The Fat and the Thin Part 19

"Is it Florent you mean?" Quenu timidly inquired after a pause.

Lisa did not immediately reply. She got up and went back to the secretaire, as if trying to restrain herself.

"Yes, it is Florent," she said presently, in incisive tones. "You know how patient I am. I would bear almost anything rather than come between you and your brother. The tie of relationship is a sacred thing. But the cup is filled to overflowing now. Since your brother came here things have been constantly getting worse and worse. But now, I won't say anything more; it is better that I shouldn't."

There was another pause. Then, as her husband gazed up at the ceiling with an air of embarra.s.sment, she continued, with increased violence:

"Really, he seems to ignore all that we have done for him. We have put ourselves to great inconvenience for his sake; we have given him Augustine's bedroom, and the poor girl sleeps without a murmur in a stuffy little closet where she can scarcely breathe. We board and lodge him and give him every attention--but no, he takes it all quite as a matter of course. He is earning money, but what he does with it n.o.body knows; or, rather, one knows only too well."

"But there's his share of the inheritance, you know," Quenu ventured to say, pained at hearing his brother attacked.

Lisa suddenly stiffened herself as though she were stunned, and her anger vanished.

"Yes, you are right; there is his share of the inheritance. Here is the statement of it, in this drawer. But he refused to take it; you remember, you were present, and heard him. That only proves that he is a brainless, worthless fellow. If he had had an idea in his head, he would have made something out of that money by now. For my own part, I should be very glad to get rid of it; it would be a relief to us. I have told him so twice, but he won't listen to me. You ought to persuade him to take it. Talk to him about it, will you?"

Quenu growled something in reply; and Lisa refrained from pressing the point further, being of opinion that she had done all that could be expected of her.

"He is not like other men," she resumed. "He's not a comfortable sort of person to have in the house. I shouldn't have said this if we hadn't got talking on the subject. I don't busy myself about his conduct, though it's setting the whole neighbourhood gossiping about us. Let him eat and sleep here, and put us about, if he likes; we can get over that; but what I won't tolerate is that he should involve us in his politics. If he tries to lead you off again, or compromises us in the least degree, I shall turn him out of the house without the least hesitation. I warn you, and now you understand!"

Florent was doomed. Lisa was making a great effort to restrain herself, to prevent the animosity which had long been rankling in her heart from flowing forth. But Florent and his ways jarred against her every instinct; he wounded her, frightened her, and made her quite miserable.

"A man who has made such a discreditable career," she murmured, "who has never been able to get a roof of his own over his head! I can very well understand his partiality for bullets! He can go and stand in their way if he chooses; but let him leave honest folks to their families! And then, he isn't pleasant to have about one! He reeks of fish in the evening at dinner! It prevents me from eating. He himself never lets a mouthful go past him, though it's little better he seems to be for it all! He can't even grow decently stout, the wretched fellow, to such a degree do his bad instincts prey on him!"

She had stepped up to the window whilst speaking, and now saw Florent crossing the Rue Rambuteau on his way to the fish market. There was a very large arrival of fish that morning; the tray-like baskets were covered with rippling silver, and the auction rooms roared with the hubbub of their sales. Lisa kept her eyes on the bony shoulders of her brother-in-law as he made his way into the pungent smells of the market, stooping beneath the sickening sensation which they brought him; and the glance with which she followed his steps was that of a woman bent on combat and resolved to be victorious.

When she turned round again, Quenu was getting up. As he sat on the edge of the bed in his night-shirt, still warm from the pleasant heat of the eider-down quilt and with his feet resting on the soft fluffy rug below him, he looked quite pale, quite distressed at the misunderstanding between his wife and his brother. Lisa, however, gave him one of her sweetest smiles, and he felt deeply touched when she handed him his socks.

