Complete Works of Emile Zola (941 page)

Lise had determined to put Jules to bed, and the wake began. Three times did Fanny and La Bécu say they were going, as La Frimat had offered to stay the night with the young ones; but they did not go, continuing to talk in low tones, and glancing askance from time to time at the corpse, while Nénesse, who had got possession of the bottle of Eau de Cologne, finished it up by drenching his hands and hair with its contents.

As twelve o’clock struck, La Bécu raised her voice. “And how about Monsieur Finet, I should like to know! Plenty of time he gives people to die in! More than two hours bringing him here from Cloyes!”

The door leading to the yard was open, and just then a great gust came in, and blew out the candles on either side of the corpse. This terrified them all, and as they re-lit the candles, the tempestuous blast returned with greater fury, while a prolonged howling arose and swelled in the dark depths of the country-side. It might have been the gallop of a devastating army approaching, so loudly did the branches crash, so deep was the wail of the riven fields. They had run to the doorway, and saw a coppery cloud whirl wildly across the livid sky. Suddenly there was a rattle, as it were, of musketry, and a rain of bullets fell lashing and rebounding at their feet. A cry of ruin and desolation burst from their lips. “Hail! Hail!”

Pale and aghast at the scourge above them, they stood there watching. It lasted barely six minutes. There were no thunder-claps; but great bluish flashes seemed incessantly to run along the ground in broad phosphoric furrows. The night was not now so gloomy: the hail stones lit it up with numberless pale streaks as if jets of glass had fallen. The noise became deafening: like a discharge of grape shot, like a train rushing at full speed over an endlessly thundering metal bridge. The wind blew furiously, and the obliquely falling stones slashed everything, accumulated and covered the soil with a layer of white.

“Hail! Oh, dear! What a misfortune! Look, look! Exactly like hen’s eggs!”

They dared not venture into the yard to pick any up. The violence of the hurricane continued to increase; all the window-panes were broken; and the momentum was such that one hailstone cracked a jug, while others rolled as far as the dead man’s mattress.

“There wouldn’t be five to the pound,” said Madame Bécu, poising them in her hand.

Fanny and La Frimat made a gesture of despair.

“Everything ruined! A massacre!”

It was over. The disastrous roar was heard rapidly passing away, and a death-like silence fell. The sky, in the rear of the cloud, had become as black as ink. A fine close rain streamed noiselessly down. Nothing was now distinguishable on the ground but the thick layer of hailstones: a gleaming sheet that had, as it were, a light of its own, the shimmer of infinite millions of night-lights.

Nénesse having rushed out of doors, returned with a perfect iceberg, an irregular jagged mass bigger than his fist; and La Frimat, who could no longer keep still, was unable to resist the temptation to go and see how things were.

“I’m going to fetch my lantern; I must know what the damage is,” she said.

Fanny controlled herself a few minutes longer, prolonging her lamentations. Oh, what a piece of work! What destruction among the vegetables and fruit-trees! The wheat, oats, and barley were not high enough to have suffered much. But the vines! Ah, the vines! And, standing at the door, she peered into the thick, impenetrable night, and quivered in a fever of uncertainty, trying to estimate the mischief, exagger­ating it, and imagining that she saw the land riddled with shot and its life oozing from the wounds.

“Hey! my pets,” she said at last: “I’ll borrow one of your lanterns and run over as far as our vines.”

Then she lit one of the two lanterns and disappeared with Nénesse.

La Bécu, who had no land, didn’t at heart care a fig. She fetched sighs and apostrophised Heaven, merely out of a habit she had of feebly moaning and melting into tears on all occa­sions. Nevertheless, curiosity continually took her to the door; and a lively interest fixed her there once for all as soon as she noticed that the village was starred all over with luminous points. Through a gap in the yard, between the cow-house and a shed, the eye could command the whole of Rognes. Doubtless, the hail-storm had awoke the peasants, and they were all seized with the same impatience to take a look at their fields, all too anxious to wait till daylight.

And indeed the lanterns came forth one by one, multiplying and flitting lightly to and fro, in so dense an opacity, that the arms that held them were merely conjectural. But La Bécu, always on the watch, knew the site of every house, and suc­ceeded in putting a name to every lantern.

“There, now! That one’s lit in La Grande’s house, and that one’s coming out of the Fouans’, and over yonder it’s Macqueron, and next door it’s Lengaigne. Bless me, poor souls! it’s heart-breaking. Well, so much the worse! I’m off to join them!”

Lise and Françoise remained alone with their father’s corpse. The downpour of the rain continued; little moist breezes skimmed along the ground and guttered the candles. The door ought to have been shut, but neither of them thought of it, being themselves absorbed and agitated by the drama outside, despite the mourning in the house. It wasn’t enough, then, to have Death at home? The good God was smashing up everything; one didn’t so much as know if there would be a bit of bread left to eat.

“Poor father,” murmured Françoise; “what a stew he would have been in! Better that he can’t see it.”

And, as her sister took up the second lantern, she added:

“Where are you going?”

“I’m thinking of the peas and beans. I’ll be back directly.”

Lise crossed the yard, through the driving rain, and went into the kitchen-garden. There was only Françoise left with the old man, and even she was standing at the doorway, keenly agitated by the flitting of the lantern to and fro. She thought she could hear complaints and sobs. Her heart was wrung.

“Hey! What is it?” she cried. “What’s the matter?”

No voice replied, but the lantern ran to and fro more quickly, as if distracted.

“Tell me, are the beans cut down? And the peas, are they hurt? Gracious! And the fruit and salad stock?”

An exclamation of grief, which now distinctly reached her ears, decided her. She caught up her skirts and ran through the rain to join her sister. The dead man remained, deserted, in the empty kitchen, lying rigid under the sheet, between the two dull, smoky wicks. His left eye, still obstinately open, stared at the old joists of the ceiling.

What a ravage had laid that stretch of land desolate! What a lamentation arose from the scene of disaster, half visible in the flickering gleam of the lanterns. Lise and Françoise carried theirs hither and thither, though it was so wet with rain that scarcely any light passed through the panes; and they brought it close to the beds, confusedly distinguish­ing, in the narrow ring of light, the beans and peas cut down short, the lettuces so chopped and hacked that it was futile even to think of utilising the leaves. The trees, especially, had suffered. The smaller branches and the fruit had been cut off as with knives. The very trunks were splintered and bruised, and the sap was escaping through the holes in the bark. Farther on, among the vines, matters were worse: the lanterns swarmed and leaped, as if maddened, amid groans and oaths. The stocks seemed to have been mown down, and bunches of blossom bestrewed the soil in company with shattered branches and spurs. Not only was the season’s crop ruined, but the stems, stripped bare, would decay and die. No one felt the rain. A dog was howling murder, and women were bursting into tears, as on the brink of a grave. Macqueron and Lengaigne, in spite of their rivalry, were lighting each other, visiting each other’s ground, and joining in ejaculations of dismay, as each new vision of ruin, wan and short-lived, met their gaze, and then faded again into shadow behind them. Although old Fouan now had no land of his own, he wanted to look on, waxing wroth. By degrees they all flew into a temper. To actually lose the fruit of a year’s work in a quarter of an hour! Could it be possible? What had they done to be so punished? There was no security or justice; unreasoning scourges and caprices slew the world. La Grande, in a fury, abruptly picked up some pebbles, and flung them into the air to pierce the heaven she could not discern. And she blasphemously screamed out:

“Hey, up there! Can’t you manage to leave us in peace?”

On the mattress in the kitchen, the deserted Mouche was still staring fixedly at the ceiling with his one eye, when two vehicles drew up at the door. Jean had at length brought Monsieur Finet, after waiting for him at his house during nearly three hours; and had returned in the cart, while the doctor had ordered out his gig.

The medical man, tall and thin, with a face jaundiced by stifled ambition, entered roughly. In his heart he loathed this peasant connection, which he held responsible for his mediocrity.

“What, no one here? Things have mended, then.”

But perceiving the corpse: “No, too late! Didn’t I tell you? I didn’t want to come! It’s always the same old game: they call me in when they’re dead.”

This useless summons in the middle of the night annoyed him; and Lise and Françoise, just then returning, put the finishing touch to his exasperation by apprising him that they had waited a couple of hours before sending for him.

“It’s you that have killed him, sure enough. Eau de Cologne and linden-flower tea for a fit of apoplexy! How idiotic! And, what’s more, no one keeping him company. It’s pretty certain he won’t see salvation.”

“It’s because of the hail, sir,” stammered Lise, in tears.

Monsieur Finet became interested, and calmed down. Dear, dear! So there’s been a hail-storm? By dint of living among the peasantry he had eventually caught their passions. Jean, also, had drawn near; and they both uttered exclama­tions of amazement, for, in coming from Cloyes, they had not seen a single hail-stone. Some spared, and others, half a mile or so off, turned topsy-turvy! Really, what a piece of ill luck to have one’s land in the damaged part of the country! Then, as Fanny returned, bringing back the lantern, La Bécu and La Frimat following her, and all the three launching out into grievous and interminable details of the harrowing things they had seen, — the doctor gravely declared:

“It’s a calamity, a great calamity. There’s no greater calamity for country-folk.”

