Complete Works of Emile Zola (1610 page)

Luc, having seen his eyes glitter, was surprised to now find him so dull, so indifferent, as if his tall, thin figure had been already burned up by toiling in the hot sun, though he was barely forty years old. He was, notwithstanding, keenly intelligent, as Luc presently perceived, when he heard him converse with Boisgelin. The latter had asked him, with a jocular air, whether he had considered the question of rent. The farmer shook his head, and answered very briefly, like a diplomat desirous of gaining a point. Evidently he kept his real thoughts in reserve: these were that the soil ought to belong to those who cultivated it; it should belong to all who loved it, and who exerted themselves to improve it. To love the soil! and he shrugged his shoulders. His father and his grandfather had loved these acres passionately. What use had their affection for them been to them? He himself would wait until he could bestow his affection upon land he could improve and fertilize for himself and those belonging to him, and not for a proprietor whose only idea was to add to the rent as soon as the harvest should be doubled. And there was yet another idea which lurked behind his muttered words, and inspired his clear vision of the future that there ought to be a good understanding among the peasants themselves, whose fields, now so cut up and divided, could be held in common and cultivated on a large scale by means of modern improvements. It was ideas such as these that he had acquired little by little, which he considered the master had no right to know of; nevertheless, they occasionally escaped him in spite of himself. The party finished their inspection of the farm by entering the house and sitting down for a few minutes, and Luc noticed for the second time the coldness and bareness of the walls, and a certain smell of labor and of poverty which had struck him so forcibly the evening before at the house of the Bonnaires in the Rue des Trois Lunes. Feuillat’s wife was there, a withered woman, indifferent, silent, and resigned, like her husband. They had an only child, Léon, a big boy, twelve years old, who already assisted his father. This accursed never - ending labor seemed to Luc to be everywhere, with the peasant as well as with the artisan; it became a mark of inferiority; it carried dishonor with it; it did not even furnish a bare subsistence to the slave, on whom perpetual toil was riveted as though it were a chain.

In the neighboring village of Combettes suffering was certainly much greater, for in these sordid hovels the people led the existence of domestic animals, except that they subsisted on soup — the Lenfants with their son Arsène and their daughter Olympe, the Yvonnots, who had also two children, Eugenie and Nicolas, all lived like swine in a filthy sty of poverty, aggravating their ills by mutual hatred. Luc listened, observed, and analyzed that social hell, saying to himself that the solution of the problem was, nevertheless, to be found there, for whenever society should be reconstructed, it would be absolutely necessary to turn to the earth herself, the eternal nurse, the common mother, who alone could assure to men their daily bread.

On leaving the farm, Boisgelin said to Feuillat:

“Then you will think over it, my good man? The soil has improved; it is only fair that I should profit by it.”

“Oh, the matter is settled, monsieur,” answered the farmer. “I may as well perish of hunger on the road as on your property.”

In returning to Guerdache the ladies and gentlemen took a different road through the park; it was more solitary and more shaded than that by which they had come, and different groups formed themselves. The sub-prefect and Leonore lingered behind, and soon found themselves the rear of the party, at a considerable distance from the rest, and were quite contented to converse placidly on terms of established intimacy. Boisgelin and Fernande by degrees separated themselves from the rest, and finally disappeared, as if they had mistaken their way, misled by cross paths, in their absorbing conversation. The two husbands, Gourier and Delaveau, quietly continued their walk along the principal road, discussing an article on the close of the strike which had appeared in the
Journal de Beauclair,
a newspaper which had about five hundred subscribers, and which was published by a man named Lebleu, a clerical bookseller in a small way. To this paper the Abbé Marie and Captain Jollivet both contributed articles. The mayor regretted that religion should have been brought into the affair, although he approved highly, as did the manager of the Pit, of the song of triumph, in which the victory of capital over labor had been celebrated in the paper in lyrical style. Luc, who walked beside them, was bored by their conversation, and at last, getting tired of it, he manoeuvred in such a way as to leave them at a distance, and then he struck into the woods, being sure that he should be able to reach Guerdache in the end.

