Complete Works of Emile Zola (1080 page)

As they left the dépôt to go to bed, in Rue François-Mazeline, they heard a voice calling them.

“Why are you in such a hurry to be off? Step in for a minute.”

It was Philomène, who, from the doorstep of the cottage of her brother, must have been looking out for Jacques. She had made a movement of lively annoyance on perceiving Pecqueux; and if she determined to hail them together, it was for the pleasure of enjoying a chat with her new friend, in spite of having to support the presence of the other.

“Just leave us alone, will you?” growled Pecqueux. “Go to blazes! We’re sleepy.”

“How amiable he is!” gaily resumed Philomène. “But Monsieur Jacques is not like you. He’ll take a dram. Will you not, Monsieur Jacques?”

The driver was going to refuse, out of prudence, when the fireman abruptly accepted, influenced by the idea of watching them, and so making quite sure of their feelings towards one another. Entering the kitchen they seated themselves at the table, on which Philomène placed glasses and a bottle of brandy, saying in a low tone:

“Try not to make too much noise, because my brother is asleep upstairs, and he is not very pleased when I receive friends.”

Then, as she filled their glasses, she immediately added:

“By the way, you know that Mother Lebleu pegged out this morning? Oh! as to that I said so: it will kill her, I said, if they put her in that lodging on the back — a regular prison! Still she lasted four months, chewing the cud of bitterness, because she could see nothing but zinc. And what gave her the finishing stroke, when she found it impossible to move from her armchair, was assuredly the knowledge that she would never more be able to keep watch on Mademoiselle Guichon and Monsieur Dabadie. It was a habit she had got. Yes, she was enraged at never having been able to catch them, and she died of it.”

Philomène paused to toss off a thimbleful of brandy, and resumed with a laugh:

“Of course there is something going on between them. Only they are too sharp! It is quite a puzzle! All the same, I think little Madame Moulin saw them one night. But there is no fear of her talking, she is too stupid; and, besides, her husband, the assistant station-master—”

Again she broke off to exclaim:

“I say, it is next week that the Roubaud case comes on for trial at Rouen!”

Until then, Jacques and Pecqueux had listened to her without putting in a word. The latter simply thought her very talkative. Never had she exerted her conversational powers to such an extent with him; and he kept his eyes on her, becoming little by little heated by jealousy at seeing her so excited in the presence of his chief.

“Yes,” answered the driver, in a perfectly tranquil manner, “I received the summons.”

Philomène drew nearer to him, delighted at being able to graze his elbow.

“So have I,” she, said. “I am a witness. Ah! Monsieur Jacques, when I was questioned about you, for you know the examining-magistrate wished to ascertain the real truth in regard to your acquaintance with this poor lady; yes, when he questioned me, I said to him: But, monsieur, he adored her, it is impossible that he can have done her any harm! Is not that right? I had seen you together and was in a fit position to speak.”

“Oh!” said the young man, with a gesture of indifference; “I was not anxious. I could say hour for hour how I passed my time. If the company have kept me, it is because there is not the slightest thing they can reproach me with.”

A pause followed, and all three slowly drank their brandy.’ It makes one shudder,” continued Philomène. “Just fancy, that ferocious brute Cabuche whom they arrested still covered with the blood of that poor lady! What an idiot a man must be to kill a woman because he is in love with her, as if that would help him, when the woman no longer existed! And what I shall never forget so long as I live, was when Monsieur Cauche, over there on the platform, came and arrested Monsieur Roubaud as well. I was there. You know this did not happen until a week afterwards, when Monsieur Roubaud, the day following the burial of his wife, resumed his duty with an air of perfect tranquillity. So then, Monsieur Cauche tapped him on the shoulder, saying he had orders to take him to prison. What do you think of that? Those two who never left one another, who gambled together night after night till daybreak! But when you are a commissary of police you must take even your father and mother to the guillotine if it is your duty to do so. Monsieur Cauche does not care a fig! I caught sight of him at the Café du Commerce a little while ago shuffling the cards, without troubling any more about his friend than the great Mogul!”

