Complete Works of Emile Zola (1658 page)

Youth seemed to be having its own way everywhere; engagements were formed and marriages took place; young men and maidens whom the traditions of two social systems seemed to have separated, set forth on their march to the future city, drawn together by the eternal attraction of man to woman. The old tradespeople of Beauclair, whose business had been so much impaired, now gave their sons and daughters to the workmen of La Crêcherie and to the peasants of Combettes. The Laboques began by letting their son Auguste marry Marthe Bourron and their daughter Eulalie espouse Arsène Lenfant. For several years they had given up their struggle against La Crêcherie, acknowledging that trade, as it was in old times, was no more, and that to struggle against fate was useless, for it would consume both energy and riches. At first they had to agree to let their shop in the Rue de Brias become a depository for the productions of La Crêcherie and the other factories which had joined the association. Afterwards they made another step, and agreed to close their shop, which had been swallowed up in the general stores, in which the kindness of Luc provided a sort of place for them as superintendents. Then, besides, old age had come upon them; they felt themselves put aside; they were bitter; they were frightened at finding themselves in a world that had not their passion for making money — a world which was carried on by a younger generation, and was enlarged by other industries and other joys. And so it chanced that their two children, Auguste and Eulalie, who followed the dictates of love, that great power which works for harmony and peace, were married according to their own choice, without any opposition from their parents, except the sort of disapprobation all old people are apt to feel when they mourn for the “good old times” that have passed away. The two weddings were to take place the same day at Combettes, which had become a large place, the
faubourg
, indeed, of Beauclair, with large, cheerful buildings, which testified how much riches could be drawn from the soil. And the double marriage took place in harvest-time, on the last day, when there were enormous ricks rising in all directions over the now whitened plain.

Feuillat, the old farmer, had before this married his son Léon to Eugénie, the daughter of Yvonnot, the assistant of Lenfant, the mayor, who long before had become reconciled with his principal. That reconciliation had brought about a good understanding among the other inhabitants of the commune; the general impulse towards association had converted the poor little village, once full of hatreds, into a flourishing place, full of good feeling. Feuillat, who was now a very old man, was a sort of patriarch in this agricultural community. It had been his dream of other days, his secret hope when he had opposed the murderous old system of farming, with a dim prescience of the great prosperity that cultivators might derive from their land if they would agree to work it by scientific methods. This plain farmer, once hard and rapacious, like most men of his class, seemed to have been enlightened by the true spirit of love for the soil that during so many years had supported his ancestors in poverty, so that he foresaw the way to save it, by promoting peace among such peasants as would listen to him, urging them to labor in common, so that their land might once more be their mother, when ploughed, sowed, and harvested as if by one sole family. And he had had his part in the realization of this dream. He had seen neighbors unite their fields, and the farm of Guerdache join the commune of Combettes; other and smaller communes, too, joined the association. He had seen a vast domain formed and set in motion, ever increasing until it seemed likely to annex the whole of the great plain of Roumagne. Lenfant and Yvonnot had founded the association, but Feuillat had been its moving spirit. These three formed a sort of council of the elders, which was consulted about everything, and it was found well to follow their advice.

So when the marriage of Lenfant’s son Arsène to Eulalie Laboque was decided on, and her brother Auguste wanted to be married on the same day to Marthe Bourron, Feuillat had a plan that everybody was delighted with of giving a great beautiful
fête
on the occasion, which should be at the same time a celebration of the pacification of Combettes, its triumph and prosperity. The guests would drink toasts to the brotherhood of the peasant and the artisan, who had been so wickedly opposed to each other in former years, and whose alliance would be the best means of bringing about prosperity and social peace. They would drink to the end of all antagonisms, to the annihilation of that barbarous system of trade which had kept up hostility between the tradesman who sold tools, the peasant who grew grain, and the baker who sold the loaves that had been made dear that so many middlemen might make their profit. And what better day could have been chosen to celebrate this reconciliation than that on which former enemies, the representatives of two classes once eager to destroy and devour each other, were exchanging their sons and daughters in marriage — marriages which would hasten the prosperity of the future?

Now that the evolution of this happy life drew heart to heart, it was well that public rejoicings should mark the stage of progress, and at the same time celebrate the splendid harvest which was about to fill the Combettes granaries. It was decided that the festivities should take place out-doors, near the town, in a great field where tall stacks of wheat should be erected to resemble the columns of a gigantic temple; these stacks shone like gold when the rays of the sun fell upon them. Far off the columns of stacks of grain stretched to the horizon, proving the inexhaustible fertility of the soil. There they sang, there they danced, in the sweet perfume of the ripened wheat, in the midst of that vast fertile plain, from which the work of men who had become reconciled drew bread enough to satisfy them abundantly.

