Complete Works of Emile Zola (1555 page)

Two months more went by, and January had arrived with a hard frost, when one day the Froments unexpectedly received a visit from Seguin and Beauchene, who had come to try their luck at wild-duck shooting, among such of the ponds on the plateau as had not yet been drained. It was a Sunday, and the whole family was gathered in the roomy kitchen, cheered by a big fire. Through the clear windows one could see the far-spreading countryside, white with rime, and stiffly slumbering under that crystal casing, like some venerated saint awaiting April’s resurrection. And, that day, when the visitors presented themselves, Gervais also was slumbering in his white cradle, rendered somnolent by the season, but plump even as larks are in the cold weather, and waiting, he also, simply for life’s revival, in order to reappear in all the triumph of his acquired strength.

The family had gayly partaken of dejeuner, and now, before nightfall, the four children had gathered round a table by the window, absorbed in a playful occupation which delighted them. Helped by Ambroise, the twins, Blaise and Denis, were building a whole village out of pieces of cardboard, fixed together with paste. There were houses, a town hall, a church, a school. And Rose, who had been forbidden to touch the scissors, presided over the paste, with which she smeared herself even to her hair. In the deep quietude, through which their laughter rang at intervals, their father and mother had remained seated side by side in front of the blazing fire, enjoying that delightful Sunday peace after the week’s hard work.

They lived there very simply, like genuine peasants, without any luxury, any amusement, save that of being together. Their gay, bright kitchen was redolent of that easy primitive life, lived so near the earth, which frees one from fictitious wants, ambition, and the longing for pleasure. And no fortune, no power could have brought such quiet delight as that afternoon of happy intimacy, while the last-born slept so soundly and quietly that one could not even hear him breathe.

Beauchene and Seguin broke in upon the quiet like unlucky sportsmen, with their limbs weary and their faces and hands icy cold. Amid the exclamations of surprise which greeted them, they complained of the folly that had possessed them to venture out of Paris in such bleak weather.

“Just fancy, my dear fellow,” said Beauchene, “we haven’t seen a single duck! It’s no doubt too cold. And you can’t imagine what a bitter wind blows on the plateau, amid those ponds and bushes bristling with icicles. So we gave up the idea of any shooting. You must give us each a glass of hot wine, and then we’ll get back to Paris.”

Seguin, who was in even a worse humor, stood before the fire trying to thaw himself; and while Marianne made haste to warm some wine, he began to speak of the cleared fields which he had skirted. Under the icy covering, however, beneath which they stiffly slumbered, hiding the seed within them, he had guessed nothing of the truth, and already felt anxious about this business of Mathieu’s, which looked anything but encouraging. Indeed, he already feared that he would not be paid his purchase money, and so made bold to speak ironically.

“I say, my dear fellow, I am afraid you have lost your time,” he began; “I noticed it all as I went by, and it did not seem promising. But how can you hope to reap anything from rotten soil in which only reeds have been growing for centuries?”

“One must wait,” Mathieu quietly answered. “You must come back and see it all next June.”

But Beauchene interrupted them. “There is a train at four o’clock, I think,” said he; “let us make haste, for it would annoy us tremendously to miss it, would it not, Seguin?”

So saying, he gave him a gay, meaning glance. They had doubtless planned some little spree together, like husbands bent on availing themselves to the utmost of the convenient pretext of a day’s shooting. Then, having drunk some wine and feeling warmed and livelier, they began to express astonishment at their surroundings.

“It stupefies me, my dear fellow,” declared Beauchene, “that you can live in this awful solitude in the depth of winter. It is enough to kill anybody. I am all in favor of work, you know; but, dash it! one must have some amusement too.”

“But we do amuse ourselves,” said Mathieu, waving his hand round that rustic kitchen in which centred all their pleasant family life.

The two visitors followed his gesture, and gazed in amazement at the walls covered with utensils, at the rough furniture, and at the table on which the children were still building their village after offering their cheeks to be kissed. No doubt they were unable to understand what pleasure there could possibly be there, for, suppressing a jeering laugh, they shook their heads. To them it was really an extraordinary life, a life of most singular taste.

