I have not time to see anything else in this volume than Abstinentia adjicit vitam; but this motto of the noble Venetian I have no intention of putting in practice, at least at breakfast time.
There is no change in the order in which we sit down to table. I find myself close to Major Noltitz, who is looking attentively at Faruskiar and his companion, placed at the extremity of the table. We are asking ourselves who this haughty Mongol could be.
“Ah!” said I, laughing at the thought which crossed my mind, “if that is—”
“Who?” asked the major.
“The chief of the brigands, the famous Ki-Tsang.”
“Have your joke, Monsieur Bombarnac, but under your breath, I advise you!”
“You see, major, he would then be an interesting personage and worth a long interview!”
We enjoyed our meal as we talked. The breakfast was excellent, the provisions having come freshly on board at Askhabad and Douchak. For drink we had tea, and Crimean wine, and Kazan beer; for meat we had mutton cutlets and excellent preserves; for dessert a melon with pears and grapes of the best quality.
After breakfast I went to smoke my cigar on the platform behind the dining car. Caterna almost immediately joins me. Evidently the estimable comedian has seized the opportunity to enter into conversation with me.
His intelligent eyes, his smooth face, his cheeks accustomed to false whiskers, his lips accustomed to false moustaches, his head accustomed to wigs red, black, or gray, bald or hairy, according to his part, everything denoted the actor made for the life of the boards. But he had such an open, cheery face, such an honest look, so frank an attitude, that he was evidently a really good fellow.
“Sir,” said he to me, “are two Frenchmen going all the way from Baku to Peking without making each other’s acquaintance?”
“Sir,” I replied, “when I meet a compatriot—”
“Who is a Parisian—”
“And consequently a Frenchman twice over,” I added, “I am only too glad to shake hands with him! And so, Monsieur Caterna—”
“You know my name?”
“As you know mine, I am sure.”
“Of course, Monsieur Claudius Bombarnac, correspondent of the Twentieth Century.”
“At your service, believe me.”
“A thousand thanks, Monsieur Bombarnac, and even ten thousand, as they say in China, whither Madame Caterna and I are bound.”
“To appear at Shanghai in the French troupe at the residency as—”
“You know all that, then?”
“A reporter!”
“Quite so.”
“I may add, from sundry nautical phrases I have noticed, that you have been to sea.”
“I believe you, sir. Formerly coxswain of Admiral de Boissondy’s launch on board the Redoubtable.”
“Then I beg to ask why you, a sailor, did not go by way of the sea?”
“Ah, there it is, Monsieur Bombarnac. Know that Madame Caterna, who is incontestably the first leading lady of the provinces, and there is not one to beat her as a waiting maid or in a man’s part, cannot stand the sea. And when I heard of the Grand Transasiatic, I said to her, ‘Be easy, Caroline! Do not worry yourself about the perfidious element. We will cross Russia, Turkestan, and China, without leaving terra firma!’ And that pleased her, the little darling, so brave and so devoted, so—I am at a loss for a word—well, a lady who will play the duenna in case of need, rather than leave the manager in a mess! An artiste, a true artiste!”
It was a pleasure to listen to Caterna; he was in steam, as the engineer says, and the only thing to do was to let him blow off. Surprising as it may seem, he adored his wife, and I believe she was equally fond of him. A well-matched couple, evidently, from what I learned from my comedian, never embarrassed, very wide awake, content with his lot, liking nothing so much as the theater—above all the provincial theater—where he and his wife had played in drama, vaudeville, comedy, operetta, opera comique, opera, spectacle, pantomime, happy in the entertainment which began at five o’clock in the afternoon and ended at one o’clock in the morning, in the grand theaters of the chief cities, in the saloon of the mayor, in the barn of the village, without boots, without patches, without orchestra, sometimes even without spectators—thus saving the return of the money—professionals fit for anything, no matter what.
As a Parisian, Caterna must have been the wag of the forecastle when he was at sea. As clever with his instrument of brass or wood, he possessed a most varied and complete assortment of jokes, songs, monologues, and dialogues. This he told me with an immense amount of attitude and gesture, now here, now there, legs, arms, hands, and feet all going together. I should never feel dull in the company of such a merry companion.
“And where were you before you left France?” I asked.
“At La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, where Madame Caterna achieved a genuine success as Elsa in Lohengrin, which we played without music. But it is an interesting piece, and it was well done.”
“You must have been a good deal about the world, Monsieur Caterna?”
“I believe you; Russia, England, both Americas. Ah! Monsieur Claudius.”
He already called me Claudius.
“Ah! Monsieur Claudius, there was a time when I was the idol of Buenos Aires, and the pet of Rio de Janeiro! Do not think I would tell you an untruth! No! I know myself. Bad at Paris, I am excellent in the provinces. In Paris you play for yourself; in the provinces you play for the others! And then what a repertory!”
“My compliments, my dear compatriot!”
“I accept them, Monsieur Claudius, for I like my trade. What would you have? All the world cannot expect to be a senator or—a special correspondent.”
“There, that is wicked, Monsieur Caterna,” said I, with a laugh.
“No; it is the last word.”
And while the unwearied actor ran on in this way, stations appeared one after the other between the shrieks of the
