The Fortune of the Rougons
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Title: The Fortune of the Rougons
Author: Émile Zola
Editor: Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
Release date: April 22, 2006 [eBook #5135]
Most recently updated: April 20, 2023
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5135
Credits: Dagny, John Bickers and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS ***
The Fortune of the Rougons
by Émile Zola
Edited With Introduction By Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
Contents
INTRODUCTION
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
INTRODUCTION
“The Fortune of the Rougons” is the initial volume of the
Rougon-Macquart series. Though it was by no means M. Zola’s first essay
in fiction, it was undoubtedly his first great bid for genuine literary
fame, and the foundation of what must necessarily be regarded as his
life-work. The idea of writing the “natural and social history of a
family under the Second Empire,” extending to a score of volumes, was
doubtless suggested to M. Zola by Balzac’s immortal “Comedie Humaine.”
He was twenty-eight years of age when this idea first occurred to him;
he was fifty-three when he at last sent the manuscript of his
concluding volume, “Dr. Pascal,” to the press. He had spent
five-and-twenty years in working out his scheme, persevering with it
doggedly and stubbornly, whatever rebuffs he might encounter, whatever
jeers and whatever insults might be directed against him by the
ignorant, the prejudiced, and the hypocritical. Truth was on the march
and nothing could stay it; even as, at the present hour, its march, if
slow, none the less continues athwart another and a different crisis of
the illustrious novelist’s career.
It was in the early summer of 1869 that M. Zola first began the actual
writing of “The Fortune of the Rougons.” It was only in the following
year, however, that the serial publication of the work commenced in the
columns of “Le Siècle,” the Republican journal of most influence in
Paris in those days of the Second Empire. The Franco-German war
interrupted this issue of the story, and publication in book form did
not take place until the latter half of 1871, a time when both the war
and the Commune had left Paris exhausted, supine, with little or no
interest in anything. No more unfavourable moment for the issue of an
ambitious work of fiction could have been found. Some two or three
years went by, as I well remember, before anything like a revival of
literature and of public interest in literature took place. Thus, M.
Zola launched his gigantic scheme under auspices which would have made
many another man recoil. “The Fortune of the Rougons,” and two or three
subsequent volumes of his series, attracted but a moderate degree of
attention, and it was only on the morrow of the publication of
“L’Assommoir” that he awoke, like Byron, to find himself famous.
As previously mentioned, the Rougon-Macquart series forms twenty
volumes. The last of these, “Dr. Pascal,” appeared in 1893. Since then
M. Zola has written “Lourdes,” “Rome,” and “Paris.” Critics have
repeated _ad nauseam_ that these last works constitute a new departure
on M. Zola’s part, and, so far as they formed a new series, this is
true. But the suggestion that he has in any way repented of the
Rougon-Macquart novels is ridiculous. As he has often told me of recent
years, it is, as far as possible, his plan to subordinate his style and
methods to his subject. To have written a book like “Rome,” so largely
devoted to the ambitions of the Papal See, in the same way as he had
written books dealing with the drunkenness or other vices of Paris,
would have been the climax of absurdity.
Yet the publication of “Rome,” was the signal for a general outcry on
the part of English and American reviewers that Zolaism, as typified by
the Rougon-Macquart series, was altogether a thing of the past. To my
thinking this is a profound error. M. Zola has always remained faithful
to himself. The only difference that I perceive between his latest
work, “Paris,” and certain Rougon-Macquart volumes, is that with time,
experience and assiduity, his genius has expanded and ripened, and that
the hesitation, the groping for truth, so to say, which may be found in
some of his earlier writings, has disappeared.
At the time when “The Fortune of the Rougons” was first published, none
but the author himself can have imagined that the foundation-stone of
one of the great literary monuments of the century had just been laid.
From the “story” point of view the book is one of M. Zola’s very best,
although its construction—particularly as regards the long interlude of
the idyll of Miette and Silvère—is far from being perfect. Such a work
when first issued might well bring its author a measure of popularity,
but it could hardly confer fame. Nowadays, however, looking backward,
and bearing in mind that one here has the genius of M. Zola’s lifework,
“The Fortune of the Rougons” becomes a book of exceptional interest and
importance. This has been so well understood by French readers that
during the last six or seven years the annual sales of the work have
increased threefold. Where, over a course of twenty years, 1,000 copies
were sold, 2,500 and 3,000 are sold to-day. How many living English
novelists can say the same of their early essays in fiction, issued
more than a quarter of a century ago?
I may here mention that at the last date to which I have authentic
figures, that is, Midsummer 1897 (prior, of course, to what is called
“L’Affaire Dreyfus”), there had been sold of the entire Rougon-Macquart
series (which had begun in 1871) 1,421,000 copies. These were of the
ordinary Charpentier editions of the French originals. By adding
thereto several _éditions de luxe_ and the widely-circulated popular
illustrated editions of certain volumes, the total amounts roundly to
2,100,000. “Rome,” “Lourdes,” “Paris,” and all M. Zola’s other works,
apart from the “Rougon-Macquart” series, together with the translations
into a dozen different languages—English, German, Italian, Spanish,
Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, Bohemian, Hungarian, and others—are not
included in the above figures. Otherwise the latter might well be
doubled. Nor is account taken of the many serial issues which have
brought M. Zola’s views to the knowledge of the masses of all Europe.
It is, of course, the celebrity attaching to certain of M. Zola’s
literary efforts that has stimulated the demand for his other writings.
Among those which are well worthy of being read for their own sakes, I
would assign a prominent place to the present volume. Much of the story
element in it is admirable, and, further, it shows M. Zola as a genuine
satirist and humorist. The Rougons’ yellow drawing-room and its
_habitués_, and many of the scenes between Pierre Rougon and his wife
Félicité, are worthy of the pen of Douglas Jerrold. The whole account,
indeed, of the town of Plassans, its customs and its notabilities, is
satire of the most effective kind, because it is satire true to life,
and never degenerates into mere caricature.
It is a rather curious coincidence that, at the time when M. Zola was
thus portraying the life of Provence, his great contemporary, bosom
friend, and rival for literary fame, the late Alphonse Daudet, should
have been producing, under the title of “The Provencal Don Quixote,”
that unrivalled presentment of the foibles of the French Southerner,
with everyone nowadays knows as “Tartarin of Tarascon.” It is possible
that M. Zola, while writing his book, may have read the instalments of
“Le Don Quichotte Provencal” published in the Paris “Figaro,” and it
may be that this perusal imparted that fillip to his pen to which we
owe the many amusing particulars that he gives us of the town of
Plassans. Plassans, I may mention, is really the Provencal Aix, which
M. Zola’s father provided with water by means of a canal still bearing
his name. M. Zola himself, though born in Paris, spent the greater part
of his childhood there. Tarascon, as is well known, never forgave
Alphonse Daudet for his “Tartarin”; and in a like way M. Zola, who
doubtless counts more enemies than any other literary man of the
period, has none bitterer than the worthy citizens of Aix. They cannot
forget or forgive the rascally Rougon-Macquarts.
The name Rougon-Macquart has to me always suggested that splendid and
amusing type of the cynical rogue, Robert Macaire. But, of course, both
Rougon and Macquart are genuine French names and not inventions.
Indeed, several years ago I came by chance upon them both, in an old
French deed which I was examining at the Bibliothèque Nationale in
Paris. I there found mention of a Rougon family and a Macquart family
dwelling virtually side by side in the same village. This, however, was
in Champagne, not in Provence. Both families farmed vineyards for a
once famous abbey in the vicinity of Epernay, early in the seventeenth
century. To me, personally, this trivial discovery meant a great deal.
It somehow aroused my interest in M. Zola and his works. Of the latter
I had then only glanced through two or three volumes. With M. Zola
himself I was absolutely unacquainted. However, I took the liberty to
inform him of my little discovery; and afterwards I read all the books
that he had published. Now, as it is fairly well known, I have given
the greater part of my time, for several years past, to the task of
familiarising English readers with his writings. An old deed, a chance
glance, followed by the great friendship of my life and years of
patient labour. If I mention this matter, it is solely with the object
of endorsing the truth of the saying that the most insignificant
incidents frequently influence and even shape our careers.
But I must come back to “The Fortune of the Rougons.” It has, as I have
said, its satirical and humorous side; but it also contains a strong
element of pathos. The idyll of Miette and Silvère is a very touching
one, and quite in accord with the conditions of life prevailing in
Provence at the period M. Zola selects for his narrative. Miette is a
frank child of nature; Silvère, her lover, in certain respects
foreshadows, a quarter of a century in advance, the Abbé Pierre Fromont
of “Lourdes,” “Rome,” and “Paris.” The environment differs, of course,
but germs of the same nature may readily be detected in both
characters. As for the other personages of M. Zola’s book—on the one
hand, Aunt Dide, Pierre Rougon, his wife, Félicité, and their sons
Eugène, Aristide and Pascal, and, on the other, Macquart, his daughter
Gervaise of “L’Assommoir,” and his son Jean of “La Terre” and “La
Debacle,” together with the members of the Mouret branch of the
ravenous, neurotic, duplex family—these are analysed or sketched in a
way which renders their subsequent careers, as related in other volumes
of the series, thoroughly consistent with their origin and their
up-bringing. I venture to asset that, although it is possible to read
individual volumes of the Rougon-Macquart series while neglecting
others, nobody can really understand any one of these books unless he
makes himself acquainted with the alpha and the omega of the edifice,
that is, “The Fortune of the Rougons” and “Dr. Pascal.”
With regard to the present English translation, it is based on one made
for my father several years ago. But to convey M. Zola’s meaning more
accurately I have found it necessary to alter, on an average, at least
one sentence out of every three. Thus, though I only claim to edit the
volume, it is, to all intents and purposes, quite a new English version
of M. Zola’s work.
E. A. V. MERTON, SURREY: August, 1898.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
I wish to explain how a family, a small group of human beings, conducts
itself in a given social system after blossoming forth and giving birth
to ten or twenty members, who, though they may appear, at the first
glance, profoundly dissimilar one from the other, are, as analysis
demonstrates, most closely linked together from the point of view of
affinity. Heredity, like gravity, has its laws.
By resolving the duplex question of temperament and environment, I
shall endeavour to discover and follow the thread of connection which
leads mathematically from one man to another. And when I have
possession of every thread, and hold a complete social group in my
hands, I shall show this group at work, participating in an historical
period; I shall depict it in action, with all its varied energies, and
I shall analyse both the will power of each member, and the general
tendency of the whole.
The great characteristic of the Rougon-Macquarts, the group or family
which I propose to study, is their ravenous appetite, the great
outburst of our age which rushes upon enjoyment. Physiologically the
Rougon-Macquarts represent the slow succession of accidents pertaining
to the nerves or the blood, which befall a race after the first organic
lesion, and, according to environment, determine in each individual
member of the race those feelings, desires and passions—briefly, all
the natural and instinctive manifestations peculiar to humanity—whose
outcome assumes the conventional name of virtue or vice. Historically
the Rougon-Macquarts proceed from the masses, radiate throughout the
whole of contemporary society, and ascend to all sorts of positions by
the force of that impulsion of essentially modern origin, which sets
the lower classes marching through the social system. And thus the
dramas of their individual lives recount the story of the Second
Empire, from the ambuscade of the Coup d’État to the treachery of
Sedan.
For three years I had been collecting the necessary documents for this
long work, and the present volume was even written, when the fall of
the Bonapartes, which I needed artistically, and with, as if by fate, I
ever found at the end of the drama, without daring to hope that it
would prove so near at hand, suddenly occurred and furnished me with
the terrible but necessary _dénouement_ for my work. My scheme is, at
this date, completed; the circle in which my characters will revolve is
perfected; and my work becomes a picture of a departed reign, of a
strange period of human madness and shame.
This work, which will comprise several episodes, is therefore, in my
mind, the natural and social history of a family under the Second
Empire. And the first episode, here called “The Fortune of the
Rougons,” should scientifically be entitled “The Origin.”
ÉMILE ZOLA
PARIS, _July_ 1, 1871.
THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS
CHAPTER I
On quitting Plassans by the Rome Gate, on the southern side of the
town, you will find, on the right side of the road to Nice, and a
little way past the first suburban houses, a plot of land locally known
as the Aire Saint-Mittre.
This Aire Saint-Mittre is of oblong shape and on a level with the
footpath of the adjacent road, from which it is separated by a strip of
trodden grass. A narrow blind alley fringed with a row of hovels
borders it on the right; while on the left, and at the further end, it
is closed in by bits of wall overgrown with moss, above which can be
seen the top branches of the mulberry-trees of the Jas-Meiffren—an
extensive property with an entrance lower down the road. Enclosed upon
three sides, the Aire Saint-Mittre leads nowhere, and is only crossed
by people out for a stroll.
In former times it was a cemetery under the patronage of Saint-Mittre,
a greatly honoured Provencal saint; and in 1851 the old people of
Plassans could still remember having seen the wall of the cemetery
standing, although the place itself had been closed for years. The soil
had been so glutted with corpses that it had been found necessary to
open a new burial-ground at the other end of town. Then the old
abandoned cemetery had been gradually purified by the dark thick-set
vegetation which had sprouted over it every spring. The rich soil, in
which the gravediggers could no longer delve without turning up some
human remains, was possessed of wondrous fertility. The tall weeds
overtopped the walls after the May rains and the June sunshine so as to
be visible from the high road; while inside, the place presented the
appearance of a deep, dark green sea studded with large blossoms of
singular brilliancy. Beneath one’s feet amidst the close-set stalks one
could feel that the damp soil reeked and bubbled with sap.
Among the curiosities of the place at that time were some large
pear-trees, with twisted and knotty boughs; but none of the housewives
of Plassans cared to pluck the large fruit which grew upon them.
Indeed, the townspeople spoke of this fruit with grimaces of disgust.
No such delicacy, however, restrained the suburban urchins, who
assembled in bands at twilight and climbed the walls to steal the
pears, even before they were ripe.
The trees and the weeds with their vigorous growth had rapidly
assimilated all the decomposing matter in the old cemetery of
Saint-Mittre; the malaria rising from the human remains interred there
had been greedily absorbed by the flowers and the fruit; so that
eventually the only odour one could detect in passing by was the strong
perfume of wild gillyflowers. This had merely been a question of a few
summers.
At last the townspeople determined to utilise this common property,
which had long served no purpose. The walls bordering the roadway and
the blind alley were pulled down; the weeds and the pear-trees
uprooted; the sepulchral remains were removed; the ground was dug deep,
and such bones as the earth was willing to surrender were heaped up in
a corner. For nearly a month the youngsters, who lamented the loss of
the pear-trees, played at bowls with the skulls; and one night some
practical jokers even suspended femurs and tibias to all the
bell-handles of the town. This scandal, which is still remembered at
Plassans, did not cease until the authorities decided to have the bones
shot into a hole which had been dug for the purpose in the new
cemetery. All work, however, is usually carried out with discreet
dilatoriness in country towns, and so during an entire week the
inhabitants saw a solitary cart removing these human remains as if they
had been mere rubbish. The vehicle had to cross Plassans from end to
end, and owing to the bad condition of the roads fragments of bones and
handfuls of rich mould were scattered at every jolt. There was not the
briefest religious ceremony, nothing but slow and brutish cartage.
Never before had a town felt so disgusted.
For several years the old cemetery remained an object of terror.
Although it adjoined the main thoroughfare and was open to all comers,
it was left quite deserted, a prey to fresh vegetable growth. The local
authorities, who had doubtless counted on selling it and seeing houses
built upon it, were evidently unable to find a purchaser. The
recollection of the heaps of bones and the cart persistently jolting
through the streets may have made people recoil from the spot; or
perhaps the indifference that was shown was due to the indolence, the
repugnance to pulling down and setting up again, which is
characteristic of country people. At all events the authorities still
retained possession of the ground, and at last forgot their desire to
dispose of it. They did not even erect a fence round it, but left it
open to all comers. Then, as time rolled on, people gradually grew
accustomed to this barren spot; they would sit on the grass at the
edges, walk about, or gather in groups. When the grass had been worn
away and the trodden soil had become grey and hard, the old cemetery
resembled a badly-levelled public square. As if the more effectually to
efface the memory of all objectionable associations, the inhabitants
slowly changed the very appellation of the place, retaining but the
name of the saint, which was likewise applied to the blind alley
dipping down at one corner of the field. Thus there was the Aire
Saint-Mittre and the Impasse Saint-Mittre.
All this dates, however, from some considerable time back. For more
than thirty years now the Aire Saint-Mittre has presented a different
appearance. One day the townspeople, far too inert and indifferent to
derive any advantage from it, let it, for a trifling consideration, to
some suburban wheelwrights, who turned it into a wood-yard. At the
present day it is still littered with huge pieces of timber thirty or
forty feet long, lying here and there in piles, and looking like lofty
overturned columns. These piles of timber, disposed at intervals from
one end of the yard to the other, are a continual source of delight to
the local urchins. In some places the ground is covered with fallen
wood, forming a kind of uneven flooring over which it is impossible to
walk, unless one balance one’s self with marvellous dexterity. Troops
of children amuse themselves with this exercise all day long. You will
see them jumping over the big beams, walking in Indian file along the
narrow ends, or else crawling astride them; various games which
generally terminate in blows and bellowings. Sometimes, too, a dozen of
them will sit, closely packed one against the other, on the thin end of
a pole raised a few feet from the ground, and will see-saw there for
hours together. The Aire Saint-Mittre thus serves as a recreation
ground, where for more than a quarter of a century all the little
suburban ragamuffins have been in the habit of wearing out the seats of
their breeches.
The strangeness of the place is increased by the circumstance that
wandering gipsies, by a sort of traditional custom always select the
vacant portions of it for their encampments. Whenever any caravan
arrives at Plassans it takes up its quarters on the Aire Saint-Mittre.
The place is consequently never empty. There is always some strange
band there, some troop of wild men and withered women, among whom
groups of healthy-looking children roll about on the grass. These
people live in the open air, regardless of everybody, setting their
pots boiling, eating nameless things, freely displaying their tattered
garments, and sleeping, fighting, kissing, and reeking with mingled
filth and misery.
The field, formerly so still and deserted, save for the buzzing of
hornets around the rich blossoms in the heavy sunshine, has thus become
a very rowdy spot, resounding with the noisy quarrels of the gipsies
and the shrill cries of the urchins of the suburb. In one corner there
is a primitive saw-mill for cutting the timber, the noise from which
serves as a dull, continuous bass accompaniment to the sharp voices.
The wood is placed on two high tressels, and a couple of sawyers, one
of whom stands aloft on the timber itself, while the other underneath
is half blinded by the falling sawdust, work a large saw to and fro for
hours together, with rigid machine-like regularity, as if they were
wire-pulled puppets. The wood they saw is stacked, plank by plank,
along the wall at the end, in carefully arranged piles six or eight
feet high, which often remain there several seasons, and constitute one
of the charms of the Aire Saint-Mittre. Between these stacks are
mysterious, retired little alleys leading to a broader path between the
timber and the wall, a deserted strip of verdure whence only small
patches of sky can be seen. The vigorous vegetation and the quivering,
deathlike stillness of the old cemetery still reign in this path. In
all the country round Plassans there is no spot more instinct with
languor, solitude, and love. It is a most delightful place for
love-making. When the cemetery was being cleared the bones must have
been heaped up in this corner; for even to-day it frequently happens
that one’s foot comes across some fragment of a skull lying concealed
in the damp turf.
Nobody, however, now thinks of the bodies that once slept under that
turf. In the daytime only the children go behind the piles of wood when
playing at hide and seek. The green path remains virginal, unknown to
others who see nought but the wood-yard crowded with timber and grey
with dust. In the morning and afternoon, when the sun is warm, the
whole place swarms with life. Above all the turmoil, above the
ragamuffins playing among the timber, and the gipsies kindling fires
under their cauldrons, the sharp silhouette of the sawyer mounted on
his beam stands out against the sky, moving to and fro with the
precision of clockwork, as if to regulate the busy activity that has
sprung up in this spot once set apart for eternal slumber. Only the old
people who sit on the planks, basking in the setting sun, speak
occasionally among themselves of the bones which they once saw carted
through the streets of Plassans by the legendary tumbrel.
When night falls the Aire Saint-Mittre loses its animation, and looks
like some great black hole. At the far end one may just espy the dying
embers of the gipsies’ fires, and at times shadows slink noiselessly
into the dense darkness. The place becomes quite sinister, particularly
in winter time.
