How she had deceived her! How the wretch had pretended to love her! And to make her appear more ungrateful and more despicable Mademoiselle de Varandeuil recalled her manifestations of affection, her attentions, her jealousies, which seemed a part of her adoration. She saw her bending over her when she was ill. She thought of her caresses. It was all a lie! Her devotion was a lie! The delight with which she kissed her, the love upon her lips, were lies! Mademoiselle told herself over and over again, she persuaded herself that it was so; and yet, little by little, from these reminiscences, from these evocations of the past whose bitterness she sought to make more bitter, from the far-off sweetness of days gone by, there arose within her a first sensation of pity.
She drove away the thoughts that tended to allay her wrath; but reflection brought them back. Thereupon there came to her mind some things to which she had paid no heed during Germinie’s lifetime, trifles of which the grave makes us take thought and upon which death sheds light. She had a vague remembrance of certain strange performances on the part of her maid, of feverish effusions and frantic embraces, of her throwing herself on her knees as if she were about to make a confession, of movements of the lips as if a secret were trembling on their verge. She saw, with the eyes we have for those who are no more, Germinie’s wistful glances, her gestures and attitudes, the despairing expression of her face. And now she realized that there were deep wounds beneath, heartrending pain, the torment of her anguish and her repentance, the tears of blood of her remorse, all sorts of suffering forced out of sight throughout her life, and in her whole being a Passion of shame that dared not ask forgiveness except with silence!
Then she would scold herself for the thought and call herself an old fool. Her instinct of rigid uprightness, the stern conscience and harsh judgment of a stainless life, the things which cause a virtuous woman to condemn a harlot and should have caused a saint like Mademoiselle de Varandeuil to be without pity for her servant—everything within her rebelled against a pardon. The voice of justice, stifling her kindness of heart, cried: “Never! never!” And she would expel Germinie’s infamous phantom with a pitiless gesture.
There were times, indeed, when, in order to make her condemnation and execration of her memory more irrevocable, she would heap charges upon her and slander her. She would add to the dead woman’s horrible list of sins. She would reproach Germinie for more than was justly chargeable to her. She would attribute crimes to her dark thoughts, murderous desires to her impatient dreams. She would strive to think, she would force herself to think, that she had desired her mistress’s death and had been awaiting it.
But at that very moment, amid the blackest of her thoughts and suppositions, a vision arose and stood in a bright light before her. A figure approached, that seemed to come to meet her glance, a figure against which she could not defend herself, and which passed through the hands with which she sought to force it back. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil saw her dead maid once more. She saw once more the face of which she had caught a glimpse in the amphitheatre, the crucified face, the tortured face to which the blood and agony of a heart had mounted together. She saw it once more with the faculty which the second sight of memory separates from its surroundings. And that face, as it became clearer to her, caused her less terror. It appeared to her, divesting itself, as it were, of its fear-inspiring, horrifying qualities. Suffering alone remained, but it was the suffering of expiation, almost of prayer, the suffering of a dead face that would like to weep. And as its expression grew ever milder, mademoiselle came at last to see in it a glance of supplication, of supplication that, at last, compelled her pity. Insensibly there glided into her reflections indulgent thoughts, suggestions of apology that surprised herself. She asked herself if the poor girl was as guilty as others, if she had deliberately chosen the path of evil, if life, circumstances, the misfortune of her body and her destiny, had not made her the creature she had been, a creature of love and sorrow. Suddenly she stopped: she was on the point of forgiving her!
One morning she leaped out of bed.
“Here! you—you other!” she cried to her housekeeper, “the devil take your name! I can’t remember it. Give me my clothes, quick! I have to go out.”
“The idea, mademoiselle—just look at the roofs, they’re all white.”
“Well, it snows, that’s all.”
Ten minutes later, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil said to the driver of the cab she had sent for:
“Montmartre Cemetery!”
LXX
In the distance an enclosure wall extended, perfectly straight, as far as the eye could see. The thread of snow that marked the outline of its coping gave it a dirty, rusty color. In a corner at the left three leafless trees reared their bare black branches against the sky. They rustled sadly, with the sound of pieces of dead wood stirred by the south wind. Above these trees, behind the wall and close against it, arose
