Coquelin

“ And you?"
"M. Coquelin has been very unhappy," said I. "He thought of going away."
"Ah?" said my aunt.
Coquelin was silent.
"You think of going away?"
"I merely spoke of it, mademoiselle. I must go away some time, you know. The Chevalier looks upon me as something eternal."
"What's eternal?" asked the Chevalier.
"There is nothing eternal, my child," said Mlle. de Bergerac. "Nothing lasts more than a moment."
"O," said Coquelin, "I don't agree with you!"
"You don't believe that in this world every thing is vain and fleeting and transitory?" ”

“ Coquelin, despite his alert and agile intelligence, remained in outward appearance almost defiantly bourgeois, and this indelible stamp of his origin, which art had done nothing to refashion or refine, never showed so clearly as when he stood beside the English actor, who, with no better social title than his own, nevertheless carried about him a nameless sense of race and breeding. ”

“ To see Coquelin in Molière is to see the greatest of comic actors at his best, and to realise that here is not a temperament, or a student, or anything apart from the art of the actor. His art may be compared with that of Sarah Bernhardt for its infinite care in the training of nature. They have an equal perfection, but it may be said that Coquelin, with his ripe, mellow art, his passion of humour, his touching vehemence, makes himself seem less a divine machine, more a delightfully faulty person. ”

“ The young girl perceived that he felt it.
She rose to her feet. "My beauty," she said, with a slight tremor in her voice, "would be a small thing without M. Coquelin's talent. We are much obliged to you. I hope that you'll bring your pictures to the château, so that we may look at the rest."
"Are you going to leave him this?" asked M. de Treuil, holding up the portrait.
"If M. Coquelin will give it to me, I shall be very glad to have it."
"One doesn't keep one's own portrait," said the Vicomte. "It ought to belong to me." ”

“ That most polished actor, Coquelin, not only did not feel the passion of his part, but he conveyed no emotion to his hearers, save admiration for his technical skill: laughter might be evoked by his mimicry, but tears refused to flow at the sight of his misfortunes. Tact is the great artist, in life as in music, or in painting or sculpture, or architecture. He who touches you wins your sympathy, even though his handling be not quite perfect. ”

“ Mlle. de Bergerac was silent. "After all," she resumed, "they oughtn't to complain."
"Not when they have a great name and beauty," said Coquelin.
"O heaven!" said the young girl, impatiently, and turned away. Coquelin stood watching her, his brow contracted, his lips parted. Presently, she came back. "Perhaps you think," she said, "that I care for my name,—my great name, as you call it." ”

“ Gracious heaven, Coquelin, suppose after all I were a bad, hard girl!"
"I'll suppose nothing; this is no time for hair-splitting." And then, after a pause, as if with a violent effort, in a voice hoarse and yet soft: "Gabrielle, passion is blind. Reason alone is worth a straw. I'll not counsel you in passion, let us wait till reason comes to us." He put out his hand; she gave him her own; he pressed it to his lips and departed.
On the following day, as I still professed myself too weak to resume my books, Coquelin left the château alone, after breakfast, for a long walk. ”

“ They come clanking up the staircase, with ringing swords, sweeping the ground with their plumes. They are all brave and splendid and fierce, but one of them far more than the rest. They each bend a knee to the lady—"
"But he bends two," cried Coquelin. "They wander apart into one of those deep embrasures and spin the threads of perfect love. ”

“ Keep repeating that: it will console you. I shall not have the compensation of doubting the perfection of what I love."
Coquelin turned away in silence. Mlle. de Bergerac sprang after him. "In Heaven's name," she cried, "say something! Rave, storm, swear, but don't let me think I've broken your heart."
"My heart's sound," said Coquelin, almost with a smile. "I regret nothing that has happened. O, how I love you!"
The young girl buried her face in her hands.
"This end," he went on, "is doubtless the only possible one. It's thinking very lightly of life to expect any other. ”

“ Coquelin to the last was intolerant of all acting which allowed the personality of the performer to override the identity of the particular character to be presented. He could be admiring, and even enthusiastic, over the art of Irving, but always with an implied reservation—the English actor never, to his thinking, sufficiently effaced himself in his part; the performance, however brilliant [236] in intellectual force, was marred, in Coquelin’s judgment, by an imperfect surrender of personality, and by a corresponding incompleteness of assumption. ”

