Memoirs of a Courtesan in Nineteenth-Century Paris (32 page)

When I would say, ‘ They are coming!’’ the poor oldster would laugh and press my hands. When I would lose sight of them, he seemed to blame me, as if I were impeding their progress.

‘ There they are! I can see them again! They are struggling!’’

‘‘Look, my child, look carefully!’’

A hundred times I thought they had sunk. Two hours went by in this anguish. Finally they arrived, broken with fatigue and fear.

The old man left my side to go kiss a handsome young man who must have been twenty-five years old. I told myself as I watched him leave,

‘ Ungrateful like a child! He does not thank me for sharing his terror.’

But that evening at the host’s table, he came to sit next to me. Instead of one conquest, I had two. The father did not stop talking about me!

He thought I was charming, adorable, pretty! I told you he had poor eyesight.

The son must have been in the habit of thinking like his father. He became more unremitting in his attentions, and after two days, he admitted frankly that he was madly in love with me.

Jean could see this little game, and what is really odd is that he was assisting him by standing aside. He hated Lionel and would have given in to any of my whims to make me forget one name, one memory.

My shipwreck survivor was not very witty and was beginning to bore me greatly! He would write me such funny letters that I could not help laughing in his face. He spoke of nothing but marrying me, certain, he

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would say, that his father would forgive him a love that he had helped give birth to.

I told Jean that I wanted to dine in my room. He asked me why. I replied that the father and the son were mad, that they were plotting an abduction.

‘‘I thought that amused you,’ said Jean.

‘‘I never laugh at the expense of those who love me. If I hurt someone, it is unintentionally.’

I looked at him as I said these words since they were meant for him.

He did not reply.

Jean had a friend at Le Havre. After dinner he asked my permission to go see him. He had barely left, when the door opened. I thought that it was he returning; I did not even look up from my reading. I heard the lock turn once; I turned around and my shipwreck admirer was there.

‘‘Why did you not go down to dinner?’’ he asked me with a look of alarm. ‘‘You are avoiding me?’’

He really looked frightening. I told him I had a headache.

‘‘You did not come down to hurt me. You are a coquette, like all Parisian women. You make people fall in love with you so you can torment them. I love you and I shall not get over that. I have seen your passport; you are unattached. You are going to leave this Monsieur and follow me, or I am going to seek a quarrel with him.’

‘ ?   !’

This was beginning to take a worrisome turn. Jean could enter any minute.

‘‘Now, my friend, do not work yourself up this way! You meet a woman with a man who is not her parent, that must not give you a good opinion of her. . . . Instead of listening to reason, you want to take her away, marry her, fight a duel. But for whom, I ask you? . . . You have no idea! . . . I shall tell you. . . . For a girl who has wasted her youth, who is not worthy of anyone’s interest, who gets picked up and dropped. In other words, for Mogador!’’

I thought this name would frighten him. He said, ‘‘Mogador? I do not know what it is. But I love you! It does not matter what you have been; I love you. I do not live in Paris; you will be able to hide your past in my province.’

‘‘Well,’ I said, ‘‘wait a few days. The person with whom I came to Le Havre is going to leave. Once I am alone, we shall see.’

He seemed quite content. Jean came home a few minutes later and said with surprise, ‘ Oh! You have already packed your trunk?’’

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‘‘Yes. We are leaving tomorrow, at dawn.’

I had stayed away only ten days.

 

My heart was beating fast as I was approaching my apartment. Perhaps I had a letter from Lionel! . . . The concierge handed me one.

I did not even notice Jean leaving. I was devouring my letter as I climbed up the stairs. Lionel was congratulating me for the way I had come to terms with losing him. He added that it was not so easy for him, because he had no one to console him.

I read this letter several times. He was jealous. A flash of joy sprang from my heart to my brain! I had a hold over him. I was filled with tremendous joy because, for the first time, I became fully aware of my power.

‘ To bring him back at my feet,’ I told myself, ‘ there is only one way: to torment him.’ And since I loved him very much, I was merciless.

