HISTORY OF LA GOUALEUSE.
"Let us begin at the beginning," said the Chourineur.
"Yes; your parents?" added Rodolph.
"I never knew them," said Fleur-de-Marie.
"The deuce!" said the Chourineur. "Well, that is odd, Goualeuse! you and
I are of the same family."
"What! you, too, Chourineur?"
"An orphan of the streets of Paris like you, my girl."
"Then who brought you up, Goualeuse?" asked Rodolph.
"I don't know, sir. As far back as I can remember--I was, I think, about
six or seven years old--I was with an old one-eyed woman, whom they call
the Chouette,[6] because she had a hooked nose, a green eye quite round,
and was like an owl with one eye out."
[6] The Screech-owl.
"Ha! ha! ha! I think I see her, the old night-bird!" shouted the
Chourineur, laughing.
"The one-eyed woman," resumed Fleur-de-Marie, "made me sell barley-sugar
in the evenings on the Pont Neuf; but that was only an excuse for asking
charity; and when I did not bring her in at least ten sous, the Chouette
beat me instead of giving me any supper."
"Are you sure the woman was not your mother?" inquired Rodolph.
"Quite sure; for she often scolded me for being fatherless and
motherless, and said she picked me up one day in the street."
"So," said the Chourineur, "you had a dance instead of a meal, if you
did not pick up ten sous?"
"Yes. And after that I went to lie down on some straw spread on the
ground; when I was cold--very cold."
"I do not doubt it, for the feather of beans (straw) is a very cold sort
of stuff," said the Chourineur. "A dung-heap is twice as good; but then
people don't like your smell, and say, 'Oh, the blackguard! where has he
been?'"
This remark made Rodolph smile, whilst Fleur-de-Marie thus continued:
"Next day the one-eyed woman gave me a similar allowance for breakfast
as for supper, and sent me to Montfauçon to get some worms to bait for
fish; for in the daytime the Chouette kept her stall for selling
fishing-lines, near the bridge of Notre Dame. For a child of seven years
of age, who is half dead with hunger and cold, it is a long way from the
Rue de la Mortellerie to Montfauçon."
"But exercise has made you grow as straight as an arrow, my girl; you
have no reason to complain of that," said the Chourineur, striking a
light for his pipe.
"Well," said the Goualeuse, "I returned very, very tired; then, at noon,
the Chouette gave me a little bit of bread."
"Ah, eating so little has kept your figure as fine as a needle, girl;
you must not find fault with that," said Chourineur, puffing out a cloud
of tobacco-smoke. "But what ails you, comrade--I mean, Master Rodolph?
You seem quite down like; are you sorry for the girl and her miseries?
Ah, we all have, and have had, our miseries!"
"Yes, but not such miseries as mine, Chourineur," said Fleur-de-Marie.
"What! not I, Goualeuse? Why, my lass, you were a queen to me! At least,
when you were little you slept on straw and ate bread; I passed my most
comfortable nights in the lime-kilns at Clichy, like a regular vagabond;
I fed on cabbage-stumps and other refuse vegetables, which I picked up
when and where I could; but very often, as it was so far to the
lime-kilns at Clichy, and I was tired after my work, I slept under the
large stones at the Louvre; and then, in winter, I had white
sheets,--that is, whenever the snow fell."
"A man is stronger; but a poor little girl--" said Fleur-de-Marie. "And
yet, with all that, I was as plump as a skylark."
"What! you remember that, eh?"
"To be sure I do. When the Chouette beat me I fell always at the first
blow; then she stamped upon me, screaming out, 'Ah, the nasty little
brute! she hasn't a farden's worth of strength,--she can't stand even
two thumps!' And then she called me Pegriotte (little thief). I never
had any other name,--that was my baptismal name."
"Like me. I had the baptism of a dog in a ditch, and they called me
'Fellow,' or 'You, sir,' or 'Albino.' It is really surprising, my wench,
how much we resemble each other!" said the Chourineur.
"That's true,--in our misery," said Fleur-de-Marie, who addressed
herself to the Chourineur almost always, feeling, in spite of herself, a
sort of shame at the presence of Rodolph, hardly venturing to raise her
eyes to him, although in appearance he belonged to that class with whom
she ordinarily lived.
"And when you had fetched the worms for the Chouette, what did you do?"
inquired the Chourineur.
"Why, she made me beg until night; then, in the evening, she went to
sell fried fish on the Pont Neuf. Oh, dear! at that time it was a long
while to wait for my morsel of bread; and if I dared to ask the Chouette
for something to eat, she beat me and said, 'Get ten sous, and then you
shall have your supper.' Then I, being very hungry, and as she hurt me
very much, cried with a very full heart and sore body. The Chouette tied
my little basket of barley-sugar round my neck, and stationed me on the
Pont Neuf, where, in winter, I was frozen to death. Yet sometimes, in
spite of myself, I slept as I stood,--but not long; for the Chouette
kicked me until I awoke. I remained on the bridge till eleven o'clock,
my stock of barley-sugar hanging round my neck, and often crying
heartily. The passengers, touched by my tears, sometimes gave me a sou;
and then I gained ten and sometimes fifteen sous, which I gave to the
Chouette, who searched me all over, and even looked in my mouth, to see
if I had kept back anything."
"Well, fifteen sous was a good haul for a little bird like you."
"It was. And then the one-eyed woman seeing that--"
"With her one eye?" said the Chourineur, laughing.
"Of course, because she had but one. Well, then, she finding that when I
cried I got most money, always beat me severely before she put me on the
bridge."
"Brutal, but cunning."
"Well, at last I got hardened to blows; and as the Chouette got in a
passion when I did not cry, why I, to be revenged upon her, the more she
thumped me the more I laughed, although the tears came into my eyes with
the pain."
"But, poor Goualeuse, did not the sticks of barley-sugar make you long
for them?"
"Ah, yes, Chourineur; but I never tasted them. It was my ambition, and
my ambition ruined me. One day, returning from Montfauçon, some little
boys beat me and stole my basket. I came back, well knowing what was in
store for me; and I had a shower of thumps and no bread. In the evening,
before going to the bridge, the Chouette, savage because I had not
brought in anything the evening before, instead of beating me as usual
to make me cry, made me bleed by pulling my hair from the sides of the
temples, where it is most tender."
"_Tonnerre!_ that was coming it too strong," said the bandit, striking
his fist heavily on the table, and frowning sternly. "To beat a child is
no such great thing, but to ill-use one so--Heaven and earth!"
Rodolph had listened attentively to the recital of Fleur-de-Marie, and
now looked at the Chourineur with astonishment: the display of such
feeling quite surprised him.
"What ails you, Chourineur?" he inquired.
"What ails me? Ails me? Why, have you no feeling? That devil's dam of a
Chouette who so brutally used this girl! Are you as hard as your own
fists?"
"Go on, my girl," said Rodolph to Fleur-de-Marie, without appearing to
notice the Chourineur's appeal.
"I have told you how the Chouette ill-used me to make me cry. I was then
sent on to the bridge with my barley-sugar. The one-eyed was at her
usual spot, and from time to time shook her doubled fist at me. However,
as I had not broken my fast since the night before, and as I was very
hungry, at the risk of putting the Chouette in a passion, I took a piece
of barley-sugar, and began to eat it."
"Well done, girl!"
"I ate another piece--"
"Bravo! go it, my hearties!"
"I found it so good, not from daintiness, but real hunger. But then a
woman, who sold oranges, cried out to the one-eyed woman, 'Look ye
there, Chouette; Pegriotte is eating the barley-sugar!'"
"Oh, thunder and lightning!" said the Chourineur; "that would enrage
her,--make her in a passion! Poor little mouse, what a fright you were
in when the Chouette saw you!--eh?"
"How did you get out of that affair, poor Goualeuse?" asked Rodolph,
with as much interest as the Chourineur.
"Why, it was a serious matter to me,--but that was afterwards; for the
Chouette, although boiling over with rage at seeing me devour the
barley-sugar, could not leave her stove, for the fish was frying."
"Ha! ha! ha! True, true,--that was a difficult position for her," said
the Chourineur, laughing heartily.
"At a distance, the Chouette threatened me with her long iron fork; but
when her fish was cooked, she came towards me. I had only collected
three sous, and I had eaten six sous' worth. She did not say a word, but
took me by the hand and dragged me away with her. At this moment, I do
not know how it was that I did not die on the spot with fright. I
remember it as well as if it was this very moment,--it was very near to
New Year's day, and there were a great many shops on the Pont Neuf, all
filled with toys, and I had been looking at them all the evening with
the greatest delight,--beautiful dolls, little furnished houses,--you
know how very amusing such things are for a child."
"You had never had any playthings, had you, Goualeuse?" asked the
Chourineur.
"I? _Mon Dieu!_ who was there to give me any playthings?" said the girl,
in a sad tone. "Well, the evening passed. Although it was in the depth
of winter, I only had on a little cotton gown, no stockings, no shift,
and with wooden shoes on my feet: that was not enough to stifle me with
heat, was it? Well, when the old woman took my hand, I burst out into a
perspiration from head to foot. What frightened me most was, that,
instead of swearing and storming as usual, she only kept on grumbling
between her teeth. She never let go my hand, but made me walk so
fast--so very fast--that I was obliged to run to keep up with her, and
in running I had lost one of my wooden shoes; and as I did not dare to
say so, I followed her with one foot naked on the bare stones. When we
reached home it was covered with blood."
"A one-eyed old devil's kin!" said the Chourineur, again thumping the
table in his anger. "It makes my heart quite cold to think of the poor
little thing trotting along beside that cursed old brute, with her poor
little foot all bloody!"
"We lived in a garret in the Rue de la Montellerie; beside the entrance
to our alley there was a dram-shop, and there the Chouette went in,
still dragging me by the hand. She then had a half pint of brandy at the
bar."
"The deuce! Why, I could not drink that without being quite fuddled!"
"It was her usual quantity; perhaps that was the reason why she beat me
of an evening. Well, at last we got up into our cock-loft; the Chouette
double-locked the door; I threw myself on my knees, and asked her pardon
for having eaten the barley-sugar. She did not answer me, but I heard
her mumbling to herself, as she walked about the room, 'What shall I do
this evening to this little thief, who has eaten all that barley-sugar?
Ah, I see!' And she looked at me maliciously with her one green eye. I
was still on my knees, when she suddenly went to a shelf and took down a
pair of pincers."
"Pincers!" exclaimed the Chourineur.
"Yes, pincers."
"What for?"
"To strike you?" inquired Rodolph.
"To pinch you?" said the Chourineur.
"No, no," answered the poor girl, trembling at the very recollection.
"To pull out your hair?"
"No; to take out one of my teeth."
The Chourineur uttered a blasphemous oath, accompanied with such furious
imprecations that all the guests in the _tapis-franc_ looked at him with
astonishment.
"Why, what is the matter with you?" asked Rodolph.
"The matter! the matter! I'll skin her alive, that infernal old hag, if
I can catch her! Where is she? Tell me, where is she? Let me find her,
and I'll throttle the old--"
"And did she really take out your tooth, my poor child,--that wretched
monster in woman's shape?" demanded Rodolph, whilst the Chourineur was
venting his rage in a volley of the most violent reproaches.
"Yes, sir; but not at the first pull. How I suffered! She held me with
my head between her knees, where she held it as if in a vice. Then, half
with her pincers, half with her fingers, she pulled out my tooth, and
then said, 'Now I will pull out one every day, Pegriotte; and when you
have not a tooth left I will throw you into the river, and the fish
shall eat you.'"
"The old devil! To break and pull out a poor child's teeth in that way!"
exclaimed the Chourineur, with redoubled fury.
"And how did you escape her then?" inquired Rodolph of the Goualeuse.
"Next day, instead of going to Montfauçon, I went on the side of the
Champs Elysées, so frightened was I of being drowned by the Chouette. I
would have run to the end of the world, rather than be again in the
Chouette's hands. After walking and walking, I fairly lost myself; I had
not begged a farthing, and the more I thought the more frightened did I
become. At night I hid myself in a timber-yard, under some piles of
wood. As I was very little, I was able to creep under an old door and
hide myself amongst a heap of logs. I was so hungry that I tried to gnaw
a piece of the bark, but I could not bite it,--it was too hard. At
length I fell asleep. In the morning, hearing a noise, I hid myself
still further back in the wood-pile. It was tolerably warm, and, if I
had had something to eat, I could not have been better off for the
winter."
"Like me in the lime-kiln."
"I did not dare to quit the timber-yard, for I fancied that the Chouette
would seek for me everywhere, to pull out my teeth and drown me, and
that she would be sure to catch me if I stirred from where I was."
"Stay, do not mention that old beast's name again,--it makes the blood
come into my eyes! The fact is, that you have known misery,--bitter,
bitter misery. Poor little mite! how sorry I am that I threatened to
beat you just now, and frightened you. As I am a man, I did not mean to
do it."
"Why, would you not have beaten me? I have no one to defend me."
