Germinie Lacerteux Read online

  And thereupon we learned things concerning the unhappy creature thattook away our appetites, leaving in our mouths the bitter taste of fruitcut with a steel knife. And a whole strange, hateful, repugnant,deplorable existence was revealed to us. The notes she signed, the debtsshe has left behind her at all the dealers, have the most unforeseen,the most amazing, the most incredible basis. She kept men: themilkwoman's son, for whom she furnished a chamber; another to whom shecarried our wine, chickens, food of all sorts. A secret life ofnocturnal orgies, of nights passed abroad, of fierce nymphomania, thatmade her lovers say: "Either she or I will stay on the field!" Apassion, passions with her whole head and heart and all her senses atonce, and complicated by all the wretched creatures' diseases,consumption which adds frenzy to pleasure, hysteria, the beginning ofinsanity. She had two children by the milkwoman's son, one of whom livedsix months. Some years ago, when she told us that she was going on avisit to her province, it was to lie in. And, with regard to these men,her passion was so extravagant, so unhealthy, so insane, that she, whowas formerly honesty personified, actually stole from us, took twentyfranc pieces out of rolls of a hundred francs, so that the lovers shepaid might not leave her. Now, after these involuntarily dishonest acts,these petty crimes extorted from her upright nature, she plunged intosuch depths of self-reproach, remorse, melancholy, such black despair,that in that hell in which she rolled on from sin to sin, desperate andunsatisfied, she had taken to drinking to escape herself, to saveherself from the present, to drown herself and founder for a few momentsin the heavy slumber, the lethargic torpor in which she would liewallowing across her bed for a whole day, just as she fell when shetried to make it. The miserable creature! how great an incentive, howmany motives and reasons she found for devouring her suffering, andbleeding internally: in the first place the rejection at intervals ofreligious ideas by the terrors of a hell of fire and brimstone; thenjealousy, that characteristic jealousy of everything and everybody thatpoisoned her life; then, then--then the disgust which these men, after atime, brutally expressed for her ugliness, and which drove her deeperand deeper into sottishness,--caused her one day to have a miscarriage,and she fell half dead on the floor. Such a frightful tearing away ofthe veil we have worn over our eyes is like the examination of apocketful of horrible things in a dead body suddenly opened. From whatwe have heard I suddenly seem to realize what she must have suffered forten years past: the dread of an anonymous letter to us or of adenunciation from some dealer; and the constant trepidation on thesubject of the money that was demanded of her, and that she could notpay; and the shame felt by that proud creature, perverted by the vileQuartier Saint-Georges, because of her intimacy with low wretches whomshe despised; and the lamentable consciousness of the premature senilitycaused by drunkenness; and the inhuman exactions and brutality of theAlphonses of the gutter; and the temptations to suicide which caused meto pull her away from a window one day, when I found her leaning farout--and lastly all the tears that we believed to be without cause--allthese things mingled with a very deep and heartfelt affection for us,and with a vehement, feverish devotion when either of us was ill. Andthis woman possessed an energetic character, a force of will, a skill inmystification, to which nothing can be compared. Yes, yes, all thosefrightful secrets kept under lock and key, hidden, buried deep in herown heart, so that neither our eyes, nor our ears, nor our powers ofobservation ever detected aught amiss, even in her hysterical attacks,when nothing escaped her but groans: a mystery preserved until herdeath, and which she must have believed would be buried with her. And ofwhat did she die? She died, because, all through one rainy winter'snight, eight months ago, at Montmartre, she spied upon the milkwoman'sson, who had turned her away, in order to find out with what woman hehad filled her place; a whole night leaning against a ground-floorwindow, as a result of which she was drenched to the bones with deadlypleurisy!

  Poor creature, we forgive her; indeed, a vast compassion for her fillsour hearts, as we reflect upon all that she has suffered. But we havebecome suspicious, for our lives, of the whole female sex, and of womenabove us as well as of women below us in station. We are terror-strickenat the double lining of their hearts, at the marvelous faculty, thescience, the consummate genius of falsehood with which their whole beingis instinct.

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  The above extracts are from our journal: JOURNAL DESGONCOURTS--_Memoires de la Vie Litteraire_; they are the documentaryfoundation upon which, two years later, my brother and I composedGERMINIE LACERTEUX, whom we made a study of and taught when she was inthe service of our venerable cousin, Mademoiselle de C----t, of whom wewere writing a veracious biography, after the style of a biography ofmodern history.

