Complete Works of Emile Zola (152 page)

She uttered these words with an accent of indomitable pride, and with deep conviction, for she looked upon Madeleine as a thief, who had stolen by surprise into La Noiraude, and sought to filch respect and peace. The young wife grew exasperated at each of her thrusts.

“You shall go,” she repeated vehemently. “Am I mistress in this house or not? — It would be preposterous if I were to be obliged to give up my home to a servant.”

“No, I shall not go,” replied Geneviève, flatly. “God has placed me in this house to watch over my son William, and to punish you for your faults — I shall stay till he is delivered from your arms, and I see you crushed beneath the anger of Heaven.”

This stubbornness, and the shrill voice of this woman subdued Madeleine’s will. She gave way, not daring to offer any further resistance to the centenarian, and unable to devise a means of getting rid of her presence. She sank into her chair, and repeated in a harrowing tone:

“How I suffer! How I suffer! — You don’t see that you are killing me by inches with your persecutions. Do you think that I don’t feel the icy thrill of your glances that are always fixed on me? And every night, when you arc reading, I can perceive very well that you are addressing yourself to me only — Do you want me to repent?”

“Repentance is useless, for God never pardons crimes of the flesh.”

“Very well then, leave me in peace: speak to me no more of your devil and your God: cease to fill me, each night, with bad thoughts that hold me panting till next morning — You may stay, it is all the same to me: but I do not wish to see you again, and I beseech you to go and live somewhere else, in another room — Even yesterday you were speaking of hell with sinister delight: I passed a frightful night — “

She shuddered, and Geneviève watched her grow pale, with a singular expression of satisfaction.

“It is not I,” she said, “who cause you these bad dreams. If you cannot sleep, it is because the demon is in your body and torments you, the moment you have put out your candle.”

“You are mad,” shouted Madeleine, whiter than a sheet, “and you are trying to frighten me as if I were a child — But I am no coward, and I don’t believe in your nursery tales.”

“Yes, but you do,” repeated the fanatic with the conviction of hallucination, “you are possessed — When you cry, I see Satan puffing out your neck. He is in your arms that are never still, and in your cheeks that quiver with nervous contractions — There now! just look at your left hand at this moment: do you see the convulsions that are contorting the fingers: Satan is there! Satan is there!”

She raised a cry, and recoiled as if before an unclean beast. Madeleine looked at her hand, and there really was a nervous twitching of the fingers. She became silent, for she could not utter another word of protestation or anger. “Geneviève is right,” she thought. “It is not she that frightens me, the fright is in myself, in my guilty flesh. At night when I have bad dreams, it is my memories that are choking me.” Then she became resigned and tolerated the presence of the old servant. All their wranglings ended like this, and Madeleine was only more terrified than ever after each one. In her terror she confused James, whose presence never left her, with the demon whom the protestant pretended to see writhing under her skin. The disdain which the latter heaped on her, and the holy horror which she seemed to feel at the sight of her, plunged her into bitter reveries: “I must be very infamous,” she would say, “that this woman should refuse to touch the objects I have made use of. She shudders at the sight of me as if she saw a toad, and she would gladly crush my head with her heel. I must, indeed, be a miserable creature.” And she would become alarmed at herself, and look with loathing at her fair skin, fancying that she saw it reeking with a ‘pungent odour. It seemed to her as if her beauty were a mask behind which was concealed some monstrous animal. When the religious mania of the fanatic had so far disordered her brain, she had no clear consciousness of her existence, and spent hours together in listening if she could not really hear Satan in her breast.

