Complete Works of Emile Zola (780 page)

Only once since morning had Madame Chanteau asked for her son, and she had appeared quite content with the first excuse made for his absence, evincing no surprise at not seeing him again. She said nothing about her husband, expressed no uneasiness whatever about his being left alone in the dining-room. All the world was gradually disappear­ing for her, and, minute by minute, the icy coldness of her limbs seemed to mount higher till it chilled her very heart. Whenever meal-time came round, Pauline had to go down­stairs and tell some fib to her uncle. In the evening she told one to Lazare as well, assuring him that the swelling was subsiding.

In the night, however, the disease made alarming progress, and the next morning, soon after daybreak, when Pauline and the servant beheld the sick woman they were terrified by the wandering look in her eyes. Her face was not changed, and there was no feverishness, but her mind appeared to be failing her, a fixed idea seemed to be destroying her reason. She had reached the last phase; her brain, gradually wrought upon by a single absorbing passion, had now become a prey to insanity.

That morning, before Doctor Cazenove’s arrival, they had a terrible time. Madame Chanteau would not even let her niece come near her.

‘Do let me nurse you, I beg you!’ Pauline said. ‘Just let me raise you a little, as you are lying so uncomfortably.’

But her aunt began to struggle as though they were trying to suffocate her.

‘No, no! You have got a pair of scissors there! Ah! you are sticking them into me! I can feel them! I can feel them! I’m bleeding all over!’

The heart-broken girl was obliged to keep at a distance from her aunt. She was quite overcome with fatigue and distress, breaking down with her useless kindly endeavours. She was obliged to put up with insults and accusations which made her burst into tears before she could induce her aunt to accept the slightest service from her. Sometimes all her efforts were in vain, and she fell weeping upon a chair, despairing of ever winning back again that affection of former days, which was now replaced by insane animosity. Still she would become all resignation once more, and strive to find some way of making her assistance acceptable by manifesting even greater care and tenderness. That morning, however, her persistent entreaties ended by provoking a paroxysm which long left her trembling.

‘Aunt,’ she said, as she was preparing a dose of medicine, ‘it’s time for you to take your draught. The Doctor, you know particularly said that you were to take it regularly.’

Madame Chanteau insisted upon seeing the bottle, and then smelt its contents.

‘Is it the same as I had yesterday?’

‘Yes, aunt.’

‘Then I won’t have any of it!’

However, by much affectionate wheedling and entreaties, her niece prevailed on her to take just one spoonful. The sick woman’s face wore an expression of deep suspicion, and no sooner was the spoonful of physio in her mouth than she spat it out again upon the floor, torn by a violent fit of coughing, and screaming out between her hiccoughs:

‘It’s vitriol! It is burning me!’

Amidst this supreme paroxysm her hatred and terror of Pauline, which had gradually increased ever since the day when she had first abstracted a twenty-franc piece of the other’s money, now found vent in a flood of wild words, to which the poor girl listened, quite thunderstruck, unable to say a single syllable in her defence.

‘Ah! you fancied I shouldn’t detect it! You put verdigris and vitriol into everything! It’s that which is killing me! There was nothing the matter with me, and I should have been able to get up this morning if you hadn’t mixed some verdigris with my broth yesterday evening. Yes, you are tired of me, and want to get me buried and done with. But I’m very tough, and it is I who will bury you yet.’

Her speech became thicker, she choked, and her lips turned so black that an immediate catastrophe seemed probable.

‘Oh! aunt, aunt!’ cried Pauline, overcome with terror, ‘you are making yourself so much worse by going on like this!’

‘Well, that’s what you want, I’m sure! Oh! I know you. You have been planning it for a long time; ever since you have been here your only thought has been how to kill us off and get hold of our money. You want to have the house for your own, and I am in your way. Ah! hussy, I ought to have choked you the first day you came here! I hate you! I hate you!’

Pauline stood there motionless, weeping in silence. Only one word rose to her lips, as though in involuntary protest against her aunt’s accusations. ‘Oh God! God!’

But Madame Chanteau was completely exhausted by the violence of her fury, and her mad outburst gave place to a childish terror. She fell back on her pillow, crying:

‘Don’t come near me! Don’t touch me! If you do I shall scream out for help! No, no! I won’t drink it; it’s poison!’

She pulled the bed-clothes over her with her twitching hands, buried her head amongst the pillows, and kept her mouth tightly closed. When her niece, who was terribly alarmed, came to her bedside to try to calm her, she broke out into frightful screams.

‘Aunt dear, be reasonable. I won’t make you take any against your will.’

‘Yes, you will! You’ve got the bottle! Oh! I’m terrified! I’m terrified!’

She was almost at the last gasp; her head had got too low, and purple blotches appeared upon her face. Pauline, imagin­ing that her aunt was dying, rang the bell for Véronique; and it was as much as the two of them could do to raise her up and lay her properly on her pillows.

Then Pauline’s own personal sufferings and heartaches disappeared amidst her intense grief. She thought no more about the last wound which her heart had received; all her passion and jealousy vanished in presence of that great wretchedness. Every other feeling became lost in one of deep pity, and she would have gladly endured injustice and insult and have sacrificed herself still more if by so doing she could only have given comfort and consolation to the others. She set herself bravely to bear the principal share of life’s woes; and from that moment she never once gave way, but mani­fested beside her aunt’s death-bed all the quiet resignation which she had shown when threatened by death herself. She was always ready; she never recoiled from anything. Even her old gentle affection came back to her; she forgave her aunt for all her mad violence during her paroxysms, and wept with pity at finding that she had gradually become insane; forcing herself to think of her as she had been in earlier years, loving her as she had done on that stormy evening when she had first come with her to Bonneville.

That day Doctor Cazenove did not call till after luncheon. An accident had detained him at Verchemont; a farmer there had broken his arm, and the Doctor had stayed to set it. After seeing Madame Chanteau he came down into the kitchen, and made no attempt to conceal his alarm. Lazare was sitting there by the fire, in that feverish idleness which preyed upon him.

‘There is no more hope, is there?’ he asked. ‘I was reading Bouillaud’s Treatise on the Diseases of the Heart again last night.’

Pauline, who had come downstairs with the Doctor, once more gave him an entreating look, which prompted him to interrupt the young man in his usual brusque fashion. Whenever an illness turned out badly, he always showed a little anger.

‘Ah! the heart, my good fellow, the heart seems to be the only idea you have got! One can’t be certain of anything. For my own part, I believe it’s rather the liver that is affected. But, of course, when the machine gets out of order, every­thing in turn is more or less affected — the lungs, the stomach, and the heart itself. Instead of reading Bouillaud last night, which has only upset you, you would have done much better to go to sleep.’

This dictum of the Doctor’s was like an order given to the house. In Lazare’s presence it was always said that his mother was dying from a diseased liver; but he refused to believe it, and spent his sleepless hours in turning over the pages of his old books. He grew quite confused over the different symptoms, and the remark made by the Doctor that the various organs of the human body became successively deranged only served to increase his alarm.

‘Well,’ he said with difficulty, ‘how long, then, do you think she will last?’

Cazenove made a gesture of doubt.

‘A fortnight; perhaps a month. You had better not question me, for I might make a mistake, and then you would be right in saying that we know nothing and can do nothing. But the progress that the disease has made since yesterday is terrible.’

Véronique, who was washing some glasses, looked at him in alarm. Could it really be true, then, that Madame was so very ill and was going to die? Until then she had been unable to believe there was any actual danger, and had gone about her work muttering to herself of people who tried to frighten folks out of pure malice. But she now seemed stupefied, and when Pauline told her to go upstairs to Madame Chanteau, that there might be some one with her, she wiped her hands on her apron and left the kitchen, ejaculating:

‘Oh, well, in that case — in that case—’

‘We must not forget my uncle, Doctor,’ said Pauline, who seemed to be the only one who retained self-possession. ‘Don’t you think we ought to warn him? Will you see him before you go?’

Just at that moment Abbé Horteur came in. He had only heard that morning of what he called ‘Madame Chanteau’s indisposition.’ When he learned how seriously ill she really was, an expression of genuine sorrow passed over his tanned face, so cheerful a moment before as he came in from the fresh air. The poor lady! Could it be possible? She who had seemed so well and strong only three days ago!

