Complete Works of Emile Zola (690 page)

“You know, I will never put up with it.”

“Put up with what?” asked she, greatly surprised.

“I do not mind the wife so much, she has not done me any harm. But if the husband comes, I shall take hold of Berthe by the arm, and leave the room in the presence of everybody.”

She looked at him, and then shrugged her shoulders. Caroline was her oldest friend, she was certainly not going to give up seeing her, just to satisfy his caprices. As though anyone even recollected the matter. He would do far better not to rake up things forgotten by everybody but himself. And as, deeply affected, he looked to Berthe for support, expecting that she would get up and follow him at once, she calmed him with a frown; was he mad? did he wish to make himself more ridiculous than he had ever been before?

“But it is in order that I may not appear ridiculous!” retorted he in despair.

Then Madame Josserand inclined towards him, and said in a severe tone of voice:

“It is becoming quite indecent; everyone is looking at you. Do behave yourself for once in a way.”

He held his tongue, but without submitting. From this moment a certain uneasiness existed amongst the ladies. The only one who preserved her smiling tranquillity was Madame Mouret, now sitting beside Clotilde and opposite Berthe. They watched Auguste, who had retired to the window recess where his marriage had been decided, not so very long before. His anger was bringing on a headache, and he now and again pressed his forehead against the icy cold panes.

Octave did not arrive till very late. As he reached the landing, he met Madame Juzeur, who had just come down, wrapped in a shawl. She complained of her chest, and had got up on purpose not to disappoint the Duveyriers. Her languid state did not prevent her falling into the young man’s arms, as she congratulated him on his marriage.

“How delighted I am with such a splendid result, my friend! Really! I was quite in despair about you, I never thought you would have succeeded. Tell me, you rascal, how did you manage to get over her!”

Octave smiled and kissed her fingers. But some one who was bounding upstairs with the agility of a goat, disturbed them; and, greatly surprised, they fancied they recognised Saturnin. It was indeed Saturnin, who a week before had left the Asile des Moulineaux, where for a second time Doctor Chassagne declined to detain him any longer, still considering him not sufficiently mad. No doubt he was going to spend the evening with Marie Pichon, just as in former days, when his parents had company. And those bygone times were suddenly evoked. Octave could hear an expiring voice coming from above, singing the ballad with which Marie whiled away her vacant hours; he beheld her once more eternally alone, beside the crib in which Lilitte slumbered, and awaiting Jules’s return with all the complacency of a gentle and useless woman.

“I wish you every happiness with your wife,” repeated Madame Juzeur, tenderly squeezing Octave’s hands.

In order not to enter the drawing-room with her, he was purposely occupying some time in removing his overcoat, when Trublot, in his dress clothes, bareheaded, and looking quite upset, came from the passage leading to the kitchen.

“You know she’s not at all well!” murmured he, whilst Hippolyte announced Madame Juzeur.

“Who isn’t?” asked Octave.

“Why Adèle, the servant upstairs.”

Hearing there was something the matter with her, he had gone up quite paternally, on leaving the dinner-table. It must have been a very severe attack of cholerine; a good glass of mulled wine was what she ought to have, and she had not even a lump of sugar. Then, as he noticed that his friend smiled in an indifferent sort of way, he added:

“Hallo! I forgot, you’re married, you joker! This sort of thing no longer interests you. I never thought of that when I found you with Madame. Anything you like except that!”

They entered together. The ladies were just then speaking of their servants, and were taking such interest in the conversation, that they did not notice them at first. All were complacently approving Madame Duveyrier, who was trying to explain, in an embarrassed way, why she continued to keep Clémence and Hippolyte: he was rough, but she dressed her so well, that one could not help shutting one’s’ eyes to other matters. Neither Valérie nor Berthe could succeed in securing a decent girl; they had given it up in despair, after trying every registry office, the good-for-nothing servants from which had done no more than pass through their kitchens. Madame Josserand violently abused Adèle, of whom she related some fresh abominable and stupid doings of an extraordinary character; and yet she did not send her about her business. As for the other Madame Campardon, she was quite enthusiastic in her praises of Lisa: a pearl, not a thing to reproach her with, in short one of those deserving domestics to whom one gives prizes.

“She is quite one of the family now,” said she. “Our little Angèle is attending some lectures at the Hôtel de Ville, and Lisa accompanies her. Oh! they might remain out together for days, we should not be in the least anxious.”

