CHAPTER VI.

HOUSEHOLD FAMINE.

A narrow street in the heart of Paris; houses on each side, towering up so high that the sunshine never reached the earth upon which they stood; and those who lived in the lower stories scarcely knew what it was to see a gleam of pure light from Christmas to Christmas. The houses, solid, old, and moss-grown at the base, were crowded with human beings, who would gladly have worked for a livelihood, had any work been attainable in Paris that cruel season.

But there was stagnation in trade, and distress in all the land. Those who depended on toil for their daily bread, found all their efforts insufficient to appease the incessant cravings of hunger, which was a terrible disease all over France that year. But there was no work. Those who controlled capital held it close, thus paralyzing trade and adding to the general distress. Thousands and thousands of those who longed to be, in fact, the working people of Paris, suffered terribly for food. This want was felt all through the neighborhood we speak of. Scarcely a family within sight of it had enjoyed a sufficiency of food for weeks. Poverty drove them from story to story, while it kept them almost too weak to climb the stairs as they multiplied upward.

In a small room, under the roof of one of these houses, two women sat in idleness. They would have been glad to work, but that poor privilege was denied to them. They would more gladly have eaten something, but all the provisions they had in the room would scarcely have set forth the ghost of a meal. Still this destitution was borne with a sort of cheerful patience, which nothing but a native of France could have maintained under such circumstances. There was no abandonment to despondency—hunger had, sometimes, made these two females serious, but seldom morose; their burden of life grew heavier day by day, but up to this time it had not broken down the patience which is the most beautiful part of womanhood.

They sat together in the darkening room, two worn and half-famished creatures, wondering if the morrow would have something in store for them with a sort of forlorn hope, which neither had the spirit to express.

These two suffering women were mother and daughter; yet the mother was not at full mid-age, and a powerful constitution made her seem younger than she really was. She was handsome, too, spite of the famine that had pinched her features, and given that hungry light to her eyes. A large, fine woman, of the English type, full of natural health and energy this person had been only a year before; now she was subdued and broken down by sheer physical want.

The young girl who sat near her was a fair, gentle blonde, very thin, white and delicate: her great, blue eyes enlarged with craving; and her mouth tremulous, like that of an infant denied of its innocent wishes.

The woman had just come in from a long, long walk through country roads; her shoes were heavy with clinging mud, and all the edges of her dress were soiled. The girl noticed this, and said, with some anxiety,

“Mother, have you been far?”

“Yes, Marguerite, very far. Once more I have been to Versailles.”

“And for no good?”

“For no good! The guard refused me at the gate.”

These words were uttered with profound despondency. The poor woman closed her eyes, and leaned her head against the wall of the room as they left her lips, as if about to sleep or die. Marguerite started up and went to her, shivering with mingled pain and nervousness.

“Mamma! mamma!”

The woman was insensible. She had been walking all day without food, and come home hopeless. This had never happened before; through many a weary year of disappointment and pain that noble form had held its strength, but it gave way now, and a cold whiteness settled upon her. To her child she seemed dead.

“Oh! my poor, poor mamma! What can I do?” she cried out, wringing her hands in utter helplessness, for there was not even a cup of water in the room.

“Monsieur! Monsieur Jacques!”

The frightened girl beat her hands against the partition which divided her room from that of some poor neighbor; and cried out in her despair, “Monsieur Jacques! Monsieur Jacques!”

Directly a heavy and most singular man appeared at the door with his coat off, and an iron crucible in his hand.

“What is it, Marguerite, my child? What is hurting you!”

Marguerite came toward the man, and seized hold of his arms with both hands.

“Monsieur Jacques, she is dead. Look, look! the great God has taken her away from me!”

The poor girl was too horror-stricken for tears; but her face was so wild and white that the strange man flung his crucible on the floor, spattering the hot lead it held over the threshold, where it gleamed like silver. The next moment found the head of that insensible woman on his bosom, and his face close to hers. He was listening for her breath.

The girl stood by, mute as stone, watching him with her wild, blue eyes, that seemed twice their usual size. At last the man spoke,

“No, little one, she is not dead. Give me your hand, I will make you sure.”

Marguerite reached forth her hand, and Jacques laid it on the wrist he was handling. The well-formed hand fell down from his hold in limp immobility; but Marguerite, after bending her head a little while, cried out joyfully as an infant does when it hears a watch tick, “Oh! my good God! It beats—it beats!”

The girl fell down upon her knees, and, covering her face with both hands, kept repeating amid her tears,

“It beats—it beats! She is alive!”

“Yes, little one, she is alive. Do not cry! Do not cry so!”

The girl looked up, radiant in spite of her pallor and her tears.

“Oh, Monsieur Jacques! it is because I am so happy! How kind the good God is! How he makes us think light of trouble that seemed so great! Only this morning I was so sad, weeping because she must go out, and no breakfast; not a morsel of bread; not a drop of milk—in short, nothing. It was the third morning I had seen this, and it made my heart sick with trouble. But now that is so little, I smile at it. I have her here alive—she breathes—she opens her eyes! Oh, mamma! you have been so close to death, I thought you had gone and was about to die myself. Only for that tiny flutter in your wrist I could not have helped it. Ah! you know all about it. You look into my eyes, and say in your heart, ‘How this poor child loves me. She is worth living for.’”

Here Monsieur Jacques put Marguerite on one side with his hand, in which was a lump of brown bread. In the other he held a cup of water.

“Let her eat this, little one; then she will be strong, and tell us how all this happened.”

Marguerite reached out her hand for the bread.

“Oh, monsieur! let me give it to her. I so longed to see her eat it from my hand; but then it is yours—I have no right.”

