Zut, and Other Parisians

by Guy Wetmore Carryl

It was at this time that two radical changes came into the life of Papa Labesse. First, on the very summit of the Butte they began to lay the foundations for the great church of Sacré-Cœur; and, second, Marcelle took it into her pretty little head to accompany him on his daily climb. At first he was disturbed by both these innovations. This curious afternoon communion of his with the wonderful wide city, which lay spread out before him like a great gray map, was akin to a religion. He loved Paris with a love so great that perhaps he himself was barely able to comprehend its proportions. He was never tired of standing there and watching her breathing at his feet, of picking out, in the gathering twilight, the faint white speck to the west that was the arc de l'Etoile, the domes of the Invalides and the Panthéon, Notre Dame, to the eastward, and the towers and spires of half a hundred minor temples and public buildings. He passed from one to the other in a kind of visual pilgrimage, saying the names over slowly to himself, and occasionally affecting an air of surprise, as if some one of the familiar piles had suddenly and unaccountably appeared in a new locality.

"La Trinité; Notre Dame de Lorette; La Bourse. Tiens! St. Eustache!"

At the outset, the serenity of this contemplative hour was seriously impaired by the creaking of derrick-pulleys and the loud chatter of wagon-drivers, and hardly less so by the eager questions of Marcelle, clinging to his hand, her eyes bright with excitement, as she looked out with him across Paris, or peered down into the vast pit when the masons were laying the foundations of the big church. But, bit by bit, Papa Labesse became accustomed to the new conditions; and every night, an hour before sunset, his high, dry voice summoned Marcelle from the dairy across the way, and the two set forth together up the long curving incline of the rue Lepic, and the old man would smoke his pipe by the low wattled fence at the brink of the bluff, while the child babbled of her little affairs. Papa Labesse no longer named the domes and spires now. His eyes rested alternately on the city and on the girl beside him, and often, when Marcelle was silent, looking off to where the thin, silver line of the Seine gleamed briefly between distant buildings, he shook his head several times, tapping the side of his inverted pipe-bowl against the palm of his hand, long after the ashes had fallen out.

When Marcelle was seventeen, Madame Clapot died suddenly, and the girl moved from the rue Veron to the home of her aunt, near by, in the rue Seveste. But the change made no difference in her friendship for Papa Labesse. All through the ensuing spring she called regularly for him each afternoon, and they climbed the Butte in company, as before. The old man would have been completely happy had it not been for Bombiste Fremier.

Bombiste was an employé of the state,—an humble one, to be sure, but, nevertheless, part and parcel of the great Administration which includes every one, from the President of the Republic to the street-sweeper on the rue Royale. In Fremier's case the employment was brief and not over-lucrative. He was engaged, for two months only in the twelve, to mow the grass on the fortifications and in parts of the Bois and the smaller parks of Paris. For the remainder of the year he lived none knew how, but he had always a few white pieces in his pocket, and was ready to treat a comrade at Le Cheval Blanc, the little wine-shop kept by Bonhomme Pirou at the corner of the boulevard and the rue Seveste. As regards the source of his income, it is probable that Amélie Chouert, called La Trompette, by reason of her loud voice, might have divulged some remarkable particulars. In any event, she was his constant companion, a sharp-featured, angular woman with snapping black eyes and a great mop of hair that came down to within an inch of her continuous line of eyebrow.

Fremier himself was as handsome as a brutal picture,—a giant in stature, with square shoulders, a thick neck, in which the muscles stood out like ropes, and the face of an Italian brigand. It is a type of masculine beauty which goes far in Montmartre, and to it was added a deep, melodious voice, that, whether in the heat of political argument or the more complicated phraseology of love, carried complete conviction. No one blamed La Trompette for her infatuation. As we have said, life on the Butte is a matter of first principles, and, in view of the manifest attraction, her position was entirely conceivable. Except to Papa Labesse.

He was a singularly rigid old man, who took no account of the remarkable beauty and the irresistible tongue of Fremier, but only of the fact that he was called Bombiste because he talked against the government at Le Cheval Blanc, advocating the use of dynamite, and only the bon Dieu knew what else beside. And if, as La Trompette alleged, he swung his scythe on the fortifications like a veritable demon, what of that? No, evidently he was a vaurien!

So it was, that when, one fine May afternoon, Papa Labesse, emerging from his little shop at the summons of Marcelle, caught a glimpse of Bombiste slipping around the further corner into the rue Lepic, his heart gave a sudden great bound and then seemed to stand still. He was very silent on the way to the Butte, for, moment by moment, the blackness of untoward premonition was settling upon him. He glanced, covertly, but again and again, at Marcelle, observing, with a strange, suddenly acquired power of perception, that she was already a woman. He had not seemed to notice, day by day, the change in her. Now it dawned upon him in a flash. No, it was no longer the baby who had fallen headlong among his shavings, nor yet the child going to her first communion, all in white and with a veil like a little bride's, nor even the slender girl who had peered down with him into the vast pit where the masons were laying the foundations of the big church. It was a woman who walked beside him, a woman very beautiful, with dark hair, coiled above a pale, pure face, and great eyes, like crushed violets swimming in their dew. Papa Labesse caught his breath: Bombiste Fremier!