Читать книгу Agnes Sorel - G. P. R. James - Страница 14

At the corner of a street, on the island which formed the first nucleus round which gathered the great city of Paris, was a small booth, protruding from a little, ill-favored house, some three or four hundred yards from the church of Nôtre Dame. This booth consisted merely of a coarse wooden shed, open in front, and only covered overhead by rough, unsmoothed planks, while upon a rude table or counter, running along the front, appeared a number of articles of cutlery, knives, great rings, and other iron ware, comprising the daggers worn, and often used in a sanguinary manner, by the lower order of citizens; for, though the possessor of the stall was not a regular armorer by profession, he did not think himself prohibited from dealing in the weapons employed by his own class. Written in white chalk upon a board over the booth were the words, "Simon, dit Caboche, Maître Coutellier."

Behind the table on which his goods were displayed appeared the personage to whom the above inscription referred: a man of some forty-five or forty-six years of age, tall, brawny, and powerful, with his huge arms bare up to the elbows, notwithstanding the severity of the weather. His countenance was any thing but prepossessing, and yet there was a certain commanding energy in the broad, square forehead and massive under jaw, which spoke, truly enough, the character of the man, and obtained for him considerable influence with people of his own class. Yet he was exceedingly ugly; his cheek bones high and prominent; his eyes small, fierce, and flashing, and his nose turned up in the air, as if in contempt of every thing below it. His skin was so begrimed with dirt, that its original color could with difficulty be distinguished; but it was probably of that dark, saturnine brown, which seldom looks completely clean; for his hair was of the stiff, black, bristly nature which usually goes with that complexion.

Limping about in the shop beside him was a creature, which even youth--usually so full of its own special charms--could not render beautiful or graceful. Nature seemed to have stamped upon it, from its birth, the most repulsive marks. It was a boy of some ten or twelve years old, but still his eyes hardly reached above the table on which the cutler's goods were displayed; but, by a peculiarity not uncommon, the growth which should have been upright had, by some obstacle, been forced to spread out laterally, and the shoulders, ribs, and hips were as broad as those of a grown man. The back was humped, though not very distinctly so; the legs were both short, but one was shorter than the other; and one eye was defective, probably from his birth. So short, so stout, so squared was the whole body, that it looked more like a cube, with a large head and very short legs, than a human form; but, though the gait was awkward and unsightly to the eyes, that little creature was possessed of singular activity, and of very great strength, notwithstanding his deformity.

It was a curious thing to see the father and the son standing together: the one with his great, powerful, well-developed limbs, and the other with his minute and apparently slender form. One could hardly believe that the one was the offspring of the other. Yet so it was. Maître Simon was the father of that deformed dwarf, whose appearance would have been quite sufficient to draw the hooting boys of Paris after him when he appeared in the streets, had not the vigor and unmerciful severity of his father's arm kept even the little vagabonds of the most turbulent city in the world in awe.

That which might seem most strange, though in reality it was not so at all, was the doting fondness of the stern, powerful father for that misshapen child. It seems a rule of Nature, that where she refuses to any one the personal attractions which, often undeservedly, command regard, she places in the bosom of some other kindred being that strong affection which generously gives gratuitously the love for which there seems so little claim.

The father and the son had obtained, first from the boys of the town, and then from elder people, the nicknames of the big Caboche and the little Caboche, and, with a good-humor very common in France, they had themselves adopted these epithets without offense; so that the cutler was constantly addressed by his companions merely as Caboche, and had even placed that title over his door. During the hours when he tended his shop, or was engaged in the manual labors of his trade, the boy was almost always with him, limping round him, making observations upon every thing, and enlivening his father's occupations by a sort of pungent wit, perhaps a little smacking of buffoonery, which, if not a gift, could be nowhere so well acquired as in the streets of Paris, and in which the hard spirit of the cutler greatly delighted.

