No one was now paying any attention to Maxence; and he slipped off without the slightest care as to what M. Costeclar might think. Reaching the spot where his cab awaited him, "Which way, boss?" inquired the driver. Maxence hesitated. What better had he to do than to go home? And yet ...

"We'll wait for that same carriage," he answered; "and we'll follow it on the return."

But he learned nothing further. Mlle. Lucienne drove straight to the Boulevard du Temple, and, as before, immediately resumed her eternal black dress; and Maxence saw her go to the little restaurant for her modest dinner.

But he saw something else too.

Almost on the heels of the girl, a servant in livery entered the hotel corridor, and only went off after remaining a full quarter of an hour in busy conference with Mme. Fortin.

"It's all over," thought the poor fellow. "Lucienne will not be much longer my neighbor."

He was mistaken. A month went by without bringing about any change. As in the past, she went out early, came home late, and on Sundays remained alone all day in her room. Once or twice a week, when the weather was fine, the carriage came for her at about three o'clock, and brought her home at nightfall. Maxence had exhausted all conjectures, when one evening, it was the 31st of October, as he was coming in to go to bed, he heard a loud sound of voices in the office of the hotel. Led by an instinctive curiosity, he approached on tiptoe, so as to see and hear every thing. The Fortins and Mlle. Lucienne were having a great discussion.

"That's all nonsense," shrieked the worthy landlady; "and I mean to be paid."

Mlle. Lucienne was quite calm.

"Well," she replied: "don't I pay you? Here are forty francs, -thirty in advance for my room, and ten on the old account."

"I don't want your ten francs!"

"What do you want, then?"

"Ah,-the hundred and fifty francs which you owe me still."

The girl shrugged her shoulders.

"You forget our agreement," she uttered.

"Our agreement?"

"Yes. After the Commune, it was understood that I would give you ten francs a month on the old account; as long as I give them to you, you have nothing to ask."

Crimson with rage, Mme. Fortin had risen from her seat.

"Formerly," she interrupted, "I presumed I had to deal with a poor working-girl, an honest girl."

Mlle. Lucienne took no notice of the insult.

"I have not the amount you ask," she said coldly.

"Well, then," vociferated the other, "you must go and ask it of those who pay for your carriages and your dresses."

Still impa.s.sible, the girl, instead of answering, stretched her hand towards her key; but M. Fortin stopped her arm.

"No, no!" he said with a giggle. "People who don't pay their hotel-bill sleep out, my darling."

Maxence, that very morning, had received his month's pay, and he felt, as it were, his two hundred francs trembling in his pockets.

Yielding to a sudden inspiration, he threw open the office-door, and, throwing down one hundred and fifty francs upon the table, "Here is your money, wretch!" he exclaimed. And he withdrew at once.

XXVII

Maxence had not spoken to Mlle. Lucienne for nearly a month. He tried to persuade himself that she despised him because he was poor. He kept watching for her, for he could not help it; but as much as possible he avoided her.

"I shall be miserable," he thought, "the day when she does not come home; and yet it would be the very best thing that could happen for me."

Nevertheless, he spent all his time trying to find some explanations for the conduct of this strange girl, who, beneath her woolen dress, had the haughty manners of a great lady. Then he delighted to imagine between her and himself some of those subjects of confidence, some of those facilities which chance never fails to supply to attentive pa.s.sion, or some event which would enable him to emerge from his obscurity, and to acquire some rights by virtue of some great service rendered.

But never had he dared to hope for an occasion as propitious as the one he had just seized. And yet, after he had returned to his room, he hardly dared to congratulate himself upon the prompt.i.tude of his decision. He knew too well Mlle. Lucienne's excessive pride and sensitive nature.

"I should not be surprised if she were angry with me for what I've done," he thought.

The evening being quite chilly, he had lighted a few sticks; and, sitting by the fireside, he was waiting, his mind filled with vague hopes. It seemed to him that his neighbor could not absolve herself from coming to thank him; and he was listening intently to all the noises of the house, starting at the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and at the slamming of doors. Ten times, at least, he went out on tiptoe to lean out of the window on the landing, to make sure that there was no light in Mlle. Lucienne's room. At eleven o'clock she had not yet come home; and he was deliberating whether he would not start out in quest of information, when there was a knock at the door.

