Zut, and Other Parisians

Finally, at the doors of the little refreshment pavilion, and talking with a colonel of infantry, he found the objects of his quest, and went up eagerly, saluting. Vieux César greeted him with heartiness.

"Ah, lieutenant! Our preserver of Friday – quoi? Natalie, see who is here – our preserver of Friday!"

The girl was radiant. Her cheeks were flushed, and the gray eyes shone with a brightness that set Eugène's heart pounding so hard that he felt its throbbing must be dimpling the breast of his tunic.

"What a magnificent race!" she said, giving him her hand. "You have cause to be proud of Vivandière. It is something to have ridden such a horse."

"It is always something to ride a good horse," said Eugène, looking into her eyes, "and it is something, also, to be second in a good race, but it is more to be first. And I had my reasons for wishing to be that, mademoiselle."

Natalie smiled.

"Ah, sans doute!" she answered. "But you must not call me mademoiselle, monsieur. You must know that since yesterday I am a serious married woman. And what is more, my husband rode Flambeau! Am I not a veritable mascotte?"

She laid her hand on the arm of the officer at her side.

"My husband, Colonel Montrésor," she added. "Paul, this is the officer of whom I spoke to you – who was so kind – Lieutenant" —

She turned to Eugène, blushing divinely, with an embarrassed little laugh.

"Oh, pray forgive me!" she said. "I am so stupid – but – but – I have forgotten your name!"

Papa Labesse

UP on the Butte Montmartre life is a matter of first principles, and conventionality an undiscovered affliction. A spade is a spade, and the blacker it happens to be, the more apt it is to receive its proper appellation, and the less likely to be confused with the hearts and diamonds. That is why Papa Labesse had no hesitation in referring to Bombiste Fremier as a good-for-nothing, – a vaurien.

Just off the boulevard de Rochechouart, in the rue Veron, Papa Labesse kept a tiny joiner's shop, in which, in his velvet cap with a long tassel and his ample apron of blue denim, he might be seen daily, toiling upon various small orders for the quartier. But daily, also, when the light began to fail, he would discard his apron, and, locking his shop door, walk slowly up the long curving incline of the rue Lepic, and through the appropriately rural-looking rue St. Rustique, until he emerged upon the broad summit of the Butte. Here he would light his pipe, and, with his legs spread wide, stand motionless by the low wattled fence at the brink of the bluff, looking off across the city. In appearance Papa Labesse was not the type of man in whom one would be apt to look for sentimentality. He was short and very thin, with a hooked nose and a gray moustache turned up fiercely at the ends, and his skin was brown and deeply wrinkled, as if he had somehow shrunk or warped; but then, as Marcelle said of him, it is the rough and crinkled Brazil-nut that is as full as possible of sweet white meat.

Between these two there had always existed a firm bond of camaraderie. Marcelle was the daughter of Madame Clapot, who presided over a little dairy directly opposite the joiner's shop, and on the day when she first made the astounding discovery that small girls can stand upright and walk alone, as if by instinct she had made a bee-line for the doorway of Papa Labesse, and, staggering in, triumphant, had fallen headlong, with a gurgle of satisfaction, into a great pile of shavings. Thenceforward she came often and tarried long, and Papa Labesse built houses for her out of odds and ends of wood, and fashioned miniature articles of furniture in his spare moments, and had always a bit of sucre-candi or a little gingerbread figure tucked away in a certain drawer of his table, which she soon learned to find for herself.

It seemed to Papa Labesse but the week following her first plunge among his shavings when Marcelle came in, all in white, and with a veil like a little bride's, to parade her splendor under his delighted eyes, before going to her first communion. But when he put into her hand the small white prayerbook he had bought for this great occasion, she had forgotten all else, and thrown her arms about his neck, entirely regardless of her finery.

"After maman, thou knowest, Papa Labesse, I love thee best of all the world!"

And Papa Labesse was properly shocked at this recklessness and said, bon Dieu! that was a fine veil, then, made to be crushed against an odious apron covered with chips and sawdust – what? And, as Marcelle ran off to join Madame Clapot, who was waiting, consumed with mingled pride and impatience, across the way, the old man wiped his spectacles vigorously, shook his head several times, and then, suddenly abandoning his work, three hours before the accustomed time, betook himself to the Butte, and smoked three pipefuls of tobacco, looking off across the city.

