In Madeira Place | Page 8

up for something different. I asked him once to tell me, for French lessons, the story of his life. With the most charming complaisance, he at once consented; but he proceeded in such endless detail, the first time, in an account of his early boyhood in a strict Benedictine monastery school, in the south of France, as to suggest that he was talking against time. And although his spirited and amusing picture of his childhood days only awakened my curiosity, I could never persuade him to resume the history. It was always "the next time."
He seemed to be poor: but he never asked a favor except for others. On the contrary, he brought me some little business. A Belge had been cheated out of five hundred dollars; I recovered half of it for him. A Frenchman from le Midi had bought out a little business, and the seller had immediately set up shop next door; I succeeded in shutting up the rival. I was a prodigy.
After a time I was told something further as to Carron's life. He had been a Capuchin monk, in a monastery at or near Paris. The instant that I heard this statement, I felt in my very soul that it was true. My eye had always missed something in Carron. I now knew exactly what it was,--a shaved crown, bare feet, and a cowl.
It was the usage for the brethren of his order to go about Paris barefoot, begging. They were not permitted by the concierges to go into the great apartment hotels. But "Carron, il est très fin," said my informant; "you know,--'e is var' smart." Carron would learn, by careful inquiry, the name of a resident on an upper floor; then he would appear at the concierge's door, and would mention the name of this resident with such adroit, demure, and absolute confidence that he would be permitted at once to ascend. Once inside, he would go the rounds of the apartments. So he would get five times as much in a day as any of his fellows. A certain amount of the receipts he would yield up to the treasury of the monastery; the rest he kept for himself. After a while this came to be suspected, and he quietly withdrew to a new country.
There was not the slightest tangible corroboration of this story. It might have been the merest gossip or the invention of an enemy. But it fitted Carron so perfectly, that from the day I heard it I could never, somehow, question its substantial truth. If I had questioned it, I should have repeated the story to him, to give him an opportunity to answer. But something warned me not to do so.
Fidèle held on well at the custom-house, and I think that he became a general favorite. No one who took the old soldier by the hand and looked him in the eye could question his absolute honesty; and as for skill in his duties,--well, it was the custom-house.
But he was not saving much money. He was free to give and free to lend to his fellow-countrymen; and, moreover, various ways were pointed out to him by Mr. Fox, from time to time, in which an old soldier, delighting to aid his country, could serve her pecuniarily. The republic,--that is, the Republicans,--it was all one.
One afternoon, late in summer, Fidèle appeared at my office. He seldom visited me, except quarterly for his pension affidavit. As he came in now, I saw that something had happened. His grisly face wore the same kindly smile that it had always borne, but the light had gone out of it. His story was short. He had lost his place. He had been notified that his services would not be needed after Saturday. No reason had been given him; he was simply dismissed in humiliation. There must be some misunderstanding, such as occurs between the warmest friends. And was not the great government his friend? Did it not send him his pension regularly? Had it not sent a special messenger to seek him out, in his obscurity, for this position; and was he not far better suited to it now than at the outset?
In reply to questions from me, he told me more about Mr. Fox's first visit than I had hitherto known. I asked him, in a casual way, about the ward-meetings, and whether the French citizens generally attended them. No, they had been dropping off; they had become envious, perhaps, of him; they had formed a club, with Carron for president, and had voted to act in a body (en solidarité).
Then I told Fidèle that I knew no way to help him, and that I feared his dismission was final. He could not understand me, but went away, leaning on his