Complete Works of Emile Zola (971 page)

“Lean on me, father.”

“Give me your hand, father.”

They then carefully assisted him out of the trap, and the old man remained standing between them, full of uneasy conster­nation, for he now felt sadly certain that they had discovered his secret.

“What has come over you all?” he asked. “Why you seem to have suddenly grown very fond of me?”

Their amiability, indeed, quite frightened him. He would rather have seen them comporting themselves as usual towards him — rough and harsh, and wanting in respect. He foresaw a world of trouble in store for him, now that they knew of his secret hoard; and he returned to the Château in a very distressful state of mind.

It happened that Canon, who had not made his appearance for the last two months, was now there, sitting on a stone and waiting for Hyacinthe’s return. As soon as he caught sight of him, he called out:

“There’s that daughter of yours in Couillard’s wood, and there’s a man with her.”

The father almost exploded with rage and indignation, and the blood rushed angrily to his face.

“The lewd hussy,” he said, “to disgrace me in that way!”

He took down a big carter’s whip which was hanging behind the door, and then hurried off down the stony bank to the little wood. La Trouille’s geese, however, kept guard over her like faithful watch-dogs, when she was up to her pranks. The gander immediately sniffed the father’s approach, and darted forward, followed by the whole flock. Raising his wings and stretching out his neck, the male bird broke out into a continuous, menacing hiss, while the rest of the flock, forming into line of battle, also stretched out their necks, and opened their great yellow beaks, ready to bite. The poacher cracked his whip at them, and the sound of a hasty retreat then became audible behind the bushes. La Trouille had heard the warning, and had made her escape.

When Hyacinthe restored the whip to its place, he seemed overcome by a deep philosophical sadness. It might be that his daughter’s persistent lewdness filled him with pity for human passions, or it might merely be the natural reaction after his triumphant hilariousness at Cloyes. Shaking his rough scampish-looking head:

“Bah!” he cried to Canon, “it isn’t worth that much!” And then, raising his leg over the valley that was now buried in shadow, he let off a violent and contemptuous deton­ation, as though he wished to overwhelm the neighbourhood.

CHAPTER IV

It was now early in October. The vintage was about to commence; a week of merry joviality, during which such families as had fallen out were in the habit of getting reconciled over pots of new wine. For a whole week Rognes stunk of grapes, such a quantity of which was eaten that the women were pulling up their petticoats and the men letting down their trousers behind every hedge; while the lovers, with juice-stained faces, kissed each other greedily amid the vines. The evil of all this was that the men got drunk and the girls in the family-way.

On the morning after his return from Cloyes, Hyacinthe duly began to hunt for his father’s hoard; for in accordance with all probability the old man did not carry his money and vouchers about with him; he must hide them away in some secret corner. But although La Trouille assisted her father in his search, they turned the house topsy-turvy without any result, and this despite their cunning and practice in maraud­ing. It was not until the following week that the poacher, chancing to remove from a shelf a cracked earthenware pan, which was no longer used, discovered therein, beneath some lentils, a packet of papers very carefully enclosed in a piece of gum-covered canvas which had been torn out of an old hat. There was not a single coin, however. The cash must be hidden somewhere else, and there must be a pretty pile of it, the poacher reflected, for his father had spent nothing for the last five years. There was the scrip there, however, re­presenting three hundred francs a year in five per cent. Rente. As Hyacinthe was counting the bonds and examining them, a piece of stamped paper, covered with large handwriting, fell from the packet, and the perusal of this document quite stupefied the poacher. The murder was out now! He had discovered where all the money had gone!

It was the most amazing story possible. A month after the old man had divided his property among his children he had fallen ill; brooding sadly over the fact that he had now absolutely nothing of his own, not even so much as a handful of corn. He could not go on living in this way, he moaned to himself; and it was then that he was guilty of a sad piece of folly — folly as infatuated as that of those lustful old men who spend their last coppers in secretly stealing back to some drab who has gone into other keeping. Despite all his earlier shrewd­ness, Fouan had allowed himself to be completely gulled by that cunning old sharper, Saucisse. That earth-hunger, that furious desire for possession which feverishly racks the bodies of all the old peasants who have spent their lives on the soil, had so completely mastered him, that he had entered into a written agreement with Saucisse to pay him fifteen sous every day as long as he lived, on condition that he, Saucisse, left him upon his death an acre and a quarter of land. A pretty bargain this, considering that Fouan was seventy-six, and that Saucisse was ten years younger. As some justification, however, of Fouan’s conduct, it should be said that Saucisse had been crafty enough to take to his bed just before the bargain was struck; and he had coughed so distressingly, seeming so near the point of death, that Fouan, goaded on by his covetousness, and think­ing himself the craftier of the two, had eagerly pressed for the completion of the agreement. The moral to be drawn was, that it was preferable to take on with a wench rather than sign an agreement; for the payment of the daily fifteen sous had now been going on for five years, and the more Fouan paid, the more lustful he grew, and the more passionately he yearned for the land. What! after cutting himself free from all the weary bondage of the soil, when he had nothing more to do than to spend the remainder of his days in peaceful tranquillity, watching others wearing themselves out in tending the ungrateful earth, he had once more returned to her, so that she might finish him off. No, really, wisdom was seldom to be found among men, either young or old.

For a moment Hyacinthe felt inclined to appropriate both the scrip and the agreement, but his courage failed him. Such a deed would have necessitated flight. Then, full of angry disappointment, he placed the papers under the lentils again, at the bottom of the pan. His exasperation was so great that he could not hold his tongue. The next day all Rognes knew of the agreement with old Saucisse, and the daily payment of fifteen sous for an acre and a quarter of poor land that was not certainly worth three thousand francs. In five years nearly fourteen hundred francs had been paid, and if the old rascal lived for another five years, he would be pretty certain to keep both the field and its value. Old Fouan was plentifully chaffed about his bargain, as was natural. Since he had divested himself of all his property, he had been unceremoniously passed by on the roads, but now he was again saluted and addressed deferen­tially since it was known that he had an invested income, and might possibly come in for some landed estate.

His own family seemed especially revolutionised by the discovery. Fanny, who had previously been on very cold terms with her father, annoyed at his having gone to live with his disreputable elder son instead of returning to her house, now brought him some linen — some old shirts of her husband’s. She was actuated less by motives of self-interest than by an unconscious respect for the head of the family, who once more acquired some importance, as he was in the possession of property. Her father, however, was very hard and unbending, and he could not refrain from alluding to that cutting speech of hers as to his begging on his knees to be taken back again. He had never forgotten it; and, on receiving Fanny, he exclaimed: “So it is you, then, who are coming on your knees to get me back?” The young woman took this rebuff very badly, and when she got home again she wept with shame and anger. She was touchy to an extreme; a look sometimes sufficed to wound her; and honest, hard-working, and well-to-do though she was, she had fallen out with almost all the country-side. After that, Delhomme undertook to pay the old man’s allowance, for Fanny swore that she would never speak a word to him again.

As for Buteau, he quite astonished everybody one day by making his appearance at the Château, coming, so he said, to pay a little visit to his father. Hyacinthe sniggered, brought out the brandy bottle, and they had a glass together. But his sneering surprise turned into absolute amazement when he saw his brother produce two five-franc pieces and lay them down on the table.

“We must settle accounts, father,” said Buteau. “Here is the last quarter’s allowance.”

Ah! the scamp! he had never paid his father a copper for years past, and now to do this he must have designs upon him. He was no doubt offering him this money in the hope of getting him to return to his house. The truth is, that as Fouan reached out his hand to take up the coins, Buteau pushed it aside and hastily picked up the money himself.

“What I mean is, that I want you to know I have the cash all ready. I will take care of it, and you will know where to find it whenever you want it.”

Hyacinthe began to scent mischief and grow annoyed.

“I say,” he began, “if you want to get father away from me—”

“What! you’re not jealous, are you?” Buteau laughingly replied. “Don’t you think, now, that it would be more natural if father stayed a week with me, and then a week with you, and so on? Eh? suppose you cut yourself in two, dad! Well, here’s your health in the meantime!”

Before taking his leave, he invited them to come and assist at the vintaging the next day, and he promised that they should stuff their bellies full of grapes. Indeed, he made him­self so pleasant and agreeable, that the other two confessed that although he was a great rascal he was nevertheless an agreeable fellow; of course, providing that one didn’t let him take one in. Then they willingly accompanied him part of his way home.

Just as they reached the bottom of the hill they met Mon­sieur and Madame Charles, accompanied by Elodie, who were returning to Roseblanche, after a walk along the bank of the Aigre. They were all three of them in mourning for Madame Estelle, as the girl’s mother was called. She had died in July, from over-exertion; indeed, every time that the grandmother had returned from Chartres she had always reported that her poor daughter was killing herself, such a deal of trouble did she take to maintain the reputation of the establishment in the Rue aux Juifs, with which her worthless husband occupied himself less and less. Keen, indeed, had been Monsieur Charles’s emotion at the funeral, to which he had not dared to take the young girl, who had only been informed of her bereavement when her mother had already lain for three days in the grave. Great also had been Monsieur Charles’s heart-pangs when, for the first time for many years, he had again gazed upon Number 19, that house at the corner of the Rue de la Planche-aux-Carpes, with its yellow-washed front and closed green shutters; that house which had been the work of his life, and which he now found hung with black drapery, the little door standing open, and the passage barred by the coffin, standing between four lighted tapers.

He was deeply touched by the manner in which the whole neighbourhood shared in his grief. The ceremony passed off in the most satisfactory manner. When the coffin was brought out of the passage into the street, all the women of the neigh­bourhood crossed themselves, and the funeral procession made its way to the church amidst signs of general mourning. The five women of the house were there in dark dresses, and com­ported themselves with an air of decorum, as was generally-remarked that evening in Chartres; and one of them even shed tears at the grave-side. In that matter, indeed, Monsieur Charles had every reason for satisfaction, but how he had suffered the next morning when he had a chat with his son-in-law, Hector Vaucogne, and visited the house. It had already lost all its brilliancy, and the many laxities which he noticed, laxities which would never have been tolerated in his own time, fully indicated the absence of masculine authority. He observed, however, with pleasure that the decorous behaviour of the five women at the funeral had created such a favourable impression in the town that the establishment remained full all the week. Upon leaving Number 19, full of uneasy thoughts, he gave Hector plainly to understand that, now poor Estelle was no longer there to look after affairs, it was his duty to reform and settle down seriously to the business of life, if he did not wish his daughter’s fortune to be lost.

Buteau, on seeing the Charles family, at once invited them to come to the vintage, but they declined on account of their mourning. Their faces were very sad, and they spoke and moved about in a weary, heart-broken fashion; they could not be prevailed upon to promise anything further than just to go and taste the new wine.

“It will be a little change for this poor darling,” said Madame Charles; “and she has so few amusements here, since we took her away from school. She’s seventeen, you know, now, and we couldn’t keep her there always.”

Elodie listened with downcast eyes, blushing shyly. She had grown very tall and slim, as pale as a lily vegetating in the shade.

“And what are you going to do with this tall young lady?” Buteau asked.

The girl’s blushes deepened; and her grandmother replied: “Ah! that I can scarcely tell you. We shall leave her perfectly free to follow her own inclinations.”

Meanwhile Fouan had taken Monsieur Charles aside. “Is he looking after the business?” he asked with an air of interest.

Monsieur Charles shrugged his shoulders, and assumed an aggrieved air.

“Ah, that’s just what is troubling us so much. I saw a person from Chartres this morning. It’s very sad! The house is done for! The supervision is so wretched that fights go on in the passages, and fellows actually walk away without paying.”

Then he crossed his arms and drew a long breath to ease himself of a new worry which had been stifling him, by reason of its enormity, ever since the morning. “And would you believe it,” he resumed, “the reprobate goes to the café, now? Going to a café, indeed, when there is one in his own house!”