"Come in!" he cried, in a voice choked with emotion. Mlle. Lucienne came in. She was somewhat paler than usual, but calm and perfectly self-possessed. Having bowed without the slightest shade of embarra.s.sment, she laid upon the mantel-piece the thirty five-franc-notes which Maxence had thrown down to the Fortins; and, in her most natural tone, "Here are your hundred and fifty francs, sir," she uttered. "I am more grateful than I can express for your prompt kindness in lending them to me; but I did not need them."

Maxence had risen from his seat, and was making every effort to control his own feelings.

"Still," he began, "after what I heard-"

"Yes," she interrupted, "Mme. Fortin and her husband were trying to frighten me. But they were losing their time. When, after the Commune, I settled with them the manner in which I would discharge my debt towards them, having a just estimate of their worth, I made them write out and sign our agreement. Being in the right, I could resist them, and was resisting them when you threw them those hundred and fifty francs. Having laid hands upon them, they had the pretension to keep them. That's what I could not suffer. Not being able to recover them by main force, I went at once to the commissary of police. He was luckily at his office. He is an honest man, who already, once before, helped me out of a sc.r.a.pe. He listened to me kindly, and was moved by my explanations. Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, he put on his overcoat, and came with me to see our landlord. After compelling them to return me your money, he signified to them to observe strictly our agreement, under penalty of incurring his utmost severity."

Maxence was wonderstruck.

"How could you dare?" he said.

"Wasn't I in the right?"

"Oh, a thousand times yes! Still-"

"What? Should my right be less respected because I am but a woman? And, because I have no one to protect me, am I outside the law, and condemned in advance to suffer the iniquitous fancies of every scoundrel? No, thank Heaven! Henceforth I shall feel easy. People like the Fortins, who live off I know not what shameful traffic, have too much to fear from the police to dare to molest me further."

The resentment of the insult could be read in her great black eyes; and a bitter disgust contracted her lips.

"Besides," she added, "the commissary had no need of my explanations to understand what abject inspirations the Fortins were following. The wretches had in their pocket the wages of their infamy. In refusing me my key, in throwing me out in the street at ten o'clock at night, they hoped to drive me to seek the a.s.sistance of the base coward who paid their odious treason. And we know the price which men demand for the slightest service they render to a woman."

Maxence turned pale. The idea flashed upon his mind that it was to him, perhaps, that these last words were addressed.

"Ah, I swear it!" he exclaimed, "it is without after-thought that I tried to help you. You do not owe me any thanks even."

"I do not thank you any the less, though," she said gently, "and from the bottom of my heart."

"It was so little!"

"Intention alone makes the value of a service, neighbor. And, besides, do not say that a hundred and fifty francs are nothing to you: perhaps you do not earn much more each month."

"I confess it," he said, blushing a little.

"You see, then? No, it was not to you that my words were addressed, but to the man who has paid the Fortins. He was waiting on the Boulevard, the result of the manoeuvre, which, they thought, was about to place me at his mercy. He ran quickly to me when I went out, and followed me all the way to the office of the commissary of police, as he follows me everywhere for the past month, with his sickening gallantries and his degrading propositions."

The eye flashing with anger, "Ah, if I had known!" exclaimed Maxence. "If you had told me but a word!"

She smiled at his vehemence.

"What would you have done?" she said. "You cannot impart intelligence to a fool, heart to a coward, or delicacy of feeling to a boor."

"I could have chastised the miserable insulter."

She had a superb gesture of indifference.

"Bash!" she interrupted. "What are insults to me? I am so accustomed to them, that they no longer have any effect upon me. I am eighteen: I have neither family, relatives, friends, nor any one in the world who even knows my existence; and I live by my labor. Can't you see what must be the humiliations of each day? Since I was eight years old, I have been earning the bread I eat, the dress I wear, and the rent of the den where I sleep. Can you understand what I have endured, to what ignominies I have been exposed, what traps have been set for me, and how it has happened to me sometimes to owe my safety to mere physical force? And yet I do not complain, since through it all I have been able to retain the respect of myself, and to remain virtuous in spite of all."

She was laughing a laugh that had something wild in it.

And, as Maxence was looking at her with immense surprise, "That seems strange to you, doesn't it?" she resumed. "A girl of eighteen, without a sou, free as air, very pretty, and yet virtuous in the midst of Paris. Probably you don't believe it, or, if you do, you just think, 'What on earth does she make by it?'

"And really you are right; for, after all, who cares, and who thinks any the more of me, if I work sixteen hours a day to remain virtuous? But it's a fancy of my own; and don't imagine for a moment that I am deterred by any scruples, or by timidity, or ignorance. No, no! I believe in nothing. I fear nothing; and I know as much as the oldest libertines, the most vicious, and the most depraved. And I don't say that I have not been tempted sometimes, when, coming home from work, I'd see some of them coming out of the restaurants, splendidly dressed, on their lover's arm, and getting into carriages to go to the theatre. There were moments when I was cold and hungry, and when, not knowing where to sleep, I wandered all night through the streets like a lost dog. There were hours when I felt sick of all this misery, and when I said to myself, that, since it was my fate to end in the hospital, I might as well make the trip gayly. But what! I should have had to traffic my person, to sell myself!"

She shuddered, and in a hoa.r.s.e voice, "I would rather die," she said.

It was difficult to reconcile words such as these with certain circ.u.mstances of Mlle. Lucienne's existence,-her rides around the lake, for instance, in that carriage that came for her two or three times a week; her ever renewed costumes, each time more eccentric and more showy. But Maxence was not thinking of that. What she told him he accepted as absolutely true and indisputable. And he felt penetrated with an almost religious admiration for this young and beautiful girl, possessed of so much vivid energy, who alone, through the hazards, the perils, and the temptations of Paris, had succeeded in protecting and defending herself.

"And yet," he said, "without suspecting it, you had a friend near you."

She shuddered; and a pale smile flitted upon her lips. She knew well enough what friendship means between a youth of twenty-five and a girl of eighteen.

"A friend!" she murmured.

Maxence guessed her thought; and, in all the sincerity of his soul, "Yes, a friend," he repeated, "a comrade, a brother." And thinking to touch her, and gain her confidence, "I could understand you," he added; "for I, too, have been very unhappy."

But he was singularly mistaken. She looked at him with an astonished air, and slowly, "You unhappy!" she uttered,-"you who have a family, relations, a mother who adores you, a sister." Less excited, Maxence might have wondered how she had found this out, and would have concluded that she must feel some interest in him, since she had doubtless taken the trouble of getting information.

"Besides, you are a man," she went on; "and I do not understand how a man can complain. Have you not the freedom, the strength, and the right to undertake and to dare any thing? Isn't the world open to your activity and to your ambition? Woman submits to her fate: man makes his."

This was hurting the dearest pretensions of Maxence, who seriously thought that he had exhausted the rigors of adversity.

"There are circ.u.mstances," he began.

But she shrugged her shoulders gently, and, interrupting him, "Do not insist," she said, "or else I might think that you lack energy. What are you talking of circ.u.mstances? There are none so adverse but that can be overcome. What would you like, then? To be born with a hundred thousand francs a year, and have nothing to do but to live according to your whim of each day, idle, satiated, a burden upon yourself, useless, or offensive to others? Ah! If I were a man, I would dream of another fate. I should like to start from the Foundling Asylum, without a name, and by my will, my intelligence, my daring, and my labor, make something and somebody of myself. I would start from nothing, and become every thing!"

With flashing eyes and quivering nostrils, she drew herself up proudly. But almost at once, dropping her head, "The misfortune is," she added, "that I am but a woman; and you who complain, if you only knew-"

She sat down, and with her elbow on the little table, her head resting upon her hand, she remained lost in her meditations, her eyes fixed, as if following through s.p.a.ce all the phases of the eighteen years of her life.

There is no energy but unbends at some given moment, no will but has its hour of weakness; and, strong and energetic as was Mlle. Lucienne, she had been deeply touched by Maxence's act. Had she, then, found at last upon her path the companion of whom she had often dreamed in the despairing hours of solitude and wretchedness? After a few moments, she raised her head, and, looking into Maxence's eyes with a gaze that made him quiver like the shock of an electric battery, "Doubtless," she said, in a tone of indifference somewhat forced, "you think you have in me a strange neighbor. Well, as between neighbors; it is well to know each other. Before you judge me, listen."

The recommendation was useless. Maxence was listening with all the powers of his attention.

"I was brought up," she began, "in a village of the neighborhood of Paris,-in Louveciennes. My mother had put me out to nurse with some honest gardeners, poor, and burdened with a large family. After two months, hearing nothing of my mother, they wrote to her: she made no answer. They then went to Paris, and called at the address she had given them. She had just moved out; and no one knew what had become of her. They could no longer, therefore, expect a single sou for the cares they would bestow upon me. They kept me, nevertheless, thinking that one child the more would not make much difference. I know nothing of my parents, therefore, except what I heard through these kind gardeners; and, as I was still quite young when I had the misfortune to lose them, I have but a very vague remembrance of what they told me. I remember very well, however, that according to their statements, my mother was a young working-woman of rare beauty, and that, very likely, she was not my father's wife. If I was ever told the name of my mother or my father, if I ever knew it, I have quite forgotten it. I had myself no name. My adopted parents called me the Parisian. I was happy, nevertheless, with these kind people, and treated exactly like their own children. In winter, they sent me to school; in summer, I helped weeding the garden. I drove a sheep or two along the road, or else I went to gather violets and strawberries through the woods.

