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Mysteries of Paris, V3 by Eugene Sue

E >> Eugene Sue >> Mysteries of Paris, V3




"It is touching. Beautiful relationship!"

"Hold! there are many dukes and marquises; why, then, should not we of the
oldest family have our nobility?" said the thief with savage irony.

"Yes, Jack Ketch gives you your letters of nobility in Palace Square!"

"Very sure that it is not the parson! So much the more reason in prison one
should be of high Toby nobility, otherwise you are looked upon as a nobody.
You ought to see how they treat those mere fogle-hunters, and who do
their--Hold! there is one here named Germain, a young man who plays the
disgusted, and seems to despise us. Let him take care of his skin. He is a
sneak; he is suspected of being a spy. If this is so, they will slit his
nose, by way of warning!"

"Germain! A young man called Germain?"

"Yes. Do you know him? He is, then, in the family line, notwithstanding his
innocent looks?"

"I do not know him. But if it is the Germain of whom I have heard speak,
his lookout is good."

"How?"

"He once escaped a snare which Velu and the Big Cripple laid for him."

"Why did they do it?"

"I don't know. They said that down among the yokels he had sold one of
their band."

"I was sure of it. Germain is a spy. Well! I will tell this to my friends;
that will give them an appetite. Does the Big Cripple still play tricks on
your lodgers?"

"I am rid of the villain! you will see him here to-day or to-morrow."

"Bravo! we shall have a laugh! He's another who never looks glum!"

"Because he is going to meet Germain here, is why I said his account was
good--if he is the same--"

"And why has the Cripple been nabbed?"

"For a robbery committed with a lagger (released convict) who wished to
remain honest and labor. Oh, yes! the Big Cripple nicely fixed him; he is
so wicked! I am sure it was he who forced the trunk of two women who occupy
my fourth floor."

"What women? Oh! the two, the youngest of whom was so handsome, old
brigand."

"Oh, yes; but it is all over with her; for, at this present moment, the
mother must be dead, and the daughter not far from it. I shall be in for
two weeks' lodgings; but may the devil burn me if I give a rag to bury
them! I have had losses enough, without counting the presents which you
_beg_ me to give you and your family. This will nicely derange my business.
I have luck this year."

"Bah, bah! you are always complaining, old Micou; you are as rich as
Croesus. When you come to bring me some more provisions, you can give me
news of my mother and Calabash!"

"Yes, it must be so."

"Oh! I forget, while you are out, buy me also a new cap, of plaid velvet,
with a tassel; mine is no longer fit to be worn."

"Decidedly--you are joking!"

"No, Micou. I want a cap of plaid velvet; it is my notion."

"But you are determined, then, to make me sleep on straw?"

"Come, Daddy Micou, don't get vexed; it is yes or no; I do not force you.
But enough."

The receiver, reflecting that he was at the mercy of Nicholas, arose,
fearing to be assailed with new demands if he prolonged his visit.

"You shall have your cap," said he; "but take care, if you ask me for
anything more, I shall give nothing; happen what may, you will lose as much
as I."

"Be tranquil, Micou; I shall not blackmail you any more than is necessary,
for this would be a pity; you pay much heavy postage as it is."

The receiver went out, shrugging his shoulders with rage, and the warder
reconducted Nicholas into the prison. At the moment Micou left, Rigolette
entered.

The warder, a man of forty years, an old soldier of energetic appearance,
was dressed in a jacket, cap, and trousers of blue cloth; two silver stars
were embroidered on the collar and skirts of his coat.

At sight of the grisette, his face brightened up, and assumed an expression
of affectionate benevolence. He had always been struck with the grace,
gentility, and touching goodness with which Rigolette consoled Germain when
she came to converse with him. Germain, on his part, was no ordinary
prisoner. His reserve, his mildness, his sadness, inspired interest in the
prison officials; an interest they were careful not to show him, for fear
of exposing him to the bad treatment of his vicious companions, who, as we
have shown, regarded him with suspicious hatred.

