Complete Works of Emile Zola (1486 page)

“But I can’t,” the young man answered in embarrassment. “I have to dine at home with my mother, who was rather poorly this morning.”

“Oh! a sensible woman like your mother will readily understand that there are matters of exceptional importance. Go home and excuse yourself. Tell her some story, tell her that a friend’s happiness is in question.” And as Gerard began to weaken, Duvillard added: “The fact is, that I really want you, my dear fellow; I must have a society man. Society, you know, is a great force in theatrical matters; and if Silviane has society with her, her triumph is certain.”

Gerard promised, and then chatted for a moment with his uncle, General de Bozonnet, who was quite enlivened by that throng of women, among whom he had been carried hither and thither like an old rudderless ship. After acknowledging the amiability with which Madame Fonsegue had listened to his stories, by purchasing an autograph of Monseigneur Martha from her for a hundred francs, he had quite lost himself amid the bevy of girls who had passed him on, one to another. And now, on his return from them, he had his hands full of lottery tickets: “Ah! my fine fellow,” said he, “I don’t advise you to venture among all those young persons. You would have to part with your last copper. But, just look! there’s Mademoiselle Camille beckoning to you!”

Camille, indeed, from the moment she had perceived Gerard, had been smiling at him and awaiting his approach. And when their glances met he was obliged to go to her, although, at the same moment, he felt that Eve’s despairing and entreating eyes were fixed upon him. The girl, who fully realised that her mother was watching her, at once made a marked display of amiability, profiting by the license which charitable fervour authorised, to slip a variety of little articles into the young man’s pockets, and then place others in his hands, which she pressed within her own, showing the while all the sparkle of youth, indulging in fresh, merry laughter, which fairly tortured her rival.

So extreme was Eve’s suffering, that she wished to intervene and part them. But it so chanced that Pierre barred her way, for he wished to submit an idea to her before leaving the bazaar. “Madame,” said he, “since that man Laveuve is dead, and you have taken so much trouble with regard to the bed which you now have vacant, will you be so good as to keep it vacant until I have seen our venerable friend, Abbe Rose? I am to see him this evening, and he knows so many cases of want, and would be so glad to relieve one of them, and bring you some poor
protege
of his.”

“Yes, certainly,” stammered the Baroness, “I shall be very happy, — I will wait a little, as you desire, — of course, of course, Monsieur l’Abbe.”

She was trembling all over; she no longer knew what she was saying; and, unable to conquer her passion, she turned aside from the priest, unaware even that he was still there, when Gerard, yielding to the dolorous entreaty of her eyes, at last managed to escape from Camille and join her.

“What a stranger you are becoming, my friend!” she said aloud, with a forced smile. “One never sees you now.”

“Why, I have been poorly,” he replied, in his amiable way. “Yes, I assure you I have been ailing a little.”

He, ailing! She looked at him with maternal anxiety, quite upset. And, indeed, however proud and lofty his figure, his handsome regular face did seem to her paler than usual. It was as if the nobility of the facade had, in some degree, ceased to hide the irreparable dilapidation within. And given his real good nature, it must be true that he suffered — suffered by reason of his useless, wasted life, by reason of all the money he cost his impoverished mother, and of the needs that were at last driving him to marry that wealthy deformed girl, whom at first he had simply pitied. And so weak did he seem to Eve, so like a piece of wreckage tossed hither and thither by a tempest, that, at the risk of being overheard by the throng, she let her heart flow forth in a low but ardent, entreating murmur: “If you suffer, ah! what sufferings are mine! — Gerard, we must see one another, I will have it so.”

“No, I beg you, let us wait,” he stammered in embarrassment.

“It must be, Gerard; Camille has told me your plans. You cannot refuse to see me. I insist on it.”

He made yet another attempt to escape the cruel explanation. “But it’s impossible at the usual place,” he answered, quivering. “The address is known.”

“Then to-morrow, at four o’clock, at that little restaurant in the Bois where we have met before.”

He had to promise, and they parted. Camille had just turned her head and was looking at them. Moreover, quite a number of women had besieged the stall; and the Baroness began to attend to them with the air of a ripe and nonchalant goddess, while Gerard rejoined Duvillard, Fonsegue and Duthil, who were quite excited at the prospect of their dinner that evening.

