Other People's Money by Emile Gaboriau (ebook smartphone txt) 📕

hid, the twenty-franc-piece I had received; and, as I was hungry, I entered a sort of eating and lodging house, where I had occasionally taken a meal.  The proprietor was a kind-hearted man.  When I had told him my situation, he invited me to remain with him until I could find something better.  On Sundays and Mondays the customers were plenty; and he was obliged to take an extra servant.  He offered me that work to do, promising, in exchange, my lodging and one meal a day.  I accepted.  The next day being Sunday, I commenced the arduous duties of a bar-maid in a low drinking house.  My pourboires amounted sometimes to five or ten francs; I had my board and lodging free; and at the end of three months I had been able to provide myself with some decent clothing, and was commencing to accumulate a little reserve, when the lodging-house keeper, whose business had unexpectedly developed itself to a considerable extent, concluded to engage a man-waiter, and urged me to look elsewhere for work.  I did so.  An old neighbor of ours told me of a situation at Bougival, where she said I would be very comfortable.  Overcoming my repugnance, I applied, and was accepted.  I was to get thirty francs a month.

“The place might have been a good one.  There were only three in the family,—the gentleman and his wife, and a son of twenty-five.  Every morning, father and son left for Paris by the first train, and only came home to dinner at about six o’clock.  I was therefore alone all day with the woman.  Unfortunately, she was a cross and disagreeable person, who, never having had a servant before, felt an insatiable desire of showing and exercising her authority.  She was, moreover, extremely suspicious, and found some pretext to visit regularly my trunks once or twice a week, to see if I had not concealed some of her napkins or silver spoons.  Having told her that I had once been a laundress, she made me wash and iron all the clothes in the house, and was forever accusing me of using too much soap and too much coal.  Still I liked the place well enough; and I had a little room in the attic; which I thought charming, and where I spent delightful evenings reading or sewing.

“But luck was against me.  The young gentleman of the house took a fancy to me, and determined to make me his mistress.  I discouraged him in a way; but he persisted in his loathsome attention, until one night he broke into my room, and I was compelled to shout for help with all my might, before I could get rid of him.

“The next day I left that house; but I tried in vain to find another situation in Bougival.  I resolved then to seek a place in Paris.  I had a big trunk full of good clothes, and about a hundred francs of savings; and I felt no anxiety.

“When I arrived in Paris, I went straight to an intelligence-office.  I was extremely well received by a very affable old woman who promised to get me a good place, and, in the mean time, solicited me to board with her.  She kept a sort of boarding-house for servants out of place; and there were there some fifty or sixty of us, who slept at night in long dormitories.

“Time went by, and still I did not find that famous place.  The board was expensive, too, for my scanty means; and I determined to leave.  I started in quest of new lodgings, followed by a porter, carrying my trunk; but as I was crossing the Boulevard, not getting quick enough out of the way of a handsome private carriage which was coming at full trot, I was knocked down, and trampled under the horses’s feet.”

Without allowing Maxence to interrupt her,

“I had lost consciousness,” went on Mlle. Lucienne.  “When I came to my senses, I was sitting in a drugstore; and three or four persons were busy around me.  I had no fracture, but only some severe contusions, and a deep cut on the head.

“The physician who had attended me requested me to try and walk; but I could not even stand on my feet.  Then he asked me where I lived, that I might be taken there; and I was compelled to own that I was a poor servant out of place, without a home or a friend to care for me.

“‘In that case,’ said the doctor to the druggist, ‘we must send her to the hospital.’

“And they sent for a cab.

“In the mean time, quite a crowd had gathered outside, and the conduct of the person who was in the carriage that had run over me was being indignantly criticised.  It was a woman; and I had caught a glimpse of her at the very moment I was falling under the horses’ feet.  She had not even condescended to get out of her carriage; but, calling a policeman, she had given him her name and address, adding, loud enough to be heard by the crowd, ‘I am in too great a hurry to stop.  My coachman is an awkward fellow, whom I shall dismiss as soon as I get home.  I am ready to pay any thing that may be asked.’

“She had also sent one of her cards for me.  A policeman handed it to me; and I read the name, Baronne de Thaller.

“‘That’s lucky for you,’ said the doctor.  ‘That lady is the wife of a very rich banker; and she will be able to help you when you get well.’

“The cab had now come.  I was carried into it; and, an hour later, I was admitted at the hospital, and laid on a clean, comfortable bed.

“But my trunk!—my trunk, which contained all my things, all I had in the world, and, worse still, all the money I had left.  I asked for it, my heart filled with anxiety.  No one had either seen or heard of it.  Had the porter missed me in the crowd? or had he basely availed himself of the accident to rob me?  This was hard to decide.

“The good sisters promised that they would have it looked after, and that the police would certainly be able to find that man whom I had engaged near the intelligence-office.  But all these assurances failed to console me.  This blow was the finishing one.  I was taken with fever; and for more than two weeks my life was despaired of.  I was saved at last:  but my convalescence was long and tedious; and for over two months I lingered with alternations of better and of worse.

“Yet such had been my misery for the past two years, that this gloomy stay in a hospital was for me like an oasis in the desert.  The good sisters were very kind to me; and, when I was able, I helped them with their lighter work, or went to the chapel with them.  I shuddered at the thought that I must leave them as soon as I was entirely well; and then what would become of me?  For my trunk had not been found, and I was destitute of all.

“And yet I had, at the hospital, more than one subject for gloomy reflections.  Twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays, visitors were admitted; and there was not on those days a single patient who did not receive a relative or a friend.  But I, no one, nothing, never!

“But I am mistaken.  I was commencing to get well, when one Sunday I saw by my bedside an old man, dressed all in black, of alarming appearance, wearing blue spectacles,