And she added, with a sort of hateful regret:
"If I were in your place, how I would blackmail them! I would not hesitate, be sure."
These words made me slightly ashamed of my comrades in the servants' hall. But, to reassure myself, I preferred to believe that the cook was jealous of Madame's evident preference for me.
I went every morning at nine o'clock to open M. Xavier's curtains and carry him his tea. It is queer; I always entered his room with my heart beating and a strong feeling of apprehension. It was a long time before he paid any attention to me. I turned this way and that, prepared his things for him, arranged his garments, trying to look pretty and show myself off to advantage. He spoke to me only to complain, in the growling voice of one who is half awake, of being disturbed too early. I was put out by this indifference, and I redoubled the silent tricks of coquetry which I had carefully planned. I was expecting every day something that did not happen; and this silence on the part of M. Xavier, this disdain for my person, irritated me to the last degree. What should I have done, if that which I expected had happened? I did not ask myself. I simply wanted it to happen.
M. Xavier was really a very pretty boy, even prettier than his photograph. A light blonde moustache—two little arcs of gold—set off his lips better than in his portrait, their red and fleshy pulp inviting a kiss. His light blue eyes, dusted with yellow, were strangely fascinating, and his movements were characterized by the indolence, the weary and cruel grace, of a girl or young deer. He was tall, slender, very supple, ultra-modern in his elegance, and wonderfully seductive through his evident cynicism and corruption. In addition to the fact that he had pleased me from the first, his resistance, or, rather, his indifference, caused my desire to quickly ripen into love.
One morning I found M. Xavier awake, and sitting on the edge of the bed. I remember that he wore a white silk shirt with blue dots. I modestly started to withdraw, but he called me back:
"Oh! what is the matter? Come in. You are not afraid of me, are you?"
With his two hands clasped over his leg, and his body swaying to and fro, he surveyed me for a long time with the utmost effrontery, while I, with slow and graceful movements, and blushing a little, placed a tray on the little table near the mantel. And, as if he then really saw me for the first time, he said:
"Why, you are a very stylish girl. How long, then, have you been here?"
"Three weeks, Monsieur."
"Well, that's astonishing!"
"What is astonishing, Monsieur?"
"That I have never noticed that you were so beautiful. Come here!" said he.
I approached, trembling a little. Without a word he took me by the waist, and forced me to sit down beside him.
"Oh! Monsieur Xavier," I sighed, struggling, but not very vigorously. "Stop, I beg of you. If your parents were to see you?"
But he began to laugh:
"My parents! Oh! my parents, you know,—I have supped on them."
This was a phrase that he was continually using. When one asked him anything, he answered: "I have supped on that." And he had supped on everything.
To gain a little time I asked him:
"There is one thing that puzzles me, Monsieur Xavier. How does it happen that one never sees you at Madame's dinners?"
"You certainly don't expect me, my dear ... oh! no, you know, Madame's dinners tire me too much."
"And how is it," I insisted, "that your room is the only one in the house in which there is not a picture of the pope?"
This observation flattered him. He answered:
"Why, my little baby, I am an Anarchist, I am. Religion, the Jesuits, the priests,—oh! no, I have enough of them. I have supped on them. A society made up of people like papa and mamma? Oh! you know ... none of that in mine, thank you!"
Now I felt at ease with M. Xavier, in whom I found, together with the same vices, the drawling accent of the Paris toughs. It seemed to me that I had known him for years and years. In his turn he asked me:
"Tell me, are you intimate with papa?"
"Your father!" I cried, pretending to be scandalized. "Oh! Monsieur Xavier! Such a holy man!"
His laugh redoubled, and rang out loudly:
"Papa! Oh! papa! Why, he is intimate with all the servants here. Then you are not yet intimate with papa? You astonish me."
"Oh! no," I replied, laughing also. "Only he brings me the 'Fin de Siècle,' the 'Rigolo,' the 'Petites Femmes de Paris'."
That set him off in a delirium of joy, and, shaking more than ever with laughter, he cried:
"Papa! Oh! he is astonishing!"
And, being now well started, he continued in a comical tone:
"He is like mamma. Yesterday she made me another scene. I am disgracing her,—her and papa. Would you believe it? And religion, and society, and everything! It is twisting. Then I declared to her: 'My dear little mother, it is agreed; I will settle down to a regular life on the day when you shall have given up your lovers.' That was a hot one, eh? That shut her up. Oh! no, you know, they make me very tired, these authors of my being. I have supped on their lectures. By the way, you know Fumeau, don't you?"
"No, Monsieur Xavier."
"Why, yes ... why, yes ... Anthime Fumeau?"
"I assure you that I do not."
"A fat fellow, very young, very red-faced, ultra-stylish, the finest teams in Paris. Fumeau ... an income of three millions. Tartlet the Kid? Why, yes, you know him."
"But I tell you that I do not know him."
"You astonish me! Why, everybody knows him. Don't you know the Fumeau biscuit? The young fellow who had a judicial adviser appointed for him two months ago? Don't you remember?"
"Not at all, I swear to you, Monsieur Xavier."
"Never mind, little turkey. Well, I played a good one on Fumeau last year,—a very good one. Guess what? You do not guess?"
"How do you expect me to guess, since I do not know him?"
"Well, it was this, my little baby. I introduced Fumeau to my mother. Upon my word! What do you think of that for a discovery? And the funniest part of it is that in two months mamma succeeded in blackmailing Fumeau to the tune of three hundred thousand bones. What a godsend that, for papa's works! Oh! they know a thing or two; they are up to snuff! But for that, the house would have gone up. We were over head and ears in debt. The priests themselves were refusing to have anything to do with us. What do you say to that, eh?"
"I say, Monsieur Xavier, that you have a queer way of treating the family."
"What do you expect, my dear? I am an Anarchist, I am. I have supped on the family."
That morning Madame was even nicer than usual with me.
"I am well satisfied with your service," she said to me. "Mary, I raise your wages ten francs."
"If she raises me ten francs every time," thought I to myself, "that will not be bad. It is more suitable."
Oh! when I think of all that! I, too, have supped on it.
M. Xavier's fancy did not last long; he had quickly "supped on me." Not for a moment, moreover, was I able to keep him in the house. Several times, on entering his room in the morning, I found the bed undisturbed and empty. M. Xavier had been out all night. The cook knew him well, and she had told the truth when she said: "He prefers to roam elsewhere." He pursued his old habits, and went in search of his customary pleasures, as before. On those mornings I felt a sudden pain in my heart, and all day long I was sad, sad!
The unfortunate part of it all is that M. Xavier had no feeling. He was not poetical, like M. Georges. He did not vouchsafe me the slightest attention. Never did he say to me a kind and touching word, as lovers do in books and plays. Moreover, he liked nothing that I liked; he did not like flowers, with the exception of the big carnations with which he adorned the buttonhole of his coat. Yet it is so good to whisper to each other things that caress the heart, to exchange disinterested kisses, to gaze for eternities into one another's eyes. But men are such coarse creatures; they do not feel these joys,—these joys so pure and blue. And it is a great pity. M. Xavier knew nothing but vice, found pleasure only in debauchery. In love all that was not vice and debauchery bored him.
