Lippincotts Magazine, August 1873 | Page 8

when Hazard, his ungenerous guardian, seemed to have quite
forgotten him, he walked--on an empty stomach, as the doctors
say--past the lofty walls of a château. A card was placed at the gate
calling for additional hands at a job of digging. Each workman, it was
promised, had a right to a plate of soup before beginning. This article
tempted him. At the gate a lackey, laughing in his face, told him the
notice had been posted there six months: workmen were no longer
wanted. "Wait, though," said the servant, and in another minute gave
the applicant a horse!--a real, live horse in blood and bones, but in
bones especially. "There," said the domestic, "set a beggar on
horseback and see him ride to the devil!" And, laughing with that
unalloyed enjoyment which one's own wit alone produces, he retired
behind his wicket.
[Illustration: SICKNESS AND COURTSHIP.]
The horse thus vicariously fulfilling the functions of a plate of soup
was a wretched glandered beast--not old, but shunned on account of the
contagious nature of his disease. Having received the order to take him
to be killed at the abattoir, monsieur the valet, having better things to
do, gave the commission to Joliet, with all its perquisites.
Joliet did not kill the steed: he cured it. He tended it, he drenched it, he
saved it. By what remedy? I cannot tell. I have never been a farrier,

though Joliet himself made me perforce a poulterer. Many a bit of
knowledge is picked up by those who travel the great roads. The sharp
Bohemian, by playing at all trades, brushing against gentry of all sorts
and scouring all neighborhoods, becomes at length a living
cyclopaedia.
[Illustration: THE WAGON.]
Joliet, like Democritus and Plato, saw everything with his own eyes,
learned everything at first hand. He was a keen observer, and in our
interviews subsequent to the affair of the chickens I was more than
once surprised by the extent of his information and the subtlety of his
insight. His wits were tacked on to a number of remote supports. In our
day, when each science has become so complicated, so obese, that a
man's lifetime may be spent in exercising round one of them, there are
hardly any generalizers or observers fit to estimate their relativity,
except among the two classes called by the world idlers and
ignorants--the poets and the Bohemians.
Joliet, now having joined the ranks of the cavalry, found his account in
his new dignity. He became an orderly, a messenger. He carried parcels,
he transported straw and hay. If the burden was too heavy for the poor
convalescent, the man took his own portion with a good grace, and the
two mutually aided each other on the errand. Thanks to his horse, the
void left by his failure to learn a trade was filled up by a daily and
regular task: what was better, an affection had crept into his heart. He
loved his charge, and his charge loved him.
This great hotel, the world, seemed to be promising entertainment then
for both man and beast, when an epoch of disaster came along--a
season of cholera. In the villages where Joliet's business lay the doors
just beginning to be hospitable were promptly shut against him. Where
the good townsmen had recognized Assistance in his person, they now
saw Contagion.
[Illustration: DINNER-TIME!]
If he had been a single man, he could have lain back and waited for
better times. But he now had two mouths to feed. He kissed his horse
and took a resolution.
He had never been a mendicant. "Beggars don't go as hungry as I have
gone," said he. "But what will you have? Nobility obliges. My father
was a gentleman. I have broken stones, but never the devoirs of my

order."
He left the groups of villages among which his new industry had lain.
The cholera was behind him: trouble, beggary perhaps, was before him.
As night was coming on, Joliet, listlessly leading his horse, which he
was too considerate to ride, saw upon the road a woman whom he took
in the obscurity for a farmer's wife of the better class or a decent
villager. For an introduction the opportunity was favorable enough. On
her side, the quasi farmer's wife, seeing in the dusk an honest fellow
dragging a horse, took him for a "gentleman's gentleman" at the least,
and the two accosted each other with that easy facility of which the
French people have the secret. Each presented the other with a hand
and a frank smile.
[Illustration: FIDELITY.]
Joliet, whom I have erred perhaps in comparing to Democritus, was
nevertheless a laugher and a philosopher. But his grand ha-ha! usually
infectious, was not shared on this occasion. The wanderer could not
show much merriment.