The Girl from Paris

by Joan Aiken

  “Thank you, madame,” murmured Ellen, impressed by the mix of authority and grace in her manner; who could she be? “I shall be happy—that is, if the Comtesse de la Ferté can spare me.”

  With a smiling salutation the lady took herself off.

  “Who is she?” Ellen asked Germaine.

  “Princess Matilde, the Emperor’s cousin; she married Prince Demidoff, a Russian nobleman, but the marriage failed, and they separated.”

  “That was Napoleon’s cousin? The daughter of the King of Westphalia? Why in the world did you not warn me?”

  “Oh, she makes nothing of her rank; she is quite du peuple; and her house is the most comfortable, informal place in the world. We’ll go there sometime and listen to Madame de Fly reading aloud.”

  Soon after this, Raoul de la Ferté came into the room. The company had thinned after the Princess’s departure; a number of the men left, murmuring about a meeting at Magny’s; and the arrival of the Comte, like a hawk drifting over a chicken run, was enough, it seemed, to disperse the rest of the guests. Yet why? Ellen wondered. He did not appear formidable; in fact he seemed quite sorry to see everyone go. Germaine was among those departing; she kissed her hand to Ellen, and called, “You made a great hit with Théo Gautier! He called you Mademoiselle Myosotis! A bientôt, mon vieux—” and she drifted out.

  Suddenly the temperature in the round room shot down. Ellen, exhilarated, confused, depressed, made haste to express her thanks to Louise, who looked fatigued and distrait, curtsey to the Comte, and take herself away to the solitary but exquisitely served meal which would be brought to her in her own quarters.

  She wondered how the la Fertés would spend the rest of the evening.

  * * *

  Ellen did not attend all the soirees in the round music room. Whether she did so was contingent on three factors: her own conscience, little Menispe’s behavior during the preceding days, and the demeanor of Louise. Sometimes, if Menispe had been noticeably troublesome, or Louise especially unamiable, she judged it best to stay away. If the domestic climate in the Hôtel Caudebec were particularly acrimonious, Ellen felt it more prudent to keep within the bounds usually ascribed to a governess.

  During the month of July, however, the domestic climate remained mild. Raoul held far fewer gambling parties. “All his friends are out of town, that is why,” said Germaine. Louise applied herself with zeal to the history of the Era of Matriarchy, passing whole days in the library, where she kept the disapproving old Abbé Grandville hard at work looking up references and taking down dusty volumes. Not infrequently, though, she paid for this diligence by migraines, which were spoken of with awe throughout the household.

  “La pauvre,” said Véronique. “When she is thus afflicted she can hardly see—and she is in such pain! I have known Michon spend whole days putting ice on her brow. C’est affreux. But what would you? Le bon dieu did not intend ladies to study so hard at books.”

  Intermittently attending the salons in the music room (writers, it appeared, were not so prone to leave Paris during the summer, since, unlike Raoul’s fashionable friends, they had no money and no country houses), Ellen became better acquainted with, and more irresistibly fascinated by, the literary panorama that was spread out before her. And not only literary—representatives from the worlds of music, drama, and art also made their appearance in the Hôtel Caudebec. Pauline Viardot, the ugly bewitching singer, currently using her “bitter orange” voice in Gluck’s Orphée, was to be met there; and Ivan Turgenev, a huge, good-looking, untidy Russian writer, Pauline’s faithful adorer, who followed wherever she went; the composer Gounod; the critic Sainte-Beuve, a little, round, cheerful man, dressed in rough country clothes, his large bald forehead and bulging eyes counterbalanced by a wide, smiling, kindly mouth; there was the poet Baudelaire, an extraordinary-looking individual with hair cropped short like a convict’s, always shabby, in threadbare clothes without cravat or vest—he had haunted eyes and a voice like a musical saw; there was Teresa, singer of burlesques at the Alcazar; Madame Allan, the chief comedienne at the Comédie-Française, who had a loud croaking voice like a frog; Natalie, actress at the Gymnase; Jeanne de Tourbey, a woman of extremely doubtful reputation, who held a salon of her own, was witty, fascinating, and a great friend of Germaine; there were dozens of other writers—the younger Dumas, Feydeau, Xavier Forneret, Lassailly the journalist, Aurélien Scholl, and a quiet bearded man, Dr. Philippe Ricord, who seemed to know everybody, and to have critical opinions about everything.

