VI
Of how François regained a lost friend, and of his adventure with the poet Horace and another gentleman.
Thus François was launched on what he was pleased to call the business of life, and soon became expert in the transfer of property. Strange to say, he had little pleasure in the debauchery of successful crime, and was too good-natured to like violence. When he had enough for his moderate wants he wandered in the country, here and there, in an aimless, drifting way. Simple things gave him pleasure. He could lie in the woods or on the highway half a day, only moving to keep in the sun. He liked to watch any living creature—to see the cows feed, to observe the birds. He had a charm for all animals. When the wagons went by, dogs deserted them, and came to him for a touch and a word. Best of all it was to sit beside some peasant’s beehive, finding there no enmity, and smiling at the laborious lives he had no mind to imitate. Sometimes he yearned for the lost poodle, and had a pang of loneliness. That this man should have had gentle tastes, a liking for nature, a regard for some of the decencies of life, will not surprise those who know well the many varieties of the young criminal class; neither will these be amazed to learn that now and then he heard mass, and crossed himself devoutly when there was occasion. Children he fascinated; a glance of his long, odd face would make them leave nurse and toy, and sidle up to him. In the Cité these singularities made him avoided, while his growing strength caused him to be feared. He sought no friends among the thieves. “Very prudent, that,” said Mme. Quatre Pattes; “the more friends, the more enemies.”
He was quick and active, and a shrewd observer; for the hard life of the streets had sharpened his naturally ready wits, and he looked far older than his years. Of a Sunday in May he was walking down the Rue St. Honoré, feeling a bit lonely, as was not often the case, when he saw Toto. He whistled, and the poodle ran to him, and would no more of the shop or fat food he liked.
“Toto! Mon Dieu!” he laughed, hugging the dog, his eyes full with the tears of joy. “Hast stolen me again! Wilt never return me? ’T is no honest dog. Viens donc. Come, then, old friend.” Joyous in the company of his comrade, who was now well grown, he strolled out into the fields, where Toto caught a rabbit—a terrible crime in those days.
During the next two years the pair fairly prospered. François, as he used to relate, having risen in his profession, found a certain pleasure in good clothes, and being of a dramatic turn, could put on an air of bourgeois sobriety, or, with a sword at his side and a bit of lace here and there, swagger as a lesser gentleman. If things were very bad, he sold Toto and all his fine tricks for a round sum, and in a day or two was sure to find the dog overjoyed and back again at the garret door. The pair were full of devices. There was Toto, a plated snuff-box in his mouth, capering before some old gentle or some slow-pacing merchant; appears François, resistlessly smiling.
“Has monsieur lost a snuff-box? My dog? Yes, monsieur. He is honest, and clever too.”
Monsieur, hastily searching, produces his own snuff-box—the indispensable snuff-box of the day.
“No; thanks.” And it is noted that the box he shows is of gold, and into what pocket it falls. In the next crowd Toto knows how to make a disturbance with some fat lap-dog, and in the confusion thus created the snuff-box changes owners.
“If the man be sorry, I at least am made happy,” says François; “and he hath been the better for a lesson in caution. I got what I needed, and he what he required. Things are very even in this world.” François had learned philosophy among the curés and priests of the choir-house. As he avoided great risks, and, as I have said, was averse to violence, he kept clear of detection, and could deceive the police of the king if by rare chance he were in peril of arrest. When the missing property was some minor article, such as a handkerchief, it was instantly hid in Toto’s mouth. The dog skipped away, the outraged master was searched; the bewildered owner apologized, and the officers were shocked at such a needless charge. François talked about his offended honor, and as he looked at twenty to be a strong man of full age, the affair was apt to go no further.
Half the cleverness and thought thus devoted to an ignoble pursuit would have given him success in more honest ways. But for a long while no angel chance tempted him, and it must be admitted that he enjoyed the game he pursued, and was easily contented, not eagerly caring to find a less precarious and less risky mode of life.
