LA FORCE.
The interior of a prison is a frightful pandemonium--a sad
_thermometer_ of the state of society, and an instructive study.
In a word, the varied physiognomies of all classes of prisoners, the
relations of family or affection which connects them still to the world,
from which the prison walls separate them, have appeared to us worthy of
regard.
The reader will, then, excuse us for having grouped around several of the
prisoners personages to be known in this tale, and other secondary figures,
destined to place in active relief certain critical events necessary to
complete this initiation into prison life. Let us enter La Force.
There is nothing gloomy, nothing sinister in the aspect of this house of
detention.
In the middle of one of the first courts are to be seen some mounds of
earth, planted with shrubbery, at the foot of which are already shooting
forth some precocious cowslips and snowdrops; a trellised doorway leads to
one of the seven or eight exercise-grounds destined for the prisoners.
The vast buildings surrounding this court resemble much a barrack or
manufactory, kept with extreme neatness. They are built of limestone, with
lofty windows, in order to allow a free circulation of air. The steps and
pavement of the yard are of scrupulous cleanliness. On the ground-floor,
vast halls, heated during winter, and well aired during summer, serve
during the day as a place for conversation, workshops, or refectories. The
upper stories are used as immense sleeping apartments, ten or twelve feet
in height, with shining floors; they are furnished with two rows of iron
bedsteads, excellent beds, composed of a soft thick mattress, a bolster,
sheets of white linen, and a warm woolen covering.
At the sight of these accommodations, uniting all the requisites of comfort
and salubrity, a stranger is much surprised, accustomed as he is to suppose
all prisons as sorrowful, dirty, unhealthy, and gloomy. He is mistaken.
Sad, dirty, and gloomy are the holes where so many poor and honest workmen
languish exhausted, forced to abandon their beds to their infirm wives, and
to leave with powerless despair their half-starving, naked children,
struggling with the cold, in the infectious straw.
There is some contrast between the physiognomies of the inhabitants of
these two dwellings. Incessantly occupied with the wants of his family, to
whom the day is hardly long enough, seeing a mad perversity reducing his
salary, the artisan will be cast down and worn out; the hour of repose will
not be sound to him; a kind of sleep like lassitude alone interrupts his
daily toil. Then, on awaking from this mournful drowsiness, he will find
himself overwhelmed with the same racking thoughts of the present, with the
same inquietudes for the morrow.
But if, hardened by vice, indifferent to the past, happy with the present,
certain of the future (he can assure himself of it by an offense or crime),
regretting his liberty without doubt, but finding large compensation in the
personal well-being he enjoys, certain to carry away with him on his
release a good sum of money, gained by moderate and easy labor, esteemed,
or, may be, feared by his companions, either for his impudence or
perversity, the convict, on the contrary, will be almost always careless
and gay. Once more; what does he want?
Does he not find in prison good shelter, good bed, good food, good pay,
easy labor, and above all and before all, _a society to his taste_, a
society, let us repeat, which measures his merit by the magnitude of his
offenses?
A hardened criminal, then, knows neither poverty, hunger, nor cold. What
matters to him the horror he inspires in honest men? He does not see
them--he knows none.
His crimes are his glory, influence, and strength with the bandits among
whom he will henceforth pass his life. How can he fear shame?
Instead of grave and charitable remonstrances, which might force him to
blush and to repent, he hears savage plaudits, which encourage him to
robbery and murder, Scarcely imprisoned, he meditates new misdeeds. What is
more logical?
If he is discovered, arrested anew, he will find repose, the personal care
of the prison, and his joyous and bold companions in crime and debauchery.
Is his corruption less great than that of the others? does he manifest, on
the contrary, the slightest remorse that he is exposed to atrocious
railings, infernal shouts, terrible threats?
