So far as young Jupillon was concerned, love was simply the satisfaction
of a certain evil curiosity, which sought, in the knowledge and
possession of a woman, the privilege and the pleasure of despising her.
Just emerging from boyhood, the young man had brought to his first
_liaison_ no other ardor, no other flame than the cold instincts of
rascality awakened in boys by vile books, the confidences of their
comrades, boarding-school conversation, the first breath of impurity
which debauches desire. The sentiment with which the young man usually
regards the woman who yields to him, the caresses, the loving words, the
affectionate attentions with which he envelops her--nothing of all that
existed in Jupillon's case. Woman was to him simply an obscene image;
and a passion for a woman seemed to him desirable as being prohibited,
illicit, vulgar, cynical and amusing--an excellent opportunity for
trickery and sarcasm.
Sarcasm--the low, cowardly, despicable sarcasm of the dregs of the
people--was the beginning and the end of this youth. He was a perfect
type of those Parisians who bear upon their faces the mocking
scepticism of the great city of _blague_ in which they are born. The
smile, the shrewdness and the mischief of the Parisian physiognomy were
always mocking and impertinent in him. Jupillon's smile had the jovial
expression imparted by a wicked mouth, a mouth that was almost cruel at
the corners of the lips, which curled upward and were always twitching
nervously. His face was pale with the pallor that nitric acid strong
enough to eat copper gives to the complexion, and in his sharp, pert,
bold features were mingled bravado, energy, recklessness, intelligence,
impudence and all sorts of rascally expressions, softened, at certain
times, by a cat-like, wheedling air. His trade of glove-cutter--he had
taken up with that trade after two or three unsuccessful trials as an
apprentice in other crafts--the habit of working in the shop-windows, of
being on exhibition to the passers-by, had given to his whole person the
self-assurance and the dandified airs of a _poseur_. Sitting in the
work-shop on the street, with his white shirt, his little black cravat
_a la Colin_, and his skin-tight pantaloons, he had adopted an awkward
air of nonchalance, the pretentious carriage and _canaille_ affectations
of the workman who knows he is being stared at. And various little
refinements of doubtful taste, the parting of the hair in the middle and
brushing it down over the temples, the low shirt collars that left the
whole neck bare, the striving after the coquettish effects that
properly belong to the other sex, gave him an uncertain appearance,
which was made even more ambiguous by his beardless face, marred only by
a faint suggestion of a moustache, and his sexless features to which
passion and ill-temper imparted all the evil quality of a shrewish
woman's face. But in Germinie's eyes all these airs and this Jupillon
style were of the highest distinction.
Thus constituted, with nothing lovable about him and incapable of a
genuine attachment even through his passions, Jupillon was greatly
embarrassed and bored by this adoration which became intoxicated with
itself, and waxed greater day by day. Germinie wearied him to death. She
seemed to him absurd in her humiliation, and laughable in her devotion.
He was weary, disgusted, worn out with her. He had had enough of her
love, enough of her person. And he had no hesitation about cutting loose
from her, without charity or pity. He ran away from her. He failed to
keep the appointments she made. He pretended that he was kept away by
accident, by errands to be done, by a pressure of work. At night, she
waited for him and he did not come; she supposed that he was detained by
business: in fact he was at some low billiard hall, or at some ball at
the barrier.