There were people coming and going in the dark filthy lane where this happened--a place where smoke-grimed gables almost met overhead, and the gutter was choked with refuse--but no one interfered. What was a little beating more or less? Or, for the matter of that, what was a boy more or less? The hulking loafers and frowsy slatterns, who huddled for warmth in corners, nodded their heads and looked on approvingly. They had their own brats to beat and business to mind. There was no one to take the boy's part. And another hundred yards would lodge him in the showman's garret.
At that last moment the boy awoke from his trance and understood; and in a convulsion of fear hung back and struggled, screaming and throwing himself down. The man dragged him up savagely, and was in the act of taking him up bodily to carry him, when a person, who had already passed the pair once, came back and looked at the boy again. The next moment a hand fell on the showman's arm, and a voice said, "Stop! What boy is that?"
The showman looked up, saw that the intervener was a priest, and sneered. "What is that to you, father?" he said, trying by a side movement to pass by. "Not one of your flock, at any rate."
"No, but you are!" the priest retorted in a strangely sonorous voice. He was a stalwart man, with a mobile face and sad eyes that seemed out of keeping with the rest of him. "You are! And if you do not this minute set him down and answer my question, you ruffian, when your time comes you shall go to the tree alone!"
"Diable!" the showman muttered, startled yet scowling. "Who are you, then?"
"I am Father Bernard. Now tell me about that boy, and truly. What have you been doing to him? Ay, you may well tremble, rascal!"
For the showman was trembling. In the Paris of that day the name of Father Bernard was almost as well known as the name of Cardinal Richelieu. There was not a night-prowler or cutpurse, bully or swindler, who did not know it, and dream in his low fits, when the drink was out and the money spent, of the day when he would travel by Father Bernard's side to Montfaucon, and find no other voice and no other eye to pity him in his trouble. Impelled by feelings of humanity, rare at that time, this man made it his life-work to attend on all who were cast for execution; to wait on them in prison, and be with them at the last, and by his presence and words of comfort to alleviate their sufferings here, and bring them to a better mind. He had become so well known in this course of work that the king himself did him honour, and the Cardinal granted him special rights. The mob also. The priest passed unharmed through the lowest wynds of Paris, and penetrated habitually to places where the Lieutenant of the Châtelet, with a dozen pikes at his back, would not have been safe for a moment.
This was the man whose stern voice brought the showman to a standstill. Master Crafty Eyes faltered. Then he remembered that the boy was his boy, that his title to him was good. He said so sulkily.
"Your boy?" the priest replied, frowning. "Who are you, then?"
"An acrobat, father."