Yes, ten years! They paid court to each other for ten years! Is it really too long when it’s a matter of being bound together for life? People study for ten years to become engineers or doctors, barristers or councillors in a préfecture – and do you think anyone can acquire the knowledge necessary to be a husband in less time? This is unthinkable and, whether through temperament or reasoned reflection, the Quiquendonians are in our view quite right to extend their studies this long. When you see that in other towns – warm-blooded, uninhibited towns – marriages are contracted in a few months, you can only shrug your shoulders and decide without delay to send your boys to day school and your daughters to boarding school in Quiquendone.

  Only one marriage that had been contracted in a mere two years could be pointed to in the past half-century – and that one had turned out to be a failure!

  So Frantz Niklausse loved Suzel van Tricasse, but in a placid way, as you would expect when you have ten years ahead of you to win your beloved. Every week, just once a week and at an agreed time, Frantz would come to fetch Suzel, and go off with her to the banks of the Vaar. He took care to bring his fishing rod, and Suzel made sure she never forgot her embroidery, in which her pretty fingers brought together the most unlikely combinations of flowers.

  This is the place to say that Frantz was a young man of twenty-two, that a light peachy down was starting to appear on his cheeks, and finally that his voice had only just gone down an octave.

  As for Suzel, she was blonde and pink. She was seventeen and wasn’t at all averse to fishing – a strange pastime, though: one that forces you to pit your wits against those of a barbel. But Frantz loved it. This hobby suited his temperament. He was as patient as one can be, happy to follow with a somewhat dreamy eye the cork float that trembled in the stream, and quite capable of waiting until, after a six-hour session, a medium-sized barbel, taking pity on him, finally agreed to let itself get caught; then he was happy, but he managed to contain his joy.

  On this particular day, the future husband and wife – or fiancés, one might say – were sitting on a verdant riverbank. The limpid Vaar was rippling along a few feet below them. Suzel was nonchalantly threading her needle through her embroidery. Frantz automatically pulled his line from left to right, then he let it float back down the current from right to left. The barbels were making capricious ripples in the water, criss-crossing all around the float, while the hook dangled at a loose end in the empty depths of the water.

  From time to time, Frantz would say, “I think I’ve got a bite, Suzel,” without even lifting his eyes to look at the young girl.

  “Do you think so, Frantz?” Suzel would reply, looking up for a moment from her work to follow with an intent eye her fiancé’s line.

  “Ah, no,” resumed Frantz. “I thought I could feel a slight tug. I was wrong.”

  “You’ll get a bite, Frantz,” replied Suzel in her pure, gentle voice. “But don’t forget to hook him in quickly. You’re always a few seconds late, and the barbel takes advantage to escape.”

  “Would you like to take my rod, Suzel?”

  “I’d love to, Frantz.”

  “Give me your embroidery, then. We’ll see if I’m any niftier with the needle than with the hook.”

  And the young girl took over the rod, her hand trembling, and the young man threaded the needle through the mesh of the tapestry. And for hours on end they would exchange gentle words in this way, and their hearts skipped a beat when the float quivered on the water. Ah! May they never forget those delightful hours during which, sitting next to one another, they listened to the murmur of the river!

  That day, the sun was already low down on the horizon and, despite the combined talents of Suzel and Frantz, “the fish just weren’t biting”. The barbels hadn’t showed any compassion, and were laughing at the two young people – who didn’t feel in the slightest put out.

  “We’ll have better luck next time, Frantz,” said Suzel, when the young fisherman stuck his still unused fishhook back into his pinewood board.

  “Let’s hope so, Suzel,” replied Frantz.

  Then the two of them, walking side by side, set out on their way home, without exchanging a word, as silent as their shadows, which lengthened before them. Suzel saw herself grow tall, tall, beneath the slanting rays of the setting sun. Frantz appeared thin, thin, like the long rod he was holding.

  They reached the burgomaster’s house. Green tufts of grass framed the gleaming cobbles, and nobody would have even thought of pulling them out, as they provided an upholstered surface for the street and muffled the sound of people’s footsteps.

  Just as the door was about to open, Frantz thought it was the time to say to his fiancée:

  “You know, Suzel, the great day is coming.”

