Complete Works of Emile Zola (648 page)

“Not honest!” exclaimed Madame Josserand in the dark, her voice resuming its ferocious tone. “It is not honest to let your daughters become old maids, sir; yes, old maids, such was perhaps your dream! We have plenty of time to turn about, we can talk the matter over, we will end by persuading her uncle. And understand, sir, that in my family, we have always been honest!”

CHAPTER VI

On the morrow, which was a Sunday, Octave with his eyes open lay thinking for an hour in the warmth of the sheets. He awoke happy, full of the lucidity of the morning laziness. What need was there to hurry? He was very comfortable at “The Ladies’ Paradise,” he was there losing all his provincial ways, and he had an absolute and profound conviction of one day possessing Madame Hédouin, who would make his fortune; but it was an affair that required prudence, a long series of gallant tactics, which his voluptuous passion for women was already enjoying by anticipation. As he was dozing off again, forming his plans, allowing himself six months to succeed in, Marie Pichon’s image resulted in calming his impatience. A woman like that was a real boon; he had merely to stretch out his arm, when he required her, and she did not cost him a sou. Whilst awaiting the other, he could certainly not hope for anything better. In his half-slumber, this bargain and this convenience ended by making him quite tender-hearted: she appeared to him very nice and pretty with all her good-nature, and he promised himself he would behave better to her in future.

“Hang it! nine o’clock!” said he thoroughly roused by his clock striking. “I must get up.”

A fine rain was falling. Then, he made up his mind not to go out all day. He would accept an invitation to dine with the Pichons, which he had been refusing for some time past, dreading another meeting with the Vuillaumes; it would please Marie, he would find opportunities of kissing her behind the doors; and, as she was always asking for books, he even thought of giving her the surprise of a quantity which he had, stowed away in one of his boxes in the loft. When he was dressed, he went down to Monsieur Gourd to get the key of this common loft, where all the tenants got rid of whatever things were in their way, or which they had no present use for.

Down below, on that clamp morning, it was quite stifling in the heated staircase, the imitation marble, the tall looking-glasses, and the mahogany doors of which were covered with steam. Under the porch, a poorly clad woman, mother Pérou, to whom the Gourds paid four sous an hour for doing the heavy work of the house, was washing the pavement with plenty of water, in face of the icy-cold blast blowing from the courtyard.

“Eh! I say old ‘un, just rub that a bit better, that I may not find a spot on it!” called out Monsieur Gourd, warmly covered up, standing on
the threshold of his apartment.

And, Octave arriving, he talked to him of mother Pérou with the brutal domineering spirit, the mad mania for revenge of former servants who were being served in their turn.

“A lazy creature that I can do nothing with! I should like to have seen her at the duke’s! Ah well! they stood no nonsense there! I’ll send her to the right about, if she doesn’t give me my money’s worth! That’s all I care about. But, excuse me, what is it you require, Monsieur Mouret?”

Octave asked for the key. Then the doorkeeper, without hurrying himself, continued to explain to him that, if they had chosen, Madame Gourd and he, they might have lived respectably in their own house, at Mort-la-Ville; only, Madame Gourd adored Paris, in spite of her swollen legs which prevented her getting as far as the pavement; and they were waiting until they had made their income into a round sum, their hearts almost breaking moreover and drawing back, each time that they felt a desire to go and live at last upon the little fortune which they had got together sou by sou.

“No one had better bother me,” concluded he, drawing himself up to the full height of his handsome figure. “I’m no longer working for a living. The key of the loft you said, did you not, Monsieur Mouret? Wherever have we put the key of the loft, my dear?”

Madame Gourd, tenderly seated before a wood fire, the flames of which enlivened the big light room, was drinking her coffee and milk out of a silver cup. She had no idea; perhaps in one of the drawers. And, whilst soaking her toast, she did not take her eyes off the door of the servants’ staircase, at the other end of the courtyard, looking barer and severer than ever in the rain.

“Look out! here she is!” said she suddenly, as a woman appeared in the doorway.

Monsieur Gourd at once went and placed himself before his room, so as to prevent the woman from passing, whilst she slackened her footsteps with an air of anxiety.

