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Elodie can scarcely put up with herself. She gives orders in writing to tradesmen now and subscribes herself 'Madame La Colonelle Patou. She has turned down a bird engagement offered by Moignon, as beneath her present dignity. You had better come home as soon as you can." Andrew laughed and threw the letter away. He had far more serious things to attend to than Elodie's pretty foibles.
At last, one afternoon, he cast the bomb calmly at her feet. "I've just been to see Moignon," said he. "Eh bien?" "He says there will be no difficulty." She turned on him her coarse puzzled face. "No difficulty in what?" "In going back to the stage." She sank upon the yellow and brown striped sofa by the wall and regarded him open-mouthed. "Tu dis?"
"Mon Dieu, it is true," she said. Forthwith she went to the agent Moignon. After a few weeks she started on the road with her aviary, and Bakkus once more left his eyrie to take charge of the flat in the Faubourg St. Denis.
He was letting down nobody; neither the managements nor the public. Moignon would find means of consolation. "My dear Hylton," said he, "now that my faith in Bakkus is not only restored but infinitely strengthened, and my mind is at rest concerning Elodie, I feel as though ten years were lifted from my life. I'm no longer Petit Patou. The blessed relief of it!
At last I had him laughing and mimicking, in his inimitable way a thing which he had not done for my benefit since the first night of our acquaintance the elderly and outraged Moignon whom he proposed to visit in Paris, for the purpose of cancelling his contracts. As for Vichy Vichy could go hang. There were ravening multitudes of demobilized variety artists besieging every stage-door in France.
When you fall on evil days and you haven't a sou in your pocket, come to me and you'll always find an inspiration." "I wish you would give me one now," said Andrew, who had spent a fruitless morning at the Agence Moignon. "You want a foil, an intelligent creature who will play up to you a creature far more intelligent than I am. A dog. Buy a dog. A poodle."
Dibdin quoted passages from Baillet's biography that show the tenderness with which the family treated his 'crazy body and nervous mind': 'Madame La Moignon and her son always took a pleasure in anticipating his wishes, soothing his irritabilities, promoting his views, and speaking loudly and constantly of the virtues of his head and heart. Baillet in his turn gave to his employers the credit of his best literary work.
From appearing on the English stage he shrank, with morbid sensitiveness. There was America, where he was unknown.... Already Moignon was in touch, on his behalf, with powerful American agencies. Just before he left Paris Moignon had said: "They are nibbling for the winter." But it was all vague. France alone appeared solid in spite of the disasters of these first two nights.
The provinces, so the rehabilitated Moignon and his confreres, the other agents, declared, in terms varying from apologetic stupor to frank brutality, had no use for Andrew-Andre and his unique entertainment. "But what shall I do?" asked the anxious Andre. "Wait, mon cher, we shall soon well arrange it," said Moignon.
He had never intrigued like most of his craft for press advertisement. Over and over again had Bakkus said: "Raise a thousand or two and give it to me or Moignon to play with and we'll boom you into all the capitals of the earth. There's a fortune in you." But Andrew, to whom publicity was the essence of his calling, would have none of it.
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