Complete Works of Emile Zola (1795 page)

I left you, I left that Provence of which you were the soul, and it was you whom I invoked, as a good angel, from the eve of the struggle. You had my first book. It was teeming with your being, all scented with the perfume of your hair. You had despatched me to the battle, with a kiss on the forehead, like a fond sweetheart who desires to see the soldier whom she loves conquer. And as for me, that kiss was the only thing I always remembered; I only thought of you, I could only speak of you.

Ten years have passed. Ah! my dear soul, how many tempests have roared, what a quantity of dark water, what ruins have passed since then, beneath the crumbling bridges of my dreams! Ten years of hard labour, ten years of bitterness, of blows given and received, of everlasting battle! My heart and brain are all gashed with wounds. If you were to see your sweetheart of former times, that tall, supple youth who dreamed of moving mountains in a trice, if you saw him passing along in the dim daylight of Paris, with his cadaverous countenance, heavy with weariness, you would shudder, my poor Ninon, regretting the bright sun, the fiery middays extinguished for ever. Some nights I am so broken down that I feel a cowardly desire to seat myself by the roadside, at the risk of sleeping for ever in the ditch. And do you know, Ninon, what it is that unceasingly urges me on, what gives me courage, each time I waver? It is your voice, my well-beloved, your distant voice, your pure, slender voice recalling to me my vows.

I know, indeed, that you are a courageous girl. I can unbare my wounds to you, and you will only love me the more. It will ease me to complain to you, who will console me. I have not put down the pen for a single day, my friend; I have fought as a soldier who has to earn his bread: if glory comes, it will spare me eating my bread dry. What bad work, and how disgusted I still feel at it! For ten years I have fed the furnace of journalism, like so many others, with the best that was in me. Of this colossal labour there remains nothing but a few cinders. Sheets of paper cast before the wind, flowers fallen in the mire, a blend of what was excellent and the worst, all spoilt in the common trough. I have touched everything, I have dirtied my hands in this torrent of turbid mediocrity running to the overflow. My love of the absolute was bleeding, in the midst of these stupidities, so full of importance in the morning, so utterly forgotten at night When I dreamt of some stroke given in a block of granite that would be eternal, some living labour placed erect for ever, I blew bubbles that were burst by the wings of insects buzzing in the sun. I would have glided into the hebetude of the calling if, in my love of power, I had not had a consolation, that of this ceaseless production, which broke me to every description of fatigue.

Then, my friend, I was armed for war. You would never believe into what fits of rage nonsense threw me. I had the passion of my opinions; I would have liked to have thrust what I believed down the throats of others. A book made me ill, a picture put me in despair, as if it were a public catastrophe; I lived in a constant battle of admiration and contempt. Beyond letters and art, the world ceased to exist. And what strokes of the pen, what furious shocks to clear the platform! Now I shrug my shoulders. I am an old, hardened offender; I have preserved my faith; I think I am even still more intractable; but I am satisfied to shut myself up and work. That is the only way to discuss things in a healthy manner; for works are only arguments, in the everlasting discussion of the beautiful.

I have not come out of the battle intact, as you very well imagine. I have scars almost everywhere, as I have told you, on the brain and heart I no longer reply; I wait for them to become accustomed to my manner. Perhaps I shall thus return to you whole. You see, my friend, I have quitted our gallant pathways of lovers, where flowers grow, where one only gathers smiles. I have taken the high-road, grey with dust, with sorry trees; I have even, I own it, stopped curiously before dead dogs lying beside the landmarks; I have spoken of truth; I have pretended that one could write everything; I have wished to prove that art is in life and not elsewhere. Naturally they pushed me into the gutter. I, Ninon, I who passed my youth in gathering daisies and blue corn-flowers for your bosom!

You will forgive me my infidelity as a lover. Men cannot always be tied to girls’ petticoats. A time comes when your flowers are too sweet. Do you remember the pale autumn evening, the evening of our farewell? It was on leaving your frail arms that Truth bore me away in her hard hands. I had a mania for correct analysis. After the ordinary daily labour, I encroached upon my nights, I wrote the books that haunted me, page by page. If I am proud of anything, it is of that will which has slowly made me independent of the calling. I have lived, without departing from my opinions. I owed you this explanation, you who have a right to know what sort of man, the child, whose beginning you encouraged, has become.

