VII.


On this day, on arriving at La Souleiade, old Mme. Rougon perceived
Martine in the kitchen garden, engaged in planting leeks; and, as she
sometimes did, she went over to the servant to have a chat with her,
and find out from her how things were going on, before entering the
house.

For some time past she had been in despair about what she called
Clotilde's desertion. She felt truly that she would now never obtain
the documents through her. The girl was behaving disgracefully, she
was siding with Pascal, after all she had done for her; and she was
becoming perverted to such a degree that for a month past she had not
been seen in Church. Thus she returned to her first idea, to get
Clotilde away and win her son over when, left alone, he should be
weakened by solitude. Since she had not been able to persuade the girl
to go live with her brother, she eagerly desired the marriage. She
would like to throw her into Dr. Ramond's arms to-morrow, in her
impatience at so many delays. And she had come this afternoon with a
feverish desire to hurry on matters.

"Good-day, Martine. How is every one here?"

The servant, kneeling down, her hands full of clay, lifted up her pale
face, protected against the sun by a handkerchief tied over her cap.

"As usual, madame, pretty well."

They went on talking, Felicite treating her as a confidante, as a
devoted daughter, one of the family, to whom she could tell
everything. She began by questioning her; she wished to know if Dr.
Ramond had come that morning. He had come, but they had talked only
about indifferent matters. This put her in despair, for she had seen
the doctor on the previous day, and he had unbosomed himself to her,
chagrined at not having yet received a decisive answer, and eager now
to obtain at least Clotilde's promise. Things could not go on in this
way, the young girl must be compelled to engage herself to him.

"He has too much delicacy," she cried. "I have told him so. I knew
very well that this morning, even, he would not venture to demand a
positive answer. And I have come to interfere in the matter. We shall
see if I cannot oblige her to come to a decision."

Then, more calmly:

"My son is on his feet now; he does not need her."

Martine, who was again stooping over the bed, planting her leeks,
straightened herself quickly.

"Ah, that for sure!"

And a flush passed over her face, worn by thirty years of service. For
a wound bled within her; for some time past the master scarcely
tolerated her about him. During the whole time of his illness he had
kept her at a distance, accepting her services less and less every
day, and finally closing altogether to her the door of his room and of
the workroom. She had a vague consciousness of what was taking place,
an instinctive jealousy tortured her, in her adoration of the master,
whose chattel she had been satisfied to be for so many years.

"For sure, we have no need of mademoiselle. I am quite able to take
care of monsieur."

Then she, who was so discreet, spoke of her labors in the garden,
saying that she made time to cultivate the vegetables, so as to save a
few days' wages of a man. True, the house was large, but when one was
not afraid of work, one could manage to do all there was to be done.
And then, when mademoiselle should have left them, that would be
always one less to wait upon. And her eyes brightened unconsciously at
the thought of the great solitude, of the happy peace in which they
should live after this departure.

"It would give me pain," she said, lowering her voice, "for it would
certainly give monsieur a great deal. I would never have believed that
I could be brought to wish for such a separation. Only, madame, I
agree with you that it is necessary, for I am greatly afraid that
mademoiselle will end by going to ruin here, and that there will be
another soul lost to the good God. Ah, it is very sad; my heart is so
heavy about it sometimes that it is ready to burst."

"They are both upstairs, are they not?" said Felicite. "I will go up
and see them, and I will undertake to oblige them to end the matter."

An hour later, when she came down again, she found Martine still on
her knees on the soft earth, finishing her planting. Upstairs, from
her first words, when she said that she had been talking with Dr.
Ramond, and that he had shown himself anxious to know his fate
quickly, she saw that Dr. Pascal approved--he looked grave, he nodded
his head as if to say that this wish seemed to him very natural.
Clotilde, herself, ceasing to smile, seemed to listen to him with
deference. But she manifested some surprise. Why did they press her?
Master had fixed the marriage for the second week in June; she had,
then, two full months before her. Very soon she would speak about it
with Ramond. Marriage was so serious a matter that they might very
well give her time to reflect, and let her wait until the last moment
to engage herself. And she said all this with her air of good sense,
like a person resolved on coming to a decision. And Felicite was
obliged to content herself with the evident desire that both had that
matters should have the most reasonable conclusion.

"Indeed I believe that it is settled," ended Felicite. "He seems to
place no obstacle in the way, and she seems only to wish not to act
hastily, like a girl who desires to examine her heart closely, before
engaging herself for life. I will give her a week more for
reflection."

Martine, sitting on her heels, was looking fixedly on the ground with
a clouded face.

"Yes, yes," she murmured, in a low voice, "mademoiselle has been
reflecting a great deal of late. I am always meeting her in some
corner. You speak to her, and she does not answer you. That is the way
people are when they are breeding a disease, or when they have a
secret on their mind. There is something going on; she is no longer
the same, no longer the same."

And she took the dibble again and planted a leek, in her rage for
work; while old Mme. Rougon went away, somewhat tranquillized;
certain, she said, that the marriage would take place.

Pascal, in effect, seemed to accept Clotilde's marriage as a thing
settled, inevitable. He had not spoken with her about it again, the
rare allusions which they made to it between themselves, in their
hourly conversations, left them undisturbed; and it was simply as if
the two months which they still had to live together were to be
without end, an eternity stretching beyond their view.

She, especially, would look at him smiling, putting off to a future
day troubles and decisions with a pretty vague gesture, as if to leave
everything to beneficent life. He, now well and gaining strength
daily, grew melancholy only when he returned to the solitude of his
chamber at night, after she had retired. He shuddered and turned cold
at the thought that a time would come when he would be always alone.
Was it the beginning of old age that made him shiver in this way? He
seemed to see it stretching before him, like a shadowy region in which
he already began to feel all his energy melting away. And then the
regret of having neither wife nor child filled him with
rebelliousness, and wrung his heart with intolerable anguish.

Ah, why had he not lived! There were times when he cursed science,
accusing it of having taken from him the best part of his manhood. He
had let himself be devoured by work; work had consumed his brain,
consumed his heart, consumed his flesh. All this solitary, passionate
labor had produced only books, blackened paper, that would be
scattered to the winds, whose cold leaves chilled his hands as he
turned them over. And no living woman's breast to lean upon, no
child's warm locks to kiss! He had lived the cold, solitary life of a
selfish scientist, and he would die in cold solitude. Was he indeed
going to die thus? Would he never taste the happiness enjoyed by even
the common porters, by the carters who cracked their whips, passing by
under his windows? But he must hasten, if he would; soon, no doubt, it
would be too late. All his unemployed youth, all his pent-up desires,
surged tumultuously through his veins. He swore that he would yet
love, that he would live a new life, that he would drain the cup of
every passion that he had not yet tasted, before he should be an old
man. He would knock at the doors, he would stop the passers-by, he
would scour the fields and town.

On the following day, when he had taken his shower bath and left his
room, all his fever was calmed, the burning pictures had faded away,
and he fell back into his natural timidity. Then, on the next night,
the fear of solitude drove sleep away as before, his blood kindled
again, and the same despair, the same rebelliousness, the same longing
not to die without having known family joys returned. He suffered a
great deal in this crisis.

During these feverish nights, with eyes wide open in the darkness, he
dreamed always, over and over again the same dream. A girl would come
along the road, a girl of twenty, marvelously beautiful; and she would
enter and kneel down before him in an attitude of submissive
adoration, and he would marry her. She was one of those pilgrims of
love such as we find in ancient story, who have followed a star to
come and restore health and strength to some aged king, powerful and
covered with glory. He was the aged king, and she adored him, she
wrought the miracle, with her twenty years, of bestowing on him a part
of her youth. In her love he recovered his courage and his faith in
life.

Ah, youth! he hungered fiercely for it. In his declining days this
passionate longing for youth was like a revolt against approaching
age, a desperate desire to turn back, to be young again, to begin life
over again. And in this longing to begin life over again, there was
not only regret for the vanished joys of youth, the inestimable
treasure of dead hours, to which memory lent its charm; there was also
the determined will to enjoy, now, his health and strength, to lose
nothing of the joy of loving! Ah, youth! how eagerly he would taste of
its every pleasure, how eagerly he would drain every cup, before his
teeth should fall out, before his limbs should grow feeble, before the
blood should be chilled in his veins. A pang pierced his heart when he
remembered himself, a slender youth of twenty, running and leaping
agilely, vigorous and hardy as a young oak, his teeth glistening, his
hair black and luxuriant. How he would cherish them, these gifts
scorned before, if a miracle could restore them to him!

And youthful womanhood, a young girl who might chance to pass by,
disturbed him, causing him profound emotion. This was often even
altogether apart from the individual: the image, merely, of youth, the
perfume and the dazzling freshness which emanated from it, bright
eyes, healthy lips, blooming cheeks, a delicate neck, above all,
rounded and satin-smooth, shaded on the back with down; and youthful
womanhood always presented itself to him tall and slight, divinely
slender in its chaste nudeness. His eyes, gazing into vacancy,
followed the vision, his heart was steeped in infinite longing. There
was nothing good or desirable but youth; it was the flower of the
world, the only beauty, the only joy, the only true good, with health,
which nature could bestow on man. Ah, to begin life over again, to be
young again, to clasp in his embrace youthful womanhood!

Pascal and Clotilde, now that the fine April days had come, covering
the fruit trees with blossoms, resumed their morning walks in La
Souleiade. It was the first time that he had gone out since his
illness, and she led him to the threshing yard, along the paths in the
pine wood, and back again to the terrace crossed by the two bars of
shadows thrown by the secular cypresses. The sun had already warmed
the old flagstones there, and the wide horizon stretched out under a
dazzling sky.

One morning when Clotilde had been running, she returned to the house
in such exuberant spirits and so full of pleasant excitement that she
went up to the workroom without taking off either her garden hat or
the lace scarf which she had tied around her neck.

"Oh," she said, "I am so warm! And how stupid I am, not to have taken
off my things downstairs. I will go down again at once."

She had thrown the scarf on a chair on entering.

But her feverish fingers became impatient when she tried to untie the
strings of her large straw hat.

"There, now! I have fastened the knot. I cannot undo it, and you must
come to my assistance."

Pascal, happy and excited too by the pleasure of the walk, rejoiced to
see her so beautiful and so merry. He went over and stood in front of
her.

"Wait; hold up your chin. Oh, if you keep moving like that, how do you
suppose I can do it?"

She laughed aloud. He could see the laughter swelling her throat, like
a wave of sound. His fingers became entangled under her chin, that
delicious part of the throat whose warm satin he involuntarily
touched. She had on a gown cut sloping in the neck, and through the
opening he inhaled all the living perfume of the woman, the pure
fragrance of her youth, warmed by the sunshine. All at once a vertigo
seized him and he thought he was going to faint.

"No, no! I cannot do it," he said, "unless you keep still!"

The blood throbbed in his temples, and his fingers trembled, while she
leaned further back, unconsciously offering the temptation of her
fresh girlish beauty. It was the vision of royal youth, the bright
eyes, the healthy lips, the blooming cheeks, above all, the delicate
neck, satin-smooth and round, shaded on the back by down. And she
seemed to him so delicately graceful, with her slender throat, in her
divine bloom!

"There, it is done!" she cried.

Without knowing how, he had untied the strings. The room whirled
round, and then he saw her again, bareheaded now, with her starlike
face, shaking back her golden curls laughingly. Then he was seized
with a fear that he would catch her in his arms and press mad kisses
on her bare neck, and arms, and throat. And he fled from the room,
taking with him the hat, which he had kept in his hand, saying:

"I will hang it in the hall. Wait for me; I want to speak to Martine."

Once downstairs, he hurried to the abandoned room and locked himself
into it, trembling lest she should become uneasy and come down here to
seek him. He looked wild and haggard, as if he had just committed a
crime. He spoke aloud, and he trembled as he gave utterance for the
first time to the cry that he had always loved her madly,
passionately. Yes, ever since she had grown into womanhood he had
adored her. And he saw her clearly before him, as if a curtain had
been suddenly torn aside, as she was when, from an awkward girl, she
became a charming and lovely creature, with her long tapering limbs,
her strong slender body, with its round throat, round neck, and round
and supple arms. And it was monstrous, but it was true--he hungered
for all this with a devouring hunger, for this youth, this fresh,
blooming, fragrant flesh.

Then Pascal, dropping into a rickety chair, hid his face in his hands,
as if to shut out the light of day, and burst into great sobs. Good
God! what was to become of him? A girl whom his brother had confided
to him, whom he had brought up like a good father, and who was now--
this temptress of twenty-five--a woman in her supreme omnipotence! He
felt himself more defenseless, weaker than a child.

And above this physical desire, he loved her also with an immense
tenderness, enamored of her moral and intellectual being, of her
right-mindedness, of her fine intelligence, so fearless and so clear.
Even their discord, the disquietude about spiritual things by which
she was tortured, made her only all the more precious to him, as if
she were a being different from himself, in whom he found a little of
the infinity of things. She pleased him in her rebellions, when she
held her ground against him,--she was his companion and pupil; he saw
her such as he had made her, with her great heart, her passionate
frankness, her triumphant reason. And she was always present with him;
he did not believe that he could exist where she was not; he had need
of her breath; of the flutter of her skirts near him; of her
thoughtfulness and affection, by which he felt himself constantly
surrounded; of her looks; of her smile; of her whole daily woman's
life, which she had given him, which she would not have the cruelty to
take back from him again. At the thought that she was going away, that
she would not be always here, it seemed to him as if the heavens were
about to fall and crush him; as if the end of all things had come; as
if he were about to be plunged in icy darkness. She alone existed in
the world, she alone was lofty and virtuous, intelligent and
beautiful, with a miraculous beauty. Why, then, since he adored her
and since he was her master, did he not go upstairs and take her in
his arms and kiss her like an idol? They were both free, she was
ignorant of nothing, she was a woman in age. This would be happiness.

Pascal, who had ceased to weep, rose, and would have walked to the
door. But suddenly he dropped again into his chair, bursting into a
fresh passion of sobs. No, no, it was abominable, it could not be! He
felt on his head the frost of his white hair; and he had a horror of
his age, of his fifty-nine years, when he thought of her twenty-five
years. His former chill fear again took possession of him, the
certainty that she had subjugated him, that he would be powerless
against the daily temptation. And he saw her giving him the strings of
her hat to untie; compelling him to lean over her to make some
correction in her work; and he saw himself, too, blind, mad, devouring
her neck with ardent kisses. His indignation against himself at this
was so great that he arose, now courageously, and had the strength to
go upstairs to the workroom, determined to conquer himself.

Upstairs Clotilde had tranquilly resumed her drawing. She did not even
look around at his entrance, but contented herself with saying:

"How long you have been! I was beginning to think that Martine must
have made a mistake of at least ten sous in her accounts."

This customary jest about the servant's miserliness made him laugh.
And he went and sat down quietly at his table. They did not speak
again until breakfast time. A great sweetness bathed him and calmed
him, now that he was near her. He ventured to look at her, and he was
touched by her delicate profile, by her serious, womanly air of
application. Had he been the prey of a nightmare, downstairs, then?
Would he be able to conquer himself so easily?

"Ah!" he cried, when Martine called them, "how hungry I am! You shall
see how I am going to make new muscle!"

She went over to him, and took him by the arm, saying:

"That's right, master; you must be gay and strong!"

But that night, when he was in his own room, the agony began again. At
the thought of losing her he was obliged to bury his face in the
pillow to stifle his cries. He pictured her to himself in the arms of
another, and all the tortures of jealousy racked his soul. Never could
he find the courage to consent to such a sacrifice. All sorts of plans
clasped together in his seething brain; he would turn her from the
marriage, and keep her with him, without ever allowing her to suspect
his passion; he would take her away, and they would go from city to
city, occupying their minds with endless studies, in order to keep up
their companionship as master and pupil; or even, if it should be
necessary, he would send her to her brother to nurse him, he would
lose her forever rather than give her to a husband. And at each of
these resolutions he felt his heart, torn asunder, cry out with
anguish in the imperious need of possessing her entirely. He was no
longer satisfied with her presence, he wished to keep her for himself,
with himself, as she appeared to him in her radiant beauty, in the
darkness of his chamber, with her unbound hair falling around her.

His arms clasped the empty air, and he sprang out of bed, staggering
like a drunken man; and it was only in the darkness and silence of the
workroom that he awoke from this sudden fit of madness. Where, then,
was he going, great God? To knock at the door of this sleeping child?
to break it in, perhaps, with a blow of his shoulder? The soft, pure
respiration, which he fancied he heard like a sacred wind in the midst
of the profound silence, struck him on the face and turned him back.
And he returned to his room and threw himself on his bed, in a passion
of shame and wild despair.

On the following day when he arose, Pascal, worn out by want of sleep,
had come to a decision. He took his daily shower bath, and he felt
himself stronger and saner. The resolution to which he had come was to
compel Clotilde to give her word. When she should have formally
promised to marry Ramond, it seemed to him that this final solution
would calm him, would forbid his indulging in any false hopes. This
would be a barrier the more, an insurmountable barrier between her and
him. He would be from that moment armed against his desire, and if he
still suffered, it would be suffering only, without the horrible fear
of becoming a dishonorable man.

On this morning, when he told the young girl that she ought to delay
no longer, that she owed a decisive answer to the worthy fellow who
had been awaiting it so long, she seemed at first astonished. She
looked straight into his eyes, but he had sufficient command over
himself not to show confusion; he insisted merely, with a slightly
grieved air, as if it distressed him to have to say these things to
her. Finally, she smiled faintly and turned her head aside, saying:

"Then, master, you wish me to leave you?"

"My dear," he answered evasively, "I assure you that this is becoming
ridiculous. Ramond will have the right to be angry."

She went over to her desk, to arrange some papers which were on it.
Then, after a moment's silence, she said:

"It is odd; now you are siding with grandmother and Martine. They,
too, are persecuting me to end this matter. I thought I had a few days
more. But, in truth, if you all three urge me--"

She did not finish, and he did not press her to explain herself more
clearly.

"When do you wish me to tell Ramond to come, then?"

"Why, he may come whenever he wishes; it does not displease me to see
him. But don't trouble yourself. I will let him know that we will
expect him one of these afternoons."

On the following day the same scene began over again. Clotilde had
taken no step yet, and Pascal was now angry. He suffered martyrdom; he
had crises of anguish and rebelliousness when she was not present to
calm him by her smiling freshness. And he insisted, in emphatic
language, that she should behave seriously and not trifle any longer
with an honorable man who loved her.

"The devil! Since the thing is decided, let us be done with it. I warn
you that I will send word to Ramond, and that he will be here
to-morrow at three o'clock."

She listened in silence, her eyes fixed on the ground. Neither seemed
to wish to touch upon the question as to whether the marriage had
really been decided on or not, and they took the standpoint that there
had been a previous decision, which was irrevocable. When she looked
up again he trembled, for he felt a breath pass by; he thought she was
on the point of saying that she had questioned herself, and that she
refused this marriage. What would he have done, what would have become
of him, good God! Already he was filled with an immense joy and a wild
terror. But she looked at him with the discreet and affectionate smile
which never now left her lips, and she answered with a submissive air:

"As you please, master. Send him word to be here to-morrow at three
o'clock."

Pascal spent so dreadful a night that he rose late, saying, as an
excuse, that he had one of his old headaches. He found relief only
under the icy deluge of the shower bath. At ten o'clock he left the
house, saying he would go himself to see Ramond; but he had another
object in going out--he had seen at a show in Plassans a corsage of
old point d'Alencon; a marvel of beauty which lay there awaiting some
lover's generous folly, and the thought had come to him in the midst
of the tortures of the night, to make a present of it to Clotilde, to
adorn her wedding gown. This bitter idea of himself adorning her, of
making her beautiful and fair for the gift of herself, touched his
heart, exhausted by sacrifice. She knew the corsage, she had admired
it with him one day wonderingly, wishing for it only to place it on
the shoulders of the Virgin at St. Saturnin, an antique Virgin adored
by the faithful. The shopkeeper gave it to him in a little box which
he could conceal, and which he hid, on his return to the house, in the
bottom of his writing-desk.

At three o'clock Dr. Ramond presented himself, and he found Pascal and
Clotilde in the parlor, where they had been awaiting him with secret
excitement and a somewhat forced gaiety, avoiding any further allusion
to his visit. They received him smilingly with exaggerated cordiality.

"Why, you are perfectly well again, master!" said the young man. "You
never looked so strong."

Pascal shook his head.

"Oh, oh, strong, perhaps! only the heart is no longer here."

This involuntary avowal made Clotilde start, and she looked from one
to the other, as if, by the force of circumstances, she compared them
with each other--Ramond, with his smiling and superb face--the face of
the handsome physician adored by the women--his luxuriant black hair
and beard, in all the splendor of his young manhood; and Pascal, with
his white hair and his white beard. This fleece of snow, still so
abundant, retained the tragic beauty of the six months of torture that
he had just passed through. His sorrowful face had aged a little, only
his eyes remained still youthful; brown eyes, brilliant and limpid.
But at this moment all his features expressed so much gentleness, such
exalted goodness, that Clotilde ended by letting her gaze rest upon
him with profound tenderness. There was silence for a moment and each
heart thrilled.

"Well, my children," resumed Pascal heroically, "I think you have
something to say to each other. I have something to do, too,
downstairs. I will come up again presently."

And he left the room, smiling back at them.

And soon as they were alone, Clotilde went frankly straight over to
Ramond, with both hands outstretched. Taking his hands in hers, she
held them as she spoke.

