Memoirs of a Courtesan in Nineteenth-Century Paris (18 page)

‘‘I returned to my hole. I worked a little. My poor child was quite pale. When he was ten months old he would hold his arms out to me.

I was happy. However, since I did not deserve this happiness, it was of short duration.

‘Although I held him against my heart, his little limbs were contorted, his face was turning bluish. I covered him with kisses.

‘ This awful struggle went on for a week, then he had an attack, and his body went limp. . . . I thought he was resting.

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A ‘ Queen’s’ Destiny

‘‘For a long time I waited for him to wake up. I picked him up. He was stiff and cold.

‘ So I ran down the stairs shouting that I wanted a doctor, that my child could not be dead without me.

‘‘I followed my son to the Montparnasse cemetery. I had a sign put on his casket so he could be taken out of the common grave when I would have the means to buy him a cross and a marker.

‘‘For two weeks I was wildly distraught. People took turns taking me in. Some nice young men, to cheer me, took me out for dinner, drinks, and then to Mabille. That is the first time you saw me, wearing the black wool dress. I am proud of myself. Very soon, I shall be rich. I am already fashionable.’

She had told me this all at once, and in the most natural manner.

From then on, my opinion of her was very different from the one I had first formed.

Even her sweet name, Lise, always retained a certain mysterious warmth.

I took leave of her convinced that she had moments of madness, but feeling that I had become very fond of her.

  !

My relationship with Adolphe was gradually getting colder.

Adolphe was certainly not a vulgar character. He was funny, but he was fickle in love and did not have in his heart the kind of feverish passion or the sensitive charm that could long fascinate a woman caught in life’s whirlwind as I was.

My visits to Versailles were becoming rarer. When he saw that there was no recourse left, he decided to sign up as surgeon with a regiment leaving Paris.

I preferred the company of Lise, whose whimsical imagination was infectious. However, in my opinion she had one big drawback, that of being closely attached to Rose Pompon.

This short woman had an adorable face and horrible manners. She said any old thing, would spit in your face when she spoke, and dressed like a pile of twigs. She was miserly, oh, how she was miserly! Pompon was pregnant, so Pomaré sent a doctor to her, had the child baptized, and bought baby clothes since Pompon said she had no income. During her absence, Pomaré went to look for something in one of Pompon’s chests of drawers. And what did she find, hidden in some stockings?

Ten gold louis coins and some jewelry!

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A ‘ Queen’s’ Destiny

The summer balls were closed so I no longer saw Lise, who was getting ready to dance the polka at the Palais-Royal.

My friends encouraged me to take advantage of my success at Mabille. They told me that the time had come for me to try the stage again.

I was accompanied to the Théâtre Beaumarchais, where I was received most kindly once I said that my name was Mogador.

I was hired. The next day I was rehearsing in a revue where I played myself and at the end danced the mazurka. My costume was adorable.

My debut was the same night as Pomaré’s.

The next day I learned that Pomaré had been outrageously booed. I read a few newspapers where she was covered with derogatory compliments and snide remarks. Journalists treat women like governments.

There used to be only one or two public dance halls. Why are there ten today? Because of the celebrities that the journalists amused themselves in creating during their spare time. Flashy fame caused much jealousy.

Thousands of young girls were drawn to those public dance halls by the phony glamour!

Pomaré had a carriage, so they all wanted one, and many did have one. Every day ten new, elegant, and bold young women would be strolling on the Champs-Elysées.

The vaudeville and theater directors, always on the lookout for passions to exploit successfully, had put prostitution on the stage.

During two hundred performances, all of Paris swooned over the tender generosity and the distress of a courtesan; then one day some other vaudeville and theater directors, catching the new trend, had placed us in the pillory of opinion.

Journalists have done those things forgetting that during another era they had beaten brass drums at the door of the Ranelagh, the Bal Mabille, the Asnières ball.

As long as I lived amid this excitement I certainly did not have time to think about my pain nor that of others. Today when I remember how the women who were the most brilliant, the most adored have ended up, I believe that, as in the little drama Victorine, if they could be shown their future in a dream, they would all recoil.

