Complete Works of Emile Zola (687 page)

“You think of nothing!” said she, wiping her eyes.

“But, mamma,” replied the girl in tears; “no one thought papa would go off so suddenly! You told me not to go for Auguste till nine o’clock, so as to be sure of keeping him till the end.”

The sorely afflicted family found some distraction in this quarrel. It was another matter gone wrong; they never succeeded in anything. Fortunately, there was still the funeral to take advantage of to bring the husband and wife together.

The funeral was a pretty decent one, though it was not so grand as Monsieur Vabre’s. Moreover, it did not give rise to nearly the same excitement in the house and the neighbourhood, for the deceased was not a landlord; he was merely a quiet-going body whose demise did not even disturb Madame Juzeur’s slumbers. Marie, who had been hourly expecting her confinement since the day before, was the only one who expressed regret at having been unable to assist the ladies in laying the poor gentleman out. Downstairs, Madame Gourd contented herself with rising, as the coffin passed, and bowing inside her room, without coming as far as the door. The entire house, however, went to the cemetery: Duveyrier, Campardon, the Vabres, and Monsieur Gourd. They talked of the spring and of the early crops, which would be greatly interfered with by the heavy rains they were having. Campardon was surprised to see Duveyrier looking so unwell; and, as the counsellor turned pale when the coffin was brought downstairs, and seemed about to faint, the architect murmured:

“He has smelt the earthy odour. God grant that the house may not sustain any further losses!”

Madame Josserand and her daughters had to be supported to their coach. Léon, assisted by uncle Bachelard, was most attentive, whilst Auguste followed behind in an embarrassed way. He got into another coach with Duveyrier and Théophile. Clotilde detained the Abbé Mauduit, who had not officiated, but who had gone to the cemetery, wishing to give the family a proof of his sympathy. The horses started on the homeward journey more gaily; and she at once asked the priest to return to the house with them, for she felt that the time was favourable. He consented.

The three mourning coaches silently drew up in the Rue de Choiseul with the relations. Théophile at once rejoined Valérie, who had remained behind to superintend a general cleaning, the warehouse being closed.

“You may pack up,” cried he, furiously. “They’re all at him. I bet he’ll end by begging her pardon!”

They all, indeed, felt a pressing necessity for putting an end to the unpleasantness. Misfortune should at least be good for something. Auguste, in the midst of them, understood very well what they wanted; and he was alone, without strength to resist, and filled with shame. The relations slowly walked in under the porch hung with black. No one spoke. On the stairs, the silence continued, a silence full of deep thought; whilst the crape skirts, soft and sad, ascended higher and higher. Auguste, seized with a final feeling of revolt, had taken the lead, with the intention of quickly shutting himself up in his own apartments; but, as he opened the door, Clotilde and the priest, who had followed close behind, stopped him. Directly after them, Berthe, dressed in deep mourning, appeared on the landing, accompanied by her mother and her sister. They all three had red eyes; Madame Josserand especially was quite painful to behold.

“Come, my friend,” simply said the priest, overcome by tears.

And that was sufficient. Auguste gave in at once, seeing that it was better to make his peace at that honourable opportunity. His wife wept, and he wept also, as he stammered:

“Come in. We will try not to do it again.”

Then the relations kissed all round. Clotilde congratulated her brother;
she had had full confidence in his heart. Madame Josserand showed a broken-hearted satisfaction, like a widow who is no longer the least affected by the most unhoped-for happiness. She associated her poor husband with the general joy —

“You are doing your duty, my dear son-in-law. He who is now in heaven thanks you.”

“Come in,” repeated Auguste, quite upset.

But Rachel, attracted by the noise, now appeared in the anteroom; and Berthe hesitated a moment in presence of the speechless exasperation which caused the maid to turn ghastly pale. Then she sternly entered, and disappeared with her black mourning in the shadow of the apartment. Auguste followed her, and the door closed behind them.