Temperament is merely a permanent mood. François was like the month of June in his dear Paris. There might be storms and changes, but his mental weather had the pleasant insurance of what was in the order of despotic nature. And yet to be owner of the continual sunshine of cheerfulness has its drawbacks. It deprives a man of some of the wholesome lures of life. It dulls the spurs which goad us to resolve. It may make calamity too easy of endurance. To be too consistently cheerful may be in itself a misfortune. It had for this vagrant all its values and some of its defects. His simple, gay existence, and his flow of effervescent merriment, kept him happy and thoughtless. Most persons of this rare type like company; but François was an exception. He was better pleased to be alone with his dog, and usually desired no other society. As the poodle could not talk, his master was given to making answer for him, and finding no one to his taste among the Crab’s villainous lodgers, kept to himself, and was satisfied. Nor did he ever appear to have imagined what the larger world he knew not held of such human society as would have comforted that sense of void in his heart which he acknowledged at times, but had no way to fill. When fortune played him some sorry trick, he laughed, and unconsciously quoted La Rochefoucauld. “Toto, ah, my Toto, one can never be as cunning as everybody.” This was apropos of an incident which greatly amused him.
He was in his favorite resort, the Palais Royal, one June morning, and was at this time somewhat short of cash. The Crab had preached him a sharp sermon on his lack of industry, and he had liked neither the sermon nor the preacher. At this moment a young fellow in fine clothes came by. François, producing, as usual, a gaudy snuff-box worth some ten francs, politely asked of monsieur had he lost this box. Monsieur took it in his hand. Yes, yes; he had just missed it, the gift of his god-father, and was much obliged. He let it fall into his pocket, and walked away. François looked after him. “Toto, nous sommes volés—we are sold!” Then the fun of it, as usual, overcame him, and he wandered away to the garden of the Luxembourg, and at last threw himself on a bench, and laughed as a child laughs, being for moments quiet, and then given over to uncontrolled mirth. Having feasted with honest comfort on all the humorous aspects of the situation, his hand chanced to fall on a little book left by some one on the seat. He had long ceased to read, for no books fell in his way, nor could he often have afforded to buy them even had he had a keen appetite for their contents.
The little vellum-bound volume opened to his touch, as if used to be generous of what it held. It was Latin, and verse. He knew, or had known, more than most choir-boys needed of this tongue, and the talk of the choir-house was, by stringent rule, in Latin. But this book was not of a religious kind; it half puzzled his mind as he read. Unaccustomed to profane Latin verse, and yet wholly pleased, he began to murmur aloud the rhythmic measures:
“Poseimus, si quid vacui sub umbrâ
Lusimus tecum, quod et hunc in annum
Vivat, et plures: age, dic Latinum,
Barbite, carmen.
“It hath a fine sound, mon ami; and who was this Quintus?” He went on reading aloud the delicious rhythms for the joy of hearing their billowy flow. Now and then he smiled as he caught the full meaning of a line.
The keen-faced poodle sat on the bench beside him, with a caressing head laid against his shoulder; the sun was sweet and warm, the roses were many. The time suited the book, and the book the man. He read on, page after page of the beautiful Aldine type, now and then pausing, vexed to be so puzzled by these half-guessed beautiful riddles.
“Toto, my dog, I would thou didst know Latin. This man he loved the country, and good wine, and girls; and he had friends—friends, which you and I have not.”
Then he was lost for an hour. At last he ceased to read, and sat with a finger in the book, idly drifting on the immortal stream of golden song.
“That must have been a merry companion, Toto. I did hear of him once in the choir-house. He must be dead a mighty while ago. If a man is as gay as that, it must be horrid to die.”
My poor thief was one of the myriad who through the long centuries had come into kindly touch of the friend of Mæcenas. For the first time in his uncertain life he felt the charm of genius.
Indulgent opportunity was for François always near to some fatal enmity of chance. So does fate deal with the unlucky. He saw coming swiftly toward him a tall, strongly built man of middle age. He was richly dressed, and as he drew near he smiled.
