Gad! think of it, hyuh am I, a beggah, by Gad, without shoes to my feet, suh! The wuth of one nigga would keep me now for a yeah. At home, by Gad, I could afford to spend the wuth of a staving field hand every twenty-fouah houahs. I'll sweah!" cried Simp in conclusion, "I call this hard."
"I suppose the Yankees have confiscated my stocks in the Havre steamers," muttered Andy Plade. "I consider they have done me out of twenty thousand dollars."
"Brotha writes to me, last lettah," continued Freckle, who had recovered, "every tree cut off the plantation—every nigga run off, down to old Sim, a hundred years old—every panel of fence toted away—no bacon in smoke-house—not an old rip in stable—no corn, coon, possum, rabbit, fox, dog or hog within ten miles of the place—house stands in a mire—mire stands in desert—Yankee general going to conscrip brotha. I save myself, sp'ose, for stahvation."
"Wait till you come down to my condition," faltered the proprietor, making emphasis with his meagre finger—"I have been my own enemy; the Yankees will but finish what is almost consummated now. I tell you, boys, I expect to die in this room; I shall never quit this bed. I am offensive, wasted, withered, and would look gladly upon Père la Chaise,[A] if with my bodily maladies my mind was not also diseased. I have no fortitude; I am afraid of death!"
[A] The great Cemetery of Paris.
The room seemed to grow suddenly cold, and the faces of all the inmates became pale; they looked more squalid than ever—the threadbare curtains, the rheumatic chairs, the soiled floor, sashes and wallpaper.
Mr. Hugenot fumbled his shirt-bosom nervously, and his diamond pin, glaring like a lamp upon the worn garbs and faces of his compatriots, showed them still wanner and meaner by contrast.
"Put the blues under your feet!" cried Auburn Risque, in his hard, practical way; "my system will resurrect the dead. You shall have clothes upon your backs, shoes upon your feet, specie in your pockets, blood in your veins. Let us sell, borrow and pawn; we can raise a thousand francs together. I will return in a fortnight with fifty thousand!"
II.
RAISING THE WIND.
The million five hundred thousand folks in Paris, who went about their pleasures that October night, knew little of the sorrows of the Southern Colony.
Pisgah dropped in at the Chateau des Fleurs to beg a paltry loan from some ancient favorite. The time had been, when, after a nightly debauch, he had placed two hundred francs in her morning's coffee-cup. It was mournful now to mark his premature gray hairs, as, resting his soiled, faded coat-sleeve upon her manteau de velour, he saw the scorn of his poverty in the bright eyes which had smiled upon him, and made his request so humbly and so feverishly.
"Give me back, Feefine," he faltered, "only that fifty francs I once tied in a gold band about your spaniel's neck. I am poor, my dear—that will not move you, I know, but I am going to Germany to play at the banks; if I win, I swear to pay you back ten francs for one!"
There was never a lorette who did not love to gamble. She stopped a passing gentleman and borrowed the money; the other saw it transferred to Pisgah, with an expression of contempt, and, turning to a friend, called him aloud a withering name.
Poor Pisgah! he would have drawn his bowie-knife once, and defied even the emperor to stand between the man and himself after such an appellation. He would have esteemed it a favor now to be what he was named, and only lifted his creased beaver gratefully, and hobbled nervously away, and stopping near by at a café drank a great glass of absinthe, with almost a prayerful heart.
At Mr. Simp's hotel in the Rue Monsieur Le Prince much business was transacted after dark. Monsieurs Freckle and Plade were engaged in smuggling away certain relics of furniture and wearing apparel.
Mr. Simp already owed his landlord fifteen months' rent, for which the only security was his diminishing effects.
If the mole-eyed concierge should suspect foul play with these, Simp would be turned out of doors immediately and the property confiscated.
Singly and in packages the collateral made its exit. A half-dozen regal chemises made to order at fifty francs apiece; a musical clock picked up at Genoa for twelve louis; a patent boot-jack and an ebony billiard cue; a Paduan violin; two statuettes of more fidelity than modesty, to be sold pound for pound at the current value of bronze; divers pipes—articles of which Mr. Simp had earned the title of connoisseur, by investing several hundred dollars annually—a gutta-percha self-adjusting dog-muzzle, the dog attached to which had been seized by H. M. Napoleon III. in lieu of taxes, etc., etc.
Everything passed out successfully except one pair of pantaloons which protruded from Freckle's vest, and that unfortunate person at once fell under suspicion of theft. All went in the manner stated to Mr. Lees' chamber, he being the only colonist who did not hazard the loss of his room, chiefly because nobody else would rent it, and in part because his landlady, having swindled him for six or eight years, had compunctions as to ejecting him.
Thence in the morning, true to his aristocratic instincts, Mr. Simp departed in a voiture for the central bureau of the Mont de Piete,[B] in the Rue Blanc Manteau. His face had become familiar there of late. He carried his articles up from the curb, while the cocher grinned and winked behind, and taking his turn in the throng of widows, orphans, ouvriers, and profligates and unfortunates of all loose conditions, Simp was a subject of much unenviable remark. He came away with quite an armful of large yellow certificates, and the articles were registered to Monsieur Simp, a French subject; for with such passports went all his compatriots.
[B] The government pawnbroking shop.
Andy Plade spent twenty-four hours, meanwhile, at the Grand Hotel, enacting the time-honored part of all things to all men.
He differed from the other colonists, in that they were weak—he was bad. He spoke several languages intelligibly, and knew much of many things—art, finances, geography—just those matters on which newly arrived Americans desire information. His address was even fascinating. One suspected him to be a leech, but pardoned the motive for the manner. He called himself a broken man. The war had blighted his fair fortunes. For a time he had held on hopefully, but now meant to breast the current no longer. His time was at the service of anybody. Would monsieur like to see the city? He knew its every cleft and den. So he had lived in Paris five years—in the same manner, elsewhere, all his life.
A few men heard his story and helped him—one Northern man had given him employment; his gratitude was defalcation.
To day he has sounded Hugenot; but that man of sentiment alluded to the business habits of his ancestry, and intimated that he did not lend.
"Ou-ah cause, Andy," he says, with a flourish, "is now negotiating a loan. When ou-ah beloved country is reduced to such straits, that she must borow from strangers, I cannot think of relieving private indigence."
Later
