was born this is the first time it ever happened to me to recall all these things at once, and my tale is not a merry one."
"Well," said the Chourineur, ironically, "you are sorry, perhaps, that you are not a kitchen-wench in a cook-shop, or a servant to some old brutes who think of no one but themselves."
"Ah!" said Fleur-de-Marie, with a deep sigh, "to be quite happy, we must be quite virtuous."
"Oh, what is your little head about now?" exclaimed the Chourineur, with a loud burst of laughter. "Why not count your rosary in honour of your father and mother, whom you never knew?"
"My father and mother abandoned me in the street like a puppy that is one too many in the house; perhaps they had not enough to feed themselves," said Goualeuse, with bitterness. "I want nothing of them, – I complain of nothing, – but there are lots happier than mine."
"Yours! Why, what would you have? You are as handsome as a Venus, and yet only sixteen and a half; you sing like a nightingale, behave yourself very prettily, are called Fleur-de-Marie, and yet you complain! What will you say, I should like to know, when you will have a stove under your 'paddlers,' and a chinchilla boa, like the ogress?"
"Oh, I shall never be so old as she is."
"Perhaps you have a charm for never growing any older?"
"No; but I could not lead such a life. I have already a bad cough."
"Ah, I see you already in the 'cold-meat box.' Go along, you silly child, you!"
"Do you often have such thoughts as these, Goualeuse?" said Rodolph.
"Sometimes. You, perhaps, M. Rodolph, understand me. In the morning, when I go to buy my milk from the milkwoman at the corner of Rue de la Vieille-Draperie, with the sous which the ogress gives me, and see her go away in her little cart drawn by her donkey, I do envy her so, and I say to myself, 'She is going into the country, to the pure air, to her home and her family;' and then I return alone into the garret of the ogress, where you cannot see plainly even at noonday."
"Well, child, be good – laugh at your troubles – be good," said the Chourineur.
"Good! mon Dieu! and how do you mean be good? The clothes I wear belong to the ogress, and I am in debt to her for my board and lodging. I can't stir from her; she would have me taken up as a thief. I belong to her, and I must pay her."
When she had uttered these last words, the unhappy girl could not help shuddering, and a tear trembled in her long eyelashes.
"Well, but remain as you are, and do not compare yourself to a country milkwoman," said the Chourineur. "Are you taking leave of your senses? Only think, you may yet cut a figure in the capital, whilst the milkwoman must boil the pot for her brats, milk her cows, gather grass for her rabbits, and, perhaps, after all, get a black eye from her husband when he comes home from the pot-house. Why, it is really ridiculous to hear you talk of envying her."
The Goualeuse did not reply; her eye was fixed, her heart was full, and the expression of her face was painfully distressed. Rodolph had listened to the recital, made with so painful a frankness, with deep interest. Misery, destitution, ignorance of the world, had weighed down this wretched girl, cast at sixteen years of age on the wide world of Paris!
Rodolph involuntarily thought of a beloved child whom he had lost, – a girl, dead at six years of age, and who, had she survived, would have been, like Fleur-de-Marie, sixteen years and a half old. This recollection excited the more highly his solicitude for the unhappy creature whose narration he had just heard.
CHAPTER IV
THE CHOURINEUR'S HISTORY
The reader has not forgotten the two guests at the tapis-franc who were watched so closely by the third individual who had come into the cabaret. We have said that one of these fellows, who had on a Greek cap, and concealed his left hand with much care, asked the ogress if the Schoolmaster and Gros-Boiteux had not arrived.
During the story of the Goualeuse, which they could not overhear, they had been constantly talking in a very low tone, throwing occasional hurried glances at the door. He who wore the Greek cap said to his comrade, "The Gros-Boiteux does not 'show,' nor the Schoolmaster."
"Perhaps the Skeleton has 'done for him,' and made off with the 'swag.'"
"A precious 'go' that would be for us, who 'laid the plant,' and look out for our 'snacks,'" replied the other.
The newcomer, who observed the two men, was seated too far off to hear a word they said, but, after having cautiously consulted a small paper concealed at the bottom of his cap, he appeared satisfied with his remarks, rose from the table, and said to the ogress, who was sleeping at the bar, with her feet on the stove, and her great cat on her knee:
"I say, Mother Ponisse, I shall soon be back again; take care of my pitcher and my plate; I don't want any one to make free with them."
"Make yourself easy, my fine fellow," said Mother Ponisse; "if your plate and pitcher are empty, no one will touch them."
The newcomer laughed loudly at the joke of the ogress, and then slipped out, so that his departure was unnoticed. At that moment when this man retired, and before the door could be shut, Rodolph saw the charcoal-dealer, whose black face and tall form we have already alluded to, and he had just time to manifest to him, by an impatient gesture, how much he disliked his watchful attendance; but the charcoal-man did not appear to heed this in the least, and still kept hanging about the tapis-franc. The countenance of the Goualeuse became still more saddened; with her back to the wall, her head drooping on her bosom, her full blue eyes gazing mechanically about her, the unfortunate being seemed bowed down with the weight of her oppressive thoughts. Two or three times, having met Rodolph's fixed look, she turned away, unable to account to herself for the singular impression which the unknown had caused her. Weighed down and abashed at his presence, she almost regretted having made so candid a narrative to him of her unhappy life. The Chourineur, on the contrary, was quite in high spirits; he had devoured the whole harlequin without the least assistance; the wine and brandy had made him very communicative; the fact of his having found his master, as he called him, had been forgotten in the generous conduct of Rodolph; and he also detected so decided a physical superiority, that his humiliation had given way to a sentiment of admiration, mingled with fear and respect. This absence of rancour, and the savage pride with which he boasted of never having robbed, proved that the Chourineur was not as yet thoroughly hardened. This had not escaped the sagacity of Rodolph, and he awaited the man's recital with curiosity.
"Now, my boy," said he, "we are listening."
The Chourineur emptied his glass, and thus began:
"You, my poor girl, were at last taken to by the Chouette, whom the devil confound! You never had a shelter until the moment when you were imprisoned as a vagabond. I can never recollect having slept in what is called a bed before I was nineteen years of age, – a happy age! – and then I became a trooper."
"What, you have served, then, Chourineur?" said Rodolph.
"Three years; but you will hear all about it: the stones of the Louvre, the lime-kilns of Clichy, and the quarries of Montrouge, these were the hôtels of my youth. Then I had my house in Paris and in the country. Who but I – "
"And what was your trade?"
"Faith, master, I have a foggy recollection of having strolled about in my childhood with an old rag-picker, who almost thumped me to death; and it must be true, for I have never since met one of these old Cupids, with a wicker-work quiver, without a longing to pitch into him, – a proof that one of them must have thumped me when I was a child. My first employment was to help the knackers to cut the horses' throats at Montfauçon. I was about ten or twelve. When I began to slash (chouriner) these poor old beasts, it had quite an impression on me. At the month's end I thought no more about it; on the contrary, I began to like my trade. No one had his knife so sharpened and keen-edged as mine; and that made me rejoice in using it. When I had cut the animals' throats, they gave me for my trouble a piece of the thigh of some animal that had died of disease; for those that they slaughter are sold to the 'cag-mag' shops near the School of Medicine, who convert it into beef, mutton, veal, or game,