refuse alms to a poor foreigner, but simply because he was never moved at human misery.

The father and daughter passed through the crowds toward other booths just as noisy, while the guzla player disappeared, probably to liquidate his receipts.

But all the open-air artists, singers and mountebanks were not similarly patronized. Among the most deserted were two acrobats who were figuring away on a platform with no one encourage them.

Above the stand was a sheet of canvas in very bad state of repair, with portraits of wild animals daubed on in distemper, in which in most fantastic outline there could be seen lions, jackals, hyenas, tigers, bears, etc., leaping and disporting themselves in marvelously unreal landscapes. Behind was a tiny arena, railed off with pieces of old canvas, which boasted of so many holes for the eyes of the indiscreet to look through that they must have seriously diminished the receipts. In front of one of the poles was a dilapidated piece of plank as an apology for a signboard. On it these five words were roughly written in charcoal:

From a physical point of view—and probably from a moral one also—these two men were as different one from the other as two human beings could be. They were both natives of Provence, and it was that fact alone that had brought them together to fight the battle of life in commic.

Whence came their queer names? Were they the two geographical points between which curves the Bay of Algiers? Yes. And the names fitted them perfectly, as of Atlas does some giant wrestler.

Cape Matifou is an enormous mamelon, strong and unshakable, which rises at the north-east end of the vast roadstead of Algiers as if to defy the unchained elements and illustrate the celebrated line—

And such was the athlete Matifou, an Alcides, a Porthos, a fortunate rival of the Ompdrailles, of Nicholas Creste, and other famous wrestlers who have shone in the arenas of the South.

This giant was more than six feet in height, with a voluminous head, shoulders in proportion, chest like a smith's bellows, and limbs like tree-trunks, with the strength of steel. He was manly strength in all its magnificence, and had he known his age, we should have found, not without surprise, that he had only just entered his twenty-second year. Although this giant was not gifted with striking intelligence, yet his heart was good, and his character was simple and gentle. He knew not hate or anger. He would do no one an injury. Seldom, indeed, would he shake the hand that was offered him, for fear he should crush it in his own. In his powerful nature there was nothing of the tiger, although he had the strength. And besides, at a word, at a sign even from his companion, he would obey, as if he had been the gigantic son of that little slip of a man.

As a contrast, at the western extremity of the Bay of Algiers, Point Pescade, opposite Cape Matifou, is a thin, spare, narrow, rocky tongue running out into the sea. From it the name of Pescade was given to this fellow of twenty, who was small, slender, skinny, and of not half the weight of his friend, but supple, active, quick-witted, of inexhaustible good humor through good and evil fortune, a philosopher in his way, inventive and practical—a regular monkey without his mischief—and indissolubly linked by fate to the enormous pachyderm whom he led through all the phases of a mountebank's life.

Both were acrobats by profession and traveled from fair to fair. Matifou—or Cape Matifou as he was also called—wrestled in the ring, giving all sorts of displays of strength, bending iron bars on his biceps, lifting the heaviest of his audience at arm's length, and juggling with his young companion as if he were a tennis ball. Pescade—or Point Pescade, as he was commonly called—gesticulated, sung, played the fool, amused the public by his clownish wit, astonished them by his feats as an equilibrist, at which he was very clever, and mystified them with his conjuring tricks.

But why on this occasion on the quay at Gravosa are these poor fellows left out in the cold, while the people crowd to the other booths? Why have they taken so little when they want it so much? It is difficult to say.

Their language, an agreeable mixture of Provençal and Italian, was more than enough for them to make themselves understood. Since their departure from Provence, where they had known no relatives and seemed to have been produced by spontaneous generation, they had wandered about from markets to fairs, living ill rather than well, but still living, and if not dining every day, at least having something for supper every night; and that was good enough for them, for, as Point Pescade remarked, “We need not ask for the impossible.”

