Complete Works of Emile Zola (982 page)

“Well, what’s the matter, eh?” asked Buteau, standing in front of the bed.

Fouan had recovered consciousness. His widely opened eyes slowly turned towards his son, and fixed their stare upon him, but his head remained quite motionless, and he looked as though he were petrified.

“Come, now, dad, none of your jokes! I’m too busy for them,” said Buteau. “You mustn’t go off the hooks to-day.”

Then, as Jules and Laure had now managed to break the jug, he gave them a couple of cuffs which set them howling.

The old man’s eyes were still staring, widely open, with the pupils enlarged and rigid. If he could not express him­self more intelligibly than that, thought Buteau, there was nothing more to be done at present. They must wait and see what the doctor said. He now regretted having come away from the field, and he began to chop some wood in front of the kitchen, for the sake of doing something.

Lise returned almost immediately with Monsieur Finet, who made a lengthy examination of the ailing man, the Buteaus awaiting the result with an uneasy air. The old man’s death would have been a release to them, if he had been carried off at once; but, if he were to linger on for a long time they might incur heavy expenses, and then again, if he died before they had succeeded in possessing themselves of his hoard, Fanny and Hyacinthe, as they foresaw, would give them a deal of trouble. The doctor’s silence served to increase their uneasi­ness, and when he took a seat in the kitchen to write out a prescription, they determined to question him.

“Is it anything serious, then? Will it last a week? Dear me, what a lot you are writing down for him? What can it all be?”

Monsieur Finet made no reply. He was accustomed to be questioned in this way by the peasantry, who lost their heads in the presence of illness, and he treated them like so many animals, refraining from entering into conversation with them. He had great experience with common-place complaints, and generally saved his patients, being perhaps more successful in dealing with them than a man of greater science would have been. However, the mediocrity to which he accused the peasants of having reduced him made him harsh and stern towards them. This only served to increase their deference, despite the doubts they continually entertained as to the efficacy of his draughts. Would it be worth the money it cost? That was the question always uppermost in their minds.

“Do you think, then,” asked Buteau, alarmed by the sight of the page of writing, “that all that will make him better?”

The doctor merely shrugged his shoulders. Then he again returned to the sick man’s bed-side, feeling interested in the case, and surprised to notice symptoms of fever after this slight attack of cerebral congestion. Keeping his eyes fixed upon his watch, he again counted the beats of the old man’s pulse, without trying to extract the slightest information from him. Meantime Fouan continued staring at him with his stupefied air.

“It will be a three weeks’ business,” said the doctor as he went away. “I will come again to-morrow. Don’t be sur­prised if he’s off his nut to-night.”

Three weeks! The Buteaus had had ears for those words only, and they were full of consternation. What a pile of money it would cost them if there would be a pageful of medicine every night! And what made matters worse was that Buteau now had to get into the cart and drive off to the druggist’s at Cloyes. It was a Saturday, and when La Frimat returned from selling her vegetables she found Lise sitting alone, and feeling so miserable that she could do nothing. The old woman expressed the bitterest grief when she heard what had happened. She never had any luck! she cried. If it had happened some other day, when she had been at home, she might at least have profited by the doctor’s presence to consult him about her husband.

The news had already spread through Rognes, for the im­pudent La Trouille had called at the house, which she would not leave without touching her grandfather’s hand, so that she might return and tell Hyacinthe that the old man was not dead. Then, after this shameless slut, La Grande made her appear­ance, evidently sent by Fanny. She planted herself by the side of her brother’s bed, and formed her opinion of his condition by the appearance of his eyes, just as she judged the eels from the Aigre; and she went away with a perk of her nose, as though to say that he would certainly get over it this time. The family now took matters easily. What was the good of troubling themselves, as the old man would in all pro­bability recover?

The house was topsy-turvy up to midnight. Buteau had returned in an execrable temper. There were mustard-plasters for the old man’s legs, a draught to be taken every hour, and a purgative, in case he seemed better, for the morning. La Frimat proffered her assistance, but, at ten o’clock, growing drowsy, and not feeling much interested in the matter, she went to bed. Buteau, who wanted to do the same, tried to hustle Lise off. What was the good of their staying there? he cried. They couldn’t do the old man any good by just looking at him!

