Cesar Cascabel E-Book

Jules Verne.

• Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 578

Beschreibung

Like most of Jules Verne's books it is the story of a journey. Some acrobats wish to travel from California to their native France, and having no money they determine to go in their caravan northwards to Behring Straits, cross on the ice, and make their way through Siberia into Europe. Jules Verne's travellers are generally successful; in spite of robbers, icebergs, and the Russian police the bold Frenchmen triumphantly reach their goal. There is nothing more to be said about the works of this very prolific writer; they have long ago been criticized and classed and are still state-of-the-art today.

Leseprobe

César Cascabel

Jules Verne

Contents:

Jules Verne – A Biographical Primer

César Cascabel

Book One

Chapter I - A Fortune Realized

Chapter II - The Cascabel Family

Chapter III - The Sierra Nevada

Chapter IV - A Great Resolution

Chapter V - On The Road

Chapter VI - The Journey Continued

Chapter VII - Through Cariboo

Chapter VIII - Knaves' Village

Chapter IX - Can't Pass Through!

Chapter X - Kayette

Chapter XI - Sitka

Chapter XII - From Sitka To Fort Yukon

Chapter XIII - Cornelia Cascabel Has An Idea

Chapter XIV - From Fort Yukon To Port Clarence

Chapter XV - Port Clarence

Chapter XVI - Farewell To The New Continent

Book Two

Chapter I - Behring Strait

Chapter II - Between Two Currents

Chapter III - Adrift

Chapter IV - From The 16th Of November To The 2d Of December

Chapter V - Liakhov Islands

Chapter VI - In Winter Quarters

Chapter VII - A Good Trick Of Mr. Cascabel's

Chapter VIII - The Country Of The Iakouts

Chapter IX - Right On To The Obi

Chapter X - From The Obi To The Ural Mountains

Chapter XI - The Ural Mountains

Chapter XII - A Journey's End Which Is Not The End

Chapter XIII - An Endless Day

Chapter XIV - A Denouement Warmly Applauded By The Spectators

Chapter XV - Conclusion

César Cascabel, J. Verne

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Germany

ISBN: 9783849646066

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

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[email protected]

Frontcover: © Can Stock Photo Inc. / Angelique

Jules Verne – A Biographical Primer

Jules Verne (1828–1905), French author, was born at Nantes on the 8th of February 1828. After completing his studies at the Nantes lycée, he went to Paris to study for the bar. About 1848, in conjunction with Michel Carré, he wrote librettos for two operettas, and in 1850 his verse comedy, Les Pailles rompues, in which Alexandre Dumas fils had some share, was produced at the Gymnase. For some years his interests alternated between the theatre and the bourse, but some travellers’ stories which he wrote for the Musée des Familles seem to have revealed to him the true direction of his talent—the delineation, viz., of delightfully extravagant voyages and adventures to which cleverly prepared scientific and geographical details lent an air of versimilitude. Something of the kind had been done before, after kindred methods, by Cyrano de Bergerac, by Swift and Defoe, and later by Mayne Reid. But in his own particular application of plausible scientific apparatus Verne undoubtedly struck out a department for himself in the wide literary genre of voyages imaginaires. His first success was obtained with Cinq semaines en ballon, which he wrote for Hetzel’s Magazin d’Éducation in 1862, and thenceforward, for a quarter of a century, scarcely a year passed in which Hetzel did not publish one or more of his fantastic stories, illustrated generally by pictures of the most lurid and sensational description.The most successful of these romances include: Voyage au centre de la terre (1864); De la terre à la lune (1865); Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1869); Les Anglais au pôle nord (1870); and Voyage autour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, which first appeared in Le Temps in 1872.The adaptation of this last (produced with success at the Porte St Martin theatre on the 8th of November 1874) and of another excellent tale, Michael Strogoff (at the Châtelet, 1880), both dramas being written in conjunction with Adolphe d’Ennery, proved the most acceptable of Verne’s theatrical pieces. The novels were translated into the various European languages—and some even into Japanese and Arabic—and had an enormous success in England. But after 1877, when he published Hector Servadac, a romance of existence upon a comet, the writer’s invention began to show signs of fatigue (his kingdom had been invaded in different directions and at different times times by such writers as R. M. Ballantyne, Rider Haggard and H. G. Wells), and he even committed himself, somewhat unguardedly, to very gloomy predictions as to the future of the novel. Jules Verne’s own novels, however, will certainly long continue to delight readers by reason of their sparkling style, their picturesque verve—apparently inherited directly from Dumas—their amusing and good-natured national caricatures, and the ingenuity with which the love element is either subordinated or completely excluded. M. Verne, who was always extremely popular in society, divided his time for the most part between Paris, his home at Amiens and his yacht. He was a member of the Legion of Honour, and several of his romances were crowned by the French Academy, but he was never enrolled among its members. He died at Amiens on the 24th of March 1905. His brother, Paul Verne, contributed to the Transactions of the French Alpine Club, and wrote an Ascension du Mont Blanc for his brother’s collection of Voyages extraordinaires in 1874.

César Cascabel

Book One

Chapter I - A Fortune Realized

“HAS nobody got any more coppers to give me? Come, children, search your pockets!”

“Here you are, father!” replied the little girl.

And she drew out of her pocket a square-cut piece of greenish paper, all crumpled and greasy.

This paper bore the almost illegible inscription “United States Fractional Currency,” encircling the respectable-looking head of a gentleman in a frock-coat, and likewise the figure 10 repeated six times,—which represented ten cents, say about ten French sous.

“How did you come by that?” inquired the mother.

“It's the remnant of the takings at the last performance,” answered Napoleona.

“Gave me everything, Sander?”

“Yes, father.”

“Nothing left, John?”

“Nothing.”

“Why, how much more do you want, Cæsar?” asked Cornelia of her husband.

“Two cents is all we want to make up a round sum,” replied Cascabel.

“Here they are, boss,” said Clovy, jerking up a small copper coin that he had just worked out from the depths of his waistcoat pocket.

“Well done, Clovy!” exclaimed the little girl.

“That's right! now we're all square,” cried Mr. Cascabel.

