Chapter XV: November 20 (2)

Ever solemn and dignified, Mme. Paulhat-Durand answered:

"Undoubtedly she is not a beauty, but Mademoiselle is very honest."

"Possibly," replied the lady. "But she is too ugly. Such ugliness is in the last degree disagreeable. What? What did you say?"

Louise had not uttered a word. She had simply blushed a little, and lowered her head. Her dull eyes were surrounded with a red streak. I thought she was going to cry.

"Well, let us look into this," resumed the lady, whose fingers at this moment, furiously agitated, were tearing the material of her gown, with the movements of a cruel beast.

She questioned Louise regarding her family, her previous places, and her capacities for cooking, sewing, and doing housework. Louise answered, "Yes, indeed," or "No, indeed," hoarsely and spasmodically. The examination, fastidious, unkind, criminal, lasted twenty minutes.

"Well, my little one," concluded the old lady, "the clearest thing about you is that you do not know how to do anything. I shall have to teach you everything. For four or five months you will be of no use to me. And besides, such ugliness is not prepossessing. That gash in your nose? Have you received a blow?"

"No, Madame, it has always been there."

"Well, it is not very attractive. What pay do you expect?"

"Thirty francs, washing, and wine," declared Louise, resolutely.

The old woman started.

"Thirty francs! Have you never, then, looked at yourself? It is senseless! What? Nobody wants you; nobody will ever want you. If I take you, it is because I am kind, it is because I really pity you. And you ask me thirty francs! Well, you have audacity, my little one. Undoubtedly your comrades have been giving you bad advice. You do wrong to listen to them."

"Surely," said Mme. Paulhat-Durand, approvingly. "When they get together, they get very big ideas."

"Well," offered the old lady, in a tone of conciliation, "I will give you fifteen francs. And you will pay for your wine. It is too much. But I do not wish to take advantage of your ugliness and distress."

She softened. Her voice became almost caressing.

"You see, my little one, this is a unique opportunity, such as you will not find again. I am not like the others; I am alone, I have no family, I have no one. My servant is my family. And what do I ask of my servant? To love me a little, that is all. My servant lives with me, eats with me ... apart from the wine. Oh! I am indulgent to her. And then, when I die,--for I am very old and often sick,--when I die, surely I shall not forget the girl who has been devoted to me, served me well, and taken care of me. You are ugly, very ugly, too ugly. Well, I shall get used to your ugliness, to your face. There are some pretty women who are very ill-disposed, and who rob you beyond question. Ugliness is sometimes a guarantee of morality in the house. Of course, you will bring no men to my house? You see, I know how to do you justice. Under these conditions, and as kind as I am, what I offer you, my little one,--why, it is a fortune; better than a fortune, it is a family!"

Louise was shaken. Certainly, the old lady's words caused unknown hopes to sing in her head. With her peasant's rapacity, she had visions of strong-boxes filled with gold, and fabulous wills. And life in common, with this good mistress, the table shared, frequent trips to the squares and the suburban woods,--these things seemed marvelous to her. And they frightened her also, for doubts, an unconquerable and native mistrust, dimmed the brilliancy of these promises. She knew not what to say or do; she knew not what course to take. I felt a desire to cry out to her: "Do not accept." For I could see this hermit-like life, the exhausting tasks, the bitter reproaches, the disputed food, and the stripped bones and spoiled meat thrown to her hunger, and the eternal, patient, torturing exploitation of a poor, defenceless being. "No, do not listen to her; go away!" But I repressed this cry, which was on my lips.

"Come a little nearer, my little one," ordered the old lady. "One would think that you were afraid of me. Come, do not be afraid of me; come nearer. How curious it is! Already you seem less ugly. Already I am getting used to your face."

Louise approached slowly, with stiffened members, trying hard not to run against the chairs and furniture, endeavoring to walk with elegance, the poor creature! But she had scarcely placed herself beside the old lady, when the latter repulsed her with a grimace.

"My God!" she cried, "what is the matter with you? Why do you smell so bad? Is your body rotten? It is frightful! It is incredible! Never did any one smell as you smell. Have you, then, a cancer in your nose, or perhaps in your stomach?"

Mme. Paulhat-Durand made a noble gesture.

"I had warned you, Madame," she said. "That is her great fault. It is that which keeps her from finding a place."

The old lady continued to groan.

