"I have it not."
"Well, but where is it? I am not a man to be trifled with. Come,
quick, or I must ask the gendarmes yonder for a bit of help."
Francois looked at him. There was menace in those cold gray eyes.
Should he trust to his own long legs? At this instant he heard a sob,
and glancing to the right, saw the woman seated on the bench with her
face in her hands, the little fellow at her side saying: "Do not cry,
mama; the gentleman will help us." The gentleman was ill clothed and
seedy. He had seen women cry, but they were not like this woman.
"M. le Marquis does me injustice. Permit that my dog and I search a
little."
The marquis smiled again. "_Pardieu!_ and if you search, and meanwhile
take a fancy to run, your legs are long; but now I have you. How the
deuce can I trust a thief?"
The little lad looked up. "I will go with monsieur to look--and the
dog; we will find it, mama."
"Monsieur may trust me; I will not run away," said Francois. "If
monsieur desires to search me?"
"I do not search thieves."
Francois looked at this strangely quiet gentleman with the large,
light-gray, unpleasant eyes, and then at the woman.
"Come, Toto; we must take a look."
The marquis stood still, quietly watching thief, dog, and boy.
"Renee," he said, "don't make a fool of yourself."
Then from a distance the boy cried, "We found it, mama!" and ran to meet
her.
The marquis took it as Francois rejoined the group.
"Ah, Master Thief, you are clever; but it is a little wet, this trifle,
and warm too. The dog had it all the while in his mouth. He is well
taught. Why the deuce did you give it up?"
The boy began to understand this small drama. He had the courage of his
breed, and the training.
"Did you dare to steal my mama's picture?"
"Yes; when she let it fall."
"I know now why you were glad to give it back. It was because she
cried."
"Yes; it was because she cried."
"Venire St. Gris!" exclaimed the marquis, who was pleased to swear like
Henry of Navarre. "You are a poor devil for a thief. You have
temptations to be good. I never have them myself. I thank Heaven I
have reasonably well used my opportunities to be agreeably wicked."
"Father!" said the young woman, reproachfully; and then to Francois: "If
you are a thief, still I thank you; I cannot tell you how much I thank
you."
"And how many louis do you expect, most magnanimous of thieves?" said
the marquis.
The woman looked up again. "Come to me to-morrow; I will find a way to
help you."
Something of yearning, some sense of a void, some complexity of novel
distress, arose in the thief's mind.
"_Mon Dieu!_ madame," he said, turning toward her, without replying to
the marquis, "you are a saint. I--I will think. I am not fit for such
as you to talk to."
"Quite true," said the marquis. "Hast thou thy purse, Renee? I forgot
mine."
"No, no," she said. "Come and see us--Rue des Petits-Augustines--a
great house with a gilded gate. You will come? I will say they are to
let you in. Promise me that you will come."
"And bring that poodle," added the marquis; "I will buy him."
Francois laughed outright--that merry laugh which half Paris had learned
to like, till Paris tired of it and of its owner.
"Monsieur will pardon me. I cannot sell my only friend. Good day."
And he walked away, the boy crying after him: "You will come? Oh, you
must come, because my mama says so."
The marquis muttered: "_Animal_! If I had your carcass--no, if I had
had you awhile ago in Normandy, your manners would have been bettered.
But now the world is upside down. He will come, Renee. If thou art quit
of him for two hundred francs and a few lost spoons, thou mayest rest
thankful."
Francois moved moodily away. Something was wrong in his world; an angel
coming into his crude life would not have disturbed him as this lady's
few kind words had done, and yet he had left her unanswered. He knew he
had been a fool, but knew not why. He had, too, a notion that he and
this marquis would meet again, but for this he was not eager. He
recalled the palm-reading. Had the woman been alone, he would probably
have said a glad "Yes"; but now his inclinations to obey her were sadly
diluted by feelings which he did not analyze, or perhaps could not have
analyzed. He did not accept the hand thus stretched out to save him,
but for many a day her tender eagerness and the pleading face which had
so attracted him came before him at times with a look of reproach. Is
it strange that this glimpse of a nobler nature and a better life than
his own should have had an influence on this man quite the reverse of
that which its good will sought to effect? He cannot be said to have
been refined, but he had in him tastes which are the germs of
refinement, and which, when I knew him, had no doubt produced results.
Probably he was in 1791 a coarser person, but he must always have been a
man who could be forced by circumstances to think.
It may have been that the sense of a great gulf between him and a world
he was by nature inclined to like caused one of those rare spells of
despair to which the gay and over-sanguine are liable. Of course he had
seen and for brief seasons shared the profligacy of the Cite,--his
memoirs confess this with absolute frankness,--but these gross lapses
had been rare and brief. Now he plunged headlong into the worst
vileness of the most dissolute quarter, where few lived who were not
saturated with crime. I have no desire to dwell on this part of his
life. A month passed away, and he was beginning to suffer in health.
This amazed him. He had not hitherto known a pang save that of hunger.
He began to drink _eau-de-vie_ to relieve his sense of impaired
strength, and being off his guard and under the influence of the
temporary mood of rashness which drink is apt to cause, he twice
narrowly escaped arrest.