“We have been on the look-out for her since the first thing this morning, Monsieur Mouret,” resumed he, in a low voice. “Last night we saw her pass. You know she comes from that carpenter, upstairs, the only workman we have in the house, thank goodness! And if the landlord only listened to me, he would let the room remain empty, a servant’s room which does not go with the other apartments. For one hundred and thirty francs a year, it is really not worth while having such a scum in the place — “

He interrupted himself, to ask the woman roughly:

“Where do you come from?”

“From upstairs, of course!” answered she, walking on.

Then, he exploded.

“We’ll have no women here, understand! The man who brings you has already been told so. If you return here to sleep, I’ll fetch a policeman, that’s what I’ll do! and we’ll see if you’ll continue your goings-on in a respectable house!”

“Oh! don’t bother me!” said the woman. “I’ve a right here; I shall come if I choose.”

And she went off, followed by Monsieur Gourd’s indignation, as he talked of going up to fetch the landlord. Had any one ever heard the like! such a creature amongst respectable people, who did not tolerate the least immorality! And it seemed as though that little room occupied by a workman was the abomination of the house, a bad place, the supervision of which offended the doorkeeper’s delicacy and spoilt his rest at night.

“And that key!” Octave ventured to observe.

But the doorkeeper, furious at a tenant’s having been able to see his authority disputed, fell on mother Pérou, wishing to show that he knew how to make himself obeyed. Did she take him for a fool?
She had again splashed the door of his room with her broom. If he paid her out of his own pocket, it was to save him from dirtying his hands, and yet he continually had to clean up after her. Might the devil take him if he was ever again charitable enough to have anything more to do with her! she could go and croak. Without answering, and bent double by the fatigue of this task so much above her strength, the old body continued to scrub with her skinny arms, struggling to keep back her tears, so great was the respectful fright that broad shouldered gentleman in cap and slippers caused her.

“I remember, my darling,” called Madame Gourd from her easy chair in which she passed the day, warming her fat person. “It was I who hid the key under the shirts, so that the servants should not be always going into the loft. Come, give it to Monsieur Mouret.”

“They’re a nice lot, too, those servants!” murmured Monsieur Gourd, who, from his many years in service, had preserved a hatred for menials. “Here is the key, sir; but I must ask you to bring it me back, for no place can be left open, without the servants getting in there and misconducting themselves.”

To save crossing the wet courtyard, Octave went back up the principal staircase. It was not till he had reached the fourth floor that he gained the servants’ staircase, by taking the door of communication that was close to his room. Up above, a long passage was intersected twice at right angles, it was painted pale yellow with a dado of darker ochre; and the doors of the servants’ rooms, also yellow, were uniform and placed at equal distances, the same as in the corridor of a hospital. An icy chill came from the zinc roof. All was bare and clean, with that unsavoury odour of the lodgings of the poor.

The loft overlooking the courtyard was in the right wing, at the further end. But Octave, who had not been there since the day of his arrival, was going along the left wing, when, suddenly, a spectacle which he beheld inside one of the rooms, by the partly open door, brought him to a standstill and filled him with amazement. A gentleman was standing in his shirt sleeves before a little looking-glass, tying his white cravat.

“What! you here?”
said he.

It was Trublot. He also, at first, stood as one petrified. No one ever came near there at that hour. Octave, who had walked in, looked at him in that room with its narrow iron bedstead, and its washstand on which a little bundle of woman’s hair was floating on the soapy water; and, perceiving the black dress coat hanging up amongst borne aprons, he could not restrain himself from saying:

“So you sleep with the cook?”

“Not at all!” replied Trublot, in a fright

Then, recognising the stupidity of this lie, he began to laugh in his convinced and satisfied way.

“Eh! she is amusing! I assure you, my dear fellow, it is awfully fine!”

Whenever he dined out, he escaped from the drawing-room to go and pinch the cook before her stove; and when she was willing to trust him with her key, he would take his departure before midnight, and go and wait patiently for her in her room, seated on a trunk, in his black dress coat and white tie. On the morrow, he would leave by the principal staircase towards ten o’clock, and pass before the doorkeeper as though he had been making an early call on one of the tenants. So long as he was pretty punctual at the stockbroker’s, his father was satisfied. Moreover, he was now employed in attending the Bourse from twelve to three. It would sometimes happen that on a Sunday he would spend the whole day in some servant’s bed, happy, lost, his nose buried in the pillow.

