Chapter II

I got up at about eight o’clock the next morning. It was foggy and dark. As I drew aside the hangings of the bed, I noticed that the snow was drifted on a level with the windows; the sashes were all white. I began to reflect upon the sad condition of my companions; they must have suffered with the cold, particularly old Bremer and Bertha, and the idea filled me with sorrow. As I was reflecting thus, a strange noise arose outside. It drew near the inn, and I sprang anxiously to the window to see if some new dangers were threatening. They were bringing the famous band of robbers to confront Dame Grédel Dick, who was not yet sufficiently recovered from her fright to venture out of doors. My poor comrades came down the street between a double file of police, and followed by a crowd of street urchins, who screamed and yelled like savages. It seems to me that I can still see that terrible scene: poor Bremer chained between his sons, Ludwig and Karl, Wilfred behind them, and Bertha bringing up the rear and crying piteously: “In the name of Heaven, my masters, have pity on a poor, innocent harpist! I kill? I steal? O God! can it be?” She wrung her hands distractedly. The others proceeded with bowed heads, their hair falling over their faces.

The crowd swarmed into the dark alleyway of the inn. The guards drove back the rabble, and the door was closed and barred. The eager crowd remained outside, standing ankle-deep in slush, with their noses flattened against the panes. A profound silence settled upon the house. Having by this time got into my clothes, I opened the door part way to listen, and see if it would be possible to escape from my unpleasant quarters. I heard the sound of voices and of people moving about on the lower floors, which convinced me that the passages were strongly guarded. My door opened on the landing, directly opposite the window through which the man had fled two nights before. I did not pay any attention to this circumstance at first, but as I stood there I suddenly noticed that the window was open, and that there was no snow on the sill; approaching it, I saw fresh tracks along the wall. I shuddered. The man must have returned last night; perhaps visited the inn every night. It was a revelation to me, and at once the mystery began to clear up.

“Oh! if it were only true,” I said to myself, “that fortune had placed the murderer’s fate in my hands, my unhappy fellows would be saved!” And I followed with my eyes the footprints, which led with surprising distinctness to the opposite roof. At this moment some words fell on my ear. The door of the dining hall had just been opened to let in the fresh air, and I heard the following conversation: “Do you recall having taken part in the murder of Ulmet Elias on the twentieth of this month?” Some unintelligible words followed, “Close the door, Madoc!” said the bailiff; “the woman is ill.” I heard no more. As I stood with my head resting against the balusters, a sudden resolution seized me. “I can save my comrades!” I exclaimed; “God has pointed out to me the means, and if I fail to do my duty, their blood will be upon my head. My self-respect and peace of mind will be forever lost, and I shall consider myself the most cowardly of wretches.” It took me some time, however, to summon up resolution enough. Then I went downstairs and entered the dining-room.

“Did you ever see this watch before?” the bailiff was saying to Dame Grédel. “Do your best to remember!” Without waiting for her answer, I stepped forward and replied firmly: “That watch, bailiff? I have seen it before in the hands of the murderer himself. I recognize it perfectly, and if you will only listen to me, I will agree to deliver the man into your hands this very night.” Perfect stillness followed my bold declaration. The officials stared at each other, dumfounded; my comrades seemed to cheer up a bit. “I am the companion of these unfortunate people,” I continued, “and I say it without shame, for every one of them is honest, even if he is poor, and there is not one among them capable of committing the crimes imputed to him.”

Again silence followed. Dame Bertha began to weep quietly. At last the bailiff aroused himself. Looking at me sharply, he said: “Where do you pretend to deliver the assassin into our hands?” “Right here in this very house! And to convince you of it, I only ask for a moment’s private conversation.” “Let us hear what you have to say,” he replied, rising. He motioned Madoc to follow us; the others remained. We left the room. I went hastily up the stairs, with the others at my heels. Pausing at the window on the third floor, I showed them the man’s footprints in the snow. “Those are the murderer’s tracks!” I said; “he visits this house every night. Yesterday he came at two in the morning; last night he returned, and he will undoubtedly be back again this evening.”

The bailiff and Madoc examined the footprints without a word. “How do you know that these are the murderer’s tracks?” asked the chief of police, doubtfully. Thereupon I told him of the man’s appearance in our loft. I pointed out to them the little window above us through which I had watched him as he fled in the moonlight, and which Wilfred had not seen, as he remained in bed. I admitted that it was mere chance that had led me to the discovery of the tracks made the night before.

“It is strange!” muttered the bailiff; “this greatly modifies the position of the accused. But how do you explain the presence of the robber in the cellar?” “That robber was myself.” I now related briefly everything that had taken place from the time of my comrades’ arrest until the moment of my flight from the inn. “That will do,” said the bailiff; and, turning toward the chief of police, he added: “I must admit, Madoc, that the depositions of these musicians never seemed to me very conclusive of their guilt; moreover, their passports established an alibi difficult to controvert. Nevertheless, young man,” turning to me, “in spite of the plausibility of the proofs you have given us, you must remain in our power until they are verified. Keep him in sight, Madoc, and take your measures accordingly.” The bailiff descended the stairs thoughtfully, and, refolding his papers, he said, without continuing the examination: “Let the accused be taken back to the prison!” And with a scornful glance at the landlady, he departed, followed by the secretary. Madoc alone remained with two officials.

“Madame,” he said to Dame Grédel, “maintain the strictest secrecy about what has happened, and give this brave young man the same room he occupied night before last.” Madoc’s look and emphasis admitted of no reply. Dame Grédel swore she would do whatever was required of her if she could only be rid of the robbers! Madoc replied: “We shall stay here all day and to-night to protect you. Go about your work in peace, and begin by giving us some breakfast. My good fellow, you will give us the pleasure of dining with us?” My situation did not permit me to decline. I accepted accordingly, and we soon found ourselves seated before a leg of ham and a jug of Rhine wine. Other people arrived from time to time, and endeavored to elicit the confidence of Dame Grédel and Annette, but they maintained a discreet silence, for which they deserve no little credit. We spent the afternoon smoking our pipes and emptying our mugs; no one paid any attention to us.

The chief of police, in spite of his sallow face, piercing glance, pale lips, and sharp nose, was excellent company after a bottle or two; he told us some excellent stories, and at every word of his the other two burst out laughing. I remained gloomy and silent. “Come, my dear young fellow!” he said to me with a smile, “forget for a little the death of your respectable grandmother. Take a drop, and put your troublesome thoughts to flight.”

Others joined in the conversation, and the time passed in the midst of tobacco smoke, the clinking of glasses, and the ringing of mugs. But at nine o’clock, after the watchman’s visit, the expression of things changed. Madoc rose and said: “Well, my friends, let us proceed to business. Fasten the doors and shutters quietly! You, ladies, may go to bed!” His two tattered followers looked more like robbers themselves than like props of law and order. Each drew a club with a knob of lead attached to one end, from his trousers’ leg, and Madoc tapped his breast pocket to make sure that his pistol was there. This done, he bid me lead them to the loft. We climbed the stairs. Having reached the little room, where thoughtful little Annette had taken care to light a fire, Madoc, cursing between his teeth, hastened to throw water on the coals; then motioning to the pile of straw, he said to me: “You may go to sleep if you like.”

He sat down, together with his two acolytes, at the end of the room close to the wall, and they put out the light. I lay down on the straw, breathing a prayer to the Almighty to send hither the assassin. After midnight the silence became so profound that you would never have suspected three men were there with wide-open eyes, on the alert for the slightest sound. The hours wore slowly away. I could not sleep. A thousand terrible ideas teemed in my brain. One o’clock--two o’clock--three o’clock struck, and nothing appeared. At three o’clock one of the officials stirred slightly. I thought the man had come at last. But again all was still. I began to think that Madoc would take me for an impostor, as he must be only too ready to do, and that in the morning things would fare badly with me; thus, instead of helping my companions, I should only be fettered with them.

The time seemed to me to pass very rapidly after three o’clock. I wished the night might last forever, that the only ray of hope might not be gone. I was starting to go over all these thoughts for the fiftieth time, when, suddenly, without my having heard a sound, the window opened and two eyes glistened in the opening. Nothing stirred in the loft. “The others are asleep,” I thought. The head remained in the opening, listening. The wretch seemed to suspect something. My heart galloped and the blood coursed through my veins. I dared not even breathe. A few moments passed thus. Then, suddenly, the man seemed to make up his mind. He let himself down into the loft with the same caution as on the preceding night. On the instant a terrible cry, short, piercing, blood-curdling, resounded through the house. “We’ve got him!”