Under the vivid impression thus created he was wandering homeward late
at night to some low resort in the Cite, when in the Rue aux Feves he
heard a cry in front of him. The moon was bright, and he saw a man set
upon by two fellows. The person assailed was staggering from the blow
of a club, and fell with the cry which the thief heard. Both bandits
threw themselves upon him, and, as he unwisely struggled, Francois saw
the glitter of a knife. Clearly this was no easy prey. As the three
tumbled over in the mud of the street there was small chance for a
decisive use of the blade. Francois, as I have said, had been always
free from crimes of violence, but this affair was none of his business,
and had his pocket been full he might have left the ruffians and their
prey unmolested. His purse, however, was down to the last sou, and here
was a chance.
He called, "Catch them, Toto!" and, leaping forward, seized one of the
men by the throat and threw him on his back. The poodle took a good nip
of the other rascal's leg, and when the man broke away and, stumbling,
ran, pursued him until recalled by Francois's whistle. Meanwhile the
assaulted man sat up, a bit dazed. The other fellow--it was he of the
knife--was on his feet again, and at once turned furiously on the
rescuer. Francois darted to one side, and, catching him by the neck,
throttled him savagely. His great length of arm made it impossible for
the scamp, who was short and strong, to reach any vital organ. But he
stabbed Francois's shoulder over and over. Francois's grip on the throat
was weakening, when the victim, now on his feet, struck the man under
the ear, and thus knocked him clean out of Francois's failing grip. He
fell headlong, but was up and away in a moment, while a crowd began to
collect.
"Hi! it is Francois!" some one cried.
"Quick!" said the thief. "Room there! Let us get out of this."
Seizing the man he had saved, he hustled his way through the crowd and
hurried him toward the bridge. In a few minutes they were standing
alone by the river, amid the tombs back of Notre Dame. Then the man
spoke:
"By Heaven! thou hast saved my life. Hallo! thou art bleeding. Here!"
and he tied a handkerchief about his shoulder. "We shall be in luck to
find a chaise. Wait!" and he ran away.
Francois's head was dizzy. He sat on a tombstone, well sobered now, but
bleeding freely. It was long before he heard a horse; and when in the
chaise, where Toto promptly followed him, he fell back, and knew little
more until they stopped in the Rue St. Honore. Here his new
acquaintance got out, and soon returned with a glass of _eau-de-vie_.
With this aid, and the arm of his host, Francois was able to reach a
large room in the second story. He fell on a couch, and lay still while
the other man ran out to find a surgeon.
On his arrival, Francois was put to bed in an adjoining room, and for
two weeks of care and good diet had leave to meditate on the changeful
chances of this wretched world. For a while he was too weak to indulge
his customary keenness of curiosity. His host, M. Achille Gamel, paid
him brief visits, and was singularly unwilling to talk one day, and the
next sufficiently so for the patient to learn that he had been in the
army as a _maitre d'armes_, and was now, in his own opinion, the best
fencing-master in France. Through the partitions could be heard the
click, click of the foils, and now and then the crack of pistols. After
a fortnight Francois's wounds were fairly healed, and he began to get
back his rosy complexion and his unfailing curiosity.
One pleasant evening in June, Gamel appeared as usual. It was one of
his days of abrupt speech.
"Art well?"
"Yes."
"Thou art soon mended."
"Yes." His brevity begot a like form of answer, and Francois was now
somewhat on his guard.
"I pay my debts."
"That is true."
"Now thou art well, what wilt thou do?"
"I--I--I shall go away."
"Why didst thou help me?"
"My pocket and paunch were empty. It seemed a chance."
"Thy two reasons are good. Who art thou?"
"Who is every one in the Cite? A thief."
"_Diable!_ but thou art honest--in speech at least."
"Yes, sometimes. I was a conjurer too--for a while."
"Yes, yes, I remember now. Thou art the fellow with a laugh. I see not
yet why thou hast helped me. Thou mightest easier have helped the
rascals and shared their gains."
Francois began to be interested, and laughed a laugh which was the most
honest of his possessions.
"I dislike clumsiness in my profession," he said. "Why should the
brutality of war be brought into a peaceful occupation?" He was half in
earnest, half in jest.
"That is a third reason, and a good one." It was difficult to surprise
Gamel. "Suppose we talk business," he added.
"Mine or thine?"
"Mine. A moment, Citizen Francois--permit me. Pray stand up a moment."
Francois rose as the fencing-master produced a tape-measure. "Permit
me," and with no more words he set one end of the tape on Francois's
shoulder and carried the length of it to his finger-tips.
Francois stood still, wondering what it all meant.
"The deuce!" said Gamel, slowly rolling up the measuring-tape.
"Well, what is it? What is wrong?"
"Wrong? Nothing. It is astonishing!"
"What?"
"This arm of thine."
"Why?"
"It is one and a half inches longer than mine."
"Well?"
"A gift! To have the longest arm in Paris! _Mon Dieu!_"
"What of that?"
"A fortune! Phenomenal! Superb! And a chest--and muscles! By
Hercules, they are as hard as horn!"
"Well?"
"_Diable_! Thou art dull for a thief."