Complete Works of Emile Zola (1028 page)

“No, I beseech you to leave me. It is not my hand that you wish for, it is my heart; and also that, of my own free will, I shall at once go away with you. But I tell you plainly that I do not wish to do so. A while ago I thought to have been as eager for flight as you are. But sure of my true self now, I know it was only the last rebellion, the agony of the old nature within me, that has just died. Little by little, without my knowledge, the good traits of my character have been drawn together and strongly united: humility, duty, and renunciation. So at each return of hereditary tendency to excess, the struggle has been less severe, and I have triumphed over temptation more easily. Now, at last, everything assures me that the supreme contest has just taken place; that henceforth it is finished for ever. I have conquered myself, and my nature is freed from the evil tendencies it had. Ah! dear Seigneur, I love you so much! Do not let us do the slightest thing to mar our happiness. To be happy it is always necessary to submit.”

As he took another step towards her, she was at the threshold of the great window, which was now wide open on to the balcony. She had stopped him with a half-smile as she said:

“You would not like to force me to throw myself down from here. Listen, and understand me when I say to you that everything which surrounds me is on my side. I have already told you that for a long time objects themselves have spoken to me. I hear voices in all directions, and never have they been so distinct as at this moment. Hear! It is the whole Clos-Marie that encourages me not to spoil my life and yours by giving myself to you without the consent of your father. This singing voice is the Chevrotte, so clear and so fresh that it seems to have put within me a purity like crystal since I have lived so near it. This other voice, like that of a crowd, tender and deep, it is that of the entire earth — the grasses, the trees, all the peaceable life of this sacred corner which has so constantly worked for the good of my soul.

“And there are other voices which come from still farther away, from the elms of the garden of Monseigneur, and from this horizon of branches, the smallest of which interests itself in me, and wishes for me to be victorious.

“Then, again, this great, sovereign voice, it is that of my old friend, the Cathedral, who, eternally awake, both day and night, has taught me many important things. Each one of the stones in the immense building, the little columns in the windows, the bell-towers of its piers, the flying buttresses of its apse, all have a murmur which I can distinguish, a language which I understand. Listen to what they say: that hope remains even in death. When one is really humble, love alone remains and triumphs. And at last, look! The air itself is filled with the whisperings of spirits. See, here are my invisible companions, the virgins, who are ever near me and aid me. Listen, listen!”

Smiling, she had lifted up her hand with an air of the deepest attention, and her whole being was in ecstasy from the scattered breathings she heard. They were the virgins of the “Golden Legend” that her imagination called forth, as in her early childhood, and whose mystic flight came from the old book with its quaint pictures, that was placed on the little table. Agnes was first, clothed with her beautiful hair, having on her finger the ring of betrothal to the Priest Paulin. Then all the others came in turn. Barbara with her tower; Genevieve with her sheep; Cecilia with her viol; Agatha with her wounded breast; Elizabeth begging on the highways, and Catherine triumphing over the learned doctors. She did not forget the miracle that made Lucy so heavy that a thousand men and five yoke of oxen could not carry her away: nor the Governor who became blind as he tried to embrace Anastasia. Then others who seemed flying through the quiet night, still bearing marks of the wounds inflicted upon them by their cruel martyrdom, and from which rivers of milk were flowing instead of blood. Ah! to die from love like them, to die in the purity of youth at the first kiss of a beloved one!

Felicien had approached her.

“I am the one person who really lives, Angelique, and you cannot give me up for mere fancies.”

“Dreams! — fancies!” she murmured.

“Yes; for if in reality these visions seem to surround you, it is simply that you yourself have created them all. Come, dear; no longer put a part of your life into objects about you, and they will be quiet.”

She gave way to a burst of enthusiastic feeling.

“Oh no! Let them speak. Let them call out louder still! They are my strength; they give me the courage to resist you. It is a manifestation of the Eternal Grace, and never has it overpowered me so energetically as now. If it is but a dream, a dream which I have placed in my surroundings, and which comes back to me at will, what of it? It saves me, it carries me away spotless in the midst of dangers. Listen yourself. Yield, and obey like me. I no longer have even a wish to follow you.”

In spite of her weakness, she made a great effort and stood up, resolute and firm.

“But you have been deceived,” he said. “Even falsehood has been resorted to in order to separate us!”

“The faults of others will not excuse our own.”

“Ah! You have withdrawn your heart from me, and you love me no longer.”

“I love you. I oppose you only on account of our love and for our mutual happiness. Obtain the consent of your father; then come for me, and I will follow you no matter where.”

“My father! You do not know him. God only could ever make him yield. Tell me, then, is this really to be the end of everything? If my father orders me to marry Claire de Voincourt, must I in that case obey him?”

At this last blow Angelique tottered. Was no torture to be spared her? She could not restrain this heartbroken cry:

“Oh! that is too much! My sufferings are greater than I can bear. I beseech you go away quickly and do not be so cruel. Why did you come at all? I was resigned. I had learned to accept the misfortune of being no longer loved by you. Yet the moment that I am reassured of your affection, all my martyrdom recommences; and how can you expect me to live now?”

Felicien, not aware of the depth of her despair, and thinking that she had yielded simply to a momentary feeling, repeated his question:

“If my father wishes me to marry her — —”

She struggled heroically against her intense suffering; she succeeded in standing up, notwithstanding that her heart was crushed, and dragging herself slowly towards the table, as if to make room for him to pass her, she said:

“Marry her, for it is always necessary to obey.”

In his turn he was now before the window, ready to take his departure, because she had sent him away from her.

“But it will make you die if I do so.”

She had regained her calmness, and, smiling sadly, she replied:

“Oh! that work is nearly done already.”

For one moment more he looked at her, so pale, so thin, so wan; light as a feather, to be carried away by the faintest breath. Then, with a brusque movement of furious resolution, he disappeared in the night.

When he was no longer there, Angelique, leaning against the back of her armchair, stretched her hands out in agony towards the darkness, and her frail body was shaken by heavy sobs, and cold perspiration came out upon her face and neck.

“My God!” This, then, was the end, and she would never see him again. All her weakness and pain had come back to her. Her exhausted limbs no longer supported her. It was with great difficulty that she could regain her bed, upon which she fell helpless, but calm in spirit from the assurance that she had done right.

The next morning they found her there, dying. The lamp had just gone out of itself, at the dawn of day, and everything in the chamber was of a triumphal whiteness.

CHAPTER XVI

Angelique was dying.

It was ten o’clock one cold morning towards the end of the winter, the air was sharp, and the clear heavens were brightened up by the beautiful sunshine. In her great royal bed, draped with its old, faded, rose-coloured chintz, she lay motionless, having been unconscious during the whole night. Stretched upon her back, her little ivory-like hands carelessly thrown upon the sheet, she no longer even opened her eyes, and her finely-cut profile looked more delicate than ever under the golden halo of her hair; in fact, anyone who had seen her would have thought her already dead, had it not been for the slight breathing movement of her lips.

The day before, Angelique, realising that she was very ill, had confessed, and partaken of the Communion. Towards three o’clock in the afternoon the good Abbe Cornille had brought to her the sacred
Viaticum
. Then in the evening, as the chill of death gradually crept over her, a great desire came to her to receive the Extreme Unction, that celestial remedy, instituted for the cure of both the soul and body. Before losing consciousness, her last words, scarcely murmured, were understood by Hubertine, as in hesitating sentences she expressed her wish for the holy oils. “Yes — oh yes! — as quickly — as possible — before it is too late.”

But death advanced. They had waited until day, and the Abbe, having been notified, was about to come.

Everything was now ready to receive the clergyman. The Huberts had just finished arranging the room. Under the gay sunlight, which at this early morning hour struck fully upon the window-panes, it looked pure as the dawn in the nudity of its great white walls. The table had been covered with a fresh damask cloth. At the right and the left of the crucifix two large wax-tapers were burning in the silver candelabrum which had been brought up from the parlour, and there were also there the consecrated wafers, the asperges brush, an ewer of water with its basin and a napkin, and two plates of white porcelain, one of which was filled with long bits of cotton, and the other with little
cornets
of paper. The greenhouses of the lower town had been thoroughly searched, but the only inodorous flowers that had been found were the peonies — great white peonies, enormous tufts of which adorned the table, like a shimmering of white lace. And in the midst of this intense whiteness, Angelique, dying, with closed eyes, still breathed gently with a half-perceptible breath.

The doctor, who had made his first morning visit, had said that she could not live through the day. She might, indeed, pass away at any moment, without even having come to her senses at all. The Huberts, resolute and grave, waited in silent despair. Notwithstanding their grief and tears, it was evidently necessary that this should be the end. If they had ever wished for this death, preferring to lose their dear child rather than to have her rebellious, it was evident that God also wished it with them, and now, that in this last trying moment they were quite powerless, they could only submit themselves to the inevitable. They regretted nothing, although their sorrow seemed greater than they could bear. Since she, their darling, had been there, suffering from her long illness, they had taken the entire care of her day and night, refusing all aid offered them from outside. They were still there alone in this supreme hour, and they waited.

Hubert, scarcely knowing what he did, walked mechanically to the porcelain stove, the door of which he opened, for the gentle roaring of the flaming wood sounded to him like a plaintive moan; then there was a perfect silence. The peonies seemed even to turn paler in the soft heat of the room.

Hubertine, stronger than her husband, and still fully conscious of all she did, listened to the sounds of the Cathedral as they came to her from behind the walls. During the past moment the old stones had vibrated from the swinging of the bell of the great tower. It must certainly be the Abbe Cornille leaving the church with the sacred oils, she thought; so she went downstairs, that she might receive him at the door of the house.

Two minutes later, the narrow stairway of the little tower was filled with a great murmuring sound. Then in the warm chamber, Hubert, struck with astonishment, suddenly began to tremble, whilst a religious fear, mingled with a faint hope, made him fall upon his knees. Instead of the old clergyman whom they had expected, it was Monseigneur who entered. Yes! Monseigneur, in lace surplice, having the violet stole, and carrying the silver vessel in which was the oil for the sick, which he himself had blessed on Holy Thursday. His eagle-like eyes were fixed, as he looked straight before him; his beautiful pale face was really majestic under the thick, curly masses of his white hair. Behind him walked the Abbe Cornille, like a simple clerk, carrying in one hand a crucifix, and under the other a book of ritual service.

Standing for a moment upon the threshold, the bishop said in a deep, grave voice:

“
Pax huic domui
.” (“Peace be to this house.”)

“
Et omnibus habitantibus in ea
,” replied the priest in a lower tone. (“And to all the inhabitants thereof.”)

When they had entered, Hubertine, who had come up the stairs after them, she also trembling from surprise and emotion, went and knelt by the side of her husband. Both of them prostrated themselves most humbly, and prayed fervently from the depths of their souls.

A few hours after his last visit to Angelique, Felicien had had the terrible and dreaded explanation with his father. Early in the morning of that same day he had found open the doors, he had penetrated even into the Oratory, where the Bishop was still at prayer, after one of those nights of frightful struggling against the memories of the past, which would so constantly reappear before him. In the soul of this hitherto always respectful son, until now kept submissive by fear, rebellion against authority, so long a time stifled, suddenly broke forth, and the collision of these two men of the same blood, with natures equally prompt to violence, was intense. The old man had left his devotional chair, and with cheeks growing purple by degrees, he listened silently as he stood there in his proud obstinacy. The young man, with face equally inflamed, poured out everything that was in his heart, speaking in a voice that little by little grew louder and rebuking. He said that Angelique was not only ill, but dying. He told him that in a pressing moment of temptation, overcome by his deep affection, he had wished to take her away with him that they might flee together, and that she, with the submissive humility of a saint, and chaste as a lily, had refused to accompany him. Would it not be a most abominable murder to allow this obedient young girl to die, because she had been unwilling to accept him unless when offered to her by the hand of his father? She loved him so sincerely that she could die for him. In fact, she could have had him, with his name and his fortune, but she had said “No,” and, triumphant over her feelings, she had struggled with herself in order to do her duty. Now, after such a proof of her goodness, could he permit her to suffer so much grief? Like her, he would be willing to give up everything, to die even, if it might be, and he realised that he was cowardly. He despised himself for not being at her side, that they might pass out of life together, by the same breath. Was it possible that anyone could be so cruel as to wish to torment them, that they should both have so sad a death, when one word, one simple word, would secure them such bliss? Ah! the pride of name, the glory of wealth, persistence in one’s determination: all these were nothing in comparison to the fact that by the union of two hearts the eternal happiness of two human beings was assured. He joined his hands together, he twisted them feverishly, quite beside himself as he demanded his father’s consent, still supplicating, already almost threatening. But the Bishop, with face deeply flushed by the mounting of his blood, with swollen lips, with flaming eyes, terrible in his unexpressed anger, at last opened his mouth, only to reply by this word of parental authority: “Never!”