Complete Works of Emile Zola (979 page)

At last a meeting was arranged at Monsieur Baillehache’s office, at which Buteau and Lise, for the first time since the marriage, again found themselves in the presence of Françoise and Jean, whom La Grande had accompanied for the pleasure of the thing, and under the pretext of seeing that nothing wrong was done. The five of them went into the private office in silence, comporting themselves stiffly. The Buteaus seated themselves on the right. On the left, Jean re­mained standing behind Françoise’s chair, as though to express that he was not of the meeting, but had simply come to support his wife. The aunt, tall and scrany, sat down in the middle, turning her round eyes and her hawk-like beak first on one couple and then on the other with a satisfied air. The two sisters did not even appear to know each other. They sat there with a hard expression on their faces, without exchanging a single word or look. The men, however, had given one another a rapid glance, gleaming and penetrating like a dagger thrust.

“Now, my friends,” said Monsieur Baillehache, who re­mained calm amid all these expressions of murderous hate, “we are first of all going to finish with the division of the land, upon which subject we are now quite agreed.”

He then made them affix their signatures forthwith. The parchment was already engrossed, blanks being left after the names of the parties for the description of the various parcels, and they all had to sign before the lots were drawn, which ceremony was immediately proceeded with, in order to prevent any trouble.

Françoise, having drawn number two, number one was, of course, left for Lise, and Buteau’s face turned quite purple from the angry surging of his blood. Luck was always against him! Here was his land cut atwain, and this hussy and her man had their share between his two parcels!

“The devil take and confound them all!” he growled from between his clenched teeth.

The notary requested him to restrain his feelings till he got into the street again.

“This will cut up our land,” remarked Lise, without turning towards her sister. “Perhaps we might be able to make an exchange. It would suit us better, and be to no one’s dis­advantage.”

“No!” said Françoise, drily.

La Grande nodded her approval. It would bring bad luck to interfere with the ruling of chance. The result of the drawing made the old woman gay. As for Jean, who was still standing behind his wife, he seemed so determined to hold himself aloof from the proceedings that he had not moved, and his face was a perfect blank.

“Come now, let us finish with it all,” said the notary.

The two sisters had, by common consent, deputed him to arrange for the sale of the house and furniture and live stock. The sale was advertised to take place in his office on the second Sunday in the month, and the conditions of the sale stated that the purchaser could have the right of entering into possession on the same day. When the sale was over, the notary would at once proceed to balance accounts between the two co-heiresses. The different parties concerned signified their approval of all this by silently nodding their heads.

Just at this moment, however, Fouan, who had been sum­moned to attend the meeting as Françoise’s guardian, was introduced by a clerk, who prevented Hyacinthe from coming in at the same time, on account of his intoxicated condi­tion. Although more than a month had elapsed since Françoise had attained her majority, the accounts of the guardianship had not yet been rendered; and this fact tended to complicate matters. It was necessary for the accounts to be passed before the old man could be released from his responsibility. He looked first at one party, and then at the other, straining his little eyes, and trembling with increasing fear lest he should find himself compromised and given up to justice.

An abstract of the accounts had been prepared, and it was read by the notary. They all listened to it attentively, full of uneasy anxiety, since they could not completely understand, and fearing that if they let a word pass unheard that very word would somehow bring them into trouble.

“Have you any observations to make, any of you?” asked the notary when he had finished reading the abstract.

They all looked bewildered. What observations? Perhaps they had forgotten something, and were allowing themselves to be robbed.

“Excuse me,” La Grande suddenly interposed, “but this by no means suits Françoise. My brother must be inten­tionally shutting his eyes if he can’t see that the girl’s being defrauded.”

“I! what? eh?” stammered Fouan. “I haven’t taken a copper of hers, so help me God I “

“I say that Françoise, since her sister’s marriage, now nearly five years ago, has been employed as her servant, and that she is entitled to wages.”

Buteau sprang up from his seat at this unexpected demand, and Lise almost choked with anger.

