Complete Works of Emile Zola (67 page)

He dressed himself and went out into the street. His head was bursting. He did not even think of going to his office, he entered a restaurant but could not eat. Everything he saw seemed to be turning, and at times he felt a choking sensation as if he were all at once in want of breath. When night came he went, as a matter of course, step by step, to the Corneille Club.

CHAPTER XV

HOW MARIUS HAD BLOOD ON HIS HANDS

On entering the room Marius perceived Sauvaire seated at a table between Clairon and Isnarde. The master-stevedore had not quitted the two girls since the morning. He rose, stepped forward and pressed the young man’s hand.

“Ah! my friend,” he said, “how wrong you were not to have come with us! We amused ourselves immensely. These charmers are so funny! They would make stones laugh. They are the sort of ladies I like!”

He dragged Marius to the table where Clairon and Isnarde were drinking beer. The young man sat down with a good deal of ill grace.

“Sir,” said Isnarde to him, “would you like me to go into partnership with you tonight?’’

“No,” he answered, drily.

“He’s quite right to refuse,” cried Sauvaire, in a noisy voice. “You want to ruin him, my dear. You know the proverb: ‘Lucky at cards, unlucky in love’.”

And he added in a low voice addressing his companion:

“Why don’t you make friends with her? Don’t you see the glances she is casting at you?”

Marius rose without answering and went and sat at the card table. A game was about to commence and he was impatient to return to the sensations of the previous night.

He wished to follow the same tactics. He placed fifty francs on the cloth and lost them; he put fifty others there, and lost them also.

Gamblers are justly fatalists, they know by experience that chance has its laws, like everything else in this world; that it labours sometimes for a whole night to make a man’s fortune, and that often, the next day, it works his ruin with the same persistence. A moment comes when chance turns, when a person who has won a long series of hands, loses another series that is quite as long. Marius had arrived at one of those terrible moments.

He lost five times in succession. Sauvaire, who had drawn near and was following his game, bent over him and said rapidly:

“Don’t play tonight, you are not in luck. You will lose all you won yesterday.”

The young man shrugged his shoulders impatiently. His throat became dry and the perspiration stood out on his forehead.

“Leave me alone,” he answered sharply, “I know what I am doing. I want all or nothing.”

“As you please,” replied the master-stevedore. “I have gained some experience during the ten years I have been playing and watching others play. In a few hours, my good fellow, you will not have a sou left. It always happens like that.”

He took a chair and sat down behind Marius, wishing to be present when his predictions were realized. Clairon and Isnarde, who hoped to gather up a few pieces of gold, as on the previous day, also came and placed themselves near the young man. They laughed, gave themselves airs, and Sauvaire, from time to time, joked noisily with them. The bursts of laughter and tittering which Marius heard behind him exasperated him. He was on the point of turning round two or three times to send Sauvaire and the girls to the Prince of Darkness. In despair at losing, enervated by the strange and terrible hands that chance gave him, he felt his anger rising within him and would have been glad to vent it on someone.

He had played at first as on the previous night, with audacity and decision, risking hands of five and relying on his good luck; but that luck had gone, his audacity did not serve him. Then he wanted to act prudently; he dodged chance, calculated the probabilities, and finally played cleverly. He lost just as often as before. On several occasions he had eight and the banker nine. Fortune seemed to take bitter pleasure in stripping him on whom she had showered her favours. It was indeed a fight to the death, and at each fresh attack, at each hand of cards, Marius was vanquished. At the expiration of an hour he had already lost four thousand francs.

Sauvaire kept singing out behind him:

“What did I say? I was certain of it!”

And Clairon and Isnarde, who saw the bits of gold on which they relied disappearing, began to make fun of the young man and to look about for someone more lucky.

Marius bewildered in front of the gulf open before him, turned towards Sauvaire and said to him in a choking voice:

“You who know how to play, tell me what to do.”

“Oh!” answered the master-stevedore, “if you were to play like an angel you would lose. Chance is blind, it goes, you see, where it likes, one can never direct it. You had better withdraw.”