Then after a moment’s silence he asked if he could see her; at the same time glancing anxiously at Lazare, whom he knew to be little given to religion. On that account he seemed to anticipate a refusal. But the young man, who was quite broken down, did not appear to have noticed the priest’s question, and it was Pauline who answered it.

‘No, not to-day, your reverence. She does not know the danger she is in, and your presence might have an alarming effect upon her. We will see to-morrow.’

‘Very well,’ the priest at once replied; ‘there is no great urgency, I hope. But we must all do our duty, you know. And as the Doctor here refuses to believe in God—’

For the last moment or two the Doctor had been gazing earnestly at the table, absorbed in thought, lost in a maze of doubt, as was always the case when he could not overcome illness. He had just caught the Abbé’s last words, however, and he interrupted him, saying:

‘Who told you that I didn’t believe in God? God is not an impossibility; one sees very strange things! And, after all, who can be sure?’

Then he shook his head and roused himself from his reverie.

‘Stay!’ he went on, ‘you shall come with me and shake hands with our good friend Monsieur Chanteau. He will soon stand in need of all the courage he can muster.’

‘If you think it will cheer him at all,’ the priest obligingly replied, ‘I shall be glad to stay and play a few games of draughts with him.’

Then they both went off to the dining-room, while Pauline hastened back to her aunt. Lazare, when he was left alone, rose and hesitated for a moment as to whether he also should not go upstairs; then he went to the dining-room door to listen to his father’s voice, without mustering enough courage to enter; and finally he came back to the kitchen again, and sank down upon the same chair as before, surrendering himself to his despair.

The priest and the Doctor had found Chanteau rolling a paper ball across the table — a ball formed of a prospectus discovered inside a newspaper. Minouche, who was lying near, looked on with her green eyes. She appeared to disdain such an elementary plaything, for she had her paws stowed away beneath her, never deigning to strike out at it with her claws, though it had rolled close to her nose.

‘Hallo! is it you?’ cried Chanteau. ‘It is very good of you to come and see me. I’m very dull — all by myself. Well, Doctor, she’s getting on all right, I hope? Oh! I don’t feel at all uneasy about her; she’s by far the strongest of all of us; she will see us all buried.’

It occurred to the Doctor that this would be a good oppor­tunity for informing Chanteau of the real state of affairs.

‘Well, certainly, there’s nothing very alarming in her condition, but she seems to me to be very weak.’

‘Ah! Doctor,’ Chanteau exclaimed, ‘you don’t know her. She has an incredible fund of strength; you will see her on her feet again in a day or two!’

In his complete belief in his wife’s vigorous constitution, he quite failed to understand the Doctor’s hints; and the latter, not wishing to tell him the dreadful truth in plain words, could say no more. Besides, he thought that it would be as well to wait a little longer; for just then Chanteau was free from pain, his gout only troubling him in his legs, though these were sufficiently incapacitated to make it necessary to wheel him to bed in his chair.

‘If it were not for these wretched legs of mine,’ he said, ‘I would go upstairs and see her myself.’

‘Resign yourself, my friend,’ said Abbé Horteur, who in his turn now tried to carry out his office of consoler. ‘We each have our own cross to bear, and we are all in the hands of God—’

But he did not fail to notice that these words, so far from consoling Chanteau, only appeared to bore and even disquiet him, so he cut his exhortation short and substituted for it something more efficacious.

‘Would you like to have a game at draughts? It will do you good.’

He went in person to take the draught-board from the cup­board. Chanteau was delighted, and shook hands with the Doctor, who then took his departure. The two others were soon deep in their game, quite forgetful of all else in the world, when all at once Minouche, who had probably got tired of seeing the paper ball under her nose, sprang forward, sent it spinning away, and bounded in wild antics after it all round the room.

‘What a capricious creature!’ cried Chanteau, put out in his play. ‘She wouldn’t have a game with me on any account a little while ago, and now she prevents one from thinking by playing all by herself.’

‘Never mind her,’ said the priest mildly: ‘cats have their own way of amusing themselves.’