Complete Works of Emile Zola (788 page)

‘Ah! what is the matter? What do you want to do?’ he cried suddenly. ‘You want to get on your feet, eh?’

Matthew, shaken by a fit of shivering, made desperate efforts to raise himself. He stiffened his limbs, while his neck was distended by his hiccoughs. But the end was close at hand, and he fell across his master’s knees, with eyes still straining from beneath their heavy lids to catch sight of him. Quite overcome by that glance, so full of intelligence, Lazare held Matthew there on his knees, while the animal’s big body, heavy like that of a man, was racked by a human-like death-agony in his sorrowing embrace. It lasted for some minutes, and then Lazare saw real tears — heavy tears — roll down from the dog’s mournful eyes, while his tongue showed forth from his convulsed mouth, as though for a last caress.

‘Oh! my poor old dog!’ cried Lazare, bursting into sobs.

Matthew was dead. A little bloody foam frothed round his jaws. As Lazare laid him down on the floor he looked as though he were asleep.

Then once more the young man felt that all was over. His dog was dead now, and this filled him with unreasonable grief and seemed to cast a gloom over his whole life. That death awoke in him the memory of other deaths, and he had not felt more heart-broken even when walking through the yard behind his mother’s coffin. Some last portion of her seemed to be torn away from him; she had gone from him now entirely. The recollection of his months of secret anguish, of his nights disturbed by nightmare visions, of his walks to the little graveyard, and of all his terror at the thought of annihilation, surged up in his mind.

However, he heard a sound, and when he turned he saw Minouche quietly making her toilet on the straw. But the door creaked, and Pauline then entered the coach-house, impelled thither by an impulse similar to that of her cousin. When he saw her his tears fell faster, and he who had care­fully concealed all his grief at his mother’s death, as though it had been some shameful folly, now cried:

‘Oh, God! God! She loved him so dearly! You remember, don’t you? She first had him when he was quite a tiny little thing, and it was she who always fed him, and he used to follow her all over the house!’

Then he added: ‘There is no one left now, and we are utterly alone!’

Tears sprang up in Pauline’s eyes. She had stooped to look at poor Matthew’s body lying there beneath the dim glimmer of the candle. And she did not seek to console Lazare. She made but a gesture of despair, for she felt that she was utterly powerless.

CHAPTER VIII

It was
ennui
that lay below all Lazare’s gloomy sadness, a heavy continuous
ennui
which rose from everything, like murky waters from some poisoned spring. He was bored both with work and with idleness, and with himself even more than with others. However, he took himself to task for his idleness and felt ashamed of it. It was disgraceful for a man of his age to waste the best years of his life in such a hole as Bonneville. Until now he had had some excuse for doing so, but at present there was no longer anything to keep him at home, and he despised himself for staying there, leading a useless existence, living upon his family, who were scarcely able to keep themselves. He told himself that he ought to be making a fortune for them, and that he was failing shamefully in not doing so, as he had formerly sworn he would. Great schemes for the future, grand enterprises, the idea of a vast fortune acquired by some brilliant stroke of genius, still occurred to him; but when he rose up from his reveries he lacked the energy to turn his thoughts into action. ‘I can’t go on like this,’ he often said to Pauline. ‘I must really do something. I should like to start a news­paper at Caen.’

And his cousin always made the same reply:

‘Wait till the time of mourning is over. There is no hurry. You had better think matters well over before you launch out into an undertaking like that.’

The truth was that, notwithstanding her desire to see him occupy himself with some kind of work, she was alarmed by this scheme of founding a newspaper. Another failure, she feared, might kill him, and she thought of all his many pre­vious ones — music, medicine, the sea-weed works; everything, in fact, that he had ever taken in hand. And, besides, a couple of hours after he had mentioned this last plan to her he had refused even to write a letter, on the ground that he was too tired.

The weeks passed away, and another flood-tide carried off three more houses at Bonneville. When the fishermen now met Lazare they asked him if he had had enough of it. Though it was really quite useless trying to do anything, they said it grieved them to see so much good timber lost. There was a touch of banter in their expressions of condolence and in the manner in which they besought him not to leave the place to the waves, as though with their sailor-natures they felt a savage pride in the sea’s destructive blows. By degrees Lazare grew so annoyed with their remarks that he avoided passing through the village. The sight of the ruined piles and stockades in the distance became intolerable to him.

One day, as he was on his way to see the priest, Prouane stopped him.

‘Monsieur Lazare,’ he said obsequiously, while a mis­chievous smile played round his eyes, ‘you know those pieces of timber which are rotting away down yonder on the shore?’

‘Well, what about them?’

‘If you’re not going to use them again, you might give them to us. They would serve, at any rate, as firewood.’

The young man was carried away by his anger, and, with­out even thinking of what he was saying, he answered sharply:

‘That’s quite impossible. I am going to set men to work again next week.’

At this all the neighbourhood shouted. They were going to have all the fun over again, since young Chanteau was showing himself so pig-headed. A fortnight went by, and the fishermen never met Lazare without asking him if he was unable to find workmen; and thus he was goaded into a re­newal of his operations, being induced thereto, also, by the entreaties of his cousin, who was anxious that he should have some occupation which would keep him near her. But he entered into the matter without the least spark of enthusiasm, and it was only his revengeful enmity against the sea which kept him saying that he was quite certain to triumph over it this time, and would make it lick the pebbles on the shore as submissively as a dog.

Once again Lazare set to work preparing plans. He planned fresh angles of resistance and doubled the strength of his supports. No excessive expense was going to be incurred, as most of the old timbers could be used again. The carpenter sent in an estimate of four thousand francs; and, as the sum was so small, Lazare made no objection to Louise advanc­ing it, being quite certain, he said, of getting a subvention from the General Council; indeed, he remarked that this was the only means they had of getting their previous expen­diture reimbursed, for the Council would certainly refuse to advance a copper so long as the works remained in their present ruinous condition. This consideration seemed to infuse a little warmth into his proceedings, and the operations were pressed on. In other ways, too, he became very busy, and went over to Caen every week to see the Prefect and the influential members of the Council.

While the piles were being laid, an intimation was received that an engineer would be sent to inspect the operations and make a report, on the receipt of which the Council would vote a subvention. The engineer spent a whole day at Bonneville. He was a very pleasant man, and gladly accepted an invita­tion from the Chanteaus to lunch with them after his visit to the shore. They refrained from making any reference to the subvention, as they were unwilling to appear in any way desirous of influencing his judgment, but he showed himself so polite and attentive to Pauline at table that she began to feel no doubt as to their success in obtaining the grant. And so, a fortnight later, when Lazare returned from one of his visits to Caen, the whole house was thrown into amazement and consternation by the news which he brought back with him. He was bursting with anger. Would they believe it! That silly fop of an engineer had sent in a simply disgraceful report. Yes! he had been polite and civil, but he had made fun of every single piece of timber with a ridiculous lavishness of technical terms. But it was only what they might have expected, for those official gentlemen didn’t believe that any one could put even a rabbit-hutch together without their advice and assistance! However, the worst of the matter was that the Council, after reading the report, had refused to vote any grant at all.

This blow was a source of fresh despondency to the young man. The works were finished, and he swore that they would resist the heaviest tides, and that the whole Engineer­ing Department would go wild with angry jealousy when they saw them. All this, however, would not repay Pauline the money that she had advanced, and Lazare bitterly reproached himself for having led her into that loss. She herself, how­ever, rising victorious over the instincts of her economical nature, claimed the entire responsibility for the course she had taken, impressing upon him that it was she who had insisted upon making the advances. The money had gone in a charitable purpose, she said, and she did not regret a sou of it, but would have gladly given more for the sake of saving the unhappy village. However, when the carpenter sent in his bill, she could not suppress a gesture of grievous astonish­ment. The four thousand francs of the estimate had grown to nearly eight thousand. Altogether, those piles and stockades, which the first storm might completely sweep away, had cost her more than twenty thousand francs.