"Listen, my dear friend; I am going to give you a great grief. You
must not be too angry with me, for I assure you that I have a very
profound friendship for you."

He understood at once, and he turned very pale.

"Clotilde give me no answer now, I beg of you; take more time, if you
wish to reflect further."

"It is useless, my dear friend, my decision is made."

She looked at him with her fine, loyal look. She had not released his
hands, in order that he might know that she was not excited, and that
she was his friend. And it was he who resumed, in a low voice:

"Then you say no?"

"I say no, and I assure you that it pains me greatly to say it. Ask me
nothing; you will no doubt know later on."

He sat down, crushed by the emotion which he repressed like a strong
and self-contained man, whose mental balance the greatest sufferings
cannot disturb. Never before had any grief agitated him like this. He
remained mute, while she, standing, continued:

"And above all, my friend, do not believe that I have played the
coquette with you. If I have allowed you to hope, if I have made you
wait so long for my answer, it was because I did not in very truth see
clearly myself. You cannot imagine through what a crisis I have just
passed--a veritable tempest of emotions, surrounded by darkness from
out of which I have but just found my way."

He spoke at last.

"Since it is your wish, I will ask you nothing. Besides, it is
sufficient for you to answer one question. You do not love me,
Clotilde?"

She did not hesitate, but said gravely, with an emotion which softened
the frankness of her answer:

"It is true, I do not love you; I have only a very sincere affection
for you."

He rose, and stopped by a gesture the kind words which she would have
added.

"It is ended; let us never speak of it again. I wished you to be
happy. Do not grieve for me. At this moment I feel as if the house had
just fallen about me in ruins. But I must only extricate myself as
best I can."

A wave of color passed over his pale face, he gasped for air, he
crossed over to the window, then he walked back with a heavy step,
seeking to recover his self-possession. He drew a long breath. In the
painful silence which had fallen they heard Pascal coming upstairs
noisily, to announce his return.

"I entreat you," murmured Clotilde hurriedly, "to say nothing to
master. He does not know my decision, and I wish to break it to him
myself, for he was bent upon this marriage."

Pascal stood still in the doorway. He was trembling and breathless, as
if he had come upstairs too quickly. He still found strength to smile
at them, saying:

"Well, children, have you come to an understanding?"

"Yes, undoubtedly," responded Ramond, as agitated as himself.

"Then it is all settled?"

"Quite," said Clotilde, who had been seized by a faintness.

Pascal walked over to his work-table, supporting himself by the
furniture, and dropped into the chair beside it.

"Ah, ah! you see the legs are not so strong after all. It is this old
carcass of a body. But the heart is strong. And I am very happy, my
children, your happiness will make me well again."

But when Ramond, after a few minutes' further conversation, had gone
away, he seemed troubled at finding himself alone with the young girl,
and he again asked her:

"It is settled, quite settled; you swear it to me?"

"Entirely settled."

After this he did not speak again. He nodded his head, as if to repeat
that he was delighted; that nothing could be better; that at last they
were all going to live in peace. He closed his eyes, feigning to drop
asleep, as he sometimes did in the afternoon. But his heart beat
violently, and his closely shut eyelids held back the tears.

That evening, at about ten o'clock, when Clotilde went downstairs for
a moment to give an order to Martine before she should have gone to
bed, Pascal profited by the opportunity of being left alone, to go and
lay the little box containing the lace corsage on the young girl's
bed. She came upstairs again, wished him the accustomed good-night,
and he had been for at least twenty minutes in his own room, and was
already in his shirt sleeves, when a burst of gaiety sounded outside
his door. A little hand tapped, and a fresh voice cried, laughing:

"Come, come and look!"

He opened the door, unable to resist this appeal of youth, conquered
by his joy.

"Oh, come, come and see what a beautiful little bird has put on my
bed!"

And she drew him to her room, taking no refusal. She had lighted the
two candles in it, and the antique, pleasant chamber, with its
hangings of faded rose color, seemed transformed into a chapel; and on
the bed, like a sacred cloth offered to the adoration of the faithful,
she had spread the corsage of old point d'Alencon.

"You would not believe it! Imagine, I did not see the box at first. I
set things in order a little, as I do every evening. I undressed, and
it was only when I was getting into bed that I noticed your present.
Ah, what a surprise! I was overwhelmed by it! I felt that I could
never wait for the morning, and I put on a skirt and ran to look for
you."

It was not until then that he perceived that she was only half
dressed, as on the night of the storm, when he had surprised her
stealing his papers. And she seemed divine, with her tall, girlish
form, her tapering limbs, her supple arms, her slender body, with its
small, firm throat.

She took his hands and pressed them caressingly in her little ones.

"How good you are; how I thank you! Such a marvel of beauty, so lovely
a present for me, who am nobody! And you remember that I had admired
it, this antique relic of art. I said to you that only the Virgin of
St. Saturnin was worthy of wearing it on her shoulders. I am so happy!
oh, so happy! For it is true, I love beautiful things; I love them so
passionately that at times I wish for impossibilities, gowns woven of
sunbeams, impalpable veils made of the blue of heaven. How beautiful I
am going to look! how beautiful I am going to look!"

Radiant in her ecstatic gratitude, she drew close to him, still
looking at the corsage, and compelling him to admire it with her. Then
a sudden curiosity seized her.

"But why did you make me this royal present?"

Ever since she had come to seek him in her joyful excitement, Pascal
had been walking in a dream. He was moved to tears by this
affectionate gratitude; he stood there, not feeling the terror which
he had dreaded, but seeming, on the contrary, to be filled with joy,
as at the approach of a great and miraculous happiness. This chamber,
which he never entered, had the religious sweetness of holy places
that satisfy all longings for the unattainable.

His countenance, however, expressed surprise. And he answered:

"Why, this present, my dear, is for your wedding gown."

She, in her turn, looked for a moment surprised as if she had not
understood him. Then, with the sweet and singular smile which she had
worn of late she said gayly:

"Ah, true, my marriage!"

Then she grew serious again, and said:

"Then you want to get rid of me? It was in order to have me here no
longer that you were so bent upon marrying me. Do you still think me
your enemy, then?"

He felt his tortures return, and he looked away from her, wishing to
retain his courage.

"My enemy, yes. Are you not so? We have suffered so much through each
other these last days. It is better in truth that we should separate.
And then I do not know what your thoughts are; you have never given me
the answer I have been waiting for."

She tried in vain to catch his glance, which he still kept turned
away. She began to talk of the terrible night on which they had gone
together through the papers. It was true, in the shock which her whole
being had suffered, she had not yet told him whether she was with him
or against him. He had a right to demand an answer.

She again took his hands in hers, and forced him to look at her.

"And it is because I am your enemy that you are sending me away? I am
not your enemy. I am your servant, your chattel, your property. Do you
hear? I am with you and for you, for you alone!"

His face grew radiant; an intense joy shone within his eyes.

"Yes, I will wear this lace. It is for my wedding day, for I wish to
be beautiful, very beautiful for you. But do you not understand me,
then? You are my master; it is you I love."

"No, no! be silent; you will make me mad! You are betrothed to
another. You have given your word. All this madness is happily
impossible."

"The other! I have compared him with you, and I have chosen you. I
have dismissed him. He has gone away, and he will never return. There
are only we two now, and it is you I love, and you love me. I know it,
and I give myself to you."

He trembled violently. He had ceased to struggle, vanquished by the
longing of eternal love.

The spacious chamber, with its antique furniture, warmed by youth, was
as if filled with light. There was no longer either fear or suffering;
they were free. She gave herself to him knowingly, willingly, and he
accepted the supreme gift like a priceless treasure which the strength
of his love had won. Suddenly she murmured in his ear, in a caressing
voice, lingering tenderly on the words:

"Master, oh, master, master!"

And this word, which she used formerly as a matter of habit, at this
hour acquired a profound significance, lengthening out and prolonging
itself, as if it expressed the gift of her whole being. She uttered it
with grateful fervor, like a woman who accepts, and who surrenders
herself. Was not the mystic vanquished, the real acknowledged, life
glorified with love at last confessed and shared.

"Master, master, this comes from far back. I must tell you; I must
make my confession. It is true that I went to church in order to be
happy. But I could not believe. I wished to understand too much; my
reason rebelled against their dogmas; their paradise appeared to me an
incredible puerility. But I believed that the world does not stop at
sensation; that there is a whole unknown world, which must be taken
into account; and this, master, I believe still. It is the idea of the
Beyond, which not even happiness, found at last upon your neck, will
efface. But this longing for happiness, this longing to be happy at
once, to have some certainty--how I have suffered from it. If I went
to church, it was because I missed something, and I went there to seek
it. My anguish consisted in this irresistible need to satisfy my
longing. You remember what you used to call my eternal thirst for
illusion and falsehood. One night, in the threshing yard, under the
great starry sky, do you remember? I burst out against your science, I
was indignant because of the ruins with which it strews the earth, I
turned my eyes away from the dreadful wounds which it exposes. And I
wished, master, to take you to a solitude where we might both live in
God, far from the world, forgotten by it. Ah, what torture, to long,
to struggle, and not to be satisfied!"

Softly, without speaking, he kissed her on both eyes.

"Then, master, do you remember again, there was the great moral shock
on the night of the storm, when you gave me that terrible lesson of
life, emptying out your envelopes before me. You had said to me
already: 'Know life, love it, live it as it ought to be lived.' But
what a vast, what a frightful flood, rolling ever onward toward a
human sea, swelling it unceasingly for the unknown future! And,
master, the silent work within me began then. There was born, in my
heart and in my flesh, the bitter strength of the real. At first I was
as if crushed, the blow was so rude. I could not recover myself. I
kept silent, because I did not know clearly what to say. Then,
gradually, the evolution was effected. I still had struggles, I still
rebelled against confessing my defeat. But every day after this the
truth grew clearer within me, I knew well that you were my master, and
that there was no happiness for me outside of you, of your science and
your goodness. You were life itself, broad and tolerant life; saying
all, accepting all, solely through the love of energy and effort,
believing in the work of the world, placing the meaning of destiny in
the labor which we all accomplish with love, in our desperate
eagerness to live, to love, to live anew, to live always, in spite of
all the abominations and miseries of life. Oh, to live, to live! This
is the great task, the work that always goes on, and that will
doubtless one day be completed!"

Silent still, he smiled radiantly, and kissed her on the mouth.

"And, master, though I have always loved you, even from my earliest
youth, it was, I believe, on that terrible night that you marked me
for, and made me your own. You remember how you crushed me in your
grasp. It left a bruise, and a few drops of blood on my shoulder. Then
your being entered, as it were into mine. We struggled; you were the
stronger, and from that time I have felt the need of a support. At
first I thought myself humiliated; then I saw that it was but an
infinitely sweet submission. I always felt your power within me. A
gesture of your hand in the distance thrilled me as though it had
touched me. I would have wished that you had seized me again in your
grasp, that you had crushed me in it, until my being had mingled with
yours forever. And I was not blind; I knew well that your wish was the
same as mine, that the violence which had made me yours had made you
mine; that you struggled with yourself not to seize me and hold me as
I passed by you. To nurse you when you were ill was some slight
satisfaction. From that time, light began to break upon me, and I at
last understood. I went no more to church, I began to be happy near
you, you had become certainty and happiness. Do you remember that I
cried to you, in the threshing yard, that something was wanting in our
affection. There was a void in it which I longed to fill. What could
be wanting to us unless it were God? And it was God--love, and life."

VIII.


Then came a period of idyllic happiness. Clotilde was the spring, the
tardy rejuvenation that came to Pascal in his declining years. She
came, bringing to him, with her love, sunshine and flowers. Their
rapture lifted them above the earth; and all this youth she bestowed
on him after his thirty years of toil, when he was already weary and
worn probing the frightful wounds of humanity. He revived in the light
of her great shining eyes, in the fragrance of her pure breath. He had
faith again in life, in health, in strength, in the eternal renewal of
nature.

On the morning after her avowal it was ten o'clock before Clotilde
left her room. In the middle of the workroom she suddenly came upon
Martine and, in her radiant happiness, with a burst of joy that
carried everything before it, she rushed toward her, crying:

"Martine, I am not going away! Master and I--we love each other."

The old servant staggered under the blow. Her poor worn face, nunlike
under its white cap and with its look of renunciation, grew white in
the keenness of her anguish. Without a word, she turned and fled for
refuge to her kitchen, where, leaning her elbows on her chopping-
table, and burying her face in her clasped hands, she burst into a
passion of sobs.

Clotilde, grieved and uneasy, followed her. And she tried to
comprehend and to console her.

"Come, come, how foolish you are! What possesses you? Master and I
will love you all the same; we will always keep you with us. You are
not going to be unhappy because we love each other. On the contrary,
the house is going to be gay now from morning till night."

But Martine only sobbed all the more desperately.

"Answer me, at least. Tell me why you are angry and why you cry. Does
it not please you then to know that master is so happy, so happy! See,
I will call master and he will make you answer."

At this threat the old servant suddenly rose and rushed into her own
room, which opened out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.
In vain the young girl called and knocked until she was tired; she
could obtain no answer. At last Pascal, attracted by the noise, came
downstairs, saying:

"Why, what is the matter?"

"Oh, it is that obstinate Martine! Only fancy, she began to cry when
she knew that we loved each other. And she has barricaded herself in
there, and she will not stir."

She did not stir, in fact. Pascal, in his turn, called and knocked. He
scolded; he entreated. Then, one after the other, they began all over
again. Still there was no answer. A deathlike silence reigned in the
little room. And he pictured it to himself, this little room,
religiously clean, with its walnut bureau, and its monastic bed
furnished with white hangings. No doubt the servant had thrown herself
across this bed, in which she had slept alone all her woman's life,
and was burying her face in the bolster to stifle her sobs.

"Ah, so much the worse for her?" said Clotilde at last, in the egotism
of her joy, "let her sulk!"

Then throwing her arms around Pascal, and raising to his her charming
face, still glowing with the ardor of self-surrender, she said:

"Master, I will be your servant to-day."

He kissed her on the eyes with grateful emotion; and she at once set
about preparing the breakfast, turning the kitchen upside down. She
had put on an enormous white apron, and she looked charming, with her
sleeves rolled up, showing her delicate arms, as if for some great
undertaking. There chanced to be some cutlets in the kitchen which she
cooked to a turn. She added some scrambled eggs, and she even
succeeded in frying some potatoes. And they had a delicious breakfast,
twenty times interrupted by her getting up in her eager zeal, to run
for the bread, the water, a forgotten fork. If he had allowed her, she
would have waited upon him on her knees. Ah! to be alone, to be only
they two in this large friendly house, and to be free to laugh and to
love each other in peace.

They spent the whole afternoon in sweeping and putting things in
order. He insisted upon helping her. It was a play; they amused
themselves like two merry children. From time to time, however, they
went back to knock at Martine's door to remonstrate with her. Come,
this was foolish, she was not going to let herself starve! Was there
ever seen such a mule, when no one had said or done anything to her!
But only the echo of their knocks came back mournfully from the silent
room. Not the slightest sound, not a breath responded. Night fell, and
they were obliged to make the dinner also, which they ate, sitting
beside each other, from the same plate. Before going to bed, they made
a last attempt, threatening to break open the door, but their ears,
glued to the wood, could not catch the slightest sound. And on the
following day, when they went downstairs and found the door still
hermetically closed, they began to be seriously uneasy. For twenty-
four hours the servant had given no sign of life.

Then, on returning to the kitchen after a moment's absence, Clotilde
and Pascal were stupefied to see Martine sitting at her table, picking
some sorrel for the breakfast. She had silently resumed her place as
servant.

"But what was the matter with you?" cried Clotilde. "Will you speak
now?"

She lifted up her sad face, stained by tears. It was very calm,
however, and it expressed now only the resigned melancholy of old age.
She looked at the young girl with an air of infinite reproach; then
she bent her head again without speaking.

"Are you angry with us, then?"

And as she still remained silent, Pascal interposed:

"Are you angry with us, my good Martine?"

Then the old servant looked up at him with her former look of
adoration, as if she loved him sufficiently to endure all and to
remain in spite of all. At last she spoke.

"No, I am angry with no one. The master is free. It is all right, if
he is satisfied."

A new life began from this time. Clotilde, who in spite of her twenty-
five years had still remained childlike, now, under the influence of
love, suddenly bloomed into exquisite womanhood. Since her heart had
awakened, the serious and intelligent boy that she had looked like,
with her round head covered with its short curls, had given place to
an adorable woman, altogether womanly, submissive and tender, loving
to be loved. Her great charm, notwithstanding her learning picked up
at random from her reading and her work, was her virginal _naivete_,
as if her unconscious awaiting of love had made her reserve the gift
of her whole being to be utterly absorbed in the man whom she should
love. No doubt she had given her love as much through gratitude and
admiration as through tenderness; happy to make him happy;
experiencing a profound joy in being no longer only a little girl to
be petted, but something of his very own which he adored, a precious
possession, a thing of grace and joy, which he worshiped on bended
knees. She still had the religious submissiveness of the former
devotee, in the hands of a master mature and strong, from whom she
derived consolation and support, retaining, above and beyond
affection, the sacred awe of the believer in the spiritual which she
still was. But more than all, this woman, so intoxicated with love,
was a delightful personification of health and gaiety; eating with a
hearty appetite; having something of the valor of her grandfather the
soldier; filling the house with her swift and graceful movements, with
the bloom of her satin skin, the slender grace of her neck, of all her
young form, divinely fresh.

And Pascal, too, had grown handsome again under the influence of love,
with the serene beauty of a man who had retained his vigor,
notwithstanding his white hairs. His countenance had no longer the
sorrowful expression which it had worn during the months of grief and
suffering through which he had lately passed; his eyes, youthful
still, had recovered their brightness, his features their smiling
grace; while his white hair and beard grew thicker, in a leonine
abundance which lent him a youthful air. He had kept himself, in his
solitary life as a passionate worker, so free from vice and
dissipation that he found now within him a reserve of life and vigor
eager to expend itself at last. There awoke within him new energy, a
youthful impetuosity that broke forth in gestures and exclamations, in
a continual need of expansion, of living. Everything wore a new and
enchanting aspect to him; the smallest glimpse of sky moved him to
wonder; the perfume of a simple flower threw him into an ecstasy; an
everyday expression of affection, worn by use, touched him to tears,
as if it had sprung fresh from the heart and had not been hackneyed by
millions of lips. Clotilde's "I love you," was an infinite caress,
whose celestial sweetness no human being had ever before known. And
with health and beauty he recovered also his gaiety, that tranquil
gaiety which had formerly been inspired by his love of life, and which
now threw sunshine over his love, over everything that made life worth
living.

They two, blooming youth and vigorous maturity, so healthy, so gay, so
happy, made a radiant couple. For a whole month they remained in
seclusion, not once leaving La Souleiade. The place where both now
liked to be was the spacious workroom, so intimately associated with
their habits and their past affection. They would spend whole days
there, scarcely working at all, however. The large carved oak press
remained with closed doors; so, too, did the bookcases. Books and
papers lay undisturbed upon the tables. Like a young married couple
they were absorbed in their one passion, oblivious of their former
occupations, oblivious of life. The hours seemed all too short to
enjoy the charm of being together, often seated in the same large
antique easy-chair, happy in the depths of this solitude in which they
secluded themselves, in the tranquillity of this lofty room, in this
domain which was altogether theirs, without luxury and without order,
full of familiar objects, brightened from morning till night by the
returning gaiety of the April sunshine. When, seized with remorse, he
would talk about working, she would link her supple arms through his
and laughingly hold him prisoner, so that he should not make himself
ill again with overwork. And downstairs, they loved, too, the
dining-room, so gay with its light panels relieved by blue bands, its
antique mahogany furniture, its large flower pastels, its brass
hanging lamp, always shining. They ate in it with a hearty appetite
and they left it, after each meal, only to go upstairs again to their
dear solitude.

Then when the house seemed too small, they had the garden, all La
Souleiade. Spring advanced with the advancing sun, and at the end of
April the roses were beginning to bloom. And what a joy was this
domain, walled around, where nothing from the outside world could
trouble them! Hours flew by unnoted, as they sat on the terrace facing
the vast horizon and the shady banks of the Viorne, and the slopes of
Sainte-Marthe, from the rocky bars of the Seille to the valley of
Plassans in the dusty distance. There was no shade on the terrace but
that of the two secular cypresses planted at its two extremities, like
two enormous green tapers, which could be seen three leagues away. At
times they descended the slope for the pleasure of ascending the giant
steps, and climbing the low walls of uncemented stones which supported
the plantations, to see if the stunted olive trees and the puny
almonds were budding. More often there were delightful walks under the
delicate needles of the pine wood, steeped in sunshine and exhaling a
strong odor of resin; endless walks along the wall of inclosure, from
behind which the only sound they could hear was, at rare intervals,
the grating noise of some cart jolting along the narrow road to Les
Fenouilleres; and they spent delightful hours in the old threshing
yard, where they could see the whole horizon, and where they loved to
stretch themselves, tenderly remembering their former tears, when,
loving each other unconsciously to themselves, they had quarreled
under the stars. But their favorite retreat, where they always ended
by losing themselves, was the quincunx of tall plane trees, whose
branches, now of a tender green, looked like lacework. Below, the
enormous box trees, the old borders of the French garden, of which now
scarcely a trace remained, formed a sort of labyrinth of which they
could never find the end. And the slender stream of the fountain, with
its eternal crystalline murmur, seemed to sing within their hearts.
They would sit hand in hand beside the mossy basin, while the twilight
fell around them, their forms gradually fading into the shadow of the
trees, while the water which they could no longer see, sang its
flutelike song.

