La Maison Tellier 🏠✨ – Guy de Maupassant
La Maison Tellier is a captivating short story by Guy de Maupassant, which immerses us in the intimate and mysterious atmosphere of a Norman brothel. The story centers on the visit of a group of characters from the city to discover a place full of secrets and paradoxes. Through this social fresco, Maupassant explores the themes of morality, temptation, and the duality of humanity. Chapter 1. People went there every evening around eleven o’clock, just like going to a café. Six or eight of them would meet there, always the same people, not revelers, but honorable men, merchants, young people from the city; and they would drink their chartreuse while teasing the girls a little, or they would chat seriously with Madame, whom everyone respected. Then they would go home to bed before midnight. The young people sometimes stayed. The house was a family one, very small, painted yellow, at the corner of a street behind the church of Saint-Étienne; and, through the windows, one could see the basin full of ships being unloaded, the large salt marsh called the Retenue and, behind, the Côte de la Vierge with its old gray chapel. Madame, who came from a good peasant family in the department of Eure, had accepted this profession absolutely as she would have become a milliner or a seamstress. The prejudice of dishonor attached to prostitution, so violent and so lively in the cities, does not exist in the Normandy countryside. The peasant said: “It’s a good job;” and he sent his son to run a harem of girls as he would send him to run a boarding school for young ladies. This house, moreover, had come by inheritance from an old uncle who owned it. Monsieur and Madame, formerly innkeepers near Yvetot, had immediately liquidated it, judging the Fécamp business more advantageous for them; and they had arrived one fine morning to take over the management of the business which was failing in the absence of the owners. They were good people who immediately made themselves loved by their staff and the neighbors. Monsieur died of a stroke two years later. His new profession kept him in a state of indolence and immobility, he had become very popular with people of all body types, and his health had suffocated him. Madame, since her widowhood, was vainly desired by all the regulars of the establishment; but she was said to be absolutely well-behaved, and even her boarders had been unable to discover anything. She was tall, fleshy, pleasant. Her complexion, pale in the darkness of this always closed dwelling, shone as if under a greasy varnish. A thin trimming of wild, false, curly hair surrounded her forehead and gave her a youthful appearance that clashed with the maturity of her figure. Invariably cheerful and open-faced, she was happy to joke, with a touch of restraint that her new occupations had not yet been able to make her lose. People of all body types always shocked her a little; and when a badly brought-up boy called the establishment she managed by its proper name, she became angry and revolted. Finally, she had a delicate soul, and although she treated her women as friends, she readily repeated that they were not of the same ilk. Sometimes, during the week, she would leave in a hired carriage with a fraction of her troop; and they would go and frolic over marijuana on the banks of the little river that runs through the Valmont valley. Then there were boarding parties, wild races, childish games, all the joy of recluses intoxicated by the fresh air. We ate charcuterie on the lawn while drinking cider, and we returned home at nightfall with a delicious fatigue, a sweet tenderness; and in the carriage we kissed Madame like a very good mother, full of gentleness and complaisance. The house had two entrances. In the corner, a sort of one-eyed café opened, in the evening, to the common people and the sailors. Two of the The people in charge of the special trade of the place were particularly intended for the needs of this part of the clientele. They served, with the help of the waiter, named Frédéric, a small, beardless blond man as strong as an ox, the pints of wine and the cans on the rickety marble tables, and, arms thrown around the necks of the drinkers, sitting across their legs, they encouraged consumption. The three other ladies (there were only five of them) formed a sort of aristocracy, and remained reserved for the company of the first, unless they were needed downstairs and the first floor was empty. The salon of Jupiter, where the bourgeois of the place gathered, was covered with blue paper and decorated with a large drawing representing Leda lying under a swan. One reached this place by means of a winding staircase ending in a narrow door, humble in appearance, opening onto the street, and above which shone all night, behind a trellis, a small lantern like those still lit in certain towns at the feet of the Madonnas set in the walls. The building, damp and old, smelled slightly musty. At times, a breath of cologne passed through the corridors, or else a half-open door at the bottom made burst throughout the house, like an explosion of thunder, the popular cries of the men seated at tables on the ground floor, and put on the faces of the gentlemen on the first floor a worried and disgusted pout. Madame, familiar with the customers, her friends, did not leave the drawing-room, and was interested in the rumors of the town which reached her through them.
Her grave conversation diverted the incoherent remarks of the three women; It was like a respite from the naughty banter of the pot-bellied individuals who indulged every evening in this honest and mediocre debauchery of drinking a glass of liqueur in the company of prostitutes . The three ladies on the first floor were called Fernande, Raphaële and Rosa la Rosse . The staff being limited, they had tried to make each of them like a sample, a summary of the feminine type, so that any consumer could find there, at least approximately, the realization of his ideal. Fernande represented the beautiful blonde, very tall, almost obese, flabby, a country girl whose freckles refused to disappear, and whose stringy, short, light and colorless hair, like combed hemp, insufficiently covered her skull. Raphaële, a Marseillaise, a hussy from the seaports, played the indispensable role of the beautiful Jewess, people of all body types, with prominent cheekbones plastered with rouge. Her black hair, polished with beef marrow, formed hooks at her temples. Her eyes would have seemed beautiful if the right one hadn’t been marked by a hairline. Her arched nose fell on a pronounced jaw where two new teeth, at the top, stood out beside those at the bottom which had, with age, taken on a dark tint like ancient antlers. Rosa la Rosse, a little ball of flesh all pot-bellied with tiny legs , sang from morning to night, in a raspy voice, verses alternately bawdy or sentimental, told interminable and insignificant stories , never stopped talking except to eat and eating only to talk, was always moving, supple as a squirrel despite her fat and the smallness of her paws; and her laughter, a cascade of shrill cries, burst out incessantly, here and there, in a room, in the attic, in the café, everywhere, about nothing. The two women on the ground floor, Louise, nicknamed Cocote, and Flora, called Swing because she limped a little, one always in Liberté with a tricolor sash, the other in fancy Spanish dress with copper sequins dancing in her carrot-shaped hair with each of her uneven steps, looked like kitchen maids dressed for a carnival. Like all the women of the people, neither uglier nor more beautiful, real inn maids, they were called in the port under the nickname of the two Pumps. A jealous, but rarely troubled, peace reigned between these five women, thanks to the conciliatory wisdom of Madame and her inexhaustible good humor. The establishment, unique in the small town, was assiduously frequented. Madame had known how to give it such a proper appearance; she showed herself so kind, so considerate to everyone; her good heart was so well known, that a sort of consideration surrounded her. The regulars made expenses for her, triumphed when she showed them a more marked friendship; and when they met during the day for business, they said to each other: See you this evening, or you know, as we say: At the cafe, isn’t it? after dinner. Finally, the Tellier house was a resource, and rarely did anyone miss the daily meeting. Now, one evening, towards the end of May, the first to arrive, Mr. Poulin, a timber merchant and former mayor, found the door closed. The small lantern, behind its trellis, did not shine; no sound came from the house, which seemed dead. He knocked, gently at first, then more forcefully; no one answered. Then he walked slowly up the street , and as he arrived at the Market Square, he met Mr. Duvert, the shipowner, who was going to the same place. They returned together without any more success. But a loud noise suddenly broke out very close to them, and, having turned the house, they saw a group of English and French sailors banging their fists on the closed shutters of the café. The two bourgeois immediately fled to avoid being compromised; but a slight pss’t stopped them: it was Mr. Tournevau, the fish salter, who, having recognized them, was hailing them. They told him this, which affected him all the more because he, married, father of a family and closely watched, only came there on Saturdays, securitatis causa, he said, alluding to a health police measure whose periodic returns Dr. Borde, his friend, had revealed to him. It was precisely his evening and he would find himself thus deprived for the whole week. The three men made a long detour to the quay, finding on the way young Mr. Philippe, son of the banker, a regular, and Mr. Pimpesse, the tax collector. All together then returned by the street to the Jews to make one last attempt. But the exasperated sailors laid siege to the house, threw stones, shouted; and the five customers on the first floor, turning back as quickly as possible, began to wander through the streets. They again met Mr. Dupuis, the insurance agent, then Mr. Vasse, the judge at the commercial court; and a long walk began which led them first to the jetty. They sat in a line on the granite parapet and watched the waves roll by. The foam on the crest of the waves made luminous whites in the shadows, extinguished almost as soon as they appeared, and the monotonous sound of the sea breaking against the rocks continued into the night all along the cliff. When the sad walkers had remained there for some time, M. Tournevau declared: “It’s not cheerful.” “No, certainly not,” replied M. Pimpesse; and they set off again at a leisurely pace. After having walked along the street that overlooks the hill and that is called: Sous-le-bois, they returned by the plank bridge over the Retenue, passed near the railway and emerged again at the Place du Marché, where a quarrel suddenly began between the tax collector, Mr. Pimpesse, and the salter, Mr. Tournevau, about an edible mushroom that one of them claimed to have found in the area. Tempers being soured by boredom, it might have come to assault if the others had not intervened. Mr. Pimpesse, furious, withdrew; and immediately a new altercation arose between the former mayor, Mr. Poulin, and the insurance agent, Mr. Dupuis, about the tax collector’s salary and the profits he could create for himself. Insulting words were raining down from both sides, when a storm of Tremendous shouts were unleashed, and the troop of sailors, tired of waiting in vain in front of a closed house, emerged onto the square. They held arms, two by two, forming a long procession, and they shouted furiously. The group of bourgeois hid under a door, and the howling horde disappeared in the direction of the abbey. For a long time still the clamor could be heard diminishing like a storm that recedes; and silence was restored. M. Poulin and M. Dupuis, furious with each other, left, each in his own way, without greeting each other. The other four resumed their march, and instinctively went back down towards the Tellier establishment. It was still closed, silent, impenetrable. A drunkard, quiet and obstinate, was tapping on the front of the café, then stopping to call out in a low voice to the waiter Frederick. Seeing that there was no answer, he decided to sit on the doorstep and wait for events to unfold. The bourgeois were about to withdraw when the tumultuous band of men from the port reappeared at the end of the street. The French sailors were shouting the Marseillaise, the English the Rule Britannia. There was a general stampede against the walls, then the stream of brutes resumed its course towards the quay, where a battle broke out between the sailors of the two nations. In the brawl, an Englishman had his arm broken, and a Frenchman had his nose split. The drunkard, who had remained in front of the door, was now weeping like drunkards or upset children. The bourgeois finally dispersed. Little by little calm returned to the troubled city. From place to place, still from time to time, a sound of voices rose, then died away in the distance.
Alone, one man still wandered, Mr. Tournevau, the salter, sorry to wait until the next Saturday; and he hoped for some unknown chance, not understanding, exasperated that the police allowed to close thus a public utility establishment that they supervise and keep under their guard. He returned there, sniffing the walls, looking for the reason; and he noticed that on the awning a sign was stuck. He quickly lit a candle-match, and read these words written in large uneven writing: Closed for First Communion. Then he moved away, understanding well that it was over. The drunkard was now asleep, stretched out at full length across the inhospitable door. And the next day, all the regulars, one after the other, found a way to pass through the street with papers under their arms to give themselves some composure; and, with a furtive glance, each one read the mysterious notice: Closed for First Communion. Chapter 2. This is because Madame had a brother established as a carpenter in their native country, Virville, in Eure. While Madame was still an innkeeper in Yvetot, she had held at the baptismal font the daughter of this brother whom she named Constance, Constance Rivet; being herself a Rivet on her father’s side. The carpenter, who knew his sister was in a good position, did not lose sight of her, although they did not meet often, both being kept up by their occupations and living far from each other. But as the girl was about to turn twelve, and was making her first communion that year, he seized this opportunity for a rapprochement, and he wrote to his sister that he was counting on her for the ceremony. The old parents were dead, she could not refuse her goddaughter; she accepted. Her brother, whose name was Joseph, hoped that by dint of thoughtfulness he might perhaps succeed in obtaining a will in favor of the little girl, Madame being childless. His sister’s profession did not in the least bother his scruples, and, besides , no one in the neighborhood knew anything. People only said when speaking of her: Madame Tellier is a bourgeois of Fécamp, which suggested that she could live on her income. From Fécamp to Virville it was at least twenty leagues; and twenty leagues of land for peasants are more difficult to cross than the ocean for a civilized person. The people of Virville had never gone beyond Rouen; nothing attracted those of Fécamp to a small village of five hundred households, lost in the middle of the plains and part of another department. In short, nothing was known. But, as the time of communion approached, Madame experienced great embarrassment. She had no undermistress, and she had no concern about leaving her house, even for a day. All the rivalries between the ladies upstairs and those downstairs would inevitably break out; then Frederick would doubtless get drunk, and when he was drunk, he would knock people out for the slightest thing. Finally, she decided to take everyone with her, except the boy, to whom she gave his freedom until the day after tomorrow. The brother consulted made no objection, and undertook to lodge the entire company for one night. So, on Saturday morning, the eight o’clock express train carried Madame and her companions in a second-class carriage. Until Beuzeville they were alone and chattered like magpies. But at this station a couple got on. The man, an old peasant dressed in a blue blouse with a pleated collar, wide sleeves tightened at the wrists and decorated with a small branch embroidery, wearing a tall antique hat whose singed hair seemed to stand on end, held in one hand an immense green umbrella, and in the other a vast basket through which the frightened heads of three ducks protruded. The woman, stiff in her rustic attire, had the face of a hen with a nose as pointed as a beak. She sat down opposite her husband and remained motionless, struck by finding herself in the midst of such fine company. And it was, indeed, in the carriage a dazzling display of brilliant colors. Madame, all in blue, in blue silk from head to toe, wore over it a shawl of imitation French cashmere, red, blinding, dazzling. Fernande was puffing in a Scottish dress whose bodice, laced with all her might by her companions, lifted her sagging bosom into a double dome, always agitated, which seemed liquid beneath the fabric. Raphaële, with a feathered headdress simulating a nest full of birds, wore a lilac dress, spangled with gold, something oriental that became her Jewish physiognomy. Rosa la Rosse, in a pink skirt with wide flounces, looked like an overweight child, like an obese dwarf; and the two Pompes seemed to have cut themselves strange accoutrements from the middle of old window curtains, those old patterned curtains dating from the Restoration. As soon as they were no longer alone in the compartment, these ladies assumed a grave countenance and began to talk of high things to give a good opinion of themselves. But at Bolbec appeared a gentleman with blond whiskers, rings, and a gold chain, who put several packages wrapped in oilcloth in the net on his head. He had a mischievous and good-natured air. He bowed, smiled, and asked with ease: “Are these ladies changing garrison?” This question threw the group into embarrassed confusion. Madame finally recovered her composure and replied curtly, to avenge the honor of the corps: “You could be polite!” He apologized: “Pardon, I meant the monastery.” Madame, finding nothing to reply, or perhaps judging the correction sufficient, made a dignified bow, pursing her lips. Then the gentleman, who was sitting between Rosa la Rosse and the old peasant, began to wink at the three ducks whose heads were sticking out of the large basket; then, when he felt that he was already captivating his audience, he began to tickle these animals under the beak, making funny speeches to them to cheer up the company:–We left our little ma-mare! squeak! squeak! squeak!–to make the acquaintance of the little spit,–squeak! squeak! squeak!–The unfortunate creatures turned their necks to avoid his caresses, made efforts frightful to get out of their wicker prison; then suddenly all three together uttered a pitiful cry of distress:–Couen! couen! couen! couen!–Then there was an explosion of laughter among the women. They bent down, they pushed each other to see; people were madly interested in the ducks; and the gentleman redoubled his grace, wit and teasing. Rosa joined in, and, leaning over her neighbor’s legs, she kissed the three beasts on the nose. Immediately each woman wanted to kiss them in turn; and the gentleman sat these ladies on his knees, made them jump, pinched them; suddenly he addressed them as “tu”. The two peasants, even more panic-stricken than their poultry, rolled their eyes like possessed people without daring to move, and their old, wrinkled faces did not have a smile, not a flinch. Then the gentleman, who was a traveling salesman, offered suspenders to these ladies as a joke, and, seizing one of his packages, he opened it. It was a trick, the package contained garters. There were some in blue silk, pink silk, red silk, violet silk, mauve silk, ponceau silk, with metal buckles formed by two entwined and gilded cupids. The girls uttered cries of joy, then examined the samples, taken over by the natural gravity of any woman who fiddles with an article of toiletry. They consulted each other with a glance or a whispered word, answered each other in the same way, and Madame was handling with envy a pair of orange garters, wider, more imposing than the others: real garters for a boss. The gentleman waited, nourishing an idea: “Come on, my little cats,” he said, “you must try them on.” There was a storm of exclamations; and they clutched their skirts between their legs as if they feared violence. He, calm, waited for his moment. He declared: “You don’t want them, I’ll pack them up.” Then, subtly: “I’ll offer a pair, of their choice, to those who try them on.” But they didn’t want them, very dignified, their waists straightened. The two Pumps, however, seemed so unhappy that he renewed the offer. Flora Balançoire especially, tortured with desire, was visibly hesitating. He urged her: “Go ahead, my girl, a little courage; here, the lilac pair, they’ll go well with your outfit.” Then she made up her mind, and, lifting her dress, showed a strong cowgirl’s leg, loosely tied in a pair of coarse stockings. The gentleman, bending down, hooked the garter first below the knee, then above; and he gently tickled the girl to make her utter little cries with sudden shudders. When he had finished, he gave the lilac pair and asked: “Whose turn is it?” They all cried together: ” Mine! Mine!” He began with Rosa la Rosse; who discovered a shapeless thing, completely round, without an ankle, a real sausage of a leg, as Raphaële said. Fernande was complimented by the traveling salesman , who was enthralled by her powerful columns. People of all body types, the shins of the beautiful Jewess, were less successful. Louise Cocote, as a joke, put her skirt on the gentleman’s head; and Madame was obliged to intervene to stop this unseemly farce. Finally, Madame herself stretched out her leg, a beautiful Norman leg, plump and muscular; and the traveler, surprised and delighted, gallantly took off his hat to salute this master calf like a true French knight. The two peasants, frozen in bewilderment, looked sideways, with one eye; and they looked so absolutely like chickens that the man with the blond whiskers, as he got up, made a Coke-coke-coke in their noses. This unleashed a new hurricane of gaiety. The old people went down to Motteville, with their basket, their ducks and their umbrella: and the woman was heard saying to her man as she walked away: “These are people who are going to this damned Paris again. ” The pleasant ball-carrier himself went down to Rouen, after having been so rude that Madame felt obliged to sharply reprimand him. her place. She added, as a moral: “That will teach us to talk to the first person who comes along.” At Oissel, they changed trains, and at the next station found M. Joseph Rivet waiting for them with a large cart full of chairs and drawn by a white horse. The carpenter politely embraced all these ladies and helped them into his carriage. Three sat on three chairs at the back; Raphaële, Madame, and her brother, on the three chairs in front, and Rosa, having no seat, placed herself as best she could on the knees of the tall Fernande; then the carriage set off. But, immediately, the jerky trot of the bidet shook the carriage so terribly that the chairs began to dance, throwing the travelers into the air, to the right, to the left, with puppet-like movements, frightened grimaces, cries of terror, suddenly interrupted by a stronger jolt. They clung to the sides of the vehicle; their hats fell down their backs, over their noses, or toward their shoulders; and the white horse went on, stretching out its head and its tail straight, a little hairless rat’s tail with which it slapped its buttocks from time to time. Joseph Rivet, one foot stretched out on the shaft, the other leg bent beneath him, his elbows very high, held the reins, and from his throat escaped at every moment a sort of clucking which, making the bidet’s ears prick up, quickened its pace. On both sides of the road the green countryside unfolded. The rapeseeds in bloom created from place to place a great undulating yellow sheet from which rose a healthy and powerful odor, a penetrating and sweet odor, carried very far by the wind. In the already tall rye, cornflowers showed their little azure heads which the women wanted to pick, but M. Rivet refused to stop. Then sometimes, an entire field seemed watered with blood, so overgrown were the poppies. And in the middle of these plains colored by the flowers of the earth, the cart, which itself seemed to be carrying a bouquet of flowers in the most ardent hues, passed at the trot of the white horse, disappeared behind the tall trees of a farm, to reappear at the end of the foliage and once again walk through the yellow and green crops, dotted with red or blue, this dazzling cartload of women fleeing under the sun. One o’clock was striking when they arrived at the carpenter’s door. They were broken with fatigue and pale with hunger, having taken nothing since the start. Madame Rivet rushed over, made them get out one after the other, kissing them as soon as they touched the ground; and she never tired of kissing her sister-in-law, whom she wanted to monopolize. They ate in the workshop, cleared of the workbenches for the next day’s dinner. A good omelet followed by a grilled andouille sausage, washed down with good, tangy cider, restored everyone’s cheerfulness. Rivet, to toast, had a glass, and his wife served, cooked, brought the dishes, removed them, whispering in each one’s ear: “Do you have any you want?” Piles of planks set up against the walls and stacks of shavings swept into the corners gave off a scent of planed wood, a smell of carpentry, that resinous breath that penetrates the depths of the lungs. They called for the little girl, but she was at church, not due back until evening. The company then went out for a tour of the countryside. It was a very small village crossed by a main road. A dozen houses lined up along this single road housed the local tradesmen, the butcher, the grocer, the carpenter, the cafe owner, the cobbler, and the baker. The church, at the end of this sort of street, was surrounded by a narrow cemetery; and four enormous lime trees, planted in front of its gate, shaded it entirely. It was built of cut flint, without any style, and topped with a slate bell tower. Beyond it the countryside began again, cut here and there with clumps of trees hiding the farms. Rivet, out of ceremony, and although dressed as a worker, had taken his sister’s arm, and was leading her majestically. His wife, quite moved by Raphaële’s gold-trimmed dress, had placed herself between her and Fernande. The plump Rosa trotted behind with Louise Cocote and Flora Balançoire, who hobbled, exhausted. The inhabitants came to the doors, the children stopped their games, a curtain was lifted to reveal a head wearing a calico bonnet; an old woman on crutches, almost blind, crossed herself as if at a procession; and everyone watched for a long time all the beautiful ladies of the town who had come from so far away for the little girl’s first communion to Joseph Rivet. An immense esteem reflected on the carpenter. As they passed in front of the church, they heard children singing: a hymn shouted to heaven by shrill little voices; but Madame prevented anyone from entering, so as not to disturb these cherubs. After a tour of the countryside, and the enumeration of the principal properties, the yield of the land and the production of the livestock, Joseph Rivet brought back his flock of women and installed them in his home. Space being very limited, they had been divided two by two in the rooms. Rivet, for this time, would sleep in the workshop, on the shavings; his wife would share her bed with her sister-in-law, and, in the room next door, Fernande and Raphaële would rest together. Louise and Flora were installed in the kitchen on a mattress thrown on the floor; and Rosa alone occupied a small dark closet above the stairs, against the entrance to a narrow loft where, that night, the communicant would sleep. When the little girl returned, she was showered with kisses; all the women wanted to caress her, with that need for tender expansion, that professional habit of petting, which, in the carriage, had made them all kiss the ducks. Each one sat her on her knees, handled her fine blond hair, held her in her arms in bursts of vehement and spontaneous affection. The well-behaved child, imbued with piety, as if closed by absolution, let herself be done, patient and collected. The day having been painful for everyone, they went to bed quickly after dinner. This limitless silence of the fields which seems almost religious enveloped the little village, a tranquil silence, penetrating, and wide as far as the stars. The girls, accustomed to the tumultuous evenings of the public lodging, felt moved by this mute repose of the sleeping countryside. They had shivers on their skin, not from cold, but shivers of solitude coming from the restless and troubled heart. As soon as they were in bed, two by two, they embraced each other as if to defend themselves against this invasion of the calm and deep sleep of the earth. But Rosa la Rosse, alone in her dark closet, and unaccustomed to sleeping with empty arms, felt seized by a vague and painful emotion. She was turning over on her bed, unable to get to sleep, when she heard, behind the wooden partition against her head, faint sobs like those of a crying child. Frightened, she called out weakly, and a small, broken voice answered her. It was the little girl who, still sleeping in her mother’s room, was afraid in her narrow attic. Rosa, delighted, got up, and quietly, so as not to wake anyone, went to fetch the child. She brought her to her warm bed, pressed her to her chest, kissing her, pampered her, enveloped her in her exaggerated tenderness, and then, calmed down herself, fell asleep. And until daybreak the communicant rested her forehead on the person’s bare breast . At five o’clock, at the Angelus, the small church bell ringing at full blast woke these ladies who usually slept the whole morning away, the only rest from the night’s fatigues. The peasants in the village were already up. The women of the country went busily from door to door. door, talking briskly, carefully bringing short muslin dresses starched like cardboard, or oversized candles, with a silk knot fringed with gold in the middle, and wax cutouts indicating the place of the hand. The sun, already high, shone in a completely blue sky which kept towards the horizon a slightly pinkish tint, like a weakened trace of dawn. Families of hens walked in front of their houses; and, from place to place, a black rooster with a shiny neck raised its head topped with purple, beat its wings, and threw its copper song to the wind, which the other roosters repeated. Carts arrived from neighboring towns, unloading at the thresholds of the doors the high Norman women in dark dresses, with a kerchief crossed on the chest and held by a centuries-old silver jewel. The men had put the blue blouse over the new frock coat or over the old green cloth coat whose two tails hung. When the horses were in the stable, there was thus all along the main road a double line of rustic jalopy carts, carts, cabriolets, tilburys, chariots à banc, carriages of every shape and age, leaning on their noses or with their backs to the ground and shafts to the sky. The carpenter’s house was full of a hive of activity. These ladies, in camisoles and petticoats, their hair spilling down their backs, hair of all types and short, which one would have said was tarnished and eaten away by use, were busy dressing the child. The little one, standing on a table, did not move, while Madame Tellier directed the movements of her flying battalion. They washed her face, combed her hair, dressed her, and, with the help of a multitude of pins, arranged the folds of the dress, pinched the overly wide waist, and organized the elegance of the toilet. Then, when this was finished, they made the patient sit down and advised her not to move; and the agitated troop of women ran to adorn themselves in turn. The little church began to ring again. Its frail ringing of a poor bell rose to lose itself across the sky, like a voice too weak, quickly drowned in the blue immensity. The communicants came out of the doors, went towards the communal building which contained the two schools and the town hall, and located at the very end of the village, while the house of God occupied the other end. The parents, in festive attire, with awkward faces and those clumsy movements of bodies always bent over work, followed their children. The little girls disappeared in a cloud of snowy tulle like whipped cream, while the little men, like embryonic waiters, their heads covered in ointment, walked with their legs apart, so as not to stain their black breeches. It was a glory for a family when a large number of relatives, come from afar, surrounded the child: thus the carpenter’s triumph was complete. The Tellier regiment, patroness at the head, followed Constance; and the father giving his arm to his sister, the mother walking beside Raphaële, Fernande with Rosa, and the two Pompes together, the troop deployed majestically like a general staff in full uniform. The effect in the village was overwhelming. At school, the girls lined up under the bonnet of the nun, the boys under the hat of the teacher, a handsome man who was representing; and they set off, attacking a hymn. The male children at the head extended their two files between the two rows of unhitched carriages, the girls followed in the same order; and all the inhabitants having given way to the ladies of the town out of consideration, they arrived immediately after the little ones, further extending the double line of the procession; three on the left and three on the right, with their costumes dazzling like a bouquet of fireworks . Their entry into the church frightened the population. People crowded, turned around, pushed to see them. And devout women spoke almost aloud, stupefied by the spectacle of these more bejeweled ladies than the singers’ chasubles. The mayor offered his pew, the first pew on the right near the choir, and Madame Tellier took her place there with her sister-in-law, Fernande, and Raphaële. Rosa la Rosse and the two Pompes occupied the second pew with the carpenter. The church choir was full of kneeling children, girls on one side, boys on the other, and the long candles they held in their hands looked like lances tilted in all directions. In front of the lectern, three men stood singing in full voices. They prolonged the syllables of sonorous Latin indefinitely, perpetuating the Amens with indefinite aa’s that the serpent sustained with its endlessly pushed monotonous note, bellowed by the wide- mouthed brass instrument. A child’s high-pitched voice gave the cue, and from time to time a priest sitting in a stall wearing a square biretta would stand up, stammer something, and sit down again, while the three cantors left, their eyes fixed on the plainsong book open before them and carried by the outstretched wings of a wooden eagle mounted on a pivot. Then there was silence. The entire congregation, with a single movement, knelt , and the officiant appeared, old, venerable, with white hair , leaning over the chalice he carried in his left hand. Before him walked the two servers in red robes, and behind him appeared a crowd of cantors in shoes who lined up on both sides of the choir. A small bell rang in the midst of the great silence. The divine office was beginning. The priest walked slowly before the golden tabernacle, genuflected, and intoned the preparatory prayers in his broken voice, quavering with age. As soon as he fell silent, all the singers and the serpent burst forth at once, and men also sang in the church, in a less loud, more humble voice, as those present should sing. Suddenly the Kyrie Eleison burst forth toward the sky, urged by all breasts and all hearts. Grains of dust and fragments of worm-eaten wood even fell from the ancient vault shaken by this explosion of cries. The sun beating down on the slates of the roof made the little church a furnace; and a great emotion, an anxious expectation, the approach of the ineffable mystery, gripped the hearts of the children, tightened the throats of their mothers. The priest, who had been sitting for some time, went back up to the altar, and, bareheaded and covered with his silver hair, with trembling gestures, he approached the supernatural act. He turned towards the faithful, and, with his hands stretched out towards them, pronounced: Orate, fratres, pray, my brothers. They were all praying. The old priest now stammered the mysterious and supreme words in a low voice ; the bell rang one after another; the prostrate crowd called out to God; the children fainted with immense anxiety. It was then that Rosa, her forehead in her hands, suddenly remembered her mother, the church in her village, her first communion. She thought she had returned to that day, when she was so small, all wrapped up in her white dress, and she began to cry. She wept gently at first: the slow tears came from her eyelids, then, with her memories, her emotion grew, and, her neck swollen, her chest heaving, she sobbed. She had taken out her handkerchief, wiped her eyes, dabbed her nose and mouth to keep from crying out: it was in vain; a sort of rattle came from her throat, and two other deep, heart-rending sighs answered her; for her two neighbors, dejected near her, Louise and Flora, gripped by the same distant memories, were also moaning with torrents of tears. But as tears are contagious, Madame, in her turn, soon felt her eyelids moist, and, turning towards her sister-in-law, she saw that her whole pew was weeping too. The priest engendered the body of God. The children no longer had thought, thrown onto the flagstones by a kind of devout fear; and, in the church, from place to place, a woman, a mother, a sister, seized by the strange sympathy of poignant emotions, upset also by these beautiful ladies on their knees shaken by shivers and hiccups, soaked her checked calico handkerchief and, with her left hand, violently pressed her leaping heart. Like the spark that throws fire across a ripe field, the tears of Rosa and her companions reached the whole crowd in an instant. Men, women, old people, young lads in new blouses, all soon sobbed, and over their heads seemed to hover something superhuman, an outpouring soul, the prodigious breath of an invisible and all-powerful being. Then, in the choir of the church, a small sharp rap sounded: the good sister, striking on her book, gave the signal for communion; and the children, shivering with a divine fever, approached the holy table. A whole line knelt. The old priest, holding the silver-gilt ciborium in his hand, passed before them, offering them, between two fingers, the sacred host, the body of Christ, the redemption of the world. They opened their mouths with spasms, nervous grimaces, their eyes closed, their faces completely pale; and the long cloth stretched out under their chins quivered like running water. Suddenly in the church a sort of madness ran, a murmur of a delirious crowd , a storm of sobs with stifled cries. It passed like those gusts of wind that bend the forests; and the priest remained standing, motionless, a host in his hand, paralyzed by emotion, saying to himself: It is God, it is God who is among us, who manifests his presence, who descends at my voice upon his kneeling people. And he stammered frantic prayers, without finding the words, prayers of the soul, in a furious surge towards heaven. He finished giving communion with such an excitement of faith that his legs gave way under him, and when he himself had drunk the blood of his Lord, he lost himself in an act of desperate thanksgiving. Behind him the people gradually calmed down. The singers, raised in the dignity of the white surplice, left with a less sure voice, still wet; and the serpent also seemed hoarse as if the instrument itself had wept. Then the priest, raising his hands, signaled them to be silent, and passing between the two rows of communicants lost in ecstasies of happiness, he approached the choir gate. The congregation had sat down amidst a clatter of chairs, and everyone was now blowing their noses vigorously. As soon as the priest was seen, there was silence, and he began to speak in a very low, hesitant, veiled tone. My dear brothers, my dear sisters, my children, I thank you from the bottom of my heart: you have just given me the greatest joy of my life. I felt God descending upon us at my call. He came, he was there, present, filling your souls, making your eyes overflow. I am the oldest priest in the diocese, and I am also, today, the happiest. A miracle has taken place among us, a true, a great, a sublime miracle. While Jesus Christ was entering for the first time into the bodies of these little ones, the Holy Spirit, the celestial bird, the breath of God, descended upon you, seized you, grasped you, bending you like reeds in the breeze. Then, in a clearer voice, turning to the two benches where the carpenter’s guests were sitting: “Thank you especially to you, my dear sisters, who have come from so far away, and whose presence among us, whose visible faith, whose lively piety have been a salutary example for all. You are the edification of my parish; your emotion has warmed hearts; without you, perhaps, this great day would not have had this truly divine character. Sometimes a single chosen sheep is enough to persuade the Lord to descend upon the flock.” His voice failed him. He added: “That is the grace I wish for you.” So be it. And he went back up to the altar to finish the service. Now they were in a hurry to leave. The children themselves were restless, weary of such a long mental strain. They were hungry, and the parents were gradually leaving, without waiting for the last Gospel, to finish preparing the meal. There was a crush at the exit, a noisy crush, a hullabaloo of shrill voices in which the Norman accent sang. The population formed two lines, and when the children appeared, each family rushed to their own. Constance found herself seized, surrounded, embraced by the whole household of women. Rosa especially never tired of embracing her. Finally she took one of her hands, Madame Tellier seized the other; Raphaële and Fernande lifted her long muslin skirt so that it would not trail in the dust; Louise and Flora brought up the rear with Madame Rivet; and the child, recollected, completely penetrated by the God she carried within her, set off in the midst of this escort of honor. The feast was served in the workshop on long planks carried by crosspieces. The open door, giving onto the street, let in all the joy of the village. People were feasting everywhere. Through every window one could see tables of people in their Sunday best, and shouts came from the houses on the spree. The peasants, in their shirtsleeves, drank full glasses of pure cider, and in the middle of each company one could see two children, here two girls, there two boys, dining with one of the two families. Sometimes, in the heavy midday heat, a chariot crossed the countryside at the bouncing trot of an old bidet, and the man in the smock who was driving would cast an envious glance at all this spread-out feast. In the carpenter’s house, the gaiety retained a certain air of reserve, a remnant of the morning’s excitement. Rivet alone was in train and drinking excessively. Madame Tellier checked the time every moment, for in order not to be idle for two days in a row they had to catch the 3:55 train which would take them to Fécamp towards evening. The carpenter made every effort to divert attention and keep his people until the next day; but Madame did not allow herself to be distracted; and she never joked when it came to business. As soon as the coffee was taken, she ordered her boarders to get ready quickly; then, turning to her brother: “You, you’ll get in harness right away,” and she herself went to finish her last preparations. When she came back downstairs, her sister-in-law was waiting to talk to her about the little girl; and a long conversation took place in which nothing was resolved. The peasant woman was sly, feigning affection, and Madame Tellier, who held the child on her knees, committed herself to nothing, promising vaguely: they would take care of her, they had time, they would see each other again anyway. However, the carriage did not arrive, and the women did not come down . Even upstairs, one could hear loud laughter, jostling, shouts, clapping of hands. Then, while the carpenter’s wife went to the stable to see if the carriage was ready, Madame finally went up. Rivet, very drunk and half-dressed, tried, but in vain, to assault Rosa, who was fainting with laughter. The two Pompes held him by the arms and tried to calm him down, shocked by this scene after the morning ceremony; but Raphaële and Fernande excited him, twisted with gaiety, holding their sides; and they uttered shrill cries at each of the drunkard’s useless efforts. The furious man, his face red, all disheveled, shaking with violent efforts the two women clinging to him, pulled with all his might on Rosa’s skirt while stammering: “Insult, you won’t?” But Madame, indignant, rushed forward, seized her brother by the shoulders, and threw him out so violently that he went banging against the wall. A minute later, he could be heard in the courtyard pumping water over his head; and when he reappeared in his cart, he was already all calmed down. They set off again as on the day before, and the little white horse set off again at its lively, dancing pace. Under the blazing sun, the joy that had been dormant during the meal was emerging. The girls were now amused by the jolting of the jalopy, even pushing the neighbors’ chairs, bursting out laughing at every moment, set in motion moreover by Rivet’s vain attempts. A wild light filled the fields, a light that shimmered in the eyes; and the wheels raised two furrows of dust that fluttered for a long time behind the carriage on the main road. Suddenly Fernande, who loved music, begged Rosa to sing; and she cheerfully began to sing Personne de tous types de corps Curé de Meudon. But Madame immediately silenced her, finding this song unsuitable for this day. She added: “Sing us something by Béranger instead.” Then Rosa, after hesitating for a few seconds, settled on her choice, and in her worn voice began “Grandmother”: My grandmother, one evening at her party, having drunk two fingers of pure wine, said to us, shaking her head: ” How many lovers I once had! How I regret My plump arm, My well-shaped leg, And the time wasted!” And the girls’ choir, which Madame herself led, continued: ” How I regret My plump arm, My well-shaped leg, And the time wasted. ” “That’s a joke!” declared Rivet, fired up by the cadence: and Rosa immediately continued: “What, Mama, you weren’t good?” “No, really! And of my charms, Alone, at fifteen, I learned the custom, For, at night, I didn’t sleep. ” All together shouted the refrain; and Rivet stamped his foot on his shaft , beat time with the reins on the back of the white bidet which, as if it had itself been carried away by the enthusiasm of the rhythm, broke into a gallop, a stormy gallop, hurling these ladies into a heap on top of each other in the back of the carriage. They got up laughing like madwomen. And the song continued, bawled at the top of their lungs across the countryside, under the burning sky, in the middle of the ripening crops, at the furious pace of the little horse which now bolted at every return of the refrain, and each time broke through its hundred meters of gallop, to the great joy of the travelers. From place to place, some stone-breaker stood up, and looked through his wire eyeglass at this enraged and howling cart being carried away in the dust. When they got off in front of the station, the carpenter was moved: “It’s a pity you’re leaving, we would have had a good laugh.” Madame replied sensibly: “Everything has its time, we can’t always be amused.” Then an idea lit up Rivet’s mind: “Well, ” he said, “I’ll come and see you at Fécamp next month.” And he looked at Rosa with a sly air, with a bright and mischievous eye. “Come now,” concluded Madame, “you must be good; you can come if you like, but you won’t do anything stupid.” He didn’t reply, and as they heard the train whistle, he immediately began to kiss everyone. When it was Rosa’s turn, he persisted in finding her mouth, which she, laughing behind her closed lips, kept hiding from him each time with a quick sideways movement. He held her in his arms, but he could not manage it, hampered by his large whip, which he had kept in his hand and which, in his efforts, he was waving desperately behind the girl’s back. “Passengers for Rouen, in the carriage!” shouted the employee. They got in. A thin whistle sounded, immediately repeated by the powerful whistling of the engine, which noisily spat out its first jet of steam while the wheels began to turn a little with visible effort. Rivet, leaving the interior of the station, ran to the barrier to see Rosa once more; and as the wagon full of this human merchandise passed in front of him, he began to crack his whip, jumping and singing with all his might: How I regret My plump arm, My well-shaped leg And the wasted time! Then he watched a white handkerchief being waved away. Chapter 3. They slept until the arrival, the peaceful sleep of satisfied consciences; and when they returned home, refreshed, rested for each evening’s work, Madame could not help saying: “It doesn’t matter, I was already bored with the house.” They had a quick supper, then, when they had put on their combat uniforms again, they waited for the usual customers; and the little lit lantern, the little Madonna lantern, indicated to passers-by that the flock had returned to the sheepfold. In the blink of an eye the news spread, no one knows how, no one knows by whom. M. Philippe, the banker’s son, even went so far as to warn M. Tournevau, imprisoned in his family , by express . The salter had several cousins over for dinner every Sunday, and they were having coffee when a man appeared with a letter in his hand. M. Tournevau, very moved, tore open the envelope and turned pale: there were only these words written in pencil: Cargo of cod found; ship entered port; good deal for you. Come quickly. He searched his pockets, gave twenty centimes to the porter, and suddenly blushing to the ears: I must go out, he said. And he handed his wife the laconic and mysterious note. He rang, then when the maid appeared: “My overcoat, quick, quick, and my hat.” Hardly out in the street, he began to run, whistling a tune, and the distance seemed twice as long, so keen was his impatience.
The Tellier establishment had a festive air. On the ground floor the noisy voices of the men from the port made a deafening din. Louise and Flora didn’t know who to answer to, drank with one, drank with the other, and deserved better than ever their nickname of the two Pumps. They were being called everywhere at once; they could already no longer cope with the work, and the night promised to be laborious for them. The former’s inner circle was complete by nine o’clock. M. Vasse, the judge at the commercial court, Madame’s appointed but platonic suitor, was talking quietly to her in a corner; and they were both smiling as if an understanding were about to be reached. M. Poulin, the former mayor, was holding Rosa astride his legs; and she, nose to nose with him, was running her short hands through the old man’s white whiskers. A piece of bare thigh passed under the raised yellow silk skirt, cutting through the black cloth of the trousers, and the red stockings were held together by a blue garter, a gift from the traveling salesman. The tall Fernande, stretched out on the sofa, had both feet on the stomach of Mr. Pimpesse, the tax collector, and her torso on the waistcoat of young Mr. Philippe, whose neck she hooked with her right hand, while in her left she held a cigarette. Raphaële seemed to be in talks with Mr. Dupuis, the insurance agent, and she ended the conversation with these words: “Yes, my darling, tonight, I ‘ll do it. ” Then, doing a quick waltz alone across the living room: “Tonight, whatever you want,” she cried. The door opened abruptly and Mr. Tournevau appeared. Enthusiastic cries broke out: “Long live Tournevau!” And Raphaële, still spinning , fell on her heart. He seized her in a tremendous embrace , and without saying a word, lifting her from the ground like a feather, he crossed the drawing-room, reached the back door, and disappeared up the bedroom staircase with his living burden, amidst applause. Rosa, who was teasing the former mayor, kissing him in quick succession and pulling on his two whiskers at the same time to keep his head straight, took advantage of the example: “Come on, do as he does,” she said. Then the good man got up, and, adjusting his waistcoat, followed the girl, rummaging in the pocket where his money lay. Fernande and Madame were left alone with the four men, and Monsieur Philippe cried out: “I’ll buy some champagne: Madame Tellier, send for three bottles.–Then Fernande, embracing him, asked in his ear:–Make us dance, say, will you?–He got up, and, sitting down in front of the age-old spinet asleep in a corner, brought forth a waltz, a hoarse, tearful waltz, from the groaning belly of the machine. The tall girl embraced the tax collector, Madame abandoned herself to the arms of M. Vasse; and the two couples turned, exchanging kisses. M. Vasse, who had once danced in society, was making graces, and Madame looked at him with a captivated eye, with that eye which answers yes, a yes more discreet and more delicious than a word! Frédéric brought the champagne. The first cork popped, and M. Philippe carried out the invitation to a quadrille. The four dancers walked him in the worldly manner, properly, with dignity, with manners, bows, and bows. After which they began to drink. Then M. Tournevau reappeared, satisfied, relieved, radiant. He exclaimed: “I don’t know what’s wrong with Raphaële, but she’s perfect this evening.” Then, as someone handed him a glass, he drained it in one gulp, murmuring: “Good heavens, that’s just luxury!” M. Philippe immediately began a lively polka, and M. Tournevau dashed off with the beautiful Jewess, whom he held in the air, without letting her feet touch the ground. M. Pimpesse and M. Vasse set off again with a new burst of energy. From time to time one of the couples stopped near the fireplace to drink a flute of sparkling wine; and this dance threatened to drag on, when Rosa half-opened the door with a candlestick in her hand. She was in her hair, slippers, chemise, all animated, all red: “I want to dance,” she cried. Raphaële asked: “And your old man?” Rosa burst out laughing: “Him? He’s already asleep, he’ll sleep right away .” She grabbed M. Dupuis, who had remained unemployed on the sofa, and the polka began again. But the bottles were empty: “I’ll buy one,” declared M. Tournevau. “Me too,” announced M. Vasse. “Me too,” concluded M. Dupuis. Then everyone applauded. It was getting organized, becoming a real ball. From time to time, Louise and Flora even went up very quickly, did a quick waltz, while their customers downstairs were getting impatient; Then they would run back to their café, their hearts swollen with regret. At midnight, they were still dancing. Sometimes one of the girls would disappear, and when they looked for her to meet someone opposite them, they would suddenly notice that one of the men was also missing. “Where have you come from?” asked Monsieur Philippe jokingly, just as Monsieur Pimpesse was returning with Fernande. “To see Monsieur Poulin sleeping,” replied the tax collector. The idea had enormous success; and everyone, in turn, went up to see Monsieur Poulin sleeping with one or other of the young ladies, who showed themselves, that night, to be inconceivablely obliging. Madame would close her eyes; and in the corners she would have long conversations with Monsieur Vasse as if to settle the last details of a matter already settled. Finally, at one o’clock, the two married men, M. Tournevau and M. Pimpesse, declared that they were retiring and wanted to settle their account. Only the champagne was charged, and even then, at six francs a bottle instead of the usual ten francs. And as they were astonished at this generosity, Madame, radiant, replied: “It’s not a party every day.” Chapter 4. THE TOMBS. The five friends were finishing dinner, five mature, wealthy men of the world, three married, two still bachelors. They met like this every month, in memory of their youth, and, after having dined, they chatted until two o’clock in the morning. Remaining close friends, and joking together, they perhaps found there their best evenings in life. They chatted about everything, about everything that occupies and amuses Parisians; It was between them, as in most salons, a kind of spoken resumption of reading the morning newspapers. One of the most cheerful was Joseph de Bardon, a bachelor and living the life Parisian in the most complete and fanciful way. He was not a debauched or depraved person, but a curious, joyful person who was still young; for he was barely forty years old. A man of the world in the broadest and most benevolent sense that this word could deserve, endowed with a lot of wit without great depth, with varied knowledge without true erudition, with agile understanding without serious penetration, he drew from his observations, his adventures, from everything he saw, encountered and found, anecdotes, both comic and philosophical, and humorous remarks that gave him a great reputation for intelligence throughout the city. He was the speaker at dinner. He had his own, each time, his story, which was counted on. He began to tell it without being asked . Smoking, his elbows on the table, a half- full glass of fine Champagne in front of his plate, numb in an atmosphere of tobacco flavored by hot coffee, he seemed completely at home, as some people are absolutely at home, in certain places and at certain times, like a devout woman in a chapel, like a goldfish in its bowl. He said, between two puffs of smoke: “A singular adventure happened to me some time ago. ” Almost everyone asked at once: “Tell me about it. ” He continued: “Willingly. You know that I walk a lot about Paris, like trinket dealers who rummage through shop windows. I watch for shows, people, everything that passes, and everything that happens. Now, towards the middle of September, the weather was very fine at that time, I left my house one afternoon, without knowing where I would go. One always has a vague desire to pay a visit to some pretty woman . You choose from your gallery, you compare them in your mind, you weigh the interest they inspire in you, the charm they impose on you and you finally decide according to the attraction of the day. But when the sun is very beautiful and the air warm, they often take away all desire to visit. The sun was beautiful, and the air warm; I lit a cigar and I went quite simply to the outer boulevard. Then as I was strolling, the idea came to me to push on to the Montmartre cemetery and go in. I like cemeteries very much, they rest me and make me melancholic: I need them. And then, there are also good friends in there, those that we no longer go to see; and I still go there, from time to time. Precisely, in this Montmartre cemetery, I have a love affair, a mistress who pinched me a lot, very moved me, a charming little woman whose memory, at the same time as it pains me enormously, gives me regrets… regrets of all kinds… And I am going to dream on her grave… It’s over for her. And then, I also love cemeteries, because they are monstrous cities , prodigiously inhabited. Just think of how many dead there are in this small space, of all the generations of Parisians who are housed there, forever, definitive troglodytes locked in their little vaults, in their little holes covered with a stone or marked with a cross, while the living take up so much space and make so much noise, those imbeciles. Then again, in cemeteries, there are monuments almost as interesting as in museums. The tomb of Cavaignac made me think, I admit, without comparing it, of that masterpiece by Jean Goujon: the body of Louis de Brézé, lying in the underground chapel of Rouen Cathedral; all so-called modern and realistic art came from there, gentlemen. This dead man, Louis de Brézé, is more real, more terrible, more made of inanimate flesh, still convulsed by agony, than all the tormented corpses that are tortured today on tombs. But in the Montmartre cemetery one can still admire Baudin’s monument , which has grandeur; that of Gautier, that of Mürger, where I have saw the other day a single poor wreath of yellow immortelles, brought by whom? By the last grisette, very old, and a caretaker in the area, perhaps? It is a pretty statuette by Millet, but which abandonment and dirt destroy. Sing youth, oh Mürger! So here I am entering the Montmartre cemetery, and suddenly imbued with sadness, a sadness that didn’t do too much harm, moreover, one of those sadnesses that make you think, when you are well: This place isn’t funny, but the time hasn’t come for me yet… The impression of autumn, of this warm humidity that smells of the death of leaves and the weakened, tired, anemic sun, aggravated by poeticizing it the sensation of solitude and definitive end floating over this place, which smells of the death of men. I walked slowly through these streets of tombs, where neighbors no longer live together, no longer sleep together, and do not read newspapers. And I began to read the epitaphs. That, for example, is the most amusing thing in the world. Labiche and Meilhac have never made me laugh like the comedy of tomb prose. Ah! What books better than those of Paul de Kock for opening the spleen than these marble plaques and crosses where the relatives of the dead have poured out their regrets, their wishes for the happiness of the departed in the other world, and their hope of joining them—jokers! But above all, I adore, in this cemetery, the abandoned, solitary part, full of tall yews and cypresses, the old quarter of the former dead which will soon become a new quarter, whose green trees, nourished by human corpses, will be cut down to line up the recently deceased under little marble slabs. When I had wandered there long enough to refresh my mind, I realized that I was going to be bored and that I must pay my little friend’s last bed the faithful homage of my memory. My heart was a little heavy when I arrived near her grave. Poor dear, she was so kind, and so loving, and so white, and so fresh… and now… if we opened this… Leaning over the iron gate, I whispered my grief to her, which she probably didn’t hear, and I was about to leave when I saw a woman in black, in deep mourning, kneeling on the neighboring tomb. Her raised crepe veil revealed a pretty blond head, whose headbands of hair seemed lit by a dawn light under the night of her headdress. I stayed. Certainly, she must be suffering from deep grief. She had buried her gaze in her hands, and rigid, in a statue-like meditation, lost in her regrets, telling in the shadow of hidden and closed eyes the torturing rosary of memories, she herself seemed to be a dead person thinking of a dead person. Then suddenly I guessed that she was going to cry, I guessed it from a small movement of the back like a shiver of wind in a willow. She cried softly at first, then more loudly, with rapid movements of the neck and shoulders. Suddenly she uncovered her eyes. They were full of tears and charming, the eyes of a madwoman that she wandered around her, in a sort of awakening from a nightmare. She saw me looking at her, seemed ashamed and hid her whole face in her hands again. Then her sobs became convulsive, and her head slowly bent down towards the marble. She rested her forehead there, and her veil spreading around her covered the white corners of the beloved tomb, like a new mourning. I heard her moan, then she collapsed, her cheek on the flagstone, and remained motionless, unconscious . I rushed to her, clapped her hands, blew on her eyelids, while reading the very simple epitaph: Here lies Louis-Théodore Carrel, captain of the marine infantry, killed by the enemy, in Tonkin. Pray for him. This death took place a few months ago. I was moved to tears, and I redoubled my care. They succeeded; she came to. I seemed very moved—I’m not too bad, I’m not forty.—I understood at her first glance that she would be polite and grateful. She was, with more tears, and her story told, coming out in fragments from her heaving chest, the death of the officer who fell in Tonkin, after a year of marriage, after having married her for love, because, orphaned of father and mother, she barely had the regulation dowry. I consoled her, I comforted her, I lifted her up, I raised her up. Then I said to her: —Don’t stay here. Come. She murmured: —I am unable to walk. —I will support you. —Thank you, sir, you are kind. Did you also come here to mourn a dead person? —Yes, madam. —A dead woman? —Yes, madam. —Your wife? —A friend. –One can love a friend as much as one’s wife, passion has no laws. –Yes, madam. And off we went together, she leaning on me, me almost carrying her through the cemetery paths. When we left, she murmured, fainting: –I think I’m going to faint. –Would you like to go in somewhere, have something? –Yes, sir. I saw a restaurant, one of those restaurants where friends of the dead go to celebrate the completion of their chores. We went in. And I made her drink a cup of hot tea which seemed to revive her. A vague smile came to her lips. And she spoke to me about herself. It was so sad, so sad to be all alone in life, all alone at home, night and day, to no longer have anyone to whom she could give affection, confidence, intimacy. It seemed sincere. It was kind coming from her mouth. I was moved. She was very young, perhaps twenty. I paid her compliments, which she accepted very willingly. Then, as the hour passed, I offered to drive her home in a carriage. She accepted; and in the cab we remained so close to each other , shoulder to shoulder, that our warmth mingled through our clothes, which is the most disturbing thing in the world. When the carriage stopped at her house, she murmured: I feel unable to climb my stairs alone, for I live on the fourth floor. You have been so kind, will you still give me your arm to my lodgings? I hastened to accept. She went up slowly, puffing heavily. Then, at her door, she added: “Come in for a few moments so that I can thank you.” And I went in, of course. It was modest, even a little poor, but simple and well-arranged, at her house.
