A Fairy Tale of Paris
by Therese

 


The fires of the gypsy camp burned brightly in the lowering dusk. It was spring, but still cool enough in the evenings that their warmth was not unwelcome. Within the circle of colorful wagons, a couple dozen men, women and children chatted, played, or finished their tasks for the day. One man walked out to the edge of the camp, away from the light of the fire, and turned his face toward the heavens.

The stars had begun to come out, like tiny, silver sequins scattered on the blue-black satin of the sky. The meadows and hillocks that rolled away into the dimness were alive with the songs of the crickets and frogs, and evening birds reluctant to return to their nests. Nights in the countryside of France teemed with beauties undreamed of in the cramped streets of Paris, and, although Paris was his home, and he would not have considered trading it, Clopin Trouillefou was grateful for the chance to enjoy a change of scenery.

The songs of the wild mingled with the joyous notes of youthful laughter, and a half dozen shadowy figures came darting out from among the wagons and surrounded him. "Clopin!" "Clopin!" "Uncle!" They clustered around him, pulling at his sleeves. "Come and tell us a story!" He laughed with delight at their eagerness and bent down to pick up the littlest child in his arms. This was his niece, Angelina, a black-haired mademoiselle of five, and he carried her back into the light of the camp, while the others pulled him along and danced around him, all the time chanting, "Clopin! Clopin!" like the refrain of a song.

"Come then!" he had to shout to be heard over them, "stop pulling me and sit down, and I'll tell you a story." Three or four others had come running to join them, led by an earnest young man of thirteen, who was Clopin's eldest nephew. Clopin seated himself on an overturned tub, with Angelina on his lap. Not all of the children belonged to his family, but it was impossible to sort out which ones did and which ones did not, so affectionate was he to all of them, and so enchanted by him were they. Pushing and shoving, they tumbled into a ragged circle at his feet. "Let me see," he considered, with a promising smile, "what story shall I tell you tonight?"

"The story of the bellringer!" demanded Renato, not a nephew, but already an accomplished acrobat at the age of nine. "No! No!" he was shouted down. "We've heard that one already." "I want to hear it again," said Renato, but his plea was drowned out by his fellows. "There, there, my boy," Clopin beckoned him to come sit by his knee. "We'll save the poor bellringer for another time, eh?" Renato was almost prepared to sulk, but a small, cheerful figure made of cloth suddenly appeared over his shoulder and remarked in falsetto, "Besides, you know it so well, you already tell it better than he does!" "Quiet, you!" Clopin made as if to throttle the puppet, who ducked for cover behind the boy, to the amusement of the children.

"So, you rascal," Clopin addressed the little duplicate of himself perched on his hand, "what story do you think I should tell my friends?" "Why don't you ask them?" retorted the puppet. "Something different," piped up a dusky girl. "Something new," seconded a small, chubby boy. "Something we've never heard before," nodded the earnest nephew. "Something new," Clopin pondered, then raised a finger in inspiration. "Ah-ha! I have it! What would you say to the tale of a girl, poor and shabby, brutally treated by a cruel guardian, but saved by the kindness of her fairy godmother..."

"That's Cinderella!" complained Renato. "If you won't tell the bellringer again, I don't want to hear that one again, either!"

"No, no, this is not Cinderella. Cinderella is make-believe, but this tale is true. The poor little girl and her fairy godmother are friends of mine. Truly!" he answered Renato's skeptical look. "This is the tale," he drew them into his circle, "of a poor child of Paris."

"When you visit the great Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, you will notice--" "The Mysterious Bellringer!" interjected the puppet, and Renato clapped his hands in approval. "No, not the bellringer," Clopin scowled, and the puppet, with a disappointed, "Aww..." buried his face against Renato's shoulder. Clopin resumed, "You will see the Foundlings' Bed, where unwanted children are exposed to the charity of the good people of Paris. It was on this wooden cradle that our child of the streets made her first known appearance, on the morning of Christmas, in the year 1466, ten years ago. Where or when she had been born, no one knew. Her parents had vanished, shadows of this world or the next, and she was all alone. But, good fortune, it seemed, was smiling upon her, for there passed by her bed a fine family of Paris, a husband and wife with a baby girl of their own. What a pretty child, they said of the poor little foundling -- and indeed she was, with her loving smile, and her great, round, blue eyes. What a sweet playmate she would be for our little Marie-Louise, said the woman, and the fine family of Paris picked her up from her cradle and carried her home."

The puppet clapped his gloved hands together and sniffled, "I love happy endings!" "Ah, but our tale is only beginning! For our dear little foundling did not find happiness with the fine family of Paris. They gave her the name of Anne, and raised her to be a little pet and maid to their precious Marie-Louise. And as the two girls grew older, side by side, like flowers in a garden, it grew clearer and clearer that Anne was in every particular superior to their own little daughter. Not only more pretty, but more patient and gentle, more clever, more tender -- Marie-Louise, who was not yet entirely a horrible child, looked ugly, ill-tempered and stupid by comparison, and this her mother could not abide. So she took little Anne, who was younger than you, little one," he kissed Angelina, "who was no more than four, and dressed her in her poorest dress, and left her at the cold, iron gates of the Foundlings' Hospital."

"Poor Anne!" fretted the puppet. "Poor Anne, indeed!" Clopin nodded. "The Foundlings' Hospital was a very unhappy place. Nothing but cold stone walls, and cold porridge for dinner, and a cold iron bedstead at night. Even the lapdogs of Marie-Louise's mother received better treatment than the sad little inmates of the Foundlings' Hospital. There was always, of course, the hope of adoption. But for most of the foundlings, the only escapes led to servitude, or death." The ring of young faces around him looked sad, indeed, for the unlucky child. "Anne faded away to a shadow of her old charming self, just a meager, anxious, hungry little girl. But, on a wet, winter day, eight years after she had been left at Notre-Dame, four years after she had been abandoned by the mother of Marie-Louise, someone came to take her away from the horrible Foundlings' Hospital."

"The Fairy Godmother!" said Angelina, and the puppet cheered, "Hooray!" "No, no, not yet!" corrected Clopin. "This was no Fairy Godmother, this was a man, a dirty, drunken, shambling excuse for a man, who had promised his wife a servant to lessen her labors. Being drunken and stupid, and lazy into the bargain, he took the first child he saw, never minding whether or not she was strong enough or old enough to be of any use. He led her away like a dog, and delivered her into the hands of his wife -- the horrible Madame Gruyere!" Clopin uttered her name in a terrible voice, and the puppet shuddered on his hand and squeaked, "Not her!!"

"Ah, you see, he knows her!" he addressed the children. "Madame Gruyere is notorious in our precinct of Paris. Even the roughest scoundrels and cut-throats who live in her alley run for cover at the sight of her. She is a hard slab of a woman, all bone, with a face the color of curdled milk. When she is in an ill-temper, which is often, her screams can be heard up and down the lane. She will beat her lump of a husband black and blue if he is at hand, and, if not, she will beat the nearest dog or child. When she is in a mild temper, it is only because she has drunk enough wine to dull her sharp tongue, and then she sits and cries about what an unfortunate, ill-used thing she is. This, my dears, was the mistress of the poor little servant, Anne."

"As cold and hungry and wretched as she was in the Foundlings' Hospital, she soon came to look back on her years there as the happiest of her life, for life with Madame Gruyere was a hundred times worse. Often, there was no food for her, and when there was, it was most likely so rotted or spoiled that a starving alley cat would have left it in the rubbish. She slept on a mat of woven rags on the floor of the kitchen, with the rats and the beetles, and spent her days drudging away for her mistress. Madame Gruyere, who was too delicate to lift a finger, unless it was part of a fist, saddled her servant with the hardest, filthiest, heaviest work she could think of. And, squalid as the house always was, let Madame Gruyere see one mite of dust, one smear on a dish, one cinder on the hearth that displeased her, and young Anne would pay dearly for it. Oh, she was a hard, cruel mistress, and Anne despaired of ever living to see another day that was not passed in utter misery."

"I hope the Fairy Godmother comes in soon," whispered Angelina, who was looking quite frightened. "So do I," said the puppet. "Ah, the Fairy Godmother! I had nearly forgotten about her!" Clopin gasped. "Thank you for reminding me. Now, if Anne had been a princess, in a fine palace, her Fairy Godmother would have been a radiant, magical creature with great, gossamer wings and a crown of stars upon her head. But, in the neighborhood of Madame Gruyere, little Anne had to settle for what she could get. One of her more common, and less unpleasant, tasks, was to run to the nearest tavern to buy wine for the master and mistress. As you might imagine, this was a task she performed nearly every day. At first, she got the wine from a tavern in the same alley, until the tavern keeper got crosswise with Madame Gruyere and refused to serve her any more. Anne moved on to a tavern in the next alley, and traded there, until the same thing happened, and that tavern keeper refused to sell to her, as well. Anne might have spent the rest of her days being barred from every public house in Paris for the sake of her ill-tempered mistress, if not for the Goose and Grapes, three streets over, where it was well known that anyone with a coin to spare could buy what they pleased, with no argument from the tavern keeper."

