_Done into English by the Editor_
He was scarcely ten years old when he was first arrested as a vagabond.
Thus he spoke to the judges:
“I am called Jean François Leturc, and for six months now I’ve been
with the man who sings between two lanterns on the Place de la
Bastille, while he scrapes on a string of catgut. I repeat the chorus
with him, and then I cry out, 'Get the collection of new songs, ten
centimes, two sous!’ He was always drunk and beat me; that’s why the
police found me the other night, in the tumble-down buildings. Before
that, I used to be with the man who sells brushes. My mother was a
laundress; she called herself Adèle. At one time a gentleman had given
her an establishment, on the ground-floor, at Montmartre. She was a
good worker and loved me well. She made money because she had the
clientele of the café waiters, and those people use lots of linen.
Sundays, she would put me to bed early to go to the ball; but week
days, she sent me to the Brothers’ school, where I learned to read.
Well, at last the _sergent-de-ville_ whose beat was up our street
began always stopping before her window to talk to her--a fine fellow,
with the Crimean medal. They got married, and all went wrong. He didn’t
take to me, and set mamma against me. Every one boxed my ears; and it
was then that, to get away from home, I spent whole days on the Place
Clichy, where I got to know the mountebanks. My step-father lost his
place, mamma her customers; she went to the wash-house to support her
man. It was there she got consumption--from the steam of the lye. She
died at Lariboisière. She was a good woman. Since that time I’ve lived
with the brush-seller and the catgut-scraper. Are you going to put me
in prison?”
He talked this way openly, cynically, like a man. He was a ragged
little rascal, as tall as a boot, with his forehead hidden under a
strange mop of yellow hair.
Nobody claimed him, so they sent him to the Reform School.
Not very intelligent, lazy, above all maladroit with his hands, he was
able to learn there only a poor trade--the reseating of chairs. Yet he
was obedient, of a nature passive and taciturn, and he did not seem
to have been too profoundly corrupted in that school of vice. But
when, having come to his seventeenth year, he was set free again on
the streets of Paris, he found there, for his misfortune, his prison
comrades, all dreadful rascals exercising their low callings. Some were
trainers of dogs for catching rats in the sewers; some shined shoes on
ball nights in the Passage de l’Opéra; some were amateur wrestlers,
who let themselves be thrown by the Hercules of the side-shows; some
fished from rafts out in the river, in the full sunlight. He tried all
these things a little, and a few months after he had left the house
of correction he was arrested anew for a petty theft: a pair of old
shoes lifted from out an open shop-window. Result: a year of prison at
Sainte-Pélagie, where he served as valet to the political prisoners.
He lived, astonished, among this group of prisoners, all very young and
negligently clad, who talked in loud voices and carried their heads
in such a solemn way. They used to meet in the cell of the eldest of
them, a fellow of some thirty years, already locked up for a long
time and apparently settled at Sainte-Pélagie: a large cell it was,
papered with colored caricatures, and from whose windows one could see
all Paris--its roofs, its clock-towers, and its domes, and, far off,
the distant line of the hills, blue and vague against the sky. There
were upon the walls several shelves filled with books, and all the
old apparatus of a _salle d’armes_--broken masks, rusty foils,
leather jackets, and gloves that were losing their stuffing. It was
there that the “politicians” dined together, adding to the inevitable
“soup and beef” some fruit, cheese, and half-pints of wine that Jean
François went out to buy in a can--tumultuous repasts, interrupted
by violent disputes, where they sang in chorus at the dessert the
_Carmangole_ and _Ça ira_.[2] They took on, however, an
air of dignity on days when they made place for a newcomer, who was
at first gravely treated as “citizen,” but who was the next day
_tutoyed_,[3] and called by his nickname. They used big words
there--Corporation, Solidarity, and phrases all quite unintelligible to
Jean François, such as this, for example, which he once heard uttered
imperiously by a frightful little hunchback who scribbled on paper all
night long:
“It is settled. The cabinet is to be thus composed: Raymond in the
Department of Education, Martial in the Interior, and I in Foreign
Affairs.”
Having served his time, he wandered again about Paris, under the
surveillance of the police, in the fashion of beetles that cruel
children keep flying at the end of a string. He had become one of
those fugitive and timid beings whom the law, with a sort of coquetry,
arrests and releases, turn and turn about, a little like those platonic
fishermen who, so as not to empty the pond, throw back into the water
the fish just out of the net. Without his suspecting that so much honor
was done to his wretched personality, he had a special docket in the
mysterious archives of _la rue de Jérusalem_,[4] his name and
surnames were written in a large back-hand on the gray paper of the
cover, and the notes and reports, carefully classified, gave him these
graded appellations: “the man named Leturc,” “the prisoner Leturc,” and
at last “the convicted Leturc.”
