2.M.8.19. OCCUPYING ONE'S SELF WITH OBSCURE DEPTHS
HARDLY was M. Leblanc seated, when he turned his eyes
towards the pallets, which were empty.
"How is the poor little wounded girl?" he inquired.
"Bad," replied Jondrette with a heart-broken and grateful
smile, "very bad, my worthy sir. Her elder sister has taken
her to the Bourbe to have her hurt dressed. You will see them
presently; they will be back immediately."
"Madame Fabantou seems to me to be better," went on
M. Leblanc, casting his eyes on the eccentric costume of the
Jondrette woman, as she stood between him and the door, as
though already guarding the exit, and gazed at him in an attitude
of menace and almost of combat.
"She is dying," said Jondrette. "But what do you expect,
sir! She has so much courage, that woman has! She's not a
woman, she's an ox."
The Jondrette, touched by his compliment, deprecated it
with the affected airs of a flattered monster.
"You are always too good to me, Monsieur Jondrette!"
"Jondrette!" said M. Leblanc, "I thought your name was
Fabantou?"
"Fabantou, alias Jondrette!" replied the husband
hurriedly.
"An artistic sobriquet!"
And launching at his wife a shrug of the shoulders which
M. Leblanc did not catch, he continued with an emphatic and
caressing inflection of voice: —
"Ah! we have had a happy life together, this poor darling
and I! What would there be left for us if we had not that?
We are so wretched, my respectable sir! We have arms, but
there is no work! We have the will, no work! I don't know
how the government arranges that, but, on my word of honor,
sir, I am not Jacobin, sir, I am not a bousingot.
I don't wish
them any evil, but if I were the ministers, on my most sacred
word, things would be different. Here, for instance, I wanted
to have my girls taught the trade of paper-box makers. You
will say to me: 'What! a trade?' Yes! A trade! A simple
trade! A bread-winner! What a fall, my benefactor! What
a degradation, when one has been what we have been! Alas!
There is nothing left to us of our days of prosperity! One
thing only, a picture, of which I think a great deal, but which
I am willing to part with, for I must live! Item, one must
live!"
While Jondrette thus talked, with an apparent incoherence
which detracted nothing from the thoughtful and sagacious
expression of his physiognomy, Marius raised his eyes, and
perceived at the other end of the room a person whom he had
not seen before. A man had just entered, so softly that the
door had not been heard to turn on its hinges. This man
wore a violet knitted vest, which was old, worn, spotted, cut
and gaping at every fold, wide trousers of cotton velvet,
wooden shoes on his feet, no shirt, had his neck bare, his bare
arms tattooed, and his face smeared with black. He had
seated himself in silence on the nearest bed, and, as he was
behind Jondrette, he could only be indistinctly seen.
That sort of magnetic instinct which turns aside the gaze,
caused M. Leblanc to turn round almost at the same moment
as Marius. He could not refrain from a gesture of surprise
which did not escape Jondrette.
"Ah! I see!" exclaimed Jondrette, buttoning up his coat
with an air of complaisance, "you are looking at your overcoat?
It fits me! My faith, but it fits me!"
"Who is that man?" said M. Leblanc.
"Him?" ejaculated Jondrette, "he's a neighbor of mine.
Don't pay any attention to him."
The neighbor was a singular-looking individual. However,
manufactories of chemical products abound in the Faubourg
Saint-Marceau. Many of the workmen might have black
faces. Besides this, M. Leblanc's whole person was expressive
of candid and intrepid confidence.
He went on: —
"Excuse me; what were you saying, M. Fabantou?"
"I was telling you, sir, and dear protector," replied
Jondrette
placing his elbows on the table and contemplating M.
Leblanc with steady and tender eyes, not unlike the eyes of
the boa-constrictor, "I was telling you, that I have a picture
to sell."
A slight sound came from the door. A second man had just
entered and seated himself on the bed, behind Jondrette.
Like the first, his arms were bare, and he had a mask of
ink
or lampblack.
Although this man had, literally, glided into the room, he
had not been able to prevent M. Leblanc catching sight of
him.
