Complete Works of Emile Zola (744 page)

He raised his head, still defending his ideas, in the person of the shopman who had betrayed him. Denise could not bear to hear him accuse himself, and she told him so, carried away by her emotion, on seeing him so humble, with his eyes full of tears, he who used formerly to reign as absolute master.

“Uncle, pray don’t apologize for him. He never loved Geneviève, he would have run away sooner if you had tried to hasten the marriage. I have spoken to him myself about it; he was perfectly well aware that my cousin was suffering on his account, and you see that did not prevent him leaving. Ask aunt.”

Without opening her lips, Madame Baudu confirmed these words by a nod. The draper turned paler still, blinded by his tears. He stammered out: “It must be in the blood, his father died last year through having led a dissolute life.”

And he once more looked round the obscure shop, his eyes wandering from the empty counters to the full shelves, then resting on Madame Baudu, who was still at the pay-desk, waiting in vain for the customers who did not come.

“Come,” said he, “it’s all over. They’ve ruined our business, and now one of their hussies is killing our daughter.”

No one spoke. The rolling of the vehicles, which occasionally shook the floor, passed like a funereal beating of drums in the still air, stifled under the low ceiling. Suddenly, amidst this gloomy sadness of the old dying shop, could be heard several heavy knocks, struck somewhere in the house. It was Geneviève, who had just awoke, and was knocking with a stick they had left near her bed.

“Let’s go up at once,” said Baudu, rising with a start. “Try and be cheerful, she mustn’t know.”

He himself rubbed his eyes to efface the trace of his tears. As soon as he had opened the door, on the first storey, they heard a frightened, feeble voice crying: “Oh, I don’t like to be left alone. Don’t leave me; I’m afraid to be left alone.” Then, when she perceived Denise, Geneviève became calmer, and smiled joyfully. “You’ve come, then! How I’ve been longing to see you since yesterday. I thought you also had abandoned me!”

It was a piteous sight. The young girl’s room looked out on to the yard, a little room lighted by a livid light. At first her parents had put her in their own room, in the front; but the sight of The Ladies’ Paradise opposite affected her so much, that they had been obliged to bring her back to her own again. And there she lay, so very thin, under the bed-clothes, that one hardly suspected the form and existence of a human body. Her skinny arms, consumed by a burning fever, were in a perpetual movement of anxious, unconscious searching; whilst her black hair seemed thicker still, and to be eating up her poor face with its voracious vitality, that face in which was agonizing the final degenerateness of a family sprung up in the shade, in this cellar of old commercial Paris. Denise, her heart bursting with pity, stood looking at her. She did not at first speak, for fear of giving way to tears. At last she murmured:

“I came at once. Can I be of any use to you? You asked for me. Would you like me to stay?”

“No, thanks. I don’t want anything. I only wanted to embrace you.”

Tears filled her eyes. Denise quickly leant over, and kissed her on both cheeks, trembling to feel on her lips the flame of those hollow cheeks. But Geneviève, stretching out her arms, seized and kept her in a desperate embrace. Then she looked towards her father.

“Would you like me to stay?” repeated Denise. “Perhaps there is something I can do for you.”

Geneviève’s glance was still obstinately fixed on her father, who remained standing, with a stolid air, almost choking. He at last understood, and went away, without saying a word; and they heard his heavy footstep on the stairs.

“Tell me, is he with that woman?” asked the sick girl immediately, seizing her cousin’s hand, and making her sit on the side of the bed. “I want to know, and you are the only one can tell me. They’re living together, aren’t they?”

Denise, surprised by these questions, stammered, and was obliged to confess the truth, the rumors that were current in the shop. Clara, tired of this fellow, who was getting a nuisance to her, had already broken with him, and Colomban, desolated, was pursuing her everywhere, trying to obtain a meeting from time to time, with a sort of canine humility. They said that he was going to take a situation at the Grands Magasins du Louvre.

“If you still love him, he may return,” said Denise, to cheer the dying girl with this last hope. “Get well quick, he will acknowledge his errors, and marry you.”

Geneviève interrupted her. She had listened with all her soul, with an intense passion that raised her in the bed. But she fell back almost immediately. “No, I know it’s all over! I don’t say anything, because I see papa crying, and I don’t wish to make mamma worse than she is. But I am going, Denise, and if I called for you last night it was for fear of going off before the morning. And to think that he is not happy after all!”

And Denise having remonstrated, assuring her that she was not so bad as all that, she cut her short again, suddenly throwing off the bed-clothes with the chaste gesture of a virgin who has nothing to conceal in death. Naked to the waist, she murmured: “Look at me! Is it possible?”

Trembling, Denise quitted the side of the bed, as if she feared to destroy this fearful nudity with a breath. It was the last of the flesh, a bride’s body used up by waiting, returned to the first infantile slimness of her young days. Geneviève slowly covered herself up again, saying: “You see I am no longer a woman. It would be wrong to wish for him still!”

There was a silence. Both continued to look at each other, unable to find a word to say. It was Geneviève who resumed: “Come, don’t stay any longer, you have your own affairs to look after. And thanks, I was tormented by the wish to know, and am now satisfied. If you see him, tell him I forgive him. Adieu, dear Denise. Kiss me once more, for it’s the last time.”

The young girl kissed her, protesting: “No, no, don’t despair, all you want is loving care, nothing more.”

But the sick girl, shaking her head in an obstinate way, smiled, quite sure of what she said. And as her cousin was making for the door, she exclaimed: “Wait a minute, knock with this stick, so that papa may come up. I’m afraid to stay alone.”

Then, when Baudu arrived in that small, gloomy room, where he spent hours seated on a chair, she assumed an air of gaiety, saying to Denise—”Don’t come tomorrow, I would rather not. But on Sunday I shall expect you; you can spend the afternoon with me.”

The next morning, at six o’clock, Geneviève expired after four hours’ fearful agony. The funeral took place on a Saturday, a fearfully black, gloomy day, under a sooty sky which hung over the shivering city. The Old Elbeuf, hung with white linen, lighted up the street with a bright spot, and the candles burning in the fading day seemed so many stars drowned in the twilight. The coffin was covered with wreaths and bouquets of white roses; it was a narrow child’s coffin, placed in the obscure passage of the house on a level with the pavement, so near the gutter that the passing carriages had already splashed the coverings. The whole neighborhood exhaled a dampness, a cellar-like moldy odor, with its continual rush of pedestrians on the muddy pavement.

At nine o’clock Denise came over to stay with her aunt. But as the funeral was starting, the latter — who had ceased weeping, her eyes burnt with tears — begged her to follow the body and look after her uncle, whose mute affliction and almost idiotic grief filled the family with anxiety. Below, the young girl found the street full of people, for the small traders in the neighborhood were anxious to show the Baudus a mark of sympathy, and in this eagerness there was also a sort of manifestation against The Ladies’ Paradise, whom they accused of causing Geneviève’s slow agony. All the victims of the monster were there — Bédoré and sister from the hosier’s shop in the Rue Gaillon, the furriers, Vanpouille Brothers, and Deslignières the toyman, and Piot and Rivoire the furniture dealers; even Mademoiselle Tatin from the underclothing shop, and the glover Quinette, long since cleared off by bankruptcy, had made it a duty to come, the one from Batignolles, the other from the Bastille, where they had been obliged to take situations. Whilst waiting for the hearse, which was late, these people, tramping about in the mud, cast glances of hatred towards The Ladies’ Paradise, the bright windows and gay displays of which seemed an insult in face of The Old Elbeuf, which, with its funeral trappings and glimmering candles, cast a gloom over the other side of the street. A few curious faces appeared at the plate-glass windows; but the colossus maintained the indifference of a machine going at full speed, unconscious of the deaths it may cause on the road.

Denise looked round for her brother Jean, whom she at last perceived standing before Bourras’s shop, and she went and asked him to walk with his uncle, to assist him if he could not get along. For the last few weeks Jean had been very grave, as if tormented by some worry. Today, buttoned up in his black frock-coat, a full grown man, earning his twenty francs a day, he seemed so dignified and so sad that his sister was surprised, for she had no idea he loved his cousin so much as that. Desirous of sparing Pépé this needless grief, she had left him with Madame Gras, intending to go and fetch him in the afternoon to see his uncle and aunt.

