Collected Works of Eugène Sue, page 20
“Unfortunately, my lad, monseigneur left without giving any orders about you. I have nothing but what monseigneur gives me, and I am unable to repay as I could wish all that I owe you personally.”
“Come, come, M. Murphy, you are jesting with me.”
“But why the devil did you not come back again to the Allée des Veuves after that fatal night? Then monseigneur would not have left without thinking of you.”
“Why, M. Rodolph did not tell me to do so, and I thought that perhaps he had no further occasion for me.”
“But you might have supposed that he would, at least, desire to express his gratitude to you.”
“Did you not tell me that M. Rodolph has not forgotten me, M. Murphy?”
“Well, well, don’t let us say another word about it; only I have had a great deal of trouble to find you out. You do not now go to the ogress’s?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, from some foolish notions I have had.”
“Very well. But to return to what you were telling me—”
“To what, M. Murphy?”
“You told me, I am glad I have found you, and still happy, perhaps—”
“Oh, yes, M. Murphy! Why, you see, when you came to where I was at work at the timber-yard, you said, ‘My lad, I am not rich, but I can procure you a situation where your work will be easier than on the Quai, and where you will gain four francs a day.’ Four francs a day! Vive la Charte! I could not believe it; ’twas the pay of an adjutant sub-officer! I replied, ‘That’s the very thing for me, M. Murphy!’ but you said then that I must not look so like a beggar, as that would frighten the employer to whom you would take me. I answered, ‘I have not the means of dressing otherwise.’ You said to me, ‘Come to the Temple.’ I followed you. I chose the most spicy attire that Mother Hubart had, — you advanced me the money to pay her, — and in a quarter of an hour I was as smart as a landlord or a dentist. You appointed me to meet you this morning at the Porte St. Denis, at daybreak; I found you there in a cab, and here we are.”
“Well, do you find anything to regret in all this?”
“Why, I’ll tell you, M. Murphy. You see, to be dressed in this way spoils a fellow; and so, you see, when I put on again my old smock-frock and trousers, I sha’n’t like it. And then, to gain four francs a day, — I, who never earned but two, — and that all at once! why, I seem to have made too great a start all of a sudden, and that it cannot last. I would rather sleep all my life on the wretched straw bed in my cock-loft, than sleep five or six nights only in a good bed. That’s my view of the thing.”
“And you are by no means peculiar in your view; but the best thing is to sleep always in a good bed.”
“And no mistake; it is better to have a bellyful of victuals every day than to starve with hunger. Ah! here is a butchery here,” said the Chourineur, as he listened to the blows of the chopper which the boy was using, and observed the quarters of beef through the curtains.
“Yes, my lad; it belongs to a friend of mine. Would you like to see it whilst the horse just recovers his wind?”
“I really should, for it reminds me of my boyish days, if it was only when I had Montfauçon for a slaughter-house and broken-down horses for cattle. It is droll, but if I had the means, a butcher’s is the trade in which I should set up, for I like it. To go on a good nag to buy cattle at fairs, — to return home to one’s own fireside, to warm yourself if cold, or dry yourself if wet, — to find your housekeeper, or a good, jolly, plump wife, cheerful and pleasant, with a parcel of children to feel in your pockets to see if you have brought them home anything! And then, in the morning, in the slaughter-house, to seize an ox by the horns, particularly when he’s fierce, — nom de nom! he must be fierce! — then to put on the ring, to cleave him down, cut him up, dress him, — Tonnerre! that would have been my ambition, as it was the Goualeuse’s to suck barley-sugar when she was a little ‘un. By the way, that poor girl, M. Murphy, — not seeing her any more at the ogress’s, I supposed that M. Rodolph had taken her away from there. That’s a good action, M. Murphy. Poor child! she never liked to do wrong, — she was so young! And then the habit! Ah, M. Rodolph has behaved quite right!”
“I am of your opinion. But will you come into the shop until our horse has rested awhile?”
The Chourineur and Murphy entered the shop, and then went to see the yard, where three splendid oxen and a score of sheep were fastened up; they then visited the stable, the chaise-house, the slaughter-house, the lofts, and the out-buildings of the house, which were all in excellent order, and kept with a cleanliness and care which bespoke regularity and easy circumstances.
When they had seen all but the up-stairs, Murphy said:
“You must own that my friend is a lucky fellow. This house and property are his, without counting a thousand crowns in hand to carry on his business with; and he is, besides, only thirty-eight, strong as a bull, with an iron constitution, and very fond of his business. The industrious and civil journeyman that you saw in the shop supplies his place, with much capability, when he goes to the fairs to purchase cattle. I say again, is he not a lucky fellow?”
“He is, indeed, M. Murphy. But, you see, there are lucky and unlucky people; and when I think that I am going to gain four francs a day, and know how many there are who only earn the half, or even less—”
“Will you come up and see the rest of the house?”
“With all my heart, M. Murphy.”
“The person who is about to employ you is up-stairs.”
“The person who is going to employ me?”
“Yes.”
