JONDRETTE ALMOST CRIES.
The garret was so dark that persons who came into it felt much as if
they were going into a cellar. The two new-comers, therefore, advanced
with some degree of hesitation, scarce distinguishing the vague forms
around them, while they were perfectly seen and examined by the eyes
of the denizens in the attic, who were accustomed to this gloom. M.
Leblanc walked up to Father Jondrette, with his sad and gentle smile,
and said,--
"You will find in this parcel, sir, new apparel, woollen stockings, and
blankets."
"Our angelic benefactor overwhelms us," Jondrette said, bowing to
the ground; then, bending down to the ear of his elder daughter, he
added in a hurried whisper, while the two visitors were examining this
lamentable interior,--
"Did I not say so,--clothes, but no money? They are all alike. By the
way, how was the letter to the old ass signed?"
"Fabantou."
"The actor,--all right."
It was lucky that Jondrette asked this, for at the same moment M.
Leblanc turned to him, and said with the air of a person who is trying
to remember the name,--
"I see that you are much to be pitied, Monsieur--"
"Fabantou," Jondrette quickly added.
"Monsieur Fabantou; yes, that is it, I remember."
"An actor, sir, who has been successful in his time."
Here Jondrette evidently believed the moment arrived to trap his
philanthropist, and he shouted in a voice which had some of the bombast
of the country showman, and the humility of the professional beggar,
--"A pupil of Talma, sir! I am a pupil of Talma! Fortune smiled upon
me formerly, but now, alas! the turn of misfortune has arrived. You
see, my benefactor, we have no bread, no fire. My poor children have
no fire. My sole chair without a seat! a pane of glass broken, in such
weather as this! my wife in bed, ill!"
"Poor woman!" said M. Leblanc.
"My child hurt," Jondrette added.
The child, distracted by the arrival of the strangers, was staring at
the "young lady," and ceased sobbing.
"Cry, I tell you; roar!" Jondrette whispered to her. At the same time
he squeezed her bad hand. All this was done with the talent of a
conjurer. The little one uttered piercing cries, and the adorable girl
whom Marius called in his heart "his Ursule," eagerly went up to her.
"Poor dear child!" she said.
"You see, respected young lady," Jondrette continued, "her hand is
bleeding. It is the result of an accident which happened to her while
working at a factory to earn six sous a day. It is possible that her
arm will have to be cut off."
"Really?" the old gentleman said in alarm.
The little girl, taking this remark seriously, began sobbing again her
loudest.
"Alas, yes, my benefactor!" the father answered.
For some minutes past Jondrette had been looking at the
"philanthropist" in a peculiar way, and while speaking seemed to be
scrutinizing him attentively, as if trying to collect his remembrances.
All at once, profiting by a moment during which the new-comers were
questioning the little girl about her injured hand, he passed close to
his wife, who was tying in her bed with a surprised and stupid air, and
said to her in a hurried whisper,--
"Look at that man!"
Then he turned to M. Leblanc, and continued his lamentations.
"Look, sir! my sole clothing consists of a chemise of my wife's, all
torn, in the heart of winter. I cannot go out for want of a coat, and
if I had the smallest bit of a coat I would go and call on Mademoiselle
Mars, who knows me, and is much attached to me. Does she still live
in the Rue de la Tour des Dames? Do you know, sir, that we played
together in the provinces, and that I shared her laurels? Célimène
would come to my help, sir, and Elmire give alms to Belisarius. But
no, nothing, and not a halfpenny piece in the house! my wife ill,--not
a son! my daughter dangerously injured,--not a son! My wife suffers
from shortness of breath; it comes from her age, and then the nervous
system is mixed up in it. She requires assistance, and so does my
daughter. But the physician and the apothecary, how are they to be
paid if I have not a farthing? I would kneel down before a penny, sir.
You see to what the arts are reduced! And do you know, my charming
young lady, and you my generous protector, who exhale virtue and
goodness, and who perfume the church where my poor child sees you daily
when she goes to say her prayers,--for I am bringing up my daughters
religiously, sir, and did not wish them to turn to the stage. Ah,
the jades, let me see them trip! I do not jest, sir; I give them
lectures on honor, morality, and virtue. Just ask them,--they must go
straight,--for they have a father. They are not wretched girls who
begin by having no family, and finish by marrying the public. Such a
girl is Miss Nobody, and becomes Madame i All-the-World. There must be
nothing of that sort in the Fabantou family! I intend to educate them
virtuously, and they must be respectable, and honest, and believe in
God,--confound it! Well, sir, worthy sir, do you know what will happen
to-morrow? To-morrow is the fatal 4th of February, the last respite
my landlord has granted me, and if I do not pay my rent by to-night,
my eldest daughter, myself, my wife with her fever, my child with her
wound, will be all four of us turned out of here into the street,
shelterless in the rain and snow. That is the state of the case, sir! I
owe four quarters,--a year's rent,--that is to say, sixty francs."
Jondrette lied, for four quarters would only have been forty francs,
and he could not owe four, as it was not six months since Marius had
paid two for him. M. Leblanc took a five-franc piece from his pocket
and threw it on the table. Jondrette had time to growl in his grown-up
daughter's ear,--
"The scamp! what does he expect me to do with his five francs? They
will not pay for the chair and pane of glass! There's the result of
making an outlay!"
In the mean while M. Leblanc had taken off a heavy brown coat, which he
wore over his blue one, and thrown it on the back of a chair.
"Monsieur Fabantou," he said, "I have only these five francs about
me, but I will take my daughter home and return to-night. Is it not
to-night that you have to pay?"
Jondrette's face was lit up with a strange expression, and he hurriedly
answered,--
"Yes, respected sir, I must be with my landlord by eight o'clock."
"I will be here by six, and bring you the sixty francs."
"My benefactor!" Jondrette exclaimed wildly; and he added in a
whisper,--
"Look at him carefully, wife."
M. Leblanc had given his arm to the lovely young lady, and was turning
to the door.
"Till this evening, my friends," he said.
"At six o'clock?" Jondrette asked.
"At six o'clock precisely."
At this moment the overcoat left on the back of the chair caught the
eye of the elder girl.
"Sir," she said, "you are forgetting your greatcoat."
Jondrette gave his daughter a crushing glance, accompanied by a
formidable shrug of the shoulders, but M. Leblanc turned and replied
smilingly,--
"I do not forget it, I leave it."
"Oh, my protector," said Jondrette, "my august benefactor, I am melting
into tears! Permit me to conduct you to your coach."
"If you go out," M. Leblanc remarked, "put on that overcoat, for it is
really very cold."
Jondrette did not let this be said twice, but eagerly put on the
brown coat. Then they all three went out, Jondrette preceding the two
strangers.