Complete Works of Emile Zola (386 page)

‘It is all over now,’ faltered Albine, as she sank down amongst the broken brambles. ‘You will never love me enough again.’

She wept, while Serge stood rooted by the breach, straining his ears to catch the slightest sound that might be wafted from the village, waiting, as it were, for some voice that might fully awaken him. The bell in the church-tower had begun to sway, and slowly through the quiet evening air the three chimes of the
Angelus
floated up to the Paradou. It was a soft and silvery summons. The bell now seemed to be alive.

‘O God!’ cried Serge, falling on his knees, quite overcome by the emotion which the soft notes of the bell had excited in him.

He bent down towards the ground, and he felt the three peals of the
Angelus
pass over his neck and echo through his heart. The voice of the bell seemed to grow louder. It was raised again sternly, pitilessly, for a few moments which seemed to him to be years. It summoned up before him all his old life, his pious childhood, his happy days at the seminary, and his first Masses in that burning valley of Les Artaud, where he had dreamt of a solitary, saintly life. He had always heard it speaking to him as it was doing now. He recognised every inflection of that sacred voice, which had so constantly fallen upon his ears, like the grave and gentle voice of a mother. Why had he so long ceased to hear it? In former times it had promised him the coming of Mary. Had Mary come then and taken him and carried him off into those happy green fastnesses, which the sound of the bell could not reach? He would never have lapsed into forgetfulness if the bell had not ceased to ring. And as he bent his head still lower towards the earth, the contact of his beard with his hands made him start. He could not recognise his own self with that long silky beard. He twisted it and fumbled about in his hair seeking for the bare circle of the tonsure, but a heavy growth of curls now covered his whole head from his brow to the nape of his neck.

‘Ah! you were right,’ he said, casting a look of despair at Albine. ‘It was forbidden. We have sinned, and we have merited some terrible punishment.... But I, indeed, I tried to reassure you, I did not hear the threats which sounded in your ears through the branches.’

Albine tried to clasp him in her arms again as she sobbed out, ‘Get up, and let us escape together. Perhaps even yet there is time for us to love each other.’

‘No, no; I haven’t the strength. I should stumble and fall over the smallest pebble in the path. Listen to me. I am afraid of myself. I know not what man dwells in me. I have murdered myself, and my hands are red with blood. If you took me away, you would never see aught in my eyes save tears.’

She kissed his wet eyes, as she answered passionately, ‘No matter! Do you love me?’

He was too terrified to answer her. A heavy step set the pebbles rolling on the other side of the wall. A growl of anger seemed to draw nigh. Albine had not been mistaken. Some one was, indeed, there, disturbing the woodland quiet with jealous inquisition. Then both Albine and Serge, as if overwhelmed with shame, sought to bide themselves behind a bush. But Brother Archangias, standing in front of the breach, could already see them.

The Brother remained for a moment silent, clenching his fists and looking at Albine clinging round Serge’s neck, with the disgust of a man who has espied some filth by the roadside.

‘I suspected it,’ he mumbled between his teeth. ‘It was virtually certain that they had hidden him here.’

Then he took a few steps, and cried out: ‘I see you. It is an abomination. Are you a brute beast to go coursing through the woods with that female? She has led you far astray, has she not? She has besmeared you with filth, and now you are hairy like a goat.... Pluck a branch from the trees wherewith to smite her on the back.’

Again Albine whispered in an ardent, prayerful voice: ‘Do you love me? Do you love me?’

But Serge, with bowed head, kept silence, though he did not yet drive her from him.

‘Fortunately, I have found you,’ continued Brother Archangias. ‘I discovered this hole.... You have disobeyed God, and have slain your own peace. Henceforward, for ever, temptation will gnaw you with its fiery tooth, and you will no longer have ignorance of evil to help you to fight it. It was that creature who tempted you to your fall, was it not? Do you not see the serpent’s tail writhing amongst her hair? The mere sight of her shoulders is sufficient to make one vomit with disgust.... Leave her. Touch her not, for she is the beginning of hell. In the name of God, come forth from that garden.’

‘Do you love me? Oh! do you love me?’ reiterated Albine.

But Serge hastily drew away from her as though her bare arms and shoulders really scorched him.

‘In the name of God! In the name of God!’ cried the Brother, in a voice of thunder.

Serge unresistingly stepped towards the breach. As soon as Brother Archangias, with rough violence, had dragged him out of the Paradou, Albine, who had fallen half fainting to the ground, with hands wildly stretched towards the love which was deserting her, rose up again, choking with sobs. And she fled, vanished into the midst of the trees, whose trunks she lashed with her streaming hair.

BOOK III

I

When Abbe Mouret had said the
Pater
, he bowed to the altar, and went to the Epistle side. Then he came down, and made the sign of the cross over big Fortune and Rosalie, who were kneeling, side by side, before the altar-rails.

‘
Ego conjungo vos in matrimonium, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti
.’

‘
Amen
,’ responded Vincent, who was serving the mass, and glancing curiously at his big brother out of the corner of his eye.

Fortune and Rosalie bent their heads, affected by some slight emotion, although they had nudged each other with their elbows when they knelt down, by way of making one another laugh. But Vincent went to get the basin and the sprinkler. Fortune placed the ring in the basin, a thick ring of solid silver. When the priest had blessed it, sprinkling it crosswise, he returned it to Fortune, who slipped it upon Rosalie’s finger. Her hand was still discoloured with grass-stains, which soap had not been able to remove.

‘
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti
,’ Abbe Mouret murmured again, giving them a final benediction.

‘
Amen
,’ responded Vincent.

It was early morning. The sun was not yet shining through the big windows of the church. Outside one could hear the noisy twittering of the sparrows in the branches of the service tree, whose foliage shot through the broken panes. La Teuse, who had not previously had time to clean the church, was now dusting the altar, craning up on her sound leg to wipe the feet of the ochre and lake-bedaubed Christ, and arranging the chairs as quietly as possible; all the while bowing and crossing herself, and following the service, but not omitting a single sweep of her feather broom. Quite alone, at the foot of the pulpit, was mother Brichet, praying in a very demonstrative fashion. She kept on her knees, and repeated the prayers in so loud a whisper that it seemed as if a swarm of bluebottles had taken possession of the nave.

At the other end of the church near the confessional, Catherine held an infant in swaddling clothes. As it began to cry, she turned her back upon the altar, and tossed it up, and amused it with the bell-rope, which dangled just over its nose.

‘
Dominus vobiscum
,’ said the priest, turning round, and spreading out his hands.

‘
Et cum spiritu tuo
,’ responded Vincent.

At that moment three big girls came into the church. They were too shy to go far up, though they jostled one another to get a better view of what was going on. They were three friends of Rosalie, who had dropped in for a minute or two on their way to the fields, curious as they were to hear what his reverence would say to the bride and bridegroom. They had big scissors hanging at their waists. At last they hid themselves behind the font, where they pinched each other and twisted themselves about, while trying to choke their bursts of laughter with their clenched fists.

‘Well,’ whispered La Rousse, a finely built girl, with copper-coloured skin and hair, ‘there won’t be any scrimmage to get out of church when it’s all over.’

‘Oh! old Bambousse is quite right,’ murmured Lisa, a short dark girl, with gleaming eyes; ‘when one has vines, one looks after them. Since his reverence so particularly desired to marry Rosalie, he can very well do it all alone.’

The other girl, Babet, who was humpbacked, tittered. ‘There’s mother Brichet,’ she said; ‘she is always here. She prays for the whole family. Listen, do you hear how she’s buzzing? All that will mean something in her pocket. She knows very well what she is about, I can tell you.’

‘She is playing the organ for them,’ retorted La Rousse.

At this all three burst into a laugh. La Teuse, in the distance, threatened them with her broom. At the altar, Abbe Mouret was taking the sacrament. As he went from the Epistle side towards Vincent, so that the water of ablution might be poured upon his thumb and fore-finger, Lisa said more softly: ‘It’s nearly over. He will begin to talk to them directly.’

‘Yes,’ said La Rousse, ‘and so big Fortune will still be able to go to his work, and Rosalie won’t lose her day’s pay at the vintage. It is very convenient to be married so early in the morning. He looks very sheepish, that big Fortune.’

‘Of course,’ murmured Babet. ‘It tires him, keeping so long on his knees. You may be sure that he has never knelt so long since his first communion.’

But the girls’ attention was suddenly distracted by the baby which Catherine was dangling in her arms. It wanted to get hold of the bell-rope, and was quite blue with rage, frantically stretching out its little hands and almost choking itself with crying.

‘Ah! so the youngster is there,’ said La Rousse.

The baby now burst into still louder wailing, and struggled like a little Imp.

‘Turn it over on its stomach, and let it suck,’ said Babet to Catherine.

Catherine lifted up her head, and began to laugh, with the shamelessness of a little minx. ‘It’s not at all amusing,’ she said, giving the baby a shake. ‘Be quiet, will you, little pig! My sister plumped it down on my knees.’

‘Naturally,’ said Babet, mischievously. ‘You could scarcely have expected her to give the brat to Monsieur le Cure to nurse.’

At this sally, La Rousse almost fell over in a fit of laughter. She leaned against the wall, holding her sides with her hands. Lisa threw herself against her, and attempted to soothe her by pinching her back and shoulders; while Babet laughed with a hunchback’s laugh, which grated on the ear like the sound of a saw.

‘If it hadn’t been for the little one,’ she continued, ‘Monsieur le Cure would have lost all use for his holy water. Old Bambousse had made up his mind to marry Rosalie to young Laurent, of Figuieres.’

However, the girls’ merriment and their chatter now came to an end, for they saw La Teuse limping furiously towards them. At this the three big hussies felt alarmed, stepped back, and subsided into sedateness.

‘You worthless things!’ hissed La Teuse. ‘You come to talk a lot of filth here, do you? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, La Rousse? You ought to be there, on your knees, before the altar, like Rosalie. I will throw you outside if you stir again. Do you hear?’

La Rousse’s copper cheeks were tinged with a rising blush, and Babet glanced at her and tittered.

‘And you,’ continued La Teuse, turning towards Catherine, ‘just you leave that baby alone. You are pinching it on purpose to make it scream. Don’t tell me you are not. Give it to me.’

She took the child, hushed it in her arms for a moment, and then laid it upon a chair, where it went to sleep, peacefully like a cherub. The church then subsided into solemn quietness, disturbed only by the chattering of the sparrows on the rowan tree outside. At the altar, Vincent had carried the missal to the right again, and Abbe Mouret had just folded the corporal and slipped it within the burse. He was now saying the concluding prayers with a solemn earnestness, which neither the screams of the baby nor the giggling of the three girls had been able to disturb. He seemed to hear nothing of them, but to be wholly absorbed in the prayers which he was offering up to Heaven for the happiness of the pair whose union he had just blessed. The sky that morning was grey with a hazy heat, which veiled the sun. Through the broken windows a russet vapour streamed into the church, betokening a stormy day. Along the walls the gaudily coloured pictures of the Stations of the Cross displayed their red, blue, and yellow patches; at the bottom of the nave the dry woodwork of the gallery creaked and strained; and under the doorway the tall grass by the steps thrust ripening straw, all alive with little brown grasshoppers. The clock, in its wooden case, made a whirring noise, as though it were some consumptive trying to clear his throat, and then huskily struck half-past six.

‘
Ite, missa est
,’ said the priest, turning round to the congregation.

‘
Deo gratias
,’ responded Vincent.

Then, having kissed the altar, Abbe Mouret once more turned round, and murmured over the bent heads of the newly married pair the final benediction: ‘
Deus Abraham, Deus Isaac, et Deus Jacob vobiscum sit
’ — his voice dying away into a gentle whisper.

‘Now, he’s going to address them,’ said Babet to her friends.

‘He is very pale,’ observed Lisa. ‘He isn’t a bit like Monsieur Caffin, whose fat face always seemed to be on the laugh. My little sister Rose says that she daren’t tell him anything when she goes to confess.’

‘All the same,’ murmured La Rousse, ‘he’s not ugly. His illness has aged him a little, but it seems to suit him. He has bigger eyes, and lines at the corners of his mouth which make him look like a man. Before he had the fever, he was too much like a girl.’

‘I believe he’s got some great trouble,’ said Babet. ‘He looks as though he were pining away. His face is deadly pale, but how his eyes glitter! When he drops his eyelids, it is just as though he were doing it to extinguish the fire in his eyes.’