Complete Works of Emile Zola (422 page)

Rougon gave her three hundred and twenty francs without a moment’s hesitation. Scarcely did his fingers tremble as he counted out the gold. It was a fine which he had inflicted upon himself. Then Clorinde, carried away by the manner in which he put down such a sum of money, stepped up to him with an adorable expression, offering him her cheek. And when he had kissed it in a fatherly fashion, she went off, looking quite delighted, and saying: ‘Thank you for the poor girls. I have only seven tickets left now. My godfather will take those.’

As soon as Rougon was alone again, he sat down at his desk by sheer force of habit. He resumed his work, and for some minutes wrote and consulted the papers that were lying in front of him. Then he held up his pen, and a grave ex­pression came over his face as he gazed blankly through the open window into the garden. He again saw Clorinde’s lithe form swaying before him like some bluish serpent. She glided on and entered the room, and sprang up on the living tail which her habit seemed to form. He saw her quivering as her arms uncoiled towards him; and gradually the room seemed full of her presence. Silently, passionately, it per­vaded everything: the carpet, the chairs, the curtains, dif­fusing over all a penetrating perfume.

Then Rougon violently threw his pen down and rose in anger. Was that girl now going to prevent him from work­ing? Was he going mad that he should see things which had no existence? he whose brain was so strong! He re­called to his mind a woman, nigh whom he had many a time written the whole night long, when he was a student, without even noticing her gentle breathing. Then he drew up the blind, and to establish a draught opened the other window and a door on the opposite side of the room, as though he were stifling. And with angry gestures similar to those with which he would have driven away some dangerous wasp, he tried to drive away the scent of Clorinde by flapping his handkerchief in the air. When he no longer noticed it, he drew a deep breath and again dabbed his face with his hand­kerchief to assuage the burning heat which Clorinde had brought there.

He could not, however, go on with the work he had com­menced, but still slowly paced the room, from one end to the other. As he caught sight of himself in a mirror, he noticed a red mark on his left cheek. Clorinde’s whip had only left a slight scratch behind it, and he could easily ascribe that to some trifling accident. However, although his skin revealed but a slight red line, his flesh still smarted with the slashing, galling cut. So he hastened to a little lavatory, curtained off from the rest of the room, and plunged his head into a basin of water. That afforded him considerable relief. He dreaded lest the whipping he had received from Clorinde should only sharpen his passion. He felt afraid to think about her till the scratch on his cheek should be quite healed; the smarting which he felt seemed to descend and thrill his whole body.

‘No! never! I won’t!’ he said aloud, as he came back into his room. ‘It would be madness!’

He threw himself on the couch and clenched his fists. Then a servant came in and told him that his
déjeuner
was getting cold, but he still sat there, struggling with himself. His stern, set face distended with the contest that was raging within him; his bull-like neck grew swollen and his muscles strained, as though silently, within his vitals, he were striving to suffocate some animal bent on devouring him. The battle went on for ten long minutes. He could not remember having ever exerted himself like this before; and, when he got up, he was quite pallid and his neck was moist with perspiration.

On the next two days Rougon admitted no one to see him. He shut himself up with a pile of work. He sat up one whole night. Three times again, when his servant came into the room, he found him lying on the couch, exhausted and with an alarming look on his face. On the evening of the second day, however, he dressed to go to Delestang’s, where he was engaged to dine. But, instead of at once crossing the Champs Elysées, he turned up the avenue and entered the Balbis’ house. It was only six o’clock.

‘Mademoiselle isn’t at home,’ said the little servant An­tonia, laughing like a black goat, as she stopped him on the staircase.

Rougon raised his voice on the chance of making himself heard, and was hesitating whether he should go down again, when Clorinde appeared up above, leaning over the balusters. ‘Come up!’ she called. ‘What an idiot that girl is! She never understands anything that is told her.’

When Rougon reached the first floor, Clorinde took him into a small room adjoining her bed-chamber. It was a dressing-room, with light blue wall-paper of a flowery pattern, but she had furnished it with a big dingy mahogany desk, an arm-chair upholstered in leather, and a nest of pasteboard boxes. Papers were lying about, thickly covered with dust. The place looked like the office of some disreputable process server. To accommodate Rougon the girl was obliged to fetch a chair from her bedroom. ‘I was expecting you,’ she called out as she went there.

When she came back with the chair, she explained to him that she was busy with her correspondence. She showed him on her desk some big sheets of yellowish paper, covered with large round handwriting. Then, as he sat down, she noticed that he was in evening dress.

‘Have you come to ask for my hand?’ she said in a playful way.

‘Exactly,’ he replied. Then he added with a smile: ‘Not for myself, but for one of my friends.’

Clorinde gazed at him doubtfully, unable to tell whether he was joking or not. She was dirty and untidy, and was wearing an ill-fitting dressing-gown; but, nevertheless she looked very beautiful, like some antique statue which is soiled by the dust of a broker’s shop, but whose beauty is beyond the power of dirt to conceal. And while she sucked one of her fingers which she had just smeared with ink, her eyes fell upon the slight scar which was still visible on Rougon’s left cheek. Presently she said, in a low voice and with an air of absent-mindedness: ‘I was sure you would come, but I expected you sooner.’ Then, seeming to wake up, she con­tinued in a louder tone: ‘So it is for one of your friends; your dearest friend, no doubt.’

She laughed sonorously. She now felt sure that Rougon bad meant himself. She had a strong desire to touch his scar in order to satisfy herself that she had really put her mark upon him and that henceforth he belonged to her. But he took hold of her wrists and made her sit down in the leather-covered arm-chair.

‘Let us have a little talk,’ he said. ‘We are good friends, aren’t we? I have been thinking a good deal since the day before yesterday. You have been in my mind the whole time. I fancied that we had got married, and that we had been living together for three months. You’ll never guess in what occu­pation I saw us engaged.’

Clorinde said nothing; she felt a little embarrassed, in spite of all her self-assurance.

‘Well, I saw us standing by the fire-place,’ he continued. ‘You had taken up the shovel and I had seized the tongs, and we were belabouring each other.’

This idea struck Clorinde as so comical that she threw her­self back in her chair and burst into ringing laughter.

‘No, don’t laugh,’ said Rougon; ‘I’m quite serious. It isn’t worth while uniting our lives just to beat each other. I swear to you that is what would happen. First there would be blows, and then a separation. Be quite sure of this, that it is useless trying to assimilate two strong wills like ours.’ — ‘And so?’ she asked, becoming very grave. — ‘And so I think that the most sensible thing we can do is to shake hands and make up our minds to be nothing but good friends in the future.’

Clorinde made no reply, but fixed her eyes searchingly and blackly upon Rougon’s. A terrible frown like that of an offended goddess appeared on her olympian brow. And her lips quivered slightly with a silent expression of scorn.

‘Will you excuse me?’ she said. Then, drawing her chair to her desk, she began to fold her letters. She used large yellow envelopes, such as are employed in French government offices, and fastened them with sealing-wax. She had lighted a taper and was watching the wax blaze. Rougon quietly waited till she had finished.

‘And you came here to tell me that?’ she resumed at last, without desisting from her work.

Rougon in his turn made no immediate reply. He wanted to get a glimpse of the girl’s face. When she at last turned her chair round again, he smiled at her and tried to catch her eye. Then he kissed her hand, as though anxious to soften her; but she still remained cold and haughty.

‘I told you,’ he said, ‘that I have come to ask you in marriage on behalf of one of my friends.’

Then he spoke at length. He loved her, he told her, much more than she imagined. He loved her particularly because she was intelligent and able. It cost him a great deal to give her up, but he was sacrificing his passion for their mutual advantage. He would like to see her ruling her own house. He pictured her married to a wealthy man whom she would mould to her own will. She would rule instead of having to surrender herself. That would be much better — would it not? — than for them to paralyse one another. He and she could speak out openly to each other. He ended by calling her his child. She was his perverse daughter, he said; her diplomatic bent of mind delighted him, and it would distress him very much to see her career end unsatisfactorily.

‘Is that all?’ she said, when he finished. She had listened to him with the greatest attention. And, raising her eyes to his face, she continued: ‘If you want to get me married in the expectation of anything, I warn you that you are mis­taken. Never! I told you.’

