by Silverpen [Eliza Meteyard].
Originally published in Howitt's Journal (William & Mary Howitt) vol.2 #38 (18 Sep 1847).
Part the First.
A very old copy of the Gospels lay upon the table, for it had edges and clasps of filigreed brass, and the paper of it, already discoloured by its many years, looked as crisp and as brown as a withered autumn leaf, in the shadowed sort of light that fell from the small iron lamp. Yet Antoine, a little old man, as withered as the leaves of knowledge before him, was, nevertheless, much interested therein; for though Mam'selle Caprice, a neighbouring portress, had lent him an interesting feuilleton, and he had laid out a franc that very morning on a violin accompaniment to the last song of Beranger, still, having opened incidentally at the second chapter of St. Matthew, he read on, and was now come to the Slaughter of the Innocents, by Herod. When he had ended the eighteenth verse, he rose thoughtfully to stir the old brown pot of bouilli, on the stove, took a glance at the clock, then another round the little cell-like chamber, and went back to the Gospels, and the sixteenth verse. From that by degrees to this,—"In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they were not."
"But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt,"
"Saying, Arise, and take the young child—" And at that moment, some tremulous hand, feeble yet quick, raised the very heavy knocker on the door, and it fell, as from a powerless hand, back again with a heavy stroke.
"Horace, or Marsailles, or Carlier, the do-nothings," muttered Antoine, as he moved from his book reluctantly; but the light of the lamp, as he held it up in his hand, and slid back the little movable shutter that ran across the grating in the door, showed him that it was none of the medical students that thus disturbed his evening's rest, but a wretched old man, belonging to the degraded class of chiffonniers, or rag-gatherers. Not answering, though Antoine called out loudly several times, or even lifting his drooping head, now sunk so low upon his breast that it touched the wide and filthy basket swung by a belt across his ragged blouse, the ancient porter of the great Paris Theatre of Anatomy, quickly threw back the door, and raised the old man by the arm across the step. He was evidently speechless, and with difficulty reached the wide stone seat to which Antoine led him. The first care of the old porter,—he had a kindly soul,—was to unstrap the heavy basket, apparently to his hasty glance full of bones, bottles, and old rags, and place it beneath the seat; next to lean the old man gently against the recess formed by the cell-like arch in which the seat was placed, then quickly to roll up the first coarse hospital-towel that came to hand, and place it for a pillow, and then to move away, and just by those Gospels stop one moment to think whether he should revive by a small cup of his own inimitable bouilli, or a glass from one of those two flasks of precious Bordeaux, brought by Nattili the student, in his last return from the provinces, or —, and this was broadening out very wide indeed the boundary of his Samaritanal virtue—a small cup from Retzner's cafetière (coffee-pot) upon the stove. However, he decided for the precious flask; brought it forth and a long taper glass from an old medicine chest, that figured prominently in an opposite recess of the cell, poured forth the Samaritanal drop with a noble and a gentle hand, took up the iron lamp and returned towards the wretched beggar; but neither wine, nor oil, nor more precious medicinal things would have served; life had followed speech; and the face that leant up against the coarse hard pillow, softer, however, than down by the rich dew of charity that had fallen on it, was as rigid as the Caen stone built up in arch and wall around. After the first momentary surprise was over, the porter summoned one of the surgeons then in the anatomical theatre; but life was found to be quite extinct. Notice was, therefore, given to the next Prefect of Police, and an officer summoned to take the necessary depositions. Nothing was known of the miserable vagrant, beyond that his name was Paquin, and that he had been occasionally employed to bring small animals such as dogs, rabbits, cats, or rats, to the hospital for the purpose of dissection, nor was anything found upon his person beyond a sou or two, some crusts of bread and blades of garlick, and such few specimens of his trade as had been supposed too fine or rare to be mixed amidst the fetid contents of his miserable basket. When, however, the officer and Antoine stooped down to move the basket from beneath the stone bench, to their surprise they found it guarded by a small, half starved terrier dog, which, Antoine recollected, had occasionally accompanied the old man in his previous visits, and was called Corbeau. On this night it had crept in unperceived, and now the basket was moved away, it growled and showed its teeth, and jumped up resolutely on the stone bench after the basket. But when the officer of police began to move the light covering of rags, it directly wagged its tail, and looked with almost speaking eyes into the face of Antoine. The porter's surprise was great indeed to see that the light covering of rags had been used as a mere blind; for beneath it lay wrapped in an old mantelet a new-born child. Its life was very low within it, and its breath ebbed fitfully, so much so that when the officer laid it down somewhat roughly on the bench, this life seemed ended.