Fouan was now rambling in his talk, speaking inconse­quentially in loud tones. He appeared to imagine that he was out in the fields, hard at work, as in the far-off days of his youthful vigour. Lise, whom these reminiscences of the past affected with an uneasy disquietude, as though her uncle were already buried and was now restlessly wandering on the earth again, was about to follow her husband, who was undressing himself, when she stopped to put away the old man’s clothes which were still lying on a chair. She carefully shook them, after having made a lengthy examination of the pockets, in which she found nothing but some string and a damaged knife. As she next proceeded to hang them up in the cupboard, she suddenly caught sight of a little bundle of papers in the middle of a shelf, right in front of her eyes. Her heart gave a great leap. Here was the secret treasure! the treasure which had been so anxiously sought for during the last month in all sorts of extraordinary places, and which was now openly presented to her sight as if to invite her to take it! It was evident that the old man had just been going to transfer it to some fresh hiding-place when he was seized by the fit.

“Buteau! Buteau!” she called in so stifled a voice that her husband at once ran to her in his shirt, imagining that his father was dying.

For a moment he, too, remained choking with amazement. Then a wild delight took possession of them both, and taking hold of each other’s hands they jumped about opposite each other like a couple of goats, forgetting all about the sick man, who was now lying with his eyes shut and his head seemingly riveted to the pillow. He was still rambling on, spasmodically, in his delirium. Just now he fancied that he was ploughing.

“Come, now, get along, you brute! Confound it all, there’s a great piece of flint, and it won’t yield! The handles are getting broken, and I shall have to buy new ones. Get along, you brute, get along!”

“Hush!” murmured Lise, turning round with a startled air.

“Stuff!” retorted Buteau. “You don’t suppose he under­stands, do you? Can’t you hear him drivelling?”

They now both seated themselves near the bed, for their sudden shock of delight left their legs quite weak and tremulous.

“No one can ever say that we hunted about for it,” Lise observed, “for, as God is my witness, I wasn’t thinking about his money at all! It tumbled into my hand. Let us see what there is,”

Buteau had already unfolded the papers, and was reckoning them up aloud.

“Two hundred and thirty, and seventy; that’s just three hundred altogether. That’s exactly what I reckoned it at before, when I saw him draw fifteen five-franc pieces for the quarter’s interest at the tax-collector’s. Doesn’t it seem funny, now, that these shabby bits of paper are just as good as real money?”

Lise again hushed him, alarmed by a sudden snigger from the old man, who now seemed to be imagining that he was engaged in reaping the famous harvest in Charles X’s time, which was so plentiful that there was not room enough in which to garner it all.

“What a lot! what a lot! Did ever any one see such a harvest? What a lot! what a lot!”

His choking laugh sounded like a death-rattle; and his delight must have been altogether internal, for not a trace of it appeared on his rigid face.

“Oh, it’s only some of his crazy thoughts that he’s snigger­ing about,” Buteau remarked, shrugging his shoulders.

There was now an interval of silence, during which the husband and wife looked at the papers, absorbed in thought.

“Well, what are we to do with them?” Lise murmured, presently. “Oughtn’t we to put them back again?”

Buteau made an energetic gesture of refusal.

“Oh, yes, indeed, we must put them back again,” his wife protested. “He will look for them, and he will make an outcry if he doesn’t find them, and then we shall have a fine row with our swinish relatives.”

She now checked herself for the third time, startled by hearing her father sobbing. He seemed to be a prey to some bitter, hopeless grief, for his sobs sounded as though they came from the very depths of his soul. It was impossible to guess what was troubling him, for he only moaned out in a voice that gradually grew more hollow.

“It’s all over — all over — all over.”

“And do you suppose,” Buteau now exclaimed violently, “that I am going to leave these papers in the possession of that old chap who’s off his nut, for him to burn them or tear them up? No, indeed.”

