_Auteuil, April, 1886._
I
"Saved! so you are really out of danger, mademoiselle!" exclaimed the
maid with a cry of joy, as she closed the door upon the doctor, and,
rushing to the bed on which her mistress lay, she began, in a frenzy of
happiness and with a shower of kisses to embrace, together with the bed
covers, the old woman's poor, emaciated body, which seemed, in the huge
bed, as small as a child's.
The old woman took her head, silently, in both hands, pressed it against
her heart, heaved a sigh, and muttered: "Ah, well! so I must live on!"
This took place in a small room, through the window of which could be
seen a small patch of sky cut by three black iron pipes, various
neighboring roofs, and in the distance, between two houses that almost
touched, the leafless branch of a tree, whose trunk was invisible.
On the mantelpiece, in a mahogany box, was a square clock with a large
dial, huge figures and bulky hands. Beside it, under glass covers, were
two candlesticks formed by three silver swans twisting their necks
around a golden quiver. Near the fireplace an easy chair _a la
Voltaire_, covered with one of the pieces of tapestry of checker-board
pattern, which little girls and old women make, extended its empty arms.
Two little Italian landscapes, a flower piece in water-colors after
Bertin, with a date in red ink at the bottom, and a few miniatures hung
on the walls.
Upon the mahogany commode of an Empire pattern, a statue of Time in
black bronze, running with his scythe in rest, served as a watch stand
for a small watch with a monogram in diamonds upon blue enamel,
surrounded with pearls. The floor was covered with a bright carpet with
black and green stripes. The curtains at the bed and the window were of
old-fashioned chintz with red figures upon a chocolate ground.
At the head of the bed, a portrait inclined over the invalid and seemed
to gaze sternly at her. It represented a man with harsh features, whose
face emerged from the high collar of a green satin coat, and a muslin
cravat, with waving ends, tied loosely around the neck, in the style of
the early years of the Revolution. The old woman in the bed resembled
the portrait. She had the same bushy, commanding black eyebrows, the
same aquiline nose, the same clearly marked lines of will, resolution
and energy. The portrait seemed to cast a reflection upon her, as a
father's face is reflected in his child's. But in hers the harshness of
the features was softened by a gleam of rough kindliness, by an
indefinable flame of sturdy devotion and masculine charity.
The light in the room was the light of an evening in early spring, about
five o'clock, a light as clear as crystal and as white as silver, the
cold, chaste, soft light, which fades away in the flush of the sunset
passing into twilight. The sky was filled with that light of a new life,
adorably melancholy, like the still naked earth, and so replete with
pathos that it moves happy souls to tears.
"Well, well! my silly Germinie, weeping?" said the old woman, a moment
later, withdrawing her hands which were moist with her maid's kisses.
"Oh! my dear, kind mademoiselle, I would like to weep like this all the
time! it's so good! it brings my poor mother back before my eyes--and
everything!--if you only knew!"
"Go on, go on," said her mistress, closing her eyes to listen, "tell me
about it."
"Oh! my poor mother!" The maid paused a moment. Then, with the flood of
words that gushes forth with tears of joy, she continued, as if, in the
emotion and outpouring of her happiness, her whole childhood flowed back
into her heart! "Poor woman! I can see her now the last time she went
out to take me to mass, one 21st of January, I remember. In those days
they read from the king's Testament. Ah! she suffered enough on my
account, did mamma! She was forty-two years old, when I was born----papa
made her cry a good deal! There were three of us before and there wasn't
any too much bread in the house. And then he was proud as anything. If
we'd had only a handful of peas in the house he would never have gone to
the cure for help. Ah! we didn't eat bacon every day at our house. Never
mind; for all that mamma loved me a little more and she always found a
little fat or cheese in some corner to put on my bread. I wasn't five
when she died. That was a bad thing for us all. I had a tall brother,
who was white as a sheet, with a yellow beard--and good! you have no
idea. Everybody loved him. They gave him all sorts of names. Some called
him Boda--why, I don't know. Others called him Jesus Christ. Ah! he was
a worker, he was! It didn't make any difference to him that his health
was good for nothing; at daybreak he was always at his loom--for we were
weavers, you must know--and he never put his shuttle down till night.
