IX

About the time that young Jupillon left the boarding-school, a maid in

the service of a kept woman who lived on the floor below mademoiselle

sometimes passed the evening with Germinie at Madame Jupillon's. A

native of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which supplies Paris with coupe

drivers and lorettes' waiting-maids, this girl was what is called in

vulgar parlance: "a great _bringue_;" she was an awkward, wild-eyed

creature, with the eyebrows of a water carrier. She soon fell into the

habit of going there every evening. She treated everybody to cakes and

liquors, amused herself by showing off little Jupillon, playing

pat-a-cake with him, sitting on his knee, telling him to his face that

he was a beauty, treating him like a child, playing the wanton with him

and joking him because he was not a man. The boy, happy and proud of

these attentions from the first woman who had ever taken notice of him,

manifested before long his preference for Adele: so was the new-comer

called.

Germinie was passionately jealous. Jealousy was the foundation of her

nature; it was the dregs of her affection and gave it its bitter taste.

Those whom she loved she wished to have entirely to herself, to possess

them absolutely. She demanded that they should love no one but her. She

could not permit them to take from her and bestow upon others the

slightest fragment of their affection: as she had earned it, it no

longer belonged to them; they were no longer entitled to dispose of it.

She detested the people whom her mistress seemed to welcome more

cordially than others, and with whom she was on most intimate terms. By

her ill-humor and her sullen manner she had offended, had almost driven

from the house, two or three of mademoiselle's old friends, whose visits

wounded her; as if the old ladies came there for the purpose of

abstracting something from the rooms, of taking a little of her mistress

from her. People of whom she had once been fond became odious to her:

she did not consider that they were fond enough of her; she hated them

for all the love she wanted from them. Her heart was despotic and

exacting in everything. As it gave all, it demanded all in return. At

the least sign of coldness, at the slightest indication that she had a

rival, she would fly into a rage, tear her hair, pass her nights in

weeping, and execrate the whole world.

Seeing that other woman make herself at home in the shop and adopt a

tone of familiarity with the young man, all Germinie's jealous instincts

were aroused and changed to furious rage. Her hatred flew to arms and

rebelled, with her disgust, against the shameless, brazen-faced

creature, who could be seen on Sunday sitting at table on the outer

boulevards with soldiers, and who had blue marks on her face on Monday.

She did her utmost to induce Madame Jupillon to turn her away; but she

was one of the best customers of the creamery, and the _cremiere_ mildly

refused to close her doors upon her. Germinie had recourse to the son

and told him that she was a miserable creature. But that only served to

attach the young man the closer to the vile woman, whose evil reputation

delighted him. Moreover, he had the cruel mischievous instinct of youth,

and he redoubled his attentions to her simply to see "the nose" that

Germinie made and to enjoy her despair. Soon Germinie discovered that

the woman's intentions were more serious than she had at first supposed:

she began to understand what she wanted of the child,--for the tall

youth of seventeen was still a child in her eyes. Thenceforward she hung

upon their steps; she was always beside them, never left them alone for

a moment, made one at all their parties, at the theatre or in the

country, joined them in all their walks, was always at hand and in the

way, seeking to hold Adele back, and to restore her sense of decency by

a word in an undertone: "A mere boy! ain't you ashamed?" she would say

to her. And the other would laugh aloud, as if it were a good joke.

When they left the theatre, enlivened and heated by the feverish

excitement of the performance and the place; when they returned from an

excursion to the country, laden with a long day's sunshine, intoxicated

with the blue sky and the pure air, excited by the wine imbibed at

dinner, amid the sportive liberties in which the woman of the people,

drunk with enjoyment and with the delights of unlimited good cheer, and

with the senses keyed up to the highest pitch of joviality, makes bold

to indulge at night, Germinie tried to be always between the maid and

Jupillon. She never relaxed her efforts to break the lovers' hold upon

each other's arms, to unbind them, to uncouple them. Never wearying of

the task, she was forever separating them, luring them away from each

other. She placed her body between those bodies that were groping for

each other. She glided between the hands outstretched to touch each

other; she glided between the lips that were put forth in search of

other proffered lips. But of all this that she prevented she felt the

breath and the shock. She felt the pressure of the hands she held apart,

the caresses that she caught on the wing and that missed their mark and

went astray upon her. The hot breath of the kisses she intercepted blew

upon her cheek. Involuntarily, and with a feeling of horror, she became

a party to the embracing, she was infected with the desires aroused by

this constant friction and struggling, which diminished day by day the

young man's restraint and respect for her person.

