Complete Works of Emile Zola (124 page)

It was her little school-mates who taught her to be a woman. At first, by her actions and shouts, she displeased these young ten year old dolls who were already learned in the art of not disarranging the folds of their skirts. The pupils played very little: they used to walk up and down the paths like important personages, and there were little brats no higher than one’s stick who could already throw a kiss with their gloved fingers. Madeleine learnt from these charming dolls a host of things which she was completely ignorant of. In secluded corners, behind the foliage of some hedge, she came on knots of them who were talking about men: she joined in these conversations, with the eager curiosity of the woman awakening in the child, and thus received the precocious education of her life. The worst thing was that these little imps, knowing as they thought themselves to be, chattered aloud; they openly declared their wishes for a lover: they confided to one another their little fondnesses for the young fellows they had met the last time they walked out; they read to one another the long love letters they used to write during the English class, and never concealed their hope of being carried off some night or other. There was no danger to sly compliant beings in such talk as this. In the case of Madeleine, on the contrary, it exerted a life-long influence.

She inherited from her father his clear head, his rapid and logical workman’s decision. Directly the child thought that she was beginning to know something of life, she tried to form a definite idea of the world, from what she saw and heard in the school. She concluded, from the childish chatter of her school-companions, that there was no harm in falling in love with a man, and that she might take the first that came. The word marriage was hardly ever pronounced by these young misses. Madeleine, whose ideas were always simple ideas, ideas of action, imagined that a woman picked up a lover in the street and walked away quietly on his arm. These thoughts never made her uneasy in the slightest, she was of a cold temperament and talked about love with her friends as she would have talked of her toilet. She used to say to herself only: “If I am ever in love with a man, I will do as Blanche does: I will write long letters to him, and try to make him run away with me.” And there was, in her reverie, a thought of opposition which filled her with delight: it was the only thing that she looked forward to with pleasure.

In later life, when she knew from experience something of the infamy of the world, she would smile sadly as she remembered her girlish thoughts. But there always remained deep down in her heart, unknown even to herself, the idea that it is quite logical and straightforward for a woman, when she is in love with a man, to tell him so and to go off with him.

Such a character would have been fit to become the seat of the strongest will. Unfortunately, there was nothing to develop its frankness and strength. Madeleine wanted simply to follow a broad smooth road: her desire was for peace, for everything that is powerful and serene. It would have been enough to arm her against her hours of weakness, to cure her of that trembling feeling of servile love which she had inherited from her mother. She received, on the contrary, an education which redoubled this feeling, She had the look of a good-natured noisy boy: her mistresses simply wished to turn her into a little hypocritical girl. If they had not succeeded, it was because her nature refused to school itself in little graceful bows, in languishing drooping looks, in false smiles which the heart and face belied. But, all the same, she grew up surrounded by young coquettes, in an atmosphere laden with the enervating perfumes of the drawing-room. The honeyed words of her governesses, who had instructions to make themselves the servants of their pupils, the chamber-maids of this little colony of heiresses, all this softened her will. Every day she would hear around her the words: “Don’t think, don’t look strong: learn to be weak; it is for that that you are here.” She lost, as the result of all these instructions in coquetry, a few of her headstrong ways, without succeeding in marking out for herself a course of conduct, but her character was less complete and further astray from its true path. The notion of what was required of her as a woman almost escaped her: she replaced it by a deep love for frankness and independence. She was to walk straight before her, like a man, with strange moments of weakness, but never false, and strong enough to do penance the day she was guilty of infamous conduct.

The secluded life which she led implanted still more deeply in her mind the false notions which she had formed of the world. Lobrichon, under whose guardianship she had been placed, came to see her at rare intervals, and thought he did his duty by giving her a little pat on the cheek and enjoining on her to be very good. A mother would have enlightened her on the errors of her mind. She grew up with no companionship but her thoughts, and only listening to the advice of others with a sort of distrust. The most childish ideas assumed for her a serious nature, because she accepted them as the only possible rule of conduct. Her companions when they came back from their Sunday visit to their relations, would tell her each time something of the outer world. During this time, she remained in the school more and more persuaded of the correctness of her errors. She even spent her holidays shut up alone with her thoughts. Lobrichon, who was afraid of her noisiness, kept her at a distance. In this way nine years passed. Madeleine was then fifteen, already a woman and destined henceforth to preserve the indelible traces of the dreams in which she had grown up.

She had been taught dancing and music. She could paint very nicely in water-colour and do every imaginable kind of embroidery. Yet she would have been incapable of hemming dusters or making her own bed. As for her knowledge, it was composed of a little grammar, a little arithmetic, and a good deal of sacred history. Her hand-writing had been carefully looked after, and yet, to the despair of her teachers, it had remained thick and cramped. Here her learning stopped. She was charged with bowing too stiffly and spoiling the effect of her smile by the cold expression of her grey eyes.

When she was fifteen, Lobrichon, who for some time had been coming to see her nearly every day, asked her if she would like to leave the school. She was in no hurry to enter on the unknown, but as she grew up she began to feel a disdain for the honeyed voice of her teachers and the acquired graces of her companions. She answered Lobrichon that she was ready to follow him. Next day, she was sleeping in a little house which her father’s friend had just bought at Passy.

The former second-hand clothes dealer was nursing a project. He had retired from trade at the age of sixty. For more than thirty years he had led the life of a miser, eating very little, depriving himself of a wife, entirely absorbed in the one object of increasing his fortune. Like Férat, he was a tremendous worker, but he worked for future enjoyment. He intended, when he was rich, to indulge his appetites to the full. When the fortune came, he hired a good cook, bought a quiet country house with a garden in front and a yard behind, and resolved to marry the daughter of his old friend.

Madeleine did not possess a sou, but she was tall and strong, and had already an amplitude of bosom which answered to Lobrichon’s ideal. Besides, he had only made up his mind after careful deliberation. The child was still young; he said that he could bring her up for his own sole delight, and let her develop slowly under his eyes, enjoying thus a foretaste of pleasure in the sight of her ripening beauty; then, he would have her a perfect virgin, he would fashion her to suit his own desires, like a seraglio slave. Thus there entered into his project of preparing a young girl to be his wife, the monstrous refinement of a man whose appetites have been weaned for many a year.

For four years, Madeleine lived peacefully in the little house at Passy. She had only changed her prison, but she did not complain of the active surveillance of her guardian; she felt no desire to go out, spending whole days in embroidery work, without experiencing any of those feelings of discomfort which are so oppressive to girls of her age. Her senses lay dormant till an unusually late period. Besides, Lobrichon was very attentive to his dear child; he would often take her delicate hands in his, or kiss her on the forehead with his warm lips. She received his caresses with a calm smile, and never noticed the strange looks of the old fellow, when she took her neckerchief off in his presence just as she would have done before her father.

She had just completed her eighteenth year, when one night the old rag-dealer so far forgot himself as to kiss her on the lips. She thrust him away with an instinctive movement of revolt, and looked him in the face, still unable to understand anything. The old man fell on his knees, and stammered out words unfit for her to hear. The wretch, who for months and months had been tormented by his burning passion, had been unable to act his part of disinterested protector to the end. Perhaps Madeleine would have married him, had he not been guilty of this outrage. She withdrew quietly, declaring in a distinct voice that she would leave the house next day.

Lobrichon, when left by himself, saw what an irreparable fault he had just committed. He knew Madeleine and was sure she would keep her word. He lost his head, and thought of nothing now but satisfying his passion. He said to himself that a forcible attempt might perhaps subdue the young girl, and make her cast herself vanquished into his arms. Towards midnight he went up to his ward’s bed-chamber; he had a key for this room, and often, on warm nights, ho had slipped in, in order to look at the half-naked child as she lay in the disorder of sleep.

