Complete Works of Emile Zola (219 page)

When Saccard, after having drawn up his schemes, set out in search of his preliminary capital, his thoughts naturally turned towards his sister. She shook her head, and sighed, talked of her three milliards. But the clerk would not humour her madness, he pulled her up roughly each time she got back to the Stuart debt; this myth seemed to him to disgrace so practical an intellect. Mme. Sidonie, who quietly accepted the most cutting satire without allowing her convictions to be shaken, next explained to him with great lucidity that he would not raise a sou, having no security to offer. This conversation took place in front of the Bourse, where she was about to speculate with her savings. One was certain to find her at about three o’clock leaning against the rail, on the left, at the post-office side; it was there that she gave audience to individuals as sinister and shady as herself. As her brother was on the point of leaving her, she murmured regretfully, “Ah! if only you were unmarried!…” This reservation, of which he scrupled to enquire the exact and complete meaning, made Saccard singularly reflective.

Months passed, war was declared in the Crimea. Paris, unmoved by a war so distant, threw itself with growing ardour into speculation and the commerce of harlots. Saccard stood by, gnawing his fists, as he watched this increasing mania which he had foreseen. The hammers beating the gold on the anvils of this gigantic forge gave him shocks of fury and impatience. So tense were his intellect and his will that he lived in a dream, like a sleep-walker stepping along the edge of a roof under the influence of a fixed idea. He was surprised, therefore, and irritated, one evening to find Angèle ill in bed. His home life, regular as clock-work, was upset, and this exasperated him like a thought-out spitefulness of Fate. Poor Angèle complained gently; she had caught a chill. When the doctor came, he appeared very anxious; he told the husband on the landing that his wife had inflammation of the lungs, and that he could not answer for her recovery. From that moment the clerk nursed the sick woman without any feeling of anger; he no longer went to his office, he stayed by her side, watching her with an indescribable look on his face, whenever she lay asleep, flushed and panting with fever. Mme. Sidonie found time, notwithstanding the overwhelming nature of her work, to call every evening and make decoctions which she maintained to be sovereign in their effects. To all her other professions she added that of a heaven-born sick-nurse, taking an interest in sufferings, in remedies, in the broken-hearted conversations that linger round death-beds. She seemed to have taken a tender liking for Angèle; she had a way of loving women, with a thousand caresses, doubtless because of the pleasure they gave to men; she treated them with the delicate attention that merchants bestow upon the more precious of their wares, calling them “Pretty one, sweetheart,” cooing to them, and behaving with the transports of a lover in the presence of his mistress. And though Angèle was one of those out of whom there was nothing to be made, yet she cajoled her like the others, on principle. When the young wife took to her bed, Mme. Sidonie’s effusions became tearful, she filled the silent chamber with her devotedness. Her brother watched her moving about, his lips tight, as though crushed with silent grief.

The illness grew worse. One evening the doctor informed them that the patient would not live through the night. Mme. Sidonie had come early, preoccupied, watching Aristide and Angèle with her watery eyes, illumined by momentary flashes of fire. When the doctor was gone, she lowered the lamp, and there was a great hush. Death entered slowly into the hot, moist room, where the uneven breathing of the dying woman sounded like the spasmodic ticking of a clock that is running down. Mme. Sidonie desisted from her potions, letting the illness take its course. She sat down before the fire-place, near her brother, who was poking the fire with a feverish hand, throwing involuntary glances the while towards the bed. Then, as though unnerved by the closeness of the atmosphere, he withdrew into the adjoining room; little Clotilde, who had been shut in there, was playing with her doll, very quietly, on a fragment of carpet. His daughter was smiling to him, when Mme. Sidonie, gliding up behind, drew him to a corner, speaking low. The door remained standing open. They could hear the faint rattle in Angèle’s throat.

“Your poor wife….” the agent sobbed out. “I fear it will soon be over. You heard what the doctor said?”

Saccard made no answer, but dismally bowed his head.

“She was a good soul,” continued the other, speaking as though Angèle were already dead. “You may find many richer women, and more fashionable women; but you will never find another heart like hers.”

Seeing her stop, wipe her eyes, and seek an excuse for changing the subject, Saccard asked her, simply:

“Have you anything to tell me?”

“Yes, I have been working for you, in the matter you know of, and I think I have found…. But at such a moment…. Believe me, my heart is broken.”

She went on wiping her eyes. Saccard let her have her way quietly, without opening his mouth. Then she came to the point.

“There is a young girl whom her people want to see married at once. The sweet child has had a misfortune. She has an aunt who would be prepared to make a sacrifice….”

She interrupted herself, she had never ceased lamenting, weeping out her words, as though still bewailing poor Angèle. Her object was to make her brother lose patience, and to compel him to question her, so that she should not have all the responsibility of the offer which she had come to make to him. And in fact the clerk was seized with an unreasoning irritation.

“Come, out with it!” he said. “Why do they want to marry this girl?”

“She had just left school,” continued the agent, in a dismal voice, “and a man seduced her, in the country, where she was staying with the relations of one of her school-fellows. The father has just discovered her condition. He wanted to kill her. The aunt, in order to save the dear child, became her accomplice, and between the two of them they made up a story and told the father that the guilty one was a man of honour whose one desire was to atone for his momentary offence.”

“In that case,” said Saccard, in a tone of surprise and seeming annoyance, “the man in the country is going to marry the girl?”

“No, he can’t, he is a married man.”

A pause ensued. The rattle in Angèle’s throat sounded more painfully in the quivering atmosphere. Little Clotilde had ceased playing; she looked up at Madame Sidonie and her father, with her great pensive child-eyes, as though she had understood their conversation. Saccard began to put brief questions:

“How old is this young girl?”

“Nineteen.”

“How long has she been in the family way?”

“Three months. It is sure to be a miscarriage.”

“And is the family rich and respectable?”

“They belong to the old-fashioned middle-class. The father used to be a magistrate. They are very well-to-do.”

“What would this sacrifice of the aunt’s amount to?”

“A hundred thousand francs.”

There was another pause. Mme. Sidonie had ceased snivelling; she was doing business now, her voice assumed the metallic tones of a second-hand clothes-woman haggling over a bargain. Her brother took a sidelong glance at her, and added, with some hesitation:

“And you, what do you want out of it?”

“We shall see later on,” she replied. “You can do something for me in your turn.”

She waited a few seconds; and as he did not speak, she asked him straight out:

“Well, have you made up your mind? Those poor women are at their wit’s end. They want to prevent an outburst. They have promised to give up the culprit’s name to the father to-morrow…. If you accept, I will send them your card by a messenger.”

Saccard seemed to wake from a dream; he started, and turned timorously towards the next room, where he thought he had heard a slight noise.

“But I can’t,” he said, with anguish in his voice, “you well know I can’t….”

Mme. Sidonie looked at him fixedly, with a cold and scornful gaze. All his Rougon blood, all his eager covetousness, rushed to his throat. He took a visiting-card from his pocket-book, and gave it to his sister, who put it in an envelope, after carefully scratching out the address. Then she went down the stairs. It was barely nine o’clock.

Left alone, Saccard went to the window and pressed his forehead against the icy panes. He forgot himself so far as to beat a tattoo with his fingers on the glass. But the night was so black, the outer darkness hung in such strange masses, that he experienced a feeling of uneasiness, and returned to the room where Angèle lay dying. He had forgotten her; he received a terrible shock on finding her half raised up against her pillows; her eyes stood wide open, a flush of life seemed to have returned to her cheeks and lips. Little Clotilde, still nursing her doll, was seated on the edge of the bed; as soon as her father’s back was turned, she had quickly slipped back into that room from which she had been removed, and to which all her happy childish curiosity attracted her. Saccard, his head full of his sister’s recital, saw his dream dashed to the ground. A hideous thought must have shone from his eyes. Angèle, seized with terror, tried to throw herself back into bed, against the wall; but death came, this awakening in agony was the last flicker of the expiring lamp. The dying woman was unable to move; she sank back, keeping her eyes fixed wide open upon her husband, as though to watch his every movement. Saccard, who had dreaded a resurrection, a devil’s device of destiny to keep him in penury, was reassured on seeing that the wretched woman had not an hour to live. He now felt nothing but intolerable uneasiness. Angèle’s eyes told him that she had overheard her husband’s conversation with Mme. Sidonie, and that she feared he would strangle her if she did not die sufficiently quickly. And her eyes still retained the terrified amazement of a sweet and inoffensive nature that learns at the last moment the infamy of this world, and shudders at the thought of the long years passed side by side with a miscreant. Little by little her look softened; she was no longer afraid, she seemed to find an excuse for the wretch as she thought of the desperate struggle he had so long maintained against Fate. Saccard, followed by the dying woman’s gaze, in which he read so deep a reproach, leant against the furniture for support, sought the dark corners of the room. Then, faltering, he made as though to drive away the nightmare that was maddening him, and stepped forward into the light of the lamp. But Angèle signed to him not to speak. And she continued to look at him with her look of terror-stricken anguish, to which was now added a promise of forgiveness. Then he stooped to take Clotilde in his arms and carry her into the other room. She forbade him this, too, with a movement of her lips. She insisted that he should stay there. She expired gently, without removing her gaze from him, and, as her sight grew dimmed, that gaze became more and more gentle. At the last breath she forgave him. She died as she had lived, colourlessly, effacing herself in death as she had effaced herself during life. Saccard stood shivering before those dead eyes, still open, which continued to follow him in their immobility. Little Clotilde nursed her doll on the edge of the sheets, gently, so as not to awaken her mother.

When Mme. Sidonie returned, it was all over. With the trick of the fingers of a woman used to this operation, she closed Angèle’s eyes, to Saccard’s intense relief. Then, after putting the little one to bed, she deftly arranged the mortuary chamber. When she had lit two candles on the chest of drawers, and carefully drawn the sheet to meet the chin of the corpse, she threw a glance of satisfaction around her, and stretched herself out in an easy-chair, where she slumbered till daybreak. Saccard spent the night in the next room, writing out the announcements of the death. He interrupted himself from time to time, forgetting himself, and jotting down columns of figures on scraps of paper.

On the evening of the funeral, Mme. Sidonie carried off Saccard to her entresol. There great resolutions were come to. The clerk decided to send little Clotilde to one of his brothers, Pascal Rougon, a doctor who led a solitary life at Plassans, sunk in research, and who had frequently offered to take his niece to enliven his silent scientific home. Mme. Sidonie next gave him to understand that he must no longer remain in the Rue Saint-Jacques. She would take an elegant set of furnished rooms for him for a month, somewhere round about the Hôtel de Ville; she would try and find some rooms in a private house, so that the furniture might seem to belong to him. As to the chattels in the Rue Saint-Jacques, they would be sold, so as to efface the last traces of the past. He could use the money in buying himself a wedding outfit and some decent clothes. Three days later Clotilde was handed over to an old lady who just happened to be going to the South. And Aristide Saccard, exultant and rosy-cheeked, fattened already in three days by the first smiles of Fortune, occupied in the Marais, in the Rue Payenne, in a severe and respectable house, a smart five-roomed flat, which he perambulated in embroidered slippers. They were the rooms of a young abbé, who had left suddenly for Italy and had sent instructions to his housekeeper to let them. This woman was a friend of Mme. Sidonie, who affected the cloth a little; she loved priests with the love she bestowed on women, instinctively, establishing, possibly, a certain subtle relationship between cassocks and silk skirts. From that time Saccard was prepared; he had thought out his part with exquisite art; he awaited without flinching the difficulties and niceties of the situation he had accepted.

On the hideous night of Angèle’s last agony, Madame Sidonie had faithfully related, in few words, the case of the Béraud family. Its head, M. Béraud du Châtel, a tall old man of sixty, was the last representative of an ancient middle-class family, whose pedigree went further back than that of certain noble houses. One of his ancestors was the friend of Étienne Marcel. In ‘93 his father had died on the scaffold, after welcoming the Republic with all the enthusiasm of a burgess of Paris in whose veins flowed the revolutionary blood of the city. He himself was a Republican of ancient Sparta, whose dream was a reign of universal justice and sound liberty. Grown old in the magistracy, where he had contracted a professional inflexibility and severity, he had resigned his chairmanship in 1851, at the time of the Coup d’État, after refusing to take part in one of those mixed commissions which tended to dishonour French justice. Since that time he had been living alone in retirement in his house on the Île Saint-Louis, situated at the extremity of the island, almost facing the Hotel Lambert. His wife had died young. Some secret tragedy, whose wound remained unhealed, added still further to the gloom of the magistrate’s countenance. He was already the father of an eight-year-old daughter, Renée, when his wife expired in giving birth to a second. The latter, who was called Christine, was taken charge of by a sister of M. Béraud du Châtel, the wife of Aubertot the notary. Renée went to a convent. Madame Aubertot, who had no children, took a maternal fondness for Christine, whom she brought up by her side. On her husband’s death, she brought back the little one to its father, and continued to live with the silent old man and the smiling, fair-haired child. Renée was forgotten at her school. During the holidays she filled the house with such an uproar that her aunt heaved a great sigh of relief when she had at last escorted her back to the ladies of the Visitation, where she had been a boarder since her eighth year. She did not leave the convent until she was nineteen, and went straight to spend the fine season at the home of her friend Adeline, whose parents owned a beautiful estate in the Nivernais. When she returned in October, her Aunt Elisabeth was surprised to find her serious and profoundly melancholy. One evening she discovered her stifling her sobs in her pillow, writhing on her bed in a paroxysm of uncontrollable grief. In the unconstraint of her despair the girl told her a heart-rending story: how a man of forty, rich, married — his wife, a young and charming woman, was there — had violated her in a field, without her daring or knowing how to defend herself. This confession terrified Aunt Elisabeth; she accused herself, as though she felt herself to be to blame; her preference for Christine made her deeply unhappy; she thought that, had she kept Renée also beside her, the poor child would not have succumbed. Henceforth, in order to drive away this exquisite remorse, which was rendered still more acute by the tenderness of her nature, she sustained the erring one; she bore the brunt of the anger of the father, to whom they both revealed the horrible truth by the very excess of their precautions; she invented, in the bewilderment of her solicitude, this strange project of matrimony, which to her idea would settle the whole affair, appease the father, and restore Renée to the world of honest women, and she refused to perceive its shameful side or foresee its disastrous consequences.