Notre-Dame-des-Vents took her place between an Italian brig and an English schooner which drew apart to make way for their comrade; then, when all the formalities of customs and harbour had been complied with, the captain gave two-thirds of his crew shore leave for the evening.
It was already night. The lights of Marseilles were lit. In the warmth of the summer evening, an odour of garlic-flavoured cooking hung over the noisy city, alive with the sound of voices, rumblings, clatterings, all the gaiety of the South.
As soon as they felt land under them, the ten men who had been tossed for months on the sea, began to walk very carefully, with hesitant steps like creatures strayed out of their element, unaccustomed to cities, two by two in a procession.
They rolled along, taking their bearings, following the scent down the by-streets that opened on to the harbour, their blood on fire with a hunger for love that had grown stronger and stronger in their bodies throughout their last sixty-six days at sea. The Normans marched ahead, led by Célestin Duclos, a tall shrewd sturdy young fellow, who captained the others whenever they set foot on shore. He found out the best places, devised ways and means to his liking, and refrained from risking himself too readily in the brawls so common between sailors on shore. But when he did get involved in one, he was absolutely fearless.
After hesitating some little time between the obscure streets that ran down to the sea like sewers, from which rose a heavy smell, as it were the very breath of hovels, Célestin decided on a sort of winding passage where lighted lamps, bearing enormous numbers on their frosted coloured glass, were hung out above the doors. Under the narrow arch of the doorways, women in aprons, looking like servant-girls, and seated on rush-bottomed chairs, got up at their approach, made three steps to the edge of the stream that ran down the middle of the street and stood right across the path of the line of men that advanced slowly, singing and chuckling, excited already by the neighbourhood of these prostitutes’ cells.
Sometimes in the depths of a lobby a second door padded with brown leather opened abruptly and behind it appeared a stout half-naked woman, whose heavy thighs and plump arms were sharply outlined under a coarse tight-fitting shift of white cotton. Her short petticoat looked like a hooped girdle, and the soft flesh of her bosom, arms and shoulders made a rosy patch against a bodice of black velvet edged with gold lace. She called to them from far off: “Are you coming in, dearies?” and sometimes came out herself to clutch one of them, pulling him towards her doorway with all her might, clinging to him like a spider dragging in a body bigger than itself. The man, excited by her touch, resisted feebly, and the others halted to watch him, hesitating between their desire to go in without further delay and their desire to make this appetising stroll last a little longer. Then, when after the most exhausting effort the woman had dragged the sailor to the threshold of her abode, into which the whole company were about to plunge after him Célestin Duclos, who was a judge of such houses, would suddenly cry: “Don’t go in there, Marchand, it’s not the right one.”
Whereupon, obedient to this command, the man disengaged himself with brutal violence, and the friends fell again into line, pursued by the obscene abuse of the exasperated women while other women, all the way down the passage ahead of them, came out of their doors, attracted by the noise, and poured out hoarse-voiced enticing appeals. They went on their way, growing more and more excited, between the cajoling cries and seductive charms offered by the chorus of love’s doorkeepers down the length of the street before them, and the vile curses flung after them by the chorus behind, the despised chorus of disappointed women. Now and then they met other companies of men, soldiers marching along with swords clattering against their legs, more sailors, a solitary citizen or so, a few shop assistants. Everywhere opened other narrow streets, starred with evil beacon-lights. They walked steadily through this labyrinth of hovels on the greasy cobbled streets, oozing streams of foul water, between houses full of women’s flesh.
At last Duclos made up his mind and, halting in front of a fairly decent-looking house, marshalled his company into it.
II
The entertainment lacked nothing! For four hours the ten sailors took their fill of love and wine. Six months’ pay vanished on it.
They were installed, lords of all they surveyed, in the big saloon, regarding with unfriendly eyes the ordinary clients who installed themselves at little tables in corners, where one of the women who were still disengaged, dressed like overgrown babies or music-hall singers, ran to attend on them, and then sat down beside them.
Each man had on arrival selected his companion whom he retained throughout the evening, for the lower orders are not promiscuous. Three tables had been dragged together, and after the first round of drinks, the procession, fallen into two ranks and increased by as many women as there were sailors, reformed on the staircase. The noise made by the four feet of each couple was heard for some time on the wooden steps, while this long file of lovers plunged through the narrow door that led to the bedrooms.
Then they came down again for more drinks; went up again, came down again.
Now, very nearly drunk, they began to bawl. Each man, with reddened eyes, his fancy on his knee, sang or shouted, hammering on the table with doubled fists, rolled the wine round his throat, giving full play to the
