From Louviers, from Elbeuf, from Rouen, he receives the most flattering offers.
He refuses them, and does not boast of having refused them.
Oh, no, indeed! He has been here for fifteen years, and he considers this house as his own.
As long as they want him, he will stay.
Madame, suspicious as she is, and seeing evil everywhere, places a blind confidence in him.
She, who believes in nobody, believes in Joseph, in Joseph's honesty, in Joseph's devotion.
"A pearl!
He would throw himself into the fire for us," she says.
And, in spite of her avarice, she overwhelms him with petty generosities and little gifts.
Nevertheless, I distrust this man.
He disturbs me, and at the same time he interests me prodigiously.
Often I have seen frightful things passing in the troubled water, in the dead water of his eyes.
Since I have been observing him, I have changed the opinion that I formed of him when I first entered this house,—the opinion that he is a gross, stupid, and clumsy peasant. I ought to have examined him more attentively.
Now I think him singularly shrewd and crafty, and even better than shrewd, worse than clever; I know not how to express myself concerning him.
And then—is it because I am in the habit of seeing him every day?—I no longer find him so ugly or so old.
Habit, like a fog, tends to palliate things and beings.
Little by little it obscures the features of a face and rubs down deformities; if you live with a humpback day in and day out, after a time he loses his hump.
But there is something else; I am discovering something new and profound in Joseph, which upsets me.
It is not harmony of features or purity of lines that makes a man beautiful to a woman.
It is something less apparent, less defined, a sort of affinity, and, if I dare say so, a sort of sexual atmosphere, pungent, terrible, or intoxicating, to the haunting influence of which certain women are susceptible, even in spite of themselves.
Well, such an atmosphere emanates from Joseph.
The other day I admired him as he was lifting a cask of wine.
He played with it like a child with its rubber ball.
His exceptional strength, his supple skill, the terrible leverage of his loins, the athletic push of his shoulders, all combined to make me dreamy.
The strange and unhealthy curiosity, prompted by fear as much as by attraction, which is excited in me by the riddle of these suspicious manners, of this closed mouth, of this impressing look, is doubled by this muscular power, this bull's back.
Without being able to explain it to myself further, I feel that there is a secret correspondence between Joseph and me,—a physical and moral tie that is becoming a little more binding every day.
From the window of the linen-room where I work, I sometimes follow him with my eyes in the garden.
There he is, bending over his work, his face almost touching the ground, or else kneeling against the wall where the espaliers stand in line. And suddenly he disappears, he vanishes. Lower your head, and, before you can raise it again, he is gone.
Does he bury himself in the ground? Does he pass through the walls?
From time to time I have occasion to go to the garden to give him an order from Madame.
I do not see him anywhere, and I call him:
"Joseph!
Joseph! where are you?"
Suddenly, without a sound, Joseph arises before me, from behind a tree, from behind a vegetable-bed.
He rises before me in the sunlight, with his severe and impenetrable mask, his hair glued to his skull, and his open shirt revealing his hairy chest. Where does he come from? From what hole does he spring? From what height has he fallen?
"Oh! Joseph, how you frightened me!"
And over Joseph's lips, and in his eyes, there plays a terrifying smile, which really has the swift, short flashes of a knife.
I believe that this man is the devil. _____
The murder of the little Claire continues to be the all-absorbing topic, and to excite the curiosity of the town.
They fight for the local and Paris newspapers that give the news.
The "Libre Parole" accuses the Jews squarely and by wholesale, and declares that it was a "ritual murder."
The magistrates have visited the spot, made inquiries and examinations, and questioned many people.
Nobody knows a thing. Rose's charge, which has been circulating, has been met everywhere with an incredulous shrug of the shoulders.
Yesterday the police arrested a poor peddler, who had no trouble in proving that he was not in the vicinity at the time of the crime.
The father, to whom public rumor pointed, has been exonerated.
Moreover, he bears an excellent reputation.
So nowhere is there any clue to put justice on the track of the guilty.
It seems that this crime excites the admiration of the magistrates, and was committed with a surprising skill,—undoubtedly by professionals, by Parisians.
It seems also that the prosecuting attorney is pushing the affair in a very tame fashion and for the sake of form.
The murder of a poor little girl is not a very interesting matter. So there is every reason to believe that no clue will ever be found, and that the case will soon be pigeon-holed, like so many others that have not told their secret. _____