The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol

From the theatre Aristide Pujol issued one morning after rehearsal, and, leaving his colleagues, including the ever-thirsty Roulard, to refresh themselves at a humble café hard by, went forth in search of distraction. He idled about the Place de la Loge, passed the time of day with a café waiter until the latter, with a disconcerting “Voilà! Voilà!” darted off to attend to a customer, and then strolled through the Porte Notre Dame onto the Quai Sadi-Carnot. There a familiar sound met his ears – the roll of a drum followed by an incantation in a quavering, high-pitched voice. It was the Town Crier, with whom, as with a brother artist, he had picked acquaintance the day before.

They met by the parapet of the Quai, just as Père Bracasse had come to the end of his incantation. The old man, grizzled, tanned and seamed, leant weakly against the parapet.

“How goes it, Père Bracasse?”

“Alas, mon bon Monsieur, it goes from bad to worse,” sighed the old man. “I am at the end of my strength. My voice has gone and the accursed rheumatism in my shoulder gives me atrocious pain whenever I beat the drum.”

“How much more of your round have you to go?” asked Aristide.

“I have only just begun,” said Père Bracasse.

The Southern sun shone from a cloudless sky; a light, keen wind blowing from the distant snow-clad Canigou set the blood tingling. A lunatic idea flashed through Aristide’s mind. He whipped the drum strap over the old man’s head.

“Père Bracasse,” said he, “you are suffering from rheumatism, bronchitis, fever and corns, and you must go home to bed. I will finish your round for you. Listen,” and he beat such a tattoo as Père Bracasse had never accomplished in his life. “Where are your words?”

The old man, too weary to resist and fascinated by Aristide’s laughing eyes, handed him a dirty piece of paper. Aristide read, played a magnificent roll and proclaimed in a clarion voice that a gold bracelet having been lost on Sunday afternoon in the Avenue des Platanes, whoever would deposit it at the Mairie would receive a reward.

“That’s all?” he enquired.

“That’s all,” said Père Bracasse. “I live in the Rue Petite-de-la-Réal, No. 4, and you will bring me back the drum when you have finished.”

Aristide darted off like a dragon-fly in the sunshine, as happy as a child with a new toy. Here he could play the drum to his heart’s content with no score or conductor’s bâton to worry him. He was also the one and only personage in the drama, concentrating on himself the attention of the audience. He pitied poor Roulard, who could never have such an opportunity with his trombone…

The effect of his drumming before the Café de la Loge was electric. Shopkeepers ran out of their shops, housewives craned over their balconies to listen to him. By the time he had threaded the busy strip of the town and emerged on to the Place Arago he had collected an admiring train of urchins. On the Place Arago he halted on the fringe of a crowd surrounding a cheap-jack whose vociferations he drowned in a roll of thunder. He drummed and drummed till he became the centre of the throng. Then he proclaimed the bracelet. He had not enjoyed himself so much since he left Paris.

He was striding away, merry-eyed and happy, followed by his satellites when a prosperous-looking gentleman with a very red face, a prosperous roll of fat above the back of his collar, and the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in his buttonhole, descending the steps of the great glass-covered café commanding the Place, hurried up and laid his finger on his arm.

“Pardon, my friend,” said he, “what are you doing there?”

“You shall hear, monsieur,” replied Aristide, clutching the drumsticks.

“For the love of Heaven!” cried the other hastily interrupting. “Tell me what are you doing?”

“I am crying the loss of a bracelet, monsieur!”

“But who are you?”

“I am Aristide Pujol, and I play the drum, kettle-drum, triangle, cymbals, castagnettes and tambourine in the orchestra of the Tournée Gulland. And now, in my turn, may I ask to whom I have the honour of speaking?”

“I am the Mayor of Perpignan.”

Aristide raised his hat politely. “I hope to have the pleasure,” said he, “of Monsieur le Maire’s better acquaintance.”

The Mayor, attracted by the rascal’s guileless mockery, laughed.

“You will, my friend, if you go on playing that drum. You are not the Town Crier.”

Aristide explained. Père Bracasse was ill, suffering from rheumatism, bronchitis, fever and corns. He was replacing him. The Mayor retorted that Père Bracasse being a municipal functionary could not transmit his functions except through the Administration. Monsieur Pujol must desist from drumming and crying. Aristide bowed to authority and unstrung his drum.

“But I was enjoying myself so much, Monsieur le Maire. You have spoiled my day,” said he.