A deep sigh of relief ascended the staircase, and filled the house with joy. The ladies pressed the hands of the priest whose prayers had been granted. Just as Clotilde was taking him off to settle the other matter, Duveyrier, who had lagged behind with Léon and Bachelard, arrived walking painfully. The happy result had all to be explained to him; but he, who had been desiring it for months past, scarcely seemed to understand, a strange expression overspreading his face, and his mind a prey to a fixed idea, the torture of which quite absorbed him. Whilst the Josserands regained their apartments, he returned to his own, behind his wife and the priest. And they had just reached the anteroom, when some stifled cries caused them to start.

“Do not be uneasy, madame. It is the little lady upstairs in labour,” Hippolyte complaisantly explained. “I saw Dr. Juillerat run up just now.”

Then, when he was alone, he added philosophically:

“One goes, another comes.”

Clotilde made the Abbé Mauduit comfortable in the drawing-room, saying that she would first of all send him Clémence; and, to help him to while away the time, she gave him the “Revue des Deux Mondes,” which contained some really charming verses. She wished to prepare her maid for the interview. But on entering her dressing-room, she found her husband seated on a chair.

Ever since the morning, Duveyrier had been in a state of agony. For the third time he had caught Clarisse with Théodore; and, as he complained, the whole family of hawkers, the mother, the brother, the little sisters, had fallen upon him, and driven him downstairs with kicks and blows; whilst Clarisse had called him a poverty-stricken wretch, and furiously threatened him with the police if he ever dared to show himself there again. It was all over; down below the doorkeeper had told him that for a week past a very rich old fellow had been anxious to provide for madame. Then, driven away, and no longer having a warm nook to nestle in, Duveyrier, after wandering about the streets, had entered an out-of-the-way shop and purchased a pocket revolver. Life was becoming too sad;
he could at least put an end to it, as soon as he had found a suitable place for doing so. This selection of a quiet corner was occupying his mind, as he mechanically returned to the Rue de Choiseul to assist at Monsieur Josserand’s funeral. Then, when following the corpse, he had had a sudden idea of killing himself at the cemetery: he would go to the furthest end and hide behind a tombstone. This flattered his taste for the romantic, the necessity for a tender ideal, which was wrecking his life, beneath his rigid middle-class attitude. But, as the coffin was being lowered into the grave, he began to tremble, seized with an earthy chill. The spot would decidedly not do; he would have to seek elsewhere. And, having returned in a worse state than ever, entirely a prey to this one idea, he sat thinking on a chair in the dressing-room, trying to decide which was the most suitable place in the house: perhaps the bedroom, beside the bed, or simply just where he was, without moving.

“Will you have the kindness to leave me to myself?”
said Clotilde to him.

He already had his hand on the revolver in his pocket.

“Why?”
asked he, with an effort.

“Because I wish to be alone.”

He thought that she wanted to change her dress, and that she would not even let him see her bare arms, so repugnant he felt was he to her. For an instant he looked at her with his dim eyes, and beheld her so tall, so beautiful, with a complexion clear as marble, her hair gathered up in deep golden tresses. Ah! if she had only consented, how everything might have been arranged! He rose stumblingly from his chair, and, opening his arms, tried to take hold of her.

“What now?” murmured she, greatly surprised. “What’s the matter with you? Not here, surely. Have you the other one no longer then? It is going to begin again, that abomination?”

And she exhibited such utter disgust, that he drew back. Without a word, he left her, stopping in the anteroom as he hesitated for a moment; then, as there was a door facing him, the door of the closet, he pushed it open; and, without the slightest hurry, he sat down. It was a quiet spot, no one would come and disturb him there. He placed the barrel of the little revolver in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

Meanwhile, Clotilde, who had been struck since the morning by his strange manner, had listened to ascertain if he were obliging her by returning to Clarisse. On learning where he had gone, by a creak peculiar to that door, she no longer bothered herself about him, and was at length in the act of ringing for Clémence, when the dull report of a fire-arm filled her with surprise. Whatever was it?
it was just like the noise a saloon rifle would make. She hastened to the anteroom, not daring at first to question him; then, as a strange sound issued from where he was, she called him, and on receiving no answer opened the door. The bolt had not even been fastened. Duveyrier, stunned by fright more than by the injury he had received, remained squatting, in a most lugubrious posture, his eyes wide open, and his face streaming with blood. He had missed his object. After grazing his jaw, the bullet had passed out again through the left cheek. And he no longer had the courage to fire a second time.

