Complete Works of Emile Zola (1545 page)

Her husband, observing her gayety, drew near and began to admire the child by way of following her example. “Ah yes, he is really a pretty baby. But I have seen so many frightful ones — thin, puny, bluish little things, looking like little plucked chickens. When they are white and plump they are quite nice.”

Mathieu began to laugh, and twitted the Angelins on having no child of their own. But on this point they held very decided opinions. They wished to enjoy life, unburdened by offspring, while they were young. As for what might happen in five or six years’ time, that, of course, was another matter. Nevertheless, Madame Angelin could not help being struck by the delightful picture which Marianne, so fresh and gay, presented with her plump little babe at her breast in that white bed amid the bright sunshine.

At last she remarked: “There’s one thing. I certainly could not feed a child. I should have to engage a nurse for any baby of mine.”

“Of course!” her husband replied. “I would never allow you to feed it. It would be idiotic.”

These words had scarcely passed his lips when he regretted them and apologized to Marianne, explaining that no mother possessed of means was nowadays willing to face the trouble and worry of nursing.

“Oh! for my part,” Marianne responded, with her quiet smile, “if I had a hundred thousand francs a year I should nurse all my children, even were there a dozen of them. To begin with, it is so healthful, you know, both for mother and child: and if I didn’t do my duty to the little one I should look on myself as a criminal, as a mother who grudged her offspring health and life.”

Lowering her beautiful soft eyes towards her boy, she watched him with a look of infinite love, while he continued nursing gluttonously. And in a dreamy voice she continued: “To give a child of mine to another — oh no, never! I should feel too jealous. I want my children to be entirely my own. And it isn’t merely a question of a child’s physical health. I speak of his whole being, of the intelligence and heart that will come to him, and which he ought to derive from me alone. If I should find him foolish or malicious later on, I should think that his nurse had poisoned him. Dear little fellow! when he pulls like that it is as if he were drinking me up entirely.”

Then Mathieu, deeply moved, turned towards the others, saying: “Ah! she is quite right. I only wish that every mother could hear her, and make it the fashion in France once more to suckle their infants. It would be sufficient if it became an ideal of beauty. And, indeed, is it not of the loftiest and brightest beauty?”

The Angelins complaisantly began to laugh, but they did not seem convinced. Just as they rose to take their leave an extraordinary uproar burst forth beneath the window, the piercing clamor of little wildings, freely romping in the fields. And it was all caused by Ambroise throwing a ball, which had lodged itself on a tree. Blaise and Denis were flinging stones at it to bring it down, and Rose called and jumped and stretched out her arms as if she hoped to be able to reach the ball. The Angelins stopped short, surprised and almost nervous.

“Good heavens!” murmured Claire, “what will it be when you have a dozen?”

“But the house would seem quite dead if they did not romp and shout,” said Marianne, much amused. “Good-by, my dear. I will go to see you when I can get about.”

The months of March and April proved superb, and all went well with Marianne. Thus the lonely little house, nestling amid foliage, was ever joyous. Each Sunday in particular proved a joy, for the father did not then have to go to his office. On the other days he started off early in the morning, and returned about seven o’clock, ever busily laden with work in the interval. And if his constant perambulations did not affect his good-humor, he was nevertheless often haunted by thoughts of the future. Formerly he had never been alarmed by the penury of his little home. Never had he indulged in any dream of ambition or wealth. Besides, he knew that his wife’s only idea of happiness, like his own, was to live there in very simple fashion, leading a brave life of health, peacefulness, and love. But while he did not desire the power procured by a high position and the enjoyment offered by a large fortune, he could not help asking himself how he was to provide, were it ever so modestly, for his increasing family. What would he be able to do, should he have other children; how would he procure the necessaries of life each time that a fresh birth might impose fresh requirements upon him? One situated as he was must create resources, draw food from the earth step by step, each time a little mouth opened and cried its hunger aloud. Otherwise he would be guilty of criminal improvidence. And such reflections as these came upon him the more strongly as his penury had increased since the birth of Gervais — to such a point, indeed, that Marianne, despite prodigies of economy, no longer knew how to make her money last her till the end of the month. The slightest expenditure had to be debated; the very butter had to be spread thinly on the children’s bread; and they had to continue wearing their blouses till they were well-nigh threadbare. To increase the embarrassment they grew every year, and cost more money. It had been necessary to send the three boys to a little school at Janville, which was as yet but a small expense. But would it not be necessary to send them the following year to a college, and where was the money for this to come from? A grave problem, a worry which grew from hour to hour, and which for Mathieu somewhat spoilt that charming spring whose advent was flowering the countryside.