"My God! My God! is it possible? Why, you will taint the whole house; you cannot stay near me. This changes the case entirely. And when I was beginning to feel sympathy for you! No, no; in spite of all my kindness, it is not possible, it is no longer possible!"

She had pulled out her handkerchief, and was trying to dissipate the putrid air, as she repeated:

"No, really, it is no longer possible!"

"Come, Madame," intervened Mme. Paulhat-Durand, "make an effort. I am sure that this unhappy girl will always be grateful to you."

"Grateful? That is all well enough. But gratitude will not cure her of this frightful infirmity. Well, so be it! But I can give her only ten francs. Ten francs, no more! She can take it or leave it."

Louise, who had so far kept back her tears, was choking.

"No ... I will not ... I will not ... I will not."

"Listen, Mademoiselle," said Mme. Paulhat-Durand, dryly. "You will accept this place. If you don't, I will not undertake to get another for you. You can go and ask for places at the other bureaus. I have had enough. And you are doing injury to my house."

"It is evident," insisted the old lady. "And you ought to thank me for these ten francs. It is out of pity, out of charity, that I offer them to you. How is it that you do not see that I am doing a good work, of which no doubt I shall repent, as I have repented of others?"

Then, addressing Mme. Paulhat-Durand, she added:

"What do you expect? I am so constituted. I cannot bear to see people suffer. In the presence of misfortune I become utterly stupid. And at my age one does not change, you know. Come, my little one, I take you with me."

Just then a sudden cramp forced me to descend from my post of observation. I never saw Louise again.

The next day but one Mme. Paulhat-Durand had me ceremoniously ushered into the bureau, and, after having examined me in rather an embarrassing fashion, she said to me:

"Mademoiselle Célestine, I have a good place for you, a very good place. Only you have to go into the country,--oh! not very far."

"Into the country? I do not go there, you know."

She insisted.

"You do not know the country. There are excellent places in the country."

"Oh! excellent places! What a humbug!" I said. "In the first place, there are no good places anywhere."

Mme. Paulhat-Durand smiled amiably and affectedly. Never had I seen such a smile on her face.

"I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle Célestine, there are no bad places."

"Indeed, I know it well. There are only bad masters."

"No, only bad servants. See, I offer you all the best houses; it is not my fault, if you do not stay in them."

She looked at me in a way that was almost friendly.

"Especially as you are very intelligent. You have a pretty face, a pretty figure, charming hands not at all ruined by work, and eyes that are not in your pockets. Good fortune might easily come to you. One does not know what good fortune could come to you ... with conduct."

"With misconduct, you mean."

"That depends on how you look at it. For my part, I call it conduct."

She was melting. Little by little, her mask of dignity fell. I was now confronted simply with the former chambermaid, expert at all rascalities. Now she had the piggish eye, the fat and flabby movements, the sort of ritual lapping of the mouth characteristic of the procuress, and which I had observed on the lips of "Madame Rebecca Ranvet, Millinery." She repeated:

"For my part, I call it conduct."

"It! What?" I exclaimed.

"Come, Mademoiselle, you are not a beginner, and you are acquainted with life. One can talk with you. It is a question of a single gentleman, already old, not extremely far from Paris, and very rich,--yes, in fact, rich enough. You will keep his house,--something like a governess, do you understand? Such places are very delicate, much in demand, and highly profitable. This one offers a certain future for a woman like you, as intelligent as you are, as pretty as you are,--especially, I repeat, with conduct."

This was my ambition. Many times I had built marvelous futures on an old man's fancy, and now this paradise that I had dreamed of was before me, smiling, calling me. By an inexplicable irony of life, by an imbecile contradiction, the cause of which I cannot understand, I squarely refused this good fortune which I had wished for so many times, and which at last presented itself.

"An old rake! Oh! no! Besides, men are too disgusting to me,--the old, the young, all of them."

For a few seconds Mme. Paulhat-Durand stood in amazement. She had not expected this sally. Resuming her severe and dignified air, which placed so great a distance between the correct _bourgeoise_ that she wished to be and the bohemian girl that I am, she said:

"Ah! Mademoiselle, what do you think, then? What do you take me for? What are you imagining?"

"I imagine nothing. Only I repeat that I have had enough of men."

"Do you really know of whom you are speaking? This gentleman, Mademoiselle, is a very respectable man. He is a member of the Society of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul. He has been a royalist deputy."

I burst out laughing.

"Yes, yes, of course. I know your Saint-Vincent-de-Pauls, and all the devil's saints, and all the deputies. No, thank you!"

Then, suddenly, without transition, I asked:

"Just what is your old man? To be sure, one more or less will make no difference. It is not a matter of great consequence, after all."

But Mme. Paulhat-Durand did not unbend. She declared, in a firm voice:

"It is useless, Mademoiselle. You are not the serious woman, the trusty person, that this gentleman needs. I thought you were more suitable. With you, one cannot be sure of anything."

I insisted a long time, but she was inflexible. And I went back to the ante-room in a very uncertain state of mind. Oh! that ante-room, so sad and dark, always the same! These girls sprawling and crushed upon the benches, this market for human meat to tempt _bourgeois_ voracity, this flux of filth and this reflux of poverty that bring you back there, mournful waifs, wreckage from the sea, eternally tossed hither and thither.

"What a queer type I am!" thought I. "I desire things ... things ... things ... when I think them unrealizable, and, so soon as they promise realization, so soon as they present themselves to me in clearer outline, I no longer want them."

There was something of this, certainly, in my refusal; but there was also a childish desire to humiliate Mme. Paulhat-Durand a little, and to take a sort of vengeance upon her by catching the contemptuous and haughty creature in the very act of catering to lust.

I regretted this old man, who now exercised over me all the seductions of the unknown, all the charms of an inaccessible ideal. And I found pleasure in picturing him to my fancy,--a spruce old man, with soft hands, a pretty smile, a pink and shaven face, and gay, and generous, and good-natured, not so much a maniac as M. Rabour, allowing himself to be led by me, like a little dog.

"Come here. Come, come here."

And he came, caressing, frisking about, with a kind and submissive look.

"Now sit up."

And he sat up, in such a funny way, with his forepaws beating the air.

"Oh! the good bow-wow!"

I gave him sugar; I stroked his silky skin. He no longer disgusted me. And again I reflected:

"How stupid I am, all the same! A good doggy, a fine garden, a fine house, money, tranquillity, an assured future,--to think that I have refused all these, and without knowing why. And never to know what I want, and never to will what I desire! At bottom I am afraid of man,--worse than that, I have a disgust for man,--when he is far away. When he is near me, I am capable of anything. I have no power of resistance save against things that are not to happen and men whom I shall never know. I really believe that I shall never be happy."

The ante-room was oppressive to me. This obscurity, this dim light, these sprawling creatures, made my ideas more and more lugubrious. Something heavy and irremediable hovered over me. Without waiting for the bureau to close, I went away, with heavy heart and choking throat. On the stairs I met M. Louis. Clinging to the banister, he was ascending the steps, slowly and painfully. We looked at each other for a second. He did not say anything, and I too found no word; but our looks said all. Ah! he, as well as I, was not happy. I listened to him a moment, as he went up the steps; then I plunged down the stairway. Poor little wretch!

In the street I stood for a moment as if stunned. I looked about for love's recruiting-agents, for the round back and black costume of "Mme. Rebecca Ranvet, Millinery." Ah! if I had seen her, I would have gone to her, I would have delivered myself to her. But there was no such person there. The people passing were busy and indifferent, and paid no attention to my distress. Then I stopped at a wine-shop, where I bought a bottle of brandy, and, after strolling about for a while, still stupid and with heavy head, I went back to my hotel.

Toward evening, late, I heard a knock at my door. I lay stretched upon my bed, half naked, stupefied by drink.

"Who is there?" I cried.

"It is I."

"Who are you?"

"The waiter."

I rose, with my loosened hair falling from my shoulders, and opened the door.

"What do you want?"

The waiter smiled. He was a tall fellow with red hair, whom I had met several times on the stairs, and who always looked at me strangely.

"What do you want?" I repeated.

The waiter smiled again, apparently embarrassed, and, rolling in his fat fingers the bottom of his blue apron, covered with grease spots, he stammered:

"Mam'zelle ... I...."

He surveyed my person with a sort of dismal desire.

"Well, come in, you brute," I cried, suddenly.

And pushing him into my room, I closed the door again, violently.

Oh! misery me!

The waiter was discharged. I never knew his name!

I should not like to leave the subject of Mme. Paulhat-Durand's employment-bureau, without giving my recollection of a poor devil whom I met there. He was a gardener, who had been a widower for four months, and who was looking for a place. Among the many lamentable faces that passed through the bureau I saw none as sad as his, none that seemed to me more overwhelmed by life. His wife had died of a miscarriage ... of a miscarriage?... the night before the day when, after two months of poverty, they were at last to take positions on an estate,--he in charge of the garden, she in charge of the barn-yard. Whether from ill-luck, or from weariness and from disgust of life, he had found nothing since this great misfortune; he had not even looked for anything. And during this period of idleness his little savings had quickly melted away. Although he was very suspicious, I succeeded in taming him a little. I put into the form of an impersonal narrative the simple and poignant tragedy that he related to me one day when I, greatly moved by his misfortune, had shown more interest and pity than usual. Here it is.

When they had examined the gardens, the terraces, the conservatories, and the gardener's house at the park entrance, sumptuously clothed with ivies, climbing plants, and wild vines, they came back slowly, without speaking to each other, their souls in anguish and suspense, toward the lawn where the countess was following with a loving gaze her three children, who, with their light hair, their bright trinkets, and their pink and prosperous flesh, were playing in the grass, under the care of the governess. At a distance of twenty steps they halted respectfully, the man with uncovered head and holding his cap in his hand, the woman, timid under her black straw hat, embarrassed in her dark woollen sack, and twisting the chain of a little leather bag, to give herself confidence. The undulating greensward of the park rolled away in the distance, between thick clusters of trees.

"Come nearer," said the countess, in a voice of kind encouragement.

The man had a brown face, skin tanned by the sun, large knotty hands of the color of earth, the tips of the fingers deformed and polished by the continual handling of tools. The woman was a little pale, with a gray pallor underlying the freckles that besprinkled her face,--a little awkward, too, and very clean. She did not dare to lift her eyes to this fine lady, who was about to examine her inconsiderately, overwhelm her with torturing questions, and turn her inside out, body and soul, as others had done before. And she looked intently at the pretty picture of the three babies playing in the grass, already showing manners well under control and studied graces.

They advanced a few steps, slowly, and both of them, with a mechanical and simultaneous movement, folded their hands over their stomachs.

"Well," asked the countess, "you have seen everything?"

"Madame the Countess is very good," answered the man. "It is very grand and very beautiful. Oh! it is a superb estate. There must be plenty of work, indeed!"

"And I am very exacting, I warn you,--very just, but very exacting. I love to have everything perfectly kept. And flowers, flowers, flowers, always and everywhere. However, you have two assistants in summer, and one in winter. That is sufficient."

"Oh!" replied the man, "the work does not worry me; the more there is, the better I like it. I love my calling, and I know it thoroughly,--trees, early vegetables, mosaics, and everything. As for flowers, with good arms, taste, water, good straw coverings, and--saving your presence, Madame the Countess--an abundance of manure, one can have as many as one wants."

After a pause, he continued:

"My wife, too, is very active, very skilful, and a good manager. She does not look strong, but she is courageous, and never sick, and nobody understands animals as she does. In the place where we last worked there were three cows and two hundred hens."

The countess nodded approvingly.

"How do you like your lodge?"

"The lodge, too, is very fine. It is almost too grand for little people like us, and we have not enough furniture for it. But one need not occupy the whole of it. And besides, it is far from the château, and it ought to be. Masters do not like to have the gardeners too near them. And we, on the other hand, are afraid of being embarrassed. Here each is by himself. That is better for all. Only...."

The man hesitated, seized with a sudden timidity, in view of what he had to say.

"Only what?" asked the countess, after a silence that increased the man's embarrassment.

The latter gripped his cap more tightly, turned it in his fat fingers, rested more heavily on the ground, and, making a bold plunge, exclaimed:

"Well, it is this. I wanted to say to Madame the Countess that the wages do not correspond with the place. They are too low. With the best will in the world it would be impossible to make ends meet. Madame the Countess ought to give a little more."

"You forget, my friend, that you are lodged, heated, lighted; that you have vegetables and fruits; that I give a dozen eggs a week and a quart of milk a day. It is enormous."

"Ah, Madame the Countess gives milk and eggs? And she furnishes light?"

And he looked at his wife as if to ask her advice, at the same time murmuring:

"Indeed, that is something! One cannot deny it. That is not bad."

The woman stammered:

"Surely that helps out a little."

Then, trembling and embarrassed:

"Madame the Countess no doubt gives presents also in the month of January and on Saint Fiacre's day?"

"No, nothing."

"It is the custom, however."

"It is not mine."

In his turn the man asked:

"And for the weasels and pole-cats?"

"No, nothing for those either; you can have the skins."

This was said in a dry, decisive tone, that forbade further discussion. And suddenly:

"Ah! I warn you, once for all, that I forbid the gardener to sell or give vegetables to any one whomsoever. I know very well that it is necessary to raise too many in order to have enough, and that three-fourths of them are wasted. So much the worse! I intend to allow them to be wasted."

"Of course, the same as everywhere else!"

"So it is agreed? How long have you been married?"

"Six years," answered the woman.

"You have no children?"

"We had a little girl. She is dead."

"Ah! that is well; that is very well," approved the countess, in an indifferent tone. "But you are both young; you may have others yet."

"They are hardly to be desired, Madame the Countess, but they are more easily obtained than an income of three hundred francs."

The countess's eyes took on a severe expression.

"I must further warn you that I will have no children on the premises, absolutely none. If you were to have another child, I should be obliged to discharge you at once. Oh! no children! They cry, they are in the way, they ruin everything, they frighten the horses and spread diseases. No, no, not for anything in the world would I tolerate a child on my premises. So you are warned. Govern yourselves accordingly; take your precautions."

Just then one of the children, who had fallen, came, crying, to take refuge in his mother's gown. She took him in her arms, lulled him with soothing words, caressed him, kissed him tenderly, and sent him back to rejoin the two others, pacified and smiling. The woman suddenly felt her heart growing heavy. She thought that she would not be able to keep back her tears. Joy, tenderness, love, motherhood, then, were for the rich only? The children had begun to play again on the lawn. She hated them with a savage hatred; she felt a desire to insult them, to beat them, to kill them; to insult and kill also this insolent and cruel woman, this egoistic mother, who had just uttered abominable words, words that condemned not to be born the future humanity that lay sleeping in her womb. But she restrained herself, and said simply, in response to a new warning, more imperative than the other:

"We will be careful, Madame the Countess; we will try."

"That's right; for I cannot too often repeat it to you,--this is a principle here, a principle upon which I cannot compromise."

And she added, with an inflection in her voice that was almost caressing:

"Moreover, believe me, when one is not rich, it is better to have no children."

The man, to please his future mistress, said, by way of conclusion:

"Surely, surely. Madame the Countess speaks truly."

But there was hatred within him. The sombre and fierce gleam that passed over his eyes like a flash gave the lie to the forced servility of these last words. The countess did not see this murderous gleam, for she had fixed her eyes instinctively on the person of the woman whom she had just condemned to sterility or infanticide.

The bargain was quickly concluded. She gave her orders, detailed minutely the services that she expected of her new gardeners, and, as she dismissed them with a haughty smile, she said, in a tone that admitted of no reply:

"I think that you have religious sentiments, do you not? Here everybody goes to mass on Sunday, and receives the sacrament at Easter. I insist upon it absolutely."

They went away without speaking to each other, very serious, very sober. The road was dusty and the heat oppressive, and the poor woman walked painfully, dragging her legs after her. As she was stifling a little, she stopped, placed her bag upon the ground, and unlaced her corsets.

"Ouf!" she exclaimed, taking in deep breaths of air.

And her figure, which had been long compressed, now swelled out, revealing the characteristic roundness, the stain of motherhood, the crime. They continued on their way.

A few steps further on they entered an inn by the roadside, and ordered a quart of wine.

"Why didn't you say I was pregnant?" asked the woman.

The man answered:

"What? That she might show us the door, as the three others have done?"

"To-day or to-morrow makes but little difference."

Then the man murmured between his teeth:

"If you were a woman,--well, you would go this very evening to Mother Hurlot. She has herbs."

But the woman began to weep. And in her tears she groaned:

"Don't say that; don't say that! That brings bad luck."

The man pounded the table, and cried:

"Must we, then, die, my God!"

The bad luck came. Four days later the woman had a miscarriage ... a miscarriage?... and died in the frightful pains of peritonitis.

And, when the man had finished his story, he said to me:

"So now here I am, all alone. No wife, no child, nothing. I really thought of revenging myself; yes, for a long time I thought of killing those three children that were playing on the lawn, although I am not wicked, I assure you. But that woman's three children, I swear to you, I could have strangled with joy, with real joy! Oh! yes. But then, I did not dare. What do you expect? We are afraid; we are cowards; we have courage only to suffer!"