Little Dorrit | Page 6

direction, that the Italian more than once
followed them to and back from the pavement in some surprise.
'What an infernal hole this is!' said Monsieur Rigaud, breaking a long
pause. 'Look at the light of day. Day? the light of yesterday week, the
light of six months ago, the light of six years ago. So slack and dead!'
It came languishing down a square funnel that blinded a window in the
staircase wall, through which the sky was never seen--nor anything
else.
'Cavalletto,' said Monsieur Rigaud, suddenly withdrawing his gaze
from this funnel to which they had both involuntarily turned their eyes,
'you know me for a gentleman?'
'Surely, surely!'
'How long have we been here?' 'I, eleven weeks, to-morrow night at
midnight. You, nine weeks and three days, at five this afternoon.'
'Have I ever done anything here? Ever touched the broom, or spread the
mats, or rolled them up, or found the draughts, or collected the
dominoes, or put my hand to any kind of work?'
'Never!'
'Have you ever thought of looking to me to do any kind of work?'

John Baptist answered with that peculiar back-handed shake of the
right forefinger which is the most expressive negative in the Italian
language.
'No! You knew from the first moment when you saw me here, that I
was a gentleman?'
'ALTRO!' returned John Baptist, closing his eyes and giving his head a
most vehement toss. The word being, according to its Genoese
emphasis, a confirmation, a contradiction, an assertion, a denial, a taunt,
a compliment, a joke, and fifty other things, became in the present
instance, with a significance beyond all power of written expression,
our familiar English 'I believe you!'
'Haha! You are right! A gentleman I am! And a gentleman I'll live, and
a gentleman I'll die! It's my intent to be a gentleman. It's my game.
Death of my soul, I play it out wherever I go!'
He changed his posture to a sitting one, crying with a triumphant air:
'Here I am! See me! Shaken out of destiny's dice-box into the company
of a mere smuggler;--shut up with a poor little contraband trader,
whose papers are wrong, and whom the police lay hold of besides, for
placing his boat (as a means of getting beyond the frontier) at the
disposition of other little people whose papers are wrong; and he
instinctively recognises my position, even by this light and in this place.
It's well done! By Heaven! I win, however the game goes.'
Again his moustache went up, and his nose came down.
'What's the hour now?' he asked, with a dry hot pallor upon him, rather
difficult of association with merriment.
'A little half-hour after mid-day.'
'Good! The President will have a gentleman before him soon. Come!
Shall I tell you on what accusation? It must be now, or never, for I shall

not return here. Either I shall go free, or I shall go to be made ready for
shaving. You know where they keep the razor.'
Signor Cavalletto took his cigarette from between his parted lips, and
showed more momentary discomfiture than might have been expected.
'I am a'--Monsieur Rigaud stood up to say it--'I am a cosmopolitan
gentleman. I own no particular country. My father was Swiss-- Canton
de Vaud. My mother was French by blood, English by birth. I myself
was born in Belgium. I am a citizen of the world.'
His theatrical air, as he stood with one arm on his hip within the folds
of his cloak, together with his manner of disregarding his companion
and addressing the opposite wall instead, seemed to intimate that he
was rehearsing for the President, whose examination he was shortly to
undergo, rather than troubling himself merely to enlighten so small a
person as John Baptist Cavalletto.
'Call me five-and-thirty years of age. I have seen the world. I have lived
here, and lived there, and lived like a gentleman everywhere. I have
been treated and respected as a gentleman universally. If you try to
prejudice me by making out that I have lived by my wits--how do your
lawyers live--your politicians--your intriguers--your men of the
Exchange?'
He kept his small smooth hand in constant requisition, as if it were a
witness to his gentility that had often done him good service before.
'Two years ago I came to Marseilles. I admit that I was poor; I had been
ill. When your lawyers, your politicians, your intriguers, your men of
the Exchange fall ill, and have not scraped money together, they
become poor. I put up at the Cross of Gold,-- kept then by Monsieur
Henri Barronneau--sixty-five at least, and in a failing state of health. I
had lived in the house some four months when Monsieur Henri
Barronneau had the misfortune