Complete Works of Emile Zola (56 page)

“Do you think,” she inquired one morning of her brother, “that M. Sauvaire is a man to lend money?”

“That’s according to circumstances,” answered Cadet. “He would willingly give a thousand francs to a poor devil on a public square, before a crowd of people, to make an exhibition of kind heartedness.”

The flower-girl laughed.

“Oh! It’s not charity that is wanted,” she answered. “The lender’s left hand must ignore what is done by his right.”

“The deuce!” said Cadet. “That is too disinterested. However, one can see.”

On the basis of these few words of conversation Fine elaborated quite a scheme. She believed Sauvaire was very wealthy, and she did not take him for an ill-natured man at heart. It would, perhaps, be possible to get something out of him by making use of Armande’s influence.

The flower-girl understood that she must first of all persuade Marius to call on the lorette. That was the difficult part of the business. The young man would firmly refuse, would say that there could be nothing in common between him and this woman.

One day she let Armande’s name escape her as if by accident, and was very much surprised to see Marius smile and appear to know all about her.

“Are you acquainted with the lady?” she inquired.

“I went to see her once,” he answered. “It was Philippe who took me there. This lady, as you term her, threw open her reception-rooms to her friends once a week, and my brother was one of the frequenters of the place. Faith, I was very well received and found a charming hostess there, who was exceedingly ladylike and very elegant.”

Fine seemed quite sad to hear Marius sing Armande’s praises.

“It appears,” he continued, “that things have somewhat changed at her place during the past year. They tell me her affairs are very much involved. However, they say she is extremely clever, and has a talent for intrigue; if she should happen to come across a simpleton she will easily get out of her difficulties.”

The young girl had recovered from the strange emotion that had got the better of her. She adroitly continued to put her plan into execution without undue haste.

“The simpleton is found,” she said, laughing. “Don’t you know M. Sauvaire, Cadet’s principal?”

“Slightly,” answered Marius, “I have sometimes met him walking about the old port in slippers.”

“Well, he has been Armande’s lover for the last few months, and they pretend he has already spent some money with her.”

Then Fine added in an indifferent tone of voice:

“Why don’t you go and see Armande again? You would meet wealthy people there who might assist you in the affair in question. M. Sauvaire would perhaps be disposed to help you.”

Marius became serious and for a moment was silent. He was thinking.

“Pooh!” he exclaimed at last, “I must not flinch at anything. I shall have to call and see that person tomorrow. I will explain my visit by speaking of my brother.”

The flower-girl looked the young man in the face with quivering eyelids.

“And above all,” she continued, with a forced laugh, “don’t go and remain at the feet of the enchantress. I have often heard tell of her costly and clever style of dress, of her wit, and the strange power she exercises over men.”

Marius, who was astonished at his friend’s unsteady voice, took her hand and examined her with his penetrating eyes.

“What is the matter with you?” he inquired. “Anyone would think I was going to see the devil, and that I am a sinner. Ah! my dear Fine, I am far from thinking of such nonsense. I have a solemn task to perform. Besides, look at me well. What woman would care for such a baboon?”

The young girl gazed at him, and was quite surprised to find him no longer ugly. Formerly he had seemed frightful; now she perceived something like light burst from his countenance and transform his features. The young man pressed her hand amicably and she remained quite troubled.

The following evening Marius called on Armande in accordance with his determination.

CHAPTER II

A MARSEILLAISE LORETTE

ARMANDE’S origin was shrouded in mystery. She pretended she was born in India of a native woman and an English officer. She started from that point and related a novel of which she was the heroine, to anyone who would listen to it.

She made a wealthy protector who had taken care of her at her father’s death, responsible for her first fault. He had brought her up in the greatest refinement on the same principle as that of fattening a fowl in order that it may make a more toothsome dish. She delighted in relating this brutally romantic tale.

