Complete Works of Emile Zola (1636 page)

Then he attempted to reason with her.

“
Let us consider the matter. You have no reproach to make to Luc?”

“Oh, no, none! I know that he has much affection for me. We are very great friends.”

“
Then what further do you want? He loves you as much as he can, and you are wrong to be angry with him.”

“But I am not angry. I feel no ill-will against any one; I am conscious of nothing but suffering.”

Her words were cut short by sobs, a new surge of distress overwhelmed her and wrung from her the cry:

“Why does he not love me? Why does he not love me?”

“If he cannot give you the love with which you wish to be loved, dear sister, it is because he does not understand you sufficiently. No, he does not understand you as I understand you. He does not know that you are the best, the most kind-hearted, the most devoted, the most loving of women. You would have been to him a companion and helpmate that would have made his life easier and happier; but the other one has stepped in with her beauty, and this must be to him a very powerful attraction, since he has followed her without observing you, you who, nevertheless, loved him so well. There is nothing for you to do but to become resigned.”

He had taken her in his arms, and was now kissing her hair. But she still struggled against the inevitable.

“No, no; I cannot become resigned!”

“Yes, you will become resigned, for you are too good and too intelligent not to do so. Some day you will forget.”

“Oh, no; that is impossible; never!”

“I am wrong; I do not ask you to forget. Keep the remembrance in your heart, since no one else will suffer from it. But I do ask you to become resigned, because I well know that the element of resignation has always existed in you, and that you are capable of submission, even to the point of renunciation and of sacrifice. Reflect, then, on all the disasters that would occur should you rebel or should you speak. Our life would be shattered, our work would be ruined, and you would suffer a thousand times more.”

She interrupted him wildly.

“Very well, then; let life be shattered, let the work be ruined! I, at least, shall be happy. It is unkind of you, brother, to speak to me thus. You are an egoist.”

“An egoist, when I think only of you, my adored sister? Just at this moment your whole nature is exasperated by suffering. And how bitter would be your remorse should I allow you to destroy everything? Tomorrow you would find life unbearable amid the ruin that you had created. My poor, dear love, you will become resigned; your happiness will rest upon self-abnegation and pure tenderness.”

Tears stifled him, and the brother and sister mingled their sobs. This controversy between the two, both so ingenuous and affectionate, exhibited a most beautiful example of fraternal love. Then Jordan repeated, in accents of the deepest pity, tempered with infinite affection:

“You will become resigned; you will become resigned.” She still protested, but in doing so she gave vent to the common plaint of poor, wounded human nature to those who seek to ease its pain.

“Oh, no! I wish to suffer. I cannot, I will not, become resigned.”

Luc breakfasted with the Jordans this morning, and when, at half-past eleven, he joined them in the laboratory, he found the brother and sister still agitated, and showing traces of emotion. But he was himself so distressed, downcast, that he observed nothing. His farewells with Josine and the necessity of their separation had filled him with real despair. It seemed as though his last stronghold had been destroyed when the love that he believed necessary to his mission was taken away from him. If he did not save Josine he would never be able to save the wretched people to whom he had given his heart. From the time that he arose, all the obstacles that were impeding his progress had risen up before him, and appeared insurmountable. He had had a gloomy vision of La Crêcherie on the point of destruction and already destroyed; he even began to feel that it would be folly to hope still to save it. The men who belonged to it were preying upon each other; it was impossible to establish any fraternity among them, and all human fatalities were in league against the work. He had suddenly lost faith, and in doing so became a prey to the most frightful crisis of discouragement that he had yet undergone. All that was heroic in him was wavering, and in his present frame of mind, which exaggerated all evils, he was nearly ready to renounce his task, in his fear of approaching defeat.

Sœurette, observing his distress, had the divine tenderness to become uneasy.

“Are you unhappy, my friend?”

“Yes,” he answered. “I am not very well; I have passed a hideous morning. Ever since I rose I have learned of nothing but misfortunes.”

She did not dwell upon the matter further, but looked at him with increasing anxiety, asking herself what could be the nature of his distress, when he loved and was beloved in turn. To conceal in some degree her own extreme emotion she seated herself at her little work-table, and made a pretence of taking notes for her brother; while the latter, with an exhausted appearance, had stretched himself once more upon his easy-chair.

“Then, my good Luc,” said he, “we are both in the same boat; for I got up this morning very well satisfied, and I, also, have met with disasters that have left me prostrate.”

Luc walked about for a moment, his face clouded, and without saying a word. He passed backward and forward, stopping sometimes before the high window, and casting a glance upon La Crêcherie and upon the infant town, the roofs of which spread out before him. At length he could no longer restrain the tide of his despair, and he spoke:

“My friend, I feel that I must tell you something. It has been thought best that your researches should not be disturbed by the knowledge that our affairs are going very badly at La Crêcherie. Our workmen are leaving us, and disunion and revolt have broken forth among them in consequence of eternal misunderstandings caused by selfishness and hatred. The whole of Beauclair is in commotion; the tradesmen, and even the workmen themselves, whose habits of life we disturb, are making existence so hard for us that our situation is becoming more alarming every day. In short, affairs seem to me now to be desperate, and I admit that everything looks dark to me this morning. I see that we are lost, and I can no longer hide from you the disaster in which we are involved.”

Jordan listened in astonishment. He remained perfectly composed, however, and even smiled slightly.

“Do you not exaggerate a little, my friend?” said he.

“
Let us admit, for argument’s sake, that I do exaggerate, that ruin is not imminent. I should none the less consider myself acting a dishonest part did I not forewarn you of the fear that I have of approaching ruin. When I asked you for land and money for the work of social redemption of which I dreamed, did I not promise you a good investment, as well as a fine and worthy action? And it is plain now that I have deceived you, and that your fortune is going to be swallowed up in the worst of failures. How could it be otherwise than that I should be haunted by the most fearful remorse?”

Jordan made an effort to interrupt him with a gesture, as though to say that money was of no consequence. But he continued:

“I am speaking not only of the large sums already lost, but of those which are necessary every day to prolong the struggle. I dare not ask any more of you, for although I am able and willing to sacrifice myself wholly, I have no right to involve you in my ruin, you and your sister.”

He let himself fall into a chair; his knees giving way, and his whole appearance that of complete exhaustion; while Sœurette, who had grown very pale, and was still seated before her little table, her gaze fastened on the two men, awaited the outcome with the deepest emotion.

“
Well, yes,” resumed Jordan, with his tranquil voice, “things are certainly going very badly. For all that, however, your idea was a good one, and you finally convinced me. I have never disguised the fact from you that I took no interest in political and social experiments, being convinced that science alone is really revolutionary, and that it is that alone that will complete the evolution of the future, by which man will be led to absolute truth and justice. But your idea of consolidation of interests and responsibilities was so beautiful. I looked from that window after my hours of work and saw your town growing with much interest. It gave me great pleasure, and I said to myself that I was working for it, and that one day electricity would be its great power — its active and beneficent industrial power. Must, then, all these hopes be abandoned?”

At these words Luc could not repress a cry of utter despair:

“My energy is spent; my courage has deserted me, and my faith has vanished. Everything is at an end, and I have come to tell you that I shall abandon everything rather than ask of you any further sacrifice. Do you suppose, my friend, that I would have the audacity to ask from you the money that we should still require, even should you venture to let me have it?”

Never had so heartrending a cry of despair come from the breast of a man. It was the evil day, the dark hour, that all heroes and all reformers know so well; the time when the divine inspiration is withdrawn, when their mission is obscured, and when success appears impossible. There is a transient defeat and a momentary cowardice, the endurance of which is fearful.

Jordan had resumed his tranquil smile. He did not make an immediate answer to the question that Luc addressed to him with so much distress in regard to the large sums of money that would still be needed. With a motion as if he were chilly, he once more drew the coverings over his frail limbs, and then said, quietly:

“You must know, my good friend, that I myself am very far from being happy. I have this very morning met with a real disaster. You will remember my discovery of a method of transmitting electric power at a low price and without any waste? Well, I was deceived. I am really not in possession of what I believed that I had. This morning a control experiment convinced me that it will be necessary to begin all over again. This means that the labor of years must be repeated. You will readily understand that it is very trying to meet with such defeat when one believed himself certain of victory.”

Sœurette had turned towards him, overwhelmed at the news of this set-back, of which she had been in ignorance up to this moment. At the same time, Luc, moved with pity out of his own despondency, extended his hand in order to shake Jordan’s in fraternal sympathy. The latter alone remained calm, except for the slight feverish trembling that was habitual with him when he was overworked.

“What are you going to do about it, then?” asked Luc.

“What am I going to do, my good friend? I shall apply myself once more to work. I shall begin over again to-morrow, and I shall take up the investigation from its starting-point, since it must be entirely done over again. The matter is very simple, and it is plain that there is nothing else to be done. You understand, of course, that one never gives up what he has undertaken. If the work in hand requires twenty years, thirty years, or an entire lifetime, such time must be given to it. If we find that we have been mistaken, we retrace our steps and travel over the road already traversed as often as is necessary. Impediments and obstacles occasion halts only, which must always arise from the inevitable difficulties of the route. A piece of work is a child whose life is sacred, and it is a criminal act not to bring it into existence. It is a part of one’s own being; we have no right to object to its creation; we owe it our whole strength, our whole soul, our flesh, and our spirit We should be ready to die of our work, if it exhausts us, as a mother sometimes dies on account of the child whom she is bringing into the world. And if our work does not cost us our life, then, when it is accomplished, and stands complete, living and whole, there is only one thing for us to do, and that is to begin over again upon some other work without pausing, and so to continue, one labor following another, so long as our strength continues and we are in possession of intelligence and vigor.”

While Jordan was speaking, he seemed to become large and strong, as though his belief in human effort fortified him against all discouragement, and he was secure of victory, even though such victory should cost him the last drop of blood in his veins. And Luc, who was listening to him, felt himself inspired by the current of indomitable energy that issued from this fragile being.

“Labor! labor!” continued Jordan, “there is no other power. If one has faith in his work, he is invincible. And it is so easy to create a world. All that is necessary is to return each morning to our work, to add another stone to the stones of the monument that have already been laid, and by this means to build as high as the length of life will permit, without haste, and by the systematic use of the physical and intellectual energies at our disposal. Why should we distress ourselves about to-morrow when it is we ourselves who make it, thanks to our labor of to-day. To-morrow we reap what our efforts of to-day have sown. Ah, it is only labor, sacred and holy, labor the creator and the savior, that is my life itself, my only reason for living!”

His gaze was lost in the distance, and he was speaking now only for himself and repeating that hymn of labor which in all his moments of great emotion recurred constantly to his lips. His continued existence was due only to his having put into his life a piece of work towards the accomplishment of which he had adjusted all the functions of life. He was very sure that death would not overtake him until his work was finished. Whoever gives himself up entirely to some work finds in it a guide and a support like the very regulator of the heart that beats in his breast. There is for him an end in existence, and to meet its claims his health is regulated until an equilibrium is established from which springs the only real human enjoyment, that of action adequately fulfilled. Jordan, however ill he might have been, had never entered his laboratory without finding relief therein. How many times had he begun to work with aching limbs and a heavy heart, and each time his labor had effected a cure. His rare moments of doubt or discouragement occurred only in his hours of enforced idleness. Labor with him sustained its creator; it had no terrors for him, and it became exhausting to him only when he was forced to abandon it.