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Updated: June 23, 2025
"And you were wise, Bellombre," said Blazius, "though your retreat was premature; you might have given ten years more to the theatre, and then have retired full early." In effect he was still a very handsome, vigorous man, about whom no signs of age were apparent, save an occasional thread of silver amid the rich masses of dark hair that fell upon his shoulders.
He hated no one, and M. Bellombre, the old college professor, now retired, and living in his little house without any other company than that of a gardener who was deaf and dumb and older than himself, was the only person who had the power to exasperate him. "A fellow who has been afraid of life; think of that! afraid of life! Yes, a hard and avaricious egotist!
M. Bellombre continued peacefully making the round of his pear trees in the March sunshine. He did not risk a too hasty movement; he economized his fresh old age. If he met a stone in his path, he pushed it aside with the end of his cane, and then walked tranquilly on. "Look at him! Is he not well preserved; is he not handsome? Have not all the blessings of heaven been showered down upon him?
He was dead; he lay there, with a peaceful expression, as if relieved that death had come to him so gently. His master knelt beside him and kissed him again and bade him farewell, while two big tears rolled down his cheeks. It was on this day that Pascal saw his neighbor, M. Bellombre, for the last time.
Bellombre was instructing him in various minor details as the play went on, and for a novice he did wonderfully well acting with much spirit and grace, showing decided talent, and remarkable aptitude.
Bellombre, who was watching him critically, stopped him a moment, to say: "You make a great mistake in attempting to suppress your natural emotions; you should take care not to do it, for they produce a capital effect, and you can create a new type of stage bully; when you have gotten accustomed to this sort of thing, and no longer feel this burning indignation, you must feign it.
I confessed my ignorance; and, as Lewis at Bellombre said of that ill-mannered Power, I had a great deal to confess. What I knew was, that in "American Anecdotes" an anonymous writer said a friend of his had seen the air among some Roundhead songs in the collection of a friend of his at Cheltenham, and that this air was the basis of Yankee Doodle. What was more, there was the old air printed.
It was on one of those bad days that Pascal, approaching a window, saw his neighbor, M. Bellombre, the retired professor, making the round of his garden to see if his fruit trees were well covered with blossoms. The sight of the old man, so neat and so erect, with the fine placidity of the egoist, on whom illness had apparently never laid hold, suddenly put Pascal beside himself.
"I see that you are always the same warm-hearted, openhanded Bellombre as of old," cried the pedant, grasping the other's outstretched hand warmly; "you have not grown rusty and hard in consequence of your bucolic occupations." "No," Bellombre replied, with a smile; "I do not let my brain lie fallow while I cultivate my fields.
The other actors were also vigorously clapped by the toil-hardened hands of these lowly tillers of the soil whose applause throughout was bestowed, Bellombre declared, judiciously and intelligently.
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