Chapter VIII: Part I: I (8)

Above the second story, the mystery ceases. All the upper rooms, the price of which is relatively modest, are occupied by tenants who may be seen and heard,--clerks like Maxence, shop-girls from the neighborhood, a few restaurant-waiters, and sometimes some poor devil of an actor or chorus-singer from the Theatre Dejazet, the Circus, or the Chateau d’Eau. One of the great advantages of the Hotel des Folies--and Mme. Fortin, the landlady, never failed to point it out to the new tenants, an inestimable advantage, she declared--was a back entrance on the Rue Beranger.

“And everybody knows,” she concluded, “that there is no chance of being caught, when one has the good luck of living in a house that has two outlets.”

When Maxence entered the office, a small, dark, and dirty room, the proprietors, M. and Mme. Fortin were just finishing their breakfast with an immense bowl of coffee of doubtful color, of which an enormous red cat was taking a share.

“Ah, here is M. Favoral!” they exclaimed.

There was no mistaking their tone. They knew the catastrophe; and the newspaper lying on the table showed how they had heard it.

“Some one called to see you last night,” said Mme. Fortin, a large fat woman, whose nose was always besmeared with snuff, and whose honeyed voice made a marked contrast with her bird-of-prey look.

“Who?”

“A gentleman of about fifty, tall and thin, with a long overcoat, coming down to his heels.”

Maxence imagined, from this description, that he recognized his own father. And yet it seemed impossible, after what had happened, that he should dare to show himself on the Boulevard du Temple, where everybody knew him, within a step of the Cafe Turc, of which he was one of the oldest customers.

“At what o’clock was he here?” he inquired.

“I really can’t tell,” answered the landlady. “I was half asleep at the time; but Fortin can tell us.”

M. Fortin, who looked about twenty years younger than his wife, was one of those small men, blonde, with scanty beard, a suspicious glance, and uneasy smile, such as the Madame Fortins know how to find, Heaven knows where.

“The confectioner had just put up his shutters,” he replied: “consequently, it must have been between eleven and a quarter-past eleven.”

“And didn’t he leave any word?” said Maxence.

“Nothing, except that he was very sorry not to find you in. And, in fact, he did look quite annoyed. We asked him to leave his name; but he said it wasn’t worth while, and that he would call again.”

At the glance which the landlady was throwing toward him from the corner of her eyes, Maxence understood that she had on the subject of that late visitor the same suspicion as himself.

And, as if she had intended to make it more apparent still,

“I ought, perhaps, to have given him your key,” she said.

“And why so, pray?”

“Oh! I don’t know, an idea of mine, that’s all. Besides, Mlle. Lucienne can probably tell you more about it; for she was there when the gentleman came, and I even think that they exchanged a few words in the yard.”

Maxence, seeing that they were only seeking a pretext to question him, took his key, and inquired,

“Is--Mlle. Lucienne at home?”

“Can’t tell. She has been going and coming all the morning, and I don’t know whether she finally staid in or out. One thing is sure, she waited for you last night until after twelve; and she didn’t like it much, I can tell you.”

Maxence started up the steep stairs; and, as he reached the upper stories, a woman’s voice, fresh and beautifully toned, reached his ears more and more distinctly.

She was singing a popular tune,--one of those songs which are monthly put in circulation by the singing cafes--

“To hope! O charming word,
Which, during all life,
Husband and children and wife
Repeat in common accord!
When the moment of success
From us ever further slips,
‘Tis Hope from its rosy lips
Whispers, To-morrow you will bless.
‘Tis very nice to run,
But to have is better fun.”

“She is in,” murmured Maxence, breathing more freely.

Reaching the fourth story, he stopped before the door which faced the stairs, and knocked lightly.

At once, the voice, which had just commenced another verse stopped short, and inquired, “Who’s there?”

“I, Maxence!”

“At this hour!” replied the voice with an ironical laugh. “That’s lucky. You have probably forgotten that we were to go to the theatre last night, and start for St. Germain at seven o’clock this morning.”

“Don’t you know then?” Maxence began, as soon as he could put in a word.

“I know that you did not come home last night.”

“Quite true. But when I have told you--”

“What? the lie you have imagined? Save yourself the trouble.”

“Lucienne, I beg of you, open the door.”

“Impossible, I am dressing. Go to your own room: as soon as I am dressed, I’ll join you.”

And, to cut short all these explanations, she took up her song again:

“Hope, I’ve waited but too long
For thy manna divine!
I’ve drunk enough of thy wine,
And I know thy siren song:
Waiting for a lucky turn,
I have wasted my best days:
Take up thy magic-lantern
And elsewhere display its rays.
‘Tis very nice to run,
But to have is better fun!”

XXVI

It was on the opposite side of the landing that what Mme. Fortin pompously called “Maxence’s apartment” was situated.

It consisted of a sort of antechamber, almost as large as a handkerchief (decorated by the Fortins with the name of dining-room), a bedroom, and a closet called a dressing-room in the lease. Nothing could be more gloomy than this lodging, in which the ragged paper and soiled paint retained the traces of all the wanderers who had occupied it since the opening of the Hotel des Folies. The dislocated ceiling was scaling off in large pieces; the floor seemed affected with the dry-rot; and the doors and windows were so much warped and sprung, that it required an effort to close them. The furniture was on a par with the rest.