In fine--a thing so rare that it has become an exception to the
rule--should a condemned man come out of this frightful pandemonium with a
firm resolution to reform by prodigies of labor, courage, patience, and
honesty, and be able to conceal his past offenses, a meeting with one of
his old prison companions would be sufficient to overturn his plan of
reformation so carefully designed. In this way:
A hardened ticket-of-leave proposes a job to a repentant one; the latter,
in spite of dangerous threats, refuses the criminal association;
immediately an anonymous communication strips the veil from the past life
of this unfortunate, who wishes, at any sacrifice, to conceal and expiate a
first fault by honorable conduct.
Then, exposed to the contempt, or, at least, the suspicion of those whose
interest he had obtained by force of industry and probity, reduced to
distress, soured by injustice, carried away by want, yielding, in fine, to
these fatal derelictions, this man, almost restored, falls back again, and
forever, to the bottom of the abyss from whence he had with so much
difficulty escaped.
In the following scenes we shall endeavor, then, to show the monstrous and
inevitable consequences of promiscuous confinement.
After ages of barbarous proofs and pernicious doubts, it begins to be
understood how unreasonable it is to plunge into an atmosphere abominably
vitiated, people whom a pure and salubrious air might have saved.
How much time shall be required to find out that, to associate gangrened
beings is to redouble the intensity of their corruption, which thus becomes
incurable?
How long to find out that there is but one remedy to this growing leprosy,
which threatens the body social, Solitary confinement?
We should esteem ourselves happy if our feeble voice could be, if not
counted, at least heard, among all those which, more imposing, more
eloquent than ours, demand, with so just and so impatient an importunity,
the complete, absolute adoption of the _solitary system_.
Some day, also, perhaps, society will know that evil is an accidental, not
organic malady; that criminals are almost always good in substance, but
false and wicked through ignorance, selfishness, or negligence of those
governing; and that the health of the soul, like that of the body, is
invincibly subordinate to the laws of a "hygiene" at once salubrious and
preservative.
God gives to all, along with healthy organs, energetic appetites, and the
desire of comfort; it is for society to modify and satisfy these wants.
The man who only has as his share strength, good-will, and health, has the
_right_, sovereign _right_ to a labor justly remunerated, which will assure
him, not the superfluities, but the necessaries of life, the means to be
healthy and robust, active and industrious, therefore honest and virtuous,
because his condition will be happy.
The dismal regions of misery and ignorance are peopled with beings of
sorrowful hearts. Cleanse these sewers, spread there the inclination to
labor, equitable salaries, just rewards, and soon these sickly faces, these
broken hearts, will be brought back to virtue, which is the life and health
of the soul.
We will conduct the reader to the visitors' room of the prison. It is an
obscure apartment, separated down its whole length into two equal parts by
a narrow, railed passage. One part communicates with the interior, destined
for the prisoners.
The other communicates with the office, destined for strangers admitted to
visit the prisoners.
These interviews and conversations take place through the double grating of
iron, in presence of a warder, who remains inside, at the extremity of the
passage. The appearance of the prisoners assembled in the visiting room on
this day offered numerous contrasts: some were covered with wretched
vestments; some seemed to belong to the working class; others, again, to
the well-to-do class.
The same contrast of condition was observable among the persons who came to
see the prisoners; they were almost all of them women. Generally the
prisoners appear less sad than the visitors; for, strange as it may appear,
it is proved by experience, there are few sorrows and little shame which
resist three or four days of imprisonment passed in company.
Those who are most alarmed at this hideous communion are soon habituated;
the contagion reaches them; surrounded by degraded beings, hearing only
infamous words, a kind of ferocious emulation drags them on, and either to
impose upon their companions by rivaling their obduracy or to stupefy
themselves by this moral intoxication, almost always the newly-arrived show
as much depravity and insolent gayety as the old hands. Let us return to
the visitors' room.
Notwithstanding the humming noise of a great number of conversations
carried on in a low tone, from one side of the passage to the other,
prisoners and visitors succeeded, after some practice, in being able to
converse among themselves--on the absolute condition not to allow
themselves, for a moment, to be distracted or occupied with the
conversation of their neighbors, which created a kind of secret in the
midst of all this noisy exchange of words, each one being forced to hear,
but not to listen, to a word of that which was spoken around him.
Among the prisoners summoned to the visitors' room, and the furthest from
the place where the guardian was seated, was one whom we still
particularize.
To the sad state of dejection he was in on his arrest had succeeded
impudent assurance. Already the contagious and detestable influence of
imprisonment _in common_ bore its fruits. Without doubt, if he had been
immediately transferred to a solitary cell, this wretch, still under the
blow of his first detection, the thought of his crimes constantly before
him, alarmed at the punishment which awaited him, might have experienced,
if not repentance, at least a salutary alarm, from which nothing might have
distracted him. And who knows what effect may be produced on a criminal by
an incessant, forced meditation on the crimes which he had committed, and
their punishment? Far from this, thrown into the midst of a ruffianly crowd
in whose eyes the least sign of repentance is cowardice, or, rather,
_treachery_, which they dearly expiate, for, in their savage obduracy and
in senseless distrust, they look upon as a spy every man (if there should
be such a one) who, sad and mournful, regretting his fault, does not
partake of their audacious thoughtlessness, and shudders at their contact.
Thrown among the bandits, this man, knowing, for a long time and by
tradition, the manners and ways of prisons, overcame his weakness, and
wished to appear worthy of a name already celebrated in the annals of
robbery and murder.
For it had been to him, Nicholas Martial, that Ferrand had applied when the
idea struck him to be rid of his housekeeper and Fleur-de-Marie at a blow.
His family were what are called ravageurs, that is dredgers, living on what
they could pick up out of the mud of the Seine. At least they were openly
these, but, secretly, they were river pirates, "lumpers," "light horsemen,"
housebreakers, and bravoes. The father had perished on the scaffold. His
widow, forty-five years old, was confirmed in crime, stern, hard, coldly
cruel, and bent on training all her children up into the life which would
most revenge on society the slaying of her husband. One son, Ambrose, had
been sold by Bras-Rouge (Red-Arm), a tavern keeper and fence, and now
languished in the Rochefort hulks. The eldest son, known as Martial, being
head of the family, was a poacher, a fisherman at unlawful seasons, but not
irreclaimably bad. The youngest children, François and Amandine, were not
yet spoiled by evil surroundings.
To this family, who added to their evil income by keeping a thieves' resort
in their house on Ravageur's Island, La Chouette had applied for the
murdering of Fleur-de-Marie. Nicholas and his sister, known as Calabash
(from her yellow complexion) had succeeded in drowning Ferrand's
housekeeper only. But, believing they had fulfilled the twofold bargain,
they had gone off rejoicing with their mother, to meet La Chouette, report
their success, and join in a fresh atrocity. This new crime, the robbery
and murder of a diamond-dealer in Red-Arm's public-house, was frustrated by
the landlord's secret connection with the police. They had made their
descent just as the jewel-broker was in the villains' hands, and arrested
the whole gang. Bras-Rouge (taken to prevent his fellows suspecting his
treachery), Nicholas Martial, and a scamp named Barbillon, were put in La
Force, widow Martial and Calabash in Saint Lazare. Another capture, a
ruffian called the Maitre d'École (Schoolmaster), from his caligraphic
abilities, who had killed La Chouette in a fit of madness, was put in the
Conciergerie Prison, in a cell for the insane.
To return to Nicholas Martial in La Force. Some veteran gallows-birds had
known his executed father, others, his brother, the galley-slave; he was
received and immediately patronized by these revelers in crime with savage
interest.
This paternal reception from murderer to murderer exhilarated the widow's
son, these praises bestowed on the hereditary perversity of his family
intoxicated him. Soon forgetting, in this hideous thoughtlessness, the
future which menaced him, he only remembered his past misdeeds but to
exaggerate them and glorify himself in the eyes of his companions. The
expression, then, of his face, was as impudent as his visitor's was uneasy
and concerned. This individual was one Micou, a receiver, dwelling in the
Passage de la Brasserie, to whose house Madame de Fermont and her daughter,
victims of the cupidity of Jacques Ferrand, had been obliged to retire.
Micou knew to what punishment he was subject, for having several times
acquired, at a miserable price, the fruits of Nicholas's robberies, and of
several others.
He being arrested, the receiver found himself almost at the discretion of
the bandit, who could point him out as his habitual fence. Although this
accusation might not be sustained by flagrant proofs, it was not the less
very dangerous for Micou: so he had immediately executed the orders which
Nicholas had sent him by a prisoner whose time had expired.
"Well! how do you get on, Daddy Micou?" said the thief.
"To serve you, sir," answered the receiver, eagerly. "As soon as I saw the
person you sent me, right away I--"
"Stop! why do you speak so loftily, Micou?" said Nicholas, interrupting
him, with a sardonic air. "Do you not despise me because I am in quod?"
"No, I despise no one," said the receiver, who did not care to make public
his past familiarity with this wretch.
"Well, then, speak as usual, or I shall believe you have no friendship for
me, and that would break my heart."
"As you like," said Micou, sighing. "I have busied myself with all your
little commissions."
"Well spoken, Micou. I knew well that you would not forget friends. The
weed?"
"I have left two pounds at the office, my lad."
"Is it good?"
"None better."
"And the ham?"
"Also left there, with a quartern loaf. I have added a little surprise you
did not expect--half a dozen hard-boiled eggs, and a fine Dutch cheese."
"That's what I call acting like a pal! And wine?"
"There are six bottles, sealed; but, you know, they will only give you one
bottle a day."
"What would you have? One ought to be content with that."
"I hope you are satisfied with me, my friend?"
"Certainly; and shall be still, and shall be again, Daddy Micou, for this
ham, cheese, eggs, and wine will only last the time to swallow them; but,
when there is no more, there will come some more, thanks to Daddy Micou,
who will give me some more sugar-plums, if I am a good boy."
"How? you wish--"
"In two or three days you would renew my little provision, Micou."
"May the devil burn me if I do. It is all very well for once."
"Good for once! Come, come; ham and wine are good always, you know that
well enough."
"It is possible; but I am not obliged to feed you with dainties."
"Oh, Micou! it is wrong, it is unjust, to refuse ham to me, who have so
often brought you fat tripe (sheet-lead)."
"Hush!" said the alarmed receiver.
"No; I'll make the beak decide; I will tell him. Imagine that, Daddy
Micou--"
"Good, good!" cried the receiver, seeing, with as much fear as anger,
Nicholas was disposed to abuse the position which their dealings gave him;
"I consent--I will replenish your stock of provisions when they are
exhausted."
"It is just--nothing but just. Neither must you forget to send some coffee
to my mother and Calabash, who are at Saint Lazare; they used to take their
cup every morning--they will feel the want of it."
"Still more? But do you mean to ruin me, lad?"
"As you please, old Micou; let us speak no more about it. I will ask the
big-wig if--"
"Agreed, then, for the coffee," said the receiver, interrupting him. "But
may the devil take you! cursed be the day I knew you!"
"My old man, as for me, it is just the contrary. At this moment, I am
delighted to know you. I venerate you as my foster-father."
"I hope that you have nothing more to order?" answered Micou, with
bitterness.
"Yes! tell my mother and sister that, though I trembled when I was
arrested, I tremble no more, and that I am now as bold as both of them."
"I will tell them. Is that all?"
"Stop! I forgot to ask for two pair of warm woolen stockings--you do not
wish me to take cold, do you?"
"I wish you were froze!"
"Thank you, Micou, that shall be later; at present, I prefer something
else. I wish to pass life calmly--at least, if they do not make me a head
shorter, like father, I shall have enjoyed life."
"Your life is very pleasant!"
"It is superb! Since I have been here, I have amused myself like a king. If
there had been lamps and guns, there would have been an illumination and a
salvo in my honor, when it was known that I was the son of the famous
Martial!"
"It is touching. Beautiful relationship!"
"Hold! there are many dukes and marquises; why, then, should not we of the
oldest family have our nobility?" said the thief with savage irony.
"Yes, Jack Ketch gives you your letters of nobility in Palace Square!"
"Very sure that it is not the parson! So much the more reason in prison one
should be of high Toby nobility, otherwise you are looked upon as a nobody.
You ought to see how they treat those mere fogle-hunters, and who do
their--Hold! there is one here named Germain, a young man who plays the
disgusted, and seems to despise us. Let him take care of his skin. He is a
sneak; he is suspected of being a spy. If this is so, they will slit his
nose, by way of warning!"
"Germain! A young man called Germain?"
"Yes. Do you know him? He is, then, in the family line, notwithstanding his
innocent looks?"
"I do not know him. But if it is the Germain of whom I have heard speak,
his lookout is good."
"How?"
"He once escaped a snare which Velu and the Big Cripple laid for him."
"Why did they do it?"
"I don't know. They said that down among the yokels he had sold one of
their band."
"I was sure of it. Germain is a spy. Well! I will tell this to my friends;
that will give them an appetite. Does the Big Cripple still play tricks on
your lodgers?"
"I am rid of the villain! you will see him here to-day or to-morrow."
"Bravo! we shall have a laugh! He's another who never looks glum!"
"Because he is going to meet Germain here, is why I said his account was
good--if he is the same--"
"And why has the Cripple been nabbed?"
"For a robbery committed with a lagger (released convict) who wished to
remain honest and labor. Oh, yes! the Big Cripple nicely fixed him; he is
so wicked! I am sure it was he who forced the trunk of two women who occupy
my fourth floor."
"What women? Oh! the two, the youngest of whom was so handsome, old
brigand."
"Oh, yes; but it is all over with her; for, at this present moment, the
mother must be dead, and the daughter not far from it. I shall be in for
two weeks' lodgings; but may the devil burn me if I give a rag to bury
them! I have had losses enough, without counting the presents which you
_beg_ me to give you and your family. This will nicely derange my business.
I have luck this year."
"Bah, bah! you are always complaining, old Micou; you are as rich as
Croesus. When you come to bring me some more provisions, you can give me
news of my mother and Calabash!"
"Yes, it must be so."
"Oh! I forget, while you are out, buy me also a new cap, of plaid velvet,
with a tassel; mine is no longer fit to be worn."
"Decidedly--you are joking!"
"No, Micou. I want a cap of plaid velvet; it is my notion."
"But you are determined, then, to make me sleep on straw?"
"Come, Daddy Micou, don't get vexed; it is yes or no; I do not force you.
But enough."
The receiver, reflecting that he was at the mercy of Nicholas, arose,
fearing to be assailed with new demands if he prolonged his visit.
"You shall have your cap," said he; "but take care, if you ask me for
anything more, I shall give nothing; happen what may, you will lose as much
as I."
"Be tranquil, Micou; I shall not blackmail you any more than is necessary,
for this would be a pity; you pay much heavy postage as it is."
The receiver went out, shrugging his shoulders with rage, and the warder
reconducted Nicholas into the prison. At the moment Micou left, Rigolette
entered.
The warder, a man of forty years, an old soldier of energetic appearance,
was dressed in a jacket, cap, and trousers of blue cloth; two silver stars
were embroidered on the collar and skirts of his coat.
