C',HM.SN!E LACERTEUX 
 
 E.&J.dc GONCOURT
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE FIRST EDITION OF THIS 
 BOOK CONSISTS OF THREE 
 THOUSAND NUMBERED COPIES 
 THIS IS NUMBERl.43
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX
 
 UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME 
 MADAME BOVARY 
 
 BY GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 Translated Jrom the French 
 
 by ELEANOR MARX-AVEUNC 
 
 \Vitb an Introduction 
 
 by BURTON RASCOE 
 
 MANON LESCAUT 
 
 BY THE ABBE PREVOST 
 
 Translated Jrom the French 
 
 With an Introduction 
 
 by BURTON RASCOE 
 
 MLLE. DE MAUPIN 
 
 BY THEOPHILE GAUTIER 
 
 Translated from the French 
 
 With an Introduction 
 
 by BURTON RASCOE 
 
 NANA 
 
 BY EMILE ZOLA 
 
 Translated Jrom the French 
 
 With an Introduction 
 
 by ERNEST BOVD
 
 GERMINIE 
 LACERTEUX 
 
 BY 
 
 EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 
 
 Translated from the French. 
 With an Introduction 
 
 by ERNEST BOYD 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 ALFRED ' A ' KNOPF 
 
 1922
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
 ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. 
 
 Publitkfd Stpumbtr. 1933 
 
 Composition, electrotypint, printing and binding by 
 
 Tke Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass. 
 Paper supplied by W. P. Etherinfton fir Co., Nev York, If. 7. 
 
 MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 ' 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 MODERN FRENCH LITERATURE is, / 
 fMn&, unique in the number of instances where 
 brothers have made their names by work written 
 in collaboration. The first of such partnership was that 
 of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, who have been followed 
 by Paul and Victor Margueritte, "J. H. Rosny," and 
 Jean and Jerome Tbaraud, all oj whom have been asso- 
 ciated in one way or another with their great predecessors. 
 The two brothers "Rosny" and Paul Margueritte are 
 members of the Goncourt Academy, while the Tbarauds' 
 first considerable work, Dingley, Pillustre ecrivain, re- 
 ceived one of the earliest of the Goncourt prizes. Since 
 the honour of winning that Prize is almost equalled by the 
 distinction of nearly getting it, it ought perhaps to be re- 
 corded that the brothers whose signature is Marius Ary 
 Leblond achieved that degree of fame on the second occa- 
 sion when the Goncourt Prize was awarded in 1904! How- 
 ever, I do not wish to stress unduly the natural interest 
 which the Goncourt Academy must have in the work of 
 brother collaborators, for the partnership of "J. H. Rosny" 
 has resolved itself into the separate use of their joint pseu- 
 donym, with the addition of "Junior" and "Senior," 
 while Paul and Victor Margueritte parted company after 
 some years. Thus Jean and Jerome Tharaud remain 
 the most important examples of the method of collabora- 
 tion which made Edmond and Jules de Goncourt famous. 
 How closely the latter worked together, and how identi- 
 cal their minds were, has been attested by innumerable
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 passages in that famous Journal des Goncourts which 
 so largely occupied the closing years oj the surviving 
 brother's life. In the last volume Edmond has left an 
 interesting account of their collaboration. "Our tempera- 
 ments," be says, "were absolutely different: my brother's 
 nature was gay, spirited and expansive; mine was melan- 
 choly, dreamy and concentrated," but if they looked at the 
 exterior world with different eyes they received the same 
 impressions. "My brother, I confess, was a greater styl- 
 ist, be bad more power over words, than I, whose only 
 advantage over him was my greater capacity for visualis- 
 ing the world about us. . . . When we began my brother 
 was under the influence of Jules Janin and I under that 
 of Tbeopbile Gautier, and in En 18 . . . these two ill- 
 assorted models are recognisable, giving to our first book 
 the character of a work from two distinct pens" As their 
 work progressed there came "the fusion, the amalgamation 
 of our two styles, which united in the creation of a single 
 style, very personal, peculiarly Goncourt." Finally it 
 came about that Jules de Goncourt " attended particularly 
 to the writing and I to the construction of the work. He 
 was seized with a rather contemptuous disinclination to 
 seek, to find and to invent, although be could always ima- 
 gine a more striking detail than I when be took the trouble." 
 The younger brother always protested against the multipli- 
 cation of books and Edmond declares that it was largely 
 out of affection for him that Jules was induced to go on. 
 "I was born," the latter used to say, "to write in a life- 
 time just one little duodecimo volume like la Bruyere, 
 just one little volume.'' 
 
 Their actual method of working together was described 
 by Edmond de Goncourt in a letter to Georg Brandes. 
 "As soon as we bad agreed as to the plan, we would smoke 
 for an hour or two and talk over the section, or rather the 
 paragraph, which bad to be written. Then we wrote it, each 
 
 C viii ]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 in a separate room, and read to each other what each oj 
 us bad written, either choosing without discussion which- 
 ever was the better, or making a combination of whatever 
 was least imperfect in the two compositions. But even 
 when one oj the two was completely sacrificed, there was 
 always something of both in the paragraph when definitely 
 arranged and polished, though it might be only the addi- 
 tion of an adjective, the repetition of a phrase, or the like." 
 Out of that collaboration came Soeur Philomene, Renee 
 Mauperin, Germinie Lacerteux, Manette Salmon and 
 Madame Gervaisais, not to mention their 'prentice efforts, 
 En 1 8 . . , La Lorette and Charles Demailly. After bis 
 brother's death Edmond de Goncourt wrote four novels, 
 La Fille Elisa, Les Freres Zemganno, La Faustin and 
 Cherie, and it is on these twelve works of fiction that the 
 fame of the brothers Goncourt rests, although as the social 
 historians of eighteenth century France, and as connois- 
 seurs of French and Japanese art, their achievements 
 have been recognised by specialists. 
 
 It would be difficult to find a body of first-rate fiction 
 whose history has been more full of accidents and contro- 
 versies than the novels of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. 
 They began their career with En 18 . ., which appeared 
 on December 2, 1851, the day selected for the coup 
 d'etat which gave France her Third Napoleon and her 
 Second Empire. The panic-stricken publisher, fearful 
 of the political heresies which might be concealed in this 
 youthful work, at once got rid of it, and in the turmoil of the 
 times little attention was paid to the few copies which 
 managed to circulate. Jules Janin, doubtless recognising 
 the style of a disciple, gave the book a long review in the 
 Journal des Debats, but Paris was busy with more press- 
 ing matters than the debut of the brothers Goncourt. A 
 year later the discretion of their publisher was proven by 
 the fact that the authors were accused of publishing an
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 article which was an outrage on public morals. They bad 
 quoted some lines by Tabureau from Sainte-Beuve's 
 Tableau historique et critique de la poesie francaise, 
 which the moral regime oj the newly-fledged Empire re- 
 garded as obscene, although this work (now Jamiliar in 
 the college class-room) bad been crowned by the French 
 Academy! The case was going against them, but a post- 
 ponement was secured, and in the interval a change in the 
 judiciary gave the Goncourts a powerful Jriend in court, 
 with the result that they were acquitted. The verdict was 
 very like that delivered in the case oj Madame Bovary, 
 and is worth quoting, " Whereas the incriminating pas- 
 sages oj the article suggest to the mind oj the reader pictures 
 which are obviously licentious and, therefore, reprehensible, 
 nevertheless, it is evident from the article as a whole that 
 the authors oj the work in question bad no intention 
 oj committing an offense against decency and public 
 morals." 
 
 In 1853 L 3 - Lorette, a novel which has been allowed 
 to lapse into the limbo oj rare editions, caused the authors 
 some apprehension, as the authorities bad marked them 
 as dangerous characters. An entry in the Journal states 
 that this book, whose title indicates its nature, was "sold 
 out within a week," and was "a revelation to us that it 
 was possible to sell a book." This now unprocurable 
 work is, by a characteristic irony of literary fate, the only 
 publication of the Goncourts which gave rise to no diffi- 
 culties, and about whose reception they have recorded no 
 complaint. Charles Demailly (1860), which was origi- 
 nally entitled Les hommes de lettres, bad little success 
 and was denounced as an unfriendly attack upon the 
 sacred order of men of letters by the . . . journalists. 
 It was not until 1861 that the first of their major novels, 
 Soeur Philomene, appeared after many difficulties, hav- 
 ing been refused by Michel Levy on the ground that the
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 subject was depressing. It eventually had what the Gon- 
 courts describe as the "triste succes" oj being issued by 
 an unimportant firm, and of being more or less ignored. 
 In this work, and its successor, Renee Mauperin (1864), 
 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt definitely developed the 
 method both in the selection of the theme and its develop- 
 ment which was to be their special contribution to the 
 modern French novel. But it was in Germinie Lacer- 
 teux, that they launched their most striking challenge to 
 all hitherto accepted conventions. 
 
 This work was published in 1864, with a preface which 
 began: "We must apologise to the public for giving" 
 "them this book, and warn them of its contents. The" 
 "public like novels that are untrue. This is a true novel. " 
 "They like books which seem to take them into society:" 
 "this work comes from the streets. They like nasty little" 
 "works, the reminiscences of prostitutes, bedroom con-" 
 "fessions, erotic filth, the scandals indecently exposed in" 
 "booksellers' windows. What they are about to read is" 
 "severe and pure. They need not expect photographs of 
 "Pleasure in evening-dress. This is a clinical study of" 
 "Love." 
 
 "Furthermore the public like harmless and comforting" 
 "stories, adventures that end happily, ideas which dis-" 
 "turb neither their digestion nor their peace of mind." 
 "This book, with its harsh and sad fable is designed to" 
 "interfere with their habits and to upset their health." 
 
 " Why, then, did we write it? Was it simply to shock" 
 "the public and to insult their tastes?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Living in the nineteenth century, in a time of univer-" 
 "sal suffrage, of democracy, of liberalism, we wondered" 
 <f whether what are called 'the lower orders' were not en-" 
 "titled to a place in fiction, whether that world beneath" 
 "a world, the common people, was to remain under a''
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 "literary taboo, disdained by authors who have hitherto" 
 "maintained a silence concerning whatever heart and" 
 "soul they may possess." 
 
 Such, in part, was the manifesto with which the Con- 
 courts invited a public previously preoccupied with the 
 tragedies oj kings and queens and the romance and sorrows 
 oj high society to contemplate the life below and about 
 them. It was only seven years since Flaubert bad shaken 
 the literary conventions to their foundations with Madame 
 Bovary, but in Germinie Lacerteux a great step further 
 was taken. The consequences are apparent in the recep- 
 tion which the book obtained. The mandarins of the time 
 ignored it, while the orthodox reviewers surpassed them- 
 selves in the manner peculiar to their tribe. One of the 
 chief articles, anticipating the English critics of Ibsen, 
 described the book as "putrid literature," and the writer, 
 Professor Gustave Merlet, declared be bad "hesitated be- 
 fore discussing the actions and reactions of Germinie 
 Lacerteux, who does not deserve to occupy the leisure time 
 of decent people." Charles Monselet, an author some- 
 what less obscure, if only because of bis contributions to 
 erotica, could find no better epithet than "sculptured 
 slime" to apply to this work. But it bad one admirer 
 whose fame was to grow out of the Naturalistic movement, 
 which dates from the publication of Germinie Lacerteux. 
 Emile Zola was a young and unknown author when be 
 published in a provincial newspaper an enthusiastic 
 defense of the Goncourts, which was subsequently in- 
 cluded in the volume of essays Mes Haines, and led to an 
 exchange of letters, and three years later to a meeting and 
 a lifelong friendship. Zola's courageous article, in which 
 be did not hesitate to set the authors of Germinie Lacer- 
 teux beside Balzac and Flaubert, bad a supporter in that 
 of another young writer, Jules Claretie, whose article 
 appeared in the Nouvelle Revue de Paris. Claretie
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 showed himself equally appreciative but somewhat less 
 rhapsodical than Zola, whose critical faculties never seem 
 to have been particularly subtle. He pleased the Gon- 
 courts specially by bis ingenious comparison of Germinie 
 Lacerteux with Sceur Philomne, and bis feeling for the 
 peculiar quality of their minds. " This talent," be wrote, 
 "supple and bold, charming and violent at the same time, 
 deliberately avoiding what attracts the mob, aristocratic 
 to the point of reproaching the Revolution, amongst other 
 misdeeds, of having scattered all the brilliant frills and 
 furbelows of the Old Regime, in love with what is bright, 
 pretty, powdered, silken, and also with what is harsh, 
 ardent and virile, this talent which is sometimes bizarre, 
 always superior; this talent so wide in its scope and so 
 complete, is one which I cannot resist and prefer to all 
 others" In this one sentence the whole essence of the Con- 
 courts' contradictory appeal is aptly given. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve was as discreet as when Baudelaire's 
 Fleurs du Mai was in trouble. He preferred to express 
 bis sympathy in a private letter rather than on the printed 
 page. His critical acumen, however, is evident in bis 
 recognition of the fact that a new era in French fiction 
 bad begun, and that a new aesthetic was needed to criti- 
 cise the new literature. Flaubert and Victor Hugo were 
 also enthusiastic. The former wrote: " What I most ad- 
 mire in your work is the gradation of the effects, the 
 psychological progression. It is heartrending from 
 beginning to end, and in places simply sublime . . . 
 The great question of realism was never so frankly pro- 
 pounded. Your book gives rise to some pretty arguments 
 as to the purpose of art." Ten years or so later, when the 
 book bad slowly reached its third edition, the press was 
 much more favourable, Madame Alpbonse Daudet wrote 
 a remarkable appreciation in the august columns of the 
 Journal Official, and Henry Ceard, now of the Goncourt 
 
 I xiii 3
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Academy, one oj the oldest survivors oj the original circle, 
 risked bis post at the Ministry oj War by an article in 
 praise oj the work of the Goncourts. It was only a ques- 
 tion of time for the authors of Germinie Lacerteux to 
 find themselves saluted as the leaders oj the Naturalistic 
 School. 
 
 The genesis oj this work can be found in the second 
 volume oj the Journal des Goncourts, where the brothers 
 tell oj the illness and death of their old servant Rose who 
 bad been with them for twenty-five years. They learn after 
 the funeral that this trusted and devoted servant bad led an 
 amazing double life, that she was drunken and debauched, 
 that she bad stolen from them. While they were absorbed 
 in their art this silent creature bad lived through unspeak- 
 able fears and sufferings, through terrible joys and the 
 lowest depths of despair. Out of that pitiful tale they 
 built up this wonderful novel of a woman ruined through 
 her craving for love and affection, which is simultaneously 
 a masterpiece of imaginative reconstruction and a scien- 
 tific work of documentation, as the entries in the author's 
 diary of the period show. They turned from Marie- 
 Antoinette to Germinie Lacerteux, and, as Henry Ceard 
 said, "in their eyes as artists the country girl arriving 
 from Langres covered with lice was no less interesting 
 than the French queen in her blue dress shot through with 
 white. They brought to the novel the severity of their his- 
 torical exactness." 
 
 This is the book which made the Goncourts famous, 
 though both brothers did not live long enough to witness 
 their success. The younger brother, Jules, who was born 
 in Paris in 1830, died in 1870, but Edmond, born at 
 Nancy in 1822, lived until 1896, thus surviving by an 
 entire literary generation. Zola began the Rougon-Mac- 
 quart series in 1871 and the campaign of the Naturalists 
 was in full swing when Germinie Lacerteux bad its
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 success, which was confirmed after Jules de Goncourt's 
 death by La Fille Elisa, the first novel which appeared 
 without their joint signature, although Edmond de- 
 clared that this powerful work was but the reali- 
 sation of a plan thoroughly discussed by the two 
 brothers. When Zola's L'Assommoir was published 
 the indebtedness of the new school to Germinie Lacer- 
 teux was apparent and Zola, Huysmans, Ceard and the 
 others were only too proud to claim the Goncourts as their 
 masters. Zola, however, represented the Left, or radical, 
 wing of realism, while Edmond and Jules de Goncourt 
 stood for the Right, or aristocratic, section. As Natural- 
 ism developed it became increasingly an appeal to mass 
 suggestion, and relied more and more upon mass effects, 
 the endless piling up of detail, the ceaseless extension of 
 the field of observation and documentation. With this 
 phase of the movement the Goncourts bad nothing in 
 common. 
 
 They were essentially and primarily artists, and if 
 they claimed for the novelist the right to transcribe reality, 
 it was reality as seen through artistic vision, not through the 
 eyes of a mere reporter. Life as the Goncourts saw it was 
 far from the immense and crude reality of Zola. While 
 they sought to reach the heart of things through a meticu- 
 lous realisation of externals, Zola professed to be a scien- 
 tist, a social anatomist, whose novels would have the pre- 
 cision and practical value of scientific studies. It did not 
 take long to demonstrate that this conception of realism led 
 through monotony and repetition to the inevitable assump- 
 tion of a democratic mission. Zola ended as reformer 
 and a Messiah with a panacea and a message for human- 
 ity. Oblivion was imminent. Edmond de Goncourt 
 resolutely held aloof in those last novels, La Faustin, 
 Les Freres Zemganno and Cherie, from the current 
 practice of bis disciples. And so bis work and that of bis
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 brother for to the end they remained indistinguishable 
 - still survive with that oj Flaubert, because they created 
 works oj art in which reality endures through the spirit 
 oj HJe breathed into them by imagination that embraces 
 and transcends the exterior world. 
 
 ERNEST BOYD 
 
 New York 
 June 1922.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX
 
 I 
 
 so now you are saved, mademoi- 
 selle!" joyfully cried the maid who had 
 just shut the door after the doctor, and, 
 rushing to the bed in which her mistress was 
 lying, she began in a frenzy of happiness and 
 with passionate caresses to embrace, bed-clothes 
 and all, the old woman's poor wasted body, 
 which seemed as small for the size of the bed as 
 the body of a child. 
 
 The old woman took her head silently between 
 her hands, pressed it to her heart, heaved a sigh, 
 and ejaculated: "Well! so I am to live some time 
 longer!" 
 
 This scene took place in a small room the win- 
 dow of which showed a narrow strip of sky inter- 
 sected by three black iron pipes, by lines of roofs, 
 and, in the distance between two houses which 
 nearly touched each other, by the leafless branches 
 of a tree which could not itself be seen. 
 
 In the room there stood on the mantelpiece 
 a clock with a square, mahogany case, a large 
 dial-plate, big numbers, and heavy hours. At 
 the sides, and under glass, were two candlesticks, 
 each formed of three silvered swans stretching 
 
 CO
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 their necks round a golden quiver. Near the 
 fire-place, a Voltaire easy-chair, covered with one 
 of those chequered antimacassars which are worked 
 by little girls and old women, extended its empty 
 arms. Two small Italian landscapes in the manner 
 of Bertin, a water-color drawing of flowers with 
 a date in red ink at the bottom, and a few minia- 
 tures hung on the wall. On the mahogany chest 
 of drawers, in the style of the Empire, stood the 
 figure of Time in black bronze, running with his 
 scythe advanced, and serving as a watch-stand 
 for a little watch with diamond figures on blue, 
 pearl-bordered enamel. On the floor stretched 
 a flaring carpet with stripes of black and green. 
 The window-curtains and bed-curtains were of 
 old-fashioned chintz with red patterns on a choco- 
 late ground. 
 
 At the head of the bed, a portrait bent over the 
 sick woman and seemed to bear down upon her 
 with its gaze. It represented a harsh-featured 
 man, whose countenance showed above the high 
 collar of a green satin coat and one of those 
 loose, flowing cravats, one of those muslin scarfs 
 which it was fashionable to tie slackly round the 
 neck in the early years of the Revolution. The 
 old woman lying in the bed resembled this face. 
 She had the same thick, black, imperious eye- 
 brows, the same aquiline nose, the same distinct 
 lines of will, resolution and energy. The portrait 
 seemed to be reflected in her as a father's face is 
 
 CO
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 in that of his daughter. But in her the harshness 
 of the features was softened by a ray of rugged 
 kindness, a flame, as it were, of manly devotion 
 and masculine charity. 
 
 The daylight which illumined the room was 
 such as is common in early spring towards five 
 o'clock in the evening, which has crystal clear- 
 ness and silver whiteness, which is cold, virginal 
 and gentle, and which expires in the rosy hue 
 of the sun with the paleness of limbo. The sky 
 was filled with this light which is like that of a new 
 life, as charmingly sad as the still naked earth, 
 and so tender that it impels happiness to weep. 
 
 "Why! is my foolish Germinie crying?" said the 
 old woman a moment afterwards drawing back 
 her hands which were wet from her maid's kisses. 
 
 "Ah! dear lady, I'd like to cry like this always! 
 it's so nice! It brings back my poor mother to 
 me, and everything, if you only knew!" 
 
 "Well, well," said her mistress to her, closing 
 her eyes to listen, "tell me about it." 
 
 "Ah! my poor mother!" The maid paused. 
 Then with the flood of words which springs from 
 happy tears she went on, as though in the emotion 
 and the outpouring of her joy her whole child- 
 hood were flowing back to her heart:- "Poor 
 woman! I can see her the last time she went out 
 to take me to mass, it was a 2ist of January, 
 I remember. They were reading the king's will 
 then. Ah! she went through a great deal for me,
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 did mother! she was forty-two years old when 
 she had me, and father made her cry so! There 
 were three of us already and not too much bread 
 in the house. And then he was as proud as any- 
 thing. If we'd had nothing but a pod of peas, 
 he'd never have looked for help from the priest. 
 Ah! we didn't have bacon every day. No matter; 
 mother loved me a little more for it all, and she 
 always found a bit of dripping or cheese some- 
 where or other to put on my bread. I wasn't 
 five years old when she died. It was a misfortune 
 for all of us. 
 
 "I had a big brother who was as white as a 
 sheet, with a yellow beard, and so good, you 
 can't think! Everyone liked him. They had given 
 him names some called him Boda, I don't know 
 why; and the others Jesus Christ. Ah, he was 
 a workman! It made no odds that his health 
 was as bad as could be; at daybreak he was 
 always at his loom -- for you must know we were 
 weavers and he kept to his shuttle till the 
 evening. And so honest, too, if you only knew! 
 They came to him from all parts with their thread, 
 and always without weighing. He was a great 
 friend of the schoolmaster's it was he made 
 the speeches at Carnival time. My father was 
 very different: he would work a minute or an 
 hour or so, then he would go off to the fields, 
 then when he came in again he would beat us 
 and hard too. He was like a madman they 
 
 C43
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 said it came of being consumptive. It was a 
 good thing my brother was there: he used to 
 prevent my second sister from pulling my hair 
 and hurting me, because she was jealous. He used 
 always to take me by the hand to go and see the 
 skittles played : indeed, he was the sole support of 
 the house. 
 
 "How he slaved for my first communion! Ah, 
 he turned out his work so fast that I might be 
 like the rest, with a white figured frock and a 
 little bag in my hand, for that was the custom 
 then. I had no cap: I had made for me, I remem- 
 ber, a pretty wreath, with favors of the white 
 pith you get by peeling reeds there's plenty 
 of it about our home in the place where the hemp 
 is put to rot. That was one of my great days, 
 that was, that and the drawing for pigs at Christ- 
 mas, and the times when I used to go and help 
 them to prop the vines, it's in the month of 
 June, you know. We had a little vineyard on 
 the top of Saint-Hilaire. One of those years was 
 a very hard one you remember it, mademoi- 
 selle? the hail of 1828, which destroyed every- 
 thing. It came down as far as Dijon, and further 
 still they were obliged to put bran into the 
 bread. Then my brother just buried himself in 
 his work. My father, who at that time was 
 always out roaming in the fields, would sometimes 
 bring us home mushrooms. It was misery all the 
 same we were hungry more often than not.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 When I was in the fields I'd look to see whether 
 anyone was watching me, then I'd slip along very 
 gently on my knees, and when I was under a cow 
 I'd take off one of my wooden shoes, and begin 
 to milk her. You see it wouldn't have done to 
 be caught 
 
 "My biggest sister was in service with the mayor 
 of Lenclos, and she used to send home her twenty- 
 four francs of wages it was so much to the good. 
 The second used to work at sewing in the houses of 
 the towns-people, but prices were not then what 
 they are now you'd go from six in the morning 
 till night for eight sous. Out of that she tried to 
 save something for dressing herself in holiday 
 style on Saint Remi's day. Ah, that's how it is 
 with us. There's many a one eats two potatoes 
 a day for six months, in order to have a new dress 
 on that day. Misfortunes came upon us from all 
 sides. My father died. It had been necessary 
 to sell a little field and a vineyard that gave us 
 a cask of wine every year. The notaries cost 
 something. When my brother was ill there was 
 nothing to give him to drink except some stum, 
 which had had water thrown into it for a year 
 past; and then there was no linen left for a change 
 for him: all our sheets in the cupboard, where 
 there used to be a gold cross above them in 
 mother's time, were gone, and the cross too. 
 
 "To make matters worse, my brother, before 
 he fell sick, went to the Clermont Fair. He 
 
 C6]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 heard them say that my sister had been seduced 
 by the mayor: he fell upon those that said so. 
 He wasn't very strong and there was a number 
 of them, and they threw him on the ground, and 
 when he was on the ground they kicked him with 
 their wooden shoes in the pit of the stomach. 
 He was brought back to us like a dead man. 
 However, the doctor set him on his feet again, 
 and told us he was cured. But he only lingered 
 I could see myself that he was going when he 
 used to kiss me. When the poor, pale darling 
 was dead, Cadet Ballard had to use all his strength 
 to drag me away from the body. The whole 
 village went to his funeral, mayor and all. My 
 sister, who had not been able to keep her place 
 in the mayor's house on account of the way he 
 used to talk to her, had left for a situation in 
 Paris, and my other sister followed her. I was 
 quite alone. A cousin of my mother's then took 
 me with her to Damblin; but I was like a fish 
 out of water there. I used to spend the night 
 in crying; and when I could escape, I always 
 returned to our own house. Just to see the old 
 vine at our gate as I entered the street had such 
 an effect on me! It gave me new legs. 
 
 "The good people who had bought the house 
 used to keep me until someone came to look for 
 me; they were always sure to find me there 
 again. At last they wrote to my sister in Paris 
 that if she did not have me with her I should not
 
 GERM1NIE LACERTEUX 
 
 be long for this world. In fact I was like wax. 
 I was placed under the charge of the driver of a 
 small conveyance which went every month from 
 Langres to Paris; and that was the way I came 
 to Paris. I was then fourteen years old. I 
 remember that during the whole journey I lay 
 down fully dressed because they made me sleep 
 in the common room. When I arrived I was 
 covered with lice."
 
 T 
 
 II 
 
 HE old woman remained silent. She was 
 comparing her maid's life with her own. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil was born in 1782. 
 Her birth took place in a house in the Rue Royale, 
 and Mesdames of France held her over the baptis- 
 mal font. Her father was intimate with the Count 
 d'Artois, and held a post in his household. He 
 was a member of his hunting parties, and one 
 of those familiar friends in whose presence, at 
 the mass which preceded the hunt, the man who 
 was to be Charles X. would hurry the officiating 
 priest, saying to him in an undertone: 
 
 "Hist! hist! parson, be quick and swallow up 
 your Bon Dieu!" 
 
 Monsieur de Varandeuil had made one of those 
 marriages to which his time was accustomed; 
 he had wedded a sort of actress, a singer who, 
 without any great talent, had succeeded at the 
 Concert Spirituel by the side of Madame Todi, 
 Madame Ponteuil, and Madame Saint-Huberti. 
 The little girl born of this marriage in 1782 was 
 of a weakly constitution, and ugly, with a large 
 and already ridiculous nose like her father's on
 
 ERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 a face as big as a fist. She was nothing that the 
 vanity of her parents would have wished her to 
 be. After a pianoforte fiasco made when she was 
 five years of age at a concert given in her mother's 
 drawing-room, she was relegated to domesticity. 
 Only for a minute in the morning used she to go 
 to her mother, who made her kiss her under the 
 chin, that she might not disturb her rouge. When 
 the Revolution came, Monsieur de Varandeuil, 
 thanks to the protection of the Count d'Artois, 
 was a collector of taxes. Madame de Varandeuil 
 was travelling in Italy, whither she had had herself 
 sent under the pretense that her health required 
 it, abandoning the charge of her daughter and of 
 a very young son to her husband. 
 
 The heavy cares of the time, the threats 
 muttered against money and the families that had 
 the control of money -- Monsieur de Varandeuil 
 had a brother who was a Farmer-General - - left 
 this very egotistical and unfeeling father little 
 of the necessary leisure or heart for looking after 
 his children. Then, embarrassment began to show 
 itself in his home. He left the Rue Royale and 
 came to live at the Hotel du Petit-Charolais, 
 which belonged to his mother who was still alive, 
 and who allowed him to take up his abode there. 
 Events progressed; the beginning of the years of 
 the guillotine had been reached, when one evening 
 he was walking behind a pedlar crying the news- 
 paper called "Stop Thief!" The pedlar, accord-
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 ing to the custom of the time, was announcing 
 the contents of the edition, and Monsieur de 
 Varandeuil heard his own name mingled with 
 the coarsest expressions. He bought the paper 
 and read in it a revolutionary denunciation. 
 
 Some time afterwards his brother was arrested 
 and shut up with the other Farmers-General at 
 the Hotel Talaru. His mother, in a fit of terror, 
 had foolishly sold the Hotel du Petit-Charolais 
 in which he lodged for the worth of the mirrors, 
 and being paid in assignats she had died of des- 
 pair on seeing the increasing decline in the value 
 of the paper currency. Fortunately, Monsieur 
 de Varandeuil obtained from the purchasers, who 
 were unable to let, permission to live in the rooms 
 which had formerly served for the stablemen. 
 He took refuge here in the rear of the house, 
 discarded his name, posted on the door, as he had 
 been ordered, his patronymic "Roulot," beneath 
 which he buried the "de Varandeuil" and the 
 former courtier of the Count d'Artois. There 
 he lived solitary, effaced, entombed, hiding his 
 head, never going out, crouching in his den, with 
 no servant, waited upon by his daughter and 
 allowing her to do everything. 
 
 They lived through the Terror in a state of 
 expectancy, trepidation and continual anticipa- 
 tion of death. Every evening the little girl went 
 to a little grated dormer window to listen to the 
 condemnations of the day, the "List of winners
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 in the Lottery of Saint Guillotine." At every 
 knock, she would go to open the door with the 
 thought that they were about to seize her father 
 in order to lead him to the Place de la Revolu- 
 tion whither her uncle had been led already. 
 The time came when money, money which 
 was so scarce, could no longer procure bread, 
 when it had to be carried off almost by force from 
 the baker's door, when it was necessary to win 
 it by spending hours in the cold, keen nights 
 amid the press and crush of crowds, by making one 
 of a file from three o'clock in the morning. Her 
 father did not care to risk himself in the throng 
 of people. He was afraid of being recognized, 
 of compromising himself by some of those out- 
 bursts such as the impetuosity of his temper 
 would have caused him to utter in any place, 
 no matter where. Moreover, he shrank from the 
 weariness and hardness of the labor. The little 
 boy was as yet too small; he would have been 
 trampled upon; and accordingly the task of ob- 
 taining bread every day, for the three months, 
 fell to the girl. 
 
 She did obtain it. With her little, thin body 
 lost in a large, knitted waistcoat belonging to 
 her father, a cotton cap pulled down over her eyes, 
 and her limbs hugged together in order to retain 
 a remnant of warmth, she would wait shivering, 
 with eyes blue with cold, amid hustlings and 
 pushings until the baker of the Rue des Francs-
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Bourgeois placed in her hands a loaf which her 
 benumbed fingers could scarcely grasp. At last 
 this poor little girl, who came back every day with 
 her face suffering and her trembling emaciation, 
 moved the baker to pity. With the kindness of 
 heart which is to be found among the people, 
 she sent her man to the little girl as soon as she 
 appeared in the long file, with the bread which 
 she came to obtain. But one day, as the little 
 girl was about to take it, a woman, jealous at the 
 favor and preference shown to the child, gave 
 her a kick with her wooden shoe which kept her 
 in bed for nearly a month. Mademoiselle de 
 Varandeuil bore the mark of it all her life. During 
 this month the family would have died of hunger, 
 but for a store of rice which it had happily occurred 
 to one of their acquaintances, the Countess 
 d'Auteuil, to lay in, and which she was willing 
 to share with the father and the two children. 
 Monsieur de Varandeuil thus escaped the Rev- 
 olutionary Tribunal through the obscurity of a 
 buried life. His escape was assisted by the 
 accounts of his post, which he was to render, 
 and which he was fortunate enough to have post- 
 poned and put off from month to month. More- 
 over, he averted suspicion by his personal ani- 
 mosities against certain great personages of the 
 court, hatreds which many servants of princes 
 had imbibed from the King's brothers against 
 the Queen. Every time that he had had occa-
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 sion to speak of this unhappy woman, he had 
 used violent, bitter, and abusive language in so 
 impassioned and sincere a tone that it had almost 
 made him appear an enemy to royalty; so that 
 those to whom he was only the citizen Roulot 
 looked upon him as a patriot, and those who 
 knew him under his former name almost ex- 
 cused him for having been what he had been - 
 a noble, the friend of a prince of the blood, and a 
 placeman. 
 
 The Republic had reached the patriotic suppers, 
 those meals of an entire street in the street, whereof 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, in the mingled terrors 
 of her confused recollections, could see the tables 
 of the Rue Pavee standing in the stream of Sep- 
 tember blood issuing from La Force! It was at 
 one of these suppers that Monsieur de Varan- 
 deuil devised a scheme which finally assured him 
 of the safety of his life. He told two of his table 
 companions, warm patriots, one of whom was 
 intimate with Chaumette, that he found himself 
 in great perplexity, that his daughter had been 
 only privately baptized, that she lacked civil 
 status, and that he would be very glad if Chau- 
 mette would have her entered upon the registers 
 of the municipality and honor her with a name 
 chosen by himself from the republican calendar 
 of Greece or Rome. Chaumette soon made an 
 appointment for this father who was so "well 
 up to his part," as people said then. Forthwith
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil was shown into a 
 room where she found two matrons who were in- 
 structed to satisfy themselves as to her sex, and 
 to whom she showed her bosom. She was then 
 brought back into the great Hall of Declarations, 
 and there, after a metaphorical address, Chaumette 
 baptized her "Sempronia;" a name which custom 
 was to make her own and which she never laid 
 aside. 
 
 Screened and reassured to some extent by this, 
 the family passed through the terrible days which 
 preceded the fall of Robespierre. At last came 
 the Qth of Thermidor and deliverance. But 
 poverty remained great and pressing in the home. 
 They had lived through the hard times of the 
 Revolution, and they were about to live through 
 the unhappy time of the Directory with nothing 
 but a very unexpected resource, a godsend in 
 money which came to them from Folly. The two 
 children and the father could scarcely have sub- 
 sisted but for the income from four shares in the 
 Vaudeville, an investment which Monsieur de 
 Varandeuil had been inspired to make in 1791, 
 and which turned out the best of transactions for 
 those years of death, when people needed to for- 
 get death every evening, for those final days 
 when every one was fain to laugh his last laugh at 
 the last song. Soon these shares, coupled with 
 the recovery of a few debts, gave the family some- 
 thing more than bread. They then left the Hotel
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 du Petit-Charolais, and took a small lodging in 
 the Rue du Chaume, in the Marais. 
 
 For the rest, there was no change in the habits 
 of the home. The daughter continued to wait 
 upon her father and her brother. Monsieur de 
 Varandeuil had gradually become accustomed to 
 see nothing more in her than was denoted by her 
 costume and by the work which she performed. 
 The father's eyes were no longer ready to recog- 
 nize a daughter through the dress and the low 
 occupations of this servant. She was no longer 
 one of his own blood, one who had the honor to 
 belong to him: she was a servant whom he had 
 there, under his thumb; and his egotism became 
 so strengthened in this harshness and this mode 
 of thought, he found so much convenience in this 
 filial affection and respectful service which cost 
 nothing, that he had all the trouble in the world 
 to surrender it later on, when a little more money 
 reverted to the household; battles were necessary 
 to bring him to hire a maid, who should replace 
 his daughter and spare the young girl the more 
 humiliating labors of domesticity. 
 
 There was no news of Madame de Varandeuil, 
 who had refused to rejoin her husband at Paris 
 during the first years of the Revolution; but 
 soon it was reported that she had married again 
 in Germany, producing the death-certificate of 
 her brother-in-law, who had been guillotined, and 
 whose first name had been changed, as that of
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 her husband. Thus, the young girl grew up for- 
 saken, uncaressed, with no mother but a woman 
 who was dead to all her relations, and whom her 
 father taught her to despise. Her childhood had 
 been spent in never-ceasing anxiety, in the priva- 
 tions which wear away life, in the fatigue of toil 
 which exhausted her feeble, childish strength, in 
 a looking for death which at last became an im- 
 patience to die. There had been moments when 
 the temptation had come to this girl of thirteen 
 to act like some woman of that time, to open the 
 door of the house and cry: "God save the King!" 
 into the street, in order to put an end to it all. 
 
 Her youth followed upon her childhood with 
 less tragic cares. She had to endure her father's 
 violence of temper, his exactingness, his harshness, 
 his storms which hitherto had been somewhat 
 subdued and restrained by the great tempest of 
 the time. She was still subjected to the fatigues 
 and humiliations of a servant. She continued to 
 be under restraint and kept down, isolated in the 
 society of her father, driven from his arms, and 
 from his kisses, her heart big and sorrowful with 
 the desire to love and with having nothing to love. 
 She began to suffer from that chilling void which 
 is formed around a woman by youth that cannot 
 attract or seduce, youth that is stripped of beauty, 
 and of sympathetic grace. She could see that she 
 inspired a sort of commiseration with her large 
 nose, her yellow complexion, her withered lean-
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 ness. She felt that she was ugly, and with a piti- 
 ful ugliness in her wretched attire, her sad- 
 colored woollen dresses, the material of which 
 her father never paid for without tokens of ill- 
 humor; for it was not until she was thirty-five 
 years old, that she could obtain from him a small 
 dress allowance. 
 
 What sadness, what bitterness, what loneliness 
 did she experience in her life, with this sour, 
 morose old man who was ever grumbling and 
 growling in their lodging, who had no amiability 
 except in society, and who left her every evening 
 to visit at the houses that had been re-opened 
 under the Directory and at the beginning of the 
 Empire! Rarely, and at wide intervals, did he 
 take her out, and when he did so it was always 
 to take her to the everlasting Vaudeville where 
 he had seats. His daughter, however, used to 
 be in terror of these outings. She trembled, the 
 whole time that she was with him ; she was fearful 
 of the violence of his temper, of the old-fashioned 
 style which still belonged to his passions, of the 
 readiness with which he would lift his stick upon 
 the insolence of the vulgar. On almost every 
 occasion there were scenes with the ticket col- 
 lector, wordy wars with the people in the pit, 
 threatenings with the fist which she would ter- 
 minate by letting down the grating of the box. 
 The same demeanor would be continued in the 
 street, even in the cab with the cabman, who,
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 unwilling to drive for the fare offered by Mon- 
 sieur de Varandeuil, would let him wait an hour 
 or two hours without proceeding, and sometimes 
 would impatiently take out his horse and leave 
 him in the vehicle with his daughter, the latter 
 vainly beseeching him to yield and pay. 
 
 Considering that these pleasures ought to be 
 sufficient for Sempronia, and being moreover 
 jealous of having her all to himself, and constantly 
 under his thumb, Monsieur de Varandeuil did 
 not allow her to become intimate with any one. 
 He did not take her into society, he did not bring 
 her except on days of official receptions and family 
 gatherings to see their relations who had returned 
 from exile. He kept her closely at home; it was 
 not until she was nearly forty years of age that 
 he considered her sufficiently grown up to have 
 permission to go out alone. Thus the young 
 woman had no friendship, no relationship to sus- 
 tain her; she had no longer even her young brother, 
 who had left for the United States, and had 
 entered the American navy. 
 
 Marriage was forbidden her by her father, who 
 refused to allow that she could so much as enter- 
 tain the idea of getting married and forsaking him; 
 every match that might have presented itself was 
 combated and repulsed by him in advance, so 
 that he did not even leave his daughter the courage 
 to speak to him did an opportunity ever offer 
 itself to her.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Meanwhile our victories were accomplishing a 
 clearance in Italy. The masterpieces of Rome, 
 Florence, Venice were thronging to Paris. Italian 
 art was throwing everything into the shade. Col- 
 lectors had ceased to pride themselves on anything 
 but pictures of the Italian School. It appeared 
 to Monsieur de Varandeuil that an opportunity of 
 making a fortune was afforded by this movement 
 in matters of taste. He too had been taken with 
 that artistic dilettantism which was one of the 
 refined crazes of the nobility before the Revolu- 
 tion. He had lived in the society of artists, and 
 virtuosos; he was fond of pictures. He thought 
 of collecting a gallery of Italian works and then 
 selling it. Paris was still filled with the sales and 
 dispersals of objects of art caused by the Reign 
 of Terror. Monsieur de Varandeuil began to 
 haunt the pavement which was then the market 
 for great pictures and every step brought a 
 discovery; every day he purchased something. 
 Soon there was not room enough for the furni- 
 ture in the little apartment, which was encumbered 
 with old black pictures, so large, for the most 
 part, that they could not be attached to the walls 
 with their frames. Each was baptized a Raphael, 
 or a Vinci, or an Andrea del Sarto; they were all 
 masterpieces, and the father would frequently 
 keep his daughter in front of them for hours, 
 taxing her with his admiration, and wearying her 
 with his ecstasy. He would rise from epithet
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 to epithet, would grow intoxicated and rave, 
 would finally believe that he was dealing with an 
 imaginary purchaser, would dispute about the 
 price of a masterpiece, and cry: 
 
 "A hundred thousand livres, my Rosso! yes, 
 sir, a hundred thousand livres!'* 
 
 His daughter, alarmed by the amount of money 
 taken from the housekeeping by these big, ugly 
 things, covered with great, frightful, perfectly 
 naked men, tried to remonstrate and sought to 
 stay such waste, but Monsieur de Varandeuil 
 would fall into a passion, display the indignation 
 of a man ashamed to find so little taste in one of 
 his own blood, and tell her that this would make 
 his fortune later on, and that she would see whether 
 or not he was a fool. At last she induced him to 
 sell. The sale took place; it was a disaster, and 
 one of the greatest disillusions ever witnessed by 
 the glazed hall of the Hotel Bullion. 
 
 Wounded to the quick, furious at this check 
 which not only involved a loss of money, and a 
 rent in his little fortune, but also a defeat as a 
 connoisseur, a slap dealt at his knowledge on the 
 cheeks of his Raphaels, Monsieur de Varandeuil de- 
 clared to his daughter that henceforth they would 
 be too poor to remain in Paris, and that they must 
 go and live in the country. Reared and cradled 
 in an age which disposed women but little to love 
 of the country, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil tried 
 in vain to combat her father's resolution; she was
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 obliged to follow him whither he wished to go, 
 and, by leaving Paris, to lose the society and 
 friendship of two young relatives to whom, in 
 interviews that were too infrequent, she had half 
 unbosomed herself, and whose hearts she had felt 
 come out to herself as to an elder sister. 
 
 At L' Isle- Adam Monsieur Varandeuil rented 
 a small house. Here he found himself close to 
 old memories in the atmosphere of a former petty 
 court, in the neighborhood of two or three man- 
 sions which were beginning to be peopled again, 
 and the owners of which he knew. And then, 
 here on the ground of the Contis, there had come 
 to be settled, since the Revolution, a little society 
 of substantial citizens and rich-grown tradesmen. 
 The name of Monsieur de Varandeuil sounded 
 big in the ears of all these worthy individuals. 
 They bowed low to him, they disputed for the 
 honor of entertaining him, they listened respect- 
 fully, and almost religiously, to the stories that 
 he told of the old society. And flattered, loved 
 and honored as a remnant of Versailles, he had 
 the position and consideration of a lord among 
 these people. When he dined at the house of 
 Madame Mutel, a retired baker, who had an 
 income of forty thousand livres a year, the mis- 
 tress of the house would rise from table in her 
 silk dress to go and fry the salsify herself. Mon- 
 sieur de Varandeuil did not like it unless it was 
 done in his own way. 
 
 C22H
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 But it was not these advantages which had 
 especially fixed Monsieur de Varandeuil's retreat 
 at L' Isle- Adam; it was a plan. He came there 
 in quest of leisure for a great work. What he 
 had been unable to do for the honor and glory of 
 Italian art by means of his collections, he wished 
 to accomplish by means of history. He had 
 learned a little Italian from his wife; he took it 
 into his head to give Vasari's "Lives of the 
 Painters" to the French public, to translate it 
 with the assistance of his daughter who, when 
 quite a child, had been able to speak Italian with 
 her mother's maid and who still remembered a 
 few words. He buried the young woman in Vasari, 
 shut up her time and thought in grammars, dic- 
 tionaries, commentators, and the scholiasts of 
 Italian art, kept her stooping over the thankless 
 task, over the weariness and fatigue of groping 
 out the translation of words. 
 
 The whole book devolved upon her; when he 
 had cut out her work for her, he would leave her 
 alone with the white vellum-bound volumes and 
 set out for a walk, or pay visits in the neighbor- 
 hood, or go and gamble in a mansion, or dine with 
 the citizens of his acquaintance, to whom he 
 would complain pathetically of the effort and 
 labor which the enormous enterprise of his transla- 
 tion cost him. He would come in again, listen 
 while the portion translated was read to him, 
 offer his observations and his criticism, and spoil
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 a sentence to insert a mistranslation which his 
 daughter would remove when he was gone; then 
 he would resume his walk, or his gadding about, 
 like a man who had done a good day's work, 
 swaggering as he walked with his hat under his 
 arm, wearing thin pumps, enjoying himself, the 
 sky, the trees, and Rousseau's God, who is gentle 
 to nature and tender to the plants. From time 
 to time impatience like that of a child or of an 
 old man would possess him; he would require so 
 many pages for the next day, and would compel 
 his daughter to sit up during part of the night. 
 
 Two or three years were spent in this work, 
 upon which finally Sempronia's eyes were fixed 
 without intermission. She lived buried in her 
 father's Vasari, more solitary than ever, alienated 
 by lofty, innate repugnance from the burgesses 
 of L'IsIe-Adam with their Madame Angot manners, 
 and too poorly dressed to visit at the mansions. 
 There was no pleasure, no amusement for her that 
 was not thwarted and tormented by the irritat- 
 ing singularities of her father. He pulled up the 
 flowers which she planted secretly in the little 
 garden. He would have nothing in it but vege- 
 tables, and he cultivated them himself, setting 
 forth grand utilitarian theories the while, argu- 
 ments which might have served the Convention 
 for the conversion of the Tuileries into a potato- 
 field. The only comfort she had was a week which 
 came at wide intervals, and during which her
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 father granted her permission to receive a visit 
 from one of her two friends, a week which would 
 have been seven days of Paradise for Sempronia 
 had not her father poisoned its joys, its diver- 
 sions and its entertainments with his ever men- 
 acing rages, his ever aggressive humors, and his 
 difficulties about trifles, a flask of Eau-de-Co- 
 logne requested by Sempronia for her friend's 
 room, a dish for her dinner, or a place to which 
 she wished to take her. 
 
 At L' Isle- Adam Monsieur de Varandeuil had 
 taken a servant who had almost immediately 
 become his mistress. Of this connection was 
 born a child whom the father, in his cynical care- 
 lessness, had the shamelessness to have brought 
 up under his daughter's eyes. As years went on 
 the maid had gained a firm footing in the house. 
 She ended by ruling the household, father and 
 daughter. A day came when Monsieur de Varan- 
 deuil wished to have her sit at his table and be 
 waited upon by Sempronia. It was too much. 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil revolted at the out- 
 rage, and drew herself up in all the loftiness of her 
 indignation. Secretly, silently, in misfortune, and 
 isolation, and the hardness of the things and 
 people around her, the young woman had devel- 
 oped a soul that was straight and strong; tears 
 had tempered instead of softened her. Beneath 
 her filial docility and humility, beneath her pas- 
 sive obedience, beneath an apparent gentleness,
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 she concealed a character of iron, a man's will, 
 one of those hearts which nothing can bend and 
 which never yield. At this insult she proved her- 
 self to be her father's daughter, set forth her entire 
 life, flung the shame and reproach of it in his 
 face with a flood of words, and ended by telling 
 him that if the woman did not leave the house 
 that very evening she would leave it herself, and 
 that, thank God! she would be at no loss to 
 live anywhere with the simple tastes which he 
 had given her. 
 
