VII Wherein Is Told How François Saved a Man’s Neck and Learned to Juggle
In the early spring of this year François found himself, one day, in a crowd near to the Porte St. Denis. He stood high on his long legs, looking on, while men on ladders broke up the royal escutcheon on the stone archway. It amused him a little to see how furious they were, and how crazy were the foolish poissardes: these fishwomen, who had so many privileges under the monarchy, at every blow of the hammer yelled with delight; and behold, here was the Crab, Quatre Pattes, far away from her quarter, hoarse with screaming, a horrible edition of woman as she stood under the arch, careless of the falling fragments. On the edge of the more prudent crowd, an old man was guilty of some rash protest in the way of speech. François heard the cry, “À bas l’aristocrate! à la lanterne!” and saw the Crab leap on the man like some fierce insect, horribly agile, a thin gray tress down her back. Swift and terrible it was. In a moment he swung writhing from the chain of the street-lantern, fighting with vain hands to loosen the rope. A red-haired woman leaped up and caught his leg. There was laughter. The man above her hung limp. François did not laugh. He tried to get out of the crowd, away from this quivering horror. To do so was not easy. The crowd was noisy and turbulent, swaying to and fro, intent on mischief. As he moved he saw a small, stout man take, with some lack of skill, a purse from the side-pouch of a huge fishwoman. François, being close to the thief, saw him seized by the woman he had robbed. In the press, which was great, François slipped a hand into the thief’s pocket, and took out the purse. Meanwhile there were again wild cries of “To the lantern!” “Up with him!” the woman lamenting her loss, and denouncing the man who had stolen. His life was like to be brief. Surrounded by these she-devils, he stood, white, shaking, and swearing he was innocent. The man’s anguish of fear moved François. “Dame!” he cried, “search the man before you hang him! I say, search him!” While one of them began to act on his hint, François let the purse fall into the pocket of the original owner—an easy feat for a practised hand. “The man has it not. Look again in thy pouch, maman,” he cried. “The man has it not; that is plain.” When the dame of the market found her purse, she turned on François, amid the laughter of her friends. “Thou art a confederate. Thou didst put it back thyself.” Indeed, things were like to go ill. The crowd was of a mind to hang some one. A dozen hands fell on him, while the man he had aided slipped away quietly. François shook off the women, and with foot and fist cleared a space, for he was of great strength of body. He would have earned but a short reprieve had he not seen the Crab. He called to her: “À moi! Quatre Pattes!” The ring of red-faced furies fell back for a moment before the rage and power of a man defending his life. Half dismayed, but furious, they shouted: “Hang him! rail him!” and called to the men to help them. Again François was hustled and struck as the crowd closed in on him. He struggled, and called to Toto, whom nothing so disturbed as to see a rude touch laid on his master. In an instant the dog was busy with the stout calves about him, biting, letting go, and biting again. The diversion was valuable, but brief; and soon Toto, who was not over-valiant, fled to his master, the crowd yelling: “Kill him! Hang him and the beast!” Once more François exerted his exceptional strength, crying, “Not while I live!” and catching up the dog under his arm. Then he heard the shrill voice of the Crab. “À moi!” he shouted, and struck right and left as Quatre Pattes, with her sticks, squirmed in under the great arms of the fishwomen.
“À moi!” she cried, “François!” With her sticks, and tongue of the vilest, she cleared a space as the venomous creatures fell back from one more hideous than themselves.
Meanwhile the accusing dame shook her purse at the Crab, crying, “He put it back; I felt him do it.” But the rest laughed, and the Crab faced her with so fierce a look that she shrank away.
“Off with thee!” said the Crab to François; “thou wert near to the lantern.”
“’T is a Jacobin of the best,” she cried to the mob; “a friend of mine. You will get into trouble—you cursed fools!”
The crowd cheered her, and François, seizing the chance, cried, laughing, “Adieu, mesdames,” and in a moment was out of the crowd and away. He turned as many corners as possible, and soon, feeling it safe to move more slowly, set down the dog and readjusted his dress.
A minute later he saw beside him the man he had saved. “Do not speak to me here,” he said; “follow me at a distance.” The man, still white and shaking, obeyed him. At the next turn, as François paused in doubt which way to go, he met Quatre Pattes.
“The devil nearly got thee, my little boy,” she said; “but a smart thief is worth some trouble to save. Pay me for thy long neck, and quick, too.” She was full eau-de-vie, and, as usual then, savage and reckless.
