“You won’t do it,” he said, munching out each one of his syllables with an effort which was obviously assumed. “Pass me the bottle. I’ll smash it.”
He seized it, broke it with a blow against the window ledge, and presenting the bottom of the bottle to Sarah:
“With a few of these little sharp-edged polyhedra, the charming young lady will easily induce a perforation of her gizzard.”
“Who is that pierrot?” she asked Passavant, who had made her sit down and was sitting beside her.
“It’s Alfred Jarry, the author of Ubu Roi. The Argonauts have dubbed him a genius because the public have just damned his play. All the same, it’s the most interesting thing that’s been put on the stage for a long time.”
“I like Ubu Roi very much,” said Sarah, “and I’m delighted to see Jarry. I had heard he was always drunk.”
“I should think he must be tonight. I saw him drink two glasses of neat absinthe at dinner. He doesn’t seem any the worse for it. Won’t you have a cigarette? One has to smoke oneself so as not to be smothered by the other people’s smoke.”
He bent towards her to give her a light. She crunched a few of the crystals.
“Why! it’s nothing but sugar candy,” said she, a little disappointed. “I hoped it was going to be something strong.”
All the time she was talking to Passavant, she kept smiling at Bernard, who had stayed beside her. Her dancing eyes shone with an extraordinary brightness. Bernard, who had not been able to see her before because of the dark, was struck by her likeness to Laura. The same forehead, the same lips. … In her features, it is true, there breathed a less angelic grace, and her looks stirred he knew not what troubled depths in his heart. Feeling a little uncomfortable, he turned to Olivier:
“Introduce me to your friend Bercail.”
He had already met Bercail in the Luxembourg, but he had never spoken to him. Bercail was feeling rather out of it in this milieu into which Olivier had introduced him, and which he was too timid not to find distasteful, and every time Olivier presented him as one of the chief contributors to the Vanguard, he blushed. The fact is, that the allegorical poem of which he had spoken to Olivier at the beginning of our story, was to appear on the first page of the new review, immediately after the manifesto.
“In the place I had kept for you,” said Olivier to Bernard. “I’m sure you’ll like it. It’s by far the best thing in the number. And so original!”
Olivier took more pleasure in praising his friends than in hearing himself praised. At Bernard’s approach, Bercail rose; he was holding his cup of coffee in his hand so awkwardly, that in his agitation he spilled half of it down his waistcoat. At that moment, Jarry’s mechanical voice was heard close at hand:
“Little Bercail will be poisoned. I’ve put poison in his cup.”
Bercail’s timidity amused Jarry, and he liked putting him out of countenance. But Bercail was not afraid of Jarry. He shrugged his shoulders and finished his coffee calmly.
“Who is that?” asked Bernard.
“What! Don’t you know the author of Ubu Roi?”
“Not possible! That Jarry? I took him for a servant.”
“Oh, all the same,” said Olivier, a little vexed, for he took a pride in his great men. “Look at him more carefully. Don’t you think he’s extraordinary?”
“He does all he can to appear so,” said Bernard, who only esteemed what was natural, and who nevertheless was full of consideration for Ubu.
Everything about Jarry, who was got up to look like the traditional circus clown, smacked of affectation—his way of talking in particular; several of the Argonauts did their utmost to imitate it, snapping out their syllables, inventing odd words, and oddly mangling others; but it was only Jarry who could succeed in producing that toneless voice of his—a voice without warmth or intonation, or accent or emphasis.
“When one knows him, he is charming, really,” went on Olivier.
“I prefer not to know him. He looks ferocious.”
“Oh, that’s just the way he has. Passavant thinks that in reality he is the kindest of creatures. But he has drunk a terrible lot tonight; and not a drop of water, you may be sure—nor even of wine; nothing but absinthe and spirits. Passavant’s afraid he may do something eccentric.”
In spite of himself, Passavant’s name kept recurring to his lips, and all the more obstinately that he wanted to avoid it.
Exasperated at feeling so little able to control himself, and as if he were trying to escape from his own pursuit, he changed his ground:
“You should talk to Dhurmer a little. I’m afraid he bears me a deadly grudge for having stepped into his shoes at the Vanguard; but it really wasn’t my fault; I simply had to accept. You might try and make him see it and calm him down a bit. Pass. … I’m told he’s fearfully worked up against me.”
He had tripped, but this time he had not fallen.
“I hope he has taken his copy with him. I don’t like what he writes,” said Bercail; then turning to Bernard: “But, you, Monsieur Profitendieu, I thought that you. …”
“Oh, please don’t call me Monsieur. … I know I’ve got a ridiculous mouthful of a name. … I mean to take a pseudonym, if I write.”
“Why haven’t you contributed anything?”
“Because I hadn’t anything ready.”
Olivier, leaving his two friends to talk together, went up to Edouard.
“How nice of you to come! I was longing to see you again. But I would rather have met you anywhere but here. … This afternoon, I went and rang at your door. Did they tell you? I was so sorry
