The elder brother, a long-legged stutterer whom they called Ariston in
jest, was the most funereal fellow on the planet; he suffered from
acute necromania; anything connected with coffins, corpses, wakes and
candles roused his enthusiasm. He would like to have been a
gravedigger, the priest of a religious confraternity, a cemetery
warden; but his great dream,--what most enchanted him,--was a funeral;
he would imagine, as a wonderful ideal, the conversations that the
proprietor of a funeral establishment must have with the father or the
inconsolable widow as he offered wreaths of immortelles, or as he went
to take the measure of a corpse or strolled amidst the coffins. What a
splendid existence, this manufacturing of last resting-places for men,
women and children, and afterward accompanying them to the
burial-ground. For Ariston, details relating to death were the most
important matter in life.
Through that irony of fate which almost always exchanges the proper
labels of things and persons, Ariston was a supernumerary in one of
the vaudeville theatres, through the influence of his father, who was
a scene-shifter, and the job disgusted him, for in such a playhouse
nobody ever died upon the stage, nobody ever came out in mourning and
there was no weeping. And while Ariston kept thinking of nothing but
funereal scenes, his brother dreamed of circuses, trapezes and
acrobats, hoping that some day fate would send him the means to
cultivate his gymnastic talents.
Pages:
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109