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

Author:Celeste Mogador [Mogador, Celeste]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2011-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

Lise’s Return

table people whose names are seldom known. The mistress of the house baptizes them. One is named the Major, another the Commandant.

They all try to get a few hundred sous from each other. The women borrow the smallest amounts, up to fifty centimes.

The old mistress of the house calls everyone ‘ darling.’ She charges a fee on the cards. Whatever the outcome, she always does well. Yet these women have practically nothing. Those who should have been very rich were destitute. Why? They bought the love they could no longer inspire.

If a newcomer joins this world, the mistress of the house is very friendly to him. First, she entices him to play a little game. The stranger is amazed at so much politeness and reserve. For three francs he has been served a dinner that is worth ten francs a head. He admires this miracle of order or generosity. But champagne is brought out and heads begin to turn!

The poor stranger loses everything he has on him, sometimes more, and he realizes too late that he has been duped.

Around the main female character flutter other women, sometimes young and pretty, who serve the mistress either by bringing people to her or by baiting the players.

Pitiful flunkies who make small profits. They are gamblers, and when they do not have any more money, in exchange, they give the key to their room.

I pointed out to my new acquaintance that she was in very wretched company.

‘‘I know,’ she told me, ‘ but my husband can come back at any moment, and I do not know where to go.’

She was right. . . . A few days later her husband came to get her and beat her senseless. She came to tell me about her woes.

‘‘Have you no friends?’’

‘‘No,’ she told me in tears, ‘‘I am quite miserable. I have been leading this life now for six years. If I could go back to my parents’, I would leave right now.’

I asked her if she had written to them.

‘ No, I have not dared.’

I entreated her to do it so she could leave once and for all.

This woman had had her day in the sun. Then she could be seen every evening in a shop, on the corner near the Opéra-Comique. A passerby could think that she was happy. She was covered with jewelry, lace, and silk. That is what leads so many poor heads astray.

One morning she came to tell me that she had found a way to make

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