Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life

Charles Theodore Murray, Francis Day, W. H. [Illustrator] Richardson, E. Benson [Illustrator] Kennedy

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• Publié par: zion
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 71
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mlle. Fouchette, by Charles Theodore Murray

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Title: Mlle. Fouchette  A Novel of French Life

Author: Charles Theodore Murray

Illustrator: W. H. Richardson  E. Benson Kennedy  Francis Day

Release Date: September 20, 2009 [EBook #30041]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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MLLE. FOUCHETTE

THIRD EDITION

F O UCHETTE

MLLE. FOUCHETTE

BY

CHARLES THEODORE MURRAY

ILLUSTRATED BY W.H. RICHARDSON E. BENSON KENNEDY & FRANCIS DAY

T O L IST

PHILADELPHIA & LONDON J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY MCMII

C O PYRIG H T , 1902

BY C H ARLES T H EO DO RE M URRAY

All rights reserved

Published March, 1902

Printed by J. B Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.

TO

MR. R.F. ("TODY") HAMILTON

A CHARMING GENTLEMAN, DELIGHTFUL TRAVELLING COMPANION, PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHER, AND RELIABLE FRIEND

CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX CHAPTER XXI CHAPTER XXII

ILLUSTRATIONS

F O UCHETTE H ISSTILLUNCO NSCIO USBURDEN S HESEIZED J EANBYTHEARM I TWASACRITICALMO MENT

Frontispiece Page 136 Page 182 Page 383

MLLE. FOUCHETTE

"Get along, you little beast!"

CHAPTER I

Madame Podvin accompanied her admonition with a vigorous blow from her heavy hand.

"Out, I say!" Thump. "You lazy caniche!" Thump. "You get no breakfast here this morning!" Thump. "Out with you!" Thump. In the mean time the unhappy object of these objurgations and blows had been rapidly propelled towards the open door, and w as with a final thump knocked into the street. A stray dog? Oh, no; a dog is never abused in this way in Paris. It would probably cause a riot. It was only a wee bit of a child,—dirty, clothed in rags, with tangled blonde hair that had never, apparently, seen a comb, and whose little bare feet and thin ankles were incrusted with the dried filth of the gutters. Being only a child, the few neighbors who were abro ad at that early hour merely grinned at her as she picked herself up and limped away without a cry or a word. "She's a tough one," muttered a witness.

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"She's got to be mighty tough to stand the Podvin," responded another. In the rapidly increasing distance the child seemed to justify these remarks; for she began to step out nimbly towards the town of Charenton without wasting time over her grievances.

"All the same, I'm hungry," she said to herself, "and the streets of Charenton will be mighty poor picking half an hour hence."

She paused presently to examine a pile of garbage in front of a house. But the dogs had been there before her,—there was nothing to eat there.

These piles of garbage awaited the tour of the carts; they began to appear at an early hour in the morning, and within an hour had been picked over by rag- pickers, dogs, and vagrants until absolutely nothing was left that could be by any possibility utilized by these early investigators. Here and there two or three dogs contested the spoils of a promising pile, to separate with watchful amity to gnaw individual bones.

As it was a principal highway from the Porte de Charenton to the town, the piles of refuse had been pretty thoroughly overhauled by the dogs and human scum that infested the barrier.

Finally, the girl stopped as a stout woman appeared at a grille with a paper of kitchen refuse which she was about to throw into the street.

They looked at each other steadily,—the child with eager, hungry eyes; the woman with resentment.

"There is nothing here for you," rasped the latter, retaining her hold upon the folded parcel as she advanced to the curb and glanced up and down the street. The child, who had unconsciously carried her rag-pi cker's hook, stood waiting in the middle of the road. "Don't you hear me?" repeated the woman, threateningly. "Be off with you!"

"It is a public road," said the little one.

"You beggar——"

"I haven't asked you for anything, madame," interru pted the child, with quivering voice,—"I'd die before asking you for anything,—but I have as much right to the road as you." There was a flash of defiance in the small blue eyes now. Two street dogs came up on a run. The woman threw d own her parcel to them and, retreating, slammed the iron gate after her.

With a wicked swing of her hook the child drove the dogs away and hastily inspected the garbage. A piece of stale crust and s ome half-decayed fruit rewarded her. A gristled end of beef she threw to the dogs, that watched her wistfully a few yards away.

"Voilà! I divide fair, messieurs," said she, skilfully munching the sound spots out of the fruit and casting the rest on the ground.

"One would have thought madame was about to spread a banquet," she muttered. She sauntered away, stoppingbreak the crust with a to piece of loose

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paving, with a sharp eye out for other windfalls. A young girl saw her from a garden, and shyly peepe d through the high wrought-iron fence at the little savage. Though the latter never stopped a second in her process of mastication, she eyed the other quite as curiously,—something as she might have regarded a strange but beautiful animal through the bars of its cage. In experience and practical knowledge of life the respective ages of these two might have been reversed; the child of the street been sixteen instead of twelve. Undersized, thin, sallow, and sunburned,—bareheaded, barefooted, dirty, and ragged,—she formed a striking contrast to the rosy-cheeked, plump, full- lipped, and well-dressed young woman within. The extraordinary sound of crunching very naturally attracted the first attention of the elder. "What in the world is that which you are eating, child?" she asked.

"Bread, ma'm'selle."

"Bread! Why, it's covered with dirt!"

"Yes, ma'm'selle."

Redoubled exertion of the sound young teeth.

"Why do you eat that?"

"Hungry, ma'm'selle." "Heavens!" Continuous crunching, while the child knocks the remaining crust against the wall to get the sand out of it, the dirt of the paving-stone.

"What's your name?"

"Fouchette."

"Fouchette? Fouchette what?"

"Nothing, ma'm'selle,—just Fouchette."

"Where do you live, Fouchette? Do throw that dirty bread away, child!"

"Say, now, ma'm'selle, do you see anything green in my eye?"

The young woman seriously inspects the blue eye that is rolled up at her and shakes her head.

"N-no; I don't see anything." "Very well," said Fouchette, continuing her attack on the slowly dissolving crust. "Throw it away, I tell you!—I'll run and get you some,—that's a good child!" Fouchette stopped suddenly and remained immobile, r egarding her interlocutor sharply.

"Truly?" she asked.

"Certainly."

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The child looked at what remained of the crust, hes itated, sighed, then dropped it on the ground. The young woman hastily re-entered the house and presently reappeared with a huge sandwich with meat on a liberal scale. "Oh, how good you are, ma'm'selle!" cried Fouchette. Her blue eyes sparkled with pleasure,—her young mou th watered as the sandwich was passed between the railing.

"What is that,—why, there is blood on your neck, Fouchette!"

The child felt her neck with her hand and brought it away. "So it is," said she, sinking her teeth into the sandwich. "Here,—come closer,—turn this way. It's running dow n now. How did you hurt yourself?" "Dame! It is nothing, ma'm'selle." "Nothing! You are just black and blue!"

"Mostly black," said Fouchette. The world looked ever so much brighter.

"You've been fighting," suggested the young woman, tentatively.

"No, ma'm'selle." "Then somebody struck you." "Quite right, ma'm'selle." This was delivered with such an air of nonchalance that the young lady smiled. "You speak as if it were a common occurrence," she observed.

"It is," said Fouchette, with a desperate swallow,—"Podvin."

"Po-Podvin?"

"Yes, ma'm'selle."

"Person you live with?"

Fouchette nodded,—she had her mouth full.

"They beat you?"

"Most every day." "Why?" "Er—exercise, mostly, I think."

The half-sly, half-humorous squint of the left blue eye set the sympathetic young woman laughing in spite of herself. The remarkable precocity of these petites misérables of the slums was new to her.

"But you had father and mother——"

"I don't know, ma'm'selle,—at least they never showed up."

"But, my child, you must have started——"

"I started in a rag-heap, ma'm'selle. There's where the Podvin found me."

