Complete Works of Emile Zola (981 page)

The old man was in such terror lest he should be murdered if he moved that he still feigned unconsciousness, and kept his eyes closed and his legs and arms rigid. But as soon as he found himself free again he fled, firmly resolved never to spend another night at the Château.

“Tell me, can you give me a corner?” he asked again.

Buteau’s spirits seemed to revive at his father’s unexpected return. It was money that was coming back.

“Certainly I can, dad! We’ll squeeze together to find a corner for you. It will bring us luck, too. Ah, I should be a rich man, if merely a good heart were needed to make one so!”

Françoise and Jean had slowly entered the empty house. The night was closing in, and the rooms lay silent in the mournful, fading light. Everything there was very old. This patrimonial roof had sheltered the toil and wretchedness of three centuries, and there was an air of solemnity about the place such as dwells in the gloom of an ancient village church.

The doors were still standing open. It seemed as though a storm of wind had blown through the house; the chairs lay over­turned on the ground amid the general chaos of the removal. The place looked as though it were dead.

Françoise slowly went over it, examining every corner. Vague recollections and confused sensations awoke in her as she proceeded. In that spot she had played as a child. It was in the kitchen, near that table, that her father had died. As she stood in the bedroom, in front of the bed stripped of its mattress, she thought of Lise and Buteau, and of the nights when they had embraced each other so vigorously that she could hear the sound of their panting breath through the ceiling. Was she even now to be tormented by them? She felt as though Buteau were still there. Here he had seized hold of her one night, and she had bitten him. And here again, too, and here. There was not a corner in the whole house that did not suggest some painful recollection.

Then as Françoise turned round, she started at seeing Jean. What was this stranger doing in the house? There was an air of constraint about him, as though he were on a visit, and did not like to take the liberty of touching anything. She felt overwhelmed with a feeling of solitude, and grew sick at heart to find that her victory had not made her more joyful. She had fancied she would enter the house, full of happiness, triumphant in the thought of having ejected her sister; but now the house afforded her no pleasure, and her heart was heavy and ill at ease. Perhaps it was the dying day that was filling her with melancholy!

When the night had quite fallen, she and her husband were still wandering from one room to another in the darkness, with­out having had the courage even to light a candle.

Presently, however, a noise brought them back into the kitchen, and they became merry on recognising Gédéon, who had effected an entrance after his usual custom, and had his head inside the sideboard, which had been left open. Close by, inside the stable, they could hear old La Coliche lowing.

Then Jean, taking Françoise in his arms, kissed her tenderly, as though to say that, despite everything, they would be happy.

PART V

CHAPTER I

Prior to the ploughing, La Beauce, stretched beneath the grey, damp, November sky, was hidden from sight by a cover­ing of manure. Carts were lumbering along the country roads, piled up with old straw litter, which filled the air with a smoky vapour; it was as though the vehicles were bearing a supply of heat to the soil. Little piles of litter from cattle-sheds and stables rose up over certain fields like surging waves, while on other patches the manure had already been spread out, and soiled the land with a dingy flood. In this mass of fermenting dung the rich fertility of the coming spring lay brooding; the decomposed matter was returning to the universal womb, and life would once more spring from death. From end to end of the vast plain the air reeked with the strong odour of the dung, which by-and-bye would bring forth bread for men.

One afternoon Jean was taking a heavy load of manure to his plot of land on the plateau. It was a month since he and Françoise had taken up their abode in the old house, and they had now dropped into the monotonous, though busy, routine of country life. As Jean approached his field he espied Buteau in the adjoining plot, with a pitchfork in his hand, engaged in spreading out the manure which had been placed there in heaps the previous week. The two men cast sidelong glances at each other. Being neighbouring owners, they frequently met and worked in close proximity to each other. Buteau greatly suffered, for the loss of Françoise’s share, torn from his seven-acre plot, had left him with two detached parcels, one on the right and one on the left of Françoise’s strip, and he con­stantly had to make circuits to get to one parcel from the other. The two men never said a word to each other. The chance was that some day a quarrel would break out between them, and then they would murder each other with their pitchforks.