We sat side by side on a small sofa, and she spoke to me again of her solitude. She rang for her maid, to offer me something to drink. The maid did not come. I was delighted, assuming that this maid must only be a morning person: what they call a cleaning lady. She had taken off her hat. She was truly kind, with her clear eyes fixed on me, so fixed, so clear that I had a terrible temptation and I gave in. I seized her in my arms, and on her eyelids , which suddenly closed, I placed kisses … kisses … kisses … so many more. She struggled, pushing me away and repeating: Finish … finish … finish then. What meaning did she give to this word? In such cases, to finish can have at least two meanings. To silence her, I moved from my eyes to my mouth, and I gave the word to finish the conclusion I preferred. She did not resist too much, and when we looked at each other again, after this outrage to the memory of the captain killed in Tonkin, she had a languid, tender, resigned air, which dissipated my worries. Then I was gallant, eager and grateful. And after another chat of about an hour, I asked her: “Where are you dining?” –In a small restaurant nearby. –All alone? –Yes. –Would you like to dine with me? –Where? –In a good restaurant on the boulevard. She resisted a little. I insisted: she gave in, giving herself this argument: I’m so bored… so bored, then she added: I must put on a dress a little less dark. And she went into her bedroom. When she came out, she was in half-mourning, charming, slender , in a very simple gray outfit. She was obviously wearing cemetery attire and city clothes. The dinner was very cordial. She drank champagne, lit up, became animated, and I went home with her. This liaison formed on the graves lasted about three weeks. But one gets tired of everything, and especially of women. I left her under the pretext of an essential trip. I had a very generous departure, for which she thanked me very much. And she made me promise, she made me swear to come back after my return, because she really seemed a little attached to me. I ran to other affections, and about a month passed without the thought of seeing this little funereal lover again being strong enough for me to give in. However, I did not forget her… Her memory haunted me like a mystery, like a problem of psychology, like one of those inexplicable questions whose solution harass us. I don’t know why, one day, I imagined that I would find her at the Montmartre cemetery, and I went there. I walked there for a long time without meeting anyone other than the ordinary visitors of this place, those who have not yet broken off all relations with their dead. The tomb of the captain killed in Tonkin had no mourner on its marble, nor flowers, nor wreaths. But as I wandered into another quarter of this great city of the dead, I suddenly saw, at the end of a narrow avenue of crosses, coming towards me, a couple in deep mourning, the man and the woman. Oh, astonishment! When they approached, I recognized her. It was her! She saw me, blushed, and, as I brushed past her, she gave me a tiny sign, a tiny glance that meant: Do n’t recognize me, but which also seemed to say: Come back and see me, my darling. The man was well-dressed, distinguished, chic, an officer of the Legion of Honor, about fifty years old. And he supported her, as I had supported her myself when leaving the cemetery. I went away stupefied, wondering what I had just seen, to what race of beings this sepulchral huntress belonged. Was she a simple girl, an inspired person who went to pick up from the graves the sad men, haunted by a woman, wife or mistress, and still troubled by the memory of vanished caresses. Was she unique? Are there several? Is it a profession? Do we do the cemetery as we do the sidewalk? The Tombales! Or had she alone had this admirable idea, a profound philosophy of exploiting the regrets of love that we rekindle in these funereal places? And I would have liked to know whose widow she was, that day? Chapter 5. ON THE WATER. Last summer, I had rented a small country house on the banks of the Seine, several leagues from Paris, and I went to sleep there every night. After a few days, I made the acquaintance of one of my neighbors, a man of thirty or forty, who was truly the most curious type I had ever seen. He was an old boater, but a rabid boater, always near the water, always on the water, always in the water. He must have been born in a boat, and he will most certainly die in the final rowing. One evening when we were walking along the banks of the Seine, I asked him to tell me some anecdotes from his nautical life. Immediately, my good man comes to life, is transformed, becomes eloquent, almost poet. He had in his heart a great passion, a devouring, irresistible passion : the river. “Ah!” he said to me, “how many memories I have of this river that you see flowing there near us! You, inhabitants of the streets, you do not know what the river is. But listen to a fisherman pronounce this word . For him, it is the mysterious, profound, unknown thing, the land of mirages and phantasmagoria, where one sees, at night, things that are not, where one hears noises one does not recognize, where one trembles without knowing why, as if crossing a cemetery: and it is indeed the most sinister of cemeteries, the one where one has no tomb. The earth is limited for the fisherman, and in the shadows, when there is no moon, the river is unlimited. A sailor does not feel the same thing about the sea. It is often harsh and wicked, it is true, but it cries, it howls, it is loyal, the great sea; while the river is silent and treacherous. It does not roar, it always flows without noise, and this eternal movement of flowing water is more frightening to me than the high waves of the Ocean. Dreamers claim that the sea hides in its bosom immense bluish countries, where the drowned roll among the great fish, in the middle of strange forests and in crystal caves. The river has only black depths where one rots in the mud. Yet it is beautiful when it shines in the rising sun and laps gently between its banks covered with murmuring reeds. The poet said, speaking of the Ocean: O waves, how you know lugubrious stories! Deep waves, feared by mothers on their knees, You tell them to each other as you ride the tides And that’s what gives you those desperate voices That you have, in the evening, when you come to us. Well, I believe that the stories whispered by the thin reeds with their small, soft voices must be even more sinister than the lugubrious dramas told by the howling waves. But since you ask me for some of my memories, I will tell you a singular adventure that happened to me here, about ten years ago. I lived, as I do today, in Mother Lafon’s house, and one of my best friends, Louis Bernet, who has now given up rowing, its pomp and its dishevelment to enter the Council of State, was living in the village of C…, two leagues further down. We dined together every day, sometimes at his place, sometimes at mine. One evening, as I was returning alone and rather tired, painfully dragging my boat, a twelve-foot ocean boat, which I always used at night, I stopped for a few seconds to catch my breath near the point of the reeds, over there, about two hundred meters before the railway bridge. The weather was magnificent; the moon was shining, the river was shining, the air was calm and mild. This tranquility tempted me; I said to myself that it would be very nice to smoke a pipe in this place. Action followed thought; I seized my anchor and threw it into the river. The boat, which was coming back down with the current, paid out its chain to the end, then stopped; and I sat down astern on my sheepskin, as comfortably as I could. We heard nothing, nothing: only sometimes I thought I caught a small, almost imperceptible lapping of the water against the bank, and I saw groups of higher reeds which took on surprising shapes and seemed at times to be agitated. The river was perfectly calm, but I felt moved by the extraordinary silence which surrounded me. All the animals, frogs and toads, these nocturnal singers of the marshes, were silent. Suddenly, to my right, against me, a frog croaked. I started: it fell silent; I heard nothing more, and I decided to smoke a little to distract. However, although I was a renowned pipe-maker, I could not; after the second puff, my heart turned and I stopped. I began to hum; the sound of my voice was painful to me; then, I lay down at the bottom of the boat and looked at the sky. For some time, I remained calm, but soon the slight movements of the boat worried me. It seemed to me that it was making gigantic lurches , touching alternately the two banks of the river; then I believed that a being or an invisible force was gently drawing it to the bottom of the water and then lifting it up to let it fall again. I was tossed about as if in the middle of a storm; I heard noises around me; I jumped up: the water shone, all was calm. I realized that my nerves were a little shaken and I decided to leave. I pulled on my chain; the boat started moving, then I felt resistance, I pulled harder, the anchor did not come; it had caught on something at the bottom of the water and I could not lift it; I started to pull again, but in vain. Then, with my oars, I turned my boat and carried it upstream to change the position of the anchor. It was in vain, it still held; I was seized with anger and I shook the chain furiously. Nothing moved. I sat down discouraged and I began to reflect on my position. I could not think of breaking this chain or separating it from the boat, because it was enormous and riveted to the front in a piece of wood no one of any type of body except my arm; but as the weather remained very fine, I thought that I would not be long, no doubt, in meeting some fisherman who would come to my aid. My misadventure had calmed me; I sat down and was finally able to smoke my pipe. I had a bottle of rum, I drank two or three glasses, and my situation made me laugh. It was very hot, so that in a pinch I could have spent the night under the stars without much difficulty. Suddenly, a small tap sounded against my planking. I jumped, and a cold sweat froze me from head to toe. This noise probably came from some piece of wood carried by the current, but it was enough and I felt again invaded by a strange nervous agitation. I seized my chain and stiffened in a desperate effort. The anchor held. I sat down again, exhausted. Meanwhile, the river had gradually become covered with a very thick white fog that crept very low over the water, so that, when I stood up, I could no longer see the river, nor my feet, nor my boat, but I could only see the tips of the reeds, then, further away, the plain, all pale with the light of the moon, with large black spots rising into the sky, formed by groups of Italian poplars. I was as if buried up to my waist in a cotton sheet of singular whiteness, and fantastic imaginations came to me . I imagined that someone was trying to get into my boat, which I could no longer distinguish, and that the river, hidden by this opaque fog, must be full of strange beings swimming around me. I felt a horrible uneasiness, my temples were tight, my heart was beating so hard I could choke; and, losing my head, I thought of saving myself by swimming; then immediately this idea made me shudder with terror. I saw myself, lost, going at random in this thick fog, struggling in the middle of marijuana and reeds that I could not avoid, groaning with fear, not seeing the bank, not finding my boat again, and it seemed to me that I would feel myself pulled by the feet to the very bottom of this black water. Indeed, as I would have had to go upstream for at least five hundred meters before finding a point free of marijuana and rushes where I could gain a foothold, there were nine chances out of ten for me of not being able to steer in this fog and of drowning, however good a swimmer that I was. I tried to reason with myself. I felt I had a very firm will not to be afraid, but there was something in me other than my will, and this other thing was afraid. I asked myself what I could fear; my brave self mocked my cowardly self, and never so well as that day did I grasp the opposition of the two beings that are in us, one wanting, the other resisting, and each winning in turn. This stupid and inexplicable fear grew and grew and became terror . I remained motionless, my eyes open, my ears pricked and waiting. What? I didn’t know, but it must have been terrible. I believe that if a fish had taken it into its head to jump out of the water, as often happens, it would not have taken more than that to make me fall stiff, unconscious. However, by a violent effort, I ended up regaining more or less my reason, which had escaped me. I took my bottle of rum again and drank in large gulps. Then an idea came to me and I began to shout with all my might, turning successively towards the four points of the horizon. When my throat was absolutely paralyzed, I listened: A dog was howling, very far away. I drank again and stretched out at full length at the bottom of the boat. I remained like that for perhaps an hour, perhaps two, without sleeping, with my eyes open, with nightmares around me. I did not dare to get up and yet I violently wanted to; I put it off from minute to minute. I said to myself: Come on, get up! and I was afraid to make a move. At last, I raised myself with infinite precautions, as if my life depended on the slightest noise I had made, and I looked over the edge. I was dazzled by the most marvelous, the most astonishing spectacle it is possible to see. It was one of those phantasmagoria of fairyland , one of those visions recounted by travelers who return from very far away and to which we listen without believing them. The fog which, two hours before, had floated on the water, had gradually withdrawn and gathered on the banks. Leaving the river absolutely free, it had formed on each bank an unbroken hill, six or seven meters high, which shone under the moon with the superb brilliance of snow. So that nothing could be seen but this river, streaked with fire between these two white mountains; and up there, above my head, spread out, full and wide, a large illuminating moon in the middle of a bluish and milky sky. All the creatures of the water had awakened; The frogs croaked furiously, while, from moment to moment, now to the right, now to the left, I heard that short, monotonous, and sad note, which the coppery voice of the toads throws to the stars. Strangely enough, I was no longer afraid; I was in the middle of a landscape so extraordinary that the strongest singularities could not have astonished me. How long this lasted, I do not know, for I had finally fallen asleep. When I opened my eyes again, the moon had set, the sky full of clouds. The water was lapping gloomily, the wind was blowing, it was cold, the darkness was profound. I drank what remained of my rum, then I listened, shivering, to the rustling of the reeds and the sinister sound of the river. I tried to see, but I could not distinguish my boat, nor my hands themselves, which I brought close to my eyes. Little by little, however, the thickness of the darkness diminished. Suddenly I thought I felt a shadow gliding very close to me; I gave a cry, a voice answered; it was a fisherman. I called him, he approached and I told him my misadventure. He then put his boat alongside mine , and we both pulled on the chain. The anchor did not move. The day came, dark, gray, rainy, freezing, one of those days that bring you sadness and misfortune. I saw another boat, we hailed it. The man who was rowing it joined his efforts with ours; then, little by little, the anchor gave way. It was rising, but slowly, slowly, and laden with a considerable weight. Finally we saw a black mass, and we pulled it on board: It was the corpse of an old woman who had a large stone around her neck. STORY OF A FARM GIRL Chapter 6. As the weather was very fine, the people of the farm had dined more quickly than usual and had gone into the fields. Rose, the servant, remained all alone in the middle of the vast kitchen where the remains of a fire were dying in the hearth under the pot full of hot water. She drew this water from time to time and slowly washed her dishes, pausing to look at two luminous squares that the sun, through the window, pressed against the long table, and in which the defects in the panes appeared. Three very bold hens were searching for crumbs under the chairs. Barnyard smells, the fermented warmth of the stable entered through the half-open door; and in the silence of the burning noon one could hear the roosters crowing. When the girl had finished her work, wiped the table, cleaned the fireplace , and arranged the plates on the high dresser at the back near the wooden clock with its loud ticking, she breathed, a little dizzy, oppressed without knowing why. She looked at the blackened clay walls, the smoky ceiling beams where cobwebs, red herrings , and rows of onions hung; then she sat down, bothered by the ancient emanations that the heat of the day was making rise from the beaten earth of the floor where so many things had been spread out for so long had dried. There was also the acrid taste of the dairy creaming in the cool air in the next room. She wanted, however, to start sewing as she was accustomed to, but her strength failed her and she went to breathe on the threshold. Then, caressed by the ardent light, she felt a sweetness that penetrated her heart, a well-being flowing through her limbs. In front of the door, the dunghill constantly gave off a little shimmering vapor. The hens wallowed on it, lying on their sides, and scratched a little with one leg to find worms. In the middle of them, the cock, superb, stood. Every moment he chose one and circled around it with a little clucking call. The hen got up nonchalantly and received him with a tranquil air, folding her feet and supporting him on her wings; then she shook her feathers from which dust rose and stretched herself out again on the dunghill, while he sang, counting his triumphs; and in all the courtyards all the roosters answered her, as if, from one farm to another , they had sent each other amorous challenges. The servant looked at them without thinking; then she raised her eyes and was dazzled by the brilliance of the apple trees in blossom, all white like powdered heads . Suddenly a young foal, mad with gaiety, galloped past her . He circled twice the ditches planted with trees, then stopped abruptly and turned his head as if surprised to be alone. She too felt an urge to run, a need for movement and, at the same time, a desire to lie down, to stretch out her limbs, to rest in the still, warm air. She took a few steps, undecided, closing her eyes, seized by a bestial well-being; then, very gently, she went to get the eggs from the henhouse. There were thirteen, which she took and brought back. When they were squeezed into the sideboard, the smells from the kitchen bothered her again and she went out to sit a little on the marijuana. The farmyard, enclosed by the trees, seemed to be asleep. The tall marijuana , where yellow dandelions burst like lights, was a powerful green, a brand new spring green. The shadows of the apple trees gathered in circles at their feet; and the thatched roofs of the buildings, on top of which grew irises with leaves like sabers, were smoking a little as if the humidity from the stables and barns had flown through the straw. The servant arrived under the shed where the carts and carriages were stored . There, in the hollow of the ditch, was a large green hole full of violets whose scent spread, and, over the embankment, one could see the countryside, a vast plain where the crops grew, with clumps of trees here and there, and, here and there, groups of distant workers, as small as dolls, white horses like toys, dragging a child’s plow pushed by a little man as tall as a finger. She went to get a bale of straw from a loft and threw it into this hole to sit on; Then, not being at ease, she undid the tie, scattered her seat and stretched out on her back, both arms under her head and her legs stretched out. Very gently she closed her eyes, dozing in a delicious softness. She was even about to fall asleep completely, when she felt two hands cupping her breast, and she sat up with a jump. It was Jacques, the farmhand, a tall, well-built Picard, who had been courting her for some time. He was working that day in the sheepfold, and, having seen her lying down in the shade, he came stealthily , holding his breath, his eyes shining, with bits of straw in his hair. He tried to kiss her, but she slapped him, strong like him; and, slyly, he begged for mercy. Then they sat down near each other and chatted amicably. They talked about the weather being favorable for the harvest, about the year that promised to be good, about their master, a good man, then about the neighbors, about the whole country, about themselves, about their village, about their youth, about their memories, about the parents they had left for a long time, perhaps forever. She was moved at the thought of this, and he, with his fixed idea, moved closer, rubbed himself against her, trembling, overcome by desire. She said: “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Mama; it’s hard all the same to be so separated. ” And her lost eye looked into the distance, across space, to the abandoned village over there, over there, to the north. He, suddenly, seized her by the neck and kissed her again; but, with her closed fist, she struck him full in the face so violently that his nose began to bleed; and he got up to go and lean his head against a tree trunk. Then she was moved and, coming closer to him, she asked: “Does it hurt?” But he began to laugh. No, it was nothing; only she had hit right in the middle. He murmured: “You rascal!” and he looked at her with admiration, filled with a respect, a completely different affection, the beginnings of true love for this tall, sturdy woman. When the blood had stopped flowing, he suggested they go for a walk, fearing, if they remained side by side like this, the rough grip of his neighbor. But of her own accord she took his arm, as engaged couples do in the evening, in the avenue, and she said to him: “It’s not right, Jacques, to despise me like that.” He protested. No, he didn’t despise her, but he was in love, that’s all. “So you’ll marry me?” she said. He hesitated, then he began to look at her sideways while she held her eyes lost in the distance before her. She had full, red cheeks , a broad, prominent bosom beneath the calico of her camisole, large, fresh lips, and her throat, almost bare, was dotted with little drops of sweat. He felt himself seized with desire again, and, with his mouth in her ear, he murmured: “Yes, I’ll do it.” Then she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him for so long that they were both breathless. From that moment on, the eternal story of love began between them. They
fought in corners; they arranged to meet in the moonlight , in the shelter of a haystack, and they bruised each other’s legs under the table, with their persons of all types of bodies, iron-shod shoes. Then, little by little, Jacques seemed to get bored of her; he avoided her, hardly spoke to her anymore, no longer sought to meet her alone. Then she was overcome by doubts and great sadness; and, after some time, she realized that she was pregnant. She was dismayed at first, then anger came over her, stronger every day, because she could not find him, so carefully did he avoid her . Finally, one night, when everyone in the farm was asleep, she came out noiselessly, in her petticoat, barefoot, crossed the courtyard and pushed open the door of the stable where Jacques was lying in a large box full of straw above his horses. He pretended to snore when he heard her coming; but she climbed up beside him, and, kneeling at his side, shook him until he stood up. When he had sat down, asking: “What do you want?” she said, through clenched teeth, trembling with fury: “I want, I want you to marry me, since you promised me marriage.” He began to laugh and replied: “Oh well! If we married all the girls we have sinned with, it would not be done.” But she seized him by the throat, knocked him down without his being able to free himself from her fierce grip, and, strangling him; She shouted right next to him, in his face: “I’m pregnant, do you hear, I’m pregnant.” He gasped, suffocating; and they both remained there, motionless, mute in the black silence broken only by the sound of a horse’s jaws pulling at the straw in the rack, then slowly grinding it . When Jacques understood that she was the stronger, he stammered: “Well, I’ll marry you, since that’s it.” But she no longer believed his promises. “Right away,” she said; “you will have the banns published.” He replied: “Right away. ” “Swear it on God.” He hesitated for a few seconds, then, making up his mind: “I swear it on God.” Then she opened her fingers and, without another word, went away. She was unable to speak to him for several days, and since the stable was now locked every night, she did not dare make a noise for fear of scandal. Then, one morning, she saw another servant come in to the soup. She asked: “Jacques has left?” “Why, yes,” said the other, “I am in his place.” She began to tremble so violently that she could not take down her pot; then, when everyone was at work, she went up to her room and cried, her face in her pillow, so as not to be overheard. During the day, she tried to make inquiries without arousing suspicion; but she was so obsessed with the thought of her misfortune that she thought she saw all the people she questioned laughing maliciously. Besides , she could learn nothing, except that he had left the country altogether .
