Complete Works of Emile Zola (1647 page)

It was she who, even now, was insulting him, in the stupor that overwhelmed him.

“
With your fists, is it? Brute that you are! With your fists — like one of your own workmen when they are drunk!”

Then, in the midst of the terrible silence, Delaveau heard the measured blows of the steam-hammer — that movement of labor which had incessantly lulled him day and night. It all came to him from afar off, like a well-known voice, whose clear accents had just finished telling him the whole terrible experience. Was it not Fernande whose hard little teeth of unalterable enamel had devoured all the wealth that this hammer had forged? The burning thought possessed his brain that she had been the devourer, was the origin of misfortune, and was responsible for the millions wasted, and the inevitable failure that was at hand. While he was devoting himself heroically to keep his promises, working eighteen hours a day, and struggling to save the old order of things that was crumbling away, it was she who was undermining the structure, and who was acting as the decay affecting the whole. She had lived there beside him, with her tranquil manner and tender, smiling countenance, and yet she was all the while the active poison, the destroying power, which was undermining all that he attempted, paralyzing his efforts and enfeebling his strength. Yes, ruin had been always present with him, at his table and in his bed, and he had not seen it; yet she had shaken and loosened everything with her pliant white hands and her little white teeth. The remembrance came to him of the nights when she would return from Guerdache, intoxicated with her lover’s caresses, with wine drunk, and waltzes danced, and money squandered with open hand, while he, innocent and imbecile, lay beside her with eyes wide open in the darkness, torturing his brain to save the Pit, and avoiding even a movement for fear of disturbing her sleep. And the thought of all this made him cry out in overwhelming horror and mad rage:

“You are going to die!”

She raised herself in the chair, her elbows resting upon the arms, her skin bare, and her exquisite face, shaded by her beautiful dark hair, once more thrust forward.

“I am quite willing! I have had enough of everything — of you, of other people, of myself, and of life! If to live is to be miserable, I should like better to die.”

And he, becoming more and more beside himself, repeated, with a shriek:

“You are going to die! You are going to die!”

But having no weapons, he turned round, looking about the room in search of them. There was no knife, he had nothing but his two hands with which to strangle her, and then what would become of him? Would he be resigned to live afterwards? One knife would have served for both of them. She saw his difficulty and his momentary hesitation, and triumphed, for she did not believe that he would ever find courage enough to kill her. She began to laugh in her turn, a laugh of irony and insult.

“Well, you are not going to kill me, after all? Kill me, then! Kill me, then, if you dare!”

All at once, in his frantic quest, he caught sight of the little stove, where there burned such a grate full of coke that the overheated room was already like one on fire. A sudden frenzy took possession of him, which made him forget everything, even his daughter, his adored Nise, sleeping peacefully above in her little room on the second floor. Oh! to put an end to himself, to annihilate himself, in the midst of this horror, this rage that possessed him! Oh! to conduct this execrable woman to death, so that she should no longer injure others, and to go with her himself, and to live no longer, since life was, henceforward, sullied and ruined.

She continued to lash him with her contemptuous laugh.

“Kill me, then! Kill me, then! You are far too great a coward to kill me!”

“Yes, yes,” said he to himself, “let everything be burned, everything be destroyed; let there be an immense fire, in which the house and the works will disappear, in which the ruin this time will be absolutely complete, the ruin that this woman and her imbecile lover have compassed! Let there be a gigantic funeral pyre, where I myself will fall in ashes, with this perjured woman, this murderess and destroyer, amid the smoking ruins of the old dead society which I have had the imbecility to protect!”

With a terrible kick he upset the stove and threw it into the middle of the room, repeating his cry:

“You are going to die! You are going to die!”

The burning coke was scattered over the carpet in a red layer. Pieces of it rolled up to the window. The cretonne curtains caught fire first, while the carpet was set afire also. Then the furniture and the walls blazed up with lightning-like rapidity. The house, being very lightly built, quickly caught fire in turn, and crackled and smoked like a bundle of fagots.

It was a fearful scene. Fernande, beside herself with fear, sprang up, and, gathering together her skirts of silk and lace, searched wildly for some path which the flames had not yet attacked. She rushed towards the door leading to the vestibule, feeling sure that she had time to escape, and that with one bound she would be in the garden. But there, before the door, she found Delaveau, whose arm barred the passage. His appearance was so terrible that she rushed towards the other door, which opened on the wooden gallery connecting the office with the adjacent buildings of the works. But this path of escape was already closed; the gallery was on fire, and it acted as a chimney, with such a draught of air that the offices belonging to the superintendent were threatened. She came back to the middle of the room, blinded, suffocated, stumbling, and filled with anger at feeling her dress burning, and her unbound hair in its turn taking fire and covering her bare shoulders with burns. Then she gasped in a frightened voice:

“I will not die! I will not die! Let me pass, assassin! Assassin!”

Once more she threw herself against the door of the vestibule, and tried to force her way out, tearing at her husband, who remained standing there, immovable, in his ferocious determination. He did not speak, except to repeat, calmly:

“I tell you that you are going to die!”

Since, in her struggles to escape, she was digging her nails into his flesh, he had to seize her by force, and, having done so, carried her back once more to the middle of the room, which was now changed into a brazier. A dreadful struggle took place there. She fought with a strength made tenfold greater by the fear of death, and sought for the doors and windows with the instinctive leap of a wounded animal; while he held her by force amid the flames, where he was resolved to die, and where he wished that she should die with him, in order to annihilate at once an existence now horrible for both. His two arms were none too strong, for the walls began to yawn, and for at least ten times he pulled her away from the exits. At length he pinned her in his arms, and squeezed her in a last embrace — he who had adored her, and who had so often before held her in this manner. They fell amid the embers of the floor, clasped in each other’s arms. The hangings on the walls, blazing like torches, finally consumed them, and the timber-work let fall upon them a shower of glowing firebrands. He did not loosen his hold upon her even in death, but clung to her tightly, and transported her into the other oblivion, each burning and consuming in the same avenging fire. At length the end came; the blazing beams above gave way, and the whole ceiling fell upon them.

It happened that on this very night Nanet, who was serving his apprenticeship at La Crêcherie, as a practical electrician, was coming out of the machine-room when he saw a great red light at one side of the Pit. His first thought was that it was a glare from the cementing furnaces. But the light increased, and then all at once he understood; it was the manager’s house that was burning. The thought of Nise struck him with a sudden shock; he began to run like mad, and dashed himself against the partition wall, which both of them, in times past, had climbed over so boldly in order to meet. He scaled it again, without knowing how, assisting himself with his hands and feet. He found himself in the garden, still alone, no alarm having as yet been given. It was, indeed, the house that was burning, and what was appalling was that it was blazing from the ground floor to the roof, like an enormous funeral pyre, without a sign of any one stirring within. The windows remained closed; the door was not open, and, us it was already in flames, no one could get in or out. Nanet thought that he heard loud cries and what appeared to be an agonizing struggle. At last the Venetian blinds belonging to one of the windows on the second floor were hastily pulled up, and Nise appeared in the smoke, deadly pale, and dressed in nothing but her chemise and petticoat. She leaned out in terror and called for help.

“Don’t be afraid! don’t be afraid!” cried Nanet, wildly. “I am coming up!”

He had noticed a long ladder lying beside a shed, but when he attempted to take it up he found that it was chained. There was a moment of terrible distress. He seized a large stone and hammered with all his strength upon the chains in an effort to break them. The flames roared, the entire first floor was taking fire, and there arose such a redoubled outburst of sparks and smoke that Nise, standing up above, disappeared at times from sight. Nanet was all the time hearing cries from her that maddened him, and so he hammered and hammered, and cried, as he did so:

“Wait! wait! I am coming!”

The chain gave way, and it was possible for him to raise the ladder. He never understood afterwards how he had succeeded in placing it upright. It must have been by a miracle that he erected it under the window. Then he saw that it was too short, and his despair was such that for a moment he wavered in his bravery of a hero of seventeen determined to save his little lady-love of thirteen. He lost his head, and knew nothing further. “Wait! wait! That is nothing. I am coming!”

Just at this moment one of the two maids, whose attic opened upon the roof, got out of her window, and clung to the edge of the gutter, and, in the madness of terror, believing that the flames were already upon her, leaped suddenly into space, landing near the flight of steps at the entrance, with her skull fractured, and was killed instantly.

Nanet, more and more alarmed by Nise’s outcries, believed that she also was going to jump. He seemed to see her lying bleeding at his feet, and uttered a final agonizing appeal:

“Don’t jump, I, am coming, I am coming!”

He ran up the whole length of the ladder, and when he reached the blazing first floor entered it through one of the windows, the glass of which was shattered by the intensity of the heat. Help was beginning to arrive, and a great many people were already to be seen on the road and in the garden. There were some minutes of terrible anxiety, as the crowd witnessed the saving of one child by another, in the courage of madness. The fire was steadily gaining, the walls were beginning to crack, and the ladder itself seemed afire as it stood empty and upright against the front of the house, where neither the boy nor the girl reappeared. At last Nanet returned, carrying Nise on his shoulders, just as one carries a lamb. He had succeeded, in spite, of the fact that the interior of the house was now a furnace, in ascending one flight, grasping her, and descending again; but his hair was singed, his clothing was burning, and after he had slid down rather than descended the ladder, round by round, with his beloved burden, both were covered with burns, and fainted in each other’s arms, clasped in an embrace so tight that it was necessary to carry them together to La Crêcherie, where Sœurette, who had been instantly summoned, came to take care of them in the infirmary.

A half-hour later the whole house was destroyed, not a stone remained standing. The worst thing of all was that the fire, after having communicated itself by the passage-way to the administration building, continued to advance by the adjacent sheds, and was now consuming the great hall in which were located the puddling-furnaces and the rolling-mills. The entire works were threatened. The fire raged among the ancient buildings, which were almost all of wood and dilapidated and calcined. It was said that the Delaveaus’ other servant, having found means of escape to the kitchen, had been the first to give the alarm to the night gang, which had rushed from the Pit. But the workmen had no fire-engine, and were obliged to wait for their neighbors at La Crêcherie, who came with brotherly haste, led by Luc himself, to the assistance of the rival works, bringing with them the fire-engine and its crew — one of the creations of La Crêcherie. The firemen from Beauclair, whose organization was very imperfect, did not arrive until after some little time. It was altogether too late, since the Pit was blazing like an immense brazier, from one end to the other of its buildings, which covered several acres, and from which nothing emerged but the lofty chimneys and the tower for tempering guns.

At the break of day, after this night of disaster, numerous groups were still stationed before the half-extinguished fire, under the gloomy and frosty sky of November. The authorities of Beauclair, including the Sub-prefect Châtelard and Mayor Gourier, had not left the place of the conflagration; and Judge Gaume was with them, as was also his son-in-law, Captain Jollivet. The Abbé Marie, who had not been summoned until too late, did not arrive until daybreak, and was soon followed by a crowd of sightseers, made up of the well-to-do, the shopkeepers, the Mazelles, the Caffiaux, and Dacheux himself. Struck with a feeling of terror, all were talking in a low voice, and their greatest anxiety was to know in what manner such a catastrophe could have occurred. There remained but one witness, and that was the servant-maid who had succeeded in making her escape. She related how madame had returned from Guerdache at a little before midnight, and that all at once there had risen a sound of loud voices, and then the flames had broken out. The story was listened to and repeated in an undertone, and persons intimately acquainted with the household divined the cause of the terrible scene that had occurred. The maid was perfectly sure that monsieur and madame had perished in the flames. The general horror was intensified when Boisgelin arrived, and was observed to be so pale and unnerved that it was necessary to assist him in getting out of his carriage. He fainted away completely at the sight of this scene of ruin, where the wreck of his fortune lay smouldering before him, and where the bones of Delaveau and Fernande were falling into ashes. Dr. Novarre was obliged to devote himself to him.