"Don't mind them," said Jondrette, "they are people who
belong in the house. So I was saying, that there remains in
my possession a valuable picture. But stop, sir, take a look
at it."
He rose, went to the wall at the foot of which stood the
panel which we have already mentioned, and turned it round,
still leaving it supported against the wall. It really was
something
which resembled a picture, and which the candle illuminated,
somewhat. Marius could make nothing out of it, as
Jondrette stood between the picture and him; he only saw a
coarse daub, and a sort of principal personage colored with the
harsh crudity of foreign canvasses and screen paintings.
"What is that?" asked M. Leblanc.
Jondrette exclaimed: —
"A painting by a master, a picture of great value, my
benefactor!
I am as much attached to it as I am to my two
daughters; it recalls souvenirs to me! But I have told you,
and I will not take it back, that I am so wretched that I will
part with it."
Either by chance, or because he had begun to feel a
dawning
uneasiness, M. Leblanc's glance returned to the bottom of
the room as he examined the picture.
There were now four men, three seated on the bed, one
standing near the door-post, all four with bare arms and
motionless, with faces smeared with black. One of those on
the bed was leaning against the wall, with closed eyes, and
it might have been supposed that he was asleep. He was old;
his white hair contrasting with his blackened face produced
a horrible effect. The other two seemed to be young; one
wore a beard, the other wore his hair long. None of them
had on shoes; those who did not wear socks were barefooted.
Jondrette noticed that M. Leblanc's eye was fixed on these
men.
"They are friends. They are neighbors," said he. "Their
faces are black because they work in charcoal. They are
chimney-builders. Don't trouble yourself about them, my
benefactor, but buy my picture. Have pity on my misery.
I will not ask you much for it. How much do you think it
is worth?"
"Well," said M. Leblanc, looking Jondrette full in the
eye,
and with the manner of a man who is on his guard, "it is
some signboard for a tavern, and is worth about three francs."
Jondrette replied sweetly: —
"Have you your pocket-book with you? I should be satisfied
with a thousand crowns."
M. Leblanc sprang up, placed his back against the wall,
and
cast a rapid glance around the room. He had Jondrette on his
left, on the side next the window, and the Jondrette woman
and the four men on his right, on the side next the door. The
four men did not stir, and did not even seem to be looking
on.
Jondrette had again begun to speak in a plaintive tone,
with
so vague an eye, and so lamentable an intonation, that M.
Leblanc might have supposed that what he had before him
was a man who had simply gone mad with misery.
"If you do not buy my picture, my dear benefactor," said
Jondrette, "I shall be left without resources; there will be
nothing left for me but to throw myself into the river. When
I think that I wanted to have my two girls taught the middle-class
paper-box trade, the making of boxes for New Year's
gifts! Well! A table with a board at the end to keep the
glasses from falling off is required, then a special stove is
needed, a pot with three compartments for the different degrees
of strength of the paste, according as it is to be used
for wood, paper, or stuff, a paring-knife to cut the cardboard,
a mould to adjust it, a hammer to nail the steels, pincers, how
the devil do I know what all? And all that in order to earn
four sous a day! And you have to work fourteen hours a day!
And each box passes through the workwoman's hands thirteen
times! And you can't wet the paper! And you mustn't spot
anything! And you must keep the paste hot. The devil, I
tell you! Four sous a day! How do you suppose a man is to
live?"
As he spoke, Jondrette did not look at M. Leblanc, who was
observing him. M. Leblanc's eye was fixed on Jondrette, and
Jondrette's eye was fixed on the door. Marius' eager attention
was transferred from one to the other. M. Leblanc seemed to
be asking himself: "Is this man an idiot?" Jondrette repeated
two or three distinct times, with all manner of varying
inflections of the whining and supplicating order: "There is
nothing left for me but to throw myself into the river! I
went down three steps at the side of the bridge of Austerlitz
the other day for that purpose."
All at once his dull eyes lighted up with a hideous flash;
the
little man drew himself up and became terrible, took a step
toward M. Leblanc and cried in a voice of thunder: "That
has nothing to do with the question! Do you know me?"