Complete Works of Emile Zola (414 page)

‘Mother,’ Clorinde cried abruptly, ‘have you shown the Chevalier the telegram you received last night?’

‘A telegram!’ exclaimed the Chevalier in a loud tone.

The Countess drew a bundle of letters from her pocket and began to search amongst them. Then she handed the Chevalier a much crumpled strip of blue paper.

As soon as he had glanced over it he made a gesture of anger and astonishment. ‘What!’ he cried in French, for­getting the presence of the others, ‘you knew this yesterday! And I only learnt it this morning!’

Clorinde indulged in a fresh burst of laughter, which in­creased his irritation.

‘And Madame la Comtesse allows me to tell her the whole story, as though she knew nothing about it!’ he continued. ‘Well, as the head-quarters of the legation seem to be here, I shall call every day to see the correspondence.’

The Countess smiled. She again searched in her bundle of letters and took out a second paper which she gave the Chevalier to read. This time he seemed much pleased. Then they renewed their conversation in whispers, the Chevalier’s face once more wearing a respectful smile. Before he left the Countess, he kissed her hand.

‘There! we’ve done with business,’ he said in a low voice as he took his seat at the piano again.

Then he rattled off a vulgar air which was very popular in Paris that year. But having ascertained what time it was, he suddenly sprang up to get his hat.

‘Are you going?’ asked Clorinde. Then she beckoned him to her, and leaning on his shoulder whispered some­thing into his ear. He nodded and smiled; and finally said: ‘Capital, capital. I will write and mention it.’

At last he bowed to the company and retired. Luigi tapped Clorinde, who was squatting on the table, with his maul-stick, in order to make her stand up again. The Countess appeared to have grown tired of watching the stream of carriages in the avenue, for she pulled the bell-rope that hung behind her as soon as she lost sight of the Cheva­lier’s brougham, which quickly disappeared among the crowd of landaus coming back from the Bois. It was the big lanky man-servant with the brigand’s face who answered her sum­mons, leaving the door wide open behind him. Leaning heavily on his arm, she slowly crossed the room, the men standing up and bowing as she passed. She acknowledged their salutations with a smiling nod. When she reached the door, she turned and said to Clorinde: ‘I have got my head­ache again; I’m going to lie down a little.’

‘Flaminio,’ called the young girl to the servant who was assisting her mother, ‘put a hot iron at her feet.’

The three political refugees did not sit down again. For a few moments they remained standing in a row, finishing their cigars, the stumps of which they then threw, each with the same precise gesture, behind the heap of dry clay. And afterwards they filed past Clorinde, going off in procession.

M. La Rouquette had just commenced a serious conversa­tion with Rougon. ‘Yes, indeed,’ he remarked,’ I know very well that this question of sugars is one of the greatest import­ance. It affects a whole branch of French commerce. But unfortunately nobody in the Chamber seems to have thoroughly studied the subject.’

Rougon, whom he bored, only answered with a nod. How­ever, the young deputy drew closer to him, an expression of sudden gravity coming over his girlish face as he continued: ‘I myself have an uncle in the sugar trade. He has one of the largest refining-houses at Marseilles. I went to stay with him for three months, and I took notes, very copious notes. I talked to the workmen and made myself conversant with the whole subject. I intended, you understand, to make a speech in the Chamber on the matter.’

In this wise he tried to show off before Rougon, giving himself a deal of trouble in order to talk to him on the only subjects which he thought would interest him; and, at the same time, being anxious to pass for a sound politician.

‘And didn’t you make a speech?’ interposed Clorinde, who seemed to be growing impatient of M. La Rouquette’s presence.

‘No, I didn’t,’ he replied; ‘I thought I’d better not. At the last moment I felt afraid that my figures might not be quite correct.’

Rougon eyed him keenly and then gravely asked him: ‘Do you know how many pieces of sugar are consumed every day at the Café Anglais?’

For a moment La Rouquette seemed quite confused and stared at the other with a blank expression. Then he broke into a peal of laughter. ‘Ah! very good! very good!’ he cried. ‘I understand now. You are chaffing me. But that’s a question of sugar. What I was speaking about was a ques­tion of sugars. Very good that, eh? You’ll let me repeat the joke, won’t you?’