"This was the happiest, indeed, the only happy time of my life, towards which my thoughts may turn when I feel despair and discouragement getting the better of me. Alas! I was but eight, when, within the same week, the gardener and his wife were both carried off by the same disease,-inflammation of the lungs.

"On a freezing December morning, in that house upon which the hand of death had just fallen, we found ourselves, six children, the oldest of whom was not eleven, crying with grief, fright, cold, and hunger.

"Neither the gardener nor his wife had any relatives; and they left nothing but a few wretched pieces of furniture, the sale of which barely sufficed to pay the expenses of their funeral. The two younger children were taken to an asylum: the others were taken charge of by the neighbors.

"It was a laundress of Marly who took me. I was quite tall and strong for my age. She made an apprentice of me. She was not unkind by nature; but she was violent and brutal in the extreme. She compelled me to do an excessive amount of work, and often of a kind above my strength.

"Fifty times a day, I had to go from the river to the house, carrying on my shoulders enormous bundles of wet napkins or sheets, wring them, spread them out, and then run to Rueil to get the soiled clothes from the customers. I did not complain (I was already too proud to complain); but, if I was ordered to do something that seemed to me too unjust, I refused obstinately to obey, and then I was unmercifully beaten. In spite of all, I might, perhaps, have become attached to the woman, had she not had the disgusting habit of drinking. Every week regularly, on the day when she took the clothes to Paris (it was on Wednesdays), she came home drunk. And then, according as, with the fumes of the wine, anger or gayety rose to her brain, there were atrocious scenes or obscene jests.

"When she was in that condition, she inspired me with horror. And one Wednesday, as I showed my feelings too plainly, she struck me so hard, that she broke my arm. I had been with her for twenty months. The injury she had done me sobered her at once. She became frightened, overpowered me with caresses, begging me to say nothing to any one. I promised, and kept faithfully my word.

"But a physician had to be called in. There had been witnesses who spoke. The story spread along the river, as far as Bougival and Rueil. And one morning an officer of gendarmes called at the house; and I don't exactly know what would have happened, if I had not obstinately maintained that I had broken my arm in falling down stairs."

What surprised Maxence most was Mlle. Lucienne's simple and natural tone. No emphasis, scarcely an appearance of emotion. One might have thought it was somebody's else life that she was narrating. Meantime she was going on, "Thanks to my obstinate denials the woman was not disturbed. But the truth was known; and her reputation, which was not good before, became altogether bad. I became an object of interest. The very same people who had seen me twenty times staggering painfully under a load of wet clothes, which was terrible, began to pity me prodigiously because I had had an arm broken, which was nothing.

"At last a number of our customers arranged to take me out of a house, in which, they said, I must end by perishing under bad treatment.

"And, after many fruitless efforts, they discovered, at last, at La Jonchere, an old Jewess lady, very rich, and a widow without children, who consented to take charge of me.

"I hesitated at first to accept these offers; but noticing that the laundress, since she had hurt me, had conceived a still greater aversion for me, I made up my mind to leave her.

"It was on the day when I was introduced to my new mistress that I first discovered I had no name. After examining me at length, turning me around and around, making me walk, and sit down, 'Now,' she inquired, 'what is your name?'

"I stared at her in surprise; for indeed I was then like a savage, not having the slightest notions of the things of life.

"'My name is the Parisian,' I replied.

"She burst out laughing, as also another old lady, a friend of hers, who a.s.sisted at my presentation; and I remember that my little pride was quite offended at their hilarity. I thought they were laughing at me.

"'That's not a name,' they said at last. 'That's a nickname.'

"'I have no other.'

"They seemed dumfounded, repeating over and over that such a thing was unheard of; and on the spot they began to look for a name for me.

"'Where were you born?' inquired my new mistress.

"'At Louveciennes.'

"'Very well,' said the other: 'let us call her Louvecienne.'

"A long discussion followed, which irritated me so much that I felt like running away; and it was agreed at last, that I should be called, not Louvecienne, but Lucienne; and Lucienne I have remained.

"There was nothing said about baptism, since my new mistress was a Jewess.