Chapter X
Disasters and Changes


The new lodging of the Coupeaus was next that of the Bijards. Almost opposite their door was a closet under the stairs which went up to the roof—a mere hole without light or ventilation, where Father Bru slept.

A chamber and a small room, about as large as one's hand, were all the Coupeaus had now. Nana's little bed stood in the small room, the door of which had to be left open at night, lest the child should stifle.

When it came to the final move Gervaise felt that she could not separate from the commode which she had spent so much time in polishing when first married and insisted on its going to their new quarters, where it was much in the way and stopped up half the window, and when Gervaise wished to look out into the court she had not room for her elbows.

The first few days she spent in tears. She felt smothered and cramped; after having had so much room to move about in it seemed to her that she was smothering. It was only at the window she could breathe. The courtyard was not a place calculated to inspire cheerful thoughts. Opposite her was the window which years before had elicited her admiration, where every successive summer scarlet beans had grown to a fabulous height on slender strings. Her room was on the shady side, and a pot of mignonette would die in a week on her sill.

No, life had not been what she hoped, and it was all very hard to bear.

Instead of flowers to solace her declining years she would have but thorns. One day as she was looking down into the court she had the strangest feeling imaginable. She seemed to see herself standing just near the loge of the concierge, looking up at the house and examining it for the first time.

This glimpse of the past made her feel faint. It was at least thirteen years since she had first seen this huge building—this world within a world. The court had not changed. The facade was simply more dingy. The same clothes seemed to be hanging at the windows to dry. Below there were the shavings from the cabinetmaker's shop, and the gutter glittered with blue water, as blue and soft in tone as the water she remembered.

But she—alas, how changed was she! She no longer looked up to the sky. She was no longer hopeful, courageous and ambitious. She was living under the very roof in crowded discomfort, where never a ray of sunshine could reach her, and her tears fell fast in utter discouragement.

Nevertheless, when Gervaise became accustomed to her new surroundings she grew more content. The pieces of furniture she had sold to Virginie had facilitated her installation. When the fine weather came Coupeau had an opportunity of going into the country to work. He went and lived three months without drinking—cured for the time being by the fresh, pure air. It does a man sometimes an infinite deal of good to be taken away from all his old haunts and from Parisian streets, which always seem to exhale a smell of brandy and of wine.

He came back as fresh as a rose, and he brought four hundred francs with which he paid the Poissons the amount for which they had become security as well as several other small but pressing debts. Gervaise had now two or three streets open to her again, which for some time she had not dared to enter.

She now went out to iron by the day and had gone back to her old mistress, Mme Fauconnier, who was a kindhearted creature and ready to do anything for anyone who flattered her adroitly.

With diligence and economy Gervaise could have managed to live comfortably and pay all her debts, but this prospect did not charm her particularly. She suffered acutely in seeing the Poissons in her old shop. She was by no means of a jealous or envious disposition, but it was not agreeable to her to hear the admiration expressed for her successors by her husband's sisters. To hear them one would suppose that never had so beautiful a shop been seen before. They spoke of the filthy condition of the place when Virginie moved in—who had paid, they declared, thirty francs for cleaning it.

Virginie, after some hesitation, had decided on a small stock of groceries—sugar, tea and coffee, also bonbons and chocolate. Lantier had advised these because he said the profit on them was immense. The shop was repainted, and shelves and cases were put in, and a counter with scales such as are seen at confectioners'. The little inheritance that Poisson held in reserve was seriously encroached upon. But Virginie was triumphant, for she had her way, and the Lorilleuxs did not spare Gervaise the description of a case or a jar.

It was said in the street that Lantier had deserted Gervaise, that she gave him no peace running after him, but this was not true, for he went and came to her apartment as he pleased. Scandal was connecting his name and Virginie's. They said Virginie had taken the clearstarcher's lover as well as her shop! The Lorilleuxs talked of nothing when Gervaise was present but Lantier, Virginie and the shop. Fortunately Gervaise was not inclined to jealousy, and Lantier's infidelities had hitherto left her undisturbed, but she did not accept this new affair with equal tranquillity. She colored or turned pale as she heard these allusions, but she would not allow a word to pass her lips, as she was fully determined never to gratify her enemies by allowing them to see her discomfiture; but a dispute was heard by the neighbors about this time between herself and Lantier, who went angrily away and was not seen by anyone in the Coupeau quarters for more than a fortnight.

Coupeau behaved very oddly. This blind and complacent husband, who had closed his eyes to all that was going on at home, was filled with virtuous indignation at Lantier's indifference. Then Coupeau went so far as to tease Gervaise in regard to this desertion of her lovers. She had had bad luck, he said, with hatters and blacksmiths—why did she not try a mason?

He said this as if it were a joke, but Gervaise had a firm conviction that he was in deadly earnest. A man who is tipsy from one year's end to the next is not apt to be fastidious, and there are husbands who at twenty are very jealous and at thirty have grown very complacent under the influence of constant tippling.

Lantier preserved an attitude of calm indifference. He kept the peace between the Poissons and the Coupeaus. Thanks to him, Virginie and Gervaise affected for each other the most tender regard. He ruled the brunette as he had ruled the blonde, and he would swallow her shop as he had that of Gervaise.

It was in June of this year that Nana partook of her first Communion. She was about thirteen, slender and tall as an asparagus plant, and her air and manner were the height of impertinence and audacity.

She had been sent away from the catechism class the year before on account of her bad conduct. And if the cure did not make a similar objection this year it was because he feared she would never come again and that his refusal would launch on the Parisian pavé another castaway.

Nana danced with joy at the mere thought of what the Lorilleuxs—as her godparents—had promised, while Mme Lerat gave the veil and cup, Virginie the purse and Lantier a prayer book, so that the Coupeaus looked forward to the day without anxiety.

The Poissons—probably through Lantier's advice—selected this occasion for their housewarming. They invited the Coupeaus and the Boche family, as Pauline made her first Communion on that day, as well as Nana.

The evening before, while Nana stood in an ecstasy of delight before her presents, her father came in in an abominable condition. His virtuous resolutions had yielded to the air of Paris; he had fallen into evil ways again, and he now assailed his wife and child with the vilest epithets, which did not seem to shock Nana, for they could fall from her tongue on occasion with facile glibness.

"I want my soup," cried Coupeau, "and you two fools are chattering over those fal-lals! I tell you, I will sit on them if I am not waited upon, and quickly too."

Gervaise answered impatiently, but Nana, who thought it better taste just then—all things considered—to receive with meekness all her father's abuse, dropped her eyes and did not reply.

"Take that rubbish away!" he cried with growing impatience. "Put it out of my sight or I will tear it to bits."

Nana did not seem to hear him. She took up the tulle cap and asked her mother what it cost, and when Coupeau tried to snatch the cap Gervaise pushed him away.

"Let the child alone!" she said. "She is doing no harm!"

Then her husband went into a perfect rage:

"Mother and daughter," he cried, "a nice pair they make. I understand very well what all this row is for: it is merely to show yourself in a new gown. I will put you in a bag and tie it close round your throat, and you will see if the cure likes that!"

Nana turned like lightning to protect her treasures. She looked her father full in the face, and, forgetting the lessons taught her by her priest, she said in a low, concentrated voice:

"Beast!" That was all.

After Coupeau had eaten his soup he fell asleep and in the morning woke quite amiable. He admired his daughter and said she looked quite like a young lady in her white robe. Then he added with a sentimental air that a father on such days was naturally proud of his child. When they were ready to go to the church and Nana met Pauline in the corridor, she examined the latter from head to foot and smiled condescendingly on seeing that Pauline had not a particle of chic.

The two families started off together, Nana and Pauline in front, each with her prayer book in one hand and with the other holding down her veil, which swelled in the wind like a sail. They did not speak to each other but keenly enjoyed seeing the shopkeepers run to their doors to see them, keeping their eyes cast down devoutly but their ears wide open to any compliment they might hear.

Nana's two aunts walked side by side, exchanging their opinions in regard to Gervaise, whom they stigmatized as an irreligious ne'er-do-well whose child would never have gone to the Holy Communion if it had depended on her.

At the church Coupeau wept all the time. It was very silly, he knew, but he could not help it. The voice of the cure was pathetic; the little girls looked like white-robed angels; the organ thrilled him, and the incense gratified his senses. There was one especial anthem which touched him deeply. He was not the only person who wept, he was glad to see, and when the ceremony was over he left the church feeling that it was the happiest day of his life. But an hour later he quarreled with Lorilleux in a wineshop because the latter was so hardhearted.

The housewarming at the Poissons' that night was very gay. Lantier sat between Gervaise and Virginie and was equally civil and attentive to both. Opposite was Poisson with his calm, impassive face, a look he had cultivated since he began his career as a police officer.

But the queens of the fete were the two little girls, Nana and Pauline, who sat very erect lest they should crush and deface their pretty white dresses. At dessert there was a serious discussion in regard to the future of the children. Mme Boche said that Pauline would at once enter a certain manufactory, where she would receive five or six francs per week. Gervaise had not decided yet, for Nana had shown no especial leaning in any direction. She had a good deal of taste, but she was butter-fingered and careless.

"I should make a florist of her," said Mme Lerat. "It is clean work and pretty work too."

Whereupon ensued a warm discussion. The men were especially careful of their language out of deference to the little girls, but Mme Lerat would not accept the lesson: she flattered herself she could say what she pleased in such a way that it could not offend the most fastidious ears.

Women, she declared, who followed her trade were more virtuous than others. They rarely made a slip.

"I have no objection to your trade," interrupted Gervaise. "If Nana likes to make flowers let her do so. Say, Nana, would you like it?"

The little girl did not look up from her plate, into which she was dipping a crust of bread. She smiled faintly as she replied:

"Yes, Mamma; if you desire it I have no objection."

The decision was instantly made, and Coupeau wished his sister to take her the very next day to the place where she herself worked, Rue du Caire, and the circle talked gravely of the duties of life. Boche said that Pauline and Nana were now women, since they had been to Communion, and they ought to be serious and learn to cook and to mend. They alluded to their future marriages, their homes and their children, and the girls touched each other under the table, giggled and grew very red. Lantier asked them if they did not have little husbands already, and Nana blushingly confessed that she loved Victor Fauconnier and never meant to marry anyone else.

Mme Lorilleux said to Mme Boche on their way home:

"Nana is our goddaughter now, but if she goes into that flower business, in six months she will be on the pavé, and we will have nothing to do with her."

Gervaise told Boche that she thought the shop admirably arranged. She had looked forward to an evening of torture and was surprised that she had not experienced a pang.

Nana, as she undressed, asked her mother if the girl on the next floor, who had been married the week before, wore a dress of muslin like hers.

But this was the last bright day in that household. Two years passed away, and their prospects grew darker and their demoralization and degradation more evident. They went without food and without fire, but never without brandy.

They found it almost impossible to meet their rent, and a certain January came when they had not a penny, and Father Boche ordered them to leave.

It was frightfully cold, with a sharp wind blowing from the north.

M. Marescot appeared in a warm overcoat and his hands encased in warm woolen gloves and told them they must go, even if they slept in the gutter. The whole house was oppressed with woe, and a dreary sound of lamentation arose from most of the rooms, for half the tenants were behindhand. Gervaise sold her bed and paid the rent. Nana made nothing as yet, and Gervaise had so fallen off in her work that Mme Fauconnier had reduced her wages. She was irregular in her hours and often absented herself from the shop for several days together but was none the less vexed to discover that her old employee, Mme Putois, had been placed above her. Naturally at the end of the week Gervaise had little money coming to her.

As to Coupeau, if he worked he brought no money home, and his wife had ceased to count upon it. Sometimes he declared he had lost it through a hole in his pocket or it had been stolen, but after a while he ceased to make any excuses.

But if he had no cash in his pockets it was because he had spent it all in drink. Mme Boche advised Gervaise to watch for him at the door of the place where he was employed and get his wages from him before he had spent them all, but this did no good, as Coupeau was warned by his friends and escaped by a rear door.

The Coupeaus were entirely to blame for their misfortunes, but this is just what people will never admit. It is always ill luck or the cruelty of God or anything, in short, save the legitimate result of their own vices.

Gervaise now quarreled with her husband incessantly. The warmth of affection of husband and wife, of parents for their children and children for their parents had fled and left them all shivering, each apart from the other.

All three, Coupeau, Gervaise and Nana, watched each other with eyes of baleful hate. It seemed as if some spring had broken—the great mainspring that binds families together.

Gervaise did not shudder when she saw her husband lying drunk in the gutter. She would not have pushed him in, to be sure, but if he were out of the way it would be a good thing for everybody. She even went so far as to say one day in a fit of rage that she would be glad to see him brought home on a shutter. Of what good was he to any human being? He ate and he drank and he slept. His child learned to hate him, and she read the accidents in the papers with the feelings of an unnatural daughter. What a pity it was that her father had not been the man who was killed when that omnibus tipped over!

In addition to her own sorrows and privations, Gervaise, whose heart was not yet altogether hard, was condemned to hear now of the sufferings of others. The corner of the house in which she lived seemed to be consecrated to those who were as poor as herself. No smell of cooking filled the air, which, on the contrary, was laden with the shrill cries of hungry children, heavy with the sighs of weary, heartbroken mothers and with the oaths of drunken husbands and fathers.

Gervaise pitied Father Bru from the bottom of her heart; he lay the greater part of the time rolled up in the straw in his den under the staircase leading to the roof. When two or three days elapsed without his showing himself someone opened the door and looked in to see if he were still alive.

Yes, he was living; that is, he was not dead. When Gervaise had bread she always remembered him. If she had learned to hate men because of her husband her heart was still tender toward animals, and Father Bru seemed like one to her. She regarded him as a faithful old dog. Her heart was heavy within her whenever she thought of him, alone, abandoned by God and man, dying by inches or drying, rather, as an orange dries on the chimney piece.

Gervaise was also troubled by the vicinity of the undertaker Bazonge—a wooden partition alone separated their rooms. When he came in at night she could hear him throw down his glazed hat, which fell with a dull thud, like a shovelful of clay, on the table. The black cloak hung against the wall rustled like the wings of some huge bird of prey. She could hear his every movement, and she spent most of her time listening to him with morbid horror, while he—all unconscious—hummed his vulgar songs and tipsily staggered to his bed, under which the poor woman's sick fancy pictured a dead body concealed.

She had read in some paper a dismal tale of some undertaker who took home with him coffin after coffin—children's coffins—in order to make one trip to the cemetery suffice. When she heard his step the whole corridor was pervaded to her senses with the odor of dead humanity.

She would as lief have resided at Père-Lachaise and watched the moles at their work. The man terrified her; his incessant laughter dismayed her. She talked of moving but at the same time was reluctant to do so, for there was a strange fascination about Bazonge after all. Had he not told her once that he would come for her and lay her down to sleep in the shadow of waving branches, where she would know neither hunger nor toil?

She wished she could try it for a month. And she thought how delicious it would be in midwinter, just at the time her quarter's rent was due. But, alas, this was not possible! The rest and the sleep must be eternal; this thought chilled her, and her longing for death faded away before the unrelenting severity of the bonds exacted by Mother Earth.

One night she was sick and feverish, and instead of throwing herself out of the window as she was tempted to do, she rapped on the partition and called loudly:

"Father Bazonge! Father Bazonge!"

The undertaker was kicking off his slippers, singing a vulgar song as he did so.

"What is the matter?" he answered.

But at his voice Gervaise awoke as from a nightmare. What had she done? Had she really tapped? she asked herself, and she recoiled from his side of the wall in chill horror. It seemed to her that she felt the undertaker's hands on her head. No! No! She was not ready. She told herself that she had not intended to call him. It was her elbow that had knocked the wall accidentally, and she shivered from head to foot at the idea of being carried away in this man's arms.

"What is the matter?" repeated Bazonge. "Can I serve you in any way, madame?"

"No! No! It is nothing!" answered the laundress in a choked voice. "I am very much obliged."

While the undertaker slept she lay wide awake, holding her breath and not daring to move, lest he should think she called him again.

She said to herself that under no circumstances would she ever appeal to him for assistance, and she said this over and over again with the vain hope of reassuring herself, for she was by no means at ease in her mind.

Gervaise had before her a noble example of courage and fortitude in the Bijard family. Little Lalie, that tiny child—about as big as a pinch of salt—swept and kept her room like wax; she watched over the two younger children with all the care and patience of a mother. This she had done since her father had kicked her mother to death. She had entirely assumed that mother's place, even to receiving the blows which had fallen formerly on that poor woman. It seemed to be a necessity of his nature that when he came home drunk he must have some woman to abuse. Lalie was too small, he grumbled; one blow of his fist covered her whole face, and her skin was so delicate that the marks of his five fingers would remain on her cheek for days!

He would fly at her like a wolf at a poor little kitten for the merest trifle. Lalie never answered, never rebelled and never complained. She merely tried to shield her face and suppressed all shrieks, lest the neighbors should come; her pride could not endure that. When her father was tired kicking her about the room she lay where he left her until she had strength to rise, and then she went steadily about her work, washing the children and making her soup, sweeping and dusting until everything was clean. It was a part of her plan of life to be beaten every day.

Gervaise had conceived a strong affection for this little neighbor. She treated her like a woman who knew something of life. It must be admitted that Lalie was large for her years. She was fair and pale, with solemn eyes for her years and had a delicate mouth. To have heard her talk one would have thought her thirty. She could make and mend, and she talked of the children as if she had herself brought them into the world. She made people laugh sometimes when she talked, but more often she brought tears to their eyes.

Gervaise did everything she could for her, gave her what she could and helped the energetic little soul with her work. One day she was altering a dress of Nana's for her, and when the child tried it on Gervaise was chilled with horror at seeing her whole back purple and bruised, the tiny arm bleeding—all the innocent flesh of childhood martyrized by the brute—her father.

Bazonge might get the coffin ready, she thought, for the little girl could not bear this long. But Lalie entreated her friend to say nothing, telling her that her father did not know what he was doing, that he had been drinking. She forgave him with her whole heart, for madmen must not be held accountable for their deeds. After that Gervaise was on the watch whenever she heard Bijard coming up the stairs. But she never caught him in any act of absolute brutality. Several times she had found Lalie tied to the foot of the bedstead—an idea that had entered her father's brain, no one knew why, a whim of his disordered brain, disordered by liquor, which probably arose from his wish to tyrannize over the child, even when he was no longer there.

Lalie sometimes was left there all day and once all night. When Gervaise insisted on untying her the child entreated her not to touch the knots, saying that her father would be furious if he found the knots had been tampered with.

And really, she said with an angelic smile, she needed rest, and the only thing that troubled her was not to be able to put the room in order. She could watch the children just as well, and she could think, so that her time was not entirely lost. When her father let her free, her sufferings were not over, for it was sometimes more than an hour before she could stand—before the blood circulated freely in her stiffened limbs.

Her father had invented another cheerful game. He heated some sous red hot on the stove and laid them on the chimney piece. He then summoned Lalie and bade her go buy some bread. The child unsuspiciously took up the sous, uttered a little shriek and dropped them, shaking her poor burned fingers.

Then he would go off in a rage. What did she mean by such nonsense? She had thrown away the money and lost it, and he threatened her with a hiding if she did not find the money instantly. The poor child hesitated; he gave her a cuff on the side of the head. With silent tears streaming down her cheeks she would pick up the sous and toss them from hand to hand to cool them as she went down the long flights of stairs.

There was no limit to the strange ingenuity of the man. One afternoon, for example, Lalie had completed playing with the children. The window was open, and the air shook the door so that it sounded like gentle raps.

"It is Mr Wind," said Lalie; "come in, Mr Wind. How are you today?"

And she made a low curtsy to Mr Wind. The children did the same in high glee, and she was quite radiant with happiness, which was not often the case.

"Come in, Mr Wind!" she repeated, but the door was pushed open by a rough hand and Bijard entered. Then a sudden change came over the scene. The two children crouched in a corner, while Lalie stood in the center of the floor, frozen stiff with terror, for Bijard held in his hand a new whip with a long and wicked-looking lash. He laid this whip on the bed and did not kick either one of the children but smiled in the most vicious way, showing his two lines of blackened, irregular teeth. He was very drunk and very noisy.

"What is the matter with you fools? Have you been struck dumb? I heard you all talking and laughing merrily enough before I came in. Where are your tongues now? Here! Take off my shoes!"

Lalie, considerably disheartened at not having received her customary kick, turned very pale as she obeyed. He was sitting on the side of the bed. He lay down without undressing and watched the child as she moved about the room. Troubled by this strange conduct, the child ended by breaking a cup. Then without disturbing himself he took up the whip and showed it to her.

"Look here, fool," he said grimly: "I bought this for you, and it cost me fifty sous, but I expect to get a good deal more than fifty sous' worth of good out of it. With this long lash I need not run about after you, for I can reach you in every corner of the room. You will break the cups, will you? Come, now, jump about a little and say good morning to Mr Wind again!"

He did not even sit up in the bed but, with his head buried in the pillow, snapped the whip with a noise like that made by a postilion. The lash curled round Lalie's slender body; she fell to the floor, but he lashed her again and compelled her to rise.

"This is a very good thing," he said coolly, "and saves my getting chilled on cold mornings. Yes, I can reach you in that corner—and in that! Skip now! Skip!"

A light foam was on his lips, and his suffused eyes were starting from their sockets. Poor little Lalie darted about the room like a terrified bird, but the lash tingled over her shoulders, coiled around her slender legs and stung like a viper. She was like an India-rubber ball bounding from the floor, while her beast of a father laughed aloud and asked her if she had had enough.

The door opened and Gervaise entered. She had heard the noise. She stood aghast at the scene and then was seized with noble rage.

"Let her be!" she cried. "I will go myself and summon the police."

Bijard growled like an animal who is disturbed over his prey.

"Why do you meddle?" he exclaimed. "What business is it of yours?"

And with another adroit movement he cut Lalie across the face. The blood gushed from her lip. Gervaise snatched a chair and flew at the brute, but the little girl held her skirts and said it did not hurt much; it would be over soon, and she washed the blood away, speaking gently to the frightened children.

When Gervaise thought of Lalie she was ashamed to complain. She wished she had the courage of this child. She knew that she had lived on dry bread for weeks and that she was so weak she could hardly stand, and the tears came to the woman's eyes as she saw the precocious mite who had known nothing of the innocent happiness of her years. And Gervaise took this slender creature for example, whose eyes alone told the story of her misery and hardships, for in the Coupeau family the vitriol of the Assommoir was doing its work of destruction. Gervaise had seen a whip. Gervaise had learned to dread it, and this dread inspired her with tenderest pity for Lalie. Coupeau had lost the flesh and the bloated look which had been his, and he was thin and emaciated. His complexion was gradually acquiring a leaden hue. His appetite was utterly gone. It was with difficulty that he swallowed a mouthful of bread. His stomach turned against all solid food, but he took his brandy every day. This was his meat as well as his drink, and he touched nothing else.

When he crawled out of his bed in the morning he stood for a good fifteen minutes, coughing and spitting out a bitter liquid that rose in his throat and choked him.

He did not feel any better until he had taken what he called "a good drink," and later in the day his strength returned. He felt strange prickings in the skin of his hands and feet. But lately his limbs had grown heavy. This pricking sensation gave place to the most excruciating cramps, which he did not find very amusing. He rarely laughed now but often stopped short and stood still on the sidewalk, troubled by a strange buzzing in his ears and by flashes of light before his eyes. Everything looked yellow to him; the houses seemed to be moving away from him. At other times, when the sun was full on his back, he shivered as if a stream of ice water had been poured down between his shoulders. But the thing he liked the least about himself was a nervous trembling in his hands, the right hand especially.

Had he become an old woman then? he asked himself with sudden fury. He tried with all his strength to lift his glass and command his nerves enough to hold it steady. But the glass had a regular tremulous movement from right to left and left to right again, in spite of all his efforts.

Then he emptied it down his throat, saying that when he had swallowed a dozen more he would be all right and as steady as a monument. Gervaise told him, on the contrary, that he must leave off drinking if he wished to leave off trembling.

He grew very angry and drank quarts in his eagerness to test the question, finally declaring that it was the passing omnibusses that jarred the house and shook his hand.

In March Coupeau came in one night drenched to the skin. He had been caught out in a shower. That night he could not sleep for coughing. In the morning he had a high fever, and the physician who was sent for advised Gervaise to send him at once to the hospital.

And Gervaise made no objection; once she had refused to trust her husband to these people, but now she consigned him to their tender mercies without a regret; in fact, she regarded it as a mercy.

Nevertheless, when the litter came she turned very pale and, if she had had even ten francs in her pocket, would have kept him at home. She walked to the hospital by the side of the litter and went into the ward where he was placed. The room looked to her like a miniature Père-Lachaise, with its rows of beds on either side and its path down the middle. She went slowly away, and in the street she turned and looked up. How well she remembered when Coupeau was at work on those gutters, cheerily singing in the morning air! He did not drink in those days, and she, at her window in the Hôtel Boncoeur, had watched his athletic form against the sky, and both had waved their handkerchiefs. Yes, Coupeau had worked more than a year on this hospital, little thinking that he was preparing a place for himself. Now he was no longer on the roof—he had built a dismal nest within. Good God, was she and the once-happy wife and mother one and the same? How long ago those days seemed!

The next day when Gervaise went to make inquiries she found the bed empty. A sister explained that her husband had been taken to the asylum of Sainte-Anne, because the night before he had suddenly become unmanageable from delirium and had uttered such terrible howls that it disturbed the inmates of all the beds in that ward. It was the alcohol in his system, she said, which attacked his nerves now, when he was so reduced by the inflammation on his lungs that he could not resist it.

The clearstarcher went home, but how or by what route she never knew. Her husband was mad—she heard these words reverberating through her brain. Life was growing very strange. Nana simply said that he must, of course, be left at the asylum, for he might murder them both.

On Sunday only could Gervaise go to Sainte-Anne. It was a long distance off. Fortunately there was an omnibus which went very near. She got out at La Rue Sante and bought two oranges that she might not go quite empty-handed.

But when she went in, to her astonishment she found Coupeau sitting up. He welcomed her gaily.

"You are better!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, nearly well," he replied, and they talked together awhile, and she gave him the oranges, which pleased and touched him, for he was a different man now that he drank tisane instead of liquor. She did not dare allude to his delirium, but he spoke of it himself.

"Yes," he said, "I was in a pretty state! I saw rats running all over the floor and the walls, and you were calling me, and I saw all sorts of horrible things! But I am all right now. Once in a while I have a bad dream, but everybody does, I suppose."

Gervaise remained with him until night. When the house surgeon made his rounds at six o'clock he told him to hold out his hands. They scarcely trembled—an almost imperceptible motion of the tips of his fingers was all. But as the room grew darker Coupeau became restless. Two or three times he sat up and peered into the remote corners.

Suddenly he stretched out his arms and seemed to crush some creature on the wall.

"What is it?" asked Gervaise, terribly frightened.

"Rats!" he said quietly. "Only rats!"

After a long silence he seemed to be dropping off to sleep, with disconnected sentences falling from his lips.

"Dirty beasts! Look out, one is under your skirts!" He pulled the covering hastily over his head, as if to protect himself against the creature he saw.

Then starting up in mad terror, he screamed aloud. A nurse ran to the bed, and Gervaise was sent away, mute with horror at this scene.

But when on the following Sunday she went again to the hospital, Coupeau was really well. All his dreams had vanished. He slept like a child, ten hours without lifting a finger. His wife, therefore, was allowed to take him away. The house surgeon gave him a few words of advice before he left, assuring him if he continued to drink he would be a dead man in three months. All depended on himself. He could live at home just as he had lived at Sainte-Anne's and must forget that such things as wine and brandy existed.

"He is right," said Gervaise as they took their seats in the omnibus.

"Of course he is right," answered her husband. But after a moment's silence he added:

"But then, you know, a drop of brandy now and then never hurts a man: it aids digestion."

That very evening he took a tiny drop and for a week was very moderate; he had no desire, he said, to end his days at Bicetre. But he was soon off his guard, and one day his little drop ended in a full glass, to be followed by a second, and so on. At the end of a fortnight he had fallen back in the old rut.

Gervaise did her best, but, after all, what can a wife do in such circumstances?

She had been so startled by the scene at the asylum that she had fully determined to begin a regular life again and hoped that he would assist her and do the same himself. But now she saw that there was no hope, that even the knowledge of the inevitable results could not restrain her husband now.

Then the hell on earth began again; hopeless and intolerant, Nana asked indignantly why he had not remained in the asylum. All the money she made, she said, should be spent in brandy for her father, for the sooner it was ended, the better for them all.

Gervaise blazed out one day when he lamented his marriage and told him that it was for her to curse the day when she first saw him. He must remember that she had refused him over and over again. The scene was a frightful one and one unexampled in the Coupeau annals.

Gervaise, now utterly discouraged, grew more indolent every day. Her room was rarely swept. The Lorilleuxs said they could not enter it, it was so dirty. They talked all day long over their work of the downfall of Wooden Legs. They gloated over her poverty and her rags.

"Well! Well!" they murmured. "A great change has indeed come to that beautiful blonde who was so fine in her blue shop."

Gervaise suspected their comments on her and her acts to be most unkind, but she determined to have no open quarrel. It was for her interest to speak to them when they met, but that was all the intercourse between them.

On Saturday Coupeau had told his wife he would take her to the circus; he had earned a little money and insisted on indulging himself. Nana was obliged to stay late at the place where she worked and would sleep with her aunt Mme Lerat.

Seven o'clock came, but no Coupeau. Her husband was drinking with his comrades probably. She had washed a cap and mended an old gown with the hope of being presentable. About nine o'clock, in a towering rage, she sallied forth on an empty stomach to find Coupeau.

"Are you looking for your husband?" said Mme Boche. "He is at the Assommoir. Boche has just seen him there."

Gervaise muttered her thanks and went with rapid steps to the Assommoir.

A fine rain was falling. The gas in the tavern was blazing brightly, lighting up the mirrors, the bottles and glasses. She stood at the window and looked in. He was sitting at a table with his comrades. The atmosphere was thick with smoke, and he looked stupefied and half asleep.

She shivered and wondered why she should stay there and, so thinking, turned away, only to come back twice to look again.

The water lay on the uneven sidewalk in pools, reflecting all the lights from the Assommoir. Finally she determined on a bold step: she opened the door and deliberately walked up to her husband. After all, why should she not ask him why he had not kept his promise of taking her to the circus? At any rate, she would not stay out there in the rain and melt away like a cake of soap.

"She is crazy!" said Coupeau when he saw her. "I tell you, she is crazy!"

He and all his friends shrieked with laughter, but no one condescended to say what it was that was so very droll. Gervaise stood still, a little bewildered by this unexpected reception. Coupeau was so amiable that she said:

"Come, you know it is not too late to see something."

"Sit down a minute," said her husband, not moving from his seat.

Gervaise saw she could not stand there among all those men, so she accepted the offered chair. She looked at the glasses, whose contents glittered like gold. She looked at these dirty, shabby men and at the others crowding around the counter. It was very warm, and the pipe smoke thickened the air.

Gervaise felt as if she were choking; her eyes smarted, and her head was heavy with the fumes of alcohol. She turned around and saw the still, the machine that created drunkards. That evening the copper was dull and glittered only in one round spot. The shadows of the apparatus on the wall behind were strange and weird—creatures with tails, monsters opening gigantic jaws as if to swallow the whole world.

"What will you take to drink?" said Coupeau.

"Nothing," answered his wife. "You know I have had no dinner!"

"You need it all the more then! Have a drop of something!"

As she hesitated Mes-Bottes said gallantly:

"The lady would like something sweet like herself."

"I like men," she answered angrily, "who do not get tipsy and talk like fools! I like men who keep their promises!"

Her husband laughed.

"You had better drink your share," he said, "for the devil a bit of a circus will you see tonight."

She looked at him fixedly. A heavy frown contracted her eyebrows. She answered slowly:

"You are right; it is a good idea. We can drink up the money together."

Bibi brought her a glass of anisette. As she sipped it she remembered all at once the brandied fruit she had eaten in the same place with Coupeau when he was courting her. That day she had left the brandy and took only the fruit, and now she was sitting there drinking liqueur.

But the anisette was good. When her glass was empty she refused another, and yet she was not satisfied.

She looked around at the infernal machine behind her—a machine that should have been buried ten fathoms deep in the sea. Nevertheless, it had for her a strange fascination, and she longed to quench her thirst with that liquid fire.

"What is that you have in your glasses?" she asked.

"That, my dear," answered her husband, "is Father Colombe's own especial brew. Taste it."

And when a glass of the vitriol was brought to her Coupeau bade her swallow it down, saying it was good for her.

After she had drunk this glass Gervaise was no longer conscious of the hunger that had tormented her. Coupeau told her they could go to the circus another time, and she felt she had best stay where she was. It did not rain in the Assommoir, and she had come to look upon the scene as rather amusing. She was comfortable and sleepy. She took a third glass and then put her head on her folded arms, supporting them on the table, and listened to her husband and his friends as they talked.

Behind her the still was at work with constant drip-drip, and she felt a mad desire to grapple with it as with some dangerous beast and tear out its heart. She seemed to feel herself caught in those copper fangs and fancied that those coils of pipe were wound around her own body, slowly but surely crushing out her life.

The whole room danced before her eyes, for Gervaise was now in the condition which had so often excited her pity and indignation with others. She vaguely heard a quarrel arise and a crash of chairs and tables, and then Father Colombe promptly turned everyone into the street.

It was still raining and a cold, sharp wind blowing. Gervaise lost Coupeau, found him and then lost him again. She wanted to go home, but she could not find her way. At the corner of the street she took her seat by the side of the gutter, thinking herself at her washtub. Finally she got home and endeavored to walk straight past the door of the concierge, within whose room she was vaguely conscious of the Poissons and Lorilleuxs holding up their hands in disgust at her condition.

She never knew how she got up those six flights of stairs. But when she turned into her own corridor little Lalie ran toward her with loving, extended arms.

"Dear Madame Gervaise," she cried, "Papa has not come in; please come and see my children. They are sleeping so sweetly!"

But when she looked up in the face of the clearstarcher she recoiled, trembling from head to foot. She knew only too well that alcoholic smell, those wandering eyes and convulsed lips.

Then as Gervaise staggered past her without speaking the child's arms fell at her side, and she looked after her friend with sad and solemn eyes.

Chapter XI
Little Nana


Nana was growing fast—fair, fresh and dimpled—her skin velvety, like a peach, and eyes so bright that men often asked her if they might not light their pipes at them. Her mass of blonde hair—the color of ripe wheat—looked around her temples as if it were powdered with gold. She had a quaint little trick of sticking out the tip of her tongue between her white teeth, and this habit, for some reason, exasperated her mother.

She was very fond of finery and very coquettish. In this house, where bread was not always to be got, it was difficult for her to indulge her caprices in the matter of costume, but she did wonders. She brought home odds and ends of ribbons from the shop where she worked and made them up into bows and knots with which she ornamented her dirty dresses. She was not overparticular in washing her feet, but she wore her boots so tight that she suffered martyrdom in honor of St Crispin, and if anyone asked her what the matter was when the pain flushed her face suddenly, she always and promptly laid it to the score of the colic.

Summer was the season of her triumphs. In a calico dress that cost five or six francs she was as fresh and sweet as a spring morning and made the dull street radiant with her youth and her beauty. She went by the name of "The Little Chicken." One gown, in particular, suited her to perfection. It was white with rose-colored dots, without trimming of any kind. The skirt was short and showed her feet. The sleeves were very wide and displayed her arms to the elbows. She turned the neck away and fastened it with pins—in a corner in the corridor, dreading her father's jests—to exhibit her pretty rounded throat. A rose-colored ribbon, knotted in the rippling masses of her hair, completed her toilet. She was a charming combination of child and woman.

Sundays at this period of her life were her days for coquetting with the public. She looked forward to them all the week through with a longing for liberty and fresh air.

Early in the morning she began her preparations and stood for hours in her chemise before the bit of broken mirror nailed by the window, and as everyone could see her, her mother would be very much vexed and ask how long she intended to show herself in that way.

But she, quite undisturbed, went on fastening down the little curls on her forehead with a little sugar and water and then sewed the buttons on her boots or took a stitch or two in her frock, barefooted all this time and with her chemise slipping off her rounded shoulders.

Her father declared he would exhibit her as the "Wild Girl," at two sous a head.

She was very lovely in this scanty costume, the color flushing her cheeks in her indignation at her father's sometimes coarse remarks. She did not dare answer him, however, but bit off her thread in silent rage. After breakfast she went down to the courtyard. The house was wrapped in Sunday quiet; the workshops on the lower floor were closed. Through some of the open windows the tables were seen laid for dinners, the families being on the fortifications "getting an appetite."

Five or six girls—Nana, Pauline and others—lingered in the courtyard for a time and then took flight altogether into the streets and thence to the outer boulevards. They walked in a line, filling up the whole sidewalk, with ribbons fluttering in their uncovered hair.

They managed to see everybody and everything through their downcast lids. The streets were their native heath, as it were, for they had grown up in them.

Nana walked in the center and gave her arm to Pauline, and as they were the oldest and tallest of the band, they gave the law to the others and decided where they should go for the day and what they should do.

Nana and Pauline were deep ones. They did nothing without premeditation. If they ran it was to show their slender ankles, and when they stopped and panted for breath it was sure to be at the side of some youths—young workmen of their acquaintance—who smoked in their faces as they talked. Nana had her favorite, whom she always saw at a great distance—Victor Fauconnier—and Pauline adored a young cabinetmaker, who gave her apples.

Toward sunset the great pleasure of the day began. A band of mountebanks would spread a well-worn carpet, and a circle was formed to look on. Nana and Pauline were always in the thickest of the crowd, their pretty fresh dresses crushed between dirty blouses, but insensible to the mingled odors of dust and alcohol, tobacco and dirt. They heard vile language; it did not disturb them; it was their own tongue—they heard little else. They listened to it with a smile, their delicate cheeks unflushed.

The only thing that disturbed them was the appearance of their fathers, particularly if these fathers seemed to have been drinking. They kept a good lookout for this disaster.

"Look!" cried Pauline. "Your father is coming, Nana."

Then the girl would crouch on her knees and bid the others stand close around her, and when he had passed on after an inquiring look she would jump up and they would all utter peals of laughter.

But one day Nana was kicked home by her father, and Boche dragged Pauline away by her ear.

The girls would ordinarily return to the courtyard in the twilight and establish themselves there with the air of not having been away, and each invented a story with which to greet their questioning parents. Nana now received forty sous per day at the place where she had been apprenticed. The Coupeaus would not allow her to change, because she was there under the supervision of her aunt, Mme Lerat, who had been employed for many years in the same establishment.

The girl went off at an early hour in her little black dress, which was too short and too tight for her, and Mme Lerat was bidden, whenever she was after her time, to inform Gervaise, who allowed her just twenty minutes, which was quite long enough. But she was often seven or eight minutes late, and she spent her whole day coaxing her aunt not to tell her mother. Mme Lerat, who was fond of the girl and understood the follies of youth, did not tell, but at the same time she read Nana many a long sermon on her follies and talked of her own responsibility and of the dangers a young girl ran in Paris.

"You must tell me everything," she said. "I am too indulgent to you, and if evil should come of it I should throw myself into the Seine. Understand me, my little kitten; if a man should speak to you you must promise to tell me every word he says. Will you swear to do this?"

Nana laughed an equivocal little laugh. Oh yes, she would promise. But men never spoke to her; she walked too fast for that. What could they say to her? And she explained her irregularity in coming—her five or ten minutes delay—with an innocent little air. She had stopped at a window to look at pictures or she had stopped to talk to Pauline. Her aunt might follow her if she did not believe her.

"Oh, I will watch her. You need not be afraid!" said the widow to her brother. "I will answer for her, as I would for myself!"

The place where the aunt and niece worked side by side was a large room with a long table down the center. Shelves against the wall were piled with boxes and bundles—all covered with a thick coating of dust. The gas had blackened the ceiling. The two windows were so large that the women, seated at the table, could see all that was going on in the street below.

Mme Lerat was the first to make her appearance in the morning, but in another fifteen minutes all the others were there. One morning in July Nana came in last, which, however, was the usual case.

"I shall be glad when I have a carriage!" she said as she ran to the window without even taking off her hat—a shabby little straw.

"What are you looking at?" asked her aunt suspiciously. "Did your father come with you?"

"No indeed," answered Nana carelessly; "nor am I looking at anything. It is awfully warm, and of all things in the world, I hate to be in a hurry."

The morning was indeed frightfully hot. The workwomen had closed the blinds, leaving a crack, however, through which they could inspect the street, and they took their seats on each side of the table—Mme Lerat at the farther end. There were eight girls, four on either side, each with her little pot of glue, her pincers and other tools; heaps of wires of different lengths and sizes lay on the table, spools of cotton and of different-colored papers, petals and leaves cut out of silk, velvet and satin. In the center, in a goblet, one of the girls had placed a two-sou bouquet,—which was slowly withering in the heat.

"Did you know," said Leonie as she picked up a rose leaf with her pincers, "how wretched poor Caroline is with that fellow who used to call for her regularly every night?"

Before anyone could answer Leonie added:

"Hush! Here comes Madame."

And in sailed Mme Titreville, a tall, thin woman, who usually remained below in the shop. Her employees stood in dread terror of her, as she was never known to smile. She went from one to another, finding fault with all; she ordered one woman to pull a marguerite to pieces and make it over and then went out as stiffly and silently as she had come in.

"Houp! Houp!" said Nana under her breath, and a giggle ran round the table.

"Really, young ladies," said Mme Lerat, "you will compel me to severe measures."

But no one was listening, and no one feared her. She was very tolerant. They could say what they pleased, provided they put it in decent language.

Nana was certainly in a good school! Her instincts, to be sure, were vicious, but these instincts were fostered and developed in this place, as is too often the case when a crowd of girls are herded together. It was the story of a basket of apples, the good ones spoiled by those that were already rotten. If two girls were whispering in a corner, ten to one they were telling some story that could not be told aloud.

Nana was not yet thoroughly perverted, but the curiosity which had been her distinguishing characteristic as a child had not deserted her, and she scarcely took her eyes from a girl by the name of Lisa, about whom strange stories were told.

"How warm it is!" she exclaimed, suddenly rising and pushing open the blinds. Leonie saw a man standing on the sidewalk opposite.

"Who is that old fellow?" she said. "He has been there a full quarter of an hour."

"Some fool who has nothing better to do, I suppose," said Mme Lerat. "Nana, will you come back to your work? I have told you that you should not go to that window."

