Complete Works of Emile Zola (1805 page)

That is no doubt why I prefer shooting in ambush.

Imagine a sort of small round construction sunk into the ground, and rising a little more than three feet above it. This hut, built up with loose stones, is roofed with tiles, which are hidden as much as possible by sprays of ivy. You might take it for a ruined tower rased near to its foundations, and hidden in the grass.

The narrow space within receives light from loopholes, which are closed by movable windows. The retreat has generally a fire-place and cupboards; I have even known one with a divan. Dead trees are planted round the hut, and at the foot of them are hung the cages of the decoy birds, imprisoned songsters whose business it is to call those that are free.

The tactics are simple. The sportsman, quietly shut up, smokes his pipe and waits. He watches the dead trees through the loopholes. Then, when a bird perches on a dry branch, he methodically takes his gun, rests the barrel on the edge of a loophole, and annihilates the wretched creature almost at the muzzle.

That is the only way in which people of Provence shoot birds of passage, ortolans in August, and thrushes in November.

I used to set out at three o’clock on icy cold mornings in November. I had a league to go in the dark, loaded like a mule; for it is necessary to take the decoy birds with you, and I can assure any one that some thirty cages are not carried so easily in a hilly country, along paths that are barely traced out. You place the cages on long wooden frames, where they are secured close to one another by strings.

When I reached my destination it was still dark, the tableland expanded, broad, savage, in a mass of gloom, with its multitude of grey scrubby bushes. All around me, in the darkness, I heard that murmur of the pines, that great confused voice, which resembles the lamentations of the waves. I was then fifteen, and did not always feel very comfortable. It was already an emotion, a palpitating pleasure that I was experiencing.

But I had to be quick. Thrushes are early birds. I hung up my cages and shut myself in the hut It was too soon as yet, I could not distinguish the branches of the dead trees. And notwithstanding I heard the harsh whistling of the thrushes above my head. Those vagabonds travel by night. I lit a fire grumbling, and hastened to get a bright blaze that shone rosy on the cinders. As soon as the sport begins not a bit of smoke must issue from the hut. It might frighten away the game. Whilst waiting for daybreak I grilled mutton chops on the embers.

And I went from loophole to loophole, searching for the first pale glimmer of daylight. Nothing yet; the bare limbs of the dead trees were dimly distinguishable. My eyesight was bad even then, and I was afraid of firing at a black spot on one of the branches, as sometimes happens. I did not rely on my eyes alone, I listened. The silence was disturbed by a thousand sounds, those whisperings, those profound sighs of the earth at its awakening. The wail of the pines increased, and, at times, it seemed to me as if an innumerable flight of thrushes were about to swoop down upon the hut, whistling furiously.

But the clouds were becoming milky. The dead trees stood out in black against the clear sky with singular distinctness. Then all my faculties were strained, and I was bent double with anxiety.

How my heart leapt when I suddenly perceived the long silhouette of a thrush on one of the dead trees! The thrush stretches out its neck, shows itself off to the first ray of the sun, in the stream of morning light. I clutched my gun with the utmost precaution, so as not to knock the barrel or stock against anything. I fired, the bird fell. I did not go to pick it up, that might have driven away other victims.

And I began to wait again, agitated by a feeling of excitement similar to that of a gambler who has had a lucky hand, and is in doubt as to what chance may have in store for him. All the pleasure of this kind of sport is in the unforeseen, in the willingness of the game to come and be slaughtered. Will another thrush perch on one of the dead trees? The question is perplexing. But I was not particular: when thrushes failed to come, I killed small birds.

I see the little hut again now, at the edge of the great deserted plateau. A fresh perfume of thyme and lavender comes from the hills. The decoys whistle softly amidst the loud rustling of the pines. The sun shows a lock of its flaming hair on the horizon; and there, on one of the dead trees, in the white light, a thrush stands motionless.

Go you and run after the hares, and do not laugh, or you will drive my thrush away.

V

I have two cats. One of them, Françoise, is as white as a May morning. The other, Catherine, is as black as a stormy night.

