That Monday morning, she was preparing a basket of red carnations when Princess d’Orviedo’s maid, old Sophie, came down to tell her that her mistress wanted to speak to her right away. Astonished, and slightly worried, Madame Caroline hurried up the stairs. She had not seen the Princess for several months, having resigned her post as secretary at the Work Foundation after the crash of the Universal. She now only went to the Boulevard Bineau at rare intervals, just to see Victor, on whom the strict discipline now seemed to be having some effect, still with one eye lower than the other, the left cheek larger than the right, and his mouth pulled into a grimace of mocking ferocity. She immediately had the feeling that it was on account of Victor that she was being called.
The Princess d’Orviedo was at last ruined. It had taken her barely ten years to return to the poor the three hundred millions she had inherited from the Prince, millions stolen from the pockets of credulous shareholders. If she had needed five years to spend the first hundred million in extravagant good works, she had managed in only four and a half years to swallow up the other two hundred million in establishments of even more amazing luxury. To the Work Foundation, the St Mary Crèche, the St Joseph Orphanage, the Chatillon Home, and the St Marceau Hospital, she had added a model farm near Évreux, two convalescent homes by the sea for children, another old people’s retirement home in Nice, hospitals, workers’ housing developments, libraries and schools all over France, not to mention large donations to already established charities. It was of course still that same determination to make royal restitution, not the crust of bread thrown to the wretched out of pity or fear, but giving enjoyment of life, luxuries, everything that is good and beautiful, to the humble folk who have nothing, and to the weak, that part of joy stolen from them by the strong: in short, the palaces of the wealthy opened wide to roadside beggars so that they too might sleep in silk and eat from vessels of gold. For ten years the showers of gold had not ceased, with marble dining-halls, dormitories brightened by colourful pictures, buildings with façades as monumental as the Louvre, gardens blooming with rare plants, ten years of magnificent constructions, with an incredibly wasteful use of building contractors and architects; and the Princess was now happy, uplifted by the great joy of having clean hands at last, with not a centime left. She had even managed the astonishing feat of getting into debt, and was being sued for a balance outstanding on some bills amounting to several hundred thousand francs, a sum her lawyers were unable to find in the final frittering away of that huge fortune thrown to the four winds of charity. And a placard nailed above the front entrance announced the sale of the house, the ultimate stroke that would sweep away even the last vestiges of the accursed money gathered in the mire and blood of financial brigandage.
Upstairs, old Sophie was waiting for Madame Caroline, to take her in. Furious at what had happened, she now carried on scolding all day long. Ah, she had said all along that Madame would end up a pauper. Shouldn’t Madame have remarried and had children with another gentleman, since that was the only thing she really cared about? It wasn’t that she, Sophie, had anything to complain or worry about, for she had long ago been given an annuity of two thousand francs, on which she was going to live, back in her birthplace near Angoulême. But she was overcome with rage at the thought that Madame had not even kept back for herself the few sous needed each morning for the bread and milk on which she now lived. Quarrels kept breaking out between the two women. The Princess just smiled her divine smile of hope, and responded that by the end of the month she would need nothing other than a shroud, once she had entered the convent in which she had long ago reserved her place, a Carmelite convent completely shut off from the world. Rest! Everlasting rest!
Madame Caroline found the Princess looking just the same as she had seen her over the last four years, dressed in her eternal black dress, her hair hidden beneath a lace shawl, still pretty at thirty-nine, with her round face and pearly teeth, but with a sallow complexion, the flesh seeming dead, as if after ten years in the cloister. And the small room, like the office of a provincial bailiff, was filled with a huge pile of papers, hopelessly jumbled together: plans, accounts, files, all the paper wasted in the squandering of three hundred millions.
