Complete Works of Emile Zola (1666 page)

Bonnaire approached him with great compassion.

“My poor man,” said he, “can I be of assistance to you? You are exhausted with fatigue, and you seem in great trouble.”

Then, as the pauper did not answer, his terrified looks still wandering from one point to another, Bonnaire continued:

“Are you hungry? Do you need a good bed? I will take charge of you; you will find aid and succour here.”

At length the old man, miserable and forlorn, made an effort, and stammered very low, as though speaking to himself:

“Beauclair, Beauclair; is this really Beauclair?”

“Undoubtedly it is Beauclair; you are at Beauclair, that is certain,” declared the master-puddler, smiling.

But on seeing the pauper give increasing evidence of uneasy surprise and doubt, he finally began to understand.

“You knew Beauclair, perhaps, formerly,” said he. “It may be a long time since you left it.”

“Yes, more than fifty years,” answered the unknown in his hollow voice.

Bonnaire then burst into a hearty laugh.

“Ah!” said he. “I am not surprised that you have difficulty in recognizing it. There have been some changes. For instance, see, in this very place the works of the Pit have disappeared, while down below, farther off, the whole of old Beauclair, that wretched hole, has been pulled down; you see it is a new city that is built; it is the park of La Crêcherie which has extended until it has surrounded the old town with its verdure, and the latter is now an immense garden where the little white houses stand gayly among the trees. Of course it is necessary to consider a little before you know where you are.” The pauper had followed these explanations, turning his eyes towards the points that the old man pointed out to him with such happy cheerfulness. But he shook his head once more; he could not believe in the reality of what was said to him.

“No, no,” said he. “I do not see; it is no longer Beauclair. There are certainly the two promontories of the Monts Bleuses, between which opens out the Brias gorge, and there is also, in the distance, the plain of Roumagne. That is all that remains; these gardens and these houses are of another country, a country of riches and enchantment that I have never seen. Come, I must march on. I am certainly deceived in the road.”

He made an effort to rise from the bench, while gathering up his stick and his wallet, when his glance at last rested on the old man who had shown him such gentle courtesy. Until then he had been occupied with himself, looking about him as if in a dream, and speaking to himself in a low voice. Then, all at once, at the first look that he threw upon Bonnaire, he became mute; he seemed terrified and in haste to depart. Had he recognized the latter, then, when he failed to recognize the town? Bonnaire was so struck by the sudden illumination that flashed over this unrecognizable face, covered with shaggy hair, that he examined it with more attention. Where had he seen those wide-open eyes, lighted up at moments with violence? Suddenly remembrance awoke within him, and he shuddered in his turn, while all the past awoke in the cry that trembled on his lips —

“Ragu!”

For fifty years they had believed him dead. The mutilated, mangled body found at the bottom of an abyss in the Monts Bleuses the day following his flight after his crime had not been his, then? He lived, he lived; great Heavens! He had reappeared, and this extraordinary resurrection, this dead man rising from the tomb after so many events, brought with it all the anguish of the unknown, the secret anxiety of what had happened yesterday and what would happen to-morrow.

“Ragu! Ragu! it is you!”

The man had once more taken his stick in his hand and his knapsack on his shoulder. But from the moment that he was recognized, why should he set forth again? He could not be deceived about the road.

“It is I, sure enough, my old Bonnaire, and since you are still living, you who are my senior by ten years, I may very well be living, too; ah! that is a very great pity, when all is said and done, that is true!”

Then in his jeering tone of former times he said:

“Come, give me your word that this is really Beauclair, all this great, magnificent garden with these pretty houses. And since I have arrived, the only thing for me to do is to find an inn where they will permit me to sleep in a corner of the stable.”

Why, then, had he returned? What project was agitating his disordered brain, behind that face seamed by so many years of vagabondage and evil living? Bonnaire, more and more uneasy, and filled with fear, already saw him disturbing the next day’s fete with some scandal, and did not dare to ask questions immediately. But, nevertheless, he wished to take him under his care, being full of pity, and feeling his heart moved at finding Ragu again in such destitution.