One Sunday evening, at about seven o’clock, a young man stepped lightly
from the Impasse Saint-Mittre, and, closely skirting the walls, took
his way among the timber in the wood-yard. It was in the early part of
December, 1851. The weather was dry and cold. The full moon shone with
that sharp brilliancy peculiar to winter moons. The wood-yard did not
have the forbidding appearance which it wears on rainy nights;
illumined by stretches of white light, and wrapped in deep and chilly
silence, it spread around with a soft, melancholy aspect.
For a few seconds the young man paused on the edge of the yard and
gazed mistrustfully in front of him. He carried a long gun, the
butt-end of which was hidden under his jacket, while the barrel,
pointed towards the ground, glittered in the moonlight. Pressing the
weapon to his side, he attentively examined the square shadows cast by
the piles of timber. The ground looked like a chess-board, with black
and white squares clearly defined by alternate patches of light and
shade. The sawyers’ tressels in the centre of the plot threw long,
narrow fantastic shadows, suggesting some huge geometrical figure, upon
a strip of bare grey ground. The rest of the yard, the flooring of
beams, formed a great couch on which the light reposed, streaked here
and there with the slender black shadows which edged the different
pieces of timber. In the frigid silence under the wintry moon, the
motionless, recumbent poles, stiffened, as it were, with sleep and
cold, recalled the corpses of the old cemetery. The young man cast but
a rapid glance round the empty space; there was not a creature, not a
sound, no danger of being seen or heard. The black patches at the
further end caused him more anxiety, but after a brief examination he
plucked up courage and hurriedly crossed the wood-yard.
As soon as he felt himself under cover he slackened his pace. He was
now in the green pathway skirting the wall behind the piles of planks.
Here his very footsteps became inaudible; the frozen grass scarcely
crackled under his tread. He must have loved the spot, have feared no
danger, sought nothing but what was pleasant there. He no longer
concealed his gun. The path stretched away like a dark trench, except
that the moonrays, gliding ever and anon between the piles of timber,
then streaked the grass with patches of light. All slept, both darkness
and light, with the same deep, soft, sad slumber. No words can describe
the calm peacefulness of the place. The young man went right down the
path, and stopped at the end where the walls of the Jas-Meiffren form
an angle. Here he listened as if to ascertain whether any sound might
be coming from the adjoining estate. At last, hearing nothing, he
stooped down, thrust a plank aside, and hid his gun in a timber-stack.
An old tombstone, which had been overlooked in the clearing of the
burial-ground, lay in the corner, resting on its side and forming a
high and slightly sloping seat. The rain had worn its edges, and moss
was slowly eating into it. Nevertheless, the following fragment of an
inscription, cut on the side which was sinking into the ground, might
still have been distinguished in the moonlight: “_Here lieth . . .
Marie . . . died . . ._” The finger of time had effaced the rest.
When the young man had concealed his gun he again listened attentively,
and still hearing nothing, resolved to climb upon the stone. The wall
being low, he was able to rest his elbows on the coping. He could,
however, perceive nothing except a flood of light beyond the row of
mulberry-trees skirting the wall. The flat ground of the Jas-Meiffren
spread out under the moon like an immense sheet of unbleached linen; a
hundred yards away the farmhouse and its outbuildings formed a still
whiter patch. The young man was still gazing anxiously in that
direction when, suddenly, one of the town clocks slowly and solemnly
struck seven. He counted the strokes, and then jumped down, apparently
surprised and relieved.
He seated himself on the tombstone, like one who is prepared to wait
some considerable time. And for about half an hour he remained
motionless and deep in thought, apparently quite unconscious of the
cold, while his eyes gazed fixedly at a mass of shadow. He had placed
himself in a dark corner, but the beams of the rising moon had
gradually reached him, and at last his head was in the full light.
He was a strong, sturdy-looking lad, with a fine mouth, and soft
delicate skin that bespoke youthfulness. He looked about seventeen
years of age, and was handsome in a characteristic way.
His thin, long face looked like the work of some master sculptor; his
high forehead, overhanging brows, aquiline nose, broad flat chin, and
protruding cheek bones, gave singularly bold relief to his countenance.
Such a face would, with advancing age, become too bony, as fleshless as
that of a knight errant. But at this stage of youth, with chin and
cheek lightly covered with soft down, its latent harshness was
attenuated by the charming softness of certain contours which had
remained vague and childlike. His soft black eyes, still full of youth,
also lent delicacy to his otherwise vigorous countenance. The young
fellow would probably not have fascinated all women, as he was not what
one calls a handsome man; but his features, as a whole, expressed such
ardent and sympathetic life, such enthusiasm and energy, that they
doubtless engaged the thoughts of the girls of his own part—those
sunburnt girls of the South—as he passed their doors on sultry July
evenings.
He remained seated upon the tombstone, wrapped in thought, and
apparently quite unconscious of the moonlight which now fell upon his
chest and legs. He was of middle stature, rather thick-set, with
over-developed arms and a labourer’s hands, already hardened by toil;
his feet, shod with heavy laced boots, looked large and square-toed.
His general appearance, more particularly the heaviness of his limbs,
bespoke lowly origin. There was, however, something in him, in the
upright bearing of his neck and the thoughtful gleams of his eyes,
which seemed to indicate an inner revolt against the brutifying manual
labour which was beginning to bend him to the ground. He was, no doubt,
an intelligent nature buried beneath the oppressive burden of race and
class; one of those delicate refined minds embedded in a rough
envelope, from which they in vain struggle to free themselves. Thus, in
spite of his vigour, he seemed timid and restless, feeling a kind of
unconscious shame at his imperfection. An honest lad he doubtless was,
whose very ignorance had generated enthusiasm, whose manly heart was
impelled by childish intellect, and who could show alike the
submissiveness of a woman and the courage of a hero. On the evening in
question he was dressed in a coat and trousers of greenish corduroy. A
soft felt hat, placed lightly on the back of his head, cast a streak of
shadow over his brow.
As the neighbouring clock struck the half hour, he suddenly started
from his reverie. Perceiving that the white moonlight was shining full
upon him, he gazed anxiously ahead. Then he abruptly dived back into
the shade, but was unable to recover the thread of his thoughts. He now
realised that his hands and feet were becoming very cold, and
impatience seized hold of him. So he jumped upon the stone again, and
once more glanced over the Jas-Meiffren, which was still empty and
silent. Finally, at a loss how to employ his time, he jumped down,
fetched his gun from the pile of planks where he had concealed it, and
amused himself by working the trigger. The weapon was a long, heavy
carbine, which had doubtless belonged to some smuggler. The thickness
of the butt and the breech of the barrel showed it to be an old
flintlock which had been altered into a percussion gun by some local
gunsmith. Such firearms are to be found in farmhouses, hanging against
the wall over the chimney-piece. The young man caressed his weapon with
affection; twenty times or more he pulled the trigger, thrust his
little finger into the barrel, and examined the butt attentively. By
degrees he grew full of youth enthusiasm, combined with childish
frolicsomeness, and ended by levelling his weapon and aiming at space,
like a recruit going through his drill.
It was now very nearly eight o’clock, and he had been holding his gun
levelled for over a minute, when all at once a low, panting call, light
as a breath, came from the direction of the Jas-Meiffren.
“Are you there, Silvère?” the voice asked.
Silvère dropped his gun and bounded on to the tombstone.
“Yes, yes,” he replied, also in a hushed voice. “Wait, I’ll help you.”
Before he could stretch out his arms, however, a girl’s head appeared
above the wall. With singular agility the damsel had availed herself of
the trunk of a mulberry-tree, and climbed aloft like a kitten. The ease
and certainty with which she moved showed that she was familiar with
this strange spot. In another moment she was seated on the coping of
the wall. Then Silvère, taking her in his arms, carried her, though not
without a struggle, to the seat.
“Let go,” she laughingly cried; “let go, I can get down alone very
well.” And when she was seated on the stone slab she added:
“Have you been waiting for me long? I’ve been running, and am quite out
of breath.”
Silvère made no reply. He seemed in no laughing humour, but gazed
sorrowfully into the girl’s face. “I wanted to see you, Miette,” he
said, as he seated himself beside her. “I should have waited all night
for you. I am going away at daybreak to-morrow morning.”
Miette had just caught sight of the gun lying on the grass, and with a
thoughtful air, she murmured: “Ah! so it’s decided then? There’s your
gun!”
“Yes,” replied Silvère, after a brief pause, his voice still faltering,
“it’s my gun. I thought it best to remove it from the house to-night;
to-morrow morning aunt Dide might have seen me take it, and have felt
uneasy about it. I am going to hide it, and shall fetch it just before
starting.”
Then, as Miette could not remove her eyes from the weapon which he had
so foolishly left on the grass, he jumped up and again hid it among the
woodstacks.
“We learnt this morning,” he said, as he resumed his seat, “that the
insurgents of La Palud and Saint Martin-de-Vaulx were on the march, and
spent last night at Alboise. We have decided to join them. Some of the
workmen of Plassans have already left the town this afternoon; those
who still remain will join their brothers to-morrow.”
He spoke the word brothers with youthful emphasis.
“A contest is becoming inevitable,” he added; “but, at any rate, we
have right on our side, and we shall triumph.”
Miette listened to Silvère, her eyes meantime gazing in front of her,
without observing anything.
“‘Tis well,” she said, when he had finished speaking. And after a fresh
pause she continued: “You warned me, yet I still hoped. . . . However,
it is decided.”
Neither of them knew what else to say. The green path in the deserted
corner of the wood-yard relapsed into melancholy stillness; only the
moon chased the shadows of the piles of timber over the grass. The two
young people on the tombstone remained silent and motionless in the
pale light. Silvère had passed his arm round Miette’s waist, and she
was leaning against his shoulder. They exchanged no kisses, naught but
an embrace in which love showed the innocent tenderness of fraternal
affection.
Miette was enveloped in a long brown hooded cloak reaching to her feet,
and leaving only her head and hands visible. The women of the lower
classes in Provence—the peasantry and workpeople—still wear these ample
cloaks, which are called pelisses; it is a fashion which must have
lasted for ages. Miette had thrown back her hood on arriving. Living in
the open air and born of a hotblooded race, she never wore a cap. Her
bare head showed in bold relief against the wall, which the moonlight
whitened. She was still a child, no doubt, but a child ripening into
womanhood. She had reached that adorable, uncertain hour when the
frolicsome girl changes to a young woman. At that stage of life a
bud-like delicacy, a hesitancy of contour that is exquisitely charming,
distinguishes young girls. The outlines of womanhood appear amidst
girlhood’s innocent slimness, and woman shoots forth at first all
embarrassment, still retaining much of the child, and ever and
unconsciously betraying her sex. This period is very unpropitious for
some girls, who suddenly shoot up, become ugly, sallow and frail, like
plants before their due season. For those, however, who, like Miette,
are healthy and live in the open air, it is a time of delightful
gracefulness which once passed can never be recalled.
Miette was thirteen years of age, and although strong and sturdy did
not look any older, so bright and childish was the smile which lit up
her countenance. However, she was nearly as tall as Silvère, plump and
full of life. Like her lover, she had no common beauty. She would not
have been considered ugly, but she might have appeared peculiar to many
young exquisites. Her rich black hair rose roughly erect above her
forehead, streamed back like a rushing wave, and flowed over her head
and neck like an inky sea, tossing and bubbling capriciously. It was
very thick and inconvenient to arrange. However, she twisted it as
tightly as possible into coils as thick as a child’s fist, which she
wound together at the back of her head. She had little time to devote
to her toilette, but this huge chignon, hastily contrived without the
aid of any mirror, was often instinct with vigorous grace. On seeing
her thus naturally helmeted with a mass of frizzy hair which hung about
her neck and temples like a mane, one could readily understand why she
always went bareheaded, heedless alike of rain and frost.
Under her dark locks appeared her low forehead, curved and golden like
a crescent moon. Her large prominent eyes, her short tip-tilted nose
with dilated nostrils, and her thick ruddy lips, when regarded apart
from one another, would have looked ugly; viewed, however, all
together, amidst the delightful roundness and vivacious mobility of her
countenance, they formed an ensemble of strange, surprising beauty.
When Miette laughed, throwing back her head and gently resting it on
her right shoulder, she resembled an old-time Bacchante, her throat
distending with sonorous gaiety, her cheeks round like those of a
child, her teeth large and white, her twists of woolly hair tossed by
every outburst of merriment, and waving like a crown of vine leaves. To
realise that she was only a child of thirteen, one had to notice the
innocence underlying her full womanly laughter, and especially the
child-like delicacy of her chin and soft transparency of her temples.
In certain lights Miette’s sun-tanned face showed yellow like amber. A
little soft black down already shaded her upper lip. Toil too was
beginning to disfigure her small hands, which, if left idle, would have
become charmingly plump and delicate.
Miette and Silvère long remained silent. They were reading their own
anxious thoughts, and, as they pondered upon the unknown terrors of the
morrow, they tightened their mutual embrace. Their hearts communed with
each other, they understood how useless and cruel would be any verbal
plaint. The girl, however, could at last no longer contain herself,
and, choking with emotion, she gave expression, in one phrase, to their
mutual misgivings.
“You will come back again, won’t you?” she whispered, as she hung on
Silvère’s neck.
Silvère made no reply, but, half-stifling, and fearing lest he should
give way to tears like herself, he kissed her in brotherly fashion on
the cheek, at a loss for any other consolation. Then disengaging
themselves they again lapsed into silence.
After a moment Miette shuddered. Now that she no longer leant against
Silvère’s shoulder she was becoming icy cold. Yet she would not have
shuddered thus had she been in this deserted path the previous evening,
seated on this tombstone, where for several seasons they had tasted so
much happiness.
“I’m very cold,” she said, as she pulled her hood over her head.
“Shall we walk about a little?” the young man asked her. “It’s not yet
nine o’clock; we can take a stroll along the road.”
Miette reflected that for a long time she would probably not have the
pleasure of another meeting—another of those evening chats, the joy of
which served to sustain her all day long.
“Yes, let us walk a little,” she eagerly replied. “Let us go as far as
the mill. I could pass the whole night like this if you wanted to.”
They rose from the tombstone, and were soon hidden in the shadow of a
pile of planks. Here Miette opened her cloak, which had a quilted
lining of red twill, and threw half of it over Silvère’s shoulders,
thus enveloping him as he stood there close beside her. The same
garment cloaked them both, and they passed their arms round each
other’s waist, and became as it were but one being. When they were thus
shrouded in the pelisse they walked slowly towards the high road,
fearlessly crossing the vacant parts of the wood-yard, which looked
white in the moonlight. Miette had thrown the cloak over Silvère, and
he had submitted to it quite naturally, as though indeed the garment
rendered them a similar service every evening.
The road to Nice, on either side of which the suburban houses are
built, was, in the year 1851, lined with ancient elm-trees, grand and
gigantic ruins, still full of vigour, which the fastidious town council
has replaced, some years since, by some little plane-trees. When
Silvère and Miette found themselves under the elms, the huge boughs of
which cast shadows on the moonlit footpath, they met now and again
black forms which silently skirted the house fronts. These, too, were
amorous couples, closely wrapped in one and the same cloak, and
strolling in the darkness.
This style of promenading has been instituted by the young lovers of
Southern towns. Those boys and girls among the people who mean to marry
sooner or later, but who do not dislike a kiss or two in advance, know
no spot where they can kiss at their ease without exposing themselves
to recognition and gossip. Accordingly, while strolling about the
suburbs, the plots of waste land, the footpaths of the high road—in
fact, all these places where there are few passers-by and numerous
shady nooks—they conceal their identity by wrapping themselves in these
long cloaks, which are capacious enough to cover a whole family. The
parents tolerate these proceedings; however stiff may be provincial
propriety, no apprehensions, seemingly, are entertained. And, on the
other hand, nothing could be more charming than these lovers’ rambles,
which appeal so keenly to the Southerner’s fanciful imagination. There
is a veritable masquerade, fertile in innocent enjoyments, within the
reach of the most humble. The girl clasps her sweetheart to her bosom,
enveloping him in her own warm cloak; and no doubt it is delightful to
be able to kiss one’s sweetheart within those shrouding folds without
danger of being recognised. One couple is exactly like another. And to
the belated pedestrian, who sees the vague groups gliding hither and
thither, ‘tis merely love passing, love guessed and scarce espied. The
lovers know they are safely concealed within their cloaks, they
converse in undertones and make themselves quite at home; most
frequently they do not converse at all, but walk along at random and in
silence, content in their embrace. The climate alone is to blame for
having in the first instance prompted these young lovers to retire to
secluded spots in the suburbs. On fine summer nights one cannot walk
round Plassans without coming across a hooded couple in every patch of
shadow falling from the house walls. Certain places, the Aire
Saint-Mittre, for instance, are full of these dark “dominoes” brushing
past one another, gliding softly in the warm nocturnal air. One might
imagine they were guests invited to some mysterious ball given by the
stars to lowly lovers. When the weather is very warm and the girls do
not wear cloaks, they simply turn up their over-skirts. And in the
winter the more passionate lovers make light of the frosts. Thus,
Miette and Silvère, as they descended the Nice road, thought little of
the chill December night.
They passed through the slumbering suburb without exchanging a word,
but enjoying the mute delight of their warm embrace. Their hearts were
heavy; the joy which they felt in being side by side was tinged with
the painful emotion which comes from the thought of approaching
severance, and it seemed to them that they could never exhaust the
mingled sweetness and bitterness of the silence which slowly lulled
their steps. But the houses soon grew fewer, and they reached the end
of the Faubourg. There stands the entrance to the Jas-Meiffren, an iron
gate fixed to two strong pillars; a low row of mulberry-trees being
visible through the bars. Silvère and Miette instinctively cast a
glance inside as they passed on.
Beyond the Jas-Meiffren the road descends with a gentle slope to a
valley, which serves as the bed of a little rivulet, the Viorne, a
brook in summer but a torrent in winter. The rows of elms still
extended the whole way at that time, making the high road a magnificent
avenue, which cast a broad band of gigantic trees across the hill,
which was planted with corn and stunted vines. On that December night,
under the clear cold moonlight, the newly-ploughed fields stretching
away on either hand resembled vast beds of greyish wadding which
deadened every sound in the atmosphere. The dull murmur of the Viorne
in the distance alone sent a quivering thrill through the profound
silence of the country-side.
When the young people had begun to descend the avenue, Miette’s
thoughts reverted to the Jas-Meiffren which they had just left behind
them.
“I had great difficulty in getting away this evening,” she said. “My
uncle wouldn’t let me go. He had shut himself up in a cellar, where he
was hiding his money, I think, for he seemed greatly frightened this
morning at the events that are taking place.”
Silvère clasped her yet more lovingly. “Be brave!” said he. “The time
will come when we shall be able to see each other freely the whole day
long. You must not fret.”
“Oh,” replied the girl, shaking her head, “you are very hopeful. For my
part I sometimes feel very sad. It isn’t the hard work which grieves
me; on the contrary, I am often very glad of my uncle’s severity, and
the tasks he sets me. He was quite right to make me a peasant girl; I
should perhaps have turned out badly, for, do you know, Silvère, there
are moments when I fancy myself under a curse. . . . I feel, then, that
I should like to be dead. . . . I think of you know whom.”
As she spoke these last words, her voice broke into a sob. Silvère
interrupted her somewhat harshly. “Be quiet,” he said. “You promised
not to think about it. It’s no crime of yours. . . . We love each other
very much, don’t we?” he added in a gentler tone. “When we’re married
you’ll have no more unpleasant hours.”
“I know,” murmured Miette. “You are so kind, you sustain me. But what
am I to do? I sometimes have fears and feelings of revolt. I think at
times that I have been wronged, and then I should like to do something
wicked. You see I pour forth my heart to you. Whenever my father’s name
is thrown in my face, I feel my whole body burning. When the urchins
cry at me as I pass, ‘Eh, La Chantegreil,’ I lose all control of
myself, and feel that I should like to lay hold of them and whip them.”
After a savage pause she resumed: “As for you, you’re a man; you’re
going to fight; you’re very lucky.”
Silvère had let her speak on. After a few steps he observed
sorrowfully: “You are wrong, Miette; yours is bad anger. You shouldn’t
rebel against justice. As for me, I’m going to fight in defence of our
common rights, not to gratify any personal animosity.”
