Lamarque—Then he would take his hat and guitar and go into the streets to sing. He would sing about the moon.
François—And the roses and the ivory towers of Babylon and about the ancient ladies of the court and about “the silent chords that flow from the ocean to the moon.”
Destage—That’s why he made no money. He was bright and clever—when he worked, he worked feverishly hard, but he was always drunk, night and day.
Lamarque—Often he lived on liquor alone for weeks at a time.
Destage—He was much in jail toward the end.
Chandelle—(calling) Pitou! More wine!
François—(excitedly) And me! He used to like me best. He used to say that I was a child and he would train me. He died before he began. (Pitou enters with another bottle of wine; François siezes it eagerly and pours himself a glass.)
Destage—And then that cursed Lafouquet—stuck him with a knife.
François—But I fixed Lafouquet. He stood on the Seine bridge drunk and—
Lamarque—Shut up, you fool you—
François—I pushed him and he sank—down—down—and that night Chandelle came in a dream and thanked me.
Chandelle—(shuddering) How long—for how many years did he come here?
Destage—Six or seven. (gloomily) Had to end—had to end.
Chandelle—And he’s forgotten. He left nothing. He’ll never be thought of again.
Destage—Remembered! Bah! Posterity is as much a charlatan as the most prejudiced tragic critic that ever boot-licked an actor. (He turns his glass nervously round and round.) You don’t realize—I’m afraid—how we feel about Jean Chandelle, François and Lamarque and I—he was more than a genius to be admired—
François—(hoarsely) Don’t you see, he stood for us as well as for himself.
Lamarque—(rising excitedly and walking up and down) There we were—four men—three of us poor dreamers—artistically uneducated, practically illiterate. (He turns savagely to Chandelle and speaks almost menacingly.) Do you realize that I can neither read nor write? Do you realize that back of François there, despite his fine phrases, there is a character weak as water, a mind as shallow as—
(François starts up angrily.)
Lamarque—Sit down. (François sits down muttering.)
François—(after a pause) But, Monsieur, you must know—I leave the gift of—of—(helplessly) I can’t name it—appreciation, artistic, aesthetic sense—call it what you will. Weak—yes, why not? Here I am, with no chance, the world against me. I lie—I steal perhaps—I am drunk—I—
(Destage fills up François’ glass with wine.)
Destage—Here! Drink that and shut up! You are boring the gentleman. There is his weak side—poor infant.
(Chandelle, who has listened to the last, keenly turns his chair toward Destage.)
Chandelle—But you say my father was more to you than a personal friend; in what way?
Lamarque—Can’t you see?
François—I—I—he helped—(Destage pours out more wine and gives it to him.)
Destage—You see he—how shall I say it?—he expressed us. If you can imagine a mind like mine, potently lyrical, sensitive without being cultivated. If you can imagine what a balm, what a medicine, what an all in all was summed up for me in my conversations with him. It was everything to me. I would struggle pathetically for a phrase to express a million yearnings and he would say it in a word.
Lamarque—Monsieur is bored? (Chandelle shakes his head and opening his case selects a cigarette and lights it.)
Lamarque—Here, sir, are three rats, the product of a sewer—destined by nature to live and die in the filthy ruts where they were born. But these three rats in one thing are not of the sewer—they have eyes. Nothing to keep them from remaining in the sewer but their eyes, nothing to help them if they go out but their eyes—and now here comes the light. And it came and passed and left us rats again—vile rats—and one, when he lost the light, went blind.
François—(muttering to himself)—
Blind! Blind! Blind!
Then he ran alone, when the light had passed;
The sun had set and the night fell fast;
The rat lay down in the sewer at last.
Blind!
(A beam of the sunset has come to rest on the glass of wine that François holds in his hand. The wine glitters and sparkles. François looks at it, starts, and drops the glass. The wine runs over the table.)
Destage—(animatedly) Fifteen—twenty years ago he sat where you sit, small, heavy-bearded, black-eyed—always sleepy-looking.
François—(his eyes closed—his voice trailing off) Always sleepy, sleepy, slee—
Chandelle—(dreamily) He was a poet unsinging, crowned with wreaths of ashes. (His voice rings with just a shade of triumph.)
François—(talking in his sleep) Ah, well, Chandelle, are you witty tonight, or melancholy or stupid or drunk?
Chandelle—Messieurs—it grows late. I must be off. Drink all of you. (enthusiastically) Drink until you cannot talk or walk or see. (He throws a bill on the table.)
Destage—Young Monsieur?
(Chandelle dons his coat and hat. Pitou enters with more wine. He fills the glasses.)
Lamarque—Drink with us, Monsieur.
François—(asleep) Toast, Chandelle, toast.
Chandelle—(taking a glass and raising it aloft) Toast. (His face is a little red and his hand unsteady. He appears infinitely more Gallic than when he entered the wine shop.)
Chandelle—I drink to one who might have been all; who was nothing—who might have sung; who only listened—who might have seen the sun; who but watched a dying ember—who drank of gall and wore a wreath of shadow laurels—
(The others have risen, even François, who totters wildly forward.)
François—Jean, Jean, don’t go—don’t—till I, François—you can’t leave me—I’ll be all alone—alone—alone. (His voice rises higher and higher.) My God, man, can’t you see, you have no right to die—You are my soul. (He stands for a moment, then sprawls across the table. Far away in the twilight a violin sighs plaintively. The last beam of the sun rests on François’ head. Chandelle opens the door and goes out.)
Destage—The old days go by, and the old loves and the old spirit. “Où sont les neiges d’antan?” I guess. (pauses unsteadily and then continues) I’ve gone far enough without him.
Lamarque—(dreamily) Far enough.
Destage—Your hand, Jacques! (They clasp hands.)
François—(wildly) Here—I, too—you won’t leave me. (feebly) I want—just one more glass—one more—
(The light fades and disappears.)
Curtain
— ◆ —
The Ordeal.
Nassau