Nana took up her violets, and they all began to watch this man. He was well dressed, about fifty, pale and grave. For a full hour he watched the windows.

"Look!" said Leonie. "He has an eyeglass. Oh, he is very chic. He is waiting for Augustine." But Augustine sharply answered that she did not like the old man.

"You make a great mistake then," said Mme Lerat with her equivocal smile.

Nana listened to the conversation which followed—reveling in indecency—as much at home in it as a fish is in water. All the time her fingers were busy at work. She wound her violet stems and fastened in the leaves with a slender strip of green paper. A drop of gum—and then behold a bunch of delicate fresh verdure which would fascinate any lady. Her fingers were especially deft by nature. No instruction could have imparted this quality.

The gentleman had gone away, and the workshop settled down into quiet once more. When the bell rang for twelve Nana started up and said she would go out and execute any commissions. Leonie sent for two sous' worth of shrimp, Augustine for some fried potatoes, Sophie for a sausage and Lisa for a bunch of radishes. As she was going out, her aunt said quietly:

"I will go with you. I want something."

Lo, in the lane running up by the shop was the mysterious stranger. Nana turned very red, and her aunt drew her arm within her own and hurried her along.

So then he had come for her! Was not this pretty behavior for a girl of her age? And Mme Lerat asked question after question, but Nana knew nothing of him, she declared, though he had followed her for five days.

Mme Lerat looked at the man out of the corners of her eyes. "You must tell me everything," she said.

While they talked they went from shop to shop, and their arms grew full of small packages, but they hurried back, still talking of the gentleman.

"It may be a good thing," said Mme Lerat, "if his intentions are only honorable."

The workwomen ate their breakfast on their knees; they were in no hurry, either, to return to their work, when suddenly Leonie uttered a low hiss, and like magic each girl was busy. Mme Titreville entered the room and again made her rounds.

Mme Lerat did not allow her niece after this day to set foot on the street without her. Nana at first was inclined to rebel, but, on the whole, it rather flattered her vanity to be guarded like a treasure. They had discovered that the man who followed her with such persistency was a manufacturer of buttons, and one night the aunt went directly up to him and told him that he was behaving in a most improper manner. He bowed and, turning on his heel, departed—not angrily, by any means—and the next day he did as usual.

One day, however, he deliberately walked between the aunt and the niece and said something to Nana in a low voice. This frightened Mme Lerat, who went at once to her brother and told him the whole story, whereupon he flew into a violent rage, shook the girl until her teeth chattered and talked to her as if she were the vilest of the vile.

"Let her be!" said Gervaise with all a woman's sense. "Let her be! Don't you see that you are putting all sorts of things into her head?"

And it was quite true; he had put ideas into her head and had taught her some things she did not know before, which was very astonishing. One morning he saw her with something in a paper. It was poudre de riz, which, with a most perverted taste, she was plastering upon her delicate skin. He rubbed the whole of the powder into her hair until she looked like a miller's daughter. Another time she came in with red ribbons to retrim her old hat; he asked her furiously where she got them.

Whenever he saw her with a bit of finery her father flew at her with insulting suspicion and angry violence. She defended herself and her small possessions with equal violence. One day he snatched from her a little cornelian heart and ground it to dust under his heel.

She stood looking on, white and stern; for two years she had longed for this heart. She said to herself that she would not bear such treatment long. Coupeau occasionally realized that he had made a mistake, but the mischief was done.

He went every morning with Nana to the shop door and waited outside for five minutes to be sure that she had gone in. But one morning, having stopped to talk with a friend on the corner for some time, he saw her come out again and vanish like a flash around the corner. She had gone up two flights higher than the room where she worked and had sat down on the stairs until she thought him well out of the way.

When he went to Mme Lerat she told him that she washed her hands of the whole business; she had done all she could, and now he must take care of his daughter himself. She advised him to marry the girl at once or she would do worse.

All the people in the neighborhood knew Nana's admirer by sight. He had been in the courtyard several times, and once he had been seen on the stairs.

The Lorilleuxs threatened to move away if this sort of thing went on, and Mme Boche expressed great pity for this poor gentleman whom this scamp of a girl was leading by the nose.

At first Nana thought the whole thing a great joke, but at the end of a month she began to be afraid of him. Often when she stopped before the jeweler's he would suddenly appear at her side and ask her what she wanted.

She did not care so much for jewelry or ornaments as she did for many other things. Sometimes as the mud was spattered over her from the wheels of a carriage she grew faint and sick with envious longings to be better dressed, to go to the theater, to have a pretty room all to herself. She longed to see another side of life, to know something of its pleasures. The stranger invariably appeared at these moments, but she always turned and fled, so great was her horror of him.

But when winter came existence became well-nigh intolerable. Each evening Nana was beaten, and when her father was tired of this amusement her mother scolded. They rarely had anything to eat and were always cold. If the girl bought some trifling article of dress it was taken from her.

No! This life could not last. She no longer cared for her father. He had thoroughly disgusted her, and now her mother drank too. Gervaise went to the Assommoir nightly—for her husband, she said—and remained there. When Nana saw her mother sometimes as she passed the window, seated among a crowd of men, she turned livid with rage, because youth has little patience with the vice of intemperance. It was a dreary life for her—a comfortless home and a drunken father and mother. A saint on earth could not have remained there; that she knew very well, and she said she would make her escape some fine day, and then perhaps her parents would be sorry and would admit that they had pushed her out of the nest.

One Saturday Nana, coming in, found her mother and father in a deplorable condition—Coupeau lying across the bed and Gervaise sitting in a chair, swaying to and fro. She had forgotten the dinner, and one untrimmed candle lighted the dismal scene.

"Is that you, girl?" stammered Gervaise. "Well, your father will settle with you!"

Nana did not reply. She looked around the cheerless room, at the cold stove, at her parents. She did not step across the threshold. She turned and went away.

And she did not come back! The next day when her father and mother were sober, they each reproached the other for Nana's flight.

This was really a terrible blow to Gervaise, who had no longer the smallest motive for self-control, and she abandoned herself at once to a wild orgy that lasted three days. Coupeau gave his daughter up and smoked his pipe quietly. Occasionally, however, when eating his dinner, he would snatch up a knife and wave it wildly in the air, crying out that he was dishonored and then, laying it down as suddenly, resumed eating his soup.

In this great house, whence each month a girl or two took flight, this incident astonished no one. The Lorilleuxs were rather triumphant at the success of their prophecy. Lantier defended Nana.

"Of course," he said, "she has done wrong, but bless my heart, what would you have? A girl as pretty as that could not live all her days in such poverty!"

"You know nothing about it!" cried Mme Lorilleux one evening when they were all assembled in the room of the concierge. "Wooden Legs sold her daughter out and out. I know it! I have positive proof of what I say. The time that the old gentleman was seen on the stairs he was going to pay the money. Nana and he were seen together at the Ambigu the other night! I tell you, I know it!"

They finished their coffee. This tale might or might not be true; it was not improbable, at all events. And after this it was circulated and generally believed in the Quartier that Gervaise had sold her daughter.

The clearstarcher, meanwhile, was going from bad to worse. She had been dismissed from Mme Fauconnier's and in the last few weeks had worked for eight laundresses, one after the other—dismissed from all for her untidiness.

As she seemed to have lost all skill in ironing, she went out by the day to wash and by degrees was entrusted with only the roughest work. This hard labor did not tend to beautify her either. She continued to grow stouter and stouter in spite of her scanty food and hard labor.

Her womanly pride and vanity had all departed. Lantier never seemed to see her when they met by chance, and she hardly noticed that the liaison which had stretched along for so many years had ended in a mutual disenchantment.

Lantier had done wisely, so far as he was concerned, in counseling Virginie to open the kind of shop she had. He adored sweets and could have lived on pralines and gumdrops, sugarplums and chocolate.

Sugared almonds were his especial delight. For a year his principal food was bonbons. He opened all the jars, boxes and drawers when he was left alone in the shop; and often, with five or six persons standing around, he would take off the cover of a jar on the counter and put in his hand and crunch down an almond. The cover was not put on again, and the jar was soon empty. It was a habit of his, they all said; besides, he was subject to a tickling in his throat!

He talked a great deal to Poisson of an invention of his which was worth a fortune—an umbrella and hat in one; that is to say, a hat which, at the first drops of a shower, would expand into an umbrella.

Lantier suggested to Virginie that she should have Gervaise come in once each week to wash the floors, shop and the rooms. This she did and received thirty sous each time. Gervaise appeared on Saturday mornings with her bucket and brush, without seeming to suffer a single pang at doing this menial work in the house where she had lived as mistress.

One Saturday Gervaise had hard work. It had rained for three days, and all the mud of the streets seemed to have been brought into the shop. Virginie stood behind the counter with collar and cuffs trimmed with lace. Near her on a low chair lounged Lantier, and he was, as usual, eating candy.

"Really, Madame Coupeau," cried Virginie, "can't you do better than that? You have left all the dirt in the corners. Don't you see? Oblige me by doing that over again."

Gervaise obeyed. She went back to the corner and scrubbed it again. She was on her hands and knees, with her sleeves rolled up over her arms. Her old skirt clung close to her stout form, and the sweat poured down her face.

"The more elbow grease she uses, the more she shines," said Lantier sententiously with his mouth full.

Virginie, leaning back in her chair with the air of a princess, followed the progress of the work with half-closed eyes.

"A little more to the right. Remember, those spots must all be taken out. Last Saturday, you know, I was not pleased."

And then Lantier and Virginie fell into a conversation, while Gervaise crawled along the floor in the dirt at their feet.

Mme Poisson enjoyed this, for her cat's eyes sparkled with malicious joy, and she glanced at Lantier with a smile. At last she was avenged for that mortification at the lavatory, which had for years weighed heavy on her soul.

"By the way," said Lantier, addressing himself to Gervaise, "I saw Nana last night."

Gervaise started to her feet with her brush in her hand.

"Yes, I was coming down La Rue des Martyrs. In front of me was a young girl on the arm of an old gentleman. As I passed I glanced at her face and assure you that it was Nana. She was well dressed and looked happy."

"Ah!" said Gervaise in a low, dull voice.

Lantier, who had finished one jar, now began another.

"What a girl that is!" he continued. "Imagine that she made me a sign to follow with the most perfect self-possession. She got rid of her old gentleman in a cafe and beckoned me to the door. She asked me to tell her about everybody."

"Ah!" repeated Gervaise.

She stood waiting. Surely this was not all. Her daughter must have sent her some especial message. Lantier ate his sugarplums.

"I would not have looked at her," said Virginie. "I sincerely trust, if I should meet her, that she would not speak to me for, really, it would mortify me beyond expression. I am sorry for you, Madame Gervaise, but the truth is that Poisson arrests every day a dozen just such girls."

Gervaise said nothing; her eyes were fixed on vacancy. She shook her head slowly, as if in reply to her own thoughts.

"Pray make haste," exclaimed Virginie fretfully. "I do not care to have this scrubbing going on until midnight."

Gervaise returned to her work. With her two hands clasped around the handle of the brush she pushed the water before her toward the door. After this she had only to rinse the floor after sweeping the dirty water into the gutter.

When all was accomplished she stood before the counter waiting for her money. When Virginie tossed it toward her she did not take it up instantly.

"Then she said nothing else?" Gervaise asked.

"She?" Lantier exclaimed. "Who is she? Ah yes, I remember. Nana! No, she said nothing more."

And Gervaise went away with her thirty sous in her hand, her skirts dripping and her shoes leaving the mark of their broad soles on the sidewalk.

In the Quartier all the women who drank like her took her part and declared she had been driven to intemperance by her daughter's misconduct. She, too, began to believe this herself and assumed at times a tragic air and wished she were dead. Unquestionably she had suffered from Nana's departure. A mother does not like to feel that her daughter will leave her for the first person who asks her to do so.

But she was too thoroughly demoralized to care long, and soon she had but one idea: that Nana belonged to her. Had she not a right to her own property?

She roamed the streets day after day, night after night, hoping to see the girl. That year half the Quartier was being demolished. All one side of the Rue des Poissonnièrs lay flat on the ground. Lantier and Poisson disputed day after day on these demolitions. The one declared that the emperor wanted to build palaces and drive the lower classes out of Paris, while Poisson, white with rage, said the emperor would pull down the whole of Paris merely to give work to the people.

Gervaise did not like the improvements, either, or the changes in the dingy Quartier, to which she was accustomed. It was, in fact, a little hard for her to see all these embellishments just when she was going downhill so fast over the piles of brick and mortar, while she was wandering about in search of Nana.

She heard of her daughter several times. There are always plenty of people to tell you things you do not care to hear. She was told that Nana had left her elderly friend for the sake of some young fellow.

She heard, too, that Nana had been seen at a ball in the Grand Salon, Rue de la Chapelle, and Coupeau and she began to frequent all these places, one after another, whenever they had the money to spend.

But at the end of a month they had forgotten Nana and went for their own pleasure. They sat for hours with their elbows on a table, which shook with the movements of the dancers, amused by the sight.

One November night they entered the Grand Salon, as much to get warm as anything else. Outside it was hailing, and the rooms were naturally crowded. They could not find a table, and they stood waiting until they could establish themselves. Coupeau was directly in the mouth of the passage, and a young man in a frock coat was thrown against him. The youth uttered an exclamation of disgust as he began to dust off his coat with his handkerchief. The blouse worn by Coupeau was assuredly none of the cleanest.

"Look here, my good fellow," cried Coupeau angrily, "those airs are very unnecessary. I would have you to know that the blouse of a workingman can do your coat no harm if it has touched it!"

The young man turned around and looked at Coupeau from head to foot.

"Learn," continued the angry workman, "that the blouse is the only wear for a man!"

Gervaise endeavored to calm her husband, who, however, tapped his ragged breast and repeated loudly:

"The only wear for a man, I tell you!"

The youth slipped away and was lost in the crowd.

Coupeau tried to find him, but it was quite impossible; the crowd was too great. The orchestra was playing a quadrille, and the dancers were bringing up the dust from the floor in great clouds, which obscured the gas.

"Look!" said Gervaise suddenly.

"What is it?"

"Look at that velvet bonnet!"

Quite at the left there was a velvet bonnet, black with plumes, only too suggestive of a hearse. They watched these nodding plumes breathlessly.

"Do you not know that hair?" murmured Gervaise hoarsely. "I am sure it is she!"

In one second Coupeau was in the center of the crowd. Yes, it was Nana, and in what a costume! She wore a ragged silk dress, stained and torn. She had no shawl over her shoulders to conceal the fact that half the buttonholes on her dress were burst out. In spite of all her shabbiness the girl was pretty and fresh. Nana, of course, danced on unsuspiciously. Her airs and graces were beyond belief. She curtsied to the very ground and then in a twinkling threw her foot over her partner's head. A circle was formed, and she was applauded vociferously.

At this moment Coupeau fell on his daughter.

"Don't try and keep me back," he said, "for have her I will!"

Nana turned and saw her father and mother.

Coupeau discovered that his daughter's partner was the young man for whom he had been looking. Gervaise pushed him aside and walked up to Nana and gave her two cuffs on her ears. One sent the plumed hat on the side; the other left five red marks on that pale cheek. The orchestra played on. Nana neither wept nor moved.

The dancers began to grow very angry. They ordered the Coupeau party to leave the room.

"Go," said Gervaise, "and do not attempt to leave us, for so sure as you do you will be given in charge of a policeman."

The young man had prudently disappeared.

Nana's old life now began again, for after the girl had slept for twelve hours on a stretch, she was very gentle and sweet for a week. She wore a plain gown and a simple hat and declared she would like to work at home. She rose early and took a seat at her table by five o'clock the first morning and tried to roll her violet stems, but her fingers had lost their cunning in the six months in which they had been idle.

Then the gluepot dried up; the petals and the paper were dusty and spotted; the mistress of the establishment came for her tools and materials and made more than one scene. Nana relapsed into utter indolence, quarreling with her mother from morning until night. Of course an end must come to this, so one fine evening the girl disappeared.

The Lorilleuxs, who had been greatly amused by the repentance and return of their niece, now nearly died laughing. If she returned again they would advise the Coupeaus to put her in a cage like a canary.

The Coupeaus pretended to be rather pleased, but in their hearts they raged, particularly as they soon learned that Nana was frequently seen in the Quartier. Gervaise declared this was done by the girl to annoy them.

Nana adorned all the balls in the vicinity, and the Coupeaus knew that they could lay their hands on her at any time they chose, but they did not choose and they avoided meeting her.

But one night, just as they were going to bed, they heard a rap on the door. It was Nana, who came to ask as coolly as possible if she could sleep there. What a state she was in! All rags and dirt. She devoured a crust of dried bread and fell asleep with a part of it in her hand. This continued for some time, the girl coming and going like a will-o'-the-wisp. Weeks and months would elapse without a sign from her, and then she would reappear without a word to say where she had been, sometimes in rags and sometimes well dressed. Finally her parents began to take these proceedings as a matter of course. She might come in, they said, or stay out, just as she pleased, provided she kept the door shut. Only one thing exasperated Gervaise now, and that was when her daughter appeared with a bonnet and feathers and a train. This she would not endure. When Nana came to her it must be as a simple workingwoman! None of this dearly bought finery should be exhibited there, for these trained dresses had created a great excitement in the house.

One day Gervaise reproached her daughter violently for the life she led and finally, in her rage, took her by the shoulder and shook her.

"Let me be!" cried the girl. "You are the last person to talk to me in that way. You did as you pleased. Why can't I do the same?"

"What do you mean?" stammered the mother.

"I have never said anything about it because it was none of my business, but do you think I did not know where you were when my father lay snoring? Let me alone. It was you who set me the example."

Gervaise turned away pale and trembling, while Nana composed herself to sleep again.

Coupeau's life was a very regular one—that is to say, he did not drink for six months and then yielded to temptation, which brought him up with a round turn and sent him to Sainte-Anne's. When he came out he did the same thing, so that in three years he was seven times at Sainte-Anne's, and each time he came out the fellow looked more broken and less able to stand another orgy.

The poison had penetrated his entire system. He had grown very thin; his cheeks were hollow and his eyes inflamed. Those who knew his age shuddered as they saw him pass, bent and decrepit as a man of eighty. The trembling of his hands had so increased that some days he was obliged to use them both in raising his glass to his lips. This annoyed him intensely and seemed to be the only symptom of his failing health which disturbed him. He sometimes swore violently at these unruly members and at others sat for hours looking at these fluttering hands as if trying to discover by what strange mechanism they were moved. And one night Gervaise found him sitting in this way with great tears pouring down his withered cheeks.

The last summer of his life was especially trying to Coupeau. His voice was entirely changed; he was deaf in one ear, and some days he could not see and was obliged to feel his way up– and downstairs as if he were blind. He suffered from maddening headaches, and sudden pains would dart through his limbs, causing him to snatch at a chair for support. Sometimes after one of these attacks his arm would be paralyzed for twenty-four hours.

He would lie in bed with even his head wrapped up, silent and moody, like some suffering animal. Then came incipient madness and fever—tearing everything to pieces that came in his way—or he would weep and moan, declaring that no one loved him, that he was a burden to his wife. One evening when his wife and daughter came in he was not in his bed; in his place lay the bolster carefully tucked in. They found him at last crouched on the floor under the bed, with his teeth chattering with cold and fear. He told them he had been attacked by assassins.

The two women coaxed him back to bed as if he had been a baby.

Coupeau knew but one remedy for all this, and that was a good stout morning dram. His memory had long since fled; his brain had softened. When Nana appeared after an absence of six weeks he thought she had been on an errand around the corner. She met him in the street, too, very often now, without fear, for he passed without recognizing her. One night in the autumn Nana went out, saying she wanted some baked pears from the fruiterer's. She felt the cold weather coming on, and she did not care to sit before a cold stove. The winter before she went out for two sous' worth of tobacco and came back in a month's time; they thought she would do the same now, but they were mistaken. Winter came and went, as did the spring, and even when June arrived they had seen and heard nothing of her.

She was evidently comfortable somewhere, and the Coupeaus, feeling certain that she would never return, had sold her bed; it was very much in their way, and they could drink up the six francs it brought.

One morning Virginie called to Gervaise as the latter passed the shop and begged her to come in and help a little, as Lantier had had two friends to supper the night before, and Gervaise washed the dishes while Lantier sat in the shop smoking. Presently he said:

"Oh, Gervaise, I saw Nana the other night."

Virginie, who was behind the counter, opening and shutting drawer after drawer, with a face that lengthened as she found each empty, shook her fist at him indignantly.

She had begun to think he saw Nana very often. She did not speak, but Mme Lerat, who had just come in, said with a significant look:

"And where did you see her?"

"Oh, in a carriage," answered Lantier with a laugh. "And I was on the sidewalk." He turned toward Gervaise and went on:

"Yes, she was in a carriage, dressed beautifully. I did not recognize her at first, but she kissed her hand to me. Her friend this time must be a vicomte at the least. She looked as happy as a queen."

Gervaise wiped the plate in her hands, rubbing it long and carefully, though it had long since been dry. Virginie, with wrinkled brows, wondered how she could pay two notes which fell due the next day, while Lantier, fat and hearty from the sweets he had devoured, asked himself if these drawers and jars would be filled up again or if the ruin he anticipated was so near at hand that he would be compelled to pull up stakes at once. There was not another praline for him to crunch, not even a gumdrop.

When Gervaise went back to her room she found Coupeau sitting on the side of the bed, weeping and moaning. She took a chair near by and looked at him without speaking.

"I have news for you," she said at last. "Your daughter has been seen. She is happy and comfortable. Would that I were in her place!"

Coupeau was looking down on the floor intently. He raised his head and said with an idiotic laugh:

"Do as you please, my dear; don't let me be any hindrance to you. When you are dressed up you are not so bad looking after all."

Chapter XII
Poverty and Degradation


The weather was intensely cold about the middle of January. Gervaise had not been able to pay her rent, due on the first. She had little or no work and consequently no food to speak of. The sky was dark and gloomy and the air heavy with the coming of a storm. Gervaise thought it barely possible that her husband might come in with a little money. After all, everything is possible, and he had said that he would work. Gervaise after a little, by dint of dwelling on this thought, had come to consider it a certainty. Yes, Coupeau would bring home some money, and they would have a good, hot, comfortable dinner. As to herself, she had given up trying to get work, for no one would have her. This did not much trouble her, however, for she had arrived at that point when the mere exertion of moving had become intolerable to her. She now lay stretched on the bed, for she was warmer there.

Gervaise called it a bed. In reality it was only a pile of straw in the corner, for she had sold her bed and all her furniture. She occasionally swept the straw together with a broom, and, after all, it was neither dustier nor dirtier than everything else in the place. On this straw, therefore, Gervaise now lay with her eyes wide open. How long, she wondered, could people live without eating? She was not hungry, but there was a strange weight at the pit of her stomach. Her haggard eyes wandered about the room in search of anything she could sell. She vaguely wished someone would buy the spider webs which hung in all the corners. She knew them to be very good for cuts, but she doubted if they had any market value.

Tired of this contemplation, she got up and took her one chair to the window and looked out into the dingy courtyard.

Her landlord had been there that day and declared he would wait only one week for his money, and if it were not forthcoming he would turn them into the street. It drove her wild to see him stand in his heavy overcoat and tell her so coldly that he would pack her off at once. She hated him with a vindictive hatred, as she did her fool of a husband and the Lorilleuxs and Poissons. In fact, she hated everyone on that especial day.

Unfortunately people can't live without eating, and before the woman's famished eyes floated visions of food. Not of dainty little dishes. She had long since ceased to care for those and ate all she could get without being in the least fastidious in regard to its quality. When she had a little money she bought a bullock's heart or a bit of cheese or some beans, and sometimes she begged from a restaurant and made a sort of panada of the crusts they gave her, which she cooked on a neighbor's stove. She was quite willing to dispute with a dog for a bone. Once the thought of such things would have disgusted her, but at that time she did not—for three days in succession—go without a morsel of food. She remembered how last week Coupeau had stolen a half loaf of bread and sold it, or rather exchanged it, for liquor.

She sat at the window, looking at the pale sky, and finally fell asleep. She dreamed that she was out in a snowstorm and could not find her way home. She awoke with a start and saw that night was coming on. How long the days are when one's stomach is empty! She waited for Coupeau and the relief he would bring.

The clock struck in the next room. Could it be possible? Was it only three? Then she began to cry. How could she ever wait until seven? After another half-hour of suspense she started up. Yes, they might say what they pleased, but she, at least, would try to borrow ten sous from the Lorilleuxs.

There was a continual borrowing of small sums in this corridor during the winter, but no matter what was the emergency no one ever dreamed of applying to the Lorilleuxs. Gervaise summoned all her courage and rapped at the door.

"Come in!" cried a sharp voice.

How good it was there! Warm and bright with the glow of the forge. And Gervaise smelled the soup, too, and it made her feel faint and sick.

"Ah, it is you, is it?" said Mme Lorilleux. "What do you want?"

Gervaise hesitated. The application for ten sous stuck in her throat, because she saw Boche seated by the stove.

"What do you want?" asked Lorilleux, in his turn.

"Have you seen Coupeau?" stammered Gervaise. "I thought he was here."

His sister answered with a sneer that they rarely saw Coupeau. They were not rich enough to offer him as many glasses of wine as he wanted in these days.

Gervaise stammered out a disconnected sentence.

He had promised to come home. She needed food; she needed money.

A profound silence followed. Mme Lorilleux fanned her fire, and her husband bent more closely over his work, while Boche smiled with an expectant air.

"If I could have ten sous," murmured Gervaise.

The silence continued.

"If you would lend them to me," said Gervaise, "I would give them back in the morning."

Mme Lorilleux turned and looked her full in the face, thinking to herself that if she yielded once the next day it would be twenty sous, and who could tell where it would stop?

"But, my dear," she cried, "you know we have no money and no prospect of any; otherwise, of course, we would oblige you."

"Certainly," said Lorilleux, "the heart is willing, but the pockets are empty."

Gervaise bowed her head, but she did not leave instantly. She looked at the gold wire on which her sister-in-law was working and at that in the hands of Lorilleux and thought that it would take a mere scrap to give her a good dinner. On that day the room was very dirty and filled with charcoal dust, but she saw it resplendent with riches like the shop of a money-changer, and she said once more in a low, soft voice:

"I will bring back the ten sous. I will, indeed!" Tears were in her eyes, but she was determined not to say that she had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours.

"I can't tell you how much I need it," she continued.

The husband and wife exchanged a look. Wooden Legs begging at their door! Well! Well! Who would have thought it? Why had they not known it was she when they rashly called out, "Come in?" Really, they could not allow such people to cross their threshold; there was too much that was valuable in the room. They had several times distrusted Gervaise; she looked about so queerly, and now they would not take their eyes off her.

Gervaise went toward Lorilleux as she spoke.

"Take care!" he said roughly. "You will carry off some of the particles of gold on the soles of your shoes. It looks really as if you had greased them!"

Gervaise drew back. She leaned against the étagère for a moment and, seeing that her sister-in-law's eyes were fixed on her hands, she opened them and said in a gentle, weary voice—the voice of a woman who had ceased to struggle:

"I have taken nothing. You can look for yourself."

And she went away; the warmth of the place and the smell of the soup were unbearable.

The Lorilleuxs shrugged their shoulders as the door closed. They hoped they had seen the last of her face. She had brought all her misfortunes on her own head, and she had, therefore, no right to expect any assistance from them. Boche joined in these animadversions, and all three considered themselves avenged for the blue shop and all the rest.

"I know her!" said Mme Lorilleux. "If I had lent her the ten sous she wanted she would have spent it in liquor."

Gervaise crawled down the corridor with slipshod shoes and slouching shoulders, but at her door she hesitated; she could not go in: she was afraid. She would walk up and down a little—that would keep her warm. As she passed she looked in at Father Bru, but to her surprise he was not there, and she asked herself with a pang of jealousy if anyone could possibly have asked him out to dine. When she reached the Bijards' she heard a groan. She went in.

"What is the matter?" she said.

The room was very clean and in perfect order. Lalie that very morning had swept and arranged everything. In vain did the cold blast of poverty blow through that chamber and bring with it dirt and disorder. Lalie was always there; she cleaned and scrubbed and gave to everything a look of gentility. There was little money but much cleanliness within those four walls.

The two children were cutting out pictures in a corner, but Lalie was in bed, lying very straight and pale, with the sheet pulled over her chin.

"What is the matter?" asked Gervaise anxiously.

Lalie slowly lifted her white lids and tried to speak.

"Nothing," she said faintly; "nothing, I assure you!" Then as her eyes closed she added:

"I am only a little lazy and am taking my ease."

But her face bore the traces of such frightful agony that Gervaise fell on her knees by the side of the bed. She knew that the child had had a cough for a month, and she saw the blood trickling from the corners of her mouth.

"It is not my fault," Lalie murmured. "I thought I was strong enough, and I washed the floor. I could not finish the windows though. Everything but those are clean. But I was so tired that I was obliged to lie down—"

She interrupted herself to say:

"Please see that my children are not cutting themselves with the scissors."

She started at the sound of a heavy step on the stairs. Her father noisily pushed open the door. As usual he had drunk too much, and in his eyes blazed the lurid flames kindled by alcohol.

When he saw Lalie lying down he walked to the corner and took up the long whip, from which he slowly unwound the lash.

"This is a good joke!" he said. "The idea of your daring to go to bed at this hour. Come, up with you!"

He snapped the whip over the bed, and the child murmured softly:

"Do not strike me, Papa. I am sure you will be sorry if you do. Do not strike me!"

"Up with you!" he cried. "Up with you!"

Then she answered faintly:

"I cannot, for I am dying."

Gervaise had snatched the whip from Bijard, who stood with his under jaw dropped, glaring at his daughter. What could the little fool mean? Whoever heard of a child dying like that when she had not even been sick? Oh, she was lying!

"You will see that I am telling you the truth," she replied. "I did not tell you as long as I could help it. Be kind to me now, Papa, and say good-by as if you loved me."

Bijard passed his hand over his eyes. She did look very strangely—her face was that of a grown woman. The presence of death in that cramped room sobered him suddenly. He looked around with the air of a man who had been suddenly awakened from a dream. He saw the two little ones clean and happy and the room neat and orderly.

He fell into a chair.

"Dear little mother!" he murmured. "Dear little mother!"

This was all he said, but it was very sweet to Lalie, who had never been spoiled by overpraise. She comforted him. She told him how grieved she was to go away and leave him before she had entirely brought up her children. He would watch over them, would he not? And in her dying voice she gave him some little details in regard to their clothes. He—the alcohol having regained its power—listened with round eyes of wonder.

After a long silence Lalie spoke again:

"We owe four francs and seven sous to the baker. He must be paid. Madame Goudron has an iron that belongs to us; you must not forget it. This evening I was not able to make the soup, but there are bread and cold potatoes."

As long as she breathed the poor little mite continued to be the mother of the family. She died because her breast was too small to contain so great a heart, and that he lost this precious treasure was entirely her father's fault. He, wretched creature, had kicked her mother to death and now, just as surely, murdered his daughter.

Gervaise tried to keep back her tears. She held Lalie's hands, and as the bedclothes slipped away she rearranged them. In doing so she caught a glimpse of the poor little figure. The sight might have drawn tears from a stone. Lalie wore only a tiny chemise over her bruised and bleeding flesh; marks of a lash striped her sides; a livid spot was on her right arm, and from head to foot she was one bruise.

Gervaise was paralyzed at the sight. She wondered, if there were a God above, how He could have allowed the child to stagger under so heavy a cross.

"Madame Coupeau," murmured the child, trying to draw the sheet over her. She was ashamed, ashamed for her father.

Gervaise could not stay there. The child was fast sinking. Her eyes were fixed on her little ones, who sat in the corner, still cutting out their pictures. The room was growing dark, and Gervaise fled from it. Ah, what an awful thing life was! And how gladly would she throw herself under the wheels of an omnibus, if that might end it!

Almost unconsciously Gervaise took her way to the shop where her husband worked or, rather, pretended to work. She would wait for him and get the money before he had a chance to spend it.

It was a very cold corner where she stood. The sounds of the carriages and footsteps were strangely muffled by reason of the fast-falling snow. Gervaise stamped her feet to keep them from freezing. The people who passed offered few distractions, for they hurried by with their coat collars turned up to their ears. But Gervaise saw several women watching the door of the factory quite as anxiously as herself—they were wives who, like herself, probably wished to get hold of a portion of their husbands' wages. She did not know them, but it required no introduction to understand their business.

The door of the factory remained firmly shut for some time. Then it opened to allow the egress of one workman; then two, three, followed, but these were probably those who, well behaved, took their wages home to their wives, for they neither retreated nor started when they saw the little crowd. One woman fell on a pale little fellow and, plunging her hand into his pocket, carried off every sou of her husband's earnings, while he, left without enough to pay for a pint of wine, went off down the street almost weeping.

Some other men appeared, and one turned back to warn a comrade, who came gamely and fearlessly out, having put his silver pieces in his shoes. In vain did his wife look for them in his pockets; in vain did she scold and coax—he had no money, he declared.

Then came another noisy group, elbowing each other in their haste to reach a cabaret, where they could drink away their week's wages. These fellows were followed by some shabby men who were swearing under their breath at the trifle they had received, having been tipsy and absent more than half the week.

But the saddest sight of all was the grief of a meek little woman in black, whose husband, a tall, good-looking fellow, pushed her roughly aside and walked off down the street with his boon companions, leaving her to go home alone, which she did, weeping her very heart out as she went.

Gervaise still stood watching the entrance. Where was Coupeau? She asked some of the men, who teased her by declaring that he had just gone by the back door. She saw by this time that Coupeau had lied to her, that he had not been at work that day. She also saw that there was no dinner for her. There was not a shadow of hope—nothing but hunger and darkness and cold.

She toiled up La Rue des Poissonnièrs when she suddenly heard Coupeau's voice and, glancing in at the window of a wineshop, she saw him drinking with Mes-Bottes, who had had the luck to marry the previous summer a woman with some money. He was now, therefore, well clothed and fed and altogether a happy mortal and had Coupeau's admiration. Gervaise laid her hands on her husband's shoulders as he left the cabaret.

"I am hungry," she said softly.

"Hungry, are you? Well then, eat your fist and keep the other for tomorrow."

"Shall I steal a loaf of bread?" she asked in a dull, dreary tone.

Mes-Bottes smoothed his chin and said in a conciliatory voice:

"No, no! Don't do that; it is against the law. But if a woman manages—"

Coupeau interrupted him with a coarse laugh.

Yes, a woman, if she had any sense, could always get along, and it was her own fault if she starved.

And the two men walked on toward the outer boulevard. Gervaise followed them. Again she said:

"I am hungry. You know I have had nothing to eat. You must find me something."

He did not answer, and she repeated her words in a tone of agony.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, turning upon her furiously. "What can I do? I have nothing. Be off with you, unless you want to be beaten."

He lifted his fist; she recoiled and said with set teeth:

"Very well then; I will go and find some man who has a sou."

Coupeau pretended to consider this an excellent joke. Yes of course she could make a conquest; by gaslight she was still passably goodlooking. If she succeeded he advised her to dine at the Capucin, where there was very good eating.

She turned away with livid lips; he called after her:

"Bring some dessert with you, for I love cake. And perhaps you can induce your friend to give me an old coat, for I swear it is cold tonight."

Gervaise, with this infernal mirth ringing in her ears, hurried down the street. She was determined to take this desperate step. She had only a choice between that and theft, and she considered that she had a right to dispose of herself as she pleased. The question of right and wrong did not present itself very clearly to her eyes. "When one is starving is hardly the time," she said to herself, "to philosophize." She walked slowly up and down the boulevard. This part of Paris was crowded now with new buildings, between whose sculptured facades ran narrow lanes leading to haunts of squalid misery, which were cheek by jowl with splendor and wealth.

It seemed strange to Gervaise that among this crowd who elbowed her there was not one good Christian to divine her situation and slip some sous into her hand. Her head was dizzy, and her limbs would hardly bear her weight. At this hour ladies with hats and well-dressed gentlemen who lived in these fine new houses were mingled with the people—with the men and women whose faces were pale and sickly from the vitiated air of the workshops in which they passed their lives. Another day of toil was over, but the days came too often and were too long. One hardly had time to turn over in one's sleep when the everlasting grind began again.

Gervaise went with the crowd. No one looked at her, for the men were all hurrying home to their dinner. Suddenly she looked up and beheld the Hôtel Boncoeur. It was empty, the shutters and doors covered with placards and the whole facade weather-stained and decaying. It was there in that hotel that the seeds of her present life had been sown. She stood still and looked up at the window of the room she had occupied and recalled her youth passed with Lantier and the manner in which he had left her. But she was young then and soon recovered from the blow. That was twenty years ago, and now what was she?

The sight of the place made her sick, and she turned toward Montmartre. She passed crowds of workwomen with little parcels in their hands and children who had been sent to the baker's, carrying four-pound loaves of bread as tall as themselves, which looked like shining brown dolls.

By degrees the crowd dispersed, and Gervaise was almost alone. Everyone was at dinner. She thought how delicious it would be to lie down and never rise again—to feel that all toil was over. And this was the end of her life! Gervaise, amid the pangs of hunger, thought of some of the fete days she had known and remembered that she had not always been miserable. Once she was pretty, fair and fresh. She had been a kind and admired mistress in her shop. Gentlemen came to it only to see her, and she vaguely wondered where all this youth and this beauty had fled.

Again she looked up; she had reached the abattoirs, which were now being torn down; the fronts were taken away, showing the dark holes within, the very stones of which reeked with blood. Farther on was the hospital with its high, gray walls, with two wings opening out like a huge fan. A door in the wall was the terror of the whole Quartier—the Door of the Dead, it was called—through which all the bodies were carried.

She hurried past this solid oak door and went down to the railroad bridge, under which a train had just passed, leaving in its rear a floating cloud of smoke. She wished she were on that train which would take her into the country, and she pictured to herself open spaces and the fresh air and expanse of blue sky; perhaps she could live a new life there.

As she thought this her weary eyes began to puzzle out in the dim twilight the words on a printed handbill pasted on one of the pillars of the arch. She read one—an advertisement offering fifty francs for a lost dog. Someone must have loved the creature very much.

Gervaise turned back again. The street lamps were being lit and defined long lines of streets and avenues. The restaurants were all crowded, and people were eating and drinking. Before the Assommoir stood a crowd waiting their turn and room within, and as a respectable tradesman passed he said with a shake of the head that many a man would be drunk that night in Paris. And over this scene hung the dark sky, low and clouded.

Gervaise wished she had a few sous: she would, in that case, have gone into this place and drunk until she ceased to feel hungry, and through the window she watched the still with an angry consciousness that all her misery and all her pain came from that. If she had never touched a drop of liquor all might have been so different.

She started from her reverie; this was the hour of which she must take advantage. Men had dined and were comparatively amiable. She looked around her and toward the trees where—under the leafless branches—she saw more than one female figure. Gervaise watched them, determined to do what they did. Her heart was in her throat; it seemed to her that she was dreaming a bad dream.

She stood for some fifteen minutes; none of the men who passed looked at her. Finally she moved a little and spoke to one who, with his hands in his pockets, was whistling as he walked.

"Sir," she said in a low voice, "please listen to me."

The man looked at her from head to foot and went on whistling louder than before.

Gervaise grew bolder. She forgot everything except the pangs of hunger. The women under the trees walked up and down with the regularity of wild animals in a cage.

"Sir," she said again, "please listen."

But the man went on. She walked toward the Hôtel Boncoeur again, past the hospital, which was now brilliantly lit. There she turned and went back over the same ground—the dismal ground between the slaughterhouses and the place where the sick lay dying. With these two places she seemed to feel bound by some mysterious tie.

"Sir, please listen!"

She saw her shadow on the ground as she stood near a street lamp. It was a grotesque shadow—grotesque because of her ample proportions. Her limp had become, with time and her additional weight, a very decided deformity, and as she moved the lengthening shadow of herself seemed to be creeping along the sides of the houses with bows and curtsies of mock reverence. Never before had she realized the change in herself. She was fascinated by this shadow. It was very droll, she thought, and she wondered if the men did not think so too.

"Sir, please listen!"

It was growing late. Man after man, in a beastly state of intoxication, reeled past her; quarrels and disputes filled the air.

Gervaise walked on, half asleep. She was conscious of little except that she was starving. She wondered where her daughter was and what she was eating, but it was too much trouble to think, and she shivered and crawled on. As she lifted her face she felt the cutting wind, accompanied by the snow, fine and dry, like gravel. The storm had come.

People were hurrying past her, but she saw one man walking slowly. She went toward him.

"Sir, please listen!"

The man stopped. He did not seem to notice what she said but extended his hand and murmured in a low voice:

"Charity, if you please!"

The two looked at each other. Merciful heavens! It was Father Bru begging and Mme Coupeau doing worse. They stood looking at each other—equals in misery. The aged workman had been trying to make up his mind all the evening to beg, and the first person he stopped was a woman as poor as himself! This was indeed the irony of fate. Was it not a pity to have toiled for fifty years and then to beg his bread? To have been one of the most flourishing laundresses in Paris and then to make her bed in the gutter? They looked at each other once more, and without a word each went their own way through the fast-falling snow, which blinded Gervaise as she struggled on, the wind wrapping her thin skirts around her legs so that she could hardly walk.

Suddenly an absolute whirlwind struck her and bore her breathless and helpless along—she did not even know in what direction. When at last she was able to open her eyes she could see nothing through the blinding snow, but she heard a step and saw the outlines of a man's figure. She snatched him by the blouse.

"Sir," she said, "please listen."

The man turned. It was Goujet.

Ah, what had she done to be thus tortured and humiliated? Was God in heaven an angry God always? This was the last dreg of bitterness in her cup. She saw her shadow: her limp, she felt, made her walk like an intoxicated woman, which was indeed hard, when she had not swallowed a drop.

Goujet looked at her while the snow whitened his yellow beard.

"Come!" he said.

And he walked on, she following him. Neither spoke.

Poor Mme Goujet had died in October of acute rheumatism, and her son continued to reside in the same apartment. He had this night been sitting with a sick friend.

He entered, lit a lamp and turned toward Gervaise, who stood humbly on the threshold.

"Come in!" he said in a low voice, as if his mother could have heard him.

The first room was that of Mme Goujet, which was unchanged since her death. Near the window stood her frame, apparently ready for the old lady. The bed was carefully made, and she could have slept there had she returned from the cemetery to spend a night with her son. The room was clean, sweet and orderly.