 The father, stupefied and astounded at this 
 revolt, yielded and sent the servant away, but 
 he kept up a cowardly spite against his daughter 
 for the sacrifice which she had wrung from him. 
 This resentment betrayed itself in harsh speeches, 
 in aggressive words, in ironical thanks, in smiles 
 of bitterness. Sempronia tended him better, more 
 gently, more patiently, for all his vengeance. A 
 final trial awaited her devotion; the old man was 
 stricken w r ith an attack of apoplexy which left 
 him with the whole of one side of his body stiff 
 and dead, with a lame leg, and with a dormant 
 understanding accompanied by the living con- 
 sciousness of his misfortune and of his dependence 
 upon his daughter. Then, all that was bad at 
 bottom within him was exasperated and un- 
 chained. He displayed ferocities of egotism. 
 Under the torment of his suffering and his weak- 
 ness, he became a sort of wicked madman. 
 
 I 26!
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil devoted her days 
 and nights to the sick man who seemed to bear 
 her ill-will for her attentions, to be humiliated 
 by her care as by her generosity and forgiveness, 
 to suffer inwardly at seeing this indefatigable 
 and watchful figure of Duty always at his side. 
 Yet what a life was hers ! She had to combat 
 the incurable weariness of the patient, to con- 
 stantly keep him company, to take him out, to 
 sustain him during the entire day. She had to 
 play cards with him when he was at home, and 
 to see that he neither lost nor won too much. 
 She also had to contest his inclinations and his 
 greedy longings, to take the dishes from him, and 
 for every thing that he wanted, to undergo com- 
 plainings, reproaches, abuse, tears, furious des- 
 pairs, rages, like those of a passionate child, and 
 such as are displayed by the old and powerless. 
 And this lasted ten years! ten years during 
 which Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had no other 
 recreation or relief than to lavish the tenderness 
 and warmth of a maternal affection upon one of 
 her two young friends who had lately been married, 
 her "chick" as she called her. Mademoiselle's 
 happiness consisted in going every fortnight to 
 pass a short time in this happy household. She 
 would kiss the pretty infant in its cradle, and al- 
 ready in the arms of sleep; she would dine at 
 racing speed; at dessert she would send for a car- 
 riage, and hurry away with the haste of a school- 
 
 1*71
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 boy who is behind his time. However, during 
 the last years of her father's life she ceased to 
 have permission to dine: the old man would no 
 longer permit so long an absence, and kept her 
 almost continually beside him, telling her re- 
 peatedly that he was well aware that it was not 
 amusing to look after an infirm old creature such 
 as he was, but that she would soon be rid of him. 
 He died in 1818, and the only words that he could 
 find before dying in which to bid farewell to her 
 who had been his daughter for almost forty years 
 were these: 
 
 "Ah, I well know that you have never loved 
 me!" 
 
 Two years before her father's death, Sempronia's 
 brother had returned from America. He brought 
 back a colored woman who had nursed him and 
 saved him from the yellow fever, and two daugh- 
 ters who were already grown up, whom he had had 
 by this woman before marrying her. Notwith- 
 standing that she had the old-fashioned ideas 
 about black people, and although she looked upon 
 this uninstructed colored woman, with her negro 
 speech, her harsh laugh, and her linen-greasing 
 skin, as absolutely a female ape, Mademoiselle de 
 Varandeuil had striven against her father's ob- 
 stinate horror of receiving his daughter-in-law; 
 and it was she who had induced him, in the last 
 days of his life, to allow her brother to present 
 his wife to him. Her father being dead, it seemed
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 to her that this household was all that remained 
 to her of the family. 
 
 Monsieur de Varandeuil, to whom on the re- 
 turn of the Bourbons the Count d'Artois had 
 caused to be paid the arrears of his office, had left 
 an income of nearly ten thousand francs to his 
 children. Before inheriting this, the brother had 
 nothing but a pension of fifteen hundred francs 
 from the United States. Mademoiselle de Varan- 
 deuil calculated that five or six thousand francs a 
 year would not be sufficient for the comfort of 
 this household which comprised two children, and 
 it immediately occurred to her to add her own 
 share in the inheritance. She proposed this con- 
 tribution in the most natural and simple way in 
 the world. Her brother accepted it, and she came 
 to live with him in a pretty little dwelling at the 
 top of the Rue de Clichy, on the fourth floor of 
 one of the first houses built on that soil, which was 
 still almost a waste, where the country air passed 
 gaily through the framework of the houses under 
 construction. Here she continued her modest 
 life, her humble toilets, her frugal habits, con- 
 tent with the worst room, and not spending on 
 herself more than from eighteen hundred to two 
 thousand francs a year. 
 
 But soon a secret and slowly hatched jealousy 
 began to show itself in the mulatto woman. She 
 took umbrage at the friendship between the 
 brother and sister, which seemed to withdraw
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 her husband from her arms. She was hurt by 
 the communion effected between them by speech, 
 mind and recollection; she was hurt by the talks 
 in which she could take no part, and by what she 
 heard in their voices without understanding it. 
 The consciousness of her own inferiority roused 
 in her heart the wrathfulness and fiery hatred 
 which burn in the tropics. She employed her 
 children for her revenge, and impelled and urged 
 and incited them against her sister-in-law. She 
 encouraged them to laugh at her, to make fun of 
 her. She applauded that evil littleness of under- 
 standing which is characteristic of children, in 
 whom observation begins with naughtiness. Once 
 let loose, she allowed them to laugh at all their 
 aunt's absurdities, her physique, her nose, her 
 clothes, whose poverty, however, was caused by 
 their own elegance. 
 
 Thus directed and supported, the children soon 
 arrived at insolence. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil 
 was as quick as she was kind. With her, hand as 
 well as heart belonged to the first impulse. More- 
 over, she thought with her time respecting the 
 mode of bringing up children. She tolerated two 
 or three impertinences without saying anything, 
 but at the fourth she seized the laugher, turned 
 up her petticoats, and in spite of her twelve years 
 gave her the soundest whipping that she had ever 
 had. The mulatto uttered loud shrieks, and told 
 her sister-in-law that she had always detested
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 her children, and that she wanted to kill them. 
 The brother interposed between the two women 
 and succeeded in patching up a reconciliation. 
 But fresh scenes occurred in which the two little 
 girls, enraged against the woman who had made 
 their mother weep, tortured their aunt with the 
 devices of naughty children combined with the 
 cruelties of little savages. 
 
 After several superficial reconciliations, it had 
 become necessary to separate. Mademoiselle de 
 Varandeuil resolved to leave her brother, who, 
 as she could see, was most unhappy in the daily 
 trial to his dearest affections. She left him to 
 his wife and children. This separation was one 
 of the great heart-breakings of her life. She who 
 had been so strong against emotion, who had been 
 so self-contained, who had apparently taken a 
 pride in suffering, was nearly giving way when 
 obliged to leave the dwelling where, in her own 
 little corner, she had had a short dream of hap- 
 piness beside the happiness of the rest; and her 
 last tears rose to her eyes. 
 
 She did not go far away, so as to be still within 
 reach of her brother, to nurse him if he were sick, 
 to see him and to meet him. But a void remained 
 in her heart and life. She had begun to see the 
 members of her family after her father's death: 
 she drew closer to them, allowing those relatives 
 whom the Restoration had again placed in high 
 and powerful positions to return to her, and going
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 herself to those whom the new authority left in- 
 significant and poor. But above all she returned 
 to her dear "chick," and to another little cousin 
 who was also married and had become the 
 "chick's" sister-in-law. Then her existence and 
 her external relations were ordered in a singular 
 fashion. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil never went 
 into society, to an evening party or to the play. 
 It required the brilliant success of Mademoiselle 
 Rachel to induce her to set foot in a theatre, and 
 she ventured into one only twice. She never 
 accepted an invitation to a large dinner party. 
 But there were two or three houses to which, as 
 to that of her "chick," she would invite herself 
 unexpectedly when no one else was there. 
 
 "Bichette," she used to say without ceremony, 
 "you and your husband are doing nothing this 
 evening? I will stay and taste your stew." 
 
 Regularly at eight o'clock she rose, and when the 
 husband took his hat in order to see her home she 
 would make him drop it with a: 
 
 "Nonsense! my dear; an old stager like me! 
 why, it is I who frighten the men in the street." 
 
 And then they would be ten days or a fortnight 
 without seeing her. But did any misfortune come, 
 the news of a death, or sadness in the house, or 
 did a child fall ill, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil 
 always heard of it in a minute, no one knew how. 
 She would arrive in spite of the weather, or the 
 hour or anything else, give her own loud ring
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 it had finally become known as "cousin's ring" 
 - and, instantly laying aside her umbrella, which 
 never left her, taking off her clogs and throwing 
 her hat upon a chair, be quite at the service of 
 those who had need of her. She listened, she 
 spoke, she inspired courage with a sort of martial 
 tone, in language energetic after the manner of 
 military consolations, and as warm as a cordial. 
 If it was a little one who was not well she would 
 come straight to its bed, laugh at the no longer 
 frightened child, hustle the father and mother, 
 hurry to and fro, give orders, assume the manage- 
 ment of everything, handle the leeches, arrange 
 the plasters, and bring back hope, mirth, and 
 health at a gallop. Among all her relatives, the 
 old maid would appear in this providential and 
 sudden manner in days of pain, weariness and grief. 
 She was never seen except when there was need of 
 her hands to cure, or of her devotion to comfort. 
 She was an impersonal woman, so to speak, 
 from sheer goodness of heart, a woman who did 
 not belong to herself at all. God seemed to have 
 made her in order to give her to others. The ever- 
 lasting black dress which she persisted in wearing, 
 the worn and twice-dyed shawl, the ridiculous 
 hat and the poorness of her whole attire, were for 
 her the means which enabled her, with her slender 
 fortune, to be rich in doing good, to be a dispenser 
 of charities, to have her pocket always open to 
 give the poor, not money, for she was afraid of the
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 public-house, but a quartern loaf which she would 
 purchase for them at the baker's. And then with 
 this poverty she indulged further in what was her 
 greatest luxury: the joy of her friends' children 
 when she loaded them with Christmas boxes, 
 presents, surprises and pleasures. Was there one, 
 for instance, whose mother, being away from Paris, 
 had left him at the boarding school on a fine 
 Sunday in summer, and who, young urchin that 
 he was, had for spite got himself kept in? He 
 would be quite astonished to see cousin marching 
 into the court-yard at the stroke of nine, and in 
 such a hurry as to be still fastening the last hook 
 in her dress. And what affliction on seeing her! 
 
 "Cousin," he would say piteously, in such a pas- 
 sion as makes one feel inclined to simultaneously 
 weep and to kill one's pedagogue, " I am kept in." 
 
 "Kept in? Ah! very likely, kept in! And you 
 think that I am going to put myself out like this 
 - does this schoolmaster of yours fancy he'll 
 make a fool of me? Where is the old bear that I 
 may speak to him? Meanwhile do you go and 
 dress yourself, and be quick." 
 
 And while the child was still afraid to hope that 
 a lady so badly dressed could have the power to 
 cancel a detention, he would feel himself seized 
 by the arms; it was his cousin carrying him off, 
 tossing him perfectly stunned and amazed with 
 joy into a cab, and taking him away to the Bois de 
 Boulogne. She would have him ride on a donkey
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 the whole day, herself urging on the animal with 
 a broken bough, and crying: "Gee!" Then, 
 after a good dinner at Borne's she would bring him 
 back again, and, kissing him at the entrance to the 
 school, put a large crown-piece into his hand. 
 
 Queer old maid ! The trials of her whole exist- 
 ence, the pain of living, the never-ending suffer- 
 ings of her body, one long physical and moral 
 torture had detached her, as it were, and set her 
 above life. Her education, what she had seen, the 
 sight of the extremity of things, the Revolution, 
 had moulded her to contempt of human misery. 
 And this old woman, to whom only breath was 
 left, had risen to a serene philosophy, to a manly, 
 lofty, and almost ironical stoicism. Sometimes, 
 she would begin to be incensed with a pain that 
 was somewhat too keen; then, in the midst of 
 her complaining, she would abruptly throw out 
 a word of anger or raillery at herself, where upon 
 even her face would grow calm. She was cheer- 
 ful with a natural, effusive and thorough cheerful- 
 ness, the cheerfulness of experienced devotion, 
 like that of an old soldier or of an old hospital- 
 sister. Exceedingly good, there was neverthe- 
 less something which her goodness lacked for- 
 giveness. Never had she been able to sway or 
 bend her temper so far as this. A hurt, a bad 
 action, a trifle which touched her heart, wounded 
 her for ever. She did not forget. Time, death 
 even, failed to drown her memory.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Of religion she had none. Born at a period 
 when women dispensed with it, she had grown 
 up at a time when there was no longer a church. 
 The mass had no existence when she was a young 
 girl; nothing had habituated her to a belief in 
 God, or made her feel that she needed Him; while 
 to priests she had always felt a hostile repugnance 
 that must have been connected with some secret 
 family history of which she never spoke. All 
 her faith, strength, and piety consisted in the 
 pride of her conscience; she considered that it 
 was sufficient to be anxious about self-esteem in 
 order to act well and never err. She was com- 
 pletely moulded in this singular fashion by the 
 two centuries in which she had lived, compounded 
 of them both, steeped in the two currents of the 
 old regime and the Revolution. After Louis XVI, 
 who had not mounted his horse on the tenth of 
 August, she had lost esteem for kings; but she 
 detested the mob. She desired equality and she 
 had a horror of upstarts. She was a Republican 
 and an aristocrat. She blended skepticism with 
 prejudice, the horror of '93, which she had seen, 
 with the vague and generous ideas of humanity 
 in which she had been cradled. 
 
 Her externals were all masculine. Her voice 
 was rough, her speech frank, her language that of 
 the old dames of the eighteenth century set off 
 by the accent of the people a rompish and 
 highly-colored elocution of her own which over-
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 looked the modesty of words and was bold enough 
 to call things plainly by their names. 
 
 Meanwhile the years passed, carrying away the 
 Restoration and the monarchy of Louis Philippe. 
 One by one she saw all those whom she had loved 
 depart, and all her relations take the road to the 
 cemetery. Solitude was falling around her, and 
 she remained astonished and sad that she should 
 be forgotten by death, she who would have offered 
 it so little resistance, she who was already quite 
 disposed for the grave, and was obliged to stoop 
 her heart to the little children brought to her by 
 the sons and daughters of the friends whom she 
 had lost. Her brother was dead. Her dear 
 "chick" was no more. The "chick's" sister-in- 
 law alone was left her. But hers was a tremu- 
 lous existence and one ready to take to flight. 
 Crushed by the death of a child that had come 
 after years of waiting, the poor woman was dying 
 of consumption. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil 
 shut herself up with her from twelve o'clock 
 until six every day for four years. She lived by 
 her side all this time, in the close atmosphere and 
 in the odor of fumigations. Not allowing herself 
 to be stayed for an hour by gout or rheumatism, 
 she devoted her time and her life to the gentle 
 dying creature, who kept looking to heaven where 
 all dead children are. And when at the ceme- 
 tery Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had kissed the 
 dead woman's coffin in a last embrace, it seemed
 
 GERM INI E LACERTEUX 
 
 to her that no one was left about her, and that 
 she was alone on the earth. 
 
 From that day, yielding to the infirmities which 
 she had no longer any reason for shaking off, she 
 had begun to live the narrow and confined life 
 of those old people who wear out the carpet of 
 their room in the same spot, no longer going out, 
 no longer reading on account of the fatigue to her 
 eyes, and most frequently sunk in her arm-chair, 
 engaged in reviewing and reviving the past. She 
 would maintain the same position for days with 
 open and dreamy eyes, far from herself, far from 
 the room and from her lodgings, going whither 
 her memories led her, to distant faces, to for- 
 gotten places, to pale and beloved countenances, 
 lost in a solemn somnolence, which Germinie 
 respected, saying: 
 
 "Mademoiselle is wrapt up in her reflections." 
 One day, nevertheless, of every week, she went 
 out. It had been on account of this excursion, 
 and in order to be nearer the place to which she 
 wished to go on this day, that she had left her 
 apartments in the Rue Taitbout and had come to 
 lodge in the Rue de Laval. One day in every 
 week, nothing, not even sickness, being able to 
 prevent her, she went to the cemetery of Mont- 
 martre, in which rested her father, her brother, 
 the women whom she regretted, and all those 
 whose pain had ended before her own. For the 
 dead and for death she had an almost ancient
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 reverence. The grave to her was sacred, dear, 
 and a friend. She loved the earth of hope and 
 deliverance in which her friends were sleeping, 
 so that she looked for it and held her body in 
 readiness. 
 
 On that day she used to set out early with her 
 maid, who gave her an arm, and carried a folding- 
 chair. Close to the cemetery, she entered the 
 shop of a wreath-seller who had known her for 
 long years, and who, in winter, used to bring 
 her foot-warmer and place it under her feet. 
 Here she would rest for a few moments; then, 
 loading Germinie with wreaths of immortelles, 
 she passed through the gate of the cemetery, 
 took the walk on the left of the cedar at the 
 entrance, and slowly made her pilgrimage from 
 tomb to tomb. She threw away the withered flow- 
 ers, swept up the dead leaves, fastened the wreaths, 
 sat down upon her folding-chair, looked, dreamed, 
 or with the end of her parasol abstractedly loosened 
 a patch of mouldy moss on the flat-stone. Then 
 she would get up, turn round as though to bid the 
 grave that she was leaving good-bye, go some dis- 
 tance farther, stop again, talk in a whisper, as 
 she had already been doing with that portion of 
 her heart which slept beneath the stone; and, 
 her visit being thus paid to all the dead of her 
 affections, she would return slowly, religiously, 
 enwrapping herself in silence, and as though afraid 
 to speak. 
 
 C393
 
 Ill 
 
 IN her reverie, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had 
 closed her eyes. The maid's talk stopped, 
 and the remainder of her life, which was 
 that evening upon her lips, went back into her 
 heart. The end of her story was this: 
 
 When little Germinie Lacerteux, not yet fifteen 
 years old, had reached Paris, her sisters, eager 
 to see her earning her own livelihood, and to put 
 her in the way of getting her bread, had placed her 
 in a little cafe on the Boulevard, where she acted 
 both as lady's-maid to the mistress of the cafe 
 and as assistant to the waiters in the heavy work 
 of the establishment. The child, fresh from her 
 village, and dropped here abruptly, felt strange 
 and quite scared in this place, this service. She 
 felt the first instinct of her modesty and her in- 
 cipient womanhood quiver at the perpetual con- 
 tact with the waiters, at the community of work, 
 food, and existence with men; and every time 
 that she was allowed out, and went to see her 
 sisters, there were tears, and despair, and scenes 
 in which, without complaining definitely of any- 
 thing, she showed something like terror at going 
 back, saying that she could not stay there any
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 longer, that she did not like it, that she would 
 rather go back home. She was answered that her 
 coming had already cost money enough, that she 
 was fanciful, that she was very well off where she 
 was, and so she was sent back to the cafe in tears. 
 She did not dare to tell all that she suffered 
 from her association with these cafe waiters, 
 brazen, jocular, and cynical as they were, fed on 
 the leavings of debauchery, polluted by all the 
 vices to which they ministered, and blending 
 within them all the rottenness of the relics of orgy. 
 At all hours she had to endure the cowardly jests, 
 the cruel mystifications, and the unkindnesses of 
 these men, who were happy at finding a little 
 martyr in this shy, little lass with the oppressed 
 and sickly look, who knew nothing, who was 
 timorous and distrustful and thin, and pitiably 
 clad in her sorry little country dresses. Bewil- 
 dered, and as one overwhelmed beneath the un- 
 intermittent torture, she became their butt. They 
 played upon her ignorance, they deceived and 
 deluded her with their tricks, they crushed her 
 with fatigue, they dulled her with continual and 
 pitiless mockeries that well-nigh drove her dis- 
 concerted understanding into imbecility. Then, 
 again, they made her blush at things which they 
 said to her, and of which she felt ashamed without 
 understanding them. They played with filthy 
 ambiguities upon the ingenuousness of her four- 
 teen years. And they amused themselves by
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 putting the eyes of her childish curiosity to the 
 keyholes of the supper-rooms. 
 
 The girl wished to confide in her sisters, but she 
 dared not. As with food a little flesh came upon 
 her body, and a little color into her cheeks, their 
 freedom increased and grew bolder. There were 
 familiarities, gestures, approaches from which she 
 escaped and rescued herself pure, but which im- 
 paired her candor by touching her innocence. 
 Ill-treated, scolded, used brutally by the master 
 of the establishment, who was accustomed to 
 seduce his female servants, and who bore her ill- 
 will because she was neither old enough nor fit 
 to be his mistress, it was only from his wife that 
 she met with a little support and humanity. She 
 began to love this woman with a sort of animal 
 devotion, and to obey her with dog-like docility. 
 She performed all her commissions without either 
 reflection or conscience. She carried her letters 
 to her lovers, and was skilful in doing it. She 
 became nimble, brisk, ingeniously subtle in order 
 to pass, to slip, to glide among the awakened sus- 
 picions of her husband, and, without well know- 
 ing what she was doing, or what she was hiding, 
 she took a wicked little mischievous and monkey- 
 ish joy in vaguely telling herself that she was 
 working something of harm to the man and the 
 house which wrought so much harm to her. 
 
 There was also among her comrades an old 
 waiter of the name of Joseph, who protected her,
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 warned her of the unkind tricks that were plotted 
 against her, and, when she was present, checked 
 too great freedom of conversation by the author- 
 ity of his white hairs and with a paternal interest. 
 Nevertheless, Germinie's horror of the house in- 
 creased every day. One week her sisters were 
 obliged to take her back to the cafe by force. 
 
 A few days afterwards there was a great review 
 at the Champ de Mars, and the waiters had leave 
 for the day. Only Germinie and old Joseph re- 
 mained behind. Joseph was engaged in a little 
 dark room putting away dirty linen. He told 
 Germinie to come and help him. She went in, 
 shrieked, fell, wept, entreated, struggled, called 
 out despairingly - - the empty house continued 
 deaf. 
 
 When she came to herself, Germinie ran and 
 shut herself up in her own room. She was not 
 seen again during the day. On the morrow, when 
 Joseph wished to speak to her, and advanced 
 towards her, she recoiled in terror with a wild 
 gesture and in mad fright. For a long time, 
 whenever a man approached her she would in- 
 voluntarily draw back with a first, abrupt move- 
 ment, shuddering and nervous as though smitten 
 with the fear of a distracted animal seeking some 
 way of escape. Joseph, who had dreaded that 
 she would denounce him, allowed her to keep him 
 at a distance, and respected the frightful loathing 
 which she displayed towards him.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 She became pregnant. One Sunday she had 
 been to spend the evening with her sister, the door- 
 keeper; after some vomitings she felt ill. A doctor 
 who resided in the house was getting his key at 
 the lodge; the two elder sisters learned from him 
 the position of the youngest. (The intractable, 
 brutal revolts of pride characteristic of the honor 
 of the people, and the implacable severities of 
 religion, broke out on the part of the two women 
 into indignant anger. , Their shame turned to rage. 
 Germinie recovered Tier senses beneath their blows, 
 their abuse, the woundings of their hands, the out- 
 rages of their mouths. Her brother-in-law who 
 was there and who could not forgive her the money 
 that her journey had cost, looked at her in a 
 jeering way, with the sly, fierce joy of an Auverg- 
 nat, with a laugh which brought to the young 
 girl's cheeks even more color than the slaps of 
 her sisters. 
 
 She accepted the blows; she did not repel the 
 abuse. She did not seek either to defend or to 
 excuse herself. She gave no account of how things 
 had occurred, and of how little her own will entered 
 into her misfortune. She remained dumb; she 
 had a vague hope that they would kill her. On 
 her eldest sister asking her whether there had not 
 been violence, and telling her that there were com- 
 missaries of police and courts of law, she shut her 
 eyes to the horrible thought of displaying her 
 shame. For an instant only, when her mother's 
 
 C443
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 memory was flung in her teeth, she gave a look, 
 a flash from her eyes which the two women could 
 feel piercing their consciences; they remembered 
 that it was they who had placed her in this situa- 
 tion, had kept her in it, had exposed and almost 
 forced her to her shame. 
 
 The same evening Germinie's youngest sister 
 took her to a cashmere-darner in the Rue Saint- 
 Martin, with whom she lodged, and who, mad 
 almost about religion, was banner-bearer in an 
 association of the Virgin. She put her to sleep 
 with herself on a mattress on the floor, and having 
 her there within reach the whole night, she vented 
 her ancient and venomous jealousies upon her, 
 her resentment for the preferences and caresses 
 given to Germinie by her father and mother. 
 There were a thousand petty tortures, brutal or 
 hypocritical unkindnesses, kicks with which she 
 bruised her legs, shoves of her body with which 
 in the cold of winter she gradually pushed her 
 companion out of bed on to the tiled floor of the 
 Tireless room. During the day-time, the darner 
 took possession of Germinie, catechised her, lec- 
 tured her, and with her details of the tortures of 
 the life to come, gave her a terrible and material 
 fear of the hell whose flames she made her feel. 
 
 She lived there for four months shut up and not 
 allowed to go out. At the end of four months she 
 gave birth to a dead child. When she had re- 
 covered, she entered the service of a depilator in
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 the Rue Laflitte, where during the first few days 
 she experienced the joy of one released from 
 prison. 
 
 Two or three times when going backwards and 
 forwards she met old Joseph, who wished to marry 
 her, and ran after her. She fled from him, and the 
 old man never knew that he had been a father. 
 
 Nevertheless, Germinie pined away in her new 
 place. The house for which she had been engaged 
 as maid-of-all-work was what servants call a 
 "hole." Wasteful and a spendthrift, untidy and 
 penniless, as is the case with women in the un- 
 certain trades and problematic callings of Paris, 
 the depilator, who was nearly always hovering 
 between seizure for debt and going away, troubled 
 herself but little about the manner in which her 
 little maid was fed. She would frequently go out 
 for the whole day without leaving her anything 
 for dinner. The girl would satisfy herself as best 
 she could with pickles, with salads and vinegared 
 things such as beguile the appetite of young 
 women, with charcoal even, which she would 
 nibble with the depraved tastes and food caprices 
 belonging to her age and sex. 
 
 This diet, following upon an accouchement, 
 and adopted in a state of health that was weak 
 and required tonics, emaciated, exhausted, and 
 undermined the young girl. Her condition be- 
 came alarming. Her complexion came to be of 
 that whiteness which appears to turn green in
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 the open light. Her swollen eyes were encircled 
 with great, bluish shadows. Her discolored lips 
 assumed a tint as of faded violets. She was 
 rendered breathless by the slightest ascent, and 
 people near her were annoyed by the incessant 
 vibration coming from the arteries of her throat. 
 With slow feet, and a sinking frame, she would 
 drag herself along as though her weakness were 
 extreme, and she were bending beneath the bur- 
 den of life. With semi-dormant faculties and 
 senses, she would swoon for a mere trifle, such as 
 the fatigue of combing her mistress's hair. 
 
 She was quietly sinking into her grave when her 
 sister found her another situation with a whilom 
 actor, a retired comedian, living on the money 
 which had been brought him by the laughter of all 
 Paris. The worthy man was old, and had never 
 had any children. He took pity on the wretched 
 girl, thought about her, cared for her, nursed her. 
 He took her to the country. He walked with her 
 in the sunshine on the Boulevards, and felt him- 
 self revived on her arm. He was pleased to see 
 her cheerful. Often to amuse her, he would take 
 down a moth-eaten costume from his wardrobe, 
 and try to recall a fragment of a part which he 
 could no longer remember. The mere sight of 
 the little maid in her white cap was a ray of youth 
 coming back to him. The old age of the clown 
 leaned upon her with the good fellowship and 
 pleasure and childishness of a grandfather's heart. 
 
 [47H
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 But he died at the end of a few months; and 
 Germinie fell back to waiting upon kept women, 
 boarding-school mistresses, and shopkeepers in 
 the arcades, when the sudden death of a servant- 
 maid brought her into the service of Mademoiselle 
 de Varandeuil, then residing in the Rue Taitbout, 
 in the house in which Germinie's sister was con- 
 cierge. 
 
 483
 
 IV 
 
 ( ^T^HOSE who can see the end of the Catholic 
 Religion in the time at which we find our- 
 selves at present, do not know what power- 
 ful and infinite roots it still strikes into the depths 
 of the people. They do not know the secret and 
 delicate entwinings which it has for the woman of 
 the people. They do not know what confession, 
 what the confessor is for the poor souls of poor 
 women. In the priest who listens to her, and 
 whose voice comes softly to her, the woman of 
 toil and pain sees not so much the minister of 
 God, the judge of her sins, and the arbiter of her 
 salvation, as the confidant of her sorrows and the 
 friend of her miseries. However coarse she may 
 be, there is always in her somewhat of the woman's 
 inner nature, a feverish, quivering, sensitive 
 wounded something, a restlessness and longing 
 like that of a sick creature looking for the caresses 
 of speech, just as a child's little troubles call for 
 the crooning of a nurse. 
 
 She, no less than the woman of fashion, needs 
 relief in expansiveness, confidence, effusion. For 
 it is of the nature of her sex to wish to unbosom 
 and to learn. There exist within her things which 
 
 C493
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 she needs to say, and upon which she would fain 
 be questioned, pitied, comforted. She dreams of 
 pitiful interest and of sympathy for hidden feelings 
 of which she feels ashamed. Though her employ- 
 ers may be the best, the most familiar, the most 
 friendly, even, with the woman who serves them, 
 they will show her only those kindnesses which 
 are thrown to a domestic animal. They will be 
 anxious about the way in which she eats, or feels; 
 they will care for the animal in her, and that will 
 be all. They will never imagine that she can 
 suffer in any other place than body, and they will 
 never suppose in her the discomforts of soul, the 
 immaterial melancholies and sorrows for which 
 they themselves find relief by confiding in their 
 equals. 
 
 To them the woman who sweeps and cooks has 
 no ideas capable of rendering her sad or a dreamer, 
 and they never speak to her of her thoughts. To 
 whom, then, shall she carry them? To the priest, 
 who awaits them, requests them and receives them, 
 to the churchman who is a man of the world, a 
 superior, a gentleman well bred, and learned, who 
 speaks well, who is always gentle, accessible, 
 patient, attentive, and who seems to despise 
 nothing in the most humble soul, in the most 
 poorly dressed penitent. The priest alone is the 
 listener of the woman in the cap. He alone is 
 troubled about her secret sufferings, about what 
 disturbs her, and agitates her, and suddenly creates
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 in maid, no less than in mistress, a longing to 
 weep or the heaviness of a storm. He is the only 
 one who seeks her outpourings, who draws from 
 her what the irony of each day thrusts back, who 
 busies himself about her moral health; the only 
 one who lifts her higher than her material life, 
 the only one who moves her with words of tender- 
 ness, charity, hope, heavenly words such as 
 she has never heard in the mouths of the men of 
 her family-circle or the males of her own class. 
 
 After entering Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's 
 service, Germinie lapsed into profound devotion, 
 and ceased to love anything but the Church. 
 She gradually gave herself up to the sweetness of 
 confession, to the even, serene, low tones coming 
 from the priest in the shade, to consultations 
 which were like touchings with caressing words, 
 and from which she went forth refreshed, light, 
 delivered, happy, and with the pleasing sensation 
 and comfort of a dressing in all the tender, painful 
 and compressed parts of her being. 
 
 She did and could not unbosom herself any- 
 where but there. Her mistress had a certain 
 masculine roughness which repelled expansive- 
 ness. There was a bluntness in her address and 
 speech which drove back what Germinie would 
 have been willing to confide in her. It was her 
 nature to be brutal to all jeremiads which did not 
 proceed from a pain or a sorrow. Her virile kind- 
 ness was not compassionate to discomforts of the
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 imagination, to the torments which thought creates 
 for itself, to the cares which arise from woman's 
 nerves and the disturbances of her organism. 
 Germinie often found her callous, but the old 
 woman had only been bronzed by her time and 
 her life. The crust on her heart was as hard as 
 her body. Never herself complaining, she did not 
 like complaints around her. And in right of all 
 the tears she had not shed she detested childish 
 tears in grown people. 
 
 The confessional was soon a sort of delightful 
 and sacred trysting-place for Germinie's thoughts. 
 Every day it had her first remembrance and her 
 last prayer. Throughout the day she knelt there 
 in a dream, and while she worked it would come 
 back to her eyes its gold-filleted oak-wood, its 
 pediment of an angel's winged head, its green 
 curtain with the motionless folds, the shadowy 
 mystery of its two sides. It seemed to her that 
 now her whole life centred in it, and that all her 
 hours tended towards it. She lived through the 
 week only to reach the desired, promised, called- 
 for day. From Thursday, she was a prey to im- 
 patience; in the heightening of a delicious anguish 
 she could feel, as it were, the material approach 
 of the blissful Saturday evening, and when Satur- 
 day was come, her work hurried over, and made- 
 moiselle's little dinner hastily served, she would 
 make her escape and hasten to Notre Dame de 
 Lorette, going to repentance as people go to love.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Having dipped her fingers in the holy water, and 
 made a genuflexion, she passed over the flagstones 
 between the rows of chairs with the gliding move- 
 ment of a cat stealing over a carpet. Stooping, 
 almost creeping, she would advance noiselessly 
 through the shadow of the aisle, as far as the 
 veiled and mysterious confessional which she 
 recognized and beside which she waited for her 
 turn, lost in the emotion of waiting. 
 
 The young priest who confessed her lent him- 
 self to her frequent confessions. He grudged her 
 neither time, nor attention, nor charity. He 
 suffered her to talk at length, to relate in full to 
 him all her little affairs. He was indulgent to 
 her talkativeness, which was that of a troubled 
 soul, and allowed her to pour out her most trifling 
 griefs. He received the avowal of her anxieties, 
 her longings, her troubles; he repelled and scorned 
 nothing of the confidences of a servant who spoke 
 to him of all the delicate and secret matters of 
 her being, as they would be spoken of to a mother 
 or to a physician. 
 
 This priest was young. He was good. He had 
 lived the life of the world. A great sorrow had 
 driven him, a crushed man, to the robe with which 
 he wore the mourning of his heart. Something 
 of the man remained within him, and he listened 
 with sad pity to the unhappy heart of a servant 
 maid. He comprehended that Germinie had need 
 of him, that he was supporting her, strengthening 
 
 C533
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 her, saving her from herself, withdrawing her from 
 the temptations of her nature. He felt a melan- 
 choly sympathy for this soul so fully formed of 
 tenderness, for this young girl at once so ardent 
 and so weak, for this unhappy creature so uncon- 
 scious of herself, so given up to passion by her 
 whole heart and body, and arguing so completely 
 in her whole personality the destiny of tempera- 
 ment. Enlightened by the experience of his post, 
 he was astonished, he was alarmed sometimes, 
 at the flashes which came from her, the fire which 
 showed in her eyes at the love-transport of a 
 prayer, at the precipitation of her confessions, 
 at her recurrences to that scene of violence, 
 that scene in which her very sincere wish for 
 resistance appeared to the priest to have been 
 betrayed by a dizziness of the senses that was 
 stronger than she. 
 
 This religious fever lasted for several years, 
 during which Germinie lived concentrated, silent, 
 radiant, devoted to God, or at least she thought 
 so. By degrees, however, her confessor had 
 thought he could see that all her adorations turned 
 towards himself. From glances, from blushes, 
 from words which she no longer uttered to him, 
 and others which she was growing bold enough to 
 utter to him for the first time, he understood that 
 the devotion of his penitent was going astray and 
 becoming exalted by self-deception. She watched 
 him when the service was over, followed him into 
 
 C54H
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 the vestry, attached herself to him, and ran after 
 his cassock in the church. 
 
 The confessor tried to warn Germinie, and to 
 turn aside this amorous fervor from himself. He 
 became more reserved, and armed himself with 
 coldness. Distressed by this change, this indiffer- 
 ence, Germinie, embittered and wounded, acknowl- 
 edged to him one day at confession the feelings of 
 hatred which came to her against two young girls, 
 the penitents preferred by the Abbe. Then the 
 priest, dismissing her without any explanation, 
 sent her to another confessor. Germinie went 
 two or three times to confess herself to this other 
 confessor; then she went no more; then she even 
 ceased to think of going; and of all her religion 
 there remained in her thoughts but a certain far- 
 off sweetness, like the flavorless odor of extin- 
 guished incense. 
 
 She had reached this point when mademoiselle 
 fell ill. During the whole period of her sickness, 
 Germinie, unwilling to leave her, did not go to 
 mass. And the first Sunday on which mademoi- 
 selle, being completely recovered, had no further 
 need of her attentions, she was astonished to see 
 "her devotee" remain at home and not make 
 her escape to the church. 
 
 "Ah," she said to her, "so you are not going 
 to see your priests any more just now? What 
 have they been doing to you, eh?" 
 
 "Nothing," said Germinie.
 
 "'TT^HERE, mademoiselle! Look at me," said 
 Germinie. 
 
 It was some months later. She had 
 asked her mistress's permission to go that evening 
 to the dance at the wedding of her grocer's sister, 
 who had chosen her for a bridesmaid, and now 
 she was coming to show herself fully arrayed in 
 her low-necked muslin dress. 
 
 Mademoiselle raised her head from the old, 
 large print volume in which she was reading, took 
 off her spectacles, put them into the book to 
 mark the page, and said: 
 
 ''You, you pious creature, you at a dance! 
 Do you know what it is, my girl, it seems to me 
 perfectly absurd! You and the rigadoon upon 
 my word, the only thing you need now is the wish 
 to get married! I warn you I will not keep you. 
 I have no inclination to become a nurse to your 
 brats. Come a little nearer. Oh ho! why, upon 
 my word, Miss Show-all! We have been very 
 coquettish, as I can see, for some time past." 
 
 "Oh no, mademoiselle," Germinie tried to say. 
 
 "Don't tell me," resumed Mademoiselle de 
 Varandeuil following up her idea, "men are pretty
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 fellows! They will take everything you have to 
 give them . . . not to mention the blows they 
 give you. But marriage I am sure that this 
 idea of getting married runs in your brain when 
 you see the others. I'll wager it's that that gives 
 you such a face? Gracious goodness! now turn 
 round a little and let yourself be seen," said Made- 
 moiselle de Varandeuil in her tone of blunt caress; 
 and, laying her thin hands on the arms of her 
 easy chair, crossing her legs the one above the 
 other, and shaking the tip of her foot, she began 
 to inspect Germinie and her toilet. 
 
 "My word!" she said, after a few moments of 
 mute attention, "What, is it you? Then I have 
 never really looked at you properly. Good 
 gracious, yes ! Why why ! She mumbled 
 some further vague exclamations between her 
 teeth "Where the mischief did you get that 
 face of yours like the muzzle of a cat in love?" 
 she said at last; and she began to gaze at her. 
 
 Germinie was ugly. Her hair, which was of 
 dark chestnut, and appeared black, was frizzled 
 and twisted into intractable waves, into little 
 rough and rebellious locks, which had escaped 
 and raised themselves upon her head in spite of 
 the pomade up>on her smoothened band. Her 
 small, smooth, prominent forehead projected from 
 the shadows of the deep sockets in which her eyes 
 were almost unhealthily sunk and hollowed 
 small, watchful, twinkling eyes, which lessened
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 and kindled with a twinkling like a little girl's, 
 which softened and lit up their smile. These eyes 
 did not look either brown or blue; they were of 
 an indefinable and changeful grey, a grey which 
 was not a color, but a light. Emotion showed in 
 them in the fire of fever, pleasure in the lightning 
 of a sort of intoxication, and passion in phosphor- 
 escence. 
 
 Her short, high, broadly-perforated nose, with 
 open quivering nostrils, was one of those noses 
 of which the people say that it is raining inside. 
 A big blue vein swelled on one side of it at the 
 corner of the eye. The breadth of face character- 
 istic of the Lorraine stock appeared in her broad, 
 strong, pronounced cheek-bones, which were 
 covered with traces of small-pox. The greatest 
 misfortune in her face was the excessive distance 
 between the nose and mouth. This lack of pro- 
 portion gave an almost simian character to the 
 lower part of the countenance where a large 
 mouth, with white teeth, and full, flat, and, as it 
 were, crushed lips, smiled with a strange and 
 vaguely irritating smile. 
 
 Her low dress showed her neck, the upper part 
 of her breast, her shoulders, and the whiteness of 
 her back, contrasting with her sun-burnt face. 
 It was a lymphatic whiteness, the sickly and, at 
 the same time, angelic whiteness of flesh that 
 does not live. She had allowed her arms to hang 
 down by her side, round, smooth arms with pretty
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 dimpled hollows at the elbow. Her wrists were 
 delicate; her hands, which had no look of work, 
 had a woman's nails. And gently, with lazy 
 grace, she suffered her indolent waist to round 
 and play, a waist that could be held within a 
 garter, and that rendered still more refined to the 
 eye the projection of the hips, and the rebound 
 of the curves swelling the dress, an impossible 
 waist, ridiculous in its slenderness, and delightful 
 as is everything in woman which possesses the 
 monstrosity of littleness. 
 
 From this ugly woman there was shed a harsh 
 and mysterious seductiveness. Light and shade, 
 conflicting with and shattering each other in her 
 face with its abundant hollows and projections, 
 imparted to it that radiance of voluptuousness 
 which one who paints from love dashes into the 
 rough sketch of his mistress's portrait. Every- 
 thing about her, her mouth, her eyes, her very 
 ugliness, was a provocation and solicitation. An 
 aphrodisiac charm issued from her, attacking, and 
 attaching itself to, the opposite sex. She released 
 desire, and created the commotion that it brings. 
 A sensual temptation sprang naturally and in- 
 voluntarily from her, from her gestures, from her 
 gait, from the slightest of her movements, from 
 the air on which her body had left one of its undu- 
 lations. Beside her, a man felt that he was near 
 one of those disturbing and disquieted creatures, 
 burning with the disease of love, and communi- 
 
 C593
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 eating it to others, whose faces recur to men at 
 unsated hours, tormenting their heavy midnight 
 thoughts, haunting their nights, and violating 
 their dreams. 
 
 In the middle of Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's 
 examination, Germinie stooped down, bent over 
 her, and kissed her hand with eager kisses. 
 
 "Well --well enough licking," said made- 
 moiselle, "you would wear out the skin with your 
 mode of kissing. Come, be off, amuse yourself, 
 and try not to come in too late don't wear 
 yourself out." 
 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil was left alone. 
 She put her elbows on her knees, gazed into the 
 fire, and dealt some blows to the fuel \vith the 
 tongs. Then, as she was w r ont to do when greatly 
 pre-occupied, with the flat of her hand she gave the 
 back of her neck two or three sharp little blows 
 which made her black head-band all awry.
 
 VI 
 
 IN talking matrimony to Germinie, Made- 
 moiselle de Varandeuil touched the cause of 
 Germinie's complaint. She laid her hand 
 upon her trouble. The irregularity of her maid's 
 temper, the vexation of her life, the languors, 
 the emptiness, and the discontent of her nature, 
 came from that disease which medicine calls 
 "virgin's melancholy." The suffering of her four 
 and twenty years was the ardent, exalted, poign- 
 ant desire for marriage, for that thing too holily 
 honorable for her, and to her apparently impos- 
 sible in the face of the confession which her wom- 
 an's probity must make of her fall, of her shame. 
 Losses, family misfortunes, came to tear her from 
 her thoughts. 
 
 Her brother-in-law, the husband to her sister 
 the concierge, had had the dream of the Auver- 
 gnats: he had sought to unite the gains of a trade 
 in bric-a-brac to the profits of his concierge's 
 lodge. He had begun modestly with one of those 
 street-stalls that hang about the doors of houses 
 where sales on account of death are taking place, 
 and on which, ranged on blue paper, may be seen 
 plated candlesticks, ivory napkin rings, colored 
 
 [613
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 lithographs framed with gold lace upon a black 
 ground, and three or four odd volumes by BufTon. 
 What he made by the plated candlesticks in- 
 toxicated him. He hired a dark shop opposite an 
 umbrella-mender's, in an arcade, and there began 
 to trade in the curiosity which comes and goes in 
 the lower halls of the Auction Rooms. He sold 
 cock-patterned plates, pieces of the shoe belong- 
 ing to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and water-colored 
 drawings by Ballue, signed VVatteau. In this busi- 
 ness he ran through what he had made, and then 
 went into debt for some thousands of francs. 
 
 His wife, in order to assist the housekeeping a 
 little, and to try to get out of debt, applied for, 
 and obtained a situation as attendant at the 
 Theatre-Historique. She had her door looked 
 after in the evening by her sister, the dressmaker, 
 went to bed at one o'clock, and got up at five. 
 After a few months she contracted pleurisy in the 
 corridors of the theatre; it lingered and carried her 
 off at the end of six weeks. The poor woman left 
 a little three-year-old daughter ill of measles, 
 which had assumed the most deadly form in the 
 stench of the garret and in the air wherein the 
 child had been breathing her mother's death for 
 more than a month. The father had left for his 
 native place to try to borrow money. There he 
 married again, and nothing more was heard of him. 
 
 On leaving her sister's funeral, Germinie has- 
 tened to visit an old woman who lived by those 
 
 C62H
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 curious industries, which in Paris prevent Misery 
 from dying outright of hunger. The old woman 
 followed several occupations. Sometimes she cut 
 horse-hair into equal lengths for brushes, some- 
 times she divided pieces of ginger-bread. When 
 this work was at a standstill, she would cook for 
 petty itinerant traders, and wash the faces of 
 their children. During Lent she rose at four 
 o'clock in the morning, and went to Notre-Dame 
 to procure a chair, which she retailed, when the 
 people arrived, for ten or twelve sous. To warm 
 herself in the hole in which she lived in the Rue 
 Saint- Victor, she would go at dusk and secretly 
 tear the bark off the trees at the Luxembourg. 
 Germinie, who knew her from giving her the 
 kitchen crusts every week, hired her a servant's 
 room on the sixth floor of the house, and installed 
 her in it with the little girl. She did this on a 
 first impulse, and without reflection. Her sister's 
 harshness at the time of her pregnancy she re- 
 membered no longer; she had not even found it 
 necessary to forgive it. 
 
 Germinie had now but one thought: her niece. 
 She wanted to revive her, and prevent her from 
 dying by dint of taking care of her. She made her 
 escape every moment from mademoiselle's house, 
 climbed the stairs four at a time to the sixth floor, 
 ran to kiss the child, gave it some tisane, settled 
 it in its bed, looked at it, and went down again 
 out of breath, her color heightened with pleasure.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Germinie lavished everything upon the little girl; 
 attention, caresses, the heart-breath with which 
 one reanimates a little creature ready to die away, 
 consultations, doctor's visits, costly medicines, 
 the remedies of the rich she gave her all. Her 
 wages went in this way. For nearly a year she 
 made her take some broth every morning, and, 
 given to sleep as she was, she used to get up at 
 five o'clock to make it, awaking of her own accord 
 like a mother. 
 
 At last the child was saved, when one morning 
 Germinie received a visit from her sister, the 
 dressmaker, who had married a mechanic two 
 or three years before, and now came to bid good- 
 bye: her husband was going with some comrades 
 who had just been hired for Africa. She was 
 leaving with him, and she proposed to Germinie 
 to take the little girl and bring it up yonder with 
 her own child. They would take charge of it, 
 and Germinie would only have to pay for the 
 journey. It was a separation which must in any 
 case be faced on account of Germinie's mistress. 
 Moreover she, too, was her aunt. And she added 
 words upon words in order to obtain the child, 
 by means of whom she and her husband expected, 
 when once in Africa, to move Germinie's pity, 
 to trick her out of her wages, to swindle her in 
 heart and purse. 
 
 To separate from her niece was a sore trial to 
 Germinie. She had set something of her own
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 existence upon the child. She had bound her- 
 self to her by anxieties and sacrifices. She had 
 wrestled with sickness for her, and had rescued 
 her from it: the little girl's life was a miracle of 
 her own working. Nevertheless, she understood 
 that she could never take her into mademoiselle's 
 house; that mademoiselle, at her age, with the 
 weariness belonging to her years, and the need of 
 quiet which old people feel, would never endure 
 the constantly active noise of a child. More- 
 over, the little girl's presence in the house would be 
 a pretext for gossip, and would make the whole 
 street talk. People would say that she was her 
 daughter. Germinie confided in her mistress. 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil knew all. She knew 
 that Germinie had taken her niece; but she 
 had pretended ignorance of the fact; she had 
 wished to shut her eyes and see nothing, that 
 she might be able to permit everything. She 
 advised Germinie to entrust her niece to her 
 sister, showing her all the impossibility of keep- 
 ing her, and giving her money to pay for the 
 journey of the family. 
 