The whole house shook from cellar to attic; cries, struggles, and hoarse shouts, coupled with muttered oaths, filled the loft. The man roared like a wild beast, and his opponents breathed painfully as they battled with his terrible strength. Then there was a crash that made the flooring creak, and I heard nothing more but a gritting of teeth and a rattle of chains. “A light here!” cried the formidable Madoc. And as the sulphur burned, illuminating the place with its bluish light, I vaguely distinguished the forms of the three officials kneeling above the prostrate man. One of them was holding him by the throat, another had sunk his knees into his chest, and Madoc encircled his wrists with handcuffs hard enough to crush them. The man, in his shirt sleeves as before, seemed inert, save that one of his powerful legs, naked from the knee to the ankle, raised up from time to time and struck the floor with a convulsive movement. His eyes were literally starting from his head, and his lips were covered with a bloody foam. Scarcely had I lighted the taper when the officials exclaimed, thunderstruck: “Our Dean!” All three got up and stood staring at each other, white with astonishment. The bloodshot eyes of the murderer turned on Madoc. He tried to speak, and after a moment I heard him murmur: “What a terrible dream! My God, what a terrible dream!” Then he sighed and became motionless.

I approached to take a look at him. It was indeed the man who had given us advice on the road to Heidelberg. Perhaps he had had a presentiment that we would be the means of his destruction, for people do sometimes have these terrible forebodings. As he did not stir, and a tiny stream of blood flowed on the dusty floor, Madoc, rousing himself from his stupor, bent over him and tore away his shirt; we then saw that he had stabbed himself to the heart with his great knife. “Ho! ho!” cried Madoc, with a sinister smile, “our Dean has cheated the gallows. You others stay here while I go and notify the bailiff.” He picked up his hat, that had fallen off during the mêlée, and left without another word. I remained opposite the corpse, with the two others.

The news spread like wildfire. It was a sensation for the neighborhood. Dean Daniel Van den Berg enjoyed a fortune and a reputation so well established that many people refused to believe in the abominable instincts which dominated him. The matter was discussed from every conceivable point of view. Some held that he was a somnambulist and irresponsible for his acts; others that he was a murderer through love of blood, having no other possible motive for committing these crimes. Perhaps both were right, for it is an undeniable fact that moral being, will, soul, whatever name you choose to call it by, is wanting in the somnambulist. The animal nature left to itself naturally yields to the dictates of its pacific or sanguinary instincts. Be that as it may, my comrades were at once restored to liberty. Little Annette was quoted for a long time after as a model of devotion. She was even sought in marriage by the son of the burgomaster Trungott, a romantic youth, who will one day disgrace his family.

As for me, I lost no time in returning to the Black Forest, where, since that time I have officiated as leader of the orchestra at the Sabre Vert Tavern, on the road to Tubingen. If you should ever happen to pass that way, and my story has interested you, come in and see me. We will drink a bottle or two together, and I will relate to you certain details that will make your hair stand on end.

AT THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE
BY ALPHONSE DAUDET

_Alphonse Daudet, best known among English-speaking people
perhaps as author of the humorous “Tartarin de Tarascon,”
written in 1872, was born at Nîmes, 1840, and died at Paris,
1897. For such novels as “Sapho,” “Sidonie,” “Numa Roumestan,”
etc., he has been called a stern censor, unsparing in his
exposition of, and satire on, the weakness and hypocrisy of
human nature. But that he has a warm, sympathetic side to his
nature, too, is plain enough in the following story, which,
on the whole, is an almost perfect example of Daudet’s art.
Jules Claretie said of him that he was a “winged realist,”
with a lightness and depth of touch that yet never forgot the
realities of life. He was subjective, not objective._

AT THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE
BY ALPHONSE DAUDET

Translated by Mrs. Dallas Bache.
Copyright, 1898, by The Current Literature Publishing Company.

