On stage: a large basin of water; a candlestick sitting atop a stool; a length of tubing; and a tarnished little flute with six stops, in order that he may play 'Au clair de la lune.' Everything is ready for him, but the sad and pale-faced man has not appeared.
From behind her, Madeleine hears the sound of her stage manager grunting. There is a fluttering of wings, and then a man comes stumbling out into the lights, as if propelled against his will by a much greater force.
He has been stripped of his smock, as Madeleine instructed, and stuffed into a black evening coat, one pilfered from the mayor especially for the occasion. It appears, at one shoulder, that he has already burst a seam. And it appears that Mme. Cochon has tried to smooth the cowlicks in his hair, for the signs of her struggle are everywhere, tiny bits of down clinging to his lapels, as though he has come freshly from wringing the neck of a goose. Yet in his heavy fist he clutches not a bird, but a filthy string, which trails behind him, weighted down by the battered kite at its end. Faded now after months in the sun and the wind, the kite still carries a picture of his cranium.
As for his face, it wears the dismayed expression of someone who finds himself in the wrong production. He looks back over his shoulder beseechingly, as if Mme. Cochon might whisper his lines, or a tremendous piece of scenery might roll out and flatten him beneath its wheels. How did I end up here? his whole body asks, twitching in the footlights, longing to disappear.
Upon seeing Madeleine, however, he seems to remember what it is that he is supposed to do. His eyes brighten; he steps forward with courage; he drops the kite string and—like that—it falls away from him, his clumsiness and coarseness and bewilderment, it all falls away. Like that, his purpose is revealed. He must unbutton his breeches. He must guide the little girl by her hand. He must wrap her little fingers around his cock. But doing so, his eyes fill with tears. Great drops of water spill down the half-wit's cheeks. Taking the hands of the girl in his own, he weeps over them.