“All the same,” the young girl continued, “I should like to be a man
and handle a gun. I feel that it would do me good.”
Then, as Silvère remained silent, she perceived that she had displeased
him. Her feverishness subsided, and she whispered in a supplicating
tone: “You are not angry with me, are you? It’s your departure which
grieves me and awakens such ideas. I know very well you are right—that
I ought to be humble.”
Then she began to cry, and Silvère, moved by her tears, grasped her
hands and kissed them.
“See, now, how you pass from anger to tears, like a child,” he said
lovingly. “You must be reasonable. I’m not scolding you. I only want to
see you happier, and that depends largely upon yourself.”
The remembrance of the drama which Miette had so sadly evoked cast a
temporary gloom over the lovers. They continued their walk with bowed
heads and troubled thoughts.
“Do you think I’m much happier than you?” Silvère at last inquired,
resuming the conversation in spite of himself. “If my grandmother had
not taken care of me and educated me, what would have become of me?
With the exception of my Uncle Antoine, who is an artisan like myself,
and who taught me to love the Republic, all my other relations seem to
fear that I might besmirch them by coming near them.”
He was now speaking with animation, and suddenly stopped, detaining
Miette in the middle of the road.
“God is my witness,” he continued, “that I do not envy or hate anybody.
But if we triumph, I shall have to tell the truth to those fine
gentlemen. Uncle Antoine knows all about this matter. You’ll see when
we return. We shall all live free and happy.”
Then Miette gently led him on, and they resumed their walk.
“You dearly love your Republic?” the girl asked, essaying a joke. “Do
you love me as much?”
Her smile was not altogether free from a tinge of bitterness. She was
thinking, perhaps, how easily Silvère abandoned her to go and scour the
country-side. But the lad gravely replied: “You are my wife, to whom I
have given my whole heart. I love the Republic because I love you. When
we are married we shall want plenty of happiness, and it is to procure
a share of that happiness that I’m going way to-morrow morning. You
surely don’t want to persuade me to remain at home?”
“Oh, no!” cried the girl eagerly. “A man should be brave! Courage is
beautiful! You must forgive my jealousy. I should like to be as
strong-minded as you are. You would love me all the more, wouldn’t
you?”
After a moment’s silence she added, with charming vivacity and
ingenuousness: “Ah, how willingly I shall kiss you when you come back!”
This outburst of a loving and courageous heart deeply affected Silvère.
He clasped Miette in his arms and printed several kisses on her cheek.
As she laughingly struggled to escape him, her eyes filled with tears
of emotion.
All around the lovers the country still slumbered amid the deep
stillness of the cold. They were now half-way down the hill. On the top
of a rather lofty hillock to the left stood the ruins of a windmill,
blanched by the moon; the tower, which had fallen in on one side, alone
remained. This was the limit which the young people had assigned to
their walk. They had come straight from the Faubourg without casting a
single glance at the fields between which they passed. When Silvère had
kissed Miette’s cheek, he raised his head and observed the mill.
“What a long walk we’ve had!” he exclaimed. “See—here is the mill. It
must be nearly half-past nine. We must go home.”
But Miette pouted. “Let us walk a little further,” she implored; “only
a few steps, just as far as the little cross-road, no farther, really.”
Silvère smiled as he again took her round the waist. Then they
continued to descend the hill, no longer fearing inquisitive glances,
for they had not met a living soul since passing the last houses. They
nevertheless remained enveloped in the long pelisse, which seemed, as
it were, a natural nest for their love. It had shrouded them on so many
happy evenings! Had they simply walked side by side, they would have
felt small and isolated in that vast stretch of country, whereas,
blended together as they were, they became bolder and seemed less puny.
Between the folds of the pelisse they gazed upon the fields stretching
on both sides of the road, without experiencing that crushing feeling
with which far-stretching callous vistas oppress the human affections.
It seemed to them as though they had brought their house with them;
they felt a pleasure in viewing the country-side as from a window,
delighting in the calm solitude, the sheets of slumbering light, the
glimpses of nature vaguely distinguishable beneath the shroud of night
and winter, the whole of that valley indeed, which while charming them
could not thrust itself between their close-pressed hearts.
All continuity of conversation had ceased; they spoke no more of
others, nor even of themselves. They were absorbed by the present,
pressing each other’s hands, uttering exclamations at the sight of some
particular spot, exchanging words at rare intervals, and then
understanding each other but little, for drowsiness came from the
warmth of their embrace. Silvère forgot his Republican enthusiasm;
Miette no longer reflected that her lover would be leaving her in an
hour, for a long time, perhaps for ever. The transports of their
affection lulled them into a feeling of security, as on other days,
when no prospect of parting had marred the tranquility of their
meetings.
They still walked on, and soon reached the little crossroad mentioned
by Miette—a bit of a lane which led through the fields to a village on
the banks of the Viorne. But they passed on, pretending not to notice
this path, where they had agreed to stop. And it was only some minutes
afterwards that Silvère whispered, “It must be very late; you will get
tired.”
“No; I assure you I’m not at all tired,” the girl replied. “I could
walk several leagues like this easily.” Then, in a coaxing tone, she
added: “Let us go down as far as the meadows of Sainte-Claire. There we
will really stop and turn back.”
Silvère, whom the girl’s rhythmic gait lulled to semi-somnolence, made
no objection, and their rapture began afresh. They now went on more
slowly, fearing the moment when they would have to retrace their steps.
So long as they walked onward, they felt as though they were advancing
to the eternity of their mutual embrace; the return would mean
separation and bitter leave-taking.
The declivity of the road was gradually becoming more gentle. In the
valley below there are meadows extending as far as the Viorne, which
runs at the other end, beneath a range of low hills. These meadows,
separated from the high-road by thickset hedges, are the meadows of
Sainte-Claire.
“Bah!” exclaimed Silvère this time, as he caught sight of the first
patches of grass: “we may as well go as far as the bridge.”
At this Miette burst out laughing, clasped the young man round the
neck, and kissed him noisily.
At the spot where the hedges begin, there were in those days two elms
forming the end of the long avenue, two colossal trees larger than any
of the others. The treeless fields stretch out from the high road, like
a broad band of green wool, as far as the willows and birches by the
river. The distance from the last elms to the bridge is scarcely three
hundred yards. The lovers took a good quarter of an hour to cover that
space. At last, however slow their gait, they reached the bridge, and
there they stopped.
The road to Nice ran up in front of them, along the opposite slope of
the valley. But they could only see a small portion of it, as it takes
a sudden turn about half a mile from the bridge, and is lost to view
among the wooded hills. On looking round they caught sight of the other
end of the road, that which they had just traversed, and which leads in
a direct line from Plassans to the Viorne. In the beautiful winter
moonlight it looked like a long silver ribbon, with dark edgings traced
by the rows of elms. On the right and left the ploughed hill-land
showed like vast, grey, vague seas intersected by this ribbon, this
roadway white with frost, and brilliant as with metallic lustre. Up
above, on a level with the horizon, lights shone from a few windows in
the Faubourg, resembling glowing sparks. By degrees Miette and Silvère
had walked fully a league. They gazed at the intervening road, full of
silent admiration for the vast amphitheatre which rose to the verge of
the heavens, and over which flowed bluish streams of light, as over the
superposed rocks of a gigantic waterfall. The strange and colossal
picture spread out amid deathlike stillness and silence. Nothing could
have been of more sovereign grandeur.
Then the young people, having leant against the parapet of the bridge,
gazed beneath them. The Viorne, swollen by the rains, flowed on with a
dull, continuous sound. Up and down stream, despite the darkness which
filled the hollows, they perceived the black lines of the trees growing
on the banks; here and there glided the moonbeams, casting a trail of
molten metal, as it were, over the water, which glittered and danced
like rays of light on the scales of some live animal. The gleams darted
with a mysterious charm along the gray torrent, betwixt the vague
phantom-like foliage. You might have thought this an enchanted valley,
some wondrous retreat where a community of shadows and gleams lived a
fantastic life.
This part of the river was familiar to the lovers; they had often come
here in search of coolness on warm July nights; they had spent hours
hidden among the clusters of willows on the right bank, at the spot
where the meadows of Sainte-Claire spread their verdant carpet to the
waterside. They remembered every bend of the bank, the stones on which
they had stepped in order to cross the Viorne, at that season as narrow
as a brooklet, and certain little grassy hollows where they had
indulged in their dreams of love. Miette, therefore, now gazed from the
bridge at the right bank of the torrent with longing eyes.
“If it were warmer,” she sighed, “we might go down and rest awhile
before going back up the hill.” Then, after a pause, during which she
kept her eyes fixed on the banks, she resumed: “Look down there,
Silvère, at that black mass yonder in front of the lock. Do you
remember? That’s the brushwood where we sat last Corpus Christi Day.”
“Yes, so it is,” replied Silvère, softly.
This was the spot where they had first ventured to kiss each other on
the cheek. The remembrance just roused by the girl’s words brought both
of them a delightful feeling, an emotion in which the joys of the past
mingled with the hopes of the morrow. Before their eyes, with the
rapidity of lightening, there passed all the delightful evenings they
had spent together, especially that evening of Corpus Christi Day, with
the warm sky, the cool willows of the Viorne, and their own loving
talk. And at the same time, whilst the past came back to their hearts
full of a delightful savour, they fancied they could plunge into the
unknown future, see their dreams realised, and march through life arm
in arm—even as they had just been doing on the highway—warmly wrapped
in the same cloak. Then rapture came to them again, and they smiled in
each other’s eyes, alone amidst all the silent radiance.
Suddenly, however, Silvère raised his head and, throwing off the cloak,
listened attentively. Miette, in her surprise, imitated him, at a loss
to understand why he had started so abruptly from her side.
Confused sounds had for a moment been coming from behind the hills in
the midst of which the Nice road wends its way. They suggested the
distant jolting of a procession of carts; but not distinctly, so loud
was the roaring of the Viorne. Gradually, however, they became more
pronounced, and rose at last like the tramping of an army on the march.
Then amidst the continuous growing rumble one detected the shouts of a
crowd, strange rhythmical blasts as of a hurricane. One could even have
fancied they were the thunderclaps of a rapidly approaching storm which
was already disturbing the slumbering atmosphere. Silvère listened
attentively, unable to tell, however, what were those tempest-like
shouts, for the hills prevented them from reaching him distinctly.
Suddenly a dark mass appeared at the turn of the road, and then the
“Marseillaise” burst forth, formidable, sung as with avenging fury.
“Ah, here they are!” cried Silvère, with a burst of joyous enthusiasm.
Forthwith he began to run up the hill, dragging Miette with him. On the
left of the road was an embankment planted with evergreen oaks, up
which he clambered with the young girl, to avoid being carried away by
the surging, howling multitude.
When he had reached the top of the bank and the shadow of the
brushwood, Miette, rather pale, gazed sorrowfully at those men whose
distant song had sufficed to draw Silvère from her embrace. It seemed
as if the whole band had thrust itself between them. They had been so
happy a few minutes before, locked in each other’s arms, alone and lost
amidst the overwhelming silence and discreet glimmer of the moon! And
now Silvère, whose head was turned away from her, who no longer seemed
even conscious of her presence, had eyes only for those strangers whom
he called his brothers.
The band descended the slope with a superb, irresistible stride. There
could have been nothing grander than the irruption of those few
thousand men into that cold, still, deathly scene. The highway became a
torrent, rolling with living waves which seemed inexhaustible. At the
bend in the road fresh masses ever appeared, whose songs ever helped to
swell the roar of this human tempest. When the last battalions came in
sight the uproar was deafening. The “Marseillaise” filled the
atmosphere as if blown through enormous trumpets by giant mouths, which
cast it, vibrating with a brazen clang, into every corner of the
valley. The slumbering country-side awoke with a start—quivering like a
beaten drum resonant to its very entrails, and repeating with each and
every echo the passionate notes of the national song. And then the
singing was no longer confined to the men. From the very horizon, from
the distant rocks, the ploughed land, the meadows, the copses, the
smallest bits of brushwood, human voices seemed to come. The great
amphitheatre, extending from the river to Plassans, the gigantic
cascade over which the bluish moonlight flowed, was as if filled with
innumerable invisible people cheering the insurgents; and in the depths
of the Viorne, along the waters streaked with mysterious metallic
reflections, there was not a dark nook but seemed to conceal human
beings, who took up each refrain with yet greater passion. With air and
earth alike quivering, the whole country-side cried for vengeance and
liberty. So long as the little army was descending the slope, the roar
of the populace thus rolled on in sonorous waves broken by abrupt
outbursts which shook the very stones in the roadway.
Silvère, pale with emotion, still listened and looked on. The
insurgents who led the van of that swarming, roaring stream, so vague
and monstrous in the darkness, were rapidly approaching the bridge.
“I thought,” murmured Miette, “that you would not pass through
Plassans?”
“They must have altered the plan of operations,” Silvère replied; “we
were, in fact, to have marched to the chief town by the Toulon road,
passing to the left of Plassans and Orcheres. They must have left
Alboise this afternoon and passed Les Tulettes this evening.”
The head of the column had already arrived in front of the young
people. The little army was more orderly than one would have expected
from a band of undisciplined men. The contingents from the various
towns and villages formed separate battalions, each separated by a
distance of a few paces. These battalions were apparently under the
orders of certain chiefs. For the nonce the pace at which they were
descending the hillside made them a compact mass of invincible
strength. There were probably about three thousand men, all united and
carried away by the same storm of indignation. The strange details of
the scene were not discernible amidst the shadows cast over the highway
by the lofty slopes. At five or six feet from the brushwood, however,
where Miette and Silvère were sheltered, the left-hand embankment gave
place to a little pathway which ran alongside the Viorne; and the
moonlight, flowing through this gap, cast a broad band of radiance
across the road. When the first insurgents reached this patch of light
they were suddenly illumined by a sharp white glow which revealed, with
singular distinctness, every outline of visage or costume. And as the
various contingents swept on, the young people thus saw them emerge,
fiercely and without cessation, from the surrounding darkness.
As the first men passed through the light Miette instinctively clung to
Silvère, although she knew she was safe, even from observation. She
passed her arm round the young fellow’s neck, resting her head against
his shoulder. And with the hood of her pelisse encircling her pale face
she gazed fixedly at that square patch of light as it was rapidly
traversed by those strange faces, transfigured by enthusiasm, with dark
open mouths full of the furious cry of the “Marseillaise.” Silvère,
whom she felt quivering at her side, then bent towards her and named
the various contingents as they passed.
The column marched along eight abreast. In the van were a number of
big, square-headed fellows, who seemed to possess the herculean
strength and naïve confidence of giants. They would doubtless prove
blind, intrepid defenders of the Republic. On their shoulders they
carried large axes, whose edges, freshly sharpened, glittered in the
moonlight.
“Those are the woodcutters of the forests of the Seille,” said Silvère.
“They have been formed into a corps of sappers. At a signal from their
leaders they would march as far as Paris, battering down the gates of
the towns with their axes, just as they cut down the old cork-trees on
the mountain.”
The young man spoke with pride of the heavy fists of his brethren. And
on seeing a band of labourers and rough-bearded men, tanned by the sun,
coming along behind the woodcutters, he continued: “That is the
contingent from La Palud. That was the first place to rise. The men in
blouses are labourers who cut up the cork-trees; the others in
velveteen jackets must be sportsmen, poachers, and charcoal-burners
living in the passes of the Seille. The poachers knew your father,
Miette. They have good firearms, which they handle skilfully. Ah! if
all were armed in the same manner! We are short of muskets. See, the
labourers have only got cudgels!”
Miette, still speechless, looked on and listened. As Silvère spoke to
her of her father, the blood surged to her cheeks. Her face burnt as
she scrutinised the sportsmen with a strange air of mingled indignation
and sympathy. From this moment she grew animated, yielding to the
feverish quiver which the insurgents’ songs awakened.
The column, which had just begun the “Marseillaise” afresh, was still
marching down as though lashed on by the sharp blasts of the “Mistral.”
The men of La Palud were followed by another troop of workmen, among
whom a goodly number of middle class folks in great-coats were to be
seen.
“Those are the men of Saint-Martin-de-Vaulx,” Silvère resumed. “That
_bourg_ rose almost at the same time as La Palud. The masters joined
the workmen. There are some rich men there, Miette; men whose wealth
would enable them to live peacefully at home, but who prefer to risk
their lives in defence of liberty. One can but admire them. Weapons are
very scarce, however; they’ve scarcely got a few fowling-pieces. But do
you see those men yonder, Miette, with red bands round their left
elbows? They are the leaders.”
The contingents descended the hill more rapidly than Silvère could
speak. While he was naming the men from Saint-Martin-de-Vaulx, two
battalions had already crossed the ray of light which blanched the
roadway.
“Did you see the insurgents from Alboise and Les Tulettes pass by just
now?” he asked. “I recognised Burgat the blacksmith. They must have
joined the band to-day. How they do run!”
Miette was now leaning forward, in order to see more of the little
bands described to her by the young man. The quiver she felt rose from
her bosom to her throat. Then a battalion larger and better disciplined
than the others appeared. The insurgents composing it were nearly all
dressed in blue blouses, with red sashes round their waists. One would
have thought they were arrayed in uniform. A man on horseback, with a
sabre at his side, was in the midst of them. And most of these
improvised soldiers carried guns, probably carbines and old muskets of
the National Guard.
“I don’t know those,” said Silvère. “The man on horseback must be the
chief I’ve heard spoken of. He brought with him the contingents from
Faverolles and the neighbouring villages. The whole column ought to be
equipped in the same manner.”
He had no time to take breath. “Ah! see, here are the country people!”
he suddenly cried.
Small groups of ten or twenty men at the most were now advancing behind
the men of Faverolles. They all wore the short jacket of the Southern
peasantry, and as they sang they brandished pitchforks and scythes.
Some of them even only carried large navvies’ shovels. Every hamlet,
however, had sent its able-bodied men.
Silvère, who recognised the parties by their leaders, enumerated them
in feverish tones. “The contingent from Chavanoz!” said he. “There are
only eight men, but they are strong; Uncle Antoine knows them. Here’s
Nazeres! Here’s Poujols! They’re all here; not one has failed to answer
the summons. Valqueyras! Hold, there’s the parson amongst them; I’ve
heard about him, he’s a staunch Republican.”
He was becoming intoxicated with the spectacle. Now that each battalion
consisted of only a few insurgents he had to name them yet more
hastily, and his precipitancy gave him the appearance of one in a
frenzy.
“Ah! Miette,” he continued, “what a fine march past! Rozan! Vernoux!
Corbière! And there are more still, you’ll see. These have only got
scythes, but they’ll mow down the troops as close as the grass in their
meadows—Saint-Eutrope! Mazet! Les Gardes, Marsanne! The whole north
side of the Seille! Ah, we shall be victorious! The whole country is
with us. Look at those men’s arms, they are hard and black as iron.
There’s no end to them. There’s Pruinas! Roches Noires! Those last are
smugglers: they are carrying carbines. Still more scythes and
pitchforks, the contingents of country folk are still passing.
Castel-le-Vieux! Sainte-Anne! Graille! Estourmel! Murdaran!”
His voice was husky with emotion as he finished naming these men, who
seemed to be borne away by a whirlwind as fast as he enumerated them.
Erect, with glowing countenance, he pointed out the several contingents
with a nervous gesture. Miette followed his movements. The road below
attracted her like the depths of a precipice. To avoid slipping down
the incline she clung to the young man’s neck. A strange intoxication
emanated from those men, who themselves were inebriated with clamour,
courage, and confidence. Those beings, seen athwart a moonbeam, those
youths and those men in their prime, those old people brandishing
strange weapons and dressed in the most diverse costumes, from working
smock to middle class overcoat, those endless rows of heads, which the
hour and the circumstances endowed with an expression of fanatical
energy and enthusiasm, gradually appeared to the girl like a whirling,
impetuous torrent. At certain moments she fancied they were not of
themselves moving, that they were really being carried away by the
force of the “Marseillaise,” by that hoarse, sonorous chant. She could
not distinguish any conversation, she heard but a continuous volume of
sound, alternating from bass to shrill notes, as piercing as nails
driven into one’s flesh. This roar of revolt, this call to combat, to
death, with its outbursts of indignation, its burning thirst for
liberty, its remarkable blending of bloodthirsty and sublime impulses,
unceasingly smote her heart, penetrating more deeply at each fierce
outburst, and filling her with the voluptuous pangs of a virgin martyr
who stands erect and smiles under the lash. And the crowd flowed on
ever amidst the same sonorous wave of sound. The march past, which did
not really last more than a few minutes, seemed to the young people to
be interminable.