Jean now commenced to discharge his load of manure. He had mounted on to the top of it; and, buried in it up to his hips, he was throwing it down with his pitchfork, when Hourdequin passed by, haying been engaged in a round of inspection all the morning. He had retained a kindly recollection of his servant, and he stopped to speak to him. His form seemed to have aged, and his face was worn with the anxiety which his farm and other matters were causing him.

“Why have you never tried phosphates, Jean?” he asked.

Then, without waiting for a reply, he went on talking for a long time, as though he were trying to drown his thoughts. The true solution of successful agriculture, he said, was to be looked for in these various natural and artificial manures. He himself had tried everything, and had just passed through that craze for manures which sometimes seizes hold of farmers like a fever. He had tried all manner of things, one after another; grass, leaves, the refuse of pressed grapes, rape and colza oil-cake, crushed bones, flesh cooked and pounded, blood dessicated and reduced to a powder; and it was a source of vexation to him that the absence of any slaughterhouse in the neighbourhood prevented him from trying the effects of blood in a liquid state. He was now using road-scrapings, the scourings of ditches, the cinders and ashes from stoves, and especially scraps of waste wool, having purchased the sweepings of a woollen manufactory at Châteaudun. His theory was that everything that came from the soil was a proper material to return to it. He had great pits filled with compost at the rear of his farm, and in them he stowed all the refuse of the whole neighbour­hood, whatever he could get hold of, even offal and putrifying carcasses picked out of stagnant ponds and elsewhere. It was all golden, he said.

“I have sometimes had very good results with phosphates,” he remarked to Jean.

“But one gets so dreadfully cheated,” Jean replied.

“Yes, certainly, if you buy from chance agents who are trying to do a small business in the country. At each market there ought to be a chemical expert who understands these artificial manures, which it is so difficult to get unadulterated. The future lies in them, I’m sure, but before that future comes I’m afraid we shall all be done up. We must have courage, however, and be content to suffer for the sake of others.”

The stench of the dung which Jean was moving seemed to have somewhat revived the farmer’s spirits. He revelled in it, and inhaled it with a sense of vigorous enjoyment, as though he smelt in it the procreative elements of the soil.

“No doubt,” he resumed after a pause, “nothing has yet been discovered which equals farm-yard manure; but one never can get a sufficient quantity of it. And then the men just toss it on to the ground. They don’t know how to prepare it or how to manipulate it. See, now, that dung of yours has been burnt by the sun; you don’t keep it covered.”

Then he launched out into invectives against routine, when Jean confessed that he still made use of Buteau’s old dung hole in front of the cow-house. For some years past he him­self, he said, had introduced layers of soil and turf into his pits, and had set up a system of pipes to convey the slops of the kitchen, with the urine of the family and cattle, and indeed all the drainings of the farm, down to a reservoir; and twice a week the dung-hill was watered with this liquid-manure. Now-a-days he even carefully saved and utilised all the contents of the privies.

“It is downright folly,” he exclaimed, “to waste the good things that God gives us! For a long time I had scruples of delicacy about it, just as the peasants have. But old Mother Caca converted me. You know old Mother Caca, don’t you? She’s a neighbour of yours. Well, it was she alone who went about matters in the right way; and the cabbage over whose roots she used to empty her slops was the king of cabbages, both in size and flavour, and it was so simply on account of what the old woman did.”

Jean laughed as he jumped down from his cart, which was now empty, then he began to divide his manure into little heaps. Hourdequin walked on after him, amid the warm reek which floated round them.

“The yearly refuse of Paris alone would be sufficient to fertilise some seventy thousand acres,” said the farmer. “It has all been properly calculated. And yet this is all wasted! There is only just a small quantity of dried night-soil utilised. Just think of it; seventy thousand acres! Ah, if we could only have it here, it would cover all La Beauce, and then you would see the wheat grow!”