The Laboques brought with them to the
fete
all the old tradespeople of Beauclair, and Bourron brought with him all La Crêcherie. The Lenfants were there on their own ground, and never before had there been such a scene of fraternization, the various groups intermingling with each other as if they formed one family. Of course the Laboques were not gay, and seemed embarrassed. But Lenfant was heartily merry, though he was nothing to Babette Bourron, who, with her usual happy temper and her confidence that everything would turn out right in the end, was in a state of triumph. She was the incarnation of hope, and gleamed behind the two newly wedded pairs. And when these arrived — Marthe Bourron on the arm of Auguste Laboque, and Eulalie Laboque on the arm of Arsène Lenfant — they brought with them such a sunshine of youth, joy, and strength that an endless cheer rose from the guests from one end to the other of the yellow stubble-fields. They were saluted with kind words; their neighbors loved them, and their marriage was in course of celebration because they represented love triumphant and victorious, the love whose warmth had already touched all hearts and had given them such splendid harvests — love by which they and their prosperity would increase and multiply — they were a people united, free henceforth, independent of animosities and of hunger. On that day other engagements took place, as had been the case when Lucien Bonnaire and Louise Mazelle were married. Madame Mitaine, of the bakery, who, though she was sixty-five, was still known as “the beautiful Madame Mitaine,” kissed Olympe Lenfant, sister of one of the brides, and told her how happy she should be to call her her daughter, for her son Evariste had told her he adored Olympe. Madame Mitaine had lost her husband ten years before, and no longer kept her shop. She had joined the co - operative stores of La Crêcherie, as had nearly all the retail dealers in the city. She lived, like a good woman who had done her work and was now taking her rest, with her son Evariste, and both were proud that Luc had put them in charge of the electric kneading-troughs, which daily gave out an abundance of light, white loaves, enough for all the population. And while Evariste was giving Olympe a kiss, at which she blushed with pleasure, as it sealed their betrothal, Madame Mitaine noticed a little old woman, very thin and very sombre, sitting under a wheat-stack. It was her old neighbor, Madame Dacheux, the widow of the butcher. Madame Mitaine went over and sat down beside her.

“It is as it ought to be,” she said, gayly, “that all should end in marriage, for these young people were all playmates once, you know.”

But Madame Dacheux was sad, and made no answer. She, too, had lost her husband, who had died from an unskilful blow of his own cleaver which had cut off his right hand. Some people said that this blow was not the result of an accident, but that the butcher had struck off his own hand in a furious fit of anger rather than sign the paper which would have given up his shop to La Crêcherie. Events that had taken place before that time, the danger that threatened that “holy meat,” the food of rich people, might be brought within the means of every workman, and be served upon the tables of the poor, had upset all his ideas, as a stout tyrannical tradesman of violent temper and reactionary opinions, to such an extent that it may have affected his brain. He died of gangrene, resulting from the wound which had not been properly attended to, leaving his widow terrified by the fierce curses he had heaped upon her in his last moments.

“How about your Julienne?” asked Madame Mitaine, in her amiable way. “I met her the other day. She is superb.”

The butcher’s widow answered at last:

“She is dancing over there. I am watching her.”

It was true that Julienne was dancing with a tall, handsome man, Louis Fauchard, son of the frail workman who once drew crucibles out of the furnaces. She was stout and fair, and her face was beaming with health and satisfaction, as she was passionately enfolded in the arms of her vigorous young partner, with his kindly face, one of the best forgemen in La Crêcherie.

“So that’s to be another marriage?” said Madame Mitaine, laughing.

Madame Dacheux gave a start, and cried out:

“Oh no! oh no! how can you say that? You know what were the ideas of my poor husband. He would come out of his grave if I were willing to marry his daughter to a working-man, to the son of poor people, the son of that Natalie who was so pitiful, always wanting something to make soup of on credit. He often turned her out of his shop because she did not pay what she owed him.”

She went on to tell more about her sufferings in a trembling voice. Her husband often appeared to her at night. Though he was dead he made her bend to his despotic authority. He scolded her and quarrelled with her in her dreams, and made devilish threats if she disobeyed him. The poor little woman, always easily frightened, was so unhappy as to find no peace even in her widowhood.

“If I were to consent to let Julienne make a match he did not approve,” she said, “he would come back every night and abuse me and beat me.”

She was weeping, and Madame Mitaine tried to comfort her, assuring her that such nightmares would cease if she tried to make every one happy around her. Just then Natalie, the plaintive Madame Fauchard, who once had been always trying to procure four bottles of wine nightly for her husband, drew near them with a little timidity. She was suffering no longer from keen poverty, but was living in one of the little bright houses of La Crêcherie with Fauchard, who had given up work, having become infirm and almost childish. She also had in her house her brother Fortune, about forty-five years of age, whose mere animal, mechanical work at the Pit, from the time he was fifteen, had early made him an old man, deaf and blind. So, in spite of the comforts she owed to the new system of pensions and mutual help, she was still doleful, a sad relic of the past, with her two men and her two children to be looked after, as she often said. It was an object-lesson, an example of what came from the old system of wage-earning, that was thus presented to the younger generation.

“You have not seen my men, have you?” she asked Madame Mitaine. “I have lost them in the crowd. Ah! there they are.”

And the two passed by as she spoke, holding each other up, each supporting the other’s tottering steps. Fauchard, who had gone all to pieces, now seemed like a ghost out of the old world of toil and misery. Fortune, younger than Fauchard, but quite as much broken, seemed to have become imbecile. And in the vigorous crowd, so overflowing with new life and hope, among these ricks of grain smelling so sweet, and containing wheat enough to support every one, they walked slowly and feebly without understanding what they saw, and without returning their neighbors’ salutations.

“Leave them in the sunshine; it will do them good,” said Madame Mitaine.
“
There’s your son; he is happy and hearty.”

“
Oh yes; Louis’ health is excellent,” replied Madame Fauchard. “Nowadays sons are not like their fathers. Just see how he is dancing! He will never know cold or hunger.”

Then the baker’s widow, with the kindly audacity of one who had been a beauty all her life, made an attempt to promote the happiness of the pair near her, who were dancing and laughing so confidingly. She drew the two mothers together. She made Madame Fauchard and Madame Dacheux sit side by side, and then managed to exert such an influence on the latter that she moved her at first, and finally convinced her. What she suffered from, Madame Mitaine assured her, was her loneliness. If she had some dear little grandchildren to climb into her lap they would put the ghosts to flight, and she would see no more of them. The poor little woman cried at last:

“Oh! dear me! I wish it, too; only they must not let me live alone. I never said no — to any one. It was only he who would not approve of it. But if you will all take my part, and if you will promise to help me — do what you will! Do what you will!”

When Louis and Julienne heard that their mothers had given their consent, they ran and hugged them in their arms with tears and laughter. And among so much happiness, this made more happiness still.

“Just see!” resumed Madame Mitaine; “how could you have separated these two young people, who seem to have grown up for each other? I have just given my Evariste to Olympe Lenfant, and I remember the day when she came, a little tot, into my bakery, and my boy gave her some cakes. It is just the same with Louis Fauchard — how often have I seen him prowling ground your butcher shop, Madame Dacheux, and playing with Julienne! The intermarriages of the Laboques, the Bourrons, the Lenfants, and the Yvonnots are the occasion of this
fête,
but all the young people grew up together; they were playmates even while their parents were ready to rend and devour each other, and this day is the grand harvest of reconciliation and good-will.” Saying this she laughed aloud with her look of infinite kindness; there seemed always about her a perfume of the warm bread, in the midst of which she had lived fair and handsome in her bakery. Around her joy seemed to increase. They came and told her that more engagements had been that day made — Sébastian Bourron to Agathe Fauchard, and Nicolas Yvonnot to Zoé Bonnaire. Love, sovereign and conqueror, had enlarged his borders, promoting reconciliation by mingling class with class. It was Love who had fertilized the great plain now covered with trees, bearing such a profusion of fruit that their branches were near breaking, and Love had covered the furrows with such an abundance of wheat that the ricks from one horizon to the other seemed columns in a temple of peace. A sweet and powerful fragrance came from this fertility which presaged the result of these happy marriages, whence future generations would be born — generations more righteous and more liberal still. Till dusk under the stars the
fête
lasted, a triumph of love, drawing hearts together, melting them into each other while songs and dances went on, exciting the joy of this little population which was progressing towards future unity and a harmonious mutual understanding.