The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty
He was dealing out playing cards and trying to find an infallible means
of winning; a card by his side, pricked full of pinholes, showed that he
was keeping tally of the runs.
The woman was four-and-thirty and appeared forty; she wore an old silk
dress; her poverty was the more dreadful as she exhibited tokens of
splendor; her hair was built up in a knot over a brass comb once gilded:
and her hands were scrupulously cared for with the nails properly
trimmed in an aristocratic style. The slippers on her feet, over
openwork stockings, had been worked with gold and silver.
Her face might pass in candlelight for about thirty; but, without paint
and powder it looked five years older than reality.
Its resemblance to Queen Marie Antoinette’s was still so marked that one
tried to recall it in the dusty clouds thrown up by royal horses around
the window of a royal coach.
The boy was five years of age; his hair curled like a cherub’s; his
cheeks were round as an apple; he had his mother’s diabolical eyes, and
the sensual mouth of his father--in short, the idleness and whims of the
pair.
He wore a faded pearl velvet suit and while munching a hunk of cake
sandwiched with preserves, he frayed out the ends of an old tricolored
scarf inside a pearl gray felt hat.
The family was illuminated by a candle with a large “thief in the
gutter,” stuck in a bottle for holder, which light fell on the man and
left most of the room in darkness.
“Mamma,” the child broke the silence by saying, as he threw the end of
the cake on the mattress which served as bed, “I am tired of that kind
of cake--faugh! I want a stick of red barley sugar candy.”
“Dear little Toussaint,” said the woman. “Do you hear that, Beausire?”
As the gamester was absorbed in his calculations, she lifted her foot
within snatch of her hand and taking off the slipper, cast it to his
nose.
“What is the matter?” he demanded, with plain ill-humor.
“Toussaint wants some candy, being tired of cheap cake.”
“He shall have it to-morrow.”
“I want it to-day--this evening--right now!” yelled the innocent in a
tearful voice which threatened stormy weather.
“Toussaint, my boy, I advise you to give us quiet or papa will take you
in hand,” said the parent.
The boy yelled again but more from deviltry than from fear.
“You drunken sot, you just touch my darling, and I will attend to you,”
said the mother, stretching out the white hand towards the bully which
her care of the nails made to become a claw at need.
“Who the deuse wants to touch the imp? you know it is only my style of
speaking, my dear Oliva, and that though I may dust your skirt now and
then I have always respected the kid’s jacket. Tut, tut, come and
embrace your poor Beausire who will be rich as a King in a week; come,
my little Nicole.”
“When you are rich as a king, it will be another matter: but up to that
time no fooling.”
“But I tell you that it is as safe as if I had a million. You might be
kind for a little while. Go and get credit of the baker.”
“A man rolling in millions wants a baker to let him have a loaf on
trust, ha, ha!”
“I want some red barely sugar,” howled the child.
“Come, you king with the millions, give some sugar sticks to your
prince.”
Beausire started to put his hand to his fob but stopped half way.
“You know I gave you my last piece yesterday.”
“Then, if you have the money,” said the child to the woman whom Beausire
called indifferently Nicole or Oliva, “give me a penny to buy candy.”
“There are two cents, you naughty boy, and mind you do not fall in
sliding down the bannisters.”
“Thank you, dear mother,” said the boy, capering for joy and holding out
his hand.
“Come here till I set your hat on and adjust your sash: it must not be
said that Captain Beausire let his son race about the streets in
disorder--though it is all the same to him, the heartless fellow! I
should die of shame!”
At the risk of whatever the neighbors might say against the heir to the
Beausire name, the boy would have dispensed with the hat and band, of
which he recognized the use before the other urchins did the freshness
and beauty. But as the arrangement of his dress was a condition of the
gift, the young Hector had to yield to it.
He consoled himself by taunting his father with the coin by thrusting it
up under his nose; absorbed in his figuring the parent merely smiled at
the pretty freak.
Soon they heard his timid step, though quickened by gluttony, descending
the stairs.
“Now then, Captain Beausire,” snapped the woman after a pause, “your
wits must lift us out of this miserable position, or else I must have
recourse to mine.”
She spoke with a toss of the head as much as to say: “A lady of my
lovely face never dies of starvation, never fear!”
“Just what I am busy about, my little Nicole,” responded Beausire.
“By shuffling the cards?”
“Did I not tell you that I have found the infallible coup?”
“At it again, eh? Captain Beausire, I warn you that I am going to hunt
up my old acquaintances and see if one of them cannot have you shut up
in the madhouse. Dear, dear, if Lord Richelieu were not dead, if
Cardinal Rohan were not ruined, if Lady Lamotte Valois were not in
London dodging the sheriff’s officers----“
“What are you talking about?”
“I should find means and not be obliged to share the misery of an old
swashbuckler like this one.”
With a queenly flirt of the hand Oliva _alias_ Nicole Legay,
disdainfully indicated the gambler.
“But I keep telling you that I shall be rich to-morrow,” he repeated,
himself at any rate convinced.
“Show me the first gold piece of your million and I shall believe the
rest.”
“You will see ten gold pieces this evening--the very sum promised me.
You can have five to buy a silk dress and a velvet suit for the
youngster: with the balance I will bring you the million I promised.”
“You unhappy fellow, you mean to gamble again?”
“But I tell you again that I have lit on an infallible sequence.”
“Own brother to the one with which you threw away the sixty thousand
livres from the amount you stole at the Portuguese Ambassador’s?”
“Money got over the devil’s back goes under his belly,” replied Beausire
sententiously. “I always did think that the way I got that cash brought
bad luck.”
“Is this fresh lot coming from an inheritance? have you an uncle who has
died in the Indies or America and left you the ten louis?”
“Nicole Legay,” rejoined Beausire with a lofty air, “these ten will be
earned not only honestly but honorably, for a cause which interests me
as well as the rest of the nobility of France.”
“So you are a nobleman, Friend Beausire?” jeered the lady.
“You may say so: we have it stated so in the birth entry on the register
of St. Paul’s, and signed by your servitor, Jean Baptiste Toussaint de
Beausire, on the day when I gave my name to our boy----“
“A handsome present that was,” gibed Nicole.
“And my estate,” added the so-called captain emphatically.
“If kind heaven does not send him something more solid,” interposed
Nicole, shaking her head, “the poor little dear is sure to live on air
and die in the poorhouse.”
“Really, Nicole, this is too much to endure--you are never contented.”
“Endure? good gracious, who wants you to endure?” exclaimed the reduced
gentlewoman, breaking down the dam to her long-restrained ire: “Thank
God, I am not worried about myself or my little pet, and this very night
I shall go forth and seek my fortune.”
She rose and took three steps towards the door, but he strode in between
them and opened his arms to bar the way.
“You naughty creature, did I not tell you that my fortune----“
“Go on,” said Nicole.
“Is coming home to-night: though the coup were a mistake--which is
impossible, it would only be five louis lost.”
“There are times when a few pieces of money are a fortune, sir. But you
would not know that, who have squandered a pile of gold as high as this
house.”
“That proves my merit: I made it at the cards, and if I made some once I
shall make more another time: besides, there is a special providence
for--smart rogues.”
“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.