Chapter 11

My father, as I have told you, was beadle at Saint Eprive's, and my mother was servant to Monsieur le Curé. These were two good situations, but they had a number of children, and not much time to attend to them. Therefore when I was thirteen, they entrusted me to an old aunt who was willing to take charge of me. She was servant to Monsieur Braqueminet, who was then at Mirecourt. She placed me at first with a lady who made me look after her little children. At the end of a year Monsieur l'Abbé had a change, and went away to a village near Saint-Dié. He said to my aunt: "You cannot leave Veronica alone at Mirecourt; she will soon be fifteen; she is tall and nice-looking; she will run too much risk, and we must take her with us; but as it would make these foolish peasants chatter if their Curé had a strange young girl in the house, she shall pass as my niece. What do you say to this proposal?" My aunt was delighted and agreed to it directly, and all the more because I would have to assist her in the household work, and that her labour would thus be lightened. They took me away from my situation, they taught me my lesson, and I went away with them, very pleased to be Monsieur le Curé's niece. Ah! that was the best time of my life. My aunt spoilt me, Monsieur le Curé was excessively fond of me, I had all my wishes. All the ladies in the neighbourhood spoke to me civilly, the Collector's wife, the lawyer's wife, the Mayoress, the wife of the exciseman, they all, in short, made much of me. Mademoiselle Veronica here! Mademoiselle Veronica there! I had my place in the gallery. They invited me to dinner and they were rivals as to who should make me little presents, as if I were really his true niece; everybody believed it, and my aunt herself, by dint of hearing it said, ended by believing it herself, for she never called me anything else than Mademoiselle Veronica.

Unfortunately after some time my aunt died. When we had both of us wept copiously for her, Monsieur le Curé said to me: "Now your aunt is dead, Veronica, what are you going to do?" I made no answer and burst again into tears. "You must not cry like that, little one, you will spoil your pretty eyes; will you remain with me? will you continue to be my niece?" That was my dream; I asked for nothing more. I thanked Monsieur Braqueminet with all my soul, and told him that as he wanted me to be his niece, I would remain his niece all my life.--"That is agreed," he said to me, "you shall keep my little house for me, and I will take another maid-servant for the heavy work only." For he was so nice to me that he would not allow me to fatigue myself in anything. Ah, the men, Monsieur le Curé, who can trust the men! See what he has made of me after all his fine promises: a poor servant, nothing more.

--Had he then any reason to complain of you?

--To complain of me! ah, sweet Paschal Lamb! Never has he said a word of reproach. But since I am in the mood to tell you everything, I may as well do so at once. It was he who had my innocence.

--What! it was not the Abbé Fortin then?

-No, Monsieur le Curé, it was the Abbé Braqueminet.

--And how did he go to work to have your innocence?

--Ah, he was a very clever man. First he knew how to inspire affection, he was so kind to me. It was I who managed everything. I was mistress of all, although so young, and, pray believe me, everything proceeded well. But ... one fine day a real niece turned up, no one knows whence ... and, faith, I was obliged to retire. I might have made an exposure, but I preferred to sacrifice myself.

--Was she younger than you then?

--The same age, sir, but she was fresh fruit. She appeared so innocent that one would have given her the sacrament without confession. Monsieur Braqueminet, he undertook to give her the Sacrament.... Yes, he undertook it, that man!...

--But was she really his niece?

--Yes, sir, his own sister's daughter. I have had proofs of it; do you think I should have gone away, without that? This sister hated me, and I thoroughly returned it; but when I saw her daughter arrive, I said to myself: I am well revenged.

--But your innocence.... how did he have it?

--Ah, you are anxious to know that. I must tell you everything then! everything! this is how it happened. He suffered a little from his chest, and every evening my aunt used to carry him up a posset. When my aunt was dead, I was obliged to take her place, for the servant we had taken was married, and went home at the end of the day. He knew very well what he was doing, and I, poor little lamb of God, believed everything. I was like a new-born child. It is not right to be so silly as that. God has punished me for it: it is quite right. I don't complain at it. So I used to take him up his posset every evening. Then he used to kiss me and squeeze me to his heart, calling me his dear niece, and charging me to be good:

--You will always be good? he used to say to me.

--Yes, uncle.

--Always! you promise me.

--Yes, uncle.

--Ah, let me kiss you for that kind promise. I found that he kissed me for rather a long time and although it was very pleasant to me, still it used to give me reason for reflection: "How can he love me so much, I thought, when he is not my uncle?"

You can judge by that if I was not silly. But it is perfectly conceivable, for I had never been to school, so who was there then to teach me naughtiness. A young girl's brain is active, and I formed a thousand fancies of every kind. "Perhaps he has some interest concealed underneath," I said artlessly to myself, "and perhaps he does not love me as he wishes me to believe." I was hardly fifteen, and you see I was quite candid and simple. I thought I would pretend to be ill, in order to make a trial of him, and see if he would be grieved and if he would come and nurse me. So one evening, when he had finished supper, I told him that I was not well, and that I was going to bed. He was reading his newspaper and did not appear to hear me. At least he made no reply. I went away very sadly and sorrowfully, thinking that his affection for me was not very great, as he did not give the least attention to my complaints. In short, I went to bed.

"He will go to bed too very soon," I said to myself, "he will call for his posset and he will be obliged to get up to see why I do not bring it to him."

Indeed, about an hour after, I heard his bell. I wrapped myself up in the sheets and pretended to be asleep. He rang a second time. "Veronica, Veronica," he cried, "my posset; what are you doing then? Have you forgotten it? Veronica!"

I turned a deaf ear.

LIII.

THE LEG.

"One is compelled sometimes to say to oneself, 'On what does ruin or safety depend?'"

J. TOURGUENEFF (_Les eaux printanières_).

Then I heard him come upstairs cautiously and stop at the door of my room. All at once he opened it. He remained standing still for a moment, then he came near my bed on tip-toe.

I half-opened my eyes quickly, and the first thing I saw was his naked legs--my word, he had a very well-made leg! I looked again and saw that he was covered with an old black cloak which served him as a dressing-gown.

I closed my eyes again quickly, and, without giving an account of my feelings, I was overcome by a strong emotion.

My uncle passed his hand over my forehead. He found it burning, for he cried out directly: "But she is really ill, she is really ill, poor child." Then leaning over me: "Little one, little one, where are you in pain?"

I pretended to wake up with a start, and I stared wildly at him, as if I was much surprised to see him there. We women have the instinct of deceit from birth; believe me, what I tell you is true, Monsieur le Curé.

--It is possible, Veronica.

--Well, then be said to me, "Where are you in pain, little one?" I put my finger on the pit of my stomach, and replied in a feeble voice "Here."

He put his hand there, and I saw that he moved it about with complacency on that part.

This touch seemed to make him beside himself, "Oh, the pretty little girl, the pretty little girl!" he said, "she is ill, poor dear child." And his hand continued to caress me.

You may think how I was trembling. Although he did it very decently, I said to myself that it was not altogether proper, but I took good care not to utter a word. A girl is inquisitive, you know, and I was not displeased to see what he would come to.

"Will you have a fomentation?" he said to me after a moment. "No, uncle," I answered, "I feel I am getting better, it is not worth while; I am even going to get up to make you your posset." "To get up, do you dream of it?... All the same, perhaps you are right, there is still some fire in my room: will you come there? you will warm yourself better than in your bed." "I will, if it does not disturb you." "Disturb me! no, no, don't be afraid of disturbing me; come, put on a dress and come."

I sat up in bed, thinking that he would go out of the room to let me dress, but he remained standing in front of me, and his looks frightened me.

I remained sitting on the bed, without stirring. "Well, well, little girl, you are not getting up?"

"I dare not get up before you, uncle." "Are you silly? What are you afraid of? Are you not my niece? Come, come, out of bed, little stupid." He said that in a gentle insinuating voice, and I dared not hesitate any more. I put one leg out of bed. He followed my movements with the greatest attention; "Well, well, and that other leg?"

I put out the other leg, blushing all over with shame, and I wanted to take my petticoat.

But he came near directly and said: "Oh, the lovely little lass, how pretty she is like this.... You will always be good, will you not?"

"Yes, uncle."

"How pretty you are when you are good. You will always be so? You promise?"

"Yes, uncle."

"Oh, I want to kiss you for that kind promise."

--I held out my cheek to him without resistance, but it was my mouth which received the kiss. It was followed by a thousand others. One is not of iron, Monsieur le Curé, and that was how ... I ... lost my innocence.

--What, Veronica, you fell so easily! They say that it is only the first step which is painful, but it seems hardly to have been painful to you.

--Oh, Monsieur le Curé, we women are full of faults, and we deserve only eternal damnation.

--I do not say that, Veronica. Certainly in this circumstance all the fault lies on your seducer, but I should have preferred more struggle on your part.

--You men are very good with your struggle. To hear you, we never make enough resistance. Would one not say that the poor women are made of another paste than you, and that they ought to be harder?

--No, but it is necessary to know how to govern one's passions. That is the noble, the lofty, the meritorious thing. Resist temptation, everything lies in that.

[PLATE III: THE LEG. "Oh, the lovely little lass, how pretty she is like this..."]

--Everything lies in that, I know it well; but what would you? I had lost my head entirely like Monsieur Braqueminet. And I did not know what he wanted, or what he was going to do. I only understood when it was too late.

--Ah, Veronica, you singular woman, you have made me quite beside myself with your stories.

--It was you who wished it.

--The Abbé Fortin! the Abbé Braqueminet! God of heaven! and who besides?

--The Abbé Marcel!

--Yes, it is true, I also ... I have been on the point of transgressing. Ah! temptation is sometimes very strong, Veronica, my good Veronica; the noble thing is to resist.

The greatest saints have succumbed. St. Origen was obliged to employ a grand means, you know what, my daughter?

--Monsieur Fortin has told me. But you must not act like that saint; that would be a pity, it would be better to succumb, dear Monsieur Marcel. How I like your name, Marcel, Marcel, it is so soft to the mouth.

--To resist temptation like Jesus on the mountain....

--There was but one Jesus.

--Like St. Antony in the desert....

--That is rubbish; in the desert no one could tempt him.

--Leave the room, Veronica; since you have talked to me, I understand the fault of your former masters; leave the room.

--Are you afraid of me then? Angels of heaven, a woman like me. Is it possible? Ah, I should have been very proud of it.

--Proud to make me sin?

--Sin! Sin! Monsieur le Curé: why do we call that a sin?

She came nearer to him. He wished to rise from his chair, but his hand went astray, he never knew how, on his servant's waist.

Oh vow of chastity, sentiments of modesty, manly dignity and priestly virtue, where were you, where were you?

LIV.

MATER SAEVA CUPIDINUM.

"Well, you have found it, this ephemeral happiness."

BABILLOT (_La Mascarade humaine_).

Sadness succeeds to joy, deception to illusion, the awakening to the dream, the head-ache to the debauch.

When the crime is perpetrated, remorse, the avenging lash of virtue, comes and scourges the conscience. "Come, up, vile thing! thou hast slept over long."

And it exposes to the wretch the emptiness of pleasures, purchased at the price of honour.

The dawn found the Curé of Althausen groaning secretly to himself on his couch.

He had made himself guilty of an abominable wickedness, he had just committed an inexcusable crime, he had succumbed cowardly, ignominiously; he had betrayed his faith, abjured his priestly oaths, forgotten his duties, prostituted his dignity on the withered breast of an old corrupted maid-servant.

Suzanne, the adorable young girl, who in the first place had insensibly and involuntarily drawn him on the road of perjury, for whom he would have sacrificed honour, reputation, the universe and his God, he had abjured her also in the arms of this drab.

And that was the wound which consumed his heart the most.

For as soon as we have yielded to the infernal temptation, the lying prism vanishes, the halo disappears, and there only remains vice in all its hideousness and repulsive nudity. It is then that we hear a threatening voice mutter secretly in the depths of our being.

Happy is he who, already slipping on the fatal descent, listens to that voice: "Stop, stop; there is still time, raise thyself up."