‘What an idea!’ he exclaimed, slightly blushing. Then he coughed, and took a paper-knife off the desk and began to examine its handle in order to conceal the trouble he was feeling. But the girl was deep in thought again, paying no attention to him.

‘And who is the husband?’ she eventually asked.

‘Can’t you guess?’

Then a faint smile came to her face once more, and she shrugged her shoulders, and began to drum on the desk with her finger tips. She knew very well who it was. ‘He is so stupid,’ she said, in a low voice.

But Rougon began to defend Delestang. He was a very well-bred man, and she would be able to do what she liked with him. And he gave her particulars as to his health and fortune and habits. Moreover, he promised that he would use all his influence in their favour should he ever return to power. Delestang was, perhaps, scarcely a man of lofty intelligence, but he would not be out of place in any position.

‘Oh, yes, he’d scrape on well enough; I’m willing to allow that,’ she said, with a frank laugh. And she continued, after a pause: ‘Well, I don’t say no; perhaps you are right. Monsieur Delestang is not distasteful to me.’

She looked at Rougon as she spoke those last words. She fancied she had noticed upon several occasions that he was jealous of Delestang. But so far as she could see not a muscle of his face now moved. He had found strength enough to destroy his passion in two days. And he seemed quite delighted with the success of his scheme, and again began to expatiate upon the advantages of such a marriage, as though he were some shrewd attorney negotiating an affair from which she would derive especial profit. He took her hands in his own and patted them affectionately, as he went on: ‘It was last night that the idea struck me, and I said to myself, “It’s the very thing!” I shouldn’t like you to remain unmarried. You are the only woman who seems to me to be really deserving of a husband. Delestang settles everything. With him one has elbow-room.’ Then he added gaily: ‘I feel convinced that you will reward me by letting me see some very wonderful things.’

‘Is Monsieur Delestang aware of your plans?’ Clorinde now inquired.

Rougon looked at her in surprise for a moment, as though she had said something which he had not expected from her. Then he calmly replied: ‘No; it was no use saying anything to him. I will tell him all about it later on.’

The girl had just resumed the sealing of her letters. After pressing a large blank seal upon the wax she turned the envelopes over and slowly addressed them in big handwriting. And as she tossed the letters to her right, Rougon tried to read the addresses. The names were mostly those of well-known Italian politicians. She must have noticed what he was doing, however, for, as she rose and collected her letters to send them to the post, she remarked: ‘When my mother has one of her headaches, I have to do the letter-writing.’

When Rougon was left to himself, he began to walk about the little room. The pasteboard boxes in the stand were all labelled ‘
Receipts,’ ‘Letters,’
and so on, like those of some man of business. He smiled, however, when among the litter of papers on the desk, he caught sight of a pair of old split stays. There was a piece of soap, too, in the inkstand, and some scraps of blue satin on the floor, clippings which had fallen during the mending of a skirt, and had not been swept away. The door leading to Clorinde’s bedroom was ajar, and Rougon had the curiosity to peep inside; but the shutters were closed and the room was so dark that he could only see the shadowy folds of the bed-curtains. Just then, too, Clorinde came back.

‘I must be off,’ Rougon said to her. ‘I am going to dine with your man this evening. Do you give me full permission to act?’

The girl made no reply. She had turned quite gloomy again, as though she had been reconsidering the matter on the staircase. Rougon had already got his hand upon the balusters, but she brought him back into the room and closed the door. Her dream was being dispelled, the hope of which she had felt so sure that only an hour previously she had regarded it as a certainty. The burning flush that comes from a deadly insult rose to her cheeks. She felt as though she had received a blow.

‘Then you mean it seriously?’ she said, turning her back to the light, so that Rougon might not see how flushed her face was.

When he had repeated his arguments for the third time, she remained silent. She was afraid that if she began to speak on the subject she would be carried away by an impulse of wild anger, which she could feel surging within her, and she feared she might strike Rougon in revenge for this crumbling away of the future which she had planned for her­self. But it was only a momentary impulse. She was soon calm again, and then slowly asked, ‘You wish this marriage to take place?’