Complete Works of Emile Zola (424 page)

The Rougons received their friends at their house in the Rue Marbeuf on Sundays and Thursdays. They chatted in the big red drawing-room till half-past ten o’clock, at which time Rougon pitilessly turned them out of doors, for he held that late hours fogged the brain. Exactly at ten o’clock, Madame Rougon herself served tea. Two plates of little cakes accompanied the tea, but no one ever touched them.

On the Thursday in the July of that year which followed the general elections, the whole band was assembled in the drawing-room at eight o’clock. Madame Bouchard, Madame Charbonnel, and Madame Correur sat in a circle near an open window to inhale the occasional whiffs of fresh air which came in from the little garden, and in their midst M. d’Es­corailles related the pranks he had played in his Plassans days, when he had often gone off to Monaco for twelve hours or so, on the pretext of taking part in a shooting expedition with a friend. Madame Rougon, who, dressed in black, sat half concealed behind a curtain, paid no attention to all this, but would now and again quietly rise and leave the room. She frequently disappeared for a quarter of an hour at a time. M. Charbonnel, however, was perched at the edge of an easy chair near the ladies, in amazement at hearing a young man of high rank confessing such adventures. At the other end of the room stood Clorinde, listening inattentively to a conversation on crops which her husband and M. Béjuin had started. She wore a creamy dress, freely trimmed with straw-coloured ribbons, and she gently tapped the palm of her left hand with her fan while gazing at the bright globe of the one lamp with which the drawing-room was lighted. Mean­time, Colonel Jobelin and M. Bouchard were playing piquet at a card-table, while Rougon, like a fortune-teller, was con­sulting a pack of cards in a corner, setting them out on the green cloth in a grave and methodical manner. This was his favourite amusement on Thursdays and Sundays, affording occupation both for his fingers and his mind.

‘Well, will it come off?’ Clorinde asked with a smile as she approached him.

‘It always comes off,’ he replied quietly.

She remained standing on the other side of the table while he dealt the pack into eight small heaps.

When he had turned the cards over and picked them up in pairs — two aces, two kings, two queens, and so forth — she remarked, ‘Yes, you have managed it all right. But what did you want the cards to tell you?’

Rougon slowly raised his eyes as though surprised at the question. ‘What kind of weather we shall have to-morrow,’ he said at length.

Then he began to deal the cards afresh. Delestang and M. Béjuin had now ceased talking, and the silence was only broken by pretty Madame Bouchard’s rippling laugh. Clorinde stepped up to a window and stood there for a moment peering into the deepening twilight.

‘Is there any news of poor Monsieur Kahn?’ she asked, without turning her head.

‘I’ve had a letter from him,’ said Rougon. ‘I am expecting him this evening.’

Then the conversation turned upon M. Kahn’s ill-fortune. During the last session of the Corps Législatif, he had been imprudent enough to criticise a government bill rather sharply, as, by authorising a very dangerous competition in a neigh­bouring district, it threatened the Bressuire blast-furnaces with ruin. In this, M. Kahn had not for a moment imagined that he had exceeded the bounds of permissible opposition; but on going down to Deux-Sèvres, to prepare for his re-elec­tion, he had been informed by the prefect himself that he was no longer the official candidate. He had lost favour, and the minister had just nominated a Niort attorney, a man of most mediocre abilities. This, of course, was a crushing blow.

Rougon was giving particulars of the matter, when M. Kahn himself came into the room, followed by Du Poizat. They had both arrived by the seven o’clock train, and had only taken sufficient time to dine before coming on to Rougon’s.

‘Well, what do you think of it?’ said M. Kahn, standing in the middle of the room, while everyone pressed round him. ‘Fancy me being a revolutionist!’

Du Poizat had thrown himself into an easy chair with a weary air. ‘A nice campaign!’ he cried. ‘A pretty muddle! It’s enough to disgust all decent people!’

However, the company insisted upon M. Kahn telling them the story in detail. He related that on his arrival in Deux-Sèvres he had noticed a sort of embarrassment among even his best friends. The prefect of the department, M. de Langlade, was a man of dissolute character, whom he accused of paying attentions to the wife of the new deputy, the Niort attorney. However, this Langlade had told him of the disfavour into which he had fallen in a kind enough fashion while they were smoking their cigars after a breakfast at the prefecture. Then M. Kahn repeated the conversation which had passed between himself and M. de Langlade. The worst of the matter, said he, was that his addresses and other bills were already being printed. He had felt so indignant at first that he had been inclined to stand all the same.

