Under the Hill 4

Under the Hill 4

The frockless Helen and Fanfreluche, with Mrs. Marsuple and Claude

and Clair, and Farcy, the chief comedian, sat at the same table.

Fanfreluche, who had doffed his travelling suit, wore long black silk

stockings, a pair of pretty garters, a very elegant ruffled shirt,

slippers and a wonderful dressing-gown; and Farcy was in ordinary

evening clothes. As for the rest of the company, it boasted some very

noticeable dresses, and whole tables of quite delightful coiffures.

There were spotted veils that seemed to stain the skin, fans with

eye-slits in them, through which the bearers peeped and peered; fans

painted with figures and covered with the sonnets of Sporion and the

short stories of Scaramouch; and fans of big, living moths stuck upon

mounts of silver sticks. There were masks of green velvet that make

the face look trebly powdered; masks of the heads of birds, of apes,

of serpents, of dolphins, of men and women, of little embryons and of

cats; masks like the faces of gods; masks of coloured glass, and masks

of thin talc and of india-rubber. There were wigs of black and scarlet

wools, of peacocks' feathers, of gold and silver threads, of swansdown,

of the tendrils of the vine, and of human hair; huge collars of stiff

muslin rising high above the head; whole dresses of ostrich feathers

curling inwards; tunics of panthers' skins that looked beautiful over

pink tights; capotes of crimson satin trimmed with the wings of owls;

sleeves cut into the shapes of apocryphal animals; drawers flounced

down to the ankles, and flecked with tiny, red roses; stockings clocked

with fetes galantes, and curious designs; and petticoats cut like

artificial flowers. Some of the women had put on delightful little

moustaches dyed in purples and bright greens, twisted and waxed with

absolute skill; and some wore great white beards, after the manner of

Saint Wilgeforte. Then Dorat had painted extraordinary grotesques and

vignettes over their bodies, here and there. Upon a cheek, an old man

scratching his horned head; upon a forehead, an old woman teased by an

impudent amor; upon a shoulder, an amorous singerie; round a breast,

a circlet of satyrs; about a wrist, a wreath of pale, unconscious

babes; upon an elbow, a bouquet of spring flowers; across a back, some

surprising scenes of adventure; at the corners of a mouth, tiny red

spots; and upon a neck, a flight of birds, a caged parrot, a branch

of fruit, a butterfly, a spider, a drunken dwarf, or, simply, some

initials.

 

[Illustration: "The Fruit Bearers"]

 

 

The supper provided by the ingenious Rambouillet was quite beyond

parallel. Never had he created a more exquisite menu. The _consomme

impromptu_ alone would have been sufficient to establish the immortal

reputation of any chef. What, then, can I say of the _Dorade bouillie

sauce maréchale,_ the _ragoût aux langues de carpes_, the _ramereaux

à la charnière,_ the _ciboulette de gibier à l'espagnole_, the _paté

de cuisses d'oie aux pois de Monsalvie,_ the _queues d'agneau au clair

de lune,_ the _artichauts à la grecque,_ the _charlotte de pommes à

la Lucy Waters,_ the _bombes à la marée_, and the _glaces aux rayons

d'or_? A veritable tour de cuisine that surpassed even the famous

little suppers given by the Marquis de Réchale at Passy, and which the

Abbé Mirliton pronounced "impeccable, and too good to be eaten."

 

Ah! Pierre Antoine Berquin de Rambouillet; you are worthy of your

divine mistress!

 

Mere hunger quickly gave place to those finer instincts of the pure

gourmet, and the strange wines, cooled in buckets of snow, unloosed

all the decollete spirits of astonishing conversation and atrocious

laughter.

 

As the courses advanced, the conversation grew bustling and more

personal. Pulex and Cyril, and Marisca and Cathelin, opened a fire of

raillery, and a thousand amatory follies of the day were discussed.

 

From harsh and shrill and clamant, the voices grew blurred and

inarticulate. Bad sentences were helped out by worse gestures, and

at one table Scabius expressed himself like the famous old knight in

the first part of the "Soldier's Fortune" of Otway. Bassalissa and

Lysistrata tried to pronounce each other's names, and became very

affectionate in the attempt; and Tala, the tragedian, robed in roomy

purple, and wearing plume and buskin, rose to his feet, and, with

swaying gestures, began to recite one of his favourite parts. He got

no further than the first line, but repeated it again and again, with

fresh accents and intonations each time, and was only silenced by the

approach of the asparagus that was being served by satyrs dressed in

white.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IV

 

 

It is always delightful to wake up in a new bedroom. The fresh

wall-paper, the strange pictures, the positions of doors and windows,

imperfectly grasped the night before, are revealed with all the charm

of surprise when we open our eyes the next morning.