“Why, then, didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I’ll tell you—”
“One moment,” said the Chourineur, with a downcast and embarrassed air, taking Murphy by the arm; “listen whilst I say a word to you, which perhaps M. Rodolph did not tell you, but which I ought not to conceal from the master who employs me, because, if he is offended by it — why then, you see — why, afterwards—”
“What do you mean to say?”
“I mean to say—”
“Well, what?”
“That I am a convict, who has served his time, — that I have been at the Bagne,” said Chourineur, in a low voice.
“Indeed!” replied Murphy.
“But I never did wrong to any one,” exclaimed the Chourineur; “and I would sooner die of hunger than rob; but I have done worse than rob,” he added, bending his head down; “I have killed my fellow creature in a passion. But that is not all,” he continued, after a moment’s pause. “I will tell everything to my employer; I would rather be refused at first than detected afterwards. You know him, and if you think he would refuse me, why, spare me the refusal, and I will go as I came.”
“Come along with me,” said Murphy.
The Chourineur followed Murphy up the staircase; a door opened, and they were both in the presence of Rodolph.
“My good Murphy,” said he, “leave us together awhile.”
CHAPTER XIX.
RECOMPENSE.
“VIVE LA CHARTE!” cried the Chourineur. “How precious glad I am to see you again, M. Rodolph — or, rather, my lord!”
“Good day, my excellent friend. I am equally glad to see you.”
“Oh, what a joker M. Murphy is! He told me you had gone away. But stay, my lord—”
“Call me M. Rodolph; I like that best.”
“Well, then, M. Rodolph, I have to ask your pardon for not having been to see you after the night with the Schoolmaster. I see now that I was guilty of a great rudeness; but I do not suppose that you had any desire to see me?”
“I forgive you,” said Rodolph, smiling; and then added, “Murphy has shown you all over the house?”
“Yes, M. Rodolph; and a fine house and fine shop it is, — all so neat and so comfortable! Talking of comfortable, I am the man that will be so, M. Rodolph! M. Murphy is going to put me in the way of earning four francs a day, — yes, four francs a day!”
“I have something better than that to propose to you, my good fellow.”
“Better! It’s unpolite to contradict you, but I think that would be difficult. Four francs a day!”
“I tell you I have something better: for this house, all that it contains, the shop, and a thousand crowns which are in this pocketbook, — all are yours.”
The Chourineur smiled with a stupid air, flattened his long-napped hat between his knees, and squeezed it convulsively, evidently not understanding what Rodolph said to him, although his language was plain enough.
Rodolph, with much kindness, said to him:
“I can imagine your surprise; but I again repeat, this house and this money are yours, — they are your property.”
The Chourineur became purple, passed his horny hand over his brow, which was bathed with perspiration, and stammered out, in a faltering voice:
“What! — eh! — that is — indeed — my property!”
“Yes, your property; for I bestow it all upon you. Do you understand? I give it to you.”
The Chourineur rocked backwards and forwards on his chair, scratched his head, coughed, looked down on the ground, and made no reply. He felt that the thread of his ideas had escaped him. He heard quite well what Rodolph said to him, and that was the very reason he could not credit what he heard. Between the depth of misery, the degradation in which he had always existed, and the position in which Rodolph now placed him, there was an abyss so wide that the service he had rendered to Rodolph, important as it was, could not fill it up.
“Does what I give you, then, seem beyond your hopes?” inquired Rodolph.
“My lord,” said the Chourineur, starting up suddenly, “you offer me this house and a great deal of money, — to tempt me; but I cannot take them; I never robbed in my life. It is, perhaps, to kill; but I have too often dreamed of the sergeant,” added he, in a hoarse tone.
“Oh, the unfortunate!” exclaimed Rodolph, with bitterness. “The compassion evinced for them is so rare, that they can only explain liberality as a temptation to crime!”
Then addressing the Chourineur, in a voice full of gentleness:
“You judge me wrong, — you mistake: I shall require from you nothing but what is honourable. What I give you, I give because you have deserved it.”
“I,” said the Chourineur, whose embarrassments recommenced, “I deserve it! How?”
“I will tell you. Abandoned from your infancy, without any knowledge of right or wrong, left to your natural instinct, shut up for fifteen years in the Bagne with the most desperate villains, assailed by want and wretchedness, compelled by your own disgrace, and the opinion of honest men, to continue to haunt the low dens infested by the vilest malefactors, you have not only remained honest, but remorse for your crime has outlived the expiation which human justice had inflicted upon you.”
This simple and noble language was a new source of astonishment for the Chourineur; he contemplated Rodolph with respect, mingled with fear and gratitude, but was still unable to convince himself that all he heard was reality.
“What, M. Rodolph, because you beat me, because, thinking you a workman, like myself, because you spoke ‘slang’ as if you had learned it from the cradle, I told you my history over two bottles of wine, and afterwards I saved you from being drowned, — you give me a house — money — I shall be master! Say really, M. Rodolph, once more, is it possible?”
“Believing me like yourself, you told me your history naturally and without concealment, without withholding either what was culpable or generous. I have judged you, and judged you well, and I have resolved to recompense you.”
