_November 20._
Joseph started for Cherbourg yesterday morning, as had been agreed.
On coming down stairs, I find him already gone. Marianne, half awake,
with swollen eyes and hawking throat, is pumping water. The plate from
which Joseph has just eaten his soup, and the empty cider-pitcher, are
still on the kitchen table. I am anxious, and at the same time I am
content, for I feel that, starting from to-day, a new life is at last
preparing for me. The sun has scarcely risen; the air is cold. Beyond
the garden the country is still sleeping under a curtain of fog, and in
the distance, coming from an invisible valley, I hear the very feeble
sound of a locomotive whistle. It is the train that bears Joseph and
my destiny. I can eat no breakfast; it seems to me that something huge
and heavy fills my stomach. I no longer hear the whistle. The fog is
thickening; it has entered the garden.
And if Joseph were never to come back?
All day long I have been distracted, nervous, extremely agitated. Never
did the house weigh more heavily upon me; never did the long corridors
seem more dismal, more icily silent; never have I so much detested the
crabbed face and shrill voice of Madame. Impossible to work. I have
had with Madame a very violent scene, in consequence of which I really
thought that I should be obliged to go. And I ask myself what I am
going to do during these six days, without Joseph. I dread the ennui of
being alone, at meals, with Marianne. I really need somebody to talk to.
As a rule, as soon as it comes night, Marianne, under the influence of
drink, falls into a state of complete stupefaction. Her brain becomes
torpid; her tongue becomes thick; her lips hang and shine like the worn
brink of an old well; and she is sad, sad to the point of weeping. I
can get nothing out of her but little plaints, little cries, something
like the puling of a child. Nevertheless, last night, less drunk than
usual, she confided to me, amid never-ending groans, that she is afraid
she is in trouble. Well, that caps the climax! My first impulse is to
laugh. But soon I feel a keen sorrow,--something like the cutting of
a lash in the pit of my stomach. Suppose it were through Joseph? I
remember that, on the day of my arrival here, I at once suspected them.
But since then nothing has happened to justify this stupid suspicion.
On the contrary. No, no, it is impossible. It cannot be. I ask:
"You are sure, Marianne?"
"Sure? No," she says; "I am only afraid."
"And through whom?"
She hesitates to answer; then, suddenly, with a sort of pride, she
declares:
"Through Monsieur."
This time I came near bursting with laughter. Marianne, mistaking my
laugh for one of admiration, begins to laugh, too.
"Yes, yes, through Monsieur," she repeats. "I am going to see Madame
Gouin to-morrow."
I feel a real pity for this poor woman whose brain is so dark and whose
ideas are so obscure. Oh! how melancholy and lamentable she is! And
what is going to happen to her now? An extraordinary thing,--love has
given her no radiance, no grace. She has not that halo of light with
which voluptuousness surrounds the ugliest faces. She has remained the
same,--heavy, flabby, lumpy.
I left her with a somewhat heavy heart. Now I laugh no more; I will
never laugh at Marianne again, and the pity that I feel for her turns
into a real and almost painful emotion.
But I feel that my emotion especially concerns myself. On returning to
my room, I am seized with a sort of shame and great discouragement. One
should never reflect upon love. How sad love is at bottom! And what
does it leave behind? Ridicule, bitterness, or nothing at all. What
remains to me now of Monsieur Jean, whose photograph is on parade on
the mantel, in its red plush frame? Nothing, except my disappointment
at having loved a vain and heartless imbecile. Can I really have
loved this insipid beauty, with his white and unhealthy face, his
regulation black mutton-chops, and his hair parted down the middle?
This photograph irritates me. I can no longer have continually before
me those two stupid eyes that look at me with the unchangeable look of
an insolent and servile flunky. Oh! no, let it go to keep company with
the others, at the bottom of my trunk, pending the time when I shall
make of my more and more detested past a fire of joy and ashes.
And I think of Joseph. Where is he at the present moment? What is he
doing? Is he even thinking of me? Undoubtedly he is in the little café.
He is looking, discussing, measuring; he is picturing to himself the
effect that I shall produce at the bar, before the mirror, amid the
dazzling of the glasses and the multi-colored bottles. I wish that I
knew Cherbourg, its streets, its squares, its harbor, that I might
represent Joseph to myself going and coming, conquering the city as he
has conquered me. I turn and turn again in my bed, a little feverish.
My thought goes from the forest of Raillon to Cherbourg, from the body
of Claire to the little café. And, after a painful period of insomnia,
I finally go off to sleep with the stern and severe image of Joseph
before my eyes, the motionless image of Joseph outlining itself in the
distance against a dark and choppy background, traversed by white masts
and red yards.
To-day, Sunday, I paid a visit in the afternoon to Joseph's room. The
two dogs follow me eagerly. They seem to be asking me where Joseph is.
A little iron bed, a large cupboard, a sort of low commode, a table,
two chairs, all in white-wood, and a porte-manteau, which a green
lustring curtain, running on a rod, protects from the dust,--these
constitute the furnishings. Though the room is not luxurious, it
is extremely orderly and clean. It has something of the rigidity
and austerity of a monk's cell in a convent. On the white-washed
walls, between the portraits of Déroulède and General Mercier, holy
pictures unframed,--Virgins, an Adoration of the Magi, a Massacre of
the Innocents, a view of Paradise. Above the bed a large crucifix of
dark wood, serving as a holy-water basin, and barred with a branch of
consecrated box.
It is not very delicate, to be sure, but I could not resist my violent
desire to search everywhere, in the hope, vague though it were, of
discovering some of Joseph's secrets. Nothing is mysterious in this
room, nothing is hidden. It is the naked chamber of a man who has no
secrets, whose life is pure, exempt from complications and events. The
keys are in the furniture and in the cupboards; not a drawer is locked.
On the table some packages of seeds and a book, "The Good Gardener."
On the mantel a prayer-book, whose pages are yellow, and a little
note-book, in which have been copied various receipts for preparing
encaustic, Bordelaise stew, and mixtures of nicotine and sulphate of
iron. Not a letter anywhere; not even an account-book. Nowhere the
slightest trace of any correspondence, either on business, politics,
family matters, or love. In the commode, beside worn-out shoes and
old hose-nozzles, piles of pamphlets, numerous numbers of the "Libre
Parole." Under the bed, mouse-traps and rat-traps. I have felt of
everything, turned everything upside down, emptied everything,--coats,
mattress, linen, and drawers. There is nothing else. In the cupboard
nothing has been changed. It is just as I left it a week ago, when I
put it in order in Joseph's presence. Is it possible that Joseph has
nothing? Is it possible that he is so lacking in those thousand little
intimate and familiar things whereby a man reveals his tastes, his
passions, his thoughts, a little of that which dominates his life?
Ah! yes, here! From the back of the table-drawer I take a cigar-box,
wrapped in paper and strongly tied with string running four times
round. With great difficulty I untie the knots, I open the box, and
on a bed of wadding I see five consecrated medals, a little silver
crucifix, and a rosary of red beads. Always religion!
My search concluded, I leave the room, filled with nervous irritation
at having found nothing of what I was searching for, and having learned
nothing of what I wanted to know. Decidedly, Joseph communicates his
impenetrability to everything that he touches. The articles that he
possesses are as silent as his lips, as unfathomable as his eyes and
brow. The rest of the day I have had before me, really before me,
Joseph's face, enigmatical, sneering, and crusty, by turns. And it has
seemed to me that I could hear him saying to me:
"And much farther you have got, my awkward little one, in consequence
of your curiosity. Ah! you can look again, you can search my linen, my
trunks, my soul; you will never find anything out."
I do not wish to think of all this any more; I do not wish to think of
Joseph any more. My head aches too hard, and I believe that I should go
mad. Let us return to my memories.
Scarcely had I left the good sisters of Neuilly, when I fell again into
the hell of the employment-bureaus. And yet I had firmly resolved never
to apply to them again. But, when one is on the pavements, without
money enough to buy even a bit of bread, what is one to do? Friends,
old comrades? Bah! They do not even answer you. Advertisements in
the newspapers? They cost a great deal, and involve interminable
correspondence,--a great lot of trouble for nothing. And besides,
they are very risky. At any rate, one must have something ahead, and
Cléclé's twenty francs had quickly melted in my hands. Prostitution?
