The Mysteries Of Paris Volume Iii Part 38

"But you know well enough that I don't complain as long as I can help it; I bear it as long as I can."

"Well, we'll let you alone, if you will tell us why you call yourself Mont Saint-Jean."

"Yes, yes; come, tell us all that directly."

"Why, I've told you a hundred times. It was an old soldier that I loved a long while ago, and who was called so because he was wounded at the battle of Mont Saint-Jean; so I took his name. That's it; now are you satisfied? You will make me repeat the same thing over, and over, and over!"

"If your soldier was like you, he was a beauty!"

"I suppose he was in the Invalids?"

"The remains of a man--"

"How many gla.s.s eyes had he?"

"And wasn't his nose of block tin?"

"He must have been short of two arms and two legs, besides being deaf and blind, if he took up with you."

"I am ugly,--a monster, I know that as well as you can tell me. Say what you like,--make game of me, if you choose, it's all one to me; only don't beat me, that's all, I beg!"

"What have you got in that old handkerchief?" asked La Louve.

"Yes, yes! What is it?"

"Show it up directly!"

"Let's see! Let's see!"

"Oh, no, I beg!" exclaimed the miserable creature, squeezing up the little bundle in her hands with all her might.

"What! Must we take it from you?"

"Yes, s.n.a.t.c.h it from her, La Louve!"

"Oh, you won't be so wicked? Let it go! Let it go, I say!"

"What is it?"

"Why, it's the beginning of my baby linen; I make it with the old bits of linen which no one wants, and I pick up. It's nothing to you, is it?"

"Oh, the baby linen of Mont Saint-Jean's little one! That must be a rum set out!"

"Let's look at it."

"The baby clothes! The baby clothes!"

"She has taken measure of the keeper's little dog, no doubt."

"Here's your baby clothes," cried La Louve, s.n.a.t.c.hing the bundle from Mont Saint-Jean's grasp.

The handkerchief, already torn, was now rent to tatters, and a quant.i.ty of fragments of stuff of all colours, and old pieces of linen half cut out, flew around the yard, and were trampled under feet by the prisoners, who holloaed and laughed louder than before.

"Here's your rags!"

"Why, it is a ragpicker's bag."

"Patterns from the ragman's."

"What a shop!"

"And to sew all that rubbis.h.!.+"

"Why, there's more thread than stuff."

"What nice embroidery!"

"Here, pick up your rags and tatters, Mont Saint-Jean."

"Oh, how wicked! Oh, how cruel!" exclaimed the poor ill-used creature, running in every direction after the pieces, which she endeavoured to pick up in spite of pushes and blows. "I never did anybody any harm,"

she added, weeping. "I have offered, if they would let me alone, to do anything I could for anybody, to give them half my allowance, although I am always so hungry; but, no! no! it's always so. What can I do to be left in peace? They haven't even pity of a poor woman in the family way.

They are more cruel than the beasts. Oh, the trouble I had to collect these little bits of linen! How else can I make the clothes for my baby, for I have no money to buy them with? What harm was there in picking up what n.o.body else wanted when it was thrown away?" Then Mont Saint-Jean exclaimed suddenly, with a ray of hope, "Oh, there you are, Goualeuse!

Now, then, I'm safe; do speak to them for me; they will listen to you, I am sure, for they love you as much as they hate me."

La Goualeuse was the last of the prisoners who entered the enclosure.

Fleur-de-Marie wore the blue woollen gown and black skull-cap of the prisoners; but even in this coa.r.s.e costume she was still charming. Yet, since her carrying off from the farm of Bouqueval (the consequences of which circ.u.mstance we will explain hereafter), her features seemed greatly altered; her pale cheeks, formerly tinged with a slight colour, were as wan as the whiteness of alabaster; the expression, too, of her countenance had changed, and was now imprinted with a kind of dignified grief. Fleur-de-Marie felt that to bear courageously the painful sacrifices of expiation is almost to attain restored position.

"Ask a favour for me, Goualeuse," said poor Mont Saint-Jean, beseechingly, to the young girl; "see how they are flinging about the yard all I had collected, with so much trouble, to begin my baby linen for my child. What good can it do them?"

Fleur-de-Marie did not say a word, but began very actively to pick up, one by one, from under the women's feet, all the rags she could collect.

One prisoner ill-temperedly kept her foot on a sort of little bed-gown of coa.r.s.e woollen cloth. Fleur-de-Marie, still stooping, looked up at the woman, and said to her in a sweet tone:

"I beg of you let me pick it up. I ask it in the name of this poor woman who is weeping."

The prisoner removed her foot. The bed-gown was rescued, as well as most of the other sc.r.a.ps, which La Goualeuse acquired piece by piece. There remained to obtain a small child's cap, which two prisoners were struggling for, and laughing at. Fleur-de-Marie said to them:

"Be all good, pray do. Let me have the little cap."

"Oh, to be sure! It's for a harlequin in swaddling-clothes this cap is!

It is made of a bit of gray stuff, with points of green and black fustian, and lined with a bit of an old mattress cover."

The description was exact, and was hailed with loud and long-continued shoutings.

"Laugh away, but let me have it," said Mont Saint-Jean; "and pray do not drag it in the mud as you have some of the other things. I'm sorry you've made your hands so dirty for me, Goualeuse," she added, in a grateful tone.

"Let me have the harlequin's cap," said La Louve, who obtained possession of it, and waved it in the air as a trophy.