How adorable was the solitude in that thick forest, through which the warm September sun shed a cloud of golden beams! For some time he walked on at haphazard, delighted to be alone, and to breathe freely in the open air, rejoicing at feeling himself relieved of a weight which had stifled him, for all these people weighed upon his brain and on his heart. He was, however, considering how to rejoin them, when he suddenly emerged in a wide field near the road to Formerie, in the midst of which was a large lake fed by a little branch of the Mionne. The scene on which he had stumbled amused him very much, and made him feel at once charmed and hopeful.

He saw before him Paul Boisgelin, who had just obtained permission to bring his two child guests there, Nise Delaveau and Louise Mazelle, whose little feet did not permit them at their age to go very far. Their nurses were lounging and gossiping under a willow-tree, and paid very little attention to the children. But the interesting part of the adventure was that the future heir of Guerdache and the two little creatures still in pinafores had found the lake already occupied by an invasion of the populace — that is, by three little gamins who must have climbed over the wall, or crawled under the hedge. Luc, to his great surprise, recognized Nanet as the head and the chief spirit of the expedition, and he was accompanied by Lucien and Antoinette Bonnaire, whom he must have tempted to wander so far from the Rue des Trois Lunes, in their enjoyment of a Sunday holiday. The real explanation was that Lucien had invented a little boat that could move alone, and Nanet had offered and even insisted on taking him to a lake which he knew of, a beautiful lake, where they would never meet any one. The little boat was now really moving alone on the clear water, which was without a ripple.

The truth was simply that Lucien had had the inspiration to make use of a mechanical toy, in the shape of a little carriage on wheels, a plaything that cost nineteen sous, and he had fitted the wheels, after providing them with paddles, to a boat hollowed out of a piece of wood. This was able to go about ten yards after being wound up. The only difficulty was that it was then necessary to hook back the boat with
à
pole, and every time this operation was repeated it threatened to submerge the vessel.

Paul and his two guests remained standing on the edge of the lake, petrified with astonishment. Louise, above all, with her eyes shining in her thin little face like a goat’s, was carried away by an inordinate desire to handle it. She stretched out her little hands, crying:

“I want it; I want it....”

Then she ran to Lucien, who had just drawn back the boat with the stick, in order to wind it up. Good-natured pleasure in their play drew them together. They treated each other with great familiarity.

“I made it myself, you know.”

“Oh, let me see! Give it to me.”

Lucien did not wish to do so, and at first he attempted to protect his property against the mischievous little hands.

“Ah, no; not that way; I have had so much trouble.

... You will break it. Let go.”

Nevertheless, he wished to please her; he found her gay and pleasant manner very attractive.

“I will make you another one, if you wish.”

And as he put the boat back in the water, and the wheels revolved anew, she acquiesced, she clapped her hands, and being pleased with him in her turn, she sat down beside him on the turf, and, growing very friendly, she refused to leave him.

Paul, who, being seven years old, was the eldest of the party, had a confused idea that he ought to obtain some information in regard to the strangers. He addressed himself to Antoinette, whose rosy, pretty face and good-natured air emboldened him.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“I am four years old; but papa says that I look as if I were six.”

“Who is your papa?”

“Papa is papa! How stupid you are to ask such a thing.”

She laughed so prettily that he found the answer sufficient, and did not inquire further. In his turn he seated himself beside her, and they were immediately the best friends in the world. She was so attractive, with her look of health, and her air of knowing everything, that he did not notice her shabby little woollen frock.

“And you,” she asked, “is it your papa who owns all these trees? Ah, what a fine place you have to play in! We got in by that hole in the hedge, down below there.”

“They will not let me do that. They will not let me come here, because they are afraid that I might fall into the water. And yet it is so amusing! But we must not say anything about it, or they would punish us.”

At this moment a dramatic accident occurred. Nanet, fair and smiling, was much attracted by Nise, who was even fairer and more smiling than himself. They seemed like two playmates, and they ran towards each other at once, as if their meeting was a foreordained thing and they had expected it. Already they were holding each other’s hands, and they laughed in each other’s faces, making believe to push each other down. Then Nanet, who wished to seem like a man, cried:

“There is no need of a stick to get his boat.... I will go into the water for it.”

Nise, who had a weakness for unusual games, agreed to this proposal with enthusiasm.

“That’s it! We must go into the water, but we must take off our shoes.”

And then she leaned over until she nearly fell into the pond. All her boasted courage abandoned her at once, and she gave a piercing shriek when she felt the water wetting her shoes. Nanet rushed bravely forward and seized her in his little arms, which were already very strong; he bore her off as if she were a conquered trophy, and deposited her on the grass, where she began to laugh, and resumed her play, both of them wrestling together and rolling over each other like two little kids. But the shriek which her fright had caused her to utter roused the two nurses from their gossiping under the willows. When they rose to their feet they were thunderstruck at seeing these little invaders, these little vagabonds, fallen from they did not know where, who were taking this opportunity to lead astray the
bourgeois
children under their charge. And they rushed forward with such fury that Lucien hastily snatched up his boat and took to his heels, in terror lest they should confiscate it; he was followed by Antoinette, and even by Nanet, carried away by panic. They rushed to the hedge, threw themselves flat on their stomachs, rolled under it, and disappeared, while the two nurses conducted the three children back to Guerdache, entirely agreeing with them that it was best to say nothing of the adventure for fear of being blamed.

Luc enjoyed a solitary laugh, being greatly amused by this little scene, which he had surprised under the fatherly sun, in the midst of nature, the good friend of all men. Ah! these blessed little creatures, how quickly they understood each other, how easily they settled all difficulties, in their ignorance of fratricidal struggles, and how triumphant was the dream of the future which the scene had suggested! In another five minutes he himself was returning to Guerdache, where he relapsed into the odious present, poisoned with selfishness, and found himself on a battle-field raging with evil passions. It was four o’clock, and the guests were taking leave.

He was struck by the sight of Monsieur Jerome in his wheeled chair a little to the left of the porch. He had just returned from his long outing, and had signed to the servant to leave him for a moment in that spot in the warm sunshine, as though he wished to take part in the farewells of the guests. Suzanne, standing on the porch among these gentlemen and ladies about to depart, was waiting for her husband, who had lingered behind with Fernande. All the other walkers had returned some minutes when she saw these two returning with tranquil steps, engaged in conversation, with an air of thinking that this long solitude
à deux
was the most natural thing in the world. She did not ask for any explanation, but Luc perceived that her hands trembled slightly, while an expression, both sad and bitter, mingled with the forced smile which she assumed in the character of a courteous hostess. And when Boisgelin, addressing himself to Captain Jollivet, said that he was coming to see him, in order to consult with him about organizing the hunting-party, which up to this time he had had vaguely in his mind, the wound to his wife’s feelings was so severe that she could not keep from trembling. The thing was done, the wife was defeated, the mistress had triumphed, and had imposed on Boisgelin her expensive and mad caprice during this walk, which had all the impropriety of a public rendezvous. Suzanne’s spirit rose in revolt; why did she not take her child and leave him? Then, with visible effort, she calmed herself, and assumed again the part which she had resolved upon — that of a good woman sacrificing herself to preserve the honor of her name and of her house by a silent life of heroic tenderness amid surrounding evil. And Luc, who divined all this, perceived the suffering that she was undergoing only in the trembling of her poor feverish hand when he pressed it on taking leave of her.

Monsieur Jerome had followed the scene with his unfathomable gaze, and Luc asked himself with painful interest whether he still possessed thought and intelligence enough to understand and condemn, as he sat watching the departure of the guests as though it were a procession of human forces, of social authorities, of the masters who set the example for the people.