"Yes, yes, of course. I know your Saint-Vincent-de-Pauls, and all the
devil's saints, and all the deputies. No, thank you!"
Then, suddenly, without transition, I asked:
"Just what is your old man? To be sure, one more or less will make no
difference. It is not a matter of great consequence, after all."
But Mme. Paulhat-Durand did not unbend. She declared, in a firm voice:
"It is useless, Mademoiselle. You are not the serious woman, the trusty
person, that this gentleman needs. I thought you were more suitable.
With you, one cannot be sure of anything."
I insisted a long time, but she was inflexible. And I went back to the
ante-room in a very uncertain state of mind. Oh! that ante-room, so sad
and dark, always the same! These girls sprawling and crushed upon the
benches, this market for human meat to tempt _bourgeois_ voracity, this
flux of filth and this reflux of poverty that bring you back there,
mournful waifs, wreckage from the sea, eternally tossed hither and
thither.
"What a queer type I am!" thought I. "I desire things ... things ...
things ... when I think them unrealizable, and, so soon as they promise
realization, so soon as they present themselves to me in clearer
outline, I no longer want them."
There was something of this, certainly, in my refusal; but there was
also a childish desire to humiliate Mme. Paulhat-Durand a little, and
to take a sort of vengeance upon her by catching the contemptuous and
haughty creature in the very act of catering to lust.
I regretted this old man, who now exercised over me all the seductions
of the unknown, all the charms of an inaccessible ideal. And I found
pleasure in picturing him to my fancy,--a spruce old man, with soft
hands, a pretty smile, a pink and shaven face, and gay, and generous,
and good-natured, not so much a maniac as M. Rabour, allowing himself
to be led by me, like a little dog.
"Come here. Come, come here."
And he came, caressing, frisking about, with a kind and submissive look.
"Now sit up."
And he sat up, in such a funny way, with his forepaws beating the air.
"Oh! the good bow-wow!"
I gave him sugar; I stroked his silky skin. He no longer disgusted me.
And again I reflected:
"How stupid I am, all the same! A good doggy, a fine garden, a fine
house, money, tranquillity, an assured future,--to think that I have
refused all these, and without knowing why. And never to know what
I want, and never to will what I desire! At bottom I am afraid of
man,--worse than that, I have a disgust for man,--when he is far away.
When he is near me, I am capable of anything. I have no power of
resistance save against things that are not to happen and men whom I
shall never know. I really believe that I shall never be happy."
The ante-room was oppressive to me. This obscurity, this dim light,
these sprawling creatures, made my ideas more and more lugubrious.
Something heavy and irremediable hovered over me. Without waiting
for the bureau to close, I went away, with heavy heart and choking
throat. On the stairs I met M. Louis. Clinging to the banister, he was
ascending the steps, slowly and painfully. We looked at each other for
a second. He did not say anything, and I too found no word; but our
looks said all. Ah! he, as well as I, was not happy. I listened to him
a moment, as he went up the steps; then I plunged down the stairway.
Poor little wretch!
In the street I stood for a moment as if stunned. I looked about for
love's recruiting-agents, for the round back and black costume of "Mme.
Rebecca Ranvet, Millinery." Ah! if I had seen her, I would have gone
to her, I would have delivered myself to her. But there was no such
person there. The people passing were busy and indifferent, and paid no
attention to my distress. Then I stopped at a wine-shop, where I bought
a bottle of brandy, and, after strolling about for a while, still
stupid and with heavy head, I went back to my hotel.
Toward evening, late, I heard a knock at my door. I lay stretched upon
my bed, half naked, stupefied by drink.
"Who is there?" I cried.
"It is I."
"Who are you?"
"The waiter."
I rose, with my loosened hair falling from my shoulders, and opened the
door.
"What do you want?"
The waiter smiled. He was a tall fellow with red hair, whom I had met
several times on the stairs, and who always looked at me strangely.
"What do you want?" I repeated.
The waiter smiled again, apparently embarrassed, and, rolling in his
fat fingers the bottom of his blue apron, covered with grease spots, he
stammered:
"Mam'zelle ... I...."
He surveyed my person with a sort of dismal desire.
"Well, come in, you brute," I cried, suddenly.
And pushing him into my room, I closed the door again, violently.
Oh! misery me!
The waiter was discharged. I never knew his name!