 

It was about eight o'clock when Fanfreluche awoke, stretched himself

deliciously in his great plumed four-post bed, murmured "What a pretty

room!" and freshened the frilled silk pillows behind him. Through

the slim parting of the long flowered window curtains, he caught a

peep of the sun-lit lawns outside, the silver fountains, the bright

flowers, the gardeners at work, and beneath the shady trees some early

breakfasters, dressed for a day's hunting in the distant wooded valleys.

 

"How sweet it all is," exclaimed the Abbé, yawning with infinite

content. Then he lay back in his bed, stared at the curious patterned

canopy above him and nursed his waking thoughts.

 

He thought or the "Romaunt de la Rose," beautiful, but all too brief.

 

Of the Claude in Lady Delaware's collection.[1]

 

Of a wonderful pair of blonde trousers he would get Madame Belleville

to make for him.

 

Of a mysterious park full of faint echoes and romantic sounds.

 

Of a great stagnant lake that must have held the subtlest frogs that

ever were, and was surrounded with dark unreflected trees, and sleeping

fleurs de luce.

 

Of Saint Rose, the well-known Peruvian virgin; how she vowed herself to

perpetual virginity when she was four years old[2]; how she was beloved

by Mary, who from the pale fresco in the Church of Saint Dominic, would

stretch out her arms to embrace her; how she built a little oratory

at the end of the garden and prayed and sang hymns in it till all the

beetles, spiders, snails and creeping things came round to listen;

how she promised to marry Ferdinand de Flores, and on the bridal

morning perfumed herself and painted her lips, and put on her wedding

frock, and decked her hair with roses, and went up to a little hill not

far without the walls of Lima; how she knelt there some moments calling

tenderly upon Our Lady's name, and how Saint Mary descended and kissed

Rose upon the forehead and carried her up swiftly into heaven.

 

[Illustration: St. Rose of Lima]

 

 

He thought of the splendid opening of Racine's "Britannicus."

 

Of a strange pamphlet he had found in Helen's library, called "A Plea

for the Domestication of the Unicorn."

 

Of the "Bacchanals of Sporion."[3]

 

Of Morales' Madonnas with their high egg-shaped creamy foreheads and

well-crimped silken hair.

 

Of Rossini's "Stabat Mater" (that delightful _démodé_ piece of

decadence, with a quality in its music like the bloom upon wax fruit).

 

Of love, and of a hundred other things.

 

Then his half-closed eyes wandered among the prints that hung upon the

rose-striped walls. Within the delicate curved frames lived the corrupt

and gracious creatures of Dorat and his school, slender children in

masque and domino smiling horribly, exquisite letchers leaning over the

shoulders of smooth doll-like girls and doing nothing in particular,

terrible little Pierrots posing as lady lovers and pointing at

something outside the picture, and unearthly fops and huge bird-like

women mingling in some rococo room, lighted mysteriously by the flicker

of a dying fire that throws great shadows upon wall and ceiling.

 

Fanfreluche had taken some books to bed with him. One was the witty,

extravagant, "Tuesday and Josephine," another was the score of "The

Rheingold." Making a pulpit of his knees he propped up the opera

before him and turned over the pages with a loving hand, and found

it delicious to attack Wagner's brilliant comedy with the cool head

of the morning.[4] Once more he was ravished with the beauty and

wit of the opening scene; the mystery of its prelude that seems to

come up from the very mud of the Rhine, and to be as ancient, the

abominable primitive wantonness of the music that follows the talk and

movements of the Rhine-maidens, the black, hateful sounds of Alberic's

love-making, and the flowing melody of the river of legends.

 

But it was the third tableau that he applauded most that morning, the

scene where Loge, like some flamboyant primeval Scapin, practises his

cunning upon Alberic. The feverish insistent ringing of the hammers at

the forge, the dry staccato restlessness of Mime, the ceaseless coming

and going of the troup of Niblungs, drawn hither and thither like a

flock of terror-stricken and infernal sheep, Alberic's savage activity

and metamorphoses, and Loge's rapid, flaming tongue-like movements,

make the tableau the least reposeful, most troubled and confusing thing

in the whole range of opera. How the Abbé rejoiced in the extravagant

monstrous poetry, the heated melodrama, and splendid agitation of it all!