“How everything does wear out!” sighed Mme. Fortin. “It isn’t ten years since I bought that furniture.”

In point of fact it was over fifteen, and even then she had bought it secondhanded, and almost unfit for use. The curtains retained but a vague shade of their original color. The veneer was almost entirely off the bedstead. Not a single lock was in order, whether in the bureau or the secretary. The rug had become a nameless rag; and the broken springs of the sofa, cutting through the threadbare stuff, stood up threateningly like knife-blades.

The most sumptuous object was an enormous China stove, which occupied almost one-half of the hall-dining-room. It could not be used to make a fire; for it had no pipe. Nevertheless, Mme. Fortin refused obstinately to take it out, under the pretext that it gave such a comfortable appearance to the apartment. All this elegance cost Maxence forty-five francs a month, and five francs for the service; the whole payable in advance from the 1st to the 3d of the month. If, on the 4th, a tenant came in without money, Mme. Fortin squarely refused him his key, and invited him to seek shelter elsewhere.

“I have been caught too often,” she replied to those who tried to obtain twenty-four hours’ grace from her. “I wouldn’t trust my own father till the 5th, he who was a superior officer in Napoleon’s armies, and the very soul of honor.”

It was chance alone which had brought Maxence, after the Commune, to the Hotel des Folies; and he had not been there a week, before he had fully made up his mind not to wear out Mme. Fortin’s furniture very long. He had even already found another and more suitable lodging, when, about a year ago, a certain meeting on the stairs had modified all his views, and lent a charm to his apartment which he did not suspect.

As he was going out one morning to his office, he met on the very landing a rather tall and very dark girl, who had just come running up stairs. She passed before him like a flash, opened the opposite door, and disappeared. But, rapid as the apparition had been, it had left in Maxence’s mind one of those impressions which are never obliterated. He could not think of any thing else the whole day; and after business-hours, instead of going to dine in Rue St. Gilles, as usual, he sent a despatch to his mother to tell her not to wait for him, and bravely went home.

But it was in vain, that, during the whole evening, he kept watch behind his door, left slyly ajar: he did not get a glimpse of the neighbor. Neither did she show herself on the next or the three following days; and Maxence was beginning to despair, when at last, on Sunday, as he was going down stairs, he met her again face to face. He had thought her quite pretty at the first glance: this time he was dazzled to that extent, that he remained for over a minute, standing like a statue against the wall.

And certainly it was not her dress that helped setting off her beauty. She wore a poor dress of black merino, a narrow collar, and plain cuffs, and a bonnet of the utmost simplicity. She had nevertheless an air of incomparable dignity, a grace that charmed, and yet inspired respect, and the carriage of a queen. This was on the 30th of July. As he was handing in his key, before leaving,

“My apartment suits me well enough,” said Maxence to Mme. Fortin: “I shall keep it. And here are fifty francs for the month of August.”

And, while the landlady was making out a receipt,

“You never told me,” he began with his most indifferent look, “that I had a neighbor.”

Mme. Fortin straightened herself up like an old warhorse that hears the sound of the bugle.

“Yes, yes!” she said,--“Mademoiselle Lucienne.”

“Lucienne,” repeated Maxence: “that’s a pretty name.”

“Have you seen her?”

“I have just seen her. She’s rather good looking.”

The worthy landlady jumped on her chair. “Rather good looking!” she interrupted. “You must be hard to please, my dear sir; for I, who am a judge, I affirm that you might hunt Paris over for four whole days without finding such a handsome girl. Rather good looking! A girl who has hair that comes down to her knees, a dazzling complexion, eyes as big as this, and teeth whiter than that cat’s. All right, my friend. You’ll wear out more than one pair of boots running after women before you catch one like her.”

That was exactly Maxence’s opinion; and yet with his coldest look,

“Has she been long your tenant, dear Mme. Fortin?” he asked.

“A little over a year. She was here during the siege; and just then, as she could not pay her rent, I was, of course, going to send her off; but she went straight to the commissary of police, who came here, and forbade me to turn out either her or anybody else. As if people were not masters in their own house!”

“That was perfectly absurd!” objected Maxence, who was determined to gain the good graces of the landlady.

“Never heard of such a thing!” she went on. “Compel you to lodge people free! Why not feed them too? In short, she remained so long, that, after the Commune, she owed me a hundred and eighty francs. Then she said, that, if I would let her stay, she would pay me each month in advance, besides the rent, ten francs on the old account. I agreed, and she has already paid up twenty francs.”

“Poor girl!” said Maxence.

But Mme. Fortin shrugged her shoulders.

“Really,” she replied, “I don’t pity her much; for, if she only wanted, in forty-eight hours I should be paid, and she would have something else on her back besides that old black rag. I tell her every day, ‘In these days, my child, there is but one reliable friend, which is better than all others, and which must be taken as it comes, without making any faces if it is a little dirty: that’s money.’ But all my preaching goes for nothing. I might as well sing.”

Maxence was listening with intense delight.

“In short, what does she do?” he asked.

“That’s more than I know,” replied Mme. Fortin. “The young lady has not much to say. All I know is, that she leaves every morning bright and early, and rarely gets home before eleven. On Sunday she stays home, reading; and sometimes, in the evening, she goes out, always alone, to some theatre or ball. Ah! she is an odd one, I tell you!”

