Memoirs of a Courtesan in Nineteenth-Century Paris (9 page)

Everyone was going, men, women, children. M. Grange was paying.

I went without asking for permission. My mother lost her temper and beat me harder than usual.

I often got slapped. Vincent would take my side, but I did not want to owe him anything, and I would position myself to receive the beatings.

‘‘What right do you have to preach to me. If I wanted to do wrong, it is not your supervision that would prevent me. There is already talk at the shop that you set a poor example for me.’

I was a few feet from her. She looked at me with frightening eyes.

Vincent looked astounded.

On a table next to my mother was a little mother-of-pearl-handled knife. Vincent had given it to me. She threw it in my face. Her aim was good. Thank goodness the hilt was heavier than the blade. Instead of coming at me like an arrow and going into my eye, the knife cut my left eyebrow.

Blood flooded my face. My mother fainted, and cried a lot when she came to; I got off with just a scratch.

Vincent scolded her. She tried to make me forget with tender attention and caresses. But it was too late, my heart was closed to this tenderness, which up until then had filled it exclusively. Instead of instilling in me trust and affection, she had allowed my bad instincts to grow without fighting them.

If at that moment I had had the means at hand to get an education, I believe I would have profited from one. The void that had filled my heart made me live through my mind. Unfortunately, my desire to know overtook the resources I had to learn, and I could barely read.

I was going on fifteen. Supposedly I was pretty. Louise was becoming ugly and had lovers, and that did not enhance her looks.

We moved to  Rue Neuve Culture-Sainte-Catherine. The house was on the corner. The windows looked out on Rue Culture, but from our house we could see the Eglise Saint-Paul and the Rue Saint-Antoine.5

The house was clean; however, the alley was strangely laid out. The stairs ended on the street. The only shop, which extended all around the house, was occupied by the owner, a wine merchant.



M. Vincent

Our lodgings were on the third floor and were composed of three rooms: a kitchen, a large room with an alcove, and another room, without a fireplace, whose light source came through a door that could be locked. A muslin curtain covered the glass half of the door, but that did not prevent being able to see everything going on in my mother’s room.

M. Vincent had given up being a stonemason. He found work in an office. He lived at our house. They were a couple.

In spite of all that I did to him, he seemed to like me more each day.

He would give me presents, was loving, and seemed to care more for me than my mother.

One night when I had just gone to bed I heard him tell my mother, ‘‘I tell you that you must take her back in to work with you. She is almost fifteen and those crickets over there are after her.’

My mother answered, ‘‘You know very well that it is not up to me.

She would not want to leave her shop.’

‘‘Pooh! There is always a way to make a girl stay with her mother, and I shall assume the responsibility of watching over her.’

My mother told Vincent that he was crazy, and that if I suspected in the least he was watching over me, I would try to run away from home.

My grandfather came down with scurvy. He had gone to stay with one of his brothers in Fontainebleau.

Feeling very ill, he wrote my mother entreating her to spend a few days with him. My mother left, advising me to do the housework.

  

I would go home every evening as usual. M. Vincent would come home very late.

Two or three times I woke up suddenly. He was standing near my bed, a light in his hand.

‘‘What do you want?’’ I would say to him.

‘‘Nothing. I have to watch over you during your mother’s absence.

You have suitors. Do you know that you are almost of marriageable age?

The one who will get you will be mighty happy.’

Then he would leave staring at me with fiery eyes.

He received a letter from my mother. He told me that my grandfather was very sick, and that my mother would stay with him another week or so.

That day I came home in tears. I had quarreled with Louise. Her father took her side. I asked for my wages, which they gave me. I was now unemployed.



M. Vincent

‘‘Why do you torment yourself so,’ said Vincent. ‘‘I love you, even though you hate me. All that I shall have will be for you.’

And taking me in his arms, he kissed me several times. Then he held me tighter and tighter, so close to him that I began to tremble.

I did not reply, but I ran to my room.

‘ What is the matter?’’ he asked.

‘‘Nothing,’ I answered, because I did not know why I had run away.

