II
There is no such thing as perfect happiness, and Captain Mercadier, who had thought that he had found it (happiness) when he installed himself in his café, was forced to abjure his illusions. On market-day the café was not fit to turn a card in. From daybreak it swarmed with trucksters, farmers, men who sold hogs, eggs, and poultry; loud-mouthed people with thick, sunburnt necks, carrying mammoth rawhides, slouching about in blue blouses and otter-skin caps, who drank as they drove their bargains, thumped the tables with their fists, called the waiter "thou," cracked the billiard balls, and "raised hell" generally. When the Captain entered the café for his 11 a.m. breakfast, he found the room full of drunkards lying over the tables, staggering about or bolting their coarse dinners. His own place was taken. The cashier's bell rang incessantly; the proprietor and the waiter bustled about, napkins on arms; in short, it was a day of bad luck, and the days preceding it weighed on the Captain's spirits like presentiments of evil. One Monday morning his courage failed him and he decided to eat at home.
He knew that the café would swarm; that he could not eat or drink in peace; that the green table would be unfit for play. But a ray of the soft autumnal sunlight enticed him, and he went out and took his seat on the stone bench by the street door. He was sitting there, smoking his damp cigar, melancholy enough, when he saw, coming down the street, a little girl eight or ten years old, driving before her a flock of geese. In her hand she held a switch.
Looking fixedly at her as she drew nearer, the Captain saw that she had a wooden leg. There was nothing of the father in the heart of the old soldier; he was a hardened bachelor, impervious as a shellback to the feelings of a family-father; in the days of his service in Algeria, when the little Arabs had pursued him, imploring him with their soft eyes, he had chased them with a whip. On the few occasions of his visits to his married comrades he had gone home growling against their ill-kept and weeping "young ones," who had "pawed" his gold lace with unclean fingers. But the strange aspect of this child, the peculiarity of her infirmity, moved him with feelings that he had never known. His heart contracted at sight of the little creature. The wasted frame was barely covered by a ragged skirt and worn-out shirt. And then she followed her geese so bravely! The dust arose in clouds around her bare foot as she stumped along on her ill-made wooden leg.
Recognizing their residence, the geese entered the courtyard and the child was following them, when the old man stopped her.
"Eh! little girl!" he cried, "what is your name?"
"Pierrette, at your service, sir," answered the child, fixing great dark eyes upon him and putting back her disordered hair.
"Do you belong here? I have never seen you until now."
"Oh! yes, and I know you well. I sleep under the stairs, and you wake me up every night when you come home."
"Truly? Well, hereafter I will come on tiptoes. How old are you?"