Chapter 15

THE BEGGARS' BALL

That evening there was a ball on the flat above. It was refreshingly democratic. The rag-pickers who lodged with Madame Gougeon and laid the foundation of her iron business, attended. Thither thronged the beggars, the knife-grinders, the old-bottle collectors of the neighbouring rookeries. The crookedest men of Paris, the most hideous women, the squalidest tatters were on hand. They whirled and jumped furiously in their unwashed feet; they became almost invisible in the clouds of dust; the odour sickened, the screeching and jumping deafened one. Bad, but maddening, wine was drunk in torrents. A man would kick his partner and the combatants tumble over each other in the midst of an applauding circle.

Who were these libels on women, these alleged men, these howling fiends? They were a driblet of two hundred thousand such wretches who overran and menaced the city, a product of the dense illiteracy of the time.

Wife Gougeon entered with the Admiral. They pushed their way to a long table in the corner where some sots were gambling, and sitting down on one of the benches around it, she shouted a couple of words to the man nearest to her, who bolted off into the dust and returned with a red-nosed beggar.

"Motte," said she, leering, "are you now on the Versailles roads?"

"Always," he said sharply.

"Do your division watch Versailles?"

"Without ceasing."

"This is the Admiral."

"The great Admiral? Of the Galley?"

"Certainly."

"I salute you, Chief," he said, raising a ragged arm.

"Have some brandy, Green Cap," the Admiral returned, rapping loudly for drink, which was brought.

"We want," said Madame engagingly, "to find a hog called Répentigny at Versailles."

The man snatched the bottle from the hand of the _garçon_, and pouring a glass off, greedily drank it before replying.

"I don't know the name. What age is he?"

"About twenty," the chief said.

"Don't you know any more about him?"

The Admiral described him as closely as possible. They took some time in the conversation. "He ought to be in the company of officers of the Bodyguard," added he. The beggar by that time was becoming unsteady with rapid libations. He nodded, dropping his head.

"Do you understand me?" shouted the Admiral.

"Répentigny," the other muttered, correctly enough.

"Can you meet us at the Place d'Armes of Versailles to-morrow?" wheedled Femme Gougeon.

He looked at her steadily and nodded deliberately.

"Is twelve o'clock too early?"

He shook his head a little.

"He will assuredly do it," she said to her companion.

The next second the beggar fell off the bench, dead drunk.

The following day at Versailles, at the entrance of the Avenue de Paris, two nuns were seen to stop and give alms to an old bent beggar. A conversation took place between them, and was interrupted by the approach of a gendarme.

"I have found him," was the beggar's whisper.

"Where?"

"At the Hôtel de Noailles. Am I to kill him?" he asked excitedly.

"No," said the taller nun.

The gendarme stepped up towards the beggar.

"I arrest you for mendicity," he said, just about to lay his hand on his shoulder.

The beggar--who bore a red nose--started back with an alacrity unexpected of so aged a man. He took to his heels, and, with tatters flying, fled like an arrow from the Avenue.

The gendarme furiously looked after him. When he turned, the pair of nuns also had moved on. They were slipping round a corner which led into a by-street of the old town.

Versailles, the City of the Court, was then in the height of its splendour, gay and triumphant. Everything in it looked towards the Palace of the King, the long and lordly façade of which, with its three concentric courtyards, faced the great square of the town, the Place d'Armes; and behind lay those delicious gardens, groves and waters, the mere remains of which, such as the Tapis Vert, the Basins of Neptune and Enceladus, the Trianons, and the Orangerie, are marvels even to our day. Thousands of costumes and equipages made the town a panorama of luxury; and countless thoroughbreds, of which the King alone possessed more than two thousand, glistened and curvetted in the streets.

The neighbourhood of the Palace was naturally that of the aristocracy. The vast mansions of the Princes of the blood and the Peers of France were clustered about the sides of the Place d'Armes and the streets immediately surrounding. One of these was the Hôtel de Noailles. Its range of buildings, for it surrounded a court, stood at the corner of the Rues de la Pompe et des Bons Enfans. Behind it were its gardens. Opposite, on the Rue des Bons Enfans, were the hotels of the Princes of Condé and the Dukes of Tremouille. The hotels of Luxembourg, Orleans, and Bouillon faced it on the Rue de la Pompe. The Noailles family were themselves many times of royal descent. Adjoining the hotel were the quarters of the Queen's equerries.

