Complete Works of Emile Zola (800 page)

One glorious afternoon Pauline had wheeled Chanteau’s chair on to the terrace, and near him, on a red woollen rug, she had deposited little Paul, who was now eighteen months old. She was his godmother, and she spoilt the child as much as she did the grandfather.

‘Are you sure the sun won’t inconvenience you, uncle?’ she asked.

‘Oh dear no! I should think not, indeed! It is so long since I saw it. Are you going to leave little Paul asleep there?’

‘Yes. The fresh air will do him good.’

She knelt down on the edge of the rug and gazed at him. He was dressed in a white frock, with bare legs and arms peeping beyond it. His eyes were fast closed, and his quiet little rosy face was turned up towards the sky.

‘He has dropped off to sleep at once,’ she said softly. ‘He tired himself out with rolling about. Don’t let the animals bother him.’

She shook her finger at Minouche, who sat at the dining-room window making an elaborate toilet. Some distance off Loulou lay stretched out on the gravel, opening his eyes every now and then with a glance of suspicion, and ever ready to snarl and bite.

As Pauline rose to her feet again, a low groan came from Chanteau.

‘Ah! has your pain returned?’

‘Returned! Ah! it never leaves me now. I groaned, eh? Well, it’s funny, but I do so without even being aware of it.’

He had become a most pitiable object. By degrees his chronic gout had led to the accumulation of cretaceous matter at all his joints, and great chalk-stones had formed and pushed out through his skin. His feet, which were hidden out of sight in his slippers, were contracted inwards like the claws of a sickly bird. But his hands openly dis­played all their horrible deformity, swollen as they were at every joint with gleaming red knots, the fingers warped by swellings which forced them apart, and the left hand being rendered especially hideous by a secretion as big as a small egg. On the left elbow, too, a more voluminous deposit had brought on an ulcer. Ankylosis was now complete; Chanteau could no longer make use of his hands or feet, and the few joints which could still slightly bend cracked with as much noise as though a bag of marbles were being shaken. His whole body seemed to have become petrified in the position which he had adopted as the least painful — that is, a somewhat forward one, with an inclination to the right; and he had so completely shaped himself to his easy-chair that even when he was put to bed he remained twisted and bent. His pain never left him now, and the least change in the weather, or a drop of wine, or a mouthful of meat in excess of his usual diet, brought on inflammation.

‘Would you like a glass of milk?’ Pauline asked him. ‘It would refresh you perhaps.’

‘Ah! milk indeed!’ he replied, between two groans. ‘That’s another pretty invention of theirs, that milk-cure! I believe they finished me off with that! No, no! I won’t take anything; that’s the treatment that does me the most good.’

He asked her, however, to change the position of his left leg, for he could not move it himself.

‘The villain is all on fire to-day. Put it further away; push it. There, that will do, thank you. What a lovely day! Oh dear! oh dear!’

With his eyes turned towards the far-spreading panorama, he continued to groan quite unconsciously. His moan of pain had now become quite as natural to him as breathing itself. He was wrapped in a heavy blue woollen rug, and his poor deformed hands, that looked so pitiable in the bright sunshine, lay helpless on his knees. It pleased him to sit and look at the sea with its infinite azure, over which white sails flitted as over a boundless highway, open there before him who could no longer put one foot before another.

Pauline, feeling anxious at the sight of Paul’s little naked legs, knelt down again and covered them up with part of the rug. For three months past she had always been intending to take her departure on the following Monday. But the child’s feeble hands held her back with a force she could not resist. For the first month of the boy’s life they had each morning feared that he would not live to see the evening. It was Pauline who had kept him alive from day to day, for his mother was long confined to her bed, and the nurse, whom they had been obliged to procure, simply gave him the breast, evincing the gentle stupidity of a cow. The most devoted, constant care and attention were needed, and Pauline had to keep perpetual watch over the child. By the end of the first month, however, the boy had happily acquired the strength of a child born in due season, and gradually developed. Still, he was but a little creature, and Pauline never left him for a minute, more especially since the weaning, which had been attended by much trouble.

