Complete Works of Emile Zola (1734 page)

Nevertheless, she went on speaking; and in short and feverish sentences, never noticing that she was confessing herself, she told him of her torture, her daily increasing anguish, for she had reached one of those distressful hours when the heart instinctively opens and overflows. She related how, unknown to Madame Duparque, she had escaped that afternoon from Maillebois, in order to speak with a famous missionary, Father Athanase, whose pious counsels were at that time revolutionising the pious folk of Beaumont. The missionary was merely sojourning there for a short time, but it was said that he had already worked some marvellous cures — a blessing, a prayer, from his lips having restored angelic calmness to the unappeasable souls of women who were racked by their yearning for Jesus. And Geneviève had just left the neighbouring cathedral, where for two hours she had remained in prayer, after confessing to that holy man her unquenchable thirst for divine happiness. But he had merely absolved her for what he called excess of pride and human passion, and by way of penitence had told her to occupy her mind with humble duties, such as the care of the poor and the sick. In vain afterwards had she striven to humble, annihilate herself, in the darkest, the loneliest chapel of St. Maxence; she had not found peace, she had not satisfied her hunger; she still glowed with the same craving — a return for the gift of her whole being to the Deity, that gift which she had tendered again and again, though never once had it brought real peace and happiness to her flesh and her heart.

As Marc listened to what she said, he began to suspect the truth, and whatever might be his sadness at seeing his Geneviève so wretched, a quiver of hope arose within him. Plainly enough, neither Abbé Quandieu nor even Father Théodose had satisfied the intense need of love that existed in her nature. She had known love, and she must still love the man, the husband, whom she had quitted, and who adored her. Mere mystical delights had left her unsatisfied and irritated. She was now but the proud, stubborn daughter of Catholicism, who turns desperately to harsher and more frantic religious practices, as to stronger stupefacients, in order to numb the bitterness and rebellion induced by increasing disillusion. Everything pointed to it: the revival of motherliness in her nature, for she had taken little Clément back, and busied herself with him, and she even found some consolation in Louise, who exercised a gentle healing influence over her, leading her back a little more each day towards the father, the husband. Then, also, there were her dissensions with her terrible grandmother, and her dawning dislike for the little house on the Place des Capucins, where she at last felt she could no longer live, for its coldness, silence, and gloom were deathly. And, after failing with Abbé Quandieu and Father Théodose, her sufferings had led her to make a supreme attempt with that powerful missionary, to whom she had transferred her faith, that miracle-working confessor, whom she had hastened to consult in secret for fear lest she might be prevented, and who, by way of relief, had only been able to prescribe practices which, in the circumstances, were childish.

‘But, my Geneviève,’ Marc cried again, carried away, losing all thought of prudence, ‘if you are thus beset, thus tortured, it is because you lack our home! You are too unhappy: come back, come back, I entreat you I-’

Her pride bristled up, however, and she answered: ‘No, no, I shall never go back to you. I am not unhappy: it is untrue. I am punished for having loved you, for having been part of you, for having had a share in your crime. Grandmother does right to remind me of it when I am so weak as to complain. I expiate your sin, God strikes me to punish you, and it is your poison which bums me beyond hope of relief.’

‘But, my poor wife, all that is monstrous. They are driving you mad! If it is true that I set a new harvest in you, it is precisely on that harvest that I rely to insure our happiness some day. Yes, we became so blended one with the other that we can never be wholly parted. And you will end by returning to me: our children will bring you back. The pretended poison which your foolish grandmother talks about is our love itself; it is working in your heart, and it will bring you back.’

‘Never!... God would strike us down, both of us,’ she retorted. ‘You drove me from our home by your blasphemy. If you had really loved me, you would not have taken my daughter from me, by refusing to let her make her first Communion. How can I return to a home of impiety where it would not even be allowable for me to pray? Ah! how wretched I am; nobody, nobody loves me, and heaven itself will not open!’

She burst into sobs. Filled with despair by that frightful cry of distress Marc felt that it would be useless and cruel to torture her further. The hour for reunion had not yet come. Silence fell between them once more, while in the distance, on the Avenue des Jaffres, the cries of some children at play rose into the limpid evening atmosphere.

During their impassioned converse they had at last drawn nearer to each other on the lonely bench; and now, seated side by side, they seemed to be reflecting, their glances wandering away amid the golden dust of the sunset. At last Marc spoke again, as if finishing his thoughts aloud: ‘I do not think, my friend, that you gave for a moment any credit to the abominable charges with which certain people wished to besmirch me
à propos
of my brotherly intercourse with Mademoiselle Mazeline.’

‘Oh! no,’ Geneviève answered quickly, ‘I know you, and I know her. Do not imagine that I have become so foolish as to believe all that has been said to me.’

Then with some slight embarrassment she continued: ‘It is the same with me. Some people, I know it, have set me among the flock which Father Théodose is said to have turned into a kind of
cour galante.
In the first place I do not admit that anything of the kind exists. Father Théodose is, perhaps, rather too proud of his person, but I believe his faith to be sincere. Besides, I should have known how to defend myself — you do not doubt it, I hope?’

In spite of his sorrow Marc could not help smiling slightly. Geneviêve’s evident embarrassment indicated that there had been some audacity on the part of the Capuchin, and that she had checked it. Assuming this to be the case Marc felt the better able to understand why she was so perturbed and embittered.

I certainly do not doubt it,’ he responded. ‘I know you, as you know me, and I am aware that you are incapable of wrongdoing. I have no anxiety respecting Father Théodose on your account, whatever another husband of my acquaintance may have to say.... Yet all the same I regret that you were so badly advised as to quit worthy Abbé Quandieu for that handsome monk.’

A fugitive blush which appeared on Geneviêve’s cheeks while her husband was speaking told him that he had guessed aright. It was not without a profound knowledge of woman in her earlier years, when an
amorosa
may exist within the penitent, that Father Crabot had advised Madame Duparque to remove her daughter from the charge of old Abbé Quandieu and place her in that of handsome Father Théodose. The Catholic doctors are well aware that love alone can kill love, and that a woman who loves apart from Christ never wholly belongs to Christ. The return of Geneviève to her husband and her sin was fatal unless she should cease to love, or rather unless she should love elsewhere. But, as it happened, Father Théodose was not expert in analysing human nature, he had blundered with respect to the passionate yet loyal penitent confided to his hands, and had thus precipitated the crisis, provoking repugnance and rebellion in that distracted, suffering woman, who, without as yet returning to sober reason, saw the glorious, mystical stage-scenery of the religion of her childhood collapse around her.

Well pleased with the symptoms which he fancied he could detect, Marc asked somewhat maliciously: ‘And so Father Théodose is no longer your confessor?’’

Geneviève turned her clear eyes upon him, and answered plainly: ‘No, Father Théodose does not suit me, and I have gone back to Abbé Quandieu, who, as grandmother rightly says, lacks warmth, but who quiets me at times, for he is very kind.’

For a moment she seemed to ponder. Then, in an undertone, she allowed another avowal to cross her Ups: ‘All the same, the dear man does not know how greatly he has increased the torment in which I live by what he said to me about that abominable affair—’

She stopped short, and Marc, guessing the truth, becoming quite impassioned now that this subject was broached, continued: ‘The Simon affair, eh? Abbé Quandieu believes Simon to be innocent, does he not?’

Genevieve had cast her eyes towards the ground. For a moment she remained silent; then said, very faintly: ‘Yes, he believes in his innocence; he told me so with great mystery in the choir of his church, at the foot of the altar, before our Lord who heard him.’

‘And you yourself, Geneviève, tell me, do you now believe in Simon’s innocence?’

‘No, I do not, I cannot. You must remember that I should never have left you had I believed him innocent, for his innocence would have meant the guilt of the defenders of God. You, by defending him, charged God with error and falsehood.’

Marc well remembered the circumstances. He again saw his wife bringing him the news of the revision, growing exasperated at the sight of his delight, exclaiming that there was no truth or justice outside heaven, and at last fleeing from the house where her faith was outraged. And now that she seemed to him to be shaken he desired more ardently than ever to convince her of the truth, for he felt that he would win her back as soon as with the triumph of truth her mind should awaken to the necessity of justice.

