Complete Works of Emile Zola (1669 page)

“Yes, from terror of losing their income. The enormous reduction in the value of stocks and the changes that affected the public funds and foretold approaching ruin fell upon them like so many thunderbolts. The husband was taken first, killed in his love of divine idleness by the idea that he might perhaps be forced to work. The wife lingered for some time, no longer caring for anything, even for her imaginary complaint, and no longer daring to go out, in her obstinate certainty that she would be assassinated in the streets, from the time that investments were attacked. Her daughter did her best to support her mother, but the latter was oppressed at the thought of being dependent upon others, and at last she was found black in the face and struck by apoplexy, with her head sunk upon a bundle of her now useless securities. Poor people, they had passed away without understanding, frightened and overwhelmed, accusing the world of turning into an inferno.”

Ragu shook his head without any evidence of feeling for these
bourgeois,
although he also, like them, was convinced that a world from which idleness was banished would cease to be habitable. He began again to look around him, depressed by the increasing joyousness of the guests and by the abundance and luxury of the table, both of which seemed things of course, and displaying neither ostentation nor pride. Then a pleasing incident occurred: all the birds of the vicinity — linnets, chaffinches, red-breasts, and sparrows — alighted upon the table before going to sleep in the midst of the dark verdure.

“Ah! here are our little friends!” cried Bonnaire. “How they chatter! they well know that this is a holiday. Alice, crumble up some bread for them.”

Ragu, with his gloomy countenance and sorrowful eyes, continued to look at the birds, alighting on all sides in a whirlwind of little light feathers, gilded by the last rays of the sun. They were descending continually from the branches, some of them flying off and then returning. The dessert was enlivened thereby, so many little feet were there hopping briskly about among the cherries and the roses. Nothing since the morning, among all the felicities and splendors they had visited, had shown Ragu, in so charming and so evident a manner, how peaceful and happy was this rising people.

He rose quickly, and said to Bonnaire:

“I am suffocating; I must walk about. And, besides, I wish to see more. I want to see everything — all the tables, all the guests.”

Bonnaire understood perfectly. Was it not Luc and Josine whom he wished to see, upon whom his burning curiosity had been fixed ever since his return? Therefore the host, still avoiding a decisive explanation, answered, simply:

“By all means. I am going to show you everything. We will go and make a tour of the tables.”

The first table that they met with, which was in front of the next house, was that of the Morfains. Petit-Da presided at it with his wife,
née
Honorine Caffiaux, both white-haired; there were there his son Raymond and his wife,
née
Thérèse Froment, as well as their eldest child, Maurice Morfain, a tall boy of nineteen years.

The arrival of Bonnaire, who met there once more his youngest son, Severin, was greeted with joyous acclamations. And Ragu, more and more bewildered by these confusing alliances, became entirely lost at the sight of the two Froments seated at this table, Thérèse and Pauline, both unmarried women, now nearing forty, but ever adorable in their bright, healthy beauty. Then the sight of Ma Bleue recalled to him old Mayor Gourier, as well as the old sub-prefect, Châtelard, and he wished to know what had become of them. Ragu looked about.

“Do not all these antagonistic bloods poison each other in the veins in which they now flow?” he exclaimed.

“No,” answered Bonnaire, tranquilly.
“
They are reconciled, and the race has thus acquired more beauty and strength.”

A new source of annoyance awaited Ragu at the next table. It was that of his old comrade Bourron, his boon companion in idleness and drunkenness, whom he had dominated and so easily led astray. Bourron happy, Bourron redeemed, while he remained in poverty and torment! And Bourron, in spite of his great age, seemed to triumph, seated by the side of his wife Babette, that eternal rejoicer, whose unalterable hope, whose obstinately blue heaven was now realized without her even condescending to be astonished. Was not this natural? They were happy because they always ended in being happy. In their vicinity the increase of succeeding generations was without limits.

Ragu could not take his eyes off Bourron.