“Ah, monsieur,” he said; “I came back in haste to reclaim my little Horace. I missed it only when I got home. I am most fortunate.”
François rose. He returned the small volume, but did not speak.
“Monsieur of course knows Horace,” said the gentleman, looking him over, a little curious and more than a little interested. Too sure of his own position to shun any intercourse which promised amusement, he went on: “No; not know Horace? Let us sit awhile. The sun is pleasant.”
François, rather shy, and suspicious of a manner of man he had never before encountered, sat down, saying, “I was a choir-boy once. I know some Latin, not much; but this sounded pleasant to the ear.”
“Yes; it is immortal music. A choir-boy, you said; and pardon me, but, mon Dieu, I heard you laugh as I was searching for my book. You have a fine gift that way, and there is little to laugh at nowadays in France.”
“Monsieur will excuse me; I am so made that I laugh at everything and at nothing. I believe I do laugh in my sleep. And just now I laughed because—because—”
“Well, why did you laugh?”
François glanced at the questioner. Something authoritative in his ways made it seem needful to answer, and what this or any man thought of him he cared little—perhaps because in his world opinions went for nothing. And still he hesitated a moment.
“Well?” There was a note of strong surprise in the voice, as if the owner felt it to be unusual that a query he put should not evoke instant reply.
“I laughed because I was cheated.”
“Charming, that! May I ask how? But perhaps—”
“No,” said François; “if it amuse monsieur, why should I care?” He calmly related his adventure.
The gentleman threw himself back on the seat in an ecstasy of amusement. He was out of humor with the time and with his own world, and bored by the incessant politics of the day; here was a pleasant diversion.
“By St. Denis! my friend, you are like the great Chicot that was fool to King Henry of merry memory.”
“And how, monsieur?”
“How? He had a long face that laughed ever, long legs, and a shrewd way of seeming more simple than he was.”
“Monsieur flatters me.”
“Ah, and a smart rogue, too. I may conclude your profession to be that of relieving the rich of their too excessive luxuries.”
François was enchanted with this ingenious and unprejudiced companion, who had, like himself, a sense of the laughable aspects of life.
“Monsieur has hit it,” he said gaily; “I am a thief.”
No one had taught him to be ashamed of anything but failure in his illegal enterprises.
“Tiens! That is droll;—not that you are a thief: I have known many in my own world. They steal a variety of things, each after his taste in theft—the money of the poor, the character of a man, a woman’s honor.”
“I scarcely comprehend,” said François, who was puzzled.
“They lack your honesty of confession. Could you be altogether honest if a man trusted you?”
“I do not know. No man ever trusted me, and one must live, monsieur.”
The gentleman hesitated, and relapsed into the indifference of a too easy life. He had been on the point of offering this outcast a chance.
“Enfin, no doubt you are right. I wish you every success. The deuce! Have you my snuff-box and my handkerchief?”
“Both,” said François.
“Then don’t run away. I could never catch you. Long legs must be of use in your profession. The snuff-box I will ransom. Let us say fifty francs. It is worth more, but it bears my name, and there are risks.”
“Certainly,” said François. “And the handkerchief. Monsieur is enrhumé—has a cold; I could not deprive monsieur.”
The gentleman thanked him, paid over the money for the box, and, greatly pleased, rose, saying: “You are a dangerous acquaintance; but I trust we may meet again. Au revoir!”
François remained on the bench, Toto at his feet in the sun. This meeting affected him strangely. It had been the first touch of a world remote from his own. He did not recognize the fact that he had gifts which enable men to rise in life. At times he had had vague ambitions, but he was at the foot of a ladder, and the rungs above were broken or not to be seen. These moods were brief, and as to their cause not always clear to him. He was by nature social, and able to like or to love; but the people of the Cité were dreadful, and if now and then some broken refugee from a higher class delighted him for a time, the eventful hand of justice or what not was apt to separate them.
