Part 16

We all were their "dear children." While waiting for the promised good place, each of these dear children was put at some work, according to her faculties. Some did cooking and housework; others worked in the garden, digging in the soil, like navvies. I was promptly put at sewing, having, said Sister Boniface, supple fingers and a distinguished air. I began by mending the chaplain's pantaloons and the drawers of a sort of monk who was just then preaching a retreat in the chapel. Oh! those pantaloons! Oh! those drawers! Surely they did not resemble M. Xavier's. Then they intrusted to me tasks less ecclesiastical,--quite profane, in fact,--the making of fine and delicate linen garments, among which I again found myself in my element. I participated in the making of elegant bridal _trousseaux_, of rich baby-linen, ordered of the good sisters by charitable and wealthy ladies who were interested in the establishment.

At first, after so many shocks, in spite of the bad food, the chaplain's pantaloons, the lack of liberty, in spite of all the fierce exploitation that I could plainly see, I felt a sense of real relief amid this calm and silence. I did not reason much; I felt rather a need of prayer. Remorse over my past conduct, or, rather, the weariness resulting from it, prompted me to fervent repentance. Several times in succession I confessed to the chaplain. He was a queer man, this chaplain, very round and red, a little rude in manner and in speech, and afflicted with a disagreeable body-smell. He asked me strange questions, and insisted on knowing my favorite authors.

"Armand Silvestre? Yes. To be sure, he is dirty. I would not give you his works instead of the 'Imitation.' No, not that; yet he is not dangerous. But you must not read impious books, books against religion,--Voltaire, for instance. No, never; never read Voltaire,--that is a mortal sin,--or Renan, or Anatole France. They are dangerous."

"And Paul Bourget, Father?"

"Paul Bourget! He is entering on the right path; that I do not deny. But his Catholicism is not sincere,--not yet; at least, it is much mixed. Your Paul Bourget makes upon me the impression of a wash-basin,--yes, that is it,--of a wash-basin, in which no matter what has been washed, and in which olives from Calvary are swimming amid hair and soapsuds. You should wait a little before reading him! Huysmans! Well, he is a little stiff in his expressions,--yes, indeed, very stiff,--but he is orthodox."

And he said to me further:

"Yes ... Ah! you do mad things with your body! That is not good. No, indeed, that is always bad. But, sin for sin, it is better to sin with your masters, when they are pious persons, than with people of your own condition. It is less serious, less irritating to the good God. And perhaps these people have dispensations. Many have dispensations."

As I named M. Xavier and his father, he cried:

"No names. I do not ask you for names. Never tell me names. I do not belong to the police. Besides, those are rich and respectable people whom you have just named,--extremely religious people. Consequently you are wrong; you are rebellious against morality and against society."

These ridiculous conversations considerably cooled my religious zeal, my ardor for repentance. The work, too, annoyed me. It made me homesick for my own calling. I felt impatient desires to escape from this prison, to return to the privacies of dressing-rooms. I sighed for the closets full of sweet-smelling linen, the wardrobes stuffed with silks, satins, and velvets, so smooth to the touch, and the bath-rooms where white flesh is lathered with oily soaps. And the stories of the servants' hall, and the unforeseen adventures, and the evenings on the stairs and in the chambers! It is really curious; when I have a place, these things disgust me, but, when I am out of a place, I miss them. I was tired also, excessively tired, sickened in fact, from having eaten for a week nothing but preserves made out of spoiled currants, of which the good sisters had purchased a large quantity in the Levallois market. Anything that the holy women could rescue from the refuse-heap was good enough for us.

What completed my irritation was the evident, the persistent effrontery with which we were exploited. Their game was a very simple one, and they took little pains to conceal it. They found places only for those girls of whom they could make no use themselves. Those from whom they could reap any profit whatever they held as prisoners, taking advantage of their talents, of their strength, and of their simplicity. As the height of Christian charity, they had found a way of having servants who paid for the privilege of working, and whom they stripped, without remorse and with inconceivable cynicism, of their modest resources and their little savings, after making a profit out of their labor. And the costs kept running on.

I complained, at first feebly, and then more forcibly, that they had not once summoned me into the reception-room, but to all my complaints the hypocrites answered:

"A little patience, my dear child! We are planning to get you an excellent place, my dear child; for you we desire an exceptional place. We know what sort of a place you should have. As yet not one has offered itself such as we wish for you, and such as you deserve."

Days and weeks passed. The places were never good enough, never exceptional enough for me. And the costs kept running on.

Although there was a watcher in the dormitory, the things that went on every night were enough to make one shudder. As soon as the watcher had finished her round, and every one seemed to be asleep, you could see white forms arise and glide about among the beds. The good sisters, holy women, closed their eyes that they might see nothing, stopped up their ears that they might hear nothing. Wishing to avoid scandal, they tolerated horrors of which they feigned ignorance. And the costs kept running on.

Fortunately, when I was at the very depth of my ennui, I was delighted by the entrance into the establishment of a little friend, Clémence, whom I called Cléclé, and whom I had known in a place where I had worked in the Rue de l'Université. Cléclé was a charming pink blonde, extremely gay and lively, and very fly. She laughed at everything, accepted everything, and was contented everywhere. Devoted and faithful, she knew but one pleasure,--that of being useful to others. Vicious to the marrow of her bones, her vice had nothing repugnant about it, it was so gay, artless, and natural. She bore vice as a plant bears flowers, as a cherry-tree bears cherries. Her pretty, bird-like chatter sometimes made me forget my feeling of weariness, and put to sleep my tendency to rebel. Our two beds were next to each other; and one night she told me, in a funny sort of whisper, that she had just had a place in the house of a magistrate at Versailles.

"Fancy, there were nothing but animals in the den,--cats, three parrots, a monkey, and two dogs. And they all had to be taken care of. Nothing was good enough for them. We were fed on old scraps, the same as in this box here. But they had what was left over of the poultry; they had cream, and cakes, and mineral water, my dear! Yes, the dirty beasts drank nothing but Evian water, because of an epidemic of typhoid fever that was raging at Versailles. In the winter Madame had the cheek to take the stove out of my chamber, and put it in the room where the monkey and the cats slept. Would you believe it? I detested them, especially one of the dogs, a horrible old pug, that was always sniffing at my skirts, in spite of the kicks that I gave it. The other morning Madame caught me whipping it. You can imagine the scene. She showed me the door in double-quick time."

Oh! this Cléclé! how agreeable and amusing she was!

People have no idea of all the annoyances to which domestics are subjected, or of the fierce and eternal exploitation under which they suffer. Now the masters, now the keepers of employment-bureaus, now the charitable institutions, to say nothing of the comrades, some of whom are capable of terrible meanness. And nobody takes any interest in anybody else. Each one lives, grows fat, and is entertained by the misery of some one poorer than himself. Scenes change, settings are shifted, you traverse social surroundings that are different and even hostile, but everywhere you find the same appetites and passions. In the cramped apartments of the _bourgeois_ and in the elegant mansion of the banker you meet the same filth, and come in contact with the inexorable. The result of it all, for a girl like me, is that she is conquered in advance, wherever she may go and whatever she may do. The poor are the human manure in which grow the harvests of life, the harvests of joy which the rich reap, and which they misuse so cruelly against us. They pretend that there is no more slavery. Oh! what nonsense? And what are domestics, then, if not slaves? Slaves in fact, with all that slavery involves of moral vileness, inevitable corruption, and hate-engendering rebellion. Servants learn vice in the houses of their masters. Entering upon their duties pure and innocent,--some of them,--they are quickly made rotten by contact with habits of depravity. They see nothing but vice, they breathe nothing but vice, they touch nothing but vice. Consequently, from day to day, from minute to minute, they get more and more used to it, being defenceless against it, being obliged, on the contrary, to serve it, to care for it, to respect it. And their revolt arises from the fact that they are powerless to satisfy it, and to break down all the obstacles in the way of its natural expansion. Oh! it is extraordinary. They demand of us all the virtues, complete resignation, all the sacrifices, all the heroisms, and only those vices that flatter the vanity of the masters, and which yield them a profit. And all this in return for contempt and wages ranging from thirty-five to ninety francs a month. No, it is too much! Add that we live in perpetual distress of mind, in a perpetual struggle between the ephemeral semi-luxury of the places that we fill, and the anguish which the loss of these places causes us. Add that we are continually conscious of the wounding suspicions that follow us everywhere,--bolting doors, padlocking drawers, marking bottles, numbering cakes and prunes, and continually putting us to shame by invasive examination of our hands, our pockets, and our trunks. For there is not a door, not a closet, not a drawer, not a bottle, not an article, that does not cry out to us: "Thief! thief! thief!" And also the continuous vexation caused by that terrible inequality, that frightful disproportion in our destinies, which, in spite of familiarities, smiles, and presents, places between our mistresses and ourselves an impassable abyss, a whole world of sullen hatreds, suppressed desires, and future vengeances,--a disproportion which is rendered every minute more perceptible, more humiliating, more disgracing, by the caprices, and even by the kindnesses, of those beings that know no justice and feel no love,--the rich. Did you ever think for a moment of the mortal and legitimate hatred, of the murderous--yes, murderous--desires with which we must be filled when we hear one of our masters, in trying to describe something base and ignoble, cry out in our presence, with a disgust that casts us so violently outside the pale of humanity: "He has the soul of a domestic; that is the sentiment of a domestic." Then what do you expect us to become in these hells? Do these mistresses really imagine that I should not like to wear fine dresses, ride in fine carriages, have a gay time with lovers, and have servants of my own? They talk to us of devotion, of honesty, of fidelity. Why; but it would choke you to death, my little chippies!

Once, in the Rue Cambon ... how many of these places I have had!... the masters were marrying their daughter. They gave a grand reception in the evening, at which the wedding-presents were exhibited,--enough of them to fill a furniture-van. By way of jest I asked Baptiste, the _valet de chambre:_

"Well, Baptiste, and you? What is your present?"

"My present?" exclaimed Baptiste, with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Yes, tell me, what is it?"

"A can of petroleum lighted under their bed. That is my present."

It was a smart answer. Moreover, this Baptiste was an astonishing man in politics.

"And yours, Célestine?" he asked, in his turn.

"Mine?"

I contracted my two hands into the shape of talons, and, pretending to claw a face ferociously, I answered:

"My nails, in their eyes!"

The butler, without being asked, remarked quietly, while arranging flowers and fruits in a glass dish with his fastidious fingers:

"I would be satisfied to sprinkle their faces in church with a bottle of good vitriol."

And he stuck a rose between two pears.

Oh! yes, how we love them! The extraordinary thing is that these revenges are not taken more frequently. When I think that a cook, for instance, holds her masters' lives in her hands every day; a pinch of arsenic instead of salt, a little dash of strychnine instead of vinegar, and the thing is done. Well, no, it must be that we have servitude in our very blood!

I have no education, and I write what I think and what I have seen. Well, I say that all this is not beautiful. I say that from the moment when any one installs another under his roof, though he were the last of poor devils, or the lowest of disreputable girls, he owes them protection, he owes them happiness. I say also that, if the master does not give it to us, we have a right to take it, even from his strong-box, even from his blood.

But enough of this! I do wrong to think of things that make my head ache and turn my stomach. I come back to my little stories.

I had much difficulty in leaving the sisters of Our Lady of Thirty-Six Sorrows. In spite of Cléclé's companionship, I was growing old in the box, and beginning to be hungry for liberty. When they understood that I had made up my mind to go, then the worthy sisters offered me places and places. There were places only for me. But I am not always a fool, and I have a keen eye for rascalities. All these places I refused. In all of them I found something that did not suit me. You should have seen the heads of these holy women. It was laughable. They had calculated on finding me a place in the house of some old bigot, where they could get back out of my wages the cost of my board with usury, and I enjoyed playing them a trick in my turn.

One day I notified Sister Boniface that it was my intention to go that very evening. She had the cheek to answer me, raising her arms to heaven:

"But, my dear child, it is impossible."

"How so? Why is it impossible?"

"Why, my dear child, you cannot leave the house like that. You owe us more than seventy francs. You will have to pay us first these seventy francs."

"And with what?" I replied. "I have not a sou; you can search me."

Sister Boniface gave me a hateful look, and, then declared, with severe dignity: "But, Mademoiselle, do you know that this is a robbery? And to rob poor women like us is worse than robbery; it is a sacrilege, for which the good God will punish you. Reflect."

Then anger got the better of me, and I cried:

"Say, then, who is it that steals here,--you or I? No, but you are astonishing, my little mothers."

"Mademoiselle, I forbid you to speak in this way."

"Oh! don't talk to me. What? One does your work, one toils like a beast for you from morning to night, one earns enormous money for you, you give us food which dogs would refuse, and then we must pay you into the bargain! Indeed, you have no cheek!"

Sister Boniface had turned very pale. I felt that coarse, filthy, furious words were on her lips, and ready to leave them; but, not daring to let them go, she stammered:

"Silence! You are a girl without shame, without religion. God will punish you. Go, if you will; but we keep your trunk."

I planted myself squarely before her, in an attitude of defiance, and, looking her full in the face, I said:

"Well, I should like to see you try it. Just try to keep my trunk, and you will have a visit from the commissary of police in short order. And, if religion consists in patching the dirty pantaloons of your chaplains, in stealing bread from poor girls, in speculating on the horrors that go on every night in the dormitory...."

The good sister was fairly white. She tried to cover my voice with her own.

"Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle!"

"Oh! don't pretend ignorance of the dirty things that go on every night in the dormitory! Do you dare to tell me, in my face, your eyes looking into mine, that you are ignorant of them? You encourage them because they are profitable to you,--yes, because they are profitable to you."

And trembling, panting, with dry throat, I completed my accusation.

"If religion is all that; if it is religious to keep a prison and a brothel,--well, then, I have enough of religion. My trunk, do you hear? I wish my trunk. You will give me my trunk at once."

Sister Boniface was frightened.

"I do not wish to discuss with a lost creature," said she, in a voice of dignity. "All right; you shall go."

"With my trunk?"

"With your trunk."

"Very well; but it takes tall talk to get one's rights here. It is worse than at the custom-house."

I went, in fact, that very evening. Cléclé, who was very nice, and who had saved something, lent me twenty francs. I went to engage a room in a lodging-house in the Rue de la Sourdière, and I bought a seat among the gallery-gods at the Porte-Saint-Martin. The play was "The Two Orphans." How true it is! Almost my own story.

I passed there a delightful evening, weeping, weeping, weeping.

XIV

_November 18._

Rose is dead. Decidedly, misfortune hangs over the captain's house. Poor captain! His ferret dead ... Bourbaki dead ... and now it is Rose's turn! After a sickness of some days, she was carried off day before yesterday, in the evening, by a sudden attack of congestion of the lungs. She was buried this morning. From the windows of the linen-room I saw the procession pass in the road. The heavy coffin, borne by six men, was covered with crowns and with bunches of white flowers, like that of a young virgin. A considerable crowd, in long, dark, babbling files,--all Mesnil-Roy--followed Captain Mauger, who, wearing a tightly-fitting black frock-coat, and holding himself very stiffly, led the mourners, in thoroughly military fashion. And the church bells, tolling in the distance, responded to the sound of the rattle waved by the beadle. Madame had warned me that I was not to go to the funeral. However, I had no desire to go. I did not like this fat and wicked woman; her death leaves me very calm and indifferent. Yet perhaps I shall miss Rose; perhaps I shall miss my occasional conversations with her in the road. But what a source of gossip this event must be at the grocer's!