"In a rag-heap!"

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"Yes, ma'm'selle,—so they say."

"But don't you remember anything at all before that?"

"Precious little. Only this: that I came a long ways off, walking, and riding in market carts, and walking some more,—and then the Podvin found me,—near here,—and here I am. That's all." "What does Podvin do for a living?" "Drinks."

"Ah! And madame?"

"Hammers me."

"And you?" "Rags." "Now, Fouchette, which is 'the' Podvin?"

"Madame, of course!"

The young woman laughed merrily, and Fouchette gave forth a singular, low, unmusical tinkle. She was astonished that the young lady should put such a question, then amused as she thought of Mother Podvin playing second to anybody.

"What a lively little girl you are, Fouchette!" said her questioner, pleasantly.

"It's the fleas, ma'm'selle."

"W-wh-what?"

"I sleep with Tartar."

"Who's Tartar, and what——"

"He's the dog, ma'm'selle." "Heavens!" "Oh, he's the best of the family, ma'm'selle, very sure!" protested Fouchette, naïvely.

"No doubt of it, poor child!"

"Only for him I'd freeze in winter; and sometimes he divides his dinner with me—as well as his fleas—when he is not too hungry, you know. This amuses the Podvin so that sometimes, when we have company, she will not give me any dinner, so I'll have to beg of Tartar. And we h ave lots of fun, and I dance——"

"You dance after that? Why——" "Oh, I love to dance, ma'm'selle. I can——" Fouchette elevated her dirty little bare foot against the railing above her head by way of illustration; while, half shocked, half l aughing, the other hastily exclaimed,—

"Là, là, là! Put it down, Fouchette! Put it down!"

A restless glance up and down the road and back towards the house seemed to relieve the young woman materially; she laughed now with delightful

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abandon. "So Tartar and you are good friends in spite of the—the——" "The fleas,—yes, ma'm'selle. He loves me and me alo ne. Nobody dares come near him when we sleep—or eat,—and I love him dearly. Did you ever love anybody, ma'm'selle?"

This artless question appeared to take the young woman by surprise; for she grew confused and quite red, and finally told little Fouchette to "run along, now, and don't be silly." "Not with fleas,—oh, no; I didn't mean that!" cried the child, conscious of having made a faux pas, but not clear. But the young woman was already flying through the flower-garden, and quickly disappeared around the corner of the house without once looking back.

Fouchette then let go of her breath and heaved a deep sigh as she turned away.

It was the only occasion within her childish recollection when one of her own sex had spoken to her in kindness. Now and then she had dreamed of such a thing as having occurred in the long ago,—in some other world, perhaps,—this was real, tangible, perceptible to the eye and ear.

"Sweet words Are like the voices of returning birds, Filling the soul with summer."

For the moment the starved soul of the child was filled with summer softness, as she slowly returned along the route she had recently come, thinking of the beautiful young lady and the sensuous odor of the f lowers which had penetrated to the innermost recesses of her being.

As she neared the barriers, however, and was gradually recalled to the harsh realities of her daily environment, these fleeting dreams had disappeared with the rest, leaving the old, fixed feelings of hopele ssness and sullen combativeness. With this revival came the pain from the still recent blows of the morning, temporarily forgotten.

The barriers at Paris have long been the popular ha unts of poverty and crime,—though their moral conditions have been grea tly modified by the multitude of tramways that afford the poor of Paris more extended outings. The barriers run along the line of fortifications and form the "octroi," or tax limit of the city. These big iron gates of the barriers intercept every road entering Paris and are manned by customs officials, who inspect all in coming vehicles and packages for dutiable goods. Within the barriers is Paris,—beyond is the rest of the world. Inside are the police agents,—outside are the gendarmes. Cheap shows, gypsy camps, merry-go-rounds, and all sorts of games hover about the barriers, where no special tax is exacted and where the regulations with reference to public order are somewhat lax. They attract noisy and unruly crowds on Sundays and holidays. A once popular song ran:

"Pour rigoler montons,

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