Complete Works of Emile Zola (721 page)

“Yes, sir,” said she at last.

She was slowly drawing back, desirous of making a bow and continuing her walk. But he turned and followed her under the black shadows of the chestnut-trees. The air was getting cooler, some children were laughing in the distance, trundling their hoops.

“This is your brother, is it not?” resumed he, looking at Pépé.

The little boy, frightened by the unusual presence of a gentleman, was gravely walking by his sister’s side, holding her tightly by the hand.

“Yes, sir,” replied she once more.

She blushed, thinking of the abominable inventions circulated by Marguerite and Clara. No doubt Mouret understood why she was blushing, for he quickly added: “Listen, mademoiselle, I have to apologize to you. Yes, I should have been happy to have told you sooner how much I regret the error that has been made. You were accused too lightly of a fault. But the evil is done. I simply wanted to assure you that everyone in our establishment now knows of your affection for your brothers,” he continued, with a respectful politeness to which the saleswomen in The Ladies’ Paradise were little accustomed. Denise’s confusion had increased; but her heart was filled with joy. He knew, then, that she had given herself to no one! Both remained silent; he continued beside her, regulating his walk to the child’s short steps; and the distant murmurs of the city were dying away under the black shadows of the spreading chestnut-trees. “I have only one reparation to offer you,” resumed he. “Naturally, if you would like to come back to us—”

She interrupted him, and refused with a feverish haste. “No, sir, I cannot. Thank you all the same, but I have found another situation.”

He knew it, they had informed him she was with Robineau; and leisurely, on a footing of amiable equality, he spoke of the latter, rendering him full justice. A very intelligent fellow, but too nervous. He would certainly come to grief: Gaujean had burdened him with a very heavy business, in which they would both suffer. Denise, conquered by this familiarity, opened her mind further, and allowed it to be seen that she was for the big shops in the war between them and the small traders: she became animated, citing examples, showing herself well up in the question, even expressing new and enlightened ideas. He, charmed, listened to her in surprise; and turned round, trying to distinguish her features in the growing darkness. She seemed still the same with her simple dress and sweet face; but from this modest bashfulness, there seemed to exhale a penetrating perfume, of which he felt the powerful influence. Decidedly this little girl had got used to the air of Paris, she was becoming quite a woman, and was really perturbing, so sensible, with her beautiful hair, overflowing with tenderness.

“As you are on our side,” said he, laughing, “why do you stay with our adversaries? I fancy, too, they told me you lodged with Bourras.”

“A very worthy man,” murmured she.

“No, not a bit of it! he’s an old idiot, a madman who will force me to ruin him, though I should be glad to get rid of him with a fortune! Besides, your place is not in his house, which has a bad reputation. He lets to certain women.”

But feeling that the young girl was confused, he hastened to add: “One can be respectable anywhere, and there’s even more merit in remaining so when one is so poor.”

They went on a few steps in silence. Pépé seemed to be listening with the attentive air of a sharp child. Now and again he raised his eyes to his sister, whose burning hand, quivering with sudden starts, astonished him.

“Look here!” resumed Mouret, gaily, “will you be my ambassador? I intended increasing my offer tomorrow — of proposing eighty thousand francs to Bourras. Do you speak to him first about it. Tell him he’s cutting his own throat. Perhaps he’ll listen to you, as he has a liking for you, and you’ll be doing him a real service.”

“Very well!” said Denise, smiling also, “I will deliver your message, but I am afraid I shall not succeed.”

And a fresh silence ensued, neither of them having anything more to say. He attempted to talk of her uncle Baudu; but had to give it up on seeing the young girl’s uneasiness. However, they continued to walk side by side, and at last found themselves near the Rue de Rivoli, in a path where it was still light. On coming out of the darkness of the trees it was like a sudden awakening. He understood that he could not detain her any longer.

“Good night, mademoiselle.”

“Good night, sir.”

But he did not go away. On raising his eyes he perceived in front of him, at the corner of the Rue d’Alger, the lighted windows at Madame Desforges’s, whither he was bound. And looking at Denise, whom he could now see, in the pale twilight, she appeared to him very puny beside Henriette. Why was it she touched his heart in this way? It was a stupid caprice.

