Complete Works of Emile Zola (217 page)

At daybreak the next morning he was at his brother’s. Eugène lived in two large, cold, barely-furnished rooms, that chilled Aristide to the marrow. He had looked to find his brother wallowing in the lap of luxury. Eugène was working at a small black table. All he said was, with a smile, in his slow voice:

“Ah! there you are, I was expecting you.”

Aristide was very bitter. He accused Eugène of leaving him to vegetate, of not even having had the charity to give him a word of good advice while he was floundering about in the country. He could never forgive himself for remaining a Republican up to the 2 December; it was an open sore with him, an everlasting confusion. Eugène had quietly taken up his pen. When the other had finished:

“Bah!” he said. “All mistakes can be set right. You have a career before you full of promise.”

He spoke these words in so decided a voice, with a look so piercing, that Aristide lowered his head, feeling that his brother was penetrating into the very depths of his nature. The latter continued with friendly bluntness:

“You have come here to ask me to find you an appointment, have you not? I have been thinking of you, but I have heard of nothing yet. You understand, I must be careful where I put you. What you want is a place where you can feather your nest without danger either to yourself or to me…. Don’t trouble to protest, we are quite alone, we can say what we like….”

Aristide thought it best to laugh.

“Oh, I know you have your wits about you,” Eugène continued, “and that you are not likely to make a fool of yourself for no purpose…. As soon as a good opportunity presents itself, I will give you the berth. Meantime, whenever you want twenty francs or so, come and ask me for it.”

They talked an instant of the rising in the South, through which their father had gained his appointment as receiver of taxes. Eugène dressed himself while they were talking. As he was about to take leave of his brother downstairs in the street, he detained him a moment longer, and said to him in a lower tone of voice:

“You will do me a favour by not seeking work on your own account, but by waiting at home quietly for the appointment which I promise you…. I should not like to see my brother hanging about in people’s waiting-rooms.”

Aristide had a certain respect for Eugène, whom he looked upon as an uncommonly smart chap. He could not forgive his distrustfulness, nor his candour, which was a trifle blunt; still he went home obediently and shut himself up in the Rue Saint-Jacques. He had arrived with five hundred francs which had been lent him by his wife’s father. After paying the expenses of the journey, he made the three hundred francs that remained last him a month. Angèle was a great eater; moreover she thought it necessary to trim her Sunday dress with a fresh set of mauve ribbons. That month of waiting seemed endless to Aristide. He was consumed with impatience. When he sat at his window and watched the gigantic labour of Paris seething beneath him, he was struck with an insane desire to hurl himself straightway into the furnace, in order with his fevered hands to mould the gold like soft wax. He inhaled the breath, vague as yet, that rose from the great city, that breath of the budding Empire, laden already with the odours of alcoves and financial hells, with the warm effluvia of sensuality. The faint fumes that reached him told him that he was on the right scent, that the game was scudding before him, that the great imperial hunt, the hunt after adventures, women, and millions, was at last about to commence. His nostrils quivered, his instinct, the instinct of a famished beast, dexterously seized upon the slightest indications of the division of spoil of which the city was to be the arena.

Twice he called on his brother, to urge him to greater activity. Eugène received him gruffly, told him again that he was not forgetting him, but that he must have patience. He at last received a letter asking him to call at the Rue Penthièvre. He went, his heart beating violently, as though he was on his way to an assignation. He found Eugène sitting before his everlasting little black table in the great bleak room which he used as a study. So soon as he saw him, the lawyer handed him a document, and said:

“There, I got your business settled yesterday. This is your appointment as an assistant surveying-clerk at the Hotel de Ville. Your salary will be two thousand four hundred francs.”

Aristide remained where he stood. He turned pale, and did not take the document, thinking that his brother was making fun of him. He had expected an appointment of at least six thousand francs. Eugène, suspecting what was passing in his mind, turned his chair round, and, folding his arms, exclaimed, with a show of anger:

“So you are a fool, then, are you?…. You indulge in dreams like a girl. You want to live in a handsome flat, to keep servants, to eat well, to sleep in silken sheets, to take your pleasure in the arms of the first woman that comes, in a boudoir furnished in a couple of hours…. You and your sort, if you had your way, would empty the coffers even before they were full. But, good God, why can’t you be patient? See how I live, and in order to pick up your fortune at least take the trouble to stoop.”

