"I do not know. No man ever trusted me, and one must live, monsieur."
The gentleman hesitated, and relapsed into the indifference of a too easy life. He had been on the point of offering this outcast a chance.
"Enfin, no doubt you are right. I wish you every success. The deuce! Have you my snuff-box and my handkerchief?"
"Both," said François.
"Then don't run away. I could never catch you. Long legs must be of use in your profession. The snuff-box I will ransom. Let us say fifty francs. It is worth more, but it bears my name, and there are risks."
"Certainly," said François. "And the handkerchief. Monsieur is enrhumé—has a cold; I could not deprive monsieur."
The gentleman thanked him, paid over the money for the box, and, greatly pleased, rose, saying: "You are a dangerous acquaintance; but I trust we may meet again. Au revoir!"
François remained on the bench, Toto at his feet in the sun. This meeting affected him strangely. It had been the first touch of a world remote from his own. He did not recognize the fact that he had gifts which enable men to rise in life. At times he had had vague ambitions, but he was at the foot of a ladder, and the rungs above were broken or not to be seen. These moods were brief, and as to their cause not always clear to him. He was by nature social, and able to like or to love; but the people of the Cité were dreadful, and if now and then some broken refugee from a higher class delighted him for a time, the eventful hand of justice or what not was apt to separate them.
As he looked after the gentleman he felt his charm and the courtesy of his ways as something to be desired. His own form of attractiveness, the influence of joyous laughter and frank approach, he had often and usefully tested; and perhaps this sense of his own power to please made him intelligently apprehensive of what he had just experienced. Had he seized eagerly the half-offered help the gentleman suggested rather than offered, he had been wiser; but it was literally true that, being when possible honest as to speech, he had obeyed the moment's impulse. A better man than the gentleman would have gone further. He had lazily reflected, and concluded that to help this poor devil might be troublesome, and thus the jewel opportunity lay lost at their feet. They were to meet again, and then it was to be the thief's turn.
Now he sat in thought, kicking the ground with his boot. Out of the past came remembrances of the asylum, and how he had been told to be good, and not to kill or to steal, or to do certain other naughty things less clear to him then than now. But this was a far-away time. At the choir-house were the same moral lessons, but they who taught were they who sinned. Since then no one had said a word of reproach to the waif; nor had this great gentleman, and yet he had left him in the rare mood of thought-filled depression.