Up to the middle of May Pascal and Clotilde secluded themselves in
this way, without even crossing the threshold of their retreat. One
morning he disappeared and returned an hour later, bringing her a pair
of diamond earrings which he had hurried out to buy, remembering this
was her birthday. She adored jewels, and the gift astonished and
delighted her. From this time not a week passed in which he did not go
out once or twice in this way to bring her back some present. The
slightest excuse was sufficient for him--a _fete_, a wish, a simple
pleasure. He brought her rings, bracelets, a necklace, a slender
diadem. He would take out the other jewels and please himself by
putting them all upon her in the midst of their laughter. She was like
an idol, seated on her chair, covered with gold,--a band of gold on
her hair, gold on her bare arms and on her bare throat, all shining
with gold and precious stones. Her woman's vanity was delightfully
gratified by this. She allowed herself to be adored thus, to be adored
on bended knees, like a divinity, knowing well that this was only an
exalted form of love. She began at last to scold a little, however; to
make prudent remonstrances; for, in truth, it was an absurdity to
bring her all these gifts which she must afterward shut up in a
drawer, without ever wearing them, as she went nowhere.

They were forgotten after the hour of joy and gratitude which they
gave her in their novelty was over. But he would not listen to her,
carried away by a veritable mania for giving; unable, from the moment
the idea of giving her an article took possession of him, to resist
the desire of buying it. It was a munificence of the heart; an
imperious desire to prove to her that he thought of her always; a
pride in seeing her the most magnificent, the happiest, the most
envied of women; a generosity more profound even, which impelled him
to despoil himself of everything, of his money, of his life. And then,
what a delight, when he saw he had given her a real pleasure, and she
threw herself on his neck, blushing, thanking him with kisses. After
the jewels, it was gowns, articles of dress, toilet articles. Her room
was littered, the drawers were filled to overflowing.

One morning she could not help getting angry. He had brought her
another ring.

"Why, I never wear them! And if I did, my fingers would be covered to
the tips. Be reasonable, I beg of you."

"Then I have not given you pleasure?" he said with confusion.

She threw her arms about his neck, and assured him with tears in her
eyes that she was very happy. He was so good to her! He was so
unwearied in his devotion to her! And when, later in the morning, he
ventured to speak of making some changes in her room, of covering the
walls with tapestry, of putting down a carpet, she again remonstrated.

"Oh! no, no! I beg of you. Do not touch my old room, so full of
memories, where I have grown up, where I told you I loved you. I
should no longer feel myself at home in it."

Downstairs, Martine's obstinate silence condemned still more strongly
these excessive and useless expenses. She had adopted a less familiar
attitude, as if, in the new situation, she had fallen from her role of
housekeeper and friend to her former station of servant. Toward
Clotilde, especially, she changed, treating her like a young lady,
like a mistress to whom she was less affectionate but more obedient
than formerly. Two or three times, however, she had appeared in the
morning with her face discolored and her eyes sunken with weeping,
answering evasively when questioned, saying that nothing was the
matter, that she had taken cold. And she never made any remark about
the gifts with which the drawers were filled. She did not even seem to
see them, arranging them without a word either of praise or dispraise.
But her whole nature rebelled against this extravagant generosity, of
which she could never have conceived the possibility. She protested in
her own fashion; exaggerating her economy and reducing still further
the expenses of the housekeeping, which she now conducted on so narrow
a scale that she retrenched even in the smallest expenses. For
instance, she took only two-thirds of the milk which she had been in
the habit of taking, and she served sweet dishes only on Sundays.
Pascal and Clotilde, without venturing to complain, laughed between
themselves at this parsimony, repeating the jests which had amused
them for ten years past, saying that after dressing the vegetables she
strained them in the colander, in order to save the butter for future
use.

But this quarter she insisted upon rendering an account. She was in
the habit of going every three months to Master Grandguillot, the
notary, to receive the fifteen hundred francs income, of which she
disposed afterward according to her judgment, entering the expenses in
a book which the doctor had years ago ceased to verify. She brought it
to him now and insisted upon his looking over it. He excused himself,
saying that it was all right.

"The thing is, monsieur," she said, "that this time I have been able
to put some money aside. Yes, three hundred francs. Here they are."

He looked at her in amazement. Generally she just made both ends meet.
By what miracle of stinginess had she been able to save such a sum?

"Ah! my poor Martine," he said at last, laughing, "that is the reason,
then, that we have been eating so many potatoes of late. You are a
pearl of economy, but indeed you must treat us a little better in the
future."

This discreet reproach wounded her so profoundly that she allowed
herself at last to say:

"Well, monsieur, when there is so much extravagance on the one hand,
it is well to be prudent on the other."

He understood the allusion, but instead of being angry, he was amused
by the lesson.

"Ah, ah! it is you who are examining my accounts! But you know very
well, Martine, that I, too, have my savings laid by."

He alluded to the money which he still received occasionally from his
patients, and which he threw into a drawer of his writing-desk. For
more than sixteen years past he had put into this drawer every year
about four thousand francs, which would have amounted to a little
fortune if he had not taken from it, from day to day, without counting
them, considerable sums for his experiments and his whims. All the
money for the presents came out of this drawer, which he now opened
continually. He thought that it would never be empty; he had been so
accustomed to take from it whatever he required that it had never
occurred to him to fear that he would ever come to the bottom of it.

"One may very well have a little enjoyment out of one's savings," he
said gayly. "Since it is you who go to the notary's, Martine, you are
not ignorant that I have my income apart."

Then she said, with the colorless voice of the miser who is haunted by
the dread of an impending disaster:

"And what would you do if you hadn't it?"

Pascal looked at her in astonishment, and contented himself with
answering with a shrug, for the possibility of such a misfortune had
never even entered his mind. He fancied that avarice was turning her
brain, and he laughed over the incident that evening with Clotilde.

In Plassans, too, the presents were the cause of endless gossip. The
rumor of what was going on at La Souleiade, this strange and sudden
passion, had spread, no one could tell how, by that force of expansion
which sustains curiosity, always on the alert in small towns. The
servant certainly had not spoken, but her air was perhaps sufficient;
words perhaps had dropped from her involuntarily; the lovers might
have been watched over the walls. And then came the buying of the
presents, confirming the reports and exaggerating them. When the
doctor, in the early morning, scoured the streets and visited the
jeweler's and the dressmaker's, eyes spied him from the windows, his
smallest purchases were watched, all the town knew in the evening that
he had given her a silk bonnet, a bracelet set with sapphires. And all
this was turned into a scandal. This uncle in love with his niece,
committing a young man's follies for her, adorning her like a holy
Virgin. The most extraordinary stories began to circulate, and people
pointed to La Souleiade as they passed by.

But old Mme. Rougon was, of all persons, the most bitterly indignant.
She had ceased going to her son's house when she learned that
Clotilde's marriage with Dr. Ramond had been broken off. They had made
sport of her. They did nothing to please her, and she wished to show
how deep her displeasure was. Then a full month after the rupture,
during which she had understood nothing of the pitying looks, the
discreet condolences, the vague smiles which met her everywhere, she
learned everything with a suddenness that stunned her. She, who, at
the time of Pascal's illness, in her mortification at the idea of
again becoming the talk of the town through that ugly story, had
raised such a storm! It was far worse this time; the height of
scandal, a love affair for people to regale themselves with. The
Rougon legend was again in peril; her unhappy son was decidedly doing
his best to find some way to destroy the family glory won with so much
difficulty. So that in her anger she, who had made herself the
guardian of this glory, resolving to purify the legend by every means
in her power, put on her hat one morning and hurried to La Souleiade
with the youthful vivacity of her eighty years.

Pascal, whom the rupture with his mother enchanted, was fortunately
not at home, having gone out an hour before to look for a silver
buckle which he had thought of for a belt. And Felicite fell upon
Clotilde as the latter was finishing her toilet, her arms bare, her
hair loose, looking as fresh and smiling as a rose.

The first shock was rude. The old lady unburdened her mind, grew
indignant, spoke of the scandal they were giving. Suddenly her anger
vanished. She looked at the young girl, and she thought her adorable.
In her heart she was not surprised at what was going on. She laughed
at it, all she desired was that it should end in a correct fashion, so
as to silence evil tongues. And she cried with a conciliating air:

"Get married then! Why do you not get married?"

Clotilde remained silent for a moment, surprised. She had not thought
of marriage. Then she smiled again.

"No doubt we will get married, grandmother. But later on, there is no
hurry."

Old Mme. Rougon went away, obliged to be satisfied with this vague
promise.

It was at this time that Pascal and Clotilde ceased to seclude
themselves. Not through any spirit of bravado, not because they wished
to answer ugly rumors by making a display of their happiness, but as a
natural amplification of their joy; their love had slowly acquired the
need of expansion and of space, at first beyond the house, then beyond
the garden, into the town, as far as the whole vast horizon. It filled
everything; it took in the whole world.

The doctor then tranquilly resumed his visits, and he took the young
girl with him. They walked together along the promenades, along the
streets, she on his arm, in a light gown, with flowers in her hat, he
buttoned up in his coat with his broad-brimmed hat. He was all white;
she all blond. They walked with their heads high, erect and smiling,
radiating such happiness that they seemed to walk in a halo. At first
the excitement was extraordinary. The shopkeepers came and stood at
their doors, the women leaned out of the windows, the passers-by
stopped to look after them. People whispered and laughed and pointed
to them. Then they were so handsome; he superb and triumphant, she so
youthful, so submissive, and so proud, that an involuntary indulgence
gradually gained on every one. People could not help defending them
and loving them, and they ended by smiling on them in a delightful
contagion of tenderness. A charm emanated from them which brought back
all hearts to them. The new town, with its _bourgeois_ population of
functionaries and townspeople who had grown wealthy, was the last
conquest. But the Quartier St. Marc, in spite of its austerity, showed
itself at once kind and discreetly tolerant when they walked along its
deserted grass-worn sidewalks, beside the antique houses, now closed
and silent, which exhaled the evaporated perfume of the loves of other
days. But it was the old quarter, more especially, that promptly
received them with cordiality, this quarter of which the common
people, instinctively touched, felt the grace of the legend, the
profound myth of the couple, the beautiful young girl supporting the
royal and rejuvenated master. The doctor was adored here for his
goodness, and his companion quickly became popular, and was greeted
with tokens of admiration and approval as soon as she appeared. They,
meantime, if they had seemed ignorant of the former hostility, now
divined easily the forgiveness and the indulgent tenderness which
surrounded them, and this made them more beautiful; their happiness
charmed the entire town.

One afternoon, as Pascal and Clotilde turned the corner of the Rue de
la Banne, they perceived Dr. Ramond on the opposite side of the
street. It had chanced that they had learned the day before that he
had asked and had obtained the hand of Mlle. Leveque, the advocate's
daughter. It was certainly the most sensible course he could have
taken, for his business interests made it advisable that he should
marry, and the young girl, who was very pretty and very rich, loved
him. He, too, would certainly love her in time. Therefore Clotilde
joyfully smiled her congratulations to him as a sincere friend. Pascal
saluted him with an affectionate gesture. For a moment Ramond, a
little moved by the meeting, stood perplexed. His first impulse seemed
to have been to cross over to them. But a feeling of delicacy must
have prevented him, the thought that it would be brutal to interrupt
their dream, to break in upon this solitude _a deux_, in which they
moved, even amid the elbowings of the street. And he contented himself
with a friendly salutation, a smile in which he forgave them their
happiness. This was very pleasant for all three.

At this time Clotilde amused herself for several days by painting a
large pastel representing the tender scene of old King David and
Abishag, the young Shunammite. It was a dream picture, one of those
fantastic compositions into which her other self, her romantic self,
put her love of the mysterious. Against a background of flowers thrown
on the canvas, flowers that looked like a shower of stars, of barbaric
richness, the old king stood facing the spectator, his hand resting on
the bare shoulder of Abishag. He was attired sumptuously in a robe
heavy with precious stones, that fell in straight folds, and he wore
the royal fillet on his snowy locks. But she was more sumptuous still,
with only the lilylike satin of her skin, her tall, slender figure,
her round, slender throat, her supple arms, divinely graceful. He
reigned over, he leaned, as a powerful and beloved master, on this
subject, chosen from among all others, so proud of having been chosen,
so rejoiced to give to her king the rejuvenating gift of her youth.
All her pure and triumphant beauty expressed the serenity of her
submission, the tranquillity with which she gave herself, before the
assembled people, in the full light of day. And he was very great and
she was very fair, and there radiated from both a starry radiance.

Up to the last moment Clotilde had left the faces of the two figures
vaguely outlined in a sort of mist. Pascal, standing behind her,
jested with her to hide his emotion, for he fancied he divined her
intention. And it was as he thought; she finished the faces with a few
strokes of the crayon--old King David was he, and she was Abishag, the
Shunammite. But they were enveloped in a dreamlike brightness, it was
themselves deified; the one with hair all white, the other with hair
all blond, covering them like an imperial mantle, with features
lengthened by ecstasy, exalted to the bliss of angels, with the glance
and the smile of immortal youth.

"Ah, dear!" he cried, "you have made us too beautiful; you have
wandered off again to dreamland--yes, as in the days, do you remember,
when I used to scold you for putting there all the fantastic flowers
of the Unknown?"

And he pointed to the walls, on which bloomed the fantastic _parterre_
of the old pastels, flowers not of the earth, grown in the soil of
paradise.

But she protested gayly.

"Too beautiful? We could not be too beautiful! I assure you it is thus
that I picture us to myself, thus that I see us; and thus it is that
we are. There! see if it is not the pure reality."

She took the old fifteenth century Bible which was beside her, and
showed him the simple wood engraving.

"You see it is exactly the same."

He smiled gently at this tranquil and extraordinary affirmation.

"Oh, you laugh, you look only at the details of the picture. It is the
spirit which it is necessary to penetrate. And look at the other
engravings, it is the same theme in all--Abraham and Hagar, Ruth and
Boaz. And you see they are all handsome and happy."

Then they ceased to laugh, leaning over the old Bible whose pages she
turned with her white fingers, he standing behind her, his white beard
mingling with her blond, youthful tresses.

Suddenly he whispered to her softly:

"But you, so young, do you never regret that you have chosen me--me,
who am so old, as old as the world?"

She gave a start of surprise, and turning round looked at him.

"You old! No, you are young, younger than I!"

And she laughed so joyously that he, too, could not help smiling. But
he insisted a little tremulously:

"You do not answer me. Do you not sometimes desire a younger lover,
you who are so youthful?"

She put up her lips and kissed him, saying in a low voice:

"I have but one desire, to be loved--loved as you love me, above and
beyond everything."

The day on which Martine saw the pastel nailed to the wall, she looked
at it a moment in silence, then she made the sign of the cross, but
whether it was because she had seen God or the devil, no one could
say. A few days before Easter she had asked Clotilde if she would not
accompany her to church, and the latter having made a sign in the
negative, she departed for an instant from the deferential silence
which she now habitually maintained. Of all the new things which
astonished her in the house, what most astonished her was the sudden
irreligiousness of her young mistress. So she allowed herself to
resume her former tone of remonstrance, and to scold her as she used
to do when she was a little girl and refused to say her prayers. "Had
she no longer the fear of the Lord before her, then? Did she no longer
tremble at the idea of going to hell, to burn there forever?"

Clotilde could not suppress a smile.

"Oh, hell! you know that it has never troubled me a great deal. But
you are mistaken if you think I am no longer religious. If I have left
off going to church it is because I perform my devotions elsewhere,
that is all."

Martine looked at her, open-mouthed, not comprehending her. It was all
over; mademoiselle was indeed lost. And she never again asked her to
accompany her to St. Saturnin. But her own devotion increased until it
at last became a mania. She was no longer to be met, as before, with
the eternal stocking in her hand which she knitted even when walking,
when not occupied in her household duties. Whenever she had a moment
to spare, she ran to church and remained there, repeating endless
prayers. One day when old Mme. Rougon, always on the alert, found her
behind a pillar, an hour after she had seen her there before, Martine
excused herself, blushing like a servant who had been caught idling,
saying:

"I was praying for monsieur."

Meanwhile Pascal and Clotilde enlarged still more their domain, taking
longer and longer walks every day, extending them now outside the town
into the open country. One afternoon, as they were going to La
Seguiranne, they were deeply moved, passing by the melancholy fields
where the enchanted gardens of Le Paradou had formerly extended. The
vision of Albine rose before them. Pascal saw her again blooming like
the spring, in the rejuvenation which this living flower had brought
him too, feeling the pressure of this pure arm against his heart.
Never could he have believed, he who had already thought himself very
old when he used to enter this garden to give a smile to the little
fairy within, that she would have been dead for years when life, the
good mother, should bestow upon him the gift of so fresh a spring,
sweetening his declining years. And Clotilde, having felt the vision
rise before them, lifted up her face to his in a renewed longing for
tenderness. She was Albine, the eternal lover. He kissed her on the
lips, and though no word had been uttered, the level fields sown with
corn and oats, where Le Paradou had once rolled its billows of
luxuriant verdure, thrilled in sympathy.

Pascal and Clotilde were now walking along the dusty road, through the
bare and arid country. They loved this sun-scorched land, these fields
thinly planted with puny almond trees and dwarf olives, these
stretches of bare hills dotted with country houses, that showed on
them like pale patches accentuated by the dark bars of the secular
cypresses. It was like an antique landscape, one of those classic
landscapes represented in the paintings of the old schools, with harsh
coloring and well balanced and majestic lines. All the ardent sunshine
of successive summers that had parched this land flowed through their
veins, and lent them a new beauty and animation, as they walked under
the sky forever blue, glowing with the clear flame of eternal love.
She, protected from the sun by her straw hat, bloomed and luxuriated
in this bath of light like a tropical flower, while he, in his renewed
youth, felt the burning sap of the soil ascend into his veins in a
flood of virile joy.

This walk to La Seguiranne had been an idea of the doctor's, who had
learned through Aunt Dieudonne of the approaching marriage of Sophie
to a young miller of the neighborhood; and he desired to see if every
one was well and happy in this retired corner. All at once they were
refreshed by a delightful coolness as they entered the avenue of tall
green oaks. On either side the springs, the mothers of these giant
shade trees, flowed on in their eternal course. And when they reached
the house of the shrew they came, as chance would have it, upon the
two lovers, Sophie and her miller, kissing each other beside the well;
for the girl's aunt had just gone down to the lavatory behind the
willows of the Viorne. Confused, the couple stood in blushing silence.
But the doctor and his companion laughed indulgently, and the lovers,
reassured, told them that the marriage was set for St. John's Day,
which was a long way off, to be sure, but which would come all the
same. Sophie, saved from the hereditary malady, had improved in health
and beauty, and was growing as strong as one of the trees that stood
with their feet in the moist grass beside the springs, and their heads
bare to the sunshine. Ah, the vast, glowing sky, what life it breathed
into all created things! She had but one grief, and tears came to her
eyes when she spoke of her brother Valentin, who perhaps would not
live through the week. She had had news of him the day before; he was
past hope. And the doctor was obliged to prevaricate a little to
console her, for he himself expected hourly the inevitable
termination. When he and his companion left La Seguiranne they
returned slowly to Plassans, touched by this happy, healthy love
saddened by the chill of death.

In the old quarter a woman whom Pascal was attending informed him that
Valentin had just died. Two of the neighbors were obliged to take away
La Guiraude, who, half-crazed, clung, shrieking, to her son's body.
The doctor entered the house, leaving Clotilde outside. At last, they
again took their way to La Souleiade in silence. Since Pascal had
resumed his visits he seemed to make them only through professional
duty; he no longer became enthusiastic about the miracles wrought by
his treatment. But as far as Valentin's death was concerned, he was
surprised that it had not occurred before; he was convinced that he
had prolonged the patient's life for at least a year. In spite of the
extraordinary results which he had obtained at first, he knew well
that death was the inevitable end. That he had held it in check for
months ought then to have consoled him and soothed his remorse, still
unassuaged, for having involuntarily caused the death of Lafouasse, a
few weeks sooner than it would otherwise have occurred. But this did
not seem to be the case, and his brow was knitted in a frown as they
returned to their beloved solitude. But there a new emotion awaited
him; sitting under the plane trees, whither Martine had sent him, he
saw Sarteur, the hatter, the inmate of the Tulettes whom he had been
so long treating by his hypodermic injections, and the experiment so
zealously continued seemed to have succeeded. The injections of nerve
substance had evidently given strength to his will, since the madman
was here, having left the asylum that morning, declaring that he no
longer had any attacks, that he was entirely cured of the homicidal
mania that impelled him to throw himself upon any passer-by to
strangle him. The doctor looked at him as he spoke. He was a small
dark man, with a retreating forehead and aquiline features, with one
cheek perceptibly larger than the other. He was perfectly quiet and
rational, and filled with so lively a gratitude that he kissed his
saviour's hands. The doctor could not help being greatly affected by
all this, and he dismissed the man kindly, advising him to return to
his life of labor, which was the best hygiene, physical and moral.
Then he recovered his calmness and sat down to table, talking gaily of
other matters.

Clotilde looked at him with astonishment and even with a little
indignation.

"What is the matter, master?" she said. "You are no longer satisfied
with yourself."

"Oh, with myself I am never satisfied!" he answered jestingly. "And
with medicine, you know--it is according to the day."

