But immediately, he began to smile. In fact, Peau-de-Balle, in full action, represented an express locomotive, and the danger was not to him.
“Look out!” shouted Gustave Louffe, who suddenly became conscious of what was about to happen.
In the blink of an eye, Échalote and Fin-Courant, lifted up as if by a catapult, projected to the right and left like corrida horses by the horns of a bull, were rolling on the ground with their jockeys. The third representative of Isaac’s stable only received the repercussion, and was able to recover his equilibrium, but he had sustained sufficient damage for his jockey to leap to the ground and pat his shoulder anxiously.
As for Peau-de-Balle, he continued straight to the winning post in his marvelously supple and extended action.
Everyone expected to see Baron Isaac uttering loud cries, invoking the God of Israel, demanding compensatory damages, and objecting against the winner. To the general amazement, he not only remained mute, but undiscoverable.
He had slipped like a large rat into a deserted corner of the stables and found his collaborator Lévy.
“Well, it’s gone wrong this time!”
“Yes, Monsieur le Baron. I’ll debit you the forty-five thousand I’ll have to pay out to Peau-de-Balle’s backers. But aren’t you going to lodge a complaint?”
“Oh, my friend you can take it for granted that if there’s an enquiry, they’ll discover the conspiracy. Of the three little jockeys that rode for us in the race, there’s sure to be one who’ll talk and spill the beans. Let’s play dead; the money will come back.”
However, on emerging from the weighing-room, Gustave Louffe was not surprised to be called up before the stewards.
Those gentlemen made a few observations to the young jockey on the manner in which he had frayed a passage.
“The desire to win is very praiseworthy, but you’ve just gambled with the lives of your competitors. It’s lucky that none of Baron Isaac’s jockeys was injured.”
“It would be unjust to hold me responsible,” replied Gustave Louffe. “Monsieur Griffith can tell you that Peau-de-Balle is a horse that’s difficult to manage and brutal, who can’t be stopped as one would like. In any case, I thought I saw, among my competitors, a deliberate intention to block my route; they only have themselves to blame for what happened.”
The explanation was more than probable, Baron Isaac’s reputation had been made a long time ago, and his acquaintance with the bookmaker Sem Lévy, who had been quoting the favorite at an excessively generous price in the circumstances, and with suspicious confidence, was well known.
The stewards therefore limited themselves to giving Gustave Louffe a warning, which was published the next day by the sporting press with appropriate commentaries.
The circumstance was underlined by a false step on the art of Monseigneur Bénin-Despalmes. The excellent prelate, having learned that his jockey had committed a sin, without at all understanding its import, had his secretary write him a letter containing three pages of excellent advice, terminated with an absolution of sorts.
On the course, as is often the case, the incident had been understood very well.
“He’s got a red face, for the moment, Brother Isaac…he’s fallen on to the gas tap again!”
VI. Peau-de-Balle is disturbed.
As a result of those unmerited reproaches, Gustave Louffe felt his soul fill with bitterness. As one says in racing jargon, he lost his action, was disheartened, and ended up committing a fault that was to have incalculable consequences.
Louffe was the most honest fellow in the world. He had resisted the perfidious offers of the bookmaker Sem Lévy, and the temptations that were offered to him in various, but generally feminine, forms. He had even refused, purely out of concern for his professional dignity, the awkward hand of Madame Tafoireau, which, according to his expression, wanted to “give him a send-off.”
But Gustave Louffe had been possessed, since childhood, by an obsession, one of those ineradicable whims that resemble monomania in the tenacity of their manifestations. He wanted to discover and applying to humans the secret of the flight of birds.
Since he had mounted Peau-de-Balle and had been living with him, a desire always repressed but incessantly growing, had haunted him: to study the marvelous mechanism of the automaton, to analyze it in order then to make the synthesis; and then to construct a similar organism that he would adapt to a flying machine. He now had enough money to attempt the experiment.