Truly, Miette was but a child. She had turned pale at the approach of
the band, she had wept for the loss of love, but she was a brave child,
whose ardent nature was easily fired by enthusiasm. Thus ardent
emotions had gradually got possession of her, and she became as
courageous as a youth. She would willingly have seized a weapon and
followed the insurgents. As the muskets and scythes filed past, her
white teeth glistened longer and sharper between her red lips, like the
fangs of a young wolf eager to bite and tear. And as she listened to
Silvère enumerating the contingents from the country-side with
ever-increasing haste, the pace of the column seemed to her to
accelerate still more. She soon fancied it all a cloud of human dust
swept along by a tempest. Everything began to whirl before her. Then
she closed her eyes; big hot tears were rolling down her cheeks.
Silvère’s eyelashes were also moist. “I don’t see the men who left
Plassans this afternoon,” he murmured.
He tried to distinguish the end of the column, which was still hidden
by the darkness. Suddenly he cried with joyous exultation: “Ah, here
they are! They’ve got the banner—the banner has been entrusted to
them!”
Then he wanted to leap from the slope in order to join his companions.
At this moment, however, the insurgents halted. Words of command ran
along the column, the “Marseillaise” died out in a final rumble, and
one could only hear the confused murmuring of the still surging crowd.
Silvère, as he listened, caught the orders which were passed on from
one contingent to another; they called the men of Plassans to the van.
Then, as each battalion ranged itself alongside the road to make way
for the banner, the young man reascended the embankment, dragging
Miette with him.
“Come,” he said; “we can get across the river before they do.”
When they were on the top, among the ploughed land, they ran along to a
mill whose lock bars the river. Then they crossed the Viorne on a plank
placed there by the millers, and cut across the meadows of
Sainte-Claire, running hand-in-hand, without exchanging a word. The
column threw a dark line over the highway, which they followed
alongside the hedges. There were some gaps in the hawthorns, and at
last Silvère and Miette sprang on to the road through one of them.
In spite of the circuitous way they had come, they arrived at the same
time as the men of Plassans. Silvère shook hands with some of them.
They must have thought he had heard of the new route they had chosen,
and had come to meet them. Miette, whose face was half-concealed by her
hood, was scrutinised rather inquisitively.
“Why, it’s Chantegreil,” at last said one of the men from the Faubourg
of Plassans, “the niece of Rebufat, the _méger_[*] of the
Jas-Meiffren.”
[*] A _méger_ is a farmer in Provence who shares the expenses and
profits of his farm with the owner of the land.
“Where have you sprung from, gadabout?” cried another voice.
Silvère, intoxicated with enthusiasm, had not thought of the distress
which his sweetheart would feel at the jeers of the workmen. Miette,
all confusion, looked at him as if to implore his aid. But before he
could even open his lips another voice rose from the crowd, brutally
exclaiming:
“Her father’s at the galleys; we don’t want the daughter of a thief and
murderer amongst us.”
At this Miette turned dreadfully pale.
“You lie!” she muttered. “If my father did kill anybody, he never
thieved!”
And as Silvère, pale and trembling more than she, began to clench his
fists: “Stop!” she continued; “this is my affair.”
Then, turning to the men, she repeated with a shout: “You lie! You lie!
He never stole a copper from anybody. You know it well enough. Why do
you insult him when he can’t be here?”
She drew herself up, superb with indignation. With her ardent,
half-wild nature she seemed to accept the charge of murder composedly
enough, but that of theft exasperated her. They knew it, and that was
why folks, from stupid malice, often cast the accusation in her face.
The man who had just called her father a thief was merely repeating
what he had heard said for many years. The girl’s defiant attitude only
incited the workmen to jeer the more. Silvère still had his fists
clenched, and matters might have become serious if a poacher from the
Seille, who had been sitting on a heap of stones at the roadside
awaiting the order to march, had not come to the girl’s assistance.
“The little one’s right,” he said. “Chantegreil was one of us. I knew
him. Nobody knows the real facts of his little matter. I always
believed in the truth of his deposition before the judge. The gendarme
whom he brought down with a bullet, while he was out shooting, was no
doubt taking aim at him at the time. A man must defend himself! At all
events Chantegreil was a decent fellow; he committed no robbery.”
As often happens in such cases, the testimony of this poacher sufficed
to bring other defenders to Miette’s aid. Several workmen also
professed to have known Chantegreil.
“Yes, yes, it’s true!” they all said. “He wasn’t a thief. There are
some scoundrels at Plassans who ought to be sent to prison in his
place. Chantegreil was our brother. Come, now, be calm, little one.”
Miette had never before heard anyone speak well of her father. He was
generally referred to as a beggar, a villain, and now she found good
fellows who had forgiving words for him, and declared him to be an
honest man. She burst into tears, again full of the emotion awakened in
her by the “Marseillaise;” and she bethought herself how she might
thank these men for their kindness to her in misfortune. For a moment
she conceived the idea of shaking them all by the hand like a man. But
her heart suggested something better. By her side stood the insurgent
who carried the banner. She touched the staff, and, to express her
gratitude, said in an entreating tone, “Give it to me; I will carry
it.”
The simple-minded workmen understood the ingenuous sublimity of this
form of gratitude.
“Yes,” they all cried, “Chantegreil shall carry the banner.”
However, a woodcutter remarked that she would soon get tired, and would
not be able to go far.
“Oh! I’m quite strong,” she retorted proudly, tucking up her sleeves
and showing a pair of arms as big as those of a grown woman. Then as
they handed her the flag she resumed, “Wait just a moment.”
Forthwith she pulled off her cloak, and put it on again after turning
the red lining outside. In the clear moonlight she appeared to be
arrayed in a purple mantle reaching to her feet. The hood resting on
the edge of her chignon formed a kind of Phrygian cap. She took the
flag, pressed the staff to her bosom, and held herself upright amid the
folds of that blood-coloured banner which waved behind her.
Enthusiastic child that she was, her countenance, with its curly hair,
large eyes moist with tears, and lips parted in a smile, seemed to rise
with energetic pride as she turned it towards the sky. At that moment
she was the virgin Liberty.
The insurgents burst into applause. The vivid imagination of those
Southerners was fired with enthusiasm at the sudden apparition of this
girl so nervously clasping their banner to her bosom. Shouts rose from
the nearest group:
“Bravo, Chantegreil! Chantegreil for ever! She shall remain with us;
she’ll bring us luck!”
They would have cheered her for a long time yet had not the order to
resume the march arrived. Whilst the column moved on, Miette pressed
Silvère’s hand and whispered in his ear: “You hear! I shall remain with
you. Are you glad?”
Silvère, without replying, returned the pressure. He consented. In
fact, he was deeply affected, unable to resist the enthusiasm which
fired his companions. Miette seemed to him so lovely, so grand, so
saintly! During the whole climb up the hill he still saw her before
him, radiant, amidst a purple glory. She was now blended with his other
adored mistress—the Republic. He would have liked to be in action
already, with his gun on his shoulder. But the insurgents moved slowly.
They had orders to make as little noise as possible. Thus the column
advanced between the rows of elms like some gigantic serpent whose
every ring had a strange quivering. The frosty December night had again
sunk into silence, and the Viorne alone seemed to roar more loudly.
On reaching the first houses of the Faubourg, Silvère ran on in front
to fetch his gun from the Aire Saint-Mittre, which he found slumbering
in the moonlight. When he again joined the insurgents they had reached
the Porte de Rome. Miette bent towards him, and with her childish smile
observed: “I feel as if I were at the procession on Corpus Christi Day
carrying the banner of the Virgin.”
CHAPTER II
Plassans is a sub-prefecture with about ten thousand inhabitants. Built
on a plateau overlooking the Viorne, and resting on the north side
against the Garrigues hills, one of the last spurs of the Alps, the
town is situated, as it were, in the depths of a cul-de-sac. In 1851 it
communicated with the adjoining country by two roads only, the Nice
road, which runs down to the east, and the Lyons road, which rises to
the west, the one continuing the other on almost parallel lines. Since
that time a railway has been built which passes to the south of the
town, below the hill which descends steeply from the old ramparts to
the river. At the present day, on coming out of the station on the
right bank of the little torrent, one can see, by raising one’s head,
the first houses of Plassans, with their gardens disposed in terrace
fashion. It is, however, only after an uphill walk lasting a full
quarter of an hour that one reaches these houses.
About twenty years ago, owing, no doubt, to deficient means of
communication, there was no town that had more completely retained the
pious and aristocratic character of the old Provencal cities. Plassans
then had, and has even now, a whole district of large mansions built in
the reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., a dozen churches, Jesuit and
Capuchin houses, and a considerable number of convents. Class
distinctions were long perpetuated by the town’s division into various
districts. There were three of them, each forming, as it were, a
separate and complete locality, with its own churches, promenades,
customs, and landscapes.
The district of the nobility, called Saint-Marc, after the name of one
of its parish churches, is a sort of miniature Versailles, with
straight streets overgrown with grass, and large square houses which
conceal extensive gardens. It extends to the south along the edge of
the plateau. Some of the mansions built on the declivity itself have a
double row of terraces whence one can see the whole valley of the
Viorne, a most charming vista much vaunted in that part of the country.
Then on the north-west, the old quarter, formed of the original town,
rears its narrow, tortuous lanes bordered with tottering hovels. The
Town-Hall, the Civil Court, the Market, and the Gendarmerie barracks
are situated here. This, the most populous part of the Plassans, is
inhabited by working-men and shop-keepers, all the wretched, toiling,
common folk. The new town forms a sort of parallelogram to the
north-east; the well-to-do, those who have slowly amassed a fortune,
and those engaged in the liberal professions, here occupy houses set
out in straight lines and coloured a light yellow. This district, which
is embellished by the Sub-Prefecture, an ugly plaster building
decorated with rose-mouldings, numbered scarcely five or six streets in
1851; it is of quite recent formation, and it is only since the
construction of the railway that it has been growing in extent.
One circumstance which even at the present time tends to divide
Plassans into three distinct independent parts is that the limits of
the districts are clearly defined by the principal thoroughfares. The
Cours Sauvaire and the Rue de Rome, which is, as it were, a narrow
extension of the former, run from west to east, from the Grand’-Porte
to the Porte de Rome, thus cutting the town into two portions, and
dividing the quarter of the nobility from the others. The latter are
themselves parted by the Rue de la Banne. This street, the finest in
the locality, starts from the extremity of the Cours Sauvaire, and
ascends northwards, leaving the black masses of the old quarter on its
left, and the light-yellow houses of the new town on its right. It is
here, about half-way along the street, that stands the Sub-Prefecture,
in the rear of a small square planted with sickly trees; the people of
Plassans are very proud of this edifice.
As if to keep more isolated and shut up within itself, the town is
belted with old ramparts, which only serve to increase its gloom and
render it more confined. These ridiculous fortifications, preyed upon
by ivy and crowned with wild gillyflowers, are about as high and as
thick as the walls of a convent, and could be demolished by gunshot.
They have several openings, the principal of which, the Porte de Rome
and the Grand’-Porte, afford access to the Nice road and the Lyons
road, at the other end of town. Until 1853 these openings were
furnished with huge wooden two-leaved gates, arched at the top, and
strengthened with bars of iron. These gates were double-locked at
eleven o’clock in summer, and ten o’clock in winter. The town having
thus shot its bolts like a timid girl, went quietly to sleep. A keeper,
who lived in a little cell in one of the inner corners of each gateway,
was authorised to admit belated persons. But it was necessary to stand
parleying a long time. The keeper would not let people in until, by the
light of his lantern, he had carefully scrutinised their faces through
a peep-hole. If their looks displeased him they had to sleep outside.
This custom of locking the gates every evening was highly
characteristic of the spirit of the town, which was a commingling of
cowardice, egotism, routine, exclusiveness, and devout longing for a
cloistered life. Plassans, when it had shut itself up, would say to
itself, “I am at home,” with the satisfaction of some pious bourgeois,
who, assured of the safety of his cash-box, and certain that no noise
will disturb him, duly says his prayers and retires gladly to bed. No
other town, I believe, has so long persisted in thus incarcerating
itself like a nun.
The population of Plassans is divided into three groups, corresponding
with the same number of districts. Putting aside the functionaries—the
sub-prefect, the receiver of taxes, the mortgage commissioner, and the
postmaster, who are all strangers to the locality, where they are
objects of envy rather than of esteem, and who live after their own
fashion—the real inhabitants, those who were born there and have every
intention of ending their days there, feel too much respect for
traditional usages and established boundaries not to pen themselves of
their own accord in one or other of the town’s social divisions.
The nobility virtually cloister themselves. Since the fall of Charles
X. they scarcely ever go out, and when they do they are eager to return
to their large dismal mansions, and walk along furtively as though they
were in a hostile country. They do not visit anyone, nor do they even
receive each other. Their drawing-rooms are frequented by a few priests
only. They spend the summer in the chateaux which they possess in the
environs; in the winter, they sit round their firesides. They are, as
it were, dead people weary of life. And thus the gloomy silence of a
cemetery hangs over their quarter of the town. The doors and windows
are carefully barricaded; one would think their mansions were so many
convents shut off from all the tumult of the world. At rare intervals
an abbé, whose measured tread adds to the gloomy silence of these
sealed houses, passes by and glides like a shadow through some
half-opened doorway.
The well-to-do people, the retired tradesmen, the lawyers and notaries,
all those of the little easy-going, ambitious world that inhabits the
new town, endeavour to infuse some liveliness into Plassans. They go to
the parties given by the sub-prefect, and dream of giving similar
entertainments. They eagerly seek popularity, call a workman “my good
fellow,” chat with the peasants about the harvest, read the papers, and
walk out with their wives on Sundays. Theirs are the enlightened minds
of the district, they are the only persons who venture to speak
disparagingly of the ramparts; in fact, they have several times
demanded of the authorities the demolition of those old walls, relics
of a former age. At the same time, the most sceptical among them
experience a shock of delight whenever a marquis or a count deigns to
honour them with a stiff salutation. Indeed, the dream of every citizen
of the new town is to be admitted to a drawing-room of the Saint-Marc
quarter. They know very well that their ambition is not attainable, and
it is this which makes them proclaim all the louder that they are
freethinkers. But they are freethinkers in words only; firm friends of
the authorities, they are ready to rush into the arms of the first
deliverer at the slightest indication of popular discontent.
The group which toils and vegetates in the old quarter is not so
clearly defined as the others. The labouring classes are here in a
majority; but retail dealers and even a few wholesale traders are to be
found among them. As a matter of fact, Plassans is far from being a
commercial centre; there is only just sufficient trade to dispose of
the products of the country—oil, wine, and almonds. As for industrial
labour, it is represented almost entirely by three or four
evil-smelling tanyards, a felt hat manufactory, and some soap-boiling
works, which last are relegated to a corner of the Faubourg. This
little commercial and industrial world, though it may on high days and
holidays visit the people of the new district, generally takes up its
quarters among the operatives of the old town. Merchants, retail
traders, and artisans have common interests which unite them together.
On Sundays only, the masters make themselves spruce and foregather
apart. On the other hand, the labouring classes, which constitute
scarcely a fifth of the population, mingle with the idlers of the
district.
It is only once a week, and during the fine weather, that the three
districts of Plassans come together face to face. The whole town
repairs to the Cours Sauvaire on Sunday after vespers; even the
nobility venture thither. Three distinct currents flow along this sort
of boulevard planted with rows of plane-trees. The well-to-do citizens
of the new quarter merely pass along before quitting the town by the
Grand’-Porte and taking the Avenue du Mail on the right, where they
walk up and down till nightfall. Meantime, the nobility and the lower
classes share the Cours Sauvaire between them. For more than a century
past the nobility have selected the walk on the south side, which is
bordered with large mansions, and is the first to escape the heat of
the sun; the lower classes have to rest content with the walk on the
north, where the cafes, inns, and tobacconists’ shops are located. The
people and the nobility promenade the whole afternoon, walking up and
down the Cours without anyone of either party thinking of changing
sides. They are only separated by a distance of some seven or eight
yards, yet it is as if they were a thousand leagues away from each
other, for they scrupulously follow those two parallel lines, as though
they must not come in contact here below. Even during the revolutionary
periods each party kept to its own side. This regulation walk on Sunday
and the locking of the town gates in the evening are analogous
instances which suffice to indicate the character of the ten thousand
people inhabiting the town.
Here, amidst these surroundings, until the year 1848, there vegetated
an obscure family that enjoyed little esteem, but whose head, Pierre
Rougon, subsequently played an important part in life owing to certain
circumstances.
Pierre Rougon was the son of a peasant. His mother’s family, the
Fouques, owned, towards the end of the last century, a large plot of
ground in the Faubourg, behind the old cemetery of Saint-Mittre; this
ground was subsequently joined to the Jas-Meiffren. The Fouques were
the richest market-gardeners in that part of the country; they supplied
an entire district of Plassans with vegetables. However, their name
died out a few years before the Revolution. Only one girl, Adélaïde,
remained; born in 1768, she had become an orphan at the age of
eighteen. This girl, whose father had died insane, was a long, lank,
pale creature, with a scared look and strange ways which one might have
taken for shyness so long as she was a little girl. As she grew up,
however, she became still stranger; she did certain things which were
inexplicable even to the cleverest folk of the Faubourg, and from that
time it was rumoured that she was cracked like her father.
She had scarcely been an orphan six months, in possession of a fortune
which rendered her an eagerly sought heiress, when it transpired that
she had married a young gardener named Rougon, a rough-hewn peasant
from the Basses-Alpes. This Rougon, after the death of the last of the
male Fouques, who had engaged him for a term, had remained in the
service of the deceased’s daughter. From the situation of salaried
servant he ascended rapidly to the enviable position of husband. This
marriage was a first shock to public opinion. No one could comprehend
why Adélaïde preferred this poor fellow, coarse, heavy, vulgar, scarce
able to speak French, to those other young men, sons of well-to-do
farmers, who had been seen hovering round her for some time. And, as
provincial people do not allow anything to remain unexplained, they
made sure there was some mystery at the bottom of this affair, alleging
even that the marriage of the two young people had become an absolute
necessity. But events proved the falsity of the accusation. More than a
year went by before Adélaïde had a son. The Faubourg was annoyed; it
could not admit that it was wrong, and determined to penetrate the
supposed mystery; accordingly all the gossips kept a watch upon the
Rougons. They soon found ample matter for tittle-tattle. Rougon died
almost suddenly, fifteen months after his marriage, from a sunstroke
received one afternoon while he was weeding a bed of carrots.
Scarcely a year then elapsed before the young widow caused unheard-of
scandal. It became known, as an indisputable fact, that she had a
lover. She did not appear to make any secret of it; several persons
asserted that they had heard her use endearing terms in public to poor
Rougon’s successor. Scarcely a year of widowhood and a lover already!
Such a disregard of propriety seemed monstrous out of all reason. And
the scandal was heightened by Adélaïde’s strange choice. At that time
there dwelt at the end of the Impasse Saint-Mittre, in a hovel the back
of which abutted on the Fouques’ land, a man of bad repute, who was
generally referred to as “that scoundrel Macquart.” This man would
vanish for weeks and then turn up some fine evening, sauntering about
with his hands in his pockets and whistling as though he had just come
from a short walk. And the women sitting at their doorsteps as he
passed: “There’s that scoundrel Macquart! He has hidden his bales and
his gun in some hollow of the Viorne.” The truth was, Macquart had no
means, and yet ate and drank like a happy drone during his short
sojourns in the town. He drank copiously and with fierce obstinacy.
Seating himself alone at a table in some tavern, he would linger there
evening after evening, with his eyes stupidly fixed on his glass,
neither seeing nor hearing anything around him. When the landlord
closed his establishment, he would retire with a firm step, with his
head raised, as if he were kept yet more erect by inebriation.
“Macquart walks so straight, he’s surely dead drunk,” people used to
say, as they saw him going home. Usually, when he had had no drink, he
walked with a slight stoop and shunned the gaze of curious people with
a kind of savage shyness.
