"My mother, my poor mother, is dead!"
Then Madame, in her ordinary voice:
"It is a pity, but I can do nothing about it. At any rate, the work
must not suffer."
And that was all. Oh! indeed, Madame's kindness will never kill her.
What has made me most unhappy is the fact that I have seen a
coincidence between my mother's death and the murder of the little
ferret. It seems to me like a punishment from heaven, and that perhaps
my mother would not be dead if I had not obliged the captain to kill
poor Kléber. In vain have I repeated to myself that my mother died
before the ferret. That had no effect; the idea has pursued me all day
long, like a remorse.
I should have liked to go home. But Audierne is so far away,--at the
end of the world, it seems. And I have no money. When I shall receive
my first month's wages, I shall have to pay the employment-bureau.
I shall not have enough to even pay the few little debts contracted
during the days when I was on the pavement.
And then, of what use would it be to go? My brother is in the naval
service, and his vessel is in China, I believe, for it is a very long
time since we had any news from him. And my sister Louise? Where is
she now? I do not know. Since she left us to follow Jean le Duff to
Concarneau, nothing has been heard from her. She must have rolled
hither and thither, the devil knows where! Perhaps she is in a public
house; perhaps she, too, is dead. And perhaps, also, my brother is dead.
Yes, why should I go there? In what way would it help me? There is no
one there now who interests me, and surely my mother has left nothing.
Her rags and the little furniture that she had certainly will not pay
her brandy bill.
It is queer, all the same; as long as she was living, I almost never
thought of her; I felt no desire to see her again. I wrote to her only
when I changed my place, and then simply to give her my address. She
has beaten me so much! I was so unhappy with her, she being always
drunk. And yet, on learning suddenly that she is dead, my soul is
plunged in mourning, and I feel more alone than ever.
And I remember my childhood with singular clearness. I see again all
the things and beings among whom I began the stern apprenticeship of
life. There is really too much sorrow on one side, too much happiness
on the other. The world is not just.
One night, I remember,--I was very small, moreover,--I remember that
we were awakened with a start by the whistle of the life-saving boat.
Oh! those calls in the tempest and in the darkness,--how lugubrious
they are! Since the night before, the wind had been blowing a gale. The
harbor bar was white and furious. Only a few sloops had been able to
get back. The others, the poor others, were surely in danger.
Knowing that my father was fishing in the vicinity of the Ile de Sein,
my mother was not too anxious. She hoped that he had put into the
island harbor, as he had done so often before. Nevertheless, on hearing
the whistle of the life-saving boat, she arose, trembling and very
pale, wrapped me hurriedly in a thick woolen shawl, and started for the
breakwater. My sister Louise, who was already grown, and my younger
brother, followed her, crying:
"Oh! Holy Virgin! Oh! Our Jesus!"
And she, too, cried:
"Oh! Holy Virgin! Oh! Our Jesus!"
The narrow streets were full of people,--women, old men, children. A
crowd of frightened shadows were hastening to the pier, where the
groaning of the boats could be heard. But they could not stay on the
breakwater because of the strong wind, and especially because of the
waves, which, beating against the stone embankment, swept it from end
to end, with the noise of a cannonade. My mother took the path ...
"Oh! Holy Virgin! Oh! Our Jesus!...." took the path that winds around
the estuary to the light-house. Everything was black on land, and on
the sea, which was black also, could be seen, from time to time, in
the distance, by the rays from the light-house, the white breaking
of enormous waves. In spite of the shocks ... "Oh! Holy Virgin! Oh!
Our Jesus!...." in spite of the shocks and in a way lulled by them,
in spite of the wind and in a way stunned by it, I went to sleep in
my mother's arms. I awoke in a low room, and I saw, among sombre
backs, gloomy faces, and waving arms,--I saw, on a camp bed, lighted
by two tallow candles, a great corpse ... "Oh! Holy Virgin! Oh! Our
Jesus!...." a frightful corpse, long and naked, perfectly rigid, the
face crushed, the limbs streaked with bleeding gashes and covered with
black and blue spots. It was my father.
I see him still. His hair was glued to his skull, and filled with a
mass of sea-weed that made a sort of crown. Men were bending over him,
rubbing his skin with warm flannels and forcing air into his mouth.
There was the mayor; there was the rector; there was the captain of
customs; there was the marine policeman. I was frightened; I freed
myself from my shawl, and, running between the legs of these men, over
the wet stone floor, I began to cry,--to call papa,--to call mamma. A
neighbor took me away.
From that moment my mother took to drinking furiously. At first she
really tried to work in the sardine-packing establishments, but, as she
was always drunk, none of her employers would keep her. Then she stayed
at home to intoxicate herself, quarrelsome and gloomy; and, when she
was full of brandy, she beat us. How does it happen that she did not
kill me?
I avoided the house as much as I could. I spent my days in playing on
the pier, in thieving in the gardens, and in paddling in the puddles
when the tide was low. Or else, on the Plogoff road, at the bottom
of a grassy decline, sheltered from the sea wind and covered with
thick bushes, I misbehaved with the little boys, among the hawthorns.
On returning at night, I generally found my mother stretched on the
tile floor across the threshold, inert, her mouth covered with vomit,
and a broken bottle in her hands. Often I had to step over her body.
Her awakenings were terrible. She was seized with a passion for
destruction. Without listening to my prayers or my cries, she tore
me from the bed, pursued me, kicked me, and knocked me against the
furniture, crying:
"I'll have your hide! I'll have your hide!"
Many times I thought I should die.
And then she debauched herself, to get money with which to buy liquor.
At night, every night, low knocks were heard at the door of our house.
A sailor entered, filling the room with a strong odor of sea-salt
and fish. He lay down, remained an hour, and went away. And another
came, after him, lay down also, remained another hour, and went away.
There were struggles and terrifying uproars in the darkness of these
abominable nights, and several times the police interfered.
Thus years rolled by. I was not wanted anywhere; nor was my sister,
or my brother. They avoided us in the streets. The respectable people
drove us with stones from their houses, to which we went, sometimes to
steal, sometimes to beg. One day my sister Louise, who also had got
into bad ways with the sailors, ran away. And then my brother enlisted
as a cabin-boy. I was left alone with my mother.
At the age of ten I was no longer chaste. Made familiar with love by
the sad example of mamma, perverted by the little boys with whom I
associated, my physical development had been very rapid. In spite of
deprivations and blows, living continually in the open sea air, free
and strong, I had grown so fast that at the age of eleven I experienced
the first awakenings of womanhood. Beneath my girlish exterior, I was
almost a woman.
At the age of twelve I was a woman quite, and no longer a virgin.
Raped? No, not exactly. Consenting? Yes, almost,--at least in the
degree in which the artlessness of my vice and the candor of my
depravity were consistent with consent. The thing occurred one Sunday,
after high mass, near the beach, on the Saint Jean side, in a recess
in the cliff, in a dark hole among the rocks where the sea-gulls came
to build their nests, and where the sailors sometimes hid the wreckage
which they found at sea. The man was the foreman of a sardine-packing
establishment,--an old, hairy, ill-smelling man, whose face was nothing
but a dirty mass of beard and hair. He gave me an orange. He had a
funny name,--M. Cléophas Biscouille.
And here is an incomprehensible thing, of which I have found no
explanation in any novel. Ugly, brutal, and repulsive though M.
Biscouille was, when I think of him now,--and I often do,--how happens
it that it is never with a feeling of detestation for him, never with
a disposition to curse him? At this recollection, which I call up
with satisfaction, I feel a sort of great gratitude, a sort of great
tenderness, and also a sort of real regret at having to say to myself
that never shall I see this disgusting personage again.
