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Zut and Other Parisians/Papa Labesse

Papa Labesse
Up on the Butte Montmartre life is a matter of first principles, and conventionality an undiscovered affliction. A spade is a spade, and the blacker it happens to be, the more apt it is to receive its proper appellation, and the less likely to be confused with the hearts and diamonds. That is why Papa Labesse had no hesitation in referring to Bombiste Fremier as a good-for-nothing, — a vaurien.

Just off the boulevard de Rochechouart, in the rue Veron, Papa Labesse kept a tiny joiner’s shop, in which, in his velvet cap with a long tassel and his ample apron of blue denim, he might be seen daily, toiling upon various small orders for the quartier. But daily, also, when the light began to fail, he would discard his apron, and, locking his shop door, walk slowly up the long curving incline of the rue Lepic, and through the appropriately rural-looking rue St. Rustique, until he emerged upon the broad summit of the Butte. Here he would light his pipe, and, with his legs spread wide, stand motionless by the low wattled fence at the brink of the bluff, looking off across the city. In appearance Papa Labesse was not the type of man in whom one would be apt to look for sentimentality. He was short and very thin, with a hooked nose and a gray moustache turned up fiercely at the ends, and his skin was brown and deeply wrinkled, as if he had somehow shrunk or warped; but then, as Marcelle said of him, it is the rough and crinkled Brazil-nut that is as full as possible of sweet white meat.

Between these two there had always existed a firm bond of camaraderie. Marcelle was the daughter of Madame Clapot, who presided over a little dairy directly opposite the joiner’s shop, and on the day when she first made the astounding discovery that small girls can stand upright and walk alone, as if by instinct she had made a bee-line for the doorway of Papa Labesse, and, staggering in, triumphant, had fallen headlong, with a gurgle of satisfaction, into a great pile of shavings. Thenceforward she came often and tarried long, and Papa Labesse built houses for her out of odds and ends of wood, and fashioned miniature articles of furniture in his spare moments, and had always a bit of sucre-candi or a little ginger-bread figure tucked away in a certain drawer of his table, which she soon learned to find for herself.

It seemed to Papa Labesse but the week following her first plunge among his shavings when Marcelle came in, all in white, and with a veil like a little bride’s, to parade her splendor under his delighted eyes, before going to her first communion. But when he put into her hand the small white prayerbook he had bought for this great occasion, she had forgotten all else, and thrown her arms about his neck, entirely regardless of her finery.

“After maman, thou knowest, Papa Labesse, I love thee best of all the world!”

And Papa Labesse was properly shocked at this recklessness and said, bon Dieu! that was a fine veil, then, made to be crushed against an odious apron covered with chips and sawdust — what? And, as Marcelle ran off to join Madame Clapot, who was waiting, consumed with mingled pride and impatience, across the way, the old man wiped his spectacles vigorously, shook his head several times, and then, suddenly abandoning his work, three hours before the accustomed time, betook himself to the Butte, and smoked three pipefuls of tobacco, looking off across the city.

It was at this time that two radical changes came into the life of Papa Labesse. First, on the very summit of the Butte they began to lay the foundations for the great church of Sacré-Cœur; and, second, Marcelle took it into her pretty little head to accompany him on his daily climb. At first he was disturbed by both these innovations. This curious afternoon communion of his with the wonderful wide city, which lay spread out before him like a great gray map, was akin to a religion. He loved Paris with a love so great that perhaps he himself was barely able to comprehend its proportions. He was never tired of standing there and watching her breathing at his feet, of picking out, in the gathering twilight, the faint white speck to the west that was the arc de l’Etoile, the domes of the Invalides and the Pantheon, Notre Dame, to the eastward, and the towers and spires of half a hundred minor temples and public buildings. He passed from one to the other in a kind of visual pilgrimage, saying the names over slowly to himself, and occasionally affecting an air of surprise, as if some one of the familiar piles had suddenly and unaccountably appeared in a new locality.

“La Trinité; Notre Dame de Lorette; La Bourse. Tiens! St. Eustache!”

At the outset, the serenity of this contemplative hour was seriously impaired by the creaking of derrick-pulleys and the loud chatter of wagon-drivers, and hardly less so by the eager questions of Marcelle, clinging to his hand, her eyes bright with excitement, as she looked out with him across Paris, or peered down into the vast pit when the masons were laying the foundations of the big church. But, bit by bit, Papa Labesse became accustomed to the new conditions; and every night, an hour before sunset, his high, dry voice summoned Marcelle from the dairy across the way, and the two set forth together up the long curving incline of the rue Lepic, and the old man would smoke his pipe by the low wattled fence at the brink of the bluff, while the child babbled of her little affairs. Papa Labesse no longer named the domes and spires now. His eyes rested alternately on the city and on the girl beside him, and often, when Marcelle was silent, looking off to where the thin, silver line of the Seine gleamed briefly between distant buildings, he shook his head several times, tapping the side of his inverted pipe-bowl against the palm of his hand, long after the ashes had fallen out.

When Marcelle was seventeen, Madame Clapot died suddenly, and the girl moved from the rue Veron to the home of her aunt, near by, in the rue Seveste. But the change made no difference in her friendship for Papa Labesse. All through the ensuing spring she called regularly for him each afternoon, and they climbed the Butte in company, as before. The old man would have been completely happy had it not been for Bombiste Fremier.

Bombiste was an employé of the state, — an humble one, to be sure, but, nevertheless, part and parcel of the great Administration which includes every one, from the President of the Republic to the street-sweeper on the rue Royale. In Fremier’s case the employment was brief and not over-lucrative. He was engaged, for two months only in the twelve, to mow the grass on the fortifications and in parts of the Bois and the smaller parks of Paris. For the remainder of the year he lived none knew how, but he had always a few white pieces in his pocket, and was ready to treat a comrade at Le Cheval Blanc, the little wine-shop kept by Bonhomme Pirou at the corner of the boulevard and the rue Seveste. As regards the source of his income, it is probable that Amélie Chouert, called La Trompette, by reason of her loud voice, might have divulged some remarkable particulars. In any event, she was his constant companion, a sharp-featured, angular woman with snapping black eyes and a great mop of hair that came down to within an inch of her continuous line of eyebrow.

Fremier himself was as handsome as a brutal picture, — a giant in stature, with square shoulders, a thick neck, in which the muscles stood out like ropes, and the face of an Italian brigand. It is a type of masculine beauty which goes far in Montmartre, and to it was added a deep, melodious voice, that, whether in the heat of political argument or the more complicated phraseology of love, carried complete conviction. No one blamed La Trompette for her infatuation. As we have said, life on the Butte is a matter of first principles, and, in view of the manifest attraction, her position was entirely conceivable. Except to Papa Labesse.

He was a singularly rigid old man, who took no account of the remarkable beauty and the irresistible tongue of Fremier, but only of the fact that he was called Bombiste because he talked against the government at Le Cheval Blanc, advocating the use of dynamite, and only the bon Dieu knew what else beside. And if, as La Trompette alleged, he swung his scythe on the fortifications like a veritable demon, what of that? No, evidently he was a vaurien!

So it was, that when, one fine May afternoon, Papa Labesse, emerging from his little shop at the summons of Marcelle, caught a glimpse of Bombiste slipping around the further corner into the rue Lepic, his heart gave a sudden great bound and then seemed to stand still. He was very silent on the way to the Butte, for, moment by moment, the blackness of untoward premonition was settling upon him. He glanced, covertly, but again and again, at Marcelle, observing, with a strange, suddenly acquired power of perception, that she was already a woman. He had not seemed to notice, day by day, the change in her. Now it dawned upon him in a flash. No, it was no longer the baby who had fallen headlong among his shavings, nor yet the child going to her first communion, all in white and with a veil like a little bride’s, nor even the slender girl who had peered down with him into the vast pit where the masons were laying the foundations of the big church. It was a woman who walked beside him, a woman very beautiful, with dark hair, coiled above a pale, pure face, and great eyes, like crushed violets swimming in their dew. Papa Labesse caught his breath: Bombiste Fremier!

But Marcelle saw nothing of her companion’s preoccupation. She almost danced beside him up the long curving incline of the rue Lepic, chaffing, as she passed, the children playing in the gutters, and pausing continually to sniff at some flower-vender’s fragrant wares, or peer into the window of a tiny shop. She was glowing with health and happiness: her cheeks dappled with color, her eyes shining. When, finally, they emerged upon the Butte, she ran to the little wattled fence, and with her hands clasped behind her head, looked out across the city. Even when Papa Labesse had come up to her side, she said no word for several minutes.

They had started later than was usual, and already the daylight had begun to dim, and the west to turn from red to saffron, and from saffron to fawn. Directly below them lay a maze of steep and narrow streets, shelving toward the boulevard de Rochechouart; and far further, to the southwest, the place de l’Opéra was breaking into the alternate deep red and glaring white of electric advertising signs, the lettering of which could not be distinguished from where they stood, but which painted the faint haze of evening with swiftly changing contrasts of color.

Suddenly Marcelle began to speak, her voice eloquent with a strange, new music.

“Papa Labesse, dost thou comprehend what all this says to us, this wonderful city upon which we look each night, thou and I? From here — what? A bewilderment of lights, a sea of roofs, a murmur of faintly heard cries. But what does it mean? Surely, it is the voice of the mother of us all, of Paris, the great, the beautiful — of a woman, Papa Labesse: that finally, which thou canst never comprehend, pauvre Papa Labesse! — a woman who says but one word — love! Papa Labesse — L’amour, l’amour, l’amour! — again, and again, and again, l’amour!”

There was a long silence. Then, almost timidly, Papa Labesse laid his hand on hers.

“But thou dost not love, my little one, — thou?” he said.

Marcelle turned suddenly.

“Si, I love!” she answered.

Above the tapering, distant shaft of the Tour Eiffel a tiny cloud caught the last ray of the departed sun, blazed crimson for an instant, and then, as suddenly, gloomed to slate-gray.

“Que Dieu te bénisse!” said Papa Labesse, solemnly.

“It is all so wonderful,” continued Marcelle after a moment, “and yet I have never seemed to understand it till to-day, — this great, sweet voice of Paris. It is indeed as if she was the mother of us all, Papa Labesse, and was spreading out her arms, and calling us all to come to her heart. And for each of us she has something good — something better than ever we have imagined for ourselves, or wished to have; and yet, in whatever form, it is really the same thing always — l’amour, Papa Labesse, l’amour!”

