"But I do not know how to cook."
"Oh! I will do the cooking; I will make my bed; I will do everything."
He becomes gallant, sprightly; his eye sparkles.
He leans towards the hedge, stretching out his neck. His eyes become bloodshot.
And in a lower voice he says:
"If you came to me, Celestine,—well...."
"Well, what?"
"Well, the Lanlaires would die of rage.
Ah! that's an idea!"
I lapse into silence, and pretend to be profoundly dreaming. The captain becomes impatient. He digs the heels of his shoes into the sandy path.
"See, Celestine, thirty-five francs a month; the master's table; the master's room; a will; does that suit you?
Answer me."
"We will see later. But, while waiting, take another."
And I run away that I may not blow into his face the tempest of laughter that is roaring in my throat. _____
I have, then, only the embarrassment of choice.
The captain or Joseph?
To live as a servant-mistress, with all the contingencies that such a position involves,—that is, to remain still at the mercy of a stupid, coarse, changeable man, and dependent upon a thousand disagreeable circumstances and a thousand prejudices; or else to marry, and thus acquire a sort of regular and respected liberty, in a situation free from the control of others, and liberated from the caprice of events?
Here at last a portion of my dream promises to be realized.
It is very evident that I should have liked a realization on a grander scale. But, when I think how few chances present themselves, in general, in the existence of a woman like me, I must congratulate myself that something is coming to me at last other than this eternal and monotonous tossing back and forth from one house to another, from one bed to another, from one face to another face.
Of course, I put aside at once the captain's plan. Moreover, I had no need of this last conversation with him to know the sort of grotesque and sinister mountebank, the type of odd humanity, that he represents.
Beyond the fact that his physical ugliness is complete,—for there is nothing to relieve and correct it,—he gives one no hold on his soul. Rose believed firmly in her assured domination over this man, and this man tricked her. One cannot dominate nothing; one can have no influence over emptiness. I cannot, without choking with laughter, think of myself for an instant in the arms of this ridiculous personage and caressing him. Yet, in spite of this, I am content, and I feel something akin to pride. However low the source from which it comes, it is none the less an homage, and this homage strengthens my confidence in myself and in my beauty.
Quite different are my feelings toward Joseph. Joseph has taken possession of my mind. He retains it, he holds it captive, he obsesses it. He disturbs me, bewitches me, and frightens me, by turns. Certainly, he is ugly, brutally, horribly ugly; but, when you analyze this ugliness, you find something formidable in it, something that is almost beauty, that is more than beauty, that is above beauty,—something elemental.
I do not conceal from myself the difficulty, the danger, of living, whether married or not, with such a man, of whom I am warranted in suspecting everything, and of whom, in reality, I know nothing. And it is this that draws me to him with a dizzy violence. At least he is capable of many things in crime, perhaps, and perhaps also in the direction of good. I do not know. What does he want of me?
What will he do with me?
Should I be the unscrupulous instrument of plans that I knew nothing of, the plaything of his ferocious passions?
Does he even love me? And why does he love me?
For my beauty; for my vices; for my intelligence; for my hatred of prejudices,—he who makes parade of all the prejudices?
I do not know. In addition to this attraction which the unknown and mysterious has for me, he exercises over me the bitter, powerful charm of force.
And this charm, yes, this charm acts more and more on my nerves, conquers my passive and submissive flesh.
It is something which I cannot define exactly, something that takes me wholly, by my mind and by my sex, revealing in me instincts of which I was unaware, instincts that slept within me without my knowledge, and that no love, no thrill of voluptuousness had before awakened. And I tremble from head to foot when I remember the words of Joseph, saying to me:
"You are like me, Celestine. Oh! not in features, of course. But our two souls are alike; our two souls resemble each other."
Our two souls!
Is that possible?
These sensations that I feel are so new, so imperious, so strongly tenacious, that they do not leave me a minute's rest, and that I remain always under the influence of their stupefying fascination. In vain do I seek to occupy my mind with other thoughts. I try to read and walk in the garden, when my masters are away, and, when they are at home, to work furiously at my mending in the linen-room. Impossible! Joseph has complete possession of my thought. And not only does he possess it in the present, but he possesses it also in the past.
Joseph so interposes himself between my entire past and myself that I see, so to speak, nothing but him, and that this past, with all its ugly or charming faces, draws farther and farther from me, fades away, disappears. Cleophas Biscouille; M. Jean; M. Xavier; William, of whom I have not yet spoken; M. Georges, himself, by whom I believed my soul to have been branded forever, as the shoulder of the convict is branded by the red iron; and all those to whom, voluntarily, joyously, passionately, I have given a little or much of myself, of my vibrant flesh and of my sorrowful heart,—all of them shadows already!
Uncertain and ludicrous shadows that fade away until they are hardly recollections, and then become confused dreams ... intangible, forgotten realities ... vapors ... nothing.
Sometimes, in the kitchen, after dinner, when looking at Joseph and his criminal mouth, and his criminal eyes, and his heavy cheek-bones, and his low, knotty, humpy forehead, upon which the lamplight accumulates hard shadows, I say to myself:
"No, no, it is not possible. I am under the influence of a fit of madness; I will not, I cannot, love this man. No, no, it is not possible."
And yet it is possible, and it is true. And I must at last confess it to myself, cry out to myself: "I love Joseph!"
Ah! now I understand why one should never make sport of love; why there are women who rush, with all the consciencelessness of murder, with all the invincible force of nature, to the kisses of brutes and to the embraces of monsters, and who voluptuously sound the death-rattle in the sneering faces of demons and bucks. _____
Joseph has obtained from Madame six days' leave of absence, and to-morrow he is to start for Cherbourg, pretending to be called by family matters. It is decided; he will buy the little cafe. But for some months he will not run it himself.
He has some one there, a trusted friend, who is to take charge of it.
"Do you understand?" he says to me. "It must first be repainted, and made to look like new; it must be very fine, with its new sign, in gilt letters:
'To the French Army!'
And besides, I cannot leave my place yet. That I cannot do."
"Why not, Joseph?"
"Because I cannot now."
"But when will you go, for good?"
Joseph scratches his neck, gives me a sly glance, and says:
"As to that I do not know. Perhaps not for six months yet; perhaps sooner; perhaps even later. I cannot tell. It depends." I feel that he does not wish to speak. Nevertheless I insist: