The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul

by Albert Robida

  This is a good opportunity to offer a description of this mysterious melomaniac, which our readers might already have recognized; his photograph once appeared in all the Parisian shop-windows and his portrait, published by all the illustrated periodicals, remains in everyone’s memory.

  This tall and strongly-built stranger was no longer young; his hair was a specimen of the wig-maker’s art and to compensate for the irreparable ravages of the years his beard had to soak up a bottle of rejuvenating dye every day. A pair of gold-rimmed spectacles sat upon his unusually flat nose. His costume was always the same, in intimate circumstances, on the boulevard and at the Café Anglais as well as at the Opera. He was constantly dressed in a blue ankle-length ulster, coiffed by a scarlet fez and gloved in an irreproachable manner.

  Who was this exotic aristocrat?

  The society periodicals had been reduced to guesswork on that score. Their newshounds could find no means of getting past the wall surrounding his private life. The staff of the town house in which the unknown lived knew nothing; they could have been put to torture without any information being extracted from them.

  Only one reporter succeeded in getting into the house; he had a long interview with the strange individual without any more result, for, without allowing himself to pronounce a single word, the unknown seized a case of champagne, set a bottle in front of the reporter, uncorked another and savored it languorously. After the first bottle, as the reporter tried to say something, the unknown uncorked two more and obliged the journalist to follow his example by ingurgitating the generous liquid. When the reporter came to, he was lying in an open-topped landau between the four mariners and the unknown; they deposited him, utterly bewildered, in a corner of the famous box at the Opera. The more silent and melancholy the unknown seemed, the noisier the four sailors became; that evening they had particular difficulty preventing themselves from accompanying the singers in the grand arias. The reporter returned to his paper two days later with only one item of information: one of the mariners was named Tournesol.

  The foreign nobleman and the marines threw gold through every window, even those of boudoirs—for it must be admitted that the frequented the wings of small theaters, the Bal Mabille and private dining-rooms as assiduously as the Opera. For a long time, the foreign nobleman had had his entrée to the Opera’s foyer; he was often seen there, always grave an melancholy, spending hours in the middle of a triple circle of charming girls with ruffled skirts, soft calves and lips full of smiles.

  In the anxious clubs the danger was not unappreciated; the entire Opera seemed vanquished; even the dancer’s mothers and aunts were dreaming about the foreign nobleman. Riding in the woods in the morning, on the boulevard in the open-topped landau with his friends in the afternoon, in evening at the Cirque, the Français, Mabille or the Opera, the magnificent stranger was everywhere. At Trouville, a few months before, he had been the king of the beach; having arrived in joyous company, he had revolutionized his hotel with his whims and bowled over the elegant population of that charming resort with his Asiatic pomp.

  His servants brought carpets and cushions on to the sand, along with hookahs and pipes, bottles of liqueurs and telescopes; at midday, the foreigner appeared, followed by his inseparable mariners. All five of them, often accompanied by graceful women, installed themselves on their cushions in the midst of the beach-huts and deck-chairs and spent the afternoon as tranquilly as could be imagined, shaded from the Sun by docile servants, savoring choice liqueurs in golden goblets, or losing themselves, telescopes in hand, in the contemplation of the female bathers.

  In Paris, several celebrities of the demi-monde who claimed to have been honored by his favors, were literally besieged by reporters, who hoped to acquire by that means a few hints regarding the brilliant and mysterious character who was the subject of so much preoccupation. It must be supposed that the foreign nobleman had always been decidedly uncommunicative, for these ladies knew no more of his life than other mortals; always silent, no one had ever seen him involve himself in a conversation other than by means of grunts, variously modulated according to his humor.

  A complete mystery!

  The other event—the polar expedition—certainly preoccupied the great city less than the noble foreigner of the Opera. It was only on the rebound that the attention of Paris had been called to that subject; communications between institutes had made that question the topic of the day in scientific societies and journals, and polemics had been exchanged with newspapers from beyond the Rhine.

