CHEFS D'OEUVRE DU ROMAN CONTEMPORAIN

 REALISTS

[Illustration: Chapter XXI

_Jupillon was a true Parisian: he loved to fish with a pole and line. _

_And when summer came they stayed there all day, at the foot of thegarden, on the bank of the stream--Jupillon on a laundry board restingon two stakes, pole in hand, and Germinie sitting, with the child in herskirts, under the medlar tree that overhung the stream. _]

 BIBLIOTHÈQUE DES CHEFS-D'OEUVRE DU ROMAN CONTEMPORAIN

 _GERMINIE LACERTEUX_

 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT

 PRINTED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY BY GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, PHILADELPHIA

 GERMINIE LACERTEUX

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

We must ask pardon of the public for offering it this book, and give itdue warning of what it will find therein. 

The public loves fictitious novels! this is a true novel. 

It loves books which make a pretence of introducing their readers tofashionable society: this book deals with the life of the street. 

It loves little indecent books, memoirs of courtesans, alcoveconfessions, erotic obscenity, the scandal tucked away in pictures in abookseller's shop window: that which is contained in the following pagesis rigidly clean and pure. Do not expect the photograph of Pleasure_décolletée_: the following study is the clinic of Love. 

Again, the public loves to read pleasant, soothing stories, adventuresthat end happily, imaginative works that disturb neither its digestionnor its peace of mind: this book furnishes entertainment of amelancholy, violent sort calculated to disarrange the habits and injurethe health of the public. 

Why then have we written it? For no other purpose than to annoy thepublic and offend its tastes?

By no means. 

Living as we do in the nineteenth century, in an age of universalsuffrage, of democracy, of liberalism, we asked ourselves the questionwhether what are called "the lower classes" had no rights in the novel;if that world beneath a world, the common people, must needs remainsubject to the literary interdict, and helpless against the contempt ofauthors who have hitherto said no word to imply that the common peoplepossess a heart and soul. We asked ourselves whether, in these days ofequality in which we live, there are classes unworthy the notice of theauthor and the reader, misfortunes too lowly, dramas too foul-mouthed, catastrophes too commonplace in the terror they inspire. We were curiousto know if that conventional symbol of a forgotten literature, of avanished society, Tragedy, is definitely dead; if, in a country wherecastes no longer exist and aristocracy has no legal status, the miseriesof the lowly and the poor would appeal to public interest, emotion, compassion, as forcibly as the miseries of the great and the rich; if, in a word, the tears that are shed in low life have the same power tocause tears to flow as the tears shed in high life. 

These thoughts led us to venture upon the humble tale, _SoeurPhilomène_, in 1861; they lead us to put forth _Germinie Lacerteux_to-day. 

Now, let the book be spoken slightingly of; it matters little. At thisday, when the sphere of the Novel is broadening and expanding, when itis beginning to be the serious, impassioned, living form of literarystudy and social investigation, when it is becoming, by virtue ofanalysis and psychological research, the true History of contemporarymorals, when the novel has taken its place among the necessary elementsof knowledge, it may properly demand its liberty and freedom of speech. And to encourage it in the search for Art and Truth, to authorize it todisclose misery and suffering which it is not well for the fortunatepeople of Paris to forget, and to show to people of fashion what theSisters of Charity have the courage to see for themselves, what thequeens of old compelled their children to touch with their eyes in thehospitals: the visible, palpitating human suffering that teachescharity; to confirm the novel in the practice of that religion which thelast century called by the vast and far-reaching name, _Humanity_:--itneeds no other warrant than the consciousness that that is its right. 

_Paris, October, 1864. _

SECOND PREFACE

PREPARED FOR A POSTHUMOUS EDITION OF GERMINIE LACERTEUX

_July 22, 1862. _--The disease is gradually doing its work of destructionin our poor Rose. It is as if the immaterial manifestations of life thatformerly emanated from her body were dying one by one. Her face isentirely changed. Her expression is not the same, her gestures are notthe same; and she seems to me as if she were putting off every day moreand more of that something, humanly speaking indefinable, which makesthe personality of a living being. Disease, before making an end of itsvictim, introduces into his body something strange, unfamiliar, something that is _not he_, makes of him a new being, so to speak, inwhom we must seek to find the former being--he, whose joyous, affectionate features have already ceased to exist. 

_July 31. _--Doctor Simon is to tell me very soon whether our dear oldRose will live or die. I am waiting to hear his ring, which to me, isequivalent to that of a jury at the assizes, announcing their return tothe court room with their verdict. "It is all over, there is no hope, itis simply a question of time. The disease has progressed very rapidly. One lung is entirely gone and the other substantially. " And we mustreturn to the invalid, restore her serenity with a smile, give herreason to hope for convalescence in every line of our faces. Then wefeel an unconquerable longing to rush from the room and from the poorcreature. We leave the house, we wander at random through the streets;at last, overdone with fatigue, we sit down at a table in a café. Wemechanically take up a copy of _L'Illustration_ and our eyes fall atonce upon the solution of its last riddle: _Against death, there is noappeal!_

_Monday, August 11. _--The disease of the lungs is complicated withperitonitis. She has terrible pains in the bowels, she cannot movewithout assistance, she cannot lie on her back or her left side. InGod's name, is not death enough? must she also endure suffering, aye, torture, as the final implacable breaking-up of the human organism? Andshe suffers thus, poor wretch! in one of the servant's rooms, where thesun, shining in through a window in the sloping roof, makes the air asstifling as in a hothouse, and where there is so little room that thedoctor has to put his hat on the bed. We struggled to the last to keepher, but finally we had to make up our minds to let her go away. She wasunwilling to go to Maison Dubois, where we proposed to take her; itseems that twenty-five years ago, when she first came to us, she wentthere to see the nurse in charge of Edmond, who died there, and so thatparticular hospital represents to her the place where people die. I amwaiting for Simon who is to bring her a permit to go to Lariboisière. She passed almost a good night. She is all ready, in high spirits, infact. We have covered everything up from her as well as we could. Shelongs to be gone. She is in a great hurry. She feels that she is goingto get well there. At two o'clock Simon arrives: "Here it is, allright. " She refuses to have a litter: "I should think I was dead!" shesays. She is dressed. As soon as she leaves her bed, all the signs oflife to be seen upon her face disappear. It is as if the earth had risenunder her skin. She comes down into our apartments. Sitting in thedining-room, with a trembling hand, the knuckles of which knock againstone another, she draws her stockings on over a pair of legs likebroomsticks, consumptive legs. Then, for a long moment, she looks aboutat the familiar objects with dying eyes that seem desirous to take awaywith them the memory of the places they are leaving--and the door of theapartment closes upon her with a noise as of farewell. She reaches thefoot of the stairs, where she rests for an instant on a chair. Theconcierge, in a bantering tone, assures her that she will be well in sixweeks. She bows and says "yes, " an inaudible "yes. " The cab drives up tothe door. She rests her hand on the concierge's wife. I hold heragainst the pillow she has behind her back. With wide open, vacant eyesshe vaguely watches the houses pass, but she does not speak. At the doorof the hospital she tries to alight without assistance. "Can you walk sofar?" the concierge asks. She makes an affirmative gesture and walks on. Really I cannot imagine where she procured the strength to walk as shedoes. Here we are at last in the great hall, a high, cold, bare, cleanplace with a litter standing, all ready for use, in the centre. I seather in a straw armchair by a door with a glazed wicket. A young manopens the wicket, asks my name and age and writes busily for quarter ofan hour, covering ten or more sheets of paper with a religious figure atthe head. At last, everything is ready, and I embrace her. A boy takesone arm, the housekeeper the other. --After that, I saw nothing more. 

_Thursday, August 14. _--We have been to Lariboisière. We found Rosequiet, hopeful, talking of her approaching discharge--in three weeks atmost, --and so free from all thought of death that she told us of afurious love scene that took place yesterday between a woman in the bednext hers and a brother of the Christian schools, who was there againto-day. Poor Rose is death, but death engrossed with life. Near her bedwas a young woman, whose husband, a mechanic, had come to see her. "Yousee, as soon as I can walk, I shall walk about the garden so much thatthey'll have to send me home!" she said. And the mother in her added:"Does the child ask for me sometimes?"

"Sometimes, oh! yes, " the man replied. 

_Saturday, August 16. _--This morning, at ten o'clock, someone rings thebell. I hear a colloquy at the door between the housekeeper and theconcierge. The door opens, the concierge enters with a letter. I takethe letter; it bears the stamp of Lariboisière. Rose died this morningat seven o'clock. 

Poor girl! So it is all over! I knew that she was doomed; but she was soanimated, so cheerful, almost happy, when we saw her Thursday! And herewe are both walking up and down the salon, filled with the thought thata fellow-creature's death inspires: We shall never see her again!--aninstinctive thought that recurs incessantly within you. What a void!what a gap in our household! A habit, an attachment of twenty-five yearsgrowth, a girl who knew our whole lives and opened our letters in ourabsence, and to whom we told all our business. When I was a bit of a boyI trundled my hoop with her, and she bought me apple-tarts with her ownmoney, when we went to walk. She would sit up for Edmond till morning, to open the door for him, when he went to the Bal de l'Opéra without ourmother's knowledge. She was the woman, the excellent nurse, whose handsmother placed in ours when she was dying. She had the keys toeverything, she managed everything, she did everything for our comfort. For twenty-five years she tucked us up in bed every night, and everynight there were the same never-ending jokes about her ugliness and herdisgraceful physique. Sorrows and joys alike she shared with us. She wasone of those devoted creatures upon whose solicitude you rely to closeyour eyes. Our bodies, when we were ill or indisposed, were accustomedto her attentions. She was familiar with all our hobbies. She had knownall our mistresses. She was a piece of our life, part of the furnitureof our apartment, a stray memory of our youth, at once loving andscolding and care-taking, like a watchdog whom we were accustomed tohaving always beside us and about us, and who ought to last as long asourselves. And we shall never see her again! It is not she moving aboutthe rooms; she will never again come to our rooms to bid usgood-morning! It is a great wrench, a great change in our lives, whichseems to us, I cannot say why, like one of those solemn breaks in one'sexistence, when, as Byron says, destiny changes horses. 

_Sunday, August 17. _--This morning we are to perform all the last sadduties. We must return to the hospital, enter once more the receptionhall, where I seem to see again, in the armchair against the wicket, theghost of the emaciated creature I seated there less than a week ago. "Will you identify the body?" the attendant hurls the question at me ina harsh voice. We go to the further end of the hospital, to a highyellow door, upon which is written in great black letters:_Amphitheatre_. The attendant knocks. After some moments the door ispartly opened, and a head like a butcher's boy's appears, with a shortpipe in its mouth: a head which suggests the gladiator and thegrave-digger. I fancied that I was at the circus, and that he was theslave who received the gladiators' bodies; and he does receive the slainin that great circus, society. They made us wait a long while beforeopening another door, and during those moments of suspense, all ourcourage oozed away, as the blood of a wounded man who is forced toremain standing oozes away, drop by drop. The mystery of what we wereabout to see, the horror of a sight that rends your heart, the searchfor the one body amid other bodies, the scrutiny and recognition of thatpoor face, disfigured doubtless--the thought of all this made us astimid as children. We were at the end of our strength, at the end of ourwill-power, at the end of our nervous tension, and, when the dooropened, we said: "We will send some one, " and fled. From there we wentto the mayor's office, riding in a cab that jolted us and shook ourheads about like empty things. And an indefinable horror seized upon usof death in a hospital, which seems to be only an administrativeformality. One would say that in that abode of agony, everything is sowell administered, regulated, reduced to system, that death opens it asif it were an administrative bureau. 

While we were having the death registered, --_Mon Dieu!_ the paper, allcovered with writing and flourishes for a poor woman's death!--a manrushed out of an adjoining room, in joyous exultation, and looked at thealmanac hanging on the wall to find the name of the saint of the day andgive it to his child. As he passed, the skirt of the happy father's coatswept the sheet on which the death was registered from the desk to thefloor. 

When we returned home, we must look through her papers, get her clothestogether, sort out the clutter of phials, bandages and innumerablethings that sickness collects--jostle death about, in short. It was aghastly thing to enter that attic, where the crumbs of bread from herlast meal were still lying in the folds of the bedclothes. I threw thecoverlid up over the bolster, like a sheet over the ghost of a dead man. 

_Monday, August 18. _--The chapel is beside the amphitheatre. In thehospital God and the dead body are neighbors. At the mass said for thepoor woman beside her coffin, two or three others were placed near by toreap the benefit of the service. There was an unpleasant promiscuousnessof salvation in that performance: it resembled the common grave in theprayer. Behind me, in the chapel, Rose's niece was weeping--the littlegirl she had at our house for a short time, who is now a young woman ofnineteen, a pupil at the convent of the Sisters of Saint-Laurent: apoor, weazened, pale, stunted creature, rickety from starvation, with ahead too heavy for her body, back bent double, and the air of aMayeux--the last sad remnant of that consumption-ridden family, awaitedby Death and with his hand even now heavy upon her, --in her soft eyesthere is already a gleam of the life beyond. 

Then from the chapel to the extreme end of the Montmartrecemetery, --vast as a necropolis and occupying a whole quarter of thecity, --walking at slow steps through mud that never ends. Lastly theintoning of the priests, and the coffin laboriously lowered by thegravediggers' arms to the ends of the ropes, as a cask of wine islowered into a cellar. 

_Wednesday, August 20. _--Once more I must return to the hospital. Forsince the visit I paid Rose on Thursday and her sudden death the nextday, there has existed for me a mystery which I force from my thoughts, but which constantly returns; the mystery of that agony of which I knownothing, of that sudden end. I long to know and I dread to learn. Itdoes not seem to me as if she were dead; I think of her simply as of aperson who has disappeared. My imagination returns to her last hours, gropes for them in the darkness and reconstructs them, and they tortureme with their veiled horrors! I need to have my doubts resolved. Atlast, this morning, I took my courage in both hands. Again I see thehospital, again I see the red-faced, obese concierge, reeking with lifeas one reeks with wine, and the corridors where the morning light fallsupon the pale faces of smiling convalescents. 

In a distant corner, I rang at a door with little white curtains. It wasopened and I found myself in a parlor where a Virgin stood upon a sortof altar between two windows. On the northern wall of the room, thecold, bare room, there are--why, I cannot explain--two framed views ofVesuvius, wretched water-colors which seem to shiver and to be entirelyexpatriated there. Through an open door behind me, from a small room inwhich the sun shines brightly, I hear the chattering of sisters andchildren, childish joys, pretty little bursts of laughter, all sorts offresh, clear vocal notes: a sound as from a dovecote bathed in the sun. Sisters in white with black caps pass and repass; one stops in front ofmy chair. She is short, badly developed, with an ugly, sweet face, apoor face by the grace of God. She is the mother of the SalleSaint-Joseph. She tells me how Rose died, in hardly any pain, feelingthat she was improving, almost well, overflowing with encouragement andhope. In the morning, after her bed was made, without any suspicion thatdeath was near, suddenly she was taken with a hemorrhage, which lastedsome few seconds. I came away, much comforted, delivered from thethought that she had had the anticipatory taste of death, the horror ofits approach. 

_Thursday, October 21. _

 * * * * *

In the midst of our dinner, which was rendered melancholy enough by theconstant hovering of the conversation around the subject of death, Maria, who came to dinner to-night, cried out, after two or threenervous blows with her fingers upon her fluffy blonde locks:--"Myfriends, while the poor girl was alive, I kept the professional secretof my trade. But, now that she is under ground, you must know thetruth. "

And thereupon we learned things concerning the unhappy creature thattook away our appetites, leaving in our mouths the bitter taste of fruitcut with a steel knife. And a whole strange, hateful, repugnant, deplorable existence was revealed to us. The notes she signed, the debtsshe has left behind her at all the dealers, have the most unforeseen, the most amazing, the most incredible basis. She kept men: themilkwoman's son, for whom she furnished a chamber; another to whom shecarried our wine, chickens, food of all sorts. A secret life ofnocturnal orgies, of nights passed abroad, of fierce nymphomania, thatmade her lovers say: "Either she or I will stay on the field!" Apassion, passions with her whole head and heart and all her senses atonce, and complicated by all the wretched creatures' diseases, consumption which adds frenzy to pleasure, hysteria, the beginning ofinsanity. She had two children by the milkwoman's son, one of whom livedsix months. Some years ago, when she told us that she was going on avisit to her province, it was to lie in. And, with regard to these men, her passion was so extravagant, so unhealthy, so insane, that she, whowas formerly honesty personified, actually stole from us, took twentyfranc pieces out of rolls of a hundred francs, so that the lovers shepaid might not leave her. Now, after these involuntarily dishonest acts, these petty crimes extorted from her upright nature, she plunged intosuch depths of self-reproach, remorse, melancholy, such black despair, that in that hell in which she rolled on from sin to sin, desperate andunsatisfied, she had taken to drinking to escape herself, to saveherself from the present, to drown herself and founder for a few momentsin the heavy slumber, the lethargic torpor in which she would liewallowing across her bed for a whole day, just as she fell when shetried to make it. The miserable creature! how great an incentive, howmany motives and reasons she found for devouring her suffering, andbleeding internally: in the first place the rejection at intervals ofreligious ideas by the terrors of a hell of fire and brimstone; thenjealousy, that characteristic jealousy of everything and everybody thatpoisoned her life; then, then--then the disgust which these men, after atime, brutally expressed for her ugliness, and which drove her deeperand deeper into sottishness, --caused her one day to have a miscarriage, and she fell half dead on the floor. Such a frightful tearing away ofthe veil we have worn over our eyes is like the examination of apocketful of horrible things in a dead body suddenly opened. From whatwe have heard I suddenly seem to realize what she must have suffered forten years past: the dread of an anonymous letter to us or of adenunciation from some dealer; and the constant trepidation on thesubject of the money that was demanded of her, and that she could notpay; and the shame felt by that proud creature, perverted by the vileQuartier Saint-Georges, because of her intimacy with low wretches whomshe despised; and the lamentable consciousness of the premature senilitycaused by drunkenness; and the inhuman exactions and brutality of theAlphonses of the gutter; and the temptations to suicide which caused meto pull her away from a window one day, when I found her leaning farout--and lastly all the tears that we believed to be without cause--allthese things mingled with a very deep and heartfelt affection for us, and with a vehement, feverish devotion when either of us was ill. Andthis woman possessed an energetic character, a force of will, a skill inmystification, to which nothing can be compared. Yes, yes, all thosefrightful secrets kept under lock and key, hidden, buried deep in herown heart, so that neither our eyes, nor our ears, nor our powers ofobservation ever detected aught amiss, even in her hysterical attacks, when nothing escaped her but groans: a mystery preserved until herdeath, and which she must have believed would be buried with her. And ofwhat did she die? She died, because, all through one rainy winter'snight, eight months ago, at Montmartre, she spied upon the milkwoman'sson, who had turned her away, in order to find out with what woman hehad filled her place; a whole night leaning against a ground-floorwindow, as a result of which she was drenched to the bones with deadlypleurisy!

Poor creature, we forgive her; indeed, a vast compassion for her fillsour hearts, as we reflect upon all that she has suffered. But we havebecome suspicious, for our lives, of the whole female sex, and of womenabove us as well as of women below us in station. We are terror-strickenat the double lining of their hearts, at the marvelous faculty, thescience, the consummate genius of falsehood with which their whole beingis instinct. 

 * * * * *

The above extracts are from our journal: JOURNAL DESGONCOURTS--_Mémoires de la Vie Littéraire_; they are the documentaryfoundation upon which, two years later, my brother and I composedGERMINIE LACERTEUX, whom we made a study of and taught when she was inthe service of our venerable cousin, Mademoiselle de C----t, of whom wewere writing a veracious biography, after the style of a biography ofmodern history. 

 EDMOND DE GONCOURT. 

_Auteuil, April, 1886. _

I

"Saved! so you are really out of danger, mademoiselle!" exclaimed themaid with a cry of joy, as she closed the door upon the doctor, and, rushing to the bed on which her mistress lay, she began, in a frenzy ofhappiness and with a shower of kisses to embrace, together with the bedcovers, the old woman's poor, emaciated body, which seemed, in the hugebed, as small as a child's. 

The old woman took her head, silently, in both hands, pressed it againsther heart, heaved a sigh, and muttered: "Ah, well! so I must live on!"

This took place in a small room, through the window of which could beseen a small patch of sky cut by three black iron pipes, variousneighboring roofs, and in the distance, between two houses that almosttouched, the leafless branch of a tree, whose trunk was invisible. 

On the mantelpiece, in a mahogany box, was a square clock with a largedial, huge figures and bulky hands. Beside it, under glass covers, weretwo candlesticks formed by three silver swans twisting their necksaround a golden quiver. Near the fireplace an easy chair _à laVoltaire_, covered with one of the pieces of tapestry of checker-boardpattern, which little girls and old women make, extended its empty arms. Two little Italian landscapes, a flower piece in water-colors afterBertin, with a date in red ink at the bottom, and a few miniatures hungon the walls. 

Upon the mahogany commode of an Empire pattern, a statue of Time inblack bronze, running with his scythe in rest, served as a watch standfor a small watch with a monogram in diamonds upon blue enamel, surrounded with pearls. The floor was covered with a bright carpet withblack and green stripes. The curtains at the bed and the window were ofold-fashioned chintz with red figures upon a chocolate ground. 

At the head of the bed, a portrait inclined over the invalid and seemedto gaze sternly at her. It represented a man with harsh features, whoseface emerged from the high collar of a green satin coat, and a muslincravat, with waving ends, tied loosely around the neck, in the style ofthe early years of the Revolution. The old woman in the bed resembledthe portrait. She had the same bushy, commanding black eyebrows, thesame aquiline nose, the same clearly marked lines of will, resolutionand energy. The portrait seemed to cast a reflection upon her, as afather's face is reflected in his child's. But in hers the harshness ofthe features was softened by a gleam of rough kindliness, by anindefinable flame of sturdy devotion and masculine charity. 

The light in the room was the light of an evening in early spring, aboutfive o'clock, a light as clear as crystal and as white as silver, thecold, chaste, soft light, which fades away in the flush of the sunsetpassing into twilight. The sky was filled with that light of a new life, adorably melancholy, like the still naked earth, and so replete withpathos that it moves happy souls to tears. 

"Well, well! my silly Germinie, weeping?" said the old woman, a momentlater, withdrawing her hands which were moist with her maid's kisses. 

"Oh! my dear, kind mademoiselle, I would like to weep like this all thetime! it's so good! it brings my poor mother back before my eyes--andeverything!--if you only knew!"

"Go on, go on, " said her mistress, closing her eyes to listen, "tell meabout it. "

"Oh! my poor mother!" The maid paused a moment. Then, with the flood ofwords that gushes forth with tears of joy, she continued, as if, in theemotion and outpouring of her happiness, her whole childhood flowed backinto her heart! "Poor woman! I can see her now the last time she wentout to take me to mass, one 21st of January, I remember. In those daysthey read from the king's Testament. Ah! she suffered enough on myaccount, did mamma! She was forty-two years old, when I was born----papamade her cry a good deal! There were three of us before and there wasn'tany too much bread in the house. And then he was proud as anything. Ifwe'd had only a handful of peas in the house he would never have gone tothe curé for help. Ah! we didn't eat bacon every day at our house. Nevermind; for all that mamma loved me a little more and she always found alittle fat or cheese in some corner to put on my bread. I wasn't fivewhen she died. That was a bad thing for us all. I had a tall brother, who was white as a sheet, with a yellow beard--and good! you have noidea. Everybody loved him. They gave him all sorts of names. Some calledhim Boda--why, I don't know. Others called him Jesus Christ. Ah! he wasa worker, he was! It didn't make any difference to him that his healthwas good for nothing; at daybreak he was always at his loom--for we wereweavers, you must know--and he never put his shuttle down till night. And honest, too, if you knew! People came from all about to bring himtheir yarn, and without weighing it, too. He was a great friend of theschoolmaster, and he used to write the _mottoes_ for the carnival. Myfather, he was a different sort: he'd work for a moment, or an hour, youknow, and then he'd go off into the fields--and when he came home he'dbeat us, and beat us hard. He was like a madman; they said it wasbecause he was consumptive. It was lucky my brother was there: he usedto prevent my second sister from pulling my hair and hurting me, becauseshe was jealous. He always took me by the hand to go and see them playskittles. In fact, he supported the family all alone. For my firstcommunion he had the bells rung! Ah! he did a heap of work so that Ishould be like the others, in a little white dress with flounces and alittle bag in my hand, such as they used to carry in those days. Ididn't have any cap: I remember making myself a pretty little wreath ofribbons and the white pith you pull off when you strip reeds; there waslots of it in the places where we used to put the hemp to soak. That wasone of my great days--that and the drawing lots for the pigs atChristmas--and the days when I went to help them tie up the vines; thatwas in June, you know. We had a little vineyard near Saint Hilaire. There was one very hard year in those days--do you remember it, mademoiselle?--the long frost of 1828 that ruined everything. Itextended as far as Dijon and farther, too--people had to make bread frombran. My brother nearly killed himself with work. Father, who was alwaysout of doors tramping about the fields, sometimes brought home a fewmushrooms. It was pretty bad, all the same; we were hungry oftener thananything else. When I was out in the fields myself, I'd look around tosee if anyone could see me, and then I'd crawl along softly on my knees, and when I was under a cow, I'd take off one of my sabots and begin tomilk her. Bless me! I came near being caught at it! My oldest sister wasout at service with the Mayor of Lenclos, and she sent home herwages--twenty-four francs--it was always as much as that. The secondworked at dressmaking in bourgeois families; but they didn't pay theprices then that they do to-day; she worked from six in the morning tilldark for eight sous. Out of that she wanted to put some by for a dressfor the fête on Saint-Remi's day. --Ah! that's the way it is with us:there are many who live on two potatoes a day for six months so as tohave a new dress for that day. Bad luck fell on us on all sides. Myfather died. We had to sell a small field, and a bit of a vineyard thatyielded a cask of wine every year. The notaries don't work for nothing. When my brother was sick there was nothing to give him to drink but_lees_ that we'd been putting water to for a year. And there wasn't anychange of linen for him; all the sheets in the wardrobe, which had agolden cross on top of it in mother's time, had gone--and the cross too. More than that, before he was sick this time, my brother goes off to thefête at Clefmont. He hears someone say that my sister had gone wrongwith the mayor she worked for; he falls on the men who said it, but hewasn't very strong. They were, though, and they threw him down, and whenhe was down, they kicked him with their wooden shoes, in the pit of thestomach. He was brought home to us for dead. The doctor put him on hisfeet again, though, and told us he was cured. But he could just draghimself along. I could see that he was going when he kissed me. When hewas dead, poor dear boy, Cadet Ballard had to use all his strength totake me away from the body. The whole village, mayor and all, went tohis funeral. As my sister couldn't keep her place with the mayor onaccount of the things he said to her, and had gone to Paris to find aplace, my other sister went after her. I was left all alone. One of mymother's cousins then took me with her to Damblin; but I was all upsetthere; I cried all night long, and whenever I could run away I alwayswent back to our house. Just to see the old vine at our door, from theend of the street, did me good! it put strength into my legs. The goodpeople who had bought the house would keep me till someone came for me!they were always sure to find me there. At last they wrote to my sisterin Paris that, if she didn't send for me to come and live with her, Iwasn't likely to live long. It's a fact that I was just like wax. Theyput me in charge of the driver of a small wagon that went from Langresto Paris every month, and that's how I came to Paris. I was fourteenyears old, then. I remember that I went to bed all dressed all the way, because they made me sleep in the common room. When I arrived I wascovered with lice. "

II

The old woman said nothing: she was comparing her own life with herservant's. 

 * * * * *

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil was born in 1782. She first saw the light ina mansion on Rue Royale and Mesdames de France were her sponsors inbaptism. Her father was a close friend of the Comte d'Artois, in whosehousehold he held an important post. He joined in all hishunting-parties, and was one of the few familiar spirits, in whosepresence, at the mass preceding the hunt, he who was one day to be KingCharles X. Used to hurry the officiating priest by saying in anundertone: "Psit! psit! curé, swallow your _Good Lord_ quickly!"

Monsieur de Varandeuil had made one of those marriages which werecustomary enough in his day: he had espoused a sort of actress, asinger, who, although she had no great talent, had made a success at the_Concert Spirituel_, beside Madame Todi, Madame Ponteuil and MadameSaint-Huberty. The little girl born of this marriage in 1782 was sicklyand delicate, ugly of feature, with a nose even then large enough to beabsurd, her father's nose in a face as thin as a man's wrist. She hadnothing of what her parents' vanity would have liked her to have. Aftermaking a fiasco on the piano at the age of five, at a concert given byher mother in her salon, she was relegated to the society of theservants. Except for a moment in the morning, she never went near hermother, who always made her kiss her under the chin, so that she mightnot disturb her rouge. When the Revolution arrived, Monsieur deVarandeuil, thanks to the Comte d'Artois' patronage, was disburser ofpensions. Madame de Varandeuil was traveling in Italy, whither she hadordered her physician to send her on the pretext of ill health, leavingher daughter and an infant son in her husband's charge. The absorbinganxiety of the times, the tempests threatening wealth and the familiesthat handled wealth--Monsieur de Varandeuil's brother was aFarmer-General--left that very selfish and unloving father but littleleisure to attend to the wants of his children. Thereupon, he began tobe somewhat embarrassed pecuniarily. He left Rue Royale and took up hisabode at the Hôtel du Petit-Charolais, belonging to his mother, whoallowed him to install himself there. Events moved rapidly; one evening, in the early days of the guillotine, as he was walking along RueSaint-Antoine, he heard a hawker in front of him, crying the journal:_Aux Voleurs! Aux Voleurs!_ According to the usual custom of thosedays, he gave a list of the articles contained in the number he had forsale: Monsieur de Varandeuil heard his own name mingled with oaths andobscenity. He bought the paper and read therein a revolutionarydenunciation of himself. 

Some time after, his brother was arrested and detained at Hôtel Talaruwith the other Farmers-General. His mother, in a paroxysm of terror, hadfoolishly sold the Hôtel du Petit-Charolais, where he was living, forthe value of the mirrors: she was paid in _assignats_, and died ofdespair over the constant depreciation of the paper. Luckily Monsieur deVarandeuil obtained from the purchasers, who could find no tenants, leave to occupy the rooms formerly used by the stableboys. He tookrefuge there, among the outbuildings of the mansion, stripped himself ofhis name and posted at the door, as he was ordered to do, his familyname of Roulot, under which he buried the _De Varandeuil_ and the formercourtier of the Comte d'Artois. He lived there alone, buried, forgotten, hiding his head, never going out, cowering in his hole, withoutservants, waited upon by his daughter, to whom he left everything. TheTerror was to them a period of shuddering suspense, the breathlessexcitement of impending death. Every evening, the little girl went andlistened at a grated window to the day's crop of condemnations, the_List of Prize Winners in the Lottery of Saint Guillotine_. She answeredevery knock at the door, thinking that they had come to take her fatherto the Place de la Révolution, whither her uncle had already been taken. The moment came when money, the money that was so scarce, no longerprocured bread. It was necessary to go and get it, almost by force, atthe doors of the bakeries; it was necessary to earn it by standing forhours in the cold, biting night air, in the crushing pressure of crowdsof people; to stand in line from three o'clock in the morning. Thefather did not care to venture into that mass of humanity. He was afraidof being recognized, of compromising himself by one of those outburststo which his impetuous nature would have given vent, no matter where hemight be. Then, too, he recoiled from the fatigue and severity of thetask. The little boy was still too small; he would have been crushed; sothe duty of obtaining bread for three mouths each day fell to thedaughter. She obtained it. With her little thin body, fairly lost in herfather's knitted jacket, a cotton cap pulled down over her eyes, herlimbs all huddled together to retain a little warmth, she would wait, shivering, her eyes aching with cold, amid the pushing and buffeting, until the baker's wife on Rue des Francs-Bourgeois placed in her hands aloaf which her little fingers, stiff with cold, could hardly hold. Atlast, this poor little creature, who returned day after day, with herpinched face and her emaciated, trembling body, moved the baker's wifeto pity. With the kindness of heart of a woman of the people, she wouldsend the coveted loaf to the little one by her boy as soon as sheappeared in the long line. But one day, just as she put out her hand totake it, a woman, whose jealousy was aroused by this mark of favor andpreference, dealt the child a kick with her wooden shoe which kept herin bed almost a month. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil bore the marks of theblow all her life. 

During that month, the whole family would have died of starvation, hadit not been for a supply of rice, which one of their acquaintances, theComtesse d'Auteuil, had had the forethought to lay aside, and which sheconsented to share with the father and the two children. 

Thus, Monsieur de Varandeuil escaped the Revolutionary Tribunal byburying himself in obscurity. He escaped it also by reason of the factthat the accounts of his administration of his office were stillunsettled, as he had had the good fortune to procure the postponement ofthe settlement from month to month. Then, too, he kept suspicion at bayby his personal animosity toward some great personages at court, and bythe hatred of the queen which many retainers of the king's brothers hadconceived. Whenever he had occasion to speak of that wretched woman, heused violent, bitter, insulting words, uttered in such a passionate, sincere tone that they almost made him appear as an enemy of the royalfamily; so that those to whom he was simply Citizen Roulot looked uponhim as a good patriot, and those who knew his former name almost excusedhim for having been what he had been: a noble, the friend of a princeof the blood, and a place holder. 

The Republic had reached the epoch of patriotic suppers, those repastsof a whole street in the street; Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, in herconfused, terrified reminiscences of those days, could still see thetables on Rue Pavée, with their legs in the streams of the blood ofSeptember flowing from La Force! It was at one of these suppers thatMonsieur de Varandeuil conceived a scheme that completely assured hisimmunity. He informed two of his neighbors at table, devoted patriotsboth, one of whom was on intimate terms with Chaumette, that he was ingreat embarrassment because his daughter had been privately baptizedonly, so that she had no civil status, and said that he would be veryhappy if Chaumette would have her entered on the registers of themunicipality and honor her with a name selected by him from theRepublican calendar of Greece or Rome. Chaumette at once arranged ameeting with this father, _who had reached so high a level_, as theysaid in those days. During the interview Mademoiselle de Varandeuil wastaken into a closet where she found two women who were instructed tosatisfy themselves as to her sex, and she showed them her breast. Theythen escorted her to the great Salle des Declarations, and there, aftera metaphorical allocution, Chaumette baptized her _Sempronie_; a namewhich habit was destined to fasten upon Mademoiselle de Varandeuil andwhich she never abandoned. 

Somewhat protected and reassured by that episode, the family passedthrough the terrible days preceding the fall of Robespierre. At lastcame the ninth Thermidor and deliverance. But poverty was none the lessa pressing fact in the Varandeuil household. They had not lived throughthe bitter days of the Revolution, they were not to live through thewretched days of the Directory without unhoped-for succor, money sent byProvidence by the hand of Folly. The father and the two children couldhardly have existed without the income from four shares in the_Vaudeville_, an investment which Monsieur de Varandeuil was happilyinspired to make in 1791, and which proved to be the best of allpossible investments in those years of death, when people felt the needof forgetting death every evening--in those days of supreme agony, wheneveryone wished to laugh his last laugh at the latest song. Soon theseshares, added to the amount of some outstanding claims that were paid, provided the family with something more than bread. They thereupon leftthe eaves of the Hôtel du Petit-Charolais and took a small suite in theMarais, on Rue du Chaume. 

No change took place, however, in the habits of the household. Thedaughter continued to wait upon her father and brother. Monsieur deVarandeuil had gradually become accustomed to see in her only the womanindicated by her costume and by the work that she did. The father's eyesdid not care to recognize a daughter in that servant's garb and in herperformance of menial occupations. She was no longer a person with hisblood in her veins or who had the honor to belong to him: she was aservant; and his selfishness confirmed him so fully in that idea and inhis harsh treatment of her, he found that filial, affectionate, respectful service, --which cost nothing at all, by the way, --soconvenient, that it cost him a bitter pang to give it up later, when alittle more money mended the family fortunes: battles had to be foughtto induce him to take a maid to fill his child's place and to relievethe girl from the most humiliating domestic labor. 

They were without information concerning Madame de Varandeuil, who hadrefused to join her husband at Paris during the early years of theRevolution; at last they learned that she had married again in Germany, producing, as a certificate of her husband's death, the deathcertificate of his guillotined brother, the baptismal name having beenchanged. The girl grew up, therefore, abandoned, without affection, withno mother except a woman dead to her family, whom her father taught herto despise. Her childhood was passed in constant anxiety, in theprivations that wear life away, in the fatigue resulting from labor thatexhausted the strength of a sickly child, in an expectation of deaththat became, at last, an impatient longing to die: there had been hourswhen that girl of thirteen was tempted to do as many women did in thosedays--to open the door and rush into the street, crying: _Vive le roi!_in order to end it all. Her girlhood was a continuation of her childhoodwith less tragic motives of weariness. She had to submit to the illhumor, the exactions, the bitter moods, the tempestuous outbreaks of herfather, which had been hitherto somewhat curbed and restrained by thegreat tempest of the time. She was still doomed to undergo the fatiguesand humiliations of a servant. She remained alone with her father, keptdown and humbled, shut out from his arms and his kisses, her heart heavywith grief because she longed to love and had nothing to love. She wasbeginning to suffer from the cold void that is formed about a woman byan unattractive, unfascinating girlhood, by a girlhood devoid of beautyand sympathetic charm. She could see that she aroused a sort ofcompassion with her long nose, her yellow complexion, her angularfigure, her thin body. She felt that she was ugly, and that her uglinesswas made repulsive by her miserable costumes, her dismal, woolen dresseswhich she made herself, her father paying for the material only aftermuch grumbling: she could not induce him to make her a small allowancefor her toilet until she was thirty-five. 

How sad and bitter and lonely for her was her life with that morose, sour old man, who was always scolding and complaining at home, affableonly in society, and who left her every evening to go to the greathouses that were reopened under the Directory and at the beginning ofthe Empire! Only at very long intervals did he take her out, and when hedid, it was always to that everlasting _Vaudeville_, where he had boxes. Even on those rare occasions, his daughter was terrified. She trembledall the time that she was with him; she was afraid of his violentdisposition, of the tone of the old régime that his outbreaks of wrathhad retained, of the facility with which he would raise his cane at aninsolent remark from the _canaille_. On almost every occasion there werescenes with the manager, wordy disputes with people in the pit, andthreats of personal violence to which she put an end by lowering thecurtain of the box. The same thing was kept up in the street, even inthe cab, with the driver, who would refuse to carry them at Monsieur deVarandeuil's price and would keep them waiting one hour, two hourswithout moving; sometimes would unharness his horse in his wrath andleave him in the vehicle with his daughter who would vainly implore himto submit and pay the price demanded. 

Considering that these diversions should suffice for Sempronie, andhaving, moreover, a jealous desire to have her all to himself and alwaysunder his hand, Monsieur de Varandeuil allowed her to form no intimacieswith anybody. He did not take her into society; he did not take her tothe houses of their kinsfolk who returned after the emigration, excepton days of formal receptions or family gatherings. He kept her closelyconfined to the house: not until she was forty did he consider that shewas old enough to be allowed to go out alone. Thus, the girl had nofriendship, no connection of any sort to lean upon; indeed, she nolonger had her younger brother with her, as he had gone to the UnitedStates and enlisted in the American navy. 

She was forbidden by her father to marry, he did not admit that shewould allow herself even to think of marrying and deserting him; all thesuitors who might have come forward he fought and rejected in advance, in order not to leave his daughter the courage to speak to him on thesubject, if the occasion should ever arise. 

Meanwhile our victories were stripping Italy of her treasures. Themasterpieces of Rome, Florence and Venice were hurrying to Paris. Italian art was at a premium. Collectors no longer took pride in anypaintings but those of the Italian school. Monsieur de Varandeuil saw anopening for a fortune in this change of taste. He, also, had fallen avictim to the artistic dilettantism which was one of the refinedpassions of the nobility before the Revolution. He had lived in thesociety of artists and collectors; he admired pictures. It occurred tohim to collect a gallery of Italian works and then to sell them. Pariswas still overrun with the objects of art sold and scattered under theTerror. Monsieur de Varandeuil began to walk back and forth through thestreets--they were the markets for large canvases in those days, --and atevery step he made a discovery; every day he purchased something. Soonthe small apartment was crowded with old, black paintings, so large forthe most part that the walls would not hold them with their frames, withthe result that there was no room for the furniture. These werechristened Raphael, Vinci, or Andrea del Sarto; there were none but_chefs d'oeuvre_, and the father would keep his daughter standing infront of them hours at a time, forcing his admiration upon her, wearyingher with his ecstatic flights. He would ascend from epithet to epithet, would work himself into a state of intoxication, of delirium, and wouldend by thinking that he was negotiating with an imaginary purchaser, would dispute with him over the price of a masterpiece, and would cryout: "A hundred thousand francs for my Rosso! yes, monsieur, a hundredthousand francs!" His daughter, dismayed by the large amount of moneythat those great, ugly things, in which there were so many nude men, deducted from the housekeeping supply, ventured upon remonstrance andtried to check such ruinous extravagance. Monsieur de Varandeuil losthis temper, waxed wroth like a man who was ashamed to find one of hisblood so deficient in taste, and told her that that was her fortune andthat she would see later if he was an old fool. At last she induced himto realize. The sale took place; it was a failure, one of the mostcomplete shipwrecks of illusions that the glazed hall of the HôtelBullion has ever seen. Stung to the quick, furious with rage at thisblow, which not only involved pecuniary loss and a serious inroad uponhis little fortune, but was also a direct denial of his claims toconnoisseurship, a slap at his knowledge of art delivered upon the cheekof his Raphaels, Monsieur de Varandeuil informed his daughter that theywere too poor to remain in Paris and that they must go into theprovinces to live. Having been cradled and reared in an epoch littleadapted to inspire a love of country life in women, Mademoiselle deVarandeuil tried vainly to combat her father's resolution: she wasobliged to go with him wherever he chose to go, and, by leaving Paris, to lose the society and friendship of two young kinswomen, to whom, intheir too infrequent interviews, she had partly given her confidence, and whose hearts she had felt reaching out to her as to an older sister. 