“More!” she cried—“more!” as he gave her a franc. “More, more! Ungrateful beast, thou art good to feed me, and for little else. More, more! I say, or I will call them after thee, and this time I shall have a good pull at the rope. More, more!” and she struck him with her stick. “Sacré, waif of hell! More! more!” she screamed. “And that fellow who helped thee! I have seen him; I know him.”
François turned without a word, and ran as fast as his long legs would carry him. Two blocks away he was overtaken by the other thief. They pushed on in silence.
At last François, getting back his somewhat scattered wits, said: “We can talk now.”
“Ah, I understand,” said the other; “thou didst steal her purse from me, and put it back in her pouch.”
“Yes; I took it just as they caught thee; then I let it fall into her pouch.”
“I thank thee, monsieur. Dieu! I am all in a sweat. We are of a trade, I perceive. Why didst thou help me?”
“To keep it was a risk. My turn might have come next. I pitied thee, too.”
“I shall never forget it—never.”
François laughed. The fat man looked up at him. “Dame! but thou hast a queer face, and ears like wings. ’T is a fortune. Let us have a little wine and talk. I have a good idea.”
“Presently,” said François; “I like not the neighborhood.”
Soon they found a guinguette, or low liquor-shop, in the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs, and, feeling at last secure, had a long talk over a bottle of wine.
François learned that his new acquaintance was named Pierre Despard, and that he had, for the most part of his means of living, given up the business of relieving the rich of their purses. He explained that he did well as a conjurer, and had a booth near the Pont Neuf. He made clear to François that with his quick fingers, and a face which none could see and not laugh, he would be a desirable partner.
“Thou must learn to move those huge ears.” Would he be his assistant? When times were bad they might profit by tempting chances in their old line of life.
François was just now as near to penitence as his nature permitted him to be, and his recent peril disposed him to listen. The more he reflected as Despard talked, the more he liked it. He ended by saying, “Yes”; and before the Crab had reached home he had taken away his slender store of garments, and, with Toto at his heels, found his way to the room of his new friend, in a little street which ran into the Rue Basse du Rempart, not far from the Madeleine. Thus began a mode of life which he found fresh and full of satisfaction.
The pair so strangely brought together took a room in the fifth story, and, with Toto, set up domestic life on a modest scale. It was much to François’s contentment. He had what I may call a side taste for the respectable, and this new business seemed to him a decided rise in life. It was varied enough to amuse him; nor was it so conventionally commercial as to lack such adventure and incident as this wild young reprobate of the Cité had learned to like. The new business soon gave the partners more than enough to live upon. After their lodging and diet were provided for, Pierre Despard took two thirds of what was left, and put it away in a stocking, at first with some doubt as to his comrade, but soon with the trust which François was apt to inspire. From early morn until noon, Pierre taught François to do tricks with cards, to juggle with balls, and to tell fortunes by the lines of the hand. Toto was educated to carry a basket and collect sous, to stand on his head with a pipe in his mouth, and to pick out a card at a signal. The rest of the day was spent in the booth, where they rarely failed to be well paid. At evening there was a quiet café and dominoes, and a modest petit verre of brandy. Meanwhile the peasants burned châteaux, and Protestant and Catholic hanged one another in the pleasant South.
Now and then the Paris mob enjoyed a like luxury, and amid unceasing disorder the past was swept on to the dust-heaps of history.
The little audience of children and nurses in front of the booth was as yet nowise concerned as to these vast changes; nor was Toto disturbed when it was thought prudent to robe him with a three-colored ribbon. The politics of the masters of the show varied as their audiences changed from the children of the rich at noon to the Jacobin workmen at the coming of dusk. François personally preferred splendor and the finery of the great. He was by nature a Royalist. Pierre was silent or depressed, and said little as to his opinions. But both had the prudence of men always too near to poverty to take risks of loss for the sake of political sentiments in which they had no immediate interest.
Despard was a somber little man, and nimble, as some fat men are. He was as red-cheeked as a Norman apple, and, at this time, of unchanging gravity of face and conduct. Not even François’s gaiety could tempt him to relate his history; and although at times a great talker, he became so terrified when frankly questioned as to his past, that François ceased to urge him. That any one should desire to conceal anything was to François amazing. He was himself a valuable possession to his morose partner.
“I do not laugh,” said Pierre; “nay, not even as a matter of business. Thou shalt laugh for two. Some day we will go to see the little girl who is at Sèvres, in a school of nuns. ’T is there the money goes.”
This was a sudden revelation to François. Here was a human being, like himself a thief, who was sacrificing something for another. The isolation of his own life came before him with a sense of shock. He said he should be glad to see the child, and when should they go?