Ten Tales | Page 6

under her sunburned skin. "I came from the Foundling Hospital," she said, briefly. Then, with an awkward courtesy, she passed limping into the house, and the Captain heard, as she went away on the pavement of the court, the hard sound of the little wooden leg.
Good heavens! he thought, mechanically walking towards his caf��, that's not at all the thing. A soldier, at least, they pack off to the Invalides, with the money from his medal to keep him in tobacco. For an officer, they fix up a collectorship, and he marries somewhere in the provinces. But this poor girl, with such an infirmity,--that's not at all the thing!
Having established in these terms the injustice of fate, the Captain reached the threshold of his dear caf��, but he saw there such a mob of blue blouses, he heard such a din of laughter and click of billiard-balls, that he returned home in very bad humor.
His room--it was, perhaps, the first time that he had spent in it several hours of the day--looked rather shabby. His bed-curtains were the color of an old pipe. The fireplace was heaped with old cigar-stumps, and one could have written his name in the dust on the furniture. He contemplated for some time the walls where the sublime lancer of Leipsic rode a hundred times to a glorious death. Then, for an occupation, he passed his wardrobe in review. It was a lamentable series of bottomless pockets, socks full of holes, and shirts without buttons.
"I must have a servant," he said.
Then he thought of the little lame girl.
"That's what I'll do. I'll hire the next little room; winter is coming, and the little thing will freeze under the stairs. She will look after my clothes and my linen and keep the barracks clean. A valet, how's that?"
But a cloud darkened the comfortable picture. The Captain remembered that quarter-day was still a long way off, and that his account at the Cafe Prosper was assuming alarming proportions.
"Not rich enough," he said to himself. "And in the mean time they are robbing me down there. That is positive. The board is too high, and that wretch of a veterinary plays bezique much too well. I have paid his way now for eight days. Who knows? Perhaps I had better put the little one in charge of the mess, soup au caf�� in the morning, stew at noon, and ragout every evening--campaign life, in fact. I know all about that. Quite the thing to try."
Going out he saw at once the mistress of the house, a great brutal peasant, and the little lame girl, who both, with pitchforks in their hands, were turning over the dung-heap in the yard.
"Does she know how to sew, to wash, to make soup?" he asked, brusquely.
"Who--Pierette? Why?"
"Does she know a little of all that?"
"Of course. She came from an asylum where they learn how to take care of themselves."
"Tell me, little one," added the Captain, speaking to the child, "I am not scaring you--no? Well, my good woman, will you let me have her? I want a servant."
"If you will support her."
"Then that is finished. Here are twenty francs. Let her have to-night a dress and a shoe. To-morrow we'll arrange the rest."
And, with a friendly tap on Pierette's cheek, the Captain went off, delighted that everything was concluded. Possibly he thought he would have to cut off some glasses of beer and absinthe, and be cautious of the veterinary's skill at bezique. But that was not worth speaking of, and the new arrangement would be quite the thing.
IV.
Captain, you are a coward!
Such was the apostrophe with which the caryatides of the Caf�� Prosper hereafter greeted the Captain, whose visits became rarer day by day.
For the poor man had not seen all the consequences of his good action. The suppression of his morning absinthe had been sufficient to cover the modest expense of Pierette's keeping, but how many other reforms were needed to provide for the unforeseen expenses of his bachelor establishment! Full of gratitude, the little girl wished to prove it by her zeal. Already the aspect of his room was changed. The furniture was dusted and arranged, the fireplace cleaned, the floor polished, and spiders no longer spun their webs over the deaths of Poniatowski in the corner. When the Captain came home the inviting odor of cabbage-soup saluted him on the staircase, and the sight of the smoking plates on the coarse but white table-cloth, with a bunch of flowers and polished table-ware, was quite enough to give him a good appetite. Pierette profited by the good-humor of her master to confess some of her secret ambitions. She wanted andirons for the fireplace, where there was now always a fire burning, and a mould for the little cakes that