Scenes from a Courtesan's Life. Honore de Balzac
handkerchief soaked with tears proved the sincerity of the Magdalen’s despair, while her classic attitude was that of the irreligious courtesan. This abject repentance made the priest smile.
Esther, unskilled in dying, had left the door open, not thinking that the air of two rooms would need a larger amount of charcoal to make it suffocating; she was only stunned by the fumes; the fresh air from the staircase gradually restored her to a consciousness of her woes.
The priest remained standing, lost in gloomy meditation, without being touched by the girl’s divine beauty, watching her first movements as if she had been some animal. His eyes went from the crouching figure to the surrounding objects with evident indifference. He looked at the furniture in the room; the paved floor, red, polished, and cold, was poorly covered with a shabby carpet worn to the string. A little bedstead, of painted wood and old-fashioned shape, was hung with yellow cotton printed with red stars, one armchair and two small chairs, also of painted wood, and covered with the same cotton print of which the window-curtains were also made; a gray wall-paper sprigged with flowers blackened and greasy with age; a fireplace full of kitchen utensils of the vilest kind, two bundles of fire-logs; a stone shelf, on which lay some jewelry false and real, a pair of scissors, a dirty pincushion, and some white scented gloves; an exquisite hat perched on the water-jug, a Ternaux shawl stopping a hole in the window, a handsome gown hanging from a nail; a little hard sofa, with no cushions; broken clogs and dainty slippers, boots that a queen might have coveted; cheap china plates, cracked or chipped, with fragments of a past meal, and nickel forks – the plate of the Paris poor; a basket full of potatoes and dirty linen, with a smart gauze cap on the top; a rickety wardrobe, with a glass door, open and empty, and on the shelves sundry pawn-tickets, – this was the medley of things, dismal or pleasing, abject and handsome, that fell on his eye.
These relics of splendor among the potsherds, these household belongings – so appropriate to the bohemian existence of the girl who knelt stricken in her unbuttoned garments, like a horse dying in harness under the broken shafts entangled in the reins – did the whole strange scene suggest any thoughts to the priest? Did he say to himself that this erring creature must at least be disinterested to live in such poverty when her lover was young and rich? Did he ascribe the disorder of the room to the disorder of her life? Did he feel pity or terror? Was his charity moved?
To see him, his arms folded, his brow dark, his lips set, his eye harsh, any one must have supposed him absorbed in morose feelings of hatred, considerations that jostled each other, sinister schemes. He was certainly insensible to the soft roundness of a bosom almost crushed under the weight of the bowed shoulders, and to the beautiful modeling of the crouching Venus that was visible under the black petticoat, so closely was the dying girl curled up. The drooping head which, seen from behind, showed the white, slender, flexible neck and the fine shoulders of a well-developed figure, did not appeal to him. He did not raise Esther, he did not seem to hear the agonizing gasps which showed that she was returning to life; a fearful sob and a terrifying glance from the girl were needed before he condescended to lift her, and he carried her to the bed with an ease that revealed enormous strength.
“Lucien!” she murmured.
“Love is there, the woman is not far behind,” said the priest with some bitterness.
The victim of Parisian depravity then observed the dress worn by her deliverer, and said, with a smile like a child’s when it takes possession of something longed for:
“Then I shall not die without being reconciled to Heaven?”
“You may yet expiate your sins,” said the priest, moistening her forehead with water, and making her smell at a cruet of vinegar he found in a corner.
“I feel that life, instead of departing, is rushing in on me,” said she, after accepting the Father’s care and expressing her gratitude by simple gestures. This engaging pantomime, such as the Graces might have used to charm, perfectly justified the nickname given to this strange girl.
“Do you feel better?” said the priest, giving her a glass of sugar and water to drink.
This man seemed accustomed to such queer establishments; he knew all about it. He was quite at home there. This privilege of being everywhere at home is the prerogative of kings, courtesans, and thieves.
“When you feel quite well,” this strange priest went on after a pause, “you must tell me the reasons which prompted you to commit this last crime, this attempted suicide.”
“My story is very simple, Father,” replied she. “Three months ago I was living the evil life to which I was born. I was the lowest and vilest of creatures; now I am only the most unhappy. Excuse me from telling you the history of my poor mother, who was murdered – ”
“By a Captain, in a house of ill-fame,” said the priest, interrupting the penitent. “I know your origin, and I know that if a being of your sex can ever be excused for leading a life of shame, it is you, who have always lacked good examples.”
“Alas! I was never baptized, and have no religious teaching.”
“All may yet be remedied then,” replied the priest, “provided that your faith, your repentance, are sincere and without ulterior motive.”
“Lucien and God fill my heart,” said she with ingenuous pathos.
“You might have said God and Lucien,” answered the priest, smiling. “You remind me of the purpose of my visit. Omit nothing that concerns that young man.”
“You have come from him?” she asked, with a tender look that would have touched any other priest! “Oh, he thought I should do it!”
“No,” replied the priest; “it is not your death, but your life that we are interested in. Come, explain your position toward each other.”
“In one word,” said she.
The poor child quaked at the priest’s stern tone, but as a woman quakes who has long ceased to be surprised at brutality.
“Lucien is Lucien,” said she, “the handsomest young man, the kindest soul alive; if you know him, my love must seem to you quite natural. I met him by chance, three months ago, at the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre, where I went one day when I had leave, for we had a day a week at Madame Meynardie’s, where I then was. Next day, you understand, I went out without leave. Love had come into my heart, and had so completely changed me, that on my return from the theatre I did not know myself: I had a horror of myself. Lucien would never have known. Instead of telling him what I was, I gave him my address at these rooms, where a friend of mine was then living, who was so kind as to give them up to me. I swear on my sacred word – ”
“You must not swear.”
“Is it swearing to give your sacred word? – Well, from that day I have worked in this room like a lost creature at shirt-making at twenty-eight sous apiece, so as to live by honest labor. For a month I have had nothing to eat but potatoes, that I might keep myself a good girl and worthy of Lucien, who loves me and respects me as a pattern of virtue. I have made my declaration before the police to recover my rights, and submitted to two years’ surveillance. They are ready enough to enter your name on the lists of disgrace, but make every difficulty about scratching it out again. All I asked of Heaven was to enable me to keep my resolution.
“I shall be nineteen in the month of April; at my age there is still a chance. It seems to me that I was never born till three months ago. – I prayed to God every morning that Lucien might never know what my former life had been. I bought that Virgin you see there, and I prayed to her in my own way, for I do not know any prayers; I cannot read nor write, and I have never been into a church; I have never seen anything of God excepting in processions, out of curiosity.”
“And what do you say to the Virgin?”
“I talk to her as I talk to Lucien, with all my soul, till I make him cry.”
“Oh, so he cries?”
“With joy,” said she eagerly, “poor dear boy! We understand each other so well that we have but one soul! He is so nice, so fond, so sweet in heart and mind and manners! He says he is a poet; I say he is god. – Forgive me! You priests, you