He stayed two years out of prison, dining _à la Californie_,[5]
sleeping in lodging-houses, and sometimes in lime-kilns, and taking
part with his fellows in endless games of pitch-penny on the boulevards
near the city gates. 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 the jack-of-hearts or the ace-of-spades, which were used
as return checks, to resell them for four sous at the door of Bobino;
opened carriage-doors as occasion offered; led about sorry nags at the
horse-market. Of all the bad luck--in the conscription he drew a good
number.[6] Who knows whether the atmosphere of honor which is breathed
in a regiment, whether military discipline, might not have saved him?
Caught in a haul of the police-net with the young vagabonds who used to
rob the drunkards asleep in the streets, he denied very energetically
having taken part in their expeditions. It was perhaps true. But his
antecedents were accepted in lieu of proof, and he was sent up for
three years to Poissy. There he had to make rough toys, had himself
tattooed on the chest, and learned thieves’ slang and the penal code.
A new liberation, a new plunge into the Parisian sewer, but very short
this time, for at the end of hardly six weeks he was again compromised
in a theft by night, aggravated by violent entry,[7] a doubtful case
in which he played an obscure rôle, half dupe and half fence.[8] On
the whole, his complicity seemed evident, and he was condemned to five
years’ hard labor. His sorrow in this adventure was, chiefly, to be
separated from an old dog which he had picked up on a heap of rubbish
and cured of the mange. This beast loved him.
Toulon, the ball on his ankle, the work in the harbor, the blows from
the staves, the wooden shoes without straw,[9] the soup of black beans
dating from Trafalgar, no money for tobacco, and the horrible sleep on
the filthy camp-bed of the galley slave, that is what he knew for five
torrid summers and five winters blown upon by the _Mistral_.[10]
He came out from there stunned, and was sent under surveillance
to Vernon, where he worked for some time on the river; then, an
incorrigible vagabond, he broke exile and returned again to Paris.
He had his savings, fifty-six francs--that is to say, time enough to
reflect. During his long absence, his old and horrible comrades had
been dispersed. He was well hidden, and slept in a loft at an old
woman’s, to whom he had represented himself as a sailor weary of the
sea, having lost his papers in a recent shipwreck, and who wished
to essay another trade. His tanned face, his calloused hands, and a
few nautical terms he let fall one time or another, made this story
sufficiently probable.
One day when he had risked a saunter along the streets, and when
the chance of his walk had brought him to Montmartre, where he had
been born, an unexpected memory arrested him before the door of
the Brothers’ school in which he had learned to read. Since it was
very warm, the door was open, and with a single glance the passing
incorrigible could recognize the peaceful school-room. Nothing was
changed: neither the bright light shining in through the large windows,
nor the crucifix over the desk, nor the rows of seats furnished with
leaden inkstands, nor the table of weights and measures, nor the map on
which pins stuck in still pointed out the operations of some ancient
war. Heedlessly and without reflecting, Jean François read on the
blackboard these words of the Gospel, which a well-trained hand had
traced as an example of penmanship:
Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more
than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance.
It was doubtless the hour for recreation, for the Brother professor had
left his chair, and, sitting on the edge of a table, he seemed to be
telling a story to all the _gamins_ who surrounded him, attentive
and raising their eyes. What an innocent and gay countenance was that
of the beardless young man, in long black robe, with white necktie,
with coarse, ugly shoes, and with badly cut brown hair pushed up at the
back. All those pallid faces of children of the populace which were
looking at him seemed less childlike than his, above all when, charmed
with a candid, priestly pleasantry he had made, he broke out with a
good and frank peal of laughter, which showed his teeth sound and
regular--laughter so contagious that all the scholars broke out noisily
in their turn. And it was simple and sweet, this group in the joyous
sunlight that made their clear eyes and their blonde hair shine.
Jean François looked at the scene some time in silence, and, for the
first time, in that savage nature all instinct and appetite, there
awoke a mysterious and tender emotion. His heart, that rude, hardened
heart, which neither the cudgel of the galley master nor the weight
of the watchman’s heavy whip falling on his shoulders was able to
stir, beat almost to bursting. Before this spectacle, in which he saw
again his childhood, his eyes closed sadly, and, restraining a violent
gesture, a prey to the torture of regret, he walked away with great
strides.
The words written on the blackboard came back to him.