"Oh! no, you know, that makes me very tired. I have supped on poetry. The little blue flower ... we must leave that to papa."
To him I was always an impersonal creature, the domestic to whom he gave orders and whom he maltreated in the exercise of his authority as master, and with his boyish cynical jests. And he often said to me, with a laugh in the corner of his mouth,—a frightful laugh that wounded and humiliated me:
"And papa? Really, you are not yet intimate with papa? You astonish me."
Once I had not the power to keep back my tears; they were choking me. M. Xavier became angry at once:
"Oh! no, you know, that is the most tiresome thing of all. Tears, scenes? You must stop that, my dear; or else, good evening! I have supped on all that nonsense."
For my part I feel an immense and imperative need of that pure embrace, of that chaste kiss, which is no longer the savage bite of the flesh, but the ideal caress of the soul. I need to rise from the hell of love to the paradise of ecstasy, to the fullness, the delicious and candid silence, of ecstasy. But M. Xavier had supped on ecstasy.
Nothing pained me so much as to see that I had not left the slightest trace of affection, not the smallest tenderness, in his heart. Yet I believe that I could have loved the little scoundrel,—that I could have devoted myself to him, in spite of everything, like a beast. Even to-day I think regretfully of his impudent, cruel, and pretty phiz, and of his perfumed skin. And I have often on my lips, from which, since then, so many lips ought to have effaced it, the acid taste, the burning sensation of his kiss. Oh! Monsieur Xavier! Monsieur Xavier!
One evening, before dinner, when he had returned to dress,—my! but how nice he looked in evening dress!—and as I was carefully arranging his affairs in the dressing-room, he asked me, without embarrassment or hesitation, and almost in a tone of command, precisely as he would have asked me for hot water:
"Have you five louis? I am in absolute need of five louis to-night. I will return them to you to-morrow."
That very morning Madame had paid me my wages. Did he know it?
"I have only ninety francs," I answered, a little ashamed,—ashamed of his question, perhaps, but more ashamed, I think, at not having the entire sum that he asked.
"That makes no difference," said he; "go and get me the ninety francs. I will return them to you to-morrow."
He took the money, and, by way of thanks, said in a dry, curt tone that froze my heart: "That's good!" Then, putting out his foot with a brutal movement, he commanded insolently:
"Tie my shoes. And be quick about it; I am in a hurry."
I looked at him sadly, imploringly:
"Then you are not to dine here this evening, Monsieur Xavier?"
"No, I dine in town. Make haste."
As I tied his shoes, I moaned:
"And you will not return to-night? I shall cry all night long. It is not nice of you, Monsieur Xavier."
His voice became hard and thoroughly wicked.
"If you lent me your ninety francs that you might say that, you can take them back. Here, take them!"
"No, no," I sighed. "You know very well that it was not for that."
"Well, then, don't bother me."
He had quickly finished dressing, and he started off without kissing me and without saying a word.
The next day nothing was said about returning the money; and I did not wish to claim it. It gave me pleasure to think that he had something of me. And now I understand the women who kill themselves with toil, the women who sell themselves to passers-by, at night, on the sidewalks, the women who steal, and the women who kill, in order to get a little money with which to procure indulgences for the little man whom they love. That is what has happened to me, in fact. Or has it really happened to me in the degree that I say? Alas! I do not know. There are moments when, in presence of a man, I feel so soft, so soft, without will, without courage, so yielding ... yes, so yielding!
Madame was not slow in changing her manner toward me. Instead of treating me nicely, as she had done before, she became severe, exacting, fault-finding. I was only a blockhead; I never did anything right; I was awkward, unclean, ill-bred, forgetful, dishonest. And her voice, which at first had been so sweet, so much like the voice of a comrade, now became as sour as vinegar. She gave me orders in a blunt and humiliating tone. No more gifts of underwear, no more cold cream and powder, no more of the secret counsels and private confidences that had so embarrassed me at first. No more of that suspicious comradeship which at bottom I felt not to be kindness, and which caused me to lose my respect for this mistress who raised me to the level of her own vice. I snapped at her sharply, strong in my knowledge of all the open or hidden infamies of the house. We got to quarreling like fish-wives, hurling our week's notice at each other's heads, like dirty rags.
"What, then, do you take my house for?" she cried. "Do you think you are working for a fast woman?"
Think of her cheek! I answered:
"Oh! your house is a clean one, indeed! You can boast of it. And you? Let us talk about it; yes, let us talk about it! You are clean, too! And what about Monsieur? Oh! la! la! And do you think they don't know you in the neighborhood, and in Paris? Why, you are notorious, everywhere. Your house? A brothel. And, in fact, there are brothels which are not as dirty as your house."
And so these quarrels went on; we exchanged the worst insults and the lowest threats; we descended to the vocabulary of the street-walkers and the prisons. And then, suddenly, everything quieted down. M. Xavier had only to show signs of a reviving interest in me,—fleeting, alas!—when straightway began again the suspicious familiarity, the shameful complicities, the gifts of garments, the promises of doubled wages, the washing with Simon cream,—it is more suitable,—and the initiations into the mysteries of refined perfumes. M. Xavier's conduct toward me was the thermometer by which Madame regulated her own. The latter's kindness immediately followed the former's caresses. Abandonment by the son was accompanied by insults from the mother. I was the victim, continually tossed back and forth, of the enervating fluctuations to which the intermittent love of this capricious and heartless boy was subject. One would have thought that Madame must have played the spy with us, must have listened at the door, must have kept tabs for herself on the different phases of our relations. But no. She simply had the instinct of vice, that's all. She scented it through walls and souls, as a dog inhales in the breeze the far-away odor of game.
As for Monsieur, he continued to dance about among all these events, among all the hidden dramas of this house, alert, busy, cynical, and comical. In the morning he disappeared, with his face of a little pink and shaven faun, with his documents, with his bag stuffed with pious pamphlets and obscene newspapers. In the evening he reappeared, cravated with respectability, armored with Christian Socialism, his gait a little slower, his gestures a little more oily, his back slightly bent, doubtless under the weight of the good works done during the day. Regularly every Friday he gave me the week's issues of indecent journals, awaiting just the right occasion for making his declaration, and contenting himself with smiling at me with the air of an accomplice, caressing my chin, and saying to me, as he passed his tongue over his lips:
"Ho, ho, she is a very queer little one, indeed!"
As it amused me to watch Monsieur's game, I did not discourage him, but I promised myself to seize the first exceptionally favorable opportunity to sharply put him where he belonged.
One afternoon I was greatly surprised to see him enter the linen-room, where I sat alone, musing sadly over my work. In the morning I had had a painful scene with M. Xavier, and was still under the influence of the impression it had left on me. Monsieur closed the door softly, placed his bag on the large table near a pile of cloth, and, coming to me, took my hands and patted them. Under his blinking eyelid his eye turned, like that of an old hen dazzled by the sunlight. It was enough to make one die of laughter.
"Célestine," said he, "for my part, I prefer to call you Célestine. That does not offend you, does it?"
I could hardly keep from bursting.
"Why, no, Monsieur," I answered, holding myself on the defensive.
"Well, Célestine, I think you charming! There!"
"Really, Monsieur?"
"Adorable, in fact; adorable, adorable!"
"Oh! Monsieur!"
His fingers had left my hand, and were caressing my neck and chin with fat and soft little touches.
"Adorable, adorable!" he whispered.
He tried to embrace me. I drew back a little, to avoid his kiss.
"Stay, Célestine, I beg of you. I do not annoy you, do I?"
"No, Monsieur; you astonish me."
"I astonish you, you little rogue. I astonish you? Oh! you don't know me."
His voice was no longer dry. A fine froth moistened his lips.
"Listen to me, Célestine. Next week I am going to Lourdes; yes, I conduct a pilgrimage to Lourdes. Do you wish to come to Lourdes? I have a way of taking you to Lourdes. Will you come? Nobody will notice anything. You will stay at the hotel; you will take walks, or do what you like. And I will meet you in the evening."
What stupefied me was not the proposition in itself,—for I had been expecting it a long time,—but the unforeseen form which Monsieur gave it. Yet I preserved all my self-possession. And, desirous of humiliating this old rake, of showing him that I had not been the dupe of Madame's dirty calculations and his own, I lashed him squarely in the face with these words:
"And M. Xavier? Say, it seems to me that you are forgetting M. Xavier? What is he to do while we are amusing ourselves in Lourdes, at the expense of Christianity?"
An indirect and troubled gleam, the look of a surprised deer, lighted in the darkness of his eyes. He stammered:
"M. Xavier?"
"Why, yes!"
"Why do you speak to me of M. Xavier? There is no question of M. Xavier? M. Xavier has nothing to do with this."
I redoubled my insolence.
"On your word? Oh! don't pretend to be ignorant. Am I hired, yes or no, to be company for M. Xavier? Yes, am I not? Well, I am company for him. But you? Oh! no, that is not in the bargain. And then, you know, my little father, you are not my style."
And I burst out laughing in his face.
He turned purple; his eyes flamed with anger. But he did not think it prudent to enter into a discussion, for which I was terribly armed. He hastily picked up his bag, and slunk away, pursued by my laughter.
The next day, apropos of nothing, Monsieur made some gross remark to me. I flew into a passion. Madame happened along. I became mad with anger. The scene that ensued between us three was so frightful, so low, that I cannot undertake to describe it. In unspeakable terms I reproached them with all their filth and with all their infamy. I demanded the return of the money that I had lent M. Xavier. They foamed at the mouth. I seized a cushion, and hurled it violently at Monsieur's head.
"Go away! Get out of here, at once, at once!" screamed Madame, threatening to tear my face with her nails.
"I erase your name from the membership of my society; you no longer belong to my society, lost creature, prostitute!" vociferated Monsieur, stuffing his bag with thrusts of his fists.
Finally Madame withheld my week's wages, refused to pay the ninety francs that I had lent M. Xavier, and obliged me to return all the rags that she had given me.
"You are all thieves," I cried; "you are all pimps!"
And I went away, threatening them with the commissary of police and the justice of the peace.
"Oh! you are looking for trouble? Yes, well, you shall have it, scoundrels that you are!"
Alas! the commissary of police pretended that the affair did not concern him. The justice of the peace advised me to let it drop. He explained:
"In the first place, Mademoiselle, you will not be believed. And that is as it should be. What would become of society if a servant could be right against a master? There would be no more society, Mademoiselle. That would be anarchy."
I consulted a lawyer; he demanded two hundred francs. I wrote to M. Xavier; he did not answer me. Then I counted up my resources. I had three francs fifty left—and the street pavement.
November 13.
And I see myself again at Neuilly, with the sisters of Our Lady of Thirty-Six Sorrows, a sort of house of refuge, and also an employment-bureau for housemaids. My! but it is a fine establishment, with a white front, and at the rear of a large garden. In the garden, which is ornamented, at intervals of fifty steps, with statues of the Virgin, there is a little chapel, very new and sumptuous, built from the proceeds of the collections. Large trees surround it. And every hour one hears the tolling of the bells. It is so nice to hear the bells toll. It stirs in one's heart memories of things so old and long forgotten. When the bells toll, I close my eyes and listen, and I see again landscapes which perhaps I never saw before, and which I recognize all the same,—very peaceful landscapes, imbued with all the transformed recollections of childhood and youth,... and bagpipes,... and, on the moor bordering on the beaches, the slowly-moving panorama of holiday crowds. Ding ... dinn ... dong! It is not very gay; it is not the same thing as gaiety; it is even sad at bottom,—sad, like love. But I like it. In Paris one never hears anything but the fountaineer's horn, and the deafening trumpet of the tramway.
In the establishment of the sisters of Our Lady of Thirty-Six Sorrows, you sleep in attic dormitories; you are fed meagrely on scraps of meat and spoiled vegetables, and you pay twenty-five sous a day to the institution. That is to say, the sisters withhold twenty-five sous from your wages, when they have secured a place for you. They call that getting you a place for nothing. Further, you have to work from six o'clock in the morning until nine in the evening, like the inmates of prisons. You are not allowed to go out. Meals and religious exercises take the place of recreation. Ah! the good sisters do not bore themselves, as M. Xavier would say; and their charity is a famous trap. They rope you in finely! But there it is,—I shall be stupid all my life. The stern lessons of experience, the succession of misfortunes, never teach me anything, are of no use to me. I am always crying out and raising a row, but in the end I am always victimized by everybody.
Several times comrades had spoken to me of the sisters of Our Lady of Thirty-Six Sorrows.
"Yes, my dear, it seems that only very swell people come to the box,... countesses,... marchionesses. One may chance on astonishing places."
I believed it. And then, in my distress, I remembered with some feeling, booby that I am, the happy years that I spent with the little sisters of Pont-Croix. Moreover, I had to go somewhere. Beggars cannot be choosers.
When I arrived, there were forty housemaids there. Many came from a great distance,—from Brittany, from Alsace, from the south, girls who had never yet had a place,—awkward, clumsy, with livid complexions, sly airs, and singular eyes that looked over the walls of the convent at the mirage of Paris lying beyond. Others, not as green, were just out of a place, like myself.
The sisters asked me whence I came, what I knew how to do, whether I had good references, and whether I had any money left. I told them all sorts of things, and without further inquiry they welcomed me, saying:
"This dear child! We will find her a good place."
We all were their "dear children." While waiting for the promised good place, each of these dear children was put at some work, according to her faculties. Some did cooking and housework; others worked in the garden, digging in the soil, like navvies. I was promptly put at sewing, having, said Sister Boniface, supple fingers and a distinguished air. I began by mending the chaplain's pantaloons and the drawers of a sort of monk who was just then preaching a retreat in the chapel. Oh! those pantaloons! Oh! those drawers! Surely they did not resemble M. Xavier's. Then they intrusted to me tasks less ecclesiastical,—quite profane, in fact,—the making of fine and delicate linen garments, among which I again found myself in my element. I participated in the making of elegant bridaltrousseaux, of rich baby-linen, ordered of the good sisters by charitable and wealthy ladies who were interested in the establishment.
