"I will crush the lot of you."
In that dark childhood there had been one ray of light:
One day, one of the little grubby boys with whom she used to lark in the gutter, the son of the stage-door keeper of the theater, got her in to the rehearsal, although it was strictly forbidden. They stole to the very back of the building in the darkness. She was gripped by the mystery of the stage, gleaming in the darkness, and by the magnificent and incomprehensible things that the actors were saying, and by the queenly bearing of the actress,—who was, in fact, playing a queen in a romantic melodrama. She was chilled by emotion: and at the same time her heart thumped…. "That—that is what I must be some day!" … Oh! if she could ever be like that!…—When it was over she wanted at all costs to see the evening performance. She let her companion go out, and pretended to follow him: and then she turned back and hid herself in the theater: she cowered away under a seat, and stayed there for three hours without stirring, choked by the dust: and when the performance was about to begin and the audience was arriving, just as she was creeping out of her hiding-place, she had the mortification of being pounced on, ignominiously expelled amid jeers and laughter, and taken home, where she was whipped. She would have died that night had she not known now what she must do later on to master these people and avenge herself on them.
Her plan was made. She took a situation as a servant in the Hôtel et Café du Théâtre, where the actors put up. She could hardly read or write: and she had read nothing, for she had nothing to read. She wanted to learn, and applied herself to it with frantic energy. She used to steal books from the guests' rooms, and read them at night by moonlight or at dawn, so as not to use her candle. Thanks to the untidiness of the actors, her larcenies passed unnoticed or else the owners put up with cursing and swearing. She used to restore their books when she had read them,—except one or two which had moved her too much for her to be able to part with them;—but she did not return them intact. She used to tear out the pages which had pleased her. When she took the books back, she used carefully to slip them under the bed or the furniture, so as to make the owners of them believe that they had never left the room. She used to glue her ears to the door to listen to the actors going over their parts. And when she was alone, sweeping the corridor, she would mimic their intonations in a whisper and gesticulate. When she was caught doing so she was laughed at and jeered at. She would say nothing, and boil with rage.—That sort of education might have gone on for a long time had she not on one occasion been imprudent enough to steal the script of a part from the room of an actor. The actor stamped and swore. No one had been to his room except the servant: he accused her. She denied it boldly: he threatened to have her searched: she threw herself at his feet and confessed everything, even to her other pilferings and the pages she had torn out of the books: the whole boiling. He cursed and swore frightfully: but he was not so angry as he seemed. He asked why she had done it. When she told him that she wanted to become an actress he roared with laughter. He questioned her, and she recited whole pages which she had learned by heart: he was struck by it, and said:
"Look here, would you like me to give you lessons?"
She was in the highest heaven of delight, and kissed his hands.
"Ah!" she said to Christophe, "how I should have loved him!"
But at once he added:
"Only, my dear, you know you can't have anything for nothing…."
She was chaste, and had always been scared and modest with those who had pursued her with their overtures. Her absolute chastity, her ardent need of purity, her disgust with things unclean and ignoble loveless sensuality, had been with her always from her childhood on, as a result of the despair and nausea of the sad sights which she saw about her on all sides at home:—and they were with her still…. Ah! unhappy creature! She had borne much punishment!… What a mockery of Fate!…