  “Yes, it’s coming, Frantz!” replied the young girl, lowering her long eyelids.

  “Yes,” said Frantz, “in five or six years…”

  “Goodbye, Frantz,” said Suzel.

  “Goodbye, Suzel,” replied Frantz.

  And, once the door had shut behind her, Frantz continued, at an even and tranquil pace, to make his way to the house of Councillor Niklausse.

  7

  In which the andantes become allegros,

  and the allegros become vivaces

  The stir caused by the incident involving Barrister Schut and Dr Custos had died down. The affair had been without consequence. So it was permitted to hope that Quiquendone would return to its habitual apathy, which an inexplicable event had momentarily disturbed.

  Meanwhile, the laying of the pipes that would bring oxyhydric gas to the main buildings in town was proceeding apace. The main pipes and branch pipes were starting gradually to ramify under the streets of Quiquendone. But the burners were still missing: as they were so delicate to manufacture, it had been necessary to have them made abroad. Dr Ox was everywhere at once – he and his assistant Ygène didn’t waste a moment, urging on the workers, finishing off the delicate mechanism of the gasometer and keeping fuelled, night and day, the gigantic batteries that decomposed the water under the influence of a powerful electric current. Yes! The doctor was already manufacturing his gas, even though the distribution system was not yet finished – which, between you and me, ought to have appeared really rather strange. But before very long – at least, people had every reason to hope as much – before very long, in the town theatre, Dr Ox would inaugurate the splendours of his new lighting.

  Quiquendone did indeed possess a theatre – a fine building, upon my word, whose interior and exterior arrangement recalled every possible style. It was at one and the same time Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, with semicircular doors, ogival windows, flamboyant rose windows, fantastic pinnacle turrets – in a word, it was a specimen of all genres: half Parthenon, half grand Parisian café. This shouldn’t astonish us – having been begun under Burgomaster Ludwig van Tricasse in 1175, it was completed only in 1837 under Burgomaster Natalis van Tricasse. It had taken seven hundred years to build, and it had conformed to the architectural fashion of each successive period. Never mind! It was a fine building, whose Romanesque pillars and Byzantine domes didn’t clash too much with oxyhydric gas lighting.

  Pretty much all sorts of things were put on at the Quiquendone theatre: comedy, opera, ballet, comic opera, vaudeville and even the operettas of Hervé and Offenbach. Yes, these two great masters, the honour of the second half of the nineteenth century, had infiltrated the town walls of Quiquendone. But it has to be said that neither the German nor the Frenchman would have recognized L’œil crevé or La Belle Hélène,* so greatly had their movements been changed.

  The fact was, as nothing was ever done quickly in Quiquendone, theatrical works had been forced to tailor themselves to the temperament of the Quiquendonians. Although the doors of the theatre usually opened at four o’clock and closed at ten, it simply never happened that, during those six hours, they ever got through more than two acts. Robert le diable, Les Huguenots, William Tell, habitually took up a good three evenings, so slow was the performance of these masterpieces.* The vivaces in the theatre of Quiquendone sauntered along like real adagios. The allegros were dragged out slowly, slowly. The hemidemisemiquavers were scarcely equal to ordinary semibreves in any other country. The most rapid roulades, performed in the taste of the Quiquendonians, had the heavy tread of a plainchant hymn. The nonchalant trills grew languid and stiff, so as not to offend the ears of the dilettanti. One example will say it all: Figaro’s lively aria, his entry in the first act of The Barber of Seville,* was taken at a beat of thirty-three on the metronome and lasted for fifty-eight minutes – when, that is, the singer was really prepared to whizz through his part.

  As you can well imagine, the artistes who came from outside town had been obliged to conform to this fashion; but since they were well paid they didn’t complain, and faithfully followed the baton of the conductor who, in the allegros, never beat more than eight bars per minute.

  And yet, what applause greeted these artistes, who delighted the spectators of Quiquendone and never let them feel bored or tired! They clapped their hands together regularly, at rather frequent intervals, which the reviews in the newspapers translated as “frenzied applause”; and on more than one occasion, if the auditorium didn’t collapse under the cries of “Bravo!” it was only because, in the twelfth century, the builders didn’t skimp on either cement or stone when laying the foundations.

