Père Jaques saw the point of the story, and, taking the hint, stood up to go.
"What did you do with the birds?" he demanded sternly, as he was leaving the room.
"Sold four of them for three francs apiece, and ate three of them, and uncommonly good they were," said the wretched woman, with unblushing heartlessness.
"Monster!" groaned Père Jacques, and hurried from her presence.
All that day he and Mlle. Adrienne stayed at home with their door and window barred and bolted; but night came, and the domiciliary visit was still a threat. Next day, however, the little door stood open as usual, and Père Jacques was to be seen hammering away at the dilapidated legs of a table that he was mending for a neighbor at the rate of twenty-five centimes a leg; but Mlle. Adrienne was not there. Had Père Jacques put an end to his agony by actually killing her, as he had threatened, and so saved her from the ignoble fate of the shambles? Or had he, haunted by the phantom of hunger which was now staring at him with its pale spectral eyes from the near background, yielded to the old man's love of life, and sold his friend to prolong it and escape himself from a ghastly death? Most people believed the latter alternative, but nobody knew for certain. When Mlle. Adrienne's name was mentioned, Père Jacques would frown, and give unmistakable signs of displeasure. If the subject was pressed, he would seize his stick, and, making a moulinet over his head with it, prepare an expletive that the boldest never waited to receive. One day he was caught crying bitterly in his now solitary home, and muttering to himself between the sobs, "Ma pauvre fille! Mlle. Adrienne! Je le suivrai bientôt—ah les coquins, les brigands, les monstres!" This was looked upon as conclusive. The monsters in question could only be the Shylocks of the abattoir who had tempted him with blood-money for Mlle. Adrienne. When curiosity was thus far satisfied, the gamins ceased to worry Père Jacques; the lonely old man became an object of pity to everybody, even to the gamins themselves; when they met him now they touched their caps, with "Bonjour, Père Jacques!" and spared him the cruel jeer that had been their customary salutation of late: "Mlle. Adrienne à la casserole! Bon appétit, Père Jacques!"
The days wore on, and the weeks, and the months. Paris, wan and pale and hunger-stricken, still held out. Winter had come, and thrown its icy pall upon the city, hiding her guilty front "under innocent snow;" the nights were long and cold, the dawn was desolate, the tepid noon brought no warmth to the perishing, fire-bound multitude. No sign of succor came to them from without. In vain they watched and waited, persecuting time with hope. The cannon kept up its sobbing recitative through the black silence of the night; through the white stillness of the day. Hunger gnawed into their vitals, till even hope, weary with disappointment, grew sick and died.
One morning, the neighbors noticed Père Jacques's door and window closed long after the hour when he was wont to be up and busy. They knocked, and, getting no answer, turned the handle of the door; it was neither locked nor barred, merely closed, as if the master were within; but he was not; the little room was tenantless, and almost entirely stripped; the mattress and the scanty store of bed-clothes were gone; the iron bedstead, a table, a stool, and two cane chairs, were the only sticks of furniture that remained; the shelves were bare of the bright pewter tankards and platters that used to adorn them; the gilt clock with its abortion of a Pegasus bestrid by a grenadier, which had been the glory of the chimney-piece, had disappeared. What did it all mean? Had the enemy made a raid on Père Jacques and his property during the night, and carried away the lot in a balloon? Great was the consternation, and greater still the gossip of the little community, when the mysterious event became known through the quartier. What had become of Père Jacques? Had he been kidnapped, or had he been murdered, or had he taken flight of his own accord, and whither, and why? Nothing transpired to throw any light on the mystery, and the gossips, tired of guessing, soon ceased to think about it, and, like many another nine days' wonder, Père Jacques's disappearance died a natural death.
A day came at last when the mitrailleuse hushed its hideous shriek, the cannon left off booming, the wild beasts of war were silent. Paris cried, "Merci!" and the gates were opened. The city, like a sick man healed of a palsy, rose up, and shook herself and rubbed her eyes, and ate plentifully after her long fast. Many came back from the outposts who were wept over as dead. There were strange meetings in many quartiers during those first days that followed the capitulation. But no one brought any news of Père Jacques. There were too many interests nearer and dearer to think of, and, in the universal excitement of shame and vengeance and rare flashes of joy, he and Mlle. Adrienne were forgotten as if they had never been. But when, on the day of my return to Paris, my conversation with my concierge was interrupted by the cheering of the crowd in the Rue Billault, and when the cause of the hubbub was made known, the fact that both Père Jacques and his idée were well remembered and, as the newspapers put it, universally esteemed by a large circle of friends and admirers, was most emphatically attested. Nothing, indeed, could be more gratifying than the manner in which their resurrection was received. The pair looked very much the worse for their sojourn in the other world, wherever it was, to which they had emigrated. Mlle. Adrienne's appearance was particularly affecting. She was worn to skin and bone; and certainly, if Père Jacques, yielding to the pangs of hunger, had sacrificed his idée to his life, and taken her to the shambles, she would not have fetched more than a brace of good rats, or, at best, some ten francs, from the inhuman butchers of the Rue Valois. She dragged her legs, and shook and stumbled as if the weight of her attenuated person were too much for them. Even her old enemies, the gamins, were moved to pity, while Père Jacques, laughing and crying and apostrophizing Mlle. Adrienne in his old familiar way, cheered her on to their old home. How she ever got there is as great a marvel as how she lived to be led there to-day; for, what between physical exhaustion and mental anxiety—for the crowd kept overpowering her with questions and caresses—and what between the well-meant but injudicious attentions of sundry little boys who kept stuffing unintermitting bits of straw and lumps of sugar into her mouth, it is little short of a miracle that she did not choke and expire on the macadam of the Rue Billault.
Many an ass has been lionized before, and many a one will be so again. It is a common enough sight in these days, but never did hero or heroine of the tribe bear herself more becomingly on the trying occasion than Mlle. Adrienne. As to Père Jacques, he bore himself as well as he could, trying hard to look dignified and unconscious, while in his inmost heart he was bursting with pride. While he and Mlle. Adrienne ambled on side by side, some facetious person remarked that Père Jacques looked quite beside himself. This, indeed, was a great day for him and his ass. Yet, notwithstanding that his heart was moved within him and softened towards all men—nay, towards all boys—he could not be induced to say a word as to where he had been, or what he had done, or how he and Mlle. Adrienne had fared in the wilderness, or what manner of wilderness it was, or anything that could furnish the remotest clue to their existence since the day when they had separately disappeared off the horizon of the Rue Billault. Provisions were still too dear, during the first fortnight after the capitulation, to allow of Père Jacques resuming his old trade of apples or cauliflowers; besides, Mademoiselle Adrienne wanted rest.
"Pauvre chérie! il faut qu'elle se remette un peu de la vache enragée," he remarked tenderly, when his friends condoled with him on her forced inactivity. He would not hear of hiring her out for work, as some of them proposed. Mère Richard came and offered a fabulous price for the loan of her for three days, with a view to a stroke of business at the railway station, where food was pouring in from London. Père Jacques shook his fist at the carnivorous old woman, and warned her never to show her unnatural old face in his house again, or it might be worse for her.