[Illustration: THE SUBSTITUTE]
He was scarcely ten years old when he was first arrested as a vagabond.
He spoke thus to the judge:
"I am called Jean François Leturc, and for six months I was with the
man who sings and plays upon a cord of catgut between the lanterns at
the Place de la Bastille. I sang the refrain with him, and after that I
called, 'Here's all the new songs, ten centimes, two sous!' He was
always drunk, and used to beat me. That is why the police picked me up
the other night. Before that I was with the man who sells brushes. My
mother was a laundress; her name was Adéle. At one time she lived with
a man on the ground-floor at Montmartre. She was a good work-woman and
liked me. She made money because she had for customers waiters in the
cafés, and they use a good deal of linen. On Sundays she used to put me
to bed early so that she could go to the ball. On week-days she sent me
to Les Fréres, where I learned to read. Well, the sergeant-de-ville
whose beat was in our street used always to stop before our windows to
talk with her--a good-looking chap, with a medal from the Crimea. They
were married, and after that everything went wrong. He didn't take to
me, and turned mother against me. Every one had a blow for me, and so,
to get out of the house, I spent whole days in the Place Clichy, where I
knew the mountebanks. My father-in-law lost his place, and my mother her
work. She used to go out washing to take care of him; this gave her a
cough--the steam.... She is dead at Lamboisière. She was a good woman.
Since that I have lived with the seller of brushes and the catgut
scraper. Are you going to send me to prison?"
He said this openly, cynically, like a man. He was a little ragged
street-arab, as tall as a boot, his forehead hidden under a queer mop of
yellow hair.
Nobody claimed him, and they sent him to the Reform School.
Not very intelligent, idle, clumsy with his hands, the only trade he
could learn there was not a good one--that of reseating straw chairs.
However, he was obedient, naturally quiet and silent, and he did not
seem to be profoundly corrupted by that school of vice. But when, in his
seventeenth year, he was thrown out again on the streets of Paris, he
unhappily found there his prison comrades, all great scamps, exercising
their dirty professions: teaching dogs to catch rats in the the sewers,
and blacking shoes on ball nights in the passage of the Opera--amateur
wrestlers, who permitted themselves to be thrown by the Hercules of the
booths--or fishing at noontime from rafts; all of these occupations he
followed to some extent, and, some months after he came out of the house
of correction, he was arrested again for a petty theft--a pair of old
shoes prigged from a shop-window. Result: a year in the prison of Sainte
Pélagie, where he served as valet to the political prisoners.
He lived in much surprise among this group of prisoners, all very young,
negligent in dress, who talked in loud voices, and carried their heads
in a very solemn fashion. They used to meet in the cell of one of the
oldest of them, a fellow of some thirty years, already a long time in
prison and quite a fixture at Sainte Pélagie--a large cell, the walls
covered with colored caricatures, and from the window of which one could
see all Paris--its roofs, its spires, and its domes--and far away the
distant line of hills, blue and indistinct upon the sky. There were upon
the walls some shelves filled with volumes and all the old paraphernalia
of a fencing-room: broken masks, rusty foils, breast-plates, and gloves
that were losing their tow. It was there that the "politicians" used to
dine together, adding to the everlasting "soup and beef," fruit, cheese,
and pints of wine which Jean François went out and got by the can--a
tumultuous repast interrupted by violent disputes, and where, during the
dessert, the "Carmagnole" and "Ca Ira" were sung in full chorus. They
assumed, however, an air of great dignity on those days when a newcomer
was brought in among them, at first entertaining him gravely as a
citizen, but on the morrow using him with affectionate familiarity, and
calling him by his nickname. Great words were used there: Corporation,
Responsibility, and phrases quite unintelligible to Jean François--such
as this, for example, which he once heard imperiously put forth by a
frightful little hunchback who blotted some writing-paper every night:
"It is done. This is the composition of the Cabinet: Raymond, the Bureau
of Public Instruction; Martial, the Interior; and for Foreign Affairs,
myself."
His time done, he wandered again around Paris, watched afar by the
police, after the fashion of cockchafers, made by cruel children to fly
at the end of a string. He became one of those fugitive and timid beings
whom the law, with a sort of coquetry, arrests and releases by
turn--something like those platonic fishers who, in order that they may
not exhaust their fish-pond, throw immediately back in the water the
fish which has just come out of the net. Without a suspicion on his part
that so much honor had been done to so sorry a subject, he had a special
bundle of memoranda in the mysterious portfolios of the Rue de
Jérusalem. His name was written in round hand on the gray paper of the
cover, and the notes and reports, carefully classified, gave him his
successive appellations: "Name, Leturc;" "the prisoner Leturc," and, at
last, "the criminal Leturc."
