The cobbler of Nîmes

The first day of the week Petit Bossu set his house in order. He swept the floor of the shop and put a cold dinner on the kitchen table that his guest might eat in his absence. Then he hung up his apron and blouse and, putting on his worn brown coat, slipped the leather strap of his wallet over his shoulder. Last he took a pair of slippers out of a cupboard and examined them with loving care and honest pride in their workmanship. They were small, high-heeled, blue slippers, daintily lined with white silk, and with rosettes of blue ribbon on the square toes. The little cobbler stroked them tenderly, fastened one bow more securely, and putting them carefully in his green bag, set out on his journey. It was early, and few people lounged in the streets, and le Bossu passed unheeded through the Rue St. Antoine, and went out at last at the Porte de France. His pace was always slow, and to-day he limped a little, but he kept cheerfully on, turning his face toward St. Césaire.

The highroad, white with dust, unrolled like a ribbon through a rugged plain which lay southwest of Nîmes, stretching from the low range of limestone mountains—the foothills of the Cévennes—on the north to the salt marshes of the Mediterranean on the south. Rocks cropped up on either side of the road; the country was wild and barren-looking, although here and there were fig trees and vineyards, and farther west was the fertile valley of the Vaunage. North of those limestone hills lay the Cévennes, where since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes the poor Huguenot peasants were making their desperate fight for liberty of conscience, against the might and the bigotry of Louis XIV. Their leader, Laporte, was dead, but he had been succeeded by Jean Cavalier and Roland, and revolt still raged in the caves and fastnesses of the upper Cévennes, though Maréchal Montrevel and the Intendant of Languedoc assured the king that they had wiped out the insurrection. But the “Barbets” or “Camisards,” as they were called in derision, though naming themselves “Enfants de Dieu,” kept up the fierce death-struggle. Meanwhile the city of Nîmes was judiciously orthodox in the presence of the dragoons, and many Huguenots went to mass rather than suffer torture and death. Not every man is made for a martyr, and there were terrors enough to awe the most heroic. The bodies of Protestants who died in prison were exposed at fairs for a fee, or dragged through the streets on hurdles to be burned, as a warning and example to the misguided who still lived.

Yet the busy life of every day went on; people bought and sold and got gain; others married and made feasts; children were born, to be snatched from Huguenot parents and baptized into the old religion; some men died and were buried, others were cast from the galleys, at Marseilles, into the sea. Such was life in Nîmes in those old days when the sign of Two Shoes hung over the humble shop on the Rue St. Antoine.

All this while le Bossu was trudging along the white road. He met many country people now, bringing their vegetables and poultry to town, and more than once he was saluted with the mocking cry, “Petit Bossu!” He kept steadily on, however, taking no heed, his face pale from the exertion, or the repression of his natural temper, which resented insults and injury more keenly than most people of his condition, in an age when the poor were as the beasts of the field to the upper classes. Many thoughts were passing in the hunchback’s mind, but he dwelt most upon the little blue slippers, and when he did, his brown eyes softened, the drawn expression on his thin face relaxed.

“The bon Dieu bless her,” he murmured; “to her I am not the hunchback or the cobbler—to her I am poor Charlot, her humble friend. Ciel! I would die for mademoiselle.”

He toiled slowly on; passing the village of St. Césaire, he turned sharply to the north, and walking through a grove of olive trees, came in sight of a château that nestled on the crest of a little eminence looking west toward the Vaunage. The sun shone on its white walls and sloping roof, and sparkled on its window panes. The building was not large, and it had a long, low wing at one side, the whole thrown into sharp relief by its background of mulberry trees. The house was partially closed, the wing showing green-shuttered windows, but the main part was evidently occupied. On the southern side was the garden, with high hedges of box, and toward this the cobbler turned his steps. As he approached the wicket-gate, which was set in a lofty part of the hedge, a dog began to bark furiously, and a black poodle dashed toward him as he entered, but recognizing the visitor, she ceased barking and greeted le Bossu with every demonstration of friendship.

