CHAPTER II.

A CRUSH AT THE MORGUE.

When the stray dog had finished his welcome repast, licking the sides of the bowl which had contained it with a gusto which many a dyspeptic favourite, fondled on the velvet cushion of my lady, and carried about by my lady's footman, would have envied, O'Hara began to talk with him; yes, to talk with him--and the dog answered him, as far as eyes and tail could speak.

'Well, my poor fellow, you seem to like that!'

The dog curled his tail and licked his lips.

'What's your name? You don't know, nor where you were born. You're as ignorant as Topsy.'

The dog sought the ground with his eyes.

'I must give you a name. Suppose I call you Chance, to mark how I found you; or Bran, like the dog in Ossian; or Hector--no, that's too bumptious a name, and you're no bully.'

The dog wisely shook his head, as if he looked on the idea of bullyism with pity.

'Let me see; egad, I'll naturalize you! I think you have a very Irish face--an honest, open, grateful face--and I'll call you Pat.'

The dog wagged his tail joyfully, stood on his hind legs, and stretched out a paw.

'Wonderful creature! can it be that I have hit on your name? Well, Pat'--again the tail wagged--'if you belonged to a rich family you would be housed, perhaps, in that hospital for indisposed gentlemen of your breed I see advertised on a kiosk near the Palais Royal; but, because you really want a friend and a crust, you are left without either. That's the way with the world, Pat,[5] and you're a vagabond, though goodness knows you're ugly enough to be a pet. I declare you're as ill-favoured as any pug I ever met sitting on a Brussels hearthrug, if it were not for that face.'

The dog gave an assenting bark.

'But we mustn't be stopping here too long, Pat, though our time isn't very precious. George Francis Train says the next best thing to money is the suspicion of money, and I say the next best thing to occupation is the suspicion of occupation; and, by my word, they lock you up for having no occupation in England, though you may be wearing the soles off your feet to get one. In the great world they go to the theatre or the opera or the circus after dinner to promote digestion, and I think I know where we can enjoy ourselves cheaply after our banquet. Hi! Pat, come along.'

And, rising, our friend retraced his steps towards the bridge, stopping for a moment at a tobacco-shop, where he purchased and lit a cigar at a sou, at the same time giving loud expression to his regret that he had forgotten his Turkish pipe.

'We must be economic, you know, and tobacco goes farther than a weed,' and seeming mentally to calculate the state of his finances--'three sous for milk and two for bread, five, that leaves five'--previous to hazarding the investment.

The open space in front of the Morgue is a favourite 'pitch' of the mountebanks who earn their livelihood on Paris streets. At the time our pair made their appearance, it was occupied by a number of the tribe in full swing. In one corner a low-sized, deformed figure, recalling the Quasimodo whom Victor Hugo's genius has made historic in connection with the neighbouring church of Notre Dame, was appealing to a crowd of bystanders to jerk ten sous more into the ring, and he would transfer the hump on his back to his breast. O'Hara did not wait for the tardy money to come in; he had no taste for the crooked talents of the posture-master.

A group in another corner surrounded a tanned fellow, with long hair and an eye like an onyx, who beat time on a drum, as he chanted a merry skit on a Paris by-word of the season--'_Avez-vous vu Lambert?_' to the air of '_Maman, le mal que j'ai_,' while the woman who accompanied him sold copies of it by the sheaf to laughing workmen, soldiers, and nursery-maids.

But by far the largest assemblage was drawn to a stout acrobat in faded tights, which might have been washed at some remote era, bedizened with spangles that revealed a faint tradition of glitter. He had an amazing flow of impudent 'patter,' this acrobat, and let it spout uninterruptedly as he flung up little metal rings, in quick succession, high in the air, catching them as they fell on a tin cone, strapped to his forehead, in the fashion of a unicorn's horn. Sometimes he missed them, and they slapped with a crack on his skull, and rolled off behind by a bald channel, which frequent misadventure of the kind had worn in his hair. But the spectators were as highly amused when he failed as when he succeeded--indeed, more so, if the truth must be told--for had they not a hit and a miss together? When the cone was encircled with rings, he flung up a monster potato, impaling it on the spike as it descended, amid the acclamations of his admirers.

'Come along, Pat,' said O'Hara; 'here is something more in our line,' as he passed to another group, before which the owner of a troop of educated dogs and cats was performing.