“You, who are going to be so rich some day!” said Octave, his face retaining an expression of disgust.

Then Trublot learnedly declared:

“My dear fellow, you don’t know what it is; don’t speak about it.”

And he stood up for Julie, a tall Burgundian of forty, with her big face pitted with small-pox, but who had the body of a superb woman. One might disrobe the ladies of the house; they were all sticks, not one would come up to her knee. Besides that, she was a girl very well to do; and to prove it he opened her drawers, displayed a bonnet, some jewellery, and some chemises trimmed with lace, no doubt stolen from Madame Duveyrier. Octave, indeed, now noticed a certain coquettishness about the room, some gilded cardboard boxes on the drawers, a chintz curtain hung over the skirts, all the accessories of a cook aping the grand lady.

“There is no denying, you see, that one may own to this one,” repeated Trublot. “If they were only all like her!”

At this moment a noise came from the servants’ staircase. It was Adèle coming up to wash her ears, Madame Josserand having furiously forbidden her to proceed with her work until she had cleaned them with soap. Trublot peeped out and recognised her
.

“Shut the door quick!” said he very anxiously. “Hush! don’t say a word!”

He pricked up his ear, and listened to Adèle’s heavy footstep along the passage.

“You sleep with her too, then?” asked Octave, surprised at his paleness, and guessing that he dreaded a scene.

But this time Trublot was coward enough to deny.

“Oh! no indeed! not with that slut! Whoever do you take me for, my dear fellow?”

He had seated himself on the edge of the bed, and while waiting to finish dressing, begged Octave not to move; and both remained perfectly still, whilst that filthy Adèle scoured out her ears, which took at least ten good minutes. They heard the tempest in her washhand basin.

“There is, however, a room between this one and hers,” softly explained Trublot, “a room that is let to a workman, a carpenter who stinks the place out with his onion soup. This morning again, it almost made me sick. And you know, in all houses, the partitions of the servants’ rooms are now almost as thin as sheets of paper. I don’t understand the landlords. It is not very decent, one can scarcely turn in one’s bed. I think it very inconvenient.”

When Adèle had gone down again, he resumed his swagger and finished dressing himself, making free use of Julie’s combs and pomatum. Octave having spoken of the loft, he insisted on taking him there, for he knew the most out-of-the-way corner of that floor. And, as he passed the doors, he familiarly mentioned the servants’ names: in this bit of a passage, after Adèle came Lisa, the Campardons’ maid, a wench who took her pleasures outside; then, Victoire, their cook, a stranded whale, seventy years old, the only one he respected; then, Françoise, who had entered Madame Valérie’s service the day before, and whose trunk would perhaps only remain twenty-four hours behind the meagre bed upon which such a gallop of maids passed, that it was always necessary to make inquiries before going there and waiting in the warmth of the blanket; then, a quiet couple, in the service of the people on the second floor; then, these people’s coachman, a strapping fellow of whom he spoke with the jealousy of a handsome man, suspecting him of going from door to door and noiselessly doing some very fine work; finally, at the other end of the passage, there were Clémence, the Duveyriers’ maid, whom her neighbour Hippolyte, the butler, rejoined matrimonially every night, and little Louise, the orphan whom Madame Juzeur had taken on trial, a chit of fifteen, who must hear some very strange things in the small hours, if she were a light sleeper.

“My dear fellow, don’t lock the door, do this to oblige me,” said he to Octave, when he had helped him to take the books from the box. “You see, when the loft is open, one can hide there and wait.”

Octave, having consented to deceive Monsieur Gourd, returned with Trublot to Julie’s room. The young man had left his overcoat there. Then it was his gloves that he could not find; he shook the skirts, overturned the bed-clothes, raised such a dust and such an odour of soiled linen, that his companion, half-suffocated, opened the window. It looked on to the narrow inner courtyard, which gave light to all the kitchens. And he was stretching out his head over this damp well, which exhaled the greasy odours of dirty sinks, when a sound of voices made him hastily withdraw.