Complete Works of Emile Zola (1819 page)

Sing then, beautiful lark, of the twenty years; sing for us as you have sung for our fathers, as you will sing for our sons. You are eternal, for you are youth and love.

THE ATTACK ON THE MILL

Translated by William Foster Apthorp

The short story
L’attaque du moulin
was originally included in
Les Soirées de Médan,
a collection of six short stories by different writers associated with Naturalism, first published in 1880.  The collection took its title from Zola’s house at Médan, near Paris, where the writers used to gather for literary dinners. The aim of the collection was to promote the ideals of Naturalism, by treating the events of the Franco-Prussian War in a realistic and ‘unheroic’ way, in contrast to officially approved patriotic views of the war. By far the most famous story in the collection is
Boule de Suif
, which immediately launched the career of the young Guy de Maupassant. 

THE ATTACK ON THE MILL

I.

OLD Merlier’s mill was in high feather, that fine summer evening. In the courtyard they had set out three tables, end to end, ready for the guests. All the country knew that, on that day, Merlier’s daughter Françoise was to be betrothed to Dominique, a fellow who had the name of being an idle loafer, but whom the women for eight miles round looked at with glistening eyes, so well-favored was he.

This mill of old Merlier’s was a real delight. It stood just in the middle of Rocreuse, at the point where the highway makes a sharp turn. The village has only one street, two rows of hovels, one row on each side of the road; but there, at the corner, the fields spread out wide, great trees, following the course of the Morelle, cover the depths of the valley with a magnificent shade. There is not in all Lorraine a more lovely bit of nature. To the right and left, thick woods of century-old trees rise up the gentle slopes, filling the horizon with a sea of verdure; while, towards the south, the plain stretches out marvellously fertile, unfolding without end its plots of land divided by live hedges. But what, above all else, gives Rocreuse its charm is the coolness of this green nook in the hottest days of July and August. The Morelle comes down from the Gagny woods, and it seems as if it brought with it the coolness of the foliage beneath which it flows for miles; it brings the murmuring sounds, the icy and sequestered shade of the forests. And it is not the only source of coolness: all sorts of running water babble beneath the trees; at every step springs gush forth; you feel, while following the narrow paths, as if subterranean lakes were forcing their way through the moss, and taking advantage of the smallest fissures, at the foot of trees, between rocks, to overflow in crystalline fountains. The whispering voices of these brooks rise so multitudinous and high that they drown the bulfinches’ song. You would think yourself in some enchanted park, with waterfalls on every hand.

Below, the meadows are soaking wet. Gigantic chestnuts cast their black shadows. Along the edge of the fields, long lines of poplars spread out their rustling drapery. There are two avenues of huge sycamore-maples rising across the fields, up toward the old chateau of Gagny, now in ruins. In this perpetually watered soil the weeds grow rank. It is like a flower garden lying between two wooded hillsides; but a natural garden, in which the lawns are fields, and giant trees trace out colossal flower-beds. When the sun, at noon, casts its rays straight down, the shadows turn blue, the scorched weeds slumber in the heat, while an icy shudder runs along beneath the foliage.

It was there that old Merlier’s mill enlivened a nook of rank green growth with its clacking. The building, of planks and mortar, seemed as old as the world. Half of it dipped into the Morelle, which, at this point, widens out into a clear, rounded basin. A dam was contrived to let the water fall from a height of several metres upon the mill-wheel, which turned creaking, with the asthmatic cough of a faithful servant, grown old in the household. When people advised old Merlier to change it for a new one, he would shake his head, saying that a young wheel would be lazier and not so well up in its business; and he mended the old one with everything that came to hand, — staves of casks, bits of rusty iron, zinc, lead. The wheel seemed all the gayer for it, its outline grown strange, all beplumed with weeds and moss. When the water beat against it with its silver stream, it would cover itself with beads, you saw it deck out its strange carcass with a sparkling bedizenment of mother-of-pearl necklaces.

The part of the mill that thus dipped into the Morelle looked like a barbarous ark, stranded there. A good half of the structure was built on piles. The water ran in under the board floor; there, too, were holes, well known in the country for the eels and enormous crawfish caught there. Above the fall, the basin was as clear as a mirror, and when the wheel did not cloud it with its foam, you could see shoals of large fish swimming there with the deliberateness of a naval squadron. A broken flight of steps led down to the river, near a stake to which a boat was moored. A wooden balcony ran above the wheel. Windows opened upon it, cut at irregular distances. This pellmell of corners, little walls, L’s added as an after-thought, beams and bits of roof, gave the mill the appearance of an old dismantled citadel. But ivy had grown there, all sorts of climbing vines had stopped up the two wide cracks and thrown a cloak of green over the old dwelling. Young ladies who passed by would sketch old Merlier’s mill in their albums.

Toward the road the house was stouter. A stone gateway opened upon the main courtyard, which was bordered on the right by sheds and stables. Near a well a huge elm covered half the courtyard with its shade. At the farther end, the house showed the line of its four first-story windows, surmounted by a pigeon-house. Old Merlier’s only bit of dandyism was to have this wall whitewashed every ten years. It had just been whitened, and dazzled the village when the sun lighted it up in the middle of the day.

For twenty years old Merlier had been mayor of Rocreuse. He was esteemed for the fortune he had managed to make. He was supposed to be worth something like eighty thousand francs, laid up sou by sou. When he married Madeleine Guillard, who brought him the mill as her dowry, he hardly possessed anything but his two arms; but Madeleine never repented her choice, so well did he manage the affairs of the household. Now that his wife was dead, he remained a widower with his daughter Françoise. No doubt, he might have taken a rest, left his mill to sleep in the moss; but he would have been too much bored, and the house would have seemed dead to him. He kept on working, for the fun of it. Old Merlier was then a tall old man, with a long, silent face, never laughing, but very jolly internally, nevertheless. He had been chosen for mayor on account of his money, and also for the fine air he knew how to assume, when he married a couple.