Chapter 7. Then began for her a life of continual torture. She worked like a machine, without caring about what she was doing, with this fixed idea in her head: If only we knew! This constant obsession made her so incapable of reasoning that she did not even seek ways to avoid this scandal which she felt coming, approaching every day, irreparable, and as sure as death. She got up every morning well before the others and, with fierce persistence, tried to look at her waist in a small piece of broken glass which she used to comb her hair, very anxious to know if it would not be today that anyone would notice. And, during the day, she interrupted her work at every moment, to looking up and down to see if the size of her belly was not lifting her apron too much. The months passed. She hardly spoke any more and, when someone asked her something, did not understand, terrified, her eyes dazed, her hands trembling; which made her master say: “My poor girl, how stupid you have been for some time!” At church, she hid behind a pillar, and no longer dared to go to confession, greatly dreading meeting the priest, to whom she attributed a superhuman power allowing him to read consciences. At table, the looks of her friends now made her faint with anxiety, and she always imagined being discovered by the cowherd, a precocious and sly little fellow whose shining eye never left her . One morning, the postman gave her a letter. She had never received one and was so upset that she was obliged to sit down. Was it from him, perhaps? But, as she could not read, she remained anxious, trembling, in front of this paper covered in ink. She put it in her pocket, not daring to confide her secret to anyone; and often she stopped working to look for a long time at these equally spaced lines which ended with a signature, vaguely imagining that she would suddenly discover their meaning. Finally, as she was becoming mad with impatience and worry, she went to find the schoolmaster who made her sit down and read: My dear daughter, this is to tell you that I am very low; our neighbor, Master Dentu, has taken up his pen to ask you to come if you can. For your affectionate mother, CÉSAIRE DENTU, assistant. She did not say a word and went away; but, as soon as she was alone, she collapsed at the edge of the road, her legs broken; and she remained there until nightfall. On returning, she told the farmer of her misfortune, who let her go for as long as she liked, promising to have her work done by a day girl and to take it back on her return. Her mother was dying; she died the very day she arrived; and the next day, Rose gave birth to a seven-month-old child, a small, hideous skeleton, a person of any type to give shivers, and who seemed to suffer constantly, so painfully did he clench his poor, emaciated hands like crab legs. He lived, however. She said that she was married, but that she could not take charge of the child and she left him with neighbors who promised to take good care of him. She returned. But then, in her heart, so long wounded, there rose, like a dawn, an unknown love for this puny little being that she had left there; and this love itself was a new suffering, a suffering of every hour, of every minute, since she was separated from him. What tortured her most was a need, a mentally ill person, to kiss him, to embrace him in her arms, to feel the warmth of his little body against her flesh. She no longer slept at night; she thought about him all day; and, in the evening, her work finished, she sat before the fire, which she stared at like people who think into the distance. People even began to gossip about her, and they teased her about the lover she must have, asking her if he was handsome, if he was tall, if he was rich, when was the wedding, when was the baptism? And she often ran away to cry alone, for these questions dug into her skin like pins. To distract herself from these worries, she set to work furiously , and, always thinking of her child, she sought ways to amass a lot of money for him. She resolved to work so hard that her wages would be forced to increase . Then, little by little, she monopolized the work around her, had the children dismissed A servant who had become useless since she was working as hard as two, economized on bread, oil and candles, on the grain that was thrown too generously to the hens, on the fodder for the cattle that was wasted a little. She showed herself to be stingy with the master’s money as if it were her own, and, by dint of making advantageous deals, selling high prices for what came out of the house and outwitting the ruses of the peasants who offered their products, she alone took care of purchases and sales, the management of the work of the laborers, the accounting of the provisions; and, in a short time, she became indispensable. She exercised such supervision around her that the farm, under her direction, prospered prodigiously. People spoke for two leagues around of the servant to Master Vallin; and the farmer repeated everywhere: That girl is worth more than gold. However, time passed and her wages remained the same. Her forced labor was accepted as something owed by any devoted servant, a simple mark of goodwill; and she began to reflect with a little bitterness that if the farmer collected, thanks to her, fifty or one hundred crowns extra every month, she continued to earn her 240 francs a year, nothing more, nothing less. She resolved to ask for a raise. Three times she went to see the master and, having arrived before him, spoke of something else. She felt a sort of modesty in soliciting money, as if it were a somewhat shameful action. Finally, one day when the farmer was having lunch alone in the kitchen, she told him with an embarrassed air that she wished to speak to him privately. He raised his head, surprised, both hands on the table, holding his knife in one hand, point in the air, and a mouthful of bread in the other , and he looked fixedly at his servant. She was troubled by his gaze and asked for eight days to go home because she was a little ill. He granted them at once; then, embarrassed himself, he added: “I too will have to speak to you when you return.” Chapter 8. The child was about to be eight months old: she did not recognize him. He had become all pink, chubby, plump all over, like a little bundle of living fat. His fingers, spread apart by rolls of flesh, moved gently in visible satisfaction. She threw herself on him as if on prey, with the passion of a beast, and she kissed him so violently that he began to howl with fear. Then she herself began to cry because he did not recognize her and stretched out his arms towards his nurse as soon as he saw her. From the next day, however, he became accustomed to her face, and he laughed when he saw her. She would carry him into the countryside, run frantically holding him in her arms, sit down in the shade of the trees; then, for the first time in her life, and although he did not hear her, she would open her heart to someone, tell him of her sorrows, her labors, her worries, her hopes, and she would tire him constantly with the violence and the relentlessness of her caresses. She took infinite joy in kneading him in her hands, in washing him, in dressing him; and she was even happy to clean up his childhood messes, as if these intimate cares had been a confirmation of her motherhood. She would look at him, always astonished that he was hers, and she would repeat to herself in a low voice, while making him dance in her arms: He is my little one, he is my little one. She sobbed all the way back to the farm, and she had barely returned when her master called her into his room. She went there, very surprised and very moved without knowing why. “Sit down there,” he said. She sat down and they remained for a few moments beside each other , both embarrassed, their arms limp and cumbersome, and without looking at each other in the face, like peasants. The farmer, people of all body types, man of forty-five, twice widowed, jovial and stubborn, felt an obvious discomfort that was not usual for him. Finally he made up his mind and began to speak vaguely, stammering a little and looking into the distance into the countryside. “Rose,” he said, “have you never thought of settling down?” She became as pale as death. Seeing that she did not answer him, he continued: “You are a good girl, orderly, active and thrifty. A woman like you would make a man’s fortune.” She remained motionless, her eyes frightened, not even trying to understand, so whirled were her thoughts as if some great danger were approaching . He waited a second, then continued: “You see, a farm without a mistress can’t work, even with a servant like you.” Then he fell silent, not knowing what else to say; and Rose looked at him with the terrified air of someone who believes she is facing a murderer and is about to flee at the slightest movement he makes. Finally, after five minutes, he asked: “Well! Does that suit you?” She answered with an idiotic expression: “What, our master?” Then he abruptly: “But to marry me, of course!” She stood up suddenly, then fell back as if broken on her chair, where she remained motionless, like someone who had received the blow of a great misfortune. The farmer at last grew impatient: “Come now; what do you want then?” She gazed at him in a panic; then, suddenly, tears came to her eyes, and she repeated twice, choking: “I can’t, I can’t! ” “Why?” asked the man. “Come now; don’t act stupid; I’ll give you until tomorrow to think it over. And he hurried off, very relieved to have finished with this process which embarrassed him greatly, and not doubting that, the next day, his servant would accept a proposal which was for her completely unexpected and, for him, an excellent deal, since he was thus forever attaching to himself a woman who would certainly bring him more than the finest dowry in the country. Besides, there could be no scruples of misalliance between them, because, in the countryside, everyone is more or less equal: the farmer plows like his servant, who, more often than not, becomes master in his turn one day or another, and the servants at any moment become mistresses without this bringing any change in their lives or habits. Rose did not go to bed that night. She fell sitting up on her bed, no longer having even the strength to cry, she was so devastated. She lay inert, no longer feeling her body, and her mind scattered, as if someone had torn it to pieces with one of those instruments carders use to fray the wool from mattresses. Only occasionally did she manage to gather together fragments of thoughts, and she was terrified at the thought of what might happen. Her terrors increased, and each time in the drowsy silence of the house the big kitchen clock slowly struck the hours, she broke out in sweats of anguish. Her head became lost, nightmares followed one another, her candle went out; then the delirium began, that fleeing delirium of country people who believe themselves to be struck by a spell, a need in a mentally ill person to leave, to escape, to run before misfortune like a ship before a storm. An owl screeched; She shuddered, stood up, ran her hands over her face, through her hair, felt her body like a madwoman; then, with the air of a sleepwalker, she went downstairs. When she was in the courtyard, she crept away so as not to be seen by some prowling lout, for the moon, about to disappear, cast a clear light over the fields. Instead of opening the gate, she climbed the embankment; then, when she was facing the countryside, she set off. She went straight ahead, with an elastic and rapid trot, and, from time to time, unconsciously, she uttered a piercing cry. Her enormous shadow, lying on the ground at her side, flew with her, and sometimes a night bird came to circle over her head. The dogs in the farmyards barked when they heard her pass; one of them jumped the ditch and chased her to bite her; but she turned on him, howling in such a way that the terrified animal fled, huddled in its lair and fell silent. Sometimes a young family of hares frolicked in a field; but, when the rabid runner approached, like a delirious Diana, the timid beasts scattered; The little ones and the mother disappeared huddled in the furrow, while the father rushed forward at full speed and, sometimes, made his leaping shadow pass, with its large pricked ears, over the moon at its setting, which was now plunging to the end of the world and illuminating the plain with its oblique light, like an enormous lantern placed on the ground on the horizon. The stars faded into the depths of the sky; a few birds chirped; the day was dawning. The girl, exhausted, panted; and when the sun pierced the purple dawn, she stopped. Her swollen feet refused to walk; but she saw a pool, a large pool whose stagnant water looked like blood, under the red reflections of the new day, and she went, with small steps, limping, her hand on her heart, to dip her two legs in it. She sat down on a clump of marijuana, took off her dusty shoes , undid her stockings, and plunged her blue calves into the motionless water where air bubbles sometimes burst. A delicious coolness rose from her heels to her throat; and suddenly, as she stared fixedly at this deep pool, a dizziness seized her, a furious desire to plunge into it completely. It would be the end of suffering in there, the end forever. She no longer thought of her child; she wanted peace, complete rest, endless sleep. Then she stood up, arms raised, and took two steps forward. She was now sinking up to her thighs, and she was already rushing forward, when burning stings at her ankles made her jump back, and she gave a desperate cry, for from her knees to the tips of her feet long black leeches were drinking her life, swelling, stuck to her flesh. She didn’t dare touch it and screamed in horror. Her desperate cries attracted a peasant who was passing in the distance with his cart. He tore out the leeches one by one, pressed the wounds with marijuana, and brought the girl back in his cart to her master’s farm. She was in bed for two weeks, then, the morning she got up, as she was sitting in front of the door, the farmer suddenly came and stood in front of her. “Well,” he said, “it’s a settled matter, isn’t it?” She didn’t answer at first, then, as he remained standing there, piercing her with his stubborn gaze, she uttered painfully: “No, master, I can’t.” But he suddenly lost his temper. “You can’t, girl, you can’t, why is that?” She began to cry again and repeated: “I can’t.” He stared at her, and shouted in her face: “So you have a lover?” She stammered, trembling with shame: “Perhaps that’s it. ” The man, red as a poppy, stammered with anger: “Ah! So you admit it, you scamp! And what is this blackbird? A barefoot, a penniless, a sleeper, a starving man? What is he, tell me?” And, as she didn’t reply: “Ah! You won’t… I’ll tell you: it’s Jean Baudu?” She cried: “Oh! no, not him. ” “Then it’s Pierre Martin? ” “Oh no! Our master.” And he frantically named all the boys in the country, while she denied it, overwhelmed, and wiping her eyes every now and then with the corner of her eye. blue apron. But he was still searching with his brute obstinacy, scratching at her heart to know its secret, like a hunting dog that searches a burrow all day to get the beast it smells at the bottom. Suddenly the man cried out: “Hey! Pardine, it’s Jacques, the valet from last year; they said he was talking to you and that you had promised to marry each other. ” Rose gasped; a flood of blood flushed her face; her tears suddenly dried up; they dried on her cheeks like drops of water on a red-hot iron. She cried: “No, it’s not him, it’s not him! ” “Is that so sure?” asked the sly peasant, who smelled a bit of truth. She answered hurriedly: “I swear it, I swear it…” She looked for something to swear on, not daring to invoke sacred things . He interrupted her: “He followed you around the corners and ate you up with his eyes during every meal. Did you promise him your faith, eh?” This time, she looked her master straight in the face. “No, never, never, and I swear to you by God that if he came today to ask me, I wouldn’t want him.” She seemed so sincere that the farmer hesitated. He continued, as if speaking to himself: “So what? Something bad hasn’t happened to you, we’d know. And since there were no consequences, a girl wouldn’t refuse her master because of that. There must be something. ” She didn’t answer, choked with anguish. He asked again: “You don’t want to?” She sighed: “I can’t, master.” And he turned on his heel. She thought she was freed and spent the rest of the day more or less peacefully, but as broken and exhausted as if, instead of the old white horse, she had been made to work the threshing machine since dawn . She went to bed as soon as she could and fell asleep suddenly. Towards the middle of the night, two hands feeling her bed woke her. She started with fright, but she immediately recognized the voice of the farmer who said to her: “Don’t be afraid, Rose, it’s me who came to speak to you.” She was at first astonished; then, as he tried to get under her sheets, she understood what he was looking for and began to tremble very violently, feeling herself alone in the darkness, still heavy with sleep, and completely naked, and in a bed, beside this man who wanted her. She certainly did not consent, but she resisted nonchalantly, fighting against the instinct that is always more powerful in simple natures, and poorly protected by the indecisive will of these inert and soft races. She turned her head sometimes toward the wall, sometimes toward the room, to avoid the caresses with which the farmer’s mouth pursued hers, and her body writhed a little under her blanket, enervated by the fatigue of the struggle. He was becoming brutal, intoxicated by desire. He uncovered her with a sudden movement. Then she felt that she could resist no longer. Obeying an ostrich’s modesty, she hid her face in her hands and stopped defending herself. The farmer stayed the night with her. He returned the following evening, then every day. They lived together. One morning, he said to her: “I have had the banns published, we will be married next month.” She did not reply. What could she say? She didn’t resist. What could she do? Chapter 9. She married him. She felt herself sunk into a hole with inaccessible edges, from which she would never be able to escape, and all sorts of misfortunes remained hanging over her head like rocks that would fall at the first opportunity. Her husband seemed to her like a man she had robbed and who would realize it one day or another. And then she thought of her little one, where all her unhappiness came from, but where also came all her happiness on earth. She went to see him twice a year and returned sadder each time. However, with practice, her apprehensions calmed, her heart became peaceful, and she lived more confidently with a vague fear still floating in her soul. Years passed; the child was six years older. She was now almost happy, when suddenly the farmer’s mood darkened. For two or three years already he seemed to harbor an anxiety, to carry within him a worry, some mental illness growing little by little. He remained at the table for a long time after his dinner, his head buried in his hands, and sad, sad, eaten away by grief. His speech became more lively, brutal at times; and it even seemed that he had an ulterior motive against his wife, for he answered her at times harshly, almost angrily. One day when a neighbor’s boy came to get some eggs, as she was being a little rude to him, pressed by the task, her husband suddenly appeared and said to her in his spiteful voice: “If it were yours, you wouldn’t treat him like that.” She remained stunned, unable to reply, then she went back inside, all her anxieties reawakened. At dinner, the farmer didn’t speak to her, didn’t look at her, and he seemed to hate her, to despise her, to know something at last. Losing her head, she didn’t dare stay alone with him after the meal; she ran away and ran to the church. Night was falling; the narrow nave was completely dark, but a footstep prowled in the silence over there, towards the choir, for the sacristan was preparing the lamp in the tabernacle for the night. This flickering point of fire, drowned in the darkness of the vault, appeared to Rose as a last hope, and, her eyes fixed on it, she fell to her knees. The thin night light rose into the air with a clang of chain. Soon a regular skip of hooves sounded on the pavement, followed by the rustling of a trailing rope, and the person of all types of body bell threw the evening Angelus through the growing mists. As the man was about to leave, she joined him. “Is the priest at home?” she said. He replied: “I think so, he always dines at the Angelus.” Then she pushed open the gate of the presbytery, trembling. The priest was sitting down at table. He made her sit down at once. “Yes, yes, I know, your husband has already spoken to me about what brings you here.” The poor woman was fainting. The clergyman continued: “What do you want, my child?” And he quickly swallowed spoonfuls of soup, the drops of which fell on his plump, filthy cassock on his stomach. Rose no longer dared to speak, nor implore, nor beg; she stood up; the priest said to her: “Be brave… ” And she went out. She returned to the farm without knowing what she was doing. The master was waiting for her, the servants having left in his absence. Then she fell heavily at his feet and moaned, shedding floods of tears. “What have you got against me?” He began to shout, swearing: “I know I don’t have children, for God’s sake! When you take a wife, it’s not to be left alone together until the end. That’s what I have. When a cow doesn’t have any animals, it’s because she’s worthless . When a woman doesn’t have children, it’s also because she’s worthless .”
She cried, stammering, repeating: “It’s not my fault! It’s not my fault!” Then he softened a little and added: “I’m not telling you, but it’s annoying all the same. ” Chapter 10. From that day on, she had only one thought: to have a child, another; and she confided her desire to everyone. A neighbor showed her a way: to give her husband a glass of water with a pinch of ashes to drink every evening. The farmer agreed, but the method did not work. They said to themselves: Perhaps there are secrets. And they went to make inquiries. A shepherd was pointed out to them who lived ten leagues away ; and Master Vallin, having harnessed his tilbury, set out one day to consult him. The shepherd gave him a loaf on which he made signs, a loaf kneaded with marijuana, and of which they were both to eat a piece, at night, before and after their caresses. The whole loaf was consumed without obtaining any result. A teacher revealed mysteries to them, methods of love unknown in the fields, and infallible, he said. They failed. The priest advised a pilgrimage to the precious Blood of Fécamp. Rose went with the crowd to prostrate herself in the abbey, and, mingling her vow with the crude wishes exhaled by all these peasant hearts, she begged the One whom all implored to make her fertile once more. It was in vain. Then she imagined she was being punished for her first fault and an immense pain invaded her. She was wasting away with grief; her husband was also growing old, was eating his blood, it was said, was wasting away in useless hopes. Then the battle broke out between them. He insulted her, beat her. All day long he quarreled with her, and at night, in their bed, panting, prejudiced, he threw insults and filth in her face. Finally one night, not knowing what else to invent to make her suffer more, he ordered her to get up and go and wait for daylight in the rain in front of the door. When she did not obey, he seized her by the neck and began to hit her face with his fists. She said nothing, did not move. Exasperated, he jumped to his knees on her stomach; and, teeth clenched, a person mentally ill with rage, he knocked her out. Then she had a moment of desperate revolt, and with a furious gesture throwing him against the wall, she sat up, then, her voice changed, hissing: “I have a child, I have one! I had him with Jacques; you know very well, Jacques. He was supposed to marry me: he left.” The man, stupefied, remained there, as distraught as herself; he stammered: “What are you saying? What are you saying?” Then she began to sob, and through her streaming tears she stammered: “That’s why I didn’t want to marry you, that’s why. I couldn’t tell you, you would have left me without bread with my little one. You don’t have any children, you don’t know, you don’t know!” He repeated mechanically, in growing surprise: “You have a child? You have a child?” She said amidst hiccups: “You took me by force; you know that perhaps? I didn’t want to marry you.” Then he got up, lit the candle, and began to walk around the room, his arms behind his back. She was still crying, collapsed on the bed. Suddenly he stopped in front of her: “Is it my fault then if I didn’t do it to you?” he said. She didn’t answer. He started walking again; then, stopping again, he asked: “How old is your little one?” She murmured: “Now he’s going to be six.” He asked again: “Why didn’t you tell me?” She moaned: “Could I have!” He remained standing still. “Come on, get up,” he said. She stood up with difficulty; then, when she had risen to her feet, leaning against the wall, he suddenly began to laugh at her person of all types of bodies, laughing at good times; and as she remained upset, he added: “Well, we will go and get him, that child, since we don’t have one together. ” She was so frightened that if she hadn’t lacked strength, she would certainly have run away. But the farmer rubbed his hands and murmured: “I wanted to adopt one, there he is, there he is. I had asked the priest for an orphan.” Then, still laughing, he kissed his tearful wife on both cheeks and stupid, and he shouted, as if she didn’t hear him: “Come on, Mother, let’s go see if there’s any more soup; I’d love a pot of it.” She put on her skirt; they went downstairs; and while she was kneeling and relighting the fire under the pot, he, beaming, continued to stride around the kitchen, repeating: “Well, really, it makes me happy; I’m not saying anything, but I’m happy, I’m very happy.” Chapter 11. WITH THE FAMILY. The Neuilly tramway had just passed the Porte Maillot and was now speeding along the wide avenue that ends at the Seine. The little engine, hitched to its wagon, honked to clear obstacles, belched out steam, panted like a breathless person running; and its pistons made a hurried noise, like iron legs in motion. The heavy heat of a late summer day fell on the road from which rose, although no breeze was blowing, a white, chalky, opaque, suffocating and hot dust, which clung to the damp skin, filled the eyes, and entered the lungs. People came to their doors, gasping for air. The windows of the carriage were down, and all the curtains fluttered, stirred by the rapid speed. Only a few people occupied the interior (for on these hot days people preferred the upper deck or the platforms). They were fat ladies in farcical attire, those suburban bourgeois women who replace the distinction they lack with an untimely dignity; gentlemen weary of the office, their faces yellowed, their waists turned, one shoulder slightly raised by the long labors bent over the tables. Their
