The novels, romances, and memoirs of Alphonse Daudet (19 page)

song, as a refrain more accentuated than the rest. This singular music lasted about an hour ; then at one last tolocototignaii, the voice stopped suddenly short, and I heard nothing more but slow and heavy breathing. All this puzzled me a good deal.

One morning my Mother Jacques, who had been fetching the water, came quickly into the room with a very mysterious air, and approaching me, said in a whisper :

"If you want to see our neighbor, — hush, she is there."

At a bound, I was out on the landing. Jacques had told the truth — the White-Cuckoo was in her room with the door wide open, and at last I could have a view of her. Oh God ! it was only a vision, but what a vision ! Imagine a little attic entirely bare, a straw mattress on the floor, a bottle of brandy on the mantelpiece, and above the mattress an enormous and mysterious horse-shoe, hanging on the wall like a vessel for holy water. Now, in the middle of this kennel, conceive of a horrible negress, with big eyes like mother-of-pearl, and hair short, woolly and frizzled like the fleece of a black sheep, clad only in a faded night-jacket and old red petticoat, with nothing over them. It was thus I first saw my neighbor the White-Cuckoo, the White-Cuckoo of my dreams, sister of Mimi-Pinson and Bernerette. Oh, you romantic country bumpkin, let this be a lesson to you !

" Well," said Jacques, as I returned, " well, what

do you think of" — he did not finish his phrase and burst into a loud laugh at my air of discomfiture. I had the wit to do likewise, and there we were, laughing with all our might in each other's faces, neither of us able to speak. At this moment, through the crack of the door left ajar, a big black head slipped into the room and disappeared almost immediately, calling to us: "White men laugh at niggers, not nice." You may fancy whether we laughed louder than ever.

When our merriment had somewhat subsided, Jacques informed me that White-Cuckoo the ne-gress was in the service of the lady of the first floor; in the house she was accused of sorcery, in proof of which there was the horse-shoe, symbol of the Vaudoux worship, hanging above her mattress. It was also said that every evening, when her mistress was out, the White-Cuckoo shut herself up in her attic, drank brandy till she fell down dead drunk, and sang negro songs for part of the night. This explained to me the mysterious sounds that had come from my neighbor's room: the uncorked bottle, the falling upon the floor, and the monotonous tune of three notes. As to the toloco-totignan, it was a sort of imitative refrain, very common among the negroes of the Cape, something like our Ion, Ian, la; the black Pierre Duponts put it into all their songs.

Need I say that from that day the proximity of the White-Cuckoo was less distracting to me. When she came upstairs in the evening, my heart no longer beat so fast, and I never disturbed my-

self to go and glue my ear to the partition. Sometimes, however, in the silence of the night, the tolocototignans reached me at my table, and I felt a certain vague sense of discomfort in listening to that sad refrain; it was as if I foresaw the part it was to play in my life.

Meanwhile my Mother Jacques found a place at fifty francs a month as book-keeper in the employ of a small iron-merchant, to whom he was to go every evening, after leaving the Marquis. The poor boy told me this good news, half glad and half sorry. " How shall you be able to go over there ? " I asked him at once. He answered, with his eyes full of tears: " I have my Sundays." And from that time, as he had said, he went over there on Sundays only, but it certainly cost him dear.

What was there so attractive over there that my Mother Jacques had so much at heart ? I should not have been sorry to know, but unfortunately he never proposed to take me with him; and I was too proud to ask him to do so. Besides, how could I go anywhere, with my india-rubbers? However, one Sunday, as Jacques was starting to go to the Pierrottes', he said with some slight embarrassment:

" Should n't you like to go over there with me, little Daniel? You would surely give them a great deal of pleasure."

" My dear fellow, you are joking! "

" Yes, I know; the Pierrottes' parlor is not the place for a poet. They are just a lot of tiresome old tradespeople."

3

" Oh, it is n't on that account, Jacques ; it is only because of my clothes."

" Yes, that is true; it did not occur to me," said Jacques.

And he went off, enchanted to have a genuine reason for not taking me.

He had hardly reached the foot of the stairs, when he turned round and ran up to me again, quite out of breath.

"Daniel," said he, "if you had a presentable hat and pair of shoes, should you go with me to the Pierrottes' ? "

"Why not?"