It was on this night that they had their first quarrel. She was angry
with him because he no longer had any pride in his profession. She
returned to her complaint of the afternoon, reproaching him for not
taking more credit to himself for the cure of Sarteur, and even for
the prolongation of Valentin's life. It was she who now had a passion
for his fame. She reminded him of his cures; had he not cured himself?
Could he deny the efficacy of his treatment? A thrill ran through him
as he recalled the great dream which he had once cherished--to combat
debility, the sole cause of disease; to cure suffering humanity; to
make a higher, and healthy humanity; to hasten the coming of
happiness, the future kingdom of perfection and felicity, by
intervening and giving health to all! And he possessed the liquor of
life, the universal panacea which opened up this immense hope!

Pascal was silent for a moment. Then he murmured:

"It is true. I cured myself, I have cured others, and I still think
that my injections are efficacious in many cases. I do not deny
medicine. Remorse for a deplorable accident, like that of Lafouasse,
does not render me unjust. Besides, work has been my passion, it is in
work that I have up to this time spent my energies; it was in wishing
to prove to myself the possibility of making decrepit humanity one day
strong and intelligent that I came near dying lately. Yes, a dream, a
beautiful dream!"

"No, no! a reality, the reality of your genius, master."

Then, lowering his voice almost to a whisper, he breathed this
confession:

"Listen, I am going to say to you what I would say to no one else in
the world, what I would not say to myself aloud. To correct nature, to
interfere, in order to modify it and thwart it in its purpose, is this
a laudable task? To cure the individual, to retard his death, for his
personal pleasure, to prolong his existence, doubtless to the injury
of the species, is not this to defeat the aims of nature? And have we
the right to desire a stronger, a healthier humanity, modeled after
our idea of health and strength? What have we to do in the matter? Why
should we interfere in this work of life, neither the means nor the
end of which are known to us? Perhaps everything is as it ought to be.
Perhaps we should risk killing love, genius, life itself. Remember, I
make the confession to you alone; but doubt has taken possession of
me, I tremble at the thought of my twentieth century alchemy. I have
come to believe that it is greater and wiser to allow evolution to
take its course."

He paused; then he added so softly that she could scarcely hear him:

"Do you know that instead of nerve-substance I often use only water
with my patients. You no longer hear me grinding for days at a time. I
told you that I had some of the liquor in reserve. Water soothes them,
this is no doubt simply a mechanical effect. Ah! to soothe, to prevent
suffering--that indeed I still desire! It is perhaps my greatest
weakness, but I cannot bear to see any one suffer. Suffering puts me
beside myself, it seems a monstrous and useless cruelty of nature. I
practise now only to prevent suffering."

"Then, master," she asked, in the same indistinct murmur, "if you no
longer desire to cure, do you still think everything must be told? For
the frightful necessity of displaying the wounds of humanity had no
other excuse than the hope of curing them."

"Yes, yes, it is necessary to know, in every case, and to conceal
nothing; to tell everything regarding things and individuals.
Happiness is no longer possible in ignorance; certainty alone makes
life tranquil. When people know more they will doubtless accept
everything. Do you not comprehend that to desire to cure everything,
to regenerate everything is a false ambition inspired by our egotism,
a revolt against life, which we declare to be bad, because we judge it
from the point of view of self-interest? I know that I am more
tranquil, that my intellect has broadened and deepened ever since I
have held evolution in respect. It is my love of life which triumphs,
even to the extent of not questioning its purpose, to the extent of
confiding absolutely in it, of losing myself in it, without wishing to
remake it according to my own conception of good and evil. Life alone
is sovereign, life alone knows its aim and its end. I can only try to
know it in order to live it as it should be lived. And this I have
understood only since I have possessed your love. Before I possessed
it I sought the truth elsewhere, I struggled with the fixed idea of
saving the world. You have come, and life is full; the world is saved
every hour by love, by the immense and incessant labor of all that
live and love throughout space. Impeccable life, omnipotent life,
immortal life!"

They continued to talk together in low tones for some time longer,
planning an idyllic life, a calm and healthful existence in the
country. It was in this simple prescription of an invigorating
environment that the experiments of the physician ended. He exclaimed
against cities. People could be well and happy only in the country, in
the sunshine, on the condition of renouncing money, ambition, even the
proud excesses of intellectual labor. They should do nothing but live
and love, cultivate the soil, and bring up their children.

IX.


Dr. Pascal then resumed his professional visits in the town and the
surrounding country. And he was generally accompanied by Clotilde, who
went with him into the houses of the poor, where she, too, brought
health and cheerfulness.

But, as he had one night confessed to her in secret, his visits were
now only visits of relief and consolation. If he had before practised
with repugnance it was because he had felt how vain was medical
science. Empiricism disheartened him. From the moment that medicine
ceased to be an experimental science and became an art, he was filled
with disquiet at the thought of the infinite variety of diseases and
of their remedies, according to the constitution of the patient.
Treatment changed with every new hypothesis; how many people, then,
must the methods now abandoned have killed! The perspicacity of the
physician became everything, the healer was only a happily endowed
diviner, himself groping in the dark and effecting cures through his
fortunate endowment. And this explained why he had given up his
patients almost altogether, after a dozen years of practise, to devote
himself entirely to study. Then, when his great labors on heredity had
restored to him for a time the hope of intervening and curing disease
by his hypodermic injections, he had become again enthusiastic, until
the day when his faith in life, after having impelled him, to aid its
action in this way, by restoring the vital forces, became still
broader and gave him the higher conviction that life was
self-sufficing, that it was the only giver of health and strength, in
spite of everything. And he continued to visit, with his tranquil smile,
only those of his patients who clamored for him loudly, and who found
themselves miraculously relieved when he injected into them only pure
water.

Clotilde now sometimes allowed herself to jest about these hypodermic
injections. She was still at heart, however, a fervent worshiper of
his skill; and she said jestingly that if he performed miracles as he
did it was because he had in himself the godlike power to do so. Then
he would reply jestingly, attributing to her the efficacy of their
common visits, saying that he cured no one now when she was absent,
that it was she who brought the breath of life, the unknown and
necessary force from the Beyond. So that the rich people, the
_bourgeois_, whose houses she did not enter, continued to groan
without his being able to relieve them. And this affectionate dispute
diverted them; they set out each time as if for new discoveries, they
exchanged glances of kindly intelligence with the sick. Ah, this
wretched suffering which revolted them, and which was now all they
went to combat; how happy they were when they thought it vanquished!
They were divinely recompensed when they saw the cold sweats
disappear, the moaning lips become stilled, the deathlike faces
recover animation. It was assuredly the love which they brought to
this humble, suffering humanity that produced the alleviation.

"To die is nothing; that is in the natural order of things," Pascal
would often say. "But why suffer? It is cruel and unnecessary!"

One afternoon the doctor was going with the young girl to the little
village of Sainte-Marthe to see a patient, and at the station, for
they were going by train, so as to spare Bonhomme, they had a
reencounter. The train which they were waiting for was from the
Tulettes. Sainte-Marthe was the first station in the opposite
direction, going to Marseilles. When the train arrived, they hurried
on board and, opening the door of a compartment which they thought
empty, they saw old Mme. Rougon about to leave it. She did not speak
to them, but passing them by, sprang down quickly in spite of her age,
and walked away with a stiff and haughty air.

"It is the 1st of July," said Clotilde when the train had started.
"Grandmother is returning from the Tulettes, after making her monthly
visit to Aunt Dide. Did you see the glance she cast at me?"

Pascal was at heart glad of the quarrel with his mother, which freed
him from the continual annoyance of her visits.

"Bah!" he said simply, "when people cannot agree it is better for them
not to see each other."

But the young girl remained troubled and thoughtful. After a few
moments she said in an undertone:

"I thought her changed--looking paler. And did you notice? she who is
usually so carefully dressed had only one glove on--a yellow glove, on
the right hand. I don't know why it was, but she made me feel sick at
heart."

Pascal, who was also disturbed, made a vague gesture. His mother would
no doubt grow old at last, like everybody else. But she was very
active, very full of fire still. She was thinking, he said, of
bequeathing her fortune to the town of Plassans, to build a house of
refuge, which should bear the name of Rougon. Both had recovered their
gaiety when he cried suddenly:

"Why, it is to-morrow that you and I are to go to the Tulettes to see
our patients. And you know that I promised to take Charles to Uncle
Macquart's."

Felicite was in fact returning from the Tulettes, where she went
regularly on the first of every month to inquire after Aunt Dide. For
many years past she had taken a keen interest in the madwoman's
health, amazed to see her lasting so long, and furious with her for
persisting in living so far beyond the common term of life, until she
had become a very prodigy of longevity. What a relief, the fine
morning on which they should put under ground this troublesome witness
of the past, this specter of expiation and of waiting, who brought
living before her the abominations of the family! When so many others
had been taken she, who was demented and who had only a spark of life
left in her eyes, seemed forgotten. On this day she had found her as
usual, skeleton-like, stiff and erect in her armchair. As the keeper
said, there was now no reason why she should ever die. She was a
hundred and five years old.

When she left the asylum Felicite was furious. She thought of Uncle
Macquart. Another who troubled her, who persisted in living with
exasperating obstinacy! Although he was only eighty-four years old,
three years older than herself, she thought him ridiculously aged,
past the allotted term of life. And a man who led so dissipated a
life, who had gone to bed dead drunk every night for the last sixty
years! The good and the sober were taken away; he flourished in spite
of everything, blooming with health and gaiety. In days past, just
after he had settled at the Tulettes, she had made him presents of
wines, liqueurs and brandy, in the unavowed hope of ridding the family
of a fellow who was really disreputable, and from whom they had
nothing to expect but annoyance and shame. But she had soon perceived
that all this liquor served, on the contrary, to keep up his health
and spirits and his sarcastic humor, and she had left off making him
presents, seeing that he throve on what she had hoped would prove a
poison to him. She had cherished a deadly hatred toward him since
then. She would have killed him if she had dared, every time she saw
him, standing firmly on his drunken legs, and laughing at her to her
face, knowing well that she was watching for his death, and triumphant
because he did not give her the pleasure of burying with him all the
old dirty linen of the family, the blood and mud of the two conquests
of Plassans.

"You see, Felicite," he would often say to her with his air of wicked
mockery, "I am here to take care of the old mother, and the day on
which we both make up our minds to die it would be through compliment
to you--yes, simply to spare you the trouble of running to see us so
good-naturedly, in this way, every month."

Generally she did not now give herself the disappointment of going to
Macquart's, but inquired for him at the asylum. But on this occasion,
having learned there that he was passing through an extraordinary
attack of drunkenness, not having drawn a sober breath for a
fortnight, and so intoxicated that he was probably unable to leave the
house, she was seized with the curiosity to learn for herself what his
condition really was. And as she was going back to the station, she
went out of her way in order to stop at Macquart's house.

The day was superb--a warm and brilliant summer day. On either side of
the path which she had taken, she saw the fields that she had given
him in former days--all this fertile land, the price of his secrecy
and his good behavior. Before her appeared the house, with its pink
tiles and its bright yellow walls, looking gay in the sunshine. Under
the ancient mulberry trees on the terrace she enjoyed the delightful
coolness and the beautiful view. What a pleasant and safe retreat,
what a happy solitude was this for an old man to end in joy and peace
a long and well-spent life!

But she did not see him, she did not hear him. The silence was
profound. The only sound to be heard was the humming of the bees
circling around the tall marshmallows. And on the terrace there was
nothing to be seen but a little yellow dog, stretched at full length
on the bare ground, seeking the coolness of the shade. He raised his
head growling, about to bark, but, recognizing the visitor, he lay
down again quietly.

Then, in this peaceful and sunny solitude she was seized with a
strange chill, and she called:

"Macquart! Macquart!"

The door of the house under the mulberry trees stood wide open. But
she did not dare to go in; this empty house with its wide open door
gave her a vague uneasiness. And she called again:

"Macquart! Macquart!"

Not a sound, not a breath. Profound silence reigned again, but the
humming of the bees circling around the tall marshmallows sounded
louder than before.

At last Felicite, ashamed of her fears, summoned courage to enter. The
door on the left of the hall, opening into the kitchen, where Uncle
Macquart generally sat, was closed. She pushed it open, but she could
distinguish nothing at first, as the blinds had been closed, probably
in order to shut out the heat. Her first sensation was one of choking,
caused by an overpowering odor of alcohol which filled the room; every
article of furniture seemed to exude this odor, the whole house was
impregnated with it. At last, when her eyes had become accustomed to
the semi-obscurity, she perceived Macquart. He was seated at the
table, on which were a glass and a bottle of spirits of thirty-six
degrees, completely empty. Settled in his chair, he was sleeping
profoundly, dead drunk. This spectacle revived her anger and contempt.

"Come, Macquart," she cried, "is it not vile and senseless to put
one's self in such a state! Wake up, I say, this is shameful!"

His sleep was so profound that she could not even hear him breathing.
In vain she raised her voice, and slapped him smartly on the hands.

"Macquart! Macquart! Macquart! Ah, faugh! You are disgusting, my
dear!"

Then she left him, troubling herself no further about him, and walked
around the room, evidently seeking something. Coming down the dusky
road from the asylum she had been seized with a consuming thirst, and
she wished to get a glass of water. Her gloves embarrassed her, and
she took them off and put them on a corner of the table. Then she
succeeded in finding the jug, and she washed a glass and filled it to
the brim, and was about to empty it when she saw an extraordinary
sight--a sight which agitated her so greatly that she set the glass
down again beside her gloves, without drinking.

By degrees she had begun to see objects more clearly in the room,
which was lighted dimly by a few stray sunbeams that filtered through
the cracks of the old shutters. She now saw Uncle Macquart distinctly,
neatly dressed in a blue cloth suit, as usual, and on his head the
eternal fur cap which he wore from one year's end to the other. He had
grown stout during the last five or six years, and he looked like a
veritable mountain of flesh overlaid with rolls of fat. And she
noticed that he must have fallen asleep while smoking, for his pipe--a
short black pipe--had fallen into his lap. Then she stood still,
stupefied with amazement--the burning tobacco had been scattered in
the fall, and the cloth of the trousers had caught fire, and through a
hole in the stuff, as large already as a hundred-sous piece, she saw
the bare thigh, whence issued a little blue flame.

At first Felicite had thought that it was linen--the drawers or the
shirt--that was burning. But soon doubt was no longer possible, she
saw distinctly the bare flesh and the little blue flame issuing from
it, lightly dancing, like a flame wandering over the surface of a
vessel of lighted alcohol. It was as yet scarcely higher than the
flame of a night light, pale and soft, and so unstable that the
slightest breath of air caused it to change its place. But it
increased and spread rapidly, and the skin cracked and the fat began
to melt.

An involuntary cry escaped from Felicite's throat.

"Macquart! Macquart!"

But still he did not stir. His insensibility must have been complete;
intoxication must have produced a sort of coma, in which there was an
absolute paralysis of sensation, for he was living, his breast could
be seen rising and falling, in slow and even respiration.

"Macquart! Macquart!"

Now the fat was running through the cracks of the skin, feeding the
flame, which was invading the abdomen. And Felicite comprehended
vaguely that Uncle Macquart was burning before her like a sponge
soaked with brandy. He had, indeed, been saturated with it for years
past, and of the strongest and most inflammable kind. He would no
doubt soon be blazing from head to foot, like a bowl of punch.

Then she ceased to try to awaken him, since he was sleeping so
soundly. For a full minute she had the courage to look at him,
awe-stricken, but gradually coming to a determination. Her hands,
however, began to tremble, with a little shiver which she could not
control. She was choking, and taking up the glass of water again with
both hands, she emptied it at a draught. And she was going away on
tiptoe, when she remembered her gloves. She went back, groped for them
anxiously on the table and, as she thought, picked them both up. Then
she left the room, closing the door behind her carefully, and as gently
as if she were afraid of disturbing some one.

When she found herself once more on the terrace, in the cheerful
sunshine and the pure air, in face of the vast horizon bathed in
light, she heaved a sigh of relief. The country was deserted; no one
could have seen her entering or leaving the house. Only the yellow dog
was still stretched there, and he did not even deign to look up. And
she went away with her quick, short step, her youthful figure lightly
swaying. A hundred steps away, an irresistible impulse compelled her
to turn round to give a last look at the house, so tranquil and so
cheerful on the hillside, in the declining light of the beautiful day.

Only when she was in the train and went to put on her gloves did she
perceive that one of them was missing. But she supposed that it had
fallen on the platform at the station as she was getting into the car.
She believed herself to be quite calm, but she remained with one hand
gloved and one hand bare, which, with her, could only be the result of
great agitation.

On the following day Pascal and Clotilde took the three o'clock train
to go to the Tulettes. The mother of Charles, the harness-maker's
wife, had brought the boy to them, as they had offered to take him to
Uncle Macquart's, where he was to remain for the rest of the week.
Fresh quarrels had disturbed the peace of the household, the husband
having resolved to tolerate no longer in his house another man's
child, that do-nothing, imbecile prince's son. As it was Grandmother
Rougon who had dressed him, he was, indeed, dressed on this day,
again, in black velvet trimmed with gold braid, like a young lord, a
page of former times going to court. And during the quarter of an hour
which the journey lasted, Clotilde amused herself in the compartment,
in which they were alone, by taking off his cap and smoothing his
beautiful blond locks, his royal hair that fell in curls over his
shoulders. She had a ring on her finger, and as she passed her hand
over his neck she was startled to perceive that her caress had left
behind it a trace of blood. One could not touch the boy's skin without
the red dew exuding from it; the tissues had become so lax through
extreme degeneration that the slightest scratch brought on a
hemorrhage. The doctor became at once uneasy, and asked him if he
still bled at the nose as frequently as formerly. Charles hardly knew
what to answer; first saying no, then, recollecting himself, he said
that he had bled a great deal the other day. He seemed, indeed,
weaker; he grew more childish as he grew older; his intelligence,
which had never developed, had become clouded. This tall boy of
fifteen, so beautiful, so girlish-looking, with the color of a flower
that had grown in the shade, did not look ten.

At the Tulettes Pascal decided that they would first take the boy to
Uncle Macquart's. They ascended the steep road. In the distance the
little house looked gay in the sunshine, as it had looked on the day
before, with its yellow walls and its green mulberry trees extending
their twisted branches and covering the terrace with a thick, leafy
roof. A delightful sense of peace pervaded this solitary spot, this
sage's retreat, where the only sound to be heard was the humming of
the bees, circling round the tall marshmallows.

"Ah, that rascal of an uncle!" said Pascal, smiling, "how I envy him!"

But he was surprised not to have already seen him standing at the edge
of the terrace. And as Charles had run off dragging Clotilde with him
to see the rabbits, as he said, the doctor continued the ascent alone,
and was astonished when he reached the top to see no one. The blinds
were closed, the hill door yawned wide open. Only the yellow dog was
at the threshold, his legs stiff, his hair bristling, howling with a
low and continuous moan. When he saw the visitor, whom he no doubt
recognized, approaching, he stopped howling for an instant and went
and stood further off, then he began again to whine softly.

Pascal, filled with apprehension, could not keep back the uneasy cry
that rose to his lips:

"Macquart! Macquart!"

No one answered; a deathlike silence reigned over the house, with its
door yawning wide open, like the mouth of a cavern. The dog continued
to howl.

Then Pascal grew impatient, and cried more loudly.

"Macquart! Macquart!"

There was not a stir; the bees hummed, the sky looked down serenely on
the peaceful scene. Then he hesitated no longer. Perhaps Macquart was
asleep. But the instant he pushed open the door of the kitchen on the
left of the hall, a horrible odor escaped from it, an odor of burned
flesh and bones. When he entered the room he could hardly breathe, so
filled was it by a thick vapor, a stagnant and nauseous cloud, which
choked and blinded him. The sunbeams that filtered through the cracks
made only a dim light. He hurried to the fireplace, thinking that
perhaps there had been a fire, but the fireplace was empty, and the
articles of furniture around appeared to be uninjured. Bewildered, and
feeling himself growing faint in the poisoned atmosphere, he ran to
the window and threw the shutters wide open. A flood of light entered.

Then the scene presented to the doctor's view filled him with
amazement. Everything was in its place; the glass and the empty bottle
of spirits were on the table; only the chair in which Uncle Macquart
must have been sitting bore traces of fire, the front legs were
blackened and the straw was partially consumed. What had become of
Macquart? Where could he have disappeared? In front of the chair, on
the brick floor, which was saturated with grease, there was a little
heap of ashes, beside which lay the pipe--a black pipe, which had not
even broken in falling. All of Uncle Macquart was there, in this
handful of fine ashes; and he was in the red cloud, also, which
floated through the open window; in the layer of soot which carpeted
the entire kitchen; the horrible grease of burnt flesh, enveloping
everything, sticky and foul to the touch.

It was the finest case of spontaneous combustion physician had ever
seen. The doctor had, indeed, read in medical papers of surprising
cases, among others that of a shoemaker's wife, a drunken woman who
had fallen asleep over her foot warmer, and of whom they had found
only a hand and foot. He had, until now, put little faith in these
cases, unwilling to admit, like the ancients, that a body impregnated
with alcohol could disengage an unknown gas, capable of taking fire
spontaneously and consuming the flesh and the bones. But he denied the
truth of them no longer; besides, everything became clear to him as he
reconstructed the scene--the coma of drunkenness producing absolute
insensibility; the pipe falling on the clothes, which had taken fire;
the flesh, saturated with liquor, burning and cracking; the fat
melting, part of it running over the ground and part of it aiding the
combustion, and all, at last--muscles, organs, and bones--consumed in
a general blaze. Uncle Macquart was all there, with his blue cloth
suit, and his fur cap, which he wore from one year's end to the other.
Doubtless, as soon as he had begun to burn like a bonfire he had
fallen forward, which would account for the chair being only
blackened; and nothing of him was left, not a bone, not a tooth, not a
nail, nothing but this little heap of gray dust which the draught of
air from the door threatened at every moment to sweep away.

