Volume III Part 13 (1/2)
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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sion 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, wis.h.i.+ng 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.”