A CRUSH AT THE MORGUE.
When the stray dog had finished his welcome repast, licking the sides of
the bowl which had contained it with a gusto which many a dyspeptic
favourite, fondled on the velvet cushion of my lady, and carried about
by my lady's footman, would have envied, O'Hara began to talk with him;
yes, to talk with him--and the dog answered him, as far as eyes and tail
could speak.
'Well, my poor fellow, you seem to like that!'
The dog curled his tail and licked his lips.
'What's your name? You don't know, nor where you were born. You're as
ignorant as Topsy.'
The dog sought the ground with his eyes.
'I must give you a name. Suppose I call you Chance, to mark how I found
you; or Bran, like the dog in Ossian; or Hector--no, that's too
bumptious a name, and you're no bully.'
The dog wisely shook his head, as if he looked on the idea of bullyism
with pity.
'Let me see; egad, I'll naturalize you! I think you have a very Irish
face--an honest, open, grateful face--and I'll call you Pat.'
The dog wagged his tail joyfully, stood on his hind legs, and stretched
out a paw.
'Wonderful creature! can it be that I have hit on your name? Well,
Pat'--again the tail wagged--'if you belonged to a rich family you would
be housed, perhaps, in that hospital for indisposed gentlemen of your
breed I see advertised on a kiosk near the Palais Royal; but, because
you really want a friend and a crust, you are left without either.
That's the way with the world, Pat,[5] and you're a vagabond, though
goodness knows you're ugly enough to be a pet. I declare you're as
ill-favoured as any pug I ever met sitting on a Brussels hearthrug, if
it were not for that face.'
The dog gave an assenting bark.
'But we mustn't be stopping here too long, Pat, though our time isn't
very precious. George Francis Train says the next best thing to money is
the suspicion of money, and I say the next best thing to occupation is
the suspicion of occupation; and, by my word, they lock you up for
having no occupation in England, though you may be wearing the soles off
your feet to get one. In the great world they go to the theatre or the
opera or the circus after dinner to promote digestion, and I think I
know where we can enjoy ourselves cheaply after our banquet. Hi! Pat,
come along.'
And, rising, our friend retraced his steps towards the bridge, stopping
for a moment at a tobacco-shop, where he purchased and lit a cigar at a
sou, at the same time giving loud expression to his regret that he had
forgotten his Turkish pipe.
'We must be economic, you know, and tobacco goes farther than a weed,'
and seeming mentally to calculate the state of his finances--'three sous
for milk and two for bread, five, that leaves five'--previous to
hazarding the investment.
The open space in front of the Morgue is a favourite 'pitch' of the
mountebanks who earn their livelihood on Paris streets. At the time our
pair made their appearance, it was occupied by a number of the tribe in
full swing. In one corner a low-sized, deformed figure, recalling the
Quasimodo whom Victor Hugo's genius has made historic in connection with
the neighbouring church of Notre Dame, was appealing to a crowd of
bystanders to jerk ten sous more into the ring, and he would transfer
the hump on his back to his breast. O'Hara did not wait for the tardy
money to come in; he had no taste for the crooked talents of the
posture-master.
A group in another corner surrounded a tanned fellow, with long hair
and an eye like an onyx, who beat time on a drum, as he chanted a merry
skit on a Paris by-word of the season--'_Avez-vous vu Lambert?_' to the
air of '_Maman, le mal que j'ai_,' while the woman who accompanied him
sold copies of it by the sheaf to laughing workmen, soldiers, and
nursery-maids.
But by far the largest assemblage was drawn to a stout acrobat in faded
tights, which might have been washed at some remote era, bedizened with
spangles that revealed a faint tradition of glitter. He had an amazing
flow of impudent 'patter,' this acrobat, and let it spout
uninterruptedly as he flung up little metal rings, in quick succession,
high in the air, catching them as they fell on a tin cone, strapped to
his forehead, in the fashion of a unicorn's horn. Sometimes he missed
them, and they slapped with a crack on his skull, and rolled off behind
by a bald channel, which frequent misadventure of the kind had worn in
his hair. But the spectators were as highly amused when he failed as
when he succeeded--indeed, more so, if the truth must be told--for had
they not a hit and a miss together? When the cone was encircled with
rings, he flung up a monster potato, impaling it on the spike as it
descended, amid the acclamations of his admirers.
'Come along, Pat,' said O'Hara; 'here is something more in our line,' as
he passed to another group, before which the owner of a troop of
educated dogs and cats was performing.