It was at this moment that the ladies caught sight of Octave. He was advancing to wish Clotilde good-evening. Berthe looked at him; then, without the least affectation, she resumed her conversation with Valérie, who had exchanged with him the affectionate glance of disinterested friendship. The others, Madame Josserand, Madame Dambreville, without throwing themselves at him, surveyed him with sympathetic interest.

“So here you are at last!” said Clotilde, who was most amiable.” I was beginning to tremble for the chorus.”

And, as Madame Mouret gently scolded her husband for being so late, he made some excuses.

“But, my dear, I was unable to come sooner. I am most sorry, madame. However, I am now entirely at your disposal.”

Meanwhile, the ladies were anxiously watching the window recess into which Auguste had retired. They received a momentary fright when they beheld him turn round at the sound of Octave’s voice. His headache was no doubt worse, he had a restless look about the eyes, which seemed full of the darkness of the street. He at length appeared to make up his mind, and returning to his former position beside his sister’s chair, he said:

“Send them away, or else we will leave.”

Clotilde again shrugged her shoulders. Then, Auguste seemed disposed to give her time to consider: he would wait a few minutes longer, more especially as Trublot had taken Octave into the parlour. The other ladies were still uneasy, for they had heard the husband whisper in his wife’s ear:

“If he comes back here, you must get up and follow me. Otherwise, you may return to your mother’s.”

In the parlour, the gentlemen greeted Octave quite as cordially. If Léon made a point of showing a little coolness, uncle Bachelard and even Théophile seemed to declare, as they held out their hands to Octave, that the family forgot everything. He congratulated Campardon, who, decorated two days previously, now wore a broad red ribbon;
and the beaming architect scolded him for never calling now and then to pass an hour with his wife: though one got married, it was scarcely nice to forget friends of fifteen years’ standing. But the young man felt quite surprised and anxious as he stood before Duveyrier. He had not seen him since his recovery. He looked uneasily at his jaw all out of place, dropping too much on the left side, and which now gave a horrid squinting expression to his countenance. Then, when the counsellor spoke, he had another surprise: his voice had lowered two tones, it had become quite sepulchral.

“Don’t you think him much better thus?
”
said Trublot to Octave, as they returned to the drawing-room door. “It positively gives him a certain majestic air. I saw him presiding at the assizes, the day before yesterday — Listen! they are talking of it.”

And indeed the gentlemen had abandoned politics to take up morality. They were listening to Duveyrier as he gave some details of an affair in which his attitude had been particularly noticed. He was even about to be named a president and an officer of the Legion of Honour. It was respecting an infanticide already a year old. The unnatural mother, a regular savage, as he said, happened to be the boot-stitcher, his former tenant, that tall pale and friendless girl, whose pregnant condition had roused Monsieur Gourd’s indignation so much. And besides that, she was altogether stupid! for, without reflecting that her appearance would betray her, she had gone and cut her child in two and kept it at the bottom of a bonnet-box. She had naturally told the jury quite a ridiculous romance: a seducer who had deserted her, misery, hunger, and then a fit of mad despair on seeing herself unable to supply the little one’s wants: in a word, the same story they all told. But it was necessary to make an example. Duveyrier congratulated himself on having summed up with that lucidity, which often decided a jury’s verdict.

“And what was your sentence?” asked the doctor.

“Five years,” replied the counsellor in his new voice, which seemed both hoarse and sepulchral. “It is time to oppose a dyke to the debauchery which threatens to submerge Paris.”

Trublot nudged Octave’s elbow; they were both acquainted with the facts of the attempt at suicide.

“Eh? you hear him?” murmured he. “Without joking, it improves his voice: it stirs one more, does it not? it goes straight to the heart, now. Ah! if you had only seen him, Standing up, draped in his long red robes, with his mug all askew! On my word! he quite frightened me, he was extraordinary, oh! you know! a style in his majesty enough to make your flesh creep!”

But he left off speaking, and listened to the ladies in the drawing-room, who were again on the subject of servants. That very morning, Madame Duveyrier had given Julie a week’s notice: she had nothing certainly to say against the girl’s cooking; only, good behaviour came before everything in her eyes. The truth was that, warned by Doctor Juillerat, and anxious for the health of her son whose little goings-on she tolerated at home, so as to keep them under control, she had had an explanation with Julie, who had been unwell for some time past: and the latter, like a genteel cook, whose style was not to quarrel with her employers, had accepted her week’s notice. Madame Josserand at once shared Clotilde’s indignation: yes, one should be very strict on the question of morality; for instance, if she kept that slut Adèle in spite of her dirty ways, and her stupidity, it was because the girl was virtuous. Oh! on that point, she had nothing whatever to reproach her with!

“Poor Adèle! when one only thinks!” murmured Trublot, again affected at the thought of the wretched creature, half frozen upstairs beneath her thin blanket.

Then, bending towards Octave’s ear, he added with a chuckle:

“I say, Duveyrier might at least take her up a bottle of claret!”

“Yes, gentlemen,” the counsellor was continuing, “statistics will bear me out, the crime of infanticide is increasing in the most frightful proportions. Sentiment prevails to too great an extent in the present day, and far too much consideration is shown to science, to your pretended physiology, all of which will end by there soon being neither good nor evil. One cannot cure debauchery; the thing is to destroy it at its root.”

This refutation was addressed above all to Doctor Juillerat, who had wished to give a medical explanation of the boot-stitcher’s case.

The other gentlemen also exhibited great severity and disgust: Campardon could not understand vice, uncle Bachelard defended infancy, Théophile demanded an inquiry, Léon discussed the question of prostitution in its relations with the state; whilst Trublot, in answer to an inquiry of Octave’s, talked of Duveyrier’s new mistress, who was a decent sort of woman this time, rather mature, but romantic, with a soul expanded by that ideal which the counsellor required to purify love; in short, a worthy person who gave him a peaceful home, imposing upon him as much as she liked and sleeping with his friends, without making any unnecessary fuss. And the Abbé Mauduit alone remained silent, his eyes fixed on the ground, his mind sorely troubled, and full of an infinite sadness.

They were now about to sing the “Blessing of the Daggers.” The drawing-room had filled up, a flood of rich dresses was crushing in the brilliant light from the chandelier and the lamps, whilst gay bursts of laughter ran along the rows of chairs; and, in the midst of the buzz, Clotilde in a low voice roughly chided Auguste, who, on seeing Octave enter with the other gentlemen of the chorus, had caught hold of Berthe’s arm to make her leave her seat. But he was already beginning to yield, feeling more and more embarrassed in the presence of the ladies’ dumb disapproval, whilst his head had become entirely the prey of triumphant neuralgia. Madame Dambreville’s stern looks quite drove him to despair, and even the other Madame Campardon was against him. It was reserved to Madame Josserand to finish him off. She abruptly interfered, threatening to take back her daughter and never to pay him the fifty thousand francs dowry; for she was always promising this dowry with the greatest coolness imaginable. Then, turning towards uncle Bachelard, seated behind her, and next to Madame Juzeur, she made him renew his promises. The uncle placed his hand on his heart: he knew his duty, the family before everything! Auguste repulsed on all sides, beat a retreat, and again sought refuge in the window recess, where he once more pressed his burning forehead against the icy cold panes.

Then, Octave experienced a singular sensation as though his Paris life was beginning over again. It was as though the two years he had lived in the Rue de Choiseul had been a blank. His wife was there, smiling at him, and yet nothing seemed to have passed in his existence: today was the same as yesterday, there was neither pause nor ending. Trublot showed him the new partner standing beside Berthe, a little fair fellow very neat in his ways, who gave her, it was said, no end of presents. Uncle Bachelard, who was now going in for poetry, was revealing himself in a sentimental light to Madame Juzeur, whom he quite affected with some intimate details respecting Fifi and Gueulin. Théophile, devoured by doubts, doubled up by violent fits of coughing, was imploring Doctor Juillerat in an out-of-the-way corner to give his wife something to quiet her. Campardon, his eyes fixed on cousin Gasparine, was talking of the diocese of Evreux, and jumping from that to the great works of the new Rue du Dix Décembre, defending God and art, sending the world about its business, for at heart he did not care a hang for it, he was an artist! And behind a flower-stand there could even be seen the back of a gentleman whom all the marriageable girls contemplated with an air of profound curiosity: it was Verdier, who was talking with Hortense, the pair of them having an acrimonious explanation, again putting off their marriage till the spring, so as not to turn the woman and her child into the street in the depth of winter.