She paused an instant.
"Go on," said Gautruche, "iron me on all the seams. Don't mind me aslong as your hand's in."
"So?" continued Germinie, "how enchanted you imagined I was going to beto take up with you! You said to yourself: 'The good-natured fool!she'll be glad of the chance! And all I shall have to do will be topromise to marry her. She'll throw up her place. She'll leave hermistress in the lurch.' The idea! Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle, who has noone but me! Ah! you don't know anything about such things. You wouldn'tunderstand if I should tell you. Mademoiselle, who is everything to me!Why, since my mother died, I've had nobody but her, never been treatedkindly by anybody but her! Who beside her ever said to me when I wasunhappy: 'Are you unhappy?' And, when I was sick: 'Don't you feel well?'No one! There's been no one but her to take care of me, to care whatbecame of me. God! and you talk of loving on account of what there isbetween us! Ah! mademoiselle has loved me! Yes, loved me! And I'm dyingof it, do you know? of having become such a miserable creature as I am,a----" She said the word. "And of deceiving her, of stealing heraffection, of allowing her still to love me as her daughter! Ah! if sheshould ever learn anything--but, no fear of that, it won't be long.There's one woman who would make a pretty leap out of a fifth-storywindow, as true as God is my master! But fancy--you are not my heart,you are not my life, you are only my pleasure. But I did have a man. Ah!I don't know whether I loved him! but you could have torn me to piecesfor him without a word from me. In short, he was the man that made mewhat I am. Well, d'ye see, when my passion for him was at its hottest,when I breathed only as he wished me to, when I was mad over him andwould have let him walk on my stomach if he'd wanted to--even then, ifmademoiselle had been sick, if she had motioned to me with her littlefinger, I'd have gone back to her. Yes, I would have left him for her! Itell you I would have left him!"
"In that case--if that's the way things stand, my dear--if you're sofond of your old lady as that, I have only one piece of advice to giveyou: you'd better not leave your good lady, d'ye see!"
"That's my dismissal, is it?" said Germinie, rising.
"Faith! it's very like it."
"Well! adieu. That suits me!"
She went straight to the door, and left the room without a word.
LIV
After this rupture Germinie fell where she was sure to fall, belowshame, below nature itself. Lower and lower the unhappy, passionatecreature fell, until she wallowed in the gutter. She took up the loverswhose passions are exhausted in one night, those whom she passed or meton the street, those whom chance throws in the way of a wandering woman.She had no need to give herself time for the growth of desire: hercaprice was fierce and sudden, kindled instantly. Pouncing greedily uponthe first comer, she hardly looked at him and could not have recognizedhim. Beauty, youth, the physical qualities of a lover, in which thepassion of the most degraded woman seeks to realize a base ideal, as itwere--none of those things tempted her now or touched her. In all menher eyes saw nothing but man: the individual mattered naught to her. Thelast indication of decency and of human feeling in debauchery,--preference,selection,--and even that which represents all that prostitutes retainof conscience and personality,--disgust, even disgust,--she had lost!
And she wandered about the streets at night, with the furtive, stealthygait of wild beasts prowling in the shadow in quest of food. As ifunsexed, she made the advances, she solicited brutes, she took advantageof drunkenness, and men yielded to her. She walked along, peering onevery side, approaching every shadowy corner where impurity might lurkunder cover of the darkness and solitude, where hands were waiting toswoop down upon a shawl. Belated pedestrians saw her by the light of thestreet lanterns, an ill-omened, shuddering phantom, gliding along,almost crawling, bent double, slinking by in the shadow, with thatappearance of illness and insanity and of utter aberration which setsthe thoughtful man's heart and the physician's mind at work on the brinkof deep abysses of melancholy.
LV
One evening when she was prowling about Rue du Rocher, as she passed awine-shop at the corner of Rue de Labarde, she noticed the back of a manwho was drinking at the bar: it was Jupillon.
She stopped short, turned toward the street with her back against thedoor of the wine-shop, and waited. The light in the shop was behind her,her shoulders against the bars, and there she stood motionless, herskirt gathered up in one hand in front, and her other hand fallinglistlessly at her side. She resembled a statue of darkness seated on amilestone. In her attitude there was an air of stern determination andthe necessary patience to wait there forever. The passers-by, thecarriages, the street--she saw them all indistinctly and as if they werefar away. The tow-horse, waiting to assist in drawing the omnibuses upthe hill,--a white horse, he was,--stood in front of her, worn out andmotionless, sleeping on his feet, with his head and forefeet in thebright light from the door: she did not see him. There was a dense fog.It was one of those vile, detestable Parisian nights when it seems as ifthe water that falls had become mud before falling. The gutter rose andflowed about her feet. She remained thus half an hour without moving,with her back to the light and her face in the shadow, a threatening,desperate, forbidding creature, like a statue of Fatality erected byDarkness at a wine-shop door!
At last Jupillon came out. She stood before him with folded arms.
"My money?" she said. Her face was that of a woman who has ceased topossess a conscience, for whom there is no God, no police, no assizes,no scaffold--nothing!
Jupillon felt that his customary _blague_ was arrested in his throat.
"Your money?" he repeated; "your money ain't lost. But I must have time.Just now, you see, work ain't very plenty. That shop business of minecame to grief a long while ago, you know. But in three months' time, Ipromise. Are you pretty well?"
"_Canaille!_ Ah! I've got you now! Ah! you'd sneak away, would you? Butit was you, my curse! it was you who made me what I am, brigand! robber!sneak! It was you."
Germinie hurled these words in his face, pushing against him, forcinghim back, pressing her body against his. She seemed to be rubbingagainst the blows that she invited and provoked, and as she leanedtoward him thus, she cried: "Come, strike me! What, then, must I say toyou to make you strike me?"
She had ceased to think. She did not know what she wanted; she simplyfelt that she needed to be struck. There had come upon her aninstinctive, irrational desire to be maltreated, bruised, made to sufferin her flesh, to experience a violent shock, a sharp pain that would puta stop to what was going on in her brain. She could think of nothing butblows to bring matters to a crisis. After the blows, she saw, with thelucidity of an hallucination, all sorts of things come to pass,--theguard arriving, the gendarmes from the post, the commissioner! thecommissioner to whom she could tell everything, her story, hermisfortunes, how the man before her had abused her and what he had costher! Her heart collapsed in anticipation at the thought of emptyingitself, with shrieks and tears, of everything with which it wasbursting.
"Come, strike me!" she repeated, still advancing upon Jupillon, whotried to slink away, and, as he retreated, tossed caressing words to heras you do to a dog that does not recognize you and seems inclined tobite. A crowd was beginning to collect about them.
"Come, old harridan, don't bother monsieur!" exclaimed a police officer,grasping Germinie by the arm and swinging her around roughly. Under thatbrutal insult from the hand of the law, Germinie's knees wavered: shethought she should faint. Then she was afraid, and fled in the middle ofthe street.
LVI
Passion is subject to the most insensate reactions, the mostinexplicable revivals. The accursed love that Germinie believed to havebeen killed by all the wounds and blows Jupillon had inflicted upon itcame to life once more. She was dismayed to find it in her heart whenshe returned home. The mere sight of the man, his proximity for thosefew moments, the sound of his voice, the act of breathing the air thathe breathed, were enough to turn her heart back to him and relegate herto the past.
&nbs
p; Notwithstanding all that had happened, she had never been able to tearJupillon's image altogether from her heart: its roots were stillimbedded there. He was her first love. She belonged to him against herown will by all the weaknesses of memory, by all the cowardice of habit.Between them there were all the bonds of torture that hold a woman fastforever,--sacrifice, suffering, degradation. He owned her, body andsoul, because he had outraged her conscience, trampled upon herillusions, made her life a martyrdom. She belonged to him, belonged tohim forever, as to the author of all her sorrows.
