Lippincotts Magazine, August 1873 | Page 9

A sewing-woman with a capacity for
embroidery, her needle had given her support, but now a sudden
warning of paralysis, and symptoms of cholera added to that, had
driven her almost to despair. She was without home, friend or
profession.
[Illustration: A LITTLE VISITOR.]
Joliet set her incontinently on horseback, and walked by her side to a
good village curé's two miles off--the same who had assisted him to his
first communion, and for whom he subsequently became a beadle. The
kind priest opened his arms to the man, his heart to the woman, his
stable to the horse. For his second patient my Bohemian set in motion
all his stock of curative ideas. In a month she was well, and the curé no
longer had three pensioners, for of two of them he made one.
Two poverties added may make a competence. Monsieur and Madame
Joliet were good and willing. The man began to wear a strange not
unbecoming air of solidity and good morals. The girls now saluted him
respectfully when he passed through a village.
One thing, however, in the midst of his proud honeymoon perplexed
him much. Hardly married, and over head and ears in love, he knew not
how to invite his bride to some wretched garret, himself deserting her
to resume his former life in the open air. To give up the latter seemed

like losing existence itself.
One morning, as he asked himself the difficult question, a pair of old
wheels at the door of a cartwright seemed of their own accord to
resolve his perplexity. He bought them, the payment to be made in
labor: for a week he blew the wheelwright's bellows. The wheels were
his own: to make a wagon was now the affair of a few old boards and a
gypsy's inventiveness.
Thus was conceived that famous establishment where, for several years,
lived the independent monarch and his spouse, rolling over the roads,
circulating through the whole belt of villages around Paris, and
carrying in their ambulant home, like the Cossacks, their utensils, their
bed, their oven, their all.
From town to town they carried packages, boxes and articles of barter.
At dinner-time the van was rolled under a tree. The lady of the house
kindled a fire in the portable stove behind a hedge or in a ditch. The
hen-coop was opened, and the sage seraglio with their sultan prudently
pecked about for food. At the first appeal they re-entered their cage.
[Illustration: FRANCINE.]
At the same appeal came flying up the dog of the establishment, a most
piteous-looking griffin, disheveled, moulted, staring out of one eye,
lame and wild. For devotion and good sense his match could be found
nowhere. Like his horse, his wife, his house and the pins in his sleeve,
Joliet had picked the collie up on the road.
The arrival of a tiny visitor to the Bohemian's address made a change
necessary. Little Francine's dowry was provided by my humorous
acquisition of the yellow and slate-colored chickens.
With his savings and my banknote Joliet determined to have a fixed
residence. He succeeded of course. The walls, the windows, the doors,
everything but the garden-patch, he picked up along the roads.
[Illustration: "DON'T WRING MY HEART!"]
Buried in eglantine and honeysuckle, soon no one would suspect the
home-made character of Joliet's château. It became the centre of my
botanizing excursions. Francine grew into a fair, slim girl, like the
sweetest and most innocent of Gavarni's sketches, and sold flowers to
the passers-by.
* * * * *
Such were the souvenirs I had of this brave tavern-keeper in his old

capacity of roadster and tramp. Now, after an hiatus of years, I found
him before me in a different character at the beginning of my
roundabout trips to Marly.
But what had become of my favorite little rose-merchant?
"Francine?" asked Joliet briskly, as if he was wondering whom I could
mean by such a name. "You mean my wife? Poor thing! She is dead."
"I am speaking of your daughter, Father Joliet."
"Oh, my daughter, my girl Francine? She went to live with her
godmother. It was ten years ago."
"And you have not seen her since?"
"Yes--yes--two years back. She has gone again."
"To her godmother?"
"No."
"Why so?"
"Her godmother would not receive her. Don't wring my heart so, sir!"
EDWARD STRAHAN.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]

OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.
[Illustration: VIEW OF TAUFERS VALLEY.]

CHAPTER VII
.
We left the Hof one August Friday--we were not superstitious--a
goodly company, sufficient to freight the rumbling old stage-wagon
which jolted daily between Bruneck and Taufers, a distance of nine
miles. At this village the sedater portion of the party were to settle
down with books, pencils and drawing-paper until the Alpine visit
should