Complete Works of Emile Zola (795 page)

But it was in vain that he tried to banish the importunate spectre; he never ceased to hear within himself the grating of the wheels which he fancied had so nearly run down; he felt that he was helplessly descending the slope of years, and the thought of the deep, black pit that lay at the bottom of it threw him into an icy perspiration and made his hair stand on end with horror.

When Lazare ceased going to his office, quarrels broke out at home. He manifested excessive irritability, which flared up at the slightest opposition. His increasing mental disorder, which he tried so carefully to conceal, revealed itself in angry snappishness, fits of moody sulking, and wild, mad actions. At one time he was so possessed by the fear of fire that he removed from a third-floor flat to one on the ground floor, in order that he might more easily escape whenever the house should burn. A perpetual anticipation of coming evil completely poisoned the present, and prevented him from deriving any enjoyment from it. Every time a door was opened rather noisily he started up in fear; and his heart throbbed violently whenever a letter was put into his hand. He suspected everybody. His money was hidden in small sums in all sorts of places, and he kept his simplest plans and intentions secret. He felt embittered, too, against the world, thinking that he was misunderstood and underrated, and that all his successive failures were the result of a general conspiracy against him. But ever-growing boredom dominated everything else — the
ennui
of a man whose mind was unhinged and to whom the incessant idea of death made all action distasteful, so that he dragged himself idly through life on the plea of its nothingness and worthlessness. What was the use of troubling? The powers of science were miserably limited; it could neither prevent nor foresee. He was possessed by the sceptical
ennui
of his generation, not the romantic
ennui
of Werther or René, who regretfully wept over the old beliefs, but the
ennui
of the new doubters, the young scientists who worry themselves and declare that the world is unendurable because they have not immediately found the secret of life in their retorts.

In Lazare the unavowed terror of ceasing to be was, by a logical contradiction, blended with a ceaseless braggart insistence upon the nothingness of things. It was his very terror, the want of equilibrium in his morbid temperament, that drove him into pessimistic ideas and a mad hatred of life. As it could not last for ever, he looked upon it as a mere fraud and delusion. Was not the first half of one’s days spent in dreaming of happiness and the latter half in regrets and fears? He fell back again upon the theories of ‘the old one,’ as he called Schopenhauer, whose most violent passages he used to recite from memory. He expatiated on the desirability of destroying the wish to live, and so bringing to an end the barbarous and imbecile exhibition of existence, with the spectacle of which the master force of the world, prompted by some incomprehensible egotistical reason, amused itself. He wanted to do away with life in order to do away with fear. He always harped upon the great deliverance; one must wish nothing for fear of evil, avoid all action since it meant pain, and thus sink entirely into death. He occupied himself in trying to discover some practical method of general suicide, some sudden and complete disappearance to which all living creatures would consent. This was perpetually recurring to his mind, even in the midst of ordinary conversation, when he freely and roughly gave vent to it. The slightest worry was sufficient to make him cry that he was sorry he was not yet annihi­lated; a mere headache set him raging furiously at his body. If he talked with a friend, his conversation immediately turned upon the woes of life, and the luck of those who were already fattening the dandelions in the cemeteries. He had a perfect mania for mournful subjects, and he was much interested in an article by a fanciful astronomer who an­nounced the arrival of a comet with a tail which would sweep the earth away like a grain of sand. Would not this indeed prove the expected cosmical catastrophe, the colossal cartridge destined to blow the world to bits like a rotten old boat? And this desire of his for death, this constant theorizing about universal annihilation, was but the expression of his desperate struggle with his terror, a mere vain hubbub of words, by which he tried to veil the awful fear which the expectation of his end caused him.