Nevertheless, the characters of the father and the son were not less strongly in contrast than their corporeal frames. Notwithstanding an occasional moroseness and acerbity, perhaps engendered by a sad comparison of his own physical powers with those of others of his age, there was in the boy's nature a fund of kindly sympathies and gentle affections, which characterized his actions more than his words: and as we all love contrasts, the secret of his father's strong affection for him might be, in part, the opposition between their several dispositions.

It was about three o'clock in the day, the hour when Parisians are most abroad; but the cold kept many within doors, and but one person had stopped at the booth to buy.

"Trade is ruined," said big Caboche, in a grumbling tone. "No business is doing. The king's sickness and his brother's influence have utterly destroyed the trade of the city. Armorers, and embroiderers, and dealers in idle goldsmiths' work, may make a living; but no one else can gain his bread. There has not been a single soul in the shop this morning, except an old woman who wanted an ax to cut her meat, because it was frozen."

"My father," replied the boy, "it was not the king nor the Duke of Orleans that made the Seine freeze, or pinched old Joaquim's nose, or burned old Jeannette's flannel coat, or kept any of the folks in who would have been out if it had not been so cold. Don't you see there is nobody in the street but those who have only one coat, and that a thin one. They come out because the frosty sunshine is better than no shine at all; and, though they keep their hands in their pockets, they won't draw them out, because you won't let them have goods without money, and they have not money to buy goods. But here comes Cousin Martin, as fine as a popinjay. It must have snowed feathers, I think, to have clothed his back so gayly."

"Ah, the scapegrace!" exclaimed Caboche "I should think that he had just been plundering some empty-headed master, if my pot had not reason to know that he has had no master to plunder for these last three months. Well, Master Never-do-well, what brings you here in such smart plumes? Violet and yellow, with a silver lace, upon my life! If you are so fully fledged, methinks you can pick up your own grain without coming to mine."

"And so I can, and so I will, uncle," replied our friend Martin Grille, pausing at the entrance of the booth to look at himself from head to foot, in evident admiration of his own appearance. "Did you ever see any thing fit better? Upon my life, it is a perfect marvel that any man should ever have been made so perfectly like me as to have worn these clothes before, without the slightest alteration! Nobody would believe it."

"Nobody will believe they are your own, Cousin Martin," said the deformed boy, with a grin.

"But they are my own, Petit Jean," answered Martin Grille, with a very grand air; "for I have bought them, and paid for them; and though they may have been stolen, for aught I know, before I had them, I had no hand in the stealing, foi de valet."

"Ah," said Caboche, dryly, "men always gave you credit for more ingenuity than you possess, and they will in this instance also. I always said you were a good-humored, foolish, hair-brained lad, without wit enough to take a bird's nest or bamboozle a goose; but people would not believe me, even when you were clad in hodden gray. What will they think now, when you dance about in silk and broadcloth?"

"Why they'll think, good uncle, that I have all the wit they imagined, and all the honesty you knew me to have. But I'll tell you all about it, that my own relations, at least, may have cause to glorify themselves."

"Get you gone--get you gone," cried the cutler, in a rough, but not ill-humored tone. "I don't want to know how you got the clothes."

"Tell me, Martin, tell me," said the boy; "I should like to hear, of all things. Perhaps I may get some in the same way, some day."

"Mayhap," answered Martin Grille, seating himself on a bench, and kindly putting his arm round the deformed boy's neck. "Well, you must know, Petit Jean, that there is a certain Signor Lomelini, who is maître d'hôtel to his highness the Duke of Orleans--"

"Big Caboche growled out a curse between his teeth; for while pretending to occupy himself with other things, he was listening to the tale all the time, and the Duke of Orleans was with him an object of that strange, fanciful, prejudiced hatred, which men of inferior station very often conceive, without the slightest cause, against persons placed above them.

"Well, this Signor Lomelini--"

"There, there," cried Caboche; "we know all about that long ago. How his mule put its foot into a hole in the street, and tumbled him head over heels into the gutter, and you picked him out, and scraped, and wiped him, and took him back clean and sound, though desperately frightened, and a little bruised. We recollect all about that, and what gay day-dreams you built up, and thought your fortune made. Has he recollected you at last, and given you a cast off suit of clothes? He has been somewhat tardy in his gratitude, and niggardly, too."

