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CHEFS D'OEUVRE DU ROMAN CONTEMPORAIN

REALISTS

BIBLIOTH?QUE DES CHEFS-D'OEUVRE DU ROMAN CONTEMPORAIN

EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT

PRINTED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY BY GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, PHILADELPHIA

GERMINIE LACERTEUX

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

We must ask pardon of the public for offering it this book, and give it due warning of what it will find therein.

The public loves fictitious novels! this is a true novel.

It loves books which make a pretence of introducing their readers to fashionable society: this book deals with the life of the street.

Again, the public loves to read pleasant, soothing stories, adventures that end happily, imaginative works that disturb neither its digestion nor its peace of mind: this book furnishes entertainment of a melancholy, violent sort calculated to disarrange the habits and injure the health of the public.

Why then have we written it? For no other purpose than to annoy the public and offend its tastes?

Living as we do in the nineteenth century, in an age of universal suffrage, of democracy, of liberalism, we asked ourselves the question whether what are called "the lower classes" had no rights in the novel; if that world beneath a world, the common people, must needs remain subject to the literary interdict, and helpless against the contempt of authors who have hitherto said no word to imply that the common people possess a heart and soul. We asked ourselves whether, in these days of equality in which we live, there are classes unworthy the notice of the author and the reader, misfortunes too lowly, dramas too foul-mouthed, catastrophes too commonplace in the terror they inspire. We were curious to know if that conventional symbol of a forgotten literature, of a vanished society, Tragedy, is definitely dead; if, in a country where castes no longer exist and aristocracy has no legal status, the miseries of the lowly and the poor would appeal to public interest, emotion, compassion, as forcibly as the miseries of the great and the rich; if, in a word, the tears that are shed in low life have the same power to cause tears to flow as the tears shed in high life.

SECOND PREFACE

PREPARED FOR A POSTHUMOUS EDITION OF GERMINIE LACERTEUX

"Sometimes, oh! yes," the man replied.

Poor girl! So it is all over! I knew that she was doomed; but she was so animated, so cheerful, almost happy, when we saw her Thursday! And here we are both walking up and down the salon, filled with the thought that a fellow-creature's death inspires: We shall never see her again!--an instinctive thought that recurs incessantly within you. What a void! what a gap in our household! A habit, an attachment of twenty-five years growth, a girl who knew our whole lives and opened our letters in our absence, and to whom we told all our business. When I was a bit of a boy I trundled my hoop with her, and she bought me apple-tarts with her own money, when we went to walk. She would sit up for Edmond till morning, to open the door for him, when he went to the Bal de l'Op?ra without our mother's knowledge. She was the woman, the excellent nurse, whose hands mother placed in ours when she was dying. She had the keys to everything, she managed everything, she did everything for our comfort. For twenty-five years she tucked us up in bed every night, and every night there were the same never-ending jokes about her ugliness and her disgraceful physique. Sorrows and joys alike she shared with us. She was one of those devoted creatures upon whose solicitude you rely to close your eyes. Our bodies, when we were ill or indisposed, were accustomed to her attentions. She was familiar with all our hobbies. She had known all our mistresses. She was a piece of our life, part of the furniture of our apartment, a stray memory of our youth, at once loving and scolding and care-taking, like a watchdog whom we were accustomed to having always beside us and about us, and who ought to last as long as ourselves. And we shall never see her again! It is not she moving about the rooms; she will never again come to our rooms to bid us good-morning! It is a great wrench, a great change in our lives, which seems to us, I cannot say why, like one of those solemn breaks in one's existence, when, as Byron says, destiny changes horses.

When we returned home, we must look through her papers, get her clothes together, sort out the clutter of phials, bandages and innumerable things that sickness collects--jostle death about, in short. It was a ghastly thing to enter that attic, where the crumbs of bread from her last meal were still lying in the folds of the bedclothes. I threw the coverlid up over the bolster, like a sheet over the ghost of a dead man.

Then from the chapel to the extreme end of the Montmartre cemetery,--vast as a necropolis and occupying a whole quarter of the city,--walking at slow steps through mud that never ends. Lastly the intoning of the priests, and the coffin laboriously lowered by the gravediggers' arms to the ends of the ropes, as a cask of wine is lowered into a cellar.

In a distant corner, I rang at a door with little white curtains. It was opened and I found myself in a parlor where a Virgin stood upon a sort of altar between two windows. On the northern wall of the room, the cold, bare room, there are--why, I cannot explain--two framed views of Vesuvius, wretched water-colors which seem to shiver and to be entirely expatriated there. Through an open door behind me, from a small room in which the sun shines brightly, I hear the chattering of sisters and children, childish joys, pretty little bursts of laughter, all sorts of fresh, clear vocal notes: a sound as from a dovecote bathed in the sun. Sisters in white with black caps pass and repass; one stops in front of my chair. She is short, badly developed, with an ugly, sweet face, a poor face by the grace of God. She is the mother of the Salle Saint-Joseph. She tells me how Rose died, in hardly any pain, feeling that she was improving, almost well, overflowing with encouragement and hope. In the morning, after her bed was made, without any suspicion that death was near, suddenly she was taken with a hemorrhage, which lasted some few seconds. I came away, much comforted, delivered from the thought that she had had the anticipatory taste of death, the horror of its approach.

In the midst of our dinner, which was rendered melancholy enough by the constant hovering of the conversation around the subject of death, Maria, who came to dinner to-night, cried out, after two or three nervous blows with her fingers upon her fluffy blonde locks:--"My friends, while the poor girl was alive, I kept the professional secret of my trade. But, now that she is under ground, you must know the truth."

Poor creature, we forgive her; indeed, a vast compassion for her fills our hearts, as we reflect upon all that she has suffered. But we have become suspicious, for our lives, of the whole female sex, and of women above us as well as of women below us in station. We are terror-stricken at the double lining of their hearts, at the marvelous faculty, the science, the consummate genius of falsehood with which their whole being is instinct.

EDMOND DE GONCOURT.

"Saved! so you are really out of danger, mademoiselle!" exclaimed the maid with a cry of joy, as she closed the door upon the doctor, and, rushing to the bed on which her mistress lay, she began, in a frenzy of happiness and with a shower of kisses to embrace, together with the bed covers, the old woman's poor, emaciated body, which seemed, in the huge bed, as small as a child's.

The old woman took her head, silently, in both hands, pressed it against her heart, heaved a sigh, and muttered: "Ah, well! so I must live on!"

This took place in a small room, through the window of which could be seen a small patch of sky cut by three black iron pipes, various neighboring roofs, and in the distance, between two houses that almost touched, the leafless branch of a tree, whose trunk was invisible.

Upon the mahogany commode of an Empire pattern, a statue of Time in black bronze, running with his scythe in rest, served as a watch stand for a small watch with a monogram in diamonds upon blue enamel, surrounded with pearls. The floor was covered with a bright carpet with black and green stripes. The curtains at the bed and the window were of old-fashioned chintz with red figures upon a chocolate ground.

At the head of the bed, a portrait inclined over the invalid and seemed to gaze sternly at her. It represented a man with harsh features, whose face emerged from the high collar of a green satin coat, and a muslin cravat, with waving ends, tied loosely around the neck, in the style of the early years of the Revolution. The old woman in the bed resembled the portrait. She had the same bushy, commanding black eyebrows, the same aquiline nose, the same clearly marked lines of will, resolution and energy. The portrait seemed to cast a reflection upon her, as a father's face is reflected in his child's. But in hers the harshness of the features was softened by a gleam of rough kindliness, by an indefinable flame of sturdy devotion and masculine charity.

The light in the room was the light of an evening in early spring, about five o'clock, a light as clear as crystal and as white as silver, the cold, chaste, soft light, which fades away in the flush of the sunset passing into twilight. The sky was filled with that light of a new life, adorably melancholy, like the still naked earth, and so replete with pathos that it moves happy souls to tears.

