As a result of this scene, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil kept her bed a
week, ill and raging, filled with indignation that shook her whole body,
overflowed through her mouth, and tore from her now and again some
coarse insult which she would hurl with a shriek of rage at her maid's
vile memory. Night and day she was possessed by the same fever of
malediction, and even in her dreams her attenuated limbs were convulsed
with wrath.
Was it possible! Germinie! her Germinie! She could think of nothing
else. Debts!--a child!--all sorts of shame! The degraded creature! She
abhorred her, she detested her. If she had lived she would have
denounced her to the police. She would have liked to believe in hell so
that she might be consigned to the torments that await the dead. Her
maid was such a creature as that! A girl who had been in her service
twenty years! whom she had loaded down with benefits! Drunkenness! she
had sunk so low as that! The horror that succeeds a bad dream came to
mademoiselle, and all the waves of loathing that flowed from her heart
said: "Out upon the dead woman whose life the grave vomited forth and
whose filth it cast out!"
How she had deceived her! How the wretch had pretended to love her! And
to make her appear more ungrateful and more despicable Mademoiselle de
Varandeuil recalled her manifestations of affection, her attentions, her
jealousies, which seemed a part of her adoration. She saw her bending
over her when she was ill. She thought of her caresses. It was all a
lie! Her devotion was a lie! The delight with which she kissed her, the
love upon her lips, were lies! Mademoiselle told herself over and over
again, she persuaded herself that it was so; and yet, little by little,
from these reminiscences, from these evocations of the past whose
bitterness she sought to make more bitter, from the far-off sweetness of
days gone by, there arose within her a first sensation of pity.
She drove away the thoughts that tended to allay her wrath; but
reflection brought them back. Thereupon there came to her mind some
things to which she had paid no heed during Germinie's lifetime, trifles
of which the grave makes us take thought and upon which death sheds
light. She had a vague remembrance of certain strange performances on
the part of her maid, of feverish effusions and frantic embraces, of her
throwing herself on her knees as if she were about to make a confession,
of movements of the lips as if a secret were trembling on their verge.
She saw, with the eyes we have for those who are no more, Germinie's
wistful glances, her gestures and attitudes, the despairing expression
of her face. And now she realized that there were deep wounds beneath,
heart-rending pain, the torment of her anguish and her repentance, the
tears of blood of her remorse, all sorts of suffering forced out of
sight throughout her life, and in her whole being a Passion of shame
that dared not ask forgiveness except with silence!
Then she would scold herself for the thought and call herself an old
fool. Her instinct of rigid uprightness, the stern conscience and harsh
judgment of a stainless life, the things which cause a virtuous woman to
condemn a harlot and should have caused a saint like Mademoiselle de
Varandeuil to be without pity for her servant--everything within her
rebelled against a pardon. The voice of justice, stifling her kindness
of heart, cried: "Never! never!" And she would expel Germinie's infamous
phantom with a pitiless gesture.
There were times, indeed, when, in order to make her condemnation and
execration of her memory more irrevocable, she would heap charges upon
her and slander her. She would add to the dead woman's horrible list of
sins. She would reproach Germinie for more than was justly chargeable to
her. She would attribute crimes to her dark thoughts, murderous desires
to her impatient dreams. She would strive to think, she would force
herself to think, that she had desired her mistress's death and had been
awaiting it.
But at that very moment, amid the blackest of her thoughts and
suppositions, a vision arose and stood in a bright light before her. A
figure approached, that seemed to come to meet her glance, a figure
against which she could not defend herself, and which passed through the
hands with which she sought to force it back. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil
saw her dead maid once more. She saw once more the face of which she had
caught a glimpse in the amphitheatre, the crucified face, the tortured
face to which the blood and agony of a heart had mounted together. She
saw it once more with the faculty which the second sight of memory
separates from its surroundings. And that face, as it became clearer to
her, caused her less terror. It appeared to her, divesting itself, as it
were, of its fear-inspiring, horrifying qualities. Suffering alone
remained, but it was the suffering of expiation, almost of prayer, the
suffering of a dead face that would like to weep. And as its expression
grew ever milder, mademoiselle came at last to see in it a glance of
supplication, of supplication that, at last, compelled her pity.
Insensibly there glided into her reflections indulgent thoughts,
suggestions of apology that surprised herself. She asked herself if the
poor girl was as guilty as others, if she had deliberately chosen the
path of evil, if life, circumstances, the misfortune of her body and her
destiny, had not made her the creature she had been, a creature of love
and sorrow. Suddenly she stopped: she was on the point of forgiving her!
One morning she leaped out of bed.
"Here! you--you other!" she cried to her housekeeper, "the devil take
your name! I can't remember it. Give me my clothes, quick! I have to go
out."
"The idea, mademoiselle--just look at the roofs, they're all white."
"Well, it snows, that's all."
Ten minutes later, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil said to the driver of the
cab she had sent for:
"Montmartre Cemetery!"