  Furthermore, so as not to overexcite those enthusiastic Flemish temperaments, the theatre put on a performance only once a week, which enabled the actors to deepen their roles and the spectators to digest at greater leisure the beauties of these masterpieces of the dramatic art.

  Now, things had been that way for a long time. Foreign artistes were in the habit of contracting an engagement with the director of the Quiquendone theatre whenever they wanted to take a rest from their exertions on other stages, and it seemed as if nothing would ever modify these inveterate customs, when, a fortnight after the Schut-Custos affair, an unexpected incident came along to spread renewed unease through the population.

  It was a Saturday: opera day. The time had still not come, as you might have expected, to inaugurate the new lighting. No: the pipes now reached the auditorium, it was true, but, for the reason mentioned above, the gas burners had still not been fitted, and the candles of the chandelier still shed their gentle light on the numerous spectators crowding the theatre. The doors had been opened to the public at one o’clock in the afternoon, and at four the auditorium was half full. At one moment there had been a queue winding as far as the other end of the Place Saint-Ernuph, outside the shop of the chemist, Josse Liefrinck. This swarm of eager spectators suggested there was going to be a fine performance.

  “Will you be going to the theatre this evening?” the councillor had asked the burgomaster that very same morning.

  “I certainly will,” van Tricasse had replied, “and I’m going to take Mme van Tricasse, as well as our daughter Suzel and our dear Aunty Némance, who are both very keen on good music.”

  “Will Mlle Suzel be coming?” asked the councillor.

  “She probably will, Niklausse.”

  “Then my son Frantz will be one of the first to join the queue,” replied Niklausse.

  “A passionate boy, Niklausse,” replied the burgomaster sagaciously. “A bit hot-headed! You ought to keep an eye on that young man.”

  “He’s in love, van Tricasse, he’s in love with your charming Suzel.”

  “Well in that case, Niklausse, he’ll marry her. Since we’re agreed on the marriage, what more can he ask for?”

  “He’s not asking for anything, van Tricasse, he’s not asking for anything, the dear boy! But let’s just say – and this is all I will say about it – that he won’t be the last to collect his ticket from the kiosk!”

  “Ah! Passionate, high-spirited youth!” replied the burgomaster, smiling at his own past. “We were exactly the same, my esteemed councillor! We too have known love! We too have joined the queue in our time! So I’ll see you this evening, then. By the way, do you know that he’s a great artiste, this Fioravanti! And what a reception he’s been given within our walls! It will be a long time before he forgets the applause of Quiquendone!”

  The man he was referring to was the famous tenor Fioravanti, who, with his virtuoso talent, his consummate method and his fine voice, aroused real enthusiasm among the town’s music lovers.

  For three weeks, Fioravanti had been scoring a real hit with Les Huguenots. The first act, performed to the taste of the Quiquendonians, had filled out an entire evening in the first week of the month. Another evening in the second week, drawn out by countless andantes, had earned the celebrated singer a veritable ovation. The success had been even greater with the third act of Meyerbeer’s masterpiece. But it was in the fourth act that people were really looking forward to hearing Fioravanti, and the fourth act was due to be performed this very evening before an impatient audience. Ah! That duet between Raoul and Valentine, that hymn of love for two voices, conveyed in expansive sighs, that stretto in which there is a succession of crescendos, stringendos, accelerandos and più crescendos, the whole piece sung slowly, compendiously, interminably! Ah, what delight!

  So, at four o’clock, the auditorium was full. The boxes, the orchestra, the pit, all were overflowing. In the stage boxes were ranged Burgomaster van Tricasse, Mlle van Tricasse, Mme van Tricasse and the good-natured Aunty Némance in an apple-green bonnet; then, not far away from them, Councillor Niklausse and his family, not forgetting the amorous Frantz. One could also see the families of Dr Custos, Barrister Schut, Honoré Syntax, the chief judge, and Soutman (Norbert), the director of the insurance company, and the fat banker Collaert, who was a devotee of German music, something of a virtuoso himself, and the tax collector Rupp, and the director of the academy, Jérôme Resh, and the civil commissioner and countless others from among the town’s notables – so many that it would be impossible to enumerate them all here without exhausting the reader’s patience.

