Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools | Page 8

Lucette serves the coffee in a little cup, and leaves the Roquefort and
the cigarettes on the table just as the sun is sinking behind the hill
skirting the railroad. While I am blowing rings through the grape leaves
over my head a quick noise is heard across the stream. Lucette runs
past me through the garden, picking up her oars as she goes.
"_Oui, mon père._ I am coming."
It is monsieur from his day's work in the city.
"Who is here?" I hear him say as he mounts the terrace steps. "Oh, the
painter--good!"
"Ah, mon ami. So you must see the willows once more. Have you not

tired of them yet?" Then, seating himself, "I hope madame has taken
good care of you. What, the '62? Ah, I remember I told you."
When it is quite dark he joins me under the leaves, bringing a second
bottle a little better corked he thinks, and the talk drifts into his early
life.
"What year was that, monsieur?" I asked.
"In 1849. I was a young fellow just grown. I had learned my trade in
Rheims, and I had come down to Paris to make my bread. Two years
later came the little affair of December 2. That 'nobody,' Louis, had
dissolved the National Assembly and the Council of State, and had
issued his address to the army. Paris was in a ferment. By the help of
his soldiers and police he had silenced every voice in Paris except his
own. He had suppressed all the journals, and locked up everybody who
had opposed him. Victor Hugo was in exile, Louis Blanc in London,
Changarnier and Cavaignac in prison. At the moment I was working in
a little shop near the Porte St. Martin decorating lacquerwork. We
workmen all belonged to a secret society which met nightly in a back
room over a wine-shop near the Rue Royale. We had but one
thought--how to upset the little devil at the Élysée. Among my
comrades was a big fellow from my own city, one Cambier. He was the
leader. On the ground floor of the shop was built a huge oven where the
lacquer was baked. At night this was made hot with charcoal and
allowed to cool off in the morning ready for the finished work of the
previous day. It was Cambier's duty to attend to this oven.
"One night just after all but he and two others had left the shop a
strange man was discovered in a closet where the men kept their
working clothes. He was seized, brought to the light, and instantly
recognized as a member of the secret police.
"At daylight the next morning I was aroused from my bed, and, looking
up, saw Chapot, an inspector of police, standing over me. He had
known me from a boy, and was a friend of my father's.
"'François, there is trouble at the shop. A police agent has been

murdered. His body was found in the oven. Cambier is under arrest. I
know what you have been doing, but I also know that in this you have
had no hand. Here are one hundred francs. Leave Paris in an hour.'
"I put the money in my pocket, tied my clothes in a bundle, and that
night was on my way to Havre, and the next week set sail for here."
"And what became of Cambier?" I asked.
"I have never heard from that day to this, so I think they must have
snuffed him out."
Then he drifted into his early life here--the weary tramping of the
streets day after day, the half-starving result, the language and people
unknown. Suddenly, somewhere in the lower part of the city, he espied
a card tacked outside of a window bearing this inscription, "Decorator
wanted." A man inside was painting one of the old-fashioned iron
tea-trays common in those days. Monsieur took off his hat, pointed to
the card, then to himself, seized the brush, and before the man could
protest had covered the bottom with morning-glories so pink and fresh
that his troubles ended on the spot. The first week he earned six dollars;
but then this was to be paid at the end of it. For these six days he
subsisted on one meal a day. This he ate at a restaurant where at night
he washed dishes and blacked the head waiter's boots. When Saturday
came, and the money was counted out in his hand, he thrust it into his
pocket, left the shop, and sat down on a doorstep outside to think.
"And, mon ami, what did I do first?"
"Got something to eat?"
"Never. I paid for a bath, had my hair cut and my face shaved, bought a
shirt and collar, and then