Germinie Lacerteux

  Germinie yielded to the impulse of passion; but as soon as she hadyielded to it she despised herself. Even in the excitement of pleasureshe could not entirely forget and lose herself. The image ofmademoiselle always arose before her, with her stern, motherly face.Germinie did not become immodest in the same degree that she abandonedherself to her passions and sank lower and lower in vice. The degradingdepths to which she descended did not fortify her against her disgustand horror of herself. Habit did not harden her. Her defiled consciencerejected its defilement, struggled fiercely in its shame, rent itself inits repentance and did not for one second permit itself the fullenjoyment of vice, was never completely stunned by its fall.

  And so when mademoiselle, forgetting that she was a servant, leaned overto her with the brusque familiarity of tone and gesture that wentstraight to her heart, Germinie, confused and overcome with blushingtimidity, was speechless and seemed bereft of sense under the horribletorture caused by the consciousness of her own unworthiness. She wouldfly from the room, she would invent some pretext to escape from thataffection which she so shamefully betrayed, and which, when it touchedher, stirred her remorse to shuddering activity.

  XXXVI

  The miraculous part of this disorderly, abandoned life, this life ofshame and misery, was that it did not become known. Germinie allowed notrace of anything to appear outside; she allowed nothing to rise to herlips, nothing to be seen in her face, nothing to be noticed in hermanner, and the accursed background of her existence remained hiddenfrom her mistress.

  It had, indeed, sometimes occurred to mademoiselle in a vague way thather maid had some secret, something that she was concealing from her,something that was obscure in her life. She had had moments of doubt, ofsuspicion, an instinctive feeling of uneasiness, confused glimpses ofsomething wrong, a faint scent that eluded her and vanished in thegloom. She had thought at times that she had stumbled upon sealed,unresponsive recesses in the girl's heart, upon a mystery, upon someunlighted passage of her life. Again, at times it had seemed to her thather maid's eyes did not say what her mouth said. Involuntarily, she hadremembered a phrase that Germinie often repeated: "A sin hidden, a sinhalf forgiven." But the thing that filled her thoughts above all elsewas amazement that Germinie, despite the increase in her wages and thelittle gifts that she gave her almost every day, never purchasedanything for her toilet, had no new dresses or linen. Where did hermoney go? She had almost admitted having withdrawn her eighteen hundredfrancs from the savings bank. Mademoiselle ruminated over it, then saidto herself that that was the whole of her maid's mystery; it was aboutmoney, she was short of funds, doubtless on account of some obligationsshe had entered into long ago for her family, and perhaps she had beensending more money to "her _canaille_ of a brother-in-law." She was sokind-hearted and had so little system! She had so little idea of thevalue of a hundred-sou piece! That was all there was to it: mademoisellewas sure of it; and as she knew the girl's obstinate nature and had nohope of inducing her to change her mind, she said nothing to her. Ifthis explanation did not fully satisfy mademoiselle, she attributed whatthere was strange and mysterious in her maid's behavior to her somewhatsecretive nature, which retained something of the characteristicdistrust of the peasant, who is jealous of her own petty affairs andtakes delight in burying a corner of her life away down in her heart, asthe villager hoards his sous in a woolen stocking. Or else she persuadedherself that it was her ill health, her state of continual sufferingthat was responsible for her whims and her habit of dissimulation. Andher mind, in its interested search for motives, stopped at that point,with the indolence and a little of the selfishness of old people'sminds, who, having an instinctive dread of final results and of the realcharacters of their acquaintances, prefer not to be too inquisitive orto know too much. Who knows? Perhaps all this mystery was nothing but apaltry matter, unworthy to disturb or to interest her, some pettywoman's quarrel. She went to sleep thereupon, reassured, and ceased tocudgel her brains.

  In truth, how could mademoiselle have guessed Germinie's degradation andthe horror of her secret! In her most poignant suffering, in her wildestintoxication, the unhappy creature retained the incredible strengthnecessary to suppress and keep back everything. From her passionate,overcharged nature, which found relief so naturally in expansion, nevera word escaped or a syllable that cast a ray of light upon her secret.Mortification, contempt, disappointment, self-sacrifice, the death ofher child, the treachery of her lover, the dying agony of her love, allremained voiceless within her, as if she stifled their cries by pressingher hands upon her heart. Her rare attacks of weakness, when she seemedto be struggling with pains that strangled her, the fierce, feverishcaresses lavished upon Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, the sudden paroxysms,as if she were trying to give birth to something, always ended withoutwords and found relief in tears.

  Even illness, with its resulting weakness and enervation, forced nothingfrom her. It could make no impression on that heroic resolution to keepsilent to the end. Hysterical attacks extorted shrieks from her andnothing but shrieks. When she was a girl she dreamed aloud; she forcedher dreams to cease speaking, she closed the lips of her sleep. Asmademoiselle might have discovered from her breath that she had beendrinking, she ate shallots and garlic, and concealed the fumes of liquorwith their offensive odors. She even trained her intoxication, herdrunken torpor to awake at her mistress's footstep, and remain awake inher presence.

  Thus she led, as it were, two lives. She was like two women, and by dintof energy, adroitness and feminine diplomacy, with a self-assurance thatnever failed her even in the mental confusion caused by drink, shesucceeded in separating those two existences, in living them bothwithout mingling them, in never allowing the two women that lived in herto be confounded with each other, in continuing to be, with Mademoisellede Varandeuil, the virtuous, respectable girl she had been, in emergingfrom her orgies without carrying away the taste of them, in displaying,when she left her lover, a sort of old-maidish modesty, shocked by thescandalous courses of other maids. She never uttered a word or boreherself in a way to arouse a suspicion of her clandestine life; nothingabout her conveyed a hint as to the way her nights were passed. When sheplaced her foot upon the door-mat outside Mademoiselle de Varandeuil'sapartments, when she approached her, when she stood before her, sheadopted the tone and the attitude, even to a certain way of holding thedress, which relieve a woman from so much as a suspicion of having aughtto do with men. She talked freely upon all subjects, as if she hadnothing to blush for. She spoke with bitterness of the misdoings andshame of others, as if she were herself beyond reproach. She joked withher mistress about love, in a jovial, unembarrassed, indifferent tone;to hear her you would have thought she was talking of an oldacquaintance of whom she had lost sight. And in the eyes of all thosewho saw her only as Mademoiselle de Varandeuil did and at her home,there was a certain atmosphere of chastity about her thirty-five years,the odor of stern, unimpeachable virtue, peculiar to middle-agedmaid-servants and plain women.

  And yet all this falsehood in the matter of appearances was nothypocrisy in Germinie. It did not arise from downright duplicity, fromcorrupt striving for effect: it was her affection for mademoiselle thatmade her what she was with her. She was determined at any price to saveher the grief of seeing her as she was, of going to the bottom of hercharacter. She deceived her solely in order to retain heraffection,--with a sort of respect; and a feeling of veneration, almostof piety, stole into the ghastly comedy she was playing, like thefeeling a girl has who lies to her mother in order not to rend herheart.

  XXXVII

  To lie! nothing was left for her but that. She felt that it was animpossibility to draw back from her present position. She did not evenentertain the idea of an attempt to escape from it, it seemed such ahopeless task, she was so cowardly, so crushed and degraded, and shefelt that she was still so firmly bound to that man by all sorts ofvile, degrading chains, even by the contempt that he no longer tried toconceal from her!

  Sometimes, as she
reflected upon her plight, she was dismayed. Thesimple ideas and terrors of the peasantry recurred to her mind. And thesuperstitions of her youth whispered to her that the man had cast aspell upon her, that he had perhaps given her enchanted bread to eat.Otherwise would she have been what she was? Would she have felt, at themere sight of him, that thrill of emotion through her whole frame, thatalmost brute-like sensation of the approach of a master? Would she havefelt her whole body, her mouth, her arms, her loving and caressinggestures involuntarily go out to him? Would she have belonged to him soabsolutely? Long and bitterly she dwelt upon all that should have curedher, rescued her: the man's disdain, his insults, the degradingconcessions he had forced from her; and she was compelled to admit thatthere had been nothing too precious for her to sacrifice to him, andthat for him she had swallowed the things she loathed most bitterly. Shetried to imagine the degree of degradation to which her love wouldrefuse to descend, and she could conceive of none. He could do what hechose with her, insult her, beat her, and she would remain under hisheel! She could not think of herself as not belonging to him. She couldnot think of herself without him. To have that man to love was necessaryto her existence; she derived warmth from him, she lived by him, shebreathed him. There seemed to be no parallel case to hers among thewomen of her condition whom she knew. No one of her comrades carriedinto a _liaison_ the intensity, the bitterness, the torture, theenjoyment of suffering that she found in hers. No one of them carriedinto it that which was killing her and which she could not dispensewith.

