You are too good, sir. I abide by what my counsel has just said.
LEONARD.
Is that all?
MLLE DE LA G.
Yes, sir.
LEONARD.
She speaks well — and briefly. This orphan moves me. (To the footman.) Take your bundle into the kitchen. (The footman goes. — To MAITRE ADAM.) Maître Adam, when you came in I was formulating the judgment I shall presently enter in the matter of this young lady.
[He comes down from the cupboard.
ADAM.
What! on top of that cupboard?
LEONARD.
I don’t know what’s come over me. My head is very bad. Would you like to hear the judgment? I want to read it over for my own sake. (Reads.) Whereas the demoiselle de le Garandière, orphan from her birth, has fraudulently and by deceit conveyed away from the said Piédeloup her guardian ten crops of hay, twenty-four pounds of fish from private waters, and whereas there is nothing so terrifying as a fire, and whereas the Procureur has received a pie from Amiens in which was a pair of horns...
ADAM.
What, in Heaven’s name, are you reading?
LEONARD.
DO not ask me. I don’t know myself. I feel as if some demon had been braying my brains in a mortar for two hours past. And it is your fault, Maître Adam Fumée. If the worthy doctor had not restored my wife’s speech...
ADAM.
Do not blame me, Monsieur Léonard. I warned you. I told you plainly that you should think twice before you loosened a woman’s tongue.
LEONARD.
Ah, Maître Adam Fumée, how I regret the time when Catherine was dumb. No. Nature has no more terrible scourge than a talkative woman.... But I count on the doctors annulling their cruel gift. I have sent for them, and here is the surgeon even
SCENE IV.
The same. MASTER JEAN MAUGIER, then MASTER SIMON COLLINE, and MASTER SERAPHIN DULAURIER, followed by two little boys from the apothecary’s.
MAUGIER.
Worshipful sir, I have the honour to greet you. Here is Master Simon Colline approaching on his mule, followed by Master Séraphin Dulaurier, the apothecary. Round him surges an adoring crowd; serving-maids holding up their skirts, pastrycook’s boys with baskets on their heads, form his escort. (Enter MASTER SIMON COLLINE and his following.) Oh, how rightly is Master Simon Colline the cynosure of every eye when he passes through the city in gown and cap, hood and bands. Oh, how grateful we should be to these good doctors who labour to keep us in health and who tend us when...
SIMON (to MASTER JEAN MAUGIER).
Enough! that will do.
LEONARD.
Master Simon Colline, I was impatient to see you. I want your services at once.
SIMON.
For yourself, sir? What is your trouble? Where do you suffer?
LEONARD.
No. For my wife — for her who was dumb.
SIMON.
Does she experience any inconvenience?
LEONARD.
None. It is I who am inconvenienced.
SIMON.
How is this? It is you who are inconvenienced, and it is your wife you would have healed?
LEONARD. —
Master Simon Colline, she talks too much. She was to be made to speak, but not to this extent. Since you cured her dumbness she is driving me mad. I can endure her talk no longer. I have called you in to make her dumb once more.
SIMON.
It is impossible.
LEONARD.
What do you say? You cannot take away the speech that you gave?
SIMON.
No. I cannot. My art is great, but it cannot do that.
MAUGIER.
It is an impossibility for us.
SERAPHIN.
All our ministrations can do nothing here.
SIMON.
We have remedies to make women speak — we have none to make them silent.
LEONARD.
You have none? What is this you tell me? You drive me to despair.
SIMON.
Alas, worshipful sir, there is no elixir, balm, sovran recipe, opiate, unguent, plaster, local application, electuary, or panacea to heal intemperance of the glottis in woman. Theriac and orviétan are without virtue here, and all the herbs prescribed by Dioscorides would work nothing.
LEONARD.
Do you speak truth?
SIMON.
You insult me if you doubt it.
LEONARD.
In that case I am a lost man. There is nothing left for me but to throw myself into the Seine with a stone round my neck. I cannot live in this uproar. If you do not want me to drown myself out of hand, you must find me a remedy, gentlemen.
