Ten Tales | Page 6

evening when you come home."
"Is that so, my girl? Ah, well, I must walk on my toes in future. How
old are you?"
"Nine, monsieur, come All-Saints day."
"Is the landlady here a relative of yours?"
"No, monsieur, I am in service."
"And they give you?"
"Soup, and a bed under the stairs."

"And how came you to be lame like that, my poor little one?"
"By the kick of a cow when I was five."
"Have you a father or mother?"
The child blushed 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 café,
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 café, 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 café 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 Café 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