  “He knows all the men here intimately,” whispered Germaine, pointing out the doctor, “because they all have social diseases for which he treats them. He is a syphilis specialist.”

  Here was another word to be added to Ellen’s rapidly growing vocabulary, and another startling concept for her extending range of ideas. Germaine added, “All these men sleep with prostitutes, of course; why, it is said that Baudelaire and Sainte-Beuve regularly meet on the same stairway; so I strongly advise you, Callisto, not to go to bed with any of them; unless you adhere to Edmond Goncourt’s theory that mental perceptions, like the pox, can never be acquired by a woman save through contact with a man.”

  And she strolled off among the guests, leaving Ellen almost paralyzed by shock.

  That such things could even pass through people’s minds, let alone be freely expressed in words!

  But she was beginning to be accustomed to this astonishing freedom of thought and expression, so different from the atmosphere at home. Possibly in London there might be found sections of society where such opinions as could be heard here were current, and permissible; but in the small English country town where Ellen’s childhood had been passed, characters like Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve, and Baudelaire would be hardly conceivable; they would be regarded with outrage and horror as emissaries of the devil himself. Nor had the propriety of Madame’s Pensionnat in any way prepared Ellen’s mind for what she was to encounter in Paris. Notwithstanding which, this liberal, free-thinking climate suited her wonderfully well; she could almost feel her faculties expanding, day by day.

  George Sand, when she finally visited the rue de l’Arbre Vert, was something of a disappointment; after Germaine’s enthusiastic descriptions, Ellen had expected a kind of fiery Muse, something much more dazzling than this sober, homely lady in gray serge gown and jacket with plain linen collar and sleeves, who talked, slowly and pontifically in a flat monotonous voice, about politics and the conditions of work among the 150,000 female operatives in Paris. She had, moreover, a double chin, a sallow complexion, and muddy eyes. Ellen remembered Baudelaire’s vitriolic comment the week before: “She is heavy, stupid, garrulous; she has about as much depth of judgment as the average concierge. Sapristi! I can’t even think of the stupid woman without a shudder—she’s one of those aging ingénues who refuse to leave the stage. If she is coming, I shall stay away—I couldn’t refrain from throwing a basin of holy water at her head.”

  Ellen wondered that the author of Elle et Lui should be so very prim, so very sedate; now if she appeared in Petworth, Sussex, everybody would take her for a wealthy brewer’s widow.

  Nevertheless, one must acknowledge that Madame Dudevant’s writing style was superior; far superior to that of some other frequenters of the la Ferté salon, such as Lassailly, who had the hero of one of his stories kill his mistress by tickling her feet; or Forneret, whose hero committed suicide by swallowing his mistress’s eyeball.

  If I ever write a novel, thought Ellen—for at some point the idea had become lodged in her mind—if I wrote a romance, I should take George Sand for my model rather than that rocambolesque rubbish.

  But of course I would have to acquire a great deal more experience before I wrote anything…

  Lacking experience she might be, but she often went to bed, after these evenings, so dazzled and ablaze with ideas that it might be hours before she slept. Phrases would recur; Flaubert shouti
ng: “A publisher may exploit you, but he has no right to judge you!”; Sainte-Beuve making some devastating pronouncement: “Balzac may have been a man of genius but he was also a monster!”; Théo Gautier, lit up at the end of a lively evening, dancing a ridiculous pas seul, “the dance of the Creditor”; Flaubert arguing with Feydeau about repetitions in writing: “Tautology is to be avoided at all costs—even if you have to spend a week searching for a synonym”; Baudelaire telling some extraordinary story—the man who fell in love with his friend’s mistress, and, so as to avoid any risk of engaging her affection, shaved off his hair, beard, mustache, and eyebrows—“There is true, disinterested friendship for you!”; or a strange game the company played sometimes when Turgenev and Pauline Viardot were present, in which Turgenev, who had unexpected talent as an artist, drew little portrait heads on bits of paper, and everybody present wrote analytical descriptions of the imaginary persons depicted.

  “Paris is certainly changing you, Callisto,” said Germaine one day. “Not so much the new plumage, though it is charming—”

  “How, then?”

  “When I look into your eyes now, I think they are like deep, deep wells; I gaze and gaze, and it is like a road without an end; the distance is concealed in mystery. There are hidden depths—you are expanding inwardly!”

  “Perhaps I shall explode.” Ellen met the smiling intent scrutiny more composedly than she would have a month ago; she was learning to keep her feet in this new life.

  “When the explosion comes, it will be interesting. Are you about to take Menispe for her outing?”

  “Yes, she has to go to the dentist, poor child.”

  Raoul’s mother, the Dowager Comtesse, had come from Rome, where she lived because of her health. She was staying in Paris for a week, to take part in the conseil de famille regarding the marital situation of Louise and Raoul which was shortly to be held. The Dowager was a formidable little lady, small, of the utmost icy elegance, with an eye that missed nothing. At first she had viewed Ellen with considerable suspicion and reserve, but after twenty-four hours this had given way to a qualified approval; Menispe had, she conceded, learned a few things in the past months and appeared to be a fraction less ungovernable. But the poor child’s teeth were shockingly irregular; what could Louise be about, to let them get into such a state? Her granddaughter must immediately attend a dentist in the rue de Rivoli. Thither, accordingly, Ellen and her charge were bound, Menispe cooperative only because she did not understand what was in store for her.

  “I will accompany you,” Germaine said. “I have to go to my apartment, for I left there a story by Allan Poe which Arsinoë wishes to read. You may come with me, if you wish?”

  Ellen had never been to Germaine’s apartment. She had had the intention of remaining to keep an eye on Menispe at the dentist’s; but the latter said that he and his nurse could manage the child better on their own; they were quite accustomed to dealing with patients of a tender age, and Menispe would be completely safe and happy. Doubting this, Ellen had, however, no option but to agree. She ordered the coachman to return in an hour’s time, and set out to walk with Germaine to her apartment in the Passage Langlade.

  Familiar with the opulence of the rue de Rivoli and its handsome shop fronts, Ellen was startled to find what a sinister and shabby network of small streets lay so close to this center of industry and fashion. Dark, ill-paved, and muddy, even at this season, stinking from household refuse, the neighborhood seemed like the exposed viscera of a live body that has been slashed open; things were exposed to view that should have been concealed.

  As the two girls picked their way over irregular cobbles—“I don’t suppose you expected that I would live in a place like this?” Germaine remarked mockingly.

  The house in which she dwelt was formidably high, but lacked depth; a narrow stair climbed back and forth inside the street wall, feebly illuminated by a minute window at each landing. Every floor held a two-room apartment; that of Germaine was the attic, five floors up. One room had a bed, one was the kitchen, and for water she went down to a sink on the floor below. Ellen gazed appalled at the worn, broken red tiles, half covered by a threadbare carpet; at the single armchair upholstered in greasy canvas; at the wooden cot over which was thrown a stained calico coverlet; the dirty wallpaper; the cracked windowpane plugged with a folded issue of Le Siècle; the bundle of firewood, the dirty pots in front of the fireplace; the clothes hung on a nail; the dingy mahogany table littered with papers.

  “Can you wonder that I spend as much time as possible at the Hôtel Caudebec?” demanded Germaine with a wry mouth, picking up a manuscript and a folded newspaper from the table. “Oh, don’t worry! You are not likely to contract some disagreeable infection—so long as you stand perfectly still in the middle of the room and don’t breathe too deeply… There—that is all we came for, now we can pick our way back to civilization. Oh, but just one instant, let me make certain—”

  She pulled up a loose floorboard and removed from the cavity underneath an object that turned Ellen pale with fright.

  “A pistol!”

  “Yes, it is one of those new revolving pistols with six chambers,” Germaine informed her with nonchalance. “See, the lock works like this, and the barrel rotates so. Do not worry, I will not point it at you, ma chère!” She restored it to its hiding place.

  “But—good God—how do you come to possess such an article?”