“He looks so young,” he murmured; “and his Babette has still her pretty laugh.” — \

He recalled their old drinking bouts, the comrade who had loitered with him at Cafliaux’s, inveighing against bosses, and going home dead-drunk. He recalled his own long life of poverty, the fifty years lost in wandering from workshop to workshop throughout the wide world. At this moment a delightful incident occurred which completed Ragu’s misery. Simonne Laboque, the child of Adolphe and of Germaine, and Bourron’s great-granddaughter, a fair little girl of five, took from the table in her tiny hands some roses stripped of leaves, and came smiling to shower them upon her great-grandfather’s white head.

“Here!” she cried, “grandfather Bourron, look! look once more! These are to make you a crown. There, there! you have some in your hair, some in your ears, on your nose, and you have some everywhere! Happy holiday! happy holiday! grandfather Bourron!”

Every one at table applauded and greeted the patriarch with acclamations. Ragu turned and fled, dragging Bonnaire with him. He was trembling and faltering. Then, after they had gone a short distance, he suddenly asked, in a gloomy tone:

“Listen; what good is it to keep silence any longer? I came here solely to see them. Where are they? Show them to me?”

It was Luc and Josine of whom he was speaking. But since Bonnaire, when he understood, delayed to answer, he continued:

“Ever since this morning you have been taking me about, and I have made believe to be interested in everything; but all the time I was thinking of them only; they alone were haunting me, for it is they alone who have brought me back here, in spite of so much fatigue and suffering. I knew when I was far off that I did not kill him, and that they were both living here still. They are, are they not? They have had a great many children; they are happy and perfectly successful; isn’t it so?”

Bonnaire reflected. He had delayed the inevitable meeting up to this time from dread of a scandal. But had his tactics not been successful? Had they not resulted in inspiring Ragu with a sort of sacred terror before the grandeur of this accomplished work? He seemed to be bewildered and to be seized with a fear that left his hands too weak for any new crime. Therefore he finally answered, with his air of serene kindness:

“You wish to see them, comrade, and I am going to show them to you; it is very true that you will find them happy people.”

Luc’s table was situated immediately beyond that of Bourron. He himself occupied the centre, with Josine at his right. At his left were Sœurette and Jordan. Suzanne was there also, opposite Luc. Nanet and Nise, who were recent grandparents, had taken their place at his side; their laughing eyes, under their fair hair, now whitened, were just the same as on those far-distant days when they were nothing but playfellows, little curly monkeys. All the descendants surrounded the table. Manual labor, trade, and the soil were represented, and all the social communion whence issued the new city, the Beauclair of justice and of happiness.

At the moment Ragu approached, the last rays of the setting sun were surrounding the table with a halo of glory, and the bouquets of roses, the silver plates, the light silks, and diamond-decked hair of the women sparkled in the midst of so much splendor. But the most striking thing in this good-night from the sun was the haste displayed by all the birds in the neighborhood to descend once again upon these guests before going to sleep in the trees. Such a flight of them appeared, with such a beating of wings, that the table was covered by them, and there was a living snow of little warm feathers. Friendly hands held them, caressed them, and released them. This confidence of the red-breasts and chaffinches was exceedingly pleasing to observe, and celebrated in the calm evening air the alliance that had been established for the future between all beings, that universal peace which reigned between men, beasts, and inanimate objects.

“Oh, grandfather Luc!” cried the little boy Richard, “see there! grandmother Josine has a bird drinking water out of her glass.”

It was true, and Luc, the founder of the town, was amused and touched by it. The water was some of that fresh, pure fluid which he had obtained from among the rocks of the Monts Bleuses, and which he had impounded for the use of the entire town, with its gardens, its avenues, and spouting fountains. He took the glass, and raised it into the light of the sun, saying:

“Josine, we must drink; we must drink to the health of our happy city!”

And when Josine, still loving and tender, with her snow-white hair, had smilingly moistened her lips, he drank in his turn, and resumed:

“To the health of our city, of which to-day is the
fete
. May it always continue to enlarge, and may it increase in liberty, in prosperity, in beauty, and may it convert all the earth to the work of universal harmony.”

Standing in the sunlight that surrounded him with a nimbus, Luc was superb in renewed youth, in faith, and in triumphant joy. He spoke simply, without pride or emphasis, of his happiness at seeing his work at last living and a reality. He was the founder, the creator, and the father, and all these rejoicing people and all these guests at all these tables at which they were enjoying the festivities of labor, the fertility of summer, were his people, his friends, his relations, and his continually increasing family, which was becoming always more and more fraternal and prosperous. The wish of ardent tenderness that he expressed for his town arose in the evening air, and echoed from table to table, even to the most distant avenues. Every one stood up, and each, raising his glass to his lips in his turn, drank to the health of Luc and Josine, the hero and heroine, the patriarchs of labor — she the redeemed, glorified as a wife and as a mother; he the redeemer, who, in order to save her, had saved the whole wretched world of the wages system from iniquity and suffering. It was a moment of exaltation and splendor, the passionate gratitude of the immense crowd, the recompense for so much active faith, the definite entrance into glory and love.

Ragu trembled in all his limbs, shuddering and pale, under the wind of the apotheosis that had just passed by. He could not support the splendor of beauty and of goodness which radiated from Luc and Josine. He drew back and hesitated, and was on the verge of flight when Luc, who had observed him, turned towards Bonnaire, and said:

“Ah, my friend, you were wanting to my joy, for you have been to me a second self, the bravest, the best, the strongest laborer in the work, and they ought not to honor me without honoring you also. Tell me, who is that old man with you?”

“He is a stranger.”

“A stranger! Then let him draw near; let him break the bread of our harvests with us, and let him drink of the water of our springs. Josine, make room, and you, friend, whom we do not know, approach and seat yourself between my wife and me, for we wish to honor, in you, all our unknown brothers of other towns all over the world.”

Ragu appeared to be seized with mortal terror, and drew back once more.

“No, no! I cannot!”

“Why, then?” asked Luc, gently. “If you have come from afar and you are weary, you will find here succoring and consoling hands. We do not ask your name, nor your past. With us everything is pardoned, and fraternity reigns alone, for the happiness of each leads to the happiness of all. Dear wife, do you also tell him these things, which will seem sweeter and more convincing from your lips, since I, myself, seem to succeed only in frightening him.”

Then Josine herself spoke.

“Wait, my friend; here is our glass; why will you not drink to our health and your own? You have come from a distance, and are our brother, and we shall take pleasure in enlarging our family still more. It is the custom in Beauclair now upon
fête
days to give the kiss of peace which effaces everything. Take and drink, for love of every one.”

But Ragu recoiled anew, more pale and trembling, struck with terror at the sacrilege.

“No, no! I cannot!”

Did Luc and Josine have, at this moment, any suspicion of the truth — did they recognize the miserable creature who had returned, after having so long fulfilled his destiny of idleness and corruption, only to suffer more? They regarded him with their eyes full of kindliness, through which passed a sadness full of the deepest pity. And Luc concluded, simply:

“Do according to your own will, since you cannot be of our family, at the time when the different members of it are approaching each other and when they are pressing closely together, hand in hand. See! see! they are going to mingle; the tables are going to be joined to each other, so that there will soon be one table only for the whole city of brothers.”

It was true; the guests were beginning to approach each other; each table seemed to be drawing near the next, and by degrees all were united. It all seemed very natural; the children acted at first as messengers, going from dessert to dessert; then the different members of the same family, scattered through the chain of alliances, had a tendency to unite and to find themselves side by side.

Bonnaire had not interfered, but did not take his eyes off Ragu, expecting to see accomplished in him the change that he expected, after this day in which surprises had staggered him one by one, up to this splendid culmination that terrified and overcame him. He felt that Ragu was so stricken and so wavering that he gave him his hand.

“Come,” said he, “let us walk about a little; the evening air is so mild. Tell me, do you believe now in our happiness? You see very plainly that it is possible to work and be happy, for joy, health, and a perfect life are to be found in labor. To labor is simply to live. An experience of suffering and death had been necessary to make a curse of labor and to make the idea of paradise that of eternal idleness. Labor is not our master; it is the breath of our lungs, the blood in our veins, our only reason for living, for loving, for producing, for being immortal human beings.”