A lodger who came in interrupted the landlady; and Maxence walked off dreaming how he could manage to make the acquaintance of his pretty and eccentric neighbor.

Because he had once spent some hundreds of napoleons in the company of young ladies with yellow chignons, Maxence fancied himself a man of experience, and had but little faith in the virtue of a girl of twenty, living alone in a hotel, and left sole mistress of her own fancy. He began to watch for every occasion of meeting her; and, towards the last of the month, he had got so far as to bow to her, and to inquire after her health.

But, the first time he ventured to make love to her, she looked at him head to foot, and turned her back upon him with so much contempt, that he remained, his mouth wide open, perfectly stupefied.

“I am losing my time like a fool,” he thought.

Great, then, was his surprise, when the following week, on a fine afternoon, he saw Mlle. Lucienne leave her room, no longer clad in her eternal black dress, but wearing a brilliant and extremely rich toilet. With a beating heart he followed her.

In front of the Hotel des Folies stood a handsome carriage and horses.

As soon as Mlle. Lucienne appeared, a footman opened respectfully the carriage-door. She went in; and the horses started at a full trot.

Maxence watched the carriage disappear in the distance, like a child who sees the bird fly upon which he hoped to lay hands.

“Gone,” he muttered, “gone!”

But, when he turned around, he found himself face to face with the Fortins, man and wife; who were laughing a sinister laugh.

“What did I tell you?” exclaimed Mme. Fortin. “There she is, started at last. Get up, horse! She’ll do well, the child.”

The magnificent equipage and elegant dress had already produced quite an effect among the neighbors. The customers sitting in front of the cafe were laughing among themselves. The confectioner and his wife were casting indignant glances at the proprietors of the Hotel des Folies.

“You see, M. Favoral,” replied Mme. Fortin, “such a girl as that was not made for our neighborhood. You must make up your mind to it; you won’t see much more of her on the Boulevard du Temple.”

Without saying a word, Maxence ran to his room, the hot tears streaming from his eyes. He felt ashamed of himself; for, after all, what was this girl to him?

“She is gone!” he repeated to himself. “Well, good-by, let her go!”

But, despite all his efforts at philosophy, he felt an immense sadness invading his heart: ill-defined regrets and spasms of anger agitated him. He was thinking what a fool he had been to believe in the grand airs of the young lady, and that, if he had had dresses and horses to give her, she might not have received him so harshly. At last he made up his mind to think no more of her,--one of those fine resolutions which are always taken, and never kept; and in the evening he left his room to go and dine in the Rue St. Gilles.

But, as was often his custom, he stopped at the cafe next door, and called for a drink. He was mixing his absinthe when he saw the carriage that had carried off Mlle. Lucienne in the morning returning at a rapid gait, and stopping short in front of the hotel. Mlle. Lucienne got out slowly, crossed the sidewalk, and entered the narrow corridor. Almost immediately, the carriage turned around, and drove off.

“What does it mean?” thought Maxence, who was actually forgetting to swallow his absinthe.

He was losing himself in absurd conjectures, when, some fifteen minutes later, he saw the girl coming out again. Already she had taken off her elegant clothes, and resumed her cheap black dress. She had a basket on her arm, and was going towards the Rue Chariot. Without further reflections, Maxence rose suddenly, and started to follow her, being very careful that she should not see him. After walking for five or six minutes, she entered a shop, half-eating house, and half wine-shop, in the window of which a large sign could be read: “Ordinary at all hours for forty centimes. Hard boiled eggs, and salad of the season.”

Maxence, having crept up as close as he could, saw Mlle. Lucienne take a tin box out of her basket, and have what is called an “ordinaire” poured into it; that is, half a pint of soup, a piece of beef as large as the fist, and a few vegetables. She then had a small bottle half-filled with wine, paid, and walked out with that same look of grave dignity which she always wore.

“Funny dinner,” murmured Maxence, “for a woman who was spreading herself just now in a ten-thousand-franc carriage.”

From that moment she became the sole and only object of his thoughts. A passion, which he no longer attempted to resist, was penetrating like a subtle poison to the innermost depths of his being. He thought himself happy, when, after watching for hours, he caught a glimpse of this singular creature, who, after that extraordinary expedition, seemed to have resumed her usual mode of life. Mme. Fortin was dumfounded.

“She has been too exacting,” she said to Maxence, “and the thing has fallen through.”

He made no answer. He felt a perfect horror for the honorable landlady’s insinuations; and yet he never ceased to repeat to himself that he must be a great simpleton to have faith for a moment in that young lady’s virtue. What would he not have given to be able to question her? But he dared not. Often he would gather up his courage, and wait for her on the stairs; but, as soon as she fixed upon him her great black eye, all the phrases he had prepared took flight from his brain, his tongue clove to his mouth, and he could barely succeed in stammering out a timid,

“Good-morning, mademoiselle.”

He felt so angry with himself, that he was almost on the point of leaving the Hotel des Folies, when one evening:

“Well,” said Mme. Fortin to him, “all is made up again, it seems. The beautiful carriage called again to-day.”

Maxence could have beaten her.

“What good would it do you,” he replied, “if Lucienne were to turn out badly?”

“It’s always a pleasure,” she grumbled, “to have one more woman to torment the men. Those are the girls, you see, who avenge us poor honest women!”

