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Updated: May 15, 2025
What right had that tortoise of a Madame Coincon to put on airs? She had seen better juggling in a booth at a fair. Her championship warmed Andrew's heart, and he began to feel less lonely in a dismal and unappreciative world. Longing for further healing of an artist's wounded vanity he said: "Tell me frankly. You did see something to admire in my performance?" "Haven't I always said so?
Sometimes he escapes from mimicry. He conjures, he juggles, he plays selections from Carmen and Cavaleria Rusticana on a fiddle made out of a cigar box and a broom-handle. The Provinces accept him with mild approbation. He tries Paris, the Paris of Menilmontant and the Outer Boulevards; but Paris, not being amused, prefers his mimicry. He is alone, mind you. No more Coincon combinations.
He had gone about his funny business with the air of a curate marrying his vicar to the object of his hopeless affections. And Coincon had devastatingly insulted him. He wasn't, nom de Dieu, carrying about freaks at a fair. He wanted a comedian and not a giant. No wonder the Cirque Rocambeau had come to grief, if it depended on such canaries as Lackaday.
Why then the failure? He blamed the check suit, the ill-will of the company, the unreason of Madame Coincon.... It did not occur to him that he had emerged from an old world into a new. That between the old circus public and the new music-hall public there was almost a generation's change of taste and critical demand.
Not a gleam anywhere of hope. His humiliation was absolute. The maniacal Coincon had not even given him an opportunity of redeeming his failure. He had been paid to go away. The disgusting yet necessary price of his shame rattled in his pockets.
Why hadn't he taken Coincon by the neck then and there with his long strong fingers and strangled him? Coincon would have had the chance of a rabbit. He had the strength of a dozen Coincons he, trained to perfection, with muscle like dried bull's sinews. He could split an apple between arm and forearm, in the hollow of his elbow. Why shouldn't he go back and break Coincon's neck?
In the happy, perspiring girls in front of him he took no interest, for all their youth and comeliness and obviously frank approachability. He saw nothing but the fury-enflamed face of Coincon and heard nothing but the rasping voice telling him that it was cheaper to pay him his week's salary than to allow him to appear again. And "f moi le camp!"
The leading lady, Madame Coincon, wife of the manager, a compact person of five foot two, roundly declared that she could not play with him, and in his funniest act, dependent on her co-operation, she left him to be helplessly funny by himself. The tradition of the troupe required the comedian to be attired in a loud check suit, green necktie and white felt bowler hat.
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