He wriggled on his chair with much self-satisfaction. The rosy hue came back to his cheeks and he seemed quite at his ease again, once more talking in his natural light manner. Clorinde attacked him on the subject of women. She had seen him, she said, two nights previously at the Variétés with a little fair person who was very plain and had hair like a poodle’s. At first the young man denied the accusation; but, irritated by Clorinde’s cruel remarks about the ‘little poodle,’ he at last forgot himself and began to defend her, saying that she was a highly respectable lady and not nearly so bad look­ing as Clorinde tried to make out. The girl, however, grew quite scathing, and finally M. La Rouquette cried out: ‘She’s expecting me now, and I must be off.’

As soon as he had closed the door behind him, Clorinde clapped her hands triumphantly, and exclaimed: ‘There, he’s gone at last. Good riddance to him.’

Then she jumped lightly from the table, ran up to Rougon, and gave him both her hands. Assuming her most winning look, she expressed her regret that he had not found her alone. What a lot of trouble she had had to get all those people to go! Some people couldn’t understand anything! What a goose La Rouquette was with his sugars! Now, however, there was no one to disturb them, and they could talk. She had led Rougon to a couch as she was speaking, and he had sat down without releasing her hands, when Luigi began to tap his easel with his maul-stick, exclaiming in a tone of irritation: ‘Clorinde! Clorinde!’

‘Oh yes, of course, the portrait,’ she cried, with a laugh.

Then she made her escape from Rougon, and bent down behind the artist with a soft caressing expression. How pretty his work looked, she cried. It was very good indeed; but, really, she felt rather tired and would much like a quarter of an hour’s rest. He could go on with the dress in the mean­time. There was no occasion for her to pose for the dress. Luigi, however, cast fiery glances at Rougon, and muttered disagreeable words. Thereupon Clorinde hastily said some­thing to him in Italian, knitting her brows the while, though still continuing to smile. This reduced Luigi to silence, and he began to pass his brush over the canvas again.

‘It’s quite true what I say,’ declared the girl as she came back and sat down beside Rougon; ‘my left leg is quite numb.’

Then she slapped herself to make the blood circulate, she explained; and she was bending towards Rougon, her bare shoulder touching his coat, when she suddenly looked at her­self and blushed deeply. And forthwith she sprang up and fetched a piece of black lace which she wrapped around her.

‘I feel chilly,’ she said, when she had wheeled an easy chair in front of Rougon and sat down in it.

Nothing but her bare wrists now peeped out from beneath her lace wrapper, which she had knotted round her neck. Her bust was completely concealed in its folds, and her face had turned pale and grave.

‘Well, what is it that has happened to you?’ she exclaimed. ‘Tell me all about it.’

Then she questioned him about his fall from office with daughterly curiosity. She was a foreigner, she told him, and she made him again and again repeat certain details which she said she did not understand. She also kept on interrupt­ing him with Italian ejaculations, and he could read in her dark eyes the interest she took in what he was telling her. Why had he quarrelled with the Emperor? How could he have brought himself to give up such a lofty position? Who were his enemies, that he should have allowed himself to be worsted in that way? And as he hesitated, unwilling to make the confessions which she tried to extort from him, she looked at him with an expression of such affectionate candour, that at last he threw off all reserve and told her the whole story from beginning to end. She soon seemed to have learnt all that she wanted to know, and then began to ask him questions quite unconnected with the matter which had first engaged her attention, questions so singular that Rougon was altogether surprised. But at last she clasped her hands and lapsed into silence. Closing her eyes she seemed buried in deep thought.

‘Well?’ said Rougon, with a smile.

‘Oh, nothing,’ she murmured, ‘but this has made me quite sad.’

Rougon was touched, and tried to take hold of her hands again, but she hid them away in her lace wrapper, and they both sat there in silence for a minute or two, when she opened her eyes again and said: ‘You have formed some plans, I suppose?’