At present, my only grief is in being alone. The world ends at my garden railing. I have shut myself up at home so that my life may be entirely devoted to work, and I have so thoroughly encompassed myself that people have ceased to come. That is what has made me think of you, my dear soul, amidst the struggle. I was too lonely, after ten years’ separation; I wanted to see you again, to kiss your hair, to tell you I love you always. That relieves me. Come, and be not afraid, I am not so black as I am painted. I assure you I love you still. I dream of having roses again, to place a nosegay of them in your bosom. I feel an inclination to drink new milk. If I did not fear to raise a laugh, I would take you under some hedge, with a white lamb, so that we might all three tell one another tender things.

And do you know what I have done, Ninon, to keep you beside me all this night? I will give you a thousand guesses. I have rummaged in the past, I have searched among the hundreds of pages written here and there, whether I could not find some that would be sufficiently delicate for your ears. It has given me pleasure to place this plum right in the midst of thorns. Yes, I wanted this feast for us two. We will become children again and picnic on the grass. They are tales; nothing but tales, jam in the toy tea-service of children. Is it not charming? Three gooseberries and two raisins will be enough to satisfy our hunger, and we will get tipsy on five drops of wine in limpid water. Listen, you inquisitive creature. I have first of all some tales that are good enough; some even that have a commencement and an end; others, it is true, go bare-footed, after having cast off all sense of propriety. But, I must warn you that, further on, we shall meet with fanciful things that are absolutely all at sea. To be sure! I have gleaned all I had, to keep you the whole night. There, I sing the song of “Dost thou remember?” They are our remembrances, one after the other, my girl; sweetness itself to us, the best part of our love. If they seem dry to others, so much the worse! They have no need to meddle in our affairs. Then, to retain you after that, I shall commence a long story, the last, which will take us, I hope, till morning. It is right at the end of the others, placed there on purpose to send you to sleep in my arms. We will let the volume fall from our hands, and will kiss each other.

Ah! Ninon, what a wealth of pink and white! However, I cannot promise that, in spite of all my care to remove the thorns, there is not a drop of blood or two in my bunch of flowers. My hands are no longer pure enough to tie up nosegays without danger. But do not be alarmed: if you prick yourself, I will kiss your fingers, I will drink your blood. The nosegay will be more fragrant.

To-morrow, I shall have grown ten years younger. It seems to me that it was but yester eve, I came from the further end of our youth, with the honey of your kiss upon my lips. It will be the beginning of my task over again. Ah! Ninon, I have done nothing yet. I weep over this mountain of paper blackened with ink; I am grieved to think that I have been unable to satisfy my thirst for reality, that vast nature escapes from my arms which are too short I feel the fierce desire to grasp the earth, strain it to me, see all, know all, say all. I should like to lay humanity on a white page, every being, every thing; and produce a work that would be an immense ark.

And do not expect me for a long time at the trysting-place, where I promised to meet you, in Provence, when the task is completed. There is so much to be accomplished. I want truth in the novel, the drama, everywhere. Remind me of you in future, only at night; come on the moonbeam that glides between my curtains, at a time when I shall be able to weep with you unseen. I require all my manhood. Later on, oh! later on, it will be I who will go and meet you out in the country still warm with our tenderness. We shall be very old; but we shall always love one another. You shall take me on a pilgrimage to the river bank, to the edge of the barely awakened water; into the leafy recesses, with the burning country slumbering around us; amidst the meadows, becoming gently enveloped in the bluish veil of twilight; along the endless highway, indifferent to the stars, having but one desire to lose ourselves in the obscurity. And the trees, the blades of grass, even the stones, will recognise us from a distance, by our kisses, and will bid us welcome.

Listen: so that we may not be seeking each other I want to tell you behind which hedge I will go and find you. You know the spot where the river makes a bend, beyond the bridge, lower down than the wash-house, just opposite the great curtain of poplars? Do you remember, we kissed hands there one fine May morning? Well! On the left, there is a hawthorn hedge, that wall of verdure at the foot of which we lay down to see only the blue of heaven. It is behind the hawthorn hedge, my dear soul, that I give you the appointment, years hence, one day when the sun is pale, when your heart will know I am in the neighbourhood.