But if the worthy fellow did not ask for it on this occasion he tried at it none the less in his endeavor to get together a dozen spectators before his platform in the hope that they would pay a visit to his miserable arena. But neither his witticisms, to which his foreign accent gave such point, nor his patter which would have made the fortune of a vandevillist, nor his facial twists which would have drawn a grin from a graven image, nor his acrobatic contortions which were quite prodigies of dislocation, nor the attractions of his grass wig whose goat's beard tail dusted the hem of his jacket, nor his sallies which were worthy of a Paleinello of Rome or a Stentarello of Florence, had the slightest effect on the public.

And yet they had been practicing on the Sclaves for many months. After leaving Provence they had crossed Lombardy and Venetia, mounted, it could almost be said, one on the other—Cape Matifou famous for his strength, Point Pescade celebrated for his agility. Their renown had preceded them to Trieste in Illyria. From Trieste they had advanced through Istria, descending on the Dalmatian coast at Zara, Salone, Ragusa, finding it more profitable to advance than to retreat. Behind them they were used up; in front of them their entertainment was new and likely to bring good business. Now, alas! the tour which had never been very good threatened to become very bad, and the poor fellows had but one desire, and that they knew not how to realize; it was to get back to their native land and never come so far away from it again. But they were dragging a weight behind them, the weight of misery, and to walk many leagues with that weight at their feet was very hard.

But without thinking of the future they had to think of the present—that is, of the night's supper, which had not yet been earned. They had not a kreutzer in the treasury, if that pretentious name could be given to the corner of the handkerchief in which Point Pescade used to keep the money. In vain he sparred away on his trestles. In vain he shouted despairing appeals into vacancy. In vain Cape Matifou exhibited his biceps, on which the veins stood out like the ivy on an old tree! Not a spectator showed the slightest idea of entering the canvas ring.

“Hard to move these Dalmatians!” said Point Pescade.

“As paving-stones,” remarked Cape Matifou.

“I don't think we shall have any luck to-day! Look here, Cape Matifou, we shall have to pack up.”

“Pack up—where for?”

“You are curious!”

“Tell us.”

“Well, I will think of some place where we are at least sure of one meal a day.”

“What place is that, Point Pescade?”

“Oh, it's far, far away—and much further than very far, Cape Matifou.”

“At the end of the world?”

“The world has no end,” sententionsly replied Pescade. “If it had an end it wouldn't be round! If it didn't turn it would be immovable, and if it was immovable—”

“Well?” asked Cape Matifou.

“Well, it would tumble into the sun in less time than I could juggle a rabbit.”

“And then?”

“And then there will happen what happens to a clumsy juggler when two balls go smash in the air! Crack! crash, collapse, and the people hiss and want their money back, and you have to give it to them, and to-night we shall have nothing for supper!”

“And so,” asked the giant, “if the earth tumbles into the sun we shall have nothing for supper?”

And Cape Matifou fell into infinite perspectives. Seated on a corner of the platform, with his arms crossed on his tights, he began to nod his head like a crockery mandarin: he said no more, he saw no more, he heard no more. He was absorbed in a most unintelligible association of ideas, all mixed up in his mighty noddle. And this is what he felt gape like a gulf in the depths of his being. It seemed to him that he rose high, very high, higher than very high; this expression of Pescade had struck him as being very appropriate. Then suddenly he was left alone, and he fell—into his own stomach—that is to say, into emptiness.

It was quite a nightmare. The poor fellow rose on the stops, with his hands extended, as if he were blind. A moment later he tumbled on to the platform.

“Eh! Cape Matifou, what's up?” exclaimed Point Pescade, seizing his comrade by the hand, and dragging him back.

“Me?” answered the giant, in great confusion. “The—do you mean?”

“Yes, you.”

“I have,” said Matifou, collecting his ideas a difficult operation, notwithstanding their number was so inconsiderable—“I have been thinking that it is necessary I should speak to you, Point Pescade!”

“Say on, then, my Cape, and fear not that I shall not listen! Avaunt, thou public, avaunt!”

The giant sat down on the steps, and, in his strong arms, gently, as if he was afraid of smashing him, he drew his companion to his side.