He had resisted that desire, firstly out of loyalty to his boss, his duty consisting strictly of piloting Peau-de-Balle on the turf and watching over his incognito at the house, and secondly because the phenomenon inspired a certain respect in him, an admiration that he could not help feeling. Although he knew perfectly well what blind and purely material force constituted the crack, the cries of enthusiasm that rose up as the traveled along the track during each victory effected a kind of suggestion upon him. Peau-de-Balle was, for him, a familiar but intangible god.
However, when, having traversed the enemy lines like a whirlwind in the Prix du Grand-Argentier, Louffe had collected certain compliments that he had not sought, the automaton lost much of its prestige in his mind; it was no longer anything for him but a sort of improved bicycle, which might carry you very rapidly, but which could also get you a stinging slap in the mouth.
He gave himself the pretext that there was something inside the automaton in need of adjustment, which might perhaps remedy the excessive violence of its action, introducing an improvement that would permit him to slow down in case that momentum became dangerous. In any case, it needed looking at, and he was better equipped than anyone else to do that, given his aptitude for mechanics.
One evening, after having locked himself securely in his pavilion, he took a screwdriver out of his pocket and marched up to the automaton, which he had put back in its usual place.
He hesitated momentarily.
This is stupid! I feel like a burglar about to pull off a robbery…or a murderer. He has a way of looking at me with his glass eyes...
He leaned over, however, and started unscrewing the movable plate artfully hidden under Peau-de-Balle’s belly, which gave access to the vital works.
That laparotomy was not subject to any difficulty; Louffe had, in fact, observed the fashion in which Griffith proceeded when he replaced the accumulators newly charged in a factory in Saint-Denis.
All the same, if that camel Isaac arrived now, as he did once before, he’d get a shock! And the archbishop, if he saw this...! Oh, with him, it would be simple. I’d tell him that all racehorses are built on the same model, and that one opens their belly every evening to see to their toilette. Damn it! It’s a complicated affair in there! It’s quite a job!
Gustave Louffe was amazed by the quantity of wheels, toothed cylinders, miniature piston-roads and dainty transmission-belts that constituted the inner workings of the very special thoroughbred.
Unfortunately, Gustave Louffe was not content to look; he wanted to touch. No child can ever resist the desire to take a toy to pieces to see what there is inside; no clockmakers, when he is brought an old watch of a special model, can resist the curiosity of taking it to pieces—to clean it, he usually pretends.
“I understand, I understand,” murmured Peau-de-Balle’s jockey. “It would be sufficient to displace these two pieces, to tighten that screw…give a little play to that set of gears...that will work much better...yes, that will avoid the jolt on departure and the abruptness of the stop. I’ll give my screwdriver a twist. That will sort it out…there…it’s nothing at all…it’s no more difficult than that!”
While he was lying down, late into the night, and very content with himself, Gustave Louffe was convinced that he had put every component back into its exact place and thus contributed to the amelioration of the race of equine automata.
Two days later, Peau-de-Balle fulfilled his engagement in the Prix Tristan-Bernard. He had almost driven away all the competiti
on, and only had two opponents unworthy of him.
He was twenty to one on.
With his customary brio, Peau-de-Balle swept ahead of his two competitors, whose ambition was, in any case, limited to the place money. Gustave Louffe was already intoxicating himself with the cheap incense of popular acclamation when, abruptly, ten meters short of the winning post, the automaton stopped dead.
The jockey, surprised, thought at first: I must have pressed the stop lever by mistake. Immediately, he activated the gallop lever. Peau-de-Balle did not respond.
Gustave Louffe went pale and, as the worthy Ponson du Terrail would have written—at least feuilletons were funny in those days—a cold sweat inundated him from his cap to his spurs, while a great current of air traversed his entrails. Desperately, he leaned on the lever the controlled the walking pace. The automaton started to move.
His partisans had the emotion of an anguishing handicap. The other two horses, which had not tried for an instant to make a race of it with the crack, and were following at a respectful distance, were approaching with great encouragement from the whip. Peau-de-Balle only had ten meters to cover, but he covered them at an exceedingly tranquil pace, his jockey upright in the saddle, with the lividity of a statue. If the equestrian effigy of the Commander had wanted to take part in a horse race, one would certainly have seen something similar.
