Both finished their jobs
practically at the same moment; and, rising together with low bows,
they exchanged pictures - each had done a rattling good caricature
of the other - and then, without a word having been spoken or a
move made toward striking up an acquaintance, each man sat him
down again and finished his dinner.
The lone diner departed first. When the party at the other table
had had their coffee they went round the corner to a little circus
- one of the common type of French circuses, which are housed in
permanent wooden buildings instead of under tents. Just as they
entered, the premier clown, in spangles and peak cap, bounded into
the ring. Through the coating of powder on it they recognized his
wrinkly, mobile face: it was the sketch-making stranger whose
handiwork they had admired not half an hour before.
Hearing the tale we went to the same circus and saw the same clown.
His ears were painted bright red - the red ear is the inevitable
badge of the French clown - and he had as a foil for his funning a
comic countryman known on the program as Auguste, which is the
customary name of all comic countrymen in France; and, though I
knew only at second hand of his sketch-making abilities, I am
willing to concede that he was the drollest master of pantomime
I ever saw.