My letters might have left something to be desired when it came to style or spelling, but I insist they were masterpieces of coquetry. A week later he was more smitten than ever, and he wrote: My dear child, I am coming to Paris for two days. I shall be at the Hôtel Chatam.

It was a Sunday. The boulevard was full of people, and I wanted to hurry but managed only to be jostled by pedestrians. Once in front of Lionel’s door, I tried to compose myself so I would appear calm, cold even. He kissed me.

‘ Céleste, do you not love me anymore? . . .’

‘‘Yes, I do,’ I replied, ‘ but I have to get used to the idea of not seeing you anymore since you are going to get married.’

‘‘No,’ he said almost cheerfully, ‘‘I am not getting married. Without realizing it, I was about to make a foolish mistake. A chamber maid told me some things about my fiancée. . . .’

‘‘Is that why you are back?’’

‘‘Yes, partly, and a lot because I love you.’

We spent a week together. He was not letting me out of his sight.

I had written to poor Jean to avoid an encounter. Then Lionel had to return to Berry.

‘‘I am taking you with me,’ he said.

He did not have to say, ‘‘Do you want to come?’’ I spent two months with him. He received a letter that one of his relatives was coming. For

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me, this letter meant I had to leave. I understood. He broke the news to me with great care.

‘ Go back to Paris for a little while,’ he said. ‘As soon as I am alone, I shall come get you.’

I had a feeling that this visit meant some new marriage plan was afoot.

I looked for the letter and had no difficulty finding it. It announced an intended union that would be arranged through a family friend.

I went back to Paris and wrote to him that I was not taken in by what he had said. It was a while before he answered.

Something told me that all these marriage plans would fail. I proceeded resolutely down the path I had traced; I was waging a terrible war against Lionel’s heart with my follies and eccentricities. I went everywhere: balls, concerts, performances. Every night after the theater we almost always dined at the Café de Paris. Its beautiful rooms decorated with gold vases filled with flowers glittered in the light. The meals seemed to be out of fairy tales. The diners were young, rich, and elegant. Their names were the greatest names in France, but their lives were frivolous, their temperaments capricious and flighty.

Léon and his friends, all sons of very honorable merchants, very honest bourgeois, were pedantic and arrogant. They ranted against the nobility, but it was out of jealousy.

What I liked best about my new hosts was that they were almost all connected to Lionel. That way I made sure that not one of my extravagances would escape him.

  

Amid the tumultuous life where I was once more whirling, I was making new acquaintances every day. I became friends with a woman older than I. Between this woman’s personality and my then-state of mind there were certain analogies that made me want to study her carefully.

Two years earlier or two years later, had she passed through my life, I would have probably not paid much attention to her, but at this precise moment, she was exercising a sort of influence over me. She had been one of the fashionable women. She was rich and was looking back over her past life with contempt. Perhaps she had been a maid and it was because of mean treatment that she had become mean, something that often happens. In any case, she cut up her dear female friends with such enthusiasm that only their bones remained. ‘And those I do not touch because they are foul.’

This Panther, so ferocious toward everyone, had, for some reason, become attached to me. One evening I wanted to take her to the Opera.

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‘‘No,’ she replied, ‘‘it would be a waste of time!’’

‘‘Why?’’

‘‘Because clever people do not go there anymore, and, if they do, they put on a false face.’

‘ They will remove it for you!’’

‘‘Five years ago I gave away my black taffeta domino to some poor girl in mourning for her mother.’

‘‘We shall rent one.’

‘All right, you win.’

After dinner her eyes were shining. If she had drunk only one glass, it was a tall one! At the entrance of the Opera she stopped a man who was following several masked women whose coats he was carrying.

‘‘Not so fast, Gerbier, how about saying good evening to your friends!’’

The man, who must have been about fifty years old and stuttered a little, told her to be quiet, that he was not alone! ‘ Oh! Monsieur is with his family today. We pick up the little one at the boarding school, and we take her to the Opera to shape her heart and mind.’

