X
This happy though unsatisfied love produced a strange physiological phenomenon in Germinie's physical being. One would have said that the passion that was alive within her renewed and transformed her lymphatic temperament. She did not seem, as before, to extract her life, drop by drop, from a penurious spring: it flowed through her arteries in a full, generous stream; she felt the tingling sensation of rich blood over her whole body. She seemed to be filled with the warm glow of health, and the joy of living beat its wings in her breast like a bird in the sunlight.
A marvelous animation had come to her. The miserable nervous energy that once sustained her had given place to healthy activity, to bustling, restless, overflowing gayety. She had no trace now of the weakness, the dejection, the prostration, the supineness, the sluggishness that formerly distinguished her. The heavy, drowsy feeling in the morning was a thing of the past; she awoke feeling fresh and bright, and alive in an instant to the cheer of the new day. She dressed in haste, playfully; her agile fingers moved of themselves, and she was amazed to be so bright and full of activity during the hours of faintness before breakfast, when she had so often felt her heart upon her lips. And throughout the day she had the same consciousness of physical well-being, the same briskness of movement. She must be always on the move, walking, running, doing something, expending her strength. At times all that she had lived through seemed to have no existence; the sensations of living that she had hitherto experienced seemed to her like a far-off dream, or as if dimly seen in the background of a sleeping memory. The past lay behind her, as if she had traversed it, covered with a veil like one in a swoon, or with the unconsciousness of a somnambulist. It was the first time that she had experienced the feeling, the impression, at once bitter and sweet, violent and celestial, of the game of life brilliant in its plenitude, its regularity and its power.
She ran up and downstairs for a nothing. At a word from mademoiselle she would trip down the whole five flights. When she was seated, her feet danced on the floor. She brushed and scrubbed and beat and shook and washed and set to rights, without rest or reprieve, always at work, filling the apartment with her goings and comings, and the incessant bustle that followed her about.—"Mon Dieu!" her mistress would say, stunned by the uproar she made, just like a child,—"you're turning things upside down, Germinie! that will do for that!"
One day, when she went into Germinie's kitchen, mademoiselle saw a little earth in a cigar box on the leads.—"What's that?" she asked.—"That's grass—that I planted—to look at," said Germinie.—"So you're in love with grass now, eh? All you need now is to have canaries!"
XI
In the course of a few months, Germinie's life, her whole life belonged to the crémière. Mademoiselle's service was not exacting and took but little time. A whiting or a cutlet—that was all the cooking there was to be done. Mademoiselle might have kept her with her in the evening for company: she preferred, however, to send her away, to drive her out of doors, to force her to take a little air and diversion. She asked only that she would return at ten o'clock to help her to bed; and yet when Germinie was a little late, mademoiselle undressed herself and went to bed alone very comfortably. Every hour that her mistress left her at leisure, Germinie passed in the shop. She fell into the habit of going down to the creamery in the morning, when the shutters were removed, and generally carried them inside; she would take her café au lait there and remain until nine o'clock, when she would go back and give mademoiselle her chocolate; and between breakfast and dinner she found excuses for returning two or three times, delaying and chattering in the back-shop on the slightest pretext. "What a magpie you are getting to be!" mademoiselle would say, in a scolding voice, but with a smiling face.
At half past five, when her mistress's little dinner was cleared away, she would run down the stairs four at a time, install herself at Mère Jupillon's, wait until ten o'clock, clamber up the five flights, and in five minutes undress her mistress, who submitted unresistingly, albeit she was somewhat astonished that Germinie should be in such haste to go to bed; she remembered the time when she had a mania for moving her sleepy body from one easy-chair to another, and was never willing to go up to her room. While the candle was still smoking on mademoiselle's night table, Germinie would be back at the creamery, this time to remain until midnight, until one o'clock; often she did not go until a policeman, noticing the light, tapped on the shutters and made them close up.
In order to be always there and to have the right to be always there, to make herself a part of the shop, to keep her eyes constantly upon the man she loved, to hover about him, to keep him, to be always brushing against him, she had become the servant of the establishment. She swept the shop, she prepared the old woman's meals and the food for the dogs. She waited upon the son; she made his bed, she brushed his clothes, she waxed his boots, happy and proud to touch what he touched, thrilling with pleasure when she placed her hand where he placed his body, and ready to kiss the mud upon the leather of his boots, because it was his!