Françoise Merlier was just eighteen. She did not pass for one of the beauties of the countryside; she was too puny. Up to the age of eleven she was even ugly. No one in Rocreuse could understand how the daughter of father and mother Merlier, both of them ruggedly built, could grow up so ill, and, so to speak, grudgingly. But at fifteen, although still delicate, she had the prettiest little face in the world. She had black hair, black eyes, and at the same time was all rosy; a mouth that laughed all the time, dimpled cheeks, a clear brow on which there seemed to rest a crown of sunshine. Although puny for the neighborhood, she was not thin, far from it; people only meant that she could not shoulder a sack of grain; but she grew very plump with time, and stood a good chance of ending by being round and dainty as a quail. Only her father’s long spells of speechlessness had made her thoughtful at an early age. If she was always laughing, it was to give others pleasure. At bottom, she was serious.

Naturally all the countryside courted her, still more for her dollars than for her niceness. And at last, she made a choice that had just scandalized the country. On the other side of the Morelle lived a young fellow, named Dominique Penquer. He did not belong in Rocreuse. Ten years before, he had come there from Belgium, to take possession of a legacy from an uncle of his who owned a little piece of property on the very outskirts of the Gagny forest, just opposite the mill, within a few gunshots. He came to sell this property, he said, and go home again. But the country fascinated him, it seems, for he did not stir. He was seen tilling his bit of field, picking a few vegetables, on which he lived. He fished, he went shooting; several times the gamekeepers just missed catching him and reporting him to the authorities. This free life, the material resources of which the peasants could not well account for, had at last given him a bad name. He was vaguely spoken of as a poacher. At all events, he was lazy, for he was often found asleep in the grass at times when he ought to have been at work. The hut in which he lived, under the first trees of the forest, did not look like an honest fellow’s dwelling either. If he had had business with the wolves of the old ruins of Gagny, it would not have surprised the old women. Yet the girls would, now and then, have the audacity to stand up for him; for this suspicious man was a superb fellow, tall and supple as a poplar, with a very white skin, and fair beard and hair that shone like gold in the sun. So, one fine morning, Françoise declared to her father that she loved Dominique, and that she would never consent to marry any one else.

You can imagine what a blow old Merlier received that day. He said nothing, as usual. He always looked thoughtful in the face; only his internal jollity stopped sparkling in his eyes. The two did not speak for a week. Françoise, too, was very grave. What bothered old Merlier was to make out how in the world that rascal of a poacher could have bewitched his daughter. Dominique had never come to the mill. The miller began to watch him, and espied the gallant on the other side of the Morelle, lying in the grass and pretending to be asleep. The thing was clear: they must have fallen in love, making sheep’s-eyes at each other across the mill-wheel.

Meanwhile another week passed by. Françoise looked more and more solemn. Old Merlier still said nothing. Then, one evening, he brought Dominique home with him, without a word. Françoise was just setting the table. She did not seem astonished; she only added another plate and knife and fork; but the little dimples appeared once more in her cheeks, and her laugh came back again. That morning old Merlier had gone after Dominique to his hut on the outskirts of the wood. There the two men had talked for three hours, with closed doors and windows. No one ever knew what they found to say to each other. What was certain was that, on coming out, old Merlier already treated Dominique like his own son. No doubt, the old man had found the man he was after, a fine fellow, in this lazybones who lay in the grass to make the girls fall in love with him.

All Rocreuse gossiped. The women, in the doorways, did not run dry of tittle-tattle about old Merlier’s folly in taking a scapegrace into his household. He let them talk on. Perhaps he remembered his own marriage. Neither had he a red sou when he married Madeleine and her mill; but that did not prevent his making a good husband. Besides, Dominique cut the gossip short by going to work with such a will that the whole country marvelled at it. It so happened that the miller’s boy had just been drafted; and Dominique would never hear of his hiring another. He carried the sacks, drove the cart, struggled with the old wheel when it had to be begged hard before it would turn, and all with such a will that people would come to look at him for sheer pleasure. Old Merlier laughed his quiet laugh. He was very proud of having scented out this fellow. There is nothing like love for putting heart into young people.

In the midst of all this hard work Françoise and Dominique adored each other. They hardly ever spoke, but they looked at each other with smiling tenderness. So far, old Merlier had not said a single word about the marriage; and they both respected this silence, awaiting the old man’s pleasure. At last, one day about the middle of July, he had three tables set out in the courtyard under the big elm, inviting his friends in Rocreuse to come and take a drink with him in the evening. When the courtyard was full, and every one had his glass in his hand, old Merlier raised his very high, saying:

 — —”This is for the pleasure of announcing to you that Françoise will marry that fellow there in a month, on Saint-Louis’s day.”

Then they clinked glasses noisily. Everybody laughed. But old Merlier, raising his voice, went on, —

 — —”Dominique, kiss your intended. That must be done.”

And they kissed each other, very red, while the crowd laughed still louder. It was a real jollification. A small cask was emptied. Then, when only the intimate friends were left, they chatted quietly. Night had come, a starlit and very clear night. Dominique and Françoise, sitting side by side on a bench, said nothing. An old peasant spoke of the war the emperor had declared with Prussia. All the boys in the village were already gone. The day before, troops had passed through. There would be hard knocks going.