Joseph
They were both tipsy, quite tipsy, the little Baroness Andrée de Fraisières and the little Comtesse Noëmi de Gardens.
They had dined alone together in the many-windowed morning room looking out over the sea. Through the open windows came the soft breeze of a summer evening, warm and cool at once, a breeze with the tang of the sea in it. The two young women, lying at full length in their long chairs, were now sipping chartreuse and smoking cigarettes, and regaling one another with intimate confidences, confidences that only their charming and amazing intoxication could bring to their lips.
Their husbands had returned to Paris that afternoon, leaving them alone at the deserted little seaside place they had chosen in order to avoid the attentions of the floating crowd of gay young men at the fashionable resorts. Away five days out of seven, the two men feared the country excursions, the picnic lunches, the swimming-lessons, and the rapid acquaintances that spring up in the holiday atmosphere of seaside towns. Dieppe, Étretat and Trouville thus seemed places to be shunned, and they had taken a house, built and abandoned by some eccentric man, in the valley of Roqueville, near Fécamp, and had buried their wives there for the whole summer.
They were tipsy. Unable to think of any amusement, the Baroness had proposed to the Countess that they should have a special dinner, with champagne. To begin with, they had amused themselves vastly by cooking the dinner with their own hands; then they had eaten merrily and drunk hard to appease the thirst induced by the heat of the kitchen range. Now they were engaged in a chorus of frivolous nonsense, smoking cigarettes and using chartreuse as a mouthwash. And they really did not know what they were saying.
The Countess, her legs in the air on the back of a chair, was even further gone than her friend.
“To round off this sort of evening,” she was saying, “we ought to have lovers. If I’d only foreseen it earlier, I’d have sent to Paris for a couple and let you have one of them.”
“Oh, I can always find them,” replied the other; “even this evening, if I wanted one, I should have one.”
“What! At Roqueville, my dear? It must be a peasant, then.”
“No, not exactly.”
“Tell me all about it.”
“What do you want me to tell you about?”
“Your lover.”
“My dear, I couldn’t live without being loved. If no one were in love with me, I should think I was dead.”
“So should I.”
“Yes, it’s true, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Men don’t understand that; our husbands least of all!”
“No, they don’t understand in the least. But can you expect anything else? The sort of love we need is an affair of amusing episodes, attentions and gallantries. They are the food of our hearts, indispensable to our lives, quite indispensable.”
“Yes, indispensable.”
“I must feel that someone is thinking of me, always, everywhere. When I am going to sleep, or waking up, I must know that someone somewhere is in love with me, dreaming of me, desiring me. Without it I should be miserable, utterly miserable—so miserable I should be crying all the time.”
“I feel just the same.”
“It could not be otherwise. When a husband has been kind for six months, or a year, or two years, he is bound to become a brute in the end, yes, a real brute. … He gets absolutely shameless and inconsiderate, he shows himself in his true colours, he makes scenes about the bills, about every single one. You can’t love a man you’re living with all the time.”
“That’s very true.”
“Yes, isn’t it? … Now where was I? I can’t remember.”
“You were saying that all husbands are brutes!”
“Yes, so they are … all of them.”
“True.”
“And after that? …”
“What do you mean, ‘after that’?”
“What was I saying after that?”
“How do I know? You never said it.”
“But I had something to tell you.”
“Yes, I remember now; wait. …”
“Wait. Ah! I’ve got it.”
“Go on; I’m listening.”
“I was saying that I can find lovers anywhere.”
“How do you do it?”
“I’ll tell you. Follow me closely. When I arrive at a strange place, I take notes and make my choice.”
“Make your choice?”
“Yes, of course. I take notes first. I get all the information. A man must be discreet, rich, and generous before all, mustn’t he?”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“And then, he must be pleasing to me as a man.”
“Of course.”
“Then I angle for him.”
“Angle?”
“Yes, like catching fish. Have you never done any fishing?”
“No, never.”
“What a pity; you should. It’s great fun. And instructive too. Well, I angle for him.”
“How?”
“Don’t be silly. A woman catches the man she wants to catch, doesn’t she? As though they had any choice in the matter! And the poor fools still think it is they who choose. But it is we who choose … always. … Women like us, who are not ugly, and no fools, have all men for our suitors, all without exception. We pass them all in review from morning till night, and when we’ve picked one out we angle for him.”
“But you’re not telling me how you do it.”
“How do I do it? … Why, I do nothing. I just let myself be looked at.”
“You let yourself be looked at?”
“Yes. It is quite sufficient. When you’ve let yourself be looked at several times running, a man promptly finds you to be the prettiest and most attractive of women. Then he begins to pay court to you. I let him understand that he’s not such a bad sort, but of course I don’t actually say anything; and he falls at my feet. I’ve got him. It depends on his character how long it lasts.”
“And do you get all the men you want like that?”
“Almost all.”
“Then there are some who hold out against you.”
“Sometimes.”
“Why?”
“Why? There are three reasons which make a man a Joseph. Because he is very much in love with another woman, because he is extraordinarily timid, or because he is … how shall I put it? … incapable of carrying the conquest of a woman to its end. …”
“Oh, my dear! … Do you think? …”
“Yes. … I’m sure of it. … There are many, very, very many of the last kind, far more than you’d think. Oh! they look like everyone else … they are dressed like the rest … they parade up and down like peacocks. … When I say peacocks … I’m wrong; … they couldn’t spread their tails.”