‘Madame,’ said the Princess in her slow and gentle voice, a voice no longer troubled by any emotion, ‘I wanted to let you know about some news that was brought to me this morning… it’s about Victor, the boy you placed with the Work Foundation…’
Madame Caroline’s heart began to beat painfully. Ah, the wretched child, whom his father, despite his solemn promises, had not even been to see, during the few months in which he had known of his existence before being imprisoned in the Conciergerie. What would become of him now? And she, who refused to allow herself to think about Saccard, was continually being brought back to him, disturbed in her adoptive motherhood.
‘Terrible things happened yesterday,’ the Princess went on, ‘a crime, in fact, that nothing can repair.’
And in her ice-cold manner she related an awful happening. For the last three days, Victor had got himself placed in the infirmary, claiming to have unbearable pains in his head. The doctor had certainly suspected this might be merely the pretence of an idler, but the child really had suffered from frequent attacks of neuralgia. Now that afternoon, Alice de Beauvilliers was at the Foundation without her mother; she had gone to help the sister on duty with the quarterly inventory of the medicine cupboard. This cupboard was in the room that separated the two dormitories, the girls’ dormitory from the boys’, in which, at that time, Victor was the only occupant; and the sister, who had gone out for a few minutes, had been very surprised on her return not to find Alice; indeed, after waiting a few minutes, she had started to look for her. Her astonishment had increased on observing that the door of the boys’ dormitory had been locked on the inside. What could be happening? She had had to go right round by the corridor, and had stood gaping in terror at the spectacle that presented itself: the young girl lay half-strangled, a towel tied over her face to stifle her screams, her skirts pulled up roughly, displaying the pitiful nakedness of an anaemic virgin, raped and defiled with appalling brutality. On the floor lay an empty purse. Victor had disappeared. The scene could be reconstructed: Alice, perhaps answering a call, going in to give a cup of milk to that fifteen-year-old boy, already as hairy as a man, and then the monster’s sudden hunger for that frail flesh, that overlong neck, and the leap of the nightshirted male, the girl, suffocating, thrown on to the bed like a rag, raped and robbed, and then a hasty pulling on of clothes, and flight. But so many points remained obscure, so many baffling and insoluble questions! How was it no one had heard anything, no sound of a struggle, no cry? How could such frightful things have happened so quickly, in barely ten minutes? And above all, how had Victor been able to escape, to vanish, as it were, leaving no trace? For after the most meticulous searches, it had been definitely established that he was no longer in the building. He must have fled through the bathroom giving on to the corridor, where one of the windows opened on to a series of tiered roofs stretching right down to the Boulevard, and yet this escape-route was so very dangerous that many refused to believe that a human being would have been able to take it. Alice had been brought back to her mother’s house, where she had taken to her bed, bruised, distraught, sobbing, and shaking with a high fever.
Madame Caroline, on hearing this story, was so shocked that it seemed as if her heart’s blood had frozen. A memory had come back to her, horrifying her with a hideous convergence: Saccard, years ago, taking the wretched Rosalie on the stairs and dislocating her shoulder at the very moment of the conception of this child, whose crushed cheek still bore witness to that event;* and now today, Victor, in his turn, violently assaulting the first girl that fortune offered him. What pointless cruelty! That young girl, so gentle and desolate, the last of her line, and on the point of giving herself to God, since she was unable to have a husband like any other girl! What sense could it have, this imb
ecilic and abominable encounter? Why smash the present with that past event?
‘I don’t want to reproach you at all, Madame,’ the Princess went on, ‘it would be quite unfair to make you feel in the least responsible. But in this boy you certainly had a really terrible protégé.’
Then, as if by an unexpressed association of ideas, she added:
‘There are some environments in which one cannot live with impunity… I have myself had very serious qualms of conscience, I felt myself to have been complicit when that bank recently crashed, creating such a heap of ruins and iniquities. Yes, I should not have agreed to let my house become the cradle of such an abomination… But there, the harm is done, the house will be cleansed, and as for me, oh! I don’t exist any more, God will forgive me.’
