Chapter XI: Dramaturgy

On the following day Croniamantal went to The Theatre, which was meeting at Monsieur Pingu's, the financier. Croniamantal succeeded in gaining entry by bribing the doorman and the butler. He entered boldly the hall where The Theatre, its satellites, its stool-pigeons and its hired thugs were gathered.

CRONIAMANTAL

Ladies and Gentlemen of THE THEATRE, I have come to read you my play entitled _Ieximal Jelimite._

THE THEATRE

Good gracious, wait a minute, young man, until you have been informed about our methods of procedure. You are here in the midst of our actors, our authors, our critics and our spectators. Listen attentively and don't even speak.

CRONIAMANTAL

Gentlemen, I thank you for the cordial reception that you give me and I shall profit, I am sure, of all that I hear.

THE ACTOR

_My rôles have slowly withered like the roses But mother, I love my metempsychoses O seats of proteus and their metamorphoses_

AN OLD STAGE MANAGER

Do you remember, Madame! One snowy night of 1832, a lost stranger knocked at the door of a villa situated on the road leading from Chanteboun to Sorrento...

THE CRITIC

Nowadays, for a play to be successful it is important that it should not be signed by its author.

THE TRAINER TO HIS BEAR

_Roll about in the sweet peas Play dead... suckle... Dance the polka... now the mazurka..._

CHORUS OF DRINKERS

_Juice o' the grape Ruddy liquor Let us drink drink If we may_

CHORUS OF EATERS

_Horde of gluttons There's no more A crumb left In the plate_

DRINKERS

_Bloated heads Drink o drink The juice o' the grape_

R.D.RD K.PL.NG, THE ACTOR, THE ACTRESS, THE AUTHORS (To the spectators) Pay! Pay! Pay! Pay! Pay! Pay! Pay!

THE PROMPTER

The theatre, my dear brothers, is a school for scandal, it is a place of perdition for the soul and the body. According to the testimony of the stage carpenters everything is faked in the theatre. Witches older than Morgane come there to pose as little girls of fifteen years.

How much blood is spilt in a melodrama! I say truthfully, though it be false, this blood will be upon the heads of the children of the authors, the actors, the directors, and the spectators, unto the seventh generation. _Ne mater suam_, the little girls used to say to their mothers. Nowadays they ask: "Are we going to the theatre tonight?"

I tell you frankly my friends. There are few shows which do not endanger the soul. Outside of the spectacle of nature I know of nothing that one may witness without fear. This last spectacle is Gallic and healthy, my dear friends. The sound dilates the glands, chases Satan from the stinking shades where he lies and thus the Fathers come in from the desert to exorcise themselves.

THE MOTHER OF AN ACTRESS

Are you p..., Charlotte?

THE ACTRESS

No, mama, I am roasting.