"That's the very reason, because you are not like the others,--because
you have no one to take your part,--that I would not have beaten you.
When I say no one, I do not mean our comrade Rodolph; but his coming was
a chance, and he certainly did give me my full allowance when we met."
"Go on, my child," said Rodolph. "How did you get away from the
timber-yard?"
"Next day, about noon, I heard a great dog barking under the wood-pile.
I listened, and the bark came nearer and nearer; then a deep voice
exclaimed, 'My dog barks,--somebody is hid in the yard!' 'They are
thieves,' said another voice; and the men then began to encourage the
dog, and cry, 'Find 'em! find 'em, lad!' The dog ran to me, and, for
fear of being bitten, I began to cry out with all my might and main.
'Hark!' said one of them; 'I hear the cry of a child.' They called back
the dog; I came out from the pile of wood, and saw a gentleman and a man
in a blouse. 'Ah, you little thief! what are you doing in my
timber-yard?' said the gentleman, in a cross tone. I put my hands
together and said, 'Don't hurt me, pray. I have had nothing to eat for
two days, and I've run away from the Chouette, who pulled out my tooth,
and said she would throw me over to the fishes. Not knowing where to
sleep, I was passing before your door, and I slept for the night
amongst these logs, under this heap, not thinking I hurt anybody.'
"'I'm not to be gammoned by you, you little hussy! You came to steal my
logs. Go and call the watch,' said the timber-merchant to his man."
"Ah, the old vagabond! The old reprobate! Call the watch! Why didn't he
send for the artillery?" said the Chourineur. "Steal his logs, and you
only eight years old! What an old ass!"
"'Not true, sir,' his man replied. 'Steal your logs, master! How can she
do that? She is not so big as the smallest piece!' 'You are right,'
replied the timber-merchant; 'but if she does not come for herself, she
does for others. Thieves have a parcel of children, whom they send to
pry about and hide themselves to open the doors of houses. She must be
taken to the commissary, and mind she does not escape.'"
"Upon my life, this timber-merchant was more of a log than any log in
his own yard," said the Chourineur.
"I was taken to the commissary," resumed Goualeuse. "I accused myself of
being a wanderer, and they sent me to prison. I was sent before the
Tribunal, and sentenced, as a rogue and vagabond, to remain until I was
sixteen years of age in a house of correction. I thank the judges much
for their kindness; for in prison I had food, I was not beaten, and it
was a paradise after the cock-loft of the Chouette. Then, in prison I
learned to sew; but, sad to say, I was idle: I preferred singing to
work, and particularly when I saw the sun shine. Ah, when the sun shone
on the walls of the prison I could not help singing; and then, when I
could sing, I seemed no longer to be a prisoner. It was after I began to
sing so much that they called me Goualeuse, instead of Pegriotte. Well,
when I was sixteen, I left the gaol. At the door, I found the ogress
here, and two or three old women, who had come to see my fellow
prisoners, and who had always told me that when I left the prison they
would find work for me."
"Yes, yes, I see," said the Chourineur.
"'My pretty little maid,' said the ogress and her old companions, 'come
and lodge with us; we will give you good clothes, and then you may amuse
yourself.' I didn't like them, and refused, saying to myself, 'I know
how to sew very well, and I have two hundred francs in hand. I have been
eight years in prison, I should like to enjoy myself a bit,--that won't
hurt anybody; work will come when the money is spent.' And so I began to
spend my two hundred francs. Ah, that was my mistake," added
Fleur-de-Marie, with a sigh. "I ought first to have got my work; but I
hadn't a soul on earth to advise me. At sixteen, to be thrown on the
city of Paris, as I was, one is so lonely; and what is done is done. I
have done wrong, and I have suffered for it. I began then to spend my
money: first, I bought flowers to put in my room,--I do love
flowers!--then I bought a gown, a nice shawl, and I took a walk in the
Bois de Boulogne, and I went to St. Germains, Vincennes, and other
country places. Oh, how I love the country!"
"With a lover by your side, my girl?" asked the Chourineur.
"Oh, _mon Dieu!_ no! I like to be my own mistress. I had my little
excursions with a friend who was in prison with me,--a good little girl
as can be: they call her Rigolette, because she is always laughing."
"Rigolette! Rigolette! I don't know her," said the Chourineur, who
appeared to be appealing to his memory.
