Complete Works of Emile Zola (411 page)

With calm face the usher replied: ‘It’s all because they caught sight of you, Monsieur le Président.’

Even as he spoke, he was obliged to step back close to the wall, in order to allow the Charbonnels to pass. They came into the room abreast, but not arm-in-arm. They were out of breath, and looked disconsolate and amazed; and they both began to speak at once. ‘We have just seen the
Moniteur
! What dreadful news! How distressed your poor mother will be! And what a sad position, too, it puts us in ourselves!’

More guileless than the others, the Charbonnels were about to enter upon their own little affairs at once, but Rougon stopped them. He shot a bolt, hidden beneath the door lock, and remarked that if any people wanted to come in now, they would have to break the door open. Then, observ­ing that none of his visitors showed signs of leaving, he resigned himself, and tried to finish his task in the midst of these nine people who were crowding his room. The whole place was now in a state of chaotic confusion, there being such a litter of portfolios and papers on the floor that when the colonel and M. Bouchard wanted to reach a window-recess, they had to exercise the greatest care in order to avoid trampling upon some important document. All the chairs were covered with bundles of papers, excepting the one on which Madame Bouchard was now seated. She was smiling at the gallant speeches of Du Poizat and M. Kahn; while M. d’Escorailles, unable to find a hassock, pushed a thick blue portfolio, stuffed with letters, under her feet. The drawers of the writing-table, which had been pushed into a corner of the room, afforded the Charbonnels a temporary seat where they could recover their breath, while young Auguste, delighted at finding himself in the bustle of a removal, poked about till he disappeared behind the mountain of pasteboard boxes, amid which Delestang had previously entrenched him­self. As the latter threw down the newspapers from the top of the bookcase, he raised considerable dust, which made Madame Bouchard cough slightly.

‘I don’t advise you to stay here amidst all this dirt,’ said Rougon, who was now emptying the boxes which he had asked Delestang to leave unexamined.

The young woman, however, quite rosy from her fit of coughing, assured him that she was very comfortable, and that the dust would not harm her bonnet. Then all the visitors poured forth their condolences. The Emperor, they declared, must care very little about the real interests of the country to allow himself to be influenced by men so unworthy of his confidence. France was suffering a great loss. But it was ever thus, they said; a man of high intelligence always had every mediocrity leagued against him.

‘Governments have no gratitude,’ declared M. Kahn.

‘So much the worse for them!’ exclaimed the colonel; ‘they strike themselves when they strike those who serve them.’

However, M. Kahn was desirous of having the last word on the subject, so he turned to Rougon, and said: ‘When a man like you falls, it is a subject for public mourning.’

This met with the approval of all. ‘Yes, yes,’ they exclaimed, ‘for public mourning, indeed!’

Rougon raised his head upon hearing this fulsome praise. His greyish cheeks flushed slightly, and his whole face was irradiated by a suppressed smile of satisfaction. He was as proud of his ability as a woman is of her beauty, and he liked to receive point-blank compliments. It was becoming evident, however, that his visitors were in each other’s way. They repeatedly glanced at one another, resolving to sit one another out, unwilling as they were to say all they desired in the presence of their companions. Now that the great man had fallen, they were anxious to know if he had done anything for them while he yet had the power. The colonel was the first to take an active step. He led Rougon, who, with a portfolio under his arm, readily followed him, into one of the window-recesses.

‘Have you given me a thought?’ he asked with a pleasant smile.

‘Yes, indeed. Your nomination as commander of the Legion of Honour was again promised me four days ago. But, of course, to-day it is impossible for me to say anything with certainty. I confess to you that I am afraid my friends will be made to suffer by my fall.’

The colonel’s lips trembled with emotion. He stammered that they must do what they could, and then, turning suddenly round, he called out: ‘Auguste!’

The lad was on his hands and knees underneath the desk, trying to decipher the inscriptions on the batches of documents. However, he hastened to his father.

‘Here’s this lad of mine,’ resumed the colonel in an undertone. ‘I shall have to find a berth for the young scamp one of these days. I am counting upon you to help me. I haven’t made up my mind yet between the law and the public service. Give your good friend your hand, Auguste, so that he may recollect you.’

