Complete Works of Emile Zola (205 page)

“You know that, do you?” exclaimed Felicite, becoming serious and distrustful. “Well, you’re not so foolish as I thought, then. Do you open letters like some one of my acquaintance?”

“No; but I listen at doors,” Aristide replied, with great assurance.

This frankness did not displease the old woman. She began to smile again, and asked more softly: “Well, then, you blockhead, how is it you didn’t rally to us sooner?”

“Ah! that’s where it is,” the young man said, with some embarrassment. “I didn’t have much confidence in you. You received such idiots: my father-in-law, Granoux, and the others! — And then, I didn’t want to go too far. . . .” He hesitated, and then resumed, with some uneasiness: “To-day you are at least quite sure of the success of the Coup d’Etat, aren’t you?”

“I!” cried Felicite, wounded by her son’s doubts; “no, I’m not sure of anything.”

“And yet you sent word to say that I was to take off my sling!”

“Yes; because all the gentlemen are laughing at you.”

Aristide remained stock still, apparently contemplating one of the flowers of the orange-coloured wall-paper. And his mother felt sudden impatience as she saw him hesitating thus.

“Ah! well,” she said, “I’ve come back again to my former opinion; you’re not very shrewd. And you think you ought to have had Eugene’s letters to read? Why, my poor fellow you would have spoilt everything, with your perpetual vacillation. You never can make up your mind. You are hesitating now.”

“I hesitate?” he interrupted, giving his mother a cold, keen glance. “Ah! well, you don’t know me. I would set the whole town on fire if it were necessary, and I wanted to warm my feet. But, understand me, I’ve no desire to take the wrong road! I’m tired of eating hard bread, and I hope to play fortune a trick. But I only play for certainties.”

He spoke these words so sharply, with such a keen longing for success, that his mother recognised the cry of her own blood.

“Your father is very brave,” she whispered.

“Yes, I’ve seen him,” he resumed with a sneer. “He’s got a fine look on him! He reminded me of Leonidas at Thermopylae. Is it you, mother, who have made him cut this figure?”

And he added cheerfully, with a gesture of determination: “Well, so much the worse! I’m a Bonapartist! Father is not the man to risk the chance of being killed unless it pays him well.”

“You’re quite right,” his mother replied; “I mustn’t say anything; but to-morrow you’ll see.”

He did not press her, but swore that she would soon have reason to be proud of him; and then he took his departure, while Felicite, feeling her old preference reviving, said to herself at the window, as she watched him going off, that he had the devil’s own wit, that she would never have had sufficient courage to let him leave without setting him in the right path.

And now for the third time a night full of anguish fell upon Plassans. The unhappy town was almost at its death-rattle. The citizens hastened home and barricaded their doors with a great clattering of iron bolts and bars. The general feeling seemed to be that, by the morrow, Plassans would no longer exist, that it would either be swallowed up by the earth or would evaporate in the atmosphere. When Rougon went home to dine, he found the streets completely deserted. This desolation made him sad and melancholy. As a result of this, when he had finished his meal, he felt some slight misgivings, and asked his wife if it were necessary to follow up the insurrection that Macquart was preparing.

“Nobody will run us down now,” said he. “You should have seen those gentlemen of the new town, how they bowed to me! It seems to me quite unnecessary now to kill anybody — eh? What do you think? We shall feather our nest without that.”

“Ah! what a nerveless fellow you are!” Felicite cried angrily. “It was your own idea to do it, and now you back out! I tell you that you’ll never do anything without me! Go then, go your own way. Do you think the Republicans would spare you if they got hold of you?”

Rougon went back to the town-hall, and prepared for the ambush. Granoux was very useful to him. He despatched him with orders to the different posts guarding the ramparts. The national guards were to repair to the town-hall in small detachments, as secretly as possible. Roudier, that bourgeois who was quite out of his element in the provinces, and who would have spoilt the whole affair with his humanitarian preaching, was not even informed of it. Towards eleven o’clock, the court-yard of the town-hall was full of national guards. Then Rougon frightened them; he told them that the Republicans still remaining in Plassans were about to attempt a desperate
coup de main
, and plumed himself on having been warned in time by his secret police. When he had pictured the bloody massacre which would overtake the town, should these wretches get the upper hand, he ordered his men to cease speaking, and extinguish all lights. He took a gun himself. Ever since the morning he had been living as in a dream; he no longer knew himself; he felt Felicite behind him. The crisis of the previous night had thrown him into her hands, and he would have allowed himself to be hanged, thinking: “It does not matter, my wife will come and cut me down.” To augment the tumult, and prolong the terror of the slumbering town, he begged Granoux to repair to the cathedral and have the tocsin rung at the first shots he might hear. The marquis’s name would open the beadle’s door. And then, in darkness and dismal silence, the national guards waited in the yard, in a terrible state of anxiety, their eyes fixed on the porch, eager to fire, as though they were lying in wait for a pack of wolves.

