Complete Works of Emile Zola (1817 page)

They came in mystery; they did not appear to know each other, and yet to look at them one could have sworn that they all belonged to one and the same lamentable and unfortunate family.

Who knows? Perhaps they were born like this, old and bent; or perhaps they had all had the same ardent youth, which, having burned up their flesh, preserved them — immortal, withered, and stiff.

This last thought took my fancy very much. I saw them dressed in white muslin with red ribbons, laughing eyes, moist lips, dancing in the “Closeries” of the last century and throwing kisses to the men.

IV

ONE June evening, at the hour when twilight was creeping over the chestnuts of the Luxembourg gardens, an old woman with blue eyes came and sat down on a stone bench where I was dreaming. As she sat down her petticoat was pushed up at the side a little, and I perceived in a big laced shoe the most sweet little foot one can imagine.

She kept her head down, and the black hat hid her face from me. She had crossed her poor little frail, girlish hands, and wrapped herself more tightly in her shawl, thin as she was. One would have thought she was a child of twelve.

Perhaps she was conscious of the pity that so deeply moved my heart, for she raised her head and looked at me with her vague, swimming eyes.

That look which met mine for a second told me a long story of love and regrets. There was in those pale coloured eyes a tender sadness, combined with all the desires of youth and all the lassitude of old age. The nights of dissipation had reddened her eyelids, and the eyelashes were missing, burnt up by the hot tears of passion. No doubt this old woman with the blue eyes still loved; no doubt she was not tired of love, but regretted the rapidity with which the years flew by. And she was trembling in the sun, thinking of the warm kisses of former years.

I believed I had penetrated into the very heart of one of these mysterious beings. Her eyes had spoken, and I said to myself that now I knew whence the old women with the blue eyes come, who still, as they passed through the streets, now and then cast love looks at the young men.

They came from our fathers’ loves.

V

I WAS watching the little foot in the big leather shoe.... She was sixteen. She was a pretty little girl, all pink and white, with soft cinder-coloured hair, which curled loosely down the sides of her cheeks. Big golden eyelashes veiled her deep blue eyes, and she had on her chin a dimple which was most noticeable when she laughed. She was always laughing. Her soft, cinder-coloured hair had made them give her the name of Cendrine. Others called her Risette, because they had never seen her lips without the smile that made the little dimple on her chin.

She was not like the girls of the present day, who have found out the way to be clothed in satins and silks without threading a needle even once a day. She sewed the whole day through, and only wore a plain cotton dress like an Indian. But what a beautiful Indian she was — bright, tidy, modest, and open-hearted. A linen cap on her head, a light kerchief round her neck, with white stockings and bare arms, and she greeted you like an honest girl, holding out her hand and looking at you with good humour in her eyes and on her lips. All her little person expressed a tender, affectionate disposition and a wholesome, strong light-heartedness. In her bursts of laughter there was a loving sweetness which went straight to the heart.

Cendrine, one must confess, had a capricious heart. But this heart was so full of frankness. It loved much, a little in all directions, never in more than two places at a time. This piece of simplicity in love, who allowed herself to be so foolishly carried away by her affections, went where her kisses went, without protection. Besides, she did not conceal her love; she loved in the full light of day. She used to say, “I love you,” and she did not hesitate the least bit more when she said, “I do not love you any longer.” As her last kiss was always just as hearty as her first, none of her lovers had ever thought of being angry with her.

Risette was well known by the trees of the neighbourhood and by the bushes of the public dancing gardens. She found means to work all day and laugh all night. Some asserted that she never slept; others mocked lightly when they heard this. Thus, then, she led a free and easy life; she lived in the good health that work brings, and in the tender voluptuousness of love. She gave her heart as one gives alms, counting her kisses as of no value, and believing all the time in the eternity of youth.

Cendrine, Risette, the child with the cindery hair, the sweetheart who was always laughing in order to show the dimple on her chin, was singing now at the top of her voice the song of sixteen years; in a hurry to love, to love much, and not to lose any time about it. She used her little feet in running about the grass, on the boards of ballrooms, anywhere and everywhere where there were any kisses in the air.

The skirt has fallen again over the little foot, which now rests quietly in the big leather shoe....

My eyes slowly travelled from the feet to the face. The face looked frightful to me — wan and of a red-brick colour, with gray hair drawn down tightly over the temples. The eyes, dull and moist, were of a dirty blue. The dimple formed a black hole in the middle of the projecting bone of the chin.

Oh, what a sad sweetheart, shivering in the sun, old and deserted! Youth had not been eternal, and one night her lovers had shuddered before her worn-out lips; even as I shuddered when she looked at me with glazed eyes.

Well! no, I love you still, poor Risette, poor Cendrine! I am determined only to see your little foot, only to follow you through the streets eternally, without speaking to you, like a timid lover. You shall be the sweetheart of my sad days; you, of whom I have dreamed on a fine sunny day on a seat in the Luxembourg gardens.

Pray do not give me the lie, dear old women with blue eyes, when I declare that you are the desolate phantoms of the young lovers of days gone by.

THE CONTRASTS

I

EVERYTHING is sold in Paris — wise virgins and foolish ones, truths and lies, smiles and tears.

You know very well that in this commercial country, beauty is a commodity in which a frightful trade is driven. Big eyes and little mouths are bought and sold; noses and chins are valued at their exact price. Each dimple, each grain of beauty represents a fixed sum. And, as counterfeiting is always carried on, the natural merchandise is often imitated; and false eyebrows, traced with the burnt ends of matches, and false chignons, fixed on to the hair by means of long pins, are sold at a much higher price.

All this is just and logical. We are a civilised nation, and I should just like to know of what use civilisation would be if it did not help us to deceive and be deceived in order to make life possible.

But I must say that I was really astonished when I learned yesterday that a tradesman — old Durandean, whom you know as well as I do — had the wonderful and ingenious idea of driving a trade in ugliness. That beauty should be sold one can well understand; that even sham beauty should be bargained for is quite natural; it is a sign of progress. But I maintain that Durandean has deserved well of his country in putting into circulation as an article of commerce that which till now has been considered as dead matter, and which is called Ugliness. Let me not be misunderstood. It is of ugly ugliness I am speaking — of true ugliness, which is honestly sold as ugliness.

You have doubtless at times met women walking two by two on the wide pavements. They go slowly along, stopping at the shop windows and giggling, their skirts dragging in a flattering and alluring way behind them. They take each other’s arms like good friends, and are on a familiar footing. They are of almost the same age, and dressed with equal elegance. But one is always far from being a brilliant beauty, and has a face which nobody would notice particularly, and nobody would turn round to look at a second time; but if you did happen to notice her, you would look at her with some favour. The other woman is always of an atrocious ugliness, an ugliness which irritates you, forces you to look at her, and makes passers-by institute comparisons between her and her companion.

Confess that you have fallen into the trap, and that you have at times begun to follow the two women.

With the monster only on the pavement you would have been terrified. The young woman who is fairly good-looking would have left you perfectly indifferent. But they were together, and the ugliness of the one has enhanced the moderate looks of the other. Well, let me tell you at once the monster, the atrociously ugly woman, belongs to the Durandean agency. She forms part of the staff of the “Contrasts.” The great Durandean has hired her, with her hideous face, at the rate of five francs an hour.

II

HERE is the whole story.

Durandean is an original; an ingenious tradesman, immensely rich, who makes commerce a fine art. He had sighed for many years for a new object in vain, when he reflected that no one had yet been able to extract a sou through dealing in ugly girls. As to speculating in pretty girls, that is a delicate matter, and Durandean, who has a rich man’s scruples, never dreamed of it, I assure you.

Suddenly one day a bright idea seized him. The new idea was born in his brain instantaneously, as happens often to great inventors. He was strolling along the boulevard, when he saw trotting before him two young girls — one beautiful, the other ugly. And at a glance he understood that the ugly one was a set-off to her appearance which the pretty one made use of. Then came the Idea, just as ribbons,
poudre-de-riz
, and false plaits of hair are sold.

It was right and logical, he said to himself, that the pretty one should buy the ugly one as an ornament or set-off that suited her.

Durandean returned home to reflect quietly. The commercial operation that he contemplated required to be carried out with the greatest circumspection. He did not want to throw himself haphazard into an enterprise which would exalt him as a man of superior genius if successful and make him look ridiculous if it failed. He passed a whole night in making his calculations and reading the works of philosophers who have written on the folly of men and the vanity of women. The next morning at daybreak he had made up his mind. His calculations were satisfactory, and the philosophers had spoken so badly of humanity that he already felt sure of a large patronage.

III

I WISH I had a more imaginative pen, so that I might write an epic on the creation of Durandean’s agency. There you would have an epic at once grotesque and sad, full of tears as well as full of laughter.

Durandean had more trouble than he anticipated in laying in a stock of merchandise. Wishing to have no intermediary, he was satisfied at first by sticking on the water-pipes of houses and against trees in out-of-the-way places, little square pieces of paper on which these words were plainly inscribed, written by hand:—”Wanted, Ugly young girls to do easy work.”

He waited eight days, and not a single ugly girl presented herself; but five or six pretty ones came and asked for work with tears in their eyes; they were hanging, pausing, hesitating between hunger and vice, and they still thought of saving themselves by work.

Durandean, very much perplexed, told them — and he had to repeat it — that they were pretty, and were not at all suitable for his purpose. But they maintained that they were ugly; that it was pure flattery and wickedness on his part to tell them the contrary. And having been unable to sell the ugliness they did not possess, they must sell the beauty they do. They became almost threatening in their demeanour.

Durandean, after this, clearly saw that it is only good-looking girls who have the courage to confess to an imaginary ugliness. As to the ugly ones — well, they never would acknowledge that their mouth was outrageously wide and that their eyes were ridiculously small. And so they kept away. It was evident that if he stuck up notices on every wall he came across, offering ten francs to every plain chit who would present herself, he would find himself not a sou the poorer.

Thereupon Durandean gave up bill-sticking. But he engaged half a dozen brokers or agents, and let them loose on the town in search of monstrosities. Their mission was a sort of a general recruiting of the ugliness of Paris. The brokers, though they were men of tact and taste, had a rough job; they went to work according to the character and position of the clients they sought — abruptly when the person they had wished to secure had pressing need of money; exercising greater delicacy when they had to do with a girl who was not yet quite dying of hunger. It is very awkward for a polite man to have to go and say to a woman: “Madame, you are ugly; I will buy your ugliness at so much a day.”

Now, there were in this hunt after poor girls, who shed tears before their looking-glass, some remarkable episodes. Sometimes the agents grew desperate; they saw, perhaps, a woman of ideal ugliness passing down a street, and they were anxious to bring her round to Durandean to earn their master’s goodwill, cash, and thanks. Therefore, at times they had to resort to extreme measures.

Every morning Durandean received and inspected the merchandise which had been “got together,” if the term be permissible, the previous day. Seated in state in his armchair, dressed in a yellow dressing-gown and black satin smoking-cap, he made the new recruits, each accompanied by her agent, pass in file before him. Then he threw himself back, winked his eye, and putting on the airs of a connoisseur who is either displeased or satisfied, he slowly took a pinch of snuff, and pondered; then he made the piece of goods turn herself about, to see her better and examine her in all her points; sometimes even he rose, touched her hair, examined her face, just as a tailor feels a material, or a grocer makes sure of the quality of a candle or some soap or sugar or rice. When the ugliness was very pronounced, when the countenance was stupid and heavy, Durandean rubbed his hands; he congratulated the agent on his success; he was sometimes so overjoyed that he felt inclined to embrace the lovely, that is to say, the ugly monster. But he mistrusted those who had merely natural ugliness. When their eyes sparkled, and their lips had a pointed smile, he frowned and muttered to himself that a girl of that sort of ugliness, if she was not made for love, was often able to excite and win it and very likely cut out all the prettiest girls that ever flirted; then he would evince a certain degree of coldness towards the agent, and would tell the woman to call again later — when she was old.