And they were indeed “all square,” to use the words of the honest showman. The total in hands amounted to nearly two thousand dollars, say ten thousand francs. Ten thousand francs! Is not such a sum a fortune, when it has been earned out of the public through one's own talents only?

Cornelia put her arms around her husband's neck; the children embraced him in their turn.

“Now,” said Mr. Cascabel, “the question is to buy a chest, a beautiful chest with secret contrivances, to lock up our fortune in it.”

“Can't we really do without it?” suggested Mrs. Cascabel, somewhat alarmed at this expenditure.

“Cornelia, we cannot!”

“Perhaps a little box might do us?—”

“That's woman all over!” sneered Mr. Cascabel. “A little box is meant for jewels! A chest, or at least a safe, that's the thing for money! And as we have a long way to go with our ten thousand francs—”

“Well then, go and buy your safe, but take care you get a good bargain,” interrupted Cornelia.

The “boss of the show” opened the door of that “superb and consequential” wagon, his itinerant dwelling-house; he went down the iron step fastened to the shaft, and made for the streets that converge toward the center of Sacramento.

February is a cold month in California, although this State lies in the same latitude as Spain. Still, wrapped up in his warm overcoat lined with imitation sable, and with his fur cap drawn down to his ears, Mr. Cascabel little cared about the weather, and tripped it lightly. A safe! being the owner of a safe had been his life-long dream; that dream was on the point of being realized at last!

Nineteen years before, the land now occupied by the town of Sacramento was but a vast barren plain. In the middle stood a small fort, a kind of block-house erected by the early settlers, the first traders, with a view to protect their encampments against the attacks of the Far West Indians. But since that time, after the Americans had taken California from the Mexicans, who were incapable of defending it, the aspect of the country had undergone a singular transformation. The small fort had made way for a town,—one of the most important in the United States, although fire and flood had, more than once, destroyed the rising city.

Now, in this year 1867, Mr. Cascabel had no longer to dread the raids of Indian tribes, or even the attacks of that lawless mob of cosmopolitan banditti who invaded the province in 1849 on the discovery of the gold mines which lay a little farther to the northeast, on the Grass Valley plateau, and of the famous Allison ranch mine, the quartz of which yielded twenty cents' worth of the precious metal for every two pound weight.

Yes, those days of unheard-of strokes of fortune, of unspeakable reverses, of nameless sorrows, were over. No more gold-seekers, not even in that portion of British Columbia, the Cariboo, to which thousands of miners flocked, about 1863. No longer was Mr. Cascabel exposed, on his travels, to being robbed of that little fortune which he had earned, well might it be said, in the sweat of his body, and that he carried in the pocket of his overcoat. In truth, the purchase of a safe was not so indispensable to the security of his fortune as he claimed it to be; if he was so desirous to get one, it was with an eye to a long journey through certain Far West territories that were less safe than California,—his journey homeward toward Europe.

Thus easy in his mind, Mr. Cascabel wended his way through the wide, clean streets of the town. Here and there were splendid squares, overhung with beautiful, though still leafless, trees, hotels and private dwellings built with much elegance and comfort, public edifices in the Anglo-Saxon style of architecture, a number of monumental churches, all giving an air of grandeur to this, the capital town of California. On all sides bustled busy looking men, merchants, ship-owners, manufacturers, some awaiting the arrival of vessels that sailed up and down the river whose waters flow to the Pacific, others besieging Folsom depot, from which numerous trains steamed away to the interior of the Confederacy.

It was toward High Street that Mr. Cascabel directed his steps, whistling a French march as he went along. In this street he had already noticed the store of a rival of Fichet & Huret, the celebrated Parisian safe-makers. There did William J. Morlan sell “good and cheap,”—at least, relatively so,—considering the excessive price that is charged for everything in the United States of America.

William J. Morlan was in his store when Mr. Cascabel came in.

“Mr. Morlan,” said the latter, “your humble servant. I'd like to buy a safe.”

William J. Morlan knew Cæser Cascabel: was there a man in Sacramento who did not? Had he not been, for three weeks past, the delight of the population? So, the worthy manufacturer made answer:

“A safe, Mr. Cascabel?—Pray accept all my congratulations—”

“What for?”

“Because buying a safe is a sure sign that a man has a few sackfuls of dollars to make safe in it.”

“Right you are, Mr. Morlan.”

“Well, take this one;” and the merchant's finger pointed to a huge safe, worthy of a site in the offices of Rothschild Brothers or other such bankers, people who have enough and to spare.

“Come—not so fast!” said Mr. Cascabel. “I could take lodging's in there for myself and family!—A real gem, to be sure; but for the time being, I've got something else to lodge in it!—Say, Mr. Morlan, how much money could be stored inside that monster?”

“Several millions in gold.”

“Several millions?—Well then—I'll call again—some other day, when I have them! No, sir, what I want is a really strong little chest that I can carry under my arm and hide away down in my wagon when I am on the road.”

“I have just the thing, Mr. Cascabel.”

And the manufacturer exhibited a small coffer supplied with a safety lock. It was not over twenty pounds in weight, and had compartments inside, after the manner of the cash or deed boxes used in banking-houses.

“This, moreover, is fireproof,” added he, “and I warrant it as such on the receipt I give you.”

“Very good!—can't be better!” answered Mr. Cascabel. “That will do me, so long as you guarantee the lock is all right.”

“It is a combination lock,” interrupted William J. Morlan. “Four letters—a word of four letters, to be made out of four alphabets, which gives you well-nigh four hundred thousand combinations. During the time it would take a thief to guess them, you might hang him a million times at your ease!”

“A million times, Mr. Morlan? That's wonderful indeed! And what about the price? You'll understand, a safe is too dear when it costs more than a man has to put in it!”

“Quite so, Mr. Cascabel. And all I'll ask you for this one is six and a half.”

“Six and a half dollars?” rejoined Cascabel. “I don't care for that ‘six and a half.’ Come, Mr. Morlan, we must knock the corners off that sum! Is it a bargain at five dollars straight?”

“I don't mind, because it is you, Mr. Cascabel.”

