Memoirs of a Courtesan in Nineteenth-Century Paris (12 page)

A third row of girls entered and was lined up behind the first.

‘ Those, look at them well so you will know to avoid them later. They are thieves. . . . When their sentences are short, they are kept here.’

All this had occurred very quietly, but soon we began hear some noise. A mass of women rushed in the part I compared to the orchestra seats. They were jostling each other, trying to grab the first benches with such unseemliness that the attendants had to intervene.

Each condemned woman had to go down to the workshops. In those days they were required to make matchboxes. There were some very good workers and when they left, they had a small amount of money.

Later I would recognize many of these women, elegant and proud, whom I had seen in this sad and shameful uniform! There were some old ones, disfigured by scars and illness, and there were some very young, very pretty ones. Among the latter, almost all had a certain stylishness. Some wore a lace bonnet under their uniform bonnet;

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Denise

others wore white camisoles and silk fichus. The more elegant ones belonged to houses.

The madams at those houses sent them clothing, money, and food.

It was said about them, ‘ So and so! She is getting a basket.’ Some had money. The men they attended to when they were free sent them a lot of things. As a rule they paid for everyone. They were called the Panuches.

During services all these women would look up in the air, chat, pass little pieces of paper to the infirmary women, the thieves, the defendants. While the attendants listened to the mass, they played their little games. Time left to serve was announced with fingers. Sunday was a play day.

Denise had been at the house of correction for three years. She had been quick to introduce me to her friend Fair Marie, as she called her.

‘‘Look, do you see on that back seat, next to the one-eyed woman, a girl with a large-checked handkerchief, her head down, with blond hair, a blue and white scarf around her neck? She is writing on her lap.

See, now she is raising her head. What do you think of her?’

I watched for a long while before answering. She must have been eighteen or twenty. Her hair was so beautiful that I looked above her head to see if there were not a ray of sunshine that could be giving it such a shiny and golden luster. Her eyes were large and pale blue. Her mouth was big, her teeth crooked but white.

‘ She has a strange appearance: the bottom part is hideous and common but the upper part is stunning.’

‘‘Her personality is like her appearance, which means that she has two. She is whimsical and carefree. You can tell her or do unpleasant things to her and she will not get angry. Then, another day, when no one is saying anything to her, she will lose her temper for no reason.

She ran away from home because she had a stepmother.’

   

I turned my head and saw, at the other end of the wire mesh fence, a little girl, twelve or thirteen years old, who was making extraordinary efforts to be noticed from below.

‘‘Look at how this little girl is moving about.’

‘ That is so her mother, who is among the defendants, can see her. Do you see this large woman who is looking our way? That is her mother.

She sold her daughter and she is going to be sentenced to at least three years. Her other daughter, whom she sold two years ago, turned her in.’

At the other end of the defendants’ bench was a small dark-haired woman with delicate features who looked ill. I pointed her out to Denise.

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Denise

‘ Oh! That is the woman who just gave birth! She was married to a nice man who adored her. Her husband went on a long trip and was away for a year. When he came home, a neighbor told him that he had been a father for a week. He had his wife arrested along with his assistant who had gone upstairs to take care of her.’

‘‘Poor woman!’’ I said looking at her.

‘‘You think she deserves pity?’’ said Denise, surprised. ‘‘I do not pity her. If she did not like this man, she should not have married him. Look, you see the second woman on the sixth bench, now that is a woman to pity! She is from Bordeaux. A man propositioned her and she married him thinking he loved her. Nothing of the kind. He put her in a shop where her beauty drew people in. He finally said what he expected of her. He would sell her to the highest bidder and he would beat the living daylights out of her if she refused. The police arrested the two of them.

He gave his consent for her to be registered.’

Once mass was over, everyone left in the order they came in. We went downstairs. On the last step Denise bent down and picked up something she put in her fichu.

Once in the garden, she led me to a corner and pulled out a tiny folded paper. She read:

My sweet darling, The time for your departure is approaching. As for me, I am not lucky; this is my third sentence. I spent the night in a hotel of the Latin Quarter. I was caught in the round-up and now I am in for a month. I am sad. I am afraid I misunderstood your sign. I think of you often. I even miss reformatory.

Fair Marie

‘‘Marie is weak,’ said Denise. ‘ She has a crush on a student who is leading her on. She must have been caught at his place.’

In those days, there were some forty of us in the reformatory. It was a real republic. We were constantly arguing and fighting.

There were some who were incredibly perverse and astonishingly bold. For example, a twelve-year-old girl fled over the walls, which are at least seventy to eighty feet high. Another one fled taking the place of a laundress.

 

In the days that I am talking about, the most damaging part of this establishment was the associations formed between twelve- to fifteen-year-old girls and thirty- to forty-year-old women.

Each letter coming in and going out is read and marked. In spite of

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Denise

these precautions the recruiters managed to practice their despicable profession.

The recruiters are women who find a pretty girl and give her the address of the wicked houses they represent.

They put ideas into the heads of poor children, lead them toward schools or the Cité, into squalid dives where they die young if they are weak.

It is not rare to hear ten-year-old children say what they want to be, and where they want to go when they are old enough.

The parlor is on the first floor, reformatory on the fourth. In the wall there is a tube that comes from below. When someone rings, it is a signal to put an ear against the funnel. Someone is wanted in the parlor and everyone looks up, everyone hopes.

Those who are called run like crazy, the others are sad. Then, when one of them comes back up with food, all the others surround her. She has seen someone from the outside and it seems that she is bringing back news from another world.

I had been there a month without anyone contacting me. For that reason I had moments of rage when, overtaken by the violence of my nature, I would swear I would avenge myself, I would be worse than everyone else. These moments of pique were ruining my heart.

There was among us a girl named Augustine who was about my age.

She told us that her father had decided to take her out of reformatory.

‘‘I convinced him that I would become worse here than I already am, and he believed that it was possible,’ she added, bursting out laughing. ‘‘Poor father, I am going to take off before we reach the end of the street!’’

I told her that was bad.

‘ Thank you,’ she replied. ‘ He promised that if I did not behave correctly, he would use his leather strap in a not so pleasant way.’

That night she came to me in the courtyard and told me in a serious tone, ‘‘I am coming out tomorrow and I do not have any clothes. You are my size, could you lend me yours? I shall send them back to you in two days.’

I pointed out to her that was all I had, and that if I lent them to her, she had to return them right away. She made such heartfelt promises that I believed in her sincerity and I relented.

She left. A few days later, since she had not returned anything, I confided my worries to Denise.

‘ Silly girl! Why did you not tell me about this? It is going to be funny when it is your turn to leave!’’

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Denise

In our enclosure there was a door that was a subject of everyone’s curiosity. This door, arched at the top, was raised off the floor and you had to go up two steps to reach it. That is where the infirmary amphi-theater was. Interns worked there, but they were forbidden to open on that side. I too was in the dark about this mysterious door.

Probably that day the key had been lost, so someone had entered through the little door and had pushed it back but not completely shut it.

I was going downstairs with Denise who left me to go talk to someone else. I walked by the door, went up the two steps, and slowly pushed on it. It opened and I saw lying on a marble table a young girl whose stomach and chest were open with large incisions. She was not disfigured and her eyes were halfway open. The light the door let in as it opened shined on her face.

‘‘What are you doing here!’’ said Denise as she approached me.

She made me go back down the two steps saying, ‘Are you crazy? If that is your idea of amusement, you have some gloomy thoughts.’

I had a terrible night.

One of us had just died. I became so sad. I was changing day by day.

 -- . 

‘ Céleste, in the parlor!’’

Instead of running like the others, I stayed in my chair, shaking so much that I could not get up.

