Tartarin On The Alps Part 6

At Brunnen the squad landed, leaving the pockets of the other travellers swollen with pious little tracts; and almost immediately after the songs and the accordion of these poor larvae ceased, the sky began to clear and patches of blue were seen.

They now entered the lake of Uri, closed in and darkened by lofty, untrodden mountains, and the tourists pointed out to each other, on the right at the foot of the Seelisberg, the field of Grutli, where Melchtal, Furst, and Stauffacher made oath to deliver their country.

Tartarin, with much emotion, took off his cap, paying no attention to environing amazement, and waved it in the air three times, to do honour to the ashes of those heroes. A few of the pa.s.sengers mistook his purpose, and politely returned his bow.

The engine at last gave a hoa.r.s.e roar, its echo repercussioning from cliff to cliff of the narrow s.p.a.ce. The notice hung out on deck before each new landing-place (as they do at public b.a.l.l.s to vary the country dances) announced the Tells-platte.

They arrived.

The chapel is situated just five minutes' walk from the landing, at the edge of the lake, on the very rock to which William Tell sprang, during the tempest, from Gessler's boat. It was to Tartarin a most delightful emotion to tread, as he followed the travellers of the Circular Cook along the lakeside, that historic soil, to recall and live again the princ.i.p.al episodes of the great drama which he knew as he did his own life.

From his earliest years, William Tell had been his type. When, in the Bezuquet pharmacy, they played the game of preference, each person writing secretly on folded slips the poet, the tree, the odour, the hero, the woman he preferred, one of the papers invariably ran thus:--

"Tree preferred? ........... the baobab.

Odour? ..................... gunpowder.

Writer? .................... Fenimore Cooper.

What I would prefer to be .. William Tell."

And every voice in the pharmacy cried out: "That's Tartarin!"

Imagine, therefore, how happy he was and how his heart was beating as he stood before that memorial chapel raised to a hero by the grat.i.tude of a whole people. It seemed to him that William Tell in person, still dripping with the waters of the lake, his crossbow and his arrows in hand, was about to open the door to him.

"No entrance... I am at work... This is not the day..." cried a loud voice from within, made louder by the sonority of the vaulted roof.

"Monsieur Astier-Rehu, of the French Academy..."

"Herr Doctor Professor Schwanthaler..."

"Tartarin of Tarascon..."

In the arch above the portal, perched upon a scaffolding, appeared a half-length of the painter in working-blouse, palette in hand.

"My _famulus_ will come down and open to you, messieurs," he said with respectful intonations.

"I was sure of it, _pardi!_" thought Tartarin; "I had only to name myself."

However, he had the good taste to stand aside modestly, and only entered after all the others.

The painter, superb fellow, with the gilded, ruddy head of an artist of the Renaissance, received his visitors on the wooden steps which led to the temporary staging put up for the purpose of painting the roof. The frescos, representing the princ.i.p.al episodes in the life of William Tell, were finished, all but one, namely: the scene of the apple in the market-place of Altorf. On this he was now at work, and his young _famulus_, as he called him, feet and legs bare under a toga of the middle ages, and his hair archangelically arranged, was posing as the son of William Tell.

All these archaic personages, red, green, yellow, blue, made taller than nature in narrow streets and under the posterns of the period, intended, of course, to be seen at a distance, impressed the spectators rather sadly. However, they were there to admire, and they admired. Besides, none of them knew anything.

"I consider that a fine characterization," said the pontifical Astier-Rehu, carpet-bag in hand.

And Schwanthaler, a camp-stool under his arm, not willing to be behindhand, quoted two verses of Schiller, most of it remaining in his flowing beard. Then the ladies exclaimed, and for a time nothing was heard but:--

"Schon!.. schon..."

"Yes... lovely..."

"Exquisite! delicious!.."

One might have thought one's self at a confectioner's.

Abruptly a voice broke forth, rending with the ring of a trumpet that composed silence.

"Badly shouldered, I tell you... That crossbow is not in place..."

Imagine the stupor of the painter in presence of this exorbitant Alpinist, who, alpenstock in hand and ice-axe on his shoulder, risking the annihilation of somebody at each of his many evolutions, was demonstrating to him by A + B that the motions of his William Tell were not correct.

"I know what I am talking about, _au mouain_... I beg you to believe it..."

"Who are you?"

"Who am I!" exclaimed the Alpinist, now thoroughly vexed... So it was not to him that the door was opened; and drawing himself up he said: "Go ask my name of the panthers of the Zaccar, of the lions of Atlas... they will answer you, perhaps."

The company recoiled; there was general alarm.

"But," asked the painter, "in what way is my action wrong?"

"Look at me, _te!_"

Falling into position with a thud of his heels that made the planks beneath them smoke, Tar-tarin, shouldering his ice-axe like a crossbow, stood rigid.

"Superb! He's right... Don't stir..."

Then to the _famulus_: "Quick! a block, charcoal!.."

The fact is, the Tarasconese hero was something worth painting,--squat, round-shouldered, head bent forward, the m.u.f.fler round his chin like a strap, and his flaming little eye taking aim at the terrified _famulus_.

Imagination, O magic power!.. He thought himself on the marketplace of Altorf, in front of his own child, he, who had never had any; an arrow in his bow, another in his belt to pierce the heart of the tyrant. His conviction became so strong that it conveyed itself to others.

"'T is William Tell himself!.." said the painter, crouched on a stool and driving his sketch with a feverish hand. "Ah! monsieur, why did I not know you earlier? What a model you would have been for me!.."

"Really! then you see some resemblance?" said Tartarin, much flattered, but keeping his pose.

Yes, it was just so that the artist imagined his hero.

"The head, too?"

"Oh! the head, that's no matter..." and the painter stepped back to look at his sketch. "Yes, a virile mask, energetic, just what I wanted--inasmuch as n.o.body knows anything about William Tell, who probably never existed."

Tartarin dropped the cross-bow from stupefaction.

"_Outre!_ {*}.. Never existed!.. What is that you are saying?"

* "Outre" and "boufre" are Tarasconese oaths of mysterious etymology.

"Ask these gentlemen..."