Since the death of his father, a journeyman tanner who had left him as
sole heritage the hovel in the Impasse Saint-Mittre, he had never been
known to have either relatives or friends. The proximity of the
frontiers and the neighbouring forests of the Seille had turned this
singular, lazy fellow into a combination of smuggler and poacher, one
of those suspicious-looking characters of whom passers-by observe: “I
shouldn’t care to meet that man at midnight in a dark wood.” Tall, with
a formidable beard and lean face, Macquart was the terror of the good
women of the Faubourg of Plassans; they actually accused him of
devouring little children raw. Though he was hardly thirty years old,
he looked fifty. Amidst his bushy beard and the locks of hair which
hung over his face in poodle fashion, one could only distinguish the
gleam of his brown eyes, the furtive sorrowful glance of a man of
vagrant instincts, rendered vicious by wine and a pariah life. Although
no crimes had actually been brought home to him, no theft or murder was
ever perpetrated in the district without suspicion at once falling upon
him.
And it was this ogre, this brigand, this scoundrel Macquart, whom
Adélaïde had chosen! In twenty months she had two children by him,
first a boy and then a girl. There was no question of marriage between
them. Never had the Faubourg beheld such audacious impropriety. The
stupefaction was so great, the idea of Macquart having found a young
and wealthy mistress so completely upset the gossips, that they even
spoke gently of Adélaïde. “Poor thing! She’s gone quite mad,” they
would say. “If she had any relatives she would have been placed in
confinement long ago.” And as they never knew anything of the history
of those strange amours, they accused that rogue Macquart of having
taken advantage of Adélaïde’s weak mind to rob her of her money.
The legitimate son, little Pierre Rougon, grew up with his mother’s
other offspring. The latter, Antoine and Ursule, the young wolves as
they were called in the district, were kept at home by Adélaïde, who
treated them as affectionately as her first child. She did not appear
to entertain a very clear idea of the position in life reserved for
these two poor creatures. To her they were the same in every respect as
her first-born. She would sometimes go out holding Pierre with one hand
and Antoine with the other, never noticing how differently the two
little fellows were already regarded.
It was a strange home. For nearly twenty years everyone lived there
after his or her fancy, the children like the mother. Everything went
on free from control. In growing to womanhood, Adélaïde had retained
the strangeness which had been taken for shyness when she was fifteen.
It was not that she was insane, as the people of the Faubourg asserted,
but there was a lack of equilibrium between her nerves and her blood, a
disorder of the brain and heart which made her lead a life out of the
ordinary, different from that of the rest of the world. She was
certainly very natural, very consistent with herself; but in the eyes
of the neighbours her consistency became pure insanity. She seemed
desirous of making herself conspicuous, it was thought she was wickedly
determined to turn things at home from bad to worse, whereas with great
naivete she simply acted according to the impulses of her nature.
Ever since giving birth to her first child she had been subject to
nervous fits which brought on terrible convulsions. These fits recurred
periodically, every two or three months. The doctors whom she consulted
declared they could do nothing for her, that age would weaken the
severity of the attacks. They simply prescribed a dietary regimen of
underdone meat and quinine wine. However, these repeated shocks led to
cerebral disorder. She lived on from day to day like a child, like a
fawning animal yielding to its instincts. When Macquart was on his
rounds, she passed her time in lazy, pensive idleness. All she did for
her children was to kiss and play with them. Then as soon as her lover
returned she would disappear.
Behind Macquart’s hovel there was a little yard, separated from the
Fouques’ property by a wall. One morning the neighbours were much
astonished to find in this wall a door which had not been there the
previous evening. Before an hour had elapsed, the entire Faubourg had
flocked to the neighbouring windows. The lovers must have worked the
whole night to pierce the opening and place the door there. They could
now go freely from one house to the other. The scandal was revived,
everyone felt less pity for Adélaïde, who was certainly the disgrace of
the suburb; she was reproached more wrathfully for that door, that
tacit, brutal admission of her union, than even for her two
illegitimate children. “People should at least study appearances,” the
most tolerant women would say. But Adélaïde did not understand what was
meant by studying appearances. She was very happy, very proud of her
door; she had assisted Macquart to knock the stones from the wall and
had even mixed the mortar so that the work might proceed the quicker;
and she came with childish delight to inspect the work by daylight on
the morrow—an act which was deemed a climax of shamelessness by three
gossips who observed her contemplating the masonry. From that date,
whenever Macquart reappeared, it was thought, as no one then ever saw
the young woman, that she was living with him in the hovel of the
Impasse Saint-Mittre.
The smuggler would come very irregularly, almost always unexpectedly,
to Plassans. Nobody ever knew what life the lovers led during the two
or three days he spent there at distant intervals. They used to shut
themselves up; the little dwelling seemed uninhabited. Then, as the
gossips had declared that Macquart had simply seduced Adélaïde in order
to spend her money, they were astonished, after a time, to see him
still lead his wonted life, ever up hill and down dale and as badly
equipped as previously. Perhaps the young woman loved him all the more
for seeing him at rare intervals, perhaps he had disregarded her
entreaties, feeling an irresistible desire for a life of adventure. The
gossips invented a thousand fables, without succeeding in giving any
reasonable explanation of a connection which had originated and
continued in so strange a manner. The hovel in the Impasse Saint-Mittre
remained closed and preserved its secrets. It was merely guessed that
Macquart had probably acquired the habit of beating Adélaïde, although
the sound of a quarrel never issued from the house. However, on several
occasions she was seen with her face black and blue, and her hair torn
away. At the same time, she did not display the least dejection or
grief, nor did she seek in any way to hide her bruises. She smiled, and
seemed happy. No doubt she allowed herself to be beaten without
breathing a word. This existence lasted for more than fifteen years.
At times when Adélaïde returned home she would find her house upside
down, but would not take the least notice of it. She was utterly
ignorant of the practical meaning of life, of the proper value of
things and the necessity for order. She let her children grow up like
those plum-trees which sprout along the highways at the pleasure of the
rain and sun. They bore their natural fruits like wild stock which has
never known grafting or pruning. Never was nature allowed such complete
sway, never did such mischievous creatures grow up more freely under
the sole influence of instinct. They rolled among the vegetables,
passed their days in the open air playing and fighting like
good-for-nothing urchins. They stole provisions from the house and
pillaged the few fruit-trees in the enclosure; they were the
plundering, squalling, familiar demons of this strange abode of lucid
insanity. When their mother was absent for days together, they would
make such an uproar, and hit upon such diabolical devices for annoying
people, that the neighbours had to threaten them with a whipping.
Moreover, Adélaïde did not inspire them with much fear; if they were
less obnoxious to other people when she was at home, it was because
they made her their victim, shirking school five or six times a week
and doing everything they could to receive some punishment which would
allow them to squall to their hearts’ content. But she never beat them,
nor even lost her temper; she lived on very well, placidly, indolently,
in a state of mental abstraction amidst all the uproar. At last,
indeed, this uproar became indispensable to her, to fill the void in
her brain. She smiled complacently when she heard anyone say, “Her
children will beat her some day, and it will serve her right.” To all
remarks, her utter indifference seemed to reply, “What does it matter?”
She troubled even less about her property than about her children. The
Fouques’ enclosure, during the many years that this singular existence
lasted would have become a piece of waste ground if the young woman had
not luckily entrusted the cultivation of her vegetables to a clever
market-gardener. This man, who was to share the profits with her,
robbed her impudently, though she never noticed it. This circumstance
had its advantages, however; for, in order to steal the more, the
gardener drew as much as possible from the land, which in the result
almost doubled in value.
Pierre, the legitimate son, either from secret instinct or from his
knowledge of the different manner in which he and the others were
regarded by the neighbours, domineered over his brother and sister from
an early age. In their quarrels, although he was much weaker than
Antoine, he always got the better of the contest, beating the other
with all the authority of a master. With regard to Ursule, a poor,
puny, wan little creature, she was handled with equal roughness by both
the boys. Indeed, until they were fifteen or sixteen, the three
children fraternally beat each other without understanding their vague,
mutual hatred, without realising how foreign they were to one another.
It was only in youth that they found themselves face to face with
definite, self-conscious personalities.
At sixteen, Antoine was a tall fellow, a blend of Macquart’s and
Adélaïde’s failings. Macquart, however, predominated in him, with his
love of vagrancy, his tendency to drunkenness, and his brutish
savagery. At the same time, under the influence of Adélaïde’s nervous
nature, the vices which in the father assumed a kind of sanguinary
frankness were in the son tinged with an artfulness full of hypocrisy
and cowardice. Antoine resembled his mother by his total want of
dignified will, by his effeminate voluptuous egotism, which disposed
him to accept any bed of infamy provided he could lounge upon it at his
ease and sleep warmly in it. People said of him: “Ah! the brigand! He
hasn’t even the courage of his villainy like Macquart; if ever he
commits a murder, it will be with pin pricks.” Physically, Antoine
inherited Adélaïde’s thick lips only; his other features resembled
those of the smuggler, but they were softer and more prone to change of
expression.
In Ursule, on the other hand, physical and moral resemblance to the
mother predominated. There was a mixture of certain characteristics in
her also; but born the last, at a time when Adélaïde’s love was warmer
than Macquart’s, the poor little thing seemed to have received with her
sex a deeper impress of her mother’s temperament. Moreover, hers was
not a fusion of the two natures, but rather a juxtaposition, a
remarkably close soldering. Ursule was whimsical, and displayed at
times the shyness, the melancholy, and the transports of a pariah; then
she would often break out into nervous fits of laughter, and muse
lazily, like a woman unsound both in head and heart. Her eyes, which at
times had a scared expression like those of Adélaïde, were as limpid as
crystal, similar to those of kittens doomed to die of consumption.
In presence of those two illegitimate children Pierre seemed a
stranger; to one who had not penetrated to the roots of his being he
would have appeared profoundly dissimilar. Never did child’s nature
show a more equal balance of the characteristics of its parents. He was
the exact mean between the peasant Rougon and the nervous Adélaïde.
Paternal grossness was attenuated by the maternal influence. One found
in him the first phase of that evolution of temperaments which
ultimately brings about the amelioration or deterioration of a race.
Although he was still a peasant, his skin was less coarse, his face
less heavy, his intellect more capacious and more supple. In him the
defects of his father and his mother had advantageously reacted upon
each other. If Adélaïde’s nature, rendered exquisitely sensitive by her
rebellious nerves, had combated and lessened Rougon’s full-bodied
ponderosity, the latter had successfully prevented the young woman’s
tendency to cerebral disorder from being implanted in the child. Pierre
knew neither the passions nor the sickly ravings of Macquart’s young
whelps. Very badly brought up, unruly and noisy, like all children who
are not restrained during their infancy, he nevertheless possessed at
bottom such sense and intelligence as would always preserve him from
perpetrating any unproductive folly. His vices, his laziness, his
appetite for indulgence, lacked the instinctiveness which characterised
Antoine’s; he meant to cultivate and gratify them honourably and
openly. In his plump person of medium height, in his long pale face, in
which the features derived from his father had acquired some of the
maternal refinement, one could already detect signs of sly and crafty
ambition and insatiable desire, with the hardness of heart and envious
hatred of a peasant’s son whom his mother’s means and nervous
temperament had turned into a member of the middle classes.
When, at the age of seventeen, Pierre observed and was able to
understand Adélaïde’s disorders and the singular position of Antoine
and Ursule, he seemed neither sorry nor indignant, but simply worried
as to the course which would best serve his own interests. He was the
only one of the three children who had pursued his studies with any
industry. When a peasant begins to feel the need of instruction he most
frequently becomes a fierce calculator. At school Pierre’s playmates
roused his first suspicions by the manner in which they treated and
hooted his brother. Later on he came to understand the significance of
many looks and words. And at last he clearly saw that the house was
being pillaged. From that time forward he regarded Antoine and Ursule
as shameless parasites, mouths that were devouring his own substance.
Like the people of the Faubourg, he thought that his mother was a fit
subject for a lunatic asylum, and feared she would end by squandering
all her money, if he did not take steps to prevent it. What gave him
the finishing stroke was the dishonesty of the gardener who cultivated
the land. At this, in one day, the unruly child was transformed into a
thrifty, selfish lad, hurriedly matured, as regards his instincts, by
the strange improvident life which he could no longer bear to see
around him without a feeling of anguish. Those vegetables, from the
sale of which the market-gardener derived the largest profits, really
belonged to him; the wine which his mother’s offspring drank, the bread
they ate, also belonged to him. The whole house, the entire fortune,
was his by right; according to his boorish logic, he alone, the
legitimate son, was the heir. And as his riches were in danger, as
everybody was greedily gnawing at his future fortune, he sought a means
of turning them all out—mother, brother, sister, servants—and of
succeeding immediately to his inheritance.
The conflict was a cruel one; the lad knew that he must first strike
his mother. Step by step, with patient tenacity, he executed a plan
whose every detail he had long previously thought out. His tactics were
to appear before Adélaïde like a living reproach—not that he flew into
a passion, or upbraided her for her misconduct; but he had acquired a
certain manner of looking at her, without saying a word, which
terrified her. Whenever she returned from a short sojourn in Macquart’s
hovel she could not turn her eyes on her son without a shudder. She
felt his cold glances, as sharp as steel blades pierce her deeply and
pitilessly. The severe, taciturn demeanour of the child of the man whom
she had so soon forgotten strangely troubled her poor disordered brain.
She would fancy at times that Rougon had risen from the dead to punish
her for her dissoluteness. Every week she fell into one of those
nervous fits which were shattering her constitution. She was left to
struggle until she recovered consciousness, after which she would creep
about more feebly than ever. She would also often sob the whole night
long, holding her head in her hands, and accepting the wounds that
Pierre dealt her with resignation, as if they had been the strokes of
an avenging deity. At other times she repudiated him; she would not
acknowledge her own flesh and blood in that heavy-faced lad, whose
calmness chilled her own feverishness so painfully. She would a
thousand times rather have been beaten than glared at like that. Those
implacable looks, which followed her everywhere, threw her at last into
such unbearable torments that on several occasions she determined to
see her lover no more. As soon, however, as Macquart returned she
forgot her vows and hastened to him. The conflict with her son began
afresh, silent and terrible, when she came back home. At the end of a
few months she fell completely under his sway. She stood before him
like a child doubtful of her behaviour and fearing that she deserves a
whipping. Pierre had skilfully bound her hand and foot, and made a very
submissive servant of her, without opening his lips, without once
entering into difficult and compromising explanations.
When the young man felt that his mother was in his power, that he could
treat her like a slave, he began, in his own interest, to turn her
cerebral weakness and the foolish terror with which his glances
inspired her to his own advantage. His first care, as soon as he was
master at home, was to dismiss the market-gardener and replace him by
one of his own creatures. Then he took upon himself the supreme
direction of the household, selling, buying, and holding the cash-box.
On the other hand, he made no attempt to regulate Adélaïde’s actions,
or to correct Antoine and Ursule for their laziness. That mattered
little to him, for he counted upon getting rid of these people as soon
as an opportunity presented itself. He contented himself with
portioning out their bread and water. Then, having already got all the
property in his own hands, he awaited an event which would permit him
to dispose of it as he pleased.
Circumstances proved singularly favourable. He escaped the conscription
on the ground of being a widow’s eldest son. But two years later
Antoine was called out. His bad luck did not affect him much; he
counted on his mother purchasing a substitute for him. Adélaïde, in
fact, wished to save him from serving; Pierre, however, who held the
money, turned a deaf ear to her. His brother’s compulsory departure
would be a lucky event for him, and greatly assist the accomplishment
of his plans. When his mother mentioned the matter to him, he gave her
such a look that she did not venture to pursue it. His glance plainly
signified, “Do you wish, then, to ruin me for the sake of your
illegitimate offspring?” Forthwith she selfishly abandoned Antoine, for
before everything else she sought her own peace and quietness. Pierre,
who did not like violent measures, and who rejoiced at being able to
eject his brother without a disturbance, then played the part of a man
in despair: the year had been a bad one, money was scarce, and to raise
any he would be compelled to sell a portion of the land, which would be
the beginning of their ruin. Then he pledged his word of honour to
Antoine that he would buy him out the following year, though he meant
to do nothing of the kind. Antoine then went off, duped, and half
satisfied.
Pierre got rid of Ursule in a still more unexpected manner. A
journeyman hatter of the Faubourg, named Mouret, conceived a real
affection for the girl, whom he thought as white and delicate as any
young lady from the Saint-Marc quarter. He married her. On his part it
was a love match, free from all sordid motives. As for Ursule, she
accepted the marriage in order to escape a home where her eldest
brother rendered life intolerable. Her mother, absorbed in her own
courses, and using her remaining energy to defend her own particular
interests, regarded the matter with absolute indifference. She was even
glad of Ursule’s departure from the house, hoping that Pierre, now that
he had no further cause for dissatisfaction, would let her live in
peace after her own fashion. No sooner had the young people been
married than Mouret perceived that he would have to quit Plassans, if
he did not wish to hear endless disparaging remarks about his wife and
his mother-in-law. Taking Ursule with him, he accordingly repaired to
Marseilles, where he worked at his trade. It should be mentioned that
he had not asked for one sou of dowry. When Pierre, somewhat surprised
by this disinterestedness, commenced to stammer out some explanations,
Mouret closed his mouth by saying that he preferred to earn his wife’s
bread. Nevertheless the worthy son of the peasant remained uneasy;
Mouret’s indifference seemed to him to conceal some trap.
Adélaïde now remained to be disposed of. Nothing in the world would
have induced Pierre to live with her any longer. She was compromising
him; it was with her that he would have liked to make a start. But he
found himself between two very embarrassing alternatives: to keep her,
and thus, in a measure, share her disgrace, and bind a fetter to his
feet which would arrest him in his ambitious flight; or to turn her
out, with the certainty of being pointed at as a bad son, which would
have robbed him of the reputation for good nature which he desired.
Knowing that he would be in want of everybody, he desired to secure an
untarnished name throughout Plassans. There was but one method to
adopt, namely, to induce Adélaïde to leave of her own accord. Pierre
neglected nothing to accomplish this end. He considered his mother’s
misconduct a sufficient excuse for his own hard-heartedness. He
punished her as one would chastise a child. The tables were turned. The
poor woman cowered under the stick which, figuratively, was constantly
held over her. She was scarcely forty-two years old, and already had
the stammerings of terror, and vague, pitiful looks of an old woman in
her dotage. Her son continued to stab her with his piercing glances,
hoping that she would run away when her courage was exhausted. The
unfortunate woman suffered terribly from shame, restrained desire and
enforced cowardice, receiving the blows dealt her with passive
resignation, and nevertheless returning to Macquart with the
determination to die on the spot rather than submit. There were nights
when she would have got out of bed, and thrown herself into the Viorne,
if with her weak, nervous, nature she had not felt the greatest fear of
death. On several occasions she thought of running away and joining her
lover on the frontier. It was only because she did not know whither to
go that she remained in the house, submitting to her son’s contemptuous
silence and secret brutality. Pierre divined that she would have left
long ago if she had only had a refuge. He was waiting an opportunity to
take a little apartment for her somewhere, when a fortuitous
occurrence, which he had not ventured to anticipate, abruptly brought
about the realisation of his desires. Information reached the Faubourg
that Macquart had just been killed on the frontier by a shot from a
custom-house officer, at the moment when he was endeavouring to smuggle
a load of Geneva watches into France. The story was true. The
smuggler’s body was not even brought home, but was interred in the
cemetery of a little mountain village. Adélaïde’s grief plunged her
into stupor. Her son, who watched her curiously, did not see her shed a
tear. Macquart had made her sole legatee. She inherited his hovel in
the Impasse Saint-Mittre, and his carbine, which a fellow-smuggler,
braving the balls of the custom-house officers, loyally brought back to
her. On the following day she retired to the little house, hung the
carbine above the mantelpiece, and lived there estranged from all the
world, solitary and silent.
Pierre was at last sole master of the house. The Fouques’ land belonged
to him in fact, if not in law. He never thought of establishing himself
on it. It was too narrow a field for his ambition. To till the ground
and cultivate vegetables seemed to him boorish, unworthy of his
faculties. He was in a hurry to divest himself of everything recalling
the peasant. With his nature refined by his mother’s nervous
temperament, he felt an irresistible longing for the enjoyments of the
middle classes. In all his calculations, therefore, he had regarded the
sale of the Fouques’ property as the final consummation. This sale, by
placing a round sum of money in his hands, would enable him to marry
the daughter of some merchant who would take him into partnership. At
this period the wars of the First Empire were greatly thinning the
ranks of eligible young men. Parents were not so fastidious as
previously in the choice of a son-in-law. Pierre persuaded himself that
money would smooth all difficulties, and that the gossip of the
Faubourg would be overlooked; he intended to pose as a victim, as an
honest man suffering from a family disgrace, which he deplored, without
being soiled by it or excusing it.