Germain sat in his apartment, watching, over the balcony of one of the windows, the incessant movement of lackeys, mounted officials, and carriages on the street near by. Raising his eyes across the gardens of the Tremouille Palace, he rested them with quickened delight on the elegant avenues and groves of the royal pleasure-realm, rich in the golden tones and clear air of an autumn morning.

In the midst the Basin of Neptune, glittering and shining, and with its white statues, seemed to inspire him with a happy suggestion, and he trolled to himself a ballad with a nonsensical chorus, popular in his native land--

"Behind the manor lies the mere, _En roulant, ma boulë_; Three fair ducks skim its water clear.

_En roulant, ma boulë roulant._ _En roulant, ma boulë._

Three fair ducks skim its waters clear, The King's son hunteth far and near.

The King's son draweth near the lake, He bears his gun of magic make.

With magic gun of silver bright He sights the Black but kills the White.

He sights the Black but kills the White; Ah, cruel Prince, my heart you smite."

A rap on the door interrupted him. Dominique put his head in, announcing--

"A woman, sir."

"A woman? Young and beautiful?"

"No, sir; old."

"On what errand?"

"She insists it is business."

"Let her come in."

A figure entered dressed in a faded black shawl, a red dress, and a blue linen apron, and her face shadowed in a hood. She kept back out of the window-light, and he thought she was in great distress.

"Madame," he stammered, putting aside his gaiety, and rose.

"Monseigneur, I supplicate your mercy," she sobbed.

"My mercy? I do not understand."

"Your mercy; I supplicate it," she cried in an agonised voice.

"My good woman, I would never injure you, I protest."

"I am their mother, sir; I am starving."

"Whose mother?"

She represented the prisoners as being sons of hers. When she mentioned the robbery, he recoiled. As she proceeded, however, he condoled with her and gave her a piece of money, which she took, expatiating brokenly on the dependance of her sons' necks on his evidence.

"Mon Dieu! Monsieur," she concluded, "do you know what it is to take three lives of poor men? Can you picture what it means to a parent? You have a heart--you have a God--you have a mother."

The flood of tears and hysterical sobbing were in the highest art of expert mendicancy. She advanced towards him, threw herself upon her knees at his feet, embraced his shoes, and writhed.

Germain was so shaken that for a moment he had an intention of running for a cabriolet to take him to Paris to intercede with the magistrates in the affair. He was about to follow his impulse when a consideration startled him. He had heard the Prince repeatedly speak with satisfaction of the capture of the highwaymen. To interfere with the arrests, he saw, would shock the robbed family; it would banish him, he thought, from the circle of Cyrène. The question troubled him. In a few moments he decided it: he must stretch out a hand of mercy to this woman.

Following the custom among beggars, she watched his countenance furtively during her appeals, interpreting its changes more accurately than he himself was doing, and at its last expression her eyes flashed with triumph.

"Go; I will help you," he said to her in an agitated voice, and calling Dominique, added with great courtesy, "See Madame to the gates, and help her in any way you can."

But no sooner had she left the chamber than a thought which angered him came like a flash, and stepping to the door, he called them back.

"You say these men are your sons?" he said severely, when she had come into the room; "let me see your face."

She shrank from him and hid it more deeply in her hood.

"The man who was a cultivator is forty years of age; you are no more," he pronounced, "how can you be his mother?"

A few mumbled words passed her lips, but he did not listen to them.

"The three are from three different families, three different ranks, three different Provinces, and yet you have pretended to be the parent of all of them. You are the parent of none of them, but have come here to shamefully impose upon my feelings. What you are is a confederate of the gang. Had you been the woman you have pretended I was ready to make sacrifices for you, the extent of which you cannot know. But if, instead of returning sons to a mother, I am to loose again three most dangerous criminals upon the country, it is a different affair. Be well satisfied that I do not immediately have yourself convicted as their accomplice." In his anger he motioned her to be off, and she, dropping the piece of gold which he had given her, crept away with alacrity, not daring to venture a word.

It was only as she passed down through the Prince's halls behind Dominique that she allowed her fury full possession of her, and as she glanced about on the evidences of luxury, she gnashed her teeth and hissed half aloud--

"Ah, but I would stick your throats, you fat hogs!"

"What do you say, Madame?" inquired Dominique.

"Nothing at all."

Germain threw himself again upon his chair and gave himself up to misery.