Short Fiction

me, and I thought: “This is what I understand to be the true meaning of the word hospitality. In our stupid and prudish northern countries, with their hateful mawkishness of ideas, and silly notions of morality, a man would never receive a stranger in this fashion.”

I went up to the woman and spoke to her, but she replied only by signs, not knowing a word of my language, which the Turk, her master, understood so well. All the happier that she would be silent, I took her by the hand and led her toward my couch, where I placed myself by her side.⁠ ⁠…

But one always awakens at those moments! So I opened my eyes and was not greatly surprised to feel beneath my hand something soft and warm, which I caressed lovingly. Then, my mind clearing, I recognized that it was a cat, a big cat rolled up against my cheek, sleeping there with confidence. I left it there and composed myself to sleep once more. When daylight appeared he was gone; and I really thought I had dreamed he had been with me; for I could not understand how he could have come in and gone out, as my door was locked.

When I related my dream and my adventure to my agreeable host (not the whole of it!) he began to laugh, and said: “He came in through his own door,” and raising a curtain, he showed me a little round hole in the wall. I learned then that the old habitations of this country have long narrow runways through the walls, which go from the cellar to the garret, from the servants’ rooms to the rooms of the seigneur, and these passages render the cat king and master of the interior of the house. He goes where it pleases him, visits his domain at his pleasure, sleeps in all the beds, sees all, hears all, knows all the secrets, all the habits, all the shames of the house. Everywhere he is at home, the animal that moves without noise, the silent prowler, the nocturnal rover of the hollowed walls. And I thought of Baudelaire.

Rosalie Prudent

There certainly was in this affair an element of mystery which neither the jury, nor the president, nor the Attorney-General himself could understand.

The girl Prudent (Rosalie), a maid employed by the Varambot family, of Mantes, became pregnant unknown to her employers, was brought to bed during the night in her attic bedroom, and had then killed and buried her child in the garden.

The story was like all other stories of every infanticide committed by a servant. But one fact remained inexplicable. The investigations conducted in the girl Prudent’s bedroom had led to the discovery of a complete set of baby clothes, made by Rosalie herself, who for three months had spent her nights in cutting out and sewing them. The grocer, from whom, out of her own wages, she had bought the candles burned in this long labour had come forward as a witness. Moreover, it was known that the local midwife, whom the girl had informed of her condition, had given her all instructions and practical advice necessary in case her time happened to come at a moment when no help was at hand. She had further sought a place at Poissy for the girl Prudent, who foresaw her dismissal, since the Varambot couple took questions of morality very seriously.

They were there present at the assizes the man and his wife, an ordinary provincial middle-class couple of small means, furiously annoyed with this slut who had defiled their house. They would have liked to see her guillotined on the spot, without a trial, and they overwhelmed her with malicious evidence that in their mouths became veritable accusations.

The guilty woman, a fine strapping girl from Basse-Normandie, with as much education as a girl of her class would have, wept incessantly and made no reply.

There was nothing for it but to suppose that she had committed this barbarous action in a moment of despair and madness, since everything pointed to the fact that she had hoped to keep and rear her child.

The president made one more attempt to get her to speak, to wring a confession from her. He urged her with the utmost kindliness, and at last made her understand that all these men come together to judge her did not wish for her death and could even pity her.

Then she made up her mind.

“Come,” he asked, “tell us first who is the father of this child.”

So far she had obstinately withheld this information.

She answered suddenly, staring angrily at the employers who had spoken with much malice against her.

“It was Monsieur Joseph, Monsieur Varambot’s nephew.”

The couple started violently and cried out with one voice: “It’s a lie! She’s lying! It’s a vile slander!”

The president silenced them and added: “Go on, please, and tell us how it happened.”

Then she poured out a sudden flood of words, comforting her shut heart, her poor lonely bruised heart, spilling out her grief, the full measure of her grief, before the severe men whom until this moment she had looked upon as enemies and inflexible judges.

“Yes, it was Monsieur Joseph Varambot, when he came on leave last year.”

“What does Monsieur Joseph Varambot do?”

“He’s an N.C.O. in the artillery, sir. He spent two months in the house, you see. Two summer months. I didn’t think anything of it, I didn’t, when he began staring at me, and then saying sweet things to me, and then coaxing me all day long. I let myself be taken in, I did, sir. He kept on telling me that I was a fine girl, that I was nice to look at⁠ ⁠… that I was his sort.⁠ ⁠… I was pleased with this; I was, for sure. What’ud you expect? You listen to these things when you’re alone⁠ ⁠… all alone⁠ ⁠… like me. I’m alone in the world, sir.⁠ ⁠… I’ve no one to talk to⁠ ⁠… no one to tell about things