“Wages!” she cried; “wages to a sister! That is too ridiculous!”

Monsieur Baillehache hushed them, and declared that the girl was perfectly entitled to claim wages if she chose to do so. “Yes, I do claim them,” said Françoise; “I wish to have everything that is my due.”

“But then you must take all her food into account!” cried Buteau, wild with excitement. “She makes short work with bread and meat! Just you feel her, and say if you think that she’s got as fat as that on air!”

“And then there’s her linen and dresses!” Lise added furiously; “and her washing! Why, she used to sweat so much that she’d soil a chemise in a couple of days.”

“If I sweated like that,” replied Françoise, with annoyance, “it was because I worked so hard.”

“Sweat dries and doesn’t soil,” interposed La Grande, curtly.

Monsieur Baillehache again intervened. He told them that a debtor and creditor account would have to be drawn up, the wages on one side and the board and lodging and other expenses on the other. Then he took a pen, and made an attempt to draw up a statement from the information they gave him. It was a terrible business. Françoise, backed up by La Grande, showed herself very exacting, setting a high price upon her services, and detailing at length all that she had done while she was with the Buteaus: her work in the house­hold, and with the cows, and out in the fields, where her brother-in-law had made her labour like a man. The exasperated Buteaus, on the other hand, swelled out the list of expenses as much as possible, counting up every meal, telling lies about the girl’s clothes, and claiming even the money which had been spent in presents for her on fête-days. But, despite all they could do, they found themselves with a balance of a hundred and eighty-six francs against them. Their hands trembled and their eyes blazed as they tried to think of some­thing else that they might charge for.

The statement was about to be passed when Buteau suddenly cried out:

“Stop a moment. There’s the doctor. He came twice when she was out of sorts; that makes another six francs.”

La Grande was by no means inclined to let the others enjoy this victory undisturbed, and she stirred up old Fouan to make him recollect how many days’ work the girl had done on the farm while he was living in the house. Was it five days or six, at a franc and a half the day? Françoise cried six, and Lise cried five, hurling the words at each other’s heads as though they had been stones. The distracted old man now supported one and then the other, tapping his forehead with his fists. Françoise, however, carried the day, and there was now a balance to her credit of a hundred and eighty-nine francs.

“Well, is everything included now?” asked the notary.

Buteau seemed quite crushed and overwhelmed with this ever-increasing liability, and no longer struggling, he sat there hoping that affairs had now seen their worst.

“I’ll take off my shirt if they want it,” he groaned in a doleful voice.

La Grande, however, had kept a last terrible bolt in reserve. It was a very important and simple matter, which everybody seemed to have forgotten.

“And then there’s the five hundred francs compensation for the road up yonder.”

Buteau now sprang wildly to his feet, his eyes projecting out of his head, and his mouth wide open. He could say nothing, however; no discussion was possible. He had received the money, and was bound to hand half of it over. For a moment he ransacked his brains for something to say, but he could not think of anything at all; and in the wild anger that was rising and making his head throb, he suddenly rushed forward at Jean.

“You filthy blackguard!” he cried, “it is you who killed our friendship! If it hadn’t been for you, we should still have all been living together in peace and quiet!”

Jean, who had very sensibly preserved silence, was now forced to assume an attitude of defence.

“Keep off!” he said, “or I’ll strike.”

Françoise and Lise had hastily sprung up and planted them­selves in front of their respective husbands, their faces swollen by their gradually accumulating hatred, and their nails out­stretched and ready to tear each other’s faces. A general en­gagement, which neither Fouan nor La Grande seemed inclined to prevent, would certainly have taken place, and caps and hair would soon have been flying about, if the notary had not thrown off his professional calmness.

“Confound it all!” he cried, “wait till you’ve got outside. It’s disgusting that you can’t settle your accounts without fighting!”

