His mother was, and is, a seamstress, or a house servant, or woman of all work, or a shop girl. His father—well, it is doubtful if the mother could give any very definite information on that subject. She may have been a true daughter of Paris, or she may have come from the delicious valleys of Normandy or Brittany, or the mountains of Switzerland, with her heavy shoes, her quaint bodice, and her long, braided hair hanging down her shapely back. She got work, she wrought in a clothing warehouse, or she went behind a counter; then came the balls in the Latin quarter (it is a part of the nature of the girls of this country to love lights and glitter and dancing, and the like); then appeared the student with his half-polished brigandage, and then began the life of a grisette. They lived together till the student was called home, and he went back to his native country to marry and settle down into respectable citizenship, forgetting entirely the poor little girl he left behind, and the wee baby she had borne him.
THE MOTHER OF THE GAMIN—AS SHE WAS.
But whoever his father might have been he never saw him that he remembers, and he has a very indistinct idea of what a father is.
The uncertainty of fatherhood in Paris is illustrated by the grisette who was walking with her little boy. A funeral procession was passing:—
“Who is it that is dead?” asked the boy of his mother.