SIMON.
There is none, as I have told you, for your wife. But there is one for you, if you consent to make use of it.
LEONARD.
You restore me some hope. Explain yourself, I beg.
SIMON.
Against a woman’s chatter there is one single remedy. It is the husband’s deafness.
LEONARD.
What do you mean?
SIMON.
I mean what I say.
ADAM.
Do you not understand? It is the finest invention there is. Being unable to make your wife dumb, this great doctor offers to make you deaf.
LEONARD.
Make me deaf once and for all?
SIMON.
Without a doubt. I will heal you instantly and radically of your honoured wife’s verbal incontinence, by cophosis.
LEONARD.
Cophosis? What is cophosis?
SIMON.
It is what is vulgarly called deafness. Do you see any drawbacks to being deaf?
LEONARD.
Yes, I do. For, indeed, there are drawbacks. MAUGIER.
Do you think so?
SERAPHIN.
What are they?
SIMON.
You are a judge. What drawback is there in a judge being deaf?
ADAM.
None. You may believe me. I frequent the Courts. There is none.
SIMON.
Would justice come to any harm?
ADAM.
No harm would come of it. On the contrary, Monsieur Léonard Botal would hear neither advocates nor their clients, and would no longer run the risk of being taken in by falsehoods.
LEONARD.
That is true. —
ADAM.
He would be all the better judge.
LEONARD.
Maybe...
ADAM.
You need have no doubt.
LEONARD.
But how do you work this — this —
MAUGIER.
Cure —
SIMON.
Cophosis or deafness may be procured in several ways. It is produced by otorrhœa, by inflammation of the parotid, by sclerosis of the ear, by otitis, or by ankylosis of the small bones. But these various methods are long and painful.
LEONARD.
I reject them. I reject them all emphatically.
SIMON.
You are wise. It is much better to induce cophosis by means of a certain white powder which I have in my pouch, a pinch of which introduced into the ear is enough to make you deaf as a post, or as unhearing as Heaven in an angry mood.
LEONARD.
Thank you for nothing, Master Simon Colline; keep your powder.... I do not wish to be deaf.
SIMON.
What, you won’t be deaf? You reject cophosis? You flee from the cure you but lately implored? It is all too common a spectacle and one well calculated to grieve the soul of a good doctor, to see a refractory patient reject salutary remedies...
MAUGIER.
... Avoid the ministrations which could comfort his sufferings....
SERAPHIN.
... And refuse to be healed.
ADAM.
Do not decide so hurriedly, Monsieur Léonard Botal, nor deliberately reject an evil which would shield you from a greater one.
L
EONARD.
No. I don’t want to be deaf. I will have none of this powder.
SCENE V.
The same. ALIZON, then CATHERINE.
ALIZON (rushing downstairs, holding her ears).
I can stand it no more. My head is bursting. It is not humanly possible to listen to such a buzzing. She never stops. I feel as if I had been two hours in a mill-wheel.
LEONARD.
Miserable woman! Don’t let her come down. Alizon! Gilles! Shut her up!
ADAM.
My good sir!
MLLE DE LA G.
Oh, sir, can you be so hard-hearted as to keep the poor lady shut up?
CATHERINE.
What a numerous and delightful company. Your servant, gentlemen. — [She curtseys.
SIMON.
And now, tell me, Madame, are you not satisfied with us? and have we not thoroughly loosed your tongue?
CATHERINE.