‘Ah! if you hadn’t written to us,’ interposed Du Poizat, turning to Rougon, ‘we should have taught the government a pretty lesson!’

Rougon shrugged his shoulders. ‘You would have failed, and have compromised yourselves for ever,’ said he, as he shuffled his cards. ‘That would have been a fine feat!’

‘I don’t know what you’re made of!’ retorted Du Poizat, jumping up with a gesture of indignation. ‘For my part, that fellow Marsy is getting past all bearing. It was you that he was aiming at when he struck our friend Kahn. Have you seen his circulars to the prefects? A pretty busi­ness his elections have been! He settled them all with bits of rhetoric! Don’t smile! If you had been Minister of the Interior, you would have managed matters in a very different fashion.’

Then, seeing that Rougon still smiled as he looked at him, he added yet more violently: ‘We were on the spot and saw the whole business. One unlucky fellow, an old comrade of mine, had the temerity to come forward as a Republican candidate. You can’t imagine the abominable way in which he was treated. The prefect, the mayors, the gendarmes, the whole clique, fell foul of him. They defaced and tore his bills and threw his bulletins into the ditches; they arrested the few poor devils who distributed his circulars; and they couldn’t even leave his poor aunt alone, a most estimable woman, who was obliged to beg him not to come to her house any more, as he only compromised her. And as for the news­papers, they spoke of him as though he were a cut-throat, and now, whenever he passes through a village, all the women cross themselves.’

Du Poizat noisily drew breath, then flung himself into his chair again and continued: ‘Well, although Marsy has got a majority in all the departments, Paris at any rate has returned five opposition deputies. That’s the awakening. If the Emperor goes on leaving power in the hands of that big coxcomb of a minister and those wanton prefects, who send husbands off to the Chamber so that they may make love to their wives, why, in five years from now the Empire will be on the verge of ruin. For my part, I’m delighted with the elections in Paris. They have avenged us, I think.’

‘So, if you had been a prefect — ‘ began Rougon quietly, with such a slight touch of irony that his thick lips barely curled.

Du Poizat showed his irregular white teeth, and grasped the arms of his chair with his frail, delicate hands as though he wished to twist them. ‘Oh!’ said he, ‘if I had been prefect — ‘ But he did not finish. He again fell back in his chair, and exclaimed: ‘It’s getting quite sicken­ing. Besides, in reality, I have always been a Republican.’

The ladies by the window had now turned their heads towards the others, and were listening to what was being said. M. d’Escorailles held a large fan, with which he was fanning pretty Madame Bouchard, who looked quite overcome by the heat. The colonel and M. Bouchard, who had just commenced a fresh game, ceased playing every now and then to express their approval or disapproval of what was being said by nodding or shaking their heads. A wide circle of chairs had been drawn up around Rougon. Clorinde, listen­ing attentively with her chin resting upon her hand, did not venture even on a gesture. Delestang, dwelling upon some tender recollection, sat smiling at his wife; while M. Béjuin, with his hands clasped on his knees, looked at the ladies and gentlemen in succession with a scared face. The sudden arrival of Du Poizat and M. Kahn had stirred up a perfect storm in the quiet drawing-room. They seemed to have brought with them an odour of opposition.

‘Well, in the end I followed your advice and retired,’ resumed M. Kahn. ‘I was warned that if I persisted I should receive even worse treatment than the Republican candidate — I who have served the Empire with such devotion! You must admit that such ingratitude is enough to damp the en­thusiasm of the firmest supporters.’

Then he bitterly complained of a whole string of annoy­ances and vexations. He had been anxious to start a news­paper which should support his scheme of a railway line from Niort to Angers, and which later on would have become a very useful financial weapon in his hands; but he had been refused the necessary authorisation. M. de Marsy had sus­pected that Rougon was behind him, and that the proposed journal would be used for attacking his administration.

‘They are afraid lest some one should at last write the truth about them,’ said Du Poizat. ‘Ah! I would have fur­nished you with some sweet articles! It is disgraceful to have such a press as we have, gagged and threatened with suppression at the first word of complaint it dares to print. A friend of mine, who is bringing out a novel serially, was recently summoned to the Ministry, where a head clerk requested him to change the colour of his hero’s waistcoast, as the colour he had assigned to it was distasteful to the minister. Oh! it’s perfectly true. It’s no invention.’