And that shock, that scene which should have caused her to think withhorror of ever meeting him again, rekindled in her the frenzied desireto meet him again. Her passion seized her again in its full force. Thethought of Jupillon filled her mind so completely that it purified her.She abruptly called a halt in the vagabondage of her passions: shedetermined to belong thenceforth to no one, as that was the only methodby which she could still belong to him.
She began to spy upon him, to make a study of his usual hours for goingout, the streets he passed through, the places that he visited. Shefollowed him to Batignolles, to his new quarters, walked behind him,content to put her foot where he had put his, to be guided by his steps,to see him now and then, to notice a gesture that he made, to snatch oneof his glances. That was all: she dared not speak to him; she kept atsome distance behind, like a lost dog, happy not to be driven away withkicks.
For weeks and weeks she made herself thus the man's shadow, a humble,timid shadow that shrank back and moved away a few steps when it thoughtit was in danger of being seen; then drew nearer again with falteringsteps, and, at an impatient movement from the man, stopped once more, asif asking pardon.
Sometimes she waited at the door of a house which he entered, caught himup again when he came out and escorted him home, always at a distance,without speaking to him, with the air of a beggar begging for crumbsand thankful for what she was allowed to pick up. Then she would listenat the shutters of the ground-floor apartment in which he lived, toascertain if he was alone, if there was anybody there.
When he had a woman on his arm, although she suffered keenly, she wasthe more persistent in following him. She went where they went to theend. She entered the public gardens and ballrooms behind them. Shewalked within sound of their laughter and their words, tore her heart totatters looking at them and listening to them, and stood at their backswith every jealous instinct of her nature bleeding.
LVII
It was November. For three or four days Germinie had not fallen in withJupillon. She went to hover about his lodgings, watching for him. Whenshe reached the street on which he lived, she saw a broad beam of lightstruggling out through the closed shutters. She approached and heardbursts of laughter, the clinking of glasses, women's voices, then a songand one voice, that of the woman whom she hated with all the hatredof her heart, whom she would have liked to see lying dead beforeher, and whose death she had so often sought to discover in thecoffee-grounds,--the cousin!
She glued her ear to the shutter, breathing in what they said, absorbedin the torture of listening to them, pasturing her famished heart uponsuffering. It was a cold, rainy winter's night. She did not feel thecold or rain. All her senses were engaged in listening. The voice shedetested seemed at times to grow faint and die away beneath kisses, andthe notes it sang died in her throat as if stifled by lips placed uponthe song. The hours passed. Germinie was still at her post. She did notthink of going away. She waited, with no knowledge of what she waswaiting for. It seemed to her that she must remain there always, untilthe end. The rain fell faster. The water from a broken gutter overheadbeat down upon her shoulders. Great drops glided down her neck. An icyshiver ran up and down her back. The water dripped from her dress to theground. She did not notice it. She was conscious of no pain in any ofher limbs except the pain that flowed from her heart.
Well on toward morning there was a movement in the house, and footstepsapproached the door. Germinie ran and hid in a recess in the wall somesteps away, and from there saw a woman come out, escorted by a youngman. As she watched them walk away, she felt something soft and warm onher hands that frightened her at first; it was a dog licking her, agreat dog that she had held in her lap many an evening, when he was apuppy, in the _cremiere's_ back shop.
"Come here, Molosse!" Jupillon shouted impatiently twice or thrice inthe darkness.
The dog barked, ran back, returned and gamboled about her, and at lastentered the house. The door closed. The voices and singing luredGerminie back to her former position against the shutter, and there sheremained, drenched by the rain, allowing herself to be drenched, as shelistened and listened, till morning, till daybreak, till the hour whenthe masons on their way to work, with their dinner loaf under theirarms, began to laugh at her as they passed.
LVIII
Two or three days after that night in the rain, Germinie's features weredistorted with pain, her skin was like marble and her eyes blazing. Shesaid nothing, made no complaints, but went about her work as usual.
"Here! girl, look at me a moment," said mademoiselle, and she led herabruptly to the window. "What does all this mean? this look of a deadwoman risen from the grave? Come, tell me honestly, are you sick? MyGod! how hot your hands are!"
She grasped her wrist, and in a moment threw it down.
"What a silly slut! you're in a burning fever! And you keep it toyourself!"
"Why no, mademoiselle," Germinie stammered. "I think it's nothing but abad cold. I went to sleep the other evening with my kitchen windowopen."
"Oh! you're a good one!" retorted mademoiselle; "you might be dying andyou'd never as much as say: 'Ouf!' Wait."
She put on her spectacles, and hastily moving her arm-chair to a smalltable by the fireplace, she wrote a few lines in her bold hand.
"Here," said she, folding the note, "you will do me the favor to givethis to your friend Adele and have her send the concierge with it. Andnow to bed you go!"
But Germinie refused to go to bed. It was not worth while. She would nottire herself. She would sit down all day. Besides, the worst of hersickness was over; she was getting better already. And then it alwayskilled her to stay in bed.
The doctor, summoned by mademoiselle's note, came in the evening. Heexamined Germinie, and ordered the application of croton oil. Thetrouble in the chest was of such a nature that he could say nothingabout it until he had observed the effect of his remedies.
He returned a few days later, sent Germinie to bed and sounded her chestfor a long while.
"It's a most extraordinary thing," he said to mademoiselle, when he wentdownstairs; "she has had pleurisy upon her and hasn't kept her bed for amoment! Is she made of iron, in Heaven's name? Oh! the energy of somewomen! How old is she?"
"Forty-one."
"Forty-one! Oh! it's not possible. Are you sure? She looks fully fifty."
"Ah! as to that, she looks as old as you please. What can you expect?Never in good health,--always sick, disappointment, sorrow,--and adisposition that can't help tormenting itself."
"Forty-one years old! it's amazing!" the physician repeated.
After a moment's reflection, he continued:
"So far as you know, is there any hereditary lung trouble in her family?Has she had any relatives who have died young?"
"She lost a sister by pleurisy; but she was older. She was forty-eight,I think."
The doctor had become very grave. "However, the lung is getting freer,"he said, in an encouraging tone. "But it is absolutely necessary thatshe should have rest. And send her to me once a week. Let her come andsee me. And let her take a pleasant day for it,--a bright, sunny day."
LIX
Mademoiselle talked and prayed and implored and scolded to no purpose:she could not induce Germinie to lay aside her work for a few days.Germinie would not even listen to the suggestion that she should have anassistant to do the heavier work. She declared that it was useless,impossible; that she could never endure the thought of another womanapproa
ching her, waiting upon her, attending to her wants; that it wouldgive her a fever simply to think of such a thing as she lay in bed; thatshe was not dead yet; and she begged that she might be allowed to go onas usual, so long as she could put one foot before the other. She saidit in such an affectionate tone, her eyes were so beseeching, her feeblevoice was so humble and so passionate in making the request, thatmademoiselle had not the courage to force her to accept an assistant.She simply called her a "blockhead," who believed, like allcountry-people, that a few days in bed means death.
Keeping on her feet, with an apparent improvement due to the physician'senergetic treatment, Germinie continued to make mademoiselle's bed,accepting her assistance to turn the mattresses. She also continued toprepare her food, and that was an especially distasteful task to her.
When she was preparing mademoiselle's breakfast and dinner, she felt asif she should die in her kitchen, one of the wretched little kitchenscommon in great cities, which are the cause of so much pulmonary troublein women. The embers that she kindled, and from which a thread ofsuffocating smoke slowly arose, began to stir her stomach to revolt;soon the charcoal that she bought from the charcoal dealer next door,strong Paris charcoal, full of half-charred wood, enveloped her in itsstifling odor. The dirty, smoking funnel, the low chimney-piece pouredback into her lungs the corroding heat of the waist-high oven. Shesuffocated, she felt the fiery heat of all her blood surge upward to herface and cause red blotches to appear on her forehead. Her head whirled.In the half-asphyxiated condition of laundresses who pass back and forththrough the vapor of their charcoal stoves, she would rush to the windowand draw a few breaths of the icy outside air.