"Come in," repeated Goujet.

Gervaise entered with the air of a woman who is startled at finding herself in a respectable place. He was pale and trembling. They crossed his mother's room softly, and when Gervaise stood within his own he closed the door.

It was the same room in which he had lived ever since she knew him—small and almost virginal in its simplicity. Gervaise dared not move.

Goujet snatched her in his arms, but she pushed him away faintly.

The stove was still hot, and a dish was on the top of it. Gervaise looked toward it. Goujet understood. He placed the dish on the table, poured her out some wine and cut a slice of bread.

"Thank you," she said. "How good you are!"

She trembled to that degree that she could hardly hold her fork. Hunger gave her eyes the fierceness of a famished beast and to her head the tremulous motion of senility. After eating a potato she burst into tears but continued to eat, with the tears streaming down her cheeks and her chin quivering.

"Will you have some more bread?" he asked. She said no; she said yes; she did not know what she said.

And he stood looking at her in the clear light of the lamp. How old and shabby she was! The heat was melting the snow on her hair and clothing, and water was dripping from all her garments. Her hair was very gray and roughened by the wind. Where was the pretty white throat he so well remembered? He recalled the days when he first knew her, when her skin was so delicate and she stood at her table, briskly moving the hot irons to and fro. He thought of the time when she had come to the forge and of the joy with which he would have welcomed her then to his room. And now she was there!

She finished her bread amid great silent tears and then rose to her feet.

Goujet took her hand.

"I love you, Madame Gervaise; I love you still," he cried.

"Do not say that," she exclaimed, "for it is impossible."

He leaned toward her.

"Will you allow me to kiss you?" he asked respectfully.

She did not know what to say, so great was her emotion.

He kissed her gravely and solemnly and then pressed his lips upon her gray hair. He had never kissed anyone since his mother's death, and Gervaise was all that remained to him of the past.

He turned away and, throwing himself on his bed, sobbed aloud. Gervaise could not endure this. She exclaimed:

"I love you, Monsieur Goujet, and I understand. Farewell!"

And she rushed through Mme Goujet's room and then through the street to her home. The house was all dark, and the arched door into the courtyard looked like huge, gaping jaws. Could this be the house where she once desired to reside? Had she been deaf in those days, not to have heard that wail of despair which pervaded the place from top to bottom? From the day when she first set her foot within the house she had steadily gone downhill.

Yes, it was a frightful way to live—so many people herded together, to become the prey of cholera or vice. She looked at the courtyard and fancied it a cemetery surrounded by high walls. The snow lay white within it. She stepped over the usual stream from the dyer's, but this time the stream was black and opened for itself a path through the white snow. The stream was the color of her thoughts. But she remembered when both were rosy.

As she toiled up the six long flights in the darkness she laughed aloud. She recalled her old dream—to work quietly, have plenty to eat, a little home to herself, where she could bring up her children, never to be beaten, and to die in her bed! It was droll how things had turned out. She worked no more; she had nothing to eat; she lived amid dirt and disorder. Her daughter had gone to the bad, and her husband beat her whenever he pleased. As for dying in her bed, she had none. Should she throw herself out of the window and find one on the pavement below?

She had not been unreasonable in her wishes, surely. She had not asked of heaven an income of thirty thousand francs or a carriage and horses. This was a queer world! And then she laughed again as she remembered that she had once said that after she had worked for twenty years she would retire into the country.

Yes, she would go into the country, for she should soon have her little green corner in Père-Lachaise.

Her poor brain was disturbed. She had bidden an eternal farewell to Goujet. They would never see each other again. All was over between them—love and friendship too.

As she passed the Bijards' she looked in and saw Lalie lying dead, happy and at peace. It was well with the child.

"She is lucky," muttered Gervaise.

At this moment she saw a gleam of light under the undertaker's door. She threw it wide open with a wild desire that he should take her as well as Lalie. Bazonge had come in that night more tipsy than usual and had thrown his hat and cloak in the corner, while he lay in the middle of the floor.

He started up and called out:

"Shut that door! And don't stand there—it is too cold. What do you want?"

Then Gervaise, with arms outstretched, not knowing or caring what she said, began to entreat him with passionate vehemence:

"Oh, take me!" she cried. "I can bear it no longer. Take me, I implore you!"

And she knelt before him, a lurid light blazing in her haggard eyes.

Father Bazonge, with garments stained by the dust of the cemetery, seemed to her as glorious as the sun. But the old man, yet half asleep, rubbed his eyes and could not understand her.

"What are you talking about?" he muttered.

"Take me," repeated Gervaise, more earnestly than before. "Do you remember one night when I rapped on the partition? Afterward I said I did not, but I was stupid then and afraid. But I am not afraid now. Here, take my hands—they are not cold with terror. Take me and put me to sleep, for I have but this one wish now."

Bazonge, feeling that it was not proper to argue with a lady, said:

"You are right. I have buried three women today, who would each have given me a jolly little sum out of gratitude, if they could have put their hands in their pockets. But you see, my dear woman, it is not such an easy thing you are asking of me."

"Take me!" cried Gervaise. "Take me! I want to go away!"

"But there is a certain little operation first, you know—" And he pretended to choke and rolled up his eyes.

Gervaise staggered to her feet. He, too, rejected her and would have nothing to do with her. She crawled into her room and threw herself on her straw. She was sorry she had eaten anything and delayed the work of starvation.

Chapter XIII
The Hospital


The next day Gervaise received ten francs from her son Etienne, who had steady work. He occasionally sent her a little money, knowing that there was none too much of that commodity in his poor mother's pocket.

She cooked her dinner and ate it alone, for Coupeau did not appear, nor did she hear a word of his whereabouts for nearly a week. Finally a printed paper was given her which frightened her at first, but she was soon relieved to find that it simply conveyed to her the information that her husband was at Sainte-Anne's again.

Gervaise was in no way disturbed. Coupeau knew the way back well enough; he would return in due season. She soon heard that he and Mes-Bottes had spent the whole week in dissipation, and she even felt a little angry that they had not seen fit to offer her a glass of wine with all their feasting and carousing.

On Sunday, as Gervaise had a nice little repast ready for the evening, she decided that an excursion would give her an appetite. The letter from the asylum stared her in the face and worried her. The snow had melted; the sky was gray and soft, and the air was fresh. She started at noon, as the days were now short and Sainte-Anne's was a long distance off, but as there were a great many people in the street, she was amused.

When she reached the hospital she heard a strange story. It seems that Coupeau—how, no one could say—had escaped from the hospital and had been found under the bridge. He had thrown himself over the parapet, declaring that armed men were driving him with the point of their bayonets.

One of the nurses took Gervaise up the stairs. At the head she heard terrific howls which froze the marrow in her bones.

"It is he!" said the nurse.

"He? Whom do you mean?"

"I mean your husband. He has gone on like that ever since day before yesterday, and he dances all the time too. You will see!"

Ah, what a sight it was! The cell was cushioned from the floor to the ceiling, and on the floor were mattresses on which Coupeau danced and howled in his ragged blouse. The sight was terrific. He threw himself wildly against the window and then to the other side of the cell, shaking hands as if he wished to break them off and fling them in defiance at the whole world. These wild motions are sometimes imitated, but no one who has not seen the real and terrible sight can imagine its horror.

"What is it? What is it?" gasped Gervaise.

A house surgeon, a fair and rosy youth, was sitting, calmly taking notes. The case was a peculiar one and had excited a great deal of attention among the physicians attached to the hospital.

"You can stay awhile," he said, "but keep very quiet. He will not recognize you, however."

Coupeau, in fact, did not seem to notice his wife, who had not yet seen his face. She went nearer. Was that really he? She never would have known him with his bloodshot eyes and distorted features. His skin was so hot that the air was heated around him and was as if it were varnished—shining and damp with perspiration. He was dancing, it is true, but as if on burning plowshares; not a motion seemed to be voluntary.

Gervaise went to the young surgeon, who was beating a tune on the back of his chair.

"Will he get well, sir?" she said.

The surgeon shook his head.

"What is he saying? Hark! He is talking now."

"Just be quiet, will you?" said the young man. "I wish to listen."

Coupeau was speaking fast and looking all about, as if he were examining the underbrush in the Bois de Vincennes.

"Where is it now?" he exclaimed and then, straightening himself, he looked off into the distance.

"It is a fair," he exclaimed, "and lanterns in the trees, and the water is running everywhere: fountains, cascades and all sorts of things."

He drew a long breath, as if enjoying the delicious freshness of the air.

By degrees, however, his features contracted again with pain, and he ran quickly around the wall of his cell.

"More trickery," he howled. "I knew it!"

He started back with a hoarse cry; his teeth chattered with terror.

"No, I will not throw myself over! All that water would drown me! No, I will not!"

"I am going," said Gervaise to the surgeon. "I cannot stay another moment."

She was very pale. Coupeau kept up his infernal dance while she tottered down the stairs, followed by his hoarse voice.

How good it was to breathe the fresh air outside!

That evening everyone in the huge house in which Coupeau had lived talked of his strange disease. The concierge, crazy to hear the details, condescended to invite Gervaise to take a glass of cordial, forgetting that he had turned a cold shoulder upon her for many weeks.

Mme Lorilleux and Mme Poisson were both there also. Boche had heard of a cabinetmaker who had danced the polka until he died. He had drunk absinthe.

Gervaise finally, not being able to make them understand her description, asked for the table to be moved and there, in the center of the loge, imitated her husband, making frightful leaps and horrible contortions.

"Yes, that was what he did!"

And then everybody said it was not possible that man could keep up such violent exercise for even three hours.

Gervaise told them to go and see if they did not believe her. But Mme Lorilleux declared that nothing would induce her to set foot within Sainte-Anne's, and Virginie, whose face had grown longer and longer with each successive week that the shop got deeper into debt, contented herself with murmuring that life was not always gay—in fact, in her opinion, it was a pretty dismal thing. As the wine was finished, Gervaise bade them all good night. When she was not speaking she had sat with fixed, distended eyes. Coupeau was before them all the time.

The next day she said to herself when she rose that she would never go to the hospital again; she could do no good. But as midday arrived she could stay away no longer and started forth, without a thought of the length of the walk, so great were her mingled curiosity and anxiety.

She was not obliged to ask a question; she heard the frightful sounds at the very foot of the stairs. The keeper, who was carrying a cup of tisane across the corridor, stopped when he saw her.

"He keeps it up well!" he said.

She went in but stood at the door, as she saw there were people there. The young surgeon had surrendered his chair to an elderly gentleman wearing several decorations. He was the chief physician of the hospital, and his eyes were like gimlets.

Gervaise tried to see Coupeau over the bald head of that gentleman. Her husband was leaping and dancing with undiminished strength. The perspiration poured more constantly from his brow now; that was all. His feet had worn holes in the mattress with his steady tramp from window to wall.

Gervaise asked herself why she had come back. She had been accused the evening before of exaggerating the picture, but she had not made it strong enough. The next time she imitated him she could do it better. She listened to what the physicians were saying: the house surgeon was giving the details of the night with many words which she did not understand, but she gathered that Coupeau had gone on in the same way all night. Finally he said this was the wife of the patient. Wherefore the surgeon in chief turned and interrogated her with the air of a police judge.

"Did this man's father drink?"

"A little, sir. Just as everybody does. He fell from a roof when he had been drinking and was killed."

"Did his mother drink?"

"Yes sir—that is, a little now and then. He had a brother who died in convulsions, but the others are very healthy."

The surgeon looked at her and said coldly:

"You drink too?"

Gervaise attempted to defend herself and deny the accusation.

"You drink," he repeated, "and see to what it leads. Someday you will be here, and like this."

She leaned against the wall, utterly overcome. The physician turned away. He knelt on the mattress and carefully watched Coupeau; he wished to see if his feet trembled as much as his hands. His extremities vibrated as if on wires. The disease was creeping on, and the peculiar shivering seemed to be under the skin—it would cease for a minute or two and then begin again. The belly and the shoulders trembled like water just on the point of boiling.

Coupeau seemed to suffer more than the evening before. His complaints were curious and contradictory. A million pins were pricking him. There was a weight under the skin; a cold, wet animal was crawling over him. Then there were other creatures on his shoulder.

"I am thirsty," he groaned; "so thirsty."

The house surgeon took a glass of lemonade from a tray and gave it to him. He seized the glass in both hands, drank one swallow, spilling the whole of it at the same time. He at once spat it out in disgust.

"It is brandy!" he exclaimed.

Then the surgeon, on a sign from his chief, gave him some water, and Coupeau did the same thing.

"It is brandy!" he cried. "Brandy! Oh, my God!"

For twenty-four hours he had declared that everything he touched to his lips was brandy, and with tears begged for something else, for it burned his throat, he said. Beef tea was brought to him; he refused it, saying it smelled of alcohol. He seemed to suffer intense and constant agony from the poison which he vowed was in the air. He asked why people were allowed to rub matches all the time under his nose, to choke him with their vile fumes.

The physicians watched Coupeau with care and interest. The phantoms which had hitherto haunted him by night now appeared before him at midday. He saw spiders' webs hanging from the wall as large as the sails of a man-of-war. Then these webs changed to nets, whose meshes were constantly contracting only to enlarge again. These nets held black balls, and they, too, swelled and shrank. Suddenly he cried out:

"The rats! Oh, the rats!"

The balls had been transformed to rats. The vile beasts found their way through the meshes of the nets and swarmed over the mattress and then disappeared as suddenly as they came.

The rats were followed by a monkey, who went in and came out from the wall, each time so near his face that Coupeau started back in disgust. All this vanished in the twinkling of an eye. He apparently thought the walls were unsteady and about to fall, for he uttered shriek after shriek of agony.

"Fire! Fire!" he screamed. "They can't stand long. They are shaking! Fire! Fire! The whole heavens are bright with the light! Help! Help!"

His shrieks ended in a convulsed murmur. He foamed at the mouth. The surgeon in chief turned to the assistant.

"You keep the temperature at forty degrees?" he asked.

"Yes sir."

A dead silence ensued. Then the surgeon shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, continue the same treatment—beef tea, milk, lemonade and quinine as directed. Do not leave him, and send for me if there is any change."

And he left the room, Gervaise following close at his heels, seeking an opportunity of asking him if there was no hope. But he stalked down the corridor with so much dignity that she dared not approach him.

She stood for a moment, undecided whether she should go back to Coupeau or not, but hearing him begin again the lamentable cry for water:

"Water, not brandy!"

She hurried on, feeling that she could endure no more that day. In the streets the galloping horses made her start with a strange fear that all the inmates of Sainte-Anne's were at her heels. She remembered what the physician had said, with what terrors he had threatened her, and she wondered if she already had the disease.

When she reached the house the concierge and all the others were waiting and called her into the loge.

Was Coupeau still alive? they asked.

Boche seemed quite disturbed at her answer, as he had made a bet that he would not live twenty-four hours. Everyone was astonished. Mme Lorilleux made a mental calculation:

"Sixty hours," she said. "His strength is extraordinary."

Then Boche begged Gervaise to show them once more what Coupeau did.

The demand became general, and it was pointed out to her that she ought not to refuse, for there were two neighbors there who had not seen her representation the night previous and who had come in expressly to witness it.

They made a space in the center of the room, and a shiver of expectation ran through the little crowd.

Gervaise was very reluctant. She was really afraid—afraid of making herself ill. She finally made the attempt but drew back again hastily.

No, she could not; it was quite impossible. Everyone was disappointed, and Virginie went away.

Then everyone began to talk of the Poissons. A warrant had been served on them the night before. Poisson was to lose his place. As to Lantier, he was hovering around a woman who thought of taking the shop and meant to sell hot tripe. Lantier was in luck, as usual.

As they talked someone caught sight of Gervaise and pointed her out to the others. She was at the very back of the loge, her feet and hands trembling, imitating Coupeau, in fact. They spoke to her. She stared wildly about, as if awaking from a dream, and then left the room.

The next day she left the house at noon, as she had done before. And as she entered Sainte-Anne's she heard the same terrific sounds.

When she reached the cell she found Coupeau raving mad! He was fighting in the middle of the cell with invisible enemies. He tried to hide himself; he talked and he answered, as if there were twenty persons. Gervaise watched him with distended eyes. He fancied himself on a roof, laying down the sheets of zinc. He blew the furnace with his mouth, and he went down on his knees and made a motion as if he had soldering irons in his hand. He was troubled by his shoes: it seemed as if he thought they were dangerous. On the next roofs stood persons who insulted him by letting quantities of rats loose. He stamped here and there in his desire to kill them and the spiders too! He pulled away his clothing to catch the creatures who, he said, intended to burrow under his skin. In another minute he believed himself to be a locomotive and puffed and panted. He darted toward the window and looked down into the street as if he were on a roof.

"Look!" he said. "There is a traveling circus. I see the lions and the panthers making faces at me. And there is Clémence. Good God, man, don't fire!"

And he gesticulated to the men who, he said, were pointing their guns at him.

He talked incessantly, his voice growing louder and louder, higher and higher.

"Ah, it is you, is it? But please keep your hair out of my mouth."

And he passed his hand over his face as if to take away the hair.

"Who is it?" said the keeper.

"My wife, of course."

He looked at the wall, turning his back to Gervaise, who felt very strange, and looked at the wall to see if she were there! He talked on.

"You look very fine. Where did you get that dress? Come here and let me arrange it for you a little. You devil! There he is again!"

And he leaped at the wall, but the soft cushions threw him back.

"Whom do you see?" asked the young doctor.

"Lantier! Lantier!"

Gervaise could not endure the eyes of the young man, for the scene brought back to her so much of her former life.

Coupeau fancied, as he had been thrown back from the wall in front, that he was now attacked in the rear, and he leaped over the mattress with the agility of a cat. His respiration grew shorter and shorter, his eyes starting from their sockets.

"He is killing her!" he shrieked. "Killing her! Just see the blood!"

He fell back against the wall with his hands wide open before him, as if he were repelling the approach of some frightful object. He uttered two long, low groans and then fell flat on the mattress.

"He is dead! He is dead!" moaned Gervaise.

The keeper lifted Coupeau. No, he was not dead; his bare feet quivered with a regular motion. The surgeon in chief came in, bringing two colleagues. The three men stood in grave silence, watching the man for some time. They uncovered him, and Gervaise saw his shoulders and back.

The tremulous motion had now taken complete possession of the body as well as the limbs, and a strange ripple ran just under the skin.

"He is asleep," said the surgeon in chief, turning to his colleagues.

Coupeau's eyes were closed, and his face twitched convulsively. Coupeau might sleep, but his feet did nothing of the kind.

Gervaise, seeing the doctors lay their hands on Coupeau's body, wished to do the same. She approached softly and placed her hand on his shoulder and left it there for a minute.

What was going on there? A river seemed hurrying on under that skin. It was the liquor of the Assommoir, working like a mole through muscle, nerves, bone and marrow.

The doctors went away, and Gervaise, at the end of another hour, said to the young surgeon:

"He is dead, sir."

But the surgeon, looking at the feet, said: "No," for those poor feet were still dancing.

Another hour, and yet another passed. Suddenly the feet were stiff and motionless, and the young surgeon turned to Gervaise.

"He is dead," he said.

Death alone had stopped those feet.

When Gervaise went back she was met at the door by a crowd of people who wished to ask her questions, she thought.

"He is dead," she said quietly as she moved on.

But no one heard her. They had their own tale to tell then. How Poisson had nearly murdered Lantier. Poisson was a tiger, and he ought to have seen what was going on long before. And Boche said the woman had taken the shop and that Lantier was, as usual, in luck again, for he adored tripe.

In the meantime Gervaise went directly to Mme Lerat and Mme Lorilleux and said faintly:

"He is dead—after four days of horror."

Then the two sisters were in duty bound to pull out their handkerchiefs. Their brother had lived a most dissolute life, but then he was their brother.

Boche shrugged his shoulders and said in an audible voice:

"Pshaw! It is only one drunkard the less!"

After this day Gervaise was not always quite right in her mind, and it was one of the attractions of the house to see her act Coupeau.

But her representations were often involuntary. She trembled at times from head to foot and uttered little spasmodic cries. She had taken the disease in a modified form at Sainte-Anne's from looking so long at her husband. But she never became altogether like him in the few remaining months of her existence.

She sank lower day by day. As soon as she got a little money from any source whatever she drank it away at once. Her landlord decided to turn her out of the room she occupied, and as Father Bru was discovered dead one day in his den under the stairs, M. Marescot allowed her to take possession of his quarters. It was there, therefore, on the old straw bed, that she lay waiting for death to come. Apparently even Mother Earth would have none of her. She tried several times to throw herself out of the window, but death took her by bits, as it were. In fact, no one knew exactly when she died or exactly what she died of. They spoke of cold and hunger.

But the truth was she died of utter weariness of life, and Father Bazonge came the day she was found dead in her den.

Under his arm he carried a coffin, and he was very tipsy and as gay as a lark.

"It is foolish to be in a hurry, because one always gets what one wants finally. I am ready to give you all your good pleasure when your time comes. Some want to go, and some want to stay. And here is one who wanted to go and was kept waiting."

And when he lifted Gervaise in his great, coarse hands he did it tenderly. And as he laid her gently in her coffin he murmured between two hiccups:

"It is I—my dear, it is I," said this rough consoler of women. "It is I. Be happy now and sleep quietly, my dear!"

The End.

Doctor Pascal

                     

                                I.

In the heat of the glowing July afternoon, the room, with blinds
carefully closed, was full of a great calm. From the three windows,
through the cracks of the old wooden shutters, came only a few
scattered sunbeams which, in the midst of the obscurity, made a soft
brightness that bathed surrounding objects in a diffused and tender
light. It was cool here in comparison with the overpowering heat that
was felt outside, under the fierce rays of the sun that blazed upon
the front of the house.

Standing before the press which faced the windows, Dr. Pascal was
looking for a paper that he had come in search of. With doors wide
open, this immense press of carved oak, adorned with strong and
handsome mountings of metal, dating from the last century, displayed
within its capacious depths an extraordinary collection of papers and
manuscripts of all sorts, piled up in confusion and filling every
shelf to overflowing. For more than thirty years the doctor had thrown
into it every page he wrote, from brief notes to the complete texts of
his great works on heredity. Thus it was that his searches here were
not always easy. He rummaged patiently among the papers, and when he
at last found the one he was looking for, he smiled.

For an instant longer he remained near the bookcase, reading the note
by a golden sunbeam that came to him from the middle window. He
himself, in this dawnlike light, appeared, with his snow-white hair
and beard, strong and vigorous; although he was near sixty, his color
was so fresh, his features were so finely cut, his eyes were still so
clear, and he had so youthful an air that one might have taken him, in
his close-fitting, maroon velvet jacket, for a young man with powdered
hair.

"Here, Clotilde," he said at last, "you will copy this note. Ramond
would never be able to decipher my diabolical writing."

And he crossed the room and laid the paper beside the young girl, who
stood working at a high desk in the embrasure of the window to the
right.

"Very well, master," she answered.

She did not even turn round, so engrossed was her attention with the
pastel which she was at the moment rapidly sketching in with broad
strokes of the crayon. Near her in a vase bloomed a stalk of
hollyhocks of a singular shade of violet, striped with yellow. But the
profile of her small round head, with its short, fair hair, was
clearly distinguishable; an exquisite and serious profile, the
straight forehead contracted in a frown of attention, the eyes of an
azure blue, the nose delicately molded, the chin firm. Her bent neck,
especially, of a milky whiteness, looked adorably youthful under the
gold of the clustering curls. In her long black blouse she seemed very
tall, with her slight figure, slender throat, and flexible form, the
flexible slenderness of the divine figures of the Renaissance. In
spite of her twenty-five years, she still retained a childlike air and
looked hardly eighteen.

"And," resumed the doctor, "you will arrange the press a little.
Nothing can be found there any longer."

"Very well, master," she repeated, without raising her head;
"presently."

Pascal had turned round to seat himself at his desk, at the other end
of the room, before the window to the left. It was a plain black
wooden table, and was littered also with papers and pamphlets of all
sorts. And silence again reigned in the peaceful semi-obscurity,
contrasting with the overpowering glare outside. The vast apartment, a
dozen meters long and six wide, had, in addition to the press, only
two bookcases, filled with books. Antique chairs of various kinds
stood around in disorder, while for sole adornment, along the walls,
hung with an old _salon_ Empire paper of a rose pattern, were nailed
pastels of flowers of strange coloring dimly visible. The woodwork of
three folding-doors, the door opening on the hall and two others at
opposite ends of the apartment, the one leading to the doctor's room,
the other to that of the young girl, as well as the cornice of the
smoke-darkened ceiling, dated from the time of Louis XV.

An hour passed without a sound, without a breath. Then Pascal, who, as
a diversion from his work, had opened a newspaper--_Le Temps_--which
had lain forgotten on the table, uttered a slight exclamation:

"Why! your father has been appointed editor of the _Epoque_, the
prosperous republican journal which has the publishing of the papers
of the Tuileries."

This news must have been unexpected by him, for he laughed frankly, at
once pleased and saddened, and in an undertone he continued:

"My word! If things had been invented, they could not have been finer.
Life is a strange thing. This is a very interesting article."

Clotilde made no answer, as if her thoughts were a hundred leagues
away from what her uncle was saying. And he did not speak again, but
taking his scissors after he had read the article, he cut it out and
pasted it on a sheet of paper, on which he made some marginal notes in
his large, irregular handwriting. Then he went back to the press to
classify this new document in it. But he was obliged to take a chair,
the shelf being so high that he could not reach it notwithstanding his
tall stature.

On this high shelf a whole series of enormous bundles of papers were
arranged in order, methodically classified. Here were papers of all
sorts: sheets of manuscript, documents on stamped paper, articles cut
out of newspapers, arranged in envelopes of strong blue paper, each of
which bore on the outside a name written in large characters. One felt
that these documents were tenderly kept in view, taken out
continually, and carefully replaced; for of the whole press, this
corner was the only one kept in order.

When Pascal, mounted on the chair, had found the package he was
looking for, one of the bulkiest of the envelopes, on which was
written the name "Saccard," he added to it the new document, and then
replaced the whole under its corresponding alphabetical letter. A
moment later he had forgotten the subject, and was complacently
straightening a pile of papers that were falling down. And when he at
last jumped down off the chair, he said:

"When you are arranging the press, Clotilde, don't touch the packages
at the top; do you hear?"

"Very well, master," she responded, for the third time, docilely.

He laughed again, with the gaiety that was natural to him.

"That is forbidden."

"I know it, master."

And he closed the press with a vigorous turn of the key, which he then
threw into a drawer of his writing table. The young girl was
sufficiently acquainted with his researches to keep his manuscripts in
some degree of order; and he gladly employed her as his secretary; he
made her copy his notes when some _confrere_ and friend, like Dr.
Ramond asked him to send him some document. But she was not a
_savante_; he simply forbade her to read what he deemed it useless
that she should know.

At last, perceiving her so completely absorbed in her work, his
attention was aroused.

"What is the matter with you, that you don't open your lips?" he said.
"Are you so taken up with the copying of those flowers that you can't
speak?"

This was another of the labors which he often intrusted to her--to
make drawings, aquarelles, and pastels, which he afterward used in his
works as plates. Thus, for the past five years he had been making some
curious experiments on a collection of hollyhocks; he had obtained a
whole series of new colorings by artificial fecundations. She made
these sorts of copies with extraordinary minuteness, an exactitude of
design and of coloring so extreme that he marveled unceasingly at the
conscientiousness of her work, and he often told her that she had a
"good, round, strong, clear little headpiece."

But, this time, when he approached her to look over her shoulder, he
uttered a cry of comic fury.

"There you are at your nonsense! Now you are off in the clouds again!
Will you do me the favor to tear that up at once?"

She straightened herself, her cheeks flushed, her eyes aglow with the
delight she took in her work, her slender fingers stained with the red
and blue crayon that she had crushed.

"Oh, master!"

And in this "master," so tender, so caressingly submissive, this term
of complete abandonment by which she called him, in order to avoid
using the words godfather or uncle, which she thought silly, there
was, for the first time, a passionate accent of revolt, the
revindication of a being recovering possession of and asserting
itself.

For nearly two hours she had been zealously striving to produce an
exact and faithful copy of the hollyhocks, and she had just thrown on
another sheet a whole bunch of imaginary flowers, of dream-flowers,
extravagant and superb. She had, at times, these abrupt shiftings, a
need of breaking away in wild fancies in the midst of the most precise
of reproductions. She satisfied it at once, falling always into this
extraordinary efflorescence of such spirit and fancy that it never
repeated itself; creating roses, with bleeding hearts, weeping tears
of sulphur, lilies like crystal urns, flowers without any known form,
even, spreading out starry rays, with corollas floating like clouds.
To-day, on a groundwork dashed in with a few bold strokes of black
crayon, it was a rain of pale stars, a whole shower of infinitely soft
petals; while, in a corner, an unknown bloom, a bud, chastely veiled,
was opening.

"Another to nail there!" resumed the doctor, pointing to the wall, on
which there was already a row of strangely curious pastels. "But what
may that represent, I ask you?"

She remained very grave, drawing back a step, the better to
contemplate her work.

"I know nothing about it; it is beautiful."

At this moment appeared Martine, the only servant, become the real
mistress of the house, after nearly thirty years of service with the
doctor. Although she had passed her sixtieth year, she, too, still
retained a youthful air as she went about, silent and active, in her
eternal black gown and white cap that gave her the look of a nun, with
her small, white, calm face, and lusterless eyes, the light in which
seemed to have been extinguished.

Without speaking, she went and sat down on the floor before an
easy-chair, through a rent in the old covering of which the hair was
escaping, and drawing from her pocket a needle and a skein of worsted,
she set to work to mend it. For three days past she had been waiting
for an hour's time to do this piece of mending, which haunted her.

"While you are about it, Martine," said Pascal jestingly, taking
between both his hands the mutinous head of Clotilde, "sew me fast,
too, this little noodle, which sometimes wanders off into the clouds."

Martine raised her pale eyes, and looked at her master with her
habitual air of adoration?"

"Why does monsieur say that?"

"Because, my good girl, in very truth, I believe it is you who have
stuffed this good little round, clear, strong headpiece full of
notions of the other world, with all your devoutness."

The two women exchanged a glance of intelligence.

"Oh, monsieur! religion has never done any harm to any one. And when
people have not the same ideas, it is certainly better not to talk
about them."

An embarrassed silence followed; this was the one difference of
opinion which, at times, brought about disagreements among these three
united beings who led so restricted a life. Martine was only
twenty-nine, a year older than the doctor, when she entered his house,
at the time when he made his _debut_ as a physician at Plassans, in a
bright little house of the new town. And thirteen years later, when
Saccard, a brother of Pascal, sent him his daughter Clotilde, aged
seven, after his wife's death and at the moment when he was about to
marry again, it was she who brought up the child, taking it to church,
and communicating to it a little of the devout flame with which she
had always burned; while the doctor, who had a broad mind, left them
to their joy of believing, for he did not feel that he had the right
to interdict to any one the happiness of faith; he contented himself
later on with watching over the young girl's education and giving her
clear and sound ideas about everything. For thirteen years, during
which the three had lived this retired life at La Souleiade, a small
property situated in the outskirts of the town, a quarter of an hour's
walk from St. Saturnin, the cathedral, his life had flowed happily
along, occupied in secret great works, a little troubled, however, by
an ever increasing uneasiness--the collision, more and more violent,
every day, between their beliefs.

Pascal took a few turns gloomily up and down the room. Then, like a
man who did not mince his words, he said:

"See, my dear, all this phantasmagoria of mystery has turned your
pretty head. Your good God had no need of you; I should have kept you
for myself alone; and you would have been all the better for it."

But Clotilde, trembling with excitement, her clear eyes fixed boldly
upon his, held her ground.

"It is you, master, who would be all the better, if you did not shut
yourself up in your eyes of flesh. That is another thing, why do you
not wish to see?"

And Martine came to her assistance, in her own style.

"Indeed, it is true, monsieur, that you, who are a saint, as I say
everywhere, should accompany us to church. Assuredly, God will save
you. But at the bare idea that you should not go straight to paradise,
I tremble all over."

He paused, for he had before him, in open revolt, those two whom he
had been accustomed to see submissive at his feet, with the tenderness
of women won over by his gaiety and his goodness. Already he opened
his mouth, and was going to answer roughly, when the uselessness of
the discussion became apparent to him.

"There! Let us have peace. I would do better to go and work. And above
all, let no one interrupt me!"

With hasty steps he gained his chamber, where he had installed a sort
of laboratory, and shut himself up in it. The prohibition to enter it
was formal. It was here that he gave himself up to special
preparations, of which he spoke to no one. Almost immediately the slow
and regular sound of a pestle grinding in a mortar was heard.

"Come," said Clotilde, smiling, "there he is, at his devil's cookery,
as grandmother says."

And she tranquilly resumed her copying of the hollyhocks. She
completed the drawing with mathematical precision, she found the exact
tone of the violet petals, striped with yellow, even to the most
delicate discoloration of the shades.

"Ah!" murmured Martine, after a moment, again seated on the ground,
and occupied in mending the chair, "what a misfortune for a good man
like that to lose his soul wilfully. For there is no denying it; I
have known him now for thirty years, and in all that time he has never
so much as spoken an unkind word to any one. A real heart of gold, who
would take the bit from his own mouth. And handsome, too, and always
well, and always gay, a real blessing! It is a murder that he does not
wish to make his peace with the good God. We will force him to do it,
mademoiselle, will we not?"

Clotilde, surprised at hearing her speak so long at one time on the
subject, gave her word with a grave air.

"Certainly, Martine, it is a promise. We will force him."

Silence reigned again, broken a moment afterward by the ringing of the
bell attached to the street door below. It had been attached to the
door so that they might have notice when any one entered the house,
too vast for the three persons who inhabited it. The servant appeared
surprised, and grumbled a few words under her breath. Who could have
come in such heat as this? She rose, opened the door, and went and
leaned over the balustrade; then she returned, saying:

"It is Mme. Felicite."

Old Mme. Rougon entered briskly. In spite of her eighty years, she had
mounted the stairs with the activity of a young girl; she was still
the brown, lean, shrill grasshopper of old. Dressed elegantly now in
black silk, she might still be taken, seen from behind, thanks to the
slenderness of her figure, for some coquette, or some ambitious woman
following her favorite pursuit. Seen in front, her eyes still lighted
up her withered visage with their fires, and she smiled with an
engaging smile when she so desired.

"What! is it you, grandmother?" cried Clotilde, going to meet her.
"Why, this sun is enough to bake one."

Felicite, kissing her on the forehead, laughed, saying:

"Oh, the sun is my friend!"

Then, moving with short, quick steps, she crossed the room, and turned
the fastening of one of the shutters.

"Open the shutters a little! It is too gloomy to live in the dark in
this way. At my house I let the sun come in."

Through the opening a jet of hot light, a flood of dancing sparks
entered. And under the sky, of the violet blue of a conflagration, the
parched plain could be seen, stretching away in the distance, as if
asleep or dead in the overpowering, furnace-like heat, while to the
right, above the pink roofs, rose the belfry of St. Saturnin, a gilded
tower with arises that, in the blinding light, looked like whitened
bones.

"Yes," continued Felicite, "I think of going shortly to the Tulettes,
and I wished to know if Charles were here, to take him with me. He is
not here--I see that--I will take him another day."

But while she gave this pretext for her visit, her ferret-like eyes
were making the tour of the apartment. Besides, she did not insist,
speaking immediately afterward of her son Pascal, on hearing the
rhythmical noise of the pestle, which had not ceased in the adjoining
chamber.

"Ah! he is still at his devil's cookery! Don't disturb him, I have
nothing to say to him."

Martine, who had resumed her work on the chair, shook her head, as if
to say that she had no mind to disturb her master, and there was
silence again, while Clotilde wiped her fingers, stained with crayon,
on a cloth, and Felicite began to walk about the room with short
steps, looking around inquisitively.

Old Mme. Rougon would soon be two years a widow. Her husband who had
grown so corpulent that he could no longer move, had succumbed to an
attack of indigestion on the 3d of September, 1870, on the night of
the day on which he had learned of the catastrophe of Sedan. The ruin
of the government of which he flattered himself with being one of the
founders, seemed to have crushed him. Thus, Felicite affected to
occupy herself no longer with politics, living, thenceforward, like a
dethroned queen, the only surviving power of a vanished world. No one
was unaware that the Rougons, in 1851, had saved Plassans from
anarchy, by causing the _coup d'etat_ of the 2d of December to triumph
there, and that, a few years later, they had won it again from the
legitimist and republican candidates, to give it to a Bonapartist
deputy. Up to the time of the war, the Empire had continued
all-powerful in the town, so popular that it had obtained there at the
plebiscite an overwhelming majority. But since the disasters the town
had become republican, the quarter St. Marc had returned to its secret
royalist intrigues, while the old quarter and the new town had sent to
the chamber a liberal representative, slightly tinged with Orleanism,
and ready to take sides with the republic, if it should triumph. And,
therefore, it was that Felicite, like the intelligent woman she was,
had withdrawn her attention from politics, and consented to be nothing
more than the dethroned queen of a fallen government.

But this was still an exalted position, surrounded by a melancholy
poetry. For sixteen years she had reigned. The tradition of her two
_salons_, the yellow _salon_, in which the _coup d'etat_ had matured,
and the green _salon_, later the neutral ground on which the conquest
of Plassans was completed, embellished itself with the reflection of
the vanished past, and was for her a glorious history. And besides,
she was very rich. Then, too, she had shown herself dignified in her
fall, never uttering a regret or a complaint, parading, with her
eighty years, so long a succession of fierce appetites, of abominable
maneuvers, of inordinate gratifications, that she became august
through them. Her only happiness, now, was to enjoy in peace her large
fortune and her past royalty, and she had but one passion left--to
defend her past, to extend its fame, suppressing everything that might
tarnish it later. Her pride, which lived on the double exploit of
which the inhabitants still spoke, watched with jealous care, resolved
to leave in existence only creditable documents, those traditions
which caused her to be saluted like a fallen queen when she walked
through the town.

She went to the door of the chamber and listened to the persistent
noise of the pestle, which did not cease. Then, with an anxious brow,
she returned to Clotilde.

"Good Heavens! What is he making? You know that he is doing himself
the greatest harm with his new drug. I was told, the other day, that
he came near killing one of his patients."

"Oh, grandmother!" cried the young girl.

But she was now launched.

"Yes, exactly. The good wives say many other things, besides! Why, go
question them, in the faubourg! They will tell you that he grinds dead
men's bones in infants' blood."

This time, while even Martine protested, Clotilde, wounded in her
affection, grew angry.

"Oh, grandmother, do not repeat such abominations! Master has so great
a heart that he thinks only of making every one happy!"

Then, when she saw that they were both angry, Felicite, comprehending
that she had gone too far, resumed her coaxing manner.

"But, my kitten, it is not I who say those frightful things. I repeat
to you the stupid reports they spread, so that you may comprehend that
Pascal is wrong to pay no heed to public opinion. He thinks he has
found a new remedy--nothing could be better! and I will even admit
that he will be able to cure everybody, as he hopes. Only, why affect
these mysterious ways; why not speak of the matter openly; why, above
all, try it only on the rabble of the old quarter and of the country,
instead of, attempting among the well-to-do people of the town,
striking cures which would do him honor? No, my child, you see your
uncle has never been able to act like other people."

She had assumed a grieved tone, lowering her voice, to display the
secret wound of her heart.

"God be thanked! it is not men of worth who are wanting in our family;
my other sons have given me satisfaction enough. Is it not so? Your
Uncle Eugene rose high enough, minister for twelve years, almost
emperor! And your father himself handled many a million, and had a
part in many a one of the great works which have made Paris a new
city. Not to speak at all of your brother, Maxime, so rich, so
distinguished, nor of your cousin, Octave Mouret, one of the kings of
the new commerce, nor of our dear Abbe Mouret, who is a saint! Well,
then, why does Pascal, who might have followed in the footsteps of
them all, persist in living in his hole, like an eccentric old fool?"

And as the young girl was again going to protest, she closed her
mouth, with a caressing gesture of her hand.

"No, no, let me finish. I know very well that Pascal is not a fool,
that he has written remarkable works, that his communications to the
Academy of Medicine have even won for him a reputation among
_savants_. But what does that count for, compared to what I have
dreamed of for him? Yes, all the best practice of the town, a large
fortune, the decoration--honors, in short, and a position worthy of
the family. My word! I used to say to him when he was a child: 'But
where do you come from? You are not one of us!' As for me, I have
sacrificed everything for the family; I would let myself be hacked to
pieces, that the family might always be great and glorious!"

She straightened her small figure, she seemed to grow tall with the
one passion that had formed the joy and pride of her life. But as she
resumed her walk, she was startled by suddenly perceiving on the floor
the copy of the _Temps_, which the doctor had thrown there, after
cutting out the article, to add it to the Saccard papers, and the
light from the open window, falling full upon the sheet, enlightened
her, no doubt, for she suddenly stopped walking, and threw herself
into a chair, as if she at last knew what she had come to learn.

"Your father has been appointed editor of the _Epoque_," she said
abruptly.

"Yes," answered Clotilde tranquilly, "master told me so; it was in the
paper."

With an anxious and attentive expression, Felicite looked at her, for
this appointment of Saccard, this rallying to the republic, was
something of vast significance. After the fall of the empire he had
dared return to France, notwithstanding his condemnation as director
of the Banque Universelle, the colossal fall of which had preceded
that of the government. New influences, some incredible intrigue must
have placed him on his feet again, for not only had he received his
pardon, but he was once more in a position to undertake affairs of
considerable importance, launched into journalism, having his share
again of all the good things going. And the recollection came to her
of the quarrels of other days between him and his brother Eugene
Rougon, whom he had so often compromised, and whom, by an ironical
turn of events, he was perhaps going to protect, now that the former
minister of the Empire was only a simple deputy, resigned to the
single role of standing by his fallen master with the obstinacy with
which his mother stood by her family. She still obeyed docilely the
orders of her eldest son, the genius, fallen though he was; but
Saccard, whatever he might do, had also a part in her heart, from his
indomitable determination to succeed, and she was also proud of
Maxime, Clotilde's brother, who had taken up his quarters again, after
the war, in his mansion in the Avenue of the Bois de Boulogne, where
he was consuming the fortune left him by his wife, Louise de Mareuil,
become prudent, with the wisdom of a man struck in a vital part, and
trying to cheat the paralysis which threatened him.

