To the wondering observations of the friends who still came to see her and whom Germinie was forced to admit, mademoiselle would reply, in a compassionate, sympathetic tone: “Yes, it is filthy, I know! But what can you expect? Germinie’s sick, and I prefer that she shouldn’t kill herself.” Sometimes, when Germinie had gone out, she would venture to rub a cloth over a commode or touch a frame with the duster, with her gouty hands. She would do it hurriedly, afraid of being scolded, of having a scene, if the maid should return and detect her.
Germinie did almost no work; she barely served mademoiselle’s meals. She had reduced her mistress’s breakfast and dinner to the simplest dishes, those which she could cook most easily and quickly. She made her bed without raising the mattress, à l’Anglaise. The servant that she had been was not to be recognized in her, did not exist in her, except on the days when mademoiselle gave a small dinner party, the number of covers being always considerable on account of the party of children invited. On those days Germinie emerged, as if by enchantment, from her indolence and apathy, and, putting forth a sort of feverish strength, she recovered all her former energy in face of her ovens and the lengthened table. And mademoiselle was dumbfounded to see her, all by herself, declining assistance and capable of anything, prepare in a few hours a dinner for half a score of persons, serve it and clear the table afterwards, with the nimble hands and all the quick dexterity of her youth.
XL
“No—not this time, no,” said Germinie, rising from the foot of Jupillon’s bed where she was sitting. “There’s no way. Why, you know perfectly well that I haven’t a sou—anything you can call a sou! You’ve seen the stockings I wear, haven’t you?”
She lifted her skirt and showed him her stockings, all full of holes and tied together with strings. “I haven’t a change of anything. Money? Why, I didn’t even have enough to give mademoiselle a few flowers on her birthday. I bought her a bunch of violets for a sou! Oh! yes, money, indeed! That last twenty francs—do you know where I got them? I took them out of mademoiselle’s box! I’ve put them back. But that’s done with. I don’t want any more of that kind of thing. It will do for once. Where do you expect me to get money now, just tell me that, will you? You can’t pawn your skin at the Mont-de-Piété—unless!—But as to doing anything of that sort again, never in my life! Whatever else you choose, but no stealing! I won’t do it again. Oh! I know very well what you will do. So much the worse!”
“Well! have you worked yourself up enough?” said Jupillon. “If you’d told me that about the twenty francs, do you suppose I’d have taken it? I didn’t suppose you were as hard up as all that. I saw that you went on as usual. I fancied it wouldn’t put you out to lend me a twenty-franc piece, and I’d have returned it in a week or two with the others. But you don’t say anything? Oh! well, I’m done, I won’t ask you for any more. But that’s no reason we should quarrel, as I can see.” And he added, with an indefinable glance at Germinie: “Till Thursday, eh?”
“Till Thursday!” said Germinie, desperately. She longed to throw herself into Jupillon’s arms, to ask his pardon for her poverty, to say to him: “You see, I can’t do it!”
She repeated: “Till Thursday!” and took her leave.
When, on Thursday, she knocked at the door of Jupillon’s apartment on the ground floor, she thought she heard a man’s hurried step at the other end of the room. The door opened; before her stood Jupillon’s cousin with her hair in a net, wearing a red jacket and slippers, and with the costume and bearing of a woman who is at home in a man’s house. Her belongings were tossed about here and there: Germinie saw them on the chairs she had paid for.
“Whom does madame wish to see?” demanded the cousin, impudently.
“Monsieur Jupillon?”
“He has gone out.”
“I’ll wait for him,” said Germinie, and she attempted to enter the other room.
“You’ll wait at the porter’s lodge then;” and the cousin barred the way.
“When will he return?”
“When the hens have teeth,” said the girl, seriously, and shut the door in her face.
“Well! this is just what I expected of him,” said Germinie to herself, as she walked along the street. The pavement seemed to give way beneath her trembling legs.
XLI
When she returned that evening from a christening dinner, which she had been unable to avoid attending, mademoiselle heard talking in her room. She thought that there was someone with Germinie, and, marveling thereat, she opened the door. In the dim light shed by an untrimmed, smoking candle she saw nothing at first; but, upon looking more closely, she discovered her maid lying in a heap at the foot of the bed.
Germinie was talking in her sleep. She was talking with a strange accent that caused emotion, almost fear. The vague solemnity of supernatural things, a breath from regions beyond this life, arose in the room, with those words of sleep, involuntary, fugitive words, palpitating, half-spoken, as if a soul without a body were wandering about a dead man’s lips. The voice was slow and deep, and had a far-off sound, with long pauses of heavy breathing, and words breathed forth like sighs, with now and then a vibrating, painful note that went to the heart—a voice laden with mystery and with the nervous tremor of the darkness, in which the sleeper seemed to be groping for souvenirs
