"Well, then," replied Pique-Vinaigre, "one day Cut-in-Half had picked up Gringalet in the streets, dying with cold and hunger; perhaps it would have been best if he had let him die. As Gringalet was weak, he was a coward; as he was a coward, he became the jest and sport of the other lads, who beat him and used him so ill that he would have become wicked if he had not been deficient in strength and courage. But no; when he had been heartily thumped, he cried, and said, 'I have not done any harm to anybody, and everybody is unkind to me,—that's very cruel; oh, if I were strong and bold!' You will, perhaps, imagine that Gringalet was about to add, 'I would return to others the ill they do to me?' By no means. He said,' Oh, if I were strong and bold, I would defend the weak against the strong, for I am weak, and the strong have made me suffer!' In the meanwhile, as he was too small a boy to prevent the strong from ill-using the weak, beginning with himself, he prevented the larger brutes from eating the smaller ones."
"What a strange idea!" said the prisoner in the blue cap.
"And, what is stranger still," said the tale-teller, "it was this idea that consoled Gringalet for being beaten; which proves that his heart was not bad at bottom."
"Pardieu! Quite the contrary," said the guardian. "What an amusing devil that Pique-Vinaigre is!"
At this instant the chimes went half past three o'clock. The Skeleton and Gros-Boiteux exchanged significant glances. The time was drawing on, and the surveillant did not go; and some of the less hardened prisoners seemed almost to forget the sinister projects of the Skeleton against Germain, as they listened attentively to Pique-Vinaigre's recital.
"When I say," he continued, "that Gringalet prevented the larger brutes from eating the smaller, you must understand that Gringalet did not mix himself up with tigers, and lions, and wolves, or even foxes and monkeys, in the menagerie of Cut-in-Half,—he was too much of a coward for that; but if he saw, for instance, a spider hidden in his web, in wait for a poor foolish fly flying gaily in the sunshine of the good God, without hurting any one, why, in a moment, Gringalet smashed the web, freed the fly, and did for the spider like a regular Cæsar,—a real Cæsar; for he turned as white as a sheet in touching such nasty reptiles; and then it required resolution in him, who was afraid of a cockchafer, and had been a long while in forming an intimacy with the tortoise which Cut-in-Half handed to him every morning. Thus Gringalet, overcoming the fear which the spider caused him, in order to prevent flies from being eaten, proved himself—"
"As plucky in his way as a man who attacks a wolf to take a lamb from his jaws," said the prisoner in the blue cap.
"Or a man who would have attacked Cut-in-Half to take Gringalet from his clutches," added Barbillon, who was deeply interested.
"As you say," continued Pique-Vinaigre; "so that after one of these onslaughts Gringalet did not feel himself so unhappy. He who never laughed, smiled, looked about him, cocked his cap on one side (when he had one), and hummed the 'Marseillaise' with the air of a conqueror. At this moment, there was not a spider that dared to look him in the face. Another time it was a grasshopper which was swimming and struggling in a brook; in a moment, Gringalet put his two fingers boldly in the water and rescued the grasshopper, which he put on the grass. A first-class swimmer, who had fished up his tenth drowning man at fifty francs a head, could not have been prouder than Gringalet when he saw his grasshopper bend his legs and jump away. And yet the grasshopper gave him neither money nor medal, nor uttered any more thanks than did the fly. But then, Pique-Vinaigre, worthy friend, the honourable company will say to me, what the devil pleasure could Gringalet, whom all the world thumped and buffeted, find in freeing grasshoppers and destroying spiders? Since people were unkind to him, why did he not take his revenge by doing all the evil in his power? For instance, in giving spiders flies to eat, leaving grasshoppers to drown, or even drowning them on purpose?"
"Yes, why not? Why did he not revenge himself in that way?" asked Nicholas.