It rained in torrents, but thanks to her overshoes and umbrella, Rigolette
had courageously braved the wind and rain.

"What a horrible day, my poor girl!" said the guardian to her, kindly. "You
must have had a good deal of courage to come out such a time as this, at
least!"

"When one is thinking all along the way of the pleasure they are going to
give a poor prisoner, one does not pay much attention to the weather, sir!"

"I have no need to ask you whom you come to see?"

"Surely not. And how is my poor Germain?"

"My dear, I have seen many prisoners; they were sad, one or two days, but
by degrees they fell in with the rest, and the most sorrowful at first
often became the most gay. Germain is not so; he appears to grow sadder
every day."

"It is this that troubles me."

"When I am on service in the yards, I watch him out of the corner of my
eye; he is always alone. I have already told you, you should advise him not
to act thus, but to speak to his comrades, otherwise he will become their
butt. The yards are watched, but--a blow is soon struck!"

"Oh, sir! is there still more danger for him?" cried Rigolette.

"Not precisely; but the knaves see he is not one of them, and they hate him
because he appears honest and proud."

"Yet I have advised him to do what you have told me, sir; to endeavor to
converse with the least wicked; but it is too much for him; he cannot
overcome his repugnance."

"He is wrong--wrong; a quarrel is soon got up."

"Can he not be separated from the others?"

"Since I have noticed two or three days ago their evil intentions toward
him, I have advised him to take a room by himself."

"Well?"

"I did not think of one thing. A whole range of cells are comprised in the
repairs now going on in the prison, and the others are occupied."

"But these bad men are capable of killing him!" cried Rigolette, with her
eyes filled with tears. "If by chance he had some persons interested in his
fate, what could they do for him, sir?"

"Nothing more than to obtain what the prisoners can obtain themselves by
paying money--a separate cell."

"Alas! then he is lost, if they hate him in the prison."

"Don't disturb yourself; he shall be watched closely. But I repeat, my
dear, counsel him to be a little familiar with them; only the first step
costs!"

"I will recommend him to do this with all my strength, sir; but for a good
and honest heart it is hard to be familiar with such people."

"Of two evils, choose the least. I go to ask for Germain. But, stop," said
the warder, reflecting; "there are only two visitors left; as soon as they
are gone--no more will come to-day, for it is now two o'clock--I will send
for Germain; you can talk more at ease. I can, even, when you are alone,
let him enter into the passage, so that you will be separated by one
grating instead of two; so much less."

"Oh, sir! how kind you are; how much I thank you!"

"Hush! let not any one hear you; it will cause jealousy. Seat yourself up
there, at the end of the bench, and as soon as this man and woman are gone,
I will send for Germain."

The warder returned to his post inside the passage. Rigolette went and
seated herself sadly at the extremity of the visitor's bench.

Thus we have a fine chance to draw the grisette's portrait.

Rigolette was hardly eighteen, of a middling size, perhaps rather small,
but so gracefully shaped, so finely modeled, so voluptuously developed,
that her size responded well to her bearing, fearless and yet modest; one
inch more in height would have caused her to lose much of her grace; the
movement of her small feet, always irreproachably confined in gaiter-boots
of black cloth, with rather thick soles, recalled to mind the coquettish,
light and discreet run of a quail. She did not appear to walk, she merely
touched the pavement; she slid rapidly on its surface. This walk, peculiar
to grisettes, ought to be attributed, without doubt, to three causes: To
their desire to be thought handsome; to their fear of an admiration
expressed in pantomime too expressive; to the desire that they always have
to lose as little time as possible in their peregrinations.

Rigolette's two broad thick bands of shining hair, black as jet, fell very
low on her forehead; her fine eyebrows seemed traced with ink, and
overshadowed large black eyes, sparkling and wicked; her full, plump cheeks
were like velvet of the freshest carnation, fresh to the sight, fresh to
the touch, like a rosy peach impregnated with the cold dew of the morning.

