Complete Works of Emile Zola (1671 page)

Then Luc exclaimed, protestingly:

“Oh, my friend, do not let us speak of me as an example. It is you who have given me continually the highest, the most magnificent one! Do you remember my weariness, my former discouragement, when I always found you erect, with the greatest courage, the strongest faith in your work, even in the days when all certainty seemed crumbling around you? Your invincible strength has lain in believing in nothing but work, and putting into that belief, the only salvation, the only reason for action and life. Your work has thus become your very heart and brain, the blood that flows in your veins, the thought that watches unceasingly at the bottom of your intelligence. Work is your sole existence; it beats with all the life that you impart to it hour by hour. Moreover, what an imperishable monument, what a magnificent gift of happiness you are going to bequeath to men! My own work as constructor of the town and shepherd of the people would certainly never have succeeded and would still be of no avail if yours had not existed.”

There was silence; a flight of birds passed overhead, and as the autumn sun sank lower in the heavens it inundated the bare branches with a more tender sweetness. Sœurette’s maternal instinct caused her to become uneasy. She replaced the coverings over Jordan’s knees, while Josine and Suzanne hung over Luc, fearful of his being fatigued. At last he resumed:

“Science remains the great revolutionist. That you told me in the beginning, and each step forward of our long existence has convinced me how right you were. Would this Beauclair of comfort and community of interests have been already possible if you had not put at my disposal electrical energy, this agent which has become necessary to all labor, to all social life? Truth and science alone will emancipate man more and more, and make him master of his destiny and give him the sovereignty of the world by reducing the forces of nature to the part of docile servants. While it was I who built, my friend, it was you who gave me the means to breathe life into my mortar and stones.”

“It is true,” answered Jordan, in his gentle, tranquil voice, “science will emancipate man, for truth is really the most powerful, and, indeed, the only worker for fraternity and justice. I am going to depart content. I have just made my last visit to our works, which will now continue to act as I would wish, for the relief and happiness of all.”

He continued to talk, giving explanations and instructions as to the operation of the new apparatus and the future employment of these inexhaustible reservoirs of power, as if he were dictating to his friend his last wishes. This was his will and testament, all the joy and all the peace that could be drawn from his scientific labors. Electricity was already so abundant and so very cheap that it was given to the inhabitants at their pleasure, like water from the springs whose streams never dried up, or like the open air coming freely from the four comers of the horizon. In this respect, if in no other, it was life itself.

The applications of electricity were numberless; each day gave birth to some new benefit. Even transportation, locomotion, and simple traffic in the populous streets were becoming more easy, thanks to that power supplied without cost, applied to an infinite number of vehicles, such as bicycles, voiturettes, wagons, and trains of cars.

“I shall depart content,” repeated Jordan, with his air of serene cheerfulness. “I have finished my task, and I find that the work is sufficiently advanced to permit me to sleep in peace. In the near future, aerial navigation will be established, and man will have conquered space, as he has conquered the ocean. In the future he will be able to correspond from one end of the earth to the other, without wires or cables. Human words and human deeds will make the tour of the world with the swiftness of lightning. And, my friend, this is certainly that deliverance of the people by science, the great invincible revolutionist which will bring them continually more peace and truth.

He was becoming tired, and his voice was growing very feeble. Yet he was still cheerful, as he concluded:

“You see, my friend, I was as revolutionary as yourself.”

“I know it, my friend,” answered Luc, with touching tenderness. “You have been my master in all things, and I can never thank you sufficiently for your admirable lessons in energy, for your superb faith in labor and what it can accomplish.”

The sun was setting, and a slight tremor had just passed through the branches of the great linden tree, through which the rays of the star of day were falling paler. The night was approaching, and a delicious repose was slowly invading the stately foliage. The three women, still standing, ever silent and attentive, became uneasy, much as they respected this last interview, the emotion of which held them spellbound. They interfered with gentleness, without words, but with a simple maternal gesture.

Then, as Josine and Suzanne were covering Luc in his turn, he said, quietly:

“
I am not cold; the evening is so beautiful.”

But Sœurette had turned to look at the sun, which, having reached the horizon, was on the point of disappearing, and Jordan followed her glance.

“
Yes, night is falling,” resumed he. “The sun may rest, but it leaves us its goodness and its strength in our storehouses. And this time when he goes to rest my day also will be done. I am going to go to sleep. Farewell, my friend.”

“Farewell, my friend,” repeated Luc. “I also shall soon sleep.”

These were their adieux; of exquisite tenderness and of extraordinary simple grandeur. Both knew that they would never see each other again, that they were exchanging their last glances and speaking their last words. After sixty years, in which their lives had been spent in a common effort, they were now separating, to be reunited only in the stream of generations, the humanity of the future, whose happiness they had hastened.

“Farewell, my friend,” said Jordan, once more. “Do not be sad; death is good and necessary. We live again in others; we remain thus immortal. We have already given ourselves to them; we have labored only for them, and we shall be born again in them; we shall thus have our part in our own work. Farewell, my friend.”

And Luc once more repeated:

“Farewell, my friend; all that is to remain of us will tell how we have loved and how we have hoped. Each human being is born to do his task; life has no other reason; every time that nature needs another workman she puts into the world another human being, and when the workman’s day is done, he can go to rest; the earth will receive him again for other needs. Farewell, my friend.” He leaned forward, wishing to kiss Jordan, but was unable, and the three loving women were obliged to aid and support them in this last embrace. They laughed like children, and displayed cheerfulness and an admirable serenity in this supreme hour of separation, experiencing neither regrets nor remorse, since they had faithfully done their duty, their task as men. They had even less to fear in the future; they were without terror of the death awaiting them, for they were secure of the great calm in which good workmen sleep. They embraced each other very tenderly, and lingeringly put all that remained to them of breath into this kiss.

“Farewell, my good Jordan.”

“Farewell, my good Luc.”

Then they spoke no more. The silence became profound and sacred. The sun disappeared from the wide heavens behind the dim and distant line of the horizon. In the great linden tree a bird became silent, the branches of the trees disappeared in the darkness, the tall grasses and the entire park, with its old trees, walks, and lawns, sank into the delightful peace of evening.

Then, upon a sign from Sœurette, the two men raised Jordan’s arm-chair, and bore him away with a slow and gentle step. Luc, sitting motionless in his own, had insisted by a gesture that they should leave him under the tree a moment longer. He gazed after his friend as the latter was borne down the wide, straight walk. The walk was a long one, and the arm-chair gradually diminished in size. There was one moment when Jordan turned round for the last time, and one more glance, together with a half-extinguished laugh, were exchanged. All was over, and Luc saw the arm-chair vanish from his sight, while the entire park sank into slumber, and became enveloped in the increasing darkness. Upon re-entering his laboratory, Jordan lay down. He was so delicate and so weak at his great age that his stature seemed reduced to that of a child. As he himself had said, his work being finished and his day ended, he was willing that death should claim him; and the next day he died, very peacefully, in Soeurette’s arms.

Luc was to live another five years in the arm-chair, which he seldom quitted, and which was placed near the window of his room, whence he saw his city each day becoming larger and more complete. A week after Jordan’s death, Sœurette had come to join Josine and Suzanne at Luc’s side, so that there were thereafter three to surround him with their tenderness and care. All this care for him was the superb and boundless harvest of all the love that he had sown, with lavish hands, over the entire earth around him, the results of which were to-day increasing with extraordinary abundance under the sun.

During his long hours of happy contemplation before his prosperous city, Luc often lived his past over again. He saw once more his point of departure, from long ago reading an unpretentious little book containing an abstract of Fourier’s doctrine. He recalled the sleepless night, during which, feverishly revolving thoughts of his still obscure mission, his brain and heart had been prepared to receive the good seed, as he had begun to read in order to find sleep. Thus, starting from Fourier’s experiment, the new city was at each stage to reform itself, to advance towards more liberty and justice, and to make a conquest upon its way of socialists, hostile sects, collectivists, and even of anarchists, in order to end by grouping them all into a family of brothers, reconciled by the realization of a common ideal, in the kingdom of heaven fulfilled at last upon earth.

The triumphant spectacle that Luc had now always before his eyes, that city of happiness, the gayly colored roofs of which were spread out before his window, was admirable. The march of progress which a former generation, sunk in ancient error, and contaminated by an iniquitous environment, had so mournfully begun in the midst of many obstacles and former hatreds, was to be pursued by their children, instructed and disciplined by the schools and workshops, advancing with a cheerful step, even to the attainment of aims formerly declared chimerical. The long effort of struggling humanity resulted in the free expansion of the individual, in a society completely satisfied; in man being fully man, and living his life in its entirety. The happy city was thus realized in the religion of life; the religion of humanity, freed at length from dogmas, it became in itself all glory and all joy.

But Luc was present at a triumph of Labor — labor the savior of mankind, creator and regulator of the social world. From the first he had desired to see the death and disappearance of the iniquitous wage-system, which he held to be the source of poverty and suffering, the rotten basis of the old social edifice, which was crumbling in all directions. He had dreamed of something different in his reorganization of labor, a new arrangement which would further a just division of the wealth acquired by labor. But by how many stages it had been necessary to advance before this dream could become reality in the happy city he had founded!

Authority was at an end; the new social system had no other foundation than the tie of labor, accepted as necessary by all, their law and the object of their worship. A number of groups adopted the new system, breaking off from the old groups of builders, dealers in clothing, metal-workers, artisans, and farm laborers, each group increasing in number, each different, each making itself essential to the rest, and satisfying individual wants as well as the needs of the community. Nothing impeded any man’s expansion; a citizen working as a laborer might unite himself with as many groups as he thought proper.

Luc laughed with delight when a morning breeze brought him the sound of song and laughter from his city. What a happy thing was work now that it had been made easy and delightful!

Luc had no further fears about the future of his city. He looked on it, as it grew day by day, as if it were a beautiful, strong creature, endowed with eternal youth. It had reached down to Brias, between the two promontories of the Monts Bleuses, and was now extending over the plain of Roumagne. On fine days the white fronts of its houses seemed to smile in the midst of verdure, and no smoke marred the clearness of the air, for chimneys had been abolished, and electricity had everywhere replaced wood and coal.

And in the city all was love. A pervading sense of love, increasing, wholesome, purifying, became the perfume and the sacred flame of daily life. Love, general and universal, had its birth in youth; then it passed on and became mother love, father love, filial love; it spread to relations, to neighbors, to fellow-citizens, to all men upon earth, and as its waves swept on and became stronger, it seemed to become a great sea of love, bathing the shores of the whole earth. Charity — that is, love of one’s neighbors — was like the fresh air which fills the lungs of all who breathe it; everywhere there was this feeling of brotherly love; love alone had proved able to realize the unity men had so long dreamed of, bringing all into divine harmony. The human race, at last as well balanced as the planets in their orbits by the law of attraction, the laws of justice, solidarity, and love, would go joyfully on its round through the ages of eternity. Such was the harvest ever renewed and renewing, the great harvest of tenderness and loving kindness, that Luc every morning saw growing up around him in spots where he had sown his seed so bountifully in his early days. In his whole city, in his school-rooms, in his workshops, in each house, and almost in each heart, for many years he had been sowing the good seed with lavish hands.

“Just look! just look!” he sometimes said in the morning when Josine, Sœurette, and Suzanne stood together round his easy-chair, placed before the open window of his room. “Just look! The trees have put forth fresh buds since last evening, and it seems to me as if kisses were flying about over the roofs like little singing birds. Look down to right and left; don’t you see love on the wing in the light of sunrise?”