CHAPTER IV

Marjolin had been found in a heap of cabbages at the Market of the Innocents. He was sleeping under the shelter of a large white-hearted one, a broad leaf of which concealed his rosy childish face It was never known what poverty-stricken mother had laid him there. When he was found he was already a fine little fellow of two or three years of age, very plump and merry, but so backward and dense that he could scarcely stammer a few words, and only seemed able to smile. When one of the vegetable saleswomen found him lying under the big white cabbage she raised such a loud cry of surprise that her neighbours rushed up to see what was the matter, while the youngster, still in petticoats, and wrapped in a sc.r.a.p of old blanket, held out his arms towards her.

He could not tell who his mother was, but opened his eyes in wide astonishment as he squeezed against the shoulder of a stout tripe dealer who eventually took him up. The whole market busied itself about him throughout the day. He soon recovered confidence, ate slices of bread and b.u.t.ter, and smiled at all the women. The stout tripe dealer kept him for a time, then a neighbour took him; and a month later a third woman gave him shelter. When they asked him where his mother was, he waved his little hand with a pretty gesture which embraced all the women present.

He became the adopted child of the place, always clinging to the skirts of one or another of the women, and always finding a corner of a bed and a share of a meal somewhere. Somehow, too, he managed to find clothes, and he even had a copper or two at the bottom of his ragged pockets. It was a buxom, ruddy girl dealing in medicinal herbs who gave him the name of Marjolin,[*] though no one knew why.

[*] Literally "Marjoram."

When Marjolin was nearly four years of age, old Mother Chantemesse also happened to find a child, a little girl, lying on the footway of the Rue Saint Denis, near the corner of the market. Judging by the little one's size, she seemed to be a couple of years old, but she could already chatter like a magpie, murdering her words in an incessant childish babble. Old Mother Chantemesse after a time gathered that her name was Cadine, and that on the previous evening her mother had left her sitting on a doorstep, with instructions to wait till she returned. The child had fallen asleep there, and did not cry. She related that she was beaten at home; and she gladly followed Mother Chantemesse, seemingly quite enchanted with that huge square, where there were so many people and such piles of vegetables. Mother Chantemesse, a retail dealer by trade, was a crusty but very worthy woman, approaching her sixtieth year. She was extremely fond of children, and had lost three boys of her own when they were mere babies. She came to the opinion that the chit she had found "was far too wide awake to kick the bucket," and so she adopted her.

One evening, however, as she was going off home with her right hand clasping Cadine's, Marjolin came up and unceremoniously caught hold of her left hand.

"Nay, my lad," said the old woman, stopping, "the place is filled. Have you left your big Therese, then? What a fickle little gadabout you are!"

The boy gazed at her with his smiling eyes, without letting go of her hand. He looked so pretty with his curly hair that she could not resist him. "Well, come along, then, you little scamp," said she; "I'll put you to bed as well."

Thus she made her appearance in the Rue au Lard, where she lived, with a child clinging to either hand. Marjolin made himself quite at home there. When the two children proved too noisy the old woman cuffed them, delighted to shout and worry herself, and wash the youngsters, and pack them away beneath the blankets. She had fixed them up a little bed in an old costermonger's barrow, the wheels and shafts of which had disappeared. It was like a big cradle, a trifle hard, but retaining a strong scent of the vegetables which it had long kept fresh and cool beneath a covering of damp cloths. And there, when four years old, Cadine and Marjolin slept locked in each other's arms.

They grew up together, and were always to be seen with their arms about one another's waist. At night time old Mother Chantemesse heard them prattling softly. Cadine's clear treble went chattering on for hours together, while Marjolin listened with occasional expressions of astonishment vented in a deeper tone. The girl was a mischievous young creature, and concocted all sorts of stories to frighten her companion; telling him, for instance, that she had one night seen a man, dressed all in white, looking at them and putting out a great red tongue, at the foot of the bed. Marjolin quite perspired with terror, and anxiously asked for further particulars; but the girl would then begin to jeer at him, and end by calling him a big donkey. At other times they were not so peaceably disposed, but kicked each other beneath the blankets.

