Julot the Apache

Ten sous. . . . I think one can sing best of poverty when one is holding it at arm's length. I'm sure that when I wrote these lines, fortune had for a moment tweaked me by the nose. To-night, however, I am truly down to ten sous. It is for that I have stayed in my room all day, rolled in my blankets and clutching my pen with clammy fingers. I must work, work, work. I must finish my book before poverty crushes me. I am not only writing for my living but for my life. Even to-day my Muse was mutinous. For hours and hours anxiously I stared at a paper that was blank; nervously I paced up and down my garret; bitterly I flung myself on my bed. Then suddenly it all came. Line after line I wrote with hardly a halt. So I made another of my Ballads of the Boulevards. Here it is:

Julot the Apache

You've heard of Julot the apache, and Gigolette, his m'me. . . .

Montmartre was their hunting-ground, but Belville was their home.

A little chap just like a boy, with smudgy black mustache, -

Yet there was nothing juvenile in Julot the apache.

From head to heel as tough as steel, as nimble as a cat,

With every trick of twist and kick, a master of savate.

And Gigolette was tall and fair, as stupid as a cow,

With three combs in the greasy hair she banged upon her brow.

You'd see her on the Place Pigalle on any afternoon,

A primitive and strapping wench as brazen as the moon.

And yet there is a tale that's told of Clichy after dark,

And two gendarmes who swung their arms with Julot for a mark.

And oh, but they'd have got him too; they banged and blazed away,

When like a flash a woman leapt between them and their prey.

She took the medicine meant for him; she came down with a crash . . .

"Quick now, and make your get-away, O Julot the apache!" . . .

But no! He turned, ran swiftly back, his arms around her met;

They nabbed him sobbing like a kid, and kissing Gigolette.

Now I'm a reckless painter chap who loves a jamboree,

And one night in Cyrano's bar I got upon a spree;

And there were trollops all about, and crooks of every kind,

But though the place was reeling round I didn't seem to mind.

Till down I sank, and all was blank when in the bleary dawn

I woke up in my studio to find - my money gone;

Three hundred francs I'd scraped and squeezed to pay my quarter's rent.

"Some one has pinched my wad," I wailed; "it never has been spent."

And as I racked my brains to seek how I could raise some more,

Before my cruel landlord kicked me cowering from the door:

A knock . . . "Come in," I gruffly groaned; I did not raise my head,

Then lo! I heard a husky voice, a swift and silky tread:

"You got so blind, last night, mon vieux, I collared all your cash -

Three hundred francs. . . . There! Nom de Dieu," said Julot the apache.

And that was how I came to know Julot and Gigolette,

And we would talk and drink a bock, and smoke a cigarette.

And I would meditate upon the artistry of crime,

And he would tell of cracking cribs and cops and doing time;

Or else when he was flush of funds he'd carelessly explain

He'd biffed some bloated bourgeois on the border of the Seine.

So gentle and polite he was, just like a man of peace,

And not a desperado and the terror of the police.

Now one day in a bistro that's behind the Place Vend'me

I came on Julot the apache, and Gigolette his m'me.

And as they looked so very grave, says I to them, says I,

"Come on and have a little glass, it's good to rinse the eye.

You both look mighty serious; you've something on the heart."

"Ah, yes," said Julot the apache, "we've something to impart.

When such things come to folks like us, it isn't very gay . . .

It's Gigolette - she tells me that a gosse is on the way."

Then Gigolette, she looked at me with eyes like stones of gall:

"If we were honest folks," said she, "I wouldn't mind at all.

But then . . . you know the life we lead; well, anyway I mean

(That is, providing it's a girl) to call her Angeline."

"Cheer up," said I; "it's all in life. There's gold within the dross.

Come on, we'll drink another verre to Angeline the gosse."

And so the weary winter passed, and then one April morn

The worthy Julot came at last to say the babe was born.

"I'd like to chuck it in the Seine," he sourly snarled, "and yet

I guess I'll have to let it live, because of Gigolette."

I only laughed, for sure I saw his spite was all a bluff,

And he was prouder than a prince behind his manner gruff.

Yet every day he'd blast the brat with curses deep and grim,

And swear to me that Gigolette no longer thought of him.

And then one night he dropped the mask; his eyes were sick with dread,

And when I offered him a smoke he groaned and shook his head:

"I'm all upset; it's Angeline . . . she's covered with a rash . . .

She'll maybe die, my little gosse," cried Julot the apache.

But Angeline, I joy to say, came through the test all right,

Though Julot, so they tell me, watched beside her day and night.

And when I saw him next, says he: "Come up and dine with me.

We'll buy a beefsteak on the way, a bottle and some brie."

And so I had a merry night within his humble home,

And laughed with Angeline the gosse and Gigolette the m'me.

And every time that Julot used a word the least obscene,

How Gigolette would frown at him and point to Angeline:

Oh, such a little innocent, with hair of silken floss,

I do not wonder they were proud of Angeline the gosse.

And when her arms were round his neck, then Julot says to me:

"I must work harder now, mon vieux, since I've to work for three."

He worked so very hard indeed, the police dropped in one day,

And for a year behind the bars they put him safe away.

So dark and silent now, their home; they'd gone - I wondered where,

Till in a laundry near I saw a child with shining hair;

And o'er the tub a strapping wench, her arms in soapy foam;

Lo! it was Angeline the gosse, and Gigolette the m'me.

And so I kept an eye on them and saw that all went right,

Until at last came Julot home, half crazy with delight.

And when he'd kissed them both, says he: "I've had my fill this time.

I'm on the honest now, I am; I'm all fed up with crime.

You mark my words, the page I turn is going to be clean,

I swear it on the head of her, my little Angeline."

And so, to finish up my tale, this morning as I strolled

Along the boulevard I heard a voice I knew of old.

I saw a rosy little man with walrus-like mustache . . .

I stopped, I stared. . . . By all the gods! 'twas Julot the apache.

"I'm in the garden way," he said, "and doing mighty well;

I've half an acre under glass, and heaps of truck to sell.

Come out and see. Oh come, my friend, on Sunday, wet or shine . . .

Say! - it's the First Communion of that little girl of mine."