“Really, dear! …”
“As for the timid ones, their folly is sometimes invincible. There must be men who can’t undress, even when going to bed by themselves, if they have a mirror in their rooms. With these, you have to take strong measures, and use your eyes and your hands. Even that is sometimes no use. They never know how or where to begin. When you faint in their presence, as a last resort … they try to revive you. … And if you delay returning to your senses … they go and fetch help.
“I prefer men who are other women’s lovers. I carry them off at … at the point of the bayonet, my dear!”
“That’s all very well, but what do you do when there are no men, as here, for instance?”
“I find them.”
“But where?”
“Oh, anywhere. Why, that reminds me of my story.
“Two years ago now, my husband sent me off to spend the summer at his place at Bougrolles. There’s absolutely nothing there, nothing whatever. There are a few revolting bumpkins in the nearby houses; they spend their lives hunting fur, shooting feather, and live in houses with no bathrooms; they perspire, and then sleep with it all, and you couldn’t improve them because their principles are fundamentally filthy.
“Guess what I did.”
“I can’t.”
“Ha! ha! I’d just been reading a pile of novels by George Sand, written in praise of the man of the people, books in which the workmen are sublime and all the gentlemen are criminals. In addition to that, I’d seen Ruy Blas that winter, and it had impressed me frightfully. Well, one of our farmers had a son, a good-looking lad of twenty-two who had been trained as a priest, but had left the seminary in disgust. Well, I engaged him as a servant!”
“Oh! … And what then?”
“Then … then, my dear, I treated him very loftily, and showed him a great deal of my person. I did not angle for the country lad; I just inflamed him!”
“Oh! Andrée!”
“Yes, and very good fun it was, too. They say servants don’t count. Well, he didn’t. I rang for him to get his orders every morning when my maid was dressing me, and every evening when she was undressing me.”
“Oh! Andrée!”
“My dear, he flamed up like a thatched roof. After that, at table, during meals, I spoke of nothing but clean livers, the care of the body, douches and baths. And it was so effective that at the end of a fortnight he was bathing in the river, morning and evening, and using so much scent that he was fairly poisoning the house. I was obliged to forbid him the use of scent, and told him, with an air of being in an awful temper, that men should never use anything but eau de cologne.”
“Oh! Andrée!”
“Then I got the idea of organising a country library. I sent for several hundred moral novels, and lent them all to our farm labourers and to my servants. Into this collection there had slipped a few books … poetical books … the sort of book that disturbs the souls … of schoolboys and undergraduates. … I gave them to my footman. They taught him life … a queer sort of life.”
“Oh … Andrée!”
“Then I began to grow familiar towards him, and address him in intimate terms. I had named him Joseph. My dear, he was in such a state … in an awful state. … He grew as thin as … as a cock, and his eyes were quite wild. I was frightfully amused. It was one of the best summers I ever spent. …”
“And after that? …”
“After … yes. Well, one day, when my husband was away, I told him to harness the wicker chaise and take me to the woods. It was very hot, very hot indeed. … That’s all!”
“Oh! Andrée, do tell me all about it. … It’s so interesting.”
“Have another glass of chartreuse, or I shall finish the decanter by myself. Well, after that, I was taken ill on the way.”
“How did that happen?”
“How stupid you are! I told him I was going to be ill and that he must carry me on to the grass. And when I was on the grass I gasped for breath and told him to unlace my stays. And when my stays had been unlaced, I fainted.”
“Fainted right away?”
“Oh, no, not at all.”
“Well?”
“Well, I had to stay unconscious nearly an hour. He could not find a remedy. But I was patient, and I never opened my eyes again until after his fall.”
“Oh! Andrée. … And what did you say to him?”
“I? Nothing. How could I know anything about it, if I was unconscious? I thanked him. I told him to put me back in the chaise, and he took me home. But he nearly upset us, turning in at the gate!”
“Oh! Andrée! And is that all? …”
“That’s all. …”
“You only fainted once?”
“Yes, only once, of course! I didn’t want to make the clodhopper my lover.”
“And did you keep him long afterwards?”
“Oh! yes. I still have him. Why should I have dismissed him? I had nothing to complain of.”
“Oh, Andrée! And does he still love you?”
“Of course.”
“Where is he?”
The Baroness extended her arm and touched the electric bell. The door opened almost at once, and a tall footman entered, spreading round him a strong scent of eau de cologne.
“Joseph, my boy,” said the Baroness, “I’m not feeling very well; go and fetch my maid.”
The man stood motionless, like a soldier in the presence of an officer, and fixed his burning eyes upon his mistress, who added:
“Hurry up, you great booby; we’re not in the woods today, and Rosalie will look after me better than you.”
He turned on his heel and left the room.
“And what will you tell your maid?” asked the startled Countess.
“I shall say I’m better! No, I think I’ll have my stays loosened all the same. It will be a relief; I can’t breathe. I’m drunk … my dear … so drunk I should fall right over if I tried to stand up.”