"All wrong, uncle mine, all wrong!" replied Martin Grille, laughing. "There has been hardly a day on which I have not seen him since, and when I hav'n't dined with you, I have dined at the Hôtel d'Orleans. He found out what you never found out: that I was dexterous, serviceable, and discreet, and many has been the little job which required dispatch and secrecy which I have done for him."

"Ay, dirty work, I trow," growled Caboche; but Martin Grille proceeded with his tale, without heeding his uncle's accustomed interruptions.

"Well, Signor Lomelini always promised," he said, "to get me rated on the duke's household. There was a prospect for a penniless lad, Petit Jean!"

"As well get you posted in the devil's kitchen," said Caboche, "and make you Satan's turnspit."

"But are you placed--but are you placed?" cried the deformed boy, eagerly.

"You shall hear all in good time," answered Martin Grille. "He promised, as I have said, to get me rated as soon as there was any vacancy; but the devil seemed in all the people. Not one of them would die, except old Angelo, the squire of the stirrup, and Monsieur De Gray, the duke's secretary. But those places were far too high for me."

"I see not why they should be," answered the deformed boy, "except that the squire is expected to fight at his lord's side, and the secretary to write for him; and I fancy, Cousin Martin, thou wouldst make as bad a hand at the one as the other."

"Ha, ha, ha!" shouted Caboche; "he hit thee there, Martin."

"On my life! I don't know," answered Martin Grille; "for I never tried either. However, yesterday afternoon the signor sent for me, and told me that the duke had got a new secretary--quite a young man, who knew very little of life, less of Paris, and nothing of a court: that this young gentleman had got no servant, and wanted one; that he had recommended me, and that I should be taken if I could recommend myself. I went to him in the gray of the evening, to set off my apparel the better, but I found the youth not quite so pastoral as I expected, and he began to ask me questions. Questions are very troublesome things, and answers still more so; so I made mine as short as possible."

"And he engaged you," cried the boy, eagerly.

"On my life! I can hardly say that," replied Martin Grille. "But the Duke of Orleans himself just happened to come in at the nick of time, when I was beginning to get a little puzzled. So I thought it best to take it for granted I was engaged; and making my way as fast as possible out of the august presence of my master, and my master's master, I went away to Signor Lomelini and told him I was hired, all through his influence. So, then, he patted me on the shoulder, and called me a brave lad. He told me, moreover, to get myself put in decent costume, and wait upon the young gentleman early the next morning."

"Ay, that's the question," cried Caboche; "where did you get the clothes? Did you steal them from your new master the first day; for you will not say that Lomelini gave them to you. If so, men have belied him."

"No," said Martin, in an exceedingly doubtful tone, "no--I can't say he exhibits his money. What his own coin is made of, I can not tell. I never saw any of it that I know of. He pays out of other men's pockets though, and he has been as good as his word with me."

"How so?" asked the cutler.

"Why, you must know," answered Martin, with an important air, "that every servant in the duke's house is rated on the duke's household. Each gentleman, down to the very pages, has one or more valets, and they are all on the household-book. To prevent excess, however, and with a paternal solicitude to keep them out of debt, the maître d'hôtel takes upon himself the task of paying all the valets, sending in to the treasurer a regular account against each master every month, to be deducted from that master's salary; and, as it is the custom to give earnest to a valet when he is engaged, I persuaded the signor to advance me a sufficient number of crowns to carry me on silver wings to a frippery shop."

"Where you spent the last penny, Cousin Martin," said the deformed boy, with a sly smile.

"No, I did not, Petit Jean," replied Martin Grille; "for I brought one whole crown to you. There, my boy; you are a good lad, and I love you dearly, though you do break your sharp wit across my hard head sometimes--take it, take it!"

The boy looked as if he would very much like to have the crown, but still put it away from him, with fingers itching as much to clutch it as Cæsar's on the Lupercal.

"Take it," repeated Martin Grille. "I owe your father much more than that."

"You owe me nothing," answered Caboche, quickly; and then added in a softened tone, as he saw how eagerly the boy looked at the piece of money: "you may take it, my son. That will show Martin that I really think he owes me nothing. What I have given him was given for blood relationship, and what he gives you is given in the same way."

The boy took it, exclaiming, "Thank you, Martin--thank you. Now I will buy me a viol of my own; for neighbor Pierrot says I spoil his, just because I make it give out sounds that he can not."

"Ay, thou had'st always a hankering after music," said Martin Grille. "Be diligent, be diligent. Petit Jean, and play me a fine tune on your fiddle at my return; for we are all away to-morrow morning by the crow of the cock."

"Where to?" exclaimed Caboche, eagerly. "More wrangling toward, I warrant. Some day I shall have to put on the salad and corselet myself, for this strife is ruining France; and if the Duke of Orleans will not let his noble cousin of Burgundy save the country, all good men must join to force him."

"Ay, ay, uncle. You always take a leap in the dark when the Duke of Orleans' name is mentioned. There's no wrangling, there's no quarreling, there's no strife. All is peace and good-will between the two dukes; and this is no patched up business, but a regular treaty, which will last till you are in your grave, and Petit Jean is an old man. We shall see bright days yet, for all that's come and gone. But the truth is, the duke is ill, and this business being happily settled, he goes off for his Castle of Beauté to-morrow, to have a little peace and quiet."

"Ill! what makes him ill?" asked the cutler. "If he had to work from morning till night to get a few sous, or to stand here in this cold shop all day long, with nobody coming in to buy, he'd have a right to be ill. But he has every thing he wants, and more than he ought to have. What makes him ill?"

"Ah, that I can't say," answered Martin Grille. "There has something gone wrong in the household, and he has been very sad; but great men's servants may use their eyes, but must hold their tongues. God mend us all."

"Much need of it," answered Caboche, "and him first. Well, I would rather be a rag-picker out of the gutter than one of your discreet, see-every thing, say-nothing serving-men--your curriers of favor, your silent, secret depositories of other men's wickedness. What I see I must speak, and what I think, too. It is the basest part of pimping, to stand by and say nothing. Out upon such a trade."

"Well, uncle, every one loves his own best," answered Martin Grille. "I, for instance, would not make knives for people to cut each other's throats with. But for my part, I think the best plan is for each man to mind his own business, and not to care for what other people do. I have no more business with my master's secrets than with his purse, and if he trusts either the one or the other with me, my duty is to keep them safely."

By his tone, Martin Grille seemed a little nettled; but the rough cutler only laughed at him, saying, "Mind, you do that, nephew of mine, and you will be the very prince of valets. I never knew one who would not finger the purse, or betray a secret, if occasion served; but thou art a phœnix in thy way, so God speed thee and keep thee honest."

"I say amen," answered Martin Grille, turning to leave the booth; "I only came to wish you both good-by; for when a man once sets out from Paris there is no knowing when he may return again."

"Oh, he is certain to come back some time," replied the cutler. "Paris is the centre of all the world, and every thing is drawn toward it by a force not to be resisted. So fare you well, my good nephew, and let us see you when you come back."

Martin promised to come and visit the cutler and his son as soon as he returned, and then sauntered away, feeling himself as fine in his new clothes as a school-boy in a holiday suit.

The cutler resumed his avocations again; but could not forbear some grumbling observations upon valets and valetry, which perhaps he might have spared, had he understood his nephew's character rightly. About quarter of an hour, however, after the young man had left the shop, a letter, neatly tied and sealed, was brought by a young boy, apparently one of the choristers of some great church or cathedral. It was addressed "To Martin Grille;" and, whatever might be his curiosity, Caboche did not venture to open it, but sent the lad on to the palace of the Duke of Orleans, telling him he would find his nephew there.