I know not if it be from lack of habit, but I can never enter the Palais de Justice without an uneasiness, an inexplicable heart pang. That grating, those great courts, that stone staircase so vast that every one mounts it in isolation, enveloped in his individual torment. The antiquity of the structures, the melancholy clock, the height of the windows, and also the mist of the quay, that moisture that clings to walls that skirt the water, all give you a foretaste of the neighboring prison. In the halls the impression is the same, or more vivid still, because of the peculiar company which peoples them, because of those long black robes which make the solemn gestures, because of those who accuse, and the unintelligible records, the eternal records spread out everywhere on the tables, carried under the arms in enormous bundles, overflowing--

There are great green doors, noiseless and mysterious, from whence escape--when they are ajar--gusts of voices severe or weeping, and visions of school benches, platforms black with caps, and great crucifixes leaning forward. Muskets ring out on the flags. Sinister rumblings of carriages pass shaking the arches. All these noises blended together are like a respiration, the panting breath of a factory, the apparatus of justice at work. And hearing this terrible machine at labor, one desires to shrink within himself, to dwindle for fear of being caught, even by a hair, in this formidable gearing which one knows to be so complicated, tenacious, destructive--

I was thinking of this the other morning, in going to see an examining magistrate before whom I had, in behalf of a poor devil, to recommend a stay of proceedings. The hall of witnesses, where I was waiting, was full of people, sheriff’s officers, clerks engrossing behind a glass partition, witnesses whispering to each other in advance of their depositions, women of the people, impressive and garrulous who were telling the officers their entire lives in order to arrive at the affair that had brought them there. Near me, an open door lit the sombre lobby of the examining magistrate, a lobby which leads everywhere, even to the scaffold, and from which the prisoners issue as accused. Some of these unfortunates, brought there under a strong escort by way of the staircase of la Conciergerie, lay about on the benches awaiting their turn to be interrogated, and it is in this ante-chamber of the convict prison that I overheard a lovers’ dialogue, an idyl of the faubourg, as impassioned as “l’Oarystis,” but more heartbreaking--Yes, in the midst of this shadow, where so many criminals have left something of their shuddering, of their hopes, and of their rages, I saw two beings love, and smile; and however lowly was this love, however faded was this smile, the old lobby must have been as astonished by it as would a miry and black street of Paris, if penetrated by the cooing of a turtle-dove.

* * * * *

In a listless attitude, almost unconscious, a young girl was seated at the end of a bench, quiet as a working woman who waits the price of her day’s labor. She wore the calico bonnet, and the sad costume of Saint-Lazare with an air of repose and of well-being, as though the prison régime were the best thing she had found in all her life. The guard, who sat beside her, seemed to find her much to his taste, and they laughed together softly. At the other end of the lobby, wholly in the shadow, was seated, handcuffs on wrists, the Desgrieux of this Manon. She had not seen him at first; but as soon as her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she perceived him and trembled: “Why, that’s Pignou--hé! Pignou!”--

The guard silenced her. The prisoners are expressly forbidden to talk to each other.

“Oh! I beg of you, only one word!” she said, leaning far forward toward the remotest part of the lobby.

But the soldier remained inflexible. “No--no--it can’t be done--only if you have some message to give him, tell it to me, I will repeat it to him.”

Then a dialogue was entered into between this girl and her Pignou, with the guard as interpreter.

Much moved, without heeding those about her, she began:

“Tell him I have never loved any one but him; that I will never love another in all my life.”

The guard made a number of steps in the lobby, and redoubling his gravity as though to take from the proceeding all that was too kindly, he repeated: “She says she has never loved but you, and that she’ll never love another.”

I heard a grumbling, a confused stammering which must have been the response of Pignou, then the guard went back with measured step toward the bench.

“What did he say?” demanded the child all anxious, and as though waiting were too long: “Well, tell me what he said now?”

“He said he was very miserable!”--

Then, carried away by her emotion and the custom of the noisy and communicative streets, she cried out loud:

“Don’t be weary, m’ami--the good days will come again!”

And in this voice, still young, there was something piteous, almost maternal. Plainly this was the woman of the people with her courage under affliction and her dog-like devotion.

From the depths of the lobby, a voice replied, the voice of Pignou, wine-soaked, torn, burned with alcohol:

“Va donc! the good days--I’ll have them at the end of my five years.”