In the meantime, Macquart had spent the day at aunt Dide’s house. Stretching himself on the old coffer, and lamenting the loss of Monsieur Garconnet’s sofa, he had several times felt a mad inclination to break into his two hundred francs at some neighbouring cafe. This money was burning a hole in his waistcoat pocket; however, he whiled away his time by spending it in imagination. His mother moved about, in her stiff, automatic way, as if she were not even aware of his presence. During the last few days her children had been coming to her rather frequently, in a state of pallor and desperation, but she departed neither from her taciturnity, nor her stiff, lifeless expression. She knew nothing of the fears which were throwing the pent-up town topsy-turvy, she was a thousand leagues away from Plassans, soaring into the one constant fixed idea which imparted such a blank stare to her eyes. Now and again, however, at this particular moment, some feeling of uneasiness, some human anxiety, occasionally made her blink. Antoine, unable to resist the temptation of having something nice to eat, sent her to get a roast chicken from an eating-house in the Faubourg. When it was set on the table: “Hey!” he said to her, “you don’t often eat fowl, do you? It’s only for those who work, and know how to manage their affairs. As for you, you always squandered everything. I bet you’re giving all your savings to that little hypocrite, Silvere. He’s got a mistress, the sly fellow. If you’ve a hoard of money hidden in some corner, he’ll ease you of it nicely some day.”

Macquart was in a jesting mood, glowing with wild exultation. The money he had in his pocket, the treachery he was preparing, the conviction that he had sold himself at a good price — all filled him with the self-satisfaction characteristic of vicious people who naturally became merry and scornful amidst their evil practices. Of all his talk, however, aunt Dide only heard Silvere’s name.

“Have you seen him?” she asked, opening her lips at last.

“Who? Silvere?” Antoine replied. “He was walking about among the insurgents with a tall red girl on his arm. It will serve him right if he gets into trouble.”

The grandmother looked at him fixedly, then, in a solemn voice, inquired: “Why?”

“Eh! Why, he shouldn’t be so stupid,” resumed Macquart, feeling somewhat embarrassed. “People don’t risk their necks for the sake of ideas. I’ve settled my own little business. I’m no fool.”

But aunt Dide was no longer listening to him. She was murmuring: “He had his hands covered with blood. They’ll kill him like the other one. His uncles will send the gendarmes after him.”

“What are you muttering there?” asked her son, as he finished picking the bones of the chicken. “You know I like people to accuse me to my face. If I have sometimes talked to the little fellow about the Republic, it was only to bring him round to a more reasonable way of thinking. He was dotty. I love liberty myself, but it mustn’t degenerate into license. And as for Rougon, I esteem him. He’s a man of courage and common-sense.”

“He had the gun, hadn’t he?” interrupted aunt Dide, whose wandering mind seemed to be following Silvere far away along the high road.

“The gun? Ah! yes; Macquart’s carbine,” continued Antoine, after casting a glance at the mantel-shelf, where the fire-arm was usually hung. “I fancy I saw it in his hands. A fine instrument to scour the country with, when one has a girl on one’s arm. What a fool!”

Then he thought he might as well indulge in a few coarse jokes. Aunt Dide had begun to bustle about the room again. She did not say a word. Towards the evening Antoine went out, after putting on a blouse, and pulling over his eyes a big cap which his mother had bought for him. He returned into the town in the same manner as he had quitted it, by relating some nonsensical story to the national guards who were on duty at the Rome Gate. Then he made his way to the old quarter, where he crept from house to house in a mysterious manner. All the Republicans of advanced views, all the members of the brotherhood who had not followed the insurrectionary army, met in an obscure inn, where Macquart had made an appointment with them. When about fifty men were assembled, he made a speech, in which he spoke of personal vengeance that must be wreaked, of a victory that must be gained, and of a disgraceful yoke that must be thrown off. And he ended by undertaking to deliver the town-hall over to them in ten minutes. He had just left it, it was quite unguarded, he said, and the red flag would wave over it that very night if they so desired. The workmen deliberated. At that moment the reaction seemed to be in its death throes. The insurgents were virtually at the gates of the town. It would therefore be more honourable to make an effort to regain power without awaiting their return, so as to be able to receive them as brothers, with the gates wide open, and the streets and squares adorned with flags. Moreover, none of those present distrusted Macquart. His hatred of the Rougons, the personal vengeance of which he spoke, could be taken as guaranteeing his loyalty. It was arranged that each of them who was a sportsman and had a gun at home should fetch it, and that the band should assemble at midnight in the neighbourhood of the town-hall. A question of detail very nearly put an end to their plans — they had no bullets; however, they decided to load their weapons with small shot: and even that seemed unnecessary, as they were told that they would meet with no resistance.

Once more Plassans beheld a band of armed men filing along close to the houses, in the quiet moonlight. When the band was assembled in front of the town-hall, Macquart, while keeping a sharp look-out, boldly advanced to the building. He knocked, and when the door-keeper, who had learnt his lesson, asked what was wanted, he uttered such terrible threats, that the man, feigning fright, made haste to open the door. Both leaves of it swung back slowly, and the porch then lay open and empty before them, while Macquart shouted in a loud voice: “Come on, my friends!”

That was the signal. He himself quickly jumped aside, and as the Republicans rushed in, there came, from the darkness of the yard, a stream of fire and a hail of bullets, which swept through the gaping porch with a roar as of thunder. The doorway vomited death. The national guards, exasperated by their long wait, eager to shake off the discomfort weighing upon them in that dismal court-yard, had fired a volley with feverish haste. The flash of the firing was so bright, that, through the yellow gleams Macquart distinctly saw Rougon taking aim. He fancied that his brother’s gun was deliberately levelled at himself, and he recalled Felicite’s blush, and made his escape, muttering: “No tricks! The rascal would kill me. He owes me eight hundred francs.”

In the meantime a loud howl had arisen amid the darkness. The surprised Republicans shouted treachery, and fired in their turn. A national guard fell under the porch. But the Republicans, on their side, had three dead. They took to flight, stumbling over the corpses, stricken with panic, and shouting through the quiet lanes: “Our brothers are being murdered!” in despairing voices which found no echo. Thereupon the defenders of order, having had time to reload their weapons, rushed into the empty square, firing at every street corner, wherever the darkness of a door, the shadow of a lamp-post, or the jutting of a stone made them fancy they saw an insurgent. In this wise they remained there ten minutes, firing into space.

The affray had burst over the slumbering town like a thunderclap. The inhabitants in the neighbouring streets, roused from sleep by this terrible fusillade, sat up in bed, their teeth chattering with fright. Nothing in the world would have induced them to poke their noses out of the window. And slowly, athwart the air, in which the shots had suddenly resounded, one of the cathedral bells began to ring the tocsin with so irregular, so strange a rhythm, that one might have thought the noise to be the hammering of an anvil or the echoes of a colossal kettle struck by a child in a fit of passion. This howling bell, whose sound the citizens did not recognise, terrified them yet more than the reports of the fire-arms had done; and there were some who thought they heard an endless train of artillery rumbling over the paving-stones. They lay down again and buried themselves beneath their blankets, as if they would have incurred some danger by still sitting up in bed in their closely-fastened rooms. With their sheets drawn up to their chins, they held their breath, and made themselves as small as possible, while their wives, by their side, almost fainted with terror as they buried their heads among the pillows.

The national guards who had remained at the ramparts had also heard the shots, and thinking that the insurgents had entered by means of some subterranean passage, they ran up helter-skelter, in groups of five or six, disturbing the silence of the streets with the tumult of their excited rush. Roudier was one of the first to arrive. However, Rougon sent them all back to their posts, after reprimanding them severely for abandoning the gates of the town. Thrown into consternation by this reproach — for in their panic, they had, in fact, left the gates absolutely defenceless — they again set off at a gallop, hurrying through the streets with still more frightful uproar. Plassans might well have thought that an infuriated army was crossing it in all directions. The fusillade, the tocsin, the marches and countermarches of the national guards, the weapons which were being dragged along like clubs, the terrified cries in the darkness, all produced a deafening tumult, such as might break forth in a town taken by assault and given over to plunder. It was the final blow of the unfortunate inhabitants, who really believed that the insurgents had arrived. They had, indeed, said that it would be their last night — that Plassans would be swallowed up in the earth, or would evaporate into smoke before daybreak; and now, lying in their beds, they awaited the catastrophe in the most abject terror, fancying at times that their houses were already tottering.