“Ah, Truffe,” said the cobbler, gently, “where is your mistress? I have brought her the blue slippers at last.”

As if she understood the question, the poodle turned and, wagging her tail, led the way back between two rows of box toward the centre of the garden. The dog and the cobbler came out into an open circle well planted with rose bushes, that grew in wild profusion around the old sundial. Here were white roses and pink, yellow and red, large and small; and sweet and fragile they looked in the old garden, which was but poorly kept despite the neat hedges. On a rustic seat in the midst of the flowers sat a young girl, the sun shining on her fair hair, and tingeing with brown the red and white of her complexion. Her face and figure were charming, and she had almost the air of a child, dressed as she was in white, her flaxen hair falling in two long braids over her shoulders.

The dog began to bark again at the sight of her, running to her and back to the hunchback to announce the arrival of a friend. She looked up with a bright smile as the cobbler lifted his cap and laid down the green bag on the seat at her side.

“Ah, Charlot, you have my slippers at last,” she exclaimed gayly, her blue eyes full of kindness as she greeted her humble visitor.

“I have them, Mademoiselle Rosaline,” he replied, his worn face lighting up, “and they are almost worthy of the feet that will wear them.”

“Almost!” laughed mademoiselle, “you are a born courtier, Charlot—oh, what dears!”

Le Bossu had opened his bag and drawn out the blue slippers, holding them up for her admiration.

“They are pretty enough for a queen!” said Rosaline, taking them in her hands and looking at them critically, with her head on one side.

“Oh, Charlot, I shall never forgive you if they do not fit!”

“They will fit like gloves, mademoiselle,” the shoemaker replied complacently; “let me try them on for you.”

But she was not yet done with her examination.

“Where did you get the pattern for the rosettes?” she asked eagerly; “truly, they are the prettiest I have seen.”

“I copied them after a pair from Paris, mademoiselle,” he replied, as pleased as she at his own success. “The heels too are just like those worn at Versailles.”

Mademoiselle Rosaline laughed softly.

“I told you that you were a courtier, Charlot,” she said; “but they say that the king wears high red heels, because he is not tall.”

“But red heels would not please mademoiselle on blue shoes,” remarked the hunchback, smiling.

“But, Charlot,” said she, with a mischievous gleam of fun in her eyes, “if we must all be of the king’s religion, must we not all also wear his red heels?”

The cobbler’s pale face grew sad again.

“Alas, mademoiselle,” he said, with a sigh, “to you ’tis a jest, but to some—” he shook his head gravely, looking down at the little blue slippers in her lap.

“What is the matter?” she asked quickly, the smile dying on her lips. “Have they—been burning any one lately in Nîmes?”

“Nay, mademoiselle,” he replied, kneeling on one knee in the gravel path, and taking the slippers off her small feet to try on the new ones.

“Come, come, Charlot—tell me,” persisted his patroness, scarcely heeding the shoe that he was drawing on her right foot. “You are as solemn as an owl this morning.”

“I will tell mademoiselle,” he rejoined, reverently arranging the rosette and smoothing the white silk stocking around the slender ankle. “Then she must not blame me if she is horrified.”

“She is often horrified,” interrupted Rosaline, with a soft little laugh. “Go on, Charlot.”

“There was a fair on Saturday—mademoiselle knows, for I saw Babet there buying a silk handkerchief—”

“Babet cannot stay away from a fair for her life,” mademoiselle interpolated again.

“’Twas a very fine fair,” continued le Bossu, putting on the other slipper. “There were many attractions, and the jailer—Zénon—had the body of a damned woman there; Adolphe, the showman, exhibited it for half a crown. She, the dead woman, was, they say, one of the Huguenot prisoners from the Tour de Constance, and she died on her way here; she was to be examined by M. de Bâville for some reason,—what, I know not,—but she died on the road, and Zénon made much by the exhibition.”

Rosaline shuddered, the color fading from her cheeks.

