The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

I

One cold, rainy evening towards the end of October-1838, a man of athletic build wearing an old straw hat and ragged serge shirt and trousers dived into the City ward of Paris, a maze of dark, crooked streets which spreads from the Palace of Justice Notre Dame. This district is the Mint, or haunt of a great number of low malefactors who swarm in the low drinking-dens.

The man we noticed slackened his pace, feeling that he was "on his own ground." It was very dark and gusts of rain lashed the walls.

"Good arternoon, La Goualeuse (Sweet-Throat)" said he to one of a group of girls sheltering under a projecting window. "You're the very girl to stand some brandy."

"I'm out of money, Slasher," said the girl trembling; for the man was the terror of the neighbourhood.

He grasped her arm, but she wrenched herself loose and fled down a dark alley, pursued by the ruffian.

"I'll have you," he exclaimed after a few seconds as he seized in his powerful hand one altogether as soft and slight.

"You shall dance for it," a masculine voice broke in, and under the soft delicate skin of the hand the Slasher felt himself grasped by muscles of iron. For some seconds nothing was heard save the sounds of a deadly strife.

The struggle was short, for the ruffian, although of athletic make and of first rate ability in rough and tumble fights, found he had met his master; he measured his length on the ground.

Burning with rage the Slasher returned to the charge, whereupon the defender of La Goualeuse showered upon the cut-throat's head a succession of blows so weighty and crushing and so completely out of the French mode of fighting that the Slasher was mentally as well as bodily stunned by them and gave up, muttering, "I'm floored. Except the Skeleton with his iron bones and the Schoolmaster, no one till now could brag of having set his foot on my neck."

"Well, come and drink a glass and you shall know who I am," said the Unknown. "Come, don't nurse a grudge against me."

"Bear malice? Not a bit of it! You're best man, make no mistake!"

The three, now upon the best terms, directed their steps towards a tavern. As the Unknown followed his companions a charcoal-seller approached him and whispered in German, "Be on your guard, Your Highness!" The Unknown waved his hand carelessly and entered the tavern.

Over their drinks the three related to each other their histories.

The Slasher was a man of tall stature, with light hair and enormous red whiskers. Notwithstanding his terrible surname his features expressed rather brutal hardihood and unconquerable boldness, than ferocity. In his childhood he had strolled about with an old rag and bone picker, who almost knocked the life out of him. He had never known his parents. His first employment was to help knockers cut horses' throats at Montfauçon till cutting and slashing became a rage with him and he was turned out of the slaughter-house for spoiling the hides. Later he enlisted and served three years. Then one day the bullying of the sergeant roused the old rage and he turned on him and cut and slashed as if he had been in the slaughter-house. That got him fifteen years in the hulks. Now he was a lighterman on the Seine rafts.

Sweet-Throat was not over sixteen and a half. A forehead of the whitest surmounted a face perfectly oval and of angelic expression, such as we see in Raphael's beauties. She was also called "Fleur-de-Marie," doubtless on account of the maiden purity of her countenance. She, too, had never known her parents. When she was about seven years of age she lived with an old and one-eyed woman, called Screech-Owl because her hooked nose and round green eye made her resemble an owl that had lost its eye. She taunted the child with being picked up from the streets and sent her out begging, rewarding her with beatings if she did not bring her at least six pence at night, until at last she ran away from Screech-Owl and hid in a wood-yard for the night. Next day she was found, taken before a magistrate and sent to a reformatory as a vagrant until she was sixteen. It was a perfect paradise compared to Screech-Owl's miserable roost. But when she came out she fell into the hands of the Ogress who kept the inn they were now in. The clothes she stood in belonged to the Ogress, she owed her for board and lodgings and could not stir from her or she must be taken up as a thief.

Rudolph (for so we shall call the defender of La Goualeuse) listened with deep interest to her recital, made with touching frankness. Misery, destitution, ignorance of the world, had destroyed this wretched girl, cast alone and unprotected on the immensity of Paris. He involuntarily thought of a beloved child whom he had lost, who had died at six, and would have been, had she lived, like Fleur-de-Marie, sixteen and a half years old.