The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 5 of 6

"Yes, sir, I said you were delicate – and so you are," cried Rigolette, interrupting him. "I suppose I may recollect, if I please, how chilly you used to be of an evening, though all the time you tried to conceal it, that you might hinder me from putting more wood on my fire when you came to sit with me. I've got a good memory, I can tell you; so don't contradict me."

"And so have I," replied Germain, in a voice of deep feeling "far too good for my present position;" and, with these words, he passed his hand across his eyes.

"Now then, I declare, I believe you are falling into low spirits again, though I so strictly forbade it."

"How is it possible for me to avoid being moved even to tears, when I recollect all you have done for me ever since I entered this prison? And is not your last kind attention another proof of your amiable care for me? And do I not know that you are obliged to work at night to make up for the time it occupies for you to visit me in my misfortunes, and that on my account you impose additional labour and fatigue on yourself?"

"Oh, if that be all you have to be miserable about I beg you will make very short work of it. Truly, I deserve a great deal of pity for taking a nice refreshing walk two or three times a week just to see a friend – I who so dearly love walking – and having a good stare at all the pretty shops as I come along."

"And see, to-day, too, what weather you have ventured out in! Such wind and rain! Oh, it is too selfish of me to permit you thus to sacrifice your health for me!"

"Oh, bless you, the wind and rain only make the walk more amusing. You have no idea what very droll sights one sees, – first comes a party of men holding on their hats with both hands, to prevent the storm from carrying them away; then you see an unfortunate individual with his umbrella blown inside out, making the most ludicrous grimaces, and shutting his eyes while the wind drives him about like a peg-top. I declare, all the way I came along this morning, it was more diverting than going to a play. I thought I should make you laugh by telling you of it; but there you are looking more dull, and solid, and serious than ever!"

"Pray forgive me if I cannot be as mirthful as your kind heart would have me; you know I never have what is styled high spirits, and just now I feel it impossible even to affect them."

Rigolette was very desirous of concealing that, spite of her lively prattle, she was to the full as sad and heavy-hearted as Germain himself could be. She therefore hastened to change the conversation by saying:

"You say it is impossible for you to conquer your low spirits, but there are other things you choose to style impossibilities I have begged and prayed of you to do, because I very well know you could, if you chose."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean your obstinate avoidance of all the other prisoners, and never speaking to one of them; the turnkey has just been talking to me about it, and he says that for your own sake you ought to associate with them a little. I am sure it would not do you any harm; you do not speak; it is always the way. I see very well you will never be satisfied till these dreadful men have played you some dangerous trick in revenge."

"You know not the horror with which they inspire me, any more than you can guess the personal reasons I have for avoiding and execrating them, and all who resemble them."

"Indeed, but I do know your reasons! I read the accounts you wrote for me, and which I went to fetch away from your lodgings after your imprisonment; from them I learned all the dangers you had incurred upon your arrival in Paris, because, when you were in the country, you refused to participate in the crimes of the bad man who had brought you up; and that it was in consequence of the last snare they laid to catch you that you quitted the Rue du Temple, without telling any one but me where you had gone to. And I read something else, too, in those papers," said Rigolette, casting down her eyes, while a bright blush dyed her cheeks; "I read things that – that – "

"You would never have known, I solemnly declare," exclaimed Germain, eagerly, "had it not been for the misfortune which befell me. But let me ask you to be as generous as you are good; forget and pardon my past follies, my insane hopes. 'Tis true, in times past I ventured to indulge such dreams, wild and unfounded as they were."

Rigolette had endeavoured a second time to draw a confession of his love from the lips of Germain by alluding to those tender and passionate effusions written by him, and dedicated to the remembrance of the grisette, for whom, as we have before stated, he had always felt the sincerest affection; but, the better to preserve the confiding familiarity with which he was treated by his pretty neighbour, he concealed his regard under the semblance of friendship.

Rendered more timid and sensitive by imprisonment, he could not for an instant believe it possible for Rigolette to reciprocate the attachment of a poor prisoner like himself, whose character was, moreover, tarnished by so foul an accusation as he laboured under, while previous to this calamity she had never manifested more than a sisterly interest in him. The grisette, finding herself so little understood, stifled a sigh, and awaited with hopeful eagerness a better opportunity of opening the eyes of Germain to the real state of her heart. She contented herself, therefore, with merely replying:

"To be sure, it is quite natural the sight of these wicked men should fill you with horror and disgust; but that is no reason for your exposing yourself to unnecessary dangers."

"I assure you that, in order to follow your advice, I have endeavoured to force myself to converse with such as seemed the least depraved among them; but you can form no notion what dreadful men they are, or what shocking language they talk."

"I dare say they do, poor unfortunate creatures! It must be horrid to hear them."

"But there is something more terrible than that, the getting gradually used to the disgusting conversations which, in spite of yourself, you are compelled to hear all day long. Yes, I am sorry to say, I now hear with gloomy indifference horrible remarks and speeches that would have excited my utmost indignation when I first came here. So, you see," continued Germain, bitterly, "I begin to be more afraid of myself than I am of them."

"Oh, M. Germain!"

"I am sure of it," pursued the unfortunate young man. "After a residence within a prison in company with such as are always to be found assembled there, the mind becomes accustomed to guilty thoughts, in the same manner as the ear gets inured to the coarse and vulgar expressions continually in use. Oh, God, I can well believe how possible it is to enter these walls innocent of the crimes ascribed to one, and to leave them with principles utterly and irretrievably perverted!"

"But you never could be so changed! Oh, no, not you!"

"Ay, me, and others twenty times better than myself! Alas, alas! those who condemn men to this fearful association little think that they expose their fellow creatures to breathe an air laden with the direst moral contagion, and inevitably fatal to every right or honourable feeling!"

"Pray do not go on so! You know not how you grieve me!"

"Nay, I but wished to explain to you why I am daily more and more melancholy. I wished not to have said so much, but I have only one way of repaying the pity you have evinced for me."

"Pity? Pity? Indeed – "

"Pardon me for interrupting you, but the only way by which I can acquit myself towards you is to speak with perfect candour; and, with shuddering alarm, I confess that I am no longer the same person I was. In vain do I fly these unfortunate wretches, their very presence, their contact seems to take effect on me; in spite of myself, I seem to feel a fatal influence in breathing the same atmosphere, as though the moral pestilence entered at every pore, and rested not till it had mingled with the heart's blood. Should I even be acquitted on my trial, the very sight of, and association with, good and virtuous men would cover me with shame and confusion; for, though I have not yet been able to find pleasure in the society of my companions, I have, at least, learned to dread the day when I shall again mix with persons of respectability, because now I am conscious of my weakness and cowardice; for is not he guilty of both who dares to make a compromise with his duties or his honesty? And have not I done so? When I first came here I did not deceive myself as to the extent of my fault, however excusable the circumstances under which it was committed might have seemed to make it; but now it appears to me an offence of a trifling description when compared with the crimes of which the robbers and murderers by whom I am surrounded make daily boast. And I sometimes surprise myself envying their audacious indifference, and blaming myself with my own weak regrets for so insignificant an action."

"And so it was an insignificant action, far more generous than wrong. Why, what did you do but borrow for a few hours a sum of money you knew you could replace on the following morning; and that, too, not for yourself, but to save a whole family from ruin, perhaps death."

"That matters not, it was a theft in the eyes of the law and all honest men. Doubtless it is better to rob with a good motive than a bad one, but it is a fearful thing to be obliged to seek an excuse for oneself by comparing one's own guilt with that of persons far beneath ourselves. I can no longer venture to compare my actions with those of upright persons, consequently, then, I am compelled to institute a comparison between myself and the degraded beings with whom I live; so that I plainly perceive in the end the conscience becomes hardened and is put to sleep. The next theft I commit, probably without the prospect of replacing the money, but from mere cupidity, I might still find an excuse for myself by comparing my conduct with that of a man who adds murder to theft; and yet at this moment there is as great a difference between me and a murderer as there is between a person of untainted character and myself. So, because there are beings a thousand times more degraded and debased than I am, by degrees my own degradation would become diminished in my estimation; instead of being able to say, as I once could, 'I am as honest a man as any I meet with,' I shall be obliged to content myself with saying I am the least guilty of the vile wretches among whom I am condemned for ever to live."

"Oh, do not say for ever! Once released from this place – "

"What should I gain even then? The lost creatures by whom I am surrounded are perfectly well acquainted with my person, and, were I even to be set free, I am exposed to the chance of meeting them again, and being hailed as a prison associate; and even though the fact of my imprisonment might be unknown, these unprincipled beings would be for ever threatening me to divulge it, thereby holding me completely in their power, by bands too firm for me to hope to break; while, on the other hand, had I been kept confined in my cell until my trial, they would have known nothing of me, or I of them; so that I should have escaped the fears which may paralyse my best resolutions. And, besides, had I been permitted to contemplate my fault in the solitude of my cell, instead of decreasing in my eyes, its enormity would have appeared still greater; and in the same proportion would the expiation I proposed to make have been augmented; and as my sin grew more and more apparent to my unbiassed view, so also would my earnest determination to atone for it by every means my humble sphere afforded have been strengthened; for well I know it takes a hundred good deeds to efface the recollection of one bad.