  To herself she appeared an extraordinary creature, of an exceptionalnature, with the temperament of animals whom ill-treatment binds thecloser to their masters. There were days when she did not know herself,and when she wondered if she were still the same woman. As she went overin her mind all the base deeds to which Jupillon had induced her tostoop, she could not believe that it was really she who had submitted toit. Had she, violent and impulsive as she knew herself to be, boilingover with fiery passions, rebellious and hotheaded, exhibited suchdocility and resignation? She had repressed her wrath, forced back themurderous thoughts that had crowded to her brain so many times! She hadalways obeyed, always possessed her soul in patience, always hung herhead! She had forced her nature, her instincts, her pride, her vanity,and more than all else, her jealousy, the fierce passions of her heart,to crawl at that man's feet! For the sake of keeping him she had stoopedto share him, to allow him to have mistresses, to receive him from thehands of others, to seek a part of his cheek on which his cousin had notkissed him! And now, after all these sacrifices, with which she hadwearied him, she retained her hold upon him by a still more distastefulsacrifice: she drew him to her by gifts, she opened her purse to him toinduce him to keep appointments with her, she purchased his good-humorby gratifying his whims and his caprices; she paid this brute, whohaggled over the price of his kisses and demanded _pourboires_ of love!And she lived from day to day in constant dread of what the miserablevillain would demand of her on the morrow.

  XXXVIII

  "He must have twenty francs," Germinie mechanically repeated thesentence to herself several times, but her thoughts did not go beyondthe words she uttered. The walk and the climb up five flights of stairshad made her dizzy. She fell in a sitting posture on the greasy couch inthe kitchen, hung her head, and laid her arms on the table. Her earswere ringing. Her ideas went and came in a disorderly throng, stiflingone another in her brain, and of them all but one remained, more andmore distinct and persistent: "He must have twenty francs! twentyfrancs! twenty francs!" And she looked as if she expected to find themsomewhere there, in the fireplace, in the waste-basket, under the stove.Then she thought of the people who owed her, of a German maid who hadpromised to repay her more than a year before. She rose and tied hercapstrings. She no longer said: "He must have twenty francs;" she said:"I will get them."

  She went down to Adele: "You haven't twenty francs for a note that justcame, have you? Mademoiselle has gone out."

  "Nothing here," said Adele; "I gave madame my last twenty francs lastnight to get her supper. The jade hasn't come back yet. Will you havethirty sous?"

  She ran to the grocer's. It was Sunday, and three o'clock in theafternoon: the grocer had closed his shop.

  There were a number of people at the fruitwoman's; she asked for foursous' worth of herbs.

  "I haven't any money," said she. She hoped that the woman would say: "Doyou want some?" Instead of that, she said: "What an idea! as if I wasafraid of you!" There were other maids there, so she went out withoutsaying anything more.

  "Is there anything for us?" she said to the concierge. "Ah! by the way,my Pipelet, you don't happen to have twenty francs about you, do you? itwill save my going way up-stairs again."

  "Forty, if you want----"

  She breathed freely. The concierge went to a desk at the back of thelodge. "_Sapristi!_ my wife has taken the key. Why! how pale you are!"

  "It isn't anything." And she rushed out into the courtyard toward thedoor of the servant's staircase.

  This is what she thought as she went up-stairs: "There are people whofind twenty-franc pieces. He needed them to-day, he told me.Mademoiselle gave me my money not five days ago, and I can't ask her.After all, what are twenty francs more or less to her? The grocer wouldsurely have lent them to me. I had another grocer on Rue Taitbout: hedidn't close till evening Sundays."

