Complete Works of Emile Zola (634 page)

“I thought so,” said Campardon. “Well! I did everything as though it had been for myself; and, moreover, I carried out the instructions contained in your letters. So the furniture pleases you?
It is all that is necessary for a young man. Later on, you can make any changes you like.”

And, as Octave shook his hand, thanking him, and apologising for having given him so much trouble, he resumed in a serious tone of voice:

“Only, my boy, no rows here, and above all no women! On my word of honour, if you were to bring a woman here it would revolutionize the whole house!”

“Be easy!” murmured the young man, feeling rather anxious. “No, let me tell you, for it is I who would be compromised. You have seen the house. All middle-class people, and of extreme morality! between ourselves, they affect it rather too much. Never a word, never more noise than you have heard just now. Ah, well! Monsieur Gourd would at once fetch Monsieur Vabre, and we should both be in a nice pickle! My dear fellow, I ask it of you for my own peace of mind: respect the house.”

Octave, overpowered by so much virtue and respectability, swore to do so. Then, Campardon, casting a mistrustful glance around, and lowering his voice as though some one might have heard him, added with sparkling eyes:

“Outside it concerns nobody. Paris is big enough, is it not? there is plenty of room. As for myself, I am at heart an artist, therefore I think nothing of it!”

A porter carried up the trunks. When everything was straight, the architect assisted paternally at Octave’s toilet. Then, rising to his feet he said:

“Now we will go and see my wife.”

Down on the third floor the maid, a slim, dark, and coquettish looking girl, said that madame was busy. Campardon, with a view of putting his young friend at ease, showed him over the rooms: first of all, there was the huge white and gold drawing-room, highly decorated with artificial mouldings, and situated between a green parlour which the architect had turned into a workroom and the bedroom, into which they could not enter, but the narrow shape of which, and the mauve wall-paper, he described. As he next ushered him into the dining-room, all in imitation wood, with an extraordinary complication of baguettes and coffers, Octave, enchanted, exclaimed:

“It is very handsome!”

On the ceiling, two big cracks cut right through the coffers, and, in a corner, the paint had peeled off and displayed the plaster.

“Yes, it creates an effect,” slowly observed the architect, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “You see, these kind of houses are built to create effect. Only, the walls will not bear much looking into. It is not twelve years old yet, and it is already cracking. One builds the frontage of handsome stone, with a lot of sculpture about it; one gives three coats of varnish to the walls of the staircase; one paints and gilds the rooms; and all that flatters people, and inspires respect. Oh! it is still solid, it will certainly last as long as we shall!”

He led him again across the ante-room, which was lighted by a window of ground glass. To the left, looking on to the courtyard, there was a second bed-chamber where his daughter Angèle slept, and which, all in white, looked on this November afternoon as sad as a tomb. Then at the end of the passage, came the kitchen, into which he insisted on conducting Octave, saying that it was necessary to see everything.

“Walk in,” repeated he, pushing open the door.

A terrible uproar issued from it. In spite of the cold, the window was wide open. With their elbows on the rail, the dark maid and a fat cook, a dissolute looking old party, were leaning out into the narrow well of an inner courtyard, which lighted the kitchens of each floor, placed opposite to each other. They were both yelling with their backs bent, whilst, from the depths of this hole, arose the sounds of vulgar voices, mingled with oaths and bursts of laughter. It was like the overflow of some sewer: all the domestics of the house were there, easing their minds. Octave’s thoughts reverted to the peaceful majesty of the grand staircase.

Just then the two women, warned by some instinct, turned round. They remained thunderstruck on beholding their master with a gentleman. There was a gentle whistle, windows were shut, and all was once more as silent as death.

“What is the matter, Lisa?” asked Campardon.

“Sir,” replied the maid, greatly excited, “it’s that filthy Adèle again. She has thrown a rabbit’s guts out of the window. You should speak to Monsieur Josserand, sir.”