Monsieur de Varandeuil hired a small house at L'Isle-Adam. There he wasnear familiar scenes, in the atmosphere of what was formerly a littlecourt, close at hand to two or three châteaux, whose owners he knew, andwhich were beginning to throw open their doors once more. Then, too, since the Revolution a little community of well-to-do bourgeois, richshopkeepers, had settled upon this territory which once belonged to theContis. The name of Monsieur de Varandeuil sounded very grand in theears of all those good people. They bowed very low to him, theycontended for the honor of entertaining him, they listenedrespectfully, almost devoutly, to the stories he told of society as itwas. And thus, flattered, caressed, honored as a relic of Versailles, hehad the place of honor and the prestige of a lord among them. When hedined with Madame Mutel, a former baker, who had forty thousand francs ayear, the hostess left the table, silk dress and all, to go and fry theoyster plants herself: Monsieur de Varandeuil did not like them exceptas she cooked them. But Monsieur de Varandeuil's decision to go intoretirement at L'Isle-Adam was mainly due, not to the pleasantsurroundings there, but to a project that he had formed. He had gonethither to obtain leisure for a monumental work. That which he had beenunable to do for the honor and glory of Italian art by his collection, he proposed to do by his pen. He had learned a little Italian with hiswife; he took it into his head to present Vasari's _Lives of thePainters_ to the French public, to translate it with the assistance ofhis daughter, who, when she was very small, had heard her mother's maidspeak Italian and had retained a few words. He plunged the girl intoVasari, he locked up her time and her thoughts in grammars, dictionaries, commentaries, all the works of all the scholiasts ofItalian art, kept her bending double over the ungrateful toil, the_ennui_ and labor of translating Italian words, groping in the darknessof her imperfect knowledge. The whole burden of the book fell upon her;when he had laid out her task, he would leave her tête-à-tête with thevolumes bound in white vellum, to go and ramble about the neighborhood, paying visits, gambling at some château or dining among the bourgeois ofhis acquaintance, to whom he would complain pathetically of thelaborious effort that the vast undertaking of his translation entailedupon him. He would return home, listen to the reading of the translationmade during the day, make comments and critical remarks, and upset asentence to give it a different meaning, which his daughter wouldeliminate again when he had gone; then he would resume his walks andjaunts, like a man who has well earned his leisure, walking very erect, with his hat under his arm and dainty pumps on his feet, enjoyinghimself, the sky and the trees and Rousseau's God, gentle to all natureand loving to the plants. From time to time fits of impatience, commonto children and old men, would overtake him; he would demand a certainnumber of pages for the next day, and would compel his daughter to situp half the night. 

Two or three years passed in this labor, in which Sempronie's eyes wereruined at last. She lived entombed in her father's Vasari, more entirelyalone than ever, holding aloof through innate, haughty repugnance fromthe bourgeois ladies of L'Isle-Adam and their manners _à la MadameAngot_, and too poorly clad to visit at the châteaux. For her, there wasno pleasure, no diversion, which was not made wretched and poisoned byher father's eccentricities and fretful humor. He tore up the flowersthat she planted secretly in the garden. He would have nothing there butvegetables and he cultivated them himself, putting forth grandutilitarian theories, arguments which might have induced the Conventionto convert the Tuileries into a potato field. Her only enjoyment waswhen her father, at very long intervals, allowed her to entertain one ofher two young friends for a week--a week which would have been sevendays of paradise to Sempronie, had not her father embittered its joys, its diversions, its fêtes, with his always threatening outbreaks, hisill-humor always armed and alert, and his constant fault-finding abouttrifles--a bottle of eau de Cologne that Sempronie asked for to place inher friend's room, a dish for her dinner, or a place to which she wishedto take her. 

At L'Isle-Adam Monsieur de Varandeuil had hired a servant, who almostimmediately became his mistress. A child was born of this connection, and the father, in his cynical indifference, was shameless enough tohave it brought up under his daughter's eyes. As the years rolled on thewoman acquired a firm foothold in the house. She ended by ruling thehousehold, father and daughter alike. The day came when Monsieur deVarandeuil chose to have her sit at his table and be served bySempronie. That was too much. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil rebelled underthe insult, and drew herself up to the full height of her indignation. Secretly, silently, in misery and isolation, harshly treated by thepeople and the things about her, the girl had built up a resolute, straightforward character; tears had tempered instead of softening it. Beneath filial docility and humility, beneath passive obedience, beneathapparent gentleness of disposition, she concealed a character of iron, aman's strength of will, one of those hearts which nothing bends andwhich never bend themselves. When her father demanded that she lowerherself to that extent, she reminded him that she was his daughter, shereviewed her whole life, cast, in a flood of words, the shame and thereproach of it in his face, and concluded by informing him that if thatwoman did not leave the house that very evening, she would leave it, andthat she should have no difficulty in living, thank God! wherever shemight go, with the simple tastes he had forced upon her. The father, thunderstruck and bewildered by this revolt, yielded and dismissed theservant; but he retained a dastardly sort of rancor against his daughteron account of the sacrifice she had extorted from him. His spleenbetrayed itself in sharp, aggressive words, ironical thanks and bittersmiles. Sempronie's only revenge was to attend to his wants morethoroughly, more gently, more patiently than ever. Her devotion wasdestined to be subjected to one final test; the old man had a stroke ofapoplexy which left him with one whole side of his body stiff and dead, lame in one leg, and asleep so far as his intelligence was concerned, although keenly conscious of his misfortune and of his dependence uponhis daughter. Thereupon, all the evil that lay dormant in the depths ofhis nature was aroused and let loose. His selfishness amounted toferocity. Under the torment of his suffering and his weakness, he becamea sort of malevolent madman. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil devoted her daysand her nights to the invalid, who seemed to hate her for herattentions, to be humiliated by her care as if it implied generosity andforgiveness, to suffer torments at seeing always by his side, indefatigable and kindly, that image of duty. But what a life it was!She had to contend against the miserable man's incurable _ennui_, to bealways ready to bear him company, to lead him about and support him allday long. She must play cards with him when he was at home, and not lethim win or lose too much. She must combat his wishes, his gormandizingtendencies, take dishes away from him, and, in connection witheverything that he wanted, endure complaints, reproaches, insults, tears, mad despair, and the outbursts of childish anger in whichhelpless old men indulge. And this lasted ten years! ten years, duringwhich Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had no other recreation, no otherconsolation than to pour out all the tenderness and warmth of a maternalaffection upon one of her two young friends, recently married, --her_chick_, as she called her. It was Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's delightto go and pass a short time every fortnight in that happy household. Shewould kiss the pretty child, already in its cradle and asleep for thenight when she arrived; she would dine at racing speed; at dessert shewould send for a carriage and would hasten away like a tardy schoolboy. But in the last years of her father's life she could not even obtainpermission to dine out: the old man would no longer sanction such a longabsence and kept her almost constantly beside him, repeating again andagain that he was well aware that it was not amusing to take care of aninfirm old man like himself, but that she would soon be rid of him. Hedied in 1818, and, before his death, could find no words but these forher who had been his daughter nearly forty years: "I know that you neverloved me!"

Two years before her father's death, Sempronie's brother had returnedfrom America. He brought with him a colored woman who had nursed himthrough the yellow fever, and two girls, already grown up, whom he hadhad by the woman before marrying her. Although she was imbued with theideas of the old régime as to the blacks, and although she looked uponthat ignorant creature, with her negro jargon, her grin like a wildbeast's and her skin that left grease stains upon her clothing, as nobetter than a monkey, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil combated her father'shorror and unwillingness to receive his daughter-in-law; and she it waswho induced him, in the last days of his life, to allow her brother topresent his wife to him. When her father was dead she reflected thather brother's household was all that remained of the family. 

Monsieur de Varandeuil, to whom the Comte d'Artois had caused thearrears of salary of his office to be paid at the return of theBourbons, left about ten thousand francs a year to his children. Thebrother had, before that inheritance, only a pension of fifteen hundredfrancs from the United States. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil consideredthat five or six thousand francs a year would hardly suffice for thecomfortable support of that family, in which there were two children, and it at once occurred to her to add to it her share in theinheritance. She suggested this contribution in the most natural andsimple way imaginable. Her brother accepted it, and she went with him tolive in a pretty little apartment at the upper end of Rue de Clichy, onthe fourth floor of one of the first houses built in that neighborhood, then hardly known, where the fresh country air blew briskly through theframework of the white buildings. She continued there her modest life, her humble manner of dressing, her economical habits, content with theleast desirable room in the suite, and spending upon herself no morethan eighteen hundred to two thousand francs a year. But, soon, abrooding jealousy, slowly gathering strength, took possession of themulattress. She took offence at the fraternal affection which seemed tobe taking her husband from her arms. She suffered because of thecommunion of speech and thought and reminiscences between them; shesuffered because of the conversations in which she could take no part, because of what she heard in their voices, but could not understand. Theconsciousness of her inferiority kindled in her heart the fires of wrathand hatred that burn fiercely in the tropics. She had recourse to herchildren for her revenge; she urged them on, excited them, aroused theirevil passions against her sister-in-law. She encouraged them to laugh ather, to make sport of her. She applauded the manifestations of themischievous intelligence characteristic of children, in whom observationbegins with naughtiness. Once she had let them loose upon their aunt, she allowed them to laugh at all her absurdities, her figure, her nose, her dresses, whose meanness, nevertheless, provided their own elegantattire. Thus incited and upheld, the little ones soon arrived atinsolence. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had the quick temper thataccompanies kindness of heart. With her the hand, as well as the heart, had a part in the first impulse. And then she shared the prevalentopinion of her time as to the proper way of bringing up children. Sheendured two or three impertinent sallies without a word; but at thefourth she seized the mocking child, took down her skirts, andadministered to her, notwithstanding her twelve years, the soundestwhipping she had ever received. The mulattress made a great outcry andtold her sister-in-law, that she had always detested her children andthat she wanted to kill them. The brother interposed between the twowomen and succeeded in reconciling them after a fashion. But new scenestook place, when the little ones, inflamed against the woman who madetheir mother weep, assailed their aunt with the refined tortures ofmisbehaved children, mingled with the fiendish cruelty of littlesavages. After several patched-up truces it became necessary to part. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil decided to leave her brother, for she saw howunhappy he was amid this daily wrenching of his dearest affections. Sheleft him to his wife and his children. This separation was one of thegreat sorrows of her life. She who was so strong against emotion and soself-contained, and who seemed to take pride in suffering, as it were, almost broke down when she had to leave the apartment, where she haddreamed of enjoying a little happiness in her corner, looking on at thehappiness of others: her last tears mounted to her eyes. 

She did not go too far away, so that she might be at hand to nurse herbrother if he were ill, and to see him and meet him sometimes. But therewas a great void in her heart and in her life. She had begun to visither kinsfolk since her father's death: she drew nearer to them; sheallowed the relatives whom the Restoration had placed in a lofty andpowerful position to come to her, and sought out those whom the neworder of things left in obscurity and poverty. But she returned to herdear _chick_ first of all, and to another distant cousin, also married, who had become the _chick's_ sister-in-law. Her relations with herkinsfolk soon assumed remarkable regularity. Mademoiselle de Varandeuilnever went into society, to an evening party, or to the play. Itrequired Mademoiselle Rachel's brilliant success to persuade her to stepinside a theatre; she ventured there but twice. She never accepted aninvitation to a large dinner-party. But there were two or three houseswhere, as at the _chick's_, she would invite herself to dine, unexpectedly, when there were no guests. "My love, " she would saywithout ceremony, "are you and your husband doing nothing this evening?Then I will stay and eat some of your ragoût. " At eight o'clockregularly she rose to go, and when the husband took his hat to escorther home, she would knock it out of his hands with a: "Nonsense! an oldnanny-goat like me! Why, I frighten men in the street!" And then tendays or a fortnight would pass, during which they would not see her. Butif anything went wrong, if there was a death or sickness in the house, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil always heard of it at once, no one knew how;she would come, in spite of everything--the weather or the hour--wouldgive a loud ring at the bell in her own way--they finally called it_cousin's ring_--and a moment later, relieved of her umbrella, whichnever left her, and of her pattens, her hat tossed upon a chair, she wasat the service of those who needed her. She listened, talked, restoredtheir courage with an indescribable martial accent, with language asenergetic as a soldier might use to console a wounded comrade, andstimulating as a cordial. If it was a child that was out of sorts, shewould go straight to the bed, laugh at the little one, whose fearvanished at once, order the father and mother about, run hither andthither, assume the management of everything, apply the leeches, arrangethe cataplasms, and bring back hope, joy and health at the double quick. In all branches of the family the old maid appeared thus providentially, without warning, on days of sorrow, _ennui_ and suffering. She was neverseen except when her hands were needed to heal, her devoted friendshipto console. She was, so to speak, an impersonal creature, because of hergreat heart; a woman who did not belong to herself: God seemed to havemade her only to give her to others. Her everlasting black dress whichshe persisted in wearing, her worn, dyed shawl, her absurd hat, herimpoverished appearance, were, in her eyes, the means of being richenough to help others with her little fortune; she was extravagant inalmsgiving, and her pockets were always filled with gifts for the poor;not of money, for she feared the wineshop, but of four-pound loaveswhich she bought for them at the baker's. And then, too, by dint ofliving in poverty, she was able to give herself what was to her thegreatest of all luxuries: the joy of her friends' children whom sheoverwhelmed with New Year's and other gifts, with surprises andpleasures of all sorts. For instance, suppose that one of them had beenleft by his mother, who was absent from Paris, to pass a lovely summerSunday at his boarding school, and the little rascal, out of spite, hadmisbehaved so that he was not allowed to go out. How surprised he wouldbe, as the clock struck nine, to see his old cousin appear in thecourtyard, just buttoning the last button of her dress, she had come insuch haste. And what a feeling of desolation at the sight! "Cousin, " hewould say piteously, in one of those fits of passion in which at thesame moment you long to cry and to kill your _tyrant_, "I--I am kept in, and----" "Kept in? Oh! yes, kept in! And do you suppose I've taken allthis trouble----Is your schoolmaster poking fun at me? Where is thepuppy, that I may have a word with him? You go and dress yourselfmeanwhile. Off with you!" And the child, not daring to hope that a womanso shabbily dressed would have the power to raise the embargo, wouldsuddenly feel a hand upon his arm, and the cousin would carry him off, toss him into a cab, all bewildered and dumfounded with joy, and takehim to the Bois de Boulogne. She would let him ride a donkey all daylong, urging the beast on with a broken branch, and crying: "Get up!"And then, after a good dinner at Borne's, she would take him back toschool, and, under the porte-cochère, as she kissed him she would slip abig hundred-sou piece into his hand. 

Strange old maid. The bitter experiences of her whole existence, thestruggle to live, the never-ending physical suffering, thelong-continued bodily and mental torture had, as it were, cut her loosefrom life and placed her above it. Her education, the things she hadseen, the spectacle of what seemed the end of everything, theRevolution, had so formed her character as to lead her to disdain humansuffering. And this old woman, who had nothing left of life save breath, had risen to a serene philosophy, to a virile, haughty, almost satiricalstoicism. Sometimes she would begin to declaim against a sorrow thatseemed a little too keen; but, in the midst of her tirade, she wouldsuddenly hurl an angry, mocking word at herself, upon which her facewould at once become calm. She was cheerful with the cheerfulness of adeep, bubbling spring, the cheerfulness of devoted hearts that have seeneverything, of the old soldier or the old hospital nurse. Kind-heartedto admiration she was, and yet something was lacking in her kindness ofheart: forgiveness. Hitherto, she had never succeeded in moving orbending her character. A slight, an unkind action, a trifle, if ittouched her heart, wounded her forever. She forgot nothing. Time, deathitself, did not disarm her memory. 

Of religion, she had none. Born at a period when women did without it, she had grown to womanhood at a time when there were no churches. Massdid not exist when she was a young maid. There had been nothing toaccustom her to the thought of God or to make her feel the need of Him, and she had retained a sort of shrinking hatred for priests, which musthave been connected with some family secret of which she never spoke. Her faith, her strength, her piety, all consisted in the pride of herconscience; she considered that if she retained her own esteem, shecould be sure of acting rightly and of never failing in her duty. Shewas thus singularly constituted by the two epochs in which she hadlived, a compound of the two, dipped in the opposing currents of the oldrégime and the Revolution. After Louis XVI. Failed to take horse on theTenth of August, she lost her regard for kings; but she detested themob. She desired equality and she held parvenus in horror. She was arepublican and an aristocrat, combined scepticism with prejudice, thehorrors of '93, which she saw, with the vague and noble theories ofhumanity which surrounded her cradle. 

Her external qualities were altogether masculine. She had the sharpvoice, the freedom of speech, the unruly tongue of the old woman of theeighteenth century, heightened by an accent suggestive of the commonpeople, a mannish, highly colored style of elocution peculiar toherself, rising above modesty in the choice of words and fearless incalling things baldly by their plain names. 

Meanwhile, the years rolled on, sweeping away the Restoration and themonarchy of Louis-Philippe. She saw all those whom she had loved gofrom her one by one, all her family take the road to the cemetery. Shewas left quite alone, and she marveled and was grieved that death shouldforget her, who would have offered so little resistance, for she wasalready leaning over the grave and was obliged to force her heart downto the level of the little children brought to her by the sons anddaughters of the friends whom she had lost. Her brother was dead. Herdear _chick_ was no more. The _chick's_ sister-in-law alone was left toher. But hers was a life that hung trembling in the balance, ready tofly away. Crushed by the death of a child for whom she had waited foryears, the poor woman was dying of consumption. Mademoiselle deVarandeuil was in her bedroom every day, from noon until six o'clock, for four years. She lived by her side all that time, in the closeatmosphere and the odor of constant fumigations. She did not allowherself to be kept away for one hour by her own gout and rheumatism, butgave her time and her life to the peaceful last hours of that dyingwoman, whose eyes were fixed upon heaven, where her dead childrenawaited her. And when, in the cemetery, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil hadturned aside the shroud to kiss the dead face for the last time, itseemed to her as if there were no one near to her, as if she were allalone upon the earth. 

Thenceforth, yielding to the infirmities which she had no further reasonto shake off, she began to live the narrow, confined life of old peoplewho wear out their carpet in one spot only--never leaving her room, reading but little because it tired her eyes, and passing most of hertime buried in her easy-chair, reviewing the past and living it overagain. She would sit in the same position for days, her eyes wide openand dreaming, her thoughts far from herself, far from the room in whichshe sat, journeying whither her memories led her, to distant faces, dearly loved, pallid faces, to vanished regions--lost in a profoundlethargy which Germinie was careful not to disturb, saying to herself:"Madame is in her meditations----"

One day in every week, however, she went abroad. Indeed it was with thatweekly excursion in view, in order to be nearer the spot to which shewished to go on that one day, that she left her apartments on RueTaitbout and took up her abode on Rue de Laval. One day in every week, deterred by nothing, not even by illness, she repaired to the MontmartreCemetery, where her father and her brother rested, and the women whoseloss she regretted, all those whose sufferings had come to an end beforehers. For the dead and for Death she displayed a veneration almost equalto that of the ancients. To her, the grave was sacred, and a dearfriend. She loved to visit the land of hope and deliverance where herdear ones were sleeping, there to await death and to be ready with herbody. On that day, she would start early in the morning, leaning on thearm of her maid, who carried a folding-stool. As she drew near thecemetery, she would enter the shop of a dealer in wreaths, who had knownher for many years, and who, in winter, loaned her a foot-warmer. Thereshe would rest a few moments; then, loading Germinie down with wreathsof immortelles, she would pass through the cemetery gate, take the pathto the left of the cedar at the entrance, and make her pilgrimage slowlyfrom tomb to tomb. She would throw away the withered flowers, sweep upthe dead leaves, tie the wreaths together, and, sitting down upon herfolding-chair, would gaze and dream, and absent-mindedly remove a bit ofmoss from the flat stone with the end of her umbrella. Then she wouldrise, turn as if to say _au revoir_ to the tomb she was leaving, walkaway, stop once more, and talk in an undertone, as she had done before, with that part of her that was sleeping under the stone; and having thuspaid a visit to all the dead who lived in her affections, she wouldreturn home slowly and reverentially, enveloping herself in silence asif she were afraid to speak. 

III

In the course of her reverie, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had closed hereyes. 

The maid's story ceased, and the remainder of the history of her life, which was upon her lips that evening, was once more buried in her heart. 

The conclusion of her story was as follows:

When little Germinie Lacerteux arrived in Paris, being then less thanfifteen years old, her sister, desirous to have her begin to earn herliving at once, and to help to put bread in her hand, obtained a placefor her in a small café on the boulevard, where she performed the doubleduties of lady's maid to the mistress of the café and assistant to thewaiters in carrying on the main business of the establishment. Thechild, just from her village and dropped suddenly in that place, wascompletely bewildered and terrified by her surroundings and her duties. She had the first instinctive feeling of wounded modesty and, foreshadowing the woman she was destined to become, she shuddered at theperpetual contact with the other sex, working, eating, passing her wholetime with men; and whenever she had an opportunity to go out, and wentto her sisters, there were tearful, despairing scenes, when, withoutactually complaining of anything, she manifested a sort of dread toreturn, saying that she did not want to stay there, that they were notsatisfied with her, that she preferred to return to them. They wouldreply that it had already cost them enough to bring her to Paris, thatit was a silly whim on her part and that she was very well off where shewas, and they would send her back to the café in tears. She dared nottell all that she suffered in the company of the waiters in the café, insolent, boasting, cynical fellows, fed on the remains of debauches, tainted with all the vices to which they ministered, and corrupt to thecore with putrefying odds and ends of obscenity. At every turn, she hadto submit to the dastardly jests, the cruel mystifications, themalicious tricks of these scoundrels, who were only too happy to make alittle martyr of the poor unsophisticated child, ignorant of everything, with the crushed and sickly air, timid and sullen, thin and pale, andpitiably clad in her wretched, countrified gowns. Bewildered, overwhelmed, so to speak, by this hourly torture, she became theirdrudge. They made sport of her ignorance, they deceived her and abusedher credulity by absurd fables, they overburdened her with fatiguingtasks, they assailed her with incessant, pitiless ridicule, whichwell-nigh drove her benumbed intellect to imbecility. In addition, theymade her blush at the things they said to her, which made her feelashamed, although she did not understand them. They soiled theartlessness of her fourteen years with filthy veiled allusions. And theyfound amusement in putting the eyes of her childish curiosity to thekeyholes of the private supper-rooms. 

The little one longed to confide in her sisters, but she dared not. When, with nourishing food, her body took on a little flesh, her cheeksa little color and she began to have something of the aspect of a woman, they took great liberties with her and grew bolder. There were attemptsat familiarity, significant gestures, advances, which she eluded, andfrom which she escaped unscathed, but which assailed her purity bybreathing upon her innocence. Roughly treated, scolded, reviled by themaster of the establishment, who was accustomed to abuse hismaidservants and who bore her a grudge because she was not old enough orof the right sort for a mistress, she found no support, no touch ofhumanity, except in his wife. She began to love that woman with a sortof animal devotion, and to obey her with the docility of a dog. She didall her errands without thought or reflection. She carried her lettersto her lovers and was very clever about delivering them. She became veryactive and agile and ingenuously sly in passing in and out, evading theawakened suspicions of the husband; and without any clear idea of whatshe was doing or of what she was concealing, she felt a mischievousdelight, such as children and monkeys feel, in telling herself vaguelythat she was causing some little suffering to that man and that house, which caused her so much. There was among her comrades an old waiter, named Joseph, who defended her, warned her of the cruel plots concoctedagainst her, and, when she was present, put a stop to conversation thatwas too free, with the authority of his white hairs and his paternalinterest in the girl. Meanwhile Germinie's horror of the house increasedevery day. One week her sisters were compelled to take her back to thecafé by force. 

A few days later, there was a great review on the Champ de Mars, and thewaiters had leave of absence for the day. Only Germinie and old Josephremained in the house. Joseph was at work sorting soiled linen in asmall, dark room. He told Germinie to come and help him. She entered theroom; she cried out, fell to the floor, wept, implored, struggled, called desperately for help. The empty house was deaf. 

When she recovered consciousness, Germinie ran and shut herself up inher chamber. She was not seen again that day. On the following day, whenJoseph walked toward her and attempted to speak to her, she recoiledfrom him in dismay, with the gesture of a woman mad with fear. For along time, whenever a man approached her, her first involuntary impulsewas to draw back suddenly, trembling and nervous, like a terrified, bewildered beast, looking about for means of flight. Joseph, who fearedthat she would denounce him, allowed her to keep him at a distance, andrespected the horrible repugnance she exhibited for him. 

She became _enceinte_. One Sunday she had been to pass the evening withher sister, the concierge; she had an attack of vomiting, followed bysevere pain. A physician who occupied an apartment in the house, came tothe lodge for his key, and the sisters learned from him the secret oftheir younger sister's condition. The brutal, intractable pride of thecommon people in their honor, the implacable severity of rigid piety, flew to arms in the two women and found vent in fierce indignation. Their bewilderment changed to fury. Germinie recovered consciousnessunder their blows, their insults, the wounds inflicted by their hands, the harsh words that came from their mouths. Her brother-in-law wasthere, who had never forgiven her the cost of her journey; he glanced ather with a bantering expression, with the cunning, ferocious joy of anAuvergnat, with a sneering laugh that dyed the girl's cheeks a deeperred than her sisters' blows. 

She received the blows, she did not repel the insults. She soughtneither to defend nor to excuse herself. She did not tell what had takenplace and how little her own desires had had to do with her misfortune. She was dumb: she had a vague hope that they would kill her. When herolder sister asked her if there had been no violence, and reminded herthat there were police officers and courts, she closed her eyes at thethought of publishing her shame. For one instant only, when hermother's memory was cast in her face, she emitted a glance, a lightningflash from her eyes, by which the two women felt their consciencespierced; they remembered that they were the ones who had placed her andkept her in that den, and had exposed her to the danger, nay, had almostforced her into her misfortune. 

That same evening, the younger of Germinie's sisters took her to the RueSaint-Martin, to the house of a repairer of cashmere shawls, with whomshe lodged, and who, being almost daft on the subject of religion, wasbanner-bearer in a sisterhood of the Virgin. She made her lie beside heron a mattress on the floor, and having her there under her hand allnight, she vented upon her all her long-standing, venomous jealousy, herbitter resentment at the preference, the caresses given Germinie by herfather and mother. It was a long succession of petty tortures, brutal orhypocritical exhibitions of spite, kicks that bruised her legs, andprogressive movements of the body by which she gradually forced hercompanion out of bed--it was a cold winter's night--to the floor of thefireless room. During the day, the seamstress took Germinie in hand, catechized her, preached at her, and by detailing the tortures of theother life, inspired in her mind a horrible fear of the hell whoseflames she caused her to feel. 

She lived there four months, in close confinement, and was never allowedto leave the house. At the end of four months she gave birth to a deadchild. When her health was restored, she entered the service of adepilator on Rue Laffitte, and for the first few days she had the joyfulfeeling of having been released from prison. Two or three times, in herwalks, she met old Joseph who ran after her and wanted to marry her; butshe escaped him and the old man never knew that he had been a father. 

But soon Germinie began to pine away in her new place. The house whereshe had taken service as a maid of all work was what servants call "abarrack. " A spendthrift and glutton, devoid of order as of money, as isoften the case with women engaged in the occupations that depend uponchance, and in the problematical methods of gaining a livelihood invogue in Paris, the depilator, who was almost always involved in alawsuit of some sort, paid but little heed to her small servant'snourishment. She often went away for the whole day without leaving herany dinner. The little one would satisfy her appetite as well as shecould with some kind of uncooked food, salads, vinegary things thatdeceive a young woman's appetite, even charcoal, which she would nibblewith the depraved taste and capricious stomach of her age and sex. Thisdiet, just after recovering from her confinement, her health being butpartially restored and greatly in need of stimulants, exhausted theyoung woman's strength, reduced her flesh and undermined herconstitution. She had a terrifying aspect. Her complexion changed tothat dead white that looks green in the daylight. Her swollen eyes weresurrounded with a great, bluish shadow. Her discolored lips assumed thehue of faded violets. Her breath failed her at the slightest ascent, andthe incessant vibrating sound that came from the arteries of her throatwas painful to those near her. With heavy feet and enfeebled body, shedragged herself along, as if life were too heavy a burden for her. Herfaculties and her senses were so torpid that she swooned for no cause atall, for so small a matter as the fatigue of combing her mistress'shair. 

She was silently drooping there when her sister found her another place, with a former actor, a retired comedian, living upon the money that thelaughter of all Paris had brought him. The good man was old and hadnever had any children. He took pity on the wretched girl, interestedhimself in her welfare, took care of her and made much of her. He tookher into the country. He walked with her on the boulevards in thesunlight, and enjoyed the warmth the more for leaning on her arm. Itdelighted him to see her in good spirits. Often, to amuse her, he wouldtake down a moth-eaten costume from his wardrobe and try to remember afragment of some part that had gone from his memory. The mere sight ofthis little maid and her white cap was like a ray of returning youth tohim. In his old age, Jocrisse leaned upon her with the good-fellowship, the pleasures and the childish fancies of a grandfather's heart. But hedied after a few months, and Germinie had fallen back into the serviceof kept mistresses, boarding-house keepers, and passageway tradesmen, when the sudden death of a maidservant gave her an opportunity to enterthe service of Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, then living on Rue Taitbout, in the house of which her sister was concierge. 

IV

Those people who look for the death of the Catholic religion in our day, do not realize by what an infinite number of sturdy roots it stillretains its hold upon the hearts of the people. They do not realize thesecret, delicate fascination it has for the woman of the people. They donot realize what confession and the confessor are to the impoverishedsouls of those poor women. In the priest who listens and whose voicefalls softly on her ear, the woman of toil and suffering sees not somuch the minister of God, the judge of her sins, the arbiter of herwelfare, as the confidant of her sorrows and the friend of her misery. However coarse she may be, there is always a little of the true woman inher, a feverish, trembling, sensitive, wounded something, a restlessnessand, as it were, the sighing of an invalid who craves caressing words, even as a child's trifling ailments require the nurse's droning lullaby. She, as well as the woman of the world, must have the consolation ofpouring out her heart, of confiding her troubles to a sympathetic ear. For it is the nature of her sex to seek an outlet for the emotions andan arm to lean upon. There are in her mind things that she must tell, and concerning which she would like to be questioned, pitied andcomforted. She dreams of a compassionate interest, a tender sympathy forhidden feelings of which she is ashamed. Her masters may be the kindest, the most friendly, the most approachable of masters to the woman intheir employ: their kindness to her will still be of the same sort thatthey bestow upon a domestic animal. They will be uneasy concerning herappetite and her health; they will look carefully after the animal partof her, and that will be all. It will not occur to them that she cansuffer elsewhere than in her body, and they will not dream that she canhave the heartache, the sadness and immaterial pain for which they seekrelief by confiding in those of their own station. In their eyes, thewoman who sweeps and does the cooking, has no ideas that can cause herto be sad or thoughtful, and they never speak to her of her thoughts. Towhom, then, shall she carry them? To the priest who is waiting for them, asks for them, welcomes them, to the churchman who is also a man of theworld, a superior creature, a well-educated gentleman, who knowseverything, speaks well, is always accessible, gentle, patient, attentive, and seems to feel no scorn for the most humble soul, the mostshabbily dressed penitent. The priest alone listens to the woman in acap. He alone takes an interest in her secret sufferings, in the thingsthat disturb and agitate her and that bring to a maid, as well as toher mistress, the sudden longing to weep, or excite a tempest withinher. There is none but he to encourage her outpourings, to draw from herthose things which the irony of her daily life holds back, to look tothe state of her moral health; none but he to raise her above hermaterial life, none but he to cheer her with moving words of charity andhope, --such divine words as she has never heard from the mouths of themen of her family and of her class. 

After entering the service of Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, Germiniebecame profoundly religious and cared for nothing but the church. Sheabandoned herself little by little to the sweet delight of confession, to the priest's smooth, tranquil bass voice that came to her from thedarkness, to the conversations which resembled the touch of soothingwords, and from which she went forth refreshed, light of heart, freefrom care, and happy with a delightful sense of relief, as if a balm hadbeen applied to all the tender, suffering, fettered portions of herbeing. 

She did not, could not, open her heart elsewhere. Her mistress had acertain masculine roughness of demeanor which repelled expansiveness. She had an abrupt, exclamatory way of speaking that forced back all thatGerminie would have liked to confide to her. It was in her nature to bebrutal in her treatment of all lamentations that were not caused by painor disappointment. Her virile kindliness had no pity to spare fordiseases of the imagination, for the suffering that is created by thethought, for the weariness of spirit that flows from a woman's nervesand from the disordered condition of her mental organism. Germinie oftenfound her unfeeling; the old woman had simply been hardened by the timesin which she had lived and by the circumstances of her life. The shellof her heart was as hard as her body. Never complaining herself, she didnot like to hear complaints about her. And by the right of all the tearsshe had not shed, she detested childish tears in grown persons. 

Soon the confessional became a sort of sacred, idolized rendezvous forGerminie's thoughts. Every day it was her first idea, the theme of herfirst prayer. Throughout the day, she was kneeling there as in a dream;and while she was about her work it was constantly before her eyes, withits oaken frame with fillets of gold, its pediment in the shape of awinged angel's head, its green curtain with the motionless folds, andthe mysterious darkness on both sides. It seemed to her that now herwhole life centred there, and that every hour tended thither. She livedthrough the week looking forward to that longed-for, prayed-for, promised day. On Thursday, she began to be impatient; she felt, in theredoubling of her blissful agony, the material drawing near, as it were, of the blessed Saturday evening; and when Saturday came andmademoiselle's dinner had been hastily served and her work done, shewould make her escape and run to Notre-Dame de Lorette, hurrying to thepenitential stool as to a lover's rendezvous. Her fingers dipped in holywater and a genuflexion duly made, she would glide over the flags, between the rows of chairs, as softly as a cat steals across a carpetedfloor. With bent head, almost crawling, she would go noiselessly forwardin the shadow of the side aisles, until she reached the mysterious, veiled confessional, where she would pause and await her turn, absorbedin the emotion of suspense. 

The young priest who confessed her, encouraged her frequent confessions. He was not sparing of time or attention or charity. He allowed her totalk at great length and tell him, with many words, of all her pettytroubles. He was indulgent to the diffuseness of a suffering soul, andpermitted her to pour out freely her most trivial afflictions. Helistened while she set forth her anxieties, her longings, her troubles;he did not repel or treat with scorn any portion of the confidences of aservant who spoke to him of all the most delicate, secret concerns ofher existence, as one would speak to a mother and a physician. 

This priest was young. He was kind-hearted. He had lived in the world. Agreat sorrow had impelled him, crushed and broken, to assume the gownwherein he wore mourning for his heart. There remained something of theman in the depths of his being, and he listened, with melancholycompassion, to the outpouring of this maidservant's suffering heart. Heunderstood that Germinie needed him, that he sustained and strengthenedher, that he saved her from herself and removed her from the temptationsto which her nature exposed her. He was conscious of a sad sympathy forthat heart overflowing with affection, for the ardent, yet tractablegirl, for the unhappy creature who knew nothing of her own nature, whowas promised to passion by every impulse of her heart, by her wholebody, and who betrayed in every detail of her person the vocation of hertemperament. Enlightened by his past experience, he was amazed andterrified sometimes by the gleams that emanated from her, by the flamethat shot from her eyes at the outburst of love in a prayer, by theevident tendency of her confessions, by her constantly recurring to thatscene of violence, that scene in which her perfectly sincere purpose toresist seemed to the priest to have been betrayed by a convulsion of thesenses that was stronger than she. 

This fever of religion lasted several years, during which Germinie liveda concentrated, silent, happy life, entirely devoted to God'sservice--at least she thought so. Her confessor, however, had comegradually to the conclusion that all her adoration tended towardhimself. By her glances, by her blushes, by the words she no longer saidto him, and by others which she made bold to say to him for the firsttime, he realized that his penitent's devotion was going astray andbecoming unduly fervent, deceiving itself as to its object. She watchedfor him when the services were at an end, followed him into thesacristy, hung on his skirts, ran into the church after his cassock. Theconfessor tried to warn her, to divert her amorous fervor from himself. He became more reserved and assumed a cold demeanor. In despair at thischange, at his apparent indifference, Germinie, feeling bitter and hurt, confessed to him one day, in the confessional, the hatred that had takenpossession of her for two young girls, who were his favorite penitents. Thereupon the priest dismissed her, without discussion, and sent her toanother confessor. Germinie went once or twice to confess to this otherconfessor; then she ceased to go; soon she ceased even to think ofgoing, and of all her religion naught remained in her mind but a certainfar-off sweetness, like the faint odor of burned-out incense. 

Affairs had reached that point when mademoiselle fell ill. Throughouther illness, as Germinie did not want to leave her, she did not attendmass. And on the first Sunday--when mademoiselle, being fully recovered, did not require her care, she was greatly surprised to find that "herdevotee" remained at home and did not run away to church. 

"Oho!" said she, "so you don't go and see your curés nowadays? What havethey done to you, eh?"

"Nothing, " said Germinie. 

V

"There, mademoiselle!--Look at me, " said Germinie. 

It was a few months later. She had asked her mistress's permission to gothat evening to the wedding ball of her grocer's sister, who had chosenher for her maid-of-honor, and she had come to exhibit herself _engrande toilette_, in her low-necked muslin dress. 

Mademoiselle raised her eyes from the old volume, printed in large type, which she was reading, removed her spectacles, placed them in the bookto mark her place, and exclaimed:

"What, my little bigot, you at a ball! Do you know, my girl, this seemsto me downright nonsense! You and the hornpipe! Faith, all you need nowis to want to get married! A deuce of a want, that! But if you marry, Iwarn you that I won't keep you--mind that! I've no desire to wait onyour brats! Come a little nearer----Oho! why----bless my soul!Mademoiselle Show-all! We're getting to be a bit of a flirt lately, Ifind----"

"Why no, mademoiselle, " Germinie tried to say. 

"And then, " continued Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, following out herthought, "among you people, the men are such sweet creatures! They'llspend all you have--to say nothing of the blows. But marriage--I am surethat that nonsensical idea of getting married buzzes around in your headwhen you see the others. That's what gives you that simper, I'll wager. _Bon Dieu de Dieu!_ Now turn a bit, so that I can see you, " saidMademoiselle de Varandeuil, with an abrupt change of tone to one thatwas almost caressing; and placing her thin hands on the arms of hereasy-chair, crossing her legs and moving her foot back and forth, sheset about inspecting Germinie and her toilet. 

"What the devil!" said she, after a few moments of silent scrutiny, "what! is it really you?----Then I have never used my eyes to look atyou. ----Good God, yes!----But----but----" She mumbled more vagueexclamations between her teeth. ----"Where the deuce did you get that muglike an amorous cat's?" she said at last, and continued to gaze at her. 

Germinie was ugly. Her hair, of so dark a chestnut that it seemed black, curled and twisted in unruly waves, in little stiff, rebellious locks, which escaped and stood up all over her head, despite the pomade uponher shiny _bandeaux_. Her smooth, narrow, swelling brow protruded abovethe shadow of the deep sockets in which her eyes were buried and sunkento such a depth as almost to denote disease; small, bright, sparklingeyes they were, made to seem smaller and brighter by a constant girlishtwinkle that softened and lighted up their laughter. They were neitherbrown eyes nor blue eyes, but were of an undefinable, changing gray, agray that was not a color, but a light! Emotion found expression thereinin the flame of fever, pleasure in the flashing rays of a sort ofintoxication, passion in phosphorescence. Her short, turned-up nose, with large, dilated, palpitating nostrils, was one of those noses ofwhich the common people say that it rains inside: upon one side, at thecorner of the eye was a thick, swollen blue vein. The square head of theLorraine race was emphasized in her broad, high, prominent cheek-bones, which were well-covered with the traces of small-pox. The mostnoticeable defect in her face was the too great distance between thenose and mouth. This lack of proportion gave an almost apish characterto the lower part of the head, where the expansive mouth, with whiteteeth and full lips that looked as if they had been crushed, they wereso flat, smiled at you with a strange, vaguely irritating smile. 

Her _décolleté_ dress disclosed her neck, the upper part of her breast, her shoulders and her white back, presenting a striking contrast to herswarthy face. It was a lymphatic sort of whiteness, the whiteness, atonce unhealthy and angelic, of flesh in which there is no life. She hadlet her arms fall by her sides--round, smooth arms with a pretty dimpleat the elbow. Her wrists were delicate; her hands, which did not betraythe servant, were embellished with a lady's fingernails. And lazily, with graceful sloth, she allowed her indolent figure to curve andsway;--a figure that a garter might span, and that was made even moreslender to the eye by the projection of the hips and the curve of thehoops that gave the balloon-like roundness to her skirt;--an impossiblewaist, absurdly small but adorable, like everything in woman thatoffends one's sense of proportion by its diminutiveness. 

From this ugly woman emanated a piquant, mysterious charm. Light andshadow, jostling and intercepting each other on her face on whichhollows and protuberances abounded, imparted to it that suggestion oflibertinism which the painter of love scenes gives to the rough sketchof his mistress. Everything about her, --her mouth, her eyes, her veryplainness--was instinct with allurement and solicitation. Her personexhaled an aphrodisiac charm, which challenged and laid fast hold of theother sex. It unloosed desire, and caused an electric shock. Sensualthoughts were naturally and involuntarily aroused by her, by hergestures, her gait, her slightest movement--even by the air in which herbody had left one of its undulations. Beside her, one felt as if he werenear one of those disturbing, disquieting creatures, burning with thelove disease and communicating it to others, whose face appears to manin his restless hours, torments his listless noonday thoughts, hauntshis nights and trespasses upon his dreams. 

In the midst of Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's scrutiny, Germinie stoopedover her, and covered her hand with hurried kisses. 

"There--there--enough of that, " said Mademoiselle. "You would soon wearout the skin--with your way of kissing. Come, run along, enjoy yourself, and try not to stay out too late. Don't get all tired out. "

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil was left alone. She placed her elbows on herknees, stared at the fire and stirred the burning wood with the tongs. Then, as she was accustomed to do when deeply preoccupied, she struckherself two or three sharp little blows on the neck with the flat of herhand, and thereby set her black cap all awry. 

VI

When she mentioned the subject of marriage to Germinie, Mademoiselle deVarandeuil touched upon the real cause of her trouble. She placed herhand upon the seat of her _ennui_. Her maid's uneven temper, herdistaste for life, the languor, the emptiness, the discontent of herexistence, arose from that disease which medical science calls the_melancholia of virgins_. The torment of her twenty-four years was theardent, excited, poignant longing for marriage, for that state which wastoo holy and honorable for her, and which seemed impossible ofattainment in face of the confession her womanly probity would insistupon making of her fall and her unworthiness. Family losses andmisfortunes forcibly diverted her mind from her own troubles. 

Her brother-in-law, her sister the concierge's husband, had dreamed thedream of all Auvergnats: he had undertaken to increase his earnings asconcierge by the profits of a dealer in bric-à-brac. He had begunmodestly with a stall in the street, at the doors of the marts whereexecutors' sales are held; and there you could see, set out upon bluepaper, plated candlesticks, ivory napkin rings, colored lithographswith frames of gold lace on a black ground, and three or four oddvolumes of Buffon. His profit on the plated candlesticks intoxicatedhim. He hired a dark shop on a passage way, opposite an umbrellamender's, and began to trade upon the credulity that goes in and out ofthe lower rooms in the Auction Exchange. He sold _assiettes à coq_, pieces of Jean Jacques Rousseau's wooden shoe, and water-colors byBallue, signed Watteau. In that business he threw away what he had made, and ran in debt to the amount of several thousand francs. His wife, inorder to straighten matters out a little and to try and get out of debt, asked for and obtained a place as box-opener at the _Théâtre-Historique_. She hired her sister the dressmaker to watch the door in the evening, went to bed at one o'clock and was astir again at five. After a fewmonths she caught cold in the corridors of the theatre, and an attack ofpleurisy laid her low and carried her off in six weeks. The poor womanleft a little girl three years old, who was taken down with the measles;the disease assumed its most malignant form in the foul stench of theloft, where the child had breathed for more than a month air poisoned bythe breath of her dying mother. The father had gone into the country totry and borrow money. He married again there. Nothing more was heard ofhim. 

