.
my attacks. Oh! how people suffer these days! It is incredible."
Then, between wheezes and hiccoughs, she encourages me:
"You must come and see me, my little one. If you need anything, good advice, no matter what, do not hesitate. I am fond of young people. We will drink a little glass of peach brandy as we talk. Many of these young women come to our house."
She stops a moment, takes breath, and then, in a lower voice and a confidential tone, continues:
"And, say, Mademoiselle Célestine, if you wish to have your letters addressed in our care, it would be more prudent. A bit of good advice that I give you. Madame Lanlaire reads the letters, all the letters. Once she came very near being sentenced for it by the justice of the peace. I repeat, do not hesitate."
I thank her, and we continue to walk. Although her body pitches and rolls like an old vessel in a heavy sea, Mademoiselle Rose seems now to breathe more easily. And we go on, gossiping:
"Oh! it will be a change for you here, surely. In the first place, my little one, at the Priory they never keep a chambermaid for any length of time. That is a settled matter. When Madame does not discharge them, Monsieur gets them into trouble. A terrible man, Monsieur Lanlaire. The pretty, the ugly, the young, the old—all are alike to him. Oh! the house is well known. And everybody will tell you what I tell you. You are ill-fed there; you have no liberty; you are crushed with work. And chiding and scolding all the time. A real hell! One needs only to see you, pretty and well brought up as you are, to know, beyond a doubt, that you are not made to stay with such curmudgeons."
All that the haberdasher told me, Mademoiselle Rose tells me again, with more disagreeable variations. So violent is this woman's passion for chattering that she finally forgets her suffering. Her malice gets the better of her asthma. And the scandal of the house goes its course, mingled with the private affairs of the neighborhood. Although already I know them all, Rose's stories are so black, and her words are so discouraging, that again I am thoroughly saddened. I ask myself if I had not better go away at once. Why try an experiment in which I am conquered in advance?
Other women have overtaken us, curious, nosy, accompanying with an energetic "For sure" each of the revelations of Rose, who, less and less winded, continues to jabber:
"M. Mauger is a very good man, and all alone, my little one. As much as to say that I am the mistress. Why! a former captain; it is natural, isn't it? He is no manager; he knows nothing of household affairs; he likes to be taken care of and coddled, have his linen well kept, his caprices respected, nice dishes prepared for him. If he had not beside him a person in whom he had confidence, he would be plundered right and left. My God, there is no lack of thieves here!"
The intonation of her spasmodic utterances, and her winks, clearly revealed to me her exact situation in Captain Mauger's house.
"Why, you know, a man all alone, and who still has ideas. And besides, there is work to do all the same. And we are going to hire a boy to assist."
This Rose is lucky, I, too, have often dreamed of entering an old man's service. It is disgusting. But at least one is tranquil, and has a future.
We traverse the entire district. Oh! indeed, it is not pretty. It in no way resembles the Boulevard Malesherbes. Dirty, narrow, winding streets, and houses that stand neither square or straight—dark houses, of old, rotten wood, with high, tottering gables, and bulging stories that project one past the other, in the olden fashion. The people who pass are ugly, ugly, and I have not seen a single handsome fellow. The industry of the neighborhood is the manufacture of list-shoes. Most of the shoemakers, having been unable to deliver a week's product at the factory, are still at work. And behind the window-panes I see poor sickly faces, bent backs, and black hands hammering leather soles.
That adds still further to the dismal sadness of the place. It seems like a prison.
But here is the haberdasher, who, standing at her threshold, smiles at us and bows.
"You are going to eight o'clock mass? I went to seven o'clock mass. You have plenty of time. Will you not come in, a moment?"
Rose thanks her. She warns me against the haberdasher, who is a malicious woman and speaks ill of everybody, a real pest! Then she begins again to boast of her master's virtues and of her easy place. I ask her:
"Then the captain has no family?"
"No family?" she cries, scandalized. "Well, my little one, you are not on. Oh! yes, there is a family, and a nice one, indeed! Heaps of nieces and cousins—loafers, penniless people, hangers-on, all of whom were plundering him and robbing him. You should have seen that. It was an abomination. So you can imagine whether I set that right—whether I cleared the house of all this vermin. Why, my dear young woman, but for me, the captain now would be on his uppers. Ah! the poor man! He is well satisfied with the way things are now."
I insist with an ironical intention, which, however, she does not understand:
"And, undoubtedly, Mademoiselle Rose, he will remember you in his will?"
Prudently, she replies:
"Monsieur will do as he likes. He is free. Surely I do not influence him. I ask nothing of him. I do not ask him even to pay me wages. I stay with him out of devotion. But he knows life. He knows those who love him, who care for him with disinterestedness, who coddle him. No one need think that he is stupid as certain persons pretend—Madame Lanlaire at the head, who says things about us. It is she, on the contrary, who is evil-minded, Mademoiselle Célestine, and who has a will of her own. Depend upon it!"
Upon this eloquent apology for the captain, we arrive at the church.
The fat Rose does not leave me. She obliges me to take a chair near hers, and begins to mumble prayers, to make genuflections and signs of the cross. Oh! this church! With its rough timbers that cross it and sustain the staggering vault, it resembles a barn; with the people in it, coughing, hawking, running against benches, and dragging chairs around, it seems also like a village wine-shop. I see nothing but faces stupefied by ignorance, bitter mouths contracted by hatred. There are none here but wretched creatures who come to ask God to do something against somebody. It is impossible for me to concentrate my thoughts, and I feel a sort of cold penetrating me and surrounding me. Perhaps it is because there is not even an organ in this church. Queer, isn't it? but I cannot pray without an organ. An anthem on the organ fills my chest, and then my stomach; it completely restores me, like love. If I could always hear the strains of an organ, I really believe that I should never sin. Here, instead of an organ, there is an old woman, in the choir, with blue spectacles, and a poor little black shawl over her shoulders, who painfully drums on a sort of piano, wheezy and out of tune. And the people are always coughing and hawking, the droning of the priest and the responses of the choristers being drowned by a sound of catarrh. And how bad it all smells—mingled odors of the muck-heap, of the stable, of the soil, of sour straw, of wet leather, of damaged incense. Really, they are very ill-bred in the country.
The mass drags along, and I grow weary. I am especially vexed at finding myself among people so ordinary and so ugly, and who pay so little attention to me. Not a pretty spectacle, not a pretty costume with which to rest my thought or cheer my eyes. Never did I better understand that I am made for the joy of elegance and style. Instead of being lifted up, as at mass in Paris, all my senses take offence, and rebel at once. For distraction, I follow attentively the movements of the officiating priest. Oh! thank you! he is a sort of tall, jovial fellow, very young, with an ordinary face, and a brick-red complexion. With his dishevelled hair, his greedy jaw, his gluttonous lips, his obscene little eyes, and his eyelids circled with black, I have sized him up at once. How he must enjoy himself at the table! And at the confessional, too—the dirty things that he must say! Rose, perceiving that I am watching him, bends toward me, and says, in a very low voice:
"That is the new vicar. I recommend him to you. There is no one like him to confess the women. The curate is a holy man, certainly, but he is looked upon as too strict. Whereas the new vicar. … "
She clacks her tongue, and goes back to her prayer, her head bent over the prie-Dieu.
Well,