The Surprises Of Life Part 9

"I never caught that much fish in my life. How do you do it?"

"Oh--they know me. As I was telling you, I was in my--in your boat, when I heard those d----policemen calling me. 'Hey! Grelu, come ash.o.r.e! We are serving your warrant on you!' Well, I landed, of course. I am used to it. We chatted like friends. They carried away my fish to fry for themselves. You won't tell me there is any justice in that, will you, _monsieur le maire_?"

"Is that the trick they played on you?"

"Oh, no! When the police had gone, I said to myself: 'Now I'm fined, I may as well go on fishing. I shan't be able to pay the fine, whether I do or not. So I'll stay.' I fished and I fished. I was doing first rate.

I was happy. When, suddenly, I hear voices. The police again! Two warrants in one night! I couldn't have that! The boat was giving me away. But they might think I had left it there. So I hide in the water, with nothing out but my head, and I wait. What do you think they do?

They stretch out on the gra.s.s, they light their pipes, and they begin to talk. They had got lost, the idiots! And finding themselves back at the mill, were looking for me to ask their way.

"As for me, I was none too comfortable in the mud. Those loafers wouldn't go away. When one pipe went out, they lighted another. I saw there was going to be nothing for it but to get caught again. Suddenly one of the men says: 'Father Grelu,' says he, 'you must be cold in there. Come and warm yourself at my pipe.' I come out, all covered with mud, and I shake my fist at him. 'If you serve another warrant on me----!' says I to him. 'A second warrant?' says he. 'No danger of that.

The law prevents it. We can only serve one warrant in twenty-four hours on the same person for the same offence. What! You didn't know that, Grelu? And that is why you stayed in the water? We were just saying: "I wonder why he does that?" Ah, Father Grelu, we are sorry! We thought you knew better.' And they laughed. And they laughed. I was in no mood for laughing. Did you know that, _monsieur le maire_, that two warrants could not be served at once?"

"No."

"Well, I know it for another time, you may be sure. And now, may I have my certificate of mendicancy, which releases me from liability to fine?"

"Very well. Your bath might have given you pneumonia. How old are you?"

"Over seventy. No harm will ever come to me from water."

"Nor from wine, eh? It is funny, all the same, to be giving you a certificate of dest.i.tution when I see you so often at the tavern."

"They give me credit, _monsieur le maire_. I pay them in fish. It is better than stealing, anyway."

XI

THE GRAY FOX

After the poacher the vagabond has the place of honour in the disfavour of the licensed citizen. A man without an abode inscribed in the tax collector's book comes near to being a man without a country, in the eyes of the bourgeois, inclined to regard the land of his fathers as exclusively what one of them has frankly called it, "the native land of the landed proprietor."

It is easy to p.r.o.nounce against the unfortunate nomad the withering sentence: "He pays no taxes." No taxes, the barefoot tramp who halts on the edge of a ditch to eat his succinct meal? I defy him to spend the penny just tossed him, without the State stepping in between him and his poor bite and taking a portion of it away. How can he be fed, clothed, and warmed without the State making its existence felt by the exaction of a t.i.the? Merely t.i.thes levied upon beggars would amount to a considerable revenue. The beggar takes no pride in this fact, being carelessly ungrudging of the sacrifices demanded by public duty, and this very modesty does him wrong, for under the pretext that he is of no social utility, householders, under-prefects, army corps commanders, and directors of the Bank of France, all unite in imputing to him most of the evils from which they are supposed to protect us.

In country places, the blame for whatever happens falls on the vagabonds. Theft, arson, trespa.s.sing, who could be guilty of these offences, if not the homeless wanderers going over the roads afoot, when all self-respecting men have at least the use of an automobile? What trade can they ply but taking other people's belongings, seeing that they have nothing of their own? Hence the execration of those who have belongings. I once knew an old philosopher who maintained that it was better to throw bread than stones at them. Ordinarily stones are readier to hand. When there are enough of them, the tramp gathers them into a pile at the roadside and breaks them for honest wages. Never for a moment believe that any one, from the President of the Republic down to the road mender, will express the slightest grat.i.tude to him. Like Timon of Athens, he expects nothing from human kind.