The knowledge that his wife was
enceinte
gave him a fresh shock. It caused him an indefinable sensation, com­pounded of joy and an increase of disquietude. Notwith­standing the contrary views of ‘the old one,’ the thought of becoming a father thrilled him with pride — indeed, a vain wonder, as though he were the first person whom such a thing had befallen. But his joy quickly became poisoned; he tormented himself with forebodings of a disastrous issue; already making up his mind that his wife would die, and that the child would never
be
born. And, indeed, it happened that Louise’s health became very bad, for she was far from strong; and then the confusion of the household and the upsetting of their usual habits, together with their frequent bickerings, soon made them both thoroughly miserable. The expectation of a child, which ought to have brought the husband and wife more closely together, only served, indeed, to increase the misunderstanding between them. Thus, when Louise’s doctor suggested a visit to the mountains, Lazare was delighted to take her to her sister-in-law’s and secure a fortnight’s freedom for himself on the plea of going to see his father at Bonneville. At the bottom of his heart he really felt ashamed of this flight; but, after arguing the matter with his conscience, he persuaded himself that a short separation would have a tranquillising effect upon both of them, and that it would be quite sufficient if he joined his wife before the expected event.

On the evening when Pauline at last learned the whole history of the past eighteen months she remained for a moment unable to speak — quite overcome, indeed, by the pitiable story. They were sitting in the dining-room; she had put Chanteau to bed, and Lazare had just finished making his confession in front of the cold tea-pot, beneath the lamp which was now burning dimly.

After an interval of silence Pauline at last exclaimed:

‘Why, you don’t love each other any longer!’

Her cousin rose to go upstairs, and replied, with an uneasy smile:

‘We love each other as much as is possible, my dear girl. You don’t understand things, shut up here in this hole. Why should love fare better than anything else?’

As soon as she had closed the door of her own room Pauline fell into one of those fits of despondency which had so often tortured her and kept her awake, on the very same chair, while all the rest of them were sleeping. Was there going to be a renewal of trouble? She had hoped it was all done with, both for others and herself, when she had torn her heart asunder and given Lazare to Louise; and now she found how useless her sacrifice had been. They had already ceased to love each other; it was all to no purpose that she had wept bitter tears and martyred herself. To this wretched result had she come, to fresh trouble and strife, the thought of which added to her grief. There seemed to be no end to suffering!

Then as, with her arms hanging listlessly in front of her, she sat watching her candle burn away, the oppressive thought arose from her conscience that she alone was guilty. She tried, but in vain, to struggle against the facts. It was she alone who had brought about that marriage, without understanding that Louise would never prove the wife that her cousin needed. She saw it now clearly enough. She recognised that the other was much too nervously inclined herself to be able to steady him, for she lost her head at the merest trifle, and her only charm lay in her caressing nature — a charm of which Lazare had already tired. Why did all this only occur to her now? Were not these, indeed, the very reasons which had determined her to let Louise take her place? She had thought that Louise possessed a more loving nature than her own; she had believed that Louise, with her kisses and caresses, would be able to free Lazare from his gloomy despondency. Ah! the pity of it all! To have brought about evil when she had striven to accomplish good, and to have shown such ignorance of life as to have brought ruin upon those she yearned to save! Yet she had felt so sure that she was right and was perfecting her good work on the day when their happiness had cost her such bitter tears! Now she felt contempt for her kind­liness, since kindliness did not always create happiness.

The house was wrapped in sleep. In the quiet of her room she could hear nothing but the throbbing of her temples. Within her was gradually surging a rebellious regret. Why had she not married Lazare herself? He had been hers; she had had no right to give him to another. Perhaps he might have been wretched and despondent at first, but by-and-by she would have restored his courage and protected him from his insane fancies. She had always felt foolishly doubtful of herself, and from that alone all the unhappiness had arisen. The consciousness of her own robust health and strength and all her power of affection forced itself upon her again. Was she not superior in every way to that other girl? How foolish she had been in weakly effacing herself! She loved her cousin sufficiently well to disappear if the other girl could make him happy; but since she knew not how to keep his love, was it not her duty to act and break that wicked union? And her anger grew apace; she felt that she was both braver and more beautiful than the other. Conviction flashed upon her mind; it was she who ought to have married Lazare.

