Ballads of a Bohemian | Page 3

~mon vieux~, I collared all your cash -- Three hundred francs. . . .
There! ~Nom de Dieu~," said Julot the ~apache~.

And that was how I came to know Julot and Gigolette,
And we would
talk and drink a ~bock~, and smoke a cigarette. And I would meditate
upon the artistry of crime,
And he would tell of cracking cribs and
cops and doing time; Or else when he was flush of funds he'd carelessly
explain
He'd biffed some bloated ~bourgeois~ on the border of the
Seine. So gentle and polite he was, just like a man of peace,
And not
a desperado and the terror of the police.
Now one day in a ~bistro~ that's behind the Place Vendo^me
I came
on Julot the ~apache~, and Gigolette his ~mome~.
And as they
looked so very grave, says I to them, says I,
"Come on and have a
little glass, it's good to rinse the eye. You both look mighty serious;
you've something on the heart." "Ah, yes," said Julot the ~apache~,
"we've something to impart. When such things come to folks like us, it
isn't very gay . . . It's Gigolette -- she tells me that a ~gosse~ is on the
way." Then Gigolette, she looked at me with eyes like stones of gall:
"If we were honest folks," said she, "I wouldn't mind at all. But then . . .
you know the life we lead; well, anyway I mean (That is, providing it's
a girl) to call her Angeline."
"Cheer up," said I; "it's all in life. There's
gold within the dross. Come on, we'll drink another ~verre~ to
Angeline the ~gosse~."
And so the weary winter passed, and then one April morn
The worthy
Julot came at last to say the babe was born.
"I'd like to chuck it in the
Seine," he sourly snarled, "and yet I guess I'll have to let it live, because
of Gigolette."
I only laughed, for sure I saw his spite was all a bluff,

And he was prouder than a prince behind his manner gruff.
Yet
every day he'd blast the brat with curses deep and grim, And swear to
me that Gigolette no longer thought of ~him~.
And then one night he
dropped the mask; his eyes were sick with dread, And when I offered
him a smoke he groaned and shook his head: "I'm all upset; it's
Angeline . . . she's covered with a rash . . . She'll maybe die, my little
~gosse~," cried Julot the ~apache~.
But Angeline, I joy to say, came through the test all right, Though Julot,
so they tell me, watched beside her day and night. And when I saw him

next, says he: "Come up and dine with me. We'll buy a beefsteak on the
way, a bottle and some ~brie~." And so I had a merry night within his
humble home,
And laughed with Angeline the ~gosse~ and Gigolette
the ~mome~. And every time that Julot used a word the least obscene,

How Gigolette would frown at him and point to Angeline:
Oh,
such a little innocent, with hair of silken floss,
I do not wonder they
were proud of Angeline the ~gosse~.
And when her arms were round
his neck, then Julot says to me: "I must work harder now, ~mon vieux~,
since I've to work for three." He worked so very hard indeed, the police
dropped in one day, And for a year behind the bars they put him safe
away.
So dark and silent now, their home; they'd gone -- I wondered where,
Till in a laundry near I saw a child with shining hair;
And o'er the tub
a strapping wench, her arms in soapy foam; Lo! it was Angeline the
~gosse~, and Gigolette the ~mome~.
And so I kept an eye on them
and saw that all went right,
Until at last came Julot home, half crazy
with delight.
And when he'd kissed them both, says he: "I've had my
fill this time. I'm on the honest now, I am; I'm all fed up with crime.

You mark my words, the page I turn is going to be clean,
I swear it
on the head of her, my little Angeline."
And so, to finish up my tale, this morning as I strolled
Along the
boulevard I heard a voice I knew of old.
I saw a rosy little man with
walrus-like mustache . . .
I stopped, I stared. . . . By all the gods!
'twas Julot the ~apache~. "I'm in the garden way," he said, "and doing
mighty well;
I've half an acre under glass, and heaps of truck to sell.

Come out and see. Oh come, my friend, on Sunday, wet or shine . . .
Say! -- ~it's the First Communion of that little girl of mine.~"
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