Campardon became very grave, anxious not to make any promise. He returned to his workroom, saying to Octave:

“You have seen all. On each floor, the rooms are arranged the same. I pay a rent of two thousand five hundred francs, and on a third floor, too! Rents are rising every day. Monsieur Vabre must make about twenty-two thousand francs a year from his house. And it will increase still more, for there is a question of opening a wide thoroughfare from the Place de la Bourse to the new Opera-house. And he had the ground this is built upon almost for nothing, twelve years ago, after that great fire caused by a druggist’s servant!”

As they entered, Octave observed, hanging above a drawing-table, and in the full light from the window, a richly framed picture of a Virgin, displaying in her opened breast an enormous flaming heart. He could not repress a movement of surprise; he looked at Campardon, whom he had known to be a rather wild fellow at Plassans.

“Ah! I forgot to tell you,” resumed the latter slightly colouring, “I have been appointed diocesan architect, yes, at Evreux. Oh! a mere bagatelle as regards money, in all barely two thousand francs a year. But there is scarcely anything to do, a journey now and again; for the rest I have an inspector there. And, you see, it is a great deal, when one can print on one’s cards: ‘government architect.’ You can have no idea what an amount of work that procures me in the highest society.”

Whilst speaking, he looked at the Virgin with the flaming heart.

“After all,” continued he in a sudden fit of frankness, “I do not care a button for their paraphernalia!”

But, on Octave bursting out laughing, the architect was seized with fear. Why confide in that young man?
He gave a side glance, and, putting on an air of compunction, he tried to smooth over what he had said.

“I do not care and yet I do care. Well! yes, I am becoming like that. You will see, you will see, my friend: when you have lived a little longer, you will do as every one else.”

And he spoke of his forty-two years, of the emptiness of life, posing for being very melancholy, which his robust health belied. In the artist’s head which he had fashioned for himself, with flowing hair and beard trimmed in the Henri IV. style, one found the flat skull and square jaw of a middle-class man of limited intelligence and voracious appetites. When younger, he had a fatiguing gaiety.

Octave’s eyes became fixed on a number of the “Gazette de France,” which was lying amongst some plans. Then, Campardon, more and more ill at ease, rang for the maid to know if madame was at length disengaged. Yes, the doctor was just leaving, madame would be there directly.

“Is Madame Campardon unwell?”
asked the young man.

“No, she is the same as usual,” said the architect in a bored tone of voice.

“Ah! and what is the matter with her?”

Again embarrassed, he did not give a straightforward answer.

“You know, there is always something going wrong with women. She has been in this state for the last thirteen years, ever since her confinement. Otherwise, she is as well as can be. You will even find her stouter.”

Octave asked no further questions. Just then, Lisa returned, bringing a card; and the architect, begging to be excused, hastened to the drawing-room, telling the young man as he disappeared to talk to his wife and have patience. Octave had caught sight, on the door being quickly opened and closed, of the black mass of a cassock in the centre of the large white and gold apartment.

At the same moment, Madame Campardon entered from the ante-room. He scarcely knew her again. In other days, when a youngster, he had known her at Plassans, at her father’s, Monsieur Domergue, government clerk of the works, she was thin and ugly, as puny-looking as a young girl suffering from the crisis of her puberty; and now he beheld her plump, with the clear and placid complexion of a nun, soft eyes, dimples, and a general appearance of an overfed she-cat. If she had not been able to grow pretty, she had ripened towards thirty, gaining a sweet savour and a nice fresh odour of autumn fruit. He remarked, however, that she walked with difficulty, her whole body wrapped, in a mignonette coloured silk dressing-gown, moving; which gave her a languid air.

“But you are a man, now!” said she gaily, holding out her hands. “How you have grown, since our last journey to the country!”

And she gazed at him: tall, dark, handsome, with his well kept moustache and beard. When he told her his age, twenty-two, she scarcely believed it: he looked twenty-five at least. He, whom the presence of a woman, even though she were the lowest of servants, filled with rapture, laughed melodiously, enveloping her with his eyes of the colour of old gold, and of the softness of velvet.

“Ah! yes,” repeated he gently, “I have grown, I have grown. Do you recollect, when your cousin Gasparine used to buy me marbles?
”

Then, he gave her news of her parents. Monsieur and Madame Domergue were living happily, in the house to which they had retired; they merely complained of being very lonely, bearing Campardon a grudge for having taken their little Rose from them, during a stay he had made at Plassans on business. Then, the young man tried to bring the conversation round to cousin Gasparine, having a precocious youngster’s old curiosity to satisfy, in the matter of an hitherto unexplained adventure: the architect’s mad passion for Gasparine, a tall lovely girl, but poor, and his sudden marriage with skinny Rose who had a dowry of thirty thousand francs, and quite a tearful scene, and a quarrel, and the flight of the abandoned one to Paris, to an aunt who was a dressmaker. But Madame Campardon, whose placid complexion preserved a rosy paleness, did not appear to understand. He was unable to draw a single particular from her.

“And your parents?” inquired she in her turn. “How are Monsieur and Madame Mouret?”

“Very well, thank you,” replied he. “My mother scarcely leaves her garden. You would find the house in the Rue de la Banne just as you left it.”

Madame Campardon, who seemed unable to remain standing for long without feeling tired, had seated herself on a high drawing-chair, her legs stretched out in her dressing-gown; and he, taking a low chair beside her, raised his head when speaking, with his air of habitual adoration. With his large shoulders, he was like a woman, he had a woman’s feeling which at once admitted him to their hearts. So that, at the end of ten minutes, they were both talking like two lady friends of long standing.

“Now I am your boarder,” said he, passing a handsome hand with neatly trimmed nails over his beard. “We shall get on well together, you will see. How charming it was of you to remember the Plassans youngster and to busy yourself about everything, at the first word!”

But she protested.

“No, do not thank me. I am a great deal too lazy, I never move. It was Achille who arranged everything. And, besides, was it not sufficient that my mother mentioned to us your desire to board in some family, for us to think at once of opening our doors to you?
You will not be with strangers, and will be company for us.”

Then, he told her of his own affairs. After having obtained a bachelor’s diploma, to please his family, he had just passed three years at Marseilles, in a big calico print warehouse, which had a factory in the neighbourhood of Plassans. He had a passion for trade, the trade in women’s luxuries, into which enters a seduction, a slow possession by gilded words and adulatory glances. And he related, laughing victoriously, how he had made the five thousand francs, without which he would never have ventured on coming to Paris, for he had the prudence of a Jew beneath the exterior of an amiable giddy-headed fellow.

“Just fancy, they had a Pompadour calico, an old design, something marvellous. No one would bite at it; it had been stowed away in the cellars for two years past. Then, as I was about to travel through the departments of the Var and the Basses-Alpes, it occurred to me to purchase the whole of the stock and to sell it on my own account. Oh! such a success! an amazing success! The women quarrelled for the remnants; and today, there is not one there who is not wearing some of my calico. I must say that I talked them over so nicely! They were all with me, I might have done as I pleased with them.”

And he laughed, whilst Madame Campardon, charmed, and troubled by thought of that Pompadour calico, questioned him: “Little bouquets on an unbleached ground, was it not?”
She had been trying to obtain the same thing everywhere for a summer dressing-gown.

“I have travelled for two years, which is enough,” resumed he. “Besides, there is Paris to conquer. I must immediately look out for something.”

“What!” exclaimed she, “has not Achille told you? But he has a berth for you, and close by, too!”

He uttered his thanks, as surprised as though he were in fairy land, asking, by way of a joke, whether he would not find a wife and a hundred thousand francs a-year in his room that evening, when a young girl of fourteen, tall and ugly, with fair insipid-looking hair, pushed open the door, and gave a slight cry of fright.

“Come in and don’t be afraid,” said Madame Campardon. “It is Monsieur Octave Mouret, whom you have heard us speak of.”

Then, turning towards the latter, she added:

“My daughter, Angèle. We did not bring her with us at our last journey. She was so delicate! But she is getting stouter now.”

Angèle, with the awkwardness of girls in the ungrateful age, went and placed herself behind her mother, and cast glances at the smiling young man. Almost immediately, Campardon reappeared, looking excited; and he could not contain himself, but told his wife in a few words of his good fortune: the Abbé Mauduit, Vicar of Saint-Roch, had called about some work, merely some repairs, but which might lead to many other things. Then, annoyed at having spoken before Octave, and still quivering, he rapped one hand in the other, saying: