On the morrow, which was a Sunday, Octave with his eyes open lay thinking for an hour in the warmth of the sheets. He awoke happy, full of the lucidity of the morning laziness. What need was there to hurry? He was very comfortable at “The Ladies’ Paradise,” he was there losing all his provincial ways, and he had an absolute and profound conviction of one day possessing Madame Hédouin, who would make his fortune; but it was an affair that required prudence, a long series of gallant tactics, which his voluptuous passion for women was already enjoying by anticipation. As he was dozing off again, forming his plans, allowing himself six months to succeed in, Marie Pichon’s image resulted in calming his impatience. A woman like that was a real boon; he had merely to stretch out his arm, when he required her, and she did not cost him a sou. Whilst awaiting the other, he could certainly not hope for anything better. In his half-slumber, this bargain and this convenience ended by making him quite tender-hearted: she appeared to him very nice and pretty with all her good-nature, and he promised himself he would behave better to her in future.
“Hang it! nine o’clock!” said he thoroughly roused by his clock striking. “I must get up.”
A fine rain was falling. Then, he made up his mind not to go out all day. He would accept an invitation to dine with the Pichons, which he had been refusing for some time past, dreading another meeting with the Vuillaumes; it would please Marie, he would find opportunities of kissing her behind the doors; and, as she was always asking for books, he even thought of giving her the surprise of a quantity which he had, stowed away in one of his boxes in the loft. When he was dressed, he went down to Monsieur Gourd to get the key of this common loft, where all the tenants got rid of whatever things were in their way, or which they had no present use for.
Down below, on that damp morning, it was quite stifling in the heated staircase, the imitation marble, the tall looking-glasses, and the mahogany doors of which were covered with steam. Under the porch, a poorly clad woman, mother Pérou, to whom the Gourds paid four sons an hour for doing the heavy work of the house, was washing the pavement with plenty of water, in face of the icy-cold blast blowing from the courtyard.
“Eh! I say old ’un, just rub that a bit better, that I may not find a spot on it!” called out Monsieur Gourd, warmly covered up, standing on the threshold of his apartment.
And, Octave arriving, he talked to him of mother Pérou with the brutal domineering spirit, the mad mania for revenge, of former servants who were being served in their turn.
“A lazy creature that I can do nothing with! I should like to have seen her at the duke’s! Ah well! they stood no nonsense there! I’ll send her to the right about, if she doesn’t give me my money’s worth! That’s all I care about. But, excuse me, what is it you require, Monsieur Mouret?”
Octave asked for the key. Then the doorkeeper, without hurrying himself, continued to explain to him that, if they had chosen, Madame Gourd and he, they might have lived respectably in their own house, at Mort-la-Ville; only, Madame Gourd adored Paris, in spite of her swollen legs which prevented her getting as far as the pavement; and they were waiting until they had made their income into a round sum, their hearts almost breaking moreover and drawing back, each time that they felt a desire to go and live at last upon the little fortune which they had got together sou by sou.
“No one had better bother me,” concluded he, drawing himself up to the full height of his handsome figure. “I’m no longer working for a living. The key of the loft you said, did you not, Monsieur Mouret? Wherever have we put the key of the loft, my dear?”
Madame Gourd, tenderly seated before a wood fire, the flames of which enlivened the big light room, was drinking her coffee and milk out of a silver cup. She had no idea; perhaps in one of the drawers. And, whilst soaking her toast, she did not take her eyes off the door of the servants’ staircase, at the other end of the courtyard, looking barer and severer than ever in the rain.
“Look out! here she is!” said she suddenly, as a woman appeared in the doorway.
Monsieur Gourd at once went and placed himself before his room, so as to prevent the woman from passing, whilst she slackened her footsteps with an air of anxiety.
“We have been on the look-out for her since the first thing this morning, Monsieur Mouret,” resumed he, in a low voice. “Last night we saw her pass. You know she comes from that carpenter, upstairs, the only workman we have in the house, thank goodness! And if the landlord only listened to me, he would let the room remain empty, a servant’s room which does not go with the other apartments. For one hundred and thirty francs a year, it is really not worth while having such a scum in the place—”
He interrupted himself, to ask the woman roughly:
“Where do you come from?”
“From upstairs, of course!” answered she, walking on.
