"Monsieur may trust me."
"And you can fence?"
"A little, monsieur."
"Well, then, on guard!" The marquis was pleased to praise the new teacher. "He has a supple wrist, and what a reach of arm!" At last he went away to Gamel's room, where they were absent a half-hour. These private talks, François observed later, were frequent, especially with certain of the middle-aged gentlemen who took here their morning exercise.
After this first introduction to business, François sat still when the marquis had left him. By and by the gentleman came back, and saying a word of encouragement to François, went away.
"Take M. de Lamerie, François," said Gamel; and turning to a gentleman near by, added, "À vous, monsieur." Others began to select foils and to fence in couples, so that soon the hall rang with the click, click of meeting steel. François was clever enough to let his pupil get in a touch now and then, and meanwhile kept him and those who looked on delighted with his natural merriment. He was soon a favorite. The dog was made to howl at a tricolored cockade, and proved a great success. As to the fencing-lessons, Gamel was overjoyed, and as time ran on came to trust and to like his thief, who began speedily to pick up the little well-mannered ways and phrases he heard about him. He liked well to be liked and to be praised for his skill, which week by week became greater, until none except M. Gamel and the marquis were able to meet him on equal terms. The master of arms was generous; the wages rose. The clothes François now wore were better, and when Gamel asked him to choose a rapier for wear in the street, which was not yet forbidden, the poor thief felt that he was in the full sunlight of fortune.
The afternoons were less to his taste. If a new pupil arrived, the cook, an old woman, let him in, and Gamel saw him in an anteroom and settled terms and hours. The Jacobins came after two o'clock. Then the room was unusually full. The poodle howled at the name of Louis Capet. Tricolored cockades were everywhere. The talk was of war and the frontier, the ways of speech were guarded, the manners not those of the morning. These citizens were awkward, but terribly in earnest. The pistol-gallery was much in favor; but at this deadly play François was never an expert. He did not like it, and was pleased when the Vicomte de Beauséjour, a favored pupil, said: "'T is a coarse weapon, François. Ah, well enough to enable bulldog English to settle their disputes over a bone; but, dame! quite unfit to be the arm of honor of gentlemen." This uncertain property of honor seemed to François a too insecure kind of investment. It was enough to have to take care of one's pocket; and his being now well lined, François began to resent the possibility of those sudden changes of ownership which under other conditions he had looked upon as almost in the nature of things.
During this summer, and in the winter of '91 and '92, Gamel was at times absent for days. Whenever he returned he was for a week after in his monosyllabic mood. François, who was keenly alive to his present advantages, and who saw how these absences interfered with their business, began to exercise his easily excited inquisitiveness, and to meditate on what was beneath Gamel's frequent fits of abstraction. His own life had known disappointments, not always of his own making. He dreaded new ones. The past of the Cité, Quatre Pattes, Despard, those haunting eyes of the marquis's widowed daughter, the choristers, the asylum, the mad street life—all the company of his uncertain days—were gone. Now, of late, he began to have a feeling of uneasy belief that things were once more about to change. Nor was the outer life of the capital such as to promise tranquillity. A nation was about to become insane. It was at this time like a man thus threatened: to-day it was sane, to-morrow it might be reeling over the uncertain line which separates the sound from the unsound. Had François been more interested and more apprehensive, he was intelligent enough to have shared the dismay with which many Frenchmen saw the growth of tumultuous misrule. Indeed, the talk of the morning fencing-school should have taught him alarm. But he had formerly lived the life of the hour, even of the minute, and as long as he was well fed, housed, and clothed, his normal good humor comfortably digested anxiety.
I should wrongly state a character of uncommon interest if I were to give the impression of a man who had merely the constant hilarity of a happy child. He was apt to laugh where others smiled; but, as he matured, cheerful contentment was his usual mood, and with it, to the last, the probability of such easily born laughter as radiated mirth upon all who heard it, like a companionable fire diffusing its generous warmth. He was at this time doing what he most fancied. The company suited him. He liked the tranquil ways of these courteous gentlemen. In a word, he was contented, and for a time lost all desire to seek change or adventure. His satisfaction in the life made him more quiet and perhaps more thoughtful. He had every reason to be cheerful, and cheerfulness is the temperate zone of the mind.
At times, on Sundays, in the summer of '92, he wandered into the country with Toto; but these holidays were rare. Now and then the habits of years brought again the longing for excitement; with the meal-hours he recovered his common sense, being a big fellow of sharp appetite and a camel-like capacity for substantial food.