'This is M'sieu Rigolo,' cried the showman, as he placed one chair reversed on another, and taking a poor cat, that looked as if it couldn't get up an emotion at a family of mice round a Stilton cheese, balanced its claws consecutively lengthwise and crosswise on the upstanding legs. When the cat had been sufficiently tortured it was dismissed, to its evident satisfaction, to the basket which served as green-room to the perambulating theatre.

'Present yourself, M'sieu Romulus,' cried the showman, and a poodle of remarkably subdued mien reluctantly entered the arena, much as a slave who was devoted to the lions might have done in the old Roman times. M'sieu Romulus had not the boldness of his illustrious namesake of antiquity, but he had more than his sagacity. His strong point lay in detecting the most amorous man, the most beautiful lady, the greatest idler and so-forth in the surrounding company. The showman, putting a card in his mouth, asked him to point out such a one. Romulus stood up in the attitude dogs are wont when asked to beg, moved carefully round and finally trotted off in the way he should go, and dropped the card at the feet of the chosen person.

Romulus was dismissed in his turn to the green-room, and the showman called for Mademoiselle. The call was responded to by one of the saddest short-eared dogs ever seen, girt round the middle with a miniature crinoline which made the creature a grotesque caricature of a woman in the prevailing fashion as she hopped into the circle painfully on her hind-legs.

'_Salut_, Ma'amselle!' said the showman; 'we want to see you dance a minuet,' and he commenced playing on a pandean pipe. But Ma'amselle did not dance long. Pat, who had been watching the whole performance with canine amazement from between O'Hara's legs, suddenly rushed in, extended his paws and lowered his head in front of the disguised member of his species, and barked a good-natured bark. Ma'amselle dropped on all fours, and looked up inquisitively at the showman's face. The showman flung his pandean pipe at Pat's snout, and the poor intruder ran howling round the amused throng. No one would make room for him to escape, until at last a short thickset man, in a long frieze coat caught him, pulled him to himself, and cried to the showman, in a foreign accent, 'It is not French to strike a dog for gallantry; he simply entered because he didn't like to see Ma'amselle dance without a partner. Didn't you see him make his bow?'

'Pardon me, sir,' said O'Hara, who had been shut out from the inner circle by the forward rush, as he made his way to the friendly stranger; 'but I believe I am the next of kin to this unfortunate animal.'

'Have him, sir, and welcome,' said he in the frieze. 'I never like to see an animal struck that can't strike back for itself.'

'Thanks, sir,' said O'Hara, and then, turning to Pat, he continued, speaking this time in English, 'Come, my companion, we'll leave that brute of a showman: every dog has his day, and perhaps you'll have yours yet.'

The stranger looked after the pair sharply as they turned towards a crowd where a little old man was expatiating on the marvellous abilities of Madame La Blague, the celebrated clairvoyante, and muttered something between his teeth. The celebrated clairvoyante was seated on a chair in the centre of a crowd, her eyes bandaged like those of the figure of Justice, and her hands crossed on her lap in the attitude of Patience on the monument.

'Now then, messieurs,' said the little old man, 'take a ticket and have your fortune told. Only ten centimes. Tell me your hopes, your fears, your desires, and madame will at once read the answer in the Book of Fate when I ask her.'

'Hark you, friend, I want my fortune told.'

It was the man in frieze who spoke. He had moved up after O'Hara and the dog.

'Take a ticket, sir, and wait your turn,' squeaked the little old man.

'Is it so? That's a thing I never do. Ten centimes, you charge; now I'll give ten francs--that's a thousand centimes--if madame is able to return me a single true answer to five plain questions I'll put to her myself.'

'I'll try, at all events, sir,' said the woman with bandaged eyes.

'I like that. To start--how old am I?'

'Forty-four,' answered the woman, after a pause.

'You don't flatter. I'm between the thirties and the forties still. Guess again--what's my disposition?'

'Impatient,' was the immediate answer.

'You've got to earn the money yet. My profession?'

'Soldier.'

'What regiment?'

'The Foreign Legion.'

'Ha! Then you've found out I'm a foreigner. From what country, pray?'

'From Ireland.'

The stranger in frieze started, gave an ejaculation of surprise, and, taking out a ten-franc piece, advanced towards the woman, and said he could understand her guessing he was a military man from his tone of voice, and the further fact that he had served in the Legion from his foreign accent; but he demanded in a puzzled tone that she would explain how she had discovered his country before he redeemed his promise.

'We show-folk travel a great deal, sir,' she said in a low voice. 'I have been in Ireland, and I recognised the accent.'

'That explains the mystery. Like Columbus's egg, all things are easy when they're known. Well, madame,' he continued aloud with a chuckle, 'if you've been in Ireland you know us. When we promise France we give the Isle of St. Louis.[6] Here is a ten-sous bit for you.'

Her countenance fell until her delicate fingers conveyed to her senses that it was, indeed, ten francs she possessed. The crowd applauded, said he was as witty as he was generous, and the man in frieze turned on his heel. He looked curiously towards the neat white one-storied structure beside the footpath from the Pont d'Archevêche to the Pont St. Louis, into which a stream of wayfarers was continually flowing, and finally directed his steps thitherward too. It was a cheerful-looking building that, which drew so many visitors, but, nevertheless, it was the Morgue--half-way house between untimely death and the outcast's grave. The stranger entered the wide door--a tall partition divided what was inside from his view; he passed around it and was within the grisly hall. O'Hara mechanically followed; he had no curiosity to scan the lineaments of the naked corpses which awaited recognition within--he was rather _blasé_ of sights of the kind, and regarded a body on a Morgue slab as he would a carcase on a butcher's stall; but he felt a something impelling him towards this stranger who had discovered himself to be a countryman. As he entered, reading, perhaps for the hundredth time, the inscriptions on the wall, which told friends who identified the deceased that they could establish their identity with the greffier free of charge, he caught an exclamation of surprise in English in the brusque voice of the man in frieze.

'Hah! so you've shuffled off this mortal coil, Marguerite.'

O'Hara turned in the direction from which the voice came; he distinguished his compatriot in the middle of an unusually excited mass which pressed against the bars of this loathsome cage of mysterious horrors, a grim smile twisting his features. He could not see any of the twelve sloping tables on which the bodies were laid out in their last toilette--their stiff limbs stretched, hair combed back, hands fixed by their cold sides, and squares of black boarding covering the stomach and thighs--because of the intervening crowd. The clothing of the unclaimed dead, hats, jackets, and blouses, suspended from racks overhead, alone was visible.

'What's the excitement?' he asked of a grizzled soldier, who edged his way back from the bars.

'Oh, it's only a _cocotte_ of the quarter, who's been fool enough to go to the devil before the devil came to her. Sapristi! but she's been a well-favoured wench, and's got a well-turned leg even on her calafaque.'[7]

'Marguerite, Marguerite,' said O'Hara, as if recalling some train of thought.

'Yes, that's what's yonder individual, who pretends that he knew her, denominated her; but I inflect he's a joker.'

'Tall, with an Italian face and black hair?' asked O'Hara eagerly.

'Ay, ay, tall, with a handsome, despising face, and long hair, as black as a grenadier's bearskin.'

'I, too, think I know her--if it be the same.'

'If it be the same! It strikes me, jokers are consolidating in the Morgue to-day. Good-morning, bourgeois, I'm an old soldier,' and away marched the veteran.

A pretty little girl, coquettishly clad in the costume of the grisette, a well-fitting robe of gray, relieved by a tidy patent leather belt with clasp, setting off her figure, and large imitation coral drops glistening under her bright chestnut hair, entered at the moment, a basket on her arm, as if returning from her work.

'Have you seen the bodies yet, please, sir?' she said to O'Hara.

'Not yet, mademoiselle,' he replied graciously; 'but if you wait a little, I shall get a place for both to see them.'

She smiled her thanks.

'Now, then, forward. It's the first time I have ever seen a crush at the Morgue;' and they perseveringly made their way to the front.

On a black slab lay extended the nude limbs of a woman who had been taken from life before she had reached its noon, whilst she might have been full of strength and lusty joy. They were bloodless to the view, but round and beautiful of proportion, and clean of colour as a statue of purest marble by a master hand. The head was pillowed on a luxuriant mass of wet, matted raven hair. There was a smile on the face (which was wickedly handsome, as the soldier had described it), even in death, and a proud, disdainful curl had left its unchangeable impress on the mouth.

'By Jove, it _is_ Marguerite!' cried O'Hara involuntarily.

At the same instant the little grisette, whom he had helped to a place, turned pale and trembled, and falling back in a faint, sank into his arms as she murmured from between her white lips, 'Merciful God! Caroline, poor Caroline!'