Complete Works of Emile Zola (1649 page)

“Then what course are you going to adopt?” asked Suzanne.

He spoke of the two solutions between which he hesitated, without ability to choose, so many were the difficulties that each presented. The choice lay between getting rid of everything and selling all that was left of the Pit, at any price, so long as it supplied the means of paying the debt of six hundred thousand francs; or finding new capital by establishing a syndicate, in which his share would be the land and the machinery saved — a combination, however, that he felt to be chimerical. The solution of the difficulty became every day more pressing, for the ruin proved to be total and complete.

Suzanne remarked:

“We still have Guerdache; we can sell that.”

“Oh! sell Guerdache!” answered he, with an air of desperation. “Sell this property where we are so happy, to which we are so habituated! To go in search of some place of refuge, and hide ourselves in some den of poverty! What a downfall! what a fresh and dreadful distress!”

She became grave again, perceiving clearly that he could not accustom himself to the idea of a quiet, commonplace existence.

“My dear, the same thing will be necessary if we stay here. We can no longer keep up so expensive an establishment.”

“No doubt, no doubt, Guerdache will have to be sold, but later, when an opportunity presents itself. If we put it on the market now we shall not obtain half its value, for it will be an announcement of our ruin, and the whole country will understand it so, and will find occasion to rejoice and to speculate.”

Then he made use of a more direct argument.

“Besides, dear love, Guerdache is your own. The title deeds state that the five hundred thousand francs purchase money were taken from the million in your dowry, and the other five hundred thousand are entered as half of the million which the Pit cost us. We were joint proprietors of the works, but Guerdache is your exclusive property, and my only wish is to keep it for you as long as we possibly can.”

Suzanne made a sign, as though she did not wish to insist, but letting it be understood that she had been long resigned to any sacrifices. Her husband looked at her, and seemed suddenly to recollect something.

“Ah, tell me — I intended to ask you: do you ever see your old friend, Monsieur Luc Froment, nowadays?”

She remained stupefied for a moment. The breaking-off of her intercourse with Luc, in consequence of the bitter rivalry arising between the two sets of works, had not been the least of her griefs amid so many domestic troubles. In him she had lost a kind, cordial, comforting friend, who would have aided and supported her. But she had in this also resigned herself; she had met him since then at infrequent intervals, and wholly by chance on the rare occasions when she went out, and had never addressed a word to him. He himself had imitated her discretion and her renunciation, and it had seemed to him plain that their old intimacy was forever dead. All this did not prevent the young woman from taking a passionate interest in Luc’s enterprise, which, however, she mentioned to no one. She continued to be secretly one with him in his generous effort and in his desire to establish a little justice and peace upon earth. Therefore she had suffered with him and triumphed with him, and when for the moment he had been thought dead under Ragu’s knife she had shut herself up for two days, so that no one should see her. In the depths of her grief she was conscious of an intolerable agony at the thought of his affection for Josine, of which she then learned, and which left a wound in her heart. Had she, then, been in love with Luc without knowing it? Had she not dreamed of the joy and pride of a husband such as he, one who would have made so magnificent a use of his fortune? Had she not said to herself how she would have aided him, how they would together have realized miracles of peace and goodness? But he had recovered, and was now the husband of Josine, and she had again withdrawn into the shade in her abnegation as a deserted wife, as a mother who lived only for her son. Luc had ceased to exist for her, and the question put to her in regard to him brought him back to her from so far off that she did not conceal her great surprise as she replied:

“How do you think that I could see Monsieur Froment? You are well aware that it is more than ten years since our relations with him were broken.”

Boisgelin shrugged his shoulders calmly.

‘“Oh, that need not prevent it; you might have met him somewhere and talked with him. You understood each other so well in old times. You have kept up no intercourse with him, then?”

“No,” said she, distinctly. “If I still met him, you would have known it.”

