A/N: Anybody who cannot see Jean Prouvaire as a little boy, hunched over at a too-big desk with some stub of a pencil in his hand and a wooden sword in his belt, has Jean Prouvaire problems. I think.
He saw a boy in the street.
A boy with no shirt.
In the poetic chill of grey morning, he saw a boy to whom no chill could be poetry.
And Jehan was a kindly poet with coin in his pocket.
So he called to the lad and he slipped his hand to the money before realizing he did not know where to buy a child's shirt.
The boy stood there with inquisitive glance as Jehan thought.
At last a place came to mind and he beckoned. The boy followed him.
They bought a shirt.
They bought a wooden sword.
The boy thanked him for the sword. Marveled at it.
But it was for the shirt that a brighter light came to his face.
Jehan wept that day. He wept because there were boys who had only misery.
Terrible sort of misery, that which deals a deathblow to the imagination.