Memoirs of a Courtesan in Nineteenth-Century Paris (33 page)

‘‘Now, now,’ replied the Panther, ‘ do not get upset. Horns are like teeth, they hurt when they are growing. Once they are out, they can be used to eat with. You are a living example of this, since, thanks to your wife, you have a position that allows you to live.’

The man frowned. I pulled Victorine away, dragging her through the crowd.

The hour was over and I did not see Jean. My companion guessed my thoughts.

‘‘Why is he not coming?’’ she asked me.

‘‘I do not know. He let me have the loge I asked for, but I suppose he is pouting. If Lionel knew that he would be delighted.’

‘‘Your Lionel will adore you,’ said Victorine. ‘‘You are doing the right thing. My first lover, a painter, would make me sleep on the tile floor in January. When he left, I felt the cold. I took revenge on my first lover with my second, on the second with my third, and so on. I was called Panther, Snake, but I was loved. Now I am hated. I never have good thoughts; I do not know how to have a good word. I am thirty years old! A titled woman would be young; I am old.’

‘‘Why did you not keep some friends instead of making yourself be hated?’’

‘‘Friends! But honest people do not have any. How could I have any?

I do not lend money!’’



21

o HoorayforReform!

The February Revolution—Châteauroux’s Nonexistence and the Crudeness of the Berry People—A Tree of Freedom and a Quart of Wine

   I went for a walk with Frisette.There were many people in the streets, all whispering. I approached several groups and listened, and did not understand a word they were saying.

Once we reached the boulevard, the crowds were bigger. All we could make out amid the noise was the word ‘ reform!’’ I stopped a young man and asked him what that meant. He replied, ‘‘We want reform.’

‘ Oh! And what kind of reform?’’

He shrugged his shoulders and walked away without answering.

We were on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, in front of the Café de France. There were many young men at the windows. Some of them recognized us and began to yell, ‘‘Hooray for Mogador! Hooray for Frisette!

Hooray for reform and beautiful women!’’

The curious and the strollers gathered around us. The air was charged with peril. I went into the house at number . I knew Madame Emburgé and asked her for permission to wait at her house until there were fewer people outside. She opened a window and we saw this blue-speckled, black stream called the populace march by. It reminded me of Lyon.

However, since everyone must dine, even those who want to wage war, around six o’clock the streets were more passable.

‘‘Have dinner with me,’ said Frisette.

  

I accepted. It was ten o’clock when we parted. When I reached the Rue Le Peletier, I heard an explosion.

‘‘Where are you going?’’ a man asked me.



Hooray for Reform!

‘‘But, monsieur, I would like to get home on the Place de la Madeleine.’

‘‘Well, then, take another route. They have just fired on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.’

I took the Rue Basse-du-Rempart. It was empty. I continued quietly.

I was thinking about Lionel. ‘A revolution,’ I was telling myself ! ‘A revolution, which ruins and forces the nobility to go into hiding. . . .

Oh! If only Lionel needed me, needed my life!’’

At the corner of the Rue Caumartin, the pharmacy had been transformed into a temporary first aid post.

When I got back home I wrote Lionel about everything I had seen, telling him for the first time, ‘‘Do not come.’

I could not sleep. Everyone in the house was up. At four o’clock in the morning, someone knocked on the outside door.

‘ Open, open!’’ I told the concierge. . . . Him, him, at a time like this! . . . ‘ Oh! Lionel, why did you come to Paris? I was happy to know you were in Berry!’

‘‘I can leave if I am in the way!’’

‘ In the way! . . . Oh! Now really, am I not allowed to have a good thought?’’

‘‘My dear child, I did not know what was going on! I left Châteauroux yesterday. When I got to the station, I could not find a carriage. I brought my suitcase over my shoulder.’

The day after his arrival he joined the first legion of the National Guard. The Madeleine post was set on fire! Powder and loaded guns that had been left there were exploding every minute. Lionel came home at five, black with dust and worn out. He had helped tear down the barricades.

There was a commotion under my windows. Approximately a hundred men, nicely dressed, looking rather reasonable, had gathered and were talking. Finally they all went to the carriage station and set fire to the little shed used by the watchman.