For several months already he had cast his eyes on a certain Félicité
Puech, the daughter of an oil-dealer. The firm of Puech & Lacamp, whose
warehouses were in one of the darkest lanes of the old quarter, was far
from prosperous. It enjoyed but doubtful credit in the market, and
people talked vaguely of bankruptcy. It was precisely in consequence of
these evil reports that Pierre turned his batteries in this direction.
No well-to-do trader would have given him his daughter. He meant to
appear on the scene at the very moment when old Puech should no longer
know which way to turn; he would then purchase Félicité of him, and
re-establish the credit of the house by his own energy and
intelligence. It was a clever expedient for ascending the first rung of
the social ladder, for raising himself above his station. Above all
things, he wished to escape from that frightful Faubourg where
everybody reviled his family, and to obliterate all these foul legends,
by effacing even the very name of the Fouques’ enclosure. For that
reason the filthy streets of the old quarter seemed to him perfect
paradise. There, only, he would be able to change his skin.
The moment which he had been awaiting soon arrived. The firm of Puech
and Lacamp seemed to be at the last gasp. The young man then negotiated
the match with prudent skill. He was received, if not as a deliverer,
at least as a necessary and acceptable expedient. The marriage agreed
upon, he turned his attention to the sale of the ground. The owner of
the Jas-Meiffren, desiring to enlarge his estate, had made him repeated
offers. A low, thin, party-wall alone separated the two estates. Pierre
speculated on the eagerness of his wealthy neighbour, who, to gratify
his caprice, offered as much as fifty thousand francs for the land. It
was double its value. Pierre, whoever, with the craftiness of a
peasant, pulled a long face, and said that he did not care to sell;
that his mother would never consent to get rid of the property where
the Fouques had lived from father to son for nearly two centuries. But
all the time that he was seemingly holding back he was really making
preparations for the sale. Certain doubts had arisen in his mind.
According to his own brutal logic, the property belonged to him; he had
the right to dispose of it as he chose. Beneath this assurance,
however, he had vague presentiments of legal complications. So he
indirectly consulted a lawyer of the Faubourg.
He learnt some fine things from him. According to the lawyer, his hands
were completely tied. His mother alone could alienate the property, and
he doubted whether she would. But what he did not know, what came as a
heavy blow to him, was that Ursule and Antoine, those young wolves, had
claims on the estate. What! they would despoil him, rob him, the
legitimate child! The lawyer’s explanations were clear and precise,
however; Adélaïde, it is true, had married Rougon under the common
property system; but as the whole fortune consisted of land, the young
woman, according to law, again came into possession of everything at
her husband’s death. Moreover, Macquart and Adélaïde had duly
acknowledged their children when declaring their birth for
registration, and thus these children were entitled to inherit from
their mother. For sole consolation, Pierre learnt that the law reduced
the share of illegitimate children in favour of the others. This,
however, did not console him at all. He wanted to have everything. He
would not have shared ten sous with Ursule and Antoine.
This vista of the intricacies of the Code opened up a new horizon,
which he scanned with a singularly thoughtful air. He soon recognised
that a shrewd man must always keep the law on his side. And this is
what he devised without consulting anyone, even the lawyer, whose
suspicions he was afraid of arousing. He knew how to turn his mother
round his finger. One fine morning he took her to a notary and made her
sign a deed of sale. Provided she were left the hovel in the Impasse
Saint-Mittre, Adélaïde would have sold all Plassans. Besides, Pierre
assured her an annual income of six hundred francs, and made the most
solemn promises to watch over his brother and sister. This oath
satisfied the good woman. She recited, before the notary, the lesson
which it had pleased her son to teach her. On the following day the
young man made her place her name at the foot of a document in which
she acknowledged having received fifty thousand francs as the price of
the property. This was his stroke of genius, the act of a rogue. He
contented himself with telling his mother, who was a little surprised
at signing such a receipt when she had not seen a centime of the fifty
thousand francs, that it was a pure formality of no consequence
whatever. As he slipped the paper into his pocket, he thought to
himself, “Now, let the young wolves ask me to render an account. I will
tell them the old woman has squandered everything. They will never dare
to go to law with me about it.” A week afterwards, the party-wall no
longer existed: a plough had turned up the vegetable beds; the Fouques’
enclosure, in accordance with young Rougon’s wish, was about to become
a thing of the past. A few months later, the owner of the Jas-Meiffren
even had the old market-gardener’s house, which was falling to pieces,
pulled down.
When Pierre had secured the fifty thousand francs he married Félicité
Puech with as little delay as possible. Félicité was a short, dark
woman, such as one often meets in Provence. She looked like one of
those brown, lean, noisy grasshoppers, which in their sudden leaps
often strike their heads against the almond-trees. Thin, flat-breasted,
with pointed shoulders and a face like that of a pole-cat, her features
singularly sunken and attenuated, it was not easy to tell her age; she
looked as near fifteen as thirty, although she was in reality only
nineteen, four years younger than her husband. There was much feline
slyness in the depths of her little black eyes, which suggested gimlet
holes. Her low, bumpy forehead, her slightly depressed nose with
delicate quivering nostrils, her thin red lips and prominent chin,
parted from her cheeks by strange hollows, all suggested the
countenance of an artful dwarf, a living mask of intrigue, an active,
envious ambition. With all her ugliness, however, Félicité possessed a
sort of gracefulness which rendered her seductive. People said of her
that she could be pretty or ugly as she pleased. It would depend on the
fashion in which she tied her magnificent hair; but it depended still
more on the triumphant smile which illumined her golden complexion when
she thought she had got the better of somebody. Born under an evil
star, and believing herself ill-used by fortune, she was generally
content to appear an ugly creature. She did not, however, intend to
abandon the struggle, for she had vowed that she would some day make
the whole town burst with envy, by an insolent display of happiness and
luxury. Had she been able to act her part on a more spacious stage,
where full play would have been allowed her ready wit, she would have
quickly brought her dream to pass. Her intelligence was far superior to
that of the girls of her own station and education. Evil tongues
asserted that her mother, who had died a few years after she was born,
had, during the early period of her married life, been familiar with
the Marquis de Carnavant, a young nobleman of the Saint-Marc quarter.
In fact, Félicité had the hands and feet of a marchioness, and, in this
respect, did not appear to belong to that class of workers from which
she was descended.
Her marriage with Pierre Rougon, that semi-peasant, that man of the
Faubourg, whose family was in such bad odour, kept the old quarter in a
state of astonishment for more than a month. She let people gossip,
however, receiving the stiff congratulations of her friends with
strange smiles. Her calculations had been made; she had chosen Rougon
for a husband as one would choose an accomplice. Her father, in
accepting the young man, had merely had eyes for the fifty thousand
francs which were to save him from bankruptcy. Félicité, however, was
more keen-sighted. She looked into the future, and felt that she would
be in want of a robust man, even if he were somewhat rustic, behind
whom she might conceal herself, and whose limbs she would move at will.
She entertained a deliberate hatred for the insignificant little
exquisites of provincial towns, the lean herd of notaries’ clerks and
prospective barristers, who stand shivering with cold while waiting for
clients. Having no dowry, and despairing of ever marrying a rich
merchant’s son, she by far preferred a peasant whom she could use as a
passive tool, to some lank graduate who would overwhelm her with his
academical superiority, and drag her about all her life in search of
hollow vanities. She was of opinion that the woman ought to make the
man. She believed herself capable of carving a minister out of a
cow-herd. That which had attracted her in Rougon was his broad chest,
his heavy frame, which was not altogether wanting in elegance. A man
thus built would bear with ease and sprightliness the mass of intrigues
which she dreamt of placing on his shoulders. However, while she
appreciated her husband’s strength and vigour, she also perceived that
he was far from being a fool; under his coarse flesh she had divined
the cunning suppleness of his mind. Still she was a long way from
really knowing her Rougon; she thought him far stupider than he was. A
few days after her marriage, as she was by chance fumbling in the
drawer of a secretaire, she came across the receipt for fifty thousand
francs which Adélaïde had signed. At sight of it she understood things,
and felt rather frightened; her own natural average honesty rendered
her hostile to such expedients. Her terror, however, was not unmixed
with admiration; Rougon became in her eyes a very smart fellow.
The young couple bravely sought to conquer fortune. The firm of Puech &
Lacamp was not, after all, so embarrassed as Pierre had thought. Its
liabilities were small, it was merely in want of ready-money. In the
provinces, traders adopt prudent courses to save them from serious
disasters. Puech & Lacamp were prudent to an excessive degree; they
never risked a thousand crowns without the greatest fear, and thus
their house, a veritable hole, was an unimportant one. The fifty
thousand francs that Pierre brought into it sufficed to pay the debts
and extend the business. The beginnings were good. During three
successive years the olive harvest was an abundant one. Félicité, by a
bold stroke which absolutely frightened both Pierre and old Puech, made
them purchase a considerable quantity of oil, which they stored in
their warehouse. During the following years, as the young woman had
foreseen, the crops failed, and a considerable rise in prices having
set in, they realised large profits by selling out their stock.
A short time after this haul, Puech & Lacamp retired from the firm,
content with the few sous they had just secured, and ambitious of
living on their incomes.
The young couple now had sole control of the business, and thought that
they had at last laid the foundation of their fortune. “You have
vanquished my ill-luck,” Félicité would sometimes say to her husband.
One of the rare weaknesses of her energetic nature was to believe
herself stricken by misfortune. Hitherto, so she asserted, nothing had
been successful with either herself or her father, in spite of all
their efforts. Goaded by her southern superstition, she prepared to
struggle with fate as one struggles with somebody who is endeavouring
to strangle one. Circumstances soon justified her apprehensions in a
singular manner. Ill-luck returned inexorably. Every year some fresh
disaster shook Rougon’s business. A bankruptcy resulted in the loss of
a few thousand francs; his estimates of crops proved incorrect, through
the most incredible circumstances; the safest speculations collapsed
miserably. It was a truceless, merciless combat.
“You see I was born under an unlucky star!” Félicité would bitterly
exclaim.
And yet she still struggled furiously, not understanding how it was
that she, who had shown such keen scent in a first speculation, could
now only give her husband the most deplorable advice.
Pierre, dejected and less tenacious than herself, would have gone into
liquidation a score of times had it not been for his wife’s firm
obstinacy. She longed to be rich. She perceived that her ambition could
only be attained by fortune. As soon as they possessed a few hundred
thousand francs they would be masters of the town. She would get her
husband appointed to an important post, and she would govern. It was
not the attainment of honours which troubled her; she felt herself
marvellously well armed for such a combat. But she could do nothing to
get together the first few bags of money which were needed. Though the
ruling of men caused her no apprehensions, she felt a sort of impotent
rage at the thought of those inert, white, cold, five-franc pieces over
which her intriguing spirit had no power, and which obstinately
resisted her.
The battle lasted for more than thirty years. The death of Puech proved
another heavy blow. Félicité, who had counted upon an inheritance of
about forty thousand francs, found that the selfish old man, in order
to indulge himself in his old age, had sunk all his money in a life
annuity. The discovery made her quite ill. She was gradually becoming
soured, she was growing more lean and harsh. To see her, from morning
till night, whirling round the jars of oil, one would have thought she
believed that she could stimulate the sales by continually flitting
about like a restless fly. Her husband, on the contrary, became
heavier; misfortune fattened him, making him duller and more indolent.
These thirty years of combat did not, however, bring him to ruin. At
each annual stock-taking they managed to make both ends meet fairly
well; if they suffered any loss during one season, they recouped
themselves the next. However, it was precisely this living from hand to
mouth which exasperated Félicité. She would, by far, have preferred a
big failure. They would then, perhaps, have been able to commence life
over again, instead of obstinately persisting in their petty business,
working themselves to death to gain the bare necessaries of life.
During one third of a century they did not save fifty thousand francs.
It should be mentioned that, from the very first years of their married
life, they had a numerous family, which in the long run became a heavy
burden to them. In the course of five years, from 1811 to 1815,
Félicité gave birth to three boys. Then during the four ensuing years
she presented her husband with two girls. These had but an indifferent
welcome; daughters are a terrible embarrassment when one has no dowry
to give them.
However, the young woman did not regard this troop of children as the
cause of their ruin. On the contrary, she based on her sons’ heads the
building of the fortune which was crumbling in her own hands. They were
hardly ten years old before she discounted their future careers in her
dreams. Doubting whether she would ever succeed herself, she centred in
them all her hopes of overcoming the animosity of fate. They would
provide satisfaction for her disappointed vanity, they would give her
that wealthy, honourable position which she had hitherto sought in
vain. From that time forward, without abandoning the business struggle,
she conceived a second plan for obtaining the gratification of her
domineering instincts. It seemed to her impossible that, amongst her
three sons, there should not be a man of superior intellect, who would
enrich them all. She felt it, she said. Accordingly, she nursed the
children with a fervour in which maternal severity was blended with an
usurer’s solicitude. She amused herself by fattening them as though
they constituted a capital which, later on, would return a large
interest.
“Enough!” Pierre would sometimes exclaim, “all children are ungrateful.
You are spoiling them, you are ruining us.”
When Félicité spoke of sending them to college, he got angry. Latin was
a useless luxury, it would be quite sufficient if they went through the
classes of a little neighbouring school The young woman, however,
persisted in her design. She possessed certain elevated instincts which
made her take a great pride in surrounding herself with accomplished
children; moreover, she felt that her sons must never remain as
illiterate as her husband, if she wished to see them become prominent
men. She fancied them all three in Paris in high positions, which she
did not clearly define. When Rougon consented, and the three youngsters
had entered the eighth class, Félicité felt the most lively
satisfaction she had ever experienced. She listened with delight as
they talked of their professors and their studies. When she heard her
eldest son make one of his brothers decline _Rosa, a rose_, it sounded
like delicious music to her. It is only fair to add that her delight
was not tarnished by any sordid calculations. Even Rougon felt the
satisfaction which an illiterate man experiences on perceiving his sons
grow more learned than himself. Then the fellowship which grew up
between their sons and those of the local big-wigs completed the
parents’ gratification. The youngsters were soon on familiar terms with
the sons of the Mayor and the Sub-Prefect, and even with two or three
young noblemen whom the Saint-Marc quarter had deigned to send to the
Plassans College. Félicité was at a loss how to repay such an honour.
The education of the three lads weighed seriously on the budget of the
Rougon household.
Until the boys had taken their degrees, their parents, who kept them at
college at enormous sacrifices, lived in hopes of their success. When
they had obtained their diplomas Félicité wished to continue her work,
and even persuaded her husband to send the three to Paris. Two of them
devoted themselves to the study of law, and the third passed through
the School of Medicine. Then, when they were men, and had exhausted the
resources of the Rougon family and were obliged to return and establish
themselves in the provinces, their parents’ disenchantment began. They
idled about and grew fat. And Félicité again felt all the bitterness of
her ill-luck. Her sons were failing her. They had ruined her, and did
not return any interest on the capital which they represented. This
last blow of fate was the heaviest, as it fell on her ambition and her
maternal vanity alike. Rougon repeated to her from morning till night,
“I told you so!” which only exasperated her the more.
One day, as she was bitterly reproaching her eldest son with the large
amount of money expended on his education, he said to her with equal
bitterness, “I will repay you later on if I can. But as you had no
means, you should have brought us up to a trade. We are out of our
element, we are suffering more than you.”
Félicité understood the wisdom of these words. From that time she
ceased to accuse her children, and turned her anger against fate, which
never wearied of striking her. She started her old complaints afresh,
and bemoaned more and more the want of means which made her strand, as
it were, in port. Whenever Rougon said to her, “Your sons are lazy
fellows, they will eat up all we have,” she sourly replied, “Would to
God I had more money to give them; if they do vegetate, poor fellows,
it’s because they haven’t got a sou to bless themselves with.”
At the beginning of the year 1848, on the eve of the Revolution of
February, the three young Rougons held very precarious positions at
Plassans. They presented most curious and profoundly dissimilar
characteristics, though they came of the same stock. They were in
reality superior to their parents. The race of the Rougons was destined
to become refined through its female side. Adélaïde had made Pierre a
man of moderate enterprise, disposed to low ambitions; Félicité had
inspired her sons with a higher intelligence, with a capacity for
greater vices and greater virtues.
At the period now referred to the eldest, Eugène, was nearly forty
years old. He was a man of middle height, slightly bald, and already
disposed to obesity. He had his father’s face, a long face with broad
features; beneath his skin one could divine the fat to which were due
the flabby roundness of his features, and his yellowish, waxy
complexion. Though his massive square head still recalled the peasant,
his physiognomy was transfigured, lit up from within as it were, when
his drooping eyelids were raised and his eyes awoke to life. In the
son’s case, the father’s ponderousness had turned to gravity. This big
fellow, Eugène, usually preserved a heavy somnolent demeanour. At the
same time, certain of his heavy, languid movements suggested those of a
giant stretching his limbs pending the time for action. By one of those
alleged freaks of nature, of which, however, science is now commencing
to discover the laws, if physical resemblance to Pierre was perfect in
Eugène, Félicité on her side seemed to have furnished him with his
brains. He offered an instance of certain moral and intellectual
qualities of maternal origin being embedded in the coarse flesh he had
derived from his father. He cherished lofty ambitions, possessed
domineering instincts, and showed singular contempt for trifling
expedients and petty fortunes.
He was a proof that Plassans was perhaps not mistaken in suspecting
that Félicité had some blue blood in her veins. The passion for
indulgence, which became formidably developed in the Rougons, and was,
in fact, the family characteristic, attained in his case its highest
pitch; he longed for self-gratification, but in the form of mental
enjoyment such as would gratify his burning desire for domination. A
man such as this was never intended to succeed in a provincial town. He
vegetated there for fifteen years, his eyes turned towards Paris,
watching his opportunities. On his return home he had entered his name
on the rolls, in order to be independent of his parents. After that he
pleaded from time to time, earning a bare livelihood, without appearing
to rise above average mediocrity. At Plassans his voice was considered
thick, his movements heavy. He generally wandered from the question at
issue, rambled, as the wiseacres expressed it. On one occasion
particularly, when he was pleading in a case for damages, he so forgot
himself as to stray into a political disquisition, to such a point that
the presiding judge interfered, whereupon he immediately sat down with
a strange smile. His client was condemned to pay a considerable sum of
money, a circumstance which did not, however, seem to cause Eugène the
least regret for his irrelevant digression. He appeared to regard his
speeches as mere exercises which would be of use to him later on. It
was this that puzzled and disheartened Félicité. She would have liked
to see her son dictating the law to the Civil Court of Plassans. At
last she came to entertain a very unfavourable opinion of her
first-born. To her mind this lazy fellow would never be the one to shed
any lustre on the family. Pierre, on the contrary, felt absolute
confidence in him, not that he had more intuition than his wife, but
because external appearances sufficed him, and he flattered himself by
believing in the genius of a son who was his living image. A month
prior to the Revolution of February, 1848, Eugène became restless; some
special inspiration made him anticipate the crisis. From that time
forward he seemed to feel out of his element at Plassans. He would
wander about the streets like a distressed soul. At last he formed a
sudden resolution, and left for Paris, with scarcely five hundred
francs in his pocket.
Aristide, the youngest son, was, so to speak, diametrically opposed to
Eugène. He had his mother’s face, and a covetousness and slyness of
character prone to trivial intrigues, in which his father’s instincts
predominated. Nature has need of symmetry. Short, with a pitiful
countenance suggesting the knob of a stick carved into a Punch’s head,
Aristide ferretted and fumbled everywhere, without any scruples, eager
only to gratify himself. He loved money as his eldest brother loved
power. While Eugène dreamed of bending a people to his will, and
intoxicated himself with visions of future omnipotence, the other
fancied himself ten times a millionaire, installed in a princely
mansion, eating and drinking to his heart’s content, and enjoying life
to the fullest possible extent. Above all things, he longed to make a
rapid fortune. When he was building his castles in the air, they would
rise in his mind as if by magic; he would become possessed of tons of
gold in one night. These visions agreed with his indolence, as he never
troubled himself about the means, considering those the best which were
the most expeditious. In his case the race of the Rougons, of those
coarse, greedy peasants with brutish appetites, had matured too
rapidly; every desire for material indulgence was found in him,
augmented threefold by hasty education, and rendered the more
insatiable and dangerous by the deliberate way in which the young man
had come to regard their realisation as his set purpose. In spite of
her keen feminine intuition, Félicité preferred this son; she did not
perceive the greater affinity between herself and Eugène; she excused
the follies and indolence of her youngest son under the pretext that he
would some day be the superior genius of the family, and that such a
man was entitled to live a disorderly life until his intellectual
strength should be revealed.