     

Pomaré must have been downhearted about the reviews, so I went to see her. In those days, she lived at  Rue de la Michodière, on the mezzanine floor. The house, a furnished residence, was neat and comfortable.

Lise was very elegant.

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A ‘ Queen’s’ Destiny

‘ Oh well!’’ she said laughing. ‘‘My beginning looks a lot like an ending. At the Palais-Royal I have had the kind of success that Lola Montès had. Several in the audience had had perforated keys forged, and they vigorously blew through them; the sound drowned out the orchestra.

My dancing was off the cadence!’’

‘ Other than that,’ I said, ‘‘you are happy?’’

‘‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘ look.’

She opened a wardrobe and showed me a lot of clothes, which I admired not without a certain amount of envy.

‘‘I am not worried,’ she said. ‘‘I am living with a young man from Toulouse whom I love and is all I could wish for. He works at the post office to please his parents, who want him to have an occupation, but which he does not need since he is quite rich.’

‘ Good! I am pleased.’

‘ Oh! I do not have long to live, so I want to have a good time and not have any regrets.’

I left. I saw her that evening in a orchestra loge with a small man with curly dirty-blond hair and glasses. He seemed very attentive to her.

She sent word asking me to join them for dinner the next day. Before he arrived she told me that she could not stand him, but that he loved her so much that she felt sorry for him.

‘‘You see, mademoiselle,’ he told me that night as he was taking me back home, ‘ right now I cannot do everything I want to do for her, but I am going to come into a lot of money from some property I am selling.

I shall give her everything.’

A few days later I heard someone in the foyer of the theater say that Pomaré had been arrested as an accomplice in a theft.

An old matron was saying, ‘ Of course! Tarts like that, they will do anything.’

‘ Oh,’ replied an ugly, dried-up thirty-year-old ingénue, ‘‘if I were the judge, I would sentence her to life in prison.’

‘‘It would be necessary,’ I said, ‘ to put all the even merely pretty women in prison. Then there would be a shortage and maybe you would find a position.’

As soon as the performance was over, I rushed over to Rue de la Michodière. The mistress of the house told me, ‘‘Yesterday a nicely dressed man came to my door and asked me which one was Mlle Lise’s room and how she lived. I thought he was her father, whom she fears so much, and I replied that I had no idea how she lived. After that he signaled to two other men who also came in, and the three of them went

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A ‘ Queen’s’ Destiny

up to her door, motioning for me to follow them. I could see that they were policemen. Lise opened the door in her chemise.

‘ ‘Get dressed,’ one of these men said, while the others inspected the furniture and took some papers. ‘You are going to follow us.’

‘ ‘Follow you!’ said Lise. ‘But where to?’

‘ ‘To the prefecture, of course!’

‘ ‘But, monsieur, I have not done anything wrong.’

‘ ‘That is for the magistrate to decide.’

‘ She ran into the next room where she probably wanted to pick up a knife, but she was caught before she could open a drawer. Almost naked, she threw herself on the floor. I thought she was crazy! Faced with her despair, they began to treat her more gently.

‘ ‘Come on child, do not fret this way. It is possible that nothing will be done to you.’

‘And the three men picked her up off the floor and put her in a chair.

‘‘Her eyes were vacant and she did not seem to hear anything. She got up, then, dry-eyed, got dressed in silence. We did not take our eyes off her. She asked me if Monsieur had come.

‘ ‘No,’ I told her, ‘I have not seen him.’

‘A carriage had been brought around. These gentlemen grabbed each of her arms and sat near her in the carriage. I saw her head jerk back.

The carriage was off.’

I could not get over what I had just learned. I was certain Lise was incapable of any act of dishonesty.

I made a few inquiries to get some news about her. Twenty times I went to her apartment, but I had to be careful because I, myself, was under surveillance.

   

During my saddest time I learned some more bad news.

On occasion I had seen at Adolphe’s a young man who had a delightful mistress. Her name was Angéline. She had been registered when she was very young. She had understood what terrible position she had put herself in. So, without becoming a total prude, she lived very modestly with her lover, who knew nothing of her circumstances.

One day that I was returning from Lise’s, I met this young man.

He told me, ‘ Oh, you see before you a miserable man. Three days ago we organized a masked ball. There were about a dozen of us. We had a nice dinner before going to the Opera. Angéline was a little too expansive, and a policeman told her he was going to throw her out. My friend,

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A ‘ Queen’s’ Destiny

with whom she was dancing, reacted, and there was an argument. They were taken to the station. When she had regained her composure, she was told that she would be taken to the police prefecture. She did not complain, she only asked if she could go home, saying that she could not appear before the magistrate dressed like a docker. She was taken home in a carriage. She asked the policemen to wait five minutes. These gentlemen became impatient and knocked. ‘Come in,’ she said. When they opened the door, they saw her disappear out the window, then they heard a body fall on the pavement. They found two letters. I was given this one.’

He read it through his tears:

My poor friend, I am going to make a very painful jump at my age; I am not yet twenty. I shall not miss life but I shall miss you. See that I am buried. If I am not disfigured, give me a kiss. I am a registered girl. I have been hiding this fact from you for the two years we have been together. I was so afraid of displeasing you! I prefer to give my body back to the earth than to go to Saint-Lazare. Adieu!

‘And she killed herself !’’ I said, moved to tears.

‘‘No. She broke both her legs and she will be crippled the rest of her life. But I shall never leave her.’

I decided Angéline was happier than I. After such a terrible accident, it was almost certain that she would be scratched from the register, whereas I . . . my blasted fame was increasing the obstacles.

I had not been able to bring myself to return to the prefecture with these women who must reregister every two weeks. Anywhere I was, I could be arrested.

Each time a man looked at me I thought I saw an inspector. I did not dare go out on foot at night.

One night my watch was stolen. I liked it very much. Well, out of fear that I would have to give my name, I did not dare report the theft.

When I began at Beaumarchais, I thought I was saved. Another illusion. They let me play and dance every night but . . . they were not giving me a permanent position.

I asked if that situation was going to go on much longer. I was told that the theater was going to close!

I was rescued from this bad situation by chance.

One day, for the lack of anything better to do, I went to see a dress merchant who lived at  Faubourg du Temple. I told her my problems.

At her house was an elderly man with gray hair, deep-set eyes, a

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A ‘ Queen’s’ Destiny

curved nose, silver-rimmed glasses, and diamonds all over his fingers.

He was the owner of the house.

This man seemed to be listening to me with interest.

‘‘I believe, mademoiselle,’ he told me, ‘ that I can offer you employment. I am looking for horsewomen for the Hippodrome.’ 1

‘ Oh,’ Mme Alphonse said to me, ‘ that is just what you need. You will learn how to ride in no time. They are going to open a magnificent racecourse at Barrière de l’Etoile.’

I asked how much I would earn.

‘ That will depend on your aptitude and what you will learn how to do. For now, I can give you one hundred francs a month.’

‘‘I must admit,’ I said, ‘ that is quite tempting. And you will give me an engagement?’

‘‘Right away, if you wish.’

‘‘When is my first lesson?’’

‘‘Next week. As early as tomorrow I shall introduce you to my son.’

When he was gone, Mme Alphonse told me, ‘‘You cannot lose since you will be learning how to ride a horse from the best riding teacher in Paris. M. Laurent Franconi is quite a remarkable man.’ 2

Everything was arranged and signed the next day. My play was closing at Beaumarchais. I left the theater.

     ( ) I was very cheerful. I rushed over to Lise’s house. She had been released the night before. She was so ashamed, she refused to see anyone. I walked up to the third floor. She was in a tiny room facing the courtyard.

The key was in the door, so I went in without knocking. I found her stretched out on a small cot of painted wood.

‘ Oh! My dear Céleste, I know you have come by several times. I am worn out. You did not think that I had stolen anything, did you?’’

‘‘No, since I am here. But tell me what happened, because it seems like a dream.’