Memoirs of a Courtesan in Nineteenth-Century Paris (17 page)

‘ Come, I have to talk to you.’

I signaled to my partner that I was coming back.

‘‘You will not be coming back,’ said Adolphe squeezing my arm.

‘And why not?’’ I asked.

‘‘Do not go,’ he said, pale, ‘ or I shall have to settle matters with this little gentleman!’’

‘‘Might you be doing me the honor of being jealous? Some time back, I admit that I would have been pleased, but today it makes me laugh.’

The flower merchant brought me two bouquets of roses that I was being offered. I took them, but Adolphe grabbed them and tore them to pieces.

‘‘Now, really, my friend, what do you want from me? You left me; you did not love me. I did not mess up your love affair. . . .’

‘ This woman has never been mine! If she were here, I would say so in front of her.’

At that very moment, I saw her coming out from behind a grove.

‘‘Look,’ I said, ‘ here she is! If you do it, I shall believe you.’

‘ You will leave with me? . . .’

‘‘Yes!’’

He went straight toward Louisa who was giving him her best smile.

‘ Come, now, mademoiselle, please tell Céleste that I am not your lover, and that you regret having been so harsh with her.’



The Bal Mabille

She made a horrible face, turned red and said, ‘‘Yes! . . .’

‘ That is enough,’ I told Adolphe, who, I could see, was squeezing her wrist. ‘ Come.’

We left in a carriage. He was all sweet and kind to me but I remained cold as a stone!

‘‘You take pleasure in tormenting me,’ he said with tears in his eyes.

‘And do you think I was not tormented when I had to walk home from Versailles the night you abandoned me?’’

He was afraid to say any more. I made dates with him . . . and arrived two hours late! He would forbid me from going to public places . . .

and I went deliberately! The papers were still talking about Pomaré and me. . . . Whole groups would come see us at night as if we were strange animals. All these gapers fought over a flower from our bouquets.

Pomaré would take on a look of arrogance, practice all sorts of eccentricities, and scare off the curious onlookers who would turn red with embarrassment. That is probably why many of them would come around me and pay me compliments.

I had my following and Pomaré had hers.

‘ She is delightful!’’ one of them said, ogling me.

‘ You will see what a great dancer she is!’ the other one said.

‘ She is so graceful!’’

Such were the remarks all these people who disdained me were making. Whatever her position, there is not a single creature who is not susceptible to fame. . . . You can imagine, uneducated as I was, how I could not help but be blinded and misled.

 

There is no theater, however small, that does not have its rivalries. My success at Mabille created many jealousies toward me. The men covered me with love and flowers.

I hated Pomaré, and she hated me.

For no particular reason, it was decided that it would be delightful to partner us, and our partisans negotiated the arrangements with all the seriousness reserved for peace treaties.

We walked toward each other and did not take another step. I felt like fleeing, but I came to the conclusion that it would be ridiculous, and so I held my hand out to her. Her face brightened, and she said to me in a most charming way, ‘‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance.

If you would permit me to visit you, I shall continue my friendship toward you.’



The Bal Mabille

She had a patronizing air about her that I did not like, but I took her arm and we went around the ballroom together.

After exchanging a few words with her, I noticed that she took her role seriously and that she thought she was a queen. In fact she was always addressed thus: ‘‘Dear queen, are you going to dance? Where will you be so your courtiers can surround you?’’

She would indicate a place in a low voice. They would leave proud of themselves and take on a look of protection with their friends whom they led to their places.

One of the usual customers, a high school supervisor, I think, who wore glasses, was called. He was surrounded and applauded with shouts of ‘‘Bravo, Pritchard!’’ The poor man lost his head and pranced about.

. . . He was carried triumphantly. . . . He held his head high, imagining himself an important character, but the poor fellow was sent back to his place. He revealed his disappointments to Pomaré who told him,

‘ Come see me, I shall protect you.’

She was convinced of her power! . . .

I wanted to get to know this strange person. Since our separation, Marie did not come over anymore; I rarely saw her. I asked Pomaré to come spend the next day with me.