"New food for the Hôpital des Enfants Trouvés," said the officer, with a laugh; "ma mère ou mon père won't be found amongst les chiffonniers, mon garçon."
For some cause or another, the honest soul of the old porter was inexpressibly touched; because, perhaps, the small frail thing before him was so utterly desolate; because, perhaps, Corbeau, the poor lean brute, licked tenderly the little outstretched hand; perhaps, because Herod's decree still lingered in his memory, or all combined; for after stepping back to the still open Gospels, he said,
"Well, it had better be left here to night, Monsieur, I shan't harm it, I shan't harm it. No, no, I am very tender, and the night is very cold, poor thing; and my friend Caprice, Monsieur, will do a hand's turn for it, if it be necessary. She's very kind; a most charming woman, Monsieur, and reads the very choicest of the Feuilletons. So she shall come, and the babe shall stop, as I say: the night is very cold, Corbeau shall stop. Yes, yes, Monsieur, God must deal tenderly with us, this is a hard world!" Antoine was so enthusiastic that his breath was gone.
"Eh bien, mon garçon," laughed the official, "if les chiffonniers get to know your tenderness to such rose-buds, you'll have a blossom every night. But farewell; if our inquiry should fail, there's the Hôpital des Enfants Trouvés for you." So saying he rolled up his papers, lighted his cigarette at the lamp, and, nodding his head, took his departure.
Antoine was now alone. No eye was over him to criticise his acts of mercy, but the divine and loving one of Heaven; so, when he found the babe still breathe, he took it tenderly in his arms, placed a dry faggot on the stove, brought his arm-chair close beside, placed on it the pillow and blanket of his truckle bed, placed the child upon these, gave it some milk that had stood heating on the stove beside Retzner's coffee, and when it had fed eagerly, and breathed more freely, he covered it gently, as if his hand had never known bolt, or lock, or bar. Next office was to toast a small thin round of bread, cut it into long fingers, reward Corbeau with the crusts, pour out the fragrant coffee, place it on a salver, and then disappear with it through a long passage that opened from this porter's chamber.
Notre Dame, and all the Paris clocks were striking twelve when he came back with gentle foot and beaming face; and finding the unknown babe still asleep, and Corbeau stretched comfortably on the hearth, he fed the lamp with fresh oil, and sat down again before his book, and when he had read on awhile, he suddenly stopped and said aloud "Heaven itself says take the child; and as this came forth as it might be from the Slaughter of the Innocents, suppose, if it should live, I be as poetical as Caprice, or Petite, the barber, and call it Innocent La Trouvée."
Though the police made every possible inquiry amidst the miserable haunts of this most degraded and squalid class of the Paris population, nothing could be learnt respecting the child's parentage. Paquin, the dead chiffonnier, had rented a wretched chamber, solely for himself; and the inhabitants round, with that apathy so much a part of brutality and degradation, knew little more of the old man than his name. Accordingly Antoine, after due consultation with Mam'selle Caprice, and the barber, and divers other friends, adopted l'enfant trouvée and le petit Corbeau, the dog, and this with much grace, and the very best of arguments on his side, as during the week through which the police had made their search, the small frail thing, so utterly adrift upon the world's wide sea, had, by its very helplessness and desolation, so touched the old man's heart, that without more ado, or one repentant sigh, he made a haven for it, and bid it rest. The merry barber had, lodging in his house, a poor married sempstress, who gladly became its nurse; and as Antoine rarely quitted his post, except on very grand or extraordinary occasions, the child was brought most evenings to the loge de portier, either by the barber or Madame Amand, its nurse, so that not only Corbeau began to understand the evening's visitation, and welcome it by a bark and frisk, but Antoine to watch beside the little grating for the nurse's well-known step. Antoine had married very early in life, and had had an only son, who, having been enrolled under the act of conscription, had afterwards perished in Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. His wife died of grief soon after; and thus he had been for many years alone, without a stronger human tie than Caprice or the barber.
When Innocent was little more than a year old, Madame Amand met with so severe an accident as to be incapable of her charge. Whereupon Antoine would have her home, and soon became so good a nurse that the child throve wonderfully.
With this good nursing, and this good thriving, several years seemed quickly to go by, and Innocent, a slight graceful child of seven, had already been taught to dance a minuet by Monsieur Petite, the barber, and to sew, by Mam'selle Caprice, the portress. And many a student that passed through the ponderous door to the theatre beyond, would now often stay to kiss her, and so often, too, bring bonbons, and dolls, and toys, that her child-life had not a sorrow, or a care, though her home was a loge de portier, with a single room inside, and a paved yard around, and her only companion and friend, a solitary old man. About this time, some good Sisters of Charity, from a neighbouring convent, who came for the purpose of recognising a body that lay in the-dead-room of the theatre, saw Innocent, and heard her story from Antoine.