The hearse had still not arrived, and Denise, greatly affected, was watching the candles burn, when she was startled by a well-known voice behind her. It was Bourras. He had called the chestnut-seller opposite, in his little box, against the public-house, and said to him:

“I say, Vigouroux, just keep a look-out for me a bit, will you? You see I’ve closed the door. If anyone comes tell them to call again. But don’t let that disturb you, no one will come.”

Then he took his stand on the pavement, waiting like the others. Denise, feeling rather awkward, glanced at his shop. He entirely abandoned it now; there was nothing left but a disorderly array of umbrellas eaten up by the damp air, and canes blackened by the gas. The embellishments that he had made, the delicate green paint work, the glasses, the gilded sign, were all cracking, already getting dirty, presenting that rapid and lamentable decrepitude of false luxury laid over ruins. But though the old crevices were re-appearing, though the spots of damp had sprung up over the gildings, the house still held its ground obstinately, hanging on to the flanks of The Ladies’ Paradise like a dishonoring wart, which, although cracked and rotten, refused to fall off.

“Ah! the scoundrels,” growled Bourras, “they won’t even let her be carried away.”

The hearse, which had at last arrived, had just got into collision with one of The Ladies’ Paradise vans, which was spinning along, shedding in the mist its starry radiance, with the rapid trot of two superb horses. And the old man cast on Denise an oblique glance, lighted up under his bushy eyebrows. Slowly, the funeral started off, splashing through the muddy pools, amid the silence of the omnibuses and carriages suddenly pulled up. When the coffin, draped with white, crossed the Place Gaillon, the sombre looks of the cortege were once more plunged into the windows of the big shop, where two saleswomen alone had run up to look on, pleased at this distraction. Baudu followed the hearse with a heavy mechanical step, refusing by a sign the arm offered by Jean, who was walking with him. Then, after a long string of people, came three mourning coaches. As they passed the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, Robineau ran up to join the cortege, very pale, and looking much older.

At Saint-Roch, a great many women were waiting, the small traders of the neighborhood, who had been afraid of the crowd at the house. The manifestation was developing into quite a riot; and when, after the service, the procession started off back, all the men followed, although it was a long walk from the Rue Saint-Honoré to the Montmartre Cemetery. They had to go up the Rue Saint-Roch, and once more pass The Ladies’ Paradise. It was a sort of obsession; this poor young girl’s body was paraded round the big shop like the first victim fallen in time of revolution. At the door some red flannels were flapping like so many flags, and a display of carpets blazed forth in a florescence of enormous roses and full-blown peonies. Denise had got into one of the coaches, being agitated by some smarting doubts, her heart oppressed by such a feeling of grief that she had not the strength to walk. At that moment there was a stop, in the Rue du Dix-Décembre, before the scaffolding of the new façade which still obstructed the thoroughfare. And the young girl observed old Bourras, left behind, dragging along with difficulty, close to the wheels of the coach in which she was riding alone. He would never get as far as the cemetery, she thought. He raised his head, looked at her, and all at once got into the coach.

“It’s my confounded knees,” exclaimed he. “Don’t draw back’! Is it you that we detest?”

She felt him to be friendly and furious as in former days. He grumbled, declared that Baudu must be fearfully strong to be able to keep up after such blows as he had received. The procession had resumed its slow pace; and on leaning out, Denise saw her uncle walking with his heavy step, which seemed to regulate the rumbling and painful march of the cortege. She then threw herself back into the corner, listening to the endless complaints of the old umbrella maker, rocked by the melancholy movement of the coach.

“The police ought to clear the public thoroughfare, my word! They’ve been blocking up our street for the last eighteen months with the scaffolding of their façade, where a man was killed the other day. Never mind! When they want to enlarge further they’ll have to throw bridges over the street. They say there are now two thousand seven hundred employees, and that the business will amount to a hundred millions this year. A hundred millions! Just fancy, a hundred millions!”

Denise had nothing to say in reply. The procession had just turned into the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, where it was stopped by a block of vehicles. Bourras went on, with a vague expression in his eyes, as if he were dreaming aloud. He still failed to understand the triumph achieved by The Ladies’ Paradise, but he acknowledged the defeat of the old-fashioned traders.