"Editor of the _Epoque_," she repeated; "it is really the position of
a minister which your father has won. And I forgot to tell you, I have
written again to your brother, to persuade him to come and see us.
That would divert him, it would do him good. Then, there is that
child, that poor Charles--"

She did not continue. This was another of the wounds from which her
pride bled; a son whom Maxime had had when seventeen by a servant, and
who now, at the age of fifteen, weak of intellect, a half-idiot, lived
at Plassans, going from the house of one to that of another, a burden
to all.

She remained silent a moment longer, waiting for some remark from
Clotilde, some transition by which she might come to the subject she
wished to touch upon. When she saw that the young girl, occupied in
arranging the papers on her desk, was no longer listening, she came to
a sudden decision, after casting a glance at Martine, who continued
mending the chair, as if she were deaf and dumb.

"Your uncle cut the article out of the _Temps_, then?"

Clotilde smiled calmly.

"Yes, master put it away among his papers. Ah! how many notes he
buries in there! Births, deaths, the smallest event in life,
everything goes in there. And the genealogical tree is there also, our
famous genealogical tree, which he keeps up to date!"

The eyes of old Mme. Rougon flamed. She looked fixedly at the young
girl.

"You know them, those papers?"

"Oh, no, grandmother; master has never spoken to me of them; and he
has forbidden me to touch them."

But she did not believe her.

"Come! you have them under your hands, you must have read them."

Very simple, with her calm rectitude, Clotilde answered, smilingly
again.

"No, when master forbids me to do anything, it is because he has his
reasons, and I do not do it."

"Well, my child," cried Felicite vehemently, dominated by her passion,
"you, whom Pascal loves tenderly, and whom he would listen to,
perhaps, you ought to entreat him to burn all that, for if he should
chance to die, and those frightful things which he has in there were
to be found, we should all be dishonored!"

Ah, those abominable papers! she saw them at night, in her nightmares,
revealing in letters of fire, the true histories, the physiological
blemishes of the family, all that wrong side of her glory which she
would have wished to bury forever with the ancestors already dead! She
knew how it was that the doctor had conceived the idea of collecting
these documents at the beginning of his great studies on heredity; how
he had found himself led to take his own family as an example, struck
by the typical cases which he saw in it, and which helped to support
laws discovered by him. Was it not a perfectly natural field of
observation, close at hand and with which he was thoroughly familiar?
And with the fine, careless justness of the scientist, he had been
accumulating for the last thirty years the most private data,
collecting and classifying everything, raising this genealogical tree
of the Rougon-Macquarts, of which the voluminous papers, crammed full
of proofs, were only the commentary.

"Ah, yes," continued Mme. Rougon hotly, "to the fire, to the fire with
all those papers that would tarnish our name!"

And as the servant rose to leave the room, seeing the turn the
conversation was taking, she stopped her by a quick gesture.

"No, no, Martine; stay! You are not in the way, since you are now one
of the family."

Then, in a hissing voice:

"A collection of falsehoods, of gossip, all the lies that our enemies,
enraged by our triumph, hurled against us in former days! Think a
little of that, my child. Against all of us, against your father,
against your mother, against your brother, all those horrors!"

"But how do you know they are horrors, grandmother?"

She was disconcerted for a moment.

"Oh, well; I suspect it! Where is the family that has not had
misfortunes which might be injuriously interpreted? Thus, the mother
of us all, that dear and venerable Aunt Dide, your great-grandmother,
has she not been for the past twenty-one years in the madhouse at the
Tulettes? If God has granted her the grace of allowing her to live to
the age of one hundred and four years, he has also cruelly afflicted
her in depriving her of her reason. Certainly, there is no shame in
that; only, what exasperates me--what must not be--is that they should
say afterward that we are all mad. And, then, regarding your
grand-uncle Macquart, too, deplorable rumors have been spread. Macquart
had his faults in past days, I do not seek to defend him. But to-day, is
he not living very reputably on his little property at the Tulettes, two
steps away from our unhappy mother, over whom he watches like a good
son? And listen! one last example. Your brother, Maxime, committed a
great fault when he had by a servant that poor little Charles, and it is
certain, besides, that the unhappy child is of unsound mind. No matter.
Will it please you if they tell you that your nephew is degenerate; that
he reproduces from four generations back, his great-great-grandmother
the dear woman to whom we sometimes take him, and with whom he likes so
much to be? No! there is no longer any family possible, if people begin
to lay bare everything--the nerves of this one, the muscles of that. It
is enough to disgust one with living!"

Clotilde, standing in her long black blouse, had listened to her
grandmother attentively. She had grown very serious; her arms hung by
her sides, her eyes were fixed upon the ground. There was silence for
a moment; then she said slowly:

"It is science, grandmother."

"Science!" cried Felicite, trotting about again. "A fine thing, their
science, that goes against all that is most sacred in the world! When
they shall have demolished everything they will have advanced greatly!
They kill respect, they kill the family, they kill the good God!"

"Oh! don't say that, madame!" interrupted Martine, in a grieved voice,
her narrow devoutness wounded. "Do not say that M. Pascal kills the
good God!"

"Yes, my poor girl, he kills him. And look you, it is a crime, from
the religious point of view, to let one's self be damned in that way.
You do not love him, on my word of honor! No, you do not love him, you
two who have the happiness of believing, since you do nothing to bring
him back to the right path. Ah! if I were in your place, I would split
that press open with a hatchet. I would make a famous bonfire with all
the insults to the good God which it contains!"

She had planted herself before the immense press and was measuring it
with her fiery glance, as if to take it by assault, to sack it, to
destroy it, in spite of the withered and fragile thinness of her
eighty years. Then, with a gesture of ironical disdain:

"If, even with his science, he could know everything!"

Clotilde remained for a moment absorbed in thought, her gaze lost in
vacancy. Then she said in an undertone, as if speaking to herself:

"It is true, he cannot know everything. There is always something else
below. That is what irritates me; that is what makes us quarrel: for I
cannot, like him, put the mystery aside. I am troubled by it, so much
so that I suffer cruelly. Below, what wills and acts in the shuddering
darkness, all the unknown forces--"

Her voice had gradually become lower and now dropped to an indistinct
murmur.

Then Martine, whose face for a moment past had worn a somber
expression, interrupted in her turn:

"If it was true, however, mademoiselle, that monsieur would be damned
on account of those villainous papers, tell me, ought we to let it
happen? For my part, look you, if he were to tell me to throw myself
down from the terrace, I would shut my eyes and throw myself, because
I know that he is always right. But for his salvation! Oh! if I could,
I would work for that, in spite of him. In every way, yes! I would
force him; it is too cruel to me to think that he will not be in
heaven with us."

"You are quite right, my girl," said Felicite approvingly. "You, at
least, love your master in an intelligent fashion."

Between the two, Clotilde still seemed irresolute. In her, belief did
not bend to the strict rule of dogma; the religious sentiment did not
materialize in the hope of a paradise, of a place of delights, where
she was to meet her own again. It was in her simply a need of a
beyond, a certainty that the vast world does not stop short at
sensation, that there is a whole unknown world, besides, which must be
taken into account. But her grandmother, who was so old, this servant,
who was so devoted, shook her in her uneasy affection for her uncle.
Did they not love him better, in a more enlightened and more upright
fashion, they who desired him to be without a stain, freed from his
manias as a scientist, pure enough to be among the elect? Phrases of
devotional books recurred to her; the continual battle waged against
the spirit of evil; the glory of conversions effected after a violent
struggle. What if she set herself to this holy task; what if, after
all, in spite of himself, she should be able to save him! And an
exaltation gradually gained her spirit, naturally inclined to
adventurous enterprises.

"Certainly," she said at last, "I should be very happy if he would not
persist in his notion of heaping up all those scraps of paper, and if
he would come to church with us."

Seeing her about to yield, Mme. Rougon cried out that it was necessary
to act, and Martine herself added the weight of all her real
authority. They both approached the young girl, and began to instruct
her, lowering their voices as if they were engaged in a conspiracy,
whence was to result a miraculous benefit, a divine joy with which the
whole house would be perfumed. What a triumph if they reconciled the
doctor with God! and what sweetness, afterward, to live altogether in
the celestial communion of the same faith!

"Well, then, what must I do?" asked Clotilde, vanquished, won over.

But at this moment the doctor's pestle was heard in the silence, with
its continued rhythm. And the victorious Felicite, who was about to
speak, turned her head uneasily, and looked for a moment at the door
of the adjoining chamber. Then, in an undertone, she said:

"Do you know where the key of the press is?"

Clotilde answered only with an artless gesture, that expressed all her
repugnance to betray her master in this way.

"What a child you are! I swear to you that I will take nothing; I will
not even disturb anything. Only as we are alone and as Pascal never
reappears before dinner, we might assure ourselves of what there is in
there, might we not? Oh! nothing but a glance, on my word of honor."

The young girl stood motionless, unwilling, still, to give her
consent.

"And then, it may be that I am mistaken; no doubt there are none of
those bad things there that I have told you of."

This was decisive; she ran to take the key from the drawer, and she
herself opened wide the press.

"There, grandmother, the papers are up there."

Martine had gone, without a word, to station herself at the door of
the doctor's chamber, her ear on the alert, listening to the pestle,
while Felicite, as if riveted to the spot by emotion, regarded the
papers. At last, there they were, those terrible documents, the
nightmare that had poisoned her life! She saw them, she was going to
touch them, to carry them away! And she reached up, straining her
little legs, in the eagerness of her desire.

"It is too high, my kitten," she said. "Help me; give them to me!"

"Oh! not that, grandmother! Take a chair!"

Felicite took a chair, and mounted slowly upon it. But she was still
too short. By an extraordinary effort she raised herself, lengthening
her stature until she was able to touch the envelopes of strong blue
paper with the tips of her fingers; and her fingers traveled over
them, contracting nervously, scratching like claws. Suddenly there was
a crash--it was a geological specimen, a fragment of marble that had
been on a lower shelf, and that she had just thrown down.

Instantly the pestle stopped, and Martine said in a stifled voice:

"Take care; here he comes!"

But Felicite, grown desperate, did not hear, did not let go her hold
when Pascal entered hastily. He had supposed that some accident had
happened, that some one had fallen, and he stood stupefied at what he
saw--his mother on the chair, her arm still in the air, while Martine
had withdrawn to one side, and Clotilde, very pale, stood waiting,
without turning her head. When he comprehended the scene, he himself
became as white as a sheet. A terrible anger arose within him.

Old Mme. Rougon, however, troubled herself in no wise. When she saw
that the opportunity was lost, she descended from the chair, without
making any illusion whatever to the task at which he had surprised
her.

"Oh, it is you! I do not wish to disturb you. I came to embrace
Clotilde. But here I have been talking for nearly two hours, and I
must run away at once. They will be expecting me at home; they won't
know what has become of me at this hour. Good-by until Sunday."

She went away quite at her ease, after smiling at her son, who stood
before her silent and respectful. It was an attitude that he had long
since adopted, to avoid an explanation which he felt must be cruel,
and which he had always feared. He knew her, he was willing to pardon
her everything, in his broad tolerance as a scientist, who made
allowance for heredity, environment, and circumstances. And, then, was
she not his mother? That ought to have sufficed, for, in spite of the
frightful blows which his researches inflicted upon the family, he
preserved a great affection for those belonging to him.

When his mother was no longer there, his anger burst forth, and fell
upon Clotilde. He had turned his eyes away from Martine, and fixed
them on the young girl, who did not turn hers away, however, with a
courage which accepted the responsibility of her act.

"You! you!" he said at last.

He seized her arm, and pressed it until she cried. But she continued
to look him full in the face, without quailing before him, with the
indomitable will of her individuality, of her selfhood. She was
beautiful and provoking, with her tall, slender figure, robed in its
black blouse; and her exquisite, youthful fairness, her straight
forehead, her finely cut nose, her firm chin, took on something of a
warlike charm in her rebellion.

"You, whom I have made, you who are my pupil, my friend, my other
mind, to whom I have given a part of my heart and of my brain! Ah,
yes! I should have kept you entirely for myself, and not have allowed
your stupid good God to take the best part of you!"

"Oh, monsieur, you blaspheme!" cried Martine, who had approached him,
in order to draw upon herself a part of his anger.

But he did not even see her. Only Clotilde existed for him. And he was
as if transfigured, stirred up by so great a passion that his handsome
face, crowned by his white hair, framed by his white beard, flamed
with youthful passion, with an immense tenderness that had been
wounded and exasperated.

"You, you!" he repeated in a trembling voice.

"Yes, I! Why then, master, should I not love you better than you love
me? And why, if I believe you to be in peril, should I not try to save
you? You are greatly concerned about what I think; you would like well
to make me think as you do!"

She had never before defied him in this way.

"But you are a little girl; you know nothing!"

"No, I am a soul, and you know no more about souls than I do!"

He released her arm, and waved his hand vaguely toward heaven, and
then a great silence fell--a silence full of grave meaning, of the
uselessness of the discussion which he did not wish to enter upon.
Thrusting her aside rudely, he crossed over to the middle window and
opened the blinds, for the sun was declining, and the room was growing
dark. Then he returned.

But she, feeling a need of air and space, went to the open window. The
burning rain of sparks had ceased, and there fell now, from on high,
only the last shiver of the overheated and paling sky; and from the
still burning earth ascended warm odors, with the freer respiration of
evening. At the foot of the terrace was the railroad, with the
outlying dependencies of the station, of which the buildings were to
be seen in the distance; then, crossing the vast arid plain, a line of
trees marked the course of the Viorne, beyond which rose the hills of
Sainte-Marthe, red fields planted with olive trees, supported on
terraces by walls of uncemented stones and crowned by somber pine
woods--broad amphitheaters, bare and desolate, corroded by the heats
of summer, of the color of old baked brick, which this fringe of dark
verdure, standing out against the background of the sky, bordered
above. To the left opened the gorges of the Seille, great yellow
stones that had broken away from the soil, and lay in the midst of
blood-colored fields, dominated by an immense band of rocks like the
wall of a gigantic fortress; while to the right, at the very entrance
to the valley through which flowed the Viorne, rose, one above
another, the discolored pink-tiled roofs of the town of Plassans, the
compact and confused mass of an old town, pierced by the tops of
ancient elms, and dominated by the high tower of St. Saturnin,
solitary and serene at this hour in the limpid gold of sunset.

"Ah, my God!" said Clotilde slowly, "one must be arrogant, indeed, to
imagine that one can take everything in one's hand and know
everything!"

Pascal had just mounted on the chair to assure himself that not one of
his packages was missing. Then he took up the fragment of marble, and
replaced it on the shelf, and when he had again locked the press with
a vigorous turn of the hand, he put the key into his pocket.

"Yes," he replied; "try not to know everything, and above all, try not
to bewilder your brain about what we do not know, what we shall
doubtless never know!"

Martine again approached Clotilde, to lend her her support, to show
her that they both had a common cause. And now the doctor perceived
her, also, and felt that they were both united in the same desire for
conquest. After years of secret attempts, it was at last open war; the
_savant_ saw his household turn against his opinions, and menace them
with destruction. There is no worse torture than to have treason in
one's own home, around one; to be trapped, dispossessed, crushed, by
those whom you love, and who love you!

Suddenly this frightful idea presented itself to him.

"And yet both of you love me!" he cried.

He saw their eyes grow dim with tears; he was filled with an infinite
sadness, on this tranquil close of a beautiful day. All his gaiety,
all his kindness of heart, which came from his intense love of life,
were shaken by it.

"Ah, my dear! and you, my poor girl," he said, "you are doing this for
my happiness, are you not? But, alas, how unhappy we are going to be!"

II.


On the following morning Clotilde was awake at six o'clock. She had
gone to bed angry with Pascal; they were at variance with each other.
And her first feeling was one of uneasiness, of secret distress, an
instant need of making her peace, so that she might no longer have
upon her heart the heavy weight that lay there now.

Springing quickly out of bed, she went and half opened the shutters of
both windows. The sun, already high, sent his light across the chamber
in two golden bars. Into this drowsy room that exhaled a sweet odor of
youth, the bright morning brought with it fresh, cheerful air; but the
young girl went back and sat down on the edge of the bed in a
thoughtful attitude, clad only in her scant nightdress, which made her
look still more slender, with her long tapering limbs, her strong,
slender body, with its round throat, round neck, round and supple
arms; and her adorable neck and throat, of a milky whiteness, had the
exquisite softness and smoothness of white satin. For a long time, at
the ungraceful age between twelve and eighteen, she had looked
awkwardly tall, climbing trees like a boy. Then, from the ungainly
hoyden had been evolved this charming, delicate and lovely creature.

With absent gaze she sat looking at the walls of the chamber. Although
La Souleiade dated from the last century, it must have been
refurnished under the First Empire, for it was hung with an
old-fashioned printed calico, with a pattern representing busts of the
Sphinx, and garlands of oak leaves. Originally of a bright red, this
calico had faded to a pink--an undecided pink, inclining to orange.
The curtains of the two windows and of the bed were still in
existence, but it had been necessary to clean them, and this had made
them still paler. And this faded purple, this dawnlike tint, so
delicately soft, was in truth exquisite. As for the bed, covered with
the same stuff, it had come down from so remote an antiquity that it
had been replaced by another bed found in an adjoining room; another
Empire bed, low and very broad, of massive mahogany, ornamented with
brasses, its four square pillars adorned also with busts of the
Sphinx, like those on the wall. The rest of the furniture matched,
however--a press, with whole doors and pillars; a chest of drawers
with a marble top, surrounded by a railing; a tall and massive
cheval-glass, a large lounge with straight feet, and seats with
straight, lyre-shaped backs. But a coverlet made of an old Louis XV.
silk skirt brightened the majestic bed, that occupied the middle of
the wall fronting the windows; a heap of cushions made the lounge
soft; and there were, besides, two _etageres_ and a table also covered
with old flowered silk, at the further end of the room.

Clotilde at last put on her stockings and slipped on a morning gown of
white _pique_, and thrusting the tips of her feet into her gray canvas
slippers, she ran into her dressing-room, a back room looking out on
the rear of the house. She had had it hung plainly with an _ecru_
drill with blue stripes, and it contained only furniture of varnished
pine--the toilette table, two presses, and two chairs. It revealed,
however, a natural and delicate coquetry which was very feminine. This
had grown with her at the same time with her beauty. Headstrong and
boyish though she still was at times, she had become a submissive and
affectionate woman, desiring to be loved, above everything. The truth
was that she had grown up in freedom, without having learned anything
more than to read and write, having acquired by herself, later, while
assisting her uncle, a vast fund of information. But there had been no
plan settled upon between them. He had not wished to make her a
prodigy; she had merely conceived a passion for natural history, which
revealed to her the mysteries of life. And she had kept her innocence
unsullied like a fruit which no hand has touched, thanks, no doubt, to
her unconscious and religious waiting for the coming of love--that
profound feminine feeling which made her reserve the gift of her whole
being for the man whom she should love.

She pushed back her hair and bathed her face; then, yielding to her
impatience, she again softly opened the door of her chamber and
ventured to cross the vast workroom, noiselessly and on tiptoe. The
shutters were still closed, but she could see clearly enough not to
stumble against the furniture. When she was at the other end before
the door of the doctor's room, she bent forward, holding her breath.
Was he already up? What could he be doing? She heard him plainly,
walking about with short steps, dressing himself, no doubt. She never
entered this chamber in which he chose to hide certain labors; and
which thus remained closed, like a tabernacle. One fear had taken
possession of her; that of being discovered here by him if he should
open the door; and the agitation produced by the struggle between her
rebellious pride and a desire to show her submission caused her to
grow hot and cold by turns, with sensations until now unknown to her.
For an instant her desire for reconciliation was so strong that she
was on the point of knocking. Then, as footsteps approached, she ran
precipitately away.

Until eight o'clock Clotilde was agitated by an ever-increasing
impatience. At every instant she looked at the clock on the
mantelpiece of her room; an Empire clock of gilded bronze,
representing Love leaning against a pillar, contemplating Time asleep.

Eight was the hour at which she generally descended to the dining-room
to breakfast with the doctor. And while waiting she made a careful
toilette, arranged her hair, and put on another morning gown of white
muslin with red spots. Then, having still a quarter of an hour on her
hands, she satisfied an old desire and sat down to sew a piece of
narrow lace, an imitation of Chantilly, on her working blouse, that
black blouse which she had begun to find too boyish, not feminine
enough. But on the stroke of eight she laid down her work, and went
downstairs quickly.

"You are going to breakfast entirely alone," said Martine tranquilly
to her, when she entered the dining-room.

"How is that?"

"Yes, the doctor called me, and I passed him in his egg through the
half-open door. There he is again, at his mortar and his filter. We
won't see him now before noon."

Clotilde turned pale with disappointment. She drank her milk standing,
took her roll in her hand, and followed the servant into the kitchen.
There were on the ground floor, besides this kitchen and the
dining-room, only an uninhabited room in which the potatoes were stored,
and which had formerly been used as an office by the doctor, when he
received his patients in his house--the desk and the armchair had years
ago been taken up to his chamber--and another small room, which opened
into the kitchen; the old servant's room, scrupulously clean, and
furnished with a walnut chest of drawers and a bed like a nun's with
white hangings.

"Do you think he has begun to make his liquor again?" asked Clotilde.

"Well, it can be only that. You know that he thinks of neither eating
nor drinking when that takes possession of him!"

Then all the young girl's vexation was exhaled in a low plaint:

"Ah, my God! my God!"

And while Martine went to make up her room, she took an umbrella from
the hall stand and went disconsolately to eat her roll in the garden,
not knowing now how she should occupy her time until midday.

It was now almost seventeen years since Dr. Pascal, having resolved to
leave his little house in the new town, had bought La Souleiade for
twenty thousand francs, in order to live there in seclusion, and also
to give more space and more happiness to the little girl sent him by
his brother Saccard from Paris. This Souleiade, situated outside the
town gates on a plateau dominating the plain, was part of a large
estate whose once vast grounds were reduced to less than two hectares
in consequence of successive sales, without counting that the
construction of the railroad had taken away the last arable fields.
The house itself had been half destroyed by a conflagration and only
one of the two buildings remained--a quadrangular wing "of four
walls," as they say in Provence, with five front windows and roofed
with large pink tiles. And the doctor, who had bought it completely
furnished, had contented himself with repairing it and finishing the
boundary walls, so as to be undisturbed in his house.

Generally Clotilde loved this solitude passionately; this narrow
kingdom which she could go over in ten minutes, and which still
retained remnants of its past grandeur. But this morning she brought
there something like a nervous disquietude. She walked for a few
moments along the terrace, at the two extremities of which stood two
secular cypresses like two enormous funeral tapers, which could be
seen three leagues off. The slope then descended to the railroad,
walls of uncemented stones supporting the red earth, in which the last
vines were dead; and on these giant steps grew only rows of olive and
almond trees, with sickly foliage. The heat was already overpowering;
she saw the little lizards running about on the disjointed flags,
among the hairy tufts of caper bushes.

Then, as if irritated by the vast horizon, she crossed the orchard and
the kitchen garden, which Martine still persisted in cultivating in
spite of her age, calling in a man only twice a week for the heavier
labors; and she ascended to a little pine wood on the right, all that
remained of the superb pines which had formerly covered the plateau;
but, here, too, she was ill at ease; the pine needles crackled under
her feet, a resinous, stifling odor descended from the branches. And
walking along the boundary wall past the entrance gate, which opened
on the road to Les Fenouilleres, three hundred meters from the first
houses of Plassans, she emerged at last on the threshing-yard; an
immense yard, fifteen meters in radius, which would of itself have
sufficed to prove the former importance of the domain. Ah! this
antique area, paved with small round stones, as in the days of the
Romans; this species of vast esplanade, covered with short dry grass
of the color of gold as with a thick woolen carpet; how joyously she
had played there in other days, running about, rolling on the grass,
lying for hours on her back, watching the stars coming out one by one
in the depths of the illimitable sky!

She opened her umbrella again, and crossed the yard with slower steps.
Now she was on the left of the terrace. She had made the tour of the
estate, so that she had returned by the back of the house, through the
clump of enormous plane trees that on this side cast a thick shade.
This was the side on which opened the two windows of the doctor's
room. And she raised her eyes to them, for she had approached only in
the sudden hope of at last seeing him. But the windows remained
closed, and she was wounded by this as by an unkindness to herself.
Then only did she perceive that she still held in her hand her roll,
which she had forgotten to eat; and she plunged among the trees,
biting it impatiently with her fine young teeth.

It was a delicious retreat, this old quincunx of plane trees, another
remnant of the past splendor of La Souleiade. Under these giant trees,
with their monstrous trunks, there was only a dim light, a greenish
light, exquisitely cool, even on the hottest days of summer. Formerly
a French garden had been laid out here, of which only the box borders
remained; bushes which had habituated themselves to the shade, no
doubt, for they grew vigorously, as tall as trees. And the charm of
this shady nook was a fountain, a simple leaden pipe fixed in the
shaft of a column; whence flowed perpetually, even in the greatest
drought, a thread of water as thick as the little finger, which
supplied a large mossy basin, the greenish stones of which were
cleaned only once in three or four years. When all the wells of the
neighborhood were dry, La Souleiade still kept its spring, of which
the great plane trees were assuredly the secular children. Night and
day for centuries past this slender thread of water, unvarying and
continuous, had sung the same pure song with crystal sound.

Clotilde, after wandering awhile among the bushes of box, which
reached to her shoulder, went back to the house for a piece of
embroidery, and returning with it, sat down at a stone table beside
the fountain. Some garden chairs had been placed around it, and they
often took coffee here. And after this she affected not to look up
again from her work, as if she was completely absorbed in it. Now and
then, while seeming to look between the trunks of trees toward the
sultry distance, toward the yard, on which the sun blazed fiercely and
which glowed like a brazier, she stole a glance from under her long
lashes up to the doctor's windows. Nothing appeared, not a shadow. And
a feeling of sadness, of resentment, arose within her at this neglect,
this contempt in which he seemed to hold her after their quarrel of
the day before. She who had got up with so great a desire to make
peace at once! He was in no hurry, however; he did not love her then,
since he could be satisfied to live at variance with her. And
gradually a feeling of gloom took possession of her, her rebellious
thoughts returned, and she resolved anew to yield in nothing.

At eleven o'clock, before setting her breakfast on the fire, Martine
came to her for a moment, the eternal stocking in her hand which she
was always knitting even while walking, when she was not occupied in
the affairs of the house.

"Do you know that he is still shut up there like a wolf in his hole,
at his villainous cookery?"

Clotilde shrugged her shoulders, without lifting her eyes from her
embroidery.

"And then, mademoiselle, if you only knew what they say! Mme. Felicite
was right yesterday when she said that it was really enough to make
one blush. They threw it in my face that he had killed old Boutin,
that poor old man, you know, who had the falling sickness and who died
on the road. To believe those women of the faubourg, every one into
whom he injects his remedy gets the true cholera from it, without
counting that they accuse him of having taken the devil into
partnership."

A short silence followed. Then, as the young girl became more gloomy
than before, the servant resumed, moving her fingers still more
rapidly:

"As for me, I know nothing about the matter, but what he is making
there enrages me. And you, mademoiselle, do you approve of that
cookery?"

At last Clotilde raised her head quickly, yielding to the flood of
passion that swept over her.

"Listen; I wish to know no more about it than you do, but I think that
he is on a very dangerous path. He no longer loves us."

"Oh, yes, mademoiselle; he loves us."

"No, no; not as we love him. If he loved us, he would be here with us,
instead of endangering his soul and his happiness and ours, up there,
in his desire to save everybody."

And the two women looked at each other for a moment with eyes burning
with affection, in their jealous anger. Then they resumed their work
in silence, enveloped in shadow.

Above, in his room, Dr. Pascal was working with the serenity of
perfect joy. He had practised his profession for only about a dozen
years, from his return to Paris up to the time when he had retired to
La Souleiade. Satisfied with the hundred and odd thousand francs which
he had earned and which he had invested prudently, he devoted himself
almost exclusively to his favorite studies, retaining only a practise
among friends, never refusing to go to the bedside of a patient but
never sending in his account. When he was paid he threw the money into
a drawer in his writing desk, regarding this as pocket-money for his
experiments and caprices, apart from his income which sufficed for his
wants. And he laughed at the bad reputation for eccentricity which his
way of life had gained him; he was happy only when in the midst of his
researches on the subjects for which he had a passion. It was matter
for surprise to many that this scientist, whose intellectual gifts had
been spoiled by a too lively imagination, should have remained at
Plassans, this out-of-the-way town where it seemed as if every
requirement for his studies must be wanting. But he explained very
well the advantages which he had discovered here; in the first place,
an utterly peaceful retreat in which he might live the secluded life
he desired; then, an unsuspected field for continuous research in the
light of the facts of heredity, which was his passion, in this little
town where he knew every family and where he could follow the
phenomena kept most secret, through two or three generations. And then
he was near the seashore; he went there almost every summer, to study
the swarming life that is born and propagates itself in the depths of
the vast waters. And there was finally, at the hospital in Plassans, a
dissecting room to which he was almost the only visitor; a large,
bright, quiet room, in which for more than twenty years every
unclaimed body had passed under his scalpel. A modest man besides, of
a timidity that had long since become shyness, it had been sufficient
for him to maintain a correspondence with his old professors and his
new friends, concerning the very remarkable papers which he from time
to time sent to the Academy of Medicine. He was altogether wanting in
militant ambition.

Ah, this heredity! what a subject of endless meditation it was for
him! The strangest, the most wonderful part of it all, was it not that
the resemblance between parents and children should not be perfect,
mathematically exact? He had in the beginning made a genealogical tree
of his family, logically traced, in which the influences from
generation to generation were distributed equally--the father's part
and the mother's part. But the living reality contradicted the theory
almost at every point. Heredity, instead of being resemblance, was an
effort toward resemblance thwarted by circumstances and environment.
And he had arrived at what he called the hypothesis of the abortion of
cells. Life is only motion, and heredity being a communicated motion,
it happened that the cells in their multiplication from one another
jostled one another, pressed one another, made room for themselves,
putting forth, each one, the hereditary effort; so that if during this
struggle the weaker cells succumbed, considerable disturbances took
place, with the final result of organs totally different. Did not
variation, the constant invention of nature, which clashed with his
theories, come from this? Did not he himself differ from his parents
only in consequence of similar accidents, or even as the effect of
larvated heredity, in which he had for a time believed? For every
genealogical tree has roots which extend as far back into humanity as
the first man; one cannot proceed from a single ancestor; one may
always resemble a still older, unknown ancestor. He doubted atavism,
however; it seemed to him, in spite of a remarkable example taken from
his own family, that resemblance at the end of two or three
generations must disappear by reason of accidents, of interferences,
of a thousand possible combinations. There was then a perpetual
becoming, a constant transformation in this communicated effort, this
transmitted power, this shock which breathes into matter the breath of
life, and which is life itself. And a multiplicity of questions
presented themselves to him. Was there a physical and intellectual
progress through the ages? Did the brain grow with the growth of the
sciences with which it occupied itself? Might one hope, in time, for a
larger sum of reason and of happiness? Then there were special
problems; one among others, the mystery of which had for a long time
irritated him, that of sex; would science never be able to predict, or
at least to explain the sex of the embryo being? He had written a very
curious paper crammed full of facts on this subject, but which left it
in the end in the complete ignorance in which the most exhaustive
researches had left it. Doubtless the question of heredity fascinated
him as it did only because it remained obscure, vast, and
unfathomable, like all the infant sciences where imagination holds
sway. Finally, a long study which he had made on the heredity of
phthisis revived in him the wavering faith of the healer, arousing in
him the noble and wild hope of regenerating humanity.

In short, Dr. Pascal had only one belief--the belief in life. Life was
the only divine manifestation. Life was God, the grand motor, the soul
of the universe. And life had no other instrument than heredity;
heredity made the world; so that if its laws could be known and
directed, the world could be made to one's will. In him, to whom
sickness, suffering, and death had been a familiar sight, the militant
pity of the physician awoke. Ah! to have no more sickness, no more
suffering, as little death as possible! His dream ended in this
thought--that universal happiness, the future community of perfection
and of felicity, could be hastened by intervention, by giving health
to all. When all should be healthy, strong, and intelligent, there
would be only a superior race, infinitely wise and happy. In India,
was not a Brahmin developed from a Soudra in seven generations, thus
raising, experimentally, the lowest of beings to the highest type of
humanity? And as in his study of consumption he had arrived at the
conclusion that it was not hereditary, but that every child of a
consumptive carried within him a degenerate soil in which consumption
developed with extraordinary facility at the slightest contagion, he
had come to think only of invigorating this soil impoverished by
heredity; to give it the strength to resist the parasites, or rather
the destructive leaven, which he had suspected to exist in the
organism, long before the microbe theory. To give strength--the whole
problem was there; and to give strength was also to give will, to
enlarge the brain by fortifying the other organs.

About this time the doctor, reading an old medical book of the
fifteenth century, was greatly struck by a method of treating disease
called signature. To cure a diseased organ, it was only necessary to
take from a sheep or an ox the corresponding organ in sound condition,
boil it, and give the soup to the patient to drink. The theory was to
cure like by like, and in diseases of the liver, especially, the old
work stated that the cures were numberless. This set the doctor's
vivid imagination working. Why not make the trial? If he wished to
regenerate those enfeebled by hereditary influences, he had only to
give them the normal and healthy nerve substance. The method of the
soup, however, seemed to him childish, and he invented in its stead
that of grinding in a mortar the brain of a sheep, moistening it with
distilled water, and then decanting and filtering the liquor thus
obtained. He tried this liquor then mixed with Malaga wine, on his
patients, without obtaining any appreciable result. Suddenly, as he
was beginning to grow discouraged, he had an inspiration one day, when
he was giving a lady suffering from hepatic colics an injection of
morphine with the little syringe of Pravaz. What if he were to try
hypodermic injections with his liquor? And as soon as he returned home
he tried the experiment on himself, making an injection in his side,
which he repeated night and morning. The first doses, of a gram only,
were without effect. But having doubled, and then tripled the dose, he
was enchanted, one morning on getting up, to find that his limbs had
all the vigor of twenty. He went on increasing the dose up to five
grams, and then his respiration became deeper, and above all he worked
with a clearness of mind, an ease, which he had not known for years. A
great flood of happiness, of joy in living, inundated his being. From
this time, after he had had a syringe made at Paris capable of
containing five grams, he was surprised at the happy results which he
obtained with his patients, whom he had on their feet again in a few
days, full of energy and activity, as if endowed with new life. His
method was still tentative and rude, and he divined in it all sorts of
dangers, and especially, that of inducing embolism, if the liquor was
not perfectly pure. Then he suspected that the strength of his
patients came in part from the fever his treatment produced in them.
But he was only a pioneer; the method would improve later. Was it not
already a miracle to make the ataxic walk, to bring consumptives back
to life, as it were; even to give hours of lucidity to the insane? And
at the thought of this discovery of the alchemy of the twentieth
century, an immense hope opened up before him; he believed he had
discovered the universal panacea, the elixir of life, which was to
combat human debility, the one real cause of every ill; a veritable
scientific Fountain of Youth, which, in giving vigor, health, and will
would create an altogether new and superior humanity.

This particular morning in his chamber, a room with a northern aspect
and somewhat dark owing to the vicinity of the plane trees, furnished
simply with an iron bedstead, a mahogany writing desk, and a large
writing table, on which were a mortar and a microscope, he was
completing with infinite care the preparation of a vial of his liquor.
Since the day before, after pounding the nerve substance of a sheep in
distilled water, he had been decanting and filtering it. And he had at
last obtained a small bottle of a turbid, opaline liquid, irised by
bluish gleams, which he regarded for a long time in the light as if he
held in his hand the regenerating blood and symbol of the world.

But a few light knocks at the door and an urgent voice drew him from
his dream.

"Why, what is the matter, monsieur? It is a quarter-past twelve; don't
you intend to come to breakfast?"

For downstairs breakfast had been waiting for some time past in the
large, cool dining-room. The blinds were closed, with the exception of
one which had just been half opened. It was a cheerful room, with
pearl gray panels relieved by blue mouldings. The table, the
sideboard, and the chairs must have formed part of the set of Empire
furniture in the bedrooms; and the old mahogany, of a deep red, stood
out in strong relief against the light background. A hanging lamp of
polished brass, always shining, gleamed like a sun; while on the four
walls bloomed four large bouquets in pastel, of gillyflowers,
carnations, hyacinths, and roses.

Joyous, radiant, Dr. Pascal entered.

"Ah, the deuce! I had forgotten! I wanted to finish. Look at this,
quite fresh, and perfectly pure this time; something to work miracles
with!"

And he showed the vial, which he had brought down in his enthusiasm.
But his eye fell on Clotilde standing erect and silent, with a serious
air. The secret vexation caused by waiting had brought back all her
hostility, and she, who had burned to throw herself on his neck in the
morning, remained motionless as if chilled and repelled by him.

"Good!" he resumed, without losing anything of his gaiety, "we are
still at odds, it seems. That is something very ugly. So you don't
admire my sorcerer's liquor, which resuscitates the dead?"

He seated himself at the table, and the young girl, sitting down
opposite him, was obliged at last to answer:

"You know well, master, that I admire everything belonging to you.
Only, my most ardent desire is that others also should admire you. And
there is the death of poor old Boutin--"

"Oh!" he cried, without letting her finish, "an epileptic, who
succumbed to a congestive attack! See! since you are in a bad humor,
let us talk no more about that--you would grieve me, and that would
spoil my day."

There were soft boiled eggs, cutlets, and cream. Silence reigned for a
few moments, during which in spite of her ill-humor she ate heartily,
with a good appetite which she had not the coquetry to conceal. Then
he resumed, laughing:

"What reassures me is to see that your stomach is in good order.
Martine, hand mademoiselle the bread."

The servant waited on them as she was accustomed to do, watching them
eat, with her quiet air of familiarity.

Sometimes she even chatted with them.

"Monsieur," she said, when she had cut the bread, "the butcher has
brought his bill. Is he to be paid?"

He looked up at her in surprise.

"Why do you ask me that?" he said. "Do you not always pay him without
consulting me?"

It was, in effect, Martine who kept the purse. The amount deposited
with M. Grandguillot, notary at Plassans, produced a round sum of six
thousand francs income. Every three months the fifteen hundred francs
were remitted to the servant, and she disposed of them to the best
interests of the house; bought and paid for everything with the
strictest economy, for she was of so saving a disposition that they
bantered her about it continually. Clotilde, who spent very little,
had never thought of asking a separate purse for herself. As for the
doctor, he took what he required for his experiments and his pocket
money from the three or four thousand francs which he still earned
every year, and which he kept lying in the drawer of his writing desk;
so that there was quite a little treasure there in gold and bank
bills, of which he never knew the exact amount.

"Undoubtedly, monsieur, I pay, when it is I who have bought the
things; but this time the bill is so large on account of the brains
which the butcher has furnished you--"

The doctor interrupted her brusquely:

"Ah, come! so you, too, are going to set yourself against me, are you?
No, no; both of you--that would be too much! Yesterday you pained me
greatly, and I was angry. But this must cease. I will not have the
house turned into a hell. Two women against me, and they the only ones
who love me at all? Do you know, I would sooner quit the house at
once!"

He did not speak angrily, he even smiled; but the disquietude of his
heart was perceptible in the trembling of his voice. And he added with
his indulgent, cheerful air:

"If you are afraid for the end of the month, my girl, tell the butcher
to send my bill apart. And don't fear; you are not going to be asked
for any of your money to settle it with; your sous may lie sleeping."

This was an allusion to Martine's little personal fortune. In thirty
years, with four hundred francs wages she had earned twelve thousand
francs, from which she had taken only what was strictly necessary for
her wants; and increased, almost trebled, by the interest, her savings
amounted now to thirty thousand francs, which through a caprice, a
desire to have her money apart, she had not chosen to place with M.
Grandguillot. They were elsewhere, safely invested in the funds.

"Sous that lie sleeping are honest sous," she said gravely. "But
monsieur is right; I will tell the butcher to send a bill apart, as
all the brains are for monsieur's cookery and not for mine."

This explanation brought a smile to the face of Clotilde, who was
always amused by the jests about Martine's avarice; and the breakfast
ended more cheerfully. The doctor desired to take the coffee under the
plane trees, saying that he felt the need of air after being shut up
all the morning. The coffee was served then on the stone table beside
the fountain; and how pleasant it was there in the shade, listening to
the cool murmur of the water, while around, the pine wood, the court,
the whole place, were glowing in the early afternoon sun.

The doctor had complacently brought with him the vial of nerve
substance, which he looked at as it stood on the table.

"So, then, mademoiselle," he resumed, with an air of brusque
pleasantry, "you do not believe in my elixir of resurrection, and you
believe in miracles!"

"Master," responded Clotilde, "I believe that we do not know
everything."

He made a gesture of impatience.

"But we must know everything. Understand then, obstinate little girl,
that not a single deviation from the invariable laws which govern the
universe has ever been scientifically proved. Up to this day there has
been no proof of the existence of any intelligence other than the
human. I defy you to find any real will, any reasoning force, outside
of life. And everything is there; there is in the world no other will
than this force which impels everything to life, to a life ever
broader and higher."

He rose with a wave of the hand, animated by so firm a faith that she
regarded him in surprise, noticing how youthful he looked in spite of
his white hair.

"Do you wish me to repeat my 'Credo' for you, since you accuse me of
not wanting yours? I believe that the future of humanity is in the
progress of reason through science. I believe that the pursuit of
truth, through science, is the divine ideal which man should propose
to himself. I believe that all is illusion and vanity outside the
treasure of truths slowly accumulated, and which will never again be
lost. I believe that the sum of these truths, always increasing, will
at last confer on man incalculable power and peace, if not happiness.
Yes, I believe in the final triumph of life."

And with a broader sweep of the hand that took in the vast horizon, as
if calling on these burning plains in which fermented the saps of all
existences to bear him witness, he added:

"But the continual miracle, my child, is life. Only open your eyes,
and look."

She shook her head.

"It is in vain that I open my eyes; I cannot see everything. It is
you, master, who are blind, since you do not wish to admit that there
is beyond an unknown realm which you will never enter. Oh, I know you
are too intelligent to be ignorant of that! Only you do not wish to
take it into account; you put the unknown aside, because it would
embarrass you in your researches. It is in vain that you tell me to
put aside the mysterious; to start from the known for the conquest of
the unknown. I cannot; the mysterious at once calls me back and
disturbs me."

He listened to her, smiling, glad to see her become animated, while he
smoothed her fair curls with his hand.

"Yes, yes, I know you are like the rest; you do not wish to live
without illusions and without lies. Well, there, there; we understand
each other still, even so. Keep well; that is the half of wisdom and
of happiness."

Then, changing the conversation:

"Come, you will accompany me, notwithstanding, and help me in my round
of miracles. This is Thursday, my visiting day. When the heat shall
have abated a little, we will go out together."

She refused at first, in order not to seem to yield; but she at last
consented, seeing the pain she gave him. She was accustomed to
accompany him on his round of visits. They remained for some time
longer under the plane trees, until the doctor went upstairs to dress.
When he came down again, correctly attired in a close-fitting coat and
wearing a broad-brimmed silk hat, he spoke of harnessing Bonhomme, the
horse that for a quarter of a century had taken him on his visits
through the streets and the environs of Plassans. But the poor old
beast was growing blind, and through gratitude for his past services
and affection for himself they now rarely disturbed him. On this
afternoon he was very drowsy, his gaze wandered, his legs were stiff
with rheumatism. So that the doctor and the young girl, when they went
to the stable to see him, gave him a hearty kiss on either side of his
nose, telling him to rest on a bundle of fresh hay which the servant
had brought. And they decided to walk.

Clotilde, keeping on her spotted white muslin, merely tied on over her
curls a large straw hat adorned with a bunch of lilacs; and she looked
charming, with her large eyes and her complexion of milk-and-roses
under the shadow of its broad brim. When she went out thus on Pascal's
arm, she tall, slender, and youthful, he radiant, his face
illuminated, so to say, by the whiteness of his beard, with a vigor
that made him still lift her across the rivulets, people smiled as
they passed, and turned around to look at them again, they seemed so
innocent and so happy. On this day, as they left the road to Les
Fenouilleres to enter Plassans, a group of gossips stopped short in
their talk. It reminded one of one of those ancient kings one sees in
pictures; one of those powerful and gentle kings who never grew old,
resting his hand on the shoulder of a girl beautiful as the day, whose
docile and dazzling youth lends him its support.

They were turning into the Cours Sauvair to gain the Rue de la Banne,
when a tall, dark young man of about thirty stopped them.

"Ah, master, you have forgotten me. I am still waiting for your notes
on consumption."

It was Dr. Ramond, a young physician, who had settled two years before
at Plassans, where he was building up a fine practise. With a superb
head, in the brilliant prime of a gracious manhood, he was adored by
the women, but he had fortunately a great deal of good sense and a
great deal of prudence.

"Why, Ramond, good day! Not at all, my dear friend; I have not
forgotten you. It is this little girl, to whom I gave the notes
yesterday to copy, and who has not touched them yet."

The two young people shook hands with an air of cordial intimacy.

"Good day, Mlle. Clotilde."

"Good day, M. Ramond."

During a gastric fever, happily mild, which the young girl had had the
preceding year, Dr. Pascal had lost his head to the extent of
distrusting his own skill, and he had asked his young colleague to
assist him--to reassure him. Thus it was that an intimacy, a sort of
comradeship, had sprung up among the three.

"You shall have your notes to-morrow, I promise you," she said,
smiling.

Ramond walked on with them, however, until they reached the end of the
Rue de la Banne, at the entrance of the old quarter whither they were
going. And there was in the manner in which he leaned, smiling, toward
Clotilde, the revelation of a secret love that had grown slowly,
awaiting patiently the hour fixed for the most reasonable of
_denouements_. Besides, he listened with deference to Dr. Pascal,
whose works he admired greatly.

"And it just happens, my dear friend, that I am going to Guiraude's,
that woman, you know, whose husband, a tanner, died of consumption
five years ago. She has two children living--Sophie, a girl now going
on sixteen, whom I fortunately succeeded in having sent four years
before her father's death to a neighboring village, to one of her
aunts; and a son, Valentin, who has just completed his twenty-first
year, and whom his mother insisted on keeping with her through a blind
affection, notwithstanding that I warned her of the dreadful results
that might ensue. Well, see if I am right in asserting that
consumption is not hereditary, but only that consumptive parents
transmit to their children a degenerate soil, in which the disease
develops at the slightest contagion. Now, Valentin, who lived in daily
contact with his father, is consumptive, while Sophie, who grew up in
the open air, has superb health."

He added with a triumphant smile:

"But that will not prevent me, perhaps, from saving Valentin, for he
is visibly improved, and is growing fat since I have used my
injections with him. Ah, Ramond, you will come to them yet; you will
come to my injections!"

The young physician shook hands with both of them, saying:

"I don't say no. You know that I am always with you."

When they were alone they quickened their steps and were soon in the
Rue Canquoin, one of the narrowest and darkest streets of the old
quarter. Hot as was the sun, there reigned here the semi-obscurity and
the coolness of a cave. Here it was, on a ground floor, that Guiraude
lived with her son Valentin. She opened the door herself. She was a
thin, wasted-looking woman, who was herself affected with a slow
decomposition of the blood. From morning till night she crushed
almonds with the end of an ox-bone on a large paving stone, which she
held between her knees. This work was their only means of living, the
son having been obliged to give up all labor. She smiled, however,
to-day on seeing the doctor, for Valentin had just eaten a cutlet with
a good appetite, a thing which he had not done for months. Valentin, a
sickly-looking young man, with scanty hair and beard and prominent
cheek bones, on each of which was a bright red spot, while the rest of
his face was of a waxen hue, rose quickly to show how much more
sprightly he felt! And Clotilde was touched by the reception given to
Pascal as a saviour, the awaited Messiah. These poor people pressed
his hands--they would like to have kissed his feet; looking at him
with eyes shining with gratitude. True, the disease was not yet cured:
perhaps this was only the effect of the stimulus, perhaps what he felt
was only the excitement of fever. But was it not something to gain
time? He gave him another injection while Clotilde, standing before
the window, turned her back to them; and when they were leaving she
saw him lay twenty francs upon the table. This often happened to him,
to pay his patients instead of being paid by them.

He made three other visits in the old quarter, and then went to see a
lady in the new town. When they found themselves in the street again,
he said:

"Do you know that, if you were a courageous girl, we should walk to
Seguiranne, to see Sophie at her aunt's. That would give me pleasure."

The distance was scarcely three kilometers; that would be only a
pleasant walk in this delightful weather. And she agreed gaily, not
sulky now, but pressing close to him, happy to hang on his arm. It was
five o'clock. The setting sun spread over the fields a great sheet of
gold. But as soon as they left Plassans they were obliged to cross the
corner of the vast, arid plain, which extended to the right of the
Viorne. The new canal, whose irrigating waters were soon to transform
the face of the country parched with thirst, did not yet water this
quarter, and red fields and yellow fields stretched away into the
distance under the melancholy and blighting glare of the sun, planted
only with puny almond trees and dwarf olives, constantly cut down and
pruned, whose branches twisted and writhed in attitudes of suffering
and revolt. In the distance, on the bare hillsides, were to be seen
only like pale patches the country houses, flanked by the regulation
cypress. The vast, barren expanse, however, with broad belts of
desolate fields of hard and distinct coloring, had classic lines of a
severe grandeur. And on the road the dust lay twenty centimeters
thick, a dust like snow, that the slightest breath of wind raised in
broad, flying clouds, and that covered with white powder the fig trees
and the brambles on either side.

Clotilde, who amused herself like a child, listening to this dust
crackling under her little feet, wished to hold her parasol over
Pascal.

"You have the sun in your eyes. Lean a little this way."

But at last he took possession of the parasol, to hold it himself.

"It is you who do not hold it right; and then it tires you. Besides,
we are almost there now."

In the parched plain they could already perceive an island of verdure,
an enormous clump of trees. This was La Seguiranne, the farm on which
Sophie had grown up in the house of her Aunt Dieudonne, the wife of
the cross old man. Wherever there was a spring, wherever there was a
rivulet, this ardent soil broke out in rich vegetation; and then there
were walks bordered by trees, whose luxuriant foliage afforded a
delightful coolness and shade. Plane trees, chestnut trees, and young
elms grew vigorously. They entered an avenue of magnificent green
oaks.

As they approached the farm, a girl who was making hay in the meadow
dropped her fork and ran toward them. It was Sophie, who had
recognized the doctor and the young lady, as she called Clotilde. She
adored them, but she stood looking at them in confusion, unable to
express the glad greeting with which her heart overflowed. She
resembled her brother Valentin; she had his small stature, his
prominent cheek bones, his pale hair; but in the country, far from the
contagion of the paternal environment, she had, it seemed, gained
flesh; acquired with her robust limbs a firm step; her cheeks had
filled out, her hair had grown luxuriant. And she had fine eyes, which
shone with health and gratitude. Her Aunt Dieudonne, who was making
hay with her, had come toward them also, crying from afar jestingly,
with something of Provencal rudeness:

"Ah, M. Pascal, we have no need of you here! There is no one sick!"

The doctor, who had simply come in search of this fine spectacle of
health, answered in the same tone:

"I hope so, indeed. But that does not prevent this little girl here
from owing you and me a fine taper!"

"Well, that is the pure truth! And she knows it, M. Pascal. There is
not a day that she does not say that but for you she would be at this
time like her brother Valentin."

"Bah! We will save him, too. He is getting better, Valentin is. I have
just been to see him."

Sophie seized the doctor's hands; large tears stood in her eyes, and
she could only stammer:

"Oh, M. Pascal!"

How they loved him! And Clotilde felt her affection for him increase,
seeing the affection of all these people for him. They remained
chatting there for a few moments longer, in the salubrious shade of
the green oaks. Then they took the road back to Plassans, having still
another visit to make.

This was to a tavern, that stood at the crossing of two roads and was
white with the flying dust. A steam mill had recently been established
opposite, utilizing the old buildings of Le Paradou, an estate dating
from the last century, and Lafouasse, the tavern keeper, still carried
on his little business, thanks to the workmen at the mill and to the
peasants who brought their corn to it. He had still for customers on
Sundays the few inhabitants of Les Artauds, a neighboring hamlet. But
misfortune had struck him; for the last three years he had been
dragging himself about groaning with rheumatism, in which the doctor
had finally recognized the beginning of ataxia. But he had obstinately
refused to take a servant, persisting in waiting on his customers
himself, holding on by the furniture. So that once more firm on his
feet, after a dozen punctures, he already proclaimed his cure
everywhere.

He chanced to be just then at his door, and looked strong and
vigorous, with his tall figure, fiery face, and fiery red hair.

"I was waiting for you, M. Pascal. Do you know that I have been able
to bottle two casks of wine without being tired!"

Clotilde remained outside, sitting on a stone bench; while Pascal
entered the room to give Lafouasse the injection. She could hear them
speaking, and the latter, who in spite of his stoutness was very
cowardly in regard to pain, complained that the puncture hurt, adding,
however, that after all a little suffering was a small price to pay
for good health. Then he declared he would be offended if the doctor
did not take a glass of something. The young lady would not affront
him by refusing to take some syrup. He carried a table outside, and
there was nothing for it but they must touch glasses with him.

"To your health, M. Pascal, and to the health of all the poor devils
to whom you give back a relish for their victuals!"

Clotilde thought with a smile of the gossip of which Martine had
spoken to her, of Father Boutin, whom they accused the doctor of
having killed. He did not kill all his patients, then; his remedy
worked real miracles, since he brought back to life the consumptive
and the ataxic. And her faith in her master returned with the warm
affection for him which welled up in her heart. When they left
Lafouasse, she was once more completely his; he could do what he
willed with her.

But a few moments before, sitting on the stone bench looking at the
steam mill, a confused story had recurred to her mind; was it not here
in these smoke-blackened buildings, to-day white with flour, that a
drama of love had once been enacted? And the story came back to her;
details given by Martine; allusions made by the doctor himself; the
whole tragic love adventure of her cousin the Abbe Serge Mouret, then
rector of Les Artauds, with an adorable young girl of a wild and
passionate nature who lived at Le Paradou.

Returning by the same road Clotilde stopped, and pointing to the vast,
melancholy expanse of stubble fields, cultivated plains, and fallow
land, said:

"Master, was there not once there a large garden? Did you not tell me
some story about it?"

"Yes, yes; Le Paradou, an immense garden--woods, meadows, orchards,
parterres, fountains, and brooks that flowed into the Viorne. A garden
abandoned for an age; the garden of the Sleeping Beauty, returned to
Nature's rule. And as you see they have cut down the woods, and
cleared and leveled the ground, to divide it into lots, and sell it by
auction. The springs themselves have dried up. There is nothing there
now but that fever-breeding marsh. Ah, when I pass by here, it makes
my heart ache!"

She ventured to question him further:

"But was it not in Le Paradou that my cousin Serge and your great
friend Albine fell in love with each other?"

He had forgotten her presence. He went on talking, his gaze fixed on
space, lost in recollections of the past.

"Albine, my God! I can see her now, in the sunny garden, like a great,
fragrant bouquet, her head thrown back, her bosom swelling with joy,
happy in her flowers, with wild flowers braided among her blond
tresses, fastened at her throat, on her corsage, around her slender,
bare brown arms. And I can see her again, after she had asphyxiated
herself; dead in the midst of her flowers; very white, sleeping with
folded hands, and a smile on her lips, on her couch of hyacinths and
tuberoses. Dead for love; and how passionately Albine and Serge loved
each other, in the great garden their tempter, in the bosom of Nature
their accomplice! And what a flood of life swept away all false bonds,
and what a triumph of life!"

Clotilde, she too troubled by this passionate flow of murmured words,
gazed at him intently. She had never ventured to speak to him of
another story that she had heard--the story of the one love of his
life--a love which he had cherished in secret for a lady now dead. It
was said that he had attended her for a long time without ever so much
as venturing to kiss the tips of her fingers. Up to the present, up to
near sixty, study and his natural timidity had made him shun women.
But, notwithstanding, one felt that he was reserved for some great
passion, with his feelings still fresh and ardent, in spite of his
white hair.

"And the girl that died, the girl they mourned," she resumed, her
voice trembling, her cheeks scarlet, without knowing why. "Serge did
not love her, then, since he let her die?"

Pascal started as though awakening from a dream, seeing her beside him
in her youthful beauty, with her large, clear eyes shining under the
shadow of her broad-brimmed hat. Something had happened; the same
breath of life had passed through them both; they did not take each
other's arms again. They walked side by side.

"Ah, my dear, the world would be too beautiful, if men did not spoil
it all! Albine is dead, and Serge is now rector of St. Eutrope, where
he lives with his sister Desiree, a worthy creature who has the good
fortune to be half an idiot. He is a holy man; I have never said the
contrary. One may be an assassin and serve God."

And he went on speaking of the hard things of life, of the blackness
and execrableness of humanity, without losing his gentle smile. He
loved life; and the continuous work of life was a continual joy to him
in spite of all the evil, all the misery, that it might contain. It
mattered not how dreadful life might appear, it must be great and
good, since it was lived with so tenacious a will, for the purpose no
doubt of this will itself, and of the great work which it
unconsciously accomplished. True, he was a scientist, a clear-sighted
man; he did not believe in any idyllic humanity living in a world of
perpetual peace; he saw, on the contrary, its woes and its vices; he
had laid them bare; he had examined them; he had catalogued them for
thirty years past, but his passion for life, his admiration for the
forces of life, sufficed to produce in him a perpetual gaiety, whence
seemed to flow naturally his love for others, a fraternal compassion,
a sympathy, which were felt under the roughness of the anatomist and
under the affected impersonality of his studies.

"Bah!" he ended, taking a last glance at the vast, melancholy plains.
"Le Paradou is no more. They have sacked it, defiled it, destroyed it;
but what does that matter! Vines will be planted, corn will spring up,
a whole growth of new crops; and people will still fall in love in
vintages and harvests yet to come. Life is eternal; it is a perpetual
renewal of birth and growth."

He took her arm again and they returned to the town thus, arm in arm
like good friends, while the glow of the sunset was slowly fading away
in a tranquil sea of violets and roses. And seeing them both pass
again, the ancient king, powerful and gentle, leaning against the
shoulder of a charming and docile girl, supported by her youth, the
women of the faubourg, sitting at their doors, looked after them with
a smile of tender emotion.

At La Souleiade Martine was watching for them. She waved her hand to
them from afar. What! Were they not going to dine to-day? Then, when
they were near, she said:

"Ah! you will have to wait a little while. I did not venture to put on
my leg of mutton yet."

They remained outside to enjoy the charm of the closing day. The pine
grove, wrapped in shadow, exhaled a balsamic resinous odor, and from
the yard, still heated, in which a last red gleam was dying away, a
chillness arose. It was like an assuagement, a sigh of relief, a
resting of surrounding Nature, of the puny almond trees, the twisted
olives, under the paling sky, cloudless and serene; while at the back
of the house the clump of plane trees was a mass of black and
impenetrable shadows, where the fountain was heard singing its eternal
crystal song.

"Look!" said the doctor, "M. Bellombre has already dined, and he is
taking the air."

He pointed to a bench, on which a tall, thin old man of seventy was
sitting, with a long face, furrowed with wrinkles, and large, staring
eyes, and very correctly attired in a close-fitting coat and cravat.

"He is a wise man," murmured Clotilde. "He is happy."

"He!" cried Pascal. "I should hope not!"

He hated no one, and M. Bellombre, the old college professor, now
retired, and living in his little house without any other company than
that of a gardener who was deaf and dumb and older than himself, was
the only person who had the power to exasperate him.

"A fellow who has been afraid of life; think of that! afraid of life!
Yes, a hard and avaricious egotist! If he banished woman from his
existence, it was only through fear of having to pay for her shoes.
And he has known only the children of others, who have made him suffer
--hence his hatred of the child--that flesh made to be flogged. The
fear of life, the fear of burdens and of duties, of annoyances and of
catastrophes! The fear of life, which makes us through dread of its
sufferings refuse its joys. Ah! I tell you, this cowardliness enrages
me; I cannot forgive it. We must live--live a complete life--live all
our life. Better even suffering, suffering only, than such
renunciation--the death of all there is in us that is living and
human!"

M. Bellombre had risen, and was walking along one of the walks with
slow, tranquil steps. Then, Clotilde, who had been watching him in
silence, at last said:

"There is, however, the joy of renunciation. To renounce, not to live;
to keep one's self for the spiritual, has not this always been the
great happiness of the saints?"

"If they had not lived," cried Pascal, "they could not now be saints.
Let suffering come, and I will bless it, for it is perhaps the only
great happiness!"

But he felt that she rebelled against this; that he was going to lose
her again. At the bottom of our anxiety about the beyond is the secret
fear and hatred of life. So that he hastily assumed again his pleasant
smile, so affectionate and conciliating.

"No, no! Enough for to-day; let us dispute no more; let us love each
other dearly. And see! Martine is calling us, let us go in to dinner."

III.


For a month this unpleasant state of affairs continued, every day
growing worse, and Clotilde suffered especially at seeing that Pascal
now locked up everything. He had no longer the same tranquil
confidence in her as before, and this wounded her so deeply that, if
she had at any time found the press open, she would have thrown the
papers into the fire as her grandmother Felicite had urged her to do.
And the disagreements began again, so that they often remained without
speaking to each other for two days together.

One morning, after one of these misunderstandings which had lasted
since the day before, Martine said as she was serving the breakfast:

"Just now as I was crossing the Place de la Sous-Prefecture, I saw a
stranger whom I thought I recognized going into Mme. Felicite's house.
Yes, mademoiselle, I should not be surprised if it were your brother."

On the impulse of the moment, Pascal and Clotilde spoke.

"Your brother! Did your grandmother expect him, then?"

"No, I don't think so, though she has been expecting him at any time
for the past six months, I know that she wrote to him again a week
ago."

They questioned Martine.

"Indeed, monsieur, I cannot say; since I last saw M. Maxime four years
ago, when he stayed two hours with us on his way to Italy, he may
perhaps have changed greatly--I thought, however, that I recognized
his back."

The conversation continued, Clotilde seeming to be glad of this event,
which broke at last the oppressive silence between them, and Pascal
ended:

"Well, if it is he, he will come to see us."

It was indeed Maxime. He had yielded, after months of refusal, to the
urgent solicitations of old Mme. Rougon, who had still in this quarter
an open family wound to heal. The trouble was an old one, and it grew
worse every day.

Fifteen years before, when he was seventeen, Maxime had had a child by
a servant whom he had seduced. His father Saccard, and his stepmother
Renee--the latter vexed more especially at his unworthy choice--had
acted in the matter with indulgence. The servant, Justine Megot,
belonged to one of the neighboring villages, and was a fair-haired
girl, also seventeen, gentle and docile; and they had sent her back to
Plassans, with an allowance of twelve hundred francs a year, to bring
up little Charles. Three years later she had married there a
harness-maker of the faubourg, Frederic Thomas by name, a good workman
and a sensible fellow, who was tempted by the allowance. For the rest
her conduct was now most exemplary, she had grown fat, and she
appeared to be cured of a cough that had threatened a hereditary
malady due to the alcoholic propensities of a long line of
progenitors. And two other children born of her marriage, a boy who
was now ten and a girl who was seven, both plump and rosy, enjoyed
perfect health; so that she would have been the most respected and the
happiest of women, if it had not been for the trouble which Charles
caused in the household. Thomas, notwithstanding the allowance,
execrated this son of another man and gave him no peace, which made
the mother suffer in secret, being an uncomplaining and submissive
wife. So that, although she adored him, she would willingly have given
him up to his father's family.

Charles, at fifteen, seemed scarcely twelve, and he had the infantine
intelligence of a child of five, resembling in an extraordinary degree
his great-great-grandmother, Aunt Dide, the madwoman at the Tulettes.
He had the slender and delicate grace of one of those bloodless little
kings with whom a race ends, crowned with their long, fair locks,
light as spun silk. His large, clear eyes were expressionless, and on
his disquieting beauty lay the shadow of death. And he had neither
brain nor heart--he was nothing but a vicious little dog, who rubbed
himself against people to be fondled. His great-grandmother Felicite,
won by this beauty, in which she affected to recognize her blood, had
at first put him in a boarding school, taking charge of him, but he
had been expelled from it at the end of six months for misconduct.
Three times she had changed his boarding school, and each time he had
been expelled in disgrace. Then, as he neither would nor could learn
anything, and as his health was declining rapidly, they kept him at
home, sending him from one to another of the family. Dr. Pascal, moved
to pity, had tried to cure him, and had abandoned the hopeless task
only after he had kept him with him for nearly a year, fearing the
companionship for Clotilde. And now, when Charles was not at his
mother's, where he scarcely ever lived at present, he was to be found
at the house of Felicite, or that of some other relative, prettily
dressed, laden with toys, living like the effeminate little dauphin of
an ancient and fallen race.

Old Mme. Rougon, however, suffered because of this bastard, and she
had planned to get him away from the gossiping tongues of Plassans, by
persuading Maxime to take him and keep him with him in Paris. It would
still be an ugly story of the fallen family. But Maxime had for a long
time turned a deaf ear to her solicitations, in the fear which
continually haunted him of spoiling his life. After the war, enriched
by the death of his wife, he had come back to live prudently on his
fortune in his mansion on the avenue of the Bois de Boulogne,
tormented by the hereditary malady of which he was to die young,
having gained from his precocious debauchery a salutary fear of
pleasure, resolved above all to shun emotions and responsibilities, so
that he might last as long as possible. Acute pains in the limbs,
rheumatic he thought them, had been alarming him for some time past;
he saw himself in fancy already an invalid tied down to an easy-chair;
and his father's sudden return to France, the fresh activity which
Saccard was putting forth, completed his disquietude. He knew well
this devourer of millions; he trembled at finding him again bustling
about him with his good-humored, malicious laugh. He felt that he was
being watched, and he had the conviction that he would be cut up and
devoured if he should be for a single day at his mercy, rendered
helpless by the pains which were invading his limbs. And so great a
fear of solitude had taken possession of him that he had now yielded
to the idea of seeing his son again. If he found the boy gentle,
intelligent, and healthy, why should he not take him to live with him?
He would thus have a companion, an heir, who would protect him against
the machinations of his father. Gradually he came to see himself, in
his selfish forethought, loved, petted, and protected; yet for all
that he might not have risked such a journey, if his physician had not
just at that time sent him to the waters of St. Gervais. Thus, having
to go only a few leagues out of his way, he had dropped in
unexpectedly that morning on old Mme. Rougon, firmly resolved to take
the train again in the evening, after having questioned her and seen
the boy.

At two o'clock Pascal and Clotilde were still beside the fountain
under the plane trees where they had taken their coffee, when Felicite
arrived with Maxime.

"My dear, here's a surprise! I have brought you your brother."

Startled, the young girl had risen, seeing this thin and sallow
stranger, whom she scarcely recognized. Since their parting in 1854
she had seen him only twice, once at Paris and again at Plassans. Yet
his image, refined, elegant, and vivacious, had remained engraven on
her mind; his face had grown hollow, his hair was streaked with silver
threads. But notwithstanding, she found in him still, with his
delicately handsome head, a languid grace, like that of a girl, even
in his premature decrepitude.

"How well you look!" he said simply, as he embraced his sister.

"But," she responded, "to be well one must live in the sunshine. Ah,
how happy it makes me to see you again!"

Pascal, with the eye of the physician, had examined his nephew
critically. He embraced him in his turn.

"Goodday, my boy. And she is right, mind you; one can be well only out
in the sunshine--like the trees."

Felicite had gone hastily to the house. She returned, crying:

"Charles is not here, then?"

"No," said Clotilde. "We went to see him yesterday. Uncle Macquart has
taken him, and he is to remain for a few days at the Tulettes."

Felicite was in despair. She had come only in the certainty of finding
the boy at Pascal's. What was to be done now? The doctor, with his
tranquil air, proposed to write to Uncle Macquart, who would bring him
back in the morning. But when he learned that Maxime wished positively
to go away again by the nine o'clock train, without remaining over
night, another idea occurred to him. He would send to the livery
stable for a landau, and all four would go to see Charles at Uncle
Macquart's. It would even be a delightful drive. It was not quite
three leagues from Plassans to the Tulettes--an hour to go, and an
hour to return, and they would still have almost two hours to remain
there, if they wished to be back by seven. Martine would get dinner,
and Maxime would have time enough to dine and catch his train.

But Felicite objected, visibly disquieted by this visit to Macquart.

"Oh, no, indeed! If you think I am going down there in this frightful
weather, you are mistaken. It is much simpler to send some one to
bring Charles to us."

Pascal shook his head. Charles was not always to be brought back when
one wished. He was a boy without reason, who sometimes, if the whim
seized him, would gallop off like an untamed animal. And old Mme.
Rougon, overruled and furious at having been unable to make any
preparation, was at last obliged to yield, in the necessity in which
she found herself of leaving the matter to chance.

"Well, be it as you wish, then! Good Heavens, how unfortunately things
have turned out!"

Martine hurried away to order the landau, and before three o'clock had
struck the horses were on the Nice road, descending the declivity
which slopes down to the bridge over the Viorne. Then they turned to
the left, and followed the wooded banks of the river for about two
miles. After this the road entered the gorges of the Seille, a narrow
pass between two giant walls of rock scorched by the ardent rays of
the summer sun. Pine trees pushed their way through the clefts; clumps
of trees, scarcely thicker at the roots than tufts of grass, fringed
the crests and hung over the abyss. It was a chaos; a blasted
landscape, a mouth of hell, with its wild turns, its droppings of
blood-colored earth sliding down from every cut, its desolate solitude
invaded only by the eagles' flight.

Felicite did not open her lips; her brain was at work, and she seemed
completely absorbed in her thoughts. The atmosphere was oppressive,
the sun sent his burning rays from behind a veil of great livid
clouds. Pascal was almost the only one who talked, in his passionate
love for this scorched land--a love which he endeavored to make his
nephew share. But it was in vain that he uttered enthusiastic
exclamations, in vain that he called his attention to the persistence
of the olives, the fig trees, and the thorn bushes in pushing through
the rock; the life of the rock itself, that colossal and puissant
frame of the earth, from which they could almost fancy they heard a
sound of breathing arise. Maxime remained cold, filled with a secret
anguish in presence of those blocks of savage majesty, whose mass
seemed to crush him. And he preferred to turn his eyes toward his
sister, who was seated in front of him. He was becoming more and more
charmed with her. She looked so healthy and so happy, with her pretty
round head, with its straight, well-molded forehead. Now and then
their glances met, and she gave him an affectionate smile which
consoled him.

But the wildness of the gorge was beginning to soften, the two walls
of rock to grow lower; they passed between two peaceful hills, with
gentle slopes covered with thyme and lavender. It was the desert
still, there were still bare spaces, green or violet hued, from which
the faintest breeze brought a pungent perfume.

Then abruptly, after a last turn they descended to the valley of the
Tulettes, which was refreshed by springs. In the distance stretched
meadows dotted by large trees. The village was seated midway on the
slope, among olive trees, and the country house of Uncle Macquart
stood a little apart on the left, full in view. The landau turned into
the road which led to the insane asylum, whose white walls they could
see before them in the distance.

Felicite's silence had grown somber, for she was not fond of
exhibiting Uncle Macquart. Another whom the family would be well rid
of the day when he should take his departure. For the credit of every
one he ought to have been sleeping long ago under the sod. But he
persisted in living, he carried his eighty-three years well, like an
old drunkard saturated with liquor, whom the alcohol seemed to
preserve. At Plassans he had left a terrible reputation as a
do-nothing and a scoundrel, and the old men whispered the execrable
story of the corpses that lay between him and the Rougons, an act of
treachery in the troublous days of December, 1851, an ambuscade in
which he had left comrades with their bellies ripped open, lying on
the bloody pavement. Later, when he had returned to France, he had
preferred to the good place of which he had obtained the promise this
little domain of the Tulettes, which Felicite had bought for him. And
he had lived comfortably here ever since; he had no longer any other
ambition than that of enlarging it, looking out once more for the good
chances, and he had even found the means of obtaining a field which he
had long coveted, by making himself useful to his sister-in-law at the
time when the latter again reconquered Plassans from the legitimists--
another frightful story that was whispered also, of a madman secretly
let loose from the asylum, running in the night to avenge himself,
setting fire to his house in which four persons were burned. But these
were old stories and Macquart, settled down now, was no longer the
redoubtable scoundrel who had made all the family tremble. He led a
perfectly correct life; he was a wily diplomat, and he had retained
nothing of his air of jeering at the world but his bantering smile.

"Uncle is at home," said Pascal, as they approached the house.

This was one of those Provencal structures of a single story, with
discolored tiles and four walls washed with a bright yellow. Before
the facade extended a narrow terrace shaded by ancient mulberry trees,
whose thick, gnarled branches drooped down, forming an arbor. It was
here that Uncle Macquart smoked his pipe in the cool shade, in summer.
And on hearing the sound of the carriage, he came and stood at the
edge of the terrace, straightening his tall form neatly clad in blue
cloth, his head covered with the eternal fur cap which he wore from
one year's end to the other.

As soon as he recognized his visitors, he called out with a sneer:

"Oh, here come some fine company! How kind of you; you are out for an
airing."

But the presence of Maxime puzzled him. Who was he? Whom had he come
to see? They mentioned his name to him, and he immediately cut short
the explanations they were adding, to enable him to straighten out the
tangled skein of relationship.

"The father of Charles--I know, I know! The son of my nephew Saccard,
_pardi_! the one who made a fine marriage, and whose wife died--"

He stared at Maxime, seeming happy to find him already wrinkled at
thirty-two, with his hair and beard sprinkled with snow.

"Ah, well!" he added, "we are all growing old. But I, at least, have
no great reason to complain. I am solid."

And he planted himself firmly on his legs with his air of ferocious
mockery, while his fiery red face seemed to flame and burn. For a long
time past ordinary brandy had seemed to him like pure water; only
spirits of 36 degrees tickled his blunted palate; and he took such
draughts of it that he was full of it--his flesh saturated with it--
like a sponge. He perspired alcohol. At the slightest breath whenever
he spoke, he exhaled from his mouth a vapor of alcohol.

"Yes, truly; you are solid, uncle!" said Pascal, amazed. "And you have
done nothing to make you so; you have good reason to ridicule us. Only
there is one thing I am afraid of, look you, that some day in lighting
your pipe, you may set yourself on fire--like a bowl of punch."

Macquart, flattered, gave a sneering laugh.

"Have your jest, have your jest, my boy! A glass of cognac is worth
more than all your filthy drugs. And you will all touch glasses with
me, hey? So that it may be said truly that your uncle is a credit to
you all. As for me, I laugh at evil tongues. I have corn and olive
trees, I have almond trees and vines and land, like any _bourgeois_.
In summer I smoke my pipe under the shade of my mulberry trees; in
winter I go to smoke it against my wall, there in the sunshine. One
has no need to blush for an uncle like that, hey? Clotilde, I have
syrup, if you would like some. And you, Felicite, my dear, I know that
you prefer anisette. There is everything here, I tell you, there is
everything here!"

He waved his arm as if to take possession of the comforts he enjoyed,
now that from an old sinner he had become a hermit, while Felicite,
whom he had disturbed a moment before by the enumeration of his
riches, did not take her eyes from his face, waiting to interrupt him.

"Thank you, Macquart, we will take nothing; we are in a hurry. Where
is Charles?"

"Charles? Very good, presently! I understand, papa has come to see his
boy. But that is not going to prevent you taking a glass."

And as they positively refused he became offended, and said, with his
malicious laugh:

"Charles is not here; he is at the asylum with the old woman."

Then, taking Maxime to the end of the terrace, he pointed out to him
the great white buildings, whose inner gardens resembled prison yards.

"Look, nephew, you see those three trees in front of you? Well, beyond
the one to the left, there is a fountain in a court. Follow the ground
floor, and the fifth window to the right is Aunt Dide's. And that is
where the boy is. Yes, I took him there a little while ago."

This was an indulgence of the directors. In the twenty years that she
had been in the asylum the old woman had not given a moment's
uneasiness to her keeper. Very quiet, very gentle, she passed the days
motionless in her easy-chair, looking straight before her; and as the
boy liked to be with her, and as she herself seemed to take an
interest in him, they shut their eyes to this infraction of the rules
and left him there sometimes for two or three hours at a time, busily
occupied in cutting out pictures.

But this new disappointment put the finishing stroke to Felicite's
ill-humor; she grew angry when Macquart proposed that all five should
go in a body in search of the boy.

"What an idea! Go you alone, and come back quickly. We have no time to
lose."

Her suppressed rage seemed to amuse Uncle Macquart, and perceiving how
disagreeable his proposition was to her, he insisted, with his
sneering laugh:

"But, my children, we should at the same time have an opportunity of
seeing the old mother; the mother of us all. There is no use in
talking; you know that we are all descended from her, and it would
hardly be polite not to go wish her a good-day, when my grandnephew,
who has come from such a distance, has perhaps never before had a good
look at her. I'll not disown her, may the devil take me if I do. To be
sure she is mad, but all the same, old mothers who have passed their
hundredth year are not often to be seen, and she well deserves that we
should show ourselves a little kind to her."

There was silence for a moment. A little shiver had run through every
one. And it was Clotilde, silent until now, who first declared in a
voice full of feeling:

"You are right, uncle; we will all go."

Felicite herself was obliged to consent. They re-entered the landau,
Macquart taking the seat beside the coachman. A feeling of disquietude
had given a sallow look to Maxime's worn face; and during the short
drive he questioned Pascal concerning Charles with an air of paternal
interest, which concealed a growing anxiety. The doctor constrained by
his mother's imperious glances, softened the truth. Well, the boy's
health was certainly not very robust; it was on that account, indeed,
that they were glad to leave him for weeks together in the country
with his uncle: but he had no definite disease. Pascal did not add
that he had for a moment cherished the dream of giving him a brain and
muscles by treating him with his hypodermic injections of nerve
substance, but that he had always been met by the same difficulty; the
slightest puncture brought on a hemorrhage which it was found
necessary to stop by compresses; there was a laxness of the tissues,
due to degeneracy; a bloody dew which exuded from the skin; he had
especially, bleedings at the nose so sudden and so violent that they
did not dare to leave him alone, fearing lest all the blood in his
veins should flow out. And the doctor ended by saying that although
the boy's intelligence had been sluggish, he still hoped that it would
develop in an environment of quicker mental activity.

They arrived at the asylum and Macquart, who had been listening to the
doctor, descended from his seat, saying:

"He is a gentle little fellow, a very gentle little fellow! And then,
he is so beautiful--an angel!"

Maxime, who was still pale, and who shivered in spite of the stifling
heat, put no more questions. He looked at the vast buildings of the
asylum, the wings of the various quarters separated by gardens, the
men's quarters from those of the women, those of the harmless insane
from those of the violent insane. A scrupulous cleanliness reigned
everywhere, a gloomy silence--broken from time to time by footsteps
and the noise of keys. Old Macquart knew all the keepers. Besides, the
doors were always to open to Dr. Pascal, who had been authorized to
attend certain of the inmates. They followed a passage and entered a
court; it was here--one of the chambers on the ground floor, a room
covered with a light carpet, furnished with a bed, a press, a table,
an armchair, and two chairs. The nurse, who had orders never to quit
her charge, happened just now to be absent, and the only occupants of
the room were the madwoman, sitting rigid in her armchair at one side
of the table, and the boy, sitting on a chair on the opposite side,
absorbed in cutting out his pictures.

"Go in, go in!" Macquart repeated. "Oh, there is no danger, she is
very gentle!"

The grandmother, Adelaide Fouque, whom her grandchildren, a whole
swarm of descendants, called by the pet name of Aunt Dide, did not
even turn her head at the noise. In her youth hysterical troubles had
unbalanced her mind. Of an ardent and passionate nature and subject to
nervous attacks, she had yet reached the great age of eighty-three
when a dreadful grief, a terrible moral shock, destroyed her reason.
At that time, twenty-one years before, her mind had ceased to act; it
had become suddenly weakened without the possibility of recovery. And
now, at the age of 104 years, she lived here as if forgotten by the
world, a quiet madwoman with an ossified brain, with whom insanity
might remain stationary for an indefinite length of time without
causing death. Old age had come, however, and had gradually atrophied
her muscles. Her flesh was as if eaten away by age. The skin only
remained on her bones, so that she had to be carried from her chair to
her bed, for it had become impossible for her to walk or even to move.
And yet she held herself erect against the back of her chair, a
yellow, dried-up skeleton--like an ancient tree of which the bark only
remains--with only her eyes still living in her thin, long visage, in
which the wrinkles had been, so to say, worn away. She was looking
fixedly at Charles.

Clotilde approached her a little tremblingly.

"Aunt Dide, it is we; we have come to see you. Don't you know me,
then? Your little girl who comes sometimes to kiss you."

But the madwoman did not seem to hear. Her eyes remained fixed upon
the boy, who was finishing cutting out a picture--a purple king in a
golden mantle.

"Come, mamma," said Macquart, "don't pretend to be stupid. You may
very well look at us. Here is a gentleman, a grandson of yours, who
has come from Paris expressly to see you."

At this voice Aunt Dide at last turned her head. Her clear,
expressionless eyes wandered slowly from one to another, then rested
again on Charles with the same fixed look as before.

They all shivered, and no one spoke again.

"Since the terrible shock she received," explained Pascal in a low
voice, "she has been that way; all intelligence, all memory seem
extinguished in her. For the most part she is silent; at times she
pours forth a flood of stammering and indistinct words. She laughs and
cries without cause, she is a thing that nothing affects. And yet I
should not venture to say that the darkness of her mind is complete,
that no memories remain stored up in its depths. Ah! the poor old
mother, how I pity her, if the light has not yet been finally
extinguished. What can her thoughts have been for the last twenty-one
years, if she still remembers?"

With a gesture he put this dreadful past which he knew from him. He
saw her again young, a tall, pale, slender girl with frightened eyes,
a widow, after fifteen months of married life with Rougon, the clumsy
gardener whom she had chosen for a husband, throwing herself
immediately afterwards into the arms of the smuggler Macquart, whom
she loved with a wolfish love, and whom she did not even marry. She
had lived thus for fifteen years, with her three children, one the
child of her marriage, the other two illegitimate, a capricious and
tumultuous existence, disappearing for weeks at a time, and returning
all bruised, her arms black and blue. Then Macquart had been killed,
shot down like a dog by a _gendarme_; and the first shock had
paralyzed her, so that even then she retained nothing living but her
water-clear eyes in her livid face; and she shut herself up from the
world in the hut which her lover had left her, leading there for forty
years the dead existence of a nun, broken by terrible nervous attacks.
But the other shock was to finish her, to overthrow her reason, and
Pascal recalled the atrocious scene, for he had witnessed it--a poor
child whom the grandmother had taken to live with her, her grandson
Silvere, the victim of family hatred and strife, whose head another
_gendarme_ shattered with a pistol shot, at the suppression of the
insurrectionary movement of 1851. She was always to be bespattered
with blood.

Felicite, meanwhile, had approached Charles, who was so engrossed with
his pictures that all these people did not disturb him.

"My darling, this gentleman is your father. Kiss him," she said.

And then they all occupied themselves with Charles. He was very
prettily dressed in a jacket and short trousers of black velvet,
braided with gold cord. Pale as a lily, he resembled in truth one of
those king's sons whose pictures he was cutting out, with his large,
light eyes and his shower of fair curls. But what especially struck
the attention at this moment was his resemblance to Aunt Dide; this
resemblance which had overleaped three generations, which had passed
from this withered centenarian's countenance, from these dead features
wasted by life, to this delicate child's face that was also as if
worn, aged, and wasted, through the wear of the race. Fronting each
other, the imbecile child of a deathlike beauty seemed the last of the
race of which she, forgotten by the world, was the ancestress.

Maxime bent over to press a kiss on the boy's forehead; and a chill
struck to his heart--this very beauty disquieted him; his uneasiness
grew in this chamber of madness, whence, it seemed to him, breathed a
secret horror come from the far-off past.

"How beautiful you are, my pet! Don't you love me a little?"

Charles looked at him without comprehending, and went back to his
play.

But all were chilled. Without the set expression of her countenance
changing Aunt Dide wept, a flood of tears rolled from her living eyes
over her dead cheeks. Her gaze fixed immovably upon the boy, she wept
slowly, endlessly. A great thing had happened.

And now an extraordinary emotion took possession of Pascal. He caught
Clotilde by the arm and pressed it hard, trying to make her
understand. Before his eyes appeared the whole line, the legitimate
branch and the bastard branch, which had sprung from this trunk
already vitiated by neurosis. Five generations were there present--the
Rougons and the Macquarts, Adelaide Fouque at the root, then the
scoundrelly old uncle, then himself, then Clotilde and Maxime, and
lastly, Charles. Felicite occupied the place of her dead husband.
There was no link wanting; the chain of heredity, logical and
implacable, was unbroken. And what a world was evoked from the depths
of the tragic cabin which breathed this horror that came from the
far-off past in such appalling shape that every one, notwithstanding
the oppressive heat, shivered.