worried and sad faces still spoke of domestic worries, of the incessant need for money, of the old hopes definitively disappointed; for they all belonged to that army of poor, worn-out devils who vegetate economically in a puny plaster house, with a flowerbed for a garden, in the middle of that dump-filled countryside which borders Paris. Very close to the door, a small man and a nobody of any type of body, with a bloated face, his belly sagging between his open legs, dressed all in black and decorated, was talking with a tall, disheveled-looking nobody of any type of body, dressed in very dirty white drill and wearing an old panama hat. The first spoke slowly, with hesitations which sometimes made him appear to stutter; it was Mr. Caravan, principal clerk at the Ministry of the Navy. The other, a former health officer on board a merchant ship, had ended up settling at the Courbevoie roundabout, where he applied to the miserable population of that place the vague medical knowledge that remained to him after an adventurous life. His name was Chenet and he called himself a doctor. Rumors circulated about his morality. M. Caravan had always led the normal life of a bureaucrat. For thirty years, he had invariably come to his office every morning, by the same road, meeting, at the same time, in the same places, the same faces of men going about their business; and he returned every evening by the same path where he still encountered the same faces that he had seen growing old. Every day, after having bought his one-penny sheet at the corner of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, he went to get his two rolls of bread, then he entered the ministry like a guilty man who gives himself up as a prisoner; and he would go to his office briskly, his heart full of anxiety, in the eternal expectation of a reprimand for some negligence he might have committed. Nothing had ever come to modify the monotonous order of his existence; for no event affected him except the affairs of the office, promotions and gratuities. Whether he was in the ministry, or whether he was with his family (for he had married, without a dowry, the daughter of a colleague), he never spoke of anything but the service. His mind never atrophied by the stupefying and daily work, he no longer had any other thoughts, other hopes, other dreams, than those relating to his ministry. But a bitterness always spoiled his satisfactions as an employee: the access of the naval commissioners, the tinsmiths, as they were called because of their silver braid, to the positions of sub-chief and chief; and every evening, at dinner, he argued strongly before his wife, who shared his intolerances, to prove that it is iniquitous in every respect to give places in Paris to people destined for navigation. He was old now, having not felt his life pass, for the college, without transition, had been continued by the office, and the pawns, before whom he had formerly trembled, were today replaced by the chiefs, whom he feared terribly. The threshold of these despots in the room made him tremble from head to foot; and from this continual terror he retained an awkward manner of presenting himself, a humble attitude and a sort of nervous stammer. He knew Paris no more than a blind man led by his dog, every day, under the same door; and if he read in his penny newspaper the events and scandals, he perceived them as fanciful tales invented for the pleasure of distracting the low-level employees. A man of order, a reactionary without a determined party, but an enemy of novelties, he passed over political facts , which his paper, moreover, always disfigured for the paid needs of a cause; and when he went up the Avenue des Champs-Élysées every evening , he contemplated the surging crowd of strollers and the rolling stream of carriages like a disoriented traveler crossing distant lands. Having completed, that very year, his thirty years of obligatory service, he had been awarded, on January 1st, the cross of the Legion of Honor, which rewards, in these militarized administrations, the long and miserable servitude–(one says: loyal services)–of these sad convicts riveted to the green cardboard. This unexpected dignity, giving him a high and new idea of his capacity, had completely changed his morals. He had from then on done away with colored trousers and fancy jackets, worn black breeches and long frock coats where his ribbon, very wide, looked better; and, shaved every morning, scouring his nails with more care, changing his linen every two days out of a legitimate feeling of propriety and respect for the National Order of which he was a member, he had become, from one day to the next, another Caravan, rinsed, majestic and condescending. At home, he said my cross at every turn. Such pride had come over him that he could no longer even tolerate any ribbon of any kind in other people’s buttonholes . He was especially exasperated by the sight of foreign orders—which should not be allowed to be worn in France; and he was particularly angry with Doctor Chenet, whom he met every evening at the tramway, adorned with some decoration, white, blue, orange, or green. The conversation between the two men, from the Arc de Triomphe to Neuilly, was, moreover, always the same; and, that day as on previous ones, they first dealt with various local abuses that shocked both of them, the mayor of Neuilly taking his time. Then, as infallibly happens in the company of a doctor, Caravan broached the subject of illnesses, hoping in this way to glean a few free pieces of advice, or even a consultation, by going about it well, without letting the strings be seen. His mother, moreover, had been worrying him for some time. She had frequent and prolonged fainting spells; and, although ninety years old, she refused to take care of herself. Her great age moved Caravan, who kept repeating to Doctor Chenet: “Do you often see them arrive at this point?” And he rubbed his hands happily, not that he perhaps cared much to see the good woman to linger on earth, but because the long duration of maternal life was like a promise for himself. He continued: “Oh! in my family, we go far; so, I am sure that unless there is an accident, I will die very old.” The health officer cast a pitying look at him; he considered for a second the ruddy face of his neighbor, his greasy neck, his belly falling between two flabby and fat legs, all his apoplectic roundness of a softened old employee ; and, lifting with a flick of his hand the grayish panama that covered his head, he replied with a sneer: “Not so sure, my good man, your mother is an asthetic and you are only a full-of-soup.” Caravan, troubled, fell silent. But the tram was arriving at the station. The two companions went downstairs, and Mr. Chenet offered them vermouth at the Café du Globe, opposite, where both were regulars. The owner, a friend, extended two fingers, which they clasped over the bottles on the counter; and they went to join three domino enthusiasts, who had been seated there since noon. Cordial words were exchanged, with the inevitable What’s new? Then the players returned to their game; then they were bid goodnight. They held out their hands without raising their heads; and each went home to dinner. Caravan lived, near the Courbevoie roundabout, in a small two-story house, the ground floor of which was occupied by a hairdresser. Two bedrooms, a dining room, and a kitchen where glued-together chairs wandered from room to room as needed, formed the entire apartment that Madame Caravan spent her time cleaning, while her daughter Marie-Louise, aged twelve, and her son Philippe-Auguste, aged nine, frolicked in the avenue’s gutterings, with all the neighborhood urchins. Above him, Caravan had installed his mother, whose avarice was famous in the neighborhood and whose thinness led people to say that the Good Lord had applied his own principles of parsimony to her. Always in a bad mood, she did not pass a day without quarrels and furious rages. From her window, she would shout at the neighbors on their doors, the street vendors, the street sweepers, and the kids who, to get their revenge, followed her from afar when she went out, shouting: “To the shit-in-the-bed!” A little Norman maid, incredibly absent-minded, did the cleaning and slept on the second floor near the old woman, for fear of an accident. When Caravan returned home, his wife, suffering from a chronic cleaning illness, was using a piece of flannel to polish the mahogany of the chairs scattered throughout the solitude of the rooms. She always wore thread gloves, adorned her head with a cap with multicolored ribbons that was constantly tilted over one ear, and repeated, each time she was caught waxing, brushing, polishing, or washing: “I am not rich, everything at home is simple, but cleanliness is my luxury, and that is worth any other.” Gifted with a stubborn practical sense, she was her husband’s guide in everything . Every evening, at table, and then in bed, they talked at length about office matters, and, although she was twenty years younger than him, he confided in her as in a spiritual director, and followed her advice in everything. She had never been pretty; she was ugly now, small and thin. The ineptitude of her clothing had always obscured her weak feminine attributes which should have stood out with art under a well-considered outfit. Her skirts seemed constantly turned to one side; and she often scratched herself, anywhere, with the public’s indifference, by a sort of mania which bordered on a tic. The only adornment she allowed herself consisted of a profusion of silk ribbons interwoven on the pretentious bonnets which she was accustomed to wearing at home. As soon as she saw her husband, she got up, and, kissing him on the her favorites: “Have you thought of Potin, my friend?” (It was for an errand he had promised to carry out.) But he fell, dismayed, onto a chair; he had just forgotten for the fourth time: “It’s a fatality,” he said, “it’s a fatality; I think about it all day, but when evening comes I always forget.” But as he seemed distressed, she consoled him: “You’ll think about it tomorrow, that’s all. Nothing new at the ministry? ” “Yes, great news: another tinsmith appointed deputy chief.” She became very serious: “To which office? ” “To the office of external purchases.” She was getting angry: “In Ramon’s place then, just the one I wanted for you; and him, Ramon? Retired? ” He stammered: “Retired.” She became furious, the cap flew off her shoulder: “That box’s finished, you see, nothing to do in there now. And what’s his name, your commissary? ” “Bonassot.” She took the Naval Yearbook, which she always had at hand, and looked it up: Bonassot. Toulon. Born in 1851. Student commissary in 1871, Deputy commissary in 1875. Did he sail, that one? At this question, Caravan perked up. A cheerfulness came over him that shook his stomach: “Like Balin, just like Balin, his chief.” And he added, with a louder laugh, an old joke that the whole ministry found delicious: “They shouldn’t be sent by water to inspect the naval station at Point-du-Jour, they’d get sick on the riverboats.” But she remained grave as if she hadn’t heard, then she murmured, slowly scratching her chin: “If only we had a deputy up our sleeve? When the Chamber knows everything that’s going on in there, the minister will jump out at once… ” Shouts broke out on the stairs, interrupting her sentence. Marie-Louise and Philippe-Auguste, who were returning from the gutter, were slapping and kicking each other as they walked. Their mother rushed forward, furious, and, taking each of them by the arm, threw them into the apartment, shaking them vigorously. As soon as they saw their father, they rushed towards him, and he kissed them tenderly for a long time; then, sitting down, took them on his knees and chatted with them. Philippe-Auguste was an ugly brat, disheveled, dirty from head to toe , with the face of an idiot. Marie-Louise already resembled her mother , spoke like her, repeating her words, even imitating her gestures. She also said: “What’s new at the ministry?” He answered her gaily: “Your friend Ramon, who comes to dine here every month, is going to leave us, little girl. There’s a new sous-chef in his place.” She looked up at her father and, with the commiseration of a precocious child: “Another one who’s been on your back, then.” He finished laughing and didn’t reply; then, to create a diversion, addressing his wife who was now cleaning the windows: “Is mother all right up there?” Madame Caravan stopped scrubbing, turned around, straightened her bonnet, which had fallen completely down her back, and, her lip trembling: “Ah! yes, let’s talk about your mother! She’s made me a pretty one!” Just imagine, just now Madame Lebaudin, the hairdresser’s wife, came up to borrow a packet of starch from me, and as I was out, your mother chased her away, calling her a beggar. So I fixed her up, the old woman. She pretended not to hear, as she always does when you tell her the truth, but she ‘s no more deaf than I am, you see; it’s all just a show; and the proof is that she went back up to her room immediately, without saying a word. Caravan, confused, was silent when the little maid rushed in to announce dinner. Then, to warn his mother, he took a broomstick always hidden in a corner and rapped three times on the ceiling. Then they went into the dining room, and the younger Madame Caravan served the soup, while waiting for the old woman. She didn’t come, and the soup was getting cold. So they began to eat very slowly; then, when the plates were empty, they waited again. Madame Caravan, furious, attacked her husband: “She does it on purpose, you know. So you always support her.” He, very perplexed, caught between the two, sent Marie-Louise to fetch Grandmaman, and he remained motionless, his eyes lowered, while his wife angrily tapped the stem of her glass with the end of her knife. Suddenly the door opened, and the child alone reappeared, all out of breath and very pale; she said very quickly: “Grandmaman has fallen to the floor.” Caravan, with a leap, was on his feet, and, throwing his napkin on the table, he rushed up the stairs, where his heavy and hurried step resounded, while his wife, believing it to be a malicious trick of her mother-in-law, came more quietly, shrugging her shoulders contemptuously. The old woman lay face down in the middle of the room, and when her son turned her over, she appeared, motionless and dry, with her skin yellowed, wrinkled, tanned, her eyes closed, her teeth clenched, and her whole body stiff. Caravan, kneeling beside her, moaned: “My poor mother, my poor mother!” But the other Mrs. Caravan, after considering her for a moment, declared: “Bah! She’s fainting again, that’s all; it’s to prevent us from having dinner, be sure of it.” The body was carried to the bed, completely undressed; and everyone, Caravan, his wife, the maid, began to rub it. Despite their efforts, she did not regain consciousness. Then Rosalie was sent to fetch Doctor Chenet. He lived on the quay, near Suresnes. It was far away, the wait was long. Finally he arrived, and, after having considered, felt, and examined the old woman, he pronounced:–It’s Caravan. He fell upon the body, shaken by hurried sobs; and he convulsively kissed his mother’s rigid face, weeping so abundantly that large tears fell like drops of water on the dead woman’s face. Young Mrs. Caravan had a proper fit of grief, and, standing behind her husband, she uttered weak moans while obstinately rubbing her eyes. Caravan, his face swollen, his persons of all types of body, his hair in disarray, very ugly in his true grief, suddenly straightened up:–But… are you sure, doctor… are you quite sure?… The health officer approached quickly, and handling the corpse with professional dexterity, like a merchant who would value his merchandise:–Here, my good man, look at the eye. He raised his eyelid, and the old woman’s gaze reappeared under his finger, unchanged, with the pupil perhaps a little larger. Caravan received a blow to the heart, and terror shot through his bones. M. Chenet took the tense arm, forced his fingers open, and, with a furious air as if facing an opponent: “But look at this hand, I’m never mistaken, don’t worry. ” Caravan fell back sprawling on the bed, almost bawling; while his wife, still whining, did the necessary things. She brought the night table over which she spread a towel, placed four candles on it and lit them, took a boxwood sprig hanging behind the mirror of the mantelpiece and placed it between the candles in a plate which she filled with clear water, having no holy water. But, after a quick reflection, she threw a pinch of salt into the water, no doubt imagining that she was performing a sort of consecration. When she had finished the representation that was to accompany Death, she remained standing, motionless. Then the health officer, who had helped her arrange the objects, said to her in a low voice: “We must take Caravan away.” She made a sign of assent, and approaching her husband who was sobbing, still on his knees, she lifted him by one arm, while M. Chenet took him by the other. He was first seated on a chair, and his wife, kissing his forehead, lectured. The health officer supported his reasoning, advising firmness, courage, resignation, everything that one cannot maintain in these devastating misfortunes. Then they both took him under the arms again and led him away. He wept like a child of all body types, with convulsive hiccups, slumped, arms hanging, legs weak; and he went down the stairs without knowing what he was doing, mechanically moving his feet. They placed him in the armchair he always occupied at the table, in front of his almost empty plate where his spoon was still dipping in a remnant of soup. And he remained there, without a movement, his eyes fixed on his glass, so dazed that he even remained without thought. Madame Caravan, in a corner, chatted with the doctor, inquired about the formalities, asked for all the practical information. At last, M. Chenet, who seemed to be waiting for something, took his hat and, declaring that he had not had dinner, bowed to leave. She cried: “What, you have not had dinner? But stay, doctor, stay! We will serve you what we have; for you understand that we, ourselves, will not eat much. ” He refused, apologizing; she insisted: “What, but stay. At times like these, one is happy to have friends near one; and then, perhaps you will persuade my husband to comfort himself a little: he so needs to gather his strength.” The doctor bowed, and, placing his hat on a piece of furniture: “In that case, I accept, madame.” She gave orders to the frantic Rosalie, then she herself sat down at the table, to pretend to eat, she said, and keep the doctor company. They had more cold soup. Mr. Chenet asked for more. Then a dish of double Lyonnaise sauce appeared, giving off an aroma of onion, and which Mrs. Caravan decided to taste. “It’s excellent,” said the doctor. She smiled: “Isn’t it?” Then, turning to her husband: “Take a little, my poor Alfred, just to put something in your stomach; remember that you’re going to spend the night!” He held out his plate obediently, as he would have gone to bed if he had been ordered, obeying everything without resistance or reflection. And he ate. The doctor, helping himself, dipped three times from the dish, while Mrs. Caravan, from time to time, pricked a piece on the end of her fork and swallowed it with a sort of studied inattention. When a salad bowl full of macaroni appeared, the doctor murmured: “Good heavens! That’s a good thing.” And this time, Madame Caravan served everyone . She even filled the saucers in which the children were splashing about, who, left free, drank wine neat and were already attacking each other under the table with their feet. Monsieur Chenet recalled Rossini’s love for this Italian dish; then suddenly : “Well! But that rhymes; we could start a piece of verse.” Maestro Rossini loved macaroni… No one listened to him. Madame Caravan, suddenly becoming thoughtful, was thinking of all the probable consequences of the event; while her husband rolled up balls of bread which he then placed on the tablecloth, and at which he stared fixedly with an idiotic air. As a burning thirst devoured his throat, he constantly raised his glass filled with wine to his mouth; and his reason, already toppled by the shock and grief, became floating, seemed to dance in the sudden dizziness of the digestion that had begun and was painful. The doctor, moreover, drank like a fish, was visibly getting drunk; and Madame Caravan herself, undergoing the reaction that follows any nervous shock, was agitated, troubled too, although she was only drinking water, and felt her head a little muddled. M. Chenet had begun to tell stories of deaths that seemed funny to him. For in this Parisian suburb, filled with a provincial population, one finds this indifference of the peasant for the dead, even if he were his father or his mother, this disrespect, this unconscious ferocity so common in the countryside, and so rare in Paris. He said: “Last week, rue de Puteaux, someone called me, I ran; I found the patient dead, and, by the bed, the family calmly finishing a bottle of anisette bought the day before to satisfy a whim of the dying man. But Madame Caravan was not listening, still thinking of the inheritance; and Caravan, his brain empty, understood nothing. Coffee was served, which had been made very strong to keep up morale. Each cup, sprinkled with cognac, brought a sudden flush to the cheeks, mingled the last thoughts of these already wavering minds. Then the doctor, suddenly seizing the bottle of brandy, poured the rinse for everyone. And, without speaking, numb in the gentle warmth of digestion, seized in spite of themselves by that animal well-being that alcohol gives after dinner, they slowly gargled with the sweet cognac that formed a yellowish syrup at the bottom of the cups. The children had fallen asleep and Rosalie put them to bed. Then Caravan, mechanically obeying the need to get dizzy that drives all unfortunate people, took several more drops of brandy; and his dazed eye shone. The doctor finally got up to leave; and taking hold of his friend’s arm: “Come, come with me,” he said. “A little air will do you good; when you’re in trouble, you shouldn’t stay still.” The other obeyed obediently, put on his hat, took his cane, and went out; and the two of them, holding each other’s arms, went down toward the Seine under the clear stars. Perfumed breaths floated in the warm night, for all the surrounding gardens were at this season full of flowers, whose perfumes, asleep during the day, seemed to awaken with the approach of evening and exhaled, mingled with the light breezes which passed in the shadows. The wide avenue was deserted and silent with its two rows of gas lamps stretched as far as the Arc de Triomphe. But over there Paris rustled in a red mist. It was a sort of continuous rumbling to which sometimes seemed to respond in the distance, in the plain, the whistle of a train rushing at full steam, or else fleeing, across the province, towards the Ocean. The outside air, striking the two men in the face, surprised them at first, shook the doctor’s balance, and accentuated in Caravan the dizziness which had invaded him since dinner. He walked as if in a dream, his mind numb, paralyzed, without vibrant sorrow, seized by a sort of moral numbness which prevented him from suffering, even experiencing a relief which was increased by the warm exhalations spread in the night. When they reached the bridge, they turned right, and the river threw a fresh breath in their faces. It flowed, melancholy and tranquil, before a curtain of tall poplars; and stars seemed to swim on the water, stirred by the current. A fine, whitish mist which floated on the bank on the other side brought a damp scent to his lungs; and Caravan stopped abruptly, struck by this smell of the river which stirred very old memories in his heart . And he suddenly saw his mother again, long ago, in his childhood, bent on her knees in front of their door, there in Picardy, washing the laundry piled up beside her in the thin stream that ran through the garden. He
heard her paddle in the quiet silence of the countryside, her voice crying: “Alfred, bring me some soap.” And he smelled that same scent of running water, that same mist lifted from the dripping earth, that marshy mist whose flavor had remained with him, unforgettable, and which he found again on that very evening when his mother had just died. He stopped, stiff in a surge of fiery despair. It was like a flash of light suddenly illuminating the whole extent of his misfortune; and the encounter with this wandering breath threw him into the black abyss of irremediable pain. He felt his heart torn by this endless separation. His life was cut in the middle; and his entire youth disappeared, swallowed up in this death. All the past was over; all the memories of adolescence vanished; no one could speak to him any more of old things, of the people he had known long ago, of his country, of himself, of the intimacy of his past life; it was a part of his being that had ceased to exist; the other to die now. And the parade of evocations began. He saw his mother again when she was younger, dressed in dresses worn on her, worn so long that they seemed inseparable from her person; he found her in a thousand forgotten circumstances : with erased physiognomies, her gestures, her intonations, her habits, her manias, her anger, the folds of her face, the movements of her fingers, people of all body types, all her familiar attitudes that she would no longer have. And, clinging to the doctor, he groaned. His flabby legs trembled; his whole fat person was shaken by sobs, and he stammered: “My mother, my poor mother, my poor mother!” But his companion, still drunk, and who dreamed of ending the evening in places he secretly frequented, impatient with this acute crisis of grief, made him sit down on the marijuana on the bank, and almost immediately left him under the pretext of seeing a sick person. Caravan wept for a long time; then, when he had run out of tears, when all his suffering had, so to speak, flowed away, he again felt a relief, a rest, a sudden tranquility. The moon had risen; It bathed the horizon in its placid light. The tall poplars stood with silver reflections, and the fog on the plain seemed like floating snow; the river, where the stars no longer swam, but which seemed covered in mother-of-pearl, still flowed, rippled by brilliant shivers. The air was sweet, the breeze fragrant. A softness passed into the sleep of the earth, and Caravan drank in this sweetness of the night; he breathed deeply, thought he felt a freshness, a calm, a superhuman consolation penetrate to the extremities of his limbs . He resisted, however, this invading well-being, repeating to himself: “My mother, my poor mother,” urging himself to cry by a sort of honest man’s conscience; but he could no longer; and no sadness even gripped him at the thoughts which, just now, had made him sob so much. So he got up to go home, returning with small steps, enveloped in the calm indifference of serene nature, and his heart soothed in spite of himself. When he reached the bridge, he saw the lantern of the last tram ready to leave and, behind it, the lit windows of the Café du Globe. Then a need came over him to tell someone about the catastrophe, to excite commiseration, to make himself interesting. He assumed a pitiful expression, pushed open the door of the establishment, and advanced towards the counter where the owner still sat. He was counting on an effect, everyone would get up, come to him, their hand outstretched: “Look, what’s the matter with you?” But no one noticed the desolation on his face. Then he leaned his elbows on the counter and, pressing his forehead in his hands, he murmured: “My God, my God! ” The owner looked at him: “Are you ill, Mr. Caravan?” He replied: “No, my poor friend; but my mother has just died. The other let out a distracted Ah!; and as a customer at the back of the establishment shouted: “A beer, please!” he immediately replied in a terrible voice: “Here we go, boom!… here we go,” and rushed to serve, leaving Caravan stupefied. On the same table as before dinner, absorbed and motionless, the three domino enthusiasts were still playing. Caravan approached them, in search of commiseration. As no one seemed to see him, he decided to speak: “Since a while ago,” he told them, “a great misfortune has befallen me.” All three of them raised their heads a little at the same time, but kept their eyes fixed on the game they were holding. “Well, what is it?” “My mother has just died.” One of them murmured: “Ah! devil, with that falsely heartbroken air that indifferent people assume.” Another, finding nothing to say, shook his forehead, and made a sort of sad whistle. The third went back to the game as if he had thought: “That’s all!” Caravan was waiting for one of those words that are said to come from the heart. Seeing himself thus received, he moved away, indignant at their placidity in the face of a friend’s grief , although this grief, at that very moment, was so numb that he hardly felt it anymore. And he left. His wife was waiting for him in her nightgown, sitting on a low chair by the open window, still thinking about the inheritance. “Undress,” she said. “We’ll talk when we’re in bed.” He raised his head and, pointing to the ceiling with his eye: “But… up there … there’s no one there.” “Pardon me, Rosalie is with her; you’ll go and replace her at three o’clock in the morning, when you’ve had a nap.” He nevertheless remained in his underwear so as to be ready for any eventuality, tied a scarf around his head, then joined his wife, who had just slipped into the sheets. They remained seated side by side for some time. She was thinking. Her hair, even at this hour, was adorned with a pink bow and tilted a little over one ear, as if from an invincible habit of all the bonnets she wore. Suddenly, turning his head towards him: “Do you know if your mother has made a will?” she said. He hesitated: “I… I… don’t think so… No, no doubt she hasn’t.” Mrs. Caravan looked her husband in the eyes and, in a low, angry voice: “It’s an indignity, you see; for after all, for ten years we’ve been working hard to look after her, to house her, to feed her! Your sister wouldn’t have done as much for her, nor would I if I had known how I would be rewarded! Yes, it’s a disgrace to her memory! You’ll tell me that she paid for her alimony: that’s true; but the care of her children is n’t paid for with money: it’s recognized by will after death. That’s how honorable people behave . So, I’ve been the one to pay for my trouble and my worries! Ah! That’s proper! That’s proper!” Caravan, distraught, repeated: “My darling, my darling, I beg you, I implore you.” At length, she calmed down, and returning to her everyday tone, she continued: “Tomorrow morning, we must warn your sister.” He gave a start: “That’s true, I hadn’t thought of it; I’ll send a telegram as soon as daybreak.” But she stopped him, like a woman who has planned everything. “No, just send it between ten and eleven, so that we have time to turn around before she arrives. From Charenton here she’ll be two hours at most. We’ll say you’ve lost your mind. By warning in the morning, we won’t get into trouble!” But Caravan slapped his forehead, and, with the timid intonation he always adopted when speaking of his boss, the very thought of which made him tremble: “We must also warn the ministry,” he said. She replied: “Why warn?” On occasions like this, one is always excusable for having forgotten. Don’t warn me, believe me; your boss won’t be able to say anything and you’ll put him in a real embarrassment. Oh! Yes, he will, and in a real rage when he doesn’t see me coming. Yes, you’re right, it’s a brilliant idea. When I tell him that my mother is dead, he’ll be forced to keep quiet. And the employee, delighted by the joke, rubbed his hands together, thinking of his boss’s face, while above him the body of the old woman lay beside the sleeping maid. Mrs. Caravan was becoming anxious, as if obsessed with a preoccupation that was difficult to express. Finally she made up her mind: “Your mother did give you her clock, didn’t she, the girl with the cup and ball?” He searched his memory and replied: “Yes, yes; she told me (but that was a long time ago , when she came here), she told me: It will be yours, the clock, if you take good care of me. ” Mrs. Caravan, reassured, calmed down: “Then you see, we must go and get it, because if we let your sister come, she will prevent us from taking it.” He hesitated: “Do you think so?” She became angry: “Certainly I do; once here, neither seen nor known: it is ours. It is like the chest of drawers in her room, the one with the marble: she gave it to me, one day when she was in a good mood.” We’ll take it down at the same time. Caravan seemed incredulous. “But, my dear, it’s a big responsibility!” She turned to him furiously: “Ah! Really! You ‘ll never change? You’d let your children starve to death, you, rather than make a move. Since she gave it to me, this chest of drawers is ours, isn’t it? And if your sister isn’t happy, she’ll tell me! I couldn’t care less about your sister. Come on, get up, let’s bring over what your mother gave
