Frangois Coppee (1842—1908)
Coppee, the poet of the poor and humble, lived a long and uneventful life. His volumes of verse are characterized by qualities of sentiment and simplicity. But his novels, plays, and short stories, especially the last, are an integral part of his literary work. These, says Brander Matthews, “have qualities of their own; they have sympathy, poetry, and a power of suggesting pictures not exceeded, I think, by those of either M. de Maupassant or M. Daudet.”
The present version, translated by Walter Learned, is reprinted from Ten Tales by Franfois Coppee, by permission of the publisher, Harper & Brothers.
The Substitute
He was scarcely ten years old when he was first arrested as a vagabond.
He spoke thus to the judge;
“I am called Jean FranQois Leturc, and for six months I was with the man who sings and plays upon a cord of catgut between the lan¬terns at the Place de la Bastille. I sang the refrain with him, and after that I called, `Here` all the new songs, ten centimes, two sous!` He was always drunk, and used to beat me.
That is why the police picked me up the other night. Before that I was with the man who sells brushes. My mother was a laundress, her name was Adele. At one time she lived with a man on the ground-floor at Montmartre. She was a good work¬woman and liked me. She made money because she had for customers waiters in the cafes, and they use a good deal of linen. On Sundays she used to put me to bed early so that she could go to the ball.
On weekdays she sent me to Les Freres, where I learned to read. Well, the sergent-de-ville whose beat was in our street used always to stop before our windows to talk with her—a good-looking chap, with a medal from the Crimea. They were married, and after that everything went wrong. He didn`t take to me, and turned mother against me.
Every one had a blow for me, and so, to get out of the house, I spent whole days in the Place Clichy, where I knew the mountebanks. My father-in-law lost his place, and my mother her work. She used to go out washing to take care of him; this gave her a cough—the steam… She is dead at Lamboisiere. She was a good woman. Since that I have lived with the seller of brushes and the catgut scraper. Are you going to send me to prison?”
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