Then, he exploded.
“We’ll have no women here, understand! The man who brings you has already been told so. If you return here to sleep, I’ll fetch a policeman, that’s what I’ll do! and we’ll see if you’ll continue your goings-on in a respectable house!”
“Oh! don’t bother me!” said the woman. “I’ve a right here; I shall come if I choose.”
And she went off, followed by Monsieur Gourd’s indignation, as he talked of going up to fetch the landlord. Had any one ever heard the like! such a creature amongst respectable people, who did not tolerate the least immorality! And it seemed as though that little room occupied by a workman was the abomination of the house, a bad place, the supervision of which offended the doorkeeper’s delicacy and spoilt his rest at night.
“And that key!” Octave ventured to observe.
But the doorkeeper, furious at a tenant’s having been able to see his authority disputed, fell on mother Pérou, wishing to show that he knew how to make himself obeyed. Did she take him for a fool? She had again splashed the door of his room with her broom. If he paid her out of his own pocket, it was to save him from dirtying his hands, and yet he continually had to clean up after her. Might the devil take him if he was ever again charitable enough to have anything more to do with her! she could go and croak. Without answering, and bent double by the fatigue of this task so much above her strength, the old body continued to scrub with her skinny arms, struggling to keep back her tears, so great was the respectful fright that broad shouldered gentleman in cap and slippers caused her.
“I remember, my darling,” called Madame Gourd from her easy chair in which she passed the day, warming her fat person. “It was I who hid the key under the shirts, so that the servants should not be always going into the loft. Come, give it to Monsieur Mouret.”
“They’re a nice lot, too, those servants!” murmured Monsieur Gourd, who, from his many years in service, had preserved a hatred for menials. “Here is the key, sir; but I must ask you to bring it me back, for no place can be left open, without the servants getting in there and misconducting themselves.”
To save crossing the wet courtyard, Octave went back up the principal staircase. It was not till he had reached the fourth floor that he gained the servants’ staircase, by taking the door of communication that was close to his room. Up above, a long passage was intersected twice at right angles, it was painted pale yellow with a dado of darker ochre; and the doors of the servants’ rooms, also yellow, were uniform and placed at equal distances, the same as in the corridor of a hospital. An icy chill came from the zinc roof. All was bare and clean, with that unsavoury odour of the lodgings of the poor.
The loft overlooking the courtyard was in the right wing, at the further end. But Octave, who had not been there since the day of his arrival, was going along the left wing, when, suddenly, a spectacle which he beheld inside one of the rooms, by the partly open door, brought him to a standstill and filled him with amazement. A gentleman was standing in his shirt sleeves before a little looking-glass, tying his white cravat.
“What! you here?” said he.
It was Trublot. He also, at first, stood as one petrified. No one ever came near there at that hour. Octave, who had walked in, looked at him in that room with its narrow iron bedstead, and its washstand on which a little bundle of woman’s hair was floating on the soapy water; and, perceiving the black dress coat hanging up amongst some aprons, he could not restrain himself from saying:
“So you sleep with the cook?”
“Not at all!” replied Trublot, in a fright.
Then, recognising the stupidity of this lie, he began to laugh in his convinced and satisfied way.
“Eh! she is amusing! I assure you, my dear fellow, it is awfully fine!”
Whenever he dined out, he escaped from the drawing-room to go and pinch the cook before her stove; and when she was willing to trust him with her key, he would take his departure before midnight, and go and wait patiently for her in her room, seated on a trunk, in his black dress coat and white tie. On the morrow, he would leave by the principal staircase towards ten o’clock, and pass before the doorkeeper as though he had been making an early call on one of the tenants. So long as he was pretty punctual at the stockbroker’s, his father was satisfied. Moreover, he was now employed in attending the Bourse from twelve to three. It would sometimes happen that on a Sunday he would spend the whole day in some servant’s bed, happy, lost, his nose buried in the pillow.
“You, who are going to be so rich some day!” said Octave, his face retaining an expression of disgust.
Then Trublot learnedly declared:
“My dear fellow, you don’t know what it is; don’t speak about it.”