In this connection may I be permitted to offer here, humble though I
am, my personal contribution to the biography of great men.
M. Paul Bourget was the intimate friend and spiritual guide of the
Countess Fardin, in whose house last year I served as chambermaid. I
had always heard it said that he alone knew, even to its subsoil, the
complex soul of woman. And many times I had had the idea of writing
to him, in order to submit to him this case of passional psychology.
I had not dared. Do not be too much astonished at the gravity of such
preoccupations. They are not usual among domestics, I admit. But
in the _salons_ of the countess they never talked of anything but
psychology. It is an admitted fact that our mind is modeled on that
of our masters, and that what is said in the _salon_ is said also in
the servants' hall. Unhappily we had not in the servants' hall a Paul
Bourget, capable of elucidating and solving the cases of feminism that
we discussed there. The explanations of Monsieur Jean himself were not
satisfactory to me.
One day my mistress sent me to carry an "urgent" letter to the
illustrious master. He handed me the reply himself. Then I made bold
to put to him the question that tormented me, pretending, however, that
the heroine of this ticklish and obscure story was a friend of mine. M.
Paul Bourget asked:
"What is your friend? A woman of the people? A poor woman, undoubtedly?"
"A chambermaid, like myself, illustrious master."
A superior grimace, a look of disdain, appeared on M. Bourget's face.
Ah! _sapristi!_ he does not like the poor.
"I do not occupy myself with these souls," said he. "These are too
little souls. They are not even souls. They are outside the province of
my psychology."
I understood that, in this province, one begins to be a soul only with
an income of a hundred thousand francs.
Not so M. Jules Lemaitre, also a familiar of the house. When I asked
him the same question, he answered, prettily catching me about the
waist:
"Well, charming Célestine, your friend is a good girl, that is all.
And, if she resembles you, I would say a couple of words to her, you
know,--hey! hey! hey!"
He, at least, with his face of a little humpbacked and merry-making
faun, put on no airs; and he was good-natured. What a pity that he has
fallen among the priests!
With all that, I know not what would have become of me in that hell
of an Audierne, if the Little Sisters of Pont-Croix, finding me
intelligent and pretty, had not taken me in, out of pity. They did not
take advantage of my age, of my ignorance, of my trying and despised
situation, to make use of me, to secrete me for their benefit, as
often happens in such establishments, which carry human exploitation
to the point of crime. They were poor, candid, timid, charitable
little beings, who were not rich, and who did not even dare to extend
their hands to passers-by or to beg at the doors of houses. There was
sometimes much poverty among them, but they got along as best they
could. And, amid all the difficulties of living, they continued none
the less to be gay, and to sing continually like larks. Their ignorance
of life had something touching about it, something which brings the
tears to my eyes to-day, now that I can better understand their
infinite and pure kindness.
They taught me to read, to write, to sew, to do housework; and, when
I had become almost expert in these necessary things, they got me a
place as a little housemaid in the house of a retired colonel, who came
every summer, with his wife and his two daughters, to occupy a sort of
dilapidated little château near Comfort. Worthy people, certainly, but
so sad, so sad! And maniacs, too! Never a smile on their faces, never
a sign of joy in their garments, which were always black. The colonel
had had a lathe put in at the top of the house, and there, all day
long, he turned egg cups out of box-wood, or else those oval balls,
called "eggs," which housewives use in mending stockings. Madame drew
up petition after petition, in order to obtain a tobacco-shop. And the
two daughters, saying nothing, doing nothing, one with a duck's beak,
the other with a rabbit's face, yellow and thin, angular and faded,
dried up on the spot, like two plants lacking everything,--soil, water,
sunshine. They bored me enormously. At the end of eight months I left
them, in a moment of rashness which I have regretted.
But then! I heard Paris breathing and living around me. Its breath
filled my heart with new desires. Although I did not go out often,
I had admired with a prodigious astonishment the streets, the
shop-windows, the crowds, the palaces, the brilliant equipages, the
jeweled women. And, when, at night, I went to bed in the sixth story,
I envied the other domestics of the house, and their pranks which I
found charming, and their stories which left me in a state of marvelous
surprise. Though I remained in the house but a short time, I saw there,
at night, in the sixth story, all sorts of debaucheries, and took my
part in them with the enthusiasm and emulation of a novice. Oh! the
vague hopes and the uncertain ambitions that I cherished there, in that
fallacious ideal of pleasure and vice!
Alas! yes, one is young, one knows nothing of life, one entertains
imaginations and dreams. Oh! the dreams! Stupidities! I have supped on
them, in the words of M. Xavier, a prettily perverted boy, of whom I
shall have something to say later.
And I have rolled. Oh! how I have rolled! It is frightful when I think
of it.
Yet I am not old, but I have had a very close view of things; I have
seen people naked. And I have sniffed the odor of their linen, of
their skin, of their soul. In spite of perfumes, they do not smell
good. All that a respected interior, all that a respectable family,
can hide in the way of filth, shameful vices, and base crimes, beneath
the appearance of virtue,--ah! I know it well. It makes no difference
if they are rich, if they have rags of silk and velvet and gilded
furniture; it makes no difference if they wash in silver tubs and make
a great show,--I know them. They are not clean. And their heart is more
disgusting than was my mother's bed.
Oh! how a poor domestic is to be pitied, and how lonely she is! She
may live in houses full of joyous and noisy people, but how lonely she
is always! Solitude does not consist in living alone; it consists in
living with others, with people who take no interest in you, with whom
you count for less than a dog gorged with goodies, or than a flower
cared for as tenderly as a rich man's child,--people of whom you have
nothing but their cast-off garments or the spoiled remains of their
table.
"You may eat this pear; it is rotten. Finish this chicken in the
kitchen; it smells bad."
Every word is contemptuous of you, every gesture disparaging of you,
placing you on a level lower than that of the beasts. And you must say
nothing; you must smile and give thanks; unless you would pass for an
ingrate or a wicked heart. Sometimes, when doing my mistresses' hair, I
have had a mad desire to tear their neck, to scratch their bosom with
my nails.
Fortunately one is not always under the influence of these gloomy
ideas. One shakes them off, and arranges matters to get all the fun one
can, by himself.
This evening, after dinner, Marianne, seeing that I was utterly sad,
was moved to pity, and tried to console me. She went to get a bottle of
brandy from the depths of the sideboard, where it stood among a heap of
old papers and dirty rags.
"You must not grieve like that," she said to me; "you must shake
yourself a little, my poor little one; you must console yourself."
And, having poured me out a drink, she sat for an hour, with elbows
on the table, and, in a drawling and lamenting voice, told me gloomy
stories of sickness, of child-birth, of the death of her mother, of her
father, and of her sister. With every minute her voice became thicker;
her eyes moistened; and she repeated, as she licked her glass:
"You must not grieve like that. The death of your mamma,--oh! it is a
great misfortune! But what do you expect? We are all mortal. Oh! my
God! Oh! my poor little one!"
Then she suddenly began to weep and weep, and, while she wept and wept,
she did not cease to wail:
"You must not grieve; you must not grieve."
At first it was a plaint; but soon it became a sort of frightful bray,
which grew louder and louder. And her big belly, and her big breasts,
and her triple chin, shaken by her sobs, heaved in enormous surges.
"Be still, then, Marianne," I said to her; "Madame might hear you, and
come."
But she did not listen to me, and, crying louder than ever, exclaimed:
"Ah! what a misfortune! what a great misfortune!"
So that I too, my stomach turned by drink, and my heart moved by
Marianne's tears, began to sob like a Madeleine. All the same, she is
not a bad girl.
But I am getting tired here; I am getting tired; I am getting tired.
I should like to get a place in the house of some member of the
_demi-monde,_ or else in America.