ÉMILE ZOLA

Paris, 1
st October
1874.

A BATH

I’LL give you a thousand chances, Ninon. Seek, invent, imagine: it is a real fairy-tale, something terrifying and improbable You know the little baroness, that delightful Adeline de C — , who had vowed — No, you’ll never guess: I prefer relating it all to you.

Well! Adeline is positively going to be married a second time. You doubt it, don’t you? You say it is necessary to be at Mesnil-Rouge, sixty-seven leagues from Paris, to put faith in such a tale. You may laugh; the wedding will none the less take place. Fancy, that poor Adeline, who was a widow at twenty-two, and whose hatred and contempt for men made so pretty! The deceased, who was certainly a worthy man, fairly well preserved, and who would have been perfect but for the infirmities that killed him, thoroughly schooled her in matrimony in a couple of months. She had declared that her experience was sufficient And she is marrying again! See how we are!

It is true Adeline had bad luck. An adventure such as happened to her could not have been foreseen. And supposing I were to tell you who she is about to marry! You know Count Octave de R — , that tall young man whom she so cordially detested. They could not meet without exchanging ill-natured smiles, without metaphorically cutting each other’s throats with pleasant phrases. Ah, the poor creatures! if you only knew where they finally met — I can see very well that I shall have to tell you all about it. It is quite a novel. It rains this morning. I’ll put it into chapters.

I

The château is six miles from Tours. From Mesnil-Rouge I can see the slate roofs buried in the verdure of the park. They call it the Château-of-the-Sleeping-Beauty, because it was formerly inhabited by a lord who nearly married one of his milkmaids there The dear child lived shut up in it, and I think her ghost returned to the place. Never did stones possess such a perfume of love.

The Beauty who sleeps there now is the old Countess de M — , one of Adeline’s aunts. For the last thirty years she has been coming to pass a winter at Paris. Each of her nieces and nephews gives her a fortnight during the fine weather. Adeline is very punctual. Besides, she likes the château, a legendary ruin, which is crumbling to pieces under the influence of rain and wind, in the centre of a virgin forest.

The elderly countess has given formal orders that neither the ceilings, which are a network of cracks, nor the stray branches that bar the walks, are to be touched. She enjoys the sight of the wall of foliage that thickens there each spring, and she frequently remarks that the building is more solid than herself. The truth of the matter is that an entire wing is on the ground. Those pleasant retreats, built under Louis XV., were as transient as the love-making of the period. The plaster-work is full of fissures, the floors have given way, and moss has penetrated even to the alcoves. The damp atmosphere of the park has given to the place a freshness, through which, however, the musky perfume of the tenderness of other times still passes.

The park threatens to invade the mansion. Trees have grown up at the foot of the perrons and in the clefts of the steps. Only the broad avenue can be used for driving; and even then the coachman has to lead his horses by the bridles. To right and left the underwood is virgin, crossed by a few rare paths, which are dark with shade, and along which you advance with your hands stretched out in front of you, putting aside the grass. And the great trees that have fallen down make blind alleys of these bits of roads, whilst the contracted glades resemble wells opening on the blue of heaven Moss hangs from the branches, and the woody nightshade forms a curtain beneath the brushwood; the swarming of insects, the murmur of birds that you do not see, give strange life to this enormous mass of foliage. I have often experienced little shudders of fright, on my way to pay the countess a visit; the woods wafted a disquieting breath to the back of my neck.

But there is a particularly delicious and disturbing corner in the park: it is to the left of the château, at the extremity of a flower-garden, where the only things that grow now are poppies as tall as myself. There is a grotto beneath a cluster of trees, buried in a drapery of ivy, the ends of which trail on the grass. The grotto which has been overrun, concealed, is nothing more than a dark recess, in the depths of which one perceives the whiteness of a smiling plaster Cupid with a finger on his mouth. The poor boy-god has but one arm, and on his right eye is a patch of moss which makes him half blind. He seems to be watching, with his sickly smile of an invalid, over some amorous lady who has been dead for a century.