The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty

“That is a fine thing to rely on!”

“Do you not believe in Providence? are you an atheist, Nicole? of the school of Voltaire who denies all that sort of thing?”

“Beausire, no matter what I am, you are a fool.”

“Springing from the lower class, as you do, it is not surprising that you nourish such notions. I warn you that they do not appertain to my caste and political opinions.”

“You are a saucebox,” returned the beauty of the past.

“But I have faith. If anyone were to say, ‘Beausire, your son who has gone out to buy a sugar stick, will return with a lump of gold,’ I should answer: ‘Very likely, if it be the will of Allah!’ as a Turkish gentleman of my acquaintance says.”

“Beausire, you are an idiot,” said Nicole, but she had hardly spoken the words before young Toussaint’s voice was heard on the stairs calling:

“Oh, papa – mamma!”

“What is the matter?” cried Nicole, opening the door with true maternal solicitude. “Come, my darling, come.”

The voice drew near like the ventriloquist doing the trick of the man in the cellar.

“I should not be astonished if he had lit on the streak of good luck I feel promised,” said the gambler.

The boy rushed into the room, holding a sugarstick in his mouth, hugging under his left arm a bag of sugarplums, and showing in his right hand a gold coin which shone in the candle glimmer like the North Star.

“Goodness of heaven, what has occurred?” cried Nicole, slamming the door to.

She covered his gluey face with kisses – mothers never being disgusted, from their caresses seeming to purify everything.

“The matter is a genuine louis of gold, worth full value of twenty-four livres,” said Beausire, skillfully obtaining the piece.

“Where did you pick that up that I may go for the others, my duck?” he inquired.

“I never found it, papa: it was give to me,” replied the boy. “A kind gentleman give it me.”

Ready as Beausire to ask who this donor was, Nicole was prudent from experience on account of Captain Beausire’s jealousy. She confined herself to repeating:

“A gentleman?”

“Yes, mamma dear,” rejoined the child, crunching the barley-sugar between his teeth: “a gentleman who came into the grocer’s store where I was, and he says: ‘God bless me, but, master, do I not behold a young gentleman whose name is De Beausire, whom you have the honor of attending to at the present time?'”

Beausire perked up and Nicole shrugged her shoulders.

“What did the grocer say to that, eh?” demanded the card-sharper.

“Master Grocer says: ‘I don’t know whether he is a gentleman or not, but his name is Beausire,’ ‘Does he live by here?’ went on the gentleman. ‘Top-floor, next house on the left.’ ‘Give anything the young master wants to him – I will foot the bill,’ said the gentleman. Then he gave me the money saying: ‘There a louis for you, young sir: when you have eaten your candy, that will buy you more. He put the money in my hand; the grocer stuck this bag under my arm and I came away awfully glad. Oh, where is my money-piece?”

Not having seen Beausire’s disappearing trick, he began to look all round for the louis.

“You clumsy little blockhead, you have lost it,” said the captain.

“No, I never!” yelled the child.

The dispute would have become warm but for the interruption which came to put an end to it.

The door opened slowly and a bland voice made these words audible:

“How do you do, Mistress Nicole? good evening, Captain Beausire! How are you, little Toussaint?”

All turned: on the threshold was an elegantly attired man, smiling on the family group.

“Oh, here’s the gentleman who gave me the candy,” cried young Toussaint.

“Count Cagliostro,” exclaimed Beausire and the lady at the same time.

“That is a winning little boy, and I think you ought to be happy at being a parent, Captain Beausire,” said the intruder.

He advanced and with one scrutinizing glance saw that the couple were reduced to the last penny.

The child was the first to break the silence because he had nothing on his conscience.

“Oh, kind sir, I have lost the shining piece,” said he.

Nicole opened her mouth to state the case but she reflected that silence might lead to a repetition of the godsend and she would inherit it; her expectation was not erroneous.

“Lost your louis, have you, my poor boy?” said Cagliostro, “well, here are two; try not to lose them.”

Pulling out a purse of which the plumpness kindled Beausire’s greedy glances, he dropped two coins into Toussaint’s little sticky paw.

“Look, mamma,” said he, running to Nicole; “here’s one for you and one for me.”

While the child shared his windfall with his mother, the new-comer remarked the tenacity with which the former-soldier watched his purse and tried to estimate the contents before it was pocketted again. On seeing it disappear, he sighed.

“Still glum, captain?” said the visitor.

“And you, count, always rich?”

“Pooh! you are one of the finest philosophers I have ever known, as well at the present as in antiquity, and you are bound to know the axiom to which man does honor in all ages. ‘Riches are not contentment.’ I have known you to be rich, relatively.”

“That’s so: I have owned as much as a hundred thousand francs.”

“It is possible; only when I met you again, you had spent nearly forty thousand of it so as to have but sixty, but that is a round sum for a corporal in the army.”

“What is that to the sums you dispose of?” he sighed.

“I am only the banker, the trustee, Captain Beausire, and if I were obliged to settle up I daresay you could play St. Martin and I the beggar who would be glad to have half your cloak. But, my dear Beausire, do you not remember the circumstances of our last meeting? As I said, just now, you had sixty thousand left of the hundred thousand: were you happier than now?”

The ex-corporal heaved a retrospective sigh which might pass for a moan.

“Would you exchange your present position though you possessed nothing but one poor louis you ‘nicked’ from young Toussaint?”