Poor creature, we forgive her; indeed, a vast compassion for her fills our hearts, as we reflect upon all that she has suffered. But we have become suspicious, for our lives, of the whole female sex, and of women above us as well as of women below us in station. We are terror-stricken at the double lining of their hearts, at the marvelous faculty, the science, the consummate genius of falsehood with which their whole being is instinct.
The above extracts are from our journal: Journal des Goncourts—Mémoires de la Vie Littéraire; they are the documentary foundation upon which, two years later, my brother and I composed Germinie Lacerteux, whom we made a study of and taught when she was in the service of our venerable cousin, Mademoiselle de C⸺t, of whom we were writing a veracious biography, after the style of a biography of modern history.
Germinie Lacerteux
I
“Saved! so you are really out of danger, mademoiselle!” exclaimed the maid with a cry of joy, as she closed the door upon the doctor, and, rushing to the bed on which her mistress lay, she began, in a frenzy of happiness and with a shower of kisses to embrace, together with the bed covers, the old woman’s poor, emaciated body, which seemed, in the huge bed, as small as a child’s.
The old woman took her head, silently, in both hands, pressed it against her heart, heaved a sigh, and muttered: “Ah, well! so I must live on!”
This took place in a small room, through the window of which could be seen a small patch of sky cut by three black iron pipes, various neighboring roofs, and in the distance, between two houses that almost touched, the leafless branch of a tree, whose trunk was invisible.
On the mantelpiece, in a mahogany box, was a square clock with a large dial, huge figures and bulky hands. Beside it, under glass covers, were two candlesticks formed by three silver swans twisting their necks around a golden quiver. Near the fireplace an easy chair à la Voltaire, covered with one of the pieces of tapestry of checkerboard pattern, which little girls and old women make, extended its empty arms. Two little Italian landscapes, a flower piece in watercolors after Bertin, with a date in red ink at the bottom, and a few miniatures hung on the walls.
Upon the mahogany commode of an Empire pattern, a statue of Time in black bronze, running with his scythe in rest, served as a watch stand for a small watch with a monogram in diamonds upon blue enamel, surrounded with pearls. The floor was covered with a bright carpet with black and green stripes. The curtains at the bed and the window were of old-fashioned chintz with red figures upon a chocolate ground.
At the head of the bed, a portrait inclined over the invalid and seemed to gaze sternly at her. It represented a man with harsh features, whose face emerged from the high collar of a green satin coat, and a muslin cravat, with waving ends, tied loosely around the neck, in the style of the early years of the Revolution. The old woman in the bed resembled the portrait. She had the same bushy, commanding black eyebrows, the same aquiline nose, the same clearly marked lines of will, resolution and energy. The portrait
