Fortune died a year ago, and he was never appreciated till death snatched him from us: the skinniest, most ramshackle of mankind, tall, loose-jointed, shuffling in gait; at all other times than those that called his art into play, a shiftless, hang-dog sort of personage, who would always be begging a coat of you, or asking the gift of ten cents to buy him some tobacco. But at a dance he was a despot unchallenged. Only to hear him jig off the Irish Washerwoman was to acknowledge his preëminence. His bleary eyes and tobacco-stained lips took on a radiance, his body rocked to and fro, vibrated to the devil-may-care rhythm of the thing, while his left foot emphatically rapped out the measure.
Until another genius shall be raised up amongst us, Fortune's name will be held in cherished memory. For that matter, it is not likely to die out, since, on the day of his death, the old reprobate was married to the mother of his seven children—baptized, married, administered, and shuffled off in a day.
It had never occurred to any of us, somehow, that Fortune might be as transitory and impermanent as his patron goddess herself. We had always accepted him as a sort of ageless thing, a living symbol, a peripatetic mortal, coming out of Petit de Grat, and going about, tobacco in cheek, fiddle under arm, as irresponsible as mirth itself among the sons of men. God rest him! Another landmark gone.
And old Maximen Forêt, too, from whom one used to take weather-wisdom every day—his bench out there in the sun is empty. Maximen's shop was just across the street from our house—a long, darkish, tunnel-like place under a steep roof. Tinware of all descriptions hung in dully shining array from the ceiling; barrels and a rusty stove and two broad low counters occupied most of the floor space, and the atmosphere was charged with a curious sharp odor in which you could distinguish oil and tobacco and molasses. The floor was all dented full of little holes, like a honeycomb, where Maximen had walked over it with his iron-pointed crutch; for he was something of a cripple. But you rarely had any occasion to enter the smelly little shop, for no one ever bought much of anything there nowadays.
Instead, you sat down on the sunny bench beside the old man—Acadian of the Acadians—and listened to his tireless, genial babble—now French, now English, as the humor struck him.
"It go mak' a leetle weat'er, m'sieu," he would say. "I t'ink you better not go fur in the p'tit caneau t'is day. Dere is squall—là-bas—see, dark—may be t'unner. Dat is not so unlike, dis mont'. Oh, w'at a hell time for de hays!"
For everybody who passed he had a greeting, even for those who had hastened his business troubles through never paying their accounts. To the last he never lost his faith in their good intentions.
"Dose poor devil fishermen," he would say, "however dey mak' leeve, God know. You t'ink I mak' 'em go wid notting? It ain't lak dat wit' me here yet, m'sieu. Dey pay some day, when le bon Dieu, he send dem some feesh; dat's sure sure."
If it happened that anybody stopped on business, old Maximen would hobble to the door and tug violently at a bell-rope.
"Cr-r-r-line! Cr-r-r-line!" he would call.