Free Memoirs of a Courtesan in Nineteenth-Century Paris by Celeste Mogador Page B

the main seamstress, and yet, sometimes the daughter would throw my work in my face, telling me, ‘ Undo this, it is
    

    M. Vincent
    poorly done.’ I would fume and wait five minutes, then I would undo my work without a word.
    There were ten workshops in this building. In the evening, during the summer, the men and women would gather at the entrance.
    If someone spoke to me, she would come over and say, ‘‘Why do you not leave? Your mother is waiting for you.’
    When my apprenticeship was over, I asked M. Grange if he wanted to keep me on as a day worker.
    ‘ Certainly, I shall pay you twenty sous a day, and if at the end of the day there is something pressing, you shall be paid per unit.’
    He said, looking at his daughter, ‘‘You are upset now, Louise, you will not be able to scold her any more. She is a woman. How old are you, Céleste?’’
    ‘‘I am almost fourteen.’
    ‘ Oh, really, I thought you were older. You are strong.’
    Out in the courtyard there was a wallpaper factory. The office clerk was always in the shop or at the entrance.
    Whenever my master’s daughter saw him, she would go outside. She would turn red when he went inside.
    One day he was standing in front of my loom, looking. In those days lots of rich gold trimming over velvet was fashionable. I did all the embroidering, and they said I was very talented.
    My young mistress came near me, angry as a little rooster. She leaned over my work.
    ‘ This is poorly done,’ she told me. ‘ Do not finish this; nobody will want it.’
    I looked at my embroidering, and I said, laughing, ‘‘You are talking about something that you cannot judge, since I have never been able to teach you how to do this kind of embroidering.’
    And I handed my work to the main seamstress.
    She had been with the house for ten years and thought of Louise as a mere child.
    ‘ Céleste’s work is good,’ she said. ‘‘Incompetent as you are, you have no right to advise others!’’
    Louise ran off to the back of the shop, and, when her father came back, she began to cry her eyes out saying that I had mistreated her.
    That evening, at home, I found my mother very agitated because M. Vincent had not been seen since the night before. When he came home—entering without knocking—my mother did not greet him well.
    As the source of tenderness that I felt for my mother was drying up, I
    

    M. Vincent
    could feel emerging inside me unfamiliar emotions. Instead of sleeping, I would spend whole hours staring at the stars. I could picture myself rich, happy, and loved.
    The plays I had been taken to when I was very young had spoiled my mind and inflamed my nature.
    M. Vincent would eat at our house. He went up to his studio only to work. When he addressed me I would answer, ‘‘Mind your own business. Do I know you? You are not my father.’
    My mother would warn me to be quiet.
    ‘‘Well,’ I would tell her, ‘‘I know that you do not love me. If I were old enough, I would leave, I would rent a little room where I would stay by myself.’
    I was making myself hated.
       - 
    We often went to M. Vincent’s mother’s house. One evening as I was returning from the shop I was told by the concierge that my mother was at Rue Popincourt. I went to meet her there. Mme Vincent told me to wait, that they would be back.
    We both fell asleep, I in a straight chair, she in an armchair. When I woke up the lamp was fading.
    ‘‘It must be very late,’ I said rubbing my eyes. ‘ They are not coming back. I am leaving.’
    It was almost midnight. It was cold. There were very few houses along the canal—just a few laundry stalls, a few streetlights very distant from each other, and squares of driftwood piled up to dry near the water.
    I was almost at the Ménilmontant bridge when I heard voices.4 I stopped, and, not knowing why, I huddled up against a door. The voices started