At first, after so many shocks, in spite of the bad food, the chaplain's pantaloons, the lack of liberty, in spite of all the fierce exploitation that I could plainly see, I felt a sense of real relief amid this calm and silence. I did not reason much; I felt rather a need of prayer. Remorse over my past conduct, or, rather, the weariness resulting from it, prompted me to fervent repentance. Several times in succession I confessed to the chaplain. He was a queer man, this chaplain, very round and red, a little rude in manner and in speech, and afflicted with a disagreeable body-smell. He asked me strange questions, and insisted on knowing my favorite authors.
"Armand Silvestre? Yes. To be sure, he is dirty. I would not give you his works instead of the 'Imitation.' No, not that; yet he is not dangerous. But you must not read impious books, books against religion,—Voltaire, for instance. No, never; never read Voltaire,—that is a mortal sin,—or Renan, or Anatole France. They are dangerous."
"And Paul Bourget, Father?"
"Paul Bourget! He is entering on the right path; that I do not deny. But his Catholicism is not sincere,—not yet; at least, it is much mixed. Your Paul Bourget makes upon me the impression of a wash-basin,—yes, that is it,—of a wash-basin, in which no matter what has been washed, and in which olives from Calvary are swimming amid hair and soapsuds. You should wait a little before reading him! Huysmans! Well, he is a little stiff in his expressions,—yes, indeed, very stiff,—but he is orthodox."
And he said to me further:
"Yes ... Ah! you do mad things with your body! That is not good. No, indeed, that is always bad. But, sin for sin, it is better to sin with your masters, when they are pious persons, than with people of your own condition. It is less serious, less irritating to the good God. And perhaps these people have dispensations. Many have dispensations."
As I named M. Xavier and his father, he cried:
"No names. I do not ask you for names. Never tell me names. I do not belong to the police. Besides, those are rich and respectable people whom you have just named,—extremely religious people. Consequently you are wrong; you are rebellious against morality and against society."
These ridiculous conversations considerably cooled my religious zeal, my ardor for repentance. The work, too, annoyed me. It made me homesick for my own calling. I felt impatient desires to escape from this prison, to return to the privacies of dressing-rooms. I sighed for the closets full of sweet-smelling linen, the wardrobes stuffed with silks, satins, and velvets, so smooth to the touch, and the bath-rooms where white flesh is lathered with oily soaps. And the stories of the servants' hall, and the unforeseen adventures, and the evenings on the stairs and in the chambers! It is really curious; when I have a place, these things disgust me, but, when I am out of a place, I miss them. I was tired also, excessively tired, sickened in fact, from having eaten for a week nothing but preserves made out of spoiled currants, of which the good sisters had purchased a large quantity in the Levallois market. Anything that the holy women could rescue from the refuse-heap was good enough for us.
What completed my irritation was the evident, the persistent effrontery with which we were exploited. Their game was a very simple one, and they took little pains to conceal it. They found places only for those girls of whom they could make no use themselves. Those from whom they could reap any profit whatever they held as prisoners, taking advantage of their talents, of their strength, and of their simplicity. As the height of Christian charity, they had found a way of having servants who paid for the privilege of working, and whom they stripped, without remorse and with inconceivable cynicism, of their modest resources and their little savings, after making a profit out of their labor. And the costs kept running on.
I complained, at first feebly, and then more forcibly, that they had not once summoned me into the reception-room, but to all my complaints the hypocrites answered:
"A little patience, my dear child! We are planning to get you an excellent place, my dear child; for you we desire an exceptional place. We know what sort of a place you should have. As yet not one has offered itself such as we wish for you, and such as you deserve."
Days and weeks passed. The places were never good enough, never exceptional enough for me. And the costs kept running on.
Although there was a watcher in the dormitory, the things that went on every night were enough to make one shudder. As soon as the watcher had finished her round, and every one seemed to be asleep, you could see white forms arise and glide about among the beds. The good sisters, holy women, closed their eyes that they might see nothing, stopped up their ears that they might hear nothing. Wishing to avoid scandal, they tolerated horrors of which they feigned ignorance. And the costs kept running on.
Fortunately, when I was at the very depth of my ennui, I was delighted by the entrance into the establishment of a little friend, Clémence, whom I called Cléclé, and whom I had known in a place where I had worked in the Rue de l'Université. Cléclé was a charming pink blonde, extremely gay and lively, and very fly. She laughed at everything, accepted everything, and was contented everywhere. Devoted and faithful, she knew but one pleasure,—that of being useful to others. Vicious to the marrow of her bones, her vice had nothing repugnant about it, it was so gay, artless, and natural. She bore vice as a plant bears flowers, as a cherry-tree bears cherries. Her pretty, bird-like chatter sometimes made me forget my feeling of weariness, and put to sleep my tendency to rebel. Our two beds were next to each other; and one night she told me, in a funny sort of whisper, that she had just had a place in the house of a magistrate at Versailles.
"Fancy, there were nothing but animals in the den,—cats, three parrots, a monkey, and two dogs. And they all had to be taken care of. Nothing was good enough for them. We were fed on old scraps, the same as in this box here. But they had what was left over of the poultry; they had cream, and cakes, and mineral water, my dear! Yes, the dirty beasts drank nothing but Evian water, because of an epidemic of typhoid fever that was raging at Versailles. In the winter Madame had the cheek to take the stove out of my chamber, and put it in the room where the monkey and the cats slept. Would you believe it? I detested them, especially one of the dogs, a horrible old pug, that was always sniffing at my skirts, in spite of the kicks that I gave it. The other morning Madame caught me whipping it. You can imagine the scene. She showed me the door in double-quick time."
Oh! this Cléclé! how agreeable and amusing she was!
People have no idea of all the annoyances to which domestics are subjected, or of the fierce and eternal exploitation under which they suffer. Now the masters, now the keepers of employment-bureaus, now the charitable institutions, to say nothing of the comrades, some of whom are capable of terrible meanness. And nobody takes any interest in anybody else. Each one lives, grows fat, and is entertained by the misery of some one poorer than himself. Scenes change, settings are shifted, you traverse social surroundings that are different and even hostile, but everywhere you find the same appetites and passions. In the cramped apartments of thebourgeoisand in the elegant mansion of the banker you meet the same filth, and come in contact with the inexorable. The result of it all, for a girl like me, is that she is conquered in advance, wherever she may go and whatever she may do. The poor are the human manure in which grow the harvests of life, the harvests of joy which the rich reap, and which they misuse so cruelly against us. They pretend that there is no more slavery. Oh! what nonsense? And what are domestics, then, if not slaves? Slaves in fact, with all that slavery involves of moral vileness, inevitable corruption, and hate-engendering rebellion. Servants learn vice in the houses of their masters. Entering upon their duties pure and innocent,—some of them,—they are quickly made rotten by contact with habits of depravity. They see nothing but vice, they breathe nothing but vice, they touch nothing but vice. Consequently, from day to day, from minute to minute, they get more and more used to it, being defenceless against it, being obliged, on the contrary, to serve it, to care for it, to respect it. And their revolt arises from the fact that they are powerless to satisfy it, and to break down all the obstacles in the way of its natural expansion. Oh! it is extraordinary. They demand of us all the virtues, complete resignation, all the sacrifices, all the heroisms, and only those vices that flatter the vanity of the masters, and which yield them a profit. And all this in return for contempt and wages ranging from thirty-five to ninety francs a month. No, it is too much! Add that we live in perpetual distress of mind, in a perpetual struggle between the ephemeral semi-luxury of the places that we fill, and the anguish which the loss of these places causes us. Add that we are continually conscious of the wounding suspicions that follow us everywhere,—bolting doors, padlocking drawers, marking bottles, numbering cakes and prunes, and continually putting us to shame by invasive examination of our hands, our pockets, and our trunks. For there is not a door, not a closet, not a drawer, not a bottle, not an article, that does not cry out to us: "Thief! thief! thief!" And also the continuous vexation caused by that terrible inequality, that frightful disproportion in our destinies, which, in spite of familiarities, smiles, and presents, places between our mistresses and ourselves an impassable abyss, a whole world of sullen hatreds, suppressed desires, and future vengeances,—a disproportion which is rendered every minute more perceptible, more humiliating, more disgracing, by the caprices, and even by the kindnesses, of those beings that know no justice and feel no love,—the rich. Did you ever think for a moment of the mortal and legitimate hatred, of the murderous—yes, murderous—desires with which we must be filled when we hear one of our masters, in trying to describe something base and ignoble, cry out in our presence, with a disgust that casts us so violently outside the pale of humanity: "He has the soul of a domestic; that is the sentiment of a domestic." Then what do you expect us to become in these hells? Do these mistresses really imagine that I should not like to wear fine dresses, ride in fine carriages, have a gay time with lovers, and have servants of my own? They talk to us of devotion, of honesty, of fidelity. Why; but it would choke you to death, my little chippies!
