"Oh! but the flowers in the broad lawns! And the little birds!"
William sneered:
"The flowers? They are pretty only on hats and in the millinery shops.
And the little birds? Oh, don't talk about them! They prevent you from
sleeping in the morning. They sound like bawling children. Oh! no. Oh!
no. I have enough of the country. The country is fit only for peasants."
And, straightening up, with a noble gesture, he concluded, in a proud
voice:
"I must have sport. I am not a peasant; I am a sportsman."
Nevertheless I was happy, and I awaited the month of June with
impatience. Oh! the marguerites in the meadows; the little paths
under the trembling leaves; the nests hidden in the ivies against
the old walls; and the nightingales on moonlight nights; and the
sweet conversations, hand in hand, on the brinks of wells, lined with
honeysuckles and carpeted with maiden's-hair and moss; and the bowls
of foaming milk; and the broad-brimmed straw hats; and the little
chickens; and the masses heard in the village churches, with their
towering steeples; and everything that moves and charms you, and makes
an impression on your heart, like one of those pretty ballads they sing
in the music-halls!
Although I am fond of fun, I have a poetical nature. The old shepherds,
the outspread hay, the birds that pursue one another from branch
to branch, and the brooks that run singing over light pebbles, and
the handsome lads, with complexions made purple by the sun, like
grapes on very old vines,--the handsome lads with robust limbs and
powerful chests,--all these things make me dream pleasant dreams. In
thinking of these things, I become almost a little girl again, my soul
inundated and my heart refreshed by innocence and candor, as a little
rain refreshes the little flower too much burned by the sun, too much
dried by the wind. And at night, while waiting for William, becoming
enthusiastic over the prospects of this future of pure joys, I made
verses:
Petite fleur,
O toi, ma soeur,
Dont la senteur
Fait mon bonheur ...
Et toi, ruisseau,
Lointain coteau,
Frêle arbrisseau,
Au bord de l'eau,
Que puis-je dire,
Dans mon délire?
Je vous admire ...
Et je soupire ...
Amour, amour,
Amour d'un jour,
Et de toujours!...
Amour, amour!...
As soon as William returned, all poesy flew away. He brought me the
heavy odor of the bar-room, and his kisses, which smelt of gin, quickly
broke the wings of my dream. I never wanted to show him my verses. What
was the use? He would have laughed at me, and at the sentiment that
inspired them. And undoubtedly he would have said to me:
"Take Edgar, now! He is an astonishing man. Does he make verses?"
My poetical nature was not the only cause of my impatience to start for
the country. My stomach was out of order, in consequence of the long
period of poverty through which I had just passed, and perhaps also
in consequence of the too abundant and exciting food that I was now
enjoying, and the champagne and the Spanish wines that William forced
me to drink. I was really suffering. Often, in the morning, on getting
out of bed, I was seized with vertigo. During the day my legs bent
under me, and I felt pains in my head, like the blows of a hammer. I
really needed a quieter life, to restore me a little.
Alas! it was written that all this dream of happiness and health was
also to be dashed.
"Oh! hell!" as Madame would say.
The scenes between Monsieur and Madame always began in Madame's
dressing-room, and always grew out of trifling pretexts, out of
nothing. The more trifling the pretext, the more violent was the scene.
After which, having vomited all that their hearts contained of long
pent-up bitterness and wrath, they sulked for entire weeks. Monsieur
retired into his room, where he played solitaire and rearranged
his collection of pipes in new harmonies. Madame remained all the
time in her room, where, stretched upon a long chair, she read love
stories, interrupting her reading only to rearrange her closets and
her wardrobe, with rage and frenzy,--such a pillage! They met only
at meals. At first, not being familiar with their manias, I thought
they were going to throw plates, knives, and bottles at each other's
heads. Nothing of the kind, alas! It was at these times that they were
the best behaved, and that Madame contrived to appear like a woman
of society. They talked about their little affairs as if nothing had
happened,--a little more ceremoniously than usual, with a little more
cold and stilted politeness,--that was all. One would have said they
were dining in town. Then, the meal finished, with serious air, sad
eyes, and very dignified, they retired to their respective rooms.
Madame began again on her novels and drawers, Monsieur on his solitaire
and his pipes. Sometimes Monsieur went to pass an hour or two at
his club, but rarely. And they exchanged a furious correspondence,
hen-shaped or heart-shaped love-letters, with the transmission of which
I was entrusted. All day long I played the letter-carrier, bearing
terrible ultimatums, threats, supplications, pardons, and tears, from
the room of Madame to that of Monsieur. It was enough to make one die
of laughter.