And yet, his defence, should he take the trouble to make one, would not be lacking in interest. Lost sentinel of the army of labour, he might relate strange adventures in the industrial warfare, no less cruel than the other warfare. He might find it difficult to deny a share of shortcomings on his side--but what of the consciences of "the righteous," oftentimes, if one could see them in nakedness?

Humanity means weakness. If the vagabond can own as much for himself, he can bear witness to the same in the case of others. Oftener, perhaps, than is generally believed, for peasants, like city people, are tempted by their neighbours' property, and as the caught thief always accuses some unknown personage of the crime attributed to him, the vagabond is in all countries the easy expiatory victim of "the respectable."

Something of the kind happened in the affair of the "Gray Fox," which once upon a time set my village in uproar. At that distant date one of the notables of the hamlet, a locksmith by trade, who had "inherited property," was Claude Guillorit. Without vanity in his Roman Emperor's name, he carried it with the quiet dignity of a man whose future is a.s.sured. He was a "scholar," incredibly learned in the acc.u.mulation of miscellaneous facts which almanacs spread even in the remotest districts. He quoted proverbs, was full of strange saws, foretold the future--approximately. He was to be met with by night, carrying a large basket, in search of simples, which have special virtues when gathered after sun-down. He brewed philters for the benefit of man and beast, and cured fevers, I must admit, more easily than he did locks.

For, in spite of his explicit locksmith's sign, locks were wrapped in mystery for Claudit--so called "for short." Village housewives, whose furniture knows not intricate locks, are at the end of their resources when they have cleaned the rust off their keys, or smeared a creaky lock with oil. If the evil persisted, in those days, the cry of supreme distress used to be: "Go and get Claudit," even as Napoleon's cry was: "Send forward the guard!" when he was at the end of his genius.

Accompanied by a formidable clatter of ironware, a little slim, spare, sharp man would approach, with long gray locks swinging about his face, after straggling from under a black round of which no one could have declared with any certainty whether it had been a hat or a cap at the time of the Revolution. But it was not his headgear that held the eye.

What struck one, what fixed the attention, what filled even a person unacquainted with him with a sort of superst.i.tious uneasiness, was the black dart of two small, l.u.s.treless eyes, which entered one's very soul and stuck there. When the shaft of Claudit's glance had pierced one, it was not to be plucked from the memory. The man, however, did not concern himself with the impression he produced; he never broke the silence except from necessity, and then spoke only of things pertaining to lock mending.

When he had arrived before the recalcitrant lock, he would throw on the ground--together with the great basket from which he was never separated, and which no one ever saw open except on one memorable occasion--an iron hoop, whence hung an extraordinary number of queerly wrought and bent hooks; then he would kneel down as if in prayer, and apply his eye to the keyhole. After a moment of scientific examination:

"_Pardine!_" he would cry--it was his favourite oath--"I see nothing at all."

In which there was nothing surprising. Claudit seemed, none the less, to experience great relief from this first ascertainment. Then followed questions regarding the piece of furniture, what was its history, and the probable age of its lock, then groans over the wretched work done in olden days. And now the moment had come for the diagnosis. Every lock may be afflicted with any one of numerous ailments. Claudit would enumerate them with great erudition, giving his client his choice among the various evils.

"It may be that, or it may be something else. I am no wizard. We shall see."

Thereupon a storm of hammerblows would beat upon the wood and the iron.

The cloudburst over, the key would function no better.

He would have to resort to subtler methods. Unperturbed, Claudit would brandish his hoop with the pendent hooks, and having examined each with care, would select one and insert it very deliberately, with appropriate contortions, into the orifice where lay the seat of the trouble.

Creakings would ensue beyond anything ever heard. Up and down, down and up, from left to right, and right to left, and all around the compa.s.s, he would turn and twist and rub the rusty point, would force it to the exhaustion of human strength, and, since the truth must be told, I will confess that I have seen locks which under this violent treatment took the provisional course of behaving themselves. Claudit would exhibit no pride. Such triumphs of his art were not calculated to surprise him.

