Why did she leave her home?
What madness, what tragedy, what tempest has pushed her forth, and stranded her, a sorrowful waif, in this roaring human sea?
These questions I asked myself every day, as I examined this poor girl sitting in her corner, so frightfully isolated.
She was ugly with that definitive ugliness which excludes all idea of pity and makes people ferocious, because it is really an offence to them.
However disgraced she may be by nature, a woman rarely reaches the point of total and absolute ugliness, utter degeneracy from the human estate.
Generally she has something, no matter what,—eyes, a mouth, an undulation of the body, a bending of the hips, or less than that, a movement of the arms, a coupling of the wrist, a freshness of skin, upon which others may rest their eyes without being offended.
Even in the very old a certain grace almost always survives the deformations of the body, the death of sex, and the seamy flesh betrays some souvenir of what they formerly were. The Breton had nothing of the kind, and she was very young.
Little, long-waisted, angular, with flat hips, and legs so short that it seemed as if she really called to mind those barbarian virgins, those snub-nosed saints, shapeless blocks of granite that have been leaning for centuries, in loneliness, on the inclined arms of Armorican Calvaries.
And her face?
Ah! the unfortunate!
An overhanging brow; pupils so dim in outline that they seemed to have been rubbed with a rag; a horrible nose, flat at the start, gashed with a furrow down the middle, and suddenly turning up at its tip, and opening into two black, round, deep, enormous holes, fringed with stiff hair. And over all this a gray and scaly skin,—the skin of a dead adder, a skin that, in the light, looked as if it had been sprinkled with flour. Yet the unspeakable creature had one beauty that many beautiful women would have envied,—her hair, magnificent, heavy, thick hair, of a resplendent red reflecting gold and purple.
But, far from being a palliation of her ugliness, this hair only aggravated it, making it more striking, fulgurating, irreparable. This is not all. Every movement that she made was clumsy. She could not take a step without running against something; everything she took into her hands she was sure to let fall; her arms hit against the furniture, and swept off everything that was lying on it. When walking, she stepped on your toes and dug her elbows into your breast; then she excused herself with a harsh and sullen voice, a voice that breathed into your face a tainted, corpse-like odor. As soon as she entered the ante-room there at once arose among us a sort of irritated complaint, which quickly changed into insulting recriminations and ended in growls. The wretched creature was hooted as she crossed the room, rolling along on her short legs, passed on from one to another like a ball, until she reached her bench at the end of the room. And every one pretended to draw away from her, with significant gestures of disgust, and grimaces that were accompanied with a lifting of handkerchiefs. Then, in the empty space instantaneously formed behind the sanitary cordon that isolated her from us, the dismal girl sat leaning against the wall, silent and detested, without a complaint, without revolt, without seeming to understand that all this contempt was meant for her. Although, not to be unlike the others, I sometimes took part in this cruel sport, I could not help feeling a sort of pity for the little Breton. I understood that here was a being predestined to misfortune,—one of those beings who, whatever they may do and wherever they may go, will be eternally repulsed by men, and also by beasts,—for there is a certain height of ugliness, a certain form of infirmity, that the beasts themselves do not tolerate.
One day, overcoming my disgust, I approached her, and asked:
"What is your name?"
"Louise Randon."
"I am a Breton ... from Audierne. And you, too, are a Breton, are you not?"
Astonished that anyone was willing to speak to her, and fearing some insult or practical joke, she did not answer directly. She buried her thumb in the deep caverns of her nose.
I repeated my question.
"From what part of Brittany do you come?"
Then she looked at me, and, seeing undoubtedly that there was no unkindness in my eyes, she decided to answer:
"I am from Saint-Michel-en-Greve, near Lannion."
I knew not what further to say to her. Her voice was repulsive to me.
It was not a voice; it was something hoarse and broken, like a hiccup,—a sort of gurgle.
This voice drove away my pity. However, I went on.
"You have relatives living?"
"Yes; my father, my mother, two brothers, four sisters. I am the oldest."
"And your father? What does he do?"
"He is a blacksmith."
"You are poor."
"My father has three fields, three houses, three threshing-machines...."
"Then he is rich?"
"Surely he is rich.
He cultivates his fields and rents his houses, and goes about the country with his threshing-machines and threshes the peasants' wheat. And my brother shoes the horses."
"And your sisters?"
"They have beautiful lace caps and embroidered gowns."
"And you?"
"I have nothing."
I drew further away, that I might not get the mortal odor of this voice.
"Why are you a domestic?" I resumed.
"Because...."
"Why did you leave home?"
"Because...."
"You were not happy?"
She spoke very quickly, in a voice that rushed and rolled the words out, like pebbles.
"My father whipped me; my mother whipped me; my sisters whipped me; everybody whipped me; they made me do everything. I brought up my sisters."
"Why did they whip you?"
"I do not know; just to whip me. In all families there is some one who is whipped ... because ... well, one does not know."
My questions no longer annoyed her.
She was gaining confidence.
"And you?" she said to me, "did not your parents whip you?"