He was two years out of prison, dining where he could, sleeping in night
lodging-houses and sometimes in lime-kilns, and taking part with his
fellows in interminable games of pitch-penny on the boulevards near the
barriers: He wore a greasy cap on the back of his head, carpet slippers,
and a short white blouse. When he had five sous he had his hair curled.
He danced at Constant's at Montparnasse; bought for two sous to sell for
four at the door of Bobino, the jack of hearts or the ace of clubs
serving as a countermark; sometimes opened the door of a carriage; led
horses to the horse-market. From the lottery of all sorts of miserable
employments he drew a goodly number. Who can say if the atmosphere of
honor which one breathes as a soldier, if military discipline might not
have saved him. Taken, in a cast of the net, with some young loafers who
robbed drunkards sleeping on the streets, he denied very earnestly
having taken part in their expeditions. Perhaps he told the truth, but
his antecedents were accepted in lieu of proof, and he was sent for
three years to Poissy. There he made coarse playthings for children, was
tattooed on the chest, learned thieves' slang and the penal-code. A new
liberation, and a new plunge into the sink of Paris; but very short this
time, for at the end of six months at the most he was again compromised
in a night robbery, aggravated by climbing and breaking--a serious
affair, in which he played an obscure role, half dupe and half fence. On
the whole his complicity was evident, and he was sent for five years at
hard labor. His grief in this adventure was above all in being separated
from an old dog which he had found on a dung-heap, and cured of the
mange. The beast loved him.
Toulon, the ball and chain, the work in the harbor, the blows from a
stick, wooden shoes on bare feet, soup of black beans dating from
Trafalgar, no tobacco money, and the terrible sleep in a camp swarming
with convicts; that was what he experienced for five broiling summers
and five winters raw with the Mediterranean wind. He came out from there
stunned, was sent under surveillance to Vernon, where he worked some
time on the river. Then, an incorrigible vagabond, he broke his exile
and came again to Paris. He had his savings, fifty-six francs, that is
to say, time enough for reflection. During his absence his former
wretched companions had dispersed. He was well hidden, and slept in a
loft at an old woman's, to whom he represented himself as a sailor,
tired of the sea, who had lost his papers in a recent shipwreck, and who
wanted to try his hand at something else. His tanned face and his
calloused hands, together with some sea phrases which he dropped from
time to time, made his tale seem probable enough.
[Illustration]
One day when he risked a saunter in the streets, and when chance had led
him as far as Montmartre, where he was born, an unexpected memory
stopped him before the door of Les Frères, where he had learned to
read. As it was very warm the door was open, and by a single glance the
passing outcast was able to recognize the peaceable school-room. Nothing
was changed: neither the bright light shining in at the great windows,
nor the crucifix over the desk, nor the rows of benches with the tables
furnished with ink-stands and pencils, nor the table of weights and
measures, nor the map where pins stuck in still indicated the operations
of some ancient war. Heedlessly and without thinking, Jean François
read on the blackboard the words of the Evangelist which had been set
there as a copy:
"Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over
ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance."
It was undoubtedly the hour for recreation, for the Brother Professor
had left his chair, and, sitting on the edge of a table, he was telling
a story to the boys who surrounded him with eager and attentive eyes.
What a bright and innocent face he had, that beardless young man, in his
long black gown, and white necktie, and great ugly shoes, and his badly
cut brown hair streaming out behind! All the simple figures of the
children of the people who were watching him seemed scarcely less
childlike than his; above all when, delighted with some of his own
simple and priestly pleasantries, he broke out in an open and frank peal
of laughter which showed his white and regular teeth, a peal so
contagious that all the scholars laughed loudly in their turn. It was
such a sweet, simple group in the bright sunlight, which lighted their
dear eyes and their blond curls.
Jean François looked at them for some time in silence, and for the
first time in that savage nature, all instinct and appetite, there awoke
a mysterious, a tender emotion. His heart, that seared and hardened
heart, unmoved when the convict's cudgel or the heavy whip of the
watchman fell on his shoulders, beat oppressively. In that sight he saw
again his infancy; and closing his eyes sadly, the prey to torturing
regret, he walked quickly away.
Then the words written on the blackboard came back to his mind.
"If it wasn't too late, after all!" he murmured; "if I could again, like
others, eat honestly my brown bread, and sleep my fill without
nightmare! The spy must be sharp who recognizes me. My beard, which I
shaved off down there, has grown out thick and strong. One can burrow
somewhere in the great ant-hill, and work can be found. Whoever is not
worked to death in the hell of the galleys comes out agile and robust,
and I learned there to climb ropes with loads upon my back. Building is
going on everywhere here, and the masons need helpers. Three francs a
day! I never earned so much. Let me be forgotten, and that is all I
ask."
He followed his courageous resolution; he was faithful to it, and after
three months he was another man. The master for whom he worked called
him his best workman. After a long day upon the scaffolding, in the hot
sun and the dust, constantly bending and raising his back to take the
hod from the man at his feet and pass it to the man over his head, he
went for his soup to the cook-shop, tired out, his legs aching, his
hands burning, his eyelids stuck with plaster, but content with himself,
and carrying his well-earned money in a knot in his handkerchief. He
went out now without fear, since he could not be recognized in his white
mask, and since he had noticed that the suspicious glances of the
policeman were seldom turned on the tired workman. He was quiet and
sober. He slept the sound sleep of fatigue. He was free!
At last--oh, supreme recompense!--he had a friend!
He was a fellow-workman like himself, named Savinien, a little peasant
with red lips who had come to Paris with his stick over his shoulder and
a bundle on the end of it, fleeing from the wine-shops and going to mass
every Sunday. Jean François loved him for his piety, for his candor,
for his honesty, for all that he himself had lost, and so long ago. It
was a passion, profound and unrestrained, which transformed him by
fatherly cares and attentions. Savinien, himself of a weak and
egotistical nature, let things take their course, satisfied only in
finding a companion who shared his horror of the wine-shop. The two
friends lived together in a fairly comfortable lodging, but their
resources were very limited. They were obliged to take into their room a
third companion, an old Auvergnat, gloomy and rapacious, who found it
possible out of his meagre salary to save something with which to buy a
place in his own country. Jean François and Savinien were always
together. On holidays they together took long walks in the environs of
Paris, and dined under an arbor in one of those small country inns where
there are a great many mushrooms in the sauces and innocent rebusses on
the napkins. There Jean François learned from his friend all that lore
of which they who are born in the city are ignorant: learned the names
of the trees, the flowers, and the plants; the various seasons for
harvesting; he heard eagerly the thousand details of a laborious country
life--the autumn sowing, the winter chores, the splendid celebrations of
harvest and vintage days, the sound of the mills at the water-side, and
the flails striking the ground, the tired horses led to water, and the
hunting in the morning mist; and, above all, the long evenings around
the fire of vine-shoots, that were shortened by some marvellous stories.
He discovered in himself a source of imagination before unknown, and
found a singular delight in the recital of events so placid, so calm, so
monotonous.
One thing troubled him, however: it was the fear lest Savinien might
learn something of his past. Sometimes there escaped from him some low
word of thieves' slang, a vulgar gesture--vestiges of his former
horrible existence--and he felt the pain one feels when old wounds
re-open; the more because he fancied that he sometimes saw in Savinien
the awakening of an unhealthy curiosity. When the young man, already
tempted by the pleasures which Paris offers to the poorest, asked him
about the mysteries of the great city, Jean François feigned ignorance
and turned the subject; but he felt a vague inquietude for the future of
his friend.
His uneasiness was not without foundation. Savinien could not long
remain the simple rustic that he was on his arrival in Paris. If the
gross and noisy pleasures of the wine-shop always repelled him, he was
profoundly troubled by other temptations, full of danger for the
inexperience of his twenty years. When spring came he began to go off
alone, and at first he wandered about the brilliant entrance of some
dancing-hall, watching the young girls who went in with their arms
around each others' waists, talking in low tones. Then, one evening,
when lilacs perfumed the air and the call to quadrilles was most
captivating, he crossed the threshold, and from that time Jean François
observed a change, little by little, in his manners and his visage. He
became more frivolous, more extravagant. He often borrowed from his
friend his scanty savings, and he forgot to repay. Jean François,
feeling that he was abandoned, jealous and forgiving at the same time,
suffered and was silent. He felt that he had no right to reproach him,
but with the foresight of affection he indulged in cruel and inevitable
presentiments.
One evening, as he was mounting the stairs to his room, absorbed in his
thoughts, he heard, as he was about to enter, the sound of angry voices,
and he recognized that of the old Auvergnat who lodged with Savinien and
himself. An old habit of suspicion made him stop at the landing-place
and listen to learn the cause of the trouble.
