arandeuil had closed her
eyes.

The maid's story ceased, and the remainder of the history of her life,
which was upon her lips that evening, was once more buried in her heart.

The conclusion of her story was as follows:

When little Germinie Lacerteux arrived in Paris, being then less than
fifteen years old, her sister, desirous to have her begin to earn her
living at once, and to help to put bread in her hand, obtained a place
for her in a small cafe on the boulevard, where she performed the double
duties of lady's maid to the mistress of the cafe and assistant to the
waiters in carrying on the main business of the establishment. The
child, just from her village and dropped suddenly in that place, was
completely bewildered and terrified by her surroundings and her duties.
She had the first instinctive feeling of wounded modesty and,
foreshadowing the woman she was destined to become, she shuddered at the
perpetual contact with the other sex, working, eating, passing her whole
time with men; and whenever she had an opportunity to go out, and went
to her sisters, there were tearful, despairing scenes, when, without
actually complaining of anything, she manifested a sort of dread to
return, saying that she did not want to stay there, that they were not
satisfied with her, that she preferred to return to them. They would
reply that it had already cost them enough to bring her to Paris, that
it was a silly whim on her part and that she was very well off where she
was, and they would send her back to the cafe in tears. She dared not
tell all that she suffered in the company of the waiters in the cafe,
insolent, boasting, cynical fellows, fed on the remains of debauches,
tainted with all the vices to which they ministered, and corrupt to the
core with putrefying odds and ends of obscenity. At every turn, she had
to submit to the dastardly jests, the cruel mystifications, the
malicious tricks of these scoundrels, who were only too happy to make a
little martyr of the poor unsophisticated child, ignorant of everything,
with the crushed and sickly air, timid and sullen, thin and pale, and
pitiably clad in her wretched, countrified gowns. Bewildered,
overwhelmed, so to speak, by this hourly torture, she became their
drudge. They made sport of her ignorance, they deceived her and abused
her credulity by absurd fables, they overburdened her with fatiguing
tasks, they assailed her with incessant, pitiless ridicule, which
well-ni