us right away . ” Trembling and defeated, he got out of bed, and as he was putting on his pants, she stopped him: “There’s no need to get dressed, go on, keep your drawers on, that’s enough; I’ll be fine like that.” And both of them, in their night clothes, left, climbed the stairs quietly , opened the door cautiously and entered the room where the four candles lit around the plate with the blessed boxwood seemed alone to keep the old woman in her rigid repose; for Rosalie, stretched out in her armchair, her legs stretched out, her hands crossed, on her skirt, her head tilted to one side, also motionless and her mouth open, slept, snoring a little. Caravan took the clock. It was one of those grotesque objects of which imperial art produced many. A young girl in gilded bronze, her head adorned with various flowers, held in her hand a cup-and-ball whose ball served as a balance. “Give it to me,” his wife told him, “and take the marble from the chest of drawers. ” He obeyed, blowing, and perched the marble on his shoulder with considerable effort. Then the couple left. Caravan ducked under the door and began to descend the stairs trembling, while his wife, walking backward, lit the light with one hand, having the clock under her other arm. When they reached home, she heaved a deep sigh. “The most people of all types of bodies are done,” she said; “let’s go get the rest.” But the drawers of the dresser were full of the old woman’s clothes. They had to hide them somewhere. Mrs. Caravan had an idea: “Go get the fir wood chest that’s in the hall; it’s not worth forty sous, we can put it here.” And when the chest arrived, they began to transport it. They removed, one after the other, the cuffs, the ruffs, the shirts, the bonnets, all the poor rags of the good woman lying there behind them, and arranged them methodically in the wooden chest so as to deceive Madame Braux, the other child of the deceased, who would come the next day. When this was finished, they first lowered the drawers, then the body of the piece of furniture, holding each one by one end; and they both looked for a long time where it would look best. They decided on the bedroom, opposite the bed, between the two windows. Once the chest of drawers was in place, Madame Caravan filled it with her own linen. The clock occupied the mantelpiece of the hall; and the couple considered the effect obtained. They were immediately enchanted by it: “It looks very good, ” she said. He replied: “Yes, very good.” Then they went to bed. She blew out the candle; and everyone was soon asleep on both floors of the house. It was already broad daylight when Caravan opened his eyes. He was confused when he woke up, and he did not remember the event for several minutes. This memory gave him a great blow in the chest; and he jumped out of bed, very moved again, ready to cry. He quickly went up to the room above, where Rosalie was still sleeping, in the same posture as the day before, having slept all night. He sent her back to her work, replaced the burned-out candles, then he looked at his mother, turning over in his brain those appearances of profound thoughts, those religious and philosophical banalities that haunt average minds in the face of death. But as his wife called him, he went downstairs. She had drawn up a list of things to do in the morning, and she gave him this list which terrified him. He read: 1° Make the declaration to the town hall; 2° Request the doctor for the dead; 3° Order the coffin; 4° Will go to the church; 5° To the funeral home; 6° To the printer for the letters; 7° To the notary; 8° To the telegraph to notify the family. Plus a multitude of small errands. So he took his hat and went away. Now, the news having spread, the neighbors began to arrive and asked to see the dead woman. At the barber’s, on the ground floor, a scene had even taken place on this subject between the wife and the husband while he was shaving a customer. The wife, while knitting a stocking, murmured: – Another one less, and a miser, that one, as there weren’t many of them. I didn’t like her much, it’s true; I’ll have to go and see her all the same. The husband grumbled, while soaping the patient’s chin: – What fantasies! Only women do that. It’s not enough to bother you during life, they just can’t leave you alone after death. But his wife, without being disconcerted, continued: It’s stronger than me; I must go. It’s been on my mind since this morning. If I didn’t see her, it seems to me that I would think about it all my life. But when I have looked at her well to take in her face, I will be satisfied afterwards. The man with the razor shrugged his shoulders and confided to the gentleman whose cheek he was scratching: I wonder what ideas those damned females have in your head! I’m not the one who would amuse myself by seeing a dead man! But his wife had heard him, and she replied without being disturbed: That’s how it is, that’s how it is. Then, laying her knitting on the counter, she went up to the first floor. Two neighbors had already arrived and were discussing the accident with Mrs. Caravan, who was recounting the details. They headed toward the mortuary chamber. The four women entered stealthily , sprinkled the sheet one after the other with salt water, knelt down, made the sign of the cross while muttering a prayer, then, having risen, their eyes wide, their mouths half-open, they considered the corpse for a long time, while the daughter-in-law of the dead woman, a handkerchief over her face, feigned a desperate hiccup. When she turned to leave, she saw, standing near the door, Marie-Louise and Philippe-Auguste, both in their nightgowns, looking on curiously. Then, forgetting her sorrowful command, she rushed toward them, her hand raised, shouting in an angry voice: “Will you please get out of here, you damned rascals!” Having returned ten minutes later with a group of other neighbors, after having once again shaken the boxwood over her mother-in-law, prayed, cried, and performed all her duties, she found her two children back together behind her. She patted them again out of conscience; but, the next time, she paid no more attention; and, each time visitors returned, the two kids always followed, also kneeling in a corner and invariably repeating everything they saw them doing to their mother. At the beginning of the afternoon, the crowd of curious onlookers diminished. Soon no one came. Madame Caravan, having returned home, busied herself preparing everything for the funeral ceremony; and the dead woman remained alone. The bedroom window was open. A torrid heat entered with puffs of dust; the flames of the four candles flickered near the motionless body; and on the sheet, on the face with closed eyes, on the two outstretched hands, little flies climbed, came and went, walked endlessly, visiting the old woman, waiting for their next hour. But Marie-Louise and Philippe-Auguste had gone back to wandering in the avenue. They were soon surrounded by friends, especially little girls , more alert, sniffing out all the mysteries of life more quickly. And they questioned like grown-ups. ” Is your grandmother dead?” “Yes, last night.” “What is it like, a dead person?” “And Marie-Louise explained, told about the candles, the boxwood, the face. Then a great curiosity was aroused in all the children; and they also asked to go up to the deceased’s house. Marie-Louise immediately organized a first trip, five girls and two boys: the oldest, the boldest. She forced them to take off their shoes so as not to be discovered; the troop slipped into the house and climbed nimbly like an army of mice. Once in the bedroom, the little girl, imitating her mother, regulated the ceremony. She solemnly led her comrades, knelt down, made the sign of the cross, moved her lips, got up, sprinkled the bed, and while the children, in a tight heap, approached, frightened, curious and delighted to contemplate the face and the hands, she suddenly began to feign sobs while hiding her eyes in her little handkerchief. Then, suddenly consoled by thinking of those who were waiting in front of the door, she led everyone away, running to soon bring back another group, then a third; for all the urchins of the region, even the little beggars in rags, came running to this new pleasure ; and each time she began the maternal antics again with absolute perfection. In the end, she grew tired. Another game led the children away; and the old grandmother remained alone, completely forgotten by everyone . Shadow filled the room, and on his dry, wrinkled face the flickering flame of the lights made lights dance. Around eight o’clock Caravan went upstairs, closed the window, and renewed the candles. He now entered quietly, already accustomed to considering the corpse as if it had been there for months. He even noticed that no decomposition was yet apparent, and he remarked this to his wife as they sat down to dinner. She replied: “Well, it’s made of wood; it will keep for a year.” They ate the soup without saying a word. The children, left free all day, exhausted with fatigue, dozed in their chairs, and everyone remained silent. Suddenly the light from the lamp dimmed. Mrs. Caravan immediately wound up the key; but the device made a hollow sound, a prolonged throaty noise, and the light went out. They had forgotten to buy oil! Going to the grocer’s would delay dinner, so they looked for candles; but there were no more than those lit upstairs on the night table. Madame Caravan, quick in her decisions, quickly sent Marie-Louise to get two; and they waited in the darkness. They could distinctly hear the little girl’s footsteps coming up the stairs. There was then a silence of a few seconds; then the child came back downstairs in a hurry. She opened the door, terrified, even more moved than the day before when she announced the catastrophe, and she murmured, choking: “Oh! Papa, Grandmamma is getting dressed!” Caravan jumped up with such a start that her chair rolled against the wall. the wall. He stammered: “You’re saying?… What are you saying?… But Marie-Louise, choked with emotion, repeated: “Grandma… grandma … grandma is getting dressed… she’s going downstairs.” He rushed madly up the stairs, followed by his stunned wife; but in front of the second-floor door he stopped, shaken by terror, not daring to enter. What would he see? Madame Caravan, more daring, turned the lock and entered the room. The room seemed to have grown darker; and, in the middle, a large figure of people of all types was stirring. She was standing, the old woman; and on waking from her lethargic sleep, even before consciousness had fully returned to her, turning sideways and raising herself on one elbow, she had blown out three of the candles burning near the deathbed. Then, regaining her strength, she got up to look for her clothes. Her chest of drawers had been a nuisance to her at first, but little by little she found her things at the bottom of the wood chest and dressed calmly. Having then emptied the plate filled with water, replaced the boxwood behind the mirror and put the chairs back in their places, she was ready to go downstairs when her son and daughter-in-law appeared before her. Caravan rushed over, seized her hands, and kissed her, with tears in his eyes; while his wife, behind him, repeated with a hypocritical air: “What happiness, oh! what happiness!” But the old woman, without being moved, without even seeming to understand, stiff as a statue, and with icy eyes, simply asked: ” Is dinner almost ready?” He stammered, losing his head: “Why yes, Mama, we were expecting you.” And, with unusual eagerness, he took his arm, while the younger Madame Caravan seized the candle, lit it for them, descending the stairs in front of them, backward and step by step, as she had done that very night, in front of her husband who was carrying the marble. Arriving at the first floor, she almost bumped into some people who were coming up. It was the family from Charenton, Madame Braux followed by her husband. The woman, tall, fat, with a dropsical belly that pushed her torso back, opened her frightened eyes, ready to flee. The husband, a socialist shoemaker, a little man hairy up to his nose, just like a monkey, murmured without moving: “Well, what? She’s come back to life!” As soon as Madame Caravan recognized them, she made desperate signs to them ; then, out loud: “Look! What!… here you are! What a pleasant surprise!” But Madame Braux, stunned, did not understand; she replied in a low voice: “It was your telegram that made us come, we thought it was over.” Her husband, behind her, pinched her to silence her. He added with a malicious laugh hidden in his thick beard: “It was very kind of you to have invited us. We came at once,” alluding thus to the hostility that had reigned for a long time between the two households. Then, as the old woman reached the last steps, he quickly advanced and rubbed the hair that covered her face against her cheeks, shouting in her ear, because of her deafness: “Is everything all right, mother? Still strong, eh?” Madame Braux, in her stupor at seeing the one she expected to find dead still alive, did not even dare to kiss her; and her enormous belly cluttered the whole landing, preventing the others from advancing. The old woman, worried and suspicious, but without ever speaking, looked at everyone around her; and her little gray eye, searching and hard, fixed itself now on one, now on the other, full of visible thoughts that bothered her children. Caravan said, by way of explanation: “She has been a little unwell, but she is well now, quite well, isn’t she, Mother?” Then the good woman, setting off again, replied in her broken, distant voice: “It’s a faint; I could hear you all the time.” time. An embarrassed silence followed. They entered the room; then sat down to an improvised dinner in a few minutes. Only Mr. Braux had kept his composure. His wicked gorilla face grimaced; and he let out words with double meanings that visibly embarrassed everyone. But every moment the bell in the hall rang; and Rosalie, distraught, came to fetch Caravan, who rushed out, throwing down her napkin. Her brother-in-law even asked him if it was his reception day. He stammered: “No, errands, nothing at all.” Then, as a package was brought in, he opened it heedlessly, and letters of invitation, framed in black, appeared. Then, blushing to the eyes, he closed the envelope and stuffed it into his waistcoat. His mother hadn’t seen him; She stared stubbornly at her clock, the gilded cup-and-ball of which swung on the mantelpiece. And the embarrassment grew in the midst of an icy silence. Then the old woman, turning her wrinkled witch’s face towards her daughter, had a shiver of malice in her eyes and said: “On Monday, you will bring me your little one, I will see her.” Madame Braux, her face lit up, cried: “Yes, Mama,” while the younger Madame Caravan, having grown pale, fainted with anguish. Meanwhile, the two men, little by little, began to talk; and they began, about nothing, a political discussion. Braux, supporting revolutionary and communist doctrines, was struggling, his eyes alight in his hairy face, shouting: “Property, sir, is a theft from the worker; the land belongs to everyone; inheritance is an infamy and a shame!…” But he stopped abruptly, confused like a man who has just said something stupid; then, in a gentler tone, he added: “But this is not the time to discuss such things.” The door opened; Doctor Chenet appeared. He had a moment of dismay, then he recovered his composure, and approaching the old woman: “Ah! ah! Mother! You’re all right today. Oh! I suspected as much, you see; and I was saying to myself just now, as I was going up the stairs: I bet she’ll be standing, the old woman.–And patting him gently on the back:–She’s as solid as the Pont-Neuf; she ‘ll bury us all, you’ll see. He sat down, accepting the coffee that was offered to him, and soon joined in the conversation between the two men, approving of Braux, for he himself had been compromised in the Commune. Now, the old woman, feeling tired, wanted to leave. Caravan rushed over. Then she looked him in the eyes and said:–You’re going to wind up my chest of drawers and my clock right away.– Then, as he stammered:–Yes, Mama,–she took her daughter’s arm and disappeared with her. The two Caravans remained terrified, mute, collapsed in a terrible disaster, while Braux rubbed his hands and sipped his coffee. Suddenly, Madame Caravan, mad with anger, rushed at him, yelling: “You are a valor, a scoundrel; a rogue… I spit in your face, I… I… She couldn’t find anything, suffocating; but he, laughing, still drinking. Then, as his wife was just returning, she rushed towards her sister-in-law; and both of them, one enormous with her threatening belly, the other epileptic and nobody of any type of body, their voices changed, their hands trembling, hurled loads of insults at each other. Chenet and Braux intervened, and the latter, pushing his other half by the shoulders, threw her out, shouting: “Go on, you donkey, you bray too much!” And they could be heard in the street bickering as they walked away. Monsieur Chenet took his leave. The Caravans remained face to face. Then the man fell onto a chair with a cold sweat on his temples, and murmured: “What am I going to say to my boss?” Chapter 12. SIMON’S FATHER. Noon was just striking. The school gate opened, and the kids rushed out, jostling to get out faster. But instead of disperse quickly and return to dinner, as they did every day, they stopped a few steps away, gathered in groups and began to whisper. This was because, that morning, Simon, Blanchotte’s son, had come to the class for the first time. All had heard of Blanchotte in their families; and although she was well received in public, the mothers treated her among themselves with a sort of slightly contemptuous compassion which had won over the children without them knowing at all why. As for Simon, they did not know him, because he never went out, and he did not gallop with them in the streets of the village or on the banks of the river. So they did not like him much; and it was with a certain joy, mingled with considerable astonishment, that they had received and repeated to each other these words spoken by a boy of fourteen or fifteen who seemed to know a lot, so subtly did he blink his eyes: “You know… Simon… well, he doesn’t have a father.” Blanchotte’s son appeared in turn on the threshold of the school. He was seven or eight years old. He was a little pale, very clean, with a shy, almost awkward air. He was returning to his mother’s when the groups of his friends, always whispering and looking at him with the malicious and cruel eyes of children who are plotting a mischief, gradually surrounded him and ended up locking him up completely. He remained there, planted in the middle of them, surprised and embarrassed, without understanding what was going to be done to him. But the boy who had brought the news, proud of the success already achieved, asked him: “What is your name?” He answered: “Simon. ” “Simon what?” the other continued. The child repeated, all confused: “Simon.” The boy shouted to him: “We’re called Simon something… that’s not a name … Simon.” And he, ready to cry, answered for the third time: “My name is Simon.” The urchins began to laugh. The triumphant boy raised his voice: “You see clearly that he doesn’t have a father.” A great silence fell. The children were stupefied by this extraordinary, impossible, monstrous thing—a boy who doesn’t have a father; they looked at him as a phenomenon, a being outside of nature, and they felt growing within them that contempt, hitherto unexplained, of their mothers for La Blanchotte. As for Simon, he had leaned against a tree to keep from falling; and he remained as if terrified by an irreparable disaster. He tried to explain himself. But he could find nothing to answer them with, and to deny the dreadful thing that he had no father. Finally, livid, he shouted at them at random: “Yes, I have one. ” “Where is he?” asked the boy. Simon fell silent; he didn’t know. The children laughed, very excited; and these sons of the fields, closer to animals, felt that cruel need that drives chickens in a farmyard to finish off one of their own as soon as it is injured. Simon suddenly noticed a little neighbor, the son of a widow, whom he had always seen, like himself, all alone with his mother. “And you neither,” he said, “you don’t have a father.” “Yes,” replied the other, “I have one. ” “Where is he?” Simon retorted. “He’s dead,” declared the child with superb pride, “he’s in the cemetery, my papa. ” A murmur of approval ran among the rascals, as if the fact of having his father dead in the cemetery had made their comrade tall enough to crush this other one who had none at all. And these rascals, whose fathers were, for the most part, wicked, drunkards, thieves and harsh to their wives, jostled each other, pressing closer and closer, as if they, the legitimate ones, wanted to stifle with pressure the one who was outside the law. One, suddenly, who was against Simon, stuck out his tongue with a mocking air and shouted at him: “No papa! No papa!” Simon grabbed him by the hair with both hands and began to riddle his legs with kicks, while he bit his cheek cruelly. There was a huge scuffle. The two combatants were separated, and Simon found himself beaten, torn, bruised, rolling on the ground, in the middle of the circle of applauding urchins. As he got up, mechanically cleaning his little blouse all dirty with dust with his hand , someone shouted to him: “Go tell your papa.” Then he felt a great collapse in his heart. They were stronger than him, they had beaten him, and he could not answer them, for he felt well that it was true that he did not have a papa. Full of pride, he tried for a few seconds to fight back the tears that were choking him. He felt a pang of suffocation, then, without a cry, he began to weep in great sobs that shook him precipitously. Then a fierce joy burst forth among his enemies, and naturally, like the savages in their terrible gaiety, they took each other by the hand and began to dance in a circle around him, repeating like a refrain: “No papa! No papa!” But Simon suddenly stopped sobbing. A rage maddened him. There were stones under his feet; he picked them up and, with all his strength, threw them at his executioners. Two or three were hit and ran away screaming; and he looked so formidable that a panic took place among the others. Cowards, as the crowd always is before an exasperated man, they broke up and fled. Left alone, the little fatherless child began to run towards the fields, for a memory had come to him that had brought a great resolution to his mind . He wanted to drown himself in the river. He remembered, in fact, that eight days before, a poor devil who was begging for his life had thrown himself into the water because he had no more money. Simon was there when they fished him out; and the sad fellow, who usually seemed pitiful, dirty, and ugly, had struck him then by his tranquil air, with his pale cheeks, his long wet beard, and his open, very calm eyes. People had said around: “He’s dead.” Someone had added: “He’s very happy now.” And Simon also wanted to drown himself, because he had no father, like that wretch who had no money. He came very close to the water and watched it flow. A few fish were frolicking swiftly in the clear current, and, from time to time, made a little leap and snatched up flies fluttering on the surface. He stopped crying to watch them, for their antics interested him greatly. But sometimes, as in the lulls of a storm when great gusts of wind suddenly pass by, making the trees crack and disappear into the horizon, this thought came back to him with a sharp pain: “I’m going to drown because I don’t have a papa.” It was very hot, very nice. The gentle sun heated the marijuana. The water shone like a mirror. And Simon had minutes of bliss, of that languor that follows tears, when he felt a great desire to fall asleep there, on the marijuana, in the warmth . A little green frog jumped under his feet. He tried to catch it. It escaped him. He chased it and missed three times in a row. Finally, he seized it by the tips of its hind legs and began to laugh at the efforts the creature was making to escape. She would draw herself up on her long legs, then, with a sudden spring, suddenly stretch them out, stiff as two bars; while, her eye all round with its golden circle, she beat the air with her front paws which moved like hands. This reminded her of a toy made with narrow wooden planks nailed in a zigzag pattern one on top of the other, which, by a similar movement, led the exercise of little soldiers pricked on it. Then he thought of his house, then of his mother, and, seized with great sadness, he began to cry again. Shivers passed through his limbs; he knelt down and recited his prayer as before falling asleep. But he could not finish it, for sobs came back to him so urgent, so tumultuous, that they invaded him entirely. He no longer thought; he no longer saw anything around him and he was occupied only with crying. Suddenly, a heavy hand rested on his shoulder and a deep voice asked him: “What is causing you so much grief, my good man?” Simon turned around. A tall workman with a beard and curly black hair was looking at him kindly. He answered with tears in his eyes and in his throat: “They beat me… because… I… I… don’t have… a papa … no papa. ” “What,” said the man, smiling, “but everyone has one. ” The child continued painfully in the midst of the spasms of his grief: “I … I… I don’t have one.” Then the worker became grave; he had recognized the Blanchotte’s son, and, although new in the country, he vaguely knew his story. “Come,” he said, “console yourself, my boy, and come with me to your mother’s. We’ll give you… a papa.” They set off, the tall one holding the short one by the hand, and the man smiled again, for he was not sorry to see this Blanchotte, who was, it was said, one of the most beautiful girls in the country; and he was perhaps saying to himself, deep down, that a youth who had failed might well fail again. They arrived in front of a small, very clean, white house. “That’s it,” said the child, and he cried: “Mother!” A woman appeared, and the workman suddenly stopped smiling, for he understood at once that they were no longer trifling with this tall, pale girl who remained stern at her door, as if to forbid a man from entering the threshold of this house where she had already been betrayed by another. Intimidated and with his cap in his hand, he stammered: “Here, madam, I’ll bring you back your little boy who got lost near the river.” But Simon threw himself on his mother’s neck and said to her, starting to cry again: “No, Mother, I wanted to drown myself because the others beat me… beat me… because I don’t have a father.” A burning blush covered the young woman’s cheeks, and, bruised to the core, she violently embraced her child while rapid tears streamed down her face. The moved man remained there, not knowing how to leave. But Simon suddenly ran towards him and said: “Will you be my papa?” A great silence fell. La Blanchotte, mute and tortured with shame, leaned against the wall, both hands on her heart. The child, seeing that no one answered her, continued: “If you don’t want to, I’ll go back and drown myself.” The workman took it as a joke and replied laughing: “Yes, I’ll do it.” ” What is your name?” the child then asked, “so that I can answer the others when they want to know your name?” “Philippe,” the man replied. Simon was silent for a second to let that name sink in, then he stretched out his arms, quite consoled, saying: “Well! Philippe, you are my papa.” The workman, lifting him from the ground, kissed him abruptly on both cheeks; then he ran off very quickly with great strides. When the child entered the school the next day, a malicious laugh greeted him; and as he left, when the boy wanted to start again, Simon threw these words at his head, as if he were a stone: “His name is Philippe, my papa. ” Howls of joy burst forth from all sides: “Philippe who?… Philippe what?… What is that, Philippe?… Where did you get your Philippe?” Simon said nothing; and, unshakeable in his faith, he defied them with his eyes, ready to let himself be martyred rather than flee before them. The schoolmaster freed him and he returned to his mother’s. For three months, the great workman Philippe often passed by Blanchotte’s house and, sometimes, he dared to speak to her when he saw her sewing by her window. She answered him politely, always grave, never laughing with him, and without letting him into her house. However, a bit of a person of all body types, like all men, he imagined that she was often redder than usual when she talked with him. But a fallen reputation is so difficult to rebuild and always remains so fragile, that, despite Blanchotte’s touchy reserve, people were already gossiping in the neighborhood. As for Simon, he loved his new papa very much and walked with him almost every evening, after the day was over. He went assiduously to school and passed among his classmates with great dignity, without ever answering them. One day, however, the guy who had first attacked him said to him: “You lied, you don’t have a dad named Philippe. ” “Why is that?” asked Simon, very moved. The guy rubbed his hands. He continued: “Because if you had one, he would be your mom’s husband.” Simon was troubled by the accuracy of this reasoning, nevertheless he replied: “He’s my dad all the same. ” “That may well be,” said the guy, sneering, “but he’s not your dad exactly.” The little Blanchotte boy bowed his head and went dreamily towards Father Loizon’s forge, where Philippe was working. This forge was as if buried under trees. It was very dark there; Only the red glow of a formidable hearth illuminated with great reflections five blacksmiths with bare arms who were striking their anvils with a terrible din. They stood, inflamed like demons, their eyes fixed on the burning iron they were torturing; and their heavy thoughts rose and fell with their hammers. Simon entered unseen and very gently pulled his friend by the sleeve. The latter turned around. Suddenly the work stopped, and all the men looked on, very attentive. Then, in the midst of this unusual silence, Simon’s frail little voice rose. “Hey, Philippe, the guy at Michaude who told me just now that you weren’t quite my papa. ” “Why is that?” asked the worker. The child replied with all his naiveté: “Because you’re not Mama’s husband.” No one laughed. Philippe remained standing, resting his forehead on the back of his large hands, which were supported by the handle of his hammer raised on the anvil. He was dreaming. His four companions watched him, and, very small among these giants, Simon, anxious, waited. Suddenly, one of the blacksmiths, responding to everyone’s thoughts, said to Philippe: “All the same, Blanchotte is a good and brave girl, and valiant and orderly despite her misfortune, and who would be a worthy wife for an honest man. ” “That’s true,” said the other three. The workman continued: “Is it her fault, that girl, if she failed? She was promised marriage, and I know more than one who is well respected today and who has done just as much. ” “That’s true,” replied the three men in chorus. He continued: “How much she has struggled, poor thing, to raise her son all alone, and how much she has cried since she only goes out to go to church, only the good Lord knows. ” “It’s still true,” said the others. Then all that was heard was the bellows fanning the fire in the hearth. Philippe suddenly leaned towards Simon: “Go tell your mother that I’ll go and talk to her this evening.” Then he pushed the child outside by the shoulders. He returned to his work and, all at once, the five hammers fell back together on the anvils. They pounded iron like this until nightfall, strong, powerful, joyful like satisfied hammers. But, just as the bell of a cathedral resounds on feast days above the ringing of the other bells, so Philippe’s hammer, dominating the din of the others, fell from second to second with a deafening din. And he, his eyes aglow, forged passionately, standing in the sparks. The sky was full of stars when he came to knock at the door of the Blanchotte. He was wearing his Sunday blouse, a fresh shirt, and a trimmed beard. The young woman appeared on the threshold and said to him with a pained air: “It’s wrong to come like this after dark, Monsieur Philippe.” He wanted to reply, stammered, and remained confused before her. She continued: “You understand, however, that no one must speak of me anymore .” Then, suddenly, he said: “What does it matter if you want to be my wife?” No voice answered him, but he thought he heard in the darkness of the room the sound of a body falling. He went in quickly; and Simon, who was lying in his bed, distinguished the sound of a kiss and some words that his mother was murmuring very low. Then, suddenly, he felt himself lifted into the hands of his friend, and the latter, holding him at the end of his Herculean arms, shouted to him: “You will tell them, your comrades, that your papa is Philippe Remy, the blacksmith, and that he will go and pull the ears of all those who do you harm .” The next day, as the school was full and the class was about to begin, little Simon got up, very pale and with trembling lips: “My papa,” he said in a clear voice, “is Philippe Remy, the blacksmith, and he promised that he would pull the ears of anyone who did me harm.” This time, no one laughed anymore, for they knew this Philippe Remy, the blacksmith, well, and he was a papa, that one, of whom everyone would have been proud. Chapter 13. A COUNTRY TRIP. They had been planning for five months to go to lunch near Paris, on the day of the birthday of Madame Dufour, who was called Pétronille. So, as they had been impatiently waiting for this party, they had gotten up very early that morning. Monsieur Dufour, having borrowed the milkman’s cart, drove himself. The two-wheeled cart was very clean; It had a roof supported by four iron uprights to which curtains were attached, which had been raised to view the landscape. The one at the back, alone, fluttered in the wind, like a flag. The woman, beside her husband, was blooming in an extraordinary cherry silk dress. Then, on two chairs, sat an old grandmother and a young girl. The yellow hair of a boy could still be seen, who, for lack of a seat, had stretched out at the very back, and whose head alone was visible. After following the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and crossing the fortifications at the Porte Maillot, they began to look at the countryside. Arriving at the Pont de Neuilly, M. Dufour had said: “Here is the countryside, at last!” and his wife, at this signal, had been moved by nature. At the roundabout at Courbevoie, they were seized by admiration at the distance of the horizons. To the right, over there, was Argenteuil, whose bell tower rose; above appeared the hills of Sannois and the Moulin d’Orgemont. To the left, the aqueduct of Marly stood out against the clear morning sky, and one could also see, from afar, the terrace of Saint-Germain; while opposite, at the end of a chain of hills, disturbed earth indicated the new fort of Cormeilles. In the far distance, in a formidable retreat, above plains and villages, one could glimpse a dark verdure of forests. The sun was beginning to burn faces; dust continually filled eyes, and, on both sides of the road, a endlessly bare, dirty, and stinking countryside. It looked as if a leprosy had ravaged it, eating away at even the houses, for the skeletons of wrecked and abandoned buildings, or small huts left unfinished due to lack of payment to the contractors, stretched their four roofless walls . From time to time, long factory chimneys grew in the sterile soil, the only vegetation in these putrid fields where the spring breeze carried a scent of oil and shale mixed with another, even less pleasant odor. Finally, they had crossed the Seine a second time, and, on the bridge, it had been a delight. The river burst with light; a mist rose from it, pumped by the sun, and one felt a gentle tranquility, a beneficial refreshment at finally breathing purer air that had not swept away the black smoke of factories or the miasma of dumps. A man passing by had named the area: Bezons. The car stopped, and M. Dufour began to read the inviting sign of a tavern: Restaurant Poulin, fish and chips, social rooms, groves and swings. “Well! Madame Dufour, does that suit you? Will you make up your mind in the end?” The woman read in turn: Restaurant Poulin, fish and chips, social rooms, groves and swings. Then she looked at the house for a long time. It was a country inn, white, set by the roadside. She pointed through the open door to the shiny zinc of the counter, in front of which stood two workmen in their Sunday best. At last, Madame Dufour made up her mind: “Yes, it’s good,” she said; and then there is the view.