“If it were not too late, after all?” he murmured. “If I could once
more, like the others, eat my toasted bread honestly, sleep out my
sleep without nightmare? The police spy would be very clever to
recognize me now. My beard, that I shaved off down there, has grown out
now thick and strong. One can borrow somewhere in this big ant-heap,
and work is not lacking. Whoever does not go to pieces soon in the hell
of the galleys comes out agile and robust; and I have learned how to
climb the rope-ladders with loads on my back. Building is going on all
around here, and the masons need helpers. Three francs a day,--I have
never earned so much. That they should forget me, that is all I ask.”
He followed his courageous resolution, he was faithful to it, and
three months afterward he was another man. The master for whom he
labored cited him as his best workman. After a long day passed on the
scaffolding, in the full sun, in the dust, constantly bending and
straightening his back to take the stones from the hands of the man
below him and to pass them to the man above him, he went to get his
soup at the cheap eating-house, tired out, his legs numb, his hands
burning, and his eyelashes stuck together by the plaster, but content
with himself, and carrying his well-earned money in the knot of his
handkerchief. He went out without fear, for his white mask made him
unrecognizable, and, then, he had observed that the suspicious glance
of the policeman seldom falls on the real worker. He was silent and
sober. He slept the sound sleep of honest fatigue. He was free.
* * * * *
At last--supreme recompense!--he had a friend.
It was a mason’s helper like himself, named Savinien, a little peasant
from Limoges, red-cheeked, who had come to Paris with his stick
over his shoulder and his bundle on the end of it, who fled from
the liquor-dealers and went to mass on Sundays. 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 reserved,
disclosing itself in the care and forethought of a father. Savinien,
himself easily moved and self-loving, let things take their course,
satisfied only in that he had found a comrade who shared his horror
of the wine-shop. The two friends lived together in a furnished room,
fairly clean, but their resources were very limited; they had to take
into their room a third companion, an old man from Auvergne, sombre
and rapacious, who found a way of economizing out of his meagre wages
enough to buy some land in his own province.
Jean François and Savinien scarcely left each other. On days of rest
they took long walks in the environs of Paris and dined in the open air
in one of those little country inns where there are plenty of mushrooms
in the sauces and innocent enigmas on the bottoms of the plates. There
Jean François made his friend tell him all those things of which those
born in the cities are ignorant. He learned the names of the trees,
the flowers, the plants; the seasons for the different harvests; he
listened avidly to the thousand details of a farmer’s labors: the
autumn’s sowing, the winter’s work, the splendid _fêtes_ of
harvest-home and vintage, and the flails beating the ground, and the
noise of the mills by the borders of the streams, and the tired horses
led to the trough, and the morning hunting in the mists, and, above
all, the long evenings around the fire of vine-branches, shortened
by tales of wonder. He discovered in himself a spring of imagination
hitherto unsuspected, finding a singular delight in the mere recital of
these things, so gentle, calm, and monotonous.
One anxiety troubled him, however, that Savinien should not come to
know his past. Sometimes there escaped him a shady word of thieves’
slang, an ignoble gesture, vestiges of his horrible former existence;
and then he felt the pain of a man whose old wounds reopen, more
especially as he thought he saw then in Savinien the awakening of
an unhealthy curiosity. When the young man, already tempted by the
pleasures which Paris offers even to the poorest, questioned him about
the mysteries of the great city, Jean François feigned ignorance and
turned the conversation; but he had now conceived a vague inquietude
for the future of his friend.
This was not without foundation, and Savinien could not long remain
the naïve rustic he had been on his arrival in Paris. If the gross
and noisy pleasures of the wine-shop always were repugnant to him,
he was profoundly troubled by other desires full of danger for the
inexperience of his twenty years. When the spring came, he began to
seek solitude, and at first he wandered before the gayly lighted
entrances to the dancing-halls, through which he saw the girls going
in couples, without bonnets--and with their arms around each other’s
waists, whispering low. Then, one evening, when the lilacs shed their
perfume, and when the appeal of the quadrille was more entrancing, he
crossed the threshold, and after that Jean François saw him change
little by little in manners and in visage. Savinien became more
frivolous, more extravagant; often he borrowed from his friend his
miserable savings, which he forgot to repay. Jean François, feeling
himself abandoned, was both indulgent and jealous; he suffered and
kept silent. He did not think he had the right to reproach; but his
penetrating friendship had cruel and insurmountable presentiments.
One evening when he was climbing the stairs of his lodging, absorbed
in his preoccupations, he heard in the room he was about to enter a
dialogue of irritated voices, and he recognized one as that of the old
man from Auvergne, who lodged with him and Savinien. An old habit of
suspicion made him pause on the landing, and he listened to learn the
cause of the trouble.