“This little man is getting tired,” resumed he, just for something to say. “Remember, mind, that our house is always open to you; you’ve only to knock, and I’ll give you every compensation possible. Good night, mademoiselle.”

“Good night, sir,”

When Mouret quitted her, Denise went back under the chestnut-trees, in the black shadow. For a long time she walked on without any object, between the enormous trunks, her face burning, her head in a whirl of confused ideas. Pépé still had hold of her hand, stretching out his short legs to keep pace with her. She had forgotten him. At last he said:

“You go too quick, little mother.”

At this she sat down on a bench; and as he was tired, the child went to sleep on her lap. She held him there, nestling to her virgin bosom, her eyes lost far away in the darkness. When, an hour later on, they returned slowly to the Rue de la Michodière, she had regained her usual quiet, sensible expression.

“Hell and thunder!” shouted Bourras, when he saw her coming, “the blow is struck. That rascal of a Mouret has just bought my house.” He was half mad, and was striking himself in the middle of the shop with such outrageous gestures that he almost threatened to break the windows. “Ah! the scoundrel! It’s the fruiterer who’s written to tell me this. And how much do you think he has got for the house? One hundred and fifty thousand francs, four times its value! There’s another thief, if you like! Just fancy, he has taken advantage of my embellishments, making capital out of the fact that the house has been done up. How much longer are they going to make a fool of me?”

The thought that his money spent on paint and white-wash had brought the fruiterer a profit exasperated him. And now Mouret would be his landlord; he would have to pay him! It was beneath this detested competitor’s roof that he must live in future! Such a thought raised his fury to the highest possible pitch.

“Ah! I could hear them digging a hole through the wall. At this moment, they are here eating out of my very plate, so to say!”

And the shop shook under his heavy fist which he banged on the counter; he made the umbrellas and the parasols dance again. Denise, bewildered, could not get in a word. She stood there, motionless, waiting for the end of his tirade; whilst Pépé, very tired, had fallen asleep on a chair. At last, when Bourras became a little calmer, she resolved to deliver Mouret’s message. No doubt the old man was irritated, but the excess even of his anger, the blind alley in which he found himself, might determine an abrupt acceptance.

“I’ve just met someone,” she commenced. “Yes, a person from The Paradise, very well informed. It appears that they are going to offer you eighty thousand francs tomorrow.”

“Eighty thousand francs!” interrupted he, in a terrible voice; “eighty thousand francs! Not for a million now!”

She tried to reason with him. But at that moment the shop door opened, and she suddenly drew back, pale and silent. It was her uncle Baudu, with his yellow face and aged look. Bourras seized his neighbor by the button-hole, and roared out in his face without allowing him to say a word, as if goaded on by his presence:

“What do you think they have the cheek to offer me? Eighty thousand francs! They’ve got so far, the brigands! they think I’m going to sell myself like a prostitute. Ah! they’ve bought the house, and think they’ve now got me. Well! it’s all over, they sha’n’t have it! I might have given way, perhaps; but now it belongs to them, let them try and take it!”

“So the news is true?” said Baudu in his slow voice. “I had heard of it, and came over to know if it was so.”

“Eighty thousand francs!” repeated Bourras. “Why not a hundred thousand at once? It’s this immense sum of money that makes me indignant. Do they think they can make me commit a knavish trick with their money! They sha’n’t have it, by heavens! Never, never, you hear me?”

Denise gently observed, in her calm, quiet way: “They’ll have it in nine years’ time, when your lease expires.”

And, notwithstanding her uncle’s presence, she begged of the old man to accept. The struggle was becoming impossible, he was fighting against a superior force; he would be mad to refuse the fortune offered him. But he still replied no. In nine years’ time he hoped to be dead, so as not to see it.

“You hear, Monsieur Baudu,” resumed he, “your niece is on their side, it’s her they have employed to corrupt me. She’s with the brigands, my word of honor!”

Baudu, who up to then had appeared not to notice Denise, now raised his head, with the morose movement that he affected when standing at his shop door, every time she passed. But, slowly, he turned round and looked at her, and his thick lips trembled.