Aristide subjected her indulgence to a rude test. In Paris he led a
low, idle life; he was one of those students who enter their names at
the taverns of the Quartier Latin. He did not remain there, however,
more than two years; his father, growing apprehensive, and seeing that
he had not yet passed a single examination, kept him at Plassans and
spoke of finding a wife for him, hoping that domestic responsibility
would make him more steady. Aristide let himself be married. He had no
very clear idea of his own ambitions at this time; provincial life did
not displease him; he was battening in his little town—eating,
sleeping, and sauntering about. Félicité pleaded his cause so earnestly
that Pierre consented to board and lodge the newly-married couple, on
condition that the young man should turn his attention to the business.
From that time, however, Aristide led a life of ease and idleness. He
spent his days and the best part of his nights at the club, again and
again slipping out of his father’s office like a schoolboy to go and
gamble away the few louis that his mother gave him clandestinely.
It is necessary to have lived in the depths of the French provinces to
form an idea of the four brutifying years which the young fellow spent
in this fashion. In every little town there is a group of individuals
who thus live on their parents, pretending at times to work, but in
reality cultivating idleness with a sort of religious zeal. Aristide
was typical of these incorrigible drones. For four years he did little
but play écarté. While he passed his time at the club, his wife, a
fair-complexioned nerveless woman, helped to ruin the Rougon business
by her inordinate passion for showy gowns and her formidable appetite,
a rather remarkable peculiarity in so frail a creature. Angèle,
however, adored sky-blue ribbons and roast beef. She was the daughter
of a retired captain who was called Commander Sicardot, a good-hearted
old gentleman, who had given her a dowry of ten thousand francs—all his
savings. Pierre, in selecting Angèle for his son had considered that he
had made an unexpected bargain, so lightly did he esteem Aristide.
However, that dowry of ten thousand francs, which determined his
choice, ultimately became a millstone round his neck. His son, who was
already a cunning rogue, deposited the ten thousand francs with his
father, with whom he entered into partnership, declining, with the most
sincere professions of devotion, to keep a single copper.
“We have no need of anything,” he said; “you will keep my wife and
myself, and we will reckon up later on.”
Pierre was short of money at the time, and accepted, not, however,
without some uneasiness at Aristide’s disinterestedness. The latter
calculated that it would be years before his father would have ten
thousand francs in ready money to repay him, so that he and his wife
would live at the paternal expense so long as the partnership could not
be dissolved. It was an admirable investment for his few bank-notes.
When the oil-dealer understood what a foolish bargain he had made he
was not in a position to rid himself of Aristide; Angèle’s dowry was
involved in speculations which were turning out unfavourably. He was
exasperated, stung to the heart, at having to provide for his
daughter-in-law’s voracious appetite and keep his son in idleness. Had
he been able to buy them out of the business he would twenty times have
shut his doors on those bloodsuckers, as he emphatically expressed it.
Félicité secretly defended them; the young man, who had divined her
dreams of ambition, would every evening describe to her the elaborate
plans by which he would shortly make a fortune. By a rare chance she
had remained on excellent terms with her daughter-in-law. It must be
confessed that Angèle had no will of her own—she could be moved and
disposed of like a piece of furniture.
Meantime Pierre became enraged whenever his wife spoke to him of the
success their youngest son would ultimately achieve; he declared that
he would really bring them to ruin. During the four years that the
young couple lived with him he stormed in this manner, wasting his
impotent rage in quarrels, without in the least disturbing the
equanimity of Aristide and Angèle. They were located there, and there
they intended to remain like blocks of wood. At last Pierre met with a
stroke of luck which enabled him to return the ten thousand francs to
his son. When, however, he wanted to reckon up accounts with him,
Aristide interposed so much chicanery that he had to let the couple go
without deducting a copper for their board and lodging. They installed
themselves but a short distance off, in a part of the old quarter
called the Place Saint-Louis. The ten thousand francs were soon
consumed. They had everything to get for their new home. Moreover
Aristide made no change in his mode of living as long as any money was
left in the house. When he had reached the last hundred-franc note he
felt rather nervous. He was seen prowling about the town in a
suspicious manner. He no longer took his customary cup of coffee at the
club; he watched feverishly whilst play was going on, without touching
a card. Poverty made him more spiteful than he would otherwise have
been. He bore the blow for a long time, obstinately refusing to do
anything in the way of work.
In 1840 he had a son, little Maxime, whom his grandmother Félicité
fortunately sent to college, paying his fees clandestinely. That made
one mouth less at home; but poor Angèle was dying of hunger, and her
husband was at last compelled to seek a situation. He secured one at
the Sub-Prefecture. He remained there nearly ten years, and only
attained a salary of eighteen hundred francs per annum. From that time
forward it was with ever increasing malevolence and rancour that he
hungered for the enjoyments of which he was deprived. His lowly
position exasperated him; the paltry hundred and fifty francs which he
received every month seemed to him an irony of fate. Never did man burn
with such desire for self-gratification. Félicité, to whom he imparted
his sufferings, was by no means grieved to see him so eager. She
thought his misery would stimulate his energies. At last, crouching in
ambush as it were, with his ears wide open, he began to look about him
like a thief seeking his opportunity. At the beginning of 1848, when
his brother left for Paris, he had a momentary idea of following him.
But Eugène was a bachelor; and he, Aristide, could not take his wife so
far without money. So he waited, scenting a catastrophe, and ready to
fall on the first prey that might come within his reach.
The other son, Pascal, born between Eugène and Aristide, did not appear
to belong to the family. He was one of those frequent cases which give
the lie to the laws of heredity. During the evolution of a race nature
often produces some one being whose every element she derives from her
own creative powers. Nothing in the moral or physical constitution of
Pascal recalled the Rougons. Tall, with a grave and gentle face, he had
an uprightness of mind, a love of study, a retiring modesty which
contrasted strangely with the feverish ambitions and unscrupulous
intrigues of his relatives. After acquitting himself admirably of his
medical studies in Paris, he had retired, by preference, to Plassans,
notwithstanding the offers he received from his professors. He loved a
quiet provincial life; he maintained that for a studious man such a
life was preferable to the excitement of Paris. Even at Plassans he did
not exert himself to extend his practice. Very steady, and despising
fortune, he contented himself with the few patients sent him by chance.
All his pleasures were centred in a bright little house in the new
town, where he shut himself up, lovingly devoting his whole time to the
study of natural history. He was particularly fond of physiology. It
was known in the town that he frequently purchased dead bodies from the
hospital grave-digger, a circumstance which rendered him an object of
horror to delicate ladies and certain timid gentlemen. Fortunately,
they did not actually look upon him as a sorcerer; but his practice
diminished, and he was regarded as an eccentric character, to whom
people of good society ought not to entrust even a finger-tip, for fear
of being compromised. The mayor’s wife was one day heard to say: “I
would sooner die than be attended by that gentleman. He smells of
death.”
From that time, Pascal was condemned. He seemed to rejoice at the mute
terror which he inspired. The fewer patients he had, the more time he
could devote to his favourite sciences. As his fees were very moderate,
the poorer people remained faithful to him; he earned just enough to
live, and lived contentedly, a thousand leagues away from the rest of
the country, absorbed in the pure delight of his researches and
discoveries. From time to time he sent a memoir to the Academie des
Sciences at Paris. Plassans did not know that this eccentric character,
this gentleman who smelt of death was well-known and highly-esteemed in
the world of science. When people saw him starting on Sundays for an
excursion among the Garrigues hills, with a botanist’s bag hung round
his neck and a geologist’s hammer in his hand, they would shrug their
shoulders and institute a comparison between him and some other doctor
of the town who was noted for his smart cravat, his affability to the
ladies, and the delicious odour of violets which his garments always
diffused. Pascal’s parents did not understand him any better than other
people. When Félicité saw him adopting such a strange, unpretentious
mode of life she was stupefied, and reproached him for disappointing
her hopes. She, who tolerated Aristide’s idleness because she thought
it would prove fertile, could not view without regret the slow progress
of Pascal, his partiality for obscurity and contempt for riches, his
determined resolve to lead a life of retirement. He was certainly not
the child who would ever gratify her vanities.
“But where do you spring from?” she would sometimes say to him. “You
are not one of us. Look at your brothers, how they keep their eyes
open, striving to profit by the education we have given them, whilst
you waste your time on follies and trifles. You make a very poor return
to us, who have ruined ourselves for your education. No, you are
certainly not one of us.”
Pascal, who preferred to laugh whenever he was called upon to feel
annoyed, replied cheerfully, but not without a sting of irony: “Oh, you
need not be frightened, I shall never drive you to the verge of
bankruptcy; when any of you are ill, I will attend you for nothing.”
Moreover, though he never displayed any repugnance to his relatives, he
very rarely saw them, following in this wise his natural instincts.
Before Aristide obtained a situation at the Sub-Prefecture, Pascal had
frequently come to his assistance. For his part he had remained a
bachelor. He had not the least suspicion of the grave events that were
preparing. For two or three years he had been studying the great
problem of heredity, comparing the human and animal races together, and
becoming absorbed in the strange results which he obtained. Certain
observations which he had made with respect to himself and his
relatives had been, so to say, the starting-point of his studies. The
common people, with their natural intuition, so well understood that he
was quite different from the other Rougons, that they invariably called
him Monsieur Pascal, without ever adding his family name.
Three years prior to the Revolution of 1848 Pierre and Félicité retired
from business. Old age was coming on apace; they were both past fifty
and were weary enough of the struggle. In face of their ill fortune,
they were afraid of being ultimately ruined if they obstinately
persisted in the fight. Their sons, by disappointing their
expectations, had dealt them the final blow. Now that they despaired of
ever being enriched by them, they were anxious to make some little
provision for old age. They retired with forty thousand francs at the
utmost. This sum provided an annual income of two thousand francs, just
sufficient to live in a small way in the provinces. Fortunately, they
were by themselves, having succeeded in marrying their daughters Marthe
and Sidonie, the former of whom resided at Marseilles and the latter in
Paris.
After they had settled their affairs they would much have liked to take
up their abode in the new town, the quarter of the retired traders, but
they dared not do so. Their income was too small; they were afraid that
they would cut but a poor figure there. So, as a sort of compromise,
they took apartments in the Rue de la Banne, the street which separates
the old quarter from the new one. As their abode was one of the row of
houses bordering the old quarter, they still lived among the common
people; nevertheless, they could see the town of the richer classes
from their windows, so that they were just on the threshold of the
promised land.
Their apartments, situated on the second floor, consisted of three
large rooms—dining-room, drawing-room, and bedroom. The first floor was
occupied by the owner of the house, a stick and umbrella manufacturer,
who had a shop on the ground floor. The house, which was narrow and by
no means deep, had only two storeys. Félicité moved into it with a
bitter pang. In the provinces, to live in another person’s house is an
avowal of poverty. Every family of position at Plassans has a house of
its own, landed property being very cheap there. Pierre kept the
purse-strings well tied; he would not hear of any embellishments. The
old furniture, faded, worn, damaged though it was, had to suffice,
without even being repaired. Félicité, however, who keenly felt the
necessity for this parsimony, exerted herself to give fresh polish to
all the wreckage; she herself knocked nails into some of the furniture
which was more dilapidated than the rest, and darned the frayed velvet
of the arm-chairs.
The dining-room, which, like the kitchen, was at the back of the house,
was nearly bare; a table and a dozen chairs were lost in the gloom of
this large apartment, whose window faced the grey wall of a
neighbouring building. As no strangers ever went into the bedroom,
Félicité had stowed all her useless furniture there; thus, besides a
bedstead, wardrobe, secretaire, and wash-stand, it contained two
cradles, one perched atop of the other, a sideboard whose doors were
missing, and an empty bookcase, venerable ruins which the old woman
could not make up her mind to part with. All her cares, however, were
bestowed upon the drawing-room, and she almost succeeded in making it
comfortable and decent. The furniture was covered with yellowish velvet
with satin flowers; in the middle stood a round table with a marble
top, while a couple of pier tables, surmounted by mirrors, leant
against the walls at either end of the room. There was even a carpet,
which just covered the middle of the floor, and a chandelier in a white
muslin cover which the flies had spotted with black specks. On the
walls hung six lithographs representing the great battles of Napoleon
I. Moreover, the furniture dated from the first years of the Empire.
The only embellishment that Félicité could obtain was to have the walls
hung with orange-hued paper covered with large flowers. Thus the
drawing room had a strange yellow glow, which filled it with an
artificial dazzling light. The furniture, the paper, and the window
curtains were yellow; the carpet and even the marble table-tops showed
touches of yellow. However, when the curtains were drawn the colours
harmonised fairly well and the drawing-room looked almost decent.
But Félicité had dreamed of quite a different kind of luxury. She
regarded with mute despair this ill-concealed misery. She usually
occupied the drawing-room, the best apartment in the house, and the
sweetest and bitterest of her pastimes was to sit at one of the windows
which overlooked the Rue de la Banne and gave her a side view of the
square in front of the Sub-Prefecture. That was the paradise of her
dreams. That little, neat, tidy square, with its bright houses, seemed
to her a Garden of Eden. She would have given ten years of her life to
possess one of those habitations. The house at the left-hand corner, in
which the receiver of taxes resided, particularly tempted her. She
contemplated it with eager longing. Sometimes, when the windows of this
abode were open, she could catch a glimpse of rich furniture and
tasteful elegance which made her burn with envy.
At this period the Rougons passed through a curious crisis of vanity
and unsatiated appetite. The few proper feelings which they had once
entertained had become embittered. They posed as victims of evil
fortune, not with resignation, however, for they seemed still more
keenly determined that they would not die before they had satisfied
their ambitions. In reality, they did not abandon any of their hopes,
notwithstanding their advanced age. Félicité professed to feel a
presentiment that she would die rich. However, each day of poverty
weighed them down the more. When they recapitulated their vain
attempts—when they recalled their thirty years’ struggle, and the
defection of their children—when they saw their airy castles end in
this yellow drawing-room, whose shabbiness they could only conceal by
drawing the curtains, they were overcome with bitter rage. Then, as a
consolation, they would think of plans for making a colossal fortune,
seeking all sorts of devices. Félicité would fancy herself the winner
of the grand prize of a hundred thousand francs in some lottery, while
Pierre pictured himself carrying out some wonderful speculation. They
lived with one sole thought—that of making a fortune immediately, in a
few hours—of becoming rich and enjoying themselves, if only for a year.
Their whole beings tended to this, stubbornly, without a pause. And
they still cherished some faint hopes with regard to their sons, with
that peculiar egotism of parents who cannot bear to think that they
have sent their children to college without deriving some personal
advantage from it.
Félicité did not appear to have aged; she was still the same dark
little woman, ever on the move, buzzing about like a grasshopper. Any
person walking behind her on the pavement would have thought her a girl
of fifteen, from the lightness of her step and the angularity of her
shoulders and waist. Even her face had scarcely undergone any change;
it was simply rather more sunken, rather more suggestive of the snout
of a pole-cat.
As for Pierre Rougon, he had grown corpulent, and had become a highly
respectable looking citizen, who only lacked a decent income to make
him a very dignified individual. His pale, flabby face, his heaviness,
his languid manner, seemed redolent of wealth. He had one day heard a
peasant who did not know him say: “Ah! he’s some rich fellow, that fat
old gentleman there. He’s no cause to worry about his dinner!” This was
a remark which stung him to the heart, for he considered it cruel
mockery to be only a poor devil while possessing the bulk and contented
gravity of a millionaire. When he shaved on Sundays in front of a small
five-sou looking-glass hanging from the fastening of a window, he would
often think that in a dress coat and white tie he would cut a far
better figure at the Sub-Prefect’s than such or such a functionary of
Plassans. This peasant’s son, who had grown sallow from business
worries, and corpulent from a sedentary life, whose hateful passions
were hidden beneath naturally placid features, really had that air of
solemn imbecility which gives a man a position in an official salon.
People imagined that his wife held a rod over him, but they were
mistaken. He was as self-willed as a brute. Any determined expression
of extraneous will would drive him into a violent rage. Félicité was
far too supple to thwart him openly; with her light fluttering nature
she did not attack obstacles in front. When she wished to obtain
something from her husband, or drive him the way she thought best, she
would buzz round him in her grasshopper fashion, stinging him on all
sides, and returning to the charge a hundred times until he yielded
almost unconsciously. He felt, moreover, that she was shrewder than he,
and tolerated her advice fairly patiently. Félicité, more useful than
the coach fly, would sometimes do all the work while she was thus
buzzing round Pierre’s ears. Strange to say, the husband and wife never
accused each other of their ill-success. The only bone of contention
between them was the education lavished on their children.
The Revolution of 1848 found all the Rougons on the lookout,
exasperated by their bad luck, and disposed to lay violent hands on
fortune if ever they should meet her in a byway. They were a family of
bandits lying in wait, ready to rifle and plunder. Eugène kept an eye
on Paris; Aristide dreamed of strangling Plassans; the mother and
father, perhaps the most eager of the lot, intended to work on their
own account, and reap some additional advantage from their sons’
doings. Pascal alone, that discreet wooer of science, led the happy,
indifferent life of a lover in his bright little house in the new town.
CHAPTER III
In that closed, sequestered town of Plassans, where class distinction
was so clearly marked in 1848, the commotion caused by political events
was very slight. Even at the present day the popular voice sounds very
faintly there; the middle classes bring their prudence to bear in the
matter, the nobility their mute despair, and the clergy their shrewd
cunning. Kings may usurp thrones, or republics may be established,
without scarcely any stir in the town. Plassans sleeps while Paris
fights. But though on the surface the town may appear calm and
indifferent, in the depths hidden work goes on which it is curious to
study. If shots are rare in the streets, intrigues consume the
drawing-rooms of both the new town and the Saint-Marc quarter. Until
the year 1830 the masses were reckoned of no account. Even at the
present time they are similarly ignored. Everything is settled between
the clergy, the nobility, and the bourgeoisie. The priests, who are
very numerous, give the cue to the local politics; they lay
subterranean mines, as it were, and deal blows in the dark, following a
prudent tactical system, which hardly allows of a step in advance or
retreat even in the course of ten years. The secret intrigues of men
who desire above all things to avoid noise requires special shrewdness,
a special aptitude for dealing with small matters, and a patient
endurance such as one only finds in persons callous to all passions. It
is thus that provincial dilatoriness, which is so freely ridiculed in
Paris, is full of treachery, secret stabs, hidden victories and
defeats. These worthy men, particularly when their interests are at
stake, kill at home with a snap of the fingers, as we, the Parisians,
kill with cannon in the public thoroughfares.
The political history of Plassans, like that of all little towns in
Provence, is singularly characteristic. Until 1830, the inhabitants
remained observant Catholics and fervent royalists; even the lower
classes only swore by God and their legitimate sovereigns. Then there
came a sudden change; faith departed, the working and middle classes
deserted the cause of legitimacy, and gradually espoused the great
democratic movement of our time. When the Revolution of 1848 broke out,
the nobility and the clergy were left alone to labour for the triumph
of Henri V. For a long time they had regarded the accession of the
Orleanists as a ridiculous experiment, which sooner or later would
bring back the Bourbons; although their hopes were singularly shaken,
they nevertheless continued the struggle, scandalised by the defection
of their former allies, whom they strove to win back to their cause.
The Saint-Marc quarter, assisted by all the parish priests, set to
work. Among the middle classes, and especially among the people, the
enthusiasm was very great on the morrow of the events of February;
these apprentice republicans were in haste to display their
revolutionary fervour. As regards the gentry of the new town, however,
the conflagration, bright though it was, lasted no longer than a fire
of straw. The small houseowners and retired tradespeople who had had
their good days, or had made snug little fortunes under the monarchy,
were soon seized with panic; the Republic, with its constant shocks and
convulsions, made them tremble for their money and their life of
selfishness.