“No, no, I’ll see it out.”

“Well then! Let us try. Play the series.”

Marius played the series. Hand on hand he lost five hundred francs.

“The deuce!” exclaimed Sauvaire. “Play intermission then.”

Marius played intermission and lost again.

“I warned you, I warned you,” repeated the master-stevedore, “Try a martingale.”

Marius tried a martingale and had no better luck.

“It’s enough to drive one mad,” he exclaimed in anger.

“Don’t play any more,” said Sauvaire.

“Yes, I will play, I’ll play to the end.”

The master-stevedore rose, whistling between his teeth. He could not understand his friend’s nervous obstinacy, he who never risked more than a hundred francs on the green cloth.

“Look here!” he continued, “the banker has thrown up his hand and is leaving. Take his place. That will perhaps change the luck.”

Marius took the banker’s seat. He paid two francs for cards and slipped a franc into the slot in accordance with the custom of the club. He shuffled the cards and then presented them to the players, saying:

“Gentlemen, the cards pass.”

Some of the players shuffled the cards again and returned them to Marius, who shuffled them a third time as was his right. The game began again. The young man could now lose all he had in a few hands.

He lost twice running. Sauvaire continued to remain behind him. He ended by taking an interest in this intrepid youth. The latter was about to deal the cards again to the players, to the punters as they are called, when the master-stevedore stopped his arm and leaning over to his ear, said to him in a low voice:

“Take care, they are robbing you. You are dealing the cards like a young innocent.”

“How do you mean?”

“Yes, you hold them up as you deal them, so that the punters opposite see them pass and know what you have in your hand. All new bankers are victimized like that. Keep the pack slanting in your hand and lower the cards as you deal them out.”

Marius followed this wise advice and did very well. He won. In a few hands he had got back a fairly large sum. Then chance turned again and he lost. Next a sort of equilibrium was established between his winning and losings. Little by little, however, he felt the ten thousand francs slipping through his fingers.

He neglected nothing to make his luck change. On several occasions he stopped and called for fresh cards. At another time he dealt his hand right out, in order to lead chance astray and bring it back to him.

But all these tactics did him no good. Fortune now seemed to take pleasure in playing with its prey, in making it suffer longer and not killing it at one blow; then, all at once, she scratched it, she took away what she had just given and even more.

Sauvaire kept watch round the table, so as to see that his friend was not cheated too much. The latter had a man opposite him who was still young and who although playing for small stakes must already have won a good round sum; each time the cards were favourable to him his stake was twenty-five francs, and each time he lost he had only a silver five-franc piece before him, which was a mascotte, he said, and he paid with another coin.

The master-stevedore looked on this man with distrust. He watched his movements and perceived that he concealed a twenty-franc gold piece under his five-franc piece in silver; when he won he displayed it all and pocketed twenty-five francs; when he lost he left the gold coin hidden under the large silver piece and only gave Marius five francs. It seems that not a night passes without this clever robbery being practised in one of the gambling-houses at Marseille.

“Wait a bit, wait a bit,” murmured Sauvaire, “I’ll nail you, my gentleman.’’

In the hand that followed, Marius won. The cheat was preparing to give him five francs in change, when Sauvaire stretched out his arm, gave a flip to the five-franc piece and uncovered the gold coin beneath it.

“You are cheating, sir,” he exclaimed, “out you go!”

The rascal did not lose countenance.

“What are you meddling with?” he answered, insolently.

He left his twenty-five francs on the table, rose, took a few turns in the room and withdrew without molestation. The punters had limited themselves to growling.

Marius turned very pale. He had fallen, then, so low as that, he was playing with thieves. From that moment there was a cloud before his eyes which made him commit the grossest blunders. He lost and was almost happy to lose. All the fever hail left him, he no longer had the uncomfortable feeling in his throat. The money when he touched it was burning hot; he would have liked to have lost the whole of it and to have gone away with empty pockets.