After a few days, they became reconciled, just as they had fallen out,
without any apparent reason. And there were sobs, and "Oh, you naughty
boy!" "Oh! you naughty girl!" and "It is over, do I not tell you it is
over?" And they went away to have a little fête at the restaurant, and
the next day arose very late, much fatigued.
I at once understood the farce that the two poor actors were playing
for themselves. And, when they threatened to leave each other, I
knew very well that they were not sincere. They were riveted to each
other,--he by his interest, she by her vanity. Monsieur clung to
Madame's money, Madame held fast to Monsieur's name and title. But, as
in reality they detested each other, precisely because of this dupe's
bargain that bound them, they felt the need of saying so to each other
from time to time, and of giving to their disappointment, their spite,
and their contempt an expression as base as their souls.
"What are such lives good for?" said I to William.
"For Baby!" answered William, who, under all circumstances, found the
accurate and final word.
For immediate and material proof he drew from his pocket a magnificent
cigar, pinched that very morning, carefully cut off the tip, and then,
lighting it with satisfaction and tranquillity, declared, between two
fragrant whiffs:
"One should never complain of the stupidity of his masters, my little
Célestine. It is the only guarantee of happiness that we servants have.
The more stupid the masters, the more fortunate the servants. Go and
get me the fine champagne."
Half stretched out in a rocking-chair, with legs cocked up and crossed,
with the cigar in his mouth, and a bottle of old Martell within reach
of his hand, he slowly and methodically unfolded the "Autorité," and
said, with admirable good nature:
"You see, my little Célestine, one must be stronger than the people
whom one serves. That is the whole secret. God knows whether Cassagnac
is a terrible man. God knows whether his ideas suit me to a T, and
whether I admire this tall devil. Well, do you know? I would not like
to be his servant,--not for anything in the world. And what I say of
Cassagnac I say also of Edgar. Remember this, and try to profit by it.
To serve in the houses of intelligent people who are 'on to us' is to
be duped, my little pet."
And, enjoying his cigar, he added, after a silence:
"When I think that there are servants who pass their lives in running
down their masters, in annoying them and threatening them! What brutes!
When I think that there are some who would like to kill them! Kill
them! And what then? Do we kill the cow that gives us milk, and the
sheep that gives us wool? No, we milk the cow, and shear the sheep ...
skilfully ... gently."
And he silently plunged into the mysteries of conservative politics.
Meanwhile Eugénie was prowling around the kitchen, amorous and flabby.
She did her work mechanically, like a somnambulist, far from the people
up-stairs, far from us, far from herself, with no eye for their follies
or ours, and with silent words of sorrowful admiration always on her
lips.
"Your little mouth, your little hands, your big eyes!"
All this often saddened me,--I don't know why,--saddened me to the
point of tears. Yes, this strange house, in which all the beings in it,
the silent old butler, William, and myself, seemed to me disquieting,
empty, and dismal, like phantoms, sometimes filled me with unspeakable
and oppressive melancholy.
The last scene that I witnessed was particularly droll.
One morning Monsieur entered the dressing-room at the moment when
Madame was trying on a new corset in my presence, a frightful mauve
satin corset with yellow flowerets and yellow silk lacings. Madame's
taste will never choke her.
"What?" said Madame, in a tone of gay reproach. "Is that the way one
enters women's rooms, without knocking?"
"Oh! women?" chirped Monsieur. "In the first place, you are not women."
"I am not women? What am I, then?"
Monsieur rounded his lips,--My! what a stupid air he had!--and very
tenderly, or pretending tenderness, he buzzed:
"Why! you are my wife, my little wife, my pretty little wife. There is
no harm in entering the room of one's little wife, I suppose."
When Monsieur played the imbecile lover, it was because he wanted to
get some money out of Madame. She, still suspicious, replied:
"Yes, there is harm."
And she minced:
"Your little wife? Your little wife? It is not so sure that I am your
little wife."
"What! It is not so sure?"
"Indeed, one never knows. Men are so queer."
"I tell you, you are my little wife,--my dear, my only little wife ...
ah!"
"And you ... my baby ... my big baby ... his little wife's only big
baby ... na!"
I was lacing Madame, who, with bare arms raised, was looking into the
mirror. And I had a great desire to laugh. How they tired me with their
"little wife" and their "big baby"! What a stupid air they both had!
After picking up skirts, stockings, and towels, and disturbing brushes,
jars, and bottles, Monsieur took a fashion journal which was lying on
the dressing-table, and sat down on a sort of plush-covered stool. He
asked:
"Is there a rebus in this number?"
"Yes, I think there is a rebus."
"Have you guessed it?"
"No, I have not guessed it."
"Ah! ah! let's have a look at it."
While Monsieur, with wrinkled brow, was absorbed in the study of the
rebus, Madame said, a little dryly:
"Robert?"
"My darling."
"Then you notice nothing?"
"No. What? In this rebus?"
She shrugged her shoulders, and pursed up her lips.
"It is not a question of the rebus. Then you notice nothing? Well, you
never notice anything."
Monsieur surveyed the room from carpet to ceiling, from dressing-table
to door, with an annoyed and a very round look, which was excessively
comical.
"No, indeed! What is it? Is there anything new here, then, that I have
not noticed? I see nothing, upon my word."
Madame became very sad, and she groaned:
"Robert, you no longer love me."
"What! I no longer love you! Indeed, that is putting it a little too
strong!"
He rose, brandishing the fashion journal.
"What! I no longer love you!" he repeated. "Well, that's an idea! Why
do you say that?"
"No, you no longer love me ... because, if you still loved me, you
would have noticed something."
"But what thing?"
"Well, you would have noticed my corset."
"What corset? Oh! yes, this corset. 'Tis true, I had not noticed it.
How stupid I am! Why, yes, it is very pretty, you know,... ravishing."
"Yes, you say that now, and you don't mean it. I am too stupid, myself.
I tire myself out in trying to make myself beautiful,--in trying to
find things to please you. And you care nothing about it. Besides, what
am I to you? Nothing; less than nothing! You come in here, and what do
you see? That dirty newspaper. In what are you interested? In a rebus!
Ah, a pretty life you give me here! We do not see anybody; we do not go
anywhere; we live like wolves, like poor people."
"Oh! come, come, I beg of you. Don't get angry. Come! As poor people,
indeed!"
He tried to approach Madame, to take her about the waist, to kiss her,
but she repulsed him severely.
"No, let me alone. You provoke me."
"Oh! come, my darling, my little wife."
"You provoke me, do you hear? Let me alone. Do not approach me. You are
a gross egoist, a clumsy puppy; you don't know how to do anything for
me; you are a dirty type, there!"
"Why do you say that? It is madness. Come, don't fly into a passion
like that. Well, yes, I was wrong. I ought to have seen this corset
right away,--this very pretty corset. Why did I not see it right away?
I do not understand it. Look at me; smile at me. My! how pretty it is!
And how it becomes you!"
Monsieur dwelt too persistently upon the subject. He irritated me,
although I had no interest in the quarrel. Madame stamped on the
carpet, and, becoming more and more nervous, with pale lips and
clenched hands, she rattled on:
"You provoke me, you provoke me! Do you understand? Clear out!"
Monsieur continued to stammer, beginning now to show signs of
exasperation.
"My darling! It is not reasonable. Just for a corset! It is out of all
proportion. Come, my darling, look at me, smile at me. It is stupid to
make such a fuss over a corset."
"Ah! _Tu m'emmerdes!_" vomited Madame, in the voice of a washerwoman.
"_Tu m'emmerdes!_ Clear out!"
I had finished lacing my mistress. I arose at this word, delighted at
having surprised their two beautiful souls in all their nakedness, and
at the thought of the humiliation that they would feel in my presence
afterward. They seemed to have forgotten that I was there. Desiring to
see how the scene would end, I kept perfectly still, and made myself as
small as possible.
Monsieur, who had been holding in for a long time, now got angry in his
turn. He made the fashion journal into a big ball, and flung it with
all his might against the dressing-table; and he cried:
"_Zut! Flûte!_ This is really getting too tiresome! It is always the
same thing. One cannot say anything or do anything without being
received like a dog. And always brutalities and coarse language. I have
enough of this life; I have had enough of these fishwife's manners. And
shall I tell you the truth? Your corset,--well, your corset is vile. It
is a prostitute's corset."
"Wretch!"
With bloodshot eye, foaming mouth, and clenched and threatening fist,
she advanced toward Monsieur. And such was her rage that the words came
from her mouth in a sort of hoarse belching.