Consequently, when the Clerical reaction of 1849 declared itself,
nearly all the middle classes passed over to the Conservative party.
They were received with open arms. The new town had never before had
such close relations with the Saint-Marc quarter: some of the nobility
even went so far as to shake hands with lawyers and retired
oil-dealers. This unexpected familiarity kindled the enthusiasm of the
new quarter, which henceforward waged bitter warfare against the
republican government. To bring about such a coalition, the clergy had
to display marvellous skill and endurance. The nobility of Plassans for
the most part lay prostrate, as if half dead. They retained their
faith, but lethargy had fallen on them, and they preferred to remain
inactive, allowing the heavens to work their will. They would gladly
have contented themselves with silent protest, feeling, perhaps, a
vague presentiment that their divinities were dead, and that there was
nothing left for them to do but rejoin them. Even at this period of
confusion, when the catastrophe of 1848 was calculated to give them a
momentary hope of the return of the Bourbons, they showed themselves
spiritless and indifferent, speaking of rushing into the melee, yet
never quitting their hearths without a pang of regret.
The clergy battled indefatigably against this feeling of impotence and
resignation. They infused a kind of passion into their work: a priest,
when he despairs, struggles all the more fiercely. The fundamental
policy of the Church is to march straight forward; even though she may
have to postpone the accomplishment of her projects for several
centuries, she never wastes a single hour, but is always pushing
forward with increasing energy. So it was the clergy who led the
reaction of Plassans; the nobility only lent them their name, nothing
more. The priests hid themselves behind the nobles, restrained them,
directed them, and even succeeded in endowing them with a semblance of
life. When they had induced them to overcome their repugnance so far as
to make common cause with the middle classes, they believed themselves
certain of victory. The ground was marvellously well prepared. This
ancient royalist town, with its population of peaceful householders and
timorous tradespeople, was destined to range itself, sooner or later,
on the side of law and order. The clergy, by their tactics, hastened
the conversion. After gaining the landlords of the new town to their
side, they even succeeded in convincing the little retail-dealers of
the old quarter. From that time the reactionary movement obtained
complete possession of the town. All opinions were represented in this
reaction; such a mixture of embittered Liberals, Legitimists,
Orleanists, Bonapartists, and Clericals had never before been seen. It
mattered little, however, at that time. The sole object was to kill the
Republic; and the Republic was at the point of death. Only a fraction
of the people—a thousand workmen at most, out of the ten thousand souls
in the town—still saluted the tree of liberty planted in the middle of
the square in front of the Sub-Prefecture.
The shrewdest politicians of Plassans, those who led the reactionary
movement, did not scent the approach of the Empire until very much
later. Prince Louis Napoleon’s popularity seemed to them a mere passing
fancy of the multitude. His person inspired them with but little
admiration. They reckoned him a nonentity, a dreamer, incapable of
laying his hands on France, and especially of maintaining his
authority. To them he was only a tool whom they would make use of, who
would clear the way for them, and whom they would turn out as soon as
the hour arrived for the rightful Pretender to show himself.[*]
However, months went by, and they became uneasy. It was only then that
they vaguely perceived they were being duped: they had no time,
however, to take any steps; the Coup d’État burst over their heads, and
they were compelled to applaud. That great abomination, the Republic,
had been assassinated; that, at least, was some sort of triumph. So the
clergy and the nobility accepted accomplished facts with resignation;
postponing, until later, the realisation of their hopes, and making
amends for their miscalculations by uniting with the Bonapartists for
the purpose of crushing the last Republicans.
[*] The Count de Chambord, “Henri V.”
It was these events that laid the foundation of the Rougons’ fortune.
After being mixed up with the various phases of the crisis, they rose
to eminence on the ruins of liberty. These bandits had been lying in
wait to rob the Republic; as soon as it had been strangled, they helped
to plunder it.
After the events of February 1848, Félicité, who had the keenest scent
of all the members of the family, perceived that they were at last on
the right track. So she began to flutter round her husband, goading him
on to bestir himself. The first rumours of the Revolution that had
overturned King Louis Philippe had terrified Pierre. When his wife,
however, made him understand that they had little to lose and much to
gain from a convulsion, he soon came round to her way of thinking.
“I don’t know what you can do,” Félicité repeatedly said, “but it seems
to me that there’s plenty to be done. Did not Monsieur de Carnavant say
to us one day that he would be rich if ever Henri V. should return, and
that this sovereign would magnificently recompense those who had worked
for his restoration? Perhaps our fortune lies in that direction. We may
yet be lucky.”
The Marquis de Carnavant, the nobleman who, according to the scandalous
talk of the town, had been on very familiar terms with Félicité’s
mother, used occasionally to visit the Rougons. Evil tongues asserted
that Madame Rougon resembled him. He was a little, lean, active man,
seventy-five years old at that time, and Félicité certainly appeared to
be taking his features and manner as she grew older. It was said that
the wreck of his fortune, which had already been greatly diminished by
his father at the time of the Emigration, had been squandered on women.
Indeed, he cheerfully acknowledged his poverty. Brought up by one of
his relatives, the Count de Valqueyras, he lived the life of a
parasite, eating at the count’s table and occupying a small apartment
just under his roof.
“Little one,” he would often say to Félicité, as he patted her on the
cheek, “if ever Henri V. gives me a fortune, I will make you my
heiress!”
He still called Félicité “little one,” even when she was fifty years
old. It was of these friendly pats, of these repeated promises of an
inheritance, that Madame Rougon was thinking when she endeavoured to
drive her husband into politics. Monsieur de Carnavant had often
bitterly lamented his inability to render her any assistance. No doubt
he would treat her like a father if ever he should acquire some
influence. Pierre, to whom his wife half explained the situation in
veiled terms, declared his readiness to move in any direction
indicated.
The marquis’s peculiar position qualified him to act as an energetic
agent of the reactionary movement at Plassans from the first days of
the Republic. This bustling little man, who had everything to gain from
the return of his legitimate sovereigns, worked assiduously for their
cause. While the wealthy nobility of the Saint-Marc quarter were
slumbering in mute despair, fearing, perhaps that they might compromise
themselves and again be condemned to exile, he multiplied himself, as
it were, spread the propaganda and rallied faithful ones together. He
was a weapon whose hilt was held by an invisible hand. From that time
forward he paid daily visits to the Rougons. He required a centre of
operations. His relative, Monsieur de Valqueyras, had forbidden him to
bring any of his associates into his house, so he had chosen Félicité’s
yellow drawing-room. Moreover, he very soon found Pierre a valuable
assistant. He could not go himself and preach the cause of Legitimacy
to the petty traders and workmen of the old quarter; they would have
hooted him. Pierre, on the other hand, who had lived among these
people, spoke their language and knew their wants, was able to
catechise them in a friendly way. He thus became an indispensable man.
In less than a fortnight the Rougons were more determined royalists
than the king himself. The marquis, perceiving Pierre’s zeal, shrewdly
sheltered himself behind him. What was the use of making himself
conspicuous, when a man with such broad shoulders was willing to bear
on them the burden of all the follies of a party? He allowed Pierre to
reign, puff himself out with importance and speak with authority,
content to restrain or urge him on, according to the necessities of the
cause. Thus, the old oil-dealer soon became a personage of mark. In the
evening, when they were alone, Félicité used to say to him: “Go on,
don’t be frightened. We’re on the right track. If this continues we
shall be rich; we shall have a drawing-room like the tax-receiver’s,
and be able to entertain people.”
A little party of Conservatives had already been formed at the Rougons’
house, and meetings were held every evening in the yellow drawing-room
to declaim against the Republic.
Among those who came were three or four retired merchants who trembled
for their money, and clamoured with all their might for a wise and
strong government. An old almond-dealer, a member of the Municipal
Council, Monsieur Isidore Granoux, was the head of this group. His
hare-lipped mouth was cloven a little way from the nose; his round
eyes, his air of mingled satisfaction and astonishment, made him
resemble a fat goose whose digestion is attended by wholesome terror of
the cook. He spoke little, having no command of words; and he only
pricked up his ears when anyone accused the Republicans of wishing to
pillage the houses of the rich; whereupon he would colour up to such a
degree as to make one fear an approaching apoplectic fit, and mutter
low imprecations, in which the words “idlers,” “scoundrels,” “thieves,”
and “assassins” frequently recurred.
All those who frequented the yellow drawing-room were not, however, as
heavy as this fat goose. A rich landowner, Monsieur Roudier, with a
plump, insinuating face, used to discourse there for hours altogether,
with all the passion of an Orleanist whose calculations had been upset
by the fall of Louis Philippe. He had formerly been a hosier at Paris,
and a purveyor to the Court, but had now retired to Plassans. He had
made his son a magistrate, relying on the Orleanist party to promote
him to the highest dignities. The revolution having ruined all his
hopes, he had rushed wildly into the reaction. His fortune, his former
commercial relations with the Tuileries, which he transformed into
friendly intercourse, that prestige which is enjoyed by every man in
the provinces who has made his money in Paris and deigns to come and
spend it in a far away department, gave him great influence in the
district; some persons listened to him as though he were an oracle.
However, the strongest intellect of the yellow drawing-room was
certainly Commander Sicardot, Aristide’s father-in-law. Of Herculean
frame, with a brick-red face, scarred and planted with tufts of grey
hair, he was one of the most glorious old dolts of the Grande Armée.
During the February Revolution he had been exasperated with the street
warfare and never wearied of referring to it, proclaiming with
indignation that this kind of fighting was shameful: whereupon he
recalled with pride the grand reign of Napoleon.
Another person seen at the Rougons’ house was an individual with clammy
hands and equivocal look, one Monsieur Vuillet, a bookseller, who
supplied all the devout ladies of the town with holy images and
rosaries. Vuillet dealt in both classical and religious works; he was a
strict Catholic, a circumstance which insured him the custom of the
numerous convents and parish churches. Further, by a stroke of genius
he had added to his business the publication of a little bi-weekly
journal, the “Gazette de Plassans,” which was devoted exclusively to
the interests of the clergy. This paper involved an annual loss of a
thousand francs, but it made him the champion of the Church, and
enabled him to dispose of his sacred unsaleable stock. Though he was
virtually illiterate and could not even spell correctly, he himself
wrote the articles of the “Gazette” with a humility and rancour that
compensated for his lack of talent. The marquis, in entering on the
campaign, had perceived immediately the advantage that might be derived
from the co-operation of this insipid sacristan with the coarse,
mercenary pen. After the February Revolution the articles in the
“Gazette” contained fewer mistakes; the marquis revised them.
One can now imagine what a singular spectacle the Rougons’ yellow
drawing-room presented every evening. All opinions met there to bark at
the Republic. Their hatred of that institution made them agree
together. The marquis, who never missed a meeting, appeased by his
presence the little squabbles which occasionally arose between the
commander and the other adherents. These plebeians were inwardly
flattered by the handshakes which he distributed on his arrival and
departure. Roudier, however, like a free-thinker of the Rue
Saint-Honoré, asserted that the marquis had not a copper to bless
himself with, and was disposed to make light of him. M. de Carnavant on
his side preserved the amiable smile of a nobleman lowering himself to
the level of these middle class people, without making any of those
contemptuous grimaces which any other resident of the Saint-Marc
quarter would have thought fit under such circumstances. The parasite
life he had led had rendered him supple. He was the life and soul of
the group, commanding in the name of unknown personages whom he never
revealed. “They want this, they don’t want that,” he would say. The
concealed divinities who thus watched over the destinies of Plassans
from behind some cloud, without appearing to interfere directly in
public matters, must have been certain priests, the great political
agents of the country. When the marquis pronounced that mysterious word
“they,” which inspired the assembly with such marvellous respect,
Vuillet confessed, with a gesture of pious devotion, that he knew them
very well.
The happiest person in all this was Félicité. At last she had people
coming to her drawing-room. It was true she felt a little ashamed of
her old yellow velvet furniture. She consoled herself, however,
thinking of the rich things she would purchase when the good cause
should have triumphed. The Rougons had, in the end, regarded their
royalism as very serious. Félicité went as far as to say, when Roudier
was not present, that if they had not made a fortune in the oil
business the fault lay in the monarchy of July. This was her mode of
giving a political tinge to their poverty. She had a friendly word for
everybody, even for Granoux, inventing each evening some new polite
method of waking him up when it was time for departure.
The drawing-room, that little band of Conservatives belonging to all
parties, and daily increasing in numbers, soon wielded powerful
influence. Owing to the diversified characters of its members, and
especially to the secret impulse which each one received from the
clergy, it became the centre of the reactionary movement and spread its
influence throughout Plassans. The policy of the marquis, who sank his
own personality, transformed Rougon into the leader of the party. The
meetings were held at his house, and this circumstance sufficed in the
eyes of most people to make him the head of the group, and draw public
attention to him. The whole work was attributed to him; he was believed
to be the chief artisan of the movement which was gradually bringing
over to the Conservative party those who had lately been enthusiastic
Republicans. There are some situations which benefit only persons of
bad repute. These lay the foundations of their fortune where men of
better position and more influence would never dare to risk theirs.
Roudier, Granoux, and the others, all men of means and respectability,
certainly seemed a thousand times preferable to Pierre as the acting
leaders of the Conservative party. But none of them would have
consented to turn his drawing-room into a political centre. Their
convictions did not go so far as to induce them to compromise
themselves openly; in fact, they were only so many provincial babblers,
who liked to inveigh against the Republic at a neighbour’s house as
long as the neighbour was willing to bear the responsibility of their
chatter. The game was too risky. There was no one among the middle
classes of Plassans who cared to play it except the Rougons, whose
ungratified longings urged them on to extreme measures.
In the month of April, 1849, Eugène suddenly left Paris, and came to
stay with his father for a fortnight. Nobody ever knew the purpose of
this journey. It is probable that Eugène wanted to sound his native
town, to ascertain whether he might successfully stand as a candidate
for the legislature which was about to replace the Constituent
Assembly. He was too shrewd to risk a failure. No doubt public opinion
appeared to him little in his favour, for he abstained from any
attempt. It was not known at Plassans what had become of him in Paris,
what he was doing there. On his return to his native place, folks found
him less heavy and somnolent than formerly. They surrounded him and
endeavoured to make him speak out concerning the political situation.
But he feigned ignorance and compelled them to talk. A little
perspicacity would have detected that beneath his apparent unconcern
there was great anxiety with regard to the political opinions of the
town. However, he seemed to be sounding the ground more on behalf of a
party than on his own account.
Although he had renounced all hope for himself, he remained at Plassans
until the end of the month, assiduously attending the meetings in the
yellow drawing-room. As soon as the bell rang, announcing the first
visitor, he would take up his position in one of the window recesses as
far as possible from the lamp. And he remained there the whole evening,
resting his chin on the palm of his right hand, and listening
religiously. The greatest absurdities did not disturb his equanimity.
He nodded approval even to the wild grunts of Granoux. When anyone
asked him his own opinion, he politely repeated that of the majority.
Nothing seemed to tire his patience, neither the hollow dreams of the
marquis, who spoke of the Bourbons as if 1815 were a recent date, nor
the effusions of citizen Roudier, who grew quite pathetic when he
recounted how many pairs of socks he had supplied to the citizen king,
Louis Philippe. On the contrary, he seemed quite at his ease in this
Tower of Babel. Sometimes, when these grotesque personages were
storming against the Republic, his eyes would smile, while his lips
retained their expression of gravity. His meditative manner of
listening, and his invariable complacency, had earned him the sympathy
of everyone. He was considered a nonentity, but a very decent fellow.
Whenever an old oil or almond dealer failed to get a hearing, amidst
the clamour, for some plan by which he could save France if he were
only a master, he took himself off to Eugène and shouted his marvellous
suggestions in his ear. And Eugène gently nodded his head, as though
delighted with the grand projects he was listening to. Vuillet, alone,
regarded him with a suspicious eye. This bookseller, half-sacristan and
half-journalist, spoke less than the others, but was more observant. He
had noticed that Eugène occasionally conversed at times in a corner
with Commander Sicardot. So he determined to watch them, but never
succeeded in overhearing a word. Eugène silenced the commander by a
wink whenever Vuillet approached them. From that time, Sicardot never
spoke of the Napoleons without a mysterious smile.
Two days before his return to Paris, Eugène met his brother Aristide,
on the Cours Sauvaire, and the latter accompanied him for a short
distance with the importunity of a man in search of advice. As a matter
of fact, Aristide was in great perplexity. Ever since the proclamation
of the Republic, he had manifested the most lively enthusiasm for the
new government. His intelligence, sharpened by two years’ stay at
Paris, enabled him to see farther than the thick heads of Plassans. He
divined the powerlessness of the Legitimists and Orleanists, without
clearly distinguishing, however, what third thief would come and juggle
the Republic away. At all hazard he had ranged himself on the side of
the victors, and he had severed his connection with his father, whom he
publicly denounced as an old fool, an old dolt whom the nobility had
bamboozled.
“Yet my mother is an intelligent woman,” he would add. “I should never
have thought her capable of inducing her husband to join a party whose
hopes are simply chimerical. They are taking the right course to end
their lives in poverty. But then women know nothing about politics.”
For his part he wanted to sell himself as dearly as possible. His great
anxiety as to the direction in which the wind was blowing, so that he
might invariably range himself on the side of that party, which, in the
hour of triumph, would be able to reward him munificently.
Unfortunately, he was groping in the dark. Shut up in his far away
province, without a guide, without any precise information, he felt
quite lost. While waiting for events to trace out a sure and certain
path, he preserved the enthusiastic republican attitude which he had
assumed from the very first day. Thanks to this demeanour, he remained
at the Sub-Prefecture; and his salary was even raised. Burning,
however, with the desire to play a prominent part, he persuaded a
bookseller, one of Vuillet’s rivals, to establish a democratic journal,
to which he became one of the most energetic contributors. Under his
impulse the “Indépendant” waged merciless warfare against the
reactionaries. But the current gradually carried him further than he
wished to go; he ended by writing inflammatory articles, which made him
shudder when he re-perused them. It was remarked at Plassans that he
directed a series of attacks against all whom his father was in the
habit of receiving of an evening in his famous yellow drawing-room. The
fact is that the wealth of Roudier and Granoux exasperated Aristide to
such a degree as to make him forget all prudence. Urged on by his
jealous, insatiate bitterness, he had already made the middle classes
his irreconcilable enemy, when Eugène’s arrival and demeanour at
Plassans caused him great consternation. He confessed to himself that
his brother was a skilful man. According to him, that big, drowsy
fellow always slept with one eye open, like a cat lying in wait before
a mouse-hole. And now here was Eugène spending entire evenings in the
yellow drawing-room, and devoting himself to those same grotesque
personages whom he, Aristide, had so mercilessly ridiculed. When he
discovered from the gossip of the town that his brother shook hands
with Granoux and the marquis, he asked himself, with considerable
anxiety, what was the meaning of it? Could he himself have been
deceived? Had the Legitimists or the Orleanists really any chance of
success? The thought terrified him. He lost his equilibrium, and, as
frequently happens, he fell upon the Conservatives with increased
rancour, as if to avenge his own blindness.
On the evening prior to the day when he stopped Eugène on the Cours
Sauvaire, he had published, in the “Indépendant,” a terrible article on
the intrigues of the clergy, in response to a short paragraph from
Vuillet, who had accused the Republicans of desiring to demolish the
churches. Vuillet was Aristide’s bugbear. Never a week passed but these
two journalists exchanged the greatest insults. In the provinces, where
a periphrastic style is still cultivated, polemics are clothed in
high-sounding phrases. Aristide called his adversary “brother Judas,”
or “slave of Saint-Anthony.” Vuillet gallantly retorted by terming the
Republican “a monster glutted with blood whose ignoble purveyor was the
guillotine.”
In order to sound his brother, Aristide, who did not dare to appear
openly uneasy, contented himself with asking: “Did you read my article
yesterday? What do you think of it?”
Eugène lightly shrugged his shoulders. “You’re a simpleton, brother,”
was his sole reply.
“Then you think Vuillet right?” cried the journalist, turning pale;
“you believe in Vuillet’s triumph?”
“I!—Vuillet——”
He was certainly about to add, “Vuillet is as big a fool as you are.”
But, observing his brother’s distorted face anxiously extended towards
him, he experienced sudden mistrust. “Vuillet has his good points,” he
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