He embraced the whole level extent of La Beauce in a sweeping gesture; and in his enthusiasm he mentally beheld all Paris pouring out its fertilising flood of human manure over the spreading tract. Streamlets were trickling along in all directions, overflowing the fields as the sea of sewage mounted higher and higher beneath the glowing sun, sped onward by a breeze which wafted the odour far and wide. The great city was restoring to the soil the life it had received from it. The earth slowly absorbed the fertilising tide, and from the glutted and fattened soil there burst forth great teeming harvests of white bread.

“We should want boats in that case,” remarked Jean, who was at once amused and disgusted by the novel idea of sub­merging the land beneath a sea of sewage.

Just at that moment the sound of a voice made him turn his head, and he was astonished to see Lise in her light cart, which was drawn up at the side of the road. She was shout­ing to Buteau at the top of her voice:

“I’m just off to Cloyes to fetch Monsieur Finet. Your father has fallen down in a fit in his bedroom. I’m afraid he’s dying. You’d better go home and see to him.”

Then, without waiting for a reply, she whipped her horse forward, and rattled along the straight road, disappearing out of sight in the distance.

Buteau leisurely continued spreading out his last heaps of manure, growling to himself as he did so. His father ill; here was a nuisance! Very likely it was all a sham, just to get himself coddled and pampered! Then he put on his jacket again, as the thought struck him that after all something serious must be the matter with the old man, since his wife had of her own accord decided to go to the expense of a doctor.

“Now, there’s a fellow who’s stingy with his manure!” observed Hourdequin, looking with interest at the dung in the adjoining field. “A niggardly peasant has niggardly land. Ah, he’s a wretched scamp, and you will do well to beware of him, especially after the worries you’ve had with him. How can you expect things to prosper when there are so many scoundrels and lewd hussies in the land? There are far too many, far too many!”

Then, saddened once more, he went off in the direction of La Borderie, just as Buteau, with his slouching gait, had got back to Rognes. Jean, left to himself, went on with his work, piling up at every ten yards or so a fresh heap of the manure, from which an ammoniacal vapour was rising in still greater force. Other heaps were smoking in the distance, blurring the line of the horizon with a fine bluish mist. All La Beauce would lie warm and odorous until the coming frosts.

The Buteaus were still quartered at La Frimat’s, occupy­ing the whole of her house, except the back room on the ground-floor, which she reserved for herself and her paralytic husband. As for a long time past she had had neither a horse in her stable nor any cows in her cow-house, her tenants had placed their own animals there. They found themselves rather cramped for room on the whole, and they chiefly regretted the loss of their kitchen-garden and orchard; for La Frimat naturally retained her acre or so of ground for her own use, especially as by desperately hard work she managed to get out of this strip of land just sufficient to support her old husband and provide him with a few luxuries. This want of a kitchen-garden would of itself have sufficed to make the Buteaus move to other quarters, had they not perceived that their proximity was a source of much annoyance to Françoise. There was only a wall between the grounds of the two houses, and the Buteaus used to declare, in loud tones, on purpose to be over­heard, that they were only just staying at La Frimat’s for a time, for they would certainly return to their old home very soon. As this was a matter of certainty, what was the use of troubling themselves with another removal? They never condescended to explain by what means their return to their old home was to be effected, and it was this calm assurance, this persistent expression of certainty on their part, based upon she knew not what, that sent Françoise almost wild, and quite spoilt her pleasure at finding herself mistress of the house. Then, too, Lise occasionally reared a ladder against the shed, and mounted it, to assail her sister with coarse abuse. Ever since the accounts had been balanced between them at Monsieur Baillehache’s office, she had accused her sister of robbing her, and she was never weary of hurling the most abominable accusations from one yard to the other.

When Buteau at last reached the house, he found old Fouan lying on the bed in the little closet which he occupied behind the kitchen, under the staircase leading to the loft. The two children. Jules and Laure, the former of whom was now eight years of age, while the latter was three, had been left to watch him; and they were amusing themselves with making streams of water on the floor by pouring out the con­tents of their grandfather’s jug.