And honest, too, if you knew! People came from all about to bring him
their yarn, and without weighing it, too. He was a great friend of the
schoolmaster, and he used to write the _mottoes_ for the carnival. My
father, he was a different sort: he'd work for a moment, or an hour, you
know, and then he'd go off into the fields--and when he came home he'd
beat us, and beat us hard. He was like a madman; they said it was
because he was consumptive. It was lucky my brother was there: he used
to prevent my second sister from pulling my hair and hurting me, because
she was jealous. He always took me by the hand to go and see them play
skittles. In fact, he supported the family all alone. For my first
communion he had the bells rung! Ah! he did a heap of work so that I
should be like the others, in a little white dress with flounces and a
little bag in my hand, such as they used to carry in those days. I
didn't have any cap: I remember making myself a pretty little wreath of
ribbons and the white pith you pull off when you strip reeds; there was
lots of it in the places where we used to put the hemp to soak. That was
one of my great days--that and the drawing lots for the pigs at
Christmas--and the days when I went to help them tie up the vines; that
was in June, you know. We had a little vineyard near Saint Hilaire.
There was one very hard year in those days--do you remember it,
mademoiselle?--the long frost of 1828 that ruined everything. It
extended as far as Dijon and farther, too--people had to make bread from
bran. My brother nearly killed himself with work. Father, who was always
out of doors tramping about the fields, sometimes brought home a few
mushrooms. It was pretty bad, all the same; we were hungry oftener than
anything else. When I was out in the fields myself, I'd look around to
see if anyone could see me, and then I'd crawl along softly on my knees,
and when I was under a cow, I'd take off one of my sabots and begin to
milk her. Bless me! I came near being caught at it! My oldest sister was
out at service with the Mayor of Lenclos, and she sent home her
wages--twenty-four francs--it was always as much as that. The second
worked at dressmaking in bourgeois families; but they didn't pay the
prices then that they do to-day; she worked from six in the morning till
dark for eight sous. Out of that she wanted to put some by for a dress
for the fete on Saint-Remi's day.--Ah! that's the way it is with us:
there are many who live on two potatoes a day for six months so as to
have a new dress for that day. Bad luck fell on us on all sides. My
father died. We had to sell a small field, and a bit of a vineyard that
yielded a cask of wine every year. The notaries don't work for nothing.
When my brother was sick there was nothing to give him to drink but
_lees_ that we'd been putting water to for a year. And there wasn't any
change of linen for him; all the sheets in the wardrobe, which had a
golden cross on top of it in mother's time, had gone--and the cross too.
More than that, before he was sick this time, my brother goes off to the
fete at Clefmont. He hears someone say that my sister had gone wrong
with the mayor she worked for; he falls on the men who said it, but he
wasn't very strong. They were, though, and they threw him down, and when
he was down, they kicked him with their wooden shoes, in the pit of the
stomach. He was brought home to us for dead. The doctor put him on his
feet again, though, and told us he was cured. But he could just drag
himself along. I could see that he was going when he kissed me. When he
was dead, poor dear boy, Cadet Ballard had to use all his strength to
take me away from the body. The whole village, mayor and all, went to
his funeral. As my sister couldn't keep her place with the mayor on
account of the things he said to her, and had gone to Paris to find a
place, my other sister went after her. I was left all alone. One of my
mother's cousins then took me with her to Damblin; but I was all upset
there; I cried all night long, and whenever I could run away I always
went back to our house. Just to see the old vine at our door, from the
end of the street, did me good! it put strength into my legs. The good
people who had bought the house would keep me till someone came for me!
they were always sure to find me there. At last they wrote to my sister
in Paris that, if she didn't send for me to come and live with her, I
wasn't likely to live long. It's a fact that I was just like wax. They
put me in charge of the driver of a small wagon that went from Langres
to Paris every month, and that's how I came to Paris. I was fourteen
years old, then. I remember that I went to bed all dressed all the way,
because they made me sleep in the common room. When I arrived I was
covered with lice."