IT was the late afternoon of a sweltering July day. The near hills
slumbered in the sunshine. Far away beyond them grey peaks of Alpine
spurs, patched with snow, rose in faint outline against the sky. The
valley lay in rich idleness, green and gold and fruitful, yielding
itself with a maternal largeness to the white fifteenth century château
on the hillside. A long white road stretched away to the left following
the convolutions of the valley, until it became a thread; on the right
it turned sharply by a clump of trees which marked a farm. In the middle
of it all, in the grateful shadow cast by a wayside café, sat Paragot
and myself, watching with thirsty eyes the buxom but slatternly
_patronne_ pour out beer from a bottle. A dirty, long-haired mongrel
terrier lapped water from an earthenware bowl, at the foot of the wooden
table at which we sat. This was Narcisse, a recent member of our
vagabond family, whom my master had casually adopted some weeks before
and had christened according to some _lucus a non lucendo_ principle of
his own. I think he was the least beautiful dog I have ever met; but I
loved him dearly.
Paragot drained his tumbler, handed it back to be refilled, drained it
again and cleared his throat with the contentment of a man whose thirst
has been slaked.
"Now one can spit," he exclaimed heartily.
"That is always a comfort to a man," remarked the _patronne_.
"It is the potentiality that is the comfort. Have you apartments for the
night, Madame?"
"They are for _des messieurs_--for gentlemen," said the patronne
diffidently.
Narcisse having also finished his draught stretched himself out on the
ground, his chin on his fore paws, and glanced furtively upwards at the
disparaging lady.
"_Tron de l'air!_" cried Paragot, "are we not gentlemen?"
"_Tiens_, you are of the Midi," cried the woman, recognising the
expletive--for no one born north of Avignon says "_Tron de l'air_"--"I
too am from Marseilles. My husband was a Savoyard. That is why I am
here."
"I am a gentleman of Gascony," said my master, "and this is my son
Asticot."
"It is a droll name," said the _patronne_.
"We are commercial travellers on our rounds with samples of philosophy."
"It is a droll trade," said the _patronne_.
We were greasy and dirty, sunburnt to the colour of Egyptian felaheen
and dressed in the peasant's blue blouse. Creatures more unlike
professors of philosophy could not be conceived. But the _patronne_
seemed to be impressed--as who was not?--by Paragot.
"The rooms will be three francs, Monsieur," she said after a calculating
pause.
"I engage them," said my master. "Asticot, aid Madame to take our
luggage up to our bedchambers." I grasped my bundle and handed Paragot's
dilapidated canvas gripsack to the _patronne_. He arrested her.
"One moment, Madame. As you see, my portmanteau contains a shirt, a
pair of socks, a comb and a toothbrush. Also a copy of the works of the
divine vagrant Maître François Villon, which I will take out at once. He
was a thief and a reprobate and got nearer hanged than any man who ever
lived, and he is the dearest friend I have."
"You have droll friends," remarked the _patronne_ continuing her litany.
"And to think that he died four hundred years ago," sighed my master.
"Isn't it strange, Madame, that all the bravest men and most beautiful
women are those that are dead?"
The landlady laughed. "You talk like a true Gascon, Monsieur. In this
country people are so silent that one loses the use of one's tongue."
I departed with her to see after domestic arrangements and when I
returned I found Paragot smoking his porcelain pipe, and talking to a
dusty child in charge of a goat. Having, at that period, a soul above
dusty children in charge of goats. I sprawled on the ground beside
Narcisse, and being tired by the day's tramp fell into a doze. The good
earth, when you have a casing of it already on clothes and person, is a
comfortable couch; but I think you must be in your teens to enjoy it.
I awoke to the sound of Paragot's voice talking to Narcisse. The goat
child had slipped away. An ox cart laden with hay lumbered past. The
mellowness of late afternoon lay over the land. The shadow cast by the
little white café had deepened gradually far beyond the table. From
within the house came the faint clatter of footsteps and cooking
utensils. Paragot was still smoking. Narcisse sat on his haunches, his
ill shaped head to one side and his ears cocked. After making a vicious
dig at a flea, he yawned and trotted about after the manner of his kind
in search of adventure. Paragot summoned him back.
"My good Narcisse, every spot on the earth has its essential quality
which the wise man or dog knows how to enjoy in its entirety. In great
cities where life is pulsating around you, you are alert for the
unexpected. The underlying principle of a world's backwater like this is
restful stagnation. Here you must wallow in the uneventful. In vain you
sniff around in quest of the exciting, mistaking like your fellow in the
fable the shadow for the substance. The substance here is rest. Here
nothing ever happens."
"Pardon, Monsieur," said a voice close upon us. "Is it very far to
Chambéry?"
"It does not matter," said a second voice following hard on the first,
"for I can go no further."
I jumped to my feet and my master started round in his chair. The first
speaker was a girl, the second an old man. She had merely the comeliness
of tanned and hair-bleached peasant youth; he was wizened, lined,
browned and bent. A cotton umbrella shaded the girl's bare head and she
carried in her hand a cane valise covered with grey canvas. The old man
was burdened with two ancient shabby cases, one evidently containing a
violin and the other some queerly shaped musical instrument. Both the
new comers were wayworn and dirty, and my master seeing suffering on the
old man's face rose and courteously offered him a chair.
"Sit down and rest," said he, "and Mademoiselle, you are thinking of
going to Chambéry? But it is nearly a day's journey on foot."
"We have to play at a wedding tomorrow, Monsieur," said the girl
piteously. "It was arranged two months ago, and we must get there in
some manner."
"There is a railway station not far off," said I.
"Alas! we have only ten sous in the world, which is not enough to pay
for our tickets," she answered. "Imagine, Monsieur, I had a piece of
twenty francs in my pocket this morning, and I went to the station to
get a ticket, for I had counted on going by railway, as my grandfather
is so ill, and when I came to pay, I found I had lost my louis. How, the
_bon Dieu_ only knows. It is desolating, Monsieur; we had to walk so as
to keep our engagement at Chambéry. If we miss it, _nous sommes dans la
purée pour tout de bon_."
To be in the _purée_ is to be in a very bad mess indeed. The prospect of
abject pennilessness filled the damsel's eyes with woe.
"You earn your living by playing at weddings for folks to dance?" asked
my master.
"Yes, Monsieur. My grandfather plays the violin and I the zither--we
also go to fairs. In the winter we play at cafés in large towns. Life is
hard, Monsieur, is it not?"
She closed her umbrella and laid it on the valise. The old man sat by
the table, his head resting on his hands, saying nothing.
"When I think of my good louis that is gone!" she added tragically.
The only feature making for charm in a coarse homely face was a set of
white even teeth. I found her singularly unattractive. A tear rolled
down her cheek and its course was that of a rill in a dusty plain.
"Suppose I lend you the money for the railway tickets?" said my master
kindly.
"O Monsieur," she cried, "I should thank you from the depths of my
heart. _Grandpère_," she turned to the old man who, ashen faced, was
staring in front of him, "Monsieur will lend us enough money to get to
Chambéry."
"I can go no further," he murmured.
Then his eyelids quivered, his body moved spasmodically, and he swayed
sideways off the chair on to the ground.
We rushed to aid him. The girl put his head on her lap. My master bade
me run into the café for brandy. When I returned the old man was dead.
Narcisse sat placidly by, with his tongue out, eyeing his master
ironically.
"You are the man," his glance implied, "who said that nothing happens
here."
I have known many dogs in my life, but never so mocking and cynical a
dog as Narcisse.
* * * * *
It was nearly midnight before my master and I sat down again outside the
café. The intervening hours had been spent in journeying to and from the
nearest village, and obtaining the necessary services of doctor and
curé. My master was smoking his porcelain pipe, as usual, but strangely
silent. A faint circle of light came from the open ground-floor window
of the café. The white road gleamed dimly, and beyond the hushed valley
the hills loomed vague against a black, starlit sky. In the lighted room
a few peasants from neighbouring farms drank their sour white wine and
discussed the death in low voices. In other circumstances my master
would have joined them under pretext of getting nearer the Heart of
Life, and would have told them amazing tales of Ekaterinoslav or
Valladolid till they reeled home drunk with wine and wonder. And I
should have been abed. But to-night Paragot seemed to prefer the silent
company of Narcisse and myself.
"What do you think of it all, Asticot?" he asked at length.
"Of what, master?"
"Death."
"It frightens me," was all I could answer.
"What I resent about it," said my master reflectively, "is that one is
not able to have any personal concern in the most interesting event in
one's career. If you could even follow your own funeral and have a
chance of weeping for yourself! You are never so important as when you
are a corpse--and you miss it all. I have a good mind not to die. It is
either the silliest or the wisest action of one's life; I wonder which."
Presently the girl came down the passage of the café, stood for a moment
in the doorway, and seeing Paragot advanced to the table.
"You are very kind, Monsieur," she said, "and for what you have done I
thank you from my heart."
"It was very little," said my master. "Asticot, why do you not give
Mademoiselle your chair? Your manners are worse than those of Narcisse.
Mademoiselle, do me the pleasure of being seated."
She sat down, her feet apart, peasant fashion, her hands in her lap.
"If I had not lost the twenty francs he would not have died," she said
dejectedly.
"He would have died if you had brought him here in a carriage. He had
aneurism of the heart, the doctor says. He might have died any moment
the last ten years. How old was he?"
"Seventy, eighty, ninety--how should I know?"
"But he was your grandfather."
"Ah, no, indeed, Monsieur," she replied in a more animated manner. "He
was not a relative. My mother was poor and she sold me to him three
years ago."
"Why that is like me, Master!" I cried, vastly interested.
"My son," said he in English, "that is one of the things that must be
forgotten. And then, Mademoiselle?" he asked in French.
"Then he taught me to play the zither and to dance. I am sorry he is
dead. _Dame, oui, par exemple!_ But I do not weep for him as for a
grandfather. Oh, no!"
"And your mother?"
"She died last year. So I am all alone."
He asked her what she thought of doing for her livelihood. She shrugged
her shoulders with the resignation of her class.
"I can always earn my living. There are brasseries, cafés-concerts in
all the towns--I am fairly well known. They will give me an engagement.
_Il faut passer par là comme les autres._"
"You must go through it like the others?" repeated my master. "But you
are very young, my poor child."
"I am eighteen, Monsieur, I know I shall not make a fortune. I am not
pretty enough even when I paint, and my figure is heavy. That is what
Père Paragot used to complain of."
"What was his name?" asked my master, pricking up his ears.
"Berzélius Paragot--and he took the name of Nibbidard, which means 'no
luck'--so he loved to call himself Berzélius Nibbidard Paragot."
"Berzélius Nibbidard Paragot," mouthed my master joyously. "I would give
anything for a name like that!"
"It is yours if you like to take it," she said quite seriously. "No one
will want it any more."
"Little Asticot of my heart," said he, "what do you think of it?"
It struck me as a most aristocratically romantic appellation. I was used
to his aliases by this time. He had long ceased to call himself
"Pradel," and what was our surname for the moment I am now unable to
recollect.
"You look like 'Paragot,' Master," said I, and, in an inexplicable way,
he did--as I have before remarked. He called me a psychometrical genius
and enquired the name of the young lady.
"Amélie Duprat, Monsieur," she said. "But _pour le métier_--we must have
professional names for the cafés--Père Paragot called me 'Blanquette de
Veau.'"
"Delicious!" cried he.
"So everyone calls me Blanquette," she explained gravely. There was a
silence. Paragot--he really assumed the name from this moment--refilled
his pipe. The belated peasants, having finished their wine, clattered
out of the café, and took off their hats as they passed us.
"Life is very hard, is it not, Messieurs?" remarked Blanquette. It
seemed to be her favourite philosophic proposition. She sighed. "If Père
Paragot had only lived to play at the wedding tomorrow!"
"What then?"
"I should have had ten francs."
"Ah!" said my master.
"First I lose my louis, and now I lose my ten francs! ah! _Sainte Vierge
de Miséricorde!_"
It was heart-rending. Sometimes they received more than the stipulated
fee at these village weddings. They passed the hat round. If the guests
were mellow with good wine, which makes folks generous, they often
earned double the amount. And they always had as much as they liked to
eat, and could take away scraps in a handkerchief.
"And good wholesome nourishment, Monsieur. Once it was half a goose."
And now there was nothing, nothing. Blanquette did not believe in the
_bon Dieu_ any longer. She buried her face in her arms and wept. Paragot
smoked helplessly for a few moments. I, unused to women's tears, felt
the desolation of the race of Blanquette de Veau overspread me. But that
I considered it to be beneath my dignity as a man, I should have wept
too.
Suddenly Paragot brought his fist down on the table and started to his
feet. Blanquette lifted a scared wet face, dimly seen in the half light.
"_Tonnerre de Dieu!_" cried he, "If you hold so much to your ten francs
and half a goose, I myself will come with you to Chambéry tomorrow and
fiddle at the wedding."
"You, Monsieur?" she gasped.
"Yes, I. Why not? Do you think I can't scrape catgut as well as Père
Paragot?"
He walked to and fro declaring his musical powers in his boastful way.
If he chose he could rip out the hearts of a dead Municipal Council
with a violin, and could set a hospital for paralytics a-dancing. He
would have fiddled the children of Hamelin away from the Pied Piper.
Didn't Blanquette believe him?
"But yes, Monsieur," she said fervently.
"Ask Asticot."
My faith in him was absolute. To my mind he had even understated his
abilities. The experience of the disillusioning years has since caused
me to modify my opinions; but Paragot's boastfulness has not lessened
him in my eyes. And this leads to a curious reflection. When a Gascon
boasts, you love him for it; when a Prussian does it, your toes tingle
to kick him to Berlin. His very whimsical braggadocio made Paragot
adorable, and I am at a loss to think what he would have been without
it.
"Of course," said he, "if you are proud, if you don't want to be seen in
the company of a scarecrow like me, there is nothing more to be said."
Blanquette humbly repudiated the charge of pride. Her soul was set on
her ten francs and she didn't care how she got them. She accepted
Monsieur's generous offer out of a full heart.
"That's sense," said my master. "We shall rehearse at daybreak."