Complete Works of Emile Zola (1804 page)

They have swept the thoroughfares. In certain corners they have arranged halting-places, and these arouse much jealousy and hatred, which lasts for months and months. If that in the Chartreux quarter is more beautiful than that of Saint Mark, it is sufficient to turn the hair of the devout in the latter quarter grey. All the neighbourhood contributes towards these halting-places. One has brought the candlesticks, another the gilded vases, another the flowers, another the lace. It is a shelter that the quarter presents to heaven.

In the meantime two rows of chairs have been placed along the narrow footways. The sightseers are waiting, they are very noisy, laughing with that south-of-France laughter which sounds like a clarion. The windows are becoming filled with spectators. The heat decreases; and, amidst the gentle rising breeze, one hears the peal of bells and beating of drums in the distance.

It is the procession that has left the church.

In front of it walk all the young bucks of the town. This promenade is a regular thing. They come there to see and be seen. The girls are at the doors. There are discreet greetings, smiles, whisperings among comrades. The young men go all round the town in this way, between two rows of flag-bedecked windows, solely to pass beneath a particular one. They look up, and that is all. The afternoon is warm, the bells peal; the children cast handfuls of broom flowers and roses picked to pieces into the street and gutters.

The road is rosy; the broom flowers form patches of gold on the pale pink. First of all two gendarmes show themselves, then comes the file of children brought up by charity, of schools, benefit societies, old ladies and old gentlemen. A Christ is borne along by a beadle at arm’s length. A thickset monk carries a complicated emblem in which all the instruments of the Passion are represented. Four buxom maidens, bursting in their white frocks, are steadying, by the aid of ribbons, an immense banner, on which a little sheep is depicted innocently sleeping. Then, above the heads, in the candle-light, which seems awed by the light of day, rise the silver incense-burners, casting flashes and leaving a thick cloud of smoke behind them, which twirls round for a moment in its whiteness, like a shred of all those muslin gowns that are passing along behind one another.

The procession moves slowly with a dull tramp, above which is heard the sound of suppressed voices. There is a clash of cymbals and a jingle of brass, followed by shrill utterances that die away, faint and feeble, in the broad expanse of open air. A muttering of lips is heard. And, suddenly, there are long silences. Now the procession glides along softly; the scene resembles a chapel all lit up, and lost in the sunshine. Distant drums are beating a march.

I remember the penitents. There were some of all colours — white, grey, blue. The latter have attributed to themselves the terrible mission of burying executed criminals. They number among them the most illustrious names of the city. Attired in a blue serge gown, with a pointed headpiece and a long veil perforated with a couple of holes for the eyes, they look really ferocious. As the holes are often too far apart, the eyes seem to squint beneath this terrifying mask. At the hem of the gown you perceive light grey trousers and patent-leather boots.

The penitents excite the most curiosity of all. A procession without them is a poor affair. Here, at last, are the clergy. Sometimes small children carry palm leaves, ears of corn on cushions, wreaths, and pieces of gold plate. But the devout are turning round their chairs, kneeling, and casting their eyes to the ground. The canopy is advancing. It is monumental, hung with red velvet, surmounted by clusters of plumes, and supported by gilt poles. I have seen sub-prefects carrying this immense awning, beneath which sickly religion takes an airing in the June sun. A band of children of the choir walk backwards, swinging the incense-burners high into the air. One hears naught but the psalmody of the priests and the silvery sound of the chains of the incense-burners each time they are swung forward.

Limping Catholicism is creeping along beneath the blue sky of old convictions. The sun sets; its rosy blushes fade away on the housetops; twilight brings great peacefulness;
and, in that limpid air of the south, the procession moves off with voices that are dying away, depicting the melancholy effacement of an entire age descending into the tomb.

The authorities follow in their official attire, the Law Courts, the Faculties, without counting the churchwardens, with their carved and gilded lanterns. And the vision disappears. The rose leaves, the golden flowers of the broom are crushed to atoms; and nothing now rises from the street but the unpleasant smell of all these faded flowers.