  The determinant cause of the German expedition to the North Pole was the discovery made in the waters of Novaya Zemlya by the Dorothea, out of Hamburg, of a tribe of seals speaking Latin. There was no denying this strange discovery; two members of the tribe—two young seals—had been brought back by the Dorothea and solemnly presented at the scientific congress of Berlin, convened in extraordinary session. The most incredulous scientists had been forced to yield to the evidence; the seals, very different from vulgar seals that say Papa and Mama, distinctly pronounced Pater and Mater. The most learned professors from the universities of Dresden, Jena, Heidelberg, Munich and so on, were summoned to the congress to take part in the appointment of a grand scientific commission charged with an in-depth examination of every aspect of the question of the Latin seals.

  The commission set to work without abandoning the grounds of the Academy, specially fitted out for the occasion and provided with large dormitories for night sessions. This innovation permitted members of the commission to work almost without interruption day and night. They discussed, ate, studied, replied, slept and woke up only to recommence. It was, in reality, a single four month session filled with Herculean labors, at the end of which the scientific commission published six volumes of reports enriched with maps, diagrams and tables, and two volumes of conclusions, which could be summarized thus:

  (1) The seals speak Latin.

  (2) They must have learned it.

  (3) That seems to prove the existence, in the polar regions, of a nation descended from some ancient Roman colony, separated from the world for centuries, the sole survivor of the ancient metropolis, whose language it has retained.

  (4) It is up to the German people, the successor of the Republic, to rediscover that colony.

  German Academia, profoundly excited by these conclusions, was soon covered with subscription lists for the dispatch of a national expedition to the North Pole. Money flowed into the coffers of the scientific commission; in only a few months, the expedition was fully organized, provided with fresh and salted food-supplies, high-quality coal, splendid instruments and eminent scientists. There was no more to do than depart for the Latin colony.

  At the same time as the German expedition’s ship left the port of Hamburg, carrying all the prayers of German Academia, an English ship left Dover, charged by jealous Albion with an analogous mission. At the end of October, it was learned in London and Berlin that both expeditions were on the ice-sheets of the Arctic Circle.

  Let us return to Paris and unveil, in a few lines, the mystery that still envelops, for the majority of our contemporaries, the identity of the noble foreigner of the Opera. This unknown nabob, this magnificent aristocrat wearing a veil of anonymity, was none other than Farandoul’s foster-father, the monkey from the island in Pomotou whom our hero had placed as a day-resident in the Jardin des Plantes when he returned from Oceania after his attempt to organize a bimane and quadrumane nation in Australia.

  Thus, the aged monkey, having reached the end of his career, after an entire life of honorability and calm respectability, had launched himself wholeheartedly into the whirlwind of Parisian pleasures. As philosophers have already remarked, when a quinquagenarian goes off the rails, he very quickly exceeds all limits and his antics surpass by a considerable distance the follies of the stormiest adolescents. Let us say immediately, however, that the brave monkey had been drawn into high society rather than throwing himself into it. He had been led astray
from his social duties and modest habits by four of our old friends—four of Farandoul’s mariners, who had come to Paris to spend their share of the 60 millions of the King of Siam’s white elephant.

  These millions, which had cost them so much effort and for which they had nearly been subjected to so many and such horrible tortures—decapitations by the sword, slicing into 98,000 pieces, boiling fat, simple or serious impalement, etc., etc.—the mariners had set about spending recklessly.

  On arriving in Paris, Tournesol, their leader, remembering the good relationship he had previously established in Australia with Farandoul’s foster-father, had run to the Jardin des Plantes to embrace the old monkey. He had found him in good health, content with his lot and held in such esteem by the administration that he was entrusted with serving as mentor to the young monkeys on days when they were let out.