Thanks to her falsehoods her real history was never known. She had one day swooped down on Marseille, just like those birds that scent a district rich in all kinds of prey, from afar. In settling in a commercial centre, she displayed extraordinary intelligence.

From the moment of her arrival she directed her batteries against business men, young merchants who shovel money about. She understood that these young sparks, confined all day in their offices, were thirsting for amusement at night, and anxious to squander some of the cash they have earned.

She set her snares with art. She began by starting her establishment on an important footing, and giving it a sort of aristocratic appearance. It was easy for her to vanquish the rivals whom she found already settled in the city. Those poor fallen daughters of Eve were grossly ignorant; they dressed badly, hardly knew how to speak, made a wretched, mean show of luxury, and gave themselves stupidly away. Armande crushed them with her elegance and the wit she had picked up here and there in her intercourse with persons in good station of life. In a few months she became a sort of mundane celebrity.

At home, as Sauvaire had naïvely said, she gave herself the airs of a duchess. She had displayed admirable taste in furnishing her apartment.

She threw open her drawing-room, and while she attracted the golden youth of the city by her noisy mode of life, she retained them by her good graces and air of distinction. You could hardly perceive, through the mistress of the house, the lady of easy virtue. She had lovers and was willing enough to show them off; but, in public and at her evening parties, she maintained a decency of demeanour for which they felt very grateful to her. She was the emblem of vice — witty, elegant, and perfumed.

Little by little she surrounded herself by most of the fast men of the city, but she was careful only to receive wealthy people, such as earned a great deal of money and spent still more. At the commencement she had only to choose her victims, a swarm being at her feet. She devoured several fortunes with her sharp teeth, living in the utmost luxury, and providing for all the requirements of her mode of life, which were enormous.

Moral people looked on her as a regular pest, as a bottomless pit in which the capital of the young commercial men of Marseille was being engulfed. Her rivals tore her to bits and accused her of engaging in shameless intrigues; they made fun of her thin face, of the wrinkles come before their time, said she was ugly, which was almost true, and vowed they could not understand the infatuation of those idiotic men for the creature. Armande let them talk and quietly reigned. For several years she had domineered over them by her mind, luxury and the science of an elegant and refined woman. Men attended her receptions in dress coats and white neckties.

Then, without any apparent cause, her credit was all at once lost. Bad fortune came, and made holes in her luxuriant existence. No doubt she had gone out of fashion and generous protectors were scarce. She descended to that semi-state of poverty which is attired in silk and treads on carpets. Feeling she would roll into the gutter if she did not make an effort to retain her grand apartment, she struggled in desperation against her ill-luck. She understood that her power of fascination came solely from her apparent wealth, from her style of dress, from the money which permitted her to act the part of a duchess beyond her sphere, at her ease. She knew that as soon as she was out of silk and had closed her drawing-room, she would become a poor girl, an ugly, faded creature whom no one would have anything to do with, and she displayed feverish energy to find protectors and procure money at any cost.

It was at this time that she made the acquaintance of a Madame Mercier, who advanced her money at an exorbitant rate of interest. She had taken in so many young simpletons, that she allowed herself to be imposed upon in her turn without much ado. She hoped, however, to make the first wealthy individual whom she came across, pay the capital and interest of the money she had borrowed. But men of wealth did not put in an appearance and she became more and more anxious.

Urged on by necessity and feeling that her beauty, which was her bread-winner, was leaving her day by day with her luxury, she turned to crime. She had already been obliged to sell looking-glasses, furniture, porcelain, to satisfy the demands of her creditors; her apartment was becoming stripped of everything; she saw the walls getting bare, little by little, and thought, with a shudder, of the day when she would find herself weary and old in an empty room. The upholsterers, milliners, all the tradesmen to whom she owed money, became more troublesome as they detected their customer’s approaching ruin: they knew that protectors were becoming rare, and insisted on the immediate payment of their claims. Some of them talked of putting in the brokers. Armande therefore understood that she was lost unless she found money at once no matter how.

