Complete Works of Emile Zola (1108 page)

‘Ah!’ the sick woman moaned, ‘by all means let the lady come in if she means us well, for this cannot possibly continue! When one thinks, madame, that I haven’t been able to get up for a fortnight on account of my illness! Of course, I haven’t a copper left. Impossible to continue business. I had a few things, which Victor went to sell; and I really believe that to-night we should have died of hunger.’ Then, raising her voice, she added: ‘Come now, it’s stupid! Come out, little one! The lady wishes you no harm.’

And Madame Caroline trembled at seeing a bundle, which she had taken for a heap of rags, rise up from a basket. It was Victor, clad in the remnants of a pair of trousers and a linen vest. The light from the doorway fell full upon him, and she stood there with open mouth, astounded at his extraordinary resemblance to Saccard. All her doubts vanished; the paternity was undeniable.

‘I don’t want to be bored about going to school,’ he declared.

But she still looked at him with a growing feeling of uneasiness. Besides the resemblance which had struck her, there was something alarming about the appearance of this urchin, with one half of his face larger than the other, and his nose twisted to the right; for he seemed prodigiously developed for his age — not very tall certainly, but thickset, full-grown already, like a precocious beast. Although his complexion was yet fresh and pure, his bold devouring eyes and sensual mouth were those of a man; and he embarrassed and terrified the beholder, like the sight of some monstrosity.

But the worst was to come, for when Madame Caroline questioned him, the answers he gave, the admissions he made, though Mother Eulalie in her shame sought to tone them down, were horrible and revolting beyond expression. Madame Caroline shuddered. Her heart failed her in a frightful attack of nausea.

She left twenty francs, hurried away, and again sought refuge in the house of the proprietress, in order to make up her mind and come to a definite understanding with the woman. The sight of such abandonment had suggested an idea to her — the Institute of Work. Had it not been expressly created for such falls, for the wretched children of the gutter, whom it was sought to regenerate by hygiene and the teaching of a trade? Victor must be extricated from this mire as quickly as possible, placed in that home, and have a new existence given him. She was still trembling at all that she had seen. And into the decision that she had arrived at there entered a woman’s delicacy: to say nothing yet awhile to Saccard, to wait until the monster should be somewhat cleansed before exhibiting him; for the sight of this frightful offspring had filled her with something like shame for the father; she suffered at the thought of how ashamed of such a child he would be. A few months, however, would undoubtedly suffice to effect a great change, and then she would speak out, well pleased with her good work.

It was difficult to make La Méchain understand, however.

‘Mon Dieu! Madame, as you please said she. Only I want my six thousand francs at once. Victor shall not stir from my house until I have my six thousand francs.’

This decision filled Madame Caroline with despair. She did not possess the amount, and, of course, did not want to ask the father for it. In vain did she argue and plead.

‘No, no!’ said La Méchain. ‘If I no longer had my security, I might say good-bye to the money. I know that!’ At last, however, realizing that the sum was a large one and that she might get nothing at all, she made an abatement. ‘Well, give me two thousand francs at once. I will wait for the rest.’

But Madame Caroline’s embarrassment remained the same, and she was asking herself where she could possibly get two thousand francs, when the idea struck her of applying to Maxime. She did not pause to think it over. He would surely consent to share the secret; he would not refuse to advance such a small sum, which his father would certainly repay him. And thereupon she went away, saying that she would return the next day to fetch Victor.

It was only five o’clock, and she was in such a fever to finish the matter that, on getting into her cab, she gave the driver Maxime’s address in the Avenue de l’Impératrice. When she arrived, the valet told her that his master was at his toilet, but that he would all the same announce her.

For a moment she stifled in the reception-room into which she was ushered. The house was small, but furnished with an exquisite refinement of luxury and comfort. Hangings and carpets had been lavished upon it; and amid the warm silence of the rooms a delicate odour of ambergris was diffused. All was pretty, soft, and discreet here, although there was no sign of woman; for the young widower, enriched by his wife’s death, had arranged his life for the sole worship of self, declining, like a man of experience, to allow anyone to share it again. Owing the enjoyments of life to one woman, he was determined not to let them be spoilt by another. He had long since abandoned his idea of entering the Council of State; he no longer even kept a racing stable, weary as he was of horses as well as women. And he lived alone, idle, perfectly happy, spending his fortune with art and precaution, evincing the ferocity of a perverse ‘kept’ masher who has turned serious.

‘If Madame will allow me,’ the valet returned to say, ‘Monsieur will receive her in his room directly.’

Madame Caroline was on familiar terms with Maxime, now that whenever he went to his father’s to dine he found her installed there as a faithful housekeeper. On entering his room, she saw that the curtains were drawn. Six candles, burning on the mantel-shelf and a stand, illumined with a quiet light this silky, downy nest, the more than effeminate chamber of a beautiful woman. With its deep seats and immense soft downy bed, this was his favourite room, where he had lavished delicacies, marvellous furniture, and precious bibelots of the last century, all blended, lost amidst the most delightful confusion of stuffs imaginable.

However, the door leading to the adjoining dressing-room was wide open, and Maxime appeared, saying: ‘What has happened, then? Papa isn’t dead, eh?’

With his pretty face, girlish but no longer fresh, his eyes blue and clear, hiding the emptiness of his brain, he had just left the bath, and, his skin cool and balmy, had slipped on an elegant white flannel costume. Through the door could still be heard the dripping from one of the bath taps, and a strong flowery perfume ascended from the soft warm water.

‘No, no; it is not so serious,’ she answered, put out by the quietly jesting tone of the question. ‘And yet what I have to say to you embarrasses me a little. You will excuse me for thus falling in upon you—’

‘It’s true I dine out, but I have time enough to dress. Come, what is the matter?’

He waited, and now she hesitated, and began to stammer, greatly struck by all the luxury and enjoyable refinement which she perceived about her. Cowardice seized upon her; and she could not find courage to tell the whole story. Was it possible that existence, so stern to the child of chance over yonder, in the sink of the Cité de Naples, had shown itself so prodigal to this one, living amid such well-ordered wealth? So much vile wretchedness, hunger, and filth on the one hand, and on the other such exquisite refinement, abundance, and beautiful life. Could money, then, be education, health, intelligence? And if the same human mud remained beneath, did not all civilisation consist in the superiority of smelling nice and living well?

‘Mon Dieu!’ said she, ‘it is such a story! But I believe I do right in telling it to you. For that matter, I am obliged to; I have need of you.’

Maxime at first listened to her standing; then he sat down in front of her, his legs giving way, such was his surprise. And when she had finished, he exclaimed: ‘What, what! So I am not the only son! A frightful little brother falls on me from the sky, without so much as shouting “Look out!”’

She thought he spoke from an interested motive, and made an allusion to the question of inheritance.

‘Oh! an inheritance from papa!’ said he.

And he made a gesture of ironical carelessness, which she did not understand. What — what did he mean? Did he not believe in his father’s great qualities, his certainty of attaining to fortune?

‘No, no, I have my pile,’ he added. ‘I need nobody. But really this is such a queer affair that I cannot help laughing at it.’

And he did laugh, but in a vexed, anxious, hollow fashion, thinking only of himself, not yet having had time to consider what good or harm this event might bring him. He felt that he lived altogether apart from the others, and dropped a remark in which he brutally gave expression to his real feelings: ‘After all, what do I care?’

Having risen, he passed into the dressing-room, and came back directly with a tortoiseshell polisher, with which he began gently rubbing his nails. ‘And what are you going to do with your monster?’ he asked. ‘He cannot be put in the Bastille, like the Man with the Iron Mask.’

She then spoke of La Méchain’s accounts, explained her idea of placing Victor at the Institute of Work, and asked for the two thousand francs.

‘I don’t wish your father to know anything of the matter yet awhile,’ said she. ‘You are the only person to whom I can apply; you must advance this money.’

But he flatly refused. ‘To papa — not if I know it! not a sou! Listen, it is an oath! Even if papa only needed a sou to pay a bridge-toll, I would not lend it to him. Understand! there are some silly things that are altogether too silly; I do not wish to be ridiculous.’

Again she looked at him, disturbed by his ugly insinuations. In this exciting moment, however, she had neither the wish nor the time to make him talk. ‘And to me,’ she abruptly rejoined—’ will you lend these two thousand francs to me?’

‘To you, to you—’

He continued polishing his nails with a light, pretty movement, while examining her with his clear eyes, which searched women to their heart’s blood. ‘To you, yes; after all — I am willing. You are one of the gullible ones, you will pay me back.’

Then, after going to take two notes of a thousand francs each from a little desk, and giving them to her, he grasped her hands and held them for a moment in his own, with an air of friendly gaiety, like a step-son who feels some sympathy for his step-mother. ‘You have some illusions respecting papa,’ said he. ‘Oh! don’t protest; I don’t want to meddle with your affairs. Women are so queer; it amuses them sometimes to devote themselves, and of course they are quite right in taking their pleasure where they find it. All the same, if some day you should be ill rewarded, come and see me, we will have a chat.’

When Madame Caroline was once more in her cab, still stifling from the soft warmth of the little residence and the heliotrope perfume which had penetrated her garments, she shuddered as though she had just left some house of ill-repute, frightened also by the son’s reticence and jocularity with regard to his father, which increased her suspicion of a past life such as none would confess to. However, she did not wish to know anything; she had the money, and quieted herself by planning the work of the morrow, so that by night time the child might be saved from his vices.

Accordingly, early in the morning, she already had to start out, for there were all sorts of formalities to be fulfilled in order to ensure her protégé’s admission into the Institute of Work. Naturally, her position as secretary of the Committee of Superintendence, to which the Princess d’Orviedo, the founder of the Institute, had appointed ten ladies of high social standing, facilitated the accomplishment of these formalities; and in the afternoon she had only to go to the Cité de Naples to fetch Victor. She took some suitable garments with her, and was not really without anxiety as to the resistance which the boy might offer — he who would not hear speak of going to school. However, La Méchain, to whom she had sent a telegram, and who was waiting for her, informed her on the threshold of a piece of news by which she herself had been upset. Mother Eulalie had died suddenly in the night, from some cause which the doctor had been unable to precisely fix — a congestion, perhaps, some distemper produced by her corrupted blood. This tragedy had quite stupefied the boy, filled him with a secret fear, so that he consented to dress and seemed even pleased with the idea of living in a house with a beautiful garden. There was nothing to keep him at the Cité any longer since the ‘fat ‘un,’ as he called Mother Eulalie, was going to rot in the grave.

Meanwhile, La Méchain, while writing her receipt for the two thousand francs, laid down her conditions. ‘It is agreed, isn’t it? you will complete the six thousand in one payment, six months from now. Otherwise, I shall apply to Monsieur Saccard.’

‘But you will be paid by Monsieur Saccard himself,’ said Madame Caroline. ‘To-day I am simply his substitute, that is all.’

There was no affection in the farewells exchanged between Victor and his old cousin; a kiss upon the hair, and then the urchin was all haste to get into the cab, while La Méchain, scolded by Busch for having consented to accept merely an instalment of her claim, remained secretly annoyed at seeing her security thus escape her. ‘Now, madame, be honest with me,’ said she, ‘otherwise I shall find a way to make you repent.’

On the way from the Cité de Naples to the Institute of Work on the Boulevard Bineau, Madame Caroline was only able to extract monosyllables from Victor, who with glittering eyes devoured the route, the broad avenues, the passers-by and handsome houses. He did not know how to write and could scarcely read, having always played the truant from school in order to loaf about the Fortifications; and his face, the face of a child who has precociously matured, only expressed the exasperated appetites of his race, a violent, pressing longing for enjoyment, aggravated by the wretchedness and the abominable examples amidst which he had grown up. On the Boulevard Bineau his eyes, like those of a young wild beast, glowed more brightly when, having alighted from the cab, he began crossing the central courtyard, edged on one side by the boys’ and on the other by the girls’ department. He had already darted a searching look at the spacious playgrounds planted with beautiful trees, at the faïence-walled kitchens, from whose open windows came the smell of meat, at the marble-decorated dining halls, as long and as lofty as the naves of chapels, at all the regal luxury which the Princess, obstinately bent on restitution, had desired to bestow upon the poor. Then, on reaching the farther end of the court, on entering the building where the managerial offices were installed, on being led from department to department so that the customary formalities of admission might be fulfilled, he listened to the clatter of his new shoes along the endless corridors, up and down the broad stairways, across all the vestibules flooded with air and light, and decorated in palatial style. His nostrils quivered; all this would be his.