  How had that honest monkey been seduced away from the path of virtue by the mariners? Why had he weakened? We still do not know. At any rate, having gone out the day after Tournesol’s visit with the young monkeys ordinarily confided to his care, Farandoul’s foster-father did not come back at 4 p.m., as usual, nor at 5, 6, 8, or even 10 p.m.

  At midnight, the staff of the Jardin des Plantes, at the height of their anxiety, had seen two omnibuses escorted by mounted policeman arrive at their gates. It was the young monkeys that were being returned. They had been found at the Folies-Bergères, where they had caused an enormous scandal, and they had been brought back drunk, exhausted and ashamed. As for Farandoul’s foster-father, he had disappeared and no one at the Jardin des Plantes ever saw him again.

  Accommodated by Tournesol in the town house in which the mariners had set up home, dressed in sumptuous garments thanks to their munificence, he had begun to astonish Paris and the seaside resorts on the coast of Normandy with his grandiose manners and mysterious appearance.

  Where was Farandoul while his foster-father was surrendering himself to these excesses? Our hero was a long way from Paris at the time. While returning from Siam, after the fortunate outcome of the affairs of the white elephant’s 60 millions, he had stopped off in Constantinople at the invitation of High Highness the Sultan, to involve himself in the great project of the reconstitution of the Ottoman Empire.

  While our friends scattered right and left to enjoy their millions, or hero, under the name of Farandoul Pasha, astonished the European powers by the loftiness of his views on the Eastern question. At a congress spontaneously gathered in Constantinople, the representatives of the old diplomacy debated with Farandoul Pasha the terms of definitive settlement of that sempiternal question.

  Russia had, you will recall, repurchased—at the cost of enormous sacrifices—the greater part of its Turkish bonds, and was talking about nothing less than forcing Turkey to file for bankruptcy. Russia’s plan had been very quickly brought to light; it consisted, first of all, of obtaining, by judiciary means, the seizure of the Sublime Porte103 and returning the keys of the Dardanelles to the official receivers, and then—which greatly interested the boyars holding the bonds—of sharing out the residents of the royal harems, seized as movable property, in proportion to the bonds.

  England had other ideas on the subject of the famous keys of the Dardanelles, and it seemed rather difficult to reach an agreement, but Farandoul Pasha was there, debating toe-to-toe and battling victoriously with both the voracious northern bear and the insatiable Britannic leopard.

  Poor Turkey had finally glimpsed the light at the end of the tunnel—continental Europe breathed again and five per cent Turks climbed to 99.95—when these hopes suddenly evaporated; an unknown but powerful motive had led Farandoul Pasha abruptly to hand in his resignation and quit Constantinople for an unknown destination!

  Bad news had arrived. Farandoul had received a blow-by-blow account of the scandalous existence led in Paris by his foster-father and an entire series of misfortunes, accidents or annoyances that had afflicted his friends in the exercise of their new profession as millionaires.

  Were these men made for the unpoetic existence that envelops us in our cities? No, in truth. Even with their millions, they immediately felt out of place, hemmed in by the thousand borders of our narrow civilization.

  Seaman Kirkson, having left for London with three millions in his pocket, had, like Tournesol in Paris, launched himself into the high life. On arrival, he had founded a club, the Rolling Stone Club—an original institution that possessed no headquarters, nor even a domicile, since it had been initially established with seven founder members in a large, carefully-refitted omnibus, which rolled by day and night around the streets of London. Kirkson, accustomed to a nomadic existence, could no longer resign himself enter any house, great restaurants aside.

  His idea had been a success; within a few days, the Rolling Stone Club had comprised four omnibuses and 30 members. They were still on the move; every three or four hours they stopped, as the opportunity presented itself, at an aristocratic restaurant, and they had a meal of some sort—breakfast, lunch or dinner. On leaving the restaurant, they furnished the vehicles with a reasonable quantity of bottles of champagne, Kirkson’s favorite tipple, and enlivened the intervals between meals with repeated libations.

