In Madeira Place | Page 8

passage in English which would serve as a tribute to
Carron's charms, and he would discover in his prayer-book, in French,
what that tribute was. Why should we deem the dead languages no
longer a practical study, when Latin can gain for a Frenchman an Irish
wife!
Carron, as I have said, puzzled me. He had not the pensive air of one
who has seen better days. He was more than cheerful in his present life:
he was full of spirits; and yet it was plain that he had been brought 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?
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