LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER IV.

      TEMPTATION.

      LAST evening, I had a bright fire on the hearth. I was rich enough to have two candles, and had lighted them both, regardless of the morrow.

      I surprised myself singing, as I prepared for a night of toil. The mansarde laughed to find itself warm and luminous.

      As I sat down, I heard on the stairway the sound of voices and hurried steps. Doors opened and shut. Then, amid the silence that ensued, stifled cries came up to me. I sprang to my feet, vaguely disturbed, and listened. The noise ceased. I was about to resume my chair, when some one ran upstairs and called out to me that a woman, my neighbor, had a nervous attack. My help was asked. I held the door open, but saw only the dark and gloomy stairway.

      I put on a warmer coat and went down, forgetting even to take one of my candles. On the floor below I stopped, not knowing what room to enter. I did not hear a sound; I was surrounded by thick darkness. At last I saw a thin thread of light through a half-open door. I gave the door a push.

      The chamber was the sister of mine: large, irregular and out of repair. But, as I had left my mansarde in a flood of flame and brightness, the gloom and cold of this place filled my heart with pity and sadness. Damp air struck against my face; a miserable candle, burning on one corner of the mantelpiece, flickered in the blast from the stairway, without permitting me at first to see the objects before me.

      I had paused upon the threshold. Finally I distinguished the bed: the sheets, thrown off and twisted, had slipped to the floor; scattered garments lay about on the coverlet.

      In the midst of these rags was stretched out a vague, white form. I should have thought I saw a corpse, if the candle had not given me occasional glimpses of a hand hanging out of the bed and agitated by rapid convulsions.

      By the pillow was an old woman. Her unfastened gray hair fell in stiff locks over her forehead, her hastily put on dress showed her yellow and wasted arms. She had her back towards me, was holding the head and hid from me the face of the woman on the bed.

      The quivering body, watched over by this horrible old woman, gave me a sudden feeling of disgust and fright. The motionlessness of their countenances gave them fantastic dimensions, their silence made one almost doubt that they were alive. I thought for an instant that I was witnessing one of those terrible scenes of the witches’ Sabbath, when the sorceresses suck the blood of young girls, and, throwing them ghastly and wrinkled into the arms of Death, rob them of their youth and freshness.

      The noise I made at the door caused the old woman to turn her head. She let the body she was supporting fall heavily; then, she advanced towards me.

      “Ah! Monsieur,” she said, “I thank you for having come. Old people fear the winter nights, and this room is so cold that, perhaps, I would not have been able to leave it in the morning. I have been watching a long while, and when one eats but little, one needs more sleep. Besides, the crisis is over. You will have to wait only until this girl awakens. Good night, Monsieur.”

      The old woman went away, and I was alone. I shut the door, and, taking up the candle, approached the bed. The girl extended upon it seemed about twenty-four. She was plunged in that deep stupor which follows nervous convulsions. Her feet were drawn up beneath her; her arms, still stiff and wide open, were thrown over the edges of the bed. I could not at first judge of her beauty: her head, thrown backward, was concealed by her flood of hair.

      I took her in my arms, straightened out her limbs and placed her upon her back. Then I drew away the hair from her face. She was ugly: her closed eyes had no lashes, her temples were low and retiring, her mouth large and sunken. Premature old age had effaced the outlines of her features and left upon her whole countenance an imprint of lassitude and avidity.

      She was sleeping. I heaped over her feet all the rags within my reach; then I raised her head by putting under it more old clothes which I had found and rolled into a bundle. My science being limited to these cares, I decided to wait until she awoke. I feared lest she might have another attack, fall and wound herself.

      I examined the garret. On entering I had noticed a strong perfume of musk, which, mingling with the sharp odor of the dampness, struck strangely upon the sense of smell. Upon the mantelpiece was a row of vials and little pots, still greasy with aromatic oils. Above hung a cracked looking-glass, with the amalgam at the back gone in broad patches. In addition, the walls were bare. Many things lay about on the floor: satin shoes down at the heel, dirty linen, faded ribbons, rags of lace. As I went along, scattering the tatters with my foot to make a passage for myself, I came across a handsome dress of blue silk, ornamented with bows of velvet. It had been thrown into a corner among the other gewgaws, rolled up, rumpled, stained yet with the mud of the town. I raised it and hung it on a nail.

      Weary and finding no chair, I sat down on the foot of the bed. I began to understand where I was. The girl still slept; she was now plainly visible. I thought I had made a mistake in declaring her ugly, and looked at her with greater attention. An easier sleep had brought to her lips a vague smile; her features were relaxed; her past suffering had given a sort of gentle and sad beauty to her ugliness. She reposed, sorrowful and resigned. Her soul seemed to have taken advantage of her rest to mount to her face.

      I was amid unclean want, a strange assemblage of blue silk and filth. This garret was the infamous den of famished luxury selling its satiety; this girl was one of those old wretches of twenty, no longer having anything of the woman about them but the fatal stamp of their sex, vending that mortality which Heaven has left them in withdrawing their souls. How could so much slime be in a single being, so many stains on a single heart! God roughly smites His creature when He allows her to tear her robe of innocence and assume the wretched garments of vice! In our visions of love, we never dreamed that some night we should find a miserable bed in a

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