 The departure was an anguish to Germinie. 
 She found herself isolated and unoccupied. Hav- 
 ing lost the child, she had nothing left to love; 
 her heart grew weary, and in the emptiness of 
 soul which she experienced without her little 
 one, she turned again to religion, and once more 
 took her tenderness to the church.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 At the end of three months she received the 
 news of her sister's death. The husband, who 
 belonged to the tribe of whining, blubbering work- 
 men, gave her in his letter, amidst coarse, emo- 
 tional phrases, and strings of endearments, a dis- 
 tressing picture of his position -- the burial to 
 be paid for, fever rendering him unable to work, 
 two children of tender age, without counting the 
 "little one," and a household with no woman 
 in it to heat the soup. Germinie cried over the 
 letter; then her thoughts began to live in that 
 house, beside the poor man, among the poor 
 children, in that frightful country of Africa; and 
 a dim desire to devote herself began to awake 
 within her. Other letters followed in which, while 
 thanking her for her assistance, her brother-in- 
 law gave his misery, his forsaken condition, his 
 complete misfortunes, a still more dramatic color- 
 ing, the coloring which the people give to things 
 with its recollections of the Boulevard du Crime, 
 and its scraps of unwholesome reading. Once 
 caught by the humbug of this misfortune, Ger- 
 minie could not free herself from it. She thought 
 that she could hear childish cries calling her 
 from over yonder. She was buried, absorbed in 
 a resolution and design to go. She was pursued 
 by this idea, and by the word Africa, which she 
 turned over and over secretly in her heart, with- 
 out speaking a syllable. Mademoiselle de Va- 
 randeuil, seeing her so thoughtful and sad, asked
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 her what was the matter, but in vain: Germinie 
 would not speak. 
 
 She was teased and tortured between what 
 seemed to her a duty, and what appeared to her 
 an act of ingratitude, between her mistress and 
 her sisters' blood. She thought that she could 
 not leave mademoiselle. And then she told her- 
 self that God would not forsake her family. She 
 looked at the rooms, saying to herself: "Still I 
 must go!'* And then she was afraid that made- 
 moiselle might be ill when she was no longer there. 
 Another servant! At the thought of this she was 
 seized with jealousy, and imagined that she could 
 already see some one robbing her of her mistress. 
 At other times, her religious notions impelling 
 her to notions of immolation, she was quite ready 
 to sacrifice her own existence to that of her brother- 
 in-law. She wished to go and live with a man 
 whom she detested, with whom she had always 
 been unfriendly, who had almost killed her sister 
 with sorrow, whom she knew to be drunken and 
 brutal; and all that she expected from him, all 
 that she dreaded from him, the certainty and the 
 fear of all that she would have to suffer, served 
 but to exalt her, to inflame her, to incite her to 
 the sacrifice with increased impatience and ardor. 
 
 Often it would all subside in an instant; at a 
 word or a gesture from mademoiselle, Germinie 
 would return to herself and be quite different 
 again. She would feel herself wholly and for ever
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 attached to her mistress, and experience a kind 
 of horror at the mere thought of separating her 
 life from her own. She struggled on in this way 
 for two years. Then one fine day she heard by 
 chance that her niece had died a few weeks after 
 her sister: her brother-in-law had concealed the 
 death from her in order to have a hold upon her, 
 and to attract her with her little savings to Africa. 
 At this revelation Germinie lost all her illusion, 
 and was cured at a single stroke. She scarcely 
 remembered that she had wished to go. 
 
 C683
 
 VII 
 
 ABOUT this time a small dairy with no custom 
 at the end of the street changed hands in 
 consequence of a sale of the business by a 
 judicial decree. The shop was restored. It was 
 repainted. The front windows were adorned with 
 inscriptions in yellow letters. Pyramids of the 
 Colonial Company's chocolate, and flowered bowls 
 of coffee, with little liqueur glasses at intervals, 
 furnished the shelves in the window. At the door 
 shone the sign of a copper milk jug intersected 
 in the middle. 
 
 The new dairy-woman, who was trying to 
 revive the establishment in this way, was a per- 
 son of fifty years of age, brimming over with cor- 
 pulence and still preserving some remnant of the 
 beauty that was half sunken beneath her fat. 
 It was said in the neighborhood that she had set 
 up with the money of an old gentleman, whose 
 servant she had been until his death in her own 
 part of the country near Langres for it hap- 
 pened that she was Germinie's fellow-country- 
 woman, belonging not to the same village, but 
 to a small place beside it, and without having 
 ever met or seen each other, she and Mademoiselle
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 de Varandcuil's maid knew each other by name, 
 and were linked together by common acquaintances 
 and by memories of the same place. 
 
 The big woman was complimentary, mealy- 
 mouthed, caressing. She said: "My sweet" to 
 everybody, spoke in a small voice, and played 
 the child with the doleful languor characteristic 
 of corpulent people. She detested big words, 
 she blushed and was scared at a trifle. She loved 
 secrets, made everything a matter of confidence, 
 talked gossip, and always spoke in your ear. 
 Her life was spent in tattling and lamentation. 
 She pitied others, she pitied herself; she be- 
 wailed her misfortunes and her stomach. When 
 she ate too much she would say dramatically: 
 "I am going to die." Nothing could have been 
 more pathetic than her fits of indigestion. Her 
 nature was one that was perpetually moved and 
 tearful; she wept indifferently for a beaten horse, 
 for a deceased acquaintance, or for soured milk. 
 She wept over the various items in the news- 
 papers, and she wept to see the passengers go by. 
 
 Germinie was quickly beguiled and moved to 
 pity by this wheedling, constantly-affected dairy- 
 woman, who invited the expansiveness of others 
 and who appeared so tender-hearted. At the end 
 of three months scarcely anything went into 
 mademoiselle's house that did not come from 
 Mother Jupillon's establishment. Germinie pro- 
 vided herself with everything, or nearly every-
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 thing, there. She spent hours in the shop. Once 
 there, she found it difficult to go away, she 
 would remain, and be unable to rise. A mechani- 
 cal slackness detained her. She would go on talk- 
 ing at the door, so as not to be gone yet. She felt 
 herself attached to the dairy-woman's house by 
 the invisible charm possessed by places to which 
 we constantly return, and which in the end clasp 
 us like things that love us. Then the shop, for 
 her, meant the three dogs, the three ugly dogs, 
 that belonged to Madame Jupillon. She had 
 them always on her knee; she scolded them, she 
 kissed them, she spoke to them; and when she 
 became warm from their heat, she would feel at 
 the bottom of her heart satisfaction like that of 
 an animal rubbing itself against its young. Fur- 
 ther, the shop meant to her all the stories of the 
 neighborhood, the meeting-place of gossip, the 
 news of a bill left unpaid by one or the carriage 
 full of flowers brought to another a place that 
 was watchful of everything, and into which every- 
 thing entered, even to the lace wrapper going into 
 town on the arm of a servant-maid. 
 
 In time, everything served to tie her there. 
 Her intimacy with the dairy-woman became closer 
 through all the mysterious ties belonging to the 
 friendships of the women of the people, through 
 the continual chattering, the daily exchange of 
 the trifles of life, the conversations for the sake 
 of talking, the recurrence of the same "Good-
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 morning" and "Good-evening," the sharing of 
 caresses among the same animals, the sleeping 
 side by side and chair against chair. The shop 
 finally became a captivating place to her, a place 
 wherein her thoughts, her speech, her very limbs 
 and body, found marvelous comfort. Happiness 
 with her came to be that time in the evening 
 when, seated drowsily in a straw arm-chair be- 
 side Mother Jupillon asleep with her spectacles 
 on her nose, she nursed the dogs as they lay 
 rolled into a ball in the skirt of her dress; and 
 while the expiring lamp grew dim on the counter, 
 she would remain there, suffering her gaze to 
 lose itself and gently die away with her thoughts, 
 in the back part of the shop, on the triumphal arch 
 made of snails' shells bound together with old 
 moss, beneath the arch of which there stood a 
 little copper figure of Napoleon.
 
 VIII 
 
 MADAME JUPILLON, who professed that 
 she had been married, and signed herself 
 "Widow Jupillon," had a son. He was 
 then a child. She had placed him at Saint- 
 Nicolas, that great establishment for religious 
 education where for thirty francs a month rudi- 
 mentary instruction and a trade are given to 
 children of the people, and to many natural 
 children among them. Germinie got into the 
 habit of accompanying Madame Jupillon on 
 Thursdays when she went to see Bibi. This 
 visit came to be a recreation to her, and some- 
 thing to be looked forward to. She would hurry 
 the mother, be the first to reach the omnibus, 
 which she was well pleased to enter with a big 
 basket of provisions, upon which she crossed her 
 arms during the journey. 
 
 Thereupon Mother Jupillon came to have a 
 sore on her leg, an anthrax, which prevented her 
 from walking for nearly eighteen months. Ger- 
 minie went to Saint-Nicolas alone, and as she 
 was ready and quick to attach herself to others, 
 she busied herself about the child as though he 
 were in some way connected with her. She never 
 
 C733
 
 CERMINIF. LACERTEUX 
 
 missed a Thursday, and always came with her 
 hands full of the leavings of the week, cakes, 
 fruits and sweetmeats which she used to buy. 
 
 She would kiss the urchin, be anxious about 
 his health, feel whether he had his knitted waist- 
 coat under his blouse, think that he was too red 
 from running, wipe his face with her handker- 
 chief, and make him show her the soles of his 
 shoes to see whether they had not holes in them. 
 She would ask him whether he gave satisfaction, 
 whether he did his tasks well, whether he had 
 many good marks. She spoke to him of his mother, 
 told him to love the Lord, and walked with him in 
 the court until the two o'clock bell rang, the child 
 giving her his arm and feeling quite proud of being 
 with a woman better dressed than the majority of 
 those who came there, a woman dressed in silk. 
 
 He wanted to learn the flageolet, and it cost 
 only five francs a month. But his mother would 
 not give them to him. Germinie secretly brought 
 him the hundred sous every month. It was hu- 
 miliating to him to wear the uniform of his little 
 blouse when he went out to walk, and on the two 
 or three occasions in the year when he came to 
 see his mother. One year, on his birthday, Ger- 
 minie opened up a big bundle before him. She 
 had had a tunic made for him. In the whole 
 school there were scarcely twenty of his compan- 
 ions whose families were sufficiently well off to 
 allow them to wear one.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 She spoiled him in this way for some years, 
 never letting him suffer for the want of anything, 
 flattering in a poor child 'the whims and vanities 
 of a rich one, and softening for him the privations 
 and hardships of that professional school which 
 trains for a workman's life, wears a blouse, eats 
 from a plate of brown crockery-ware, and in its 
 virile apprenticeship tempers the people for toil. 
 Meanwhile the boy was growing up. Germinie 
 did not perceive it; in her eyes he was still a 
 child. From habit she always kissed him. 
 
 One day she was summoned before the Abbe 
 who conducted the school. He spoke to her of 
 sending young Jupillon away. It was a matter 
 of some bad books which had been found in his 
 hands. Germinie, trembling at the thought of 
 the blows which awaited the child at his mother's 
 house, prayed, entreated, implored, and finally 
 obtained the offender's pardon from the Abbe. 
 Going down again, she tried to scold Jupillon, 
 but at the first word of her lecture Bibi suddenly 
 gave her to her face a look and a smile in which 
 remained nothing of the child that he had been 
 yesterday. She cast down her eyes, and it was 
 she who blushed. A fortnight passed without 
 another visit from her to Saint-Nicolas.
 
 IX 
 
 AT the time when young Jupillon left school, 
 the maid-servant of a kept woman who 
 lived below Mademoiselle used sometimes to 
 come to spend the evening at Madame Jupillon's 
 with Germinie. A native of that Grand Duchy of 
 Luxembourg, which provides Paris with cab- 
 drivers and waiting-maids for high class prosti- 
 tutes, she was what is popularly called a "great 
 trollop"; she had the look of a mare, the brows 
 of a water-carrier, and wanton eyes. She soon 
 began to come every evening. She paid for cakes 
 and glasses of liqueurs for everybody, amused 
 herself by making young Jupillon romp, indulged 
 in horse-play with him, sat down upon him, 
 twitted him with being handsome, treated him as 
 a child, and joked him coarsely for not being yet 
 a man. The young fellow, pleased and elated by 
 these attentions from the first woman who ever 
 took any notice of him, soon allowed his prefer- 
 ence for Adele, as the new-comer was called, to 
 be seen. 
 
 Germinie was passionately jealous. Jealousy 
 was the foundation of her nature; it formed the 
 dregs and bitterness of her tenderness. She
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 wished to have those whom she loved all to her- 
 self to hold them in absolute possession. She 
 required that they should love none but herself. 
 She could not allow them to divert and give to 
 others the smallest particle of their affection; 
 from the time that she had merited it, this affec- 
 tion was no longer theirs; they were no longer 
 masters of its disposal, She detested the people 
 whom her mistress seemed to receive more warmly 
 than the rest, and to welcome as intimates. By 
 her ill-tempered demeanor and cross looks she had 
 estranged and almost driven from the house two 
 or three of mademoiselle's old friends whose 
 visits distressed her, as though the old ladies were 
 coming to steal something from the rooms to 
 take some portion of her mistress away from her. 
 People whom she had loved had become odious 
 to her: she had not found that they loved her 
 enough, and she hated them for all the love that 
 she would fain have had from them. Altogether, 
 her heart was most exacting and despotic. Giving 
 all, she asked for all. At the smallest sign of cool- 
 ing, or of division on the part of those upon whom 
 she had bestowed her affection, she would break 
 out and prey upon herself, passing nights in tears, 
 and holding the world in execration. 
 
 On seeing this woman establishing herself in 
 the shop, and growing familiar with the young 
 man, all Germinie's jealousies were roused and 
 turned into rage. Her hatred rose and rebelled 
 
 C773
 
 CERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 with her disgust against this abandoned, shame- 
 less woman, who might be seen at table with 
 soldiers on Sundays on the outer Boulevards, and 
 whose face on Mondays bore the signs of her 
 dissipation on the previous day. She did every- 
 thing to induce Madame Jupillon to banish her, 
 but she was one of the best customers of the dairy, 
 and the dairy-woman, with all gentleness, refused 
 to drive her away. Germinie had recourse to the 
 son, and told him she was an unfortunate. But 
 this only served to attach the young man to this 
 ugly woman, whose evil reputation flattered him. 
 Moreover, he had the cruel mischievousness of 
 youth, and increased his amiability towards her, 
 merely to see "the mug" that Germinie made, 
 and to enjoy distressing her. Soon, Germinie per- 
 ceived that this woman had more serious inten- 
 tions than she had at first imagined; she under- 
 stood what she wanted with the child --for the 
 young man, with his seventeen years, was still a 
 child to her. 
 
 From that time she dogged their footsteps; 
 she never quitted them, she never left them alone 
 for a moment. She made one at their parties, at 
 the theatre, and in the country, shared all their 
 walks was always there, present and trouble- 
 some, striving to restrain the servant, and to 
 restore her to modesty with a whispered word: 
 "A child! are you not ashamed?" she would say 
 to her. The other would give a great laugh, as 
 
 C783
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 though it were a good joke. When they left the 
 play, animated, heated by the fever of the per- 
 formance and the excitement of the theatre, or 
 when they were returning from the country, 
 charged with a whole day's sunshine, intoxicated 
 by the sky and open air, lashed by the wine at 
 dinner, and indulging in such playfulness and 
 freedom as are encouraged at night by the exalta- 
 tions of pleasure, by the feasted joyousness and 
 the mirthful senses of the woman of the people, 
 Germinie sought to be ever between Jupillon and 
 the maid. She tried every moment to break their 
 arm-linked amours, to untie them, to uncouple 
 them. Unweariedly would she separate them, 
 and withdraw them continually from each other. 
 She would place her own person between those 
 two who sought to be together. She would glide 
 between the gestures which sought for mutual 
 contact; she would glide between those presented 
 lips and offered mouths. 
 
 But she was herself touched and stricken by 
 all that she prevented. She could feel the brushing 
 of the hands that she separated, of the caresses 
 which she checked midway, and which were de- 
 luded in straying upon herself. The sigh and 
 breathing of the kisses that she parted would 
 pass across her cheek. Without wishing it, and 
 disturbed by a certain horror, she mingled in 
 embraces and partook of desires in the friction 
 and struggle which were every day diminishing 
 
 C793
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 about her person the young man's respect and 
 reserve. 
 
 It happened one day that she was not so strong 
 against herself as she had hitherto been. This 
 time she did not shrink so abruptly from his ad- 
 vances. Jupillon felt that she was hesitating. 
 Germinie felt it better than he did; but she had 
 exhausted effort and torment, and was worn out 
 with suffering. The love that the other woman 
 had felt, which she had turned away from Jupillon, 
 had slowly entered into her own heart. Now it 
 was buried there, and bleeding with jealousy, she 
 found herself weakened, unresisting, swooning 
 like one mortally \vounded in presence of the 
 happiness that was coming to her. 
 
 Nevertheless, she repelled the attempts, the 
 liberties of the young man, without saying any- 
 thing, without speaking. She did not dream of 
 belonging to him in another fashion, or of sur- 
 rendering herself more fully. She lived on the 
 thoughts of love, believing that she would always 
 do so, and in the rapture which uplifted her soul, 
 she drove away her fall and repulsed her senses. 
 She continued quivering and pure absorbed 
 and suspended in abysses of tenderness, tasting 
 and desiring nothing of her lover but his caress, 
 as though her heart had been formed only for the 
 sweetness of kisses.
 
 X 
 
 THIS happy and unsatisfied love produced a 
 singular physiological phenomenon in Ger- 
 minie's physical being. It appeared as 
 though the passion circulating within her renewed 
 and transformed her lymphatic temperament. She 
 no longer seemed to draw life, as formerly, drop by 
 drop, from a miserly spring; a full and generous 
 force flowed in her veins; the fire of a rich blood 
 coursed through her body. She felt herself filled 
 with warm health, and the joys of existence swept 
 through her, beating their wings within her breast 
 like birds in the sunshine. 
 
 A marvellous animation had come to her. The 
 miserable, nervous energy which had sustained 
 her, had given place to a healthy activity, to a 
 clamorous, moving, overflowing liveliness. She 
 knew her former weaknesses no more, her depres- 
 sion, her prostration, her drowsiness, her nerveless 
 indolence. Her mornings once so heavy and tor- 
 pid were now brisk, bright awakenings opening 
 up in an instant to the cheerfulness of the day. 
 She dressed herself playfully, and in haste; her 
 nimble fingers moved of their own accord, and she 
 was astonished at being so brisk, so full of spirits
 
 GERMIN1E LACERTEUX 
 
 during those fainting hours in the early morning, 
 when she had formerly so often felt her heart upon 
 her lips. And throughout the day there was with 
 her the same bodily good-humor, the same cheer- 
 fulness of movement. She must be constantly 
 going, walking, moving, working, spending her- 
 self. At times, what she had lived through ap- 
 peared to her to be extinguished, the natural sen- 
 sations which she had hitherto experienced shrank 
 from her into the remoteness of a dream, or the 
 depth of a slumbering recollection. The past was 
 behind her, as though she had passed through it 
 beneath the veil of a fainting-fit, and with the 
 unconsciousness of a somnambulist. It was the 
 first time that she experienced the feeling, the 
 impression at once harsh and soft, violent and 
 divine, of the play of life breaking forth in its 
 plenitude, its regularity and its power. 
 
 She went up and down stairs for a trifle. At a 
 word from Mademoiselle she would clatter down 
 the five flights. When she was seated, her feet 
 danced upon the floor. She scrubbed, cleaned, 
 arranged, beat, shook, washed without rest or 
 truce, and was always at work, filling the rooms 
 with her coming and going, and the incessant 
 bustle of her person. 
 
 "Good gracious!" said her mistress, when deaf- 
 ened as by the noise of a child, "Germinie! how 
 you do turn things upside down, don't you?" 
 
 One day on going into Germinie's kitchen,
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Mademoiselle saw a little, earth in a cigar-box 
 standing in the sink. 
 
 "What is that?" she said to her. 
 
 "It is some grass that I have planted to look 
 at," said Germinie. 
 
 "So you have grown fond of grass, have you? 
 AH you want now is to have some canaries!"
 
 XI 
 
 AFTER a few months, Germinie's life, her 
 entire life, belonged to the dairy-woman. 
 Mademoiselle's service was not very re- 
 strictive and took up very little of her time. A 
 whiting, a cutlet, and there was nothing further 
 to cook. In the evening, Mademoiselle might 
 have kept her with her for company, but she pre- 
 ferred to send her to walk, to turn her out, 
 make her take a little air and recreation. She 
 only required her to be back at ten o'clock to 
 assist her when going to bed, and she would even 
 undress herself and go to bed very well alone when 
 Germinie was late. All the hours which her mis- 
 tress left her, Germinie came to live through and 
 spend in the shop. She used now to go down to 
 the dairy in the morning at the taking down of 
 the shutters, which most frequently she brought 
 in herself, have her coffee and milk, remain until 
 nine o'clock, go up again for Mademoiselle's choc- 
 olate, and find means to return two or three 
 times between breakfast and dinner, lingering, 
 and talking in the back-shop for the smallest 
 errand. 
 
 "What a chatter-box you are!" Mademoiselle
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 would say to her, with a scolding voice and a 
 smiling look. 
 
 At half-past five, when the little dinner had been 
 cleared away, she would go down the stairs four 
 at a time, establish herself at Mother Jupillon's, 
 wait there for ten o'clock, climb the five stories 
 again, and in five minutes undress her mistress, 
 who, while acquiescing, would be somewhat as- 
 tonished at seeing her in such a hurry to go to 
 bed. She could recall the time when Germinie 
 had a passion for sleeping in one easy-chair after 
 another, and was never willing to go up to her 
 room. The extinguished candle on Mademoiselle's 
 night-table was still smoking when Germinie again 
 found herself at the dairy-woman's, this time to 
 remain until twelve or one o'clock. Often she 
 left only when a policeman, seeing the light, 
 knocked at the shutters and obliged them to 
 close. 
 
 That she might be always there, and have the 
 right of being there, that she might incrust her- 
 self in this shop, and never take her eyes off the 
 man of her love, but brood over him, and look after 
 him and keep company with him, she became the 
 servant of the house. She swept the shop, did 
 the cooking for the mother, and made the porridge 
 for the dogs. She waited on the son, she made his 
 bed, she brushed his clothes, she polished his shoes, 
 happy and proud to touch what he had touched, 
 moved to lay her hand where he had laid his body,
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 ready to kiss the mud that came from him on the 
 leather of his boots! 
 
 She did the work, she kept shop, she served the 
 customers, Madame Jupillon relying for every- 
 thing upon her; and while the brave girl was 
 working and sweating, the big woman, assuming 
 majestic and lady-like leisure at her door, stranded 
 on a chair across the pavement, and inhaling the 
 freshness of the street, fingered the delicious money 
 of her profits again and again in the shopkeeper's 
 pocket beneath her apron, the money which comes 
 from selling, and which sounds so sweet in the ear 
 of the petty tradespeople of Paris that the retired 
 shopkeeper is at first quite melancholy at no longer 
 having it jingling and fidgeting beneath his fingers.
 
 XII 
 
 WHEN the spring had come, Germinie would 
 say almost every evening to Jupillon: 
 
 "Suppose we were to go to the begin- 
 ning of the fields?*' 
 
 Jupillon would put on his red and black checked 
 flannel shirt, and his black velvet cap, and they 
 would set out for what the people of the neighbor- 
 hood called "the beginning of the fields." 
 
 They went up the Clignancourt Road, and with 
 the tide of suburban Parisians hastening on their 
 way to drink in a little air, walked towards that 
 great stretch of sky which rose straight from the 
 pavement between the two rows of houses on the 
 top of the ascent, and showed quite clear when an 
 omnibus was not passing out of it. The heat sub- 
 sided, the houses had no longer any sun except 
 on the ridges of the roofs and the chimneys. As 
 from a great door opening upon the country, there 
 came from the end of the street and from the sky 
 a breath of space and freedom. 
 
 At the Chateau-Rouge they came across the 
 first tree and the first leaves. Then, in the Rue 
 du Chateau, the horizon opened up before them 
 in dazzling sweetness. The country stretched
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 gleaming and indefinite in the distance, lost in 
 the golden dust of seven o'clock. Everything 
 quivered in the powder of light, which the light 
 leaves behind it on the verdure which it effaces, 
 and on the houses which it colors rose. 
 
 They descended, following the pavement black- 
 ened with games of hop-scotch, past long walls 
 over which a branch hung here and there, past 
 lines of houses, broken and interspaced with 
 gardens; to their left rose tree- tops filled with 
 light, clusters of leaves pierced by the setting sun 
 which traced stripes of fire on the bars of the iron 
 gratings. After the gardens, they passed the 
 palings, the enclosures for sale, the buildings 
 raised by anticipation in the newly-planned streets 
 and now presenting the toothing at the sides to 
 empty space, the walls covered at foot with heaps 
 of bottle-ends, the large smooth-plastered houses 
 with windows encumbered by cages and linen, 
 and with the Y of a plumb-line on every story, 
 the entrances to plots of ground looking like farm- 
 yards, with little hillocks in them browsed over 
 by goats. 
 
 Here and there they stopped and smelled the 
 flowers, the scent of some sorry lilac growing in a 
 narrow yard. Germinie would pluck a leaf as she 
 passed, and nibble it. 
 
 The mad, merry, circular flight of swallows re- 
 volved and grew complicated over her head. The 
 birds called to one another. The sky answered 
 
 881]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 the cages. She could hear everything singing 
 around her, and with happy eyes she watched the 
 women at the windows in their dressing-jackets, 
 the men in the little gardens in their shirt-sleeves, 
 the mothers on the door-steps with little brats 
 between their knees. 
 
 The descent came to an end, the pavement 
 ceased, the street was succeeded by a broad, white, 
 chalky, dusty road, formed of rubbish, fragments 
 of plaster, and crumbled lime and brick, and 
 broken up and furrowed by ruts with shining edges, 
 made by the iron on big wheels, and the crushing 
 of carts laden with free-stone. Then began that 
 which comes when Paris ends, and which grows 
 where grass will not grow, one of those arid land- 
 scapes which great towns create around them, 
 that first zone of suburb intra muros, where nature 
 is withered, the earth worn out, and the country 
 strewn with oyster-shells. There was now nothing 
 but half-enclosed plots, showing carts and drays 
 with the shafts pointing skywards in the air, yards 
 for the sawing of stone, planking works, work- 
 men's houses in process of construction, full of 
 gaps and openings and bearing the masons' flag, 
 wastes of grey and white sand, and market- 
 gardens marked out with the line, beyond the 
 ditches towards which the embankment of the 
 road sloped in streams of pebbles. 
 
 Soon came the last street lamp, hanging to a 
 green post. People were constantly going and
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 coming. The road was alive, and it amused the 
 eye. Germinie met women carrying their hus- 
 bands' sticks, girls of easy virtue in silk on the 
 arms of their brothers in blouses, and old women 
 in Madras handkerchiefs, resting after work, and 
 walking with folded arms. There were working 
 men drawing their children in little carriages, 
 urchins, with their lines, coming back from fishing 
 at Saint-Ouen, and people trailing branches of 
 flowering acacia at the end of a stick. 
 
 Sometimes a pregnant woman would pass hold- 
 ing out her arms before her to a tiny child, and 
 casting the shadow of her pregnancy upon the 
 wall. 
 
 All walked quietly, happily, with steps that 
 liked to linger, with the cheerful lounging and the 
 happy laziness of a stroll. No one was in a hurry, 
 and the groups of promenaders formed in the 
 distance dark and nearly motionless spots on the 
 perfectly level horizon, which every now and then 
 was traversed by the white smoke of a railway 
 train. 
 
 They would come to the back of Montmartre 
 to the kind of large ditches, the sloping beds 
 crossed by grey and trodden paths. There was 
 a little grass there, frizzled and yellowed by the 
 sun which all aflame might be seen setting be- 
 tween the houses. And Germinie loved to meet 
 with the mattress-carders at work, the knacker's 
 horses grazing on the bare ground, the madder
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 trousers of the soldiers playing at bowls, or the child- 
 ren flying a dark kite in the clear sky. Then, in 
 order to cross the railway bridge, they turned down 
 through that evil encampment of rag-pickers, the 
 stonemasons' district below Clignancourt. They 
 passed quickly by the houses built of stolen 
 materials, and reeking with the horrors that they 
 concealed; these hovels a cross between a 
 cabin and a burrow terrified Germinie vaguely; 
 she could feel crouching within them all the horrors 
 of Night. 
 
 But at the fortifications her pleasure returned. 
 She hastened to sit down with Jupillon on the 
 slope. Close to her were families in groups, work- 
 men lying flat on their faces, middle-class folk 
 scanning the horizon with telescopes, and philos- 
 ophers in misery, leaning with both hands upon 
 their knees, and wearing coats greasy with old 
 age, and black hats as red as their beards. The 
 air was filled with the sounds of organ-playing. 
 Below her, in the moat, were parties playing at 
 puss in the corner. Before her eyes she had a 
 motley crowd white blouses, blue aprons on 
 children running about, a revolving ring game, 
 cafes, wine-shops, stalls for fried fish, games for 
 macaroons, shooting-galleries half hidden in a 
 cluster of verdure from which rose masts with 
 tri-colored pendants; while further off, in a vapor, 
 in a bluish mist, a line of tree-tops marked the 
 course of a road. On the right she could see
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Saint-Denis and the great structure of its basilica; 
 on the left, above a line of vanishing houses, the 
 disc of the sun setting over Saint-Ouen was of 
 cherry-colored fire, letting fall to the lower part 
 of the sky as it were red pillars which upbore him 
 trembling. And often this splendor was crossed 
 for a moment by the ball of a child at play. 
 
 They would go down through the gate, pass the 
 shops for Lorraine sausages, the cake-sellers, the 
 boarded wine-shops, the greenless arbors of wood 
 that was still white wherein a medley of men, 
 women, and children were eating fried potatoes, 
 mussels, and shrimps, and so would come to the 
 first field and the first living grass. At the 
 edge of the grass stood a hand-cart laden with 
 gingerbread and peppermint lozenges; and a woman 
 sold licorice-water on a table in the furrow. A 
 strange landscape in which there was a complete 
 mixture the smoke of frying and the evening 
 mist, the noise of games and the silence shed from 
 heaven, the odor of powdered dung and the smell 
 of the green corn, the barrier and the idyll, the 
 Fair and Nature! Germinie enjoyed it neverthe- 
 less; and urging Jupillon to go further, she would 
 walk on the very edge of the road, thrusting her 
 legs into the corn as she went, in order to feel its 
 tickling freshness upon her stockings. 
 
 When they were returning she liked to re-ascend 
 the slope. The sunshine was gone. The sky was 
 grey below, pink in the middle, and bluish over-
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 head. The horizon was growing black, the green- 
 ness was deepening and darkening, the zinc roofs 
 of the wine-shops were reflecting the moonlight, 
 fires were beginning to dot the shadow, the crowd 
 was becoming greyish, and the whiteness of linen 
 blue. Everything was being gradually obliterated, 
 blurred, and lost in a colorless and expiring residue 
 of daylight, and thickening shadows began to creep 
 up amid the din of rattles, the noise of a crowd 
 growing animated by the night, and of wine 
 prompting to sing. The tops of the tall grass on 
 the slope were swaying and bending in the breeze. 
 Then Germinie made up her mind to leave. She 
 would return, filled with the falling night, giving 
 herself up to the uncertain vision of things half- 
 seen, passing the unlighted houses, again seeing 
 everything on her way as though it were grown 
 pale, wearied by the road that was hard to her 
 feet, content to be weary, slow, tired, half-faint- 
 ing, and feeling full of satisfaction. 
 
 At the first lighted lamps in the Rue du Chateau, 
 she fell to the pavement from a dream.
 
 XIII 
 
 MADAME JUPILLON wore a look full of 
 happiness when she saw Germinie, and 
 kissed her with effusiveness, and spoke 
 to her with endearments of voice, and looked at 
 her with sweetness of expression. The huge 
 woman's kindness seemed, in her case, to find 
 vent in emotion, and tenderness, and confidence 
 of a maternal description. To Germinie she con- 
 fided her shop accounts, her woman's secrets, the 
 most intimate recesses of her life. She seemed to 
 devote herself to her as to a person of her own 
 blood in process of initiation into family interests. 
 When she spoke of the future, Germinie was always 
 mentioned as some one from whom she was never 
 to be separated, and who formed part of the house- 
 hold. Often she would let certain discreet and 
 mysterious smiles escape her, smiles seeming to 
 indicate that everything was seen and without 
 displeasure. Sometimes, also, when her son was 
 seated beside Germinie, she would suddenly fasten 
 moistening, motherly eyes upon them, and em- 
 brace the couple in a look which seemed to bring 
 together and bless the heads of her two children. 
 Without ever speaking, without uttering a word
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 that might constitute an engagement, without 
 opening her mind and binding 'herself, and while 
 continuing to repeat that her son was still very 
 young to enter upon housekeeping, she en- 
 couraged Germinie's hopes and illusions by the 
 attitude of her entire person, by her airs of secret 
 indulgence and complicity of heart, and by those 
 intervals of silence in which she seemed to open 
 to her a mother-in-law's arms. And displaying 
 all her talents for falseness, employing her mines 
 of sentiment, her ingenuous artfulness, and that 
 easy, intricate deceit which is characteristic of 
 fat people, the big woman succeeded through 
 the assurance, the tacit promise of marriage, in 
 overcoming all resistance on the part of Germinie, 
 who finally suffered the young man's ardor to 
 snatch from her what she believed she was giving 
 in advance to her husband's love. 
 
 Throughout this game the dairy-woman had 
 been desirous of only one thing: of attaching to 
 herself and keeping a servant who cost her 
 nothing.
 
 XIV 
 
 AS Germinie was going one day down the 
 back staircase, she heard a voice calling 
 over the banisters, and Adele shouting to 
 her to bring her up two sous' worth of butter and 
 ten of absinthe. 
 
 "Now indeed you shall sit down for a minute," 
 said Adele to her when she brought her back the 
 absinthe and the butter. "And you have given 
 up coming in here, you are never to be seen now. 
 Come! you have plenty of time for being with 
 your old woman. / could not live with such a 
 figure-head of antichrist as that! Do stay. 
 There's no work to be done here to-day. There's 
 no money, and Madame is in bed. Whenever 
 there's no money she goes to bed, does Madame, 
 and she stays there reading novels the whole day. 
 Will you have some?" and she offered her the 
 glass of absinthe. "No? Oh, of course, you 
 don't drink. It's funny not to drink. You are 
 wrong. Look here: it would be very kind of you 
 to write me a line to my sweetheart, Labourieux, 
 you know; I have spoken to you about him. 
 See, here is Madame's pen and some of her paper; 
 it's got a nice scent. D'ye take me? He's a
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 trump, my dear, is that man! He's in the butch- 
 ery, as I have told you. My word, it doesn't 
 do to contradict him! When he has just drunk 
 a glass of blood after killing his beasts, he's like 
 a madman, and if you make him obstinate well, 
 he does hit out. But what would you have? It's 
 because he's strong that he's like that. You 
 ought to see him hitting himself blows on the chest 
 hard enough to kill an ox, and saying to you: 
 'This is a wall!' Ah, he is a fine fellow, he is! 
 Take pains with his letter, won't you? Make it 
 fetch him. Say nice things to him, you know, and 
 rather sad. He delights in that. At the theatre 
 he likes nothing but what makes everybody cry. 
 See! imagine that it's yourself writing to a lover." 
 
 Germinie began to write. 
 
 "I say, Germinie! Don't you know? It's a 
 queer notion Madame has taken into her head. 
 How curious it is in women like that, who can go 
 in for the grandest things, and can have every- 
 thing, and marry kings if it suits them! And 
 there's no mistake about it when one is like 
 Madame, with a face and figure like hers. And 
 then with the nicknacks that they cover them- 
 selves with, and all their paraphernalia of dresses, 
 and lace everywhere, and everything, how can 
 anybody be expected to resist them? And if it's 
 not a gentleman, but some one like ourselves, you 
 may imagine how that turns his head all the more. 
 A woman in velvet is what'II upset his brain.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Yes, my dear, just think if Madame hasn't gone 
 cracked about that boy Jupillon! That's all was 
 wanted to make us die of starvation here!" 
 
 Germinie, with her pen raised above the letter 
 which she had begun, was looking at Adele and 
 devouring her with her eyes. 
 
 "That's a staggerer, isn't it?" said Adele, 
 smacking her lips and sipping the absinthe in 
 small mouthfuls, her eyes lit up with joy at seeing 
 Germinie's wry face. "Ah! the fact is, it's funny; 
 but as for truth, I'll guarantee it's being true. 
 She noticed the fellow on the door-step of the shop 
 the other day as she was coming back from the 
 races. She has gone in two or three times under 
 pretence of buying something. She is to have 
 some perfumery brought to her, to-morrow, I 
 believe. But no matter; that's their own look- 
 out, isn't it? Now then, my letter? You're 
 annoyed at what I have told you? You used to 
 do the prude, so I didn't know. Oh-h-h! so, that's 
 it now I understand what you were telling me 
 about the youngster. I can quite believe now 
 that you didn't want him touched! Sly creature!" 
 
 And at a gesture of denial from Germinie: 
 
 "Tut! tut!" Adele went on. "What is it to 
 me? A child fresh from his mother's milk? 
 Thanks! that's not my sort. However, that's 
 your own business. Now let's see about my 
 letter, eh?" 
 
 Germinie bent over the sheet of paper. But
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 she was in a fever; her nervous fingers made the 
 pen splutter. 
 
 "Look here," she said, throwing it down, after 
 a few moments: "I don't know what's wrong 
 with me to-day. I'll write it for you another 
 time." 
 
 Just as you like, my girl, but I rely upon you. 
 Come to-morrow then, and I'll tell you about 
 Madame's fooleries. We'll have a good laugh!" 
 
 And when the door was shut, Adele burst out 
 laughing; it had cost her nothing but a little 
 humbug to get hold of Germinie's secret.
 
 XV 
 
 WITH young Jupillon, love had been nothing 
 but the satisfaction of a certain curiosity 
 in evil which sought in the knowledge and 
 possession of a woman for the right and pleasure of 
 despising her. This man, on emerging from child- 
 hood, had brought no ardor or fire to his first 
 liaison, but the cold, blackguardly instincts which 
 are awakened in children by bad books, the con- 
 fidences of companions, the conversations of a 
 boarding-school, the first breath of impurity de- 
 flowering desire. All that a young man throws 
 around the woman who yields to him, all that he 
 veils her with, caresses, loving words, imaginings 
 of tenderness, these had no existence whatever for 
 Jupillon. Woman was to him nothing but an 
 obscene image; and a woman's passion appeared 
 to him merely to be something forbidden, illicit, 
 coarse, indecent, funny, something excellent for 
 disillusion and irony. 
 
 Irony -- the base, cowardly, wicked irony which 
 belongs to the lowest of the people was this 
 fellow's entire nature. He embodied the type 
 of those Parisians who wear on their faces the 
 chaffing skepticism of that great city of hum- 
 
 C ioo 3
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 bug in which they were born. Smiles the wit 
 and malice of the Parisian physiognomy -- were 
 with him always mocking and impertinent. Jupil- 
 lon had the mirthfulness of a wicked mouth with 
 what was almost cruelty at the two corners of 
 upturned lips that quivered with nervous move- 
 ment. On his face, which was pale with such pale- 
 ness as is imparted to the complexion by the bit- 
 ing of aqua fortis on copper, on his small, sharp, 
 decided, impudent features were mingled bluster, 
 energy, heedlessness, intelligence, impudence 
 all kinds of rascally expressions which in him were 
 softened down at certain times by a look of feline 
 cunning 
 
 His trade as a glove-cutter he had kept to 
 glove-making after two or three unfortunate at- 
 tempts in various apprenticeships his habit of 
 working in the shop-window and of being a spec- 
 tacle for passers-by had imparted to his whole 
 person the self-possession and elegance of an atti- 
 tudinizer. In the workshop looking upon the 
 street, dressed in his white shirt, his little black 
 "Colin" tie, and his tight waisted trousers, he 
 had learnt the affectations, the pretensions in 
 dress, and the "mob" graces of the workman 
 who is an object of attention. And his doubtful 
 elegancies the parting down the middle, the 
 hair over the temples, the low shirt-collars dis- 
 closing the entire neck, the straining after fem- 
 inine appearances and affectations gave him
 
 CERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 an uncertain figure which was rendered more am- 
 biguous by his beardless face with its merest 
 shading of two little pencils of moustache, and 
 his sexless features, to which passion and anger 
 imparted all that is bad in the wicked little face 
 of a woman. But to Germinie all these airs and 
 this style on the part of Jupillon implied distinc- 
 tion. 
 
 Constituted in this way, having nothing within 
 him that could love, and incapable of being 
 attached even through his senses, Jupillon found 
 himself quite embarrassed and wearied by a wor- 
 ship which grew intoxicated with itself and whose 
 frenzy went on continually increasing. Germinie 
 was overwhelming him. He thought her ridicu- 
 lous in humiliation, and comical in devotion. 
 He was tired, disgusted, sick of her. He had had 
 enough of her love, enough of her person. He 
 fled from her. He made his escape to meet his 
 friends. He alleged accidents, business to be gone 
 about, work that was pressing. In the evening, 
 she waited and he did not come; she thought 
 that he was busy, and he was in some obscure 
 billiard room, or at some barrier ball.
 
 XVI 
 
 /^ 
 
 THERE was a ball one Thursday at the 
 "Boule Noire," and dancing was going on. 
 The room had the modern character of the 
 pleasure resorts of the people. It glittered with 
 false riches and poor luxury. There were the sort 
 of paintings and tables which one sees in wine- 
 shops, gilded gas-apparatus and glasses for drink- 
 ing a quartern of brandy, velvet and wooden 
 benches, the wretchedness and rusticity of a 
 country inn amid the embellishments of a palace 
 of cardboard. 
 
 Crimson velvet valances with a gold-lace stripe 
 hung at the windows, and were economically re- 
 peated in paint under the looking-glasses, which 
 were lit up by triple-branched sconces. On the 
 walls, in large white panels, pastorals by Boucher, 
 surrounded by painted frames, alternated with 
 Prud'hon's "Seasons," astonished to find them- 
 selves there; and over the windows and doors 
 dropsical loves played among fine roses that had 
 been taken off the pomatum-pot of some suburban 
 hair dresser. Square posts, spotted with sorry 
 arabesques, supported the middle of the room in 
 the centre of which was a small octagonal gallery
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 for the orchestra. An oaken barrier, breast-high 
 and serving as a back to a red, meagre bench, 
 enclosed the dancers. And against this barrier 
 on the outside, green-painted tables with wooden 
 benches were crowded together in two rows, thus 
 surrounding the ball with a cafe. 
 
 In the space reserved for dancing, beneath the 
 sharp fire and darting flames of the gas, were all 
 sorts of women clad in dark, worn, faded woollen- 
 stuffs, women in black tulle caps, women in black 
 paletots, women in jackets worn out and frayed 
 at the seams, women cramped in the fur tippets 
 of open-air dealers and side-street shops. Amidst 
 all this, there was not a collar to frame the youth- 
 fulness of the faces, not a scrap of a light petti- 
 coat fluttering out of the whirlwind of the dance, 
 not a touch of white among these women, sad- 
 colored to the toes of their dull boots, and wholly 
 clad in the hues of wretchedness. This absence 
 of linen gave an appearance of poverty-stricken 
 mourning to the ball; it imparted something sad, 
 and dirty, deadened and earthy, to all these forms, 
 a kind of vague, sinister aspect wherein the return 
 from the hospital was mingled with the return from 
 the pawnshop! 
 
 An old woman, bare-headed and with her hair 
 parted on the side of her head, was handing round 
 the tables a basket filled with pieces of Savoy 
 cake and red-cheeked apples. 
 
 From time to time the dance, in its swinging
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 and whirling, would display a dirty stocking, the 
 Jewish type of a street sponge-seller, red fingers 
 at the end of black mittens, a brown, moustached 
 face, an under-petticoat spotted with dirt two 
 days old, a second-hand crinoline strained and 
 quite bent, flowered village calico, or a piece of a 
 kept woman's cast-off garments. 
 
 The men wore overcoats, limp caps turned 
 down behind, and woollen comforters, unfastened 
 and hanging down their backs. They invited the 
 women by pulling the cap-ribbons that streamed 
 behind them. A few in hats, surtouts, and colored 
 shirts, had a look like that of the insolent domes- 
 tics and stablemen of some great household. 
 
 Everywhere there was hopping and movement. 
 The women dancers threw themselves about and 
 capered, animated, clumsy, and riotous beneath 
 the lash of bestial joy. And during the second 
 figure might be heard the giving of such addresses 
 as Impasse du Depotoir. 
 
 Here it was that Germinie walked in just as 
 the quadrille was ending with the air of "Daddy 
 Bugeaud's Cap," in which the cymbals, bells, 
 and drum had imparted to the dance the 
 giddiness and madness of their noise. At a 
 glance Germinie took in the room, with all the 
 men bringing back their partners to the places 
 marked by their caps. She had been deceived; 
 be was not there; she did not see him. Never- 
 theless she waited. She entered the dancing 
 
 C 105 3
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 enclosure and sat down on the edge of a bench, 
 trying not to look too uncomfortable. From their 
 linen caps, she had concluded that the women 
 seated in a row beside her were servants like her- 
 self. Fellow-servants intimidated her less than 
 the dancing-lasses, with their hair in a net, their 
 hands in the pockets of their paletots, impudent 
 eyes, and humming lips. 
 
 But, even on her bench, she soon attracted 
 malevolent attention. Her bonnet only a dozen 
 women at the ball wore bonnets --her scalloped 
 petticoat the white of which showed beneath her 
 dress, the gold brooch in her shawl, created hostile 
 curiosity around her. They cast ill-natured glances 
 and smiles at her. All the women seemed to be 
 asking themselves whence this new-comer came, 
 and to be telling themselves that she had come to 
 take the lovers of the rest. Friends walking 
 through the room, clasped together as though for 
 a waltz, with their hands slipped about each other's 
 waists, made her cast down her eyes as they passed 
 before her, and then moved off shrugging their 
 shoulders and turning back their heads. 
 
 She changed her position and again encountered 
 the same smiles, the same hostility, the same 
 whisperings. She went to the end of the room, 
 and all these women's eyes followed her; she 
 felt herself enwrapped in looks of malice and 
 envy from the hem of her dress to the flowers in 
 her bonnet. She was red in the face; at times, 
 
 CI063
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 she feared that she would weep. She .wished to 
 go away, but courage to cross the room wholly 
 failed her. 
 
 She began to look mechanically at an old woman 
 walking slowly round the room with a silent step 
 like a night-bird's circling flight. A black bonnet 
 of the color of burnt paper confined the bands of 
 her whitening hair. From her square, high, man- 
 like shoulders hung a lead-colored Scotch tartan. 
 On reaching the door she cast a last look into the 
 room, and took it all in with the eye of a vulture 
 seeking meat and finding none. 
 
 Suddenly there was a shout: it was a policeman 
 turning out a slight youth who was trying to bite 
 the man's hands, and was clinging to the tables 
 against which, as he fell, he made a sharp, break- 
 ing noise. 
 
 As Germinie turned away her head she per- 
 ceived Jupillon: he was there, in the recess of a 
 window, smoking at a green table between two 
 women. One was a tall blonde with scanty, 
 frizzled, hemp-like hair, a flat, stupid face, and 
 round eyes. A red flannel chemise was wrinkled 
 up her back, and with her hands she was dancing 
 about the two pockets of a black apron that 
 covered her maroon-colored skirt. The other, 
 who was small and dark, with a face that was 
 quite red from being washed with soap, was 
 muffled, with all the coquetry of a fish-wife, in 
 a white knitted hood with a blue border.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Jupillon had recognized Germinie. When he 
 saw her getting up and coming to him with a 
 fixed look, he leaned over to the ear of the woman 
 in the hood, and squaring himself as he sat, 
 waited with both elbows on the table. 
 
 "Hello! is that you?" he said, when Germinie 
 was in front of him motionless, erect, mute. 
 'This is a surprise! Waiter, another bowl." 
 