Jacques was holding the woman’s head on his arm. She was conscious,—her eyes were wide open,—but quiet from perfect exhaustion. He surrendered the bread into those outstretched hands with a smile that illuminated his grim free into something better than beauty ever was to a man.

Marguerite held the water to her mother’s lips, and then placed a morsel of bread between them. This was feebly swallowed. At that moment, made aware that food was near, the woman started up, snatched at the bread, and devoured it ravenously. Marguerite began to cry again at this; then she laughed through her tears, and turned to Jacques, who looked on with two great tears rolling down his cheeks. Seizing his two hands, she fell to kissing them rapturously.

“It is you that I must thank. Where did you get it? bread, and such bread, all of flour; the last we had was half fern, that made our throats dry. She would not eat, but gave it all to me, saying that she had plenty put away, but liked to eat it by herself. That was wrong, very wrong; it cheated me into eating so much. Do you know, Monsieur Jacques, I fear—nay, I feel sure that she has eaten nothing. Oh! mamma, mamma! if I forgive you, it will be after you have eaten every crumb of monsieur’s bread.”

The woman, who had been devouring the bread like a hungry wolf, now dropped the last crust from her hands.

“Forgive me! I had forgotten you, little one; but the day was so long, and I walked fast both ways.”

Marguerite replaced the fragment of bread in her mother’s hands.

“Eat it all!” she said. “I have had enough, haven’t I, Monsieur Jacques?”

“Plenty,” answered the man. “Never fear; there is yet another loaf—the baker is my friend. Besides, I have made a discovery.”

“A discovery! What?” cried Marguerite. “I can believe anything since we have food. See, mamma is listening. Where shall we look for this discovery?”

“Here, in this house.”

“Here?”

“Yes, in the roof. We have been close to it all the time. What the people want is, first bread, then arms.”

“Well, monsieur.”

“And ammunition. Look!”

Jacques pointed to the crucible, which lay upon the floor, and the bright metal which covered the threshold, like a fantastic embroidery. Marguerite shook her head; she could understand nothing of this.

“There is plenty of it under the roof and about the old windows. The people want arms, powder, bullets—I make them, you understand. See, I gather this up—no harm is done. I melt it over again, run it into a mold, that you shall see—for Jacques not only works for the people, but he invents. Then I take my bag of bullets to the proper place, do a little work where I can get it, and come back with a pocket full of sous, enough for a little bread that is all flour, such as madame has eaten. So do not fear that she will faint again. To-morrow shall be a holiday—I don’t just now remember the saint, but we will find one to suit us, or do without. Between us, little one, saints are getting out of fashion since liberty took the lead—not that I like it altogether, mark; but we will have our holiday. In the morning I will go to market—that is, you shall go with me, and I will buy you six eggs, a sprig of parsley, perhaps an onion, who knows, with some milk, and—but it does not do so well when we promise overmuch; still make sure of this, it will be a feast providing we can get the work.”

Marguerite smiled, and took both her mother’s cold hands in hers.

“You hear, mamma, it is to be a feast!”

“Yes, I hear,” answered the woman, brightening into new life. “Give me plenty of food and I can do anything.”

“Ah!” said Marguerite, with a sigh. “Even food will not bring _him_ out of the Bastille.”

Monsieur Jacques laughed.

“The want of it may: people who starve are strong as giants. It is hunger which makes lions fierce; famish a man, and he becomes a wild beast. Food may not relieve your father, my little friend; hunger can—but for that what would my bullets be worth?”

The woman, who was listening keenly to all this, sat upright, and you could see the strong vitality of a great idea kindling through her frame.

“Go on, Monsieur Jacques, your words are worth more than the bread; they give life to ideas.”

“Yes, I know. We have found a saint worth all the martyrs in the calendar—nay, we must not call it a saint, but a goddess. Let the clergy take their saints; we want something to work for, not to pray to.”

The woman’s eyes grew bright as stars. Hunger had made them supernaturally large.

“This very day I would have knelt to the king. After so many years of waiting, I had made up my mind to speak to him, or be trampled under the feet of his horses; but though I fell upon the earth, it was of no avail, they would not allow me to reach him. Oh! those nobles are hard, hard as the rock. He did not look that way; so many persons surrounded him that I could no more get through them, or reach him, than I could have stopped an army.

“The king was on his way to Meudon, to hunt, they told me, and no one must impede the way. So they went by, horses and men, spattering me with mud. Ah! how grand they were, how their clothes shone and glittered! How rosy and plump they looked, while I was famishing, and _he_ in the depths of the Bastille. Ah, Monsieur Jacques! there is a great gulf between the good king and his people. Who will fill it up?”

“Wait,” said Jacques—“wait and work.”

“Ah! but mamma has already worked so hard,” said Marguerite, kissing her mother with pathetic tenderness. “It is my turn now. I will find something to do, if it is only to open and shut the mold in which Monsieur Jacques runs his bullets.”

“But can you do nothing better than that, little one?”

“Oh, many things!” answered the girl. “I can embroider beautifully, and make the loveliest things—but who will employ me? I have tried, oh! so hard, to get work.”

“No doubt, no doubt; but then work is the thing which no one can get in Paris. Even the earth refuses to do her part, and lets the seed dry up in her bosom, that is why France is so restless. But madame has just made a revelation—she spoke of some one in the Bastille.”

“She spoke of my father,” said Marguerite, in a sad, low voice.

“And is he in that awful place?”

“Sit down, monsieur, and I will tell you,” said the elder lady, “for you are almost the only friend we have, and I must confide in some one.”