LIKE the lackeys in Molière’s farce, when the true nobleman broke in on
their high life below stairs, we were destined to be confronted with a
real pedlar. To make the lesson still more poignant for fallen gentlemen
like us, he was a pedlar of infinitely more consideration than the sort
of scurvy fellows we were taken for: like a lion among mice, or a ship of
war bearing down upon two cock-boats. Indeed, he did not deserve the
name of pedlar at all: he was a travelling merchant.
I suppose it was about half-past eight when this worthy, Monsieur Hector
Gilliard of Maubeuge, turned up at the ale-house door in a tilt cart
drawn by a donkey, and cried cheerily on the inhabitants. He was a lean,
nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, with something the look of an actor,
and something the look of a horse-jockey. He had evidently prospered
without any of the favours of education; for he adhered with stern
simplicity to the masculine gender, and in the course of the evening
passed off some fancy futures in a very florid style of architecture.
With him came his wife, a comely young woman with her hair tied in a
yellow kerchief, and their son, a little fellow of four, in a blouse and
military _képi_. It was notable that the child was many degrees better
dressed than either of the parents. We were informed he was already at a
boarding-school; but the holidays having just commenced, he was off to
spend them with his parents on a cruise. An enchanting holiday
occupation, was it not? to travel all day with father and mother in the
tilt cart full of countless treasures; the green country rattling by on
either side, and the children in all the villages contemplating him with
envy and wonder? It is better fun, during the holidays, to be the son of
a travelling merchant, than son and heir to the greatest cotton-spinner
in creation. And as for being a reigning prince—indeed I never saw one
if it was not Master Gilliard!
While M. Hector and the son of the house were putting up the donkey, and
getting all the valuables under lock and key, the landlady warmed up the
remains of our beefsteak, and fried the cold potatoes in slices, and
Madame Gilliard set herself to waken the boy, who had come far that day,
and was peevish and dazzled by the light. He was no sooner awake than he
began to prepare himself for supper by eating galette, unripe pears, and
cold potatoes—with, so far as I could judge, positive benefit to his
appetite.
The landlady, fired with motherly emulation, awoke her own little girl;
and the two children were confronted. Master Gilliard looked at her for
a moment, very much as a dog looks at his own reflection in a mirror
before he turns away. He was at that time absorbed in the galette. His
mother seemed crestfallen that he should display so little inclination
towards the other sex; and expressed her disappointment with some candour
and a very proper reference to the influence of years.
Sure enough a time will come when he will pay more attention to the
girls, and think a great deal less of his mother: let us hope she will
like it as well as she seemed to fancy. But it is odd enough; the very
women who profess most contempt for mankind as a sex, seem to find even
its ugliest particulars rather lively and high-minded in their own sons.
The little girl looked longer and with more interest, probably because
she was in her own house, while he was a traveller and accustomed to
strange sights. And besides there was no galette in the case with her.
All the time of supper, there was nothing spoken of but my young lord.
The two parents were both absurdly fond of their child. Monsieur kept
insisting on his sagacity: how he knew all the children at school by
name; and when this utterly failed on trial, how he was cautious and
exact to a strange degree, and if asked anything, he would sit and
think—and think, and if he did not know it, ‘my faith, he wouldn’t tell
you at all—_foi_, _il ne vous le dira pas_’: which is certainly a very
high degree of caution. At intervals, M. Hector would appeal to his
wife, with his mouth full of beefsteak, as to the little fellow’s age at
such or such a time when he had said or done something memorable; and I
noticed that Madame usually pooh-poohed these inquiries. She herself was
not boastful in her vein; but she never had her fill of caressing the
child; and she seemed to take a gentle pleasure in recalling all that was
fortunate in his little existence. No schoolboy could have talked more
of the holidays which were just beginning and less of the black
school-time which must inevitably follow after. She showed, with a pride
perhaps partly mercantile in origin, his pockets preposterously swollen
with tops and whistles and string. When she called at a house in the way
of business, it appeared he kept her company; and whenever a sale was
made, received a sou out of the profit. Indeed they spoiled him vastly,
these two good people. But they had an eye to his manners for all that,
and reproved him for some little faults in breeding, which occurred from
time to time during supper.
On the whole, I was not much hurt at being taken for a pedlar. I might
think that I ate with greater delicacy, or that my mistakes in French
belonged to a different order; but it was plain that these distinctions
would be thrown away upon the landlady and the two labourers. In all
essential things we and the Gilliards cut very much the same figure in
the ale-house kitchen. M. Hector was more at home, indeed, and took a
higher tone with the world; but that was explicable on the ground of his
driving a donkey-cart, while we poor bodies tramped afoot. I daresay,
the rest of the company thought us dying with envy, though in no ill
sense, to be as far up in the profession as the new arrival.
And of one thing I am sure: that every one thawed and became more
humanised and conversible as soon as these innocent people appeared upon
the scene. I would not very readily trust the travelling merchant with
any extravagant sum of money; but I am sure his heart was in the right
place. In this mixed world, if you can find one or two sensible places
in a man—above all, if you should find a whole family living together on
such pleasant terms—you may surely be satisfied, and take the rest for
granted; or, what is a great deal better, boldly make up your mind that
you can do perfectly well without the rest; and that ten thousand bad
traits cannot make a single good one any the less good.
It was getting late. M. Hector lit a stable lantern and went off to his
cart for some arrangements; and my young gentleman proceeded to divest
himself of the better part of his raiment, and play gymnastics on his
mother’s lap, and thence on to the floor, with accompaniment of laughter.
‘Are you going to sleep alone?’ asked the servant lass.
‘There’s little fear of that,’ says Master Gilliard.
‘You sleep alone at school,’ objected his mother. ‘Come, come, you must
be a man.’
But he protested that school was a different matter from the holidays;
that there were dormitories at school; and silenced the discussion with
kisses: his mother smiling, no one better pleased than she.
There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little fear that he should
sleep alone; for there was but one bed for the trio. We, on our part,
had firmly protested against one man’s accommodation for two; and we had
a double-bedded pen in the loft of the house, furnished, beside the beds,
with exactly three hat-pegs and one table. There was not so much as a
glass of water. But the window would open, by good fortune.
Some time before I fell asleep the loft was full of the sound of mighty
snoring: the Gilliards, and the labourers, and the people of the inn, all
at it, I suppose, with one consent. The young moon outside shone very
clearly over Pont-sur-Sambre, and down upon the ale-house where all we
pedlars were abed.