Agnes Sorel: A Novel

by G. P. R. James

Limping about in the shop beside him was a creature, which even youth--usually so full of its own special charms--could not render beautiful or graceful. Nature seemed to have stamped upon it, from its birth, the most repulsive marks. It was a boy of some ten or twelve years old, but still his eyes hardly reached above the table on which the cutler's goods were displayed; but, by a peculiarity not uncommon, the growth which should have been upright had, by some obstacle, been forced to spread out laterally, and the shoulders, ribs, and hips were as broad as those of a grown man. The back was humped, though not very distinctly so; the legs were both short, but one was shorter than the other; and one eye was defective, probably from his birth. So short, so stout, so squared was the whole body, that it looked more like a cube, with a large head and very short legs, than a human form; but, though the gait was awkward and unsightly to the eyes, that little creature was possessed of singular activity, and of very great strength, notwithstanding his deformity.

It was a curious thing to see the father and the son standing together: the one with his great, powerful, well-developed limbs, and the other with his minute and apparently slender form. One could hardly believe that the one was the offspring of the other. Yet so it was. Maître Simon was the father of that deformed dwarf, whose appearance would have been quite sufficient to draw the hooting boys of Paris after him when he appeared in the streets, had not the vigor and unmerciful severity of his father's arm kept even the little vagabonds of the most turbulent city in the world in awe.

That which might seem most strange, though in reality it was not so at all, was the doting fondness of the stern, powerful father for that misshapen child. It seems a rule of Nature, that where she refuses to any one the personal attractions which, often undeservedly, command regard, she places in the bosom of some other kindred being that strong affection which generously gives gratuitously the love for which there seems so little claim.

The father and the son had obtained, first from the boys of the town, and then from elder people, the nicknames of the big Caboche and the little Caboche, and, with a good-humor very common in France, they had themselves adopted these epithets without offense; so that the cutler was constantly addressed by his companions merely as Caboche, and had even placed that title over his door. During the hours when he tended his shop, or was engaged in the manual labors of his trade, the boy was almost always with him, limping round him, making observations upon every thing, and enlivening his father's occupations by a sort of pungent wit, perhaps a little smacking of buffoonery, which, if not a gift, could be nowhere so well acquired as in the streets of Paris, and in which the hard spirit of the cutler greatly delighted.

Nevertheless, the characters of the father and the son were not less strongly in contrast than their corporeal frames. Notwithstanding an occasional moroseness and acerbity, perhaps engendered by a sad comparison of his own physical powers with those of others of his age, there was in the boy's nature a fund of kindly sympathies and gentle affections, which characterized his actions more than his words: and as we all love contrasts, the secret of his father's strong affection for him might be, in part, the opposition between their several dispositions.

It was about three o'clock in the day, the hour when Parisians are most abroad; but the cold kept many within doors, and but one person had stopped at the booth to buy.

"Trade is ruined," said big Caboche, in a grumbling tone. "No business is doing. The king's sickness and his brother's influence have utterly destroyed the trade of the city. Armorers, and embroiderers, and dealers in idle goldsmiths' work, may make a living; but no one else can gain his bread. There has not been a single soul in the shop this morning, except an old woman who wanted an ax to cut her meat, because it was frozen."

"My father," replied the boy, "it was not the king nor the Duke of Orleans that made the Seine freeze, or pinched old Joaquim's nose, or burned old Jeannette's flannel coat, or kept any of the folks in who would have been out if it had not been so cold. Don't you see there is nobody in the street but those who have only one coat, and that a thin one. They come out because the frosty sunshine is better than no shine at all; and, though they keep their hands in their pockets, they won't draw them out, because you won't let them have goods without money, and they have not money to buy goods. But here comes Cousin Martin, as fine as a popinjay. It must have snowed feathers, I think, to have clothed his back so gayly."

"Ah, the scapegrace!" exclaimed Caboche "I should think that he had just been plundering some empty-headed master, if my pot had not reason to know that he has had no master to plunder for these last three months. Well, Master Never-do-well, what brings you here in such smart plumes? Violet and yellow, with a silver lace, upon my life! If you are so fully fledged, methinks you can pick up your own grain without coming to mine."

"And so I can, and so I will, uncle," replied our friend Martin Grille, pausing at the entrance of the booth to look at himself from head to foot, in evident admiration of his own appearance. "Did you ever see any thing fit better? Upon my life, it is a perfect marvel that any man should ever have been made so perfectly like me as to have worn these clothes before, without the slightest alteration! Nobody would believe it."