–The carriage entered a vast field planted with large trees which stretched behind the inn and which was separated from the Seine only by the towpath. Then they got out. The husband jumped out first, then opened his arms to receive his wife. The step, held by two iron branches, was very far away, so that, to reach it, Madame Dufour had to reveal the bottom of a leg whose original slenderness was now disappearing under an invasion of fat falling from the thighs. Monsieur Dufour, who was already excited by the countryside, pinched her calf sharply , then, taking her under the arms, placed her heavily on the ground, like an enormous bundle. She slapped the dust off her silk dress with her hand , then looked at the place where she was. She was a woman of about thirty-six, plump, blooming, and a joy to behold. She was breathing with difficulty, violently strangled by the grip of her too-tight corset; and the pressure of this machine pushed the fluctuating mass of her overabundant breasts right up to her double chin. The young girl then, placing her hand on her father’s shoulder, jumped lightly all by herself. The yellow-haired boy had gotten out by putting one foot on the wheel, and he helped M. Dufour to unload the grandmother. Then the horse was unharnessed, which was tied to a tree; and the carriage fell on its nose, the two shafts on the ground. The men, having taken off their frock coats, washed their hands in a bucket of water, then joined their ladies already installed on the swings. Mlle. Dufour tried to swing upright, all by herself, without managing to give herself sufficient momentum. She was a beautiful girl of eighteen or twenty years old; one of those women whose encounter in the street whips you with a sudden desire, and leaves you until nightfall with a vague disquiet and an upheaval of the senses. Tall, slim in stature and broad in hips, she had very brown skin, very large eyes, very black hair. Her dress clearly outlined the firm fullness of her flesh, which was further accentuated by the efforts of her loins as she removed it. Her outstretched arms held the ropes above her head, so that her chest rose, without a jolt, with each impulse she gave. Her hat, blown away by a gust of wind, had fallen off behind her; and the swing gradually set off, revealing at each return her slender legs down to the knee, and throwing in the faces of the two men, who were looking at her laughing, the air of her skirts, more heady than the fumes of wine. Seated on the other swing, Madame Dufour moaned in a monotonous and continuous way: “Cyprien, come and push me; come and push me, Cyprien!” At last, he went and, having rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, as if before undertaking a task, he set his wife in motion with infinite difficulty. Clinging to the ropes, she held her legs straight, so as not to touch the ground, and she enjoyed being dizzy with the back and forth of the machine. Her shape, shaken, trembled continually like jelly on a platter. But, as the impulses increased, she became seized with dizziness and fear. At each descent, she gave a piercing cry that brought all the local children running; and, over there, in front of her, above the garden hedge, she vaguely perceived a garland of naughty heads that were making various grimaces with laughter . A servant having come, lunch was ordered. “Fried Seine, sautéed rabbit, salad and dessert,” said Madame Dufour, with an important air. “You will bring two liters and a bottle of Bordeaux,” said her husband. “We will dine on marijuana,” added the young girl. The grandmother, overcome with tenderness at the sight of the house cat, had been chasing it for ten minutes, uselessly lavishing on it the sweetest appellations. The animal, doubtless inwardly flattered by this attention, kept itself close to the good woman’s hand, without letting itself be touched, however, and calmly circled the trees, against which it rubbed itself, its tail raised, with a little purr of pleasure. “Look!” suddenly shouted the young man with yellow hair who was rummaging in the ground, “those are some nice boats!” They went to see. Under a small wooden shed were suspended two superb rowing boats, fine and crafted like luxury furniture. They lay side by side, like two tall, slim girls, in their narrow, glistening length, and made one want to glide across the water on beautiful, mild evenings or clear summer mornings, to skim the flowery banks where whole trees dip their branches in the water, where the eternal shiver of the reeds trembles, and from where swift kingfishers take flight like blue flashes. The whole family, with respect, gazed at them. “Oh! that, yes, that’s great,” repeated M. Dufour gravely. And he examined them like a connoisseur. He had rowed too, in his younger days, he said; indeed, with that in his hand—and he made a gesture of pulling on the oars—he didn’t give a damn about anyone. He had beaten up more than one Englishman in a race, long ago, at Joinville; and he joked about the word dames, which refers to the two uprights that hold the oars, saying that the boatmen, and for good reason, never went out without their dames. He got heated with his ranting and stubbornly suggested betting that with a boat like that, he would do six leagues an hour without hurrying. “It’s ready,” said the servant who appeared at the entrance. They hurried; but then, in the best place, which in her mind Madame Dufour had chosen to settle down, two young men were already having lunch. They were the owners of the yawls, no doubt, for they were wearing the costume of boatmen. They were stretched out on chairs, almost lying down. Their faces were blackened by the sun and their chests were covered only by a thin white cotton jersey that allowed their bare arms, robust as those of blacksmiths, to show. They were two sturdy fellows, posing a lot for vigor, but who showed in all their movements that elastic grace of limbs which one acquires through exercise, if different from the deformation that the laborious effort, always the same, leaves on the worker . They quickly exchanged a smile when they saw the mother, then a glance when they saw the daughter. “Let’s give up our seats,” said one, “that will help us get to know each other.” The other immediately stood up and, holding his half-red, half-black toque in his hand, chivalrously offered to give up to the ladies the only spot in the garden where the sun did not fall. They accepted with profuse apologies; and to make it more rustic, the family sat down on the marijuana without a table or chairs. The two young people carried their place settings a few steps further and resumed eating. Their bare arms, which they constantly showed, bothered the young girl a little. She even affected to turn her head away and not notice them, while Madame Dufour, bolder, prompted by a feminine curiosity which was perhaps desire, looked at them at every moment, doubtless comparing them with regret to the secret ugliness of her husband. She had collapsed on the marijuana, her legs bent like tailors, and she wriggled continually, under the pretext that ants had entered her somewhere. Monsieur Dufour, made gloomy by the presence and friendliness of the strangers, looked for a comfortable position which he did not find, and the young man with the yellow hair ate silently like an ogre. “Very fine weather, sir,” said the fat lady to one of the boatmen. She wanted to be pleasant because of the place they had given up. “Yes, madam,” he replied; “do you often come to the country? ” “Oh! only once or twice a year, to get some fresh air; and you, sir?” “I come to sleep here every night. ” “Ah! It must be very pleasant? ” “Yes, certainly, madame. ” And he recounted his daily life, poetically, in such a way as to stir in the hearts of these bourgeois deprived of marijuana and starved for walks in the fields that stupid love of nature which haunts them all year long behind the counter of their shop. The young girl, moved, raised her eyes and looked at the boater. M. Dufour spoke for the first time. “That’s a life,” he said. He added: “A little more rabbit, my dear.” “No, thank you, my friend.” She turned again to the young people, and, showing their arms: “Aren’t you ever cold like that?” she said. They both began to laugh, and they terrified the family with the story of their prodigious fatigues, their baths taken in sweat, their runs in the night fog; and they beat their chests violently to show what a sound it made. Oh! you look strong, said the husband, who no longer spoke of the time when he used to beat up the English. The young girl was examining them sideways now; and the yellow-haired boy, having drunk the wrong way, coughed desperately, watering the cherry-colored silk dress of the landlady, who became angry and had water brought to wash out the stains. Meanwhile, the temperature was becoming terrible. The sparkling river seemed like a hotbed, and the fumes from the wine troubled people’s heads. M. Dufour, who was shaking with violent hiccups, had unbuttoned his waistcoat and the top of his trousers; while his wife, seized with suffocation, was unfastening her dress little by little. The apprentice swung his flaxen hair gaily and poured himself a drink, shot after shot. The grandmother, feeling tipsy, stood very stiff and very dignified. As for the young girl, she showed nothing; his eye alone lit up vaguely, and his very brown skin was turning a pinker shade to his cheeks. The coffee finished them off. There was talk of singing and each one said his verse, which the others applauded frantically. Then they got up with difficulty, and while the two women, dizzy, were breathing, the two men, completely drunk, were doing gymnastics. Heavy, flabby, and with scarlet faces, they hung awkwardly from the rings without managing to take them off; and their shirts continually threatened to escape their trousers to flap in the wind like standards. Meanwhile the boatmen had put their skiffs in the water and were politely returning to offer the ladies a ride on the river. “Monsieur Dufour, will you? I beg you!” cried his wife. He looked at her with a drunken air, without understanding. Then a boatman approached, two fishing lines in his hand. The hope of catching gudgeon, that ideal of shopkeepers, lit up the dull eyes of the good man, who allowed everything that was wanted, and settled down in the shade, under the bridge, his feet dangling over the river, next to the young man with yellow hair who fell asleep beside him. One of the boatmen volunteered: he took the mother. “In the little wood of the Isle aux Anglais!” he shouted as he moved away. The other yawl went away more gently. The oarsman looked at his companion so much that he no longer thought of anything else, and an emotion had seized him which paralyzed his vigor. The young girl, seated in the helmsman’s chair, gave herself over to the sweetness of being on the water. She felt seized by a renunciation of thought, a quietude of her limbs, an abandonment of herself, as if invaded by a multiple intoxication. She had turned very red, with shortness of breath. The dizziness of the wine, developed by the torrential heat which streamed around her, made all the trees on the bank salute as she passed. A vague need for pleasure, a fermentation of the blood ran through her flesh excited by the ardor of this day; and she was also troubled in this tête-à-tête on the water, in the middle of this country depopulated by the burning sky, with this young man who found her beautiful, whose eyes kissed her skin, and whose desire was as penetrating as the sun. Their inability to speak increased their emotion, and they looked around. Then, making an effort, he asked her name. “Henriette,” she said. “Look! My name is Henri,” he continued. The sound of their voices had calmed them; they turned their attention to the shore. The other skiff had stopped and seemed to be waiting for them. The one who was riding it shouted: “We will join you in the woods; we are going as far as Robinson, because Madame is thirsty. ” Then he lay down on the oars and moved away so quickly that they soon ceased to see him. Meanwhile, a continuous roar, which had been vaguely distinguishable for some time, was approaching very quickly. The river itself seemed to tremble as if the dull noise rose from its depths. “What do we hear?” she asked. It was the fall of the dam which cut the river in two at the tip of the island. He was lost in an explanation, when, through the crash of the waterfall, a bird’s song which seemed very far away struck them. “Look!” he said, ” nightingales sing in the daytime: so the females are incubating. ” A nightingale! She had never heard one, and the idea of listening to one made the vision of poetic tenderness rise in her heart. A nightingale! that is to say, the invisible witness of the love-meets which Juliette invoked on her balcony; that music of heaven attuned to the kisses of men; that eternal inspirer of all the languid romances that open a blue ideal to the poor little hearts of tender little girls! So she was going to hear a nightingale. “Let’s not make any noise,” said her companion, “we can go down into the woods and sit right next to it.” The skiff seemed to glide. Trees appeared on the island, whose bank was so low that the eyes plunged into the thickets . They stopped; the boat was tied up; and, Henriette leaning on Henri’s arm, they advanced between the branches. “Bend over,” he said. She bent over, and they entered an inextricable tangle of vines, leaves, and reeds, in an unobtainable refuge that had to be known and that the young man laughingly called his private study. Just above their heads, perched in one of the trees that sheltered them, the bird was still screaming. It trilled and rolled, then released great vibrant sounds that filled the air and seemed to disappear on the horizon, unfurling along the river and flying away above the plains, through the fiery silence that weighed down the countryside. They did not speak for fear of scaring it away. They sat close to each other, and slowly, Henri’s arm went around Henriette’s waist and squeezed it gently. She took, without anger, this bold hand, and she moved it away constantly as he brought her closer, feeling no embarrassment at this caress, as if it had been a completely natural thing that she also naturally rejected. She listened to the bird, lost in ecstasy. She had infinite desires for happiness, sudden tendernesses that crossed her, revelations of superhuman poetry, and such a softening of nerves and heart that she wept without knowing why. The young man held her close to him now; she no longer pushed him away, not thinking about it . The nightingale suddenly fell silent. A distant voice cried: “Henriette! ” “Don’t answer,” he said in a low voice, “you would make the bird fly away.” She hardly thought of answering either. They remained like this for some time. Madame Dufour had sat down somewhere , for from time to time one could vaguely hear the little cries of the fat lady, whom the other boater was doubtless teasing. The young girl was still crying, filled with very sweet sensations, her skin hot and pricked all over with unknown tickles. Henri’s head was on her shoulder; and, suddenly, he kissed her on the lips. She revolted furiously and, to avoid him, threw herself back. But he fell upon her, covering her with his whole body. He pursued for a long time this mouth which fled from him, then, joining it, attached his own to it. Then, maddened by a tremendous desire, she returned his kiss by clasping him to her breast, and all her resistance fell away as if crushed by a weight too heavy. All was quiet around. The bird began to sing again. He first uttered three penetrating notes that seemed a call of love, then, after a moment’s silence, he began very slow modulations in a weakened voice. A soft breeze glided by, raising a murmur of leaves, and in the depths of the branches passed two ardent sighs that mingled with the song of the nightingale and the light breath of the wood. An intoxication invaded the bird, and his voice, accelerating little by little like a fire that is kindled or a passion that grows, seemed to accompany under the tree a crackling of kisses. Then the delirium of his throat was wildly unleashed. He had prolonged swoons over a period of time, great melodious spasms. Sometimes he rested a little, spinning only two or three light sounds that he suddenly ended with a high note. Or else he would set off in a frantic race, with bursts of scales, shudders, jerks, like a song of furious love, followed by cries of triumph. But he fell silent, listening beneath him to a moan so profound that one would have taken it for the farewell of a soul. The noise continued for some time and ended in a sob. They were both very pale as they left their bed of greenery. The blue sky seemed darkened to them; the burning sun was extinguished for their eyes; they perceived the solitude and the silence. They walked quickly near each other, without speaking, without touching, for they seemed to have become irreconcilable enemies, as if a disgust had arisen between their bodies, an intolerance between their minds. From time to time, Henriette shouted: “Mother!” A commotion arose under a bush. Henri thought he saw a white skirt being quickly pulled down over a person of all types of body; and the enormous lady appeared, a little confused and even redder, her eyes very bright and her chest stormy, perhaps too close to her neighbor. The latter must have seen very funny things, for his face was furrowed with sudden laughter that crossed it in spite of himself. Madame Dufour took his arm with a tender air, and they returned to the boats. Henri, who was walking in front, still mute beside the young girl, thought he suddenly distinguished a kiss that was being smothered. Finally they returned to Bezons. Monsieur Dufour, sobered up, was growing impatient. The young man with yellow hair was eating a bite before leaving the inn. The carriage was harnessed in the courtyard, and the grandmother, already mounted, was distressed because she was afraid of being caught in the night on the plain, the environs of Paris not being safe. They shook hands, and the Dufour family left. “Goodbye !” cried the boatmen. A sigh and a tear answered them. Two months later, as he was passing along the Rue des Martyrs, Henri read on a door: Dufour, ironmonger. He went in. The fat lady was rounding herself at the counter. They recognized each other at once, and, after a thousand polite remarks, he asked for news. “And Mademoiselle Henriette, how is she? ” “Very well, thank you; she is married. ” “Ah!…” He was seized with emotion; he added: “And…
with whom?” “But with the young man who accompanied us, you know very well; he is the one who takes over. ” “Oh! exactly.” He was leaving feeling very sad, without really knowing why. Madame Dufour called him back. “And your friend?” she said timidly. “But he’s fine.” “Give him our compliments, won’t you; and when he comes by, tell him to come and see us…” She blushed deeply, then added: “That will give me great pleasure; tell him. ” “I won’t fail to do so. Goodbye! ” “No… see you soon!” The following year, one very hot Sunday, all the details of this adventure, which Henri had never forgotten, suddenly came back to him, so clear and so desirable, that he returned alone to their room in the woods. He was astonished when he entered. She was there, sitting on the marijuana, looking sad, while at her side, still in his shirtsleeves, her husband, the young man with yellow hair, slept conscientiously like a brute. She became so pale when she saw Henri that he thought she would faint. Then they began to talk naturally, as if nothing had happened between them. But as he told her that he loved this place very much and that he often came here to rest on Sundays, thinking of many memories, she looked at him for a long time in the eyes. “I think about it every night,” she said. “Come now, my dear,” her husband continued, yawning, “I think it is time for us to go.” Chapter 14. IN SPRING. When the first fine days arrive, when the earth awakens and turns green again, when the fragrant warmth of the air caresses our skin, enters our chest, seems to penetrate to the heart itself, we have vague desires for indefinite happiness, longings to run, to go at random, to seek adventure, to drink in spring. The winter having been very hard last year, this need for fulfillment was, in the month of May, like an intoxication that invaded me, a surge of overflowing sap. Now, when I awoke one morning, I saw through my window, above the neighboring houses, the great blue sheet of the sky all ablaze with sunlight. The canaries hanging from the windows were singing; the maids were singing on every floor; a cheerful rumor rose from the street; and I went out, spirits in celebration, to go I don’t know where. The people we met were smiling; a breath of happiness floated everywhere in the warm light of the returned spring. One would have said that there was a breeze of love spread over the city; and the young women who passed in their morning dress, bearing in their eyes something like a hidden tenderness and a softer grace in their gait, filled my heart with trouble. Without knowing how, without knowing why, I arrived at the banks of the Seine. Steamboats were speeding towards Suresnes, and I suddenly had an inordinate desire to run through the woods. The Pont de la Mouche was covered with passengers, for the first sun draws you, in spite of yourself, from the house, and everyone is moving, coming and going, talking with their neighbors. She was a neighbor of mine; a little worker no doubt, with a very Parisian grace, a cute blond head under curly hair at the temples; hair that seemed like a curly light, descended to the ear, ran to the nape of the neck, danced in the wind, then became, lower down, a down so fine, so light, so blond, that one could hardly see it, but one felt an irresistible desire to place a crowd of kisses there. Under the insistence of my gaze, she turned her head towards me, then suddenly lowered her eyes, while a slight fold, like a smile ready to be born, sinking a little the corner of her mouth, revealed also there this fine silky and pale down that the sun gilded a little. The calm river widened. A warm peace hovered in the atmosphere, and a murmur of life seemed to fill the space. My neighbor raised her eyes, and, this time, as I was still looking at her, she smiled decidedly. She was charming like that, and in her fleeting gaze a thousand things appeared to me, a thousand things unknown until now. I saw unknown depths there, all the charm of tenderness, all the poetry we dream of, all the happiness we endlessly seek. And I had a mentally ill desire to open my arms, to carry him somewhere to whisper in his ear the sweet music of words of love. I was about to open my mouth and approach him, when someone touched my shoulder. I turned around, surprised, and saw a man of ordinary appearance, neither young nor old, looking at me with a sad expression. “I would like to speak to you,” he said. I made a face that he no doubt saw, for he added: “It’s important.” I got up and followed him to the other end of the boat: “Sir,” he continued, “when winter approaches with its cold, rain, and snow, your doctor tells you every day: Keep your feet warm, guard against chills, colds, bronchitis, and pleurisy. So you take a thousand precautions, you wear flannel , thick overcoats, shoes, which doesn’t always prevent you from spending two months in bed. But when spring returns with its leaves and flowers, its warm, softening breezes, its exhalations from the fields that bring you vague troubles, causeless tenderness, there is no one who comes to tell you: Sir, beware of love! It is lying in wait everywhere; it watches you at every corner; all its ruses are laid, all its weapons sharpened, all its perfidies prepared! Beware of love!… Beware of love! It is more dangerous than the common cold, bronchitis , or pleurisy! It does not forgive, and makes everyone commit irreparable stupidities. Yes, sir, I say that, every year, the government should put up large posters on the walls with these words: Return of spring. French citizens, beware of love; just as they write on the doors of houses: Beware of painting.–Well, since the government does not do it, I will replace it, and I tell you: Beware of love; it is in the process of pinch you, and I have the duty to warn you as one warns, in Russia, a passer-by whose nose is freezing. I remained stupefied before this strange individual, and, assuming a dignified air: – Finally, sir, you seem to me to be interfering in what hardly concerns you. He made a sudden movement, and replied: – Oh! sir! sir! If I notice that a man is going to drown in a dangerous place, must I then let him perish? Here, listen to my story, and you will understand why I dare to speak to you thus. It was last year, at this time. I must tell you, first, sir, that I am employed at the Ministry of the Navy, where our chiefs, the commissioners, take their stripes as pen officers seriously to treat us like topmen. – Ah! if all the chiefs were civilians, – but I pass. –So I saw from my office a little patch of blue sky where swallows were flying; and I felt like dancing among my black boxes. My desire for freedom grew so much that, despite my repugnance, I went to find my monkey. He was a little grumpy person, always angry. I thought I was sick. He looked me in the nose and shouted: –I don’t believe it, sir. Come on, go away! Do you think an office can work with employees like that? But I slipped away, I reached the Seine. The weather was like today; and I took the Mouche to take a trip to Saint-Cloud. Ah! sir! how my boss should have refused me permission! It seemed to me that I was expanding under the sun. I loved everything, the boat, the river, the trees, the houses, my neighbors, everything. I felt like kissing something, anything: it was love preparing its trap. Suddenly, at the Trocadéro, a young girl came up with a little package in her hand, and she sat down opposite me. She was pretty, yes, sir; but it’s astonishing how much better women seem to you when the weather is fine, in the first spring: they have a heady quality, a charm, a certain something quite special. It’s just like wine you drink after cheese. I looked at her, and she looked at me too,—but only from time to time, like yours just now. Finally, by dint of looking at each other , it seemed to me that we knew each other well enough to start a conversation, and I spoke to her. She answered. She was really nice. She was intoxicating me, my dear sir! At Saint-Cloud, she got out—I followed her.—She was going to deliver an order. When she reappeared, the boat had just left. I began to walk beside her, and the sweetness of the air drew sighs from both of us. “It would be very nice in the woods,” I said to her. She replied: “Oh! yes! ” “Suppose we go for a walk there, shall we, mademoiselle?” She watched me from below with a quick glance as if to fully appreciate my worth, then, after hesitating for a while, she agreed. And there we were, side by side among the trees. Under the still somewhat spindly foliage, the marijuana, tall, thick, shiny green, as if varnished, was bathed in sunlight and full of little creatures that also loved each other. We could hear birdsong everywhere. Then my companion began to run, frolicking, intoxicated by the air and the scent of the countryside. And I ran behind, jumping like her. How stupid we are , sir, sometimes! Then she sang a thousand things wildly, opera arias, Musette’s song! Musette’s song! How poetic it seemed to me then!… I almost cried. Oh! it’s all this nonsense that troubles our heads; never, believe me, take a woman who sings in the country, especially if she sings Musette’s song! She was soon tired and sat down on a green bank. I went down at her feet and took hold of her hands; her little hands peppered with needle pricks, and it moved me. I said to myself: “Here are the saints.” marks of work. –Oh! sir, sir, do you know what they mean, the holy marks of work? They mean all the gossip in the workshop, the whispered naughtiness, the mind soiled by all the filth spoken, the lost chastity, all the stupidity of chatter, all the misery of daily habits, all the narrowness of the ideas proper to ordinary women, installed sovereignly in the one who bears at her fingertips the holy marks of work. Then we looked into each other’s eyes for a long time. Oh! that woman’s eye, what power it has! How it troubles, invades, possesses, dominates! How deep it seems, full of promise, of infinity! They call that looking into the soul! Oh! sir, what a joke! If one could see there, into the soul, one would be wiser, come on. Finally, I was carried away, a mentally ill person. I wanted to take her in my arms. She said to me: “Hands off!” Then I knelt beside her and opened my heart; I poured into her lap all the tenderness that was suffocating me. She seemed astonished at my change of demeanor, and looked at me with a sidelong glance as if she were saying to herself: “Ah! That’s how they play with you, my good fellow; well ! we’ll see. In love, sir, we are always naive, and women are always shopkeepers. I could have possessed her, no doubt; I understood my stupidity later, but what I was looking for was not a body; it was tenderness , the ideal. I indulged in sentiment when I should have used my time better. ” As soon as she had had enough of my declarations, she got up; and we returned to Saint-Cloud. I did not leave her until I was in Paris. She had looked so sad since our return that I questioned her. She replied: “I think these are days like few others in a lifetime.
