"Then you are not to dine here this evening, Monsieur Xavier?"
"No, I dine in town. Make haste."
As I tied his shoes, I moaned:
"And you will not return to-night? I shall cry all night long. It is
not nice of you, Monsieur Xavier."
His voice became hard and thoroughly wicked.
"If you lent me your ninety francs that you might say that, you can
take them back. Here, take them!"
"No, no," I sighed. "You know very well that it was not for that."
"Well, then, don't bother me."
He had quickly finished dressing, and he started off without kissing me
and without saying a word.
The next day nothing was said about returning the money; and I did not
wish to claim it. It gave me pleasure to think that he had something of
me. And now I understand the women who kill themselves with toil, the
women who sell themselves to passers-by, at night, on the sidewalks,
the women who steal, and the women who kill, in order to get a little
money with which to procure indulgences for the little man whom they
love. That is what has happened to me, in fact. Or has it really
happened to me in the degree that I say? Alas! I do not know. There are
moments when, in presence of a man, I feel so soft, so soft, without
will, without courage, so yielding ... yes, so yielding!
Madame was not slow in changing her manner toward me. Instead of
treating me nicely, as she had done before, she became severe,
exacting, fault-finding. I was only a blockhead; I never did anything
right; I was awkward, unclean, ill-bred, forgetful, dishonest. And her
voice, which at first had been so sweet, so much like the voice of a
comrade, now became as sour as vinegar. She gave me orders in a blunt
and humiliating tone. No more gifts of underwear, no more cold cream
and powder, no more of the secret counsels and private confidences that
had so embarrassed me at first. No more of that suspicious comradeship
which at bottom I felt not to be kindness, and which caused me to lose
my respect for this mistress who raised me to the level of her own
vice. I snapped at her sharply, strong in my knowledge of all the open
or hidden infamies of the house. We got to quarreling like fish-wives,
hurling our week's notice at each other's heads, like dirty rags.
"What, then, do you take my house for?" she cried. "Do you think you
are working for a fast woman?"
Think of her cheek! I answered:
"Oh! your house is a clean one, indeed! You can boast of it. And you?
Let us talk about it; yes, let us talk about it! You are clean, too!
And what about Monsieur? Oh! la! la! And do you think they don't
know you in the neighborhood, and in Paris? Why, you are notorious,
everywhere. Your house? A brothel. And, in fact, there are brothels
which are not as dirty as your house."
And so these quarrels went on; we exchanged the worst insults and the
lowest threats; we descended to the vocabulary of the street-walkers
and the prisons. And then, suddenly, everything quieted down. M.
Xavier had only to show signs of a reviving interest in me,--fleeting,
alas!--when straightway began again the suspicious familiarity, the
shameful complicities, the gifts of garments, the promises of doubled
wages, the washing with Simon cream,--it is more suitable,--and the
initiations into the mysteries of refined perfumes. M. Xavier's
conduct toward me was the thermometer by which Madame regulated her
own. The latter's kindness immediately followed the former's caresses.
Abandonment by the son was accompanied by insults from the mother. I
was the victim, continually tossed back and forth, of the enervating
fluctuations to which the intermittent love of this capricious and
heartless boy was subject. One would have thought that Madame must have
played the spy with us, must have listened at the door, must have kept
tabs for herself on the different phases of our relations. But no. She
simply had the instinct of vice, that's all. She scented it through
walls and souls, as a dog inhales in the breeze the far-away odor of
game.
As for Monsieur, he continued to dance about among all these events,
among all the hidden dramas of this house, alert, busy, cynical, and
comical. In the morning he disappeared, with his face of a little
pink and shaven faun, with his documents, with his bag stuffed with
pious pamphlets and obscene newspapers. In the evening he reappeared,
cravated with respectability, armored with Christian Socialism, his
gait a little slower, his gestures a little more oily, his back
slightly bent, doubtless under the weight of the good works done
during the day. Regularly every Friday he gave me the week's issues
of indecent journals, awaiting just the right occasion for making his
declaration, and contenting himself with smiling at me with the air of
an accomplice, caressing my chin, and saying to me, as he passed his
tongue over his lips:
"Ho, ho, she is a very queer little one, indeed!"
As it amused me to watch Monsieur's game, I did not discourage him,
but I promised myself to seize the first exceptionally favorable
opportunity to sharply put him where he belonged.
One afternoon I was greatly surprised to see him enter the linen-room,
where I sat alone, musing sadly over my work. In the morning I had
had a painful scene with M. Xavier, and was still under the influence
of the impression it had left on me. Monsieur closed the door softly,
placed his bag on the large table near a pile of cloth, and, coming to
me, took my hands and patted them. Under his blinking eyelid his eye
turned, like that of an old hen dazzled by the sunlight. It was enough
to make one die of laughter.
"Célestine," said he, "for my part, I prefer to call you Célestine.
That does not offend you, does it?"