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manifested an unmistakable desire to escape by the door rather than

renew the acquaintance. Seeing this, his old prison comrade fell back

upon the door, and set his shoulders against it.

'Cavalletto! Wake, boy! Rub your eyes and look at me. Not the name you

used to call me--don't use that--Lagnier, say Lagnier!'

John Baptist, staring at him with eyes opened to their utmost width,

made a number of those national, backhanded shakes of the right

forefinger in the air, as if he were resolved on negativing beforehand

everything that the other could possibly advance during the whole term

of his life.

'Cavalletto! Give me your hand. You know Lagnier, the gentleman. Touch

the hand of a gentleman!'

Submitting himself to the old tone of condescending authority, John

Baptist, not at all steady on his legs as yet, advanced and put his

hand in his patron's. Monsieur Lagnier laughed; and having given it a

squeeze, tossed it up and let it go.

'Then you were--' faltered John Baptist.

'Not shaved? No. See here!' cried Lagnier, giving his head a twirl; 'as

tight on as your own.'

John Baptist, with a slight shiver, looked all round the room as if to

recall where he was. His patron took that opportunity of turning the key

in the door, and then sat down upon his bed.

'Look!' he said, holding up his shoes and gaiters. 'That's a poor trim

for a gentleman, you'll say. No matter, you shall see how Soon I'll mend

it. Come and sit down. Take your old place!'

John Baptist, looking anything but reassured, sat down on the floor at

the bedside, keeping his eyes upon his patron all the time.

'That's well!' cried Lagnier. 'Now we might be in the old infernal hole

again, hey? How long have you been out?'

'Two days after you, my master.'

'How do you come here?'

'I was cautioned not to stay there, and so I left the town at once,

and since then I have changed about. I have been doing odds and ends at

Avignon, at Pont Esprit, at Lyons; upon the Rhone, upon the Saone.' As

he spoke, he rapidly mapped the places out with his sunburnt hand upon

the floor. 'And where are you going?'

'Going, my master?'

'Ay!'

John Baptist seemed to desire to evade the question without knowing how.

'By Bacchus!' he said at last, as if he were forced to the admission, 'I

have sometimes had a thought of going to Paris, and perhaps to England.'

'Cavalletto. This is in confidence. I also am going to Paris and perhaps

to England. We'll go together.'

The little man nodded his head, and showed his teeth; and yet seemed not

quite convinced that it was a surpassingly desirable arrangement.

'We'll go together,' repeated Lagnier. 'You shall see how soon I will

force myself to be recognised as a gentleman, and you shall profit by

it. It is agreed? Are we one?'

'Oh, surely, surely!' said the little man.

'Then you shall hear before I sleep--and in six words, for I want

sleep--how I appear before you, I, Lagnier. Remember that. Not the

other.'

'Altro, altro! Not Ri--' Before John Baptist could finish the name, his

comrade had got his hand under his chin and fiercely shut up his mouth.

'Death! what are you doing? Do you want me to be trampled upon and

stoned? Do YOU want to be trampled upon and stoned? You would be. You

don't imagine that they would set upon me, and let my prison chum go?

Don't think it!' There was an expression in his face as he released his

grip of his friend's jaw, from which his friend inferred that if the

course of events really came to any stoning and trampling, Monsieur

Lagnier would so distinguish him with his notice as to ensure his

having his full share of it. He remembered what a cosmopolitan gentleman

Monsieur Lagnier was, and how few weak distinctions he made.

'I am a man,' said Monsieur Lagnier, 'whom society has deeply wronged

since you last saw me. You know that I am sensitive and brave, and that

it is my character to govern. How has society respected those qualities

in me? I have been shrieked at through the streets. I have been guarded

through the streets against men, and especially women, running at me

armed with any weapons they could lay their hands on. I have lain in

prison for security, with the place of my confinement kept a secret,

lest I should be torn out of it and felled by a hundred blows. I have

been carted out of Marseilles in the dead of night, and carried leagues

away from it packed in straw. It has not been safe for me to go near my

house; and, with a beggar's pittance in my pocket, I have walked through

vile mud and weather ever since, until my feet are crippled--look at

them! Such are the humiliations that society has inflicted upon me,

possessing the qualities I have mentioned, and which you know me to

possess. But society shall pay for it.'

All this he said in his companion's ear, and with his hand before his

lips.

'Even here,' he went on in the same way, 'even in this mean

drinking-shop, society pursues me. Madame defames me, and her guests

defame me. I, too, a gentleman with manners and accomplishments

to strike them dead! But the wrongs society has heaped upon me are

treasured in this breast.'

To all of which John Baptist, listening attentively to the suppressed

hoarse voice, said from time to time, 'Surely, surely!' tossing his

head and shutting his eyes, as if there were the clearest case against

society that perfect candour could make out.

'Put my shoes there,' continued Lagnier. 'Hang my cloak to dry there

by the door. Take my hat.' He obeyed each instruction, as it was given.

'And this is the bed to which society consigns me, is it? Hah. Very

well!'

As he stretched out his length upon it, with a ragged handkerchief

bound round his wicked head, and only his wicked head showing above the

bedclothes, John Baptist was rather strongly reminded of what had so

very nearly happened to prevent the moustache from any more going up as

it did, and the nose from any more coming down as it did.

'Shaken out of destiny's dice-box again into your company, eh? By

Heaven! So much the better for you. You'll profit by it. I shall need a

long rest. Let me sleep in the morning.'

John Baptist replied that he should sleep as long as he would, and

wishing him a happy night, put out the candle. One might have Supposed

that the next proceeding of the Italian would have been to undress;

but he did exactly the reverse, and dressed himself from head to foot,

saving his shoes. When he had so done, he lay down upon his bed with

some of its coverings over him, and his coat still tied round his neck,

to get through the night.

When he started up, the Godfather Break of Day was peeping at its

namesake. He rose, took his shoes in his hand, turned the key in the

door with great caution, and crept downstairs. Nothing was astir there

but the smell of coffee, wine, tobacco, and syrups; and madame's little

counter looked ghastly enough. But he had paid madame his little note

at it over night, and wanted to see nobody--wanted nothing but to get on

his shoes and his knapsack, open the door, and run away.

He prospered in his object. No movement or voice was heard when he

opened the door; no wicked head tied up in a ragged handkerchief looked

out of the upper window. When the sun had raised his full disc above the

flat line of the horizon, and was striking fire out of the long muddy

vista of paved road with its weary avenue of little trees, a black speck

moved along the road and splashed among the flaming pools of rain-water,

which black speck was John Baptist Cavalletto running away from his

patron.

CHAPTER 12. Bleeding Heart Yard

In London itself, though in the old rustic road towards a suburb of note

where in the days of William Shakespeare, author and stage-player, there

were Royal hunting-seats--howbeit no sport is left there now but for

hunters of men--Bleeding Heart Yard was to be found; a place much

changed in feature and in fortune, yet with some relish of ancient

greatness about it. Two or three mighty stacks of chimneys, and a few

large dark rooms which had escaped being walled and subdivided out of

the recognition of their old proportions, gave the Yard a character.

It was inhabited by poor people, who set up their rest among its faded

glories, as Arabs of the desert pitch their tents among the fallen

stones of the Pyramids; but there was a family sentimental feeling

prevalent in the Yard, that it had a character.

As if the aspiring city had become puffed up in the very ground on which

it stood, the ground had so risen about Bleeding Heart Yard that you

got into it down a flight of steps which formed no part of the original

approach, and got out of it by a low gateway into a maze of shabby

streets, which went about and about, tortuously ascending to the level

again. At this end of the Yard and over the gateway, was the factory of

Daniel Doyce, often heavily beating like a bleeding heart of iron,

with the clink of metal upon metal. The opinion of the Yard was divided

respecting the derivation of its name. The more practical of its inmates

abided by the tradition of a murder; the gentler and more imaginative

inhabitants, including the whole of the tender sex, were loyal to the

legend of a young lady of former times closely imprisoned in her chamber

by a cruel father for remaining true to her own true love, and refusing

to marry the suitor he chose for her. The legend related how that the

young lady used to be seen up at her window behind the bars, murmuring a

love-lorn song of which the burden was, 'Bleeding Heart, Bleeding Heart,

bleeding away,' until she died. It was objected by the murderous party

that this Refrain was notoriously the invention of a tambour-worker, a

spinster and romantic, still lodging in the Yard. But, forasmuch as all

favourite legends must be associated with the affections, and as many

more people fall in love than commit murder--which it may be hoped,

howsoever bad we are, will continue until the end of the world to be

the dispensation under which we shall live--the Bleeding Heart, Bleeding

Heart, bleeding away story, carried the day by a great majority. Neither

party would listen to the antiquaries who delivered learned lectures in

the neighbourhood, showing the Bleeding Heart to have been the heraldic

cognisance of the old family to whom the property had once belonged.

And, considering that the hour-glass they turned from year to year was

filled with the earthiest and coarsest sand, the Bleeding Heart Yarders

had reason enough for objecting to be despoiled of the one little golden

grain of poetry that sparkled in it.

Down in to the Yard, by way of the steps, came Daniel Doyce, Mr Meagles,

and Clennam. Passing along the Yard, and between the open doors on

either hand, all abundantly garnished with light children nursing heavy

ones, they arrived at its opposite boundary, the gateway. Here Arthur

Clennam stopped to look about him for the domicile of Plornish,

plasterer, whose name, according to the custom of Londoners, Daniel

Doyce had never seen or heard of to that hour.

It was plain enough, nevertheless, as Little Dorrit had said; over a

lime-splashed gateway in the corner, within which Plornish kept a ladder

and a barrel or two. The last house in Bleeding Heart Yard which she

had described as his place of habitation, was a large house, let off to

various tenants; but Plornish ingeniously hinted that he lived in the

parlour, by means of a painted hand under his name, the forefinger of

which hand (on which the artist had depicted a ring and a most elaborate

nail of the genteelest form) referred all inquirers to that apartment.

Parting from his companions, after arranging another meeting with

Mr Meagles, Clennam went alone into the entry, and knocked with his

knuckles at the parlour-door. It was opened presently by a woman with

a child in her arms, whose unoccupied hand was hastily rearranging the

upper part of her dress. This was Mrs Plornish, and this maternal

action was the action of Mrs Plornish during a large part of her waking

existence.

Was Mr Plornish at home? 'Well, sir,' said Mrs Plornish, a civil woman,

'not to deceive you, he's gone to look for a job.'

'Not to deceive you' was a method of speech with Mrs Plornish. She would

deceive you, under any circumstances, as little as might be; but she had

a trick of answering in this provisional form.

'Do you think he will be back soon, if I wait for him?'

'I have been expecting him,' said Mrs Plornish, 'this half an hour, at

any minute of time. Walk in, sir.' Arthur entered the rather dark and

close parlour (though it was lofty too), and sat down in the chair she

placed for him.

'Not to deceive you, sir, I notice it,' said Mrs Plornish, 'and I take

it kind of you.'

He was at a loss to understand what she meant; and by expressing as much

in his looks, elicited her explanation.

'It ain't many that comes into a poor place, that deems it worth their

while to move their hats,' said Mrs Plornish. 'But people think more of

it than people think.'

Clennam returned, with an uncomfortable feeling in so very slight a

courtesy being unusual, Was that all! And stooping down to pinch the

cheek of another young child who was sitting on the floor, staring at

him, asked Mrs Plornish how old that fine boy was?

'Four year just turned, sir,' said Mrs Plornish. 'He IS a fine little

fellow, ain't he, sir? But this one is rather sickly.' She tenderly

hushed the baby in her arms, as she said it. 'You wouldn't mind my

asking if it happened to be a job as you was come about, sir, would

you?' asked Mrs Plornish wistfully.

She asked it so anxiously, that if he had been in possession of any