Complete Works of Emile Zola (766 page)

There was a short interval of silence while the embar­rassed family lingered before the table.

‘The girl is evidently avaricious,’ said Madame Chanteau at last. ‘It is a pitiful failing, but I won’t have Lazare worried to death with all these bothers and vexations.’

Then Chanteau broke in timidly:

‘I was never told that any such sum had been spent. It is dreadful to think of. A hundred thousand francs!’

‘Well, what of it!’ interrupted his wife sharply. ‘It will be all repaid to her. If our son marries her, he is certainly capable of making a hundred thousand francs.’

Then they began to discuss the best way out of this difficulty. What had alarmed Lazare more than anything else was a statement given to him by Boutigny, which showed a most desperate condition of affairs. The debts amounted to about twenty thousand francs; and, when Boutigny saw that his partner was determined to retire, he expressed his intention of going to Algeria, where, said he, there was a splendid position awaiting him. But, afterwards, he came to the conclusion that his best coarse would be to get the works into his own possession. So he feigned such un­willingness, and so complicated the accounts, that in the end he managed to secure the site and buildings and ap­paratus against payment of the twenty thousand francs debts; and when, ultimately, Lazare succeeded in wringing out of him some bills for five thousand francs, to be paid at intervals of three months, he regarded it as quite a wonderful victory. On the very next day Boutigny sold off the apparatus and began to adapt the buildings for the manufacture of common commercial soda, to be made in the ordinary routine way, without any ultra-scientific process.

Pauline, who felt a little ashamed at her impulsive move­ment in favour of prudence and economy, became quite cheerful again and submissive, as though she recognised that she had done something for which she ought to seek pardon. When Lazare produced the bills for the five thousand francs, Madame Chanteau was quite triumphant, and insisted upon her niece going upstairs with her to see them put away in the drawer.

‘There, my dear, that’s five thousand francs we’ve got back. There they are: they are all for you. My son has refused to keep a single one of them to repay him for all the trouble he has had.’

Chanteau had been worried in mind for some time now. Although he dared not refuse his signature when it was asked of him, the way in which his wife was dealing with their ward’s fortune filled him with alarm. That total of a hundred thousand francs was for ever ringing in his ears. How could they possibly make up such a deficiency by the time when the accounts would have to be examined? And the worst of it all was that Saccard, the surrogate-guardian, with the fame of whose speculations all Paris re-echoed, had just recalled Pauline’s existence, after apparently forgetting all about her for nearly eight years. He had written to ask after her, and had even spoken of calling at Bonneville one day on his way to transact some business at Cherbourg. What explanation could they possibly give him, if he were to ask for an account of how matters stood, as he undoubtedly had the right to do? This sudden awaking after such a long period of utter indifference was very alarming.

When Chanteau at last spoke to his wife on the matter, he found that she was much more affected by curiosity than by alarm. For a moment, she felt sure that the truth of the matter was that Saccard, with his gigantic speculations, had suddenly found himself ruined, and had bethought himself of getting hold of Pauline’s money to try and regain what he had lost. Then, directly afterwards, she began to wonder whether it was not the girl herself who had written to her surrogate-guardian out of some feeling of revenge. But, when she found that her husband expressed the deepest disgust at any such hypothesis, she began to indulge in com­plicated suppositions of the most unlikely kind. Perhaps, said she, that creature of Boutigny’s, the hussy whom they had refused to receive at their house, and who was running them down in all the shops of Verchemont and Arromanches, had written anonymous letters to Saccard.

‘But they may do what they like, for all that,’ she said. ‘The girl is not eighteen yet, but we have only to marry her straight off to Lazare, and the marriage will at once make her complete mistress of her fortune.’

‘Are you quite sure of that?’ asked Chanteau.

‘Of course I am. I was only reading it in the Code this morning.’

Madame Chanteau had taken to studying the Code lately. Her conscientious scruples were not quite extinct, and she sought about her for reasons to allay them. Legal subtleties had a special interest for her just now in the growing decline of her honesty, which the temptation afforded by the large sum of money in her keeping was gradually and com­pletely destroying.

