He was maybe three years old. Cute. Pulling his mother toward the beggar who lay semi-prostrate. He wanted to give some money to the beggar. The beggar was a middle-aged, bearded man with a dark, knitted skull cap laying against a tree on the side of Boulevard Saint-Michel. His face wore the scars of the hard journey he must have had growing up. He was laying in a dark and dirty sleeping bag which was nestled on a root of the tree. His hand held a red cup.
The mother was resistant and tried to pull the youngster around the vagrant, but, in the end, she gave him some coins that found the bottom of the beggar’s cup. The youngster was excited as he skipped by. There was a smile on the face of the beggar. After a few minutes, the beggar took the money out of the cup and put it into his sleeping bag.
Nancy and I watched from the second floor while we were eating lunch at Pauls, a chain French pâtisserie. As we were finishing up, the beggar got out of his sleeping bag, straightened it out, carefully folded it, and put it in a plastic case. He had been laying on a suitcase. He affixed the plastic case to his rolling suitcase and walked away, with a definite spring in his step and hard-won coins in his stash.
I couldn’t help but think he looked just like a business man on his way to work in Paris.