Jupillon promised Germinie not to go to the ball again. But he was just
beginning to make a name for himself at La Brididi, among the low haunts
near the barrier, the _Boule-Noire_, the _Reine-Blanche_ and the
_Ermitage_. He had become one of the dancers who make the guests leave
their seats, who keep a whole roomful of people hanging on the soles of
their boots as they toss them two inches above their heads, and whom the
fair dancers of the locality invite to dance with them and sometimes pay
for their refreshment to that end. The ball to him was not a ball
simply; it was a stage, an audience, popularity, applause, the
flattering murmur of his name among the groups of people, an ovation
accorded to saltatory glory in the glare of the reverberators.
On Sunday he did not go to the _Boule-Noire_; but on the following
Thursday he went there again; and Germinie, seeing plainly enough that
she could not prevent him from going, decided to follow him and to stay
there as long as he did. Sitting at a table in the background, in the
least brilliantly lighted corner of the ball-room, she would follow him
eagerly with her eyes throughout the whole contra-dance; and when it was
at an end, if he held back, she would go and seize him, take him almost
by force from the hands and caresses of the women who persisted in
trying to pull him back, to detain him by wicked wiles.
As they soon came to know her, the insulting remarks in her neighborhood
ceased to be vague and indistinct and muttered under the breath, as at
the first ball. The words were thrown in her face, the laughter spoke
aloud. She was obliged to pass her three hours amid a chorus of derision
that pointed its finger at her, called her by name and cast her age in
her face. At every turn she was forced to submit to the appellation of:
_old woman!_ which the young hussies spat at her over their shoulders as
they passed. But they did at least look at her; often, however, dancing
women invited by Jupillon to drink, and brought by him to the table at
which Germinie was, would sit with their elbows on the table and their
cheeks resting on their hands, drinking the bowl of mulled wine for
which she paid, apparently unaware that there was another woman there,
crowding into her place as if it were unoccupied, and making no reply
when she spoke to them. Germinie could have killed these creatures whom
Jupillon forced her to entertain and who despised her so utterly that
they did not even notice her presence.
The time arrived, when, having endured all she could endure and being
sickened by the humiliation she was forced to swallow, she conceived
the idea of dancing herself. She saw no other way to avoid leaving her
lover to others, to keep him by her all the evening, and perhaps to bind
him more closely to her by her success, if she had any chance of
succeeding. Throughout a whole month she worked, in secret, to learn to
dance. She rehearsed the figures and the steps. She forced her body into
unnatural attitudes, she wore herself out trying to master the
contortions and the manipulations of the skirt that she saw were
applauded. At the end of the month she made the venture; but everything
tended to disconcert her and added to her awkwardness; the hostility
that she could feel in the atmosphere, the smiles of astonishment and
pity that played about the lips of the spectators when she took her
place in the dancers' enclosure. She was so absurd and so laughed at,
that she had not the courage to make a second attempt. She buried
herself gloomily in her dark corner, only leaving it to hunt up Jupillon
and carry him off, with the mute violence of a wife dragging her husband
out of the wineshop and leading him home by the arm.
It was soon rumored in the street that Germinie went to these balls,
that she never missed one of them. The fruit woman, at whose shop Adele
had already held forth, sent her son "to see;" he returned with a
confirmation of the rumor, and told of all the petty annoyances to which
Germinie was subjected, but which did not keep her from returning.
Thereafter there was no more doubt in the quarter as to the relations
between mademoiselle's servant and Jupillon--relations which some
charitable souls had hitherto persisted in denying. The scandal burst
out, and in a week the poor girl, berated by all the slanderous tongues
in the quarter, baptized and saluted by the vilest names in the language
of the streets, fell at a blow from the most emphatically expressed
esteem to the most brutally advertised contempt.
Thus far her pride--and it was very great--had procured for her the
respect and consideration which is bestowed, in the lorette quarters,
upon a servant who honestly serves a virtuous mistress. She had become
accustomed to respect and deference and attention. She stood apart from
her comrades. Her unassailable probity, her conduct, as to which not a
word could be said, her confidential relations with mademoiselle, which
caused her mistress's honorable character to be reflected upon her, led
the shopkeeper to treat her on a different footing from the other maids.
They addressed her, cap in hand; they always called her _Mademoiselle
Germinie_. They hurried to wait upon her; they offered her the only
chair in the shop when she had to wait. Even when she contended over
prices they were still polite with her and never called her _haggler_.
Jests that were somewhat too broad were cut short when she appeared. She
was invited to the great banquets, to family parties, and consulted upon
business matters.
Everything changed as soon as her relations with Jupillon and her
assiduous attendance at the _Boule-Noire_ were known. The quarter took
its revenge for having respected her. The brazen-faced maids in the
house accosted her as one of their own kind. One, whose lover was at
Mazas, called her: "My dear." The men accosted her familiarly, and with
all the intimacy of thee and thou in glance and gesture and tone and
touch. The very children on the sidewalk, who were formerly trained to
courtesy politely to her, ran away from her as from a person of whom
they had been told to be afraid. She felt that she was being maligned
behind her back, handed over to the devil. She could not take a step
without walking through scorn and receiving a blow from her shame upon
the cheek.
It was a horrible affliction to her. She suffered as if her honor were
being torn from her, shred by shred, and dragged in the gutter. But the
more she suffered, the closer she pressed her love to her heart and
clung to him. She bore him no ill-will, she uttered no word of reproach
to him. She attached herself to him by all the tears he caused her pride
to shed. And now, in the street through which she passed but a short
time ago, proudly and with head erect, she could be seen, bent double as
if crouching over her fault, hurrying furtively along, with oblique
glances, dreading to be recognized, quickening her pace in front of the
shops that swept their slanders out upon her heels.