‘There!’ she said, ‘he can’t take cold now. See, uncle, how pretty he looks in this crimson rug! It makes him quite rosy.’

Chanteau painfully turned his head, which was now the only part of his body which he was able to move.

‘If you kiss him,’ he murmured, ‘you will wake him. Don’t disturb the little cherub. Do you see that steamer over there? It is coming from Havre. How fast it is cutting along!’

Pauline watched the steamer in order to please him. It looked like a black speck on the boundless waters; a slight streak of smoke just blurred a point of the horizon. For a short time the girl stood there, perfectly still, gazing at that sea which slumbered so peacefully beneath the clear sky, and enjoying the beauty of the day.

‘But, while I’m stopping here, the stew is getting burned!’ she exclaimed at last, hurrying off towards the kitchen.

Just as she was about to enter the house a voice called from the first floor:

‘Pauline!’

It was Louise, who was leaning out of the window of what had once been Madame Chanteau’s room, but which was now occupied by herself and Lazare. She wore a loose jacket, and her hair was hanging down. In querulous tones she went on: ‘If Lazare’s down there, tell him to come upstairs.’

‘No, he isn’t here. He hasn’t come back yet,’ Pauline replied.

At this Louise broke out angrily:

‘I knew quite well that we shouldn’t see him again till this evening, even if he condescends to come back then. He stayed away all night in spite of his express promise. Ah! he’s a nice fellow. When he once gets to Caen, there’s no getting him away from it!’

‘He has so few amusements,’ Pauline gently urged. ‘And then this business about the manure would keep him some time. No doubt he will take advantage of the Doctor’s gig, and come back in it.’

Since Lazare and Louise had settled down at Bonneville they had lived a life of perpetual misunderstanding and bickering. There were no open quarrels between them, but constant signs of ill-temper, the lives of both being rendered unhappy by want of harmony. Louise, after a long and painful convalescence, was now leading an empty, aimless existence, manifesting the greatest distaste for domestic matters, and spending her time in novel-reading and pro­tracted toilets. Lazare had again fallen a prey to over­whelming
ennui;
he never opened a book, but spent his time in gazing abstractedly at the sea, just escaping to Caen at long intervals, though only to return home more weary than ever. Pauline, who had been obliged to retain the management of the house, had become quite indispensable to them, for she patched up their quarrels several times a day.

‘Be quick and finish dressing!’ added the girl. ‘The Abbé will be here directly, and you must come and sit with him and my uncle. I have too much to do myself.’

But Louise could not rid herself of her rancour.

‘How
can
he do it? Keeping away from home all this time! My father wrote to me yesterday and told me that the remainder of our money would go the same way as the rest.’

Lazare had, indeed, allowed himself to be swindled in a couple of unfortunate speculations, and Pauline had become so anxious on the child’s account that, as his godmother, she had made him a present of two-thirds of what she still possessed, taking out in his name a policy which would assure him a hundred thousand francs on the day he reached his majority. She now had only an income of five hun­dred francs herself, but her sole regret in the matter was the necessity she was under of curtailing her customary charities.

‘A fine speculation that manure business is!’ Louise continued. ‘I am sure my father will have made him give it up, and he’s only stopping away to amuse himself. Oh, well! I don’t care! He may be as dissolute as he likes!’

‘Then what are you getting so angry for?’ Pauline retorted. ‘But you know that’s all nonsense; the poor fellow never thinks of anything wrong. Do hurry down, won’t you? What can have happened to Véronique, I wonder, that she should disappear in this way on a Saturday, and leave me all her work to do?’

In fact, a most extraordinary thing had happened — one which had been puzzling the whole house since two o’clock. Véronique had prepared the vegetables for the stew, and plucked and trussed a duck; and then she had disappeared as suddenly and completely as if the earth had swallowed her up. Pauline, quite astounded by this sudden disappearance, had at last resolved to undertake the cooking of the stew herself.

‘She hasn’t come back, then?’ asked Louise, recovering from her anger.