“But, M. Rodolph, it ought not to be; there are poor labourers who have been honest all their lives, and who—”
“I know it, and it may be I have done for many others more than I am doing for you; but, if the man who lives honestly in the midst of honest men, encouraged by their esteem, deserves assistance and support, he who, in spite of the aversion of good men, remains honest amidst the most infamous associates on earth, — he, too, deserves assistance and support. This is not all; you saved my life, you saved the life of Murphy, the dearest friend I have; and what I do for you is as much the dictate of personal gratitude as it is the desire to withdraw from pollution a good and generous nature, which has been perverted, but not destroyed. And that is not all.”
“What else have I done, M. Rodolph?”
Rodolph took his hand, and, shaking it heartily, said:
“Filled with commiseration for the mischief which had befallen the very man who had tried just before to kill you, you even gave him an asylum in your humble dwelling, — No. 9, close to Notre Dame.”
“You knew, then, where I lived, M. Rodolph?”
“If you forget the services you have done to me, I do not. When you left my house you were followed, and were seen to enter there with the Schoolmaster.”
“But M. Murphy told me that you did not know where I lived, M. Rodolph.”
“I was desirous of trying you still further; I wished to know if you had disinterestedness in your generosity, and I found that, after your courageous conduct, you returned to your hard daily labour, asking nothing, hoping for nothing, not even uttering a word of reproach for the apparent ingratitude with which I repaid your services; and when Murphy yesterday proposed to you employment a little more profitable than that of your habitual toil, you accepted it with joy, with gratitude.”
“Why, M. Rodolph, do you see, sir, four francs a day are always four francs a day. As to the service I rendered you, why, it is rather I who ought to thank you.”
“How so?”
“Yes, yes, M. Rodolph,” he added, with a saddened air, “I do not forget that, since I knew you, it was you who said to me those two words,’You have both heart and honour!’ It is astonishing how I have thought of that. They are only two little words, and yet those two words had that effect. But, in truth, sow two small grains of anything in the soil, and they will put forth shoots.”
This comparison, just and almost poetical as it was, struck Rodolph. In sooth, two words, but two magic words for the heart that understood them, had almost suddenly developed the generous instincts which were inherent in this energetic nature.
“You placed the Schoolmaster at St. Mandé?” said Rodolph.
“Yes, M. Rodolph. He made me change his notes for gold, and buy a belt, which I sewed round his body, and in which I put his ‘mopuses;’ and then, good day! He boards for thirty sous a day with good people, to whom that sum is of much service. When I have time to leave my wood-piles, I shall go and see how he gets on.”
“Your wood-piles! You forget your shop, and that you are here at home!”
“Come, M. Rodolph, do not amuse yourself by jesting with a poor devil like me; you have had your fun in ‘proving’ me, as you term it. My house and my shop are songs to the same tune. You said to yourself,’Let us see if this Chourineur is such a gulpin as to believe that I will make him such a present.’ Enough, enough, M. Rodolph; you are a wag, and there’s an end of the matter.”
And he laughed long, loud, and heartily.
“But, once more, believe—”
“If I were to believe you, then you would say, ‘Poor Chourineur! go! you are a trouble to me now.’”
Rodolph began to be really troubled how to convince the Chourineur, and said in a solemn, impressive, and almost severe tone:
“I never make sport of the gratitude and sympathy with which noble conduct inspires me. I have said this house and this establishment are yours, if they suit you, for the bargain is conditional. I swear to you, on my honour, all this belongs to you; and I make you a present of it, for the reasons I have already given.”
The dignified and firm tone, and the serious expression of the features of Rodolph, at length convinced the Chourineur. For some moments he looked at his protector in silence, and then said, in a voice of deep emotion:
“I believe you, my lord, and I thank you much. A poor man like me cannot make fine speeches, but once more, indeed, on my word, I thank you very much. All I can say is, that I will never refuse assistance to the unhappy; because Hunger and Misery are ogresses of the same sort as those who laid hands on the poor Goualeuse; and, once in that sink, it is not every one that has the fist strong enough to pull you out again.”
“My worthy fellow, you cannot prove your gratitude more than in speaking to me thus.”
“So much the better, my lord; for else I should have a hard job to prove it.”
“Come, now, let us visit your house; my good old Murphy has had the pleasure, and I should like it also.”
Rodolph and the Chourineur came down-stairs. At the moment they reached the yard, the shopman, addressing the Chourineur, said to him, respectfully:
“Since you, sir, are to be my master, I beg to tell you that our custom is capital. We have no more cutlets or legs of mutton left, and we must kill a sheep or two directly.”
“Parbleu!” said Rodolph to the Chourineur; “here is a capital opportunity for exercising your skill. I should like to have the first sample, — the open air has given me an appetite, and I will taste your cutlets.”
“You are very kind, M. Rodolph,” said the Chourineur, in a cheerful voice; “you flatter me, but I will do my best.”
“Shall I bring two sheep to the slaughter-house, master?” asked the journeyman.
“Yes; and bring a well-sharpened knife, not too thin in the blade, and strong in the back.”
“I have just what you want, master. There, you could shave with it. Take it—”