"As she has sometimes been within the room, mes sœurs," spoke Antoine with deep respect, "Innocent can be your guide. She has no fear of death, the pretty one." And gently, as Antoine had prophesied, the child stepped on, and this so lightly, so like leaf-fall, when she bore the light into the chamber of the dead, that the sisters asked her why.
"Because God's sleep seems so very beautiful, mes sœurs, that I can but tread with a hushed step." And more than this she seemed so fearless, and yet so reverent, amidst the dead, so intuitively, yet so naturally so, that the sisters, whispering one to the other, said it was surely heaven's decree, the little one was destined for une religieuse. From this time they failed not in calling often to see Innocent, and though Antoine had no intention that she should enter the cloister, even though on the mission of a heavenly charity, les sœurs soon obtained his permission that Innocent should attend daily at their convent, for the sake of superior instruction in various accomplishments. Other children, the good sisters taught, were quicker than Innocent la Trouvée at the embroidery frame and the singing lesson, but none were so useful as she soon became, in assisting to prepare medicine and food for the sick; as if out of probable guilt and shame, the ever-coming spirit of purity and love was here to testify itself, and balance evil done by good enlarged, as good for ever does throughout all nature. But good in this case, how noble, how exalted, how far above the common way it had to be, we yet shall see! for the ways and means of good take progress with the courses of all universal law!
Well, amongst the five hundred students, or thereabouts, that frequented this great Parisian theatre of anatomy, was one very poor, perhaps the very poorest, named Camille Dispareaux. Being a provincial, and utterly without friends or resources, he existed in Paris, and paid the fees of the various educational classes he attended, by preparing skeletons for the setters, and painting cheap likenesses for a shopkeeper of the Boulevards. Antoine, from whose province Camille had come, brought about so friendly an acquaintance with him, that after the theatre was closed for the night, or on holidays, he would stop and share the old man's bouilli, dress up with cocked hat and wooden sword dear old petted Corbeau for Innocent, or tell her stories, or sing to her les petites chansons of the provinces, till her small child's heart was very light and glad. But that was truer joy, though her child's heart told it not, when with her head nestled on Antoine's knee, Camille, through a whole evening, would talk to the old man of the wonderful revelations of anatomy, of its sublime and its religious teachings, of his own exalted ambition and infinite struggles with the world; and sometimes, when perhaps he thought the child asleep, he would fetch from the students' room some of his own preparations of cartilage, and bone, and nerve, or unroll the productions of his peneil, often larger than the nature copied from, and always beautiful, though of the grim subjects of the scalpel and the dissecting-room.
Surrounded by circumstances all bearing relation to this mystery of life growing forth from death, there were two especially hidden, and yet ever spoken of as they were, that deeply excited the most intense curiosity in Innocent, and directly led to the sublime duty of her coming life. Two things she had never seen, the theatre itself, nor its great master, Professor Retzner. If the first excited a sort of curiosity akin to that of Bluebeard's wife, the last was reverent, such as the humble feel in wishing to behold true greatness; for Antoine's praise and faith, his visitations night by night, always at the same hour, his long service even before his appointment as portier, the homage of so many students, the solemn praise of the otherwise merry barber, had raised up such an enchantment in the mind of Innocent la Trouvée, that to see Retzner face to face, became the greatest and intensest passion of her life; and yet it was a wish so mixed up with fear, that she had never dared to ask Antoine, dearly as she loved him.
It was the fête of New-year's eve, and, agreeably to an old custom, Mam'selle Caprice, and the barber, and Madame Amand, and other friends had come to spend it with Antoine. Yes, and it was the very happiest fête-night Innocent had known, for not only did the barber bring his violin for a dance, but also one of the prettiest embroidered aprons ever seen, and Caprice also brought a very tasty frock, and each one something else for ma mignonne, and there was fruit and lemonade and pastry, and bonbons, and excellent vin du pays, and all might have thought that Innocent had nothing more to wish. Still had they watched her eye so often glancing upwards to the Geneva clock, they could have fancied there was some other wish, though not the strange one that made her heart beat so quickly to and fro. It was known, however, at midnight, for when came forth the coffee-cup and salver as of old,—for nights and days of study were the only fêtes known to the great anatomist, and though he lived in the grandest street of Paris, here was his study to which he walked to and fro and never quitted till long after midnight,—Innocent put her arms round the old man's neck and whispered in his ear.
