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Jasmin's appearance at Bergerac was a great event. Bergerac is a town of considerable importance, containing about fourteen thousand inhabitants, situated on the right or north bank of the river Dordogne. But during that terrible winter the poor people of Bergerac were in great distress, and Jasmin was summoned to their help.
In possessing himself of Agen, Bergerac, Perigueux, Cognac, and even for a moment of Saintes, and by pushing his conquests into Haute Guienne, on the side of Mont-de-Marsan, Dax, and Pau, he had made Bordeaux the capital of a small but rich and populous kingdom, surrounded on all sides by a belt of strongholds, communicating with the sea by the Gironde, and admirably placed for attack or defence.
The course of the Garonne was cleared by his capture of La Réole and Aiguillon, that of the Dordogne by the reduction of Bergerac, and a way opened for the reconquest of Poitou by the capture of Angoulême. These unexpected successes roused Philip to strenuous efforts, and a hundred thousand men gathered under his son, John, Duke of Normandy, for the subjugation of the South.
There he turned the books upside down, in his haste, till he found an old one, by a French gentleman, Monsieur Cyrano de Bergerac. It was an account of a voyage to the moon, in which there is a great deal of information about matters not generally known; for few travellers have been to the moon.
No one knows that Cyrano de Bergerac is on the stage until he rises in the midst of the crowd in the Hôtel de Bourgogne and shakes his cane at Montfleury. When Sir Herbert Tree played D'Artagnan in The Musketeers, he emerged suddenly in the midst of a scene from a suit of old armor standing monumental at the back of the stage, a deus ex machina to dominate the situation.
In order that the attention of the audience may not be unduly distracted by any striking effect, the dramatist must always prepare for such an effect in advance, and give the spectators an idea of what they may expect. The extraordinary nose of Cyrano de Bergerac is described at length by Ragueneau before the hero comes upon the stage.
Among the proverbs of Spanish folk-lore there is a saying that good wine retains its flavor in spite of rude bottles and cracked cups. The success of M. Rostand’s brilliant drama, Cyrano de Bergerac, in its English dress proves once more the truth of this adage.
He was staying near Bergerac, at the castle of the Lord of La Force, with whom he was so intimate that he took with him none of his household, as he preferred to be waited upon by M. de la Force's own staff. He did not return the greeting of the municipal functionaries or of the mob that blocked his way.
You were there, for one." "No! no! I I vas far away!" "Tell me who organized the attack." "I I cannot!" "You can." "No! no! I I I Stop! Do not shoot me! I vill tell! Eet vas Jean Bevoir." "I thought as much. Was Jacques Valette with him?" "Oui! But say not I tell you, or za vill keel me!" "And Hector Bergerac?" The Frenchman shook his head. "Not Bergerac, no. He ees gone avay."
Indeed, I never imagined him capable of feeling any emotions but those of a purely physical character such as the effects of cold, heat, hunger or bodily pain. And here he was, sighing and looking so dejected it was depressing even to see him about the place. I had just been re-reading Cyrano de Bergerac, whose case seemed rather applicable to William.
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