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So he stepped forward now when Polichinelle had done. His make-up assisting him to mask his bitter feelings, he professed to add his own to Polichinelle's acclamations of his dear partner. But he did it in such a manner as to make it clear that what Scaramouche had done, he had done by M. Binet's favour, and that in all M. Binet's had been the guiding hand.
For Manet's "Bon Bock" is one of the eternal types, a permanent national conception, as inherent in French life as Polichinelle, Pierrot, Monsieur Prud'homme, or the Baron Hulot. I have not seen the portrait for fifteen or eighteen years, and yet I see it as well as if it were hung on the wall opposite the table on which I am writing this page.
How often has she taunted me with lack of dignified reserve and needful caution! How many times has she saucily insinuated that all my affairs are the secret of Polichinelle!" This was true enough: I had not spared him on this point, nor perhaps on any other that was assailable. Magnificent-minded, grand-hearted, dear, faulty little man! You deserved candour, and from me always had it.
"That is the delusion proper to Pierrot," said Pantaloon, contemptuously. "This heavy, beetle-browed ruffian, who has grown old in sin, and whose appetite increases with his years, is Polichinelle. Each one, as you perceive, is designed by Nature for the part he plays.
They make against life and the joy thereof. Ah, but the joy of life is not only the joy of self-assertion: there is the joy of self-effacement, which is only another form of self-expression, the assertion of a higher self. That was the secret of Jesus, of Buddha. Whereas the doctrine of Nietzsche c'est le secret de Polichinelle. The man in the street needs no encouragement to enjoyment.
In associating himself with Polichinelle, he desired to thank Scaramouche, much in the manner of a lord rendering thanks to his steward for services diligently rendered and orders scrupulously carried out. It neither deceived the troupe nor mollified himself. Indeed, his consciousness of the mockery of it but increased his bitterness.
"Go to the devil," Binet flung at him. "Better and better." Polichinelle made for the door. On the threshold he halted and struck an attitude. "Understand me, Binet. I do not now play Scaramouche in any circumstances whatever." And he went out. On the whole, it was a very dignified exit. Andre-Louis shrugged, threw out his arms, and let them fall to his sides again.
Mr. Genoni, the restaurateur, had been one of the first to identify him; but, as he explained to me, he was no spy or betrayer, and whatever he might think of the Dreyfus business he was a reader of that anti-Revisionist print the 'Petit Journal' M. Zola's secret was, he assured me, quite safe in his hands. But, independently of Mr. Genoni, the secret soon became le secret de Polichinelle.
Trust," he said, speaking the very language of Polichinelle, "is the livery of fools." She went without answering him and toiled upstairs with dragging feet. She paused a moment in the corridor above, outside Una's door. She was in such need of communion with some one that for a moment she thought of going in.
I suppose I should have blushed to confess it, but Polichinelle and his puppets, in the afternoons, under an umbrage sparse till evening fell, had still their spell to cast as part and parcel, that is, of the general intensity of animation and variety of feature.
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