"Yes," said the Auvergnat, angrily, "I am sure that some one has opened
my trunk and stolen from it the three louis that I had hidden in a
little box; and he who has done this thing must be one of the two
companions who sleep here, if it were not the servant Maria. It concerns
you as much as it does me, since you are the master of the house, and I
will drag you to the courts if you do not let me at once break open the
valises of the two masons. My poor gold! It was here yesterday in its
place, and I will tell you just what it was, so that if we find it again
nobody can accuse me of having lied. Ah, I know them, my three beautiful
gold pieces, and I can see them as plainly as I see you! One piece was
more worn than the others; it was of greenish gold, with a portrait of
the great emperor. The other was a great old fellow with a queue and
epaulettes; and the third, which had on it a Philippe with whiskers, I
had marked with my teeth. They don't trick me. Do you know that I only
wanted two more like that to pay for my vineyard? Come, search these
fellows' things with me, or I will call the police! Hurry up!" "All
right," said the voice of the landlord; "we will go and search with
Maria. So much the worse for you if we find nothing, and the masons get
angry. You have forced me to it."
[Illustration]
Jean François' soul was full of fright. He remembered the embarrassed
circumstances and the small loans of Savinien, and how sober he had
seemed for some days. And yet he could not believe that he was a thief.
He heard the Auvergnat panting in his eager search, and he pressed his
closed fists against his breast as if to still the furious beating of
his heart.
"Here they are!" suddenly shouted the victorious miser. "Here they are,
my louis, my dear treasure; and in the Sunday vest of that little
hypocrite of Limousin! Look, landlord, they are just as I told you. Here
is the Napoleon, the man with a queue, and the Philippe that I have
bitten. See the dents? Ah, the little beggar with the sanctified air. I
should have much sooner suspected the other. Ah, the wretch! Well, he
must go to the convict prison."
At this moment Jean François heard the well-known step of Savinien
coming slowly up the stairs.
He is going to his destruction, thought he. Three stories. I have time!
And, pushing open the door, he entered the room, pale as death, where he
saw the landlord and the servant stupefied in a corner, while the
Auvergnat, on his knees, in the disordered heap of clothes, was kissing
the pieces of gold.
"Enough of this," he said, in a thick voice; "I took the money, and put
it in my comrade's trunk. But that is too bad. I am a thief, but not a
Judas. Call the police; I will not try to escape, only I must say a word
to Savinien in private. Here he is."
In fact, the little Limousin had just arrived, and seeing his crime
discovered, believing himself lost, he stood there, his eyes fixed, his
arms hanging.
Jean François seized him forcibly by the neck, as if to embrace him; he
put his mouth close to Savinien's ear, and said to him in a low,
supplicating voice,
"Keep quiet."
Then turning towards the others:
"Leave me alone with him. I tell you I won't go away. Lock us in if you
wish, but leave us alone."
With a commanding gesture he showed them the door. They went out.
[Illustration]
Savinien, broken by grief, was sitting on the bed, and lowered his eyes
without understanding anything.
"Listen," said Jean François, who came and took him by the hands. "I
understand! You have stolen three gold pieces to buy some trifle for a
girl. That costs six months in prison. But one only comes out from there
to go back again, and you will become a pillar of police courts and
tribunals. I understand it. I have been seven years at the Reform
School, a year at Sainte Pélagie, three years at Poissy, five years at
Toulon. Now, don't be afraid. Everything is arranged. I have taken it on
my shoulders."
"It is dreadful," said Savinien; but hope was springing up again in his
cowardly heart.
"When the elder brother is under the flag, the younger one does not go,"
replied Jean François. "I am your substitute, that's all. You care for
me a little, do you not? I am paid. Don't be childish--don't refuse.
They would have taken me again one of these days, for I am a runaway
from exile. And then, do you see, that life will be less hard for me
than for you. I know it all, and I shall not complain if I have not done
you this service for nothing, and if you swear to me that you will never
do it again. Savinien, I have loved you well, and your friendship has
made me happy. It is through it that, since I have known you, I have
been honest and pure, as I might always have been, perhaps, if I had
had, like you, a father to put a tool in my hands, a mother to teach me
my prayers. It was my sole regret that I was useless to you, and that I
deceived you concerning myself. To-day I have unmasked in saving you. It
is all right. Do not cry, and embrace me, for already I hear heavy boots
on the stairs. They are coming with the _posse_, and we must not seem to
know each other so well before those chaps."
He pressed Savinien quickly to his breast, then pushed him from him,
when the door was thrown wide open.
It was the landlord and the Auvergnat, who brought the police. Jean
François sprang forward to the landing-place, held out his hands for
the handcuffs, and said, laughing, "Forward, bad lot!"
To-day he is at Cayenne, condemned for life as an incorrigible.
[Illustration]