Ten Tales Part 7

"Believe me, I had trouble enough then, monsieur le cure; my soul was full of it. But what could I do, since I loved them both? Only what I believed was for their happiness--let them marry. And as Philip had always lived freely, and spent as he made, I lent him my h.o.a.rd to buy the furniture.

"Then they were married, and for a while all went well. They had a little boy, and I stood sponsor for him and named him Camille, in remembrance of his mother. It was a little after the birth of the baby that Philip began to go wrong. I was mistaken in him--he was not made for marriage; he was too fond of frivolity and pleasure. You live in a poor quarter, monsieur le cure, and you must know the sad story by heart--the workman who glides little by little from idleness into drunkenness, who is off on a spree for two or three days, who does not bring home his week's wages, and who only returns to his home, broken up by his spree, to make scenes and to beat his wife. In less than two years Philip became one of these wretches. At first I tried to reform him, and sometimes, ashamed of himself, he would attempt to do better; but that did not last long. Then my remonstrances only irritated him; and when I went to his house, and he saw me look sadly around the chamber made bare by the p.a.w.n-shop, at poor Catherine, thin and pale with grief, he became furious. One day he had the audacity to be jealous of me on account of his wife, who was as pure as the blessed Virgin, reminding me that I was once her lover and accusing me of still being so, with slanders and infamies that I should be ashamed to repeat. We almost flew at each other's throats. I saw what I must do. I would see Catherine and my G.o.dson no more; and as for Philip, I would only meet him when by chance we worked on the same job.

"Only, you will understand, I loved Catherine and little Camille too well to lose sight of them entirely. On Sat.u.r.day evenings, when I knew that Philip was drinking up his wages with his comrades, I used to prowl about the quarter, and chat with the boy when I found him; and if it was too miserable at home, he did not return with empty hands, you know. I believe that the wretched Philip knew that I was helping his wife, and that he closed his eyes to the fact, finding it rather convenient. I will hurry on, for the story is too miserable. Some years have pa.s.sed; Philip plunging deeper in vice; but Catherine, whom I had helped all I could, has educated her son, who is now a fellow of twenty years, good and courageous like herself. He is not a workman; he is educated; he has learned to draw at the evening schools, and he is now with an architect, where he gets good wages. And though the house is saddened by the presence of the drunkard, things go fairly well, for Camille is a great comfort to his mother; and for a year or two, when I see Catherine--she is so changed, the poor woman!--leaning on the arm of her manly son, it warms my heart.

"But yesterday evening, coming out of my cook-shop, I met Camille; and shaking hands with him--oh, he is not ashamed of me, and he doesn't blush at a blouse covered with plaster--I saw that something was the matter.

"'Let's see--what's the matter now?'

"'I drew the lot yesterday,' he replied, 'and I drew the number ten--a number that sends you to die with fever in the colonies with the marines. That will, at all events, send me there for five years, to leave mother alone, without resources, with father, who has never been drinking so much, who has never been so wicked. And it will kill her--it will kill her! How cursed it is to be poor!'

"Oh, what a horrible night I pa.s.sed! Think of it, monsieur le cure, that poor woman's labor for twenty years destroyed in a minute by an unhappy chance; because a child, rummaging in a sack, has drawn an unfortunate number! In the morning I was broken as by age when I went to the house we were building on the Boulevard Arago. Of what use is sorrow? we must work all the same. So I mounted the scaffolding. We had already built the house to the fourth story, and I began to place my mortar. Suddenly I felt some one strike me on the shoulder. It was Philip. He only worked now when the inclination seized him, and he was apparently putting in a day's work to get something to drink; but the builder, having a forfeit to pay if the building was not finished by a certain date, accepted the first-comers.

V.

"I had not seen Philip for a long time, and it was with difficulty that I recognized him. Burned and fevered by brandy, his beard gray, his hands trembling, he was more than an old man--he was a ruin.

"'Well,' I said to him, 'the boy has drawn a bad number.'

"'What of it?' he replied, with an angry look. 'Are you going to worry me about that, too, like Catherine and Camille? The boy will do as others have done: he will serve his country. I know what worries them, both my wife and son. If I were dead he would not have to go. But, so much the worse for them, I am still solid at my post, and Camille is not the son of a widow.'