"What is it, master?" whispered Clotilde, trembling.

"No, no, nothing!" murmured the doctor. "I will tell you later."

Macquart, who alone continued to sneer, scolded the old mother. What
an idea was hers, to receive people with tears when they put
themselves out to come and make her a visit. It was scarcely polite.
And then he turned to Maxime and Charles.

"Well, nephew, you have seen your boy at last. Is it not true that he
is pretty, and that he is a credit to you, after all?"

Felicite hastened to interfere. Greatly dissatisfied with the turn
which affairs were taking, she was now anxious only to get away.

"He is certainly a handsome boy, and less backward than people think.
Just see how skilful he is with his hands. And you will see when you
have brightened him up in Paris, in a different way from what we have
been able to do at Plassans, eh?"

"No doubt," murmured Maxime. "I do not say no; I will think about it."

He seemed embarrassed for a moment, and then added:

"You know I came only to see him. I cannot take him with me now as I
am to spend a month at St. Gervais. But as soon as I return to Paris I
will think of it, I will write to you."

Then, taking out his watch, he cried:

"The devil! Half-past five. You know that I would not miss the nine
o'clock train for anything in the world."

"Yes, yes, let us go," said Felicite brusquely. "We have nothing more
to do here."

Macquart, whom his sister-in-law's anger seemed still to divert,
endeavored to delay them with all sorts of stories. He told of the
days when Aunt Dide talked, and he affirmed that he had found her one
morning singing a romance of her youth. And then he had no need of the
carriage, he would take the boy back on foot, since they left him to
him.

"Kiss your papa, my boy, for you know now that you see him, but you
don't know whether you shall ever see him again or not."

With the same surprised and indifferent movement Charles raised his
head, and Maxime, troubled, pressed another kiss on his forehead.

"Be very good and very pretty, my pet. And love me a little."

"Come, come, we have no time to lose," repeated Felicite.

But the keeper here re-entered the room. She was a stout, vigorous
girl, attached especially to the service of the madwoman. She carried
her to and from her bed, night and morning; she fed her and took care
of her like a child. And she at once entered into conversation with
Dr. Pascal, who questioned her. One of the doctor's most cherished
dreams was to cure the mad by his treatment of hypodermic injections.
Since in their case it was the brain that was in danger, why should
not hypodermic injections of nerve substance give them strength and
will, repairing the breaches made in the organ? So that for a moment
he had dreamed of trying the treatment with the old mother; then he
began to have scruples, he felt a sort of awe, without counting that
madness at that age was total, irreparable ruin. So that he had chosen
another subject--a hatter named Sarteur, who had been for a year past
in the asylum, to which he had come himself to beg them to shut him up
to prevent him from committing a crime. In his paroxysms, so strong an
impulse to kill seized him that he would have thrown himself upon the
first passer-by. He was of small stature, very dark, with a retreating
forehead, an aquiline face with a large nose and a very short chin,
and his left cheek was noticeably larger than his right. And the
doctor had obtained miraculous results with this victim of emotional
insanity, who for a month past had had no attack. The nurse, indeed
being questioned, answered that Sarteur had become quiet and was
growing better every day.

"Do you hear, Clotilde?" cried Pascal, enchanted. "I have not the time
to see him this evening, but I will come again to-morrow. It is my
visiting day. Ah, if I only dared; if she were young still--"

His eyes turned toward Aunt Dide. But Clotilde, whom his enthusiasm
made smile, said gently:

"No, no, master, you cannot make life anew. There, come. We are the
last."

It was true; the others had already gone. Macquart, on the threshold,
followed Felicite and Maxime with his mocking glance as they went
away. Aunt Dide, the forgotten one, sat motionless, appalling in her
leanness, her eyes again fixed upon Charles with his white, worn face
framed in his royal locks.

The drive back was full of constraint. In the heat which exhaled from
the earth, the landau rolled on heavily to the measured trot of the
horses. The stormy sky took on an ashen, copper-colored hue in the
deepening twilight. At first a few indifferent words were exchanged;
but from the moment in which they entered the gorges of the Seille all
conversation ceased, as if they felt oppressed by the menacing walls
of giant rock that seemed closing in upon them. Was not this the end
of the earth, and were they not going to roll into the unknown, over
the edge of some abyss? An eagle soared by, uttering a shrill cry.

Willows appeared again, and the carriage was rolling lightly along the
bank of the Viorne, when Felicite began without transition, as if she
were resuming a conversation already commenced.

"You have no refusal to fear from the mother. She loves Charles
dearly, but she is a very sensible woman, and she understands
perfectly that it is to the boy's advantage that you should take him
with you. And I must tell you, too, that the poor boy is not very
happy with her, since, naturally, the husband prefers his own son and
daughter. For you ought to know everything."

And she went on in this strain, hoping, no doubt, to persuade Maxime
and draw a formal promise from him. She talked until they reached
Plassans. Then, suddenly, as the landau rolled over the pavement of
the faubourg, she said:

"But look! there is his mother. That stout blond at the door there."

At the threshold of a harness-maker's shop hung round with horse
trappings and halters, Justine sat, knitting a stocking, taking the
air, while the little girl and boy were playing on the ground at her
feet. And behind them in the shadow of the shop was to be seen Thomas,
a stout, dark man, occupied in repairing a saddle.

Maxime leaned forward without emotion, simply curious. He was greatly
surprised at sight of this robust woman of thirty-two, with so
sensible and so commonplace an air, in whom there was not a trace of
the wild little girl with whom he had been in love when both of the
same age were entering their seventeenth year. Perhaps a pang shot
through his heart to see her plump and tranquil and blooming, while he
was ill and already aged.

"I should never have recognized her," he said.

And the landau, still rolling on, turned into the Rue de Rome. Justine
had disappeared; this vision of the past--a past so different from the
present--had sunk into the shadowy twilight, with Thomas, the
children, and the shop.

At La Souleiade the table was set; Martine had an eel from the Viorne,
a _sauted_ rabbit, and a leg of mutton. Seven o'clock was striking,
and they had plenty of time to dine quietly.

"Don't be uneasy," said Dr. Pascal to his nephew. "We will accompany
you to the station; it is not ten minutes' walk from here. As you left
your trunk, you have nothing to do but to get your ticket and jump on
board the train."

Then, meeting Clotilde in the vestibule, where she was hanging up her
hat and her umbrella, he said to her in an undertone:

"Do you know that I am uneasy about your brother?"

"Why so?"

"I have observed him attentively. I don't like the way in which he
walks; and have you noticed what an anxious look he has at times? That
has never deceived me. In short, your brother is threatened with
ataxia."

"Ataxia!" she repeated turning very pale.

A cruel image rose before her, that of a neighbor, a man still young,
whom for the past ten years she had seen driven about in a little
carriage by a servant. Was not this infirmity the worst of all ills,
the ax stroke that separates a living being from social and active
life?

"But," she murmured, "he complains only of rheumatism."

Pascal shrugged his shoulders; and putting a finger to his lip he went
into the dining-room, where Felicite and Maxime were seated.

The dinner was very friendly. The sudden disquietude which had sprung
up in Clotilde's heart made her still more affectionate to her
brother, who sat beside her. She attended to his wants gayly, forcing
him to take the most delicate morsels. Twice she called back Martine,
who was passing the dishes too quickly. And Maxime was more and more
enchanted by this sister, who was so good, so healthy, so sensible,
whose charm enveloped him like a caress. So greatly was he captivated
by her that gradually a project, vague at first, took definite shape
within him. Since little Charles, his son, terrified him so greatly
with his deathlike beauty, his royal air of sickly imbecility, why
should he not take his sister Clotilde to live with him? The idea of
having a woman in his house alarmed him, indeed, for he was afraid of
all women, having had too much experience of them in his youth; but
this one seemed to him truly maternal. And then, too, a good woman in
his house would make a change in it, which would be a desirable thing.
He would at least be left no longer at the mercy of his father, whom
he suspected of desiring his death so that he might get possession of
his money at once. His hatred and terror of his father decided him.

"Don't you think of marrying, then?" he asked, wishing to try the
ground.

The young girl laughed.

"Oh, there is no hurry," she answered.

Then, suddenly, looking at Pascal, who had raised his head, she added:

"How can I tell? Oh, I shall never marry."

But Felicite protested. When she saw her so attached to the doctor,
she often wished for a marriage that would separate her from him, that
would leave her son alone in a deserted home, where she herself might
become all powerful, mistress of everything. Therefore she appealed to
him. Was it not true that a woman ought to marry, that it was against
nature to remain an old maid?

And he gravely assented, without taking his eyes from Clotilde's face.

"Yes, yes, she must marry. She is too sensible not to marry."

"Bah!" interrupted Maxime, "would it be really sensible in her to
marry? In order to be unhappy, perhaps; there are so many ill-assorted
marriages!"

And coming to a resolution, he added:

"Don't you know what you ought to do? Well, you ought to come and live
with me in Paris. I have thought the matter over. The idea of taking
charge of a child in my state of health terrifies me. Am I not a child
myself, an invalid who needs to be taken care of? You will take care
of me; you will be with me, if I should end by losing the use of my
limbs."

There was a sound of tears in his voice, so great a pity did he feel
for himself. He saw himself, in fancy, sick; he saw his sister at his
bedside, like a Sister of Charity; if she consented to remain
unmarried he would willingly leave her his fortune, so that his father
might not have it. The dread which he had of solitude, the need in
which he should perhaps stand of having a sick-nurse, made him very
pathetic.

"It would be very kind on your part, and you should have no cause to
repent it."

Martine, who was serving the mutton, stopped short in surprise; and
the proposition caused the same surprise at the table. Felicite was
the first to approve, feeling that the girl's departure would further
her plans. She looked at Clotilde, who was still silent and stunned,
as it were; while Dr. Pascal waited with a pale face.

"Oh, brother, brother," stammered the young girl, unable at first to
think of anything else to say.

Then her grandmother cried:

"Is that all you have to say? Why, the proposition your brother has
just made you is a very advantageous one. If he is afraid of taking
Charles now, why, you can go with him, and later on you can send for
the child. Come, come, that can be very well arranged. Your brother
makes an appeal to your heart. Is it not true, Pascal, that she owes
him a favorable answer?"

The doctor, by an effort, recovered his self-possession. The chill
that had seized him made itself felt, however, in the slowness with
which he spoke.

"The offer, in effect, is very kind. Clotilde, as I said before, is
very sensible and she will accept it, if it is right that she should
do so."

The young girl, greatly agitated, rebelled at this.

"Do you wish to send me away, then, master? Maxime is very good, and I
thank him from the bottom of my heart. But to leave everything, my
God! To leave all that love me, all that I have loved until now!"

She made a despairing gesture, indicating the place and the people,
taking in all La Souleiade.

"But," responded Pascal, looking at her fixedly, "what if Maxime
should need you, what if you had a duty to fulfil toward him?"

Her eyes grew moist, and she remained for a moment trembling and
desperate; for she alone understood. The cruel vision again arose
before her--Maxime, helpless, driven, about in a little carriage by a
servant, like the neighbor whom she used to pity. Had she indeed any
duty toward a brother who for fifteen years had been a stranger to
her? Did not her duty lie where her heart was? Nevertheless, her
distress of mind continued; she still suffered in the struggle.

"Listen, Maxime," she said at last, "give me also time to reflect. I
will see. Be assured that I am very grateful to you. And if you should
one day really have need of me, well, I should no doubt decide to go."

This was all they could make her promise. Felicite, with her usual
vehemence, exhausted all her efforts in vain, while the doctor now
affected to say that she had given her word. Martine brought a cream,
without thinking of hiding her joy. To take away mademoiselle! what an
idea, in order that monsieur might die of grief at finding himself all
alone. And the dinner was delayed, too, by this unexpected incident.
They were still at the dessert when half-past eight struck.

Then Maxime grew restless, tapped the floor with his foot, and
declared that he must go.

At the station, whither they all accompanied him he kissed his sister
a last time, saying:

"Remember!"

"Don't be afraid," declared Felicite, "we are here to remind her of
her promise."

The doctor smiled, and all three, as soon as the train was in motion,
waved their handkerchiefs.

On this day, after accompanying the grandmother to her door, Dr.
Pascal and Clotilde returned peacefully to La Souleiade, and spent a
delightful evening there. The constraint of the past few weeks, the
secret antagonism which had separated them, seemed to have vanished.
Never had it seemed so sweet to them to feel so united, inseparable.
Doubtless it was only this first pang of uneasiness suffered by their
affection, this threatened separation, the postponement of which
delighted them. It was for them like a return to health after an
illness, a new hope of life. They remained for long time in the warm
night, under the plane trees, listening to the crystal murmur of the
fountain. And they did not even speak, so profoundly did they enjoy
the happiness of being together.

IV.


Ten days later the household had fallen back into its former state of
unhappiness. Pascal and Clotilde remained entire afternoons without
exchanging a word; and there were continual outbursts of ill-humor.
Even Martine was constantly out of temper. The home of these three had
again become a hell.

Then suddenly the condition of affairs was still further aggravated. A
Capuchin monk of great sanctity, such as often pass through the towns
of the South, came to Plassans to conduct a mission. The pulpit of St.
Saturnin resounded with his bursts of eloquence. He was a sort of
apostle, a popular and fiery orator, a florid speaker, much given to
the use of metaphors. And he preached on the nothingness of modern
science with an extraordinary mystical exaltation, denying the reality
of this world, and disclosing the unknown, the mysteries of the
Beyond. All the devout women of the town were full of excitement about
his preaching.

On the very first evening on which Clotilde, accompanied by Martine,
attended the sermon, Pascal noticed her feverish excitement when she
returned. On the following day her excitement increased, and she
returned home later, having remained to pray for an hour in a dark
corner of a chapel. From this time she was never absent from the
services, returning languid, and with the luminous eyes of a seer; and
the Capuchin's burning words haunted her; certain of his images
stirred her to ecstasy. She grew irritable, and she seemed to have
conceived a feeling of anger and contempt for every one and everything
around her.

Pascal, filled with uneasiness, determined to have an explanation with
Martine. He came down early one morning as she was sweeping the
dining-room.

"You know that I leave you and Clotilde free to go to church, if that
pleases you," he said. "I do not believe in oppressing any one's
conscience. But I do not wish that you should make her sick."

The servant, without stopping in her work, said in a low voice:

"Perhaps the sick people are those who don't think that they are
sick."

She said this with such an air of conviction that he smiled.

"Yes," he returned; "I am the sick soul whose conversion you pray for;
while both of you are in possession of health and of perfect wisdom.
Martine, if you continue to torment me and to torment yourselves, as
you are doing, I shall grow angry."

He spoke in so furious and so harsh a voice that the servant stopped
suddenly in her sweeping, and looked him full in the face. An infinite
tenderness, an immense desolation passed over the face of the old maid
cloistered in his service. And tears filled her eyes and she hurried
out of the room stammering:

"Ah, monsieur, you do not love us."

Then Pascal, filled with an overwhelming sadness, gave up the contest.
His remorse increased for having shown so much tolerance, for not
having exercised his authority as master, in directing Clotilde's
education and bringing up. In his belief that trees grew straight if
they were not interfered with, he had allowed her to grow up in her
own way, after teaching her merely to read and write. It was without
any preconceived plan, while aiding him in making his researches and
correcting his manuscripts, and simply by the force of circumstances,
that she had read everything and acquired a fondness for the natural
sciences. How bitterly he now regretted his indifference! What a
powerful impulse he might have given to this clear mind, so eager for
knowledge, instead of allowing it to go astray, and waste itself in
that desire for the Beyond, which Grandmother Felicite and the good
Martine favored. While he had occupied himself with facts, endeavoring
to keep from going beyond the phenomenon, and succeeding in doing so,
through his scientific discipline, he had seen her give all her
thoughts to the unknown, the mysterious. It was with her an obsession,
an instinctive curiosity which amounted to torture when she could not
satisfy it. There was in her a longing which nothing could appease, an
irresistible call toward the unattainable, the unknowable. Even when
she was a child, and still more, later, when she grew up, she went
straight to the why and the how of things, she demanded ultimate
causes. If he showed her a flower, she asked why this flower produced
a seed, why this seed would germinate. Then, it would be the mystery
of birth and death, and the unknown forces, and God, and all things.
In half a dozen questions she would drive him into a corner, obliging
him each time to acknowledge his fatal ignorance; and when he no
longer knew what to answer her, when he would get rid of her with a
gesture of comic fury, she would give a gay laugh of triumph, and go
to lose herself again in her dreams, in the limitless vision of all
that we do not know, and all that we may believe. Often she astounded
him by her explanations. Her mind, nourished on science, started from
proved truths, but with such an impetus that she bounded at once
straight into the heaven of the legends. All sorts of mediators passed
there, angels and saints and supernatural inspirations, modifying
matter, endowing it with life; or, again, it was only one single
force, the soul of the world, working to fuse things and beings in a
final kiss of love in fifty centuries more. She had calculated the
number of them, she said.

For the rest, Pascal had never before seen her so excited. For the
past week, during which she had attended the Capuchin's mission in the
cathedral, she had spent the days visibly in the expectation of the
sermon of the evening; and she went to hear it with the rapt
exaltation of a girl who is going to her first rendezvous of love.
Then, on the following day, everything about her declared her
detachment from the exterior life, from her accustomed existence, as
if the visible world, the necessary actions of every moment, were but
a snare and a folly. She retired within herself in the vision of what
was not. Thus she had almost completely given up her habitual
occupations, abandoning herself to a sort of unconquerable indolence,
remaining for hours at a time with her hands in her lap, her gaze lost
in vacancy, rapt in the contemplation of some far-off vision. Now she,
who had been so active, so early a riser, rose late, appearing barely
in time for the second breakfast, and it could not have been at her
toilet that she spent these long hours, for she forgot her feminine
coquetry, and would come down with her hair scarcely combed,
negligently attired in a gown buttoned awry, but even thus adorable,
thanks to her triumphant youth. The morning walks through La Souleiade
that she had been so fond of, the races from the top to the bottom of
the terraces planted with olive and almond trees, the visits to the
pine grove balmy with the odor of resin, the long sun baths in the hot
threshing yard, she indulged in no more; she preferred to remain shut
up in her darkened room, from which not a movement was to be heard.
Then, in the afternoon, in the work room, she would drag herself about
languidly from chair to chair, doing nothing, tired and disgusted with
everything that had formerly interested her.

Pascal was obliged to renounce her assistance; a paper which he gave
her to copy remained three days untouched on her desk. She no longer
classified anything; she would not have stooped down to pick up a
paper from the floor. More than all, she abandoned the pastels, copies
of flowers from nature that she had been making, to serve as plates to
a work on artificial fecundations. Some large red mallows, of a new
and singular coloring, faded in their vase before she had finished
copying them. And yet for a whole afternoon she worked
enthusiastically at a fantastic design of dream flowers, an
extraordinary efflorescence blooming in the light of a miraculous sun,
a burst of golden spike-shaped rays in the center of large purple
corollas, resembling open hearts, whence shot, for pistils, a shower
of stars, myriads of worlds streaming into the sky, like a milky way.

"Ah, my poor girl," said the doctor to her on this day, "how can you
lose your time in such conceits! And I waiting for the copy of those
mallows that you have left to die there. And you will make yourself
ill. There is no health, nor beauty, even, possible outside reality."

Often now she did not answer, intrenching herself behind her fierce
convictions, not wishing to dispute. But doubtless he had this time
touched her beliefs to the quick.

"There is no reality," she answered sharply.

The doctor, amused by this bold philosophy from this big child,
laughed.

"Yes, I know," he said; "our senses are fallible. We know this world
only through our senses, consequently it is possible that the world
does not exist. Let us open the door to madness, then; let us accept
as possible the most absurd chimeras, let us live in the realm of
nightmare, outside of laws and facts. For do you not see that there is
no longer any law if you suppress nature, and that the only thing that
gives life any interest is to believe in life, to love it, and to put
all the forces of our intelligence to the better understanding of it?"

She made a gesture of mingled indifference and bravado, and the
conversation dropped. Now she was laying large strokes of blue crayon
on the pastel, bringing out its flaming splendor in strong relief on
the background of a clear summer night.

But two days later, in consequence of a fresh discussion, matters went
still further amiss. In the evening, on leaving the table, Pascal went
up to the study to write, while she remained out of doors, sitting on
the terrace. Hours passed by, and he was surprised and uneasy, when
midnight struck, that he had not yet heard her return to her room. She
would have had to pass through the study, and he was very certain that
she had not passed unnoticed by him. Going downstairs, he found that
Martine was asleep; the vestibule door was not locked, and Clotilde
must have remained outside, oblivious of the flight of time. This
often happened to her on these warm nights, but she had never before
remained out so late.

The doctor's uneasiness increased when he perceived on the terrace the
chair, now vacant, in which the young girl had been sitting. He had
expected to find her asleep in it. Since she was not there, why had
she not come in. Where could she have gone at such an hour? The night
was beautiful: a September night, still warm, with a wide sky whose
dark, velvety expanse was studded with stars; and from the depths of
this moonless sky the stars shone so large and bright that they
lighted the earth with a pale, mysterious radiance. He leaned over the
balustrade of the terrace, and examined the slope and the stone steps
which led down to the railroad; but there was not a movement. He saw
nothing but the round motionless tops of the little olive trees. The
idea then occurred to him that she must certainly be under the plane
trees beside the fountain, whose murmuring waters made perpetual
coolness around. He hurried there, and found himself enveloped in such
thick darkness that he, who knew every tree, was obliged to walk with
outstretched hands to avoid stumbling. Then he groped his way through
the dark pine grove, still without meeting any one. And at last he
called in a muffled voice:

"Clotilde! Clotilde!"

The darkness remained silent and impenetrable.

"Clotilde! Clotilde!" he cried again, in a louder voice. Not a sound,
not a breath. The very echoes seemed asleep. His cry was drowned in
the infinitely soft lake of blue shadows. And then he called her with
all the force of his lungs. He returned to the plane trees. He went
back to the pine grove, beside himself with fright, scouring the
entire domain. Then, suddenly, he found himself in the threshing yard.

At this cool and tranquil hour, the immense yard, the vast circular
paved court, slept too. It was so many years since grain had been
threshed here that grass had sprung up among the stones, quickly
scorched a russet brown by the sun, resembling the long threads of a
woolen carpet. And, under the tufts of this feeble vegetation, the
ancient pavement did not cool during the whole summer, smoking from
sunset, exhaling in the night the heat stored up from so many sultry
noons.

The yard stretched around, bare and deserted, in the cooling
atmosphere, under the infinite calm of the sky, and Pascal was
crossing it to hurry to the orchard, when he almost fell over a form
that he had not before observed, extended at full length upon the
ground. He uttered a frightened cry.

"What! Are you here?"

Clotilde did not deign even to answer. She was lying on her back, her
hands clasped under the back of her neck, her face turned toward the
sky; and in her pale countenance, only her large shining eyes were
visible.

"And here I have been tormenting myself and calling you for an hour
past! Did you not hear me shouting?"

She at last unclosed her lips.

"Yes."

"Then that is very senseless! Why did you not answer me?"

But she fell back into her former silence, refusing all explanation,
and with a stubborn brow kept her gaze fixed steadily on the sky.

"There, come in and go to bed, naughty child. You will tell me
to-morrow."

She did not stir, however; he begged her ten times over to go into the
house, but she would not move. He ended by sitting down beside her on
the short grass, through which penetrated the warmth of the pavement
beneath.

"But you cannot sleep out of doors. At least answer me. What are you
doing here?"

"I am looking."

And from her large eyes, fixed and motionless, her gaze seemed to
mount up among the stars. She seemed wholly absorbed in the
contemplation of the pure starry depths of the summer sky.

"Ah, master!" she continued, in a low monotone; "how narrow and
limited is all that you know compared to what there is surely up
there. Yes, if I did not answer you it was because I was thinking of
you, and I was filled with grief. You must not think me bad."

In her voice there was a thrill of such tenderness that it moved him
profoundly. He stretched himself on the grass beside her, so that
their elbows touched, and they went on talking.

"I greatly fear, my dear, that your griefs are not rational. It gives
you pain to think of me. Why so?"

"Oh, because of things that I should find it hard to explain to you; I
am not a _savante_. You have taught me much, however, and I have
learned more myself, being with you. Besides, they are things that I
feel. Perhaps I might try to tell them to you, as we are all alone
here, and the night is so beautiful."

Her full heart overflowed, after hours of meditation, in the peaceful
confidence of the beautiful night. He did not speak, fearing to
disturb her, but awaited her confidences in silence.

"When I was a little girl and you used to talk to me about science, it
seemed to me that you were speaking to me of God, your words burned so
with faith and hope. Nothing seemed impossible to you. With science
you were going to penetrate the secret of the world, and make the
perfect happiness of humanity a reality. According to you, we were
progressing with giant strides. Each day brought its discovery, its
certainty. Ten, fifty, a hundred years more, perhaps, and the heavens
would open and we should see truth face to face. Well, the years pass,
and nothing opens, and truth recedes."

"You are an impatient girl," he answered simply. "If ten centuries
more be necessary we must only wait for them to pass."

"It is true. I cannot wait. I need to know; I need to be happy at
once, and to know everything at once, and to be perfectly and forever
happy. Oh, that is what makes me suffer, not to be able to reach at a
bound complete knowledge, not to be able to rest in perfect felicity,
freed from scruples and doubts. Is it living to advance with
tortoiselike pace in the darkness, not to be able to enjoy an hour's
tranquillity, without trembling at the thought of the coming anguish?
No, no! All knowledge and all happiness in a single day? Science has
promised them to us, and if she does not give them to us, then she
fails in her engagements."

Then he, too, began to grow heated.

"But what you are saying is folly, little girl. Science is not
revelation. It marches at its human pace, its very effort is its
glory. And then it is not true that science has promised happiness."

She interrupted him hastily.

"How, not true! Open your books up there, then. You know that I have
read them. Do they not overflow with promises? To read them one would
think we were marching on to the conquest of earth and heaven. They
demolish everything, and they swear to replace everything--and that by
pure reason, with stability and wisdom. Doubtless I am like the
children. When I am promised anything I wish that it shall be given me
at once. My imagination sets to work, and the object must be very
beautiful to satisfy me. But it would have been easy not to have
promised anything. And above all, at this hour, in view of my eager
and painful longing, it would be very ill done to tell me that nothing
has been promised me."

He made a gesture, a simple gesture of protestation and impatience, in
the serene and silent night.

"In any case," she continued, "science has swept away all our past
beliefs. The earth is bare, the heavens are empty, and what do you
wish that I should become, even if you acquit science of having
inspired the hopes I have conceived? For I cannot live without belief
and without happiness. On what solid ground shall I build my house
when science shall have demolished the old world, and while she is
waiting to construct the new? All the ancient city has fallen to
pieces in this catastrophe of examination and analysis; and all that
remains of it is a mad population vainly seeking a shelter among its
ruins, while anxiously looking for a solid and permanent refuge where
they may begin life anew. You must not be surprised, then, at our
discouragement and our impatience. We can wait no longer. Since tardy
science has failed in her promises, we prefer to fall back on the old
beliefs, which for centuries have sufficed for the happiness of the
world."

"Ah! that is just it," he responded in a low voice; "we are just at
the turning point, at the end of the century, fatigued and exhausted
with the appalling accumulation of knowledge which it has set moving.
And it is the eternal need for falsehood, the eternal need for
illusion which distracts humanity, and throws it back upon the
delusive charm of the unknown. Since we can never know all, what is
the use of trying to know more than we know already? Since the truth,
when we have attained it, does not confer immediate and certain
happiness, why not be satisfied with ignorance, the darkened cradle in
which humanity slept the deep sleep of infancy? Yes, this is the
aggressive return of the mysterious, it is the reaction against a
century of experimental research. And this had to be; desertions were
to be expected, since every need could not be satisfied at once. But
this is only a halt; the onward march will continue, up there, beyond
our view, in the illimitable fields of space."

For a moment they remained silent, still motionless on their backs,
their gaze lost among the myriads of worlds shining in the dark sky. A
falling star shot across the constellation of Cassiopeia, like a
flaming arrow. And the luminous universe above turned slowly on its
axis, in solemn splendor, while from the dark earth around them arose
only a faint breath, like the soft, warm breath of a sleeping woman.

"Tell me," he said, in his good-natured voice, "did your Capuchin turn
your head this evening, then?"

"Yes," she answered frankly; "he says from the pulpit things that
disturb me. He preaches against everything you have taught me, and it
is as if the knowledge which I owe to you, transformed into a poison,
were consuming me. My God! What is going to become of me?"

"My poor child! It is terrible that you should torture yourself in
this way! And yet I had been quite tranquil about you, for you have a
well-balanced mind--you have a good, little, round, clear, solid
headpiece, as I have often told you. You will soon calm down. But what
confusion in the brains of others, at the end of the century, if you,
who are so sane, are troubled! Have you not faith, then?"

She answered only by a heavy sigh.

"Assuredly, viewed from the standpoint of happiness, faith is a strong
staff for the traveler to lean upon, and the march becomes easy and
tranquil when one is fortunate enough to possess it."

"Oh, I no longer know whether I believe or not!" she cried. "There are
days when I believe, and there are other days when I side with you and
with your books. It is you who have disturbed me; it is through you I
suffer. And perhaps all my suffering springs from this, from my revolt
against you whom I love. No, no! tell me nothing; do not tell me that
I shall soon calm down. At this moment that would only irritate me
still more. I know well that you deny the supernatural. The mysterious
for you is only the inexplicable. Even you concede that we shall never
know all; and therefore you consider that the only interest life can
have is the continual conquest over the unknown, the eternal effort to
know more. Ah, I know too much already to believe. You have already
succeeded but too well in shaking my faith, and there are times when
it seems to me that this will kill me."

He took her hand that lay on the still warm grass, and pressed it
hard.

"No, no; it is life that frightens you, little girl. And how right you
are in saying that happiness consists in continual effort. For from
this time forward tranquil ignorance is impossible. There is no halt
to be looked for, no tranquillity in renunciation and wilful
blindness. We must go on, go on in any case with life, which goes on
always. Everything that is proposed, a return to the past, to dead
religions, patched up religions arranged to suit new wants, is a
snare. Learn to know life, then; to love it, live it as it ought to be
lived--that is the only wisdom."

But she shook off his hand angrily. And her voice trembled with
vexation.

"Life is horrible. How do you wish me to live it tranquil and happy?
It is a terrible light that your science throws upon the world. Your
analysis opens up all the wounds of humanity to display their horror.
You tell everything; you speak too plainly; you leave us nothing but
disgust for people and for things, without any possible consolation."

He interrupted her with a cry of ardent conviction.

"We tell everything. Ah, yes; in order to know everything and to
remedy everything!"

Her anger rose, and she sat erect.

"If even equality and justice existed in your nature--but you
acknowledge it yourself, life is for the strongest, the weak
infallibly perishes because he is weak--there are no two beings equal,
either in health, in beauty, or intelligence; everything is left to
haphazard meeting, to the chance of selection. And everything falls
into ruin, when grand and sacred justice ceases to exist."

"It is true," he said, in an undertone, as if speaking to himself,
"there is no such thing as equality. No society based upon it could
continue to exist. For centuries, men thought to remedy evil by
character. But that idea is being exploded, and now they propose
justice. Is nature just? I think her logical, rather. Logic is perhaps
a natural and higher justice, going straight to the sum of the common
labor, to the grand final labor."

"Then it is justice," she cried, "that crushes the individual for the
happiness of the race, that destroys an enfeebled species to fatten
the victorious species. No, no; that is crime. There is in that only
foulness and murder. He was right this evening in the church. The
earth is corrupt, science only serves to show its rottenness. It is on
high that we must all seek a refuge. Oh, master, I entreat you, let me
save myself, let me save you!"

She burst into tears, and the sound of her sobs rose despairingly on
the stillness of the night. He tried in vain to soothe her, her voice
dominated his.

"Listen to me, master. You know that I love you, for you are
everything to me. And it is you who are the cause of all my suffering.
I can scarcely endure it when I think that we are not in accord, that
we should be separated forever if we were both to die to-morrow. Why
will you not believe?"

He still tried to reason with her.

"Come, don't be foolish, my dear--"

But she threw herself on her knees, she seized him by the hands, she
clung to him with a feverish force. And she sobbed louder and louder,
in such a clamor of despair that the dark fields afar off were
startled by it.

"Listen to me, he said it in the church. You must change your life and
do penance; you must burn everything belonging to your past errors--
your books, your papers, your manuscripts. Make this sacrifice,
master, I entreat it of you on my knees. And you will see the
delightful existence we shall lead together."

At last he rebelled.

"No, this is too much. Be silent!"

"If you listen to me, master, you will do what I wish. I assure you
that I am horribly unhappy, even in loving you as I love you. There is
something wanting in our affection. So far it has been profound but
unavailing, and I have an irresistible longing to fill it, oh, with
all that is divine and eternal. What can be wanting to us but God?
Kneel down and pray with me!"

With an abrupt movement he released himself, angry in his turn.

"Be silent; you are talking nonsense. I have left you free, leave me
free."

"Master, master! it is our happiness that I desire! I will take you
far, far away. We will go to some solitude to live there in God!"

"Be silent! No, never!"

Then they remained for a moment confronting each other, mute and
menacing. Around them stretched La Souleiade in the deep silence of
the night, with the light shadows of its olive trees, the darkness of
its pine and plane trees, in which the saddened voice of the fountain
was singing, and above their heads it seemed as if the spacious sky,
studded with stars, shuddered and grew pale, although the dawn was
still far off.

Clotilde raised her arm as if to point to this infinite, shuddering
sky; but with a quick gesture Pascal seized her hand and drew it down
toward the earth in his. And no word further was spoken; they were
beside themselves with rage and hate. The quarrel was fierce and
bitter.

She drew her hand away abruptly, and sprang backward, like some proud,
untamable animal, rearing; then she rushed quickly through the
darkness toward the house. He heard the patter of her little boots on
the stones of the yard, deadened afterward by the sand of the walk.
He, on his side, already grieved and uneasy, called her back in urgent
tones. But she ran on without answering, without hearing. Alarmed, and
with a heavy heart, he hurried after her, and rounded the clump of
plane trees just in time to see her rush into the house like a
whirlwind. He darted in after her, ran up the stairs, and struck
against the door of her room, which she violently bolted. And here he
stopped and grew calm, by a strong effort resisting the desire to cry
out, to call her again, to break in the door so as to see her once
more, to convince her, to have her all to himself. For a moment he
remained motionless, chilled by the deathlike silence of the room,
from which not the faintest sound issued. Doubtless she had thrown
herself on the bed, and was stifling her cries and her sobs in the
pillow. He determined at last to go downstairs again and close the
hall door, and then he returned softly and listened, waiting for some
sound of moaning. And day was breaking when he went disconsolately to
bed, choking back his tears.

Thenceforward it was war without mercy. Pascal felt himself spied
upon, trapped, menaced. He was no longer master of his house; he had
no longer any home. The enemy was always there, forcing him to be
constantly on his guard, to lock up everything. One after the other,
two vials of nerve-substance which he had compounded were found in
fragments, and he was obliged to barricade himself in his room, where
he could be heard pounding for days together, without showing himself
even at mealtime. He no longer took Clotilde with him on his visiting
days, because she discouraged his patients by her attitude of
aggressive incredulity. But from the moment he left the house, the
doctor had only one desire--to return to it quickly, for he trembled
lest he should find his locks forced, and his drawers rifled on his
return. He no longer employed the young girl to classify and copy his
notes, for several of them had disappeared, as if they had been
carried away by the wind. He did not even venture to employ her to
correct his proofs, having ascertained that she had cut out of an
article an entire passage, the sentiment of which offended her
Catholic belief. And thus she remained idle, prowling about the rooms,
and having an abundance of time to watch for an occasion which would
put in her possession the key of the large press. This was her dream,
the plan which she revolved in her mind during her long silence, while
her eyes shone and her hands burned with fever--to have the key, to
open the press, to take and burn everything in an _auto da fe_ which
would be pleasing to God. A few pages of manuscript, forgotten by him
on a corner of the table, while he went to wash his hands and put on
his coat, had disappeared, leaving behind only a little heap of ashes
in the fireplace. He could no longer leave a scrap of paper about. He
carried away everything; he hid everything. One evening, when he had
remained late with a patient, as he was returning home in the dusk a
wild terror seized him at the faubourg, at sight of a thick black
smoke rising up in clouds that darkened the heavens. Was it not La
Souleiade that was burning down, set on fire by the bonfire made with
his papers? He ran toward the house, and was reassured only on seeing
in a neighboring field a fire of roots burning slowly.

But how terrible are the tortures of the scientist who feels himself
menaced in this way in the labors of his intellect! The discoveries
which he has made, the writings which he has counted upon leaving
behind him, these are his pride, they are creatures of his blood--his
children--and whoever destroys, whoever burns them, burns a part of
himself. Especially, in this perpetual lying in wait for the creatures
of his brain, was Pascal tortured by the thought that the enemy was in
his house, installed in his very heart, and that he loved her in spite
of everything, this creature whom he had made what she was. He was
left disarmed, without possible defense; not wishing to act, and
having no other resources than to watch with vigilance. On all sides
the investment was closing around him. He fancied he felt the little
pilfering hands stealing into his pockets. He had no longer any
tranquillity, even with the doors closed, for he feared that he was
being robbed through the crevices.

"But, unhappy child," he cried one day, "I love but you in the world,
and you are killing me! And yet you love me, too; you act in this way
because you love me, and it is abominable. It would be better to have
done with it all at once, and throw ourselves into the river with a
stone tied around our necks."

She did not answer, but her dauntless eyes said ardently that she
would willingly die on the instant, if it were with him.

"And if I should suddenly die to-night, what would happen to-morrow?
You would empty the press, you would empty the drawers, you would make
a great heap of all my works and burn them! You would, would you not?
Do you know that that would be a real murder, as much as if you
assassinated some one? And what abominable cowardice, to kill the
thoughts!"

"No," she said at last, in a low voice; "to kill evil, to prevent it
from spreading and springing up again!"

All their explanations only served to kindle anew their anger. And
they had terrible ones. And one evening, when old Mme. Rougon had
chanced in on one of these quarrels, she remained alone with Pascal,
after Clotilde had fled to hide herself in her room. There was silence
for a moment. In spite of the heartbroken air which she had assumed, a
wicked joy shone in the depths of her sparkling eyes.

"But your unhappy house is a hell!" she cried at last.

The doctor avoided an answer by a gesture. He had always felt that his
mother backed the young girl, inflaming her religious faith, utilizing
this ferment of revolt to bring trouble into his house. He was not
deceived. He knew perfectly well that the two women had seen each
other during the day, and that he owed to this meeting, to a skilful
embittering of Clotilde's mind, the frightful scene at which he still
trembled. Doubtless his mother had come to learn what mischief had
been wrought, and to see if the _denouement_ was not at last at hand.

"Things cannot go on in this way," she resumed. "Why do you not
separate since you can no longer agree. You ought to send her to her
brother Maxime. He wrote to me not long since asking her again."

He straightened himself, pale and determined.

"To part angry with each other? Ah, no, no! that would be an eternal
remorse, an incurable wound. If she must one day go away, I wish that
we may be able to love each other at a distance. But why go away?
Neither of us complains of the other."

Felicite felt that she had been too hasty. Therefore she assumed her
hypocritical, conciliating air.

"Of course, if it pleases you both to quarrel, no one has anything to
say in the matter. Only, my poor friend, permit me, in that case, to
say that I think Clotilde is not altogether in the wrong. You force me
to confess that I saw her a little while ago; yes, it is better that
you should know, notwithstanding my promise to be silent. Well, she is
not happy; she makes a great many complaints, and you may imagine that
I scolded her and preached complete submission to her. But that does
not prevent me from being unable to understand you myself, and from
thinking that you do everything you can to make yourself unhappy."

She sat down in a corner of the room, and obliged him to sit down with
her, seeming delighted to have him here alone, at her mercy. She had
already, more than once before, tried to force him to an explanation
in this way, but he had always avoided it. Although she had tortured
him for years past, and he knew her thoroughly, he yet remained a
deferential son, he had sworn never to abandon this stubbornly
respectful attitude. Thus, the moment she touched certain subjects, he
took refuge in absolute silence.

"Come," she continued; "I can understand that you should not wish to
yield to Clotilde; but to me? How if I were to entreat you to make me
the sacrifice of all those abominable papers which are there in the
press! Consider for an instant if you should die suddenly, and those
papers should fall into strange hands. We should all be disgraced. You
would not wish that, would you? What is your object, then? Why do you
persist in so dangerous a game? Promise me that you will burn them."

He remained silent for a time, but at last he answered:

"Mother, I have already begged of you never to speak on that subject.
I cannot do what you ask."

"But at least," she cried, "give me a reason. Any one would think our
family was as indifferent to you as that drove of oxen passing below
there. Yet you belong to it. Oh, I know you do all you can not to
belong to it! I myself am sometimes astonished at you. I ask myself
where you can have come from. But for all that, it is very wicked of
you to run this risk, without stopping to think of the grief you are
causing to me, your mother. It is simply wicked."

He grew still paler, and yielding for an instant to his desire to
defend himself, in spite of his determination to keep silent, he said:

"You are hard; you are wrong. I have always believed in the necessity,
the absolute efficacy of truth. It is true that I tell the truth about
others and about myself, and it is because I believe firmly that in
telling the truth I do the only good possible. In the first place,
those papers are not intended for the public; they are only personal
notes which it would be painful to me to part with. And then, I know
well that you would not burn only them--all my other works would also
be thrown into the fire. Would they not? And that is what I do not
wish; do you understand? Never, while I live, shall a line of my
writing be destroyed here."

But he already regretted having said so much, for he saw that she was
urging him, leading him on to the cruel explanation she desired.

"Then finish, and tell me what it is that you reproach us with. Yes,
me, for instance; what do you reproach me with? Not with having
brought you up with so much difficulty. Ah, fortune was slow to win!
If we enjoy a little happiness now, we have earned it hard. Since you
have seen everything, and since you put down everything in your
papers, you can testify with truth that the family has rendered
greater services to others than it has ever received. On two
occasions, but for us, Plassans would have been in a fine pickle. And
it is perfectly natural that we should have reaped only ingratitude
and envy, to the extent that even to-day the whole town would be
enchanted with a scandal that should bespatter us with mud. You cannot
wish that, and I am sure that you will do justice to the dignity of my
attitude since the fall of the Empire, and the misfortunes from which
France will no doubt never recover."