I came back, contrite, and I sat down near the window. He sat next to me.

‘‘You must have quite a grudge against me that you run away when I come near you! You are jealous of me because of your mother. You are wrong because, had it not been for you, I would have been long gone.’

I looked at him surprised. He took my hand and continued, ‘‘I am a skirt-chaser, I like women, but until now, I have not been capable of loving the same one for very long. You, however, I have not been able to leave.’

He looked me straight in the eyes and held my hand.

‘ You are wrong,’ I replied. ‘ I have never been jealous of you. I hate you because my mother loves you more than she loves me. If you stayed because of me, you made a mistake.’

He seemed taken aback. I took this opportunity to say that it was late, and I retreated to my little cabinet. Since he was not keeping the light on, I turned mine out and undressed in the dark.

I spent the next day at home. Two men came to invite Vincent to dinner. They left their names.

He came home around three o’clock. I handed him the note they had written and he left to meet them.

I spent the day mending some of my things. At ten that evening I was still working. I had taken my dress off to redo the hem. I was in my slip and chemise when I heard a knock at the door. I put my shawl around my shoulders and opened the door. Vincent came in tipsy.

‘ You made a conquest this afternoon,’ he said. ‘ The short one told me that he liked you. I replied that the stove was not burning for him, that I was keeping you.’

‘‘What do you mean, you are keeping me! Are you under the impression that I shall never marry?’’

‘ Unless you want to marry me.’

I backed up a little.

‘‘You!’’ I said, ‘‘I certainly hope you would not dare ask me!’’

‘‘I told you yesterday that I love you.’



M. Vincent

I looked at the door. I saw that he had locked it and removed the key.

‘‘What do you want from me?’’

He hesitated a moment, stretched his arms out to embrace me, and replied in a low voice, ‘‘I want you to love me! I want you! I shall have you! . . .’

He grabbed me by the waist and hugged me tight.

I tried so hard to slip to the floor that I was successful, and, hanging on to the bed post with all my strength, I screamed for help. He snatched my shawl and tore my fichu. I crossed my arms to hide my almost bare breasts. He lifted me and squeezing tight said, ‘‘Hush up!

Give yourself willingly, or I shall have you by force.’

His head was leaning against my shoulder, and I felt his damp mouth.

On a sudden impulse, I bit his arm so hard he yelled and let go of me.

I ran to the window, opened it, and, climbing out on the ledge, told him, ‘‘If you come near me, I shall jump.’

He asked for forgiveness, told me that he had had a moment of temporary insanity, but that I could come down and he gave his word he would not try anything again. It is not because I trusted his word that I decided to leave my position, but because of the terrifying void I could see below me.

Tugging on my skirt and my arm, trying to get me down from the window, he told me, ‘‘You think that I am going to leave so you can accuse me. I want to be able to tell your mother that you are the one who provoked me!’’

I began to scream. He pulled me so hard I broke one of the window panes with my elbow.

At that moment, there was some noise in the street and Vincent got scared. He ran out and the door stayed open.

My arm was cut in three places. I put on my dress, my shawl, a bonnet, and left, not quite knowing where I was going.

  

Once downstairs, I pushed the door open and ran toward Place Royale.

I came back by way of Rue Saint-Antoine. The bells of Eglise Saint-Paul were striking two in the morning. I turned onto Rue Culture. I sidled along the houses.

I saw the light in the window. What was he doing? . . . Why had he come back? . . . He had not seen me go out. He must have thought I had fainted or was dead.

I saw him look out the window, and I hid behind a scaffolding.



M. Vincent

This neighborhood is still quite dreary, but in those days, everything was closed after ten at night.

I crossed the street and stood outside the porte cochere of the grain merchant next door.

I had been walking for two hours.

The herb and grain merchant’s shop was at the back of the courtyard.

The granary where he stored his straw and hay was on the second floor.

I was leaning against his door. Probably someone had forgotten to lock it.

I went inside and corrected that oversight.