And he stood up for Julie, a tall Burgundian of forty, with her big face pitted with small-pox, but who had the body of a superb woman. One might disrobe the ladies of the house; they were all sticks, not one would come up to her knee. Besides that, she was a girl very well to do; and to prove it he opened her drawers, displayed a bonnet, some jewellery, and some chemises trimmed with lace, no doubt stolen from Madame Duveyrier. Octave, indeed, now noticed a certain coquettishness about the room, some gilded cardboard boxes on the drawers, a chintz curtain hung over the skirts, all the accessaries of a cook aping the grand lady.
“There is no denying, you see, that one may own to this one,” repeated Trublot. “If they were only all like her!”
At this moment a noise came from the servants’ staircase. It was Adèle coming up to wash her ears, Madame Josserand having furiously forbidden her to proceed with her work until she had cleaned them with soap. Trublot peeped out and recognised her.
“Shut the door quick!” said he very anxiously. “Hush! don’t say a word!”
He pricked up his ear, and listened to Adèle’s heavy footstep along the passage.
“You sleep with her too, then?” asked Octave, surprised at his paleness, and guessing that he dreaded a scene.
But this time Trublot was coward enough to deny.
“Oh! no indeed! not with that slut! Whoever do you take me for, my dear fellow!”
He had seated himself on the edge of the bed, and while waiting to finish dressing, begged Octave not to move; and both remained perfectly still, whilst that filthy Adèle scoured out her ears, which took at least ten good minutes. They heard the tempest in her washhand basin.
“There is, however, a room between this one and hers,” softly explained Trublot, “a room that is let to a workman, a carpenter who stinks the place out with his onion soup. ‘This morning again, it almost made me sick. And you know, in all houses, the partitions of the servants’ rooms are now almost as thin as sheets of paper. I don’t understand the landlords. It is not very decent, one can scarcely turn in one’s bed. I think it very inconvenient.”
When Adèle had gone down again, he resumed his swagger and finished dressing himself, making free use of Julie’s combs and pomatum. Octave having spoken of the loft, he insisted on taking him there, for he knew the most out-of-the-way corner of that floor. And, as he passed the doors, he familiarly mentioned the servants’ names: in this bit of a passage, after Adèle came Lisa, the Campardons’ maid, a wench who took her pleasures outside; then, Victoire, their cook, a stranded whale, seventy years old, the only one he respected; then, Françoise, who had entered Madame Valerie’s service the day before, and whose trunk would perhaps only remain twenty-four hours behind the meagre bed upon whieh such a gallop of maids passed, that it was always necessary to make inquiries before going there and waiting in the warmth of the blanket; then, a quiet couple, in the service of the people on the second floor; then, these people’s coachman, a strapping fellow of whom he spoke with the jealousy of a handsome man, suspecting him of going from door to door and noiselessly doing some very fine work; finally, at the other end of the passage, there were Clémenee, the Duveyriers’ maid, whom her neighbour Hippolyte, the butler, rejoined matrimonially every night, and little Louise, the orphan whom Madame Juzeur had taken on trial, a chit of fifteen, who must hear some very strange things in the small hours, if she were a light sleeper.
“My dear fellow, don’t lock the door, do this to oblige me,” said he to Octave, when he had helped him to take the books from the box. “You see, when the loft is open, one can hide there and wait.”
Octave, having consented to deceive Monsieur Gourd, returned with Trublot to Julie’s room. The young man had left his overcoat there. Then it was his gloves that he could not find; he shook the skirts, overturned the bed-clothes, raised such a dust and such an odour of soiled linen, that his companion, half-suffocated, opened the window. It looked on to the narrow inner courtyard, which gave light to all the kitchens. And he was stretching out his head over this damp well, which exhaled the greasy odours of dirty sinks, when a sound of voices made him hastily withdraw.
“The little morning gossip,” said Trublot on all fours under the bed, still searching. “Just listen to it.”
It was Lisa, who was leaning out of the window of the Campardons’ kitchen to speak to Julie, two storeys below her.
“So it’s come off then this time?”
“It seems so,” replied Julie, raising her head. “You see, she did all she could to catch him. Hippolyte came from the drawing-room so disgusted, that he almost had an attack of indigestion.”
“If we were only to do a quarter as much!” resumed Lisa.
But she disappeared a moment, to drink some broth that Victoire brought her. They got on well together, nursing each other’s vices, the maid hiding the cook’s drunkenness, and the cook facilitating the maid’s outings, from which the latter returned quite worn out, her limbs aching, her eyelids blue.
