"Oh! the good bow-wow!"
I gave him sugar; I stroked his silky skin.
He no longer disgusted me. And again I reflected:
"How stupid I am, all the same!
A good doggy, a fine garden, a fine house, money, tranquillity, an assured future,—to think that I have refused all these, and without knowing why.
And never to know what I want, and never to will what I desire!
At bottom I am afraid of man,—worse than that, I have a disgust for man,—when he is far away.
When he is near me, I am capable of anything.
I have no power of resistance save against things that are not to happen and men whom I shall never know. I really believe that I shall never be happy."
The ante-room was oppressive to me.
This obscurity, this dim light, these sprawling creatures, made my ideas more and more lugubrious. Something heavy and irremediable hovered over me. Without waiting for the bureau to close, I went away, with heavy heart and choking throat. On the stairs I met M. Louis.
Clinging to the banister, he was ascending the steps, slowly and painfully. We looked at each other for a second. He did not say anything, and I too found no word; but our looks said all. Ah! he, as well as I, was not happy. I listened to him a moment, as he went up the steps; then I plunged down the stairway. Poor little wretch! _____
In the street I stood for a moment as if stunned. I looked about for love's recruiting-agents, for the round back and black costume of "Mme. Rebecca Ranvet, Millinery."
Ah! if I had seen her, I would have gone to her, I would have delivered myself to her. But there was no such person there. The people passing were busy and indifferent, and paid no attention to my distress. Then I stopped at a wine-shop, where I bought a bottle of brandy, and, after strolling about for a while, still stupid and with heavy head, I went back to my hotel.
Toward evening, late, I heard a knock at my door.
I lay stretched upon my bed, half naked, stupefied by drink.
"Who is there?" I cried.
"It is I."
"Who are you?"
"The waiter."
I rose, with my loosened hair falling from my shoulders, and opened the door.
"What do you want?"
The waiter smiled.
He was a tall fellow with red hair, whom I had met several times on the stairs, and who always looked at me strangely.
"What do you want?" I repeated.
The waiter smiled again, apparently embarrassed, and, rolling in his fat fingers the bottom of his blue apron, covered with grease spots, he stammered:
"Mam'zelle ... I...."
He surveyed my person with a sort of dismal desire.
"Well, come in, you brute," I cried, suddenly.
And pushing him into my room, I closed the door again, violently.
Oh! misery me!
The waiter was discharged. I never knew his name! _____
I should not like to leave the subject of Mme. Paulhat-Durand's employment-bureau, without giving my recollection of a poor devil whom I met there.
He was a gardener, who had been a widower for four months, and who was looking for a place.
Among the many lamentable faces that passed through the bureau I saw none as sad as his, none that seemed to me more overwhelmed by life.
His wife had died of a miscarriage ... of a miscarriage?... the night before the day when, after two months of poverty, they were at last to take positions on an estate,—he in charge of the garden, she in charge of the barn-yard.
Whether from ill-luck, or from weariness and from disgust of life, he had found nothing since this great misfortune; he had not even looked for anything. And during this period of idleness his little savings had quickly melted away.
Although he was very suspicious, I succeeded in taming him a little. I put into the form of an impersonal narrative the simple and poignant tragedy that he related to me one day when I, greatly moved by his misfortune, had shown more interest and pity than usual.
Here it is. _____
When they had examined the gardens, the terraces, the conservatories, and the gardener's house at the park entrance, sumptuously clothed with ivies, climbing plants, and wild vines, they came back slowly, without speaking to each other, their souls in anguish and suspense, toward the lawn where the countess was following with a loving gaze her three children, who, with their light hair, their bright trinkets, and their pink and prosperous flesh, were playing in the grass, under the care of the governess.
At a distance of twenty steps they halted respectfully, the man with uncovered head and holding his cap in his hand, the woman, timid under her black straw hat, embarrassed in her dark woollen sack, and twisting the chain of a little leather bag, to give herself confidence.
The undulating greensward of the park rolled away in the distance, between thick clusters of trees.
"Come nearer," said the countess, in a voice of kind encouragement.
The man had a brown face, skin tanned by the sun, large knotty hands of the color of earth, the tips of the fingers deformed and polished by the continual handling of tools.
The woman was a little pale, with a gray pallor underlying the freckles that besprinkled her face,—a little awkward, too, and very clean.
She did not dare to lift her eyes to this fine lady, who was about to examine her inconsiderately, overwhelm her with torturing questions, and turn her inside out, body and soul, as others had done before. And she looked intently at the pretty picture of the three babies playing in the grass, already showing manners well under control and studied graces. They advanced a few steps, slowly, and both of them, with a mechanical and simultaneous movement, folded their hands over their stomachs.
"Well," asked the countess, "you have seen everything?"
"Madame the Countess is very good," answered the man.
"It is very grand and very beautiful. Oh! it is a superb estate. There must be plenty of work, indeed!"
"And I am very exacting, I warn you,—very just, but very exacting.