 And emptying the bowl of mulled wine into 
 the glasses of the two women, he exclaimed: 
 
 "Look here, don't be a fool. Sit down there." 
 
 And as Germinie did not stir: 
 
 "Tut! these are ladies who belong to friends 
 of mine ask them!" 
 
 "Melie," said the woman in the hood to the 
 other, in rasping tones, "don't you see? It's the 
 gentleman's mother! Make room for the lady 
 since she's kind enough to drink with us." 
 
 Germinie cast a murderous glance at the 
 woman. 
 
 "Eh! what?" resumed the latter, "that annoys 
 you, madame, does it? Excuse me! you ought to 
 have told me. What age does she think herself, 
 eh, Melie? By Jove! you choose 'em young, you 
 do; you're not particular!" 
 
 Jupillon was covertly smiling, lounging at ease, 
 and inwardly sneering. His whole person be- 
 trayed the cowardly joy which bad men take in 
 seeing the sufferings of those who suffer because 
 they love them. 
 
 C 108:]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "I want to speak to you --to yourself not 
 here outside," said Germinie to him. 
 
 "I hope you'll enjoy yourselves! Are you 
 coming, Melie?" said the woman in the cape, re- 
 lighting an extinguished cigar-end forgotten by 
 Jupillon on the table beside a slice of lemon. 
 
 "What do you want?" asked Jupillon, moved 
 in spite of himself by the tone of Germinie's voice. 
 
 "Come!" 
 
 And she began to walk in front of them. There 
 was crowding and laughing as she went. She 
 could hear voices and phrases, and muttered 
 hootings. 
 
 1093
 
 XVII 
 
 JUPILLON promised Germinie that he would 
 return to the ball no more. But the young 
 man was beginning to have the reputation of a 
 Brididi at these tavern-hops of the barrier, at 
 the "Boule Noire," the "Reine Blanche," and 
 the "Ermitage." He had become a dancer who 
 brings the consumers at the table to their feet, 
 a dancer who has a whole hall hanging on the 
 sole of his boot as he flings it two inches higher than 
 his head, a dancer whom the women of the place 
 invite, and to whom they frequently offer re- 
 freshments to dance with them. The ball was not 
 to him merely a ball, it was a theatre, a public 
 popularity, applause, the flattering murmurs of 
 his name in the various groups, the ovation of 
 a cancan-dancer's glory beneath the fire of the 
 lamps. 
 
 On the Sunday he did not go to the "Boule 
 Noire," but on the Thursday following he returned; 
 and Germinie, seeing clearly that she was unable 
 to prevent his going, determined to follow him 
 and to stay there as long as he stayed. Seated 
 at a table in the background, in the worst-lighted 
 corner of the room, she followed him and watched
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 him with her eyes during the whole of the quad- 
 rille; and if he lingered when it was over, she would 
 go and take him away, withdrawing him almost 
 by force from the hands and endearments of the 
 women, who, in malicious sport, would persist in 
 pulling and detaining him. 
 
 As she quickly became known, the insults 
 around her ceased to be vague, subdued, and dis- 
 tant as at the first ball. Words assailed her to 
 her face, and laughter spoke to her aloud. She 
 was obliged to spend her three hours amid mock- 
 ings which pointed at her, indicated her with 
 the finger, named her, fastened her age upon her 
 face. Every moment she was obliged to endure 
 the expression, "old woman," which the young 
 hussies would spit at her over their shoulders. 
 Still, these women simply looked at her; but 
 often partners invited to drink by Jupillon, 
 brought by him to the table where Germinie was, 
 and drinking the bowl of mulled wine for which 
 she paid, would remain leaning on their elbows, 
 with their cheeks upon their hands, appearing 
 not to see that there was a woman there, moving 
 towards her place as though it were empty, and 
 making no reply, when she spoke to them. Ger- 
 minie could have killed these women whom 
 Jupillon made her entertain and who despised 
 her so much that they did not so much as 
 notice her presence. 
 
 It came to pass that, worn out by her sufferings,
 
 CERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 and revolted by all the humiliation which she 
 was obliged to suffer in this place, she conceived 
 the idea that she too would dance. She could 
 see no other means of keeping her lover from 
 others, of having him the whole evening, per- 
 haps of attracting him by her success should she 
 chance to succeed. For a whole month she 
 worked in secret in order to learn how to dance. 
 She went over the figures, and the steps. She 
 strained her body, toiled to acquire the flinging 
 of the waist and whirl of the petticoat which she 
 saw applauded. After doing this she ventured; 
 but everything baffled her and added to her 
 awkwardness the hostility by which she felt 
 herself surrounded, the smiles of astonishment 
 and pity which had traversed the lips when she 
 took her place within the dancing enclosure. She 
 was so ridiculous and so much laughed at that 
 she had not the courage to try again. She once 
 more buried herself gloomily in her dark corner, 
 leaving it only to seek Jupillon and lead him away 
 with the mute violence of a woman who tears her 
 husband from the public-house and carries him 
 off by the arm. 
 
 It was soon rumored through the street that 
 Germinie went to these balls, and that she never 
 missed one. The fruiterer, at whose shop Adele 
 had already been gossiping, sent her son "to see"; 
 he came back saying that it was true, and he 
 related all the annoyances to which Germinie was 
 
 CH2]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 subjected, but which were nevertheless ineffectual 
 to prevent her from returning. Then there was 
 no longer any doubt in the neighborhood as to 
 the relations between mademoiselle's servant and 
 Jupillon, relations which a few charitable souls 
 disputed still. The scandal was discovered, and 
 in one week the poor girl, dragged through all the 
 slanders of the neighborhood, christened and 
 greeted with the foulest names in the language of 
 the street, fell at a single stroke from the most 
 highly expressed esteem into the most brutally 
 published contempt. 
 
 Hitherto her pride and it was great had 
 enjoyed that respect and consideration which, 
 in a district of women of easy virtue, surrounds 
 the servant who serves a respectable person 
 honestly. People had accustomed her to con- 
 sideration, deference, attention. She was ex- 
 cepted from among her companions. Her honesty, 
 which was beyond suspicion, her conduct, which 
 gave rise to no remarks, the confidential position 
 which she held in her mistress's house and which 
 reflected a portion of her mistress's repute upon 
 herself, caused the tradespeople to treat her on 
 a different footing from that of other servants. 
 People spoke to her cap in hand, and always said 
 "Mademoiselle Germinie" to her. They hastened 
 to serve her; they pushed forward the only chair 
 in the shop to have her wait. Even when she 
 bargained, they were still polite with her, and
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 did not call her "a haggler." Jests that were 
 rather too lively were checked in her presence. 
 She was invited to big entertainments, to family 
 gatherings, and was consulted about things. 
 
 All was changed as soon as her relations with 
 Jupillon and her regular attendance at the "Boule 
 Noire" became known. The neighborhood took 
 its revenge for having respected her. The shame- 
 less servants of the house approached as though 
 she were an equal. One, whose lover was at 
 Mazas, said "My dear" to her. Men addressed 
 her familiarly, and showed freedom by look, tone, 
 gesture, hand. Even the children on the pave- 
 ment, who had formerly drawn themselves up 
 to give her a curtsy, fled from her as from one 
 whom they had been told to fear. She felt that 
 she was being treated in an underhand way, that 
 she was being served abominably ill. She could 
 not take a step without walking into the midst 
 of contempt, and receiving her shame upon the 
 cheek. 
 
 This was to her a terrible forfeiture of herself. 
 She suffered as though her honor were being torn 
 piece by piece from her in the kennel. But in 
 proportion to her sufferings she pressed herself 
 against her love and cleaved to it. She was not 
 angry with it, she uttered no reproach against it. 
 She clung to it by all the tears that it brought 
 her pride to shed. And, thrown back and riveted 
 upon her shame, she might be seen in the street
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 through which lately she had passed proudly and 
 with head carried high, advancing furtively and 
 fearfully, with bent back, and oblique glance, 
 anxious to avoid recognition, and hastening her 
 steps in front of the shops which swept out their 
 slanders upon her heels.
 
 XVIII 
 
 JUPILLON used to complain unceasingly of 
 the annoyance of working for others, of not 
 being "in quarters of his own," of not being 
 able to find fifteen or eighteen hundred francs 
 in his mother's purse. He asked for no bigger 
 sum in order to rent two rooms on a ground-floor, 
 and start a little glove-business. And already he 
 had his plans and his dreams: he would set up in 
 the neighborhood, which was an excellent one for 
 his trade, full of purchasers and extravagant 
 ladies who think nothing of kids at five francs 
 a pair. To gloves he would soon unite perfumery 
 and ties; then with his big profits, and the money 
 obtained in selling the business again, he would 
 move into a shop in the Rue Richelieu. 
 
 Whenever he spoke of this, Germinie asked him 
 for a thousand explanations. She wanted to know 
 all that was necessary for setting up the business. 
 She asked for the names of the tools and accesso- 
 ries, with their prices and the dealers in them. 
 She questioned him about his trade and his work 
 so inquisitively and at such length that finally 
 Jupillon, being out of patience, ended by saying 
 to her:
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "What is all that to you? The work bothers 
 me enough as it is; don't talk to me about it!" 
 
 One Sunday she was walking up towards Mont- 
 martre with him. Instead of going by the Rue 
 Trochot she went by the Rue Pigalle. 
 
 "But it's not that way," said Jupillon to her. 
 
 "I know that," she said, "but come, neverthe- 
 less." 
 
 She had taken his arm, and as she walked she 
 turned a little away from him that he might not 
 see what was passing on her face. In the middle 
 of the Rue Fontaine-Saint-Georges, she stopped 
 him abruptly in front of two ground-floor windows, 
 and said to him: 
 
 "Look there!" 
 
 She was trembling with joy. 
 
 Jupillon looked: between the two windows, 
 he saw on a plate in bright copper letters: 
 
 GLOVE WAREHOUSE 
 JUPILLON 
 
 He saw white curtains in the first window. 
 Through the panes in the second he perceived 
 pigeon-holes, cardboard boxes, and, in the fore- 
 ground, the little work-table of his trade, with 
 the large scissors, the jar for the pieces, and the 
 pointed knife for trimming the skins. 
 
 "Your key is at the doorkeeper's," she said to 
 him. 
 
 C "7:1
 
 G E R M I N I E L A C E R T E U X 
 
 They went into the first room of the shop. 
 
 She became eager to show him everything. 
 She opened the cardboard boxes and laughed. 
 Then pushing open the door of the other room: 
 
 "See, you won't be stifled there as in your 
 mother's garret. Does it please you? Oh! it's 
 not handsome but it's clean. I should have 
 liked mahogany for you. Does this please 
 you, this hearth-rug? And the paper I was 
 forgetting." 
 
 She placed in his hand a receipt for rent. 
 
 "Here! it's for six months. Ah! you'll have to 
 set to work immediately to make money. There 
 are my pence in the savings bank gone at a stroke. 
 Ah! here, let me sit down. You look so pleased 
 - it has such an effect upon me it makes me 
 giddy - - I have lost my legs." 
 
 And she let herself slide on to a chair. Jupillon 
 bent over her to kiss her. 
 
 "Ah! yes, they are gone," she said to him, 
 seeing his eyes looking for her earrings. " They're 
 like my rings. Look, do you see, all gone." 
 
 And she showed him her hands stripped 
 of the poor jewels she had worked so long 
 to buy. 
 
 'That was for the arm-chair, all that, see, but 
 it's all horse-hair." 
 
 And as Jupillon stood before her with the look 
 of a man embarrassed, and seeking for words of 
 thanks:
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "Why, you are quite funny. What is the 
 matter with you? Ah! it is for that?" And she 
 indicated the room. "You're foolish! I love 
 you, don't I? Well?" 
 
 Germinie said this simply, in the way that the 
 heart says sublime things.
 
 XIX 
 
 SHE became pregnant. 
 At first she doubted, and dared not be- 
 lieve it. Then, when she was certain of it, 
 an immense joy filled her, a joy which steeped 
 her soul. Her happiness was so great and so 
 strong that it instantly stifled the anguish, the 
 dread, the trembling thoughts, which commonly 
 enter into the maternity of unmarried women 
 and embitter the expectation of delivery, the 
 divine hope living and stirring within them. The 
 thought of the scandal caused by her detected 
 liaison, of the exposure of her guilt in the neigh- 
 borhood, the thought of that abominable thing 
 which had made her think constantly of suicide; 
 the disgrace, even the fear of seeing herself found 
 out by mademoiselle and driven away by her, 
 could in no degree affect her bliss. As though she 
 had already lifted it in her arms before her, the 
 child that she was awaiting suffered her to see 
 nothing but itself; and with but scanty conceal- 
 ment she bore her woman's shame almost proudly 
 beneath the gaze of the street in the pride and 
 radiancy of the mother that she was going to be. 
 She was distressed only at having spent all her 
 i2ol]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 savings, at being without money and indebted 
 to her mistress for several months' wages in 
 advance. She bitterly regretted her poverty for 
 the reception of her child. Often when passing 
 through the Rue Saint-Lazare she would stop in 
 front of a linen warehouse, in the windows of 
 which were displayed layettes for rich children. 
 Her eyes would devour all the prettily worked 
 and coquettish linen, the quilted bibs, the long, 
 short-waisted robe trimmed with English em- 
 broideries, the whole toilet of cherub and doll. 
 A terrible longing, the longing of a pregnant 
 woman, seized her to break through the glass 
 and steal it all, and behind the display of the 
 window the shopmen, who had become used to 
 seeing her standing there, would point her out 
 to one another and laugh. 
 
 Then again, amid the happiness which over- 
 whelmed her, amid the rapturous joy which up- 
 lifted her entire being, an anxiety would at times 
 pass through her. She asked herself how the 
 father would accept the child. Two or three 
 times she had wanted to announce her pregnancy 
 to him and had not dared to do so. At last one 
 day, seeing him with the face for which she had 
 been waiting so long in order to tell him every- 
 thing, a face in which there was a touch of tender- 
 ness, she confessed to him, with blushes, and as 
 though asking his pardon for it, what was making 
 her so happy.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "What an idea!" said Jupillon. 
 
 Then, when she had assured him that it was 
 not an idea and that her pregnancy was posi- 
 tively five months old: 
 
 "What luck!" returned the young man. "Much 
 obliged to you!" And he swore. "Just you tell 
 me who's to give this sparrow his beakful?" 
 
 "Oh, be easy! he won't suffer, that's my busi- 
 ness. And then it will be so nice! Don't be afraid; 
 no one will know anything about it. I'll manage. 
 See! during the last days I'll walk like this, with 
 my head back --I'll wear no more petticoats 
 -I'll squeeze myself, you'll see! --No one will 
 notice anything, I tell you A little child of 
 our own, just think!" 
 
 "In short, since it's so it's so, isn't it?" said 
 the young man. 
 
 "I say," ventured Germinie timidly, "suppose 
 you were to tell your mother?" 
 
 "Mammy? -- No, indeed. You must be con- 
 fined and after that we'll bring the brat to the 
 house that'll touch her up, and perhaps she'll 
 give us her consent." 
 
 122:1
 
 XX 
 
 TWELFTH NIGHT came. It was the oc- 
 casion of a great dinner-party given regu- 
 larly every year by Mademoiselle de 
 Varandeuil. On this day she used to invite all 
 the children, big and little, belonging to her 
 relations and her friends. The little dwelling 
 could scarcely hold them. It was necessary to 
 put part of the furniture upon the landing. And 
 a table was laid in each of the two rooms which 
 formed the whole of mademoiselle's abode. 
 
 For the children this day was a great treat 
 to which they used to look forward a week before- 
 hand. They ran up the staircase behind the 
 pastry-cook waiters. At table they overate them- 
 selves without being scolded. In the evening 
 they would not go to bed, climbed upon the chairs, 
 and made a din which always gave Mademoiselle 
 de Varandeuil a headache next day; but she was 
 not vexed with them, for she had the happiness 
 of a grandmother's birthday in hearing them, in 
 seeing them, in fastening behind them the white 
 napkins which made them look so rosy. And for 
 nothing in the world would she have failed to 
 give this dinner-party, which filled an old maid's
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 rooms with all those little fair, mischievous heads, 
 and gave them in one noisy day, youth and laugh- 
 ter for a year. 
 
 Germinie was engaged in cooking this dinner. 
 She was whipping cream in a basin on her knees 
 when suddenly she felt her first pains. She looked 
 at herself in the bit of broken glass which she had 
 over her dresser, and she saw that she was pale. 
 She went down to Adele: "Give me your mis- 
 tress's rouge," she said to her. And she put some 
 on her cheeks. Then she went upstairs again, 
 and, unwilling to indulge her pain, finished the 
 dinner. It had to be served, and she served it. 
 At dessert, when handing plates, she leaned against 
 the furniture, and held to the backs of the chairs, 
 hiding her torture with the horrible, shrivelled 
 smile of those whose bowels are being wrung. 
 
 "Ah! you are ill?" asked her mistress, looking 
 at her. 
 
 "Yes, mademoiselle, a little perhaps it's the 
 fire, the kitchen - 
 
 "Well, go to bed. You are not wanted any 
 more, and you can clear away to-morrow." 
 
 She went down again to Adele. 
 
 "It's come," she said to her, "quick a cab. 
 Isn't it in the Rue de la Hutchette that you told 
 me your midwife is, opposite a copper-planisher's? 
 You haven't a pen and some paper, have you?" 
 
 And she began to write a line for her mistress. 
 She told her that she was suffering excessively and
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 was going to a hospital, that she did not say "where 
 because mademoiselle would tire herself coming 
 to see her, and that she would be back again in a 
 week. 
 
 "There!" said Adele, out of breath, and giving 
 her the number of the cab. 
 
 "I may remain there," said Germinie to her, 
 "but not a word to mademoiselle. That's all. 
 Swear it to me, not a word!" 
 
 She was going down the stairs when she met 
 Jupillon. 
 
 "Hello!" he said, "where are you going out?" 
 
 "I am going to be confined. The pains came 
 on during the day. There was a large dinner- 
 party. Ah! it was hard! Why do you come here? 
 I told you never to come, I won't have it!" 
 
 "The fact is -- I must tell you -- I'm just now 
 in absolute need of forty francs. There, truly, 
 in absolute need." 
 
 "Forty francs! why, I have only just enough 
 for the midwife." 
 
 "It's a nuisance there! It can't be helped," 
 and he gave her his arm to assist her downstairs. 
 "By Jove! I shall have a job to get them, all the 
 same." 
 
 He had opened the door of the vehicle: "Where 
 is he to take you?" 
 
 "To La Bourbe," said Germinie. And she 
 slipped the forty francs into his hand. 
 
 "Don't," said Jupillon.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "Ah! nonsense there or anywhere else! Be- 
 sides, I've seven francs left." 
 
 The cab started. 
 
 Jupillon stood for a moment motionless on the 
 pavement, looking at the two napoleons in his 
 hand. Then he began to run after the cab, and, 
 stopping it, said to Germinie through the window: 
 
 "At least, let me see you to the place?" 
 
 "No, I'm in too much pain. I'd rather be 
 alone," answered Germinie, writhing on the 
 cushions of the cab. 
 
 At the end of an eternal half-hour the cab 
 stopped in the Rue de Port-Royal, in front of a 
 black door surmounted by a violet lantern which 
 announced to medical students passing in the 
 street that, on that night and at that very mo- 
 ment, there was the curiosity and interest of a 
 painful delivery at the Maternity. 
 
 The driver got down from his box and rang. 
 The porter, assisted by a maid, took Germinie 
 under the arms and brought her up to one of the 
 four beds in the delivery ward. Once in bed her 
 pains became a little easier. She looked round 
 her, saw the other empty beds, and at the end of 
 the immense apartment, a large hearth such as 
 is found in the country, blazing with a great fire 
 in front of which swaddling-clothes, sheets, and 
 under-covers were hanging to dry. 
 
 Half an hour afterwards Germinie was de- 
 livered; she brought a little girl into the world.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Her bed was wheeled into another ward. She 
 had been there for several hours, lost in the sweet 
 weakness of deliverance which follows the fright- 
 ful pangs of child-birth, perfectly happy and as- 
 tonished at being still alive, bathed in ease and 
 profoundly affected by the vague happiness of 
 having created. Suddenly a cry of "I'm dying!" 
 made her look to one side: she saw one of her 
 neighbors throw her arms round the neck of a 
 nursing student midwife, fall back again almost 
 immediately, stir for a moment beneath the 
 sheets, and then move no more. Almost at the 
 same instant there rose from an adjacent bed 
 another horrible, piercing, terrified cry, the cry 
 of one who looks on death; it was a woman 
 calling with despairing hands on the young pupil; 
 the latter hastened to her, stooped down, and fell 
 stiff and fainting to the ground. 
 
 Then silence returned; but Germinie and the 
 other women in the room that were still alive 
 remained between the two dead women and the 
 half dead woman who was not brought to her- 
 self by the coldness of the floor for more than an 
 hour without even venturing to pull the bell 
 hung in each bed for the purpose of summoning 
 assistance. 
 
 At that time there was at the Maternity one 
 of those terrible puerperal epidemics which breathe 
 death upon human fruitfulness, one of those 
 poisonings of the air which simply empty in whole 
 
 127:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 rows the beds of women in travail and which once 
 used to shut up La Clinique: it was like the passing 
 of the plague, a plague which blackens the coun- 
 tenance in a few hours, carries off everyone, sweeps 
 away the strongest and the youngest, a plague 
 which issues from the cradle, the Black Death of 
 mothers! 
 
 Every hour, and especially at night, there were 
 round about Germinie corpses such as are the 
 handiwork of milk fever, corpses which seemed 
 to be a violation of nature, tortured corpses, 
 frenzied with shriekings and troubled with hallu- 
 cination and delirium, death-struggles which ren- 
 dered the strait- waistcoat of madness a neces- 
 sity, death-struggles which would suddenly spring 
 from the bed, carrying the sheets with them, and 
 causing the whole ward to shudder at the thought 
 of seeing the corpses of the amphitheatre return! 
 Life departed there as though wrenched from the 
 body. The sickness itself assumed shapes of 
 horror, and monstrous appearance. In the beds 
 beneath the lamp-light, the sheets rose in the centre 
 dim and horrible with the swellings of peritonitis. 
 
 For five days Germinie, curling and gathering 
 herself up in her bed, and closing eyes and ears 
 as best she might, was strong enough to strive 
 against all these terrors and to yield only occasion- 
 ally to them. She wanted to live, and her strength 
 was stimulated by the thought of her child and by 
 the recollection of mademoiselle. But on the
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 sixth day her energy was exhausted, and her 
 courage forsook her. A chill entered into her soul; 
 she told herself that all was over. The hand that 
 death lays upon your shoulder, the presentiment 
 that you are about to die, was already touching 
 her. She was sensible of the first attack of the 
 epidemic, the belief that she belonged to it, and 
 the impression that she was already half possessed 
 by it. Without being resigned, she abandoned 
 herself. Her life, vanquished in anticipation, 
 scarcely continued the effort to struggle. She 
 was in this condition when a head bent like a 
 light over her bed. 
 
 It was the head of the youngest of the pupils, 
 a fair head with long golden hair, and blue eyes 
 of such sweetness that dying women could see 
 heaven opening up within them. When women 
 in delirium saw her they used to say: "See! it 
 is the Holy Virgin!" 
 
 "My child," she said to Germinie, "you must 
 ask for your discharge at once. You must leave. 
 Dress yourself very warmly, and protect your- 
 self well. As soon as you are in bed at home, you 
 must take something hot, tisane, or an infusion 
 of lime-flowers. Try to perspire. In this way 
 you will be none the worse. But go. Here, to- 
 night," she said, casting her eyes over the beds, 
 "it would not be good for you. Don't say that 
 it is I who am making you leave: you would 
 have me turned out." 
 
 C
 
 XXI 
 
 GERMINIE recovered in a few days. 
 The joy and pride of having given birth 
 to a little creature in whom her own flesh 
 was blended with that of the man she loved, the 
 happiness of being a mother, saved her from the 
 consequences of a badly nursed confinement. 
 She was restored to health, and she wore a look 
 of gratification with life that her mistress had 
 never before seen with her. 
 
 Every Sunday, whatever the weather, she set 
 off at about eleven o'clock. Mademoiselle thought 
 that she went to see a friend in the country, and 
 was delighted with the benefit which her maid 
 derived from these days in the open air. Ger- 
 minie used to take Jupillon, who allowed himself 
 to be carried off without overmuch grumbling, 
 and they would leave for Pommeuse where the 
 child was, and where a good luncheon, ordered 
 by the mother, awaited them. Once in the car- 
 riage on the Mulhouse railway, Germinie could 
 no longer speak, could no longer reply. Leaning 
 towards the window she seemed to have all her 
 thoughts in front of her. She gazed as though 
 her longing would fain have outstripped steam. 
 
 130:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Scarcely had the train stopped, when she sprang 
 out, threw her ticket to the collector, and hastened 
 into the Pommeuse road, leaving Jupillon behind. 
 She approached, she arrived, she was come; there 
 it was! She would rush upon her child, take it 
 out of the nurse's arms with jealous hands 
 mother's hands! press it, clasp it, embrace it, 
 devour it with kisses, and looks, and laughter! 
 She would admire it for a moment, and then dis- 
 tracted, blissful, mad with love, would cover it 
 with lip-tenderness to the tips of its little naked 
 feet. 
 
 They used to lunch. She sat down to table 
 with the child on her knees, and could eat nothing. 
 She had been kissing it so much that she had not 
 yet seen it, and she would begin to seek to detail 
 the little one's resemblance to them both. One 
 feature was his, another her own. 
 
 "That is your nose these are my eyes. In 
 time she will have hair like yours it will curl! 
 Look, these are your hands it's your own 
 self" 
 
 And for hours she indulged in the exhaustless 
 and delightful dotage of a woman who wants to 
 give a man a share in their daughter. Jupillon 
 acquiesced in it all without too much impatience, 
 thanks to the three-sou cigars which Germinie 
 used to take out of her pocket and give him one by 
 one. Moreover, he had discovered a means of 
 diversion: the Morin flowed past the end of the 
 
 CI3I3
 
 CERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 garden. Jupillon was a Parisian, and he was 
 fond of angling. 
 
 When the summer had come they stayed the 
 whole day by the water's edge at the end of the 
 garden, Jupillon on a spring-board thrown over 
 two stakes, Germinie, with the child in her lap, 
 seated on the ground beneath the medlar which 
 bent over the river. The day was perhaps a 
 brilliant one, the sun burning the great flaming 
 water-sheet which threw off the flashings like a 
 mirror. It was like a bonfire of sky and river, 
 in the midst of which Germinie would hold up 
 her daughter and make her trample upon her, 
 naked and rosy, with her short vest, her skin 
 quivering with sun-light here and there, her flesh 
 struck with rays like the angel-flesh which Ger- 
 minie had seen in pictures. 
 
 She experienced divine delights when the little 
 thing, with the meddling hands of a child as yet 
 unable to speak, would touch her on the chin and 
 mouth and cheeks, would persist in putting her 
 fingers into her eyes, would check them, in her 
 play, at a look, and would cover her whole face 
 with the tickling torment of those dear little 
 hands which seem to be groping about for a 
 mother's face: it was as though her child's life 
 and warmth were straying over her features. 
 From time to time she would send half her smile 
 to Jupillon over the baby's head, and cry to him: 
 
 "Now, just look at her!"
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Then the child used to fall asleep with those 
 parted lips which smile in slumber. Germinie 
 bent down to her breathing, listening to her rest; 
 and by degrees, lulled by the child's respiration, 
 she forgot herself deliciously as she gazed at the 
 poor locality of her happiness, the country garden, 
 the apple-trees with leaves covered with little 
 yellow snails, the rosy apples on the south side, 
 the stick at the foot of which twined the pea- 
 stems, twisted and parched, the cabbage-bed, the 
 four sunflowers in the little circular bed in the 
 middle of the walk; and, quite close to her, on 
 the river's bank, the plots of grass filled with 
 mercury plants, the white nettle-tops against the 
 wall, the washerwomen's boxes, the bottles of 
 lye, and the truss of straw scattered by the frolics 
 of a puppy in coming out of the water. She gazed 
 and mused. She dreamed of the past, having 
 her future on her knees. With the grass, the 
 trees, and the river, which were there before her, 
 she formed again, in memory, the rustic garden 
 of her rustic childhood. She could once more see 
 the two stones going down into the water, where 
 her mother, before putting her to bed, used to wash 
 her feet in summer when she was quite a child. 
 
 "I say, Daddy Remalard," said Jupillon from 
 his position on his plank to the goodman who 
 was watching him, on one of the hottest days of 
 August, "do you know the hook's not worth a 
 rap with the red worm on it?" 
 
 C I33II
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "It 'ud want a gentle!" said the peasant, 
 sententiously. 
 
 "Well, we'll have it! Daddy Remalard, you 
 must get a calf's lights on Thursday, and hang 'em 
 up for me on this tree, and next Sunday we'll see." 
 
 On Sunday Jupillon had miraculous luck, and 
 Germinie heard the first syllable coming from her 
 daughter's lips.
 
 XXII 
 
 ON Wednesday morning Germinie found a 
 letter for her when she went downstairs. 
 In this letter, which was written on the 
 back of a laundress's receipt, Mother Remalard 
 told her that her child had fallen ill almost as 
 soon as she had left: that since then she had been 
 growing worse, that she had consulted the doctor, 
 that he had spoken of a noxious fly which had 
 bitten the child, that she had brought her to him 
 the second time, that she was at her wits' end, 
 that she had had pilgrimages made for her. The 
 letter concluded thus: 
 
 "If you could see what trouble I have with 
 your little one, and if you could see how bonny 
 she is when she is not enduring pain!" 
 
 This letter had upon Germinie an effect like 
 that of a great blow impelling her forward. She 
 went out and proceeded mechanically in the direc- 
 tion of the railway that brought her to her child. 
 She was bareheaded and in slippers, but she paid 
 no heed to this. She must see her child, and see 
 her immediately; after that she would return. 
 She gave a moment's thought to mademoiselle's 
 breakfast, and then forgot it. Suddenly, when 
 
 CI353
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 half way, she saw the time by a clock on a cab- 
 office she recollected that there was no train 
 at that hour. She retraced her steps, saying to 
 herself that she would hurry over the breakfast, 
 and then find some pretext for being free for the 
 rest of the day. But when breakfast had been 
 served she could find none: her head was so full 
 of her child that she was unable to invent a lie; 
 her imagination was dull. And then, if she had 
 spoken and asked, she would have burst out with 
 it, and she was conscious of having the words, 
 
 Tis to see my baby," on her lips. At nightfall 
 she dared not make her escape; mademoiselle 
 had had a little pain the previous night, and she 
 was afraid she might be wanted. 
 
 The next day when she went in to mademoiselle 
 with a story imagined during the night, and pre- 
 pared to ask permission to go out, mademoiselle 
 said to her, as she read the letter which Germinie 
 had brought up from the lodge: 
 
 "Ah, it's my old friend, Madame de Belleuse, 
 who wants you for the whole day to help her with 
 her preserves. Come, my two eggs, post-haste, 
 and be off with you. Why, what now! that 
 ruffles you? What is the matter?" 
 
 "I oh! not at all," Germinie found strength 
 to say. 
 
 All that long day she spent amid the heat of 
 pans and the tying up of pots in such torture as 
 is suffered by those who are fast bound by their 
 
 136:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 lives far from the sickness of those they love. 
 She endured the anguish of those unfortunates 
 who cannot follow their anxieties, and, sinking 
 into the depths of despair at their remoteness and 
 uncertainty, imagine every moment that death 
 is about to take place without them. 
 
 Finding that there was no letter on Thursday 
 evening, no letter on Friday morning, she was 
 reassured. If the little one had been worse, the 
 nurse would have written to her. The child was 
 getting better, and she imagined it to herself saved 
 and cured. They are constantly at death's door, 
 are children, and they recover so quickly. And 
 then, hers was so strong. She resolved to wait, 
 to have patience until Sunday, which was only 
 forty-eight hours distant, beguiling the remnant 
 of her fears with the superstitions which say yes 
 to hope, persuading herself that her daughter had 
 "escaped," because the first person that she had 
 met in the morning had been a man, because she 
 had seen a red horse in the street, because she had 
 guessed that a foot passenger would go down such 
 a turning, because she had ascended a story in 
 so many strides. 
 
 On Saturday morning, going in to see Mother 
 Jupillon, she found her engaged in shedding big 
 tears over a print of butter which she was covering 
 up with a wet cloth. 
 
 "Ah! it's you," said Mother Jupillon. "That 
 poor coal-woman! I can't help crying for her
 
 GERMIN1E LACERTEUX 
 
 there! She's just left here. Perhaps you don't 
 know, but in her trade they can only clean their 
 faces with butter and now her love of a little 
 girl, she's at the point of death you know the 
 darling child. Dear, dear! such is life. Ah, Lord, 
 yes. Well, just now she said to her, 'Mammy, 
 I want you to clean my face with butter, im- 
 mediately, to get ready for God!' Ah, ah!" 
 
 And Mother Jupillon began to sob. 
 
 Germinie made her escape. She could not re- 
 main quiet during the whole day. Every moment 
 she went up to her room to prepare the little things 
 which she wished to take to her child next day in 
 order to make her "tidy," and to prepare a little 
 toilet for her, as for one risen from the dead. As 
 she was going down in the evening to put made- 
 moiselle to bed, Adele handed her a letter which 
 she had found lying for her below. 
 
 138:1
 
 XXIII 
 
 MADEMOISELLE had begun to undress 
 when Germinie entered the room, took 
 a few steps, dropped upon a chair, and 
 almost immediately after giving two or three 
 long, deep sighs, heart-heaving and mournful, 
 mademoiselle saw her fall writhing back, roll off 
 the chair, and sink upon the ground. She tried 
 to raise her, but Germinie was shaken by convul- 
 sive movements of such violence that the old 
 woman was obliged to let the frenzied body fall 
 again to the floor with its limbs contracting 
 and concentrating for a moment and then flying 
 out at random right and left, launching forth 
 with the click of a released spring, and throwing 
 down everything with which they came in contact. 
 
 At mademoiselle's cries from the landing, a 
 servant ran to the house of a neighboring doctor, 
 whom she did not find; four other women belong- 
 ing to the house assisted mademoiselle to take up 
 Germinie and carry her to the bed in her mis- 
 tress's room, on which she was laid, after her 
 stay-laces had been cut. 
 
 The terrible shocks, the nervous slackenings 
 
 CI393
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 of the limbs, and the cracking of the tendons had 
 ceased, but across the neck and the breast, which 
 was uncovered by the loosening of the dress, there 
 passed undulating movements which were like 
 waves raised beneath the skin, and which could 
 be perceived by the quivering of the skirt to run 
 down to the feet. With head thrown back, height- 
 ened color, eyes full of sad tenderness of that 
 gentle anguish to be observed in the eyes of the 
 wounded and big veins tracing themselves be- 
 neath her skin, Germinie, panting and giving no 
 reply to the questions addressed to her, kept put- 
 ting up both hands to her throat and neck, and 
 scratching them; she seemed to be trying to pluck 
 thence the sensation of something rising and fall- 
 ing within her. 
 
 It was in vain that they made her inhale ether 
 and drink orange-flower water: the waves of pain 
 passing through her body continued to traverse 
 her, and in her countenance there remained per- 
 sistently that same expression of melancholy 
 gentleness and sentimental anxiety which seemed 
 to add a soul-suffering to the flesh-suffering of all 
 her features. For a long time everything appeared 
 to wound her senses and to affect them painfully 
 - the shining of the light, the sound of voices, 
 and the perfume of things. At last, suddenly, at 
 the end of an hour, tears, a deluge springing 
 from her eyes, removed the terrible crisis. Then 
 there was only a shuddering at long intervals 
 
 C 1403
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 through her exhausted frame, which was soon 
 quieted by weariness, by a general collapse. It 
 was necessary to carry Germinie to her own room. 
 The letter which Adele had handed to her 
 contained the tidings of her daughter's death. 
 
 1413
 
 XXIV 
 
 AFTER this crisis Germinie lapsed into a 
 stupor of grief. For months she remained 
 insensible to everything; for months she 
 was completely invaded and filled by the thought 
 of the little creature which was no more, and she 
 bore her child's death in her bosom as she had 
 borne its life. Every evening when she went up 
 to her room, she took her poor darling's cap and 
 vest out of the trunk which stood at the foot of 
 the bed. She looked at them and touched them! 
 she spread them out upon the bedclothes; she 
 remained for hours weeping over them, kissing 
 them, speaking to them, uttering to them the 
 words which afford a mother's sorrow speech with 
 the shade of a little daughter. 
 
 Weeping for her child, the unhappy mother 
 wept for herself. A voice whispered to her that 
 with the child living, she was saved; that with 
 the child to love, she had a Providence; that all 
 that she dreaded in herself - - her tenderness, her 
 transports, her ardors, all the fires of her nature 
 would centre upon the head of the child and 
 there be sanctified. By anticipation, she seemed 
 to feel the heart of the mother soothe and purify
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 the heart of the woman. In her daughter she 
 could discern something celestial that would re- 
 deem and cure her, like a little angel of deliverance 
 issuing from her faults to strive for her and rescue 
 her from the evil influences which pursued her, 
 and by which she sometimes believed herself 
 possessed. 
 
 When she began to emerge from this first 
 annihilation of despair, when, with the returning 
 perception of life and sensation of things, she 
 looked around her with eyes that could see, she 
 was roused from her grief by a bitterness that 
 was keener still. 
 
 Having become too big and heavy for the work 
 of her dairy, and finding that, in spite of all that 
 Germinie did, she had still too much to do, Ma- 
 dame Jupillon had sent for a niece from her own 
 district to assist her. There was the youthfulness 
 of the country in this girl; she was a woman in 
 whom there was still something of the child, 
 lively and vivacious, with dark eyes that were 
 full of sunshine, and lips full, round, and red, 
 like the pulp of a cherry, with the summer of her 
 native countryside in her complexion, and the 
 warmth of health in her blood. 
 
 Ardent and ingenuous, the young girl, during 
 the first days after her coming, had approached 
 her cousin naturally and simply from that in- 
 clination of like years which prompts youth to 
 seek out youth. She had thrown herself in his
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 way with the shamclcssness of innocence, with 
 candid boldness, with the freedom taught by the 
 fields, with the happy foolishness of a rich nature, 
 with all sorts of temerities, ignorances, bold frank- 
 nesses, and rustic coquetries, against which her 
 cousin's vanity had been quite unable to defend 
 itself. 
 
 By the side of this child, Germinie had no rest. 
 The young girl wounded her every minute by her 
 presence, her contact, her caresses, by everything 
 which acknowledged love in her amorous person. 
 Her engrossment of Jupillon, the work which 
 brought her close to him, the countrified amaze- 
 ment which she displayed before him, the semi- 
 confidences which she allowed to come to her 
 lips when the young man was out, her merri- 
 ment, her jokes, her healthy good-humor, all 
 exasperated Germinie, all raised secret wrath 
 within her; all wounded that obstinate heart 
 whose jealousy was such that the very animals 
 made her suffer when they seemed to love some 
 one whom she loved. 
 
 She dared not speak to Mother Jupillon and 
 denounce the girl to her for fear of betraying her- 
 self; but whenever she found herself alone with 
 Jupillon, she broke forth into recriminations, com- 
 plaints, and quarrels. She would remind him of 
 a circumstance, a word, something that he had 
 done, said, replied, some trifle forgotten by him, 
 but still sore within her. 
 
 C i44 U
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "Are you mad?" said Jupillon to her; "a 
 young thing like that!" 
 
 "A young thing, is she? Go along! and she has 
 such eyes that all the men look at her in the street. 
 The other day I went out with her, and I was 
 ashamed. I don't know how she contrived it, 
 but we were followed by a gentleman the whole 
 time." 
 
 "Well! what of that? She's pretty, that's all!" 
 
 Pretty! Pretty! And at this word, Germinie 
 flung herself upon the young girl's face, and tore 
 it with savage words as with claws. 
 
 Often she ended by saying to Jupillon: 
 
 "There! you love her!" 
 
 "Well, what then?" Jupillon would reply, not 
 displeased by these disputes, by the sight and 
 sport afforded by the anger which he used to tease 
 and goad, by the amusement given him by this 
 woman, whom, beneath her sarcasm and indiffer- 
 ence, he could see half-losing her reason, growing 
 distracted, stumbling into incipient madness, run- 
 ning her head against a wall. 
 
 As a sequel to such scenes which recurred and 
 were repeated every day, a revolution was wrought 
 in this variable, extreme, extravagant tempera- 
 ment, in this soul wherein violence jostled violence. 
 Slowly poisoned, love decomposed and turned to 
 hate. Germinie began to detest her lover, and to 
 seek for everything that could make him more 
 detested. And as her thoughts reverted to her 
 
 C 1453
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 daughter, to the loss of her child, to the cause of 
 its death, she persuaded herself that it was he 
 who had killed it. She conceived a horror of him, 
 shrank from him, fled from him as from the curse 
 of her life, with the terror that is felt of one who 
 is your Misfortune! 
 
 146:1
 
 XXV 
 
 ONE morning, after a night in which she had 
 been revolving within her all her thoughts 
 of grief and hate, Germinie, on entering 
 the dairy to fetch her four sous' worth of milk, 
 found two or three servants in the back-shop 
 taking an early dram. Seated at table, they were 
 sipping gossip and liquor. 
 
 "Hello!" said Adele, striking her glass upon 
 the table, "is that you already, Mademoiselle de 
 Varandeuil?" 
 
 "What's this?" said Germinie, taking Adele's 
 glass. " I want some." 
 
 "You're as thirsty as that, this morning, are 
 you? Brandy and absinthe, that's all. It's my 
 Tommy's mixture the soldier, don't you know? 
 He never drank anything else. Stiff, isn't it?" 
 
 "Yes, indeed," said Germinie, with the lip- 
 motion and eye- wrinkling of a child who is given 
 a glass of liquor at dessert at a large dinner-party. 
 
 "It's good, all the same." Her courage was 
 rising. "Madame Jupillon the bottle this way 
 - I'll pay for it." 
 
 And she threw the money upon the table. After 
 three glasses: 
 
 CI473
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "I'm tight!" she cried, and burst into a fit of 
 laughter. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had gone that 
 morning to receive the half-yearly payment of 
 her dividends. When she came back at eleven 
 o'clock she rang once, twice, but nothing came 
 of it. 
 
 "Ah!" she said to herself, "she's gone down- 
 stairs." 
 
 She opened the door with her key, went to her 
 room and entered it: the mattresses and sheets 
 of her bed, which was in course of making, were 
 thrown back over two chairs; and Germinie was 
 stretched across the palliasse, sleeping, and inert 
 like a mass of matter, in the listlessness of sudden 
 lethargy. 
 
 At the sound of mademoiselle, Germinie sprang 
 up, and drew her hand across her eyes: 
 
 "Eh?" she said, as though someone were calling 
 her. Her looks were dreamy. 
 
 "What is the matter?" said Mademoiselle de 
 Varandeuil, in alarm. "Did you fall? Are you 
 unwell?" 
 
 "I! no," replied Germinie. "I was asleep - 
 what o'clock is it? It's nothing ah! how 
 stupid - 
 
 And she began to beat the mattress, turning 
 her back towards her mistress to hide the color 
 that the drink had brought into her face.
 
 XXVI 
 
 ONE Sunday morning, Jupillon was dressing in 
 the room that Germinie had furnished for 
 him. His mother sat and watched him with 
 that wondering pride which is to be observed in the 
 eyes of the mothers of the people when in the pres- 
 ence of a son who is got up like a "gentleman." 
 
 "You're dressed like the young man on the 
 first floor!" she said to him. "One would think 
 it was his coat it's not right to say it, but you 
 look quite the swell, you do." 
 
 Jupillon, engaged in tying his cravat, did not 
 reply. 
 
 "What a lot of hearts you'll break!" resumed 
 Mother Jupillon, giving her voice a tone of caress- 
 ing insinuation. "Listen to what I say to you, 
 Bibi, you big, bad boy: if the lasses make slips, 
 why, so much the worse for them: it's their own 
 lookout and their own business. You're a man, 
 ain't you, in age, and constitution and every- 
 thing? I can't always keep you tied up, and so 
 I said to myself as well one as another so go 
 in for her and I acted as though I saw nothing. 
 Well, yes, I mean Germinie. As she pleased you, 
 and it kept you from wasting your money with bad 
 
 C M9 U
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 women and then I saw nothing inconvenient 
 about the girl until now. But it's come to be 
 different. They're making remarks in the neigh- 
 borhood - - telling a lot of horrible things about 
 us --the vipers! We're above all that, I know 
 - when one's been honest all one's life, thank 
 God! But one never knows what may happen: 
 Mademoiselle would only have to pry into her 
 maid's affairs. For my part, the bare idea of a 
 court of justice makes me dizzy. What do you 
 say to that, Bibi, eh?" 
 
 "Faith! mother --just as you like." 
 "Ah! I knew you loved your dear, darling 
 mammy!" said the monstrous woman, kissing 
 him. "Well, invite her to dinner this evening. 
 Bring up two bottles of our Lunel, the two-franc 
 sort that gets into the head, and make sure of 
 her coming. Be sweet with her, and make her 
 believe that it's to be a great occasion - Put 
 on your best gloves: you'll make much more of 
 an impression - 
 
 About seven o'clock in the evening, Germinie 
 arrived, full of happiness, cheerfulness and hope, 
 her head filled with dreams and the air of mystery 
 which Jupillon had imparted owing to his mother's 
 invitation. They dined, drank, and laughed. 
 Mother Jupillon began to cast moved, moist, 
 swimming glances at the couple seated in front 
 of her. When at their coffee, she said, as though 
 wishing to be alone with Germinie:
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "Bibi, you know you've something to do this 
 evening." 
 
 Jupillon went out. Madame Jupillon, sipping 
 her coffee, then turned towards Germinie with 
 the countenance of a mother asking for her 
 daughter's secret, and shrouding her confession 
 beforehand in the forgiveness of her indulgence. 
 For a moment the two women remained thus in 
 silence, the one waiting for the other to speak, 
 and the other having the cry of her heart on the 
 tip of her tongue. Suddenly, Germinie sprang 
 from her chair, and rushed into the big woman's 
 arms: 
 
 "If you only knew, Madame Jupillon!" 
 
 She spoke, and wept, and kissed. 
 
 "Oh! you will not be angry with me! Well, 
 yes; I do love him I have had a child by him 
 -it's true, I love him for three years " 
 
 At each word, Madame Jupillon's face had 
 grown more chill and icy. She put Germinie from 
 her coldly, and in her most doleful voice, in tones 
 of lamentation and despairing grief, she began 
 to say, like one choking: 
 
 "Oh, heavens! you to tell such things as 
 that to me his mother! to my face. Heavens, 
 is it possible! My son! a child an innocent 
 child! You have been shameless enough to de- 
 bauch him! And you even tell me that it was 
 you! No, it is not possible! I, who had such con- 
 fidence it's enough to kill me. There is no
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 security left in this world! Ah! mademoiselle, I 
 would not have believed it of you all the same! 
 Well! these things do make my head swim. 
 I tell you, it's a revelation to me I know what 
 I am, and I'm likely to be ill after it!" 
 
 "Madame Jupillon! Madame Jupillon!" Ger- 
 minie murmured in a tone of entreaty, ready to die 
 of shame and grief on the chair upon which she 
 had fallen back. $ " I ask your forgiveness. It 
 was stronger than I. And then _I thought I 
 believed " 
 
 "You believed! Good gracious, you believed! 
 What did you believe? You, my son's wife, eh? 
 Oh, Lord! is it possible, my poor child?" 
 
 And constantly assuming a more plaintive and 
 mournful voice as she continued to cast these 
 wounding words at Germinie, Mother Jupillon 
 resumed: 
 
 "But, come, my poor girl, people must be 
 rational. What was it I always said? That it 
 might be done if you were ten years younger. 
 You were born in 1820, as you have told me, and 
 we're now in 1849. You see you're going on 
 thirty, my good girl. Look here, it hurts me to 
 tell you this-- I should be so unwilling to give 
 you pain but one has only to look at you, my 
 poor lass - What can you expect? It's age 
 - Your hair you might lay your finger in the 
 parting - 
 
 "But." said Germinie, within whom there was
 
 GERMINIE LACERT EUX 
 
 beginning a murmuring of sullen wrath, "what 
 about the money your son owes me my money? 
 The money I drew out of the savings bank, the 
 money I borrowed for him, the money I " 
 
 "Ah! he owes you money? Why, yes, what 
 you lent him to begin his trade. Well, you needn't 
 make such a fuss. Do you think that you've got 
 thieves to deal with? Do you suppose we mean 
 to deny having had your money from you, even 
 though there's no receipt if you want a proof. 
 I remember now - - the honest, child-like fellow 
 wanted to write one out, in case he should die 
 but, all at once, people are made pickpockets 
 without more ado. Ah, goodness! life's not worth 
 the having in such times as these. Ah! I am well 
 punished for becoming attached to you. But, 
 I tell you, I can see it all now clearly enough. 
 Oh! you are shrewd, you are. You wanted to 
 buy my son for yourself and for life. Thank you, 
 I'd rather not. It's cheaper to pay you back your 
 money. The leavings of a cafe waiter my poor, 
 dear child! God keep him from such a thing!" 
 
