That meagre story of pain and sorrow was Charlot’s history, and now he stitched away patiently on his shoes and made no complaint. No one thought of him as a man endowed with all a man’s feelings and passions. The little hunchbacked shoemaker of St. Antoine was not disliked by his neighbors; he was welcome to gather up the crumbs of joy that fell from the happier man’s table, to look on at feasts and weddings; he was even wanted at funerals--for he had a strangely touching way of showing his sympathy; but _Dieu!_ he was a thing apart, _le bossu_, a little deformity. No one thought of the soul caged within that wretched shape, and looking out on all it desired of the fulness of life, hungering for a crumb of joy, and debarred forever and ever. “Ah, _mon Dieu!_” Charlot said sometimes, “why didst thou give me the soul of a man, and a body that is only a mark for pity or scorn?” A question that could be answered only when the long and painful journey should be over and the poor, misshapen body laid to rest. Who can say in what beautiful form such a spirit may be clad when the River of Death is crossed? All these thoughts were in the shoemaker’s mind as he turned a little shoe in his hand. It was of white satin and he was making a rosette of pink ribbon, shaping it like a rose and fastening it on the toe. He fondled his work and held it off at arm’s length, admiring it. Another pair of shoes for Mademoiselle de St. Cyr, but this time they would come as a surprise. Next Thursday was Rosaline’s birthday, and the cobbler had been long fashioning these shoes as a present. He had never dared offer her a gift before, but now he owed them so many kindnesses, they had done so much to help him, that he felt he might offer this humble return on mademoiselle’s birthday. That pair of little white satin shoes stood for much joy in le Bossu’s dreary life; to plan them, to make them, to buy the ribbon for the rosettes, had furnished him with so many separate diversions. In the blankness of his existence there was one sacred spot, the château of St. Cyr; in his sad days, the figure of Rosaline stood before him like an angel. There was a great gulf between these two, the beautiful girl and the humble cobbler, and he knelt down on the farther side and worshipped her, as he would worship a saint in heaven. And she knew it not. To her, he was little Charlot, poor Charlot, and her voice softened when she spoke to him; her manner was more kind too than to others; she could afford to be goodness itself to the hunchbacked cobbler, and she never dreamed that she held his life in the hollow of her hand. Great was the gulf indeed, and she stood a long way off with the merciful sympathy of the angel that she seemed to him to be. He understood it all well enough and looked up to worship, happy to fashion a shoe that pleased her and to see the light in her blue eyes when she thanked him.