The Mayor laughed again. There was an irresistible charm and roguishness about the fellow, with his intelligent oval face, black Vandyke beard and magically luminous eyes.

“I should have thought you had enough of drums in your orchestra.”

“Ah! there I am cramped!” cried Aristide. “I have it in horror, in detestation. Here I am free. I can give vent to all the aspirations of my soul!”

The Mayor mechanically moved from the spot where they had been standing. Aristide, embroidering his theme, mechanically accompanied him; and, such is democratic France, and also such was the magnetic, Ancient Mariner-like power of Aristide – did not I, myself, on my first meeting with him at Aigues-Mortes fall helplessly under the spell – that, in a few moments, the amateur Town Crier and the Mayor were walking together, side by side, along the Quai Sadi-Carnot, engaged in amiable converse. Aristide told the Mayor the story of his life – or such incidents of it as were meet for Mayoral ears – and when they parted – the Mayor to lunch, Aristide to yield up the interdicted drum to Père Bracasse – they shook hands warmly and mutually expressed the wish that they would soon meet again.

They met again; Aristide saw to that. They met again that very afternoon in the café on the Place Arago. When Aristide entered he saw the Mayor seated at a table in the company of another prosperous, red-ribboned gentleman. Aristide saluted politely and addressed the Mayor. The Mayor saluted and presented him to Monsieur Quérin, the President of the Syndicat d’Initiative of the town of Perpignan. Monsieur Quérin saluted and declared himself enchanted at the encounter. Aristide stood gossiping until the Mayor invited him to take a place at the table and consume liquid refreshment. Aristide glowingly accepted the invitation and cast a look of triumph around the café. Not to all mortals is it given to be the boon companion of a Mayor and a President of the Syndicat d’Initiative!

Then ensued a conversation momentous in its consequences.

The Syndicat d’Initiative is a semi-official body existing in most provincial towns in France for the purpose of organising public festivals for the citizens and developing the resources and possibilities of the town for the general amenity of visitors. Now Perpignan is as picturesque, as sun-smitten and, in spite of the icy tramontana, even as joyous a place as tourist could desire; and the Carnival of Perpignan, as a spontaneous outburst of gaiety and pageantry, is unique in France. But Perpignan being at the end of everywhere and leading nowhere attracts very few visitors. Biarritz is on the Atlantic coast at the other end of the Pyrenees; Hyères, Cannes and Monte Carlo on the other side of the Gulf of Lions. No English or Americans – the only visitors of any account in the philosophy of provincial France – flock to Perpignan. This was a melancholy fact bewailed by Monsieur Quérin. The town was perishing from lack of Anglo-Saxon support. Monsieur Coquereau, the Mayor, agreed. If the English and Americans came in their hordes to this paradise of mimosa, fourteenth century architecture, sunshine and unique Carnival, the fortunes of all the citizens would be assured. Perpignan would out-rival Nice. But what could be done?

“Advertise it,” said Aristide. “Flood the English-speaking world with poetical descriptions of the place. Build a row of palatial hotels in the new part of the town. It is not known to the Anglo-Saxons.”

“How can you be certain of that?” asked Monsieur Quérin.

“Parbleu!” he cried, with a wide gesture. “I have known the English all my life. I speak their language as I speak French or my native Provençal. I have taught in schools in England. I know the country and the people like my pocket. They have never heard of Perpignan.”

His companions acquiesced sadly. Aristide, aglow with a sudden impudent inspiration, leant across the marble table.

“Monsieur le Maire and Monsieur le Président du Syndicat d’Initiative, I am sick to death of playing the drum, the kettle-drum, the triangle, the cymbals, the castagnettes and the tambourine in the Tournée Gulland. I was born to higher things. Entrust to me” – he converged the finger-tips of both hands to his bosom – “to me, Aristide Pujol, the organisation of Perpignan-Ville de Plaisir, and you will not regret it.”

The Mayor and the President laughed.

But my astonishing friend prevailed – not indeed to the extent of being appointed a Petronius, arbiter élegantiarum, of the town of Perpignan; but to the extent of being employed, I fear in a subordinate capacity, by the Mayor and the Syndicat in the work of propagandism. The Tournée Gulland found another drum and went its tuneful but weary way; and Aristide remained gloriously behind and rubbed his hands with glee. At last he had found permanence in a life where heretofore had been naught but transience. At last he had found a sphere worthy of his genius. He began to nourish insensate ambitions. He would be the Great Benefactor of Perpignan. All Roussillon should bless his name. Already he saw his statue on the Quai Sadi-Carnot.

His rise in the social scale of the town was meteoric, chiefly owing to the goodwill of Madame Coquereau, the widowed mother of the Mayor. She was a hard-featured old lady, with a face that might have been made of corrugated iron painted yellow and with the eyes of an old hawk. She dressed always in black, was very devout and rich and narrow and iron-willed. Aristide was presented to her one Sunday afternoon at the Café on the Place Arago – where on Sunday afternoons all the fashion of Perpignan assembles – and – need I say it? – she fell at once a helpless victim to his fascination. Accompanying her grandmother was Mademoiselle Stéphanie Coquereau, the Mayor’s niece (a wealthy orphan, as Aristide soon learned), nineteen, pretty, demure, perfectly brought up, who said “Oui, Monsieur” and “Non, Monsieur” with that quintessence of modest grace which only a provincial French Convent can cultivate.

Aristide’s heart left his body and rolled at the feet of Mademoiselle Stéphanie. It was a way with Aristide’s heart. It was always doing that. He was of Provence and not of Peckham Rye or Hoboken, and he could not help it.

Aristide called on Madame Coquereau, who entertained him with sweet Frontignan wine, dry sponge cakes and conversation. After a while he was invited to dinner. In a short space of time he became the intimate friend of the house, and played piquet with Madame Coquereau, and grew familiar with the family secrets. First he learned that Mademoiselle Stéphanie would go to a husband with two hundred and fifty thousand francs. Aristide’s heart panted at the feet of Mademoiselle Stéphanie. Further he gathered that, though Monsieur Coquereau was a personage of great dignity and importance in civic affairs, he was as but a little child in his own house. Madame Coquereau held the money-bags. Her son had but little personal fortune. He had reached the age of forty-five without being able to marry. Marriage unauthorized by Madame Coquereau meant immediate poverty and the testamentary assignment of Madame Coquereau’s fortune to various religious establishments. None of the objects of Monsieur Coquereau’s matrimonial desire had pleased Madame Coquereau, and none of Madame Coquereau’s blushing candidates had caused a pulse in Monsieur Coquereau’s being to beat the faster. The Mayor held his mother in professed adoration and holy terror. She held him in abject subjection. Aristide became the confidant, in turn, of Madame’s sour philosophy of life and of Monsieur’s impotence and despair. As for Mademoiselle Stéphanie, she kept on saying “Oui, Monsieur” and “Non, Monsieur,” in a crescendo of maddening demureness.

So passed the halcyon hours. During the day time Aristide in a corner of the Mayor’s office, drew up flamboyant circulars in English which would have put a pushing Land and Estate Agent in the New Jerusalem to the blush, and in the evening played piquet with Madame Coquereau, while Mademoiselle Stéphanie, model of modest piety, worked pure but nameless birds and flowers on her embroidery frame. Monsieur le Maire, of course, played his game of manilla at the café, after dinner, and generally came home just before Aristide took his leave. If it had not been for the presence of Mademoiselle Stéphanie, it would not have been gay for Aristide. But love gilded the moments.

On the first evening of the Carnival, which lasts nearly a fortnight in Perpignan, Aristide, in spite of a sweeter “Oui, Monsieur” than ever from Mademoiselle Stéphanie, made an excuse to slip away rather earlier than usual, and, front door having closed behind him, crossed the strip of gravel with a quick step and flung out of the iron gates. Now the house had an isolated position in the new quarter of the town. It was perky and modern and defaced by all sorts of oriel windows and tourelles and pinnacles which gave it a top-heavy appearance, and it was surrounded by a low brick wall. Aristide, on emerging through the iron gates, heard the sound of scurrying footsteps on the side of the wall nearest to the town, and reached the corner, just in time to see a masquer, attired in a Pierrot costume and wearing what seemed to be a pig’s head, disappear round the further angle. Paying no heed to this phenomenon, Aristide lit a cigarette and walked, in anticipation of enjoyment, to the great Avenue des Plantanes where the revelry of the Carnival was being held. Aristide was young, he loved flirtation, and flirtation flourished in the Avenue des Plantanes.

The next morning the Mayor entered his office with a very grave face.

