Complete Works of Emile Zola (20 page)

Seeing that I stared at him curiously, he continued, in a drawling voice, the while securing his gloves on his hands:

“The poor man should not laugh, Monsieur. He is altogether dishonest if he forgets his poverty for an hour. Who then will weep over the misfortunes of the people, if the government often gives such saturnalias as this?”

He wiped away a tear and left me. I saw him enter the shop of a wine merchant, where he drowned his emotion in five or six glasses of claret, taking one after the other over the counter.

The last light of the fair had just been extinguished; the crowd had dispersed. In the vacillating brightness of the street lamps, I now saw wandering beneath the trees only a few dark forms, couples of belated lovers, drunkards and sergents de ville airing their melancholy. The booths stretched away, gray and silent, on both borders of the avenue, like the tents of a deserted encampment.

Brothers, the morning breeze, damp with dew, imparted a quiver to the leaves of the elm trees. The biting emanations of the evening had given place to a delicious coolness. The softened silence, the transparent gloom of the infinite, fell slowly from the depths of the sky, and the fête of the stars followed the fête of the lamps. Honest people, at last, could amuse themselves a little.

I felt myself thoroughly rejuvenated, brothers, the hour of solitude having arrived. I walked with a firm step, ascending and descending the neighboring streets; then, I saw a gray shadow glide along the houses. This shadow came rapidly towards me, without seeming to see me; from the lightness of the step and the rhythmical rustle of the garments, I recognized a woman. She was about to run against me, when she instinctively raised her eyes. Her visage was revealed to me by the glimmer of a neighboring lantern, and I recognized it immediately as belonging to the girl who loved me: she was not the immortal in the white muslin cloud as I had seen her in the booth, but a poor daughter of this earth clad in faded calico. In her poverty, she seemed to me more charming than before, though pale and fatigued. I could not doubt the evidence of my senses: I saw before me the large eyes, the caressing lips of the vision, and, besides, I distinguished, on inspecting her thus closely, that sweetness of the features imparted by suffering.

As she stopped for a second, brothers, I seized her hand and kissed it, forgetting Laurence. She raised her head and smiled vaguely upon me, without seeking to withdraw her fingers. Seeing me remain silent, emotion having choked the words in my throat, she shrugged her shoulders and resumed her rapid walk.

I ran after her, caught her by the arm, and walked beside her. She laughed almost silently; then, she shivered and said, in a low voice:

“I am cold: let us hasten along.”

Poor child, she was cold! Beneath her thin black shawl, her shoulders trembled in the cool morning breeze. I said to her, gently:

“Do you know me?”

Again she raised her eyes, and, without hesitating, replied: “No.”

I know not what rapid thought shot through my mind. In my turn, I shivered.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders, and said to me, in a childish voice, with a little, careless pout:

“I am going home.”

We walked along down the avenue.

I saw upon a bench two soldiers, one of whom was discoursing gravely, while the other listened with respect. These soldiers were the sergeant and the conscript. The sergeant, who seemed to me greatly moved, made me a mocking salute, murmuring:

“The rich lend, sometimes, Monsieur.”

The conscript, a tender and innocent soul, said to me, in a tone full of grief:

“I had only her, Monsieur: you are stealing from me the girl who loves me!”

I crossed the thoroughfare, and took another street., Three youths came towards us, holding each other by the arm and singing very loudly. I recognized the schoolboys. The little wretches had no further need to feign intoxication. They stopped, almost bursting with laughter; then, they followed me a few steps, crying after me, each one in an uncertain voice:

“Ho! Monsieur, Madame is deceiving you: Madame is the person who loves me!”

I felt a cold sweat moisten my temples. I hastened my steps in my eagerness to flee, thinking no more of the woman I was dragging along on my arm. At the end of the avenue, as I was about at last to quit this accursed spot, on stepping down from the sidewalk, I ran against a man who was sitting at his ease upon the curbstone. He was leaning his head against a lamp-post, his face turned towards the sky, and was executing with the aid of his fingers a very complicated calculation.