Once, in the Rue Cambon ... how many of these places I have had!... the masters were marrying their daughter. They gave a grand reception in the evening, at which the wedding-presents were exhibited,—enough of them to fill a furniture-van. By way of jest I asked Baptiste, thevalet de chambre:
"Well, Baptiste, and you? What is your present?"
"My present?" exclaimed Baptiste, with a shrug of his shoulders.
"Yes, tell me, what is it?"
"A can of petroleum lighted under their bed. That is my present."
It was a smart answer. Moreover, this Baptiste was an astonishing man in politics.
"And yours, Célestine?" he asked, in his turn.
"Mine?"
I contracted my two hands into the shape of talons, and, pretending to claw a face ferociously, I answered:
"My nails, in their eyes!"
The butler, without being asked, remarked quietly, while arranging flowers and fruits in a glass dish with his fastidious fingers:
"I would be satisfied to sprinkle their faces in church with a bottle of good vitriol."
And he stuck a rose between two pears.
Oh! yes, how we love them! The extraordinary thing is that these revenges are not taken more frequently. When I think that a cook, for instance, holds her masters' lives in her hands every day; a pinch of arsenic instead of salt, a little dash of strychnine instead of vinegar, and the thing is done. Well, no, it must be that we have servitude in our very blood!
I have no education, and I write what I think and what I have seen. Well, I say that all this is not beautiful. I say that from the moment when any one installs another under his roof, though he were the last of poor devils, or the lowest of disreputable girls, he owes them protection, he owes them happiness. I say also that, if the master does not give it to us, we have a right to take it, even from his strong-box, even from his blood.
But enough of this! I do wrong to think of things that make my head ache and turn my stomach. I come back to my little stories.
I had much difficulty in leaving the sisters of Our Lady of Thirty-Six Sorrows. In spite of Cléclé's companionship, I was growing old in the box, and beginning to be hungry for liberty. When they understood that I had made up my mind to go, then the worthy sisters offered me places and places. There were places only for me. But I am not always a fool, and I have a keen eye for rascalities. All these places I refused. In all of them I found something that did not suit me. You should have seen the heads of these holy women. It was laughable. They had calculated on finding me a place in the house of some old bigot, where they could get back out of my wages the cost of my board with usury, and I enjoyed playing them a trick in my turn.
One day I notified Sister Boniface that it was my intention to go that very evening. She had the cheek to answer me, raising her arms to heaven:
"But, my dear child, it is impossible."
"How so? Why is it impossible?"
"Why, my dear child, you cannot leave the house like that. You owe us more than seventy francs. You will have to pay us first these seventy francs."
"And with what?" I replied. "I have not a sou; you can search me."
Sister Boniface gave me a hateful look, and, then declared, with severe dignity: "But, Mademoiselle, do you know that this is a robbery? And to rob poor women like us is worse than robbery; it is a sacrilege, for which the good God will punish you. Reflect."
Then anger got the better of me, and I cried:
"Say, then, who is it that steals here,—you or I? No, but you are astonishing, my little mothers."
"Mademoiselle, I forbid you to speak in this way."
"Oh! don't talk to me. What? One does your work, one toils like a beast for you from morning to night, one earns enormous money for you, you give us food which dogs would refuse, and then we must pay you into the bargain! Indeed, you have no cheek!"
Sister Boniface had turned very pale. I felt that coarse, filthy, furious words were on her lips, and ready to leave them; but, not daring to let them go, she stammered:
"Silence! You are a girl without shame, without religion. God will punish you. Go, if you will; but we keep your trunk."
I planted myself squarely before her, in an attitude of defiance, and, looking her full in the face, I said:
"Well, I should like to see you try it. Just try to keep my trunk, and you will have a visit from the commissary of police in short order. And, if religion consists in patching the dirty pantaloons of your chaplains, in stealing bread from poor girls, in speculating on the horrors that go on every night in the dormitory...."
The good sister was fairly white. She tried to cover my voice with her own.
"Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle!"
"Oh! don't pretend ignorance of the dirty things that go on every night in the dormitory! Do you dare to tell me, in my face, your eyes looking into mine, that you are ignorant of them? You encourage them because they are profitable to you,—yes, because they are profitable to you."
And trembling, panting, with dry throat, I completed my accusation.
"If religion is all that; if it is religious to keep a prison and a brothel,—well, then, I have enough of religion. My trunk, do you hear? I wish my trunk. You will give me my trunk at once."
Sister Boniface was frightened.
"I do not wish to discuss with a lost creature," said she, in a voice of dignity. "All right; you shall go."
"With my trunk?"
"With your trunk."
"Very well; but it takes tall talk to get one's rights here. It is worse than at the custom-house."
I went, in fact, that very evening. Cléclé, who was very nice, and who had saved something, lent me twenty francs. I went to engage a room in a lodging-house in the Rue de la Sourdière, and I bought a seat among the gallery-gods at the Porte-Saint-Martin. The play was "The Two Orphans." How true it is! Almost my own story.
I passed there a delightful evening, weeping, weeping, weeping.
November 18.
Rose is dead. Decidedly, misfortune hangs over the captain's house. Poor captain! His ferret dead ... Bourbaki dead ... and now it is Rose's turn! After a sickness of some days, she was carried off day before yesterday, in the evening, by a sudden attack of congestion of the lungs. She was buried this morning. From the windows of the linen-room I saw the procession pass in the road. The heavy coffin, borne by six men, was covered with crowns and with bunches of white flowers, like that of a young virgin. A considerable crowd, in long, dark, babbling files,—all Mesnil-Roy—followed Captain Mauger, who, wearing a tightly-fitting black frock-coat, and holding himself very stiffly, led the mourners, in thoroughly military fashion. And the church bells, tolling in the distance, responded to the sound of the rattle waved by the beadle. Madame had warned me that I was not to go to the funeral. However, I had no desire to go. I did not like this fat and wicked woman; her death leaves me very calm and indifferent. Yet perhaps I shall miss Rose; perhaps I shall miss my occasional conversations with her in the road. But what a source of gossip this event must be at the grocer's!
I was curious to know what impression this sudden death had made upon the captain. And, as my masters were visiting, I took a walk in the afternoon along the hedge. The captain's garden is sad and deserted. A spade stuck in the ground indicates abandoned work. "The captain will not come into the garden," said I to myself; "he is undoubtedly weeping in his chamber, among the souvenirs." And suddenly I perceive him. He has taken off his fine frock-coat, and put on his working-clothes again, and, with his old foraging-cap on his head, he is engaged in manuring his lawns. I even hear him humming a march in a low voice. He leaves his wheelbarrow, and comes toward me, carrying his fork on his shoulder.
"I am glad to see you, Mademoiselle Célestine."
I should like to offer him consolation or pity. I search for words, for phrases. But how can one find a touching word in presence of such a droll face? I content myself with repeating:
"A great misfortune, captain, a great misfortune for you! Poor Rose!"
"Yes, yes," he says, tamely.
His face is devoid of expression. His movements are uncertain. He adds, jabbing his fork into a soft spot in the ground near the hedge:
"Especially as I cannot get along without anybody."
I insist upon Rose's domestic virtues.
"You will not easily replace her, Captain."
Decidedly, he is not touched at all. One would say even, from looking at his eyes that have suddenly become brighter and from watching his movements, now more alert, that he has been relieved from a great weight.
"Bah!" says he, after a short silence, "everything can be replaced."
This resignation astonishes me, and even scandalizes me a little. To amuse myself, I try to make him understand all he has lost in losing Rose.
"She knew so well your habits, your tastes, your manias! She was so devoted to you!"
"Well, if she had not been, that would have been the last straw," he growled.
And, making a gesture by which he seems to put aside all sorts of objections, he goes on:
"Besides, was she so devoted to me? Oh! I may as well tell you the truth. I had had enough of Rose. Yes, indeed! After we took a little boy to help us, she attended to nothing in the house, and everything went badly, very badly. I could not even have an egg boiled to my taste. And the scenes that went on, from morning to night, apropos of nothing. If I spent ten sous, there were cries and reproaches. And, when I talked with you, as I am doing now,—well, there was a row, indeed; for she was jealous, jealous. Oh! no. She went for you; you should have heard her. In short, I was no longer at home in my own house."
He breathes deeply, noisily, and, with the new and deep joy that a traveler feels on returning from a long journey, he contemplates the sky, the bare grass-plots in the garden, the violet interlacings of the branches of the trees against the light, and his little house.
This joy, so offensive to Rose's memory, now seems to me very comical. I stimulate the captain to further confidences. And I say to him, in a tone of reproach:
"Captain, I think you are not just to Rose."
"Egad!" he rejoins, quickly. "You do not know; you don't know anything about it. She did not go to tell you of all the scenes that she made, her tyranny, her jealousy, her egoism. Nothing belonged to me here any longer. Everything in my house was hers. For instance, you would not believe it, my Voltaire arm-chair was never at my disposition. She had it all the time. She had everything, for that matter. To think that I could no longer eat asparagus with oil, because she did not like it! Oh! she did well to die. It was the best thing that could happen to her, for, in some way or other, I should have gotten rid of her. Yes, yes, I should have gotten rid of her. She was becoming too much for me. I had had enough. And let me tell you; if I had died before her, Rose would have been prettily trapped. I had a bitter pill in store for her. My word for it!"
His lip curls in a smile that ends in an atrocious grimace. He continues, chopping each of his words with moist little puffs of laughter:
"You know that I made a will, in which I gave her everything,—house, money, dividends, everything. She must have told you; she told everybody. Yes, but what she did not tell you, because she did not know it, is that, two months later, I made a second will, cancelling the first, in which I did not leave her anything,—not a sou."
Unable to contain himself longer, he bursts out laughing, a strident laugh that scatters through the garden like a flight of scolding sparrows. And he cries:
"Ah! that's an idea, hey? Oh! her head,—you can see it from here,—on learning that I had left my little fortune to the French Academy. For, my little Célestine, it is true; I had left my fortune to the French Academy. Ah! that's an idea!"
I allow his laughter to become quieter, and then I gravely ask him:
"And now, Captain, what are you going to do?"
The captain gives me a long, sly, amorous look, and says:
"Well, that depends on you."
"On me?"
"Yes, on you; on you alone."
"And how is that?"
A moment of silence follows, during which, straightening up and twisting his pointed beard, he seeks to envelop me in a seductive fluid.
"Come," he says, suddenly, "let us go straight to the point. Let us speak squarely,—soldier-fashion. Do you wish to take Rose's place?"
I was expecting the attack. I had seen it coming from the depth of his eyes. It does not surprise me. I receive it with a serious and unmoved expression.
"And the wills, Captain?"
"Oh! I tear them up."
I object:
"But I do not know how to cook."
"Oh! I will do the cooking; I will make my bed; I will do everything."
He becomes gallant, sprightly; his eye sparkles. He leans towards the hedge, stretching out his neck. His eyes become bloodshot. And in a lower voice he says:
"If you came to me, Célestine,—well...."
"Well, what?"
"Well, the Lanlaires would die of rage. Ah! that's an idea!"
I lapse into silence, and pretend to be profoundly dreaming. The captain becomes impatient. He digs the heels of his shoes into the sandy path.
"See, Célestine, thirty-five francs a month; the master's table; the master's room; a will; does that suit you? Answer me."
"We will see later. But, while waiting, take another."
And I run away that I may not blow into his face the tempest of laughter that is roaring in my throat.
I have, then, only the embarrassment of choice. The captain or Joseph? To live as a servant-mistress, with all the contingencies that such a position involves,—that is, to remain still at the mercy of a stupid, coarse, changeable man, and dependent upon a thousand disagreeable circumstances and a thousand prejudices; or else to marry, and thus acquire a sort of regular and respected liberty, in a situation free from the control of others, and liberated from the caprice of events? Here at last a portion of my dream promises to be realized.
It is very evident that I should have liked a realization on a grander scale. But, when I think how few chances present themselves, in general, in the existence of a woman like me, I must congratulate myself that something is coming to me at last other than this eternal and monotonous tossing back and forth from one house to another, from one bed to another, from one face to another face.
Of course, I put aside at once the captain's plan. Moreover, I had no need of this last conversation with him to know the sort of grotesque and sinister mountebank, the type of odd humanity, that he represents. Beyond the fact that his physical ugliness is complete,—for there is nothing to relieve and correct it,—he gives one no hold on his soul. Rose believed firmly in her assured domination over this man, and this man tricked her. One cannot dominate nothing; one can have no influence over emptiness. I cannot, without choking with laughter, think of myself for an instant in the arms of this ridiculous personage and caressing him. Yet, in spite of this, I am content, and I feel something akin to pride. However low the source from which it comes, it is none the less an homage, and this homage strengthens my confidence in myself and in my beauty.