“Do you know what has happened? My house was broken into last night. The safe in my study was forced open, and three thousand francs and some valuable jewelry were stolen. Quel malheur!” he cried, throwing himself into a chair, and wiping his forehead. “It is not I who can afford to lose three thousand francs at once. If they had robbed maman it would have been a different matter.”

Aristide expressed his sympathy.

“Whom do you suspect?” he asked.

“A robber, parbleu!” said the Mayor. “The police are even now making their investigations.”

The door opened and a plain clothes detective entered the office.

“Monsieur le Maire,” said he, with an air of triumph, “I know a burglar.”

Both men leapt to their feet.

“Ah!” said Aristide.

“A la bonne heure!” cried the Mayor.

“Arrest him at once,” said Aristide.

“Alas, Monsieur,” said the detective, “that I cannot do. I have called on him this morning and his wife tells me that he left for the North yesterday afternoon. But it is José Puégas that did it. I know his ways.”

“Tiens!” said the Mayor, reflectively. “I know him also, an evil fellow.”

“But why are you not looking for him?” exclaimed Aristide.

“Arrangements have been made,” replied the detective coldly.

Aristide suddenly bethought him of the furtive masquer of the night before.

“I can put you on his track,” said he, and related what he knew.

The Mayor looked dubious. “It wasn’t he,” he remarked.

“José Puégas, Monsieur, would not commit a burglary in a pig’s head,” said the policeman, with the cutting contempt of the expert.

“It was a vow, I suppose,” said Aristide, stung to irony. “I’ve always heard he was a religious man.”

The detective did not condescend to reply.

“Monsieur le Maire,” said he, “I should like to examine the premises, and beg that you will have the kindness to accompany me.”

“With the permission of Monsieur le Maire,” said Aristide. “I too will come.”

“Certainly,” said the Mayor. “The more intelligences concentrated on the affair the better.”

“I am not of that opinion,” said the detective.

“It is the opinion of Monsieur le Maire,” said Aristide rebukingly, “and that is enough.”

When they reached the house – distances are short in Perpignan – they found policemen busily engaged with tape measures around the premises. Old Madame Coquereau in a clean white linen dressing jacket, bare-headed, defying the keen air, stood grim and eager in the midst of them.

“Good morning, Monsieur Pujol, what do you think of this?”

“A veritable catastrophe,” said Aristide.

She shrugged her iron shoulders. “I tell him it serves him right,” she said, cuttingly. “A sensible person keeps his money under his mattress and not in a tin machine by a window which anyone can get at. I wonder we’ve not been murdered in our beds before.”

“Ah, Maman!” expostulated the Mayor of Perpignan.

But she turned her back on him and worried the policemen. They, having probed, and measured, and consulted with the detective, came to an exact conclusion. The thief had climbed over the back wall – there were his footsteps. He had entered by the kitchen door – there were the marks of infraction. He had broken open the safe – there was the helpless condition of the lock. No one in Perpignan, but José Puégas, with his bad, socialistic, Barcelona blood, could have done it. These brilliant results were arrived at after much clamour and argument and imposing procès verbal. Aristide felt strangely depressed. He had narrated his story of the pig-headed masquer to unresponsive ears. Here was a melodramatic scene in which he not only was not playing a leading part, but did not even carry a banner. To be less than a super in life’s pageant was abhorrent to the nature of Aristide Pujol.

Moodily he wandered away from the little crowd. He hated the police and their airs of gods for whom exists no mystery. He did not believe in the kitchen-door theory. Why should not the thief have simply entered by the window of the study, which like the kitchen, was on the ground floor? He went round the house and examined the window by himself. No; there were no traces of burglary. The fastenings of the outside shutters and the high window were intact. The police were right.

Suddenly his quick eye lit on something in the gravel path and his heart gave a great leap. It was a little round pink disc of confetti.

Aristide picked it up and began to dance and shake his fist at the invisible police.

“Aha!” he cried, “now we shall see who is right and who is wrong!”

He began to search and soon found another bit of confetti. A little further along he discovered a third and a fourth. By using his walking stick he discovered that they formed a trail to a point in the wall. He examined the wall. There, if his eyes did not deceive him, were evidences of mortar dislodged by nefarious toes. And there, mirabile visu! at the very bottom of the wall lay a little woollen pompon or tassel, just the kind of pompon that gives a finish to a pierrot’s shoes. Evidently the scoundrel had scraped it off against the bricks while clambering over.

The pig-headed masquer stood confessed.

