Complete Works of Emile Zola (1806 page)

The willow which pious hands have planted before his tomb, is still languishing. Never has that willow, in the shade of which he chose to sleep, grown vigorous and free in the strength of its sap. Its yellow foliage droops sadly, the ends of its branches hang down like heavy, weary tears. Perhaps its roots go and absorb in the dead man’s heart, all the bitterness of a life thrown away.

I remained for a long time musing. Over there was the tumult of Paris. Here, the chirp of a bird, the buzzing of an insect, the sudden cracking of a branch. Then long silences, during which the breath of the tomb was heard louder. Only an inhabitant of the neighbourhood, some person of small independent means, was walking softly along the path, his feet in slippers, his hands behind his back, like a worthy bourgeois sniffing the first warm air.

My souvenirs were awakening. They recalled to me my youth, that long happy time when I ran along the footpaths of my dear Provence. Musset was then my companion. I carried him in my game-bag; and, behind the first bush I forgot my gun on the sward, and read the poet, in that warm shade of the south, perfumed with sage and lavender. I owe him my first sorrow and my first joy. Even now, amidst that passion for exact analysis which has got possession of me, when sudden gusts of youth flush my cheeks, I think of that despairing one, and I thank him for having taught me how to weep.

VII

May, the month of flowers, the month of nests! The sun is discreetly smiling to-day, and I will have faith in the sun. I walk along the streets in the clear morning air, giving the whole of my attention to the merry-making of the sparrows.

If it rain to-night, heaven forgive my chaunt of joy which greets the spring.

This morning a young woman, a young wife who was about to become a mother, was seated in front of a lawn in the Park Monceau. She wore a grey silk gown. Her little gloved hands, the lace on her skirt and bodice, the delicate pale tint of her face, bore testimony to the elegant and opulent indolence of her existence. She was one of the happy of this world.

The young woman was watching two sparrows who were boldly hopping about the grass at her feet. First one, then the other, came and stole a sprig of hay and flew off to a neighbouring tree. They were building their nest. The female carefully took each straw, plaited it with the other materials that had already been brought there, and smoothed it with the warm and thrilling weight of her throat. It was a stealthy coming and going, a labour of love in which tenderness took the place of strength.

The unknown in grey silk, watched the two lovers who were hastily preparing the cradle. She was learning the ways of poor people, who have only a few sprigs of hay and the warmth of their caresses to protect their little ones on cool nights.

She smiled with sad sweetness, and I fancied I could read her reverie in her dreamy eyes.

“Alas! I am rich, and I can never feel the joy of those birds. At this moment a cabinetmaker is putting together the rosewood cradle in which a Normandy or Picardy wet-nurse will rock my child. A loom is somewhere manufacturing the woollen and linen stuffs to keep his delicate limbs warm. A work-girl is hemming the baby-linen. A midwife will attend to the newborn’s first requirements. I shall be only half a mother to the dear little creature; I shall bring it into the world naked; he will not have everything from me. And these sparrows make the cradle, weave and hem the materials; they have nothing, they create all by a miracle of love; they transform the first hole they come to in a wall, into a warm nest They are artisans of tenderness, who are envied by young mothers.”

Nests grow naturally in the hedges and trees out in the country, like living flowers. They open, they bloom at the first ray of sunshine, and the sound of chirping comes from them at the time when the hawthorn exhales its perfume.

The chaffinches, goldfinches, and bullfinches select shrubs for alcoves; the rooks and magpies ascend to the loftiest branches of the poplars; the larks and fauvettes remain on the ground, in the corn and bushes. These lovers, who are jealous of their tenderness, require the great silence of the country. I know very well that there are wretches who steal nests in order to pluck the young ones, and who eat the eggs in omelettes. And so the birds hide themselves more closely each season; they go to deserted spots.

Only sparrows and swallows dare to confide their love to the walls and trees of Paris. They live and love among us. We certainly have canaries in cages who lay and sit. But what sad sweethearts they make! One would think our canaries were married before the mayor. Their enforced union, the habit of imprisoning them behind bars is as stupid as a marriage. They have pale and peevish young ones, who never expand their wings with the freedom of the offspring of love.

