IV

Those people who look for the death of the Catholic religion in our day,

do not realize by what an infinite number of sturdy roots it still

retains its hold upon the hearts of the people. They do not realize the

secret, delicate fascination it has for the woman of the people. They do

not realize what confession and the confessor are to the impoverished

souls of those poor women. In the priest who listens and whose voice

falls softly on her ear, the woman of toil and suffering sees not so

much the minister of God, the judge of her sins, the arbiter of her

welfare, as the confidant of her sorrows and the friend of her misery.

However coarse she may be, there is always a little of the true woman in

her, a feverish, trembling, sensitive, wounded something, a restlessness

and, as it were, the sighing of an invalid who craves caressing words,

even as a child's trifling ailments require the nurse's droning lullaby.

She, as well as the woman of the world, must have the consolation of

pouring out her heart, of confiding her troubles to a sympathetic ear.

For it is the nature of her sex to seek an outlet for the emotions and

an arm to lean upon. There are in her mind things that she must tell,

and concerning which she would like to be questioned, pitied and

comforted. She dreams of a compassionate interest, a tender sympathy for

hidden feelings of which she is ashamed. Her masters may be the kindest,

the most friendly, the most approachable of masters to the woman in

their employ: their kindness to her will still be of the same sort that

they bestow upon a domestic animal. They will be uneasy concerning her

appetite and her health; they will look carefully after the animal part

of her, and that will be all. It will not occur to them that she can

suffer elsewhere than in her body, and they will not dream that she can

have the heartache, the sadness and immaterial pain for which they seek

relief by confiding in those of their own station. In their eyes, the

woman who sweeps and does the cooking, has no ideas that can cause her

to be sad or thoughtful, and they never speak to her of her thoughts. To

whom, then, shall she carry them? To the priest who is waiting for them,

asks for them, welcomes them, to the churchman who is also a man of the

world, a superior creature, a well-educated gentleman, who knows

everything, speaks well, is always accessible, gentle, patient,

attentive, and seems to feel no scorn for the most humble soul, the most

shabbily dressed penitent. The priest alone listens to the woman in a

cap. He alone takes an interest in her secret sufferings, in the things

that disturb and agitate her and that bring to a maid, as well as to

her mistress, the sudden longing to weep, or excite a tempest within

her. There is none but he to encourage her outpourings, to draw from her

those things which the irony of her daily life holds back, to look to

the state of her moral health; none but he to raise her above her

material life, none but he to cheer her with moving words of charity and

hope,--such divine words as she has never heard from the mouths of the

men of her family and of her class.

After entering the service of Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, Germinie

became profoundly religious and cared for nothing but the church. She

abandoned herself little by little to the sweet delight of confession,

to the priest's smooth, tranquil bass voice that came to her from the

darkness, to the conversations which resembled the touch of soothing

words, and from which she went forth refreshed, light of heart, free

from care, and happy with a delightful sense of relief, as if a balm had

been applied to all the tender, suffering, fettered portions of her

being.

She did not, could not, open her heart elsewhere. Her mistress had a

certain masculine roughness of demeanor which repelled expansiveness.

She had an abrupt, exclamatory way of speaking that forced back all that

Germinie would have liked to confide to her. It was in her nature to be

brutal in her treatment of all lamentations that were not caused by pain

or disappointment. Her virile kindliness had no pity to spare for

diseases of the imagination, for the suffering that is created by the

thought, for the weariness of spirit that flows from a woman's nerves

and from the disordered condition of her mental organism. Germinie often

found her unfeeling; the old woman had simply been hardened by the times

in which she had lived and by the circumstances of her life. The shell

of her heart was as hard as her body. Never complaining herself, she did

not like to hear complaints about her. And by the right of all the tears

she had not shed, she detested childish tears in grown persons.

Soon the confessional became a sort of sacred, idolized rendezvous for

Germinie's thoughts. Every day it was her first idea, the theme of her

first prayer. Throughout the day, she was kneeling there as in a dream;

and while she was about her work it was constantly before her eyes, with

its oaken frame with fillets of gold, its pediment in the shape of a

winged angel's head, its green curtain with the motionless folds, and

the mysterious darkness on both sides. It seemed to her that now her

whole life centred there, and that every hour tended thither. She lived

through the week looking forward to that longed-for, prayed-for,

promised day. On Thursday, she began to be impatient; she felt, in the

redoubling of her blissful agony, the material drawing near, as it were,

of the blessed Saturday evening; and when Saturday came and

mademoiselle's dinner had been hastily served and her work done, she

would make her escape and run to Notre-Dame de Lorette, hurrying to the

penitential stool as to a lover's rendezvous. Her fingers dipped in holy

water and a genuflexion duly made, she would glide over the flags,

between the rows of chairs, as softly as a cat steals across a carpeted

floor. With bent head, almost crawling, she would go noiselessly forward

in the shadow of the side aisles, until she reached the mysterious,

veiled confessional, where she would pause and await her turn, absorbed

in the emotion of suspense.

The young priest who confessed her, encouraged her frequent confessions.

He was not sparing of time or attention or charity. He allowed her to

talk at great length and tell him, with many words, of all her petty

troubles. He was indulgent to the diffuseness of a suffering soul, and

permitted her to pour out freely her most trivial afflictions. He

listened while she set forth her anxieties, her longings, her troubles;

he did not repel or treat with scorn any portion of the confidences of a

servant who spoke to him of all the most delicate, secret concerns of

her existence, as one would speak to a mother and a physician.

This priest was young. He was kind-hearted. He had lived in the world. A

great sorrow had impelled him, crushed and broken, to assume the gown

wherein he wore mourning for his heart. There remained something of the

man in the depths of his being, and he listened, with melancholy

compassion, to the outpouring of this maidservant's suffering heart. He

understood that Germinie needed him, that he sustained and strengthened

her, that he saved her from herself and removed her from the temptations

to which her nature exposed her. He was conscious of a sad sympathy for

that heart overflowing with affection, for the ardent, yet tractable

girl, for the unhappy creature who knew nothing of her own nature, who

was promised to passion by every impulse of her heart, by her whole

body, and who betrayed in every detail of her person the vocation of her

temperament. Enlightened by his past experience, he was amazed and

terrified sometimes by the gleams that emanated from her, by the flame

that shot from her eyes at the outburst of love in a prayer, by the

evident tendency of her confessions, by her constantly recurring to that

scene of violence, that scene in which her perfectly sincere purpose to

resist seemed to the priest to have been betrayed by a convulsion of the

senses that was stronger than she.

This fever of religion lasted several years, during which Germinie lived

a concentrated, silent, happy life, entirely devoted to God's

service--at least she thought so. Her confessor, however, had come

gradually to the conclusion that all her adoration tended toward

himself. By her glances, by her blushes, by the words she no longer said

to him, and by others which she made bold to say to him for the first

time, he realized that his penitent's devotion was going astray and

becoming unduly fervent, deceiving itself as to its object. She watched

for him when the services were at an end, followed him into the

sacristy, hung on his skirts, ran into the church after his cassock. The

confessor tried to warn her, to divert her amorous fervor from himself.

He became more reserved and assumed a cold demeanor. In despair at this

change, at his apparent indifference, Germinie, feeling bitter and hurt,

confessed to him one day, in the confessional, the hatred that had taken

possession of her for two young girls, who were his favorite penitents.

Thereupon the priest dismissed her, without discussion, and sent her to

another confessor. Germinie went once or twice to confess to this other

confessor; then she ceased to go; soon she ceased even to think of

going, and of all her religion naught remained in her mind but a certain

far-off sweetness, like the faint odor of burned-out incense.

Affairs had reached that point when mademoiselle fell ill. Throughout

her illness, as Germinie did not want to leave her, she did not attend

mass. And on the first Sunday--when mademoiselle, being fully recovered,

did not require her care, she was greatly surprised to find that "her

devotee" remained at home and did not run away to church.

"Oho!" said she, "so you don't go and see your cures nowadays? What have

they done to you, eh?"

"Nothing," said Germinie.

V

"There, mademoiselle!--Look at me," said Germinie.

It was a few months later. She had asked her mistress's permission to go

that evening to the wedding ball of her grocer's sister, who had chosen

her for her maid-of-honor, and she had come to exhibit herself _en

grande toilette_, in her low-necked muslin dress.

Mademoiselle raised her eyes from the old volume, printed in large type,

which she was reading, removed her spectacles, placed them in the book

to mark her place, and exclaimed:

"What, my little bigot, you at a ball! Do you know, my girl, this seems

to me downright nonsense! You and the hornpipe! Faith, all you need now

is to want to get married! A deuce of a want, that! But if you marry, I

warn you that I won't keep you--mind that! I've no desire to wait on

your brats! Come a little nearer----Oho! why----bless my soul!

Mademoiselle Show-all! We're getting to be a bit of a flirt lately, I

find----"

"Why no, mademoiselle," Germinie tried to say.