"Let France rest, mother," he said, speaking again, for she had
touched the spot where she knew he was most sensitive. "France is
tenacious of life, and I think she is going to astonish the world by
the rapidity of her convalescence. True, she has many elements of
corruption. I have not sought to hide them, I have rather, perhaps,
exposed them to view. But you greatly misunderstand me if you imagine
that I believe in her final dissolution, because I point out her
wounds and her lesions. I believe in the life which ceaselessly
eliminates hurtful substances, which makes new flesh to fill the holes
eaten away by gangrene, which infallibly advances toward health,
toward constant renovation, amid impurities and death."

He was growing excited, and he was conscious of it, and making an
angry gesture, he spoke no more. His mother had recourse to tears, a
few little tears which came with difficulty, and which were quickly
dried. And the fears which saddened her old age returned to her, and
she entreated him to make his peace with God, if only out of regard
for the family. Had she not given an example of courage ever since the
downfall of the Empire? Did not all Plassans, the quarter of St. Marc,
the old quarter and the new town, render homage to the noble attitude
she maintained in her fall? All she asked was to be helped; she
demanded from all her children an effort like her own. Thus she cited
the example of Eugene, the great man who had fallen from so lofty a
height, and who resigned himself to being a simple deputy, defending
until his latest breath the fallen government from which he had
derived his glory. She was also full of eulogies of Aristide, who had
never lost hope, who had reconquered, under the new government, an
exalted position, in spite of the terrible and unjust catastrophe
which had for a moment buried him under the ruins of the Union
Universelle. And would he, Pascal, hold himself aloof, would he do
nothing that she might die in peace, in the joy of the final triumph
of the Rougons, he who was so intelligent, so affectionate, so good?
He would go to mass, would he not, next Sunday? and he would burn all
those vile papers, only to think of which made her ill. She entreated,
commanded, threatened. But he no longer answered her, calm and
invincible in his attitude of perfect deference. He wished to have no
discussion. He knew her too well either to hope to convince her or to
venture to discuss the past with her.

"Why!" she cried, when she saw that he was not to be moved, "you do
not belong to us. I have always said so. You are a disgrace to us."

He bent his head and said:

"Mother, when you reflect you will forgive me."

On this day Felicite was beside herself with rage when she went away;
and when she met Martine at the door of the house, in front of the
plane trees, she unburdened her mind to her, without knowing that
Pascal, who had just gone into his room, heard all. She gave vent to
her resentment, vowing, in spite of everything, that she would in the
end succeed in obtaining possession of the papers and destroying them,
since he did not wish to make the sacrifice. But what turned the
doctor cold was the manner in which Martine, in a subdued voice,
soothed her. She was evidently her accomplice. She repeated that it
was necessary to wait; not to do anything hastily; that mademoiselle
and she had taken a vow to get the better of monsieur, by not leaving
him an hour's peace. They had sworn it. They would reconcile him with
the good God, because it was not possible that an upright man like
monsieur should remain without religion. And the voices of the two
women became lower and lower, until they finally sank to a whisper, an
indistinct murmur of gossiping and plotting, of which he caught only a
word here and there; orders given, measures to be taken, an invasion
of his personal liberty. When his mother at last departed, with her
light step and slender, youthful figure, he saw that she went away
very well satisfied.

Then came a moment of weakness, of utter despair. Pascal dropped into
a chair, and asked himself what was the use of struggling, since the
only beings he loved allied themselves against him. Martine, who would
have thrown herself into the fire at a word from him, betraying him in
this way for his good! And Clotilde leagued with this servant,
plotting with her against him in holes and corners, seeking her aid to
set traps for him! Now he was indeed alone; he had around him only
traitresses, who poisoned the very air he breathed. But these two
still loved him. He might perhaps have succeeded in softening them,
but when he knew that his mother urged them on, he understood their
fierce persistence, and he gave up the hope of winning them back. With
the timidity of a man who had spent his life in study, aloof from
women, notwithstanding his secret passion, the thought that they were
there to oppose him, to attempt to bend him to their will, overwhelmed
him. He felt that some one of them was always behind him. Even when he
shut himself up in his room, he fancied that they were on the other
side of the wall; and he was constantly haunted by the idea that they
would rob him of his thought, if they could perceive it in his brain,
before he should have formulated it.

This was assuredly the period in his life in which Dr. Pascal was most
unhappy. To live constantly on the defensive, as he was obliged to do,
crushed him, and it seemed to him as if the ground on which his house
stood was no longer his, as if it was receding from beneath his feet.
He now regretted keenly that he had not married, and that he had no
children. Had not he himself been afraid of life? And had he not been
well punished for his selfishness? This regret for not having children
now never left him. His eyes now filled with tears whenever he met on
the road bright-eyed little girls who smiled at him. True, Clotilde
was there, but his affection for her was of a different kind--crossed
at present by storms--not a calm, infinitely sweet affection, like
that for a child with which he might have soothed his lacerated heart.
And then, no doubt what he desired in his isolation, feeling that his
days were drawing to an end, was above all, continuance; in a child he
would survive, he would live forever. The more he suffered, the
greater the consolation he would have found in bequeathing this
suffering, in the faith which he still had in life. He considered
himself indemnified for the physiological defects of his family. But
even the thought that heredity sometimes passes over a generation, and
that the disorders of his ancestors might reappear in a child of his
did not deter him; and this unknown child, in spite of the old corrupt
stock, in spite of the long succession of execrable relations, he
desired ardently at certain times: as one desires unexpected gain,
rare happiness, the stroke of fortune which is to console and enrich
forever. In the shock which his other affections had received, his
heart bled because it was too late.

One sultry night toward the end of September, Pascal found himself
unable to sleep. He opened one of the windows of his room; the sky was
dark, some storm must be passing in the distance, for there was a
continuous rumbling of thunder. He could distinguish vaguely the dark
mass of the plane trees, which occasional flashes of lightning
detached, in a dull green, from the darkness. His soul was full of
anguish; he lived over again the last unhappy days, days of fresh
quarrels, of torture caused by acts of treachery, by suspicions, which
grew stronger every day, when a sudden recollection made him start. In
his fear of being robbed, he had finally adopted the plan of carrying
the key of the large press in his pocket. But this afternoon,
oppressed by the heat, he had taken off his jacket, and he remembered
having seen Clotilde hang it up on a nail in the study. A sudden pang
of terror shot through him, sharp and cold as a steel point; if she
had felt the key in the pocket she had stolen it. He hastened to
search the jacket which he had a little before thrown upon a chair;
the key was not here. At this very moment he was being robbed; he had
the clear conviction of it. Two o'clock struck. He did not again dress
himself, but, remaining in his trousers only, with his bare feet
thrust into slippers, his chest bare under his unfastened nightshirt,
he hastily pushed open the door, and rushed into the workroom, his
candle in his hand.

"Ah! I knew it," he cried. "Thief! Assassin!"

It was true; Clotilde was there, undressed like himself, her bare feet
covered by canvas slippers, her legs bare, her arms bare, her
shoulders bare, clad only in her chemise and a short skirt. Through
caution, she had not brought a candle. She had contented herself with
opening one of the window shutters, and the continual lightning
flashes of the storm which was passing southward in the dark sky,
sufficed her, bathing everything in a livid phosphorescence. The old
press, with its broad sides, was wide open. Already she had emptied
the top shelf, taking down the papers in armfuls, and throwing them on
the long table in the middle of the room, where they lay in a confused
heap. And with feverish haste, fearing lest she should not have the
time to burn them, she was making them up into bundles, intending to
hide them, and send them afterward to her grandmother, when the sudden
flare of the candle, lighting up the room, caused her to stop short in
an attitude of surprise and resistance.

"You rob me; you assassinate me!" repeated Pascal furiously.

She still held one of the bundles in her bare arms. He wished to take
it away from her, but she pressed it to her with all her strength,
obstinately resolved upon her work of destruction, without showing
confusion or repentance, like a combatant who has right upon his side.
Then, madly, blindly, he threw himself upon her, and they struggled
together. He clutched her bare flesh so that he hurt her.

"Kill me!" she gasped. "Kill me, or I shall destroy everything!"

He held her close to him, with so rough a grasp that she could
scarcely breathe, crying:

"When a child steals, it is punished!"

A few drops of blood appeared and trickled down her rounded shoulder,
where an abrasion had cut the delicate satin skin. And, on the
instant, seeing her so breathless, so divine, in her virginal slender
height, with her tapering limbs, her supple arms, her slim body with
its slender, firm throat, he released her. By a last effort he tore
the package from her.

"And you shall help me to put them all up there again, by Heaven! Come
here: begin by arranging them on the table. Obey me, do you hear?"

"Yes, master!"

She approached, and helped him to arrange the papers, subjugated,
crushed by this masculine grasp, which had entered into her flesh, as
it were. The candle which flared up in the heavy night air, lighted
them; and the distant rolling of the thunder still continued, the
window facing the storm seeming on fire.

V.


For an instant Pascal looked at the papers, the heap of which seemed
enormous, lying thus in disorder on the long table that stood in the
middle of the room. In the confusion several of the blue paper
envelopes had burst open, and their contents had fallen out--letters,
newspaper clippings, documents on stamped paper, and manuscript notes.

He was already mechanically beginning to seek out the names written on
the envelopes in large characters, to classify the packages again,
when, with an abrupt gesture, he emerged from the somber meditation
into which he had fallen. And turning to Clotilde who stood waiting,
pale, silent, and erect, he said:

"Listen to me; I have always forbidden you to read these papers, and I
know that you have obeyed me. Yes, I had scruples of delicacy. It is
not that you are an ignorant girl, like so many others, for I have
allowed you to learn everything concerning man and woman, which is
assuredly bad only for bad natures. But to what end disclose to you
too early these terrible truths of human life? I have therefore spared
you the history of our family, which is the history of every family,
of all humanity; a great deal of evil and a great deal of good."

He paused as if to confirm himself in his resolution and then resumed
quite calmly and with supreme energy:

"You are twenty-five years old; you ought to know. And then the life
we are leading is no longer possible. You live and you make me live in
a constant nightmare, with your ecstatic dreams. I prefer to show you
the reality, however execrable it may be. Perhaps the blow which it
will inflict upon you will make of you the woman you ought to be. We
will classify these papers again together, and read them, and learn
from them a terrible lesson of life!"

Then, as she still continued motionless, he resumed:

"Come, we must be able to see well. Light those other two candles
there."

He was seized by a desire for light, a flood of light; he would have
desired the blinding light of the sun; and thinking that the light of
the three candles was not sufficient, he went into his room for a pair
of three-branched candelabra which were there. The nine candles were
blazing, yet neither of them, in their disorder--he with his chest
bare, she with her left shoulder stained with blood, her throat and
arms bare--saw the other. It was past two o'clock, but neither of them
had any consciousness of the hour; they were going to spend the night
in this eager desire for knowledge, without feeling the need of sleep,
outside time and space. The mutterings of the storm, which, through
the open window, they could see gathering, grew louder and louder.

Clotilde had never before seen in Pascal's eyes the feverish light
which burned in them now. He had been overworking himself for some
time past, and his mental sufferings made him at times abrupt, in
spite of his good-natured complacency. But it seemed as if an infinite
tenderness, trembling with fraternal pity, awoke within him, now that
he was about to plunge into the painful truths of existence; and it
was something emanating from himself, something very great and very
good which was to render innocuous the terrible avalanche of facts
which was impending. He was determined that he would reveal
everything, since it was necessary that he should do so in order to
remedy everything. Was not this an unanswerable, a final argument for
evolution, the story of these beings who were so near to them? Such
was life, and it must be lived. Doubtless she would emerge from it
like the steel tempered by the fire, full of tolerance and courage.

"They are setting you against me," he resumed; "they are making you
commit abominable acts, and I wish to restore your conscience to you.
When you know, you will judge and you will act. Come here, and read
with me."

She obeyed. But these papers, about which her grandmother had spoken
so angrily, frightened her a little; while a curiosity that grew with
every moment awoke within her. And then, dominated though she was by
the virile authority which had just constrained and subjugated her,
she did not yet yield. But might she not listen to him, read with him?
Did she not retain the right to refuse or to give herself afterward?
He spoke at last.

"Will you come?"

"Yes, master, I will."

He showed her first the genealogical tree of the Rougon-Macquarts. He
did not usually lock it in the press, but kept it in the desk in his
room, from which he had taken it when he went there for the
candelabra. For more than twenty years past he had kept it up to date,
inscribing the births, deaths, marriages, and other important events
that had taken place in the family, making brief notes in each case,
in accordance with his theory of heredity.

It was a large sheet of paper, yellow with age, with folds cut by
wear, on which was drawn boldly a symbolical tree, whose branches
spread and subdivided into five rows of broad leaves; and each leaf
bore a name, and contained, in minute handwriting, a biography, a
hereditary case.

A scientist's joy took possession of the doctor at sight of this labor
of twenty years, in which the laws of heredity established by him were
so clearly and so completely applied.

"Look, child! You know enough about the matter, you have copied enough
of my notes to understand. Is it not beautiful? A document so
complete, so conclusive, in which there is not a gap? It is like an
experiment made in the laboratory, a problem stated and solved on the
blackboard. You see below, the trunk, the common stock, Aunt Dide;
then the three branches issuing from it, the legitimate branch, Pierre
Rougon, and the two illegitimate branches, Ursule Macquart and Antoine
Macquart; then, new branches arise, and ramify, on one side, Maxime,
Clotilde, and Victor, the three children of Saccard, and Angelique,
the daughter of Sidonie Rougon; on the other, Pauline, the daughter of
Lisa Macquart, and Claude, Jacques, Etienne, and Anna, the four
children of Gervaise, her sister; there, at the extremity, is Jean,
their brother, and here in the middle, you see what I call the knot,
the legitimate issue and the illegitimate issue, uniting in Marthe
Rougon and her cousin Francois Mouret, to give rise to three new
branches, Octave, Serge, and Desiree Mouret; while there is also the
issue of Ursule and the hatter Mouret; Silvere, whose tragic death you
know; Helene and her daughter Jean; finally, at the top are the latest
offshoots, our poor Charles, your brother Maxime's son, and two other
children, who are dead, Jacques Louis, the son of Claude Lantier, and
Louiset, the son of Anna Coupeau. In all five generations, a human
tree which, for five springs already, five springtides of humanity,
has sent forth shoots, at the impulse of the sap of eternal life."

He became more and more animated, pointing out each case on the sheet
of old yellow paper, as if it were an anatomical chart.

"And as I have already said, everything is here. You see in direct
heredity, the differentiations, that of the mother, Silvere, Lisa,
Desiree, Jacques, Louiset, yourself; that of the father, Sidonie,
Francois, Gervaise, Octave, Jacques, Louis. Then there are the three
cases of crossing: by conjugation, Ursule, Aristide, Anna, Victor; by
dissemination, Maxime, Serge, Etienne; by fusion, Antoine, Eugene,
Claude. I even noted a fourth case, a very remarkable one, an even
cross, Pierre and Pauline; and varieties are established, the
differentiation of the mother, for example, often accords with the
physical resemblance of the father; or, it is the contrary which takes
place, so that, in the crossing, the physical and mental predominance
remains with one parent or the other, according to circumstances. Then
here is indirect heredity, that of the collateral branches. I have but
one well established example of this, the striking personal
resemblance of Octave Mouret to his uncle Eugene Rougon. I have also
but one example of transmission by influence, Anna, the daughter of
Gervaise and Coupeau, who bore a striking resemblance, especially in
her childhood, to Lantier, her mother's first lover. But what I am
very rich in is in examples of reversion to the original stock--the
three finest cases, Marthe, Jeanne, and Charles, resembling Aunt Dide;
the resemblance thus passing over one, two, and three generations.
This is certainly exceptional, for I scarcely believe in atavism; it
seems to me that the new elements brought by the partners, accidents,
and the infinite variety of crossings must rapidly efface particular
characteristics, so as to bring back the individual to the general
type. And there remains variation--Helene, Jean, Angelique. This is
the combination, the chemical mixture in which the physical and mental
characteristics of the parents are blended, without any of their
traits seeming to reappear in the new being."

There was silence for a moment. Clotilde had listened to him with
profound attention, wishing to understand. And he remained absorbed in
thought, his eyes still fixed on the tree, in the desire to judge his
work impartially. He then continued in a low tone, as if speaking to
himself:

"Yes, that is as scientific as possible. I have placed there only the
members of the family, and I had to give an equal part to the
partners, to the fathers and mothers come from outside, whose blood
has mingled with ours, and therefore modified it. I had indeed made a
mathematically exact tree, the father and the mother bequeathing
themselves, by halves, to the child, from generation to generation, so
that in Charles, for example, Aunt Dide's part would have been only a
twelfth--which would be absurd, since the physical resemblance is
there complete. I have therefore thought it sufficient to indicate the
elements come from elsewhere, taking into account marriages and the
new factor which each introduced. Ah! these sciences that are yet in
their infancy, in which hypothesis speaks stammeringly, and
imagination rules, these are the domain of the poet as much as of the
scientist. Poets go as pioneers in the advance guard, and they often
discover new countries, suggesting solutions. There is there a
borderland which belongs to them, between the conquered, the
definitive truth, and the unknown, whence the truth of to-morrow will
be torn. What an immense fresco there is to be painted, what a
stupendous human tragedy, what a comedy there is to be written with
heredity, which is the very genesis of families, of societies, and of
the world!"

His eyes fixed on vacancy, he remained for a time lost in thought.
Then, with an abrupt movement, he came back to the envelopes and,
pushing the tree aside, said:

"We will take it up again presently; for, in order that you may
understand now, it is necessary that events should pass in review
before you, and that you should see in action all these actors
ticketed here, each one summed up in a brief note. I will call for the
envelopes, you will hand them to me one by one, and I will show you
the papers in each, and tell you their contents, before putting it
away again up there on the shelf. I will not follow the alphabetical
order, but the order of events themselves. I have long wished to make
this classification. Come, look for the names on the envelopes; Aunt
Dide first."

At this moment the edge of the storm which lighted up the sky caught
La Souleiade slantingly, and burst over the house in a deluge of rain.
But they did not even close the window. They heard neither the peals
of thunder nor the ceaseless beating of the rain upon the roof. She
handed him the envelope bearing the name of Aunt Dide in large
characters; and he took from it papers of all sorts, notes taken by
him long ago, which he proceeded to read.

"Hand me Pierre Rougon. Hand me Ursule Macquart. Hand me Antoine
Macquart."

Silently she obeyed him, her heart oppressed by a dreadful anguish at
all she was hearing. And the envelopes were passed on, displayed their
contents, and were piled up again in the press.

First was the foundress of the family, Adelaide Fouque, the tall,
crazy girl, the first nervous lesion giving rise to the legitimate
branch, Pierre Rougon, and to the two illegitimate branches, Ursule
and Antoine Macquart, all that _bourgeois_ and sanguinary tragedy,
with the _coup d'etat_ of December, 1854, for a background, the
Rougons, Pierre and Felicite, preserving order at Plassans,
bespattering with the blood of Silvere their rising fortunes, while
Adelaide, grown old, the miserable Aunt Dide, was shut up in the
Tulettes, like a specter of expiation and of waiting.

Then like a pack of hounds, the appetites were let loose. The supreme
appetite of power in Eugene Rougon, the great man, the disdainful
genius of the family, free from base interests, loving power for its
own sake, conquering Paris in old boots with the adventurers of the
coming Empire, rising from the legislative body to the senate, passing
from the presidency of the council of state to the portfolio of
minister; made by his party, a hungry crowd of followers, who at the
same time supported and devoured him; conquered for an instant by a
woman, the beautiful Clorinde, with whom he had been imbecile enough
to fall in love, but having so strong a will, and burning with so
vehement a desire to rule, that he won back power by giving the lie to
his whole life, marching to his triumphal sovereignty of vice emperor.

With Aristide Saccard, appetite ran to low pleasures, the whole hot
quarry of money, luxury, women--a devouring hunger which left him
homeless, at the time when millions were changing hands, when the
whirlwind of wild speculation was blowing through the city, tearing
down everywhere to construct anew, when princely fortunes were made,
squandered, and remade in six months; a greed of gold whose ever
increasing fury carried him away, causing him, almost before the body
of his wife Angele was cold in death, to sell his name, in order to
have the first indispensable thousand francs, by marrying Renee. And
it was Saccard, too, who, a few years later, put in motion the immense
money-press of the Banque Universelle. Saccard, the never vanquished;
Saccard, grown more powerful, risen to be the clever and daring grand
financier, comprehending the fierce and civilizing role that money
plays, fighting, winning, and losing battles on the Bourse, like
Napoleon at Austerlitz and Waterloo; engulfing in disaster a world of
miserable people; sending forth into the unknown realms of crime his
natural son Victor, who disappeared, fleeing through the dark night,
while he himself, under the impassable protection of unjust nature,
was loved by the adorable Mme. Caroline, no doubt in recompense of all
the evil he had done.

Here a tall, spotless lily had bloomed in this compost, Sidonie
Rougon, the sycophant of her brother, the go-between in a hundred
suspicious affairs, giving birth to the pure and divine Angelique, the
little embroiderer with fairylike fingers who worked into the gold of
the chasubles the dream of her Prince Charming, so happy among her
companions the saints, so little made for the hard realities of life,
that she obtained the grace of dying of love, on the day of her
marriage, at the first kiss of Felicien de Hautecoeur, in the
triumphant peal of bells ringing for her splendid nuptials.

The union of the two branches, the legitimate and the illegitimate,
took place then, Marthe Rougon espousing her cousin Francois Mouret, a
peaceful household slowly disunited, ending in the direst catastrophes
--a sad and gentle woman taken, made use of, and crushed in the vast
machine of war erected for the conquest of a city; her three children
torn from her, she herself leaving her heart in the rude grasp of the
Abbe Faujas. And the Rougons saved Plassans a second time, while she
was dying in the glare of the conflagration in which her husband was
being consumed, mad with long pent-up rage and the desire for revenge.

Of the three children, Octave Mouret was the audacious conqueror, the
clear intellect, resolved to demand from the women the sovereignty of
Paris, fallen at his _debut_ into the midst of a corrupt _bourgeois_
society, acquiring there a terrible sentimental education, passing
from the capricious refusal of one woman to the unresisting
abandonment of another, remaining, fortunately, active, laborious, and
combative, gradually emerging, and improved even, from the low
plotting, the ceaseless ferment of a rotten society that could be
heard already cracking to its foundations. And Octave Mouret,
victorious, revolutionized commerce; swallowed up the cautious little
shops that carried on business in the old-fashioned way; established
in the midst of feverish Paris the colossal palace of temptation,
blazing with lights, overflowing with velvets, silks, and laces; won
fortunes exploiting woman; lived in smiling scorn of woman until the
day when a little girl, the avenger of her sex, the innocent and wise
Denise, vanquished him and held him captive at her feet, groaning with
anguish, until she did him the favor, she who was so poor, to marry
him in the midst of the apotheosis of his Louvre, under the golden
shower of his receipts.

There remained the two other children, Serge Mouret and Desiree
Mouret, the latter innocent and healthy, like some happy young animal;
the former refined and mystical, who was thrown into the priesthood by
a nervous malady hereditary in his family, and who lived again the
story of Adam, in the Eden of Le Paradou. He was born again to love
Albine, and to lose her, in the bosom of sublime nature, their
accomplice; to be recovered, afterward by the Church, to war eternally
with life, striving to kill his manhood, throwing on the body of the
dead Albine the handful of earth, as officiating priest, at the very
time when Desiree, the sister and friend of animals, was rejoicing in
the midst of the swarming life of her poultry yard.

Further on there opened a calm glimpse of gentle and tragic life,
Helene Mouret living peacefully with her little girl, Jeanne, on the
heights of Passy, overlooking Paris, the bottomless, boundless human
sea, in face of which was unrolled this page of love: the sudden
passion of Helene for a stranger, a physician, brought one night by
chance to the bedside of her daughter; the morbid jealousy of Jeanne--
the instinctive jealousy of a loving girl--disputing her mother with
love, her mother already so wasted by her unhappy passion that the
daughter died because of her fault; terrible price of one hour of
desire in the entire cold and discreet life of a woman, poor dead
child, lying alone in the silent cemetery, in face of eternal Paris.

With Lisa Macquart began the illegitimate branch; appearing fresh and
strong in her, as she displayed her portly, prosperous figure, sitting
at the door of her pork shop in a light colored apron, watching the
central market, where the hunger of a people muttered, the age-long
battle of the Fat and the Lean, the lean Florent, her brother-in-law,
execrated, and set upon by the fat fishwomen and the fat shopwomen,
and whom even the fat pork-seller herself, honest, but unforgiving,
caused to be arrested as a republican who had broken his ban,
convinced that she was laboring for the good digestion of all honest
people.

From this mother sprang the sanest, the most human of girls, Pauline
Quenu, the well-balanced, the reasonable, the virgin; who, knowing
everything, accepted the joy of living in so ardent a love for others
that, in spite of the revolt of her youthful heart, she resigned to
her friend her cousin and betrothed, Lazare, and afterward saved the
child of the disunited household, becoming its true mother; always
triumphant, always gay, notwithstanding her sacrificed and ruined
life, in her monotonous solitude, facing the great sea, in the midst
of a little world of sufferers groaning with pain, but who did not
wish to die.

Then came Gervaise Macquart with her four children: bandy-legged,
pretty, and industrious Gervaise, whom her lover Lantier turned into
the street in the faubourg, where she met the zinc worker Coupeau, the
skilful, steady workman whom she married, and with whom she lived so
happily at first, having three women working in her laundry, but
afterward sinking with her husband, as was inevitable, to the
degradation of her surroundings. He, gradually conquered by alcohol,
brought by it to madness and death; she herself perverted, become a
slattern, her moral ruin completed by the return of Lantier, living in
the tranquil ignominy of a household of three, thenceforward the
wretched victim of want, her accomplice, to which she at last
succumbed, dying one night of starvation.

Her eldest son, Claude, had the unhappy genius of a great painter
struck with madness, the impotent madness of feeling within him the
masterpiece to which his fingers refused to give shape; a giant
wrestler always defeated, a crucified martyr to his work, adoring
woman, sacrificing his wife Christine, so loving and for a time so
beloved, to the increate, divine woman of his visions, but whom his
pencil was unable to delineate in her nude perfection, possessed by a
devouring passion for producing, an insatiable longing to create, a
longing so torturing when it could not be satisfied, that he ended it
by hanging himself.

Jacques brought crime, the hereditary taint being transmuted in him
into an instinctive appetite for blood, the young and fresh blood from
the gashed throat of a woman, the first comer, the passer-by in the
street: a horrible malady against which he struggled, but which took
possession of him again in the course of his _amour_ with the
submissive and sensual Severine, whom a tragic story of assassination
caused to live in constant terror, and whom he stabbed one evening in
an excess of frenzy, maddened by the sight of her white throat. Then
this savage human beast rushed among the trains filing past swiftly,
and mounted the snorting engine of which he was the engineer, the
beloved engine which was one day to crush him to atoms, and then, left
without a guide, to rush furiously off into space braving unknown
disasters.

Etienne, in his turn driven out, arrived in the black country on a
freezing night in March, descended into the voracious pit, fell in
love with the melancholy Catherine, of whom a ruffian robbed him;
lived with the miners their gloomy life of misery and base
promiscuousness, until one day when hunger, prompting rebellion, sent
across the barren plain a howling mob of wretches who demanded bread,
tearing down and burning as they went, under the menace of the guns of
the band that went off of themselves, a terrible convulsion announcing
the end of the world. The avenging blood of the Maheus was to rise up
later; of Alzire dead of starvation, Maheu killed by a bullet,
Zacharie killed by an explosion of fire-damp, Catherine under the
ground. La Maheude alone survived to weep her dead, descending again
into the mine to earn her thirty sons, while Etienne, the beaten chief
of the band, haunted by the dread of future demands, went away on a
warm April morning, listening to the secret growth of the new world
whose germination was soon to dazzle the earth.

Nana then became the avenger; the girl born among the social filth of
the faubourgs; the golden fly sprung from the rottenness below, that
was tolerated and concealed, carrying in the fluttering of its wings
the ferment of destruction, rising and contaminating the aristocracy,
poisoning men only by alighting upon them, in the palaces through
whose windows it entered; the unconscious instrument of ruin and
death--fierce flame of Vandeuvres, the melancholy fate of Foucarmont,
lost in the Chinese waters, the disaster of Steiner, reduced to live
as an honest man, the imbecility of La Faloise and the tragic ruin of
the Muffats, and the white corpse of Georges, watched by Philippe,
come out of prison the day before, when the air of the epoch was so
contaminated that she herself was infected, and died of malignant
smallpox, caught at the death-bed of her son Louiset, while Paris
passed beneath her windows, intoxicated, possessed by the frenzy of
war, rushing to general ruin.

Lastly comes Jean Macquart, the workman and soldier become again a
peasant, fighting with the hard earth, which exacts that every grain
of corn shall be purchased with a drop of sweat, fighting, above all,
with the country people, whom covetousness and the long and difficult
battle with the soil cause to burn with the desire, incessantly
stimulated, of possession. Witness the Fouans, grown old, parting with
their fields as if they were parting with their flesh; the Buteaus in
their eager greed committing parricide, to hasten the inheritance of a
field of lucern; the stubborn Francoise dying from the stroke of a
scythe, without speaking, rather than that a sod should go out of the
family--all this drama of simple natures governed by instinct,
scarcely emerged from primitive barbarism--all this human filth on the
great earth, which alone remains immortal, the mother from whom they
issue and to whom they return again, she whom they love even to crime,
who continually remakes life, for its unknown end, even with the
misery and the abomination of the beings she nourishes. And it was
Jean, too, who, become a widower and having enlisted again at the
first rumor of war, brought the inexhaustible reserve, the stock of
eternal rejuvenation which the earth keeps; Jean, the humblest, the
staunchest soldier at the final downfall, swept along in the terrible
and fatal storm which, from the frontier to Sedan, in sweeping away
the Empire, threatened to sweep away the country; always wise,
circumspect, firm in his hope, loving with fraternal affection his
comrade Maurice, the demented child of the people, the holocaust
doomed to expiation, weeping tears of blood when inexorable destiny
chose himself to hew off this rotten limb, and after all had ended--
the continual defeats, the frightful civil war, the lost provinces,
the thousands of millions of francs to pay--taking up the march again,
notwithstanding, returning to the land which awaited him, to the great
and difficult task of making a new France.

Pascal paused; Clotilde had handed him all the packages, one by one,
and he had gone over them all, laid bare the contents of all,
classified them anew, and placed them again on the top shelf of the
press. He was out of breath, exhausted by his swift course through all
this humanity, while, without voice, without movement, the young girl,
stunned by this overflowing torrent of life, waited still, incapable
of thought or judgment. The rain still beat furiously upon the dark
fields. The lightning had just struck a tree in the neighborhood, that
had split with a terrible crash. The candles flared up in the wind
that came in from the open window.

"Ah!" he resumed, pointing to the papers again, "there is a world in
itself, a society, a civilization, the whole of life is there, with
its manifestations, good and bad, in the heat and labor of the forge
which shapes everything. Yes, our family of itself would suffice as an
example to science, which will perhaps one day establish with
mathematical exactness the laws governing the diseases of the blood
and nerves that show themselves in a race, after a first organic
lesion, and that determine, according to environment, the sentiments,
desires, and passions of each individual of that race, all the human,
natural and instinctive manifestations which take the names of virtues
and vices. And it is also a historical document, it relates the story
of the Second Empire, from the _coup d'etat_ to Sedan; for our family
spring from the people, they spread themselves through the whole of
contemporary society, invaded every place, impelled by their unbridled
appetites, by that impulse, essentially modern, that eager desire that
urges the lower classes to enjoyment, in their ascent through the
social strata. We started, as I have said, from Plassans, and here we
are now arrived once more at Plassans."

He paused again, and then resumed in a low, dreamy voice:

"What an appalling mass stirred up! how many passions, how many joys,
how many sufferings crammed into this colossal heap of facts! There is
pure history: the Empire founded in blood, at first pleasure-loving
and despotic, conquering rebellious cities, then gliding to a slow
disintegration, dissolving in blood--in such a sea of blood that the
entire nation came near being swamped in it. There are social studies:
wholesale and retail trade, prostitution, crime, land, money, the
_bourgeoisie_, the people--that people who rot in the sewer of the
faubourgs, who rebel in the great industrial centers, all that
ever-increasing growth of mighty socialism, big with the new century.
There are simple human studies: domestic pages, love stories, the
struggle of minds and hearts against unjust nature, the destruction of
those who cry out under their too difficult task, the cry of virtue
immolating itself, victorious over pain, There are fancies, flights of
the imagination beyond the real: vast gardens always in bloom,
cathedrals with slender, exquisitely wrought spires, marvelous tales
come down from paradise, ideal affections remounting to heaven in a
kiss. There is everything: the good and the bad, the vulgar and the
sublime, flowers, mud, blood, laughter, the torrent of life itself,
bearing humanity endlessly on!"

He took up again the genealogical tree which had remained neglected on
the table, spread it out and began to go over it once more with his
finger, enumerating now the members of the family who were still
living: Eugene Rougon, a fallen majesty, who remained in the Chamber,
the witness, the impassible defender of the old world swept away at
the downfall of the Empire. Aristide Saccard, who, after having
changed his principles, had fallen upon his feet a republican, the
editor of a great journal, on the way to make new millions, while his
natural son Victor, who had never reappeared, was living still in the
shade, since he was not in the galleys, cast forth by the world into
the future, into the unknown, like a human beast foaming with the
hereditary virus, who must communicate his malady with every bite he
gives. Sidonie Rougon, who had for a time disappeared, weary of
disreputable affairs, had lately retired to a sort of religious house,
where she was living in monastic austerity, the treasurer of the
Marriage Fund, for aiding in the marriage of girls who were mothers.
Octave Mouret, proprietor of the great establishment _Au Bonheur des
Dames_, whose colossal fortune still continued increasing, had had,
toward the end of the winter, a third child by his wife Denise Baudu,
whom he adored, although his mind was beginning to be deranged again.
The Abbe Mouret, cure at St. Eutrope, in the heart of a marshy gorge,
lived there in great retirement, and very modestly, with his sister
Desiree, refusing all advancement from his bishop, and waiting for
death like a holy man, rejecting all medicines, although he was
already suffering from consumption in its first stage. Helene Mouret
was living very happily in seclusion with her second husband, M.
Rambaud, on the little estate which they owned near Marseilles, on the
seashore; she had had no child by her second husband. Pauline Quenu
was still at Bonneville at the other extremity of France, in face of
the vast ocean, alone with little Paul, since the death of Uncle
Chanteau, having resolved never to marry, in order to devote herself
entirely to the son of her cousin Lazare, who had become a widower and
had gone to America to make a fortune. Etienne Lantier, returning to
Paris after the strike at Montsou, had compromised himself later in
the insurrection of the Commune, whose principles he had defended with
ardor; he had been condemned to death, but his sentence being commuted
was transported and was now at Noumea. It was even said that he had
married immediately on his arrival there, and that he had had a child,
the sex of which, however, was not known with certainty. Finally, Jean
Macquart, who had received his discharge after the Bloody Week, had
settled at Valqueyras, near Plassans, where he had had the good
fortune to marry a healthy girl, Melanie Vial, the daughter of a
well-to-do peasant, whose lands he farmed, and his wife had borne him
a son in May.

"Yes, it is true," he resumed, in a low voice; "races degenerate.
There is here a veritable exhaustion, rapid deterioration, as if our
family, in their fury of enjoyment, in the gluttonous satisfaction of
their appetites, had consumed themselves too quickly. Louiset, dead in
infancy; Jacques Louis, a half imbecile, carried off by a nervous
disease; Victor returned to the savage state, wandering about in who
knows what dark places; our poor Charles, so beautiful and so frail;
these are the latest branches of the tree, the last pale offshoots
into which the puissant sap of the larger branches seems to have been
unable to mount. The worm was in the trunk, it has ascended into the
fruit, and is devouring it. But one must never despair; families are a
continual growth. They go back beyond the common ancestor, into the
unfathomable strata of the races that have lived, to the first being;
and they will put forth new shoots without end, they will spread and
ramify to infinity, through future ages. Look at our tree; it counts
only five generations. It has not so much importance as a blade of
grass, even, in the human forest, vast and dark, of which the peoples
are the great secular oaks. Think only of the immense roots which
spread through the soil; think of the continual putting forth of new
leaves above, which mingle with other leaves of the ever-rolling sea
of treetops, at the fructifying, eternal breath of life. Well, hope
lies there, in the daily reconstruction of the race by the new blood
which comes from without. Each marriage brings other elements, good or
bad, of which the effect is, however, to prevent certain and
progressive regeneration. Breaches are repaired, faults effaced, an
equilibrium is inevitably re-established at the end of a few
generations, and it is the average man that always results; vague
humanity, obstinately pursuing its mysterious labor, marching toward
its unknown end."

He paused, and heaved a deep sigh.

"Ah! our family, what is it going to become; in what being will it
finally end?"

He continued, not now taking into account the survivors whom he had
just named; having classified these, he knew what they were capable
of, but he was full of keen curiosity regarding the children who were
still infants. He had written to a _confrere_ in Noumea for precise
information regarding the wife whom Etienne had lately married there,
and the child which she had had, but he had heard nothing, and he
feared greatly that on that side the tree would remain incomplete. He
was more fully furnished with documents regarding the two children of
Octave Mouret, with whom he continued to correspond; the little girl
was growing up puny and delicate, while the little boy, who strongly
resembled his mother, had developed superbly, and was perfectly
healthy. His strongest hope, besides these, was in Jean's children,
the eldest of whom was a magnificent boy, full of the youthful vigor
of the races that go back to the soil to regenerate themselves. Pascal
occasionally went to Valqueyras, and he returned happy from that
fertile spot, where the father, quiet and rational, was always at his
plow, the mother cheerful and simple, with her vigorous frame, capable
of bearing a world. Who knew what sound branch was to spring from that
side? Perhaps the wise and puissant of the future were to germinate
there. The worst of it, for the beauty of his tree, was that all these
little boys and girls were still so young that he could not classify
them. And his voice grew tender as he spoke of this hope of the
future, these fair-haired children, in the unavowed regret for his
celibacy.

Still contemplating the tree spread out before him, he cried:

"And yet it is complete, it is decisive. Look! I repeat to you that
all hereditary cases are to be found there. To establish my theory, I
had only to base it on the collection of these facts. And indeed, the
marvelous thing is that there you can put your finger on the cause why
creatures born of the same stock can appear radically different,
although they are only logical modifications of common ancestors. The
trunk explains the branches, and these explain the leaves. In your
father Saccard and your Uncle Eugene Rougon, so different in their
temperaments and their lives, it is the same impulse which made the
inordinate appetites of the one and the towering ambition of the
other. Angelique, that pure lily, is born from the disreputable
Sidonie, in the rapture which makes mystics or lovers, according to
the environment. The three children of the Mourets are born of the
same breath which makes of the clever Octave the dry goods merchant, a
millionaire; of the devout Serge, a poor country priest; of the
imbecile Desiree, a beautiful and happy girl. But the example is still
more striking in the children of Gervaise; the neurosis passes down,
and Nana sells herself; Etienne is a rebel; Jacques, a murderer;
Claude, a genius; while Pauline, their cousin german, near by, is
victorious virtue--virtue which struggles and immolates itself. It is
heredity, life itself which makes imbeciles, madmen, criminals and
great men. Cells abort, others take their place, and we have a
scoundrel or a madman instead of a man of genius, or simply an honest
man. And humanity rolls on, bearing everything on its tide."

Then in a new shifting of his thought, growing still more animated, he
continued:

"And animals--the beast that suffers and that loves, which is the
rough sketch, as it were, of man--all the animals our brothers, that
live our life, yes, I would have put them in the ark, I would give
them a place among our family, show them continually mingling with us,
completing our existence. I have known cats whose presence was the
mysterious charm of the household; dogs that were adored, whose death
was mourned, and left in the heart an inconsolable grief. I have known
goats, cows, and asses of very great importance, and whose personality
played such a part that their history ought to be written. And there
is our Bonhomme, our poor old horse, that has served us for a quarter
of a century. Do you not think that he has mingled his life with ours,
and that henceforth he is one of the family? We have modified him, as
he has influenced us a little; we shall end by being made in the same
image, and this is so true that now, when I see him, half blind, with
wandering gaze, his legs stiff with rheumatism, I kiss him on both
cheeks as if he were a poor old relation who had fallen to my charge.
Ah, animals, all creeping and crawling things, all creatures that
lament, below man, how large a place in our sympathies it would be
necessary to give them in a history of life!"

This was a last cry in which Pascal gave utterance to his passionate
tenderness for all created beings. He had gradually become more and
more excited, and had so come to make this confession of his faith in
the continuous and victorious work of animated nature. And Clotilde,
who thus far had not spoken, pale from the catastrophe in which her
plans had ended, at last opened her lips to ask:

"Well, master, and what am I here?"

She placed one of her slender fingers on the leaf of the tree on which
she saw her name written. He had always passed this leaf by. She
insisted.

"Yes, I; what am I? Why have you not read me my envelope?"

For a moment he remained silent, as if surprised at the question.

"Why? For no reason. It is true, I have nothing to conceal from you.
You see what is written here? 'Clotilde, born in 1847. Selection of
the mother. Reversional heredity, with moral and physical predominance
of the maternal grandfather.' Nothing can be clearer. Your mother has
predominated in you; you have her fine intelligence, and you have also
something of her coquetry, at times of her indolence and of her
submissiveness. Yes, you are very feminine, like her. Without your
being aware of it, I would say that you love to be loved. Besides,
your mother was a great novel reader, an imaginative being who loved
to spend whole days dreaming over a book; she doted on nursery tales,
had her fortune told by cards, consulted clairvoyants; and I have
always thought that your concern about spiritual matters, your anxiety
about the unknown, came from that source. But what completed your
character by giving you a dual nature, was the influence of your
grandfather, Commandant Sicardot. I knew him; he was not a genius, but
he had at least a great deal of uprightness and energy. Frankly, if it
were not for him, I do not believe that you would be worth much, for
the other influences are hardly good. He has given you the best part
of your nature, combativeness, pride, and frankness."

She had listened to him with attention. She nodded slightly, to
signify that it was indeed so, that she was not offended, although her
lips trembled visibly at these new details regarding her people and
her mother.

"Well," she resumed, "and you, master?"

This time he did not hesitate.

"Oh, I!" he cried, "what is the use of speaking of me? I do not belong
to the family. You see what is written here. 'Pascal, born in 1813.
Individual variation. Combination in which the physical and moral
characters of the parents are blended, without any of their traits
seeming to appear in the new being.' My mother has told me often
enough that I did not belong to it, that in truth she did not know
where I could have come from."

Those words came from him like a cry of relief, of involuntary joy.

"And the people make no mistake in the matter. Have you ever heard me
called Pascal Rougon in the town? No; people always say simply Dr.
Pascal. It is because I stand apart. And it may not be very
affectionate to feel so, but I am delighted at it, for there are in
truth inheritances too heavy to bear. It is of no use that I love them
all. My heart beats none the less joyously when I feel myself another
being, different from them, without any community with them. Not to be
of them, my God! not to be of them! It is a breath of pure air; it is
what gives me the courage to have them all here, to put them, in all
their nakedness, in their envelopes, and still to find the courage to
live!"

He stopped, and there was silence for a time. The rain had ceased, the
storm was passing away, the thunderclaps sounded more and more
distant, while from the refreshed fields, still dark, there came in
through the open window a delicious odor of moist earth. In the calm
air the candles were burning out with a tall, tranquil flame.

"Ah!" said Clotilde simply, with a gesture of discouragement, "what
are we to become finally?"

She had declared it to herself one night, in the threshing yard; life
was horrible, how could one live peaceful and happy? It was a terrible
light that science threw on the world. Analysis searched every wound
of humanity, in order to expose its horror. And now he had spoken
still more bluntly; he had increased the disgust which she had for
persons and things, pitilessly dissecting her family. The muddy
torrent had rolled on before her for nearly three hours, and she had
heard the most dreadful revelations, the harsh and terrible truth
about her people, her people who were so dear to her, whom it was her
duty to love; her father grown powerful through pecuniary crimes; her
brother dissolute; her grandmother unscrupulous, covered with the
blood of the just; the others almost all tainted, drunkards, ruffians,
murderers, the monstrous blossoming of the human tree.

The blow had been so rude that she could not yet recover from it,
stunned as she was by the revelation of her whole family history, made
to her in this way at a stroke. And yet the lesson was rendered
innocuous, so to say, by something great and good, a breath of
profound humanity which had borne her through it. Nothing bad had come
to her from it. She felt herself beaten by a sharp sea wind, the storm
wind which strengthens and expands the lungs. He had revealed
everything, speaking freely even of his mother, without judging her,
continuing to preserve toward her his deferential attitude, as a
scientist who does not judge events. To tell everything in order to
know everything, in order to remedy everything, was not this the cry
which he had uttered on that beautiful summer night?

And by the very excess of what he had just revealed to her, she
remained shaken, blinded by this too strong light, but understanding
him at last, and confessing to herself that he was attempting in this
an immense work. In spite of everything, it was a cry of health, of
hope in the future. He spoke as a benefactor who, since heredity made
the world, wished to fix its laws, in order to control it, and to make
a new and happy world. Was there then only mud in this overflowing
stream, whose sluices he had opened? How much gold had passed, mingled
with the grass and the flowers on its borders? Hundreds of beings were
still flying swiftly before her, and she was haunted by good and
charming faces, delicate girlish profiles, by the serene beauty of
women. All passion bled there, hearts swelled with every tender
rapture. They were numerous, the Jeannes, the Angeliques, the
Paulines, the Marthes, the Gervaises, the Helenes. They and others,
even those who were least good, even terrible men, the worst of the
band, showed a brotherhood with humanity.

And it was precisely this breath which she had felt pass, this broad
current of sympathy, that he had introduced naturally into his exact
scientific lesson. He did not seem to be moved; he preserved the
impersonal and correct attitude of the demonstrator, but within him
what tender suffering, what a fever of devotion, what a giving up of
his whole being to the happiness of others? His entire work,
constructed with such mathematical precision, was steeped in this
fraternal suffering, even in its most cruel ironies. Had he not just
spoken of the animals, like an elder brother of the wretched living
beings that suffer? Suffering exasperated him; his wrath was because
of his too lofty dream, and he had become harsh only in his hatred of
the factitious and the transitory; dreaming of working, not for the
polite society of a time, but for all humanity in the gravest hours of
its history. Perhaps, even, it was this revolt against the vulgarity
of the time which had made him throw himself, in bold defiance, into
theories and their application. And the work remained human,
overflowing as it was with an infinite pity for beings and things.

Besides, was it not life? There is no absolute evil. Most often a
virtue presents itself side by side with a defect. No man is bad to
every one, each man makes the happiness of some one; so that, when one
does not view things from a single standpoint only, one recognizes in
the end the utility of every human being. Those who believe in God
should say to themselves that if their God does not strike the wicked
dead, it is because he sees his work in its totality, and that he
cannot descend to the individual. Labor ends to begin anew; the
living, as a whole, continue, in spite of everything, admirable in
their courage and their industry; and love of life prevails over all.

This giant labor of men, this obstinacy in living, is their excuse, is
redemption. And then, from a great height the eye saw only this
continual struggle, and a great deal of good, in spite of everything,
even though there might be a great deal of evil. One shared the
general indulgence, one pardoned, one had only an infinite pity and an
ardent charity. The haven was surely there, waiting those who have
lost faith in dogmas, who wish to understand the meaning of their
lives, in the midst of the apparent iniquity of the world. One must
live for the effort of living, for the stone to be carried to the
distant and unknown work, and the only possible peace in the world is
in the joy of making this effort.

Another hour passed; the entire night had flown by in this terrible
lesson of life, without either Pascal or Clotilde being conscious of
where they were, or of the flight of time. And he, overworked for some
time past, and worn out by the life of suspicion and sadness which he
had been leading, started nervously, as if he had suddenly awakened.

"Come, you know all; do you feel your heart strong, tempered by the
truth, full of pardon and of hope? Are you with me?"

But, still stunned by the frightful moral shock which she had
received, she too, started, bewildered. Her old beliefs had been so
completely overthrown, so many new ideas were awakening within her,
that she did not dare to question herself, in order to find an answer.
She felt herself seized and carried away by the omnipotence of truth.
She endured it without being convinced.

"Master," she stammered, "master--"

And they remained for a moment face to face, looking at each other.
Day was breaking, a dawn of exquisite purity, far off in the vast,
clear sky, washed by the storm. Not a cloud now stained the pale azure
tinged with rose color. All the cheerful sounds of awakening life in
the rain-drenched fields came in through the window, while the
candles, burned down to the socket, paled in the growing light.

"Answer; are you with me, altogether with me?"

For a moment he thought she was going to throw herself on his neck and
burst into tears. A sudden impulse seemed to impel her. But they saw
each other in their semi-nudity. She, who had not noticed it before,
was now conscious that she was only half dressed, that her arms were
bare, her shoulders bare, covered only by the scattered locks of her
unbound hair, and on her right shoulder, near the armpit, on lowering
her eyes, she perceived again the few drops of blood of the bruise
which he had given her, when he had grasped her roughly, in struggling
to master her. Then an extraordinary confusion took possession of her,
a certainty that she was going to be vanquished, as if by this grasp
he had become her master, and forever. This sensation was prolonged;
she was seized and drawn on, without the consent of her will, by an
irresistible impulse to submit.

Abruptly Clotilde straightened herself, struggling with herself,
wishing to reflect and to recover herself. She pressed her bare arms
against her naked throat. All the blood in her body rushed to her skin
in a rosy blush of shame. Then, in her divine and slender grace, she
turned to flee.

"Master, master, let me go--I will see--"

With the swiftness of alarmed maidenhood, she took refuge in her
chamber, as she had done once before. He heard her lock the door
hastily, with a double turn of the key. He remained alone, and he
asked himself suddenly, seized by infinite discouragement and sadness,
if he had done right in speaking, if the truth would germinate in this
dear and adored creature, and bear one day a harvest of happiness.

VI.


The days wore on. October began with magnificent weather--a sultry
autumn in which the fervid heat of summer was prolonged, with a
cloudless sky. Then the weather changed, fierce winds began to blow,
and a last storm channeled gullies in the hillsides. And to the
melancholy household at La Souleiade the approach of winter seemed to
have brought an infinite sadness.

It was a new hell. There were no more violent quarrels between Pascal
and Clotilde. The doors were no longer slammed. Voices raised in
dispute no longer obliged Martine to go continually upstairs to listen
outside the door. They scarcely spoke to each other now; and not a
single word had been exchanged between them regarding the midnight
scene, although weeks had passed since it had taken place. He, through
an inexplicable scruple, a strange delicacy of which he was not
himself conscious, did not wish to renew the conversation, and to
demand the answer which he expected--a promise of faith in him and of
submission. She, after the great moral shock which had completely
transformed her, still reflected, hesitated, struggled, fighting
against herself, putting off her decision in order not to surrender,
in her instinctive rebelliousness. And the misunderstanding continued,
in the midst of the mournful silence of the miserable house, where
there was no longer any happiness.

During all this time Pascal suffered terribly, without making any
complaint. He had sunk into a dull distrust, imagining that he was
still being watched, and that if they seemed to leave him at peace it
was only in order to concoct in secret the darkest plots. His
uneasiness increased, even, and he expected every day some catastrophe
to happen--the earth suddenly to open and swallow up his papers, La
Souleiade itself to be razed to the ground, carried away bodily,
scattered to the winds.

The persecution against his thought, against his moral and
intellectual life, in thus hiding itself, and so rendering him
helpless to defend himself, became so intolerable to him that he went
to bed every night in a fever. He would often start and turn round
suddenly, thinking he was going to surprise the enemy behind him
engaged in some piece of treachery, to find nothing there but the
shadow of his own fears. At other times, seized by some suspicion, he
would remain on the watch for hours together, hidden, behind his
blinds, or lying in wait in a passage; but not a soul stirred, he
heard nothing but the violent beating of his heart. His fears kept him
in a state of constant agitation; he never went to bed at night
without visiting every room; he no longer slept, or, if he did, he
would waken with a start at the slightest noise, ready to defend
himself.

And what still further aggravated Pascal's sufferings was the
constant, the ever more bitter thought that the wound was inflicted
upon him by the only creature he loved in the world, the adored
Clotilde, whom for twenty years he had seen grow in beauty and in
grace, whose life had hitherto bloomed like a beautiful flower,
perfuming his. She, great God! for whom his heart was full of
affection, whom he had never analyzed, she, who had become his joy,
his courage, his hope, in whose young life he lived over again. When
she passed by, with her delicate neck, so round, so fresh, he was
invigorated, bathed in health and joy, as at the coming of spring.

His whole life, besides, explained this invasion, this subjugation of
his being by the young girl who had entered into his heart while she
was still a little child, and who, as she grew up, had gradually taken
possession of the whole place. Since he had settled at Plassans, he
had led a blest existence, wrapped up in his books, far from women.
The only passion he was ever known to have had, was his love for the
lady who had died, whose finger tips he had never kissed. He had not
lived; he had within him a reserve of youthfulness, of vigor, whose
surging flood now clamored rebelliously at the menace of approaching
age. He would have become attached to an animal, a stray dog that he
had chanced to pick up in the street, and that had licked his hand.
And it was this child whom he loved, all at once become an adorable
woman, who now distracted him, who tortured him by her hostility.

Pascal, so gay, so kind, now became insupportably gloomy and harsh. He
grew angry at the slightest word; he would push aside the astonished
Martine, who would look up at him with the submissive eyes of a beaten
animal. From morning till night he went about the gloomy house,
carrying his misery about with him, with so forbidding a countenance
that no one ventured to speak to him.

He never took Clotilde with him now on his visits, but went alone. And
thus it was that he returned home one afternoon, his mind distracted
because of an accident which had happened; having on his conscience,
as a physician, the death of a man.

He had gone to give a hypodermic injection to Lafouasse, the tavern
keeper, whose ataxia had within a short time made such rapid progress
that he regarded him as doomed. But, notwithstanding, Pascal still
fought obstinately against the disease, continuing the treatment, and
as ill luck would have it, on this day the little syringe had caught
up at the bottom of the vial an impure particle, which had escaped the
filter. Immediately a drop of blood appeared; to complete his
misfortune, he had punctured a vein. He was at once alarmed, seeing
the tavern keeper turn pale and gasp for breath, while large drops of
cold perspiration broke out upon his face. Then he understood; death
came as if by a stroke of lightning, the lips turning blue, the face
black. It was an embolism; he had nothing to blame but the
insufficiency of his preparations, his still rude method. No doubt
Lafouasse had been doomed. He could not, perhaps, have lived six
months longer, and that in the midst of atrocious sufferings, but the
brutal fact of this terrible death was none the less there, and what
despairing regret, what rage against impotent and murderous science,
and what a shock to his faith! He returned home, livid, and did not
make his appearance again until the following day, after having
remained sixteen hours shut up in his room, lying in a semi-stupor on
the bed, across which he had thrown himself, dressed as he was.

On the afternoon of this day Clotilde, who was sitting beside him in
the study, sewing, ventured to break the oppressive silence. She
looked up, and saw him turning over the leaves of a book wearily,
searching for some information which he was unable to find.

"Master, are you ill? Why do you not tell me, if you are. I would take
care of you."

He kept his eyes bent upon the book, and muttered:

"What does it matter to you whether I am ill or not? I need no one to
take care of me."

She resumed, in a conciliating voice:

"If you have troubles, and can tell them to me, it would perhaps be a
relief to you to do so. Yesterday you came in looking so sad. You must
not allow yourself to be cast down in that way. I have spent a very
anxious night. I came to your door three times to listen, tormented by
the idea that you were suffering."

Gently as she spoke, her words were like the cut of a whip. In his
weak and nervous condition a sudden access of rage made him push away
the book and rise up trembling.

"So you spy upon me, then. I cannot even retire to my room without
people coming to glue their ears to the walls. Yes, you listen even to
the beatings of my heart. You watch for my death, to pillage and burn
everything here."

His voice rose and all his unjust suffering vented itself in
complaints and threats.

"I forbid you to occupy yourself about me. Is there nothing else that
you have to say to me? Have you reflected? Can you put your hand in
mine loyally, and say to me that we are in accord?"

She did not answer. She only continued to look at him with her large
clear eyes, frankly declaring that she would not surrender yet, while
he, exasperated more and more by this attitude, lost all self-control.

"Go away, go away," he stammered, pointing to the door. "I do not wish
you to remain near me. I do not wish to have enemies near me. I do not
wish you to remain near me to drive me mad!"

She rose, very pale, and went at once out of the room, without looking
behind, carrying her work with her.

During the month which followed, Pascal took refuge in furious and
incessant work. He now remained obstinately, for whole days at a time,
alone in the study, sometimes passing even the nights there, going
over old documents, to revise all his works on heredity. It seemed as
if a sort of frenzy had seized him to assure himself of the legitimacy
of his hopes, to force science to give him the certainty that humanity
could be remade--made a higher, a healthy humanity. He no longer left
the house, he abandoned his patients even, and lived among his papers,
without air or exercise. And after a month of this overwork, which
exhausted him without appeasing his domestic torments, he fell into
such a state of nervous exhaustion that illness, for some time latent,
declared itself at last with alarming violence.

Pascal, when he rose in the morning, felt worn out with fatigue,
wearier and less refreshed than he had been on going to bed the night
before. He constantly had pains all over his body; his limbs failed
him, after five minutes' walk; the slightest exertion tired him; the
least movement caused him intense pain. At times the floor seemed
suddenly to sway beneath his feet. He had a constant buzzing in his
ears, flashes of light dazzled his eyes. He took a loathing for wine,
he had no longer any appetite, and his digestion was seriously
impaired. Then, in the midst of the apathy of his constantly
increasing idleness he would have sudden fits of aimless activity. The
equilibrium was destroyed, he had at times outbreaks of nervous
irritability, without any cause. The slightest emotion brought tears
to his eyes. Finally, he would shut himself up in his room, and give
way to paroxysms of despair so violent that he would sob for hours at
a time, without any immediate cause of grief, overwhelmed simply by
the immense sadness of things.

In the early part of December Pascal had a severe attack of neuralgia.
Violent pains in the bones of the skull made him feel at times as if
his head must split. Old Mme. Rougon, who had been informed of his
illness, came to inquire after her son. But she went straight to the
kitchen, wishing to have a talk with Martine first. The latter, with a
heart-broken and terrified air, said to her that monsieur must
certainly be going mad; and she told her of his singular behavior, the
continual tramping about in his room, the locking of all the drawers,
the rounds which he made from the top to the bottom of the house,
until two o'clock in the morning. Tears filled her eyes and she at
last hazarded the opinion that monsieur must be possessed with a
devil, and that it would be well to notify the cure of St. Saturnin.

"So good a man," she said, "a man for whom one would let one's self be
cut in pieces! How unfortunate it is that one cannot get him to go to
church, for that would certainly cure him at once."

Clotilde, who had heard her grandmother's voice, entered at this
moment. She, too, wandered through the empty rooms, spending most of
her time in the deserted apartment on the ground floor. She did not
speak, however, but only listened with her thoughtful and expectant
air.

"Ah, goodday! It is you, my dear. Martine tells me that Pascal is
possessed with a devil. That is indeed my opinion also; only the devil
is called pride. He thinks that he knows everything. He is Pope and
Emperor in one, and naturally it exasperates him when people don't
agree with him."

She shrugged her shoulders with supreme disdain.

"As for me, all that would only make me laugh if it were not so sad. A
fellow who knows nothing about anything; who has always been wrapped
up in his books; who has not lived. Put him in a drawing-room, and he
would know as little how to act as a new-born babe. And as for women,
he does not even know what they are."

Forgetting to whom she was speaking, a young girl and a servant, she
lowered her voice, and said confidentially:

"Well, one pays for being too sensible, too. Neither a wife nor a
sweetheart nor anything. That is what has finally turned his brain."

Clotilde did not move. She only lowered her eyelids slowly over her
large thoughtful eyes; then she raised them again, maintaining her
impenetrable countenance, unwilling, unable, perhaps, to give
expression to what was passing within her. This was no doubt all still
confused, a complete evolution, a great change which was taking place,
and which she herself did not clearly understand.

"He is upstairs, is he not?" resumed Felicite. "I have come to see
him, for this must end; it is too stupid."

And she went upstairs, while Martine returned to her saucepans, and
Clotilde went to wander again through the empty house.

Upstairs in the study Pascal sat seemingly in a stupor, his face bent
over a large open book. He could no longer read, the words danced
before his eyes, conveying no meaning to his mind. But he persisted,
for it was death to him to lose his faculty for work, hitherto so
powerful. His mother at once began to scold him, snatching the book
from him, and flinging it upon a distant table, crying that when one
was sick one should take care of one's self. He rose with a quick,
angry movement, about to order her away as he had ordered Clotilde.
Then, by a last effort of the will, he became again deferential.

"Mother, you know that I have never wished to dispute with you. Leave
me, I beg of you."

She did not heed him, but began instead to take him to task about his
continual distrust. It was he himself who had given himself a fever,
always fancying that he was surrounded by enemies who were setting
traps for him, and watching him to rob him. Was there any common sense
in imagining that people were persecuting him in that way? And then
she accused him of allowing his head to be turned by his discovery,
his famous remedy for curing every disease. That was as much as to
think himself equal to the good God; which only made it all the more
cruel when he found out how mistaken he was. And she mentioned
Lafouasse, the man whom he had killed--naturally, she could understand
that that had not been very pleasant for him; indeed there was cause
enough in it to make him take to his bed.

Pascal, still controlling himself, very pale and with eyes cast on the
ground, contented himself with repeating:

"Mother, leave me, I beg of you."

"No, I won't leave you," she cried with the impetuosity which was
natural to her, and which her great age had in no wise diminished. "I
have come precisely to stir you up a little, to rid you of this fever
which is consuming you. No, this cannot continue. I don't wish that we
should again become the talk of the whole town on your account. I wish
you to take care of yourself."

He shrugged his shoulders, and said in a low voice, as if speaking to
himself, with an uneasy look, half of conviction, half of doubt:

"I am not ill."

But Felicite, beside herself, burst out, gesticulating violently:

"Not ill! not ill! Truly, there is no one like a physician for not
being able to see himself. Why, my poor boy, every one that comes near
you is shocked by your appearance. You are becoming insane through
pride and fear!"

This time Pascal raised his head quickly, and looked her straight in
the eyes, while she continued:

"This is what I had to tell you, since it seems that no one else would
undertake the task. You are old enough to know what you ought to do.
You should make an effort to shake off all this; you should think of
something else; you should not let a fixed idea take possession of
you, especially when you belong to a family like ours. You know it;
have sense, and take care of yourself."

He grew paler than before, looking fixedly at her still, as if he were
sounding her, to know what there was of her in him. And he contented
himself with answering:

"You are right, mother. I thank you."

When he was again alone, he dropped into his seat before the table,
and tried once more to read his book. But he could not succeed, any
more than before, in fixing his attention sufficiently to understand
the words, whose letters mingled confusedly together before his eyes.
And his mother's words buzzed in his ears; a vague terror, which had
some time before sprung up within him, grew and took shape, haunting
him now as an immediate and clearly defined danger. He who two months
before had boasted triumphantly of not belonging to the family, was he
about to receive the most terrible of contradictions? Ah, this
egotistic joy, this intense joy of not belonging to it, was it to give
place to the terrible anguish of being struck in his turn? Was he to
have the humiliation of seeing the taint revive in him? Was he to be
dragged down to the horror of feeling himself in the clutches of the
monster of heredity? The sublime idea, the lofty certitude which he
had of abolishing suffering, of strengthening man's will, of making a
new and a higher humanity, a healthy humanity, was assuredly only the
beginning of the monomania of vanity. And in his bitter complaint of
being watched, in his desire to watch the enemies who, he thought,
were obstinately bent on his destruction, were easily to be recognized
the symptoms of the monomania of suspicion. So then all the diseases
of the race were to end in this terrible case--madness within a brief
space, then general paralysis, and a dreadful death.

From this day forth Pascal was as if possessed. The state of nervous
exhaustion into which overwork and anxiety had thrown him left him an
unresisting prey to this haunting fear of madness and death. All the
morbid sensations which he felt, his excessive fatigue on rising, the
buzzing in his ears, the flashes of light before his eyes, even his
attacks of indigestion and his paroxysms of tears, were so many
infallible symptoms of the near insanity with which he believed
himself threatened. He had completely lost, in his own case, the keen
power of diagnosis of the observant physician, and if he still
continued to reason about it, it was only to confound and pervert
symptoms, under the influence of the moral and physical depression
into which he had fallen. He was no longer master of himself; he was
mad, so to say, to convince himself hour by hour that he must become
so.

All the days of this pale December were spent by him in going deeper
and deeper into his malady. Every morning he tried to escape from the
haunting subject, but he invariably ended by shutting himself in the
study to take up again, in spite of himself, the tangled skein of the
day before.

The long study which he had made of heredity, his important
researches, his works, completed the poisoning of his peace,
furnishing him with ever renewed causes of disquietude. To the
question which he put to himself continually as to his own hereditary
case, the documents were there to answer it by all possible
combinations. They were so numerous that he lost himself among them
now. If he had deceived himself, if he could not set himself apart, as
a remarkable case of variation, should he place himself under the head
of reversional heredity, passing over one, two, or even three
generations? Or was his case rather a manifestation of larvated
heredity, which would bring anew proof to the support of his theory of
the germ plasm, or was it simply a singular case of hereditary
resemblance, the sudden apparition of some unknown ancestor at the
very decline of life?

From this moment he never rested, giving himself up completely to the
investigation of his case, searching his notes, rereading his books.
And he studied himself, watching the least of his sensations, to
deduce from them the facts on which he might judge himself. On the
days when his mind was most sluggish, or when he thought he
experienced particular phenomena of vision, he inclined to a
predominance of the original nervous lesion; while, if he felt that
his limbs were affected, his feet heavy and painful, he imagined he
was suffering the indirect influence of some ancestor come from
outside. Everything became confused, until at last he could recognize
himself no longer, in the midst of the imaginary troubles which
agitated his disturbed organism. And every evening the conclusion was
the same, the same knell sounded in his brain--heredity, appalling
heredity, the fear of becoming mad.

In the early part of January Clotilde was an involuntary spectator of
a scene which wrung her heart. She was sitting before one of the
windows of the study, reading, concealed by the high back of her
chair, when she saw Pascal, who had been shut up in his room since the
day before, entering. He held open before his eyes with both hands a
sheet of yellow paper, in which she recognized the genealogical tree.
He was so completely absorbed, his gaze was so fixed, that she might
have come forward without his observing her. He spread the tree upon
the table, continuing to look at it for a long time, with the
terrified expression of interrogation which had become habitual to
him, which gradually changed to one of supplication, the tears
coursing down his cheeks.

Why, great God! would not the tree answer him, and tell him what
ancestor he resembled, in order that he might inscribe his case on his
own leaf, beside the others? If he was to become mad, why did not the
tree tell him so clearly, which would have calmed him, for he believed
that his suffering came only from his uncertainty? Tears clouded his
vision, yet still he looked, he exhausted himself in this longing to
know, in which his reason must finally give way.

Clotilde hastily concealed herself as she saw him walk over to the
press, which he opened wide. He seized the envelopes, threw them on
the table, and searched among them feverishly. It was the scene of the
terrible night of the storm that was beginning over again, the gallop
of nightmares, the procession of phantoms, rising at his call from
this heap of old papers. As they passed by, he addressed to each of
them a question, an ardent prayer, demanding the origin of his malady,
hoping for a word, a whisper which should set his doubts at rest.
First, it was only an indistinct murmur, then came words and fragments
of phrases.

"Is it you--is it you--is it you--oh, old mother, the mother of us
all--who are to give me your madness? Is it you, inebriate uncle, old
scoundrel of an uncle, whose drunkenness I am to pay for? Is it you,
ataxic nephew, or you, mystic nephew, or yet you, idiot niece, who are
to reveal to me the truth, showing me one of the forms of the lesion
from which I suffer? Or is it rather you, second cousin, who hanged
yourself; or you, second cousin, who committed murder; or you, second
cousin, who died of rottenness, whose tragic ends announce to me mine
--death in a cell, the horrible decomposition of being?"

And the gallop continued, they rose and passed by with the speed of
the wind. The papers became animate, incarnate, they jostled one
another, they trampled on one another, in a wild rush of suffering
humanity.

"Ah, who will tell me, who will tell me, who will tell me?--Is it he
who died mad? he who was carried off by phthisis? he who was killed by
paralysis? she whose constitutional feebleness caused her to die in
early youth?--Whose is the poison of which I am to die? What is it,
hysteria, alcoholism, tuberculosis, scrofula? And what is it going to
make of me, an ataxic or a madman? A madman. Who was it said a madman?
They all say it--a madman, a madman, a madman!"

Sobs choked Pascal. He let his dejected head fall among the papers, he
wept endlessly, shaken by shuddering sobs. And Clotilde, seized by a
sort of awe, feeling the presence of the fate which rules over races,
left the room softly, holding her breath; for she knew that it would
mortify him exceedingly if he knew that she had been present.

Long periods of prostration followed. January was very cold. But the
sky remained wonderfully clear, a brilliant sun shone in the limpid
blue; and at La Souleiade, the windows of the study facing south
formed a sort of hothouse, preserving there a delightfully mild
temperature. They did not even light a fire, for the room was always
filled with a flood of sunshine, in which the flies that had survived
the winter flew about lazily. The only sound to be heard was the
buzzing of their wings. It was a close and drowsy warmth, like a
breath of spring that had lingered in the old house baked by the heat
of summer.

Pascal, still gloomy, dragged through the days there, and it was
there, too, that he overheard one day the closing words of a
conversation which aggravated his suffering. As he never left his room
now before breakfast, Clotilde had received Dr. Ramond this morning in
the study, and they were talking there together in an undertone,
sitting beside each other in the bright sunshine.

It was the third visit which Ramond had made during the last week.
Personal reasons, the necessity, especially, of establishing
definitely his position as a physician at Plassans, made it expedient
for him not to defer his marriage much longer: and he wished to obtain
from Clotilde a decisive answer. On each of his former visits the
presence of a third person had prevented him from speaking. As he
desired to receive her answer from herself directly he had resolved to
declare himself to her in a frank conversation. Their intimate
friendship, and the discretion and good sense of both, justified him
in taking this step. And he ended, smiling, looking into her eyes:

"I assure you, Clotilde, that it is the most reasonable of
_denouements_. You know that I have loved you for a long time. I have
a profound affection and esteem for you. That alone might perhaps not
be sufficient, but, in addition, we understand each other perfectly,
and we should be very happy together, I am convinced of it."

She did not cast down her eyes; she, too, looked at him frankly, with
a friendly smile. He was, in truth, very handsome, in his vigorous
young manhood.

"Why do you not marry Mlle. Leveque, the lawyer's daughter?" she
asked. "She is prettier and richer than I am, and I know that she
would gladly accept you. My dear friend, I fear that you are
committing a folly in choosing me."

He did not grow impatient, seeming still convinced of the wisdom of
his determination.

"But I do not love Mlle. Leveque, and I do love you. Besides, I have
considered everything, and I repeat that I know very well what I am
about. Say yes; you can take no better course."

Then she grew very serious, and a shadow passed over her face, the
shadow of those reflections, of those almost unconscious inward
struggles, which kept her silent for days at a time. She did not see
clearly yet, she still struggled against herself, and she wished to
wait.

"Well, my friend, since you are really serious, do not ask me to give
you an answer to-day; grant me a few weeks longer. Master is indeed
very ill. I am greatly troubled about him; and you would not like to
owe my consent to a hasty impulse. I assure you, for my part, that I
have a great deal of affection for you, but it would be wrong to
decide at this moment; the house is too unhappy. It is agreed, is it
not? I will not make you wait long."

And to change the conversation she added:

"Yes, I am uneasy about master. I wished to see you, in order to tell
you so. The other day I surprised him weeping violently, and I am
certain the fear of becoming mad haunts him. The day before yesterday,
when you were talking to him, I saw that you were examining him. Tell
me frankly, what do you think of his condition? Is he in any danger?"

"Not the slightest!" exclaimed Dr. Ramond. "His system is a little out
of order, that is all. How can a man of his ability, who has made so
close a study of nervous diseases, deceive himself to such an extent?
It is discouraging, indeed, if the clearest and most vigorous minds
can go so far astray. In his case his own discovery of hypodermic
injections would be excellent. Why does he not use them with himself?"

And as the young girl replied, with a despairing gesture, that he
would not listen to her, that he would not even allow her to speak to
him now, Ramond said:

"Well, then, I will speak to him."

It was at this moment that Pascal came out of his room, attracted by
the sound of voices. But on seeing them both so close to each other,
so animated, so youthful, and so handsome in the sunshine--clothed
with sunshine, as it were--he stood still in the doorway. He looked
fixedly at them, and his pale face altered.

Ramond had a moment before taken Clotilde's hand, and he was holding
it in his.

"It is a promise, is it not? I should like the marriage to take place
this summer. You know how much I love you, and I shall eagerly await
your answer."

"Very well," she answered. "Before a month all will be settled."

A sudden giddiness made Pascal stagger. Here now was this boy, his
friend, his pupil, who had introduced himself into his house to rob
him of his treasure! He ought to have expected this _denouement_, yet
the sudden news of a possible marriage surprised him, overwhelmed him
like an unforeseen catastrophe that had forever ruined his life. This
girl whom he had fashioned, whom he had believed his own, she would
leave him, then, without regret, she would leave him to die alone in
his solitude. Only the day before she had made him suffer so intensely
that he had asked himself whether he should not part from her and send
her to her brother, who was always writing for her. For an instant he
had even decided on this separation, for the good of both. Yet to find
her here suddenly, with this man, to hear her promise to give him an
answer, to think that she would marry, that she would soon leave him,
this stabbed him to the heart.

At the sound of his heavy step as he came forward, the two young
people turned round in some embarrassment.

"Why, master, we were just talking about you," said Ramond gaily.
"Yes, to be frank with you, we were conspiring. Come, why do you not
take care of yourself? There is nothing serious the matter with you;
you would be on your feet again in a fortnight if you did."

Pascal, who had dropped into a chair, continued to look at them. He
had still the power to control himself, and his countenance gave no
evidence of the wound which he had just received. He would assuredly
die of it, and no one would suspect the malady which had carried him
off. But it was a relief to him to be able to give vent to his
feelings, and he declared violently that he would not take even so
much as a glass of tisane.

"Take care of myself!" he cried; "what for? Is it not all over with my
old carcass?"

Ramond insisted, with a good-tempered smile.

"You are sounder than any of us. This is a trifling disturbance, and
you know that you have the remedy in your own hands. Use your
hypodermic injection."

Pascal did not allow him to finish. This filled the measure of his
rage. He angrily asked if they wished him to kill himself, as he had
killed Lafouasse. His injections! A pretty invention, of which he had
good reason to be proud. He abjured medicine, and he swore that he
would never again go near a patient. When people were no longer good
for anything they ought to die; that would be the best thing for
everybody. And that was what he was going to try to do, so as to have
done with it all.

"Bah! bah!" said Ramond at last, resolving to take his leave, through
fear of exciting him still further; "I will leave you with Clotilde; I
am not at all uneasy, Clotilde will take care of you."

But Pascal had on this morning received the final blow. He took to his
bed toward evening, and remained for two whole days without opening
the door of his room. It was in vain that Clotilde, at last becoming
alarmed, knocked loudly at the door. There was no answer. Martine went
in her turn and begged monsieur, through the keyhole, at least to tell
her if he needed anything. A deathlike silence reigned; the room
seemed to be empty.

Then, on the morning of the third day, as the young girl by chance
turned the knob, the door yielded; perhaps it had been unlocked for
hours. And she might enter freely this room in which she had never set
foot: a large room, rendered cold by its northern exposure, in which
she saw a small iron bed without curtains, a shower bath in a corner,
a long black wooden table, a few chairs, and on the table, on the
floor, along the walls, an array of chemical apparatus, mortars,
furnaces, machines, instrument cases. Pascal, up and dressed, was
sitting on the edge of his bed, in trying to arrange which he had
exhausted himself.

"Don't you want me to nurse you, then?" she asked with anxious
tenderness, without venturing to advance into the room.

"Oh, you can come in," he said with a dejected gesture. "I won't beat
you. I have not the strength to do that now."

And from this day on he tolerated her about him, and allowed her to
wait on him. But he had caprices still. He would not let her enter the
room when he was in bed, possessed by a sort of morbid shame; then he
made her send him Martine. But he seldom remained in bed, dragging
himself about from chair to chair, in his utter inability to do any
kind of work. His malady continued to grow worse, until at last he was
reduced to utter despair, tortured by sick headaches, and without the
strength, as he said, to put one foot before the other, convinced
every morning that he would spend the night at the Tulettes, a raving
maniac. He grew thin; his face, under its crown of white hair--which
he still cared for through a last remnant of vanity--acquired a look
of suffering, of tragic beauty. And although he allowed himself to be
waited on, he refused roughly all remedies, in the distrust of
medicine into which he had fallen.

Clotilde now devoted herself to him entirely. She gave up everything
else; at first she attended low mass, then she left off going to
church altogether. In her impatience for some certain happiness, she
felt as if she were taking a step toward that end by thus devoting all
her moments to the service of a beloved being whom she wished to see
once more well and happy. She made a complete sacrifice of herself,
she sought to find happiness in the happiness of another; and all this
unconsciously, solely at the impulse of her woman's heart, in the
midst of the crisis through which she was still passing, and which was
modifying her character profoundly, without her knowledge. She
remained silent regarding the disagreement which separated them. The
idea did not again occur to her to throw herself on his neck, crying
that she was his, that he might return to life, since she gave herself
to him. In her thoughts she grieved to see him suffer; she was only an
affectionate girl, who took care of him, as any female relative would
have done. And her attentions were very pure, very delicate, occupying
her life so completely that her days now passed swiftly, exempt from
tormenting thoughts of the Beyond, filled with the one wish of curing
him.

But where she had a hard battle to fight was in prevailing upon him to
use his hypodermic injections upon himself. He flew into a passion,
disowned his discovery, and called himself an imbecile. She too cried
out. It was she now who had faith in science, who grew indignant at
seeing him doubt his own genius. He resisted for a long time; then
yielding to the empire which she had acquired over him, he consented,
simply to avoid the affectionate dispute which she renewed with him
every morning. From the very first he experienced great relief from
the injections, although he refused to acknowledge it. His mind became
clearer, and he gradually gained strength. Then she was exultant,
filled with enthusiastic pride in him. She vaunted his treatment, and
became indignant because he did not admire himself, as an example of
the miracles which he was able to work. He smiled; he was now
beginning to see clearly into his own condition. Ramond had spoken
truly, his illness had been nothing but nervous exhaustion. Perhaps he
would get over it after all.

"Ah, it is you who are curing me, little girl," he would say, not
wishing to confess his hopes. "Medicines, you see, act according to
the hand that gives them."

The convalescence was slow, lasting through the whole of February. The
weather remained clear and cold; there was not a single day in which
the study was not flooded with warm, pale sunshine. There were hours
of relapse, however, hours of the blackest melancholy, in which all
the patient's terrors returned; when his guardian, disconsolate, was
obliged to sit at the other end of the room, in order not to irritate
him still more. He despaired anew of his recovery. He became again
bitter and aggressively ironical.

It was on one of those bad days that Pascal, approaching a window, saw
his neighbor, M. Bellombre, the retired professor, making the round of
his garden to see if his fruit trees were well covered with blossoms.
The sight of the old man, so neat and so erect, with the fine
placidity of the egoist, on whom illness had apparently never laid
hold, suddenly put Pascal beside himself.

"Ah!" he growled, "there is one who will never overwork himself, who
will never endanger his health by worrying!"

And he launched forth into an ironical eulogy on selfishness. To be
alone in the world, not to have a friend, to have neither wife nor
child, what happiness! That hard-hearted miser, who for forty years
had had only other people's children to cuff, who lived aloof from the
world, without even a dog, with a deaf and dumb gardener older than
himself, was he not an example of the greatest happiness possible on
earth? Without a responsibility, without a duty, without an anxiety,
other than that of taking care of his dear health! He was a wise man,
he would live a hundred years.

"Ah, the fear of life! that is cowardice which is truly the best
wisdom. To think that I should ever have regretted not having a child
of my own! Has any one a right to bring miserable creatures into the
world? Bad heredity should be ended, life should be ended. The only
honest man is that old coward there!"

M. Bellombre continued peacefully making the round of his pear trees
in the March sunshine. He did not risk a too hasty movement; he
economized his fresh old age. If he met a stone in his path, he pushed
it aside with the end of his cane, and then walked tranquilly on.

"Look at him! Is he not well preserved; is he not handsome? Have not
all the blessings of heaven been showered down upon him? He is the
happiest man I know."

Clotilde, who had listened in silence, suffered from the irony of
Pascal, the full bitterness of which she divined. She, who usually
took M. Bellombre's part, felt a protest rise up within her. Tears
came to her eyes, and she answered simply in a low voice:

"Yes; but he is not loved."

These words put a sudden end to the painful scene. Pascal, as if he
had received an electric shock, turned and looked at her. A sudden
rush of tenderness brought tears to his eyes also, and he left the
room to keep from weeping.

The days wore on in the midst of these alternations of good and bad
hours. He recovered his strength but slowly, and what put him in
despair was that whenever he attempted to work he was seized by a
profuse perspiration. If he had persisted, he would assuredly have
fainted. So long as he did not work he felt that his convalescence was
making little progress. He began to take an interest again, however,
in his accustomed investigations. He read over again the last pages
that he had written, and, with this reawakening of the scientist in
him, his former anxieties returned. At one time he fell into a state
of such depression, that the house and all it contained ceased to
exist for him. He might have been robbed, everything he possessed
might have been taken and destroyed, without his even being conscious
of the disaster. Now he became again watchful, from time to time he
would feel his pocket, to assure himself that the key of the press was
there.

But one morning when he had overslept himself, and did not leave his
room until eleven o'clock, he saw Clotilde in the study, quietly
occupied in copying with great exactness in pastel a branch of
flowering almond. She looked up, smiling; and taking a key that was
lying beside her on the desk, she offered it to him, saying:

"Here, master."

Surprised, not yet comprehending, he looked at the object which she
held toward him.

"What is that?" he asked.

"It is the key of the press, which you must have dropped from your
pocket yesterday, and which I picked up here this morning."

Pascal took it with extraordinary emotion. He looked at it, and then
at Clotilde. Was it ended, then? She would persecute him no more. She
was no longer eager to rob everything, to burn everything. And seeing
her still smiling, she also looking moved, an immense joy filled his
heart.

He caught her in his arms, crying:

"Ah, little girl, if we might only not be too unhappy!"

Then he opened a drawer of his table and threw the key into it, as he
used to do formerly.

From this time on he gained strength, and his convalescence progressed
more rapidly. Relapses were still possible, for he was still very
weak. But he was able to write, and this made the days less heavy. The
sun, too, shone more brightly, the study being so warm at times that
it became necessary to half close the shutters. He refused to see
visitors, barely tolerated Martine, and had his mother told that he
was sleeping, when she came at long intervals to inquire for him. He
was happy only in this delightful solitude, nursed by the rebel, the
enemy of yesterday, the docile pupil of to-day. They would often sit
together in silence for a long time, without feeling any constraint.
They meditated, or lost themselves in infinitely sweet reveries.

One day, however, Pascal seemed very grave. He was now convinced that
his illness had resulted from purely accidental causes, and that
heredity had had no part in it. But this filled him none the less with
humility.

"My God!" he murmured, "how insignificant we are! I who thought myself
so strong, who was so proud of my sane reason! And here have I barely
escaped being made insane by a little trouble and overwork!"

He was silent, and sank again into thought. After a time his eyes
brightened, he had conquered himself. And in a moment of reason and
courage, he came to a resolution.

"If I am getting better," he said, "it is especially for your sake
that I am glad."

Clotilde, not understanding, looked up and said:

"How is that?"

"Yes, on account of your marriage. Now you will be able to fix the
day."

She still seemed surprised.

"Ah, true--my marriage!"

"Shall we decide at once upon the second week in June?"

"Yes, the second week in June; that will do very well."

They spoke no more; she fixed her eyes again on the piece of sewing on
which she was engaged, while he, motionless, and with a grave face,
sat looking into space.