Her pale smile, of hope at last fulfilled, had reappeared as, with a gesture, she indicated her departure from the world, and the disappearance for ever of this invisible good angel.
Madame Caroline had seized her hands and clasped them, kissing them, so overwhelmed with remorse and pity that she could only stammer incoherently:
‘You’re wrong to excuse me, I am guilty… That poor girl, I must see her, I shall go at once to see her…’
And she went away, leaving the Princess and Sophie, her old servant, to do their packing for the great departure which was to separate them after forty years of life together.
On the Saturday two days before, Countess de Beauvilliers had resigned herself to abandoning her house to her creditors. She had not been paying the mortgage interests for the last six months, and the situation had become intolerable amid expenses of all sorts, and the continual threat of an enforced sale; her lawyer had advised her to leave everything and retire to a small apartment, where she could live on very little, while he would try to pay off her debts. She would not have given up, would perhaps have continued obstinately to try to maintain her rank, persevering with her pretence of an undamaged fortune, even to the point of risking the extinction of her race under collapsing ceilings, were it not for a further misfortune which had laid her low. Her son, Ferdinand, the last of the Beauvilliers, that useless young man, who had been kept away from any employment, and had become a pontifical Zouave to escape his nullity and idleness, had died ingloriously in Rome without any glory, his blood being so impoverished, and his body so unable to withstand the fierce sun, that he had not been able to fight at Mentana,* being feverish and his lungs already affected. After that she had felt a sudden inner emptiness, a crumbling of all her ideas, all her resolution, and all the laboriously constructed scaffolding that for so many years had so proudly upheld the honour of her name. It took only twenty-four hours; the whole house had collapsed and penury made its distressing appearance in the debris. The old horse was sold and only the cook remained, going shopping in a dirty apron for two sous of butter and a litre of dried beans, and the Countess was seen on the pavement with mud on her dress and leaking boots on her feet. It was penury overnight, disaster sweeping away even the pride of this woman still faithful to a bygone age and at war with her century. She had taken refuge with her daughter in the Rue de la Tour-des-Dames, in the house of an old second-hand-clothes dealer who, having turned pious, rented out furnished rooms to priests. There the two women lived in one large, bare room, dignified and depressing in its wretchedness, with an alcove closed off at one end. The alcove was occupied by two small beds, and when the folding doors, covered with the same paper as the walls, were closed, the room was transformed into a drawing-room. That happy arrangement had somewhat comforted them.
But the Countess de Beauvilliers had scarcely been there two hours on that Saturday, when an unexpected and extraordinary visit threw her back into fresh anguish. Alice, fortunately, had just gone out on an errand. The visitor was Busch, with his dull and dirty face, his greasy overcoat, and his white cravat rolled into a string, who, prompted perhaps by his instinct for when the time was ripe, had decided at last to get on with the old business of the promissory note signed by the Count de Beauvilliers to Léonide* Cron for ten thousand francs. With one glance at their lodgings, he grasped the widow’s situation: had he perhaps waited too long? And, as one capable, on occasion, of urbanity and patience, he had lengthily explained the case to the alarmed Countess. It was indeed her husband’s writing, was it not? And this clearly established the facts of the case: the Count had had a passion for the young person, so first, he finds a way of having her, and then a way of getting rid of her. Busch did not even conceal from the Countess the fact that, after nearly fifteen years, he did not believe she could legally be forced to pay. But he was merely acting for his client, whom he knew to be resolved on taking the matter to court, and creating the most frightful scandal if no compromise could be found. The Countess, white-faced and struck to the heart by the reawakening of that awful past, expressed astonishment that they had waited so long before contacting her, whereupon Busch invented a tale about the note being lost, then found again at the bottom of a trunk; and as she absolutely refused to discuss the matter further, he had gone away, still very polite, saying he would come back with his client, not next day, as she could not leave her place of work on a Sunday, but certainly on Monday or Tuesday.