While this scene was going on, Madame Bouchard, who had begun to bite her gloves impatiently, had risen from her chair and made her way to the window on the left, after giving M. d’Escorailles a look which meant that he was to follow her. Her husband was already there, leaning upon the cross-bar and gazing out upon the view. The leaves of the tall chestnut trees in the Tuileries Garden were languidly waving in the warm sunshine, and the Seine could be seen rolling blue waters, flecked with golden light, between the Royal and Concorde bridges.

Madame Bouchard suddenly turned round and exclaimed: ‘Oh!
Monsieur Rougon, come and look here.’

Thereupon Rougon hastily quitted the colonel, while Du Poizat, who had followed the young woman, discreetly retired, again joining M. Kahn at the middle window.

‘Do you see that barge full of bricks? It nearly foundered just now,’ said Madame Bouchard.

Rougon looked and obligingly lingered there in the sun­shine till M. d’Escorailles, upon a fresh glance from the young woman, said to him: ‘Monsieur Bouchard wants to send in his resignation. We have brought him here in order that you may try to dissuade him.’

M. Bouchard then explained that he could not endure injustice. ‘Yes, Monsieur Rougon,’ he continued, ‘I began as a copying-clerk in the office of the Minister of the Interior, and reached the position of head clerk without owing either to favour or intrigue. I have been head clerk since 1847. Well, the post of head of department has been vacant five times — four times under the Republic and once under the Empire — and yet the Minister has not once thought of me, though I had hierarchical rights to the place. Now that you will no longer be able to fulfil the promise you gave me I think I had better retire.’

Rougon tried to soothe him. The post, said he, had not yet been bestowed upon any one else, and even if he did not get it this time, it would only be a chance lost; a chance which would certainly present itself again on some future occasion. Then he grasped Madame Bouchard’s hands and complimented her in a paternal fashion. Her husband’s house had been the first thrown open to him on his arrival in Paris, and it was there that he had met the colonel, who was the head clerk’s cousin. Later on, when M. Bouchard had inherited his father’s property and had been smitten, at fifty-four years of age, with a sudden desire to get married, Rougon had acted as witness on behalf of Madame Bouchard, then Adèle Desvignes, a well brought up young lady of a respect­able family at Rambouillet. The head clerk had been anxious to marry a young lady from the provinces, because he made a point of having a steady wife. However, the fair and adorable little Adèle, with her innocent blue eyes, had in less than four years proved to be a great deal worse than a mere flirt.

‘There, now, don’t distress yourself,’ said Rougon, who was still holding her hands in his big fists. ‘You know very well that I will do my best for you.’

Then he took M. d’Escorailles aside, and told him that he had written that morning to his father to tranquillise him. The young auditor must remain quietly in his place. The Escorailles family was one of the oldest in Plassans, where it was treated with the utmost respect; and Rougon, who in former days had often dragged his worn-down boots past the old Marquis’s house, took a pride in protecting and assisting the young man. The family retained an enthusiastic devotion for Henri V., though it allowed its heir to serve the Empire. This was one of the inevitable consequences of the wickedness of the times.

Meanwhile, at the middle window, which they had opened to obtain greater privacy, Kahn and Du Poizat were talking together, while gazing out upon the distant roofs of the Tuileries, which looked blue in the haze of the sunlight. They were sounding each other, dropping a few words, and then lapsing into intervals of silence. Rougon, they agreed, was too impulsive. He ought not to have allowed himself to be irritated by that Rodriguez question, which might have been very easily settled. Then M. Kahn, gazing blankly into the distance, murmured as though he were speaking to himself: ‘A man knows when he falls, but never knows whether he will rise again.’

Du Poizat pretended not to hear; but, after a long pause, he said: ‘Oh! he’s a very clever fellow.’

Then the deputy abruptly turned, and, looking the sub-prefect full in the face, spoke to him very rapidly: ‘Between ourselves, I am afraid for him. He plays with fire. We are his friends, of course, and there can be no thought of our abandoning him. But I must say that he has thought very little about us in this matter. Take my own case, for instance. I have matters of enormous importance on my hands, and he has placed them in utter jeopardy by this sudden freak of his. He would have no right to complain — would he, now? — if I were to knock at somebody else’s door; for, you know, it is not I alone who suffer, there are all the townsfolk as well.’

