THE ADVENTURE OF THE PIG’S HEAD
Once upon a time Aristide Pujol found himself standing outside his Paris residence, No. 213 bis, Rue Saint Honoré, without a penny in the world. His last sou had gone to Madame Bidoux, who kept a small green grocer’s shop at No. 213 bis and rented a ridiculously small back room for a ridiculously small weekly sum to Aristide whenever he honoured the French capital with his presence. During his absence she forwarded him such letters as might arrive for him; and as this was his only permanent address, and as he let Madame Bidoux know his whereabouts only at vague intervals of time, the transaction of business with Aristide Pujol, “Agent, No. 213 bis, Rue Saint Honoré, Paris,” by correspondence was peculiarly difficult.
He had made Madame Bidoux’s acquaintance in the dim past; and he had made it in his usual direct and electric manner. Happening to walk down the Rue Saint Honoré, he had come upon tragedy. Madame Bidoux, fat, red of face, tearful of eye and strident of voice, held in her arms a little mongrel dog—her own precious possession—which had just been run over in the street, and the two of them filled the air with wailings and vociferation. Aristide uncovered his head, as though he were about to address a duchess, and smiled at her engagingly.
“Madame,” said he, “I perceive that your little dog has a broken leg. As I know all about dogs, I will, with your permission, set the limb, put it into splints and guarantee a perfect cure. Needless to say, I make no charge for my services.”
Snatching the dog from the arms of the fascinated woman, he darted in his dragon-fly fashion into the shop, gave a hundred orders to a stupefied assistant, and—to cut short a story which Aristide told me with great wealth of detail—mended the precious dog and gained Madame Bidoux’s eternal gratitude. For Madame Bidoux the world held no more remarkable man than Aristide Pujol; and for Aristide the world held no more devoted friend than Madame Bidoux. Many a succulent meal, at the widow’s expense—never more enjoyable than in summer time when she set a little iron table and a couple of iron chairs on the pavement outside the shop—had saved him from starvation; and many a gewgaw sent from London or Marseilles or other such remote latitudes filled her heart with pride. Since my acquaintance with Aristide I myself have called on this excellent woman, and I hope I have won her esteem, though I have never had the honour of eating pig’s trotters and chou-croûte with her on the pavement of the Rue Saint Honoré. It is an honour from which, being an unassuming man, I shrink.
Unfortunately Madame Bidoux has nothing further to do with the story I am about to relate, save in one respect:—
There came a day—it was a bleak day in November, when Madame Bidoux’s temporary financial difficulties happened to coincide with Aristide’s. To him, unsuspicious of coincidence, she confided her troubles. He emptied the meagre contents of his purse into her hand.
“Madame Bidoux,” said he with a flourish, and the air of a prince, “why didn’t you tell me before?” and without waiting for her blessing he went out penniless into the street.
Aristide was never happier than when he had not a penny piece in the world. He believed, I fancy, in a dim sort of way, in God and the Virgin and Holy Water and the Pope; but the faith that thrilled him to exaltation was his faith in the inevitable happening of the unexpected. He marched to meet it with the throbbing pulses of a soldier rushing to victory or a saint to martyrdom. He walked up the Rue Saint Honoré, the Rue de la Paix, along the Grands Boulevards, smiling on a world which teemed with unexpectednesses, until he reached a café on the Boulevard des Bonnes Filles de Calvaire. Here he was arrested by Fate, in the form of a battered man in black, who, springing from the solitary frostiness of the terrace, threw his arms about him and kissed him on both cheeks.
“Mais, c’est toi, Pujol!”