I was curious to know what impression this sudden death had made upon the captain. And, as my masters were visiting, I took a walk in the afternoon along the hedge. The captain's garden is sad and deserted. A spade stuck in the ground indicates abandoned work. "The captain will not come into the garden," said I to myself; "he is undoubtedly weeping in his chamber, among the souvenirs." And suddenly I perceive him. He has taken off his fine frock-coat, and put on his working-clothes again, and, with his old foraging-cap on his head, he is engaged in manuring his lawns. I even hear him humming a march in a low voice. He leaves his wheelbarrow, and comes toward me, carrying his fork on his shoulder.

"I am glad to see you, Mademoiselle Célestine."

I should like to offer him consolation or pity. I search for words, for phrases. But how can one find a touching word in presence of such a droll face? I content myself with repeating:

"A great misfortune, captain, a great misfortune for you! Poor Rose!"

"Yes, yes," he says, tamely.

His face is devoid of expression. His movements are uncertain. He adds, jabbing his fork into a soft spot in the ground near the hedge:

"Especially as I cannot get along without anybody."

I insist upon Rose's domestic virtues.

"You will not easily replace her, Captain."

Decidedly, he is not touched at all. One would say even, from looking at his eyes that have suddenly become brighter and from watching his movements, now more alert, that he has been relieved from a great weight.

"Bah!" says he, after a short silence, "everything can be replaced."

This resignation astonishes me, and even scandalizes me a little. To amuse myself, I try to make him understand all he has lost in losing Rose.

"She knew so well your habits, your tastes, your manias! She was so devoted to you!"

"Well, if she had not been, that would have been the last straw," he growled.

And, making a gesture by which he seems to put aside all sorts of objections, he goes on:

"Besides, was she so devoted to me? Oh! I may as well tell you the truth. I had had enough of Rose. Yes, indeed! After we took a little boy to help us, she attended to nothing in the house, and everything went badly, very badly. I could not even have an egg boiled to my taste. And the scenes that went on, from morning to night, apropos of nothing. If I spent ten sous, there were cries and reproaches. And, when I talked with you, as I am doing now,--well, there was a row, indeed; for she was jealous, jealous. Oh! no. She went for you; you should have heard her. In short, I was no longer at home in my own house."

He breathes deeply, noisily, and, with the new and deep joy that a traveler feels on returning from a long journey, he contemplates the sky, the bare grass-plots in the garden, the violet interlacings of the branches of the trees against the light, and his little house.

This joy, so offensive to Rose's memory, now seems to me very comical. I stimulate the captain to further confidences. And I say to him, in a tone of reproach:

"Captain, I think you are not just to Rose."

"Egad!" he rejoins, quickly. "You do not know; you don't know anything about it. She did not go to tell you of all the scenes that she made, her tyranny, her jealousy, her egoism. Nothing belonged to me here any longer. Everything in my house was hers. For instance, you would not believe it, my Voltaire arm-chair was never at my disposition. She had it all the time. She had everything, for that matter. To think that I could no longer eat asparagus with oil, because she did not like it! Oh! she did well to die. It was the best thing that could happen to her, for, in some way or other, I should have gotten rid of her. Yes, yes, I should have gotten rid of her. She was becoming too much for me. I had had enough. And let me tell you; if I had died before her, Rose would have been prettily trapped. I had a bitter pill in store for her. My word for it!"

His lip curls in a smile that ends in an atrocious grimace. He continues, chopping each of his words with moist little puffs of laughter:

"You know that I made a will, in which I gave her everything,--house, money, dividends, everything. She must have told you; she told everybody. Yes, but what she did not tell you, because she did not know it, is that, two months later, I made a second will, cancelling the first, in which I did not leave her anything,--not a sou."

Unable to contain himself longer, he bursts out laughing, a strident laugh that scatters through the garden like a flight of scolding sparrows. And he cries:

"Ah! that's an idea, hey? Oh! her head,--you can see it from here,--on learning that I had left my little fortune to the French Academy. For, my little Célestine, it is true; I had left my fortune to the French Academy. Ah! that's an idea!"

I allow his laughter to become quieter, and then I gravely ask him:

"And now, Captain, what are you going to do?"