This little way, in Toni’s mind, meant to walk through life with the circus company.
Nicolas laughed; runaway boys were the general concomitants of a circus company. And in a moment more he recognized the boy who had stuck on the pony’s back, and then had run away so quickly.
“Yes, come along, you young rascal,” he said, “and you can carry this portmanteau if you like,”—and he slung the heavy portmanteau from his own shoulders to Toni’s.
Toni trudged along, carrying the portmanteau easily, being a strong boy. He got into a conversation with his new friend and soon expressed his determination to stay with the circus, if only they would give him something to eat, for he was very hungry. A woman, walking along with them, heard this and handed Toni a couple of biscuits, which he eagerly devoured. They trudged on for two hours, the moon growing larger and brighter and flooding with a white radiance the hedges, the wide fields, the woods and the highway along which the cavalcade traveled slowly. Toni felt an immense sense of relief. The police could not come so far to get him. He hardened his heart against his mother. He judged, from what Clery had told him, that his mother would be the first to denounce him.
And so began poor Toni’s life with the circus, away from his mother, away from Denise, away from Paul Verney—only Jacques remained.
CHAPTER X
Seven years afterward, Toni found himself one day at the little town of Beaupré, in the valley of the Seine, where the circus was performing, for Toni had remained with it all that time. Beautiful young ladies in spangles had come and gone, demigods in red satin with white sashes had done the same. Toni himself was a demigod in red satin and a white sash, and was the crack rider of the circus. He had a large head-line of letters a foot high all to himself—Monsieur Louis D’Argens he was called on the bill-boards, although everybody about the circus called him Toni. Toni was then twenty years old and at least twenty years wiser than he had been seven years before. One does not spend seven years in the circus without learning many things. He learned all the immense wickednesses as well as the immense virtues which may be found in the lower half of humanity.