At sight of the grisette, his face brightened up, and assumed an expression
of affectionate benevolence. He had always been struck with the grace,
gentility, and touching goodness with which Rigolette consoled Germain when
she came to converse with him. Germain, on his part, was no ordinary
prisoner. His reserve, his mildness, his sadness, inspired interest in the
prison officials; an interest they were careful not to show him, for fear
of exposing him to the bad treatment of his vicious companions, who, as we
have shown, regarded him with suspicious hatred.
It rained in torrents, but thanks to her overshoes and umbrella, Rigolette
had courageously braved the wind and rain.
"What a horrible day, my poor girl!" said the guardian to her, kindly. "You
must have had a good deal of courage to come out such a time as this, at
least!"
"When one is thinking all along the way of the pleasure they are going to
give a poor prisoner, one does not pay much attention to the weather, sir!"
"I have no need to ask you whom you come to see?"
"Surely not. And how is my poor Germain?"
"My dear, I have seen many prisoners; they were sad, one or two days, but
by degrees they fell in with the rest, and the most sorrowful at first
often became the most gay. Germain is not so; he appears to grow sadder
every day."
"It is this that troubles me."
"When I am on service in the yards, I watch him out of the corner of my
eye; he is always alone. I have already told you, you should advise him not
to act thus, but to speak to his comrades, otherwise he will become their
butt. The yards are watched, but--a blow is soon struck!"
"Oh, sir! is there still more danger for him?" cried Rigolette.
"Not precisely; but the knaves see he is not one of them, and they hate him
because he appears honest and proud."
"Yet I have advised him to do what you have told me, sir; to endeavor to
converse with the least wicked; but it is too much for him; he cannot
overcome his repugnance."
"He is wrong--wrong; a quarrel is soon got up."
"Can he not be separated from the others?"
"Since I have noticed two or three days ago their evil intentions toward
him, I have advised him to take a room by himself."
"Well?"
"I did not think of one thing. A whole range of cells are comprised in the
repairs now going on in the prison, and the others are occupied."
"But these bad men are capable of killing him!" cried Rigolette, with her
eyes filled with tears. "If by chance he had some persons interested in his
fate, what could they do for him, sir?"
"Nothing more than to obtain what the prisoners can obtain themselves by
paying money--a separate cell."
"Alas! then he is lost, if they hate him in the prison."
"Don't disturb yourself; he shall be watched closely. But I repeat, my
dear, counsel him to be a little familiar with them; only the first step
costs!"
"I will recommend him to do this with all my strength, sir; but for a good
and honest heart it is hard to be familiar with such people."
"Of two evils, choose the least. I go to ask for Germain. But, stop," said
the warder, reflecting; "there are only two visitors left; as soon as they
are gone--no more will come to-day, for it is now two o'clock--I will send
for Germain; you can talk more at ease. I can, even, when you are alone,
let him enter into the passage, so that you will be separated by one
grating instead of two; so much less."
"Oh, sir! how kind you are; how much I thank you!"
"Hush! let not any one hear you; it will cause jealousy. Seat yourself up
there, at the end of the bench, and as soon as this man and woman are gone,
I will send for Germain."
The warder returned to his post inside the passage. Rigolette went and
seated herself sadly at the extremity of the visitor's bench.
Thus we have a fine chance to draw the grisette's portrait.
Rigolette was hardly eighteen, of a middling size, perhaps rather small,
but so gracefully shaped, so finely modeled, so voluptuously developed,
that her size responded well to her bearing, fearless and yet modest; one
inch more in height would have caused her to lose much of her grace; the
movement of her small feet, always irreproachably confined in gaiter-boots
of black cloth, with rather thick soles, recalled to mind the coquettish,
light and discreet run of a quail. She did not appear to walk, she merely
touched the pavement; she slid rapidly on its surface. This walk, peculiar
to grisettes, ought to be attributed, without doubt, to three causes: To
their desire to be thought handsome; to their fear of an admiration
expressed in pantomime too expressive; to the desire that they always have
to lose as little time as possible in their peregrinations.
Rigolette's two broad thick bands of shining hair, black as jet, fell very
low on her forehead; her fine eyebrows seemed traced with ink, and
overshadowed large black eyes, sparkling and wicked; her full, plump cheeks
were like velvet of the freshest carnation, fresh to the sight, fresh to
the touch, like a rosy peach impregnated with the cold dew of the morning.
Her little turned-up nose, saucy and cunning, would have made the fortune
of a stage chambermaid; her mouth, somewhat large, with lips of rose well
moistened, and little, white, pearly teeth, was smiling and provoking; of
three charming dimples, which gave enticing grace to her face, two buried
themselves in her cheeks, the other in her chin, not far from a beauty
spot, a little black patch most killingly placed near the corner of her
mouth.
Up to the day of Germain's arrest, Rigolette had had no sorrows but those
of others; she sympathized with all her flowers--devoted herself, body and
soul, to those who suffered--but thought no more about it when her back was
turned. Often she ceased from laughing to weep sincerely, and then she
ceased from weeping to laugh again. A true child of Paris--she preferred
noise to solitude, movement to repose the resounding harmony of the
orchestra at the Chartreuse or Coliseum balls, to the soft murmur of the
winds, the waters, and the foliage--the deafening noise of the streets of
Paris to the solitude of the country--the glare of fireworks, the glitter
of a ball, the noise of rockets, to the serenity of a fine night, with
stars and darkness and silence. Alas! yes; the good girl frankly preferred
the black mud of the streets of the capital to the verdure of the flowery
meadows--its dirty or scorching pavements to fresh and velvet moss of
wood-paths perfumed with violets--the suffocating dust of the barriers or
the boulevards to the waving of golden corn, enameled with the scarlet
flowers of the wild poppy and the azure of the bluebells. Rigolette only
left her room on Sundays--and each morning, to lay in her provision of
chickweed, bread, milk, and hempseed, for herself and her two birds, but
she lived in Paris for Paris' sake. She would have been in despair to have
lived elsewhere than in the capital.
Another anomaly: notwithstanding this taste for Parisian pleasures;
notwithstanding the liberty, or, rather, the state of abandonment in which
she found herself, being alone in the world; notwithstanding the rigid
economy which she was obliged to use in her smallest expenses in order to
live on thirty sous a day; notwithstanding the most mischievous and
adorable little face in the world, never had Rigolette been a man's prey.
Early in life, she had lost her parents by the cholera, and, at ten years
of age, strangers had taken care of her, until she left them to find her
own living. At this period she had made Fleur-de-Marie's passing
acquaintance, and later, as she dwelt in Rudolph's lodging-house--that of
the prince whom she only thought to be a workman--she had been in the habit
of going out on Sundays and other holidays with young men of her house, but
they had given up the companionship when they found how virtuous she was,
without knowing it. Germain, also her neighbor in the house, had, however,
fallen desperately in love with Rigolette, without daring to breathe one
word respecting it. Far from imitating his predecessors, who resorted to
other sources of solace, without losing their regard for her, Germain had
delightfully enjoyed his intimacy with the girl, and the pleasure afforded
by her society on Sundays and every other evening that he was disengaged.
During these long hours, Rigolette was always gay and merry, and Germain
affectionate, serious, and attentive, and often slightly melancholy. This
sadness was his only disadvantage, for his manners, being naturally
refined, did not suffer by comparison with the ridiculous pretensions of M.
Girandeau, a traveling clerk, or with the boisterous eccentricities of
Cabrion, an artist, though Girandeau, by his excessive loquacity, and the
painter, by his no less excessive hilarity, had the advantage of Germain,
whose gentlemanly gravity rather awed his lively neighbor.
Rigolette had never evinced any partiality for either of her three lovers;
but, with excellent judgment, she soon discovered that Germain combined all
the qualities which would render any reasonable woman happy.
When the latter was imprisoned, her feeling manifested itself as love.