But most frequently we remain deaf to that importunate cry. And, weary of crying in vain, conscience is silent. It no more casts its solemn serious note into the intoxicating music of facile love.

And the wretch, devoured by insatiable desire, pursues his coarse and looks not back. He goes on, he ever goes on, leaving right and left, like the trees on the way-side, his vigour and his youth which he scatters behind him. He set forth young, robust and strong, and he arrives at the halting-place, worn-out, soiled and blemished. There is the ditch, and he tumbles headlong into it. He falls into the common grave of cowardice and infamy. The lowest depths receive him and restore him not again.

Seek no more, for there is no more; the worms which consume him to his gums have already consumed his brain, and his heart is but gangrened. Disturb not this corpse, it is only putrefaction.

The poet has said:

"Evil to him who has permitted lewdness Beneath his breast its foremost nail to delve! The pure man's heart is like a goblet deep: Whe the first water poured therin is foul, The sea itself could not wash out the spot, So deep the chasm where the stain doth lie."

Marcel had not reached that point, but he felt that he was on a rapid descent, and made these tardy reflections to himself:

"Shall I ever be able to see the light of day? Shall I ever dare to raise my eyes after this filthy crime? Oh Heaven, Heaven, overwhelm me. Avenging thunderbolt of omnipotent God, reduce me to ashes, restore me again to the nothingness, from which I ought never to have come forth."

But Heaven did not overwhelm him that day, nor was there the slightest rumbling of thunder. Nature continued her work peacefully, just as if no minister of God had sinned. The sun, a glorious sun of Spring, came and danced on his window, and he heard as usual the happy cries of the pillaging sparrows as they fluttered in his garden.

There was a movement by his side, and he felt, close to his flesh, the burning flesh of Veronica; she was awake and looking at him with a smile. She felt no remorse; she was proud and happy, and her eyes burning with pleasure and want of sleep were fixed on her new lover with restless curiosity.

[PLATE IV: MATER SAEVA CUPIDINUM. ...he sprang out of bed, surfeited with disgust.... And she rose also, and ran off to her room, laughing like a madcap, and carrying her dress and petticoats under her arm.]

Doubtless she was saying to herself: "Is it really possible? Am I then in bed with this handsome priest? Is my dream then realised?"

And to assure herself that she was not dreaming, that she was really in the Curé of Althausen's bed, she spoke to him in mincing tones:

--You say nothing, my handsome master. You seem to be dejected. What! you are not tired out already?

And she put out her hand to give him a caress. But he sprang out of bed, surfeited with disgust.

--Ah, true, she said, happiness makes us forgetful. I was forgetting your Mass.

And she rose also, and ran off to her room, laughing like a madcap, and carrying her dress and petticoats under her arm.

LV.

IN THE FOOT-PATH.

"'Tis the comer blest where God's creatures dwell, The wild birds' haunt and the dragon-fly's home, Where the queen-bee flies when she leaves her cell, Where Spring in the verdant glades doth roam."

CAMILLE DELTHIL (_Les Rustiques_).

"Abomination of abomination!" murmured Marcel, and he went out in haste; he would not remain another minute in that cursed house. It seemed to him that the walls of his room reeked of debauchery, and that everything there was impregnated with the odour of foul orgies.

He went out of the village, unconscious of his road, like a hunted criminal; he tried to escape from himself, for that harsh officer, remorse, had laid vigorous hold of his conscience. Be followed at random the foot-paths, lined by gardens by which he had passed so many times with placid brow and a clean heart; he walked on, he walked on, with bare head, and blank and haggard eyes, thinking of nothing but his crime, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, not oven the bell which summoned him to his morning Mass, as it cheerfully filled the air with its silver notes.

The morning was as bright as the face of a bride. May was shedding its perfumes and flowers on the paths, and displaying everywhere its marvellous adornments of universal life,--labour and love. The children were already tumbling about in the foot-paths, the birds were warbling in the hawthorn hedges, and in the moist grass the grasshopper was saluting the rising sun.

And he, in the midst of all this joy and all this life, was walking on with his head filled with vague ideas of suicide. A few peasants passed near him and sainted him: he saw them not; he saw not the children who stopped still and gazed in bewilderment at his strange appearance: he saw not Suzanne who was approaching at the end of the path.

She was only a few paces away when he raised his head, and all his blood rushed to his heart. Vision blessed and cursed at the same time. She, she there, at the vary moment of the consummation of his shame. She before him when he had just dug an abyss between them. What should he say? Would she not read on his troubled face the shameful secret of the drama within? Was not his crime written on his sullied brow in indelible soars? He would have wished the earth to open under his feet.

Meanwhile she advanced blushing, perhaps as greatly agitated as himself.

And from the smile on her rosy lips, from the brightness of her dark eyes, from the gram of her carriage, from the chaste swelling of her bosom, from the folds of her dress which, blown by the morning breeze, revealed the harmonious outlines of her fairy leg, from all those inexpressible maiden charms, there breathed forth that _something_, for which there is no name in the language of men, but which accelerates the beating of the heart, which pours into the veins an unknown fluid, and bids us murmur low to the stranger who passes by, and whom perhaps we may never see again: "My life is thine, is thine!"

Mysterious sensation, which, in the golden days of youth, we have all experienced once at least with ravishing delight.

And everything seemed to say to Marcel: "Fool! If thou hadst wished it, we were thine. The delights of paradise were thine, and thou hast preferred the impurities of hell!"

Oh, if he had been able, if he had dared, he would have cast himself at this maiden's feet, he would have kissed her knees, he would have grovelled on the ground and cried with tears: "Pardon! pardon! Fate has caused it all. Almighty God will never pardon me, but it is thou whom I implore, and what matters it, if thou, thou dost pardon me."

The feeling of the reality recalled him to himself. Who was aware of his fault, and what was there, besides, in common between this young girl and himself? One evening when alone with her, he had acted imprudently, that was all, and it was now long ago. Then, through desperation and also to show that he attached no importance to that act of imprudence which he had almost forgotten, he assumed an icy demeanour.

She advanced with a smile, but she felt it congeal on her lips before this insolent coldness, while he, gravely bowing to her as before, a stranger, passed on.

LVI.

DOUBLE REMORSE.

"Ah, how much better are the love-tales which we spelt in our eyes with our hearts."

CAMILLE LEMONNIER (_Croquis d'automne_).

His Mass said, Marcel did not want to return to the parsonage. He made his way slowly to the wood, absorbed by a world of thoughts. All was quite changed since the day before, and what a revolution had been wrought in his soul in one day.

The day before there was still time to stop, there was time to cast far away temptations and impure desires, to avoid the infernal snares and ambushes, to take refuge, according to the Apostle's advice, in the bosom of God; now it was too late, it was no longer in his power; he found himself hemmed in within the circle of abominations, and he did not see how he could get forth.

A double remorse tormented him, and wrung his conscience with fierce fingers.

On the one hand, there was his servant, become his accomplice and his mistress, an odious thing; his servant defiling his couch, hitherto immaculate; his couch of a virtuous priest.

Then, on the other, there was the fair pale face of Suzanne, full of reproaches, surprised and sad. Why had he not stopped? What fury had urged him forward, cold and scornful, when he burned to hear once again the sound of that voice which stirred his heart!

And the memory of that meeting, at the very moment of the consummation of his infamy, was the blow of the lash which laid bare the open wound of his remorse. He did not curse his crime more than the inopportuneness and the awkwardness of that crime.

What! be had given himself up to a despicable old woman, he had slaked the thirst of that ghoul with his generous blood, he had abandoned to that hell-hag the promises of his young body and his virgin soul, while a young girl whose like he had never seen but in fairy tales and dreams, came to him and seemed to say to him: "You may love me."

And he had repulsed her in order to give himself up to the former: that horrible creature, that hypocrite, that sorceress.

And now that his judgment was calm, he could not understand how he had allowed himself to be carried away by such clumsy manoeuvres, that he had fallen in so cowardly a way, and for such an object.

If, at least, it had been in the arms of the lovely school-girl! If his virtue had melted under the kisses of her charming lips! But no, none of all that: none of those unparalleled joys, of those ineffable delights, of those divine and sweet pleasures.