Sometimes the procession is overtaken by darkness as it returns by the narrow, crooked lanes in the old quarter of the city. The white gowns become nothing more than vague indications of something light; the penitents form a confused dark line along the pavements; the small candle flames cast will-o’-the-wisps and slowly falling stars on the blackness of the houses boxing up the narrow way. And voices are accompanied by a sort of quiver, as of fright, amidst these crosses, these banners, this canopy, the supports of which are hardly distinguishable in the gloom.

That is the time when the rogues fondle the young minxes. The organ booms at the end of the church, the Host has returned home. Then the girls go off with kisses on their necks and love letters in their pocket

III

When I cross the bridges on these sultry evenings, the Seine calls to me with a friendly roar. It runs broad and fresh with amorous languor, offering itself to one and loitering between the quays. Water has something of the crumpling sound of a silk skirt. It is a gentle lover, and inspires one with an irresistible desire to spring towards it.

The owners of the floating bathing establishments, who had watched the persistent fall of rain in May with terror, perspire in beatitude beneath the sultry June sun. The water at last is warm. From six o’clock in the morning there is a crush. Bathing drawers are not given time to dry, and towards evening, there are no more gowns.

I remember my first visit to one of these baths, to one of these great wooden tubs, in which the bathers turn about in much the same way as straws dance at the bottom of a pot of boiling water.

I had just come from a small town, from a little river where I had dabbled with absolute freedom, and I was horrified at this trough in which water took the colour of soot.

Towards six o’clock in the evening the crowd is such that one must calculate one’s plunge in order not to take a seat on somebody’s back, or dash into a person’s stomach. There is froth on the water, the white bodies give it a neutral tint, whilst the pieces of cloth stretched on cords by way of a ceiling, allow a dim light to penetrate within.

The noise is frightful. At times the water spurts up, under the influence of a sudden plunge, and rolls with the sound of distant artillery. Some jokers, beating the river with their hands, imitate the tic-tac of water-mills; and there are others who practise falling backward, so as to make as much racket as possible and inundate the establishment. But that is nothing in comparison to the intolerable yells, that yelping of voices which reminds one of a school in playtime. Man becomes a child again in pure water. Grave persons walking along the quays, cast startled looks at those flapping cloths, between which they perceive great capering nude figures. Ladies pass along more rapidly.

I have nevertheless enjoyed some pleasant hours there, in the very early morning, whilst the city still slumbered. It is no longer the swarm of lean shoulders, bald heads and enormous stomachs of the afternoon. The bath is almost deserted. A few young fellows are swimming there in a resolute manner. The water is fresher after its night’s rest. It is more pure, more virgin-like.

You must go there before five o’clock. The air is mild when the city awakens. Nothing is more delicious than to follow the quays, gazing at the water with that covetous look of lovers. It will be yours. The water slumbers in the bath. You will arouse it. You can take it silently in your arms. You feel the current flowing with a fleeting caress along your body, from the back of your neck to your heels.

The rising sun casts rosy streaks on the cloths that deck the ceiling. But the more ardent kisses of the river cause a shiver to run over one’s skin, and it is then good to wrap one’s self in a gown and take a walk along the galleries. You are at Athens with bare feet, the neck at liberty, and a simple robe wound round you. Trousers, waistcoat, frock coat, boots and hat, are far away. You enjoy your state of nudity at your ease in this piece of linen. You are borne away in fancy’s dream to springtime in Greece, at the edge of the eternal blue of the Archipelago.

But you must run off as soon as the band of bathers arrive. They bring the heat of the streets clinging to their heels with them. The river is no more the virgin of early morn; it is the noon-day girl who gives herself away to every one, who is all bruised, all warm with the embraces of the crowd.

And what frights! Ladies passing along the quays do well to hurry on. A museum of antiquities, caricatured by some witty artist, would not present anything so painfully comical.