The purchase was made, the money was paid down, and W. J. Morlan offered to the showman to have his safe brought home for him, so as not to trouble him with such a burden.

“Come, come, Mr. Morlan! A man like your humble servant who juggles with forty-pounders!”

“Say—what is the exact weight of your forty-pounders, eh?” inquired Mr. Morlan with a laugh.

“Just fifteen pounds, but—mum's the word!”

Thereupon William J. Morlan and his customer parted, delighted with each other.

Half an hour later, the happy possessor of the safe reached Circus Place where his wagon stood, and laid down, not without a feeling of complacency, “the safe of the Cascabel firm.”

Ah! how admired was that safe in its little world! What joy and pride all felt at having it! And how the hinges were worked with the opening and the shutting of it! Young Sander would have dearly liked to dislocate himself into it—just for fun. But that was not to be thought of; it was too small for young Sander!

As to Clovy, never had he seen anything so beautiful, even in dreamland.

“I guess, that lock's no easy job to open,” exclaimed he, “unless it's mighty easy if it doesn't shut right!”

“Never a truer word did you speak,” answered Mr. Cascabel.

Then, in that authoritative tone of voice that brooks no arguing, and with one of those significant gestures which forbid of any delaying:

“Now, children, off you go, the shortest cut,” said he, “and fetch us a breakfast—Ah! Here is a dollar you can spend as you like—It's I will stand the treat to-day!”

Good soul! As though it were not he who “stood the treat” every day! But he was fond of this kind of joking, which he indulged in with a good genial chuckle.

In a trice, John, Sander, and Napoleona were off, accompanied by Clovy, who carried on his arm a large straw basket for the provisions.

“And now we are alone, Cornelia, let us have a few words,” said the boss.

“What about, Cæsar?”

“What about? Why, about the word we are going to choose for the lock of our safe. It is not that I don't trust the children—Good Lord! They are angels!—or that poor fellow Clovy, who is honesty itself! None the less, that must be kept a secret.”

“Take what word you like,” answered the wife; “I'll agree to anything you say.”

“You have no choice?”

“I haven't.”

“Well, I should like it to be a proper name.”

“Yes!—I got it—your own name, Cæsar.”

“That can't be! Mine is too long! It must be a word of four letters only.”

“Well then, take one letter off! Surely you can spell Cæser without an r! We are free to do as we like, I dare say!”

“Bravo, Cornelia! That's an idea!—One of those ideas you often hit on, wifie! But if we decide on cutting one letter out of a name, I'd rather cut out four, and let it be out of yours!”

“Out of my name?”

“Yes! And we'd keep the end of it—e l i a. Indeed, I rather think it would be more select that way; so, it will be just the thing!”

“Ah! Cæsar!”

“It will please you, wont it, to have your name on the lock of our safe?”

“It will, since it is in your heart already!” answered Cornelia, with loving emphasis.

Then, her face beaming with pleasure, she gave a hearty kiss to her good-natured husband.

And that is how, in consequence of this arrangement, any one, unacquainted with the name Elia, would be baffled in his attempts to open the safe of the Cascabel family.

Half an hour after, the children were back with the provisions, ham and salt beef, cut in appetizing slices, not forgetting a few of those wonderful outgrowths of Californian vegetation, heads of cabbage grown on tree-like stalks, potatoes as large as melons, carrots half a yard long and “equaled only,” Mr. Cascabel was fond of saying, “by those leeks that you make people swallow, without having the trouble of growing them?” As to drink, the only puzzle was which to choose among the varieties that nature and art offer to American thirsty lips. On this occasion, not to mention a jugful of beer with a head on it, each one was to have his share of a good bottle of sherry, at dessert.

In the twinkling of an eye, Cornelia, aided by Clovy, her usual help, had prepared breakfast. The table was laid in the second compartment of the van, styled the family parlor, where the temperature was maintained at the right degree by the cooking-stove set up in the next room. If, on that day,—as on every day indeed,—father, mother, and children ate with remarkably keen appetite, the fact was but too easily accounted for by the circumstances.

Breakfast over, Mr. Cascabel, assuming the solemn tone that he gave to his utterances when he spoke to the public, expressed himself as follows:

“To-morrow, children, we shall have bidden farewell to this noble town of Sacramento, and to its noble citizens, with all of whom we have every reason to be satisfied, whatever be their complexion, red, black or white. But, Sacramento is in California, and California is in America, and America is not in Europe. Now, home is home, and Europe is France; and it is not a day too soon, that France should see us once more ‘within its walls,’ after a prolonged absence of many a year. Have we made a fortune? Properly speaking, we have not. Still, we have in hands a certain quantity of dollars that will look uncommonly well in our safe, when we have changed them into French gold or silver. A portion of this sum will enable us to cross the Atlantic Ocean on one of those swift vessels that fly the three-colored flag once borne by Napoleon from capital to capital.—Your health, Cornelia!”

Mrs. Cascabel acknowledged with a bow this token of good feeling which her husband often gave her, as though he meant to thank her for having presented him with Alcides and Hercules in the persons of his children.

Then, the speaker proceeded:

“I likewise drink ‘safe home’ to us all! May favorable winds swell our sails!”

He paused to pour to each one a last glass of his excellent sherry.

“But then,—Clovy may say to me, perhaps,—once our passage-money paid, there will be nothing left in the safe?”

“No such thing, boss,—unless the passage-money added on to the railway fares—”

“Railways, railroads, as the Yankees say!” cried Mr. Cascabel. “Why, you simpleton, you thoughtless fellow, we shan't use them! I quite intend saving the traveling expenses from Sacramento to New York by covering the distance on our own wheels! A few hundred leagues! I guess it would take more than that to frighten the Cascabel family, accustomed as it is to disport itself from one world's end to the other!”

“Of course!” John chimed in.

“And how glad we shall be to see France again!” exclaimed Mrs. Cascabel.

“Our old France that you don't know, my children,” continued Mr. Cascabel, “since you were born in America, our beautiful France that you shall know at last. Ah, Cornelia, what pleasure it will be for you, a child of Provence, and for me, a son of Normandy, after twenty years' absence!”

“It will, Cæser, it will!”

