THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя
through the mistress of the house, the lady of easy virtue. She had lovers and was willing enough to show them off; but, in public and at her evening parties, she maintained a decency of demeanour for which they felt very grateful to her. She was the emblem of vice — witty, elegant, and perfumed.
Little by little she surrounded herself by most of the fast men of the city, but she was careful only to receive wealthy people, such as earned a great deal of money and spent still more. At the commencement she had only to choose her victims, a swarm being at her feet. She devoured several fortunes with her sharp teeth, living in the utmost luxury, and providing for all the requirements of her mode of life, which were enormous.
Moral people looked on her as a regular pest, as a bottomless pit in which the capital of the young commercial men of Marseille was being engulfed. Her rivals tore her to bits and accused her of engaging in shameless intrigues; they made fun of her thin face, of the wrinkles come before their time, said she was ugly, which was almost true, and vowed they could not understand the infatuation of those idiotic men for the creature. Armande let them talk and quietly reigned. For several years she had domineered over them by her mind, luxury and the science of an elegant and refined woman. Men attended her receptions in dress coats and white neckties.
Then, without any apparent cause, her credit was all at once lost. Bad fortune came, and made holes in her luxuriant existence. No doubt she had gone out of fashion and generous protectors were scarce. She descended to that semi-state of poverty which is attired in silk and treads on carpets. Feeling she would roll into the gutter if she did not make an effort to retain her grand apartment, she struggled in desperation against her ill-luck. She understood that her power of fascination came solely from her apparent wealth, from her style of dress, from the money which permitted her to act the part of a duchess beyond her sphere, at her ease. She knew that as soon as she was out of silk and had closed her drawingroom, she would become a poor girl, an ugly, faded creature whom no one would have anything to do with, and she displayed feverish energy to find protectors and procure money at any cost.
It was at this time that she made the acquaintance of a Madame Mercier, who advanced her money at an exorbitant rate of interest. She had taken in so many young simpletons, that she allowed herself to be imposed upon in her turn without much ado. She hoped, however, to make the first wealthy individual whom she came across, pay the capital and interest of the money she had borrowed. But men of wealth did not put in an appearance and she became more and more anxious.
Urged on by necessity and feeling that her beauty, which was her bread-winner, was leaving her day by day with her luxury, she turned to crime. She had already been obliged to sell looking-glasses, furniture, porcelain, to satisfy the demands of her creditors; her apartment was becoming stripped of everything; she saw the walls getting bare, little by little, and thought, with a shudder, of the day when she would find herself weary and old in an empty room. The upholsterers, milliners, all the tradesmen to whom she owed money, became more troublesome as they detected their customer’s approaching ruin: they knew that protectors were becoming rare, and insisted on the immediate payment of their claims. Some of them talked of putting in the brokers. Armande therefore understood that she was lost unless she found money at once no matter how.
She had recourse to an extreme measure. She imitated the writing of three or four of her lovers, and made out acceptances in her own favour which she signed with these person’s names. Then, not daring to go to a banker, she applied to Madame Mercier, who consented to discount several of the bills.
It is probable that this female usurer was not ignorant of their origin and that she even speculated on it. Holding the young woman in her clutches, able at any moment to lodge a complaint with the crown-attorney, relying, moreover, on those whose names were on the bills, and whose interest it was to avoid a scandal, she considered the forgeries she held in guarantee, as preferable to genuine bills. She based quite a fortune on her complacency, exacting enormous interest, embroiling the lorette’s affairs more and more, making her provide for her completely, acting a cunning and hypocritical part which she performed to perfection.
Armande managed to get along for two years without being disturbed. She had made the bills payable at her residence, and provided the money for them when they fell due at any cost, taking a hundred francs from the first man she met, completing the amount by selling something, borrowing again and forging fresh bills. Madame Mercier continued to be humble and obliging; she desired to hold her prey in a close grip before showing her teeth and biting.
Then the time came when Armande was positively unable to meet the forged acceptances. She cast herself into the gutter in vain. She went to the Châteaudes-Fleurs and still could not make the money she required to keep up her house.
It was just then that she made Sauvaire’s acquaintance. For him she dismissed a Count she had ruined, under the impression that the master-stevedore was rich and generous. In other times when she was Queen of Marseille and insolently displayed her lace and velvet, she would have gazed down on Sauvaire from the height of the wealth and elegance of her admirers. But now there was no prey that she disdained; she set her batteries against the crowd and would willingly have received money from soiled hands. The former workman mistook the dire necessity which thrust the young woman into his arms, for tenderness. After a few months she perceived with alarm, that her new acquaintance had all the prudent, economical habits of an upstart and that he spent all his money on himself like an egotist. Two or three of the forged acceptances were not met and Madame Mercier began to get angry.
Things were at that point when one evening Marius naïvely called. He expected to meet some of the numerous wealthy company in her drawingroom to whom his brother had introduced him. He had a vague idea of getting intimate with some young businessman who would come to his assistance; and he relied in a measure on Sauvaire, whose obliging disposition Fine had been careful to exaggerate.
He was very much astonished to find the drawingroom empty. The large apartment was lit with a single lamp and appeared particularly bare. Sauvaire was reclining on a large divan and seemed to be making a great fuss about digesting the dinner he had just eaten, undoing some of the buttons of his waistcoat, and holding a toothpick between his fingers.
Armande was seated beside him in an armchair, reading Graziella, with her forehead resting dreamily on the palm of her left hand. An Italian greyhound named Djali was lying at her feet, with its head reposing on her cherry-coloured slippers.
One of Armande’s ways of seduction was to read the works of great modern poets before her admirers. She had a small bookcase containing the writings of Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo, de Lamartine and Alfred de Musset.
In the evening, in the pale light of the lamp, at an hour when she was still beautiful, she languidly spelt over pages of verse or poetical prose. This placed a sort of halo round her head. Her admirers thought they had an ignorant girl to deal with, and they found an educated, almost a lettered, lady, who read books that they had never had either the time or energy to look into.
Sauvaire, especially, felt crushed and overshadowed on the day when his lady friend took up a book of verses, and quietly began turning over the pages of it before him. It was a rare event with him when he glanced through a newspaper. A woman opening a volume of poetry was in his eyes a superior creature. Each time Armande read in his presence he collected himself and looked affected and charmed. It seemed to him that he was becoming wise himself.
Marius slightly smiled when he saw Armande in an inclined attitude feigning ecstasy, and the position Sauvaire was in, lounging on the divan with his hands clasped across his stomach.
The lorette welcomed the newcomer with her easy, sprightly grace. She had been more or less intimately connected with Philippe, and she treated Marius as an old acquaintance. She asked him to be seated, and reproached him with the rarity of his visits.
“I know very well,” she added, “that you have had a great deal of trouble lately. Poor Philippe! I can fancy sometimes that I see him in his damp prison, he who was so fond of luxury and pleasure! That will teach him to place his affection in better hands.”
Sauvaire had raised himself a little. One of his good qualities was that he was not jealous; on the contrary he showed himself quite proud of his companion’s