However, she seemed to hesitate about actually bringing the marriage scheme to an immediate issue. After the finan­cial disaster at the sea-weed works, Pauline herself had wished to hasten affairs. What was the good of waiting another six months till she should be eighteen? They had better get married at once, without waiting for Lazare to look out for other employment. She ventured to say as much to her aunt, who, put out by the girl’s frankness, had recourse to a lie. She closed the door, and whispered that Lazare was really rendered very unhappy by secret trouble. He was extremely sensitive, and it would pain him very much to marry her before he was able to bring her a fortune, now that he had compromised her own. The girl listened to all this with great astonishment, quite unable to understand any such romantic delicacy. What did it matter? Even if he had been very rich, she would have married him all the same, because she loved him. Besides, how long would they have to wait? For ever, very likely. Then Madame Chanteau protested, saying she would do what she could to persuade him to overcome this exaggerated sense of honour, if Pauline would only keep quiet and not try to hurry matters; and, in conclusion, she made her niece swear to say nothing on the subject, as she feared that the young man might do something foolish, perhaps suddenly leave home, if he found that his secret had been discovered and discussed. Pauline, whom her aunt’s remarks filled with un­easiness, then promised to remain silent and patient. Chanteau, however, continued to grow more and more afraid of Saccard, and one day he said to his wife: ‘If it can be managed, Pauline and Lazare had much better be married at once.’

‘There is no hurry,’ she said. ‘The danger is not at the door yet.’

‘But as they are to be married some day — You haven’t changed your mind about it, eh? It will kill them if they are separated.’

‘Kill them, indeed! As long as a thing is not done, it need not be done at all, if it should turn out inadvisable. But they are quite free to do as they like, and we shall see if they continue in the same mind.’

Pauline and Lazare had resumed all their old comrade­ship, while the terribly severe winter kept them both confined to the house. During the first week Lazare seemed so melan­choly, and so ashamed of himself and embittered by his ill-fortune, that Pauline lavished all her tenderness upon him and treated him as gently as though he were an invalid. She felt great pity for that big young man, whose whimsical, en­thusiastic temperament, and mere nervous courage accounted for all his failures, and she gradually began to assume a sort of scolding mother-like authority over him. At first he entirely lost his head and vowed that he would go and work as a mere peasant; then he gave himself up to all kinds of wild projects for making an immediate fortune, and declared that he would not remain a burden on his family for another day. But time slipped on, and he continually deferred putting his plans into execution. Every morning he came down with some new scheme which would at once lead to the greatest wealth and honour. Pauline, frightened by her aunt’s lying confidences, scolded him and asked him if he supposed that anyone wanted him to go bothering himself in that way. It would be soon enough for him to look out for something to do when the spring came, and, no doubt, he would speedily be successful; but, till then, it was necessary for him to rest. At the end of a month she seemed to have gained the better of him, and he fell into a state of dreamy idleness and cynical resignation beneath what he called the burdens of life.

Every day now Pauline found some new trouble in Lazare which upset her. His previous outbursts of temper and his will-o’-the-wisp enthusiasm were preferable to this moody cynicism and bitter profession of scepticism. Pessimism acquired in Paris among fellow-students was reviving in him. The girl could understand that angry disgust at his failure — the catastrophe of the sea-weed scheme — lay at the bottom of his railings against life. But she was not able to divine the other influences at work in him, and had to confine herself to indignant protests when he reverted to his old philosophy — the denial of all progress and the futility of science. Wasn’t that beast of a Boutigny on the high road to fortune with his wretched commercial soda? said Lazare. What was the good, then, of ruining one’s self to make something better, to dis­cover new laws and systems, when empiricism won the day? This was his constant strain, and he would finish by saying, with a bitter smile on his lips, that the only good thing science could do would be to discover a way to blow the whole universe into atoms by means of some colossal cartridge. Then he frigidly jested on the will-power that directs the world and the blind folly of wishing to live. All life, he said, was pain and trouble, and he adopted the doctrine of the Hindoo fakirs, that annihilation was the supreme blessing. When Pauline heard him affecting a horror and disgust of all active motion, and predicting the ultimate self-extinction of the nations, who one day — when their intelligence was highly enough developed to enable them to realise the imbecile, miserable part which an unknown power made them play — would refuse to beget fresh generations, she became indignant and tried to find arguments to confute him; but all to no avail, for she was quite ignorant of these matters, and, as her cousin told her, did not possess a metaphysical head. Still, she would not allow she was beaten, and roundly sent Schopenhauer to the devil when Lazare wanted to read some extracts from his works to her. Schopenhauer, indeed! A man who had written such horrid lies about women! If he had not shown a little affection for animals she would have strangled him! Vigorous with robust health herself, and full of cheerfulness and hope for the morrow, she at last reduced her cousin to silence by her merry laughter and youthful freshness.

