Free The Missing Italian Girl by Barbara Pope Page B

and not count on the…”
    Martin filled in the word that Leroux hesitated to say, “The bourgeoisie.”
    The mason nodded again, not wanting to look at the man he might have just insulted, for what could be more bourgeois than a lawyer?
    Martin slapped him on the back in good humor. “Two different paths, huh? We’ll see which one gets everyone their rights.” Leroux’s anarchism was the kind that Martin admired and supported, based not on terrorist tactics coming from the fringe of the movement, but on solidarity, self-education, and unions.
    Leroux looked up at him, almost grateful. “Thank you, Maître Martin; the union president told us that the Labor Exchange would be better off if we hired our own windbag to compete with their windbags, and I can see—” The man broke off again. This time, the insult had been even more pointed. “I didn’t mean…”
    Martin laughed. “Listen, you want to see windbags, lucky we didn’t have to go to the civil court at the Palais de Justice. I would have had to wear one of those black gowns, and you would have seen scores of lawyers and judges flying around the marble halls like a plague of crows cawing their own self-importance. I liked this much better.”
    When they reached the canals, Leroux stuck out his uninjured hand. “Thank you, Maître Martin, I’m going to take the tram home now.”
    Martin took the calloused hand gladly. “We made the case,” he said. “Do you have need of tram fare?”
    This time the smile on the mason’s face was genuine. “No, sir, I think I can find a brother who will let me on for free.”
    Martin nodded. Workers, Anarchists, Socialists. The mason would only be breaking a minor law, yet it was something Martin would not dream of doing. He was in their clubhouse, but not really of their club.
    After a wave good-bye, he walked along the canals for a while, which, despite the poverty of the surrounding neighborhood, glistened like jewels under the late morning sun. He loosened his dampened cravat to catch a bit of a breeze before turning down the street that led to the grand Place de la République. He stuck his hands in his pockets, strolling past the hawkers and shoppers. He was floating a little and couldn’t keep from smiling like a fool as he imagined relating his first victory to Clarie. “He called me a windbag, and that almost took the wind out of my sails, I can tell you,” he would say, and her beautiful almond-shaped brown eyes would shine. She’d smile at his bon mot and be so pleased for him. Happy that he was happy. Rejuvenated. He had certainly dealt with more important cases as a judge, solving murders, keeping the peace where violence threatened to erupt. But now it was different. He felt part of something, a movement forward, progress in bettering the human condition, not just cleaning up its messes.
    A bent-over, toothless man, mumbling a plea, almost fell into Martin. The old beggar’s desperation and the unwashed odor that reeked from his filthy clothes vividly reminded Martin of how far he had come and why. After a moment’s hesitation, he pulled a coin out of his pocket and dropped it in the man’s gnarled hand. Martin had been brought up to believe in charity. The altar-boy son of a pious widow, he believed everything the Church taught him until he encountered the true face and smell of poverty. Merckx. It always came back to Merckx, his oldest boyhood friend. The towheaded thirteen-year-old schoolmate who hated the priests and led Martin through the tottering wooden tenements of Lille to his large family’s two miserable rooms. Martin would never forget watching Merckx’s father coughing up blood mixed with the coal black dirt of the mines, or observing how the women of the family had been misshapen by years of 14-hour days in the humid, clanging woolen mills. Mills owned by Lille’s leading and proudly “charitable” families. It was Merckx who taught Martin that charity without justice or equality