Toni was now thirteen years old, and though short, was very lithe¹ and well made. He had never been on a horse’s back since that glorious day when the old cavalry² charger had run off with him, and he had not been able to enjoy the society of the horses much, or to lurk³ around the riding-school since his apprenticeship⁴ to Clery. On a certain May day which, although Toni did not know it, was a day of fate to him, he saw the greatest sight of his life—the debarkation⁶ of a circus company, with all its horses and other animals, at the little station in Bienville.  
Toni had often seen recruits debark⁵ when they came to the cavalry school for instruction. Clumsy, awkward fellows they were—at first ridiculously uneasy on a horse, and often as much afraid of a horse as Toni was of people. And he had seen them return, fine, dashing-looking troopers, after having been licked into shape in the riding-school. He loved to see the horses led to the train—they were so intelligent, so orderly, and seemed like real comrades of the troopers. But he had never seen anything like the trained intelligence of the circus horses in his life, and on this May day, when he wandered down to the station and saw horses who obeyed the word of command, like human beings, in getting off the train and taking up their right places, he was astounded⁷ and delighted. Every boy in Bienville was at the station to see the circus arrive, but Toni, according to his habit, slunk off by himself. There were numerous cages of animals, in which the other boys took a much greater interest than in the horses, but the other animals were nothing to Toni, to whom the cult⁸ of the horse was everything.
 
He followed the circus people, at a respectful distance, to the large open field where they put up the tent, but the chief point of interest to him was the temporary canvas stables which were erected⁹. He knew that it was time for him to go back to Clery’s, but he could not, to save his life, have torn himself away from the fascinating sights and sounds which surrounded him.
 
Everywhere was the bustle¹⁰ and well-regulated haste of such companies. The circus, which was really a small affair, had arrived in the morning, and the tent was up, and the performance ready to open by two o’clock. Toni spent the whole of the intervening time watching what was going on. Clery and the shop quite faded from his memory. He saw the circus riders come out of the dressing-tent, in their beautiful costumes of red and gold and pink and silver, a little tarnished¹¹, but glorious in Toni’s eyes, and he saw the horses gaily¹² caparisoned and almost adored them.
 
If he had a single franc, he would be able to go into the tent, and see the performance, but he had not a franc, nor did he know where to get one, except—except—he knew where his mother kept a tin box full of francs. He was afraid to go to her and ask her for the franc, because he had not been near Clery’s shop that day, and if his mother once caught him she might send him back to the shop, and that would mean no circus for him that day. But it was so easy to open the box and take out a franc—a thing he had never done before or thought of doing. But, like Captain Ravenel and Sophie, there are moments in the lives of human beings when temptation overwhelms the soul. Toni, who was neither a thief nor a liar¹³, became both, just as Captain Ravenel and Sophie Delorme had, in one desperate moment, trampled¹⁴ on the social law.
 
So Toni to, whom, in spite of his faults, deceit was as foreign even as it was to Paul Verney, conceived the thought of taking a franc out of his mother’s tin box. He sneaked¹⁵ back home, along by-lanes and garden walls, and crept in through the little back door which opened into the kitchen. His mother was in the front shop, and did not see him. As he stole softly up the narrow stair into the bedroom above, the sun was shining brightly, and the clock on the mantel pointed¹⁶ to half-past one. Toni always remembered this as an hour of fate.
 
The circus performance was to begin at two, and he barely had time to find the key which his mother kept under the bureau cover, and to unlock the press in which she kept her strong box, to find the key to the strong box hanging up on a nail inside the press, to open it and there, in a smaller tin box, to find many pieces of silver. Toni took out a single franc. He might have taken the whole box, but he never thought of it. It was not money he wanted, but a sight of the circus. He then closed and replaced the box, made everything as it was before, and, creeping down stairs, rushed off to thefield where the circus tent was up, his heart beating with a wild excitement which was not joy—neither was it pain.
 
The performance was almost ready to begin when Toni handed in his franc with a trembling hand. The place was full; everybody in Bienville seemed to be there, and many persons from the surrounding country, but Toni managed to slip himself between two stout¹⁷ peasant women with baskets in their laps, and contrived¹⁸ to see the whole performance without being seen. He gave himself up, à la Toni, to the enjoyment¹⁹ of the moment, putting off until four o’clock the hated interview with his mother and the still worse one that he must have with Clery.
 
 
 
But the circus to him was a sight well worth a dozen whippings. The view of the prancing²⁰ horses, so wonderfully intelligent, the beautiful young ladies in gauze and spangles, the riders in their satin suits,—all were a dream to Toni. He did not see any of the grease spots on the costumes, nor the paint on the faces of the lovely young ladies; all was a foretaste of Paradise. It came to him in a moment what his real destiny was—to be a circus rider. At once his imagination seized upon it. He wondered himself that he had managed to exist so long without the circus. All that vaulting²² and jumping and leaping, that careering around on the backs of brave horses, must be heavenly—it could not possibly be work.
 
Toni saw himself, in imagination, one of those glorious beings. Two things only did not fit into this picture which he drew of his future—his mother and little Denise. He could not imagine either of them in the place of those short-skirted, fluffy-haired young ladies, with pink silk stockings and very stout legs.
 
Just before the end a pony²³ was brought out which succeeded in throwing three clowns so successfully that the audience was in roars of laughter. The ring-master challenged any one present below a certain weight to come out in the ring and try to ride this astonishing pony. Toni, without his own volition²⁴, and knowing no more of what he was doing than a sleep-walker, wriggled²⁵ out from between the two fat peasant women and got down in the sanded ring. There was a roaring in his ears and a blur²⁶ before his eyes, and he could not have told how it was that he found himself upon the back of the kicking, plunging²⁷ pony careering around that dazzling circle. All Toni knew was that he was the pony’s master. There ............