'This is M'sieu Rigolo,' cried the showman, as he placed one chair
reversed on another, and taking a poor cat, that looked as if it
couldn't get up an emotion at a family of mice round a Stilton cheese,
balanced its claws consecutively lengthwise and crosswise on the
upstanding legs. When the cat had been sufficiently tortured it was
dismissed, to its evident satisfaction, to the basket which served as
green-room to the perambulating theatre.
'Present yourself, M'sieu Romulus,' cried the showman, and a poodle of
remarkably subdued mien reluctantly entered the arena, much as a slave
who was devoted to the lions might have done in the old Roman times.
M'sieu Romulus had not the boldness of his illustrious namesake of
antiquity, but he had more than his sagacity. His strong point lay in
detecting the most amorous man, the most beautiful lady, the greatest
idler and so-forth in the surrounding company. The showman, putting a
card in his mouth, asked him to point out such a one. Romulus stood up
in the attitude dogs are wont when asked to beg, moved carefully round
and finally trotted off in the way he should go, and dropped the card at
the feet of the chosen person.
Romulus was dismissed in his turn to the green-room, and the showman
called for Mademoiselle. The call was responded to by one of the saddest
short-eared dogs ever seen, girt round the middle with a miniature
crinoline which made the creature a grotesque caricature of a woman in
the prevailing fashion as she hopped into the circle painfully on her
hind-legs.
'_Salut_, Ma'amselle!' said the showman; 'we want to see you dance a
minuet,' and he commenced playing on a pandean pipe. But Ma'amselle did
not dance long. Pat, who had been watching the whole performance with
canine amazement from between O'Hara's legs, suddenly rushed in,
extended his paws and lowered his head in front of the disguised member
of his species, and barked a good-natured bark. Ma'amselle dropped on
all fours, and looked up inquisitively at the showman's face. The
showman flung his pandean pipe at Pat's snout, and the poor intruder ran
howling round the amused throng. No one would make room for him to
escape, until at last a short thickset man, in a long frieze coat caught
him, pulled him to himself, and cried to the showman, in a foreign
accent, 'It is not French to strike a dog for gallantry; he simply
entered because he didn't like to see Ma'amselle dance without a
partner. Didn't you see him make his bow?'
'Pardon me, sir,' said O'Hara, who had been shut out from the inner
circle by the forward rush, as he made his way to the friendly stranger;
'but I believe I am the next of kin to this unfortunate animal.'
'Have him, sir, and welcome,' said he in the frieze. 'I never like to
see an animal struck that can't strike back for itself.'
'Thanks, sir,' said O'Hara, and then, turning to Pat, he continued,
speaking this time in English, 'Come, my companion, we'll leave that
brute of a showman: every dog has his day, and perhaps you'll have yours
yet.'
The stranger looked after the pair sharply as they turned towards a
crowd where a little old man was expatiating on the marvellous abilities
of Madame La Blague, the celebrated clairvoyante, and muttered something
between his teeth. The celebrated clairvoyante was seated on a chair in
the centre of a crowd, her eyes bandaged like those of the figure of
Justice, and her hands crossed on her lap in the attitude of Patience on
the monument.
'Now then, messieurs,' said the little old man, 'take a ticket and have
your fortune told. Only ten centimes. Tell me your hopes, your fears,
your desires, and madame will at once read the answer in the Book of
Fate when I ask her.'
'Hark you, friend, I want my fortune told.'
It was the man in frieze who spoke. He had moved up after O'Hara and the
dog.
'Take a ticket, sir, and wait your turn,' squeaked the little old man.
'Is it so? That's a thing I never do. Ten centimes, you charge; now I'll
give ten francs--that's a thousand centimes--if madame is able to return
me a single true answer to five plain questions I'll put to her myself.'
'I'll try, at all events, sir,' said the woman with bandaged eyes.
'I like that. To start--how old am I?'
'Forty-four,' answered the woman, after a pause.
'You don't flatter. I'm between the thirties and the forties still.
Guess again--what's my disposition?'
'Impatient,' was the immediate answer.
'You've got to earn the money yet. My profession?'
'Soldier.'
'What regiment?'
'The Foreign Legion.'
'Ha! Then you've found out I'm a foreigner. From what country, pray?'
'From Ireland.'
The stranger in frieze started, gave an ejaculation of surprise, and,
taking out a ten-franc piece, advanced towards the woman, and said he
could understand her guessing he was a military man from his tone of
voice, and the further fact that he had served in the Legion from his
foreign accent; but he demanded in a puzzled tone that she would
explain how she had discovered his country before he redeemed his
promise.