He cited other facts, and told them of terrible stories which circulated among the people; of the suicides of a young actress and a relation of the Emperor’s, and of an alleged duel between two generals, one of whom had killed the other, in one of the corridors of the Tuileries, as the outcome of some story of robbery.
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‘Would such stories ever have found any credence if the press had been allowed to speak freely?’ asked Du Poizat; and he added: ‘I am a Republican, decidedly I am.’

‘You are very fortunate,’ remarked M. Kahn; ‘I no longer know what I am.’

Rougon, bending his broad shoulders, had just then com­menced a very elaborate
réussite.
His aim, after dealing his thirty-two cards three times, first into seven heaps, then into five, and finally into three, was to bring the eight clubs together. He seemed completely absorbed in what he was doing, still he pricked up his ears at certain words.

‘The parliamentary system afforded us reliable guarantees,’ remarked the colonel. ‘Ah! if we could only have the princes back!’

When his fits of opposition were on, Colonel Jobelin was an Orleanist. He often recounted the engagement of Mouzaïa, when he had fought by the side of the Duc d’Aumale, at that time a captain in the fourth regiment of the Line. ‘We all got on very well under Louis Philippe,’ he continued, noticing the silence with which his expression of regret was received. ‘Don’t you believe that, if we had a responsible cabinet, our friend here would be at the head of the government within six months?’

M. Bouchard, however, showed signs of impatience. He professed himself a Legitimist, probably because his grand­father had had some connection with the Court in former days. Thus, he and his cousin Jobelin often had heated discussions upon politics. ‘Nonsense!’ he exclaimed, ‘your July monarchy only existed by dint of expedients. There is only one real principle, as you know very well.’

Thereupon they began to get rather warm. They made a clean sweep of the Empire, and each installed in its place the government of his particular choice. Would the Orléans family, cried Jobelin, have ever made the decoration of an old soldier a matter of bargain? Would the Legitimist kings, retorted Bouchard, ever have been guilty of such unjust favouritism as was now to be seen every day in the govern­ment offices? Thus they went on till they covertly alluded to one another as fools, when all at once the colonel, angrily picking up his cards, exclaimed: ‘Make less noise, do you hear, Bouchard, and please attend to the game!’

Delestang, whom the dispute had awakened from his reverie, now felt bound to defend the Empire. Certainly, said he, it was not everything that he could wish. He would have liked a government of broader sympathies. And he attempted to explain his aspirations, which embraced a some­what involved form of socialism, with such desiderata as the extinction of pauperism and the co-operation of the working classes, a system, in fact, much like that of his model farm of Chamade, but on a large scale. While her husband spoke, wagging his handsome head with an official air, Clorinde kept her eyes on him, and slightly pouted.

‘Yes, certainly I’m a Bonapartist,’ he repeated; ‘a liberal Bonapartist, if you like.’

‘And you, Béjuin?’ M. Kahn suddenly inquired.

‘Oh, I am one too,’ replied M. Béjuin; ‘there are shades and distinctions of course, but I am certainly a Bonapartist.’

Du Poizat burst into a shrill laugh. ‘Of course, you are!’ he exclaimed. And as they pressed him to explain himself, he continued: ‘Oh! you amuse me. You haven’t been turned out, you see. Delestang is still a member of the Council of State, and Béjuin has just been re-elected.’

‘That was a matter of course,’ said Béjuin; ‘the prefect of the Cher — ‘

‘Oh, you are not responsible, I don’t accuse you. We all know how these matters are worked. Combelot, too, is re-elected, and La Rouquette also. So, of course, the Empire is a magnificent institution!’

M. d’Escorailles, who was still fanning pretty Madame Bouchard,

now felt constrained to put in a word. He defended the Empire from another point of view. He had adhered to it, he said, because it seemed to him that the Emperor had a grand mission to fulfil. ‘The salvation of France before every­thing else!’

‘You have retained your berth as auditor, haven’t you?’ asked Du Poizat, raising his voice. ‘Well, then, there’s no difficulty in guessing your opinions. You all seem terribly scandalised by what I’m saying; but it is a very simple matter. Kahn and I, you see, are no longer paid to keep our eyes shut.’