“Ah! my children,” said Victoire leaning out in her turn, her elbows touching Lisa’s, “you’re young. When you’ve seen what I’ve seen! At old Campardon’s, there was a niece who had been well brought up, and who used to go and look at the men through the key-hole.”
“Pretty goings-on!” murmured Julie with the horrified air of a lady. “Had I been in the place of the little one of the fourth floor, I’d have boxed Monsieur Auguste’s ears, if he’d touched me in the drawing-room! He’s a fine fellow!”
At these words, a shrill laugh issued from Madame Juzeur’s kitchen. Lisa, who was opposite, searched the room with a glance, and caught sight of Louise, whose precocious fifteen years took a delight in listening to the other servants.
“She’s spying on us from morning to night, the chit,” said she. “How stupid it is to thrust a child upon us! We sha’n’t be able to talk at all soon.”
She did not finish. The sound of a suddenly opened window chased them away. A profound silence ensued. But they ventured to look out again. Eh! what! what was the matter? They had thought that Madame Valérie or Madame Josserand was going to catch them.
“No fear!” resumed Lisa. “They’re all soaking in their washhand basins. They’re too busy with their skins, to think of bothering us. It’s the only moment in all the day when one can breathe freely.”
“So it still goes on the same at your place?” asked Julie, who was paring a carrot.
“Still the same,” replied Victoire. “It’s all over, she’s no more use.”
“But your big noodle of an architect, what does he do then?”
“Takes up with the cousin, of course!”
They were laughing louder than ever, when they beheld the new servant, Françoise, in Madame Valérie’s kitchen. It was she who had caused the alarm, by opening the window. At first there was an exchange of politeness.
“Ah! it’s you, mademoiselle.”
“Why, yes, mademoiselle. I am trying to make myself at home, but this kitchen is so filthy!”
Then came scraps of abominable information.
“You will be more than constant, if you remain there long. The last one had her arms all scratched by the child, and madame worked her so hard, that we could hear her crying from here.”
“Ah well! that won’t last long with me,” said Françoise. “Thanks all the same, mademoiselle.”
“Where is she, your missus?” asked Victoire curiously.
“She’s just gone off to lunch with a lady.”
Lisa and Julie stretched their necks, to exchange a glance. They knew her well, the lady. A funny sort of lunch, with her head down and her feet in the air! Was it possible, to lie to that extent! They did not pity the husband, for he deserved more than that; only, it was a disgrace to humanity, that a woman should not behave herself better.
“There’s Dish-cloth!” interrupted Lisa, discovering the Josserands’ servant overhead.
Then a host of vulgar expressions were bawled from the depths of this hole, as obscure and infected as a sewer. All, with their faces raised, violently yelled at Adèle, who was their butt, the dirty awkward creature on whom the entire household vented their spite.
“Hallo! she’s washed herself, it’s evident!”
“Just throw your fish bones into the yard again, and I’ll come up and rub ’em in your face!”
Thoroughly bewildered, Adèle looked down upon them from above, her body half out of the window. She ended by answering:
“Leave me alone, can’t you? or I’ll water you.”
But the yells and the laughter increased.
“You married your young mistress, last night, didn’t you! Eh! it’s you, perhaps, who teach her how to hook the men?”
“Ah! the heartless thing! she stops in a place where they don’t give you enough to eat! On my word, it’s that which exasperates me against her! You’re such a fool, you should send ’em to blazes!”
Adèle’s eyes filled with tear’s.
“You can only talk nonsense,” stammered she. “It’s not my fault if I don’t get enough to eat.”
And the voices swelled, unpleasant words commenced to be exchanged between Lisa and the new servant, Françoise, who stuck up for Adèle, when the latter, forgetting the abuse heaped upon her, and yielding to party instinct, called out: “Look out! here’s madame!”
The silence of the tomb ensued. They all immediately plunged back into their kitchens; and from the dark chasm of the narrow courtyard all that ascended was the stench of the dirty sinks, like the exhalation of the hidden abominations of the families, stirred up there by the spite of the hirelings. It was the sewer of the house, the shames of which it carried off, whilst the masters were still lounging in their slippers, and the grand staircase unfolded the solemnity of its flights, in the silent suffocation of the hot air stove. Octave recalled the blast of uproar he received full in the face, when entering the Campardons’ kitchen, the day of his arrival.