'We show-folk travel a great deal, sir,' she said in a low voice. 'I
have been in Ireland, and I recognised the accent.'
'That explains the mystery. Like Columbus's egg, all things are easy
when they're known. Well, madame,' he continued aloud with a chuckle,
'if you've been in Ireland you know us. When we promise France we give
the Isle of St. Louis.[6] Here is a ten-sous bit for you.'
Her countenance fell until her delicate fingers conveyed to her senses
that it was, indeed, ten francs she possessed. The crowd applauded, said
he was as witty as he was generous, and the man in frieze turned on his
heel. He looked curiously towards the neat white one-storied structure
beside the footpath from the Pont d'Archevêche to the Pont St. Louis,
into which a stream of wayfarers was continually flowing, and finally
directed his steps thitherward too. It was a cheerful-looking building
that, which drew so many visitors, but, nevertheless, it was the
Morgue--half-way house between untimely death and the outcast's grave.
The stranger entered the wide door--a tall partition divided what was
inside from his view; he passed around it and was within the grisly
hall. O'Hara mechanically followed; he had no curiosity to scan the
lineaments of the naked corpses which awaited recognition within--he was
rather _blasé_ of sights of the kind, and regarded a body on a Morgue
slab as he would a carcase on a butcher's stall; but he felt a something
impelling him towards this stranger who had discovered himself to be a
countryman. As he entered, reading, perhaps for the hundredth time, the
inscriptions on the wall, which told friends who identified the deceased
that they could establish their identity with the greffier free of
charge, he caught an exclamation of surprise in English in the brusque
voice of the man in frieze.
'Hah! so you've shuffled off this mortal coil, Marguerite.'
O'Hara turned in the direction from which the voice came; he
distinguished his compatriot in the middle of an unusually excited mass
which pressed against the bars of this loathsome cage of mysterious
horrors, a grim smile twisting his features. He could not see any of the
twelve sloping tables on which the bodies were laid out in their last
toilette--their stiff limbs stretched, hair combed back, hands fixed by
their cold sides, and squares of black boarding covering the stomach and
thighs--because of the intervening crowd. The clothing of the unclaimed
dead, hats, jackets, and blouses, suspended from racks overhead, alone
was visible.
'What's the excitement?' he asked of a grizzled soldier, who edged his
way back from the bars.
'Oh, it's only a _cocotte_ of the quarter, who's been fool enough to go
to the devil before the devil came to her. Sapristi! but she's been a
well-favoured wench, and's got a well-turned leg even on her
calafaque.'[7]
'Marguerite, Marguerite,' said O'Hara, as if recalling some train of
thought.
'Yes, that's what's yonder individual, who pretends that he knew her,
denominated her; but I inflect he's a joker.'
'Tall, with an Italian face and black hair?' asked O'Hara eagerly.
'Ay, ay, tall, with a handsome, despising face, and long hair, as black
as a grenadier's bearskin.'
'I, too, think I know her--if it be the same.'
'If it be the same! It strikes me, jokers are consolidating in the
Morgue to-day. Good-morning, bourgeois, I'm an old soldier,' and away
marched the veteran.
A pretty little girl, coquettishly clad in the costume of the grisette,
a well-fitting robe of gray, relieved by a tidy patent leather belt with
clasp, setting off her figure, and large imitation coral drops
glistening under her bright chestnut hair, entered at the moment, a
basket on her arm, as if returning from her work.
'Have you seen the bodies yet, please, sir?' she said to O'Hara.
'Not yet, mademoiselle,' he replied graciously; 'but if you wait a
little, I shall get a place for both to see them.'
She smiled her thanks.
'Now, then, forward. It's the first time I have ever seen a crush at the
Morgue;' and they perseveringly made their way to the front.
On a black slab lay extended the nude limbs of a woman who had been
taken from life before she had reached its noon, whilst she might have
been full of strength and lusty joy. They were bloodless to the view,
but round and beautiful of proportion, and clean of colour as a statue
of purest marble by a master hand. The head was pillowed on a luxuriant
mass of wet, matted raven hair. There was a smile on the face (which was
wickedly handsome, as the soldier had described it), even in death, and
a proud, disdainful curl had left its unchangeable impress on the mouth.
'By Jove, it _is_ Marguerite!' cried O'Hara involuntarily.
At the same instant the little grisette, whom he had helped to a place,
turned pale and trembled, and falling back in a faint, sank into his
arms as she murmured from between her white lips, 'Merciful God!
Caroline, poor Caroline!'