Among those who indulged in the acrimonious apostrophe, the most persevering, if not the loudest, was an urchin of some fourteen years old, whom Monsieur Georges had added to his establishment two years before, by way of Jack Nasty, foot-page, or errand-boy, under an engagement to clean Monsieur Georges and the housekeeper's shoes, without dirtying the ante-room with his own; to work much, eat little, sleep less; to keep his ears open, and his mouth shut; his hands full, and his stomach empty; his legs were to be evermore running, his tongue never. Now, little Auguste, (Auguste in the parlour, and Guguste in the porter's lodge,) though reared in a provincial foundling hospital, where infants are fed, like sheep, on a common, by the score, and washed, like pocket-handkerchiefs, by the dozen, had unluckily both a will and an appetite of his own. Cleaning Mademoiselle Berthe's shoes inspired him with a fancy for standing in them; and, on more than one occasion, he was found to have encroached upon the housekeeper's breakfast of coffee and cream, instead of contenting himself with wholesome filtred water. He was forthwith accused of being a greedy pig, as well as of making a litter in the apartments; till, after six months of faultiness and fault-finding, Monsieur Georges pronounced him to be an incorrigible gamin, sentenced him to "bring firing at requiring," and blacken shoes as usual, but to have his bed in an attic under the roof, (Parisianly called, after the famous Parisian architect, a mansarde,) and his board in the porter's lodge, where the board was exceedingly hard; Madame Grégoire,—the knitter of stockings, reader of novels, and coiner of romances for the corner-house of the Rue Montmartre,—having consented to feed and cherish him at the rate of twenty-five francs per month, id est, five weekly shillings lawful coin of her Majesty's realm. Monsieur Georges perhaps intended to starve the saucy gamin into submission; he did almost succeed in starving him into an atrophy.
Guguste, however, was a lad of spirit, and could hunger cheerfully under the housekeeping of the kind-hearted Madame Grégoire, who made up for the scantiness of her cheer by the abundance of her cheerfulness, buttered her parsnips with fine words, and gave the poor half-clothed gamin the place nearest the chauffrette, (fire she had none,) while Mademoiselle Berthe made the apartment on the second floor too hot to hold him. Madame Grégoire,—whose only daughter was the wife of a puppet-showman, and whose only grandson, a seller of sparrows rouged et noired into bullfinches, or white-washed into canaries, on the Pont Neuf,—transferred a considerable portion of her unclaimed dividends of maternal tenderness to the little orphan. Her son was a soldier, serving (as she said) at Algiers in the Indies, and by no means likely to enter into rivalship with the slave of Monsieur Georges and Mademoiselle Berthe's household.
"'Tis a strange thing, my dear child," mumbled the old woman to Guguste, as they sat down together one day to their six o'clock soup, (a composition of hot water, cabbage-stalks, half an ounce of bacon, and a peck of salt,) "that so long as I have held the string[29] in this house, not a drop of wine, either in piece or bottle, has ever gone through the gateway to the address of Monsieur Georges! Every month comes the supply of chocolate from Marquise's for Monsieur, and from the Golden Bee a cargo of Bourbon coffee and beetroot sugar for the housekeeper; but of wine not a pint."
"Neither Georges nor the Dragon are honest souls enough to trust themselves with their cups," said the knowing gamin. "Wine tells truth, they say. None but an ass talks now-a-days of truth lying at the bottom of a well;—'tis in the bottom of a hogshead of claret. Ma'mselle Berthe, who can do nothing but lie, is the liar in the well. She can't keep her head above water."
"But Monsieur Georges, who need entertain no fear of making too free with his own secrets after a glass or two, inasmuch as no living mortal ever dips with him in the dish;—surely Monsieur might indulge on Sundays, and fête days, and the like?"
"And so he does indulge, Maman Grégoire,—so he does! Some folks like their champagne, some their burgundy. Master loves to take an internal hot-bath after the English fashion."
"A tea-drinker? sacristie! what effeminacy!" exclaimed the old woman, bravely swallowing, out of a spoon of métal d'Alger, a large mouthful of tepid cabbage water. "I recollect seeing tea made upon the stage, in the farce of 'Madame Pochet et Madame Gibou.' Jésu! what nastiness! I really wonder at Monsieur Georges! So spruce and so cleanly a gentleman as he looks, when, every evening just as St. Philip's church chimes the half-hour after seven, 'Le cordon, s'il vous plait,' gives me notice of his exit! His superfine blue coat and garnet-coloured velvet waistcoat without a speck of dust upon them!"
"Thanks to me!" interposed Guguste.
"His toupet shining with huile antique."
"Thanks to me!" continued Guguste.