When returning from her sister's burial Germinie ran to the house of anold woman who made a living in those curious industries which preventpoverty from absolutely starving to death in Paris. This old womancarried on several trades. Sometimes she cut bristles into equal lengthsfor brushes, sometimes she sorted out bits of gingerbread. When thoseindustries failed, she did cooking and washed the faces of pedlars'children. In Lent she rose at four o'clock in the morning, went and tookpossession of a chair at Notre-Dame, and sold it for ten or twelve souswhen the crowd arrived. In order to procure fuel to warm herself, in theden where she lived on Rue Saint-Victor, she would go, at nightfall, tothe Luxembourg and peel the bark off the trees. Germinie, who knew herfrom having given her the crusts from the kitchen every week, hired aservant's room on the sixth floor of the house, and took up her abodethere with the little one. She did it on the impulse of the moment, without reflection. She did not remember her sister's harsh treatment ofher when she was _enceinte_, so that she had no need to forgive it. 

Thenceforth Germinie had but one thought, her niece. She determined torescue her from death and restore her to life by dint of carefulnursing. She would rush away from Mademoiselle at every moment, run upthe stairs to the sixth floor four at a time, kiss the child, give herher draught, arrange her comfortably in bed, look at her, and rush downagain, all out of breath and red with pleasure. Care, caresses, thebreath from the heart with which we revive a tiny flame on the point ofdying out, consultations, doctor's visits, costly medicines, theremedies of the wealthy, --Germinie spared nothing for the little one andgave her everything. Her wages flowed through that channel. For almost ayear she gave her beef juice every morning: sleepyhead that she was, sheleft her bed at five o'clock in the morning to prepare it, and awokewithout being called, as mothers do. The child was out of danger atlast, when Germinie received a visit one morning from her sister thedressmaker, who had been married two or three years to a machinist, andwho came now to bid her adieu: her husband was going to accompany somefellow-workmen who had been hired to go to Africa. She was going withhim and she proposed to Germinie that they should take the little onewith them as a playmate for their own child. They offered to take heroff her hands. Germinie, they said, would have to pay only for thejourney. It was a separation she would have to make up her mind tosooner or later on account of her mistress. And then, said the sister, she was the child's aunt too. And she heaped words upon words to induceGerminie to give them the child, with whom she and her husband expected, after their arrival in Africa, to move Germinie to pity, to getpossession of her wages, to play upon her heart and her purse. 

It cost Germinie very dear to part with her niece. She had staked aportion of her existence upon the child. She was attached to her by heranxiety and her sacrifices. She had disputed possession of her withdisease and had won the day; the girl's life was her miracle. And yetshe realized that she could never take her to mademoiselle's apartments;that mademoiselle, at her age, with the burden of her years, and an agedperson's need of tranquillity, could never endure the constant noise andmovement of a child. And then, the little girl's presence in the housewould cause idle gossip and set the whole street agog: people would sayshe was her child. Germinie made a confidante of her mistress. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil knew the whole story. She knew that she hadtaken charge of her niece, although she had pretended not to know it;she had chosen to see nothing in order to permit everything. She advisedGerminie to entrust her niece to her sister, pointing out to her all thedifficulties in the way of keeping her herself, and she gave her moneyto pay for the journey of the whole family. 

The parting was a heart-breaking thing to Germinie. She found herselfleft alone and without occupation. Not having the child, she knew notwhat to love; her heart was weary, and she had such a feeling of theemptiness of life without the little one, that she turned once more toreligion and transferred her affections to the church. 

Three months had passed when she received news of her sister's death. The husband, who was one of the whining, lachrymose breed of mechanics, gave her in his letter, mingled with labored, moving phrases, andthreads of pathos, a despairing picture of his position, with the burialto pay for, attacks of fever that prevented him from working, two youngchildren, without counting the little girl, and a household with no wifeto heat the soup. Germinie wept over the letter; then her thoughtsturned to living in that house, beside that poor man, among the poorchildren, in that horrible Africa; and a vague longing to sacrificeherself began to awaken within her. Other letters followed, in which, while thanking her for her assistance, her brother-in-law gave to hispoverty, to his desolate plight, to the misery that enveloped him, astill more dramatic coloring--the coloring that the common people impartto trifles, with its memories of the Boulevard du Crime and itsfragments of vile books. Once caught by the _blague_ of this misery, Germinie could not cut loose from it. She fancied she could hear thecries of the children calling her. She became completely absorbed, buried in the project and resolution of going to them. She was hauntedby the idea and by the word Africa, which she turned over and overincessantly in the depths of her mind, without a word. Mademoiselle deVarandeuil, noticing her thoughtfulness and melancholy, asked her whatthe matter was, but in vain: Germinie did not speak. She was pulled thisway and that, tormented between what seemed to her a duty and whatseemed to her ingratitude, between her mistress and her sisters' blood. She thought that she could not leave mademoiselle. And again she said toherself that God did not wish her to abandon her family. She would lookabout the apartment and mutter: "And yet I must go!" Then she would fearthat mademoiselle might be sick when she was not there. Another maid! Atthat thought she was seized with jealousy and fancied that she couldalready see someone stealing her mistress. At other moments, when herreligious ideas impelled her to thoughts of self-sacrifice, she was allready to devote her existence to this brother-in-law. She determined togo and live with this man, whom she detested, with whom she had alwaysbeen on the worst of terms, who had almost killed her sister with grief, whom she knew to be a brutish, drunken sot; and all that sheanticipated, all that she dreaded, the certainty of all she would haveto suffer and her shrinking fear of it, served to exalt and inflame herimagination, to urge her on to the sacrifice with the greater impatienceand ardor. Often the whole scheme fell to the ground in an instant: at aword, at a gesture from mademoiselle, Germinie would become herself oncemore, and would fail to recognize herself. She felt that she was boundto her mistress absolutely and forever, and she had a thrill of horrorat having so much as thought of detaching her own life from hers. Shestruggled thus for two years. Then she learned one fine day, by chance, that her niece had died a few weeks after her sister: her brother-in-lawhad concealed the child's death in order to maintain his hold upon her, and to lure her to him in Africa, with her few sous. Germinie'sillusions being wholly dispelled by that revelation, she was cured onthe spot. She hardly remembered that she had ever thought of goingaway. 

VII

About this time a small creamery at the end of the street, with fewcustomers, changed hands, as a result of the sale of the real estate byorder of court. The shop was renovated and repainted. The front windowswere embellished with inscriptions in yellow letters. Pyramids ofchocolate from the Compagnie Coloniale, and coffee-cups filled withflowers, alternating with small liqueur glasses, were displayed upon theshelves. At the door glistened the sign--a copper milk jug divided inthe middle. 

The woman who thus endeavored to re-establish the concern, the new_crémière_, was a person of about fifty years of age, whose corpulencepassed all bounds, and who still retained some _débris_ of beauty, halfsubmerged in fat. It was said in the quarter that she had set herself upin business with the money of an old gentleman, whose servant she hadbeen until his death, in her native province, near Langres; for ithappened that she was a countrywoman of Germinie, not from the samevillage, but from a small place near by; and although she andmademoiselle's maid had never met nor seen each other in the country, they knew each other by name and were drawn together by the fact thatthey had acquaintances in common and could compare memories of the sameplaces. The stout woman was a flattering, affected, fawning creature. She said: "My love" to everybody, talked in a piping voice, and playedthe child with the querulous languor of corpulent persons. She detestedvulgar remarks and would blush and take alarm at trifles. She adoredsecrets, twisted everything into a confidential communication, inventedstories and always whispered in your ear. Her life was passed ingossiping and groaning. She pitied others and she pitied herself; shelamented her ill fortune and her stomach. When she had eaten too muchshe would say dramatically: "I am dying!" and nothing ever was sopathetic as her indigestion. She was constantly moved to tears: she weptindiscriminately for a maltreated horse, for someone who had died, formilk that had curdled. She wept over the various items in thenewspapers, she wept for the sake of weeping. 

Germinie was very soon ensnared and moved to pity by this wheedling, talkative _crémière_, who was always in a state of intense emotion, calling upon others to open their hearts to her, and apparently soaffectionate. After three months hardly anything passed mademoiselle'sdoors that did not come from Mère Jupillon. Germinie procuredeverything, or almost everything there. She passed hours in the shop. Once there it was hard work for her to leave; she remained there, unable to rise from her chair. A sort of instinctive cowardice detainedher. At the door she would stop and talk on, in order to delay herdeparture. She felt bound to the _crémière_ by the invisible charm offamiliar places to which you constantly return, and which end byembracing you like things that would love you. And then, too, in hereyes the shop meant Madame Jupillon's three dogs, three wretched curs;she always had them on her knees, she scolded them and kissed them andtalked to them; and when she was warm with their warmth, she would feelin the depths of her heart the contentment of a beast rubbing againsther little ones. Again, the shop to her meant all the gossip of thequarter, the rendezvous of all the scandals, --how this one had failed topay her note and that one had received a carriage load of flowers; itmeant a place that was on the watch for everything, even to the lace_peignoir_ going to town on the maid's arm. 

In a word everything tended to attach her to the place. Her intimacywith the _crémière_ was strengthened by all the mysterious bonds offriendship between women of the people, by the continual chatter, thedaily exchange of the trivial affairs of life, the conversation for thesake of conversing, the repetition of the same _bonjour_ and the same_bonsoir_, the division of caresses among the same animals, the napsside by side and chair against chair. The shop at last became herregular place for idling away her time, a place where her thoughts, herwords, her body and her very limbs were marvelously at ease. There camea time when her happiness consisted in sitting drowsily of an evening ina straw arm-chair, beside Mère Jupillon--sound asleep with herspectacles on her nose--and holding the dogs rolled in a ball in theskirt of her dress; and while the lamp, almost dying, burned pale uponthe counter, she would sit idly there, letting her glance lose itself atthe back of the shop, and gradually grow dim, with her ideas, as hereyes rested vaguely upon a triumphal arch of snail shells joinedtogether with old moss, beneath which stood a little copper Napoléon, with his hands behind his back. 

VIII

Madame Jupillon, who claimed to have been married and signed herself_Widow Jupillon_, had a son. He was still a child. She had placed him atSaint-Nicholas, the great religious establishment where, for thirtyfrancs a month, rudimentary instruction and a trade are furnished to thechildren of the common people, and to many natural children. Germiniefell into the way of accompanying Madame Jupillon when she went to see_Bibi_ on Thursdays. This visit became a means of distraction to her, something to look forward to. She would urge the mother to hurry, wouldalways arrive first at the omnibus office, and was content to sit withher arms resting on a huge basket of provisions all the way. 

It happened that Mère Jupillon had trouble with her leg--a carbunclethat prevented her from walking for nearly eighteen months. Germiniewent alone to Saint-Nicholas, and as she was promptly and easily led todevote herself to others, she took as deep an interest in that child asif he were connected with her in some way. She did not miss a singleThursday and always arrived with her hands full of the last week'sdesserts, and with cakes and fruit and sweetmeats she had bought. Shewould kiss the urchin, inquire for his health, and feel to see if he hadhis knitted vest under his blouse; she would notice how flushed he wasfrom running, would wipe his face with her handkerchief and make himshow her the soles of his shoes so that she could see if there were anyholes in them. She would ask if his teachers were satisfied with him, ifhe attended to his duties and if he had had many good marks. She wouldtalk to him of his mother and bid him love the good Lord, and until theclock struck two she would walk with him in the courtyard: the childwould offer her his arm, as proud as you please to be with a woman muchbetter dressed than the majority of those who came there--with a womanin silk. He was anxious to learn the flageolet. It cost only five francsa month, but his mother would not give them. Germinie carried him thehundred sous every month, on the sly. It was a humiliating thing to himto wear the little uniform blouse when he went out to walk, and on thetwo or three occasions during the year when he went to see his mother. On his birthday, one year, Germinie unfolded a large parcel before him:she had had a tunic made for him; it is doubtful if twenty of hiscomrades in the whole school belonged to families in sufficiently easycircumstances to wear such garments. 

She spoiled him thus for several years, not allowing him to suffer witha longing for anything, encouraging the caprices and the pride ofwealthy children in the poor child, softening for him the privations andhardships of that trade school, where children were formed for alaboring life, wore blouses and ate off plates of brown earthenware; aschool that by its toilsome apprenticeship hardened the children of thepeople to lives of toil. Meanwhile the boy was growing fast. Germiniedid not notice it: in her eyes he was still the child he had alwaysbeen. From habit she always stooped to kiss him. One day she wassummoned before the abbé who was at the head of the school. He spoke toher of expelling Jupillon. Obscene books had been found in hispossession. Germinie, trembling at the thought of the blows that awaitedthe child at his mother's hands, prayed and begged and implored; shesucceeded at last in inducing the abbé to forgive the culprit. When shewent down into the courtyard again she attempted to scold him; but atthe first word of her moral lecture, Bibi suddenly cast in her face aglance and smile in which there was no trace of the child that he wasthe day before. She lowered her eyes, and she was the one to blush. Afortnight passed before she went again to Saint-Nicholas. 

IX

About the time that young Jupillon left the boarding-school, a maid inthe service of a kept woman who lived on the floor below mademoisellesometimes passed the evening with Germinie at Madame Jupillon's. Anative of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which supplies Paris with coupédrivers and lorettes' waiting-maids, this girl was what is called invulgar parlance: "a great _bringue_;" she was an awkward, wild-eyedcreature, with the eyebrows of a water carrier. She soon fell into thehabit of going there every evening. She treated everybody to cakes andliquors, amused herself by showing off little Jupillon, playingpat-a-cake with him, sitting on his knee, telling him to his face thathe was a beauty, treating him like a child, playing the wanton with himand joking him because he was not a man. The boy, happy and proud ofthese attentions from the first woman who had ever taken notice of him, manifested before long his preference for Adèle: so was the new-comercalled. 

Germinie was passionately jealous. Jealousy was the foundation of hernature; it was the dregs of her affection and gave it its bitter taste. Those whom she loved she wished to have entirely to herself, to possessthem absolutely. She demanded that they should love no one but her. Shecould not permit them to take from her and bestow upon others theslightest fragment of their affection: as she had earned it, it nolonger belonged to them; they were no longer entitled to dispose of it. She detested the people whom her mistress seemed to welcome morecordially than others, and with whom she was on most intimate terms. Byher ill-humor and her sullen manner she had offended, had almost drivenfrom the house, two or three of mademoiselle's old friends, whose visitswounded her; as if the old ladies came there for the purpose ofabstracting something from the rooms, of taking a little of her mistressfrom her. People of whom she had once been fond became odious to her:she did not consider that they were fond enough of her; she hated themfor all the love she wanted from them. Her heart was despotic andexacting in everything. As it gave all, it demanded all in return. Atthe least sign of coldness, at the slightest indication that she had arival, she would fly into a rage, tear her hair, pass her nights inweeping, and execrate the whole world. 

Seeing that other woman make herself at home in the shop and adopt atone of familiarity with the young man, all Germinie's jealous instinctswere aroused and changed to furious rage. Her hatred flew to arms andrebelled, with her disgust, against the shameless, brazen-facedcreature, who could be seen on Sunday sitting at table on the outerboulevards with soldiers, and who had blue marks on her face on Monday. She did her utmost to induce Madame Jupillon to turn her away; but shewas one of the best customers of the creamery, and the _crémière_ mildlyrefused to close her doors upon her. Germinie had recourse to the sonand told him that she was a miserable creature. But that only served toattach the young man the closer to the vile woman, whose evil reputationdelighted him. Moreover, he had the cruel mischievous instinct of youth, and he redoubled his attentions to her simply to see "the nose" thatGerminie made and to enjoy her despair. Soon Germinie discovered thatthe woman's intentions were more serious than she had at first supposed:she began to understand what she wanted of the child, --for the tallyouth of seventeen was still a child in her eyes. Thenceforward she hungupon their steps; she was always beside them, never left them alone fora moment, made one at all their parties, at the theatre or in thecountry, joined them in all their walks, was always at hand and in theway, seeking to hold Adèle back, and to restore her sense of decency bya word in an undertone: "A mere boy! ain't you ashamed?" she would sayto her. And the other would laugh aloud, as if it were a good joke. 

When they left the theatre, enlivened and heated by the feverishexcitement of the performance and the place; when they returned from anexcursion to the country, laden with a long day's sunshine, intoxicatedwith the blue sky and the pure air, excited by the wine imbibed atdinner, amid the sportive liberties in which the woman of the people, drunk with enjoyment and with the delights of unlimited good cheer, andwith the senses keyed up to the highest pitch of joviality, makes boldto indulge at night, Germinie tried to be always between the maid andJupillon. She never relaxed her efforts to break the lovers' hold uponeach other's arms, to unbind them, to uncouple them. Never wearying ofthe task, she was forever separating them, luring them away from eachother. She placed her body between those bodies that were groping foreach other. She glided between the hands outstretched to touch eachother; she glided between the lips that were put forth in search ofother proffered lips. But of all this that she prevented she felt thebreath and the shock. She felt the pressure of the hands she held apart, the caresses that she caught on the wing and that missed their mark andwent astray upon her. The hot breath of the kisses she intercepted blewupon her cheek. Involuntarily, and with a feeling of horror, she becamea party to the embracing, she was infected with the desires aroused bythis constant friction and struggling, which diminished day by day theyoung man's restraint and respect for her person. 

It happened one day that she was less strong against herself than shehad previously been. On that occasion she did not elude his advances soabruptly as usual. Jupillon felt that she stopped short. Germinie feltit even more keenly than he; but she was at the end of her efforts, exhausted with the torture she had undergone. The love which, comingfrom another, she had turned aside from Jupillon, had slowly taken fullpossession of her own heart. Now it was firmly rooted there, and, bleeding with jealousy, she found that she was incapable of resistance, weak and fainting, like a person fatally wounded, in presence of the joythat had come to her. 

She repelled the young man's audacious attempts, however, without aword. She did not dream of belonging to him otherwise than as a friend, or giving way farther than she had done. She lived upon the thought oflove, believing that she could live upon it always. And in the ecstaticexaltation of her thoughts, she put aside all memory of her fall, andrepressed her desires. She remained shuddering and pure, lost andsuspended in abysses of affection, neither enjoying nor wishing foraught from the lover but a caress, as if her heart were made only forthe joy of kissing. 

X

This happy though unsatisfied love produced a strange physiologicalphenomenon in Germinie's physical being. One would have said that thepassion that was alive within her renewed and transformed her lymphatictemperament. She did not seem, as before, to extract her life, drop bydrop, from a penurious spring: it flowed through her arteries in a full, generous stream; she felt the tingling sensation of rich blood over herwhole body. She seemed to be filled with the warm glow of health, andthe joy of living beat its wings in her breast like a bird in thesunlight. 

A marvelous animation had come to her. The miserable nervous energy thatonce sustained her had given place to healthy activity, to bustling, restless, overflowing gayety. She had no trace now of the weakness, thedejection, the prostration, the supineness, the sluggishness thatformerly distinguished her. The heavy, drowsy feeling in the morning wasa thing of the past; she awoke feeling fresh and bright, and alive in aninstant to the cheer of the new day. She dressed in haste, playfully;her agile fingers moved of themselves, and she was amazed to be sobright and full of activity during the hours of faintness beforebreakfast, when she had so often felt her heart upon her lips. Andthroughout the day she had the same consciousness of physicalwell-being, the same briskness of movement. She must be always on themove, walking, running, doing something, expending her strength. Attimes all that she had lived through seemed to have no existence; thesensations of living that she had hitherto experienced seemed to herlike a far-off dream, or as if dimly seen in the background of asleeping memory. The past lay behind her, as if she had traversed it, covered with a veil like one in a swoon, or with the unconsciousness ofa somnambulist. It was the first time that she had experienced thefeeling, the impression, at once bitter and sweet, violent andcelestial, of the game of life brilliant in its plenitude, itsregularity and its power. 

She ran up and downstairs for a nothing. At a word from mademoiselle shewould trip down the whole five flights. When she was seated, her feetdanced on the floor. She brushed and scrubbed and beat and shook andwashed and set to rights, without rest or reprieve, always at work, filling the apartment with her goings and comings, and the incessantbustle that followed her about. --"Mon Dieu!" her mistress would say, stunned by the uproar she made, just like a child, --"you're turningthings upside down, Germinie! that will do for that!"

One day, when she went into Germinie's kitchen, mademoiselle saw alittle earth in a cigar box on the leads. --"What's that?" sheasked. --"That's grass--that I planted--to look at, " said Germinie. --"Soyou're in love with grass now, eh? All you need now is to havecanaries!"

XI

In the course of a few months, Germinie's life, her whole life belongedto the _crémière_. Mademoiselle's service was not exacting and took butlittle time. A whiting or a cutlet--that was all the cooking there wasto be done. Mademoiselle might have kept her with her in the evening forcompany: she preferred, however, to send her away, to drive her out ofdoors, to force her to take a little air and diversion. She asked onlythat she would return at ten o'clock to help her to bed; and yet whenGerminie was a little late, mademoiselle undressed herself and went tobed alone very comfortably. Every hour that her mistress left her atleisure, Germinie passed in the shop. She fell into the habit of goingdown to the creamery in the morning, when the shutters were removed, andgenerally carried them inside; she would take her _café au lait_ thereand remain until nine o'clock, when she would go back and givemademoiselle her chocolate; and between breakfast and dinner she foundexcuses for returning two or three times, delaying and chattering in theback-shop on the slightest pretext. "What a magpie you are getting tobe!" mademoiselle would say, in a scolding voice, but with a smilingface. 

At half past five, when her mistress's little dinner was cleared away, she would run down the stairs four at a time, install herself at MèreJupillon's, wait until ten o'clock, clamber up the five flights, and infive minutes undress her mistress, who submitted unresistingly, albeitshe was somewhat astonished that Germinie should be in such haste to goto bed; she remembered the time when she had a mania for moving hersleepy body from one easy-chair to another, and was never willing to goup to her room. While the candle was still smoking on mademoiselle'snight table, Germinie would be back at the creamery, this time to remainuntil midnight, until one o'clock; often she did not go until apoliceman, noticing the light, tapped on the shutters and made themclose up. 

In order to be always there and to have the right to be always there, tomake herself a part of the shop, to keep her eyes constantly upon theman she loved, to hover about him, to keep him, to be always brushingagainst him, she had become the servant of the establishment. She sweptthe shop, she prepared the old woman's meals and the food for the dogs. She waited upon the son; she made his bed, she brushed his clothes, shewaxed his boots, happy and proud to touch what he touched, thrillingwith pleasure when she placed her hand where he placed his body, andready to kiss the mud upon the leather of his boots, because it washis!

She did the menial work, she kept the shop, she served the customers. Madame Jupillon rested everything upon her shoulders; and while thegood-natured girl was working and perspiring, the bulky matron, assumingthe majestic, leisurely air of an annuitant, anchored upon a chair inthe middle of the sidewalk and inhaling the fresh air of the street, fingered and rattled the precious coin in the capacious pocket beneathher apron--the coin that rings so sweetly in the ears of the pettytradesmen of Paris, that the retired shopkeeper is melancholy beyondwords at first, because he no longer has the chinking and the tinklingunder his hand. 

XII

When the spring came, Germinie said to Jupillon almost every evening:"Suppose we go as far as the beginning of the fields?"

Jupillon would put on his flannel shirt with red and black squares, andhis black velvet cap; and they would start for what the people of thequarter call "the beginning of the fields. "

They would go up the Chaussée Clignancourt, and, with the flood ofParisians from the faubourg hurrying to drink a little fresh air, wouldwalk on toward the great patch of sky that rose straight from thepavements, at the top of the ascent, between the two lines of houses, unobstructed except by an occasional omnibus. The air was growing coolerand the sun shone only upon the roofs of the houses and the chimneys. Asfrom a great door opening into the country, there came from the end ofthe street and from the sky beyond, a breath of boundless space andliberty. 

At the Château-Rouge they found the first tree, the first foliage. Then, at Rue du Château, the horizon opened before them in dazzling beauty. The fields stretched away in the distance, glistening vaguely in thepowdery, golden haze of seven o'clock. All nature trembled in thedaylight dust that the day leaves in its wake, upon the verdure it blotsfrom sight and the houses it suffuses with pink. 

Frequently they descended the footpath covered with the figures of thegame of hop-scotch marked out in charcoal, by long walls with anoccasional overhanging branch, by lines of detached houses with gardensbetween. At their left rose tree-tops filled with light, clusteringfoliage pierced by the beams of the setting sun, which cast lines offire across the bars of the iron gateways. After the gardens camehedgerows, estates for sale, unfinished buildings erected upon the lineof projected streets and stretching out their jagged walls into emptyspace, with heaps of broken bottles at their feet; large, low, plasteredhouses, with windows filled with bird-cages and cloths, and with the Yof the sink-pipes at every floor; and openings into enclosures thatresembled barnyards, studded with little mounds on which goats werebrowsing. 

They would stop here and there and smell the flowers, inhale the perfumeof a meagre lilac growing in a narrow lane. Germinie would pluck a leafin passing and nibble at it. 

Flocks of joyous swallows flew wildly about in circles and in fantasticfigures over her head. The birds called. The sky answered the cages. Sheheard everything about her singing, and glanced with a glad eye atthe women in chemisettes at the windows, the men in their shirt sleevesin the little gardens, the mothers on the doorsteps with their littleones between their legs. 

[Illustration: Chapter XII

_But at the fortifications her pleasure returned. She would go withJupillon and sit upon the slope of the embankment. Beside her werefamilies innumerable, workmen lying flat upon their faces, smallannuitants gazing at the horizon through spy-glasses, philosophers ofwant, bent double, with their hands upon their knees, the greasy coatscharacteristic of old men, and black hats worn as red as their redbeards. _]

At the foot of the slope the pavement came to an end. The street wassucceeded by a broad, white, chalky, dusty road, made of débris, oldpieces of plaster, crumbs of lime and bricks; a sunken road, with deepruts, polished on the edges, made by the iron tires of the huge greatwheels of carts laden with hewn stone. At that point began the thingsthat collect where Paris ends, the things that grow where grass does notgrow, one of those arid landscapes that large cities create around them, the first zone of suburbs _intra muros_ where nature is exhausted, thesoil used up, the fields sown with oyster shells. Beyond was awilderness of half-enclosed yards displaying numbers of carts and truckswith their shafts in the air against the sky, stone-cutters' sheds, factories built of boards, unfinished workmen's houses, full of gaps andopen to the light, and bearing the mason's flag, wastes of gray andwhite sand, kitchen gardens marked out with cords, and, on the lowerlevel, bogs to which the embankment of the road slopes down in oceans ofsmall stones. 

Soon they would reach the last lantern hanging on a green post. Peoplewere still coming and going about them. The road was alive and amusedthe eyes. They met women carrying their husband's canes, lorettes insilk dresses leaning on the arms of their blouse-clad brothers, oldwomen in bright-colored ginghams walking about with folded arms, enjoying a moment's rest from labor. Workmen were drawing their childrenin little wagons, urchins returning with their rods from fishing atSaint-Ouen, and men and women dragging branches of flowering acacia atthe ends of sticks. 

Sometimes a pregnant woman would pass, holding out her arms to a yetsmall child, and casting the shadow of her pregnancy upon the wall. 

And everyone moved tranquilly, blissfully, at a pace that told of thewish to delay, with the awkward ease and the happy indolence of thosewho walk for pleasure. No one was in a hurry, and against the unbrokenhorizon line, crossed from time to time by the white smoke of a railroadtrain, the groups of promenaders were like black spots, almostmotionless, in the distance. 

Behind Montmartre, they came to those great moats, as it were, thosesloping squares, where narrow, gray, much-trodden paths cross andrecross. A few blades of shriveled, yellow grass grew thereabout, softened by the rays of the setting sun, which they could see, allablaze, between the houses. And Germinie loved to watch the wool-combersat work there, the quarry horses at pasture in the bare fields, themadder-red trousers of the soldiers who were playing at bowls, thechildren flying kites that made black spots in the clear air. Passingall these, they turned to cross the bridge over the railroad by thewretched settlement of ragpickers, the stonemasons' quarter at the footof Clignancourt hill. They would walk quickly by those houses built ofmaterials stolen from demolished buildings, and exuding the horrors theyconceal; the wretched structures, half cabin, half burrow, causedGerminie a vague feeling of terror: it seemed to her as if all thecrimes of Night were lurking there. 

But at the fortifications her pleasure returned. She would go withJupillon and sit upon the slope of the embankment. Beside her werefamilies innumerable, workmen lying flat upon their faces, smallannuitants gazing at the horizon through spy-glasses, philosophers ofwant, bent double, with their hands upon their knees, the greasy coatscharacteristic of old men, and black hats worn as red as their redbeards. The air was full of rich harmonies. Below her, in the moat, amusical society was playing at each corner. Before her eyes was amulti-colored crowd, white blouses, children in blue aprons runningaround, a game of riding at the ring in progress, wine shops, cakeshops, fried fish stalls, and shooting galleries half hidden in clumpsof verdure, from which arose staves bearing the tricolor; and fartheraway, in a bluish haze, a line of tree tops marked the location of aroad. To the right she could see Saint-Denis and the towering basilica;at her left, above a line of houses that were becoming indistinct, thesun was setting over Saint-Ouen in a disk of cherry-colored flame, andprojecting upon the gray horizon shafts of light like red pillars thatseemed to support it tremblingly. Often a child's balloon would passswiftly across the dazzling expanse of sky. 

They would go down, pass through the gate, walk along by the Lorrainesausage shops, the dealers in honeycomb, the board _cabarets_, theverdureless, still unpainted arbors, where a noisy multitude of men andwomen and children were eating fried potatoes, mussels and prawns, untilthey reached the first field, the first living grass: on the edge of thegrass there was a handcart laden with gingerbread and peppermintlozenges, and a woman selling hot cocoa on a table in the furrow. Astrange country, where everything was mingled--the smoke from thefrying-pan and the evening vapor, the noise of quoits on the head of acask and the silence shed from the sky, the city barrier and the idyllicrural scene, the odor of manure and the fresh smell of green wheat, thegreat human Fair and Nature! Germinie enjoyed it, however; and, urgingJupillon to go farther, walking on the very edge of the road, she wouldconstantly step in among the grain to enjoy the fresh, cool sensation ofthe stalks against her stockings. When they returned she always wantedto go upon the slope once more. The sun had by that time disappeared andthe sky was gray below, pink in the centre and blue above. The horizongrew dark; from green the trees became a dark brown and melted into thesky; the zinc roofs of the wine shops looked as if the moon wereshining upon them, fires began to appear in the darkness, the crowdbecame gray, and the white linen took on a bluish tinge. Little bylittle everything would fade away, be blotted out, lose its form andcolor in a dying remnant of colorless daylight, and through theincreasing darkness the voices of a class whose life begins at night, and the voice of the wine beginning to sing, would arise, mingled withthe din of the rattles. Upon the slope the tops of the tall grass wavedto and fro in the gentle breeze. Germinie would make up her mind to go. She would wend her way homeward, filled with the influence of thefalling night, abandoning herself to the uncertain vision of thingshalf-seen, passing the dark houses, and finding that everything alongher road had turned paler, as it were--wearied by the long walk overrough roads, and content to be weary and slow and half-fainting, andwith a feeling of peace at her heart. 

At the first lighted lanterns on Rue du Château, she would fall from herdream to the pavement. 

XIII

Madame Jupillon's face always wore a pleased expression when Germinieappeared; when she kissed her she was very effusive, when she spoke toher her voice was caressing, when she looked at her her glance was mostamiable. The huge creature's kind heart seemed, when with her, toabandon itself to the emotion, the affection, the trustfulness of a sortof maternal tenderness. She took Germinie into her confidence as to herbusiness, as to her woman's secrets, as to the most private affairs ofher life. She seemed to open her heart to her as to a person of her ownblood, whom she desired to make familiar with matters of interest to thefamily. When she spoke of the future, she always referred to Germinie asone from whom she was never to be separated, and who formed a part ofthe household. Often she allowed certain discreet, mysterious smiles toescape her, smiles which made it appear that she saw all that was goingon and was not angry. Sometimes, too, when her son was sitting byGerminie's side, she would let her eyes, moist with a mother's tears, rest upon them, and would embrace them with a glance that seemed tounite her two children and call down a blessing on their heads. 

Without speaking, without ever uttering a word that could be construedas an engagement, without divulging her thoughts or binding herself inany way, and all the time repeating that her son was still very young tothink of being married, she encouraged Germinie's hopes and illusions byher whole bearing, her airs of secret indulgence and of complicity, sofar as her heart was concerned; by those meaning silences when sheseemed to open to her a mother-in-law's arms. And displaying all hertalents in the way of hypocrisy, drawing upon her hidden mines ofsentiment, her good-natured shrewdness, and the consummate, intricatecunning that fat people possess, the corpulent matron succeeded invanquishing Germinie's last resistance by dint of this tacit assuranceand promise of marriage; and she finally allowed the young man's ardorto extort from her what she believed that she was giving in advance tothe husband. 

XIV

As Germinie was going down the servant's staircase one day, she heardAdèle's voice calling her over the banister and telling her to bring hertwo sous' worth of butter and ten of absinthe. 

"Oh! you can sit down a minute, you know you can, " said Adèle, when shebrought her the absinthe and the butter. "I never see you now, you'llnever come in. Come! you have plenty of time to be with your old woman. For my part, I couldn't live with an Antichrist's face like hers! Sostay. This is the house without work to-day. There isn't a sou--madame'sabed. Whenever there's no money, she goes to bed, does madame; she staysin bed all day, reading novels. Have some of this?"--And she offered herher glass of absinthe. --"No? oh! no, you don't drink. You're veryfoolish. It's a funny thing not to drink. Say, it would be very nice ofyou to write me a little line for my dearie. Hard work, you know. I havetold you about it. See, here's madame's pen--and her paper--it smellsgood. Are you ready? He's a good fellow, my dear, and no mistake! He'sin the butcher line as I told you. Ah! my word! I mustn't rub him thewrong way! When he's had a glass of blood after killing his beasts, he'slike a madman--and if you're obstinate with him--Dame! why then hethumps you! But what would you have? He does that to make him strong. Ifyou could see him thump himself on the breast--blows that would kill anox, and say: 'That's a wall, that is!' Ah! he's a gentleman, I tell you!Are you thinking about the letter, eh? Make it one of the fetching kind. Say nice things to him, you know--and a little sad--he adores that. Atthe theatre he doesn't like anything that doesn't make him cry. Lookhere! Imagine that you're writing to a lover of your own. "

Germinie began to write. 

"Say, Germinie! Have you heard? Madame's taken a strange idea into herhead. It's a funny thing about women like her, who can hold their headsup with the greatest of 'em, who can have everything, hobnob with kingsif they choose! And there's nothing to be said--when one is like madame, you know, when one has such a body as that! And then the way they loadthemselves down with finery, with their tralala of dresses and laceeverywhere and everything else--how do you suppose anyone can resistthem? And if it isn't a gentleman, if it's someone like us--you can seehow much more all that will catch him; a woman in velvet goes to hisbrain. Yes, my dear, just fancy, here's madame gone daft on that_gamin_ of a Jupillon! That's all we needed to make us die of hungerhere!"

Germinie, with her pen in the air over the letter she had begun, lookedup at Adèle, devouring her with her eyes. 

"That brings you to a standstill, doesn't it?" said Adèle, sipping herabsinthe, her face lighted up with joy at sight of Germinie'sdiscomposed features. "Oh! it is too absurd, really; but it's true, 'ponmy word it's true. She noticed the _gamin_ on the steps of the shop theother day, coming home from the races. She's been there two or threetimes on the pretence of buying something. She'll probably have someperfumery sent from there--to-morrow, I think. --Bah! it's sickening, isn't it? It's their affair. Well! what about my letter? Is it what Itold you that makes you so stupid? You played the prude--I didn'tknow--Oh! yes, yes, now I remember; that's what it is--What was it yousaid to me about the little one? I believe you didn't want anyone totouch him! Idiot!"

At a gesture of denial from Germinie, she continued:

"Nonsense, nonsense! What do I care? The kind of a child that, if youblew his nose, milk would come out! Thanks! that's not my style. However, that's your business. Come, now for my letter, eh?"

Germinie leaned over the sheet of paper. But she was burning up withfever; the quill cracked in her nervous fingers. "There, " she said, throwing it down after a few seconds, "I don't know what's the matterwith me to-day. I'll write it for you another time. "

"As you like, little one--but I rely on you. Come to-morrow, then. --I'lltell you some of madame's nonsense. We'll have a good laugh at her!"

And, when the door was closed, Adèle began to roar with laughter: it hadcost her only a little _blague_ to unearth Germinie's secret. 

XV

So far as young Jupillon was concerned, love was simply the satisfactionof a certain evil curiosity, which sought, in the knowledge andpossession of a woman, the privilege and the pleasure of despising her. Just emerging from boyhood, the young man had brought to his first_liaison_ no other ardor, no other flame than the cold instincts ofrascality awakened in boys by vile books, the confidences of theircomrades, boarding-school conversation, the first breath of impuritywhich debauches desire. The sentiment with which the young man usuallyregards the woman who yields to him, the caresses, the loving words, theaffectionate attentions with which he envelops her--nothing of all thatexisted in Jupillon's case. Woman was to him simply an obscene image;and a passion for a woman seemed to him desirable as being prohibited, illicit, vulgar, cynical and amusing--an excellent opportunity fortrickery and sarcasm. 

Sarcasm--the low, cowardly, despicable sarcasm of the dregs of thepeople--was the beginning and the end of this youth. He was a perfecttype of those Parisians who bear upon their faces the mockingscepticism of the great city of _blague_ in which they are born. Thesmile, the shrewdness and the mischief of the Parisian physiognomy werealways mocking and impertinent in him. Jupillon's smile had the jovialexpression imparted by a wicked mouth, a mouth that was almost cruel atthe corners of the lips, which curled upward and were always twitchingnervously. His face was pale with the pallor that nitric acid strongenough to eat copper gives to the complexion, and in his sharp, pert, bold features were mingled bravado, energy, recklessness, intelligence, impudence and all sorts of rascally expressions, softened, at certaintimes, by a cat-like, wheedling air. His trade of glove-cutter--he hadtaken up with that trade after two or three unsuccessful trials as anapprentice in other crafts--the habit of working in the shop-windows, ofbeing on exhibition to the passers-by, had given to his whole person theself-assurance and the dandified airs of a _poseur_. Sitting in thework-shop on the street, with his white shirt, his little black cravat_à la Colin_, and his skin-tight pantaloons, he had adopted an awkwardair of nonchalance, the pretentious carriage and _canaille_ affectationsof the workman who knows he is being stared at. And various littlerefinements of doubtful taste, the parting of the hair in the middle andbrushing it down over the temples, the low shirt collars that left thewhole neck bare, the striving after the coquettish effects thatproperly belong to the other sex, gave him an uncertain appearance, which was made even more ambiguous by his beardless face, marred only bya faint suggestion of a moustache, and his sexless features to whichpassion and ill-temper imparted all the evil quality of a shrewishwoman's face. But in Germinie's eyes all these airs and this Jupillonstyle were of the highest distinction. 

Thus constituted, with nothing lovable about him and incapable of agenuine attachment even through his passions, Jupillon was greatlyembarrassed and bored by this adoration which became intoxicated withitself, and waxed greater day by day. Germinie wearied him to death. Sheseemed to him absurd in her humiliation, and laughable in her devotion. He was weary, disgusted, worn out with her. He had had enough of herlove, enough of her person. And he had no hesitation about cutting loosefrom her, without charity or pity. He ran away from her. He failed tokeep the appointments she made. He pretended that he was kept away byaccident, by errands to be done, by a pressure of work. At night, shewaited for him and he did not come; she supposed that he was detained bybusiness: in fact he was at some low billiard hall, or at some ball atthe barrier. 

XVI

There was a ball at the _Boule-Noire_ one Thursday. The dancing was infull blast. 

The ball-room had the ordinary appearance of modern places of amusementfor the people. It was brilliant with false richness and tawdrysplendor. There were paintings there, and tables at which wine was sold, gilded chandeliers and glasses that held a quartern of brandy, velvethangings and wooden benches, the shabbiness and rusticity of anale-house with the decorations of a cardboard palace. 

Garnet velvet lambrequins with a fringe of gold lace hung at the windowsand were economically copied in paint beneath the mirrors, which werelighted by three-branched candelabra. On the walls, in large whitepanels, pastoral scenes by Boucher, surrounded with painted frames, alternated with Prud'hon's _Seasons_, which were much astonished to findthemselves in such a place; and above the windows and doors dropsicalLoves gamboled among five roses protruding from a pomade jar of the sortused by suburban hair-dressers. Square pillars, embellished with meagrearabesques, supported the ceiling in the centre of the hall, wherethere was a small octagonal stand containing the orchestra. An oakenrail, waist high, which served as a back to a cheap red bench, enclosedthe dancers. And against this rail, on the outside, were tables paintedgreen and two rows of benches, surrounding the dance with a café. 

In the dancers' enclosure, beneath the fierce glare and the intense heatof the gas, were women of all sorts, dressed in dark, worn, rumpledwoolens, women in black tulle caps, women in black _paletots_, women in_caracos_ worn shiny at the seams, women in fur tippets bought ofopen-air dealers and in shops in dark alleys. And in the wholeassemblage not one of the youthful faces was set off by a collar, not aglimpse of a white skirt could be seen among the whirling dancers, not aglimmer of white about these women, who were all dressed in gloomycolors, the colors of want, to the ends of their unpolished shoes. Thisabsence of linen gave to the ball an aspect as of poverty in mourning;it imparted to all the faces a touch of gloom and uncleanness, oflifelessness and earthiness--a vaguely forbidding aspect, in which therewas a suggestion of the Hôtel-Dieu and the Mont-de-Piété!

An old woman in a wig with the hair parted at the side passed in frontof the tables, with a basket filled with pieces of Savoy cake and redapples. 

From time to time the dance, in its twisting and turning, disclosed asoiled stocking, the typical Jewish features of a street pedlar ofsponges, red fingers protruding from black mitts, a swarthy moustachedface, an under-petticoat soiled with the mud of night before last, asecond-hand-skirt, stiff and crumpled, of flowered calico, the cast-offfinery of some kept mistress. 

The men wore _paletots_, small, soft caps pulled down over their ears, and woolen comforters untied and hanging down their backs. They invitedthe women to dance by pulling them by the cap ribbons that flutteredbehind them. Some few, in hats and frockcoats and colored shirts, had aninsolent air of domesticity and a swagger befitting grooms in some greatfamily. 

Everybody was jumping and bustling about. The women frisked and caperedand gamboled, excited and stimulated by the spur of bestial pleasure. And in the evolutions of the contra-dance, one could hear brotheladdresses given: _Impasse du Dépotoir_. 

Germinie entered the hall just at the conclusion of a quadrille to theair of _La Casquette du père Bugeaud_, in which the cymbals, thesleigh-bells and the drum had infected the dancers with the giddinessand madness of their uproar. At a glance she embraced the whole room, all the men leading their partners back to the places marked by theircaps: she had been misled; _he_ was not there, she could not see him. However, she waited. She entered the dancers' enclosure and sat down onthe end of a bench, trying not to seem too much embarrassed. From theirlinen caps she judged that the women seated in line beside her wereservants like herself: comrades of her own class alarmed her less thanthe little brazen-faced hussies, with their hair in nets and their handsin the pockets of their _paletots_, who strolled humming about the room. But soon she aroused hostile attention, even on her bench. Her hat--onlyabout a dozen women at the ball wore hats--her flounced skirt, the whitehem of which could be seen under her dress, the gold brooch that securedher shawl awakened malevolent curiosity all about her. Glances andsmiles were bestowed upon her that boded her no good. All the womenseemed to be asking one another where this new arrival had come from, and to be saying to one another that she would take their lovers fromthem. Young women who were walking about the hall in pairs, with theirarms about one another's waists as if for a waltz, made her lower hereyes as they passed in front of her, and then went on with acontemptuous shrug, turning their heads to look back at her. 

She changed her place: she was met with the same smiles, the samewhispering, the same hostility. She went to the further end of the hall;all the women looked after her; she felt as if she were enveloped inmalicious, envious glances, from the hem of her dress to the flowers onher hat. Her face flushed. At times she feared that she should weep. Shelonged to leave the place, but she lacked courage to walk the length ofthe hall all alone. 

She began mechanically to watch an old woman who was slowly making thecircuit of the hall with a noiseless step, like a bird of night flyingin a circle. A black hat, of the hue of charred paper, confined her_bandeaux_ of grizzled hair. From her square, high masculine shoulders, hung a sombre-hued Scotch tartan. When she reached the door, she cast alast glance about the hall, that embraced everyone therein, with the eyeof a vulture seeking in vain for food. 

Suddenly there was an outcry: a police officer was ejecting a diminutiveyouth who tried to bite his hands and clung to the tables, againstwhich, as he was dragged along, he struck with a noise like breakingfurniture. 

As Germinie turned her head she spied Jupillon: he was sitting betweentwo women at a green table in a window-recess, smoking. One of the twowas a tall blonde with a small quantity of frizzled flaxen hair, a flat, stupid face and round eyes. A red flannel chemise lay in folds on herback, and she had both hands in the pockets of a black apron which shewas flapping up and down on her dark red skirt. The other, a short, darkcreature, whose face was still red from having been scrubbed with soap, was enveloped as to her head, with the coquetry of a fishwoman, in awhite knitted hood with a blue border. 

Jupillon had recognized Germinie. When he saw her rise and approach him, with her eyes fixed upon his face, he whispered something to the womanin the hood, rested his elbows defiantly on the table and waited. 

"Hallo! you here, " he exclaimed when Germinie stood before him, erect, motionless and mute. "This is a surprise!--Waiter! another bowl!"

And, emptying the bowl of sweetened wine into the two women's glasses, he continued: "Come, don't make up faces--sit down there. "

And, as Germinie did not budge: "Go on! These ladies are friends ofmine--ask them!"

"Mélie, " said the woman in the hood to the other woman, in a voice likea diseased crow's, "don't you see? She's monsieur's mother. Make roomfor the lady if she'd like to drink with us. "

Germinie cast a murderous glance at the woman. 

"Well! what's the matter?" the woman continued; "that don't suit you, madame, eh? Excuse me! you ought to have told me beforehand. How old doyou suppose she is, Mélie, eh? _Sapristi!_ You select young ones, myboy, you don't put yourself out!"

Jupillon smiled internally, and simpered and sneered externally. Hiswhole manner displayed the cowardly delight that evil-minded personstake in watching the suffering of those who suffer because of lovingthem. 

"I have something to say to you--to you!--not here--outside, " saidGerminie. 

"Much joy to you! Coming, Mélie?" said the woman in the hood, lightingthe stub of a cigar that Jupillon had left on the table beside a pieceof lemon. 

"What do you want?" said Jupillon, impressed, in spite of himself, byGerminie's tone. 

"Come!"

And she walked on ahead of him. As she passed, the people crowded abouther, laughing. She heard voices, broken sentences, subdued hooting. 

XVII

Jupillon promised Germinie not to go to the ball again. But he was justbeginning to make a name for himself at La Brididi, among the low hauntsnear the barrier, the _Boule-Noire_, the _Reine-Blanche_ and the_Ermitage_. He had become one of the dancers who make the guests leavetheir seats, who keep a whole roomful of people hanging on the soles oftheir boots as they toss them two inches above their heads, and whom thefair dancers of the locality invite to dance with them and sometimes payfor their refreshment to that end. The ball to him was not a ballsimply; it was a stage, an audience, popularity, applause, theflattering murmur of his name among the groups of people, an ovationaccorded to saltatory glory in the glare of the reverberators. 

On Sunday he did not go to the _Boule-Noire_; but on the followingThursday he went there again; and Germinie, seeing plainly enough thatshe could not prevent him from going, decided to follow him and to staythere as long as he did. Sitting at a table in the background, in theleast brilliantly lighted corner of the ball-room, she would follow himeagerly with her eyes throughout the whole contra-dance; and when it wasat an end, if he held back, she would go and seize him, take him almostby force from the hands and caresses of the women who persisted intrying to pull him back, to detain him by wicked wiles. 

As they soon came to know her, the insulting remarks in her neighborhoodceased to be vague and indistinct and muttered under the breath, as atthe first ball. The words were thrown in her face, the laughter spokealoud. She was obliged to pass her three hours amid a chorus of derisionthat pointed its finger at her, called her by name and cast her age inher face. At every turn she was forced to submit to the appellation of:_old woman!_ which the young hussies spat at her over their shoulders asthey passed. But they did at least look at her; often, however, dancingwomen invited by Jupillon to drink, and brought by him to the table atwhich Germinie was, would sit with their elbows on the table and theircheeks resting on their hands, drinking the bowl of mulled wine forwhich she paid, apparently unaware that there was another woman there, crowding into her place as if it were unoccupied, and making no replywhen she spoke to them. Germinie could have killed these creatures whomJupillon forced her to entertain and who despised her so utterly thatthey did not even notice her presence. 

The time arrived, when, having endured all she could endure and beingsickened by the humiliation she was forced to swallow, she conceivedthe idea of dancing herself. She saw no other way to avoid leaving herlover to others, to keep him by her all the evening, and perhaps to bindhim more closely to her by her success, if she had any chance ofsucceeding. Throughout a whole month she worked, in secret, to learn todance. She rehearsed the figures and the steps. She forced her body intounnatural attitudes, she wore herself out trying to master thecontortions and the manipulations of the skirt that she saw wereapplauded. At the end of the month she made the venture; but everythingtended to disconcert her and added to her awkwardness; the hostilitythat she could feel in the atmosphere, the smiles of astonishment andpity that played about the lips of the spectators when she took herplace in the dancers' enclosure. She was so absurd and so laughed at, that she had not the courage to make a second attempt. She buriedherself gloomily in her dark corner, only leaving it to hunt up Jupillonand carry him off, with the mute violence of a wife dragging her husbandout of the wineshop and leading him home by the arm. 

It was soon rumored in the street that Germinie went to these balls, that she never missed one of them. The fruit woman, at whose shop Adèlehad already held forth, sent her son "to see;" he returned with aconfirmation of the rumor, and told of all the petty annoyances to whichGerminie was subjected, but which did not keep her from returning. Thereafter there was no more doubt in the quarter as to the relationsbetween mademoiselle's servant and Jupillon--relations which somecharitable souls had hitherto persisted in denying. The scandal burstout, and in a week the poor girl, berated by all the slanderous tonguesin the quarter, baptized and saluted by the vilest names in the languageof the streets, fell at a blow from the most emphatically expressedesteem to the most brutally advertised contempt. 

Thus far her pride--and it was very great--had procured for her therespect and consideration which is bestowed, in the lorette quarters, upon a servant who honestly serves a virtuous mistress. She had becomeaccustomed to respect and deference and attention. She stood apart fromher comrades. Her unassailable probity, her conduct, as to which not aword could be said, her confidential relations with mademoiselle, whichcaused her mistress's honorable character to be reflected upon her, ledthe shopkeeper to treat her on a different footing from the other maids. They addressed her, cap in hand; they always called her _MademoiselleGerminie_. They hurried to wait upon her; they offered her the onlychair in the shop when she had to wait. Even when she contended overprices they were still polite with her and never called her _haggler_. Jests that were somewhat too broad were cut short when she appeared. Shewas invited to the great banquets, to family parties, and consulted uponbusiness matters. 

Everything changed as soon as her relations with Jupillon and herassiduous attendance at the _Boule-Noire_ were known. The quarter tookits revenge for having respected her. The brazen-faced maids in thehouse accosted her as one of their own kind. One, whose lover was atMazas, called her: "My dear. " The men accosted her familiarly, and withall the intimacy of thee and thou in glance and gesture and tone andtouch. The very children on the sidewalk, who were formerly trained tocourtesy politely to her, ran away from her as from a person of whomthey had been told to be afraid. She felt that she was being malignedbehind her back, handed over to the devil. She could not take a stepwithout walking through scorn and receiving a blow from her shame uponthe cheek. 

It was a horrible affliction to her. She suffered as if her honor werebeing torn from her, shred by shred, and dragged in the gutter. But themore she suffered, the closer she pressed her love to her heart andclung to him. She bore him no ill-will, she uttered no word of reproachto him. She attached herself to him by all the tears he caused her prideto shed. And now, in the street through which she passed but a shorttime ago, proudly and with head erect, she could be seen, bent double asif crouching over her fault, hurrying furtively along, with obliqueglances, dreading to be recognized, quickening her pace in front of theshops that swept their slanders out upon her heels. 

XVIII

Jupillon was constantly complaining that he was tired of working forothers, that he could not set up for himself, that he could not findfifteen or eighteen hundred francs in his mother's purse. He needed nomore than that, he said, to hire a couple of rooms on the ground floorand set up as a glover in a small way. Indeed he was already dreaming ofwhat he might do and laying out his plans: he would open a shop in thequarter, an excellent quarter for his business, as it was full ofpurchasers, and of makers of wretched gloves at five francs. He wouldsoon add a line of perfumery and cravats to his gloves; and then, whenhe had made a tidy sum, he would sell out and take a fine shop on Rue deRichelieu. 

Whenever he mentioned the subject Germinie asked him innumerablequestions. She wanted to know everything that was necessary to start inbusiness. She made him tell her the names of the tools andappurtenances, give her an idea of their prices and where they could bebought. She questioned him as to his trade and the details of his workso inquisitively and persistently that Jupillon lost his patience atlast and said to her:

"What's all this to you? The work sickens me enough now; don't mentionit to me!"

One Sunday she walked toward Montmartre with him. Instead of taking RueFrochot she turned into Rue Pigalle. 

"Why, this ain't the way, is it?" said Jupillon. 

"I know what I'm about, " said she, "come on. "

She had taken his arm, and she walked on, turning her head slightly awayfrom him so that he could not see what was taking place on her face. Half way along Rue Fontaine Saint-Georges, she halted abruptly in frontof two windows on the ground floor of a house, and said to him: "Look!"

She was trembling with joy. 

Jupillon looked; he saw between the two windows, on a glistening copperplate:

 _Magasin de Ganterie. _

 JUPILLON. 

He saw white curtains at the first window. Through the glass in theother he saw pigeon-holes and boxes, and, near the window, the littleglover's cutting board, with the great shears, the jar for clippings, and the knife to make holes in the skins in order to stretch them. 

"The concierge has your key, " she said. 

They entered the first room, the shop. 

She at once set about showing him everything. She opened the boxes andlaughed. Then she pushed open the door into the other room. "There, youwon't be stifled there as you are in the loft at your mother's. Do youlike it? Oh! it isn't handsome, but it's clean. I'd have liked to giveyou mahogany. Do you like that little rug by the bed? And the paper--Ididn't think of that----" She put a receipt for the rent in his hand. "See! this is for six months. Dame! you must go to work right off andearn some money. The few sous I had laid by are all gone. Oh! let me sitdown. You look so pleased--it gives me a turn--it makes my head spin. Ihaven't any legs. "

And she sank into a chair. Jupillon stooped over her to kiss her. 

"Ah! yes, they're not there any longer, " she said, seeing that he waslooking for her earrings. "They've gone like my rings. D'ye see, allgone----"

And she showed him her hands, bare of the paltry gems she had worked solong to buy. 

"They all went for the easy-chair, you see--but it's all horsehair. "

As Jupillon stood in front of her with an embarrassed air, as if he weretrying to find words with which to thank her, she continued:

"Why, you're a funny fellow. What's the matter with you? Ah! it's onthat account, is it?" And she pointed to the bedroom. "You're a stupid!I love you, don't I? Well then?"

Germinie said the words simply, as the heart says sublime things. 

XIX

She became _enceinte_. 

At first she doubted, she dared not believe it. But when she was certainof the fact, she was filled with immeasurable joy, a joy that overflowedher heart. Her happiness was so great and so overpowering that itstifled at a single stroke the anguish, the fear, the inward tremblingthat ordinarily disturb the maternity of unmarried women and poisonstheir anticipations of childbirth, the divine hope that lives and moveswithin them. The thought of the scandal caused by the discovery of her_liaison_, of the outcry in the quarter, the idea of the abominablething that had always made her think of suicide: dishonor, --even thefear of being detected by mademoiselle and dismissed by her--nothing ofall this could cast a shadow on her felicity. The child that sheexpected allowed her to see nothing but it, as if she had it already inher arms before her; and, hardly attempting to conceal her condition, she bore her woman's shame almost proudly through the streets, exultingand radiant in the thought that she was to be a mother. 

She was unhappy only because she had spent all her savings, and was notonly without money but had been paid several months' wages in advance byher mistress. She bitterly deplored having to receive her child in apoor way. Often, as she passed through Rue Saint-Lazare, she would stopin front of a linen-draper's, in whose windows were displayed stores ofrich baby-linen. She would devour with her eyes the pretty, daintyflowered garments, the piqué bibs, the long short-waisted dressestrimmed with English embroidery, the whole doll-like cherub's costume. Aterrible longing, --the longing of a pregnant woman, --to break the glassand steal it all, would come upon her: the clerks standing behind thedisplay framework became accustomed to seeing her take up her stationthere and would laughingly point her out to one another. 

Again, at intervals, amid the happiness that overflowed her heart, amidthe ecstasy that exalted her being, another disturbing thought passedthrough her mind. She would ask herself how the father would welcome hischild. Two or three times she had attempted to tell him of her conditionbut had not dared. At last, one day, seeing that his face wore theexpression she had awaited so long as a preliminary to telling himeverything, an expression in which there was a touch of affection, sheconfessed to him, blushing hotly and as if asking his forgiveness, whatit was that made her so happy. 

"That's all imagination!" said Jupillon. 

And when she had assured him that it was not imagination and that shewas positively five months advanced in pregnancy: "Just my luck!" theyoung man rejoined. "Thanks!" And he swore. "Would you mind telling mewho's going to feed the sparrow?"

"Oh! never you fear! it sha'n't suffer, I'll look out for that. And thenit'll be so pretty! Don't be afraid, no one shall know anything aboutit. I'll fix myself up. See! the last part of the time I'll walk likethis, with my head back--I won't wear any petticoats, and I'll pullmyself in--you'll see! Nobody shall notice anything, I tell you. Justthink of it! a little child of our own!"

"Well, as long as it's so, it's so, eh?" said the young man. 

"Say, " ventured Germinie, timidly, "suppose you should tell yourmother?"

"Ma? Oh! no, I rather think not. You must lie in first. After that we'lltake the brat to the house. It will give her a start, and perhaps she'llconsent without meaning to. "

XX

Twelfth Night arrived. It was the day on which Mademoiselle deVarandeuil gave a grand dinner-party regularly every year. She invitedall the children of her own family or her old friends' families, greatand small. The small suite would hardly hold them all. They were obligedto put part of the furniture on the landing, and a table was set in eachof the two rooms which formed mademoiselle's whole suite. For thechildren, that day was a great festival to which they looked forward fora week. They came running up the stairway behind the pastry-cook's men. At table they ate too much without being scolded. At night, they wereunwilling to go to bed, they climbed on the chairs and made a racketthat always gave Mademoiselle de Varandeuil a sick headache the nextday; but she bore them no grudge therefor: she had had the fullenjoyment of a genuine grandmother's fête, in listening to them, lookingat them, tying around their necks the white napkins that made them lookso rosy. And not for anything in the world would she have failed to givethis dinner-party, which filled her old maid's apartments with thefair-haired little imps of Satan, and brought thither, in a single day, an atmosphere of activity and youth and laughter that lasted a wholeyear. 

Germinie was preparing the dinner. She was whipping cream in an earthenbowl on her knees, when suddenly she felt the first pains. She looked ather face in the bit of a broken mirror that she had above her kitchendresser, and saw that she was pale. She went down to Adèle: "Give meyour mistress's rouge, " she said. And she put some on her cheeks. Thenshe went up again, and, refusing to listen to the voice of hersuffering, finished cooking the dinner. It had to be served, and sheserved it. At dessert, she leaned against the furniture and grasped thebacks of chairs as she passed the plates, hiding her torture with theghastly set smile of people whose entrails are writhing. 

"How's this, are you sick?" said her mistress, looking sharply at her. 

"Yes, mademoiselle, a little--it may be the charcoal or the hotkitchen. "

"Go to bed--we don't need you any more, and you can clean up to-morrow. "

She went down to Adèle once more. 

"It's come, " she said; "call a cab quick. It was Rue de la Huchettewhere you said your midwife lives, wasn't it? opposite a copperplaner's? Haven't you a pen and paper?"

And she sat down to write a line to her mistress. She told her that shewas too ill to work, that she had gone to the hospital, but would nottell her where, because she would fatigue herself coming to see her;that she would come back within a week. 

"There you are!" said Adèle, all out of breath, giving her the number ofthe cab. 

"I can stay there, " said Germinie; "not a word to mademoiselle. That'sall. Swear you won't say a word to her!"

She was descending the stairs when she met Jupillon. 

"Hallo!" said he, "where are you going? going out?"

"I am going to lie in----It took me during the day. There was a greatdinner-party here----Oh! but it was hard work! Why do you come here? Itold you never to come; I don't want you to!"

"Because----I'll tell you----because just now I absolutely must haveforty francs. 'Pon my word, I must. "

"Forty francs! Why I have just that for the midwife!"

"That's hard luck----look out! What do you want to do?" And he offeredhis arm to assist her. "_Cristi!_ I'm going to have hard work to get 'emall the same. "

He had opened the carriage door. 

"Where do you want him to take you?"

"To La Bourbe, " said Germinie. And she slipped the forty francs into hishand. 

"No, no, " said Jupillon. 

"Oh! nonsense----there or somewhere else! Besides, I have seven francsleft. "

The cab started away. 

Jupillon stood for a moment motionless on the sidewalk, looking at thetwo napoleons in his hand. Then he ran after the cab, stopped it, andsaid to Germinie through the window:

"At least, I can go with you?"

"No, I am in too much pain, I'd rather be alone, " she replied, writhingon the cushions of the cab. 

After an endless half hour, the cab stopped on Rue de Port-Royal, infront of a black door surmounted by a violet lantern, which announced tosuch medical students as happened to pass through the street that therewas that night, and at that moment, the curious and interestingspectacle of a difficult labor in progress at La Maternité. 

The driver descended from his box and rang. The concierge, assisted by afemale attendant, took Germinie's arms and led her up-stairs to one ofthe four beds in the _salle d'accouchement_. Once in bed, her painsbecame somewhat less excruciating. She looked about her, saw the otherbeds, all empty, and, at the end of the immense room, a hugecountry-house fireplace in which a bright fire was blazing, and in frontof which, hanging upon iron bars, sheets and cloths and bandages weredrying. 

Half an hour later, Germinie gave birth to a little girl. Her bed wasmoved into another room. She had been there several hours, lost in theblissful after-delivery weakness which follows the frightful agony ofchildbirth, happy and amazed to find that she was still alive, swimmingin a sea of blessed relief and deeply penetrated with the joy of havingcreated. Suddenly a loud cry: "I am dying!" caused her to turn her eyesin the direction from which it came: she saw one of her neighbors throwher arms around the neck of one of the assistant nurses, fall backalmost instantly, move a moment under the clothes, then lie perfectlystill. Almost at the same instant, another shriek arose from a bed onthe other side, a horrible, piercing, terrified shriek, as of one whosees death approaching: it was a woman calling the young assistant, withdesperate gestures; the assistant ran to her, leaned over her, and fellin a dead faint upon the floor. 

Thereupon silence reigned once more; but between the two dead bodies andthe half-dead assistant, whom the cold floor did not restore toconsciousness for more than an hour, Germinie and the other women whowere still alive in the room lay quiet, not daring even to ring the bellthat hung beside each bed to call for help. 

Thereafter La Maternité was the scene of one of those terrible puerperalepidemics which breathe death upon human fecundity, of one of thosecases of atmospheric poisoning which empty, in a twinkling and by wholerows, the beds of women lately delivered, and which once caused theclosing of La Clinique. They believed that it was a visitation of theplague, a plague that turns the face black in a few hours, carries allbefore it and snatches up the youngest and the strongest, a plague thatissues from the cradle--the Black Plague of mothers! All about Germinie, at all hours, especially at night, women were dying such deaths as themilk-fever causes, deaths that seemed to violate all nature's laws, agonizing deaths, accompanied by wild shrieks and troubled byhallucinations and delirium, death agonies that compelled theapplication of the strait-waistcoat, death agonies that caused thevictims to leap suddenly from their beds, carrying the clothes withthem, and causing the whole room to shudder at the thought that theywere dead bodies from the amphitheatre! Life departed as if it were tornfrom the body. The very disease assumed a ghastly shape and monstrousaspect. The bedclothes were lifted in the centre by the swelling causedby peritonitis, producing a vague, horrifying effect in the lamplight. 

For five days Germinie, lying swathed and bandaged in her bed, closingher eyes and ears as best she could, had the strength to combat allthese horrors, and yielded to them only at long intervals. She wasdetermined to live, and she clung to her strength by thinking of herchild and of mademoiselle. But, on the sixth day, her energy wasexhausted, her courage forsook her. A cold wave flowed into her heart. She said to herself that it was all over. The hand that death lays uponone's shoulder, the presentiment of death, was already touching her. Shefelt the first breath of the epidemic, the belief that she was itsdestined victim, and the impression that she was already half-possessedby it. Although unresigned, she succumbed. Her life, vanquishedbeforehand, hardly made an effort to struggle. At that crisis a headbent over her pillow, like a ray of light. 

It was the head of the youngest of the pupil-assistants, a fair head, with long golden locks and blue eyes so soft and sweet that the dyingsaw heaven opening its gates therein. When they saw her, delirious womensaid: "Look! the Blessed Virgin!"

"My child, " she said to Germinie, "you must ask for your discharge atonce. You must go away from here. You must dress warmly. You must wrapup well. As soon as you're at home and in bed, you must take a hotdraught of something or other. You must try to take a sweat. Then, itwon't do you any harm. But go away from here. It wouldn't be healthy foryou here to-night, " she said, glancing around at the beds. "Don't saythat I told you to go: you would get me discharged if you should. "

XXI

Germinie recovered in a few days. The joy and pride of having givenbirth to a tiny creature in whom her flesh was mingled with the flesh ofthe man she loved, the bliss of being a mother, saved her from thenatural results of a confinement in which she did not receive propercare. She was restored to health and had an apparent pleasure in livingthat her mistress had never before seen her manifest. 

Every Sunday, no matter what the weather might be, she left the houseabout eleven o'clock; mademoiselle believed that she went to see afriend in the country, and was delighted that her maid derived so muchbenefit from these days passed in the open air. Germinie would captureJupillon, who allowed himself to be taken in tow without too muchresistance, and they would start for Pommeuse where the child was, andwhere a good breakfast ordered by the mother awaited them. Once in thecarriage on the Mulhouse railway, Germinie would not speak or reply whenspoken to. She would lean out of the window, and all her thoughts seemedto be upon what lay before her. She gazed, as if her longing werestriving to outrun the steam. The train would hardly have stopped beforeshe had leaped out, tossed her ticket to the ticket-taker, and startedat a run on the Pommeuse road, leaving Jupillon behind. She drew nearerand nearer, she could see the house, she was there: yes, there was thechild! She would pounce upon her, snatch her from the nurse's arms withjealous hands--a mother's hands!--hug her, strain her to her heart, kissher, devour her with kisses and looks and smiles! She would gazeadmiringly at her for an instant and then, distraught with joy, mad withlove, would cover her with kisses to the tips of her little bare toes. Breakfast would be served. She would sit at the table with the child onher knees and eat nothing: she had kissed her so much that she had notyet looked at her, and she would begin to seek out points of resemblanceto themselves in the little one. One feature was his, anotherhers:--"She has your nose and my eyes. Her hair will be like yours intime. It will curl! Look, those are your hands--she is all you. " And forhours she would continue the inexhaustible and charming prattle of awoman who is determined to give a man his share of their daughter. Jupillon submitted to it all with reasonably good grace, thanks todivers three-sou cigars Germinie always produced from her pocket andgave to him one by one. Then he had found a means of diversion; theMorin flowed at the foot of the garden. Jupillon was a true Parisian: heloved to fish with a pole and line. 

And when summer came they stayed there all day, at the foot of thegarden, on the bank of the stream--Jupillon on a laundry board restingon two stakes, pole in hand, and Germinie sitting, with the child in herskirts, under the medlar tree that overhung the stream. On pleasantdays, the sun poured down upon the broad sparkling current, from whichbeams of light arose as from a mirror. It was like a display offireworks from the sky and the stream, amid which Germinie would holdthe little girl upon her feet and let her trample upon her with herlittle bare pink legs, in her short baby dress, her skin shimmering inspots in the sunlight, her flesh mottled with sunbeams like the flesh ofangels Germinie had seen in pictures. She had a divinely sweet sensationwhen the little one, with the active hands of children that cannot talk, touched her chin and mouth and cheeks, persisted in putting her fingersin her eyes, rested them playfully on the lids, and kept them movingover her whole face, tickling and tormenting her with the dear littledigits that seem to grope in the dark for a mother's features: it was asif her child's life and warmth were wandering over her face. From timeto time she would bestow half of her smile on Jupillon over the littleone's head, and would call to him: "Do look at her!"

Then the child would fall asleep with the open mouth that laughs insleep. Germinie would lean over her and listen to her breathing inrepose. And, soothed by the peaceful respiration, she would graduallyforget herself as she gazed dreamily at the poor abode of her happiness, the rustic garden, the apple-trees with their leaves covered with littleyellow snails and the red-cheeked apples on the southern limbs, thepoles, at whose feet the beanstalks, twisted and parched, were beginningto climb, the square of cabbages, the four sunflowers in the littlecircle in the centre of the path; and, close beside her, on the edge ofthe stream, the patches of grass covered with dog's mercury, the whiteheads of the nettles against the wall, the washerwomen's boxes, thebottles of lye and the bundle of straw scattered about by the antics ofa puppy just out of the water. She gazed and dreamed. She thought of thepast, having her future on her knees. With the grass and the trees andthe river that were before her eyes, she reconstructed, in memory, therustic garden of her rustic childhood. She saw again the two stonesreaching down to the water, from which her mother, when she was a littlechild, used to wash her feet before putting her to bed in summertime. 

"Look you, Père Remalard, " said Jupillon from his board, on one of thehottest days in August, to the peasant who was watching him, --"do youknow they won't bite at the red worm worth a sou?"

"You must try the gentle, " rejoined the peasant sententiously. 

"All right, I'll have my revenge with the gentle! Père Remalard, youmust get some calf's lights Thursday. You hang 'em up in that tree, andSunday we'll see. "

On the Sunday Jupillon had miraculous success with his fishing, andGerminie heard the first syllable issue from her daughter's mouth. 

XXII

On Wednesday morning, when she came downstairs, Germinie found a letterfor herself. In that letter, written on the back of a laundry receipt, the Remalard woman informed her that her child had fallen sick almostimmediately after her departure; that she had grown steadily worse; thatshe had consulted the doctor; that he said some insect had stung thechild; that she had been to him a second time; that she did not knowwhat more to do; that she had had pilgrimages made for her. The letterconcluded thus: "If you could see how troubled I am for your littleone--if you could see how good she is when she isn't suffering!"

This letter produced upon Germinie the effect of a push from behind. Shewent out and instinctively walked toward the railroad that would takeher to her little one. Her hair was uncombed and she was in herslippers, but she did not think of that. She must see her child, shemust see her instantly. Then she would come back. She thought ofmademoiselle's breakfast for a moment, then forgot it. Suddenly, half-way to the station, she saw a clock at a cab office and noticedthe hour: she remembered that there was no train at that time. Sheretraced her steps, saying to herself that she would hurry the breakfastand then make some excuse to be given her liberty for the rest of theday. But when the breakfast was served she could find none: her mind wasso full of her child that she could not invent a falsehood; herimagination was benumbed. And then, if she had spoken, if she had madethe request, she would have betrayed herself; she could feel the wordsupon her lips: "I want to go and see my child!" At night she dared notmake her escape; mademoiselle had been a little indisposed the nightbefore; she was afraid that she might need her. 

The next morning when she entered mademoiselle's room with a fable shehad invented during the night, all ready to ask for leave of absence, mademoiselle said to her, looking up from a letter that had just beensent up to her from the lodge: "Ah! my old friend De Belleuse wants youfor the whole day to-day, to help her with her preserves. Come, give memy two eggs, post-haste, and off with you. Eh? what! doesn't that suityou? What's the matter?"

"With me? why nothing at all!" Germinie found strength to say. 

All that endless day she passed standing over hot stewpans and sealingup jars, in the torture known only to those whom the chances of lifedetain at a distance from the sick bed of those dear to them. Shesuffered such heart-rending agony as those unhappy creatures suffer whocannot go where their anxiety calls them, and who, in the extremity ofdespair caused by separation and uncertainty, constantly imagine thatdeath will come in their absence. 

As she received no letter Thursday evening and none Friday morning, shetook courage. If the little one were growing worse the nurse would havewritten her. The little one was better: she imagined her saved, cured. Children are forever coming near dying, and they get well so quickly!And then hers was strong. She decided to wait, to be patient untilSunday, which was only forty-eight hours away, deceiving the remainderof her fears with the superstitions that say yes to hope, persuadingherself that her daughter had "escaped, " because the first person shemet in the morning was a man, because she had seen a red horse in thestreet, because she had guessed that a certain person would turn into acertain street, because she had ascended a flight of stairs in so manystrides. 

On Saturday, in the morning, when she entered Mère Jupillon's shop, shefound her weeping hot tears over a lump of butter that she was coveringwith a moist cloth. 

"Ah! it's you, is it?" said Mère Jupillon. "That poor charcoal woman!See, I'm actually crying over her! She just went away from here. Youdon't know--they can't get their faces clean in their trade withanything but butter. And here's her love of a daughter--she's atdeath's door, you know, the dear child. That's the way it is with us!Ah! _mon Dieu_, yes!--Well, as I was saying, she said to her just nowlike this: 'Mamma, I want you to wash my face in butter right away--forthe good God. '"

And Mère Jupillon began to sob. 

Germinie had fled. All that day she was unable to keep still. Again andagain she went up to her chamber to prepare the few things she proposedto take to her little one the next day, to dress her cleanly, to make alittle special toilet for her in honor of her recovery. As she went downin the evening to put Mademoiselle to bed, Adèle handed her a letterthat she had found for her below. 

XXIII

Mademoiselle had begun to undress, when Germinie entered her bedroom, walked a few steps, dropped upon a chair, and almost immediately, aftertwo or three long-drawn, deep, heart-breaking sighs, mademoiselle sawher throw herself backward, wringing her hands, and at last roll fromthe chair to the floor. She tried to lift her up, but Germinie wasshaken by such violent convulsions that the old woman was obliged to letthe frantic body fall again upon the floor; for all the limbs, whichwere for a moment contracted and rigid, lashed out to right and left, atrandom, with the sharp report of the trigger of a rifle, and threw downwhatever they came in contact with. At mademoiselle's shrieks on thelanding, a maid ran to a doctor's office near by but did not find him;four other women employed in the house assisted mademoiselle to liftGerminie up and carry her to the bed in her mistress's room, on whichthey laid her after cutting her corset lacings. 

The terrible convulsions, the nervous contortions of the limbs, thesnapping of the tendons had ceased; but her neck and her breast, whichwas uncovered where her dress was unbuttoned, moved up and down as ifwaves were rising and falling under the skin, and the rustling of theskirts showed that the movement extended to her feet. Her head thrownback, her face flushed, her eyes full of melancholy tenderness, of thepatient agony we see in the eyes of the wounded, the great veins clearlymarked under her chin, Germinie, breathing hard and paying no heed toquestions, raised her hands to her neck and throat and clawed at them;she seemed to be trying to tear out the sensation of something risingand falling within her. In vain did they make her inhale ether and drinkorange-flower water; the waves of grief that flowed through her body didnot cease their action; and her face continued to wear the sameexpression of gentle melancholy and sentimental anxiety, which seemed toplace the suffering of the heart above the suffering of the flesh inevery feature. For a long time everything seemed to wound her senses andto produce a painful effect upon them--the bright light, the sound ofvoices, the odor of the things about her. At last, after an hour ormore, a deluge of tears suddenly poured from her eyes and put an end tothe terrible crisis. After that there was nothing more than anoccasional convulsive shudder in the overburdened body, soon quieted byweariness and by general prostration. It was possible to carry Germinieto her own room. 

The letter Adèle handed her contained the news of her daughter's death. 

XXIV

As a result of this crisis, Germinie fell into a state of dumb, brutishsorrow. For months she was insensible to everything; for months, completely possessed and absorbed by the thought of the little creaturethat was no more, she carried her child's death in her entrails as shehad carried her life. Every evening, when she went up to her chamber, she took the poor darling's little cap and dress from the trunk at thefoot of her bed. She would gaze at them and touch them; she would laythem out on the bed; she would sit for hours weeping over them, kissingthem, talking to them, saying the things that a mother's bitter sorrowis wont to say to a little daughter's ghost. 

While weeping for her daughter the unhappy creature wept for herself aswell. A voice whispered to her that she was saved had the child lived;that to have that child to love was her Providence; that all that shedreaded in herself would be expended upon that dear head and besanctified there--her affections, her unreasoning impulses, her ardor, all the passions of her nature. It seemed to her that she had felt hermother's heart soothing and purifying her woman's heart. In herdaughter she saw a sort of celestial vision that would redeem her andmake her whole, a little angel of deliverance as it were, issuing fromher errors to fight for her and rescue her from the evil influenceswhich pursued her and by which she sometimes thought that she waspossessed. 

When she began to recover from the first prostration of despair, when, as the consciousness of life and the perception of objects returned toher, she looked about her with eyes that saw, she was aroused from hergrief by a more poignant cause of bitterness of spirit. 

Madame Jupillon, who had become too stout and too heavy to do what itwas necessary for her to do at the creamery, notwithstanding all theassistance rendered by Germinie, had sent to her province for a niece ofhers. She was the embodiment of the blooming youth of the country, awoman in whom there was still something of the child, active andvivacious, with black eyes full of sunlight, lips as round and red ascherries, the summer heat of her province in her complexion, the warmthof perfect health in her blood. Impulsive and ingenuous as she was, thegirl had, at first, drawn near to her cousin, simply and naturally, obeying the law of attraction that draws the young toward the young. Shehad met his friendly advances with the immodesty of innocence, artlesseffrontery, the liberties taught by life in the country, the happy follyof a nature abounding in high spirits, and with all sorts of ignoranthardihood, unblushing ingenuousness and rustic coquetry, against whichher cousin's vanity was without means of defence. The child's presencedeprived Germinie of all hope of repose. Mere girl as she was, shewounded her every minute in the day by her presence, her touch, hercaresses, everything in her amorous body that spoke of love. Herpreoccupation with Jupillon, the work that kept them constantlytogether, the provincial wonderment that she constantly exhibited, thehalf-confidences she allowed to come to her lips when the young man hadgone, her gayety, her jests, her healthy good-humor--everything helpedto exasperate Germinie and to arouse a sullen wrath within her;everything wounded that jealous heart, so jealous that the very animalscaused it a bitter pang by seeming to love someone whom it loved. 

She dared not speak to Mère Jupillon and denounce the little one to her, for fear of betraying herself; but whenever she found herself alone withJupillon she vented her feelings in recriminations, complaints andquarrels. She would remind him of an incident, a word, something he haddone or said, some answer he had made, a trifle forgotten by him butstill bleeding in her heart. 

"Are you mad?" Jupillon would say to her; "a slip of a girl!"--"A slipof a girl, eh? nonsense!--when she has such eyes that all the men stareat her in the street! I went out with her the other day--I wasashamed--I don't know how she did it, but we were followed by agentleman all the time. "--"Well, what if you were? She's a pretty girl, you know!"--"Pretty! pretty!" And at that word Germinie would hurlherself, figuratively speaking, at the girl's face, and claw it topieces with frantic words. 

Often she would end by saying to Jupillon: "Look here! you loveher!"--"Well! what then?" he would retort, highly entertained by thesedisputes, by the opportunity to watch the antics of this fierce wrathwhich he fanned with pretended sulkiness, and by the excitement oftrifling with the woman, whom he saw to be half insane under hissarcasms and his indifference, stumbling wildly about and running herhead against stone walls in the first paroxysms of madness. 

As a result of these scenes, repeated almost every day, a revolutiontook place in that excitable, extreme character, which knew no middlecourse, in that heart in which the most violent passions were constantlyclashing. Love, in which poison had long been at work, became decomposedand changed to hate. Germinie began to detest her lover and to seek outevery possible pretext for hating him more. And her thoughts recurred toher daughter, to the loss of her child, to the cause of her death, andshe persuaded herself that he had killed her. She looked upon him as anassassin. She conceived a horror of him, she avoided him, fled from himas from the evil genius of her life, with the terror that one has of aperson who is one's Bane!

XXV

One morning, after a night passed by her in turning over and over in hermind all her despairing, hate-ridden thoughts, Germinie went to thecreamery for her four sous' worth of milk and found in the back-shopthree or four maids from the neighborhood engaged in "taking aneye-opener. " They were seated at a table, gossiping and sippingliqueurs. 

"Aha!" said Adèle, striking the table with her glass; "you here already, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil?"

"What's this?" said Germinie, taking Adèle's glass; "I'd like somemyself. "

"Are you so thirsty as all that this morning? Brandy and absinthe, that's all!--my soldier boy's _tap_, you know, --he never drank anythingelse. It's a little stiff, eh?"

"Ah! yes, " said Germinie, contracting her lips and winking like a childwho is given a glass of liqueur with the dessert at a granddinner-party. 

"It's good, all the same. " Her spirits rose. "Madame Jupillon, let'shave the bottle--I'll pay. "

And she tossed money on the table. After the third glass, she cried: "Iam _tight_!" And she roared with laughter. 

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had gone out that morning to collect herhalf-yearly income. When she returned at eleven o'clock, she rang once, twice! no one came. "Ah!" she said to herself, "she must have gonedown. " She opened the door with her key, went to her bedroom and lookedin: the mattress and bedclothes lay in a heap on two chairs, andGerminie was stretched out across the straw under-mattress, sleepingheavily, like a log, in the utterly relaxed condition following a suddenattack of lethargy. 

At the noise made by mademoiselle, Germinie sprang to her feet andpassed her hand over her eyes. --"Yes?" she said, as if some one hadcalled her; her eyes were wandering. 

"What's happened?" said Mademoiselle de Varandeuil in alarm; "did youfall? Is anything the matter with you?"

"With me? no, " Germinie replied; "I fell asleep. What time is it?Nothing's the matter. Ah! what a fool!"

And she began to shake the mattress, turning her back to her mistress tohide the flush of intoxication on her face. 

XXVI

One Sunday morning Jupillon was dressing in the room Germinie hadfurnished for him. His mother was sitting by, gazing at him with thewondering pride expressed in the eyes of mothers among the common peoplein presence of a son who dresses like a _monsieur_. 

"You're dressed up like the young man on the first floor!" she said. "Ishould think it was his coat. I don't mean to say fine things don't lookwell on you, too----"

Jupillon, intent upon tying his cravat, made no reply. 

"You'll play the deuce with the poor girls to-day!" continued MèreJupillon, giving to her voice an accent of insinuating sweetness: "Lookyou, bibi, let me tell you this, you great bad boy: if a young womangoes wrong, so much the worse for her! that's their look-out. You're aman, aren't you? you've got the age and the figure and everything. Ican't always keep you in leading-strings. So, I said to myself, as wellone as another. That one will do. And I fixed her so that she wouldn'tsee anything. Yes, Germinie would do, as you seemed to like her. Thatprevented you from wasting your money on bad women--and then I didn'tsee anything out of the way in the girl till now. But now it won't do atall. They're telling stories in the quarter--a heap of horrible thingsabout us. A pack of vipers! We're above all that, I know. When one hasbeen an honest woman all her life, thank God! But you never know whatwill happen--mademoiselle would only have to put the end of her noseinto her maid's affairs. Why there's the law--the bare idea gives me aturn. What do you say to that, bibi, eh?"

"_Dame_, mamma, --whatever you please. "

"Ah! I knew you loved your dear darling mamma!" exclaimed the monstrouscreature embracing him. "Well! invite her to dinner to-night. You canget up two bottles of our Lunel--at two francs--the heady kind. And besure she comes. Make eyes at her, so that she'll think to-day's thegreat day. Put on your fine gloves: they'll make you look moredignified. "

Germinie arrived at seven o'clock, happy and bright and hopeful, herhead filled with blissful dreams by the mysterious air with whichJupillon delivered his mother's invitation. They dined and drank andmade merry. Mère Jupillon began to cast glances expressive of deepemotion, drowned in tears, upon the couple sitting opposite her. Whenthe coffee was served, she said, as if for the purpose of being leftalone with Germinie: "Bibi, you know you have an errand to do thisevening. "

Jupillon went out. Madame Jupillon, as she sipped her coffee, turned toGerminie the face of a mother seeking to learn her daughter's secret, and, in her indulgence, forgiving her in advance of her confession. Fora moment the two women sat thus, silent, one waiting for the other tospeak, the other with the cry of her heart on her lips. SuddenlyGerminie rushed from her chair into the stout woman's arms. 

"If you knew, Madame Jupillon!"

She talked and wept and embraced her all at once. "Oh! you won't beangry with me! Well! yes, I love him--I've had a child by him. It'strue, I love him. Three years ago----"

At every word Madame Jupillon's face became sterner and more icy. Shecoldly pushed Germinie away, and in her most doleful voice, with anaccent of lamentation and hopeless desolation, she began, like a personwho is suffocating: "Oh! my God--you!--tell me such things asthat!--me!--his mother!--to my face! My God, must it be? My son--achild--an innocent child! You've had the face to ruin him for me! Andnow you tell me that you did it! No, it ain't possible, my God! And Ihad such confidence. There's nothing worth living for. There's notrusting anybody in this world! All the same, mademoiselle, I wouldn'tever 'a' believed it of you. _Dame!_ such things give me a turn. Ah!this upsets me completely. I know myself, and I'm quite likely to besick after this----"

"Madame Jupillon! Madame Jupillon!" Germinie murmured in an imploringtone, half dead with shame and grief on the chair on which she hadfallen. "I beg you to forgive me. It was stronger than I was. And then Ithought--I believed----"

"You believed! Oh! my God; you believed! What did you believe? Thatyou'd be my son's wife, eh? Ah! Lord God! is it possible, my poorchild?"

And adopting a more and more plaintive and lamentable tone as the wordsshe hurled at Germinie cut deeper and deeper, Mère Jupillon continued:"But, my poor girl, you must have a reason, let's hear it. What did Ialways tell you? That it would be all right if you'd been born ten yearsearlier. Let's see, your date was 1820, you told me, and now it's '49. You're getting on toward thirty, you see, my dear child. I say! it makesme feel bad to say that to you--I'd so much rather not hurt you. But abody only has to look at you, my poor young lady. What can I do? It'syour age--your hair--I can lay my finger in the place where you partit. "

"But, " said Germinie, in whose heart black wrath was beginning torumble, "what about what your son owes me? My money? The money I tookout of the savings bank, the money I borrowed for him, the money I----"

"Money? he owes you money? Oh! yes, what you lent him to begin businesswith. Well! what about it? Do you think we're thieves? Does anyone wantto cheat you out of your old money, although there wasn't any paper--Iknow it because the other day--it just occurs to me--that honest man ofa child of mine wanted to write it down for fear he might die. But thenext minute we're pickpockets, as glib as you please! Oh! my God, it'shardly worth while living in such times as these! Ah! I'm well paid forgetting attached to you! But I see through it now. You're a politician, you are! You wanted to pay yourself with my son, for his whole life!Excuse me! No, thank you! It costs less to give back your money! A caféwaiter's leavings! my poor dear boy! God preserve him from it!"

Germinie had snatched her shawl and hat from the hook and was out ofdoors. 

XXVII

Mademoiselle was sitting in her large armchair at the corner of thefireplace, where a few live embers were still sleeping under the ashes. Her black cap was pulled down over her wrinkled forehead almost to hereyes. Her black dress, cut in the shape of a child's frock, was drapedin scanty folds about her scanty body, showing the location of everybone, and fell straight from her knees to the floor. She wore a smallblack shawl crossed on her breast and tied behind her back, as they areworn by little girls. Her half-open hands were resting on her hips, withthe palms turned outward--thin, old woman's hands, awkward and stiff, and swollen with gout at the knuckles and finger joints. Sitting in thehuddled, crouching posture that compels old people to raise their headsto look at you and speak to you, she seemed to be buried in all thatmass of black, whence nothing emerged but her face, to whichpreponderance of bile had imparted the yellow hue of old ivory, and theflashing glance of her brown eyes. One who saw her thus, her bright, sparkling eyes, the meagre body, the garb of poverty and the noble airwith which she bore all the burdens of age, might well have fanciedthat he was looking at a fairy on the stage of the Petits-Ménages. 

Germinie was by her side. The old lady began:

"The list is still under the door, eh, Germinie?"

"Yes, mademoiselle. "

"Do you know, my girl, " Mademoiselle de Varandeuil resumed, after apause, "do you know that when one is born in one of the finest houses onRue Royale--when one has been in a fair way to own the Grand andPetit-Charolais--when one has almost had the Château ofClichy-la-Garenne for a country house--and when it took two servants tocarry the silver platter on which the joint was served at yourgrandmother's--do you know that it takes no small amount ofphilosophy"--and mademoiselle with difficulty raised a hand to hershoulder--"to see yourself end like this, in this devilish nest ofrheumatism, where, in spite of all the list in the world, you can't keepout of draughts. --That's it, stir up the fire a little. "

She put out her feet toward Germinie, who was kneeling in front of thefireplace, and laughingly placed them under her nose: "Do you know thatthat takes no small amount of philosophy--to wear stockings out at heel!Simpleton! I'm not scolding you; I know well enough that you can't doeverything. So you might as well have a woman come to do the mending. That's not very much to do. Why don't you speak to that little girl thatcame here last year? She had a face that I remember. "

"Oh! she's black as a mole, mademoiselle. "

"Bah! I knew it. In the first place you never think well of anybody. That isn't true, you say? Why, wasn't she a niece of Mère Jupillon's? Wemight take her for one or two days a week. "

"That hussy shall never set foot here. "

"Nonsense, more fables! You're a most astonishing creature, to adorepeople and then not want to see them again. What has she done to you?"

"She's a lost creature, I tell you!"

"Bah! what does my linen care for that?"

"But, mademoiselle. "

"All right! find me someone else then. I don't care about herparticularly. But find me someone. "

"Oh! the women that come in like that don't do any work. I'll mend yourclothes. You don't need any one. "

"You!--Oh! if we have to rely on your needle!" said mademoisellejocosely; "and then, will Mère Jupillon ever give you the time?"

"Madame Jupillon? Oh! for all the dust I shall ever leave in her houseagain!"

"Hoity-toity! What's that? She too! so she's on your black books, isshe? Oho! hurry up and make another acquaintance, or else, _bon Dieu deDieu_! we shall have some bad days here!"

XXVIII

The winter of that year should certainly have assured Mademoiselle deVarandeuil a share of paradise hereafter. She had to undergo the reflexaction of her maid's chagrin, her nervous irritability, the vengeance ofher embittered, contradictory moods, which the approaching spring wouldere long infect with that species of malignant madness which thecritical season, the travail of nature and the restless, disturbingfructification of the summer cause in unhealthily sensitiveorganizations. 

Germinie was forever wiping eyes which no longer wept, but which hadonce wept copiously. She was always ready with an everlasting:"Nothing's the matter, mademoiselle!" uttered in the tone that covers asecret. She adopted dumb, despairing, funereal attitudes, the airs bywhich a woman's body diffuses melancholy and makes her very shadow abore. With her face, her glance, her mouth, the folds of her dress, herpresence, the noise she made at work in the adjoining room, even withher silence, she enveloped mademoiselle in the despair that exhaled fromher person. At the slightest word she would bristle up. Mademoisellecould not address an observation to her, ask her the most trivialquestion, give her an order or express a wish: everything was taken byher as a reproach. And thereupon she would act like a madwoman. Shewould wipe her eyes and grumble: "Oh! I am very unfortunate! I can seethat mademoiselle doesn't care for me any more!" Her spite againstvarious people vented itself in sublimely ingenious complaints. "Thatwoman always comes when it rains!" she would say, upon discovering a bitof mud that Madame de Belleuse had left on the carpet. During the weekfollowing New Year's Day, the week when all of Mademoiselle deVarandeuil's remaining relatives and friends, rich and poor alike, climbed the five flights and waited on the landing at her door for theirturns to occupy the six chairs in her bedroom, Germinie redoubled herill-humor, her impertinent remarks, her sulky muttering. Inventinggrievances against her mistress, she punished her constantly by apersistent silence, which it was impossible to break. Then there wouldbe periods of frenzied industry. Mademoiselle would hear through thepartitions on all sides furious manipulation of the broom and duster, the sharp, vicious scrubbing and slamming of the servant whom oneimagines muttering to herself as she maltreats the furniture: "Oh! yes, I'll do your work for you!"

Old people are patient with servants who have been long in theirservice. Long habit, the weakening will-power, the horror of change, the dread of new faces, --everything disposes them to weakness andcowardly concessions. Notwithstanding her quick temper, her promptnessto lose her head, to fly into a rage, to breathe fire and flame, mademoiselle said nothing. She acted as if she saw nothing. Shepretended to be reading when Germinie entered the room. She waited, curled up in her easy-chair, until the maid's ill-humor had blown overor burst. She bent her back before the storm; she said no word, had nothought of bitterness against her. She simply pitied her for causingherself so much suffering. 

In truth Germinie was not Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's maid; she wasDevotion, waiting to close her eyes. The solitary old woman, overlookedby death, alone at the end of her life, dragging her affections fromgrave to grave, had found her last friend in her servant. She had restedher heart upon her as upon an adopted daughter, and she was especiallyunhappy because she was powerless to comfort her. Moreover, atintervals, Germinie returned to her from the depths of her broodingmelancholy and her savage humor, and threw herself on her knees beforeher kind heart. Suddenly, at a ray of sunlight, a beggar's song, or anyone of the nothings that float in the air and expand the heart, shewould burst into tears and demonstrations of affection; her heart wouldoverflow with burning emotions, she would seem to feel a pleasure inembracing her mistress, as if the joy of living again had effacedeverything. At other times some trifling ailment of mademoiselle's wouldbring about the change; a smile would come to the old servant's face andgentleness to her hands. Sometimes, at such moments, mademoiselle wouldsay: "Come, my girl--something's the matter. Tell me what it is. " AndGerminie would reply: "No, mademoiselle, it's the weather. "--"Theweather!" mademoiselle would repeat with a doubtful air, "the weather!"

XXIX

One evening in March the Jupillons, mother and son, were talkingtogether by the stove in their back-shop. 

Jupillon had been drafted. The money his mother had put aside topurchase his release had been used up as a result of six months of poorbusiness and by credits given to certain _lorettes_ on the street, whohad left the key under their door-mat one fine morning. He had notprospered, in a business way, himself, and his stock in trade had beentaken on execution. He had been that day to ask a former employer toadvance him the money to purchase a substitute. But the old perfumer hadnot forgiven him for leaving him and setting up for himself, and herefused point-blank. 

Mère Jupillon, in despair, was complaining tearfully. She repeated thenumber drawn by her son: "Twenty-two! twenty-two!" And she said: "Andyet I sewed a black spider into your _paletot_ with his web; a _velvety_fellow he was! Oh, dear! I ought to have done as they told me and madeyou wear the cap you were baptized in. Ah! the good God ain't fair!There's the fruit woman's son drew a lucky number! That comes of beinghonest! And those two sluts at number eighteen must go and hook it withmy money! I might have known they meant something by the way they shookhands. They did me out of more than seven hundred francs, did you knowit? And the black creature opposite--and that infernal girl as had theface to eat pots of strawberries at twenty francs! they might as wellhave taken me too, the hussies! But you haven't gone yet all the same. I'd rather sell the creamery--I'll go out to work again, do cooking orhousekeeping, --anything! Why, I'd draw money from a stone for you!"

Jupillon smoked and let his mother do the talking. When she hadfinished, he said: "That'll do for talk, mamma!--all that's nothing butwords. You'll spoil your digestion and it ain't worth while. You needn'tsell anything--you needn't strain yourself at all--I'll buy mysubstitute and it sha'n't cost you a sou;--do you want to bet on it?"

"Jesus!" ejaculated Madame Jupillon. 

"I have an idea. "

After a pause, Jupillon continued: "I didn't want to make trouble withyou on account of Germinie--you know, at the time the stories about uswere going round; you thought it was time for me to break with her--thatshe would be in our way--and you kicked her out of the house, stiff. That wasn't my idea--I didn't think she was so bad as all that for thefamily butter. But, however, you thought best to do it. And perhaps, after all, you did the best thing; instead of cooling her off, youwarmed her up for me--yes, warmed her up--I've met her once ortwice--and she's changed, I tell you. Gad! how she's drying up!"

"But you know very well she hasn't got a sou. "

"I don't say she has, of her own. But what's that got to do with it?She'll find it somewhere. She's good for twenty-three hundred shinersyet!"

"But suppose you get mixed up in it?"

"Oh! she won't steal 'em----"

"The deuce she won't!"

"Well! if she does, it won't be from anyone but her mistress. Do yousuppose her mademoiselle would have her pinched for that? She'll turnher off, and that'll be the end of it. We'll advise her to try the airin another quarter--off she goes!--and we sha'n't see her again. But itwould be too stupid for her to steal. She'll arrange it somehow, she'llhunt round and turn things over. I don't know how, not I! but that's heraffair, you understand. This is the time for her to show her talents. Bythe way, perhaps you don't know, they say her old woman's sick. If thedear lady should happen to step out and leave her all the stuff, as thestory goes in the quarter--why, it wouldn't be a bad thing to haveplayed see-saw with her, eh, mamma? We must put on gloves, you see, mamma, when we're dealing with people who may have four or five thousanda year come tumbling into their aprons. "

"Oh! my God! what are you talking about? But after the way I treatedher--oh! no, she'll never come back here. "

"Well! I tell you I'll bring her back--and to-night at the latest, " saidJupillon, rising, and rolling a cigarette between his fingers. "Noexcuses, you know, " he said to his mother, "they won't do any good--andbe cold to her. Act as if you received her only on my account, becauseyou are weak. No one knows what may happen, we must always keep ananchor to windward. "

XXX

Jupillon was walking back and forth on the sidewalk in front ofGerminie's house when she came out. 

"Good-evening, Germinie, " he said, behind her. 

She turned as if she had been struck, and, without answering hisgreeting, instinctively moved on a few steps as if to fly from him. 

"Germinie!"

Jupillon said nothing more than that; he did not follow her, he did notmove. She came back to him like a trained beast when his rope is takenoff. 

"What is it?" said she. "Do you want more money? or do you want to tellme some of your mother's foolish remarks?"

"No, but I am going away, " said Jupillon, with a serious face. "I amdrafted--and I am going away. "

"You are going away?" said she. She seemed as if her mind was not awake. 

"Look here, Germinie, " Jupillon continued. "I have made you unhappy. Ihaven't been very kind to you, I know. My cousin's been a little toblame. What do you want?"

"You're going away?" rejoined Germinie, taking his arm. "Don't lie tome--are you going away?"

"I tell you, yes--and it's true. I'm only waiting for marching orders. You have to pay more than two thousand francs for a substitute thisyear. They say there's going to be a war: however, there's a chance. "

As he spoke he was leading Germinie down the street. 

"Where are you taking me?" said she. 

"To mother's, of course--so that you two can make up and put an end toall this nonsense. "

"After what she said to me? Never!"

And Germinie pushed Jupillon's arm away. 

"Well, if that's the way it is, good-bye. "

And Jupillon raised his cap. 

"Shall I write to you from the regiment?"

Germinie was silent, hesitating, for a moment. Then she said, abruptly:"Come on!" and, motioning to Jupillon to walk beside her, she turnedback up the street. 

And so they walked along, side by side, without a word. They reached apaved road that stretched out as far as the eye could see, between twolines of lanterns, between two rows of gnarled trees that held alofthandfuls of bare branches and cast their slender, motionless shadows onhigh blank walls. There, in the keen air, chilled by the evaporation ofthe snow, they walked on and on for a long time, burying themselves inthe vague, infinite, unfamiliar depths of a street that follows thesame wall, the same trees, the same lanterns, and leads on to the samedarkness beyond. The damp, heavy air that they breathed smelt of sugarand tallow and carrion. From time to time a vivid flash passed beforetheir eyes: it was the lantern of a butcher's cart that shone uponslaughtered cattle and huge pieces of bleeding meat thrown upon the backof a white horse; the light upon the flesh, amid the darkness, resembleda purple conflagration, a furnace of blood. 

"Well! have you reflected?" said Jupillon. "This little Avenue Trudaineisn't a very cheerful place, do you know?"

"Come on, " Germinie replied. 

And, without another word, she set out again at the same fierce, jerkygait, agitated by all the tumult raging in her heart. Her thoughts wereexpressed in her gestures. Her feet went astray, madness attacked herhands. At times her shadow, seen from behind, reminded one of a womanfrom La Salpêtrière. Two or three passers-by stopped for a moment andlooked after her; then, remembering that they were in Paris, passed on. 

Suddenly she stopped, and with the gesture of one who has made adesperate resolution, she said: "Ah! my God! another pin in thecushion!--Let us go!"

And she took Jupillon's arm. 

"Oh! I know very well, " said Jupillon, when they were near the creamery, "my mother wasn't fair to you. You see, the woman has been too virtuousall her life. She don't know, she don't understand. And then, d'ye see, I'll tell you the whole secret: she loves me so much she's jealous ofany woman who loves me. So go in, do!"

And he pushed her into the arms of Madame Jupillon, who kissed her, mumbled a few words of regret, and made haste to weep in order torelieve her own embarrassment and make the scene more affecting. 

Throughout the evening Germinie sat with her eyes fixed on Jupillon, almost terrifying him with her expression. 

"Come, come, " he said, as he walked home with her, "don't be so down inthe mouth as all this. We must have a little philosophy in this world. Well! here I am a soldier--that's all! To be sure they don't all comeback. But then--look here! I propose that we enjoy ourselves for thefortnight that's left, because it will be so much gained--and if I don'tcome back--Well, at all events, I shall leave you a pleasant memory ofme. "

Germinie made no reply. 

XXXI

For a whole week Germinie did not set foot in the shop again. 

The Jupillons, when she did not return, began to despair. At last, oneevening about half past ten, she pushed the door open, entered the shopwithout a word of greeting, walked up to the little table where themother and son were sitting half asleep, and placed upon it, beneath herhand which was closed like a claw, an old piece of cloth that gave fortha ringing sound. 

"There it is!" said she. 

And, letting go the corners of the cloth, she emptied its contents onthe table: forth came greasy bank-notes, patched on the back, fastenedtogether with pins, old tarnished louis d'or, black hundred-sou pieces, forty-sou pieces, ten-sou pieces, the money of the poor, the money oftoil, money from Christmas-boxes, money soiled by dirty hands, worn outin leather purses, rubbed smooth in the cash drawer filled withsous--money with a flavor of perspiration. 

For a moment she gazed at the display as if to assure her own eyes; thenshe said to Madame Jupillon in a sad voice, the voice of her sacrifice:

"There it is--There's the two thousand three hundred francs for him tobuy a substitute. "

"Oh! my dear Germinie!" said the stout woman, almost suffocated byemotion; and she threw herself upon Germinie's neck, who submitted to beembraced. "Oh! you must take something with us--a cup of coffee--"

"No, thank you, " said Germinie; "I am done up. _Dame!_ I've had to flyaround, you know, to get them. I'm going to bed now. Some other time. "

And she went away. 

She had had to "fly around, " as she said, to scrape together such a sum, to accomplish that impossibility: to raise two thousand three hundredfrancs--two thousand three hundred francs, of which she had not thefirst five! She had collected them, begged them, extorted them piece bypiece, almost sou by sou. She had picked them up, scraped them togetherhere and there, from this one and from that one, by loans of twohundred, one hundred, fifty, twenty francs, or whatever sum anyone wouldlend. She had borrowed from her concierge, her grocer, her fruit woman, her poulterer, her laundress; she had borrowed from all the dealers inthe quarter, and from the dealers in the quarters where she hadpreviously lived with mademoiselle. She had made up the amount withmoney drawn from every source, even from her poor miserablewater-carrier. She had gone a-begging everywhere, importuned humbly, prayed, implored, invented fables, swallowed the shame of lying andof seeing that she was not believed. The humiliation of confessing thatshe had no money laid by, as was supposed, and as, through pride, shehad encouraged people to suppose, the sympathy of people she despised, the refusals, the alms, she had undergone everything, endured what shewould not have endured to procure bread for herself, and not once only, with a single person, but with thirty, forty, all those who had givenher something or from whom she had hoped for something. 

[Illustration: Chapter XXXI

_At last, one evening about half past ten, she pushed the door open, entered the shop without a word of greeting, walked up to the littletable where the mother and son were sitting half asleep, and placed uponit, beneath her hand which was closed like a claw, an old piece of cloththat gave forth a ringing sound. _

_"There it is!" said she. _]

At last she had succeeded in collecting the money; but it was her masterand had possession of her forever. Her life thenceforth belonged to theobligations she had entered into with all these people, to the serviceher dealers had rendered her, knowing very well what they were doing. She belonged to her debt, to the sum she would have to pay every year. She knew it; she knew that all her wages would go in that way; that withthe rates of interest, which she had left entirely at the discretion ofher creditors, and the written obligations demanded by them, mademoiselle's three hundred francs would hardly suffice to pay theinterest on the twenty-three hundred she had borrowed. She knew that shewas in debt, that she should be in debt forever, that she was doomedforever to privation and embarrassment, to the strictest economy in hermanner of living and her dress. She had hardly any more illusions as tothe Jupillons than as to her own future. She had a presentiment thather money was lost so far as they were concerned. She had not even basedany hopes on the possibility that this sacrifice would touch the youngman. She had acted on the impulse of the moment. If she had been told todie to prevent his going, she would have died. The idea of seeing him asoldier, the idea of the battlefield, the cannon, the wounded, inpresence of which a woman shuts her eyes in terror, had led her to dosomething more than die; to sell her life for that man, to consignherself to everlasting poverty. 

XXXII

Disorders of the nervous system frequently result in disarranging thenatural sequence of human joys and sorrows, in destroying theirproportion and equilibrium, and in carrying them to the greatestpossible excess. It seems that, under the influence of this disease ofsensitiveness, the sharpened, refined, spiritualized sensations exceedtheir natural measure and limits, reach a point beyond themselves, and, as it were, make the enjoyment and suffering of the individual infinite. So the infrequent joys that Germinie still knew were insane joys, fromwhich she emerged drunk, and with the physical symptoms ofdrunkenness. --"Why, my girl, " mademoiselle sometimes could not forbearsaying, "anyone would think you were tipsy. "--"Mademoiselle makes youpay dear for a little amusement once in a while!" Germinie would reply. And when she relapsed into her sorrowful, disappointed, restlesscondition, her desolation was more intense, more frantic and deliriousthan her gayety. 

The moment had arrived when the terrible truth, which she had suspectedbefore, at last became clear to her. She saw that she had failed to layhold of Jupillon by the devotion her love had manifested, by strippingherself of all she possessed, by all the pecuniary sacrifices whichinvolved her life in the toils and embarrassment of a debt it wasimpossible for her to pay. She felt that he gave her his lovegrudgingly, a love to which he imparted all the humiliation of an act ofcharity. When she told him that she was again _enceinte_, the man whomshe was about to make a father once more said to her: "Well, women likeyou are amusing creatures! always full or just empty!" She conceived theideas, the suspicions that come to genuine love when it is betrayed, thepresentiments of the heart that tell women they are no longer inundisputed possession of their lovers, and that there is another becausethere is likely to be another. 

She complained no more, she wept no more, she indulged no more inrecrimination. She abandoned the struggle with this man, armed withindifference, who, with the cold-blooded sarcasm of the vulgar cad, wasso expert in insulting her passion, her unreasoning impulses, her wildoutbursts of affection. And so, in agonizing resignation, she setherself the task of waiting--for what? She did not know: perhaps untilhe would have no more of her. 

Heart-broken and silent, she kept watch upon Jupillon; she followed himabout and never lost sight of him; she tried to make him speak byinterjecting remarks in his fits of distraction. She hovered about him, but she saw nothing wrong, she could lay hold of nothing, detectnothing; and yet she was convinced that there was something and thatwhat she feared was true; she felt a woman's presence in the air. 

One morning, as she went down the street rather earlier than usual, shespied him a few yards before her on the sidewalk. He was dressed up, andconstantly looked himself over as he walked along. From time to time heraised his trouser leg a little to see the polish on his boots. Shefollowed him. He went straight on without looking back. She was not farbehind him when he reached Place Bréda. There was a woman walking on thesquare beside the cabstand. Germinie could see nothing of her but herback. Jupillon went up to her and she turned: it was his cousin. Theybegan to walk side by side, up and down the square; then they startedthrough Rue Bréda toward Rue de Navarin. There the girl took Jupillon'sarm; she did not lean on it at first, but little by little, as theyproceeded, she leaned toward him, with the movement of a branch when itis bent, and drew closer and closer. They walked slowly, so slowly thatat times Germinie was obliged to stop in order to keep at a safedistance from them. They ascended Rue des Martyrs, passed through Rue dela Tour d'Auvergne, and went down Rue Montholon. Jupillon was talkingearnestly; the cousin said nothing, but listened to Jupillon, andwalked on with the absent-minded air of a woman smelling of a bouquet, now and then darting a little vague glance on one side or the other--theglance of a frightened child. 

When they reached Rue Lamartine, opposite the Passage des Deux-Soeurs, they turned. Germinie had barely time to throw herself in at a halldoor. They passed without seeing her. The little one was very seriousand walked slowly. Jupillon was talking into her ear. They stopped for amoment; Jupillon gesticulated earnestly; the girl stared fixedly at thepavement. Germinie thought they were about to part; but they resumedtheir walk together and made four or five turns, passing back and forthby the end of the passage. At last they turned in; Germinie darted fromher hiding-place and rushed after them. From the gateway of the passageshe saw the skirt of a dress disappear through the door of a smallfurnished lodging-house, beside a wine shop. She ran to the door, lookedinto the hall and could see nothing. Thereupon all her blood rushed toher head, with one thought, a single thought that her lips keptrepeating like an idiot: "Vitriol! vitriol! vitriol!" And as herthoughts were instantly transformed into the act of which she thought, and her delirium transported her abruptly to the crime she contemplated, she said to herself that she would go up the stairs with the bottle wellhidden under her shawl; she would knock at the door very loud andcontinuously. He would come at last and would open the door a crack. She would say nothing to him, not her name even. She would go in withoutheeding him. She was strong enough to kill him! and she would go to thebed, to _her_! She would take her by the arm and say: "Yes it's me--thisis for your life!" And over her face, her throat, her skin, overeverything about her that was youthful and attractive and that invitedlove, Germinie watched the vitriol sear and seam and burn and hiss, transforming her into a horrible object that filled Germinie's heart tooverflowing with joy! The bottle was empty, and she laughed! And, in herfrightful dream, her body also dreaming, her feet began to move. Shewalked unconsciously down the passage, into the street and to a grocer'sshop. Ten minutes she stood motionless at the counter, with eyes thatdid not see, the vacant, wandering eyes of one who has murder in hisheart. 

"Well, well, what do you want?" said the grocer's wife testily, almostfrightened by the bearing of this woman who did not stir. 

"What do I want?" said Germinie. She was so filled, so possessed withthe thought of what she wanted that she believed she had asked forvitriol. "What do I want?"--She passed her hand across herforehead. --"Ah! I don't know now. "

And she left the shop, stumbling as she went. 

XXXIII

In the torment of the life she was leading, in which she suffered thehorrors of death and of unsatisfied passion, Germinie, seeking to deadenher ghastly thoughts, had remembered the glass she had taken fromAdèle's hand one morning, which gave her a whole day of oblivion. Fromthat day she had taken to drink. She had begun with the little morningdraughts to which the maids of kept women are addicted. She had drunkwith this one and with that one. She had drunk with men who came tobreakfast at the creamery; she had drunk with Adèle, who drank like aman and who took a base delight in seeing this virtuous woman's maiddescend as low as herself. 

At first she had needed excitement, company, the clinking of glasses, the encouragement of speech, the inspiration of the challenge, in orderto arouse the desire to drink; but she had soon reached the point whereshe drank alone. Then it was that she began to carry home a half-filledglass under her apron and hide it in a corner of the kitchen; that shehad taken to drinking those mixtures of white wine and brandy, of whichshe would take draught upon draught until she had found that for whichshe thirsted--sleep. For what she craved was not the fevered brain, thehappy confusion, the living folly, the delirious, waking dream ofdrunkenness; what she needed, what she sought was the negative joy ofsleep, Lethean, dreamless sleep, a leaden sleep falling upon her likethe blow of the sledge upon the ox's head: and she found it in thosecompounds which struck her down and stretched her out face downward onthe waxed cover of the kitchen table. 

To sleep that overpowering sleep, to wallow, by day, in that midnightdarkness, had come to mean to her a truce, deliverance from an existencethat she had not the courage to continue or to end. An overwhelminglonging for oblivion was all she felt when she awoke. The hours of herlife that she passed in possession of her faculties, contemplatingherself, examining her conscience, looking on at her own shame, seemedto her so execrable! She preferred to kill them. There was nothing inthe world but sleep to make her forget everything--the congested sleepof intoxication, which lulls its victim with the arms of Death. 

In that glass, from which she forced herself to drink, and which sheemptied in a sort of frenzy, her sufferings, her sorrows, all herhorrible present would be drowned and disappear. In a half hour, hermind would have ceased to think, her life would have ceased to exist;nothing of her surroundings would have any being for her, there would beno more time even, so far as she was concerned. "I drink away mytroubles!" she said to a woman who told her that she would wreck herhealth by drinking. And as, in the periods of reaction that followed herdebauches, there came to her a more painful feeling of her own shame, agreater sense of desolation and a fiercer detestation of her mistakesand her sins, she sought stronger decoctions of alcohol, more fierybrandy, and even drank pure absinthe, in order to produce a more deathlylethargy, and to make her more utterly oblivious to everything. 

She ended by attaining in this way whole half days of unconsciousness, from which she emerged only half awake, with benumbed intelligence, blunted perceptions, hands that did things by force of habit, themotions of a somnambulist, a body and a mind in which thought, will, memory seemed still to retain the drowsiness and vagueness of theconfused waking hours of the morning. 

XXXIV

Half an hour after the horrible meeting when--her mind having dabbled incrime as if with her fingers--she had determined to disfigure her rivalwith vitriol and had believed that she had done so, Germinie returned toRue de Laval with a bottle of brandy procured at the grocer's. 

For two weeks she had been mistress of the apartment, free to indulgeher brutish appetite. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, who as a general rulehardly stirred from her chair, had gone, strangely enough, to pass sixweeks with an old friend in the country; and she decided not to takeGerminie with her for fear of setting a bad example to the otherservants, and arousing their jealousy of a maid who was accustomed tovery light duties and was treated on a different footing fromthemselves. 

Germinie went into mademoiselle's bedroom and took no more time than wasnecessary to throw her shawl and hat on the floor before she began todrink, with the neck of the bottle between her teeth, pouring down theliquid hurriedly until everything in the room was whirling around her, and she remembered nothing of the day. Thereupon, staggering, feelingthat she was about to fall, she tried to throw herself on her mistress'sbed to sleep; but her dizziness threw her against the night table. Fromthat she fell to the floor and lay without moving; she simply snored. But the blow was so violent that during the night she had a miscarriage, followed by one of those hemorrhages in which the life often ebbs away. She tried to rise and go out on the landing to call; she tried to standup: she could not. She felt that she was gliding on to death, enteringits portals and descending with gentle moderation. At last, summoningall her strength for a final effort, she dragged herself as far as thehall door; but it was impossible for her to lift her head to thekeyhole, impossible to cry out. And she would have died where she layhad not Adèle, as she was passing in the morning, heard a groan, and, inher alarm, fetched a locksmith to open the door, and afterward a midwifeto attend to the dying woman. 

When mademoiselle returned a month later, she found Germinie up andabout, but so weak that she was constantly obliged to sit down, and sopale that she seemed to have no blood left in her body. They told herthat she had had a hemorrhage of which she nearly died: mademoisellesuspected nothing. 

XXXV

Germinie welcomed mademoiselle's return with melting caresses, wet withtears. Her affectionate manner was like a sick child's; she had the sameclinging gentleness, the imploring expression, the melancholy of timid, frightened suffering. She sought excuses for touching her mistress withher white blue-veined hands. She approached her with a sort of tremblingand fervent humility. Very often, as she sat facing her upon a stool, and looked up at her with eyes like a dog's, she would rise and go andkiss some part of her dress, then resume her seat, and in a moment beginagain. 

There was heart-rending entreaty in these caresses, these kisses ofGerminie's. Death, whose footsteps she had heard approaching her as ifit were a living person; the hours of utter prostration, when, as shelay in her bed, alone with herself, she had reviewed her whole pastlife; the consciousness of the shame of all she had concealed fromMademoiselle de Varandeuil; the fear of a judgment of God, rising fromthe depths of her former religious ideas; all the reproaches, all theapprehensions that whisper in the ear of a dying agony had aroused ahorrible dread in her conscience; and remorse, --the remorse that she hadnever been able to put down, --was now alive and crying aloud in herenfeebled, broken body, as yet but partially restored to life, as yetscarcely firm in the persuasion that it was alive. 

Germinie's was not one of those fortunate natures that do wrong andleave the memory of it behind them, and never feel a twinge of regret. She had not, like Adèle, one of those vulgar material organizations, which never allow themselves to be affected by any but animal impulses. She was not blessed with one of those consciences which escape sufferingby virtue of mere brutishness, or of that dense stupidity in which awoman vegetates, sinning because she knows no better. In her case, anunhealthy sensitiveness, a sort of cerebral excitement, a disposition onthe part of the brain to be always on the alert, to work itself into afrenzy of bitterness, anxiety and discontent with itself, a moral sensethat stood erect, as it were, after every one of her backslidings, allthe characteristics of a sensitive mind, predestined to misfortune, united to torture her, and to renew day after day, more openly and morecruelly in her despair, the agony due to acts that would hardly havecaused such long-continued suffering in many women in her station. 

Germinie yielded to the impulse of passion; but as soon as she hadyielded to it she despised herself. Even in the excitement of pleasureshe could not entirely forget and lose herself. The image ofmademoiselle always arose before her, with her stern, motherly face. Germinie did not become immodest in the same degree that she abandonedherself to her passions and sank lower and lower in vice. The degradingdepths to which she descended did not fortify her against her disgustand horror of herself. Habit did not harden her. Her defiled consciencerejected its defilement, struggled fiercely in its shame, rent itself inits repentance and did not for one second permit itself the fullenjoyment of vice, was never completely stunned by its fall. 

And so when mademoiselle, forgetting that she was a servant, leaned overto her with the brusque familiarity of tone and gesture that wentstraight to her heart, Germinie, confused and overcome with blushingtimidity, was speechless and seemed bereft of sense under the horribletorture caused by the consciousness of her own unworthiness. She wouldfly from the room, she would invent some pretext to escape from thataffection which she so shamefully betrayed, and which, when it touchedher, stirred her remorse to shuddering activity. 

XXXVI

The miraculous part of this disorderly, abandoned life, this life ofshame and misery, was that it did not become known. Germinie allowed notrace of anything to appear outside; she allowed nothing to rise to herlips, nothing to be seen in her face, nothing to be noticed in hermanner, and the accursed background of her existence remained hiddenfrom her mistress. 

It had, indeed, sometimes occurred to mademoiselle in a vague way thather maid had some secret, something that she was concealing from her, something that was obscure in her life. She had had moments of doubt, ofsuspicion, an instinctive feeling of uneasiness, confused glimpses ofsomething wrong, a faint scent that eluded her and vanished in thegloom. She had thought at times that she had stumbled upon sealed, unresponsive recesses in the girl's heart, upon a mystery, upon someunlighted passage of her life. Again, at times it had seemed to her thather maid's eyes did not say what her mouth said. Involuntarily, she hadremembered a phrase that Germinie often repeated: "A sin hidden, a sinhalf forgiven. " But the thing that filled her thoughts above all elsewas amazement that Germinie, despite the increase in her wages and thelittle gifts that she gave her almost every day, never purchasedanything for her toilet, had no new dresses or linen. Where did hermoney go? She had almost admitted having withdrawn her eighteen hundredfrancs from the savings bank. Mademoiselle ruminated over it, then saidto herself that that was the whole of her maid's mystery; it was aboutmoney, she was short of funds, doubtless on account of some obligationsshe had entered into long ago for her family, and perhaps she had beensending more money to "her _canaille_ of a brother-in-law. " She was sokind-hearted and had so little system! She had so little idea of thevalue of a hundred-sou piece! That was all there was to it: mademoisellewas sure of it; and as she knew the girl's obstinate nature and had nohope of inducing her to change her mind, she said nothing to her. Ifthis explanation did not fully satisfy mademoiselle, she attributed whatthere was strange and mysterious in her maid's behavior to her somewhatsecretive nature, which retained something of the characteristicdistrust of the peasant, who is jealous of her own petty affairs andtakes delight in burying a corner of her life away down in her heart, asthe villager hoards his sous in a woolen stocking. Or else she persuadedherself that it was her ill health, her state of continual sufferingthat was responsible for her whims and her habit of dissimulation. Andher mind, in its interested search for motives, stopped at that point, with the indolence and a little of the selfishness of old people'sminds, who, having an instinctive dread of final results and of the realcharacters of their acquaintances, prefer not to be too inquisitive orto know too much. Who knows? Perhaps all this mystery was nothing but apaltry matter, unworthy to disturb or to interest her, some pettywoman's quarrel. She went to sleep thereupon, reassured, and ceased tocudgel her brains. 

In truth, how could mademoiselle have guessed Germinie's degradation andthe horror of her secret! In her most poignant suffering, in her wildestintoxication, the unhappy creature retained the incredible strengthnecessary to suppress and keep back everything. From her passionate, overcharged nature, which found relief so naturally in expansion, nevera word escaped or a syllable that cast a ray of light upon her secret. Mortification, contempt, disappointment, self-sacrifice, the death ofher child, the treachery of her lover, the dying agony of her love, allremained voiceless within her, as if she stifled their cries by pressingher hands upon her heart. Her rare attacks of weakness, when she seemedto be struggling with pains that strangled her, the fierce, feverishcaresses lavished upon Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, the sudden paroxysms, as if she were trying to give birth to something, always ended withoutwords and found relief in tears. 

Even illness, with its resulting weakness and enervation, forced nothingfrom her. It could make no impression on that heroic resolution to keepsilent to the end. Hysterical attacks extorted shrieks from her andnothing but shrieks. When she was a girl she dreamed aloud; she forcedher dreams to cease speaking, she closed the lips of her sleep. Asmademoiselle might have discovered from her breath that she had beendrinking, she ate shallots and garlic, and concealed the fumes of liquorwith their offensive odors. She even trained her intoxication, herdrunken torpor to awake at her mistress's footstep, and remain awake inher presence. 

Thus she led, as it were, two lives. She was like two women, and by dintof energy, adroitness and feminine diplomacy, with a self-assurance thatnever failed her even in the mental confusion caused by drink, shesucceeded in separating those two existences, in living them bothwithout mingling them, in never allowing the two women that lived in herto be confounded with each other, in continuing to be, with Mademoisellede Varandeuil, the virtuous, respectable girl she had been, in emergingfrom her orgies without carrying away the taste of them, in displaying, when she left her lover, a sort of old-maidish modesty, shocked by thescandalous courses of other maids. She never uttered a word or boreherself in a way to arouse a suspicion of her clandestine life; nothingabout her conveyed a hint as to the way her nights were passed. When sheplaced her foot upon the door-mat outside Mademoiselle de Varandeuil'sapartments, when she approached her, when she stood before her, sheadopted the tone and the attitude, even to a certain way of holding thedress, which relieve a woman from so much as a suspicion of having aughtto do with men. She talked freely upon all subjects, as if she hadnothing to blush for. She spoke with bitterness of the misdoings andshame of others, as if she were herself beyond reproach. She joked withher mistress about love, in a jovial, unembarrassed, indifferent tone;to hear her you would have thought she was talking of an oldacquaintance of whom she had lost sight. And in the eyes of all thosewho saw her only as Mademoiselle de Varandeuil did and at her home, there was a certain atmosphere of chastity about her thirty-five years, the odor of stern, unimpeachable virtue, peculiar to middle-agedmaid-servants and plain women. 

And yet all this falsehood in the matter of appearances was nothypocrisy in Germinie. It did not arise from downright duplicity, fromcorrupt striving for effect: it was her affection for mademoiselle thatmade her what she was with her. She was determined at any price to saveher the grief of seeing her as she was, of going to the bottom of hercharacter. She deceived her solely in order to retain heraffection, --with a sort of respect; and a feeling of veneration, almostof piety, stole into the ghastly comedy she was playing, like thefeeling a girl has who lies to her mother in order not to rend herheart. 

XXXVII

To lie! nothing was left for her but that. She felt that it was animpossibility to draw back from her present position. She did not evenentertain the idea of an attempt to escape from it, it seemed such ahopeless task, she was so cowardly, so crushed and degraded, and shefelt that she was still so firmly bound to that man by all sorts ofvile, degrading chains, even by the contempt that he no longer tried toconceal from her!

Sometimes, as she reflected upon her plight, she was dismayed. Thesimple ideas and terrors of the peasantry recurred to her mind. And thesuperstitions of her youth whispered to her that the man had cast aspell upon her, that he had perhaps given her enchanted bread to eat. Otherwise would she have been what she was? Would she have felt, at themere sight of him, that thrill of emotion through her whole frame, thatalmost brute-like sensation of the approach of a master? Would she havefelt her whole body, her mouth, her arms, her loving and caressinggestures involuntarily go out to him? Would she have belonged to him soabsolutely? Long and bitterly she dwelt upon all that should have curedher, rescued her: the man's disdain, his insults, the degradingconcessions he had forced from her; and she was compelled to admit thatthere had been nothing too precious for her to sacrifice to him, andthat for him she had swallowed the things she loathed most bitterly. Shetried to imagine the degree of degradation to which her love wouldrefuse to descend, and she could conceive of none. He could do what hechose with her, insult her, beat her, and she would remain under hisheel! She could not think of herself as not belonging to him. She couldnot think of herself without him. To have that man to love was necessaryto her existence; she derived warmth from him, she lived by him, shebreathed him. There seemed to be no parallel case to hers among thewomen of her condition whom she knew. No one of her comrades carriedinto a _liaison_ the intensity, the bitterness, the torture, theenjoyment of suffering that she found in hers. No one of them carriedinto it that which was killing her and which she could not dispensewith. 

To herself she appeared an extraordinary creature, of an exceptionalnature, with the temperament of animals whom ill-treatment binds thecloser to their masters. There were days when she did not know herself, and when she wondered if she were still the same woman. As she went overin her mind all the base deeds to which Jupillon had induced her tostoop, she could not believe that it was really she who had submitted toit. Had she, violent and impulsive as she knew herself to be, boilingover with fiery passions, rebellious and hotheaded, exhibited suchdocility and resignation? She had repressed her wrath, forced back themurderous thoughts that had crowded to her brain so many times! She hadalways obeyed, always possessed her soul in patience, always hung herhead! She had forced her nature, her instincts, her pride, her vanity, and more than all else, her jealousy, the fierce passions of her heart, to crawl at that man's feet! For the sake of keeping him she had stoopedto share him, to allow him to have mistresses, to receive him from thehands of others, to seek a part of his cheek on which his cousin had notkissed him! And now, after all these sacrifices, with which she hadwearied him, she retained her hold upon him by a still more distastefulsacrifice: she drew him to her by gifts, she opened her purse to him toinduce him to keep appointments with her, she purchased his good-humorby gratifying his whims and his caprices; she paid this brute, whohaggled over the price of his kisses and demanded _pourboires_ of love!And she lived from day to day in constant dread of what the miserablevillain would demand of her on the morrow. 

