The Son of Clemenceau | Page 2

audible in the narrow and devious passages,
between tottering houses, and those even more squalid in the rear, a
commingling of shuffling and stamping feet, the smiting of heavy
sticks on uneven stones and the dragging of wet rags.
Struck with surprise, if not with apprehension, he shrank back into the
over-jutting porch of an old residence, with sculptured armorial
bearings of some family long ago abased in its pride. Here he peered,
not without anxiety.
By the exact programme carried out in cities by the divisions of its
population, a new contingent were coming from their resting-places to
substitute themselves for the honest toilers on the thoroughfares; each
cellar and attic in the rookeries were exuding the horrible vermin which

shun the wholesome light of day.
The spruce trees, stuck in tubs of sand at a beer-house beyond the
bridge, shuddered as though in disgust at this horde of Hans hastening
to invade the district of hotels, supper-houses and gaming clubs, to beg
or steal the means to survive yet another day.
For ten or fifteen minutes the stranger watched the beggars stream
individually out of the mazes and, to his horror, form like soldiers for a
review, along the street before him, up to the end of the bridge at one
extremity and far along at the other end of the line. Some certainly
spied him, for these wretches could see as lucidly as the felines in the
night--their day from society having reversed their conditions. But,
though these whispered the warning to one another, and he was the
object of scrutiny, no one left his place, and soon as their backs were
turned to him, he had no immediate uneasiness as regarded an attack, or
even a challenge upon his business there.
Probably the good citizens were not ignorant that this meeting of the
vagrants took place each evening, for not only were all store-doors
closed hermetically, but the upper windows no longer emitted a
scintillation of lamplight. The spy by accident concluded that he would
raise his voice for help all in vain as far as the tradesmen were
concerned. But he was brave, and he let increasing curiosity enchain
him continuously.
From time out of mind the sage in velvet has serenely contemplated
Diogenes in his tub; not that our philosopher seemed the treasurer of an
Alexander!
Ranged at length in a long row, cripples, the blind, the young, the aged,
it was a company of mendicants which eccentric painters would have
given five years of life to have seen. Except for consumptive coughs,
the misstep of a wooden leg of which the clumsy ferule slipped on a
cobblestone, and the querulous whimper of a child, half-starved and
imperfectly swaddled in a tattered shawl, on a flaccid bosom, the mob
were silent in an expectation as intense as the lookers-on. The wind
brought the whistle of the railway locomotives and the clanking of a

steam-dredger in the river, like a giant toiling in massive chains.
For this platoon of vice and misery, crime and disorder, laziness and
rapine, the stranger confidently expected to see a commander appear
whose flashing, fearless eye, and upright, powerful frame, would
account for the awe in which all were held.
What was his amazement, therefore, to perceive--while a tremor of
emotion thrilled the line and announced the commander whom all
awaited--a bent-up, scarcely human-shaped form, hardly to be
acknowledged a woman's. It was enveloped in a heavily furred pelisse
fitted for a man.
This singular object appeared up the trap of a cellarway, much like the
opening of a sewer, on the opposite side of the street. She proceeded to
review the vagabonds and put questions and issue orders to each, which
were received like mandates from Cæsar by his legions. The voice was
fine and shrill, the movements betokened vigor, but the whole
impression was that the female captain-general of the beggars of
Munich was far from young.
In the obscurity, and keeping in the background as he did, it was not
possible for the stranger to scan her features; besides, they were veiled
by the long hair of a Polish hunter's cap, with earflaps and a drooping
foxtail, worn as the pompon but half-loosened in time. The eyes that
inspected the file of vagrants, shone with undiminished force, and when
they fell on the burliest and most impudent, these became quiet and
submissive. In a word, the cohort of beggary yielded utter subserviency
to this remarkable leader.
Questions and answers were uttered in a thieve's jargon which were
sealed letters to the eavesdropper, but it seemed to him that they all
addressed her as Baboushka! This struck him as more odd from its
being a Slavonic title, meaning "grandmother." Was it possible that he
had before him one of those