The worst was that Mathieu deemed himself immured, as it were, in his position as designer at the Beauchene works. Even admitting that his salary should some day be doubled, it was not seven or eight thousand francs a year which would enable him to realize his dream of a numerous family freely and proudly growing and spreading like some happy forest, indebted solely for strength, health, and beauty to the good common mother of all, the earth, which gave to all its sap. And this was why, since his return to Janville, the earth, the soil had attracted him, detained him during his frequent walks, while he revolved vague but ever-expanding thoughts in his mind. He would pause for long minutes, now before a field of wheat, now on the verge of a leafy wood, now on the margin of a river whose waters glistened in the sunshine, and now amid the nettles of some stony moorland. All sorts of vague plans then rose within him, uncertain reveries of such vast scope, such singularity, that he had as yet spoken of them to nobody, not even his wife. Others would doubtless have mocked at him, for he had as yet but reached that dim, quivering hour when inventors feel the gust of their discovery sweep over them, before the idea that they are revolving presents itself with full precision to their minds. Yet why did he not address himself to the soil, man’s everlasting provider and nurse? Why did he not clear and fertilize those far-spreading lands, those woods, those heaths, those stretches of stony ground which were left sterile around him? Since it was just that each man should bring his contribution to the common weal, create subsistence for himself and his offspring, why should not he, at the advent of each new child, supply a new field of fertile earth which would give that child food, without cost to the community? That was his sole idea; it took no more precise shape; at the thought of realizing it he was carried off into splendid dreams.

The Froments had been in the country fully a month when one evening Marianne, wheeling Gervais’s little carriage in front of her, came as far as the bridge over the Yeuse to await Mathieu, who had promised to return early. Indeed, he got there before six o’clock. And as the evening was fine, it occurred to Marianne to go as far as the Lepailleurs’ mill down the river, and buy some new-laid eggs there.

“I’m willing,” said Mathieu. “I’m very fond of their romantic old mill, you know; though if it were mine I should pull it down and build another one with proper appliances.”

In the yard of the picturesque old building, half covered with ivy, with its mossy wheel slumbering amid water-lilies, they found the Lepailleurs, the man tall, dry, and carroty, the woman as carroty and as dry as himself, but both of them young and hardy. Their child Antonin was sitting on the ground, digging a hole with his little hands.

“Eggs?” La Lepailleur exclaimed; “yes, certainly, madame, there must be some.”

She made no haste to fetch them, however, but stood looking at Gervais, who was asleep in his little vehicle.

“Ah! so that’s your last. He’s plump and pretty enough, I must say,” she remarked.

But Lepailleur raised a derisive laugh, and with the familiarity which the peasant displays towards the bourgeois whom he knows to be hard up, he said: “And so that makes you five, monsieur. Ah, well! that would be a deal too many for poor folks like us.”

“Why?” Mathieu quietly inquired. “Haven’t you got this mill, and don’t you own fields, to give labor to the arms that would come and whose labor would double and treble your produce?”

These simple words were like a whipstroke that made Lepailleur rear. And once again he poured forth all his spite. Ah! surely now, it wasn’t his tumble-down old mill that would ever enrich him, since it had enriched neither his father nor his grandfather. And as for his fields, well, that was a pretty dowry that his wife had brought him, land in which nothing more would grow, and which, however much one might water it with one’s sweat, did not even pay for manuring and sowing.

“But in the first place,” resumed Mathieu, “your mill ought to be repaired and its old mechanism replaced, or, better still, you should buy a good steam-engine.”

“Repair the mill! Buy an engine! Why, that’s madness,” the other replied. “What would be the use of it? As it is, people hereabouts have almost renounced growing corn, and I remain idle every other month.”

“And then,” continued Mathieu, “if your fields yield less, it is because you cultivate them badly, following the old routine, without proper care or appliances or artificial manure.”

“Appliances! Artificial manure! All that humbug which has only sent poor folks to rack and ruin! Ah! I should just like to see you trying to cultivate the land better, and make it yield what it’ll never yield any more.”

Thereupon he quite lost his temper, became violent and brutal, launching against the ungrateful earth all the charges which his love of idleness and his obstinacy suggested. He had travelled, he had fought in Africa as a soldier, folks could not say that he had always lived in his hole like an ignorant beast. But, none the less, on leaving his regiment he had lost all taste for work and come to the conclusion that agriculture was doomed, and would never give him aught but dry bread to eat. The land would soon be bankrupt, and the peasantry no longer believed in it, so old and empty and worn out had it become. And even the sun got out of order nowadays; they had snow in July and thunderstorms in December, a perfect upsetting of seasons, which wrecked the crops almost before they were out of the ground.

“No, monsieur,” said Lepailleur, “what you say is impossible; it’s all past. The soil and work, there’s nothing left of either. It’s barefaced robbery, and though the peasant may kill himself with labor, he will soon be left without even water to drink. Children indeed! No, no! There’s Antonin, of course, and for him we may just be able to provide. But I assure you that I won’t even make Antonin a peasant against his will! If he takes to schooling and wishes to go to Paris, I shall tell him that he’s quite right, for Paris is nowadays the only chance for sturdy chaps who want to make a fortune. So he will be at liberty to sell everything, if he chooses, and try his luck there. The only thing that I regret is that I didn’t make the venture myself when there was still time.”

Mathieu began to laugh. Was it not singular that he, a bourgeois with a bachelor’s degree and scientific attainments, should dream of coming back to the soil, to the common mother of all labor and wealth, when this peasant, sprung from peasants, cursed and insulted the earth, and hoped that his son would altogether renounce it? Never had anything struck him as more significant. It symbolized that disastrous exodus from the rural districts towards the towns, an exodus which year by year increased, unhinging the nation and reducing it to anaemia.

“You are wrong,” he said in a jovial way so as to drive all bitterness from the discussion. “Don’t be unfaithful to the earth; she’s an old mistress who would revenge herself. In your place I would lay myself out to obtain from her, by increase of care, all that I might want. As in the world’s early days, she is still the great fruitful spouse, and she yields abundantly when she is loved in proper fashion.”

But Lepailleur, raising his fists, retorted: “No, no; I’ve had enough of her!”

“And, by the way,” continued Mathieu, “one thing which astonishes me is that no courageous, intelligent man has ever yet come forward to do something with all that vast abandoned estate yonder — that Chantebled — which old Seguin, formerly, dreamt of turning into a princely domain. There are great stretches of waste land, woods which one might partly fell, heaths and moorland which might easily be restored to cultivation. What a splendid task! What a work of creation for a bold man to undertake!”

This so amazed Lepailleur that he stood there openmouthed. Then his jeering spirit asserted itself: “But, my dear sir — excuse my saying it — you must be mad! Cultivate Chantebled, clear those stony tracts, wade about in those marshes! Why, one might bury millions there without reaping a single bushel of oats! It’s a cursed spot, which my grandfather’s father saw such as it is now, and which my grandson’s son will see just the same. Ah! well, I’m not inquisitive, but it would really amuse me to meet the fool who might attempt such madness.”

“
Mon Dieu
, who knows?” Mathieu quietly concluded. “When one only loves strongly one may work miracles.”

La Lepailleur, after going to fetch a dozen eggs, now stood erect before her husband in admiration at hearing him talk so eloquently to a bourgeois. They agreed very well together in their avaricious rage at being unable to amass money by the handful without any great exertion, and in their ambition to make their son a gentleman, since only a gentleman could become wealthy. And thus, as Marianne was going off after placing the eggs under a cushion in Gervais’ little carriage, the other complacently called her attention to Antonin, who, having made a hole in the ground, was now spitting into it.