William was too nervous to save her from Geneviève’s clutches, for this woman exercised a strange influence over them both, by her age and her almost prophetic attitude. The young husband would gladly have welcomed the courage to send her to live alone in the little house on the edge of the park. But he did not dare to put any pressure on her. She had nursed his father, she had looked after his own bringing up, and he could not drive her away. When she quarrelled with Madeleine, he kept out of the way, trying not to get crushed between these two angry women. But it Was in vain, for he always arrived just at the moment when each of them was making a thrust at him; Madeleine reproached him for tolerating Geneviève’s incredible liberty of speech, and Geneviève accused him of rushing willingly into damnation by living with sin. Assailed on both sides, and too feeble to come to a decision that would require energy, he would beseech them to be quiet and not distress his life so cruelly. Directly he saw them near each other, the dread of hearing them commence an attack made him feel extremely uneasy, and if they happened to exchange a few sharp words he went and tapped on the windows, full of anxiety, and feeling the storm gathering over his head.

What produced the most painful impression on the young couple, was Geneviève’s idea that she was trying to bring about William’s salvation. She wished to tear him from Madeleine’s arms and to purify him so that he might not
go
to hell. She busied herself in this conversion with all the obstinacy of her nature. Every hour, she found means off recurring to her fixed idea, and the smallest incident served to make the conversation turn on this subject.

“Listen, my son,” she would say, “you ought to come, at night, and say your prayers in my room, as you used to do when you were little. You remember; you used to clasp your hands and repeat the words one by one after me. This would save you from the snares of the demon.”

William paid no attention, but this only made the protestant the more earnest, and she explained straight out what she meant.

“You can still escape the clutches of Satan,” she went on. “You are not contaminated and condemned for ever. But, take care! if you continue to repose in the arms of the impure one, she will carry you off one of these nights into the abyss — A prayer would redeem your soul — If when you are on this woman’s breast, you will repeat three* times a prayer which I am going to teach you, she will!

raise a loud cry and fall into dust. Try, you will see.”

Madeleine was by, listening with terror to the old lunatic.

Then Geneviève slowly recited the prayer which was to make the young wife crumble into dust. “Lubrica, daughter of hell, return to the flames which thou has left ‘or the damnation of men. May thy skin become black, may thy red hair spread over thy whole body and cover thee with a beast’s fur. Disappear in the name of Him at whose word thou tremblest, disappear in the name of God the Father.”

This adjuration had doubtless been composed by the fanatic herself. She accompanied it with certain instructions; it was to be pronounced three times, and each time a cabalistic sign was to be made on the body of the impure one, the first time on the left breast, the second time on the right, and the third on the navel. It was after this third sign, that this snowy body would change into vile filth.

As the young couple listened to Geneviève’s terrible vagaries, they thought that they had raised a phantom which could never be laid. This medley of religion and sorcery made them lose all proper judgment of things. Madeleine felt carried away by a sort of diabolical whirlwind, and her sense of right wavered more and more each day beneath the attacks of the old woman. Like his wife, William led a terrible life of shocks to his nerves and foolish fears. For a month, they lived in this atmosphere of dread, and La Noiraude was filled with the exorcisms of old Geneviève. The droner of canticles paced the long] passages muttering her prayers, and often at night humming psalms which filled the silence with their mournful echoes. You might have thought that she was fully bent on driving her master and mistress stark mad.

The young couple had another ground too of anguish. They were cruelly pained by the serious expression on little Lucy’s face which made her look so like James. She was now compelled to stay at La Noiraude, because her nurse had just gone into service in a tradesman’s house at Véteuil. William did not dare to confess that she frightened him and that they would have to send her away. He tried to forget her presence during the days that she spent by his side in the huge room. Lucy hardly played at all now; she would sit on the floor, mute and motionless, like an important person buried in thought. With that intuitive notion about affection which is so inherent in children, she could see that her father did not take to her; she had not yet reached her fourth year, and could not attempt to give any explanation for the way he neglected her, but she felt that she lived in a cooler atmosphere of love, and she grew sad to find that they were forgetting to kiss her. Seeing that her noisy games pained her husband, Madeleine had so often told her in a stern voice to keep quiet, that she had become quite timid. She would walk on tip-toe, trying to avoid making the least noise, and her boisterous enjoyment had given place to a sort of terrified meditation. Her favourite position was to sit crouching before the fire; she would put her little hands on her legs, and, sitting in this attitude, rock herself for hours. Then she fell into a brown study and gazed at the flames, perfectly motionless. She must be musing on her chilly surroundings, and her thoughts, as yet scarcely formed, ware lost doubtless in the big sorrow that her undeserved misfortunes caused her. At times, for no apparent reason, she would suddenly wake up from her reverie, and raise her head, looking at William straight in the face. Then she would screw up her lips and frown as she examined her father with a steady gaze, as if to read in his face what it was that he could have to reproach her with. William would then think that it was James who was before him, and he would leave the chimney corner and walk excitedly up and down the room.

