XVI
November 24.
No letter from Joseph. Knowing how prudent he is, I am not greatly astonished at his silence, but it causes me a little suffering. To be sure, Joseph is not unaware that the letters go through Madame's hands before reaching ours, and doubtless he does not wish to expose himself or me to the danger of their being read by her, or even have the fact that he writes to me made a subject of Madame's malicious comments. Yet, with his great mental resources, it seems to me that he could have found a way of sending me news. He is to return to-morrow morning. Will he return? I am not without anxiety, and cannot keep from thinking about it. Why, too, was he unwilling to give me his Cherbourg address? But I do not wish to think of all these things, that split my head and put me into a fever.
Here everything goes on in the same way, except that there are fewer events and still greater silence. Joseph's work is done by the sacristan, out of friendship. He comes every day, punctually, to groom the horses and to tend to the garden-frames. Impossible to get a single word out of him. He is more silent and suspicious than Joseph, and his manners are more doubtful. He is more ordinary, too, and lacks his greatness and power. I see him only when I have an order to deliver to him. He is a queer type, too. The grocer tells me that, when young, he studied for the priesthood, and was expelled from the seminary on account of his indelicacy and immorality. May it not have been he who outraged the little Claire in the woods? Since then, he has tried his hand at all trades. Now a pastry-cook, now a church-singer, now a peddler, a notary's clerk, a domestic, the town drummer, an auctioneer, and an employee in the sheriff's office, for the last four years he has been sacristan. To be sacristan is to be also something of a priest. Moreover, he has all the slimy and crawling manners of the ecclesiastical bugs. Surely he would not recoil from the vilest tasks. Joseph does wrong to make him his friend. But is he his friend? Is he not, rather, his accomplice?
Madame has a sick headache. It seems she has one regularly every three months. For two days she remains shut up in her room, with drawn curtains and without light, only Marianne being allowed to enter. She does not want me. Madame's sickness means a good time for Monsieur. Monsieur makes the most of it. He does not leave the kitchen.
Captain Mauger, who does not speak to me any more, but casts furious glances at me over the hedge, has become reconciled with his family,—at least, with one of his nieces, who has come to live with him. She is not bad-looking,—a tall blonde with a nose that is too long, but with a fresh complexion and a good figure. People say she is to keep the house, and take Rose's place.
As for Mme. Gouin, Rose's death must have been a blow to her Sunday mornings. She saw at once that she could not get along without a leading lady. Now, it is that pest of a haberdasher who leads off in the gossip, and undertakes to maintain the admiration of the girls of Mesnil-Roy for the clandestine talents of this infamous grocer. Yesterday being Sunday, I went to the grocery-shop. It was a very brilliant occasion; they were all there. There was very little said about Rose, and, when I told the story of the wills, there was a general shout of laughter. Ah! the captain was right when he said to me: "Everything can be replaced." But the haberdasher has not Rose's authority, for she is a woman concerning whom, from the point of view of morals, there unhappily is nothing to be said.
In what a hurry I am to see Joseph! With what nervous impatience I await the moment when I shall know what I must hope or fear from destiny! I can no longer live as I am living now. Never have I been so distressed by this mediocre life that I live, by these people whom I serve, by all these dismal mountebanks around me, among whom I am growing more stupid from day to day. If I were not sustained by the strange feeling that gives a new and powerful interest to my present life, I think it would not be long before I, too, should plunge into the abyss of stupidity and vileness which I see continually widening around me. Ah! whether Joseph succeeds or not, whether he changes his mind about me or not, I have come to a final decision; I will no longer stay here. A few hours more, another whole night of anxiety, and then I shall be settled regarding my future.
I am going to spend this night in a further revival of old memories, perhaps for the last time. It is the only way that I have of avoiding the anxieties of the present and not splitting my head over the dreams of to-morrow. In reality these recollections amuse me, and deepen my contempt. What singular and monotonous faces, all the same, I have met on my path of servitude! When I see them again, in my mind's eye, they do not make on me the impression of really living beings. They live, or at least give the illusion of life, only through their vices. Take away the vices that sustain them as bandages sustain mummies, and they are no longer even phantoms ... they are nothing but dust ... ashes ... death.
Oh! that was a famous house, for instance, to which, a few days after my refusal to go into the service of the old gentleman in the country, I was sent, with all sorts of admirable references, by Mme. Paulhat-Durand. My masters were a very young couple, without animals or children, living in an ill-kept interior, though the furniture was stylish and there was a heavy elegance about the decorations. Luxury and great waste! A single glance as I entered showed me all; I saw clearly with whom I had to deal. It was my dream! Now then, I was going to forget all my miseries,—M. Xavier, and the good sisters of Neuilly, and the killing sessions in the ante-room of the employment-bureau, and the long days of anguish, and the long nights of solitude and debauchery.
Now then, I was going to plan for myself an agreeable life, with easy work and certain profits. Made happy by this prospect, I promised myself that I would correct my caprices, repress the ardent impulses of my frankness, in order to stay in this place a long, long time. In a twinkling my gloomy ideas vanished; and my hatred of the bourgeois flew away, as if by enchantment. I again became madly and hilariously gay, and, seized anew with a violent love of life, I began to think that the masters are sometimes good. The personnel was not numerous, but it was select,—a cook, a valet de chambre, an old butler, and myself. There was no coachman, the masters having abolished their stable a short time before, preferring to hire their teams from a livery-man. We became friends directly. That very evening they gave me welcome by opening a bottle of champagne.
"My!" I exclaimed, clapping my hands; "they do things well here."
The valet de chambre smiled, and shook a bunch of keys musically in the air. He had the keys to the cellar; he had all the keys. He was the trusted servant of the house.
"Say, will you lend them to me?" I asked, by way of a joke.
Giving me a tender look, he answered:
"Yes, if you are nice with Baby. You will have to be nice with Baby."
Oh! he was a chic man, and he knew how to talk to women. He had an English name,—William. What a pretty name!
During the meal, which lasted for some time, the old butler did not say a word, but ate and drank a great deal. They paid no attention to him, and he seemed a little dopy. As for William, he was charming, gallant, and assiduous; he paid me delicate attentions under the table; and, when we were drinking our coffee, he offered me Russian cigarettes, of which his pockets were full. Then, drawing me to him,—the tobacco had made me a little dizzy, and I was a little drunk too, and my hair was disarranged,—he seated me upon his knees, and whispered audacious things in my ear. Oh! but he was bold!
Eugénie, the cook, did not seem scandalized by these remarks and these performances. Anxious and dreamy, she kept her neck continually inclined toward the door, pricked up her ears at the slightest sound, as if she were expecting some one, and, with a very uncertain eye, kept on guzzling wine, glass after glass. She was a woman of about forty-five, with a large bust, fleshy, sensual lips, languishing and passionate eyes, and an air of great kindness mingled with melancholy. At last there came a discreet knock at the door. Eugénie's face lighted up; she rose with a bound, and went to open the door. Not being familiar with the habits of this servants' hall, I wanted to assume a more decorous attitude, but William held me more tightly than before, pressing me close against him with a firm embrace.
"That's nothing," he remarked, quietly. "That is the little one."
Meantime a young man had entered, almost a child. Very slender, very blonde, with a very white skin underlying the dark beginnings of a beard, scarcely eighteen, he was as pretty as a love. He wore an entirely new and elegant jacket, which set off his trim and slender bust, and a pink cravat. He was the son of the janitor in the next house. He came, it seems, every evening. Eugénie adored him, was mad over him. Every day she put aside, in a big basket, tureens full of bouillon, fine slices of meat, bottles of wine, cakes, and delicious fruits, which the little one carried to his parents.
"Why are you so late to-night?" asked Eugénie.
The little one excused himself in a drawling voice.
"I had to look out for the lodge. Mamma had gone on an errand."
"Your mother, your mother ... are you telling me the truth, young scamp?"
She sighed, and, with her eyes gazing into the child's eyes, and her two hands resting on his shoulders, she continued, in a mournful tone:
"When you are late, I am always afraid something has happened. I do not want you to be late, my darling. You will say to your mother that, if that continues,—well, I will give you nothing more ... for her."
Then, with quivering nostrils and her whole body shaken by a thrill, she said:
"How pretty you are, my love! Oh! your little phiz! your little phiz! Why did you not wear your pretty yellow shoes? I want you to look your best when you come to see me. And those eyes, those big eyes, you little brigand! Ah! I'll bet they have been looking at another woman. And your lips! your lips! What have those lips been doing?"
He smilingly reassured her, with a slightly swaying motion of his body:
"No, indeed, I assure you, Nini, that's straight. Mamma had gone on an errand,—yes, truly."
Eugénie repeated several times:
"Oh! you scamp, you scamp, I do not want you to be looking at other women. Your little phiz for me, your little mouth for me, your big eyes for me! Say, do you really love me?"
"Oh, yes, surely."
"Say it again."
"Oh! surely."
She leaped upon his neck, and, panting, led him into the adjoining room, stammering words of love.
William said to me:
"How she holds him! And what a pile this little chap costs her! Last week she gave him a complete new outfit. You would not love me like that."
This scene had stirred me deeply, and I promptly vowed a sister's friendship for the poor Eugénie. This boy resembled M. Xavier. At least there was a moral similarity between these two beings,—so pretty, though so rotten. And this reminder made me sad,—oh! infinitely sad! I saw myself again in M. Xavier's room, the night when I gave him the ninety francs. Oh! your little phiz! your little mouth! your big eyes! They were the same cold and cruel eyes, there was the same undulation of the body, there was the same vice shining in the pupils and imparting a sort of benumbing poison to the lips.
I released myself from William's arms, and, as I was arranging my disordered hair, I remarked:
"Well, I must say, you don't lose any time."
Of course I did not want to change anything in the habits of the house, or in the service. William did the housework, in a go-as-you-please fashion. A stroke of the broom here, a stroke of the duster there, and the thing was done. The rest of the time he babbled, ransacked drawers and closets, and read the letters that were dragging about on every hand and in every corner. I did as he did. I allowed the dust to accumulate upon and under the furniture, and I took good care not to disturb the disorder of the salons and the chambers. If I had been in the masters' place, I should have been ashamed to live in so untidy an interior. But they did not know how to command, and, being timid and fearing scenes, they never dared to say anything. If sometimes, after an omission that was too patent or too embarrassing, they ventured to stammer: "It seems to me that you have not done this or that," we had only to answer, in a tone whose firmness did not exclude insolence: "I really ask Madame's pardon; Madame is mistaken. And, if Madame is not content...." Then they insisted no further, and that was the end of it. Never in my life have I met masters having less authority over their servants, or such ninnies! Really, one is not to be led by the nose as they were.
It is necessary to do William this justice,—that he had known how to put things on a good footing in the box. William had a passion that is common among servants,—the passion for the races. He knew all the jockeys, all the trainers, all the bookmakers, and also some very sporty gentlemen, barons and viscounts, who showed a certain friendship for him, knowing that he had astonishing tips from time to time. This passion, whose maintenance and satisfaction require numerous suburban excursions, does not harmonize with a restricted and sedentary calling, like that of a valet de chambre. Now, William had regulated his life in this way; after breakfast, he dressed and went out. How chic he was in his black and white check pantaloons, his highly-polished shoes, his putty-colored overcoat, and his hats! Oh! William's hats, hats the color of deep water, in which skies, trees, streets, rivers, crowds, hippodromes, succeeded one another in prodigious reflections! He came back just in time to dress his master, and often, in the evening, after dinner, he went out again, saying that he had an important rendezvous with the English. I did not see him again until very late at night, when he always came home a little drunk, from having taken too many cocktails. Every week he invited friends to dinner,—coachmen, valets de chambre, race-track people,—these latter very comical and weird with their twisted legs, their deformed knees, and their appearance of crapulous cynicism and ambiguous sex. They talked horses, turf, women, told all sorts of disagreeable stories about the morals of their masters, and then, becoming excited by the fumes of the wine, began on politics. William was a superbly uncompromising and terribly violent reactionary.
"The man for me," he cried, "is Cassagnac. A rude lad, Cassagnac! They are afraid of him. How he can write! What raps he gives! Yes, let the dirty rascals tackle this strenuous chap if they dare!"
And suddenly, at the height of the noise, Eugénie rose, paler and with shining eyes, and rushed for the door. The little one entered, his face wearing an expression of astonishment at sight of these unusual people, of these empty bottles, of this reckless pillage of the table. Eugénie had saved a glass of champagne and a plate of goodies for him. Then they both disappeared into the adjoining room.
"Oh! your little phiz, your little mouth, your big eyes!"
That night the parents' basket contained larger and better portions. Of course these worthy people should profit by the feast.
William often spoke to me of Edgar, the celebrated stud-groom of the baron de Borgsheim. He was proud to know him; he admired him almost as much as he admired Cassagnac. Edgar and Cassagnac were the two great enthusiasms of his life. I think it would have been dangerous to joke him about them, or even to discuss them with him. When he came home at night, late, William excused himself by saying to me, "I was with Edgar." It seemed that to be with Edgar constituted not only an excuse, but a glory.
"Why don't you bring your famous Edgar to dinner, that I may see him?" I asked of him one day.
William was scandalized at this idea, and he declared, loftily: "What! do you imagine that Edgar would dine with simple servants?"
It was from Edgar that William got his incomparable method of polishing his hats. Once, at the Auteuil races, Edgar was approached by the young marquis de Plérin.
"Say, my lad," begged the marquis, "how do you get your hats?"
"My hats, Monsieur the Marquis?" responded Edgar, highly flattered, for the young Plérin, a robber at the races and a trickster at the gaming-table, was then one of the most famous personalities of Parisian society. "It is very simple; only it is like picking the winner,—you must know how. Well, this is the trick. Every morning I make my valet de chambre run for a quarter of an hour. He sweats, of course. And the sweat contains oil. Then, with a very fine silk handkerchief, he wipes the sweat from his brow, and rubs my hats with it. A stroke or two with the iron finishes the job. But it takes a clean and healthy man, preferably a man with nut-brown complexion,—for some blondes smell strong, and all sweats are not suitable. Last year I gave the receipt to the prince of Wales."
And, as the young marquis de Plérin thanked Edgar and slyly shook his hand, the latter added, confidently:
"Take Baladeur at seven to one. He is to be the winner, Monsieur the Marquis."
It is really funny when I think of it, but I finally came to feel flattered myself that William had such a relation. To me, too, Edgar was something admirable and inaccessible, like the emperor of Germany, Victor Hugo, or Paul Bourget. That is why I think it advisable to fix in these pages, from all that William told me, the portrait of this more than illustrious, this historic personage.
Edgar was born in London, in a frightful den, between two hiccups of whiskey. As a boy he was a vagabond, a beggar, a thief, and a jail-bird. Later, having the requisite physical deformities and the most crapulous instincts, he was pitched on for a groom. From ante-room to stable, rubbing against all the trickery, all the rapacity, all the vice prevailing among the servants of a grand establishment, he became a "lad" in the Eaton stud. And he strutted about in a Scotch cap, a yellow and black striped waistcoat, and light pantaloons, loose at the thighs, tight at the calves, and wrinkled at the knees in the form of a screw. When scarcely an adult, he looked like a little old man, with frail limbs and furrowed face, red at the cheek-bones, yellow at the temples, with worn-out and grimacing mouth, with thin hair brushed over his ears in the form of a greasy spiral. In a society which the odor of horse-dung causes to swoon with delight Edgar was already a personage less anonymous than a workingman or a peasant,—almost a gentleman.
At Eaton he learned his trade thoroughly. He knows how to groom a stylish horse, how to take care of it when it is sick, and what detailed and complicated toilets are most suitable to the color of its coat. He knows the secret of the intimate washings, the refined polishings, the expert pedicurings, and the ingenious processes of make-up, by which the beasts of the race-track, like the beasts of love, are set out and beautified. In the bar-rooms he knew important jockeys, celebrated trainers, and the big-bellied baronets, and blackleg dukes and bums, who are the cream of this muck-heap and the flower of this horse-dung. Edgar would have liked to become a jockey, for he soon saw all the tricks that could be played and the money that could be made. But he had grown too large. Though his legs had remained thin and bowed, he had acquired something of a corporation. He was too heavy. So, being unable to don the jockey's coat, he decided to wear the coachman's livery.
To-day Edgar is forty-three years old. He is one of the five or six English, Italian, and French stud-grooms of whom they talk in elegant society with wondering admiration. His name triumphs in the sporting papers, and even in the paragraphs of the society and literary journals. The baron de Borgsheim, his present master, is proud of him,—more proud of him than he would be of a financial operation that had ruined a hundred thousand janitors. Swelling up with an air of definitive superiority, he says: "My stud-groom!" as a collector of pictures would say: "My Rubens!" And, in fact, the lucky baron has reason to be proud, for, since he came into possession of Edgar, he has made great strides in fame and respectability. Edgar has gained for him that admission to uncompromising salons which he so long coveted. Through Edgar he has at last overcome the resistance of society to his race. At the club they talk of the famous "victory of the baron over England." The English have taken Egypt from us, but the baron has taken Edgar from the English, and that restores the equilibrium. If he had conquered the Indies, he would not have been more loudly acclaimed. This admiration is accompanied, however, by deep jealousy. They would like to get Edgar away from him, and so there goes on around Edgar all sorts of intrigues, and corrupting conspiracies, and flirtations, like those that go on around a beautiful woman. As for the newspapers, they, in their respectful enthusiasm, have reached a point where they are no longer able to tell exactly which of the two, Edgar or the baron, is the admirable stud-groom, and which the admirable financier. They confound the two in the mutual glories of one and the same apotheosis.
Provided you have been curious enough to circulate among aristocratic crowds, you certainly must have met Edgar, who is one of their most precious ornaments and one who is most commonly displayed. He is a man of average height, very ugly,—that comical English ugliness,—and having an immoderately long nose, with doubly royal curves, which oscillate between the Semitic curve and the Bourbon curve. His lips, very short and turned-up, reveal black holes between decaying teeth. His complexion is lightened in the scale of the yellows, relieved at the cheek-bones with some hatchings in bright lake. Without being obese, like the majestic coachman of the olden time, he is now endowed with a comfortable and regular embonpoint which covers with fat the vulgar protuberances of his frame. And, slightly throwing out his chest, he walks with an elastic step, his elbows bent at the regulation angle. Scorning to follow the fashion, desirous rather of setting it, he dresses richly and fantastically. He has blue frock-coats, with watered-silk facings, excessively tight-fitting and too new; pantaloons of English cut that are too light; cravats that are too white; jewels that are too big; handkerchiefs that are too fragrant; shoes that are too highly polished; hats that are too shining. How long the young swells have envied Edgar the unusual and fulgurating brilliancy of his headgear!
At eight o'clock in the morning, wearing a little round hat and a putty-colored overcoat as short as a jacket, with an enormous yellow rose in his button-hole, Edgar descends from his automobile, in front of the baron's mansion. The grooming is just finished. After having cast an ill-humored look around the yard, he enters the stables and begins his inspection, followed by the anxious and respectful hostlers. Nothing escapes his suspicious and sidewise glances,—a bucket not in its place, a spot on the steel chains, a scratch on the silvers and brasses. And he growls, flies into a passion, and threatens in a phlegm-choked voice, his bronchial tubes being still obstructed by the fermentation of the champagne drunk the night before. He enters each box, and passes his white-gloved hand over the manes, necks, bellies, and legs of the horses. If he finds the slightest trace of dirt on his glove, he jaws the hostlers; there is a flood of filthy words and insulting oaths, and a tempest of furious gestures. Then he examines minutely the horses' hoofs, smells of the oats in the marble mangers, feels of the litter, and long and carefully studies the form, color, and density of the dung, which never suits him.
"What kind of dung do you call that, I should like to know? It is the dung of a cab-horse. Be sure that I see nothing like it to-morrow, pack of good-for-nothings that you are!"
Sometimes the baron puts in an appearance, glad of a chance to talk with his stud-groom. Scarcely does he notice his master's presence. The latter's timid questions he answers with curt and snarling words. Never does he say "Monsieur the Baron." The baron, on the contrary, is almost tempted to say: "Monsieur the coachman!" Afraid that he may irritate Edgar, he does not stay long, and retires discreetly.
Having finished his review of the stables, the carriage-houses, and the harness-rooms, and having given his orders in a tone of military command, Edgar gets into his automobile again, and starts rapidly for the Champs-Elysées, where at first he makes a short stop in a little bar-room, among race-track people, skunk-faced tipsters, who drop mysterious words into his ears, and show him confidential dispatches. The rest of the morning is devoted to visits to sundry trades-people, to give them new orders and receive commissions, and to horse-dealers, with whom such conversations as the following take place:
"Well, Master Edgar?"
"Well, Master Poolny?"
"I have a buyer for the baron's bays."
"They are not for sale."
"Fifty pounds for you."
"No."
"A hundred pounds, Master Edgar."
"We will see, Master Poolny."
"That is not all, Master Edgar."
"What else, Master Poolny?"
"I have two magnificent sorrels for the baron."
"We do not need them."
"Fifty pounds for you."
"No."
"A hundred pounds, Master Edgar."
"We will see, Master Poolny."
A week later Edgar has spoiled the paces of the baron's bays in just the right degree, not too much or too little, and then, having demonstrated to the baron that it is high time to get rid of them, he sells them to Poolny, who sells to Edgar the two magnificent sorrels. Poolny restores the bays to good condition by sending them to pasture for three months, and two years later perhaps sells them again to the baron.
At noon Edgar's work is done. He returns for lunch to his apartments in the Rue Euler, for he does not live in the baron's mansion, and never drives the baron. His apartments consist of a ground-floor, heavily upholstered in embroidered plush of the loudest shades, the walls being covered with English lithographs of hunts, steeplechases, famous cracks, and various portraits of the prince of Wales, one of which was presented to Edgar by the prince himself, and bears a dedication from him. Then there are canes, whips, stirrups, bits, and tally-ho horns, arranged in a panoply, with an enormous bust of Queen Victoria, made of polychromatic and loyalist terra cotta, in the centre, between two gilded pediments. Then, free from care, strangling in his blue frock-coats, his head covered with his radiant beacon, Edgar devotes the rest of his day to his own affairs and to his own pleasures. His affairs are numerous, for he is in partnership with a club cashier, a bookmaker, and a horse photographer, and he has three horses in training near Chantilly. Nor are his pleasures lacking; the most famous little women know the way to the Rue Euler, where, on days when they happen to be short, they are sure to find a cup of tea and five louis.
In the evening, after having shown himself at the Ambassadeurs, at the Cirque, and at the Olympia, very correct in his silk-faced dress-coat, Edgar repairs to the Ancien, and there spends a long time in getting drunk, in the company of coachmen who assume the airs of gentlemen, and of gentlemen who assume the airs of coachmen.
And every time that William told me one of these stories he concluded, with a voice of admiring wonder:
"Oh! this Edgar! there is a man for you, indeed!"
My masters belonged to what it is agreed to call the high society of Paris; that is to say, Monsieur was a penniless nobleman, and nobody knew exactly where Madame came from. Many stories were afloat regarding her origin, each more disagreeable than the others. William, very familiar with the scandals of high society, pretended that the madame was the daughter of an old coachman and an old chambermaid, who, by pinching and general misbehavior, got together a small capital, established themselves as usurers in a disreputable quarter of Paris, and rapidly made a large fortune by lending money, mainly to prostitutes and house-servants. They struck it rich, indeed!
It was certainly true that Madame, in spite of her apparent elegance and her very pretty face, had queer manners and vulgar habits that were very disagreeable. The dirty creature was fond of boiled beef, and bacon and cabbage; and, like the cabmen, it was her delight to pour red wine into her soup. I was ashamed of her. Often, in her quarrels with Monsieur, her anger stirred the mud that still remained in the depths of her being, not yet thoroughly cleaned by her suddenly-acquired luxury, and brought up to her lips a filthy foam of words,—ah! words that I, who am not a lady, often regret having uttered. But there you are! One does not imagine how many women there are, with angels' mouths, and starry eyes, and three-thousand-franc dresses, who, in their own houses, use coarse language, make filthy gestures, and are disgusting by their vulgarity,—in fact, strumpets of the lowest type.
"Great ladies," said William, "are like the best sauces,—it is better not to know how they are made."
William was given to these disenchanting aphorisms. And, being all the same a very gallant man, he added, as he took me about the waist:
"A little girl like you is less flattering to a lover's vanity. But she is more serious, all the same."
I must say that Madame spent all her wrath and showered all her coarse words upon Monsieur; with us, I repeat, she was rather timid.
Moreover, amid the disorder of her house, amid all the reckless waste she tolerated, Madame showed queer streaks of avarice that were quite unexpected. She higgled with the cook over two sous spent for salad, economized in the matter of the servants' washing, raised objections to a bill of three francs, and did not rest until, after endless complaints and correspondence, and interminable negotiations, she had secured a refunding of fifteen centimes unwarrantably collected by an expressman for the transportation of a package. Every time she took a cab, there was a quarrel with the coachman, to whom she gave no tip, and whom she even found a way of cheating. And yet she left her money about everywhere, with her jewels and her keys, on the mantels and on the furniture. She recklessly ruined her richest costumes and her finest linen, she suffered herself to be impudently robbed by dealers in articles of luxury, and accepted with without a frown the books of the old butler, as Monsieur, for that matter, accepted those of William. And yet God knows what frauds they contained! Sometimes I said to William:
"Really, you pinch too much; some day you will get into trouble."
To which William replied, very calmly:
"Oh! let me alone; I know what I am about, and how far I can go. When one has masters as stupid as these are, it would be a crime not to take advantage of them."
But the poor fellow scarcely profited by these continual larcenies, which, in spite of the astonishing tips he had, continually went to fill the pockets of the bookmakers.
Monsieur and Madame had been married for five years. At first they went into society a great deal, and gave dinners. Then gradually they restricted their goings-out and their receptions, and lived almost alone, saying that they were jealous of each other. Madame reproached Monsieur with flirting with the women; Monsieur accused Madame of looking too much at the men. They loved each other much,—that is to say, they quarreled all day long, like a little bourgeois household. The truth is that Madame had not succeeded in society, and that her manners had cost her not a few insults. She was angry with Monsieur for not having been able to impose her upon society, and Monsieur was angry with Madame for having made him ridiculous in the eyes of his friends. They did not confess to each other the bitterness of their feelings, finding it simpler to charge their dissensions to the score of love.
Every year, in the middle of June, they started for the country, Madame having, it seems, a magnificent château in Touraine. The personnel was re-enforced with a coachman, two gardeners, a second chambermaid, and some barnyard-scullions. There were cows, peacocks, hens, and rabbits. How delightful! William told me the details of their country life with a bitter and grumbling ill-humor. He did not like the country; the fields, the trees, and the flowers made him tired. Nature was endurable to him only with bar-rooms, race-tracks, bookmakers, and jockeys. He was exclusively Parisian.
"Do you know anything more stupid than a chestnut tree?" he often said to me. "Take Edgar, for instance; he is a chic man, a superior man; does he like the country?"
I became enthusiastic:
"Oh! but the flowers in the broad lawns! And the little birds!"
William sneered:
"The flowers? They are pretty only on hats and in the millinery shops. And the little birds? Oh, don't talk about them! They prevent you from sleeping in the morning. They sound like bawling children. Oh! no. Oh! no. I have enough of the country. The country is fit only for peasants."
And, straightening up, with a noble gesture, he concluded, in a proud voice:
"I must have sport. I am not a peasant; I am a sportsman."
Nevertheless I was happy, and I awaited the month of June with impatience. Oh! the marguerites in the meadows; the little paths under the trembling leaves; the nests hidden in the ivies against the old walls; and the nightingales on moonlight nights; and the sweet conversations, hand in hand, on the brinks of wells, lined with honeysuckles and carpeted with maiden's-hair and moss; and the bowls of foaming milk; and the broad-brimmed straw hats; and the little chickens; and the masses heard in the village churches, with their towering steeples; and everything that moves and charms you, and makes an impression on your heart, like one of those pretty ballads they sing in the music-halls!
Although I am fond of fun, I have a poetical nature. The old shepherds, the outspread hay, the birds that pursue one another from branch to branch, and the brooks that run singing over light pebbles, and the handsome lads, with complexions made purple by the sun, like grapes on very old vines,—the handsome lads with robust limbs and powerful chests,—all these things make me dream pleasant dreams. In thinking of these things, I become almost a little girl again, my soul inundated and my heart refreshed by innocence and candor, as a little rain refreshes the little flower too much burned by the sun, too much dried by the wind. And at night, while waiting for William, becoming enthusiastic over the prospects of this future of pure joys, I made verses:
Petite fleur,
O toi, ma soeur,
Dont la senteur
Fait mon bonheur ...
Et toi, ruisseau,
Lointain coteau,
Frêle arbrisseau,
Au bord de l'eau,
Que puis-je dire,
Dans mon délire?
Je vous admire ...
Et je soupire ...
Amour, amour,
Amour d'un jour,
Et de toujours!...
Amour, amour!...
As soon as William returned, all poesy flew away. He brought me the heavy odor of the bar-room, and his kisses, which smelt of gin, quickly broke the wings of my dream. I never wanted to show him my verses. What was the use? He would have laughed at me, and at the sentiment that inspired them. And undoubtedly he would have said to me:
"Take Edgar, now! He is an astonishing man. Does he make verses?"
My poetical nature was not the only cause of my impatience to start for the country. My stomach was out of order, in consequence of the long period of poverty through which I had just passed, and perhaps also in consequence of the too abundant and exciting food that I was now enjoying, and the champagne and the Spanish wines that William forced me to drink. I was really suffering. Often, in the morning, on getting out of bed, I was seized with vertigo. During the day my legs bent under me, and I felt pains in my head, like the blows of a hammer. I really needed a quieter life, to restore me a little.
Alas! it was written that all this dream of happiness and health was also to be dashed.
"Oh! hell!" as Madame would say.
The scenes between Monsieur and Madame always began in Madame's dressing-room, and always grew out of trifling pretexts, out of nothing. The more trifling the pretext, the more violent was the scene. After which, having vomited all that their hearts contained of long pent-up bitterness and wrath, they sulked for entire weeks. Monsieur retired into his room, where he played solitaire and rearranged his collection of pipes in new harmonies. Madame remained all the time in her room, where, stretched upon a long chair, she read love stories, interrupting her reading only to rearrange her closets and her wardrobe, with rage and frenzy,—such a pillage! They met only at meals. At first, not being familiar with their manias, I thought they were going to throw plates, knives, and bottles at each other's heads. Nothing of the kind, alas! It was at these times that they were the best behaved, and that Madame contrived to appear like a woman of society. They talked about their little affairs as if nothing had happened,—a little more ceremoniously than usual, with a little more cold and stilted politeness,—that was all. One would have said they were dining in town. Then, the meal finished, with serious air, sad eyes, and very dignified, they retired to their respective rooms. Madame began again on her novels and drawers, Monsieur on his solitaire and his pipes. Sometimes Monsieur went to pass an hour or two at his club, but rarely. And they exchanged a furious correspondence, hen-shaped or heart-shaped love-letters, with the transmission of which I was entrusted. All day long I played the letter-carrier, bearing terrible ultimatums, threats, supplications, pardons, and tears, from the room of Madame to that of Monsieur. It was enough to make one die of laughter.
After a few days, they became reconciled, just as they had fallen out, without any apparent reason. And there were sobs, and "Oh, you naughty boy!" "Oh! you naughty girl!" and "It is over, do I not tell you it is over?" And they went away to have a little fête at the restaurant, and the next day arose very late, much fatigued.
I at once understood the farce that the two poor actors were playing for themselves. And, when they threatened to leave each other, I knew very well that they were not sincere. They were riveted to each other,—he by his interest, she by her vanity. Monsieur clung to Madame's money, Madame held fast to Monsieur's name and title. But, as in reality they detested each other, precisely because of this dupe's bargain that bound them, they felt the need of saying so to each other from time to time, and of giving to their disappointment, their spite, and their contempt an expression as base as their souls.
"What are such lives good for?" said I to William.
"For Baby!" answered William, who, under all circumstances, found the accurate and final word.
For immediate and material proof he drew from his pocket a magnificent cigar, pinched that very morning, carefully cut off the tip, and then, lighting it with satisfaction and tranquillity, declared, between two fragrant whiffs:
"One should never complain of the stupidity of his masters, my little Célestine. It is the only guarantee of happiness that we servants have. The more stupid the masters, the more fortunate the servants. Go and get me the fine champagne."
Half stretched out in a rocking-chair, with legs cocked up and crossed, with the cigar in his mouth, and a bottle of old Martell within reach of his hand, he slowly and methodically unfolded the "Autorité," and said, with admirable good nature:
"You see, my little Célestine, one must be stronger than the people whom one serves. That is the whole secret. God knows whether Cassagnac is a terrible man. God knows whether his ideas suit me to a T, and whether I admire this tall devil. Well, do you know? I would not like to be his servant,—not for anything in the world. And what I say of Cassagnac I say also of Edgar. Remember this, and try to profit by it. To serve in the houses of intelligent people who are 'on to us' is to be duped, my little pet."
And, enjoying his cigar, he added, after a silence:
"When I think that there are servants who pass their lives in running down their masters, in annoying them and threatening them! What brutes! When I think that there are some who would like to kill them! Kill them! And what then? Do we kill the cow that gives us milk, and the sheep that gives us wool? No, we milk the cow, and shear the sheep ... skilfully ... gently."
And he silently plunged into the mysteries of conservative politics.
Meanwhile Eugénie was prowling around the kitchen, amorous and flabby. She did her work mechanically, like a somnambulist, far from the people up-stairs, far from us, far from herself, with no eye for their follies or ours, and with silent words of sorrowful admiration always on her lips.
"Your little mouth, your little hands, your big eyes!"
All this often saddened me,—I don't know why,—saddened me to the point of tears. Yes, this strange house, in which all the beings in it, the silent old butler, William, and myself, seemed to me disquieting, empty, and dismal, like phantoms, sometimes filled me with unspeakable and oppressive melancholy.
The last scene that I witnessed was particularly droll.
One morning Monsieur entered the dressing-room at the moment when Madame was trying on a new corset in my presence, a frightful mauve satin corset with yellow flowerets and yellow silk lacings. Madame's taste will never choke her.
"What?" said Madame, in a tone of gay reproach. "Is that the way one enters women's rooms, without knocking?"
"Oh! women?" chirped Monsieur. "In the first place, you are not women."
"I am not women? What am I, then?"
Monsieur rounded his lips,—My! what a stupid air he had!—and very tenderly, or pretending tenderness, he buzzed:
"Why! you are my wife, my little wife, my pretty little wife. There is no harm in entering the room of one's little wife, I suppose."
When Monsieur played the imbecile lover, it was because he wanted to get some money out of Madame. She, still suspicious, replied:
"Yes, there is harm."
And she minced:
"Your little wife? Your little wife? It is not so sure that I am your little wife."
"What! It is not so sure?"
"Indeed, one never knows. Men are so queer."
"I tell you, you are my little wife,—my dear, my only little wife ... ah!"
"And you ... my baby ... my big baby ... his little wife's only big baby ... na!"
I was lacing Madame, who, with bare arms raised, was looking into the mirror. And I had a great desire to laugh. How they tired me with their "little wife" and their "big baby"! What a stupid air they both had!
After picking up skirts, stockings, and towels, and disturbing brushes, jars, and bottles, Monsieur took a fashion journal which was lying on the dressing-table, and sat down on a sort of plush-covered stool. He asked:
"Is there a rebus in this number?"
"Yes, I think there is a rebus."
"Have you guessed it?"
"No, I have not guessed it."
"Ah! ah! let's have a look at it."
While Monsieur, with wrinkled brow, was absorbed in the study of the rebus, Madame said, a little dryly:
"Robert?"
"My darling."
"Then you notice nothing?"
"No. What? In this rebus?"
She shrugged her shoulders, and pursed up her lips.
"It is not a question of the rebus. Then you notice nothing? Well, you never notice anything."
Monsieur surveyed the room from carpet to ceiling, from dressing-table to door, with an annoyed and a very round look, which was excessively comical.
"No, indeed! What is it? Is there anything new here, then, that I have not noticed? I see nothing, upon my word."
Madame became very sad, and she groaned:
"Robert, you no longer love me."
"What! I no longer love you! Indeed, that is putting it a little too strong!"
He rose, brandishing the fashion journal.
"What! I no longer love you!" he repeated. "Well, that's an idea! Why do you say that?"
"No, you no longer love me ... because, if you still loved me, you would have noticed something."
"But what thing?"
"Well, you would have noticed my corset."
"What corset? Oh! yes, this corset. 'Tis true, I had not noticed it. How stupid I am! Why, yes, it is very pretty, you know,... ravishing."
"Yes, you say that now, and you don't mean it. I am too stupid, myself. I tire myself out in trying to make myself beautiful,—in trying to find things to please you. And you care nothing about it. Besides, what am I to you? Nothing; less than nothing! You come in here, and what do you see? That dirty newspaper. In what are you interested? In a rebus! Ah, a pretty life you give me here! We do not see anybody; we do not go anywhere; we live like wolves, like poor people."
"Oh! come, come, I beg of you. Don't get angry. Come! As poor people, indeed!"
He tried to approach Madame, to take her about the waist, to kiss her, but she repulsed him severely.
"No, let me alone. You provoke me."
"Oh! come, my darling, my little wife."
"You provoke me, do you hear? Let me alone. Do not approach me. You are a gross egoist, a clumsy puppy; you don't know how to do anything for me; you are a dirty type, there!"
"Why do you say that? It is madness. Come, don't fly into a passion like that. Well, yes, I was wrong. I ought to have seen this corset right away,—this very pretty corset. Why did I not see it right away? I do not understand it. Look at me; smile at me. My! how pretty it is! And how it becomes you!"
Monsieur dwelt too persistently upon the subject. He irritated me, although I had no interest in the quarrel. Madame stamped on the carpet, and, becoming more and more nervous, with pale lips and clenched hands, she rattled on:
"You provoke me, you provoke me! Do you understand? Clear out!"
Monsieur continued to stammer, beginning now to show signs of exasperation.
"My darling! It is not reasonable. Just for a corset! It is out of all proportion. Come, my darling, look at me, smile at me. It is stupid to make such a fuss over a corset."
"Ah! Tu m'emmerdes!" vomited Madame, in the voice of a washerwoman. "Tu m'emmerdes! Clear out!"
I had finished lacing my mistress. I arose at this word, delighted at having surprised their two beautiful souls in all their nakedness, and at the thought of the humiliation that they would feel in my presence afterward. They seemed to have forgotten that I was there. Desiring to see how the scene would end, I kept perfectly still, and made myself as small as possible.
Monsieur, who had been holding in for a long time, now got angry in his turn. He made the fashion journal into a big ball, and flung it with all his might against the dressing-table; and he cried:
"Zut! Flûte! This is really getting too tiresome! It is always the same thing. One cannot say anything or do anything without being received like a dog. And always brutalities and coarse language. I have enough of this life; I have had enough of these fishwife's manners. And shall I tell you the truth? Your corset,—well, your corset is vile. It is a prostitute's corset."
"Wretch!"
With bloodshot eye, foaming mouth, and clenched and threatening fist, she advanced toward Monsieur. And such was her rage that the words came from her mouth in a sort of hoarse belching.
"Wretch!" she roared again. "And it is you who dare to speak to me in this way,—you? Oh! but it is unheard of. When I picked him up in the mud, this poverty-stricken fine gentleman, covered with dirty debts, posted at his club,—when I saved him from the mire, he was not so proud! Your name, I suppose? Your title? Oh! clean they were, indeed, this name and title, on which the usurers were unwilling to advance you another hundred sous. You can take them back, and welcome. And he talks of his nobility, of his ancestors, this Monsieur whom I have bought and whom I support! Well, the nobility will have nothing more from me,—not that! And, as for your ancestors, you scoundrel, you can try to hang them up. You will see whether you can borrow even ten sous on their ugly mugs,—mugs of veterans and valets. Nothing more, do you hear? Never, never! Back to your gaming-tables, trickster! Back to your prostitutes, pimp!"
She was frightful. Monsieur, timid, trembling, with cowardly back and humiliated eye, retired before this flood of filth. He reached the door, noticed me, and fled, and Madame again cried after him, in the passage-way, in a voice which had become more hoarse and horrible:
"Pimp! Dirty pimp!"
And she sank upon her long chair, overcome by a terrible nervous attack, which I finally quieted by making her inhale an entire flask of ether.
Then Madame began again the reading of her love stories and the rearrangement of her drawers. Monsieur was more absorbed than ever in the complexities of solitaire and in the revision of his collection of pipes. And the correspondence began again. Timid and widely-spaced at first, it was soon going on fast and furiously. I became utterly tired out with running from the room of one to the room of the other, bearing heart-shaped or hen-shaped threats. But oh! what fun I had!
Three days after this scene, while reading a missive from Monsieur, on pink paper and bearing his coat of arms, Madame turned pale, and suddenly asked me, in a gasping voice:
"Célestine, do you really think that Monsieur wants to kill himself? Have you seen him with weapons in his hands? My God! If he were to kill himself?"
I burst out laughing in Madame's face. And this laugh, which had escaped me in spite of myself, increased, let itself loose, poured itself out. I thought I should die, choked by this laugh, strangled by this cursed laugh that rose, like a tempest, in my breast, and filled my throat with irrepressible hiccups.
For a moment Madame sat aghast.
"What is it? What is the matter with you? Why do you laugh like that? Be still, then. Will you be still, nasty creature?"
But the laugh held me fast; it would not let go. At last, between two gasps, I cried:
"Oh! no, your goings on are too funny, too stupid! Oh! la la! Oh! la la! How stupid it is!"
Of course I quit the house that night, and found myself once more on the street pavement.
What a dog of a trade! What a dog of a life!
The blow was a hard one, and I said to myself, but too late, that never should I find another place like that. There I had everything,—good wages, profits of all sorts, easy work, liberty, pleasures. I had only to let myself live. Another, less crazy than I, would have been able to put much money aside, and gradually accumulate a complete and beautiful wardrobe. Five or six years only, and who knows? One could marry, buy a little business, have a home of one's own, secure against want and ill-luck,—almost a lady. But now the series of miseries must begin over again, and I submit anew to the offences of chance. I was much put out by this accident, and furious; furious against myself, against William, against Eugénie, against Madame, against everybody. Curious and inexplicable thing,—instead of clinging and holding fast to my place, which would have been easy with a type like Madame, I had buried myself deeper in my stupidity, and, cheeking it through, I had rendered irreparable that which could have been repaired. What strange things take place in one at certain moments! It passes understanding. It is like a fit of madness which falls upon you, you know not whence, you know not why,—which seizes you, shakes you, excites you, and forces you to cry out and shower insults. Under the influence of this fit of madness, I had heaped outrages upon Madame. I had reproached her with her father, with her mother, and with the imbecile falsehood of her life; I had treated her as one does not treat a prostitute; I had spat upon her husband. And this frightens me, when I think of it. I feel ashamed of these sudden descents into baseness, of these filthy intoxications, in which my reason so often staggers, and which impel me to violence and murder. Why did I not kill her that day? Why did I not strangle her? I do not know. God knows, however, that I am not wicked. To-day I see again this poor woman, in my mind's eye; I see again her sad and disorderly life, with her coward, her dismal coward, of a husband. And I feel an immense pity for her; and I would like her to have strength enough to leave him and be happy.
After the terrible scene I hurried down to the servants' hall. William was mildly polishing the silverware, and smoking a Russian cigarette.
"What is the matter with you?" asked he, in the most tranquil fashion in the world.
"I must go away; I must quit the box to-night," I gasped.
I could scarcely speak.
"What! you are going?" exclaimed William, without the least emotion. "And why?"
In short and hissing phrases, and mimicking their manners, I related the entire scene between Madame and Monsieur. William, very calm and indifferent, shrugged his shoulders.
"It is too stupid, indeed!" said he. "One should not be as stupid as that!"
"And that is all you find to say to me?"
"What else do you expect me to say to you? I say that it is stupid. There is nothing else to say."
"And you? What are you going to do?"
He looked at me obliquely. There was a sneer on his lips. Ah! how ugly was his look, in that moment of distress; how ugly and hideous was his mouth!
"I?" said he, pretending not to understand that, in this question, there were prayers for him.
"Yes, you. I asked you what you were going to do."
"Nothing. I have nothing to do. I am going to continue. Why, you are crazy, my girl. You do not expect...."
I burst out:
"You are going to have the courage to remain in a house from which I am driven out?"
He rose, relighted his cigarette, and said, icily:
"Oh! no scene, you know. I am not your husband. You have seen fit to commit a stupidity. I am not responsible for it. What do you expect? You must take the consequences. Life is life."
I became indignant.
"Then you are going to drop me? You are a wretch, a scoundrel, like the others, do you know it?"
William smiled. He was really a superior man.
"Oh! don't say useless things. I have made you no promises. Nor have you made me any. People meet; that is well. They part; that is well, too. Life is life."
And he added, sententiously:
"You see, Célestine, in life there must be conduct; there must be what I call administration. You have no conduct; you have no administration. You allow yourself to be carried away by your nerves. In our business nerves are a very bad thing. Remember this well: life is life."
I think I should have thrown myself upon him and torn his face, his emotionless and cowardly face of a flunky, with furious digs of my nails, if tears had not suddenly come to soften and relax my overstrained nerves. My wrath fell, and I begged:
"Oh! William! William! my little William! my dear little William! how unhappy I am!"
William tried to revive my drooping spirits a little. I must say that he made use of all his powers of persuasion and all his philosophy. During the day he generously overwhelmed me with lofty thoughts, with grave and consoling aphorisms, in which these words, provoking and soothing at the same time, continually recurred:
"Life is life."
I must do him justice. This last day he was charming, though a little too solemn, and he did things very well. In the evening, after dinner, he put my trunks on a cab, and escorted me to a lodging-house where he was known, paying a week's rent in advance out of his own pocket, and recommending the proprietor to take good care of me. But he could not stay himself, for he had an appointment with Edgar!
"You understand, of course, that I cannot disappoint Edgar. And perhaps, too, he might know of a place for you. A place gotten through Edgar,—ah! that would be astonishing."
On leaving me, he said:
"I will come to see you to-morrow. Be wise; no more stupidities. They do you no good. And get this truth well into your head, Célestine,—that life is life!"
The next day I waited for him in vain. He did not come.
"It is life," I said to myself.
But the following day, being impatient to see him, I went to the house. I found in the kitchen only a tall blonde girl, bold and pretty,—prettier than I.
"Eugénie is not here?" I asked.
"No, she is not here," answered the tall girl, dryly.
"And William?"
"Nor William either."
"Where is he?"
"How do I know?"
"I want to see him. Go tell him I want to see him."
The tall girl looked at me scornfully.
"Say, am I your servant?"
I understood it all. And, being tired of struggling, I went away.
"It is life."
This phrase pursued me, obsessed me, like a music-hall refrain.
And, as I went away, I could not help thinking, not without a feeling of sorrowful melancholy, of the joy with which I had been welcomed in that house. The same scene must have taken place. They had opened the usual bottle of champagne. William had taken the blonde girl on his knees, and had whispered in her ear:
"You will have to be nice with Baby."
The same words, the same movements, the same caresses, while Eugénie, devouring the janitor's son with her eyes, led him into the adjoining room.
"Your little phiz, your little hands, your big eyes!"
I walked on, utterly irresolute and stupefied, repeating to myself with stupid obstinacy:
"Yes, indeed, it is life; it is life."
For more than an hour, in front of the door, I paced up and down the sidewalk, hoping that William might come in or go out. I saw the grocer enter, a little milliner with two big band-boxes, and the delivery-man from the Louvre; I saw the plumbers come out, and I know not who or what else,—shades, shades, shades. I did not dare to go into the janitor's lodge in the next house. The janitress undoubtedly would not have received me well. And what would she have said to me? Then I went away for good, still pursued by the irritating refrain:
"It is life."
The streets seemed to me intolerably sad. The passers-by made upon me the impression of spectres. When I saw in the distance a hat shining on a gentleman's head, like a light-house in the night, like a gilded cupola in the sunshine, my heart leaped. But it was never William. In the lowering, pewter-colored sky, no hope was shining.
I returned to my room, disgusted with everything.
Ah! yes, the men! Be they coachmen, valets, dudes, priests, or poets, they are all the same. Low-lived wretches!
I think that these are the last recollections that I shall call up. I have others, however,—many others. But they all resemble each other, and it tires me to continually write the same stories, and to unroll, in a continuous and monotonous panorama, the same faces, the same souls, the same phantoms. And then I feel that I have no mind left for it, for I am becoming more and more distracted from the ashes of this past by the new preoccupations of my future. I could have told also of my stay in the Countess Fardin's mansion. But what is the use? I am too weary, and also too distressed. There, amid the same social phenomena, there was one vanity that disgusts me more than any other,—literary vanity; one species of stupidity that is lower than any other,—political stupidity.
There I knew M. Paul Bourget in all his glory; it is needless to say more. Ah! there you have the philosopher, the poet, the moralist, befitting the pretentious nullity, the intellectual hollowness, the falsehood, of that sphere of society in which everything is artificial,—elegance, love, cooking, religious feeling, patriotism, art, charity, and vice itself, which, making a pretext of politeness and literature, wraps itself in mystical tinsel and covers itself with sacred masks; that sphere of society in which there is to be found but one sincere desire,—the fierce desire for money, which gives to these ridiculous mountebanks something even more odious and grim than their ridiculousness. That is the only thing that makes of these poor phantoms living human creatures.
There I knew Monsieur Jean, he too a psychologist and a moralist, a moralist of the servants' hall, a psychologist of the ante-room, scarcely more of a parvenu in his way, or more of a ninny, than he who reigned in the salon. Monsieur Jean emptied chamber-vessels; M. Paul Bourget emptied souls. Between the servants' hall and the salon there is not such a distance of servitude as we think. But, since I have put Monsieur Jean's photograph in the bottom of my trunk, let his memory remain, similarly buried, in the bottom of my heart, under a thick layer of oblivion.
It is two o'clock in the morning. My fire is going out, my lamp is smoking, and I have no more wood or oil. I am going to bed. But there is too much fever in my brain; I shall not sleep. I shall dream of him who is on the way to me. I shall dream of what is to happen to-morrow. Outside, the night is calm and silent. A sharp, cold air is hardening the ground, beneath a sky sparkling with stars. And somewhere in this night Joseph is on his way. Through space I see him,—yes, really, I see him, serious, dreaming, enormous, in his compartment in a railway carriage. He is smiling at me; he is drawing nearer to me; he is coming toward me. He is bringing me, at last, peace, liberty, happiness. Happiness?
I shall see him to-morrow.
[XVII]
It is eight months since I have written a single line in this diary,—I have had something else to do and to think of,—and it is exactly three months since Joseph and I left the Priory, and established ourselves in the little café at Cherbourg, near the harbor. We are married; business is good; I like the trade; I am happy. Born by the sea, I have come back to the sea. I did not miss it, but it gives me pleasure, all the same, to find it again. Here one does not see the desolate landscapes of Audierne, the infinite sadness of its coasts, the magnificent horror of its beaches that howl so mournfully. Here nothing is sad; on the contrary, everything contributes to gaiety. There is the joyous sound of a military city, the picturesque movement and varied activity of a military harbor. Crowds in a hurry to enjoy between two periods of far-off exile; spectacles incessantly changing and diverting, in which I inhale that natal odor of coal tar and sea-weed which I love, although I never found it agreeable in my childhood. I have seen again the lads of my native province, now serving on State men-of-war. We have scarcely talked together, and I have not dreamed of asking them for news of my brother. It is so long ago! To me it is as if he were dead. Good day!... good evening!... be good. When they are not drunk, they are too stupid. When they are not stupid, they are too drunk. And they have heads like those of old fishes. Between them and me there has been no other emotion, no other effusion. Besides, Joseph does not like me to be familiar with simple seamen, dirty Bretons who haven't a sou, and who get drunk on a glass of kill-me-quick.
But I must relate briefly the events that preceded our departure from the Priory.
It will be remembered that, at the Priory, Joseph slept in the out-buildings, over the harness-room. Every day, summer and winter, he rose at five o'clock. Now, on the morning of December 24, just a month after his return from Cherbourg, he noticed that the kitchen-door was wide open.
"What!" said he to himself. "Can they have risen already?"
He noticed at the same time that a square of glass had been cut out of the glass door, with a diamond, near the lock, in such a way as to admit the introduction of an arm. The lock had been forced by expert hands. Bits of wood, glass, and twisted iron were strewn along the stone flagging. Within, all the doors, so carefully bolted at night under Madame's eyes, were open also. One felt that something frightful had happened. Greatly impressed,—I tell the story of his discovery as he told it himself before the magistrates,—Joseph passed through the kitchen, and then through the passage-way into which opened, at the right, the fruit-room, the bath-room, and the ante-room; at the left, the servants' hall, the dining-room, and the little salon; and, at the end, the grand salon. The dining-room presented a spectacle of frightful disorder, of real pillage. The furniture was upset; the sideboard had been ransacked from top to bottom; its drawers, as well as those of the two side-tables, were turned upside down on the carpet; and on the table, among empty boxes and a confused heap of valueless articles, a candle was burning itself out in a brass candlestick. But it was in the servants' hall that the spectacle became really imposing. In the servants' hall—I believe I have already noted the fact—there was a very deep closet, protected by a very complicated system of locks, the secret of which was known only to Madame. There slept the famous and venerable silver service, in three heavy boxes, with steel corners and cross-pieces. The boxes were screwed to the floor, and held fast against the wall by solid iron clamps. But now the three boxes, torn from their mysterious and inviolable tabernacle, lay yawning and empty, in the middle of the room. At sight of these, Joseph gave the alarm. With all the strength of his lungs, he shouted up the stairs:
"Madame! Monsieur! Come down right away. We are robbed! we are robbed!"
There was a sudden avalanche, a frightful plunge down the stairs. Madame, in her chemise, with her shoulders scarcely covered by a light neckkerchief. Monsieur, in his drawers and shirt. And both of them, dishevelled, pale, and grimacing, as if they had been awakened in the middle of a nightmare, shouted:
"What is the matter? What is the matter?"
"We are robbed! we are robbed!"
"We are robbed, what? We are robbed, what?"
In the dining-room, Madame groaned:
"My God! My God!"
While, with distorted mouth, Monsieur continued to scream:
"We are robbed, what? what?"
Guided by Joseph into the servants' hall, Madame, at sight of the three boxes unsealed, made a great gesture, uttered a great cry:
"My silver service! My God! Is it possible? My silver service!"
And, lifting the empty compartments, and turning the empty cases upside down, she sank, frightened and horrified, upon the floor. Scarcely had she strength enough to stammer, in the voice of a child:
"They have taken everything! They have taken everything ... everything ... everything ... everything! Even the Louis XVI cruet."
While Madame was looking at the boxes as if she were looking at a dead child, Monsieur, scratching his neck, and rolling haggard eyes, moaned persistently in the far-away voice of a demented person:
"Name of a dog! Ah! name of a dog! Name of a dog of name of a dog!"
And Joseph, too, with atrocious grimaces, was exclaiming:
"The cruet of Louis XVI! The cruet of Louis XVI! Oh! the bandits!"
Then there was a minute of tragic silence, a long minute of prostration,—that silence of death, that prostration of beings and things, which follows the fracas of a terrible downfall, the thunder of a great cataclysm. And the lantern, swinging in Joseph's hands, cast a red, trembling, sinister gleam over the whole scene, over the dead faces and the empty boxes.
I had come down, in response to Joseph's call, at the same time as the masters. In presence of this disaster, and in spite of the prodigious comicality of these faces, my first feeling was one of compassion. It seemed to me that this misfortune fell upon me too, and that I was one of the family, sharing its trials and sorrows. I should have liked to speak consoling words to Madame, whose dejected attitude it gave me pain to see. But this impression of solidarity or of servitude quickly vanished.
In crime there is something violent, solemn, justiciary, religious, which frightens me, to be sure, but which also leaves in me—how shall I express it?—a feeling of admiration. No, not of admiration, since admiration is a moral feeling, a spiritual excitement, whereas that which I feel influences and excites only my flesh. It is like a brutal shock throughout my physical being, at once painful and delicious,—a sorrowful and swooning rape of my sex. It is curious, doubtless it is peculiar, perhaps it is horrible,—and I cannot explain the real cause of these strange and powerful sensations,—but in me every crime, especially murder, has secret relationships with love. Yes, indeed! A fine crime takes hold of me just as a fine man does.
I must say that further reflection suddenly transformed into a hilarious gaiety, a childish content, that grave, atrocious, and powerful enjoyment of crime which succeeded the impulse to pity that at first so inappropriately startled my heart. I thought:
"Here are two beings who live like moles, like larvæ. Like voluntary prisoners, they have voluntarily shut themselves up in the jail of these inhospitable walls. All that constitutes the joy of life, the smile of a house, they repress as something superfluous. Against everything that could excuse their wealth, and pardon their human uselessness, they guard as they would guard against filth. They let nothing fall from their parsimonious table to satisfy the hunger of the poor; they let nothing fall from their dry hearts to relieve the pain of the suffering. They even economize in making provision for their own happiness. And should I pity them? Oh! no. It is justice that has overtaken them. In stripping them of a portion of their goods, in giving air to the buried treasures, the good thieves have restored equilibrium. What I regret is that they did not leave these two maleficent beings totally naked and miserable, more destitute than the vagabond who so often begged at their door in vain, sicker than the abandoned creature dying by the roadside, within two steps of this hidden and accursed wealth."
This idea of my masters, with wallets on their backs, having to drag their lamentable rags and their bleeding feet over the stony highways, and to stand with outstretched hands at the implacable threshold of the evil-minded rich, enchanted me, and filled me with gaiety. But my gaiety became more direct, and more intense, and more hateful, as I surveyed Madame, stranded beside her empty boxes, deader than if she had been really dead,—for she was conscious of this death, the most horrible death conceivable to a being who had never loved anything but the valuation in money of those invaluable things,—our pleasures, our caprices, our charities, our love, the divine luxury of the soul. This shameful sorrow, this crapulous dejection, was also a revenge for the humiliations and severities that I have undergone, that came to me from her, in every word that issued from her mouth, in every look that fell from her eyes. This deliciously grim enjoyment I tasted to the full. I would have liked to cry out: "Well done! Well done!" And, above all, I would have liked to know these admirable and sublime thieves, in order to thank them in the name of all the ragamuffins, and to embrace them, as brothers. Oh! good thieves, dear figures of justice and pity, through what a series of intense and delightful sensations you have made me pass!
Madame was not slow in recovering her self-possession. Her combative, aggressive nature suddenly reawakened in all its violence.
"And what are you doing here?" she said to Monsieur, in a tone of anger and supreme scorn. "Why are you here? How ridiculous you are, with your big puffy face, and in your shirt-tail! Do you think that will get us back our silver service? Come! shake yourself; stir yourself; try to understand. Go for the police, for the justice of the peace. Ought they not to have been here long ago? Oh! my God! what a man!"
Monsieur, with bent back, started to go. She interrupted him:
"And how is it that you heard nothing? What! they turn the house upside down, break in doors, force locks, empty walls and boxes, and you hear nothing? What are you good for, big blockhead?"
Monsieur ventured to answer:
"But you, too, my pet, you did not hear anything."
"I? It is not the same thing. Is it not a man's business to hear? And besides, you provoke me. Clear out!"
And, as Monsieur went up-stairs to dress, Madame turned her fury upon us.
"And you? What are you doing, standing there like so many bundles, and looking at me? It is all the same to you, I suppose, whether your masters are plundered or not? And you too heard nothing? What luck! It is charming to have such servants. You think of nothing but eating and drinking, pack of brutes that you are!"
Then, addressing Joseph directly, she asked:
"Why didn't the dogs bark? Say, why not?"
This question seemed to embarrass Joseph for a fraction of a second, but he quickly recovered himself.
"I don't know, Madame," said he, in a most natural tone. "It is true that the dogs didn't bark. That is curious, indeed!"
"Did you let them loose last night?"
"Certainly I let them loose, as I do every night. That is curious! Yes, indeed! that is curious! It must be that the robbers knew the house ... and the dogs."
"Well, Joseph, how is it that you, so devoted and punctual as a rule, did not hear anything?"
"It is true that I heard nothing. That is another singular thing. For I do not sleep soundly. If a cat crosses the garden, I hear it. It is not natural, all the same. And those confounded dogs especially! Indeed, indeed!"
Madame interrupted Joseph:
"Stop! Leave me in peace. You are brutes, all of you! And Marianne. Where is Marianne? Why isn't she here? She is sleeping like a chump, undoubtedly."
And, going out of the servants' hall, she called up the stairs:
"Marianne! Marianne!"
I looked at Joseph, who looked at the boxes. Joseph's face wore a grave expression. There was a sort of mystery in his eyes.
I will not try to describe this day, with all its varied incidents and follies. The prosecuting attorney, summoned by dispatch, came in the afternoon, and began his investigation. Joseph, Marianne, and I were questioned, one after the other,—the first two for the sake of form, I with a hostile persistence which was extremely disagreeable to me. They visited my room, and searched my commode and my trunks. My correspondence was examined in detail. Thanks to a piece of good luck that I bless, the manuscript of my diary escaped them. A few days before the event I had sent it to Cléclé, from whom I had received an affectionate letter. But for that the magistrates perhaps would have found in these pages a foundation for a charge against Joseph, or at least for suspicion of him. I still tremble at the thought of it. It goes without saying that they also examined the garden paths, the platbands, the walls, the openings in the hedges, and the little yard leading to the lane, in the hope of finding foot-prints and traces of wall-scaling. But the ground was very dry and hard; it was impossible to discover the slightest imprint, the slightest clue. The fence, the walls, the openings in the hedges, kept their secret jealously. Just as in the case of the outrage in the woods, the people of the neighborhood hurried forward, asking to testify. One had seen a man of light complexion "whose looks he did not like;" another had seen a man of dark complexion "who had a funny air." In short, the investigation proved fruitless. No scent, no suspicion.
"We shall have to wait," declared the prosecuting attorney, mysteriously, as he left that night. "Perhaps the Paris police will put us on the track of the guilty."
During this fatiguing day, amid the goings and comings, I had scarcely the leisure to think of the consequences of this drama, which for the first time put a little animation and life into this dismal Priory. Madame did not give us a minute's rest; we had to run hither and thither,—without reason, moreover, for Madame had lost her head a little. As for Marianne, she seemed to take no notice of anything, and to be unaware that anything had happened to upset the house. Like the sad Eugénie, she followed her own idea, and her own idea was very far from our preoccupations. When Monsieur appeared in the kitchen, she became suddenly like one intoxicated, and she looked at him with ecstatic eyes.
"Oh! your big phiz! Your big hands! Your big eyes!"
In the evening, after a silent dinner, I had an opportunity to reflect. The idea had struck me immediately, and now it was fortified within me, that Joseph was not a stranger to this bold robbery. I even went so far as to hope that between his Cherbourg trip and the preparation of this audacious and incomparably executed stroke there had been an evident connection. And I remembered the answer he made to me, on the eve of his departure:
"That depends ... on a very important matter."
Although he endeavored to appear natural, I perceived in his movements, in his attitude, in his silence, an unusual embarrassment, visible only to me.
I took so much satisfaction in this presentiment that I did not try to put it aside. On the contrary, I felt an intense joy in contemplating the idea. Marianne having left us alone a moment in the kitchen, I approached Joseph, and, in a coaxing, tender voice, moved by an inexpressible emotion, I asked him:
"Tell me, Joseph, that it was you who outraged the little Claire in the woods. Tell me that it was you who stole Madame's silver service."
Surprised, stupefied by this question, Joseph looked at me. Then, suddenly, without answering, he drew me to him, and, making my neck bend under a kiss that fell like a blow of a club, he said to me:
"Don't talk about that, since you are to come with me to the little café, and since our two souls are alike."
I remember having seen in a little salon at the Countess Fardin's a sort of Hindoo idol, horribly and murderously beautiful. At this moment Joseph resembled it.
Days passed, and months. Naturally the magistrates were unable to discover anything, and finally they abandoned the investigation. Their opinion was that the crime was the work of expert burglars from Paris. Paris has a broad back. Go look for them in the heap!
This negative result made Madame indignant. She railed violently at the magistracy, which could not recover her silver service. But nevertheless she did not give up hope of finding "the cruet of Louis XVI," as Joseph called it. Every day she concocted new and outlandish schemes, which she sent to the magistrates, who, tiring at last of all this nonsense, did not even answer her. At last I was reassured concerning Joseph; for I was always afraid that some catastrophe would overtake him.
Joseph had again become silent and devoted, the family servant, the rare pearl. I cannot help puffing with laughter at the recollection of a conversation which, on the very day of the robbery, I overheard behind the door of the salon, between Madame and the prosecuting attorney, a dry little man, with thin lips and bilious complexion, whose profile was as sharp as the edge of a sword.
"You do not suspect anybody among your people?" asked the prosecuting attorney. "Your coachman?"
"Joseph!" cried Madame, scandalized, "a man who is so devoted to us, who has been in our service for more than fifteen years! Honesty itself, Monsieur; a pearl! He would throw himself into the fire for us."
Anxious, with wrinkled brow, she reflected:
"Unless it were this girl, the chambermaid. I do not know her. Perhaps she has very bad relations in Paris. Several times I have caught her drinking the table-wine and eating our prunes. A servant who drinks his master's wine is capable of anything."
And she murmured:
"One should never take servants from Paris. She is singular, indeed."
Just fancy the mean thing!
That is the way with suspicious people. They suspect everybody, save him who robs them, of course. For I was more and more convinced that Joseph had been the soul of this affair. For a long time I had watched him, not from any hostile feeling, as you may know, but from curiosity; and I was certain that this faithful and devoted servant, this unique pearl, was foraging in the house for all he was worth. He stole oats, coal, eggs, all sorts of little things that could be sold without giving any trace of their origin. And his friend, the sacristan, did not come to the harness-room in the evening for nothing, and simply to discuss the benefits of anti-Semitism. Being a circumspect, patient, prudent, methodical man, Joseph was not unaware that petty larcenies, committed daily, foot up largely at the end of the year, and I am persuaded that in this way he tripled and quadrupled his wages,—a thing never to be disdained. I know very well that there is a difference between these little thefts and such an audacious pillage as that of the night of December 24. That proves that he liked also to work on the grand scale. How do I know that Joseph was not then a member of a gang? Ah! how I should have liked to know all that, and how I should like to know it still.
After the evening when he gave me the kiss that to me was equivalent to a confession of the crime, when his confidence went out to me in a moment of passion, Joseph steadily denied. In vain did I turn him this way and that, set traps for him, and wheedle him with soft words and caresses; he would not contradict himself. And he entered into the madness of Madame's hopes. He too concocted schemes, and tried to imagine the robbery in all its details; and he beat the dogs that did not bark, and he threatened with his fist the unknown thieves, the chimerical thieves, as if he saw them running at the horizon. I did not know what to think about this impenetrable man. One day I believed him guilty; another day I believed him innocent. And it was horribly provoking.
We met again in the harness-room in the evening, as before.
"Well, Joseph?"
"Ah! it is you, Célestine!"
"Why don't you speak to me any more? You seem to shun me."
"Shun you? I? Oh! heavens!"
"Yes, since that famous morning."
"Don't talk of that, Célestine; you have too bad ideas."
And he sadly wagged his head.
"Come, Joseph, you know that I do that for fun. Would I love you, if you had committed such a crime? My little Joseph...."
"Yes, yes. You are trying to wheedle me. It is not well."
"And when are we to start? I cannot live here any longer."
"Not directly. We must wait awhile."
"But why?"
"Because ... that cannot be done at once."
A little piqued, I said in a tone of slight anger:
"It is not nice of you. You evidently are in no hurry for me."
"I?" cried Joseph, with ardent grimaces. "Why, I am crazy over you."
"Well, then, let us start."
But he was obstinate, refusing to explain further.
"No, no; that cannot be done yet."
Very naturally I reflected:
"He is right, after all. If he has stolen the silver service, he cannot go away now, or set up in business. Perhaps it would awaken suspicion. Some time must be allowed to pass, so that this mysterious affair may be forgotten."
Another evening I proposed:
"Listen, my little Joseph; I know a way of leaving here. We could get up a quarrel with Madame, and force her to discharge us both."
But he protested sharply.
"No, no," he exclaimed. "None of that, Célestine. No, indeed! For my part, I love my masters. They are good masters. We must part with them on good terms. We must go away from here like worthy people, like serious people. The masters must be sorry to have us leave; they must weep to see us go."
With a sad gravity, in which I perceived no trace of irony, he declared:
"I, you know, shall be greatly grieved at leaving here. I have been here for fifteen years. One gets attached to a house in that time. And you, Célestine, will it give you no pain?"
"Oh! no," I shouted, laughing.
"It is not well; it is not well. One should love one's masters. Masters are masters. And let me give you some advice. Be very nice, very gentle, very devoted; do your work well; don't talk back. In short, Célestine, we must leave on good terms with them,—with Madame, especially."
I followed Joseph's advice, and, during the months that we had to remain at the Priory, I promised myself that I would be a model chambermaid,—that I would be a pearl, too. I lavished upon them all my intelligence, all my willingness, all my delicacy. Madame became human with me; little by little, she became really my friend. I do not think it was my care alone that brought about this change in Madame's character. Madame's pride, and even her reasons for living, had received a blow. As after some great sorrow, after the overwhelming loss of some cherished darling, she no longer struggled, but gently and plaintively abandoned herself to the dejection of her conquered nerves and her humiliated pride, seeming to seek from those about her only consolation, pity, and confidence. The hell of the Priory was transformed for everybody into a real paradise.
It was in the height of this family peace, of this domestic calm, that I announced one morning to Madame that I was under the necessity of leaving her. I invented a romantic story; I was to return to my native province, there to marry a worthy fellow who had long been waiting for me. In words of tenderness I expressed my pain, my regrets, my appreciation of Madame's kindness, etc. Madame was overwhelmed. She tried to keep me by appealing to my sentiments and to my interest. She offered to increase my wages, and to give me a fine room on the second floor. But, finding me determined, she had to be resigned.
"I have become so accustomed to you now," she sighed. "Ah! I have no luck."
But it was much worse when, a week later, Joseph came, in his turn, to explain that, being too old and tired, he could no longer continue his service, and must seek the rest that he needed.
"You, Joseph?" cried Madame. "You, too? It is not possible. A curse must have fallen on the Priory. Everybody abandons me; everything abandons me."
Madame wept. Joseph wept. Monsieur wept. Marianne wept.
"You take with you all our regrets, Joseph."
Alas! he took not only regrets; he took also the silver service.
Once away, I was much perplexed. I had no scruple about enjoying Joseph's money, the stolen money,—no, it was not that,—where is the money that is not stolen?—but I feared lest my feeling might prove only a fleeting curiosity. Joseph had acquired over me, over my mind as well as my flesh, an ascendency that perhaps would not last. And perhaps it was only a momentary perversion of my senses. There were moments, too, when I asked myself if it was not my imagination, carried to the heights of exceptional dreams, which had created Joseph as I saw him; if really he was anything more than a simple brute, a peasant, incapable even of a fine act of violence, of a fine crime. The consequences of this act frightened me. And then, is it not really inexplicable? This idea that I was no longer to be in the service of others caused me some regret. Formerly I thought that I should welcome the news of my liberty with great joy. Well, no! Through being a domestic, one gets it into his blood. Suppose I should suddenly miss the spectacle of bourgeois luxury? I foresaw my own little interior, severe and cold, like a workman's interior, my mediocre life, deprived of all these pretty things, of all these pretty stuffs so soft to the touch, of all these pretty vices which it was my pleasure to serve, to dress, to adorn, to plunge into, as into a perfumed bath. But it was too late to draw back.
Ah! who could have told me, on the gray, sad, and rainy day on which I arrived at the Priory, that I would end with this strange, silent, and crusty man, who looked at me with such disdain?
Now we are in the little café. Joseph has grown young again. He is no longer bent and clumsy. And he walks from one table to another, and he runs from one room to the other, with supple leg and elastic spine. His shoulders, which so frightened me, have taken on good nature; his neck, sometimes so terrible, has something about it that is fraternal and restful. Always freshly shaven, with skin as dark and shining as mahogany, with a skull cap on his head, and wearing a blue and very clean woollen shirt, he has the air of an old sailor, of an old sea-dog who has seen extraordinary things and passed through extravagant countries. What I admire in him is his moral tranquillity. There is no longer any anxiety in his look. One sees that his life rests on solid foundations. More violently than ever, he is for the family, for property, for religion, for the navy, for the army, for the country. He astonishes me!
When we married, Joseph gave me a marriage portion of ten thousand francs. The other day the maritime commissary knocked down to him at fifteen thousand francs a lot of wreckage, for which he paid cash, and which he has sold again at a big profit. He also does a little banking business,—that is, he lends money to fishermen. And already he is thinking of branching out, by taking the next house. Perhaps we shall start a music-hall there.
It puzzles me that he has so much money. And how much is his fortune? I do not know. He does not like me to talk to him about that. He does not like me to talk to him about the time that we were servants. One would say that he has forgotten everything, and that his life really began only on the day when he took possession of the little café. When I ask him a question that torments me, he seems not to understand what I say. And then terrible gleams flash through his eyes, as they used to do. Never shall I know anything of Joseph; never shall I know the mystery of his life. And perhaps it is this mystery which so attaches me to him.
Joseph looks out for everything in the house, and there is no hitch anywhere. We have three waiters to serve the customers, a maid-of-all-work for the kitchen and the household, and everything goes as to the beat of a magic wand. It is true that in three months we have changed our servant four times. How exacting these Cherbourg servants are! how thieving, and how shameless! No, it is incredible, and it is disgusting.
As for me, I superintend the cash, enthroned behind the bar, amid a forest of colored bottles. I am there also on show, and to chat. Joseph wishes me to be finely arrayed; he never refuses me anything for the adornment of my person, and he likes me to show my skin in the evening, in a tantalizing dress, somewhat low in the neck. It is necessary to excite the customer, to keep him in a state of constant joy, of constant desire. There are already two or three fat quartermasters, two or three engineers of the squadron, very well fixed, who pay me assiduous court. Naturally, to please me, they spend a good deal. Joseph spoils them especially, for they are terrible drinkers. We have also taken four boarders. They eat with us, and every evening pay for wine and cordials, which all hands drink. They are very gallant with me, and I do my best to excite them. But I am careful not to let my manners go farther than the encouragement of commonplace ogling, equivocal smiles, and illusory promises. Moreover, I have no intentions. Joseph is enough for me, and I really think I should suffer by the change, even if I had the opportunity to deceive him with the admiral. It is really funny; ugly as he is, nobody is as handsome as my Joseph. Oh! the old monster! What a hold he has taken on me! And to think that he has always lived in the country, and has been all his life a peasant!
But where Joseph especially triumphs is in politics. Thanks to him, the little café, whose sign, "To the French Army," shines over the whole neighborhood, in big letters of gold by day, in big letters of fire by night, is now the official rendezvous of the conspicuous anti-Semites and the noisiest patriots of the town. These come here to fraternize, in heroic sprees, with sub-officers of the army and non-commissioned officers of the navy. There have already been some bloody fights, and several times, apropos of nothing, the sub-officers have drawn their swords, threatening to kill imaginary traitors. The night that Dreyfus landed in France I thought that the little café would tumble down under the cries of "Long Live the Army!" and "Death to the Jews!" That night Joseph, who is already popular in the town, had a mad success. He mounted a table, and shouted:
"If the traitor is guilty, let him be sent back. If he is innocent, let him be shot."
On every hand they shouted:
"Yes, yes! Let him be shot! Long live the army!"
This proposition had carried the enthusiasm to the height of paroxysm. Above the shouting, in the café, could be heard only the clashing of swords and the pounding of fists on the marble tables. Some one, having ventured to say nobody knows what, was hooted, and Joseph, rushing upon him, smashed his mouth with a blow of his fist, and broke five teeth for him. Struck repeatedly with the flat of a sword, torn, covered with blood, and half dead, the unfortunate man was cast, like so much filth, into the street, always to the cries of "Long Live the Army! Death to the Jews!"
There are moments when I am afraid in this atmosphere of debauchery, among all these bestial faces, heavy with alcohol and murder. But Joseph, reassures me.
"That's nothing," he says. "That is good for business."
Yesterday, coming back from the market, Joseph announced, gaily rubbing his hands:
"Bad news. There is talk of a war with England."
"Oh! my God!" I cried. "Suppose Cherbourg should be bombarded?"
"Pooh! Pooh!" sneered Joseph. "Only I have thought of something; I have thought of a stroke, a rich stroke."
In spite of myself I shuddered. He must be contemplating some immense rascality.
"The more I look at you," he said, "the more I say to myself that you have not the head of a Breton. Oh! no, you have not the head of a Breton. You have rather an Alsatian head. Hey? That would make a fine show behind the bar."
I was disappointed. I thought that Joseph was going to propose some terrible thing. I was proud already at the thought of being admitted to partnership in a bold undertaking. Whenever I see him in reflective mood, my ideas are immediately inflamed. I imagine tragedies, nocturnal wallscalings, robberies, drawn knives, people in the agony of death on the forest heath. And it was nothing but a petty and vulgar piece of advertising.
With his hands in his pockets, and his blue skull-cap on his head, he swayed to and fro, in a droll fashion.
"Do you understand?" he insisted. "At the outbreak of a war a very pretty Alsatian, finely dressed, would inflame hearts and excite patriotism. And there is nothing like patriotism to get people drunk. What do you think of it? I would put you in the newspapers, and perhaps even on posters."
"I prefer to remain in the costume of a lady," I answered, a little dryly.
Thereupon we began to quarrel. And for the first time we came to violent words.
"You did not put on so many airs when you were intimate with everybody," cried Joseph.
"And you?... When you ... Oh! you had better let me alone, because I could say too much."
"Strumpet!"
"Thief!"
A customer came in. The discussion ceased. And at night there was a reconciliation, with kisses.
I am going to have a pretty Alsatian costume made for me, of silk and velvet. Really I am powerless against Joseph's will. In spite of this little fit of revolt, Joseph holds me, possesses me, like a demon. And I am happy in being his. I feel that I shall do whatever he wishes me to do, and that I shall go wherever he tells me to go ... even to crime!
March, 1900.