The sequel seemed at first to justify her worst previsions. Three times during that week, Mlle. Lucienne rode out in grand style; but as she always returned, and always resumed her eternal black woolen dress,

“I can’t make head or tail of it,” thought Maxence. “But never mind, I’ll clear the matter up yet.”

He applied, and obtained leave of absence; and from the very next day he took up a position behind the window of the adjoining cafe. On the first day he lost his time; but on the second day, at about three o’clock, the famous equipage made its appearance; and, a few moments later, Mlle. Lucienne took a seat in it. Her toilet was richer, and more showy still, than the first time. Maxence jumped into a cab.

“You see that carriage,” he said to the coachman, “Wherever it goes, you must follow it. I give ten francs extra pay.”

“All right!” replied the driver, whipping up his horses.

And much need he had, too, of whipping them; for the carriage that carried off Mlle. Lucienne started at full trot down the Boulevards, to the Madeleine, then along the Rue Royale, and through the Place de la Concorde, to the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, where the horses were brought down to a walk. It was the end of September, and one of those lovely autumnal days which are a last smile of the blue sky and the last caress of the sun.

There were races in the Bois de Boulogne; and the equipages were five and six abreast on the avenue. The side-alleys were crowded with idlers. Maxence, from the inside of his cab, never lost sight of Mlle. Lucienne.

She was evidently creating a sensation. The men stopped to look at her with gaping admiration: the women leaned out of their carriages to see her better.

“Where can she be going?” Maxence wondered.

She was going to the Bois; and soon her carriage joined the interminable line of equipages which were following the grand drive at a walk. It became easier now to follow on foot. Maxence sent off his cab to wait for him at a particular spot, and took the pedestrians’ road, that follows the edge of the lakes. He had not gone fifty steps, however, before he heard some one call him. He turned around, and, within two lengths of his cane, saw M. Saint Pavin and M. Costeclar. Maxence hardly knew M. Saint Pavin, whom he had only seen two or three times in the Rue St. Gilles, and execrated M. Costeclar. Still he advanced towards them.

Mlle. Lucienne’s carriage was now caught in the file; and he was sure of joining it whenever he thought proper.

“It is a miracle to see you here, my dear Maxence!” exclaimed M. Costeclar, loud enough to attract the attention of several persons.

To occupy the attention of others, anyhow and at any cost, was M. Costeclar’s leading object in life. That was evident from the style of his dress, the shape of his hat, the bright stripes of his shirt, his ridiculous shirt-collar, his cuffs, his boots, his gloves, his cane, every thing, in fact.

“If you see us on foot,” he added, “it is because we wanted to walk a little. The doctor’s prescription, my dear. My carriage is yonder, behind those trees. Do you recognize my dapple-grays?” And he extended his cane in that direction, as if he were addressing himself, not to Maxence alone, but to all those who were passing by.

“Very well, very well! everybody knows you have a carriage,” interrupted M. Saint Pavin.

The editor of “The Financial Pilot” was the living contrast of his companion. More slovenly still than M. Costeclar was careful of his dress, he exhibited cynically a loose cravat rolled over a shirt worn two or three days, a coat white with lint and plush, muddy boots, though it had not rained for a week, and large red hands, surprisingly filthy.

He was but the more proud; and he wore, cocked up to one side, a hat that had not known a brush since the day it had left the hatter’s.

“That fellow Costeclar,” he went on, “he won’t believe that there are in France a number of people who live and die without ever having owned a horse or a coupe; which is a fact, nevertheless. Those fellows who were born with fifty or sixty thousand francs’ income in their baby-clothes are all alike.”

The unpleasant intention was evident; but M. Costeclar was not the man to get angry for such a trifle.

“You are in bad humor to-day, old fellow,” he said. The editor of “The Financial Pilot” made a threatening gesture.

“Well, yes,” he answered, “I am in bad humor, like a man who for ten years past has been beating the drum in front of your d--d financial shops, and who does not pay expenses. Yes, for ten years I have shouted myself hoarse for your benefit: ‘Walk in, ladies and gentlemen, and, for every twenty-cent-piece you deposit with us, we will return you a five-franc-piece. Walk in, follow the crowd, step up to the office: this is the time.’ They go in. You receive mountains of twenty-cent-pieces: you never return anything, neither a five-franc-piece, nor even a centime. The trick is done, the public is sold. You drive your own carriage; you suspend diamonds to your mistress’ ears; and I, the organizer of success, whose puffs open the tightest closed pockets, and start up the old louis from the bottom of the old woolen stocking,--I am driven to have my boots half-soled. You stint me my existence; you kick as soon as I ask you to pay for the big drums bursted in your behalf.”

He spoke so loud, that three or four idlers had stopped. Without being very shrewd, Maxence understood readily that he had happened in the midst of an acrimonious discussion. Closely pressed, and desirous of gaining time, M. Costeclar had called him in the hopes of effecting a diversion.

Bowing, therefore, politely,

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said: “I fear I have interrupted you.”

But M. Costeclar detained him.

“Don’t go,” he declared; “you must come down and take a glass of Madeira with us, down at the Cascade.”

And, turning to the editor of “The Pilot”:

“Come, now, shut up,” he said: “you shall have what you want.”

“Really?”

“Upon my word.”

“I’d rather have two or three lines in black and white.”

“I’ll give them to you to-night.”

“All right, then! Forward the big guns! Look out for next Sunday’s number!”

Peace being made, the gentlemen continued their walk in the most friendly manner, M. Costeclar pointing out to Maxence all the celebrities who were passing by them in their carriages.

He had just designated to his attention Mme. and Mlle. de Thaller, accompanied by two gigantic footmen, when, suddenly interrupting himself, and rising on tiptoe,

“Sacre bleu!” he exclaimed: “what a handsome woman!”

Without too much affectation, Maxence fell back a step or two. He felt himself blushing to his very ears, and trembled lest his sudden emotion were noticed, and he were questioned; for it was Mlle. Lucienne who thus excited M. Costeclar’s noisy enthusiasm. Once already she had been around the lake; and she was continuing her circular drive.

“Positively,” approved the editor of “The Financial Pilot,” “she is somewhat better than the rest of those ladies we have just seen going by.”

M. Costeclar was on the point of pulling out what little hair he had left.

“And I don’t know her!” he went on. “A lovely woman rides in the Bois, and I don’t know who she is! That is ridiculous and prodigious! Who can post us?”

A little ways off stood a group of gentlemen, who had also just left their carriages, and were looking on this interminable procession of equipages and this amazing display of toilets.

“They are friends of mine,” said M. Costeclar: “let us join them.”

They did so; and, after the usual greetings,

“Who is that?” inquired M. Costeclar,--“that dark person, whose carriage follows Mme. de Thaller’s?”

An old young man, with scanty hair, dyed beard, and a most impudent smile, answered him,

“That’s just what we are trying to find out. None of us have ever seen her.”

“I must and shall find out,” interrupted M. Costeclar. “I have a very intelligent servant.”

Already he was starting in the direction of the spot where his carriage was waiting for him. The old beau stopped him.

“Don’t bother yourself, my dear friend,” he said. “I have also a servant who is no fool; and he has had orders for over fifteen minutes.”

The others burst out laughing.

“Distanced, Costeclar!” exclaimed M. Saint Pavin, who, notwithstanding his slovenly dress and cynic manners, seemed perfectly well received.

No one was now paying any attention to Maxence; and he slipped off without the slightest care as to what M. Costeclar might think. Reaching the spot where his cab awaited him,

“Which way, boss?” inquired the driver. Maxence hesitated. What better had he to do than to go home? And yet . . .

“We’ll wait for that same carriage,” he answered; “and we’ll follow it on the return.”

But he learned nothing further. Mlle. Lucienne drove straight to the Boulevard du Temple, and, as before, immediately resumed her eternal black dress; and Maxence saw her go to the little restaurant for her modest dinner.

But he saw something else too.

Almost on the heels of the girl, a servant in livery entered the hotel corridor, and only went off after remaining a full quarter of an hour in busy conference with Mme. Fortin.

“It’s all over,” thought the poor fellow. “Lucienne will not be much longer my neighbor.”

He was mistaken. A month went by without bringing about any change. As in the past, she went out early, came home late, and on Sundays remained alone all day in her room. Once or twice a week, when the weather was fine, the carriage came for her at about three o’clock, and brought her home at nightfall. Maxence had exhausted all conjectures, when one evening, it was the 31st of October, as he was coming in to go to bed, he heard a loud sound of voices in the office of the hotel. Led by an instinctive curiosity, he approached on tiptoe, so as to see and hear every thing. The Fortins and Mlle. Lucienne were having a great discussion.

“That’s all nonsense,” shrieked the worthy landlady; “and I mean to be paid.”

Mlle. Lucienne was quite calm.

“Well,” she replied: “don’t I pay you? Here are forty francs, --thirty in advance for my room, and ten on the old account.”

“I don’t want your ten francs!”

“What do you want, then?”

“Ah,--the hundred and fifty francs which you owe me still.”

The girl shrugged her shoulders.

“You forget our agreement,” she uttered.

“Our agreement?”

“Yes. After the Commune, it was understood that I would give you ten francs a month on the old account; as long as I give them to you, you have nothing to ask.”

Crimson with rage, Mme. Fortin had risen from her seat.

“Formerly,” she interrupted, “I presumed I had to deal with a poor working-girl, an honest girl.”

Mlle. Lucienne took no notice of the insult.

“I have not the amount you ask,” she said coldly.

“Well, then,” vociferated the other, “you must go and ask it of those who pay for your carriages and your dresses.”

Still impassible, the girl, instead of answering, stretched her hand towards her key; but M. Fortin stopped her arm.

“No, no!” he said with a giggle. “People who don’t pay their hotel-bill sleep out, my darling.”

Maxence, that very morning, had received his month’s pay, and he felt, as it were, his two hundred francs trembling in his pockets.

Yielding to a sudden inspiration, he threw open the office-door, and, throwing down one hundred and fifty francs upon the table,

“Here is your money, wretch!” he exclaimed. And he withdrew at once.

XXVII

Maxence had not spoken to Mlle. Lucienne for nearly a month. He tried to persuade himself that she despised him because he was poor. He kept watching for her, for he could not help it; but as much as possible he avoided her.

“I shall be miserable,” he thought, “the day when she does not come home; and yet it would be the very best thing that could happen for me.”

Nevertheless, he spent all his time trying to find some explanations for the conduct of this strange girl, who, beneath her woolen dress, had the haughty manners of a great lady. Then he delighted to imagine between her and himself some of those subjects of confidence, some of those facilities which chance never fails to supply to attentive passion, or some event which would enable him to emerge from his obscurity, and to acquire some rights by virtue of some great service rendered.