He spoke with a profound contempt for his brother’s schoolboy impatience. One could feel, through his rude speech, a higher ambition, a desire for unmitigated power; this candid craving for money must have seemed common to him, and puerile. He continued in a gentler voice, with a subtle smile:

“No doubt you have excellent propensities, and I have no wish to thwart them. Men like you are worth much to us. We fully intend to choose our best friends from among the hungriest. Set your mind at rest, we shall keep open table, and the most unbounded appetites shall be satisfied. It is, after all, the easiest way of governing…. But for Heaven’s sake wait till the cloth is laid; and, if you take my advice, you will go to the kitchen yourself and fetch your own knife and fork.”

Aristide still remained sullen. His brother’s metaphorical humour in no way raised his spirits. And Eugène once more gave vent to his anger.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “I was right in my first opinion: you are a fool…. Why, what did you expect, what did you imagine I was going to do with your illustrious person? You have not even had the spirit to finish your law studies; you bury yourself for ten years in a miserable clerkship in a sous-préfecture; and you come down upon me with the odious reputation of a Republican whom the Coup d’État alone was able to convert …. Do you think there is the making of a minister in you, with a record like that?…. Oh, I know you have in your favour your savage desire to succeed by any possible means. It is a great point, I admit, and it is that which I had in my mind when I got you this appointment in the Hotel de Ville.”

And rising, he thrust the nomination into Aristide’s hands, and continued:

“Take it, and some day you’ll thank me! I chose the place for you myself, and I know what you’ll be able to get out of it…. You have only to look about you and to keep your ears open. If you know your way about, you will understand, and act accordingly…. Now remember carefully what I am about to add. We are entering upon a period when fortune will be within the reach of anyone. Make as much money as you like: I give you leave; only no folly, no flagrant scandal, or I’ll exterminate you.”

This threat produced the effect which his promises had not been able to bring about. All Aristide’s ardour was rekindled at the thought of the fortune of which his brother spoke. It seemed to him that he was at last let loose in the fray, authorized to cut throats, provided he did so legally, and without causing too much commotion. Eugène gave him two hundred francs to keep him till the end of the month. Then he paused, reflecting.

“I am thinking of changing my name,” he said at last; “you should do the same…. We should be less in each other’s way.”

“As you like,” answered Aristide quietly.

“You need take no trouble in the matter, I will attend to the formalities…. Would you like to call yourself Sicardot, your wife’s name?”

Aristide raised his eyes to the ceiling, repeating the name and listening to the sound of the syllables:

“Sicardot…. Aristide Sicardot…. No, I wouldn’t; it’s clumsy and stinks of failure.”

“Think of something else then,” said Eugène.

“I would prefer Sicard simply,” resumed the other after a pause: “Aristide Sicard…. That’s not so bad, is it?…. a little frivolous, perhaps ….”

He thought a moment longer, and then, triumphantly:

“I have it, I’ve found it,” he cried …. “Saccard, Aristide Saccard!…. with two c’s …. Eh! there’s money in that name; it sounds as if you were counting five-franc pieces.”

Eugène’s was a savage type of humour. He dismissed his brother, and said to him with a smile:

“Yes, a name that ought to make either a felon or a millionaire of you.”

A few days later Aristide Saccard was installed at the Hotel de Ville. He learnt that his brother must have had great influence to get him admitted without the usual examinations.

