Produced by R. Cedron, Verity White, Henry Craig and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION EDITED BY J. LEWIS MAY AND BERNARD MIALL A MUMMER'S TALE (HISTOIRE COMIQUE) A MUMMER'S TALE BY ANATOLE FRANCE A TRANSLATION BY CHARLES E. ROCHE LONDON, JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY: MCMXXI WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES, ENGLAND CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. 1 II. 21 III. 26 IV. 41 V. 63 VI. 71 VII. 82 VIII. 97 IX. 108 X. 137 XI. 166 XII. 176 XIII. 181 XIV. 186 XV. 194 XVI. 197 XVII. 205 XVIII. 212 XIX. 220 XX. 230 A MUMMER'S TALE A MUMMER'S TALE CHAPTER I The scene was an actress's dressing-room at the Odeon. Felicie Nanteuil, her hair powdered, with blue on her eyelids, rouge on her cheeks and ears, and white on her neck and shoulders, was holding out her foot to Madame Michon, the dresser, who was fitting on a pair of little black slippers with red heels. Dr. Trublet, the physician attached to the theatre, and a friend of the actress's, was resting his bald cranium on a cushion of the divan, his hands folded upon his stomach and his short legs crossed. "What else, my dear?" he inquired of her. "Oh, I don't know! Fits of suffocation; giddiness; and, all of a sudden, an agonizing pain, as if I were going to die. That's the worst of all." "Do you sometimes feel as though you must laugh or cry for no apparent reason, about nothing at all?" "That I cannot tell you, for in this life one has so many reasons for laughing or crying!" "Are you subject to attacks of dizziness?" "No. But, just think, doctor, at night, I see an imaginary cat, under the chairs or the table, gazing at me with fiery eyes!" "Try not to dream of cats any more," said Madame Michon, "because that's a bad omen. To see a cat is a sign that you'll be betrayed by friends, or deceived by a woman." "But it is not in my dreams that I see a cat! It's when I'm wide awake!"