The Wandering Jew — Complete
life, by twelve years of incessant toil, rendered lucrative by the most
violent exertions, and accompanied by such privations as made it almost
suicidal. Then (for it was a time of splendid wages, compared to the
present), by sleepless nights and constant labor, she contrived to earn
about two shillings (fifty sous) a day, and with this she managed to
educate her son and her adopted child.
At the end of these twelve years, her health was ruined, and her
strength nearly exhausted; but, at all events, her boys had wanted for
nothing, and had received such an education as children of the people
can obtain. About this time, M. Francois Hardy took Agricola as an
apprentice, and Gabriel prepared to enter the priest's seminary,
under the active patronage of M. Rodin, whose communications with the
confessor of Frances Baudoin had become very frequent about the year
1820.
This woman (whose piety had always been excessive) was one of those
simple natures, endowed with extreme goodness, whose self-denial
approaches to heroism, and who devote themselves in obscurity to a life
of martyrdom--pure and heavenly minds, in whom the instincts of the
heart supply the place of the intellect!
The only defect, or rather the necessary consequence of this extreme
simplicity of character, was the invincible determination she displayed
in yielding to the commands of her confessor, to whose influence she
had now for many years been accustomed to submit. She regarded this
influence as most venerable and sacred; no mortal power, no human
consideration, could have prevented her from obeying it. Did any dispute
arise on the subject, nothing could move her on this point; she opposed
to every argument a resistance entirely free from passion--mild as her
disposition, calm as her conscience--but, like the latter, not to
be shaken. In a word, Frances Baudoin was one of those pure, but
uninstructed and credulous beings, who may sometimes, in skillful and
dangerous hands, become, without knowing it, the instruments of much
evil.
For some time past, the bad state of her health, and particularly the
increasing weakness of her sight, had condemned her to a forced repose;
unable to work more than two or three hours a day, she consumed the rest
of her time at church.
Frances rose from her seat, pushed the coarse bags at which she had been
working to the further end of the table, and proceeded to lay the cloth
for her son's supper, with maternal care and solicitude. She took from
the press a small leathern bag, containing an old silver cup, very much
battered, and a fork and spoon, so worn and thin, that the latter cut
like a knife. These, her only plate (the wedding present of Dagobert)
she rubbed and polished as well as she was able, and laid by the side of
her son's plate. They were the most precious of her possessions, not so
much for what little intrinsic value might attach to them, as for the
associations they recalled; and she had often shed bitter tears, when,
under the pressure of illness or want of employment, she had been
compelled to carry these sacred treasures to the pawnbroker's.
Frances next took, from the lower shelf of the press, a bottle of water,
and one of wine about three-quarters full, which she also placed near
her son's plate; she then returned to the stove, to watch the cooking of
the supper.
Though Agricola was not much later than usual, the countenance of his
mother expressed both uneasiness and grief; one might have seen, by the
redness of her eyes, that she had been weeping a good deal. After
long and painful uncertainty, the poor woman had just arrived at the
conviction that her eyesight, which had been growing weaker and weaker,
would soon be so much impaired as to prevent her working even the two or
three hours a day which had lately been the extent of her labors.
Originally an excellent hand at her needle, she had been obliged, as
her eyesight gradually failed her, to abandon the finer for the
coarser sorts of work, and her earnings had necessarily diminished in
proportion; she had at length been reduced to the necessity of making
those coarse bags for the army, which took about four yards of sewing,
and were paid at the rate of two sous each, she having to find her own
thread. This work, being very hard, she could at most complete three
such bags in a day, and her gains thus amounted to threepence (six
sous)!
It makes one shudder to think of the great number of unhappy females,
whose strength has been so much exhausted by privations, old age, or
sickness, that all the labor of which they are capable, hardly suffices
to bring them in daily this miserable pittance. Thus do their gains
diminish in exact proportion to the increasing wants which age and
infirmity must occasion.
Happily, Frances had an efficient support in her son. A first-rate
workman, profiting by the just scale of wages adopted by M. Hardy, his
labor brought him from four to five shillings a day--more than double
what was gained by the workmen of many other establishments. Admitting
therefore that his mother were to gain nothing, he could easily maintain
both her and himself.
But the poor woman, so wonderfully economical that she denied herself
even some of the necessaries of life, had of late become ruinously
liberal on the score of the sacristy, since she had adopted the habit
of visiting daily the parish church. Scarcely a day passed but she had
masses sung, or tapers burnt, either for Dagobert, from whom she had
been so long separated, or for the salvation of her son Agricola, whom
she considered on the high-road to perdition. Agricola had so excellent
a heart, so loved and revered his mother, and considered her actions
in this respect inspired by so touching a sentiment, that he never
complained when he saw a great part of his week's wages (which he paid
regularly over to his mother every Saturday) disappear in pious forms.