Out of the strain of the past half hour a great sob was suddenly wrung from Papa Labesse. He took the girl’s radiant face between his knotted hands and looked long into her eyes without speaking.

“Tell me, my pigeon,” he said, finally, “is it — is it the young Fremier?”

Marcelle flung both arms about his neck, as she had done on the day when he had given her the little white prayerbook. He felt her lips, warm and moist, against his wrinkled ear, and when she spoke, her voice was like the sound of two leaves grazing each other at the touch of a light breeze.

“Oui!” she said.

When Marcelle went away with Bombiste Fremier, all the quartier babbled. Fat fish-wives and dairywomen stopped at each others’ doors, and said, wisely, with their heads together and hands on hips, that they had always known how it would be. Since the first, whatever Bombiste wanted, that Bombiste was sure to have — what? Did not Madame Rollin remember how, when a mere baby, he had cried for the little brass dish which hung in front of his father’s salle de coiffure, until, actually, Fremier père had taken it down and given it to him to cut his first tooth on? Assuredly, Madame Rollin recalled this astounding incident, and not only that, but the fact that she herself had spoken to Madame Fremier, warning her that the result of such folly would be the unhappiness of some one. But they were all alike, the Fremier. They made no excuses and took no advice.

There were others who recalled the days when La Trompette was the belle of the quartier, and as respectable as the best of them. But there, what wouldst thou? Bombiste had wanted her, so there was nothing to be done. And the debate invariably ended with a bit of flattery for Bombiste. It was a beau garçon, after all, name of a good name, with such eyes! And a tongue, bon Dieu, to draw the cork from a bottle! For there are many mysteries of human society, but the greatest of these is the good word of the other women for the man.

Curiously enough, Bombiste’s most eloquent partisan was La Trompette herself. Her first appearance at Le Cheval Blanc, after Fremier’s desertion of her, was the signal for the outburst of ironic condolence.

“Eh! La Trompette, he has planted thee — yes? So the cord is cut, little one — hein? Did he give thee a reference, at least?”

To these, and many similar compliments, La Trompette returned nothing beyond a tolerant smile, or —

“One shall see, my children!” she cried, in her shrill voice. “It is not the first time, you know. Variety, one has need of that in life. Perhaps we do not know each other, that story and I! Wait a little. In six weeks we shall be here in company as before, and the little one it will be who is planted. But I remain. And she who laughs last — what? But, above all, not a word against Bombiste, unless you have need of the wherewithal to make broken heads. It is a brave gars, do you understand, and one who has often enough paid your drinks, types of good-for-nothings!”

And she planted herself at a table amidst a burst of laughter and applause (for loyalty is greatly esteemed on the boulevard Rochechouart), and proceeded to collect interest, in the form of repeated glasses of cognac, on the past generosities of Bombiste Fremier.

But the eternal feminine had its part in the make-up of La Trompette, and so it was that one evening, just at nightfall, she presented herself at the door of Papa Labesse’s little shop. He was always at home now, poor Papa Labesse, for the growing church of Sacré-Cœur had never once seen him emerging, breathless but smiling, from the little rue St. Rustique, since the day when Marcelle disappeared. He stopped his simple toil at the same hour still, but, instead of stepping out briskly upon the long, curving incline of the rue Lepic, he would seat himself in his doorway, and, oftentimes forgetting to light the pipe which he had filled, stare out wistfully across the street, to where a trim little laundress stood, busily ironing shirts, in the window of the shop that had formerly been the dairy of Madame Clapot.

He looked up as La Trompette drew up before his door, and a slight frown wrinkled for an instant above his patient blue eyes, from which all the singular intensity seemed gone.

“Thou hast a strange air of solitude, Papa Labesse,” began La Trompette, affecting a tone of solicitude.

Papa Labesse made no reply.

“And Marcelle,” said the woman, — “she is always with Bombiste? Poor little one! The end is so sure! Is there one who knows him better than I? Ah, non! It is always the same story, — a pair of bright eyes, a good figure, and v’là! But, without fail, he comes back to me, ce sacré coureur!”

She glanced up and down the street with an air of complete unconcern, and then her eyes came back to Papa Labesse with a vindictive snap.

“Happily,” she added, “he will have taught her a way of earning white pieces in abundance. She is not the first, thy Marcelle. They are sprinkled from here to La Villette, the gonzesses who know the name of Bombiste Premier. Wouldst thou prove it? Walk, then, from the place Pigalle to the place de la Rotonde to-night at twelve!” And La Trompette laughed.

Papa Labesse rose suddenly to his full height.

“God damn you!” he said. And this was no oath, but rather a prayer.

Toward the end of July Papa Labesse resumed his pilgrimages to the summit of the Butte. He had aged visibly in six weeks, and he walked no longer with the brisk and cheerful step which had bespoken his youthfulness of spirit, but shuffled his feet, and often stumbled over trifling obstacles. He looked neither to the right nor to the left, and if he heard the greetings of those along his way, for whom formerly he had always had a hearty word, he made no reply. It is doubtful whether, had he been suddenly asked, he could have told his exact whereabouts: it was rather instinct than absolute intention which sent him shuffling up to his old coign of vantage. His eyes took no note of his immediate surroundings, but looked far beyond, with an expression that was half question, half entreaty. It was only when he had come to the edge of the bluff that he seemed to awaken into something resembling the man he had been. Then, his lean, gnarled hands gripped the wattles with a kind of convulsive eagerness, and, for a little, the old blue spark gleamed under his lids, and his eyes swept the great city feverishly, as if they would pluck out her secret from her by mere force of will. He no longer dwelt upon the churches and the public buildings, but traced with his glance the line of the great boulevards, des Batignolles, de Clichy, and de Rochechouart, and their tributary streets; and often he remained at his post until nearly midnight, motionless, silent, watching, watching, watching, with his eyes fixed upon the distant red glare from the giant revolving wings of the brilliantly lighted Moulin Rouge.

What he saw, what he heard, during those long hours of vigil no one ever knew: what he thought he barely knew himself. The entire intensity of his failing strength was concentrated upon one endeavor. Hour after hour he sent a voice without sound out, over, and down into the labyrinth of streets beneath him, into the dance-halls, the wine-shops, the café-concerts, wooing, pleading, beseeching. It was as if, minute by minute, he wove a great net of tenderest entreaty and persuasion, fitting it cunningly into each nook and cranny of the city below, and then, at the end, with one mighty effort of his will, drew the whole fabric up and into his heart, hoping against hope that, mysteriously, some one pleading thought of his might have caught her and swept her back to his arms. It was a struggle, silent but to the death, between Papa Labesse and the great siren city, for the possession of a soul.

And, as if, indeed, that eager voice without words of his entreaty had, somehow, been able to reach and win her, Marcelle came back. It was at the hour just following sunset, the hour they had loved to pass together, and superbly still and clear. To the west, over the wide, green sweep of the Bois de Boulogne, a great multitude of little puffs of cloud lay piled up against a turquoise sky, and these were constantly changing from tint to opalescent tint, as shafts of crimson and saffron sunlight moved among them from below the horizon. Above, where the turquoise dulled to steel, the stars were already nicking the sky, one by one; and, one by one, the lights of the boulevard, red, white, and yellow, flashed into being in reply.

As it was the dinner hour, the summit of the Butte was deserted save for the figure of Papa Labesse, silhouetted against the sky, as Marcelle emerged from the rue St. Rustique, came slowly across the open space before the church, and stood at his side. She was very pale, with the transparent, leaden pallor which comes only at the end, and her face seemed little more than two great, stunned eyes. Her clothes, in the last stage of what had been tawdry finery, were unspeakably more slovenly than mere rags. It was but eight weeks since they had stood on the same spot together, but this so brief period had wrought in each the havoc of a decade.

For a time neither spoke. Papa Labesse had looked up briefly as she reached his side, and then, as she swayed and seemed about to fall, had put an arm about her and drawn her close to him. So they stood watching, while Paris winked and sparkled into the starry splendor of her summer night. Finally, —

“I knew thou wouldst come, my pigeon,” said Papa Labesse. “For a time I was desolate, is it not so? — and sat alone in the shop below there, and thought of nothing. But then I remembered how that thou didst love this place, and so I have come each night to wait for thee, because I knew thou wouldst return. And now thou art here. It is well, my little white pigeon, it is very well.”

A keener ear than his would have caught the unmistakable warning that underlay her voice when she replied. It lacked not only hope, but life itself. It was the voice of one long dead.

“I did not think to find thee here, Papa Labesse — it has been so long since then. I came to see it all once again — to hear the voice of the great city that sings of love. And then, when at last comes the night, I would throw myself down from here, even into the very heart of her, for I am hers, and she has made me like herself.”

She seemed to feel the unvoiced question which quivered on the lips of Papa Labesse, and continued, presently, —

“He never married me. Not that I cared for that. I loved him, thou seest, and when one loves one thinks not of little things. No, I was happy so. But now — last week he left me. He has gone back to La Trompette. He gave me a hundred sous. I think he was sorry to go.”

A faint smile touched the corners of her lips.

“Pauvre Bombiste!” she added. “It is one who does not know his own heart!”

And this again is unknowable mystery, — the gentle word of the woman for the man!

“He is mowing on the fortifs this week,” went on Marcelle, wistfully echoing her lover’s slang, “and La Trompette is with him. I saw them but to-day, from the porte de Clichy. So, since they are together, for me it is finished. I have come back to the Butte, Papa Labesse — come back to die. For now there is none to receive me, save Paris. She will take me, thou knowest, she who has made me like herself.”

That was all. There was no word, now at the end, of Bombiste Fremier, except that he did not know his own heart, — no word of the days without food, the long nights of following him from wineshop to wineshop, perhaps to be refused at last the wretched shelter of his little room; no word of curses, blows, and insults worse than either.

When she was silent again Papa Labesse drew her gently away from the brink of the bluff.

“My pigeon,” he said, “there is one to receive thee. Thou wilt come to the little shop — pas? — and rest there upon my bed. For I have no need of sleep, I. And in the morning thou wilt be strong again, and well. Come, my pigeon!”

And silently, hand in hand, they retraced the familiar way, down the long, curving incline of the rue Lepic, and the door of the little joiner’s shop closed behind them.

Marcelle died at daybreak, going out softly like a lamp that dims and dims, and then flares once into brilliance before all is dark. Papa Labesse was on his knees beside the narrow bed, when she woke from the stupor into which she had fallen, and raised herself upright, her face shining with a great light. The old man, himself unconscious that the end had come, lifted his eyes eagerly to hers.

“My little white pigeon,” he said tremulously, “thou findest thyself better, is it not so?”

But the knowledge of him had passed utterly from Marcelle. For a moment she was silent, looking at the wall of the tiny room, as she had looked in the old days at the great city, spread like a map at the foot of the Butte Montmartre. Then she sank back upon the pillow and crossed her hands upon her breast.

“Paris!” she said. “Paris, toi qui chantes de l’amour!”

And then, very faintly, “Bombi!”

It was her pet name for Fremier, but Papa Labesse did not understand.

Half an hour later, he came out into the growing light of the dawn, and looked vacantly up and down the short stretch of the rue Veron as if uncertain what direction he desired to take. It was not yet five o’clock, but already the quartier was astir. As Papa Labesse hesitated in the doorway, a band of laborers passed the corner, laughing, on their way to their work in the Rochechouart section of the Métropolitain. The little assistant was taking down the shutters of the laundry across the way, and on every side was the sound of opening doors and windows, and voices suddenly raised in greeting or comment upon the weather. Madame Rollin lumbered by, carrying a bundle of clothes on her way to the public lavoir.

“Hé! bonjour, Papa Labesse!” she cried in passing. “A fine morning — what?”

Papa Labesse turned suddenly, clamped the padlock on his door, and was presently shuffling along the avenue de Clichy. As he went, the city awoke around him to full activity, but he noted his surroundings even less than he had been wont to do of late, on his climbs to the Butte. The return of Marcelle had quickened him, but for a moment only. Now he was again, as it were, a mere automaton, going forward without volition, or purpose, or perception, on, on, on, whither and why he knew not.

After a time he was conscious of a great weariness. The noisy clamor of the crowds on the avenue, marketing and bargaining in the new sunlight, seemed unaccountably to have given place to quiet; and looking about him, Papa Labesse learned from a little signboard that he was passing through the porte de Clichy. The octroi officials looked curiously at the shuffling, stooping figure as he went by, and one of them laughed.

“As full as an egg, the grandfather!” he said.

Turning to the left, Papa Labesse toiled up upon the slope of the fortifications, stumbled on for a little, and, finally, as his exhaustion gained upon him, flung himself, face down, upon the grass. He had passed the need of sleep long since, but he lay quite motionless for a long time, with his chin on his hands. Directly before him, seen more clearly from the elevation upon which he lay, was the dingy suburb of Clichy, and, to the left, its still dingier neighbor, Levallois-Perret, studded, both of them, with gaunt sheds of blackened wood, and ghastly factories and storehouses of cheap brick, their endless windows, in close-set rows, giving them the appearance of rusted waffle-irons, and their tall chimneys slabbering slow coils of smoke. In the immediate foreground, a man with a scythe was lazily cutting the long grass on the outward slope of the fortifications.

Presently Papa Labesse began to talk to himself. His eyes were very bright, and as he spoke they jumped nimbly from shed to shed, from factory to factory, of the dispiriting scene before him.

“But what are those?” he began, scowling at two high chimneys standing side by side. “Tiens! Sainte Clotilde! But the evening is clear then, par exemple, that one sees so far and so well. It is all so wonderful — but I have never understood it till now. Ah! Saint Etienne-du-Mont! That I know, since the dome of the Pantheon is quite near. Sapristi! What is that? L’amour, Papa Labesse, l’amour, — that which, finally, thou canst never understand, poor Papa Labesse! Tiens! Notre Dame! Ah, ça! A woman like herself, what? — like Paris that sings of love! My pigeon!”

So, for an hour, the thin stream of jumbled phrases slipped from his dry lips. He talked softly, — no one could have heard him at two paces, — but the babble never ceased.

At seven o’clock a woman carrying a basket appeared upon the fortifications from the direction of the gate, and, pausing at the top of the slope, looked down upon the mower.

“Hé! Allô — labago! Bom-biste!” she cried. The man turned. There was no such thing as not being able to hear La Trompette.

And suddenly Papa Labesse held his peace.

Bombiste came up the slope with a long leisurely stride, flung his scythe upon the grass, and placing his arm around La Trompette’s neck, kissed her loudly on both cheeks.

“Name of God!” he said. “But I have thirst!”

They seated themselves side by side and close together, with their backs to Papa Labesse, some fifty metres distant, and La Trompette opened her basket. Presently Bombiste lowered his left elbow and raised his right in the act of drawing a cork, and then raised his left again and took a long draught from the bottle. At the same moment Papa Labesse swung round a quarter circle to the right, as if upon a pivot, and began to crawl very slowly forward.

“Chouette!” said Bombiste to La Trompette, biting a great mouthful from a slice of rye bread and cheese, “c’est du suisse!”

“Thou deservest water and a raw turnip!” replied the woman, assuming a tone of angry reproach. “If it were not I, thou knowest, long since thou wouldst have been put ashore, heart of an artichoke — va!”

“I am like that,” observed Bombiste, with regret. “But what wouldst thou, name of God! They come, they go: but at the end it is always thou.”

The woman made no reply, and Papa Labesse, two metres away, laid his gnarled brown fingers on the handle of Bombiste’s discarded scythe.

Bombiste capped his philosophy with a second long draught of wine, and then, taking a stupendous bite of bread and cheese, glanced slyly at his companion out of the corners of his eyes. She was gazing straight before her, her teeth nicking the edge of her lower lip.

“What hast thou?” mumbled the man, with his mouth full.

“She was very pretty,” answered La Trompette, “and she loved thee, that garce. But thou art going to tell me that it is finished forever! — That never, never,” she went on, clenching her hands, “wilt thou see her again! Else I plant thee, and thou canst earn thine own white pieces, — mackerel!”

Bombiste leaned over and placed his face beside hers.

“Is it not enough?” he said in his softest voice. “Voyons bien! What is she to me, this Marcelle? Fichtre! I planted her last week, thou knowest. B’en, quoi? Thou knowest the blue gown? It is that which sweeps the Boul’ Roch’ at present! But that is not for long. Perhaps the Morgue — more likely St. Lazare. Art thou not content?” And he pressed his cheek to the woman’s and moved his head up and down slowly, caressing her.

Papa Labesse rose slowly to his feet, and stretched his lean arms to their full length. The sun winked for the fraction of a second on the downward swirling scythe, and then all was still, save for the dull thud, thudding of two round objects rolling down the uneven slope of sod. In a moment even this sound ceased.

Papa Labesse revolved slowly upon his heels, pausing as his blue eyes, wide and vacant, fell upon the distant walls of Sacré-Cœur, swimming, cream-white and high in air, between him and the sun. Then he pitched softly forward upon the grass.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Zut and Other Parisians/Papa Labesse


text:
Zut and Other Parisians/In the Absence of Monsieur

In the Absence of Monsieur
Monsieur Armand Michel — seated before his newly installed Titian — was in the act of saying to himself that if its acquisition could not, with entire accuracy, be viewed as an unqualified bargain, it had been, at least, an indisputable stroke of diplomacy, when his complacent meditation was interrupted by the entrance of Arsène. It was the first time that Monsieur Michel had seen his new servant in his official capacity, and he was not ill-pleased. Arsène was in flawless evening dress, in marked contrast to the objectionably flamboyant costume in which, on the preceding evening, he had made application for the position of valet-maître d’hôtel, left vacant by the fall from grace of Monsieur Michel’s former factotum. That costume had come near to being his undoing. The fastidious Armand had regarded with an offended eye the brilliant green cravat, the unspeakable checked suit, and the painfully pointed chrome-yellow shoes in which the applicant for his approval was arrayed, and more than once, in the course of conversation, was on the point of putting a peremptory end to the negotiations by a crushing comment on would-be servants who dressed like café chantant comedians. But the reference had outweighed the costume. Monsieur Michel did not remember ever to have read more unqualified commendation. Arsène Sigard had been for two years in the service of the Comte de Chambour, whose square pink marble hôtel on the avenue de Malakoff is accounted, in this degenerate age, one of the sights of Paris; and this of itself, was more than a little. The Comte did not keep his eyes in his pockets, by any manner of means, when it came to the affairs of his household, and apparently there was nothing too good for him to say about Arsène. Here, on pale blue note-paper, and surmounted by the de Chambour crest, it was set forth that the bearer was sober, honest, clean, willing, capable, quiet, intelligent, and respectful. And discreet. When the Comte de Chambour gave his testimony on this last point it meant that you were getting the opinion of an expert. Monsieur Michel refolded the reference, tapped it three times upon the palm of his left hand, and engaged the bearer without further ado.

Now, as Arsène went quietly about the salon, drawing the curtains and clearing away the card table, which remained as mute witness to Monsieur Michel’s ruling passion, he was the beau idéal of a gentleman’s manservant, — unobtrusive in manner and movement, clean-shaven and clear-eyed, adapting himself without need of instruction to the details of his new surroundings. A less complacent person than Armand might have been aware that, while he was taking stock of Arsène, Arsène was taking stock, with equal particularity, of him. And there was an unpleasant slyness in his black eyes, a something akin to alertness in his thin nostrils, which moved like those of a rabbit, and seemed to accomplish more than their normal share of conveying to their owner’s intelligence an impression of exterior things. Also, had Monsieur Michel but observed it, his new servant walked just a trifle too softly, and his hands were just a trifle too white and slender. Moreover, he had a habit of smiling to himself when his back was turned, which is an undesirable thing in anybody, and approaches the ominous in a valet-maître d’hôtel. But Monsieur Michel was far too much of an aristocrat to have any doubt of his power to overawe and impress his inferiors, or to see in the newcomer’s excessive inconspicuity anything more than a commendable recognition of monsieur’s commanding presence. So, when Arsène completed his work and had shut the door noiselessly behind him, his master rubbed his hands and said “Ter-rès bien!” in a low voice, this being his superlative expression of satisfaction. Had his glance been able to penetrate his salon door, it would have met, in the antichambre, with the astounding spectacle of his new servant in the act of tossing monsieur’s silk hat into the air, and catching it, with extreme dexterity, on the bridge of his nose. Unfortunately, the other side of the door is something which, like the future and the bank-accounts of our debtors, it is not given us to see. So Monsieur Michel repeated his “Ter-rès bien!” and fell again to contemplating his Titian.