At the very moment when Peau-de-Balle’s head passed the finish line, his two competitors went past him like a whirlwind.
There were a few seconds of anxiety, then a sigh of relief. The judge had just put up the number of the favorite.
For the second time, Gustave Louffe was called before the stewards; he was asked to explain the incident.
“A whim of the horse. When it will take him, no one can tell.”
“But in sum, you were almost beaten by your own fault. You let the beast walk, which demanding anything of him.”
“Naturally!” said Gustave Louffe, with remarkable aplomb. “If I’d permitted myself to touch Peau-de-Balle with a spur or the whip, he’d have stopped completely. He’s very badly brought-up; he does what he wants. Would you have the kindness to summon John Blight, Messieurs, who will confirm that?”
Blight, urgently summoned, made no difficult about admitting that the boss had put him on Peau-de-Balle’s saddle one day at Chantilly, that he had gone to a great deal of trouble to make him set off at a trot or a gallop, but it had been exactly as if he were mounted on a wooden horse. He offered, moreover, to bet Messieurs the stewards a bottle of whisky that no one in that honorable company could do any better in managing that damned swine of a horse.
Messieurs the stewards declined that offer. But as, after all, Monseigneur Bénin-Despalmes’ horse had won the race, they decided to close the investigation with no action taken.
Griffith, when he was alone with Gustave Louffe, sought information in his turn.
“Come on, what happened?”
“There must have been a hitch in the mechanism. I’m not in the horse’s belly, it must be said.”
An explanation was nevertheless required. The specialist newspapers took charge of finding it.
At the moment when Peau-de-Balle was about to reach he winning post thirty lengths clear, a female spectator on the course unfortunately opened her umbrella. The horse, frightened, veered sideways and stopped dead. His jockey, desirous of not treating him roughly, contented himself with finishing the race at a walk. He had the time to win the race literally standing still, and much more easily than it seemed.
That opinion was adopted by the majority of sportsmen, and, as happens to the majority of generally admitted opinions, was categorically belied by events five days later, when the Prix Julien-Fautrard was run.
This time, Peau-de-Balle, starting at ten to one on, remained coldly at the starting-post.
Griffith said to himself: Damn! This is getting serious. It’s going to be necessary to get Fred back from Chicago to repair the automaton. Will he consent to come? It’s a pity that my Yankees have pocketed their million; otherwise, the cancellation clause would become interesting.
Gustave Louffe said to himself: I’ve definitely put the mechanism out of order. What an idiot I am! It was going so well! I’ll have to sort it out; I don’t see any alternative.
Monseigneur Bénin-Despalmes sad to himself: It’s unfortunate, very unfortunate! A horse prognosticated by the Archangel Michael himself! I’ll have to send our jockey the silks embroidered by Mademoiselle Benoît with our intention and the cap sent to me from Rome by Cardinal Capello, a cap blessed by the Holy Father himself and favored with a plenary indulgence.
Baron Isaac said to his faithful Sem Lévy: “Aha! The young man’s just pulled his horse! We’ll soon be able to reach an understanding with him!”
The sporting newspapers said to their readers, in substance: We foresaw this from the first day. Peau-de-Balle is a stubborn animal whose character was becoming more difficult with every outing; he owes that fault, as our competence permitted us to observe then, to his dam Polaire VII.
And the members of the crowd said to one another: “It’s all right, it’s all right. They got him to stay at the staring-post this time, in order to get a better price in his next race. He’s a sly one, the archbishop, but we’re cleverer than he is; we won’t miss out on Peau-de-Balle when he runs again.”
VII. Monsieur Pigouette and Madame Subtil
suffer heavy losses.
Monsieur Pigouette was a beadle at the Cathedral of Caudebec-en-Caux. He had a manner full of unction combined with a physique full of dignity. Abbé Douillet often said, not without pride: “Our beadle resembles Monsieur Félix Faure.”91
Everyone knows that the ambition of all beadles, in that era, was to resemble Monsieur Félix Faure. Later, they wanted to resemble Monsieur Dujardin-Beaumetz; there are even some who succeed, in spite of the law of separation.92
One would have given Monsieur Pigouette to the good God without confession. However, we can say now, since he is dead, without leaving any heirs who might be offended by the qualification, that he was the most incorrigible debauchee in the entire diocese of Caudebec-en-Caux. The cashier at the Café du Commerce had seen him, not without a scandalized admiration, playing billiards at a advanced hour of the night—eleven o’clock by the belfry—he sometimes absorbed five glasses of beer in his nocturnal orgies and lost, with a terrifying self-composure, thirty sous at auction manilla. But these debauches remained secret; the proprietor of the Café du Commerce did not boast about counting Monsieur Pigouette among a clientele that included the most distinguished members of the army and the magistracy, and the most distinguished members of the army and the magistracy did not boast about frequenting the Café du Commerce on a daily basis with Monsieur Pigouette.
Madame Subtil was the chair-woman at the cathedral. Avid for gain, as all working women are, even those who wear a black bonnet instead of a pink one, she had an apron whose insatiable pockets reminded Abbé Tacot, stuffed with classical memories, of the famous barrel of the Danaïdes, and her nose could have given rise to comparisons of the same sort, so much snuff did it absorb between the eight o’clock mass and the one at midday.
Monsieur Pigouette and Madame Subtil found themselves in obligatory and frequent communication in the exercise of their functions.
One morning in June, they were chatting in the deserted basilica.
Perhaps, if Madame Subtil had been thirty years younger and had less hair on her chin, Monsieur Pigouette, wanting to complete his resemblance to President Félix Faure in all regards, would have risked, in spite of the majesty of the location, a few words of displaced gallantry. But the chair-woman was of broadly canonical age, and had, in addition, the rebarbative air that all ladies of her métier have, except when it is a matter of passing between the chairs with the collection plate; then they put on a hideous smile and are even uglier.
The beadle therefore limited himself to observing that the weather was very good for the
time of year—to which the chair-woman replied that times were hard and that one had a great deal of trouble earning a meager living.
“You’re telling me, Madame Subtil!”
“Oh, Monsieur Pigouette, if I weren’t a little too old, I’d certainly think about becoming a dancer like your demoiselle. There’s a métier that’s flattering...”
“Don’t talk so loud, Madame Subtil. If Monsieur l’Abbé Tacot heard you…!”
“The other day, in the pulpit, however, he said that King David danced before the ark, and he seemed to approve of that.”
“Well, yes, Madam Subtil, but there are things that are only permitted to kings, you know…”
“In the meantime, we don’t have the wherewithal, like those gentlemen, to put butter on our parsnips.”
“It’s not only you, Madame Subtil. If you want to make a little money, I’ll give you a good means. Do you know what this is?”
Monsieur Pigouette had just taken an issue of the Sport du Soir from his pocket.
“It’s a newspaper,” said Madame Subtil, without hesitation.
“Yes, it’s a racing paper. Perhaps you don’t know what racecourses are…read that line there.”
The chair-woman put on her spectacles and read: “Monseigneur Bénin-Despalmes. T. Griffith senior. Peau-de-Balle. Sixty-five kilos. Amethyst; red cap. I don’t understand Monsieur Pigouette. What has the Monseigneur done to be printed there? It doesn’t look like a writ of mandamus.”
“Madame Subtil, you ought to keep up to date; people don’t talk enough in the diocese. It means that the Monseigneur is the owner of a racehorse, that the horse is called Peau-de-Balle, that it’s trained by Monsieur Griffith, and that its jockey wears purple silks with a red cap.”
“How knowledgeable you are, Monsieur Pigouette,” said the chair-woman, admiringly.
“Well, yes, Madame Subtil, I’ve had the opportunity and the honor to frequent very learned individuals, the Messieurs of the tribunal and the barracks. I meet them…hmm…over in the direction of the archbishopric...yes...and it’s while talking to those people that I got the idea I’m talking about. Peau-de-Balle, you know, the Monseigneur’s horse, is made to run against other horses. In those races, everyone bets on the horse they believe is going to win. And then, when the race is over, the people who have won their bets collect all the others’ money. Do you understand?”
The Mirror of Present Events Page 20