Complete Works of Emile Zola (763 page)

‘You are not attending to the game, Monsieur Chanteau. Now, be advised by me, and be very careful about what you eat this evening. Rich food is bad for you in your present condition.’

Louise had arrived the previous day. When she and Pauline heard the Doctor’s gig approaching, they both rushed wildly into the yard. But it was only his cousin whom Lazare appeared to notice, and he looked at her with an expression of amazement.

‘What! can this really be Pauline?’

‘Yes, indeed, it is!’

‘But, good gracious, what a lot you must have eaten to have grown like that! Why, you are quite big enough to get married now!’

She blushed, and laughed gaily, her eyes glistening with pleasure at seeing him take such notice of her. He had left her a mere chit, a raw schoolgirl in a pinafore, and now he saw her again as a well-grown young woman, whose figure showed to advantage in her white rose-sprayed summer gown. However, she became quite serious as she examined him in turn. She thought he was looking much older, he stooped, his laugh no longer sounded young, and his face twitched nervously at times.

‘By the way,’ said Lazare, ‘I must really treat you a little more ceremoniously now. How do you do, partner?’

Pauline’s blush assumed a deeper tint; the word ‘partner’ made her feel intensely happy. When her cousin had kissed her, he might well kiss Louise afterwards. She experienced no feeling of jealousy now.

It was a delightful dinner. Chanteau, alarmed by the Doctor’s threats, ate with moderation. Madame Chanteau and the priest discussed magnificent schemes for the ag­grandizement of Bonneville when the sea-weed business should have enriched the neighbourhood. It was eleven o’clock before they separated. As Lazare and Pauline were about to quit each other, at the doors of their rooms, the young man said to her laughingly:

‘So young ladies, when they have grown up, no longer wish one good-night?’

‘Why, yes, they do,’ she cried; and, throwing her arms round his neck, she kissed him full on the lips with all her old girlish impulsiveness.

CHAPTER III

Two days later a very low tide laid the rocks quite bare. Lazare, brimming over with the wild enthusiasm which always filled him at the outset of any of his new schemes, was impatient to be off to the sea-weed. So away he hurried, with bare legs and just a canvas jacket over his bathing-costume. Pauline went with him to share in his investiga­tions. She, too, wore a bathing costume and the heavy shoes which she used when bound on shrimping expeditions. When they had got about half a mile from the cliffs, and had reached the centre of the spreading tract of sea-weed, still streaming with the water of the ebbing tide, the young man’s enthusiasm burst forth as if he were only now discovering that immense crop of marine plants over which he and Pauline had rambled a hundred times before.

‘Look! look!’ he cried; ‘what money we shall make out of it all; and nobody has ever thought of making any use of it before!’

Then he began to point out to her the different species with gleeful pedantry; the zosterias, of a delicate green and similar to long hair, stretching far away in spreading lawns; the ulvae, with large lettuce-like leaves of glaucous transparency; the serrated fuci and the bladder-bearing fuci, which grew in such thick profusion that they enveloped the rooks like thick moss. As they followed the tide, too, they came upon species of greater size and stranger forms, such as various kinds of laminaria, especially that known as Neptune’s Belt, a girdle-like strip of greenish leather, with wrinkled edges, that looked as though it were made to circle some giant’s waist.

‘What wealth there is going to waste here!’ exclaimed Lazare. ‘How stupid people are! In Scotland folks are sensible enough to make some use of the ulvae at any rate, for they turn it into food and eat it. We here just use the fuci to pack fish with, and the zosteria to stuff mattresses; and as for the rest, it is simply turned into manure; and all that science does is to bum a few cartloads to extract soda from the residue.’

Pauline, in the water to her knees, felt perfectly happy amidst all the sharp saltness; and her cousin’s explanations interested her extremely.

‘So do you intend to distil all this?’ she asked.

Lazare was very much amused with the word ‘distil.’

‘Yes; distil it, if you like to call it so. But the process is a very complicated one, as you’ll see. However, mark my words. We have subjugated terrestrial vegetation to our use; we eat vegetables and fruit, and avail ourselves in other ways of trees and plants, don’t we? Well, perhaps we shall find that we can turn marine vegetation to still greater profit when we seriously try to do so.’

Meantime they both enthusiastically gathered specimens, loading themselves and going so far out that they became drenched on their way back. Lazare went on pouring forth explanations, repeating all that his master, Herbelin, had told him. The ocean was a vast reservoir of chemical compounds, and the sea-weed was ever condensing in its tissues the salts contained in the water. The problem they had to solve was how to extract from the sea-weed all its useful components at small cost. He talked of taking the ashes which resulted from combustion — the impure soda of commerce — of sifting them, and finally extracting in a state of perfect purity the various iodides and bromides of sodium and potassium, the sulphate of soda, and the various salts of iron and manganese, so as to turn every particle of the material to profitable use. He waxed particularly enthusiastic over the fact that by the system which the illustrious Herbelin had devised nothing that could be of the slightest use would be lost. So there was an immense fortune before them.

‘Good gracious! what a mess you’re in!’
cried Madame Chanteau, when they got home again.

‘Never mind about that,’ said Lazare gaily, as he flung his load of sea-weed on to the middle of the terrace. ‘We are bringing you back five-franc pieces.’

The next day one of the Verchemont peasants was sent with a cart to bring back a whole load of weed, and the experiments were commenced in the big room on the second floor. Pauline was appointed assistant. For a month they went quite mad over the subject. The room was soon crammed with dried weeds, with jars containing floating sprays, and instruments of all sorts of odd shapes. There was a microscope on the table, and the piano was hidden beneath retorts and flasks; whilst the wardrobe groaned with the weight of technical works and collections that were perpetually being referred to. The experiments, made with small quantities of material with the most scrupulous care, gave encouraging results. Herbelin’s cold system was based upon the discovery that certain bodies crystallise at very low temperatures, and the only thing required was to obtain the necessary lowness of temperature, whereupon each particular substance deposited itself in crystals successively, and thus separate from others. Lazare burned the weeds in a pit, mixed the ashes with water, and subjected them to the necessary temperature, which he obtained by a refrigerative method based upon the rapid evaporation of ammonia. He would afterwards have to carry out these operations on a large scale and transfer them from the laboratory to proper works, observing careful economy in the method of manufacture and the installation of the requisite plant.

On the day when he succeeded in extracting five distinct substances from his crude liquor, the room rang with cries of triumph. They had obtained quite a surprising proportion of bromide of potassium, and would be able to supply that popular remedy as plentifully as bread. Pauline danced wildly round the table; and then flew downstairs and burst into the dining-room, where her uncle was reading his news­paper and her aunt was marking table-napkins.

‘There!’ she cried, ‘you can be as ill as you like now, and we can give you as much bromide of potassium as ever you’ll want!’

Madame Chanteau, who had been suffering lately from nervous attacks, had been put upon a bromide
régime
by Doctor Cazenove. She smiled as she answered:

‘Have you got enough to cure everyone? — for everyone seems to be out of sorts just now.’

The vigorous young girl, whose face beamed with robust health, spread out her arms as though she were casting the remedy to the four corners of the earth.

‘Yes, yes!’ said she, ‘we shall make enough for the whole world. Neurosis is done for!’

After inspecting the coast Lazare decided that he would build his works near the Golden Bay. It answered all the necessary requirements. It had a wide spreading beach, flagged as it were with flat rocks, which facilitated the gather­ing of the weed; there was good communication from it by the Verchemont Road; land was cheap; the necessary materials were at hand; and it was sufficiently isolated without being remote. Pauline joked about the name which they had given to the bay on account of its gleaming sand. They did not think then, said she, that they would ever find real gold there, as they were going to do now. They made a capital beginning, bought about five acres of barren land at a low price, and obtained the Prefect’s authorisation after only two months’ delay. Then the building was commenced. Boutigny had already arrived on the scene. He was a little, ruddy-faced man of thirty, extremely common in appearance, and the Chanteaus did not take to him at all. He declined to live at Bonneville, saying that he had found a very con­venient house at Verchemont; and the family’s coldness towards him increased when they heard that he had brought there a woman whom he had probably picked up in some low haunt in Paris. Lazare shrugged his shoulders at what he called their provincial narrow-mindedness. She was a very pleasant sort of person, he thought, and had shown a good deal of devotion in consenting to bury herself in such a wilderness; but he made no further protest, on Pauline’s account. What was expected from Boutigny was active surveillance and intelligent organisation of the work, and in this respect he showed himself to be all that could be desired. He was never idle, and had a perfect genius for manage­ment; under his direction the building soon sprang up.