 Germinie had snatched her bonnet and shawl 
 from the peg, and was outside.
 
 XXVII 
 
 MADEMOISELLE was seated in her large 
 easy-chair at the corner of the fire place 
 in which a few embers always slumbered 
 beneath the ashes. Her black head-band, low- 
 ered upon the wrinkles of her forehead, fell almost 
 to her eyes. Her black dress, which was shaped 
 like a frock and allowed her bones to project 
 through it, lay in meagre folds over the meagre- 
 ness of her person, and fell straight down from 
 her knees. A small black shawl was crossed and 
 fastened behind her back after the fashion of 
 little girls. She had laid her upward-turned and 
 half-opened hands upon her thighs, poor, old 
 woman's hands, awkward and stiff, and swollen 
 at the joints and knuckles by the gout. 
 
 Sunk in the bent, broken-down attitude which 
 obliges old people to raise their heads in order to 
 see you and speak to you, she lay in a heap, buried, 
 as it were, in the darkness whence there emerged 
 nothing but her face, yellowed by biliousness to 
 the tone of old ivory, and the warm flame of her 
 brown eyes. Looking at her, at the living, cheer- 
 ful eyes, the miserable frame, the poverty-stricken 
 dress, the nobility with which she bore her years 
 
 C 1543
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 and all her sorrows, she might have been taken 
 for a fairy at the Petits-Menages. 
 
 Germinie was beside her. The old maid said: 
 
 "The cushion is under the door, Germinie, 
 eh?" 
 
 "Yes, mademoiselle." 
 
 "Do you know, my girl," Mademoiselle de 
 Varandeuil resumed after a pause, "do you know 
 that when one has been born in one of the hand- 
 somest mansions of the Rue Royale, and ought to 
 have been the possessor of the Grand and the 
 Petit-Charolais, and ought to have had the cha- 
 teau of Clichy-Ia-Garenne for a country seat; 
 and when it took two servants to carry the silver 
 dish on which the joint was served in your grand- 
 mother's house do you know, it requires a 
 good deal of philosophy," and mademoiselle placed 
 a hand upon her shoulders with difficulty "to 
 see oneself meeting one's end here, in this abomi- 
 nably rheumatic hovel where, in spite of all the 
 cushions in the world, you get these miserable 
 draughts. That's right, stir up the fire a 
 little." 
 
 And stretching out her feet towards Germinie, 
 who was on her knees before the fire place, and 
 laughingly putting them under her nose she went 
 on: 
 
 "Do you know one wants a great deal of that 
 philosophy to be able to wear stockings in holes! 
 Foolish creature! I don't say it to scold you; I 
 
 CI553
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 know very well that you can't do everything. 
 You might get a woman to come and do the 
 mending. That's not very difficult. Why don't 
 you tell the girl who came last year? She had a 
 face that pleased me." 
 
 "Oh, she was as black as a mole, mademoiselle." 
 
 "There now! I was sure- To begin with, 
 you never think well of anybody. That's so, 
 isn't it? But wasn't she Mother Jupillon's niece? 
 We might have her for a day or two in the 
 week " 
 
 "That strumpet shall never set foot in here 
 again. " 
 
 "Come, more difficulties! You are wonderful 
 at worshipping people, and then being unable to 
 bear the sight of them. What has she done to 
 you?" 
 
 "She is an unfortunate, I tell you!" 
 
 "Tut! what has that to do with my linen?" 
 
 " But, mademoiselle " 
 
 "Well! find me another--! don't insist upon 
 her. But find one for me. " 
 
 "Oh, the women who are brought in do no 
 work. I will do your mending myself. There's 
 no need for anyone. " 
 
 'You? Oh, if we are to reckon upon your 
 needle!" said mademoiselle, gaily; "and be- 
 sides, Mother Jupillon will never leave you the 
 time- 
 
 " Mademoiselle Jupillon? Ah! yes she will, for
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 all the dust that I shall make in her house 
 now!" 
 
 "What? She, too? is she thrown aside? Oh, 
 ho! Make haste and make another acquaintance, 
 or else, good gracious! there will be bad times in 
 store for us!" 
 
 157:1
 
 XXVIII 
 
 THE winter of that year ought to have en- 
 sured a portion in Paradise to Mademoiselle 
 de Varandeuil. She had to endure all the 
 reaction of her servant's grief, the torment from 
 her nerves, the vengeance of her provoked and 
 sour temper, to which the approach of spring was 
 soon to impart that kind of wicked madness which 
 accrues to sickly sensibilities from the critical 
 season, the birth-time of nature, the restless, 
 irritating fecundation of summer. 
 
 Germinie began to have dried eyes, eyes which 
 had been weeping though they had ceased to 
 weep. She uttered an everlasting: 'There's 
 nothing the matter with me, mademoiselle," 
 spoken in that hollow tone which stifles a secret. 
 She assumed mute and grief-stricken postures, 
 funeral attitudes, and airs of the kind with which 
 a woman's person will set forth sadness and make 
 her shadow a trouble. With her face, her looks, 
 her mouth, the folds of her dress, her presence, 
 with the noise that she made when walking in 
 the adjoining apartment, with her very silence, 
 she enwrapped mademoiselle in the despair of her 
 person. At the least word she would bristle up.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Mademoiselle could not make a remark to her, 
 ask her for the slightest thing, or express a wish, 
 a desire: she took everything as a reproach. 
 Thereupon she would indulge in ferocious out- 
 bursts. She would grumble and weep: 
 
 "Ah! I am very unfortunate! I can see quite 
 well that mademoiselle does not like me any more." 
 
 Her fancies against people found vent in sub- 
 lime grumblings. "She always comes when it's 
 wet," she would say on finding a little mud left 
 on the carpet by Madame de Belleuse. During 
 the first week of the New Year, the week when 
 all who were left of Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's 
 relations and connections, without exception, rich 
 and poor, ascended to her fifth story and waited on 
 the landing at the door to relieve one another in 
 the six chairs in her room, Germinie's ill temper, 
 impertinent remarks, and sullen complaints were 
 increased. She would continually imagine in- 
 juries on her mistress's part, and punish her by 
 a dumbness which nothing could break. Then 
 would come fits of weakness. All round her, 
 mademoiselle could hear through the partitions 
 furious strokes of broom and feather-brush, scrub- 
 bings, jerky flappings, and all the nervous work 
 of a servant who, by abusing the furniture, seems 
 to say: 
 
 "Well, you're getting your work done, at any 
 rate!" 
 
 Old people are patient with old servants. Habit, 
 
 CI593
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 slackened will-power, horror of change, dread of 
 new faces, everything inclines them to weakness, 
 concession, cowardice. In spite of her quickness, 
 her readiness to become angry, to break out, to 
 rage and fume, mademoiselle said nothing. She 
 appeared to see nothing. She made a pretence 
 of reading when Germinie entered. Ensconced 
 in her chair, she would wait until her maid's 
 temper passed off or burst forth. She stooped 
 beneath the storm; she had neither word nor 
 thought of bitterness against her maid. She only 
 pitied her so greatly that she herself suffered as 
 much. 
 
 In Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's view Germinie 
 was, in fact, not a servant; she was Devotion, 
 and, as such, must necessarily cause her to close 
 her eyes. This isolated old woman whom death 
 had forgotten, and who, at the end of her life, 
 found herself alone, and dragging her affections 
 from grave to grave, had found her last friend 
 in her servant. She had bestowed her heart 
 upon her, as upon an adopted daughter, and she 
 was especially unhappy at being unable to com- 
 fort her. Moreover, Germinie would, at times, 
 come back to her out of the depths of her gloomy 
 melancholy and evil temper, and throw herself 
 upon her knees before her kindness. Suddenly 
 a ray of sunshine, a beggar's song, a trifle such 
 as will pass through the air, and unbend the soul, 
 would cause her to melt into tears and endear-
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 ments; she would indulge in burning effusiveness, 
 in delighted kissing, as in an all-effacing joy at 
 being alive once more. At other times it was 
 over some small ailment of mademoiselle's; and 
 the old servant immediately recovered her smiling 
 face and gentle hands. 
 
 Sometimes on these occasions, mademoiselle 
 used to say to her: 
 
 "Come, my girl, there is something the matter 
 with you. Come, tell me?" 
 And Germinie would reply: 
 "No, mademoiselle, it is the weather." 
 "The weather!" mademoiselle would repeat with 
 a doubtful air, "the weather!"
 
 XXIX 
 
 ONE evening in March, Mother Jupillon and 
 her son were talking at the corner of their 
 stove in the back-shop. 
 
 Jupillon had just been drawn for the army. 
 The money which his mother had set aside for 
 buying him off had been consumed by six months 
 of bad trade, by credits given to girls living in 
 the same street who one fine morning had put 
 their key under the door-mat. He himself was 
 in a bad way and had an execution in his place. 
 During the day he had gone to a former employer 
 to ask him to make him an advance in order to 
 procure a man in his place. But the old perfumer 
 had not forgiven him for having left him and set 
 up for himself, and he had refused point-blank. 
 Mother Jupillon was in grief and was giving 
 way to tearful lamentations. She kept repeating 
 the number drawn by her son: 
 
 "Twenty-two! twenty-two!" And she said: 
 "Yet I sewed a black, velvety spider and its web 
 into your coat. Ah! I ought rather to have done 
 as I was told, and put on you the cap you were 
 baptized in. Ah! the good God is not just. And 
 to think of the fruit-seller's son getting a good 
 
 C 162;]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 one. So much for being honest! And the two 
 baggages at number 18 who have just taken to 
 their heels with my money. They might well 
 give me their hand-shakings. Do you know that 
 they are in my debt for more than seven hundred 
 francs? And the blackamoor over the way - 
 and that little fright who had the face to eat pots 
 of raspberries at twenty francs each what they 
 have robbed me of besides! But there, you're 
 not gone yet, all the same. I'll sell the dairy first. 
 I'll go back to service, I'll be a cook, I'll be a char- 
 woman, I'll be anything at all. Why, I'd draw 
 money from a stone for you/" 
 
 Jupillon smoked and let his mother talk. When 
 she had finished: 
 
 " Enough said, mother all that's nothing but 
 words," he remarked. "You're plaguing your 
 digestion and it's not worth while. There's no 
 need for you to sell anything. There's no need 
 for you to put yourself about. What will you bet 
 that I buy myself off without its costing you a 
 sou?" 
 
 "Lord!" said Madame Jupillon. 
 "I've a notion of my own." 
 And after a pause, Jupillon went on: 
 "I didn't want to thwart you about Germinie 
 at the time of the gossip, you know --you 
 thought it was time for me to break with her - 
 that she would get us into a scrape and you 
 turned her out, straight. That wasn't my plan 
 
 163:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 -I didn't think her so bad as all that for the 
 butter in the place. But after all you thought you 
 were doing right. And perhaps, in fact, you did 
 do right; instead of quieting her you have kindled 
 her for me just kindled. I've met her once or 
 twice and she's changed Ay, she's pining 
 away!" 
 
 "But you know quite well she hasn't another 
 
 > 
 sou 
 
 "Of her own, I daresay. But what of that? 
 she'll get some she's good still for two thousand 
 three hundred francs, there!" 
 
 "And if you are compromised?" 
 
 "Oh, she won't steal them - 
 
 "Goodness knows!" 
 
 "Well! it will only be from her mistress. Do 
 you think her mademoiselle will have her run in 
 for that? She'll discharge her, and the thing will 
 go no further. We'll advise her to take a change of 
 air in another neighborhood, and we'll see no more 
 of her. But it would be too stupid of her to steal. 
 She'll make arrangements, and search, and manage 
 - 1 don't know how, indeed, but, you know, 
 that's her own lookout. It's a time for showing 
 off one's talents. In fact, you don't know, but 
 they say her old woman is ill. If the worthy 
 damsel were to go off and leave her all her nick- 
 nacks, as people are saying in the neighborhood 
 - what then? It would be pretty foolish to have 
 sent her to the right about then, eh, mammy?
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 You have to go a little carefully, you see, when 
 you're dealing with people who may fall into 
 four or five thousand francs a year. " 
 
 "Goodness! what's that you're telling me! 
 But after the scene I had with her Oh, no! 
 she'll never be willing to come back here again." 
 
 "Well! I'll bring her back and not later than 
 this evening," said Jupillon, getting up and rolling 
 a cigarette between his fingers. 
 
 "No excuses, you understand," he said to his 
 mother, "it would be useless. And coldness - 
 seem to receive her only from weakness, on my 
 account. One doesn't know what may happen."
 
 XXX 
 
 JUPILLON was walking backwards and for- 
 wards on the pavement in front of Germinie's 
 house, when Germinie came out. 
 
 "Good-evening, Germinie," he said, just be- 
 hind her. 
 
 She turned round as though she had been struck, 
 and, without answering him, instinctively took 
 two or three steps forward, and away from him. 
 
 "Germinie!" 
 
 Jupillon said only this to her, without stirring, 
 without following her. She came back to him, as 
 an animal is brought back to the hand by drawing 
 in its cord. 
 
 "What?" she said. "Money again? or some of 
 your mother's follies that you have to tell me?" 
 
 "No, it's to tell you that I am going away," 
 said Jupillon to her with a grave air. "I've been 
 drawn for the army, and I'm leaving." 
 
 "You are leaving?" she said. Her ideas seemed 
 to be not yet awake. 
 
 "Look here, Germinie," returned Jupillon, "I've 
 given you pain. I've not been kind to you, I 
 know. It was partly cousin. What could I do?" 
 
 ''You are leaving?" returned Germinie, taking 
 166;]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 hold of his arm. "Do not lie, you are leaving?** 
 
 "I tell you, yes, and it's true. I am only wait- 
 ing for my orders. They want more than two 
 thousand francs for a man this year. It is said 
 that there's going to be a war; in short, it's a 
 chance." 
 
 While he was speaking he was making Ger- 
 minie walk down the street. 
 
 "Where are you taking me?" she said to him. 
 
 'To mother's to have you both friends again, 
 and put an end to all this fuss - 
 
 "After what she said to me? Never!" And 
 Germinie pushed away Jupillon's arm. 
 
 ;< Then if that's so, good-bye - 
 
 And Jupillon raised his cap. 
 
 "Am I to write to you from the regiment?" 
 
 For an instant Germinie was silent, for a moment 
 she hesitated. Then she said abruptly: 
 
 "Come on," and signing to Jupillon to walk 
 beside her, she went up the street again. 
 
 They both began to walk beside each other 
 without speaking. They reached a paved road, 
 which retreated and extended eternally between 
 two lines of lamps, between two rows of twisted 
 trees that threw up handfuls of dry branches 
 towards heaven, and overlaid large, smooth walls 
 with their lean and motionless shadows. There 
 beneath a sky that was keen and cold with a 
 reflection of snow, they walked for a long time, 
 diving into the vagueness, and infinity, and 
 
 CI673
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 strangeness that belong to a street which ever 
 follows the same line of wall, the same lamps, 
 which ever leads towards the same night. The 
 dark and heavy air which they were breathing 
 savored of sugar, and sweat, and carrion. Now 
 and then a kind of flaming light passed before 
 their eyes: it was a cart, the lantern of which 
 shone on disemboweled beasts, and pieces of 
 bleeding meat thrown over the crupper of a 
 white horse: the light on the flesh streamed 
 through the darkness like a conflagration of purple, 
 like a furnace of blood. 
 
 "Well? have you finished your reflections?" 
 said Jupillon. 'This little Avenue Trudaine of 
 yours is not particularly cheerful, do you know?" 
 
 "Come on," said Germinie. 
 
 And, without speaking, she again began to 
 walk in the same abrupt and violent fashion 
 which showed the agitation of all the tumults in 
 her soul. Her thoughts passed into her gestures. 
 Distraction visited her footsteps, and madness 
 her hands. Now and then she had the shadow of 
 a woman belonging to the Salpetriere behind her. 
 Two or three passers-by stopped for a moment 
 and looked at her; then, being Parisians, they 
 passed on. 
 
 Suddenly she stopped with a gesture of de- 
 spairing resolve. 
 
 "Ah dear!" she said, "one pin more in the pin- 
 cushion. Come!"
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 And she took Jupillon's arm. 
 
 "Oh! I know very well," said Jupillon to her, 
 when they were close to the dairy, "my mother 
 has not been fair to you. You see, she's always 
 been too respectable a woman all her life; she 
 doesn't know, she doesn't understand. And then, 
 look here, I'll tell you what's at the bottom of 
 the whole thing: she's so fond of me herself that 
 she's jealous of the women who like me. Just 
 go in there!" 
 
 And he pushed her into the arms of Madame 
 Jupillon, who kissed her, muttered some words 
 of regret, and hastened to cry in order to relieve 
 her embarrassment and to render the scene more 
 affecting. 
 
 The whole of that evening Germinie kept her 
 eyes fixed on Jupillon, almost frightening him 
 with her look. 
 
 "Come," he said to her as he was taking her 
 home, "don't be such a wet-blanket as all that. 
 People need philosophy in this world. Why, I'm 
 a soldier, that's all! They don't always come 
 back, it's true, but after all - Look here! I'd 
 like us to amuse ourselves for the fortnight that 
 I've got left, because it will be so much gained, 
 and if I don't come back, well! I'll at least have 
 left you with a pleasant recollection of me." 
 
 Germinie made no reply.
 
 XXXI 
 
 FOR a week Germinie did not set foot again 
 in the shop. The Jupillons, not seeing her 
 come back, were beginning to despair. At 
 last, about half-past ten one evening, she pushed 
 open the door, walked in without salutation of any 
 kind, went up to the little table at which mother 
 and son were sitting half asleep, and laid down 
 an old piece of linen, with her hand closed upon 
 it in a claw-like grip. 
 "There!" she said. 
 
 Letting go the corners of the piece of linen she 
 poured out what was inside of it, and there 
 streamed upon the table greasy bank-notes pasted 
 together behind or fastened with pins, old louis 
 d'or that had grown green, hundred-sou pieces 
 that were perfectly black, forty-sou pieces, ten- 
 sou pieces money of poverty, of labor, of the 
 money-box, money soiled by dirty hands, chafed 
 in the leathern purse, worn among the sous that 
 filled the till money that savored of sweat. 
 For a moment she looked at all that was spread 
 out before her as though to convince her own 
 eyes; then in a sad and gentle voice, the voice of 
 her sacrifice, she said simply to Madame Jupillon,
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "There it is. That's the two thousand three 
 hundred francs to buy himself off with." 
 
 "Ah, my good Germinie!" said the big woman, 
 choking with a first rush of emotion; and she 
 threw herself upon Germinie's neck, who allowed 
 herself to be kissed. "Oh! you will take some- 
 thing with us, a cup of coffee - 
 
 "No, thank you," said Germinie, "I'm worn 
 out, and I've had to run about, upon my word, 
 to get them. I'm going to bed. Another time." 
 And she went out. 
 
 She had had to "run about" as she said to 
 collect such a sum, to realize this impossible thing, 
 to find two thousand three hundred francs whereof 
 she had not the first five! She had searched for 
 them, begged them, picked them up piece by 
 piece, almost sou by sou. She had gathered them, 
 scraped them up here and there, one after another, 
 by loans of two francs, of a hundred francs, of 
 fifty francs, of twenty francs, of whatever people 
 would give. She had borrowed from her porter, 
 her grocer, her fruiterer, her poulterer, her laun- 
 dress; she had borrowed from the tradesmen of 
 the neighborhood, and from the tradesmen of 
 the neighborhoods in which she had at first lived 
 with mademoiselle. She had swept every kind 
 of money into the sum down to the miserable 
 pittance of her water-carrier. She had begged 
 everywhere, extorted humbly, prayed, entreated, 
 invented stories, swallowed her shame at lying 
 
 c 171:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 and seeing that she was not believed. The humil- 
 iation of confessing that she had no money in- 
 vested, as people had believed, and as she, in her 
 pride, had allowed them to believe, the commisera- 
 tion of persons whom she despised, refusals, alms 
 - she had submitted to all these, had endured 
 what she would not have endured to find herself 
 bread, and not once and with a single individual, 
 but with thirty or forty, with all who had ever 
 given her anything, or from whom she had ex- 
 pected anything. 
 
 At last she had got the money together, but it 
 was her master, and possessed her for ever. She 
 belonged to the obligations which existed between 
 her and others, to the service which her tradesmen, 
 well aware of what they were doing, had rendered 
 her. She belonged to her debts, to what she would 
 have to pay every year. She knew it; she knew 
 that all her wages would be absorbed in this way, 
 that with the usurious arrangements left by her 
 to the will of her creditors, and the acknowl- 
 edgments that they had required, mademoiselle's 
 three hundred francs would do little more than 
 pay the interest of her loan of two thousand 
 three hundred francs. She knew that she would be 
 a debtor, that she would always be a debtor, that 
 she would be bound for ever to privations, to 
 embarrassment, to every possible retrenchment 
 in dress and toilet. 
 
 She entertained scarcely more illusions respect- 
 172:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 ing the Jupillons than she did about her future. 
 Her money with them was lost of this she had 
 a presentiment. She had not even calculated that 
 the sacrifice would touch the young man. She 
 had acted on a first impulse. If she had been told 
 to die in order to prevent his departure, she 
 would have died. The thought of seeing him a 
 soldier, the thought of the battlefield, of the 
 cannon, of the wounded, at which a woman closes 
 her eyes in terror, had induced her to do more than 
 die; to sell her life for this man, and, for his sake, 
 to sign her own everlasting misery! 
 
 CI73:
 
 XXXII 
 
 IT is an ordinary result of nervous disturbances 
 in the organism to disorder human joys and 
 sorrows, to deprive them of proportion and 
 equilibrium, and to push them to the extreme of 
 excess. It would seem that under the influence 
 of this disease of impressibility, the senses become 
 quickened, refined, spiritualized, they exceed their 
 natural measure and limit, pass beyond them- 
 selves, and impart a sort of infinitude to the 
 enjoyment and suffering of the creature. The 
 infrequent joys which Germinie still had were 
 now mad joys, joys from which she emerged in- 
 toxicated and with the physical characteristics 
 of intoxication. 
 
 "Why, my girl," mademoiselle could not help 
 saying to her, "one would think you were drunk." 
 
 And when she relapsed into her troubles, and 
 sorrows, and anxieties, her affliction would be 
 still more intense, more frenzied and delirious than 
 her mirth. 
 
 The time had come when the terrible truth, of 
 which she had caught a glimpse, but which had 
 then been veiled by later illusions, finally appeared 
 to Germinie. She saw that she had not been able 
 
 CI74I1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 to attach Jupillon to her by the devotion of her 
 love, by the spoliation of all that she possessed, 
 by all these money sacrifices which were involving 
 her life in the embarrassment and agony of a 
 debt that it was impossible to pay. She felt that 
 he brought her his love with reluctance, a love 
 to which he imparted the humiliation of a charity. 
 When she informed him that she was pregnant 
 for a second time, this man, whom she was about 
 to make a father, had said to her: 
 
 "Well! women like you are a good joke! always 
 full or ready to begin again!'* 
 
 Thoughts came to her, suspicions such as come 
 to genuine love when it is deceived, forebodings 
 of the heart which tell women that they are no 
 longer in sole possession of their lovers, and that 
 there is another because there must be another. 
 
 She had ceased to complain, to weep, to re- 
 criminate. She gave up striving with this man 
 who was armed with coldness, and who so well 
 knew how to outrage her passion, her unreason, 
 her tender follies, with his icy, blackguard ironies. 
 And she set herself to wait in resigned anguish 
 for what? She did not know; perhaps, until 
 he would have no more of her! 
 
 Heart-broken and silent she spied upon Jupillon; 
 she dogged him and watched him; she tried to 
 make him speak by throwing in a word when he 
 was inattentive. She revolved about him, seeing, 
 apprehending, surprising nothing, but remaining, 
 
 n 1753
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 nevertheless, persuaded that there was something 
 and that what she dreaded was true; she scented 
 a woman in the air. 
 
 One morning, having come down earlier than 
 usual, she saw him on the pavement a few steps 
 in front of her. He was dressed, and kept looking 
 at himself as he walked. From time to time he 
 raised the edge of his trousers a little, to see the 
 polish on his boots. She began to follow him. 
 He went straight on without turning. She reached 
 the Place Breda behind him; on the Place, be- 
 side the cabstand, a woman was walking up and 
 down. Germinie could see only her back. Jupil- 
 lon went up to her, and the woman turned: it 
 was his cousin. 
 
 They began to walk to and fro beside each 
 other on the Place; then they proceeded through 
 the Rue Breda towards the Rue de Navarin. 
 There the young girl took Jupillon's arm, not 
 leaning on it at first, but afterwards, as they 
 walked on, stooping gradually with the move- 
 ment of a bending bough, and leaning upon him. 
 They walked slowly, so slowly that Germinie was 
 sometimes obliged to stop in order not to be too 
 close to them. They went up the Rue des Martyrs, 
 crossed the Rue de la Tour-d'Auvergne, and went 
 down the Rue Montholon. Jupillon was speaking; 
 the cousin was saying nothing, was listening to 
 Jupillon, and, absent as a woman inhaling a bou- 
 quet, was casting vague little side-looks from
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 time to time, little glances like those of a fright- 
 ened child. 
 
 On reaching the Rue Lamartine in front of the 
 Passage des Deux-Soeurs, they turned back; Ger- 
 minie had only just time to spring into an entry. 
 They passed without seeing her. The girl was 
 grave, and slow in walking. Jupillon was talking 
 close to her neck. For a moment they stopped, 
 Jupillon making great gestures, and the young 
 girl looking fixedly on the pavement. Germinie 
 thought that they were going to part; but they 
 again began to walk together and took four or 
 five turns, passing and repassing in front of the 
 Passage. 
 
 At last they entered it. Germinie darted from 
 her hiding-place, and leaped after them. From 
 the grating of the Passage she could see part of a 
 dress disappearing within the doorway of a small 
 private house, next door to the shop of a liquor- 
 dealer. She hastened to the doorway, looked at 
 the staircase, could see nothing more. Then all 
 her blood mounted to her head with a thought, a 
 single thought which her idiotic lips kept repeating: 
 "Vitriol! Vitriol! -- Vitriol!" And her thought 
 becoming instantly the very action of her thought, 
 her frenzy transporting her suddenly into her 
 crime, she was ascending the stairs with the bottle 
 well hidden beneath her shawl; she was knocking 
 continuously and very loudly at the door. Some 
 one came at last; he half opened the door. She 
 
 CI773
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 passed without paying any attention to him. 
 She was capable of killing him! and she was 
 going up to the bed, to her! She was taking her 
 by the arm, and saying to her: "Yes, 'tis I- 
 this will last you your life!'* And over her face, 
 her breast, her skin, over all that was young in 
 her, and proud, and beautiful for love, Germinie 
 could see the vitriol marking, burning, hollowing, 
 bubbling, making something that was horrible 
 and that flooded her with joy. The bottle was 
 empty and she was laughing. 
 
 And in her frightful dream, her body also 
 dreaming, her feet began to walk. Her steps 
 went on before her, passed down the Passage, 
 entered the street, and took her to the grocer's. 
 For ten minutes she stood by the counter with 
 eyes that saw nothing, the vacant, bewildered 
 eyes of one bent on murder. 
 
 "Come, what do you want?" said the shop- 
 woman to her, out of patience, and almost fright- 
 ened at this motionless woman. 
 
 "What do I want?" said Germinie. She was 
 so full of and so possessed by what she desired, 
 that she thought she had asked for the vitriol. 
 "What do I want?" And she drew her hand 
 across her forehead. "Ah! I have forgotten." 
 
 And she went stumbling out of the shop.
 
 XXXIII 
 
 AMID the torture of a life in which she 
 suffered death and passion, Germinie, seek- 
 ing to deaden the horrors of her thoughts, 
 had gone back to the glass which she had taken 
 from Adele's hands one morning, and which had 
 given her a whole day of forgetfulness. From 
 that day she had begun to drink. She had drunk 
 little morning "sips," like the maids of kept 
 women. She had drunk with one and drunk with 
 another. She had drunk with men who came to 
 breakfast at the dairy. She had drunk with 
 Adele, who drank like a man, and who took a vile 
 pleasure in seeing this honest woman's maid sink- 
 ing as low as herself. 
 
 At first, in order to be able to drink, she had 
 required temptation, society, the clinking of 
 glasses, the excitement of language, the warmth 
 of a challenge; soon afterwards, she came to 
 drink when alone. Then it was that she had 
 drunk from the half-filled glass brought upstairs 
 under her apron and hidden in a corner of the 
 kitchen; that in solitude and despair she had 
 drunk those mixtures of white wine and brandy 
 which she swallowed continuously, until she had
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 found in them that for which she was thirsting 
 - sleep. For what she desired was not the heady 
 fever, the happy confusion, the living madness, 
 the waking and delirious dream of intoxication; 
 what she desired, what she asked for, was the 
 dark happiness of sleep, of unremembering and 
 dreamless sleep, of leaden sleep falling upon her 
 like a bludgeon on the head of an ox: and she 
 found it in those blended liquors which crushed 
 her and brought her head to lie upon the cloth 
 of her kitchen table. 
 
 To sleep such overwhelming sleep, to sink in 
 the daytime into such a night, had come to be 
 with her a truce to, and a deliverance from, a 
 manner of life which she had lost courage either 
 to continue or to end. A boundless yearning for 
 non-existence was all that she felt in her wakeful- 
 ness. Such hours of her life as she lived collectedly, 
 under self-inspection, looking into her conscience, 
 a spectator of all her shamefulness, seemed so 
 abominable to her! She preferred to be dead to 
 them. Nothing in the world but sleep was left 
 to her that would give her complete forgetfulness, 
 the congested sleep of Drunkenness which cradles 
 in the arms of Death. 
 
 Here, in the glass which she forced herself to 
 drink, and which she emptied with frenzy, her 
 sufferings, her griefs, the whole of her horrible 
 present would drown and disappear. Within half- 
 an-hour her thought ceased to think, her life to be;
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 all that she was had, to her, no further existence, 
 and even time was no longer with her. "I am 
 drowning my troubles," she had replied to a 
 woman who had told her that she would ruin her 
 health by drinking. And as during the re-actions 
 which followed her periods of intoxication, there 
 returned to her a more painful self-consciousness, 
 a greater grieving and detestation for her faults 
 and her misfortunes, she sought out stronger 
 alcohol, rawer brandy, she even drank absinthe 
 pure in order to lapse into a duller lethargy, and 
 to render her insensibility to all things still more 
 complete. 
 
 Finally she succeeded in inducing periods of 
 annihilation which lasted half a day, and from 
 which she emerged only partially awake, with 
 stupefied intellect, blunted perceptions, hands 
 which did things simply from habit, gestures like 
 those of a somnambulist, a body and soul in which 
 thought, will, and memory seemed to be still 
 slumbering and dim as in the hazy hours of 
 morning.
 
 XXXIV 
 
 HALF-AN-HOUR after the frightful occa- 
 sion when, touching crime in thought as 
 though with fingers, she had wished to 
 disfigure her rival with vitriol and had fancied 
 that she had done so, Germinie re-entered the Rue 
 de Laval bringing up a bottle of brandy with her 
 from the grocer's. 
 
 For two weeks she had been mistress of the 
 apartments, free to indulge in her drunkenness 
 and brutishness. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, 
 who, as a rule, hardly ever stirred from home, had 
 most exceptionally gone to spend six weeks in 
 the country with one of her old friends; and she 
 had been unwilling to take Germinie with her 
 through fear of allowing the other servants to see 
 her bad example, and to become jealous of a maid 
 accustomed to her easy service, and treated on a 
 footing other than their own. 
 
 On entering mademoiselle's room, Germinie 
 gave herself only time to throw her bonnet and 
 shawl upon the ground before she began to drink 
 in hurried mouthfuls, with the neck of the brandy- 
 bottle between her teeth, until everything in the 
 room was spinning around her, and the whole of
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 the day had vanished from her brain. Then, 
 staggering, feeling that she was falling, she tried to 
 lie down on her mistress's bed in order to sleep, but 
 her intoxication flung her aside upon the night- 
 table. From there she rolled to the floor and 
 moved no more: she was snoring. 
 
 But the shock had been so violent that during 
 the night she had a miscarriage, followed by one 
 of those fluxes wherein life ebbs away. She tried 
 to raise herself to go and call on the landing, she 
 tried to get upon her feet, but could not. She 
 felt herself slipping towards death, entering it, 
 descending into it with lingering slowness. At 
 last, putting forth a final effort, she dragged her- 
 self as far as the door opening on the staircase; 
 but when there she found it impossible to lift her- 
 self as high as the lock, impossible to cry out. And 
 she would have died at last, had not Adele, uneasy 
 at hearing a moaning sound as she passed in the 
 morning, sent for a locksmith to open the door, and 
 a midwife to deliver the dying woman. 
 
 When mademoiselle returned at the end of a 
 month, she found Germinie up, but so weak that 
 she was obliged to sit down every minute, and so 
 pale that she no longer seemed to have any 
 blood in her body. They told her that Germinie 
 had had a flux of which she had nearly died, 
 and mademoiselle suspected nothing.
 
 XXXV 
 
 GERMINIE greeted mademoiselle's return 
 with feeling caresses, moistened with tears. 
 Her tenderness was like a sick child's; it 
 had the same lingering gentleness, the same be- 
 seeching air, the same timorous and startled 
 sadness of suffering. She sought to touch her 
 mistress with her pale, blue-veined hands. She 
 approached her with a sort of trembling and rever- 
 ent humility. Most frequently, seated opposite 
 to her on a footstool, and looking up at her with 
 the eyes of a dog, she would get up at intervals to 
 kiss her on some part of her dress, return to her 
 seat, and then, a moment later, perform the same 
 action over again. 
 
 There was anguish and entreaty in these caresses 
 and kisses of Germinie's. The death that she had 
 heard approaching her like a person, with some- 
 body's footsteps, those hours of exhaustion when, 
 in bed and alone with herself, she had reviewed 
 her life, and retraced her past, the remembrance 
 and the shame of all that she had concealed from 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, the terror of a judg- 
 ment from God uprising from the heart of her old 
 religious ideas, all the reproaches and all the fears
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 which haunt those who are about to die, had 
 created a supreme terror in her conscience; and 
 remorse remorse which she had never been able 
 to kill within her was now living and crying 
 out in the weakened, shaken being, which was 
 still but imperfectly linked back to life, was still 
 scarcely attached once more to a belief in existence. 
 
 Germinie was not one of those happy natures 
 who do evil and leave the memory of it behind 
 them, reverting to it no more in regretful thought. 
 Unlike Adele, she had not one of those gross 
 material organisms which can be penetrated only 
 by animal impressions. She had not such a con- 
 science as will escape from suffering through bru- 
 tishness, and through that dense stupidness in 
 which a woman vegetates, ingenuously faulty. 
 In her a morbid sensitiveness, a sort of cerebral 
 erethism, a tendency of her head to be always 
 working and disquieting itself in bitterness, anx- 
 iety, and self-discontent, a moral sense which had 
 erected itself, as it were, within her after every 
 fall, all the gifts of nicety, choiceness, and mis- 
 fortune, united to torture her, and every day thrust 
 back further and more cruelly into despair the 
 torment of what would scarcely have caused such 
 lengthened sorrows to many of her kind. 
 
 Germinie yielded to the rush of passion, but 
 she had no sooner done so than she despised her- 
 self for it. Even during her pleasure she could 
 not forget herself entirely and lose herself. Amid 
 
 185:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 her self-distraction there rose constantly before 
 her the image of mademoiselle with her austere, 
 maternal face. Germinie did not feel shameless- 
 ness come to her in proportion as she sank beneath 
 the level of her virtue. The degradations into 
 which she plunged strengthened her in no degree 
 against disgust and horror of herself. Habit did 
 not bring her callousness. Her polluted con- 
 science rejected its pollutions, struggled amidst 
 its shame, was torn asunder in its repentance, 
 and did not for one moment permit to her the 
 full enjoyment of vice, the entire deadness of 
 degradation. 
 
 Thus, when mademoiselle, forgetting the ser- 
 vant that she was, bent over her with one of those 
 abrupt familiarities of voice and gesture which 
 brought her close to her heart, Germinie, in con- 
 fusion, and a sudden prey to blushing timidity, 
 would become mute and idiot-like beneath the 
 horrible pain of seeing all her unworthiness. She 
 would fly, she would make an excuse for tearing 
 herself away from this affection, which had been 
 so odiously deceived, and which as it touched her, 
 stirred and thrilled all her remorse.
 
 XXXVI 
 
 A MIRACULOUS feature in this life of dis- 
 order and anguish, this shameful and broken 
 life, was that it did not break out. Ger- 
 minie suffered none of it to start forth, she suffered 
 none of it to rise to her lips, she suffered none of it 
 to be seen in her countenance, none of it to appear 
 in her demeanor, and the accursed depths of 
 her existence ever remained hidden from her 
 mistress. 
 
 It had, indeed, sometimes befallen Mademoiselle 
 de Varandeuil to be vaguely sensible of some 
 secret on the part of her maid, of something that 
 she was hiding from her, of some obscure spot in 
 her life; she had had moments of doubt and mis- 
 trust, and instinctive anxiety, beginnings of con- 
 fused perception, the scent of a trail that was con- 
 stantly sinking and losing itself in gloom. At 
 times she had thought that she had come close in 
 this girl to things secret and cold, to mystery, to 
 shadow. At other times, again, it had seemed to her 
 that her maid's eyes did not express the utterance 
 of her lips. Without intending it, she had retained 
 in her memory a phrase which Germinie used often 
 to repeat: "A sin hidden is a sin half forgiven."
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 But what especially engaged her thoughts was 
 her astonishment at seeing that, in spite of an 
 increase in her wages, in spite of the little daily 
 presents which she gave her, Germinie bought 
 nothing new for her toilet, had no new dresses, no 
 new linen. Where did her money go? She had 
 almost acknowledged to her the withdrawal of 
 her eighteen hundred francs from the savings 
 bank. Mademoiselle thought over this, and then 
 said to herself that here was the whole of her maid's 
 mystery; it was money embarrassments, obliga- 
 tions which, doubtless, she had formerly con- 
 tracted on account of her relations, and perhaps 
 fresh sendings "to her rascally brother-in-law." 
 She had so good a heart and so little method! 
 She had so little knowledge of the value of a hun- 
 dred-sou piece! That was all: mademoiselle was 
 sure of it; and as she knew her maid's obstinate 
 nature, and had no hopes of changing her, she 
 said nothing to her. 
 
 When this explanation did not completely sat- 
 isfy mademoiselle, she attributed whatever she 
 found strange and mysterious in her maid to a 
 somewhat secret-loving feminine nature, which pre- 
 served the disposition and distrustfulness of the 
 peasant-woman, jealous of her own little concerns, 
 and delighting to bury a fragment of her life deep 
 within her, just as, in villages, people heap up 
 sous in a woollen stocking. Or else she persuaded 
 herself that it was sickness, her continual state
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 of suffering, that gave her these whims and this 
 secretiveness. And her thoughts, in their in- 
 vestigation and their curiosity, stopped here with 
 the indolence and also with something of the ego- 
 ism of the thoughts of old persons, who, with an 
 instinctive dread of the ends of things and of the 
 hearts of people, are unwilling to be too anxious, 
 or to know too much. Who could tell? Perhaps 
 all this mysteriousness was only some trifle un- 
 deserving of her anxiety or interest, some feminine 
 squabble or quarrel. She was reassured and lulled 
 by this thought, and ceased her inquiry. 
 
 And how could mademoiselle have guessed 
 Germinie's degradations and the horror of her 
 secret! In her most poignant griefs, in her wildest 
 intoxications, the unhappy woman maintained the 
 incredible strength requisite for restraining and 
 burying all. From her passionate, extravagant na- 
 ture, so ready to pour itself out in expansiveness, 
 there never escaped a phrase, a word that might 
 have been a lightning-flash, a gleam. Vexations, 
 scornings, sorrows, sacrifices the death of her 
 child, the treachery of her lover, the death struggle 
 of her love, all remained silent, stifled within her 
 as though she were straining both hands upon her 
 heart. The occasional swoonings which came upon 
 her, and in which she seemed to be struggling with 
 the griefs that were strangling her, the feverish, 
 frenzied caresses given to Mademoiselle de Varan- 
 deuil, the sudden outpouring which resembled 
 
 189 3
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 crises seeking to give birth to something, ended 
 always without speech and took refuge in tears. 
 
 Even sickness with its weakness and nerveless- 
 ness drew nothing from her. It could not impair 
 the heroic will to be silent to the end. Her nerve- 
 crises wrung from her cries and nothing more. 
 When a young girl she used to dream aloud; she 
 forced her dreams to speak no more; she closed 
 the lips of her sleep. As mademoiselle might have 
 perceived from her breath that she drank, she 
 ate garlic and scallions, and in the stench of them 
 concealed the odor of her drunkenness. Even her 
 intoxications, her drunken lethargies, she trained 
 to rouse at her mistress's step, and to remain awake 
 in her presence. 
 
 She thus led as it were two lives. She was like 
 two women, and by her energy, adroitness, and 
 feminine diplomacy, with the self-possession that 
 was always present with her even in the confusion 
 of drink, she succeeded in separating these two 
 lives, in living them both without mingling them, 
 in refraining from confusing the two women who 
 were in her, in remaining to Mademoiselle de 
 Varandeuil's eyes the honest and steady girl that 
 she had been, in emerging from a debauch with- 
 out taking the flavor of it with her, in displaying, 
 when she had just left her own lover, a sort of 
 shamefacedness like that of an old maid disgusted 
 by the scandalous behavior of the other servant- 
 women. No utterance or manner of dress was ever 
 
 C IPO]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 such as might rouse a suspicion of her clandestine 
 life; nothing about her savored of her nights. 
 When she set her foot upon the matting in Made- 
 moiselle de VarandeuiPs apartment, when she ap- 
 proached her and found herself face to face with 
 her, she would assume the language, the atti- 
 tude, even certain folds of the dress which keep 
 from a woman the very thought of a man's ap- 
 proaches. 
 
 She spoke freely of everything, as though she 
 had to blush at nothing. She was bitter against 
 the faults and shame of others, as is a person who 
 is without reproach. She jested about love with 
 her mistress in a gay, unembarrassed, offhand 
 manner; she had the appearance of talking about 
 an old acquaintance that she had lost sight of. 
 And to all those who saw her only as Mademoiselle 
 de Varandeuil saw her, and in her mistress's house, 
 there was about her thirty-five years a certain 
 atmosphere of peculiar chastity, a perfume of 
 severe and not to be suspected honesty, which 
 is characteristic of old servants and ugly 
 women. 
 
 Nevertheless, all this falsity of appearance was 
 not hypocrisy with Germinie. It was not the out- 
 come of perverse duplicity, of depraved calcula- 
 tion: it was her affection for mademoiselle that 
 made her what she was in her mistress's house. 
 She wanted at all costs to save her the sorrow of 
 seeing her and of piercing her inmost nature. She
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 deceived her solely to keep her affection, and with 
 a sort of respect; into the horrible comedy that 
 she was acting there crept a pious, religious feeling, 
 like the feeling of a young girl who lies to her 
 mother's eyes that she may not grieve her heart.
 
 XXXVII 
 
 LIE! she had lost the power of doing anything 
 else. She felt it to be a kind of impossibility 
 to draw back from her position ; she did not 
 so much as entertain the idea of an effort to get 
 out of it, so craven, so overwhelmed, so vanquished 
 was she, so completely did she still feel herself 
 bound to this man by all sorts of base chains and 
 degrading ties, by the very contempt which he 
 no longer concealed from her! 
 
 Sometimes she was frightened as she reflected 
 upon herself. Village ideas, village fears recurred 
 to her, and her youthful superstitions whispered 
 to her that this man had thrown a spell over her, 
 that he had made her eat "unleavened bread." 
 Without this would she have been as she was? 
 Would she have had that emotion throughout her 
 being at the mere sight of him, that almost animal 
 sensation of a master's approach? Would she 
 have felt her whole person, her mouth, her arms, 
 the love and caressing of her gestures going out 
 involuntarily to him? Would she have belonged 
 to him thus completely? Long and bitterly did 
 she recall all that ought to have cured her, to have 
 saved her the disdain of the man, his insults,
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 the depravity of the pleasures which he had re- 
 quired from her and she was compelled to 
 acknowledge to herself that she had found no 
 sacrifice too dear for him, and that for him she 
 had swallowed the uttermost dregs of disgust. 
 She strove to imagine a degree of degradation to 
 which her love would refuse to descend, and she 
 could find none. He might do what he would with 
 her, insult her, beat her, and she would still be his, 
 and beneath his heel! She could not see herself 
 as no longer belonging to him. She could not see 
 herself without him. To have this man to love 
 was a necessity with her; she warmed herself in 
 him and lived in him, and breathed in him. Noth- 
 ing similar seemed to exist round about her among 
 the women of her rank. None of the companions 
 to whom she had access experienced in a liaison the 
 violence, the bitterness, the torture, the happiness 
 in suffering which she found in her own. None 
 experienced that which was killing her, and which 
 she could not forego. 
 
 To herself, she appeared extraordinary and of 
 an exceptional disposition, of the temperament of 
 animals that are rendered faithful by evil treat- 
 ment. There were days on which she no longer 
 knew herself, and on which she asked herself 
 whether she was still the same woman. In review- 
 ing all the baseness to which Jupillon had bent her, 
 she could not believe that it was she who had 
 undergone it all. She, who knew herself to be 
 
 n 1943
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 violent, fiery, full of bad passions, revolts and 
 storms, she had resigned herself to all this sub- 
 missiveness and docility! She had repressed her 
 anger, had driven back the thoughts of blood 
 which had so often risen to her brain! She had 
 been always obedient, always patient, always with 
 bowed head! She had made her temper, her in- 
 stincts, her pride, her vanity, and more than all, 
 her jealousy, the ragings of her heart, crawl at 
 this man's feet! To keep him, she had gone so far 
 as to share him, to allow him mistresses, to re- 
 ceive him from the hands of others, to search his 
 cheek for a place on which his cousin had not 
 kissed him! 
 
 And now, after exhausting the many conces- 
 sions with which she had wearied him, she re- 
 tained him by a more disgusting sacrifice, she 
 drew him by presents, she opened her purse to 
 bring him to the place of meeting, she purchased 
 his amiability by satisfying his whims and caprices, 
 she paid this man who trafficked in his kisses, and 
 asked gratuities from love! And she lived on 
 from one day to the next in terror of what the 
 wretch might require of her on the morrow.
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 HE wants twenty francs." 
 Germinie repeated this several times to 
 herself, but her thought did not pass be- 
 yond the words that she uttered. Her walk, and 
 the ascent of the five stories had dazed her. She 
 dropped into a seat on the greasy settle in her 
 kitchen, bent her head, and laid her arms upon 
 the table. Her head was singing. Her thoughts 
 would go from her, and then return as in a crowd, 
 and stifle one another within her, while of them 
 all there remained to her but one, ever keener 
 and more fixed: 
 
 "He wants twenty francs! twenty francs! 
 twenty francs ! - 
 
 And she looked around her as though she w r ould 
 find them there in the fireplace, in the dust-basket, 
 or beneath the stove. Then she thought of the 
 people who were in her debt, of a German maid, 
 who had promised to repay her a year ago. She 
 got up and fastened on her cap. She no longer 
 said: 
 
 "He wants twenty francs;" she said: "I shall 
 get them." 
 
 She went down to Adele:
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "You haven't twenty francs for a bill that's 
 been brought? Mademoiselle is out." 
 
 "No such luck," said Adele: "I gave my last 
 twenty francs to madame yesterday evening to go 
 out to supper. The jade hasn't come in again 
 yet. Will you have thirty sous?" 
 
