Complete Works of Emile Zola (444 page)

Perfect silence had fallen all around. Not a sound broke upon the speaker’s words save the rustling of the trees or the grating of some river-lock in the distance. The firemen striv­ing to bear themselves as martially as the soldiers beneath the hot sun, cast side-long glances at the minister, without turn­ing their necks. The spectators on the hill-side, however, were taking their ease. Ladies had spread their handkerchiefs on the ground and were sitting on them; and two gentlemen, whom the sun was reaching, had just opened their wives’ parasols. And Rougon’s voice gradually grew louder and louder. He seemed ill at ease in that little hollow. It was as if the narrow valley did not afford him sufficient space for his gesticulations. As he threw his hands energetically in front of him, it seemed as if he desired to sweep away all obstruc­tions and open out a wider horizon. Twice he gazed into the air as if seeking space, but nothing met his eyes on the hill tops save the gutted ruins of the windmills which were split­ting in the sun.

He had taken up M. Kahn’s text and was enlarging upon it. It was not, he said, the department of Deux-Sèvres alone that was about to enter upon an era of wonderful prosperity, but the whole of France, thanks to the branch line from Niort to Angers. For ten minutes he recounted the in­numerable advantages which would rain down upon the people. He even went so far as to allude to the hand of God. Then he began to reply to what had been said by the chief surveyor, though he in no way discussed it or even referred to it. He simply said the direct opposite of what the surveyor had said, dwelling for a long time upon M. Kahn’s devotion, and praising his great modesty and disinterestedness and nobility of mind. The financial aspect of the matter, he said, caused him no uneasiness whatever; and he smiled and seemed to be sweeping up big piles of gold with a rapid movement of his hands.

An outburst of cheering quite drowned his voice.

‘One word in conclusion, gentlemen,’ he said, after wiping his lips with his handkerchief. That one word lasted for a quarter of an hour. He was growing excited, and went further than he had meant to do. Indeed, in his peroration, while speaking of the grandeur of the reign, and extolling the Emperor’s great ability, he even hinted that his Majesty would bestow his patronage in a special manner upon the branch line from Niort to Angers. It was as if the under­taking had become a State affair.

However, three great bursts of cheers rang out. A flight of crows, skimming aloft across the cloudless sky, took fright with much noisy croaking. Immediately the minister’s speech had finished, the Philharmonic Society had begun to play again, a signal being given from the tent; while all the ladies sprang up, anxious to miss nothing of the ceremony. The guests were smiling around Rougon with delighted faces.

The mayor, the public prosecutor, and the colonel of the seventy-eighth infantry were wagging their heads approvingly while listening to the deputy, who expressed his admiration of his excellency in tones which, although subdued, were yet loud enough to reach the minister’s ears. However, it was the chief surveyor of bridges and highways who manifested the greatest enthusiasm. He displayed an extraordinary amount of obsequiousness, and seemed quite thunderstruck by the great man’s magnificent language.

‘Would your excellency do me the honour to follow me?’ now asked M. Kahn, whose fat face was perspiring with pleasure.

The concluding part of the ceremony was at hand. His excellency was about to fire the first mine. Orders had just been given to the gang of navvies in new blouses. The men preceded the minister and M. Kahn into the cutting and drew themselves up in two lines at the far end. Then a foreman who held a piece of lighted rope presented it to Rougon. The officials, who had remained in the tent, craned their heads forward. Everyone waited anxiously. The Philharmonic Society was still playing.

‘Will it make very much noise?’ the head-master’s wife inquired, with an uneasy smile, of one of the public prosecu­tor’s assessors.

‘That depends upon the nature of the rock,’ hastily inter­posed the President of the Tribunal of Commerce, who at once entered upon various mineralogical explanations.

‘I shall stuff up my ears,’ murmured the eldest of the three daughters of the conservator of rivers and forests.

Rougon felt that he was looking very foolish, standing in the midst of all these people with the burning rope in his hand. Up above, on the hill crests, the ruined windmills were creaking louder than ever in the warm sunlight. Then he hastened to light the fuse, the end of which, lying between two stones, was pointed out to him by the foreman. One of the navvies immediately blew a long blast on a horn, and all the gang hurried off, while M. Kahn hastily pulled his excel­lency back into the tent, manifesting much anxious solicitude for his safety.