You should see the sparrows at liberty in the holes in the old walls, the swallows at liberty on the chimney-tops. They love and breed in the open air, and marriages among them are marriages of inclination.

The swallows make Paris their summer villa. As soon as the travellers arrive they visit the empty cradles which they abandoned at the first cold weather. They repair the frail habitation, strengthen it, furnish it with down. And the poets, the lovers who pass by with open ears and hearts hear their little tender cries above the rumbling of the cabs.

But the real native of Paris, the urchin of the air, is the free sparrow, the fellow who wears the grey blouse of the dweller in the faubourg. He is vulgar, perky, ashamed of nothing. His chirp is like a mockery, he flaps his wings in a bantering way; the twists and turns of his head give him a devil-may-care manner, which is both jocular and aggressive.

He certainly prefers paths that are grey with dust, the noisy boulevards, to the cool shade of Meudon and Montmorency. He takes pleasure in the racket of wheels, drinks in the gutter, eats bread, walks quietly along the pavements. He has left the fields, where the company of stupid, backward animals, wearied him, to come and live among us, lodging beneath our tiles, getting light at night from the gas, and in the daytime doing his little business in our streets, either loitering or in a hurry.

The sparrow is a Parisian who does not pay taxes. He is the spoilt child of the feathered tribe, and has a weakness for gingerbread and modern civilisation.

It is in the public gardens, particularly, that you should study the lively and tender manners of the sparrows in the month of May. There are persons who go to the Jardin des Plantes to stand before bars and gaze at the animals imprisoned there. If you visit the menagerie one of these days, just look at the creatures at liberty, the sparrows who are flying about in the sunshine.

The sparrows chirp a song of triumph around the bars. They loudly extol the open air. They enter the cages with impunity, fill them with their freedom, and are the everlasting despair of the unhappy prisoners. They steal crumbs of bread from the monkeys and bears; the monkeys show them their fists, the bears protest with a swinging of the head that is full of disdainful impatience. The sparrows fly off, they are free and merry creatures in that ark in which man endeavours to confine creation.

In May the sparrows in the Jardin des Plantes, build their nests beneath the tiles on the neighbouring houses. They become more caressing, they try to steal a piece of wool or hair from the coats of the animals. One day I saw a great lion stretching out his powerful head between his extended paws, and gazing at a sparrow that was boldly hopping between the bars of his cage. The eyes of the wild beast were half closed in a sweet, poignant reverie. The great lion was dreaming of boundless horizons. He allowed the sparrow to steal a red hair from his paw.

VIII

I went to the markets on one of these recent nights. Paris is gloomy at those early hours. They have not yet given it a bit of toilet. It resembles some vast dining-room still warm and greasy with the meal of the previous evening; bones are lying about, and the dirty cloth in the form of paving-stones is covered with refuse. The masters went to bed without giving orders to clear away; and, it is only in the morning that the servant sweeps up with her broom and spreads clean linen for lunch.

There is great tumult at the markets. They form a colossal larder engulfing all the food of slumbering Paris. When it opens its eyes it will already have its stomach full. Crimson quarters of meat, baskets of fish sparkling like silver, mountains of vegetables breaking up the obscurity with white and green dabs, are piled up in the quivering rays of morning light, amidst the hubbub of the crowd. It is an avalanche of eatables, carts emptied on the pavement, cases torn asunder, sacks ripped open and the contents bursting out of them, a rising flood of salads, eggs, fruit, poultry, which threatens to reach the neighbouring streets and inundate all Paris. I went by curiosity into the middle of this turmoil, when I perceived women rummaging with both hands in great blackish heaps piled up on the ground. I could only see imperfectly in the dancing light of the lanterns, and I thought first of all that they consisted of scraps of meat that were being sold cheaply.

I approached. The heaps of refuse meat were heaps of roses.

All that is peculiar to the streets of Paris in springtime trails on this muddy spot, amongst the eatables of the market. On big holidays the sale commences at two o’clock in the morning.

The gardeners in the suburbs bring their great bunches of flowers. These, according to the season, have a current price like leeks and turnips. This sale takes place at night The women hawkers, the small tradeswomen, who thrust their arms up to the elbows in heaps of roses, seem to be committing a crime, plunging their hands to the bottom of some sanguinary work.

It is now a matter of toilet. The disembowelled bullocks that are bleeding, will be washed, wreathed in garlands, decked with artificial flowers; the roses that are being trodden under foot, will be mounted on bits of osier, and will have an unobtrusive perfume in their ruffles of green leaves.

I had stopped before these poor expiring flowers. They were still damp, brutally squeezed by the bonds that cut into their delicate stalks. They preserved the strong smell of the cabbages in the company of which they had come. And there were bunches in agony that had rolled into the gutter.

I picked up one of them. It was all muddy on one side. It will be washed in a bucket of water and will recover its sweet, delicate perfume. A little mud that will remain at the bottom of its petals, will be the only sign of its visit to the gutter. The lips that will kiss it to-night will be less pure, perhaps, than it

Then, amidst the abominable riot in the markets, I remembered that walk I took with you, Ninon, some ten years ago. Spring was bursting forth, the new foliage shone in the bright April sun. The little pathway following the hill was bordered with large clumps of violets. As one passed along, one felt a sweet perfume rise around that filled one’s being with lassitude.

You leant upon my arm quite faint, as if the sweet smell had sent you off to sleep with love. The country looked bright, and small flies were whirling round in the sun. Great silence descended from heaven. Our kiss was so soft, that it did not frighten the chaffinches among the cherry trees in bloom In a field at the bend of a road, we saw some old women stooping down, gathering violets which they threw into large baskets. I called one of them to me.

“Do you want some violets?” she asked me. “How many? A pound?”

She sold her flowers by the pound! We hurried away, both of us feeling sad, fancying we saw spring opening a grocery in the amorous country. I slipped along the hedges, and stole a few sorry violets, which smelt all the sweeter to you. But then we found that violets, quite small ones that were dreadfully afraid, and knew how to hide among the leaves by means of a thousand devices, grew in the wood above, on the tableland.

You quickly threw away the stolen violets, those stupid ones that came up in cultivated ground and were sold by the pound. You wanted flowers at liberty, offspring of the dew and rising sun. For two long hours I ferreted in the grass. As soon as I found a violet I ran to sell it you, and you bought it off me with a kiss.

And I thought of those distant things amidst those fulsome smells, in the deafening riot at the markets, whilst standing before those poor dead flowers on the ground. I remembered my sweetheart, and that bunch of dry violets I had preserved at the bottom of a drawer at home. When I returned I counted the faded stalks; there were twenty, and I felt on my lips the delicious burn of twenty kisses.

IX

I have paid a visit to the gipsy encampment opposite the military station, at the gate of Saint Ouen. These savages must be having a good laugh at this great stupid city for taking an interest in them. I only had to follow the crowd; all the faubourg was moving round their tents, and I was ashamed to see even persons who did not look like absolute idiots arriving in open carriages with liveried footmen.

When this poor Paris possesses a curiosity it goes into enthusiasm over it. The case of these gipsies is as follows. They came to tin stewpans and mend the cooking-pots of the faubourg. Only from the first day, at the sight of the urchins who stared them out of countenance, they understood the sort of civilised city they had to deal with, and so they hastened to sever their connection with cooking-pots and stewpans. Comprehending that they were taken in the light of a curious menagerie, they consented with mocking good humour to show themselves for two sous. The encampment is surrounded by a paling; two men are placed at two very narrow openings, where they collect the offerings of the ladies and gentlemen who desire to visit the kennels. There is so much rushing and crushing in the place that it has been necessary to have recourse to policemen. The gipsies sometimes turn away their heads, so as not to burst out laughing in the faces of the worthy people, who forget themselves sometimes so far, as to throw them bits of silver.

I can picture them to myself counting the receipts at night-time when the public are no longer there. What jeering! They have crossed France, amidst the rebuffs of the peasantry and the distrust of the rural police. They reach Paris in fear of being thrown into gaol. And they awaken amidst the golden dream of an entire population of ladies and gentlemen in ecstasy before their rags. They, they who are driven from town to town! I fancy I can see them, draped in their tatters, standing erect on the talus of the fortifications, and giving utterance to a huge peal of contemptuous laughter at slumbering Paris.