Complete Works of Emile Zola (1655 page)

“Little Nanet! Little Nanet! we played together so much, we shall love each other much, but we shall love each other even more some day in our children; we may even romp again with our children’s children.”

They kissed each other, they laughed, they toyed in the fulness of their happiness. Excited by this spectacle, roused to enthusiasm by a breeze of gayety which was felt by all, the crowd clapped hands and cried that love the all-powerful promised them life and happiness. Love had founded the city, had sown it with good men as seed, and now at length had come the harvest, in which men would reap a crop of peace and righteousness.

Then the songs began; there were choruses in which one set of voices answered another; old men sang of their well-earned right to rest; men sang of the conquering results of labor, women of their sweet offices of helpfulness, children of their happy confidence and hope in the future. Then there were dances; all were joyful on that day; there was a grand round in which all joined, hand in hand, and it seemed to go on as if it were never coming to an end. It lasted for hours to the sound of music through all the great halls of the works. They danced in that of the crucible-furnaces, in the great hall of the rolling-mills, then in that of the puddling-furnaces; they crossed to the lathes; they came back to the place where steel was cast, filling all places with their turbulent gayety, and sending cheerful strains up to the high roofs which generally heard only the heroic panting of machines. The time had been when workmen had toiled and suffered much in the black, dirty, unwholesome prison which had once stood on that spot, and which fire had destroyed. Now sunshine, pure air, and life entered the workshops freely, and the dancers in the marriage
fête
went whirling among the great machines, the colossal presses, the steam-hammers, the enormous planing-machines, which, dressed with boughs and flowers, seemed to look down on them with smiles. The two young people just married led the revel as if they were the very soul of it all, as if the coming reign of fraternity and righteousness was assured by the victory of their long attachment.

Luc had planned a surprise for Jordan; he wanted him to have his share in the festival, for the labors of the scientist were going to do more for the city than a hundred years of politics. When darkness fell all the works were flooded with light. Thousands of lamps illuminated it with the light of day. This was because Jordan’s labors had at last, after many defeats, discovered how to bring electric power unimpaired to the place where it was wanted, thanks to new apparatus and ingenious methods of transmission. The expense of hauling coal had been done away with. It was burned at the mouth of the mine, and the machines which transformed caloric power into electricity sent it straight to La Crêcherie by special, cables which occasioned no waste, and which reduced its cost by one-half. This, therefore, was another great victory; La Crêcherie was profusely flooded with light, fresh power was added to the machinery, work was made easier, and profits increased. It was, in short, a fresh step taken on the road to general prosperity.

When Jordan, seeing this illumination, understood the affectionate design of Luc, he laughed like a child.

“Ah! my friend, you have given me my bouquet, as children bring flowers to their parents on their
fête
day. But you are right. I have done some little to deserve it. For ten years I have struggled to solve the problem. What obstacles have I not surmounted! What defeats have I not met with when I imagined success was certain! No matter; on the ruins of my unsuccessful experiments I set to work again next day. People always succeed who keep on trying.”

Luc laughed with him, inspired by his faith and courage.

“I know that well,” he said; “you are its living example. I know no greater, no more lofty master of power than yourself; and I have studied in your school.... So now you have accomplished a victory over night; you have put darkness to flight by this flood of electricity, which is not expensive. We shall now be able, from the top of La Crêcherie, every night, to light up what will seem like another sun. And, besides this, you have economized human labor; one man is enough now where two were formerly wanted, thanks to this mechanical power which by degrees will do away with the severity of labor.

We honor you to-day as the master of light, heat, and power.”

Jordan, who had been wrapped in a blanket by Sœurette, for fear of his being chilled by the night air, kept on looking at the works sparkling like some palace in fairyland. Small and frail, with his pallid complexion, and a look as if death might claim him at any moment, he walked through the halls, now blazing with splendor. It seemed to him like an apotheosis, since for ten years he had hardly ever left his laboratory, where he lived absorbed in his work, almost completely ignorant of events in the outside world, and leaving all care of his large and ever-increasing property to his friend and his sister. He therefore found himself on that marriage day very much as if he had been a man dropped down from another planet. He marvelled at the results that had been obtained, and at the success of the work of which he had been the most ignored, yet the most active creator.