"But how can I ever expect to turn my thoughts towards expiating a crime which scarcely awakens in me the smallest remorse? I tell you again – and I feel what I say – that I seem acting under some irresistible influence, against which I have long and fruitlessly struggled. I was brought up for evil, and, alone, friendless, and powerless to resist, I yield to my destiny. What matters it whether that destiny be accomplished by honest or dishonest means? Yet Heaven knows my thoughts and intentions were ever pure and upright; and I felt the greater satisfaction in the possession of an unsullied reputation, from recollection of all the attempts that had been made to lead me to a life of infamy; and mine has been a course of infinite difficulty while seeking to free myself from the odious wretches who wished to degrade me, and render me as vile as themselves.

"But what avails my having been a person of unblemished honour and unspotted reputation? What am I now? Oh, dreadful, dreadful contrast!" exclaimed the unhappy prisoner, in an agony of tears and sobs, which drew a plenteous shower of sympathising drops from the tender-hearted grisette, who, guided by her natural right-mindedness, her woman's wit, as well as warmed by her deep affection for Germain, clearly perceived that, although as yet her protégé had lost none of the scrupulous notions of honour and probity he had ever entertained, yet that he spoke truly when he expressed his dread that the day might come when he would behold with guilty indifference those words and actions he now shuddered even to think of.

Drying her eyes, therefore, and addressing Germain, who was still leaning his forehead against the grating, she said, in a voice and manner more touchingly serious than Germain had ever before observed:

"Listen to me, Germain! I shall not, perhaps, be able to express myself as I could wish, for I am not a good speaker like you, but what I do say is uttered in all sincerity and truth; but first I must tell you you have no right to call yourself alone and friendless."

"Oh, think not I can ever forget all your generous compassion has induced you to do to serve me!"

"Just now, when you used the word pity, I did not interrupt you; but now that you repeat the word, or at least one quite as bad, I must tell you quite plainly that I feel neither pity nor compassion for you, but quite a different – Stay, I will try and explain myself as well as I can. While we were next-door neighbours, I felt for you all the regard due to one I esteemed as a friend and brother. We mutually aided each other; you shared with me all your Sunday amusements, and I did my very best to look as well and be as gay and entertaining as I could, in order to show how much I was gratified; so there again we were quits."

"Quits? Oh, no, no! I – "

"Now, do hold your tongue, and let me speak! I'm sure you have had all the talk to yourself this long while. When you were obliged to quit the house we lodged in, I felt more sorrow at your departure than I had ever done before."

"Is it possible?"

"Yes, indeed, for all the other persons who had lived in your apartments were careless creatures, whom I did not care a pin for; while you, from the very first of our acquaintance, seemed just the sort of person I wanted to be my neighbour, because you could understand that I wished us to be good friends, and nothing more. Then you were so ready to pass all your spare time with me, teaching me to write, giving me good advice, – a little serious, to be sure, but all the better for that. You were ever kind and good, yet never presumed upon it in any way; and even when compelled to change your lodging, you confided to me a secret you would not have trusted to any one else, – the name of your new abode; and that made me so proud and happy, to think you should have so much reliance on the silence and friendship of a giddy girl like myself. I used to think of you so constantly that at last every other person seemed to be banished from my recollection, and you alone to occupy my memory. Pray don't turn away as if you did not believe me. You know I always speak the truth."

"Indeed, indeed, I can scarcely believe that you were kind enough thus to remember me."

"Oh, but I did, though; and I should have been very ungrateful had I acted otherwise. Sometimes I used to say to myself, 'M. Germain is the very nicest young man I know, though he is rather too serious at times; but never mind that. If I had a friend whom I wished to be very, very happy when she was married, I certainly should recommend her marrying M. Germain, who would make just such a husband as a good wife deserves to meet with.'"

"You remembered me then, it seems, for the sake of bestowing me on another," murmured poor Germain, almost involuntarily.

"Yes, and I should have been delighted to have helped you to obtain a good wife, because I felt a real and friendly interest in your happiness. You see I speak without any reserve; you know I never could disguise my thoughts."

"Well, I can but thank you for caring enough about me even to wish to dispose of me in marriage to one of your acquaintances."

"This was the state of things when your troubles came upon you, and you sent me that poor, dear letter in which you acquainted me with what you styled your fault, but which, to an ignorant mind like my own, seemed a noble and generous action. That letter directed me to go and fetch away your papers, among which I found the confession of your love for me, – a love you had never ventured to reveal; and there, too," continued Rigolette, unable longer to restrain her tears, "I learned that, kindly considering my future prospects (illness or want of employ might render so distressing), you wished, in the event of your dying a violent death (as your fears foretold might be the case), to secure to me the trifle you had accumulated by industry and care."

"I did; and surely if, during my lifetime, you had been overtaken by sickness or any other misfortune, you would sooner have accepted assistance from me than from any other living creature, would you not? I flattered myself so, at least. Tell me, tell – I was right, that to me you would have turned for succour and support as to any true and devoted friend?"