For the next four months, while the work for the in­stallation of the machinery was going on, the Golden Bay Factory, as they called it, became the goal of the young people’s daily walk. Madame Chanteau sometimes went with them, but Matthew was more often their only companion. He soon grew tired, dragged his big feet along wearily till they reached the works, when he would lie down, with his tongue hanging out, panting like a blacksmith’s bellows. The dog was the only one of the party who bathed now, and would rush into the sea whenever a stick was thrown for him to fetch, showing sufficient intelligence to turn his back to the waves when he seized the stick, so as to avoid swallowing the salt water. At each visit to the works Lazare used to hurry on the contractors, while Pauline made practical remarks which occasionally showed a good deal of common-sense.

The apparatus, constructed after designs made by Lazare himself, had been ordered at Caen, and workmen came thence to set it up. Boutigny was beginning to show a good deal of uneasiness at the rapid rate at which the estimates increased. Why couldn’t they have commenced with as small a building as possible, and with merely the absolutely indispensable appliances, he asked. Why launch out into all those intricate workshops and rooms and all that elaborate machinery for a business which it would have been more prudent to have started on a small scale? They might gra­dually have extended it as they gained some experience of the conditions under which it ought to be carried on and the demand there might be for the output. But Lazare was carried away by his enthusiastic dreams, and, if he had been allowed to have his own way entirely, he would have added to the works a magnificent façade looking towards the sea and proclaiming the grandeur of his plans to the limitless horizon. Each visit only seemed to increase his feverish hopes. So, what was the use of being stingy, especially as they were going to make such a fortune out of the place? Thus the walk back was delightfully gay. Poor Matthew used to lag far behind them; and at times Pauline and Lazare would hide behind a wall, as delighted as little children when the dog, suddenly finding himself alone and fearing that he was lost, began hunting about for them in a state of comical alarm.

Every evening on their return they were greeted with the same question: ‘Well, how’s it all getting on? Are you well pleased?’

The answer, too, was always the same.

‘Oh, yes; but it is not finished yet.’

This was a period of close intimacy between the two young people. Lazare showed a warm affection for Pauline, which a feeling of gratitude for the money she had advanced served to strengthen. Again, too, he gradually lost sight of her sex and regarded her as a boyish companion, a younger brother, whose good points became more manifest every day. She was so sensible and courageous, so cheerful and pleasant, that he could not refrain from looking on her with an unconfessed feeling of respect and esteem, which he tried to conceal even from himself by chaffing and teasing her. In the most unconcerned and casual way she had told him of her private studies and her aunt’s horror, and he had experienced a mo­ment’s wonder and embarrassment as the girl, who knew so much already, turned her big candid eyes upon him. After that, however, a perfect understanding seemed to exist between them, and he talked freely and openly, as they worked together at their common studies. She was continually asking him questions, in which she appeared to have no other object than the simple acquisition of information, so that she might make herself useful to him. And she often amused him by the many gaps which she showed in her knowledge, by the extraordinary mixture of information with which she was crammed. When she showed herself to be labouring under some ludicrous misconception, Lazare broke out into such peals of laughter that she grew quite angry with him and told him that it would be much better if, instead of laughing at her, he would show her where she was wrong; and the matter generally terminated in a lesson.

Pauline, however, was changing; she often felt a vague uneasiness. At times, when Lazare pulled her about in his brotherly fashion, her heart would beat excitedly. The woman whom they had forgotten all about was awaking within her amid the pulsing of her blood. She often believed that she was on the point of falling into some serious illness, for she grew very feverish, and could not sleep. In the day-time, too, she felt weary and listless, but she made no complaints to her aunt.