The man threw himself in the crowd to escape her.

I asked her, ‘‘Who is this man?’’

‘An idiot! At his age, he is playing groom to an actress. I hate actresses. But for a few exceptions, the stage is no more than an exhibi-tion.’

‘ They are not all like that. . . .’

‘ Oh! No, I exclude the old ones, and, if you wish, one out of one hundred among the young ones, but the rest live off the collective resources of European fortunes.’

We had arrived at the foyer entrance.

‘‘Hello, beautiful mask!’’ a man coming out said as he grabbed me around the waist.

‘‘Well,’ she asked him, ‘ has your servant been behaving himself ?’’

‘‘Why do you ask me this?’’ said the man, who was trying to place her.

‘ Indeed, you told him on New Year’s Day last year, ‘François, I am giving you this old boot! If you are a good servant, you will have the other one next year.’ Does he finally have the pair?’’

Everyone laughed. We went into loge  that Jean had let me have.

There were two people already there. One woman turned around. I saw her eyes gleaming through her domino, then I heard her say, ‘ Oh! How dreadful! There is a snake in here. Who let these women in?’’

‘‘Ladies, this loge is rented.’

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‘‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘‘it is mine.’

‘‘You must be mistaken! . . .’

‘‘No, ask the usher; I just gave her the ticket stub.’

She called the usher over. There was indeed an error; their loge was the one next to mine, and they had to leave. During the discussion, Victorine had been looking at the domino, and, unfortunately for the woman wearing the mask, she recognized her.

‘ Yes, it is she! . . . So, I am a snake, am I! Well, you are going to hear me hiss.’

The mask did not reply, left, and entered the loge on the right. When she was seated, Victorine asked me, ‘ Do you want me to tell you why I am called the snake? The story will amuse you and our neighbors also.’

There were a lot of people in the loge on the left. The domino turned toward us and looked at Victorine defiantly.

‘‘Believe it or not,’ she told me, ‘‘I was loved by one of the most fashionable men in Paris. He loved me very much, but he circulated among high society. A highborn woman stole him from me. I would not hold such a grudge against her if she had not been a titled woman and if she had been more generous toward others, but in all honesty, she was too cunning to be interesting. My lover returned to me. She wanted to take him back. This was annoying. At his home I found letters from her, and I sent them to her husband after I had made the addressee’s name illegible. You see Céleste, in this world, one half of the population steals from the other. I yelled: thief ! And that is why she calls me a snake.’

The domino did not expect so much audacity. Her exasperation was evident by the movements of her fan. After a few seconds, the lady complained of the heat, left, and never came back. To top off the affront, the Panther spit out her name. I chided her for saying it so loud.

‘And why not? Because she has a husband and children? She does not respect them; why should I respect them?’’

‘ Come on, let us take a walk through the foyer.’

      

She stopped in front of a young man whose back was resting against a post.

‘ Good evening, de J

. How is your father?’

‘‘You know me?’’ said the young man.

‘ Obviously.’

‘ Well, my father is better.’

‘ Oh! Now I understand why you seem sad! The price of money is going to go up. You poor boy!’

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Then she burst out laughing. I asked her why the price of money was going to go up.

‘‘It is going to increase for him. Several years ago he wanted to borrow from a usurer and write letters of exchange. He told him, ‘My father is sick and I am certain he has not much time left, so you will be paid on time.’ If the father is doing better, payments will be higher! All this is a little bit the fault of the fathers who do not rear their children well.

When they are small, they are taken care of by foreigners. Later they must eat with governesses, then they are sent off to school, far from the family, and they get out when they are seventeen or eighteen. Love takes hold of them before they have thought about loving their parents.

They incur debts and their fathers do not pay them. The better ones wait for the end, the worse ones wish it. Oh! There you are,’ she told a man we came across. ‘‘You were in your wife’s way, so she sent you to the Opera?’

‘‘What do you mean?’’ said the man.