Jump to content

Page:Ballads of a Bohemian.djvu/21

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
JULOT THE APACHE
19
nervously I paced up and down my garret; bitterly I flung myself on my bed. Then suddenly it all came. Line after line I wrote with hardly a halt. So I made another of my Ballads of the Boulevards. Here it is:

JULOT THE APACHE

You’ve heard of Julot the apache, and GigoIette, his môme….
Montmartre was their hunting-ground, but Belville was their home.
A little chap just like a boy, with smudgy black mustache,—
Yet there was nothing juvenile in Julot the apache.
From head to heel as tough as steel, as nimble as a cat,
With every trick of twist and kick, a master of savate.
And Gigolette was tall and fair, as stupid as a cow,
With three combs in the greasy hair she banged upon her brow.
You’d see her on the Place Pigalle on any afternoon,
A primitive and strapping wench as brazen as the moon.
And yet there is a tale that’s told of Clichy after dark,
And two gendarmes who swung their arms with Julot for a mark.
And oh, but they’d have got him too; they banged and blazed away,