"The son of a widow! Ah, monsieur le cure, why did he use that unhappy phrase? The evil thought came to me at once, and it never quitted me all the morning that I worked at the wretch's side. I imagined all that she was about to suffer--poor Catherine!--when she no longer had her son to care for and protect her, and she must be alone with the miserable drunkard, now completely brutalized, ugly, and capable of anything. A neighboring clock struck eleven, and the workmen all descended to lunch.

We remained until the last, Philip and I, but in stepping on the ladder to descend, he turned to me with a leer, and said, in his hoa.r.s.e, dissipated voice:

"'You see, steady as a sailor; Camille is not nearly the son of a widow.'

"The blood mounted to my head. I was beside myself. I seized with both hands the rounds of the ladder to which Philip clung shouting 'Help!'

and with a single effort I toppled it over.

"He was instantly killed--by an accident, they said--and now Camille is the son of a widow and need not go.

"That is what I have done, monsieur le cure, and what I want to tell to you and to the good G.o.d. I repent, I ask pardon, of course; but I must not see Catherine in her black dress, happy on the arm of her son, or I could not regret my crime. To prevent that I will emigrate--I will lose myself in America. As to my penance--see, monsieur le cure, here is the little cross of gold that Catherine refused when she told me that she was in love with Philip. I have always kept it, in memory of the only happy days that I ever knew in my life. Take it and sell it. Give the money to the poor."

Jack rose absolved by the Abbe Faber.

One thing is certain, and that is that the priest never sold the little cross of gold. After having paid its price into the Treasury of the Church, he hung the jewel, as an _ex-voto_, on the altar of the chapel of the Virgin, where he often went to pray for the poor mason.

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THE SABOTS OF LITTLE WOLFF.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Sabots of little Wolff.

(a Christmas Story).]

Once upon a time--it was so long ago that the whole world has forgotten the date--in a city in the north of Europe--whose name is so difficult to p.r.o.nounce that n.o.body remembers it--once upon a time there was a little boy of seven, named Wolff, an orphan in charge of an old aunt who was hard and avaricious, who only embraced him on New-Year's Day, and who breathed a sigh of regret every time that she gave him a porringer of soup.

But the poor little chap was naturally so good that he loved the old woman just the same, although she frightened him very much, and he could never see without trembling the great wart, ornamented with four gray hairs, which she had on the end of her nose.

As the aunt of Wolff was known through all the village to have a house and an old stocking full of gold, she did not dare send her nephew to the school for the poor. But she so schemed to obtain a reduction of the price with the school-master whose school little Wolff attended, that the bad teacher, vexed at having a scholar so badly dressed and who paid so poorly, punished him very often and unjustly with the backboard and fool's cap, and even stirred his fellow-pupils against him, all sons of well-to-do men, who made the orphan their scapegoat.

The poor little fellow was therefore as miserable as the stones in the street, and hid himself in out-of-the-way corners to cry; when Christmas came.

The night before Christmas the school-master was to take all of his pupils to the midnight ma.s.s, and bring them back to their homes.

Now, as the winter was very severe that year, and as for several days a great quant.i.ty of snow had fallen, the scholars came to the rendezvous warmly wrapped and bundled up, with fur caps pulled down over their ears, double and triple jackets, knitted gloves and mittens, and good thick nailed boots with strong soles. Only little Wolff came shivering in the clothes that he wore week-days and Sundays, and with nothing on his feet but coa.r.s.e Strasbourg socks and heavy sabots, or wooden shoes.

His thoughtless comrades made a thousand jests over his sad looks and his peasant's dress. But the orphan was so occupied in blowing on his fingers, and suffered so much from his chilblains, that he took no notice of them; and the troop of boys, with the master at their head, started for the church.

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It was fine in the church, which was resplendent with wax-candles; and the scholars, excited by the pleasant warmth, profited by the noise of the organ and the singing to talk to each other in a low voice. They boasted of the fine suppers that were waiting for them at home. The son of the burgomaster had seen, before he went out, a monstrous goose that the truffles marked with black spots like a leopard. At the house of the first citizen there was a little fir-tree in a wooden box, from whose branches hung oranges, sweetmeats, and toys. And the cook of the first citizen had pinned behind her back the two strings of her cap, as she only did on her days of inspiration when she was sure of succeeding with her famous sugar-candy. And then the scholars spoke, too, of what the Christ-child would bring to them, of what he would put in their shoes, which they would, of course, be very careful to leave in the chimney before going to bed. And the eyes of those little chaps, lively as a parcel of mice, sparkled in advance with the joy of seeing in their imagination pink paper bags of burnt almonds, lead soldiers drawn up in battalions in their boxes, menageries smelling of varnished wood, and magnificent jumping-jacks covered with purple and bells.

Little Wolff knew very well by experience that his old miserly aunt would send him supperless to bed. But in the simplicity of his soul, and knowing that he had been all the year as good and industrious as possible, he hoped that the Christ-child would not forget him, and he, too, looked eagerly forward by-and-by to putting his wooden shoes in the ashes of the fireplace.

The midnight ma.s.s concluded, the faithful went away, anxious for supper, and the band of scholars, walking two by two after their teacher, left the church.

Now, under the porch, sitting on a stone seat under a Gothic niche, a child was sleeping--a child covered by a robe of white linen, and whose feet were bare, notwithstanding the cold. He was not a beggar, for his robe was new and nice, and near him on the ground were seen, lying in a cloth, a square, a hatchet, a pair of compa.s.ses, and the other tools of a carpenter's apprentice. Under the light of the stars, his face, with its closed eyes, bore an expression of divine sweetness, and his long locks of golden hair seemed like an _aureole_ about his head. But the child's feet, blue in the cold of that December night, were sad to see.

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The scholars, so well clothed and shod for the winter, pa.s.sed heedlessly before the unknown child. One of them, even, the son of one of the princ.i.p.al men in the village, looked at the waif with an expression in which could be seen all the scorn of the rich for the poor, the well-fed for the hungry.

But little Wolff, coming the last out of the church, stopped, full of compa.s.sion, before the beautiful sleeping infant.

"Alas!" said the orphan to himself, "it is too bad: this poor little one going barefoot in such bad weather. But what is worse than all, he has not to-night even a boot or a wooden shoe to leave before him while he sleeps, so that the Christ-child could put something there to comfort him in his misery."

And, carried away by the goodness of his heart, little Wolff took off the wooden shoe from his right foot, and laid it in front of the sleeping child; and then, as best he could, limping along on his poor blistered foot and dragging his sock through the snow, he went back to his aunt's.

"Look at the worthless fellow!" cried his aunt, full of anger at his return without one of his shoes. "What have you done with your wooden shoe, little wretch?"

Little Wolff did not know how to deceive, and although he was shaking with terror at seeing the gray hairs bristle up on the nose of the angry woman, he tried to stammer out some account of his adventure.

But the old woman burst into a frightful peal of laughter.

"Ah, monsieur takes off his shoes for beggars! Ah, monsieur gives away his wooden shoe to a barefoot! That is something new for example! Ah, well, since that is so, I am going to put the wooden shoe which you have left in the chimney, and I promise you the Christ-child will leave there to-night something to whip you with in the morning. And you shall pa.s.s the day to-morrow on dry bread and water. We will see if next time you give away your shoes to the first vagabond that comes."

And the wicked woman, after having given the poor boy a couple of slaps, made him climb up to his bed in the attic. Grieved to the heart, the child went to bed in the dark, and soon went to sleep on his pillow steeped with tears.

But on the morrow morning, when the old woman, awakened by the cold and shaken by her cough, went down stairs--oh, wonderful sight!--she saw the great chimney full of beautiful playthings, and sacks of magnificent candies, and all sorts of good things; and before all these splendid things the right shoe, that her nephew had given to the little waif, stood by the side of the left shoe, that she herself had put there that very night, and where she meant to put a birch-rod.

And as little Wolff, running down to learn the meaning of his aunt's exclamation, stood in artless ecstasy before all these splendid Christmas presents, suddenly there were loud cries of laughter out-of-doors. The old woman and the little boy went out to know what it all meant, and saw all the neighbors gathered around the public fountain. What had happened? Oh, something very amusing and very extraordinary. The children of all the rich people of the village, those whose parents had wished to surprise them by the most beautiful gifts, had found only rods in their shoes.