Cadine would pull up her legs, and try to restrain her laughter as Marjolin missed his aim, and sent his feet banging against the wall.

When this happened, old Madame Chantemesse was obliged to get up to put the bed-clothes straight again; and, by way of sending the children to sleep, she would administer a box on the ear to both of them. For a long time their bed was a sort of playground. They carried their toys into it, and munched stolen carrots and turnips as they lay side by side.

Every morning their adopted mother was amazed at the strange things she found in the bed--pebbles, leaves, apple cores, and dolls made out of sc.r.a.ps of rags. When the very cold weather came, she went off to her work, leaving them sleeping there, Cadine's black mop mingling with Marjolin's sunny curls, and their mouths so near together that they looked as though they were keeping each other warm with their breath.

The room in the Rue au Lard was a big, dilapidated garret, with a single window, the panes of which were dimmed by the rain. The children would play at hide-and-seek in the tall walnut wardrobe and underneath Mother Chantemesse's colossal bed. There were also two or three tables in the room, and they crawled under these on all fours. They found the place a very charming playground, on account of the dim light and the vegetables scattered about in the dark corners. The street itself, too, narrow and very quiet, with a broad arcade opening into the Rue de la Lingerie, provided them with plenty of entertainment. The door of the house was by the side of the arcade; it was a low door and could only be opened half way owing to the near proximity of the greasy corkscrew staircase. The house, which had a projecting pent roof and a bulging front, dark with damp, and displaying greenish drain-sinks near the windows of each floor, also served as a big toy for the young couple. They spent their mornings below in throwing stones up into the drain-sinks, and the stones thereupon fell down the pipes with a very merry clatter. In thus amusing themselves, however, they managed to break a couple of windows, and filled the drains with stones, so that Mother Chantemesse, who had lived in the house for three and forty years, narrowly escaped being turned out of it.

Cadine and Marjolin then directed their attention to the vans and drays and tumbrels which were drawn up in the quiet street. They clambered on to the wheels, swung from the dangling chains, and larked about amongst the piles of boxes and hampers. Here also were the back premises of the commission agents of the Rue de la Poterie--huge, gloomy warehouses, each day filled and emptied afresh, and affording a constant succession of delightful hiding-places, where the youngsters buried themselves amidst the scent of dried fruits, oranges, and fresh apples. When they got tired of playing in his way, they went off to join old Madame Chantemesse at the Market of the Innocents. They arrived there arm-in-arm, laughing gaily as they crossed the streets with never the slightest fear of being run over by the endless vehicles. They knew the pavement well, and plunged their little legs knee-deep in the vegetable refuse without ever slipping. They jeered merrily at any porter in heavy boots who, in stepping over an artichoke stem, fell sprawling full-length upon the ground. They were the rosy-cheeked familiar spirits of those greasy streets. They were to be seen everywhere.

On rainy days they walked gravely beneath the shelter of a ragged old umbrella, with which Mother Chantemesse had protected her stock-in-trade for twenty years, and sticking it up in a corner of the market they called it their house. On sunny days they romped to such a degree that when evening came they were almost too tired to move. They bathed their feet in the fountains, dammed up the gutters, or hid themselves beneath piles of vegetables, and remained there prattling to each other just as they did in bed at night. People pa.s.sing some huge mountain of cos or cabbage lettuces often heard a m.u.f.fled sound of chatter coming from it. And when the green-stuff was removed, the two children would be discovered lying side by side on their couch of verdure, their eyes glistening uneasily like those of birds discovered in the depth of a thicket. As time went on, Cadine could not get along without Marjolin, and Marjolin began to cry when he lost sight of Cadine. If they happened to get separated, they sought one another behind the petticoats of every stallkeeper in the markets, amongst the boxes and under the cabbages. If was, indeed, chiefly under the cabbages that they grew up and learned to love each other.

Marjolin was nearly eight years old, and Cadine six, when old Madame Chantemesse began to reproach them for their idleness. She told them that she would interest them in her business, and pay them a sou a day to a.s.sist her in paring her vegetables. During the first few days the children displayed eager zeal; they squatted down on either side of the big flat basket with little knives in their hands, and worked away energetically. Mother Chantemesse made a specialty of pared vegetables; on her stall, covered with a strip of damp black lining, were little lots of potatoes, turnips, carrots, and white onions, arranged in pyramids of four--three at the base and one at the apex, all quite ready to be popped into the pans of dilatory housewives. She also had bundles duly stringed in readiness for the soup-pot--four leeks, three carrots, a parsnip, two turnips, and a couple of springs of celery. Then there were finely cut vegetables for julienne soup laid out on squares of paper, cabbages cut into quarters, and little heaps of tomatoes and slices of pumpkin which gleamed like red stars and golden crescents amidst the pale hues of the other vegetables. Cadine evinced much more dexterity than Marjolin, although she was younger. The peelings of the potatoes she pared were so thin that you could see through them; she tied up the bundles for the soup-pot so artistically that they looked like bouquets; and she had a way of making the little heaps she set up, though they contained but three carrots or turnips, look like very big ones. The pa.s.sers-by would stop and smile when she called out in her shrill childish voice: "Madame! madame! come and try me! Each little pile for two sous."

She had her regular customers, and her little piles and bundles were widely known. Old Mother Chantemesse, seated between the two children, would indulge in a silent laugh which made her bosom rise almost to her chin, at seeing them working away so seriously. She paid them their daily sous most faithfully. But they soon began to weary of the little heaps and bundles; they were growing up, and began to dream of some more lucrative business. Marjolin remained very childish for his years, and this irritated Cadine. He had no more brains than a cabbage, she often said. And it was, indeed, quite useless for her to devise any plan for him to make money; he never earned any. He could not even do an errand satisfactorily. The girl, on the other hand, was very shrewd. When but eight years old she obtained employment from one of those women who sit on a bench in the neighbourhood of the markets provided with a basket of lemons, and employ a troop of children to go about selling them.

Carrying the lemons in her hands and offering them at two for three sous, Cadine thrust them under every woman's nose, and ran after every pa.s.ser-by. Her hands empty, she hastened back for a fresh supply. She was paid two sous for every dozen lemons that she sold, and on good days she could earn some five or six sous. During the following year she hawked caps at nine sous apiece, which proved a more profitable business; only she had to keep a sharp look-out, as street trading of this kind is forbidden unless one be licensed. However, she scented a policeman at a distance of a hundred yards; and the caps forthwith disappeared under her skirts, whilst she began to munch an apple with an air of guileless innocence. Then she took to selling pastry, cakes, cherry-tarts, gingerbread, and thick yellow maize biscuits on wicker trays. Marjolin, however, ate up nearly the whole of her stock-in-trade.

At last, when she was eleven years old, she succeeded in realising a grand idea which had long been worrying her. In a couple of months she put by four francs, bought a small _hotte_,[*] and then set up as a dealer in birds' food.

[*] A basket carried on the back.--Translator.

It was a big affair. She got up early in the morning and purchased her stock of groundsel, millet, and bird-cake from the wholesale dealers. Then she set out on her day's work, crossing the river, and perambulating the Latin Quarter from the Rue Saint Jacques to the Rue Dauphine, and even to the Luxembourg. Marjolin used to accompany her, but she would not let him carry the basket. He was only fit to call out, she said; and so, in his thick, drawling voice, he would raise the cry, "Chickweed for the little birds!"

Then Cadine herself, with her flute-like voice, would start on a strange scale of notes ending in a clear, protracted alto, "Chickweed for the little birds!"

