At the corner of a street, on the island which formed the first
nucleus round which gathered the great city of Paris, was a small
booth, protruding from a little, ill-favored house, some three or four
hundred yards from the church of Nôtre Dame. This booth consisted
merely of a coarse wooden shed, open in front, and only covered
overhead by rough, unsmoothed planks, while upon a rude table or
counter, running along the front, appeared a number of articles of
cutlery, knives, great rings, and other iron ware, comprising the
daggers worn, and often used in a sanguinary manner, by the lower
order of citizens; for, though the possessor of the stall was not a
regular armorer by profession, he did not think himself prohibited
from dealing in the weapons employed by his own class. Written in
white chalk upon a board over the booth were the words, "Simon, dit
Caboche, Maître Coutellier."
Behind the table on which his goods were displayed appeared the
personage to whom the above inscription referred: a man of some
forty-five or forty-six years of age, tall, brawny, and powerful, with
his huge arms bare up to the elbows, notwithstanding the severity of
the weather. His countenance was any thing but prepossessing, and yet
there was a certain commanding energy in the broad, square forehead
and massive under jaw, which spoke, truly enough, the character of the
man, and obtained for him considerable influence with people of his
own class. Yet he was exceedingly ugly; his cheek bones high and
prominent; his eyes small, fierce, and flashing, and his nose turned
up in the air, as if in contempt of every thing below it. His skin was
so begrimed with dirt, that its original color could with difficulty
be distinguished; but it was probably of that dark, saturnine brown,
which seldom looks completely clean; for his hair was of the stiff,
black, bristly nature which usually goes with that complexion.
Limping about in the shop beside him was a creature, which even
youth--usually so full of its own special charms--could not render
beautiful or graceful. Nature seemed to have stamped upon it, from its
birth, the most repulsive marks. It was a boy of some ten or twelve
years old, but still his eyes hardly reached above the table on which
the cutler's goods were displayed; but, by a peculiarity not uncommon,
the growth which should have been upright had, by some obstacle, been
forced to spread out laterally, and the shoulders, ribs, and hips were
as broad as those of a grown man. The back was humped, though not very
distinctly so; the legs were both short, but one was shorter than the
other; and one eye was defective, probably from his birth. So short,
so stout, so squared was the whole body, that it looked more like a
cube, with a large head and very short legs, than a human form; but,
though the gait was awkward and unsightly to the eyes, that little
creature was possessed of singular activity, and of very great
strength, notwithstanding his deformity.
It was a curious thing to see the father and the son standing
together: the one with his great, powerful, well-developed limbs, and
the other with his minute and apparently slender form. One could
hardly believe that the one was the offspring of the other. Yet so it
was. Maître Simon was the father of that deformed dwarf, whose
appearance would have been quite sufficient to draw the hooting boys
of Paris after him when he appeared in the streets, had not the vigor
and unmerciful severity of his father's arm kept even the little
vagabonds of the most turbulent city in the world in awe.
That which might seem most strange, though in reality it was not so at
all, was the doting fondness of the stern, powerful father for that
misshapen child. It seems a rule of Nature, that where she refuses to
any one the personal attractions which, often undeservedly, command
regard, she places in the bosom of some other kindred being that
strong affection which generously gives gratuitously the love for
which there seems so little claim.
The father and the son had obtained, first from the boys of the town,
and then from elder people, the nicknames of the big Caboche and the
little Caboche, and, with a good-humor very common in France, they had
themselves adopted these epithets without offense; so that the cutler
was constantly addressed by his companions merely as Caboche, and had
even placed that title over his door. During the hours when he tended
his shop, or was engaged in the manual labors of his trade, the boy
was almost always with him, limping round him, making observations
upon every thing, and enlivening his father's occupations by a sort of
pungent wit, perhaps a little smacking of buffoonery, which, if not a
gift, could be nowhere so well acquired as in the streets of Paris,
and in which the hard spirit of the cutler greatly delighted.
Nevertheless, the characters of the father and the son were not less
strongly in contrast than their corporeal frames. Notwithstanding an
occasional moroseness and acerbity, perhaps engendered by a sad
comparison of his own physical powers with those of others of his age,
there was in the boy's nature a fund of kindly sympathies and gentle
affections, which characterized his actions more than his words: and
as we all love contrasts, the secret of his father's strong affection
for him might be, in part, the opposition between their several
dispositions.
It was about three o'clock in the day, the hour when Parisians are
most abroad; but the cold kept many within doors, and but one person
had stopped at the booth to buy.
"Trade is ruined," said big Caboche, in a grumbling tone. "No business
is doing. The king's sickness and his brother's influence have utterly
destroyed the trade of the city. Armorers, and embroiderers, and
dealers in idle goldsmiths' work, may make a living; but no one else
can gain his bread. There has not been a single soul in the shop this
morning, except an old woman who wanted an ax to cut her meat, because
it was frozen."
"My father," replied the boy, "it was not the king nor the Duke of
Orleans that made the Seine freeze, or pinched old Joaquim's nose, or
burned old Jeannette's flannel coat, or kept any of the folks in who
would have been out if it had not been so cold. Don't you see there is
nobody in the street but those who have only one coat, and that a thin
one. They come out because the frosty sunshine is better than no shine
at all; and, though they keep their hands in their pockets, they won't
draw them out, because you won't let them have goods without money,
and they have not money to buy goods. But here comes Cousin Martin, as
fine as a popinjay. It must have snowed feathers, I think, to have
clothed his back so gayly."
"Ah, the scapegrace!" exclaimed Caboche "I should think that he had
just been plundering some empty-headed master, if my pot had not
reason to know that he has had no master to plunder for these last
three months. Well, Master Never-do-well, what brings you here in such
smart plumes? Violet and yellow, with a silver lace, upon my life! If
you are so fully fledged, methinks you can pick up your own grain
without coming to mine."
"And so I can, and so I will, uncle," replied our friend Martin
Grille, pausing at the entrance of the booth to look at himself from
head to foot, in evident admiration of his own appearance. "Did you
ever see any thing fit better? Upon my life, it is a perfect marvel
that any man should ever have been made so perfectly like me as to
have worn these clothes before, without the slightest alteration!
Nobody would believe it."
"Nobody will believe they are your own, Cousin Martin," said the
deformed boy, with a grin.
"But they are my own, Petit Jean," answered Martin Grille, with a very
grand air; "for I have bought them, and paid for them; and though they
may have been stolen, for aught I know, before I had them, I had no
hand in the stealing, _foi de valet_."
"Ah," said Caboche, dryly, "men always gave you credit for more
ingenuity than you possess, and they will in this instance also. I
always said you were a good-humored, foolish, hair-brained lad,
without wit enough to take a bird's nest or bamboozle a goose; but
people would not believe me, even when you were clad in hodden gray.
What will they think now, when you dance about in silk and
broadcloth?"
"Why they'll think, good uncle, that I have all the wit they imagined,
and all the honesty you knew me to have. But I'll tell you all about
it, that my own relations, at least, may have cause to glorify
themselves."
"Get you gone--get you gone," cried the cutler, in a rough, but not
ill-humored tone. "I don't want to know how you got the clothes."
"Tell me, Martin, tell me," said the boy; "I should like to hear, of
all things. Perhaps I may get some in the same way, some day."
"Mayhap," answered Martin Grille, seating himself on a bench, and
kindly putting his arm round the deformed boy's neck. "Well, you must
know, Petit Jean, that there is a certain Signor Lomelini, who is
maître d'hôtel to his highness the Duke of Orleans--"
"Big Caboche growled out a curse between his teeth; for while
pretending to occupy himself with other things, he was listening to
the tale all the time, and the Duke of Orleans was with him an object
of that strange, fanciful, prejudiced hatred, which men of inferior
station very often conceive, without the slightest cause, against
persons placed above them.
"Well, this Signor Lomelini--"
"There, there," cried Caboche; "we know all about that long ago. How
his mule put its foot into a hole in the street, and tumbled him head
over heels into the gutter, and you picked him out, and scraped, and
wiped him, and took him back clean and sound, though desperately
frightened, and a little bruised. We recollect all about that, and
what gay day-dreams you built up, and thought your fortune made. Has
he recollected you at last, and given you a cast off suit of clothes?
