Chapter II.

"Pinn'd, beaten, cold, pinch'd, threaten'd, and abused, His efforts punish'd and his food refused, Awake tormented, soon aroused from sleep, Struck if he wept, and yet compelled to weep, The trembling boy dropped down, and strove to pray, Received a blow, and trembling turned away."

Crabbe.

Pelagie Vautrin, now a widow, continued to gain her living as before. She was what is called in France a "merchant of the four seasons," that is, a costermonger, hawking about the streets in a handcart the different vegetables and fruits of each season, sometimes even venturing on a load of salt mackerel, sometimes of dried figs. She was a strong, masculine-looking virago, who might have gained a tolerable living, for one day with another brought her in about three francs, had she not been given to drink. {256} Every bargain she made either to buy or to sell was ratified by a glass of brandy, so that by the time she had emptied her cart, her pocket was nearly empty too. At all times without gentleness or pity, she became almost ferocious when excited by liquor, and it was a cruel fate that had made the little orphan fall into her hands. He, poor fellow, seemed to be quite friendless. Questioned and cross-questioned by Pelagie and her neighbors, he could give no further account of himself than that he was called Marcel, and that his father was shot on the barricade; the child shuddered each time that he was forced to answer this. He appeared never to have known his mother, replying always that he had lived with his father, only with his father, and nobody else. He was a slight, elegantly formed boy, with the intelligent, delicate features peculiar to the true Parisian. Timid and nervous, he trembled each time that Pelagie addressed him, and implicitly obeyed her slightest order.

During the two days that followed the death of Auguste, Pelagie remained shut up in her dirty, close-smelling room. Whether she feared that the restoration of public order might expose her to the unpleasant observation of the law, or that the loss of her husband did really somewhat affect her, we know not; certain it is that she staid quietly at home, and even shared the bread and boiled beef that a neighbor had fetched for her from a _gargote_, or poor eating-house, near by, with Marcel. He had been provided with a heap of rags for a bed, and permitted to sleep. And for two nights, poor boy, he had slept as children, happily the poor as well as the rich, only can sleep--forgetful of the past and unthinking of the future. But on the morning of the third day, Pelagie got up in full possession of all her wonted energy and brutality.

"Out of bed, little beggar!" were her first words, as she pushed the sleeping child with her foot; "out of bed; you must begin to work for your bread. Now, listen to me," she continued, as Marcel, with a scared look, started up ready-dressed from his bed of rags; "listen, do you hear, to me. You will go search for all the bits of old iron, old nails, and things of that sort, that you can find in the streets and gutters. Here is a leathern bag to put them in; do you see? I shall tie it about your waist, and take care you don't lose it. And here is a basket and a hook; with this hook you will catch up all the pieces of paper and rag that you see, and put them into the basket. Now, mind what you're about: I shall have an eye on you, wherever you may be. Here is a piece of bread; and don't come back until your basket is full, or I shall skin you."

So saying, she thrust the bewildered, frightened boy out of the door, which she shut immediately, leaving him to grope his way down the dark, crazy staircase as he best might.

After two or three falls he reached the door of the house, and found himself in the narrow, filthy gutter called the Rue de la Parcheminerie--one of the impure, airless thoroughfares of that old Paris which the present ruler of France is levelling to give place to wide, healthful, handsome streets and squares. He stood a moment hesitating whether he should turn to the right or to the left, when the voice of Pelagie calling to him from the window above made him look up. "Be off!" she screamed. "I'm watching you, and mind you bring me back all you get!"

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The child shouldered his basket and ran on. Turning the corner and out of sight of his fierce protectress, if we may call her so, he stopped, poor little fellow! His basket and hook dropped to the ground, as with a gesture of despair he threw up his hands toward heaven and cried aloud, "O my father! my father!"

The cry and the gesture were not addressed to that Heavenly Father whose eye was then as ever upon him, full of pity and mercy though unseen and incomprehensible, for the unhappy orphan knew not how to pray; but we can believe that it was heard and answered, as if it had been a direct supplication to the throne of grace; not then, perhaps, but in the fulness of that time which he hath chosen for our consolation. A moment after, the boy gathered up his fallen basket and hook and diligently set to work. Not a rag or scrap of paper escaped his searching eye. Nails and metal buttons, and bits of old iron, and many a flattened bullet that had probably done some deadly work, all found their way into his basket or his leathern bag.

