Complete Works of Emile Zola (44 page)

“But what had I better do now?”

“What had you better do? Why, restore the young lady to her uncle, and make for the frontier as fast as you can.”

“You know very well that I shall never do that.”

“Very well, then just wait quietly until you’re arrested. I’ve no other advice to give you. So there!”

Beneath a friendly abruptness, M. de Girousse hid the kindest heart in the world. As Philippe, confused by the curtness of his reception, was about to take his departure, he called him back, and, taking his hand, continued with slight bitterness:

“My duty would be to have you arrested. I belong to that nobility you have just insulted. Listen, I have somewhere on the other side of Lambesc a little unoccupied house of which I will give you the key. Go and hide yourselves there, but don’t tell me you’re going to do so. If you do, I’ll send the gendarmes after you.”

It was thus the lovers remained nearly a week at Lambesc. They lived in retirement, amid a peacefulness broken at times by sudden alarms. Philippe had received the thousand francs Marius had sent him. Blanche was becoming quite a little housekeeper, and they ate out of the same plate with delight. This new life was like a dream to the young girl. At times, however, she would wonder why she had gone off with Philippe; she would then experience a revulsion of feeling, and wish to return to her uncle; but she never dared say so.

It was then the time of the feast of Corpus Christi. One afternoon, as Blanche was looking out of the window, she saw a procession pass by. She knelt down and joined her hands, and fancied she could see herself dressed in white among the singers. Her heart was bursting. That night, Philippe received an anonymous letter warning him that he would be arrested on the morrow. He thought he recognised M. de Girousse’s handwriting. The flight was resumed, more difficult and painful.

CHAPTER VI

THE HUNT AFTER THE LOVERS

THEN ensued a regular rout, a race without truce or repose, an ever- recurring panic. Driven right and left by their fright, perpetually fancying they could hear the sound of horses’ hoofs behind them, passing their nights hurrying along the highways and their days trembling in the filthy rooms of country inns, the fugitives crossed and recrossed the whole of Provence, going before them and retracing their footsteps, not knowing where to find an unknown retreat hidden on the confines of some desert.

They left Lambesc one terribly stormy night, and went in the direction of Avignon. They had hired a little cart, and the wind nearly blinded their horse. Blanche was shivering in her thin cotton dress. To complete their wretchedness, they thought they could see from a distance, at one of the gates of the town, some gendarmes examining the faces of the passers-by. Thoroughly frightened, they retraced their steps, and returned to Lambesc through which they only passed.

Arrived at Aix, they did not dare stay there, and resolved to reach the frontier at no matter what cost.

There they would procure themselves a passport, and be in safety. Philippe, who knew a chemist at Toulon, decided to pay a visit to that town. He expected that his friend would be able to assist him in his flight. The chemist, a big, merry fellow named Jourdan, received them very well. He hid them in his own room and promised to at once try and obtain them a passport.

Jourdan was gone out, when two gendarmes called. Blanche nearly fainted away. White as a ghost and seated in a corner, she was stifling her sobs. Philippe, in a choking voice, asked the gendarmes what they wanted.

“Are you M. Jourdan?” one of them inquired, with a roughness which forbode nothing good.

“No,” replied the young man. “M. Jourdan is out, but will soon be back.”

“Very well,” said the gendarme curtly; and he seated himself heavily.

The poor lovers scarcely dared look at each other; they felt fit to faint away in the presence of these men who had, no doubt, come after them. Their anguish lasted a good half hour. At length, Jourdan returned. He paled at the sight of the gendarmes, and answered their questions with the greatest confusion.

“You must come with us,” said one of the men.

“What for?” he asked. “What am I accused of?”

“You are charged with having cheated at cards last night in a club. You will be able to give your explanations when before the magistrate.”

A shudder passed through Jourdan’s frame. He was quite dazed, and accompanied the gendarmes with the docility of a child. They went off without even perceiving the terror of the lovers. Jourdan’s affair made a great sensation at Toulon at the time. But no one knew of the painful drama which had been enacted at the chemist’s, the day of his arrest.

This event took all the courage out of Philippe. He understood that he was not strong enough to evade the police who were on his track. Besides, he had now no longer any hope of obtaining a passport, and would therefore be unable to cross the frontier. Moreover, he saw that Blanche’s strength was giving way. He therefore determined to return towards Marseille, and wait, in the neighbourhood of the city, until M. de Cazalis’ anger was partly appeased. Like all those who have no longer any ground for hope, he had at times ridiculous visions of pardon and happiness.

Philippe had a relation at Aix named Isnard, who kept a draper’s shop. Not knowing where to obtain hospitality, the fugitives returned to Aix, to ask Isnard for the key of one of his cottages. A fatality pursued them: the draper was away, and they were obliged to hide themselves in an old house on the Cours Sextius, belonging to a cousin of M. de Girousse’s farmer. This woman would not at first receive them, fearing she might be called to account, later on, for her hospitality; she only yielded before Philippe’s promises to procure her son’s exemption from military service. The young man was no doubt in a hopeful frame of mind; he could already see himself a deputy’s nephew, and was disposing freely of his uncle’s great influence.

That evening, Isnard came to the lovers and handed them the key of a cottage he owned in the Puyricard plain. He had two others, one at Tholonet and the other in the district of the Trois-bons-Dieux. The keys of these were hidden under certain great stones which he described to them. He advised them not to remain two nights running beneath the same roof, and promised to do his best to put the police off their track.

They started off and took the road which passes beside the hospital. Isnard’s cottage was situated to the right of Puyricard, between the village and the road leading to Venelles. It was one of those ugly little buildings formed of lime-washed stones without mortar, and enlivened by a roof of red tiles; it contained but one room, little better than a dirty stable; straw refuse littered the ground and great cobwebs hung from the ceiling. They had fortunately brought a rug with them. They gathered the litter into a corner and spread the rug over the heap. This formed their couch amid the acrid exhalations of the dampness surrounding them.

On the morrow, they passed the day in a hole in a dried-up watercourse called the Touloubre. Then, towards evening, they gained the Venelles road, and reached Tholonet by a roundabout way in order to avoid passing through Aix. It was eleven o’clock when they arrived at the draper’s cottage situated below the Jesuit oratory.

This cottage was rather better. It had two rooms, a kitchen and a parlour, which latter contained a fold-up bedstead; the walls were covered with caricatures cut out of the Charivari, and strings of onions hung from the white-washed beams. The lovers could almost fancy themselves in a palace.

In the morning their fright returned; they climbed the hill and remained till night-time in the recesses of the Infernets. In those days, the precipices of Jaumegarde still possessed all their sinister horror; the Zola canal had not then pierced the mountain, and strollers did not often venture into that dismal abyss of reddish rocks. Blanche and Philippe enjoyed profound peacefulness in the midst of this desert; they rested long beside a clear and murmuring spring, which trickled from a gigantic mass of rock.

At night-fall returned the cruel question of shelter. Blanche could now scarcely walk; her wounded feet bled upon the sharp and pointed stones. Philippe understood he could not take her much farther. He supported her, and they slowly ascended to the level ground overlooking the Infernets. It is an extensive uncultivated plain, vast fields of pebbles, waste land broken up here and there by disused quarries. Nothing looks so strangely wild as this broad landscape with its bare horizon dotted here and there with a dark and stunted vegetation; the rocks, looking like distorted limbs, pierce above the barren earth; the plain, having the appearance of a humpback, seems to have been stricken with death in the midst of the convulsions of a terrible agony.

Philippe hoped to find some hole, some cavern. He had the good luck to discover a shanty, one of those shelters in which sportsmen hide themselves while awaiting the flight of birds of passage. He did not hesitate to force in the door, and seated Blanche upon a little bench he felt beneath his hand. Then he went and gathered a quantity of thyme; the plain is covered with this humble grey plant the strong perfume of which rises from every hill of Provence. He carried the thyme into the shelter, and spread it in the form of a mattress over which he laid the rug. The bed was ready, and the fugitives kissed each other good night upon this miserable couch.

Philippe was unable to sleep, the strong smell of the thyme upon which he was lying affected his brain. He dreamt in spite of his wakefulness, that M. de Cazalis had received him affectionately and that he had been elected deputy in his uncle’s stead. Now and again he could hear Blanche’s mournful sighs, as she slumbered beside him, agitated and feverish. The young girl had come to consider her flight some nightmare full of bitter pleasures. During the day she was rendered stupid by fatigue; she smiled sadly and never complained. Her inexperience had caused her to agree to the flight, and her weak character prevented her proposing to return. She belonged body and soul to this man who carried her along; all she wished was to have to walk less, she continued to believe that her uncle would consent to her marriage, when his temper had cooled.

The fugitives left their bed of thyme at sunrise. Their clothes were becoming terribly torn, and their shoes were nearly worn out. In the coolness of the morning, amid the wild perfumes of this solitude, they forgot their wretchedness for a time, and declared laughingly that they were frightfully hungry. So Philippe told Blanche to go back to the hut and hurried off to Tholonet in search of food. It took him a good half-hour.

When he returned he found the young girl in a state of terror: she assured him she had seen some wolves prowling about. The table was laid on a large flat stone, and they were like a couple of gipsy lovers breakfasting in the open air. After breakfast, they made for the centre of the plain, and remained there all day. These were some of their happiest hours.

But when twilight fell, fear again seized them, they dreaded to pass another night amidst all that solitude. The pure warm air of the hills had filled them with gentler thoughts and hopes.

“You are tired, my poor child?” asked Philippe.

“Oh! yes,” she replied.

“Listen, we must perform one more journey. Let us go as far as Isnard’s cottage in the Trois-bons-Dieux district, and remain there until your uncle forgives us or has me arrested.”

“My uncle will forgive us.”

“I dare not think it. In any case I will no longer fly, you have need of rest. Come, let us walk slowly.”

They crossed the plain, leaving the Infernets behind them, and passing the Château of Saint Marc, which they could see on an eminence on their right. They reached their destination at the end of an hour.

Isnard’s cottage was on the slope of the hill which stretches to the left of the Vauvenargues road after one has passed the Repentance glen. It was a small, one-storied house; the ground door consisted of a single room, containing a rickety table and three old rush-bottomed chairs. A ladder led to the upper room, a kind of loft almost entirely bare, and containing merely a wretched mattress on a heap of hay. Isnard had considerately placed a sheet at the foot of the mattress.

Philippe’s intention was to go on the morrow to Aix, and procure information as to M. de Cazalis’ intentions towards him. He felt that he would be unable to hide himself any longer. He went to rest in an almost peaceful frame of mind, calmed by Blanche’s kind words as she judged events with all a young girl’s hopefulness.

It was now twenty days that the fugitives had been running about the country, and during this time the gendarmes had been scouring the neighbourhood, following on their track, sometimes losing it, but always getting set right again by some slight circumstance.

The deputy’s anger had only increased with the delay; his pride was irritated by each fresh obstacle. At Lambesc, the gendarmes came a few hours too late; the arrival of the fugitives at Toulon was not known until the morrow of their return to Aix; everywhere they escaped as though by a miracle.

The deputy ended by accusing the police of being lukewarm. He was informed at last that the lovers were in the neighbourhood of Aix, and that they were on the point of being arrested. He hastened there to assist in the search.

The woman of the Cours Sextius, who had given them hospitality for a few hours, was seized with terror. To avoid being accused of complicity, she told all she knew, and said that they were probably hidden in one of Isnard’s cottages. Isnard, who was questioned, quietly denied everything. He declared that he had not seen his relative for several months past. This was happening at the very time Philippe and Blanche were entering the cottage in the Trois-bons-Dieux district. The draper was unable to warn the lovers during the night.

At five o’clock the next morning a police commissary called on him and informed him that he was going to search his house and three cottages.

M. de Cazalis remained at Aix, saying he was afraid he would kill his niece’s abductor, if he ever met him face to face. The officers sent to search the cottage at Puyricard found the nest empty. Isnard obligingly offered to lead two gendarmes to his place at Tholonet, feeling certain that they would waste their time. The police commissary, also accompanied by two gendarmes, went to the Trois-bons-Dieux. He took a locksmith with him, Isnard having vaguely stated that the key of the cottage was hidden under a stone on the right of the door.