‘No, indeed!’ Pauline replied. ‘Do you know what I am beginning to think? She bought the duck for forty sous of a woman who happened to be passing, and I remember telling her that I had seen much finer ones for thirty sous at Verchemont. She tossed her head directly, and gave me one of her surly looks. Well, I’ll be bound that she has gone to Verchemont to see if I wasn’t telling a lie.’

She smiled, but there was a touch of sadness in her smile, for the surliness which Véronique was again manifesting pained her. The servant’s gradually increasing ill-will against Pauline since Madame Chanteau’s death had now brought her back to the virulence of the very early days.

‘We’ve none of us been able to get a word out of her for a week or more,’ said Louise. ‘Any sort of folly may be expected from a person with such a disposition.’

‘Well,’ said Pauline charitably, ‘we must excuse her whims. She is sure to come back again, and we shan’t die of hunger this time.’

But the baby now began to move about on the rug, and she ran up and bent over it.

‘Well! what is it, my dear?’

The mother, who was still at the window, glanced out for a moment and then disappeared within the room. Chanteau, quite absorbed in his own reflections, just turned his head as Loulou began to bark, and then called out to his niece:

‘Here are your visitors, Pauline!’

Two ragged young urchins, the advanced guard of the troop which she received every Saturday, now came up. Little Paul had quickly dropped off to sleep once more, and she rose and said:

‘It’s a nice time for them to come! I haven’t a minute to spare. Well, never mind; stay, since you’re here. Sit down on the bench. And, uncle, if any more of them come, please make them sit down by the side of these. I must just go and glance at my stew.’

When she returned, at the end of a quarter of an hour, two boys and two girls were already seated on the bench; they were some of her little beggars of former days, but had now grown much bigger, though they still retained their mendicant habits.

Never before had there been so much distress in Bonne­ville. During the storms in May the three remaining houses had been crushed against the cliffs. The destruction was now complete; the flood-tides had made a clean sweep of the village after centuries of attack, during which the sea had each year devoured one or another part of the place. On the shingle one now only saw the conquering waves, which effaced even all trace of the ruins. The fishermen, expelled from the nook where for generation after generation they had obstinately persisted in struggling against the ceaseless onslaught, had been compelled to migrate further up the ravine, where they were camping in companies. The richer ones had built cabins for themselves, while the poorer ones were taking refuge under rocks, all combining to found a new Bonneville, from which their descendants would in turn be ejected after fresh centuries of contest. Before it could complete its work of destruction, the sea had found it neces­sary to sweep the piles and stockades away. On the day of their overthrow the wind had blown from the north, and such huge mountains of water had clashed up that the church itself had been shaken by the violence with which they broke against the shore. Lazare, though he was told of what was happening, would not go down. He had remained on the terrace, watching the waves sweep up, while the fishermen rushed off to view the desperate onslaught. They were thrilled with mingled pride and awe. Ah! how the hussy was howling! Now she was going to make a clean sweep of it all! And in less than twenty minutes, indeed, every­thing had disappeared, the stockades were broken down, and the timbers were smashed into matchwood. And the fisher­men roared with the waves, and gesticulated and danced like so many savages, intoxicated by the wind and the sea, and glutting themselves with the sight of all that destruction. Then, while Lazare angrily shook his fist at them, they had fled for their lives, closely pursued by the wild rush of the waves, which nothing more held in check. Now they were perishing of starvation, and groaning as of old in their new Bonneville, accusing the hussy of their ruin and commending themselves to the charity of the ‘kind young lady.’

‘What are you doing there?’ cried Pauline, as she saw Houtelard’s son. ‘I forbade you ever to come here again!’

He was a great strapping fellow, now nearly twenty years old. His former sad and timid expression, that told of bad treatment at home, had turned into a sly, crafty look. He lowered his eyes as he replied:

‘Please take pity upon us, Mademoiselle Pauline. We are so miserable and wretched now that father is dead!’

Houtelard had gone off to sea one stormy evening and had never returned. His body had never been found, nor had that of his mate, nor even a single plank of their boat. Pauline, however, obliged as she was to exercise strict super­vision over her charities, had sworn that she would never give a single sou to either son or widow, for they lived together in open shame.