A less imaginative man than Aristide would have immediately acquainted the police with his discovery. But Aristide had been insulted. A dull, mechanical bureaucrat who tried to discover crime with a tape-measure had dared to talk contemptuously of his intelligence! On his wooden head should be poured the vials of his contempt.

“Tron de l’air!” cried Aristide – a Provençal oath which he only used on sublime occasions – “It is I who will discover the thief and make the whole lot of you the laughing-stock of Perpignan.”

So did my versatile friend, joyously confident in his powers, start on his glorious career as a private detective.

“Madame Coquereau,” said he, that evening, while she was dealing a hand at piquet, “what would you say if I solved this mystery and brought the scoundrel to justice?”

“To say that you would have more sense than the police, would be a poor compliment,” said the old lady.

Stéphanie raised cloistral eyes from her embroidery frame. She sat in a distant corner of the formal room discreetly lit by a shaded lamp.

“You have a clue, Monsieur?” she asked with adorable timidity.

Aristide tapped his forehead with his forefinger. “All is there, Mademoiselle.”

They exchanged a glance – the first they had exchanged – while Madame Coquereau was frowning at her cards; and Aristide interpreted the glance as the promise of supreme reward for great deeds accomplished.

The mayor returned early from the café, a dejected man. The loss of his hundred and twenty pounds weighed heavily on his mind. He kissed his mother sorrowfully on the cheek, his niece on the brow, held out a drooping hand to Aristide, and, subsiding into a stiff imitation Louis XVI chair, rested his elbows on its unconsoling arms and hid his face in his hands.

“My poor uncle! You suffer so much?” breathed Stéphanie, in divine compassion.

“Little Saint!” murmured Aristide devoutly, as he declared four aces and three queens.

The Mayor moved his head sympathetically. He was suffering from the sharpest pain in his pocket he had felt for many a day. Madame Coquereau’s attention wandered from the cards.

“Dis donc, Fernand,” she said sharply. “Why are you not wearing your ring?”

The Mayor looked up.

“Maman,” said he, “it is stolen.”

“Your beautiful ring?” cried Aristide.

The Mayor’s ring, which he usually wore, was a remarkable personal adornment. It consisted in a couple of snakes in old gold clenching an enormous topaz between their heads. Only a Mayor could have worn it with decency.

“You did not tell me, Fernand,” rasped the old lady. “You did not mention it to me as being one of the stolen objects.”

The Mayor rose wearily. “It was to avoid giving you pain, maman. I know what a value you set upon the ring of my good Aunt Philomène.”

“And now it is lost,” said Madame Coquereau, throwing down her cards. “A ring that belonged to a saint. Yes, Monsieur Pujol, a saint, though she was my sister. A ring that had been blessed by His Holiness the Pope – ”

“But, maman,” expostulated the Mayor, “that was an imagination of Aunt Philomène. Just because she went to Rome and had an audience like anyone else – ”

“Silence, impious atheist that you are!” cried the old lady. “I tell you it was blessed by His Holiness – and when I tell you a thing it is true. That is the son of to-day. He will call his mother a liar as soon as look at her. It was a ring beyond price. A ring such as there are few in the world. And instead of taking care of this precious heirloom, he goes and locks it away in a safe. Ah! you fill me with shame. Monsieur Pujol, I am sorry I can play no more, I must retire. Stéphanie, will you accompany me?”

And gathering up Stéphanie like a bunch of snowdrops, the yellow, galvanized iron old lady swept out of the room.

The Mayor looked at Aristide and moved his arms dejectedly.

“Such are women,” said he.

“My own mother nearly broke her heart because I would not become a priest,” said Aristide.

“I wish I were a Turk,” said the Mayor.

“I, too,” said Aristide.

He took pouch and papers and rolled a cigarette.

“If there is a man living who can say he has not felt like that at least once in his life he ought to be exhibited at a fair.”

“How well you understand me, my good Pujol,” said Monsieur Coquereau.

The next few days passed busily for Aristide. He devoted every spare hour to his new task. He scrutinized every inch of ground between the study window and the wall; he drew radiating lines from the point of the wall whence the miscreant had started homeward and succeeded in finding more confetti. He cross-examined every purveyor of pierrot shoes and pig’s heads in Perpignan. His researches soon came to the ears of the police, still tracing the mysterious José Puégas. A certain good-humoured brigadier whose Catalan French Aristide found difficult to understand, but with whom he had formed a derisory kind of friendship, urged him to desist from the hopeless task.