They each took one side of the road, and looked up in the air as they walked along. In those days Marjolin wore a big scarlet waistcoat which hung down to his knees; it had belonged to the defunct Monsieur Chantemesse, who had been a cab-driver. Cadine for her part wore a white and blue check gown, made out of an old tartan of Madame Chantemesse's.

All the canaries in the garrets of the Latin Quarter knew them; and, as they pa.s.sed along, repeating their cry, each echoing the other's voice, every cage poured out a song.

Cadine sold water-cress, too. "Two sous a bunch! Two sous a bunch!" And Marjolin went into the shops to offer it for sale. "Fine water-cress!

Health for the body! Fine fresh water-cress!"

However, the new central markets had just been erected, and the girl would stand gazing in ecstacy at the avenue of flower stalls which runs through the fruit pavilion. Here on either hand, from end to end, big clumps of flowers bloom as in the borders of a garden walk. It is a perfect harvest, sweet with perfume, a double hedge of blossoms, between which the girls of the neighbourhood love to walk, smiling the while, though almost stifled by the heavy perfume. And on the top tiers of the stalls are artificial flowers, with paper leaves, in which dewdrops are simulated by drops of gum; and memorial wreaths of black and white beads rippling with bluish reflections. Cadine's rosy nostrils would dilate with feline sensuality; she would linger as long as possible in that sweet freshness, and carry as much of the perfume away with her as she could. When her hair bobbed under Marjolin's nose he would remark that it smelt of pinks. She said that she had given over using pomatum; that is was quite sufficient for her to stroll through the flower walk in order to scent her hair. Next she began to intrigue and scheme with such success that she was engaged by one of the stallkeepers. And then Marjolin declared that she smelt sweet from head to foot. She lived in the midst of roses, lilacs, wall-flowers, and lilies of the valley; and Marjolin would playfully smell at her skirts, feign a momentary hesitation, and then exclaim, "Ah, that's lily of the valley!" Next he would sniff at her waist and bodice: "Ah, that's wall-flowers!" And at her sleeves and wrists: "Ah, that's lilac!" And at her neck, and her cheeks and lips: "Ah, but that's roses!" he would cry. Cadine used to laugh at him, and call him a "silly stupid," and tell him to get away, because he was tickling her with the tip of his nose. As she spoke her breath smelt of jasmine. She was verily a bouquet, full of warmth and life.

She now got up at four o'clock every morning to a.s.sist her mistress in her purchases. Each day they bought armfuls of flowers from the suburban florists, with bundles of moss, and bundles of fern fronds, and periwinkle leaves to garnish the bouquets. Cadine would gaze with amazement at the diamonds and Valenciennes worn by the daughters of the great gardeners of Montreuil, who came to the markets amidst their roses.

On the saints' days of popular observance, such as Saint Mary's, Saint Peter's, and Saint Joseph's days, the sale of flowers began at two o'clock. More than a hundred thousand francs' worth of cut flowers would be sold on the footways, and some of the retail dealers would make as much as two hundred francs in a few hours. On days like those only Cadine's curly locks peered over the mounds of pansies, mignonette, and marguerites. She was quite drowned and lost in the flood of flowers.

Then she would spend all her time in mounting bouquets on bits of rush.

In a few weeks she acquired considerable skillfulness in her business, and manifested no little originality. Her bouquets did not always please everybody, however. Sometimes they made one smile, sometimes they alarmed the eyes. Red predominated in them, mottled with violent tints of blue, yellow, and violet of a barbaric charm. On the mornings when she pinched Marjolin, and teased him till she made him cry, she made up fierce-looking bouquets, suggestive of her own bad temper, bouquets with strong rough scents and glaring irritating colours. On other days, however, when she was softened by some thrill of joy or sorrow, her bouquets would a.s.sume a tone of silvery grey, very soft and subdued, and delicately perfumed.

Then, too, she would set roses, as sanguineous as open hearts, in lakes of snow-white pinks; arrange bunches of tawny iris that shot up in tufts of flame from foliage that seemed scared by the brilliance of the flowers; work elaborate designs, as complicated as those of Smyrna rugs, adding flower to flower, as on a canvas; and prepare rippling fanlike bouquets spreading out with all the delicacy of lace. Here was a cl.u.s.ter of flowers of delicious purity, there a fat nosegay, whatever one might dream of for the hand of a marchioness or a fish-wife; all the charming quaint fancies, in short, which the brain of a sharp-witted child of twelve, budding into womanhood, could devise.

There were only two flowers for which Cadine retained respect; white lilac, which by the bundle of eight or ten sprays cost from fifteen to twenty francs in the winter time; and camellias, which were still more costly, and arrived in boxes of a dozen, lying on beds of moss, and covered with cotton wool. She handled these as delicately as though they were jewels, holding her breath for fear of dimming their l.u.s.tre, and fastening their short stems to springs of cane with the tenderest care.

She spoke of them with serious reverence. She told Marjolin one day that a speckless white camellia was a very rare and exceptionally lovely thing, and, as she was making him admire one, he exclaimed: "Yes; it's pretty; but I prefer your neck, you know. It's much more soft and transparent than the camellia, and there are some little blue and pink veins just like the pencillings on a flower." Then, drawing near and sniffing, he murmured: "Ah! you smell of orange blossom to-day."

Cadine was self-willed, and did not get on well in the position of a servant, so she ended by setting up in business on her own account. As she was only thirteen at the time, and could not hope for a big trade and a stall in the flower avenue, she took to selling one-sou bunches of violets p.r.i.c.ked into a bed of moss in an osier tray which she carried hanging from her neck. All day long she wandered about the markets and their precincts with her little bit of hanging garden. She loved this continual stroll, which relieved the numbness of her limbs after long hours spent, with bent knees, on a low chair, making bouquets. She fastened her violets together with marvellous deftness as she walked along. She counted out six or eight flowers, according to the season, doubled a sprig of cane in half, added a leaf, twisted some damp thread round the whole, and broke off the thread with her strong young teeth.

The little bunches seemed to spring spontaneously from the layer of moss, so rapidly did she stick them into it.

Along the footways, amidst the jostling of the street traffic, her nimble fingers were ever flowering though she gave them not a glance, but boldly scanned the shops and pa.s.sers-by. Sometimes she would rest in a doorway for a moment; and alongside the gutters, greasy with kitchen slops, she sat, as it were a patch of springtime, a suggestion of green woods, and purple blossoms. Her flowers still betokened her frame of mind, her fits of bad temper and her thrills of tenderness. Sometimes they bristled and glowered with anger amidst their crumpled leaves; at other times they spoke only of love and peacefulness as they smiled in their prim collars. As Cadine pa.s.sed along, she left a sweet perfume behind her; Marjolin followed her devoutly. From head to foot she now exhaled but one scent, and the lad repeated that she was herself a violet, a great big violet.

"Do you remember the day when we went to Romainville together?" he would say; "Romainville, where there are so many violets. The scent was just the same. Oh! don't change again--you smell too sweetly."

And she did not change again. This was her last trade. Still, she often neglected her osier tray to go rambling about the neighbourhood. The building of the central markets--as yet incomplete--provided both children with endless opportunities for amus.e.m.e.nt. They made their way into the midst of the work-yards through some gap or other between the planks; they descended into the foundations, and climbed up to the cast-iron pillars. Every nook, every piece of the framework witnessed their games and quarrels; the pavilions grew up under the touch of their little hands. From all this arose the affection which they felt for the great markets, and which the latter seemed to return. They were on familiar terms with that gigantic pile, old friends as they were, who had seen each pin and bolt put into place. They felt no fear of the huge monster; but slapped it with their childish hands, treated it like a good friend, a chum whose presence brought no constraint. And the markets seemed to smile at these two light-hearted children, whose love was the song, the idyll of their immensity.