A SILK-WEAVER OF PARIS.
"No, madame, there is no more any old Paris. The Paris that I remember
is gone, all gone, save here and there a corner that soon they will pull
down as all the rest. All changes, manners no less than these streets
that I know not in their new dress, and where I go seeking a trace of
what is past. It is only in the churches that one feels that all is the
same, and even with them one wonders why, if it is the same, fewer and
fewer come, and that men smile often at those that enter the doors, and
would close them to us who still must pray in the old places. Is there
that consolation for the worker in America, madame? Can she forget her
sorrow and want at a shrine that is holy, and feel the light resting on
her, full of the glory of the painted windows and the color that is joy
and rest? Because, if there had not been the church, my St. Etienne du
Mont, that I know from a child, if there had not been that, I must have
died. And so I have wondered if your country had this gift also for the
worker, and, if it has not bread enough, has at least something that
feeds the soul. Is it so, madame?"
Poor old Rose, once weaver in silk and with cheeks like her name,
looking at me now with her sad eyes, blue and clear still in spite of
her almost seventy years, and full of the patience born of long struggle
and acceptance! St. Etienne had drawn me as it had drawn her, and it was
in the apse, the light streaming from the ancient windows, each one a
marvel of color whose secret no man to-day has penetrated, that I saw
first the patient face and the clasped hands of this suppliant, who
prayed there undisturbed by any thought of watching eyes, and who rose
presently and went slowly down the aisles, with a face that might have
taken its place beside the pictured saints to whom she had knelt. Her
_sabots_ clicked against the pavement worn by many generations of feet,
and her old fingers still moved mechanically, telling the beads which
she had slipped out of sight.
"You love the little church," I said; and she answered instantly, with a
smile that illumined the old face, "Indeed, yes; and why not? It is home
and all that is good, and it is so beautiful, madame. There is none like
it. I go to the others sometimes, above all to Nôtre Dame, which also is
venerable and dear, and where one may worship well. But always I return
here; for the great church seems to carry my prayers away, and they are
half lost in such bigness, and it is not so bright and so joyous as
this. For here the color lifts the heart, and I seem to rise in my soul
also, and I know every pillar and ornament, for my eyes study often when
my lips pray; but it is all one worship, madame, else I should shut them
close. But the good God and the saints know well that I am always
praying, and that it is my St. Etienne that helps, and that is so
beautiful I must pray when I see it."
This was the beginning of knowing Rose, and in good time her whole story
was told,--a very simple one, but a record that stands for many like it.
There was neither discontent nor repining. Born among workers, she had
filled her place, content to fill it, and only wondering as years went
on why there were not better days, and, if they were to mend for others,
whether she had part in it or not. Far up under the roof of an old
house, clung to because it was old, Rose climbed, well satisfied after
the minutes in the little church in which she laid down the burden that
long ago had become too heavy for her, and which, if it returned at all,
could always be dropped again at the shrine which had heard her first
prayer.
"It is Paris that I know best," she said, "and that I love always, but I
am not born in it, nor none of mine. It is my father that desired much
that we should gain more, and who is come here when I am so little that
I can be carried on the back. He is a weaver, madame, a weaver of silk,
and my mother knows silk also from the beginning. Why not, when it is to
her mother who also has known it, and she winds cocoons, too, when she
is little? I have played with them for the first plaything, and indeed
the only one, madame, since, when I learn what they are and how one
must use them, I have knowledge enough to hold the threads, and so
begin. It was work, yes, but not the work of to-day. We worked together.
If my father brought us here, it was that all things might be better;
for he loved us well. He sang as he wove, and we sang with him. If hands
were tired, he said always: 'Think how you are earning for us all, and
for the _dot_ that some day you shall have when your blue eyes are
older, and some one comes who will see that they are wise eyes that, if
they laugh, know also all the ways that these threads must go.' That
pleased me, for I was learning, too, and together we earned well, and
had our _pot au feu_ and good wine and no lack of bread.
"That was the hand-loom, and when at last is come another that goes with
steam, the weavers have revolted and sworn to destroy them all, since
one could do the work of many. I hear it all, and listen, and think how
it is that a man's mind can think a thing that takes bread from other
men. I am sixteen, then, and skilful and with good wages for every day,
and it is then that Armand is come,--Armand, who was weaver, too, but
who had been soldier with the great Emperor, and seen the girls of all
countries. But he cared for none of them till he saw me, for his thought
was always on his work; and he, too, planned machines, and fretted that
he had not education enough to make them with drawings and figures so
that the masters would understand. When machines have come he has
fretted more; for one at least had been clear in his own thought, and
now he cannot have it as he will, since another's thought has been
before him. He told me all this, believing I could understand; and so I
could, madame, since love made me wise enough to see what he might mean,
and if I had not words, at least I had ears, and always I have used them
well. We are still one family when the time comes that I marry, and my
father has good wages in spite of machines, and all are reconciled to
them, save my brother. But the owners build factories. It is no longer
at home that one can work; and in these the children go, yes, even
little ones, and hours are longer, and there is no song to cheer them,
and no mother who can speak sometimes or tell a tale as they wind, and
all is different. And so my mother says always: 'It is not good for
France that the loom is taken out of the houses;' and if she makes more
money because of more silk, she loses things that are more precious than
money, and it is all bad that it must be so. My father shakes his head.
There are wages for every child; and he sees this, and does not so well
see that they earned also at home, and had some things that the factory
stops, for always.
"For me, I am weaver of ribbons, and I love them well, all the bright,
beautiful colors. I look at the windows of my St. Etienne and feel the
color like a song in my heart, and while I weave I see them always, and
could even think that I spin them from my own mind.
"That is a fancy that has rest when the days are long, and the sound of
the mill in my ears, and the beat of the machines, that I feel sometimes
are cruel, for one can never stop, but must go on always. I think in
myself, as I see the children, that I shall never let mine stand with
them, and indeed there is no need, since we are all earning, and there
is money saved, and this is all true for long. The children are come.
Three boys are mine; two with Armand's eyes, and one with mine, whom
Armand loves best because of this, but seeks well to make no difference,
and we call him Etienne for my saint and my church. And, madame, I think
often that more heaven is in him than we often know, and perhaps because
I have prayed always under the window where the lights are all at last
one glory, and the color itself is a prayer, Etienne is so born that he
must have it, too. I take him there a baby, and he stretches his hands
and smiles. He does not shout like the others, but his smile seems from
heaven. He is an artist. He draws always with a bit of charcoal, with
anything, and I think that he shall study, and, it may be, make other
beautiful things that may live in a new St. Etienne, or in some other
place in this Paris that I love; and I am happy.
"Then comes the time, madame, that one remembers and prays to forget,
till one knows that it may be the good God's way of telling us how wrong
we are and what we must learn. First it is Armand, who has become
revolutionary,--what you call to-day communist,--and who is found in
what are called plots, and tried and imprisoned. It was not for long. He
would have come to me again, but the fever comes and kills many; he dies
and I cannot be with him,--no, nor even see him when they take him to
burial. I go in a dream. I will not believe it; and then my father is
hurt. He is caught in one of those machines that my mother so hates, and
his hand is gone and his arm crushed.
"Now the children must earn. There is no other way. For Armand and
Pierre I could bear it, since they are stronger, but for Etienne, no. He
comes from school that he loves, and must take his place behind the
loom. He is patient; he says, even, he is glad to earn for us all; but
he is pale, and the light in his eyes grows dim, save when, night and
morning, he kneels with me under my window and feels it as I do.
"Then evil days are here, and always more and more evil. Month by month
wages are less and food is more. My mother is dead, too, and my father
quite helpless, and my brother that has never been quite as others, and
so cannot earn. We work always. My boys know well all that must be
known, but at seventeen Armand is tall and strong as a man, and he is
taken for soldier, and he, too, never comes to us again. I work more and
more, and if I earn two francs for the day am glad, but now Etienne is
sick and I see well that he cannot escape. 'It is the country he needs,'
says the doctor. 'He must be taken to the country if he is to live;' but
these are words. I pray,--I pray always that succor may come, but it
comes not, nor can I even be with him in his pain, since I must work
always. And so it is, madame, that one day when I return, my father lies
on his bed weeping, and the priest is there and looks with pity upon me,
and my Etienne lies there still, and the smile that was his only is on
his face.
"That is all, madame. My life has ended there. But it goes on for others
still and can. My father has lived till I too am almost old. My brother
lives yet, and my boy, Pierre, who was shot at Balaklava, he has two
children and his wife, who is _couturière_, and I must aid them. I
remain weaver, and I earn always the same. Wages stay as in the
beginning, but all else is more and more. One may live, but that is
all. Many days we have only bread; sometimes not enough even of that.
But the end comes. I have always my St. Etienne, and often under the
window I see my Etienne's smile, and know well the good God has cared
for him, and I need no more. I could wish only that the children might
be saved, but I cannot tell. France needs them; but I think well she
needs them more as souls than as hands that earn wages, though truly I
am old and it may be that I do not know what is best. Tell me, madame,
must the children also work always with you, or do you care for other
things than work, and is there time for one to live and grow as a plant
in the sunshine? That is what I wish for the children; but Paris knows
no such life, nor can it, since we must live, and so I must wait, and
that is all."