"You, ma petite, ma mignonne," said the old man, looking down surprised, "you see Monsieur?"
She whispered "yes," so very eagerly, it was a fête-night, and though Monsieur might be angry, Antoine could not refuse ma mignonne; and so with the salver pressed against her beating heart, and not hearing that the barber advised that the new apron should be put on, and Caprice the dress "to charm Monsieur," she left the vaulted room and closed the door behind her. A long passage and three or four steps from which led a broad stone staircase to the salle d'anatomie, brought her to a three-fold door, which opening and closing as directed by Antoine, she stood in the study of the great scientific master. He sat before a table, with his back to her, so that she had time to lean against the door, and try to hide the fear that was now greater than her curiosity. One older, one more worldly, might have been awe-struck; wisely or fearfully, according to his education. For round this vaulted chamber, lighted from the roof, were long compartments ranged one above the other, in which were set hundreds of human skulls, not only from the desert sands of Africa, the mountains of Morocco, Caucasus, Andes, and Himalayah, but from the snows of Kamtschatka, the buried cities of central America, and the battle-fields and grave-yards of the two temperate zones. On pedestals were skeletons; and heaped-up bones, and prepared cartilage, and atlases, and diagrams, and maps, and books, and papers, were on tables set about, and on the floor two giant globes as tall as the tallest man. The table at which Retzner himself sat, was literally walled up with books and covered with papers and instruments, except for the space at which he sat writing, the lamp above shining on his whitened hair and wasted hand as it glanced to and fro with pen across the paper. Just beyond this paper stood a bronze pillar of about a foot high, on which was swung an engraved slab of marble, bearing this in large French characters:—"ORGANIZATION WOULD PERFECT AND BEAUTIFY, IF MAN WERE NOT DEBASED BY CRIME AND MISERY." Now of this misery and crime come forward one of its ministering angels! as many angels will when woman knows her office and her mission from the skies!
The child approached the table and set down the coffee with a beating heart, perhaps in her nervousness touching Retzner's elbow. He looked suddenly round, and sternly, when he saw a stranger.
"How, who, what, why, —"
"Innocent La Trouvée, Monsieur!"
But he scarcely heard words, he was looking with intense eagerness into her sublime and beautiful face; beautiful, because so full of truth, and intellect, and affection. He drew her nearer by the hand and spanned her forehead; no anger was on his face now. No! no Raphael's Madonna ever looked down more touchingly upon her holy child. Conscious, perhaps, that she trembled violently, he spoke kindly and asked her name.
"Innocent—well I'll Italianise it—it shall be Innocenti," and as he spoke he placed a louis d'or in her hand, "there you'll come again soon—soon, recollect."
Antoine's surprise and delight may be conceived; "it was so noble of Monsieur, so good," he said. However, the joy was nothing to Innocent till Camille knew it; so the next day, with Antoine's leave, the new frock and apron were put on, and over them a little black scarf, given her by Nattili the sculptor before he went to Rome, she set out to the Faubourg where he lived. She found the poor anatomical student in his atelier, and instead of being at his legitimate work, a smartly dressed grisette of the lower class was sitting to him for her likeness. She was young and very pretty, but so vain, that though her dark hair was dressed most elaborately, she kept arranging it sideways in the student's little frameless mirror, and her mother, a fat bourgeoise of a neighbouring cabaret, standing over Camille, was guiding his brush, as it were, with such exclamations as, "More colour, sir, more colour; Marie has a beautiful mouth—that dimple larger, sir; the girl is very beautiful. Thank you, thank you, her eyebrows are very dark."
In this way the fat mistress of the cabaret proceeded till the sitting was over, when she and the grisette withdrew. Then it was that Innocent drawing her little stool to Camille's side, and telling him all about Retzner and her wonderful fortune, brought forth from beneath her little scarf, a pair of gloves, as a new year's gift. "And now dear Camille," she said, when the poor anatomical painter had kissed her tenderly, "I have a great secret to tell you. I am very fond of drawing. I have always loved it, and I am sure I should very soon learn. So you shall buy me pencils and paper, and then will you teach me, Camille?"
He thought it but a child's request, and promised her he would.
"And now, Camille," she went on to say, "as this is a fête day, and I have leave, do let me hear some stories about the rag-gatherers; you know them, you go amongst them; I came from them you know, Camille, and a story will be better than a walk in the Champs Elysées. Do, dear Camille!"