Françoise has the laughing, round head of a European girl. Her great eyes, which are of a pale green colour, cover almost all her face. Her nose and rosy lips are coated with carmine. Any one would say they were painted like a virgin madly in love with her form. She is fat, plump, Parisian to the end of her claws. She seeks to attract attention when she walks, giving herself engaging airs, turning up her tail with the sudden shiver of a little lady gathering up the train of her gown.

Catherine has the pointed and delicately moulded head of an Egyptian goddess. Her eyes, which are as yellow as golden moons, have the same fixity and impenetrable harshness as the pupils of a barbarian idol. The corners of her thin lips display the everlasting ironic smile of the Sphinx. When she squats on her hind paws, holding her head up motionless, she is a divinity in black marble, the great hieratic Pacht of the Theban temples.

Both pass their days on the yellow sand in the garden.

Françoise rolls on her back, and is very busy with her ablutions, licking her paws with the delicate care of a coquette who is whitening her hands in oil of sweet almonds. She has not three ideas in her head. It is easy to see that by her. crazy-like air of a very fashionable lady.

Catherine thinks. She thinks, looking without seeing, penetrating with her gaze the unknown world of the gods. She remains sitting up erect for hours, implacable, smiling with her strange smile of a sacred animal.

When I caress Françoise with my hand, she curves her back and slightly mews with delight. She is so happy at having attention paid to her! She looks up with a wheedling movement, returning my caress by rubbing her nose against my cheek. Her hair quivers, her tail is gently waved. And she ends by closing her eyes, going off into a doze, and softly purring.

When I want to caress Catherine, she avoids my hand. She prefers a solitary existence amidst her religious dream. She has the modesty of a goddess who feels irritated and wounded at all human contact. If I succeed in taking her on my knees, she flattens herself out, stretches her neck, fixes her eyes ready to escape at a bound. Her nervous limbs and lean body are inert beneath my fingers which are fondling her. She does not deign to lower herself to the joy of love for a mortal.

And so Françoise is a daughter of Paris, doxy or marchioness, she is a light-headed, charming creature, who would give herself away for a compliment on her white coat; whilst Catherine is the daughter of some city in ruins, I know not where, out there in the region of the sun. They belong to two civilisations; one is a modern doll, the other an idol of a nation that has ceased to exist.

Ah! if I could but read in their eyes! I take them in my arms, I gaze at them fixedly, so that they may tell me their secret. They do not lower their eyelids, and it is they that study me. I read nothing in the glassy transparency of those orbs which open like fathomless holes, like dim wells throwing out bright sparks.

And Françoise purrs more tenderly, whereas the yellow glances of Catherine pierce me like brass wire.

Françoise recently became a mother. This madcap has a good heart. She gives the most tender attention to the one kitten that has been left her. She takes it up delicately by the nape of the neck and carries it into all the cupboards in the house.

Catherine watches her, lost in deep thought. The kitten interests her. In its presence she gives herself the attitudes of an ancient philosopher reflecting on the life and death of creatures, building up a whole system of philosophy in dreamland.

Yesterday, in the absence of the mother, she went and crouched down beside the little one. She smelt it, turned it over with her paw. Then, she suddenly carried it into a dark corner. There, thinking herself well hidden, she stood before the little creature, with flashing eyes, and quivering spine, like a priestess preparing for a sacrifice. I believe she was about to crush the victim’s head between her teeth, when I promptly interfered and drove her away. As she ran off she cast diabolical, cringing looks at me in silence, without swearing.

Well! I still like Catherine; I like her because she is perfidious and cruel, like a fiend of hell. What care I for the gentle gracefulness of Françoise, her delightful airs, her ways of a madcap! All our daughters of Eve are white and purr as she does. But I have never yet been able to find a sister to Catherine, a perverse, cold creature, a black idol wrapped in an eternal dream of evil.

VI

The rose-trees in the cemeteries bear large flowers, as white as milk and of a deep red. The roots penetrate to the bottom of the coffins, to take whiteness from virgin bosoms and bright crimson from wounded hearts. This white rose is the bloom of a child who died at sixteen; this red one is the last drop of blood of a man fallen in the struggle.

