The woman, with her eyes lowered, kept looking at her blue apron. I then asked the blind man how he had made his living up to this time, and how they had become acquainted, he and his companion.
“I used to be, owing to infirmity, a real burden upon my family. I did whatever I could but I could not do much. I washed the dishes, lighted the fire, picked the vegetables, swept the floor, washed the windows, made the beds—perhaps badly, but at any rate I did all that, and although we were very poor at home they kept me. The day came, however, when my mother died. Then it was my father’s turn. I had to leave the empty house. I went on the road armed with my accordion, asking for alms. My accordion became my best friend. But I blundered along the roads. Then I met my dear companion who is with me, and I married her.”
She was a cook, the woman told me this herself in an undertone, who had become too old to keep her place, and who consented to join her fate with that of the wandering blind man, serving as his guide along the roads. The blind man found this arrangement a blessing from Heaven, a kindness bestowed upon him by Providence. They were married without delay.
“But how do you manage to live?” I asked.
“Well, it is not always easy to make both ends meet, for alas! now and then, one of us falls ill. We are getting old, you understand. When it is not fatigue that gets the better of us, then there is always the cold. There are times when we cannot go out. Then it is necessary to take a notch in one’s girdle.”
Each day they visited one district of Paris. They had divided the city into blocks, and they sometimes walked miles before arriving at their destination, for they lived far from the centre, in one of the poorest suburbs.
“What day do you go by here?”
“Every Sunday, before mass. Many people of this quarter go to church, and we encounter them going and coming.”
“Do they give you something?”
“It is a rich neighbourhood. We have several very good clients.”