A muffled sound, a kind of bubbling noise, interrupted him. It came from the corpse, lying forgotten between the two candles. They all became silent, and the women crossed themselves.

CHAPTER III

A month passed by. Old Fouan, appointed guardian to Françoise, who was entering on her fifteenth year, induced the two girls — his ward and Lise, who was the elder by ten years — to let all their land, excepting a strip of meadow, to cousin Delhomme, so that it might be properly cultivated and kept.

Now that the two girls were left alone in the house, with­out father or mother, they would have had to engage a servant, which would have been ruinous, on account of the increasing price of manual labour. Delhomme, moreover, was simply doing them a service, as he undertook to cancel the lease as soon as either of them married, and a division of the inheritance became necessary.

Lise and Françoise also sold their cousin their horse, which had now become useless, but they kept the two cows, La Coliche and La Rousse, as well as the donkey, Gédéon. Of course they likewise kept their patch of kitchen garden, which it became the province of the elder girl to keep in order, while the younger one looked after the live stock. To be sure, that made plenty of work; but they were hale and hearty, thank God! and would soon get through with it.

The first few weeks were very burdensome, for there was the damage of the hail-storm to be repaired, the soil to be tilled, the vegetables to be replanted. This it was that induced Jean to lend a helping hand. An intimacy had sprung up be­tween him and the girls since the day he had brought their dying father home. The day after the burial he called and inquired after them. Next he came and chatted, growing gradually familiar and obliging, insomuch that one afternoon he took the spade out of Lise’s hands to finish the digging of a bed. Thence­forth he devoted to them, in a friendly way, the time that was not taken up by his work at the farm. He belonged to the house, to that old patriarchal house of the Fouans, built three centuries back by an ancestor, and honoured by the whole family with a sort of worship. When Mouche used to complain of having had the worst lot in the distribution of the property, accusing his brother and sister of having swindled him, they answered: “And how about the house? Hadn’t he got the house?”

A poor, dilapidated house it was, settling down on its foundations, cracked and rickety, patched up everywhere with odds and ends of plank and plaster. It had obviously been originally constructed of rough stones and clay; subsequently, two walls had been rebuilt with mortar; and finally, towards the beginning of the century, the owners had reluctantly replaced the thatch with a roofing of small slates, now rotten. Thus it had lasted, and thus it still held out; sunk a yard deep in the earth, as all houses were built in the olden time, doubtless for the pur­pose of ensuring greater warmth. The inconvenience of it was that, in heavy storms, they were flooded with water; and it was of no avail to sweep the hardened soil that composed the cellar-like floor; there was always a remnant of mud in the corners.

The house had been planned, however, with particular artful­ness, its back being turned towards the far-stretching northern plain of La Beauce, whence blew the terrible winter winds. On that side, in the kitchen, the only opening was a narrow window, barricaded by a shutter, on a level with the street; while on the southern side, one found the other windows and the door. The place suggested one of those fisher-huts on the sea-shore, which do not expose a single chink to the ocean waves. The winds of La Beauce had battered the house aslant, so that it bent forward like an old broken-backed hag.

Jean was soon familiar with every corner of it. He helped to clean up the room of the deceased; that corner cut off from the granary by a mere plank partition, and containing nothing but an old chest full of straw serving as a bed, with a chair and a table. Downstairs he did not go beyond the kitchen, for he shrank from following the two sisters into their own room, where, as the door was always on the swing, one could see the double-bedded alcove, the large walnut wardrobe, and a superbly-carved round table, doubtless a relic formerly stolen from the château. There existed yet another room behind this, but it was so damp that the father had preferred to sleep up-stairs. They were reluctant even to store potatoes in it, for they began immediately to germinate. They lived in the kitchen, a huge smoky room where, for three centuries, many generations of Fouans had succeeded each other. It was redolent of sustained toil and stinted food, of the constant efforts of people who, while working themselves to death, had just managed not to starve, never having a halfpenny more in December than they had in January. A door that opened flush into the cow-house brought the cattle into companionship with the occupants, and when that door was shut, the animals could still be seen and watched through a pane of glass let into the wall. Next there came the stable, where Gédéon now remained by himself; then a shed and a wood-house; and there was no need to go out of doors, for you entered every place in succession. Outside, the rains replenished the pond, which furnished them with water for the cattle and for domestic use. Every morning they had to go down to the Aigre to bring up drinking-water.