Crainquebille, Putois, Riquet and Other Profitable Tales. François-Anatole Thibault

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СКАЧАТЬ "Asparagus!" For leeks are the asparagus of the poor. Now it happened that on October 20, at noon, as he was going down the Rue Montmartre, there came out of her shop the shoemaker's wife, Madame Bayard. She went up to Crainquebille’s barrow and scornfully taking up a bundle of leeks, she said:

      "I don’t think much of your leeks. What do you want a bundle?"

      “Sevenpence halfpenny, mum, and the best in the market!"

      "Sevenpence halfpenny for three wretched leeks?"

      And disdainfully she cast the leeks back into the barrow.

      ​Then it was that Constable 64 came and said to Crainquebille:

      "Move on."

      Moving on was what Crainquebille had been doing from morning till evening for fifty years. Such an order seemed right to him, and perfectly in accordance with the nature of things. Quite prepared to obey, he urged his customer to take what she wanted.

      "You must give me time to choose," she retorted sharply.

      Then she felt all the bundles of leeks over again. Finally, she selected the one she thought the best, and held it clasped to her bosom as saints in church pictures hold the palm of victory.

      "I will give you seven pence. That’s quite enough; and I’ll have to fetch it from the shop, for I haven’t anything on me."

      Still embracing the leeks, she went back into the shop, whither she had been preceded by a customer, carrying a child.

      Just at this moment Constable 64 said to Crainquebille for the second time:

      "Move on."

      "I’m waiting for my money," replied Crainquebille.

      ​"And I’m not telling you to wait for your money; I’m telling you to move on," retorted the constable grimly.

      Meanwhile, the shoemaker’s wife in her shop was fitting blue slippers on to a child of eighteen months, whose mother was in a hurry. And the green heads of the leeks were lying on the counter.

      For the half century that he had been pushing his barrow through the streets, Crainquebille had been learning respect for authority. But now his position was a peculiar one: he was torn asunder between what was his due and what was his duty. His was not a judicial mind. He failed to understand that the possession of an individual’s right in no way exonerated him from the performance of a social duty. He attached too great importance to his claim to receive seven pence, and too little to the duty of pushing his barrow and moving on, for ever moving on. He stood still.

      For the third time Constable 64 quietly and calmly ordered him to move on. Unlike Inspector Montauciel, whose habit it is to threaten constantly but never to take proceedings, Constable 64 is slow to threaten and quick to act. Such is his character. Though somewhat sly he is an excellent servant and a loyal soldier. He is as brave as a lion and as gentle ​as a child. He knows naught save his official instructions.

      "Don’t you understand when I tell you to move on?"

      To Crainquebille’s mind his reason for standing still was too weighty for him not to consider it sufficient. Therefore, artlessly and simply he explained it:

      "Good Lord! Don’t I tell you that I am waiting for my money."

      Constable 64 merely replied:

      "Do you want me to summons you? If you do you have only to say so."

      At these words Crainquebille slowly shrugged his shoulders, looked sadly at the constable, and then raised his eyes to heaven, as if he would say:

      "I call God to witness! Am I a law-breaker? Am I one to make light of the by-laws and ordinances which regulate my ambulatory calling? At five o’clock in the morning I was at the market. Since seven, pushing my barrow and wearing my hands to the bone, I have been crying: ‘Cabbages! Turnips! Carrots!’ I am turned sixty. I am worn out. And you ask me whether I have raised the black flag of rebellion. You are mocking me and your joking is cruel."

      ​Either because he failed to notice the expression on Crainquebille’s face, or because he considered it no excuse for disobedience, the constable inquired curtly and roughly whether he had been understood.

      Now, just at that moment the block of traffic in the Rue Montmartre was at its worst. Carriages, drays, carts, omnibuses, trucks, jammed one against the other, seemed indissolubly welded together. From their quivering immobility proceeded shouts and oaths. Cabmen and butchers’ boys grandiloquent and drawling insulted one another from a distance, and omnibus conductors, regarding Crainquebille as the cause of the block, called him “a dirty leek."

      Meanwhile, on the pavement the curious were crowding round to listen to the dispute. Then the constable, finding himself the centre of attention, began to think it time to display his authority:

      "Very well," he said, taking a stumpy pencil and a greasy notebook from his pocket.

      Crainquebille persisted in his idea, obedient to a force within. Besides, it was now impossible for him either to move on or to draw back. The wheel of his barrow was unfortunately caught in that of a milkman’s cart.

      ​Tearing his hair beneath his cap he cried:

      "But don’t I tell you I’m waiting for my money! Here’s a fix! Misère de misère! Bon sang de bon sang!"

By these words, expressive rather of despair than of rebellion, Constable 64 considered he had been insulted. And, because to his mind all insults must necessarily take the consecrated, regular, traditional, liturgical, ritual form so to speak of Mort aux vaches,^[1] thus the offender’s words were heard and understood by the constable.

      “Ah! You said: Mort aux vaches. Very good. Come along."

      Stupefied with amazement and distress, Crainquebille opened his great rheumy eyes and gazed at Constable 64. With a broken voice proceeding now from the top of his head and now from the heels of his boots, he cried, with his arms folded over his blue blouse:

      "I said ‘Mort aux vaches’? I? … Oh!"

      The tradesmen and errand boys hailed the arrest with laughter. It gratified the taste of all crowds for violent and ignoble spectacles. But ​there was one serious person who was pushing his way through the throng; he was a sad-looking old man, dressed in black, wearing a high hat; he went up to the constable and said to him in a low voice very gently and firmly:

      “You are mistaken. This man did not insult you.”

      “Mind your own business,” replied the policeman, but without threatening, for he was speaking to a man who was well dressed.

      The old man insisted calmly and tenaciously. And the policeman ordered him to make his declaration to the Police Commissioner.

      Meanwhile Crainquebille was explaining:

      “Then I did say ‘Mort aux vaches!’ Oh!…”

      As he was thus giving vent to his astonishment, Madame Bayard, the shoemaker’s wife, came to him with sevenpence in her hand. But Constable 64 already had him by the collar; СКАЧАТЬ