The Celibates

In October 1827, at break of day, a youth of about sixteen, whose dress proclaimed him to be what modern phraseology insolently calls a proletarian, was standing on a little square in the lower part of the town of Provins. At this early hour he could, without being observed, study the various houses set round the Place in an oblong square. The mills on the streams of Provins were already at work. Their noise, repeated by the echoes from the upper town, and harmonizing with the sharp air and the clear freshness of the morning, betrayed the perfect silence⁠—so complete that the clatter of a diligence was audible, still a league away on the highroad.

The two longer rows of houses, divided by an arched avenue of lime-trees, are artless in style, confessing the peaceful and circumscribed life of the townsfolk. In this part of the town there are no signs of trade. At that time there was hardly a carriage-gate suggesting the luxury of the rich⁠—or if there were, it rarely turned on its hinges⁠—excepting that of Monsieur Martener, a doctor who was obliged to keep and use a cab. Some of the fronts were graced by a long vine stem, others with climbing roses growing up to the first floor, and scenting the windows with their large scattered bunches of flowers. One end of this Square almost joins the High Street of the lower town; the other end is shut in by a street parallel with the High Street, and the gardens beyond run down to one of the two rivers that water the valley of Provins.

“Where is she to sleep?” asked the maid.

Such was the reception that met Pierrette Lorrain on her arrival at her cousins’ house, while they looked at her with a bewildered air. She was flung on their hands like a parcel, with no transition between the wretched room in which she had lived with her grandparents and her cousins’ dining-room, which struck her as palatial. She stood there mute and shy. To anyone but these retired haberdashers, the little Bretonne would have been adorable in her frock of coarse blue serge, a pink cotton apron, her blue stockings, thick shoes, and white kerchief; her little red hands were covered by knitted mittens of red wool edged with white that the guard had bought for her. Her little Brittany cap, which had been washed in Paris⁠—it had got tumbled in the course of the journey from Nantes⁠—really looked like a glory round her bright face. This native cap, made of fine cambric, with a stiff lace border ironed into flat pleats, deserves a description, it is so smart and so simple. The light, filtered through the muslin and lace, casts a half shadow, a twilight softness, on the face; it gives it the virginal grace which painters try to find on their palettes, and which Léopold Robert has succeeded in lending to the Raphael-like face of the woman holding a child in his picture of the Reapers. Within this setting of broken lights shone an artless rose and white face, beaming with vigorous health.

She inspected everything, and came to her little cousin, who was waiting to know what they would have for breakfast.

“So there you are, Miss Ladylove!” said Sylvie to Pierrette, in a half-merry, half-mocking tone.

“I beg your pardon, cousin?”

“You crept into my room like a sneak and out again in the same way; but you must have known that I should have something to say to you.”

“To me?”

“You have had a serenade this morning like a princess, neither more nor less.”

“A serenade?” exclaimed Pierrette.

“A serenade?” echoed Sylvie, mimicking her. “And you have a lover.”

“Cousin, what do you mean by a lover?” Sylvie evaded the question, and said:

“Do you dare to say, mademoiselle, that a man did not come under our windows and talk to you of marriage!”

Persecution had taught Pierrette the cunning indispensable to slaves; she boldly replied, “I do not know what you mean⁠—”

“Dog⁠—” added the old maid in vinegar tones.

“Cousin,” said Pierrette humbly.

“And you did not get up, I suppose, and did not go barefoot to your window? Enough to give you some bad illness. Well, catch it, and serve you right!⁠—And I suppose you did not talk to your lover?”

Men are thought very fierce, and so are tigers; but neither tigers, nor vipers, nor diplomats, nor men of law, nor executioners, nor kings, can in their utmost atrocities come near the gentle cruelty, the poisoned sweetness, the savage scorn of young ladies to each other when certain of them think themselves superior to others in birth, fortune, or grace, and when marriage is in question, or precedence, or, in short, any feminine rivalry. The “Thank you, mademoiselle,” spoken by Bathilde to Pierrette, was a poem in twelve cantos.

Her name was Bathilde, the other’s was Pierrette; she was a Chargeboeuf, the other a Lorrain! Pierrette was undersized and fragile, Bathilde was tall and full of vitality! Pierrette was fed by charity, Bathilde and her mother lived on their own money! Pierrette wore a stuff frock with a deep tucker, Bathilde dragged the serpentine folds of her blue velvet; Bathilde had the finest shoulders in the department, and an arm like a queen’s, Pierrette’s shoulder-blades and arms were skinny; Pierrette was Cinderella, Bathilde the fairy; Bathilde would get married, Pierrette would die a maid! Bathilde was worshiped, Pierrette had no one to love her! Bathilde had her hair dressed⁠—she had taste, Pierrette hid her hair under a little cap, and knew nothing of the fashions! Epilogue⁠—Bathilde was everything, Pierrette was nothing. The proud little Bretonne perfectly understood this cruel poem.

“Good evening, child,” said Madame de Chargeboeuf from the summit of her grandeur, and with an accent given by her narrow pinched nose.

“You will see,” said Vinet, shaking hands affectionately with the Colonel.

At about one in the morning three clear, low hoots, like those of an owl, admirably mimicked, sounded in the Place; Pierrette heard them in her fevered sleep. She got up, quite damp, opened her window, saw Brigaut, and threw out a ball of silk, to which he tied a letter.

Sylvie, excited by the events of the evening and her own deliberations, was not asleep; she was taken in by the owl’s cry.

“Ah! what a bird of ill-omen!⁠—But, hark! Pierrette is out of bed. What does she want?”

On hearing the attic window open, Sylvie rushed to her own window and heard Brigaut’s paper rustle against the shutters. She tied her jacket strings, and nimbly mounted the stairs to Pierrette’s room; she found her untying the silk from round the letter.

“So I have caught you!” cried the old maid, going to the window, whence she saw Brigaut take to his heels. “Give me that letter.”

“No, cousin,” said the girl, who, by one of the stupendous inspirations of youth, and sustained by her spirit, rose to the dignity of resistance which we admire in the history of some nations reduced to desperation.

“What, you will not?” cried Sylvie, advancing on her cousin, and showing her a hideous face full of hatred, and distorted by rage.

Pierrette drew back a step or two to have time to clutch her letter in her hand, which she kept shut with invincible strength. On seeing this, Sylvie seized Pierrette’s delicate white hand in her lobster’s claws, and tried to wrench it open.