Clotilde had meanwhile entered, Charles remaining outside, his
attention attracted by the continued howling of the dog.

"Good Heavens, what a smell!" she cried. "What is the matter?"

When Pascal explained to her the extraordinary catastrophe that had
taken place, she shuddered. She took up the bottle to examine it, but
she put it down again with horror, feeling it moist and sticky with
Uncle Macquart's flesh. Nothing could be touched, the smallest objects
were coated, as it were, with this yellowish grease which stuck to the
hands.

A shudder of mingled awe and disgust passed through her, and she burst
into tears, faltering:

"What a sad death! What a horrible death!"

Pascal had recovered from his first shock, and he was almost smiling.

"Why horrible? He was eighty-four years old; he did not suffer. As for
me, I think it a superb death for that old rascal of an uncle, who, it
may be now said, did not lead a very exemplary life. You remember his
envelope; he had some very terrible and vile things upon his
conscience, which did not prevent him, however, from settling down
later and growing old, surrounded by every comfort, like an old
humbug, receiving the recompense of virtues which he did not possess.
And here he lies like the prince of drunkards, burning up of himself,
consumed on the burning funeral pile of his own body!"

And the doctor waved his hand in admiration.

"Just think of it. To be drunk to the point of not feeling that one is
on fire; to set one's self aflame, like a bonfire on St. John's day;
to disappear in smoke to the last bone. Think of Uncle Macquart
starting on his journey through space; first diffused through the four
corners of the room, dissolved in air and floating about, bathing all
that belonged to him; then escaping in a cloud of dust through the
window, when I opened it for him, soaring up into the sky, filling the
horizon. Why, that is an admirable death! To disappear, to leave
nothing of himself behind but a little heap of ashes and a pipe beside
it!"

And he picked up the pipe to keep it, as he said, as a relic of Uncle
Macquart; while Clotilde, who thought she perceived a touch of bitter
mockery in his eulogistic rhapsody, shuddered anew with horror and
disgust. But suddenly she perceived something under the table--part of
the remains, perhaps.

"Look at that fragment there."

He stooped down and picked up with surprise a woman's glove, a yellow
glove.

"Why!" she cried, "it is grandmother's glove; the glove that was
missing last evening."

They looked at each other; by a common impulse the same explanation
rose to their lips, Felicite was certainly there yesterday; and a
sudden conviction forced itself on the doctor's mind--the conviction
that his mother had seen Uncle Macquart burning and that she had not
quenched him. Various indications pointed to this--the state of
complete coolness in which he found the room, the number of hours
which he calculated to have been necessary for the combustion of the
body. He saw clearly the same thought dawning in the terrified eyes of
his companion. But as it seemed impossible that they should ever know
the truth, he fabricated aloud the simplest explanation:

"No doubt your grandmother came in yesterday on her way back from the
asylum, to say good day to Uncle Macquart, before he had begun
drinking."

"Let us go away! let us go away!" cried Clotilde. "I am stifling here;
I cannot remain here!"

Pascal, too, wished to go and give information of the death. He went
out after her, shut up the house, and put the key in his pocket.
Outside, they heard the little yellow dog still howling. He had taken
refuge between Charles' legs, and the boy amused himself pushing him
with his foot and listening to him whining, without comprehending.

The doctor went at once to the house of M. Maurin, the notary at the
Tulettes, who was also mayor of the commune. A widower for ten years
past, and living with his daughter, who was a childless widow, he had
maintained neighborly relations with old Macquart, and had
occasionally kept little Charles with him for several days at a time,
his daughter having become interested in the boy who was so handsome
and so much to be pitied. M. Maurin, horrified at the news, went at
once with the doctor to draw up a statement of the accident, and
promised to make out the death certificate in due form. As for
religious ceremonies, funeral obsequies, they seemed scarcely
possible. When they entered the kitchen the draught from the door
scattered the ashes about, and when they piously attempted to collect
them again they succeeded only in gathering together the scrapings of
the flags, a collection of accumulated dirt, in which there could be
but little of Uncle Macquart. What, then, could they bury? It was
better to give up the idea. So they gave it up. Besides, Uncle
Macquart had been hardly a devout Catholic, and the family contented
themselves with causing masses to be said later on for the repose of
his soul.

The notary, meantime, had immediately declared that there existed a
will, which had been deposited with him, and he asked Pascal to meet
him at his house on the next day but one for the reading; for he
thought he might tell the doctor at once that Uncle Macquart had
chosen him as his executor. And he ended by offering, like a
kindhearted man, to keep Charles with him until then, comprehending
how greatly the boy, who was so unwelcome at his mother's, would be in
the way in the midst of all these occurrences. Charles seemed
enchanted, and he remained at the Tulettes.

It was not until very late, until seven o'clock, that Clotilde and
Pascal were able to take the train to return to Plassans, after the
doctor had at last visited the two patients whom he had to see. But
when they returned together to the notary's on the day appointed for
the meeting, they had the disagreeable surprise of finding old Mme.
Rougon installed there. She had naturally learned of Macquart's death,
and had hurried there on the following day, full of excitement, and
making a great show of grief; and she had just made her appearance
again to-day, having heard the famous testament spoken of. The reading
of the will, however, was a simple matter, unmarked by any incident.
Macquart had left all the fortune that he could dispose of for the
purpose of erecting a superb marble monument to himself, with two
angels with folded wings, weeping. It was his own idea, a reminiscence
of a similar tomb which he had seen abroad--in Germany, perhaps--when
he was a soldier. And he had charged his nephew Pascal to superintend
the erection of the monument, as he was the only one of the family, he
said, who had any taste.

During the reading of the will Clotilde had remained in the notary's
garden, sitting on a bench under the shade of an ancient chestnut
tree. When Pascal and Felicite again appeared, there was a moment of
great embarrassment, for they had not spoken to one another for some
months past. The old lady, however, affected to be perfectly at her
ease, making no allusion whatever to the new situation, and giving it
to be understood that they might very well meet and appear united
before the world, without for that reason entering into an explanation
or becoming reconciled. But she committed the mistake of laying too
much stress on the great grief which Macquart's death had caused her.
Pascal, who suspected the overflowing joy, the unbounded delight which
it gave her to think that this family ulcer was to be at last healed,
that this abominable uncle was at last out of the way, became
gradually possessed by an impatience, an indignation, which he could
not control. His eyes fastened themselves involuntarily on his
mother's gloves, which were black.

Just then she was expressing her grief in lowered tones:

"But how imprudent it was, at his age, to persist in living alone--
like a wolf in his lair! If he had only had a servant in the house
with him!"

Then the doctor, hardly conscious of what he was saying, terrified at
hearing himself say the words, but impelled by an irresistible force,
said:

"But, mother, since you were there, why did you not quench him?"

Old Mme. Rougon turned frightfully pale. How could her son have known?
She looked at him for an instant in open-mouthed amazement; while
Clotilde grew as pale as she, in the certainty of the crime, which was
now evident. It was an avowal, this terrified silence which had fallen
between the mother, the son, and the granddaughter--the shuddering
silence in which families bury their domestic tragedies. The doctor,
in despair at having spoken, he who avoided so carefully all
disagreeable and useless explanations, was trying desperately to
retract his words, when a new catastrophe extricated him from his
terrible embarrassment.

Felicite desired to take Charles away with her, in order not to
trespass on the notary's kind hospitality; and as the latter had sent
the boy after breakfast to spend an hour or two with Aunt Dide, he had
sent the maid servant to the asylum with orders to bring him back
immediately. It was at this juncture that the servant, whom they were
waiting for in the garden, made her appearance, covered with
perspiration, out of breath, and greatly excited, crying from a
distance:

"My God! My God! come quickly. Master Charles is bathed in blood."

Filled with consternation, all three set off for the asylum. This day
chanced to be one of Aunt Dide's good days; very calm and gentle she
sat erect in the armchair in which she had spent the hours, the long
hours for twenty-two years past, looking straight before her into
vacancy. She seemed to have grown still thinner, all the flesh had
disappeared, her limbs were now only bones covered with parchment-like
skin; and her keeper, the stout fair-haired girl, carried her, fed
her, took her up and laid her down as if she had been a bundle. The
ancestress, the forgotten one, tall, bony, ghastly, remained
motionless, her eyes, only seeming to have life, her eyes shining
clear as spring water in her thin withered face. But on this morning,
again a sudden rush of tears had streamed down her cheeks, and she had
begun to stammer words without any connection; which seemed to prove
that in the midst of her senile exhaustion and the incurable torpor of
madness, the slow induration of the brain and the limbs was not yet
complete; there still were memories stored away, gleams of
intelligence still were possible. Then her face had resumed its vacant
expression. She seemed indifferent to every one and everything,
laughing, sometimes, at an accident, at a fall, but most often seeing
nothing and hearing nothing, gazing fixedly into vacancy.

When Charles had been brought to her the keeper had immediately
installed him before the little table, in front of his great-great-
grandmother. The girl kept a package of pictures for him--soldiers,
captains, kings clad in purple and gold, and she gave them to him with
a pair of scissors, saying:

"There, amuse yourself quietly, and behave well. You see that to-day
grandmother is very good. You must be good, too."

The boy raised his eyes to the madwoman's face, and both looked at
each other. At this moment the resemblance between them was
extraordinary. Their eyes, especially, their vacant and limpid eyes,
seemed to lose themselves in one another, to be identical. Then it was
the physiognomy, the whole face, the worn features of the centenarian,
that passed over three generations to this delicate child's face, it,
too, worn already, as it were, and aged by the wear of the race.
Neither smiled, they regarded each other intently, with an air of
grave imbecility.

"Well!" continued the keeper, who had acquired the habit of talking to
herself to cheer herself when with her mad charge, "you cannot deny
each other. The same hand made you both. You are the very spit-down of
each other. Come, laugh a bit, amuse yourselves, since you like to be
together."

But to fix his attention for any length of time fatigued Charles, and
he was the first to lower his eyes; he seemed to be interested in his
pictures, while Aunt Dide, who had an astonishing power of fixing her
attention, as if she had been turned into stone, continued to look at
him fixedly, without even winking an eyelid.

The keeper busied herself for a few moments in the little sunny room,
made gay by its light, blue-flowered paper. She made the bed which she
had been airing, she arranged the linen on the shelves of the press.
But she generally profited by the presence of the boy to take a little
relaxation. She had orders never to leave her charge alone, and now
that he was here she ventured to trust her with him.

"Listen to me well," she went on, "I have to go out for a little, and
if she stirs, if she should need me, ring for me, call me at once; do
you hear? You understand, you are a big enough boy to be able to call
one."

He had looked up again, and made a sign that he had understood and
that he would call her. And when he found himself alone with Aunt Dide
he returned to his pictures quietly. This lasted for a quarter of an
hour amid the profound silence of the asylum, broken only at intervals
by some prison sound--a stealthy step, the jingling of a bunch of
keys, and occasionally a loud cry, immediately silenced. But the boy
must have been tired by the excessive heat of the day, for sleep
gradually stole over him. Soon his head, fair as a lily, drooped, and
as if weighed down by the too heavy casque of his royal locks, he let
it sink gently on the pictures and fell asleep, with his cheek resting
on the gold and purple kings. The lashes of his closed eyelids cast a
shadow on his delicate skin, with its small blue veins, through which
life pulsed feebly. He was beautiful as an angel, but with the
indefinable corruption of a whole race spread over his countenance.
And Aunt Dide looked at him with her vacant stare in which there was
neither pleasure nor pain, the stare of eternity contemplating things
earthly.

At the end of a few moments, however, an expression of interest seemed
to dawn in the clear eyes. Something had just happened, a drop of
blood was forming on the edge of the left nostril of the boy. This
drop fell and another formed and followed it. It was the blood, the
dew of blood, exuding this time, without a scratch, without a bruise,
which issued and flowed of itself in the laxity of the degenerate
tissues. The drops became a slender thread which flowed over the gold
of the pictures. A little pool covered them, and made its way to a
corner of the table; then the drops began again, splashing dully one
by one upon the floor. And he still slept, with the divinely calm look
of a cherub, not even conscious of the life that was escaping from
him; and the madwoman continued to look at him, with an air of
increasing interest, but without terror, amused, rather, her attention
engaged by this, as by the flight of the big flies, which her gaze
often followed for hours.

Several minutes more passed, the slender thread had grown larger, the
drops followed one another more rapidly, falling on the floor with a
monotonous and persistent drip. And Charles, at one moment, stirred,
opened his eyes, and perceived that he was covered with blood. But he
was not frightened; he was accustomed to this bloody spring, which
issued from him at the slightest cause. He merely gave a sigh of
weariness. Instinct, however, must have warned him, for he moaned more
loudly than before, and called confusedly in stammering accents:

"Mamma! mamma!"

His weakness was no doubt already excessive, for an irresistible
stupor once more took possession of him, his head dropped, his eyes
closed, and he seemed to fall asleep again, continuing his plaint, as
if in a dream, moaning in fainter and fainter accents:

"Mamma! mamma!"

Now the pictures were inundated; the black velvet jacket and trousers,
braided with gold, were stained with long streaks of blood, and the
little red stream began again to flow persistently from his left
nostril, without stopping, crossed the red pool on the table and fell
upon the ground, where it at last formed a veritable lake. A loud cry
from the madwoman, a terrified call would have sufficed. But she did
not cry, she did not call; motionless, rigid, emaciated, sitting there
forgotten of the world, she gazed with the fixed look of the
ancestress who sees the destinies of her race being accomplished. She
sat there as if dried up, bound; her limbs and her tongue tied by her
hundred years, her brain ossified by madness, incapable of willing or
of acting. And yet the sight of the little red stream began to stir
some feeling in her. A tremor passed over her deathlike countenance, a
flush mounted to her cheeks. Finally, a last plaint roused her
completely:

"Mamma! mamma!"

Then it was evident that a terrible struggle was taking place in Aunt
Dide. She carried her skeleton-like hand to her forehead as if she
felt her brain bursting. Her mouth was wide open, but no sound issued
from it; the dreadful tumult that had arisen within her had no doubt
paralyzed her tongue. She tried to rise, to run, but she had no longer
any muscles; she remained fastened to her seat. All her poor body
trembled in the superhuman effort which she was making to cry for
help, without being able to break the bonds of old age and madness
which held her prisoner. Her face was distorted with terror; memory
gradually awakening, she must have comprehended everything.

And it was a slow and gentle agony, of which the spectacle lasted for
several minutes more. Charles, silent now, as if he had again fallen
asleep, was losing the last drops of blood that had remained in his
veins, which were emptying themselves softly. His lily-like whiteness
increased until it became a deathlike pallor. His lips lost their rosy
color, became a pale pink, then white. And, as he was about to expire,
he opened his large eyes and fixed them on his great-great-
grandmother, who watched the light dying in them. All the waxen face
was already dead, the eyes only were still living. They still kept
their limpidity, their brightness. All at once they became vacant, the
light in them was extinguished. This was the end--the death of the
eyes, and Charles had died, without a struggle, exhausted, like a
fountain from which all the water has run out. Life no longer pulsed
through the veins of his delicate skin, there was now only the shadow
of its wings on his white face. But he remained divinely beautiful,
his face lying in blood, surrounded by his royal blond locks, like one
of those little bloodless dauphins who, unable to bear the execrable
heritage of their race, die of decrepitude and imbecility at sixteen.

The boy exhaled his latest breath as Dr. Pascal entered the room,
followed by Felicite and Clotilde. And when he saw the quantity of
blood that inundated the floor, he cried:

"Ah, my God! it is as I feared, a hemorrhage from the nose! The poor
darling, no one was with him, and it is all over!"

But all three were struck with terror at the extraordinary spectacle
that now met their gaze. Aunt Dide, who seemed to have grown taller,
in the superhuman effort she was making, had almost succeeded in
raising herself up, and her eyes, fixed on the dead boy, so fair and
so gentle, and on the red sea of blood, beginning to congeal, that was
lying around him, kindled with a thought, after a long sleep of
twenty-two years. This final lesion of madness, this irremediable
darkness of the mind, was evidently not so complete but that some
memory of the past, lying hidden there, might awaken suddenly under
the terrible blow which had struck her. And the ancestress, the
forgotten one, lived again, emerged from her oblivion, rigid and
wasted, like a specter of terror and grief.

For an instant she remained panting. Then with a shudder, which made
her teeth chatter, she stammered a single phrase:

"The _gendarme_! the _gendarme_!"

Pascal and Felicite and Clotilde understood. They looked at one
another involuntarily, turning very pale. The whole dreadful history
of the old mother--of the mother of them all--rose before them, the
ardent love of her youth, the long suffering of her mature age.
Already two moral shocks had shaken her terribly--the first, when she
was in her ardent prime, when a _gendarme_ shot down her lover
Macquart, the smuggler, like a dog; the second, years ago, when
another _gendarme_ shattered with a pistol shot the skull of her
grandson Silvere, the insurgent, the victim of the hatred and the
sanguinary strife of the family. Blood had always bespattered her. And
a third moral shock finished her; blood bespattered her again, the
impoverished blood of her race, which she had just beheld flowing
slowly, and which lay upon the ground, while the fair royal child, his
veins and his heart empty, slept.

Three times--face to face with her past life, her life red with
passion and suffering, haunted by the image of expiation--she
stammered:

"The _gendarme_! the _gendarme_! the _gendarme_!"

Then she sank back into her armchair. They thought she was dead,
killed by the shock.

But the keeper at this moment at last appeared, endeavoring to excuse
herself, fearing that she would be dismissed. When, aided by her, Dr.
Pascal had placed Aunt Dide on the bed, he found that the old mother
was still alive. She was not to die until the following day, at the
age of one hundred and five years, three months, and seven days, of
congestion of the brain, caused by the last shock she had received.

Pascal, turning to his mother, said:

"She will not live twenty-four hours; to-morrow she will be dead. Ah!
Uncle Macquart, then she, and this poor boy, one after another. How
much misery and grief!"

He paused and added in a lower tone:

"The family is thinning out; the old trees fall and the young die
standing."

Felicite must have thought this another allusion. She was sincerely
shocked by the tragic death of little Charles. But, notwithstanding,
above the horror which she felt there arose a sense of immense relief.
Next week, when they should have ceased to weep, what a rest to be
able to say to herself that all this abomination of the Tulettes was
at an end, that the family might at last rise, and shine in history!

Then she remembered that she had not answered the involuntary
accusation made against her by her son at the notary's; and she spoke
again of Macquart, through bravado:

"You see now that servants are of no use. There was one here, and yet
she prevented nothing; it would have been useless for Uncle Macquart
to have had one to take care of him; he would be in ashes now, all the
same."

She sighed, and then continued in a broken voice:

"Well, well, neither our own fate nor that of others is in our hands;
things happen as they will. These are great blows that have fallen
upon us. We must only trust to God for the preservation and the
prosperity of our family."

Dr. Pascal bowed with his habitual air of deference and said:

"You are right, mother."

Clotilde knelt down. Her former fervent Catholic faith had revived in
this chamber of blood, of madness, and of death. Tears streamed down
her cheeks, and with clasped hands she was praying fervently for the
dear ones who were no more. She prayed that God would grant that their
sufferings might indeed be ended, their faults pardoned, and that they
might live again in another life, a life of unending happiness. And
she prayed with the utmost fervor, in her terror of a hell, which
after this miserable life would make suffering eternal.

From this day Pascal and Clotilde went to visit their sick side by
side, filled with greater pity than ever. Perhaps, with Pascal, the
feeling of his powerlessness against inevitable disease was even
stronger than before. The only wisdom was to let nature take its
course, to eliminate dangerous elements, and to labor only in the
supreme work of giving health and strength. But the suffering and the
death of those who are dear to us awaken in us a hatred of disease, an
irresistible desire to combat and to vanquish it. And the doctor never
tasted so great a joy as when he succeeded, with his hypodermic
injections, in soothing a paroxysm of pain, in seeing the groaning
patient grow tranquil and fall asleep. Clotilde, in return, adored
him, proud of their love, as if it were a consolation which they
carried, like the viaticum, to the poor.

X.


Martine one morning obtained from Dr. Pascal, as she did every three
months, his receipt for fifteen hundred francs, to take it to the
notary Grandguillot, to get from him what she called their "income."
The doctor seemed surprised that the payment should have fallen due
again so soon; he had never been so indifferent as he was now about
money matters, leaving to Martine the care of settling everything. And
he and Clotilde were under the plane trees, absorbed in the joy that
filled their life, lulled by the ceaseless song of the fountain, when
the servant returned with a frightened face, and in a state of
extraordinary agitation. She was so breathless with excitement that
for a moment she could not speak.

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" she cried at last. "M. Grandguillot has gone
away!"

Pascal did not at first comprehend.

"Well, my girl, there is no hurry," he said; "you can go back another
day."

"No, no! He has gone away; don't you hear? He has gone away forever--"

And as the waters rush forth in the bursting of a dam, her emotion
vented itself in a torrent of words.

"I reached the street, and I saw from a distance a crowd gathered
before the door. A chill ran through me; I felt that some misfortune
had happened. The door closed, and not a blind open, as if there was
somebody dead in the house. They told me when I got there that he had
run away; that he had not left a sou behind him; that many families
would be ruined."

She laid the receipt on the stone table.

"There! There is your paper! It is all over with us, we have not a sou
left, we are going to die of starvation!" And she sobbed aloud in the
anguish of her miserly heart, distracted by this loss of a fortune,
and trembling at the prospect of impending want.

