Mlle. Fouchette: A Novel of French Life

by Charles Theodore Murray

He was, in fact, so unbearably a bear in his treatment of little Fouchette that only the most extraordinary circumstances would seem to excuse him.

And the circumstances were quite extraordinary. Jean was suffering from personal notoriety. Unseen hands were tossing him about and pulling him to pieces. Unknown purposes held him as in a vice.

Within the last two weeks his mail had grown from two to some twenty letters a day,—most of which letters were not only of a strongly incendiary nature, but expressed a wholly false conception of his political position and desires. He was being inundated by indiscriminate praise and abuse. There were reams of well-meant advice and quires of threats of violence.

Among these letters had been some enclosing money and drafts to a considerable amount,—to be used in a way which was plainly apparent. From a distinguished royalist he had received in a single cover the sum of ten thousand francs "for the cause." From another had come five thousand francs for his "personal use." Various smaller sums aggregated not less than ten thousand francs more, most of which was to be expended at discretion in the restoration of a "good" and "stable" and "respectable" government to unhappy France. Besides cash were drafts and promises,—the latter reaching unmeasured sums. And interspersed with all these were strong hints of political preferment that would have turned almost any youthful head less obstinate than that which ornamented the broad shoulders of Jean Marot.

At first Jean was amused, then he was astonished. Finally he became indignant and angry to the bursting-point.

It was several days before he could adequately comprehend what had provoked this furious storm, with its shower of money and warning flashes of wrath and rumblings of violence. Then it became clear that he was being made the political tool of the reactionary combination then laying the axe at the root of the republican tree. The Orléanists, Bonapartists, Anti-Semites, and their allies were quick to see the value of a popular leader in the most turbulent and unmanageable quarter of Paris. The Quartier Latin was second only to Montmartre as a propagating bed for revolution; the fiery youth of the great schools were quite as important as the butchers of La Villette.

The conclusions of the young leader were materially assisted and hastened by the flattering attention with which he was received by the young men wearing royalist badges, and by the black looks from the more timid republicans. He thereupon avoided the streets of the quarter, and devoted his time to answering such letters as bore signature and address. He sought to disabuse the public mind, so far as the writers were concerned, by declaring his adherence to the republic, and by returning the money so far as possible.

Jean Marot had now for the first time, with many others, turned his attention to the revelations in the Dreyfus case as appeared in the Figaro, and saw with amazement the use being made of a wholly fictitious crisis to destroy French liberty. He was appalled at these disclosures. Not that they demonstrated the innocence of a condemned man, but because they showed the utter absence of conscience on the part of his accusers and the criminal ignorance of the military leaders on whom France relied in the hour of public danger. For the first time he saw, what the whole civilized world outside of France had seen with surprise and indignation, that the conviction of Captain Dreyfus rested upon the testimony of a staff-officer of noble blood who lived openly and shamelessly on the immoral earnings of his mistress, and who was the self-acknowledged agent of a maison de toleration on commission. In the person of this distinguished member of the "condotteri" was centred the so-called "honor of the army." As for the so-called "evidence," no police judge of England or America would have given a man five days on it.

Matters were at this stage when one morning about a fortnight since the day Mlle. Fouchette had changed masters they reached the bursting-point. Jean suddenly jumped from his seat where he had been looking over his mail and broke into a torrent of invective.

"Dame!" said Mlle. Fouchette, coming in from the kitchen in the act of manipulating a plate with a towel,—"surely, Monsieur Jean, it can't be as bad as that!"