Free The Vatard Sisters by Joris-Karl Huysmans

didn’t turn their noses up at spicy foods, at spring onions and garlic. After a few glasses of wine, some cognac and a pipe they stank of abattoirs and drains.
    Désirée didn’t find this very appetising. Certainly, she wouldn’t have wanted a gentleman with a black top-hat and a perfumed beard, a man so clean he blew soap-bubbles when he spoke, that would have embarrassed her; she liked to have a laugh with workmen like her father, decent men, whose sweat didn’t smell of lard and fat; she wanted a husband who didn’t have stains on his shirt, who washed his feet every week, a man who didn’t go boozing and who’d let her finally realise her dream: to have a bedroom with floral wallpaper, a bed and a table of walnut wood, white curtains on the windows, a pincushion made of shells, a cup on the dresser with her initials in gilt, and, hanging on the wall, a nice picture of a little cupid knocking on a door. She even daydreamed about this engraving, which she’d seen in a bric-à-brac shop, and she imagined how comfortable and cheerful the room would be with this picture leaning against the mantelpiece, reflecting in its framed glass the back of an alarm clock and two zinc candleholders around which she’d wrap pink paper sconces.
    She’d never wanted anything more than this. To live in peace, to be able to put aside ten francs a year in order to afford a dog, and to own, in addition to her bedroom, a small pantry in which, behind a green serge curtain, she could put her water jug and her coal, that was the extent of her soul’s desires!
    If he’d had any fears about her in the past, Vatard could sleep peacefully now. His younger daughter wouldn’t lose her head or let herself go in a moment of weakness. Moreover, her sister had done her an inestimable service by not trying to stop her from going astray. Free to indulge herself as much as she wanted, she had no desire to do so, she was holding onto the ‘flower of her maidenhead’, determined not to let it be taken from her without good reason. And what’s more, there was the example of Céline before her, and the trenchant words of the girl who’d thought of throwing herself in the river still rang in her ears. She’d also witnessed her sister’s numerous and casual infatuations, she’d seen her treated with contempt by Eugène, and she herself, having once dared to call him a scoundrel, had received such a resounding slap that her cheek had retained the imprint of his hand for a whole day. This method of ending a discussion hadn’t been to her taste, and if the example of her sister wasn’t appealing, that of the other women at the bindery was even less so. Truly, there’s a lot to dislike about men once one has worked in a workshop with them. And it wasn’t just one, it wasn’t just two…they were all like that, all, even old Chaudrut, an ancient workman, a venerable dotard, clean-shaven with a sanctimonious eye and a shuffling gait. Despite his austere countenance, his afflicting deafness, and his goodnatured air, Chaudrut was nothing more nor less than a dirty old man. A villain and a drunkard, he was an old crony whose filthy instincts had increased with age, he was a crock full of vices that would spill out from time to time over young bits of skirt, spattering them from waistband to hem. Riddled with debts, openly hounded by his creditors, this deaf old man, the bane of landlords who ruined themselves letting him run up huge tabs, would flutter around in his wire-rimmed glasses, cooing and strutting about, pawing at the women and acting the fool, and despite his thinning hair he still found young girls who’d try to rekindle the burned-out embers of his lips with the red-hot fire of their own.
    His mistress was a friend of Céline and Désirée, a woman separated from her husband, a fine lass, decent in her own way, who wasn’t so much contemptible as simply a glutton. Chaudrut adored rabbit cooked in wine, and he’d seduced her with these