PIQUE-VINAIGRE.

The prisoner who was placed alongside of Barbillon in the visitor's room, was a man about forty years of age, and of slender make, and with a cunning, intelligent, jovial, and jeering face; he had an enormous mouth, almost entirely without teeth; when he spoke he twisted it from side to side, according to the pretty general custom of those who address the populace of market places; his nose was flat, his head immensely large, and almost entirely bald; he wore an old gray waistcoat, trousers of an indescribable color, pieced in a thousand different places; his naked feet, red from the cold, half wrapped up in old linen, were thrust into wooden shoes.

This man, named Fortune Gobert, nick-named Pique-Vinaigre (Sharp Vinegar, to prevent mistakes), formerly a juggler, and a prisoner for the crime of pa.s.sing counterfeit money, was accused of breaking the terms of his ticket-of-leave, and of burglary.

Confined but for a few days at La Force, already Pique-Vinaigre filled, to the general satisfaction of his prison companions, the post of story-teller. At the present day these are rare, but formerly each ward generally had, at the expense of a light, individual contribution, its tale-teller, who, by his improvisations, made the interminable winter evenings appear less long, the prisoners retiring to rest at nightfall.

Pique-Vinaigre excelled in that kind of heroic recital where weakness, after a thousand crosses, finishes by triumphing over its persecutors.

Pique-Vinaigre possessed, besides, an immense fund of irony, which had given him his nickname. He had just entered the room.

Opposite him, on the other side of the railing, was a woman of about thirty-five, with a pale, sweet, and interesting face, poorly but neatly clad; she wept bitterly, and kept her handkerchief to her eyes.

Pique-Vinaigre looked at her with a mixture of impatience and affection.

"Come now, Jeanne," said he, "do not be a child; it is sixteen years since we have met; if you keep your handkerchief over your eyes, we won't know each other."

"My brother, my poor Fortune--I suffocate--I cannot speak."

"Ain't you droll! what ever is the matter with you?"

This sister--for this woman was his sister--restrained her sobs, dried her eyes, and regarding him with stupor, answered, "What is the matter? I find you again in prison, who had already been in fifteen years!"

"It is true; to-day six months I came out of Melun prison, without going to see you at Paris, because the _capital_ was forbidden to me."

"Already retaken! What have you then done? Why did you leave Beaugency, where you were sent, with orders to report yourself now and then?"

"Why? You ought to ask me why I went there?"

"You are right."

"In the first place, my poor Jeanne, since these gratings are between us both, imagine that I have embraced you, folded you in my arms, as one ought to do when he sees a sister after an age. Now, let us chat. A prisoner of Melun, called the Big Cripple, told me that there was at Beaugency an old galley-slave of his acquaintance, who employed liberated convicts in a manufactory of white-lead. Do you know what that is?"

"No, brother."

"It is a very fine trade; those who are employed in it, at the end of a month or two, have the painter's colic; of three attacked, about one dies.

To be just, the two others die also, but at their ease; they take their time; take good care of themselves, and they may last a year, eighteen months at the most. After all, the trade is not so badly paid as some others, and there are some folks born already dressed, who hold out two or three years; but these are the old folks, the centenaries of the _white-leaders_. They die, it is true, but that's not fatiguing."

"And why did you choose a trade so dangerous, my poor Fortune?"

"And what would you have me do? When I entered Melun for this affair of false money, I was a juggler. As in the prison there was no work-shop for my trade, and as I was no stronger than a fly, they put me at making toys for children. It was a manufacturer of Paris who found it advantageous to have made by the prisoners his harlequins, his trumpets of wood, and his swords of ditto. Thus, I tell you, haven't I sharpened, and cut, and carved for fifteen years, these toys! I am sure that I supplied the pets of an entire quarter of Paris--it was, above all, on the trumpet I excelled; and rattles too! With these two instruments one could have put on edge the teeth of a whole battalion! I pride myself, on it. My time out, behold me with the degree of penny-trumpet manufacturer. They allowed me to choose for my residence three or four places, at forty leagues from Paris; I had for sole resource my knowledge of trumpet-making. Now, admitting that, from old men to babies, all the inhabitants of the town should have had a pa.s.sion to play toot-too on my trumpets. I should have had, even then, trouble enough to pay my expenses; but I could not seduce a whole village into blowing trumpets from morning to night. They would have taken me for a conspirator!"

"You always laugh."

"That is better than to cry. Finally, seeing that at forty leagues from Paris my trade as a juggler would be of no more resource to me than my trumpets, I demanded an exchange to Beaugency, wishing to engage myself in the white-lead factory. It is a pastry which gives you an indigestion of misery; but, until one dies from it, one has a living; it is always something gained, and I like that trade as well as that of a robber; to steal I am not brave or strong enough, and it was by pure chance I have committed the act of which I shall speak directly."

"You would have been brave and strong if you had only had the _idea_ not to steal any more."

"Ah! you believe that, do you?"

"Yes, at the bottom you are not wicked; for, in this dangerous affair of false money, you had been dragged into it in spite of yourself, almost forced--you know it well."

"Yes, my girl--but, do you see, fifteen years in a prison, that spoils a man like my old pipe which you see, whenever it comes in the jail white as a new pipe; on coming out of Melun, then, I felt myself too cowardly to steal."

