Complete Works of Emile Zola (251 page)

“There it is,” he cried. “I recognize it!”

“What?” asked the doctor.

“My room, of course! That’s it!”

It was on the fifth floor, a little room which must formerly have looked out on a courtyard. A breach in the wall showed it, quite bare, already cut into on one side, with its wall-paper with a pattern of big yellow flowers, a broad torn strip of which trembled in the wind. On the left they could still see the recess of a cupboard, lined with blue paper. And beside it was the aperture for a stove-pipe, with a bit of piping left in it.

The ex-workman was seized with emotion.

“I spent five years there,” he murmured. “I didn’t have a good time in those days; but no matter, I was young…. You see the cupboard; that’s where I put my three hundred francs, sou by sou. And the hole for the stove-pipe, I can still remember the day I made it. There was no fireplace in the room, it was bitterly cold, the more so as there were not often two of us.”

“Come, come,” interrupted the doctor, joking, “we don’t ask you for any confidences. You sowed your wild oats like the rest of us.”

“That’s true enough,” ingenuously resumed the worthy man. “I still remember an ironing-girl who lived over the way…. Do you see, the bed was on the right, near the window…. Ah, my poor room, what a state they’ve put it in!”

He was really very much upset.

“Get out,” said Saccard. “There’s no harm done in pulling down those old rookeries. We’re going to build fine freestone houses in their stead…. Would you still live in a hole like that? Whereas there is nothing to prevent you from taking up your quarters on the new boulevard.”

“That’s true enough,” replied the manufacturer, who seemed quite consoled.

The committee of enquiry halted again two houses further on. The doctor remained outside, smoking, looking at the sky. When they reached the Rue des Amandiers, the houses became more scattered; they now passed through large enclosures, pieces of waste land, where straggled some tumble-down ruins. Saccard seemed enraptured by this walk through devastations. He had just remembered the dinner he had once had with his first wife on the Buttes Montmartre, and he clearly recollected how he had pointed out to her, with the edge of his hand, the cutting that went from the Place du Château-d’Eau to the Barrière du Trône. The realization of this far-away prophecy delighted him. He followed the cutting with the secret joys of authorship, as though he himself had struck the first blows of the pickaxe with his iron fingers. And he skipped over the puddles, reflecting that three millions were awaiting him beneath a heap of building-rubbish, at the end of this stream of greasy mire.

Meanwhile the gentlemen began to fancy themselves in the country. The road passed through gardens, whose separating walls had been pulled down. There were large clumps of budding lilac. The foliage was a very delicate, pale green. Each of these gardens, looking like a retreat hung with the verdure of the shrubs, was hollowed out with a narrow basin, a miniature cascade, bits of wall on which were painted optical delusions in the shape of fore-shortened groves, blue backgrounds of landscape. The buildings, disseminated and discreetly hidden, resembled Italian pavilions, Greek temples: moss was crumbling away the bases of the plaster columns, while lichens had already loosened the mortar of the pediments.

“Those are ‘follies,’” said the doctor, with a wink.

But as he saw that the gentlemen did not understand him, he explained to them that under Louis XV the Court nobility kept up houses for their select parties. It was the fashion. And he added:

“Those places were called their ‘follies.’ The neighbourhood is full of them…. I tell you, some stiff things used to happen here.”

The committee of enquiry had become very attentive. The two business-men had eyes that glittered, they smiled, looked with lively interest at these gardens, these pavilions which they had barely honoured with a glance prior to their colleague’s explanations. They stood long before a grotto. But when the doctor, seeing a house already attacked by the pickaxe, said that he recognized the Comte de Savigny’s ‘folly,’ well-known by reason of that nobleman’s orgies, the whole of the committee deserted the boulevard to go and inspect the ruins. They climbed on to the rubbish-heaps, entered the ground-floor rooms by the windows, and as the workmen were at dinner, they were able to linger there quite at their ease. They stayed a good half-hour, examining the rose-work of the ceilings, the frescoes over the door, the tortuous mouldings of the plaster yellowed with age. The doctor reconstructed the house.

