Germinie Lacerteux

“Saved! so you are really out of danger, mademoiselle!” exclaimed the maid with a cry of joy, as she closed the door upon the doctor, and, rushing to the bed on which her mistress lay, she began, in a frenzy of happiness and with a shower of kisses to embrace, together with the bed covers, the old woman’s poor, emaciated body, which seemed, in the huge bed, as small as a child’s.

The old woman took her head, silently, in both hands, pressed it against her heart, heaved a sigh, and muttered: “Ah, well! so I must live on!”

This took place in a small room, through the window of which could be seen a small patch of sky cut by three black iron pipes, various neighboring roofs, and in the distance, between two houses that almost touched, the leafless branch of a tree, whose trunk was invisible.

On the mantelpiece, in a mahogany box, was a square clock with a large dial, huge figures and bulky hands. Beside it, under glass covers, were two candlesticks formed by three silver swans twisting their necks around a golden quiver. Near the fireplace an easy chair à la Voltaire, covered with one of the pieces of tapestry of checkerboard pattern, which little girls and old women make, extended its empty arms. Two little Italian landscapes, a flower piece in watercolors after Bertin, with a date in red ink at the bottom, and a few miniatures hung on the walls.

“There, mademoiselle!⁠—Look at me,” said Germinie.

It was a few months later. She had asked her mistress’s permission to go that evening to the wedding ball of her grocer’s sister, who had chosen her for her maid-of-honor, and she had come to exhibit herself en grande toilette, in her low-necked muslin dress.

Mademoiselle raised her eyes from the old volume, printed in large type, which she was reading, removed her spectacles, placed them in the book to mark her place, and exclaimed:

“What, my little bigot, you at a ball! Do you know, my girl, this seems to me downright nonsense! You and the hornpipe! Faith, all you need now is to want to get married! A deuce of a want, that! But if you marry, I warn you that I won’t keep you⁠—mind that! I’ve no desire to wait on your brats! Come a little nearer⁠—Oho! why⁠—bless my soul! Mademoiselle Show-all! We’re getting to be a bit of a flirt lately, I find⁠—”

“Why no, mademoiselle,” Germinie tried to say.

“And then,” continued Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, following out her thought, “among you people, the men are such sweet creatures! They’ll spend all you have⁠—to say nothing of the blows. But marriage⁠—I am sure that that nonsensical idea of getting married buzzes around in your head when you see the others. That’s what gives you that simper, I’ll wager. Bon Dieu de Dieu! Now turn a bit, so that I can see you,” said Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, with an abrupt change of tone to one that was almost caressing; and placing

Germinie was preparing the dinner. She was whipping cream in an earthen bowl on her knees, when suddenly she felt the first pains. She looked at her face in the bit of a broken mirror that she had above her kitchen dresser, and saw that she was pale. She went down to Adèle: “Give me your mistress’s rouge,” she said. And she put some on her cheeks. Then she went up again, and, refusing to listen to the voice of her suffering, finished cooking the dinner. It had to be served, and she served it. At dessert, she leaned against the furniture and grasped the backs of chairs as she passed the plates, hiding her torture with the ghastly set smile of people whose entrails are writhing.

“How’s this, are you sick?” said her mistress, looking sharply at her.

“Yes, mademoiselle, a little⁠—it may be the charcoal or the hot kitchen.”

“Go to bed⁠—we don’t need you any more, and you can clean up tomorrow.”

She went down to Adèle once more.

“It’s come,” she said; “call a cab quick. It was Rue de la Huchette where you said your midwife lives, wasn’t it? opposite a copper planer’s? Haven’t you a pen and paper?”

And she sat down to write a line to her mistress. She told her that she was too ill to work, that she had gone to the hospital, but would not tell her where, because she would fatigue herself coming to see her; that she would come back within a week.

Jupillon went out. Madame Jupillon, as she sipped her coffee, turned to Germinie the face of a mother seeking to learn her daughter’s secret, and, in her indulgence, forgiving her in advance of her confession. For a moment the two women sat thus, silent, one waiting for the other to speak, the other with the cry of her heart on her lips. Suddenly Germinie rushed from her chair into the stout woman’s arms.

“If you knew, Madame Jupillon!”

She talked and wept and embraced her all at once. “Oh! you won’t be angry with me! Well! yes, I love him⁠—I’ve had a child by him. It’s true, I love him. Three years ago⁠—”

At every word Madame Jupillon’s face became sterner and more icy. She coldly pushed Germinie away, and in her most doleful voice, with an accent of lamentation and hopeless desolation, she began, like a person who is suffocating: “Oh! my God⁠—you!⁠—tell me such things as that!⁠—me!⁠—his mother!⁠—to my face! My God, must it be? My son⁠—a child⁠—an innocent child! You’ve had the face to ruin him for me! And now you tell me that you did it! No, it ain’t possible, my God! And I had such confidence. There’s nothing worth living for. There’s no trusting anybody in this world! All the same, mademoiselle, I wouldn’t ever ’a’ believed it of you. Dame! such things give me a turn. Ah! this upsets me completely. I know myself, and I’m quite likely to be sick after this⁠—”

The Jupillons, when she did not return, began to despair. At last, one evening about half past ten, she pushed the door open, entered the shop without a word of greeting, walked up to the little table where the mother and son were sitting half asleep, and placed upon it, beneath her hand which was closed like a claw, an old piece of cloth that gave forth a ringing sound.

“There it is!” said she.

And, letting go the corners of the cloth, she emptied its contents on the table: forth came greasy banknotes, patched on the back, fastened together with pins, old tarnished louis d’or, black hundred-sou pieces, forty-sou pieces, ten-sou pieces, the money of the poor, the money of toil, money from Christmas-boxes, money soiled by dirty hands, worn out in leather purses, rubbed smooth in the cash drawer filled with sous⁠—money with a flavor of perspiration.

For a moment she gazed at the display as if to assure her own eyes; then she said to Madame Jupillon in a sad voice, the voice of her sacrifice:

“There it is⁠—There’s the two thousand three hundred francs for him to buy a substitute.”