Yes, undoubtedly, it had been a great stroke of diplomacy. The young Marchese degli Abbraccioli was not conspicuous for his command of ready money, but his father had left him the finest private collection of paintings in Rome, and this, in consequence of chronic financial stress, was gradually passing from the walls of his palazzo in the via Cavour into the possession of an appreciative but none too extravagant government. It had been an inspiration, this proposal of Monsieur Michel’s to settle his claim upon the Marchese for his overwhelming losses at baccarat by taking over one of the two Titians which flanked the chimney-piece in his study. The young Italian had assented eagerly, and had supplemented his acquiescence with a proposal to dispose of the pendant for somewhat more material remuneration than canceled reconnaissances. But Armand Michel had undertaken it before, this delicate task of getting objets d’art over the Italian frontier — yes, and been caught in the act, too, and forced to disgorge. For the moment, it was enough to charge himself with one picture, on the given conditions, without risking hard cash in the experiment. Later — well, later, one would see. And so, a rivederla, mio caro marchese.

Monsieur Michel fairly hugged himself as he thought of his success. Mon Dieu, quelle génie, that false bottom to his trunk! He had come safely through them all, the imbecile inspectors, and now his treasure hung fairly and finally upon his wall, smiling at him out of its tapestry surroundings. It was épatant, truly, and moreover, all there was of the most calé. Only one small cloud of regret hung upon the broad blue firmament of his satisfaction — the other picture! It had been so easy. He might as well have had two as one. And now, without doubt, the imbecile Marchese would sell the pendant to the imbecile government, and that would be the end of it so far as private purchase was concerned. Monsieur Michel rose from his chair with a gesture of impatience, and, drawing the curtain back from the window, looked out lugubriously upon the March cheerlessness of the place Vendôme. Little by little, a most seductive plan formed itself in his mind. After all, why not? A couple of weeks at Monte Carlo, a week at Sorrento, and a fortnight at Rome, in which to win the Titian from the Marchese degli Abbraccioli, by baccarat if possible, or by bank-notes should fortune prove unkind. It was the simplest thing in the world, and he would avoid the remainder of the wet weather and be back for the opening of Longchamp. And Monsieur Michel rubbed his hands and said “Ter-rès bien!” again, with much emphasis.

When, a week later, Arsène was informed of Monsieur’s intention to leave him in sole charge of his apartment for a time, he received the intelligence with the dignified composure of one who feels himself worthy of the confidence reposed in him. The cook was to have the vacation for which she had been clamoring, that she might display to her relatives in Lille the elaborate wardrobe which was the result of her savings during three years in Monsieur Michel’s employ. Perfectly. And the apartment was to be aired and dusted daily, as if monsieur himself were there. And visitors to be told that monsieur was returning in a month. And letters to be made to follow monsieur, to Monte Carlo at first, and then to Rome. But perfectly; it was completely understood. Arsène bowed a number of times in succession, and outwardly was as calm as a tall, candid-faced clock, being wound up to run for a specified time independent of supervision. But beneath that smooth and carefully oiled expanse of jet-black hair a whole colony of the most fantastic ideas suddenly aroused themselves and began to elbow each other about in a veritable tumult.

Monsieur Michel took his departure in a whirl of confusion, losing a quantity of indispensable articles with exclamations of despair, and finding them the next moment with cries of satisfaction. Eugénie, the cook, compactly laced into a traveling dress of blue silk, stood at the doorway to bid her master good-by, and was run into at each instant by the cabman or the concierge or Monsieur Michel himself, each of whom covered, at top speed, several kilometres of stair and hallway, in the stupendous task of transferring a trunk, a valise, a hatbox, a shawl-strap, and an umbrella from the apartment to the carriage below. On the surface of this uproar, the presence of Arsène swam as serenely as a swan on a maelstrom. He accompanied his master to the gare de Lyon, and the last object which met the anxious eyes of Monsieur Michel, peering out from one of the first-class carriages of the departing express, was his new servant, standing upon the platform, as unmoved by the events of the morning as if monsieur had been passing from the dining room to take coffee in the salon instead of from Paris to take breakfast in Marseille. The sight of him was intensely soothing to the fevered spirit of Monsieur Michel, on whom the details of such a departure produced much the same effect as do cakes of soap when tossed into the mouth of an active geyser.

“He is calm,” he said to himself, rubbing his hands. “He is very calm, and he will not lose his head while I am gone. Ter-rès bien!”

But the calm of Arsène was the calm of thin ice over swiftly rushing waters. As the polished buffers of the last carriage swung out of sight around the curve with a curiously furtive effect, like the eyes of an alarmed animal, slipping backward into its burrow, he clenched the fingers of his right hand, and slipping his thumb nail under the edge of his upper teeth, drew it forward with a sharp click. At the same time he said something to his vanished master in the second person singular, which is far from being the address of affection on the lips of a valet-maître d’hôtel.

Wheeling suddenly after this singular manifestation, Monsieur Sigard found himself the object of close and seemingly amused scrutiny on the part of an individual standing directly behind him. There was something so extremely disconcerting in this gentleman’s unexpected proximity, and in his very evident enjoyment of the situation, that Arsène was upon the point of turning abruptly away, when the other addressed him, speaking the colloquial French of their class, with the slightest possible hint of foreign accent.

“Bah, vieux! Is it that I do not know what they are, the patrons? Oh, lalà!”

“Avec ça! There are some who have it, an astounding audacity!” said Arsène to the air over the stranger’s head.

“Farceur!” replied the stranger, to the air over Arsène’s. And then —

“There are two parrakeets that have need of plucking across the way,” he added, reflectively.

“There are two empty sacks here to put the feathers in,” answered Arsène, with alacrity; and ten minutes later, oblivious to the chill damp of the March morning, Monsieur Sigard and his new-found acquaintance, seated at a little table in front of a near-by wine-shop, were preparing in company the smoky-green mixture of absinthe and water which Paris slang has dubbed a parrakeet. On the part of Arsène the operation was performed with elaborate solicitude, and as he poured a tiny stream of water over the lump of sugar on the flat spoon balanced deftly across the glass, he held his head tipped sidewise and his left eye closed, in the manner of a contemplative fowl, and was oblivious to all but the delectable business of the moment.

But his companion, while apparently deeply engaged in the preparation of his own beverage, was far from being wholly preoccupied thereby. He was a man shorter by an inch or two than Monsieur Michel’s maître d’hôtel, dressed in the most inconspicuous fashion, and with an air of avoiding any emphasis of voice or gesture which would be apt to attract more than casual attention to the circumstance of his existence. There was something about him vaguely suggestive of a chameleon, an instant harmonizing of his appearance and manner with any background whatsoever against which he chanced to find himself placed, and a curious clouding of his eyes when unexpectedly they were met by those of another, which lent him an immediate air of profound stupidity. No doubt his long practice in this habit of self-obliteration made him doubly appreciative of Arsène’s little outburst of ill-feeling on the platform of the gare de Lyon. A man who would do that in public — well, he had much to learn!

Just now, however, this gentleman’s eyes were very bright, though they had dwindled to mere slits; and he followed every movement of the unconscious Arsène with short, swift glances from beneath his drooping lids, as, bit by bit, the lumps of sugar melted under the steady drip of the trickling water, and the opalescent mixture mounted toward the brims. He knew but two varieties of absinthe drinker, this observant individual, — the one who progressed, under its influence, from cheerful candor to shrewdest insight into the motives of others, and most skilful evasion of their toils; the other whom, by easy stages, it led from obstinate reserve to the extreme of careless garrulity. At this moment he was on the alert for symptoms.

Arsène looked up suddenly as the last morsel of his sugar melted, and, lifting his glass, dipped it before the eyes of his new friend.

“To your health, — Monsieur?” — he said, in courteous interrogation.

“Fresque,” said the other.

“Bon! And I, Monsieur Fresque, am Sigard, Arsène Sigard, maître d’hôtel, at your service, of the type who has just taken himself off, down there.”

And he indicated the imposing pile of the gare de Lyon with his thumb, and then, closing his eyes, took a long sip of his absinthe, and replacing the glass upon the table, plunged his hands into his pockets and stared off gloomily toward the Seine.

“Poof!” he said, “but I am content that he is gone. What a filthiness, a rich man — what?”

“Not to be denied,” agreed Monsieur Fresque. “There is not a foreign sou’s worth of delicacy in the whole lot!”

“Mazette! I believe thee,” answered the other, much pleased. Fresque’s thin lips relaxed the veriest trifle at the familiarity, and he lit a cigarette and gazed vacantly into space.

“But what dost thou expect?” he observed, with calm philosophy.

It appeared that what Arsène expected was that honest folk should not work from seven to ten, in an ignoble box of a pantry, on boots, and silver, and what not, he demanded of him, name of a pipe! and dust, and sweep, and serve at table, good heaven! and practice a species of disgusting politeness to a type of old engraving like Monsieur Armand Michel. And all, oh, mon Dieu! for the crushing sum of twenty dollars a month, did he comprehend? while the animal in question was sowing his yellow buttons by fistfuls. Mazette! Evidently, he himself was not an eagle. He did not demand the Louvre to live in, for example, nor the existence lalala of Emile Loubet — what? but it was not amusing, he assured him, to be in the employ of the great revolting one in question. Ah, non!

“Eiffelesque!” succinctly commented Monsieur Fresque.

But, said Arsène, there was another side to the question, and he himself, it went without saying, was no waffle-iron, speaking of stupidity. He had not been present the day fools were distributed. Oh, far from that! In consequence, it was to become hump-backed with mirth, that part of his life passed behind the back of the example of an old Sophie whom he had the honor to serve. He had not forgotten how to juggle since he traveled with a band of mountebanks. And there were the patron’s plates, — at one hundred francs the piece, good blood! Also he smoked the ancient cantaloupe’s cigarettes, and as for the wines — tchutt! Arsène kissed his finger-tips and took a long sip of absinthe.

“He is gone for long?” inquired Fresque.

Ah, that! Who knew? Six weeks at least. And meanwhile might not a brave lad amuse himself in the empty apartment — eh? Oh, it would be life in a gondola, name of a name of a name!

The conversation was prolonged for an hour, Arsène growing more and more confidential under the seductive influence of his parrakeet, and his companion showing himself so heartily in accord with his spirit of license, that, by degrees, he captured completely the fancy of the volatile valet, and was permitted to take his departure only on the condition of presenting himself in the place Vendôme that evening for the purpose of smoking the cantaloupe’s cigarettes and seeing Arsène juggle with the hundred-franc plates.