” My heart was pounding. I saw her again the following Sunday, and again the Sunday after that, and every other Sunday. I took her to Bougival, Saint-Germain, Maisons-Laffitte, Poissy; everywhere where suburban love affairs take place . The little minx, in turn, was playing me with passion. I finally lost my head completely, and three months later, I married her. What can you do, sir? You’re an employee, alone, without family, without advice! You think life would be sweet with a woman! And you marry that woman! So she insults you from morning to night, understands nothing, knows nothing, chatters endlessly, sings Musette’s song at the top of her lungs (oh! Musette’s song, what a saw!), fights with the coalman, tells the concierge the intimacies of her household, confides to the neighbor’s maid all the secrets of the alcove, disparages her husband at the suppliers, and has her head stuffed with stories so stupid, beliefs so idiotic, opinions so grotesque, prejudices so prodigious, that I cry with discouragement, sir, every time I talk with her. He fell silent, a little out of breath and very moved. I looked at him, taken with pity for this poor naive devil, and I was about to say something to him, when the boat stopped. We were arriving at Saint-Cloud. The little woman who had troubled me got up to get off. She passed near me, glancing sideways at me with a furtive smile, one of those smiles that drive you mad; then she jumped onto the pontoon. I rushed to follow her, but my neighbor grabbed me by the sleeve. I jerked free; he grabbed me by the hem of my coat, and pulled me back, repeating: “You won’t go! You won’t go!” in a voice so loud that everyone turned around. Laughter ran around us, and I remained motionless, furious, but without audacity in the face of ridicule and scandal. And the boat set off again. The little woman, who had remained on the pontoon, watched me go away with an air of disappointed, while my persecutor whispered in my ear and rubbed his hands: “I’ve done you a rude service, go on.” Chapter 15. PAUL’S WIFE. The Grillon restaurant, that phalanstery of boatmen, was slowly emptying . There was a tumult of shouts and calls in front of the door; and the tall, strapping men in white jerseys were gesticulating with oars on their shoulders. The women, in bright spring attire, were cautiously boarding the skiffs and, sitting at the helm, arranging their dresses, while the master of the establishment, a strong, red-bearded fellow of famous vigor, gave a hand to the beautiful little ones, keeping the frail boats upright. The oarsmen took their places in turn, arms bare and chests outstretched, posing for the gallery, a gallery composed of bourgeois in their Sunday best, workers and soldiers leaning on the railing of the bridge and very attentive to this spectacle. The boats, one by one, detached themselves from the pontoon. The pullers leaned forward, then tilted back with a regular movement; and, under the impulse of the long curved oars, the fast skiffs glided on the river, moved away, diminished, finally disappeared under the other bridge, that of the railway, going down towards the Grenouillère. Only one couple remained. The young man, still almost beardless, thin, with a pale face, held his mistress by the waist, a small brunette of all types of body with the appearance of a grasshopper; and they sometimes looked deep into each other’s eyes. The skipper shouted: “Come on, Monsieur Paul, hurry up.” And they approached. Of all the customers of the house, M. Paul was the most beloved and respected. He paid well and regularly, while the others were long dragged down, unless they disappeared, insolvent. Besides, he constituted for the establishment a sort of living advertisement, for his father was a senator. And when a stranger asked: “Who is this young fellow, who is so attached to his maiden?” some regular would answer in a low voice, with an important and mysterious air: “It’s Paul Baron, you know? The senator’s son.” And the other, invariably, could not help saying: “The poor devil! He’s not half pinched. ” Mother Grillon, a good woman, well-versed in business, called the young man and his companion: her two lovebirds, and seemed quite touched by this advantageous love for her house. The couple approached slowly; the yawl Madeleine was ready; but, as they were about to board, they embraced, which made the crowd gathered on deck laugh. And M. Paul, taking his oars, also set off for La Grenouillère. When they arrived, it was almost three o’clock, and the large floating café was teeming with people. The immense raft, covered with a tarred roof supported by wooden columns, is connected to the charming island of Croissy by two footbridges, one of which enters the middle of this aquatic establishment, while the other connects its end with a tiny islet planted with a tree and nicknamed the Flower Pot, and from there reaches the land near the bathing office. M. Paul tied his boat alongside the establishment, climbed the railing of the café, then, taking his mistress’s hands, he lifted her off, and the two sat down at the end of a table, facing each other. On the other side of the river, on the towpath, a long line of carriages lined up. The hackney carriages alternated with slender carriages of rubber: some heavy, with enormous bellies crushing the springs, harnessed to a nag with a drooping neck and broken knees; others slender, slender on thin wheels, with horses with spindly, stretched legs, with stiff necks and bits snowy with foam, while the coachman, stiff in his livery, his head stiff in his high collar, remained inflexible loins and the whip on one knee. The bank was covered with people who came in families, or in bands, or two by two, or alone. They pulled out sprigs of marijuana, went down to the water, came back up the path, and all, arriving at the same place, stopped, waiting for the ferryman. The heavy boat went endlessly from one bank to the other, unloading its travelers on the island. The arm of the river (which is called the dead arm), onto which this pontoon for drinks opens, seemed to be asleep, so weak was the current. Fleets of yawls, skiffs, perissoires, podoscaphes, gigs, boats of every shape and nature, sped over the motionless water, crossing, mingling, colliding, stopping abruptly with a jerk of the arms to spring forth again under a sudden tension of the muscles, and gliding briskly like long yellow or red fish. Others were constantly arriving: some from Chatou, upstream; others from Bougival, downstream; and laughter went over the water from one boat to another, calls, calls or shouts. The rowers exposed the browned and bumpy flesh of their biceps to the heat of the day ; and, like strange flowers, like flowers that would swim, the red, green, blue or yellow silk parasols of the coxswains bloomed at the stern of the canoes. A July sun blazed in the middle of the sky; the air seemed full of a burning gaiety; no shiver of breeze stirred the leaves of the willows and poplars. Over there, opposite, the inevitable Mont-Valérien terraced its fortified banks in the harsh light; while to the right, the adorable hillside of Louveciennes, turning with the river, rounded into a semicircle, allowing the white walls of the country houses to pass through the powerful and dark verdure of the large gardens. Near La Grenouillère, a crowd of walkers circulated under the giant trees which make this corner of the island the most delightful park in the world. Women, girls with yellow hair, disproportionately plump breasts, exaggerated rumps, complexions plastered with rouge, sooty eyes, bloody lips, laced, strapped into extravagant dresses , trailed the garish bad taste of their attire across the fresh lawns; while beside them young people posed in their accoutrements of fashion plates, with light gloves, patent leather boots, sticks as thick as a thread and monocles punctuating the silliness of their smiles. The island is strangled just at La Grenouillère, and on the other bank, where a ferry also operates, constantly bringing people from Croissy, the rapid arm, full of whirlpools, eddies, foam, rolls with the appearance of a torrent. A detachment of pontooners, in artillery uniforms, was camped on this bank, and the soldiers, seated in line on a long beam, watched the water flow by. In the floating establishment, it was a furious and howling mob. The wooden tables, where the spilled drinks made thin sticky rivulets, were covered with half-empty glasses and surrounded by half-drunk people. The whole crowd shouted, sang, and bawled. The men, hats pulled back, red-faced, with shining drunken eyes, moved about vociferously with a need for rowdiness natural to brutes. The women, looking for prey for the evening, were getting drinks while they waited; and, in the free space between the tables, dominated the ordinary public of the place, a battalion of rowdy boaters with their companions in short flannel skirts. One of them was struggling at the piano and seemed to be playing with his feet and hands; four couples were jumping up and down a quadrille; and young people were watching them, elegant, correct, who would have seemed proper if the defect, despite everything, had not appeared. For one smells there, with full nostrils, all the foam of the world, all the distinguished scum, all the mold of Parisian society: a mixture of calicoes, hams, low-level journalists, gentlemen under guardianship, crooked stockbrokers, crazy revelers, rotten old carousers; a shady mob of all suspect beings, half -known, half-lost, half-greeted, half-dishonored, rogues, crooks, attorneys for women, knights of industry with a dignified bearing , with a braggart air that seems to say: The first one who calls me a scoundrel, I’ll kill him. This place reeks of stupidity, stinks of rabble and bazaar gallantry. Males and females are equal there. There is a smell of love floating there, and people fight over a yes or a no, in order to maintain rotten reputations that sword blows and pistol bullets only further destroy. A few local residents pass by as curious onlookers every Sunday; a few young people, very young, appear there every year, learning how to live. Walkers, strolling, show themselves there; a few naive people get lost there. It is, with good reason, called the Grenouillère. Beside the covered raft where people drink, and very close to the Pot-à-Fleurs, people bathe. Those women whose curves are sufficient come there to show off their display and play the customer. The others, disdainful, although amplified by cotton, supported by springs, straightened here, modified there, look with a contemptuous air at their sisters paddling. On a small platform, swimmers crowd to dip their heads. They are as long as poles, round as pumpkins, gnarled as olive branches, bent forward or thrown back by the size of their bellies, and, invariably ugly, they jump into the water which splashes up onto the coffee drinkers. Despite the immense trees leaning over the floating house and despite the proximity of the water, a suffocating heat filled the place. The fumes of the spilled liquors mingled with the odor of the bodies and that of the violent perfumes which permeate the skin of the love merchants and which evaporated in this furnace. But beneath all these diverse scents floated a light aroma of rice powder which sometimes disappeared, reappeared, which was always found again, as if some hidden hand had shaken an invisible tuft in the air. The spectacle was on the river, where the incessant coming and going of the boats was a source of tension. The rowing women sprawled in their armchairs opposite their strong-armed males, and they looked with contempt at the dinner-seekers prowling by the island. Sometimes, when a team of men went by at full speed, the friends who had gone ashore would shout, and the whole audience, suddenly seized with madness, would begin to howl. At the bend in the river, near Chatou, new boats were constantly appearing . They approached, grew larger, and, as faces were recognized, more vociferations would start. A canoe covered with a tent and manned by four women was slowly going down the current. The one rowing was small, people of all types, faded, dressed in a cabin boy’s costume with her hair tucked up under a waxed hat. Opposite her, a fat blonde dressed as a man, with a white flannel jacket, was lying on her back at the bottom of the boat, her legs in the air on the bench on either side of the rower, and she was smoking a cigarette, while with each effort of the oars her chest and stomach quivered, tossed by the jolt. At the very back, under the tent, two beautiful girls, tall and slim, one brunette and the other blonde, held each other by the waist, constantly looking at their companions. A cry came from the Grenouillère: Vl’à Lesbos! and, suddenly, there was a furious clamor; a frightening scuffle took place; glasses were falling; people were climbing onto the tables; everyone, in a delirium of noise, shouted: Lesbos! Lesbos! Lesbos! The cry rolled, became indistinct, formed only a sort of terrifying howl, then, suddenly, it seemed to rush forth again, rise through space, cover the plain, fill the thick foliage of the tall trees, extend to the distant hillsides, go as far as the sun. The oarswoman, faced with this ovation, had stopped calmly. The
fat blonde stretched out at the bottom of the boat turned her head nonchalantly , raising herself on her elbows; and the two beautiful girls, at the stern, began to laugh as they greeted the crowd. Then the vociferation redoubled, making the floating establishment tremble. The men raised their hats, the women waved their handkerchiefs, and all the voices, shrill or deep, cried together: Lesbos! One would have said that this people, this collection of corrupt people, was saluting a leader, like those squadrons which fire their cannons when an admiral passes over their front. The numerous fleet of boats also cheered the women’s boat, which set off again at its sleepy pace to land a little further away. M. Paul, unlike the others, had taken a key from his pocket and, with all his might, he whistled. His mistress, nervous, still pale, held his arm to silence him and this time she looked at him with rage in her eyes. But he seemed exasperated, as if stirred by a man’s jealousy, by a deep, instinctive, disordered fury. He stammered, his lips trembling with indignation: “It’s shameful! They should be drowned like bitches, with a stone around their necks.” But Madeleine suddenly lost her temper; her small, shrill voice became whistling; and she spoke volubly, as if pleading her own cause: “Is that any of your business?” Aren’t they free to do what they want, since they don’t owe anyone anything? Leave us alone with your manners and mind your own business… But he cut her off: “That’s the police’s business, and I’ll have them thrown in Saint-Lazare, me! ” She jumped: “You? ” “Yes, me! And, in the meantime, I forbid you to speak to them, you hear, I forbid you. ” Then she shrugged her shoulders, and suddenly calmed down: “My dear, I’ll do what I please; if you’re not happy, go, and right away. I’m not your wife, am I? So be quiet.” He didn’t reply and they remained facing each other, their mouths set and their breathing rapid. At the other end of the large wooden café, the four women were entering. The two women dressed as men walked in front: one, a person of all body types, like an old-fashioned boy, with yellow tints at the temples; the other, filling her white flannel clothes with her fat , bulging her wide trousers from her rump, swayed like a fat goose, with enormous thighs and drawn-in knees. Their two friends followed them and the crowd of boaters came to shake their hands. The four of them had rented a small cottage by the water, and they lived there, as two households would have lived. Their vice was public, official, patent. It was spoken of as a natural thing, which made them almost sympathetic, and strange stories were whispered in hushed tones, dramas born of furious feminine jealousies, and secret visits from well-known women, actresses, to the little house by the water. A neighbor, revolted by these scandalous rumors, had alerted the police, and the brigadier, followed by a man, had come to investigate. The mission was delicate; in short, nothing could be blamed on these women, who were not engaged in prostitution. The brigadier, very perplexed, and even almost ignorant of the nature of the suspected offenses, had questioned them at random, and made a monumental report concluding that they were innocent. People had laughed about it all the way to Saint-Germain. They crossed the establishment with small steps, like queens, Grenouillère; and they seemed proud of their celebrity, happy with the stares fixed on them, superior to this crowd, this mob, this plebs. Madeleine and her lover watched them come, and in the girl’s eye a flame was lit. When the first two were at the end of the table, Madeleine cried: “Pauline!” The fat one turned around, stopped, still holding the arm of her female cabin boy: “Here! Madeleine… Come and talk to me, my darling.” Paul tightened his fingers on his mistress’s wrist; but she said to him in such a way: “You know, my little one, you can go,” that he fell silent and remained alone. Then they chatted in low voices, standing, all three of them. Happy gaiety passed over their lips; they spoke quickly; and Pauline, at times, looked at Paul surreptitiously with a mocking and malicious smile. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, he suddenly stood up and rushed over to them , trembling all over. He grabbed Madeleine by the shoulders: “Come, I want you,” he said, “I forbade you to speak to these sluts. ” But Pauline raised her voice and began to yell at him with her fishwife’s repertoire. People around them laughed; they came closer; they stood on tiptoe to get a better look. And he remained speechless under this rain of muddy insults; it seemed to him that the words coming out of that mouth and falling on him were dirtying him like garbage, and, faced with the scandal that was beginning, he stepped back, retraced his steps, and leaned on the balustrade towards the river, his back turned to the three victorious women. He remained there, looking at the water, and sometimes, with a quick gesture, as if he were tearing it away, he removed with a nervous finger a tear formed in the corner of his eye. It was because he loved desperately, without knowing why, despite his delicate instincts, despite his reason, despite his very will. He had fallen into this love as one falls into a muddy hole. Of a tender and refined nature, he had dreamed of exquisite, ideal and passionate liaisons ; and now this little cricket of a woman, stupid, like all girls, of an exasperating stupidity, not even pretty, a person of all types of body and furious, had taken him, captivated him, possessed him from head to toe, body and soul. He was subjected to this feminine bewitchment, mysterious and all-powerful, this unknown force, this prodigious domination, coming from who knows where, from the demon of the flesh, and which throws the most sensible man at the feet of any girl without anything in her explaining its fatal and sovereign power. And there, behind his back, he felt that something infamous was about to happen. Laughter entered his heart. What was to be done? He knew it well, but could not. He stared fixedly, on the bank opposite, at a motionless fisherman with a line. Suddenly the good man abruptly pulled from the river a small silver fish that was wriggling at the end of the line. Then he tried to remove his hook, twisted it, turned it, but in vain; then, overcome with impatience, he began to pull, and the whole bleeding throat of the beast came out with a bundle of entrails. And Paul shuddered, himself torn to the heart; It seemed to him that this hook was his love, and that if he had to pull it out, everything he had in his chest would come out at the end of a curved iron, hooked deep inside him, and of which Madeleine held the thread.
A hand was placed on his shoulder; he started, turned; his mistress was at his side. They did not speak; and she leaned on the balustrade like him, her eyes fixed on the river. He searched for what he should say, and found nothing. He could not even unravel what was happening inside him; all he felt was a joy to feel her there, near him, returned, and a shameful cowardice, a need to forgive everything, to allow everything provided that she did not leave him. Finally, after a few minutes, he asked her in a very sweet: “Do you want us to leave? It would be better in the boat.” She answered: “Yes, my dear.” And he helped her down into the skiff, supporting her, holding her hands, all moved, with a few tears still in his eyes. Then she looked at him smiling and they kissed again. They went up the river very slowly, along the bank planted with willows, covered with marijuana, bathed and tranquil in the warmth of the afternoon. When they returned to the Grillon restaurant, it was barely six o’clock; then, leaving their skiff, they set off on foot for the island, towards Bezons, across the meadows, along the tall poplars that line the river. The large haystacks, ready to be mown, were filled with flowers. The setting sun spread a sheet of russet light over it, and in the softened heat of the ending day, the floating exhalations of marijuana mingled with the humid scents of the river, impregnating the air with a tender languor, a light happiness, like a vapor of well-being. A soft weakness came to the hearts, and a kind of communion with this calm splendor of the evening, with this vague and mysterious shiver of life spread out, with this penetrating, melancholy poetry, which seemed to come from plants, from things, to blossom, revealed to the senses in this sweet and contemplative hour. He felt all this; but she did not understand it. They walked side by side; and suddenly, tired of being silent, she sang. She sang in her shrill and off-key voice something that ran through the streets, a tune lingering in memories, which suddenly tore at the deep and serene harmony of the evening. Then he looked at her, and he felt between them an impassable abyss. She was beating the marigolds of her parasol, her head slightly lowered, contemplating her feet, and singing, spinning sounds, trying out roulades, daring trills. Her small, narrow forehead, which he loved so much, was then empty, empty! There was nothing in it but this serinette music; and the thoughts which were formed there by chance were like this music. She understood nothing of him; they were more separated than if they did not live together. Did his kisses never go further than the lips? Then she raised her eyes to him and smiled again. He was moved to the marrow, and, opening his arms, in a redoubling of love, he embraced her passionately. As he crumpled her dress, she finally pulled away, murmuring in compensation: “Go, I love you very much, my dear.” But he seized her by the waist and, seized with madness, dragged her away running; and he kissed her on the cheek, on the temple, on the neck, all the while jumping for joy. They fell, panting, at the foot of a bush set ablaze by the rays of the setting sun, and, before they had caught their breath, they united, without her understanding his exaltation. They were returning holding hands, when suddenly, through the trees, they saw on the river the canoe manned by the four women. Fat Pauline saw them too, for she straightened up, blowing kisses to Madeleine. Then she cried: “See you this evening!” Madeleine replied: “See you this evening!” Paul thought he suddenly felt his heart enveloped in ice. And they went back to dinner. They settled down under one of the arbors at the water’s edge and began to eat in silence. When night fell, a candle was brought in, enclosed in a glass globe, which lit them with a faint, flickering light; and at every moment the explosions of shouts from the boatmen could be heard in the great hall on the first floor. Towards dessert, Paul, tenderly taking Madeleine’s hand, said to her: “I feel very tired, my darling; if you like, we will go to bed early.” But she had understood the ruse, and she gave him that enigmatic look, that look of perfidy which appears so quickly in the depths of the woman’s eye. Then, after thinking, she replied: “You can go to bed if you want, I promised to go to the ball at La Grenouillère. ” He gave a pitiful smile, one of those smiles with which one veils the most horrible suffering, but he replied, in a caressing and heartbroken tone: “If you were very kind, we would both stay.” She shook her head without opening her mouth. He insisted: “You’re welcome! My darling.” Then she broke off abruptly: “You know what I told you. If you’re not happy, the door is open. We won’t keep you. As for me, I promised: I’ll go.” He placed both his elbows on the table, buried his forehead in his hands, and remained there, dreaming painfully. The boatmen went back down, still bawling. They were leaving in their skiffs for the ball at La Grenouillère. Madeleine said to Paul: “If you don’t come, make up your mind, I’ll ask one of these gentlemen to drive me. ” Paul stood up: “Come on!” he murmured. And they left. The night was black, full of stars, traversed by a burning breath, a heavy breeze, laden with ardor, fermentation, living germs which, mingled with the breeze, slowed things down. It ran a warm caress over their faces, made them breathe faster, pant a little, so thick and heavy did it seem. The skiffs were setting off, carrying a Venetian lantern in the bow. The boats could not be seen, but only those small colored lanterns, fast and dancing, like delirious fireflies ; and voices ran in the shadows on all sides. The skiff of the two young people glided gently along. Sometimes, when a boat was launched, they suddenly saw the white back of the boatman lit by his lantern. When they had turned the bend in the river, the Grenouillère appeared in the distance. The festive establishment was adorned with girandoles, garlands of colored night lights, clusters of lights. On the Seine, a few people of all types of baccho bodies were slowly moving, representing domes, pyramids, complicated monuments in fires of all shades. Flaming festoons trailed down to the water; and sometimes a red or blue lantern, at the end of an immense invisible fishing rod , seemed like a large swinging star. All this illumination spread a glow around the café, illuminating from bottom to top the tall trees on the bank whose trunks stood out in pale gray, and their leaves in milky green, against the deep black of the fields and the sky. The orchestra, composed of five suburban artists, threw out its bar-room music, no one of any body type and bouncy, which made Madeleine sing again. She wanted to go in at once. Paul had wanted to take a tour of the island first; but he had to give in. The audience had thinned out. Almost only the boaters remained, with a few scattered bourgeois and a few young men flanked by girls. The director and organizer of this cancan, majestic in a tired black coat, paraded his ravaged face of an old merchant of cheap public pleasures in all directions . The fat Pauline and her companions were not there; and Paul breathed. They were dancing: the couples facing each other capered madly, threw their legs in the air up to the noses of those opposite them. The females, with their thighs disjointed, leaped in a flight of skirts revealing their underwear. Their feet rose above their heads with surprising ease, and they swung their bellies, wriggled their rumps, shook their breasts, spreading around them a vigorous scent of sweating women. The males squatted like toads with obscene gestures, contorted themselves, grimacing and hideous, did cartwheels on their hands, or else, trying to be funny, sketched out manners with ridiculous grace. A fat maid and two waiters served the drinks. This café-boat, covered only by a roof, having no partition to separate it from the outside, the wild dance spread out in front of the peaceful night and the firmament powdered with stars. Suddenly Mont-Valérien, over there, opposite, seemed to light up as if a fire had been lit behind it. The glow spread, grew stronger, gradually invading the sky, describing a great luminous circle, with a pale, white light. Then something red appeared, grew, a fiery red like metal on an anvil. It developed slowly in a circle, seemed to come out of the earth; and the moon, soon detaching itself from the horizon, rose gently in space. As it rose, its purple tint faded, became yellow, a clear, brilliant yellow; and the star seemed to diminish as it moved away. Paul had been watching it for a long time, lost in this contemplation, forgetting his mistress. When he turned around, she had disappeared. He looked for her, but did not find her. He scanned the tables with an anxious eye, going back and forth constantly, questioning one and the other. No one had seen her. He was wandering thus, tortured with anxiety, when one of the waiters said to him: “It is Madame Madeleine you are looking for. She has just left in the company of Madame Pauline.” And, at the same moment, Paul saw, standing at the other end of the café, the cabin boy and the two beautiful girls, all three tied together at the waist, who were watching him, whispering. He understood, and, like a mentally ill person, rushed into the island. He ran first towards Chatou; but, before the plain, he retraced his steps. Then he began to search the thick undergrowth, to wander wildly, sometimes stopping to listen. The toads, all along the horizon, were throwing out their short, metallic notes. Near Bougival, an unknown bird was modulating a few sounds that arrived weakened by the distance. Over the wide lawns the moon shed a soft light, like cotton wool dust; it penetrated the foliage, made its light flow over the silvery bark of the poplars, and riddled the quivering tops of the tall trees with its brilliant rain. The intoxicating poetry of this summer evening entered Paul in spite of himself, pierced his frantic anguish, stirred his heart with a ferocious irony, developing to the point of rage in his gentle and contemplative soul his need for ideal tenderness, for passionate outpourings in the bosom of an adored and faithful woman. He was forced to stop, choked by hurried, heart-rending sobs . The crisis over, he set off again. Suddenly he felt like a knife blow; they were kissing there, behind that bush. He ran there; it was a couple in love, whose two silhouettes moved away quickly at his approach, entwined, united in an endless kiss. He did not dare call out, knowing full well that She would not answer; and he also had a terrible fear of discovering them suddenly. The refrains of the quadrilles with the heart-rending solos of the piston, the false laughter of the flute, the high-pitched rages of the violin tugged at his heart, exasperating his suffering. The furious, limping music ran under the trees, sometimes weakened, sometimes swollen in a passing breath of breeze. Suddenly he said to himself that She had perhaps returned? Yes! She had returned! Why not? He had lost his mind for no reason, stupidly, carried away by his terrors, by the disordered suspicions that had been invading him for some time. And, seized by one of those singular lulls that sometimes cross the greatest despair, he returned to the ball. With a glance he scanned the room. She was not there. He went around the tables, and suddenly found himself face to face with the three women again . He apparently had a desperate and funny face, for all three of them burst into gaiety together. He ran away, went back to the island, rushed through the thickets, panting. Then he listened again, he listened for a long time, for his ears were ringing; but, finally, he thought he heard a little further on a shrill little laugh that he knew well; and he advanced very softly, crawling, pushing aside the branches, his chest so shaken by his heart that he could no longer breathe. Two voices murmured words he did not yet hear. Then they fell silent. Then he had an immense desire to flee, not to see, not to know, to escape forever, far from this furious passion that was ravaging him. He was going to return to Chatou, take the train, and would never come back, would never see her again. But her image suddenly invaded him, and he saw her in his thoughts when she awoke in the morning, in their warm bed, pressed herself cuddly against him, throwing her arms around his neck, with her hair spread, a little tangled on her forehead, with her eyes still closed and her lips open for the first kiss; and the sudden memory of this morning caress filled him with a frantic regret and a frenzied desire. They spoke again; and he approached, bent double. Then a slight cry ran from under the branches very close to him. A cry! One of those cries of love that he had learned to know in the desperate hours of their tenderness. He advanced still, always, as if in spite of himself, drawn invincibly, without being aware of anything … and he saw them. Oh! if it had been a man, the other! but that! that! He felt himself chained by their very infamy. And he remained there, shattered, overwhelmed, as if he had suddenly discovered a dear and mutilated corpse, a crime against nature, monstrous, a filthy profanation. Then, in a flash of involuntary thought, he thought of the little fish whose entrails he had felt being torn out… But Madeleine murmured: Pauline! in the same passionate tone with which she said: Paul! and he was pierced by such pain that he fled with all his might. He struck two trees, fell on a root, started again, and suddenly found himself before the river, before the swift arm lit by the moon. The torrential current made great whirlpools in which the light played. The high bank dominated the water like a cliff, leaving at its foot a wide dark band where the eddies could be heard in the shadows. On the other bank, the country houses of Croissy stood in tiers in full light. Paul saw all this as in a dream, as through a memory; He thought of nothing, understood nothing, and all things, his very existence, appeared vaguely to him, distant, forgotten, finished. The river was there. Did he understand what he was doing? Did he want to die? He was a mentally ill person. He turned, however, towards the island, towards Her; and, in the calm air of the night where the weakened and obstinate refrains of the dance hall still danced, he uttered in a desperate, high-pitched, superhuman voice a frightful cry: “Madeleine!” His heart-rending cry pierced the wide silence of the sky, ran across the entire horizon. Then, with a tremendous leap, a beast’s bound, he jumped into the river. The water gushed forth, closed again, and, from the place where he had disappeared, a succession of great circles departed, widening their brilliant undulations to the other bank . The two women had heard. Madeleine stood up: “It’s Paul.” A suspicion arose in her soul. “He’s drowned,” she said. And she rushed toward the bank, where the fat Pauline joined her. A heavy boat manned by two men was turning over and over. One of the boatmen was rowing, the other was pushing a large stick into the water and seemed to be looking for something. Pauline cried out: “What are you doing? What is it?” An unknown voice answered: “It’s a man who has just drowned . ”
The two women, pressed against each other, haggard, followed the the movements of the boat. The music of the Grenouillère still frolicked in the distance, seemed to accompany in cadence the movements of the sombre fishermen; and the river, which now hid a corpse, swirled, illuminated. The search dragged on. The horrible wait made Madeleine shiver. Finally, after at least half an hour, one of the men announced: “I’ve got him!” And he raised his long boathook, gently, very gently. Then something person-like, of all types of body, appeared on the surface of the water. The other boatman left his oars, and the two of them, joining forces, hauling on the inert mass, toppled it into their boat. Then they reached land, looking for a low, lighted place. As they landed, the women arrived too. As soon as she saw it, Madeleine recoiled in horror. In the moonlight , he already looked green, with his mouth, his eyes, his nose, his clothes full of mud. His closed, stiff fingers were hideous. A sort of blackish, liquid coating covered his entire body. His face seemed swollen, and from his hair, stuck together by the silt, dirty water flowed incessantly. The two men examined him. “Do you know him?” said one. The other, the ferryman from Croissy, hesitated: “Yes, I think I saw that face; but you know, like that, you don’t recognize it very well.” Then, suddenly: “But it’s Monsieur Paul!” “Who is that, Monsieur Paul?” asked his comrade. The first continued: “But Monsieur Paul Baron, the senator’s son, that little fellow who was so in love.
” The other added philosophically: “Well, he’s finished laughing now; it’s a shame all the same when you’re rich!” Madeleine was sobbing, fallen to the ground. Pauline approached the body and asked: “Is he really dead?” The men shrugged their shoulders: “Oh! After all that time! For sure.” Then one of them asked: “Was he staying at Grillon’s?” “Yes,” replied the other; “we must take him back, there will be embers.” They got back into their boat and set off again, moving away slowly because of the fast current; and for a long time after they were no longer seen from the place where the women had remained, the regular strokes of the oars could be heard falling into the water . Then Pauline took the poor, weeping Madeleine in her arms, cuddled her, kissed her for a long time, and consoled her: “What can you do? It’s not your fault, is it? You can’t stop men from doing stupid things.” He wanted it, too bad for him, after all!–Then, picking her up:–Come on, my darling, come and sleep at home; you can’t go back to Grillon’s tonight.–She kissed him again :–Go, we’ll cure you, she said. Madeleine got up, and, still crying, but with weakened sobs , her head on Pauline’s shoulder, as if taking refuge in a more intimate and more secure tenderness, more familiar and more trusting, she left with very small steps. In conclusion, La Maison Tellier offers us a poignant reflection on the appearances and reality of human lives. Through subtle writing and well-drawn characters, Guy de Maupassant reveals to us the complexity of human behavior and social judgments . A work that is both intriguing and profoundly human, where the moral of the story leaves room for reflection.
Découvrez ‘La Maison Tellier’ de Guy de Maupassant, une nouvelle pleine de charme et de subtilité qui explore les thèmes de la vie humaine, du désir et de la condition féminine. 📚 Cette histoire captivante vous plonge dans l’univers intrigant de la maison close de Madame Tellier, où les vies de ses habitantes se croisent et s’entrelacent. 💫
Au programme de cette narration :
– Un portrait émouvant et touchant des personnages
– Une réflexion sur la société et ses tabous
– Une atmosphère unique et poignante
Rejoignez-nous pour cette expérience littéraire inoubliable ! 🎧 N’oubliez pas de vous abonner et de partager cette vidéo avec vos amis pour plus d’histoires fascinantes. 👉
👉 Abonnez-vous ici: https://bit.ly/LivresAudioLaMagieDesMots
-🌊📚 Vingt Mille Lieues Sous Les Mers — Partie 1 | Jules Verne 🚢🐙[https://youtu.be/fpH1IsazeOA]
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00:00:22 Chapter 1.
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01:30:09 Chapter 7.
01:36:10 Chapter 8.
01:48:09 Chapter 9.
01:51:42 Chapter 10.
01:55:54 Chapter 11.
02:46:23 Chapter 12.
03:02:27 Chapter 13.
03:25:01 Chapter 14.
03:36:40 Chapter 15.
4件のコメント
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Elle est belle cette music 2:07
สนุกมาก นางเอก พระเอก น่ารักสุดๆไปเลย สนุกจนไม่อยากให้จบ แถมวนดูหลายรอบ❤
พระเอกนางเอกน่ารักดีค่ะ