They were the neighborhood coachmen having some fun, just like in Lyon. Only there, it was because of the tariffs.

’   

    

The next day we left for Berry. At Etampes I began to breathe easier.

I had not dared ask him about his marriage plans. He was the one who told me that he had been rejected.



Hooray for Reform!

Lionel, young, elegant, with a name and a fortune, should have succeeded at anything. But he had one fault that was a constant obstacle in his life: he was not emotionally stable. I thought I had detected a great strength of character in him, but I was wrong; he had a violent temperament. He did not know how to restrain his passions and his desires. He loved me, and I must have been the reason for many of his uncertain-ties. I could not rise to his level, and he blamed me for having to come down to mine. And yet, out of affection for him, I had changed.

The château, which had become his in the division, was dilapidated.

Only one room attested to a past splendor. The whole estate was three hundred years old. Everything, the château and the rest of the property, needed repairs. The farmers, already in debt, were not paying. The creditors became demanding. Lionel borrowed sixty thousand francs at twenty percent on a first mortgage. There was a revolution. Even though money was for sale at these prices, it was not easy to find. The Belgian farmers told him they wanted to go back to their country. Berry is un-healthy. There are risks of fevers that are difficult to avoid, the work is strenuous, the farm hands are slow because they are not well fed. They can make ends meet only if they deprive themselves. Many of them sell their wheat and eat potatoes or chestnuts. The Belgians could not get used to this poverty. They had been brought there by Lionel’s father, who was hoping to take advantage of the vast lands called heath.

Lionel let them leave. He even gave them some money because one of them had lost his whole harvest in a hail storm. Another had seen three of his relatives die. Others had been sick. The best lands remained vacant.

Châteauroux does not exist. It is the sort of hamlet one goes through looking for the town. The inhabitants are crude. Some of them are so crude, they are no more than savages. When the uncultivated nature of peasants rebels, they become brutal. In the surrounding area there had been some atrocious crimes committed, and several châteaux had been invaded. The caretaker in one of these châteaux had been cut with a scythe. The Villedieu château had been partially burned. The area where we lived was calm, and besides, Lionel was liked. I had gone to Châteauroux in one of his carriages. I heard children yelling. There was a carriage ahead of mine. The coachman made his horses turn around and told me, ‘‘We cannot pass. See, they are pelting the carriage of Madame de

with stones.’

I begged Lionel not to go out, or if he did, to erase the coat of arms off his carriage.

He took this badly, telling me that it would be cowardly.



        

I spent the night wide awake. I was afraid that my presence in the châ-

teau would make him lose the favorable consideration he enjoyed in the region. One day I saw some forty men armed with rifles and pistols in the garden. They were coming toward the château.

Lionel was in the billiard room with Martin. I walked in shouting,

‘‘Flee! Hide! Or you are lost.’

‘‘What is the matter with you?’’ asked Lionel.

‘ The matter with me?’ I said. ‘Armed men are out there, yelling.

Flee, go down to the basement.’

And, certain that he was following me, I ran toward the stairs leading to the basement. It was huge. I turned around, and I saw that he had not followed me.

‘‘Yes! Yes!’’ voices were yelling. ‘ That one! Let us take that one! It is the most beautiful one!’’

Suddenly shots were heard. With each discharge, I could feel myself getting weaker. I wanted to hide inside the wall. Finally, I went back to the stairs. The shooting seemed to recede.

‘‘Where did you just come from?’’ asked Lionel, who was calmly lighting a cigar.

‘ Where I have just come from? From the basement. What did this little skirmish mean?’’

‘‘Listen, and you will find out.’

And in fact, I could hear these words: ‘‘Hooray for M. le Comte!

Hooray for the republic! Hooray for the trees of freedom!’’

We were on the terrace. A man came back, removed his hat, and said to Lionel, ‘‘I hope you do not mind, M. le Comte, if we plant a tree of freedom? If it offends you, then I do not wish to do it; we just want to have some fun and drink a glass to your health.’

‘‘No, I do not mind,’ said Lionel, ‘ since I let you have it along with a quart of wine, and, as long as you do not plant it in my garden, it does not matter to me.’

