The Comic Romance the Comic Romance
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The Comic Romance The Comic Romance Paul Scarron Translated by Jacques Houis ALMA CLASSICS Contents The Comic Romance !e First Part " Second Part !#$ )*+) ,*)--.,- */0 Notes %&' London House %#$-%"$ Lower Mortlake Road Richmond Extra Material %($ Surrey TW1 %LL United Kingdom Paul Scarron’s Life and Works %(" www.almaclassics.com Translator’s Note %'# The Comic Romance first published in French in !&"!–"( This edition first published by Alma Classics Ltd in %2!% Select Bibliography %'" Cover image © Getty Images Translation and Extra Material © Jacques Houis, %2!% Printed in Great Britain by XXX Typeset by Tetragon .-34: 1('-!-'#(#1-%%2-$ All the pictures in this volume are reprinted with permission or pre- sumed to be in the public domain. Every e5ort has been made to ascertain and acknowledge their copyright status, but should there have been any unwitting oversight on our part, we would be happy to rectify the error in subsequent printings. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher. The Comic Romance t/6 /78 ,6)09:/6;* /6 /78 ,6)09:/6;* That Is Saying It All 8-, +64-.<46;, Y Your name alone carries with it all the titles and all the praise that can be given to the most illustrious persons of the century. It will make my book seem good, however bad it may be; and even those who find that I could have done a better job of writing it will have to admit that I could not do a better job of dedicating it. Were the honour you do me by the a5ection you have shown me through so much kindness and so many visits not to incline me to seek out carefully the means to please you, I would be so inclined anyway. Thus my novel was destined for you from the time I had the honour of reading you the beginning, which you found to your liking. This, more than anything else, gave me the courage to finish it, and prevents me from blushing while giving you such a bad gift. Should you value it for more than it is worth, or should the least part of it please you, I would not trade places with the healthiest man in France. But, Monsignor, I do not dare hope that you will read it; it would be too much time wasted for someone who uses his time as e5ectively as you, and who has more important things to do. I will be su=ciently rewarded for my book should you merely deign to receive it and should you take my word – as it is the only faculty I have left – that I am, with my entire being, Monsignor, Your most humble, most obedient and most obliged servant, SCARRON $ !"# $%&'$ (%&)*$# /6 /78 ;8)08; ?76 .- -,)40)*.@80 By the Typographical Errors Contained in My Book FIRST PART )+ 46/ <6.4< /6 <.A8 B6: any errata from my book other I than the book itself, which is full of errors. The printer is less to blame than I, whose bad habit it is often to write what I give the printer on the eve of the day it is printed. So much so that, my head still full of what I just finished writing, I reread the pages I am given to correct in roughly the same way I recited in school the lesson I had not had time to learn – I mean by glancing at a few lines and skipping over what I had not yet forgotten. Those who know how to discern the good from the bad in what they read will ,7)>/8; . soon recognize the errors I was able to make, and those who do A Theatre Troupe Arrives in the Town of Le Mans not understand what they read will not notice my failures. That, benevolent or malevolent reader, is all I have to say; if you like my book enough to want it to be more correct, buy enough copies 78 -:4 7)0 ,6+>*8/80 more than half of his journey, to warrant a second printing, and I promise it will be reviewed, T and his chariot, having reached the downward slope of the augmented and corrected. world, moved faster than he wanted. Had his steeds wished to take advantage of their downhill course, they could have completed SCARRON what was left of the day in less than ten minutes; but instead of pulling with all their might, they frolicked and curveted about, breathing the sea air which made them whinny as it alerted them to the proximity of the sea, where, it is said, their master sleeps every night. To put it in simpler, more human terms, it was between five and six o’clock in the afternoon when a cart pulled into the marketplace of Le Mans. Hitched to four rather emaciated oxen led by a brood mare whose colt sauntered all around it like the little devil he was, the cart was piled high with trunks, chests and big bolts of painted canvas, forming a pyramid on top of which sat a lady wearing a patchwork of town clothes and country clothes. A young man, whose clothing was as shabby as his bearing was noble, walked beside the cart. A large bandage on his face covered one eye and half of his cheek. He shouldered a long rifle he had used to murder several magpies, blue jays and crows. These he wore # " !"# $%&'$ (%&)*$# C.;-/ >);/t,7)>/8; .. strung together like a bandolier at the bottom of which hung, by their feet, a hen and a gosling, in all likelihood pilfered. Instead of The conversation was interrupted by the sound of punches and a hat, he wore a nightcap bound by garters of several colours, and cursing coming from the front of the cart. It was the tennis court’s this headgear looked like a kind of rough, unfinished turban. His servant who had attacked the driver, because his oxen and mare doublet was a grisette coat with a strap for a belt, which also served were helping themselves to a pile of hay in front of the door. The to hold up a sword of such great length it was impossible to wield combatants were separated, and the tennis-court keeper, who e5ectively without a stand. He wore tucked breeches like those loved the theatre more than she did sermons or vespers, with a worn by actors when they portray heroes of antiquity, and instead generosity unheard of in a tennis-court keeper, allowed the driver of shoes he had a tragedian’s buskins covered with mud up to the to let his animals eat their fill. He accepted her o5er, and while the ankles. An old man, less irregularly though very poorly dressed, animals ate, the author rested awhile and began to think about walked beside him. He carried a bass viol on his shoulders and, what he would say in the second chapter. because he stooped a bit as he walked, from a distance he could have been mistaken for a big tortoise walking on its hind legs. Now some critic will probably grumble about this comparison because of the disproportion between a tortoise and a man, but I am refer- ,7)>/8; .. ring to the giant tortoises found in the Indies and, moreover, I have it on my own authority. The Sort of Man the Sieur de La Rappinière Was Let us return to our caravan. It passed in front of a tennis* court called The Doe, at the door of which many of the town’s 4 /76-8 0)B- /78 -.8:; 08 *) ;)>>.4.D;8 was the town most prominent citizens were gathered. The novelty of the rig and I joker of Le Mans. Every small town has its joker, and the city the noise made by the rabble crowded around the cart caused all of Paris has its fair share of them. There is a joker in every neigh- of these honourable bourgeois to look over at our strangers. A bourhood, and I myself would have been my neighbourhood’s sheri5’s lieutenant named La Rappinière, among others, accosted joker if I had wanted to, but as everyone knows, I forsook the them with a magistrate’s air of authority, demanding to know vanities of this world a long time ago. But to return to the Sieur what kind of people they were. The young man I described de La Rappinière, he soon resumed the conversation which had earlier spoke up and, without removing his turban, because he been interrupted by the fist fight and asked the young actor if held his rifle with one hand and the hilt of his sword with the their troupe consisted only of Mademoiselle Cave, Monsieur other, to keep it from hitting his legs, told him that they were Grudge and himself. French by birth, actors by profession, that his own stage name “Our troupe is as complete as the Prince of Orange’s or His Grace was Destiny, his old companion’s Grudge, and the lady’s, who the Duke of Épernon’s,” he replied, “but because of a mishap we was perched on top of their luggage like a hen, Cave. This su5ered in Tours, where our scatterbrained doorkeeper killed one bizarre name made several in the group laugh, whereupon the of the royal intendant’s riflemen, we were forced to escape with young actor added that the name Cave should seem no more one shoe o5 and one shoe on, in the sorry state you see us in now.” far-fetched to thinking men than those of Mountain, Valley, “Those riflemen did the same thing at La Flèche,” said La Rose or Thorn.