“Come and see my little Gervais,” said Marianne softly. “He is asleep; mind, you must not wake him.”

For politeness’ sake they both bent over the cradle, and expressed surprise at finding a child but ten months old so big. He was very good, too. Only, as soon as he should wake, he would no doubt deafen everybody. And then, too, if a fine child like that sufficed to make life happy, how many people must be guilty of spoiling their lives! The visitors came back to the fireside, anxious only to be gone now that they felt enlivened.

“So it’s understood,” said Mathieu, “you won’t stay to dinner with us?”

“Oh, no, indeed!” they exclaimed in one breath.

Then, to attenuate the discourtesy of such a cry, Beauchene began to jest, and accepted the invitation for a later date when the warm weather should have arrived.

“On my word of honor, we have business in Paris,” he declared. “But I promise you that when it’s fine we will all come and spend a day here — yes, with our wives and children. And you will then show us your work, and we shall see if you have succeeded. So good-by! All my good wishes, my dear fellow! Au revoir, cousin! Au revoir, children; be good!”

Then came more kisses and hand-shakes, and the two men disappeared. And when the gentle silence had fallen once more Mathieu and Marianne again found themselves in front of the bright fire, while the children completed the building of their village with a great consumption of paste, and Gervais continued sleeping soundly. Had they been dreaming? Mathieu wondered. What sudden blast from all the shame and suffering of Paris had blown into their far-away quiet? Outside, the country retained its icy rigidity. The fire alone sang the song of hope in life’s future revival. And, all at once, after a few minutes’ reverie the young man began to speak aloud, as if he had at last just found the answer to all sorts of grave questions which he had long since put to himself.

“But those folks don’t love; they are incapable of loving! Money, power, ambition, pleasure — yes, all those things may be theirs, but not love! Even the husbands who deceive their wives do not really love their mistresses. They have never glowed with the supreme desire, the divine desire which is the world’s very soul, the brazier of eternal life. And that explains everything. Without desire there is no love, no courage, and no hope. By love alone can one create. And if love be restricted in its mission there is but failure. Yes, they lie and deceive, because they do not love. Then they suffer and lapse into moral and physical degradation. And at the end lies the collapse of our rotten society, which breaks up more and more each day before our eyes. That, then, is the truth I was seeking. It is desire and love that save. Whoever loves and creates is the revolutionary saviour, the maker of men for the new world which will shortly dawn.”

Never before had Mathieu so plainly understood that he and his wife were different from others. This now struck him with extraordinary force. Comparisons ensued, and he realized that their simple life, free from the lust of wealth, their contempt for luxury and worldly vanities, all their common participation in toil which made them accept and glorify life and its duties, all that mode of existence of theirs which was at once their joy and their strength, sprang solely from the source of eternal energy: the love with which they glowed. If, later on, victory should remain with them, if they should some day leave behind them work of value and health and happiness, it would be solely because they had possessed the power of love and the courage to love freely, harvesting, in an ever-increasing family, both the means of support and the means of conquest. And this sudden conviction filled Mathieu with such a glow that he leant towards his wife, who sat there deeply moved by what he said, and kissed her ardently upon the lips. It was divine love passing like a flaming blast. But she, though her own eyes were sparkling, laughingly scolded him, saying: “Hush, hush, you will wake Gervais.”

Then they remained there hand in hand, pressing each other’s fingers amid the silence. Evening was coming on, and at last the children, their village finished, raised cries of rapture at seeing it standing there among bits of wood, which figured trees. And then the softened glances of the parents strayed now through the window towards the crops sleeping beneath the crystalline rime, and now towards their last-born’s cradle, where hope was likewise slumbering.

Again did two long months go by. Gervais had just completed his first year, and fine weather, setting in early, was hastening the awaking of the earth. One morning, when Marianne and the children went to join Mathieu on the plateau, they raised shouts of wonder, so completely had the sun transformed the expanse in a single week. It was now all green velvet, a thick endless carpet of sprouting corn, of tender, delicate emerald hue. Never had such a marvellous crop been seen. And thus, as the family walked on through the mild, radiant April morning, amid the country now roused from winter’s sleep, and quivering with fresh youth, they all waxed merry at the sight of that healthfulness, that progressing fruitfulness, which promised the fulfilment of all their hopes. And their rapture yet increased when, all at once, they noticed that little Gervais also was awaking to life, acquiring decisive strength. As he struggled in his little carriage and his mother removed him from it, behold! he took his flight, and, staggering, made four steps; then hung to his father’s legs with his little fists. A cry of extraordinary delight burst forth.

“Why! he walks, he walks!”

Ah! those first lispings of life, those successive flights of the dear little ones; the first glance, the first smile, the first step — what joy do they not bring to parents’ hearts! They are the rapturous
etapes
of infancy, for which father and mother watch, which they await impatiently, which they hail with exclamations of victory, as if each were a conquest, a fresh triumphal entry into life. The child grows, the child becomes a man. And there is yet the first tooth, forcing its way like a needle-point through rosy gums; and there is also the first stammered word, the “pa-pa,” the “mam-ma,” which one is quite ready to detect amid the vaguest babble, though it be but the purring of a kitten, the chirping of a bird. Life does its work, and the father and the mother are ever wonderstruck with admiration and emotion at the sight of that efflorescence alike of their flesh and their souls.

“Wait a moment,” said Marianne, “he will come back to me. Gervais! Gervais!”

And after a little hesitation, a false start, the child did indeed return, taking the four steps afresh, with arms extended and beating the air as if they were balancing-poles.

“Gervais! Gervais!” called Mathieu in his turn. And the child went back to him; and again and again did they want him to repeat the journey, amid their mirthful cries, so pretty and so funny did they find him.

Then, seeing that the four other children began playing rather roughly with him in their enthusiasm, Marianne carried him away. And once more, on the same spot, on the young grass, did she give him the breast. And again did the stream of milk trickle forth.

Close by that spot, skirting the new field, there passed a crossroad, in rather bad condition, leading to a neighboring village. And on this road a cart suddenly came into sight, jolting amid the ruts, and driven by a peasant — who was so absorbed in his contemplation of the land which Mathieu had cleared, that he would have let his horse climb upon a heap of stones had not a woman who accompanied him abruptly pulled the reins. The horse then stopped, and the man in a jeering voice called out: “So this, then, is your work, Monsieur Froment?”

Mathieu and Marianne thereupon recognized the Lepailleurs, the people of the mill. They were well aware that folks laughed at Janville over the folly of their attempt — that mad idea of growing wheat among the marshes of the plateau. Lepailleur, in particular, distinguished himself by the violent raillery he levelled at this Parisian, a gentleman born, with a good berth, who was so stupid as to make himself a peasant, and fling what money he had to that rascally earth, which would assuredly swallow him and his children and his money all together, without yielding even enough wheat to keep them in bread. And thus the sight of the field had stupefied him. It was a long while since he had passed that way, and he had never thought that the seed would sprout so thickly, for he had repeated a hundred times that nothing would germinate, so rotten was all the land. Although he almost choked with covert anger at seeing his predictions thus falsified, he was unwilling to admit his error, and put on an air of ironical doubt.

“So you think it will grow, eh? Well, one can’t say that it hasn’t come up. Only one must see if it can stand and ripen.” And as Mathieu quietly smiled with hope and confidence, he added, striving to poison his joy: “Ah! when you know the earth you’ll find what a hussy she is. I’ve seen plenty of crops coming on magnificently, and then a storm, a gust of wind, a mere trifle, has reduced them to nothing! But you are young at the trade as yet; you’ll get your experience in misfortune.”

His wife, who nodded approval on hearing him talk so finely, then addressed herself to Marianne: “Oh! my man doesn’t say that to discourage you, madame. But the land you know, is just like children. There are some who live and some who die; some who give one pleasure, and others who kill one with grief. But, all considered, one always bestows more on them than one gets back, and in the end one finds oneself duped. You’ll see, you’ll see.”