Picaresque Tale of a Triumphant Orphan

The Foundling by Hector Malot, translated by Douglas Munro (Harmony: $14.95)

When Hector Malot wrote “Sans Famille,” a two-volume picaresque about a poor orphan boy, the Academie Francaise heaped honor upon story and author. The work appeared in the decade following Dickens’ death, and Malot may have seen a position open to him. Now we have Douglas Munro’s translation, “The Foundling,” compressed into a single volume.

This is writing in a grandiose, ancient European tradition, though the telescoping into one volume seems to have bled the wide-ranging adventure of most of its local color and coherence. At the end, when our hero has achieved triumphant adulthood, the stage fills abruptly with figures from his youth, some of whom will be perfect strangers to most readers.

Still, this is the sort of story 20th-Century writers are assailed for not writing. Remi is the foster child of French peasants, Mother Barberin and her extremely practical husband, Jerome. They all live on the knife-edge of poverty, though there are those finely sewn baby clothes the foundling was wearing to give us hope. After the cow is sold, Jerome sells Remi to old Vitalis, an itinerant animal trainer with a hidden and, of course, exalted past.

Performing Animals

Here enter the best-drawn, liveliest characters in this crowded story, the performing animals of old Vitalis’ troupe. Three dogs: black and shaggy Zerbino, a bit impulsive and given to thievery; Signora Dolce, “a modest young person,” and Capi, a wonder poodle who can tell time, write his own name, command the others and often out-think humans:

“Capi at once tapped Zerbino with his paw, and you would almost think that there was a bit of an argument between them. Animals have a language of their own, and as for dogs they not only know how to speak but also how to read. Watch them with their noses in the air, or with their heads lowered sniffing the ground and smelling stones and shrubs. Suddenly they’ll stop at a tuft of grass or a wall and stay there for a while--we can see nothing on that wall, but a dog can read all sorts of curious things which could be written in mysterious letters that we don’t understand.”

To complete the company is Joli-Coeur, a monkey. Though a popular performer, he suffers from a short attention span. But he has his uses. The book’s best moment occurs as Joli-Coeur in his military uniform lies dying. In a century full of death-bed scenes, this one treads where even Dickens never ventured.

Having served this apprenticeship, Remi must find his way in the world. And he goes precisely where the author wishes to expose the rigors of his times: into a flooded coal mine, into a colony of children sadistically abused and lifted either from “Oliver Twist” or harsh reality, even into a felonious family of itinerant British hawkers.

But the reader is not dismayed. From the early appearance of a lovely English lady, we’re assured that plucky Remi will find his home and proper position.

Meanwhile, his sufferings ennoble and never coarsen. He’s the child who 19th-Century adults wished were real: a miniature adult whose character hardly needs further building.

Though Remi walks footsore and hungry over much of Europe, will he find his way onto 20th-Century turf? He’s probably too young for adolescent readers. Younger ones may well prefer the animal characters and may not survive the loss of all but the incomparable Capi. Even adults who turn from the sociological realities of current Young Adult books may be given pause by an era when dying of cold and starvation and the buying and selling of children were accepted givens. Possibly, “The Foundling” is a book for reading aloud. Its episodic structure suggests that, but it will take a good performer. Douglas Munro’s translation is only serviceable and often flat.

Maybe this is a tale only to be half remembered from childhood, of a brave band wandering country roads between Maxfield Parrish villages, the hardships blurred by distance and time. The kind of book they just don’t write anymore.