“ Coquelin folded his arms. "Address me directly, M. le Vicomte," he said; "don't fling mud at me over mademoiselle's head."
"You? Who are you?" hissed the nobleman. "A man doesn't address you; he sends his lackeys to flog you!"
"Well, M. le Vicomte, you're complete," said Coquelin, eyeing him from head to foot.
"Complete?" and M. de Treuil broke into an almost hysterical laugh. "I only lack having married your mistress!"
"Ah!" cried Mlle. de Bergerac.
"O, you poor, insensate fool!" said Coquelin. ”

“ The farewell words of Jules Claretie, the accomplished director of the Théâtre français, spoken by his grave, were indeed a tribute: "Coquelin was more than a stage king, he was a king of the stage, and has left a luminous trail in the heaven of art."
I was one of the group of English actors who went to Paris with our sculptured offering to his genius which is enshrined in the historic foyer, where, at a luncheon, I had the temerity to make a short speech in indifferent French, urged to do so by Madame Bartet, a brilliant actress, who helped me to frame some of its sentences. ”

“ We used often to meet them, and as we drew near Mlle. de Chalais would always stop and offer to kiss the Chevalier. By this pretty trick Coquelin was subjected for a few moments to the influence of her innocent agaçeries; for rather than have no man at all to prick with the little darts of her coquetry, the poor girl would have gone off and made eyes at the scare-crow in the wheat-field. Coquelin was not at all abashed by her harmless advances; for although, in addressing my aunt, he was apt to lose his voice or his countenance, he often showed a very pretty wit in answering Mlle. de Chalais. ”

“ It's you,—it's what I love in you! It was that which went through my heart that day at Fossy. It was the look, the tone, with which you called the place horrible; it was your bitter plebeian hate. When you spoke of the misery and baseness of your race, I could have cried out in an anguish of love! When I contradicted you, and pretended that I prized and honored all these tokens of your servitude,—just heaven! you know now what my words were worth!"
Coquelin walked beside her with his hands clasped behind him, and his eyes fixed on the ground with a look of repressed sensibility. ”

“ In those days, you see, a man occupying Coquelin's place was expected to hold all his faculties and talents at the disposal of his patron, and it was thought an unwarrantable piece of assumption that he should cultivate any of the arts for his own peculiar delectation. In withholding his drawings, therefore, it may have seemed to the Vicomte that Coquelin was unfaithful to the service to which he was held,—that, namely, of instructing, diverting, and edifying the household of Bergerac. Coquelin went to a little cupboard in the wall, and took out three small albums and a couple of portfolios. ”

“ Coquelin seated himself near the other end of the terrace, and drew me between his knees. At last the nightingale ceased. Coquelin got up, and bade good night to the company, and made his way across the park to his lodge. I went over to my aunt and the Vicomte.
"M. Coquelin is a clever man," said the Vicomte, as he disappeared down the avenue. "He spoke very well this evening."
"He never spoke so much before," said I. "He's very shy."
"I think," said my aunt, "he's a little proud."
"I don't understand," said the Vicomte, "how a man with any pride can put up with the place of a tutor. ”

“ Although in a straight line from the spot which we occupied, the distance through the air to the rugged sides of the great cylinder of masonry which frowned above us was not more than thirty yards, Coquelin was obliged, in order to strike at the nearest accessible point the winding staircase which clung to its massive ribs, to retrace his steps through the interior of the castle and make a détour of some five minutes' duration. In ten minutes more he showed himself at an aperture in the wall, facing our terrace.
"How do you prosper?" cried my aunt, raising her voice. ”

“ He had a passion for Virgil. M. Scarron was very soon dismissed to the cupboard, among the dice-boxes and the old packs of cards, and I was confined for the time to Virgil and Ovid and Plutarch, all of which, with the stimulus of Coquelin's own delight, I found very good reading. But better than any of the stories I read were those stories of his wanderings, and his odd companions and encounters, and charming tales of pure fantasy, which, with the best grace in the world, he would recite by the hour. ”

“ The Vicomte probably knew a good sketch from a poor one, and he very good-naturedly pronounced my tutor an extremely knowing fellow. Coquelin had drawn anything and everything,—peasants and dumb brutes, landscapes and Parisian types and figures, taken indifferently from high and low life. ”

“ What strange figures stand aloof from its vacant windows? You ask the question, and the answer is a long revery. I never look at the picture without thinking of those summer afternoons in the woods and of Coquelin's long stories. His fairies were the fairies of the Grand Siècle, and his princes and shepherds the godsons of Perrault and Madame d'Aulnay. They lived in such palaces and they hunted in such woods.
Mlle. de Bergerac, to all appearance, was not likely to break her promise to M. de Treuil,—for lack of the opportunity, quite as much as of the will. ”

“ My father's household at Bergerac (said the Baron) consisted, exclusive of the servants, of five persons,—himself, my mother, my aunt (Mile. de Bergerac) , M. Coquelin (my preceptor) , and M. Coquelin's pupil, the heir of the house. Perhaps, indeed, I should have numbered M. Coquelin among the servants. It is certain that my mother did. Poor little woman! she was a great stickler for the rights of birth. Her own birth was all she had, for she was without health, beauty, or fortune. ”

“ One of the numerous ephemeral journals which the young and old jeunesse of the Latin Quarter is constantly creating has made a very clever caricature of the picture in a sort of Pompeian style. Death is represented by the grinning figure of Coquelin ainé. The legend is "'La Jeune Fille et la Mort,' or Coquelin ainé, presenting Sarah Bernhardt the bill of costs of her fugue." In other words, Coquelin is Death, handing to Sarah the undertaker's bill—300,000 francs—for her civil burial at the Comédie Française. ”

“ Do the instructors of youth nowadays condescend to the fairy-tale pure and simple? Coquelin's stories belonged to the old, old world: no political economy, no physics, no application to anything in life. ”

“ If we had walked far from home, we used to go and ask for some dinner at the hut of a neighboring peasant. For a very small coin we got enough bread and cheese and small fruit to keep us over till supper. The peasants, stupid and squalid as they were, always received us civilly enough, though on Coquelin's account quite as much as on my own. He addressed them with an easy familiarity, which made them feel, I suppose, that he was, if not quite one of themselves, at least by birth and sympathies much nearer to them than to the future Baron de Bergerac. ”

“ Madame Favart was most touching in her part, and everybody, I think, wept. Coquelin was excellent; but I do not like him so much in his pathetic rôles; his squeaky voice and nasal tones do not belong to the sentimental style. ”

“ My friendship for Coquelin was one of many years. No stage-struck youth perhaps was more unlikely to succeed; but his teacher at the Conservatoire—the great Regnier—always argued that to make a really fine actor a man should have to fight against some physical drawback. ”

“ I rushed off to the theater to find Perrin at once. At the door I met Coquelin, who was taking the part of the Duc de Septmonts, which he did marvelously well. I showed him the letter. He shrugged his shoulders. “It is infamous! But why do you take any notice of an anonymous letter? It is not worthy of you!” We were talking at the foot of the staircase when the manager arrived. ”

“ Only half this castle is above the soil; the rest is dungeons and vaults and oubliettes."
"Nevertheless," said the young girl, "I should have liked to live in those old days. Shouldn't you?"
"Verily, no, mademoiselle!" And then after a pause, with a certain irrepressible bitterness: "Life is hard enough now."
Mlle. de Bergerac stared but said nothing.
"In those good old days," Coquelin resumed, "I should have been a brutal, senseless peasant, yoked down like an ox, with my forehead in the soil. ”

“ He told me that the Comédie Française was a ministry; that there was the minister, the secretary, the subchiefs and the employés, and that each one must conform to the rules and bring in his share either of talent or work, and so on and so on.... I saw Coquelin at the theater in the evening. He came to me with outstretched hands.
“You know I can’t compliment you,” he said, “on your rash action, but fortunately we shall make you change your mind. When one has the good fortune and the honor of belonging to the Comédie Française one must remain there until the end of one’s career.” ”