He has been somewhat tardy in his gratitude, and niggardly, too."
"All wrong, uncle mine, all wrong!" replied Martin Grille, laughing.
"There has been hardly a day on which I have not seen him since, and
when I hav'n't dined with you, I have dined at the Hôtel d'Orleans. He
found out what you never found out: that I was dexterous, serviceable,
and discreet, and many has been the little job which required dispatch
and secrecy which I have done for him."
"Ay, dirty work, I trow," growled Caboche; but Martin Grille proceeded
with his tale, without heeding his uncle's accustomed interruptions.
"Well, Signor Lomelini always promised," he said, "to get me rated on
the duke's household. There was a prospect for a penniless lad, Petit
Jean!"
"As well get you posted in the devil's kitchen," said Caboche, "and
make you Satan's turnspit."
"But are you placed--but are you placed?" cried the deformed boy,
eagerly.
"You shall hear all in good time," answered Martin Grille. "He
promised, as I have said, to get me rated as soon as there was any
vacancy; but the devil seemed in all the people. Not one of them would
die, except old Angelo, the squire of the stirrup, and Monsieur De
Gray, the duke's secretary. But those places were far too high for
me."
"I see not why they should be," answered the deformed boy, "except
that the squire is expected to fight at his lord's side, and the
secretary to write for him; and I fancy, Cousin Martin, thou wouldst
make as bad a hand at the one as the other."
"Ha, ha, ha!" shouted Caboche; "he hit thee there, Martin."
"On my life! I don't know," answered Martin Grille; "for I never tried
either. However, yesterday afternoon the signor sent for me, and told
me that the duke had got a new secretary--quite a young man, who knew
very little of life, less of Paris, and nothing of a court: that this
young gentleman had got no servant, and wanted one; that he had
recommended me, and that I should be taken if I could recommend
myself. I went to him in the gray of the evening, to set off my
apparel the better, but I found the youth not quite so pastoral as I
expected, and he began to ask me questions. Questions are very
troublesome things, and answers still more so; so I made mine as short
as possible."
"And he engaged you," cried the boy, eagerly.
"On my life! I can hardly say that," replied Martin Grille. "But the
Duke of Orleans himself just happened to come in at the nick of time,
when I was beginning to get a little puzzled. So I thought it best to
take it for granted I was engaged; and making my way as fast as
possible out of the august presence of my master, and my master's
master, I went away to Signor Lomelini and told him I was hired, all
through his influence. So, then, he patted me on the shoulder, and
called me a brave lad. He told me, moreover, to get myself put in
decent costume, and wait upon the young gentleman early the next
morning."
"Ay, that's the question," cried Caboche; "where did you get the
clothes? Did you steal them from your new master the first day; for
you will not say that Lomelini gave them to you. If so, men have
belied him."
"No," said Martin, in an exceedingly doubtful tone, "no--I can't say
he exhibits his money. What his own coin is made of, I can not tell. I
never saw any of it that I know of. He pays out of other men's pockets
though, and he has been as good as his word with me."
"How so?" asked the cutler.
"Why, you must know," answered Martin, with an important air, "that
every servant in the duke's house is rated on the duke's household.
Each gentleman, down to the very pages, has one or more valets, and
they are all on the household-book. To prevent excess, however, and
with a paternal solicitude to keep them out of debt, the maître
d'hôtel takes upon himself the task of paying all the valets, sending
in to the treasurer a regular account against each master every month,
to be deducted from that master's salary; and, as it is the custom to
give earnest to a valet when he is engaged, I persuaded the signor to
advance me a sufficient number of crowns to carry me on silver wings
to a frippery shop."
"Where you spent the last penny, Cousin Martin," said the deformed
boy, with a sly smile.
"No, I did not, Petit Jean," replied Martin Grille; "for I brought one
whole crown to you. There, my boy; you are a good lad, and I love you
dearly, though you do break your sharp wit across my hard head
sometimes--take it, take it!"
The boy looked as if he would very much like to have the crown, but
still put it away from him, with fingers itching as much to clutch it
as Cæsar's on the Lupercal.
"Take it," repeated Martin Grille. "I owe your father much more than
that."
"You owe me nothing," answered Caboche, quickly; and then added in a
softened tone, as he saw how eagerly the boy looked at the piece of
money: "you may take it, my son. That will show Martin that I really
think he owes me nothing. What I have given him was given for blood
relationship, and what he gives you is given in the same way."
The boy took it, exclaiming, "Thank you, Martin--thank you. Now I will
buy me a viol of my own; for neighbor Pierrot says I spoil his, just
because I make it give out sounds that he can not."
"Ay, thou had'st always a hankering after music," said Martin Grille.
"Be diligent, be diligent. Petit Jean, and play me a fine tune on your
fiddle at my return; for we are all away to-morrow morning by the crow
of the cock."
"Where to?" exclaimed Caboche, eagerly. "More wrangling toward, I
warrant. Some day I shall have to put on the salad and corselet
myself, for this strife is ruining France; and if the Duke of Orleans
will not let his noble cousin of Burgundy save the country, all good
men must join to force him."
"Ay, ay, uncle. You always take a leap in the dark when the Duke of
Orleans' name is mentioned. There's no wrangling, there's no
quarreling, there's no strife. All is peace and good-will between the
two dukes; and this is no patched up business, but a regular treaty,
which will last till you are in your grave, and Petit Jean is an old
man. We shall see bright days yet, for all that's come and gone. But
the truth is, the duke is ill, and this business being happily
settled, he goes off for his Castle of Beauté to-morrow, to have a
little peace and quiet."
"Ill! what makes him ill?" asked the cutler. "If he had to work from
morning till night to get a few sous, or to stand here in this cold
shop all day long, with nobody coming in to buy, he'd have a right to
be ill. But he has every thing he wants, and more than he ought to
have. What makes him ill?"
"Ah, that I can't say," answered Martin Grille. "There has something
gone wrong in the household, and he has been very sad; but great men's
servants may use their eyes, but must hold their tongues. God mend us
all."
"Much need of it," answered Caboche, "and him first. Well, I would
rather be a rag-picker out of the gutter than one of your discreet,
see-every thing, say-nothing serving-men--your curriers of favor, your
silent, secret depositories of other men's wickedness. What I see I
must speak, and what I think, too. It is the basest part of pimping,
to stand by and say nothing. Out upon such a trade."
"Well, uncle, every one loves his own best," answered Martin Grille.
"I, for instance, would not make knives for people to cut each other's
throats with. But for my part, I think the best plan is for each man
to mind his own business, and not to care for what other people do. I
have no more business with my master's secrets than with his purse,
and if he trusts either the one or the other with me, my duty is to
keep them safely."
By his tone, Martin Grille seemed a little nettled; but the rough
cutler only laughed at him, saying, "Mind, you do that, nephew of
mine, and you will be the very prince of valets. I never knew one who
would not finger the purse, or betray a secret, if occasion served;
but thou art a ph[oe]nix in thy way, so God speed thee and keep thee
honest."
"I say amen," answered Martin Grille, turning to leave the booth; "I
only came to wish you both good-by; for when a man once sets out from
Paris there is no knowing when he may return again."
"Oh, he is certain to come back some time," replied the cutler. "Paris
is the centre of all the world, and every thing is drawn toward it by
a force not to be resisted. So fare you well, my good nephew, and let
us see you when you come back."
Martin promised to come and visit the cutler and his son as soon as he
returned, and then sauntered away, feeling himself as fine in his new
clothes as a school-boy in a holiday suit.
The cutler resumed his avocations again; but could not forbear some
grumbling observations upon valets and valetry, which perhaps he might
have spared, had he understood his nephew's character rightly. About
quarter of an hour, however, after the young man had left the shop, a
letter, neatly tied and sealed, was brought by a young boy, apparently
one of the choristers of some great church or cathedral. It was
addressed "To Martin Grille;" and, whatever might be his curiosity,
Caboche did not venture to open it, but sent the lad on to the palace
of the Duke of Orleans, telling him he would find his nephew there.