GRACE
331
over an odious word or an image more indelicate than the rest. But
even with this theoretical equipment in hand, the question whether
the sin of lust was to be carried out at home or abroad had to be
resolved. Madame Duperrier was of the opinion that it should all be
done at home, alleging reasons of economy to which he was not insen–
sible. But Duperrier, after weighing the pros and cons, said that he
could see no advantage in endangering his wife's health with those
ugly practices. So as a good and honorable husband he courageously
decided to assume all the risks on
his
own account.
From then on Duperrier spent most of his nights in little
run-down hotels undergoing his initiation
with
the professionals of
the neighborhood. The halo, which of course was plainly visible to
his
unhappy companions, sometimes brought about situations which
proved troublesome; at other times it was a help. In the beginning,
anxious to follow the instructions in the manual, he went about sin–
ning with little elation of spirit, but rather with the methodical appli–
cation of a dancer working out a figure or practicing a dance routine.
Unhappily, this desire for perfection, the result of pride, soon earned
him
a certain notoriety among the prostitutes. And as
his
taste for
this
manner of pastime grew, indulgence in it proved costly, and the
miser in him suffered cruelly.
One evening, on Place Pigalle, he met up with a girl of twenty
who had already taken the downward path. Her name was Marie
Jannick, the same one, so they say, for whom, or about whom, the
poet Maurice Fombeure wrote these charming lines:
It's Marie Jannick
From Landivisiau
Who kills mosquitoes
With her sabot.
Marie Jannick had come from Brittanny to work as a servant in the
home of a municipal councilor, who was a Socialist and an atheist.
Finding service with a godless family intolerable, she soon left them,
and for several months had been courageously earning her livelihood
on the sidewalks of Montmartre. So simple a soul as Marie Jannick
could not fail to be deeply impressed by a halo. To her, Duperrier
seemed the equal of Saint Yves or Saint Ronan. For his part, he was
quick to realize how much she revered him and did not resist the
temptation to take adva ntage of it in a practical way.
