Bruant could sing all night, but speech-making was not in his line.
The two hurried to Belleville and breakfasted, and afterwards De Bercy wrote madly for three hours and finished the address. Bruant knew that if he would ingratiate himself in the hearts of the Bellevillians he must do so by expressions indicating his sympathy with the current wrongs of the community. He must touch upon the rights of the widows and orphans, the wrongs of the working man, and other kindred topics.
It happened that Bruant had in his repertoire a lot of songs upon these very topics, none of which the good people of Belleville had ever heard.
The hour arrived and before a large and enthusiastic audience De Bercy launched into his speech. Each time he finished a portion of his discourse upon the widows or orphans, Bruant would burst into a song relative to the subject. He had one ready upon every question upon which his confrère spoke. The Bellevillians cheered and Bruant was elected by an overwhelming majority amid a furor of good-fellowship and an outpouring of the red wine of Belleville Saint Fargeau!
The “Treteau de Tabarin,” familiarly known as the “Boîte à Fursy,” is a unique mixture of cabaret and theater in the rue Pigalle. Its owner and manager, Henri Fursy, is the author of the celebrated “Chansons Rosses.” These rough and ready satires are sparkling with wit. To invent a new type of songs is the achievement of an epoch, and this is what Fursy has done. He tells me he is not a poet, that his rhymes are often very poor.
“My style is not always good,” he said to me; “my songs are satires written upon the spur of the moment, and precisely in this crude state I present them to the public. If I worked over them they would lose much of their freshness.”
There is nothing of the bohemian _chansonnier_ in Monsieur Fursy. He is a dapper, smartly dressed, alert, courteous, clean-cut man of business. By his wits, push and energy, he has made a success of his theater.
Perhaps he has seen too much of the Parisian method of transacting a business deal. This consists in taking four weeks to think about the proposition, several more of leisurely indecision, and a corresponding length of time to settle the matter. The Frenchman is astonished if in the meantime some other fellow with a little Anglo-Saxon hustle in him has seized the opportunity and signed the contract.