Complete Works of Emile Zola (1726 page)

This attitude was very much remarked and discussed in Maillebois. Reasonable people were pleased to see they did their best to put an end to the horrid reports which had been circulated: but the others sneered, saying that it was all very well to save appearances, but this did not prevent the lovers from meeting secretly. Thus infamous reports again began to circulate. When Marc heard of them from Mignot he sank into bitter discouragement. There came hours when, his courage failing, he asked of what use it was for him to wreck his life and renounce every happiness, if no sacrifice was to be held in account by the malicious. Never had his solitude been so bitter, so hard to bear. As soon as at nightfall he found himself alone with Louise in the cold, deserted house, despair came over him at the thought that if he should some day lose his child nobody would be left to love him and warm his heart.

The girl lighted the lamp and seated herself at her little table, saying: ‘Papa, I am going to write my history exercise, before I go to bed.’

‘That’s right, my darling, work,’ he answered.

Then, amid the deep silence of the empty house, anguish came upon him. He could no longer continue correcting his pupils’ exercises, but rose and walked heavily up and down the room. In this wise he long went on tramping to and fro in the gloom beyond the circle of light which fell from the lamp-shade. And, at times, as he passed behind his daughter he leant over her, and brusquely kissed her hair, tears gathering the while in his eyes.

‘Oh! what is the matter, papa?’ asked Louise. ‘You are distressing yourself again.’

A hot tear had fallen on her brow. Then, turning round, she took hold of her father with her caressing arms and compelled him to sit down near her. ‘It is not reasonable of you, papa, to distress yourself like that when we are alone,’ she said. ‘You are so brave in the daytime, but one would think you felt frightened in the evening, just as I used to do when I did not like to remain without a light.... But as you have work to do, you ought to work.’ He tried to laugh. ‘So it is you who are now the sensible grown-up person, my darling,’ said he. ‘But you are right, certainly; I will get to work again.’

Then, however, as he continued looking at her, his eyes
again clouded, and he
once more began to kiss her hair
wildly, distractedly.

‘What is the matter? What is the matter?’ she stammered, deeply stirred, and, in her turn, shedding tears.

‘Why do you kiss me like that, papa?’

In quivering accents he then confessed his terror, acknowledged how menacing he found all the surrounding gloom: ‘Ah, if at least you remain with me, my child, if at least they do not rob me of you as well.’

She could find no answer to that plaint, but she caressed him, and they wept together. At last, having succeeded in inducing him to turn to his pupils’ exercises, she herself reverted to her history lesson. But when a few minutes had elapsed anxiety came on Marc again, he was compelled to rise from his chair, and walk, walk, without a pause. One might have thought he was pursuing his lost happiness athwart all the silence and darkness of his wrecked home.

Louise had lately completed her thirteenth year, so that the time when the first Communion is usually made had quite come; and all the devotees of Maillebois were indignant to see such a big girl remaining religionless, refusing to go to confession, and no longer even attending Mass. And naturally she was compassionately called a victim, crushed down beneath the brutal authority of her father, who by way of sacrilege, it was said, made her spit on the crucifix every morning and evening. Moreover, Mademoiselle Mazeline assuredly gave her lessons of diabolical depravity. But was it not a crime to leave that poor girl’s soul in a state of perdition, in the power of two of the damned, whose notorious misconduct horrified every conscience? Thus, there was talk of energetic action, of organising demonstrations to compel that unnatural father to restore the daughter to her mother, the pious woman whom he had driven away by the loathsome baseness of his life.

Accustomed as Marc was to insults, he only felt anxious when he thought of the violent scenes to which Louise must be subjected at the ladies’ house. Her mother, still in an ailing state, was content to treat her coldly, with silent sadness, leaving Madame Duparque to thunder in the name of her angry Deity, and quicken the infernal flames under Satan’s cauldrons. Ought not a big girl, already in her fourteenth year, to feel ashamed of living like a savage, like one of those dogs, who know nothing of religion and are
driven from
the churches?  Was she not frightened of the
thought of
the eternal chastisement which would fall on her, the boiling oil, the iron forks, the red hot hooks, the prospect of being lacerated, boiled, and roasted during thousands after thousands of centuries? When Louise, on returning home in the evening, told Marc of those threats, he shuddered to think that such attempts should be made to capture her conscience by fright, and tried to read her eyes in order to ascertain if she were shaken.

She at times seemed moved, but then things which were really too abominable were told her. And in her quiet, sensible way she would remark: ‘It is really droll, papa, that the good God should be so spiteful! Grandmamma said to-day that if I once missed going to Mass the devil would cut my feet into little pieces through all eternity.... It would be very unjust; besides, it seems to me hardly possible.’

After such remarks her father felt a little easier in mind. Unwilling as he was to do any violence to his daughter’s growing intelligence, he entered into no direct discussion of the strange lessons which she received at the ladies’ house; he contented himself with some general teaching, based on reason, and appealing to the child’s sense of truth, justice, and kindness. He was delighted by the precocious wakening of good sense which he noticed in her, a craving for logic and certainty which she must have inherited from him. It was with joy that he saw a woman with a clear, strong mind and a tender heart already emerging from the weak girl, who still retained in many respects the childishness of her years. And if he felt anxious, it was from a fear lest the promise of a beautiful harvest should be destroyed. He only recovered his calmness when the girl astonished him by reasoning things as if she were already a grown woman full of sense.

‘Oh! I am very polite, you know, with grandmamma,’ she said one day. ‘I tell her that if I do not go to confession or make my first Communion, it is because I am waiting till I am twenty years old, as you asked me to do.... That seems to me very reasonable. And, by keeping to that, I am very strong; for when one has reason on one’s side one is always very strong, is it not so?’

At times, too, in spite of her affection and deference for her mother, she said with a smile, in a gentle, jesting way: ‘You remember, papa, that mamma said she would explain, the
Catechism to me,
and I answered
you shall hear me my
lessons. You know that I try my best to understand.” Well, as I never understood anything at the Catechism class, mamma wished to explain matters to me. But, unfortunately, I still understand nothing whatever of it.... It puts me into great embarrassment. I feel afraid I may grieve her, and all I can do is to pretend that I suddenly understand something. But I must look very stupid, for she always interrupts the lesson as if she were angry, and calls me foolish.... The other day, when she was talking of the mystery of the Incarnation, she repeated that it was not a question of understanding but of believing; and as I unluckily told her that I could not believe without understanding, she said that was one of your phrases, papa, and that the devil would take both of us.... Oh, I cried, I cried!’

She smiled, however, as she spoke of it, and added in a lower tone: ‘Instead of making me think more as mamma does, the Catechism has rather taken me away from her ideas. There are too many things in it that worry my mind. It is wrong of mamma to try to force them into my head.’

Her father could have kissed her. Was he to have the joy of finding in his daughter an exception, one of those well-balanced little minds that ripen early, in which sense seems to grow as in some propitious soil? Other girls, at that troublous hour of maidenhood, are still so childish and so greatly disturbed by the quiver which comes upon them that they easily fall a prey to fairy tales and mystical reveries. How rare would be his luck if his own girl should escape the fate of her companions, whom the Church seized and conquered at a disturbing hour of life. Tall, strong, and very healthy, she was already a young woman, though there were days when she became quite childish once more, amusing herself with trifles, saying silly things, returning to her doll, with which she held extraordinary conversations. And on those days anxiety came back to her father; he trembled as he observed that there was still so much puerility in her nature, and wondered if the others might not yet steal her from him, and end by obscuring her mind, whose dawn was so limpid and so fresh.

‘Ah, yes, papa, what my doll said just now was very silly! But what can you expect? She’ s not very sensible yet.’

‘And do you hope to make her sensible, my darling?’

‘I scarcely know. Her head is so hard. With Bible history she does fairly well; she can recite that by heart. But with grammar and arithmetic she is a real blockhead.’ Then she laughed. That sorry home might be empty and icy cold, she none the less filled it with childish gaiety, as sonorous as April’s trumpet-wind. But the days went by, and with the lapse of time Louise became more serious and thoughtful. On returning from her Thursday and Sunday visits to her mother she sank into long, silent reveries. Of an evening, while she was working beside the lamp, she paused at times to give her father a long look, full of sorrowful affection. And at last came that which was bound to come.

It was a warm evening, and a storm was threatening, the heavens were heavy with a mass of inky clouds. The father and the daughter, according to their habit, sat working in the little circular patch of light which fell from the lampshade; and through the window, set wide open upon the dark and slumbering town, some moths flew in, they alone disturbing the profound silence with the slight quiver of their wings. Louise, who had spent the afternoon at the house on the Place des Capucins, seemed very tired. It was as if her brow was laden with some weighty thought. Leaning over her exercise paper, she ceased writing and reflected. And, at last, making up her mind to set down her pen, she spoke out amid the deep, mournful quietude of the house.

‘Papa, I want to tell you something which grieves me very much. I shall certainly cause you very great, great sorrow; and that is why I did not have the courage to tell you of it before. But I have made up my mind now not to go to bed before telling you of what I want to do — for it seems to me so reasonable and necessary.’

Marc had immediately looked up, a pang, a feeling of terror coming to his heart, for by the girl’s tremulous voice he guessed that the supreme disaster was at hand. ‘What is it, my darling?’ he asked.

‘Well, papa, I have been turning the matter over in my head all day, and it seems to me that, if you think as I do, I ought to go and live with mamma at grandmother’s.’ Marc, thoroughly upset, began by protesting violently: ‘What, think as you do! No, no, I won’t allow it! I mean to keep you here, I will prevent you from forsaking me.’

‘Oh! papa,’ she murmured distressfully, ‘think it over, only just a little, and you will see that I am right.’

But he did not listen, he had risen and was walking wildly about the dim room. ‘I have only you left me, and you think of going away! My wife has been taken from me, and now
my
daughter is to be taken, and I am to remain alone, stripped, forsaken, without an affection left! Ah! I felt that this
coup de grâce
was coming, I foresaw that those abominable hands, working in the darkness, would tear away the last shred of my heart.... But no! no! this is too much, never will I consent to such a separation!’ And stopping short before his daughter, he continued roughly: ‘Have you also had your mind and heart spoilt that you no longer love me?... At each of your visits to your grandmother’s I am put on trial — is it not so? — and infamous things are said about me in order to detach you from me. It is a question — eh? — of saving you from the damned and restoring you to the good friends of those ladies, who will turn you into a hypocrite and a lunatic.... And you listen to my enemies, and yield to their constant obsession by forsaking me.’

Louise, in despair, her eyes full of tears, raised her hands entreatingly. ‘Papa, papa, calm yourself!’ she cried. ‘I assure you that you are mistaken, mamma has never allowed anything evil to be said about you before me. Grandmother, no doubt, does not like you, and she would often do well to keep quiet when I am there. It would be telling a falsehood to say that she does not do all she can to get me to join mamma and live with her. But I swear to you that neither she nor any of the others has anything to do with what I propose.... You know very well that I never tell you stories. It is I myself who have thought it all over, and come to the conclusion that our separation would be a good and sensible thing.’

‘A good thing — that you should forsake me! Why, it would kill me!’

‘No, you will understand — and you are so brave!... Sit down and listen to me.’

She gently compelled him to seat himself again in front of her. And, taking his hands in hers caressingly, she reasoned with him like a shrewd little woman.

‘Everybody at grandmother’s,’ said she, ‘is convinced that you alone turn me away from religion. You weigh on
me,
it is said, you impose your ideas on me, and if I could
only
escape from you I should go to confession tomorrow
and make
my first Communion.... So why should I not prove to them that they are mistaken? To-morrow I will go and live at grandmother’s, and then they will see for themselves, they will have to admit how mistaken they have been, for nothing will prevent me from giving them always the same answer: “I have promised not to make my first Communion before I am twenty, in order that the full responsibility of such an action may be mine only, and I shall keep my promise, I shall wait.”’