 She hastened to the grocer's. It was Sunday, 
 and three o'clock; the grocer had just closed his 
 shop. 
 
 There were some people at the fruit- woman's; 
 she asked for four sous' worth of herbs. 
 
 "I have no money," she said. She hoped that 
 the fruit-woman would say to her: "Do you want 
 some?" The fruit-woman said: "What a piece of 
 affectation! as though people were afraid about 
 that!" There were other servants there, so she 
 went out without speaking. 
 
 "There's nothing for us?" she said to the con- 
 cierge. "Ah! by the way, you haven't got twenty 
 francs, my Pipelet, have you? It would save my 
 going up again." 
 
 "Forty if you like." 
 
 She drew her breath. The concierge went up 
 to a cupboard in the back part of his lodge. 
 
 "Ah! by jove! my wife has taken the key. But 
 how pale you are!" 
 
 "It's nothing," and she escaped into the court- 
 yard towards the back staircase. 
 
 As she went up again this is what she was think- 
 ing: 
 
 C 197 H
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 'There are people who find twenty-franc pieces. 
 It's to-day that he wants them, so he told me. 
 Mademoiselle gave me my money not five days 
 ago, and I can't ask her. For that matter what 
 are twenty francs more or less to her? The grocer 
 would have lent them to me without doubt. 
 There's that other that I used to deal with in the 
 Rue Taitbout; he didn't close until the evening 
 on Sundays " 
 
 She was on her own story and in front of the 
 door. She leaned over the balustrade of the front 
 staircase, and looked to see whether any one was 
 coming up, entered, went straight to made- 
 moiselle's room, opened the window, and took a 
 deep breath, resting both elbows on the cross- 
 bar. Some sparrows hastened thither from the 
 chimneys round about, thinking that she was going 
 to throw them some bread. She shut the window 
 and looked into the room at the top of the chest 
 of drawers, first at a marble vein, then at a little 
 money-box of West Indian wood, then at the key, 
 a small steel key, which had been forgotten in the 
 lock. Suddenly, her ears tingled; she thought 
 that some one was ringing; she went to open the 
 door, but there was no one there. She came back 
 with the feeling that she was alone, went to the 
 kitchen for a cloth, and turning her back to the 
 chest of drawers, began to rub the mahogany of an 
 armchair; but she could still see the box, she could 
 see it open, she could see the righthand corner 
 
 198:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 in which mademoiselle put her gold, the little 
 papers in which she wrapped up the francs hun- 
 dred by hundred; her twenty francs were there! 
 She shut her eyes as though they were dazzled. 
 She was sensible of a vertigo in her conscience; 
 but immediately it rose in its entirety against 
 itself, and it seemed to her as if her indignant 
 heart were mounting up within her breast. 
 
 In an instant the honor of her whole life had 
 reared itself between her hand and the key. Her 
 past of probity, disinterestedness, devotion, twenty 
 years of resistance to the evil counsels of that cor- 
 rupt district, twenty years of contempt for theft, 
 twenty years in which her pocket had not con- 
 tained a farthing belonging to her employers, 
 twenty years of indifference to lucre, twenty years 
 in which temptation had not approached her, her 
 lengthened and natural honesty, the confidence 
 of mademoiselle all these came back to her at 
 a stroke. The years of her youth embraced her 
 and took her back. From her family even, from 
 the recollection of her parents, from the pure 
 memory of her wretched name, from the dead from 
 whom she sprang, there arose as it were a murmur- 
 ing of guardian shadows around her. For a second 
 she was saved. 
 
 Then by insensible degrees evil thoughts crept 
 one by one into her head. She sought for matters 
 of bitterness, for reasons for ingratitude towards 
 her mistress. She compared her own wages with 
 
 C 1 99 3
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 the amount of which the other maids of the house 
 used in vanity to boast. She considered that 
 mademoiselle was very well off, that she ought to 
 have given a greater increase since she had been 
 with her. And then, she suddenly asked herself, 
 why does she leave the key in the box? And then 
 she began to think that the money which was there 
 was not money for living on, but savings of made- 
 moiselle's to buy a velvet dress for a god-daughter; 
 money which was lying idle she said to herself 
 again. She hurried her reasons as though to pre- 
 vent herself from discussing her excuses. "And 
 then, it is only for once she would lend them to 
 me if I asked her and I will pay them back 
 
 She put out her hand, and turned the key. She 
 paused; it seemed as though the great silence 
 around her were looking at her and listening to 
 her. She raised her eyes, and the glass threw her 
 back her features. At the sight of this countenance 
 of her own, she was afraid; she recoiled in terror 
 and shame as though before the face of her crime; 
 it was a thief's head that she had upon her shoulders. 
 
 She had fled into the corridor. Suddenly she 
 turned upon her heels, went straight to the box, 
 gave the key a turn, thrust in her hand, searched 
 through hair-lockets and keepsake trinkets, blindly 
 took a coin from a little pile of five louis pieces, 
 shut the box, and escaped into the kitchen. She 
 held the little coin in her hand and did not dare to 
 look at it. 
 
 C2003
 
 XXXIX 
 
 IT was then that Germinie's debasement and 
 degradation began to appear in her whole 
 person, to make her dull and dirty. A sort 
 of sleep overtook her ideas. She was no longer 
 quick and prompt to think; what she had read 
 and learnt seemed to escape her. Her memory, 
 which formerly had retained everything, became 
 confused and forgetful. The wit of the Parisian 
 servant gradually forsook her conversation, her 
 replies, her laughter. Her physiognomy, which 
 lately had been so lively, had lost all its lightning- 
 glances. Her whole person seemed to betoken the 
 return of the stupid peasant that she had been 
 when she arrived from the country and went to a 
 stationer's to buy ginger-bread. She seemed to 
 have lost the power of comprehension. Made- 
 moiselle saw her look with a face of an idiot, when 
 she spoke to her. She was obliged to explain to her, 
 and repeat to her twice or thrice, what, hitherto, 
 Germinie had caught from a hint. Seeing her in 
 this condition, slow and drowsy, she asked her- 
 self whether some one had not changed her 
 maid.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "Really you are becoming a stupid fool!" she 
 said to her sometimes in her impatience. 
 
 She remembered the time when Germinie had 
 been so useful to her in recalling a date, in address- 
 ing a card, in telling the day when the wood had 
 come in or the cask of wine had been begun, all 
 these being things which escaped her own old 
 brain. Germinie could now remember nothing. 
 When she was reckoning up with mademoiselle in 
 the evening she could not recall what she had 
 bought in the morning. "Wait!" she would say, 
 and after a vague gesture nothing recurred to her. 
 To spare her eyes, mademoiselle had grown ac- 
 customed to have the newspaper read to her by 
 her maid; but Germinie came to hesitate in such 
 a fashion, and to read with so little intelligence, 
 that mademoiselle was obliged to decline the 
 service. 
 
 While her intellect thus grew constantly weaker, 
 her body also was abandoned and neglected. She 
 renounced the toilet, and even cleanliness. In 
 her heedlessness she preserved nothing of a 
 woman's care; she no longer dressed herself. She 
 wore dresses spotted with grease and rent under 
 the arms, aprons in tatters, stockings in holes, 
 with misshapen old shoes. She allowed the kitchen 
 smoke, coal, blacking, to soil her, to be wiped up 
 by her as by a dishcloth. Formerly she had in- 
 dulged in the coquetry and luxury of poor women 
 the love of linen. No one in the house wore 
 
 1:202]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 fresher caps. Her little collars, which were quite 
 simple and plain, had always that whiteness which 
 lights up the skin so prettily and makes the whole 
 person tidy. Now she wore caps that were worn 
 and crumpled, and that looked as though she had 
 slept in them. She did without cuffs, her collar 
 allowed a strip of dirt to be seen against the skin 
 of her neck, and one felt she was even filthier below 
 than above. A rank and stagnant odor of wretch- 
 edness came from her. Sometimes it was so 
 strong that Mademoiselle de Varandeuil could 
 not help saying to her: 
 
 "Go and change, my girl; you smell of poverty." 
 In the street she no longer looked as though she 
 belonged to any decent person. She no longer 
 seemed to be a respectable person's servant. She 
 was losing the aspect of a maid who, careful and 
 respectful of herself in her very dress, bears about 
 her the reflection of her house, and the pride of 
 her employers. From day to day she was be- 
 coming that abject, bare-breasted creature whose 
 dress sweeps the kennel a sloven. 
 
 Neglecting herself, she neglected everything 
 around her. She no longer tidied, or cleaned, or 
 washed. She allowed disorder and dirt to find 
 their way into the apartments, to invade made- 
 moiselle's home, that little home whose cleanli- 
 ness had formerly made mademoiselle so content 
 and proud. The dust collected, spiders spun their 
 webs behind the picture-frames, the mirrors grew
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 dull, the marble chimney-pieces and mahogany 
 furniture became tarnished; moths flew from the 
 no longer shaken rugs, worms established them- 
 selves in places unswept by brush or broom; 
 forgetfulness everywhere scattered dust upon the 
 slumbering and neglected things which formerly 
 were awaked and revived by the energy of every 
 morning. 
 
 Ten times over had mademoiselle tried to pique 
 Germinie's pride in the matter; but then, the 
 whole day long, there was a cleaning so furious 
 and accompanied by such fits of temper, that 
 mademoiselle resolved never to do so again. One 
 day, nevertheless, she was bold enough to write 
 Germinie's name with her finger in the dust on the 
 looking-glass; it was a week before Germinie for- 
 gave her. Mademoiselle at last resigned herself 
 to it. She did no more than say very gently, 
 when she saw her maid in a momentary good 
 humor: 
 
 "Confess, my girl, that the dust has a good time 
 with us!" 
 
 To the astonishment and remarks of the friends 
 who still came to see her and whom Germinie was 
 obliged to admit, mademoiselle would reply in a 
 tone of pity and compassion: 
 
 "Yes, it is dirty, I know. But what of it? 
 Germinie is ill, and I would rather that she did 
 not kill herself." 
 
 Sometimes when Germinie had gone out she 
 [2043
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 ventured with gouty hands to give a wipe with a 
 napkin to the chest of drawers, a stroke with a 
 feather brush to a picture-frame. She used to 
 make haste, dreading lest she should be scolded, 
 lest she should have a scene, if her maid came in 
 and saw her. 
 
 Germinie did scarcely any more work; she 
 hardly served the meals. She had reduced her 
 mistress's lunch and dinner to the simplest dishes, 
 the quickest and easiest to cook. She made her 
 bed without raising the mattresses in the English 
 fashion. The servant that she had once been 
 was recovered and revived within her only on the 
 days on which mademoiselle gave a little dinner, 
 when the number of covers was always sufficiently 
 large owing to the band of children invited. On 
 such days Germinie would emerge as though by 
 magic from her laziness and apathy, and drawing 
 strength from a sort of fever, would recover all 
 her old activity in front of her stoves and 
 lengthened table. And mademoiselle would be 
 astounded to see her, all-sufficing, alone and un- 
 willing to receive assistance, cooking a dinner 
 for ten people in a few hours, serving it, and clear- 
 ing it away with the hands and all the quick 
 adroitness of her youth.
 
 XL 
 
 NO this time, no," said Germinie, getting 
 up from the foot of Jupillon's bed, on which 
 she had been seated. "There is no means. 
 So you don't know that I haven't got another sou, 
 nothing that is called a sou. You haven't seen 
 the stockings I wear!" 
 
 And raising her petticoat, she showed him stock- 
 ings that were all in holes and fastened with sel- 
 vages. 
 
 "I haven't what will get me a change of any- 
 thing. Money? why, on mademoiselle's birthday, 
 I hadn't enough just to give her some flowers. I 
 bought her a bunch of violets for a sou, so ! Money, 
 indeed! Do you know how I got your last twenty 
 francs? By taking them out of mademoiselle's 
 cash-box. I have replaced them, but that's all 
 over. I'll have no more of that kind of thing. It's 
 all very well for once. Where would you have me 
 find them now, just tell me that? People can't 
 pawn their skins, and there's no other way that 
 I know of. But another thing like that I'll never 
 do in my life again! Anything you like, but not 
 that, not stealing! I'll do it no more. Oh, I know 
 well enough what will happen to me with you 
 but so much the worse!" 
 
 1*061
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "Well, have you done exciting yourself?" said 
 Jupillon. "If you had told me that about the 
 twenty francs, do you imagine that I'd have 
 wanted them? I didn't think you were such a 
 beggar as that. I saw you always getting along. 
 I fancied it wouldn't put you out to lend me a 
 twenty- franc piece that I'd have paid you back 
 in a week or two with the rest. But you don't 
 say anything. Well, that's all about it; I'll ask 
 you no more. It's no reason why we should get 
 angry, is it?" 
 
 And casting an indefinable glance upon Ger- 
 minie: 
 
 "Till Thursday, eh?" 
 
 'Till Thursday!" said Germinie, desperately. 
 
 She longed to throw herself into Jupillon's arms, 
 to ask his forgiveness for her wretchedness, to say 
 to him: 
 
 "You see, I cannot!" 
 
 "Till Thursday!" she repeated, and went away. 
 
 When she knocked at the door of Jupillon's 
 ground-floor lodgings on Thursday, she thought 
 that she could hear the footsteps of a man re- 
 treating into the back part. The door opened; 
 before her stood the cousin in a hair-net, an 
 ample red jacket, slippers, and the toilet and face 
 of a woman who is at home in a man's home. Her 
 things were lying about here and there. Germinie 
 could see them on the furniture for which she had 
 paid. 
 
 207:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "What does madame want?" asked the cousin, 
 impudently. 
 
 "Monsieur Jupillon." 
 
 "He is out." 
 
 " I will wait for him," said Germinie, as she tried 
 to enter the other room. 
 
 "At the concierge's, then." And the cousin 
 barred her passage. 
 
 "When will he be back?" 
 
 "When hens have teeth," said the young girl, 
 gravely; and she shut the door in her face. 
 
 "Well, it's just what I expected from him," 
 said Germinie, as she walked along the street. The 
 paving-stones seemed to be giving way beneath 
 her nerveless legs.
 
 XLI 
 
 COMING in that evening from a baptismal 
 dinner party which she had been unable to 
 decline, mademoiselle heard talking in her 
 room. She thought that there was some one with 
 Germinie, and pushed open the door in astonish- 
 ment. By the light of a black smoky candle she 
 could at first see nobody; then, looking carefully, 
 she perceived her maid lying curled up on the foot 
 of her bed. 
 
 Germinie was asleep and was speaking. She 
 spoke in a strange tone, and one which inspired 
 emotion and almost fear. The vague solemnity 
 of supernatural things, a breath from beyond the 
 limits of life was in the room with this involuntary, 
 escaping, throbbing, suspended speech of sleep 
 which was like a disembodied soul straying upon 
 dead lips. It was a slow, deep, distant voice, with 
 long breathing pauses and words exhaled like sighs, 
 crossed by vibrating and poignant tones which 
 penetrated the heart, a voice full of the mystery 
 and trembling of the night in which the sleeper 
 seemed to be groping after memories, and to be 
 passing her hand over faces. These words were 
 audible: 
 
 C 209 ]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "Oh! she loved me well. And he, if he were not 
 dead we'd be happy now, wouldn't we? No, 
 no! But it's done so much the worse I 
 won't tell - 
 
 And then came a nervous shrinking as though 
 Germinie wished to thrust back her secret, and 
 bring it back from the edge of her lips. 
 
 Mademoiselle had leaned with a sort of terror 
 over this abandoned, self-alienated body, to which 
 the past was returning like a ghost to a forsaken 
 house. She listened to these confessions ready to 
 spring forth and mechanically arrested, to this 
 unknowing thought which was speaking wholly 
 of itself, to this voice which could not hear itself. 
 A feeling of horror came upon her; she felt as if 
 she were beside a corpse possessed by a dream. 
 
 After an interval of silence, of a sort of pulling 
 to and fro amid what she appeared to be seeing 
 again, Germinie seemed to allow the present period 
 of her life to come to her. What escaped her, 
 what she poured forth in detached and inconse- 
 quent words, consisted, so far as mademoiselle 
 could understand, in reproaches addressed to 
 some one. And as she went on speaking her 
 language became as unrecognizable as her words, 
 as her voice transposed into the notes of the dream. 
 It soared above the woman, above her daily toil 
 and expressions. It was like a people's language 
 purified and transfigured in passion. Germinie 
 was accenting her words with their orthography;
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 she was uttering them with their eloquence. The 
 phrases came forth from her mouth with their 
 rhythm, their anguish, and their tears, as from 
 the mouth of an admirable actress. There were 
 impulses of tenderness broken by cries; then came 
 revolts, outbursts, and marvellous, strident, merci- 
 less irony ever stifled in a fit of nervous laughter 
 that repeated and prolonged the same insult to the 
 echo. 
 
 Mademoiselle was bewildered, astounded, lis- 
 tening as in a theatre. Never had she heard dis- 
 dain falling from such a height, contempt being 
 shattered in such a manner and springing into 
 laughter, a woman's utterance containing so much 
 of vengeance against a man. She searched her 
 memory; such acting, such intonations, a voice 
 so dramatic and lacerating as this consumptive, 
 heart-breaking one, she could recollect only with 
 Mademoiselle Rachel. 
 
 At last Germinie awoke abruptly, her eyes 
 filled with the tears of her sleep, and she sprang 
 off the bed on seeing that her mistress had come 
 back. 
 
 "Thanks," said the latter to her, "don't 
 trouble. Sprawl away on my bed, as you are 
 doing!" 
 
 "Oh! mademoiselle," said Germinie, "I was 
 not where you lay your head. There, that will 
 warm your feet!" 
 
 "Well, just tell me what you were dreaming
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 about. There was a man in it, and you were 
 arguing." 
 
 "I?" said Germinie, "I have forgotten." 
 And seeking after her dreams she began to 
 silently undress her mistress. When she had put 
 her into bed: 
 
 "Ah! mademoiselle," she said to her as she 
 tucked in the clothes, "won't you give me a fort- 
 night, just for once, to go home? I remember 
 now "
 
 XLII 
 
 SOON afterwards mademoiselle was astonished 
 by an entire change in the manner of life and 
 habits of her maid. Germinie lost her sullen- 
 ness, her wild tempers, her rebelliousness, her word- 
 mutterings wherein scolded her discontent. She 
 suddenly emerged from her laziness, and recovered 
 zeal in her work. She no longer took whole hours 
 to do her shopping; she seemed to shun the street. 
 She went out no more in the evening; she scarcely 
 stirred from mademoiselle's side, encompassing 
 her, tending her from her rising to her bedtime, 
 taking continuous, incessant, almost irritating 
 care of her, never allowing her to get up, or even 
 to stretch out her hand to take anything, serving 
 her, watching over her as over a child. At times, 
 wearied of this eternal occupation about her per- 
 son, mademoiselle would open her mouth to say to 
 her: 
 
 "Well now! are you going to decamp from here 
 soon!" 
 
 But Germinie would turn her smile upon her, 
 a smile so sad and so sweet that it checked the 
 impatience on the old maid's lips. And Germinie 
 would continue to remain near her with a sort of
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 charmed and divinely stupid look, in the immo- 
 bility of profound adoration, the absorption of 
 almost idiotic contemplation. 
 
 The reason was that at this juncture all the 
 poor girl's affection was returning towards made- 
 moiselle. Her voice, her gestures, her eyes, her 
 silence, her thoughts went out to her mistress's 
 person with a fervor of an expiation, the contri- 
 tion of a prayer, the transport of a religion. She 
 loved her with all the tender violence of her nature. 
 She loved her with all the betrayals of her passion. 
 She would fain have rendered to her all that she 
 had not given her, all that others had taken from 
 her. Every day her love embraced her mistress 
 more closely, more religiously, so that the old 
 maiden lady felt herself pressed, enwrapped, 
 gently warmed by the glow of two arms that were 
 thrown about her old age. 
 
 C 214]
 
 XLIII 
 
 BUT the past and her debts were always with 
 her, and every hour repeating to her: 
 "If mademoiselle knew!" 
 
 She lived in a criminal's agony, in trembling 
 pain from which no instant was free. Not a ring 
 came to the door that she did not say to herself, 
 "There it is!" Letters in a strange handwriting 
 filled her with anxiety. She tortured the wax with 
 her fingers, she thrust them into her pocket, she 
 hesitated about giving them, and the moment 
 at which mademoiselle opened the terrible paper, 
 and ran over it with an old woman's indifferent 
 eye, cost her the emotion that is caused by an 
 expected sentence of death. She felt her secret 
 and her falsehood to be in everyone's keeping. The 
 house had seen it and could speak. The neighbor- 
 hood knew it. Her mistress was the only person 
 left of those round about her whose good opinion 
 she could steal. 
 
 Going up and down stairs she encountered the 
 concierge's glance, a glance which smiled and said 
 to her: "I know!" She no longer ventured to 
 call him familiarly: "My Pipelet." When she 
 came in, he used to look into her basket. "Ah,
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 I am so fond of that!" his wife would say when 
 there was something good. In the evening she 
 would bring them down what was left. She could 
 no longer eat. In the end she fed them. 
 
 The whole street alarmed her like the staircase 
 and the concierge's lodge. In every shop there was 
 a face that reflected her shame and speculated 
 upon her guilt. At every step she was forced to 
 purchase silence at the cost of humility and sub- 
 missiveness. The tradespeople whom she had 
 been unable to repay had a hold upon her. If she 
 considered anything too dear, some jeering woman 
 would remind her that they were masters and that 
 she must pay if she did not wish to be exposed. 
 A jest, an allusion would make her turn pale. She 
 was tied to the place, obliged to deal there, to allow 
 her pockets to be ransacked as though by accom- 
 plices. 
 
 The new dairy-woman, successor to Madame 
 Jupillon, who had left to keep a grocer's shop at 
 Bar-sur-Aube, would palm off her bad milk upon 
 her, and when she told her that mademoiselle com- 
 plained about it and scolded her every morning: 
 
 "Your mademoiselle!" replied the dairy-woman, 
 "don't tell me she bothers you!" 
 
 When she smelt a fish at the fishmonger's and 
 said to her: 
 
 " It's been on the ice." 
 
 "Nonsense!" the woman would return, "say 
 at once that I put the influence of the moon into its 
 
 [216]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 gills to make it look fresh! And so, my dear, 
 people are hard to please to-day!" 
 
 Mademoiselle wished her to go to the central 
 market on account of a dinner-party; she spoke 
 of this in presence of the fruiterer: 
 
 "Ah! yes, indeed, to the market! I should like 
 to see you going to the market!'* 
 
 And she cast a glance at Germinie in which the 
 latter could see the bill she owed sent up to her 
 mistress. 
 
 The grocer sold her his snuffy coffee, his damaged 
 prunes, his spoilt rice, his old biscuits. When 
 she took courage to make some remark: 
 
 "Tut!" he would say, "surely an old customer 
 like you wouldn't find fault. When I tell you that 
 what I give you is good " 
 
 And he would cynically weigh for her with false 
 weights what she asked for and what he made her 
 ask for.
 
 XLIV 
 
 IT was a great trial to Germinie a trial which 
 she sought, nevertheless to pass through 
 a street in which there was a school for little 
 girls, on her way back after getting mademoiselle's 
 evening paper before dinner. She frequently 
 found herself in front of the door at the hour when 
 school was over; she wished to escape, and she 
 would stand still. 
 
 There was first the sound of a swarm, a hum- 
 ming, a great joyousness of children such as fills 
 the Parisian street with prattling. From the dark 
 and narrow passage running beside the school- 
 room, the little ones escaped as from an open cage, 
 ran off pell-mell, hastened onwards, frolicking in 
 the sun. They pushed and hustled one another, 
 tossing their empty baskets over their heads. 
 Then the groups called to one another and formed; 
 little hands went out to other little hands; friends 
 gave their arms to one another; couples took each 
 other round the waist or held each other round the 
 neck, and began to walk, eating the same slice 
 of bread and butter. The troop soon advanced, 
 and all loitering went slowly up the dirty street. 
 The tallest, who were ten years old, would stop to
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 talk, like little women, at the gate-ways. Others 
 would halt to drink from their luncheon bottles. 
 The smallest amused themselves by wetting the 
 soles of their shoes in the gutter. And there were 
 some who would put a cabbage-leaf that they had 
 picked up from the ground on their heads, a green 
 cap from the good God beneath which laughed 
 their fresh little faces. 
 
 Germinie would watch them all and walk with 
 them. She joined their ranks that she might feel 
 the rustling of their pinafores. She could not take 
 her eyes off the little arms with the satchels jog- 
 ging beneath them, the little brown-spotted dresses, 
 the little black drawers, the little legs in their 
 little woollen stockings. To her there seemed to 
 be a kind of divine light on all these fair little 
 heads, with their soft tresses like those of the in- 
 fant Jesus. A playful little lock on a little neck, 
 a trifle of childish flesh above the edge of a chemise, 
 or below a sleeve, this was, at times, all that she 
 saw: to her it was the whole sunshine of the street, 
 and Heaven! 
 
 Meanwhile the troop was diminishing. Every 
 street drew off the children of the neighboring 
 streets. The school was dispersing on the road- 
 way. The gaiety of all these little footsteps was 
 gradually dying away. The little dresses were 
 disappearing one by one. Germinie followed the 
 last; she attached herself to those who went the 
 farthest.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 On one occasion, when walking in this way, and 
 feeding her eyes upon the memory of her daughter, 
 she was suddenly seized with a passion for kissing 
 and darted upon one of the children, grasping it 
 by the arm with the gesture of a child-stealer. 
 
 "Mamma! mamma!" the little one called and 
 wept, as she made her escape. 
 
 Germinie fled. 
 
 2203
 
 XLV 
 
 WITH Germinie the days followed one 
 another alike, equally sorrowful and dark. 
 She had finally ceased to expect anything 
 from chance and to ask anything from the unfore- 
 seen. Her life seemed to her to have been shut 
 up for ever in its despair: it was still to be always 
 the same merciless thing, the same smooth, straight 
 road of misfortune, the same pathway of shadow 
 with death at the end. In time there ceased to be 
 a future for her. And yet, amid the hopelessness 
 in which she cowered, there passed through her at 
 times thoughts which made her raise her head and 
 look out before her and beyond her present. At 
 times the illusion of a lost hope smiled upon her. 
 It seemed to her that she might still be happy, and 
 that, if certain things took place, she would be so. 
 Then she imagined these things to herself. She 
 arranged accidents and catastrophes. She linked 
 the impossible to the impossible. She renewed all 
 the chances of her life. And her fevered hope, 
 setting itself to create on the horizon the events 
 of her desire, soon grew intoxicated with the mad 
 vision of its hypothesis. 
 
 Then by degrees this delirium of hope departed 
 
 C22I]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 from Germinic. She told herself that it was im- 
 possible, that nothing of what she dreamed could 
 come to pass, and she used to remain absorbed in 
 reflections, and sunk upon her chair. Soon, after 
 a few moments, she would get up, go in a slow 
 and uncertain fashion to the fireplace, groping 
 on the chimney-piece for the coffee-pot, and make 
 up her mind to take it; she was going to learn 
 the remainder of her life. Her weal and her woe, 
 all that was to happen to her was there, in the 
 fortune of this woman of the People, on the plate 
 upon which she had just poured the dregs of the 
 coffee. 
 
 She drained off the liquid from the dregs, waited 
 for a few minutes, breathed upon it with the reli- 
 gious breath with which her childish lips used to 
 touch the paten at the church in her village. Then, 
 bending down, she kept her head advanced, dread- 
 ful in its immobility, with fixed, absorbed eyes 
 bent upon the black trail scattered in spots on the 
 plate. She sought for what she had seen fortune- 
 tellers find in the granulations and 'almost im- 
 perceptible dottings left by the residue of the 
 coffee on being poured off. She exhausted her 
 sight upon these thousands of little spots, discover- 
 ing in them shapes, letters, signs. She separated 
 some of the grains with her finger in order to have 
 a clearer and plainer view of them. She turned 
 and revolved the plate slowly in her hands, ques- 
 tioned her mystery on all sides, and pursued in 
 
 1:222]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 to its circle of appearances, images, name-rudi- 
 ments, shadows of initials, likenesses of somebody, 
 outlines of something, embryos of omens, fig- 
 urations of nothing, which announced to her 
 that she would be "victorious.'* She wanted 
 to see, and she compelled herself to guess. 
 Beneath the intensity of her gaze, the china be- 
 came animate with her waking visions; her 
 griefs, her hatreds, the faces that she detested, 
 rose up little by little from the magic plate and 
 the designs of chance. Beside her, the candle, 
 which she forgot to snuff, cast its intermittent 
 and expiring gleam; the light sank into silence, 
 the hour passed into night, and Germinie, as 
 though petrified in arrested anguish, remained 
 still riveted there, alone, and face to face with the 
 terror of the future, seeking to distinguish the 
 confused features of her destiny in the specks of 
 the coffee, until she believed that she could see a 
 cross by the side of a woman, who looked like 
 Jupillon's cousin, a cross, that is to say an 
 approaching death. 
 
 223:1
 
 XLVI 
 
 THE love which she lacked, and which she 
 wished to deny herself, then became the 
 torture of her life, an incessant and abomi- 
 nable anguish. She had to defend herself against 
 the feverishness of her body, and stimulations 
 from without against the ready emotions, and 
 weak cowardliness of her flesh, against all the 
 natural solicitations that assailed her. She had 
 to wrestle with the heat of the daytime, with the 
 suggestions of the night, with the moist warmth 
 of the hours of storm, with the breath of her past 
 and of her recollections, with the things suddenly 
 depicted within her, with the voices that whispered 
 kisses in her ear, with the quiverings that gave 
 fondness to every limb 
 
 For weeks and months and years her tempta- 
 tion lasted, and she did not yield to it, did not 
 take another lover. Dreading herself, she shunned 
 man and fled from his sight. She continued to be 
 unsociable and a recluse shut up with mademoi- 
 selle, or else upstairs in her own room; and she 
 no longer went out on Sundays. She had given 
 up seeing the servants belonging to the house, 
 and, to ensure occupation and self-forgetfulness,
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 she plunged into extensive sewing-tasks, or buried 
 herself in sleep. When musicians came into the 
 courtyard she used to shut her windows that she 
 might not hear them, for the voluptuousness of 
 music melted her soul. 
 
 In spite of it all she could not grow either calm 
 or cold. Her evil thoughts kindled spontaneously, 
 lived and struggled of themselves. At all times the 
 fixed idea of desire uprose from her entire being, 
 became throughout her whole person that wild 
 unending torment, that delirium of the senses in 
 the brain: obsession, obsession which nothing 
 can drive away and which always returns, shame- 
 less, desperate, image-swarming obsession which 
 introduces love through all a woman's sense, 
 communicates it to her shut eyes, rolls it reeking 
 through her head, drives it hot through her 
 arteries ! 
 
 In time, the nervous shock of these continual 
 assaults, the irritation of this painful continence, 
 began to confuse Germinie's powers of perception. 
 Her eyes seemed to rest on her temptations; a 
 frightful hallucination brought close to her senses 
 the reality of their dreams. It came to pass that 
 at certain times, whatever she saw, whatever was 
 before her, the chandeliers, the legs of the furni- 
 ture, the arms of the easy chairs, everything about 
 her assumed appearances and forms of impurity. 
 Obscenity sprang up from all that was before her 
 eyes, and came to her. Then, looking at the time
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 by the cuckoo-clock in her kitchen, like a con- 
 demned criminal no longer in possession of her 
 own person, she would say: 
 
 "In five minutes I shall go down into the 
 street - 
 
 And when the five minutes were over, she re- 
 mained where she was and did not go down. 
 
 226:1
 
 XLVII 
 
 THERE came a time in this life when Ger- 
 minie resigned the struggle. Her con- 
 science yielded, her will bent, and she 
 bowed to the fate of her life. All that was left to 
 her of resolution, energy and courage departed 
 before her sense, her despairing conviction, of 
 her powerlessness to save herself from herself. 
 She felt that she was in the current of something 
 which was ever moving, and which it was useless, 
 almost impious, to attempt to stay. That great 
 world-force which imposes suffering, that evil 
 power, Fatality, which on the marble of ancient 
 tragedies bears the name of a god, and on the 
 tattooed brow of the galleys is called No Luck, was 
 crushing her, and Germinie bowed her head be- 
 neath its foot. 
 
 When in her hours of discouragement she again 
 experienced in memory the bitterness of her past, 
 when she traced from childhood the links in her 
 mournful existence, that file of sorrows which had 
 accompanied her years and grown with them, the 
 whole sequence of her life which had been like a 
 conjunction and adjustment of wretchedness 
 wherein she had never distinguished the hand of 
 
 227;]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 that Providence of whom she had heard so much 
 - she told herself that she was one of those un- 
 fortunates devoted at their birth to an eternity 
 of misery, one of those for whom happiness was 
 not intended, and who are acquainted with it 
 only by envying it in others. She fed and feasted 
 on this thought, and from searching into the de- 
 spair that it caused her, from sifting within her- 
 self the continuity of her misfortunes and the 
 sequence of her griefs, she came to see the per- 
 secution of her ill-luck in the pettiest mischances 
 of her life and work. 
 
 A little money lent by her, and not repaid, a 
 bad coin given her in a shop, a commission which 
 she executed badly, a purchase in which she had 
 been deceived, all these things never resulted with 
 her from her own fault or from accident. It was 
 the sequel to the rest. Life was in a conspiracy 
 against her, and persecuted her in everything, 
 everywhere, in small things as well as in great, 
 from her daughter's death to the badness of the 
 grocery. There were days on which she broke 
 everything that she touched, and she then 
 imagined that she was cursed to the very finger 
 tips. Cursed! ay, damned almost, as she per- 
 suaded herself when she questioned her body, 
 when she sounded her senses. Did she not feel 
 stirring in the fire of her blood, in the appetite of 
 her organs, in her burning weakness, the Fatality 
 of Love, the mystery and domination of a disease 
 
 C228:
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 which was stronger than her modesty or her rea- 
 son, which had already delivered her over to the 
 shamefulness of passion, and which she knew 
 by presentiment was to do so again. 
 
 Thus she had now only a single utterance upon 
 her lips, an utterance which was the refrain of her 
 thoughts : 
 
 "What can you expect? I am unfortunate: 
 I have no luck. Nothing succeeds with me." 
 
 She used to say this like a woman who has 
 resigned hope. With the thought which every 
 day became more rooted, that she had been born 
 under an unfavorable star, that she belonged to 
 hatreds and vengeances higher than herself, a 
 terror came to her of everything that happens in 
 life. She lived in that cowardly anxiety in which 
 the unforeseen is dreaded like a calamity about 
 to make its appearance, in which a ring at the 
 bell alarms, in which we turn a letter over and 
 over, weighing its mystery, and not daring to open 
 it, in which the news that you are going to hear, 
 the lips that are parted to speak to you, bring the 
 perspiration to your temples. She had come to 
 be in that state of mistrust, of nervousness, of 
 trembling at destiny, in which misfortune sees 
 only misfortune, and in which one would fain 
 stay his life that it may pause, and cease to ad- 
 vance yonder, whither all the desires and expecta- 
 tions of others are impelling it. 
 
 At last she arrived through tears at that supreme
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 disdain, that pinnacle of suffering, where the ex- 
 cess of pain is like irony, where sorrow, passing 
 beyond the bounds of the strength of the human 
 creature, passes beyond its sensitiveness, and 
 where the heart stricken and no longer sensible to 
 blows says defiantly to Heaven: 
 "Again!" 
 
 230:1
 
 XLVIII 
 
 WHERE are you going in that style?" said 
 Germinie one Sunday morning to Adele, 
 who, dressed all in her best, was passing 
 before the open doorway of her room on the corri- 
 dor of the sixth floor. 
 
 "I'm off to a proper jollification. There's a lot 
 of us big Marie, you know, the big dare-devil 
 Elisa from 41, both the Badiniers, tall and 
 short ay, and men too. First of all, I shall have 
 my 'dealer in sudden death.' Well ah, you 
 don't know who that is? my last, the fencing- 
 master of the 24th; and then there's one of his 
 friends, a painter and a regular jolly fellow. We're 
 going to Vincennes. Everybody's taking some- 
 thing and we're to have dinner on the grass. The 
 gentlemen will pay for the drink, and we'll have 
 some fun, I promise you." 
 
 "I'll go," said Germinie. 
 'You? Nonsense! why, you have done with 
 parties." 
 
 "I tell you I'll go, and I will," said Germinie, 
 with abrupt decision. "Just give me time to let 
 mademoiselle know, and to put on a dress. Wait for 
 me and I'll get half a lobster at the pork-butcher's." 
 
 231:]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Half an hour afterwards the two women set out, 
 went along by the boundary wall, and found the 
 rest of the company at table outside a cafe on the 
 Boulevard de la Chopinette. After having some 
 black currant ratafia all round, they got into two 
 large cabs and rolled away. On reaching Vin- 
 cennes they alighted in front of the fort, and the 
 whole band began to walk in a troop along the 
 slope of the trench. As they passed in front of 
 the wall of the fort the fencing-master's friend, the 
 painter, called out to an artillery-man on duty 
 beside a cannon: 
 
 "I say, old boy, you'd rather drink one than 
 mount guard over it." * 
 
 "How funny he is," said Adele to Germinie, 
 giving her a great nudge with her elbow. 
 
 Soon they were quite in the Bois de Vincennes. 
 
 Narrow beaten tracks, full of footprints, crossed 
 one another in all directions over the trampled 
 and hardened earth. In the spaces between these 
 little paths, there stretched patches of grass, but 
 grass that was crushed, dried up, yellow and dead, 
 scattered about like litter, the straw-colored blades 
 of which were entangled on all sides with brush- 
 wood amid the dull greenery of nettles. Here 
 might be recognized one of those rural spots to 
 which the great suburbs go to lounge on Sundays, 
 and which remain like turf trampled by a crowd 
 
 *"Cannon" (cannon) is a slang term for a glass of wine drunk at 
 the bar of a wine-shop.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 after a display of fireworks. Twisted, ill-grown 
 trees stood at intervals, small elms with grey 
 trunks, spotted with yellow leprosy, and lopped 
 to the height of a man, sickly oaks eaten by cater- 
 pillars, and with only the lace-work of their leaves 
 remaining. The verdure was paltry, wasted and 
 scanty; the leafage in the air looked thin; the 
 stunted, worn, and scorched foliation, merely 
 speckled the sky with green. The flying dust of 
 high roads covered the ground with grey. The 
 whole had the wretchedness and leanness of a 
 trampled and choked vegetation, the sorry look 
 of verdure on the outskirts of a city, where nature 
 seemed to be issuing from the pavement. No 
 song in the branches, no insect on the beaten soil; 
 the noise of the carts bewildered the birds; the 
 organ suppressed the silence and quivering of 
 the wood; the street passed humming through 
 the landscape. 
 
 On the trees hung women's hats fastened into 
 handkerchiefs with four pins; an artilleryman's 
 tuft shone red every moment through openings 
 in the leaves; cake-sellers rose amid the thickets; 
 on the bare turf, bloused children were cutting 
 sticks, workmen's families were trifling away the 
 time and eating cake, urchin's caps were catching 
 butterflies. It was one of the woods modelled on 
 the old Bois de Boulogne, dusty and broiling, a 
 vulgar and tawdry promenade, one of those places 
 of niggardly shade, where the people go for an 
 
 C2333
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 outing at the gates of capitals, parodies of forests, 
 full of corks, where bits of melon rind and suicides 
 are to be found in the underwood. 
 
 The heat that day was stifling; there was a 
 faint and cloud-wrapped sun, a strong, veiled 
 and diffused light which almost blinded the gaze. 
 The air had a dull heaviness; nothing moved; 
 the greenery with its hard shadows did not stir, 
 the wood was weary and as though crushed be- 
 neath the heavy sky. Now and then only, a 
 breath of air would arise, trailing and skimming 
 the ground. A south wind would pass, one of 
 those enervating winds, fallow and flat which 
 blow upon the senses, and inflame the breath of 
 desire. Without knowing whence the sensation 
 came, Germinie felt, passing over her whole body, 
 something that was akin to the tickling caused 
 by the down of a ripe peach upon the skin. 
 
 They went on merrily, with that somewhat 
 intoxicated activity which the country causes in 
 those who are of the people. The men ran, and 
 the women skipped after them and caught them. 
 They played at rolling about. There was eager- 
 ness to dance among them, and desire to climb 
 the trees; while the painter amused himself by 
 throwing pebbles from a distance into the loop- 
 holes in the gates of the fortress, which he always 
 succeeded in doing. 
 
 At last they all sat down in a sort of glade, at 
 the foot of a clump of oaks, the shadow of which 
 
 234]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 was lengthening in the light of the setting sun. 
 The men, lighting matches on the drill of their 
 trousers, began to smoke. The women chattered, 
 laughed, threw themselves back every minute in 
 loud fits of silly hilarity, and shrill bursts of joy. 
 Germinie alone remained without speaking or 
 laughing. She did not listen, she did not look. 
 Her eyes, beneath her lowered eyelids, were fixed 
 steadily upon the toes of her boots. Absorbed 
 in herself, she seemed to be absent from the actual 
 place and hour. Lying stretched at full length 
 on the grass, with her head somewhat raised by a 
 clod of earth, the only movement that she made 
 was to lay the palms of her hands flat on the grass 
 beside her; then after a short time she would 
 turn them upon their backs and rest them in the 
 same way, repeating this constantly that she 
 might get the freshness of the earth to allay the 
 burning of her skin. 
 
 "There's a lazy hussy! are you snoring?" said 
 Adele to her. 
 
 Germinie opened wide her burning eyes without 
 answering her, and until dinner-time she pre- 
 served the same attitude, the same silence, the same 
 lethargy, feeling around her for the places upon 
 which she had not yet laid the fever of her hands. 
 
 "Adele!" said a woman's voice, "sing us some- 
 thing." 
 
 "Ah!" replied Adele, "I haven't wind enough 
 before eating." 
 
 235!!
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Suddenly a big paving stone, hurled through 
 the air, fell beside Germinie close to her head; 
 at the same moment she heard the painter's voice 
 calling to her: 
 
 "Don't be frightened. It's your chair." 
 
 Each one put his handkerchief on the ground 
 by way of table-cloth. The eatables were un- 
 twisted from the greasy papers. Some quart 
 bottles being uncorked, the wine went round, 
 foaming in glasses wedged between tufts of grass, 
 and all began to eat pork-butcher's meat on 
 slices of bread and butter which served as plates. 
 The painter carved, made paper boats to hold the 
 salt, imitated the orders of the cafe waiters, calling 
 out: 
 
 "Bourn! The Pavilion! Serve!" 
 
 By degrees the party became animated. The 
 atmosphere, the wine and the food stimulated 
 the merriment of the open-air repast. Hands 
 grew neighborly, lips met, free expressions were 
 whispered in the ear, shirt sleeves encircled waists 
 for a moment, and from time to time greedy kisses 
 echoed amid unrestrained embraces. 
 
 Germinie said nothing and drank. The painter, 
 who had placed himself beside her, felt himself 
 becoming stiff and embarrassed with this singular 
 neighbor who amused herself "so internally." 
 Suddenly with his knife, he began to beat a tattoo 
 on his glass which sounded above the noise of the 
 party and raising himself on both knees: 
 
 C236U
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "Ladies!" he said in a voice, like that of a 
 parrot which has been talking too much, "To 
 the health of a man in misfortune: to mine! 
 Perhaps, that will bring me good luck. Jilted, 
 yes, ladies; well, yes, I've been jilted. I'm a 
 widower, an out and out widower clean! I'm 
 as bewildered as a bell-founder. It's not that I 
 cared particularly about it, but habit, that old 
 rascal, habit's the cause of it. In fact I'm bothered 
 as much as a bug in a watch-spring. For the last 
 fortnight, life has with me been like a cup of coffee 
 without a drop of brandy in it. I who love love 
 as if it had made me. No woman! That's a 
 weaning for a man of years! Since I've known 
 what it is, I've had respect for the priests; I 
 quite feel for them, I do, on my word of honor. 
 No longer a woman, and there are so many of them ! 
 But I can't walk about with a placard: A man to 
 let. Apply now to so and so First, it would be 
 necessary to be licensed by the prefect, and then 
 people are so foolish that it would create crowds. 
 All of which, ladies, is for the purpose of informing 
 you that, if there were any one among the persons 
 you know, who would like to form an acquaintance 
 - an honorable acquaintance a nice little ficti- 
 tious marriage, there need be no trouble; here I 
 am - - Victor Mederic Gautruche, a stay-at-home 
 fellow, a regular house ivy-plant for sentiment. 
 You've only to ask at my old lodgings, at the 
 'Safety-Key.' And as merry as a hunchback 
 
 237;]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 who has just drowned his wife. Gautruche! 
 alias Gogo-la-Gaiete, there you are. A nice easy- 
 going young man that doesn't manufacture bother- 
 ations; a good chap that takes things easy and 
 that's not going to give himself the stomach-ache 
 with this Adam's ale." 
 
 As he said this he sent a bottle of water that was 
 beside him flying twenty paces off. 
 
 "Hurrah for the walls! They are to this child 
 what heaven is to God! Gogo-la-Gaiete paints 
 them all the week, Gogo-la-Gaiete stumbles against 
 them on Monday! With all this, not jealous, 
 not naughty, not inclined to kick over the traces; 
 a regular ducky who has never left his mark on 
 any of the other sex. As for appearance, well, 
 I'm your man!" 
 
 He rose to his feet, and drawing up his great, 
 ill-formed figure in his old blue coat with its gold 
 buttons, lifting his grey hat to display his bald, 
 smooth, and perspiring skull, and raising his head 
 which was like that of an unfeathered old bird, 
 he went on: 
 
 "You see what it is. It's not an ornamental 
 property, it's not a flattering one to show off. 
 But it's productive, somewhat unfurnished, but 
 well built. Well, there are forty-nine years, as 
 much hair as there is on a billiard-ball, a dog's- 
 grass beard that you might make tisane with, 
 foundations that are still pretty firm, feet as long 
 as La Villette, and, with all that, leanness enough 
 
 238:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 to take a bath in a gunbarrel. That's the lot. 
 Pass the prospectus. If there's a woman who'll 
 have the whole in a lump some one that's 
 steady, and not too young, and that won't amuse 
 herself by stroking me too much the wrong way 
 
 -You understand, I don't ask for a princess 
 from BatignoIIes - - Very well, then, it's a case!" 
 
 Germinie seized Gautruche's glass, half-emptied 
 it at a draught, and held it out to him on the side 
 at which she herself had drunk. 
 
 As evening was falling, the party returned on 
 foot. At the wall of the fortifications, Gautruche 
 drew a large heart on the stone with cuts of his 
 knife, within which everyone's name was placed 
 beneath the date. 
 
 When night had come Gautruche and Ger- 
 minie were on the outer boulevards, up as far as 
 the Rochechouart Gate. Beside a low house 
 bearing a plaster panel whereon might be read: 
 Madame Merlin. Dresses cut out and tried on, two 
 francs, they stopped before a little stone staircase 
 which, after the first three steps, led into darkness 
 at the very back of which was the blood-red light 
 of an Argand lamp. On a cross-beam, over the 
 entrance, was written in black letters: 
 
 Hotel of the Little Blue Hand. 
 239 3
 
 XLIX 
 
 FREDERIC GAUTRUCHE was a workman 
 of the jovial, ne'er-do-weel, good-for-noth- 
 ing kind, a workman who makes his life 
 a holiday. Filled with the joyousness of wine, his 
 lips perpetually damp with a last drop, his inside 
 befouled with tartar like an old cask, he was one 
 of those whom the Burgundians energetically call 
 "red guts." Always a little drunk, drunk from 
 over night if not drinking during the day, he 
 looked upon life through the liquor which affected 
 his head. He smiled at his lot, he gave himself 
 up to it with the heedlessness of the drunkard, 
 smiling vaguely at things as he followed in the 
 track of the wine-seller, at life, at the road stretch- 
 ing away into the night. Weariness, anxiety, 
 neediness, had taken no hold upon him; and 
 when a gloomy, a serious thought came to him, 
 he would turn away his head, give a sort of "psitt" 
 which was his way of saying "Hell!" and raising 
 his right arm towards Heaven in caricature of the 
 gesture of a Spanish dancer, send his melancholy 
 over his shoulder to the devil. 
 
 He possessed the superb philosophy that comes 
 after drinking, the jolly serenity of the bottle. 
 