Her little turned-up nose, saucy and cunning, would have made the fortune
of a stage chambermaid; her mouth, somewhat large, with lips of rose well
moistened, and little, white, pearly teeth, was smiling and provoking; of
three charming dimples, which gave enticing grace to her face, two buried
themselves in her cheeks, the other in her chin, not far from a beauty
spot, a little black patch most killingly placed near the corner of her
mouth.

Up to the day of Germain's arrest, Rigolette had had no sorrows but those
of others; she sympathized with all her flowers--devoted herself, body and
soul, to those who suffered--but thought no more about it when her back was
turned. Often she ceased from laughing to weep sincerely, and then she
ceased from weeping to laugh again. A true child of Paris--she preferred
noise to solitude, movement to repose the resounding harmony of the
orchestra at the Chartreuse or Coliseum balls, to the soft murmur of the
winds, the waters, and the foliage--the deafening noise of the streets of
Paris to the solitude of the country--the glare of fireworks, the glitter
of a ball, the noise of rockets, to the serenity of a fine night, with
stars and darkness and silence. Alas! yes; the good girl frankly preferred
the black mud of the streets of the capital to the verdure of the flowery
meadows--its dirty or scorching pavements to fresh and velvet moss of
wood-paths perfumed with violets--the suffocating dust of the barriers or
the boulevards to the waving of golden corn, enameled with the scarlet
flowers of the wild poppy and the azure of the bluebells. Rigolette only
left her room on Sundays--and each morning, to lay in her provision of
chickweed, bread, milk, and hempseed, for herself and her two birds, but
she lived in Paris for Paris' sake. She would have been in despair to have
lived elsewhere than in the capital.

Another anomaly: notwithstanding this taste for Parisian pleasures;
notwithstanding the liberty, or, rather, the state of abandonment in which
she found herself, being alone in the world; notwithstanding the rigid
economy which she was obliged to use in her smallest expenses in order to
live on thirty sous a day; notwithstanding the most mischievous and
adorable little face in the world, never had Rigolette been a man's prey.

Early in life, she had lost her parents by the cholera, and, at ten years
of age, strangers had taken care of her, until she left them to find her
own living. At this period she had made Fleur-de-Marie's passing
acquaintance, and later, as she dwelt in Rudolph's lodging-house--that of
the prince whom she only thought to be a workman--she had been in the habit
of going out on Sundays and other holidays with young men of her house, but
they had given up the companionship when they found how virtuous she was,
without knowing it. Germain, also her neighbor in the house, had, however,
fallen desperately in love with Rigolette, without daring to breathe one
word respecting it. Far from imitating his predecessors, who resorted to
other sources of solace, without losing their regard for her, Germain had
delightfully enjoyed his intimacy with the girl, and the pleasure afforded
by her society on Sundays and every other evening that he was disengaged.
During these long hours, Rigolette was always gay and merry, and Germain
affectionate, serious, and attentive, and often slightly melancholy. This
sadness was his only disadvantage, for his manners, being naturally
refined, did not suffer by comparison with the ridiculous pretensions of M.
Girandeau, a traveling clerk, or with the boisterous eccentricities of
Cabrion, an artist, though Girandeau, by his excessive loquacity, and the
painter, by his no less excessive hilarity, had the advantage of Germain,
whose gentlemanly gravity rather awed his lively neighbor.

Rigolette had never evinced any partiality for either of her three lovers;
but, with excellent judgment, she soon discovered that Germain combined all
the qualities which would render any reasonable woman happy.

When the latter was imprisoned, her feeling manifested itself as love.




CHAPTER IV.

PIQUE-VINAIGRE.


The prisoner who was placed alongside of Barbillon in the visitor's room,
was a man about forty years of age, and of slender make, and with a
cunning, intelligent, jovial, and jeering face; he had an enormous mouth,
almost entirely without teeth; when he spoke he twisted it from side to
side, according to the pretty general custom of those who address the
populace of market places; his nose was flat, his head immensely large, and
almost entirely bald; he wore an old gray waistcoat, trousers of an
indescribable color, pieced in a thousand different places; his naked feet,
red from the cold, half wrapped up in old linen, were thrust into wooden
shoes.

This man, named Fortune Gobert, nick-named Pique-Vinaigre (Sharp Vinegar,
to prevent mistakes), formerly a juggler, and a prisoner for the crime of
passing counterfeit money, was accused of breaking the terms of his
ticket-of-leave, and of burglary.

Confined but for a few days at La Force, already Pique-Vinaigre filled, to
the general satisfaction of his prison companions, the post of
story-teller. At the present day these are rare, but formerly each ward
generally had, at the expense of a light, individual contribution, its
tale-teller, who, by his improvisations, made the interminable winter
evenings appear less long, the prisoners retiring to rest at nightfall.

Pique-Vinaigre excelled in that kind of heroic recital where weakness,
after a thousand crosses, finishes by triumphing over its persecutors.
Pique-Vinaigre possessed, besides, an immense fund of irony, which had
given him his nickname. He had just entered the room.

Opposite him, on the other side of the railing, was a woman of about
thirty-five, with a pale, sweet, and interesting face, poorly but neatly
clad; she wept bitterly, and kept her handkerchief to her eyes.
Pique-Vinaigre looked at her with a mixture of impatience and affection.

"Come now, Jeanne," said he, "do not be a child; it is sixteen years since
we have met; if you keep your handkerchief over your eyes, we won't know
each other."

"My brother, my poor Fortune--I suffocate--I cannot speak."

"Ain't you droll! what ever is the matter with you?"

This sister--for this woman was his sister--restrained her sobs, dried her
eyes, and regarding him with stupor, answered, "What is the matter? I find
you again in prison, who had already been in fifteen years!"

"It is true; to-day six months I came out of Melun prison, without going to
see you at Paris, because the _capital_ was forbidden to me."

"Already retaken! What have you then done? Why did you leave Beaugency,
where you were sent, with orders to report yourself now and then?"

"Why? You ought to ask me why I went there?"

"You are right."

"In the first place, my poor Jeanne, since these gratings are between us
both, imagine that I have embraced you, folded you in my arms, as one ought
to do when he sees a sister after an age. Now, let us chat. A prisoner of
Melun, called the Big Cripple, told me that there was at Beaugency an old
galley-slave of his acquaintance, who employed liberated convicts in a
manufactory of white-lead. Do you know what that is?"

"No, brother."

"It is a very fine trade; those who are employed in it, at the end of a
month or two, have the painter's colic; of three attacked, about one dies.
To be just, the two others die also, but at their ease; they take their
time; take good care of themselves, and they may last a year, eighteen
months at the most. After all, the trade is not so badly paid as some
others, and there are some folks born already dressed, who hold out two or
three years; but these are the old folks, the centenaries of the
_white-leaders_. They die, it is true, but that's not fatiguing."

"And why did you choose a trade so dangerous, my poor Fortune?"

"And what would you have me do? When I entered Melun for this affair of
false money, I was a juggler. As in the prison there was no work-shop for
my trade, and as I was no stronger than a fly, they put me at making toys
for children. It was a manufacturer of Paris who found it advantageous to
have made by the prisoners his harlequins, his trumpets of wood, and his
swords of ditto. Thus, I tell you, haven't I sharpened, and cut, and carved
for fifteen years, these toys! I am sure that I supplied the pets of an
entire quarter of Paris--it was, above all, on the trumpet I excelled; and
rattles too! With these two instruments one could have put on edge the
teeth of a whole battalion! I pride myself, on it. My time out, behold me
with the degree of penny-trumpet manufacturer. They allowed me to choose
for my residence three or four places, at forty leagues from Paris; I had
for sole resource my knowledge of trumpet-making. Now, admitting that, from
old men to babies, all the inhabitants of the town should have had a
passion to play toot-too on my trumpets. I should have had, even then,
trouble enough to pay my expenses; but I could not seduce a whole village
into blowing trumpets from morning to night. They would have taken me for a
conspirator!"

"You always laugh."