Clotilde sat stunned and speechless, her eyes fixed on Pascal, whose
predominating feeling at first seemed to be one of incredulity. He
endeavored to calm Martine. Why! why! it would not do to give up in
this way. If all she knew of the affair was what she had heard from
the people in the street, it might be only gossip, after all, which
always exaggerates everything. M. Grandguillot a fugitive; M.
Grandguillot a thief; that was monstrous, impossible! A man of such
probity, a house liked and respected by all Plassans for more than a
century past. Why people thought money safer there than in the Bank of
France.

"Consider, Martine, this would not have come all of a sudden, like a
thunderclap; there would have been some rumors of it beforehand. The
deuce! an old reputation does not fall to pieces in that way, in a
night."

At this she made a gesture of despair.

"Ah, monsieur, that is what most afflicts me, because, you see, it
throws some of the responsibility on me. For weeks past I have been
hearing stories on all sides. As for you two, naturally you hear
nothing; you don't even know whether you are alive or dead."

Neither Pascal nor Clotilde could refrain from smiling; for it was
indeed true that their love lifted them so far above the earth that
none of the common sounds of existence reached them.

"But the stories I heard were so ugly that I didn't like to worry you
with them. I thought they were lies."

She was silent for a moment, and then added that while some people
merely accused M. Grandguillot of having speculated on the Bourse,
there were others who accused him of still worse practises. And she
burst into fresh sobs.

"My God! My God! what is going to become of us? We are all going to
die of starvation!"

Shaken, then, moved by seeing Clotilde's eyes, too, filled with tears,
Pascal made an effort to remember, to see clearly into the past. Years
ago, when he had been practising in Plassans, he had deposited at
different times, with M. Grandguillot, the twenty thousand francs on
the interest of which he had lived comfortably for the past sixteen
years, and on each occasion the notary had given him a receipt for the
sum deposited. This would no doubt enable him to establish his
position as a personal creditor. Then a vague recollection awoke in
his memory; he remembered, without being able to fix the date, that at
the request of the notary, and in consequence of certain
representations made by him, which Pascal had forgotten, he had given
the lawyer a power of attorney for the purpose of investing the whole
or a part of his money, in mortgages, and he was even certain that in
this power the name of the attorney had been left in blank. But he was
ignorant as to whether this document had ever been used or not; he had
never taken the trouble to inquire how his money had been invested. A
fresh pang of miserly anguish made Martine cry out:

"Ah, monsieur, you are well punished for your sin. Was that a way to
abandon one's money? For my part, I know almost to a sou how my
account stands every quarter; I have every figure and every document
at my fingers' ends."

In the midst of her distress an unconscious smile broke over her face,
lighting it all up. Her long cherished passion had been gratified; her
four hundred francs wages, saved almost intact, put out at interest
for thirty years, at last amounted to the enormous sum of twenty
thousand francs. And this treasure was put away in a safe place which
no one knew. She beamed with delight at the recollection, and she said
no more.

"But who says that our money is lost?" cried Pascal.

"M. Grandguillot had a private fortune; he has not taken away with him
his house and his lands, I suppose. They will look into the affair;
they will make an investigation. I cannot make up my mind to believe
him a common thief. The only trouble is the delay: a liquidation drags
on so long."

He spoke in this way in order to reassure Clotilde, whose growing
anxiety he observed. She looked at him, and she looked around her at
La Souleiade; her only care his happiness; her most ardent desire to
live here always, as she had lived in the past, to love him always in
this beloved solitude. And he, wishing to tranquilize her, recovered
his fine indifference; never having lived for money, he did not
imagine that one could suffer from the want of it.

"But I have some money!" he cried, at last. "What does Martine mean by
saying that we have not a sou left, and that we are going to die of
starvation!"

And he rose gaily, and made them both follow him saying:

"Come, come, I am going to show you some money. And I will give some
of it to Martine that she may make us a good dinner this evening."

Upstairs in his room he triumphantly opened his desk before them. It
was in a drawer of this desk that for years past he had thrown the
money which his later patients had brought him of their own accord,
for he had never sent them an account. Nor had he ever known the exact
amount of his little treasure, of the gold and bank bills mingled
together in confusion, from which he took the sums he required for his
pocket money, his experiments, his presents, and his alms. During the
last few months he had made frequent visits to his desk, making deep
inroads into its contents. But he had been so accustomed to find there
the sums he required, after years of economy during which he had spent
scarcely anything, that he had come to believe his savings
inexhaustible.

He gave a satisfied laugh, then, as he opened the drawer, crying:

"Now you shall see! Now you shall see!"

And he was confounded, when, after searching among the heap of notes
and bills, he succeeded in collecting only a sum of 615 francs--two
notes of 100 francs each, 400 francs in gold, and 15 francs in change.
He shook out the papers, he felt in every corner of the drawer,
crying:

"But it cannot be! There was always money here before, there was a
heap of money here a few days ago. It must have been all those old
bills that misled me. I assure you that last week I saw a great deal
of money. I had it in my hand."

He spoke with such amusing good faith, his childlike surprise was so
sincere, that Clotilde could not keep from smiling. Ah, the poor
master, what a wretched business man he was! Then, as she observed
Martine's look of anguish, her utter despair at sight of this
insignificant sum, which was now all there was for the maintenance of
all three, she was seized with a feeling of despair; her eyes filled
with tears, and she murmured:

"My God, it is for me that you have spent everything; if we have
nothing now, if we are ruined, it is I who am the cause of it!"

Pascal had already forgotten the money he had taken for the presents.
Evidently that was where it had gone. The explanation tranquilized
him. And as she began to speak in her grief of returning everything to
the dealers, he grew angry.

"Give back what I have given you! You would give a piece of my heart
with it, then! No, I would rather die of hunger, I tell you!"

Then his confidence already restored, seeing a future of unlimited
possibilities opening out before him, he said:

"Besides, we are not going to die of hunger to-night, are we, Martine?
There is enough here to keep us for a long time."

Martine shook her head. She would undertake to manage with it for two
months, for two and a half, perhaps, if people had sense, but not
longer. Formerly the drawer was replenished; there was always some
money coming in; but now that monsieur had given up his patients, they
had absolutely no income. They must not count on any help from
outside, then. And she ended by saying:

"Give me the two one-hundred-franc bills. I'll try and make them last
for a month. Then we shall see. But be very prudent; don't touch the
four hundred francs in gold; lock the drawer and don't open it again."

"Oh, as to that," cried the doctor, "you may make your mind easy. I
would rather cut off my right hand."

And thus it was settled. Martine was to have entire control of this
last purse; and they might trust to her economy, they were sure that
she would save the centimes. As for Clotilde, who had never had a
private purse, she would not even feel the want of money. Pascal only
would suffer from no longer having his inexhaustible treasure to draw
upon, but he had given his promise to allow the servant to buy
everything.

"There! That is a good piece of work!" he said, relieved, as happy as
if he had just settled some important affair which would assure them a
living for a long time to come.

A week passed during which nothing seemed to have changed at La
Souleiade. In the midst of their tender raptures neither Pascal nor
Clotilde thought any more of the want which was impending. And one
morning during the absence of the latter, who had gone with Martine to
market, the doctor received a visit which filled him at first with a
sort of terror. It was from the woman who had sold him the beautiful
corsage of old point d'Alencon, his first present to Clotilde. He felt
himself so weak against a possible temptation that he trembled. Even
before the woman had uttered a word he had already begun to defend
himself--no, no, he neither could nor would buy anything. And with
outstretched hands he prevented her from taking anything out of her
little bag, declaring to himself that he would look at nothing. The
dealer, however, a fat, amiable woman, smiled, certain of victory. In
an insinuating voice she began to tell him a long story of how a lady,
whom she was not at liberty to name, one of the most distinguished
ladies in Plassans, who had suddenly met with a reverse of fortune,
had been obliged to part with one of her jewels; and she then enlarged
on the splendid chance--a piece of jewelry that had cost twelve
hundred francs, and she was willing to let it go for five hundred. She
opened her bag slowly, in spite of the terrified and ever-louder
protestations of the doctor, and took from it a slender gold necklace
set simply with seven pearls in front; but the pearls were of
wonderful brilliancy--flawless, and perfect in shape. The ornament was
simple, chaste, and of exquisite delicacy. And instantly he saw in
fancy the necklace on Clotilde's beautiful neck, as its natural
adornment. Any other jewel would have been a useless ornament, these
pearls would be the fitting symbol of her youth. And he took the
necklace in his trembling fingers, experiencing a mortal anguish at
the idea of returning it. He defended himself still, however; he
declared that he had not five hundred francs, while the dealer
continued, in her smooth voice, to push the advantage she had gained.
After another quarter an hour, when she thought she had him secure,
she suddenly offered him the necklace for three hundred francs, and he
yielded; his mania for giving, his desire to please his idol, to adorn
her, conquered. When he went to the desk to take the fifteen gold
pieces to count them out to the dealer, he felt convinced that the
notary's affairs would be arranged, and that they would soon have
plenty of money.

When Pascal found himself once more alone, with the ornament in his
pocket, he was seized with a childish delight, and he planned his
little surprise, while waiting, excited and impatient, for Clotilde's
return. The moment she made her appearance his heart began to beat
violently. She was very warm, for an August sun was blazing in the
sky, and she laid aside her things quickly, pleased with her walk,
telling him, laughing, of the good bargain Martine had made--two
pigeons for eighteen sous. While she was speaking he pretended to
notice something on her neck.

"Why, what have you on your neck? Let me see."

He had the necklace in his hand, and he succeeded in putting it around
her neck, while feigning to pass his fingers over it, to assure
himself that there was nothing there. But she resisted, saying gaily:

"Don't! There is nothing on my neck. Here, what are you doing? What
have you in your hand that is tickling me?"

He caught hold of her, and drew her before the long mirror, in which
she had a full view of herself. On her neck the slender chain showed
like a thread of gold, and the seven pearls, like seven milky stars,
shone with soft luster against her satin skin. She looked charmingly
childlike. Suddenly she gave a delighted laugh, like the cooing of a
dove swelling out its throat proudly.

"Oh, master, master, how good you are! Do you think of nothing but me,
then? How happy you make me!"

And the joy which shone in her eyes, the joy of the woman and the
lover, happy to be beautiful and to be adored, recompensed him
divinely for his folly.

She drew back her head, radiant, and held up her mouth to him. He bent
over and kissed her.

"Are you happy?"

"Oh, yes, master, happy, happy! Pearls are so sweet, so pure! And
these are so becoming to me!"

For an instant longer she admired herself in the glass, innocently
vain of her fair flower-like skin, under the nacre drops of the
pearls. Then, yielding to a desire to show herself, hearing the
servant moving about outside, she ran out, crying:

"Martine, Martine! See what master has just given me! Say, am I not
beautiful!"

But all at once, seeing the old maid's severe face, that had suddenly
turned an ashen hue, she became confused, and all her pleasure was
spoiled. Perhaps she had a consciousness of the jealous pang which her
brilliant youth caused this poor creature, worn out in the dumb
resignation of her servitude, in adoration of her master. This,
however, was only a momentary feeling, unconscious in the one, hardly
suspected by the other, and what remained was the evident
disapprobation of the economical servant, condemning the present with
her sidelong glance.

Clotilde was seized with a little chill.

"Only," she murmured, "master has rummaged his desk again. Pearls are
very dear, are they not?"

Pascal, embarrassed, too, protested volubly, telling them of the
splendid opportunity presented by the dealer's visit. An incredibly
good stroke of business--it was impossible to avoid buying the
necklace.

"How much?" asked the young girl with real anxiety.

"Three hundred francs."

Martine, who had not yet opened her lips, but who looked terrible in
her silence, could not restrain a cry.

"Good God! enough to live upon for six weeks, and we have not bread!"

Large tears welled from Clotilde's eyes. She would have torn the
necklace from her neck if Pascal had not prevented her. She wished to
give it to him on the instant, and she faltered in heart-broken tones:

"It is true, Martine is right. Master is mad, and I am mad, too, to
keep this for an instant, in the situation in which we are. It would
burn my flesh. Let me take it back, I beg of you."

Never would he consent to this, he said. Now his eyes, too, were
moist, he joined in their grief, crying that he was incorrigible, that
they ought to have taken all the money away from him. And running to
the desk he took the hundred francs that were left, and forced Martine
to take them, saying:

"I tell you that I will not keep another sou. I should spend this,
too. Take it, Martine; you are the only one of us who has any sense.
You will make the money last, I am very certain, until our affairs are
settled. And you, dear, keep that; do not grieve me."

Nothing more was said about this incident. But Clotilde kept the
necklace, wearing it under her gown; and there was a sort of
delightful mystery in feeling on her neck, unknown to every one, this
simple, pretty ornament. Sometimes, when they were alone, she would
smile at Pascal and draw the pearls from her dress quickly, and show
them to him without a word; and as quickly she would replace them
again on her warm neck, filled with delightful emotion. It was their
fond folly which she thus recalled to him, with a confused gratitude,
a vivid and radiant joy--a joy which nevermore left her.

A straitened existence, sweet in spite of everything, now began for
them. Martine made an exact inventory of the resources of the house,
and it was not reassuring. The provision of potatoes only promised to
be of any importance. As ill luck would have it, the jar of oil was
almost out, and the last cask of wine was also nearly empty. La
Souleiade, having neither vines nor olive trees, produced only a few
vegetables and some fruits--pears, not yet ripe, and trellis grapes,
which were to be their only delicacies. And meat and bread had to be
bought every day. So that from the first day the servant put Pascal
and Clotilde on rations, suppressing the former sweets, creams, and
pastry, and reducing the food to the quantity barely necessary to
sustain life. She resumed all her former authority, treating them like
children who were not to be consulted, even with regard to their
wishes or their tastes. It was she who arranged the menus, who knew
better than themselves what they wanted; but all this like a mother,
surrounding them with unceasing care, performing the miracle of
enabling them to live still with comfort on their scanty resources;
occasionally severe with them, for their own good, as one is severe
with a child when it refuses to eat its food. And it seemed as if this
maternal care, this last immolation, the illusory peace with which she
surrounded their love, gave her, too, a little happiness, and drew her
out of the dumb despair into which she had fallen. Since she had thus
watched over them she had begun to look like her old self, with her
little white face, the face of a nun vowed to chastity; her calm
ash-colored eyes, which expressed the resignation of her thirty years
of servitude. When, after the eternal potatoes and the little cutlet at
four sous, undistinguishable among the vegetables, she was able, on
certain days, without compromising her budget, to give them pancakes,
she was triumphant, she laughed to see them laugh.

Pascal and Clotilde thought everything she did was right, which did
not prevent them, however, from jesting about her when she was not
present. The old jests about her avarice were repeated over and over
again. They said that she counted the grains of pepper, so many grains
for each dish, in her passion for economy. When the potatoes had too
little oil, when the cutlets were reduced to a mouthful, they would
exchange a quick glance, stifling their laughter in their napkins,
until she had left the room. Everything was a source of amusement to
them, and they laughed innocently at their misery.

At the end of the first month Pascal thought of Martine's wages.
Usually she took her forty francs herself from the common purse which
she kept.

"My poor girl," he said to her one evening, "what are you going to do
for your wages, now that we have no more money?"

She remained for a moment with her eyes fixed on the ground, with an
air of consternation, then she said:

"Well, monsieur, I must only wait."

But he saw that she had not said all that was in her mind, that she
had thought of some arrangement which she did not know how to propose
to him, so he encouraged her.

"Well, then, if monsieur would consent to it, I should like monsieur
to sign me a paper."

"How, a paper?"

"Yes, a paper, in which monsieur should say, every month, that he owes
me forty francs."

Pascal at once made out the paper for her, and this made her quite
happy. She put it away as carefully as if it had been real money. This
evidently tranquilized her. But the paper became a new subject of
wondering amusement to the doctor and his companion. In what did the
extraordinary power consist which money has on certain natures? This
old maid, who would serve him on bended knees, who adored him above
everything, to the extent of having devoted to him her whole life, to
ask for this silly guarantee, this scrap of paper which was of no
value, if he should be unable to pay her.

So far neither Pascal nor Clotilde had any great merit in preserving
their serenity in misfortune, for they did not feel it. They lived
high above it, in the rich and happy realm of their love. At table
they did not know what they were eating; they might fancy they were
partaking of a princely banquet, served on silver dishes. They were
unconscious of the increasing destitution around them, of the hunger
of the servant who lived upon the crumbs from their table; and they
walked through the empty house as through a palace hung with silk and
filled with riches. This was undoubtedly the happiest period of their
love. The workroom had pleasant memories of the past, and they spent
whole days there, wrapped luxuriously in the joy of having lived so
long in it together. Then, out of doors, in every corner of La
Souleiade, royal summer had set up his blue tent, dazzling with gold.
In the morning, in the embalsamed walks on the pine grove; at noon
under the dark shadow of the plane trees, lulled by the murmur of the
fountain; in the evening on the cool terrace, or in the still warm
threshing yard bathed in the faint blue radiance of the first stars,
they lived with rapture their straitened life, their only ambition to
live always together, indifferent to all else. The earth was theirs,
with all its riches, its pomps, and its dominions, since they loved
each other.

Toward the end of August however, matters grew bad again. At times
they had rude awakenings, in the midst of this life without ties,
without duties, without work; this life which was so sweet, but which
it would be impossible, hurtful, they knew, to lead always. One
evening Martine told them that she had only fifty francs left, and
that they would have difficulty in managing for two weeks longer, even
giving up wine. In addition to this the news was very serious; the
notary Grandguillot was beyond a doubt insolvent, so that not even the
personal creditors would receive anything. In the beginning they had
relied on the house and the two farms which the fugitive notary had
left perforce behind him, but it was now certain that this property
was in his wife's name and, while he was enjoying in Switzerland, as
it was said, the beauty of the mountains, she lived on one of the
farms, which she cultivated quietly, away from the annoyances of the
liquidation. In short, it was infamous--a hundred families ruined;
left without bread. An assignee had indeed been appointed, but he had
served only to confirm the disaster, since not a centime of assets had
been discovered. And Pascal, with his usual indifference, neglected
even to go and see him to speak to him about his own case, thinking
that he already knew all that there was to be known about it, and that
it was useless to stir up this ugly business, since there was neither
honor nor profit to be derived from it.

Then, indeed, the future looked threatening at La Souleiade. Black
want stared them in the face. And Clotilde, who, in reality, had a
great deal of good sense, was the first to take alarm. She maintained
her cheerfulness while Pascal was present, but, more prescient than
he, in her womanly tenderness, she fell into a state of absolute
terror if he left her for an instant, asking herself what was to
become of him at his age with so heavy a burden upon his shoulders.
For several days she cherished in secret a project--to work and earn
money, a great deal of money, with her pastels. People had so often
praised her extraordinary and original talent that, taking Martine
into her confidence, she sent her one fine morning to offer some of
her fantastic bouquets to the color dealer of the Cours Sauvaire, who
was a relation, it was said, of a Parisian artist. It was with the
express condition that nothing was to be exhibited in Plassans, that
everything was to be sent to a distance. But the result was
disastrous; the merchant was frightened by the strangeness of the
design, and by the fantastic boldness of the execution, and he
declared that they would never sell. This threw her into despair;
great tears welled her eyes. Of what use was she? It was a grief and a
humiliation to be good for nothing. And the servant was obliged to
console her, saying that no doubt all women were not born for work;
that some grew like the flowers in the gardens, for the sake of their
fragrance; while others were the wheat of the fields that is ground up
and used for food.

Martine, meantime, cherished another project; it was to urge the
doctor to resume his practise. At last she mentioned it to Clotilde,
who at once pointed out to her the difficulty, the impossibility
almost, of such an attempt. She and Pascal had been talking about his
doing so only the day before. He, too, was anxious, and had thought of
work as the only chance of salvation. The idea of opening an office
again was naturally the first that had presented itself to him. But he
had been for so long a time the physician of the poor! How could he
venture now to ask payment when it was so many years since he had left
off doing so? Besides, was it not too late, at his age, to recommence
a career? not to speak of the absurd rumors that had been circulating
about him, the name which they had given him of a crack-brained
genius. He would not find a single patient now, it would be a useless
cruelty to force him to make an attempt which would assuredly result
only in a lacerated heart and empty hands. Clotilde, on the contrary,
had used all her influence to turn him from the idea. Martine
comprehended the reasonableness of these objections, and she too
declared that he must be prevented from running the risk of so great a
chagrin. But while she was speaking a new idea occurred to her, as she
suddenly remembered an old register, which she had met with in a
press, and in which she had in former times entered the doctor's
visits. For a long time it was she who had kept the accounts. There
were so many patients who had never paid that a list of them filled
three of the large pages of the register. Why, then, now that they had
fallen into misfortune, should they not ask from these people the
money which they justly owed? It might be done without saying anything
to monsieur, who had never been willing to appeal to the law. And this
time Clotilde approved of her idea. It was a perfect conspiracy.
Clotilde consulted the register, and made out the bills, and the
servant presented them. But nowhere did she receive a sou; they told
her at every door that they would look over the account; that they
would stop in and see the doctor himself. Ten days passed, no one
came, and there were now only six francs in the house, barely enough
to live upon for two or three days longer.