XXXVIII

"He must have twenty francs, " Germinie mechanically repeated thesentence to herself several times, but her thoughts did not go beyondthe words she uttered. The walk and the climb up five flights of stairshad made her dizzy. She fell in a sitting posture on the greasy couch inthe kitchen, hung her head, and laid her arms on the table. Her earswere ringing. Her ideas went and came in a disorderly throng, stiflingone another in her brain, and of them all but one remained, more andmore distinct and persistent: "He must have twenty francs! twentyfrancs! twenty francs!" And she looked as if she expected to find themsomewhere there, in the fireplace, in the waste-basket, under the stove. Then she thought of the people who owed her, of a German maid who hadpromised to repay her more than a year before. She rose and tied hercapstrings. She no longer said: "He must have twenty francs;" she said:"I will get them. "

She went down to Adèle: "You haven't twenty francs for a note that justcame, have you? Mademoiselle has gone out. "

"Nothing here, " said Adèle; "I gave madame my last twenty francs lastnight to get her supper. The jade hasn't come back yet. Will you havethirty sous?"

She ran to the grocer's. It was Sunday, and three o'clock in theafternoon: the grocer had closed his shop. 

There were a number of people at the fruitwoman's; she asked for foursous' worth of herbs. 

"I haven't any money, " said she. She hoped that the woman would say: "Doyou want some?" Instead of that, she said: "What an idea! as if I wasafraid of you!" There were other maids there, so she went out withoutsaying anything more. 

"Is there anything for us?" she said to the concierge. "Ah! by the way, my Pipelet, you don't happen to have twenty francs about you, do you? itwill save my going way up-stairs again. "

"Forty, if you want----"

She breathed freely. The concierge went to a desk at the back of thelodge. "_Sapristi!_ my wife has taken the key. Why! how pale you are!"

"It isn't anything. " And she rushed out into the courtyard toward thedoor of the servant's staircase. 

This is what she thought as she went up-stairs: "There are people whofind twenty-franc pieces. He needed them to-day, he told me. Mademoiselle gave me my money not five days ago, and I can't ask her. After all, what are twenty francs more or less to her? The grocer wouldsurely have lent them to me. I had another grocer on Rue Taitbout: hedidn't close till evening Sundays. "

She was in front of her own door. She leaned over the rail of the otherstaircase, looked to see if anyone was coming up, entered her room, wentstraight to mademoiselle's bedchamber, opened the window and breathedlong and hard with her elbows on the window-sill. Sparrows hastened toher from the neighboring chimneys, thinking that she was going to tossbread to them. She closed the window and glanced at the top of thecommode--first at a vein of marble, then at a little sandal-wood box, then at the key--a small steel key left in the lock. Suddenly there wasa ringing in her ears; she thought that the bell rang. She ran andopened the door: there was no one there. She returned with the certaintythat she was alone, went to the kitchen for a cloth and began to rub amahogany armchair, turning her back to the commode; but she could stillsee the box, she could see it lying open, she could see the coins at theright where mademoiselle kept her gold, the papers in which she wrappedit, a hundred francs in each;--her twenty francs were there! She closedher eyes as if the light dazzled them. She felt a dizziness in herconscience; but immediately her whole being rose in revolt against her, and it seemed to her as if her heart in its indignation rose to herthroat. In an instant the honor of her whole life stood erect betweenher hand and that key. Her upright, unselfish, devoted past, twentyyears of resistance to the evil counsels and the corruption of that foulquarter, twenty years of scorn for theft, twenty years in which herpocket had not held back a sou from her employers, twenty years ofindifference to gain, twenty years in which temptation had never comenear her, her long maintained and natural virtue, mademoiselle'sconfidence in her--all these things came to her mind in a singleinstant. Her youthful years clung to her and took possession of her. From her family, from the memory of her parents, from the unsulliedreputation of her wretched name, from the dead from whom she wasdescended, there arose a murmur as of guardian angels hovering abouther. For one second she was saved. 

And then, insensibly, evil thoughts glided one by one into her brain. She sought for subjects of bitterness, for excuses for ingratitude toher mistress. She compared with her own wages the wages of which theother maids in the house boasted vaingloriously. She concluded thatmademoiselle was very fortunate to have her in her service, and that sheshould have increased her wages more since she had been with her. 

"And then, " she suddenly asked herself, "why does she leave the key inher box?" And she began to reflect thereupon that the money in the boxwas not used for living expenses, but had been laid aside bymademoiselle to buy a velvet dress for a goddaughter. --"Sleepingmoney, " she said to herself. She marshaled her reasons withprecipitation, as if to make it impossible to discuss them. "And then, it's only for once. She would lend them to me if I asked her. And I willreturn them. "

She put out her hand and turned the key. She stopped; it seemed to herthat the intense silence round about was listening to her and looking ather. She raised her eyes: the mirror threw back her face at her. Beforethat face, her own, she was afraid; she recoiled in terror and shame asif before the face of her crime: it was a thief's head that she had uponher shoulders!

She fled into the corridor. Suddenly she turned upon her heel, wentstraight to the box, turned the key, put in her hand, fumbled under thehair trinkets and souvenirs, felt in a roll of five louis and took outone piece, closed the box and rushed into the kitchen. She had thelittle coin in her hand and dared not look at it. 

XXXIX

Then it was that Germinie's abasement and degradation began to bevisible in her personal appearance, to make her stupid and slovenly. Asort of drowsiness came over her ideas. She was no longer keen andprompt of apprehension. What she had read and what she had learnedseemed to escape her. Her memory, which formerly retained everything, became confused and unreliable. The sharp wit of the Parisianmaid-servant gradually vanished from her conversation, her retorts, herlaughter. Her face, once so animated, was no longer lighted up by gleamsof intelligence. In her whole person you would have said that she hadbecome once more the stupid peasant girl that she was when she came fromher province, when she went to a stationer's for gingerbread. She seemednot to understand. As mademoiselle expressed it, she made faces like anidiot. She was obliged to explain to her, to repeat two or three timesthings that Germinie had always grasped on the merest hint. She askedherself, when she saw how slow and torpid she was, if somebody had notexchanged her maid for another. --"Why, you're getting to be a perfectimbecile!" she would sometimes say to her testily. She remembered thetime when Germinie was so useful about finding dates, writing an addresson a card, telling her what day they had put in the wood or broached thecask of wine, --all of which were things that her old brain could notremember. Now Germinie remembered nothing. In the evening, when she wentover her accounts with mademoiselle, she could not think what she hadbought in the morning; she would say: "Wait!" but she would simply passher hand vaguely across her brow; nothing would come to her mind. Mademoiselle, to save her tired old eyes, had fallen into the habit ofhaving Germinie read the newspaper to her; but she got to stumbling soand reading with so little intelligence, that mademoiselle was compelledto decline her services with thanks. 

As her faculties failed, she abandoned and neglected her body in a likedegree. She gave no thought to her dress, nor to cleanliness even. Inher indifference she retained nothing of a woman's natural solicitudetouching her personal appearance; she did not dress decently. She woredresses spotted with grease and torn under the arms, aprons in rags, worn stockings in shoes that were out at heel. She allowed the cooking, the smoke, the coal, the wax, to soil her hands and face and simplywiped them as she would after dusting. Formerly she had had the onecoquettish and luxurious instinct of poor women, a love for clean linen. No one in the house had fresher caps than she. Her simple littlecollars were always of that snowy whiteness that lights up the skin soprettily and makes the whole person clean. Now she wore frayed, dirtycaps which looked as if she had slept in them. She went without ruffles, her collar made a band of filth against the skin of her neck, and youfelt that she was less clean beneath than above. An odor of poverty, rank and musty, arose from her. Sometimes it was so strong thatMademoiselle de Varandeuil could not refrain from saying to her: "Go andchange your clothes, my girl--you smell of the poor!"

In the street she no longer looked as if she belonged to any respectableperson. She had not the appearance of a virtuous woman's maid. She lostthe aspect of a servant who, by dint of displaying her self-esteem andself-respect even in her garb, reflects in her person the honor and thepride of her masters. From day to day she sank nearer to the level ofthat abject, shameless creature whose dress drags in the gutter--a dirtyslattern. 

As she neglected herself, so she neglected everything about her. Shekept nothing in order, she did no cleaning or washing. She allowed dirtand disorder to make their way into the apartments, to invademademoiselle's own sanctum, with whose neatness mademoiselle wasformerly so well pleased and so proud. The dust collected there, thespiders spun their webs behind the frames, the mirrors were as ifcovered with a veil; the marble mantels, the mahogany furniture, losttheir lustre; moths flew up from the carpets which were never shaken, worms ensconced themselves where the brush and broom no longer came todisturb them; neglect spread a film of dust over all the sleeping, neglected objects that were formerly awakened and enlivened everymorning by the maid's active hand. A dozen times mademoiselle had triedto spur Germinie's self-esteem to action; but thereupon, for a wholeday, there was such a frantic scrubbing, accompanied by such gusts ofill-humor, that mademoiselle would take an oath never to try again. Oneday, however, she made bold to write Germinie's name with her finger inthe dust on her mirror; Germinie did not forgive her for a week. At lastmademoiselle became resigned. She hardly ventured to remark mildly, whenshe saw that her maid was in good humor: "Confess, Germinie, that thedust is very well treated with us!"

To the wondering observations of the friends who still came to see herand whom Germinie was forced to admit, mademoiselle would reply, in acompassionate, sympathetic tone: "Yes, it is filthy, I know! But whatcan you expect? Germinie's sick, and I prefer that she shouldn't killherself. " Sometimes, when Germinie had gone out, she would venture torub a cloth over a commode or touch a frame with the duster, with hergouty hands. She would do it hurriedly, afraid of being scolded, ofhaving a scene, if the maid should return and detect her. 

Germinie did almost no work; she barely served mademoiselle's meals. Shehad reduced her mistress's breakfast and dinner to the simplest dishes, those which she could cook most easily and quickly. She made her bedwithout raising the mattress, _à l'Anglaise_. The servant that she hadbeen was not to be recognized in her, did not exist in her, except onthe days when mademoiselle gave a small dinner party, the number ofcovers being always considerable on account of the party of childreninvited. On those days Germinie emerged, as if by enchantment, from herindolence and apathy, and, putting forth a sort of feverish strength, she recovered all her former energy in face of her ovens and thelengthened table. And mademoiselle was dumfounded to see her, all byherself, declining assistance and capable of anything, prepare in a fewhours a dinner for half a score of persons, serve it and clear the tableafterwards, with the nimble hands and all the quick dexterity of heryouth. 

XL

"No--not this time, no, " said Germinie, rising from the foot ofJupillon's bed where she was sitting. "There's no way. Why, you knowperfectly well that I haven't a sou--anything you can call a sou! You'veseen the stockings I wear, haven't you?"

She lifted her skirt and showed him her stockings, all full of holes andtied together with strings. "I haven't a change of anything. Money? Why, I didn't even have enough to give mademoiselle a few flowers on herbirthday. I bought her a bunch of violets for a sou! Oh! yes, money, indeed! That last twenty francs--do you know where I got them? I tookthem out of mademoiselle's box! I've put them back. But that's donewith. I don't want any more of that kind of thing. It will do for once. Where do you expect me to get money now, just tell me that, will you?You can't pawn your skin at the Mont-de-Piété--unless!----But as todoing anything of that sort again, never in my life! Whatever else youchoose, but no stealing! I won't do it again. Oh! I know very well whatyou will do. So much the worse!"

"Well! have you worked yourself up enough?" said Jupillon. "If you'dtold me that about the twenty francs, do you suppose I'd have taken it?I didn't suppose you were as hard up as all that. I saw that you went onas usual. I fancied it wouldn't put you out to lend me a twenty-francpiece, and I'd have returned it in a week or two with the others. Butyou don't say anything? Oh! well, I'm done, I won't ask you for anymore. But that's no reason we should quarrel, as I can see. " And headded, with an indefinable glance at Germinie: "Till Thursday, eh?"

"Till Thursday!" said Germinie, desperately. She longed to throw herselfinto Jupillon's arms, to ask his pardon for her poverty, to say to him:"You see, I can't do it!"

She repeated: "Till Thursday!" and took her leave. 

When, on Thursday, she knocked at the door of Jupillon's apartment onthe ground floor, she thought she heard a man's hurried step at theother end of the room. The door opened; before her stood Jupillon'scousin with her hair in a net, wearing a red jacket and slippers, andwith the costume and bearing of a woman who is at home in a man's house. Her belongings were tossed about here and there: Germinie saw them onthe chairs she had paid for. 

"Whom does madame wish to see?" demanded the cousin, impudently. 

"Monsieur Jupillon?"

"He has gone out. "

"I'll wait for him, " said Germinie, and she attempted to enter the otherroom. 

"You'll wait at the porter's lodge then;" and the cousin barred the way. 

"When will he return?"

"When the hens have teeth, " said the girl, seriously, and shut the doorin her face. 

"Well! this is just what I expected of him, " said Germinie to herself, as she walked along the street. The pavement seemed to give way beneathher trembling legs. 

XLI

When she returned that evening from a christening dinner, which she hadbeen unable to avoid attending, mademoiselle heard talking in her room. She thought that there was someone with Germinie, and, marvelingthereat, she opened the door. In the dim light shed by an untrimmed, smoking candle she saw nothing at first; but, upon looking more closely, she discovered her maid lying in a heap at the foot of the bed. 

Germinie was talking in her sleep. She was talking with a strange accentthat caused emotion, almost fear. The vague solemnity of supernaturalthings, a breath from regions beyond this life, arose in the room, withthose words of sleep, involuntary, fugitive words, palpitating, half-spoken, as if a soul without a body were wandering about a deadman's lips. The voice was slow and deep, and had a far-off sound, withlong pauses of heavy breathing, and words breathed forth like sighs, with now and then a vibrating, painful note that went to the heart, --avoice laden with mystery and with the nervous tremor of the darkness, inwhich the sleeper seemed to be groping for souvenirs of the past andpassing her hand over faces. "Oh! she loved me dearly, " mademoiselleheard her say. "And if he had not died we should be very happy now, shouldn't we? No! no! But it's done, worse luck, and I don't want totell of it. "

The words were followed by a nervous contraction of her features as ifshe sought to seize her secret on the edge of her lips and force itback. 

Mademoiselle, with something very like terror, leaned over the poor, forlorn body, powerless to direct its own acts, to which the pastreturned as a ghost returns to a deserted house. She listened to theconfessions that were all ready to rush forth but were instinctivelychecked, to the unconscious mind that spoke without restraint, to thevoice that did not hear itself. A sensation of horror came over her: shefelt as if she were beside a dead body haunted by a dream. 

After a pause of some duration, and what seemed to be a sort of conflictbetween the things that were present in her mind, Germinie apparentlyturned her attention to the circumstances of her present life. The wordsthat escaped her, disjointed, incoherent words, were, as far asmademoiselle could understand them, addressed to some person by way ofreproach. And as she talked on, her language became as unrecognizable asher voice, which had taken on the tone and accent of the dreamer. Itrose above the woman, above her ordinary style, above her dailyexpressions. It was the language of the people, purified andtransfigured by passion. Germinie accentuated words according to theirorthography; she uttered them with all their eloquence. The sentencescame from her mouth with their proper rhythm, their heart-rending pathosand their tears, as from the mouth of an admirable actress. There werebursts of tenderness, interlarded with shrieks; then there wereoutbreaks of rebellion, fierce bursts of passion, and the mostextraordinary, biting, implacable irony, always merging into a paroxysmof nervous laughter that repeated the same result and prolonged it fromecho to echo. Mademoiselle was confounded, stupefied, and listened as atthe theatre. Never had she heard disdain hurled down from so lofty aheight, contempt so tear itself to tatters and gush forth in laughter, awoman's words express such a fierce thirst for vengeance against a man. She ransacked her memory: such play of feature, such intonations, such adramatic and heart-rending voice as that voice of a consumptive coughingaway her life, she could not remember since the days of MademoiselleRachel. 

At last Germinie awoke abruptly, her eyes filled with the tears of herdream, and jumped down from the bed, seeing that her mistress hadreturned. "Thanks, " said mademoiselle, "don't disturb yourself! Wallowabout on my bed all you please!"

"Oh! mademoiselle, " said Germinie, "I wasn't lying where you put yourhead. I have made it nice and warm for your feet. "

"Indeed! Suppose you tell me what you've been dreaming? There was a manin it--you were having a dispute with him----"

"Dream?" said Germinie, "I don't remember. "

She silently set about undressing her mistress, trying to recall herdream. When she had put her in bed, she said, drawing near to her: "Ah!mademoiselle, won't you give me a fortnight, for once, to go home? Iremember now. "

XLII

Soon after this, mademoiselle was amazed to notice an entire change inher maid's manner and habits. Germinie no longer had her sullen, savagemoods, her outbreaks of rebellion, her fits of muttering wordsexpressive of discontent. She suddenly threw off her indolence andbecame once more an energetic worker. She no longer passed hours indoing her marketing; she seemed to avoid the street. She ceased to goout in the evening; indeed, she hardly stirred from mademoiselle's side, hovering about her and watching her from the time she rose in themorning until she went to bed at night, lavishing continuous, incessant, almost irritating attentions upon her, never allowing her to rise oreven to put out her hand for anything, waiting upon her and keepingwatch of her as if she were a child. At times mademoiselle was so wornout with her, so weary of this constant fussing about her person, thatshe would open her mouth to say: "Come, come! aren't you almost ready toclear out!" But Germinie would look up at her with a smile, a smile sosad and sweet that it checked the impatient exclamation on the oldmaid's lips. And so she stayed on with her, going about with a sort offascinated, divinely stolid air, in the impassibility of profoundadoration, buried in almost idiotic contemplation. 

At that period all the poor girl's affection turned to mademoiselle. Hervoice, her gestures, her eyes, her silence, her thoughts, went out toher mistress with the fervor of expiation, with the contrition of aprayer, the rapt intensity of a cult. She loved her with all the lovingviolence of her nature. She loved her with all the deceptive ardor ofher passion. She strove to give her all that she had not given her, allthat others had taken from her. Every day her love clung more closely, more devoutly, to the old maid, who was conscious of being enveloped, embraced, agreeably warmed by the heat from those two arms that werethrown about her old age. 

XLIII

But the past and its debts were still there, and whispered to her everyhour: "If mademoiselle knew!"

She lived in the constant panic of a guilty woman, trembling with dreadfrom morning till night. There was never a ring at the door that she didnot say to herself: "It has come at last!" Letters in a strangehandwriting filled her with anxiety. She would feel of the wax with herfingers, bury the letters in her pocket, hesitate about delivering them, and the moment when mademoiselle unfolded the terrible paper and scannedits contents with the inexpressive eye of elderly people was as full ofsuspense to her as if she were awaiting sentence of death. She felt thather secret and her falsehood were in everybody's hand. The house hadseen her and might speak. The quarter knew her as she was. Of all abouther, there was no one but her mistress whose esteem she could stillsteal. 

As she went in and out, the concierge looked at her with a smile and aglance, that said: "I know. " She no longer dared to call him: "MyPipelet. " When she returned home he looked into her basket. "I am sofond of that!" his wife would say, when it contained some temptingmorsel. At night she would take down what was left. She ate nothingherself. She ended by supplying them with food. 

The whole street frightened her no less than the hall and the porter'slodge. There was a face in every shop that reflected her shame andcommented on her sins. At every step she had to purchase silence bygroveling humility. The dealers she had not been able to repay had herin their clutches. If she said that anything was too dear, she wasreminded in a bantering way that they were her masters, and that shemust pay the price unless she chose to be denounced. A jest or anallusion drove the color from her cheeks. She was bound to them, compelled to trade with them and to allow them to empty her pockets asif they were accomplices. The successor of Madame Jupillon, who had goneinto the grocery business at Bar-sur Aube, --the new _crémière_, --gaveher bad milk, and when she suggested that mademoiselle complained aboutit, and that she was found fault with every morning, the woman replied:"Much you care for your mademoiselle!" And at the fish-stall, if shesmelt of a fish, and said: "This has been frozen, " the reply would be:"Bah! tell me next, will you, that I let the moon shine on their gills, so's to make 'em look fresh! So these are hard days for you, eh, myduck?" Mademoiselle wanted her to go to the _Halle Centrale_ one day forher dinner, and she mentioned the fact in the fish-woman's presence. "Oho! yes, yes, to the _Halle_! I'd like to see you go to the _Halle_!"And she bestowed a glance upon her in which Germinie saw a threat tosend her account to her mistress. The grocer sold her coffee that smeltof snuff, rotten prunes, dried rice and old biscuit. If she ventured toremonstrate, "Nonsense!" he would say; "an old customer like youwouldn't want to make trouble for me. Don't I tell you I give you goodweight?" And he would coolly give her false weight of the goods that sheordered, and that he forced her to order. 

XLIV

It was a very great trial to Germinie--a trial that she sought, however--to have to pass through a street where there was a school foryoung girls, when she went out before dinner to buy an evening paper formademoiselle. She often happened to be at the door when the school wasdismissed; she tried to run away--and stood still. 

At first there would be a sound like that made by a swarm of bees, abuzzing and humming, one of those great outbursts of childish joy thatwake the echoes in the streets of Paris. From the dark and narrowpassageway leading to the schoolroom the children would rush forth as ifescaping from an open cage, and run about and frolic in the sunlight. They would push and jostle one another, and toss their empty baskets inthe air. Then some would call to one another and form little groups;tiny hands would go forth to meet other tiny hands; friends would takeone another by the arm or put their arms around one another's waists ornecks, and walk along nibbling at the same tart. Soon the whole bandwould be in motion, walking slowly up the filthy street with loiteringstep. The larger ones, ten years old at most, would stop and talk, likelittle women, at the _portes cochères_. Others would stop to drink fromtheir luncheon bottles. The smaller ones would amuse themselves bydipping the soles of their shoes in the gutter. And there were some whomade a headdress of a cabbage leaf picked up from the ground, --a greencap sent by the good God, beneath which the fresh young face smiledbrightly. 

Germinie would gaze at them all and walk along with them; she would goin among them in order to feel the rustling of their aprons. She couldnot take her eyes off the little arms under which the school satchelsleaped about, the little pea-green dresses, the little black leggings, the little legs in the little woolen stockings. In her eyes there was asort of divine light about all those little flaxen heads, with the softhair of the child Jesus. A little stray lock upon a little neck, a bitof baby flesh above a chemise or at the end of a sleeve--at times shesaw nothing but that; it was to her all the sunshine of the street--andthe sky!

Gradually the troop dwindled away. Each street took some children awayto neighboring streets. The school dispersed along the road. The gaietyof all the tiny footsteps died away little by little. The little dressesdisappeared one by one. Germinie followed the last, she attached herselfto those who went the farthest. 

On one occasion, as she was walking along thus, devouring with her eyesthe memory of her daughter, she was suddenly seized with a frenziedlonging to embrace something; she rushed at one of the little girls andgrasped her arm just as a kidnapper of children would do. "Mamma!mamma!" the little one cried, and wept as she pulled her arm away. 

Germinie fled. 

XLV

To Germinie all days were alike, equally gloomy and desolate. She hadreached a point at last where she expected nothing from chance and askednothing from the unforeseen. Her life seemed to her to be foreverencaged in her despair; it would always be the same implacable thing, the same straight, monotonous road to misfortune, the same dark pathwith death at the end. In all the time to come there was no future forher. 

And yet, in the depths of despair in which she was crouching, thoughtspassed through her mind at times which made her raise her head and lookbefore her to a point beyond the present. At times the illusion of alast hope smiled upon her. It seemed to her that she might even yet behappy, and that if certain things should come to pass, she would be. Thereupon she imagined that those things did happen. She arrangedincidents and catastrophes. She linked the impossible to the impossible. She reconstructed the opportunities of her life. And her fevered hope, setting about the task of creating events according to her desire on thehorizon of the future, soon became intoxicated with the insane vision ofher suppositions. 

Then the delirious hope would gradually fade away. She would tellherself that it was impossible, that nothing of what she dreamed ofcould happen, and she would sink back in her chair and think. After amoment or two she would rise and walk, slowly and uncertainly, to thefireplace, toy with the coffee-pot on the mantelpiece, and at lastdecide to take it: she would learn what the rest of her life was to be. Her good fortune, her ill fortune, everything that was to happen to herwas there, in that fortune-telling device of the woman of the people, onthe plate on which she was about to pour the coffee-grounds. She drainedthe water from the grounds, waited a few minutes, breathed upon themwith the religious breath with which her lips, as a child, touched thepaten at the village church. Then she leaned over them, with her headthrust forward, terrifying in her immobility, with her eyes fixedintently upon the black dust scattered in patches over the plate. Shesought what she had seen fortune-tellers find in the granulations andthe almost imperceptible traces left by the coffee as it trickled away. She fatigued her eyes by gazing at the innumerable little spots, anddeciphered shapes and letters and signs therein. She put aside somegrains with her finger in order to see them more clearly and moresharply defined. She turned the plate slowly in her hands, this way andthat, questioned its mystery on all sides, and hunted down, within itscircular rim, apparitions, images, rudiments of names, shadowyinitials, resemblances to different people, rough outlines of objects, omens in embryo, symbols of trifles, which told her that she would be_victorious_. She wanted to see these things and she compelled herselfto discover them. Under her tense gaze the porcelain became alive withthe visions of her insomnia; her disappointments, her hatreds, the facesshe detested, arose gradually from the magic plate and the designs drawnthereon by chance. By her side the candle, which she forgot to snuff, gave forth an intermittent, dying light: it sank lower and lower in thesilence, night came on apace, and Germinie, as if turned to stone in heragony, always remained rooted there, alone and face to face with herfear of the future, trying to decipher in the dregs of the coffee theconfused features of her destiny, until she thought she could detect across, beside a woman who resembled Jupillon's cousin--a cross, that isto say, _a speedy death_. 

XLVI

The love which she lacked, and which it was her determination to denyherself, became the torment of her life, incessant, abominable torture. She had to defend herself against the fevers of her body and theirritations from without, against the easily aroused emotions and theindolent cowardice of her flesh, against all the solicitations of natureby which she was assailed. She had to contend with the heat of the day, with the suggestions of the darkness, with the moist warmth of stormyweather, with the breath of her past and her memories, with the picturessuddenly thrown upon the background of her mind, with the voices thatwhispered caressingly in her ear, with the emotions that sent a thrillof tenderness into her every limb. 

Weeks, months, years, the frightful temptation endured, and she did notyield or take another lover. Fearful of herself, she avoided man andfled from his sight. She continued her domestic, unsocial habits, alwayscloseted with mademoiselle, or else above in her own room. On Sundaysshe did not leave the house. She had ceased to consort with the othermaids in the house, and, in order to occupy her time and forgetherself, she plunged into vast undertakings in the way of sewing, orburied herself in sleep. When musicians came into the courtyard sheclosed the windows in order not to hear them: the sensuousness of musicmoved her very soul. 

In spite of everything, she could not calm or cool her passions. Herevil thoughts rekindled themselves, lived and flourished uponthemselves. At every moment the fixed idea of desire arose from herwhole being, became throughout her body the fierce torment that knows noend, that delirium of the senses, obsession, --the obsession that nothingcan dispel and that constantly returns, the shameless, implacableobsession, swarming with images, the obsession that brings love close tothe woman's every sense, that touches with it her closed eyes, forces itsmoking into her brain and pours it, hot as fire, into her arteries!

At length, the nervous exhaustion caused by these constant assaults, theirritation of this painful continence, began to disturb Germinie'sfaculties. She fancied that she could see her temptations: a ghastlyhallucination brought the realization of her dreams near to her senses. It happened that at certain moments the things she saw in her room, thecandlesticks, the legs of the chairs, everything about her assumedimpure appearances and shapes. Obscenity arose from everything beforeher eyes and approached her. At such times she would look at herkitchen clock, and would say, like a condemned man whose body no longerbelongs to himself: "In five minutes I am going down into the street. "And when the five minutes had passed she would stay where she was. 

XLVII

The time came at last in this life of torture when Germinie abandonedthe conflict. Her conscience yielded, her will succumbed, she bowed herhead beneath her destiny. All that remained to her of resolution, energy, courage, vanished before the feeling, the despairing conviction, of her powerlessness to save herself from herself. She felt that she wasbeing borne along on a resistless current, that it was useless, almostimpious, to try to stop. That great power of the world that causessuffering, the malevolent power that bears the name of a god on themarble of the antique tragedies, and is called _No Chance_ on thetattooed brow of the galley-slave--Fatality--was trampling upon her, andGerminie lowered her head beneath its foot. 

When, in her hours of discouragement, the bitter experiences of her pastrecurred to her memory, when she followed, from her infancy, the linksin the chain of her deplorable existence, that long line of afflictionsthat had followed her years and grown heavier with them; all theincidents that had succeeded one another in her life, as if bypreconcerted arrangement on the part of misery, without her having evercaught a glimpse of the hand of the Providence of which she had heard somuch--she said to herself that she was one of those miserable creatureswho are destined from their birth to an eternity of misery, one of thosefor whom happiness was not made, and who know it only because they envyit in others. She fed and nourished herself on that thought, and by dintof yielding to the despair it tended to produce, by dint of broodingover the unbroken chain of her misfortunes and the endless succession ofher disappointments, she reached the point where she looked upon themost trifling annoyances of her life and her service as a part of thepersecution of her evil genius. A little money that she loaned and thatwas not repaid, a counterfeit coin that was put off upon her in a shop, an errand that she failed to perform satisfactorily, a purchase in whichshe was cheated--all these things were in her opinion due neither to herown fault nor to chance. It was the sequel of what had gone before. Lifewas in a conspiracy against her and persecuted her everywhere, ineverything, great and small, from her daughter's death to bad groceries. There were days when she broke everything she touched; she thereuponimagined that she was accursed to her finger-tips. Accursed! almostdamned; she persuaded herself that she was so in very truth, when shequestioned her body, when she probed her feelings. Did she not feel, inthe fire in her blood, in the appetite of her organs, in her passionateweakness, the spur of the Fatality of Love, the mystery and obsession ofa disease, stronger than her modesty and her reason, having alreadydelivered her over to the shameful excesses of passion, anddestined--she had a presentiment that it was so--to deliver her again inthe same way?

And so she had one sentence always in her mouth, a sentence that was therefrain of her thought: "What can you expect? I am unlucky. I have hadno chance. From the beginning nothing ever succeeded with me!" She saidit in the tone of a woman who has abandoned hope. With the persuasion, every day more firm, that she was born under an unlucky star, that shewas in the power of hatred and vengeance that were more powerful thanshe, Germinie had come to be afraid of everything that happens inordinary life. She lived in that state of cowardly unrest wherein theunexpected is dreaded as a possible calamity, wherein a ring at the bellcauses alarm, wherein one turns a letter over and over, weighing themystery it contains, not daring to open it, wherein the news you areabout to hear, the mouth that opens to speak to you, cause theperspiration to start upon your temples. She was in that state ofsuspicion, of shuddering fear, of trembling awe in face of destiny, wherein misfortune sees naught but misfortune, and wherein one wouldlike to check the current of his life so that it should not go forwardwhither all the endeavors and the attacks of others are forcing it. 

At last, by virtue of the tears she shed, she arrived at that supremedisdain, that climax of suffering, where the excess of pain seems asatire, where chagrin, exceeding the utmost limits of human strength, exceeds its sensibility as well, and the stricken heart, which no longerfeels the blows, says to the Heaven it defies: "Go on!"

XLVIII

"Where are you going in that rig?" said Germinie one Sunday morning toAdèle, as she passed in grand array along the corridor on the sixthfloor, in front of her open door. 

"Ah! there you are! I'm going to a swell wedding, my dear! There's acrowd of us--big Marie, the _great bully_, you know--Elisa, from 41, thetwo Badiniers, big and little--and men, too! In the first place, there'smy _dealer in sudden death_. Yes, and--Oh! didn't you know--my newflame, the master-at-arms of the 24th--and a friend of his, a painter, areal Father Joy. We're going to Vincennes. Everyone carries something. We shall dine on the grass--the men will pay for the wine. And there'llbe plenty of it, I promise you!"

"I'll go, too, " said Germinie. 

"You? nonsense! you don't go to parties any more. "

"But I tell you I'll go, " said Germinie, in a sharp, decided tone. "Justgive me time to tell mademoiselle and put on a dress. If you'll waitI'll go and get half a lobster. "

Half an hour later the two women left the house; they skirted the citywall and found the rest of the party sitting outside a café on Boulevardde la Chopinette. After taking a glass of currant wine, they entered twolarge cabs and rode away. When they arrived at the fortress at Vincennesthey alighted and the whole party walked along the bank of the moat. Asthey were passing under the wall of the fort, the master-at-arms'friend, the painter, shouted to an artilleryman, who was doing sentryduty beside a cannon: "Say! old fellow, you'd rather drink one thanstand guard over it, eh?"[1]

"Isn't he funny?" said Adèle to Germinie, nudging her with her elbow. 

Soon they were fairly in the forest of Vincennes. 

Narrow paths crossed and recrossed in every direction on the hard, uneven, footprint-covered ground. In the spaces between all these littleroads there was here and there a little grass, but down-trodden, withered, yellow, dead grass, strewn about like bedding for cattle, itsstraw-colored blades were everywhere mingled with briars, amid the dullgreen of nettles. It was easily recognizable as one of the rural spotsto which the great faubourgs resort on Sundays to loll about in thegrass, and which resemble a lawn trampled by a crowd after a display offireworks. Gnarled, misshapen trees were scattered here and there; dwarfelms with gray trunks covered with yellow, leprous-like spots andstripped of branches to a point higher than a man's head; scraggy oaks, eaten by caterpillars so that their leaves were like lacework. Theverdure was scant and sickly and entirely unshaded, the leaves above hada very unhealthy look; the stunted, ragged, parched foliage made onlyfaint green lines against the sky. Clouds of dust from the high-roadscovered the bushes with a gray pall. Everything had the wretched, impoverished aspect of trampled vegetation that has no chance tobreathe, the melancholy effect of the grass at the barriers! Natureseemed to sprout from beneath the pavements. No birds sang in the trees, no insects hummed about the dusty ground; the noise of the spring-cartsstunned the birds; the hand-organ put the rustling of the trees tosilence; the denizens of the street strolled about through the paths, singing. Women's hats, fastened with four pins to a handkerchief, werehanging from the trees; the red plume of an artilleryman burst upon oneat every moment through the scanty leaves; dealers in honey rose fromthe thickets; on the trampled greensward children in blouses werecutting twigs, workingmen's families idling their time away nibbling at_pleasure_, and little urchins catching butterflies in their caps. Itwas a forest after the pattern of the original Bois de Boulogne, hot anddusty, a much-frequented and sadly-abused promenade, one of those spots, avaricious of shade, to which the common people flock to disportthemselves at the gates of great capitals--burlesque forests, filledwith corks, where you find slices of melon and skeletons in theunderbrush. 

The heat on this day was stifling; the sun was swimming in clouds, shedding a veiled diffuse light that was almost blinding to the eyes andthat seemed to portend a storm. The air was heavy and dead; nothingstirred; the leaves and their tiny, meagre shadows did not move; theforest seemed weary and crushed, as it were, beneath the heavy sky. Atrare intervals a breath of air from the south passed lazily along, sweeping the ground, one of those enervating, lifeless winds that blowupon the senses and fan the breath of desire into a flame. With noknowledge whence it came, Germinie felt over her whole body a sensationlike the tickling of the down on a ripe peach against the skin. 

They went gayly along, with the somewhat excited activity that thecountry air imparts to the common people. The men ran, the women trippedafter them and caught them. They played at rolling on the grass. Therewas a manifest longing to dance and climb trees; the painter amusedhimself by throwing stones at the loop-holes in the gateways of thefortress, and he never missed his aim. 

At last they all sat down in a sort of clearing under a clump of oaks, whose shadows were lengthening in the setting sun. The men, lightingmatches on the seats of their trousers, began to smoke. The womenchattered and laughed and threw themselves backward in paroxysms ofinane hilarity and noisy outbursts of delight. Germinie alone did notspeak or laugh. She did not listen or look. Her eyes, beneath theirlowered lids, were fixed upon the toes of her boots. So engrossed inthought was she that you would have said she was totally oblivious totime and place. Lying at full length on the grass, her head slightlyraised by a hammock, she made no other movement than to lay her hands, palm downwards, on the grass beside her; in a short time she would turnthem on their backs and let them lie in that position, seeking thecoolness of the earth to allay the fever of her flesh. 

"There's a lazybones! going to sleep?" said Adèle. 

Germinie opened wide her blazing eyes, without answering, and untildinner maintained the same position, the same silence, the same air oftorpor, feeling about her for places where her burning hands had notrested. 

"Come, old girl!" said a woman's voice, "sing us something. "

"Oh! no, " Adèle replied, "I haven't got wind enough before eating. "

Suddenly a great stone came hurtling through the air and struck theground near Germinie's head; at the same moment she heard the painter'svoice shouting: "Don't be afraid! that's your chair. "

One and all laid their handkerchiefs on the ground by way oftablecloth. Eatables were produced from greasy papers. Bottles wereuncorked and the wine went round; the glasses were rested against tuftsof grass, and they fell to upon bits of pork and sausages, with slicesof bread for plates. The painter cut boats out of paper to hold thesalt, and imitated the orders shouted out by waiters in a café. "_Boum!Pavillon! Servez!_" he cried. The company gradually became animated. Theopen air, the patches of blue sky, the food and drink started the gayetyof the table in full blast. Hands approached one another, mouths met, coarse remarks were whispered from one to another, shirt sleeves creptaround waists, and now and then energetic embraces were attended bygreedy, resounding kisses. 

Germinie drank, and said nothing. The painter, who had taken his placeby her side, felt decidedly chilly and embarrassed beside hisextraordinary neighbor, who amused herself "so entirely inside. "Suddenly he began to beat a tattoo with his knife against his glass, drowning the uproar of the party, and rose to his knees. 

"Mesdames!" said he, with the voice of a paroquet that has sung toomuch, "here's the health of a man in hard luck: myself! Perhaps it willbring me good luck! Deserted, yes, mesdames; yes, I've been deserted!I'm a widower! you know the kind of widower, _razibus_! I was struck allof a heap. Not that I cared much for her, but habit, that old villain, habit! The fact is I'm as bored as a bed-bug in a watch spring. For twoweeks my life has been like a restaurant without a _pousse-café_! Andwhen I love love as if it had made me! No wife! That's what I callweaning a grown man! that is to say, since I've known what it is, I takeoff my hat to the curés: I feel very sorry for them, 'pon my word! Nowife! and there are so many of 'em! But I can't walk about with a sign:_Vacant man to let. Inquire within. _ In the first place it would have tobe stamped by M'sieu le Préfet, and then, people are such fools, itwould draw a crowd! All of which, mesdames, is intended to inform you, that if, among the people you have the honor of knowing, there shouldhappen to be one who'd like to make an acquaintance--virtuousacquaintance--a pretty little left-handed marriage--why she needn't lookany farther! I'm her man--Victor-Médéric Gautruche! a home body, agenuine house-ivy for sentiment! She has only to apply at my formerhotel, _La Clef de Sûreté_. And gay as a hunchback who's just drownedhis wife! Gautruche, called Gogo-la-Gaiété, egad! A pretty fellow whoknows what's what, who doesn't beat about the bush, a good old body whotakes things easy and who won't give himself the colic with that fishes'grog!" With that he took a bottle of water that stood beside him andhurled it twenty yards away. "Long live the walls! They're the same topapa that the sky is to the good God! Gogo-la-Gaiété paints them throughthe week and beats them on Monday![2] And with all that not jealous, notugly, not a wife-beater, but a real love of a man, who never harmed oneof the fair sex in his life! If you want physique, _parbleu_! I'm yourman!"

He rose to his feet and, drawing up his wavering body, clad in an oldblue coat with gilt buttons, to its full height, removing his gray hatso as to show his perspiring, polished, bald skull, and tossing his oldplucked _gamin's_ head, he continued: "You see what it is! It isn't avery attractive piece of property; it doesn't help it to exhibit it. Butit yields well, it's a little dilapidated, but well put together. Dame!Here I am with my little forty nine-years--no more hair than a billiardball, a witchgrass beard that would make good herb-tea, foundations nottoo solid, feet as long as La Villette--and with all the rest thinenough to take a bath in a musket-barrel. There's the bill of lading!Pass the prospectus along! If any woman wants all that in a lump--anyrespectable person--not too young--who won't amuse herself by paintingme too yellow--you understand, I don't ask for a Princess ofBatignolles--why, sure as you're born, I'm her man!"

Germinie seized Gautruche's glass, half emptied it at a draught and heldout the side from which she had drunk to him. 

 * * * * *

At nightfall the party returned on foot. When they reached thefortifications, Gautruche drew a large heart with the point of his knifeon the stone, and all the names with the date were carved inside. 

In the evening Gautruche and Germinie were upon the outer boulevards, near Barrière Rochechouart. Beside a low house with these words, in aplaster panel: _Madame Merlin_. _Dresses cut and tried on, two francs_, they stopped at a stone staircase of three steps leading into a darkpassage, at the end of which shone the red light of an Argand lamp. Atthe entrance to the passage, these words were printed in black on awooden sign:

 _Hotel of the Little Blue Hand. _

XLIX

Médérie Gautruche was one of the wenching, idling, vagabond workmen whomake their whole life a Monday. Filled with the love of wine, his lipsforever wet with the last drop, his insides as thoroughly lined withtartar as an old wine cask, he was one of those whom the Burgundiansgraphically call _boyaux rouges_. [3] Always a little tipsy, tipsy fromyesterday when he had drunk nothing to-day, he looked at life throughthe sunbeam in his head. He smiled at his fate, he yielded to it withthe easy indifference of the drunkard, smiling vaguely from the steps ofthe wineshop at things in general, at life and the road that stretchedaway into the darkness. _Ennui_, care, want, had gained no hold uponhim; and if by chance a grave or gloomy thought did come into his mind, he turned his head away, uttered an exclamation that sounded like_psitt_! which was his way of saying _pshaw_! and, raising his rightarm, caricaturing the gesture of a Spanish dancer, he would toss hismelancholy over his shoulder to the devil. He had the superbafter-drinking philosophy, the jovial serenity, of the bottle. He knewneither envy nor longing. His dreams served him as a cashbox. For threesous he was sure of a small glass of happiness; for twelve, of a bottleof ideal bliss. Being content with everything, he liked everything, andfound food for laughter and entertainment in everything. Nothing in theworld seemed sad to him--except a glass of water. 

With this drunkard's expansiveness, with the gayety of his excellenthealth and his temperament, Gautruche combined the characteristic gayetyof his profession, the good humor and the warm-heartedness of that free, unfatiguing life, in the open air, between heaven and earth, which seeksdistraction in singing, and flings the workmen's _blague_ at passers-by, from its lofty perch upon a ladder. He was a house-painter and didlettering. He was the one man in Paris who would attack a sign without ameasure, with no other guide than a cord, without outlining the lettersin white; he was the only one who could place each of the letters inposition inside of the frame of a placard, and, without losing aninstant in aligning them, dash off capitals off-hand. He was alsorenowned for fantastic letters, capricious letters, letters shaded inbronze or gold to imitate those cut in stone. Thus he made fifteen totwenty francs on some days. But as he drank it all up, he was notwealthy, and he always had unpaid scores on the slate at the wine-shops. 

He was a man brought up in the street. The street had been his mother, his nurse and his school. The street had given him his self-assurance, his ready tongue and his wit. All that the keen mind of a man of thepeople can pick up upon the pavements of Paris he had picked up. Allthat falls from the upper to the lower strata of a great city, thestrainings and drippings, the crumbs of ideas and information, thethings that float in the sensitive atmosphere and the brimming gutters, the contact with the covers of books, bits of _feuilletons_ swallowedbetween two glasses, odds and ends of plays heard on the boulevard, hadendowed him with that accidental intelligence which, though withouteducation, learns everything. He possessed an inexhaustible, imperturbable store of talk. His words gushed forth abundantly inoriginal remarks, laughable images, the metaphors that flow from thecomic genius of crowds. He had the natural picturesqueness of theunadulterated farce. He was brimming over with amusing stories andbuffoonery, rich in the possession of the richest of all repertories ofhouse-painter's nonsense. Being a member of divers of the low hauntscalled _lists_, he knew all the new tunes and ballads, and he was nevertired of singing. He was amusing, in short, from head to foot. And ifyou merely looked at him you laughed at him, as at a comic actor. 

A man of his cheerful, hearty temperament suited Germinie. 

Germinie was not a mere beast of burden with nothing but her work in herhead. She was not the servant, who stands like a post, with thefrightened face and doltish air of utter stupidity, when masters andmistresses are talking in her presence. She, too, had cast off hershell, fashioned herself and opened her mind to the education of Paris. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, having no occupation, and being interestedafter the manner of old maids in what was going on in the quarter, hadlong been in the habit of making Germinie tell her what news she hadgleaned, what she knew of the tenants, all the gossip of the house andthe street; and this habit of narration, of talking with her mistresslike a sort of companion, of describing people and drawing silhouettesof them, had eventually developed in her a facility of animateddescription, of happy, unconscious characterization, a piquancy andsometimes an acrimony in her remarks that were most remarkable in themouth of a servant. She had progressed so far that she often surprisedMademoiselle de Varandeuil by her quickness of comprehension, herpromptness at grasping things only half said, her good fortune andfacility in selecting such words as good talkers use. She knew how tojest. She understood a play upon words. She expressed herself without_cuirs_, [4] and when there was a discussion concerning orthography atthe creamery, her opinion was listened to with as much deference as thatof the clerk in the registry of deaths at the mayoralty who came thereto breakfast. She had also that background of indiscriminate readingwhich women of her class have when they read at all. With the two orthree kept women in whose service she had been, she had passed hernights devouring novels; since then she had continued to read the_feuilletons_ cut by her acquaintances from the bottom of newspapers, and she had gathered from them a vague idea of many things and of someof the kings of France. She had retained enough of such subjects to makeher desire to talk of them with others. Through a woman in the house whoworked for an author on the street, she often had tickets to the play;when she came away she could remember the whole play and the names ofthe actors she had seen on the programme. She loved to buy ballads andone sou novels, and read them. 

The air, the keen breath of Quartier Bréda, full of the _verve_ of theartist and the studio, of art and vice, had sharpened these tastes ofGerminie's mind and had created in her new needs and demands. Longbefore her disorderly life began, she had cut loose from the virtuouscompanionship of decent women of her rank and station, from the worthycreatures who were so uninteresting and stupid. She had quitted thecircle of orderly, dull uprightness, of sleep-inducing conversationsaround the tea-table under the auspices of the old servants ofmademoiselle's elderly acquaintances. She had shunned the wearisomesociety of maids whom their absorption in their employment and thefascination of the savings bank rendered unendurably stupid. She hadreached the point where, before accepting the companionship of people, she must satisfy herself that they possessed a degree of intelligencecorresponding to her own and were capable of understanding her. And now, when she emerged from her fits of brutishness, when she found her oldself and was born again, in diversion and pleasure, she must for herenjoyment have kindred spirits of her own. She wanted men about her whowould make her laugh, noisy gayety, the spirituous wit that intoxicatedher with the wine that was poured into her glass. And thus it was thatshe sank to the level of the rascally Bohemia of the common people, uproarious, maddening, intoxicating, like all Bohemias: thus it was thatshe fell to the lot of a Gautruche. 

L

As Germinie was returning to the house one morning at daybreak, sheheard, from the shadows of the _porte-cochère_ as it closed behind her, a voice cry: "Who's that?" She ran to the servants' staircase, but foundthat she was pursued, and as she turned a corner on the landing theconcierge seized her. As soon as he recognized her, he said: "Oh! is ityou? excuse me; don't be frightened! What a giddy creature you are! Itsurprises you to see me up so early, eh? It's on account of the thievingthat's going on these days in the cook's bedroom on the second. Good-night to you! it's lucky for you I don't tell all I know. "

A few days later Germinie learned through Adèle that the husband of thecook who had been robbed said that there was no need to look very far;that the thief was in the house, and that he knew what he knew. Adèleadded that it was making a good deal of talk in the street and thatthere were plenty of people who would believe it and repeat it. Germiniebecame very indignant and told her mistress all about it. Mademoisellewas even more indignant than she, and, feeling personally outraged bythe insult, wrote instantly to the cook's mistress that she must put astop at once to the slanderous statements concerning a girl who had beenin her service twenty years, and for whom she would answer as forherself. The cook was reprimanded. Her husband in his wrath talkedlouder than ever. He made a great outcry and for several days filled thehouse with his project of going to the commissioner of police andcalling upon him to question Germinie as to where she procured the moneyto start the _crémière's_ son in business, as to where she procured themoney to purchase a substitute for him, and how she paid the expenses ofthe men she kept. For a whole week the terrible threat hung overGerminie's head. At last the thief was discovered and the threat fell tothe ground. But it had had its effect on the poor girl. It had done allthe injury it could do in that confused brain, where, under the sudden, overpowering rush of the blood, her reason was wavering and becameovercast at the slightest shock. It had overturned that brain which wasso prompt to go astray in fear or vexation, which lost so quickly thefaculty of good judgment, of discernment, clear-sightedness andappreciation of its surroundings, which exaggerated its troubles, whichplunged into foolish alarms, previsions of evil, despairingpresentiments, which looked upon its terrors as realities, and wasconstantly lost in the pessimism of that species of delirium, at the endof which it could find nothing but this ejaculation and this phrase:"Bah! I will kill myself!"

Throughout the week the fever in her brain caused her to experience allthe effects of the things she thought might happen. By day and night shesaw her shame laid bare and made public; she saw her secret, hercowardice, her wrong-doing, all that she carried about with herconcealed and sewn in her heart--she saw it all uncovered, noisedabroad, disclosed--disclosed to mademoiselle! Her debts on Jupillon'saccount, augmented by her debts for drink and for food for Gautruche, byall that she purchased now on credit, her debt to the concierge and theshopkeepers would soon become known and ruin her! A cold shiver ran downher back at the thought: she could feel mademoiselle turning her away!Throughout the week she constantly imagined herself standing before thecommissioner of police. Seven long days she brooded over that word andthat idea: the Law! the Law as it appears to the imagination of thelower classes; something terrible, indefinable, inevitable, which iseverywhere, and lurks in everyone's shadow; an omnipotent source ofcalamity which appears vaguely in the judge's black gown, between thepolice sergeant and the executioner, with the hands of the gendarme andthe arms of the guillotine! She, who was subject to all the instinctiveterrors of the common people, and who often repeated that she would muchrather die than appear before the court--she imagined herself seated inthe dock, between two gendarmes, in a court-room, surrounded by all theunfamiliar paraphernalia of the Law, her ignorance of which made themobjects of terror to her. Throughout the week her ears heard footstepson the stairs coming to arrest her!

The shock was too violent for nerves as weak as hers. The mentalupheaval of that week of agony possessed her with an idea that hithertohad only hovered about her--the idea of suicide. She began to listen, with her head in her hands, to the voice that spoke to her ofdeliverance. She opened her ears to the sweet music of death that wehear in the background of life like the fall of mighty waters in thedistance, dying away in space. The temptations that speak to thediscouraged heart of the things that put an end to life so quickly andso easily, of the means of quelling suffering with the hand, pursued andsolicited her. Her glance rested wistfully upon all the things about herthat could cure the disease called life. She accustomed her fingers andher lips to them. She touched them, handled them, drew them near to her. She sought to test her courage upon them and to obtain a foretaste ofdeath. She would remain for hours at her kitchen window with her eyesfixed on the pavements in the courtyard down at the foot of the fiveflights--pavements that she knew and could have distinguished fromothers! As the daylight faded she would lean farther out bending almostdouble over the ill-secured window-bar, hoping always that it wouldgive way and drag her down with it--praying that she might die withouthaving to make the desperate, voluntary leap into space to which she nolonger felt equal. 

"Why, you'll fall out!" said mademoiselle one day, grasping her skirtimpulsively in her alarm. "What are you looking at down there in thecourtyard?"

"Oh! nothing--the pavements. "

"In Heaven's name, are you crazy? How you frightened me!"

"Oh! people don't fall that way, " said Germinie in a strange tone. "Itell you, mademoiselle, in order to fall one must have a mighty longingto do it!"

LI

Germinie had not been able to induce Gautruche, who was haunted by aformer mistress, to give her the key to his room. When he had notreturned she was obliged to await his coming outside, in the cold, darkstreet. 

At first she would walk back and forth in front of the house. She wouldtake twenty steps in one direction and twenty in the other. Then, as ifto prolong her period of waiting, she would take a longer turn, and, going farther and farther every time, would end by extending her walk toboth ends of the boulevard. Frequently she walked thus for hours, shamefaced and mud-stained, in the fog and darkness, amid the iniquitousand horrible surroundings of an avenue near the barriers, where darknessreigned. She followed the line of red-wine shops, the naked arbors, the_cabaret_ trellises supported by dead trees such as we see in bear-pits, low, flat hovels with curtainless windows cut at random in the walls, cap factories where shirts are sold, and wicked-looking hotels where anight's lodging may be had. She passed by closed, hermetically-sealedshops, black with bankruptcy, by fragments of condemned walls, by darkpassageways with iron gratings, by walled-up windows, by doors thatseemed to give admission to those abodes of murder, the plan of which ishanded to the jury at the assizes. As she went on, there were gloomylittle gardens, crooked buildings, architecture in its most degradedform, tall, mouldy _portes-cochères_, hedge-rows, within which could bevaguely seen the uncanny whiteness of stones in the darkness, corners ofunfinished buildings from which arose the stench of nitrification, wallsdisfigured by disgusting placards and fragments of torn advertisementsby which they were spotted with loathsome publications as by leprosy. From time to time, at a sharp turn in the street, she would come uponlanes that seemed to plunge into dark holes a few steps from theirbeginning, and from which a blast of damp air came forth as from acellar; dark no-thoroughfares stood out against the sky with therigidity of a great wall; streets stretched vaguely away in thedistance, with the feeble gleam of a lantern twinkling here and there atlong intervals upon the ghostly plaster fronts of the houses. 

Germinie would walk on and on. She would cover all the territory wherelow debauchery fills its crop on Mondays and finds its loves, between ahospital, a slaughter-house, and a cemetery; Lariboisière, the Abattoirand Montmartre. 

The people who passed that way--the workman returning from Pariswhistling; the workingwoman, her day's work ended, hurrying on with herhands under her armpits to keep herself warm; the street-walker in herblack cap--would stare at her as they passed. Strange men acted as ifthey recognized her; the light made her ashamed. She would turn and runtoward the other end of the boulevard and follow the dark, desertedfootway along the city wall; but she was soon driven away by horribleshadows of men and by brutally familiar hands. 

She tried to go away; she insulted herself inwardly; she called herselfa cowardly wretch; she swore to herself that each turn should be thelast, that she would go as far as a certain tree, and that was all; ifhe had not returned, she would go away and put an end to the wholething. But she did not go; she walked on and on; she waited, moreconsumed than ever, the longer he delayed, with the mad desire to seehim. 

At last, as the hours flew by and the boulevard became empty, Germinie, exhausted, overdone with weariness, would approach the houses. She wouldloiter from shop to shop, she would go mechanically where gas was stillburning, and stand stupidly in the bright glare from the shop windows. She welcomed the dazzling light in her eyes, she tried to allay herimpatience by benumbing it. The objects to be seen through theperspiring windows of the wine-shops--the cooking utensils, the bowls ofpunch flanked by two empty bottles with sprigs of laurel protruding fromtheir necks, the show-cases in which the liquors combined their variedcolors in a single beam, a cup filled with plated spoons--these thingswould hold her attention for a long while. She would read the oldannouncements of lottery drawings placarded on the walls of a saloon, the advertisements of _gloria_--coffee with brandy--the inscriptions inyellow letters: _New wine, pure blood, 70 centimes. _ For a whole quarterof an hour she would stand staring into a back room containing a man ina blouse sitting on a stool by a table, a stove-pipe, a slate, and twoblack tea-boards against the wall. Her fixed, vacant stare would rest, through the reddish mist, upon the dark forms of shoemakers leaning overtheir benches. It fell and lingered heedlessly upon a counter that wasbeing washed, upon hands that were counting the receipts of the day, upon a tunnel or jug that was being scoured with sandstone. She hadceased to think. She would simply stand there, nailed to the spot andgrowing weaker and weaker, feeling her courage vanish from the mereweariness of standing on her feet, seeing things only through a sort offilm as in a swoon, hearing the noise made by the muddy cabs rollingover the wet pavements only as a buzzing in her ears, ready to fall andcompelled again and again to lean against the wall for support. 

In her then condition of prostration and illness, with thatsemi-hallucination of vertigo that made her so timid of crossing theSeine and impelled her to cling to the bridge railings, it happenedthat, on certain evenings, when it rained, these fits of weakness thatshe had upon the outer boulevard assumed the terrors of a nightmare. When the light from the lanterns, trembling in misty vapor, cast itsvarying, flickering reflection on the damp ground; when the pavements, the sidewalks, the earth, seemed to melt away and disappear under therain, and there was no appearance of solidity anywhere in the aqueousdarkness, the wretched creature, almost mad with fatigue, would fancythat she could see a flood rising in the gutter. A mirage of terrorwould show her suddenly the water all about her, and creeping constantlynearer to her. She would close her eyes, not daring to move, fearing tofeel her feet slip from under her; she would begin to weep, and wouldweep on until someone passed by and offered to escort her to the _Hotelof the Little Blue Hand_. 

LII

She would then ascend the stairs; that was her last place of refuge. Shewould fly from the rain and snow and cold, from fear, despair, andfatigue. She would go up and sit on the top step against Gautruche'sclosed doors; she would draw her shawl and skirts closely about her inorder to leave room for those who went and came up that long steepladder, and would draw back as far as possible into the corner in orderthat her shame might fill but little space on the narrow landing. 

From the open doors the odor of unventilated closets, of families heapedtogether in a single room, the exhalations of unhealthy trades, thedense, greasy fumes of cooking done in chafing-dishes on the floor, thestench of rags and the faint damp smell of clothes drying in the house, came forth and filled the hall. The broken-paned window behind Germiniewafted to her nostrils the fetid stench of a leaden pipe in which thewhole house emptied its refuse and its filth. Her stomach rose in revoltevery moment at a puff of infection; she was obliged to take from herpocket a phial of melissa water that she always carried, and swallow amouthful of it to avoid being ill. 

But the staircase had its passers, too: honest workmen's wives went upwith a bushel of charcoal, or a pint of wine for supper. Their feetwould rub against her as they passed, and as they went farther up, Germinie would feel their scornful glances resting upon her and fallingupon her with more crushing force at every floor. The children--littlegirls in _fanchons_ who flitted up the dark stairway and brightened itas if with flowers, little girls in whom she saw, as she so often saw indreams, her own little one, living and grown to girlhood--she saw themstop and look at her with wide open eyes that seemed to recoil from her;then the little creatures would turn and run breathlessly up-stairs, and, when they were well out of reach, would lean over the rail untilthey almost fell, and hurl impure jests at her, the insults of thechildren of the common people. Insulting words, poured out upon her bythose rosebud mouths, wounded Germinie more deeply than all else. Shewould half rise for an instant; then, overwhelmed by shame, resigningherself to her fate, she would fall back into her corner, and, pullingher shawl over her head in order to bury herself therein out of sight, she would sit like a dead woman, crushed, inert, insensible, coweringover her own shadow, like a bundle tossed on the floor which everyonemight tread upon--having no control of her faculties, dead to everythingexcept the footsteps that she was listening for--and that did not come. 

At last, after long hours, hours that she could not count, she wouldfancy that she heard a stumbling walk in the street; then a vinous voicewould mount the stairs, stammering "_Canaille!_ _canaille_ of asaloon-keeper!--you sold me the kind of wine that goes to my head!"

It was he. 

And almost every day the same scene was enacted. 

"Ah! there y'are, my Germinie, " he would say as his eyes fell upon her. "It's like this--I'll tell you all about it. I'm a little bit underwater. " And, as he put the key in the lock: "I'll tell you all about it. It isn't my fault. "

He would enter the room, kick aside a turtle-dove with mangy wings thatlimped forward to greet him, and close the door. "It wasn't me, d'yesee. It was Paillon, you know Paillon? that little round fellow, fat asa mad dog. Well, it was him, 'pon my honor. He insisted on paying for asixteen-sous bottle for me. He offered to treat me, and I _proffered_him thanks. Thereupon we naturally _consoled_[5] our coffee; when you'reconsoled, you console! and as one thing led to another, we fell uponeach other! There was a very devil of a carnage! The proof of it is thatthat gallows-bird of a saloon-keeper threw us out-o'-doors like lobstershells!"

Germinie, during the explanation, would have lighted the candle, stuckin a yellow copper candlestick. By its flickering light the dirty paperon the walls could be seen, covered with caricatures from _Charivari_, torn from the paper and pasted on the wall. 

"Well, you're a love!" Gautruche would exclaim, as he saw her place acold fowl and two bottles of wine on the table. "For I must tell you allI've had in my stomach to-day--a plate of wretched soup--that's all. Ah!it must have taken a stout master-at-arms to put that fellow's eyesout!"

And he would begin to eat. Germinie would sit with her elbows on thetable, watching him and drinking, and her glance would grow dark. 

 * * * * *

"Pshaw! all the négresses are dead, "[6] Gautruche would say at last, ashe drained the bottles one by one. "Put the children to bed!"

 * * * * *

Thereupon terrible, fierce, abhorrent outbursts of passion would ensuebetween those two strange creatures, savage ardor followed by savagesatiety, frantic storms of lust, caresses that were impregnated with thefierce brutality of wine, kisses that seemed to seek the blood beneaththe skin, like the tongue of a wild beast, and at the end, utterexhaustion that swallowed them up and left their bodies like corpses. 

Germinie plunged into these debauches with--what shall I say?--delirium, madness, desperation, a sort of supreme frenzy. Her ungovernablepassions turned against themselves, and, going beyond their naturalappetites, forced themselves to suffer. Satiety exhausted them withoutextinguishing them; and, overpassing the widest limits of excess, theyexcited themselves to self-torture. In the poor creature's paroxysms ofexcitement, her brain, her nerves, the imagination of her maddened body, no longer sought pleasure in pleasure, but something sharper, keener, and more violent: pain in pleasure. And the words "to die" constantlyescaped from her compressed lips, as if she were invoking death in anundertone and seeking to embrace it in the agonies of love. 

Sometimes, in the night, she would suddenly sit up on the edge of thebed, rest her bare feet on the cold floor, and remain there, wild-eyed, listening to the things that breathe in a sleeping-chamber. And littleby little the obscurity of the place and hour seemed to envelop her. Sheseemed to herself to fall and writhe helplessly in the blindunconsciousness of the night. Her will became as naught. All sorts ofblack things, that seemed to have wings and voices, beat against hertemples. The ghastly temptations that afford madness a vague glimpse ofcrime caused a red light, the flash of murder, to pass before her eyes, close at hand; and hands placed against her back pushed her toward thetable where the knives lay. She would close her eyes and move one foot;then fear would lay hold of her and she would cling to the bedclothes;and at last she would turn around, fall back upon the bed, and go tosleep beside the man she had been tempted to murder; why? she had noidea; for nothing--for the sake of killing!

And so, until daybreak, in that wretched furnished lodging, the fiercestruggle of those fatal passions would continue, while the poor maimed, limping dove, the infirm bird of Venus, nesting in one of Gautruche'sold shoes, would utter now and then, awakened by the noise, a frightenedcoo. 

[Illustration: Chapter LII

_Sometimes, in the night, she would suddenly sit up on the edge of thebed, rest her bare feet on the cold floor, and remain there, wild-eyed, listening to the things that breathe in a sleeping-chamber. The ghastlytemptations that afford madness a vague glimpse of crime caused a redlight, the flash of murder, to pass before her eyes, close at hand; andhands placed against her back pushed her toward the table where theknives lay. _]

LIII

In those days Gautruche became a little disgusted with drinking. He feltthe first pangs of the disease of the liver that had long been lurkingin his heated, alcoholized blood, under his brick-red cheek bones. Thehorrible pains that gnawed at his side, and twisted the cords of hisstomach for a whole week, caused him to reflect. There came to his mind, together with divers resolutions inspired by prudence, certain almostsentimental ideas of the future. He said to himself that he must put alittle more water into his life, if he wanted to live to old age. Whilehe lay writhing in bed and tying himself into knots, with his knees upto his chin to lessen the pain, he looked about at his den, the fourwalls within which he passed his nights, to which he brought his drunkenbody home in the evening, and from which he fled into the daylight inthe morning; and he thought about making a real home for himself. Hedreamed of a room, where he could keep a wife, a wife who would make hima good stew, look after him if he were ill, straighten out his affairs, keep his linen in order, prevent him from beginning a new score at thewine-shop; a wife, in short, who would combine all the useful qualitiesof a housekeeper, and who, in addition, would not be a stupid fool, butwould understand him and laugh with him. Such a wife was all found:Germinie was the very one. She probably had a little hoard, a few souslaid by during the time she had been in her old mistress's service; andwith what he earned they could "grub along" in comfort. He had no doubtof her consent; he was sure beforehand that she would accept hisproposition. More than that, her scruples, if she had any, would nothold out against the prospect of marriage which he proposed to exhibitto her at the end of their _liaison_. 

One Monday she had come to his room as usual. 

"Say, Germinie, " he began, "what would you say to this, eh? A goodroom--not like this box--a real room, with a closet--at Montmartre, andtwo windows, no less! Rue de l'Empereur--with a view an Englishman wouldgive five thousand francs to carry away with him. Something first-class, bright, and cheerful, you know, a place where you could stay all daywithout hating yourself. Because, I tell you I'm beginning to haveenough of moving about here and there just to change fleas. And thatisn't all, either: I'm tired of being cooped up in furnished lodgings, I'm tired of being all alone. Friends don't make society. They fall onyou like flies in your glass when you're to pay, and then, there youare! In the first place, I don't propose to drink any more, honorbright! no more for me, you'll see! You understand I don't intend to usemyself up in this life, not if I know myself. Not by any means!Attention! We mustn't let drink get the better of us. It seemed to methose days as if I'd been swallowing corkscrews. And I've no desire toknock at the monument just yet. Well, to go from the thread to theneedle, this is what I thought: I'll make the proposition to Germinie. I'll treat myself to a little furniture. You've got what you have inyour room. You know I'm not much of a shirker, I haven't a lazy bone inmy body where work's concerned. And then we might look to not always beworking for others: we might take a lodging-house for country thieves. If you had a little something put aside, that would help. We would joinforces in genteel fashion, and have ourselves straightened out some daybefore the mayor. That's not such a bad scheme, is it, old girl, eh? Andyou'll leave your old lady this time, won't you, for your dear oldGautruche?"

Germinie, who had listened to him with her head thrust forward and herchin resting on the palm of her hand, threw herself back with a burst ofstrident laughter. 

"Ha! ha! ha! You thought--and you have the face to tell me so!--youthought I'd leave her! Mademoiselle? Did you really think so? You're afool, you know! Why, you might have thousands and hundred thousands, youmight be stuffed with gold, do you hear? all stuffed with it. You'rejoking, aren't you? Mademoiselle? Why, don't you know? haven't I evertold you? I would like to see her die and these hands not be there toclose her eyes! I'd like to see it! Come now, really, did you think so?"

"Damnation! I imagined, from the way you acted with me, I thought youcared more for me than that--that you loved me, in fact!" exclaimed thepainter, disconcerted by the terrible, stinging irony of Germinie'swords. 

"Ah! you thought that, too--that I loved you!" And, as if she weresuddenly uprooting from the depths of her heart the remorse andsuffering of her passions, she continued: "Well, yes! I do love you--Ilove you as you love me! just as much! and that's all! I love you as oneloves something that is close at hand--that one makes use of because itis there! I am used to you as one gets used to an old dress and wears itagain and again. That's how I love you! How do you suppose I should carefor you? I'd like you to tell me what difference it can make to mewhether it's you or another? For, after all, what have you been to memore than any other man would be? In the first place, you took me. Well?Is that enough to make me love you? What have you done, then, to attachme to you, will you be kind enough to tell me? Have you ever sacrificeda glass of wine to me? Have you even so much as taken pity on me when Iwas tramping about in the mud and snow at the risk of my life? Oh! yes!And what did people say to me and spit out in my face so that my bloodboiled from one end of my body to the other! You never troubled yourhead about all the insults I've swallowed waiting for you! Look you!I've been wanting to tell you all this for a long time--it's beenchoking me. Tell me, " she continued, with a ghastly smile, "do youflatter yourself you've driven me wild with your physical beauty, withyour hair, which you've lost, with that head of yours? Hardly! I tookyou--I'd have taken anyone, it didn't matter who! It was one of thetimes when I had to have someone! At those times I don't know anythingor see anything. I'm not myself at all. I took you because it was a hotday!"

She paused an instant. 

"Go on, " said Gautruche, "iron me on all the seams. Don't mind me aslong as your hand's in. "

"So?" continued Germinie, "how enchanted you imagined I was going to beto take up with you! You said to yourself: 'The good-natured fool!she'll be glad of the chance! And all I shall have to do will be topromise to marry her. She'll throw up her place. She'll leave hermistress in the lurch. ' The idea! Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle, who has noone but me! Ah! you don't know anything about such things. You wouldn'tunderstand if I should tell you. Mademoiselle, who is everything to me!Why, since my mother died, I've had nobody but her, never been treatedkindly by anybody but her! Who beside her ever said to me when I wasunhappy: 'Are you unhappy?' And, when I was sick: 'Don't you feel well?'No one! There's been no one but her to take care of me, to care whatbecame of me. God! and you talk of loving on account of what there isbetween us! Ah! mademoiselle has loved me! Yes, loved me! And I'm dyingof it, do you know? of having become such a miserable creature as I am, a----" She said the word. "And of deceiving her, of stealing heraffection, of allowing her still to love me as her daughter! Ah! if sheshould ever learn anything--but, no fear of that, it won't be long. There's one woman who would make a pretty leap out of a fifth-storywindow, as true as God is my master! But fancy--you are not my heart, you are not my life, you are only my pleasure. But I did have a man. Ah!I don't know whether I loved him! but you could have torn me to piecesfor him without a word from me. In short, he was the man that made mewhat I am. Well, d'ye see, when my passion for him was at its hottest, when I breathed only as he wished me to, when I was mad over him andwould have let him walk on my stomach if he'd wanted to--even then, ifmademoiselle had been sick, if she had motioned to me with her littlefinger, I'd have gone back to her. Yes, I would have left him for her! Itell you I would have left him!"

"In that case--if that's the way things stand, my dear--if you're sofond of your old lady as that, I have only one piece of advice to giveyou: you'd better not leave your good lady, d'ye see!"

"That's my dismissal, is it?" said Germinie, rising. 

"Faith! it's very like it. "

"Well! adieu. That suits me!"

She went straight to the door, and left the room without a word. 

LIV

After this rupture Germinie fell where she was sure to fall, belowshame, below nature itself. Lower and lower the unhappy, passionatecreature fell, until she wallowed in the gutter. She took up the loverswhose passions are exhausted in one night, those whom she passed or meton the street, those whom chance throws in the way of a wandering woman. She had no need to give herself time for the growth of desire: hercaprice was fierce and sudden, kindled instantly. Pouncing greedily uponthe first comer, she hardly looked at him and could not have recognizedhim. Beauty, youth, the physical qualities of a lover, in which thepassion of the most degraded woman seeks to realize a base ideal, as itwere--none of those things tempted her now or touched her. In all menher eyes saw nothing but man: the individual mattered naught to her. Thelast indication of decency and of human feeling in debauchery, --preference, selection, --and even that which represents all that prostitutes retainof conscience and personality, --disgust, even disgust, --she had lost!

And she wandered about the streets at night, with the furtive, stealthygait of wild beasts prowling in the shadow in quest of food. As ifunsexed, she made the advances, she solicited brutes, she took advantageof drunkenness, and men yielded to her. She walked along, peering onevery side, approaching every shadowy corner where impurity might lurkunder cover of the darkness and solitude, where hands were waiting toswoop down upon a shawl. Belated pedestrians saw her by the light of thestreet lanterns, an ill-omened, shuddering phantom, gliding along, almost crawling, bent double, slinking by in the shadow, with thatappearance of illness and insanity and of utter aberration which setsthe thoughtful man's heart and the physician's mind at work on the brinkof deep abysses of melancholy. 

LV

One evening when she was prowling about Rue du Rocher, as she passed awine-shop at the corner of Rue de Labarde, she noticed the back of a manwho was drinking at the bar: it was Jupillon. 

She stopped short, turned toward the street with her back against thedoor of the wine-shop, and waited. The light in the shop was behind her, her shoulders against the bars, and there she stood motionless, herskirt gathered up in one hand in front, and her other hand fallinglistlessly at her side. She resembled a statue of darkness seated on amilestone. In her attitude there was an air of stern determination andthe necessary patience to wait there forever. The passers-by, thecarriages, the street--she saw them all indistinctly and as if they werefar away. The tow-horse, waiting to assist in drawing the omnibuses upthe hill, --a white horse, he was, --stood in front of her, worn out andmotionless, sleeping on his feet, with his head and forefeet in thebright light from the door: she did not see him. There was a dense fog. It was one of those vile, detestable Parisian nights when it seems as ifthe water that falls had become mud before falling. The gutter rose andflowed about her feet. She remained thus half an hour without moving, with her back to the light and her face in the shadow, a threatening, desperate, forbidding creature, like a statue of Fatality erected byDarkness at a wine-shop door!

At last Jupillon came out. She stood before him with folded arms. 

"My money?" she said. Her face was that of a woman who has ceased topossess a conscience, for whom there is no God, no police, no assizes, no scaffold--nothing!

Jupillon felt that his customary _blague_ was arrested in his throat. 

"Your money?" he repeated; "your money ain't lost. But I must have time. Just now, you see, work ain't very plenty. That shop business of minecame to grief a long while ago, you know. But in three months' time, Ipromise. Are you pretty well?"

"_Canaille!_ Ah! I've got you now! Ah! you'd sneak away, would you? Butit was you, my curse! it was you who made me what I am, brigand! robber!sneak! It was you. "

Germinie hurled these words in his face, pushing against him, forcinghim back, pressing her body against his. She seemed to be rubbingagainst the blows that she invited and provoked, and as she leanedtoward him thus, she cried: "Come, strike me! What, then, must I say toyou to make you strike me?"

She had ceased to think. She did not know what she wanted; she simplyfelt that she needed to be struck. There had come upon her aninstinctive, irrational desire to be maltreated, bruised, made to sufferin her flesh, to experience a violent shock, a sharp pain that would puta stop to what was going on in her brain. She could think of nothing butblows to bring matters to a crisis. After the blows, she saw, with thelucidity of an hallucination, all sorts of things come to pass, --theguard arriving, the gendarmes from the post, the commissioner! thecommissioner to whom she could tell everything, her story, hermisfortunes, how the man before her had abused her and what he had costher! Her heart collapsed in anticipation at the thought of emptyingitself, with shrieks and tears, of everything with which it wasbursting. 

"Come, strike me!" she repeated, still advancing upon Jupillon, whotried to slink away, and, as he retreated, tossed caressing words to heras you do to a dog that does not recognize you and seems inclined tobite. A crowd was beginning to collect about them. 

"Come, old harridan, don't bother monsieur!" exclaimed a police officer, grasping Germinie by the arm and swinging her around roughly. Under thatbrutal insult from the hand of the law, Germinie's knees wavered: shethought she should faint. Then she was afraid, and fled in the middle ofthe street. 

LVI

Passion is subject to the most insensate reactions, the mostinexplicable revivals. The accursed love that Germinie believed to havebeen killed by all the wounds and blows Jupillon had inflicted upon itcame to life once more. She was dismayed to find it in her heart whenshe returned home. The mere sight of the man, his proximity for thosefew moments, the sound of his voice, the act of breathing the air thathe breathed, were enough to turn her heart back to him and relegate herto the past. 

Notwithstanding all that had happened, she had never been able to tearJupillon's image altogether from her heart: its roots were stillimbedded there. He was her first love. She belonged to him against herown will by all the weaknesses of memory, by all the cowardice of habit. Between them there were all the bonds of torture that hold a woman fastforever, --sacrifice, suffering, degradation. He owned her, body andsoul, because he had outraged her conscience, trampled upon herillusions, made her life a martyrdom. She belonged to him, belonged tohim forever, as to the author of all her sorrows. 

And that shock, that scene which should have caused her to think withhorror of ever meeting him again, rekindled in her the frenzied desireto meet him again. Her passion seized her again in its full force. Thethought of Jupillon filled her mind so completely that it purified her. She abruptly called a halt in the vagabondage of her passions: shedetermined to belong thenceforth to no one, as that was the only methodby which she could still belong to him. 

She began to spy upon him, to make a study of his usual hours for goingout, the streets he passed through, the places that he visited. Shefollowed him to Batignolles, to his new quarters, walked behind him, content to put her foot where he had put his, to be guided by his steps, to see him now and then, to notice a gesture that he made, to snatch oneof his glances. That was all: she dared not speak to him; she kept atsome distance behind, like a lost dog, happy not to be driven away withkicks. 

For weeks and weeks she made herself thus the man's shadow, a humble, timid shadow that shrank back and moved away a few steps when it thoughtit was in danger of being seen; then drew nearer again with falteringsteps, and, at an impatient movement from the man, stopped once more, asif asking pardon. 

Sometimes she waited at the door of a house which he entered, caught himup again when he came out and escorted him home, always at a distance, without speaking to him, with the air of a beggar begging for crumbsand thankful for what she was allowed to pick up. Then she would listenat the shutters of the ground-floor apartment in which he lived, toascertain if he was alone, if there was anybody there. 

When he had a woman on his arm, although she suffered keenly, she wasthe more persistent in following him. She went where they went to theend. She entered the public gardens and ballrooms behind them. Shewalked within sound of their laughter and their words, tore her heart totatters looking at them and listening to them, and stood at their backswith every jealous instinct of her nature bleeding. 

LVII

It was November. For three or four days Germinie had not fallen in withJupillon. She went to hover about his lodgings, watching for him. Whenshe reached the street on which he lived, she saw a broad beam of lightstruggling out through the closed shutters. She approached and heardbursts of laughter, the clinking of glasses, women's voices, then a songand one voice, that of the woman whom she hated with all the hatredof her heart, whom she would have liked to see lying dead beforeher, and whose death she had so often sought to discover in thecoffee-grounds, --the cousin!

She glued her ear to the shutter, breathing in what they said, absorbedin the torture of listening to them, pasturing her famished heart uponsuffering. It was a cold, rainy winter's night. She did not feel thecold or rain. All her senses were engaged in listening. The voice shedetested seemed at times to grow faint and die away beneath kisses, andthe notes it sang died in her throat as if stifled by lips placed uponthe song. The hours passed. Germinie was still at her post. She did notthink of going away. She waited, with no knowledge of what she waswaiting for. It seemed to her that she must remain there always, untilthe end. The rain fell faster. The water from a broken gutter overheadbeat down upon her shoulders. Great drops glided down her neck. An icyshiver ran up and down her back. The water dripped from her dress to theground. She did not notice it. She was conscious of no pain in any ofher limbs except the pain that flowed from her heart. 

Well on toward morning there was a movement in the house, and footstepsapproached the door. Germinie ran and hid in a recess in the wall somesteps away, and from there saw a woman come out, escorted by a youngman. As she watched them walk away, she felt something soft and warm onher hands that frightened her at first; it was a dog licking her, agreat dog that she had held in her lap many an evening, when he was apuppy, in the _crémière's_ back shop. 

"Come here, Molosse!" Jupillon shouted impatiently twice or thrice inthe darkness. 

The dog barked, ran back, returned and gamboled about her, and at lastentered the house. The door closed. The voices and singing luredGerminie back to her former position against the shutter, and there sheremained, drenched by the rain, allowing herself to be drenched, as shelistened and listened, till morning, till daybreak, till the hour whenthe masons on their way to work, with their dinner loaf under theirarms, began to laugh at her as they passed. 

LVIII

Two or three days after that night in the rain, Germinie's features weredistorted with pain, her skin was like marble and her eyes blazing. Shesaid nothing, made no complaints, but went about her work as usual. 

"Here! girl, look at me a moment, " said mademoiselle, and she led herabruptly to the window. "What does all this mean? this look of a deadwoman risen from the grave? Come, tell me honestly, are you sick? MyGod! how hot your hands are!"

She grasped her wrist, and in a moment threw it down. 

"What a silly slut! you're in a burning fever! And you keep it toyourself!"

"Why no, mademoiselle, " Germinie stammered. "I think it's nothing but abad cold. I went to sleep the other evening with my kitchen windowopen. "

"Oh! you're a good one!" retorted mademoiselle; "you might be dying andyou'd never as much as say: 'Ouf!' Wait. "

She put on her spectacles, and hastily moving her arm-chair to a smalltable by the fireplace, she wrote a few lines in her bold hand. 

"Here, " said she, folding the note, "you will do me the favor to givethis to your friend Adèle and have her send the concierge with it. Andnow to bed you go!"

But Germinie refused to go to bed. It was not worth while. She would nottire herself. She would sit down all day. Besides, the worst of hersickness was over; she was getting better already. And then it alwayskilled her to stay in bed. 

The doctor, summoned by mademoiselle's note, came in the evening. Heexamined Germinie, and ordered the application of croton oil. Thetrouble in the chest was of such a nature that he could say nothingabout it until he had observed the effect of his remedies. 

He returned a few days later, sent Germinie to bed and sounded her chestfor a long while. 

"It's a most extraordinary thing, " he said to mademoiselle, when he wentdownstairs; "she has had pleurisy upon her and hasn't kept her bed for amoment! Is she made of iron, in Heaven's name? Oh! the energy of somewomen! How old is she?"

"Forty-one. "

"Forty-one! Oh! it's not possible. Are you sure? She looks fully fifty. "

"Ah! as to that, she looks as old as you please. What can you expect?Never in good health, --always sick, disappointment, sorrow, --and adisposition that can't help tormenting itself. "

"Forty-one years old! it's amazing!" the physician repeated. 

After a moment's reflection, he continued:

"So far as you know, is there any hereditary lung trouble in her family?Has she had any relatives who have died young?"

"She lost a sister by pleurisy; but she was older. She was forty-eight, I think. "

The doctor had become very grave. "However, the lung is getting freer, "he said, in an encouraging tone. "But it is absolutely necessary thatshe should have rest. And send her to me once a week. Let her come andsee me. And let her take a pleasant day for it, --a bright, sunny day. "

LIX

Mademoiselle talked and prayed and implored and scolded to no purpose:she could not induce Germinie to lay aside her work for a few days. Germinie would not even listen to the suggestion that she should have anassistant to do the heavier work. She declared that it was useless, impossible; that she could never endure the thought of another womanapproaching her, waiting upon her, attending to her wants; that it wouldgive her a fever simply to think of such a thing as she lay in bed; thatshe was not dead yet; and she begged that she might be allowed to go onas usual, so long as she could put one foot before the other. She saidit in such an affectionate tone, her eyes were so beseeching, her feeblevoice was so humble and so passionate in making the request, thatmademoiselle had not the courage to force her to accept an assistant. She simply called her a "blockhead, " who believed, like allcountry-people, that a few days in bed means death. 

Keeping on her feet, with an apparent improvement due to the physician'senergetic treatment, Germinie continued to make mademoiselle's bed, accepting her assistance to turn the mattresses. She also continued toprepare her food, and that was an especially distasteful task to her. 

When she was preparing mademoiselle's breakfast and dinner, she felt asif she should die in her kitchen, one of the wretched little kitchenscommon in great cities, which are the cause of so much pulmonary troublein women. The embers that she kindled, and from which a thread ofsuffocating smoke slowly arose, began to stir her stomach to revolt;soon the charcoal that she bought from the charcoal dealer next door, strong Paris charcoal, full of half-charred wood, enveloped her in itsstifling odor. The dirty, smoking funnel, the low chimney-piece pouredback into her lungs the corroding heat of the waist-high oven. Shesuffocated, she felt the fiery heat of all her blood surge upward to herface and cause red blotches to appear on her forehead. Her head whirled. In the half-asphyxiated condition of laundresses who pass back and forththrough the vapor of their charcoal stoves, she would rush to the windowand draw a few breaths of the icy outside air. 

She had other motives for suffering on her feet, for keeping constantlyabout her work despite her increasing weakness, than the repugnance ofcountry-people to take to their beds, or her fierce, jealousdetermination that no one but herself should attend to mademoiselle'sneeds: she had a constant terror of denunciation, which might accompanythe installation of a new servant. It was absolutely necessary that sheshould be there, to keep watch on mademoiselle and prevent anyone fromcoming near her. It was necessary, too, that she should show herself, that the quarter should see her, and that she should not appear to hercreditors with the aspect of a dead woman. She must make a pretence ofbeing strong, she must assume a cheerful, lively demeanor, she mustimpart confidence to the whole street with the doctor's studied words, with a hopeful air, and with the promise not to die. She must appear ather best in order to reassure her debtors and to prevent apprehensionson the subject of money from ascending the stairs and applying tomademoiselle. 

