Edmond de Goncourt
Germinie Lacerteux
LXVII
Prostrated by the excitement and by this last spectacle, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil took to her bed on returning home, after she had given the concierge the money for the purchase of a burial lot, and for the burial. And when she was in bed the things she had seen arose before her. The horrible dead body was still beside her, the ghastly face framed by the coffin. That never-to-be-forgotten face was engraved upon her mind; beneath her closed eyelids she saw it and was afraid of it. Germinie was there, with the distorted features of one who has been murdered, with sunken orbits and eyes that seemed to have withdrawn into their holes! She was there with her mouth still distorted by the vomiting that accompanied her last breath! She was there with her hair, her terrible hair, brushed back and standing erect upon her head!
Her hair! – that haunted mademoiselle more persistently than all the rest. The old maid thought, involuntarily, of things that had come to her ears when she was a child, of superstitions of the common people stored away in the background of her memory; she asked herself if she had not been told that dead people whose hair is like that carry a crime with them to the grave. And at times it was such hair as that that she saw upon that head, the hair of crime, standing on end with terror and stiffened with horror before the justice of Heaven, like the hair of the condemned man before the scaffold in La Grève!
On Sunday mademoiselle was too ill to leave her bed. On Monday she tried to rise and dress, in order to attend the funeral; but she was attacked with faintness, and was obliged to return to her bed.
LXVIII
"Well! is it all over?" said mademoiselle from her bed, as the concierge entered her room about eleven o'clock, on his return from the cemetery, with the black coat and the sanctimonious manner suited to the occasion.
"Mon Dieu, yes, mademoiselle. Thank God! the poor girl is out of pain."
"Stay! I have no head to-day. Put the receipts and the rest of the money on my table. We will settle our accounts some other day."
The concierge stood before her without moving or evincing any purpose to go, shifting from one hand to the other a blue velvet cap made from the dress of one of his daughters. After a moment's reflection, he decided to speak.
"This burying is an expensive business, mademoiselle. In the first place, there's – "
"Who asked you to give the figures?" Mademoiselle de Varandeuil interrupted, with the haughty air of superb charity.
The concierge continued: "And as I was saying, a lot in the cemetery, which you told me to get, ain't given away. It's no use for you to have a kind heart, mademoiselle, you ain't any too rich, – everyone knows that, – and I says to myself: 'Mademoiselle's going to have no small amount to pay out, and I know mademoiselle, she'll pay.' So it'll do no harm to economize on that, eh? It'll be just so much saved. The other'll be just as safe under ground. And then, what will give her the most pleasure up yonder? Why, to know that she isn't making things hard for anybody, the excellent girl."
"Pay? What?" said mademoiselle, out of patience with the concierge's circumlocution.
"Oh! that's of no account," he replied; "she was very fond of you, all the same. And then, when she was very sick, it wasn't the time. Oh! Mon Dieu, you needn't put yourself out – there's no hurry about it – it's money she owed a long while. See, this is it."
He took a stamped paper from the inside pocket of his coat.
"I didn't want her to make a note, – she insisted."
Mademoiselle de Varandeuil seized the stamped paper and saw at the foot:
"I acknowledge the receipt of the above amount.
Germinie Lacerteux."
It was a promise to pay three hundred francs in monthly installments, which were to be endorsed on the back.
"There's nothing there, you see," said the concierge, turning the paper over.
Mademoiselle de Varandeuil took off her spectacles. "I will pay," she said.
The concierge bowed. She glanced at him; he did not move.
"That is all, I hope?" she said, sharply.
The concierge had his eyes fixed on a leaf in the carpet. "That's all – unless – "
Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had the same feeling of terror as at the moment she passed through the door on whose other side she was to see her maid's dead body.
"But how does she owe all this?" she cried. "I paid her good wages, I almost clothed her. Where did her money go, eh?"
"Ah! there you are, mademoiselle. I should rather not have told you, – but as well to-day as to-morrow. And then, too, it's better that you should be warned; when you know beforehand you can arrange matters. There's an account with the poultry woman. The poor girl owed a little everywhere; she didn't keep things in very good shape these last few years. The laundress left her book the last time she came. It amounts to quite a little, – I don't know just how much. It seems there's a note at the grocer's – an old note – it goes back years. He'll bring you his book."
"How much at the grocer's?"
"Something like two hundred and fifty."
All these disclosures, falling upon Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, one after another, extorted exclamations of stupefied surprise from her. Resting her elbow on her pillow, she said nothing as the veil was torn away, bit by bit, from this life, as its shameful features were brought to light one by one.
"Yes, about two hundred and fifty. There's a good deal of wine, he tells me."
"I have always had wine in the cellar."
"The crémière," continued the concierge, without heeding her remark, "that's no great matter, – some seventy-five francs. It's for absinthe and brandy."
"She drank!" cried Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, everything made clear to her by those words.
The concierge did not seem to hear.
"You see, mademoiselle, knowing the Jupillons was the death of her, – the young man especially. It wasn't for herself that she did what she did. And the disappointment, you see. She took to drink. She hoped to marry him, I ought to say. She fitted up a room for him. When they get to buying furniture the money goes fast. She ruined herself, – think of it! It was no use for me to tell her not to throw herself away by drinking as she did. You don't suppose I was going to tell you, when she came in at six o'clock in the morning! It was the same with her child. Oh!" the concierge added, in reply to mademoiselle's gesture, "it was a lucky thing the little one died. Never mind, you can say she led a gay life – and a hard one. That's why I say the common ditch. If I was you – she's cost you enough, mademoiselle, all the time she's been living on you. And you can leave her where she is – with everybody else."
"Ah! that's how it is! that's what she was! She stole for men! she ran in debt! Ah! she did well to die, the hussy! And I must pay! A child! – think of that: the slut! Yes, indeed, she can rot where she will! You have done well, Monsieur Henri. Steal! She stole from me! In the ditch, parbleu! that's quite good enough for her! To think that I let her keep all my keys – I never kept any account. My God! That's what comes of confidence. Well! here we are – I'll pay – not on her account, but on my own. And I gave her my best pair of sheets to be buried in! Ah! if I'd known I'd have given you the kitchen dish-clout, mademoiselle how I am duped!"
And mademoiselle continued in this strain for some moments until the words choked one another in her throat and strangled her.
LXIX
As a result of this scene, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil kept her bed a week, ill and raging, filled with indignation that shook her whole body, overflowed through her mouth, and tore from her now and again some coarse insult which she would hurl with a shriek of rage at her maid's vile memory. Night and day she was possessed by the same fever of malediction, and even in her dreams her attenuated limbs were convulsed with wrath.
Was it possible! Germinie! her Germinie! She could think of nothing else. Debts! – a child! – all sorts of shame! The degraded creature! She abhorred her, she detested her. If she had lived she would have denounced her to the police. She would have liked to believe in hell so that she might be consigned to the torments that await the dead. Her maid was such a creature as that! A girl who had been in her service twenty years! whom she had loaded down with benefits! Drunkenness! she had sunk so low as that! The horror that succeeds a bad dream came to mademoiselle, and all the waves of loathing that flowed from her heart said: "Out upon the dead woman whose life the grave vomited forth and whose filth it cast out!"
How she had deceived her! How the wretch had pretended to love her! And to make her appear more ungrateful and more despicable Mademoiselle de Varandeuil recalled her manifestations of affection, her attentions, her jealousies, which seemed a part of her adoration. She saw her bending over her when she was ill. She thought of her caresses. It was all a lie! Her devotion was a lie! The delight with which she kissed her, the love upon her lips, were lies! Mademoiselle told herself over and over again, she persuaded herself that it was so; and yet, little by little, from these reminiscences, from these evocations of the past whose bitterness she sought to make more bitter, from the far-off sweetness of days gone by, there arose within her a first sensation of pity.
She drove away the thoughts that tended to allay her wrath; but reflection brought them back. Thereupon there came to her mind some things to which she had paid no heed during Germinie's lifetime, trifles of which the grave makes us take thought and upon which death sheds light. She had a vague remembrance of certain strange performances on the part of her maid, of feverish effusions and frantic embraces, of her throwing herself on her knees as if she were about to make a confession, of movements of the lips as if a secret were trembling on their verge. She saw, with the eyes we have for those who are no more, Germinie's wistful glances, her gestures and attitudes, the despairing expression of her face. And now she realized that there were deep wounds beneath, heart-rending pain, the torment of her anguish and her repentance, the tears of blood of her remorse, all sorts of suffering forced out of sight throughout her life, and in her whole being a Passion of shame that dared not ask forgiveness except with silence!
Then she would scold herself for the thought and call herself an old fool. Her instinct of rigid uprightness, the stern conscience and harsh judgment of a stainless life, the things which cause a virtuous woman to condemn a harlot and should have caused a saint like Mademoiselle de Varandeuil to be without pity for her servant – everything within her rebelled against a pardon. The voice of justice, stifling her kindness of heart, cried: "Never! never!" And she would expel Germinie's infamous phantom with a pitiless gesture.
There were times, indeed, when, in order to make her condemnation and execration of her memory more irrevocable, she would heap charges upon her and slander her. She would add to the dead woman's horrible list of sins. She would reproach Germinie for more than was justly chargeable to her. She would attribute crimes to her dark thoughts, murderous desires to her impatient dreams. She would strive to think, she would force herself to think, that she had desired her mistress's death and had been awaiting it.
But at that very moment, amid the blackest of her thoughts and suppositions, a vision arose and stood in a bright light before her. A figure approached, that seemed to come to meet her glance, a figure against which she could not defend herself, and which passed through the hands with which she sought to force it back. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil saw her dead maid once more. She saw once more the face of which she had caught a glimpse in the amphitheatre, the crucified face, the tortured face to which the blood and agony of a heart had mounted together. She saw it once more with the faculty which the second sight of memory separates from its surroundings. And that face, as it became clearer to her, caused her less terror. It appeared to her, divesting itself, as it were, of its fear-inspiring, horrifying qualities. Suffering alone remained, but it was the suffering of expiation, almost of prayer, the suffering of a dead face that would like to weep. And as its expression grew ever milder, mademoiselle came at last to see in it a glance of supplication, of supplication that, at last, compelled her pity. Insensibly there glided into her reflections indulgent thoughts, suggestions of apology that surprised herself. She asked herself if the poor girl was as guilty as others, if she had deliberately chosen the path of evil, if life, circumstances, the misfortune of her body and her destiny, had not made her the creature she had been, a creature of love and sorrow. Suddenly she stopped: she was on the point of forgiving her!
One morning she leaped out of bed.
"Here! you – you other!" she cried to her housekeeper, "the devil take your name! I can't remember it. Give me my clothes, quick! I have to go out."
"The idea, mademoiselle – just look at the roofs, they're all white."
"Well, it snows, that's all."
Ten minutes later, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil said to the driver of the cab she had sent for:
"Montmartre Cemetery!"
LXX
In the distance an enclosure wall extended, perfectly straight, as far as the eye could see. The thread of snow that marked the outline of its coping gave it a dirty, rusty color. In a corner at the left three leafless trees reared their bare black branches against the sky. They rustled sadly, with the sound of pieces of dead wood stirred by the south wind. Above these trees, behind the wall and close against it, arose the two arms from which hung one of the last oil-lamps in Paris. A few snow-covered roofs were scattered here and there; beyond, the hill of Montmartre rose sharply, its white shroud broken by oases of brown earth and sandy patches. Low gray walls followed the slope, surmounted by gaunt, stunted trees whose branches had a bluish tint in the mist, as far as two black windmills. The sky was of a leaden hue, with occasional cold, bluish streaks as if ink had been applied with a brush! over Montmartre there was a light streak, of a yellow color, like the Seine water after heavy rains. Above that wintry beam the wings of an invisible windmill turned and turned, – slow-moving wings, unvarying in their movement, which seemed to be turning for eternity.
In front of the wall, against which was planted a thicket of dead cypresses, turned red by the frost, was a vast tract of land upon which were two rows of crowded, jostling overturned crosses, like two great funeral processions. The crosses touched and pushed one another and trod on one another's heels. They bent and fell and collapsed in the ranks. In the middle there was a sort of congestion which had caused them to bulge out on both sides; you could see them lying – covered by the snow and raising it into mounds with the thick wood of which they were made – upon the paths, somewhat trampled in the centre, that skirted the two long files. The broken ranks undulated with the fluctuation of a multitude, the disorder and wavering course of a long march. The black crosses with their arms outstretched assumed the appearance of ghosts and persons in distress. The two disorderly columns made one think of a human panic, a desperate, frightened army. It was as if one were looking on at a terrible rout.
All the crosses were laden with wreaths, wreaths of immortelles, wreaths of white paper with silver thread, black wreaths with gold thread; but you could see them beneath the snow, worn out, withered, ghastly things, souvenirs, as it were, which the other dead would not accept and which had been picked up in order to make a little toilet for the crosses with gleanings from the graves.
All the crosses had a name written in white; but there were other names that were not even written on a piece of wood, – a broken branch of a tree, stuck in the ground, with an envelope tied around it – such tombstones as that were to be seen there!