“They are very nice,” said he simply.
And, leaning out in his turn, he looked at the walls, as though annoyed at not having at once read through them, behind the imitation marble and the mouldings bright with gilding.
“Where the devil has she stowed them away?” repeated Trublot who had searched everywhere for his white kid gloves.
At length, he discovered them at the bottom of the bed itself, flattened out and quite warm. He gave a last glance in the glass, went and hid the key in the place agreed upon, right at the end of the passage, underneath an old sideboard left behind by some lodger, and led the way downstairs, accompanied by Octave. After passing the Josserands’ door, on the grand staircase, he recovered all his assurance, with his overcoat buttoned up to the neck to hide his dress clothes and white tie.
“Good-bye, my dear fellow,” said he raising his voice. “I felt anxious, so I just looked in to hear how the ladies were. They passed a very good night. Good-bye.”
Octave watched him with a smile as he went downstairs. Then, as it was almost lunch time, he decided to return the key of the loft later on. During lunch, at the Campardons’, he particularly watched Lisa, who waited at table. She had her usual clean and agreeable look; but, in his mind, he could still hear her defiling her lips with the most abominable words. His knowledge of women had not deceived him with respect to that girl with the flat chest. Madame Campardon continued to be enchanted with her, surprised that she did not steal anything, which was a fact, for her vice was of a different kind. Moreover, the girl seemed very kind to Angèle, and the mother entirely trusted her.
It so happened, that on that day Angèle disappeared when the dessert was placed on the table, and she could be heard laughing in the kitchen. Octave ventured to make an observation.
“You are perhaps wrong, to let her be so free with the servants.”
“Oh! there is not much harm in it,” replied Madame Campardon, in her languid way. “Victoire saw my husband born, and I am so sure of Lisa. Besides, how can I help it? the child gives me a headache. I should go crazy, if I heard her jumping about me all day.”
The architect gravely chewed the end of his cigar.
“It is I,” said he, “who make Angèle pass two hours in the kitchen, every afternoon. I wish her to become a good housewife. It teaches her a great deal. She never goes out, my dear fellow, she is continually under our sheltering wing. You will see what a jewel we shall make of her.”
Octave said no more. On certain days, Campardon appeared to him to be very stupid; and as the architect pressed him to go and hear a great preacher at Saint-Roch, he refused, obstinately persisting in remaining indoors. After telling Madame Campardon that he would not dine with them that evening, he was returning to his room, when he felt the key of the loft in his pocket. He preferred to go down and return it at once. But on the landing an unexpected sight attracted his attention. The door of the room let to the highly distinguished gentleman, whose name was never mentioned, happened to be open; and this was quite an event, for it was invariably shut, as though barred by the silence of the tomb. His surprise increased: he was looking for the gentleman’s work-table, and in its stead had discovered the corner of a big bedstead, when he beheld a slim lady dressed in black, her face hidden behind a thick veil, come out of the room, whilst the door closed noiselessly behind her.
Then, his curiosity being roused, he followed the lady downstairs, to find out if she were pretty. But she hastened along with an anxious nimbleness, scarcely touching the Wilton carpet with her tiny boots, and leaving no trace in the house, save a faint odour of verbena. As he reached the vestibule, she disappeared, and he only beheld Monsieur Gourd standing under the porch, cap in hand and bowing very low to her.
When the young man had returned the doorkeeper his key, he tried to make him talk.
“She looks very lady-like,” said he. “Who is she?”
“A lady,” answered Monsieur Gourd.
And he would add nothing further. But he was more communicative regarding the gentleman on the third floor. Oh! a man belonging to the very best society, who had taken that room to come and work there quietly, one night a week.
“Ah! he works!” interrupted Octave. “What at, pray!”
“He was kind enough to ask me to keep his room tidy for him,” continued Monsieur Gourd, without appearing to have heard the question. “And, you know, he pays money down. Ah! sir, when one waits on people, one soon knows whether they are decent He is everything that is most respectable: it is easily seen by his clothes.”