She told me that she did not call for her carriage until four o’clock and that in the morning she received her court.

‘ Come have lunch at my house,’ she invited me. ‘‘We shall chat and smoke a cigarette.’

She left me, then came back.

‘‘Would you like to have dinner with me and some of my friends? . . .’

I replied yes before she had finished her sentence.

We left. At the door she made a frown with her dark eyebrows. . . .

‘‘Jean! Jean!’’ she said impatiently.

A young boy of about twelve came running up. He was wearing a ridiculous outfit: gray linen pants tucked into his top boots, a frock coat whose waist would have been big enough to make him a cardigan, a very large hat with a flashy braid. In his arms he was carrying a faded cotton tapestry shawl with one end dragging on the ground. Pomaré, furious, grabbed it out of his hands.

‘‘Idiot! Can you not pay attention! . . . You are wiping the pavement with my scarf. . . . If you do not do your work better, I shall dismiss you.’

Everyone was laughing around her. The little boy left shrugging his shoulders and brought the carriage around, a two-horse barouche that



The Bal Mabille

she rented by the month. . . . It was an almost grotesque conveyance from the shed of an inferior renter.

‘ The queen’s carriage!’’ shouted ten young boys in unison.

Pritchard walked up to her to kiss her hand. She threw a few coins up in the air. They all jostled each other to pick them up shouting, ‘‘Long live la Reine Pomaré!’’

The short man was on the seat next to the driver, who wore a hat adorned with the same flashy braid and brown frock coat. Add to that a white horse and a bay one. The interior of the barouche was adorned in some old faded red fabric.

We arrived at the Café Anglais.

‘‘Which room do you want?’’

‘ The large parlor.’

It was beginning to be cold, so she requested a fire. Kindling was lit. . . .

‘ The first cold days are painful,’ she told me, pale as a ghost.

‘‘Keep your shawl on,’ I told her.

But she did nothing of the sort. She was wearing a light blue taffeta dress that clashed with her shawl.

She coughed once or twice. She picked up a glass of chilled champagne and gulped it down. Her eyes were shining and color was returning to her cheeks.

Then she was asked to sing a song, of her own composition she said, that passed in review all the gods of mythology.

Her voice was weak. She was accompanying herself on the piano.

She received untold compliments. I was paid very little attention. She talked, smoked; she stood up to everyone. She had an inexhaustible mind and a peerless originality.

The night continued thus. When we left, it was daylight.

At that time of day there are only sweepers and ragmen in the streets.

The former, leaning on their brooms, look at you, and each is probably saying to himself, ‘‘What these lunatics have just spent in one night would allow me to live for a year.’

Sometimes they are handed some money, but more often they are not even noticed.

We were crossing the boulevard when a woman swept some dirt over Pomaré’s legs. The queen called her stupid.

The woman with the broom joined in.

‘ So, look at that, her pesky ladyship! I have been your better, my little one, but I was not proud with the poor people!’’



The Bal Mabille

We were already far off.

‘ See you this afternoon!’’ said Pomaré. ‘‘Rue Gaillon, . If you forget the number, ask in the street for la Reine Pomaré.’

I thought this boast was marvelous.



10

o A‘Queen’s’ Destiny

She Wanted to Be a Nun . . .—Those Roguish Journalists!—

The Kind Young Man from Toulouse—Hired at the Hippodrome—

No More Kind Young Man (from Toulouse)—Camille

  ’ I was at my new friend’s house. I expected to see a luxuriously furnished boudoir, but I was surprised to find myself in a kennel. Anyway that was my reaction to Pomaré’s apartment, it was so messy and dirty.

She lived in a large, sparsely furnished room; her chest of drawers was covered with a multitude of little objects, souvenirs of her triumphs at the Mabille dance hall.

Each object was covered with an inch of dust. On a table papers lay in disarray next to a pile of issues of Charivari. Her blue dress was lying on the floor.

I noticed, hanging on the wall, a plaster Virgin adorned with a little necklace and a crown. On the mantle the queen had put her hat in a plate.

She was still in bed, head bare, and hair tousled.

‘‘Forgive me,’ she said, ‘ my housework is not done yet. The person I rent from is supposed to do everything and does nothing.’

She jumped out of bed and went into a sort of anteroom whose window looked out on a courtyard. She called her porter, who was also her landlord. He came up.

‘‘Fix us some lunch.’

‘ Certainly, but give me some money.’

‘‘I do not have any.’

‘‘Now, really,’ said the old man, ‘‘you must have at least twenty sous.’

‘‘No,’ she said, ‘ not a farthing left.’

‘‘Well, then, go have lunch wherever you wish, but I am not extending you any more credit.’



A ‘ Queen’s’ Destiny

‘‘Now, do not be mean! I invited a friend; I cannot send her away.’

‘‘Is that right?’’ said the old man. ‘‘Not only you want me to feed you, but I have to feed others as well.’

And he went downstairs fussing.

I had heard everything and I was quite embarrassed. She did not lose her composure and told me, as she came back into the room, that we were going to eat out because, as the concierge just let her know, her domestic was not back.

That was really something. I bit my lip to keep from bursting out laughing. I had seen her the night before throwing at least ten francs in change. Obviously she was mad.

      . . .

I asked Pomaré to wait for me. I went downstairs, and a few minutes later I returned with everything we needed for lunch.

‘‘I shall reimburse you soon for everything you spent,’ she said with incredible audacity.

I asked her a couple of questions about her past, but she changed the subject without answering.

And yet I really wanted to know.

‘All right,’ she said after lunch, ‘‘you are a sweet girl; promise me you will not tell anyone, and I shall confess all to you.’

I promised, and she began.

‘‘I came into the world in Paris in . My father was rich and I was his first child. He had approximately , francs of capital invested in a theater and it paid fifteen, sometimes twenty percent in interest. I was placed in one of the first boarding schools of Paris. My mother had given me two brothers and two sisters, yet they did not curtail what my parents spent on me. I was seventeen when I heard at the boarding school that there had been a terribly destructive fire on Boulevard du Temple. Two days later my father came to see me. He had been crying.

‘ ‘I am broke,’ he told me. ‘The fire ate everything up. My poor Lise, I had no insurance!’

‘ ‘Do not worry about me, dear father. You know very well that my deepest desire is to be a nun,’ I told him.

‘ ‘No,’ he said hugging me tight, ‘your mother is almost mad with grief. You must comfort her, help her. I am here to bring you home.’

‘‘Back home, I found everyone in deep despair.

‘‘My mother was slightly out of her head, so I had to take care of the children.



A ‘ Queen’s’ Destiny

‘ Soon we were so poor that we let the maid go and I was left to do everything by myself.

‘A young man that my father had in his employ often came to the house. He told me so often that he loved me that I gave myself to him without much resistance.

‘ One day my father came home. I was talking to my lover at the door.

My father asked him to visit me in the presence of my mother or himself from now on.

‘After a while I began to feel ill and weak. There was a doctor in our building, so I went up to tell him about my symptoms. He looked at me and said, ‘You are big with child. That is not a dangerous condition.’

‘‘I ran to see the one who had ruined me. He could think of only one way to save me: destroy my child.

‘ I took to my room to write. I saw my Virgin Mary and I promised her to live for my punishment and for the poor little creature I was carrying in my body.

‘‘I packed a bag, kissed my brothers and sisters, and left in despera-tion. I turned into a deserted street and read Furnished House. I spoke to the mistress of the house and explained my situation to the woman, and I pleaded with her so that she eventually relented. I was lodged in an attic.

‘‘I asked where women about to give birth were taken in. I was directed to the maternity ward. I went, but I was told that they took women just two weeks before their delivery date. I was only three months pregnant. . . .

‘‘Little by little, I sold all my possessions. When I had nothing left, I asked for work in the house. I was given clothes to mend and housework to do. The woman at whose house I was residing wanted me to work fifteen hours a day for a piece of bread.

‘After much pain I gave birth to a boy. He was so frail that I always listened for his breathing. I was told not to breast-feed him, but I did not listen. I was given a little money, some baby clothes, and I left with my precious bundle in my arms.