On the left, where they were digging a trench for a third row of crosses, the workman's shovel threw black dirt into the air, which fell upon the white earth around. Profound silence, the deaf silence of the snow, enveloped everything, and but two sounds could be heard; the dull sound made by the clods of earth and the heavy sound of regular footsteps; an old priest who was waiting there, his head enveloped in a black cowl, dressed in a black gown and stole, and with a dirty, yellow surplice, was trying to keep himself warm by stamping his great galoches on the pavement of the high road, in front of the crosses.
Such was the common ditch in those days. That tract of land, those crosses and that priest said this: "Here sleeps the Death of the common people; this is the poor man's end!"
O Paris! thou art the heart of the world, thou art the great city of humanity, the great city of charity and brotherly love! Thou hast kindly intentions, old-fashioned habits of compassion, theatres that give alms. The poor man is thy citizen as well as the rich man. Thy churches speak of Jesus Christ; thy laws speak of equality; thy newspapers speak of progress; all thy governments speak of the common people; and this is where thou castest those who die in thy service, those who kill themselves ministering to thy luxury, those who perish in the noisome odors of thy factories, those who have sweated their lives away working for thee, giving thee thy prosperity, thy pleasures, thy splendors, those who have furnished thy animation and thy noise, those who have lengthened with the links of their lives the chain of thy duration as a capital, those who have been the crowd in thy streets and the common people of thy grandeur. Each of thy cemeteries has a like shameful corner, hidden in the angle of a wall, where thou makest haste to bury them, and where thou castest dirt upon them in such stingy clods, that one can see the ends of their coffins protruding! One would say that thy charity stops with their last breath, that thy only free gift is the bed whereon they suffer, and that, when the hospital can do no more for them, thou, who art so vast and so superb, hast no place for them! Thou dost heap them up, crowd them together and mingle them in death, as thou didst mingle them in the death-agony beneath the sheets of thy hospitals a hundred years since! As late as yesterday thou hadst only that priest on sentry duty, to throw a drop of paltry holy water on every comer: not the briefest prayer! Even that symbol of decency was lacking: God could not be disturbed for so small a matter! And what the priest blesses is always the same thing: a trench in which the pine boxes strike against one another, where the dead enjoy no privacy! Corruption there is common to all; no one has his own, but each one has that of all the rest: the worms are owned promiscuously! In the devouring soil a Montfaucon hastens to make way for the Catacombs. For the dead here have no more time than room to rot in: the earth is taken from them before it has finished with them! before their bones have assumed the color and the ancient appearance, so to speak, of stone, before the passing years have effaced the last trace of humanity and the memory of a body! The excavation is renewed when the earth is still themselves, when they are the damp soil in which the mattock is buried. The earth is loaned to them, you say? But it does not even confine the odor of death! In summer, the wind that passes over this scarcely-covered human charnel-house wafts the unholy miasma to the city of the living. In the scorching days of August the keepers deny admission to the place: there are flies that bear upon them the poison of the carrion, pestilential flies whose sting is deadly!
Mademoiselle arrived at this spot after passing the wall that separates the lots sold in perpetuity from those sold temporarily only. Following the directions given her by a keeper, she walked along between the further line of crosses and the newly-opened trench. And there she made her way over buried wreaths, over the snowy pall, to a hole where the trench began. It was covered over with old rotten planks and a sheet of oxidized zinc on which a workman had thrown his blue blouse. The earth sloped away behind them to the bottom of the trench, where could be seen the sinister outlines of three wooden coffins: there were one large one and two smaller ones just behind. The crosses of the past week, of the day before, of two days before, extended in a line down the slope; they glided along, plunged suddenly downward, and seemed to be taking long strides as if they were in danger of being carried over a precipice.
Mademoiselle began to ascend the path by these crosses, spelling out the dates and searching for the names with her wretched eyes. She reached the crosses of the 8th of November: that was the day before her maid's death, and Germinie should be close by. There were five crosses of the 9th of November, five crosses huddled close together: Germinie was not in the crush. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil went a little farther on, to the crosses of the 10th, then to those of the 11th, then to those of the 12th. She returned to the 8th, and looked carefully around in all directions: there was nothing, absolutely nothing, – Germinie had been buried without a cross! Not even a bit of wood had been placed in the ground by which to identify her grave!
At last the old lady dropped on her knees in the snow, between two crosses, one of which bore the date of the 9th and the other of the 10th of November. All that remained of Germinie should be almost in that spot. That ill-defined space was her ill-defined grave. To pray over her body it was necessary to pray at random between two dates, – as if the poor girl's destiny had decreed that there should be no more room on earth for her body than for her heart!