That Monday, in the midst of the appalling events that had befallen her daughter, who had been brought back to her, delirious, the Countess, looking after her with eyes blinded by tears, was not thinking at all about that scruffy-looking man and his cruel story. At last, Alice had fallen asleep, and her mother had just sat down, worn out, and crushed by this further blow of relentless fate, when Busch presented himself once more, accompanied this time by Léonide.
‘Madame, here is my client, we must get the matter settled.’
At the sight of the girl, the Countess had shuddered. She looked at her, dressed in garish colours, her coarse black hair falling down upon her eyebrows, her wide, flabby face, her whole person sordid and vile, worn out by ten years of prostitution. And the Countess felt wounded, her womanly pride cut to the quick after so many years of forgiving and forgetting. It was, dear Lord! for creatures destined to fates like this, that the Count had betrayed her.
‘The matter must be settled,’ Busch insisted, ‘because my client needs to get back to the Rue Feydeau.’
‘Rue Feydeau,’ the Countess repeated, uncomprehending.
‘Yes, that’s where she is. In the brothel.’
Bewildered and with trembling hands, the Countess went over to close the alcove properly, since only one of the doors was pushed to. Alice had just moved, feverishly, under her coverlet. If only she went back to sleep! If only she didn’t see, and didn’t hear!
Busch was already going on:
‘Look, Madame, just understand… Mademoiselle has entrusted me with this business, and I represent her, that’s all. That’s why I wanted her to come in person to explain what she is seeking… Come then, Léonide, explain yourself.’
Anxious and ill at ease in the role he was making her play, Léonide turned her big, cloudy eyes on him with a hangdog look. But the hope of the thousand francs he had promised made her decide. And while he, once more, unfolded and held up the Count’s note, she, with her hoarse voice, roughened by alcohol, began:
‘Yes, that’s it, that’s the paper Monsieur Charles signed for me… I was the daughter of the carter, Cron the cuckold, as he was called, you see, Madame!… And then Monsieur Charles was always there, hanging on to my skirts, asking for all sorts of dirty things. For me, it was just annoying. When you’re young, you don’t know much, do you? So you’re not kind to old people… So Monsieur Charles signed this paper for me one evening when he’d taken me into the stable…’
Standing there, crucified, the Countess was just letting her talk, when she thought she heard a moan from the alcove. She gestured in anguish.
‘Be quiet!’
But Léonide was in full flow and wanted to finish.
‘It’s really not honest after all, when you don’t want to pay, to go seduc
ing a good little girl… Yes, Madame, your Monsieur Charles was a thief. That’s what they all think, the women I’ve told about it… And I assure you it was well worth the money.’
‘Be quiet! Be quiet!’ cried the Countess in fury, throwing her arms in the air, as if to knock her down, if she went on.
Frightened, Léonide raised her elbow to protect her face, with the instinctive movement of a girl who is used to being slapped. A dreadful silence fell, in which another sound, a moan, choking with tears, seemed to come from the alcove.
‘Well, what do you want?’ said the Countess, trembling, and lowering her voice. Now Busch intervened.
‘But Madame, the girl wants to be paid. And she’s quite right, the poor thing, to say that the Count de Beauvilliers treated her very badly. It’s a straightforward swindle.’
‘Never will I pay such a debt.’
‘Well then, we’ll take a cab as soon as we’ve left you, and go to the Palais de Justice, where I shall lodge the complaint which I’ve already drafted, as you can see here… It contains all the facts Mademoiselle has just told you…’
‘Monsieur, that’s an abominable piece of blackmail; you won’t do that.’
‘I beg your pardon, Madame, I shall do it at once. Business is business.’
An immense weariness, an utter discouragement, came over the Countess. That last bit of pride which had held her up had just been broken, and all her violence, all her strength, collapsed with it. She clasped her hands, and stammered:
‘But you can see how it is with us. Just look round this room… We have nothing left, tomorrow perhaps not even anything to eat… Where do you expect me to get money, ten thousand francs, my God!’