"Well, well! my silly Germinie, weeping?" said the old woman, a moment later, withdrawing her hands which were moist with her maid's kisses.

"Oh! my dear, kind mademoiselle, I would like to weep like this all the time! it's so good! it brings my poor mother back before my eyes--and everything!--if you only knew!"

"Go on, go on," said her mistress, closing her eyes to listen, "tell me about it."

"They'd better begin to rush pretty quick, then," was the sneering answer. "I guess your goose is cooked." There was a stir among the Dean County Nine, who, with their friends, sat together at the end of the range of seats, when this unfriendly remark was flung out. There were threatening glances and clenched fists in the group of Catalpa boys.

"Here! here! no squabbling!" cried Deputy Sheriff Wheeler, hurrying up, as his vigilant eye fell on the angry-looking knot of lads. "These men are visitors; can't you behave yourselves?"

But the Catalpas were in nowise cast down. Lew Morris, their captain, went among the boys and impressed on them something of his own cheerful courage and roused them to the importance of making a tremendous effort in the next inning. Perhaps the Jonesvillians were unduly elated. Their first man at the bat, Alexander, was put out by sending the ball almost directly into the hands of Hiram Porter at first base. Then Studley sent a good ball to center field, on which he went to first base, and went to second while Larry Boyne was batting. Larry tipped a foul fly which Al Heaton caught, and Morrison, who succeeded him, was caught out in a precisely similar manner, and the inning closed with Studley left on the second base and a "whitewash" for the visitors.

There was great uproar in the crowd around the field, as soon as the Catalpas went in their turn to the bat. The townsfolk forgot all decorum in their delight over the semblance of victory thus snatched from defeat. They cheered the Catalpas as they came in from the field, and by their noise, at least, showed that no impartial judgment could be expected from the majority of the spectators. Judge Howell critically looked over the crowd and remarked to Alice that he thought it was bad mannered in the townspeople to exult over the defeat or reverses of their visitors.

"But it is because they know that the Catalpas are going to be beaten, after all," said Alice, with a tone of great despondency.

"Going to be beaten?" asked the Judge, with surprise. "Why, haven't they just given the Jonesvilles a whitewash, as I think you call it, and the score is 15 to 8, with your favorites going to the bat?"

"Yes, papa, that is so; but you see that the Jonesvillians play a much better fielding game than the Catalpas, and I am sure that our club will never be able to regain what they have lost."

Miss Alice soon began to think that she had lost hope too soon, for the Catalpas scored three runs in their inning, Hart Stirling having made a home run on a tremendous ball sent to left field where it was muffed shamefully, first by Martin and then by Simpson. Will Sprague and John Brubaker followed him successfully, and Hiram Porter, who had made his first base, was put out by Morrison. The same fate overtook George Buckner and Al Heaton, who were put out by the active and vigilant first base man of the Jonesvilles. Nevertheless, the inning closed with a decided gain for the home nine, the score being 15 for the Jonesvilles, 11 for the Catalpas.

There was intense but suppressed excitement all around the field, as the visitors sent Ellis to the bat, and he was at once caught out by Hart Stirling on a fly sent to second base. Wheeler made first base, and Martin, who followed him, was put out on first base, while Wheeler came home on a ball balked by Charlie King. Simpson was put out on first base, and the Catalpas took their inning, sending Ben Burton to the bat. He was caught out by Studley; then Lew Morris was put out at first base by a ball sent by Alexander to Morrison; next Charlie King went out on called balls, and, amidst cries of "another whitewash!" the inning closed with a score of 16 to 11, in favor of the visitors.

In the sixth inning, the Jonesvilles added eight to their score, and the Catalpas gained seven, thus making the home nine a little more hopeful, although the relative distance of the two nines was not changed. The feature of this inning was a grand hit to the center field made by Larry Boyne, on which he made first base and brought home Alexander and Studley, who were on the second and third bases, respectively. The score stood thus: Jonesvilles, 24, Catalpas, 18. And there was no exultation in the ranks of the townsfolk.

Larry Boyne went to the bat in the next inning, for the visiting Nine. He sent a magnificent air ball so high that it seemed lost in the misty blue of the October sky. But it descended straight into the hands of John Brubaker in the right field, and a chorus of "ah-h-h's" went up from the assembled multitude. Morrison was caught out on a foul fly; Ellis shared his fate, and Wheeler was put out on first base. Great was the exultation among the citizens of Catalpa. The Jonesvillers had been again whitewashed. The short October day was wearing on apace, but the chances of the Catalpas were improving as the light went down in the west.

The home nine added three to their score in the inning, home runs being made by John Brubaker, Hiram Porter, and George Buckner. Al Heaton and Ben Burton were both put out by foul flies. Charlie King was put out on first base, leaving Lew Morris on third base. But as the score stood 24 for the Jonesvilles and 21 for the home nine, the spirits of the majority of the spectators, whose sympathies were all one way, began to rise. Perhaps the Jonesvillers would be sent home without the championship.

But these hopes were dashed by the next inning, which was the eighth, the Jonesvilles having gained one run, while the Catalpas were ignominiously "whitewashed." The visitors showed their good qualities in the field by a fine double play in their inning. Hart Stirling being on the first base, Will Sprague hit short to Ellis, who sent the ball to Studley at second base, cutting off Stirling; and John Brubaker, in attempting to steal from first to second base, was run out by Studley and Morrison.

Nobody stirred from the field, although the day was dying slowly and the simple habits of the Catalpa women called them home to their household duties. The decisive inning was near at hand, and as Alice stood up in her father's carriage, in order to get a better view of the game, the hitherto orderly crowd closed in around the players. Spectators and players drew a long breath as Larry Boyne went to the bat for the Jonesvilles. He wielded the bat with great skill and dexterity; but Charlie King's pitching was wonderfully clever, and Larry went out on a foul tip to Al Heaton, catcher. Morrison made third base on a safe hit; Ellis made first base and Morrison came home on a ball muffed by Charlie King, and then Martin, on a center field ball hit, brought Ellis and Wheeler home. Simpson now made first base on a hit to the right field, and an overthrow brought Martin home and gave second base to Simpson. Berthelet was caught out on a foul fly by Al Heaton, and Simpson, in attempting to steal home, was run out by Al Heaton and Will Sprague.

"Three out on the last inning!" roared two or three of the Dean County Nine, great hulking fellows, who stood near the carriage of the Judge. Alice looked at them reproachfully, although her cheeks were ruddy with half-suppressed excitement.

"It's real mean of them, isn't it, papa?" she said. "They will not seem to consider that we should be very angry if we were treated thus in Jonesville."

Now went Hiram Porter, big and handsome Hiram, to the bat for the Catalpas. Hiram looked as tall as a giant in the gathering twilight, and he stood up in manly fashion. But Hiram was put out on first base by a ball sent by Studley to Morrison, and George Buckner, who followed him, had great ado to save himself. But he made first base, and Al Heaton next sent a singing ball to center field, on which he went to second base and Buckner to third. Ben Burton then undertook to bat Buckner home, but he was, himself, put out on first base. Lew Morris then took the bat, sent a high ball to center field and secured the first base. Charlie King followed to the first, and amidst despondent cries of "Three out!" the game and the inning ended with a score of 29 for the Jonesville Nine and 23 for the Catalpas.

Deputy Sheriff Wheeler, forgetting for the time his official dignity, stood up in what was once the judges' stand and shouted, "Three cheers for the champions of Northern Illinois! Now, then! Hip! Hip! Hip!"

The cheers were given with a pretty good will, considering how great was the disappointment of the townspeople. The captain of the Catalpas set a laudable and manly example to his comrades by going straight to Larry Boyne, the captain of the Jonesville Nine, and, grasping him warmly by the hand, congratulating him on the victory so honorably and handsomely won.

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