He is to return to-morrow morning.
Will he return?
I am not without anxiety, and cannot keep from thinking about it. Why, too, was he unwilling to give me his Cherbourg address?
But I do not wish to think of all these things, that split my head and put me into a fever.
Here everything goes on in the same way, except that there are fewer events and still greater silence.
Joseph's work is done by the sacristan, out of friendship.
He comes every day, punctually, to groom the horses and to tend to the garden-frames.
Impossible to get a single word out of him.
He is more silent and suspicious than Joseph, and his manners are more doubtful.
He is more ordinary, too, and lacks his greatness and power.
I see him only when I have an order to deliver to him.
He is a queer type, too.
The grocer tells me that, when young, he studied for the priesthood, and was expelled from the seminary on account of his indelicacy and immorality.
May it not have been he who outraged the little Claire in the woods?
Since then, he has tried his hand at all trades.
Now a pastry-cook, now a church-singer, now a peddler, a notary's clerk, a domestic, the town drummer, an auctioneer, and an employee in the sheriff's office, for the last four years he has been sacristan. To be sacristan is to be also something of a priest.
Moreover, he has all the slimy and crawling manners of the ecclesiastical bugs. Surely he would not recoil from the vilest tasks.
Joseph does wrong to make him his friend.
But is he his friend?
Is he not, rather, his accomplice?
Madame has a sick headache. It seems she has one regularly every three months.
For two days she remains shut up in her room, with drawn curtains and without light, only Marianne being allowed to enter.
She does not want me. Madame's sickness means a good time for Monsieur. Monsieur makes the most of it. He does not leave the kitchen.
Captain Mauger, who does not speak to me any more, but casts furious glances at me over the hedge, has become reconciled with his family,—at least, with one of his nieces, who has come to live with him.
She is not bad-looking,—a tall blonde with a nose that is too long, but with a fresh complexion and a good figure.
People say she is to keep the house, and take Rose's place.
As for Mme. Gouin, Rose's death must have been a blow to her Sunday mornings.
She saw at once that she could not get along without a leading lady.
Now, it is that pest of a haberdasher who leads off in the gossip, and undertakes to maintain the admiration of the girls of Mesnil-Roy for the clandestine talents of this infamous grocer.
Yesterday being Sunday, I went to the grocery-shop.
It was a very brilliant occasion; they were all there.
There was very little said about Rose, and, when I told the story of the wills, there was a general shout of laughter. Ah! the captain was right when he said to me: "Everything can be replaced." But the haberdasher has not Rose's authority, for she is a woman concerning whom, from the point of view of morals, there unhappily is nothing to be said.
In what a hurry I am to see Joseph!
With what nervous impatience I await the moment when I shall know what I must hope or fear from destiny!
I can no longer live as I am living now.
Never have I been so distressed by this mediocre life that I live, by these people whom I serve, by all these dismal mountebanks around me, among whom I am growing more stupid from day to day.
If I were not sustained by the strange feeling that gives a new and powerful interest to my present life, I think it would not be long before I, too, should plunge into the abyss of stupidity and vileness which I see continually widening around me. Ah! whether Joseph succeeds or not, whether he changes his mind about me or not, I have come to a final decision; I will no longer stay here.
A few hours more, another whole night of anxiety, and then I shall be settled regarding my future.
I am going to spend this night in a further revival of old memories, perhaps for the last time.
It is the only way that I have of avoiding the anxieties of the present and not splitting my head over the dreams of to-morrow.
In reality these recollections amuse me, and deepen my contempt.
What singular and monotonous faces, all the same, I have met on my path of servitude!
When I see them again, in my mind's eye, they do not make on me the impression of really living beings.
They live, or at least give the illusion of life, only through their vices. Take away the vices that sustain them as bandages sustain mummies, and they are no longer even phantoms ... they are nothing but dust ... ashes ... death. _____
Oh! that was a famous house, for instance, to which, a few days after my refusal to go into the service of the old gentleman in the country, I was sent, with all sorts of admirable references, by Mme. Paulhat-Durand.
My masters were a very young couple, without animals or children, living in an ill-kept interior, though the furniture was stylish and there was a heavy elegance about the decorations. Luxury and great waste! A single glance as I entered showed me all; I saw clearly with whom I had to deal.
It was my dream!
Now then, I was going to forget all my miseries,—M. Xavier, and the good sisters of Neuilly, and the killing sessions in the ante-room of the employment-bureau, and the long days of anguish, and the long nights of solitude and debauchery.
Now then, I was going to plan for myself an agreeable life, with easy work and certain profits.
Made happy by this prospect, I promised myself that I would correct my caprices, repress the ardent impulses of my frankness, in order to stay in this place a long, long time.