I had been receiving one letter after another from my maid. I had debts, bills to pay. Lionel, in spite of his great fortune in lands, was poorer than I. I could not, and would not, ask him for anything.

I let him know that I had to go to Paris.

He raised the lid on his writing desk and rifled through his pockets.

‘‘My poor Céleste, I have nothing. I am going to borrow two hundred francs for your trip.’



22

o

Roulette

The Gambling Demon—

It Is Safer to Pay One’s Debts before Playing Again

  , I was in a bind. I did have a few pieces of jewelry that Lionel had given me, but to part with them seemed impossible.

One evening I was at a dinner with Lagie and Frisette.

‘ Come gambling with us,’ they said. ‘ We play roulette every night.

There are several roulette games, but the best is the one on Rue de l’Arcade.’

‘‘But,’ I said to Lagie, ‘ there must be risks. Gambling houses are illegal.’

‘‘Yes, but there is nothing to fear. Not everyone is allowed in. Precautions are taken.’

All I had was one hundred francs. I decided to go in spite of my fear of the police.

Once we were on the Rue de l’Arcade, our carriage stopped in front of a large and beautiful house. We climbed stairs painted red, lit from a distance by little lanterns.

We went up to the sixth floor. Lagie rang. A doorbell sounded three times. A servant came to open. His livery was flashy.

From the anteroom we went into a living room. We were welcomed by a woman in her thirties who probably used to be quite pretty, and who would still be if her pale, skinny face had not been framed by a forest of black hair in long curls that gave her a wild look.

‘‘You have not been her before, mademoiselle?’’ she asked me.

‘‘No, madame, it is my first time.’

‘ Oh! Are you lucky with the red and the black?’

‘‘I do not know.’

She got up and went to speak to some other people. Lagie told me,



Roulette

‘ She is the mistress of the house. I mean by that, the rent is in her name.

The man holding the bank is some sort of amphibious animal. No one knows where he comes from or what country he is from. He put the house in this woman’s name. If the police came, she would be the one taken away.’

I examined her and tried to discern on her the desire for luxury that drove her to her destruction. She dressed simply; her silk dress had been mended; everything about her seemed destitute. Each time the bell rang she would jump off her chair, and she would stare anxiously at the door.

  

‘‘Why do we not start?’’ said a tall young man.

‘ The banker has not arrived,’ replied the mistress of the house, who was watching the clock. ‘‘He will not be long; it is almost eleven.’

‘‘You in a hurry to lose your money, Brésival?’’ said a fat girl called La Pouron.

I went up to Lagie and asked her who this man called Brésival was.

‘ Oh,’ said Lagie, ‘ he does not have much to do with women; he likes gambling too much for that. He is married and has adorable children.

He will end up gambling their baby clothes away.’

A few minutes later a man appeared; he had just let himself in with a key.

The newcomer must have been about forty years old. He wore a black suit and a white tie. His complexion was tan, his hair, brown. He looked a little bit Italian. He spoke to the mistress of the house to give her orders and make reproaches. He looked at me for a long time.

The servant opened both flaps of the door, and I saw a large, well-lighted room, a long table covered with a green cloth, a roulette wheel in the middle, and chairs around. Everyone went in. I stayed near the fireplace in the first room.

‘‘You are not going to play?’’ asked the mistress of the house.

‘‘No,’ I replied, ‘‘I am not used to gambling. Besides, I do not feel safe. Are you not afraid?’’

‘ Oh! Yes,’ she said, ‘ but I cannot let my fear show; yet, I am in great danger.’

‘ So you make a lot of money?’’

‘‘Me!’’ she said, with a sad laugh, ‘‘I am barely fed.’

‘ So you must really love the man who just entered?’’

‘ Me! Love him! I hate him, I despise him, but I am afraid of him.’

Some people came in the room where I was to smoke, so it became



Roulette

impossible to talk. I got up to go to the game. The mistress of the house, who was called La Pépine, said to me softly, ‘‘You do not know how to play? Bet on the hand of this old decorated gentleman over there; he is lucky at the game.’