Street-walking? To take men home with you who are often more destitute
than yourself? Oh! no, indeed. For pleasure,--yes, as much as you like.
But for money? I cannot; I do not know how; I am always victimized. I
was even obliged to hang up some little jewels that I had, in order to
pay for my board and lodging. Inevitably, hard luck brings you back to
the agencies of usury and human exploitation.
Oh! the employment-bureaus, what dirty traps they are! In the first
place, one must give ten sous to have her name entered; and then there
is the risk of getting a bad place. In these frightful dens there is
no lack of bad places; and, really, one has only the embarrassment of
choice between one-eyed hussies and blind hussies. Nowadays, women with
nothing at all, keepers of little fourpenny grocery stores, pretend
to have servants and to play the _role_ of countess. What a pity!
If, after discussions, and humiliating examinations, and still more
humiliating haggling, you succeed in coming to terms with one of these
rapacious _bourgeoises_, you owe to the keeper of the employment-bureau
three per cent. of your first year's wages. So much the worse, if
you remain but ten days in the place she has procured for you. That
does not concern her; her account is good, and the entire commission
is exacted. Oh! they know the trick; they know where they send you,
and that you will come back to them soon. Once, for instance, I had
seven places in four months and a half. A run on the black; impossible
houses, worse than prisons. Well, I had to pay the employment-bureau
three per cent. of seven years' wages,--that is, including the ten sous
required for each fresh entrance of my name, more than ninety francs.
And nothing had been accomplished, and all had to be begun over again.
Is that just, I want to know? Is it not abominable robbery?
Robbery? In whatever direction one turns, one sees nothing but robbery
anywhere. Of course it is always those who have nothing who are the
most robbed, and robbed by those who have all. But what is one to do?
One rages and rebels, and then ends by concluding that it is better
to be robbed than to die like a dog in the street. Oh! the world is
arranged on a fine plan, that's sure! What a pity it is that General
Boulanger did not succeed! At least he, it seems, loved domestics.
The employment-bureau in which I was stupid enough to have my
name entered is situated in the Rue du Colisée, at the back of a
court-yard, on the third floor of a dark and very old house,--almost
a house for working-people. At the very entrance the narrow and steep
staircase, with its filthy steps that stick to your shoes and its
damp banister that sticks to your hands, blows into your face an
infected air, an odor of sinks and closets, and fills your heart with
discouragement. I do not pretend to be fastidious, but the very sight
of this staircase turns my stomach and cuts off my legs, and I am
seized with a mad desire to run away. The hope which, on the way, has
been singing in your head is at once silenced, stifled by this thick
and sticky atmosphere, by these vile steps, and these sweating walls
that seem to be frequented by glutinous larvæ and cold toads. Really, I
do not understand how fine ladies dare to venture into this unhealthy
hovel. Frankly, they are not disgusted. But what is there to-day that
disgusts fine ladies? They would not go into such a house to help a
poor person, but to worry a domestic they would go the devil knows
where!
This bureau was run by Mme. Paulhat-Durand, a tall woman of almost
forty-five years, who, underneath her very black and slightly wavy
hair, and in spite of soft flesh crammed into a terrible corset, still
preserved remnants of beauty, a majestic deportment,... and such an
eye! My! but she must have had fun in her day! With her austere
elegance, always wearing a black watered-silk dress, a long gold chain
falling in loops over her prominent bosom, a brown velvet cravat
around her neck, and with very pale hands, she seemed the perfection
of dignity and even a little haughty. She lived, outside of marriage,
with a city employee, M. Louis. We knew him only by his Christian name.
He was a queer type, extremely near-sighted, with mincing movements,
always silent, and presenting a very awkward appearance in a grey
jacket that was too short for him. Sad, timid, bent, although young, he
seemed, not happy, but resigned. He never dared to speak to us, or even
to look at us, for the madame was very jealous. When he came in, with
his bag of papers under his arm, he contented himself with slightly
lifting his hat in our direction, without turning his head toward
us, and, with a dragging step, glided into the hall, like a shadow.
And how tired the poor fellow was! At night M. Louis attended to the
correspondence, kept the books,... and did the rest.
Mme. Paulhat-Durand was named neither Paulhat or Durand; these two
names, which go so well together, she acquired, it seems, from two
gentlemen, dead to-day, with whom she had lived, and who had supplied
her with funds to open her employment-bureau. Her real name was
Josephine Carp. Like many keepers of employment-bureaus, she was an
old chambermaid. That was to be seen, moreover, in her pretentious
bearing, in her manners, modeled upon those of the great ladies in
whose service she had been, and beneath which, in spite of her gold
chain and black silk dress, one could see the filth of her inferior
origin. She showed all the insolence of an old domestic, but she
reserved this insolence for us exclusively, showing her customers, on
the contrary, a servile obsequiousness, proportioned to their wealth
and social rank.
"Oh! what a set of people, Madame the Countess," said she, with an
air of affectation. "Chambermaids _de luxe_,--that is, wenches who
are unwilling to do anything, who do not work, and whose honesty and
morality I do not guarantee,--as many of those as you want! But women
who work, who sew, who know their trade,--there are no more of them; I
have no more of them; nobody has any more of them. That's the way it
is."
Yet her bureau was well patronized. She had the custom especially
of the people in the Champs-Elysées quarter, consisting largely of
foreigners and Jewesses. Ah! the scandals that I know about them!
The door opens into a hall leading to the _salon_, where Mme.
Paulhat-Durand is enthroned in her perpetual black silk dress. At the
left of the hall is a sort of dark hole, a vast ante-room with circular
benches, and in the middle a table recovered with faded red serge.
Nothing else. The ante-room is lighted only by a narrow strip of glass
set in the upper part of the partition which separates the room from
the employment-bureau, and running its entire length. A bad light, a
light more gloomy than darkness, comes through this glass, coating
objects and faces with something less than a twilight glimmer.
We came there every morning and every afternoon, heaps of us,--cooks
and chambermaids, gardeners and valets, coachmen and butlers,--and we
spent our time in telling each other of our misfortunes, in running
down the masters, and in wishing for extraordinary, fairy-like,
liberating places. Some brought books and newspapers, which they read
passionately; others wrote letters. Now gay, now sad, our buzzing
conversations were often interrupted by the sudden irruption of Mme.
Paulhat-Durand, like a gust of wind.
"Be silent, young women," she cried. "It is impossible to hear
ourselves in the _salon_."
Or else she called in a curt, shrill voice:
"Mademoiselle Jeanne!"
Mlle. Jeanne rose, arranged her hair a little, followed the madame into
the bureau, from which she returned a few moments later, with a grimace
of disdain upon her lips. Her recommendations had not been found
sufficient. What did they require then? The Monthyon prize? A maiden's
diploma?
Or else they had been unable to agree upon wages.
"Oh! no, the mean things! A dirty dance hall ... nothing to pinch. She
does her own marketing. Oh! la! la! Four children in the house! Think
of it!"
The whole punctuated by furious or obscene gestures.
We all passed into the bureau by turns, summoned by Mme.
Paulhat-Durand, whose voice grew shriller and shriller, and whose
shining flesh at last became green with anger. For my part, I saw
directly with whom I had to deal, and that the place did not suit me.
Then, to amuse myself, instead of submitting to their stupid questions,
I questioned the fine ladies themselves.
"Madame is married?"
"Undoubtedly."
"Ah! And Madame has children?"
"Certainly."
"Dogs?"
"Yes."
"Madame makes the chambermaid sit up?"
"When I go out in the evening ... evidently."
"And Madame often goes out in the evening?"
Pursing up her lips, she was about to answer; but I, casting a
contemptuous glance at her hat, her costume, and her entire person,
said, in a curt and disdainful voice:
"I regret it, but Madame's place does not please me. I do not go into
houses like Madame's."
And I sailed out triumphantly.
One day a little woman, with hair outrageously dyed, with lips painted
with minium, with enameled cheeks, as insolent as a guinea-hen, and
perfumed like a bidet, after asking me thirty-six questions, put a
thirty-seventh:
"Are you well behaved? Do you receive lovers?"
"And Madame?" I answered very quietly, showing no astonishment.
Some, less difficult to please, or more weary or more timid, accepted
infected places. They were hooted.
"_Bon voyage!_ We shall see you soon again."
At the sight of us thus piled up on our benches, with legs spread
apart, dreamy, stupid, or chattering, and listening to the successive
calls of the madame: "Mademoiselle Victoire!... Mademoiselle Irène!...
Mademoiselle Zulma!" it sometimes seemed to me as if we were in a
public house, awaiting the next caller. That seemed to me funny or sad,
I don't know which; and one day I remarked upon it aloud. There was a
general outburst of laughter. Each one immediately delivered herself of
all the exact and marvelous information of which she was in possession
concerning establishments of that character. A fat and puffy creature,
who was peeling an orange, said:
"Surely that would be better. They are sure of a living in those
places. And champagne, you know, young women; and chemises with silver
stars; and no corsets!"
I remember that that day I thought of my sister Louise, undoubtedly
shut up in one of those houses. I pictured to myself her life, possibly
happy, at least tranquil, in any case exempt from the danger of poverty
and hunger. And, more than ever disgusted with my dismal and beaten
youth, with my wandering existence, with my dread of the morrow, I too
dreamed:
"Yes, perhaps that would be better."
And evening came, and then night,--a night hardly darker than the day.
We became silent, fatigued from having talked too much, from having
waited too long. A gas jet was lighted in the hall, and regularly,
at five o'clock, through the glass in the door, we could see the
slightly-bent outline of M. Louis passing very quickly, and then
vanishing. It was the signal for our departure.
Often old women, runners for public houses, pimps with a respectable
air, and quite like the good sisters in their honeyed sweetness,
awaited us at the exit on the sidewalk. They followed us discreetly,
and, in some darker corner of the street, behind the groups of trees in
the Champs-Elysées, out of sight of the police, they approached us.
"Come, then, to my house, instead of dragging out your poor life from
anxiety to anxiety, and from poverty to poverty. In my house you will
find pleasure, luxury, money; you will find liberty."
Dazzled by the marvelous promises, several of my little comrades
listened to these love-brokers. With sadness I saw them start. Where
are they now?
One evening one of these prowlers, fat and flabby, whom I had already
brutally dismissed, succeeded in getting me to go with her to a café in
the Rond-Point, where she offered me a glass of chartreuse. I see her
still, with her hair turning grey, her severe costume of a _bourgeoise_
widow, her plump and sticky hands, loaded with rings. She reeled
off her story with more spirit and conviction than usual, and, as I
remained indifferent to all her humbug inducements, she cried:
"Oh! if you only would, my little one. I do not need to look at you
twice to see how beautiful you are in all respects. And it is a real
crime to let such beauty go to waste, and be squandered in the company
of house-servants. With your beauty, you would quickly make a fortune.
Oh! you would have a bag of money in a very little time. You see, I
have a wonderful set of customers,--old gentlemen, very influential,
and very, very generous. All that is best in Paris comes to my
house,--famous generals, powerful magistrates, foreign ambassadors."
She drew nearer to me, lowering her voice.
"And if I were to tell you that the president of the republic himself
... why, yes, my little one! That gives you an idea of what my house
is. There is not one like it in the world. Rabineau's is nothing side
of my house. And stay! yesterday at five o'clock the president was so
well pleased that he promised me the academic palms ... for my son, who
is chief auditor in a religious educational institution at Auteuil."
She looked at me a long time, searching me body and soul, and repeated:
"Oh! if you would! What a success!"
I offered a heap of objections, my lack of fine linen, of costumes, of
jewels. The old woman reassured me.
"Oh! if that's all," said she, "you need not worry, because in my
house, you understand, natural beauty is the chief adornment."
"Yes, yes, I know, but still...."
"I assure you that you need not worry," she insisted, with benevolence.
"Listen, sign a contract with me for three months, and I will give you
an outfit of the best, such as no soubrette of the Théâtre-Français
ever had. My word for it!"