“And you went to see that horrible, wicked spectacle, Charlot?” she demanded, in open disgust.

“Mademoiselle knows I am a good Catholic,” replied the cobbler, meekly, his eyes drooping before her look of disdain. “’Tis done for the good of our souls—to show us the fate of these misguided people.”

“Mon Dieu!” ejaculated mademoiselle, softly.

Silence fell between them unbroken save by the soft sounds of summer, the humming of the honey-bees, the murmur of the mulberry leaves stirred by a light wind. Mademoiselle sat looking vacantly at her new slippers, while the shoemaker still knelt on one knee watching her face with that pathetic expression in his eyes that we see only in the look of sufferers.

“That was not all I saw at the fair,” he went on at last. “In the tent there was also—”

Rosaline made a gesture of disgust.

“I will hear no more!” she cried indignantly.

“This will not horrify you, mademoiselle,” he replied gently; “’tis only the story of my new guest.”

Her face relaxed, partly because she saw that she had hurt the hunchback’s feelings.

“Well, you may tell me,” she said reluctantly.

“There was a young man there—in that tent— Nay, mademoiselle, I will say nothing more of it.” Le Bossu broke off, and then went on carefully: “He was in great anguish, and I saw that he was watched by a wicked old woman and one of the dragoons. I got him away to my house, and there I found he had no money, except one piece, and was in great trouble. He is—” the cobbler looked about keenly at the hedges, then he lowered his voice, “a Huguenot.”

“And what did you do with him?” Rosaline demanded eagerly.

“He is in my upper room now,” replied the hunchback, “but I do not know where he will go. He is not safe in Nîmes. I think he wants to join the Barbets, but, of course, he tells me nothing. He is a gentleman, mademoiselle, le Bossu knows, and very poor, like many of the Huguenots, and proud. I know no more, except that he was reckless enough to tell me his name.”

“What is it?” she asked, all interest now, and more than ever forgetful of her new slippers.

“François d’Aguesseau,” he answered, in an undertone, with another cautious glance behind him.

“’Tis all very strange,” remarked mademoiselle, regarding the worn face thoughtfully. “You are a good Catholic, Charlot, yet you imperil yourself to shelter a Huguenot.”

“The risk to me is very little,” he replied with great simplicity. “I am too humble for M. de Bâville, and how could I give him up? He is a kind young man, and in trouble; ah, mademoiselle, I also have had troubles. May the bon Dieu forgive me if I do wrong.”

“I do not think you do wrong, Charlot,” she said gently, “and I am sure the bon Dieu forgives you; but M. de Bâville will not.”

“I can die but once, mademoiselle,” he rejoined smiling.

“Why is it you always smile at death?” she asked.

“Ah, mademoiselle, you are not as I am,” he said quietly. “Death to me—the gates of Paradise stand open—suffering over—poverty no more!”

Tears gathered in Rosaline’s blue eyes.

“Do you suffer much now?” she asked.

“Nearly always,” he replied.

Again there was a painful silence. Then le Bossu recollected the slippers and rearranged the rosettes.

“They fit like gloves, mademoiselle,” he said calmly, “do they give you comfort?”

The girl roused herself.

“They are beautiful, Charlot,” she replied, standing up and pacing to and fro before the bench, to try them. “They do not even feel like new shoes. You are a magician.”

She had lifted her white skirts to show the two little blue feet. Le Bossu stood up too, admiring not only the slippers, but the beautiful face and the golden hair, as fair as the sunshine. Even Truffe, the poodle, danced about in open approval. Then they heard a sharp voice from the direction of the house.

“Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle Rosaline!” it called; “the dinner grows cold, and Madame de St. Cyr is waiting. Viens donc!”

“Poor Babet!” laughed Rosaline; “I am her torment. Come to the house, Charlot; she will have a dinner for you also, and grandmother will be delighted with these beautiful slippers. Come, Truffe, you at least are hungry, you little gourmande.”