  The Rolling Stone Club’s four omnibuses had, of course, often run into trouble with some policeman or other, but how could one get annoyed with such fine fellows? “Put him out!” said Kirkson, and, according to his expression, the policeman and his claims were “put out” by floods of champagne.

  One day, Kirkson wearied of this existence; finding the Rolling Stone Club too fastidious, he got his colleagues abominably drunk and abandoned them on the public highway He had had another idea; the improvement of the equine species—an eminently national task—claimed him and what remained of his three millions. In consequence, Kirkson bought a job lot of 30 horses and hired a considerable number of jockeys and grooms.

  For a fortnight, under the pretext of training them, he raced his string over the countryside between London and Windsor, galloping through the fields, scaling the heights, jumping hedges, walls, fallen trees and almost anything else he could jump over, occasionally leaving behind a broken-legged horse or a crippled jockey. After two weeks of this exercise, Kirkson judged his stable sufficiently trained and gave the signal to return to London. It was the eve of the Derby, but Kirkson, detesting flat-racing, wanted to show his compatriots how much interest would be generated by courses with well-designed obstacles. He therefore took his string to the Strand and suddenly launched the entire troop through the tightly-knit ranks of carriages and omnibuses.

  Clearing omnibuses, leaping over cabs and unseating the coachmen, entering shops through one widow and exiting through another—that was what Kirkson meant by obstacle courses. Setting the prime example himself, he had selected the gates of St. Paul’s Cathedral as a finishing-post. He arrived there well ahead, followed several minutes behind by only five of his horses. The others remained scattered along the route, with various things broken to various degrees.

  The joyous Kirkson was about to take his men to a public house to water them with spirits, when he was astonished to see the hand of a breathless policeman descend on his collar. There were damages. Kirkson, seeming greatly offended, declared that he had every intention of paying them. In response to this statement, the policemen bowed. Alas, the improvement of the equine species cost Kirkson dear; the residue of the three millions was insufficient to pay for the indemnities claimed for that single race and Kirkson, declared insolvent, was thrown into a debtors’ prison.

  He was not alone in his misfortune. Our friend Escoubico, a Spaniard by birth, had also harvested his share of annoyances, similarly in the cause of sport. There was of course, no question with Escoubico of improving the equine species; the races he preferred with those of bulls. Cut off from that sort of pleasure since he had quit Spain, as soon as he became a millionaire he had rushed back to his fatherland to catch up with it. Scarcely having disembarked, he had raced to G
renada, the town of his birth, with the intention of hiring that city’s arenas at any price, extortionate if necessary. He got them cheaper than that.

  Numerous ferocious bulls were purchased and brought to Grenada at great expense, the most renowned toreadors were engaged, with their teams of toreros, by theatrical agents to whom the ostentatious Escoubico had given only one instruction: get the best, at an extortionate price, if necessary.

  Thus provided with bulls and toreros, the Grenada bull-ring commenced a long series of magnificent fights, but almost in private. Escoubico wanted the fights for himself alone, and for the ladies. Enthroned in a huge box previously reserved for the authorities, he gleefully contemplated the prowess of his toreadors and, during the intermissions, let his eyes wander over the steps covered with charming senoras and senoritas.

  Escoubico was happy. One day, unfortunately, these pleasures were disturbed by a storm. Escoubico quarreled with the celebrated torero Cuchares, the prima spada of Andalusia!

  What had happened? A bouquet, thrown by a dark-eyed Grenadine to Cuchares, was, it is said, seized in flight by Escoubico, who was stupid enough to claim it for himself. The toreadors, furious at the insult to their leader, went on strike the following day. Escoubico’s only response was to declare that he would dispense with them henceforth and fight the bulls himself.

  That was too much. All the toreadors in Spain declared that their honor had been besmirched and swore revenge. Escoubico, besieged in his private bull-ring, was nearly transpierced by numerous Toledo navajas simultaneously deployed against him. It was necessarily to flee—regretfully, of course, but it was necessary.