It was a curious trait in Innocent La Trouvée's character that she was always most curious, and inquiring about subjects of misery and degradation, and perhaps, for the very reason that Antoine suppressed them. Of the incidental knowledge of her early history, she was always very curious, and of the rag-gatherers that prowled about the streets with their fetid baskets. On this subject, and on others, she sat by Camille's side and chattered for some hours, whilst he resumed his more legitimate occupation; and after that, Camille locked up his poor room, with its marvellous labours strewn around, and accompanied her home. They had walked some way, and were clearing a filthy quartier of the town, when a witch-like old woman starting from a narrow entrance, stayed Camille.
"Eh! mon garçon, a whelp with two heads, a pretty subject for your knife. Only been a day in the Seine, and therefore but two sous, Eh bien! a bargain, Monsieur?"
Camille at first refused, but she mumbled some further persuasion, and he followed. The street, though narrow, had once been a street of palaces. Wide corridors and staircases led from it; these, scarcely now defended by a door, were public ways, fetid with the ordure and rubbish that dripped from story to story. With difficulty they followed to the fourth story, where, from a long passage, dens of misery opened, more or less densely crowded. Innocent stood trembling in this passage or corridor, whilst Camille followed the old woman. In some were miserable groups, aged and hideous, that squabbled for their promiscuous bed upon the floor, or secured their miserable baskets, or gnawed ravenously their morsels of putrescent food; in another, a group of old women were seated, grumbling round a bit of charcoal on a brazier; in another, an old man and woman were cooking in a wide fireplace, the cheap refuse of the market; but what touched Innocent's young heart the most was a group of girls, not older than herself, though dressed like women, talking with loud coarse voices, and drinking strong vin du pays from the flask itself! Such she might have been, her child's heart told her, and taking Camille's hand, she said softly, "Let us go, Monsieur."
"What makes those girls look so wicked, and be so bold, Camille?" she asked, when they had cleared the miserable quartier.
"Because they are unfortunate, and are untaught, ma mignonne."
"And what makes many look so crooked and deformed;—all, too, so different to happy people, Camille?"
"Because being ignorant and vicious, my little one, they know not how to take care of the beautiful body God has given to his creatures; or, if diseased and deformed, how to make it better."
"Ah, then, Camille," she said, looking earnestly up into his face, "what angels, then, the good should be to those unfortunate." She did not speak another word the whole way home. The impression made was graven on her heart for ever!
To Camille's astonishment, her talent for the pencil was extraordinary. And this, too, in dry outlines and diagrams, for which women have rarely any taste. She did not care to draw carts, and houses, and fruit-baskets, as her dear old friend the barber wished, but astonished them all by drawing his hand and head, the latter not dressed in its best wig, but bare and eyeless; in a word, it was Monsieur Petite's skull.
During this extraordinary progress of some months, Retzner was absent from Paris. Upon his return, the long looked-for night came, when she would carry in his coffee. He remembered her at once, and laid aside his pen to look into her beaming face.
"Well, Innocenti, what of the louis d'or?" he said, smilingly.
"It brought some pencils and a portefeuille, and new year's gifts for Monsieur mon père, and Camille, Monsieur."
"What, to draw Antoine's dog?"
"No, such as that." She pointed to a large atlas, open before the anatomist.
This night was the white night in the fortunes of Innocent La Trouvée, for if Retzner was astonished at her answer, more so was he at the visible proofs of her extraordinary talent; and more so when he heard of her innate pity, touching as it did all the misery within her influence. It was the dew-drop of the flower. That very night Retzner determined to educate and adopt her, and a week after, to the utter astonishment of Antoine's friends, the barber included, the old porter, as a sort of charge d'affairs, Innocent La Trouvée and dear old Corbeau, were located in Retzner's house, in one of the grandest streets of Paris. There were soon governesses and masters enough, and but one young child as mistress within that house, for Retzner was unmarried.
Some years had passed quietly by, when it began to be whispered amongst the savans, and in the salons of Paris, that the greatest anatomist of his age had an equally gifted daughter. Yes, that he who was profounder than Blumenbach, and as great in his province as Cuvier; he who by the progress of science was teaching statesmen to read politics by the light of physical organization, who was declaring perfection and beauty to be capable of acquirement by nations as by individuals; that human progress lay with brain and skull, bone and sinew; had a fair young creature flitting about him, like his best spirit, understanding his learned books, imbibing his philosophy, assisting him by her wonderful pencil, visiting with him the beds of Magdalens and hospitals, and the recesses of prisons. Yes, so there was! and the anatomist was the German Retzner, and his daughter, the poor infant that had come forth from the chiffonnier's fetid basket. Yes, the Gospels had said "take the young child," as they will by-and-by teach us to take all young children, and make them what God has destined all his creatures to be—wise and happy.