Part 15

I went every morning at nine o'clock to open M. Xavier's curtains and carry him his tea. It is queer; I always entered his room with my heart beating and a strong feeling of apprehension. It was a long time before he paid any attention to me. I turned this way and that, prepared his things for him, arranged his garments, trying to look pretty and show myself off to advantage. He spoke to me only to complain, in the growling voice of one who is half awake, of being disturbed too early. I was put out by this indifference, and I redoubled the silent tricks of coquetry which I had carefully planned. I was expecting every day something that did not happen; and this silence on the part of M. Xavier, this disdain for my person, irritated me to the last degree. What should I have done, if that which I expected had happened? I did not ask myself. I simply wanted it to happen.

M. Xavier was really a very pretty boy, even prettier than his photograph. A light blonde moustache--two little arcs of gold--set off his lips better than in his portrait, their red and fleshy pulp inviting a kiss. His light blue eyes, dusted with yellow, were strangely fascinating, and his movements were characterized by the indolence, the weary and cruel grace, of a girl or young deer. He was tall, slender, very supple, ultra-modern in his elegance, and wonderfully seductive through his evident cynicism and corruption. In addition to the fact that he had pleased me from the first, his resistance, or, rather, his indifference, caused my desire to quickly ripen into love.

One morning I found M. Xavier awake, and sitting on the edge of the bed. I remember that he wore a white silk shirt with blue dots. I modestly started to withdraw, but he called me back:

"Oh! what is the matter? Come in. You are not afraid of me, are you?"

With his two hands clasped over his leg, and his body swaying to and fro, he surveyed me for a long time with the utmost effrontery, while I, with slow and graceful movements, and blushing a little, placed a tray on the little table near the mantel. And, as if he then really saw me for the first time, he said:

"Why, you are a very stylish girl. How long, then, have you been here?"

"Three weeks, Monsieur."

"Well, that's astonishing!"

"What is astonishing, Monsieur?"

"That I have never noticed that you were so beautiful. Come here!" said he.

I approached, trembling a little. Without a word he took me by the waist, and forced me to sit down beside him.

"Oh! Monsieur Xavier," I sighed, struggling, but not very vigorously. "Stop, I beg of you. If your parents were to see you?"

But he began to laugh:

"My parents! Oh! my parents, you know,--I have supped on them."

This was a phrase that he was continually using. When one asked him anything, he answered: "I have supped on that." And he had supped on everything.

To gain a little time I asked him:

"There is one thing that puzzles me, Monsieur Xavier. How does it happen that one never sees you at Madame's dinners?"

"You certainly don't expect me, my dear ... oh! no, you know, Madame's dinners tire me too much."

"And how is it," I insisted, "that your room is the only one in the house in which there is not a picture of the pope?"

This observation flattered him. He answered:

"Why, my little baby, I am an Anarchist, I am. Religion, the Jesuits, the priests,--oh! no, I have enough of them. I have supped on them. A society made up of people like papa and mamma? Oh! you know ... none of that in mine, thank you!"

Now I felt at ease with M. Xavier, in whom I found, together with the same vices, the drawling accent of the Paris toughs. It seemed to me that I had known him for years and years. In his turn he asked me:

"Tell me, are you intimate with papa?"

"Your father!" I cried, pretending to be scandalized. "Oh! Monsieur Xavier! Such a holy man!"

His laugh redoubled, and rang out loudly:

"Papa! Oh! papa! Why, he is intimate with all the servants here. Then you are not yet intimate with papa? You astonish me."

"Oh! no," I replied, laughing also. "Only he brings me the 'Fin de Siècle,' the 'Rigolo,' the 'Petites Femmes de Paris'."

That set him off in a delirium of joy, and, shaking more than ever with laughter, he cried:

"Papa! Oh! he is astonishing!"

And, being now well started, he continued in a comical tone:

"He is like mamma. Yesterday she made me another scene. I am disgracing her,--her and papa. Would you believe it? And religion, and society, and everything! It is twisting. Then I declared to her: 'My dear little mother, it is agreed; I will settle down to a regular life on the day when you shall have given up your lovers.' That was a hot one, eh? That shut her up. Oh! no, you know, they make me very tired, these authors of my being. I have supped on their lectures. By the way, you know Fumeau, don't you?"

"No, Monsieur Xavier."

"Why, yes ... why, yes ... Anthime Fumeau?"

"I assure you that I do not."

"A fat fellow, very young, very red-faced, ultra-stylish, the finest teams in Paris. Fumeau ... an income of three millions. Tartlet the Kid? Why, yes, you know him."

"But I tell you that I do not know him."

"You astonish me! Why, everybody knows him. Don't you know the Fumeau biscuit? The young fellow who had a judicial adviser appointed for him two months ago? Don't you remember?"

"Not at all, I swear to you, Monsieur Xavier."

"Never mind, little turkey. Well, I played a good one on Fumeau last year,--a very good one. Guess what? You do not guess?"

"How do you expect me to guess, since I do not know him?"

"Well, it was this, my little baby. I introduced Fumeau to my mother. Upon my word! What do you think of that for a discovery? And the funniest part of it is that in two months mamma succeeded in blackmailing Fumeau to the tune of three hundred thousand bones. What a godsend that, for papa's works! Oh! they know a thing or two; they are up to snuff! But for that, the house would have gone up. We were over head and ears in debt. The priests themselves were refusing to have anything to do with us. What do you say to that, eh?"

"I say, Monsieur Xavier, that you have a queer way of treating the family."

"What do you expect, my dear? I am an Anarchist, I am. I have supped on the family."

That morning Madame was even nicer than usual with me.

"I am well satisfied with your service," she said to me. "Mary, I raise your wages ten francs."

"If she raises me ten francs every time," thought I to myself, "that will not be bad. It is more suitable."

Oh! when I think of all that! I, too, have supped on it.

M. Xavier's fancy did not last long; he had quickly "supped on me." Not for a moment, moreover, was I able to keep him in the house. Several times, on entering his room in the morning, I found the bed undisturbed and empty. M. Xavier had been out all night. The cook knew him well, and she had told the truth when she said: "He prefers to roam elsewhere." He pursued his old habits, and went in search of his customary pleasures, as before. On those mornings I felt a sudden pain in my heart, and all day long I was sad, sad!

The unfortunate part of it all is that M. Xavier had no feeling. He was not poetical, like M. Georges. He did not vouchsafe me the slightest attention. Never did he say to me a kind and touching word, as lovers do in books and plays. Moreover, he liked nothing that I liked; he did not like flowers, with the exception of the big carnations with which he adorned the buttonhole of his coat. Yet it is so good to whisper to each other things that caress the heart, to exchange disinterested kisses, to gaze for eternities into one another's eyes. But men are such coarse creatures; they do not feel these joys,--these joys so pure and blue. And it is a great pity. M. Xavier knew nothing but vice, found pleasure only in debauchery. In love all that was not vice and debauchery bored him.

"Oh! no, you know, that makes me very tired. I have supped on poetry. The little blue flower ... we must leave that to papa."

To him I was always an impersonal creature, the domestic to whom he gave orders and whom he maltreated in the exercise of his authority as master, and with his boyish cynical jests. And he often said to me, with a laugh in the corner of his mouth,--a frightful laugh that wounded and humiliated me:

"And papa? Really, you are not yet intimate with papa? You astonish me."

Once I had not the power to keep back my tears; they were choking me. M. Xavier became angry at once:

"Oh! no, you know, that is the most tiresome thing of all. Tears, scenes? You must stop that, my dear; or else, good evening! I have supped on all that nonsense."

For my part I feel an immense and imperative need of that pure embrace, of that chaste kiss, which is no longer the savage bite of the flesh, but the ideal caress of the soul. I need to rise from the hell of love to the paradise of ecstasy, to the fullness, the delicious and candid silence, of ecstasy. But M. Xavier had supped on ecstasy.

Nothing pained me so much as to see that I had not left the slightest trace of affection, not the smallest tenderness, in his heart. Yet I believe that I could have loved the little scoundrel,--that I could have devoted myself to him, in spite of everything, like a beast. Even to-day I think regretfully of his impudent, cruel, and pretty phiz, and of his perfumed skin. And I have often on my lips, from which, since then, so many lips ought to have effaced it, the acid taste, the burning sensation of his kiss. Oh! Monsieur Xavier! Monsieur Xavier!

One evening, before dinner, when he had returned to dress,--my! but how nice he looked in evening dress!--and as I was carefully arranging his affairs in the dressing-room, he asked me, without embarrassment or hesitation, and almost in a tone of command, precisely as he would have asked me for hot water:

"Have you five louis? I am in absolute need of five louis to-night. I will return them to you to-morrow."

That very morning Madame had paid me my wages. Did he know it?

"I have only ninety francs," I answered, a little ashamed,--ashamed of his question, perhaps, but more ashamed, I think, at not having the entire sum that he asked.

"That makes no difference," said he; "go and get me the ninety francs. I will return them to you to-morrow."

He took the money, and, by way of thanks, said in a dry, curt tone that froze my heart: "That's good!" Then, putting out his foot with a brutal movement, he commanded insolently:

"Tie my shoes. And be quick about it; I am in a hurry."

I looked at him sadly, imploringly:

"Then you are not to dine here this evening, Monsieur Xavier?"

"No, I dine in town. Make haste."

As I tied his shoes, I moaned:

"And you will not return to-night? I shall cry all night long. It is not nice of you, Monsieur Xavier."

His voice became hard and thoroughly wicked.

"If you lent me your ninety francs that you might say that, you can take them back. Here, take them!"

"No, no," I sighed. "You know very well that it was not for that."

"Well, then, don't bother me."

He had quickly finished dressing, and he started off without kissing me and without saying a word.

The next day nothing was said about returning the money; and I did not wish to claim it. It gave me pleasure to think that he had something of me. And now I understand the women who kill themselves with toil, the women who sell themselves to passers-by, at night, on the sidewalks, the women who steal, and the women who kill, in order to get a little money with which to procure indulgences for the little man whom they love. That is what has happened to me, in fact. Or has it really happened to me in the degree that I say? Alas! I do not know. There are moments when, in presence of a man, I feel so soft, so soft, without will, without courage, so yielding ... yes, so yielding!

Madame was not slow in changing her manner toward me. Instead of treating me nicely, as she had done before, she became severe, exacting, fault-finding. I was only a blockhead; I never did anything right; I was awkward, unclean, ill-bred, forgetful, dishonest. And her voice, which at first had been so sweet, so much like the voice of a comrade, now became as sour as vinegar. She gave me orders in a blunt and humiliating tone. No more gifts of underwear, no more cold cream and powder, no more of the secret counsels and private confidences that had so embarrassed me at first. No more of that suspicious comradeship which at bottom I felt not to be kindness, and which caused me to lose my respect for this mistress who raised me to the level of her own vice. I snapped at her sharply, strong in my knowledge of all the open or hidden infamies of the house. We got to quarreling like fish-wives, hurling our week's notice at each other's heads, like dirty rags.

"What, then, do you take my house for?" she cried. "Do you think you are working for a fast woman?"

Think of her cheek! I answered:

"Oh! your house is a clean one, indeed! You can boast of it. And you? Let us talk about it; yes, let us talk about it! You are clean, too! And what about Monsieur? Oh! la! la! And do you think they don't know you in the neighborhood, and in Paris? Why, you are notorious, everywhere. Your house? A brothel. And, in fact, there are brothels which are not as dirty as your house."

And so these quarrels went on; we exchanged the worst insults and the lowest threats; we descended to the vocabulary of the street-walkers and the prisons. And then, suddenly, everything quieted down. M. Xavier had only to show signs of a reviving interest in me,--fleeting, alas!--when straightway began again the suspicious familiarity, the shameful complicities, the gifts of garments, the promises of doubled wages, the washing with Simon cream,--it is more suitable,--and the initiations into the mysteries of refined perfumes. M. Xavier's conduct toward me was the thermometer by which Madame regulated her own. The latter's kindness immediately followed the former's caresses. Abandonment by the son was accompanied by insults from the mother. I was the victim, continually tossed back and forth, of the enervating fluctuations to which the intermittent love of this capricious and heartless boy was subject. One would have thought that Madame must have played the spy with us, must have listened at the door, must have kept tabs for herself on the different phases of our relations. But no. She simply had the instinct of vice, that's all. She scented it through walls and souls, as a dog inhales in the breeze the far-away odor of game.

As for Monsieur, he continued to dance about among all these events, among all the hidden dramas of this house, alert, busy, cynical, and comical. In the morning he disappeared, with his face of a little pink and shaven faun, with his documents, with his bag stuffed with pious pamphlets and obscene newspapers. In the evening he reappeared, cravated with respectability, armored with Christian Socialism, his gait a little slower, his gestures a little more oily, his back slightly bent, doubtless under the weight of the good works done during the day. Regularly every Friday he gave me the week's issues of indecent journals, awaiting just the right occasion for making his declaration, and contenting himself with smiling at me with the air of an accomplice, caressing my chin, and saying to me, as he passed his tongue over his lips:

"Ho, ho, she is a very queer little one, indeed!"

As it amused me to watch Monsieur's game, I did not discourage him, but I promised myself to seize the first exceptionally favorable opportunity to sharply put him where he belonged.

One afternoon I was greatly surprised to see him enter the linen-room, where I sat alone, musing sadly over my work. In the morning I had had a painful scene with M. Xavier, and was still under the influence of the impression it had left on me. Monsieur closed the door softly, placed his bag on the large table near a pile of cloth, and, coming to me, took my hands and patted them. Under his blinking eyelid his eye turned, like that of an old hen dazzled by the sunlight. It was enough to make one die of laughter.

"Célestine," said he, "for my part, I prefer to call you Célestine. That does not offend you, does it?"

I could hardly keep from bursting.

"Why, no, Monsieur," I answered, holding myself on the defensive.

"Well, Célestine, I think you charming! There!"

"Really, Monsieur?"

"Adorable, in fact; adorable, adorable!"

"Oh! Monsieur!"

His fingers had left my hand, and were caressing my neck and chin with fat and soft little touches.

"Adorable, adorable!" he whispered.

He tried to embrace me. I drew back a little, to avoid his kiss.

"Stay, Célestine, I beg of you. I do not annoy you, do I?"

"No, Monsieur; you astonish me."

"I astonish you, you little rogue. I astonish you? Oh! you don't know me."

His voice was no longer dry. A fine froth moistened his lips.

"Listen to me, Célestine. Next week I am going to Lourdes; yes, I conduct a pilgrimage to Lourdes. Do you wish to come to Lourdes? I have a way of taking you to Lourdes. Will you come? Nobody will notice anything. You will stay at the hotel; you will take walks, or do what you like. And I will meet you in the evening."

What stupefied me was not the proposition in itself,--for I had been expecting it a long time,--but the unforeseen form which Monsieur gave it. Yet I preserved all my self-possession. And, desirous of humiliating this old rake, of showing him that I had not been the dupe of Madame's dirty calculations and his own, I lashed him squarely in the face with these words:

"And M. Xavier? Say, it seems to me that you are forgetting M. Xavier? What is he to do while we are amusing ourselves in Lourdes, at the expense of Christianity?"

An indirect and troubled gleam, the look of a surprised deer, lighted in the darkness of his eyes. He stammered:

"M. Xavier?"

"Why, yes!"

"Why do you speak to me of M. Xavier? There is no question of M. Xavier? M. Xavier has nothing to do with this."

I redoubled my insolence.

"On your word? Oh! don't pretend to be ignorant. Am I hired, yes or no, to be company for M. Xavier? Yes, am I not? Well, I am company for him. But you? Oh! no, that is not in the bargain. And then, you know, my little father, you are not my style."

And I burst out laughing in his face.

He turned purple; his eyes flamed with anger. But he did not think it prudent to enter into a discussion, for which I was terribly armed. He hastily picked up his bag, and slunk away, pursued by my laughter.

The next day, apropos of nothing, Monsieur made some gross remark to me. I flew into a passion. Madame happened along. I became mad with anger. The scene that ensued between us three was so frightful, so low, that I cannot undertake to describe it. In unspeakable terms I reproached them with all their filth and with all their infamy. I demanded the return of the money that I had lent M. Xavier. They foamed at the mouth. I seized a cushion, and hurled it violently at Monsieur's head.

"Go away! Get out of here, at once, at once!" screamed Madame, threatening to tear my face with her nails.

"I erase your name from the membership of my society; you no longer belong to my society, lost creature, prostitute!" vociferated Monsieur, stuffing his bag with thrusts of his fists.

Finally Madame withheld my week's wages, refused to pay the ninety francs that I had lent M. Xavier, and obliged me to return all the rags that she had given me.

"You are all thieves," I cried; "you are all pimps!"

And I went away, threatening them with the commissary of police and the justice of the peace.

"Oh! you are looking for trouble? Yes, well, you shall have it, scoundrels that you are!"

Alas! the commissary of police pretended that the affair did not concern him. The justice of the peace advised me to let it drop. He explained:

"In the first place, Mademoiselle, you will not be believed. And that is as it should be. What would become of society if a servant could be right against a master? There would be no more society, Mademoiselle. That would be anarchy."

I consulted a lawyer; he demanded two hundred francs. I wrote to M. Xavier; he did not answer me. Then I counted up my resources. I had three francs fifty left--and the street pavement.

XIII

_November 13._

And I see myself again at Neuilly, with the sisters of Our Lady of Thirty-Six Sorrows, a sort of house of refuge, and also an employment-bureau for housemaids. My! but it is a fine establishment, with a white front, and at the rear of a large garden. In the garden, which is ornamented, at intervals of fifty steps, with statues of the Virgin, there is a little chapel, very new and sumptuous, built from the proceeds of the collections. Large trees surround it. And every hour one hears the tolling of the bells. It is so nice to hear the bells toll. It stirs in one's heart memories of things so old and long forgotten. When the bells toll, I close my eyes and listen, and I see again landscapes which perhaps I never saw before, and which I recognize all the same,--very peaceful landscapes, imbued with all the transformed recollections of childhood and youth,... and bagpipes,... and, on the moor bordering on the beaches, the slowly-moving panorama of holiday crowds. Ding ... dinn ... dong! It is not very gay; it is not the same thing as gaiety; it is even sad at bottom,--sad, like love. But I like it. In Paris one never hears anything but the fountaineer's horn, and the deafening trumpet of the tramway.

In the establishment of the sisters of Our Lady of Thirty-Six Sorrows, you sleep in attic dormitories; you are fed meagrely on scraps of meat and spoiled vegetables, and you pay twenty-five sous a day to the institution. That is to say, the sisters withhold twenty-five sous from your wages, when they have secured a place for you. They call that getting you a place for nothing. Further, you have to work from six o'clock in the morning until nine in the evening, like the inmates of prisons. You are not allowed to go out. Meals and religious exercises take the place of recreation. Ah! the good sisters do not bore themselves, as M. Xavier would say; and their charity is a famous trap. They rope you in finely! But there it is,--I shall be stupid all my life. The stern lessons of experience, the succession of misfortunes, never teach me anything, are of no use to me. I am always crying out and raising a row, but in the end I am always victimized by everybody.

Several times comrades had spoken to me of the sisters of Our Lady of Thirty-Six Sorrows.

"Yes, my dear, it seems that only very swell people come to the box,... countesses,... marchionesses. One may chance on astonishing places."

I believed it. And then, in my distress, I remembered with some feeling, booby that I am, the happy years that I spent with the little sisters of Pont-Croix. Moreover, I had to go somewhere. Beggars cannot be choosers.

When I arrived, there were forty housemaids there. Many came from a great distance,--from Brittany, from Alsace, from the south, girls who had never yet had a place,--awkward, clumsy, with livid complexions, sly airs, and singular eyes that looked over the walls of the convent at the mirage of Paris lying beyond. Others, not as green, were just out of a place, like myself.

The sisters asked me whence I came, what I knew how to do, whether I had good references, and whether I had any money left. I told them all sorts of things, and without further inquiry they welcomed me, saying:

"This dear child! We will find her a good place."