But never had he dared to hope for an occasion as propitious as the one he had just seized. And yet, after he had returned to his room, he hardly dared to congratulate himself upon the promptitude of his decision. He knew too well Mlle. Lucienne’s excessive pride and sensitive nature.

“I should not be surprised if she were angry with me for what I’ve done,” he thought.

The evening being quite chilly, he had lighted a few sticks; and, sitting by the fireside, he was waiting, his mind filled with vague hopes. It seemed to him that his neighbor could not absolve herself from coming to thank him; and he was listening intently to all the noises of the house, starting at the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and at the slamming of doors. Ten times, at least, he went out on tiptoe to lean out of the window on the landing, to make sure that there was no light in Mlle. Lucienne’s room. At eleven o’clock she had not yet come home; and he was deliberating whether he would not start out in quest of information, when there was a knock at the door.

“Come in!” he cried, in a voice choked with emotion. Mlle. Lucienne came in. She was somewhat paler than usual, but calm and perfectly self-possessed. Having bowed without the slightest shade of embarrassment, she laid upon the mantel-piece the thirty five-franc-notes which Maxence had thrown down to the Fortins; and, in her most natural tone,

“Here are your hundred and fifty francs, sir,” she uttered. “I am more grateful than I can express for your prompt kindness in lending them to me; but I did not need them.”

Maxence had risen from his seat, and was making every effort to control his own feelings.

“Still,” he began, “after what I heard--”

“Yes,” she interrupted, “Mme. Fortin and her husband were trying to frighten me. But they were losing their time. When, after the Commune, I settled with them the manner in which I would discharge my debt towards them, having a just estimate of their worth, I made them write out and sign our agreement. Being in the right, I could resist them, and was resisting them when you threw them those hundred and fifty francs. Having laid hands upon them, they had the pretension to keep them. That’s what I could not suffer. Not being able to recover them by main force, I went at once to the commissary of police. He was luckily at his office. He is an honest man, who already, once before, helped me out of a scrape. He listened to me kindly, and was moved by my explanations. Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, he put on his overcoat, and came with me to see our landlord. After compelling them to return me your money, he signified to them to observe strictly our agreement, under penalty of incurring his utmost severity.”

Maxence was wonderstruck.

“How could you dare?” he said.

“Wasn’t I in the right?”

“Oh, a thousand times yes! Still--”

“What? Should my right be less respected because I am but a woman? And, because I have no one to protect me, am I outside the law, and condemned in advance to suffer the iniquitous fancies of every scoundrel? No, thank Heaven! Henceforth I shall feel easy. People like the Fortins, who live off I know not what shameful traffic, have too much to fear from the police to dare to molest me further.”

The resentment of the insult could be read in her great black eyes; and a bitter disgust contracted her lips.

“Besides,” she added, “the commissary had no need of my explanations to understand what abject inspirations the Fortins were following. The wretches had in their pocket the wages of their infamy. In refusing me my key, in throwing me out in the street at ten o’clock at night, they hoped to drive me to seek the assistance of the base coward who paid their odious treason. And we know the price which men demand for the slightest service they render to a woman.”

Maxence turned pale. The idea flashed upon his mind that it was to him, perhaps, that these last words were addressed.

“Ah, I swear it!” he exclaimed, “it is without after-thought that I tried to help you. You do not owe me any thanks even.”

“I do not thank you any the less, though,” she said gently, “and from the bottom of my heart.”

“It was so little!”

“Intention alone makes the value of a service, neighbor. And, besides, do not say that a hundred and fifty francs are nothing to you: perhaps you do not earn much more each month.”

“I confess it,” he said, blushing a little.

“You see, then? No, it was not to you that my words were addressed, but to the man who has paid the Fortins. He was waiting on the Boulevard, the result of the manoeuvre, which, they thought, was about to place me at his mercy. He ran quickly to me when I went out, and followed me all the way to the office of the commissary of police, as he follows me everywhere for the past month, with his sickening gallantries and his degrading propositions.”

The eye flashing with anger,

“Ah, if I had known!” exclaimed Maxence. “If you had told me but a word!”

She smiled at his vehemence.

“What would you have done?” she said. “You cannot impart intelligence to a fool, heart to a coward, or delicacy of feeling to a boor.”

“I could have chastised the miserable insulter.”

She had a superb gesture of indifference.

“Bash!” she interrupted. “What are insults to me? I am so accustomed to them, that they no longer have any effect upon me. I am eighteen: I have neither family, relatives, friends, nor any one in the world who even knows my existence; and I live by my labor. Can’t you see what must be the humiliations of each day? Since I was eight years old, I have been earning the bread I eat, the dress I wear, and the rent of the den where I sleep. Can you understand what I have endured, to what ignominies I have been exposed, what traps have been set for me, and how it has happened to me sometimes to owe my safety to mere physical force? And yet I do not complain, since through it all I have been able to retain the respect of myself, and to remain virtuous in spite of all.”

She was laughing a laugh that had something wild in it.

And, as Maxence was looking at her with immense surprise,

“That seems strange to you, doesn’t it?” she resumed. “A girl of eighteen, without a sou, free as air, very pretty, and yet virtuous in the midst of Paris. Probably you don’t believe it, or, if you do, you just think, ‘What on earth does she make by it?’