Soon he had no more than two or three hundred francs before him.

Since the commencement of the evening he had had a young man beside him who had followed all the changes of fortune with lively anxiety. As he lost, he became more pale and haggard. He had begun with a considerable sum before him and gazed in despair on each piece of gold as it was swept away. Marius had heard him more than once utter disjointed words and had felt anxious about him. He could see that a frightful drama was being performed at his elbow.

A final stroke completed his neighbour’s ruin. He remained for a moment motionless, with contracted features. Then he placed a hand over his eyes, drew a pistol rapidly from his pocket, placed the barrel in his mouth, and fired.

There was a sound like the crack of a whip. The blood spurted out and large warm crimson drops fell on Marius’ hands.

All the players had risen in a fright. The body had just fallen on the table, the arms folded, the head hanging down. The bullet after piercing the neck had came out on the right below the ear, and there was a red hole there, from which ran a stream of blood. A pool of gore was formed on the green cloth; and, in this pool, the abandoned cards were soaking.

Alarming sentences, uttered in undertones, passed among the gamblers.

“Do you know the poor fellow?”

“I think it’s a collector of Lambert & Co.”

“His family is honourable. His brother purchased a solicitor’s practice six months ago.”

“He must have embezzled a large sum and killed himself when he lost it.”

“Anyhow he might have shot himself somewhere else. The police will be here in twenty minutes and close the club.”

“These people who have a mania for killing themselves are most annoying. We were very well here, we could gamble at ease. Now we must move.”

“Have they sent to inform the police commissary?”

“Yes.”

“I’m off.”

There was a general stampede. The players seized their hats and prudently slipped out on to the landing. One could hear them stumbling downstairs like drunkards.

Marius had remained seated beside the corpse. He could not move hand or foot. He sat looking in a stupid way at the suicide’s red neck and the splashes of blood covering his own hands. His hair stood on end, sparks of madness flashed in his eyes which were almost starting out of his head. He still held the pack of cards. All at once he threw them down, shook his hands violently, as if to get rid of the blood that was running between his fingers, and uttering a harsh cry, fled.

He did not even pick up the few hundreds of francs that were before him. The pool increased little by little, and the bits of gold now seemed bathed in a stream of blood.

Only the corpse and the two girls remained in the room. Sauvaire had been one of the first to fly. When Clairon and Isnarde found themselves alone they approached the table attracted by the gold glittering in the blood.

“Let’s divide,” said Isnarde.

“Yes, let’s be quick,” answered Clairon, “it’s no good giving the police the money.”

And each of them took a handful of gold from the middle of the crimson pool. The coins stained with gore disappeared in their pockets; then they wiped their fingers on their handkerchiefs and in their turn fled, gasping for breath and fancying they heard the voice of the police commissary behind them.

It was three o’clock in the morning. Great gusts of wind were driving along the big, dark clouds that studded the grey sky with black. A sort of mist floated in the air and fell in fine, icy cold rain. There is nothing more mournful than those hours of the early morning in a great city: the streets are dirty, the houses stand out in sad silhouettes.

Marius ran like a madman through the silent and deserted streets. He slipped on the greasy stones, dipping his feet in the gutters, and knocking up against the corners of the pavement. And he continued running with his arms extended before him, wringing his hands in furious rage. He wanted to go and clip them in the sea and wash them with all the water of the ocean. There only, could he find relief for the terrible burn that was devouring him.

He ran, alarmed and fierce, still wringing his hands and taking out-of-the-way streets like a murderer. At moments he was half mad; he imagined it was he who had killed the suicide to rob him of fifteen thousand francs. Then he heard the heavy tread of the gendarmes behind him, he hastened the pace, not knowing where to hide his hands which would bear witness against him.

He had to cross the Cours Belzunce. Workmen were passing along under the trees, and he experienced most horrible anguish. To avoid descending to the harbour by the Cannebière, he plunged into the old town. There the streets are dark and narrow and no one could see his blood-stained hands.