  EDMOND DE GONCOURT.

  _Auteuil, April, 1886._

  I

  "Saved! so you are really out of danger, mademoiselle!" exclaimed themaid with a cry of joy, as she closed the door upon the doctor, and,rushing to the bed on which her mistress lay, she began, in a frenzy ofhappiness and with a shower of kisses to embrace, together with the bedcovers, the old woman's poor, emaciated body, which seemed, in the hugebed, as small as a child's.

  The old woman took her head, silently, in both hands, pressed it againsther heart, heaved a sigh, and muttered: "Ah, well! so I must live on!"

  This took place in a small room, through the window of which could beseen a small patch of sky cut by three black iron pipes, variousneighboring roofs, and in the distance, between two houses that almosttouched, the leafless branch of a tree, whose trunk was invisible.

  On the mantelpiece, in a mahogany box, was a square clock with a largedial, huge figures and bulky hands. Beside it, under glass covers, weretwo candlesticks formed by three silver swans twisting their necksaround a golden quiver. Near the fireplace an easy chair _a laVoltaire_, covered with one of the pieces of tapestry of checker-boardpattern, which little girls and old women make, extended its empty arms.Two little Italian landscapes, a flower piece in water-colors afterBertin, with a date in red ink at the bottom, and a few miniatures hungon the walls.

  Upon the mahogany commode of an Empire pattern, a statue of Time inblack bronze, running with his scythe in rest, served as a watch standfor a small watch with a monogram in diamonds upon blue enamel,surrounded with pearls. The floor was covered with a bright carpet withblack and green stripes. The curtains at the bed and the window were ofold-fashioned chintz with red figures upon a chocolate ground.

  At the head of the bed, a portrait inclined over the invalid and seemedto gaze sternly at her. It represented a man with harsh features, whoseface emerged from the high collar of a green satin coat, and a muslincravat, with waving ends, tied loosely around the neck, in the style ofthe early years of the Revolution. The old woman in the bed resembledthe portrait. She had the same bushy, commanding black eyebrows, thesame aquiline nose, the same clearly marked lines of will, resolutionand energy. The portrait seemed to cast a reflection upon her, as afather's face is reflected in his child's. But in hers the harshness ofthe features was softened by a gleam of rough kindliness, by anindefinable flame of sturdy devotion and masculine charity.

  The light in the room was the light of an evening in early spring, aboutfive o'clock, a light as clear as crystal and as white as silver, thecold, chaste, soft light, which fades away in the flush of the sunsetpassing into twilight. The sky was filled with that light of a new life,adorably melancholy, like the still naked earth, and so replete withpathos that it moves happy souls to tears.

  "Well, well! my silly Germinie, weeping?" said the old woman, a momentlater, withdrawing her hands which were moist with her maid's kisses.

  "Oh! my dear, kind mademoiselle, I would like to weep like this all thetime! it's so good! it brings my poor mother back before my eyes--andeverything!--if you only knew!"

  "Go on, go on," said her mistress, closing her eyes to listen, "tell meabout it."