“And really you are right; for, after all, who cares, and who thinks any the more of me, if I work sixteen hours a day to remain virtuous? But it’s a fancy of my own; and don’t imagine for a moment that I am deterred by any scruples, or by timidity, or ignorance. No, no! I believe in nothing. I fear nothing; and I know as much as the oldest libertines, the most vicious, and the most depraved. And I don’t say that I have not been tempted sometimes, when, coming home from work, I’d see some of them coming out of the restaurants, splendidly dressed, on their lover’s arm, and getting into carriages to go to the theatre. There were moments when I was cold and hungry, and when, not knowing where to sleep, I wandered all night through the streets like a lost dog. There were hours when I felt sick of all this misery, and when I said to myself, that, since it was my fate to end in the hospital, I might as well make the trip gayly. But what! I should have had to traffic my person, to sell myself!”

She shuddered, and in a hoarse voice,

“I would rather die,” she said.

It was difficult to reconcile words such as these with certain circumstances of Mlle. Lucienne’s existence,--her rides around the lake, for instance, in that carriage that came for her two or three times a week; her ever renewed costumes, each time more eccentric and more showy. But Maxence was not thinking of that. What she told him he accepted as absolutely true and indisputable. And he felt penetrated with an almost religious admiration for this young and beautiful girl, possessed of so much vivid energy, who alone, through the hazards, the perils, and the temptations of Paris, had succeeded in protecting and defending herself.

“And yet,” he said, “without suspecting it, you had a friend near you.”

She shuddered; and a pale smile flitted upon her lips. She knew well enough what friendship means between a youth of twenty-five and a girl of eighteen.

“A friend!” she murmured.

Maxence guessed her thought; and, in all the sincerity of his soul,

“Yes, a friend,” he repeated, “a comrade, a brother.” And thinking to touch her, and gain her confidence,

“I could understand you,” he added; “for I, too, have been very unhappy.”

But he was singularly mistaken. She looked at him with an astonished air, and slowly,

“You unhappy!” she uttered,--“you who have a family, relations, a mother who adores you, a sister.” Less excited, Maxence might have wondered how she had found this out, and would have concluded that she must feel some interest in him, since she had doubtless taken the trouble of getting information.

“Besides, you are a man,” she went on; “and I do not understand how a man can complain. Have you not the freedom, the strength, and the right to undertake and to dare any thing? Isn’t the world open to your activity and to your ambition? Woman submits to her fate: man makes his.”

This was hurting the dearest pretensions of Maxence, who seriously thought that he had exhausted the rigors of adversity.

“There are circumstances,” he began.

But she shrugged her shoulders gently, and, interrupting him,

“Do not insist,” she said, “or else I might think that you lack energy. What are you talking of circumstances? There are none so adverse but that can be overcome. What would you like, then? To be born with a hundred thousand francs a year, and have nothing to do but to live according to your whim of each day, idle, satiated, a burden upon yourself, useless, or offensive to others? Ah! If I were a man, I would dream of another fate. I should like to start from the Foundling Asylum, without a name, and by my will, my intelligence, my daring, and my labor, make something and somebody of myself. I would start from nothing, and become every thing!”

With flashing eyes and quivering nostrils, she drew herself up proudly. But almost at once, dropping her head,

“The misfortune is,” she added, “that I am but a woman; and you who complain, if you only knew--”

She sat down, and with her elbow on the little table, her head resting upon her hand, she remained lost in her meditations, her eyes fixed, as if following through space all the phases of the eighteen years of her life.

There is no energy but unbends at some given moment, no will but has its hour of weakness; and, strong and energetic as was Mlle. Lucienne, she had been deeply touched by Maxence’s act. Had she, then, found at last upon her path the companion of whom she had often dreamed in the despairing hours of solitude and wretchedness? After a few moments, she raised her head, and, looking into Maxence’s eyes with a gaze that made him quiver like the shock of an electric battery,

“Doubtless,” she said, in a tone of indifference somewhat forced, “you think you have in me a strange neighbor. Well, as between neighbors; it is well to know each other. Before you judge me, listen.”

The recommendation was useless. Maxence was listening with all the powers of his attention.

“I was brought up,” she began, “in a village of the neighborhood of Paris,--in Louveciennes. My mother had put me out to nurse with some honest gardeners, poor, and burdened with a large family. After two months, hearing nothing of my mother, they wrote to her: she made no answer. They then went to Paris, and called at the address she had given them. She had just moved out; and no one knew what had become of her. They could no longer, therefore, expect a single sou for the cares they would bestow upon me. They kept me, nevertheless, thinking that one child the more would not make much difference. I know nothing of my parents, therefore, except what I heard through these kind gardeners; and, as I was still quite young when I had the misfortune to lose them, I have but a very vague remembrance of what they told me. I remember very well, however, that according to their statements, my mother was a young working-woman of rare beauty, and that, very likely, she was not my father’s wife. If I was ever told the name of my mother or my father, if I ever knew it, I have quite forgotten it. I had myself no name. My adopted parents called me the Parisian. I was happy, nevertheless, with these kind people, and treated exactly like their own children. In winter, they sent me to school; in summer, I helped weeding the garden. I drove a sheep or two along the road, or else I went to gather violets and strawberries through the woods.