Quite different are my feelings toward Joseph. Joseph has taken possession of my mind. He retains it, he holds it captive, he obsesses it. He disturbs me, bewitches me, and frightens me, by turns. Certainly, he is ugly, brutally, horribly ugly; but, when you analyze this ugliness, you find something formidable in it, something that is almost beauty, that is more than beauty, that is above beauty,—something elemental. I do not conceal from myself the difficulty, the danger, of living, whether married or not, with such a man, of whom I am warranted in suspecting everything, and of whom, in reality, I know nothing. And it is this that draws me to him with a dizzy violence. At least he is capable of many things in crime, perhaps, and perhaps also in the direction of good. I do not know. What does he want of me? What will he do with me? Should I be the unscrupulous instrument of plans that I knew nothing of, the plaything of his ferocious passions? Does he even love me? And why does he love me? For my beauty; for my vices; for my intelligence; for my hatred of prejudices,—he who makes parade of all the prejudices? I do not know. In addition to this attraction which the unknown and mysterious has for me, he exercises over me the bitter, powerful charm of force. And this charm, yes, this charm acts more and more on my nerves, conquers my passive and submissive flesh. It is something which I cannot define exactly, something that takes me wholly, by my mind and by my sex, revealing in me instincts of which I was unaware, instincts that slept within me without my knowledge, and that no love, no thrill of voluptuousness had before awakened. And I tremble from head to foot when I remember the words of Joseph, saying to me:
"You are like me, Célestine. Oh! not in features, of course. But our two souls are alike; our two souls resemble each other."
Our two souls! Is that possible?
These sensations that I feel are so new, so imperious, so strongly tenacious, that they do not leave me a minute's rest, and that I remain always under the influence of their stupefying fascination. In vain do I seek to occupy my mind with other thoughts. I try to read and walk in the garden, when my masters are away, and, when they are at home, to work furiously at my mending in the linen-room. Impossible! Joseph has complete possession of my thought. And not only does he possess it in the present, but he possesses it also in the past. Joseph so interposes himself between my entire past and myself that I see, so to speak, nothing but him, and that this past, with all its ugly or charming faces, draws farther and farther from me, fades away, disappears. Cléophas Biscouille; M. Jean; M. Xavier; William, of whom I have not yet spoken; M. Georges, himself, by whom I believed my soul to have been branded forever, as the shoulder of the convict is branded by the red iron; and all those to whom, voluntarily, joyously, passionately, I have given a little or much of myself, of my vibrant flesh and of my sorrowful heart,—all of them shadows already! Uncertain and ludicrous shadows that fade away until they are hardly recollections, and then become confused dreams ... intangible, forgotten realities ... vapors ... nothing. Sometimes, in the kitchen, after dinner, when looking at Joseph and his criminal mouth, and his criminal eyes, and his heavy cheek-bones, and his low, knotty, humpy forehead, upon which the lamplight accumulates hard shadows, I say to myself:
"No, no, it is not possible. I am under the influence of a fit of madness; I will not, I cannot, love this man. No, no, it is not possible."
And yet it is possible, and it is true. And I must at last confess it to myself, cry out to myself: "I love Joseph!"
Ah! now I understand why one should never make sport of love; why there are women who rush, with all the consciencelessness of murder, with all the invincible force of nature, to the kisses of brutes and to the embraces of monsters, and who voluptuously sound the death-rattle in the sneering faces of demons and bucks.
Joseph has obtained from Madame six days' leave of absence, and to-morrow he is to start for Cherbourg, pretending to be called by family matters. It is decided; he will buy the little café. But for some months he will not run it himself. He has some one there, a trusted friend, who is to take charge of it.
"Do you understand?" he says to me. "It must first be repainted, and made to look like new; it must be very fine, with its new sign, in gilt letters: 'To the French Army!' And besides, I cannot leave my place yet. That I cannot do."
"Why not, Joseph?"
"Because I cannot now."
"But when will you go, for good?"
Joseph scratches his neck, gives me a sly glance, and says:
"As to that I do not know. Perhaps not for six months yet; perhaps sooner; perhaps even later. I cannot tell. It depends."
I feel that he does not wish to speak. Nevertheless I insist:
"It depends on what?"
He hesitates to answer; then, in a mysterious and, at the same time, somewhat excited tone, he says:
"On a certain matter; on a very important matter."
"But what matter?"
"Oh! on a certain matter, that's all."
This is uttered in a brusque voice,—a voice not of anger exactly, but of impatience. He refuses to explain further.
He says nothing to me of myself. This astonishes me, and causes me a painful disappointment. Can he have changed his mind? Has my curiosity, my hesitation, wearied him? Yet it is very natural that I should be interested in an event in the success or failure of which I am to share. Can the suspicion that I have not been able to hide, my suspicion of the outrage committed by him upon the little Claire, have caused Joseph to reflect further, and brought about a rupture between us? But I feel from the tremor of my heart that my resolution, deferred out of coquetry, out of a disposition to tease, was well taken. To be free, to be enthroned behind a bar, to command others, to know that one is looked at, desired, adored by so many men! And that is not to be? And this dream is to escape me, as all the others have? I do not wish to seem to be throwing myself at Joseph's head, but I wish to know what he has in his mind. I put on a sad face, and I sigh:
"When you have gone, Joseph, the house will no longer be endurable to me. I have become so accustomed to you now, to our conversations."
"Oh! indeed!"
"I too shall go away."
Joseph says nothing.
He walks up and down the harness-room, with anxious brow and preoccupied mind, his hands nervously twirling a pair of garden-shears in the pocket of his blue apron. The expression of his face is unpleasant. I repeat, as I watch him go back and forth:
"Yes, I shall go away; I shall return to Paris."
He utters not a word of protest, not a cry; not even an imploring glance does he turn upon me. He puts a stick of wood in the stove, as the fire is low, and then begins again his silent promenade up and down the room. Why is he like this? Does he, then, accept this separation? Does he want it? Has he, then, lost his confidence in me, the love that he had for me? Or does he simply fear my imprudence, my eternal questions?
Trembling a little, I ask him:
"Will it cause you no pain, Joseph, if we do not see each other again?"
Without halting in his walk, without even glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, in the manner so characteristic of him, he says:
"Of course. But what can you expect? One cannot oblige people to do what they refuse to do. A thing either pleases, or it does not please."
"What have I refused to do, Joseph?"
"And besides, you are always full of bad ideas about me," he continues, without answering my question.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because...."
"No, no, Joseph; you no longer love me; you have something else in mind now. I have refused nothing; I have reflected, that is all. It is natural enough, isn't it? One does not make a life-contract without reflection. My hesitation, on the contrary, ought to make you think well of me. It proves that I am not light-headed,—that I am a serious woman."
"You are a good woman, Célestine, an orderly woman."
"Well, then?"
At last Joseph stops walking, and, gazing at me with profound and still suspicious, but yet tenderer, eyes, he says, slowly:
"It is not that, Célestine. There is no question of that. I do not prevent you from reflecting. Reflect all you like. There is plenty of time, and we will talk again on my return. But what I do not like, you see, is so much curiosity. There are things that do not concern women; there are things...."
And he finishes his phrase with a shake of his head.
After a moment's silence he resumes:
"I have nothing else in mind, Célestine. I dream of you; I am crazy over you. As true as the good God exists, what I have said once I say always. We will talk it over again. But you must not be curious. You do what you do; I do what I do. In that way there is no mistake, no surprise."
Approaching me, he grasps my hands.
"I have a hard head, Célestine; yes, indeed! But what is in it stays in it, and cannot be gotten out of it. I dream of you, Célestine, of you ... in the little café."
November 20.
Joseph started for Cherbourg yesterday morning, as had been agreed. On coming down stairs, I find him already gone. Marianne, half awake, with swollen eyes and hawking throat, is pumping water. The plate from which Joseph has just eaten his soup, and the empty cider-pitcher, are still on the kitchen table. I am anxious, and at the same time I am content, for I feel that, starting from to-day, a new life is at last preparing for me. The sun has scarcely risen; the air is cold. Beyond the garden the country is still sleeping under a curtain of fog, and in the distance, coming from an invisible valley, I hear the very feeble sound of a locomotive whistle. It is the train that bears Joseph and my destiny. I can eat no breakfast; it seems to me that something huge and heavy fills my stomach. I no longer hear the whistle. The fog is thickening; it has entered the garden.
And if Joseph were never to come back?
All day long I have been distracted, nervous, extremely agitated. Never did the house weigh more heavily upon me; never did the long corridors seem more dismal, more icily silent; never have I so much detested the crabbed face and shrill voice of Madame. Impossible to work. I have had with Madame a very violent scene, in consequence of which I really thought that I should be obliged to go. And I ask myself what I am going to do during these six days, without Joseph. I dread the ennui of being alone, at meals, with Marianne. I really need somebody to talk to.
As a rule, as soon as it comes night, Marianne, under the influence of drink, falls into a state of complete stupefaction. Her brain becomes torpid; her tongue becomes thick; her lips hang and shine like the worn brink of an old well; and she is sad, sad to the point of weeping. I can get nothing out of her but little plaints, little cries, something like the puling of a child. Nevertheless, last night, less drunk than usual, she confided to me, amid never-ending groans, that she is afraid she is in trouble. Well, that caps the climax! My first impulse is to laugh. But soon I feel a keen sorrow,—something like the cutting of a lash in the pit of my stomach. Suppose it were through Joseph? I remember that, on the day of my arrival here, I at once suspected them. But since then nothing has happened to justify this stupid suspicion. On the contrary. No, no, it is impossible. It cannot be. I ask:
"You are sure, Marianne?"
"Sure? No," she says; "I am only afraid."
"And through whom?"
She hesitates to answer; then, suddenly, with a sort of pride, she declares:
"Through Monsieur."
This time I came near bursting with laughter. Marianne, mistaking my laugh for one of admiration, begins to laugh, too.
"Yes, yes, through Monsieur," she repeats. "I am going to see Madame Gouin to-morrow."
I feel a real pity for this poor woman whose brain is so dark and whose ideas are so obscure. Oh! how melancholy and lamentable she is! And what is going to happen to her now? An extraordinary thing,—love has given her no radiance, no grace. She has not that halo of light with which voluptuousness surrounds the ugliest faces. She has remained the same,—heavy, flabby, lumpy.
I left her with a somewhat heavy heart. Now I laugh no more; I will never laugh at Marianne again, and the pity that I feel for her turns into a real and almost painful emotion.
But I feel that my emotion especially concerns myself. On returning to my room, I am seized with a sort of shame and great discouragement. One should never reflect upon love. How sad love is at bottom! And what does it leave behind? Ridicule, bitterness, or nothing at all. What remains to me now of Monsieur Jean, whose photograph is on parade on the mantel, in its red plush frame? Nothing, except my disappointment at having loved a vain and heartless imbecile. Can I really have loved this insipid beauty, with his white and unhealthy face, his regulation black mutton-chops, and his hair parted down the middle? This photograph irritates me. I can no longer have continually before me those two stupid eyes that look at me with the unchangeable look of an insolent and servile flunky. Oh! no, let it go to keep company with the others, at the bottom of my trunk, pending the time when I shall make of my more and more detested past a fire of joy and ashes.
And I think of Joseph. Where is he at the present moment? What is he doing? Is he even thinking of me? Undoubtedly he is in the little café. He is looking, discussing, measuring; he is picturing to himself the effect that I shall produce at the bar, before the mirror, amid the dazzling of the glasses and the multi-colored bottles. I wish that I knew Cherbourg, its streets, its squares, its harbor, that I might represent Joseph to myself going and coming, conquering the city as he has conquered me. I turn and turn again in my bed, a little feverish. My thought goes from the forest of Raillon to Cherbourg, from the body of Claire to the little café. And, after a painful period of insomnia, I finally go off to sleep with the stern and severe image of Joseph before my eyes, the motionless image of Joseph outlining itself in the distance against a dark and choppy background, traversed by white masts and red yards.
To-day, Sunday, I paid a visit in the afternoon to Joseph's room. The two dogs follow me eagerly. They seem to be asking me where Joseph is. A little iron bed, a large cupboard, a sort of low commode, a table, two chairs, all in white-wood, and a porte-manteau, which a green lustring curtain, running on a rod, protects from the dust,—these constitute the furnishings. Though the room is not luxurious, it is extremely orderly and clean. It has something of the rigidity and austerity of a monk's cell in a convent. On the white-washed walls, between the portraits of Déroulède and General Mercier, holy pictures unframed,—Virgins, an Adoration of the Magi, a Massacre of the Innocents, a view of Paradise. Above the bed a large crucifix of dark wood, serving as a holy-water basin, and barred with a branch of consecrated box.
It is not very delicate, to be sure, but I could not resist my violent desire to search everywhere, in the hope, vague though it were, of discovering some of Joseph's secrets. Nothing is mysterious in this room, nothing is hidden. It is the naked chamber of a man who has no secrets, whose life is pure, exempt from complications and events. The keys are in the furniture and in the cupboards; not a drawer is locked. On the table some packages of seeds and a book, "The Good Gardener." On the mantel a prayer-book, whose pages are yellow, and a little note-book, in which have been copied various receipts for preparing encaustic, Bordelaise stew, and mixtures of nicotine and sulphate of iron. Not a letter anywhere; not even an account-book. Nowhere the slightest trace of any correspondence, either on business, politics, family matters, or love. In the commode, beside worn-out shoes and old hose-nozzles, piles of pamphlets, numerous numbers of the "Libre Parole." Under the bed, mouse-traps and rat-traps. I have felt of everything, turned everything upside down, emptied everything,—coats, mattress, linen, and drawers. There is nothing else. In the cupboard nothing has been changed. It is just as I left it a week ago, when I put it in order in Joseph's presence. Is it possible that Joseph has nothing? Is it possible that he is so lacking in those thousand little intimate and familiar things whereby a man reveals his tastes, his passions, his thoughts, a little of that which dominates his life? Ah! yes, here! From the back of the table-drawer I take a cigar-box, wrapped in paper and strongly tied with string running four times round. With great difficulty I untie the knots, I open the box, and on a bed of wadding I see five consecrated medals, a little silver crucifix, and a rosary of red beads. Always religion!