And then the household entered upon the monotonous life of a small clerk. Aristide and his wife resumed their Plassans habits. Only they had fallen from a dream of sudden fortune, and their poverty-stricken existence seemed the heavier to them since they had come to look upon it as a time of probation whose length they were unable to determine. To be poor in Paris is to be doubly poor. Angèle accepted penury with the listlessness of a chlorotic woman; she spent her days in the kitchen, or else lolling on the floor playing with her daughter, never bewailing her lot till the last franc was reached. But Aristide quivered with rage in this poverty, in this narrow existence, in which he turned about like a caged beast. For him it was a period of unspeakable suffering; his pride was wounded to the quick, his unsatisfied cravings goaded him to madness. His brother succeeded in getting elected to the Corps Législatif by the arrondissement of Plassans, and he suffered all the more. He was too conscious of Eugène’s superiority to be foolishly jealous: he accused him of not doing as much as he might have done for him. Time after time he was driven by want to go to him and borrow money of him. Eugène lent him the money, but reproached him roughly for his lack of spirit and willingness. After that Aristide set his back up. He swore he would never ask anybody for a sou, and he kept his word. The last week of each month Aristide ate dry bread and sighed. This apprenticeship completed Saccard’s gruesome training. His lips became still more thin; he was no longer fool enough to dream of millions aloud; his emaciated person became dumb, and expressed but one desire, one fixed idea, that never left his mind. When he trotted from the Rue Saint-Jacques to the Hotel de Ville, his worn heels sounded sharply on the pavement, and he buttoned himself up in his threadbare frock-coat as in an asylum of hatred, while his weasel’s nose sniffed the air of the streets: a jagged symbol of the envious wretchedness that one sees prowling over the pavements of Paris, carrying abroad its plan of fortune and its dream of gratification.

In the early part of 1853, Aristide was appointed a surveying commissioner of roads. His salary was to be four thousand five hundred francs. This increase came in the nick of time: Angèle was in a decline, little Clotilde had lost all her colour. He kept on his scanty lodgings of two small rooms, the dining-room furnished in walnut and the bedroom in mahogany, and continued to lead a harsh existence, avoiding debt, not desiring to touch other people’s money until he was able to plunge his arms into it up to the elbows. He thus belied his instincts, scorning the few additional sous that came to him, remaining on the look-out. Angèle was perfectly happy. She bought herself some things and ate meat every day. She could no longer understand her husband’s suppressed anger, nor the reason why he wore the sombre expression of a man working out the solution of a formidable problem.

Aristide followed Eugène’s advice: he kept his ears and eyes open. When he went to thank his brother for his promotion, the latter observed the change that had taken place in him; he complimented him on what he called his sensible demeanour. The clerk, inwardly hardened by jealousy, had become supple and insinuating. A few months had sufficed to transform him into an admirable comedian. All his Southern ardour had been aroused; and he carried his cunning so far that his fellow-clerks at the Hotel de Ville looked upon him as an inoffensive fellow whom his near relationship to a deputy marked out beforehand for some fat appointment. This relationship secured for him the goodwill also of his superiors. He thus enjoyed a sort of authority above his position, which enabled him to open certain doors and to explore certain receptacles without any blame being attached to his indiscretions. For two years he was seen to roam about all the passages, linger in all the rooms, leave his seat twenty times a day to go and talk to a friend, or carry an instruction, or take a stroll through the offices, endless journeys that caused his colleagues to exclaim, “That devil of a Provençal! he can’t sit still: his legs are always on the move.” His personal friends took him for an idler, and our worthy laughed when they accused him of having but one thought, to despoil the services of a few minutes. He never made the mistake of listening at keyholes; but he had a way of boldly opening a door and walking across a room, with a document in his hand and a preoccupied air, with a step so slow and even that he did not lose a word of the conversation. This was a masterpiece of tactics; people ended by not interrupting themselves when this assiduous clerk passed by them, gliding through the shadows of the offices, and seemingly so wrapt up in his business. He had still one other method; he was extraordinarily obliging, he offered to help his fellow-clerks whenever they dropped into arrears with their work, and he would then study the registers and documents that passed through his hands with meditative fondness. But one of his favourite tricks was to strike up a friendship with the messengers. He went so far as to shake them by the hand. For hours together he would keep them talking between the doors, with little stifled bursts of laughter, telling them stories, drawing them out. The worthy men worshipped him, and said of him, “There’s a man who isn’t haughty.” He was the first to be told of any scandal that might occur. And thus it came about that at the end of two years the Hotel de Ville was an open book to him. He knew every member of the staff down to the least of the lamp-lighters, and every paper down to the laundress’s bills.