The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de Maupassant
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sir.”
“Have you been here long?”
“Two weeks, sir.”
“And do you like it?”
“Not very well so far, but it is too soon to tell, and then I was tired of the air of Paris, and the country has done me good; that is why I made up my mind to come here. Then I shall bring you a vermouth, Monsieur?”
“Yes, Mademoiselle, and tell the cook to be careful and pay attention to my dinner.”
“Never fear, Monsieur.”
After she had gone away he went into the garden of the hotel, and took a seat in an arbor, where his vermouth was served. He remained there all the rest of the day, listening to a blackbird whistling in its cage, and watching the little waitress in her goings and comings. She played the coquette, and put on her sweetest looks for the gentleman, for she had not failed to observe that he found her to his liking.
He went away as he had done the day before after drinking a bottle of champagne to dispel gloom, but the darkness of the way and the coolness of the night air quickly dissipated his incipient tipsiness, and sorrow again took possession of his devoted soul. He thought: “What am I to do? Shall I remain here? Shall I be condemned for long to drag out this desolate way of living?” It was very late when he got to sleep.
The next morning he again installed himself in the hammock, and all at once the sight of a man casting his net inspired him with the idea of going fishing. The grocer from whom he bought his lines gave him some instructions upon the soothing sport, and even offered to go with him and act as his guide upon his first attempt. The offer was accepted, and between nine o’clock and noon Mariolle succeeded, by dint of vigorous exertion and unintermitting patience, in capturing three small fish.
When he had dispatched his breakfast he took up his march again for Mariotte. Why? To kill time, of course.
The little waitress began to laugh when she saw him coming. Amused by her recognition of him, he smiled back at her, and tried to engage her in conversation. She was more familiar than she had been the preceding day, and met him halfway.
Her name was Elisabeth Ledru. Her mother, who took in dressmaking, had died the year before; then the husband, an accountant by profession, always drunk and out of work, who had lived on the little earnings of his wife and daughter, disappeared, for the girl could not support two persons, though she shut herself up in her garret room and sewed all day long. Tiring of her lonely occupation after a while, she got a position as waitress in a cook-shop, remained there a year, and as the hard work had worn her down, the proprietor of the Hotel Corot at Mariotte, upon whom she had waited at times, engaged her for the summer with two other girls who were to come down a little later on. It was evident that the proprietor knew how to attract customers.
Her little story pleased Mariolle, and by treating her with respect and asking her a few discriminating questions, he succeeded in eliciting from her many interesting details of this poor dismal home that had been laid in ruins by a drunken father. She, poor, homeless, wandering creature that she was, gay and cheerful because she could not help it, being young, and feeling that the interest that this stranger took in her was unfeigned, talked to him with confidence, with that expansiveness of soul that she could no more restrain than she could restrain the agile movements of her limbs.
When she had finished he asked her: “And — do you expect to be a waitress all your life?”
“I could not answer that question, Monsieur. How can I tell what may happen to me tomorrow?” ‘‘And yet it is necessary to think of the future.” She had assumed a thoughtful air that did not linger long upon her features, then she replied: “I suppose that I shall have to take whatever comes to me. So much the worse!”
They parted very good friends. After a few days he returned, then again, and soon he began to go there frequently, finding a vague distraction in the girl’s conversation, and that her artless prattle helped him somewhat to forget his grief.
When he returned on foot to Montigny in the evening, however, he had terrible fits of despair as he thought of Mme de Burne. His heart became a little lighter with the morning sun, but with the night his bitter regrets and fierce jealousy closed in on him again. He had no intelligence; he had written to no one and had received letters from no one.
Then, alone with his thoughts upon the dark road, his imagination would picture the progress of the approaching liaison that he had foreseen between his quondam mistress and the Comte de Bernhaus. This had now become a settled idea with him and fixed itself more firmly in his mind every day. That man, he thought, will be to her just what she requires; a distinguished, assiduous, unexacting lover, contented and happy to be the chosen one of this superlatively delicious coquette. He compared him with himself. The other most certainly would not behave as he had, would not be guilty of that tiresome impatience and of that insatiable thirst for a return of his affection that had been the destruction of their amorous understanding. He was a very discreet, pliant, and well-posted man of the world, and would manage to get along and content himself with but little, for he did not seem to belong to the class of impassioned mortals.
On one of André Mariolle’s visits to Marlotte one day, he beheld two bearded young fellows in the other arbor of the Hotel Corot, smoking pipes and wearing Scotch caps on their heads. The proprietor, a big, broad-faced man, came forward to pay his respects as soon as he saw him, for he had an interested liking for this faithful patron of his dinner-table, and said to him: “I have two new customers since yesterday, two painters.”
“Those gentlemen sitting there?”
“Yes. They are beginning to be heard of. One of them got a second-class medal last year.” And having told all that he knew about the embryo artists, he asked: “What will you take to-day, Monsieur Mariolle?”
“You may send me out a vermouth, as usual.” The proprietor went away, and soon Elisabeth appeared, bringing the salver, the glass, the carafe, and the bottle. Whereupon one of the painters called to her: “Well! little one, are we angry still?”
She did not answer and when she approached Mariolle he saw that her eyes were red.
“You have been crying,” he said.
“Yes, a little,” she simply replied.
“What was the matter?”
“Those two gentlemen there behaved rudely to me.”
“What did they do to you?”
“They took me for a bad character.”
“Did you complain to the proprietor?”
She gave a sorrowful shrug of the shoulders, “Oh! Monsieur — the proprietor. I know what he is now —— the proprietor!”
Mariolle was touched, and a little angry; he said to her: “Tell me what it was all about.”
She told him of the brutal conduct of the two painters immediately upon their arrival the night before, and then began to cry again, asking what she was to do, alone in the country and without friends or relatives, money or protection.
Mariolle suddenly said to her: “Will you enter my service? You shall be well treated in my house, and when I return to Paris you will be free to do what you please.”
She looked him in the face with questioning eyes, and then quickly replied: “I will, Monsieur.
“How much are you earning here?”
“Sixty francs a month,” she added, rather uneasily, “and I have my share of the pourboires besides; that makes it about seventy.”
“I will pay you a hundred.”
She repeated in astonishment: “A hundred francs a month?”
“Yes. Is that enough?”
“I should think that it was enough!”
“All