It happened one day that she was less strong against herself than she

had previously been. On that occasion she did not elude his advances so

abruptly as usual. Jupillon felt that she stopped short. Germinie felt

it even more keenly than he; but she was at the end of her efforts,

exhausted with the torture she had undergone. The love which, coming

from another, she had turned aside from Jupillon, had slowly taken full

possession of her own heart. Now it was firmly rooted there, and,

bleeding with jealousy, she found that she was incapable of resistance,

weak and fainting, like a person fatally wounded, in presence of the joy

that had come to her.

She repelled the young man's audacious attempts, however, without a

word. She did not dream of belonging to him otherwise than as a friend,

or giving way farther than she had done. She lived upon the thought of

love, believing that she could live upon it always. And in the ecstatic

exaltation of her thoughts, she put aside all memory of her fall, and

repressed her desires. She remained shuddering and pure, lost and

suspended in abysses of affection, neither enjoying nor wishing for

aught from the lover but a caress, as if her heart were made only for

the joy of kissing.

X

This happy though unsatisfied love produced a strange physiological

phenomenon in Germinie's physical being. One would have said that the

passion that was alive within her renewed and transformed her lymphatic

temperament. She did not seem, as before, to extract her life, drop by

drop, from a penurious spring: it flowed through her arteries in a full,

generous stream; she felt the tingling sensation of rich blood over her

whole body. She seemed to be filled with the warm glow of health, and

the joy of living beat its wings in her breast like a bird in the

sunlight.

A marvelous animation had come to her. The miserable nervous energy that

once sustained her had given place to healthy activity, to bustling,

restless, overflowing gayety. She had no trace now of the weakness, the

dejection, the prostration, the supineness, the sluggishness that

formerly distinguished her. The heavy, drowsy feeling in the morning was

a thing of the past; she awoke feeling fresh and bright, and alive in an

instant to the cheer of the new day. She dressed in haste, playfully;

her agile fingers moved of themselves, and she was amazed to be so

bright and full of activity during the hours of faintness before

breakfast, when she had so often felt her heart upon her lips. And

throughout the day she had the same consciousness of physical

well-being, the same briskness of movement. She must be always on the

move, walking, running, doing something, expending her strength. At

times all that she had lived through seemed to have no existence; the

sensations of living that she had hitherto experienced seemed to her

like a far-off dream, or as if dimly seen in the background of a

sleeping memory. The past lay behind her, as if she had traversed it,

covered with a veil like one in a swoon, or with the unconsciousness of

a somnambulist. It was the first time that she had experienced the

feeling, the impression, at once bitter and sweet, violent and

celestial, of the game of life brilliant in its plenitude, its

regularity and its power.

She ran up and downstairs for a nothing. At a word from mademoiselle she

would trip down the whole five flights. When she was seated, her feet

danced on the floor. She brushed and scrubbed and beat and shook and

washed and set to rights, without rest or reprieve, always at work,

filling the apartment with her goings and comings, and the incessant

bustle that followed her about.--"Mon Dieu!" her mistress would say,

stunned by the uproar she made, just like a child,--"you're turning

things upside down, Germinie! that will do for that!"

One day, when she went into Germinie's kitchen, mademoiselle saw a

little earth in a cigar box on the leads.--"What's that?" she

asked.--"That's grass--that I planted--to look at," said Germinie.--"So

you're in love with grass now, eh? All you need now is to have

canaries!"