Monsieur Fresque was as good as his word. He put in an appearance promptly at eight o’clock, hung his hat and coat, at his host’s invitation, on a Louis Quinze applique, and made himself comfortable in a chaise longue which — on the guarantee of Duveen — had once belonged to the Pompadour. Arsène outdid himself in juggling, and afterwards they cracked a bottle of Château Laffitte and drank it with great satisfaction out of Salviati glasses, topping off the entertainment with Russian kümmel and two of Monsieur Michel’s cigars. Arsène, in his picturesque idiom, expressed himself as being tapped in the eye with his new friend to the extent of being able to quit him no longer, and forthwith Monsieur Hercule Fresque took up his quarters in the bedroom of the cantaloupe, his host established himself in Monsieur Michel’s Empire guest chamber, and the “life in a gondola” went forward for five weeks to the supreme contentment of both parties.

Now it is a peculiarity of life in a gondola, as is known to all who have sampled its delights, that, while it lasts, consideration of past and future alike becomes dulled, and one loses all sense of responsibility in the lethal torpor of the present. So it was not until Arsène received a letter from Monsieur Michel, announcing his return, that he began to figure up the possible consequences of his experiment. They were, as he gloomily announced to Hercule, stupefying to the extent of dashing out one’s brains against the wall. But one bottle of Château Laffitte remained, and none whatever of Russian kümmel. Moreover, the brocade of the chaise longue was hopelessly ruined by the boots of the conspirators, and the enthusiasm of Arsène’s juggling had reduced by fifty per cent, the set of Sèvres plates. What was to be done, bon Dieu, what was to be done?

Monsieur Fresque, having carefully perused a letter with an Italian stamp, which had come by the evening mail, revolved the situation in his mind, slowly smoking the last, of the cantaloupe’s cigars, and glancing from time to time at the despondent figure of his host, with his eyes narrowed to mere slits. Had the fish been sufficiently played? He reeled in a foot or so of line by way of experiment.

“What, after all, is a situation?” he said. “Thou wilt be discharged, yes. But afterwards? Pah! thou wilt find another. And thou hast thy rigolade.”

“Ah, that!” replied Arsène with a shrug. “I believe thee! But thinkest thou my old melon will find himself in the way of glueing the ribbon of the Légion on me for what I have done? I see myself from here, playing the harp on the bars of La Maz!”

“La vie à Mazas, c’est pas la vie en gondole,” observed Hercule philosophically.

“Tu parles!”

Hercule appeared to take a sudden resolve. He swung his feet to the floor, and bending forward in the chaise longue, began to speak rapidly and with extreme earnestness.

“Voyons, donc, mon gars, thou hast been foolish, but one must not despair. What is done in France is never known in Italy. And here thou art surrounded by such treasures as the imbeciles of foreigners pay fortunes for, below there. Take what thou hast need of, — a trunk of the patron’s, some silver, what thou canst lay hands on of gold and brass and enamel, whatever will not break — and get away before he returns. In Milan thou canst sell it all, and get another place. I have friends there, and thou shalt have letters. Voilà!”

“But one must have money,” replied Arsène, brightening, nevertheless. “And that is lacking me.”

Hercule seemed to ponder this objection deeply. Finally, with a sigh of resignation, he spoke again.

“B’en, voilà! Thou hast been my friend, is it not so? Hercule Fresque is not the man to be ungrateful. I am poor, and have need of my little savings — But, there! it is for a friend — pas? Let us say no more!” And he thrust a roll of banknotes into the hands of the stupefied Arsène.

The evening was spent in arranging the details of the flight. Arsène produced a serviceable trunk from the storeroom, and in this the two men placed a great variety of the treasures which Monsieur Michel had accumulated during twenty years of patient search and exorbitant purchase. Squares of priceless tapestry, jeweled watches and snuff boxes, figurines of old Sèvres, ivories cunningly carved and yellow with age, madonnas of box-wood, and wax, and ebony, — all were carefully wrapped in newspapers and stowed away; and to these Arsène added a dozen of his master’s shirts, two suits of clothes, and a box of cigarettes, But when all the available material had been appropriated there yet remained an empty space below the tray. It would never do to have the treasures knocking about on the way. Arsène proposed a blanket — or, better yet, one of Monsieur Michel’s overcoats. But Hercule, after rearranging the trunk so as to make the empty space of different form, turned suddenly to his companion, who was picking nervously at his fingers and watching the so fruitful source of suggestion with a pathetic air of entreaty, and clapped him gleefully upon the chest.

“A painting!” he exclaimed.

Complete demoralization seemed to have taken possession of Arsène. He was very pale, and his eyes constantly sought the salon door as if he expected the object of his ingenious epithets to burst in at any moment, with the prefect and all his legions at his heels.

“A painting?” he repeated blankly; “but how, a painting?”

But Monsieur Fresque had already mounted nimbly on a chair and lifted the cherished Titian of Monsieur Michel from its place against the tapestry. There was no further need of persuasion. The moment had come for action; and, seizing a hammer, he began to wrench off the frame, talking rapidly between short gasps of exertion.

“But certainly, a painting. This one is small — ugh! — but who can say how valuable? They sell readily down there, these black daubs. Ah! By rolling, it will fill the empty space, seest thou, and later it may mean a thousand francs. One does not do things by — umph! — by halves in such a case. Sacred nails! One would say they had been driven in for eternity! Oof! Thou art fortunate to have me to advise thee, great imbecile. Mayhap this is worth all the rest. Pig of a frame, va! It is of iron. Ugh! He will be furious, thy patron, but what of that? In Italy thou wilt hear no more of it. Still one nail. Come away, then, type of a cow! Enfin!”

With one final effort he tore off the last fragment of frame, peeled the canvas from the back-board, and, rolling it carefully, tucked it into the empty space, replaced the tray, and closed the trunk with a snap.

“Voilà!” he said, straightening himself and turning a red but triumphant face to the astounded maître d’hôtel.

“Now for the letters,” he added, seating himself at Monsieur Michel’s desk and beginning to scribble busily. “Do thou go for a cab, and at a gallop. It has struck half past ten and the Bâle rapide leaves the gare de l’Est at midnight.”

Hardly had the door of the apartment closed upon the demoralized valet when Monsieur Fresque hastily shoved to one side the note he had begun, and, writing a sentence or two upon another slip of paper, wrapped the latter about a two-sou piece, and went quietly to the salon window. Opening this cautiously, he found a fine rain falling outside, and the eastern half of the square deserted save for two figures, — one the flying form of Arsène, cutting across a corner into the rue Castiglione in search of a cab, and the other that of a man muffled in a heavy overcoat and with a slouch hat pulled well over his eyes, who was lounging against the railing of the Column, and who, as Fresque opened the window, shook himself into activity and stepped nimbly out across the wide driveway. Hercule placed the paper containing the two-sou piece upon the window sill and with a sharp flick of his fore-finger sent it spinning down into the square. The man in the slouch hat stooped for an instant in passing the spot where it lay, and Monsieur Fresque, softly closing the window, stretched his arms upward into a semblance of a gigantic letter Y, and indulged in a prodigious yawn.

“Ça y est!” said he.

Papa Briguette had long since climbed into his high bedstead, in the loge de concierge, when, for the second time in fifteen minutes, he was aroused by the voice of Arsène calling, “Cordon, s’il vous plait!” in the main hall-way, and, reaching from under his feather coverlid, pressed the bulb which unlocked the street-door.

“Quel coureur, que ce gars!” grumbled the worthy man to his fat spouse, snoring complacently at his side. “I deceive myself if, when Monsieur Michel returns, thou dost not hear a different story.”

“Awr-r-r-r!” replied Maman Briguette.

On the way to the gare de l’Est Arsène recovered the better part of his lost composure, and listened with something akin to cheerfulness to the optimistic prognostications of his companion. By the time the precious trunk was registered and he had secured his seat in a second-class compartment of the Bâle rapide, he was once more in high feather and profuse in expressions of gratitude, as he smoked a farewell cigarette with Fresque while waiting for the train to start.

“Thou canst believe me, mon vieux,” he protested. “It is not a little thing that thou hast done, name of a name. Ah, non! It was the act of a brave comrade, that I assure thee. Et voyons! When I have sold the effects down there, thou shalt have back thy little paper mattress, word of honor! Yes, and more — thy share of the gain, mon zig!”

He grasped the other’s hand fervently as a passing guard threw them a curt “En voiture, messieurs!” and seemed on the point of kissing him farewell. There was some confusion attendant upon his entering the compartment, owing to the excessive haste of a man muffled in a heavy overcoat and with a slouch hat pulled well over his eyes, who arrived at the last moment and persisted in scrambling in, at the very instant chosen by Monsieur Sigard. The latter immediately reappeared at the window, and, as the train began to move, shouted a few final acknowledgments at his benefactor.

“B’en, au r’voir, vieux! And I will write thee from below there, thou knowest. A thousand thanks. Fear not for thy blue paper — what? Thou shalt have it back, sou for sou, name of a name!”

He was almost out of hearing now, his face a cream-colored splotch against the deep maroon of the railway carriage, and, drawing out a gaudy handkerchief, he waved it several times in token of farewell.

“I shall never forget thee, never!” he cried, as a kind of afterthought and valedictory in one.

“Ah, ça!” said Monsieur Fresque to himself, as Arsène’s face went out of sight, “that I well believe!”