She felt her own astonishment increase, wounded as she was at his insistence and a little mortified at being interrogated after this fashion. What was he aiming at? What was the reason of this desire that she should have kept up relations with Luc? She began to seek information in her turn.

“Why do you ask me this?”

“For no definite reason, only a passing idea that came to me a little while ago.”

He returned to it, however, and ended by confessing.

“I said to you, you remember, that we had two courses open to us: either to sell the Pit and get rid of everything, or to establish a business firm, in which I should remain. But there is still a third course, a combination of the two others, which would be to get La Crêcherie to buy the Pit, reserving to ourselves the best part of the profits. Do you understand?”

“No, not at all.”

“Nevertheless, it is very simple. This Luc must have an intense desire to possess our property. Now he has done us a great deal of harm, has he not? It is only fair that we should extract a large sum from him. And this would be our salvation; above all, if we had an interest in the house besides, it would permit us to keep Guerdache without diminishing our establishment in the least.”

Suzanne listened to him with a feeling of great sadness. She perceived that he was still the same man, and that the dreadful lesson that he had just received had not reformed him. His only idea was to speculate upon others, and extract profit for himself out of any situation wherever it might be found. Above all, his one aim was to do nothing himself, and to remain in idleness as the sleeping-partner, the capitalist that he now was. In the midst of the overwhelming despair that had oppressed him ever since the catastrophe, he preserved nothing but the terror of and hatred for work. His absorbing thought was how to arrange matters so that he could continue to live without doing anything. And his pleasure in this prospect reappeared suddenly from beneath his already dried tears.

Wishing to understand the matter thoroughly, Suzanne said: “But what have I to do with the affair? Why do you ask me whether I have preserved relations with Monsieur Froment?”

He answered, coolly:

“
Oh, well, because that would have facilitated the overtures that I am thinking of making to him. You can understand that after years of misunderstanding it is not easy to approach a gentleman in order to introduce a question of one’s own interest, while it would become simpler if the gentleman had remained your friend. You yourself, perhaps, could have seen him and spoken to him—”

She stopped him with a sudden gesture.

“I should never have spoken to Monsieur Froment under such circumstances. You forget that I had a sisterly affection for him.”

The unfortunate man had stooped to the baseness of speculating upon the tenderness which Luc might have kept in his heart, and it was this that he had thought of employing in order to move his adversary, so as to conquer him the more easily.

He must have known that he was paining her, for he saw her suddenly turn paler and colder, as if she had again withdrawn from him. So, wishing to efface the bad impression, he said:

“You are right; these things do not concern women. You could not, of course, undertake such a commission; but, nevertheless, I am pleased with my idea, since the more I reflect upon it the more I am convinced that our salvation is there. I am going to arrange my plan of attack, and then I shall do my best to find a means of placing myself in communication with the manager of La Crêcherie — unless, indeed, I let him take the first step himself, which would be shrewder.”

He was cheered up by this hope of duping another, and of thereby securing his own enjoyment, as he had always done. Life was still worth living, if one could live with his hands white and idle, ignorant of the use of tools. He rose with a sigh of relief, and looked out of one of the windows at the great park, which seemed more spacious than ever, on this clear winter day, and where he hoped, as soon as spring came, to resume his
fêtes
. Then he exclaimed:

“We should be very stupid to distress ourselves unduly. Can people like ourselves ever be wretched?” Suzanne, who had remained seated, felt her horrible sadness increase. A moment before she had entertained the ingenuous hope of reforming this man, but now perceived that all the tempests in the world and revolutions themselves might pass over him without his amending and without his even comprehending the new times. The primitive exploitation of man by man was in his blood, and he could live and enjoy himself only upon others. He would always remain a big, bad child, whom she would eventually have the charge of, if justice ever did its work. Then she had no longer any other feeling towards him than a great deal of cold pity.