“Do you know, Cornelia? If I were to be offered an engagement now, even at Barnum's theater, I should say no! Putting off our journey home, never! I'd rather go on all fours!—It's homesick we are, and what's needed for that ailment is a trip home!—I know of no other cure!”

Cæsar Cascabel spoke truly. His wife and he no longer cherished but one thought: returning to France; and what bliss it was to be able to do so, now that there was no lack of money!

“So then, we start to-morrow!” said Mr. Cascabel.

“And it may be our last trip!” remarked Cornelia.

“Cornelia,” her husband said with dignity, “the only last trip I know of is the one for which God issues no return ticket!”

“Just so, Cæsar, but before that one, shan't we have a rest, when we have made our fortune?”

“A rest, Cornelia? Never! I don't want any of your fortune, if fortune means doing nothing! Do you think you have a right to lay those talents idly by, that nature has so freely lavished on you? Do you imagine I could live with folded arms and run the risk of letting my joints grow stiff? Do you see John giving up his work as an equilibrist, Napoleona ceasing to dance on the tight rope with or without a pole, Sander standing no more on top of the human pyramid, and Clovy himself no longer receiving his half-dozen dozen slaps on his cheeks per minute, to the great gratification of the public? No, Cornelia! Tell me that the sun's light will be put out by the rain, that the sea will be drunk by the fishes, but do not tell me that the hour of rest will ever strike for the Cascabel family!”

And now, there was nothing more to do but to make the final arrangements for setting out, next morning, as soon as the sun would peep over the horizon of Sacramento.

This was done in the course of the afternoon.

Needless to say the safe was placed out of the way, in the furthest compartment of the wagon.

“In this room,” said Mr. Cascabel, “we shall be able to watch it night and day!”

“Really, Cæsar, I think that was a good idea of yours,” remarked Cornelia, “and I don't begrudge the money we spent on the safe.”

“It may be rather small, perhaps, wifie, but we shall buy a bigger one, if our treasure takes larger proportions!”

Chapter II - The Cascabel Family

CASCABEL!—A name, you might say, “pealed and chimed on all the tongues of fame,” throughout the five parts of the globe, and “other localities,” proudly added the man who bore that patronymic so honorably.

Cæsar Cascabel, a native of Pontorson, right in the heart of Normandy, was a master in all the dodges, knacks, and trickeries of Norman folks. But, sharp and knowing as he was, he had remained an honest man, and it were not right to confound him with the too often suspicious members of the juggling confraternity; in him, humbleness of birth and professional irregularities were fully redeemed by the private virtues of the head of the family circle.

At this period, Mr. Cascabel looked his age, forty-five, not a day more or less. A child of the road in the full acceptation of the word, his only cradle had been the pack that his father shouldered as he tramped along from fairs to markets throughout Normandy. His mother having died shortly after his coming into the world, he had been very opportunely adopted by a traveling troupe on the death of his father, a few years after. With them he spent his youth in tumbles, contortions and somersaults, his head down and his feet in the air. Then he became in turn a clown, a gymnast, an acrobat, a Hercules at country fairs,—until the time when, the father of three children, he appointed himself manager of the little family he had brought out conjointly with Mrs. Cascabel, nee Cornelia Vadarasse, all the way from Martigues in Provence (France).

An intelligent and ingenious man, if on the one hand his muscle and his skill were above the common, his moral worth was in no way inferior to his physical abilities. True, a rolling stone gathers no moss; but, at least, it rubs against the rough knobs on the road, it gets polished, its angles are smoothed off, it grows round and shiny. Even so, in the course of the twenty-five years that he had been rolling along, Cæser Cascabel had rubbed so hard, had got so thoroughly polished and rounded off, that he knew about all that can be known of life, felt surprised at nothing, wondered at nothing. By dint of roughing it through Europe from fair to fair, and acclimatizing himself quite as readily in America as in the Dutch or the Spanish Colonies, he wellnigh understood all languages, and spoke them more or less accurately, “even those he did not know,” as he used to say, for it was no trouble to him to express his meaning by gestures whenever his power of speech failed him.

Cæser Cascabel was a trifle above the middle height; his body was muscular; his limbs were “well oiled”; his lower jaw, somewhat protruding, indicated energy; his head was large, and shagged over with bushy hair, his skin marbled by the sun of every clime, tanned by the squalls of every sea; he wore a mustache cut short at the ends, and half-length whiskers shaded his ruddy cheeks; his nose was rather full; he had blue eyes glowing with life and very keen, with a look of kindness in them; his mouth would have boasted thirty-three teeth still, had he got one put in. Before the public, he was a real Frederic Lemaitre, a tragedian with grand gestures, affected poses, and oratorical sentences, but in private, a very simple, very natural man, who doted on his wife and children.

Blessed with a constitution that could stand anything, although his advancing years now forbade him all acrobatic performances, he was still wonderful in those displays of strength that “require biceps.” He was possessed, moreover, of extraordinary talent in that branch of the showman's profession, the science of the engastrimuth or ventriloquism, a science which goes back a good many centuries if, as Bishop Eustachius asserts, the pythoness of Edon was nothing more than a ventriloquist. At his will his vocal apparatus slipped down from his throat to his stomach. You wonder if he could have sung a duet, all by himself? Well, you had better not have challenged him to!

To give one last stroke to this picture, let us notice that Cæser Cascabel had a weakness for the great conquerors of history in general, and for Napoleon in particular. Yes! He did love the hero of the first Empire just as much as he hated his “tormentors,” those sons of Hudson Lowe, those abominable John Bulls. Napoleon! That was “the man for him!” Wherefore he had never consented to perform before the Queen of England, “although she had requested him to do so through her first Steward of the Household,” a statement he had made so earnestly and so repeatedly that he had eventually acquired a belief in it, himself.

And still, Mr. Cascabel was no circus manager; no Franconi was he with a troupe of horsemen and women, of clowns and jugglers. By no means. He was merely a showman, performing on the public commons in the open air when the weather was fine, and under a tent when it rained. At this business, of which he had known the ups and downs for a quarter of a century, he had earned, as we know, the goodly lump sum just now put away in the safe with the combination lock.