Yet, so inconstant is man, the promised letter from “below there” never reached him. Another did, however, and it was this which he might have been observed reading to a friend, with every evidence of the liveliest satisfaction, one week later, at a rear table before the Taverne Royale. One would hardly have recognized the plainly, almost shabbily dressed comrade of Arsène, with his retiring manners and his furtive eyes, in this extremely prosperous individual, in polished top hat, white waist-coat and gaiters, and gloves of lemon yellow. His companion was equally imposing in appearance, and it was apparent that he derived as much amusement from listening to Monsieur Fresque’s epistle as did the latter from reading it aloud, which he did with the most elaborate emphasis, calling the other’s attention to certain sentences by tapping him lightly upon the arm and repeating them more slowly. The letter was in Italian, and ran as follows: —


text:
Zut and Other Parisians/Little Tapin

Little Tapin
His name was Jean-Marie-Michel Jumière, and the first eighteen years of his life were spent near the little Breton village of Plougastel. They were years of which each was, in every respect, like that which went before, and, in every respect, like that which followed after: years, that is to say, devoid of incident, beyond the annual pardon, when the peasants came from far and near to the quaint little church, to offer their prayers at the cemetery Calvary, and display their holiday costumes, and make love, and exchange gossip on the turf round about. It is a land of wide and wind-swept hillsides, this, imbued with the strange melancholy of a wild and merciless sea, and wherein there are no barriers of convention or artificiality between earth and sky, man and his Maker; but Jean-Marie loved it for its very bleakness. From the doorway of his mother’s cottage, standing, primly white, in the midst of great rocks and strawberry fields, with its thatched roof drawn down, like a hood, about its ears, as if in protection against the western gales, he could look out across the broad harbor of Brest to the Goulet, the gateway to that great Atlantic whose mighty voice came to his ears in stormy weather, muttering against the barrier of the shore. And this voice of the sea spoke to Jean-Marie of many things, but, most of all, of the navies of France, of the mighty battleships which went out from Brest to unimagined lands, far distant, China, America, and the southern islands, whence comrades, older than himself, brought back curious treasures, coral, and shells, and coins, and even parrots, to surprise the good people of Plougastel. He looked at them enviously, as they gathered about the door of Père Yvetot’s wine-shop, when they were home on leave, and spun sailor yarns for his delighted ears. How wonderful they were, these men who had seen the world, — Toulon, and Marseille, and Tonkin, — how wonderful, with their wide, flapping trousers, and their jaunty caps, with a white strap and a red pompon, and their throats and breasts, showing ruddy bronze at the necks of their shirts!

At such times Jean-Marie would join timidly in the talk, and, perhaps, speak of the time when he, too, should be marin français, and see the world. And the big Breton sailors would laugh good-naturedly, and slap him on the shoulder, and say: “Tiens! And how then shall the cruisers find their way into Brest harbor, when the little phare is gone?” For it was a famous joke in Plougastel to pretend that Jean-Marie, with his flaming red hair, was a lighthouse, which could be seen through the Goulet, far, far out at sea.

But Jean-Marie only smiled quietly in reply, for he knew that his day would come. At night, the west wind, sweeping in from the Atlantic, and rattling his little casement, seemed to be calling him, and it was a fancy of his to answer its summons in a whisper, turning his face toward the window.

“All in good time, my friend. All in good time!”

Again, when he was working in the strawberry fields, he would strain his eyes to catch the outline of some big green battleship, anchored off Brest, or, during one of his rare visits to the town, lean upon the railing of the pont tournant, to watch the sailors and marines moving about the barracks and magazines on the quais of the porte militaire. All in good time, my friends; all in good time!

Only, there were two to whom one did not speak of these things, — the Little Mother, and Rosalie Vivieu. Already the sea had taken three from Madame Jumière — Baptiste, her husband, and Philippe and Yves, the older boys, who went out together, with the fishing fleet, seven years before, in the staunch little smack La Belle Fortune. She had been cheerful, even merry, during the long weeks of waiting for the fleet’s return, and, when it came in one evening, with news of La Belle Fortune cut down in the fog by a North Cape German Lloyd, and all hands lost, she had taken the news as only a Breton woman can. Jean-Marie was but twelve at the time, but there is an intuition, beyond all reckoning in years, in the heart of a fisher’s son, and never should he forget how the Little Mother had caught him to her heart that night, at the doorway of their cottage, crying, “Holy Saviour! Holy Saviour!” with her patient blue eyes upturned to the cold, grey sky of Finistère! As for Rosalie, Jean-Marie could not remember when they two had not been sweethearts, since the day when, as a round-eyed boy of six, he had watched Madame Vivieu crowding morsels of blessed bread into her baby mouth at the pardon of Plougastel, since all the world knows that in such manner only can backwardness of speech be cured. Rosalie was sixteen now, as round, and pink, and sweet as one of her own late peaches, and she had promised to marry Jean-Marie some day. For the time being, he was allowed to kiss her only on the great occasion of the pardon, but that was once more each year than any other gars in Plougastel could do, so Jean-Marie was content. No, evidently, to these two there must be no mention of his dreamings of the wide and wonderful sea, of the summons of the impatient western wind, of those long reveries upon the pont tournant.

So Jean-Marie hugged his visions to his heart for another year, working in the strawberry fields, gazing out with longing eyes toward the warships in the harbor, and whispering, when the fingers of the wind tapped upon his little casement: “All in good time, my friend. All in good time!”

And his day came at last, as he had known it would. But with what a difference! For there were many for the navy that spring. Plougastel had nine, and Daoulas fifteen ready, and Hanvec seven, and Crozon twenty-one, and from Landerneau, and Chàteaulin, and Lambezellec, and le Folgoet came fifty more, and from Brest itself, a hundred; and all of these, with few exceptions, were great, broad-shouldered lads, strong of arm and deep of chest, and so the few who were slender and fragile, like Jean-Marie, were assigned to the infantry, and sent, as is the custom, far from Finistère, because, says the code, change of scene prevents homesickness, and what the code says must, of course, be true.

When Madame Jumière heard this she smiled as she was seldom known to smile. The Holy Virgin, then, had listened to her prayers. The gars was to be a piou-piou instead of a col bleu, after all! The great sea should not rob her again, as it had robbed her in the time. It was very well, oh, grace au saint Sauveur, it was very well! And, all that night, the Little Mother prayed, and watched a tiny taper, flickering before her porcelain image of Notre Dame de la Recouvrance, while Jean-Marie tossed and turned upon his little garret bed, and made no reply, even in a whisper, to the west wind, rattling his casement with insistent ringers.

But it was all far worse than he had pictured it to himself, even in those first few hours of disappointment and despair. The last Sunday afternoon which he and Rosalie passed, hand in hand, seated by the Calvary in Plougastel cemetery, striving dumbly to realize that they should see each other no more for three long years; the following morning, chill and bleak for that time of year, when he and the Little Mother, standing on the platform of the station at Brest, could barely see each others’ faces, for the sea-fog and their own hot tears; the shouts and laughter and noisy farewells of the classe, crowding out of the windows of their third-class carriages; and, finally, the interminable journey to Paris, — all of these were to Jean-Marie like the successive stages of a feverish, uneasy dream. He knew none of the noisy Breton peasant lads about him, but sat by himself in the centre of the compartment, too far from either window to catch more than fleeting glimpses of the fog-wrapped landscape through which the train crept at thirty kilometres the hour. At long intervals, they stopped in great stations, of which little Jean-Marie remembered to have heard, — Morlaix, St. Brieuc, Rennes, and Laval, where the recruits bought cakes and bottles of cheap wine, and joked with white-capped peasant women on the platforms; and twice during the long night he was roused from a fitful, troubled sleep to a consciousness of raucous voices crying “Le Mans!” and “Chartres!” and gasped in sudden terror — before he could remember where he was — at the faces of his slumbering companions, ghastly and distorted in the wretched light of the compartment lamp. So, as the dawn was breaking over Paris, they came into the gare Montparnasse, and, too drowsy to realize what was demanded of them, were herded together by the drill sergeants in charge, and marched away across the city to the barracks of La Pépinière.

The weeks that followed were to Jean-Marie hideous beyond any means of expression. From the first he had been assigned to the drum-corps, and spent hours daily, under command of a corporal expert in the art, laboriously learning double rolls and ruffles in the fosse of the fortifications. For they are not in the way of enduring martyrdom, the Parisians, and even while they cry “Vive l’armée!” with their hats off, and their eyes blazing, the drummers and buglers are sent out of hearing, to practice the music that later, when the regiments parade, will stir the patriotism of the throng.

But this part of his new life was no hardship to Jean-Marie, or Little Tapin, as his comrades soon learned to call him, because he was the smallest drummer in the corps. On the contrary, it was something to be in the open air, even though that air was tainted with sluggish smoke from the factory chimneys of Levallois-Perret, instead of being swept and refreshed by the west wind from beyond the Goulet. And he was very earnest, very anxious to please, was Little Tapin. First of all the new drummers, he learned the intricacies of the roll, and so diligently did he improve the hours of practice that he was first, as well, to be regularly assigned to a place in the regimental band. No, this was no hardship. What cramped and crushed his kindly little heart, what clouded his queer, quizzical eyes, was nothing less than Paris, beautiful, careless Paris, that laughed, and danced, and sang about him, and had never a thought for Little Tapin, with his funny, freckled face, and his ill-fitting uniform of red and blue, and his coarse boots, and his ineradicable Breton stare.

In Plougastel he had been wont to greet and to be greeted, to hear cheery words from those who passed him on the wide, white roads. He was part of it all, one who was called by his honest name, instead of by a ridiculous sobriquet, and who had his share in all that went forward, from the strawberry harvest to the procession of the pardon. And if all this was but neighborly interest, at least there were two to whom Jean-Marie meant more, and who meant more to him.

But Paris, — Paris, with her throngs of strange faces hurrying past, her brilliantly lighted boulevards, her crowded cafés, her swirl of traffic along avenues that one crossed only at peril of one’s life, — he was lost amid her clamor and confusion as utterly as a bubble in a whirlpool! The bitterest hours of his new life were those of his leave, in which, with a band of his fellows, he went out of the great green gates of the caserne to seek amusement. Amusement! They soon lost Little Tapin, the others, for he was one who did not drink, and who walked straight on when they turned to speak to passing grisettes, who clung to each others’ arms, and looked back, laughing at the sallies of the piou-pious. He was not bon camarade. He seemed to disapprove. So, presently, while he was staring into a shop window, they would slip down a side street, or into a tiny café, and Little Tapin would find himself alone in the great city which he dreaded.

He came to spending long hours of his leave in the galleries of the Louvre, hastening past row upon row of nude statues with startled eyes, or making his way wearily from picture to picture of the old Dutch masters, striving, striving to understand. Then, footsore and heartsick, he would creep out upon the pont du Carrousel, and stand for half an afternoon, with his elbows on the railing. Behind him, the human tide swung back and forward from bank to bank, the big omnibuses making the bridge throb and sway under his feet. It was good, that, like the rise and fall of his little boat on the swells of the bras de Landerneau, when he rowed up with a comrade to fish at the mouth of the Elorn. And there was always the Seine, whirling, brown and angry, under the arches of the pont Royal beyond, on its way to the sea, where were the great, green battleships. Little Tapin strained his eyes in an attempt to follow the river’s long sweep to the left, toward the distant towers of the Trocadéro, and then pictured to himself how it would go on and on, out into the good, green country, past hillsides crowded with vineyards, and broad, flat meadows, where the poplars stood, aligned like soldiers, against the sky, until it broadened toward its end, running swifter and more joyously, for now the wind had met it and was crying, “Come! Come! The Sea! The Sea!” as it was used to cry, rattling the casement of his little room at Plougastel. Then two great tears ran slowly down his freckled cheeks, and dropped, unnoted, into the flying river, wherein so many fall. Ah, what a baby he was, to be sure, Little Tapin!

So three months went by, and then one morning the news ran through La Pépinière that the regiment was going to move. There is no telling how such tidings get abroad, for the pawns are not supposed to know what part in the game they are to play. A loose-tongued lieutenant, perhaps, and a sharp-eared ordonnance, or a word between two commandants overheard by the sentry in his box at the gates of the caserne. Whatever the source of information, certain it was that, six hours after the colonel of the 107th of the line had received his orders, his newest recruit could have told you as much of them as was known to General de Galliffet himself, in his office on the boulevard St. Germain.

A more than usually friendly comrade confided the news to Little Tapin, exulting. The regiment was to move — in three days, name of God! Epatant — what? And, what was more, they were to go to the south, to Grenoble, whence one saw the Alpes Maritimes, with snow upon them — snow upon them, did Tapin comprehend? — and always! No matter whether it was a Tuesday, or a Friday, — yes, or even a Sunday! There was always snow!

No, Little Tapin could hardly comprehend. He pondered dully upon this new development of his fate all that afternoon, and then, suddenly, while he was beating the staccato roll of the retraite in the court of the caserne that night, he understood! Why, it was to go further away, this, — further away from Plougastel, and the Little Mother, and Rosalie, to be stationed in God knew what great town, crueller, more crowded than even Paris herself!

All that night Little Tapin lay staring at the ceiling of the big dortoir, while the comrades breathed heavily around him. And, little by little, the spirit of rebellion roused and stirred in his simple Breton heart. For he hated it all, — this army, this dreary, rigid routine, this contemptuous comment of trim, sneering young lieutenants, with waxed mustaches, and baggy red riding breeches, and immaculately varnished boots. He hated his own uniform, which another tapin had worn before him, and which, in consequence, had never even had the charm of freshness. He hated the bugles, and the drums, — yes, and, more than all, the tricolor, the flag of the great, cruel Republic which had cooped him up in these desolate barracks of La Pépinière, instead of sending him with other Bretons out to the arms of the blue sea! And, when gray morning crept through the windows of the dortoir, there lay upon the pallet of Little Tapin a deserter, in spirit, at least, from the 107th of the line!

That day, for the third time since joining the regiment, Little Tapin was detailed as drummer to the guard at the Palais du Louvre. He knew what that meant, — a long, insufferably tiresome day, with nothing to do save to idle about a doorway of the palace, opposite the place du Palais Royal, watching the throng of shoppers scurrying to and fro, and passing in and out of the big magasins du Louvre. It was only as sunset approached that the drummer of the guard detail had any duty to perform. Then he marched, all alone, with his drum slung on his hip, across the place du Carrousel, and down the wide central promenade of the Tuileries gardens, to the circular basin at their western end, where, on pleasant afternoons, the little Parisians — and some, too, of larger growth — manœuvred their miniature yachts, to the extreme vexation of the sluggish gold-fish. There, standing motionless, like a sketch by Edouard Detaille, he watched the sun creep lower, lower, behind the arc de l’Etoile, until it went out of sight, and then, turning, he marched back, drumming sturdily, to warn all who lingered in the gardens that the gates were about to close.

But they were not good for Little Tapin, those hours of idleness at the portals of the palace. It is the second busiest and most densely thronged spot in Paris, this: first the place de l’Opéra, and then the place du Palais Royal. And to Little Tapin’s eyes, as he glanced up and down the rue de Rivoli, the great city seemed more careless, more cruel than ever, and bit by bit the rebellious impulse born in the dortoir grew stronger, more irresistible. His Breton mind was slow to action, but, once set in a direction, it was obstinacy itself. He took no heed of consequences. If he realized at any stage of his meditation what the outcome of desertion must inevitably be, it was only to put the thought resolutely from him. Capture, court-martial, imprisonment, they were only names to him. What was real was that he should see Plougastel again, sit hand in hand with Rosalie, and refind his comrades, the wide, sunlit harbor, and the impatient western wind, for which his heart was aching. What was false and unbearable was longer service in an army that he loathed.

He arranged the details of escape in his mind, as he sat apart from his comrades of the guard, fingering the drum-cords. An hour’s leave upon the morrow — certainly the tambour-major would grant him so much, if he said it was to bid his sister good-by; then, a change from his detested uniform to a cheap civile in the shop of some second-hand dealer in the Gobelins quarter; and, finally, a quick dash to the gare Montparnasse, when he should have learned the hour of his train, and so, away to Finistère. It sounded extremely simple, as all such plans do, when the wish is father to the thought, and in his calculations he went no further than Plougastel. After that, one would see. So the long afternoon stole past.

At seven o’clock the lieutenant of the guard touched Little Tapin upon the shoulder, and, more by instinct than actual perception, he sprang to his feet and saluted.

“Voyons, mon petit,” said the officer, not unkindly. “It is time thou wast off. Thou knowest thy duty — eh? There is no need of instructions?”

“Oh, ça me connait, mon lieutenant,” answered Little Tapin quaintly, and, presently, he was striding away to his post, under the arc de Triomphe, past the statues, and the flower-beds, and the dancing fountains, across the rue des Tuileries, and so into the wide, central promenade of the gardens beyond.

The old woman who sold cakes, and reglisse, and balloons to the children, was putting up the shutters of her little booth as he passed, and two others were piling wooden chairs in ungainly pyramids under the trees, though the gardens were still full of people, hurrying north and south on the transverse paths leading to the rue de Rivoli or to the quai and the pont de Solférino. But, curiously enough, the open space around the western basin was almost deserted as Little Tapin took his position, facing the great grille.

The mid-August afternoon had been oppressively warm, and now a thin haze had risen from the wet wood pavement of the place de la Concorde, and hovered low, pink in the light of the setting sun. Directly before Little Tapin the obelisk raised its warning finger, and beyond, the Champs Elysées, thickly dotted with carriages, and half veiled by great splotches of ruddy-yellow dust, swept away in a long, upward curve toward the distant arc de l’Etoile.

But of all this Little Tapin saw nothing. He stood very still, with his back to the basin, where the fat goldfish went to and fro like lazy sentinels, on the watch for a possible belated little boy, with a pocket full of crumbs. He was still deep in his dream of Plougastel, so deep that he could almost smell the salt breeze rollicking in from the Goulet, and hear the chapel bell sending the Angelus out over the strawberry fields and the rock-dotted hillside.

After a minute, something — a teamster’s shout, or the snap of a cocher’s whip — roused him, and he glanced around with the same half-sensation of terror with which he had wakened in the night to hear the guards shouting “Le Mans!” and “Chartres!” Then the reality came back to him with a rush, and he grumbled to himself. Oh, it was all very well, the wonderful French army, all very well if one could have been a marshal or a general, or even a soldier of the line in time of war. There was a chance for glory, bon sang! But to be a drummer — a drummer one metre seventy in height, with flaming red hair and a freckled face — a drummer who was called Little Tapin; and to have, for one’s most important duty, to drum the loungers out of a public garden! No, evidently he would desert.

“But why?” said a grave voice beside him.

Little Tapin was greatly startled. He had not thought he was saying the words aloud. And his fear increased when, on turning to see who had spoken, he found himself looking into the eyes of one who was evidently an officer, though his uniform was unfamiliar. He was plain-shaven and very short, almost as short, indeed, as Little Tapin himself, but about him there was a something of dignity and command which could not fail of its effect. He wore a great black hat like a gendarme’s, but without trimming, and a blue coat with a white plastron, the tails lined with scarlet, and the sleeves ending in red and white cuffs. White breeches, and knee-boots carefully polished, completed the uniform, and from over his right shoulder a broad band of crimson silk was drawn tightly across his breast. A short sword hung straight at his hip, and on his left breast were three orders on red ribbons, — a great star, with an eagle in the centre, backed by a sunburst studded with brilliants; another eagle, this one of white enamel, pendant from a jeweled crown, and a smaller star of enameled white and green, similar to the large one.

Little Tapin had barely mastered these details when the other spoke again.

“Why art thou thinking to desert?” he said.

“Monsieur is an officer?” faltered the drummer, — “a general, perhaps. Pardon, but I do not know the uniform.”

“A corporal, simply — a soldier of France, like thyself. Be not afraid, my little one. All thou sayest shall be held in confidence. Tell me thy difficulties.”

His voice was very kind, the kindest Little Tapin had heard in three long months, and suddenly the barrier of his Breton reserve gave and broke. The nervous strain had been too great. He must have sympathy and advice — yes, even though it meant confiding in a stranger and the possible discovery and failure of his dearly cherished plans.

“A soldier of France!” he exclaimed, impulsively. “Ah, monsieur, there you have all my difficulty. What a thing it is to be a soldier of France! And not even that, but a drummer, a drummer who is called Little Tapin because he is the smallest and weakest in the corps. To be taken from home, from the country he loves, from Brittany, and made to serve among men who despise him, who laugh at him, who avoid him in the hours of leave, because he is not bon camarade. To wear a uniform that has been already worn. To sleep in a dormitory where there are bêtes funestes. To have no friends. To know that he is not to see Plougastel, and the sweetheart, and the Little Mother for three years. Never to fight, but, at best, to drum voyous out of a garden! That, monsieur, is what it is to be a soldier of France!”

There were tears in Little Tapin’s eyes now, but he was more angry than sad. The silence of months was broken, and the hoarded resentment and despair of his long martyrdom, once given rein, were not to be checked a second time. He threw back his narrow shoulders defiantly, and said a hideous thing:

“Conspuez l’armée française!”

There was an instant’s pause, and then the other leaned forward, and with one white-gloved hand touched Little Tapin on the eyes.

Before them a great plain, sloping very gradually upward in all directions, like a vast, shallow amphitheatre, spread away in a long series of low terraces to where, in the dim distance, the peaks of a range of purple hills nicked and notched a sky of palest turquoise. From where they stood, upon a slight elevation, the details of even the farthest slopes seemed singularly clean-cut and distinct, — the groups of grey willows; the poplars, standing stiffly in twos and threes; the short silver reaches of a little river, lying in the hollows where the land occasionally dipped; at long intervals, a white-washed cottage, gleaming like a sail against this sea of green; even, on the most distant swell of all, a herd of ruddy cattle, moving slowly up toward the crest, — each and all of these, although in merest miniature, as clear and vivid in form and color as if they had been the careful creations of a Claude Lorrain.