Pecqueux, clenching his. teeth, struck his fist on the table, and exclaimed with a violent oath:

“If I were in the place of that Roubaud I’d—”

Then, breaking off and turning to Jacques, he added: “What! you make love to his wife, another man kills her, and they take him off to the assizes. No; it’s enough to make one burst with rage!”

“But, you great donkey,” said Philomène, “it is because they accuse him of having urged the other to rid him of his wife. Yes, in connection with money matters, or something else! It appears that the watch belonging to President Grandmorin, was found in the hut of Cabuche. You remember, the gentleman who was murdered in a railway carriage eighteen months ago. Then they hooked that nasty job on to the one of the other day, and made a long story of it, as black as ink. I cannot explain it ail to you, but it was in the newspaper where it filled at least two columns.”

Jacques, who was absent-minded, did not even seem to be listening.

“What is the use of puzzling our brains about it?” he murmured. “What does it matter to us? If the judicial authorities do not know what they are doing, how can we expect to know?”

Then, with eyes lost in space, and pallid cheeks, he murmured:

“In all this there is only that poor girl who excites pity! Ah! the poor, poor girl!”

“As for me,” concluded Pecqueux, “if anyone took it into his head to interfere with my wench, I should begin by strangling them both. After that, they might cut off my head. I should not care a straw.”

Another silence ensued. Philomène, who was filling up the glasses a second time, affected to shrug her shoulders and chuckle; but, in reality, she felt quite upset, and gave Pecqueux a searching look sideways. He had neglected his personal appearance considerably, and looked very dirty and ragged since Mother Victoire, as a result of her accident, had become impotent, and had been obliged to relinquish her post at the station to enter an almshouse. She was no longer there, tolerant and maternal, to slip pieces of silver into his pocket, to mend his clothes, so that the other one at Havre might not accuse her of keeping their man untidy. And Philomène, bewitched by the smart, clean look of Jacques, put on an expression of disgust.

“Do you mean that you would strangle your Paris wench?” she inquired in bravado. “There is no fear of anybody carrying her off!”

“That one or another!” he growled.

But she was already touching glasses in a joking vein.

“Look here! to your health!” she exclaimed. “And bring your linen to me, so that I may have it washed and mended, for really you no longer do honour, to either of us. To your health, Monsieur Jacques!”

The latter started, as if disturbed in a dream. Notwithstanding the complete absence of remorse and the feeling of relief and physical comfort, in which he had been living since the murder, Séverine sometimes passed before his eyes as now, moving his gentle inner self to tears. And he touched glasses, remarking precipitately to hide his trouble:

“You know that we are going to war?”

“Can it be possible?” exclaimed Philomène. “Who with?”

“Why, with the Prussians,” answered Jacques. “Yes, on account of one of their princes, who wishes to be King of Spain. Yesterday in the Chamber they were occupied with nothing else.”

Then she was in despair.

“Ah! well! That’s a nice thing,” said she. “They bothered us enough with their elections, their plebiscite, and their riots at Paris! I say, if they do fight, will they take away all the men?”

“Oh! as to us, we are shunted! They cannot disorganise the railways. Only we shall have a warm time, on account of the transport of troops and provisions! Anyhow, if it happens, everyone will have to do his duty.”

Thereupon, he rose, noticing that she was becoming too familiar, and that Pecqueux perceived it. Indeed, the face of the latter had become crimson, and he was already clenching his fists.

“It is time for bed,” said Jacques. “Let us be off.”

“Yes, that will be the better thing to do,” stammered the fireman.

He had grasped the arm of Philomène, and squeezed it fit to break it. Restraining a cry of agony, she contented herself with whispering in the ear of the driver, while the other finished his glass in a fury:

“Be on your guard. He is a regular brute when he has been drinking.”

But heavy footsteps could now be heard coming downstairs, and Philomène looked scared.

“It is my brother,” said she. “Slip out quick! slip out quick!”

The two men were not twenty paces from the house when they heard slaps followed by yells. Philomène was being abominably chastised, like a little girl caught in the act, with her nose in the jam-pot. The driver stopped, ready to run to her assistance, but the fireman held him back.

“What are you going to do?” he inquired; “it is no business of yours. Ah! the slut! if he could only beat her to death!”

On reaching the Rue François-Mazeline, Jacques and Pecqueux went to bed without exchanging a word. The two bedsteads almost touched in the small room, and for a long time the men remained awake with their eyes open, listening to the breathing of one another.

It was on the Monday that the Roubaud trial was to commence at Rouen. This case proved a triumph for the examining-magistrate, Denizet, for there was no lack of praise in the judicial world as to the way in which he had brought the complicated and obscure business to a satisfactory issue. It was a masterpiece of clever analysis, said they; a logical substitution for the truth; in a word, a genuine creation.

First of all, M. Denizet had caused Cabuche to be arrested as soon as he had visited the house at La Croix-de-Maufras a few hours after the murder of Séverine. Everything pointed openly to this man as author of the crime: the blood trickling down him, the overwhelming evidence of Roubaud and Misard, who related how they had surprised him, alone with the corpse, and in a state of bewilderment. Questioned, pressed, to say in what manner and for what purpose he found himself in this room, the quarryman stammered out a story, which appeared so silly, and so like the usual run of such stories, that the examining-magistrate received it with a shrug of the shoulders.

He had been expecting this story, which was always the same, the tale of an imaginary murderer, the invented culprit, whom the real culprit pretended he had heard fleeing across the dark country. This bugbear must be a long way off, must he not, if he should still happen to be running? Besides, on Cabuche being asked what he was doing in front of the house at such a time, he became troubled, refused to answer, and ended by saying he was walking about. This was childish. How could anyone believe in the existence of this mysterious unknown, who came and committed a murder, and then ran off, leaving all the doors wide open without having searched a single article of furniture, or carried even a pocket-handkerchief away with him? Where did he come from? Why had he killed?

Nevertheless, the examining-magistrate having heard at the commencement of the inquiry, of the intimacy between the victim and Jacques, took measures to ascertain how the latter had passed his time on the day of the murder; but, apart from the accused acknowledging that he had accompanied Jacques to Barentin, to catch the 4.14 train in the afternoon; the innkeeper at Rouen took her solemn oath that the young man, who had gone to bed immediately after his dinner, did not leave his room until the next morning at about seven o’clock. And, moreover, a lover does not slaughter without any reason, a sweetheart whom he adores, and with whom he has never had the slightest quarrel. It would be absurd. No, no; only one murderer was possible, a murderer who was evident, the liberated convict found there red-handed, with the knife at his feet, that brute beast who had related a rigmarole to the representative of justice, fit to send him off to sleep.

But when M. Denizet reached this point he for a moment felt embarrassed, notwithstanding his conviction and his scent, which, said he, gave him better information than proofs. In a first search made at the hovel of the accused, on the outskirts of the forest of Bécourt, absolutely nothing had been found. It having been impossible to prove robbery, it became necessary to discover another motive for the crime. All at once, in the hazard of an examination, Misard put him on the track, by relating that he had one night seen Cabuche scale the wall of the property to look through the window of the room occupied by Madame Roubaud who was going to bed.

Jacques, on being questioned in his turn, quietly related what he knew: the mute adoration of the quarryman for the wife of the assistant station-master, his ardent desire to be of service to her, ever running after her as if fastened to her apron strings. No room, therefore, remained for doubt: bestial passion alone had urged him to the crime. Everything became quite clear: the man returning by the door to which he might have a key, leaving it open in his excitement, then the struggle which had brought about the murder.

Nevertheless, one final objection to this theory occurred to the examining-magistrate. It appeared singular that the man, aware of the imminent arrival of the husband, should have chosen the very hour when Roubaud might surprise him. But on careful consideration this circumstance turned against the accused, and completely overwhelmed him by establishing that he must have acted under the influence of a supreme crisis, driven crazy by the thought that if he failed to take advantage of the time when Séverine was still alone, he would lose her for ever, as she would be leaving on the morrow. From that moment, the conviction of the examining-magistrate was complete and unalterable.