It was at this time that two radical changes came into the life of Papa Labesse. First, on the very summit of the Butte they began to lay the foundations for the great church of Sacré-Cœur; and, second, Marcelle took it into her pretty little head to accompany him on his daily climb. At first he was disturbed by both these innovations. This curious afternoon communion of his with the wonderful wide city, which lay spread out before him like a great gray map, was akin to a religion. He loved Paris with a love so great that perhaps he himself was barely able to comprehend its proportions. He was never tired of standing there and watching her breathing at his feet, of picking out, in the gathering twilight, the faint white speck to the west that was the arc de l'Etoile, the domes of the Invalides and the Panthéon, Notre Dame, to the eastward, and the towers and spires of half a hundred minor temples and public buildings. He passed from one to the other in a kind of visual pilgrimage, saying the names over slowly to himself, and occasionally affecting an air of surprise, as if some one of the familiar piles had suddenly and unaccountably appeared in a new locality.

"La Trinité; Notre Dame de Lorette; La Bourse. Tiens! St. Eustache!"

At the outset, the serenity of this contemplative hour was seriously impaired by the creaking of derrick-pulleys and the loud chatter of wagon-drivers, and hardly less so by the eager questions of Marcelle, clinging to his hand, her eyes bright with excitement, as she looked out with him across Paris, or peered down into the vast pit when the masons were laying the foundations of the big church. But, bit by bit, Papa Labesse became accustomed to the new conditions; and every night, an hour before sunset, his high, dry voice summoned Marcelle from the dairy across the way, and the two set forth together up the long curving incline of the rue Lepic, and the old man would smoke his pipe by the low wattled fence at the brink of the bluff, while the child babbled of her little affairs. Papa Labesse no longer named the domes and spires now. His eyes rested alternately on the city and on the girl beside him, and often, when Marcelle was silent, looking off to where the thin, silver line of the Seine gleamed briefly between distant buildings, he shook his head several times, tapping the side of his inverted pipe-bowl against the palm of his hand, long after the ashes had fallen out.

When Marcelle was seventeen, Madame Clapot died suddenly, and the girl moved from the rue Veron to the home of her aunt, near by, in the rue Seveste. But the change made no difference in her friendship for Papa Labesse. All through the ensuing spring she called regularly for him each afternoon, and they climbed the Butte in company, as before. The old man would have been completely happy had it not been for Bombiste Fremier.

Bombiste was an employé of the state, – an humble one, to be sure, but, nevertheless, part and parcel of the great Administration which includes every one, from the President of the Republic to the street-sweeper on the rue Royale. In Fremier's case the employment was brief and not over-lucrative. He was engaged, for two months only in the twelve, to mow the grass on the fortifications and in parts of the Bois and the smaller parks of Paris. For the remainder of the year he lived none knew how, but he had always a few white pieces in his pocket, and was ready to treat a comrade at Le Cheval Blanc, the little wine-shop kept by Bonhomme Pirou at the corner of the boulevard and the rue Seveste. As regards the source of his income, it is probable that Amélie Chouert, called La Trompette, by reason of her loud voice, might have divulged some remarkable particulars. In any event, she was his constant companion, a sharp-featured, angular woman with snapping black eyes and a great mop of hair that came down to within an inch of her continuous line of eyebrow.

Fremier himself was as handsome as a brutal picture, – a giant in stature, with square shoulders, a thick neck, in which the muscles stood out like ropes, and the face of an Italian brigand. It is a type of masculine beauty which goes far in Montmartre, and to it was added a deep, melodious voice, that, whether in the heat of political argument or the more complicated phraseology of love, carried complete conviction. No one blamed La Trompette for her infatuation. As we have said, life on the Butte is a matter of first principles, and, in view of the manifest attraction, her position was entirely conceivable. Except to Papa Labesse.

He was a singularly rigid old man, who took no account of the remarkable beauty and the irresistible tongue of Fremier, but only of the fact that he was called Bombiste because he talked against the government at Le Cheval Blanc, advocating the use of dynamite, and only the bon Dieu knew what else beside. And if, as La Trompette alleged, he swung his scythe on the fortifications like a veritable demon, what of that? No, evidently he was a vaurien!