What labor, what toils, what misery at times, had gone to the making up of this sum! The hardest was now over. The Cascabels were preparing to return to Europe. After they had crossed the United States, they would take passage on a French or an American vessel,—an English one—no, never!

As to that, Cæser Cascabel never let himself be beaten by anything. Obstacles were a myth for him. Difficulties, at most, did turn up on his path; but, extricating, disentangling himself through life was his speciality. He had gladly repeated the words of the Duke of Dantzic, one of the marshals of his great man:

“You make a hole for me, and I'll make my way through it.”

And many indeed were the holes he had wriggled through!

“Mrs. Cascabel, née Cornelia Vadarasse, a genuine native of Provence, the unequaled clairvoyant of things to come, the queen of electrical women, adorned with all the charms of her sex, graced with all the virtues that are a mother's pride, the champion of the great female tournaments to which Chicago challenged the ‘first athletes of the universe.’”

Such were the terms in which Mr. Cascabel usually introduced his wife to the public. Twenty years before, he had married her in New York. Had he taken his father's advice in the matter? He had not! Firstly, he said, because his father had not consulted him in reference to his own wedding, and, secondly, because the worthy man was no longer on this planet. And the thing had been done in a very simple way, I can tell you, and without any of those preliminary formalities which, in Europe, prove such drawbacks to the speedy union of two beings predestined for one another.

One evening, at Barnum's theater in Broadway, where he was one of the spectators, Cæsar Cascabel was dazzled by the charms, the agility and the strength shown in horizontal bar exercises by a young French acrobat, Mlle. Cornelia Vadarasse.

Associating his own talents with those of this graceful performer, of their two lives making but one, foreseeing yonder in the future a family of little Cascabels worthy of their father and mother, all this appeared as if mapped out before the honest showman's eye. Rushing behind the scenes between two acts, introducing himself to Cornelia Vadarasse with the fairest proposals in view of the wedding of a Frenchman and a Frenchwoman; then, eyeing a respectable clergyman in the audience, hauling him off to the green-room and asking him to bless the union of so well-matched a couple, that is all that was needed in that happy land of the United States of America. Do those life-contracts, sealed with full steam on, turn out the worse for it? Be the answer what it may, the union of Cascabel and Cornelia Vadarasse was to be one of the happiest ever celebrated in this nether world.

At the time when our story begins, Mrs. Cascabel was forty years old. She had a fine figure, rather stoutish perhaps, dark hair, dark eyes, a smiling mouth, and, like her husband, a good show of teeth. As to her uncommon muscular strength, she had proved it in those memorable Chicago encounters, where she had won a “Chignon of honor” as a prize. Let us add that Cornelia still loved her husband as she did on the first day, feeling as she did an unshakable trust, an absolute faith in the genius of this extraordinary man, one of the most remarkable beings ever produced by Normandy.

The first-born of our itinerant performers was a boy, John, now nineteen years old. If he did not take after his parents with regard to muscle or to the performances of a gymnast, an acrobat or a clown, he showed his true blood by a wonderfully dexterous hand and an eye ever sure of its aim, two gifts that made him a graceful, elegant juggler. Nor was his success marred with self-conscious pride. He was a gentle, thoughtful youth with blue eyes, and dark-complexioned like his mother. Studious and reserved, he sought to improve himself wherever and whenever he could. Though not ashamed of his parents' profession, he felt there was something better to do than performing in public, and he looked forward to giving up the craft as soon as he would be in France. At the same time his genuine love for his father and his mother prompted him to keep extremely reserved on this subject; indeed, besides, what prospects had he of making another position for himself in the world?

Then, there was the second boy, the last but one of the children, the contortionist of the troupe. He was really the logical joint-product of the Cascabel couple. Twelve years old, as nimble as a cat, as handy as a monkey, as lively as an eel, a little three-foot-six clown who had tumbled into this world heels over head, so his father said, a real gamin as ready-witted as full of fun and frolic, and a good heart withal, sometimes deserving of a thump on his head, but taking it with a grin, for it was never a very hard one.

It was stated above that the eldest scion of the Cascabels was called John. Whence came this name? The mother had insisted upon it in memory of one of her grand-uncles, Jean Vadarasse, a sailor from Marseilles, who had been eaten by the Caribbean islanders, an exploit she was proud of. To be sure, the father who had the good luck to have been christened Cæser, would have preferred another name, one better known in history and more in accordance with his secret admiration for warriors. But he was unwilling to thwart his wife's wishes on the advent of their first-born, and he had accepted the name John, promising himself to make up for it, should a second heir be born to him.

This event came to pass, and the second son was called Alexander, after having a narrow escape of being named Hamilcar, Attila, or Hannibal. For shortness sake, however, he was familiarly known as Sander.

After the first and the second boy, the family circle was joined by a little girl who received the name of Napoleona, in honor of the martyr at St. Helena, although Mrs. Cascabel would have loved to call her Hersilla.

Napoleona was now eight years old. She was a pretty child, with every promise of growing to be a handsome girl, and a handsome girl she did become. Fair and rosy, with a bright, animated countenance, graceful and clever, she had mastered the art of tight-rope walking; her tiny feet seemed to glide along the wire for play, as though the little sylph had had wings to bear her up.

It were idle to say Napoleona was the spoilt child of the family. She was worshipped by all, and she was fit to be. Her mother fondly cherished the thought that she would make a grand match some day. Is not that one of the contingencies of these people's nomadic life? Why might not Napoleona, grown up into a handsome young girl, come across a prince who would fall in love with her, and marry her?

“Just as in fairytales?” Mr. Cascabel would suggest, his turn of mind being more practical than his wife's.

“No, Cæser, just as in real life.”

“Alas, Cornelia, the time is gone when kings married shepherdesses, and, my word! in these days of ours, I have yet to know that shepherdesses would consent to marry kings!”

Such was the Cascabel family, father, mother and three children. It might have been better perhaps, if a fourth olive branch had increased the number, seeing there are certain human-pyramid exercises in which the artists climb on top of each other in even numbers. But this fourth member did not appear.