He was obliged to jump on one side, and Octave himself had to enter the doorkeepers’ room for a moment, in order to let the carriage of the second floor people, who were going to the Bois, pass. The horses pawed the ground, held back by the coachman the reins high; and, when the big closed landau rolled under the vaulted roof, one beheld through the windows two handsome children, whose smiling faces almost hid the vague profiles of the father and mother. Monsieur Gourd drew himself up, polite, but cold.
“They don’t make much noise in the house,” observed Octave.
“No one makes any noise,” said the doorkeeper, curtly.
“Eaeh one lives as he thinks best, that’s all. There are people who know how to live, and there are people who don’t know how to live.”
The second floor tenants were judged severely, because they associated with no one. They appeared to be well off, however; but the husband wrote books, and Monsieur Gourd mistrusted him, curling his lip with contempt; more especially as no knew what the family was up to in there, with its air of requiring nobody, and being always perfectly happy. It did not seem to him natural.
Octave was opening the vestibule door, when Valérie returned. He drew politely on one side, to allow her to pass before him.
“Are you quite well, madame?”
“Yes, sir, thank you.”
She was out of breath; and as she went upstairs he looked at her muddy boots, thinking of that lunch, with her head down and her feet in the air, which the servants had spoken of. She had no doubt walked home, not having been able to find a cab. A hot unsavoury odour came from her damp skirts. Fatigue, a placid weariness of all her flesh, made her at times, in spite of herself, place her hand on the balustrade.
“What a disagreeable day, is it not, madame?”
“Frightful, sir. And, with that, the atmosphere is very close.”
She had reached the first-floor landing, and they bowed to each other. But, with a glance, he had seen her haggard face, her eyelids heavy with sleep, her unkempt hair beneath the bonnet tied on in haste; and as he continued on his way upstairs, he reflected, annoyed and angry. Then, why not with him? He was neither more stupid nor uglier than the others.
When before Madame Juzeur’s door, on the third floor, his promise of the evening before recurred to him. He felt curious about that little woman, so discreet and with eyes like periwinkles. He rang. It was Madame Juzeur herself who answered the door.
“Ah! dear sir, how kind of you! Pray walk in.”
There was a softness about the lodging which smelt a bit stuffy: carpets and hangings everywhere, seats as yielding as down, with the warm unruffled atmosphere of a chest padded with old rainbow coloured satin. In the drawing-room, to which the double curtains imparted the peacefulness of a church, Octave was invited to seat himself on a broad and very low sofa.
“Here is the lace,” resumed Madame Juzeur, reappearing with a sandal-wood box full of finery. “I am going to make a present of it to some one, and I am curious to know its value.”
It was a piece of very fine old Brussels. Octave examined it carefully, and ended by valuing it at three hundred francs. Then, without waiting further, as their hands were both handling the lace, he bent forward and kissed her fingers, fingers as delicate as a little girl’s.
“Oh! Monsieur Octave, at my age! you cannot think what you are doing!” murmured Madame Juzeur, prettily, without getting angry.
She was thirty-two, and pretended she was quite old. And she made her usual allusion to her misfortunes; good heavens! yes, after ten days of married bliss, the cruel man had gone off one morning and had not returned, nobody had ever discovered why.
“You can understand,” continued she, gazing up at the ceiling, “that all is over for the woman who has gone through this.”
Octave had kept hold of her little warm hand which seemed to mould itself to his, and he continued kissing it lightly, on the fingers. She turned her eyes towards him, and gazed upon him with a vague and tender look; then, in a maternal way, she uttered this single word:
“Child!”
Thinking himself encouraged, he wished to take her round the waist, and draw her on to the sofa; but she freed herself without any violence, and slipped from his arms, laughing, and with an air of thinking that he was merely playing.
“No, leave me alone, do not touch me, if you wish that we should remain good friends.”
“Then, no?” asked he in a low voice.
“What, no? What do you mean? Oh! my hand, as much as you like!”
He had again taken hold of her hand. But, this time, he opened it, kissing it on the palm; and, her eyes half closed, treating the little game as a joke, she opened her fingers like a cat spreads out its claws to be tickled inside its paw. She did not let him go farther than the wrist. The first day, a sacred line was drawn there, where harm began.
“The priest is coming upstairs,” Louise suddenly entered and said, on returning from some errand.
The orphan had the yellow complexion, and the squashed features of girls forgott