  "Oh! my poor mother!" The maid paused a moment. Then, with the flood ofwords that gushes forth with tears of joy, she continued, as if, in theemotion and outpouring of her happiness, her whole childhood flowed backinto her heart! "Poor woman! I can see her now the last time she wentout to take me to mass, one 21st of January, I remember. In those daysthey read from the king's Testament. Ah! she suffered enough on myaccount, did mamma! She was forty-two years old, when I was born----papamade her cry a good deal! There were three of us before and there wasn'tany too much bread in the house. And then he was proud as anything. Ifwe'd had only a handful of peas in the house he would never have gone tothe cure for help. Ah! we didn't eat bacon every day at our house. Nevermind; for all that mamma loved me a little more and she always found alittle fat or cheese in some corner to put on my bread. I wasn't fivewhen she died. That was a bad thing for us all. I had a tall brother,who was white as a sheet, with a yellow beard--and good! you have noidea. Everybody loved him. They gave him all sorts of names. Some calledhim Boda--why, I don't know. Others called him Jesus Christ. Ah! he wasa worker, he was! It didn't make any difference to him that his healthwas good for nothing; at daybreak he was always at his loom--for we wereweavers, you must know--and he never put his shuttle down till night.And honest, too, if you knew! People came from all about to bring himtheir yarn, and without weighing it, too. He was a great friend of theschoolmaster, and he used to write the _mottoes_ for the carnival. Myfather, he was a different sort: he'd work for a moment, or an hour, youknow, and then he'd go off into the fields--and when he came home he'dbeat us, and beat us hard. He was like a madman; they said it wasbecause he was consumptive. It was lucky my brother was there: he usedto prevent my second sister from pulling my hair and hurting me, becauseshe was jealous. He always took me by the hand to go and see them playskittles. In fact, he supported the family all alone. For my firstcommunion he had the bells rung! Ah! he did a heap of work so that Ishould be like the others, in a little white dress with flounces and alittle bag in my hand, such as they used to carry in those days. Ididn't have any cap: I remember making myself a pretty little wreath ofribbons and the white pith you pull off when you strip reeds; there waslots of it in the places where we used to put the hemp to soak. That wasone of my great days--that and the drawing lots for the pigs atChristmas--and the days when I went to help them tie up the vines; thatwas in June, you know. We had a little vineyard near Saint Hilaire.There was one very hard year in those days--do you remember it,mademoiselle?--the long frost of 1828 that ruined everything. Itextended as far as Dijon and farther, too--people had to make bread frombran. My brother nearly killed himself with work. Father, who was alwaysout of doors tramping about the fields, sometimes brought home a fewmushrooms. It was pretty bad, all the same; we were hungry oftener thananything else. When I was out in the fields myself, I'd look around tosee if anyone could see me, and then I'd crawl along softly on my knees,and when I was under a cow, I'd take off one of my sabots and begin tomilk her. Bless me! I came near being caught at it! My oldest sister wasout at service with the Mayor of Lenclos, and she sent home herwages--twenty-four francs--it was always as much as that. The secondworked at dressmaking in bourgeois families; but they didn't pay theprices then that they do to-day; she worked from six in the morning tilldark for eight sous. Out of that she wanted to put some by for a dressfor the fete on Saint-Remi's day.--Ah! that's the way it is with us:there are many who live on two potatoes a day for six months so as tohave a new dress for that day. Bad luck fell on us on all sides. Myfather died. We had to sell a small field, and a bit of a vineyard thatyielded a cask of wine every year. The notaries don't work for nothing.When my brother was sick there was nothing to give him to drink but_lees_ that we'd been putting water to for a year. And there wasn't anychange of linen for him; all the sheets in the wardrobe, which had agolden cross on top of it in mother's time, had gone--and the cross too.More than that, before he was sick this time, my brother goes off to thefete at Clefmont. He hears someone say that my sister had gone wrongwith the mayor she worked for; he falls on the men who said it, but hewasn't very strong. They were, though, and they threw him down, and whenhe was down, they kicked him with their wooden shoes, in the pit of thestomach. He was brought home to us for dead. The doctor put him on hisfeet again, though, and told us he was cured. But he could just draghimself along. I could see that he was going when he kissed me. When hewas dead, poor dear boy, Cadet Ballard had to use all his strength totake me away from the body. The whole village, mayor and all, went tohis funeral. As my sister couldn't keep her place with the mayor onaccount of the things he said to her, and had gone to Paris to find aplace, my other sister went after her. I was left all alone. One of mymother's cousins then took me with her to Damblin; but I was all upsetthere; I cried all night long, and whenever I could run away I alwayswent back to our house. Just to see the old vine at our door, from theend of the street, did me good! it put strength into my legs. The goodpeople who had bought the house would keep me till someone came for me!they were always sure to find me there. At last they wrote to my sisterin Paris that, if she didn't send for me to come and live with her, Iwasn't likely to live long. It's a fact that I was just like wax. Theyput me in charge of the driver of a small wagon that went from Langresto Paris every month, and that's how I came to Paris. I was fourteenyears old, then. I remember that I went to bed all dressed all the way,because they made me sleep in the common room. When I arrived I wascovered with lice."

  II

  The old woman said nothing: she was comparing her own life with herservant's.

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  Mademoiselle de Varandeuil was born in 1782. She first saw the light ina mansion on Rue Royale and Mesdames de France were her sponsors inbaptism. Her father was a close friend of the Comte d'Artois, in whosehousehold he held an important post. He joined in all hishunting-parties, and was one of the few familiar spirits, in whosepresence, at the mass preceding the hunt, he who was one day to be KingCharles X. used to hurry the officiating priest by saying in anundertone: "Psit! psit! cure, swallow your _Good Lord_ quickly!"

  Monsieur de Varandeuil had made one of those marriages which werecustomary enough in his day: he had espoused a sort of actress, asinger, who, although she had no great talent, had made a success at the_Concert Spirituel_, beside Madame Todi, Madame Ponteuil and MadameSaint-Huberty. The little girl born of this marriage in 1782 was sicklyand delicate, ugly of feature, with a nose even then large enough to beabsurd, her father's nose in a face as thin as a man's wrist. She hadnothing of what her parents' vanity would have liked her to have. Aftermaking a fiasco on the piano at the age of five, at a concert given byher mother in her salon, she was relegated to the society of theservants. Except for a moment in the morning, she never went near hermother, who always made her kiss her under the chin, so that she mightnot disturb her rouge. When the Revolution arrived, Monsieur deVarandeuil, thanks to the Comte d'Artois' patronage, was disburser ofpensions. Madame de Varandeuil was traveling in Italy, whither she hadordered her physician to send her on the pretext of ill health, leavingher daughter and an infant son in her husband's charge. The absorbinganxiety of the times, the tempests threatening wealth and the familiesthat handled wealth--Monsieur de Varandeuil's brother was aFarmer-General--left that very selfish and unloving father but littleleisure to attend to the wants of his children. Thereupon, he began tobe somewhat embarrassed pecuniarily. He left Rue Royale and took up hisabode at the Hotel du Petit-Charolais, belonging to his mother, whoallowed him to install himself there. Events moved rapidly; one evening,in the early days of the guillotine, as he was walking along RueSaint-Antoine, he heard a hawker in front of him, crying the journal:_Aux Voleurs! Aux Voleurs!_ According to the usual custom of thosedays, he gave a list of the articles contained in the number he had forsale: Monsieur de Varandeuil heard his own name mingled with oaths andobscenity. He bought the paper and read therein a revolutionarydenunciation of himself.

  Some time after, his brother was arrested and detained at Hotel Talaruwith the other Farmers-General. His mother, in a paroxysm of terror, hadfoolishly sold the Hotel du Petit-Charolais, where he was living, forthe value of the mirrors: she was paid in _assignats_, and died ofdespair over the constant depreciation of the paper. Luckily Monsieur deVarandeuil obtained from the purchasers, who could find no tenants,leave to occupy the rooms formerly used by the stableboys. He tookrefuge there, among the outbuildings of the mansion, stripped himself ofhis name and posted at the door, as he was ordered to do, his familyname of Roulot, under which he buried the _De Varandeuil_ and the formercourtier of the Comte d'Artois. He lived there alone, buried, forgotten,hiding his head, never going out, cowering in his hole, withoutservants, waited upon by his daughter, to whom he left everything. TheTerror was to them a period of shuddering suspense, the breathlessexcitement of impending death. Every evening, the little girl went andlistened at a grated window to the day's crop of condemnations, the_List of Prize Winners in the Lottery of Saint Guillotine_. She answeredevery knock at the door, thinking that they had come to take her fatherto the Place de la Revolution, whither her uncle had already been taken.The moment came when money, the money that was so scarce, no longerprocured bread. It was necessary to go and get it, almost by force, atthe doors of the bakeries; it was necessary to earn it by standing forhours in the cold, biting night air, in the crushing pressure of crowdsof people; to stand in line from three o'clock in the morning. Thefather did not care to venture into that mass of humanity. He was afraidof being recognized, of compromising himself by one of those outburststo which his impetuous nature would have given vent, no matter where hemight be. Then, too, he recoiled from the fatigue and severity of thetask. The little boy was still too small; he would have been crushed; sothe duty of obtaining bread for three mouths each day fell to thedaughter. She obtained it. With her little thin body, fairly lost in herfather's knitted jacket, a cotton cap pulled down over her eyes, herlimbs all huddled together to retain a little warmth, she would wait,shivering, her eyes aching with cold, amid the pushing and buffeting,until the baker's wife on Rue des Francs-Bourgeois placed in her hands aloaf which her little fingers, stiff with cold, could hardly hold. Atlast, this poor little creature, who returned day after day, with herpinched face and her emaciated, trembling body, moved the baker's wifeto pity. With the kindness of heart of a woman of the people, she wouldsend the coveted loaf to the little one by her boy as soon as sheappeared in the long line. But one day, just as she put out her hand totake it, a woman, whose jealousy was aroused by this mark of favor andpreference, dealt the child a kick with her wooden shoe which kept herin bed almost a month. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil bore the marks of theblow all her life.