San-Cravate; or, The Messengers; Little Streams Part 20

The waiter appeared; the expression of his face was even more ironical than before. Tobie had four francs fifty centimes to pay. He paid it, sighing profoundly, and saying to himself:

"If only I can win it back at bouillotte!"

At that moment the showman began again, tapping the canvas with his stick:

"Walk in, messieurs, mesdames; you will see what you will see. Buy your tickets! if you are not satisfied, you'll get your money back."

"The devil take you!" muttered Tobie, as he left the room. "I am not at all satisfied; I have spent money recklessly to-day, and I shan't get it back!"

VIII

THE WINE SHOP.--SCENES AMONG THE COMMON PEOPLE

On the first floor of a wine shop on Rue Saint-Lazare was a room containing several tables; the room was reached by a staircase, which started from the shop itself and ended almost in the middle of the room in question, which was frequented by drinkers who desired to be more at their ease than was possible below.

The room was ordinarily occupied by workmen, loafers, and an occasional peddler. The workmen, after a laborious day, came to the wine shop to take a modest meal and to rest their tired limbs; the others, after idling the greater part of the day, came thither to spend a large part of the night in the same occupation.

Those who had done no work, and consequently had earned nothing, generally spent the most money. Economy is almost always the companion of toil; dissipation, of idleness.

A journeyman mason sat at one of the tables, eating with evident enjoyment a piece of cheese, washed down with a mug of wine; the tempting invitations of his comrades were powerless to induce him to spend another sou, for he was determined to save money and not remain a mere journeyman all his days.

Near by sat a carpenter, with a red nose, bloated face, and eyes blinking with the vapors of wine; he had already emptied several bottles, and, instead of going home to his waiting family, was all ready to drink some more, inviting his acquaintances and even strangers to join him, in order to find an excuse for further tippling, aye, to spend the last sou of the wages he had just received, and for which his wife was waiting in order to buy bread for their children.

At another table was a man about fifty years of age, with gray hair and enormous whiskers, whose costume indicated no special profession. His chin was buried in a piece of ticking, which served him as a cravat; he wore a coat, but it was torn and patched and much too short for him; trousers whose color was no longer distinguishable, fastened behind with strings instead of buckles. On his head was a round hat, if the name can properly be given to a piece of felt torn in several places, and with only a few small fragments of brim. But all this did not prevent the individual in question from carrying his head erect, scrutinizing everybody who came in, drumming on the table with his knife by way of accompaniment to the songs he sang under his breath, and, in a word, making as much noise as many parties produced, although his repast consisted of only a gla.s.s of beer and a piece of bread.

Among the tables surrounded by customers, there was one at which a supper was being served that aroused the envy of most of the other occupants of the room: it was the table occupied by Sans-Cravate, his mistress, and the other two messengers.

The flower girl was seated beside Sans-Cravate, who ate, drank, laughed, talked, sang, and served his guests with food and drink--all without a moment's rest; at times, indeed, he succeeded in doing several things at once.

Mademoiselle Bastringuette did not seem to share her lover's merry humor; she ate heartily, but spoke very little. From time to time, she fixed her eyes on Paul, who sat opposite her; but he always avoided meeting them, the result being that he kept his own eyes on his plate much of the time.

Jean Ficelle sat opposite Sans-Cravate; he did honor to the supper, and handled his knife and fork with great dexterity; but that did not prevent his glancing constantly to right and left, and seeing everything that took place in the room.

"Who wants some rabbit--a little more of the _gibelotte_?" said Sans-Cravate, helping himself from an enormous dish, in which the party had already made a considerable breach. "No one speaks, so I help myself."

"Give me just a bit," said Jean Ficelle, pa.s.sing his plate.

"That's right!" cried Sans-Cravate, as he helped his comrade; "you're all right, you are! You never lag behind at table. But Paul--what a sluggard! he don't eat, he hardly drinks;--are you sick, my boy?"

"No, indeed," Paul replied, with a smile; "but I am not very hungry."

"Monsieur has something on his mind, and that fills the stomach at the same time!" muttered Bastringuette, sucking a bone.

"Never mind," rejoined Sans-Cravate; "I don't propose to scold him, as long as he came, although he don't seem to be enjoying himself any too much with us."

"_Dame!_ we ain't in the dressmaking line, you know," said Bastringuette, in a sarcastic tone; "we don't help dress the swells, we don't spend the day in rooms with waxed and polished floors!"

"Do I?" said Paul, glancing sternly at Bastringuette.

"No; but you're acquainted with people that put on airs and wear gloves!

Upon my word," continued Bastringuette, with a sigh, "I've a right good mind to change my trade. I'm not going to sell flowers any more; I'm going to fly higher."

"And sell oranges, eh?" said Sans-Cravate.

"Bah! better than that."

"Herrings, then?"

"What a fool! I tell him I'm going to rise in the world, and he wants me to lower myself to herring! I'm going to be a trousers maker, and save up money; save up money to buy a shop with. I sew well enough now, and I've always had a liking for trousers; that's not surprising, as my mother used to sell 'em under the pillars in the Market."

"Well, don't you worry, sun of my heart; if I often have days like to-day, I'll soon have enough nuggets to buy you a well-stocked shop."

"Oh, yes!" retorted Bastringuette, with a shrug; "all I've got to do is depend on you! it's surprising how you save money; you don't even know how to make people pay what they owe you----"

"What's that? does anyone owe you money?" cried Jean Ficelle, gazing at Sans-Cravate in amazement. "Do you mean to say you've got funds invested? have you had a legacy without telling a friend anything about it? Pa.s.s me some more rabbit, then."

"No, no! do you pay any attention to what Bastringuette says? she's talking about some people that I helped to move. There was mighty little to move, and it didn't tire me much; and then, I'd sawed half a cord of wood and done a few errands, so that they owed me six or seven francs, perhaps--a magnificent sum!"

"Oh, yes! it's always like that," rejoined the girl. "Look you--it was last winter; freezing cold, but bright sunlight, and I'd had an idea for a long time that I'd like to go by the railroad to Corbeil, and then take a walk in the forest of Fontainebleau, where they say there's snakes--and I'm very curious to see one, yes, and a big one, too; I've never been afraid of the beasts. So I says to Sans-Cravate: 'You're going to take me to Fontainebleau on the railroad, and we'll have a little spree down there in the country, on the gra.s.s; it'll be a little cold, but all the more fun for that; I like to eat and drink on the gra.s.s. It's a long time since I've been in the country, and it'll do me good.'--Sans-Cravate felt in his pocket, and found he had only five francs. I says: 'That's a little scant to do things up brown on the gra.s.s; we ought to have at least twice that. Let's see if there ain't some way of getting some more cash.'--At that, he says: 'I've got some customers that owe me something; among others that family that lives on the fifth in Rue des Martyrs, that I moved six months ago.'--'Well,' I says, 'if you wait any longer, they'll be moving again, and without your help this time. Go and get your money; a poor messenger has the right to ask for what's owing him, after six months.'--And I urged him so that he decided to go there, but what do you suppose he did?"

"Smashed everything to make 'em pay him," said Jean Ficelle; "at least, that's what I'd have done."

"Oh! no, you wouldn't," said Sans-Cravate; "if you'd seen the poverty of those poor people, you'd have done just what I did, for you couldn't have helped being touched. When I went into their room--they lived up under the eaves--it was near six o'clock in the morning; I found the man and his wife still in bed. They had old towels round their heads for nightcaps, that made 'em look like Turks. They had no bedclothes but an old quilt all full of holes, so they'd piled all their clothes on the bed--old dresses, a pair of trousers, and even old boots! all that to keep 'em warm! And then, in a recess, there was the child's bed--a pretty, red-cheeked little boy, two or three years old--I say, the bed, but it wasn't one! Guess what the child was lying in--an old m.u.f.f, with hardly any fur left on it; they had stuffed the little fellow into that, and then taken out the drawer of a commode and put him in it for a bed.

When he saw me come in, the man said: 'My dear friend, if you have come for what I owe you, I shall have to ask you to be kind enough to wait a little longer; for I've been out of work for a fortnight. We lie in bed as long as possible, because we haven't got anything to make a fire, and what is worse is that I don't know just now what we're going to breakfast on to-day!'--I'd just like to know if I could ask those people for money! I tried to comfort 'em a little, and then I went away."

"That's very well, but he don't tell you the whole story," cried Bastringuette; "he not only didn't ask 'em for what was owing him, but he left on that poor man's mantelpiece the only five-franc piece he owned; so, instead of bringing back twice what he had, so that we could have some fun, he came back without a sou!"

Paul seized Sans-Cravate's hand and shook it warmly, crying:

"Ah! that was fine, Sans-Cravate! that was a fine thing you did! you have a warm heart, you're a good fellow!"

"Oh! _pardi!_ what a fuss over nothing!" rejoined the messenger, filling his gla.s.s; "of course, that little fellow in the m.u.f.f had to have some breakfast! My credit's good at the wine shop, you see, so I could wait."

"If all creditors acted like that," muttered Jean Ficelle, "trade would be pretty bad.--I say, Laboussole, if your creditors gave you five francs, that would suit you down to the ground, eh?"

This apostrophe was addressed to the individual with the striped cravat, who had long since finished his beer, but was still chewing his bread and beating the table with his knife as if he were playing a drum. He thrust out his chin toward his interlocutor, and replied with a sprightly air:

"I should be a millionaire! as it is, I'm strapped. What do you expect?

you see that every day! and I've known what it is to eat roast veal and lettuce, and to drink all the wine I wanted. We all have our ups and downs [_bas_]."

"But he hasn't any stockings [_bas_], just now," murmured Bastringuette, after a glance at Laboussole; "that fellow looks to me like an old pickpocket."

"Not at all," said Jean Ficelle; "he's a man who used to have great talent in his line. But, you see, he has had hard luck."

"What was his line?"