"Until religion shall have been restored in France, as we used to have it; until everybody is obliged to go to mass and to confession,—there will be nothing done, my God!"
He has hung up in his harness-room portraits of the pope and of Drumont; in his chamber, that of Deroulede; in the little seed-room those of Guerin and General Mercier,—terrible fellows, patriots, real Frenchmen!
He preciously collects all the anti-Jewish songs, all the colored portraits of the generals, all the caricatures of the circumcised.
For Joseph is violently anti-Semitic.
He belongs to all the religious, military, and patriotic societies of the department.
He is a member of the
"Anti-Semitic Youth" of Rouen, a member of the
"Anti-Jewish Old Age" of Louviers, and a member also of an infinite number of groups and sub-groups, such as the
"National Cudgel," the
"Norman Alarm-Bell," the "Bayados du Vexin," etc.
When he speaks of the Jews, there are sinister gleams in his eyes, and his gestures show bloodthirsty ferocity.
And he never goes to town without a club.
"As long as there is a Jew left in France, there is nothing done."
And he adds:
"Ah! my God! if I were in Paris, I would kill and burn and gut these cursed sheenies.
There is no danger that the traitors will come to live at Mesnil-Roy. They know very well what they are about, these mercenaries!"
He joins in one and the same hatred Protestants, Free Masons, freethinkers, all the brigands who never set foot in the churches, and who are, moreover, nothing but Jews in disguise. But he does not belong to the Clerical party; he is for religion, that's all!
As for the ignoble Dreyfus, he had better not think of coming back to France from Devil's Island. Oh, no! And Joseph strongly advises the unclean Zola not to come to Louviers to give a lecture, as it is reported that he intends to do. His hash would be settled, and Joseph himself would settle it.
This miserable traitor of a Zola, who, for six hundred thousand francs, has delivered the entire French army, and also the entire Russian army, to the Germans and the English?
And this is no humbug, no gossip, no lightly-spoken word; no, Joseph is sure of it. Joseph has it from the sacristan, who has it from the priest, who has it from the bishop, who has it from the pope, who has it from Drumont. Ah! the Jews may visit the Priory.
They will find, written by Joseph, in the cellar, in the attic, in the stable, in the coach-house, under the lining of the harnesses, and even on the broom-handles, and everywhere, these words:
"Long Live the Army!
Death to the Jews!"
From time to time Marianne approves these violent remarks with nods of her head and silent gestures. She, too, undoubtedly is being ruined and disgraced by the republic.
She, too, is for the sword, for the priests, and against the Jews,—about whom she knows nothing, by the way, except that they are lacking something somewhere.
And certainly I, too, am for the army, for the country, for religion, and against the Jews.
Who, then, among us house-servants, from the lowest to the highest, does not profess these nickel-plated doctrines?
Say what you will of the domestics,—it is possible that they have many faults,—but it cannot be denied that they are patriots.
Take myself, for instance; politics is not in my line, and it bores me.
But, a week before I started for this place, I squarely refused to serve as chambermaid in the house of Labori; and all the comrades who were at the employment-bureau that day refused also.
"Work for that dirty creature?
Oh, no, indeed!
Never!"
Yet, when I seriously question myself, I do not know why I am against the Jews, for I used to serve in their houses in the days when one could still do so with dignity.
I find that at bottom the Jews and the Catholics are very much alike.
They are equally vicious, have equally vile characters, equally ugly souls.
They all belong to the same world, you see, and the difference in religion counts for nothing.
Perhaps the Jews make more show, more noise; perhaps they make a greater display of the money that they spend.
But, in spite of what you hear about their management and their avarice, I maintain that it is not bad to be in their houses, where there is even more leakage than in Catholic houses.
But Joseph will hear nothing of all this.
He reproached me with being a bogus patriot and a bad Frenchwoman, and, with prophecies of massacre on his lips, and with bloody visions of broken heads and gashed bellies before his eyes, he went off to bed.
Straightway Marianne took the bottle of brandy from the sideboard. We needed to recover ourselves, and we talked of something else.
Marianne, who every day becomes more confiding, told me of her childhood, of the hard time that she had in her youth, and how, when in the employ, as a servant, of a woman who kept a tobacco-shop at Caen, she was seduced by a hospital-surgeon,—a delicate, slender, blonde young fellow, who had blue eyes and a pointed, short, and silky beard,—oh! how silky!
She became pregnant, and the tobacco merchant, who herself was intimate with any number of people, including all the sub-officers of the garrison, turned her out.
So young, on the pavements of a great city, and carrying a child!
Ah! the poverty that she experienced, her friend having no money. And surely she would have died of hunger, if the surgeon had not found her a queer place in the medical school.
"My God! yes," she said, "at the Boratory I killed rabbits and guinea-pigs. It was very nice."
And the recollection brought to Marianne's thick lips a smile that seemed to me strangely melancholy.
After a silence, I asked her:
"And the kid!