‘Well, why doesn’t it go off?’ stammered the registrar, who was blinking nervously, and would very much have liked to close his ears, as the ladies were doing.

The explosion did not take place for a couple of minutes.

It had been considered prudent to have a very long fuse. The expectation of the company turned almost to anguish; every eye was fixed upon the red rock; some spectators fancied they could see it moving, and timid ones expressed a fear of being struck by the fragments. At last there was a low rever­beration, and the rock split, while a number of fragments, twice the size of a man’s fist, shot up into the air amidst the smoke. Then everybody went away; and on all sides one could hear the same question repeated, ‘Don’t you smell the powder?’

In the evening the prefect gave a dinner, which the officials and functionaries attended. For the ball which followed he had issued five hundred invitations. It was a splendid affair. The great drawing-room was decorated with evergreens; and in each corner a small chandelier had been fixed, making with the central one five chandeliers in all, whose tapers flooded the room with brilliant light. Niort could remember no such scene of magnificence. The light that streamed from the six windows quite illuminated the Place de la Préfecture, where more than two thousand inquisi­tive sightseers had gathered together, straining their eyes in their eagerness to catch a glimpse of the dancers. The orchestra also could be so distinctly heard that children got up galops on the footways. From nine o’clock the ladies were fanning themselves, refreshments were being carried round, and quadrilles were following upon waltzes and polkas. In cere­monious fashion Du Poizat stood by the door, smilingly receiving the late arrivals.

‘Doesn’t your excellency dance?’ the head-master’s wife boldly asked of Rougon. She had just arrived, and was wear­ing a dress of tarlatan, spangled with gold stars.

Rougon excused himself, with a smile. He was standing in front of one of the windows, surrounded by a group of guests, and, while joining in a conversation on the desirability of a new land survey, he kept on glancing outside. In the bright light which the candles cast upon the houses on the opposite side of the square, he had just caught sight of Madame Correur and Mademoiselle Herminie Billecoq at one of the windows of the Hôtel de Paris. They were stand­ing there, leaning and watching the ball, as though they were in a box at a theatre. Their faces glistened, and every now and then their bare throats rippled with laughter as some amusing incident attracted their notice.

However, the head-master’s wife had gone all round the drawing-room, looking somewhat disconsolate, and never heeding the admiration which her sweeping train excited among the younger men. She was evidently looking for some one, as she thus stepped smilingly and languidly along.

‘Hasn’t Monsieur le Commissaire central arrived?’ she at last asked Du Poizat, who was inquiring after her husband’s health. ‘I promised him a waltz.’

‘Oh, he’s sure to come,’ the prefect answered. ‘I am surprised that he is not here already. He had to go away on official business to-day; but he told me that he would be back by six o’clock.’

After the
déjeuner
at the prefecture, about noon, Gilquin had set out from Niort on horseback to go and arrest notary Martineau. Coulonges was some twelve miles away. He cal­culated upon arriving there at two o’clock, and upon being able to get away by four, or perhaps a little later, which would leave him plenty of time to attend the banquet, to which he had been invited. Consequently, he did not hurry his horse, but jogged along, while reflecting that he would make the running at the ball in the evening with that pretty blonde, the head-master’s wife, whose only fault in his eyes was that she was rather too slim. When he reached Coulonges, he dismounted at the Golden Lion, where a corporal and two gendarmes ought to have been waiting for him. By arrang­ing matters in this way, he had anticipated that his arrival would not be noticed; and he could hire a carriage, he thought, and carry the notary off without any of the neighbours being any the wiser. The gendarmes, however, were not there. Gilquin waited for them till five o’clock, swearing, and drinking grog, and looking at his watch every quarter of an hour. He should never be able to get back to Niort in time for the banquet, he muttered. He was just having his horse saddled, when the corporal at last made his appearance, followed by his two men. There had been some misunderstanding.

‘Well, well, don’t waste time in apologising!’ cried the commissary angrily. ‘We’ve got no time for that! It’s already a quarter-past five. Let us get hold of our man as quickly as possible. We must be on our way back in another ten minutes.’

Generally speaking, Gilquin was a good-natured indi­vidual. He prided himself upon the urbanity with which he discharged his official duties. That day he had even ar­ranged an elaborate scheme, by which he hoped to spare Madame Correur’s brother any violent emotion. It had been his intention to enter the house alone, while the gendarmes waited with the carriage near the garden-gate, in a little lane which looked on to the open country. But his three hours’ waiting at the Golden Lion had so exasperated him that he forgot all these fine precautions. He walked through the village, and rang loudly at the street-door of the notary’s house. One of the gendarmes was posted at this door, and the other was directed to go round and keep a watch on the garden-wall. The corporal went in with the commissary. Ten or a dozen scared villagers watched them from a distance.

The servant who opened the door was seized with childish terror at the sight of the uniforms, and rushed away, crying at the top of her voice: ‘Madame! Madame! Madame!’

A short plump woman, whose face maintained an expres­sion of perfect calm, came slowly down the staircase.

‘Madame Martineau, I presume?’ said Gilquin rapidly. ‘I have a painful duty to perform, madame. I have come to arrest your husband.’

Madame Martineau clasped her short hands, while her pale lips began to quiver. But she uttered no cry. She remained standing on the bottom step, blocking the way with her skirts. Then she asked Gilquin to show her his warrant, and required explanations, doing all she could to cause a delay.

‘Be careful! He’ll slip through our fingers if we don’t mind,’ the corporal murmured in the commissary’s ear.

Madame Martineau probably heard this remark, for she looked at the two men with her calm eyes, and said: ‘Come upstairs, gentlemen.’

She went up in front of them and took them into a room, in the middle of which stood M. Martineau in his dressing gown. Upon hearing the servant’s cries of alarm he had risen from the arm-chair in which he spent most of his time. He was very tall; his hands seemed quite dead; his face was as pale as wax; and only his eyes — dark, soft, and yet determined eyes — appeared to retain any life. Madame Martineau pointed to him in silence.

‘I regret to say, sir,’ began Gilquin, ‘that I have a painful duty to perform.’

When he had explained his errand, the notary nodded but did not speak. A slight quiver, however, shook the dressing-gown which covered his attenuated limbs. At last, with great politeness, he replied: ‘Very well, gentlemen, I will follow you.’

Then he began to walk about the room, putting in order several articles, which were lying on different pieces of furniture. For instance, he moved a parcel of books to another place. Then he asked his wife for a clean shirt. The trembling which was affecting him had now become more pronounced. Madame Martineau, seeing him totter, followed him with outstretched arms, ready to catch him should he fall, just as one follows a little child.

‘Come, sir, make haste!’ repeated Gilquin. The notary took another couple of turns round the room, and then suddenly snatched at the air with his hands, and let himself fall into an arm-chair, distorted and stiffened by a paralytic seizure. At this his wife shed big silent tears.

Gilquin took out his watch. ‘Confound it all!’ he cried. It was half-past five, and he felt that he must now relinquish all hope of being back at Niort in time for the dinner at the prefecture. It would take at least another half hour to get this man into a carriage. He tried to console himself with the thought that at any rate he would not miss the ball, and just then he recollected that the head-master’s wife had promised him the first waltz.

‘He’s shamming,’ the corporal now whispered to Gilquin. ‘Shall I lift him on to his feet?’ And without waiting for a reply, he stepped up to the notary and advised him not to attempt to deceive justice. Martineau, however, was as rigid as a corpse; his eyes were closed and his lips pinched. There­upon the corporal lost his temper, and indulged in strong language, till at last he laid his heavy hand on the collar of the notary’s dressing-gown. But at this Madame Martineau, who had hitherto remained passive, energetically pushed him aside, and planted herself in front of her husband, clenching her fists with an air of devoted resolution.

‘He’s shamming, I tell you!’ the corporal repeated.

Gilquin shrugged his shoulders. He had made up his mind to carry the notary off whether he were dead or alive. ‘Send one of your men to get the carriage from the Golden Lion,’ he said to the corporal. ‘I have spoken to the landlord about one.’

When the corporal had left the room, Gilquin stepped up to the window, and looked complacently at the apricot trees which were blossoming in the garden. He was growing quite absorbed in his thoughts, when he felt a touch upon his shoulder. Madame Martineau stood behind him. Her cheeks were quite dry now, and she spoke in a calm steady voice. ‘You mean a carriage for yourself, don’t you?’ she asked. ‘You surely can’t think of dragging my husband to Niort, in his present state.’