Directly before the knoll upon which they were stationed, a wide road, dazzling white in the sunlight, swept in a superb full curve from left to right, and on its further side the ground was covered with close-cropped turf, and completely empty for a distance of two hundred metres. But beyond! Beyond, every hectare of the great semicircle was occupied by dense masses of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, regiment upon regiment, division upon division, corps upon corps, an innumerable multitude, motionless, as if carved out of many-colored marbles!

In some curious, unaccountable fashion, Little Tapin seemed to know all these by name. There, to the left, were the chasseurs à pied, their huge bearskins flecked with red and green pompons, and their white cross-belts slashed like capital X’s against the blue of their tunics; there, beside them, the foot artillery, a long row of metal collar plates, like dots of gold, and gold trappings against dark blue; to the right, the Garde Royale Hollandaise, in brilliant crimson and white; in the centre, the infantry of the Guard, with tall, straight pompons, red above white, and square black shakos, trimmed with scarlet cord.

Close at hand, surrounding Little Tapin and his companion, were the most brilliant figures of the scene, and these, too, he seemed to know by name. None was missing. Prince Murat, in a cream-white uniform blazing with gold embroidery, and with a scarlet ribbon across his breast; a group of marshals, Ney, Oudinot, Duroc, Macdonald, Augereau, and Soult, with their yellow sashes, and cocked hats laced with gold; a score of generals, Larouche, Durosnel, Marmont, Letort, Henrion, Chasteller, and the rest, with white instead of gold upon their hats, — clean-shaven, severe of brow and lip-line, they stood without movement, their gauntleted hands upon their sword-hilts, gazing straight before them.

Little Tapin drew a deep breath.

Suddenly from somewhere came a short, sharp bugle note, and instantly the air was full of the sound of hoofs, and the ring of scabbards and stirrup-irons, and the wide white road before them alive with flying cavalry. Squadron after squadron, they thundered by: mounted chasseurs, with pendants of orange-colored cloth fluttering from their shakos, and plaits of powdered hair bobbing at their cheeks; Polish light horse, with metal sunbursts gleaming on their square-topped helmets, and crimson and white pennons snapping in the wind at the points of their lances; Old Guard cavalry, with curving helmets like Roman legionaries; Mamelukes, with full red trousers, white and scarlet turbans, strange standards of horsehair surmounted by the imperial eagle, brazen stirrups singularly fashioned, and horse trappings of silver with flying crimson tassels; Horse Chasseurs of the Guard, in hussar tunics and yellow breeches, their sabretaches swinging as they rode: and Red Lancers, in gay uniforms of green and scarlet. Like a whirlwind they went past, — each squadron, in turn, wheeling to the left, and coming to a halt in the open space beyond the road, until the last lancer swept by.

A thick cloud of white dust, stirred into being by the flying horses, now hung between the army and the knoll, and through this one saw dimly the mounted band of the 20th Chasseurs, on gray stallions, occupying the centre of the line, and heard, what before had been drowned by the thunder of hoofs, the strains of “Partant pour la Syrie.”

Slowly, slowly, the dust cloud thinned and lifted, so slowly that it seemed as if it would never wholly clear. But, on a sudden, a sharp puff of wind sent it whirling off in arabesques to the left, and the whole plain lay revealed.

“Bon Dieu!” said Little Tapin.

The first rank of cavalry was stationed within a metre of the further border of the road, the line sweeping off to the left and right until details became indistinguishable. And beyond, reaching away in a solid mass, the vast host dwindled and dwindled, back to where the ascending slopes were broken by the distant willows and the reaches of the silver stream. With snowy white of breeches and plastrons, with lustre of scarlet velvet and gold lace, with sparkle of helmet and cuirass, and dull black of bearskin and smoothly groomed flanks, the army blazed and glowed in the golden sunlight like a mosaic of a hundred thousand jewels. Silent, expectant, the legions flashed crimson, emerald, and sapphire, rolling away in broad swells of light and color, motionless save for a long, slow heave, as of the ocean, lying, vividly iridescent, under the last rays of the setting sun. Then, without warning, as if the touch of a magician’s wand had roused the multitude to life, a myriad sabres swept twinkling from their scabbards, and, by tens of thousands, the guns of the infantry snapped with a sharp click to a present arms. The bugles sounded all along the line, the tricolors dipped until their golden fringes almost swept the ground, the troopers stood upright in their stirrups, their heads thrown back, their bronzed faces turned toward the knoll, their eyes blazing. And from the farthest slopes inward, like thunder that growls afar, and, coming nearer, swells into unbearable volume, a hoarse cry ran down the massed battalions and broke in a stupendous roar upon the shuddering air, —

“Vive l’empereur!”

Little Tapin rubbed his eyes.

“I am ill,” he murmured. “I have been faint. I seemed to see” —

“Thou hast seen,” said the voice of his companion, very softly, very solemnly, — “thou hast seen simply what it is to be a soldier of France!”

His hand rested an instant on the drummer’s shoulder, with the ghost of a caress.

“My little one,” he added, tenderly, “forget not this. It matters nothing whether one is Emperor of the French or the smallest drummer of the corps, whom men call ‘Little Tapin.’ I, too, was called ‘little’ in the time — ‘The Little Corporal’ they called me, from Moscow to the Loire. But it is all the same. Chief of the army, drummer of the corps, on the field of battle, in the gardens of the Tuileries, routing the Prussians, or drumming out the voyous, — it is all the same, my little one, it is all the same. All that is necessary is to understand — to understand that it is all and always for la belle France. Empire or republic, in peace or war — what difference? It is still France, still the tricolor, still l’armée française.”

He lifted his hat, and looked steadily up at the sky, where the first stars were shouldering their way into view.

“Vive la France!” he added. And on his lips the phrase was like a prayer.

Through the arc de l’Etoile the fading sunset looked back, as upon something it was loath to leave. Then Little Tapin flung back his head. There was a strange, new light in his eyes, and his breath came quickly, between parted lips. Without a word he swung upon his heels, slipped his drum into place, and marched steadily away, beating the long roll. Once, when he had gone a hundred metres, he looked back. The figure of the Little Corporal was still standing beside the basin, but now it was very thin and faint, like the dust clouds on the Champs Elysées. But, as the little drummer turned, it raised one hand to its forehead in salute.

Little Tapin stood motionless for an instant, and then he smiled, and, through the deepening twilight —

“Vive l’armée!” he shouted, shrilly. “Vive la France!”

title: Zut and Other Parisians/Little Tapin


text:
Page:Peter and Wendy.djvu/331

Rh Now there is delicious linen for my mother to finger; there was always rapture on her face when the clothes-basket came in; it never failed to make her once more the active genius of the house. I may leave her now with her sheets and collars and napkins and fronts. Indeed, she probably orders me to go. A son is all very well, but suppose he were to tread on that counterpane!

My sister is but and I am ben—I mean she is in the east end and I am in the west tuts, tuts, let us get at the English of this by striving: she is in the kitchen and I am at my desk in the parlour. I hope I may not be disturbed, for to-night I must make my hero say "Darling," and it needs both privacy and concentration. In a word, let me admit (though I should like to beat about the bush) that I have sat down to a love-chapter. Too long has it been avoided, Albert has called Marion "dear" only as yet (between you and me, these are not their real names), but though the public will probably read the word without blinking, it went off in my hands with a bang. They tell me—the Sassenach tell me—that in time I shall be able without a blush to make Albert say "darling," and even gather her up in his arms, but I begin to doubt it; the moment sees me as shy as ever; I still find it advisable to lock the door, and then—no witness save the dog—I "do" it dourly with my teeth clenched, while the dog retreats into the far Rh

title: Page:Peter and Wendy.djvu/331


text:
Page:Peter and Wendy.djvu/332

Rh corner and moans. The bolder Englishman (I am told) will write a love-chapter and then go out, quite coolly, to dinner, but such goings on are contrary to the Scotch nature; even the great novelists dared not. Conceive Mr. Stevenson left alone with a hero, a heroine, and a proposal impending (he does not know where to look). Sir Walter in the same circumstances gets out of the room by making his love-scenes take place between the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next, but he could afford to do anything, and the small fry must e'en to their task, moan the dog as he may. So I have yoked to mine when, enter my mother, looking wistful.

"I suppose you are terrible thrang," she says.

"Well, I am rather busy, but—what is it you want me to do?"

"It would be a shame to ask you."

"Still, ask me."

"I am so terrified they may be filed."

"You want me to—"

"If you would just come up, and help me to fold the sheets!"

The sheets are folded and I return to Albert. I lock the door and at last I am bringing my hero forward nicely (my knee in the small of his back), when this startling question is shot by my sister through the keyhole:

"Where did you put the carrot-grater?" Rh

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text:
Page:Peter and Wendy.djvu/333

Rh It will all have to be done over again if I let Albert go for a moment, so, gripping him hard, I shout indignantly that I have not seen the carrot-grater.

"Then what did you grate the carrots on?" asks the voice, and the door-handle is shaken just as I shake Albert.

"On a broken cup," I reply with surprising readiness, and I get to work again, but am less engrossed, for a conviction grows on me that I put the carrot-grater in the drawer of the sewing-machine.

I am wondering whether I should confess or brazen it out, when I hear my sister going hurriedly upstairs. I have a presentiment that she has gone to talk about me, and I basely open my door and listen.

"Just look at that, mother!"

"Is it a dish-cloth?"

"That's what it is now."

"Losh behears! it's one of the new table-napkins."

"That's what it was. He has been polishing the kitchen grate with it!"

(I remember!)

"Woe's me! That is what comes of his not letting me budge from this room. O, it is a watery Sabbath when men take to doing women's work!"

"It defies the face of clay, mother, to fathom what makes him so senseless." Rh

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Rh "Oh, it's that weary writing."

"And the worst of it is, he will talk to-morrow as if he had done wonders."

"That's the way with the whole clanjamfray of them."

"Yes, but as usual you will humour him, mother."

"Oh, well, it pleases him, you see," says my mother, "and we can have our laugh when his door's shut."

"He is most terribly handless."

"He is all that, but, poor soul, he does his best." Rh

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