 2403
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 He knew neither wish nor desire. His dreams 
 were served to him across the counter. For three 
 sous he was sure of having a small glass of happi- 
 ness, and for twelve a quart of the ideal. Satisfied 
 with everything, he liked everything, and found 
 laughter and amusement in everything. Nothing 
 in the world seemed sad to him except a glass of 
 water. 
 
 To this tipster-like expansiveness, to the gaiety 
 of his health, and of his temperament, Gautruche 
 united the gaiety of his condition, the good humor 
 and high spirits of that free and non-fatiguing 
 occupation out of doors and in mid-air, which 
 amuses itself by singing, and perches a workman's 
 humbug on a ladder over the heads of the passers- 
 by. He was a house-painter and painted letters. 
 He was the only, the single man in Paris who could 
 attack a sign-board without measuring with string, 
 without a blank outline, the only one who could 
 at first trial put every letter inside the border of 
 a placard into its place, and without losing a 
 minute in arranging them, could trace out the 
 capital off-hand. He was noted, further, for 
 "monster" letters, whimsical letters, shaded 
 letters, picked out in bronze or gold to imitate 
 hollows in stone. Thus he would make from 
 fifteen to twenty francs in the day. But as he 
 drank it all he was none the richer, and he had 
 always arrears against him on the slates in the 
 wine-shops. 
 
 C ^O
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 He was a man brought up by the street. The 
 street had been his mother, his nurse, and his 
 school. The street had given him his assurance, 
 his language and his wit. All that an intellect 
 belonging to the people can pick up on the pave- 
 ment of Paris, he had picked up. All that sinks 
 from the upper portions of a great town to the 
 lower filtrations, fragments, crumbs of ideas 
 and of knowledge, all that is borne by the subtle 
 atmosphere and laden kennel of a capital - - the 
 rubbing up against printed matter, the scraps of 
 feuilletons swallowed between two half-pints, the 
 dramatic morsels heard on the boulevards, had 
 imparted to him that lucky intelligence which, 
 without education, grasps everything. He pos- 
 sessed an inexhaustible, imperturbable confidence. 
 His speech abounded and gushed in happy ex- 
 pressions, in funny images, in such metaphors as 
 issue from the comic genius of crowds. He had 
 the picturesque naturalness of open-air farce. He 
 was brimful of funny stories and jokes, rich with 
 the richest stock of the "Joe Millers" of the 
 house-painting business. A member of those low 
 caves of harmony called "lists," he knew all the 
 airs and songs, and he sang them unweariedly. 
 In short he was a droll fellow from top to toe. 
 And only to look at him, people would laugh 
 as at a comic actor. 
 
 A man with this gaiety, with these high spirits, 
 "suited" Germinie. 
 
 1:242]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Germinie was not the working animal which 
 has nothing but its duties in its head. She was 
 not a servant to stand open-mouthed with fright- 
 ened features and doltish demeanor of unintelli- 
 gence while the words of her employers passed 
 unheeded. She, too, had been formed, had been 
 trained, had been drawn out by the education 
 of Paris. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, being 
 without occupation, and having an old maid's 
 curiosity about the stories of the neighborhood, had 
 long made her relate her gleaning of news, all that 
 she knew about the lodgers, the whole chronicle 
 of house and street; and this habit of narration, 
 of chattering as a sort of companion with her 
 mistress, of depicting people, of sketching sil- 
 houettes, had in time developed in her a facility 
 for lively expressions, for happy, unconscious 
 touches, a piquancy and sometimes a keenness of 
 observation remarkable in the mouth of a servant. 
 
 She had often surprised Mademoiselle de Varan- 
 deuil by her liveliness of comprehension, her 
 promptness to grasp half-uttered thoughts, her 
 happiness and readiness in finding such words 
 as would be employed by a good speaker. She 
 knew how to jest. She understood a play on 
 words. She expressed herself without mispronun- 
 ciation, and when there was any orthographical 
 discussion at the dairy, she decided the question 
 with an authority equal to that of the registrar 
 of deaths at the Town Hall, who used to come there
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 for his breakfast. She had also that foundation 
 of miscellaneous reading which women of her class 
 possess when they read. In the service of the two 
 or three kept women with whom she had been, 
 she had spent her nights in devouring novels; 
 since then she had continued to read the feuilletons 
 cut from the bottom of the papers by all her 
 acquaintances; and from these she had retained 
 a sort of vague idea of many things, and of a few 
 kings of France. She had preserved enough to 
 inspire a wish to talk of it to others. 
 
 Through a woman belonging to the house who 
 looked after the establishment of an author in the 
 same street, and who used to have tickets, she 
 had often been to the play; as she returned home 
 she used to recall the whole piece, and the names 
 of the actors that she had seen on the programmes. 
 She liked to buy penny songs, and novels, and 
 read them. 
 
 The atmosphere, the living breath of the Breda 
 quarter with all its vitality of artist and studio, 
 art and vice, had quickened these intellectual 
 tastes in Germinie, and created needs, require- 
 ments within her. Long before the time of her 
 loose habits, she had separated herself from virtu- 
 ous society, from the "respectable" people of her 
 condition and caste, from those who were silly, 
 stupid, and worthy. She had withdrawn from 
 surroundings of steady, narrow-minded probity, 
 of sleepy gossipings over the teas given by the 
 
 244;]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 old servants of the old folk who knew made- 
 moiselle. She had shunned the tediousness of 
 maids dulled by the consciousness of service and 
 the fascination of the savings bank. She had come 
 to require from those who were to associate with 
 her a certain intelligence corresponding to her 
 own and able to understand it. 
 
 And now, when she was emerging from her 
 brutishness, when she was recovering and re- 
 viving amid diversion and pleasure, she felt that 
 she must amuse herself with her equals in capacity. 
 She would have about her men who made her 
 laugh, violent merriment, spirituous wit that in- 
 toxicated her like the wine that was poured out 
 for her. And it was thus that she turned towards 
 the low Bohemia of the people, noisy, bewildering, 
 intoxicating as all Bohemias are: it was thus that 
 she fell to a Gautruche. 
 
 C245D
 
 AS Germinie was coming in one morning at 
 daybreak, she heard a voice call to her 
 through the shadow of the gate as it closed 
 behind her: 
 
 "Who's that?" 
 
 She darted to the back staircase; but she per- 
 ceived that she was being pursued, and soon felt 
 herself seized by the concierge's hand at the 
 turning of a landing. As soon as he recognized 
 her, he said: 
 
 "Oh! beg pardon, it's you; don't put yourself 
 about! My word, you're going it! It astonishes 
 you, does it, to see me afoot so early? It's on 
 account of the robbery lately in the room of the 
 cook belonging to the second floor. Well, good- 
 night! I can tell you it's lucky for you that I'm 
 no gossip." 
 
 A few days afterwards, Germinie learnt through 
 Adele that the husband of the cook who had been 
 robbed was saying that there was no need to 
 search, for the robber was in the house; people 
 knew what they knew. Adele added that this 
 was making a great stir in the street, and that 
 there were people to repeat it, and believe it. 
 
 1:246:
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Germinie, in indignation, went and told the whole 
 story to her mistress. Mademoiselle, in still 
 greater indignation, and feeling personally affected 
 by the insult, instantly wrote to the servant's mis- 
 tress to put an immediate stop to calumnies 
 directed against a girl whom she had had in her 
 service for twenty years, and for whom she would 
 answer as for herself. The servant was repri- 
 manded. In his anger, he spoke still more strongly. 
 He scolded, and, for several days, spread through 
 the house his intention of going to the Commis- 
 sary of Police, and through him of finding out 
 from Germinie with what money she had stocked 
 the dairy-woman's son, with what money she 
 had hired a substitute for him, with what money 
 she had met the expenses of the men that she had 
 had. 
 
 For a whole week the terrible threat hung over 
 Germinie's head. At last the thief was discovered, 
 and the threat fell to the ground. But it had had 
 its effect upon the poor girl. It had wrought all 
 its evil in this disturbed brain in which, under the 
 afHux and sudden mounting of blood, reason 
 tottered, and was clouded at the slightest shock 
 of life. It had deranged the head that was so 
 ready to go astray under the influence of fear or 
 annoyance, so quick to lose judgment, discern- 
 ment, clearness of vision and appreciation of 
 things, exaggerating everything to itself, falling 
 into foolish alarms, evil forebodings, and de- 
 ll 247 3
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 spairing prospects, feeling its terrors as though 
 they were realities, and momently lost in the 
 pessimism of such delirium that finally it could 
 find no other phrase or safety than this: 
 
 "Bah! I'll kill myself!" 
 
 During the whole week, the fever of her brain 
 led her through all the modifications of that which 
 she imagined must come to pass. Day and night, 
 she could see her shame exposed, published; she 
 could see her secret, her ignominy, her faults, all 
 that she bore hidden about her and locked in her 
 heart, she could see it shown, displayed, and dis- 
 covered to mademoiselle. Her debts for Jupillon 
 increased by her debts for Gautruche's eating 
 and drinking, and by all that she was now buying 
 on credit, her debts to the doorkeeper and to the 
 tradespeople, were all about to come out and ruin 
 her! The thought made her shiver: she could feel 
 mademoiselle driving her away. 
 
 Throughout the week she imagined at every 
 moment of her thought that she was before the 
 Commissary of Police. For seven whole days she 
 revolved the idea and utterance of "the court!" 
 the court as it appears to the imagination of the 
 lower orders, something terrible, undefined, inevi- 
 table, which is everywhere, and in the shadow of 
 everything, an omnipotence of misfortune appear- 
 ing dimly in the black of a judge's robe between 
 the constable and the executioner, with the hands 
 of the police and the arms of the guillotine! She
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 who had all the instincts of these terrors of the 
 people, she who used often to repeat that she 
 would rather die than appear in court, she could see 
 herself seated on a bench with gendarmes on each 
 side of her! in a court, in the midst of all that great 
 unknown of the law which her ignorance made a 
 terror to her. Throughout the week her ears 
 could hear footsteps on the staircase coming to 
 arrest her! 
 
 The shock was too great for nerves so diseased 
 as hers. The moral strain of that week of anguish 
 cast her, and surrendered her to a thought which 
 hitherto had been continually fluttering about 
 her the thought of suicide. With her head 
 between her hands, she began to listen to what 
 spoke to her of deliverance. She lent her ear to 
 the sweet sound of death, which is heard behind 
 life like the distant fall of mighty waters de- 
 scending and disappearing into vacancy. The 
 temptations which speak to discouragement of all 
 that kills with such quickness and facility, of all 
 that takes away suffering with its hand, solicited 
 her, and pursued her. Her gaze rested and lingered 
 upon all those things around her which might be 
 a cure for life. She made them familiar to her 
 fingers, her lips. She touched them, handled 
 them, brought them close to her. She sought 
 in them a trial of her courage, and a foretaste of her 
 death. 
 
 She would remain for hours at her kitchen 
 249 3
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 window, her eyes fixed upon the pavement of 
 the courtyard five stories below, pavement which 
 she knew, which she would have recognized! 
 As the light faded she would lean farther out, 
 bending her whole person over the badly fastened 
 windowbar, ever hoping that this bar might give 
 way with her, praying for death without the 
 necessity of that desperate spring into space for 
 which she did not feel that she had the strength 
 
 "Why, you will fall!'* said mademoiselle to her 
 one day, holding her back by the petticoat, with 
 a first, frightened impulse. " What are you looking 
 at in the courtyard? " 
 
 "I? Nothing the pavement." 
 
 "Come now, are you mad? You gave me a 
 fright!" 
 
 "Oh! people don't fall in that way," said Ger- 
 minie, in a strange tone. "It takes a real wish 
 to make you fall!" 
 
 2503
 
 LI 
 
 GERMINIE had not been able to induce 
 Gautruche, who was pursued by a former 
 mistress, to give her the key of his room. 
 When he had not returned, she was obliged to 
 wait below, outside, in the street and the night and 
 the winter. 
 
 She would at first walk up and down in front 
 of the house. She used to pass backwards and 
 forwards, taking twenty steps and returning. 
 Then, as though she were lengthening out her 
 expectation, she would take a longer turn, and 
 continually increasing the distance, would at last 
 reach the two extremities of the boulevard. She 
 often walked for hours in this way, ashamed and 
 muddy, beneath the gloomy sky, in the suspicious 
 horrors of an avenue near the city gate and of the 
 shadow of everything. She went along by the red 
 houses of the wine-sellers, the bare arbors, the 
 public-house trellises supported by dead trees 
 such as are to be seen in bears' pits, the low, flat 
 hovels pierced at random with blindless windows, 
 the cap manufactories where shirts are sold, the 
 sinister houses in which there are lodgings by the 
 night. She passed in front of shops, shut up, 
 
 251:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 sealed, dismal with failures, of accursed wall- 
 sections, of dark iron-barred passages seeming to 
 lead to those abodes of murder the plan of which is 
 handed to the gentlemen of the jury in the assize 
 court. 
 
 As she proceeded there came funereal little 
 gardens, crooked buildings, mean structures, large 
 mouldy entrances, palings enclosing in a plot of 
 waste ground the disquieting whiteness of stones 
 as seen at night, corners of buildings with sal- 
 petrous stinks, walls fouled with shameful plac- 
 ards and fragments of torn notices in which the 
 rotting advertisements were like a leprosy. From 
 time to time, at an abrupt turning, a lane would 
 appear which seemed to sink after a few steps into 
 a hole, and from which there issued the breath 
 of a cellar; blind alleys cast the dark rigidity of 
 a great wall upon the blue of the sky; streets 
 ascended dimly, where at distant intervals the 
 light of the street-lamps oozed out upon the 
 bleak plaster of the houses. 
 
 Germinie still walked on. She trod the whole 
 of that space wherein the debauched grow drunk 
 on their Mondays, and find their loves, between 
 a hospital, a slaughter-house, and a cemetery :- 
 Lariboisiere, the Abattoir, and Montmartre. 
 
 Those who passed that way, the workman 
 coming whistling from Paris, the workwoman 
 returning after her day's toil with her hands under 
 her armpits to keep herself warm, the prostitute 
 
 1*521
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 wandering about in a black bonnet crossed 
 her path and looked at her. Strangers seemed to 
 be recognizing her; the light made her ashamed- 
 She would escape to the other side of the boule- 
 vard, and follow the dark and deserted road be- 
 side the boundary wall; but she was soon driven 
 away again by horrible shadows of men and 
 brutally amorous hands. 
 
 She would fain have gone away; she abused 
 herself inwardly; she called herself coward and 
 wretch; she swore to herself that this should be 
 the last turn, that she would go again as far as 
 that tree, and that then there should be no more 
 of it, that if he had not then come in there should 
 be an end of it and she would go away. And she 
 did not go away; she still walked and still waited, 
 devoured by a longing and passion to see him that 
 increased in proportion as he delayed. 
 
 At last as the hours went by, and the boulevard 
 emptied of passengers, Germinie, exhausted, worn 
 out with fatigue, would approach the houses. She 
 dragged herself from shop to shop, went mechani- 
 cally where there was still gas burning, and stood 
 stupidly before the flaming windows. She dazed 
 her eyes, and strove to kill her impatience by 
 deadening it. She was arrested for a long time by 
 what is to be seen through the succeeding window- 
 panes of the wine-sellers. The kitchen utensils, 
 the punch-bowls standing in tiers between empty 
 bottles from which issue sprigs of laurel, the glass- 
 
 2533
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 cases in which the colors of the liquors are 
 brilliantly displayed, a half-pint measure full of 
 little plated spoons. She would spell over the old 
 advertisements of lottery-drawings placarded at 
 the back of a wine-shop, the announcements of 
 brandied coffee, the inscriptions in yellow letters 
 of: "New Wine, genuine, 70 centimes." She 
 would gaze for a quarter of an hour at a back room 
 in which there were a man in a blouse seated on a 
 stool before a table, a stove pipe, and a slate and 
 two black trays on the wall. Her fixed and vacant 
 gaze wandered through a reddish mist to blurred 
 silhouettes of cobblers leaning over their benches. 
 It fell and became absorbed on a counter that 
 was being washed, on a pair of hands counting 
 the pence that the day had brought in, on a funnel 
 that was being scoured, on a water-can that was 
 being rubbed with sandstone. She had ceased to 
 think. She stood there, riveted and growing weak, 
 feeling her heart giving way with the fatigue of 
 being on her feet, seeing everything in a sort of 
 swoon, hearing as in a humming noise the mud- 
 splashed cabs rolling along the soft boulevard, 
 ready to fall and at times obliged to prop herself 
 with her shoulder againt the wall. 
 
 In the state of strain and sickness in which she 
 found herself, in that semi-hallucination of gid- 
 diness which rendered her so fearful of crossing 
 the Seine and which made her cling to the balus- 
 trades of the bridges, it would happen that on
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 certain rainy evenings these weaknesses which 
 she experienced on the outer boulevard assumed 
 the terrors of a nightmare. When the flames of the 
 street-lamps, flickering in a watery vapor, cast 
 lengthening and wavering reflections upon the 
 wet ground as on the mirror-like surface of a 
 river; when the pavement, the footpaths, the 
 earth seemed to be disappearing and softening 
 beneath the rain, and nothing solid appeared to 
 be left in the drenching night, the poor wretch, 
 almost mad from fatigue, thought that she could 
 see a deluge swelling in the gutter. A mirage of 
 terror suddenly showed her water all round her, 
 water advancing and drawing near from every 
 direction. She shut her eyes, no longer daring 
 to stir and dreading to feel her feet slip from under 
 her, and beginning to weep, continued weeping 
 until some one passed by and was willing to lend 
 her an arm as far as the Hotel of the Little Blue 
 Hand. 
 
 255:1
 
 LII 
 
 THEN she ascended the staircase; it was her 
 last refuge. She fled there from rain, snow, 
 cold, fear, despair, fatigue. She ascended 
 and sat down on a step against Gautruche's closed 
 door, drawing her shawl and petticoat closely in 
 order to allow a passage to those going and com- 
 ing along this steep ladder, gathering up her per- 
 son and shrinking into a corner to lessen the room 
 occupied by her shame on the narrow landing. 
 
 From the opened doors issued and spread upon 
 the staircase the odor of the airless rooms, and of 
 the families massed together in a single apart- 
 ment, the exhalations from unhealthy occupations, 
 the greasy, animalized fumes from meat-warmers 
 heated on the landing, a stench of rags, the dank 
 unsavoriness of linen drying on strings. The 
 broken-paned window which Germinie had behind 
 her transmitted to her the fetidity of a sink into 
 which the whole house emptied its filth and liquid 
 refuse. Every moment her heart heaved at a gust 
 of infectiousness, and she was obliged to take from 
 her pocket a bottle of carmelite water which she 
 always had about her, and drink a mouthful to 
 keep herself from feeling ill.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 But the staircase also had its passers-by: 
 honest wives of workingmen coming up with a 
 bushel of charcoal or with the wine for supper. 
 They pushed her with their feet, and the whole 
 time that they took to ascend Germinie could feel 
 their looks of contempt winding round the well 
 of the staircase and crushing her from a greater 
 height at every story. Children, little girls with 
 kerchiefs on their heads passing along the dark 
 staircase with the light of a flower, little girls 
 causing her to see her little daughter again, alive 
 and grown, as she appeared to her in dreams - 
 she used to watch them stop and look at her with 
 widely opened eyes that shrank from her; 
 then they would run away and pant upstairs, and 
 when at the very top would lean over the banister 
 and fling impure abuse at her, revilings such as 
 came from children of the people. 
 
 Insults, spit out from those lips of roses, fell upon 
 Germinie more painfully than anything else. She 
 would half raise herself for a moment; then, de- 
 jected and self-abandoned, would sink back, and, 
 drawing her plaid over her head so as to hide and 
 bury herself in it, would remain like one dead, 
 crouched, inert, insensible, coiled up on her 
 shadow like a bundle thrown down for every- 
 body to walk on, her senses gone and no life left 
 throughout her body save for a sound of foot- 
 steps for whose coming she listened but which 
 never came. 
 
 2573
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 At last, after hours had elapsed, hours which 
 she could not number, she seemed to hear the 
 stumbling of footsteps in the street; then a thick 
 voice stuttering up the stairs: 
 
 "Rascal! rascal of wineseller! shold me wine 
 -makes fler drunk!" 
 
 It was he. 
 
 And the same scene was repeated nearly every 
 day. 
 
 "Ah! you're there, Germinie," he would say on 
 recognizing her. "Tell you what it is --I'm 
 going to tell you we were a bit drowned - 
 and putting the key into the lock - "I'm going 
 to tell you, 'tis not my fault." 
 
 He went in, kicked away a turtledove with 
 clipped wings that was hopping lamely about, and 
 shut the door. 
 
 "D'ye see? 'Twasn't me. It was Paillon 
 you know Paillon? The little stout chap who's 
 as fat as a madman's dog. Well! 'twas his doing, 
 it was, on my honor. He would stand me a six- 
 teen-sou bottle. He offered me civility, and I 
 offered him politeness in return. Then, naturally, 
 we put a little comfort into our coffee over and 
 over again? By and by we fell out -- there was the 
 devil's own row And so that rascal of a publican 
 chucked us out of doors like lobster shells!" 
 
 During the explanation, Germinie had lighted 
 the candle standing in a brass candlestick. The 
 unsteady light showed the dirty papering of the 
 
 258:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 room, covered with caricatures from the "Chari- 
 vari," which had been torn out of the journal and 
 pasted on the wall. 
 
 "You're a love," Gautruche would say to her 
 as he saw her place a cold chicken and three 
 bottles of wine on the table. " For you must know 
 some wretched soup is all that I've got in my 
 stomach. Ah, it would have taken a proper fenc- 
 ing-master to put out that fellow's eyes." 
 
 And he began to eat. Germinie, with both 
 elbows on the table, drank and looked at him, and 
 her look grew dark. 
 
 "Good! there's an end of those chaps!" said 
 Gautruche at length, draining the bottles one by 
 one. "Bye! bye! children!" 
 
 And between these two beings there were love- 
 passages, terrible, desperate, funereal, wild frenzies 
 and gratifications, furious indulgences, caresses 
 possessing the brutality and wrath of wine, kisses 
 that seemed to seek for the blood beneath the skin 
 like a wild beast's tongue, prostrations that en- 
 gulfed them and left them but the corpses of their 
 bodies. 
 
 To this debauchery Germinie brought an ele- 
 ment of madness, of delirium, of desperation, a 
 sort of supreme frenzy. Her inflamed senses 
 turned upon themselves, and passing beyond the 
 appetites of their nature, were driven to the point 
 
 2593
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 of suffering. Satiety wore them out without 
 destroying them; and, exceeding excess, they 
 were forced into anguish. In the unhappy crea- 
 ture's paroxysm of excitement, her head, her 
 nerves, the imaginings of her raging body, no 
 longer sought even for pleasure in pleasure, but 
 for something beyond it, more harsh, more poign- 
 ant, more severe for pain in voluptuousness. 
 And momentarily the word "death" escaped from 
 her compressed lips, as though she were invoking 
 it in a whisper, and seeking to embrace it in the 
 agonies of love! 
 
 Sometimes at night, rising up suddenly on the 
 edge of the bed, she set her naked feet upon the 
 coldness of the floor and remained there, wild, 
 listening to the breathing of a sleeping room. And 
 gradually all that was about her, the darkness of 
 the hour, seemed to enwrap her. She appeared to 
 herself to be falling and rolling into the uncon- 
 sciousness and blindness of the night. The will- 
 power of her thoughts disappeared; all sorts of 
 dark things, having as it were beings and voices, 
 beat against her temples. The sombre tempta- 
 tions, which dimly display crime and madness, 
 caused a red light the lightning-flash of a murder 
 - to pass close before her eyes ; and at her back 
 there were hands pushing her from behind towards 
 the table on which the knives lay. She would close 
 her eyes, move a foot; then in fear, hold herself 
 back by the sheets; and finally, turning round, 
 
 260;]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 would fall back into the bed, and link her sleep 
 once more to the sleep of the man whom she had 
 been wishing to assassinate; why? she did not 
 know; for nothing for the sake of killing! 
 
 And thus until day the rage and struggle of these 
 mortal loves strove still in the meanly-furnished 
 room while the poor lame and limping dove, 
 the infirm bird of Venus, nestled in an old shoe 
 belonging to Gautruche, and waking from time to 
 time at the noise, uttered a startled coo.
 
 LIII 
 
 GAUTRUCHE had at this time something of 
 a distaste for drinking. He had just felt 
 the first attack of the liver complaint, which 
 had long been lurking in his fired and alcoholized 
 blood under the brick-red color of his cheek-bones. 
 The frightful pains which had gnawed his side 
 and griped the pit of his stomach for a week had 
 brought him to reflect. With resolutions of wisdom 
 there had come to him almost sentimental notions 
 about the future. He had told himself that he 
 must put a little more water into his life if he 
 wished to die in an old skin. 
 
 While he turned and twisted himself in his bed, 
 with his knees drawn up in order to diminish the 
 pain, he had surveyed his hovel the four walls 
 within which he spent his nights, into which with- 
 out a candle sometimes he brought back his 
 drunkenness at evening, and from which he es- 
 caped in the morning at daybreak; and he had 
 thought of making himself a home. He had 
 thought of a room in which he should have a 
 woman a woman who would make him a good 
 stew, would nurse him if he were ill, would mend 
 his things, would prevent him from beginning a 
 
 C262H
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 new score at the wine-shop, a woman, in short, who 
 would have all the qualities of a good housekeeper, 
 and who would, furthermore, be no fool, who 
 would understand him and laugh with him. This 
 woman was already found she was Germinie. 
 She must surely have a little hoard, a few sous 
 laid by during the time that she had been a servant 
 to her old mademoiselle, and with his own earnings 
 they would live comfortably and "be snug." He 
 had no doubt about her assent; he was sure before- 
 hand that she would accept the proposal. More- 
 over, her scruples, if she had any, would not with- 
 stand the proposal of a marriage to terminate their 
 liaison, with which he intended to dazzle her. 
 
 One Monday she had just come to see him. 
 
 "Look here, Germinie," Gautruche began, 
 "what do you say to this, eh? A good room 
 not like this box of a place, but a proper one with 
 a little one off it at Montmartre in the Rue de 
 I'Empereur, with two windows and a view that 
 an Englishman would give you five thousand francs 
 to take away with him ! something smart and 
 cheerful, in fact, that a fellow might spend a whole 
 day in without being worried, because, d'ye know, 
 I'm beginning to have enough of moving about 
 only to change the fleas. And then, that's not all. 
 I'm sick of hanging out in furnished lodgings all 
 alone. Friends are no company they fall into 
 your glass like flies when you pay, and there's an 
 end of them. First of all, I don't intend to drink 
 
 263:1
 
 GERM1NIE LACERTEUX 
 
 any more, I really don't, as you'll see. I don't 
 want to kill myself, you know, with that sort of 
 life. Nothing of that sort. Mind you, a man has 
 no right to muddle his brains. I've been feeling 
 these times as if I'd swallowed corkscrews, and I 
 don't want to step straight into the grave just yet. 
 So this was the idea that ran through me like the 
 threading of a needle: 
 
 "I'll make a proposal to Germinie. I'll treat 
 myself to a little furniture, and you've got what's 
 in your room. You know there's not much laziness 
 about me; my hands are not too soft to work. 
 Then we might look to be not always working for 
 other people, but to set up a little shop of our own. 
 If you've anything laid by, it would help. We'd 
 settle down nicely together, ready to have our- 
 selves put to rights some day before the mayor. 
 That's not so bad, eh, my lass, is it? And she'll 
 leave her old woman, straight away, won't she, 
 for her old darling of a Gautruche?" 
 
 Germinie, who had been listening to Gautruche 
 with her head advanced towards him and her chin 
 leaning on her hand, threw herself back with a 
 burst of strident laughter. 
 
 "Ha, ha, ha! you thought that! You actually 
 tell me that! You thought that I'd leave her!- 
 her! Mademoiselle! You really thought so? You 
 are a fool, do you know that? Why, you might 
 have hundreds and thousands, you might have 
 pocketfuls of gold pocketfuls, do you hear? 
 
 264:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 and I wouldn't do it. It's a perfect farce. Made- 
 moiselle! But you don't know I've never told 
 you. Ah! it would be a nice thing to have her die 
 and these hands not there to close her eyes! That 
 would be a pretty sight! And you really thought 
 that?" 
 
 "Confound it! I fancied being with me the 
 way you were I thought you cared more about 
 me than that in fact, that you loved me," 
 said the painter, baffled by the terrible, hissing 
 irony of Germinie's words. 
 
 "Ah! so you thought that too that I loved 
 you?" and as though suddenly plucking remorse, 
 and the wound caused by her love, from the bottom 
 of her heart, she went on : " Well, yes, I do love 
 you, I love you just as much as you love me, and 
 no more. I love you like something that's at 
 hand, and that's made use of because it's there. 
 I'm accustomed to you, as I might be to an old 
 dress that was always being put on. That's the 
 way I love you. How would you have me care 
 about you? You or another? I'd like to know 
 what difference that makes to me? For, after all, 
 what have you been more than another to me? 
 Well, yes, you took me, but what then? Is that 
 enough to make me love you? Why, what have 
 you done to make me fond of you, you just tell me 
 that? Did you ever sacrifice a glass of wine for 
 me? Have you as much as had pity on me when 
 I was running about in the mud and snow at the 
 
 265 3
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 risk of my life? Yes, and all that was said to me, 
 all that was flung in my teeth, till my blood was 
 in a boil from one end to another, all the insults 
 that I've swallowed when waiting for you - 
 precious little you were affected by them. There! 
 I've been wanting this long time to tell you all this 
 - my heart has been full with it. Why," she 
 went on, with a cruel smile, "do you think you've 
 made me crazy with your appearance, with the 
 hair that you've lost, and that head of yours? 
 Not likely! I took you -- I'd have taken any 
 one I was at one of those times when I must 
 have somebody, when I know nothing and see 
 nothing, and it's not myself that wills. I took 
 you because it was hot there!" 
 
 She paused for a moment. 
 
 "Go on," said Gautruche, "pitch into me all 
 round. Make yourself comfortable while you're 
 about it." 
 
 "Eh?" Germinie resumed, "you fancied I was 
 going to be delighted to settle down with you? 
 You said to yourself: 'That good fool! How 
 pleased she'll be. And then I'll only have to 
 promise to marry her and she'll leave her place 
 there and then. She'll give up her mistress.' Just 
 imagine! Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle, who had 
 no one but me. Ah! you know nothing about it, 
 and you wouldn't understand it either. Made- 
 moiselle, who is everything to me! Why, since 
 my mother, I've had no one but her to be kind to 
 
 C266I1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 me. Except her, who ever said to me when I was 
 sad, 'Are you sad?' or when I was ill, 'Are you 
 ill?' No one. There was nothing and nobody 
 but her to take care of me, or trouble about 
 me. 
 
 ; 'You talk about loving on account of what 
 there's between us. Why, there's somebody - 
 mademoiselle- who did love me, ay, loved me! 
 And it's killing me, I can tell you, that I've be- 
 come a wretch such as I am, a She uttered 
 the word. "And to deceive her, to rob her of her 
 affection, to go on allowing her to love me like her 
 own daughter, -- me! me! Ah, if ever she heard 
 anything but never mind, it wouldn't be for 
 long. There's someone who'd take a fine jump 
 from the fifth floor, as sure as God's my master! But 
 you may make sure of this you are not my heart, 
 you are not my life, you are only my pleasure. 
 But I had a man once. Ah, didn't I just love him! 
 I might have been cut to pieces for his sake and 
 I'd have said nothing. Ay, he was the man of my 
 misfortune. Well, when I was most taken with 
 him, when I never breathed but when he wished, 
 when I was mad, and if he'd trodden on my body 
 I'd have let him do it, if at that time mademoiselle 
 had been ill and had signed to me with her little 
 finger, I'd have come back yes, for her sake, 
 I'd have left him! I tell you, I'd have left him!" 
 
 "Well, then, if that's so, my dear, and you're 
 so fond of your old woman, I have only one piece
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 of advice to give you: you oughtn't to leave your 
 
 good lady any more, d'ye see?" 
 
 "This is my dismissal?" said Germinie, rising. 
 
 "Faith! something like it." 
 
 "Well, good-bye. I've no objection." 
 
 And going straight to the door, she went out 
 
 without another word.
 
 LIV 
 
 AFTER this rupture, Germinie fell, as she was 
 bound to fall, below shame, below nature 
 itself. Step by step, the miserable, burn- 
 ing creature sank to the street. She picked up the 
 loves that are worn out in a night, such as pass, 
 such as are met with, such as are revealed to a 
 wandering woman by the chance of the pavement. 
 She no longer needed to take time for her desire: 
 her caprice was frenzied and sudden, kindled at 
 the instant. Hungry for the first comer, she 
 scarcely looked at him, and would have been 
 unable to recognize him afterwards. Beauty, youth, 
 that appearance in a lover wherein love of the most 
 degraded women seek a kind of base ideal, all this 
 had ceased to tempt or to move her. Among all 
 men, her eyes could see only man; the individual 
 was indifferent to her. The last remaining mod- 
 esty and the last human sentiment in debauchery, 
 preference, choice, and even what is left to 
 prostitutes to serve as conscience and personality 
 disgust itself was lost in her! 
 
 And she passed along the streets, roaming 
 through the night, with the suspicious, furtive 
 fashion of animals searching the shade with seek- 
 
 269:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 ing appetite. As though an outcast from her sex, 
 she herself attacked, she solicited brutality, she took 
 advantage of intoxication, and the yielding was to 
 her. She walked along, smelling around her, go- 
 ing to the ambushed impurity of stretches of 
 waste ground, to the opportunities of evening and 
 solitude, to the hands that were waiting to pounce 
 upon a shawl. The midnight passers could see 
 her by the light of the street lamp, sinister and 
 quivering, gliding and as it were creeping along, 
 stooped, unobtrusive, her shoulders bent, hugging 
 the darkness, with such a look of insanity and 
 sickness, such an infinite wildness as will cause 
 the heart of the thinker and the thought of the 
 physician to be occupied with abysses of sadness. 
 
 2703
 
 LV 
 
 ONE evening when she was roaming along 
 the Rue du Rocher, passing in front of a 
 wine-shop at the corner of the Rue de 
 Laborde, she saw the back of a man who was 
 drinking at the counter: it was Jupillon. 
 
 She stopped short, turned towards the street, 
 and leaning her back against the grating of the 
 wine-shop, set herself to wait. With her shoulders 
 against the bars, she had the light of the shop 
 behind her, and she stood motionless, one hand 
 holding up her skirt in front and the other hang- 
 ing at the end of her idle arm. She was like a 
 statue of shadow seated on a boundary stone. In 
 her attitude there was terrible resolution and what 
 seemed like eternal patience for waiting there 
 for ever. Passers-by, vehicles, street, she saw them 
 all dimly and distantly. A white horse, the trace- 
 horse of the omnibus used in the ascent of the 
 street, was in front of her, motionless, wearied, 
 sleeping where it stood with its head and two 
 forelegs in the full light from the doorway; but 
 she did not see it. It was drizzling. The weather 
 was such as it sometimes is in Paris, dirty and 
 rotten, the falling water seeming muddy even be- 
 
 1:270
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 fore it has fallen. The gutter was rising over her 
 feet. She remained thus for half an hour, a mourn- 
 ful sight, moveless, menacing and desperate, dark 
 and featureless like a statue of Fate placed by 
 Night at a dram-seller's door. 
 
 At last Jupillon came out. She stood up in 
 front of him with folded arms. 
 
 "My money?" she said to him. She had the 
 face of a woman with whom there is no longer 
 conscience, God, police, assize court, scaffold - 
 anything ! 
 
 Jupillon felt his nonsense sticking in his throat. 
 
 "Your money?" he said. "Your money isn't 
 lost. But you must give me time; just now, work 
 is not doing well. My shop came to an end long 
 ago, as you know. But I promise to repay you 
 in three months. And how are you getting on?" 
 
 "You rascal ! Ah ! I've got you ! So you wanted 
 to be off. It's you that's been my curse, that's 
 made me what I am, robber! thief! pickpocket! 
 It was you - 
 
 Germinie hurled this into his face, pushing 
 against him, facing him, pressing her bosom 
 against his. She seemed to be giving herself to 
 the blows that she called for and challenged; and, 
 stretching quite over to him, she cried: 
 
 "Beat me. Tell me what I must say to you to 
 make you beat me?" 
 
 She could no longer think. She did not know 
 what she wanted; she had only a kind of desire
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 to be struck. There had come to her an instinc- 
 tive, irrational longing to be brutally ill-used, to 
 be bruised, to suffer in her flesh, to feel a shock, 
 a concussion, a pain that might silence what was 
 throbbing in her head. Blows she could think 
 of nothing else to put an end to it all. Then, with 
 the clearness of a hallucination, she could see all 
 kinds of things happening after the blows the 
 arrival of the police, the police-station, the com- 
 missary; the commissary before whom she could 
 tell everything, her story, her miseries, what this 
 man had made her suffer, what he had cost her! 
 Her heart swelled in anticipation at the thought 
 of emptying itself with cries and tears of all that 
 made it ready to burst. 
 
 "Beat me!" she repeated, still walking close 
 after Jupillon, who was trying to get away, and 
 was throwing caressing words to her, as he drew 
 back, just as we do to an animal which does not 
 recognize us and which wants to bite us. A crowd 
 began to gather round them. 
 
 "Come, now, old tippler, let's have no annoy- 
 ance of the gentleman," said a policeman, grasping 
 Germinie by the arm and roughly turning her 
 round. At the brutal insult of the policeman's 
 hand, Germinie's knees gave way: she thought 
 that she was fainting. Then she grew frightened, 
 and began to run down the middle of the street. 
 
 C2733
 
 LVI 
 
 PASSION has insane recurrences, inexplicable 
 returns. That accursed love which Ger- 
 minie thought had been killed by all Jupil- 
 lon's wounds and blows was reviving. She was 
 terrified to find it again within her as she re- 
 entered the house. The mere sight of the man, a 
 few minutes near him, the sound of his voice, the 
 breathing of the air that he breathed, had been 
 sufficient to turn back her heart, and to surrender 
 her wholly to the past. 
 
 In spite of everything, she had never been able 
 wholly to tear out Jupillon from her heart; he 
 had remained rooted in it. He was her first love. 
 She belonged to him, in opposition to herself, by 
 all the weaknesses of memory, all the cowardliness 
 of habit. Between them there were all the bonds 
 of torture which chain a woman for ever sacri- 
 fice, suffering, humiliation. He owned her for 
 having outraged her conscience, trampled upon 
 her illusions, martyred her life. She was his, 
 eternally his, who was the master of all her sorrows. 
 
 And this shock, this scene which ought to have 
 given her a horror of ever meeting him, rekindled 
 within her a frenzy to see him again. All her
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 passion seized upon her once more. The thought 
 of Jupillon filled her so as even to purify her. She 
 checked the vagrancy of her senses : she wished to 
 belong to nobody, since in this way only could she 
 still belong to him. 
 
 She began to watch him, to study the hours of 
 his going out, the streets through which he 
 passed, the places to which he went. She followed 
 him to BatignoIIes, to his new lodgings, walking 
 behind him, happy to set her foot where his had 
 trod, to be guided by his route, to see him a little, 
 to catch a gesture that he made, to snatch one of 
 his glances. That was all: she dared not speak 
 to him; she kept at a distance behind, like a lost 
 dog that is pleased at not being repulsed with kicks 
 from the heel. 
 
 For weeks, she made herself thus the shadow 
 of this man, a humble and fearful shadow, shrink- 
 ing back and returning a few paces when she 
 thought that she was seen; then drawing near 
 with timid steps, and, at a sign of impatience 
 from the man, stopping again, and seeming to ask 
 his forgiveness. 
 
 Sometimes she waited for him at the door of a 
 house that he entered, rejoined him when he came 
 out, and accompanied him home again, always at 
 a distance and without speaking, with the look 
 of a beggar-woman who begs for leavings and gives 
 thanks for what she is allowed to pick up. Then 
 she used to listen at the shutter of the ground- 
 
 112753
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Hoor apartment in which he lived, to find out 
 whether he was alone, whether anybody was there. 
 When he had a woman on his arm, she was ob- 
 stinate in the pursuit of him, in spite of what she 
 might suffer. She went where the couple went, to 
 the very end. She followed them into public 
 gardens and into balls. She walked in their 
 laughter and their speech, lacerated at seeing 
 and hearing them, yet remaining at their backs 
 with all her jealousies sore within her.
 
 LVII 
 
 IT was the month of November. For three or 
 four days Germinie had not met Jupillon. 
 She came to spy him out, to look for him near 
 his lodgings. On reaching his street she saw a 
 broad streak of light streaming through his closed 
 shutter; she approached and heard bursts of 
 laughter, the clinking of glasses, women, then a 
 song, a voice, a woman, one whom she hated with 
 all her heart, one whom she would fain have seen 
 dead, one whose death she had so often looked for 
 in the lines of fate, in a word, his cousin! 
 
 She pressed against the shutter, breathing in 
 what they said, sunk in the torture of hearing 
 them, starving and feeding herself upon pain. A 
 cold, wintry rain was falling. She did not feel it. 
 All her senses were devoted to listening. The 
 voice that she detested seemed at times to grow 
 weak, and be smothered by kisses, and what it 
 was singing took to flight as though stifled by 
 lips laid upon a song. The hours went by. Ger- 
 minie was still there. She never thought of going 
 away. She waited without knowing what she 
 was waiting for. It seemed to her that she must 
 continue to remain there until the end. The rain
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 was falling more heavily. Water from a broken 
 spout above her was beating upon her shoulders. 
 Big drops were gliding down the back of her neck. 
 An icy coldness was spreading through her back. 
 Her dress was sweating water upon the pavement. 
 She did not perceive it. Nothing was left to her 
 in all her limbs but the suffering of her soul. 
 
 Far in the night there was a noise, a stirring, 
 footsteps coming towards the door. Germinie 
 hastened to hide herself a few steps off in the 
 angle of a wall, and she saw a woman led away 
 by a young man. As she looked at them moving 
 off, she felt something soft and warm in her hand 
 that at first frightened her: it was a dog licking 
 her, a big dog which when quite small she had held 
 in her lap many an evening in the back-shop at 
 the dairy. 
 
 "Here, Molossus!" shouted Jupillon's impa- 
 tient voice two or three times into the shadow of 
 the street. 
 
 The dog barked, ran off, turned back frisking, 
 and went in again. The door closed. The voices 
 and songs brought Germinie back to the same 
 spot against the shutter, and the rain soaked her 
 and she allowed it to soak her as she continued to 
 listen until the morning, until daybreak, until 
 the hour when some bricklayers going to their 
 work with their bread under their arms, burst 
 out laughing at the sight of her. 
 
 1:278:
 
 LVIII 
 
 TWO or three days after this night spent in 
 the rain, Germinie had a face rendered fright- 
 ful by pain, a ghastly colour and burning 
 eyes. She said nothing, made no complaint, and 
 did her work as usual. 
 
 "Here! just look at me," said mademoiselle; 
 and drawing her abruptly to the light: "What 
 is this?" she went on. "You look as if you had 
 risen from the grave? Come, you are ill? Good 
 gracious! how hot your hands are." 
 
 She took her wrist, and threw back the arm a 
 moment after: 
 
 "Why, you wretched fool, you are in a high state 
 of fever. And you are keeping it all to yourself." 
 
 "Why, no, mademoiselle," stammered Ger- 
 minie, " I think it's simply a bad cold. I fell asleep 
 the other night with my kitchen window open." 
 
 "Oh, as for you," returned mademoiselle, "you 
 would die without so much as saying : ' Ah ! wait J : 
 
 And putting on her spectacles and wheeling her 
 easy-chair up to a little table beside the fire-place 
 she began to write a few lines in her big hand- 
 writing. 
 
 "Here," she said, folding up the letter, "you 
 2793
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 will be kind enough to give this to your friend 
 Adele to have it taken by the concierge. And 
 now, to bed with you!" 
 
 But Germinie would never consent to go to bed. 
 It was not worth while. She would not tire her- 
 self. She would remain seated the whole day. 
 Besides, the worst of her sickness was over; she 
 was better already. And then with her, bed meant 
 death. 
 
 The doctor, summoned by mademoiselle's note, 
 came in the evening. He examined Germinie, and 
 ordered the application of croton oil. The dis- 
 orders in the breast were such that he could as yet 
 say nothing. It was necessary to await the effect 
 of the remedies. 
 
 He returned after a few days, made Germinie 
 go to bed, and examined her for a long time with 
 the stethoscope. 
 
 "It's extraordinary," he said to mademoiselle, 
 after he had come downstairs again, "she has had 
 pleurisy, and has not kept her bed for a moment. 
 Is the girl made of iron? What energy women 
 have! How old is she?" 
 
 " Forty-one." 
 
 "Forty-one? Oh, it's impossible. Are you 
 sure? She looks fifty." 
 
 "Oh, for that matter, she looks any age. What 
 can you expect? Never in health always ailing 
 sorrow worry, and a disposition that is 
 always torturing itself."
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "Forty-one! it's astonishing!" repeated the 
 doctor. 
 
 After a moment's reflection he resumed: 
 
 "Have there been any chest affections in her 
 family to your knowledge? Had she any rela- 
 tions who died?" 
 
 "She lost a sister from pleurisy, but she was 
 older. She was forty-eight, I think." 
 
 The doctor had become grave. 
 
 "After all, the chest is becoming clear," he said 
 in a reassuring tone. "But it is absolutely neces- 
 sary that she should have rest. And then, send 
 her to me once a week. Let her come to see me, 
 and let her choose a fine, sunny day." 
 
 1:2813
 
 LIX 
 
 IT was in vain that mademoiselle spoke, en- 
 treated, desired scolded: she could not in- 
 duce Germinie to leave off her work for a few 
 days. Germinie would not even hear of a helper 
 to do the chief part of her work. She declared to 
 mademoiselle that it was impossible and useless, 
 that she could never reconcile herself to the idea 
 of another woman approaching her, and serving 
 her and taking care of her; that the mere thought 
 of it in her bed put her into a fever, that she was 
 not dead yet, and that so long as she could put 
 one foot before another she begged to be allowed 
 to go on as she was doing. Her tone was so tender 
 as she said this, her eyes were so beseeching, and 
 her invalid's voice was so humble and impassioned 
 in its request, that mademoiselle had not courage 
 enough to compel her to have an assistant. She 
 only treated her "as a wooden-headed fool," who 
 believed in common with all country folk that a 
 person is dead if she spends a few days in bed. 
 Bearing up with an appearance of improvement 
 due to the doctor's energetic medication, Ger- 
 minie continued to make mademoiselle's bed, her 
 mistress assisting her to raise the mattress. She
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 continued to prepare her food, and this was more 
 horrible to her than anything else. 
 
 When she was getting ready mademoiselle's 
 breakfast and dinner, she felt herself dying in her 
 little kitchen, one of those wretched little kitchens 
 found in large towns, which make so many women 
 consumptive. The embers which she kindled and 
 from which rose slowly a thread of acrid smoke, 
 would begin to make her heart grow faint; then 
 the charcoal - - which the dealer next door sold 
 her strong Paris charcoal full of smoking pieces, 
 wrapped her in its giddy odor. The dirty, badly 
 drawing stovepipe and the low chimney-cover 
 sent back into her lungs the unhealthy respiration 
 of the fire, and the corroding heat of the breast- 
 high stove. She choked, she could feel the redness 
 and heat of all her blood rising to her face and 
 making patches on her forehead. Her head swam. 
 In a state of semi- asphyxiation like that of laun- 
 dresses ironing amidst the steam from their heaters, 
 she would dash to the window, and inhale a little 
 of the icy air. 
 
 As an inducement to being astir when suffering, 
 and her activity continuing in spite of her weak- 
 ness, she had more than the repugnance of those 
 belonging to the people to keeping her bed, more 
 than the wild, jealous disinclination to suffer the 
 attentions of another to be about mademoiselle; 
 she was in terror of the accusation that might 
 find an entrance with a new servant. It was nec-
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 essary that she should be there to watch made- 
 moiselle, and prevent anyone from coming near 
 her. Then again it was necessary that she should 
 show herself, that the neighborhood should see 
 her, that she should not be like a dead woman 
 in the eyes of her creditors. It was necessary that 
 she should make a pretense of being strong, even that 
 she should act the appearance and cheerfulness of 
 life, that she should confide in the whole street 
 with an adaptation of the doctor's language, with 
 a look of hopefulness, with a promise not to die. 
 It was necessary that she should put a good face 
 on the matter to reassure her creditors, to prevent 
 the alarms of the money from ascending the stair- 
 case and having recourse to mademoiselle. 
 
 This horrible and necessary comedy she sus- 
 tained. She was heroic in bringing her whole body 
 to lie, drawing up her sinking figure in front of 
 the shops that were watching her, hastening her 
 dragging footsteps, rubbing her cheeks with a 
 rough towel before go'ng downstairs in order to 
 bring the color of blood into them again, in order 
 to disguise on her face the paleness of her disease 
 and the mask of her death! 
 
 In spite of the fearful cough that racked her 
 sleeplessness throughout the night, in spite of the 
 loathing with which her stomach rejected food, 
 she passed the whole winter in thus conquering 
 and subduing herself, in struggling with the ups 
 and downs of her illness. 
 
 [284]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 Whenever the doctor came he told mademoiselle 
 that he saw none of the organs essential to life 
 seriously attacked. The lungs indeed were some- 
 what ulcerated, but that was curable. "Only, 
 her body is much impaired, much impaired," he 
 would repeat in a certain tone of sadness, and 
 with an almost embarrassed air which struck 
 mademoiselle. And at the end of his visits he 
 always spoke of change of air and of the country.
 
 LX 
 
 IN the month of August this was all that the 
 doctor had to advise and order the country. 
 Notwithstanding the reluctance which old 
 people have to move, to change their surroundings, 
 their habits, the laws of their lives; in spite of her 
 domestic temperament and of the species of wrench 
 which she felt in tearing herself away from her 
 home, mademoiselle resolved to take Germinie into 
 the country. She wrote to a daughter of the 
 "chick's," who was living with a nestful of chil- 
 dren on a pretty little property in a village in Brie, 
 and who had for years been soliciting a long visit 
 from her. She requested her hospitality during 
 a month or six weeks for herself and her sick maid. 
 They took their departure. Germinie was 
 happy. On her arrival she felt better. For a few 
 days her illness appeared to be diverted by the 
 change. But the summer of that year was un- 
 certain, rainy, mixed with sudden variations and 
 sudden blasts. Germinie caught a chill; and 
 mademoiselle soon heard the frightful cough which 
 had been so intolerable and painful to her in Paris, 
 beginning again overhead, just above where she 
 slept. There were urgent, and, as it were, strangled 
 
 C286I]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 fits, pausing for a moment and then beginning 
 again, fits the intervals in which left ear and heart 
 nervously waiting and anxious for what would 
 return, for what always did return, burst forth, 
 break down, and die away once more, vibrating 
 however, even when abated, without ever becom- 
 ing silent or stopping. 
 
 Nevertheless Germinie rose after these horrible 
 nights with an energy and activity which aston- 
 ished, and at times reassured, mademoiselle. She 
 was afoot with everybody. One morning at five 
 o'clock she went three leagues off in a car with 
 the man-servant, to get some fish at a mill; another 
 time she dragged herself to the holiday ball with 
 the maids belonging to the house, returning with 
 them only at daylight. She waked and assisted 
 the servants. Sitting on the edge of a chair in a 
 corner of the kitchen, she was always engaged in 
 doing something with her fingers. Mademoiselle 
 was obliged to make her go out, to send her to sit 
 in the garden. Germinie used then to go and 
 place herself on the green bench, with her parasol 
 open over her head, and the sunshine on her skirt 
 and feet. Perfectly still, she forgot herself in 
 breathing in the day, the light, the warmth, in a 
 sort of passionate inhaling and feverish happiness. 
 Her lips relaxed, and partially opened to the 
 breath of the open air. Her eyes burned without 
 moving; and in the bright shadow glancing from 
 the silk of the parasol, her worn, emaciated, fune-
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 real countenance looked forth like a death's head 
 in love. 
 
 Weary as she was in the evening, nothing could 
 induce her to go to bed before her mistress. She 
 wished to be there to undress her. Seated beside 
 her, she used to get up from time to time to wait 
 on her as well as she could, assist her to take off a 
 petticoat, then sit down again, collect her strength 
 for a moment, and once more rise and try to help 
 her in something. Mademoiselle had to make 
 her sit down again by force and order her to re- 
 main quiet. And the whole time that this evening 
 toilet lasted there was always the same repetition 
 in her mouth about the servants of the house. 
 
 "Do you know, mademoiselle, you have no idea 
 what eyes the cook and man-servant make at each 
 other when they think they are not seen. They 
 still restrain themselves when I am there; but 
 the other day I surprised them in the bake-house. 
 They were kissing, only fancy! Fortunately ma- 
 dame here does not suspect it." 
 
 "Ah! there you go again with your stories! 
 But good gracious," mademoiselle would say, 
 "whether they make fools of each other, or not, 
 what affair is that of yours? They are kind to 
 you, are they not? That is all that's wanted." 
 
 "Oh! very kind, mademoiselle; in that respect 
 I have nothing to complain of. Marie got up last 
 night to give me a drink, and as for him, whenever 
 there is any dessert left it is always for me. Oh!
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 he is very good to me; Marie even doesn't quite 
 like his being so attentive to me you understand, 
 mademoiselle." 
 
 "Come, be off to bed with all your nonsense," 
 mademoiselle would say abruptly to her, being 
 sorrowfully impatient to see a sick person so 
 eagerly occupied with the loves of others. 
 
 289:1
 
 LXI 
 
 ON their return from the country the doctor, 
 after examining Germinie, said to made- 
 moiselle: 
 
 "It has been rapid, very rapid. The left lung is 
 quite gone. The right one is attacked in the upper 
 part, and I am greatly afraid that the mischief 
 has spread through her entire system. She is a 
 lost woman. She may live another six weeks, 
 or at the very most two months." 
 
 "Ah! Heavens,'* said Mademoiselle de Varan- 
 deuil, "all that I have loved will go before me! 
 Must I go after everybody else?" 
 
 "Have you thought of placing her anywhere, 
 mademoiselle?" said the doctor after a moment's 
 silence. 'You cannot keep her. It would be too 
 much trouble for you --it would be a grief to you 
 to have her there," the doctor added in reply to a 
 gesture from mademoiselle. 
 
 "No, no, I have not thought of it. Ah! yes, to 
 send her away! But you have seen that she is not 
 a maid or a servant to me; she is like the family 
 that I never had. How can you expect me to say 
 to her: 'Now be off!* Ah! it is the first time I 
 have so keenly regretted that I am not rich, and
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 that I have such wretched rooms. But it is im- 
 possible for me to speak to her about it! And 
 then where could she go? To Dubois? To Du- 
 bois indeed! She went there to see the servant 
 that I had before her and that died there. You 
 might as well kill her at once! The hospital, then? 
 No, not there: I will not have her die there!" 
 
 "Upon my word, mademoiselle, she would be 
 a hundred times better off there than here. I 
 would enter her at Lariboisiere under the care of 
 a doctor who is a friend of mine. I would recom- 
 mend her to a house-surgeon who is a good deal 
 indebted to me. She would have a very kind sister 
 in the ward where I would have her placed, and if 
 necessary she would have a private room. But 
 I am sure that she would prefer to be in a general 
 ward. You see, mademoiselle, it's a step that 
 must be taken; she cannot remain in the room 
 upstairs. You know what these horrible servants' 
 rooms are. I go so far as to think that the sanitary 
 inspectors ought to force the owners into humanity 
 on the point; it is shameful! The cold weather 
 will soon be here; there is no fireplace, and with 
 the skylight and the roof, it will be an icehouse. 
 You see that she is still keeping up - Oh, yes, 
 she has astonishing courage, prodigious nervous 
 vitality. But in spite of it all she will have to 
 take to her bed in a few days, and she will never 
 get up again. Come, be reasonable, mademoiselle 
 Let me speak to her; will you?" 
 
 2913
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "No, not yet. The thought of it I must grow 
 accustomed to it. And then seeing her about me 
 I think that she will not die so soon as that. We 
 shall have plenty of time. Later on, we can see 
 about it, yes later on.*' 
 
 "Forgive me, mademoiselle, but permit me to 
 tell you that you may make yourself ill by nurs- 
 ing her." 
 
 "I? --Oh! I!- ' and mademoiselle made a 
 gesture like that of one whose life is quite done for. 
 
 292:1
 
 LXII 
 
 AMID the despairing anxieties caused to 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil by her maid's 
 illness, there crept in a singular feeling, a 
 certain fear in the presence of the new, strange, 
 mysterious creature which the disease had evoked 
 out of Germinie's inner nature. Mademoiselle felt 
 a sort of uneasiness beside a face that was ab- 
 sorbed, buried, almost hidden in implacable hard- 
 ness, and that seemed to recover and return to 
 itself only transitorily, in gleams, in the effort of 
 a wan smile. The old woman had seen many 
 people die; her long and sorrowful memory 
 brought back to her many expressions of dear, 
 doomed faces, many sad, downcast, distressed 
 expressions of death, but none of the countenances 
 that she remembered had in its decline assumed 
 the sombre appearance of one retiring into seclu- 
 sion within itself. 
 
 Locked in her suffering, Germinie continued 
 solitary, stiff, concentrated, impenetrable. She 
 had the immobility of bronze. As she looked at 
 her, mademoiselle would ask herself what she was 
 thus brooding quietly over, whether it was dis- 
 gust of her life, horror of death, or perhaps some 
 
 293:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 secret, some ground for remorse. Nothing ex- 
 ternal seemed to affect the sick woman. Her per- 
 ception of things was going from her. Her body 
 was becoming indifferent to everything; it no 
 longer sought for comfort or seemed desirous of 
 being cured. She made no complaint, and found 
 no pleasure or diversion in anything. Even her 
 yearnings after affection had left her. She never 
 bestowed a mark of endearment, and every day 
 something of humanity quitted this woman's soul 
 which appeared to be growing petrified. Often 
 she sank into a silence that prompted waiting for 
 the anguish of a cry, of an utterance; but after 
 casting her eyes around her she would say nothing 
 and again set herself to gaze at the same spot, in 
 vacancy, before her, fixedly, everlastingly. 
 
 When mademoiselle returned from a friend's 
 house where she had been dining, she used to find 
 Germinie sunk in an easy-chair, in the dark, with- 
 out any light, her legs stretched out upon a chair, 
 her head bowed upon her breast, and herself so 
 deeply absorbed that sometimes she did not hear 
 the opening of the door. As Mademoiselle de 
 Varandeuil advanced into the room it seemed to 
 her as though she were disturbing a terrible 
 interview between Sickness and Shade, wherein 
 Germinie was already seeking the terror of the 
 invisible, the blindness of the grave and the 
 darkness of death. 
 
 294:1
 
 LXIII 
 
 THROUGHOUT the month of October Ger- 
 minie persisted in her unwillingness to stay 
 in bed. Every day, however, she was feebler, 
 weaker, more deserted by her bodily powers. She 
 could with difficulty ascend the flight that led to 
 her sixth story, drawing herself up by the banister. 
 At last she used to fall down on the stairs, and the 
 other servants lifted her up and carried her to her 
 room. But this did not stop her: the next day 
 she came down again with that gleam of strength 
 which the morning gives to the sick. She pre- 
 pared mademoiselle's breakfast, made a pretense 
 of working, and still went about the room hold- 
 ing on to the furniture and dragging herself along. 
 Mademoiselle used to take pity on her, and make 
 her lie down on her own bed. Then, Germinie 
 rested in it for half an hour, without sleeping or 
 speaking and with open, motionless and unsettled 
 eyes, like a person in pain. 
 
 One morning she did not come down. Made- 
 moiselle ascended to the sixth floor, turned down 
 a narrow, evil-smelling corridor through the ser- 
 vants' quarters, and reached Germinie's door, 
 which was No. 21. Germinie asked her forgive- 
 
 295:]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 ness for having made her come up. She had found 
 it impossible to set her foot to the ground. She 
 had great pains in the stomach, which was quite 
 swelled. She begged mademoiselle to sit down 
 for a moment, and, to make room for her, took 
 away the candlestick which was on the chair at 
 the head of the bed. 
 
 Mademoiselle sat down, and remained for a few 
 moments looking at this wretched servant's room, 
 one of those rooms in which the doctor is obliged 
 to lay his hat upon the bed, and in which there 
 is scarcely room to die! It was a garret a few feet 
 square without a fireplace, in which the skylight 
 (kept open by a rack) gave passage to the breath 
 of the seasons, the heat of summer and the cold 
 of winter. The lumber of old trunks and carpet- 
 bags, a towel-basket, and the little iron bedstead 
 on which Germinie had laid her niece, were heaped 
 together under the sloping roof. The bed, a chair, 
 and a small, rickety dressing-table with a broken 
 hand-basin, formed the whole of the furniture. 
 Above the bed hung the daguerreotype of a man, 
 in a frame painted to resemble rosewood. 
 
 The doctor came during the day. 
 
 "Ah! peritonitis," he said when mademoiselle 
 had informed him of Germinie's condition. He 
 went up to see the patient. 
 
 "I am afraid," he said on coming down again, 
 "that there is an abscess in the intestine com- 
 municating with an abscess in the bladder. It 
 
 296:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 is very serious, very serious. She must be told 
 not to make any great movement in the bed, and 
 to turn herself with caution. She might die of 
 a sudden in the most frightful pain. I proposed 
 to her that she should go to Lariboisiere, and she 
 acquiesced at once. She has no aversion to doing 
 so. The only thing is that I do not know how 
 she will stand the moving. But after all, she has 
 such energy; I never knew anyone like her. To- 
 morrow morning you shall have the order for 
 admission." 
 
 When mademoiselle went up again to see Ger- 
 minie, she found her smiling in bed, cheerful at the 
 thought of going away. 
 
 "Come, mademoiselle," she cried to her, "it's 
 only a matter of six weeks." 
 
 297!!
 
 LXIV 
 
 AT two o'clock on the following day the doc- 
 tor brought the admission order. The in- 
 valid was ready to set out. Mademoiselle 
 proposed to her that she should go on a stretcher, 
 which would be brought from the hospital. 
 
 "Oh! no," said Germinie eagerly, "I should 
 believe myself dead." She was thinking of her 
 debts; she must show herself to her creditors in 
 the street, alive and afoot until the end! 
 
 She got out of bed. Mademoiselle de Varan- 
 deuil assisted her to put on her petticoat and her 
 dress. As soon as she had left her bed, the life 
 disappeared from her face, and the fire from her 
 complexion; it seemed as though earth were 
 suddenly rising under her skin. Clinging to the 
 banister, she descended the steep flight of the 
 back-staircase, and reached the rooms below. They 
 made her sit down on an easy-chair in the dining- 
 room near the window. She wished to put on her 
 stockings quite by herself, and as she drew them 
 up with a poor, trembling hand whose fingers 
 knocked together, she showed a little of her legs 
 which were so thin as to be frightful. The char- 
 woman, meanwhile, was putting up into a bundle
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 a little linen, a glass, a cup and a tin case con- 
 taining knife, fork, and spoon, which Germinie 
 had wished to take with her. When this was done 
 Germinie looked for a moment all around her; 
 she took the room into a last embrace which 
 seemed as though it would carry the things away. 
 Then her eyes rested on the door through which 
 the charwoman had just gone out: "At least," 
 she said to mademoiselle, "I leave you someone 
 who is honest." 
 
 She got up. The door closed behind her with 
 a sound of good-bye, and supported by Made- 
 moiselle de Varandeuil, who almost carried her, 
 she went down the five stories by the principal 
 staircase. At every landing she stopped and took 
 breath. In the entrance-hall she found the con- 
 cierge who had brought her a chair. The stout 
 fellow laughed and promised her health in six weeks. 
 She moved her head with a stifled: "Yes! yes!" 
 
 She was in the cab beside her mistress. The 
 cab was hard, and jolted over the stones. She 
 kept her body advanced to avoid the shocks of 
 the jolting, and clung to the hand of the con- 
 cierge's wife. She watched the houses gliding 
 past, and kept silence. On reaching the door of 
 the hospital she would not be carried. 
 
 "Can you go as far as that?" asked the porter, 
 showing her the reception room twenty paces off. 
 
 She made a sign of assent and went in; it was 
 a dead woman walking because she desired to walk! 
 
 2993
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 At last she reached the large lofty room, cold, 
 rigid, spotless, and terrible, the wooden benches 
 in which formed a circle round the stretcher in 
 waiting. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil made her 
 sit down on a straw easy-chair near an office 
 window. A clerk opened the window, asked 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil Germinie's name and 
 age, and spent a quarter of an hour in filling ten 
 sheets of paper, marked at the top with a religious 
 figure, with writing. This done, Mademoiselle de 
 Varandeuil turned and kissed her; she saw an 
 attendant take her under the arm, then she saw 
 her no more, hastened away, and falling upon the 
 cushions of the cab burst into sobs, giving free 
 course to all the tears that had been stifling her 
 heart for an hour past. On his seat at the back 
 the coachman was astonished to hear such loud 
 weeping. 
 
 300:]
 
 LXV 
 
 WHEN Thursday, which was the day for 
 visitors, had come, Mademoiselle de Varan- 
 deuil set out at half-past twelve to see 
 Germinie. She wanted to be at her bedside at 
 the very moment of admission, at one o'clock 
 precisely. Passing again through the streets which 
 she had traversed four days before, she recalled 
 the frightful journey of Monday. It seemed to 
 her that in the vehicle in which she sat alone, she 
 was inconveniencing the body of a sick person, 
 and she kept in the corner of the cab as though 
 to leave room for the recollection of Germinie. 
 How was she going to find her? Would she so 
 much as find her? What if her bed were to prove 
 empty? 
 
 The cab threaded a little street full of carts of 
 oranges, and women who, sitting on the footpaths, 
 sold biscuits in baskets. There was something 
 wretched and lugubrious in this open-air display 
 of fruits and cakes, delicacies for the dying, vi- 
 aticums for the sick, looked for by fever, hoped 
 for by the last agony, and taken in the black 
 hands of toil to be brought to the hospital as a 
 tit-bit for death. Children were bringing them as 
 
 C30IU
 
 GERM INI F. LACERTEUX 
 
 though they understood, gravely, almost piously, 
 and without touching them. 
 
 The cab stopped in front of the railing of the 
 court-yard. It was five minutes to one. At the 
 gate thronged a file of women in their work-day 
 dresses, crowded, sombre, sorrowful and silent. 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil took her place in the 
 file, advanced with the rest and entered. She was 
 searched. She asked for the Sainte-Josephine 
 ward, and was directed to the second pavilion on 
 the second floor. She found the ward, then the 
 bed, bed No. 14, which, as she had been told, was 
 one of the last on the right. Moreover she was, 
 so to speak, summoned to it from the end of the 
 ward by Germinie's smile, the smile of a hospital 
 patient at an unexpected visit, which says so 
 gently, as soon as the visitor enters: 
 
 "Here, here I am." 
 
 She bent over the bed. Germinie tried to repel 
 her with a gesture of humility and the modesty 
 of a servant 
 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil kissed her. 
 
 "Ah!" said Germinie to her, "the time appeared 
 very long to me yesterday. I had fancied it was 
 Thursday and I was wearying for you." 
 
 "Poor girl! And how are you?" 
 
 "Oh! it's all right now --the swelling in my 
 stomach has gone down. I've three weeks to be 
 here, mademoiselle. They say I've a month or 
 six weeks but I know about myself. And then 
 
 302;]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 I'm very comfortable; I'm not dull. I sleep at 
 night now. I was thirsty when you brought me on 
 Monday! They won't give me wine and water." 
 
 "What have you there to drink?" 
 
 "Oh! the same as at home the white of an 
 egg. See, mademoiselle, will you pour me out 
 some? Their tin things are so heavy." 
 
 And raising herself by one arm by means of the 
 little stick hanging over the middle of her bed, and 
 holding out the other, bared by the drawing back 
 of the night-dress, thin, shivering, for the glass 
 which Mademoiselle de Varandeuil handed to her, 
 she drank. 
 
 ;< There," she said when she had finished, lay- 
 ing her two arms at full length on the sheet out- 
 side the bed-clothes. "Poor mademoiselle," she 
 resumed, "must I give you all this trouble? It 
 must be downright dirty at home." 
 
 "Don't mind about that." 
 
 There was a moment's silence. A colorless 
 smile came upon Germinie's lips: 
 
 "I've been smuggling," she said to Made- 
 moiselle de Varandeuil, lowering her voice, "I've 
 confessed in order to feel comfortable." 
 
 Then, putting her head forward on the pillow 
 so as to be closer to Mademoiselle de Varan- 
 deuil's ear, she went on: 
 
 ; ' There are tales to be told here. I have a 
 funny neighbor, there, see," with a glance and a 
 movement of her shoulder she indicated the sick 
 
 C3033
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 woman, towards whom her back was turned. "She 
 has a man who comes to see her here. He spoke 
 to her yesterday for an hour. I could hear that 
 they had a child. She has left her husband. He 
 was like a madman, that man was, while he was 
 talking to her." 
 
 And as she said this Germinie grew animated 
 as though she were still quite full of this scene and 
 quite tormented by it, quite feverish and jealous, 
 though so near death, at having heard love be- 
 side her! 
 
 Then suddenly her countenance changed. A 
 woman was coming toward her bed. The new- 
 comer acted embarrassed on seeing Mademoiselle 
 de Varandeuil. After a few minutes she kissed 
 Germinie, and, as another woman w r as coming, 
 took leave in haste. The new-comer acted in the 
 same manner, kissed Germinie and left her imme- 
 diately. After the woman a man came; then 
 there was another woman. They all, after a 
 moment, bent down to kiss the patient, and in 
 every kiss Mademoiselle de Varandeuil vaguely 
 gathered a muttering of words, an exchanging 
 of utterances, a low question from those who were 
 kissing, and a r,apid reply from her who was kissed. 
 
 "Well!" she said to Germinie. "They're look- 
 ing well after you, I hope!" 
 
 "Ah! yes," repeated Germinie in a strange 
 voice, "they are looking after me!" 
 
 She had no longer the same lively appearance as
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 at the beginning of the visit. A little blood which 
 had mounted into her cheeks had remained there 
 only in the form of a spot. Her countenance 
 seemed to be shut; it was cold and dead like a 
 wall. Her lips were drawn in and as though sealed. 
 Her features were hidden beneath the veil of mute 
 and infinite suffering. There was no longer any- 
 thing caressing and speaking in her motionless eyes 
 which were occupied and filled with a thought. 
 It seemed as though a boundless internal concen- 
 tration, a wish born of the last hour brought back 
 within her person all the external tokens of her 
 ideas, and that her whole being remained de- 
 spairingly fastened upon a grief that drew every- 
 thing to itself. 
 
 For the visits that she had just received were 
 those of the fruiterer, the grocer, the butter- 
 woman, and the laundress of all her living 
 debts! These kisses were the kisses of all her 
 creditors coming to scent out their dues and 
 blackmail her death-agony in an embrace!
 
 LXVI 
 
 MADEMOISELLE had just risen on Satur- 
 day morning. She was about to make up 
 a little basket of four pots of Bar-Ie-Duc 
 preserve which she intended to take to Germinie the 
 next day, when she heard low voices, a colloquy 
 in the ante-chamber between the charwoman and 
 the concierge. Then almost immediately the door 
 opened, and the concierge came in. 
 
 "Sad news, mademoiselle," he said. 
 
 And he held out a letter which he had in his 
 hand; it bore the stamp of the hospital of Lari- 
 boisiere: Germinie had died that morning at 
 seven o'clock. 
 
 Mademoiselle took the paper; she saw nothing 
 in it but the words saying to her: "Dead! dead!" 
 And it was for nothing that the letter repeated to 
 her: "Dead! dead!" for she could not believe it. 
 Like those of whose end we are informed with 
 suddenness, Germinie appeared to her full of life, 
 and her person which was no more came before her 
 with the supreme presence of someone's shadow. 
 Dead! She would see her no more! There was 
 no longer a Germinie in the world! Dead! she 
 was dead! And the person who would now move 
 
 C306H
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 about in the kitchen, would be no longer she; the 
 person who would open the door for her would 
 be no longer she; the person who would roam 
 about in her room in the morning would be another! 
 
 "Germinie!" she cried at last, with the cry with 
 which she used to call her; then she recovered 
 herself: "Machine! Thing! What do you call 
 yourself?" she said harshly to the disconcerted 
 charwoman. "My dress--! must go there!" 
 
 So rapid an issue of the illness was such an 
 abrupt surprise that her thoughts could not accus- 
 tom themselves to it. It was with difficulty that 
 she could conceive this sudden, secret and vague 
 death, which, to her, was wholly comprised within 
 this scrap of paper. Was Germinie really dead? 
 Mademoiselle asked herself the question with the 
 doubtfulness of those who have lost at a distance 
 some one that is dear to them and, not having 
 seen the death, are unwilling to believe in it. 
 Had she not seen her full of life, on the last occa- 
 sion? How had this happened? How had she 
 suddenly become that which is good for nothing 
 but to be put underground? Mademoiselle dared 
 not think about it, and yet did think about it. 
 The unknown nature of this death, concerning 
 which she was in complete ignorance, frightened 
 and attracted her. The anxious inquisitiveness 
 of her affection went out to her maid's last hours, 
 and she tried in groping fashion to raise the veil 
 and horror that shrouded it. Then she was seized 
 
 307]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 with an irrepressible longing to know everything, 
 to be a spectator, through what was told her, of 
 what she had not seen. She must learn whether 
 Germinie had spoken before dying, whether she 
 had expressed a desire, or testified a wish, or given 
 utterance to one of those words which are life's 
 last cry. 
 
 On reaching Lariboisiere, she passed the con- 
 cierge, a stout man reeking of life as one reeks of 
 wine, traversed the corridors in which pale con- 
 valescents were gliding about, and at the very 
 end of the hospital rang at a door draped with 
 white curtains. It was opened, and she found 
 herself in a parlor lighted by two windows, in 
 which a plaster image of the Holy Virgin stood 
 on an altar between two views of Vesuvius which 
 seemed to be quivering there against the naked 
 wall. From an open door behind her issued a 
 prattling of sisters and little girls, a sound of 
 young voices and fresh laughter, the merriment 
 of a clean room wherein the sunshine sports with 
 children at play. 
 
 Mademoiselle asked to speak to the Mother of 
 the Sainte-Josephine ward. A little, half-de- 
 formed sister came to her, with a face that was 
 ugly and good, a face like the mercy of God. 
 Germinie had died in her arms. 
 
 "Her pain was almost gone," the sister told 
 mademoiselle; "she was better; she was feeling 
 relief; she had hope. About seven o'clock in the 
 
 C308H
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 morning, just after her bed had been made, and 
 without realizing that she was dying, she was 
 suddenly seized with a vomiting of blood during 
 which she passed away." 
 
 The sister added that she had said nothing, 
 asked for nothing, wished for nothing. 
 
 Mademoiselle rose, freed from the horrible 
 thoughts that she had had. Germinie had been 
 saved from all the dying agonies which she had 
 imagined. Mademoiselle blessed such a death 
 from the hand of God which gathers the soul at 
 a single stroke. 
 
 As she was going out, an attendant coming up 
 to her said: "Will you identify the body?" 
 
 The body! The expression was a frightful one 
 to mademoiselle. Without waiting for her to reply 
 the attendant began to walk before her until he 
 reached a large, yellowish door, above which was 
 written: "Amphitheatre" He rapped: a man 
 in his shirt-sleeves and with a cutty-pipe in his 
 mouth half opened the door, and told them to 
 wait for a moment. 
 
 Mademoiselle waited. Her thoughts frightened 
 her. Her imagination was on the other side of this 
 door of terror. She tried to see what she was going 
 to see. Filled with confused images and conjured 
 terrors, she shuddered at the idea of entering in 
 there, and of recognizing amid others that dis- 
 figured countenance, if indeed she could still 
 recognize it! And yet she could not tear herself 
 
 C3093
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 from the spot: she told herself that she would 
 never see her again! 
 
 The man with the pipe opened the door. Made- 
 moiselle saw nothing but a bier, the covering of 
 which, reaching only as far as the neck, allowed 
 Germinie to be seen with open eyes, and with 
 hair lying straight back from her head.
 
 LXVII 
 
 BROKEN down by these emotions, and by 
 this last sight, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil 
 took to her bed on going home, after giving 
 money to the concierge for the sad proceedings, the 
 burial, the concession of a private grave. And 
 when she was in bed, what she had seen came back 
 before her. Horrible death was always near her, 
 and the frightful countenance framed in its bier. 
 Her gaze had brought away this unforgettable 
 head within her; beneath her closed eyelids she 
 could see it, and was afraid of it. Germinie was 
 there, with the discolored features of a murdered 
 face, with her hollow sockets, and her eyes which 
 seemed to have shrunken into holes! There she 
 was, with the lips still distorted by the pain of 
 vomiting forth her last breath! There she was 
 with her hair, her terrible hair, brushed back 
 straight from her head! 
 
 Her hair! It was this that especially pursued 
 mademoiselle. The old maid thought, without 
 wishing to think, of things dropped into her ear 
 when a child, of popular superstitions lost in the 
 depths of her memory, and she asked herself 
 whether she had not been told that the dead
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 whose hair is thus carry away a crime with them 
 when they die. And at times this was the hair 
 that she saw on this head, hair of crime, upright 
 with terror and stiffened with horror before the 
 justice of Heaven, like theliair of a man con- 
 demned to death when in presence of the scaffold 
 on the Place de G revel 
 
 On Sunday mademoiselle was too ill to leave 
 her bed. On Monday she sought to rise, in order 
 to go to the funeral, but she was seized with weak- 
 ness, and was obliged to lie down again. 
 
 312:1
 
 LXVIII 
 
 WELL, is it over?" said Mademoiselle from 
 her bed, on seeing the concierge coming 
 into her apartment from the cemetery at 
 eleven o'clock, in a black frock-coat, and with a 
 look of compunction suited to a return from a 
 funeral. 
 
 "Yes, indeed, mademoiselle. God be thanked, 
 the poor girl is out of pain." 
 
 "Here! I have not my wits about me to-day. 
 Put the receipts and the remainder of the money 
 on my night-table. We'll count it another time." 
 
 The concierge remained standing in front of her 
 without stirring or going away, changing a blue 
 velvet skull-cap, cut out of the dress of a girl be- 
 longing to the house, from one hand to the other. 
 After a moment he made up his mind to speak. 
 
 " It's dear, mademoiselle, getting buried. First 
 there's - 
 
 "Who told you to calculate it?" interrupted 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, with a pride of 
 haughty charity. 
 
 The concierge continued: 
 
 "And then, moreover, a grant in perpetuity, 
 as you told me to get, is not to be had for nothing. 
 
 313:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 For all you've a good heart, mademoiselle, you 
 are not over-rich; people know that, and they 
 say to themselves: 'Mademoiselle will have 
 plenty to pay, and we know mademoiselle - 
 she will pay.' Well, what if this were saved her? 
 It will be so much to the good, and she will be 
 all right underground. Besides, what would give 
 her most satisfaction up above? Why, to know, 
 worthy girl, that she's not wronging anybody." 
 
 'To pay what?" said Mademoiselle de Varan- 
 deuil, rendered impatient by the concierge's cir- 
 cumlocutions. 
 
 "Why, it's not of any consequence," replied 
 the concierge, "she was very fond of you all the 
 same. And then when she was so ill, it was not 
 the time, -- dear me, it's not right to trouble you 
 about it there's no hurry --it's the money 
 she had been owing for sometime. Here it is." 
 
 And he drew a stamped paper from the inside 
 pocket of his coat. 
 
 " I did not want her to give a note it was her 
 own doing." 
 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil seized the stamped 
 paper, and at the bottom of it saw the words: 
 
 I certify that the above statement is correct. 
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 It was an acknowledgement for three hundred 
 francs, payable in monthly instalments, the latter 
 to be entered on the back of the paper.
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "There's nothing, you see," said the concierge, 
 turning the paper round. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil took off her spec- 
 tacles. 
 
 "I shall pay it," she said. 
 
 The concierge bowed. She looked at him: he 
 remained where he was. 
 
 "That is all, I hope?" she said in an abrupt 
 tone. 
 
 The concierge had again begun to gaze steadily 
 at a square in the floor. 
 
 "That's all --if - 
 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil felt afraid, just 
 as she had felt afraid when passing through the 
 door behind which she was to see her maid's body. 
 
 "But how is it that she owes all that?" she 
 exclaimed. "I gave her good wages. I almost 
 dressed her. Where did her money go?" 
 
 "Ah! there it is, mademoiselle. I'd rather not 
 have told you, but it's as well told to-day as to- 
 morrow. Besides, it's better you should learn 
 beforehand; when people know about things, 
 they can make arrangements. There's an account 
 with the poultry-woman. The poor girl owes a 
 little everywhere; she wasn't very regular towards 
 the end. The laundress left her book the last 
 time it mounts up rather high, but that's all 
 I know about it. It seems that there's a bill at 
 the grocer's oh ! an old bill, going years back. 
 He'll bring you his book '
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 "How much to the grocer?" 
 
 "Somewhere about two hundred and fifty." 
 
 All these revelations falling upon Mademoiselle 
 de Varandeuil one after the other drew from her 
 deep exclamations. Raising herself on her pillow, 
 she was left speechless in presence of this life 
 whose veil was being torn away, piece by piece, 
 and whose shames were being revealed one by one. 
 
 'Yes, somewhere about two hundred and fifty. 
 There's been a deal of wine, by what he says." 
 
 "I always had some in the cellar - 
 
 'The dairy-woman," resumed the concierge, 
 without replying- "Oh! nothing very much - 
 the dairy- woman seventy-five francs. There 
 was absinthe, and brandy - 
 
 "She drank!" exclaimed Mademoiselle de 
 Varandeuil, who at this word guessed everything. 
 
 The concierge did not seem to hear. 
 
 "Ah! you see, mademoiselle, it was her mis- 
 fortune to know the Jupillons the young man. 
 It was not on her own account that she did it; 
 and then, what with sorrow and so on, she took to 
 drinking. You must know she hoped to marry 
 him, she fitted up a room for him, and when people 
 go in for furniture, money soon disappears. She 
 was destroying herself, and it was all no use my 
 telling her not to drown herself in drink as she 
 was doing. As far as I was concerned, I was not 
 going to tell you, as you may believe, when she 
 came in at six o'clock in the morning. It's like 
 
 C3I63
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 her child oh!" the concierge went on, in reply 
 to the gesture from mademoiselle, "it was precious 
 lucky the baby died. There's no harm in telling 
 you she led a fearful life, a gay old time. . . . And 
 so about the ground that's why, if I were you, 
 I'd why, she cost you enough, mademoiselle, 
 as long as she was eating your bread, and so you 
 may as well leave her where she is along with 
 everyone else." 
 
 "Ah! so that's the way of it! That's how it 
 was. She stole for her lovers, and ran into debt, 
 did she? Ah! she did well to die! And I have to 
 pay! A child! Just to think of that, the trollop! 
 Yes, indeed, she may rot where she lies! You 
 did well, Monsieur Henri! Steal! She stole from 
 me! It's a good thing for her that she's in her 
 coffin! And to think that I used to leave her all 
 my keys. I never expected that she'd good 
 gracious ! that's what comes of putting trust in one. 
 Well, yes, I'll pay, not on her account but on my 
 own. And I gave her my finest pair of sheets 
 to be buried in. Ah! if I had known, I'd have 
 given you a dish-cloth nicely swindled as I 
 am!" 
 
 And mademoiselle went on for some minutes 
 until the words choked her and were strangled in 
 her throat.
 
 LXIX 
 
 AFTER this scene, Mademoiselle de Varan- 
 deuil remained for a week in bed, sick and 
 furious, filled with an indignation that shook 
 her entire heart, that overflowed her lips, that 
 wrung from her at times some coarse insult which 
 she would ejaculate with an outcry at the foul 
 memory of her servant. Night and day she re- 
 volved the same imprecatory thoughts, and her 
 very dreams stirred the anger of her slender limbs 
 in her bed. 
 
 Was it possible! Germinie! her Germinie! She 
 could not get over it. Debts! A child! All sorts 
 of disgracefulness! The profligate! She abhorred 
 and detested her. Had she lived she would have 
 gone and denounced her to the commissary of 
 police. She would have liked to believe in hell, 
 that she might commend her to the tortures which 
 chastise the dead. Her maid was such a character 
 as that! A girl who had been in her service for 
 twenty years, and whom she had loaded with 
 kindness! Drunkenness! She had sunk so low 
 as that! The horror that follows upon an evil 
 dream came to mademoiselle, and all the disgust 
 rising from her soul cried shame upon this dead 
 
 318:1
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 woman whose grave had vomited her life and 
 rejected her filthiness. 
 
 How she had deceived her! How the wretch 
 had pretended to love her! And that her in- 
 gratitude and knavery might be displayed still 
 more clearly, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil recalled 
 her endearments, her attentions, her jealousies 
 which seemed as though they worshipped her. 
 She could see her bending over her when she was 
 sick. She thought again of her caresses. And it 
 was all a lie! Her devotion was a lie! The 
 happiness of her kisses, the love of her lips were 
 lies! Mademoiselle told herself this, repeating 
 it to herself, and persuading herself of it; and 
 yet from these awakened memories, from these 
 evocations whose bitterness she sought, from the 
 distant sweetness of bygone days, there rose up 
 gradually and slowly within her a first softening 
 of pity. 
 
 She drove away the thoughts which allowed 
 her anger to flag; but her musing brought them 
 back again. There occurred to her those things to 
 which she had paid no attention during Germinie's 
 lifetime, such trifles as the tomb suggests and death 
 illumines. She had a dim recollection of certain 
 singularities on the part of this girl, feverish out- 
 pourings, agitated embraces, kneelings that seemed 
 preparatory to confessions, movements of lips upon 
 which a secret seemed to hang. With the eyes 
 which we have for those who are no more, she 
 
 C3I9:]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 reviewed Germinie's sad looks, the gestures and 
 attitudes that she displayed, her countenances of 
 despair. And she could now divine beneath them 
 wounds, sores, rendings, the tortures of her agonies 
 and repentances, the blood-tears of her remorse, 
 all kinds of stifled sufferings throughout her life 
 and her person, a passion of shame which dared 
 not ask for forgiveness save by its silence! 
 
 Then she scolded herself for thinking this, and 
 blamed herself as an old fool. Her rigid, straight- 
 forward instincts, the severity of conscience and 
 harshness of judgment due to a faultless life, all 
 that prompts a virtuous woman to condemn a 
 female, all that must inevitably prompt a saint 
 like Mademoiselle de Varandeuil to be pitiless 
 towards her servant, rebelled against forgiveness. 
 Within her, justice, stifling her kindness, cried 
 out: "Never! never!" And with an implacable 
 gesture she drove Germinie's infamous spectre 
 away. 
 
 At times, even, to render the damnation and 
 execration of this recollection still more irrevocable, 
 she accused her and crushed her, and calumniated 
 her. She added to the frightful inheritance of 
 death. She reproached Germinie with even more 
 than she had to reproach her with. She lent 
 crimes to the darkness of her thoughts, and mur- 
 derous desires to the inpatience of her dreams. 
 She wanted to think, and did think, that she had 
 wished and looked for her death. 
 
 C320]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 But at this very moment, amid the blackest 
 gloom of thought and supposition, a vision rose 
 and shone before her. An image approached that 
 seemed to advance towards her gaze, an image 
 from which she could not protect herself, which 
 passed through the hands wherewith she sought 
 to repel it, and Mademoiselle de Varandeuil 
 saw her dead servant once more. She saw the 
 face of which she had had a glimpse at the amphi- 
 theatre, that crucified face, that tortured coun- 
 tenance to which had mounted both the blood 
 and the agony of a heart. She saw her with that 
 soul which the second-sight of memory evolves 
 from things. She appeared as though stripping 
 herself of terror and horror. Suffering alone re- 
 mained to her, but it was a suffering of expiation, 
 almost of prayer, the suffering on the face of a 
 dead woman who would fain weep. And as the 
 expression of this countenance grew constantly 
 softer, mademoiselle could at last see in it a be- 
 seeching supplication, a supplication which in 
 time ensnared her pity. Insensibly there crept 
 into her reflections, allowances, palliating thoughts 
 at which she was herself astonished. She asked 
 herself whether the poor girl were as guilty as 
 others, whether she had chosen the evil, whether 
 life, and circumstance, and misfortune of body 
 and destiny, had not made her the creature she had 
 been, a being of love and sorrow. And then she sud- 
 denly checked herself, for she was ready to forgive! 
 
 C32IH
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 One morning she sprang out of bed. 
 
 "Here you! whatever you're called!" she cried 
 to her charwoman, "the mischief take your name, 
 I always forget it! My things, quick, I have to 
 go out." 
 
 "Lord! mademoiselle, just look at the roofs. 
 They're quite white." 
 
 "Well, it's snowing; that's all." 
 
 Ten minutes afterwards Mademoiselle de Varan- 
 deuil was saying to the driver of the cab that she 
 had sent for: 
 
 "The Montmartre cemetery!"
 
 LXX 
 
 A WALL stretched in the distance, a bound- 
 ary wall perfectly straight and continu- 
 ous. The thread of snow which striped 
 the coping gave it the color of dirty rust. In the 
 corner to the left, three bare trees reared their 
 dry, black branches to the sky. They rustled 
 mournfully with a sound of dead wood clashing 
 in the north wind. Above these trees, behind the 
 wall and right opposite, rose the two arms on 
 which hung one of the last oil lamps in Paris. A 
 few roofs stood at intervals here and there; then 
 began the slope of the hill of Montmartre, its 
 shroud of snow rent by streaks of earth and sandy 
 patches. Little grey walls followed the line of 
 escarpment, topped by thin, meagre trees whose 
 clusters were violaceous in the mist, and reached 
 away as far as two black mills. 
 
 The sky was leaden, washed with the cold, 
 bluish tints of ink spread with a brush, while for 
 light there was a clear and perfectly yellow rift 
 over Montmartre of the color of the water of the 
 Seine after heavy rain. Across this wintry ray 
 passed and repassed the arms of a hidden mill, 
 arms that were slow and undeviating in their move-
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 ment, and that seemed to be revolving eternity. 
 
 In front of the wall, which was overlaid with 
 a bush of dead, frost-reddened cypress, extended 
 a large tract, upon which, like two great mourning 
 processions, there descended two thick rows of 
 serried, crowded, huddled, overturned crosses. 
 These crosses touched and hustled and crowded 
 one another. They bent, and fell, and were 
 crushed by the way. In the centre there was a 
 sort of strangulation which had forced them out 
 and to one side: they could be seen covered, only 
 raising by the thickness of their wood the snow that 
 lay on the paths, which, somewhat trodden in 
 the middle, ran down the length of the two files. 
 The broken ranks undulated with the fluctuation 
 of a crowd, w T ith the disorder and serpentine move- 
 ment of a long march. The black crosses, with 
 their outstretched arms, assumed an appearance 
 of shadows and persons in distress. These two 
 straggling columns suggested a human overthrow, 
 a desperate and terrified army. They were like 
 a terrible rout. 
 
 All the crosses were laden with wreaths of im- 
 mortelles, wreaths of white paper with silver thread, 
 black wreaths with gold thread; but the snow 
 beneath made them show out worn and all tar- 
 nished, horrible as mementoes rejected by the other 
 dead and picked up to trick out the crosses with 
 the gleanings of graves. 
 
 All the crosses bore names written in white
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 letters; but there were also names which were 
 not even written on a bit of wood; and a tomb 
 might be seen there formed of the bough of a tree 
 broken off and planted in the ground, with the 
 envelope of a letter tied round it! 
 
 On the left, where a trench was being dug for a 
 third row of crosses, a workman's pick was throw- 
 ing up black earth, which fell back upon the 
 whiteness of the embankment. A great silence, 
 the dull silence of the snow, enfolded everything, 
 and two sounds only were audible, the deadened 
 sound of the shovelled earth, and the heavy sound 
 of a regular footstep: an old priest who was in 
 attendance, with his head in a black cowl and 
 wearing a black camail, a black stole, and a dirty 
 yellow surplice, was trying to warm himself by 
 stamping his big goloshes on the pavement of the 
 main avenue in front of the crosses. 
 
 It was the common grave that day. The 
 ground, the crosses, the priest expressed these 
 words : 
 
 "Here sleeps the Death of the people, and the 
 Nothingness of the poor." 
 
 O Paris! you are the heart of the world, you 
 are the great human city, the great charitable and 
 fraternal city! 
 
 You have gentleness of spirit, ancient clemency 
 of manners, and sights which give alms! The 
 poor man is your citizen as well as the rich. Your
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 churches speak of Jesus Christ; your laws speak 
 of equality; your newspapers speak of progress; 
 all your governments speak of the people; and 
 it is there that you fling those who die in your 
 service, who kill themselves in creating your lux- 
 ury, who perish from the mischief of your indus- 
 tries, who have sweated out their lives in working 
 for you, in giving you your comfort, your pleasures, 
 your splendors, who have made your animation, 
 your noise, who have placed the chain of their 
 existences in your duration as a capital, who have 
 been the crowd in your streets and the people of 
 your greatness! 
 
 Each one of your cemeteries has a like shame- 
 ful corner, hidden at the end of a wall, where you 
 hasten to bury them, and where you cast the 
 earth upon them in such niggardly shovelfuls 
 that the foot of their coffins may be seen coming 
 through. It is as though your charity were 
 checked at your last sigh, as though your only 
 free gift were the bed of suffering, and as though, 
 the hospital apart, you who are so enormous and 
 superb had no further room for these folk! You 
 keep them, and crowd them, and mingle them in 
 death as a hundred years ago you mingled their 
 dying agonies beneath the sheets in your public 
 Hospitals! Even yesterday you had not so much 
 as the priest on duty to throw a little, common 
 holy water upon all comers, nor the smallest 
 prayer !
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 But what this priest blesses is still the same: 
 a hole wherein the deal knocks together, and the 
 dead are not at home! Corruption is common 
 there; no one has his own, but each one has that 
 of all; 'tis the promiscuousness of the worm! 
 In the devouring soil a Montfaucon hastens for 
 the Catacombs. For the dead have neither time 
 nor space to rot; the earth is taken from them be- 
 fore the earth has finished! before their bones 
 have the color and as it were the ancientness of 
 stone, before the years have effaced a remnant 
 of humanity upon them and the memory of a 
 body! The clearing is made while the earth is 
 still themselves, and they are the damp mould 
 into which the spade sinks. The earth that is lent 
 them why, it does not enclose so much as the 
 odor of death! The summer, the wind which 
 passes across this scarcely buried human sewer, 
 wafts the impious miasma from it over the city 
 of the living. In the burning days of August, the 
 keepers prevent us from going so far, for there 
 are flies that have the poison of the charnel-house, 
 flies that are carbuncled and that kill! 
 
 Mademoiselle arrived here after passing the 
 wall and vault which separate the perpetual from 
 the temporary concessions. Following the direc- 
 tion of a keeper, she went up between the last 
 file of crosses and the newly opened trench. And 
 there, walking upon buried wreaths, and upon
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 the oblivion of the snow, she came to a hole, to 
 the opening of the grave. It was stopped up with 
 old rotten planks and a sheet of oxidized zinc upon 
 which a digger had thrown his blue blouse. The 
 earth sank behind to the bottom, where it left 
 visible three coffins outlined in their sinister ele- 
 gance: there was a large one and two smaller ones 
 a little way back. The crosses of the week, of two 
 days before, of the previous day, descended along 
 the channel of earth; they were slipping, and 
 sinking, and seemed to be making great strides, 
 as though they were being hurried down the slope 
 of a precipice. 
 
 Mademoiselle began to go up past these crosses, 
 bending over each, spelling out the date, seeking 
 for the names with her bad eyesight. She reached 
 some crosses of the 8th of November; it was the 
 day before that of Germinie's death, and Ger- 
 minie must be close by. There were five crosses 
 of the Qth of November, five crosses huddled to- 
 gether; Germinie was not among the crowd. 
 Mademoiselle de Varandeuil went a little further 
 on, to the crosses of the loth, then to those of the 
 nth, then to those of the I2th. She came back 
 to the 8th, and again looked everywhere: there 
 was absolutely nothing Germinie had been 
 buried without a cross! Not even a piece of wood 
 had been set up by which she might be known! 
 
 At last the old lady let herself fall on her knees 
 in the snow between two crosses, one dated the 
 
 328;]
 
 GERMINIE LACERTEUX 
 
 pth of November, and the other the loth. What 
 remained of Germinie must be close by. Her 
 uncared-for tomb was this uncared-for soil. To 
 pray over her it was needful to pray at haphazard 
 between two dates as though the poor girl's des- 
 tiny had willed that there should be as little room 
 on earth for her body as there had been for her 
 heart! 
 
 3293
 
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