Complete Works of Emile Zola (636 page)

Octave, nevertheless, had great difficulty in getting to sleep. He kept feverishly turning over, his brain occupied with the new faces he had seen. Why the devil were the Campardons so amiable? Were they dreaming of marrying their daughter to him later on?
Perhaps, too, the husband took him to board with them so that he might amuse and enliven the wife? And that poor lady, what peculiar complaint could she be suffering from? Then his ideas got more mixed; he saw shadows pass — little Madame Pichon, his neighbour, with her clear empty glances; beautiful Madame Hédouin, correct and grave in her black dress; and Madame Vabre’s ardent eyes, and Mademoiselle Josserand’s gay laugh. How they swarmed in a few hours in the streets of Paris! It had always been his dream, ladies who would take him by the hand and help him in his affairs. But these kept returning and mingling with fatiguing obstinacy. He knew not which to choose; he tried to keep his voice soft, his gestures cajoling. And suddenly, worn-out, exasperated, he yielded to his brutal inner nature, to the ferocious disdain in which he held woman, beneath his air of amorous adoration.

“Are they going to let me sleep at all?” said he out loud, turning violently on to his back. “The first who likes, it is the same to me, and all together if it pleases them! To sleep now, it will be daylight tomorrow.”

CHAPTER II

Madame Josserand, preceded by her young ladies, left the evening party given by Madame Dambreville, who resided on a fourth floor in the Rue de Rivoli, at the corner of the Rue de l’Oratoire, she roughly slammed the street door, in the sudden outburst of a passion she had been keeping under for the past two hours. Berthe, her younger daughter, had again just gone and missed a husband.

“Well! what are you doing there?” said she angrily to the young girls, who were standing under the arcade and watching the cabs pass by. “Walk on! don’t have any idea we are going to ride! To waste another two francs, eh?
”

And as Hortense, the elder, murmured:

“It will be pleasant, with this mud. My shoes will never recover it.”

“Walk on!” resumed the mother, all beside herself. “When you have no more shoes, you can stop in bed, that’s all. A deal of good it is, taking you out!”

Berthe and Hortense bowed their heads and turned into the Rue de l’Oratoire. They held their long skirts up as high as they could over their crinolines, squeezing their shoulders together and shivering under their thin opera-cloaks. Madame Josserand followed behind, wrapped in an old fur cloak made of Calabar skins, looking as shabby as cats’. All three, without bonnets, had their hair enveloped in lace wraps, head-dresses which caused the last passers-by to look back, surprised at seeing them glide along the houses, one by one, with bent backs, and their eyes fixed on the puddles. And the mother’s exasperation increased still more at the recollection of many similar returns home, for three winters past, hampered by their gay dresses, amidst the black mud of the streets and the jeers of belated blackguards. No, decidedly, she had had enough of dragging her young ladies about to the four corners of Paris, without daring to venture on the luxury of a cab, for fear of having to omit a dish from the morrow’s dinner!

“And she makes marriages!” said she out loud, returning to Madame Dambreville, and talking alone to ease herself, without even addressing her daughters, who had turned down the Rue Saint-Honoré. “They are pretty, her marriages! A lot of impertinent minxes, who come from no one knows where! Ah! if one was not obliged! It’s like her last success, that bride whom she brought out, to show us that it did not always fail; a fine specimen! a wretched child who had to be sent back to her convent for six months, after a little mistake, to be re-whitewashed!”

The young girls were crossing the Place du Palais-Royal, when a shower came on. It was a regular rout. They stopped, slipping, splashing, looking again at the vehicles passing empty along.

“Walk on!” cried the mother, pitilessly. “We are too near now; it is not worth two francs. And your brother Léon, who refused to leave with us for fear of having to pay for the cab! So much the better for him if he gets what he wants at that lady’s, but we can say that it is not at all decent. A woman who is over fifty and who only receives young men! An old nothing-much whom a high personage married to that fool Dambreville, appointing him head clerk!”

Hortense and Berthe trotted along in the rain, one before the other, without seeming to hear. When their mother thus eased herself, letting everything out, and forgetting the wholesome strictness with which she kept them, it was agreed that they should be deaf. Berthe, however, revolted on entering the gloomy and deserted Rue de l’Echelle.

“Oh, dear!” said she, “the heel of my shoe is coming off. I cannot go a stop further!”

Madame Josserand’s wrath became terrible.

“Just walk on! Do I complain? Is it my place to be out in the street at such a time and in such weather?
It would be different if you had a father like others! But no, the fine gentleman stays at home taking his ease. It is always my turn to drag you about; he would never accept the burden. Well? I declare to you that I have had enough of it. Your father may take you out in future if he likes; may the devil have me if ever again I accompany you to houses where I am plagued like that! A man who deceived me as to his capacities, and who has never yet procured me the least pleasure! Ah! good heavens! there is one I would not marry now, if it were to come over again!”

The young ladies no longer protested. They were already acquainted with this inexhaustible chapter of their mother’s blighted hopes. With their lace wraps drawn over their faces, their shoes sopping wet, they rapidly followed the Rue Sainte-Anne. But, in the Rue de Choiseul, at the very door of her house, a last humiliation awaited Madame Josserand: the Duveyriers’ carriage splashed her as it passed in.

On the stairs, the mother and the young ladies, worn out and enraged, recovered their gracefulness when they had to pass before Octave. Only, as soon as ever their door was closed behind them, they rushed through the dark apartment, knocking up against the furniture, and tumbled into the dining-room, where Monsieur Josserand was writing by the feeble light of a little lamp.

“Failed!” cried Madame Josserand, letting herself fall on to a chair.

And, with a rough gesture, she tore the lace wrap from her head, threw her fur cloak on to the back of her chair, and appeared in a flaring dress trimmed with black satin and cut very low in the neck, looking enormous, her shoulders still beautiful, and resembling a mare’s shining flanks. Her square face, with its drooping cheeks and too big nose, expressed the tragic fury of a queen restraining herself from descending to the use of coarse, vulgar expressions.

“Ah!” said Monsieur Josserand simply, bewildered by this violent entrance.

He kept blinking his eyes and was seized with uneasiness. His wife positively crushed him when she displayed that giant throat, the full weight of which he seemed to feel on the nape of his neck. Dressed in an old thread-bare frock-coat which he was finishing to wear out at home, his face looking as though tempered and expunged by thirty-five years spent at an office desk, he watched her for a moment with his big lifeless blue eyes. Then, after thrusting his grey locks behind his ears, feeling very embarrassed and unable to find a word to say, he attempted to resume his work.

“But you do not seem to understand!” resumed Madame Josserand in a shrill voice. “I tell you that there is another marriage knocked on the head, and it is the fourth!”

“Yes, yes, I know, the fourth,” murmured he. “It is annoying, very annoying.”

And, to escape from his wife’s terrifying nudity, he turned towards his daughters with a good-natured smile. They also were removing their lace wraps and their opera-cloaks; the elder one was in blue and the younger in pink;
their dresses, too, free in cut and over-trimmed, were like a provocation. Hortense, with her sallow complexion, and her face spoilt by a nose like her mother’s, which gave her an air of disdainful obstinacy, had just turned twenty-three and looked twenty-eight; whilst Berthe, two years younger, retained all a child’s gracefulness, having, however, the same features, but more delicate and dazzlingly white, and only menaced with the coarse family mask after she entered the fifties.

“It will do no good if you go on looking at us for ever!” cried Madame Josserand. “And, for God’s sake, put your writing away; it worries my nerves!”

“But, my dear,” said he peacefully, “I am addressing wrappers.”

“Ah! yes, your wrappers at three francs a thousand! Is it with those three francs that you hope to marry your daughters?”

Beneath the feeble light of the little lamp, the table was indeed covered with large sheets of coarse paper, printed wrappers, the blanks of which Monsieur Josserand filled in for a large publisher who had several periodicals. As his salary as cashier did not suffice, he passed whole nights at this unprofitable labour, working in secret, and seized with shame at the idea that any one might discover their penury.

“Three francs are three francs,” replied he in his slow, tired voice. “Those three francs will enable you to add ribbons to your dresses, and to offer some pastry to your guests on your Tuesdays at home.”

