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A SECOND HOME
A SECOND HOME HONORE DE BALZAC The Rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean formerly one of the darkest and most
tortuous of the streets about the Hotel de Ville zigzagged round the
little gardens of the Paris Prefecture and ended at the Rue Martroi
exactly at the angle of an old wall now pulled down. Here stood the
turnstile to which the street owed its name; it was not removed till
1823 when the Municipality built a ballroom on the garden plot
adjoining the Hotel de Ville for the fete given in honor of the Duc
d'Angouleme on his return from Spain.
The widest part of the Rue du Tourniquet was the end opening into the
Rue de la Tixeranderie and even there it was less than six feet
across. Hence in rainy weather the gutter water was soon deep at the
foot of the old houses sweeping down with it the dust and refuse
deposited at the corner-stones by the residents. As the dust-carts
could not pass through the inhabitants trusted to storms to wash
their always miry alley; for how could it be clean? When the summer
sun shed its perpendicular rays on Paris like a sheet of gold but as
piercing as the point of a sword it lighted up the blackness of this
street for a few minutes without drying the permanent damp that rose
from the ground-floor to the first story of these dark and silent
tenements.
The residents who lighted their lamps at five o'clock in the month of
June in winter never put them out. To this day the enterprising
wayfarer who should approach the Marais along the quays past the end
of the Rue du Chaume the Rues de l'Homme Arme des Billettes and des
Deux-Portes all leading to the Rue du Tourniquet might think he had
passed through cellars all the way.
Almost all the streets of old Paris of which ancient chronicles laud
the magnificence were like this damp and gloomy labyrinth where the
antiquaries still find historical curiosities to admire. For instance
on the house then forming the corner where the Rue du Tourniquet
joined the Rue de la Tixeranderie the clamps might still be seen of
two strong iron rings fixed to the wall the relics of the chains put
up every night by the watch to secure public safety.
This house remarkable for its antiquity had been constructed in a
way that bore witness to the unhealthiness of these old dwellings;
for to preserve the ground-floor from damp the arches of the cellars
rose about two feet above the soil and the house was entered up three
outside steps. The door was crowned by a closed arch of which the
keystone bore a female head and some time-eaten arabesques. Three
windows their sills about five feet from the ground belonged to a
small set of rooms looking out on the Rue du Tourniquet whence they
derived their light. These windows were protected by strong iron bars
very wide apart and ending below in an outward curve like the bars of
a baker's window.
If any passer-by during the day were curious enough to peep into the
two rooms forming this little dwelling he could see nothing; for only
under the sun of July could he discern in the second room two beds
hung with green serge placed side by side under the paneling of an
old-fashioned alcove; but in the afternoon by about three o'clock
when the candles were lighted through the pane of the first room an
old woman might be seen sitting on a stool by the fireplace where she
nursed the fire in a brazier to simmer a stew such as porters' wives
are expert in. A few kitchen utensils hung up against the wall were
visible in the twilight.
At that hour an old table on trestles but bare of linen was laid
with pewter-spoons and the dish concocted by the old woman. Three
wretched chairs were all the furniture of this room which was at once
the kitchen and the dining-room. Over the chimney-piece were a piece
of looking-glass a tinder-box three glasses some matches and a
large cracked white jug. Still the floor the utensils the
fireplace all gave a pleasant sense of the perfect cleanliness and
thrift that pervaded the dull and gloomy home.
The old woman's pale withered face was quite in harmony with the
darkness of the street and the mustiness of the place. As she sat
there motionless in her chair it might have been thought that she
was as inseparable from the house as a snail from its brown shell; her
face alert with a vague expression of mischief was framed in a flat
cap made of net which barely covered her white hair; her fine gray
eyes were as quiet as the street and the many wrinkles in her face
might be compared to the cracks in the walls. Whether she had been
born to poverty or had fallen from some past splendor she now seemed
to have been long resigned to her melancholy existence.
From sunrise till dark excepting when she was getting a meal ready
or with a basket on her arm was out purchasing provisions the old
woman sat in the adjoining room by the further window opposite a
young girl. At any hour of the day the passer-by could see the
needlewoman seated in an old red velvet chair bending over an
embroidery frame and stitching indefatigably.
Her mother had a green pillow on her knee and busied herself with
hand-made net; but her fingers could move the bobbin but slowly; her
sight was feeble for on her nose there rested a pair of those
antiquated spectacles which keep their place on the nostrils by the
grip of a spring. By night these two hardworking women set a lamp
between them; and the light concentrated by two globe-shaped bottles
of water showed the elder the fine network made by the threads on her
pillow and the younger the most delicate details of the pattern she
was embroidering. The outward bend of the window had allowed the girl
to rest a box of earth on the window-sill in which grew some sweet
peas nasturtiums a sickly little honeysuckle and some convolvulus
that twined its frail stems up the iron bars. These etiolated plants
produced a few pale flowers and added a touch of indescribable
sadness and sweetness to the picture offered by this window in which
the two figures were appropriately framed.
The most selfish soul who chanced to see this domestic scene would
carry away with him a perfect image of the life led in Paris by the
working class of women for the embroideress evidently lived by her
needle. Many as they passed through the turnstile found themselves
wondering how a girl could preserve her color living in such a
cellar. A student of lively imagination going that way to cross to
the Quartier-Latin would compare this obscure and vegetative life to
that of the ivy that clung to these chill walls to that of the
peasants born to labor who are born toil and die unknown to the
world they have helped to feed. A house-owner after studying the
house with the eye of a valuer would have said "What will become of
those two women if embroidery should go out of fashion?" Among the men
who having some appointment at the Hotel de Ville or the Palais de
Justice were obliged to go through this street at fixed hours either
on their way to business or on their return home there may have been
some charitable soul. Some widower or Adonis of forty brought so
often into the secrets of these sad lives may perhaps have reckoned
on the poverty of this mother and daughter and have hoped to become
the master at no great cost of the innocent work-woman whose nimble
and dimpled fingers youthful figure and white skin--a charm due no
doubt to living in this sunless street--had excited his admiration.
Perhaps again some honest clerk with twelve hundred francs a year
seeing every day the diligence the girl gave to her needle and
appreciating the purity of her life was only waiting for improved
prospects to unite one humble life with another one form of toil to
another and to bring at any rate a man's arm and a calm affection
pale-hued like the flowers in the window to uphold this home.
Vague hope certainly gave life to the mother's dim gray eyes. Every
morning after the most frugal breakfast she took up her pillow
though chiefly for the look of the thing for she would lay her
spectacles on a little mahogany worktable as old as herself and look
out of the window from about half-past eight till ten at the regular
passers in the street; she caught their glances remarked on their
gait their dress their countenance and almost seemed to be offering
her daughter her gossiping eyes so evidently tried to attract some
magnetic sympathy by manoeuvres worthy of the stage. It was evident
that this little review was as good as a play to her and perhaps her
single amusement.
The daughter rarely looked up. Modesty or a painful consciousness of
poverty seemed to keep her eyes riveted to the work-frame; and only
some exclamation of surprise from her mother moved her to show her
small features. Then a clerk in a new coat or who unexpectedly
appeared with a woman on his arm might catch sight of the girl's
slightly upturned nose her rosy mouth and gray eyes always bright
and lively in spite of her fatiguing toil. Her late hours had left a
trace on her face by a pale circle marked under each eye on the fresh
rosiness of her cheeks. The poor child looked as if she were made for
love and cheerfulness--for love which had drawn two perfect arches
above her eyelids and had given her such a mass of chestnut hair
that she might have hidden under it as under a tent impenetrable to
the lover's eye--for cheerfulness which gave quivering animation to
her nostrils which carved two dimples in her rosy cheeks and made
her quick to forget her troubles; cheerfulness the blossom of hope
which gave her strength to look out without shuddering on the barren
path of life.
The girl's hair was always carefully dressed. After the manner of
Paris needlewomen her toilet seemed to her quite complete when she
had brushed her hair smooth and tucked up the little short curls that
played on each temple in contrast with the whiteness of her skin. The
growth of it on the back of her neck was so pretty and the brown
line so clearly traced gave such a pleasing idea of her youth and
charm that the observer seeing her bent over her work and unmoved
by any sound was inclined to think of her as a coquette. Such
inviting promise had excited the interest of more than one young man
who turned round in the vain hope of seeing that modest countenance.
"Caroline there is a new face that passes regularly by and not one
of the old ones to compare with it."
These words spoken in a low voice by her mother one August morning in
1815 had vanquished the young needlewoman's indifference and she
looked out on the street; but in vain the stranger was gone.
"Where has he flown to?" said she.
"He will come back no doubt at four; I shall see him coming and will
touch your foot with mine. I am sure he will come back; he has been
through the street regularly for the last three days; but his hours
vary. The first day he came by at six o'clock the day before
yesterday it was four yesterday as early as three. I remember seeing
him occasionally some time ago. He is some clerk in the Prefet's
office who has moved to the Marais.--Why!" she exclaimed after
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