"I didn't think you knew her. I am sure Rigolette was very well behaved
in prison, and always so gay and so industrious, she took out with her
when she left the prison at least four hundred francs that she had
earned. And then she is so particular!--you should see her! When I say I
had no one to advise me, I am wrong: I ought to have listened to her;
for, after having had a week's amusement together, she said to me, 'Now
we have had such a holiday, we ought to try for work, and not spend our
money in waste.' I, who was so happy in the fields and the woods,--it
was just at the end of spring, this year,--I answered, 'Oh, I must be
idle a little longer, and then I will work hard.' Since that time I have
not seen Rigolette, but I heard a few days since that she was living
near the Temple,--that she was a famous needlewoman, and earned at least
twenty-five sous a-day, and has a small workroom of her own; but now I
could not for the world see her again,--I should die with shame if I met
her."
"So, then, my poor girl," said Rodolph, "you spent your money in the
country,--you like the country, do you?"
"Like it? I love it! Oh, what would I not give to live there? Rigolette,
on the contrary, prefers Paris, and likes to walk on the Boulevards; but
she is so nice and so kind, she went into the country only to please
me."
"And you did not even leave yourself a few sous to live upon whilst you
found work?" said the Chourineur.
"Yes, I had reserved about fifty francs; but it happened that I had for
my washerwoman a woman called Lorraine, a poor thing, with none but the
good God to protect her. She was then very near her confinement, and yet
was obliged all day long to be with her hands and feet in her
washing-tubs. She fell sick, and, not being able to work, applied for
admittance to a lying-in hospital, but there was no room. She could not
work, and her time was very near at hand, and she had not a son to pay
for the bed in a garret, from which they drove her. Fortunately, she met
one day, at the end of the Pont Notre-Dame, with Goubin's wife, who had
been hiding for four days in a cellar of a house which was being pulled
down behind the Hôtel Dieu--"
"But why was Goubin's wife hiding?"
"To escape from her husband, who threatened to kill her; and she only
went out at night to buy some bread, and it was then she met with the
poor Lorraine, ill, and hardly able to drag herself along, for she was
expecting to be brought to bed every hour. Well, it seems this Goubin's
wife took her to the cellar where she was hiding,--it was just a
shelter, and no more. There she shared her bread and straw with the poor
Lorraine, who was confined in this cellar of a poor little infant; her
only covering and bed was straw! Well, it seems that Goubin's wife could
not bear it, and so, going out at all risks, even of being killed by her
husband, who was looking for her everywhere, she left the cellar in open
day, and came to me. She knew I had still a little money left, and that
I could assist her if I would; so, when Helmina had told me all about
poor Lorraine, who was obliged to lie with her new-born babe on straw, I
told her to bring them both to my room at once, and I would take a
chamber for her next to mine. This I did; and, oh, how happy she was,
poor Lorraine, when she found herself in a bed, with her babe beside her
in a little couch which I had bought for her! Helmina and I nursed her
until she was able to get about again, and then, with the rest of my
money, I enabled her to return to her washing-tubs."
"And when all your money was spent on Lorraine and her infant, what did
you do, my child?" inquired Rodolph.
"I looked out for work; but it was too late. I can sew very well, I have
good courage, and thought that I had only to ask for work and get it.
Ah! how I deceived myself! I went into a shop where they sell ready-made
linen, and asked for employment, and as I would not tell a story, I said
I had just left prison. They showed me the door, without making me any
answer. I begged they would give me a trial, and they pushed me into the
street as if I had been a thief. Then I remembered, too late, what
Rigolette had told me. Little by little I sold my small stock of clothes
and linen, and when all was gone they turned me out of my lodging. I had
not tasted food for two days; I did not know where to sleep. At this
moment I met the ogress and one of her old women who knew where I
lodged, and was always coming about me since I left prison. They told me
they would find me work, and I believed them. I went with them, so
exhausted for want of food that my senses were gone. They gave me brandy
to drink, and--and--here I am!" said the unhappy creature, hiding her
face in her hands.
"Have you lived a long time with the ogress, my poor girl?" asked
Rodolph, in accents of the deepest compassion.
"Six weeks, sir," replied Goualeuse, shuddering as she spoke.
"I see,--I see," said the Chourineur; "I know you now as well as if I
were your father and mother, and you had never left my lap. Well, well,
this is a confession indeed!"
"It makes you sad, my girl, to tell the story of your life," said
Rodolph.
"Alas! sir," replied Fleur-de-Marie, sorrowfully, "since I 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.