Oh! Our Jesus!...." a frightful corpse, long and naked, perfectly rigid, the face crushed, the limbs streaked with bleeding gashes and covered with black and blue spots. It was my father.
I see him still. His hair was glued to his skull, and filled with a mass of sea-weed that made a sort of crown. Men were bending over him, rubbing his skin with warm flannels and forcing air into his mouth.
There was the mayor; there was the rector; there was the captain of customs; there was the marine policeman. I was frightened; I freed myself from my shawl, and, running between the legs of these men, over the wet stone floor, I began to cry,—to call papa,—to call mamma. A neighbor took me away. _____
From that moment my mother took to drinking furiously.
At first she really tried to work in the sardine-packing establishments, but, as she was always drunk, none of her employers would keep her.
Then she stayed at home to intoxicate herself, quarrelsome and gloomy; and, when she was full of brandy, she beat us. How does it happen that she did not kill me?
I avoided the house as much as I could. I spent my days in playing on the pier, in thieving in the gardens, and in paddling in the puddles when the tide was low. Or else, on the Plogoff road, at the bottom of a grassy decline, sheltered from the sea wind and covered with thick bushes, I misbehaved with the little boys, among the hawthorns.
On returning at night, I generally found my mother stretched on the tile floor across the threshold, inert, her mouth covered with vomit, and a broken bottle in her hands. Often I had to step over her body. Her awakenings were terrible. She was seized with a passion for destruction.
Without listening to my prayers or my cries, she tore me from the bed, pursued me, kicked me, and knocked me against the furniture, crying:
"I'll have your hide!
I'll have your hide!"
Many times I thought I should die.
And then she debauched herself, to get money with which to buy liquor.
At night, every night, low knocks were heard at the door of our house. A sailor entered, filling the room with a strong odor of sea-salt and fish. He lay down, remained an hour, and went away.
And another came, after him, lay down also, remained another hour, and went away. There were struggles and terrifying uproars in the darkness of these abominable nights, and several times the police interfered. _____
Thus years rolled by. I was not wanted anywhere; nor was my sister, or my brother.
They avoided us in the streets.
The respectable people drove us with stones from their houses, to which we went, sometimes to steal, sometimes to beg.
One day my sister Louise, who also had got into bad ways with the sailors, ran away.
And then my brother enlisted as a cabin-boy.
I was left alone with my mother. _____
At the age of ten I was no longer chaste.
Made familiar with love by the sad example of mamma, perverted by the little boys with whom I associated, my physical development had been very rapid. In spite of deprivations and blows, living continually in the open sea air, free and strong, I had grown so fast that at the age of eleven I experienced the first awakenings of womanhood. Beneath my girlish exterior, I was almost a woman.
At the age of twelve I was a woman quite, and no longer a virgin. Raped?
No, not exactly.
Consenting?
Yes, almost,—at least in the degree in which the artlessness of my vice and the candor of my depravity were consistent with consent.
The thing occurred one Sunday, after high mass, near the beach, on the Saint Jean side, in a recess in the cliff, in a dark hole among the rocks where the sea-gulls came to build their nests, and where the sailors sometimes hid the wreckage which they found at sea. The man was the foreman of a sardine-packing establishment,—an old, hairy, ill-smelling man, whose face was nothing but a dirty mass of beard and hair. He gave me an orange.
He had a funny name,—M. Cleophas Biscouille.
And here is an incomprehensible thing, of which I have found no explanation in any novel.
Ugly, brutal, and repulsive though M. Biscouille was, when I think of him now,—and I often do,—how happens it that it is never with a feeling of detestation for him, never with a disposition to curse him?
At this recollection, which I call up with satisfaction, I feel a sort of great gratitude, a sort of great tenderness, and also a sort of real regret at having to say to myself that never shall I see this disgusting personage again.
In this connection may I be permitted to offer here, humble though I am, my personal contribution to the biography of great men. _____
M. Paul Bourget was the intimate friend and spiritual guide of the Countess Fardin, in whose house last year I served as chambermaid.
I had always heard it said that he alone knew, even to its subsoil, the complex soul of woman.
And many times I had had the idea of writing to him, in order to submit to him this case of passional psychology. I had not dared. Do not be too much astonished at the gravity of such preoccupations.
They are not usual among domestics, I admit.
But in the salons of the countess they never talked of anything but psychology. It is an admitted fact that our mind is modeled on that of our masters, and that what is said in the salon is said also in the servants' hall.
Unhappily we had not in the servants' hall a Paul Bourget, capable of elucidating and solving the cases of feminism that we discussed there. The explanations of Monsieur Jean himself were not satisfactory to me.
One day my mistress sent me to carry an "urgent" letter to the illustrious master.
He handed me the reply himself.
Then I made bold to put to him the question that tormented me, pretending, however, that the heroine of this ticklish and obscure story was a friend of mine. M. Paul Bourget asked:
"What is your friend?
A woman of the people?
A poor woman, undoubtedly?"
"A chambermaid, like myself, illustrious master."
A superior grimace, a look of disdain, appeared on M. Bourget's face.
Ah! sapristi! he does not like the poor.
"I do not occupy myself with these souls," said he. "These are too little souls. They are not even souls. They are outside the province of my psychology."
I understood that, in this province, one begins to be a soul only with an income of a hundred thousand francs.