Martine, when she returned with empty hands on the following day from
a new application to an old patient, took Clotilde aside and told her
that she had just been talking with Mme. Felicite at the corner of the
Rue de la Banne. The latter had undoubtedly been watching for her. She
had not again set foot in La Souleiade. Not even the misfortune which
had befallen her son--the sudden loss of his money, of which the whole
town was talking--had brought her to him; she still continued stern
and indignant. But she waited in trembling excitement, she maintained
her attitude as an offended mother only in the certainty that she
would at last have Pascal at her feet, shrewdly calculating that he
would sooner or later be compelled to appeal to her for assistance.
When he had not a sou left, when he knocked at her door, then she
would dictate her terms; he should marry Clotilde, or, better still,
she would demand the departure of the latter. But the days passed, and
he did not come. And this was why she had stopped Martine, assuming a
pitying air, asking what news there was, and seeming to be surprised
that they had not had recourse to her purse, while giving it to be
understood that her dignity forbade her to take the first step.

"You should speak to monsieur, and persuade him," ended the servant.
And indeed, why should he not appeal to his mother? That would be
entirely natural.

"Oh! never would I undertake such a commission," cried Clotilde.
"Master would be angry, and with reason. I truly believe he would die
of starvation before he would eat grandmother's bread."

But on the evening of the second day after this, at dinner, as Martine
was putting on the table a piece of boiled beef left over from the day
before, she gave them notice.

"I have no more money, monsieur, and to-morrow there will be only
potatoes, without oil or butter. It is three weeks now that you have
had only water to drink; now you will have to do without meat."

They were still cheerful, they could still jest.

"Have you salt, my good girl?"

"Oh, that; yes, monsieur, there is still a little left."

"Well, potatoes and salt are very good when one is hungry."

That night, however, Pascal noticed that Clotilde was feverish; this
was the hour in which they exchanged confidences, and she ventured to
tell him of her anxiety on his account, on her own, on that of the
whole house. What was going to become of them when all their resources
should be exhausted? For a moment she thought of speaking to him of
his mother. But she was afraid, and she contented herself with
confessing to him what she and Martine had done--the old register
examined, the bills made out and sent, the money asked everywhere in
vain. In other circumstances he would have been greatly annoyed and
very angry at this confession; offended that they should have acted
without his knowledge, and contrary to the attitude he had maintained
during his whole professional life. He remained for a long tine
silent, strongly agitated, and this would have sufficed to prove how
great must be his secret anguish at times, under his apparent
indifference to poverty. Then he forgave Clotilde, clasping her wildly
to his breast, and finally he said that she had done right, that they
could not continue to live much longer as they were living, in a
destitution which increased every day. Then they fell into silence,
each trying to think of a means of procuring the money necessary for
their daily wants, each suffering keenly; she, desperate at the
thought of the tortures that awaited him; he unable to accustom
himself to the idea of seeing her wanting bread. Was their happiness
forever ended, then? Was poverty going to blight their spring with its
chill breath?

At breakfast, on the following day, they ate only fruit. The doctor
was very silent during the morning, a prey to a visible struggle. And
it was not until three o'clock that he took a resolution.

"Come, we must stir ourselves," he said to his companion. "I do not
wish you to fast this evening again; so put on your hat, we will go
out together."

She looked at him, waiting for an explanation.

"Yes, since they owe us money, and have refused to give it to you, I
will see whether they will also refuse to give it to me."

His hands trembled; the thought of demanding payment in this way,
after so many years, evidently made him suffer terribly; but he forced
a smile, he affected to be very brave. And she, who knew from the
trembling of his voice the extent of his sacrifice, had tears in her
eyes.

"No, no, master; don't go if it makes you suffer so much. Martine can
go again."

But the servant, who was present, approved highly of monsieur's
intention.

"And why should not monsieur go? There's no shame in asking what is
owed to one, is there? Every one should have his own; for my part, I
think it quite right that monsieur should show at last that he is a
man."

Then, as before, in their hours of happiness, old King David, as
Pascal jestingly called himself, left the house, leaning on Abishag's
arm. Neither of them was yet in rags; he still wore his tightly
buttoned overcoat; she had on her pretty linen gown with red spots,
but doubtless the consciousness of their poverty lowered them in their
own estimation, making them feel that they were now only two poor
people who occupied a very insignificant place in the world, for they
walked along by the houses, shunning observation. The sunny streets
were almost deserted. A few curious glances embarrassed them. They did
not hasten their steps, however; only their hearts were oppressed at
the thought of the visits they were about to make.

Pascal resolved to begin with an old magistrate whom he had treated
for an affection of the liver. He entered the house, leaving Clotilde
sitting on the bench in the Cours Sauvaire. But he was greatly
relieved when the magistrate, anticipating his demand, told him that
he did not receive his rents until October, and that he would pay him
then. At the house of an old lady of seventy, a paralytic, the rebuff
was of a different kind. She was offended because her account had been
sent to her through a servant who had been impolite; so that he
hastened to offer her his excuses, giving her all the time she
desired. Then he climbed up three flights of stairs to the apartment
of a clerk in the tax collector's office, whom he found still ill, and
so poor that he did not even venture to make his demand. Then followed
a mercer, a lawyer's wife, an oil merchant, a baker--all well-to-do
people; and all turned him away, some with excuses, others by denying
him admittance; a few even pretended not to know what he meant. There
remained the Marquise de Valqueyras, the sole representative of a very
ancient family, a widow with a girl of ten, who was very rich, and
whose avarice was notorious. He had left her for the last, for he was
greatly afraid of her. Finally he knocked at the door of her ancient
mansion, at the foot of the Cours Sauvaire, a massive structure of the
time of Mazarin. He remained so long in the house that Clotilde, who
was walking under the trees, at last became uneasy.

When he finally made his appearance, at the end of a full half hour,
she said jestingly, greatly relieved:

"Why, what was the matter? Had she no money?"

But here, too, he had been unsuccessful; she complained that her
tenants did not pay her.

"Imagine," he continued, in explanation of his long absence, "the
little girl is ill. I am afraid that it is the beginning of a gastric
fever. So she wished me to see the child, and I examined her."

A smile which she could not suppress came to Clotilde's lips.

"And you prescribed for her?"

"Of course; could I do otherwise?"

She took his arm again, deeply affected, and he felt her press it
against her heart. For a time they walked on aimlessly. It was all
over; they had knocked at every debtor's door, and nothing now
remained for them to do but to return home with empty hands. But this
Pascal refused to do, determined that Clotilde should have something
more than the potatoes and water which awaited them. When they
ascended the Cours Sauvaire, they turned to the left, to the new town;
drifting now whither cruel fate led them.

"Listen," said Pascal at last; "I have an idea. If I were to speak to
Ramond he would willingly lend us a thousand francs, which we could
return to him when our affairs are arranged."

She did not answer at once. Ramond, whom she had rejected, who was now
married and settled in a house in the new town, in a fair way to
become the fashionable physician of the place, and to make a fortune!
She knew, indeed, that he had a magnanimous soul and a kind heart. If
he had not visited them again it had been undoubtedly through
delicacy. Whenever they chanced to meet, he saluted them with so
admiring an air, he seemed so pleased to see their happiness.

"Would that be disagreeable to you?" asked Pascal ingenuously. For his
part, he would have thrown open to the young physician his house, his
purse, and his heart.

"No, no," she answered quickly. "There has never been anything between
us but affection and frankness. I think I gave him a great deal of
pain, but he has forgiven me. You are right; we have no other friend.
It is to Ramond that we must apply."

Ill luck pursued them, however. Ramond was absent from home, attending
a consultation at Marseilles, and he would not be back until the
following evening. And it young Mme. Ramond, an old friend of
Clotilde's, some three years her junior, who received them. She seemed
a little embarrassed, but she was very amiable, notwithstanding. But
the doctor, naturally, did not prefer his request, and contented
himself with saying, in explanation of his visit, that he had missed
Ramond. When they were in the street again, Pascal and Clotilde felt
themselves once more abandoned and alone. Where now should they turn?
What new effort should they make? And they walked on again aimlessly.

"I did not tell you, master," Clotilde at last ventured to murmur,
"but it seems that Martine met grandmother the other day. Yes,
grandmother has been uneasy about us. She asked Martine why we did not
go to her, if we were in want. And see, here is her house."

They were in fact, in the Rue de la Banne. They could see the corner
of the Place de la Sous-Prefecture. But he at once silenced her.

"Never, do you hear! Nor shall you go either. You say that because it
grieves you to see me in this poverty. My heart, too, is heavy, to
think that you also are in want, that you also suffer. But it is
better to suffer than to do a thing that would leave one an eternal
remorse. I will not. I cannot."

They emerged from the Rue de la Banne, and entered the old quarter.

"I would a thousand times rather apply to a stranger. Perhaps we still
have friends, even if they are only among the poor."

And resolved to beg, David continued his walk, leaning on the arm of
Abishag; the old mendicant king went from door to door, leaning on the
shoulder of the loving subject whose youth was now his only support.
It was almost six o'clock; the heat had abated; the narrow streets
were filling with people; and in this populous quarter where they were
loved, they were everywhere greeted with smiles. Something of pity was
mingled with the admiration they awakened, for every one knew of their
ruin. But they seemed of a nobler beauty than before, he all white,
she all blond, pressing close to each other in their misfortune. They
seemed more united, more one with each other than ever; holding their
heads erect, proud of their glorious love, though touched by
misfortune; he shaken, while she, with a courageous heart, sustained
him. And in spite of the poverty that had so suddenly overtaken them
they walked without shame, very poor and very great, with the
sorrowful smile under which they concealed the desolation of their
souls. Workmen in dirty blouses passed them by, who had more money in
their pockets than they. No one ventured to offer them the sou which
is not refused to those who are hungry. At the Rue Canoquin they
stopped at the house of Gulraude. She had died the week before. Two
other attempts which they made failed. They were reduced now to
consider where they could borrow ten francs. They had been walking
about the town for three hours, but they could not resolve to go home
empty-handed.

Ah, this Plassans, with its Cours Sauvaire, its Rue de Rome, and its
Rue de la Banne, dividing it into three quarters; this Plassans; with
its windows always closed, this sun-baked town, dead in appearance,
but which concealed under this sleeping surface a whole nocturnal life
of the clubhouse and the gaming table. They walked through it three
times more with slackened pace, on this clear, calm close of a glowing
August day. In the yard of the coach office a few old stage-coaches,
which still plied between the town and the mountain villages, were
standing unharnessed; and under the thick shade of the plane trees at
the doors of the cafes, the customers, who were to be seen from seven
o'clock in the morning, looked after them smiling. In the new town,
too, the servants came and stood at the doors of the wealthy houses;
they met with less sympathy here than in the deserted streets of the
Quartier St. Marc, whose antique houses maintained a friendly silence.
They returned to the heart of the old quarter where they were most
liked; they went as far as St. Saturnin, the cathedral, whose apse was
shaded by the garden of the chapter, a sweet and peaceful solitude,
from which a beggar drove them by himself asking an alms from them.
They were building rapidly in the neighborhood of the railway station;
a new quarter was growing up there, and they bent their steps in that
direction. Then they returned a last time to the Place de la
Sous-Prefecture, with a sudden reawakening of hope, thinking that they
might meet some one who would offer them money. But they were followed
only by the indulgent smile of the town, at seeing them so united and
so beautiful. Only one woman had tears in her eyes, foreseeing,
perhaps, the sufferings that awaited them. The stones of the Viorne,
the little sharp paving stones, wounded their feet. And they had at
last to return to La Souleiade, without having succeeded in obtaining
anything, the old mendicant king and his submissive subject; Abishag,
in the flower of her youth, leading back David, old and despoiled of
his wealth, and weary from having walked the streets in vain.

It was eight o'clock, and Martine, who was waiting for them,
comprehended that she would have no cooking to do this evening. She
pretended that she had dined, and as she looked ill Pascal sent her at
once to bed.

"We do not need you," said Clotilde. "As the potatoes are on the fire
we can take them up very well ourselves."

The servant, who was feverish and out of humor, yielded. She muttered
some indistinct words--when people had eaten up everything what was
the use of sitting down to table? Then, before shutting herself into
her room, she added:

"Monsieur, there is no more hay for Bonhomme. I thought he was looking
badly a little while ago; monsieur ought to go and see him."

Pascal and Clotilde, filled with uneasiness, went to the stable. The
old horse was, in fact, lying on the straw in the somnolence of
expiring old age. They had not taken him out for six months past, for
his legs, stiff with rheumatism, refused to support him, and he had
become completely blind. No one could understand why the doctor kept
the old beast. Even Martine had at last said that he ought to be
slaughtered, if only through pity. But Pascal and Clotilde cried out
at this, as much excited as if it had been proposed to them to put an
end to some aged relative who was not dying fast enough. No, no, he
had served them for more than a quarter of a century; he should die
comfortably with them, like the worthy fellow he had always been. And
to-night the doctor did not scorn to examine him, as if he had never
attended any other patients than animals. He lifted up his hoofs,
looked at his gums, and listened to the beating of his heart.

"No, there is nothing the matter with him," he said at last. "It is
simply old age. Ah, my poor old fellow, I think, indeed, we shall
never again travel the roads together."

The idea that there was no more hay distressed Clotilde. But Pascal
reassured her--an animal of that age, that no longer moved about,
needed so little. She stooped down and took a few handfuls of grass
from a heap which the servant had left there, and both were rejoiced
when Bonhomme deigned, solely and simply through friendship, as it
seemed, to eat the grass out of her hand.

"Oh," she said, laughing, "so you still have an appetite! You cannot
be very sick, then; you must not try to work upon our feelings. Good
night, and sleep well."

And they left him to his slumbers after having each given him, as
usual, a hearty kiss on either side of his nose.

Night fell, and an idea occurred to them, in order not to remain
downstairs in the empty house--to close up everything and eat their
dinner upstairs. Clotilde quickly took up the dish of potatoes, the
salt-cellar, and a fine decanter of water; while Pascal took charge of
a basket of grapes, the first which they had yet gathered from an
early vine at the foot of the terrace. They closed the door, and laid
the cloth on a little table, putting the potatoes in the middle
between the salt-cellar and the decanter, and the basket of grapes on
a chair beside them. And it was a wonderful feast, which reminded them
of the delicious breakfast they had made on the morning on which
Martine had obstinately shut herself up in her room, and refused to
answer them. They experienced the same delight as then at being alone,
at waiting upon themselves, at eating from the same plate, sitting
close beside each other. This evening, which they had anticipated with
so much dread, had in store for them the most delightful hours of
their existence. As soon as they found themselves at home in the large
friendly room, as far removed from the town which they had just been
scouring as if they had been a hundred leagues away from it, all
uneasiness and all sadness vanished--even to the recollection of the
wretched afternoon wasted in useless wanderings. They were once more
indifferent to all that was not their affection; they no longer
remembered that they had lost their fortune; that they might have to
hunt up a friend on the morrow in order to be able to dine in the
evening. Why torture themselves with fears of coming want, when all
they required to enjoy the greatest possible happiness was to be
together?

But Pascal felt a sudden terror.

"My God! and we dreaded this evening so greatly! Is it wise to be
happy in this way? Who knows what to-morrow may have in store for us?"

But she put her little hand over his mouth; she desired that he should
have one more evening of perfect happiness.

"No, no; to-morrow we shall love each other as we love each other
to-day. Love me with all your strength, as I love you."

And never had they eaten with more relish. She displayed the appetite
of a healthy young girl with a good digestion; she ate the potatoes
with a hearty appetite, laughing, thinking them delicious, better than
the most vaunted delicacies. He, too, recovered the appetite of his
youthful days. They drank with delight deep draughts of pure water.
Then the grapes for dessert filled them with admiration; these grapes
so fresh, this blood of the earth which the sun had touched with gold.
They ate to excess; they became drunk on water and fruit, and more
than all on gaiety. They did not remember ever before to have enjoyed
such a feast together; even the famous breakfast they had made, with
its luxuries of cutlets and bread and wine, had not given them this
intoxication, this joy in living, when to be together was happiness
enough, changing the china to dishes of gold, and the miserable food
to celestial fare such as not even the gods enjoyed.

It was now quite dark, but they did not light the lamp. Through the
wide open windows they could see the vast summer sky. The night breeze
entered, still warm and laden with a faint odor of lavender. The moon
had just risen above the horizon, large and round, flooding the room
with a silvery light, in which they saw each other as in a dream light
infinitely bright and sweet.

XI.


But on the following day their disquietude all returned. They were now
obliged to go in debt. Martine obtained on credit bread, wine, and a
little meat, much to her shame, be it said, forced as she was to
maneuver and tell lies, for no one was ignorant of the ruin that had
overtaken the house. The doctor had indeed thought of mortgaging La
Souleiade, but only as a last resource. All he now possessed was this
property, which was worth twenty thousand francs, but for which he
would perhaps not get fifteen thousand, if he should sell it; and when
these should be spent black want would be before them, the street,
without even a stone of their own on which to lay their heads.
Clotilde therefore begged Pascal to wait and not to take any
irrevocable step so long as things were not utterly desperate.

Three or four days passed. It was the beginning of September, and the
weather unfortunately changed; terrible storms ravaged the entire
country; a part of the garden wall was blown down, and as Pascal was
unable to rebuild it, the yawning breach remained. Already they were
beginning to be rude at the baker's. And one morning the old servant
came home with the meat from the butcher's in tears, saying that he
had given her the refuse. A few days more and they would be unable to
obtain anything on credit. It had become absolutely necessary to
consider how they should find the money for their small daily
expenses.

One Monday morning, the beginning of another week of torture, Clotilde
was very restless. A struggle seemed to be going on within her, and it
was only when she saw Pascal refuse at breakfast his share of a piece
of beef which had been left over from the day before that she at last
came to a decision. Then with a calm and resolute air, she went out
after breakfast with Martine, after quietly putting into the basket of
the latter a little package--some articles of dress which she was
giving her, she said.

When she returned two hours later she was very pale. But her large
eyes, so clear and frank, were shining. She went up to the doctor at
once and made her confession.

"I must ask your forgiveness, master, for I have just been disobeying
you, and I know that I am going to pain you greatly."

"Why, what have you been doing?" he asked uneasily, not understanding
what she meant.

Slowly, without removing her eyes from him, she drew from her pocket
an envelope, from which she took some bank-notes. A sudden intuition
enlightened him, and he cried:

"Ah, my God! the jewels, the presents I gave you!"

And he, who was usually so good-tempered and gentle, was convulsed
with grief and anger. He seized her hands in his, crushing with almost
brutal force the fingers which held the notes.

"My God! what have you done, unhappy girl? It is my heart that you
have sold, both our hearts, that had entered into those jewels, which
you have given with them for money! The jewels which I gave you, the
souyenirs of our divinest hours, your property, yours only, how can
you wish me to take them back, to turn them to my profit? Can it be
possible--have you thought of the anguish that this would give me?"

"And you, master," she answered gently, "do you think that I could
consent to our remaining in the unhappy situation in which we are, in
want of everything, while I had these rings and necklaces and earrings
laid away in the bottom of a drawer? Why, my whole being would rise in
protest. I should think myself a miser, a selfish wretch, if I had
kept them any longer. And, although it was a grief for me to part with
them--ah, yes, I confess it, so great a grief that I could hardly find
the courage to do it--I am certain that I have only done what I ought
to have done as an obedient and loving woman."

And as he still grasped her hands, tears came to her eyes, and she
added in the same gentle voice and with a faint smile:

"Don't press so hard; you hurt me."

Then repentant and deeply moved, Pascal, too, wept.

"I am a brute to get angry in this way. You acted rightly; you could
not do otherwise. But forgive me; it was hard for me to see you
despoil yourself. Give me your hands, your poor hands, and let me kiss
away the marks of my stupid violence."

He took her hands again in his tenderly; he covered them with kisses;
he thought them inestimably precious, so delicate and bare, thus
stripped of their rings. Consoled now, and joyous, she told him of her
escapade--how she had taken Martine into her confidence, and how both
had gone to the dealer who had sold him the corsage of point
d'Alencon, and how after interminable examining and bargaining the
woman had given six thousand francs for all the jewels. Again he
repressed a gesture of despair--six thousand francs! when the jewels
had cost him more than three times that amount--twenty thousand francs
at the very least.

"Listen," he said to her at last; "I will take this money, since, in
the goodness of your heart, you have brought it to me. But it is
clearly understood that it is yours. I swear to you that I will, for
the future, be more miserly than Martine herself. I will give her only
the few sous that are absolutely necessary for our maintenance, and
you will find in the desk all that may be left of this sum, if I
should never be able to complete it and give it back to you entire."

He clasped her in an embrace that still trembled with emotion.
Presently, lowering his voice to a whisper, he said:

"And did you sell everything, absolutely everything?"

Without speaking, she disengaged herself a little from his embrace,
and put her fingers to her throat, with her pretty gesture, smiling
and blushing. Finally, she drew out the slender chain on which shone
the seven pearls, like milky stars. Then she put it back again out of
sight.

He, too, blushed, and a great joy filled his heart. He embraced her
passionately.

"Ah!" he cried, "how good you are, and how I love you!"

But from this time forth the recollection of the jewels which had been
sold rested like a weight upon his heart; and he could not look at the
money in his desk without pain. He was haunted by the thought of
approaching want, inevitable want, and by a still more bitter thought
--the thought of his age, of his sixty years which rendered him
useless, incapable of earning a comfortable living for a wife; he had
been suddenly and rudely awakened from his illusory dream of eternal
love to the disquieting reality. He had fallen unexpectedly into
poverty, and he felt himself very old--this terrified him and filled
him with a sort of remorse, of desperate rage against himself, as if
he had been guilty of a crime. And this embittered his every hour; if
through momentary forgetfulness he permitted himself to indulge in a
little gaiety his distress soon returned with greater poignancy than
ever, bringing with it a sudden and inexplicable sadness. He did not
dare to question himself, and his dissatisfaction with himself and his
suffering increased every day.