"And you had the courage to follow a deadly calling. Hold, Fortune! I tell you that you wish to make yourself worse than you are."

"Stop a moment, then; all greenhorn that I was, I had an idea, may the devil burn me if I know why! that I would not care for the colic, that the malady would find too little in me to feed on, and that it would go elsewhere; in fine, that I would become one of the old white-leaders. On leaving the prison I began by squandering my savings, augmented, understand, by what I had gained by relating stories at night in our ward."

"As you used to tell us in old times, my brother? It used to amuse our mother so much, do you remember?"

"Pardieu! good woman! And she never suspected before she died that I was at Melun?"

"Never: to her last moments she thought you had gone to the islands."

"What could I do, my girl? My escapades were the fault of my father, who brought me up to play the clown, to a.s.sist him in his juggling, to eat flax and spit fire; that was the cause that I had not the time to a.s.sociate with the sons of peers of France, and that I made bad acquaintances. But, to return to Beaugency: once out of Melun, I spent my money as I had a right.

After fifteen years in a cage one must have a little air, and amuse one's self so much the more, as, without being too greedy, the white lead might give me a last indigestion; then, what good would my pension money be to me? I ask you. Finally, I arrived at Beaugency almost without a sou: I asked for _Velu_, the friend of Big Cripple, the chief of the factory.

Serviteur! no more manufactory of white-lead than you could put under your hand; eleven persons had died there in one year; the old galley-slave had shut up shop. Here I was in this village, with my talents for making wooden trumpets for my dinner, and my convict's pa.s.sport for my sole recommendation. I asked for employment suited to my strength, and, as I had no strength, you can comprehend how I was received; robber here, gueux there, jail bird! in fine, as soon as I made my appearance anywhere, every one clapped their hands on their pockets; I could not, then, prevent myself from starving with hunger in a hole which I was not to leave for five years. Seeing this, I broke my 'parole' to come to Paris to use my talents.

As I had not the means to come in a carriage and four, I came begging all along the road; avoiding the constables as a dog does a kick. I was lucky--I arrived without difficulty at Auteuil. I was worried, I was as hungry as the devil, I was dressed, as you see, without profuseness." And Pique-Vinaigre cast a merry glance at his rags. "I had not a sou; I could at any moment be arrested as a vagabond. Faith, an opportunity offered, the devil tempted me, and, in spite of my cowardice--"

"Enough, my brother, enough," said his sister, fearing that the warder, although at this moment some distance off, might hear the dangerous confession.

"You are afraid that some one will listen?" answered he: "be tranquil, I do not conceal it; I was taken in the act; there are no means to deny it; I have confessed all; I know what I have to expect; my account is good."

"Alas!" answered the poor woman, weeping, "with what ease you speak of this."

"If I were to speak of it with uneasiness, what should I gain? Come, be reasonable, Jeanne; must _I_ console _you?_" Jeanne wiped away her tears, and sighed.

"But to return to my affair," said Pique-Vinaigre; "I arrived near Auteuil in the dusk of the evening. I could go no further; I did not wish to enter Paris but at night; I seated myself behind a hedge to repose and reflect upon my plans. From the intensity of my thoughts I fell asleep; a noise of voices awoke me; it was quite dark; I listened, it was a man and a woman talking on the road, on the other side of my hedge; the man said to the woman, 'Who do you think would rob us? have we not left the house alone a hundred times?' 'Yes,' answered the woman, 'but then we did not leave a hundred francs in our chest.' 'Who knows it, fool?' said the husband. 'You are right,' replied the woman, and they pa.s.sed on. The chance appeared too favorable for me to lose--there was no danger.

"I waited until they had got a little distance to come out from behind my hedge; I looked around: at twenty steps off I saw a small cottage; that must be the house with the hundred francs; there was no other hovel on the road but this one; Auteuil was five hundred yards off. I said to myself, 'Courage, my old boy, there is no one there, it is night, if there is no dog (you know I always was afraid of dogs), the affair is done.' Luckily there was no dog. To be still more sure, I knocked against the door--nothing; that encouraged me. The shutters of the ground floor were closed: I pa.s.sed my stick between the two, I forced them, I entered through the window into a chamber; there was some fire in the fireplace; this served as a light; I saw a chest from whence the key had been taken; I took the tongs, I forced the drawers, and under a heap of linen I found the treasure, wrapped up in an old woolen stocking; I did not amuse myself by taking anything else; I jumped out of the window and I fell--guess where?

There's luck!"

"Go on!"

"On the back of the watchman who was going to the village."

"What a misfortune!"

"The moon had risen, he saw me coming out of the window; he seized me. He was a giant who could have eaten ten such as me. Too cowardly to resist, I resigned myself to my fate. I still held the stocking in my hand; he heard the money jingle, he took it all, put it in his bag, and compelled me to follow him to Auteuil. He went to the mayor's with the usual accompaniment of boys and constables; they waited for the proprietors to return; they made their declaration. I could not deny it; I confessed all, they put on the handcuffs, and off we went!"

"And here you are in prison again, perhaps for a long time!"

"Listen, Jeanne, I do not wish to deceive you, my girl, so I will tell you at once."

"What more now?"

"Come, take courage!"

"But speak, then!"