So it was, that when, one fine May afternoon, Papa Labesse, emerging from his little shop at the summons of Marcelle, caught a glimpse of Bombiste slipping around the further corner into the rue Lepic, his heart gave a sudden great bound and then seemed to stand still. He was very silent on the way to the Butte, for, moment by moment, the blackness of untoward premonition was settling upon him. He glanced, covertly, but again and again, at Marcelle, observing, with a strange, suddenly acquired power of perception, that she was already a woman. He had not seemed to notice, day by day, the change in her. Now it dawned upon him in a flash. No, it was no longer the baby who had fallen headlong among his shavings, nor yet the child going to her first communion, all in white and with a veil like a little bride's, nor even the slender girl who had peered down with him into the vast pit where the masons were laying the foundations of the big church. It was a woman who walked beside him, a woman very beautiful, with dark hair, coiled above a pale, pure face, and great eyes, like crushed violets swimming in their dew. Papa Labesse caught his breath: Bombiste Fremier!

But Marcelle saw nothing of her companion's preoccupation. She almost danced beside him up the long curving incline of the rue Lepic, chaffing, as she passed, the children playing in the gutters, and pausing continually to sniff at some flower-vender's fragrant wares, or peer into the window of a tiny shop. She was glowing with health and happiness: her cheeks dappled with color, her eyes shining. When, finally, they emerged upon the Butte, she ran to the little wattled fence, and with her hands clasped behind her head, looked out across the city. Even when Papa Labesse had come up to her side, she said no word for several minutes.

They had started later than was usual, and already the daylight had begun to dim, and the west to turn from red to saffron, and from saffron to fawn. Directly below them lay a maze of steep and narrow streets, shelving toward the boulevard de Rochechouart; and far further, to the southwest, the place de l'Opéra was breaking into the alternate deep red and glaring white of electric advertising signs, the lettering of which could not be distinguished from where they stood, but which painted the faint haze of evening with swiftly changing contrasts of color.

Suddenly Marcelle began to speak, her voice eloquent with a strange, new music.

"Papa Labesse, dost thou comprehend what all this says to us, this wonderful city upon which we look each night, thou and I? From here – what? A bewilderment of lights, a sea of roofs, a murmur of faintly heard cries. But what does it mean? Surely, it is the voice of the mother of us all, of Paris, the great, the beautiful – of a woman, Papa Labesse: that finally, which thou canst never comprehend, pauvre Papa Labesse! – a woman who says but one word – love! Papa Labesse – L'amour, l'amour, l'amour! – again, and again, and again, l'amour!"

There was a long silence. Then, almost timidly, Papa Labesse laid his hand on hers.

"But thou dost not love, my little one, – thou?" he said.

Marcelle turned suddenly.

"Si, I love!" she answered.

Above the tapering, distant shaft of the Tour Eiffel a tiny cloud caught the last ray of the departed sun, blazed crimson for an instant, and then, as suddenly, gloomed to slate-gray.

"Que Dieu te bénisse!" said Papa Labesse, solemnly.

"It is all so wonderful," continued Marcelle after a moment, "and yet I have never seemed to understand it till to-day, – this great, sweet voice of Paris. It is indeed as if she was the mother of us all, Papa Labesse, and was spreading out her arms, and calling us all to come to her heart. And for each of us she has something good – something better than ever we have imagined for ourselves, or wished to have; and yet, in whatever form, it is really the same thing always – l'amour, Papa Labesse, l'amour!"

Out of the strain of the past half hour a great sob was suddenly wrung from Papa Labesse. He took the girl's radiant face between his knotted hands and looked long into her eyes without speaking.

"Tell me, my pigeon," he said, finally, "is it – is it the young Fremier?"

Marcelle flung both arms about his neck, as she had done on the day when he had given her the little white prayerbook. He felt her lips, warm and moist, against his wrinkled ear, and when she spoke, her voice was like the sound of two leaves grazing each other at the touch of a light breeze.

"Oui!" she said.