" Very well, come; I will buy all you need, and then we can go over there!'

I looked at him, stupefied. " It is the end of the month, and I have the money," he added to convince me. I was so delighted with the idea of having new apparel that I did not observe Jacques' emotion, or the strange tone in which he spoke. I only thought of all that later. At the moment, I flung my arms round his neck, and we set out for the Pierrottes', passing by the Palais-Royal, where I was fitted out at the shop of an old-clothes dealer.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ROMANCE OF PIERROTTE.

If anybody had told Pierrotte at twenty that he would one day succeed M, Lalouette in the china business, that he would have two hundred thousand francs at his notary's — Pierrotte with a notary! — and a superb shop at the corner of the Passage du Saumon, it would have astonished him very much.

At twenty, Pierrotte had never left his native village; he wore big sabots made from the pine of the Cevennes, could not speak a word of French, and earned a hundred crowns a year by breeding silkworms; besides this, he was a robust fellow and a fine dancer, fond of laughing and singing patriotic songs, but always decently, and without prejudice to the tavern-keepers. Like all fellows of his age, Pierrotte had a sweetheart, for whom he waited every Sunday, as the people came out from vespers, to take with him for a dance under the mulberry-trees. Pierrette's sweetheart was named Roberte, the tall Roberte, She was a handsome lass of eighteen, an orphan like him, and poor as he was, but she knew well how to read and write, which is rarer than a dowr)' in the villages of the Cevennes. Pierrotte was very

proud of his Roberta, and expected to marry her as soon as he should draw his lot; but on the day of the conscription, though the poor fellow had dipped his hand three times in holy water before approaching the urn, he drew out No. 4. He had to go. What despair! Luckily for him, Mme. Eyssette who had been nursed, and partly brought up by Pierrotte's mother, came to the assistance of her foster-brother, and lent him two thousand francs to buy a substitute. The Eyssettes were rich at that time! — So the joyful Pierrotte did not have to go, and was able to marry his Roberte; but as these good people desired above everything to pay back Mme. Eyssette's money, and as they could never succeed in doing so if they remained in their native place, they had the courage to exile themselves and went to Paris to seek their fortunes.

For a year our mountaineers were heard of no more; then, one fine morning, Mme. Eyssette received a touching letter signed " Pierrotte and his wife," that contained three hundred francs, the first-fruits of their economies. The second year, there was a new letter from " Pierrotte and his wife," with an enclosure of five hundred francs. The third year nothing came. They had probably not been successful in their affairs. The fourth year, there was a third letter from " Pierrotte and his wife " with a last enclosure of twelve hundred francs and blessings for the Eyssette family. Sad to say, when this letter reached us, we were completely ruined; the factory had just been sold and

we were about to go into exile. In her grief, Mme. Eyssette forgot to answer " Pierrotte and his wife." After that, we had no more news of them until Jacques went to Paris, and found the worthy Pierrotte, — Pierrotte without his wife, alas! — installed at the desk of the former house of Lalouette.

Nothing could be less poetic or more touching than the history of his prosperity. On their arrival in Paris, Pierrotte's wife had bravely set herself to doing housework. The first place she took was with the Lalouettes. These were rich tradespeople, miserly almost to madness, who had never been willing to employ either a clerk or a servant, because they wanted to do everything themselves. (" Sir, I made my own trousers myself, until I was fifty! " old Lalouette was accustomed to say proudly.) Only in their old age would they permit themselves the extravagant luxury of a maid-of-all-work at twelve francs a month. God knows that the work she did was well worth the money! There was the shop, the back-shop, an apartment on the fourth floor, and two buckets of water to fill every morning. Only a woman fresh from the C6vennes would have accepted such conditions; but she was young, active, and inured to labor, and her back was strong as that of a young heifer ; in a twinkling she despatched the rough work, and, besides, threw her pretty smile into the bargain, which alone was worth more than twelve francs to the old people. By dint of her good-nature and prowess, this

courageous young woman succeeded in winning over her employers. They began to take an interest in her, and made her tell them about herself; then one fine day, of his own accord — for the dryest hearts sometimes burst into sudden bloom, — old Lalouette offered to lend a little money to Pierrotte, so that he could go into business and follow out his own plan.