O — brilliant flowers, living flowers, that contain something of our dead!

In the country, the plum and apricot trees grow boldly behind the church, along the crumbling walls of the little graveyard. The warm sun gilds the fruit, the open air gives it a delicious taste. And the housekeeper of the parish priest makes preserves which are renowned for more than ten leagues round. I have tasted them. You would think — to use the happy expression of the country folk — that you were swallowing Paradise.

I know one of those little village churchyards where there are superb gooseberry bushes growing as high as trees. The red gooseberries beneath the green leaves resemble bunches of cherries. And I have seen the beadle come there of a morning, with a small loaf of bread under his arm, and quietly breakfast sitting at the edge of an old tombstone. He was surrounded by a swarm of sparrows. He picked the gooseberries and threw the sparrows crumbs of bread; and all those little creatures ate with a famous appetite above the skulls.

The graveyard looks quite gay. The grass grows thick and strong. In one of the corners clusters of wild poppies form a sheet of crimson. Fresh air comes in abundance from the plain, with puffs of all the pleasant perfumes of new-mown hay. Bees buzz in the sun at noon; little grey lizards lie in ecstasy at the entrance to their holes, inhaling the heat with open jaws. The dead are warm; and it is no longer a graveyard, it is a corner of universal life, where the souls of the dead pass into the trunks of the trees, where there remains naught but a vast kiss of what was yesterday and what will be to-morrow. The flowers are girls’ smiles; the fruits are the requirements of men.

There, it is no crime to gather corn-flowers and poppies. Children come and make nosegays. The parish priest is only angry when they climb up into the plum-trees. The plum-trees are his, but the flowers belong to every one. Sometimes they are obliged to mow the graveyard; the grass is so high that the black wooden crosses are lost in it; then, the priest’s mare eats the hay. The villagers are not spiteful, and not one of the parishioners thinks of taxing the mare with biting into the souls of the dead.

Mathurine had planted a rose-tree on the tomb of her affianced lover, and every Sunday in May, Mathurine went and picked a rose which she placed in her neckerchief. She passed the Sunday amidst the perfume of her departed love. When she cast her eyes on her neckerchief, she fancied her lover smiled at her.

I like cemeteries, beneath a blue sky. I go there bareheaded, forgetful of my hatreds, as into a holy city where one is all affection and forgiveness.

One morning recently, I went to Père Lachaise. The white sepulchres of the burial-ground rose in terraces against the blue horizon. Tufts of trees grew on the slope, and through the still light screen of their leaves, one could see the shining corners of great tombs. Spring is kind to the deserted fields where rest our dearly beloved dead; it sprinkles the soft paths along which the young widows slowly wend their way, with grass; it whitens the marbles with bright and childlike gaiety. The cemetery, from a distance, resembles an enormous bouquet of verdure, picked out here and there by a tuft of hawthorn blossom. The tombs are as virgin flowers of herbs and foliage.

I followed the paths slowly. What thrilling silence, what penetrating fragrance, what puffs of gentle warmth, coming from one knows not where, like the fondling breath of women whom one does not see! One feels that a whole people sleeps in that agitated and mournful earth beneath the tread of passers-by. From each of the shrubs that form the clusters of verdure, from each cleft in the flagstones, escapes a soft and regular respiration, accompanied by all the peacefulness of the last sleep, as if it were that of a child crawling along the ground.

More winters have passed over Musset’s slab of marble. I found it looking whiter, more sympathetic. The last showers have given it a new appearance. A ray of sunshine, falling from a neighbouring tree, lit up the poet’s delicate and nervous profile with lifelike brightness. That medallion, with its everlasting smile, has a charm that saddens one.

How can one account for the strange power that Musset exercised over my generation? There are few young men who, after having read him, have not preserved a feeling of everlasting gentleness in their hearts. And yet Musset taught us neither how to live, nor how to die; he fell down at every step; in his agony he could only rise upon his knees and cry like a child. No matter, we love him; we love him fondly, like a sweetheart who gives our heart feeling by wounding it.

The fact is, that he raised the wail of despair of the century, that he was the youngest and most afflicted of us all.