Madeleine was suddenly awakened by a strange feverish sensation. The night lamp had not been quite turned out, and she saw Lobrichon who had crept up to her side and was trying to press her to his breast. With incredible force she took him with both hands by the throat, jumped hastily on to the floor, and held the wretch on the bed till the death-rattle came through his teeth. The sight of this old fellow pale and livid, in his shirt, the thought that his limbs had touched hers, filled her with horrible disgust. It seemed to her that she was no longer a virgin. She held on to Lobrichon for a second without moving au inch, looking at him fixedly with her grey eyes and asking herself if she was not going to strangle him; then she thrust him away with such violence that he knocked his head against the wall of the recess and fell back in a swoon.

The young girl dressed herself hastily and left the house. She walked down towards the Seine. As she went along the embankments, she heard the clock strike one. She walked straight on, saying to herself that she would do so till morning and then look for a room. She had become calm, and merely felt profoundly sad. There was one idea only in her head; passion was infamous, and she would never love. There was always before her eyes the sight of the white legs of the old man in his shirt.

When she got to the Pont-Neuf, she turned off into the Rue Dauphine, to avoid a band of students who were hammering away at the walls. She continued to go straight on, no longer knowing where the road would take her to. Soon she noticed that a man was following her; she wanted to escape, but the man began to run and overtook her. Then, with the decision and frankness of her nature, she turned towards the stranger and, in a few words, told him her history. He politely offered her his arm, and advised her to accept his hospitality. He was a tall young fellow with a bright and sympathetic face. Madeleine examined him in silence, then, calmly and confidingly, she took his arm.

The young man had a room in an hotel in the Rue Soufflot. He told his companion to lie down on the bed; as for himself, he would sleep very well on the sofa. Madeleine pondered; she looked round the room which was littered with swords and pipes; she surveyed her protector, who treated her as a comrade with cordial familiarity. She noticed a pair of lady’s gloves on the table. Her companion smilingly reassured her; he told her that no lady would come to disturb them, and that, besides, if he had been married, he would not have run after her in the street. Madeleine blushed.

Next morning, she woke up in the young man’s arms. She had thrown herself into them of her own accord, impelled by a sudden surrender of herself for which she could not account. What she had refused to Lobrichon with savage revolt, she had actually granted two hours later to a stranger. She felt no regret. She was simply astonished.

When her lover learned that the story she had given the night before was no idle tale, he seemed very much surprised. He thought he had met a wily woman who was inventing falsehoods to make him run after her all the more. All the little scene she had acted before getting into the bed had seemed to him got up beforehand. Otherwise, he would have acted more discreetly, he would above all have reflected on the serious consequences of such an intimacy. He was a decent fellow who did not object to amuse himself, but he had a wholesome dread of serious love affairs. He had calculated that he was simply showing hospitality to Madeleine for a night and that he would see her go off next morning. He was very much cast down at his mistake.

“My poor child,” he said to Madeleine in a voice of emotion, “we have been guilty of a serious error. Forgive me and forget — me. I have to leave France in a few weeks and I don’t know if I shall ever come back.”

The young girl listened to this confession pretty calmly. In short, she was not at all in love with this young fellow. For him their intimacy was an adventure, for her an accident from which her ignorance had not been able to protect her. The thought of the coming departure of her lover could not yet break her heart, but the idea of an immediate separation was peculiarly distressing. In an indistinct way she said to herself that this man was her husband and that she could not leave him like that. She took one turn round the room, lost in thought, looking for her clothes; then she came back, sat down on the edge of the bed, and said hesitatingly; “Listen, keep me with yon as long as you stay in Paris. It will be more seemly.”

This last phrase, so touchingly naive, deeply affected the young fellow. He became aware of the life-long misery be had just given to the life of this big child who had confided herself to him with the calmness of a little girl. He drew her to his breast, and answered that his home was hers.