Then she was overwhelmed with regret. The hours of the night passed, one by one, yet she did not think of seeking her bed. She sat there, staring at the tall flame of the candle without seeing it, in a vivid waking dream. She was no longer in her old bedroom. She thought she had married Lazare, and their life unrolled itself before her eyes in a series of pictures of love and delight. They were at Bonneville, by the edge of the blue sea, or in Paris, in some busy street. They were in a peaceful little room, with books lying about it and sweet roses on the table; the lamp gave out a soft, clear light, while the ceiling was steeped in shadow. Every moment their hands sought each other. Lazare had recovered all the careless gaiety of his early youth, and she loved him so much that he had again come to believe in the eternity of existence. Just now they were sitting at table; now they were going out together; to-morrow she would go over the week’s accounts with him. She loved those little domestic details; she made them the foundation of their happiness, which knew no break from the laughing toilet in the morning until the last kiss at night. In the summer they travelled. Then one day she discovered that she was likely to become a mother. But just then a shivering shudder dissipated her dream, and she was no longer far away, but in her own room at Bonneville, staring at her expiring candle. A mother! Ah! the misery of it! It was that other who would be one; never would any of those things happen to herself, never would those joys be hers! The shock was so painful that tears gushed from her eyes, and she wept distractedly, sob­bing like one heart-broken. At last the candle burnt out, and she had to seek her bed in darkness.

That feverish night left Pauline with a feeling of deep emotion and charitable pity for the disunited husband and wife, and for herself. Her grief melted into a kind of affec­tionate hope. She could not have told on what she was reckoning; she dared not analyse the confused sentiments which agitated her heart. But, after all, why should she trouble herself in this way? Hadn’t she at least ten days before her? It would be time enough to think of matters by-and-by. What was of immediate importance was to tran­quillise Lazare, so that he might derive some benefit from his stay at Bonneville. And she assumed her old gaiety of demeanour, and soon they plunged afresh into their life of former days.

At first it seemed a renewal of the old comradeship of early youth. ‘Don’t bother about that tiresome play of yours. It will only get hissed. Come and help me to look whether Minouche has carried her ball of thread on to the top of the cupboard,’ said Pauline.

He held a chair for her, while she mounted upon it, and, standing on tip-toes, looked for the missing thread. The rain had been falling for the last two days and they could not leave the big room. Their laughter rang out as they kept on unearthing some relic of old days.

‘Oh, see! here is the doll which you made out of two of my old collars. Ah! and this — don’t you remember? — is the portrait of you that I drew the day when you made your­self so frightfully ugly by getting into a rage and crying, because I wouldn’t lend you my razor.’

Then Pauline wagered that she could still jump at a single bound on to the table; Lazare, too, jumped, quite glad at being drawn out of himself. His play was already lying neglected in a drawer. One morning when they came across the great symphony on Grief she played portions of it to him, accentuating the rhythm in a comical fashion. He made fun of his composition and sang the notes to support the piano, whose weak tones could scarcely be heard. But one little bit, the famous March of Death, made them both serious; it was really not bad, and must be preserved. Everything pleased them and struck a chord of tenderness in their hearts: a collection of
floridae
which Pauline had once mounted, and which they now discovered behind some books; a forgotten jar containing a sample of the bromide of potas­sium which they had extracted from the seaweed; a small broken model of a stockade, which looked as though it had been wrecked by a storm in a teacup. Then they romped over the house, chasing each other like schoolboys at play. They were perpetually rushing up and down the stairs and scamper­ing through the rooms, banging the doors noisily. It seemed as if the old days had come back again. She was ten years old once more, and he was nineteen; and she again felt for him all the enthusiastic friendship of a little girl. Nothing was changed. In the dining-room there still remained the sideboard of bright walnut, the polished brass hanging-lamp, the view of Vesuvius, and the four lithographs of the Seasons, while the grandfather’s masterpiece still slum­bered in its old place. There was only one room which they entered with silent emotion — that which Madame Chanteau had occupied, and which had been unused since her death. The secrétaire was never opened now, but the hangings of yellow cretonne, with their pattern of flower-work, were fading from the bright sunlight which was occasionally allowed to enter the room. It so happened that the anniversary of Madame Chanteau’s birth came round about this time, and they decked the room with big bunches of flowers.