“Yes — yes,” murmured he, “it seems all right now; you have already made great progress. We are marching on; the future we have dreamed of is approaching. And I ought to apologize to you, my dear Luc, for I did not conceal from you at the beginning that I had not the smallest belief in your mission. It is singular how hard we find it to share the faith of others, when they are working on lines different from those we take ourselves! Now at last you have converted me. You certainly will hasten the reign of happiness, since you are every day acquiring more good from association and more justice. But you have still a great deal to do; and I, alas! have done nothing in comparison with what I had hoped to accomplish.”

He grew grave and looked thoughtful.

“That interest on the net cost, though we have lessened it one-half, seems to me still too large. And then those costly complicated installations at the mouth of the shafts, those steam-engines, those boilers, and those miles of cables, of such expensive maintenance; they are all barbarous and consume time and money. We want something else, something simpler, more practical, and more direct. Ah! I know in what direction I must look for it, but such a search would seem foolishness to most people. I do not dare to speak to any one of the task I have undertaken, for I cannot announce it myself as clearly as is desirable.... Yes, we must do away with the steam-engine and the boiler, which is a troublesome intermediary between the coal that is mined and the electricity produced. In a word, we ought directly to transform the caloric energy contained in coal into electric power, without passing it through mechanical energy.... How this is to be done I do not yet know. If I did know, the new problem would be solved. But I have undertaken the work, and I hope I shall not fail to find the solution. And you will see — then you will see that electricity will cost almost nothing, and we shall be able to give it to every one, to diffuse it, to make it the victorious agent of comfort to all.”

He grew enthusiastic. He straightened himself on his feeble feet, with passionate gestures, he who was usually so silent and so meditative.

“The day must come,” resumed he, “when electricity will be as common to all men as water in the rivers, as the air of heaven. We must not only give it, we must lavish it, and let men use it as they will, like the air we breathe. It will circulate through cities, just as blood circulates in actual life. In every house there will be little cocks to turn in order to have any quantity of power, heat, and light, even as water is dipped out of a spring. And at night, when the sky darkens, electricity will be like another sun which may put out the light of the stars. And it will do away with winter! It will make a universal summer; it will warm up our old world; it will melt the snows, and it will send their moisture to the clouds. For these reasons I am not as yet very proud of what I have done. There is as yet only a small result from my work in comparison with what remains to be accomplished.” And he ended by saying, with a look of quiet disdain: “I cannot as yet even set my electric furnaces for smelting iron practically to work. They are mere laboratory furnaces. Electricity is still too dear. We must wait until it is remunerative to employ it, and then, I repeat, it should cost no more than the water of the rivers or the air of heaven. When I can furnish any amount of electricity without cost, my furnaces will transform metallurgy. And I am certain that I know the way; I am now at work on it.”

The festivity at night was wonderful. Dancing and singing were resumed in the halls sparkling with electric light and crowded with people to do honor to the wedding. All felt joy in seeing labor set free and made healthful, joyous, and restored to a place of honor. Poverty had been overcome; common good fortune was giving back little by little to all in the community the right and the means to live comfortably and happily. They had in prospect a future of even greater peace and greater equity when the dream of brotherhood in a society associated and free should be fully realized. Love would bring about this miracle, and they escorted Nise and Nanet to their new home, with cheers for the love which had united them, the love which would make them the progenitors of children who would carry on love to the world’s end.

About this time this revolutionary spirit of love made its way among the
bourgeoisie
of Beauclair. Its first appearance was in the peaceable household of the Mazelles, people who lived on the interest of their investments, lazy and kindly. They caught the first breath of the tempest. Their daughter Louise had always been to them an enigma. She bewildered and surprised them, for she was wholly different from themselves. She was very active, very enterprising, and was always busy about the house, saying that it would kill her if she had to live in idleness. The old folks, who thought it a blessing to have nothing to do, were very good people, glad to think they were now comfortably well off, by reason of the money they had put by years before, and they were resolved to enjoy it without incurring any risks or harboring any ambitions. They could not understand why Louise should spend her days in useless activity. She was their only child, and would have a handsome fortune, all in government securities, and was it not unreasonable in her, under these circumstances, not to shut herself up in her own little peaceful corner and keep herself apart from all the worries of an active, moving world? They were satisfied with their own self-centred happiness, never casting a thought on the misery of others; honest, affectionate, full of sympathy for each other, though they cared for no one but themselves, adoring, cherishing, caressing, and cosseting each other. Then why should their daughter worry herself about every beggar who passed their house; about ideas which were bringing to pass great changes in the world; about events which interested people in the streets? She was always in a state of excitement and always wide awake. Everything interested her; she gave part of her life to all around her. Therefore, into the love and adoration with which they regarded her there entered some surprise that they should have had a daughter in whom they recognized no resemblance to themselves. And at last she put the finishing touch to their amazement by falling in love, a thing at which they at first shrugged their shoulders, thinking it a mere fancy; but it grew worse and worse, until they began to think that the end of the world must certainly have come.

Louise Mazelle, who had always been intimate with Nise Delaveau, continued to see her often at the Boisgelins, after they had moved into La Crêcherie. And there she had again met Lucien Bonnaire, her old playmate in the days when she climbed over walls to romp with little boys out of the street. They had both been present on the famous day when Lucien’s little boat had sailed of itself on the waters of the pond, and again when they played hide - and - seek and climbed over the Delaveaus’ garden wall. But now Lucien had grown to be a man. He was a strong, handsome fellow twenty-three years of age, and Louise was twenty. Though he no longer made little boats that could sail of themselves, he had become a most intelligent machinist under the instruction of Luc. He had a great taste for invention, and was likely to do good service to La Crêcherie, where his employment was that of setting up machinery. He did not pretend to be a gentleman. He was, on the contrary, rather proud of remaining a simple workman, like his father, whom he reverenced. And no doubt when Louise fell in love with him there was some attraction to her spirit of revolt, when she thought how she would shock the social ideas of the
bourgeois
class to which she belonged, and she felt delight in doing something that would be decidedly disapproved by people in society. Their old comradeship soon turned, on her part, into a passionate attachment, ready to brave all obstacles. Lucien, whose heart was touched by the tender devotion of this pretty young girl, so bright and smiling, soon fell equally in love. But of the two he was the more reasonable. He did not wish to offend any one. He suffered from the idea that she was something above him, and that she was too rich for him, so he only said to himself that he would never marry if he had to lose her; while she, at the mere thought of opposition to their marriage, became madly rebellious, and said frankly that she was ready to forsake fortune and social position to share her life with him.

Thus the struggle went on for six months. In Lucien’s home the idea of such a marriage, instead of being held to be an honor, gave rise to opposition. Bonnaire especially, who was always sensible, would have preferred that Lucien should marry the daughter of some fellow-workman. The world had gone on rapidly of late years. He found nothing to be proud of in seeing one of his sons climb to a dais above him on the arm of a wife belonging to the
bourgeoisie,
which was already near its end. Before long it might be the
bourgeoisie
that would be glad to mate with the working-class, when it should need the red blood of health and strength for its recovery. There were sharp quarrels on this account in the Bonnaire household, for Bonnaire’s wife, the terrible La Toupe, being proud of social advancement, would no doubt have given her consent if it would have made her a lady with fine dresses and jewelry. The revolution in other things which had been going on around her had never diminished her desire to govern and domineer. She had lost nothing of her detestable disposition, and even while living in ease and comfort was always reproaching her husband for never having laid by a fortune, like Monsieur Mazelle, for example, a sharp fellow who had ceased to do any work this long time. If he had she would have worn a hat (then the distinction between women of the working-class and ladies) and would have sauntered on the public promenades in the character of a lady of fortune, who was enjoying a life of idleness. And when she heard Lucien declare that if he married Louise he was resolved never to take a sou from the old Mazelles, she almost went out of her mind. She took part in the war against this marriage, which no longer seemed likely to bring profit to her family. What was the use of marrying such a poor, thin little thing, a girl who was not pretty, and who put on droll airs, if it were not for her money? It would put a finishing touch to all the other extraordinary things which bewildered and alarmed her, things which for a long time past she had ceased to understand.