I should not like to leave the subject of Mme. Paulhat-Durand's
employment-bureau, without giving my recollection of a poor devil
whom I met there. He was a gardener, who had been a widower for four
months, and who was looking for a place. Among the many lamentable
faces that passed through the bureau I saw none as sad as his, none
that seemed to me more overwhelmed by life. His wife had died of a
miscarriage ... of a miscarriage?... the night before the day when,
after two months of poverty, they were at last to take positions on an
estate,--he in charge of the garden, she in charge of the barn-yard.
Whether from ill-luck, or from weariness and from disgust of life, he
had found nothing since this great misfortune; he had not even looked
for anything. And during this period of idleness his little savings
had quickly melted away. Although he was very suspicious, I succeeded
in taming him a little. I put into the form of an impersonal narrative
the simple and poignant tragedy that he related to me one day when I,
greatly moved by his misfortune, had shown more interest and pity than
usual. Here it is.
When they had examined the gardens, the terraces, the conservatories,
and the gardener's house at the park entrance, sumptuously clothed with
ivies, climbing plants, and wild vines, they came back slowly, without
speaking to each other, their souls in anguish and suspense, toward the
lawn where the countess was following with a loving gaze her three
children, who, with their light hair, their bright trinkets, and their
pink and prosperous flesh, were playing in the grass, under the care of
the governess. At a distance of twenty steps they halted respectfully,
the man with uncovered head and holding his cap in his hand, the woman,
timid under her black straw hat, embarrassed in her dark woollen
sack, and twisting the chain of a little leather bag, to give herself
confidence. The undulating greensward of the park rolled away in the
distance, between thick clusters of trees.
"Come nearer," said the countess, in a voice of kind encouragement.
The man had a brown face, skin tanned by the sun, large knotty hands
of the color of earth, the tips of the fingers deformed and polished
by the continual handling of tools. The woman was a little pale, with
a gray pallor underlying the freckles that besprinkled her face,--a
little awkward, too, and very clean. She did not dare to lift her
eyes to this fine lady, who was about to examine her inconsiderately,
overwhelm her with torturing questions, and turn her inside out,
body and soul, as others had done before. And she looked intently at
the pretty picture of the three babies playing in the grass, already
showing manners well under control and studied graces.
They advanced a few steps, slowly, and both of them, with a mechanical
and simultaneous movement, folded their hands over their stomachs.
"Well," asked the countess, "you have seen everything?"
"Madame the Countess is very good," answered the man. "It is very grand
and very beautiful. Oh! it is a superb estate. There must be plenty of
work, indeed!"
"And I am very exacting, I warn you,--very just, but very exacting. I
love to have everything perfectly kept. And flowers, flowers, flowers,
always and everywhere. However, you have two assistants in summer, and
one in winter. That is sufficient."
"Oh!" replied the man, "the work does not worry me; the more
there is, the better I like it. I love my calling, and I know it
thoroughly,--trees, early vegetables, mosaics, and everything. As
for flowers, with good arms, taste, water, good straw coverings,
and--saving your presence, Madame the Countess--an abundance of manure,
one can have as many as one wants."
After a pause, he continued:
"My wife, too, is very active, very skilful, and a good manager. She
does not look strong, but she is courageous, and never sick, and nobody
understands animals as she does. In the place where we last worked
there were three cows and two hundred hens."
The countess nodded approvingly.
"How do you like your lodge?"
"The lodge, too, is very fine. It is almost too grand for little people
like us, and we have not enough furniture for it. But one need not
occupy the whole of it. And besides, it is far from the château, and it
ought to be. Masters do not like to have the gardeners too near them.
And we, on the other hand, are afraid of being embarrassed. Here each
is by himself. That is better for all. Only...."
The man hesitated, seized with a sudden timidity, in view of what he
had to say.
"Only what?" asked the countess, after a silence that increased the
man's embarrassment.
The latter gripped his cap more tightly, turned it in his fat fingers,
rested more heavily on the ground, and, making a bold plunge, exclaimed:
"Well, it is this. I wanted to say to Madame the Countess that the
wages do not correspond with the place. They are too low. With the best
will in the world it would be impossible to make ends meet. Madame the
Countess ought to give a little more."
"You forget, my friend, that you are lodged, heated, lighted; that you
have vegetables and fruits; that I give a dozen eggs a week and a quart
of milk a day. It is enormous."
"Ah, Madame the Countess gives milk and eggs? And she furnishes light?"
And he looked at his wife as if to ask her advice, at the same time
murmuring:
"Indeed, that is something! One cannot deny it. That is not bad."
The woman stammered:
"Surely that helps out a little."
Then, trembling and embarrassed:
"Madame the Countess no doubt gives presents also in the month of
January and on Saint Fiacre's day?"
"No, nothing."