He turned his eyes, and, without moving his head from his pillow, stammered out:

“Ah! it is you, Monsieur! You must help me to count the stars. I have already found several millions of them, but I am afraid I have forgotten one somewhere. The welfare of humanity, Monsieur, depends upon statistics alone!”

A hiccough interrupted him. He resumed, with tears in his eyes:

“Do you know what a star costs? Surely, the great God has gone to vast expense on high, and the people lack bread, Monsieur! Of what good are those lamps up there? Can they be eaten? What is the practical application of them, I beg of you? We have no need whatever of this eternal fête!”

He had succeeded in turning his body around; he gazed about him with perplexed looks, tossing his heap with an indignant air. It was then that he noticed my companion. He gave a start, and, with purple visage, greedily stretched out his arms.

“Ah! ah!” he stuttered, “it is the person who loves me!”

The girl and I walked on a short distance.

“Listen,” said she: “I am poor; I do what I can to get something to eat. Last winter, I spent fifteen hours a day bent over my work, an honest trade, and yet I was sometimes without bread. In the spring, I threw my needle out of the window. I had found an occupation less fatiguing and more lucrative.

“I dress myself every evening in white muslin. Alone in a sort of nook, leaning against the back of an arm-chair, I have nothing to do but smile from six o’clock until midnight. From time to time, I make a courtesy, I send a kiss into space. For this I am paid three francs a sitting.

“Opposite me, behind a little glass enclosed in the partition, I incessantly see an eye looking at me. Sometimes it is black, sometimes blue. Without this eye, I should be perfectly happy; it spoils the business for me. At times, from always finding it alone and steadily fixed there, I am filled with wild terror, I am tempted to cry out and flee!

“But one must work for one’s living. I smile, I courtesy, I send my kiss. At midnight, I wash off my rouge and resume my calico dress. Bah! how many women, without being forced to do so, air their graces before a mirror!”

By this time, we had reached the wretched abode in which this girl dwelt. I left her at the door, and returned to my mansarde and my misery.

CHAPTER XXVI.

AT MARIE’S BEDSIDE.

I TAKE a sad pleasure in being in Marie’s chamber. In the morning, I go there and sit upon the edge of the dying girl’s bed; I live there as much as possible, departing with regret. Everywhere else, I belong to Laurence, everywhere else, I am feverish, excited and tormented. I hasten to reach this spot of pacification, I enter it with the feeling of confidence and comfort experienced by an invalid who is going to breathe a milder atmosphere, by which he expects to be cured.

I love death. The chamber is lukewarm, damp; the light there is gray and softened, made up of shadow and white brightness; everything there floats in a final languor, in a soft and dreamy half transparency. One does not know how sweet to a bleeding heart is the silence which reigns in a chamber where a young girl is dying. This silence is a strange, peculiar silence, full of exquisite mildness, full of restrained tears. The sounds — the clink of a glass, the crackling of a piece of furniture — are subdued, drag along like half stifled complaints; the cries from without enter in murmurs of pity, of compassionate encouragement. Everything is held in check, noise as well as light; everything is filled with grief and hope. And, in the shadow, amid the silence, one hears a vague despair which comes from one knows not where, and which accompanies the broken breath of the dying girl.

I gaze at Marie. I feel myself penetrated, little by little, by that invisible breath of consoling pity which fills the chamber. My eyes rest from their tears in that pale brightness; my ears, amid the quivering silence, forget for an hour the sound of my sobs. All the gentleness, all the delicate attentions, all the faintly uttered and caressing words, intended for Marie, seem as if addressed to me; they subdue the sound of voices and footsteps; they question, they reply, affectionately; they avoid sharp and painful sensations; and, as for me, I believe, at times, that all these considerate precautions are taken that my poor being, full of suffering, may not burst asunder. I imagine that I am dying, that they are taking care of me; I seize my share of the care and consolation; I steal from Marie half of her agony and of the pity it causes; I go there, beside a dying girl, to profit by the regrets and tenderness which men accord to the last hours of a soul. I am curing my love through death.