“There is no longer an inn, comrade,” said he, “and you are going to come to my house. You shall satisfy your hunger, and you shall sleep in a clean bed. Then we will talk; you shall tell me what you will, and I will help you towards what you want, if it is possible.”

Ragu still jeered.

“Oh, what I want! Nothing; the wish of an old beggar, who is half crippled, is no longer of any consequence. I want to see you again, and, in passing, to glance at the country where I was born. That was what tormented me — that idea — and I could not die easy without coming back to take a turn around here. That is allowed, is it not? The roads are still free?”

“Certainly.”

“Then I shall be starting out again. Oh! it has been years and years. When one has poor legs and not a sou in the world, one does not advance very quickly, but one gets there all the same, since here I am. And, as you speak of it, let us go to your house, if you offer me hospitality like a good comrade.”

The night was approaching, and the two old men could cross the new Beauclair without being remarked by any one. Ragu continued to give way to astonishment and cast glances to right and left, but failed to recognize any of the places through which they were passing. At last, when Bonnaire stopped before one of the most charming of the houses, standing beneath a group of beautiful trees, he gave vent to an exclamation in which all his former nature reappeared.

“You have made your fortune, then; you are a
bourgeois!”

The old master-puddler began to laugh.

“No, no; I have been, and am, nothing more than a workman. But it is true, notwithstanding, for we have all made fortunes; we are all
bourgeois.”

Ragu sneered, as though his envious feelings were reassured.

“A workman cannot be a
bourgeois,
and when a man is still working, it is because he has not made a fortune.”

“Very good, old comrade. I told you that we would talk, and I will explain this. In the meanwhile, come in; come in.”

Bonnaire was living alone, for the moment, in the house that belonged to his granddaughter Claudine, who was married to Charles Froment. Father Linot had been dead for a long time, and his daughter, Ragu’s sister, the terrible La Toupe, had joined him the preceding year, after a terrible quarrel, in which she had, as she said, received a stroke. When Ragu heard of this double loss, and that the places of his father and sister were vacant, he simply made a gesture, as though to say that he expected it, on account of their great age. After half a century of absence, a failure to meet some one again is not surprising.

“We are here, then, in the house of my granddaughter Claudine, the daughter of my eldest son, Lucien, who has married Louise Mazelle, the young lady of fortune whom you should remember. Claudine herself is married to Charles Froment, a son of the master of La Crêcherie. But they have just taken their little girl Alice, who is eight years old, to her aunt’s house at Formeries, whence they will not return until to-morrow.”

Then Bonnaire concluded, merrily:

“It is several months since the children took me with them, in order to pamper me a little. The house is our own; eat and drink, then; afterwards I will take you to your bed, and to-morrow, when it is daylight, we shall understand each other.”

Ragu had listened in a sort of stupor. All these names, all these marriages, and all these three generations passing before him like a flash of lightning frightened him. How could he understand, how could he find his bearings in the midst of these events of which he was in ignorance, and of these deaths and births? Bonnaire, becoming uneasy at seeing him so gloomy and disquieted, asked himself by what unknown adventures he could have drifted about during half a century, and became astonished at the fact that he was still living in the midst of such misery.

“Where did you come from?” asked he, at length.

“Oh, from everywhere!” answered Ragu, with a sweep of the hand that took in the whole extent of the horizon.

“Then you must have seen other countries, and people, and things?”

“Oh yes; in France, in Germany, in England, and in America. I have dragged my carcass from one end of the world to the other.”

And before going to sleep, while smoking his pipe, he gave an outline of his existence as a wandering workman, idle and pleasure-loving, who had revolted against labor. He had never succeeded in laying up a sou; poverty became everywhere more constantly his mistress, and each succeeding year was a new stage on his downward track. When old age overtook him it was, indeed, a miracle that he did not die of hunger and want in the corner of some field. Up to sixty he had not worked much except at little jobs. Then he got into a hospital, was forced at last to come out, and then fell into another. For fifteen years he had managed to live on chance jobs. Now he was simply begging, and in this way found along the roads the bit of bread and bed of straw that he needed. Nothing in him was changed, neither his secret rage nor the mad desire to be master and to enjoy himself.

“But,” answered Bonnaire, who had restrained the flood of questions that rose to his lips, “all these countries that you have visited are in a condition of progress! Here, I know very well that we have moved very quickly; we are in advance. But, nevertheless, the whole world is progressing, is it not?”

“Yes, yes,” answered Ragu, with his scoffing air; “they are scrambling, they are making over society a little everywhere; but all of that did not save me from poverty and hunger.”

To-day, an aged vagabond and beggar, he jeered at their city of justice and peace. This would not give him back his twenty years; it would not give him a palace with slaves, so that he could end his life in the midst of enjoyment, like the kings spoken of in books. And he jested bitterly at the stupidity of human beings who gave themselves so much trouble to prepare for their great-great-grandchildren, in a future age, houses a little better than their own, which seemed to be the dream of men of to-day.

“This dream has sufficed a long time for happiness,” said Bonnaire, quietly. “But what you say is no longer true; the house is now almost reconstructed; it is very beautiful, very healthy, and very cheerful, and I will show it to you to-morrow, and you shall see if it is not a pleasure to live in it.”

Then he explained to Ragu that the next day he would take him to share in one of the four labor
fetes
, which on the first day of each season caused great festivity in Beauclair. Each of them was marked by rejoicings especially adapted to the particular season. That which was to take place next day, the
fête
of summer, would be gay with all the flowers and all the fruits of the earth, overflowing in a prodigious abundance of wealth acquired, and in the sovereign splendor of landscape and sky, where blazed the gorgeous sun of June.

When Bonnaire rose to conduct him to the room where he was to sleep, a spotless apartment containing a large white bed which promised the utmost comfort, he followed with a lagging step, suffering greatly from this abundant hospitality, so kindly in its pleasant freedom.

“Sleep well, comrade, until to-morrow morning.”

“Yes, to-morrow morning, unless this accursed world crumbles to pieces during the night.”

But Bonnaire, after he also had gone to rest, had some difficulty in sleeping. He, too, entertained some uneasiness, and was continually asking himself what Ragu’s intentions could be. He had repeatedly resisted the desire to interrogate the latter directly, for fear of provoking a dangerous explanation, thinking it wiser to wait, and then to act according to circumstances. When he finally slept he dreamed of a dreadful scene, in which this miserable vagabond, mad with poverty and misfortune, figured as coming back only to create a scandal, insulting Luc, insulting Josine, and perhaps committing his crime over again. It was this very abomination that he wished to avoid, and he swore to himself not to leave Ragu for a moment the next day, and to accompany him everywhere, in order to be sure that he was never left alone. Bonnaire went to sleep at length, resolved upon this last struggle for peace and universal love.

The next morning at six o’clock trumpet-blasts sounded forth and spread a joyous summons over the roofs of Beauclair, to announce the
fête
of labor. The sun was already high, an orb of joy and of strength, in the blue immensity of the exquisite June sky. Windows opened, salutations passed from one house to another, amid the verdure, and the soul of the people in this new city could be felt entering into gladness, while the trumpet-calls continued, as they went from garden to garden, awakening the cries of children and the laughter of loving couples.

Bonnaire dressed quickly, and found Ragu up, washed in the abundant supply of water in a neighboring bathtub, and dressed in decent clothes, put upon a chair for him the evening before. And Ragu, now that he was rested, had become again jeering, openly resolved on mocking at everything, and not accepting the slightest progress. On seeing his host enter he burst into his evil laugh — that laugh which was so impudent and low-minded.

“Tell me, old fellow,” said he, “are these blackguards making a holiday with their trumpets? It must be very annoying for people who do not like to be waked up all of a sudden. Do they play this music for you every morning in your barracks?”