Luckily, Clovy was there, the very man to lend a hand on extraordinary occasions.

In truth, Clovy was the complement of the Cascabels. He was not one of the show, he was one of the family; and he had every claim to the membership, an American though he was by birth. He was one of those poor wretches, one of those “nobody's children,” born Heaven knows where,—they hardly know it themselves,—brought up by charity, fed as luck will have it, and taking the right road in life, if they happen to be rightly inclined, if their innate sense of what is good enables them to resist the evil examples and the evil promptings of their miserable surroundings. And should we not feel some pity for these unfortunates if, in the majority of cases, they are led to evil deeds, and come to an evil end?

Such was not the case with Ned Harley, on whom Mr. Cascabel had thought it funny to bestow the name of Clovy. And why? First, because he had as much spare fat about him as a dried clove; second, because he was engaged to receive, during the “parades,” a greater number of five-fingered stingers than any cruciferous shrub could produce of cloves in a year!

Two years before, when Mr. Cascabel lighted upon him, in his round through the States, the unfortunate man was at death's door through starvation. The troupe of acrobats, to which he belonged, had just broken up, the manager having run away. With them, he was in the “minstrels,” a sad business, even when it manages to pay, or nearly so, for the food of the wretch who plies it! Daubing your face with boot-blacking, “niggering” yourself, as they say; putting on a black coat and pants, a white vest and necktie; then singing stupid songs whilst scraping on a ludicrous fiddle in company with four or live outcasts of your kin, what a position that is in society! Well, Ned Harley had just lost that social position; and he was but too happy to meet Providence on his path, in the person of Mr. Cascabel.

It happened just then that the latter had lately dismissed the artist who generally played the clown in the parade scenes. Will it ever be believed? This clown had passed himself off as an American, and was in reality of English origin! A John Bull in the troupe! A countryman of those heartless tormentors who—The rest of the story is known. One day, by mere chance, Mr. Cascabel heard of the intruder's nationality.

“Mr. Waldurton,” said he to him, “since you are an Englishman, you'll take yourself off this very moment, or else it's not my hand on your face you shall get, a clown though you be!”

And a clown though he was, it is the tip of a boot he would have felt if he had not disappeared instantly.

It was then that Clovy stepped into the vacant berth. The late “minstrel” now engaged himself as a “man of all work”; he would perform on the boards, groom the horses, or, just as readily, do the kitchen work, whenever the mistress needed a helping hand. Naturally, he spoke French, but with a very strong accent.

He still was, on the whole, a simple-minded fellow, though now five-and-thirty years of age, as full of mirth when he gratified the public with his drolleries as he was melancholy in private life. He was rather inclined to view things on their dark side; and, to be candid, that was not to be wondered at, for it would have been hard for him to look upon himself as one of the favored ones here below. With his tapering head, his long-drawn face, his yellowish hair, his round, sheepish eyes, his phenomenal nose on which he was able to place half a dozen pairs of spectacles, a great source of laughter,—his flabby ears, his long neck like a stork's, his thin body stuck up on skeleton legs, he looked indeed a strange being. Still, he was not a man to complain, unless—this was his favorite way of qualifying a statement,—unless ill-luck gave him cause to complain. In addition, ever since his joining the Cascabels, he had become greatly attached to the good people, and they, on their part, could not have done without their Clovy.

Such was, if it may be put thus, the human element in this itinerant troupe.

As to the animal element, it was represented by two fine dogs, a spaniel—a first-rate hunter and a reliable watch-dog for the house on wheels—and a clever, intelligent poodle, sure to become a member of the “Institute,” whenever the intellectual powers of the canine race are rewarded in France on a par with those of men.

Next to the two dogs, it is right we should introduce to the public a little ape that proved a worthy rival of Clovy himself when they vied with one another in distorting their faces, and puzzled the spectators as to who should carry off the palm. Then, there was a parrot, Jako, a native of Java, who talked and prattled and sang and jabbered ten hours out of twelve, thanks to the teaching of his friend Sander. Lastly two horses, two good old horses, drew the wagon, and God knows if their legs, somewhat stiffened with years, had been stretched out over the miles and miles they had measured across country.

And, should you care to know the names of these two good steeds? One was called Vermont like Mr. Delamarre's winning horse, the other Gladiator like Count de Lagrange's.

Yes, they bore those names so famous on the French turf; yet they never had a thought of getting themselves entered for the Paris Grand Prix.

As to the dogs, they were called: the spaniel, Wagram, the poodle, Marengo; and, no need to tell who the godfather was to whom they were indebted for those renowned historical names.

The ape—why, he had been christened John Bull, for the simple reason that he was ugly.

What can be done? We must overlook this mania of Mr. Cascabel's, proceeding as it did, after all, from a patriotic sentiment which is very pardonable—even though at an epoch when such strong feelings are but little justified.

“Were it possible,” he would say sometimes, “not to worship the man who exclaimed under a shower of bullets: ‘Follow the white feather on my hat; you will ever find it, etc?’”

And, when he would be reminded that it was Henry IV who had uttered those beautiful words:

“That may be,” he would reply; “but Napoleon could have said as much!”

Chapter III - The Sierra Nevada

HOW many people have had dreams, at one time or other, of a journey performed in a movable house, after gypsy fashion! of a journey exempt of all worry concerning hotels, and inns, and unreliable beds, and still more unreliable cooks, when the country to be traversed is no more than besprinkled with hamlets or villages! That which wealthy amateurs do daily on board their pleasure yachts, surrounded by all the comfort of their transplanted home, few are the people who have done it by means of a vehicle ad hoc. And still, is not a carriage a movable house? Why do gypsies enjoy a monopoly of the pleasures of “yachting on terra firma?”

In reality, the showman's wagon constitutes a complete flat, with its various rooms and furniture; it is “home” on wheels; and Cæser Cascabel's was beautifully adapted to the requirements of his gypsy life.

The Fair Rambler was the name they had given it, as though it were a Norman schooner; and that name was justified after so many peregrinations through the length and breadth of the United States. They had bought it three years ago, with the first money they had saved, as a substitute for the old primitive van, just covered over with an awning and unsupported by a single spring, that had nestled them so long. Now, as it was over twenty years since Mr. Cascabel had begun visiting the fairs and markets of the United States, it is needless to say his wagon was of American manufacture.