When Marcelle went away with Bombiste Fremier, all the quartier babbled. Fat fishwives and dairywomen stopped at each others' doors, and said, wisely, with their heads together and hands on hips, that they had always known how it would be. Since the first, whatever Bombiste wanted, that Bombiste was sure to have – what? Did not Madame Rollin remember how, when a mere baby, he had cried for the little brass dish which hung in front of his father's salle de coiffure, until, actually, Fremier père had taken it down and given it to him to cut his first tooth on? Assuredly, Madame Rollin recalled this astounding incident, and not only that, but the fact that she herself had spoken to Madame Fremier, warning her that the result of such folly would be the unhappiness of some one. But they were all alike, the Fremier. They made no excuses and took no advice.

There were others who recalled the days when La Trompette was the belle of the quartier, and as respectable as the best of them. But there, what wouldst thou? Bombiste had wanted her, so there was nothing to be done. And the debate invariably ended with a bit of flattery for Bombiste. It was a beau garçon, after all, name of a good name, with such eyes! And a tongue, bon Dieu, to draw the cork from a bottle! For there are many mysteries of human society, but the greatest of these is the good word of the other women for the man.

Curiously enough, Bombiste's most eloquent partisan was La Trompette herself. Her first appearance at Le Cheval Blanc, after Fremier's desertion of her, was the signal for the outburst of ironic condolence.

"Eh! La Trompette, he has planted thee – yes? So the cord is cut, little one – hein? Did he give thee a reference, at least?"

To these, and many similar compliments, La Trompette returned nothing beyond a tolerant smile, or —

"One shall see, my children!" she cried, in her shrill voice. "It is not the first time, you know. Variety, one has need of that in life. Perhaps we do not know each other, that story and I! Wait a little. In six weeks we shall be here in company as before, and the little one it will be who is planted. But I remain. And she who laughs last – what? But, above all, not a word against Bombiste, unless you have need of the wherewithal to make broken heads. It is a brave gars, do you understand, and one who has often enough paid your drinks, types of good-for-nothings!"

And she planted herself at a table amidst a burst of laughter and applause (for loyalty is greatly esteemed on the boulevard Rochechouart), and proceeded to collect interest, in the form of repeated glasses of cognac, on the past generosities of Bombiste Fremier.

But the eternal feminine had its part in the make-up of La Trompette, and so it was that one evening, just at nightfall, she presented herself at the door of Papa Labesse's little shop. He was always at home now, poor Papa Labesse, for the growing church of Sacré-Cœur had never once seen him emerging, breathless but smiling, from the little rue St. Rustique, since the day when Marcelle disappeared. He stopped his simple toil at the same hour still, but, instead of stepping out briskly upon the long, curving incline of the rue Lepic, he would seat himself in his doorway, and, oftentimes forgetting to light the pipe which he had filled, stare out wistfully across the street, to where a trim little laundress stood, busily ironing shirts, in the window of the shop that had formerly been the dairy of Madame Clapot.

He looked up as La Trompette drew up before his door, and a slight frown wrinkled for an instant above his patient blue eyes, from which all the singular intensity seemed gone.

"Thou hast a strange air of solitude, Papa Labesse," began La Trompette, affecting a tone of solicitude.

Papa Labesse made no reply.

"And Marcelle," said the woman, – "she is always with Bombiste? Poor little one! The end is so sure! Is there one who knows him better than I? Ah, non! It is always the same story, – a pair of bright eyes, a good figure, and v'là! But, without fail, he comes back to me, ce sacré coureur!"

She glanced up and down the street with an air of complete unconcern, and then her eyes came back to Papa Labesse with a vindictive snap.

"Happily," she added, "he will have taught her a way of earning white pieces in abundance. She is not the first, thy Marcelle. They are sprinkled from here to La Villette, the gonzesses who know the name of Bombiste Fremier. Wouldst thou prove it? Walk, then, from the place Pigalle to the place de la Rotonde to-night at twelve!" And La Trompette laughed.

Papa Labesse rose suddenly to his full height.

"God damn you!" he said. And this was no oath, but rather a prayer.