‘ Take her down,’ said Mlle Bénard. ‘ She has never been there.’

Denise volunteered to take me there and, without waiting for a reply, led me toward the stairs. I stopped on the third floor. My legs were giving way.

‘‘What are you going to say to your mother?’’

‘‘Well, I am going to tell her everything that happened.’

‘ Oh but, if as you say, she loves this man, do not do so until you know whether she is still seeing him. He will have given her his version of things.’

My mother was seated on a chair, at the back of a large room with oak benches all around. The floor tiles were white. There was a crucifix on the wall.

She did not take a step in my direction and I was afraid to go near her.

‘‘You poor wretch!’’ she finally said to me. ‘Are you not ashamed to make me come here!’’

I looked up. I was so certain that I was the one who had the right to criticize that her tone surprised me!

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Denise

‘‘I hope, dear mother, that you know what led me here. You spent so much time thinking about coming here, you must be used to the thought of my being here.’

‘ Oh!’’ she said. ‘‘I learned three days ago that you were here. It took me that long to get permission to come.’

‘‘Five times, you were sent messages.’

‘ That is not true.’

‘‘How long have you been back in Paris?’’

‘A month.’

‘‘What were you told when you arrived?’’

‘ That you had let yourself be led astray by a woman.’

‘And who told you that?’’

She did not answer.

‘‘How did you find out that I was here?’’

‘ Three days ago a woman stopped me in the street, the one who got you taken into custody. She told me where you were and recounted some tale about having come twenty times and being told that I had not returned.’

‘‘Did you ask the wine merchant if that was true?’’

‘ No. Under what pretext would my door have been denied her?’’

I hesitated a little and I asked her, ‘‘How is M. Vincent?’’

‘‘Well,’ she replied. ‘‘He is waiting for me outside.’

‘‘Did you send a petition to the prefect so I can get out of here?’’

‘‘I have not had time yet. Vincent is going to write it tomorrow.’

‘‘No,’ I said, ‘ have it written by someone else, and be sure to take it over yourself.’

‘‘But why?’’

‘‘I shall tell you later.’

I had been in the parlor with my mother for an hour, the amount the time we are allowed to stay there.

‘‘Do not forget to write. When will you come?’’

‘‘In a few days. I shall write tomorrow.’

She kissed me so coldly that, as I was going back upstairs, I began to cry and I told Denise, ‘‘You were right, I am done for. I shall never get out of here. Poor Thérèse! I accused her of forgetting. He was preventing her from seeing my mother and he was keeping the letters.’

  

A week went by. My mother returned. She told me that she had made the request but that they had not answered.

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Denise

I became worried again. Another week went by. My mother finally told me that she had a reply and that I would be free in three days.

And exactly on the third day someone came to my cell to tell me to get dressed, that I was leaving in two hours.

‘‘But I have nothing to wear,’ I exclaimed. ‘‘I did not get my clothes back. I forgot to mention that fact to my mother. Shall I have time to send for some clothes from here?’’

‘‘No,’ the guard answered, ‘ not from here, but from the prison where you will stay until tomorrow. You can keep your reformatory outfit, which will be returned to us in the basket.’

I went to Denise’s cell. She began to cry so hard that all joy left me.

‘‘I swear that I shall go see you wherever you are.’

I left as I had arrived, in the same car, only my attire had changed.

Once at the prison, I was led to the room where I had been before.

There was a crowd: seven persons in this little room. I spent three days there without sleep or food.

The fourth day, M. Régnier sent for me.

‘‘Well now, child, I wrote your mother to come get you. Why does she not come? And why are you still in the reformatory uniform?’’

‘ Sir, it is because I lent my clothes.’

‘‘Have you been sick? You are very pale.’

‘ Oh, sir, if you only knew! We are very crowded. I am in there with a gang of beggars from Alsace. I have not eaten since my arrival.’

‘ Come on, I am going to send you to the pistole.’’ 5