He knew his case well, that one!--

The guards cried: “Chut!--Keep quiet!”--But too late.

* * * * *

A door had opened, and the examining magistrate himself appeared on the sill.

Skull-cap of velvet, grizzled whiskers, mouth thin and evil, the eye scrutinizing, distrustful, but not profound, it was just the type of an examining magistrate, one of those men who thinks he has a criminal before him always, like those doctors of the insane who see maniacs everywhere. That one in particular had a certain way of looking at you, so annoying, and so insulting, that you felt guilty without having done anything. With one glance of the eye he terrified all the lobby: “What does all this noise mean?--Try to do your duty a little better,” he said, addressing the guards. Then he closed his door with a sharp click.

* * * * *

The municipal guard taken to task, red, mortified, looked around a moment for some one upon whom to lay the blame. But the little girl said nothing more, Pignou sat quiet on his bench--All at once he perceived me, and as I was at the door of the hall, almost in the lobby, he took me by the arm and jerked me around brutally.

“What are you doing there, you?”

BOUM-BOUM
BY ARSÈNE ARNAUD CLARETIE

_Jules Claretie, as he is known in the literary world, was
born at Limoges in 1840, and was educated at Paris, where in
1860 he adopted journalism for a living; contributed a great
variety of papers to the journals, under his own name and under
the various pseudonyms of Olivier de Salin, Candide, Perdican,
etc. In 1885 he became administrator of the Comédie Française,
and in 1888 Member of the French Academy. He was Anatole
France’s predecessor as editor of “Le Temps.”_

_Claretie has written a great number of works, a “History
of the Revolution 1870-1871,” belles-lettres, biographies,
criticism, etc. Among his novels may be mentioned the first,
“Une Drôlesse,” published in 1862; “Les Muscadins,” “Monsieur
le Ministre” which the author dramatized, and “L’Accusateur,”
1897._

BOUM-BOUM
BY JULES CLARETIE

Translated by Mary Stuart Symonds.
Copyright, 1891, by The Current Literature Publishing Company.

The child was lying stretched out in his little, white bed, and his eyes, grown large through fever, looked straight before him, always with the strange fixity of the sick who already perceive what the living do not see.

The mother at the foot of the bed, torn by suffering and wringing her hands to keep herself from crying, anxiously followed the progress of the disease on the poor, emaciated face of the little being. The father, an honest workman, kept back the tears which burned his eyelids.

The day broke clear and mild, a beautiful morning in June, and lighted up the narrow room in the street of the Abessess where little François, the child of Jacques and Madeleine Legrand, lay dying. He was seven years old and was very fair, very rosy, and so lively. Not three weeks ago he was gay as a sparrow; but a fever had seized him and they had brought him home one evening from the public school with his head heavy and his hands very hot. From that time he had been here in this bed and sometimes in his delirium when he looked at his little well-blackened shoes, which his mother had carefully placed in a corner on a board, he said:

“You can throw them away now, little François’ shoes! Little François will not put them on any more! Little François will not go to school any more--never, never!”

Then the father cried out and said: “Wilt thou be still!” And the mother, very pale, buried her blond head in his pillow so that little François could not hear her weep.

This night the child had not been delirious; but for the two days past the doctor had been uneasy over an odd sort of prostration which resembled abandon, it was as if at seven years the sick one already felt the weariness of life. He was tired, silent, sad, and tossed his little head about on the bolster. He had no longer a smile on his poor, thin lips, and with haggard eyes he sought, seeing they knew not what, something there beyond, very far off--

In Heaven! Perhaps! thought Madeleine, trembling.

When they wished him to take some medicine, some sirup, or a little soup, he refused. He refused everything.

“Dost thou wish anything, François?”

“No, I wish nothing!”

“We must draw him out of this,” the doctor said. “This torpor frightens me!--you are the father and the mother, you know your child well--Seek for something to reanimate this little body, recall to earth this spirit which runs after the clouds!”

Then he went away.

“Seek!”

Yes, without doubt they knew him well, their François, these worthy people! They knew how it amused him, the little one, to plunder the hedges on Sunday and to come back to Paris on his father’s shoulders laden with hawthorne--Jacques Legrand had bought some images, some gilded soldiers, and some Chinese shadows for François; he cut them out, put them on the child’s bed and made them dance before the bewildered eyes of the little one, and with a desire to weep himself he tried to make him laugh.

“Dost thou see, it is the broken bridge--Tire tire tire!--And that is a general!--Thou rememberest we saw one, a general, once, in the Bois de Boulogne?--If thou takest thy medicine well I will buy thee a real one with a cloth tunic and gold epaulets--Dost thou wish for him, the general, say?”

“No,” replied the child, with the dry voice which fever gives.

“Dost thou wish a pistol, some marbles--a crossbow?”

“No,” repeated the little voice, clearly and almost cruelly.

And to all that they said to him, to all the jumping-jacks, to all the balloons that they promised him, the little voice--while the parents looked at each other in despair--responded:

“No.”--“No.”--“No!”

“But what dost thou wish, my François?” asked the mother. “Let us see, there is certainly something thou wouldst like to have--Tell it, tell it to me! to me!--thy mother!” And she laid her cheek on the pillow of the sick boy and whispered this softly in his ear as if it were a secret. Then the child, with an odd accent, straightening himself up in his bed and stretching out his hand eagerly toward some invisible thing, replied suddenly in an ardent tone, at the same time supplicating and imperative:

“I want Boum-Boum!”

Boum-Boum.

Poor Madeleine threw a frightened look toward her husband. What did the little one say? Was it the delirium, the frightful delirium, which had come back again?

Boum-Boum!

She did not know what that meant, and she was afraid of these singular words which the child repeated with a sickly persistence as if, not having dared until now to formulate his dream, he grasped the present time with invincible obstinacy:

“Yes, Boum-Boum! Boum-Boum! I want Boum-Boum!”

The mother had seized Jacques’s hand and spoke very low, as if demented.

“What does that mean, Jacques? He is lost!”

But the father had on his rough, working man’s face a smile almost happy, but astonished too, the smile of a condemned man who foresees a possibility of liberty.

Boum-Boum! He remembered well the morning of Easter Monday when he had taken François to the circus. He had still in his ears the child’s outbursts of joy, the happy laugh of the amused boy, when the clown, the beautiful clown, all spangled with gold and with a great gilded butterfly sparkling, many-colored, on the back of his black costume, skipped across the track, gave the trip to a rider or held himself motionless and stiff on the sand, his head down and his feet in the air. Or again he tossed up to the chandelier some soft, felt hats which he caught adroitly on his head, where they formed, one by one, a pyramid; and at each jest, like a refrain brightening up his intelligent and droll face, he uttered the same cry, repeated the same word, accompanied now and then by a burst from the orchestra: Boum-Boum!

Boum-Boum! and each time that it rang out, Boum-Boum, the audience burst out into hurrahs and the little one joined in with his hearty, little laugh. Boum-Boum! It was this Boum-Boum, it was the clown of the circus, it was this favorite of a large part of the city that little François wished to see and to have and whom he could not have and could not see since he was lying here without strength in his white bed.

In the evening Jacques Legrand brought the child a jointed clown, all stitched with spangles, which he had bought in a passageway and which was very expensive. It was the price of four of his working days! But he would have given twenty, thirty, he would have given the price of a year’s labor to bring back a smile to the pale lips of the sick child.

The child looked at the plaything a moment as it glistened on the white cover of the bed, then said, sadly:

“It is not Boum-Boum!--I want to see Boum-Boum!”

Ah! if Jacques could have wrapped him up in his blankets, could have carried him to the circus, could have shown him the clown dancing under the lighted chandelier and have said to him, Look! He did better, Jacques, he went to the circus, demanded the address of the clown, and timidly, his legs shaking with fear, he climbed, one by one, the steps which led to the apartment of the artist, at Montmartre. It was very bold this that Jacques was going to do! But after all the comedians go to sing and recite their monologues in drawing-rooms, at the houses of the great lords. Perhaps the clown--oh! if he only would--would consent to come and say good-day to François. No matter, how would they receive him, Jacques Legrand, here at Boum-Boum’s house?

He was no longer Boum-Boum! He was Monsieur Moreno, and, in the artistic dwelling, the books, the engravings, the elegance was like a choice decoration around the charming man who received Jacques in his office like that of a doctor.

