She would then ascend the stairs; that was her last place of refuge. She
would fly from the rain and snow and cold, from fear, despair, and
fatigue. She would go up and sit on the top step against Gautruche's
closed doors; she would draw her shawl and skirts closely about her in
order to leave room for those who went and came up that long steep
ladder, and would draw back as far as possible into the corner in order
that her shame might fill but little space on the narrow landing.
From the open doors the odor of unventilated closets, of families heaped
together in a single room, the exhalations of unhealthy trades, the
dense, greasy fumes of cooking done in chafing-dishes on the floor, the
stench of rags and the faint damp smell of clothes drying in the house,
came forth and filled the hall. The broken-paned window behind Germinie
wafted to her nostrils the fetid stench of a leaden pipe in which the
whole house emptied its refuse and its filth. Her stomach rose in revolt
every moment at a puff of infection; she was obliged to take from her
pocket a phial of melissa water that she always carried, and swallow a
mouthful of it to avoid being ill.
But the staircase had its passers, too: honest workmen's wives went up
with a bushel of charcoal, or a pint of wine for supper. Their feet
would rub against her as they passed, and as they went farther up,
Germinie would feel their scornful glances resting upon her and falling
upon her with more crushing force at every floor. The children--little
girls in _fanchons_ who flitted up the dark stairway and brightened it
as if with flowers, little girls in whom she saw, as she so often saw in
dreams, her own little one, living and grown to girlhood--she saw them
stop and look at her with wide open eyes that seemed to recoil from her;
then the little creatures would turn and run breathlessly up-stairs,
and, when they were well out of reach, would lean over the rail until
they almost fell, and hurl impure jests at her, the insults of the
children of the common people. Insulting words, poured out upon her by
those rosebud mouths, wounded Germinie more deeply than all else. She
would half rise for an instant; then, overwhelmed by shame, resigning
herself to her fate, she would fall back into her corner, and, pulling
her shawl over her head in order to bury herself therein out of sight,
she would sit like a dead woman, crushed, inert, insensible, cowering
over her own shadow, like a bundle tossed on the floor which everyone
might tread upon--having no control of her faculties, dead to everything
except the footsteps that she was listening for--and that did not come.
At last, after long hours, hours that she could not count, she would
fancy that she heard a stumbling walk in the street; then a vinous voice
would mount the stairs, stammering "_Canaille!_ _canaille_ of a
saloon-keeper!--you sold me the kind of wine that goes to my head!"
It was he.
And almost every day the same scene was enacted.
"Ah! there y'are, my Germinie," he would say as his eyes fell upon her.
"It's like this--I'll tell you all about it. I'm a little bit under
water." And, as he put the key in the lock: "I'll tell you all about it.
It isn't my fault."
He would enter the room, kick aside a turtle-dove with mangy wings that
limped forward to greet him, and close the door. "It wasn't me, d'ye
see. It was Paillon, you know Paillon? that little round fellow, fat as
a mad dog. Well, it was him, 'pon my honor. He insisted on paying for a
sixteen-sous bottle for me. He offered to treat me, and I _proffered_
him thanks. Thereupon we naturally _consoled_[5] our coffee; when you're
consoled, you console! and as one thing led to another, we fell upon
each other! There was a very devil of a carnage! The proof of it is that
that gallows-bird of a saloon-keeper threw us out-o'-doors like lobster
shells!"
Germinie, during the explanation, would have lighted the candle, stuck
in a yellow copper candlestick. By its flickering light the dirty paper
on the walls could be seen, covered with caricatures from _Charivari_,
torn from the paper and pasted on the wall.
"Well, you're a love!" Gautruche would exclaim, as he saw her place a
cold fowl and two bottles of wine on the table. "For I must tell you all
I've had in my stomach to-day--a plate of wretched soup--that's all. Ah!
it must have taken a stout master-at-arms to put that fellow's eyes
out!"
And he would begin to eat. Germinie would sit with her elbows on the
table, watching him and drinking, and her glance would grow dark.
* * * * *
"Pshaw! all the negresses are dead,"[6] Gautruche would say at last, as
he drained the bottles one by one. "Put the children to bed!"
* * * * *
Thereupon terrible, fierce, abhorrent outbursts of passion would ensue
between those two strange creatures, savage ardor followed by savage
satiety, frantic storms of lust, caresses that were impregnated with the
fierce brutality of wine, kisses that seemed to seek the blood beneath
the skin, like the tongue of a wild beast, and at the end, utter
exhaustion that swallowed them up and left their bodies like corpses.
Germinie plunged into these debauches with--what shall I say?--delirium,
madness, desperation, a sort of supreme frenzy. Her ungovernable
passions turned against themselves, and, going beyond their natural
appetites, forced themselves to suffer. Satiety exhausted them without
extinguishing them; and, overpassing the widest limits of excess, they
excited themselves to self-torture. In the poor creature's paroxysms of
excitement, her brain, her nerves, the imagination of her maddened body,
no longer sought pleasure in pleasure, but something sharper, keener,
and more violent: pain in pleasure. And the words "to die" constantly
escaped from her compressed lips, as if she were invoking death in an
undertone and seeking to embrace it in the agonies of love.
Sometimes, in the night, she would suddenly sit up on the edge of the
bed, rest her bare feet on the cold floor, and remain there, wild-eyed,
listening to the things that breathe in a sleeping-chamber. And little
by little the obscurity of the place and hour seemed to envelop her. She
seemed to herself to fall and writhe helplessly in the blind
unconsciousness of the night. Her will became as naught. All sorts of
black things, that seemed to have wings and voices, beat against her
temples. The ghastly temptations that afford madness a vague glimpse of
crime caused a red light, the flash of murder, to pass before her eyes,
close at hand; and hands placed against her back pushed her toward the
table where the knives lay. She would close her eyes and move one foot;
then fear would lay hold of her and she would cling to the bedclothes;
and at last she would turn around, fall back upon the bed, and go to
sleep beside the man she had been tempted to murder; why? she had no
idea; for nothing--for the sake of killing!
And so, until daybreak, in that wretched furnished lodging, the fierce
struggle of those fatal passions would continue, while the poor maimed,
limping dove, the infirm bird of Venus, nesting in one of Gautruche's
old shoes, would utter now and then, awakened by the noise, a frightened
coo.
[Illustration: Chapter LII
_Sometimes, in the night, she would suddenly sit up on the edge of the
bed, rest her bare feet on the cold floor, and remain there, wild-eyed,
listening to the things that breathe in a sleeping-chamber. The ghastly
temptations that afford madness a vague glimpse of crime caused a red
light, the flash of murder, to pass before her eyes, close at hand; and
hands placed against her back pushed her toward the table where the
knives lay._]