  Ordinarily, as they waited for the curtain to be raised, the Quiquendonians were in the habit of remaining silent, some of them reading their newspapers, the others exchanging a few words in a low voice; some made their way to their seats without noise and without haste, while others glanced with a half-extinguished glitter in their eyes at the attractive beauties on prominent display in the circle.

  But that evening an observer would have noted that, even before the curtain went up, an unaccustomed animation had filled the auditorium. You could see people gesticulating emphatically who never usually gesticulated at all. The ladies’ fans were fluttering with a quite abnormal rapidity. A more vivacious air seemed to have filled all their bosoms. They were breathing more deeply. Eyes were shining and, to be quite honest, shining almost as brightly as the flames of the chandelier, which seemed to shed on the auditorium an unaccustomed dazzle. It was true: you could see more clearly than usual, even though the lighting had not been turned up. Ah! If only Dr Ox’s new apparatuses had been working… but they weren’t yet in operation.

  Finally the orchestra is in its seats, in full strength. The first violinist has passed between the desks to give a modest A to his colleagues. The string instruments, the wind instruments, the percussion instruments have all tuned up. The conductor is merely awaiting the bell so he can beat the first bar.

  The bell rings out. The fourth act begins. The allegro appassionato of the entr’acte is played, as is the habit, with a majestic slowness which would have made the illustrious Meyerbeer jump out of his skin, and whose full majesty is savoured by the music lovers of Quiquendone.

  But soon the conductor feels he has lost control of his performers. He finds it difficult to hold them back – when they are usually so obedient, so calm. The wind instruments are showing a tendency to push the rhythm forwards, and he has to rein them in with a firm hand, since otherwise they’d get ahead of the strings – which, from the harmonic point of view, would produce a regrettable effect. The bassoonist himself, the son of the chemist Josse Liefrinck, such a well-brought-up young man, is starting to get carried away.

  Meanwhile, Valentine has begun her recitative:

  I am alone at home…

  But she’s started to pick up speed. The conductor and all his musicians follow her – perhaps without realizing it – in her cantabile, which ought to be beaten quite slowly, like the twelve-eight it is. When Raoul appears in the door at the back of the stage, between the moment when Valentine goes to him and when she hides him in the bedroom next door, less than a quarter of an hour goes by – whereas previously, in accordance with the tradition of the theatre of Quiquendone, this recitative thirty-seven bars long lasted for a good thirty-seven minutes.

  Saint-Bris, Nevers, Tavannes and the Catholic noblemen have come on stage, a bit too quickly perhaps. Allegro pomposo is what the composer indicated on his score. The orchestra and the noblemen are indeed going allegro, but not in the slightest pomposo, and in the ensemble piece, that magisterial scene including the oath and the blessing of the daggers, the statutory allegro is no longer being played at a moderate tempo. Singers and musicians slip their leash and make a dash for it. The conductor isn’t even trying to keep them back. In any case, the audience doesn’t want him to – quite the opposite: you can feel that he is being swept along too, that he’s caught up in the movement and that this movement expresses the longings of his soul:

  From renewed warfare and an impious band,

  Will you, like me, deliver our fair land?

  They make their promises and swear their oaths. Nevers hardly has time to protest and to sing that “among his ancestors, there are only soldiers, and not one murderer”. He is arrested. The municipal officials and the magistrates come running up and rapidly swear “to strike all at once”. Saint-Bris smashes through the recitative summoning the Catholics to vengeance as if it were a flimsy gate, at a veritable two-four tempo. The three monks, carrying baskets with white scarves, dash through the door at the back of Nevers’s apartment, paying no attention to the stage directions, which require them to advance slowly. Already all those present have drawn their swords and their daggers, which the three monks bless with a wave of their hands. The sopranos, the tenors and the bass launch into the allegro furioso uttering cries of rage, and turn a dramatic six-eight into the six-eight of a quadrille. Then they leave, bellowing: