"M. Xavier is like all young people," she said to me. "He is not very
orderly. You must be orderly for him; and his room must be perfectly
kept. You will enter the room every morning at nine o'clock; you will
bring him his tea; at nine o'clock, you understand, Mary? Sometimes M.
Xavier comes home late. Perhaps he will not receive you well in the
morning, but that makes no difference. A young man should be awakened
at nine o'clock."
She showed me where M. Xavier kept his linen, his cravats, his shoes,
accompanying each detail with some remark like this:
"My son is a little sharp, but he is a charming child."
Or else:
"Do you know how to fold pantaloons? Oh! M. Xavier is especially
particular about his pantaloons."
As for the hats, it was agreed that I need pay no attention to them,
the glory of their daily ironing belonging to the _valet de chambre_.
I found it extremely odd that, in a house where there was a _valet de
chambre_, Madame should select me to serve M. Xavier.
"It is funny, but perhaps it is not very suitable," I said to myself,
parodying the word which my mistress was constantly repeating apropos
of no matter what.
It is true that everything seemed odd to me in this odd house.
In the evening, in the servants' hall, I learned many things.
"An extraordinary box," they explained to me. "It is very astonishing
at first, and then you get used to it. Sometimes there isn't a sou in
the whole house. Then Madame goes, comes, runs, goes away and comes
back again, nervous, tired, her mouth filled with high words. As for
Monsieur, he never leaves the telephone. He shouts, threatens, begs,
and raises the devil through the instrument. And the process-servers!
It has often happened that the butler had to give something out of his
own pocket, on account, to furious tradesmen who were unwilling to
supply anything more. On one reception day the electricity and gas were
cut off. And then, suddenly, there comes a rain of gold. The house is
overflowing with wealth. Where does it come from? That nobody knows
exactly. As for the servants, they wait months and months for their
wages. But they are always paid at last; only after what scenes, after
what insults, after what squabbles! It is incredible."
Well, indeed, a nice place I had tumbled into! And such was my luck,
for the one time in my life when I had good wages.
"M. Xavier has not yet come in to-night," said the _valet de chambre_.
"Oh!" exclaimed the cook, looking at me persistently, "perhaps he will
return now."
And the _valet de chambre_ related that that very morning a creditor
of M. Xavier had come again to raise a row. It must have been a very
dirty matter, for Monsieur had sung small, and had been obliged to pay
a heavy sum,--at least four thousand francs.
"Monsieur was in a pretty rage," he added; "I heard him say to Madame:
'This cannot last; he will disgrace us; he will disgrace us.'"
The cook, who seemed very philosophical, shrugged her shoulders.
"Disgrace them?" said she, with a chuckle; "little they care about
that. It is the having to pay that bothers them."
This conversation made me ill at ease. I understood vaguely that there
might be some relation between Madame's garments, Madame's words, and
M. Xavier. But exactly what?
"It is having to pay that bothers them!"
I did not sleep at all well that night, haunted by strange dreams and
impatient to see M. Xavier.
The _valet de chambre_ had not lied. A queer box, indeed!
Monsieur was in the pilgrimages,--I don't know exactly
what,--president, director, or something of that sort. He picked
up pilgrims where he could, among the Jews, the Protestants, the
vagabonds, even among the Catholics; and once a year he took these
people to Rome, to Lourdes, to Paray-le-Monial, not without gaining
notoriety and profit, of course. The pope didn't see through it, and
religion triumphed. Monsieur occupied himself also with charitable
and political works: "The League against Secular Education," "The
League against Obscene Publications," "The Society of Amusing and
Christian Libraries," "The Society for the Collection of Congreganist
Sucking-Bottles for the Nursing of Working People's Children." And any
number of others. He presided over orphan asylums, alumnæ, convents,
clubs, employment-bureaus. He presided over everything. Oh! the trades
that he had! He was a plump little man, very lively, very neat, very
clean-shaven, whose manners, at the same time sugary and cynical, were
those of a shrewd priest full of the devil. Sometimes the newspapers
contained references to him and his works. Naturally, some of them
extolled his humanitarian virtues and his high apostolic sanctity;
others treated him as an old rascal and a dirty scoundrel. In the
servants' hall we were much amused over these quarrels, although it
is rather _chic_ and flattering to be in the service of masters
who are talked about in the newspapers. Every week Monsieur gave a
grand dinner, followed by a grand reception, which were attended by
celebrities of all sorts, academicians, reactionary senators, Catholic
deputies, recalcitrant priests, intriguing monks, and archbishops.