"That is better than to cry. Finally, seeing that at forty leagues from
Paris my trade as a juggler would be of no more resource to me than my
trumpets, I demanded an exchange to Beaugency, wishing to engage myself in
the white-lead factory. It is a pastry which gives you an indigestion of
misery; but, until one dies from it, one has a living; it is always
something gained, and I like that trade as well as that of a robber; to
steal I am not brave or strong enough, and it was by pure chance I have
committed the act of which I shall speak directly."

"You would have been brave and strong if you had only had the _idea_
not to steal any more."

"Ah! you believe that, do you?"

"Yes, at the bottom you are not wicked; for, in this dangerous affair of
false money, you had been dragged into it in spite of yourself, almost
forced--you know it well."

"Yes, my girl--but, do you see, fifteen years in a prison, that spoils a
man like my old pipe which you see, whenever it comes in the jail white as
a new pipe; on coming out of Melun, then, I felt myself too cowardly to
steal."

"And you had the courage to follow a deadly calling. Hold, Fortune! I tell
you that you wish to make yourself worse than you are."

"Stop a moment, then; all greenhorn that I was, I had an idea, may the
devil burn me if I know why! that I would not care for the colic, that the
malady would find too little in me to feed on, and that it would go
elsewhere; in fine, that I would become one of the old white-leaders. On
leaving the prison I began by squandering my savings, augmented,
understand, by what I had gained by relating stories at night in our ward."

"As you used to tell us in old times, my brother? It used to amuse our
mother so much, do you remember?"

"Pardieu! good woman! And she never suspected before she died that I was at
Melun?"

"Never: to her last moments she thought you had gone to the islands."

"What could I do, my girl? My escapades were the fault of my father, who
brought me up to play the clown, to assist him in his juggling, to eat flax
and spit fire; that was the cause that I had not the time to associate with
the sons of peers of France, and that I made bad acquaintances. But, to
return to Beaugency: once out of Melun, I spent my money as I had a right.
After fifteen years in a cage one must have a little air, and amuse one's
self so much the more, as, without being too greedy, the white lead might
give me a last indigestion; then, what good would my pension money be to
me? I ask you. Finally, I arrived at Beaugency almost without a sou: I
asked for _Velu_, the friend of Big Cripple, the chief of the factory.
Serviteur! no more manufactory of white-lead than you could put under your
hand; eleven persons had died there in one year; the old galley-slave had
shut up shop. Here I was in this village, with my talents for making wooden
trumpets for my dinner, and my convict's passport for my sole
recommendation. I asked for employment suited to my strength, and, as I had
no strength, you can comprehend how I was received; robber here, gueux
there, jail bird! in fine, as soon as I made my appearance anywhere, every
one clapped their hands on their pockets; I could not, then, prevent myself
from starving with hunger in a hole which I was not to leave for five
years. Seeing this, I broke my 'parole' to come to Paris to use my talents.
As I had not the means to come in a carriage and four, I came begging all
along the road; avoiding the constables as a dog does a kick. I was
lucky--I arrived without difficulty at Auteuil. I was worried, I was as
hungry as the devil, I was dressed, as you see, without profuseness." And
Pique-Vinaigre cast a merry glance at his rags. "I had not a sou; I could
at any moment be arrested as a vagabond. Faith, an opportunity offered, the
devil tempted me, and, in spite of my cowardice--"

"Enough, my brother, enough," said his sister, fearing that the warder,
although at this moment some distance off, might hear the dangerous
confession.

"You are afraid that some one will listen?" answered he: "be tranquil, I do
not conceal it; I was taken in the act; there are no means to deny it; I
have confessed all; I know what I have to expect; my account is good."

"Alas!" answered the poor woman, weeping, "with what ease you speak of
this."

"If I were to speak of it with uneasiness, what should I gain? Come, be
reasonable, Jeanne; must _I_ console _you?_" Jeanne wiped away her tears,
and sighed.

