Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens [big ebook reader txt] 📗

His hoarse voice failed him, and he rested his head upon his hands until a bottle of wine was brought from the counter. Having filled and emptied his little tumbler twice, and having broken off an end from the great loaf that was set before him with his cloth and napkin, soup-plate, salt, pepper, and oil, he rested his back against the corner of the wall, made a couch of the bench on which he sat, and began to chew crust, until such time as his repast should be ready.

There had been that momentary interruption of the talk about the stove, and that temporary inattention to and distraction from one another, which is usually inseparable in such a company from the arrival of a stranger. It had passed over by this time; and the men had done glancing at him, and were talking again.

“That’s the true reason,” said one of them, bringing a story he had been telling, to a close, “that’s the true reason why they said that the devil was let loose.” The speaker was the tall Swiss belonging to the church, and he brought something of the authority of the church into the discussion⁠—especially as the devil was in question.

The landlady having given her directions for the new guest’s entertainment to her husband, who acted as cook to the Break of Day, had resumed her needlework behind her counter. She was a smart, neat, bright little woman, with a good deal of cap and a good deal of stocking, and she struck into the conversation with several laughing nods of her head, but without looking up from her work.

“Ah Heaven, then,” said she. “When the boat came up from Lyons, and brought the news that the devil was actually let loose at Marseilles, some flycatchers swallowed it. But I? No, not I.”

“Madame, you are always right,” returned the tall Swiss. “Doubtless you were enraged against that man, madame?”

“Ay, yes, then!” cried the landlady, raising her eyes from her work, opening them very wide, and tossing her head on one side. “Naturally, yes.”

“He was a bad subject.”

“He was a wicked wretch,” said the landlady, “and well merited what he had the good fortune to escape. So much the worse.”

“Stay, madame! Let us see,” returned the Swiss, argumentatively turning his cigar between his lips. “It may have been his unfortunate destiny. He may have been the child of circumstances. It is always possible that he had, and has, good in him if one did but know how to find it out. Philosophical philanthropy teaches⁠—”

The rest of the little knot about the stove murmured an objection to the introduction of that threatening expression. Even the two players at dominoes glanced up from their game, as if to protest against philosophical philanthropy being brought by name into the Break of Day.

“Hold there, you and your philanthropy,” cried the smiling landlady, nodding her head more than ever. “Listen then. I am a woman, I. I know nothing of philosophical philanthropy. But I know what I have seen, and what I have looked in the face in this world here, where I find myself. And I tell you this, my friend, that there are people (men and women both, unfortunately) who have no good in them⁠—none. That there are people whom it is necessary to detest without compromise. That there are people who must be dealt with as enemies of the human race. That there are people who have no human heart, and who must be crushed like savage beasts and cleared out of the way. They are but few, I hope; but I have seen (in this world here where I find myself, and even at the little Break of Day) that there are such people. And I do not doubt that this man⁠—whatever they call him, I forget his name⁠—is one of them.”

The landlady’s lively speech was received with greater favour at the Break of Day, than it would have elicited from certain amiable whitewashers of the class she so unreasonably objected to, nearer Great Britain.

“My faith! If your philosophical philanthropy,” said the landlady, putting down her work, and rising to take the stranger’s soup from her husband, who appeared with it at a side door, “puts anybody at the mercy of such people by holding terms with them at all, in words or deeds, or both, take it away from the Break of Day, for it isn’t worth a sou.”

As she placed the soup before the guest, who changed his attitude to a sitting one, he looked her full in the face, and his moustache went up under his nose, and his nose came down over his moustache.

“Well!” said the previous speaker, “let us come back to our subject. Leaving all that aside, gentlemen, it was because the man was acquitted on his trial that people said at Marseilles that the devil was let loose. That was how the phrase began to circulate, and what it meant; nothing more.”

“How do they call him?” said the landlady. “Biraud, is it not?”

“Rigaud, madame,” returned the tall Swiss.

“Rigaud! To be sure.”

The traveller’s soup was succeeded by a dish of meat, and that by a dish of vegetables. He ate all that was placed before him, emptied his bottle of wine, called for a glass of rum, and smoked his cigarette with his cup of coffee. As he became refreshed, he became overbearing; and patronised the company at the Daybreak in certain small talk at which he assisted, as if his condition were far above his appearance.

The company might have had other engagements, or they might have felt their inferiority, but in any case they dispersed by degrees, and not being replaced by other company, left their new patron in possession of the Break of Day. The landlord was clinking about in his kitchen; the landlady was quiet at her work; and the refreshed traveller sat smoking by the stove, warming his ragged feet.

“Pardon me, madame⁠—that Biraud.”

“Rigaud, monsieur.”

“Rigaud. Pardon me again⁠—has contracted your