"Bash!" she interrupted. "What are insults to me? I am so accustomed to them, that they no longer have any effect upon me.
I am eighteen: I have neither family, relatives, friends, nor any one in the world who even knows my existence; and I live by my labor. Can't you see what must be the humiliations of each day?
Since I was eight years old, I have been earning the bread I eat, the dress I wear, and the rent of the den where I sleep. Can you understand what I have endured, to what ignominies I have been exposed, what traps have been set for me, and how it has happened to me sometimes to owe my safety to mere physical force? And yet I do not complain, since through it all I have been able to retain the respect of myself, and to remain virtuous in spite of all."
She was laughing a laugh that had something wild in it.
And, as Maxence was looking at her with immense surprise, "That seems strange to you, doesn't it?" she resumed. "A girl of eighteen, without a sou, free as air, very pretty, and yet virtuous in the midst of Paris. Probably you don't believe it, or, if you do, you just think, 'What on earth does she make by it?'
"And really you are right; for, after all, who cares, and who thinks any the more of me, if I work sixteen hours a day to remain virtuous?
But it's a fancy of my own; and don't imagine for a moment that I am deterred by any scruples, or by timidity, or ignorance. No, no!
I believe in nothing. I fear nothing; and I know as much as the oldest libertines, the most vicious, and the most depraved. And I don't say that I have not been tempted sometimes, when, coming home from work, I'd see some of them coming out of the restaurants, splendidly dressed, on their lover's arm, and getting into carriages to go to the theatre. There were moments when I was cold and hungry, and when, not knowing where to sleep, I wandered all night through the streets like a lost dog. There were hours when I felt sick of all this misery, and when I said to myself, that, since it was my fate to end in the hospital, I might as well make the trip gayly.
But what! I should have had to traffic my person, to sell myself!"
She shuddered, and in a hoarse voice, "I would rather die," she said.
It was difficult to reconcile words such as these with certain circumstances of Mlle. Lucienne's existence, - her rides around the lake, for instance, in that carriage that came for her two or three times a week; her ever renewed costumes, each time more eccentric and more showy. But Maxence was not thinking of that. What she told him he accepted as absolutely true and indisputable. And he felt penetrated with an almost religious admiration for this young and beautiful girl, possessed of so much vivid energy, who alone, through the hazards, the perils, and the temptations of Paris, had succeeded in protecting and defending herself.
"And yet," he said, "without suspecting it, you had a friend near you."
She shuddered; and a pale smile flitted upon her lips. She knew well enough what friendship means between a youth of twenty-five and a girl of eighteen.
"A friend!" she murmured.
Maxence guessed her thought; and, in all the sincerity of his soul, "Yes, a friend," he repeated, "a comrade, a brother." And thinking to touch her, and gain her confidence, "I could understand you," he added; "for I, too, have been very unhappy."
But he was singularly mistaken. She looked at him with an astonished air, and slowly, "You unhappy!" she uttered, - "you who have a family, relations, a mother who adores you, a sister." Less excited, Maxence might have wondered how she had found this out, and would have concluded that she must feel some interest in him, since she had doubtless taken the trouble of getting information.
"Besides, you are a man," she went on; "and I do not understand how a man can complain. Have you not the *******, the strength, and the right to undertake and to dare any thing? Isn't the world open to your activity and to your ambition? Woman submits to her fate: man makes his."
This was hurting the dearest pretensions of Maxence, who seriously thought that he had exhausted the rigors of adversity.
" There are circumstances," he began.
But she shrugged her shoulders gently, and, interrupting him, "Do not insist," she said, "or else I might think that you lack energy. What are you talking of circumstances? There are none so adverse but that can be overcome. What would you like, then?
To be born with a hundred thousand francs a year, and have nothing to do but to live according to your whim of each day, idle, satiated, a burden upon yourself, useless, or offensive to others? Ah! If I were a man, I would dream of another fate. I should like to start from the Foundling Asylum, without a name, and by my will, my intelligence, my daring, and my labor, make something and somebody of myself. I would start from nothing, and become every thing!"
With flashing eyes and quivering nostrils, she drew herself up proudly. But almost at once, dropping her head, "The misfortune is," she added, "that I am but a woman; and you who complain, if you only knew "
She sat down, and with her elbow on the little table, her head resting upon her hand, she remained lost in her meditations, her eyes fixed, as if following through space all the phases of the eighteen years of her life.
There is no energy but unbends at some given moment, no will but has its hour of weakness; and, strong and energetic as was Mlle.
Lucienne, she had been deeply touched by Maxence's act. Had she, then, found at last upon her path the companion of whom she had often dreamed in the despairing hours of solitude and wretchedness?
After a few moments, she raised her head, and, looking into Maxence's eyes with a gaze that made him quiver like the shock of an electric battery, "Doubtless," she said, in a tone of indifference somewhat forced, "you think you have in me a strange neighbor. Well, as between neighbors; it is well to know each other. Before you judge me, listen."
The recommendation was useless. Maxence was listening with all the powers of his attention.