Then as the quivering antagonists quieted down, he added:

“You are now agreed, I think, eh? Well, I will have the accounts made out in proper form, and then, when they have been signed, we will proceed to the sale of the house, and get the whole matter done with. Now you can go, and mind you are careful. Folly sometimes turns out very expensive!”

This remark finished pacifying them. As they were leav­ing, however, Hyacinthe, who had been waiting outside for his father, attacked the whole family, and roared out that it was a foul shame to involve a poor old man in their dirty business for the sake of robbing him, no doubt; and then, as his drunken­ness made him affectionate, he took his father away, as he had brought him, in a cart, bedded with straw, which he had borrowed from a neighbour. The Buteaus went off on one side, while La Grande pushed Jean and Françoise towards “The Jolly Ploughman,” where she had herself treated to some black coffee. She was radiant.

“At any rate I’ve had a good laugh!” she exclaimed, as she put the remains of the sugar into her pocket.

La Grande had another idea that same day. When she got back to Rognes, she hurried off to make an arrangement with old Saucisse, who had once been a lover of hers, so folks declared. The Buteaus having threatened to bid against Fran­çoise for the house, even though it cost them all they possessed, it had occurred to her that if Saucisse bid on Françoise’s behalf the others might not have any suspicions, but let him secure the house; he was their neighbour and might very well wish to enlarge his premises. In consideration of a present the old man immediately consented to do as he was asked.

On the second Sunday of the month, when the sale came off, matters turned out just as La Grande had foreseen. Once more the Buteaus were seated on one side of Monsieur Baillehache’s office, and Françoise and Jean and La Grande on the other. There were also various other people there, some peasants, who had come with a vague idea of bidding, if things went very cheaply. After four or five bids from Lise and Françoise, the house stood at three thousand five hundred francs, which was just about its value. When they got to three thousand eight hundred, Françoise stopped. Then old Saucisse came upon the scene, pushed the bidding up to four thousand francs, and then on to an additional five hundred. The Buteaus looked at each other in consternation. They felt as though they could really go no higher; the thought of such a large sum of money quite froze their blood. Lise, however, let herself be carried away as far as five thousand francs; but then the old man quite crushed her by immediately bidding five thousand two hundred. That settled the business, and the house was knocked down to him for the five thousand two hundred francs. The Buteaus sniggered. It would be very pleasant to handle their share of this big sum of money, now that Françoise and her filthy blackguard of a husband had failed to get the house.

However, when Lise, upon her return to Rognes, once more entered the old house where she had been born and where she had hitherto lived, she burst into tears. Buteau, also, was dreadfully cut up and down-hearted, and he relieved his feelings by falling foul of his wife; swearing that if he had had his own way he would have parted with the last hair on his head rather than have let the house go. But your heartless women, he cried, refused to open their purses, except it were for self-indulgence. In this, however, he was lying, for it was he himself who had held Lise back. Then they got to blows. Ah! The poor old patrimonial abode of the Fouans, built by an ancestor three hundred years previously, and now crazy and cracked, mended and patched in every part, sunken and thrown forward by the sweeping winds of La Beauce! To think that the family had lived in it for three hundred years, that they had grown to love it and honour it as a holy relic, and that it was counted as a leading item in the inheritances! Buteau, at the thought of losing it, knocked his wife down with a back­hander, and when she struggled up again she kicked him so violently that she nearly broke his leg.

On the evening of the next day matters were even worse — the thunderbolt fell. Old Saucisse had gone in the morning to complete the sale, and by noon all Rognes knew that he had bought the house on behalf of Françoise, with her husband’s authorisation; and not only the house, but the furniture also, and Gédéon and La Coliche. There was a howl of anguish and distress at the Buteaus’, as though lightning had stricken them. Husband and wife threw themselves upon the ground, and roared and wept in their wild despair at finding themselves defeated, outwitted, by that hussy of a girl. What maddened them, perhaps, more than anything else, was the knowledge that the whole village was laughing at them for their lack of penetration. To be fooled in this way, and turned out of their own house by such a trick! No, indeed, it was too much! They would not submit to it!