He regretted his words as soon as he had uttered them; for he felt that they struck Madame Josserand full in the heart, in the most sensitive part of her wounded pride. A rush of blood purpled her shoulders; she seemed on the point of breaking out into revengeful utterances; then, by an effort of dignity, she merely stammered,

“Ah! good heavens! ah! good heavens!”

And she looked at her daughters; she magisterially crushed her husband beneath a shrug of her terrible shoulders, as much as to say, “Eh! you hear him?
what an idiot!” The daughters nodded their heads. Then, seeing himself beaten, and laying down his pen with regret, the father opened the “Temps” newspaper, which he brought home every evening from his office.

“Is Saturnin asleep?” sharply inquired Madame Josserand, speaking of her younger son.

“Yes, long ago,” replied he. “I also sent Adèle to bed. And Léon, did you see him at the Dambrevilles’?”

“Of course! he sleeps there!” she let out in a cry of rancour which she was unable to restrain.

The father, surprised, naively added, “Ah! you think so?”

Hortense and Berthe had become deaf again. They faintly smiled, however, affecting to be busy with their shoes, which were in a pitiful state. To create a diversion, Madame Josserand tried to pick another quarrel with Monsieur Josserand; she begged him to take his newspaper away every morning, not to leave it lying about in the room all day, as he had done with the previous number, for instance, a number containing the report of an abominable trial, which his daughters might have read. She well recognised there his want of morality.

“Well, are we going to bed?” asked Hortense. “I am hungry.”

“Oh! and I too!” said Berthe. “I am famishing.”

“What! you are hungry!” cried Madame Josserand beside herself. “Did you not eat any cake there, then?
What a couple of geese! You should have eaten some! I did.”

The young ladies resisted. They were hungry, they were feeling quite ill. So the mother accompanied them to the kitchen, to see if they could discover anything. The father at once returned stealthily to his wrappers. He well knew that, without them, every little luxury in the home would have disappeared;
and that was why, in spite of the scorn and unjust quarrels, he obstinately remained till daybreak engaged in this secret work, happy like the worthy man he was whenever he fancied that an extra piece of lace would hook a rich husband. As they were already stinting the food, without managing to save sufficient for the dresses and the Tuesday receptions, he resigned himself to his martyr-like labour, dressed in rags, whilst the mother and daughters wandered from drawing-room to drawing-room with flowers in their hair.

“What a stench there is here!” cried Madame Josserand on entering the kitchen. “To think that I can never get that slut Adèle to leave the window slightly open! She pretends that the room is so very cold in the morning.”

She went and opened the window, and from the narrow courtyard separating the kitchens there rose an icy dampness, the unsavoury odour of a musty cellar. The candle which Berthe had lighted caused colossal shadows of naked shoulders to dance upon the wall.

“And what a state the place is in!” continued Madame Josserand, sniffing about, and poking her nose into all the dirty corners. “She has not scrubbed her table for a fortnight. Here are plates which have been waiting to be washed since the day before yesterday. On my word, it is disgusting! And her sink, just look! smell it now, smell her sink!”

Her rage was lashing itself. She tumbled the crockery about with her arms white with rice powder and bedecked with gold bangles; she trailed her flaring dress amidst the grease stains, catching it in cooking utensils thrown under the tables, risking her hardly earned luxury amongst the vegetable parings. At last, the discovery of a notched knife made her anger break all bounds.

“I will turn her into the street tomorrow morning!”

“You will be no better off,” quietly remarked Hortense. “We are never able to keep anyone. This is the first who has stayed three months. The moment they begin to get a little decent and know how to make melted butter, off they go.”

Madame Josserand bit her lips. As a matter of fact, Adèle alone, stupid and lousy, and only lately arrived from her native Brittany, could put up with the ridiculously vain penury of these middle-class people, who took advantage of her ignorance and her slovenliness to half starve her. Twenty times already, on account of a comb found on the bread or of some abominable stew which gave them all the colic, they had talked of sending her about her business; then, they had resigned themselves to putting up with her, in the presence of the difficulty of replacing her, for the pilferers themselves declined to be engaged, to enter that hole, where even the lumps of sugar were counted.