It is horrible to be fifteen and alone in the streets of Paris, without a friend.

I walked around the courtyard a little, found the stairs to the hayloft.

I went in. I lay down on bales of straw and slept until first light.



5

o

Thérèse

Corruption of a Minor out of Pity—Vice Squad—At the House of Detention—Wretched Childhood in the Slums—M. Régnier, Magistrate for the Prostitutes—The Iron Cage

‘      ?’’ I was saying to myself as I woke up shiv-ering from the cold. ‘‘I cannot go back home. My mother wrote five days ago that she would be back in a week. She will be arriving tomorrow or later. But what am I to do for two days?’

I spent that day on the wharf watching people fish. I had ten sous. I spent two on bread.

Five days later, my mother still had not come back.

I was crying . . . , I was hungry, and I could not walk anymore.

I sat on the steps of Eglise Saint-Paul and put my head in my hands.

Several people walked by without looking at me. I felt someone tap me on the shoulder.

‘‘What are you doing here, little girl? You have been here more than two hours. Are you crying?’’

The person addressing me was a rather pretty twenty-five- to thirty-year-old woman.

She was wearing a black silk dress, a bonnet with ribbons, a jumper with colorful flowers in the style of the day. She hiked up her dress on one side and revealed a well-turned foot in a black high-top shoe. Her very white, perfectly straight stockings denoted habits of elegant clean-liness.

I told her why I was there. She stepped into a corner that separated the shops from the church. It was dark and she seemed to want to avoid being seen.

‘‘Poor girl,’ she said, ‘ do you think your mother will be back soon?’’

She asked me if I had written to her. I answered that I did not know



Thérèse

how to write, and that, in any case, I did not know her address in Fontainebleau.

‘‘You cannot sleep in the street. . . . I cannot take you. . . . Oh, well, never mind, you have to eat. You see, I cannot walk by your side. Follow me a few steps behind and enter where you will see me enter.’

      

I was so afraid of losing her that I was walking on her heels. I saw her laugh with women who were walking back and forth.

She stopped in front of a wine merchant’s door and glanced inside the shop, which was crowded.

She took an alley that abutted the shop, opened a door that probably led to one of the wine merchant’s rooms, and picked up a candle and a key with a brass number. Once on the second floor, she opened a glass door draped with poppy-red calico curtains.

The ceiling was low. There was a bed, a sort of sofa, two chairs, a table.

‘ Come in,’ she said. ‘ Tomorrow, I shall go see if your mother is back.

You will be better here than in the street.’

She came back with bread, wine, and cold cuts. I had been so hungry that my stomach had shrunk.

‘‘Well,’ she asked, ‘ are you feeling better?’’

‘‘Yes, madame. I want to thank you! . . .’

And I kissed her enthusiastically.

I asked her what she did. She replied, ‘ What I do! . . . I am doing something bad bringing you to my rooms. I was like you. A man ruined me the way one wanted to ruin you six days ago. I did not defend myself, and this is where it led me. I have to hide the fact that I am keeping you here for a day or two. If it was known that you are here, we would be suspected of things you or I could not even imagine, and I would be in a lot of trouble. How old are you?’’

‘‘I am going on fifteen.’

‘‘Fifteen!’’ she repeated. ‘‘My God, that would cost me six months!’’

‘ Six months!’’ I said without understanding.

‘‘Yes, girl. Corruption of a minor!’’

‘ I do not understand.’

‘‘It is not easy to explain. I am not Thérèse anymore, I am a number.

I do not follow my will anymore but the regulations on a card. If I want to go out bareheaded, the regulations state that I must wear a bonnet.

If I want to go out during the day, the regulations forbid it. I am not allowed to walk down certain esplanades. I must never appear at a win-



Thérèse

dow, and I especially must never go out with an honest woman. Judge for yourself what would happen with a fifteen year old girl! They would say I want to sell you.’

I looked at her. This confession did not distance me from her.

‘‘Be very careful, little one, and never fall prey to this vice! Because you see, I would regret not letting you die of hunger. Now go to bed.