"But I do not know how to cook."
"Oh! I will do the cooking; I will make my bed; I will do everything."
He becomes gallant, sprightly; his eye sparkles. He leans towards the
hedge, stretching out his neck. His eyes become bloodshot. And in a
lower voice he says:
"If you came to me, Célestine,--well...."
"Well, what?"
"Well, the Lanlaires would die of rage. Ah! that's an idea!"
I lapse into silence, and pretend to be profoundly dreaming. The
captain becomes impatient. He digs the heels of his shoes into the
sandy path.
"See, Célestine, thirty-five francs a month; the master's table; the
master's room; a will; does that suit you? Answer me."
"We will see later. But, while waiting, take another."
And I run away that I may not blow into his face the tempest of
laughter that is roaring in my throat.
I have, then, only the embarrassment of choice. The captain or Joseph?
To live as a servant-mistress, with all the contingencies that such a
position involves,--that is, to remain still at the mercy of a stupid,
coarse, changeable man, and dependent upon a thousand disagreeable
circumstances and a thousand prejudices; or else to marry, and thus
acquire a sort of regular and respected liberty, in a situation free
from the control of others, and liberated from the caprice of events?
Here at last a portion of my dream promises to be realized.
It is very evident that I should have liked a realization on a
grander scale. But, when I think how few chances present themselves,
in general, in the existence of a woman like me, I must congratulate
myself that something is coming to me at last other than this eternal
and monotonous tossing back and forth from one house to another, from
one bed to another, from one face to another face.
Of course, I put aside at once the captain's plan. Moreover, I had no
need of this last conversation with him to know the sort of grotesque
and sinister mountebank, the type of odd humanity, that he represents.
Beyond the fact that his physical ugliness is complete,--for there
is nothing to relieve and correct it,--he gives one no hold on his
soul. Rose believed firmly in her assured domination over this man,
and this man tricked her. One cannot dominate nothing; one can have
no influence over emptiness. I cannot, without choking with laughter,
think of myself for an instant in the arms of this ridiculous personage
and caressing him. Yet, in spite of this, I am content, and I feel
something akin to pride. However low the source from which it comes, it
is none the less an homage, and this homage strengthens my confidence
in myself and in my beauty.
Quite different are my feelings toward Joseph. Joseph has taken
possession of my mind. He retains it, he holds it captive, he
obsesses it. He disturbs me, bewitches me, and frightens me, by
turns. Certainly, he is ugly, brutally, horribly ugly; but, when
you analyze this ugliness, you find something formidable in it,
something that is almost beauty, that is more than beauty, that is
above beauty,--something elemental. I do not conceal from myself the
difficulty, the danger, of living, whether married or not, with such
a man, of whom I am warranted in suspecting everything, and of whom,
in reality, I know nothing. And it is this that draws me to him with
a dizzy violence. At least he is capable of many things in crime,
perhaps, and perhaps also in the direction of good. I do not know.
What does he want of me? What will he do with me? Should I be the
unscrupulous instrument of plans that I knew nothing of, the plaything
of his ferocious passions? Does he even love me? And why does he love
me? For my beauty; for my vices; for my intelligence; for my hatred of
prejudices,--he who makes parade of all the prejudices? I do not know.
In addition to this attraction which the unknown and mysterious has
for me, he exercises over me the bitter, powerful charm of force. And
this charm, yes, this charm acts more and more on my nerves, conquers
my passive and submissive flesh. It is something which I cannot define
exactly, something that takes me wholly, by my mind and by my sex,
revealing in me instincts of which I was unaware, instincts that
slept within me without my knowledge, and that no love, no thrill of
voluptuousness had before awakened. And I tremble from head to foot
when I remember the words of Joseph, saying to me:
"You are like me, Célestine. Oh! not in features, of course. But our
two souls are alike; our two souls resemble each other."
Our two souls! Is that possible?
These sensations that I feel are so new, so imperious, so strongly
tenacious, that they do not leave me a minute's rest, and that I remain
always under the influence of their stupefying fascination. In vain do
I seek to occupy my mind with other thoughts. I try to read and walk in
the garden, when my masters are away, and, when they are at home, to
work furiously at my mending in the linen-room. Impossible! Joseph has
complete possession of my thought. And not only does he possess it in
the present, but he possesses it also in the past. Joseph so interposes
himself between my entire past and myself that I see, so to speak,
nothing but him, and that this past, with all its ugly or charming
faces, draws farther and farther from me, fades away, disappears.
Cléophas Biscouille; M. Jean; M. Xavier; William, of whom I have not
yet spoken; M. Georges, himself, by whom I believed my soul to have
been branded forever, as the shoulder of the convict is branded by the
red iron; and all those to whom, voluntarily, joyously, passionately,
I have given a little or much of myself, of my vibrant flesh and of my
sorrowful heart,--all of them shadows already! Uncertain and ludicrous
shadows that fade away until they are hardly recollections, and then
become confused dreams ... intangible, forgotten realities ... vapors
... nothing. Sometimes, in the kitchen, after dinner, when looking at
Joseph and his criminal mouth, and his criminal eyes, and his heavy
cheek-bones, and his low, knotty, humpy forehead, upon which the
lamplight accumulates hard shadows, I say to myself:
"No, no, it is not possible. I am under the influence of a fit of
madness; I will not, I cannot, love this man. No, no, it is not
possible."
And yet it is possible, and it is true. And I must at last confess it
to myself, cry out to myself: "I love Joseph!"
Ah! now I understand why one should never make sport of love; why there
are women who rush, with all the consciencelessness of murder, with
all the invincible force of nature, to the kisses of brutes and to the
embraces of monsters, and who voluptuously sound the death-rattle in
the sneering faces of demons and bucks.
Joseph has obtained from Madame six days' leave of absence, and
to-morrow he is to start for Cherbourg, pretending to be called by
family matters. It is decided; he will buy the little café. But for
some months he will not run it himself. He has some one there, a
trusted friend, who is to take charge of it.
"Do you understand?" he says to me. "It must first be repainted, and
made to look like new; it must be very fine, with its new sign, in gilt
letters: 'To the French Army!' And besides, I cannot leave my place
yet. That I cannot do."
"Why not, Joseph?"
"Because I cannot now."
"But when will you go, for good?"
Joseph scratches his neck, gives me a sly glance, and says:
"As to that I do not know. Perhaps not for six months yet; perhaps
sooner; perhaps even later. I cannot tell. It depends."