The Beautiful Lady | Page 2

laugh there is too frequently some
person who is uncomfortable or wicked. I am glad that I was born not a
Frenchman; I should regret to be native to a country where they invent
such things as I was doing in the Place de l'Opera; for, as I tell you, the
idea was not mine.
As I sat with my eyes drooping before the gaze of my terrible and
applauding audiences, how I mentally formed cursing words against the
day when my misfortunes led me to apply at the Theatre Folie-Rouge
for work! I had expected an audition and a role of comedy in the Revue;
for, perhaps lacking any experience of the stage, I am a Neapolitan by
birth, though a resident of the Continent at large since the age of fifteen.
All Neapolitans can act; all are actors; comedians of the greatest, as
every traveller is cognizant. There is a thing in the air of our beautiful
slopes which makes the people of a great instinctive musicalness and
deceptiveness, with passions like those burning in the old mountain we
have there. They are ready to play, to sing--or to explode, yet, imitating
that amusing Vesuvio, they never do this last when you are in
expectancy, or, as a spectator, hopeful of it.
How could any person wonder, then, that I, finding myself suddenly

destitute in Paris, should apply at the theatres? One after another, I saw
myself no farther than the director's door, until (having had no more to
eat the day preceding than three green almonds, which I took from a
cart while the good female was not looking) I reached the Folie-Rouge.
Here I was astonished to find a polite reception from the director. It
eventuated that they wished for a person appearing like myself a person
whom they would outfit with clothes of quality in all parts, whose
external presented a gentleman of the great world, not merely of one
the galant-uomini, but who would impart an air to a table at a cafe'
where he might sit and partake. The contrast of this with the
emplacement of the establishment on his bald head-top was to be the
success of the idea. It was plain that I had no baldness, my hair being
very thick and I but twenty-four years of age, when it was explained
that my hair could be shaved. They asked me to accept, alas! not a part
in the Revue, but a specialty as a sandwich-man. Knowing the English
tongue as I do, I may afford the venturesomeness to play upon it a little:
I asked for bread, and they offered me not a role, but a sandwich!
It must be undoubted that I possessed not the disposition to make any
fun with my accomplishments during those days that I spent under the
awning of the Cafe' de la Paix. I had consented to be the advertisement
in greatest desperation, and not considering what the reality would be.
Having consented, honour compelled that I fulfil to the ending. Also,
the costume and outfittings I wore were part of my emolument. They
had been constructed for me by the finest tailor; and though I had
impulses, often, to leap up and fight through the noisy ones about me
and run far to the open country, the very garments I wore were fetters
binding me to remain and suffer. It seemed to me that the hours were
spent not in the centre of a ring of human persons, but of un-well-made
pantaloons and ugly skirts. Yet all of these pantaloons and skirts had
such scrutinous eyes and expressions of mirth to laugh like demons at
my conscious, burning, painted head; eyes which spread out, astonished
at the sight of me, and peered and winked and grinned from the big
wrinkles above the gaiters of Zouaves, from the red breeches of the
gendarmes, the knickerbockers of the cyclists, the white ducks of
sergents de ville, and the knees of the boulevardiers, bagged with
sitting cross-legged at the little tables. I could not escape these

eyes;--how scornfully they twinkled at me from the spurred and
glittering officers' boots! How with amaze from the American and
English trousers, both turned up and creased like folded paper, both
with some dislike for each other but for all other trousers more.
It was only at such times when the mortifications to appear so greatly
embarrassed became stronger than the embarrassment itself that I could
by will power force my head to a straight construction and look out
upon my spectators firmly. On the second day of my ordeal, so facing
the laughers, I found myself facing straight into the monocle of my
half-brother and ill- wisher, Prince Caravacioli.
At this, my agitation was sudden and very great, for there was