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Updated: June 1, 2025
And one doesn't break the hearts of creatures like Prepimpin. I managed to arrange the performance, at last, so that he should think he was doing a devil of a lot...." Then the end came. It was on the Bridge of Avignon, which, if you will remember, Lackaday superstitiously regards as a spot fraught with his destiny. Fate had not taken him to the town since his last disastrous appearance.
Comes on again immediately, Petit Patou, apparently seven foot high, in the green silk tights reaching to the arm-pit waist, a low frill round his neck, his hair up to a point, a perpetual grin painted on his face. On the other side enters Prepimpin on hind legs, bearing an immense envelope. Petit Patou opens it shows the audience an invitation to a ball. "Ah! dress me, Prepimpin."
He went, carrying the dog, up the dirty river bank outside the walls, where there was comparative solitude, and sat down on a stone seat, and laid Prepimpin on the ground. He broke down and cried. For seven years the dog's life and his had been inextricably interwoven.
'Mon pauvre ami, said I, on the journey Prepimpin never suffered the indignity of a dog cage 'There is only one thing to be done. It is you who will be going to the ball and will juggle with the three objects, and I who will catch the cigar in my mouth. But it was not to be. At Bordeaux and all through the tour we had a succes fou."
He marched off. In a few minutes he came back accompanied by one of the hotel baggage porters. The grave, on the waste land by the Rhone, was quickly dug, and Prepimpin covered over for ever with the kindly earth. As soon as the body was hidden, Andrew turned away, the tears in his eyes. "And now," said he, "let us sit somewhere else and you shall tell me about yourself. I have been selfish."
Experience enabled him to give a satisfactory performance; and his manager prepared his path by announcing the unhappy end of Prepimpin and craving the indulgence of the audience. But Andrew passed a heartbroken hour at the music-hall.
Andrew, still kneeling, loosed his hold on the dog, who forthwith put both paws on his shoulder and tried to lick the averted human face. "I've trained animals since I was two years old, Monsieur Berguinan. Please tell me something that I don't know." He rose. "Alors, Prepimpin, we belong to each other. Viens." The dog followed him joyously.
She was artist enough to divine when her personality should be effaced and when it should count. She spoke her patter with intelligent point. She learned, thanks to Andrew's professional patience, and her own vehement will, a few elementary juggling tricks. Andrew repeated the famous Prepimpin cigar-act. Open-mouthed, Elodie followed his manipulations.
At last the hat descends on Petit Patou's head, the crook-handled stick falls on his arm, and he looks about in a dazed way for the cigar, and then he sees Prepimpin, who has caught it, swaggering off on his hind legs, the still lighted cigar in his mouth. "No," writes Lackaday, "it was a failure. Poor Prepimpin and I left Paris with our tails between our legs. We were to start a tour at Bordeaux.
"We only met for a few hours many years ago here in Avignon but we were good friends." Then Andrew drew a deep breath and turned swiftly round on the bench and shot out both his hands. "Mon Dieu! Elodie!" She smiled sadly. "Ah," said she, "I'm glad you remember." They sat awhile and talked of the tragedy, the dead Prepimpin, at once a link and a barrier between them, lying at their feet.
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