  She was in front of her own door. She leaned over the rail of the otherstaircase, looked to see if anyone was coming up, entered her room, wentstraight to mademoiselle's bedchamber, opened the window and breathedlong and hard with her elbows on the window-sill. Sparrows hastened toher from the neighboring chimneys, thinking that she was going to tossbread to them. She closed the window and glanced at the top of thecommode--first at a vein of marble, then at a little sandal-wood box,then at the key--a small steel key left in the lock. Suddenly there wasa ringing in her ears; she thought that the bell rang. She ran andopened the door: there was no one there. She returned with the certaintythat she was alone, went to the kitchen for a cloth and began to rub amahogany armchair, turning her back to the commode; but she could stillsee the box, she could see it lying open, she could see the coins at theright where mademoiselle kept her gold, the papers in which she wrappedit, a hundred francs in each;--her twenty francs were there! She closedher eyes as if the light dazzled them. She felt a dizziness in herconscience; but immediately her whole being rose in revolt against her,and it seemed to her as if her heart in its indignation rose to herthroat. In an instant the honor of her whole life stood erect betweenher hand and that key. Her upright, unselfish, devoted past, twentyyears of resistance to the evil counsels and the corruption of that foulquarter, twenty years of scorn for theft, twenty years in which herpocket had not held back a sou from her employers, twenty years ofindifference to gain, twenty years in which temptation had never comenear her, her long maintained and natural virtue, mademoiselle'sconfidence in her--all these things came to her mind in a singleinstant. Her youthful years clung to her and took possession of her.From her family, from the memory of her parents, from the unsulliedreputation of her wretched name, from the dead from whom she wasdescended, there arose a murmur as of guardian angels hovering abouther. For one second she was saved.

  And then, insensibly, evil thoughts glided one by one into her brain.She sought for subjects of bitterness, for excuses for ingratitude toher mistress. She compared with her own wages the wages of which theother maids in the house boasted vaingloriously. She concluded thatmademoiselle was very fortunate to have her in her service, and that sheshould have increased her wages more since she had been with her.

  "And then," she suddenly asked herself, "why does she leave the key inher box?" And she began to reflect thereupon that the money in the boxwas not used for living expenses, but had been laid aside bymademoiselle to buy a velvet dress for a goddaughter.--"Sleepingmoney," she said to herself. She marshaled her reasons withprecipitation, as if to make it impossible to discuss them. "And then,
it's only for once. She would lend them to me if I asked her. And I willreturn them."

  She put out her hand and turned the key. She stopped; it seemed to herthat the intense silence round about was listening to her and looking ather. She raised her eyes: the mirror threw back her face at her. Beforethat face, her own, she was afraid; she recoiled in terror and shame asif before the face of her crime: it was a thief's head that she had uponher shoulders!

  She fled into the corridor. Suddenly she turned upon her heel, wentstraight to the box, turned the key, put in her hand, fumbled under thehair trinkets and souvenirs, felt in a roll of five louis and took outone piece, closed the box and rushed into the kitchen. She had thelittle coin in her hand and dared not look at it.

  XXXIX

  Then it was that Germinie's abasement and degradation began to bevisible in her personal appearance, to make her stupid and slovenly. Asort of drowsiness came over her ideas. She was no longer keen andprompt of apprehension. What she had read and what she had learnedseemed to escape her. Her memory, which formerly retained everything,became confused and unreliable. The sharp wit of the Parisianmaid-servant gradually vanished from her conversation, her retorts, herlaughter. Her face, once so animated, was no longer lighted up by gleamsof intelligence. In her whole person you would have said that she hadbecome once more the stupid peasant girl that she was when she came fromher province, when she went to a stationer's for gingerbread. She seemednot to understand. As mademoiselle expressed it, she made faces like anidiot. She was obliged to explain to her, to repeat two or three timesthings that Germinie had always grasped on the merest hint. She askedherself, when she saw how slow and torpid she was, if somebody had notexchanged her maid for another.--"Why, you're getting to be a perfectimbecile!" she would sometimes say to her testily. She remembered thetime when Germinie was so useful about finding dates, writing an addresson a card, telling her what day they had put in the wood or broached thecask of wine,--all of which were things that her old brain could notremember. Now Germinie remembered nothing. In the evening, when she wentover her accounts with mademoiselle, she could not think what she hadbought in the morning; she would say: "Wait!" but she would simply passher hand vaguely across her brow; nothing would come to her mind.Mademoiselle, to save her tired old eyes, had fallen into the habit ofhaving Germinie read the newspaper to her; but she got to stumbling soand reading with so little intelligence, that mademoiselle was compelledto decline her services with thanks.