Toward twelve o'clock he found himself near the fountain in St. Michael's Place; tired and hot, he took a drink, and, seating himself on the curbstone near by, began to eat the piece of bread that Pelagie had given him that morning. His appetite was good, and he enjoyed his dry crust better than many a rich man did his sumptuous dinner that day. His little teeth went so busily and vigorously to work, that a hackney-coachman belonging to the coach-stand in the place, and who was lazily contemplating humanity from his box-seat, after watching him awhile with admiration, threw him a sou, telling him to buy some sausage, because he deserved something for the way in which he attacked that piece of brick-bat.

"He has teeth like a rat," cried the coachman, grinning, to one of his comrades; "the way he nibbles that crust, that's as hard as the stone he's sitting on, is a sight!"

Marcel took the sou, and returned a look of such smiling gratitude that the observant coachman again remarked to his friend that that little chap had eyes like the gazelle's in the Garden of Plants; "they're just as soft and tender," added he, "only blue." But the child dared not spend the money on himself--had not Pelagie told him to bring her back everything he got? So he put it into the bag with the old iron, and once more went to work. Steadily and earnestly he plodded on, all his little faculties concentrated on his task, so that at five in the afternoon his leathern bag was full, and his basket piled up and pressed down.

Glad and triumphant, with some hope of kind words this time at least, he turned toward the Rue de la Parcheminerie, and reached the wretched house just as Pelagie was pushing her empty handcart through the narrow passage into the yard, where it was put up under a shed for the night. He climbed the staircase and stood waiting for her on the landing-place before the door of her room.

"You here!" she cried when she perceived him. "What's brought you back so soon, you little _vaurien_?" [Footnote 114]

[Footnote 114: Worth-nothing.]

"My basket and my bag are both full, madam," replied Marcel, trembling as he looked up into the furious eyes of the drunken virago.

"I shall soon see that." She pushed him violently into the room. "Now, give me the bag."

She snatched it from him as she spoke and emptied out the contents on the floor.

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"Why, what is this?" she exclaimed as she caught sight of the sou. "Did you find this? don't you know what it is?"

"I know what it is, madam; it was given to me to buy some sausage with to flavor my bread."

"To flavor your bread, you little beggar! Good bread's not good enough for you, then! I'll flavor your bread, you idiot." And with her strong right hand she dealt him a blow on the side of the head that felled him instantly to the floor.

He hid his bruised face in his little trembling hands and lay there weeping silently.

"Get up, get up, you idle dog; you're not going to stay there, I can tell you! Come, take your basket and hook and be off again." The unfeeling woman pulled up the wretched child as she spoke. "What! crying! I'll have none of that! Come, be off! You'll get no supper, I promise you, until your basket's full again."

Down the crazy staircase once more the little orphan stumbled into the street--hungry and tired, his cheek blue with the cruel blow, and his young heart swelling with the sense of so much injustice and oppression. The thought came to him suddenly that he would not return again to that wicked woman; but then, where should he go? Who would take care of him? He wandered through many dirty, narrow streets while he thus meditated, and at last found himself before the old church of St. Etienne du Mont. He saw some children going in, and followed them. There was so profound a silence in the sacred edifice, such a soft, subdued light streamed in from the beautiful painted windows, that the child's agitated, angry heart seemed calmed almost by a miracle. He slunk into a dark corner, and there, doing as he saw the happier children with whom he had entered do, he knelt. He did not pray; he had never known a mother's care, never been taught to lisp "Our Father who art in heaven" at his mother's knee; but peace and forgiveness entered into the orphan's soul as he knelt, silent, unheeded, in that dark corner of God's house.

Half an hour after he slunk out again into the street, feeling better, he knew not why, poor ignorant boy, and only anxious to try to satisfy his task-mistress.

All the evening he went to and fro, filling his basket from the heaps of rubbish thrown into the streets as soon as night comes by the numerous inhabitants of Parisian houses. At last, when ten o'clock had struck from all the church-towers in the quarter, he again climbed to the third story. The door was ajar, he entered softly, and saw, by the light of a gas-lamp that was on the opposite side of the street, Pelagie Vautrin lying extended on her bed, and snoring the heavy sleep of the drunkard.

He crept, tired and hungry, to his heap of rags, and soon happily forgot for a few hours that he was motherless and fatherless, a little waif adrift on the sea of life.

Thus passed and ended Marcel's first day of labor.