By this time Pauline’s fortune was reduced to forty thou­sand francs, which produced a yearly income of two thousand francs, a sum on which she would be barely able to live, should she ever find herself homeless and friendless. Her money had trickled away in small sums in the household expenses, which she still continued to defray. But she now began to exercise a strict supervision over all the outlay of the house. The Chanteaus themselves no longer had even their three hundred francs a month, for, after Madame Chanteau’s death, it was found that a certain amount of stock had been sold without there being any clue as to how the amount realised by its sale had been applied. When her own income was added to that of the family, Pauline had little more than four hundred francs a month with which to keep the house going. The expenses of the establishment were heavy, and she had to perform miracles of economy in order to save the money that she needed for her charities. Doctor Cazenove’s trusteeship had terminated during the winter, and Pauline, being now of age, her money and herself were entirely at her own disposal; though indeed the Doctor during the term of his authority had never refused to let her have her own way. That authority had legally ceased for some weeks before either of them remembered the fact. But, although Pauline had been practically her own mistress for some time, she felt more thoroughly independent, more like a fully-grown woman, now that she was the uncontrolled mistress of the house, with no accounts to render to anybody, for her uncle was ever entreating her to settle everything, and Lazare, like his father, also hated having anything to do with money matters.

Thus Pauline held the common purse and stepped entirely into her aunt’s place, performing her duties as mistress of the house with a practical common-sense that sometimes quite amazed the two men. It was only Véronique who made any complaints, thinking that Mademoiselle Pauline was very stingy, and grumbling at being restricted to a single pound of butter a week.

The days succeeded each other with monotonous regula­rity. The perpetual sameness, the unvarying habits of the household, which constituted Pauline’s happiness, only tended to increase Lazare’s feeling of
ennui.
Never had the house affected him with such uneasy disquietude as now, when every room seemed basking in cheerful peace. The completion of the operations on the shore had proved a great relief, for enforced attention to anything had become intoler­able to him, and he had no sooner fallen back into idleness than he once more became the prey of shame and anxiety. Every morning he made a fresh set of plans for the future. He had abandoned the idea of starting a newspaper as un­worthy of him, and he inveighed against the poverty which prevented him from quietly devoting himself to some great literary work. He had lately become enamoured of the notion of preparing himself for a professorship, and so earn­ing a livelihood and enabling himself to carry out his literary ambition. There no longer seemed to exist between himself and Pauline anything beyond their old feeling of comrade­ship, a
quiet affection which made them, as it were, brother and sister. The young man never made any reference to their marriage, either because he never thought of it, or, perhaps, because he took it for granted and considered any dis­cussion of the matter unnecessary while the girl herself was equally reticent on the subject, feeling quite certain that her cousin would willingly acquiesce in the first suggestion of their union. And yet Lazare’s passion for her was gradually diminishing; a fact of which she was quite conscious, though she did not understand that it was this alone which rendered her powerless to free him from his
ennui.

One evening, when she had gone upstairs in the dusk to tell him that dinner was ready, she surprised him in the act of hastily hiding something which she could not distinguish.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, with a laugh. ‘Some verses for my birthday?’

‘No!’ he replied, with much emotion and in wavering tones. ‘It’s nothing at all.’

It was an old glove which Louise had left behind her, and which he had just discovered behind a pile of books. The glove had retained a strong odour of the original skin of which it was made, and this was softened to a musky fragrance by Louise’s favourite perfume, heliotrope. Lazare, who was very susceptible to the influence of odours, was violently agitated by that scent, and in a state of emotion had lingered with the glove pressed to his lips, draining from it a draught of sweet recollections.

From that day onward he began to yearn for Louise over the yawning chasm which his mother’s death had left within him. He had never indeed forgotten the girl; her image had been dimmed somewhat by his grief, but it only wanted that little thing that had once belonged to her to bring her back to his mind. He took up the glove again, as soon as he was alone, kissed it, inhaled its scent, and fancied that he was still holding the girl in his embrace with his lips seeking hers. His nervous excitement, the mental feverishness which re­sulted from his long-continued inactivity, tended to intensify this species of intoxication. He felt vexed with himself on account of it, but he succumbed to it again and again, carried away by a passion which quite overpowered him. All this, too, increased his gloomy moodiness, and he even began to get snappish and surly with his cousin, as though she were in some way to blame for his passionate trances. Often, in the midst of some tranquil conversation, he would suddenly rush off and shut himself up in his room and wallow in his pas­sionate recollections of the other girl. Then he would come downstairs again, weary and disgusted with life.