Chapter 5
Those people who look for the death of the Catholic religion in our day, do not realize by what an infinite number of sturdy roots it still retains its hold upon the hearts of the people. They do not realize the secret, delicate fascination it has for the woman of the people. They do not realize what confession and the confessor are to the impoverished souls of those poor women. In the priest who listens and whose voice falls softly on her ear, the woman of toil and suffering sees not so much the minister of God, the judge of her sins, the arbiter of her welfare, as the confidant of her sorrows and the friend of her misery. However coarse she may be, there is always a little of the true woman in her, a feverish, trembling, sensitive, wounded something, a restlessness and, as it were, the sighing of an invalid who craves caressing words, even as a child's trifling ailments require the nurse's droning lullaby. She, as well as the woman of the world, must have the consolation of pouring out her heart, of confiding her troubles to a sympathetic ear. For it is the nature of her sex to seek an outlet for the emotions and an arm to lean upon. There are in her mind things that she must tell, and concerning which she would like to be questioned, pitied and comforted. She dreams of a compassionate interest, a tender sympathy for hidden feelings of which she is ashamed. Her masters may be the kindest, the most friendly, the most approachable of masters to the woman in their employ: their kindness to her will still be of the same sort that they bestow upon a domestic animal. They will be uneasy concerning her appetite and her health; they will look carefully after the animal part of her, and that will be all. It will not occur to them that she can suffer elsewhere than in her body, and they will not dream that she can have the heartache, the sadness and immaterial pain for which they seek relief by confiding in those of their own station. In their eyes, the woman who sweeps and does the cooking, has no ideas that can cause her to be sad or thoughtful, and they never speak to her of her thoughts. To whom, then, shall she carry them? To the priest who is waiting for them, asks for them, welcomes them, to the churchman who is also a man of the world, a superior creature, a well-educated gentleman, who knows everything, speaks well, is always accessible, gentle, patient, attentive, and seems to feel no scorn for the most humble soul, the most shabbily dressed penitent. The priest alone listens to the woman in a cap. He alone takes an interest in her secret sufferings, in the things that disturb and agitate her and that bring to a maid, as well as to her mistress, the sudden longing to weep, or excite a tempest within her. There is none but he to encourage her outpourings, to draw from her those things which the irony of her daily life holds back, to look to the state of her moral health; none but he to raise her above her material life, none but he to cheer her with moving words of charity and hope,--such divine words as she has never heard from the mouths of the men of her family and of her class.
After entering the service of Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, Germinie became profoundly religious and cared for nothing but the church. She abandoned herself little by little to the sweet delight of confession, to the priest's smooth, tranquil bass voice that came to her from the darkness, to the conversations which resembled the touch of soothing words, and from which she went forth refreshed, light of heart, free from care, and happy with a delightful sense of relief, as if a balm had been applied to all the tender, suffering, fettered portions of her being.
She did not, could not, open her heart elsewhere. Her mistress had a certain masculine roughness of demeanor which repelled expansiveness. She had an abrupt, exclamatory way of speaking that forced back all that Germinie would have liked to confide to her. It was in her nature to be brutal in her treatment of all lamentations that were not caused by pain or disappointment. Her virile kindliness had no pity to spare for diseases of the imagination, for the suffering that is created by the thought, for the weariness of spirit that flows from a woman's nerves and from the disordered condition of her mental organism. Germinie often found her unfeeling; the old woman had simply been hardened by the times in which she had lived and by the circumstances of her life. The shell of her heart was as hard as her body. Never complaining herself, she did not like to hear complaints about her. And by the right of all the tears she had not shed, she detested childish tears in grown persons.
Soon the confessional became a sort of sacred, idolized rendezvous for Germinie's thoughts. Every day it was her first idea, the theme of her first prayer. Throughout the day, she was kneeling there as in a dream; and while she was about her work it was constantly before her eyes, with its oaken frame with fillets of gold, its pediment in the shape of a winged angel's head, its green curtain with the motionless folds, and the mysterious darkness on both sides. It seemed to her that now her whole life centred there, and that every hour tended thither. She lived through the week looking forward to that longed-for, prayed-for, promised day. On Thursday, she began to be impatient; she felt, in the redoubling of her blissful agony, the material drawing near, as it were, of the blessed Saturday evening; and when Saturday came and mademoiselle's dinner had been hastily served and her work done, she would make her escape and run to Notre-Dame de Lorette, hurrying to the penitential stool as to a lover's rendezvous. Her fingers dipped in holy water and a genuflexion duly made, she would glide over the flags, between the rows of chairs, as softly as a cat steals across a carpeted floor. With bent head, almost crawling, she would go noiselessly forward in the shadow of the side aisles, until she reached the mysterious, veiled confessional, where she would pause and await her turn, absorbed in the emotion of suspense.
The young priest who confessed her, encouraged her frequent confessions. He was not sparing of time or attention or charity. He allowed her to talk at great length and tell him, with many words, of all her petty troubles. He was indulgent to the diffuseness of a suffering soul, and permitted her to pour out freely her most trivial afflictions. He listened while she set forth her anxieties, her longings, her troubles; he did not repel or treat with scorn any portion of the confidences of a servant who spoke to him of all the most delicate, secret concerns of her existence, as one would speak to a mother and a physician.
This priest was young. He was kind-hearted. He had lived in the world. A great sorrow had impelled him, crushed and broken, to assume the gown wherein he wore mourning for his heart. There remained something of the man in the depths of his being, and he listened, with melancholy compassion, to the outpouring of this maidservant's suffering heart. He understood that Germinie needed him, that he sustained and strengthened her, that he saved her from herself and removed her from the temptations to which her nature exposed her. He was conscious of a sad sympathy for that heart overflowing with affection, for the ardent, yet tractable girl, for the unhappy creature who knew nothing of her own nature, who was promised to passion by every impulse of her heart, by her whole body, and who betrayed in every detail of her person the vocation of her temperament. Enlightened by his past experience, he was amazed and terrified sometimes by the gleams that emanated from her, by the flame that shot from her eyes at the outburst of love in a prayer, by the evident tendency of her confessions, by her constantly recurring to that scene of violence, that scene in which her perfectly sincere purpose to resist seemed to the priest to have been betrayed by a convulsion of the senses that was stronger than she.
This fever of religion lasted several years, during which Germinie lived a concentrated, silent, happy life, entirely devoted to God's service--at least she thought so. Her confessor, however, had come gradually to the conclusion that all her adoration tended toward himself. By her glances, by her blushes, by the words she no longer said to him, and by others which she made bold to say to him for the first time, he realized that his penitent's devotion was going astray and becoming unduly fervent, deceiving itself as to its object. She watched for him when the services were at an end, followed him into the sacristy, hung on his skirts, ran into the church after his cassock. The confessor tried to warn her, to divert her amorous fervor from himself. He became more reserved and assumed a cold demeanor. In despair at this change, at his apparent indifference, Germinie, feeling bitter and hurt, confessed to him one day, in the confessional, the hatred that had taken possession of her for two young girls, who were his favorite penitents. Thereupon the priest dismissed her, without discussion, and sent her to another confessor. Germinie went once or twice to confess to this other confessor; then she ceased to go; soon she ceased even to think of going, and of all her religion naught remained in her mind but a certain far-off sweetness, like the faint odor of burned-out incense.
Affairs had reached that point when mademoiselle fell ill. Throughout her illness, as Germinie did not want to leave her, she did not attend mass. And on the first Sunday--when mademoiselle, being fully recovered, did not require her care, she was greatly surprised to find that "her devotee" remained at home and did not run away to church.
"Oho!" said she, "so you don't go and see your cures nowadays? What have they done to you, eh?"
"Nothing," said Germinie.
V
"There, mademoiselle!--Look at me," said Germinie.
It was a few months later. She had asked her mistress's permission to go that evening to the wedding ball of her grocer's sister, who had chosen her for her maid-of-honor, and she had come to exhibit herself _en grande toilette_, in her low-necked muslin dress.
Mademoiselle raised her eyes from the old volume, printed in large type, which she was reading, removed her spectacles, placed them in the book to mark her place, and exclaimed:
"What, my little bigot, you at a ball! Do you know, my girl, this seems to me downright nonsense! You and the hornpipe! Faith, all you need now is to want to get married! A deuce of a want, that! But if you marry, I warn you that I won't keep you--mind that! I've no desire to wait on your brats! Come a little nearer----Oho! why----bless my soul! Mademoiselle Show-all! We're getting to be a bit of a flirt lately, I find----"
"Why no, mademoiselle," Germinie tried to say.
"And then," continued Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, following out her thought, "among you people, the men are such sweet creatures! They'll spend all you have--to say nothing of the blows. But marriage--I am sure that that nonsensical idea of getting married buzzes around in your head when you see the others. That's what gives you that simper, I'll wager. _Bon Dieu de Dieu!_ Now turn a bit, so that I can see you," said Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, with an abrupt change of tone to one that was almost caressing; and placing her thin hands on the arms of her easy-chair, crossing her legs and moving her foot back and forth, she set about inspecting Germinie and her toilet.
"What the devil!" said she, after a few moments of silent scrutiny, "what! is it really you?----Then I have never used my eyes to look at you.----Good God, yes!----But----but----" She mumbled more vague exclamations between her teeth.----"Where the deuce did you get that mug like an amorous cat's?" she said at last, and continued to gaze at her.
Germinie was ugly. Her hair, of so dark a chestnut that it seemed black, curled and twisted in unruly waves, in little stiff, rebellious locks, which escaped and stood up all over her head, despite the pomade upon her shiny _bandeaux_. Her smooth, narrow, swelling brow protruded above the shadow of the deep sockets in which her eyes were buried and sunken to such a depth as almost to denote disease; small, bright, sparkling eyes they were, made to seem smaller and brighter by a constant girlish twinkle that softened and lighted up their laughter. They were neither brown eyes nor blue eyes, but were of an undefinable, changing gray, a gray that was not a color, but a light! Emotion found expression therein in the flame of fever, pleasure in the flashing rays of a sort of intoxication, passion in phosphorescence. Her short, turned-up nose, with large, dilated, palpitating nostrils, was one of those noses of which the common people say that it rains inside: upon one side, at the corner of the eye was a thick, swollen blue vein. The square head of the Lorraine race was emphasized in her broad, high, prominent cheek-bones, which were well-covered with the traces of small-pox. The most noticeable defect in her face was the too great distance between the nose and mouth. This lack of proportion gave an almost apish character to the lower part of the head, where the expansive mouth, with white teeth and full lips that looked as if they had been crushed, they were so flat, smiled at you with a strange, vaguely irritating smile.
Her _decollete_ dress disclosed her neck, the upper part of her breast, her shoulders and her white back, presenting a striking contrast to her swarthy face. It was a lymphatic sort of whiteness, the whiteness, at once unhealthy and angelic, of flesh in which there is no life. She had let her arms fall by her sides--round, smooth arms with a pretty dimple at the elbow. Her wrists were delicate; her hands, which did not betray the servant, were embellished with a lady's fingernails. And lazily, with graceful sloth, she allowed her indolent figure to curve and sway;--a figure that a garter might span, and that was made even more slender to the eye by the projection of the hips and the curve of the hoops that gave the balloon-like roundness to her skirt;--an impossible waist, absurdly small but adorable, like everything in woman that offends one's sense of proportion by its diminutiveness.
From this ugly woman emanated a piquant, mysterious charm. Light and shadow, jostling and intercepting each other on her face on which hollows and protuberances abounded, imparted to it that suggestion of libertinism which the painter of love scenes gives to the rough sketch of his mistress. Everything about her,--her mouth, her eyes, her very plainness--was instinct with allurement and solicitation. Her person exhaled an aphrodisiac charm, which challenged and laid fast hold of the other sex. It unloosed desire, and caused an electric shock. Sensual thoughts were naturally and involuntarily aroused by her, by her gestures, her gait, her slightest movement--even by the air in which her body had left one of its undulations. Beside her, one felt as if he were near one of those disturbing, disquieting creatures, burning with the love disease and communicating it to others, whose face appears to man in his restless hours, torments his listless noonday thoughts, haunts his nights and trespasses upon his dreams.
In the midst of Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's scrutiny, Germinie stooped over her, and covered her hand with hurried kisses.
"There--there--enough of that," said Mademoiselle. "You would soon wear out the skin--with your way of kissing. Come, run along, enjoy yourself, and try not to stay out too late. Don't get all tired out."
Mademoiselle de Varandeuil was left alone. She placed her elbows on her knees, stared at the fire and stirred the burning wood with the tongs. Then, as she was accustomed to do when deeply preoccupied, she struck herself two or three sharp little blows on the neck with the flat of her hand, and thereby set her black cap all awry.
VI
When she mentioned the subject of marriage to Germinie, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil touched upon the real cause of her trouble. She placed her hand upon the seat of her _ennui_. Her maid's uneven temper, her distaste for life, the languor, the emptiness, the discontent of her existence, arose from that disease which medical science calls the _melancholia of virgins_. The torment of her twenty-four years was the ardent, excited, poignant longing for marriage, for that state which was too holy and honorable for her, and which seemed impossible of attainment in face of the confession her womanly probity would insist upon making of her fall and her unworthiness. Family losses and misfortunes forcibly diverted her mind from her own troubles.
Her brother-in-law, her sister the concierge's husband, had dreamed the dream of all Auvergnats: he had undertaken to increase his earnings as concierge by the profits of a dealer in bric-a-brac. He had begun modestly with a stall in the street, at the doors of the marts where executors' sales are held; and there you could see, set out upon blue paper, plated candlesticks, ivory napkin rings, colored lithographs with frames of gold lace on a black ground, and three or four odd volumes of Buffon. His profit on the plated candlesticks intoxicated him. He hired a dark shop on a passage way, opposite an umbrella mender's, and began to trade upon the credulity that goes in and out of the lower rooms in the Auction Exchange. He sold _assiettes a coq_, pieces of Jean Jacques Rousseau's wooden shoe, and water-colors by Ballue, signed Watteau. In that business he threw away what he had made, and ran in debt to the amount of several thousand francs. His wife, in order to straighten matters out a little and to try and get out of debt, asked for and obtained a place as box-opener at the _Theatre-Historique_. She hired her sister the dressmaker to watch the door in the evening, went to bed at one o'clock and was astir again at five. After a few months she caught cold in the corridors of the theatre, and an attack of pleurisy laid her low and carried her off in six weeks. The poor woman left a little girl three years old, who was taken down with the measles; the disease assumed its most malignant form in the foul stench of the loft, where the child had breathed for more than a month air poisoned by the breath of her dying mother. The father had gone into the country to try and borrow money. He married again there. Nothing more was heard of him.
When returning from her sister's burial Germinie ran to the house of an old woman who made a living in those curious industries which prevent poverty from absolutely starving to death in Paris. This old woman carried on several trades. Sometimes she cut bristles into equal lengths for brushes, sometimes she sorted out bits of gingerbread. When those industries failed, she did cooking and washed the faces of pedlars' children. In Lent she rose at four o'clock in the morning, went and took possession of a chair at Notre-Dame, and sold it for ten or twelve sous when the crowd arrived. In order to procure fuel to warm herself, in the den where she lived on Rue Saint-Victor, she would go, at nightfall, to the Luxembourg and peel the bark off the trees. Germinie, who knew her from having given her the crusts from the kitchen every week, hired a servant's room on the sixth floor of the house, and took up her abode there with the little one. She did it on the impulse of the moment, without reflection. She did not remember her sister's harsh treatment of her when she was _enceinte_, so that she had no need to forgive it.
Thenceforth Germinie had but one thought, her niece. She determined to rescue her from death and restore her to life by dint of careful nursing. She would rush away from Mademoiselle at every moment, run up the stairs to the sixth floor four at a time, kiss the child, give her her draught, arrange her comfortably in bed, look at her, and rush down again, all out of breath and red with pleasure. Care, caresses, the breath from the heart with which we revive a tiny flame on the point of dying out, consultations, doctor's visits, costly medicines, the remedies of the wealthy,--Germinie spared nothing for the little one and gave her everything. Her wages flowed through that channel. For almost a year she gave her beef juice every morning: sleepyhead that she was, she left her bed at five o'clock in the morning to prepare it, and awoke without being called, as mothers do. The child was out of danger at last, when Germinie received a visit one morning from her sister the dressmaker, who had been married two or three years to a machinist, and who came now to bid her adieu: her husband was going to accompany some fellow-workmen who had been hired to go to Africa. She was going with him and she proposed to Germinie that they should take the little one with them as a playmate for their own child. They offered to take her off her hands. Germinie, they said, would have to pay only for the journey. It was a separation she would have to make up her mind to sooner or later on account of her mistress. And then, said the sister, she was the child's aunt too. And she heaped words upon words to induce Germinie to give them the child, with whom she and her husband expected, after their arrival in Africa, to move Germinie to pity, to get possession of her wages, to play upon her heart and her purse.
It cost Germinie very dear to part with her niece. She had staked a portion of her existence upon the child. She was attached to her by her anxiety and her sacrifices. She had disputed possession of her with disease and had won the day; the girl's life was her miracle. And yet she realized that she could never take her to mademoiselle's apartments; that mademoiselle, at her age, with the burden of her years, and an aged person's need of tranquillity, could never endure the constant noise and movement of a child. And then, the little girl's presence in the house would cause idle gossip and set the whole street agog: people would say she was her child. Germinie made a confidante of her mistress. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil knew the whole story. She knew that she had taken charge of her niece, although she had pretended not to know it; she had chosen to see nothing in order to permit everything. She advised Germinie to entrust her niece to her sister, pointing out to her all the difficulties in the way of keeping her herself, and she gave her money to pay for the journey of the whole family.
The parting was a heart-breaking thing to Germinie. She found herself left alone and without occupation. Not having the child, she knew not what to love; her heart was weary, and she had such a feeling of the emptiness of life without the little one, that she turned once more to religion and transferred her affections to the church.