When the lock seemed to be entirely bedevilled, Claudit would draw from his pocket a two-penny knife, the blade of which had gained a saw-edge from much usage, and for the final satisfaction of conscience would do what he could by "rummaging" with it. After that it was finished.

"The King himself could do no more," he would declare, fully a.s.sured that Louis Philippe would have succeeded no better than he. "If you like, I will make you a new lock."

Do not imagine that the manufacture of this lock would give Claudit any great trouble. He sent to Nantes for his locks. He unscrewed one, and screwed on another, and by this simple performance acquired the reputation of a "skilled workman."

A little forge was attached to his house. It was littered with iron junk. But no man alive ever saw it lighted, so that hens had formed the habit of making their nest amid the cinders of the hearth, and the white gleam of eggs was pleasant to see at the bottom of the crater where one looked for glowing coals. I have seen as many as ten, for Claudit, owing to an extreme love of poultry, permitted large numbers of hens to wander at will about his dwelling.

In reality, the mending of locks and the brewing of healing philters were merely the recreations of his life. Its pa.s.sion was "the little hen," as he tenderly called her. One of those silent pa.s.sions deeply rooted in our inmost being, for the satisfaction of which the Evil One besieges us with temptations. It is certain that between Claudit and the gallinaceous tribe obscure affinities existed. On Claudit's side the sentiment might be explained by an appet.i.te for toothsome eating. But why did the hen feel Claudit's fascination? Why did she stand there, stupidly motionless, fastened to the ground by the magnetism of that black eye? They say that hypnotized hens will drop of themselves into the fox's jaws. To quote Hamlet: "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy."

Curious as it may seem, Claudit was not the only one in our village to cultivate a fondness for poultry. From time immemorial housewives on all sides had complained of missing hens. Everyone blamed it on the tramps, who were never there to answer back. Claudit more than any other suffered from these thefts, and bewailed his losses at every street corner. His white hen gone, his black hen and his yellow hen gone, the thieves were cleaning him out--and the neighbours got Christian consolation in their misfortunes from the reflection that Claudit was even more cruelly hit than they.

Claudit, as may be imagined, was on the lookout for marauders, but in vain. One day he saw one, but was unable to catch up with him. It was a bent old man, dragging along a bag, full of hens, no doubt. "A regular gray fox," muttered the wronged and indignant Claudit.

The name stuck to the unknown. His description was given to the police, and a warning was sent out by the authorities, against the despoiler of farms, and chief of a band of marauders, known under the name of "Gray Fox."

One day Claudit, on his way home from a heated battle with a stubborn lock, was crossing the village, when he stopped at sight of a crowd. An aged tramp, bent double under the weight of a coa.r.s.e canvas bag, was struggling with the rural guard, who had found him lying asleep beside a ditch and was accusing him of all the vague crimes reported over the whole canton. The women had come running out of their houses, and each of them had some accusation to bring against the malefactor. One in particular was making an outcry:

"My cuckoo hen was stolen this morning. He took it! Come, now, give me back my hen and go get yourself hanged elsewhere!"

"Ah! So you stole a hen, did you?" exclaimed the rural guard. "I knew there was something wrong."

Then addressing the crowd: "The bent old man with a bag is the 'Gray Fox,' isn't he? You are the 'Gray Fox,' aren't you? You may as well confess."

It was here that Claudit arrived upon the scene, by good luck, for having once seen the thief, he could identify him better than any one else. Way was made for him, and the entire village, hanging on his lips, waited to hear what he would say.

"_Pardine!_" said Claudit, scratching his ear, "I believe we've got him this time. Yes, yes, I recognize him. He is the 'Gray Fox.'"

"Hoo--hoo! To prison with the Gray Fox!" howled the delirious crowd.

"Give me back my cuckoo hen!" screamed the housewife.

But the man, not in the least agitated, straightened up and said:

"So I am the Gray Fox, am I? My word! You are too great fools! Often enough, from the other side of a hedge, I have seen him at work, your Gray Fox. I know him. Do you want me to show him to you?"