Pierre had heard a part of the conversation between Gerard and the Baroness. He knew what skeletons the house concealed, what physiological and moral torture and wretchedness lay beneath all the dazzling wealth and power. There was here an envenomed, bleeding sore, ever spreading, a cancer eating into father, mother, daughter and son, who one and all had thrown social bonds aside. However, the priest made his way out of the
salons
, half stifling amidst the throng of lady-purchasers who were making quite a triumph of the bazaar. And yonder, in the depths of the gloom, he could picture Salvat still running and running on; while the corpse of Laveuve seemed to him like a buffet of atrocious irony dealt to noisy and delusive charity.

II. SPIRIT AND FLESH

How delightful was the quietude of the little ground-floor overlooking a strip of garden in the Rue Cortot, where good Abbe Rose resided! Hereabouts there was not even a rumble of wheels, or an echo of the panting breath of Paris, which one heard on the other side of the height of Montmartre. The deep silence and sleepy peacefulness were suggestive of some distant provincial town.

Seven o’clock had struck, the dusk had gathered slowly, and Pierre was in the humble dining-room, waiting for the
femme-de-menage
to place the soup upon the table. Abbe Rose, anxious at having seen so little of him for a month past, had written, asking him to come to dinner, in order that they might have a quiet chat concerning their affairs. From time to time Pierre still gave his friend money for charitable purposes; in fact, ever since the days of the asylum in the Rue de Charonne, they had had accounts together, which they periodically liquidated. So that evening after dinner they were to talk of it all, and see if they could not do even more than they had hitherto done. The good old priest was quite radiant at the thought of the peaceful evening which he was about to spend in attending to the affairs of his beloved poor; for therein lay his only amusement, the sole pleasure to which he persistently and passionately returned, in spite of all the worries that his inconsiderate charity had already so often brought him.

Glad to be able to procure his friend this pleasure, Pierre, on his side, grew calmer, and found relief and momentary repose in sharing the other’s simple repast and yielding to all the kindliness around him, far from his usual worries. He remembered the vacant bed at the Asylum, which Baroness Duvillard had promised to keep in reserve until he should have asked Abbe Rose if he knew of any case of destitution particularly worthy of interest; and so before sitting down to table he spoke of the matter.

“Destitution worthy of interest!” replied Abbe Rose, “ah! my dear child, every case is worthy of interest. And when it’s a question of old toilers without work the only trouble is that of selection, the anguish of choosing one and leaving so many others in distress.” Nevertheless, painful though his scruples were, he strove to think and come to some decision. “I know the case which will suit you,” he said at last. “It’s certainly one of the greatest suffering and wretchedness; and, so humble a one, too — an old carpenter of seventy-five, who has been living on public charity during the eight or ten years that he has been unable to find work. I don’t know his name, everybody calls him ‘the big Old’un.’ There are times when he does not come to my Saturday distributions for weeks together. We shall have to look for him at once. I think that he sleeps at the Night Refuge in the Rue d’Orsel when lack of room there doesn’t force him to spend the night crouching behind some palings. Shall we go down the Rue d’Orsel this evening?”

Abbe Rose’s eyes beamed brightly as he spoke, for this proposal of his signified a great debauch, the tasting of forbidden fruit. He had been reproached so often and so roughly with his visits to those who had fallen to the deepest want and misery, that in spite of his overflowing, apostolic compassion, he now scarcely dared to go near them. However, he continued: “Is it agreed, my child? Only this once? Besides, it is our only means of finding the big Old’un. You won’t have to stop with me later than eleven. And I should so like to show you all that! You will see what terrible sufferings there are! And perhaps we may be fortunate enough to relieve some poor creature or other.”

Pierre smiled at the juvenile ardour displayed by this old man with snowy hair. “It’s agreed, my dear Abbe,” he responded, “I shall be very pleased to spend my whole evening with you, for I feel it will do me good to follow you once more on one of those rambles which used to fill our hearts with grief and joy.”

At this moment the servant brought in the soup; however, just as the two priests were taking their seats a discreet ring was heard, and when Abbe Rose learnt that the visitor was a neighbour, Madame Mathis, who had come for an answer, he gave orders that she should be shown in.

“This poor woman,” he explained to Pierre, “needed an advance of ten francs to get a mattress out of pawn; and I didn’t have the money by me at the time. But I’ve since procured it. She lives in the house, you know, in silent poverty, on so small an income that it hardly keeps her in bread.”

“But hasn’t she a big son of twenty?” asked Pierre, suddenly remembering the young man he had seen at Salvat’s.

“Yes, yes. Her parents, I believe, were rich people in the provinces. I’ve been told that she married a music master, who gave her lessons, at Nantes; and who ran away with her and brought her to Paris, where he died. It was quite a doleful love-story. By selling the furniture and realising every little thing she possessed, she scraped together an income of about two thousand francs a year, with which she was able to send her son to college and live decently herself. But a fresh blow fell on her: she lost the greater part of her little fortune, which was invested in doubtful securities. So now her income amounts at the utmost to eight hundred francs; two hundred of which she has to expend in rent. For all her other wants she has to be content with fifty francs a month. About eighteen months ago her son left her so as not to be a burden on her, and he is trying to earn his living somewhere, but without success, I believe.”

Madame Mathis, a short, dark woman, with a sad, gentle, retiring face, came in. Invariably clad in the same black gown, she showed all the anxious timidity of a poor creature whom the storms of life perpetually assailed. When Abbe Rose had handed her the ten francs discreetly wrapped in paper, she blushed and thanked him, promising to pay him back as soon as she received her month’s money, for she was not a beggar and did not wish to encroach on the share of those who starved.

“And your son, Victor, has he found any employment?” asked the old priest.

She hesitated, ignorant as she was of what her son might be doing, for now she did not see him for weeks together. And finally, she contented herself with answering: “He has a good heart, he is very fond of me. It is a great misfortune that we should have been ruined before he could enter the Ecole Normale. It was impossible for him to prepare for the examination. But at the Lycee he was such a diligent and intelligent pupil!”

“You lost your husband when your son was ten years old, did you not?” said Abbe Rose.

At this she blushed again, thinking that her husband’s story was known to the two priests. “Yes, my poor husband never had any luck,” she said. “His difficulties embittered and excited his mind, and he died in prison. He was sent there through a disturbance at a public meeting, when he had the misfortune to wound a police officer. He had also fought at the time of the Commune. And yet he was a very gentle man and extremely fond of me.”

Tears had risen to her eyes; and Abbe Rose, much touched, dismissed her: “Well, let us hope that your son will give you satisfaction, and be able to repay you for all you have done for him.”

With a gesture of infinite sorrow, Madame Mathis discreetly withdrew. She was quite ignorant of her son’s doings, but fate had pursued her so relentlessly that she ever trembled.

“I don’t think that the poor woman has much to expect from her son,” said Pierre, when she had gone. “I only saw him once, but the gleam in his eyes was as harsh and trenchant as that of a knife.”

“Do you think so?” the old priest exclaimed, with his kindly
naivete
. “Well, he seemed to me very polite, perhaps a trifle eager to enjoy life; but then, all the young folks are impatient nowadays. Come, let us sit down to table, for the soup will be cold.”

Almost at the same hour, on the other side of Paris, night had in like fashion slowly fallen in the drawing-room of the Countess de Quinsac, on the dismal, silent ground-floor of an old mansion in the Rue St. Dominique. The Countess was there, alone with her faithful friend, the Marquis de Morigny, she on one side, and he on the other side of the chimney-piece, where the last embers of the wood fire were dying out. The servant had not yet brought the lamp, and the Countess refrained from ringing, finding some relief from her anxiety in the falling darkness, which hid from view all the unconfessed thoughts that she was afraid of showing on her weary face. And it was only now, before that dim hearth, and in that black room, where never a sound of wheels disturbed the silence of the slumberous past, that she dared to speak.

“Yes, my friend,” she said, “I am not satisfied with Gerard’s health. You will see him yourself, for he promised to come home early and dine with me. Oh! I’m well aware that he looks big and strong; but to know him properly one must have nursed and watched him as I have done! What trouble I had to rear him! In reality he is at the mercy of any petty ailment. His slightest complaint becomes serious illness. And the life he leads does not conduce to good health.”