You did it very well, gentlemen, and I am much obliged to you. Just at first I could not articulate a good many words. But now I have considerable facility of speech. I use it with moderation, for a talkative woman is a domestic scourge. Gentlemen, I should be inconsolable if you had reason to suspect me of loquacity or if you thought an itch for speaking had hold of me. Therefore, I ask your leave to put myself right at once in my husband’s sight, for he, prejudiced on I know not what grounds against me, has conceived that my conversation distracted him in a vexatious manner when he was propounding a judgment... a judgment in favour of a young orphan girl? whose father and mother were cut off in the flower of her youth. But no matter. I was sitting by him and hardly addressed a word to him, so to say. All I did was to sit there. Can a husband complain of that? Can he complain of a wife’s sitting near him and seeking his company, as she ought to? (To her husband.) The more I think about it the less I understand your impatience. What was the cause of it? Don’t say again that it was my chatter. The excuse cannot be sustained. My friend, you must have some grievance against me that I am ignorant of, and I beg you to tell me it. You owe me an explanation, and when I know what has vexed you I will see to it that you are spared in future the annoyance you have brought to my knowledge. For I am anxious to shield you from every occasion of discontent. My mother used to say: “Between husband and wife there should be no secrets.” And she was right. A husband or a wife has, at times, as a result of not confiding the one in the other, drawn down on the household or on themselves the most terrible calamities. That is what happened to the wife of the President of Beaupréau. To give her husband an agreeable surprise she shut up a little sucking-pig in a box in her room. The husband heard it squeal, and thinking it was a lover, drew his sword and thrust it through his wife’s heart before he heard the unhappy woman’s explanations. When he opened the box, judge of his surprise and his despair. That is why there should never be anything hole and corner, even when well meant. You can say what you like before these gentlemen. I have done no wrong, and whatever you may say my innocence will only show the more clearly.
LEONARD
(who, for some moments, has been vainly trying, by his signs and exclamations, to stop CATHERINE’S flow of words, and who has already given signs of extreme impatience).
The powder! The powder! Master Simon Colline, your powder — your white powder, for pity’s sake!
SIMON.
Never, indeed, was deafening powder more necessary. Be good enough to sit down, worshipful sir. Master Séraphin Dulaurier will blow the deafening powder into your ears.
SERAPHIN.
With pleasure, sir.
SIMON.
There — it is done.
CATHERINE (to MAITRE ADAM FUMEE).
Make my husband listen to reason, Master Lawyer. Tell him he must hear what I have to say — that a wife must not be condemned unheard — tell him that one does not throw bags at a woman’s head — for he threw bags at my head — without being driven to do it by some violent impulse, mental or emotional. But no! I will speak to him myself. (To LEONARD.) Answer me, my friend, have I failed you in any way? Am I a wicked woman? Am I a bad wife? I have done my duty faithfully. I will go so far as to say that I have loved...
LEONARD
(his countenance expresses beatitude, and he twiddles his thumbs tranquilly).
How delicious! I hear nothing now.
CATHERINE.
Listen to me, Léonard. I love you tenderly. I will open my heart to you. I am not one of these light and frivolous women a mere nothing can cast down and a mere nothing console, and who are amused with trifles. I feel the need of friendship. I was born so. When I was no more than seven I had a little dog, a little yellow dog... You are not listening to me...
SIMON.
Madame, he cannot listen to you or to anyone else. He no longer hears.
CATHERINE.
What do you mean, he no longer hears?
SIMON.
He can no longer hear because of a drug he has taken...
SERAPHIN.
... Which has resulted for him in a calm and cheerful deafness.
CATHERINE.
I will make him hear me.
SIMON.
You can do nothing of the sort, Madame, it is impossible.
CATHERINE.
You shall see. (To her husband.) My friend, my dearest, my love, my heart, my better half... you don’t hear. (She shakes him.) Olibrius, Herod, Bluebeard, cuckold...
LEONARD.
I hear her no longer through my ears. But I hear her only too plainly in my arms, shoulders, and backbone.
SIMON.
She is going mad.
LEONARD.
Whither can I flee? She has bitten me! I feel that I am becoming as mad as she!
[The blind man is heard without. He enters the hall singing: —
Riverward wend you,
Arm clipped in arm,
Tra-la-lal-la,
Mill-maiden, send you
Take no alarm!
Trip you and bend you,
Flaunting each charm,
Tra-la-lal-la,
Mill-maiden, send you
Come not to harm!