As he looked after the gentleman he felt his charm and the courtesy of his ways as something to be desired. His own form of attractiveness, the influence of joyous laughter and frank approach, he had often and usefully tested; and perhaps this sense of his own power to please made him intelligently apprehensive of what he had just experienced. Had he seized eagerly the half-offered help the gentleman suggested rather than offered, he had been wiser; but it was literally true that, being when possible honest as to speech, he had obeyed the moment’s impulse. A better man than the gentleman would have gone further. He had lazily reflected, and concluded that to help this poor devil might be troublesome, and thus the jewel opportunity lay lost at their feet. They were to meet again, and then it was to be the thief’s turn.
Now he sat in thought, kicking the ground with his boot. Out of the past came remembrances of the asylum, and how he had been told to be good, and not to kill or to steal, or to do certain other naughty things less clear to him then than now. But this was a far-away time. At the choir-house were the same moral lessons, but they who taught were they who sinned. Since then no one had said a word of reproach to the waif; nor had this great gentleman, and yet he had left him in the rare mood of thought-filled depression.
“Wake up, Toto,” he cried; “thou art become too fat. En avant aux champs!” And, followed by the poodle, he went away up the Seine, and was gone so long that Quatre Pattes began to think he had taken to honest courses and would return no more.
He came back in a fortnight, the better for certain prosperous ventures. And thus the days ran on. If fortune were against him, and even diet hard to get, Toto went with the Crab to some distant market after dusk, and, while she bargained, knew to steal a cutlet, and to run away with his prize, and make for home or the next dark lane. But these devices failed at times, and thus François’s life consisted of a series of ups and downs. When lucky he bought good clothes, for which he had a liking; when unlucky he pawned them, and went back to garments no one would take in pledge.
It was in the year 1788 that this adventure occurred. He was, as far as was to be guessed, fully twenty-one years of age. His life of adventure, of occasional hardships, and of incessant watchfulness had already given him the appearance of being a far older person.
Always an odd-looking lad, as he grew to maturity his great length of limb, his long face, and ears of unnatural bigness, gave him such singularity of aspect as made disguises impossible.
The poodle was an added danger, and for this reason, when in pursuit of prey, François was forced to leave the dog with Mother Crab. Thus time ran on with such perils as attend the life he led, but with better fortune than could have been expected. As to these later years up to 1790, François, in his memoirs, says little. Once—indeed, twice—he left the Crab’s house, only to be driven back by stress of circumstance. After 1790 his account is more complete, and here it is that we take up again the fuller story of his life.
The turmoil of vast governmental and social changes was disturbing all ranks of life. If the Revolution was nursed in the salons, as some say, it was born in the furrows of the tax-tormented peasant, and in the seething caldron of the Cité and the quarters of the starving poor.
François, who cared little what ruler was on top, or who paid taxes, was aware of the uneasy stir in his own neighborhood. Men were more savage. Murder and all violent crimes were more common. That hungry beast, the mob, began to show its fangs, soon to be red with blood. The clubs of all opinions were busy. The church was toppling to ruin, its centuries of greedy gain at an end. Political lines were sharply drawn. The white cockade and the tricolor were the badges of hostile ranks, still more distinctly marked by costume. The cafés were divided: some were Royalist, some Jacobin or neutral. Too many who were of the noble class were flying, or, if more courageous or less forethoughtful, were gathering into bitterly opponent camps. So much of that lower Paris as felt, yearned, hated, and was hungry, glad of any change, was pleased amid tumult to find its chance to plunder and to kill.
The fall of the Bastille in the preceding year had not seemed important to François. He had interested himself in the purses of the vast crowd which looked on and was too much taken up with the event to guard the contents of its pockets. The violence which came after was not to François’s taste; but these street crowds were admirable for business until money became scarce, and the snuff-box and the lace handkerchief disappeared with armorial bearings, and with the decree of the people that great dames must no more go in fine carriages.