Part 77 (1/2)
”My only one! The others are in Pere la Chaise. There are but few children alive in my street now. G.o.d has been very merciful, and taken them to Himself.”
De Mauleon recalled the scene of a neat comfortable apartment, and the healthful happy children at play on the floor. The mortality among the little ones, especially in the quartier occupied by the working cla.s.ses, had of late been terrible. The want of food, of fuel, the intense severity of the weather, had swept them off as by a pestilence.
”And Monnier--what of him? No doubt he is a National Guard, and has his pay?”
The woman made no answer, but hung down her head. She was stifling a sob. Till then her eyes seemed to have exhausted the last source of tears.
”He lives still?” continued Victor, pityingly: ”he is not wounded?”
”No: he is well--in health; thank you kindly, Monsieur.”
”But his pay is not enough to help you, and of course he can get no work. Excuse me if I stopped you. It is because I owed Armand Monnier a little debt for work, and I am ashamed to say that it quite escaped my memory in these terrible events. Allow me, Madame, to pay it to you,”
and he thrust his purse into her hand. ”I think this contains about the sum I owed; if more or less, we will settle the difference later. Take care of yourself.”
He was turning away when the woman caught hold of him.
”Stay, Monsieur. May Heaven bless you!--but--but tell me what name I am to give to Armand. I can't think of any one who owed him money. It must have been before that dreadful strike, the beginning of all our woes.
Ah, if it were allowed to curse any one, I fear my last breath would not be a prayer.”
”You would curse the strike, or the master who did not forgive Armand's share in it?”
”No, no,--the cruel man who talked him into it--into all that has changed the best workman, the kindest heart--the--the--” again her voice died in sobs.
”And who was that man?” asked De Mauleon, falteringly.
”His name was Lebeau. If you were a poor man, I should say 'Shun him.'”
”I have heard of the name you mention; but if we mean the same person, Monnier cannot have met him lately. He has not been in Paris since the siege.”
”I suppose not, the coward! He ruined us--us who were so happy before; and then, as Armand says, cast us away as instruments he had done with.
But--but if you do know him, and do see him again, tell him--tell him not to complete his wrong--not to bring murder on Armand's soul. For Armand isn't what he was--and has become, oh, so violent! I dare not take this money without saying who gave it. He would not take money as alms from an aristocrat. Hus.h.!.+ he beat me for taking money from the good Monsieur Raoul de Vandemar--my poor Armand beat me!”
De Mauleon shuddered. ”Say that it is from a customer whose rooms he decorated in his spare hours on his own account before the strike,--Monsieur --------;” here he uttered indistinctly some unp.r.o.nounceable name and hurried off, soon lost as the streets grew darker. Amid groups of a higher order of men-military men, n.o.bles, ci-devant deputies--among such ones his name stood very high. Not only his bravery in the recent sorties had been signal, but a strong belief in his military talents had become prevalent; and conjoined with the name he had before established as a political writer, and the remembrance of the vigour and sagacity with which he had opposed the war, he seemed certain, when peace and order became established, of a brilliant position and career in a future administration: not less because he had steadfastly kept aloof from the existing Government, which it was rumoured, rightly or erroneously, that he had been solicited to join; and from every combination of the various democratic or discontented factions.
Quitting these more distinguished a.s.sociates, he took his way alone towards the ramparts. The day was closing; the thunders of the cannon were dying down.
He pa.s.sed by a wine-shop round which were gathered many of the worse specimens of the Moblots and National Guards, mostly drunk, and loudly talking in vehement abuse of generals and officers and commissariat. By one of the men, as he came under the glare of a petroleum lamp (there was gas no longer in the dismal city), he was recognised as the commander who had dared to insist on discipline, and disgrace honest patriots who claimed to themselves the sole option between fight and flight. The man was one of those patriots--one of the new recruits whom Victor had shamed and dismissed for mutiny and cowardice. He made a drunken plunge at his former chief, shouting, ”A bas Pai-isto! Comrades, this is the coquin De Mauleon who is paid by the Prussians for getting us killed: a la lanterne!” ”A la lanterne!” stammered and hiccupped others of the group; but they did not stir to execute their threat.
Dimly seen as the stern face and sinewy form of the threatened man was by their drowsied eyes, the name of De Mauleon, the man without fear of a foe, and without ruth for a mutineer, sufficed to protect him from outrage; and with a slight movement of his arm that sent his denouncer reeling against the lamp-post, De Mauleon pa.s.sed on:--when another man, in the uniform of a National Guard, bounded from the door of the tavern, crying with a loud voice, ”Who said De Mauleon?--let me look on him:”
and Victor, who had strode on with slow lion-like steps, cleaving the crowd, turned, and saw before him in the gleaming light a face, in which the bold frank, intelligent aspect of former days was lost in a wild, reckless, savage expression--the face of Armand Monnier.
”Ha! are you really Victor de Mauleon?” asked Monnier, not fiercely, but under his breath,--in that sort of stage whisper which is the natural utterance of excited men under the mingled influence of potent drink and h.o.a.rded rage.
”Certainly; I am Victor de Mauleon.”
”And you were in command of the--company of the National Guard on the 30th of November at Champigny and Villiers?”
”I was.”