The cobbler of Nîmes

The priest’s stout figure seemed to fill Charlot’s little shop, and he stood with his hands crossed behind his back looking down placidly at the shoemaker. He had a round, rosy, face with a succession of double chins and a nose like a turnip, but his eyes were kindly and he was nearly always smiling. Père Ambroise was popular; hardly a parish priest in Nîmes was more welcome as a visitor, and none were less feared. Children ran after the amiable father, babies crowed for him, invalids were glad to hear his cheery voice. He was not intended as a persecutor or a martyr; he was round and the world was round, and both revolved comfortably in their own orbits. Père Ambroise was lazy, and, Mère de Dieu, these wretched Camisards were as fleet of foot as mountain goats! The good priest preferred a good dinner and a soft bed in Nîmes. It was a season of trouble for his brethren who were outside of the protection of the garrison towns, and Père Ambroise was sorry for them. Chayla had been slain at Pont-de-Montvert; the Curé of Frugères shot in a rye field; the Curé of St. André de Lancèze thrown from the highest window of his own belfry; others had suffered violent deaths, and Père Ambroise felt that Nîmes was the safest spot for his residence. He did not belong to the missionaries or the prophets, but he raised his hand against no man, and more than one sufferer secretly blessed the stout father as he ambled along the Esplanade, or stopped to chat with the children.

He wore his usual expression of placidity, a certain unctuous, well-fed air,—the cheerfulness that comes from a full stomach and the digestion of an ox. He looked down with mild compassion on the drawn face of the hunchback. He pitied Charlot, but with all his worldly wisdom he had not the least comprehension of him. The cobbler greeted him respectfully, rising from his stool at his entrance.

“Sit down—sit down,” said Père Ambroise, with good-humored remembrance of the hunchback’s weariness. “I only came to pay for my shoes.”

As he spoke he tried the back of a chair with his hand before trusting his weight upon it. Being satisfied with its strength, he sat down with a sigh of relief, and drawing out his purse slowly counted out the money and laid it on Charlot’s bench.

“How is the business, my son?” he asked, blandly; “you seem to be always occupied.”

“Yes,” replied the shoemaker; “thanks to the bon Dieu I am well occupied. All men must try to walk, and most men wear shoes.”

“When they can afford them,” supplemented Père Ambroise. “You have a better trade than some of your competitors. All goes well with you, then?”

“As well as usual, mon père,” the hunchback replied quietly, “I live and I eat.”

“That is more than some do in Languedoc,” rejoined the father, with his usual placid philosophy, folding his fat hands on his portly front and gazing mildly around the shop. “Is your room above rented?” he asked, after a moment’s pause.

Charlot looked up quickly, his face changing a little, and then he bent over his work again.

“It is empty,” he answered; “I found a lodger often troublesome.”

“Yet you had one some weeks since,” remarked the priest calmly, “or I have been misinformed.”

Charlot stirred uneasily. “I rented it for three days only, mon père,” he said.

“Ah, yes—for three days,” repeated Père Ambroise, twirling his thumbs and looking up at the ceiling; “and your lodger then became Madame de St. Cyr’s steward. How was this, my son?”

The shoemaker’s fingers were twitching the thread nervously.

“It was an accident, Père Ambroise,” he said. “Madame de St. Cyr knew his family and heard that he was here.”

“She knew his family?” repeated the priest again, his twinkling eyes travelling down from the ceiling to the drawn face before him. “From what part of France did he come?”

“From Dauphiné,” le Bossu retorted shortly.

“Humph!” ejaculated Père Ambroise, taking up a shoe from the bench and examining it critically. “From Dauphiné—and his name is—?”

Charlot laid down his work and looked the good father in the eye.

“You love the family at St Cyr, mon père?” he asked gravely.

Père Ambroise nodded his head in assent, smiling a little all the while and patting the shoe in his hands.

“Then I pray you to ask me no more questions,” the hunchback said.

“Ah!” ejaculated Père Ambroise, and there was much significance in his tone.

There was a long pause. Charlot took up his work, cutting away at the sole of a shoe, and his visitor sat quite still, his fat person spreading comfortably over the chair and settling into it, after the fashion of soft, fleshy bodies.

“You go often to St. Cyr,” he remarked at last; “do you know that M. Montrevel is determined to make a clean sweep of these Camisards—of all heretics, in fact; that he will cleanse Languedoc of this corruption?”

“’Tis the king’s will,” remarked le Bossu, with a sigh, “but there is much suffering.”

“‘If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off,’” Père Ambroise retorted placidly; “heretics must suffer—fire here and hereafter.”

As he spoke, he rose deliberately and replaced his purse in his pocket.

“My son,” he said kindly, “take no more such lodgers—that is my advice, and you know that I am your friend.”

“I know it, mon père,” replied the shoemaker, respectfully accompanying the priest to the door.

The good father moved ponderously and at the threshold he paused a moment to look about the court, waving his hand to the two children who stood gaping at him. Then he bade Charlot farewell.

“Peace be to you, my son,” he said benignly, and passed slowly out into the Rue St. Antoine.

When he was gone Charlot put away his work and went back to the kitchen and set out his supper, some figs and black bread. He could not stitch, he could not meditate, he was troubled. He did not fear Père Ambroise, but he saw a cloud gathering over St. Cyr. He was a constant witness of cruelties to the Protestants, so common then that they scarcely made a ripple in the placid surface of every-day life. He saw the chain, the stake, the corpses of damned persons, and these things troubled him as they did not trouble other good Catholics. When the miserable appealed to him, his heart was touched with sympathy; he never mocked, he never refused a cup of water, as others did; he pitied because he too had suffered the world’s scorn. He could not think of these hideous things approaching Mademoiselle de St. Cyr; he would as soon have dreamed of casting an angel into hell; yet he began now to fear that the finger of Fate was moving slowly but surely in her direction. It sickened him; he sat down to eat, but the bread was as a stone between his teeth.

While he sat thus, looking at his frugal supper, he heard some one at the door of the shop, and went out to find Mère Tigrane. She grinned her hideous grin at him as he appeared. She had done a good business that day and her hands were empty and she jingled some coin in her pocket.

“I have sold all my fish, Petit Bossu,” she said, “and I’ve been to the château out there by St. Césaire. Dame! but mademoiselle has a white skin, whiter than the corpse we saw at the fair, and her cheeks are pink—but she’s a fury, mon chéri.”

Charlot frowned. “Is this all you have to say?” he asked sharply; “I am closing my shop.”

“Close it, my straight-back!” she replied, mocking him. “I stopped by to tell you that your lodger was out at St. Cyr,” she added, bursting into a hideous cackle of laughter at the sight of his angry face.

“You are a fool for your pains!” he retorted and slammed the door in her face.

“So ho!” she said, pointing her bony finger at the door; “you are out of temper, Petit Bossu, and I such a friend of yours too! The dog tears my petticoat and the hunchback slams the door in my face. Viens donc, Mère Tigrane; they treat you ill, but never mind, my rosebud, ’twill all be well yet for the good old woman and her dear little fish!”

And she took herself off, laughing and mumbling as she went.

Meanwhile, within the house, le Bossu left his supper untouched, and toiling up the ladder to his room, reverently lighted a taper before the shrine of the Virgin. He fell on his knees before it, and remained a long time, a deep shadow on his worn face, and his callous hands clasped and raised in an attitude of supplication.

At that moment the shadows were falling softly about the white walls of St. Cyr, and Rosaline stood looking out of the window of her own room, her face to the east, and singing softly, in all the joy of youth and innocence.

Ah, the contrast in the lives that touch each other so strangely in this world of ours!