‘Stop! stop!’ she would cry. ‘You are talking nonsense. We will think about dying when we have grown old.’

The idea of death, which she spoke of so lightly, always affected him very painfully, and he quickly turned the con­versation, after murmuring:

‘People die at all ages.’

Pauline at last understood that the thought of death was terrible to Lazare. She called to mind his fear-stricken cry that night as they lay on the beach gazing at the stars. At the mention of certain things she saw him turn sickly pale, shut himself up in moody silence, as though he were conceal­ing some disease whose existence he dared not confess. She was greatly surprised at the fear of personal extinction felt by this pessimist, who talked about snuffing out the stars like so many candles amid the wreck of the whole universe. This mental disease of Lazare’s was of old standing, and the girl did not guess the dangerous hold that it had obtained upon her cousin. As he grew older, Lazare had seen death rise before him. Till he was twenty years of age but a faint chill had touched him when he went to bed. But now he could not lay his head on his pillow without the thought of Nevermore freezing his very blood. He tossed about, a prey to sleeplessness, and could not resign himself to the fatal necessity which presented itself so lugubriously to his imagination.

And when, from sheer exhaustion, he had at last fallen asleep, he would awake with a start, and spring up in bed, his eyes staring wildly with terror and his hands clutching one another, as he gasped in the darkness: ‘O my God! my God!’ He would pant for breath and believe that he was dying; and it was not till he had struck a light and thoroughly awakened himself that he regained anything like calmness. After these outbreaks of panic he always retained a feeling of shame that he had allowed himself to cry out to a God whose existence he denied, that he had yielded to the hereditary weakness of the human race in calling amidst its powerlessness for help. But every night he suffered in this way, and even during the daytime a chance word or a momentary thought, arising from something he saw or read, sufficed to throw him into a state of terror. One evening, as Pauline was reading a newspaper to her uncle, Lazare hastily rushed from the room, completely upset by the fancies of some story-teller who pictured the skies of the twentieth century filled with troops of balloons conveying travellers from continent to continent. He had thought that he would no longer be living then, that his eyes would never gaze upon those balloons, which vanished into far-away centuries, the idea of whose revolution, after his own complete extinction, filled him with anguish. It was to no purpose that philo­sophers reminded him that not a spark of life is ever utterly lost; the
Ego
within him ragefully refused to accept its fate. These inward struggles had already deprived him of his former cheerfulness; and when Pauline, who could not always follow the twists and turns of his morbid mind, looked at him at those times when tormenting shame prompted him to conceal his anguish, her heart melted with compassion; she burned to show her love and do all she could to make him happier.

Their days were spent in the big room on the second floor, amidst a litter of sea-weed, bottles, jars, and instruments, which Lazare had never had the energy to clear away. The sea-weed was falling to pieces and the bottles were growing discoloured, while the instruments were getting damaged by neglect. But in all this disorder Pauline and Lazare were alone and warm. Frequently did the December rains beat upon the slates of the roof from morning till night, while the west wind roared organ-like through the crevices of the woodwork. Whole weeks passed without sight of the sun, and there was nothing for the eye to rest upon save the grey sea — a grey immensity, in which the earth seemed to be melting away. Pauline found amusement for her unoccupied hours in classifying a collection of
floridae
which she had gathered during the previous spring. At first Lazare, with his utter
ennui,
had just watched her as she mounted the delicate forms, whose soft blues and reds showed like water-colours; but afterwards, growing weary of his idleness, and forgetting his theory of inaction, he unearthed the piano from the litter of damaged appliances and dirty bottles beneath which it was buried. A week later his passion for music had resumed all its old sway over him. It was a revival of the artistic sense which lay beneath his failure as a scientist and a manufacturer. One morning, as he was playing his March of Death, the idea of the great symphony on Grief, which he had once thought of composing, excited him again. All that had been already written, except the March, was worthless, he thought; and the March was the only portion he would retain. But what a magnificent subject it was — what a task to perform! And how he might embody all his philo­sophy in it! He would commence with the creation of life by the selfish caprice of some superior power. Then would come the delusiveness of happiness and the mockery of life in striking passages, an embrace of lovers, a massacre of soldiers, and the death of a God upon the cross. Throughout every­thing a cry of woe should ascend; the groans of human­kind should mount upwards to the skies, until came the final hymn of deliverance, a hymn whose melting sweet­ness should express all the happiness that came of universal annihilation.