During this long conversation Paul had not moved, but had listened to his parents with an air of intelligence and tenderness. All the emotions that agitated his mother could be seen reflected in his large, thoughtful eyes. He was in complete communion with her, and suffered whatever she suffered upon seeing the unworthiness of the husband and father. And when she noticed his painful constraint, she asked him:

“Where were you going, my child?”

“Mother, I was going to the farm, where Feuillat must, by this time, have received the new plough for winter tillage.”

Boisgelin laughed outright.

“And does that interest you?”

“Why, certainly, my father. At Combettes they have steam-ploughs that make furrows more than a mile long in their fields, which have been united in common so as to form one immense field. It is wonderful to see the earth turned over and fertilized down to its inwards.” He was becoming enthusiastic with the vehemence of a child. His mother smiled tenderly.

“Go, go, my child,” she said; “go and see the new plough, and work yourself; you will be the better for it.” During the days that followed Suzanne observed that her husband was in no haste to put his project into execution. He seemed to be satisfied to have found the solution, which, according to him, was going to save them all; and his indolence and feebleness of will took possession of him once more. There was also now at Guerdache another grown-up child, whose conduct caused her a sudden uneasiness. Monsieur Jérôme, her grandfather, who had just reached the advanced age of eighty-eight years, in spite of the species of living death with which paralysis had stricken him, had always led his silent life apart, having no longer any relations with the outside world, except during his continual airings in his wheeled chair, pushed by his servant. Suzanne alone entered his room, and cared for him with the tender attentions that she had bestowed upon him, nearly thirty years before, when she was a little girl, in that same room upon the ground floor opening upon the park. She had become so accustomed to the clear eyes of the old man, those fathomless eyes, like the depths of spring water, that she could read therein the slightest and most fugitive emotions. Now, since the recent events, the eyes had become darker, and it seemed as though their waters had been troubled by some sediment disturbed in their depths. During many monotonous years she had bent over them, without seeing anything in them, and she had asked herself whether they could remain so pure, so vacant, if the power of thought were not gone from them forever. Was it possible that thought was now returning? Might not these shadows, these growing disquietudes, indicate a possible revival of all his powers? Was it possible that he had always been conscious and intelligent; or had the hard physical pressure of the paralysis relaxed, as it were, by a miracle, freeing him for a moment, at the last, from the silence and immobility in which he had so long lived imprisoned. She watched this slow work of deliverance with surprise and increasing distress.

One evening the servant who pushed Monsieur Jérome’s wheeled chair ventured to stop Suzanne as she came out of the old man’s room, induced to do so by the look of intelligence with which he had followed her to the door.

“Madame,” he said, “I made up my mind that I would tell you. It seems to me that monsieur is more himself. He has spoken to-day.”

Suzanne exclaimed, in great astonishment:

“What! he has spoken?”

“Yes. I was almost sure yesterday that I heard him stammer a few words, in a low voice, during a little halt that we made on the Brias road opposite the Pit. But to-day, as we were passing La Crêcherie, he certainly spoke. I am sure of it.”

“And what did he say?”

“Ah, madame, I did not clearly understand, but I am almost sure that the words were incoherent, and had no reasonable meaning.”

From that time on Suzanne watched over her grandfather with anxious tenderness. His servant had orders to come every evening and relate the events of the day to madame, and it was thus that she was able to follow the increasing uneasiness that seemed to be taking possession of the aged man. He was becoming possessed of a craving to see and hear, and insisted that his drives should be extended, as if he were greedy of the sights spread out along the roads. But, above all, he caused himself to be taken daily to one of two places, either the Pit or La Crêcherie, and remained for hours gazing fixedly at the gloomy ruins of the one or the cheerful prosperity of the other. He insisted that his servant should walk more slowly, and on several occasions ordered him to go back over the road, stammering more and more distinctly the incoherent words, which were still devoid of meaning. At last, Suzanne, disturbed by this slow revival, sent for Dr. Novarre, being desirous to have his opinion.