I feel that it is the need of being pitied, of being caressed, which pushes me into this chamber. I find here the atmosphere, the pity, necessary for me. Life is too sharp for my painful flesh and my wounded heart; the bright sunlight irritates me; I am at ease only in the restorative seclusion of the tomb. If, some day, I emerge from my despair, I ought to thank God for having permitted me to live thus, seated at the foot of a bed of death, for having allowed me to share the pacification of a dying creature. I will live, because a child expired at my side.

I gaze at Marie. The fever purifies her flesh from day to day. She is growing younger, she is becoming a little girl, amid the exhaustion of her blood. Her deeply sunken face expresses an ardent longing, the longing for the end, for rest; her eyes are enlarged, her pallid lips remain half open as if to facilitate the passage of the final breath. She is waiting, resigned, almost smiling, as ignorant of death as she has been ignorant of life.

Sometimes, we look each other in the face for long hours. I know not what thought then arrests the cough upon her lips; she seems filled with a single idea, which suffices to keep her awake, to give her more life and more calmness. Her countenance grows tranquil, pink flushes appear upon her cheeks; her limbs beneath the bed clothes have less stiffness; Marie, under the influence of my glance, stretches herself out, shakes off the iron grasp of death. As for me, I am absorbed in her, I share her sufferings; little by little, it seems to me that I pass in through her half open lips and that I become a part of this sick creature; I experience a gentle and bitter sensation at languishing with her, at slowly sinking away; I feel the inexorable disease take possession of my entire body, shake me with increasing violence, in proportion as my glances penetrate deeper and deeper into those of Marie; I say to myself that I shall die simultaneously with her, and a great flood of joy sweeps through me.

Oh! what strange fascination and what wonderful pacification I experience! Death is powerful; it has biting temptations, irresistible attractions. One must not lean over the eyes of a dying creature, for they are full of light and so deep that their abysses make one dizzy. One wishes to see what those enlarged eyes behold, one is seized with frightful curiosity in regard to the unknown. Every time Marie looks at me, I desire to die, to leave this world with her, in order that I may know what she will know; I imagine that she is soliciting me, that she is begging me not to abandon her, that she is dreaming we will go away in company, taking the risk of the same annihilation or the same splendor.

Then, I forget, I forget Laurence. Though I see Laurence in everything, waking or sleeping — in the objects which surround me, in that which I eat and in that which I drink — I do not see Laurence in the depths of Marie’s eyes. I see there only that blue glimmer, paler now, which I saw one night while my lips touched the poor child’s lips. That blue glimmer does not speak to me of my love, does not speak to me of my grief; it is the only thing at which I can gaze without weeping. This is the reason I love Marie’s chamber, this is the reason I love the dying girl with her dilated eyes which have more purity, more gentleness, than the sky, for the sky, when I lift my face towards it, speaks to me of Laurence. I am about to lose myself in this oblivion, in this clear and serene light which is so pure. Perhaps, thereby, my heart will be cured.

When the night comes on and I can no longer see the blue glimmer in Marie’s eyes, I open the window, I gaze at the black wall. The square patch of yellow light is there, empty or peopled, still and sad or filled with silent movements. I feel a sharp sensation on finding myself again, after several hours of forgetfulness, face to face with reality, face to face with my jealousy and my anguish. Every evening, I recommence the painful and colossal task of giving a meaning to those dark stains which increase in size and roll in a bewildering way over the surface of the wall. I have converted this search into a dolorous recreation. I apply myself to it with an anxious patience, an obstinacy full of fever, and each night I am drawn back to the window, though I promise myself daily that I will no longer risk my reason there.

CHAPTER XXVII.

MARIE’S DEATH.

I HAVE reached that plenitude of despair which is almost rest. I cannot suffer additionally; this certainty that nothing can augment my tears is a solace. My being has torn itself to such an extent that it has stopped in pity. To-day, I can only wipe away my tears.

And yet I feel that I have need of Heaven to be cured. I have the brutishness of pain, I have not the tranquil joy of health. If my wounds cannot be enlarged, they cannot remain open, bleeding drop by drop, with inexorable suffering.

Brothers, the hand which is to close them is a terrible hand, the hand of death and truth.