Mlle. Fouchette Part 8

Madame Therese and little Fouchette were suffering simultaneously from this evil.

"Take 'em away!"

"But listen, child! I----"

"Take 'em away!" she screamed.

Tartar rose with an ominous growl and looked from his mistress to the woman.

"We don't need 'em, do we, Tartar? No! Let them take their gall and honey with 'em. Yes! They make us tired. Yes!"

To all of these observations--somewhat heavily weighted with barrier billingsgate--Tartar showed his approval by wagging his tail knowingly and by covering the small face bent down to him with canine kisses.

"Better come away, madame," said an agent, in a low voice, to the stupefied woman thus a.s.sailed. He laughed at her discomfiture. "It is waste kindness and waste time. You can't do anything with that sort of riffraff. It's only a stray cat fed to scratch you. They're a bad lot."

The "bad lot" had overheard this police philosophy, and it confirmed her pre-existing opinion of the police.

Monsieur le Commissaire was a grave and burly gentleman of middle life, with iron-gray hair and moustache, and eyes that seemed to read their object through and through. He pulled this moustache thoughtfully as he listened to the report of the river police agent, all the time keeping the eyes upon the diminutive but defiant child before him. When he had learned everything,--including the scene in the station,--he said, abruptly,--

"Come in here, my child. Don't be afraid,--n.o.body's going to hurt you.

Yes, bring the dog. Brave dog! Splendid fellow! Come! I'd like to own that dog, now,--I would, indeed!" he observed, as he closed the door of his private office; "but I suppose you wouldn't part with him for the world now, would you?"

"N-no. But he isn't mine, monsieur," she replied, regretfully.

"No? What a pity! Then perhaps I could buy him, eh?"

"I--I don't know. Monsieur Podvin----"

She stopped suddenly. But the magistrate was looking abstractedly over her head and did not appear to notice her slip of the tongue. He was thinking. It gave little Fouchette time to recover.

He was something like the enthusiastic physician who sees in his patient only "a case,"--something devoid of personality. He recognized in this waif a condition of society to be treated. In his mind she was a wholly irresponsible creature. Not the whole case in question,--oh, no; but a part of the case. What she had been, was now, or would be were questions that did not enter into the consideration. Nothing but the case.

Instead of putting the child through a course of questions,--what she antic.i.p.ated and had steeled herself against,--he merely talked to her on what appeared to be topics foreign to the subject immediately in hand.

"You must be taken care of in some way," he declared. "Yes,--a child like you should not be left in the streets of Paris to beg or starve,--and it's against the law to beg----"

"But I never begged, monsieur," interrupted the child,--"never!"

"Of course not,--of course not! No; you are too proud to beg. That's right. But you couldn't make a living picking rags, and the law doesn't permit a child to pick rags in the streets of Paris."

"I never did, monsieur, never!"

"Of course not,--you would be arrested. But outside the barriers the work is not lucrative. Charenton, for instance, is not as prolific of rags as it is of rascals."

At the mention of Charenton Fouchette started visibly; but her interlocutor did not seem to notice it.

"No; it does not even give as brave a child as you enough to eat,--not if you work ever so hard,--let alone to provide comfortably for Tar--for Tartar. Eh, my brave spaniel? We must get Tartar some breakfast. Has Tartar had any breakfast?"

"No, monsieur,--oh, no! And he is so hungry!"

She was all eagerness and softness when it came to her faithful companion. Tartar began to take a lively interest in the conversation of which he knew himself the subject.

"Exactly," said the Commissaire, suddenly getting up. He had reached his conclusion. "Now, remain here a few minutes, little one, while I see about it."

He disappeared into the outer office and remained closeted in a small cabinet with a telephone. Then, calling one of his men in plain clothes aside, he gave some instructions in a rapid manner.

When he re-entered the private office he knew that a rascal named Podvin kept a disreputable cabaret near the Porte de Charenton, and that a small, thin child called Fouchette lived with the Podvins, who also kept a dog, liver-colored, with dark-brown splotches, named Tartar, but that the child was not yet missed, probably owing to the fact that it was her customary hour in the streets of Charenton. In the same time he had notified the Prefecture that a murderous attempt had been made on a child, probably by some one of the gang that infested the Rendez-Vous pour Cochers, and had been directed to co-operate with two skilled Central men in an investigation.

"All right, pet.i.te," said the Commissaire, rubbing his hands and a.s.suming his most oily tone. "First we are going to have some dry clothes and some shoes and stockings and----"

"I only--I never wore shoes and stockings," interrupted Fouchette, somewhat embarra.s.sed by this flood of finery. "I don't need 'em, monsieur. It is only Tartar's----"

"Oh, we'll attend to Tartar also,--don't be afraid."

"Monsieur is very kind."

"It is nothing. Come along, now. You're going to ride in a nice carriage, too,--for the crowd might follow you in the street, you know,--and I'll send a man with you to take good care of you."

"But Tartar----"

"You can take him in the carriage with you if you wish,--yes, it is better, perhaps. He might get run over or lost."

"Oh!"

And thus Fouchette rode in state, and in wet rags at the same time, down past the great Jardin des Plantes, the Halle aux Vins, and along the Boulevard St. Germain to Rue St. Jacques, where they turned down across the Pet.i.t Pont and stopped in the court-yard of an immense building across the plaza from Notre Dame. Tartar was somewhat uneasy, as well as his little mistress, at this novelty of locomotion, but as long as they were together it seemed to be all right. So they looked out of the carriage windows at the sights that were as strange to their eyes as if they had never before been in the city of Paris.

Meanwhile, to divert the child, the man at her side had gayly pointed out the objects of interest.

"Ah! and there is grand old Notre Dame," said he.

"What's that?"

"Notre Dame."

"It's a big house."

"Yes; but you've seen it, of course."

"Never."

"What!" he exclaimed, in astonishment; "you, a little Parisienne, and never saw Notre Dame?"

"You--you, monsieur, you have then seen everything in Paris?"

There was a vein of cold irony in the small voice.

"Er--w-well, not quite. Not quite, perhaps," he smilingly answered.

"No, nor I," she said.