“I know it,” replied he in a half-whisper, and he continued to look at her.

Denise, affected almost to tears, thought him greatly changed by trouble. Perhaps he was stricken with remorse for not having assisted her during the time of misery she had just passed through. Then the sight of Pépé sleeping on the chair, amidst the noise of the discussion, seemed to suddenly inspire him with compassion.

“Denise.” said he simply, “come tomorrow and have dinner with us and bring the little one. My wife and Geneviève asked me to invite you if I met you.”

She turned very red, and went up and kissed him. And as he was going away, Bourras, delighted at this reconciliation, cried out to him again: “Just talk to her, she isn’t a bad sort. As for me, the house may fall, I shall be found in the ruins.”

“Our houses are already falling, neighbor,” said Baudu with a sombre air. “We shall all be crushed under them.”

CHAPTER VIII

At this time the whole neighborhood was talking of the great thoroughfare to be opened from the Bourse to the new Opera House, under the name of the Rue du Dix-Décembre. The expropriation judgments had just been delivered, two gangs of demolishers were already attacking the opening at the two ends, the first pulling down the old mansions in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, the other destroying the thin walls of the old Vaudeville; and one could hear the picks getting closer. The Rue de Choiseul and the Rue de la Michodière got quite excited over their condemned houses. Before a fortnight passed, the opening would make a great hole in these streets, letting in the sun and air.

But what stirred up the district still more, was the work going on at The Ladies’ Paradise. Considerable enlargements were talked of, gigantic shops having frontages in the Rue de la Michodière, the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, and the Rue Monsigny. Mouret, it was said, had made arrangements with Baron Hartmann, chairman of the Crédit Immobilier, and he would occupy the whole block, except the future frontage in the Rue du Dix-Décembre, on which the baron wished to construct a rival to the Grand Hôtel. The Paradise people were buying up leases on all sides, the shops were closing, the tenants moving; and in the empty buildings an army of workmen were commencing the various alterations under a cloud of plaster. In the midst of this disorder, old Bourras’s narrow hovel was the only one that remained standing and intact, obstinately sticking between the high walls covered with masons.

When, the next day, Denise went with Pépé to her uncle Baudu’s, the street was just at that moment blocked up by a line of tumbrels discharging bricks before the Hôtel Duvillard. Baudu was standing at his shop door looking on with a gloomy air. As The Ladies’ Paradise became larger, The Old Elbeuf seemed to get smaller. The young girl thought the windows looked blacker than ever, and more and more crushed beneath the low first storey, with its prison-like bars; the damp had still further discolored the old green sign-board, a sort of distress oozed from the whole frontage, livid in hue, and, as it were, grown thinner.

“Here you are, then!” said Baudu. “Take care! they would run right over you.”

Inside the shop, Denise experienced the same heart-broken sensation; she found it darker, invaded more than ever by the somnolence of approaching ruin; empty corners formed dark and gloomy holes, the dust was invading the counters and drawers, whilst an odor of saltpetre rose from the bales of cloth that were no longer moved about. At the desk Madame Baudu and Geneviève were standing mute and motionless, as in some solitary spot, where no one would come to disturb them. The mother was hemming some dusters. The daughter, her hands spread on her knees, was gazing at the emptiness before her.

“Good evening, aunt,” said Denise; “I’m delighted to see you again, and if I have hurt your feelings, I hope you will forgive me.”

Madame Baudu kissed her, greatly affected. “My poor child,” said she, “if I had no other troubles, you would see me gayer than this.”

“Good evening, cousin,” resumed Denise, kissing Geneviève on the cheeks.

The latter woke up with a sort of start, and returned her kisses, without finding a word to say. The two women then took up Pépé, who was holding out his little arms, and the reconciliation was complete.

“Well! it’s six o’clock, let’s go to dinner,” said Baudu. “Why haven’t you brought Jean?”

“But he was to come,” murmured Denise, embarrassed. “I saw him this morning, and he faithfully promised me. Oh! we must not wait for him; his master has kept him, I dare say.” She suspected some extraordinary adventure, and wished to apologize for him in advance.

“In that case, we will commence,” said her uncle. Then turning towards the obscure depths of the shop, he added: