"This existence molded me forever, and has influenced the rest of my life. Dishonor, death, anything is to me preferable to poverty…. I, who have no fear of danger, become a coward at the mere thought of that!"
The mother died, credulous and sensuous, worn out with expecting a solid fortune that never arrived. The daughter continued with her father, becoming the type of young woman who lives among men from hotel to hotel, always somewhat masculine in her attitude;—a half-way virgin who knows everything, is not frightened at anything, guards ferociously the integrity of her sex, calculating just what it may be worth, and adoring wealth as the most powerful divinity on earth.
Finding herself upon her father's death with no other fortune than her gowns and a few artistic gems of scant value, she had coldly decided upon her destiny.
"In our world there is no other virtue than that of money. The girls of the people surrender themselves less easily than a young woman accustomed to luxury having as her only fortune some knowledge of the piano, of dancing, and a few languages…. We yield our body as though fulfilling a material function, without shame and without regret. It is a simple matter of business. The only thing that matters is to preserve the former life with all its conveniences … not to come down."
She passed hastily over her recollection of this period of her existence. An old acquaintance of her father, an old trader of Vienna, had been the first. Then she felt romantic flutterings which even the coldest and most positive women do not escape. She believed that she had fallen in love with a Dutch officer, a blonde Apollo who used to skate with her in Saint Moritz. This had been her only husband. Finally she had become bored with the colonial drowsiness of Batavia and had returned to Europe, breaking off her marriage in order to renew her life in the great hotels, passing the winter season at the most luxurious resorts.
"Ay, money!… In no social plane was its power so evident as that in which she was accustomed to dwell. In the Palace Hotels she had met women of soldierly aspect and common hands, smoking at all hours, with their feet up and the white triangle of their petticoats stretched over the seat. They were like the prostitutes waiting at the doors of their huts. How were they ever permitted to live there!… Nevertheless, the men bowed before them like slaves, or followed as suppliants these creatures who talked with unction of the millions inherited from their fathers, of their formidable wealth of industrial origin which had enabled them to buy noble husbands and then give themselves up to their natural tastes as fast, coarse women.
"I never had any luck…. I am too haughty for that kind of thing. Men find me ill-humored, argumentative, and nervous. Perhaps I was born to be the mother of a family…. Who knows but what I might have been otherwise if I had lived in your country?"
Her announcement of her religious veneration for money took on an accent of hate. Poor and well-educated girls, if afraid of the misery of poverty, had no other recourse than prostitution. They lacked a dowry,—that indispensable requisite in many civilized families for honorable marriage and home-making.
Accursed poverty!… It had weighed upon her life like a fatality. The men who had appeared good at first afterwards became poisoned, turning into egoists and wretches. Doctor Talberg, on returning from America, had abandoned her in order to marry a young and rich woman, the daughter of a trader, a senator from Hamburg. Others had equally exploited her youth, taking their share of her gayety and beauty only to marry, later, women who had merely the attractiveness of a great fortune.
She had finally come to hate them all, desiring their extermination, exasperated at the very thought that she needed them to live and could never free herself from this slavery. Trying to be independent, she had taken up the stage.