[CATHERINE and LEONARD, dancing and singing, proceed to bite all the company who, in turn, become mad, dance and sing furiously, and only halt at length to allow MONSIEUR LEONARD BOTAL to say:
Ladies and gentlemen, be lenient to the author’s shortcomings.
FINIS.
COME WHAT MAY
A COMEDY IN ONE ACT
Translated by Wilfrid Jackson and Emilie Jackson
CONTENTS
CHARACTERS.
SCENE I.
SCENE II.
SCENE III.
SCENE IV.
SCENE V.
SCENE VI.
SCENE VII.
SCENE VIII.
SCENE IX.
SCENE X.
SCENE XI.
SCENE XII.
CHARACTERS.
MADAME DE SESCOURT (GERMAINE)
MADAME LAVERNE (CECILE)
NALEGE
JACQUES CHAMBRY FRANÇOIS
A drawing-room in Paris, 1895.
SCENE I.
GERMAINE, then CECILE.
GERMAINE (alone, writing).
Acroclinium, rose, twelve packets; double acroclinium, white, twenty-four packets. Alpine plants are all small. And if I am to choose the species you must tell me whether they will have a north or south aspect...
CECILE (coming in).
Good morning, Germaine. I am fortunate. You are not yet flown.
GERMAINE.
Good morning, Cécile. You have something to tell me?
CECILE.
No, nothing... everything.... Never mind Finish your letter.
GERMAINE.
I have but a couple more lines to write. (Writes.) Californian Eschscholtzia, mandarin, rose...
CECILE.
Good heavens! whatever is that?
GERMAINE (writing).
A flower, my dear g
irl, a pretty little white flower touched with rose. (Writing) Heliotropium, Browalle Czerwiakowskii.
CECILE.
Goodness! In what language do you conduct your correspondence?
GERMAINE.
In the language of seedsmen. I am replying to Adalbert who wants me to choose him flowers for his garden. Each spring, for five years past, comes the same touching letter: “Dear Germaine, when my poor brother was alive you chose flowers for the parterres at Seuilly. Do so now that Seuilly is mine. You have so much taste.” I cannot refuse him. And whatever I do, the parterres at Seuilly will be none the fairer for it.
CECILE.
Why?
GERMAINE (closing her letter).
I don’t know. It is a gift. The Sescourts are unfortunate in all their undertakings. My husband had but a single passion — horses. His stable was always unlucky. Adalbert loves flowers. Flowers will not grow for him.
CECILE.
Do you think it is so?
GERMAINE.
I am sure of it.
CECILE.
But your husband was a much cleverer man than Adalbert.
GERMAINE.
Do you say that to flatter me, or because you think it? —
CECILE.
Oh, I know that he was not the last word in husbands. He was not incomparable. You deserved a better. But I have ideas on the subject. A woman should not be so well married. On the contrary, a good marriage becomes an inconvenience in the end. Yes, I assure you... it prevents things. I, for instance, have a husband...
GERMAINE.
A charming one! Your husband is charming.
CECILE.
Charming! Well, it has put a stop to everything. I tell myself at times that there is some good in a bad match. It leaves an opening, it leaves possibilities, and one can hope at large. A delicious state!...
GERMAINE.
You have some very unruly notions to-day, my dearest. Say at once, with Paul Chambry, that a woman marries only to get into circulation [Enter NALEGE.
SCENE II.
The same and NALEGE.
NALEGE (to MADAME DE SESCOURT).
Madame!
(to MADAME LAVERNE).
Dear Madame! — [He bozos.
CECILE.
Monsieur de Nalége!... I thought you were at home, in your woods. —
NALEGE.
I come from them, Madame. I came but yesterday.
CECILE.
Your first visit is for Madame de Sescourt. I claim the second for myself. Come and see me when you leave here. You will find my husband, who grows every day more devoted to you, and soon will be unable to get on without you. Which, for once in a way, does not mean... I will leave you. I have visits to pay from which I may not dispense myself, for they are to people I do not know. Good-bye. Exchange confidences of the fairest, and, if you speak of me, say: “She is lovable.” — [She goes out.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 398