Toward the end of July Papa Labesse resumed his pilgrimages to the summit of the Butte. He had aged visibly in six weeks, and he walked no longer with the brisk and cheerful step which had bespoken his youthfulness of spirit, but shuffled his feet, and often stumbled over trifling obstacles. He looked neither to the right nor to the left, and if he heard the greetings of those along his way, for whom formerly he had always had a hearty word, he made no reply. It is doubtful whether, had he been suddenly asked, he could have told his exact whereabouts: it was rather instinct than absolute intention which sent him shuffling up to his old coign of vantage. His eyes took no note of his immediate surroundings, but looked far beyond, with an expression that was half question, half entreaty. It was only when he had come to the edge of the bluff that he seemed to awaken into something resembling the man he had been. Then, his lean, gnarled hands gripped the wattles with a kind of convulsive eagerness, and, for a little, the old blue spark gleamed under his lids, and his eyes swept the great city feverishly, as if they would pluck out her secret from her by mere force of will. He no longer dwelt upon the churches and the public buildings, but traced with his glance the line of the great boulevards, des Batignolles, de Clichy, and de Rochechouart, and their tributary streets; and often he remained at his post until nearly midnight, motionless, silent, watching, watching, watching, with his eyes fixed upon the distant red glare from the giant revolving wings of the brilliantly lighted Moulin Rouge.

What he saw, what he heard, during those long hours of vigil no one ever knew: what he thought he barely knew himself. The entire intensity of his failing strength was concentrated upon one endeavor. Hour after hour he sent a voice without sound out, over, and down into the labyrinth of streets beneath him, into the dance-halls, the wine-shops, the café-concerts, wooing, pleading, beseeching. It was as if, minute by minute, he wove a great net of tenderest entreaty and persuasion, fitting it cunningly into each nook and cranny of the city below, and then, at the end, with one mighty effort of his will, drew the whole fabric up and into his heart, hoping against hope that, mysteriously, some one pleading thought of his might have caught her and swept her back to his arms. It was a struggle, silent but to the death, between Papa Labesse and the great siren city, for the possession of a soul.

And, as if, indeed, that eager voice without words of his entreaty had, somehow, been able to reach and win her, Marcelle came back. It was at the hour just following sunset, the hour they had loved to pass together, and superbly still and clear. To the west, over the wide, green sweep of the Bois de Boulogne, a great multitude of little puffs of cloud lay piled up against a turquoise sky, and these were constantly changing from tint to opalescent tint, as shafts of crimson and saffron sunlight moved among them from below the horizon. Above, where the turquoise dulled to steel, the stars were already nicking the sky, one by one; and, one by one, the lights of the boulevard, red, white, and yellow, flashed into being in reply.

As it was the dinner hour, the summit of the Butte was deserted save for the figure of Papa Labesse, silhouetted against the sky, as Marcelle emerged from the rue St. Rustique, came slowly across the open space before the church, and stood at his side. She was very pale, with the transparent, leaden pallor which comes only at the end, and her face seemed little more than two great, stunned eyes. Her clothes, in the last stage of what had been tawdry finery, were unspeakably more slovenly than mere rags. It was but eight weeks since they had stood on the same spot together, but this so brief period had wrought in each the havoc of a decade.

For a time neither spoke. Papa Labesse had looked up briefly as she reached his side, and then, as she swayed and seemed about to fall, had put an arm about her and drawn her close to him. So they stood watching, while Paris winked and sparkled into the starry splendor of her summer night. Finally, —

"I knew thou wouldst come, my pigeon," said Papa Labesse. "For a time I was desolate, is it not so? – and sat alone in the shop below there, and thought of nothing. But then I remembered how that thou didst love this place, and so I have come each night to wait for thee, because I knew thou wouldst return. And now thou art here. It is well, my little white pigeon, it is very well."

A keener ear than his would have caught the unmistakable warning that underlay her voice when she replied. It lacked not only hope, but life itself. It was the voice of one long dead.

"I did not think to find thee here, Papa Labesse – it has been so long since then. I came to see it all once again – to hear the voice of the great city that sings of love. And then, when at last comes the night, I would throw myself down from here, even into the very heart of her, for I am hers, and she has made me like herself."

She seemed to feel the unvoiced question which quivered on the lips of Papa Labesse, and continued, presently, —

"He never married me. Not that I cared for that. I loved him, thou seest, and when one loves one thinks not of little things. No, I was happy so. But now – last week he left me. He has gone back to La Trompette. He gave me a hundred sous. I think he was sorry to go."