‘But once more, Geneviève, my Genevieve, it is impossible that you, who are so upright and so sincere, whose mind is so clear when the superstitions of your childhood do not cloud it — it is impossible that you should believe such gross falsehoods. Inform yourself, read the documents.’

‘But I am frilly informed, I assure you, my friend; I have read everything.’

‘You have read all the documents which have been published? All the inquiry of the Court of Cassation?’

‘Why, yes! I have read everything that has appeared in
Le Petit Beaumontais.
You know very well that grandmother takes that paper every morning.’

With a violent gesture Marc gave expression to his disgust and indignation. ‘Ah well, my darling, you are, indeed, fully informed! The vile print you speak of is a sewer of poison, which disseminates only filth and falsehood. Documents are falsified in it, texts are mutilated, and the credulous minds of the poor and the lowly are gorged with stupid fables.... You are simply poisoned like many other worthy folk.’

She herself, no doubt, was conscious that the folly and impudence of
Le Petit Beaumontais
were excessive, for again she cast down her eyes, and looked distressed.

‘Listen!’ Marc resumed. ‘Let me send you the complete verbatim report of the Court’s inquiry, with the documents annexed to it; and promise me that you will read everything attentively and straightforwardly.’

But at this suggestion she vivaciously raised her head:

‘No, no; send me nothing. I do not wish it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it is useless. There is no need for me to read anything.’

He looked at her, again feeling discouraged and grieved. ‘Say rather that you won’t read.’

‘Well, yes, if you prefer it that way, I won’t read anything. As grandmother says: “What is the use of it?” Ought one not always to distrust one’s reason?’

‘You won’t read anything because you fear you might be convinced, because you already doubt the things which, only yesterday, you regarded as certainties.’

She interrupted him with a gesture of fatigue and unconcern, but he continued: ‘And the words of Abbé Quandieu pursue you; you ask yourself with terror how a holy priest can believe in an innocence which, if recognised, would compel you to curse all the years of error with which you have tortured our poor home.’

This time she did not even make a gesture, but it was apparent that she had resolved to listen no further. For a moment her glance remained fixed on the ground. Then she slowly said: ‘Do not amuse yourself by increasing my sorrow. Our life has been shattered. It is all over. I should deem myself still more guilty than now if I were to go back to you. And what personal relief could it give you to imagine that I made a mistake, and that I have not found my grandmother’s house to be the home of peace and faith in which I thought I was taking refuge? My sufferings would not cure yours.’

This, as Marc felt, was almost a confession — an acknowledgment of her secret regret at having quitted him, and of the anxious doubts into which she had sunk. Once more, therefore, he exclaimed: ‘But if you are unhappy, say it! And come back; bring the children with you; the house still awaits you! It would be great joy, great happiness.’

But she stood up and repeated, like one who obstinately remains blind and deaf: ‘I am not unhappy. I am being punished, and I will endure my punishment to the end. And if you have any pity for me, remain here; do not try to follow me. Should you meet me again, too, turn your head away, for all is ended, all must be ended, between us.’

Then she went off along the deserted avenue, amid the paling gold of the sunset, her figure quite sombre, tall, and slim; and all that Marc could still see of her beauty was her splendid fair hair, which a last sunbeam irradiated. He obediently refrained from moving, but, hoping for a last glance of farewell, he watched her as she walked away. She did not turn, however; she disappeared from view among the trees, while the evening wind, now rising, passed with a chilling quiver beneath the foliage.

When Marc painfully rose to his feet, he was amazed to see his good friend Salvan standing before him, with a happy smile on his lips. ‘Ah! my fine lover, so this is how I catch you giving assignations in lonely comers! I saw you already some time ago, but remained watching, for I did not wish to disturb you.... So this is why you remained with me such a short time when you called at the college this afternoon, Master Slyboots!’

Sadly shaking his head, Marc walked away beside his old friend. ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘we merely met by chance, and my heart is quite lacerated.’