She acted up to her part in this horrible, but necessary, comedy. Shewas absolutely heroic in the way she made her whole body lie, --indrawing up her enfeebled form to its full height as she passed theshops, whose proprietors' eyes were upon her; in quickening her trailingfootsteps; in rubbing her cheeks with a rough towel before going out inorder to bring back the color of blood to them; in covering the pallorof her disease and her death-mask with rouge. 

Despite the terrible cough that racked her sleepless nights, despite herstomach's loathing for food, she passed the whole winter conquering andovercoming her own weakness and struggling with the ups and downs of herdisease. 

At every visit that he made, the doctor told mademoiselle that he wasunable to find that any of her maid's vital organs were seriouslydiseased. The lungs were a little ulcerated near the top; but peoplerecovered from that. "But her body seems worn out, thoroughly worn out, "he said again and again, in a sad tone, with an almost embarrassedmanner that impressed mademoiselle. And he always had something to say, at the end of his visit, about a change of air--about the country. 

LX

When August arrived, the doctor had nothing but that to advise orprescribe--the country. Notwithstanding the repugnance of elderly peopleto move, to change their abode and the habits and regular hours of theirlife; despite her domestic nature and the sort of pang that she felt atbeing torn from her hearthstone, mademoiselle decided to take Germinieinto the country. She wrote to the _chick's_ daughter, who lived, with abrood of children, on a small estate in a village of Brie, and who hadbeen, for many years, begging her to pay her a long visit. She requestedher hospitality for a month or six weeks for herself and her sick maid. 

They set out. Germinie was delighted. On their arrival she feltdecidedly better. For some days her disease seemed to be diverted by thechange. But the weather that summer was very uncertain, with much rain, sudden changes, and high winds. Germinie had a chill, and mademoisellesoon heard again, overhead, just above the room in which she slept, thefrightful cough that had been so painful and hard to bear at Paris. There were hurried paroxysms of coughing that seemed almost to strangleher; spasms that would break off for a moment, then begin again; and thepauses caused the ear and the heart to experience a nervous, anxiousanticipation of what was certain to come next, and always didcome, --racking and tearing, dying away again, but still vibrating in theear, even when it had ceased: never silent, never willing to have done. 

And yet Germinie rose from those horrible nights with an energy andactivity that amazed mademoiselle and at times reassured her. She wasout of bed as early as anybody in the house. One morning, at fiveo'clock, she went with the man-servant in a _char-à-banc_ to a mill-pondthree leagues away, for fish; at another time she dragged herself to thesaint's day ball, with the maids from the house, and did not returnuntil they did, at daybreak. She worked all the time; assisted theservants. She was always sitting on the edge of a chair, in a corner ofthe kitchen, doing something with her fingers. Mademoiselle was obligedto force her to go out, to drive her into the garden to sit. ThenGerminie would sit on the green bench, with her umbrella over her head, and the sun in her skirts and on her feet. Hardly moving, she wouldforget herself utterly as she inhaled the light and air and warmth, passionately and with a sort of feverish joy. Her distended lips wouldpart to admit the fresh, clear air. Her eyes burned, but did not move;and in the light shadow of the silk umbrella her gaunt, wasted, haggardface stared vacantly into space like an amorous death's head. 

Weary as she was at night, no persuasion could induce her to retirebefore her mistress. She insisted upon being at hand to undress her. Seated by her side, she would rise from time to time to wait upon her asbest she could, assist her to take off a petticoat, then sit down again, collect her strength for a moment, rise again, and insist upon doingsomething for her. Mademoiselle had to force her to sit down and orderher to keep quiet. And all the time that the evening toilet lasted shehad always upon her lips the same tiresome chatter about the servants ofthe house. 

"Why, mademoiselle, you haven't an idea of the eyes they make at eachother when they think no one sees them--the cook and the man--I mean. They keep quiet when I am by; but the other day I surprised them in thebakery. They were kissing, fancy! Luckily madame here don't suspect it. "

"Ah! there you are again with your tale-bearing! Why, good God!"mademoiselle would exclaim, "what difference does it make to you whetherthey _coo_ or don't _coo_? They're kind to you, aren't they? That's allthat's necessary. "

"Oh! very kind, mademoiselle; as far as that's concerned I haven't aword to say. Marie got up in the night last night to give me somewater--and as for him, when there's any dessert left, it's always forme. Oh! he's very polite to me--in fact, Marie don't like it very wellthat he thinks so much about me. You understand, mademoiselle----"

"Come, come! go to bed with all your nonsense!" said her mistresssharply, sad, and annoyed as well, to find such a keen interest inothers' love-affairs in one so ill. 

LXI

When they returned from the country, the doctor, after examiningGerminie, said to Mademoiselle: "It has been very rapid, very rapid. Theleft lung is entirely gone. The right has begun to be affected at thetop, and I fear that there is more or less difficulty all through it. She's a dead woman. She may live six weeks, two months at most. "

"Great Heaven!" said Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, "everyone I have everloved will go before me! Tell me, must I wait until everybody has gone?"

"Have you thought of placing her in some institution?" said the doctor, after a moment's silence. "You can't keep her here. It's too great aburden, too great a grief for you to have her with you, " he added, at agesture from mademoiselle. 

"No, monsieur, no, I haven't thought of it. Oh! yes, I am likely to sendher away. Why you must have seen, monsieur: that girl isn't a maid, sheisn't a servant in my eyes; she's like the family I never had! Whatwould you have me say to her: 'Be off with you now!' Ah! I neversuffered so much before on account of not being rich and having awretched four-sou apartment like this. I, mention such a thing to her!why, it's impossible! And where could she go? To the Maison Dubois? Oh!yes, to the Dubois! She went there once to see the maid I had before, who died there. You might as well kill her! The hospital, then? No, notthere; I don't choose to have her die in that place!"

"Good God, mademoiselle, she'll be a hundred times better off there thanhere. I would get her admitted at Lariboisière, during the term ofservice of a doctor who is a friend of mine. I would recommend her to anintern, who is under great obligations to me. She would have a veryexcellent Sister to nurse her in the hall to which I would have hersent. If necessary, she could have a private room. But I am sure shewould prefer to be in a common room. It's the essential thing to do, yousee, mademoiselle. She can't stay in that chamber up there. You knowwhat these horrible servants' quarters are. Indeed, it's my opinion thatthe health authorities ought to compel the landlords to show commonhumanity in that direction; it's an outrage! The cold weather is coming;there's no fireplace; with the window and the roof it will be like anice-house. You see she still keeps about. She has a marvelous stock ofcourage, prodigious nervous vitality. But, in spite of everything, thebed will claim her in a few days, --she won't get up again. Come, listento reason, mademoiselle. Let me speak to her, will you?"

"No, not yet. I must get used to the idea. And then, when I see heraround me I imagine she isn't going to die so quickly as all that. There's time enough. Later, we'll see about it, --yes, later. "

"Excuse me, mademoiselle, if I venture to say to you that you are quitecapable of making yourself sick nursing her. "

"I? Oh! as for me!" And Mademoiselle de Varandeuil made a gestureindicating that her life was of no consequence. 

LXII

Amid Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's desperate anxiety concerning hermaid's health, she became conscious of a strange feeling, a sort of fearin the presence of the new, unfamiliar, mysterious creature thatsickness had made of Germinie. Mademoiselle had a sense of discomfortbeside that hollow, ghostly face, which was almost unrecognizable in itsimplacable rigidity, and which seemed to return to itself, to recoverconsciousness, only furtively, by fits and starts, in the effort toproduce a pallid smile. The old woman had seen many people die; hermemories of many painful years recalled the expressions of many dear, doomed faces, of many faces that were sad and desolate andgrief-stricken in death; but no face of all those she remembered hadever assumed, as the end drew near, that distressing expression of aface retiring within itself and closing the doors. 

Enveloped in her suffering, Germinie maintained her savage, rigid, self-contained, impenetrable demeanor. She was as immovable as bronze. Mademoiselle, as she looked at her, asked herself what it could be thatshe brooded over thus without moving; whether it was her life rising inrevolt, the dread of death, or a secret remorse for something in herpast. Nothing external seemed to affect the sick woman. She was nolonger conscious of things about her. Her body became indifferent toeverything, did not ask to be relieved, seemed not to desire to becured. She complained of nothing, found no pleasure or diversion inanything. Even her longing for affection had left her. She no longermade any motion to bestow or invite a caress, and every day somethinghuman left her body, which seemed to be turning to stone. Often shewould bury herself in profound silence that made one expect aheart-rending shriek or word; but after glancing about the room, shewould say nothing and begin again to stare fixedly, vacantly, at thesame spot in space. 

When mademoiselle returned from the friend's house with whom she dined, she would find Germinie in the dark, sunk in an easy-chair with her legsstretched out upon a chair, her head hanging forward on her breast, andso profoundly absorbed that sometimes she did not hear the door open. Asshe walked forward into the room it seemed to Mademoiselle de Varandeuilas if she were breaking in upon a ghastly _tête-à-tête_ between Diseaseand the Shadow of Death, wherein Germinie was already seeking, in theterror of the Invisible, the blindness of the grave and the darkness ofdeath. 

LXIII

Throughout the month of October, Germinie obstinately refused to take toher bed. Each day, however, she was weaker and more helpless than theday before. She was hardly able to ascend the flight of stairs that ledto her sixth floor, dragging herself along by the railing. One day shefell on the stairs: the other servants picked her up and carried her toher chamber. But that did not stop her; the next day she went downstairsagain, with the fitful gleam of strength that invalids commonly have inthe morning. She prepared mademoiselle's breakfast, made a pretence ofworking, and kept moving about the apartment, clinging to the chairs anddragging herself along. Mademoiselle took pity on her; she forced her tolie down on her own bed. Germinie lay there half an hour, an hour, wideawake, not speaking, but with her eyes open, fixed, and staring intovacancy like the eyes of a person in severe pain. 

One morning she did not come down. Mademoiselle climbed to the sixthfloor, turned into a narrow corridor in which the air was heavy with theodors from servants' water-closets and at last reached Germinie's door, No. 21. Germinie apologized for having compelled her to come up. It wasimpossible for her to put her feet out of the bed. She had terriblepains in her bowels and they were badly swollen. She begged mademoiselleto sit down a moment and, to make room for her, removed the candlestickthat stood on the chair at the head of her bed. 

Mademoiselle sat down and remained a few moments, looking about thewretched room, --one of those where the doctor has to lay his hat on thebed, and where there is barely room to die! It was a small attic room, without a chimney, with a scuttle window in the sloping roof, whichadmitted the heat of summer and the cold of winter. Old trunks, clothesbags, a foot-bath, and the little iron bedstead on which Germinie'sniece had slept, were heaped up in a corner under the sloping roof. Thebed, one chair, a little disabled washstand with a broken pitcher, comprised the whole of the furniture. Above the bed, in an imitationviolet-wood frame, hung a daguerreotype of a man. 

The doctor came during the day. "Aha! peritonitis, " he said, whenmademoiselle described Germinie's condition. 

He went up to see the sick woman. "I am afraid, " he said, when he camedown, "that there's an abscess in the intestine communicating with anabscess in the bladder. It's a serious case, very serious. You must tellher not to move about much in her bed, to turn over with great care. She might die suddenly in horrible agony. I suggested to her to go toLariboisière, --she agreed at once. She seemed to have no repugnance atall. But I don't know how she will bear the journey. However, she hassuch an unlimited stock of energy; I have never seen anything like it. To-morrow morning you shall have the order of admission. "

When mademoiselle went up to Germinie's room again, she found hersmiling in her bed, gay as a lark at the idea of going away. 

"It's a matter of six weeks at most, mademoiselle, " said she. 

LXIV

At two o'clock the next day the doctor brought the order for heradmission to Lariboisière. The invalid was ready to start. Mademoisellesuggested that they should send to the hospital for a litter. "Oh! no, "said Germinie, hastily, "I should think I was dead. " She was thinking ofher debts; she must show herself to her creditors on the street, alive, and on her feet to the last!

She got out of bed. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil assisted her to put onher petticoat and her dress. As soon as she left her bed, all signs oflife disappeared from her face, the flush from her complexion: it seemedas if earth suddenly took the place of blood under her skin. She wentdown the steep servants' stairway, clinging to the baluster, and reachedher mistress's apartments. She sat down in an arm-chair near the windowin the dining-room. She insisted upon putting on her stockings withoutassistance, and as she pulled them on with her poor trembling hands, thefingers striking against one another, she afforded a glimpse of herlegs, which were so thin as to make one shudder. The housekeeper, meanwhile, was putting together in a bundle a little linen, a glass, acup, and a pewter plate, which she wished to carry with her. When thatwas done, Germinie looked about her for a moment; she cast one lastglance around the room, a glance that seemed to long to take everythingaway with her. Then, as her eyes rested on the door through which thehousekeeper had just gone out, she said to mademoiselle: "At all eventsI leave a good woman with you. "

She rose. The door closed noisily behind her, as if to say adieu, and, supported by Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, who almost carried her, shewent down the five flights of the main stairway. At every landing shepaused to take breath. In the vestibule she found the concierge, who hadbrought her a chair. She fell into it. The vulgar fellow laughinglypromised her that she would be well in six weeks. She moved her headslightly as she said _yes_, a muffled _yes_. 

She was in the cab, beside her mistress. It was an uncomfortable cab andjolted over the pavements. She sat forward on the seat to avoid theconcussion of the jolting, and clung to the door with her hand. Shewatched the houses pass, but did not speak. When they reached thehospital gate, she refused to be carried. "Can you walk as far as that?"said the concierge, pointing to the reception-room some sixty feetdistant. She made an affirmative sign and walked: it was a dead womanwalking, because she was determined to walk!

At last she reached the great hall, cold and stiff and clean and bareand horrible, with a circle of wooden benches around the waiting litter. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil led her to a straw chair near a glazed door. A clerk opened the door, asked Mademoiselle de Varandeuil Germinie'sname and age, and wrote for a quarter of an hour, covering ten or moresheets of paper with a religious emblem at the top. That done, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil kissed her and turned to go; she saw anattendant take her under the arms, then she saw no more, but turned andfled, and, throwing herself upon the cushions of the cab, she burst intosobs and gave vent to all the tears with which her heart had beensuffocated for an hour past. The driver on his box was amazed to hearsuch violent weeping. 

LXV

On the visiting day, Thursday, mademoiselle started at half-past twelveto go and see Germinie. It was her purpose to be at her bedside at themoment the doors were thrown open, at one o'clock precisely. As she rodethrough the streets she had passed through four days before, sheremembered the ghastly ride of Monday. It seemed to her as if she wereincommoding a sick person in the cab, of which she was the onlyoccupant, and she sat close in the corner in order to make room for thememory of Germinie. In what condition should she find her? Should shefind her at all? Suppose her bed should be empty?

The cab passed through a narrow street filled with orange carts, andwith women sitting on the sidewalk offering biscuit for sale in baskets. There was something unspeakably wretched and dismal in this open-airdisplay of fruit and cakes, --the delicacies of the dying, the _viaticum_of invalids, craved by feverish mouths, longed for by thedeath-agony, --which workingmen's hands, black with toil, purchase asthey pass, to carry to the hospital and offer death a tempting morsel. Children carried them with sober faces, almost reverentially, andwithout touching them, as if they understood. 

The cab stopped before the gate of the courtyard. It was five minutes toone. There was a long line of women crowding about the gate, women withtheir working clothes on, sorrowful, depressed and silent. Mademoisellede Varandeuil took her place in the line, went forward with the othersand was admitted: they searched her. She inquired for SalleSainte-Joséphine, and was directed to the second wing on the secondfloor. She found the hall and the bed, No. 14, which was, as she hadbeen told, one of the last at the right. Indeed, she was guided thither, as it were, from the farther end of the hall, by Germinie's smile--thesmile of a sick person in a hospital at an unexpected visit, which says, so gently, as soon as you enter the room: "Here I am. "

She leaned over the bed. Germinie tried to push her away with a gestureof humility and the shamefacedness of a servant. 

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil kissed her. 

"Ah!" said Germinie, "the time dragged terribly yesterday. I imagined itwas Thursday and I longed so for you. "

"My poor girl! How are you?"

"Oh! I'm getting on finely now--the swelling in my bowels has all gone. I have only three weeks to stay here, mademoiselle, you'll see. They talk about a month or six weeks, but I know better. And I'm verycomfortable here, I don't mind it at all. I sleep all night now. My! butI was thirsty, when you brought me here Monday! They wouldn't give mewine and water. "

[Illustration: Chapter LXV

_One and all, after a moment's conversation, leaned over Germinie tokiss her, and with every kiss Mademoiselle de Varandeuil could hear anindistinct murmur as of words exchanged; a whispered question from thosewho kissed, a hasty reply from her who was kissed. _]

"What have you there to drink?"

"Oh! what I had at home--lime-water. Would you mind pouring me out some, mademoiselle? their pewter things are so heavy!"

She raised herself with one arm by the aid of the little stick that hungover the middle of the bed, and putting out the other thin, tremblingarm, left bare by the sleeve falling back from it, she took the glassmademoiselle held out to her, and drank. 

"There, " said she when she had done, and she placed both her armsoutside the bed, on the coverlid. 

"What a pity that I have to put you out in this way, my poordemoiselle!" she continued. "Things must be in a horribly dirty state athome!"

"Don't worry about that. "

There was a moment's silence. A faint smile came to Germinie's lips. "Iam sailing under false colors, " she said, lowering her voice; "I haveconfessed so as to get well. "

Then she moved her head on the pillow in order to bring her mouth nearerto Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's ear:

"There are tales to tell here. I have a funny neighbor yonder. " Sheindicated with a glance and a movement of her shoulder the patient towhom her back was turned. "There's a man who comes here to see her. Hetalked to her an hour yesterday. I heard them say they'd had a child. She has left her husband. He was like a madman, the man was, when he wastalking to her. "

As she spoke, Germinie's face lighted up as if she were still full ofthe scene of the day before, still stirred up and feverish withjealousy, so near death as she was, because she had heard love spoken ofbeside her!

Suddenly her expression changed. A woman came toward her bed. She seemedembarrassed when she saw Mademoiselle de Varandeuil. After a fewmoments, she kissed Germinie, and hurriedly withdrew as another womancame up. The new-comer did the same, kissed Germinie and at once tookher leave. After the women a man came; then another woman. One and all, after a moment's conversation, leaned over Germinie to kiss her, andwith every kiss Mademoiselle de Varandeuil could hear an indistinctmurmur as of words exchanged; a whispered question from those whokissed, a hasty reply from her who was kissed. 

"Well!" she said to Germinie, "I hope you are well taken care of!"

"Oh! yes, " Germinie answered in a peculiar tone, "they take excellentcare of me!"

She had lost the animation that she displayed at the beginning of thevisit. The little blood that had mounted to her cheeks remained there inone spot only. Her face seemed closed; it was cold and deaf, like awall. Her drawn-in lips were sealed, as it were. Her features wereconcealed beneath the veil of infinite dumb agony. There was nothingcaressing or eloquent in her staring eyes, absorbed as they were andfilled with one fixed thought. You would have said that all exteriorsigns of her ideas were drawn within her by an irresistible power ofconcentration, by a last supreme effort of her will, and that her wholebeing was clinging in desperation to a sorrow that drew everything toitself. 

The visitors she had just received were the grocer, the fish-woman, thebutter woman and the laundress--all her debts, incarnate! The kisseswere the kisses of her creditors, who came to keep on the scent of theirclaims and to extort money from her death-agony!

LXVI

Mademoiselle had just risen on Saturday morning. She was making a littlepackage of four jars of Bar preserves, which she intended to carry toGerminie the next day, when she heard low voices, a colloquy between thehousekeeper and the concierge in the reception room. Almost immediatelythe door opened and the concierge came in. 

"Sad news, mademoiselle, " he said. 

And he handed her a letter he had in his hand; it bore the stamp of theLariboisière hospital: Germinie was dead; she died at seven o'clock thatmorning. 

Mademoiselle took the letter; she saw only the letters that said: "Dead!dead!" And they repeated the word: "Dead! dead!" to no purpose, for shecould not believe it. As is always the case with a person of whose deathone learns abruptly, Germinie appeared to her instinct with life, andher body, which was no more, seemed to stand before her with theawe-inspiring presence of a ghost. Dead! She should never see her more!So there was no longer a Germinie on earth! Dead! She was dead! And theperson she should hear henceforth moving about in the kitchen would notbe she; somebody else would open the door for her, somebody else wouldpotter about her room in the morning! "Germinie!" she cried at last, inthe tone with which she was accustomed to call her; then, collecting herthoughts: "Machine! creature! What's your name?" she cried, savagely, tothe bewildered housekeeper. "My dress--I must go there. "

She was so taken by surprise by this sudden fatal termination of thedisease, that she could not accustom her mind to the thought. She couldhardly realize that sudden, secret, vague death, of which her onlyknowledge was derived from a scrap of paper. Was Germinie really dead?Mademoiselle asked herself the question with the doubt of persons whohave lost a dear one far away, and, not having seen her die, do notadmit that she is dead. Was she not still alive the last time she sawher? How could it have happened? How could she so suddenly have become athing good for nothing except to be put under ground? Mademoiselle darednot think about it, and yet she kept on thinking. The mystery of thedeath-agony, of which she knew nothing, attracted and terrified her. Theanxious interest of her affection turned to her maid's last hours, andshe tried gropingly to take away the veil and repel the feeling ofhorror. Then she was seized with an irresistible longing to knoweverything, to witness, with the help of what might be told her, whatshe had not seen. She felt that she must know if Germinie had spokenbefore she died, --if she had expressed any desire, spoken of any lastwishes, uttered one of those sentences which are the final outcry oflife. 

When she reached Lariboisière, she passed the concierge, --a stout manreeking with life as one reeks with wine, --passed through the corridorswhere pallid convalescents were gliding hither and thither, and rang ata door, veiled with white curtains, at the extreme end of the hospital. The door was opened: she found herself in a parlor, lighted by twowindows, where a plaster cast of the Virgin stood upon an altar, betweentwo views of Vesuvius, which seemed to shiver against the bare wall. Behind her, through an open door, came the voices of Sisters and littlegirls chattering together, a clamor of youthful voices and freshlaughter, the natural gayety of a cheery room where the sun frolics withchildren at play. 

Mademoiselle asked to speak with the _mother_ of Salle Sainte-Joséphine. A short, half-deformed Sister, with a kind, homely face, a face alightwith the grace of God, came in answer to her request. Germinie had diedin her arms. "She hardly suffered at all, " the Sister told mademoiselle;"she was sure that she was better; she felt relieved; she was full ofhope. About seven this morning, just as her bed was being made, shesuddenly began vomiting blood, and passed away without knowing that shewas dying. " The Sister added that she had said nothing, asked fornothing, expressed no wish. 

Mademoiselle rose, delivered from the horrible thoughts she had had. Germinie had been spared all the tortures of the death-agony that shehad dreamed of. Mademoiselle was grateful for that death by the hand ofGod which gathers in the soul at a single stroke. 

As she was going away an attendant came to her and said: "Will you bekind enough to identify the body?"

_The body!_ The words gave mademoiselle a terrible shock. Withoutawaiting her reply, the attendant led the way to a high yellow door, over which was written: _Amphitheatre_. He knocked; a man in shirtsleeves, with a pipe in his mouth, opened the door and bade them wait amoment. 

Mademoiselle waited. Her thoughts terrified her. Her imagination was onthe other side of that awful door. She tried to anticipate what she wasabout to see. And her mind was so filled with confused images, withfanciful alarms, that she shuddered at the thought of entering the room, of recognizing that disfigured face among a number of others, if, indeed, she could recognize it! And yet she could not tear herself away;she said to herself that she should never see her again!

The man with the pipe opened the door: mademoiselle saw nothing but acoffin, the lid of which extended only to the neck, leaving Germinie'sface uncovered, with the eyes open, and the hair erect upon her head. 

LXVII

Prostrated by the excitement and by this last spectacle, Mademoiselle deVarandeuil took to her bed on returning home, after she had given theconcierge the money for the purchase of a burial lot, and for theburial. And when she was in bed the things she had seen arose beforeher. The horrible dead body was still beside her, the ghastly faceframed by the coffin. That never-to-be-forgotten face was engraved uponher mind; beneath her closed eyelids she saw it and was afraid of it. Germinie was there, with the distorted features of one who has beenmurdered, with sunken orbits and eyes that seemed to have withdrawn intotheir holes! She was there with her mouth still distorted by thevomiting that accompanied her last breath! She was there with her hair, her terrible hair, brushed back and standing erect upon her head!

Her hair!--that haunted mademoiselle more persistently than all therest. The old maid thought, involuntarily, of things that had come toher ears when she was a child, of superstitions of the common peoplestored away in the background of her memory; she asked herself if shehad not been told that dead people whose hair is like that carry a crimewith them to the grave. And at times it was such hair as that that shesaw upon that head, the hair of crime, standing on end with terror andstiffened with horror before the justice of Heaven, like the hair of thecondemned man before the scaffold in La Grève!

On Sunday mademoiselle was too ill to leave her bed. On Monday she triedto rise and dress, in order to attend the funeral; but she was attackedwith faintness, and was obliged to return to her bed. 

LXVIII

"Well! is it all over?" said mademoiselle from her bed, as the conciergeentered her room about eleven o'clock, on his return from the cemetery, with the black coat and the sanctimonious manner suited to the occasion. 

"_Mon Dieu_, yes, mademoiselle. Thank God! the poor girl is out ofpain. "

"Stay! I have no head to-day. Put the receipts and the rest of the moneyon my table. We will settle our accounts some other day. "

The concierge stood before her without moving or evincing any purpose togo, shifting from one hand to the other a blue velvet cap made from thedress of one of his daughters. After a moment's reflection, he decidedto speak. 

"This burying is an expensive business, mademoiselle. In the firstplace, there's----"

"Who asked you to give the figures?" Mademoiselle de Varandeuilinterrupted, with the haughty air of superb charity. 

The concierge continued: "And as I was saying, a lot in the cemetery, which you told me to get, ain't given away. It's no use for you to havea kind heart, mademoiselle, you ain't any too rich, --everyone knowsthat, --and I says to myself: 'Mademoiselle's going to have no smallamount to pay out, and I know mademoiselle, she'll pay. ' So it'll do noharm to economize on that, eh? It'll be just so much saved. The other'llbe just as safe under ground. And then, what will give her the mostpleasure up yonder? Why, to know that she isn't making things hard foranybody, the excellent girl. "

"Pay? What?" said mademoiselle, out of patience with the concierge'scircumlocution. 

"Oh! that's of no account, " he replied; "she was very fond of you, allthe same. And then, when she was very sick, it wasn't the time. Oh! _MonDieu_, you needn't put yourself out--there's no hurry about it--it'smoney she owed a long while. See, this is it. "

He took a stamped paper from the inside pocket of his coat. 

"I didn't want her to make a note, --she insisted. "

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil seized the stamped paper and saw at the foot:

 _"I acknowledge the receipt of the above amount. _

 "GERMINIE LACERTEUX. "

It was a promise to pay three hundred francs in monthly installments, which were to be endorsed on the back. 

"There's nothing there, you see, " said the concierge, turning the paperover. 

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil took off her spectacles. "I will pay, " shesaid. 

The concierge bowed. She glanced at him; he did not move. 

"That is all, I hope?" she said, sharply. 

The concierge had his eyes fixed on a leaf in the carpet. "That'sall--unless----"

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had the same feeling of terror as at themoment she passed through the door on whose other side she was to seeher maid's dead body. 

"But how does she owe all this?" she cried. "I paid her good wages, Ialmost clothed her. Where did her money go, eh?"

"Ah! there you are, mademoiselle. I should rather not have toldyou, --but as well to-day as to-morrow. And then, too, it's better thatyou should be warned; when you know beforehand you can arrange matters. There's an account with the poultry woman. The poor girl owed a littleeverywhere; she didn't keep things in very good shape these last fewyears. The laundress left her book the last time she came. It amounts toquite a little, --I don't know just how much. It seems there's a note atthe grocer's--an old note--it goes back years. He'll bring you hisbook. "

"How much at the grocer's?"

"Something like two hundred and fifty. "

All these disclosures, falling upon Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, oneafter another, extorted exclamations of stupefied surprise from her. Resting her elbow on her pillow, she said nothing as the veil was tornaway, bit by bit, from this life, as its shameful features were broughtto light one by one. 

"Yes, about two hundred and fifty. There's a good deal of wine, he tellsme. "

"I have always had wine in the cellar. "

"The _crémière_, " continued the concierge, without heeding her remark, "that's no great matter, --some seventy-five francs. It's for absintheand brandy. "

"She drank!" cried Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, everything made clear toher by those words. 

The concierge did not seem to hear. 

"You see, mademoiselle, knowing the Jupillons was the death of her, --theyoung man especially. It wasn't for herself that she did what she did. And the disappointment, you see. She took to drink. She hoped to marryhim, I ought to say. She fitted up a room for him. When they get tobuying furniture the money goes fast. She ruined herself, --think of it!It was no use for me to tell her not to throw herself away by drinkingas she did. You don't suppose I was going to tell you, when she came inat six o'clock in the morning! It was the same with her child. Oh!" theconcierge added, in reply to mademoiselle's gesture, "it was a luckything the little one died. Never mind, you can say she led a gaylife--and a hard one. That's why I say the common ditch. If I wasyou--she's cost you enough, mademoiselle, all the time she's been livingon you. And you can leave her where she is--with everybody else. "

"Ah! that's how it is! that's what she was! She stole for men! she ranin debt! Ah! she did well to die, the hussy! And I must pay! Achild!--think of that: the slut! Yes, indeed, she can rot where shewill! You have done well, Monsieur Henri. Steal! She stole from me! Inthe ditch, parbleu! that's quite good enough for her! To think that Ilet her keep all my keys--I never kept any account. My God! That's whatcomes of confidence. Well! here we are--I'll pay--not on her account, but on my own. And I gave her my best pair of sheets to be buried in!Ah! if I'd known I'd have given you the kitchen dish-clout, _mademoiselle how I am duped_!"

And mademoiselle continued in this strain for some moments until thewords choked one another in her throat and strangled her. 

LXIX

As a result of this scene, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil kept her bed aweek, ill and raging, filled with indignation that shook her whole body, overflowed through her mouth, and tore from her now and again somecoarse insult which she would hurl with a shriek of rage at her maid'svile memory. Night and day she was possessed by the same fever ofmalediction, and even in her dreams her attenuated limbs were convulsedwith wrath. 

Was it possible! Germinie! her Germinie! She could think of nothingelse. Debts!--a child!--all sorts of shame! The degraded creature! Sheabhorred her, she detested her. If she had lived she would havedenounced her to the police. She would have liked to believe in hell sothat she might be consigned to the torments that await the dead. Hermaid was such a creature as that! A girl who had been in her servicetwenty years! whom she had loaded down with benefits! Drunkenness! shehad sunk so low as that! The horror that succeeds a bad dream came tomademoiselle, and all the waves of loathing that flowed from her heartsaid: "Out upon the dead woman whose life the grave vomited forth andwhose filth it cast out!"

How she had deceived her! How the wretch had pretended to love her! Andto make her appear more ungrateful and more despicable Mademoiselle deVarandeuil recalled her manifestations of affection, her attentions, herjealousies, which seemed a part of her adoration. She saw her bendingover her when she was ill. She thought of her caresses. It was all alie! Her devotion was a lie! The delight with which she kissed her, thelove upon her lips, were lies! Mademoiselle told herself over and overagain, she persuaded herself that it was so; and yet, little by little, from these reminiscences, from these evocations of the past whosebitterness she sought to make more bitter, from the far-off sweetness ofdays gone by, there arose within her a first sensation of pity. 

She drove away the thoughts that tended to allay her wrath; butreflection brought them back. Thereupon there came to her mind somethings to which she had paid no heed during Germinie's lifetime, triflesof which the grave makes us take thought and upon which death shedslight. She had a vague remembrance of certain strange performances onthe part of her maid, of feverish effusions and frantic embraces, of herthrowing herself on her knees as if she were about to make a confession, of movements of the lips as if a secret were trembling on their verge. She saw, with the eyes we have for those who are no more, Germinie'swistful glances, her gestures and attitudes, the despairing expressionof her face. And now she realized that there were deep wounds beneath, heart-rending pain, the torment of her anguish and her repentance, thetears of blood of her remorse, all sorts of suffering forced out ofsight throughout her life, and in her whole being a Passion of shamethat dared not ask forgiveness except with silence!

Then she would scold herself for the thought and call herself an oldfool. Her instinct of rigid uprightness, the stern conscience and harshjudgment of a stainless life, the things which cause a virtuous woman tocondemn a harlot and should have caused a saint like Mademoiselle deVarandeuil to be without pity for her servant--everything within herrebelled against a pardon. The voice of justice, stifling her kindnessof heart, cried: "Never! never!" And she would expel Germinie's infamousphantom with a pitiless gesture. 

There were times, indeed, when, in order to make her condemnation andexecration of her memory more irrevocable, she would heap charges uponher and slander her. She would add to the dead woman's horrible list ofsins. She would reproach Germinie for more than was justly chargeable toher. She would attribute crimes to her dark thoughts, murderous desiresto her impatient dreams. She would strive to think, she would forceherself to think, that she had desired her mistress's death and had beenawaiting it. 

But at that very moment, amid the blackest of her thoughts andsuppositions, a vision arose and stood in a bright light before her. Afigure approached, that seemed to come to meet her glance, a figureagainst which she could not defend herself, and which passed through thehands with which she sought to force it back. Mademoiselle de Varandeuilsaw her dead maid once more. She saw once more the face of which she hadcaught a glimpse in the amphitheatre, the crucified face, the torturedface to which the blood and agony of a heart had mounted together. Shesaw it once more with the faculty which the second sight of memoryseparates from its surroundings. And that face, as it became clearer toher, caused her less terror. It appeared to her, divesting itself, as itwere, of its fear-inspiring, horrifying qualities. Suffering aloneremained, but it was the suffering of expiation, almost of prayer, thesuffering of a dead face that would like to weep. And as its expressiongrew ever milder, mademoiselle came at last to see in it a glance ofsupplication, of supplication that, at last, compelled her pity. Insensibly there glided into her reflections indulgent thoughts, suggestions of apology that surprised herself. She asked herself if thepoor girl was as guilty as others, if she had deliberately chosen thepath of evil, if life, circumstances, the misfortune of her body and herdestiny, had not made her the creature she had been, a creature of loveand sorrow. Suddenly she stopped: she was on the point of forgiving her!

One morning she leaped out of bed. 

"Here! you--you other!" she cried to her housekeeper, "the devil takeyour name! I can't remember it. Give me my clothes, quick! I have to goout. "

"The idea, mademoiselle--just look at the roofs, they're all white. "

"Well, it snows, that's all. "

Ten minutes later, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil said to the driver of thecab she had sent for:

"Montmartre Cemetery!"

LXX

In the distance an enclosure wall extended, perfectly straight, as faras the eye could see. The thread of snow that marked the outline of itscoping gave it a dirty, rusty color. In a corner at the left threeleafless trees reared their bare black branches against the sky. Theyrustled sadly, with the sound of pieces of dead wood stirred by thesouth wind. Above these trees, behind the wall and close against it, arose the two arms from which hung one of the last oil-lamps in Paris. Afew snow-covered roofs were scattered here and there; beyond, the hillof Montmartre rose sharply, its white shroud broken by oases of brownearth and sandy patches. Low gray walls followed the slope, surmountedby gaunt, stunted trees whose branches had a bluish tint in the mist, asfar as two black windmills. The sky was of a leaden hue, with occasionalcold, bluish streaks as if ink had been applied with a brush! overMontmartre there was a light streak, of a yellow color, like the Seinewater after heavy rains. Above that wintry beam the wings of aninvisible windmill turned and turned, --slow-moving wings, unvarying intheir movement, which seemed to be turning for eternity. 

In front of the wall, against which was planted a thicket of deadcypresses, turned red by the frost, was a vast tract of land upon whichwere two rows of crowded, jostling overturned crosses, like two greatfuneral processions. The crosses touched and pushed one another and trodon one another's heels. They bent and fell and collapsed in the ranks. In the middle there was a sort of congestion which had caused them tobulge out on both sides; you could see them lying--covered by the snowand raising it into mounds with the thick wood of which they weremade--upon the paths, somewhat trampled in the centre, that skirted thetwo long files. The broken ranks undulated with the fluctuation of amultitude, the disorder and wavering course of a long march. The blackcrosses with their arms outstretched assumed the appearance of ghostsand persons in distress. The two disorderly columns made one think of ahuman panic, a desperate, frightened army. It was as if one were lookingon at a terrible rout. 

All the crosses were laden with wreaths, wreaths of immortelles, wreathsof white paper with silver thread, black wreaths with gold thread; butyou could see them beneath the snow, worn out, withered, ghastly things, souvenirs, as it were, which the other dead would not accept and whichhad been picked up in order to make a little toilet for the crosses withgleanings from the graves. 

All the crosses had a name written in white; but there were other namesthat were not even written on a piece of wood, --a broken branch of atree, stuck in the ground, with an envelope tied around it--suchtombstones as that were to be seen there!

On the left, where they were digging a trench for a third row ofcrosses, the workman's shovel threw black dirt into the air, which fellupon the white earth around. Profound silence, the deaf silence of thesnow, enveloped everything, and but two sounds could be heard; the dullsound made by the clods of earth and the heavy sound of regularfootsteps; an old priest who was waiting there, his head enveloped in ablack cowl, dressed in a black gown and stole, and with a dirty, yellowsurplice, was trying to keep himself warm by stamping his great galocheson the pavement of the high road, in front of the crosses. 

Such was the common ditch in those days. That tract of land, thosecrosses and that priest said this: "Here sleeps the Death of the commonpeople; this is the poor man's end!"

 * * * * *

O Paris! thou art the heart of the world, thou art the great city ofhumanity, the great city of charity and brotherly love! Thou hast kindlyintentions, old-fashioned habits of compassion, theatres that give alms. The poor man is thy citizen as well as the rich man. Thy churches speakof Jesus Christ; thy laws speak of equality; thy newspapers speak ofprogress; all thy governments speak of the common people; and this iswhere thou castest those who die in thy service, those who killthemselves ministering to thy luxury, those who perish in the noisomeodors of thy factories, those who have sweated their lives away workingfor thee, giving thee thy prosperity, thy pleasures, thy splendors, those who have furnished thy animation and thy noise, those who havelengthened with the links of their lives the chain of thy duration as acapital, those who have been the crowd in thy streets and the commonpeople of thy grandeur. Each of thy cemeteries has a like shamefulcorner, hidden in the angle of a wall, where thou makest haste to burythem, and where thou castest dirt upon them in such stingy clods, thatone can see the ends of their coffins protruding! One would say that thycharity stops with their last breath, that thy only free gift is the bedwhereon they suffer, and that, when the hospital can do no more forthem, thou, who art so vast and so superb, hast no place for them! Thoudost heap them up, crowd them together and mingle them in death, as thoudidst mingle them in the death-agony beneath the sheets of thy hospitalsa hundred years since! As late as yesterday thou hadst only that prieston sentry duty, to throw a drop of paltry holy water on every comer: notthe briefest prayer! Even that symbol of decency was lacking: God couldnot be disturbed for so small a matter! And what the priest blesses isalways the same thing: a trench in which the pine boxes strike againstone another, where the dead enjoy no privacy! Corruption there is commonto all; no one has his own, but each one has that of all the rest: theworms are owned promiscuously! In the devouring soil a Montfauconhastens to make way for the Catacombs. For the dead here have no moretime than room to rot in: the earth is taken from them before it hasfinished with them! before their bones have assumed the color and theancient appearance, so to speak, of stone, before the passing years haveeffaced the last trace of humanity and the memory of a body! Theexcavation is renewed when the earth is still themselves, when they arethe damp soil in which the mattock is buried. The earth is loaned tothem, you say? But it does not even confine the odor of death! Insummer, the wind that passes over this scarcely-covered humancharnel-house wafts the unholy miasma to the city of the living. In thescorching days of August the keepers deny admission to the place: thereare flies that bear upon them the poison of the carrion, pestilentialflies whose sting is deadly!

 * * * * *

Mademoiselle arrived at this spot after passing the wall that separatesthe lots sold in perpetuity from those sold temporarily only. Followingthe directions given her by a keeper, she walked along between thefurther line of crosses and the newly-opened trench. And there she madeher way over buried wreaths, over the snowy pall, to a hole where thetrench began. It was covered over with old rotten planks and a sheet ofoxidized zinc on which a workman had thrown his blue blouse. The earthsloped away behind them to the bottom of the trench, where could be seenthe sinister outlines of three wooden coffins: there were one large oneand two smaller ones just behind. The crosses of the past week, of theday before, of two days before, extended in a line down the slope; theyglided along, plunged suddenly downward, and seemed to be taking longstrides as if they were in danger of being carried over a precipice. 

Mademoiselle began to ascend the path by these crosses, spelling out thedates and searching for the names with her wretched eyes. She reachedthe crosses of the 8th of November: that was the day before her maid'sdeath, and Germinie should be close by. There were five crosses of the9th of November, five crosses huddled close together: Germinie was notin the crush. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil went a little farther on, tothe crosses of the 10th, then to those of the 11th, then to those of the12th. She returned to the 8th, and looked carefully around in alldirections: there was nothing, absolutely nothing, --Germinie had beenburied without a cross! Not even a bit of wood had been placed in theground by which to identify her grave!

At last the old lady dropped on her knees in the snow, between twocrosses, one of which bore the date of the 9th and the other of the 10thof November. All that remained of Germinie should be almost in thatspot. That ill-defined space was her ill-defined grave. To pray over herbody it was necessary to pray at random between two dates, --as if thepoor girl's destiny had decreed that there should be no more room onearth for her body than for her heart!

NOTES

[1] _Canon_ is the French word for cannon; it is also used invulgar parlance to mean a glass of wine drunk at the bar. 

[2] _Battre les murailles_--to beat the walls--has a slangmeaning: to be so drunk that you can't see, or can't lie down withoutholding on. 

[3] Literally, _red bowels_--common slang for hard drinkers. 

[4] _Cuir_ is an expression used to denote the error inspeaking, which consists--in French--in pronouncing a _t_ for an _s_, and vice versa at the end of words which are joined in pronunciation tothe next word: _e. G. , il étai-z-à la campagne_ for _il était à lacampagne_. 

[5] In the slang vocabulary, to _console_ one's coffee means toadd brandy to it. 

[6] A _négresse_ is a bottle of red wine, and, as applied tothat article, _morte_ (dead) means empty. 

List of Illustrations

GERMINIE LACERTEUX

 PAGE

GERMINIE AND JUPILLON VISIT THEIR CHILD _Fronts. _

JUPILLON AND GERMINIE AT THE FORTIFICATIONS 116

GERMINIE BRINGS MONEY FOR A SUBSTITUTE 204

GERMINIE TEMPTED TO MURDER 308

GERMINIE AT LARIBOISIÈRE 356