"Wretch!" she roared again. "And it is you who dare to speak to me in
this way,--you? Oh! but it is unheard of. When I picked him up in the
mud, this poverty-stricken fine gentleman, covered with dirty debts,
posted at his club,--when I saved him from the mire, he was not so
proud! Your name, I suppose? Your title? Oh! clean they were, indeed,
this name and title, on which the usurers were unwilling to advance
you another hundred sous. You can take them back, and welcome. And he
talks of his nobility, of his ancestors, this Monsieur whom I have
bought and whom I support! Well, the nobility will have nothing more
from me,--not that! And, as for your ancestors, you scoundrel, you can
try to hang them up. You will see whether you can borrow even ten sous
on their ugly mugs,--mugs of veterans and valets. Nothing more, do you
hear? Never, never! Back to your gaming-tables, trickster! Back to your
prostitutes, pimp!"
She was frightful. Monsieur, timid, trembling, with cowardly back and
humiliated eye, retired before this flood of filth. He reached the
door, noticed me, and fled, and Madame again cried after him, in the
passage-way, in a voice which had become more hoarse and horrible:
"Pimp! Dirty pimp!"
And she sank upon her long chair, overcome by a terrible nervous
attack, which I finally quieted by making her inhale an entire flask of
ether.
Then Madame began again the reading of her love stories and the
rearrangement of her drawers. Monsieur was more absorbed than ever in
the complexities of solitaire and in the revision of his collection of
pipes. And the correspondence began again. Timid and widely-spaced at
first, it was soon going on fast and furiously. I became utterly tired
out with running from the room of one to the room of the other, bearing
heart-shaped or hen-shaped threats. But oh! what fun I had!
Three days after this scene, while reading a missive from Monsieur,
on pink paper and bearing his coat of arms, Madame turned pale, and
suddenly asked me, in a gasping voice:
"Célestine, do you really think that Monsieur wants to kill himself?
Have you seen him with weapons in his hands? My God! If he were to kill
himself?"
I burst out laughing in Madame's face. And this laugh, which had
escaped me in spite of myself, increased, let itself loose, poured
itself out. I thought I should die, choked by this laugh, strangled by
this cursed laugh that rose, like a tempest, in my breast, and filled
my throat with irrepressible hiccups.
For a moment Madame sat aghast.
"What is it? What is the matter with you? Why do you laugh like that?
Be still, then. Will you be still, nasty creature?"
But the laugh held me fast; it would not let go. At last, between two
gasps, I cried:
"Oh! no, your goings on are too funny, too stupid! Oh! la la! Oh! la
la! How stupid it is!"
Of course I quit the house that night, and found myself once more on
the street pavement.
What a dog of a trade! What a dog of a life!
The blow was a hard one, and I said to myself, but too late, that never
should I find another place like that. There I had everything,--good
wages, profits of all sorts, easy work, liberty, pleasures. I had
only to let myself live. Another, less crazy than I, would have been
able to put much money aside, and gradually accumulate a complete and
beautiful wardrobe. Five or six years only, and who knows? One could
marry, buy a little business, have a home of one's own, secure against
want and ill-luck,--almost a lady. But now the series of miseries must
begin over again, and I submit anew to the offences of chance. I was
much put out by this accident, and furious; furious against myself,
against William, against Eugénie, against Madame, against everybody.
Curious and inexplicable thing,--instead of clinging and holding fast
to my place, which would have been easy with a type like Madame, I had
buried myself deeper in my stupidity, and, cheeking it through, I had
rendered irreparable that which could have been repaired. What strange
things take place in one at certain moments! It passes understanding.
It is like a fit of madness which falls upon you, you know not whence,
you know not why,--which seizes you, shakes you, excites you, and
forces you to cry out and shower insults. Under the influence of this
fit of madness, I had heaped outrages upon Madame. I had reproached
her with her father, with her mother, and with the imbecile falsehood
of her life; I had treated her as one does not treat a prostitute; I
had spat upon her husband. And this frightens me, when I think of it.
I feel ashamed of these sudden descents into baseness, of these filthy
intoxications, in which my reason so often staggers, and which impel me
to violence and murder. Why did I not kill her that day? Why did I not
strangle her? I do not know. God knows, however, that I am not wicked.
To-day I see again this poor woman, in my mind's eye; I see again her
sad and disorderly life, with her coward, her dismal coward, of a
husband. And I feel an immense pity for her; and I would like her to
have strength enough to leave him and be happy.
After the terrible scene I hurried down to the servants' hall. William
was mildly polishing the silverware, and smoking a Russian cigarette.
"What is the matter with you?" asked he, in the most tranquil fashion
in the world.
"I must go away; I must quit the box to-night," I gasped.