The Thursday matinées are filled with happy French children. What a never-to-be-forgotten ecstasy it must be to Jacqueline, François and little Antoinette to be taken between the acts to the café of the Cirque Médrano and be served with a huge _cérise à l’eau_ by the clown himself. How delightful to hear his special jokes as he pours out for them their _cérise_ and nearly spills a whole trayful of cakes over their heads as he serves it!
I spent the afternoon yesterday with a famous old clown at the Médrano. At intervals during our chat my friend would leave me to run back into the ring and play the fool. Yet he was a grave and a sad old man. His heavily chalked face with its traditional black lines between his eyes and his painted cheeks seemed strangely incongruous as he talked seriously of his life.
Behind his mask of chalk his old eyes burned with a brave light in them still, for his life had been one of trying struggle. He spoke of the death of his only daughter, of the hardships of many touring adventures in many lands.
“I went with my family to Constantinople to start a circus there, and it took me five years to earn enough money to return, for we not only lost all we had, but were forced into debt.
“We managed to get free at last and returned to Paris. Here we worked hard, all of us, and at last we opened again a circus of our own. My son-in-law was the trapeze performer, and my boy was a clown like myself. We had with us a family of old friends, the Lorettis—you may remember them? The opening night of that show brought with it the old sensation of ruin staring us in the face. We opened the doors that evening just thirty-five thousand francs in debt. Gradually by hard work we managed to pull out of it, and,” he added, “to-day, thank God! I am free from worry and anxiety. I know that I can make but a living at the best. I get my money here; it is not much, but I get it regularly, and here I shall stay. I am sixty years old and have been a clown nearly forty years of my life.”
He excused himself for a moment and ran out into the ring, turned a flipflap, and ran tripping over things in a fruitless endeavor to assist the lady in pink tulle on her cantering white horse. A pantomime followed in which a second clown, his son, having killed him in a comic duel, doubled his father up, packed him neatly in a barrel, and wheelbarrowed him out of the ring.