Yet now and then he ventured to remark to Frances, with as much respect
as tenderness, that it pained him to see her enduring privations
injurious at her age, because she preferred incurring these devotional
expenses. But what answer could he make to this excellent mother, when
she replied with tears: "My child, 'tis for the salvation of your father
and yours too."
To dispute the efficacy of masses, would have been venturing on a
subject which Agricola, through respect for his mother's religious
faith, never discussed. He contented himself, therefore, with seeing her
dispense with comforts she might have enjoyed.
A discreet tap was heard at the door. "Come in," said Frances. The
person came in.
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE SISTER OF THE BACCHANAL QUEEN.
The person who now entered was a girl of about eighteen, short, and very
much deformed. Though not exactly a hunchback, her spine was curved; her
breast was sunken, and her head deeply set in the shoulders. Her face
was regular, but long, thin, very pale, and pitted with the small pox;
yet it expressed great sweetness and melancholy. Her blue eyes beamed
with kindness and intelligence. By a strange freak of nature, the
handsomest woman would have been proud of the magnificent hair twisted
in a coarse net at the back of her head. She held an old basket in her
hand. Though miserably clad, the care and neatness of her dress revealed
a powerful struggle with her poverty. Notwithstanding the cold, she
wore a scanty frock made of print of an indefinable color, spotted with
white; but it had been so often washed, that its primitive design and
color had long since disappeared. In her resigned, yet suffering face,
might be read a long familiarity with every form of suffering, every
description of taunting. From her birth, ridicule had ever pursued her.
We have said that she was very deformed, and she was vulgarly called
"Mother Bunch." Indeed it was so usual to give her this grotesque name,
which every moment reminded her of her infirmity, that Frances and
Agricola, though they felt as much compassion as other people showed
contempt for her, never called her, however, by any other name.
Mother Bunch, as we shall therefore call her in future, was born in the
house in which Dagobert's wife had resided for more than twenty years;
and she had, as it were, been brought up with Agricola and Gabriel.
There are wretches fatally doomed to misery. Mother Bunch had a very
pretty sister, on whom Perrine Soliveau, their common mother, the widow
of a ruined tradesman, had concentrated all her affection, while she
treated her deformed child with contempt and unkindness. The latter
would often come, weeping, to Frances, on this account, who tried to
console her, and in the long evenings amused her by teaching her to read
and sew. Accustomed to pity her by their mother's example, instead of
imitating other children, who always taunted and sometimes even beat
her, Agricola and Gabriel liked her, and used to protect and defend her.
She was about fifteen, and her sister Cephyse was about seventeen,
when their mother died, leaving them both in utter poverty. Cephyse was
intelligent, active, clever, but different to her sister; she had the
lively, alert, hoydenish character which requires air, exercise and
pleasures--a good girl enough, but foolishly spoiled by her mother.
Cephyse, listening at first to Frances's good advice, resigned herself
to her lot; and, having learnt to sew, worked like her sister, for
about a year. But, unable to endure any longer the bitter privations her
insignificant earnings, notwithstanding her incessant toil, exposed
her to--privations which often bordered on starvation--Cephyse, young,
pretty, of warm temperament, and surrounded by brilliant offers and
seductions--brilliant, indeed, for her, since they offered food to
satisfy her hunger, shelter from the cold, and decent raiment, without
being obliged to work fifteen hours a day in an obscure and unwholesome
hovel--Cephyse listened to the vows of a young lawyer's clerk, who
forsook her soon after. She formed a connection with another clerk, whom
she (instructed by the examples set her), forsook in turn for a bagman,
whom she afterwards cast off for other favorites. In a word, what with
changing and being forsaken, Cephyse, in the course of one or two years,
was the idol of a set of grisettes, students and clerks; and acquired
such a reputation at the balls on the Hampstead Heaths of Paris, by her
decision of character, original turn of mind, and unwearied ardor in all
kinds of pleasures, and especially her wild, noisy gayety, that she was
termed the Bacchanal Queen, and proved herself in every way worthy of
this bewildering royalty.
From that time poor Mother Bunch only heard of her sister at rare
intervals. She still mourned for her, and continued to toil hard to
gain her three-and-six a week. The unfortunate girl, having been taught
sewing by Frances, made coarse shirts for the common people and the
army. For these she received half-a-crown a dozen. They had to be
hemmed, stitched, provided with collars and wristbands, buttons, and
button holes; and at the most, when at work twelve and fifteen hours a
day, she rarely succeeded in turning out more than fourteen or sixteen
shirts a week--an excessive amount of toil that brought her in about
three shillings and fourpence a week. And the case of this poor girl
was neither accidental nor uncommon. And this, because the remuneration
given for women's work is an example of revolting injustice and savage
barbarism. They are paid not half as much as men who are employed at the
needle: such as tailors, and makers of gloves, or waistcoats, etc.--no
doubt because women can work as well as men--because they are more weak
and delicate--and because their need may be twofold as great when they
become mothers.