‘Yes, well,
go
and knock at some other door,’ said Du Poizat, with a smile.

At this the deputy, in a sudden outburst of anger, let the truth escape him. ‘But is it possible? This confounded fellow spoils you with everybody else. When you belong to his band, every one else fights shy of you.’

Then he calmed down, sighed, and looked out towards the Arc de Triomphe, which could be seen rising in a greyish mass out of the green expanse of the Champs Elysées. ‘Well, well,’ he continued softly, ‘I’m as faithful as a dog myself.’

For the last moment or two the colonel had been stand­ing behind the two men. ‘Fidelity is the road to honour,’ said he in his military voice. Then, as Du Poizat and Kahn made room for him, he added: ‘Rougon is contracting a debt to us to-day. Rougon no longer belongs to himself.’

This remark met with the warmest approval. It was cer­tainly quite true that Rougon no longer belonged to himself. What was more, it was necessary that he should be distinctly told so in order that he might know what it behoved him to do. Then the three friends chatted in whispers, forming plans and fortifying each other with hope. At intervals they turned and cast a glance into the big room to make sure that no one was monopolising the great man for too long a time.

The great man was now gathering up the portfolios, while still talking to Madame Bouchard. The Charbonnels were wrangling in the corner where they had remained silent and ill at ease ever since their arrival. They had twice attempted to get hold of Rougon, but had been anticipated by the colonel and the young woman. Now, at last, M. Charbonnel pushed his wife towards the ex-President.

‘This morning,’ she stammered, ‘we received a letter from your mother — ‘

Rougon did not allow her to finish, but took her and her husband into the window-recess on the right hand, once more abandoning his portfolios without any great sign of im­patience.

‘We have received a letter from your mother,’ repeated Madame Charbonnel, and she was going to read the letter in question, when Rougon took it from her and glanced over it. Charbonnel was a retired oil merchant of Plassans, and he and his wife had been protected by Madame Félicité, as Rougon’s mother was called in her own little town. She had given them a letter of introduction to her son on the occasion of their presenting a petition to the Council of State. A cousin of theirs, one Chevassu, a lawyer at Faverolles, the chief town of a neighbouring department, had died, leaving his fortune of five hundred thousand francs to the Sisters of the Holy Family. Originally the Charbonnels had not expected to inherit his fortune, but having suddenly become his next heirs, owing to his brother’s death, they contested the will on the ground of undue influence; and the Sisterhood having petitioned the Council of State to authorise the pay­ment of the bequest to them, they had left their old home at Plassans, hastened to Paris, and taken lodgings at the Hôtel du Périgord in the Rue Jacob in order that they might be on the spot to look after their interests. The matter had been lingering on for the past six months.

‘We are feeling extremely depressed,’ sighed Madame Charbonnel, while Rougon was reading the letter. ‘I myself was always against bringing this action, but Monsieur Char­bonnel said that with you on our side we should certainly get the money, as you had only to say a word to put the five hundred thousand francs into our pocket. Isn’t that so, Monsieur Charbonnel?’

The retired oil merchant nodded his head with a hopeless air.

‘And for such a sum as that,’ continued Madame Char­bonnel, ‘it did seem worth while to make a change in our old way of life. And it has been nicely changed and disturbed, indeed. Will you believe it, Monsieur Rougon, they actually refused to change our dirty towels at the hotel yesterday? We who have five chests full of linen at home!’

She went on railing at Paris, which she detested. They had originally come thither for a week. Then, as they had always hoped to be able to return home during the following week, they had not thought it worth while to send for anything, and, their case still being unsettled, they doggedly lingered on in their furnished lodgings, eating whatever it pleased the cook to provide, short too of clean linen and almost of clothes. Madame Charbonnel was obliged to dress her hair with a broken comb. Sometimes they sat down on their little valise and wept from very weariness and indig­nation.

‘And the hotel is frequented by such queer characters!’ complained M. Charbonnel, with a shocked expression. ‘A young man has the room next to ours, and the things we hear — ‘