THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя

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      CHAPTER II

      A MARSEILLAISE LORETTE

      ARMANDE’S origin was shrouded in mystery. She pretended she was born in India of a native woman and an English officer. She started from that point and related a novel of which she was the heroine, to anyone who would listen to it.

      She made a wealthy protector who had taken care of her at her father’s death, responsible for her first fault. He had brought her up in the greatest refinement on the same principle as that of fattening a fowl in order that it may make a more toothsome dish. She delighted in relating this brutally romantic tale.

      Thanks to her falsehoods her real history was never known. She had one day swooped down on Marseille, just like those birds that scent a district rich in all kinds of prey, from afar. In settling in a commercial centre, she displayed extraordinary intelligence.

      From the moment of her arrival she directed her batteries against business men, young merchants who shovel money about. She understood that these young sparks, confined all day in their offices, were thirsting for amusement at night, and anxious to squander some of the cash they have earned.

      She set her snares with art. She began by starting her establishment on an important footing, and giving it a sort of aristocratic appearance. It was easy for her to vanquish the rivals whom she found already settled in the city. Those poor fallen daughters of Eve were grossly ignorant; they dressed badly, hardly knew how to speak, made a wretched, mean show of luxury, and gave themselves stupidly away. Armande crushed them with her elegance and the wit she had picked up here and there in her intercourse with persons in good station of life. In a few months she became a sort of mundane celebrity.

      At home, as Sauvaire had naïvely said, she gave herself the airs of a duchess. She had displayed admirable taste in furnishing her apartment.

      She threw open her drawingroom, and while she attracted the golden youth of the city by her noisy mode of life, she retained them by her good graces and air of distinction. You could hardly perceive, through the mistress of the house, the lady of easy virtue. She had lovers and was willing enough to show them off; but, in public and at her evening parties, she maintained a decency of demeanour for which they felt very grateful to her. She was the emblem of vice — witty, elegant, and perfumed.

      Little by little she surrounded herself by most of the fast men of the city, but she was careful only to receive wealthy people, such as earned a great deal of money and spent still more. At the commencement she had only to choose her victims, a swarm being at her feet. She devoured several fortunes with her sharp teeth, living in the utmost luxury, and providing for all the requirements of her mode of life, which were enormous.

      Moral people looked on her as a regular pest, as a bottomless pit in which the capital of the young commercial men of Marseille was being engulfed. Her rivals tore her to bits and accused her of engaging in shameless intrigues; they made fun of her thin face, of the wrinkles come before their time, said she was ugly, which was almost true, and vowed they could not understand the infatuation of those idiotic men for the creature. Armande let them talk and quietly reigned. For several years she had domineered over them by her mind, luxury and the science of an elegant and refined woman. Men attended her receptions in dress coats and white neckties.

      Then, without any apparent cause, her credit was all at once lost. Bad fortune came, and made holes in her luxuriant existence. No doubt she had gone out of fashion and generous protectors were scarce. She descended to that semi-state of poverty which is attired in silk and treads on carpets. Feeling she would roll into the gutter if she did not make an effort to retain her grand apartment, she struggled in desperation against her ill-luck. She understood that her power of fascination came solely from her apparent wealth, from her style of dress, from the money which permitted her to act the part of a duchess beyond her sphere, at her ease. She knew that as soon as she was out of silk and had closed her drawingroom, she would become a poor girl, an ugly, faded creature whom no one would have anything to do with, and she displayed feverish energy to find protectors and procure money at any cost.

      It was at this time that she made the acquaintance of a Madame Mercier, who advanced her money at an exorbitant rate of interest. She had taken in so many young simpletons, that she allowed herself to be imposed upon in her turn without much ado. She hoped, however, to make the first wealthy individual whom she came across, pay the capital and interest of the money she had borrowed. But men of wealth did not put in an appearance and she became more and more anxious.

      Urged on by necessity and feeling that her beauty, which was her bread-winner, was leaving her day by day with her luxury, she turned to crime. She had already been obliged to sell looking-glasses, furniture, porcelain, to satisfy the demands of her creditors; her apartment was becoming stripped of everything; she saw the walls getting bare, little by little, and thought, with a shudder, of the day when she would find herself weary and old in an empty room. The upholsterers, milliners, all the tradesmen to whom she owed money, became more troublesome as they detected their customer’s approaching ruin: they knew that protectors were becoming rare, and insisted on the immediate payment of their claims. Some of them talked of putting in the brokers. Armande therefore understood that she was lost unless she found money at once no matter how.

      She had recourse to an extreme measure. She imitated the writing of three or four of her lovers, and made out acceptances in her own favour which she signed with these person’s names. Then, not daring to go to a banker, she applied to Madame Mercier, who consented to discount several СКАЧАТЬ