“Look here,” he said, “this room must be the banqueting-hall. There, in that recess of the wall, must certainly have stood a huge divan. And see, I am positive there was a mirror over the divan; there are the feet of the mirror…. Oh! those scamps knew jolly well how to enjoy life!”

They would never have left those old stones, which tickled their curiosity, had not Aristide Saccard, seized with impatience, said to them, laughing:

“You may look as long as you like, the ladies are gone…. Let’s get on with our business.”

But before leaving, the doctor climbed on to a mantel-shelf in order delicately to detach, with a blow from a pickaxe, a little painted Cupid’s head, which he put into the pocket of his frock-coat.

They arrived at last at the end of their journey. The land that was formerly Mme. Aubertot’s was very extensive; the music-hall and the garden took up barely the half of it, the rest had here and there a few houses of no importance. The new boulevard cut diagonally across this huge parallelogram, which circumstance had allayed one of Saccard’s fears: he had long imagined that only a corner of the music-hall would be cut off. And accordingly Larsonneau had been instructed to talk very big, as the bordering plots ought to increase at least five-fold in value. He was already threatening against the municipality to avail himself of a recent decree that authorized the land-owners to deliver up no more than the ground absolutely necessary for the public works.

The expropriation-agent received the gentlemen in person. He walked them through the garden, made them go over the music-hall, showed them a huge bundle of documents. But the two business men had gone down again, accompanied by the doctor, whom they still questioned about the Comte de Savigny’s folly, of which their minds were full. They listened to him with gaping mouths, all three standing beside a
jeu de tonneau
. And he talked to them of the Pompadour, told them of the amours of Louis XV, while M. de Mareuil and Saccard continued the enquiry alone.

“That’s finished,” said the latter, returning to the garden, you allow me, messieurs, I will undertake to draw up the report.”

The surgical-instrument maker did not even hear. He was deep in the Regency.

“What queer times, all the same!” he muttered.

Then they found a cab in the Rue de Charonne, and they drove off, splashed up to their knees, but as satisfied with their walk as though they had had a day in the country. The conversation changed in the cab, they talked politics, they said that the Emperor was doing great things. They had never seen anything like what they had seen just now. That great, long, straight street would be splendid when the houses were built.

Saccard drew up the report, and the jury granted three millions. The speculator was at the end of his tether, he could not have waited another month. This money saved him from ruin and even from the dock. He paid five hundred thousand francs on account of the million which he owed to his upholsterer and his builder, for the house in the Parc Monceau. He stopped up other holes, flung himself into new companies, deafened Paris with the sound of the real crown-pieces which he shovelled out on to the shelves of his iron safe. The golden stream had a source at last. But it was not yet a solid, entrenched fortune, flowing with an even, continuous current. Saccard, saved from a crisis, thought himself a beggar with the crumbs of his three millions, said frankly that he was still too poor, that he could not stop. And soon the ground cracked once more beneath his secretaries to help me.”

Larsonneau had behaved so admirably in the Charonne business that Saccard, after a short hesitation, had the honesty to give him his ten per cent, and his bonus of thirty thousand francs. The expropriation-agent thereupon started a banking-house. When his accomplice peevishly accused him of being richer than himself, the yellow-gloved coxcomb replied with a laugh:

“You see, dear master, you’re very clever at making the five-franc pieces rain down, but you don’t know how to pick ‘em feet.”

Madame Sidonie profited by her brother’s stroke of luck to borrow ten thousand francs of him, with which she went and spent two months in London. She returned without a sou. It was never known where the ten thousand francs had gone to.

“Good gracious!” she replied, when they questioned her, “it all costs money. I ransacked all the libraries. I had three up.”

And when she was asked if she had at last any positive information about the three milliards, she smiled at first with a mysterious air, and then ended by muttering:

“You’re a lot of unbelievers…. I have discovered nothing, but it makes no difference. You’ll see, you’ll see some day.”

She had not, however, wasted all her time while she was in England. Her brother the minister profited by her journey to entrust her with a delicate commission. When she returned she obtained large orders from the ministry. It was a fresh incarnation. She made contracts with the government, she undertook every imaginable kind of supply. She sold it provisions and arms for the troops, furniture for the préfectures and public departments, firewood for the museums and government-offices. The money she made did not induce her to change her everlasting black gowns, and she kept her yellow, dismal face. Saccard then reflected that it was indeed she whom he had seen long ago furtively leaving their brother Eugène’s house. She must have kept up secret relations with him all through, for reasons with which not a soul was acquainted.

Amid these interests, these burning, unquenchable thirsts, Renée suffered agonies. Aunt Elisabeth was dead; her sister had married and left the Hotel Béraud, where her father alone remained erect in the gloomy shadow of the large rooms. Renée in one season ran through her aunt’s inheritance. She gambled now. She had found a house where ladies sat at the card-table till three o’clock in the morning, losing hundreds of thousands of francs, a night. She made an endeavour to drink; but she could not, she experienced invincible uprisings of disgust. Since she had found herself alone again, a prey to the mundane flood that carried her with it, she abandoned herself more than ever, not knowing with what to kill time. She succeeded in tasting of everything. And nothing touched her amid the boundless ennui which overwhelmed her. She grew older, her eyes were circled with blue, her nose became thinner, her lips pouted with sudden, uncalled-for laughter. It was the breaking-up of a woman.

When Maxime had married Louise, and the young couple had left for Italy, she no longer troubled herself about her lover, she even seemed entirely to forget him. And when after six months Maxime returned alone, having buried “the hunchback” in the cemetery of a small town in Lombardy, her feeling towards him was one of hatred. She remembered
Phèdre
, she doubtless recollected that poisonous love to which she had heard Ristori lend her sobs. Then, to avoid meeting the young man at home in future, to dig for ever an abyss of shame between the father and son, she forced her husband to take cognizance of the incest, she told him that on the day when he had surprised her with Maxime, the latter, who had long been running after her, was trying to ravish her. Saccard was terribly annoyed by her persistency in her desire to open his eyes. He was compelled to quarrel with his son, to cease to see him. The young widower, rich with his wife’s dowry, took a small house in the Avenue de l’Impératrice, where he lived alone. He gave up the Council of State, he ran race-horses. Renée experienced one of her last satisfactions. She took her revenge, she flung back the infamy these two men had set in her into their faces; she said to herself that now she would never again see them laughing at her, arm in arm, familiarly.

Amid the crumbling of Renée’s affections there came a time when she had none but her maid left to love. She had gradually developed a motherly fondness for Céleste. Perhaps this girl, who was all that remained near her of Maxime’s love, recalled to her hours of enjoyment for ever dead. Perhaps she simply found herself touched by the faithfulness of this servant, of this honest heart whose tranquil solicitude nothing seemed to shake. From the depth of her remorse she thanked her for having witnessed her shame without leaving her in disgust; she pictured self-denials, a whole life of renunciation, before becoming able to understand the calmness of the lady’s maid in the presence of incest, her icy hands, her respectful and serene attentions. And she was all the happier in the girl’s devotion as she knew her to be virtuous and thrifty, with no lovers, no vices.

Sometimes in her sad moments she would say to her:

“Ah, my good girl, it will be your duty to close my eyes.”

Céleste made no reply, gave a curious smile. One morning she quietly told Renée that she was leaving, that she was going back to the country. Renée stood trembling all over, as though some great misfortune had overtaken her. She protested, she plied her with questions. Why was she deserting her when they agreed so well together? And she offered to double her wages.

But the lady’s-maid, to all her kind words, replied no with a gesture, placidly and obstinately.

“Listen, madame,” she ended by replying; “you might offer me all the gold in Peru, and I could not remain a week longer. Lord, you don’t know me…. I have been eight years with you, haven’t I? Well, then, ever since the first day I said to myself, ‘As soon as I have got five thousand francs together, I will go back home; I will buy Lagache’s house, and I shall live very happily.’… It’s a promise I made myself, you see. And I made up the five thousand francs yesterday, when you paid me my wages.”