Henceforth she felt no qualms; Lastours, her new lover, had no further cause to complain.
He dealt in paintings in a little house in the rue ffémont. He was dark and bald, with the beard of a minion, a brutal mouth and the hands of a street-porter. He held an advantageous place in the syndicate of those painter-dealers whom the Paris of the parvenus freely provides with both a living and notoriety. He frequented assiduously the fashionable drawing-rooms of the smart set, mixed with the élite of clubs and art circles, dressed like a sportsman, was as funny as a low comedian and carried about him a vague perfume of something beyond, an aristocratic vapor which seemed to float above his square shoulders. Listening to him, Zozé felt nearer the world of fashion. He was to her the higher step on the social ladder; merely to see that step was as good as believing she was on it and she clung to it with delight. She admired, as if they stood for the finest wit, his studio gossip, his prankish school ditties and the obscenity of his conversation. He had but to say a word and she laughed outright; she rushed to satisfy his slightest whim; in three months Chambannes took three paintings off his hands. Nevertheless Lastours soon abused his privilege. She dreamed of nothing else but the satisfaction of his desires and yet he treated her like a servant, ill-treated her when he was in bad humor; he even ordered the gentle Zozé, after their meetings, to fasten his boots for him.
Such insolence, daily renewed, exasperated the unhappy woman and acted upon her love as water upon flames.
She was fresh, loving and of a pleasant disposition; why should she be denied that happiness of the heart which fell to the lot of so many other women less beautiful than she was? In moments of passing intuition, Zozé gave herself the melancholy reply: They were often less beautiful, that was true, but they were Parisiennes; they were well read and resolute; they operated upon their native soil, while she was a little Mouzarkhi, blindly floating at the whim of her instincts, groping and stranded more than any girl lost on alien soil!... The next day, with renewed hope, she would go back to Lastours!
When she ceased to love him, she wanted to avenge the outrages he had piled upon her. Following a banal, instinctive strategy, she gave herself to one of his friends—also a painter and one of Lastours’ competitors—by the name of Montiers, who lived two doors further down the street.
This man was fat and red-headed and concealed his nature even less than the other had done. He was more ambitious and greedy for money than Lastours and entertained not the least intention of wasting his time with women. It was business before anything else with him. For the sake of a prospective sale, a meeting with a client or a patro call, he would dismiss Zozé or put off her visit without hesitation. Once he had kept her, frozen and crazy with fear, shut up for a whole hour in the dark closet used by his models to disrobe in, because some rich American had chanced to turn up at the studio during her visit.
When the American had departed, Montiers walked about the room so elated by his successful transaction that he forgot to deliver his prisoner. He only opened the door when he heard her cries; and when he opened it he smiled, seeing only the humorous side of the affair, while Zozé wept for vexation and grief.
After six weeks such treatment she was thoroughly disgusted with Montiers, and with fashionable painters, and indeed—or so she thought—with adventurous affaires in general.
Who would have thought that these men, who were outwardly so courteous, so much made of and so much petted by the most beautiful women, could prove themselves so mean upon intimacy? Why should she keep up these casual liaisons, expose herself to such insults which lacked even the excuse of accompanying tenderness; why seek happiness in love instead of waiting for it?
What, moreover, did she lack in order to be the most envied young woman?