The Fair Rambler rested on four wheels. Supplied with good steel springs, it combined lightness with strength. Well looked after, scrubbed and washed with soap, it shone in all the glow of its brightly-painted panels on which gold yellow blended harmoniously with cochineal red, and displayed to the public gaze the already famous trade name and mark:  THE CÆSAR CASCABEL FAMILY.

As to length, it would have been a match for those wagons that still ply the prairies of the Far West, in parts where the Great Trunk Railroad has not hitherto pushed its way. It is evident that two horses could only walk with so heavy a vehicle. In truth the load was no light one. Not to speak of its inhabitants, did not the Fair Rambler convey, on its roof, the canvas for the tent, and the poles, and the ropes, and, underneath between the fore and the hind wheels, a swinging board laden with various articles, a large drum and a smaller one, a horn, a trombone and other utensils and accessories, the real tools of the showman? Let us put on record likewise the costumes of a noted pantomine, “The Brigands of the Black Forest,” on the repertory of the Cascabel family.

The internal arrangements were well devised, and we need not add that scrupulous cleanliness, Flemish cleanliness, reigned supreme, thanks to Cornelia, who could stand no trifling in this respect.

In the fore part, closing by means of a sliding glass-door, was the first compartment heated by the cooking-stove. Next came a drawing or dining-room, where the fortune-teller gave her consultations; then a bed-room with bunks, superposed on each other as on board ship, which, with a curtain for a division, afforded sleeping accommodation, on the right to the two brothers, and on the left to their little sister; lastly at the further end, Mr. and Mrs. Cascabel's room. Here, a bed with thick mattresses and a patchwork quilt, near which the famous safe had been deposited. All the recesses were taken up with little boards on hinges, which might be used as tables or toilet-stands, or with narrow cupboards where the costumes, the wigs and the false beards for the pantomine, were put by. The whole was lighted by two paraffine lamps, veritable ship lamps that swung to and fro with the motion of the vehicle when the roads were unlevel; moreover, so as to allow the light of day to penetrate the various compartments, half a dozen little windows, with lead-cased panes, light muslin curtains and colored bands, gave to the Fair Rambler the appearance of the saloon on a Dutch galliot.

Clovy, naturally easy to please, slept in the first compartment, on a hammock that he hung up at night and took down at day-break next morning.

We have yet to mention that the two dogs, Wagram and Marengo, in consequence of their being on night-duty, slept among the baggage under the wagon, where they tolerated the company of John Bull, the ape, in spite of his restlessness and his propensity for playing tricks, and that Jako, the parrot, was housed in a cage hooked on to the ceiling in the second compartment.

As to the horses, Gladiator and Vermont, they were quite free to graze round about the Fair Rambler nor was there any necessity to fetter them. And when they had done cropping the grass of those vast prairies where their table was ever laid, and their bed, or rather their litter ever ready, they had only to pick out a spot whereon to lay themselves to sleep, on the very ground that had supplied them with food.

One thing certain is, that, when night had closed around, what with the guns and the revolvers of its occupants, what with the two dogs that kept watch over it, the Fair Rambler was in perfect safety.

Such was this family coach. How many a mile it had rambled along for the past three years through the States, from New York to Albany, from Niagara to Buffalo, to St. Louis, to Philadelphia, to Boston, to Washington, down the Mississippi to New Orleans, all along the Great Trunk, up to the Rocky Mountains, to the Mormon district, to the furthermost ends of California! A healthy mode of traveling, if ever there was one, seeing that not one member of the little troupe had ever been ill, save and except John Bull, whose fits of indigestion were anything but few, his instinctive knavery making it easy for him to satisfy his inconceivable gluttony.

And how glad they would be to bring back the Fair Rambler to Europe, to drive it along on the highways of the old continent! What sympathetic curiosity it would awaken as it went through France, through the village homesteads of Normandy! Ah! seeing France again, “seeing his Normandie once more” as in Berat's well-known song, such was the aim of all Cæsar Cascabel's thoughts, the goal of all his aspirations.

Once in New York, the wagon was to be taken to pieces, packed up and put on board ship for Havre, where it would only need to be set up on its wheels again, to ramble away toward the French capital.

How Mr. Cascabel, his wife and children, longed to be off! and so, doubtless, did their companions, their four-footed friends we might say. That is why, at day-break, on the 15th of February, they left Circus Place in Sacramento, some on foot, others riding, each one to his fancy.

The temperature was very cool still, but it was fine weather. It may be surmised the anchor was not weighed without a due supply of biscuits on board, or if you like, without various preserves of meat and vegetables. As to that, it was an easy matter to renew the stocks in the towns and villages. And then, was not the country swarming with game, buffaloes, deer, hares and partridges? And would John be sparing of his gun or his shot when shooting was subject to no restriction, when no European gun license was demanded in those boundless wilds of the Far West? And a dead shot was John, I tell you; and Wagram, the spaniel, showed hunting qualities of no mean standard, if Marengo the poodle was deficient in that respect.

On leaving Sacramento, the Fair Rambler took a north-east course. The object was to reach the frontier by the shortest road, and to cross the Sierra Nevada, say, to travel a distance of about six hundred miles to the Sonora Pass, which opens on to the endless plains of the East.

This was not the Far West, properly so-called, yet, where villages are only to be found at long intervals; it was not the prairie with its far-distant horizon, its immense waste, its wandering Indians gradually driven back toward the less frequented parts of North America. Almost as soon as you were out of Sacramento, the land already began to rise. You already perceived the ramifications of the Sierra which so nobly enclasps old California within the dark frame of its pine-covered mountains, overtopped here and there with peaks 15,000 feet high. It is a barrier of verdure thrown up by nature around that country on which she had lavished such wealth of gold, now carried away by the rapacity of man.