Jacques looked, but did not recognize the clown, and turned and twisted his felt hat between his fingers. The other waited. Then the father excused himself. “It was astonishing what he came there to ask, it could not be--pardon, excuse--But in short, it was concerning the little one--A nice little one, monsieur. And so intelligent! Always the first at school, except in arithmetic, which he did not understand--A dreamer, this little one, do you see! Yes, a dreamer. And the proof--wait--the proof--”

Jacques now hesitated, stammered; but he gathered up his courage and said bruskly:

“The proof is that he wishes to see you, that he thinks only of you, and that you are there before him like a star which he would like to have, and that he looks--”

When he had finished the father was deadly pale and he had great drops on his forehead. He dared not look at the clown who remained with his eyes fixed on the workman. And what was he going to say, this Boum-Boum? Was he going to dismiss him, take him for a fool and put him out the door?

“You live?” asked Boum-Boum.

“Oh! very near! Street of the Abessess!”

“Come!” said the other. “Your boy wants to see Boum-Boum? Ah, well, he is going to see Boum-Boum.”

* * * * *

When the door opened and showed the clown, Jacques Legrand cried out joyfully to his son:

“François, be happy, child! See, here he is, Boum-Boum!”

A look of great joy came over the child’s face. He raised himself on his mother’s arm and turned his head toward the two men who approached, questioning, for a moment, who it was by the side of his father; this gentleman in an overcoat, whose good, pleasant face he did not know. When they said to him: “It is Boum-Boum!” he slowly fell back on the pillow and remained there, his eyes fixed, his beautiful large, blue eyes, which looked beyond the walls of the little room, and were always seeking the spangles and the butterfly of Boum-Boum, like a lover who pursues his dream.

“No,” replied the child with a voice which was no longer dry, but full of despair, “no, it is not Boum-Boum.”

The clown, standing near the little bed, threw upon the child an earnest look, very grave, but of an inexpressible sweetness.

He shook his head, looked at the anxious father, the grief-stricken mother, and said, smiling, “He is right, this is not Boum-Boum!” and then he went out.

“I can not see him, I will never see Boum-Boum any more!” repeated the child, whose little voice spoke to the angels. “Boum-Boum is perhaps there, there, where little François will soon go.”

And suddenly--it was only a half-hour since the clown had disappeared--the door opened quickly, and in his black, spangled clothes, his yellow cap on his head, the gilded butterfly on his breast and on his back, with a smile as big as the mouth of a money-box and a powdered face, Boum-Boum, the true Boum-Boum, the Boum-Boum of the circus, the Boum-Boum of the popular neighborhood, the Boum-Boum of little François--Boum-Boum appeared.

Lying on his little white bed the child clapped his thin, little hands, laughing, crying, happy, saved, with a joy of life in his eyes, and cried “Bravo!” with his seven-year gaiety, which all at once kindled up like a match:

“Boum-Boum! It is he, it is he, this time! Here is Boum-Boum! Long live Boum-Boum! Good-day, Boum-Boum.”

And when the doctor came back, he found, seated by little François’s bedside, a clown with a pale face, who made the little one laugh again and again, and who said to the child while he was stirring a piece of sugar into a cup of medicine:

“Thou knowest, if thou dost not drink, little François, Boum-Boum will not come back any more.”

So the child drank.

“Is it not good?”

“Very good!--thanks, Boum-Boum!”

“Doctor,” said the clown to the doctor, “do not be jealous--It seems to me that my grimaces will do him as much good as your prescriptions!”

The father and the mother wept, but this time from joy.

Until little François was on his feet again a carriage stopped every day before the dwelling of a workman in the street of the Abessess, at Montmartre, and a man got out with a gay powdered face, enveloped in an overcoat with the collar turned back, and underneath it one could see a clown’s costume.

“What do I owe you, monsieur?” said Jacques, at last, to the master-clown when the child took his first walk, “for now I owe you something!”

The clown stretched out his two soft, Herculean hands to the parents.

“A shake of the hand!” said he.

Then placing two great kisses on the once more rosy cheeks of the child:

“And (laughing) permission to put on my visiting-card:

“BOUM-BOUM

_Acrobatic Doctor and Physician in ordinary to little
François!_”