“A Most Gentlemanly Emperor.”
How the Calf Which This Famous Hornplayer
Put in His Apartment Became
in Time an Ox.
Henry Sutherland Edwards, a London journalist, who died a short time ago, published in 1900 a volume of “Personal Recollections” which is very much alive with anecdotes of men of the past generation. Considerable space is given to a man who is now almost unremembered—Eugene Vivier, the hornplayer, “the most charming of men and the spoiled child of nearly every court in Europe.” Vivier is the man who said of Napoleon III, “He is the most gentlemanly emperor I know.”
“What can I do for you?” said this gentlemanly emperor one day, when Vivier had gone to see him at the Tuileries.
“Come out on the balcony with me, sire,” replied the genial cynic. “Some of my creditors are sure to be passing, and it will do me good to be seen in conversation with your majesty.”
Vivier was a confirmed practical joker. Once, while riding in an omnibus, he pretended to be mad.
He indulged in the wildest gesticulations, and then, as if in despair, drew a pistol from his pocket. The conductor was called upon by acclamation to interfere, and Vivier was on the point of being disarmed when suddenly he broke the pistol in two, handed half to the conductor and began to eat the other half himself. It was made of chocolate!
Vivier could not bear to see people in a hurry. According to him, there was nothing in life worth hurrying for; and, living on the Boulevard, just opposite the Rue Vivienne, he was much annoyed at seeing so many persons hastening, toward six o’clock, to the post-office on the Place de la Bourse.
He determined to pay them out, and for that purpose bought a calf, which he took up to his apartments at night, and exhibited the next afternoon at a few minutes before six o’clock on the balcony of his second floor. In spite of their eagerness to catch the post, many persons could not help stopping to look at the calf.
Soon a crowd collected and messengers stayed their steps in order to gaze at the unwonted apparition. Six o’clock struck, and soon after a number of men who had missed the post returned in an irritated condition, and, stopping before Vivier’s house, shook their fists at him. Vivier went down to them and asked the meaning of the insolence.
“We were not shaking our fists at you,” replied the enraged ones, “but at that calf.”
“Ah! You know him, then?” returned Vivier. “I was not aware of it.”
In time Vivier’s calf became the subject of a legend, according to which the animal (still in Vivier’s apartments) grew to be an ox, and so annoyed the neighbors by his lowing that the proprietor of the house insisted on its being sent away. Vivier told him to come and take it, when it was found that the calf of other days had grown to such a size that it was impossible to get it down-stairs.