This was Pierrotte's plan: he bought an old ass and a cart, and went from one end of Paris to the other crying with all his might: "Get rid of all you don't want! " Our sly mountaineer did not sell, he bought things. What did he buy? Everything. Broken vessels and bottles, old iron, papers, worn-out furniture not worth selling, old finery that no shopkeeper would look at; all sorts of things of no value, that people keep at home out of habit or carelessness, because they do not know what to do with them ; in short, everything that is a nuisance. Pierrotte turned up his nose at nothing; he bought all that was offered him, or, at least, he accepted it, for often things were not sold but given away, so as to be got rid of. " Get rid of all you don't want! "

Pierrotte was very popular in the quarter of Montmartre. Like all peddlers who are anxious to make themselves heard in the hubbub of the street, he had adopted a peculiar and personal series of cries that the housekeepers learned to know well. First, there was the formidable " Get rid of all you don't want," at the top of his lungs; and then, in a drawling whimpering tone, long

conversations with his ass, his Anastagille, as he called her. He thought he was saying Anastasie. "Come along, Anastagille; come, get along, my girl," and the docile Anastagille followed with her head down, keeping by the side of the pavement with a melancholy air. From every house, somebody called : " Here, here, Anastagille ! " and the cart filled, till it was a sight to see. When it was full to overflowing, Anastagille and Pierrotte went to Montmartre to deposit their cargo with a wholesale rag-dealer, who paid well for all this rubbish that had cost nothing, or almost nothing.

Pierrotte did not make his fortune by this singular trade, but he made a good living by it. The very first year, they returned the Lalouettes' money and sent three hundred francs to Mademoiselle, — it was thus they had called Mme. Eyssette when she was a young girl, and they had never been able to make up their minds to speak of her in any other way. But the third year was not a lucky one. It was 1830. In vain Pierrotte shouted : " Get rid of what you don't want! " for the Parisians, who were occupied in getting rid of an old king they did not want, turned a deaf ear to Pierrotte's cries, and let him shout himself hoarse in the streets ; so, every evening, the cart returned home empty. To cap the climax of misfortune, Anastagille died. It was then that the old Lalouettes, who were beginning to be unable to do everything for themselves, proposed to take Pierrotte as shopman in their employ. Pierrotte accepted the position, but did not long retain

these modest functions. Ever since their arrival in Paris, his wife had been giving him, every evening, lessons in reading and writing; he could already manage a letter, and expressed himself in French in a way to make himself understood. When he entered the service of the Lalouettes, he redoubled his efforts, joining a class of adults in which he studied arithmetic. His progress was such that at the end of a few months he was able to take his place at the desk, instead of M. Lalou-ette then nearly blind, and to sell for Mme. Lalou-ette, whose old legs could no longer keep pace with her courage. Meanwhile, Mdlle. Picrrotte came into the world, and from that time, Pierrette's fortune kept on increasing. First, he had an interest in the business of the Lalouettes, and later, he became their partner ; then, one fine day, old Lalouette, who had completely lost his sight, retired from trade, and sold out to Pierrotte, who paid him in annual instalments. With one lucky stroke he enlarged the business to such a degree that in three years he repaid the Lalouettes, and found himself, unencumbered with debt, at the head of a handsome shop, with an excellent custom. Just then, as if she had waited to die until her husband no longer needed her, Roberte fell ill and died of exhaustion.

This is Pierrette's romance, as Jacques related it to me that evening, while we were walking to the Passage du Saumon; and, as the way was long,— we had taken the longest way to show the Parisians my new coat, — I understood our friend thoroughly

before I reached his house. I knew the good Pierrotte had two idols he would not allow to be touched, his daughter and M. Lalouette. I knew also that he was rather garrulous and tiresome to listen to, as he spoke slowly, casting about for his phrases, spluttered, and could not say three consecutive words without adding:

" If I may be allowed to say so."

This was due to a particular cause: the peasant from the Cevennes had never become accustomed to our language. As all his thoughts came to his lips in the patois of Languedoc, he was obliged to turn this dialect word by word into French, and the repetitions of " If I may be allowed to say so " with which he garnished his conversation, gave him time to accomplish this little task in his own mind. As Jacques said, Pierrotte did not speak, he translated. As to Mdlle. Pierrotte, all I could learn of her was that she was sixteen years old, and that her name was Camille; nothing more, for on this chapter Jacques' lips were sealed.