"It is the custom, however."
"It is not mine."
In his turn the man asked:
"And for the weasels and pole-cats?"
"No, nothing for those either; you can have the skins."
This was said in a dry, decisive tone, that forbade further discussion.
And suddenly:
"Ah! I warn you, once for all, that I forbid the gardener to sell
or give vegetables to any one whomsoever. I know very well that it
is necessary to raise too many in order to have enough, and that
three-fourths of them are wasted. So much the worse! I intend to allow
them to be wasted."
"Of course, the same as everywhere else!"
"So it is agreed? How long have you been married?"
"Six years," answered the woman.
"You have no children?"
"We had a little girl. She is dead."
"Ah! that is well; that is very well," approved the countess, in an
indifferent tone. "But you are both young; you may have others yet."
"They are hardly to be desired, Madame the Countess, but they are more
easily obtained than an income of three hundred francs."
The countess's eyes took on a severe expression.
"I must further warn you that I will have no children on the premises,
absolutely none. If you were to have another child, I should be
obliged to discharge you at once. Oh! no children! They cry, they are
in the way, they ruin everything, they frighten the horses and spread
diseases. No, no, not for anything in the world would I tolerate a
child on my premises. So you are warned. Govern yourselves accordingly;
take your precautions."
Just then one of the children, who had fallen, came, crying, to take
refuge in his mother's gown. She took him in her arms, lulled him with
soothing words, caressed him, kissed him tenderly, and sent him back
to rejoin the two others, pacified and smiling. The woman suddenly
felt her heart growing heavy. She thought that she would not be able
to keep back her tears. Joy, tenderness, love, motherhood, then, were
for the rich only? The children had begun to play again on the lawn.
She hated them with a savage hatred; she felt a desire to insult them,
to beat them, to kill them; to insult and kill also this insolent and
cruel woman, this egoistic mother, who had just uttered abominable
words, words that condemned not to be born the future humanity that lay
sleeping in her womb. But she restrained herself, and said simply, in
response to a new warning, more imperative than the other:
"We will be careful, Madame the Countess; we will try."
"That's right; for I cannot too often repeat it to you,--this is a
principle here, a principle upon which I cannot compromise."
And she added, with an inflection in her voice that was almost
caressing:
"Moreover, believe me, when one is not rich, it is better to have no
children."
The man, to please his future mistress, said, by way of conclusion:
"Surely, surely. Madame the Countess speaks truly."
But there was hatred within him. The sombre and fierce gleam that
passed over his eyes like a flash gave the lie to the forced servility
of these last words. The countess did not see this murderous gleam, for
she had fixed her eyes instinctively on the person of the woman whom
she had just condemned to sterility or infanticide.
The bargain was quickly concluded. She gave her orders, detailed
minutely the services that she expected of her new gardeners, and,
as she dismissed them with a haughty smile, she said, in a tone that
admitted of no reply:
"I think that you have religious sentiments, do you not? Here everybody
goes to mass on Sunday, and receives the sacrament at Easter. I insist
upon it absolutely."
They went away without speaking to each other, very serious, very
sober. The road was dusty and the heat oppressive, and the poor woman
walked painfully, dragging her legs after her. As she was stifling a
little, she stopped, placed her bag upon the ground, and unlaced her
corsets.
"Ouf!" she exclaimed, taking in deep breaths of air.
And her figure, which had been long compressed, now swelled out,
revealing the characteristic roundness, the stain of motherhood, the
crime. They continued on their way.
A few steps further on they entered an inn by the roadside, and ordered
a quart of wine.
"Why didn't you say I was pregnant?" asked the woman.
The man answered:
"What? That she might show us the door, as the three others have done?"
"To-day or to-morrow makes but little difference."
Then the man murmured between his teeth:
"If you were a woman,--well, you would go this very evening to Mother
Hurlot. She has herbs."
But the woman began to weep. And in her tears she groaned:
"Don't say that; don't say that! That brings bad luck."
The man pounded the table, and cried:
"Must we, then, die, my God!"
The bad luck came. Four days later the woman had a miscarriage ... a
miscarriage?... and died in the frightful pains of peritonitis.
And, when the man had finished his story, he said to me:
"So now here I am, all alone. No wife, no child, nothing. I really
thought of revenging myself; yes, for a long time I thought of killing
those three children that were playing on the lawn, although I am not
wicked, I assure you. But that woman's three children, I swear to you,
I could have strangled with joy, with real joy! Oh! yes. But then, I
did not dare. What do you expect? We are afraid; we are cowards; we
have courage only to suffer!"