And, as he thus tramped backwards and forwards, he felt that the child’s eyes were fastened on him. As she seemed to wake up from these brown studies, Lucy’s face had the look of a little old woman; her pale features seemed wrinkled and became strangely serious, and she appeared to be thinking of things beyond her age. Her father fancied then that she understood everything and that she guessed what it was that estranged him from her. Her attitude like that of an important person, and her eyes full of sad thoughts touched him with an indefinable emotion, as if he had always expected to hear her argue like an upgrown woman and speak to him about her resemblance to James.

Often Lucy would not be content with simply looking at her father, but would get up gently and approach him holding out her arms. Then in a beseeching tone she would repeat her favourite expression, “Take me, take me,” urged by that irresistible need for kisses that children sometimes feel. And as William did not kiss her, she insisted, and a nervous twitching would pucker her little face. When her father had managed to escape touching her hands, she went and threw herself with tears into Madeleine’s arms. Her mother was grieved at the sadness of her daughter; yet she did not dare, when she saw her in an attitude of meditation, to take her on her knees and play with her to drive away her resigned expression of martyrdom, for she was afraid of irritating her husband. But every time that the child, on being repulsed by her father, came to ask her for consolation, she could not resist the wild longing that she felt to press her to her heart. She dried with her kisses the big silent tears that filled her eyes, and walked about with her for a moment, speaking softly to her, and striving to give her for a few seconds the affection which she usually denied her.

One day, Lucy had been repulsed by her father with a hasty movement and she ran sobbing to her mother. When she was on her knees, she stammered; “Papa has beaten me. He is very naughty and I won’t have anything more to do with him.”

William had gone near to her, sorry for his brutality.

“Look now,” said Madeleine to the little girl as she rocked her on her knees, “your father is here. He will kiss you if you are good.”

But the child threw her arms round her mother’s neck, with a shudder of fright. When she thought herself safe, she raised her eyes towards her father and looked at him with a serious expression, sobbing:

“No, no, I won’t have anything more to do with him.” And she accompanied these words with a little pout of reluctance that made the young couple cast a singular glance at each other. William’s eyes said clearly to Madeleine: “You see, she refuses to be my daughter, for she has blood in her veins which is not mine.” The presence of this poor little being was thus a source of continual pain, for it seemed to them that James was always there, by their side. They made martyrs of themselves, giving to trivial matters a significance of terror and suffering. The young husband especially seemed to take a horrible pleasure in imagining monstrous things. He still loved his child with a strange affection, an affection subject at times to a sudden accession of dread. Sometimes he felt a desire to press her to his bosom, to obliterate her features with his kisses, so as to make her entirely his. He would look at her earnestly, seeking for a spot on her face that bore a resemblance to himself, in order to plant his kisses on it. Then he gradually became frightened, as be saw the child, troubled by this scrutiny, screw up her month and contract her brows. And then he would lose himself again in his old thoughts: he was not this little thing’s only father, he had made a total surrender of himself to Madeleine, and had only been able to have by her a daughter whose form had been fashioned in the embraces of another man. The sight of Lucy, as she looked upon him with the dreamy expression of a person of importance, the thought that fortune had simply made him an instrument to assist in giving birth to James’s child, the former affection for this man and the jealous hatred with which he now felt pervaded, all this produced in him a sensation of unbearable anguish, and heartrending revolts of body and mind.