“This was the happiest, indeed, the only happy time of my life, towards which my thoughts may turn when I feel despair and discouragement getting the better of me. Alas! I was but eight, when, within the same week, the gardener and his wife were both carried off by the same disease,--inflammation of the lungs.

“On a freezing December morning, in that house upon which the hand of death had just fallen, we found ourselves, six children, the oldest of whom was not eleven, crying with grief, fright, cold, and hunger.

“Neither the gardener nor his wife had any relatives; and they left nothing but a few wretched pieces of furniture, the sale of which barely sufficed to pay the expenses of their funeral. The two younger children were taken to an asylum: the others were taken charge of by the neighbors.

“It was a laundress of Marly who took me. I was quite tall and strong for my age. She made an apprentice of me. She was not unkind by nature; but she was violent and brutal in the extreme. She compelled me to do an excessive amount of work, and often of a kind above my strength.

“Fifty times a day, I had to go from the river to the house, carrying on my shoulders enormous bundles of wet napkins or sheets, wring them, spread them out, and then run to Rueil to get the soiled clothes from the customers. I did not complain (I was already too proud to complain); but, if I was ordered to do something that seemed to me too unjust, I refused obstinately to obey, and then I was unmercifully beaten. In spite of all, I might, perhaps, have become attached to the woman, had she not had the disgusting habit of drinking. Every week regularly, on the day when she took the clothes to Paris (it was on Wednesdays), she came home drunk. And then, according as, with the fumes of the wine, anger or gayety rose to her brain, there were atrocious scenes or obscene jests.

“When she was in that condition, she inspired me with horror. And one Wednesday, as I showed my feelings too plainly, she struck me so hard, that she broke my arm. I had been with her for twenty months. The injury she had done me sobered her at once. She became frightened, overpowered me with caresses, begging me to say nothing to any one. I promised, and kept faithfully my word.

“But a physician had to be called in. There had been witnesses who spoke. The story spread along the river, as far as Bougival and Rueil. And one morning an officer of gendarmes called at the house; and I don’t exactly know what would have happened, if I had not obstinately maintained that I had broken my arm in falling down stairs.”

What surprised Maxence most was Mlle. Lucienne’s simple and natural tone. No emphasis, scarcely an appearance of emotion. One might have thought it was somebody’s else life that she was narrating. Meantime she was going on,

“Thanks to my obstinate denials the woman was not disturbed. But the truth was known; and her reputation, which was not good before, became altogether bad. I became an object of interest. The very same people who had seen me twenty times staggering painfully under a load of wet clothes, which was terrible, began to pity me prodigiously because I had had an arm broken, which was nothing.

“At last a number of our customers arranged to take me out of a house, in which, they said, I must end by perishing under bad treatment.

“And, after many fruitless efforts, they discovered, at last, at La Jonchere, an old Jewess lady, very rich, and a widow without children, who consented to take charge of me.

“I hesitated at first to accept these offers; but noticing that the laundress, since she had hurt me, had conceived a still greater aversion for me, I made up my mind to leave her.

“It was on the day when I was introduced to my new mistress that I first discovered I had no name. After examining me at length, turning me around and around, making me walk, and sit down, ‘Now,’ she inquired, ‘what is your name?’

“I stared at her in surprise; for indeed I was then like a savage, not having the slightest notions of the things of life.

“‘My name is the Parisian,’ I replied.

“She burst out laughing, as also another old lady, a friend of hers, who assisted at my presentation; and I remember that my little pride was quite offended at their hilarity. I thought they were laughing at me.

“‘That’s not a name,’ they said at last. ‘That’s a nickname.’

“‘I have no other.’

“They seemed dumfounded, repeating over and over that such a thing was unheard of; and on the spot they began to look for a name for me.

“‘Where were you born?’ inquired my new mistress.

“‘At Louveciennes.’

“‘Very well,’ said the other: ‘let us call her Louvecienne.’

“A long discussion followed, which irritated me so much that I felt like running away; and it was agreed at last, that I should be called, not Louvecienne, but Lucienne; and Lucienne I have remained.

“There was nothing said about baptism, since my new mistress was a Jewess.

“She was an excellent woman, although the grief she had felt at the loss of her husband had somewhat deranged her faculties.

“As soon as it was decided that I was to remain, she desired to inspect my trousseau. I had none to show her, possessing nothing in the world but the rags on my back. As long as I had remained with the laundress, I had finished wearing out her old dresses; and I had never worn any other under-clothing save that which I borrowed, ‘by authority,’ from the clients,--an economical system adopted by many laundresses.

“Dismayed at my state of destitution, my new mistress sent for a seamstress, and at once ordered wherewith to dress and change me.

“Since the death of the poor gardeners, this was the first time that any one paid any attention to me, except to exact some service of me. I was moved to tears; and, in the excess of my gratitude, I would gladly have died for that kind old lady.

“This feeling gave me the courage and the constancy required to bear with her whimsical nature. She had singular manias, disconcerting fancies, ridiculous and often exorbitant exactions. I lent myself to it all as best I could.

“As she already had two servants, a cook and a chambermaid, I had myself no special duties in the house. I accompanied her when she went out riding. I helped to wait on her at table, and to dress her. I picked up her handkerchief when she dropped it; and, above all, I looked for her snuff-box, which she was continually mislaying.