It is a terrible trial for a modern man, a Parisian, to strip himself. Prudent fellows never go to cold baths. One day they pointed out a counsellor of state to me there, who looked so pitiful with his pointed shoulders and his poor, flat stomach, that every time I came across his name in the papers, I could not repress a smile.

There are the fat, thin, tall, and short; those who float on the water like bladders, those who bury themselves in it, and seem to melt away like sticks of barley-sugar. The flesh is flabby, the bones prominent, the heads enter into the shoulders or are perched upon necks that resemble those of plucked fowls, the arms are as long as paws, and the legs are drawn up like the twisted appendages of ducks. Some are all buttock, others all stomach, and there is another kind with neither one nor the other. It is a grotesque and lamentable exhibition, and pity stays the burst of hilarity one feels inclined to give at the sight of it.

The worst of it all is that these miserable bodies, retain the pride of the black coats and purses they have left in the cloakroom. Some drape themselves, gather up the corners of their gowns, in the attitudes of purse-proud landlords. Others walk in their extravagant nudity, with the dignity of heads of departments passing among their multitude of clerks. The youngest put on airs as if they fancied themselves behind the scenes of some small theatre in short coats; the oldest forget that they have taken off their stays, and that they are not at the fireside, in the mansion of the beautiful Countess de B — .

During an entire season, at the baths of the Pont-Royal, I saw a fat man as round as a barrel and as red as a ripe tomato, who posed as Alcibiades. He had studied the folds of his gown before one of David’s paintings. He was on the Agora; he smoked with antique gestures. When he deigned to cast himself into the Seine, it was Leander crossing the Hellespont to join Hero. The poor creature. I still remember his short torso to which the water gave violet blotches. O human hideousness!

No, I prefer my little river to that. We did not even put on drawers. What was the good of them? The kingfishers and wagtails did not trouble to blush. And we chose the holes, the
goures
as they call them in the South.

You could cross the river without wetting your feet, by jumping from stone to stone; but the holes were of a tragic character. Some devoured two or three children every year. There were most awful legends connected with them, and there were boards covered with threats which, however, troubled us but little. We used them for targets, and in many instances there only remained a bit of wood held on by a nail, which swung backward and forward in the wind.

The water was burning hot in the evening. The fierce sun heated that in the holes to such a degree, that it was necessary to allow it to cool in the first freshness of twilight. We remained naked on the sand for hours, wrestling, throwing stones at the boards, catching frogs with our hands in the mud. Night set in, and an immense sigh, a sigh of relief, passed over the trees. Then it was a bathing party without end. When we were tired, we lay down in the water, at the edge of it, where it was shallow, with our heads on tufts of grass. It was then that ushers were judged with severity, and that exercises sped away in the smoke of our first pipes.

Good old river where I learnt to float, tepid water in which the little white fish were cooking, I love thee still as a sweetheart of my childhood. You took a comrade of ours one night, in one of those holes which we laughed at, and it is perhaps that stain of blood on your green gown, which has left within me a thrill of desire for your narrow streak of water. There are sobs in your innocent prattle.

IV

I care for but one sort of sport with the gun, a sport accompanied by tranquil charms with which Parisians are unfamiliar. Here, in the fields, are hares and partridges. You do not waste powder on sparrows, you disdain larks, reserving your shot for larger birds. In Provence hares and partridges are rare; sportsmen stay abroad for feathered warblers, for all the little birds in the bushes. When they have killed their dozen becaficos, they return home very proud.

I have often wandered over ploughed ground for whole days to take back three or four wheatears. I sank up to the ankles in the soil, which gave way like fine sand. In the evening, when I could no longer stand, I returned home delighted.

If, by a miracle, a hare passed between my legs I watched it run with righteous astonishment, so little was I accustomed to meet with such large creatures. I remember a covey of partridges getting up one morning in front of me; I remained so stupefied at that loud sound of wings, that I discharged my gun without aiming, and peppered a telegraph pole.

Besides, I acknowledge that I have always been a wretched shot If I have killed a good many sparrows in my time, I have never been able to bring down a swallow.