But the father had on his rough, working man’s face a smile almost happy, but astonished too, the smile of a condemned man who foresees a possibility of liberty.
Boum-Boum! He remembered well the morning of Easter Monday when he had taken François to the circus. He had still in his ears the child’s outbursts of joy, the happy laugh of the amused boy, when the clown, the beautiful clown, all spangled with gold and with a great gilded butterfly sparkling, many-colored, on the back of his black costume, skipped across the track, gave the trip to a rider or held himself motionless and stiff on the sand, his head down and his feet in the air. Or again he tossed up to the chandelier some soft, felt hats which he caught adroitly on his head, where they formed, one by one, a pyramid; and at each jest, like a refrain brightening up his intelligent and droll face, he uttered the same cry, repeated the same word, accompanied now and then by a burst from the orchestra: Boum-Boum!
Boum-Boum! and each time that it rang out, Boum-Boum, the audience burst out into hurrahs and the little one joined in with his hearty, little laugh. Boum-Boum! It was this Boum-Boum, it was the clown of the circus, it was this favorite of a large part of the city that little François wished to see and to have and whom he could not have and could not see since he was lying here without strength in his white bed.
In the evening Jacques Legrand brought the child a jointed clown, all stitched with spangles, which he had bought in a passageway and which was very expensive. It was the price of four of his working days! But he would have given twenty, thirty, he would have given the price of a year’s labor to bring back a smile to the pale lips of the sick child.
The child looked at the plaything a moment as it glistened on the white cover of the bed, then said, sadly:
“It is not Boum-Boum!—I want to see Boum-Boum!”
Ah! if Jacques could have wrapped him up in his blankets, could have carried him to the circus, could have shown him the clown dancing under the lighted chandelier and have said to him, Look! He did better, Jacques, he went to the circus, demanded the address of the clown, and timidly, his legs shaking with fear, he climbed, one by one, the steps which led to the apartment of the artist, at Montmartre. It was very bold this that Jacques was going to do! But after all the comedians go to sing and recite their monologues in drawing-rooms, at the houses of the great lords. Perhaps the clown—oh! if he only would—would consent to come and say good-day to François. No matter, how would they receive him, Jacques Legrand, here at Boum-Boum’s house?
He was no longer Boum-Boum! He was Monsieur Moreno, and, in the artistic dwelling, the books, the engravings, the elegance was like a choice decoration around the charming man who received Jacques in his office like that of a doctor.
Jacques looked, but did not recognize the clown, and turned and twisted his felt hat between his fingers. The other waited. Then the father excused himself. “It was astonishing what he came there to ask, it could not be—pardon, excuse—But in short, it was concerning the little one—A nice little one, monsieur. And so intelligent! Always the first at school, except in arithmetic, which he did not understand—A dreamer, this little one, do you see! Yes, a dreamer. And the proof—wait—the proof—”
Jacques now hesitated, stammered; but he gathered up his courage and said bruskly: