The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 3 of 6

The handkerchief, already torn, was now rent to tatters, and a quantity of fragments of stuff of all colours, and old pieces of linen half cut out, flew around the yard, and were trampled under feet by the prisoners, who holloaed and laughed louder than before.

"Here's your rags!"

"Why, it is a ragpicker's bag."

"Patterns from the ragman's."

"What a shop!"

"And to sew all that rubbish!"

"Why, there's more thread than stuff."

"What nice embroidery!"

"Here, pick up your rags and tatters, Mont Saint-Jean."

"Oh, how wicked! Oh, how cruel!" exclaimed the poor ill-used creature, running in every direction after the pieces, which she endeavoured to pick up in spite of pushes and blows. "I never did anybody any harm," she added, weeping. "I have offered, if they would let me alone, to do anything I could for anybody, to give them half my allowance, although I am always so hungry; but, no! no! it's always so. What can I do to be left in peace? They haven't even pity of a poor woman in the family way. They are more cruel than the beasts. Oh, the trouble I had to collect these little bits of linen! How else can I make the clothes for my baby, for I have no money to buy them with? What harm was there in picking up what nobody else wanted when it was thrown away?" Then Mont Saint-Jean exclaimed suddenly, with a ray of hope, "Oh, there you are, Goualeuse! Now, then, I'm safe; do speak to them for me; they will listen to you, I am sure, for they love you as much as they hate me."

La Goualeuse was the last of the prisoners who entered the enclosure.

Fleur-de-Marie wore the blue woollen gown and black skull-cap of the prisoners; but even in this coarse costume she was still charming. Yet, since her carrying off from the farm of Bouqueval (the consequences of which circumstance we will explain hereafter), her features seemed greatly altered; her pale cheeks, formerly tinged with a slight colour, were as wan as the whiteness of alabaster; the expression, too, of her countenance had changed, and was now imprinted with a kind of dignified grief. Fleur-de-Marie felt that to bear courageously the painful sacrifices of expiation is almost to attain restored position.

"Ask a favour for me, Goualeuse," said poor Mont Saint-Jean, beseechingly, to the young girl; "see how they are flinging about the yard all I had collected, with so much trouble, to begin my baby linen for my child. What good can it do them?"

Fleur-de-Marie did not say a word, but began very actively to pick up, one by one, from under the women's feet, all the rags she could collect. One prisoner ill-temperedly kept her foot on a sort of little bed-gown of coarse woollen cloth. Fleur-de-Marie, still stooping, looked up at the woman, and said to her in a sweet tone:

"I beg of you let me pick it up. I ask it in the name of this poor woman who is weeping."

The prisoner removed her foot. The bed-gown was rescued, as well as most of the other scraps, which La Goualeuse acquired piece by piece. There remained to obtain a small child's cap, which two prisoners were struggling for, and laughing at. Fleur-de-Marie said to them:

"Be all good, pray do. Let me have the little cap."

"Oh, to be sure! It's for a harlequin in swaddling-clothes this cap is! It is made of a bit of gray stuff, with points of green and black fustian, and lined with a bit of an old mattress cover."

The description was exact, and was hailed with loud and long-continued shoutings.

"Laugh away, but let me have it," said Mont Saint-Jean; "and pray do not drag it in the mud as you have some of the other things. I'm sorry you've made your hands so dirty for me, Goualeuse," she added, in a grateful tone.

"Let me have the harlequin's cap," said La Louve, who obtained possession of it, and waved it in the air as a trophy.

"Give it to me, I entreat you," said Goualeuse.

"No! You want to give it back to Mont Saint-Jean."

"Certainly I do."

"Oh, it is not worth while, it is such a rag."

"Mont Saint-Jean has nothing but rags to dress her child in, and you ought to have pity upon her, La Louve," said Fleur-de-Marie, in a mournful voice, and stretching out her hand towards the cap.

"You sha'n't have it!" answered La Louve, in a brutal tone; "must everybody always give way to you because you are the weakest? You come, I see, to abuse the kindness that is shown to you."

"But," said La Goualeuse, with a smile full of sweetness, "where would be the merit of giving up to me, if I were the stronger of the two?"

"No, no; you want to wheedle me over with your smooth, canting words; but it won't do, – you sha'n't have it, I tell you."

"Come, come, now, La Louve, do not be ill-natured."

"Let me alone! You tire me to death!"

"Oh, pray do!"

"I will not!"

"Yes, do, – let me beg of you!"

"Now, don't put me in a passion," exclaimed La Louve, thoroughly irritated. "I have said no, and I mean no."

"Take pity on the poor thing, see how she is crying!"

"What is that to me? So much the worse for her; she is our pain-bearer" (souffre douleur).

"So she is," murmured out a number of the prisoners, instigated by the example of La Louve. "No, no, she ought not to have her rags back! So much the worse for Mont Saint-Jean."

"You are right," said Fleur-de-Marie, with bitterness; "it is so much the worse for her; she is your pain-bearer, she ought to submit herself to your pleasure, – her tears and sighs amuse and divert you! – and you must have some way of passing your time. Were you to kill her on the spot, she would have no right to say anything. You speak truly, La Louve, this is just and fair, is it not? Here is a poor, weak, defenceless woman; alone in the midst of so many, she is quite unable to defend herself, yet you all combine against her! Certainly your behaviour towards her is most just and generous!"

"And I suppose you mean to say we are all a parcel of cowards?" retorted La Louve, carried away by the violence of her disposition and extreme impatience at anything like contradiction. "Answer me, do you call us cowards, eh? Speak out, and let us know your meaning," continued she, growing more and more incensed.

A murmur of displeasure against La Goualeuse, not unmixed with threats, arose from the assembled crowd. The offended prisoners thronged around her, vociferating their disapprobation, forgetting, or remembering but as a fresh cause of offence, the ascendency she had until the present moment exercised over them.

"She calls us cowards, you see!"

"What business has she to find fault with us?"

"Is she better than we are, I should like to know?"

"Ah, we have all been too kind to her!"

"And now she wants to give herself fine lady airs, and to domineer over us! If we choose to torment Mont Saint-Jean, what need has she to interfere?"

"Since it has come to this, I tell you what, Mont Saint-Jean, you shall fare the worse for it for the future."

"Take this to begin with!" said one of the most violent of the party, giving her a blow.

"And if you meddle again with what does not concern you, La Goualeuse, we will serve you the same."

"Yes, that we will."