“Yes,” said the man from Auvergne angrily, “I am sure that some one
has broken open my trunk and stolen the three louis which I had hidden
in a little box; and the man who has done this thing can only be one
of the two companions who sleep here, unless it is Maria, the servant.
This concerns you as much as me, since you are the master of the house,
and I will drag you before the judge if you do not let me at once open
up the valises of the two masons. My poor hoard! It was in its place
only yesterday; and I will tell you what it was, so that, if we find
it, no one can accuse me of lying. Oh, I know them, my three beautiful
gold pieces, and I can see them as plainly as I see you. One was a
little more worn than the others, of a slightly greenish gold, and that
had the portrait of the great Emperor; another had that of a fat old
fellow with a queue and epaulets; and the third had a Philippe with
side-whiskers. I had marked it with my teeth. No one can trick me, not
me. Do you know that I needed only two others like those to pay for my
vineyard? Come on, let us look through the things of these comrades, or
I will call the police. Make haste!”
“All right,” said the voice of the householder; “we’ll search with
Maria. So much the worse if you find nothing, and if the masons get
angry. It is you who have forced me to it.”
Jean François felt his heart fill with fear. He recalled the poverty
and the petty borrowings of Savinien, the sombre manner he had borne
the last few days. Yet he could not believe in any theft. He heard the
panting of the man from Auvergne in the ardor of his search, and he
clenched his fists against his breast as if to repress the beatings of
his heart.
“There they are!” suddenly screamed the victorious miser. “There they
are, my louis, my dear treasure! And in the Sunday waistcoat of that
little hypocrite from Limoges. Look, landlord! they are just as I told
you. There’s the Napoleon, and the man with the queue, and the Philippe
I had dented with my teeth. Look at the mark. Ah, the little rascal
with his saintly look! I should more likely have suspected the other.
Ah, the villain! He will have to go to the galleys!”
At this moment Jean François heard the well-known step of Savinien, who
was slowly mounting the stairs.
“He is going to his betrayal,” thought he. “Three flights. I have time!”
And, pushing open the door, he entered, pale as death, into the room
where he saw the landlord and the stupefied servant in a corner,
and the man from Auvergne on his knees amid the disordered clothes,
lovingly kissing his gold pieces.
“Enough of this,” he said in a thick voice. “It is I who have taken
the money and who have put it in my comrade’s trunk. But that is too
disgusting. I am a thief and not a Judas. Go hunt for the police. I’ll
not try to save myself. Only, I must say a word in private to Savinien,
who is here.”
The little man from Limoges had, in fact, just arrived, and, seeing his
crime discovered, and believing himself lost, he stood still, his eyes
fixed, his arms drooping.
Jean François seized him violently about the neck as though to embrace
him; he pressed his mouth to Savinien’s ear and said to him in a voice
low and supplicating:
“Be quiet!”
Then, turning to the others:
“Leave me alone with him. I shall not go away, I tell you. Shut us up,
if you wish, but leave us alone.”
And, with a gesture of command, he showed them the door. They went out.
Savinien, broken with anguish, had seated himself on a bed, and dropped
his eyes without comprehending.
“Listen,” said Jean François, who approached to take his hands. “I
understand you have stolen three gold pieces to buy some trifle for a
girl. That would have cost six months of prison for you. But one does
not get out of that except to go back again, and you would have become
a pillar of the police tribunals and the courts of assizes. I know all
about them. I have done seven years in the Reform School, one year
at Sainte-Pélagie, three years at Poissy, and five years at Toulon.
Now, have no fear. All is arranged. I have taken this affair on my
shoulders.”
“Unhappy fellow!” cried Savinien; but hope was already coming back to
his cowardly heart.
“When the elder brother is serving under the colors, the younger does
not go,” Jean François went on. “I’m your substitute, that’s all. You
love me a little, do you not? I am paid. Do not be a baby. Do not
refuse. They would have caught me one of these days, for I have broken
my exile. And then, you see, that life out there will be less hard for
me than for you; I know it, and shall not complain if I do not render
you this service in vain and if you swear to me that you will not do it
again. Savinien, I have loved you well, and your friendship has made
me very happy, for it is thanks to my knowing you that I have kept
honest and straight, 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. My only regret was that I was useless to you and that I
was deceiving you about my past. To-day I lay aside the mask in saving
you. It is all right. Come, good-by! Do not weep; and embrace me, for
already I hear the big boots on the stairs. They are returning with the
police; and we must not seem to know each other so well before these
fellows.”
He pressed Savinien hurriedly to his breast, and then he pushed him
away as the door opened wide.
It was the landlord and the man from Auvergne, who were bringing the
police. Jean François started forward to the landing and 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.