"And then," continued Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, following out her

thought, "among you people, the men are such sweet creatures! They'll

spend all you have--to say nothing of the blows. But marriage--I am sure

that that nonsensical idea of getting married buzzes around in your head

when you see the others. That's what gives you that simper, I'll wager.

_Bon Dieu de Dieu!_ Now turn a bit, so that I can see you," said

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, with an abrupt change of tone to one that

was almost caressing; and placing her thin hands on the arms of her

easy-chair, crossing her legs and moving her foot back and forth, she

set about inspecting Germinie and her toilet.

"What the devil!" said she, after a few moments of silent scrutiny,

"what! is it really you?----Then I have never used my eyes to look at

you.----Good God, yes!----But----but----" She mumbled more vague

exclamations between her teeth.----"Where the deuce did you get that mug

like an amorous cat's?" she said at last, and continued to gaze at her.

Germinie was ugly. Her hair, of so dark a chestnut that it seemed black,

curled and twisted in unruly waves, in little stiff, rebellious locks,

which escaped and stood up all over her head, despite the pomade upon

her shiny _bandeaux_. Her smooth, narrow, swelling brow protruded above

the shadow of the deep sockets in which her eyes were buried and sunken

to such a depth as almost to denote disease; small, bright, sparkling

eyes they were, made to seem smaller and brighter by a constant girlish

twinkle that softened and lighted up their laughter. They were neither

brown eyes nor blue eyes, but were of an undefinable, changing gray, a

gray that was not a color, but a light! Emotion found expression therein

in the flame of fever, pleasure in the flashing rays of a sort of

intoxication, passion in phosphorescence. Her short, turned-up nose,

with large, dilated, palpitating nostrils, was one of those noses of

which the common people say that it rains inside: upon one side, at the

corner of the eye was a thick, swollen blue vein. The square head of the

Lorraine race was emphasized in her broad, high, prominent cheek-bones,

which were well-covered with the traces of small-pox. The most

noticeable defect in her face was the too great distance between the

nose and mouth. This lack of proportion gave an almost apish character

to the lower part of the head, where the expansive mouth, with white

teeth and full lips that looked as if they had been crushed, they were

so flat, smiled at you with a strange, vaguely irritating smile.

Her _decollete_ dress disclosed her neck, the upper part of her breast,

her shoulders and her white back, presenting a striking contrast to her

swarthy face. It was a lymphatic sort of whiteness, the whiteness, at

once unhealthy and angelic, of flesh in which there is no life. She had

let her arms fall by her sides--round, smooth arms with a pretty dimple

at the elbow. Her wrists were delicate; her hands, which did not betray

the servant, were embellished with a lady's fingernails. And lazily,

with graceful sloth, she allowed her indolent figure to curve and

sway;--a figure that a garter might span, and that was made even more

slender to the eye by the projection of the hips and the curve of the

hoops that gave the balloon-like roundness to her skirt;--an impossible

waist, absurdly small but adorable, like everything in woman that

offends one's sense of proportion by its diminutiveness.

From this ugly woman emanated a piquant, mysterious charm. Light and

shadow, jostling and intercepting each other on her face on which

hollows and protuberances abounded, imparted to it that suggestion of

libertinism which the painter of love scenes gives to the rough sketch

of his mistress. Everything about her,--her mouth, her eyes, her very

plainness--was instinct with allurement and solicitation. Her person

exhaled an aphrodisiac charm, which challenged and laid fast hold of the

other sex. It unloosed desire, and caused an electric shock. Sensual

thoughts were naturally and involuntarily aroused by her, by her

gestures, her gait, her slightest movement--even by the air in which her

body had left one of its undulations. Beside her, one felt as if he were

near one of those disturbing, disquieting creatures, burning with the

love disease and communicating it to others, whose face appears to man

in his restless hours, torments his listless noonday thoughts, haunts

his nights and trespasses upon his dreams.

In the midst of Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's scrutiny, Germinie stooped

over her, and covered her hand with hurried kisses.

"There--there--enough of that," said Mademoiselle. "You would soon wear

out the skin--with your way of kissing. Come, run along, enjoy yourself,

and try not to stay out too late. Don't get all tired out."

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil was left alone. She placed her elbows on her

knees, stared at the fire and stirred the burning wood with the tongs.

Then, as she was accustomed to do when deeply preoccupied, she struck

herself two or three sharp little blows on the neck with the flat of her

hand, and thereby set her black cap all awry.