Complete Works of Emile Zola (644 page)

“I had a talk with your husband this morning,” said Octave. “You do not go out enough, and I have persuaded him to take you to the theatre.”

But she shook her head, turning pale and shivering. A silence ensued. She again beheld the narrow dining-room with its cold light. Jules’s image, sullen and correct, had suddenly cast a shadow over the huntsman of the romance whom she had been imagining, and the sound of whose horn in the distance again rang in her ears. Every now and then she listened: perhaps he was coming. Her husband had never taken her feet in his hands to kiss them; he had never either knelt beside her to tell her he adored her. Yet, she loved him well; but she was surprised that love did not contain more sweetness.

“What stifles me, you know,” resumed she, returning to the book, “is when there are passages in novels about the characters telling one another of their love.”

Octave then sat down. He wished to laugh, not caring for such sentimental trifling.

“I detest a lot of phrases,” said he. “When two persons adore each other, the best thing is to prove it at once.”

But she did not seem to understand, her eyes remained undimmed. He stretched out his hand, slightly touching hers, and leant over so close to her to observe a passage in the book that his breath warmed her shoulder through the open dressing-gown; yet she remained insensible. Then, he rose up, full of a contempt mingled with pity. As he was leaving, she said:

“I read very slowly, I shall not have finished it before tomorrow. It will be amusing tomorrow! Look in during the evening.”

He certainly had no designs upon her, and yet he felt indignant. He conceived a singular friendship for this young couple who exasperated him, they seemed to take life so stupidly. And the idea came to him of rendering them a service in spite of them; he would take them out to dinner, make them tipsy, and then amuse himself by pushing them into each other’s arms. When such fits of kindness got hold of him, he, who would not have lent ten francs, delighted in flinging his money out of the window, to bring two lovers together and give them joy.

Little Madame Pichon’s coldness, however, brought Octave back to the ardent Valérie. This one, certainly, would not require to be breathed upon twice on the back of her neck. He was advancing in her favour: one day that she was going upstairs before him, he had ventured to compliment her on her ankle, without her appearing displeased.

At length the opportunity so long watched for presented itself. It was the evening that Marie had made him promise to look in; they would be alone to talk about the novel, as her husband was not to be home till very late. But the young man had preferred to go out, seized with fright at the thought of this literary treat. However, he had decided to venture upon it, towards ten o’clock, when he met Valérie’s maid on the first-floor landing with a scared look on her face, and who said to him:

“Madame has gone into hysterics, my master is out, and every one opposite has gone to the theatre. Pray come in. I am all alone, I don’t know what to do.”

Valérie was stretched out in an easy-chair in her bedroom, her limbs rigid. The maid had unlaced her stays, and her bosom was heaving. The attack subsided almost immediately. She opened her eyes, was surprised to see Octave there, and acted moreover as she might have done in the presence of a doctor.

“I must ask you to excuse me, sir,” murmured she, her voice still choking. “I have only had this girl since yesterday, and she lost her head.”

Her perfect coolness in adjusting her stays and fastening up her dress again, embarrassed the young man. He remained standing, swearing not to depart thus, yet not daring to sit down. She had sent away the maid, the sight of whom seemed to irritate her; then she went to the window to breathe the cool outdoor air in long nervous inspirations, her mouth wide open. After a short silence, they commenced talking. She had first suffered from these attacks when fourteen years old; Doctor Juillerat was tired of prescribing for her; sometimes they seized her in the arms, sometimes in the loins. However, she was getting used to them; she might as well have them as anything else, as no one was really perfectly well. And, whilst she talked, with scarcely any life in her limbs, he excited himself with looking at her, he thought her provoking in the midst of her disorder, with her leaden complexion, her face upset by the attack as though by a whole night of love. Behind the black mass of her loose hair, which hung over her shoulders, he fancied he beheld the husband’s poor and beardless head. Then, stretching out his hands, with the unrestrained gesture with which he would have seized some harlot, he tried to take hold of her.

“Well! what now?” asked she, in a voice full of surprise.

In her turn she looked at him, whilst her eyes were so cold, her flesh so calm, that he felt frozen and let his hands fall with an awkward slowness, fully aware of the ridiculousness of his gesture. Then, in a last nervous gape which she stifled, she slowly added:

“Ah! my dear sir, if you only knew!”

And she shrugged her shoulders, without getting angry, as though crushed beneath her contempt for man and her weariness of him. Octave thought she was about to have him turned out when he saw her move towards a bell-pull, dragging her loosely fastened skirts along with her. But she merely required some tea; and she ordered it to be very weak and very hot. Altogether nonplussed, he muttered some excuses and made for the door, whilst she again reclined in the depths of her easy-chair, with the air of a chilly woman greatly in want of sleep.

On the stairs, Octave stopped at each landing. She did not like that then? He had just seen how indifferent she was, without desire as without indignation, as difficult to deal with as his employer, Madame Hédouin. Why did Campardon say she was hysterical? it was absurd to take him in by telling him such humbug; for had it not been for the architect’s lie, he would never have risked such an adventure. And he remained quite bewildered by the result, his ideas of hysteria altogether upset, and thinking of the different stories that were going about. He recalled Trublot’s words: one never knows what to expect, with those crazy sort of people whose eyes shine like balls of fire.

Up on his landing Octave, annoyed with all women, walked as softly as he could. But the Pichons’ door opened, and he had to resign himself. Marie awaited him, standing in the narrow room, which the charred wick of the lamp but imperfectly lighted. She had drawn the crib close to the table, and Lilitte was sleeping there in the circle of the yellow light. The lunch things had probably also served for the dinner, for the closed book was lying beside a dirty plate full of radish ends.

“Have you finished it?” asked Octave, surprised at the young woman’s silence. She seemed intoxicated, her face was swollen as though she had just awakened from a too heavy sleep.

“Yes, yes,” said she, with an effort. “Oh! I have passed the day, my head in my hands, buried in
it. When the fit takes one, one no longer knows where one is. I have such a stiff neck.”

And, feeling pains all over her, she did not speak any more of the book, but was so full of her emotion and of confused dreams engendered by her reading, that she was choking. Her ears rang with the distant calls of the horn, blown by the huntsman of her romances, in the blue background of ideal loves. Then, without the least reason, she said that she had been to Saint-Roch that morning to hear the nine o’clock mass. She had wept a great deal, religion replaced everything.

“Ah! I feel better,” resumed she, heaving a deep sigh and standing still in front of Octave.

A pause ensued. She smiled at him with her candid eyes. He had never thought her so useless, with her scanty hair and her washed-out features. But as she continued looking at him, she became very pale and almost stumbled; and he was obliged to put out his hands to support her.

“Good heavens! good heavens!” stuttered she, sobbing.

He continued to hold her, feeling considerably embarrassed.

“You should take a little infusion. You have been reading too much.”

“Yes, it upset me, when on closing the book I found myself alone. How kind you are, Monsieur Mouret! I might have hurt myself, had it not been for you.”

He looked for a chair on which to seat her.

“Shall I light a fire?”

“No, thank you, it would dirty your hands. I have noticed that you always wear gloves.”

And choking again at the idea, and suddenly feeling faint, she launched an awkward kiss into space as though in a dream, a kiss which slightly touched the young man’s ear.

Octave received this kiss with amazement. The young woman’s lips were as cold as ice. Then, when she had sank upon his breast in an abandonment of her whole frame, he was seized with a sudden desire, and sought to bear her into the inner room. But this brusque wooing roused Marie; her womanly instinct revolted; she struggled and called upon her mother, forgetting her husband, who was shortly to return; and her daughter who was sleeping near her.

“No, oh! no, no. It is wrong.”

But he kept ardently repeating:

“No one will ever know — I shall never tell.”

“No, Monsieur Octave. Do not spoil the happiness I have in knowing you. It will do no good I assure you, and I had dreamed things — “

Then he left off speaking, having a revenge to take on woman-kind, and saying coarsely to himself: “You, at any rate, shall succumb!” The door had not even been shut, the solemnity of the staircase seemed to ascend in the midst of the silence. Lilitte was peacefully sleeping on the pillow of her crib.

When Marie and Octave rose up, they could find nothing to say to each other. She, mechanically, went and looked at her daughter, took up the plate, and then laid it down again. He remained silent, a prey to similar uneasiness, the adventure had been so unexpected; and he recalled to mind how he had fraternally planned to restore the young woman to her husband’s arms. Feeling the necessity of breaking that intolerable silence he ended by murmuring:

“You did not shut the door, then?”

She glanced out on to the landing, and stammered:

“That is true, it was open.”

Her face wore an expression of disgust. The young man too was now thinking that after all there was nothing the least funny in this adventure with a helpless woman, in the midst of that solitude.

“Dear me? the book has fallen on the floor!” she continued, picking the volume up.

A corner of the cover was broken. That drew them together, and afforded some relief. Speech returned to them. Marie appeared quite distressed.

“It was not my fault. You see, I had covered it with paper for fear of soiling it. We must have knocked it over, without doing so on purpose.”

“Was it there then?”
asked Octave. “I did not notice it. Oh! for myself, I don’t care a bit! But Campardon thinks so much of his books!”

They kept passing it from one to the other, trying to put the corner straight again. Their fingers touched without a quiver. As they reflected on the consequences, they were quite dismayed at the accident which had happened to that handsome volume of George Sand.

“It was bound to end badly,” concluded Marie, with tears in her eyes.

Octave was obliged to console her. He would invent some story, Campardon would not eat him. And their uneasiness returned, at the moment of separation. They would have liked at least to have said something amiable to each other; but the words choked them. Fortunately, a step was heard, it was the husband coming upstairs. Octave silently took her in his arms again and kissed her in his turn on the mouth. She once more complaisantly submitted, her lips icy cold as before. When he had noiselessly regained his room, he asked himself, as he took off his overcoat, whatever was it that she wanted? Women, he said, were decidedly very peculiar.

On the morrow, at the Campardons’, just as lunch was finished, Octave was once more explaining that he had clumsily knocked the book over, when Marie entered the room. She was going to take Lilitte to the Tuileries gardens, and she had called to ask if they would allow Angèle to accompany her. And she smiled at Octave, without the least confusion, and glanced in her innocent way at the book lying on a chair.

“Why, I shall be only too pleased!” said Madame Campardon. “Angèle, go and put your hat on. I have no fear in trusting her with you.”

Marie, looking very modest, in a simple dress of dark woollen stuff, talked of her husband, who had caught a cold the night before, and of the price of meat, which would soon prevent people buying it at all. Then, when she had left with Angèle, they all leant out of the windows to see them depart. Marie gently pushed Lilitte’s perambulator along the pavement with her gloved hands; whilst Angèle, knowing that they were looking at her, walked beside her friend, with her eyes fixed on the ground.

“How respectable she looks!” exclaimed Madame Campardon. “And so gentle! so decorous!”

Then, slapping Octave on the shoulder, the architect said:

“Education is everything in a family, my dear fellow; there is nothing like it!”

CHAPTER V

That evening, there was a reception and concert at the Duveyriers’. Towards nine o’clock, Octave, who had been invited for the first time, was just finishing dressing. He was grave, and felt irritated with himself. Why had he missed fire with Valérie, a woman so well connected?
And Berthe Josserand, ought he not to have reflected before refusing her?
At the moment he was tying his white tie, the thought of Marie Pichon had become unbearable to him: five months in Paris, and nothing but that wretched adventure! It was as painful to him as a disgrace, for he well saw the emptiness and the uselessness of such a connection. And he vowed to himself, as he took up his gloves, that he would no longer waste his time in such a manner. He was decided to act, as he had at length got into society, where opportunities were certainly not wanting.

But, at the end of the passage, Marie was watching for him. Pichon not being there, he was obliged to go in for a moment.

“How smart you are!” murmured she.

They had never been invited to the Duveyriers’, and that filled her with respect for the first floor drawing-room. Besides, she was jealous of no one, she had neither the strength nor the will to be so.