NO RELATIONS.
27
Just at first the landlady, who was a dignified
personage, had disdained to look at us; but my
master's grand airs overawed her, and a serv-
ant-girl received the order to show us the way.
" Quick! go to bed," said Vitalis to me,
while the servant lighted the fire.
I stood for a moment amazed: why should I
go to bed? I would much rather.have sat down
to table than have gone to bed.
"Come, quick!" repeated Vitalis, and I had
nothing for it but to obey.
There was an eider-down upon the bed; Vi-
talis drew it over me up to the chin.
"Try and get warm," he said to me: "the
warmer you are the better it will be."
It seemed to me that Joli Cœur had much
more need than I of heat, for I was not in the
least cold. While I remained motionless under
the eider-down trying to get warm, Vitalis, to
the great astonishment of the servant, turned
and re-turned about poor little Joli Cœur as if
he meant to roast him
"Are you warm?" asked Vitalis of me, after
some instants.
" I'm smothering."
"That's just what I want;" and, coming
quickly to me, he put Joli Cœur into my bed,
telling me to keep him closely held against my
chest.
The poor little creature, who was usually so
restive when anything was done to him that
did not please him, seemed resigned to every
thing.    It clung close to me without moving:
it was no longer cold; its body was burning.
My master had gone down to the kitchen ;
soon after he came up again, carrying a bowl of
hot, sweetened wine. He tried to make Joli
Cœur drink some spoonfuls of this beverage,
but the latter would not unclose his teeth. With
his bright eyes he looked at us- sadly, as though
begging us not to torment him. At the same
time he put one of his arms out of bed and held
it towards us.
I was asking myself what this gesture meant,
which he repeated.every minute, when Vitalis ex-
plained it to me. Before I joined the company
Joli Cœur had had inflammation of the chest,
and they had bled him in the arm; and now,
feeling himself ill again, he held out his arm
that he might be bled and cured as he had been
cured the first time. It was so touching! Not
only was Vitalis touched, but he was uneasy
besides. Poor Joli Cseur was evidently ill ; and,
more than that, he must have felt himself very
ill to refuse the sugared wine he was so fond of.
"Drink the wine," said Vitalis, " and stop in
bed: I am going to get a doctor."
It must be confessed that I also was very
fond of sweetened wine; and, more than that,
I was terribly hungry. I did not let this order
be given twice, and after having emptied the
bowl I put myself again under the eider-down,
where, the heat of the wine helping, I was
nearly suffocated.
Our master was not long away : he returned
soon, bringing with him a gentleman in gold
spectacles,—the doctor.
Fearing that this mighty personage would not
trouble himself for a monkey, Vitalis had not
stated for what invalid he required him: there-
fore, seeing me in bed as red as an opening
peony, the doctor came to me, and, having put
his hand upon my forehead, " Congestion," said
he, and he shook his head with an air which
prophesied ho good.
It was time to undeceive him, or perhaps he
would bleed me.
" It isn't I who am ill," I said.
" What, not ill!    This child is raving."
Without replying, I raised the coverlet a
little, and, showing Joli Cœur, who had put his
little arm round my neck, said,—
" It is he who is ill."
The doctor recoiled two steps, and, turning
to Vitalis, cried,—
"A monkey! What! do you mean to say
that you have disturbed me for a monkey, and
in such weather?"
I thought that he was about to go away in
indignation. But our, master was a clever man,
and one who did not easily lose his presence of
mind He accosted the doctor with his most
polite and grandest manner, explaining to him
the circumstances,—how we had been caught
in the snow, and how, terrified by the wolves,
Joli Cœur had taken refuge in an oak-tree,
where he had been frozen with cold.
"It must be allowed that the invalid was only
a monkey; but what a talented monkey! and,
more than that, a comrade, a friend of ours!
How could so remarkable an actor be intrusted
to the care of a mere veterinary surgeon? All
the world knows that village veterinary sur-
geons are nothing but donkeys; while all the
world knows equally well that doctors are,
every one of them, in different degrees, men of
science,—so that in the smallest village one has
only to knock at the doctor's door to have the
certainty of finding both learning and gener-
osity. Also, although the monkey is but an
animal, as the naturalists tell us, it approaches
man so closely that its ailments are the same as
his. Is it not interesting, from a scientific and
artistic point of view, to study how these mala-
dies resemble or differ from one another?"
The Italians are adroit flatterers: the doctor
soon came back from the door and approached
the bed once more.
Whilst our master had been speaking, Joli
Cœur, who had plainly divined this personage
with the spectacles to be a doctor, had more
than ten times stretched out his little arm, as if
holding it to be bled.
"Set how intelligent this monkey is: he
knows that you are a doctor, and he holds out
his arm that you may feel his pulse."
That turned the scale with the doctor.
"Humph!" said he: "the case is probably
interesting. "
Alas! it was a very sad and very anxious one
for us. Poor Monsieur Joli Cœur was threat-
ened with inflammation of the lungs. This little
arm that he had so often held out was held by
the doctor, and the lancet was plunged into its
veins without his giving the least cry. He
knew that it was to cure him. Then after the
bleeding came mustard-plasters, poultices,
draughts, and hot drinks.
I did not stay in bed, as may be guessed : I
became nurse under the superintendence of
Vitalis. Poor little Joli Cœur liked my minis-
trations, and he rewarded me with a gentle
smiie; his expression had become really human.
Once so lively, so petulant, so provoking, al-
ways on the alert to play us some mischievous
trick, he lay there now a pattern of docility
and quietness. He even seemed to want us to
show him affection, even exacting it of Capi,
who had so often been his victim. Like a
spoiled child, he would have us all about him
at once, and when one of us went out he flew
in a rage.
His disease ran the usual course of all chest-
complaints; that is to say, a cough soon estab-
lished itself, tiring him greatly by the shocks it
gave his poor little body. All my wealth was
five sous: I laid them out in buying barley-
sugar for Joli Cœur. Unfortunately, I aggra-
vated his illness instead of soothing it; for,
with the attention which he brought to bear
upon everything, it did not take him long to as-
certain that I gave him a piece of barley-sugar
every time he coughed.
Thereupon he made haste to profit by this
piece of information, and set himself to cough
every other minute, in order to enjoy oftener
theremedy which he liked so well: so that this
remedy, instead of curing him, made him
worse.
When I discovered his maneuver, I of course
suppressed the barley-sugar; but he was not
discouraged. He began by imploring me with
his beseeching eyes, and, when he saw that his
prayers were useless, he sat up and bent double,
one hand on his stomach, coughing with all his
might, his face flushed, the veins of his fore-
head distended, and he ended by choking him-
self, no longer in play, but in good earnest.
My master had never confided the state
of his affairs to me, and it was only in an
incidental way that I learned he had been
forced to sell his watch in order to buy me my
sheepskin; but in the hard straits we were
now in he thought that he might break through
this rule.
One morning, on coming back after break;
fasting, I meantime having remained with Joli
Cœur, who was never left alone, he told me
that the landlord had asked for the payment of
what we owed, and that after this payment all
that he had left was two shillings and a penny.
What were we to do? Naturally, I was un-
able to solve the difficulty. As for him, he saw
oniy one way of getting out of it, and that was
to give a performance that very evening. A
performance without Zerbino, without Dolce,
without Joli Cœur! it seemed to me out of the
question.
But we were not in a position to be long cast
down by what appeared a mere impossibility ;
we must at any cost nurse Joli Cœur and save
him.    The doctor, the medicines, the fire, the
room, obliged us to get, somehow, at least forty
francs to pay the landlord, who, seeing the color
of our money, would open a fresh account with
us.
Forty francs in this village, in this coldl
weather, and with the resources at our disposal,,
—what a master-stroke that would be! How-
ever, my master, without waiting to reflect, set.
himself to work at once to carry it out.
While I took charge of our invalid, he foundi
a theater in the market-place: an open-air fw~
formance was impossible in this cold weather.
He drew up and hung out the advertisements;
he arranged a stage with some planks, and
boldly expended his fifty sous in buying candles,
which he cut in two so as to double the iilu-
mination.
From the window of the room I could see
him going and coming through the snow, pass-
ing and repassing before our inn; and it was
not without perplexity that I asked myself
what the programme of this performance was
to be.
I was soon at rest on that point, for the village
drummer, wearing a red képi, stopped before
the inn, and, after a splendid tattoo, read out
the programme.
What it was may easily be imagined from the
fact that Vitalis had lavished on it the most ex-
travagant promises : it spoke of "an artist cele-
brated throughout the entire universe,"—this
meant Capi,—and of "a young singer who was
a prodigy:" the prodigy was—myself. But the
most interesting part of this piece of news was
the statement that there was no fixed price for
admission, and that it was left tothe generosity
of the spectators, who were not asked to pay
until after they had seen, heard, and applauded.
This seemed very venturesome to me; for
would they applaud us? Capi really deserved
to be celebrated. But, for my part, I had not
the least conviction of being a prodigy.
On hearing the drum, Capi had barked joy-
fully, and Joli Cœur had half raised himself»
although he was just then very poorly; both of
them, I felt quite sure, guessed that there was
going to be a performance. This idea which
had flashed upon my mind was soon confirmed
by Joli Cœur's pantomime. He wanted to get
up, and I had to hold him down in bed by
force ; then he asked me for his English gen-
eral's costume, the coat and red trousers braided
with gold, the cocked hat with its red plume.
He clasped his hands, he went on his knees the
better to entreat me. Seeing that he got noth-
ing from me by prayer, he tried anger; then,
last of all, tears.
It was clear that we were going to bave a
good deal of trouble to induce him to give up
this whim of playing his part that evening, and
I thought that, under these circumstances, th©
best plan would be to hide our departure from
him. Unluckily, when Vitalis, who did not
know what had happened during hio absence,
came in, his first words were to tell me to get
ready my harp and all the affairs necessary for
our performance.
At these well-known words Joli Cœur began
again his supplications, this time addressing
them to his master. One might wager that,
had he been able to use it, articulate speech
could not have better expressed his wishes than
did the different sounds he uttered, the contor-
tions of his face, and the pantomime of his
whole body; real tears ran down his cheeks;
they were real kisses that he was showering on
Vitalis's hands.
"You want to play?" spoke the latter.
"Yes, yes!" proclaimed aloud all Joli Cœur's
bodv.
" But you are ill, poor little Joli Cœur!"
"Not iii any longer!" he cried, less express-
ively.
It was truly touching to see the ardor that
this poor little sick thing, that had now barely
a breath of life left, threw into its supplica-
tions, and the looks as well as the attitudes he
assumed in order to melt us; but to grant him
what he asked would have been condemning
him to certain death.
The hour was come for us to go to the mar-
ket-place. I made a good fire on the hearth
with large logs which would last for a long
time; I rolled poor little Joli Cœur well up in
his coverlet; he wept hot tears, and embraced
me as much as he could; then we set out.
As we made our way through the snow, my
master explained what he expected of me. Our
usual pieces were out of the question, since our
leading actors were wanting: but Capi and I
were to do our utmost and display all our zeal