Disorders of the nervous system frequently result in disarranging the
natural sequence of human joys and sorrows, in destroying their
proportion and equilibrium, and in carrying them to the greatest
possible excess. It seems that, under the influence of this disease of
sensitiveness, the sharpened, refined, spiritualized sensations exceed
their natural measure and limits, reach a point beyond themselves, and,
as it were, make the enjoyment and suffering of the individual infinite.
So the infrequent joys that Germinie still knew were insane joys, from
which she emerged drunk, and with the physical symptoms of
drunkenness.--"Why, my girl," mademoiselle sometimes could not forbear
saying, "anyone would think you were tipsy."--"Mademoiselle makes you
pay dear for a little amusement once in a while!" Germinie would reply.
And when she relapsed into her sorrowful, disappointed, restless
condition, her desolation was more intense, more frantic and delirious
than her gayety.
The moment had arrived when the terrible truth, which she had suspected
before, at last became clear to her. She saw that she had failed to lay
hold of Jupillon by the devotion her love had manifested, by stripping
herself of all she possessed, by all the pecuniary sacrifices which
involved her life in the toils and embarrassment of a debt it was
impossible for her to pay. She felt that he gave her his love
grudgingly, a love to which he imparted all the humiliation of an act of
charity. When she told him that she was again _enceinte_, the man whom
she was about to make a father once more said to her: "Well, women like
you are amusing creatures! always full or just empty!" She conceived the
ideas, the suspicions that come to genuine love when it is betrayed, the
presentiments of the heart that tell women they are no longer in
undisputed possession of their lovers, and that there is another because
there is likely to be another.
She complained no more, she wept no more, she indulged no more in
recrimination. She abandoned the struggle with this man, armed with
indifference, who, with the cold-blooded sarcasm of the vulgar cad, was
so expert in insulting her passion, her unreasoning impulses, her wild
outbursts of affection. And so, in agonizing resignation, she set
herself the task of waiting--for what? She did not know: perhaps until
he would have no more of her.
Heart-broken and silent, she kept watch upon Jupillon; she followed him
about and never lost sight of him; she tried to make him speak by
interjecting remarks in his fits of distraction. She hovered about him,
but she saw nothing wrong, she could lay hold of nothing, detect
nothing; and yet she was convinced that there was something and that
what she feared was true; she felt a woman's presence in the air.
One morning, as she went down the street rather earlier than usual, she
spied him a few yards before her on the sidewalk. He was dressed up, and
constantly looked himself over as he walked along. From time to time he
raised his trouser leg a little to see the polish on his boots. She
followed him. He went straight on without looking back. She was not far
behind him when he reached Place Breda. There was a woman walking on the
square beside the cabstand. Germinie could see nothing of her but her
back. Jupillon went up to her and she turned: it was his cousin. They
began to walk side by side, up and down the square; then they started
through Rue Breda toward Rue de Navarin. There the girl took Jupillon's
arm; she did not lean on it at first, but little by little, as they
proceeded, she leaned toward him, with the movement of a branch when it
is bent, and drew closer and closer. They walked slowly, so slowly that
at times Germinie was obliged to stop in order to keep at a safe
distance from them. They ascended Rue des Martyrs, passed through Rue de
la Tour d'Auvergne, and went down Rue Montholon. Jupillon was talking
earnestly; the cousin said nothing, but listened to Jupillon, and
walked on with the absent-minded air of a woman smelling of a bouquet,
now and then darting a little vague glance on one side or the other--the
glance of a frightened child.
When they reached Rue Lamartine, opposite the Passage des Deux-Soeurs,
they turned. Germinie had barely time to throw herself in at a hall
door. They passed without seeing her. The little one was very serious
and walked slowly. Jupillon was talking into her ear. They stopped for a
moment; Jupillon gesticulated earnestly; the girl stared fixedly at the
pavement. Germinie thought they were about to part; but they resumed
their walk together and made four or five turns, passing back and forth
by the end of the passage. At last they turned in; Germinie darted from
her hiding-place and rushed after them. From the gateway of the passage
she saw the skirt of a dress disappear through the door of a small
furnished lodging-house, beside a wine shop. She ran to the door, looked
into the hall and could see nothing. Thereupon all her blood rushed to
her head, with one thought, a single thought that her lips kept
repeating like an idiot: "Vitriol! vitriol! vitriol!" And as her
thoughts were instantly transformed into the act of which she thought,
and her delirium transported her abruptly to the crime she contemplated,
she said to herself that she would go up the stairs with the bottle well
hidden under her shawl; she would knock at the door very loud and
continuously. He would come at last and would open the door a crack.
She would say nothing to him, not her name even. She would go in without
heeding him. She was strong enough to kill him! and she would go to the
bed, to _her_! She would take her by the arm and say: "Yes it's me--this
is for your life!" And over her face, her throat, her skin, over
everything about her that was youthful and attractive and that invited
love, Germinie watched the vitriol sear and seam and burn and hiss,
transforming her into a horrible object that filled Germinie's heart to
overflowing with joy! The bottle was empty, and she laughed! And, in her
frightful dream, her body also dreaming, her feet began to move. She
walked unconsciously down the passage, into the street and to a grocer's
shop. Ten minutes she stood motionless at the counter, with eyes that
did not see, the vacant, wandering eyes of one who has murder in his
heart.
"Well, well, what do you want?" said the grocer's wife testily, almost
frightened by the bearing of this woman who did not stir.
"What do I want?" said Germinie. She was so filled, so possessed with
the thought of what she wanted that she believed she had asked for
vitriol. "What do I want?"--She passed her hand across her
forehead.--"Ah! I don't know now."
And she left the shop, stumbling as she went.