“Yes, that is perhaps true,” murmured Lise.

“Come, now, we’ve had quite enough of the matter; let’s go to bed. If he asks for the papers, I’ll make it my business to reply to him; and the others had better not try to worry me!”

They now went off to bed, after concealing the papers under the marble top of an old chest of drawers, which seemed to them to be a safer hiding-place than one of the drawers themselves, even if they were kept locked. The old man was left alone, without a candle, for fear of fire, and he continued sobbing and talking deliriously all through the night.

On the morrow Monsieur Finet found him calmer, and alto­gether better than he had expected. Ah, those old plough horses had their souls well riveted to their bodies! he exclaimed. The fever which he had feared did not seem likely now. He prescribed steel, quinine, and other expensive drugs, filling the Buteaus with renewed consternation; and, as he was leaving, he had a struggle with La Frimat, who had been on the watch for him.

“My good woman,” he said, “I have already told you that there is really no difference between your husband and this block of stone. I can’t put life into stones, can I? You must know very well what the end will be; and the sooner the better both for him and for you.”

He then whipped up his horse, and the old woman sank down on to the block of stone in a flood of tears. It was already a weary long time, a dozen years and more, that she had been burdened with the support of her husband, and her strength was failing her with advancing age. She was afraid, indeed, that ere long she would be too weak to cultivate her patch of ground; but all the same, it upset her to think that she might soon lose the infirm old man, who had become like her child, whom she lifted and dressed and undressed and pampered with dainties. Even the unparalysed arm which he had hitherto been able to use was now growing so stiff that she herself was obliged to put his pipe into his mouth.

At the end of a week Monsieur Finet was astonished to find Fouan on his legs again. He was still very feeble, but he was obstinately bent on getting about, saying that the best way to keep from dying was to be determined not to die. Buteau sniggered behind the doctor’s back with a contemptuous grin, for he had tossed all the prescriptions, after the second one, aside, declaring that the best way was to let the complaint feed on itself till it was exhausted. On market-day, however, Lise had been weak enough to bring back with her from the town a draught, which had been prescribed on the previous evening; and when the doctor paid his last visit on the Monday Buteau told him that the old man had nearly had a relapse.

“I don’t know what it was they put into the bottle you ordered, but it made him dreadfully sick,” he said.

That day, in the evening, Fouan at last spoke on the subject nearest his heart. Ever since he had left his bed he had been prowling about the house with an air of anxiety, with his mind quite blank as to where he had deposited his papers. He ferretted and searched everywhere, and made desperate efforts to remember where he had put them. Then, at last, a vague recollection dawned upon him. Perhaps he had not hidden them away anywhere, but had left them lying on the shelf. But, then again, supposing he was mistaken in his fears, sup­posing no one had taken the papers, was it advisable to give the alarm, and confess to the existence of this money, which it had cost him such a struggle in the past to get together, and con­cerning which he had ever since maintained the most determined silence? For two days he struggled on against contending emotions — the despair with which the sudden disappearance of his money filled him, and the fear of the consequences of indiscreetly opening his mouth. Gradually, however, a clear recollection of matters returned to him, and he remembered having placed the packet of papers on the shelf on the morning of his attack, pending an opportunity to slip them into a chink in the rafters of the ceiling, which he had just discovered as he lay on his bed gazing into the air. Plun­dered and desperate, he now unbosomed himself.

They had just finished their evening meal. Lise was putting the plates away, and Buteau, who had been watching his father with leering eyes ever since the day he had left his bed, expected the outbreak, and was swinging himself on his chair, thinking that the explosion was now really coming off, for the old fellow seemed so very wretched and excited. He was not mistaken, for Fouan, who had been persistently tottering about the room on his shaky legs, now suddenly halted in front of his son.

“Where are the papers?” he demanded of him in a hoarse voice, and the words almost seemed to choke him.

Buteau opened his eyes widely, with an expression of pro­found surprise, as though he failed to understand.