There was one especially to whom they paid especial attention, a very
old Assumptionist, Father something or other, a sanctimonious and
venomous man, who was always saying spiteful things with a contrite and
pious air. And everywhere, in every room, there were portraits of the
pope. Ah! he must have seen some tall things in that house, the Holy
Father.
For my part, Monsieur was not to my liking. He did too many things, he
loved too many people. And yet nobody knew half the things that he did
and half the people that he loved. Surely he was a sly old dog.
On the day after my arrival, as I was helping him to put on his
overcoat in the ante-chamber, he asked me:
"Do you belong to my society,--the Society of the Servants of Jesus?"
"No, Monsieur."
"You must join it. It is indispensable. I am going to enter your name."
"Thank you, Monsieur. May I ask Monsieur what this society is?"
"An admirable society, which takes in girl mothers and gives them a
Christian education."
"But, Monsieur, I am not a girl mother."
"That makes no difference. There are also women just out of prison;
there are repentant prostitutes; there is a little of everything. I am
going to enter your name."
He took from his pocket some carefully-folded newspapers, and handed
them to me.
"Hide these; read them when you are alone. They are very curious."
And he chucked me under the chin, saying with a slight clack of his
tongue:
"Ah! she is a queer little one,--yes, indeed, a very queer little one!"
When Monsieur had gone, I looked at the newspapers that he had left
with me. They were the "Fin de Siècle," the "Rigolo," the "Petites
Femmes de Paris." Dirty sheets, indeed!
Oh! the _bourgeois!_ What an eternal farce! I have seen many of them,
and of the most different kinds. They are all alike. For instance, I
was once a domestic in the house of a republican deputy. He spent his
time in railing at the priests. A blower, indeed! you should have seen
him. He would not hear a word about religion, or the pope, or the good
sisters. If people had listened to him, they would have overturned all
the churches and blown up all the convents. Well, on Sunday he went to
mass, secretly, in far-away parishes. At the slightest ailment he sent
for the priests, and all his children were brought up by the Jesuits.
He would never consent to meet his brother after the latter's refusal
to marry in church. All hypocrites, all cowards, all disgusting, each
in his own way.
Madame de Tarves was also in the charity line: she too presided over
religious committees and benevolent societies, and organized charity
sales. That is to say, she was never at home, and things in the house
went on as they could. Very often Madame returned late, coming from the
devil knows where. Oh! I know these returns; they directly acquainted
me with the sort of works in which Madame was engaged, and with the
queer capers that were cut in her committees. But she was nice with me.
Never an abrupt word, never a reproach. On the contrary, she treated
me familiarly, almost like a comrade; and so far did she carry this
that sometimes, she forgetting her dignity and I my respect, we talked
nonsense together and said _risqués_ things. She gave me advice as to
the arrangement of my little affairs, encouraged my coquettish tastes,
deluged me with glycerine and _peau d'Espagne_, covered my arms with
cold cream, and sprinkled me with powder. And during these operations
she was continually saying:
"You see, Mary, a woman must be well groomed. Her skin must be white
and soft. You have a pretty face; you must learn how to set it off. You
have a very fine bust; you must give it its full value. Your legs are
superb; you must be able to show them. It is more suitable."
I was content. Yet within I still was not free from anxiety and obscure
suspicions. I could not forget the surprising stories that they told me
in the servants' hall. There, when I praised Madame and enumerated her
kindnesses toward me, the cook said:
"Yes, yes, that's all right; but wait and see what follows. What she
wants of you is to be intimate with her son, that he may be kept in
the house more, and thus may cost these curmudgeons less money. She
has already tried that with others. She has even induced friends of
hers to come here,--married women,--young girls,--yes, young girls, the
trollop! But M. Xavier does not fall in with this. He prefers to roam
elsewhere. You will see; you will see."
And she added, with a sort of hateful regret:
"If I were in your place, how I would blackmail them! I would not
hesitate, be sure."
These words made me slightly ashamed of my comrades in the servants'
hall. But, to reassure myself, I preferred to believe that the cook was
jealous of Madame's evident preference for me.
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."