She had recourse to an extreme measure. She imitated the writing of three or four of her lovers, and made out acceptances in her own favour which she signed with these person’s names. Then, not daring to go to a banker, she applied to Madame Mercier, who consented to discount several of the bills.

It is probable that this female usurer was not ignorant of their origin and that she even speculated on it. Holding the young woman in her clutches, able at any moment to lodge a complaint with the crown-attorney, relying, moreover, on those whose names were on the bills, and whose interest it was to avoid a scandal, she considered the forgeries she held in guarantee, as preferable to genuine bills. She based quite a fortune on her complacency, exacting enormous interest, embroiling the lorette’s affairs more and more, making her provide for her completely, acting a cunning and hypocritical part which she performed to perfection.

Armande managed to get along for two years without being disturbed. She had made the bills payable at her residence, and provided the money for them when they fell due at any cost, taking a hundred francs from the first man she met, completing the amount by selling something, borrowing again and forging fresh bills. Madame Mercier continued to be humble and obliging; she desired to hold her prey in a close grip before showing her teeth and biting.

Then the time came when Armande was positively unable to meet the forged acceptances. She cast herself into the gutter in vain. She went to the Château-des-Fleurs and still could not make the money she required to keep up her house.

It was just then that she made Sauvaire’s acquaintance. For him she dismissed a Count she had ruined, under the impression that the master-stevedore was rich and generous. In other times when she was Queen of Marseille and insolently displayed her lace and velvet, she would have gazed down on Sauvaire from the height of the wealth and elegance of her admirers. But now there was no prey that she disdained; she set her batteries against the crowd and would willingly have received money from soiled hands. The former workman mistook the dire necessity which thrust the young woman into his arms, for tenderness. After a few months she perceived with alarm, that her new acquaintance had all the prudent, economical habits of an upstart and that he spent all his money on himself like an egotist. Two or three of the forged acceptances were not met and Madame Mercier began to get angry.

Things were at that point when one evening Marius naïvely called. He expected to meet some of the numerous wealthy company in her drawing-room to whom his brother had introduced him. He had a vague idea of getting intimate with some young business-man who would come to his assistance; and he relied in a measure on Sauvaire, whose obliging disposition Fine had been careful to exaggerate.

He was very much astonished to find the drawing-room empty. The large apartment was lit with a single lamp and appeared particularly bare. Sauvaire was reclining on a large divan and seemed to be making a great fuss about digesting the dinner he had just eaten, undoing some of the buttons of his waistcoat, and holding a toothpick between his fingers.

Armande was seated beside him in an arm-chair, reading Graziella, with her forehead resting dreamily on the palm of her left hand. An Italian greyhound named Djali was lying at her feet, with its head reposing on her cherry-coloured slippers.

One of Armande’s ways of seduction was to read the works of great modern poets before her admirers. She had a small bookcase containing the writings of Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo, de Lamartine and Alfred de Musset.

In the evening, in the pale light of the lamp, at an hour when she was still beautiful, she languidly spelt over pages of verse or poetical prose. This placed a sort of halo round her head. Her admirers thought they had an ignorant girl to deal with, and they found an educated, almost a lettered, lady, who read books that they had never had either the time or energy to look into.

Sauvaire, especially, felt crushed and overshadowed on the day when his lady friend took up a book of verses, and quietly began turning over the pages of it before him. It was a rare event with him when he glanced through a newspaper. A woman opening a volume of poetry was in his eyes a superior creature. Each time Armande read in his presence he collected himself and looked affected and charmed. It seemed to him that he was becoming wise himself.

Marius slightly smiled when he saw Armande in an inclined attitude feigning ecstasy, and the position Sauvaire was in, lounging on the divan with his hands clasped across his stomach.

The lorette welcomed the new-comer with her easy, sprightly grace. She had been more or less intimately connected with Philippe, and she treated Marius as an old acquaintance. She asked him to be seated, and reproached him with the rarity of his visits.