"But to return to my affair," said Pique-Vinaigre; "I arrived near Auteuil
in the dusk of the evening. I could go no further; I did not wish to enter
Paris but at night; I seated myself behind a hedge to repose and reflect
upon my plans. From the intensity of my thoughts I fell asleep; a noise of
voices awoke me; it was quite dark; I listened, it was a man and a woman
talking on the road, on the other side of my hedge; the man said to the
woman, 'Who do you think would rob us? have we not left the house alone a
hundred times?' 'Yes,' answered the woman, 'but then we did not leave a
hundred francs in our chest.' 'Who knows it, fool?' said the husband. 'You
are right,' replied the woman, and they passed on. The chance appeared too
favorable for me to lose--there was no danger.

"I waited until they had got a little distance to come out from behind my
hedge; I looked around: at twenty steps off I saw a small cottage; that
must be the house with the hundred francs; there was no other hovel on the
road but this one; Auteuil was five hundred yards off. I said to myself,
'Courage, my old boy, there is no one there, it is night, if there is no
dog (you know I always was afraid of dogs), the affair is done.' Luckily
there was no dog. To be still more sure, I knocked against the
door--nothing; that encouraged me. The shutters of the ground floor were
closed: I passed my stick between the two, I forced them, I entered through
the window into a chamber; there was some fire in the fireplace; this
served as a light; I saw a chest from whence the key had been taken; I took
the tongs, I forced the drawers, and under a heap of linen I found the
treasure, wrapped up in an old woolen stocking; I did not amuse myself by
taking anything else; I jumped out of the window and I fell--guess where?
There's luck!"

"Go on!"

"On the back of the watchman who was going to the village."

"What a misfortune!"

"The moon had risen, he saw me coming out of the window; he seized me. He
was a giant who could have eaten ten such as me. Too cowardly to resist, I
resigned myself to my fate. I still held the stocking in my hand; he heard
the money jingle, he took it all, put it in his bag, and compelled me to
follow him to Auteuil. He went to the mayor's with the usual accompaniment
of boys and constables; they waited for the proprietors to return; they
made their declaration. I could not deny it; I confessed all, they put on
the handcuffs, and off we went!"

"And here you are in prison again, perhaps for a long time!"

"Listen, Jeanne, I do not wish to deceive you, my girl, so I will tell you
at once."

Alex Ross: Winner of the Guardian first book award
Stuart Evers: They made a real difference to Britain's literary culture, and it would be a terrible shame if they got forgotten in the age of Amazon

Congratulations to Alex Ross, winner of the Guardian first book award
One of only seven copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard handwritten by JK Rowling is unveiled at the New York Public Library as the mass market edition goes on sale around the world

The arcane first book that's also a bestseller

Congratulations to Alex Ross, the deserving winner of the 2008 Guardian first book award. There's been a massed chorus of appreciation for this work already, so I shan't add much, except to say that what I particular enjoy about it is the connections it makes between musics and musicians. I'm the sort of person who goes to a lot of concerts, plays the violin, has some kind of grasp of how the history of music works – but frankly, it's all a bit fragmented and vague, since I have never studied the history of music properly and I can't really do the textbook musicological stuff. As I was reading Ross's book, it dawned on me that most of my knowledge of 20th-century music was based on reading the occasional Grove essay – and mostly, reading programme notes. What Ross's book does brilliantly is knit all these odd and isolated bits of knowledge together, so that everything starts to synthesise rather wonderfully, and you get to know what Sibelius thought of Stravinsky, say (not much – "stillborn affectations" was the phrase employed); or that Alban Berg was lionised by George Gershwin; or that David Bowie referenced Philip Glass and vice versa. That, and then the material is set against its historical and political background, such that this is a book for history-lovers as much as music-lovers.

By the way, there's a pungent criticism of the new-music scene by Hans Eisler in 1928, as quoted by Ross. How much have things changed, I wonder?

"The big music festivals have become downright stock exchanges, where the value of the works is assessed and contracts for the coming season are settled. Yet all this noise is carried out in the vacuum of a bell glass, so to speak, so that not a sound can be heard outside. An empty officiousness celebrates orgies of inbreeding, while there is a complete lack of interest or participation of a public of any kind."

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