"There!" exclaimed the puppet all at once. "There's the Fairy Godmother!" Clopin looked at him dubiously. "The tavern keeper? An unlikely Fairy Godmother! A brisk, busy little woman who hardly ever said three words to the child, except to take her money and give her a jug and send her on her way. Some of the more tender-hearted of her customers would sometimes share their suppers with Anne, or slip a little coin into her pocket, if they could spare it. They would watch the poor girl straggle off home with her burden, and shake their heads over her sad lot in life, but not the tavern keeper. All she ever said was ‘She's not my child, and I can't worry about every urchin in the street.' Oh, yes, a fine Fairy Godmother, indeed!"

"Don't listen to him!" the puppet boldly slapped a hand over Clopin's mouth. "She is, you'll see, and someone's very fond of her--" Clopin put an end to this sing-song by smothering the puppet with his hat and snapped, "Who's telling this story?!" "Dang!" muttered a little voice from under the hat. "That's better," said Clopin. "Where was I? Ah, yes. Every day, Anne bought a jug of wine from the keeper of the Goose and Grapes and carried it home to her mistress, and was thanked for the favor with a good thrashing. Until one day, when something horrible happened. Anne didn't know if it was a speck of dust, a smear of grease, or a smudge of soot that started it, but Madame Gruyere flew into one of her rages and began to beat the little girl, as she so often did. Only this time, the mistress, tired of merely slapping her, threw her down the stairs into the kitchen. Anne fell, and struck her head, and--" Clopin stopped. "I cannot tell you what happened." "What? What?" the anxious children gasped. "Let me only say that Madame Gruyere's wrath had cost Anne one of her pretty blue eyes." A shudder went around the circle, and Clopin nodded sadly. "Our little Anne was a brave girl, however, despite all she had been through, and she somehow managed to bind up her wounds and, the next day, she went on about her work as best she could. That afternoon, she walked into the Goose and Grapes, and the instant Madame the Proprietress saw the bandage around her head, she exclaimed, ‘What on earth happened to you!?' The others had gathered around her, and they pried the tale out of her. And as she told them what had happened to her, Madame Darbois, the tavern keeper, first put her hand to her mouth as if she would be ill, then put her hand to her eyes as if she would cry, then slapped her hand on the bar as if she would smash it to splinters. And without so much as a word, she laid hold of Anne's arm and dragged her out of the tavern, into the street, straight to the twisted alley and the house of Madame Gruyere."

"Bam-bam-bam Madame Darbois pounded her fist on the door of Madame Gruyere's lodgings and threw it open without a by-your-leave. The lump of a husband was there and stared at her stupidly, but she pushed past him and walked straight up to Anne's cruel mistress. Madame Darbois was a good head shorter than Madame Gruyere, but she drew herself up as tall as she could and said, ‘I'm taking the girl off your hands, and you'll have no more wine from me!' And with Madame Gruyere left gaping in astonishment, Madame Darbois, still holding tight to Anne's thin little arm, dragged the child back down the stairs, out of the house, through the alley, down the street, and straight back to the Goose and Grapes. She dragged her right through the public room into the kitchen, and sat the girl down in a chair, and this is what she said." Clopin took Angelina off his lap and stood her in front of him in the role of Anne, and pointed a finger at her nose. "‘You listen to me. I am not your friend, and I am not your mother, but if you'll behave yourself and work for me, I'll give you food and a bed and a fair wage, and I'll treat you a good deal better than your last mistress did. What do you say?' And Anne, poor little one-eyed Anne, with her dress in tatters and her homemade bandage round her head, threw herself at the feet of Madame Darbois and burst into tears of joy."

"Hooray!" said the puppet. "You see, I told you!" Clopin didn't stifle him, but nodded this time. "Yes, Madame Darbois did turn out to be Anne's Fairy Godmother after all. And she was sorry she hadn't troubled herself to help the girl sooner. She took Anne to the best doctor she knew, and when there was nothing more to be done for her, Madame Darbois sewed her a little blue eyepatch to match her remaining eye. She bought her clean clothes, and fed her from her own table, and made up a good, warm bed for her in her own lodgings above the tavern. And, though to this day, Madame Darbois insists that she is not the girl's friend and not the girl's mother, and is only giving her what she has earned, the two of them feel more tenderly for each other, I think, than many a mother and daughter in Paris."

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