Rougon looked at her keenly, with a touch of suspicion. But she seemed so adorable as she languidly reclined in that easy chair, as though the troubles of her ‘dear friend’ had broken her down, that he dismissed the chilling thought. More­over, she plied him with flattery. She was sure, said she, that he would not long be allowed to remain aloof, but would be master again some day. She was confident that he had high ambitions and trusted hopefully in his star, for she could plainly read as much on his brow. Why wouldn’t he take her for his confidante? She was very discreet, and it would make her so happy to share his hopes for the future. Rougon, quite infatuated by all this, and still trying to grasp the little hands hidden away beneath the lace, thereupon kept nothing back, but confessed everything to the girl, his hopes as well as his certainties. He required no further urging from her, and she had only to let him talk on, refrain­ing even from a gesture for fear of checking him. She kept her eyes upon him, examining him searchingly limb by limb, fathoming his skull, weighing his shoulders and measuring his chest. He was certainly a solid, well-built man, who, with a turn of his wrist, could have tossed her, strong as she was, on to his back and have carried her without the least difficulty to whatever height she might have desired.

‘Ah! my dear friend,’ she exclaimed abruptly, ‘it is not I who have ever felt any doubts.’

Then she sprang from her seat, and, spreading out her arms, let the lace wrapper slip off. A momentary all-alluring vision, a sort of promise and reward, appeared to Rougon.

‘Ah!’ she cried, ‘my lace has fallen,’ and quickly picking it up again, she knotted it round her more tightly than before.

‘Oh!’ she next exclaimed, ‘there’s Luigi growling.’

Then she hastened back to the artist, bent over him a second time and rapidly whispered to him. Rougon, now that she was no longer by his side, roughly rubbed his hands together, feeling almost angry. That girl had exercised a most extraordinary influence over him and he resented it. If he had been a lad of twenty he could not have acted more foolishly. She had wheedled him into a confession as though he had been a mere child; whereas he, for the last two months, had been doing his best to make her speak, but had only succeeded in extracting peals of laughter from her. She, however, had merely had to deny him her little hands for a moment, and he had foolishly forgotten all his prudence and told her everything in order to gain possession of them.

Nevertheless, Rougon smiled a smile of conscious strength. He could break her, he told himself, whenever he liked. Wasn’t it she herself who was challenging him? He cer­tainly could not go on playing the part of an imbecile with this girl who so freely showed him her shoulders. He was by no means sure that the lace wrapper had slipped off with­out her assistance.

‘Would you say that my eyes were grey?’ Clorinde now asked him, stepping towards him again.

He rose and looked at her quite closely, but she bore his inspection without even her eyelids quivering. However, when he stretched forth his hands, she gave him a tap. There was no occasion to touch her. She had become very cold, now. She wrapped herself yet more closely in her strip of lace, and her modesty seemed to take alarm at the least hole in it. In vain did Rougon joke and jest. She only covered herself the more, and even refused to sit down again.

‘I prefer walking about a little,’ she said; ‘it stretches my legs.’

Then Rougon followed her and they paced the room together. He tried, in his turn, to extract a confession from her. As a rule, she could not be got to answer questions. Her conversation usually consisted of sudden starts and jumps, interspersed with ejaculations and snatches of stories which she never finished. When Rougon adroitly questioned her concerning the fortnight of the previous month which she and her mother had spent away from Paris, she started on an in­terminable string of anecdotes about her journeyings. She had been everywhere, to England, Spain, and Germany; and she had seen everything. Then she vented a series of trifling remarks upon food, and the fashions and the weather. Now and then she began some story, in which she herself figured with sundry well-known persons, whom she named; and, thereupon, Rougon listened attentively, hoping that she was at last going to make some real revelation; but she either turned the story off into some childish nonsense or stopped short and left it unfinished altogether. That day, as pre­viously, he learnt absolutely nothing. Her face retained its impenetrable smile, and she remained full of secretive reserve amidst all her boisterous freedom. Rougon, quite confused by the different extraordinary stories he had heard of her, each of which gave the lie to the other, was utterly unable to determine whether he had before him a mere girl whose innocence extended even to foolishness, or a keen­witted woman who cunningly affected simplicity.

She was telling him of an adventure that had happened to her in a little town in Spain, and of the gallantry of a traveller who had given up his room to her, when she suddenly broke off and exclaimed: ‘You mustn’t go back to the Tuileries. Make yourself missed.’