“What! that is what you come to do here?” cried Clotilde quite beside herself. “Just go and kill yourself outside?”

She was most indignant. Instead of softening her, this spectacle threw her into a supreme exasperation, she bullied him, and raised him up without the least precaution, wishing to carry him away so that no one should see him in such a place. In that closet! and to miss killing himself too! It was too much.

Then, whilst she supported him to lead him to the bedroom, Duveyrier, who had his throat filled with blood, and whose teeth were dropping out, stuttered between two rattles:

“You never loved me!”

And he burst into sobs, he bewailed the death of poetry, that little blue flower which it had been denied him to pluck. When Clotilde had put him to bed, she at length became softened, seized with a nervous emotion in the midst of her anger. The worst of it was that Clémence and Hippolyte were coming in answer to the bell. She at first talked to them of an accident: their master had fallen on his chin; then she was obliged to abandon this fable, for on going to wipe up the blood, the foot-man had found the revolver. The wounded man was still losing a great deal of blood, when the maid remembered that Dr. Juillerat was upstairs attending to Madame Pichon, and she hastened to him, meeting him on the staircase, on his way home after a most successful delivery. The doctor immediately reassured Clotilde; perhaps the jaw would be slightly out of its place, but her husband’s life was not in the least danger. He was proceeding to dress the wound, in the midst of basins of water and red stained rags, when the Abbé Mauduit, uneasy at all this commotion, ventured to enter the room.

“Whatever has happened?”
asked he.

This question completed upsetting Madame Duveyrier.. She burst into tears, at the first words of explanation. The priest, fully aware of the hidden miseries of his flock, had moreover quite understood matters. Already whilst waiting in the drawing-room he had been taken with a feeling of uneasiness, and almost regretted the success which had attended his efforts, that wretched young woman whom he had once more united to her husband without her showing the slightest remorse. He was filled with a terrible doubt, perhaps God was not with him. And his anguish still further increased as he beheld the counsellor’s fractured jaw. He went up to him, bent upon energetically condemning suicide. But the doctor, who was very busy, thrust him aside.

“After me, my dear Abbé Mauduit. By-and-by. You can see very well that he has fainted.”

And indeed, directly the doctor touched him, Duveyrier had lost consciousness. Then Clotilde, to get rid of the servants who were no longer needed, and whose staring eyes embarrassed her very much, murmured, as she wiped her eyes:

“Go into the drawing-room. Abbé Mauduit has something to say to you.”

The priest was obliged to take them there. It was another unpleasant piece of business. Hippolyte and Clémence followed him in profound surprise. When they were alone together, he began preaching them a rather confused sermon: heaven rewarded good behaviour whereas a single sin led one to hell; moreover, it was time to put a stop to scandal and to think of one’s salvation. Whilst he spoke thus, their surprise turned to bewilderment; with their hands hanging down beside them, she with her slender limbs and tiny mouth, he with his flat face and his big bones like a gendarme, they exchanged anxious glances! Had madame found some of her napkins upstairs in a trunk? or was it because of the bottle of wine they took up with them every evening?

“My children,” the priest ended by saying, “you set a bad example. The greatest of crimes is to pervert one’s neighbour, and to bring the house where one lives into disrepute. Yes, you live in a disorderly way which unfortunately is no longer a secret to anyone, for you have been fighting together for a week past.”

He blushed; a modest hesitation caused him to choose his words. Meanwhile the two servants had sighed with relief. They smiled now and strutted about in quite a happy manner. It was only that! really there was no occasion to be so frightened!

“But it’s all over, sir,” declared Clémence, glancing at Hippolyte in the fondest manner. “We have made it up. Yes, he explained everything to me.”

The priest, in his turn, exhibited an astonishment full of sadness.

“You do not understand me, my children. You cannot continue to live together, you sin against God and man. You must get married.”

At this, their amazement returned. Get married? whatever for?

“I don’t want to,” said Clémence. “I’ve quite another idea.”