  “Well, you see, this is not a very respectable house. And the lock on my door got broken, and the landlord is extremely negligent about repairing it.”

  In fact it was plain that the door had been smashed in at some time; there were deep gouges on the outer surface, and it hung by one hinge.

  “Are you not afraid to stay here alone?”

  “Not a bit; but naturally I prefer the rue de l’Arbre Vert,” said Germaine, briskly going ahead of Ellen down the dark stone stair. “Take care—it is quite slippery just here where the water escapes from the basin—”

  She nodded amiably to the concierge, a terrible toothless old woman who sat mumbling in a kind of niche at the stair foot, and again to the wine merchant who kept the ground-floor shop. “I would offer you a glass of wine here—it is not bad, and exceedingly cheap—but I daresay you would rather return to the rue de Rivoli.”

  As they emerged from the doorway, Ellen, glancing along the sordid street, saw a young man who looked remarkably like Raoul de la Ferté turn in at yet another of the dark entrances. Was it Raoul? But Paris was full of such handsomely dressed young men. She did not mention the matter to Germaine.

  “Can you not afford better quarters?” she demanded bluntly as they turned into a wider and less fetid-smelling thoroughfare.

  “You are thinking of that novel I sold to Le Siècle? The three hundred francs? But you see, alas, I was obliged to borrow from a moneylender when my family cut me off”—Germaine, Ellen knew, had been brought up by an uncle after her parents died—“and the man’s rates of interest are quite extortionate. So I am still in debt—what a nuisance it all is! Still, don’t look so horrified. That ridiculous little man Ponsard was last year awarded a government pension of 25,000 francs; why should some such windfall not come my way?”

  She grinned at Ellen. They had by now arrived at the dentist’s, and the carriage stood waiting. “You are such a sweet innocent, Callisto. Don’t look so troubled! I manage well enough… Do you know, I had thoughts of making love to you just now—but I saw that it would not do. In my poor little chamber you seemed too incongruous. You have such a perplexing charm, you woodland nymph—no wonder that poor Benedict is so bouleversé about you—wayward, provoking creature that you are!” She raised her brows mockingly at Ellen’s expression, and added, “I think I will not accompany you back to the Hôtel Caudebec just at present. I must find—never mind! And I have a disinclination for the company of Menispe—who, I daresay, will be in a very mauvaise humeur
after the tooth-puller’s attentions. Do you, my dear Callisto, give these to Arsinoë. I will see you later on at the soiree—where I have a surprise for you. A bientôt!”And she gave Ellen the papers, then sauntered off into the crowd, kissing her hand airily as she went.

  Wholly disconcerted, Ellen stared after her. Could those remarks have been serious? Surely not. She had been teasing—but why? More and more, latterly, Ellen had the impression that Germaine was trying to manipulate her in some way; was making use of her; that every action, almost every word was calculated to a particular end. This trip to the wretched apartment in the Passage Langlade—what was the purpose of that? To make evident to Ellen the real and desperate need that Germaine had for the help she received from Louise? To enlist Ellen’s sympathy and support before the la Ferté family council? But what use will that be? thought Ellen. I shall not be present at the council; my opinion certainly will not be sought… How can she bear to live in that stinking den? It was not only squalid, it was frightening. Surely—however poor she is—she could find better quarters than that?

  Little Menispe, after her ordeal at the dentist’s, proved unwontedly subdued; apparently the surgeon and his nurse had been a match for her. Tearstained, taciturn, she huddled against Ellen in the carriage like a small wild animal which has only just managed to elude pursuers and reach its burrow. Ellen had planned a visit to Tortoni’s, for consolatory ices, but saw this would not do, so told the coachman to drive straight home.

  As they bowled along the handsome streets, and the mild summer air blew against them, Ellen looked about her with a different vision. She was becoming more and more attached to Paris; its glitter, its gaiety, its angular antique beauty, its modern elegance, the superb style of its fashionable women, and the free-ranging intellects of its men, had answered a deep need in her. Yet now she realized her view of the city had been a superficial one—as had been her first notion of Germaine de Rhetorée. There were subterranean regions under the bright surface. If I am to understand Paris thoroughly, thought Ellen, I must know the dark as well as the light.