Along the road followed by the Fair Rambler there was no lack of important towns: Jackson, Mokelumne, Placerville, the world-known outposts of the Eldorado, and the Calaveras. But Mr. Cascabel halted in these places barely long enough to make a few purchases, or to have a specially good night's rest, when needed. He longed to get to the other side of the Nevada, the Great Salt Lake district, and the huge rampart of the Rocky Mountains, where his horses would have many a hard tug to give. Then as far as the Erie or Ontario region, all they need do would be to follow, through the prairies, the trails already beaten by the feet of the horses and furrowed by the wagons of preceding caravans.

Still, progress was slow through these hilly districts. Unavoidable detours increased the length of the journey. And again, although the country lay in the thirty-eighth parallel, which, in Europe, is the latitude of Sicily and Spain, the last lingering chill of winter had lost none of its sting. In consequence, as the reader knows, of the deviation of the Gulf Stream—that warm current which, when leaving the Gulf of Mexico, winds obliquely toward Europe,—the climate of North America is much colder, on the same latitudes, than that of the old Continent. But, a few weeks more, and once again California would be the land exuberant among all others, that fruitful land, where cereals multiply a hundredfold, where the most varied productions, both of the tropics and of the temperate zone, luxuriate side by side, sugar cane, rice, tobacco, oranges, lemons, olives, pineapples, bananas. The wealth of the Californian soil is not the gold it contains, it is the marvelous vegetation it brings forth.

“We shall be sorry to leave this country,” said Cornelia, who did not look with an indifferent eye on the good things of the table.

“You glutton!” her husband would answer.

“Oh, it is not for myself I speak, it is for the children!”

Several days were spent journeying along the edge of the forests, through prairies gradually resuming their fresh tint of green. Despite their numbers, the ruminants fed by these prairies are unable to wear out the carpet of grass that nature keeps on renewing for ever under their feet. Too great emphasis could not be laid on the vegetative power of that Californian soil, to which no other can be compared. It is the granary of the Pacific, and the merchant navy, that takes its produce away, cannot exhaust it. The Fair Rambler went on its way, at its usual speed, a daily average of eighteen or twenty miles—not more. It is at this rate it had already conveyed its freight throughout all the States, where the name of the Cascabels was so favorably known, from the mouth of the Mississippi to New England. True, they then stopped in every town of the Confederacy to increase the amount of their takings; while in this journey, from west to east, there was no thought of dazzling the populations. No artistic tour was this; this time, it was the journey home toward old Europe, with the Norman farms away in perspective.

A merry journey it was, too! How many sedentary dwellings would have envied the happiness of this house on wheels? There was laughing, and singing, and joking; and at times the horn, on which young Sander exhibited all his skill, would set the birds to flight, just as noisy a tribe as our frolicsome troupe.

All this was very fine, but days spent traveling need not, of necessity, be schoolboys' holidays.

“My children,” Mr. Cascabel would often say, “we must not get rusty for all this!”

And so, during the halts, if the horses took a rest, the family did not do so. More than once did the Indians eagerly watch John going over his juggling, Napoleona rehearsing a few graceful steps, Sander dislocating himself as though his limbs were India-rubber, Mrs. Cascabel indulging in muscular exercises, and Mr. Cascabel in ventriloquial effects, not to forget Jako prattling in its cage, the two dogs performing together, and John Bull exhausting himself in contortions.

Let it be noticed, however, that John did not neglect his studying by the roadside. Over and over again did he read the few books that made up the little library of the Fair Rambler, a small geography, a small arithmetic, and various volumes of travels; he it was, moreover, who wrote up the log-book, in which were pleasantly recorded the incidents of the cruise.

“You will know too much!” his father sometimes said to him. “Still, if your taste runs that way,—”

And far was it from Mr. Cascabel to thwart the literary instincts of his first-born. As a fact, his wife and himself were very proud to have a “scholar” in the family.

One afternoon, about the 27th of February, the Fair Rambler reached the foot of the Sierra Nevada gorges. For four or five days to come, this rugged pass through the chain would cause them much toil and labor. It would be no light task, for man or beast, to climb half-way up the mountain. The men would have to put their shoulders to the wheels along the narrow paths which skirt the giant's sides. Although the weather continued to grow milder, thanks to the early influence of Californian spring, the climate would still be inclement at certain latitudes. Nothing is to be dreaded more than the floods of rain, the fearful snowdrifts, the bewildering squalls you encounter at the turns of those gorges in which the wind gets imprisoned as in a gulf. Besides, the upper portion of the passes rises above the zone of the permanent snow, and you must ascend to a height of at least six thousand feet before reaching the downward slope toward the Mormon district.

Mr. Cascabel proposed to do as he had already done on similar occasions: he would hire extra horses in the villages or the farms on the mountain, as well as men, Indians or Americans, to drive them. It would be an additional expense, of course, but a necessary one, if they cared not to break down their own horses.

On the evening of the 27th, the entrance into the Sonora Pass was reached. The valleys they had hitherto followed presented but a slight gradient; Vermont and Gladiator had walked them up with comparative ease. But farther up they could not have gone, even with the help of every member of the troupe.

A halt was made within a short distance of a hamlet that lay in a gorge of the Sierra. Just a few houses, and, at a couple of gunshots' distance, a farm to which Mr. Cascabel determined to repair that very evening. There he would engage, for the following morning, some extra horses that Vermont and Gladiator would gladly welcome.

First, the necessary measures had to be taken for spending the night in this spot.

As soon as the camp was organized in the usual manner, the inhabitants of the hamlet were communicated with and readily consented to supply fresh food for the masters, and forage for the horses.

On this evening, the rehearsing of exercises was out of the question. All were worn out with fatigue. It had been a heavy day: for, in order to lighten the load, they had had to go on foot a great part of the journey. Manager Cascabel therefore granted absolute rest on this and every other night while they crossed the Sierra.

After the “master's searching eye” had been cast over the encampment, Cascabel took Clovy, and, leaving the Fair Rambler to the charge of his wife and children, made his way toward the farm over which ringlets of smoke were seen curling up through the trees.

This farm was kept by a Californian and his family by whom the showman was well received. The farmer undertook to supply him with three horses and two drivers. The latter were to pilot the Fair Rambler as far as where the eastward declivity begins, and then return with the extra horses. But, that would cost a deal of money.