Then a frightful revelation came to him. One morning, when he was
alone, he received a letter bearing the Plassans postmark, the
superscription on which he examined with surprise, not recognizing the
writing. This letter was not signed; and after reading a few lines he
made an angry movement as if to tear it up and throw it away; but he
sat down trembling instead, and read it to the end. The style was
perfectly courteous; the long phrases rolled on, measured and
carefully worded, like diplomatic phrases, whose only aim is to
convince. It was demonstrated to him with a superabundance of
arguments that the scandal of La Souleiade had lasted too long
already. If passion, up to a certain point, explained the fault, yet a
man of his age and in his situation was rendering himself contemptible
by persisting in wrecking the happiness of the young relative whose
trustfulness he abused. No one was ignorant of the ascendency which he
had acquired over her; it was admitted that she gloried in sacrificing
herself for him; but ought he not, on his side, to comprehend that it
was impossible that she should love an old man, that what she felt was
merely pity and gratitude, and that it was high time to deliver her
from this senile love, which would finally leave her with a dishonored
name! Since he could not even assure her a small fortune, the writer
hoped he would act like an honorable man, and have the strength to
separate from her, through consideration for her happiness, if it were
not yet too late. And the letter concluded with the reflection that
evil conduct was always punished in the end.

From the first sentence Pascal felt that this anonymous letter came
from his mother. Old Mme. Rougon must have dictated it; he could hear
in it the very inflections of her voice. But after having begun the
letter angry and indignant, he finished it pale and trembling, seized
by the shiver which now passed through him continually and without
apparent cause. The letter was right, it enlightened him cruelly
regarding the source of his mental distress, showing him that it was
remorse for keeping Clotilde with him, old and poor as he was. He got
up and walked over to a mirror, before which he stood for a long time,
his eyes gradually filling with tears of despair at sight of his
wrinkles and his white beard. The feeling of terror which arose within
him, the mortal chill which invaded his heart, was caused by the
thought that separation had become necessary, inevitable. He repelled
the thought, he felt that he would never have the strength for a
separation, but it still returned; he would never now pass a single
day without being assailed by it, without being torn by the struggle
between his love and his reason until the terrible day when he should
become resigned, his strength and his tears exhausted. In his present
weakness, he trembled merely at the thought of one day having this
courage. And all was indeed over, the irrevocable had begun; he was
filled with fear for Clotilde, so young and so beautiful, and all
there was left him now was the duty of saving her from himself.

Then, haunted by every word, by every phrase of the letter, he
tortured himself at first by trying to persuade himself that she did
not love him, that all she felt for him was pity and gratitude. It
would make the rupture more easy to him, he thought, if he were once
convinced that she sacrificed herself, and that in keeping her with
him longer he was only gratifying his monstrous selfishness. But it
was in vain that he studied her, that he subjected her to proofs, she
remained as tender and devoted as ever, making the dreaded decision
still more difficult. Then he pondered over all the causes that
vaguely, but ceaselessly urged their separation. The life which they
had been leading for months past, this life without ties or duties,
without work of any sort, was not good. He thought no longer of
himself, he considered himself good for nothing now but to go away and
bury himself out of sight in some remote corner; but for her was it
not an injurious life, a life which would deteriorate her character
and weaken her will? And suddenly he saw himself in fancy dying,
leaving her alone to perish of hunger in the streets. No, no! this
would be a crime; he could not, for the sake of the happiness of his
few remaining days, bequeath to her this heritage of shame and misery.

One morning Clotilde went for a walk in the neighborhood, from which
she returned greatly agitated, pale and trembling, and as soon as she
was upstairs in the workroom, she almost fainted in Pascal's arms,
faltering:

"Oh, my God! oh, my God! those women!"

Terrified, he pressed her with questions.

"Come, tell me! What has happened?"

A flush mounted to her face. She flung her arms around his neck and
hid her head on his shoulder.

"It was those women! Reaching a shady spot, I was closing my parasol,
and I had the misfortune to throw down a child. And they all rose
against me, crying out such things, oh, such things--things that I
cannot repeat, that I could not understand!"

She burst into sobs. He was livid; he could find nothing to say to
her; he kissed her wildly, weeping like herself. He pictured to
himself the whole scene; he saw her pursued, hooted at, reviled.
Presently he faltered:

"It is my fault, it is through me you suffer. Listen, we will go away
from here, far, far away, where we shall not be known, where you will
be honored, where you will be happy."

But seeing him weep, she recovered her calmness by a violent effort.
And drying her tears, she said:

"Ah! I have behaved like a coward in telling you all this. After
promising myself that I would say nothing of it to you. But when I
found myself at home again, my anguish was so great that it all came
out. But you see now it is all over, don't grieve about it. I love
you."

She smiled, and putting her arms about him she kissed him in her turn,
trying to soothe his despair.

"I love you. I love you so dearly that it will console me for
everything. There is only you in the world, what matters anything that
is not you? You are so good; you make me so happy!"

But he continued to weep, and she, too, began to weep again, and there
was a moment of infinite sadness, of anguish, in which they mingled
their kisses and their tears.

Pascal, when she left him alone for an instant, thought himself a
wretch. He could no longer be the cause of misfortune to this child,
whom he adored. And on the evening of the same day an event took place
which brought about the solution hitherto sought in vain, with the
fear of finding it. After dinner Martine beckoned him aside, and gave
him a letter, with all sorts of precautions, saying:

"I met Mme. Felicite, and she charged me to give you this letter,
monsieur, and she told me to tell you that she would have brought it
to you herself, only that regard for her reputation prevented her from
returning here. She begs you to send her back M. Maxime's letter,
letting her know mademoiselle's answer."

It was, in fact, a letter from Maxime, and Mme. Felicite, glad to have
received it, used it as a new means of conquering her son, after
having waited in vain for misery to deliver him up to her, repentant
and imploring. As neither Pascal nor Clotilde had come to demand aid
or succor from her, she had once more changed her plan, returning to
her old idea of separating them; and, this time, the opportunity
seemed to her decisive. Maxime's letter was a pressing one; he urged
his grandmother to plead his cause with his sister. Ataxia had
declared itself; he was able to walk now only leaning on his servant's
arm. His solitude terrified him, and he urgently entreated his sister
to come to him. He wished to have her with him as a rampart against
his father's abominable designs; as a sweet and upright woman after
all, who would take care of him. The letter gave it to be understood
that if she conducted herself well toward him she would have no reason
to repent it; and ended by reminding the young girl of the promise she
had made him, at the time of his visit to Plassans, to come to him, if
the day ever arrived when he really needed her.

Pascal turned cold. He read the four pages over again. Here an
opportunity to separate presented itself, acceptable to him and
advantageous for Clotilde, so easy and so natural that they ought to
accept it at once; yet, in spite of all his reasoning he felt so weak,
so irresolute still that his limbs trembled under him, and he was
obliged to sit down for a moment. But he wished to be heroic, and
controlling himself, he called to his companion.

"Here!" he said, "read this letter which your grandmother has sent
me."

Clotilde read the letter attentively to the end without a word,
without a sign. Then she said simply:

"Well, you are going to answer it, are you not? I refuse."

He was obliged to exercise a strong effort of self-control to avoid
uttering a great cry of joy, as he pressed her to his heart. As if it
were another person who spoke, he heard himself saying quietly:

"You refuse--impossible! You must reflect. Let us wait till to-morrow
to give an answer; and let us talk it over, shall we?"

Surprised, she cried excitedly:

"Part from each other! and why? And would you really consent to it?
What folly! we love each other, and you would have me leave you and go
away where no one cares for me! How could you think of such a thing?
It would be stupid."

He avoided touching on this side of the question, and hastened to
speak of promises made--of duty.

"Remember, my dear, how greatly affected you were when I told you that
Maxime was in danger. And think of him now, struck down by disease,
helpless and alone, calling you to his side. Can you abandon him in
that situation? You have a duty to fulfil toward him."

"A duty?" she cried. "Have I any duties toward a brother who has never
occupied himself with me? My only duty is where my heart is."

"But you have promised. I have promised for you. I have said that you
were rational, and you are not going to belie my words."

"Rational? It is you who are not rational. It is not rational to
separate when to do so would make us both die of grief."

And with an angry gesture she closed the discussion, saying:

"Besides, what is the use of talking about it? There is nothing
simpler; it is only necessary to say a single word. Answer me. Are you
tired of me? Do you wish to send me away?"

He uttered a cry.

"Send you away! I! Great God!"

"Then it is all settled. If you do not send me away I shall remain."

She laughed now, and, running to her desk, wrote in red pencil across
her brother's letter two words--"I refuse;" then she called Martine
and insisted upon her taking the letter back at once. Pascal was
radiant; a wave of happiness so intense inundated his being that he
let her have her way. The joy of keeping her with him deprived him
even of his power of reasoning.

But that very night, what remorse did he not feel for having been so
cowardly! He had again yielded to his longing for happiness. A
deathlike sweat broke out upon him when he saw her in imagination far
away; himself alone, without her, without that caressing and subtle
essence that pervaded the atmosphere when she was near; her breath,
her brightness, her courageous rectitude, and the dear presence,
physical and mental, which had now become as necessary to his life as
the light of day itself. She must leave him, and he must find the
strength to die of it. He despised himself for his want of courage, he
judged the situation with terrible clear-sightedness. All was ended.
An honorable existence and a fortune awaited her with her brother; he
could not carry his senile selfishness so far as to keep her any
longer in the misery in which he was, to be scorned and despised. And
fainting at the thought of all he was losing, he swore to himself that
he would be strong, that he would not accept the sacrifice of this
child, that he would restore her to happiness and to life, in her own
despite.

And now the struggle of self-abnegation began. Some days passed; he
had demonstrated to her so clearly the rudeness of her "I refuse," on
Maxime's letter, that she had written a long letter to her
grandmother, explaining to her the reasons for her refusal. But still
she would not leave La Souleiade. As Pascal had grown extremely
parsimonious, in his desire to trench as little as possible on the
money obtained by the sale of the jewels, she surpassed herself,
eating her dry bread with merry laughter. One morning he surprised her
giving lessons of economy to Martine. Twenty times a day she would
look at him intently and then throw herself on his neck and cover his
face with kisses, to combat the dreadful idea of a separation, which
she saw always in his eyes. Then she had another argument. One evening
after dinner he was seized with a palpitation of the heart, and almost
fainted. This surprised him; he had never suffered from the heart, and
he believed it to be simply a return of his old nervous trouble. Since
his great happiness he had felt less strong, with an odd sensation, as
if some delicate hidden spring had snapped within him. Greatly
alarmed, she hurried to his assistance. Well! now he would no doubt
never speak again of her going away. When one loved people, and they
were ill, one stayed with them to take care of them.

The struggle thus became a daily, an hourly one. It was a continual
assault made by affection, by devotion, by self-abnegation, in the one
desire for another's happiness. But while her kindness and tenderness
made the thought of her departure only the more cruel for Pascal, he
felt every day more and more strongly the necessity for it. His
resolution was now taken. But he remained at bay, trembling and
hesitating as to the means of persuading her. He pictured to himself
her despair, her tears; what should he do? how should he tell her? how
could they bring themselves to give each other a last embrace, never
to see each other again? And the days passed, and he could think of
nothing, and he began once more to accuse himself of cowardice.

Sometimes she would say jestingly, with a touch of affectionate
malice:

"Master, you are too kind-hearted not to keep me."

But this vexed him; he grew excited, and with gloomy despair answered:

"No, no! don't talk of my kindness. If I were really kind you would
have been long ago with your brother, leading an easy and honorable
life, with a bright and tranquil future before you, instead of
obstinately remaining here, despised, poor, and without any prospect,
to be the sad companion of an old fool like me! No, I am nothing but a
coward and a dishonorable man!"

She hastily stopped him. And it was in truth his kindness of heart,
above all, that bled, that immense kindness of heart which sprang from
his love of life, which he diffused over persons and things, in his
continual care for the happiness of every one and everything. To be
kind, was not this to love her, to make her happy, at the price of his
own happiness? This was the kindness which it was necessary for him to
exercise, and which he felt that he would one day exercise, heroic and
decisive. But like the wretch who has resolved upon suicide, he waited
for the opportunity, the hour, and the means, to carry out his design.
Early one morning, on going into the workroom, Clotilde was surprised
to see Dr. Pascal seated at his table. It was many weeks since he had
either opened a book or touched a pen.

"Why! you are working?" she said.

Without raising his head he answered absently:

"Yes; this is the genealogical tree that I had not even brought up to
date."

She stood behind him for a few moments, looking at him writing. He was
completing the notices of Aunt Dide, of Uncle Macquart, and of little
Charles, writing the dates of their death. Then, as he did not stir,
seeming not to know that she was there, waiting for the kisses and the
smiles of other mornings, she walked idly over to the window and back
again.

"So you are in earnest," she said, "you are really working?"

"Certainly; you see I ought to have noted down these deaths last
month. And I have a heap of work waiting there for me."

She looked at him fixedly, with that steady inquiring gaze with which
she sought to read his thoughts.

"Very well, let us work. If you have papers to examine, or notes to
copy, give them to me."

And from this day forth he affected to give himself up entirely to
work. Besides, it was one of his theories that absolute rest was
unprofitable, that it should never be prescribed, even to the
overworked. As the fish lives in the water, so a man lives only in the
external medium which surrounds him, the sensations which he receives
from it transforming themselves in him into impulses, thoughts, and
acts; so that if there were absolute rest, if he continued to receive
sensations without giving them out again, digested and transformed, an
engorgement would result, a _malaise_, an inevitable loss of
equilibrium. For himself he had always found work to be the best
regulator of his existence. Even on the mornings when he felt ill, if
he set to work he recovered his equipoise. He never felt better than
when he was engaged on some long work, methodically planned out
beforehand, so many pages to so many hours every morning, and he
compared this work to a balancing-pole, which enabled him to maintain
his equilibrium in the midst of daily miseries, weaknesses, and
mistakes. So that he attributed entirely to the idleness in which he
had been living for some weeks past, the palpitation which at times
made him feel as if he were going to suffocate. If he wished to
recover his health he had only to take up again his great work.

And Pascal spent hours developing and explaining these theories to
Clotilde, with a feverish and exaggerated enthusiasm. He seemed to be
once more possessed by the love of knowledge and study in which, up to
the time of his sudden passion for her, he had spent his life
exclusively. He repeated to her that he could not leave his work
unfinished, that he had still a great deal to do, if he desired to
leave a lasting monument behind him. His anxiety about the envelopes
seemed to have taken possession of him again; he opened the large
press twenty times a day, taking them down from the upper shelf and
enriching them by new notes. His ideas on heredity were already
undergoing a transformation; he would have liked to review the whole,
to recast the whole, to deduce from the family history, natural and
social, a vast synthesis, a resume, in broad strokes, of all humanity.
Then, besides, he reviewed his method of treatment by hypodermic
injections, with the purpose of amplifying it--a confused vision of a
new therapeutics; a vague and remote theory based on his convictions
and his personal experience of the beneficent dynamic influence of
work.

Now every morning, when he seated himself at his table, he would
lament:

"I shall not live long enough; life is too short."

He seemed to feel that he must not lose another hour. And one morning
he looked up abruptly and said to his companion, who was copying a
manuscript at his side:

"Listen well, Clotilde. If I should die--"

"What an idea!" she protested, terrified.

"If I should die," he resumed, "listen to me well--close all the doors
immediately. You are to keep the envelopes, you, you only. And when
you have collected all my other manuscripts, send them to Ramond.
These are my last wishes, do you hear?"

But she refused to listen to him.

"No, no!" she cried hastily, "you talk nonsense!"

"Clotilde, swear to me that you will keep the envelopes, and that you
will send all my other papers to Ramond."

At last, now very serious, and her eyes filled with tears, she gave
him the promise he desired. He caught her in his arms, he, too, deeply
moved, and lavished caresses upon her, as if his heart had all at once
reopened to her. Presently he recovered his calmness, and spoke of his
fears. Since he had been trying to work they seemed to have returned.
He kept constant watch upon the press, pretending to have observed
Martine prowling about it. Might they not work upon the fanaticism of
this girl, and urge her to a bad action, persuading her that she was
securing her master's eternal welfare? He had suffered so much from
suspicion! In the dread of approaching solitude his former tortures
returned--the tortures of the scientist, who is menaced and persecuted
by his own, at his own fireside, in his very flesh, in the work of his
brain.

One evening, when he was again discussing this subject with Clotilde,
he said unthinkingly:

"You know that when you are no longer here--"

She turned very pale and, as he stopped with a start, she cried:

"Oh, master, master, you have not given up that dreadful idea, then? I
can see in your eyes that you are hiding something from me, that you
have a thought which you no longer share with me. But if I go away and
you should die, who will be here then to protect your work?"

Thinking that she had become reconciled, to the idea of her departure,
he had the strength to answer gaily:

"Do you suppose that I would allow myself to die without seeing you
once more. I will write to you, of course. You must come back to close
my eyes."

Now she burst out sobbing, and sank into a chair.

"My God! Can it be! You wish that to-morrow we should be together no
longer, we who have never been separated!"

From this day forth Pascal seemed more engrossed than ever in his
work. He would sit for four or five hours at a time, whole mornings
and afternoons, without once raising his head. He overacted his zeal.
He would allow no one to disturb him, by so much as a word. And when
Clotilde would leave the room on tiptoe to give an order downstairs or
to go on some errand, he would assure himself by a furtive glance that
she was gone, and then let his head drop on the table, with an air of
profound dejection. It was a painful relief from the extraordinary
effort which he compelled himself to make when she was present; to
remain at his table, instead of going over and taking her in his arms
and covering her face with sweet kisses. Ah, work! how ardently he
called on it as his only refuge from torturing thoughts. But for the
most part he was unable to work; he was obliged to feign attention,
keeping his eyes fixed upon the page, his sorrowful eyes that grew dim
with tears, while his mind, confused, distracted, filled always with
one image, suffered the pangs of death. Was he then doomed to see work
fail now its effect, he who had always considered it of sovereign
power, the creator and ruler of the world? Must he then throw away his
pen, renounce action, and do nothing in future but exist? And tears
would flow down his white beard; and if he heard Clotilde coming
upstairs again he would seize his pen quickly, in order that she might
find him as she had left him, buried seemingly in profound meditation,
when his mind was now only an aching void.

It was now the middle of September; two weeks that had seemed
interminable had passed in this distressing condition of things,
without bringing any solution, when one morning Clotilde was greatly
surprised by seeing her grandmother, Felicite, enter. Pascal had met
his mother the day before in the Rue de la Banne, and, impatient to
consummate the sacrifice, and not finding in himself the strength to
make the rupture, he had confided in her, in spite of his repugnance,
and begged her to come on the following day. As it happened, she had
just received another letter from Maxime, a despairing and imploring
letter.

She began by explaining her presence.

"Yes, it is I, my dear, and you can understand that only very weighty
reasons could have induced me to set my foot here again. But, indeed,
you are getting crazy; I cannot allow you to ruin your life in this
way, without making a last effort to open your eyes."

She then read Maxime's letter in a tearful voice. He was nailed to an
armchair. It seemed he was suffering from a form of ataxia, rapid in
its progress and very painful. Therefore he requested a decided answer
from his sister, hoping still that she would come, and trembling at
the thought of being compelled to seek another nurse. This was what he
would be obliged to do, however, if they abandoned him in his sad
condition. And when she had finished reading the letter she hinted
that it would be a great pity to let Maxime's fortune pass into the
hands of strangers; but, above all, she spoke of duty; of the
assistance one owed to a relation, she, too, affecting to believe that
a formal promise had been given.

"Come, my dear, call upon your memory. You told him that if he should
ever need you, you would go to him; I can hear you saying it now. Was
it not so, my son?"

Pascal, his face pale, his head slightly bent, had kept silence since
his mother's entrance, leaving her to act. He answered only by an
affirmative nod.

Then Felicite went over all the arguments that he himself had employed
to persuade Clotilde--the dreadful scandal, to which insult was now
added; impending want, so hard for them both; the impossibility of
continuing the life they were leading. What future could they hope
for, now that they had been overtaken by poverty? It was stupid and
cruel to persist longer in her obstinate refusal.

Clotilde, standing erect and with an impenetrable countenance,
remained silent, refusing even to discuss the question. But as her
grandmother tormented her to give an answer, she said at last:

"Once more, I have no duty whatever toward my brother; my duty is
here. He can dispose of his fortune as he chooses; I want none of it.
When we are too poor, master shall send away Martine and keep me as
his servant."

Old Mme. Rougon wagged her chin.

"Before being his servant it would be better if you had begun by being
his wife. Why have you not got married? It would have been simpler and
more proper."

And Felicite reminded her how she had come one day to urge this
marriage, in order to put an end to gossip, and how the young girl had
seemed greatly surprised, saying that neither she nor the doctor had
thought of it, but that, notwithstanding, they would get married later
on, if necessary, for there was no hurry.

"Get married; I am quite willing!" cried Clotilde. "You are right,
grandmother."

And turning to Pascal:

"You have told me a hundred times that you would do whatever I wished.
Marry me; do you hear? I will be your wife, and I will stay here. A
wife does not leave her husband."

But he answered only by a gesture, as if he feared that his voice
would betray him, and that he should accept, in a cry of gratitude,
the eternal bond which she had proposed to him. His gesture might
signify a hesitation, a refusal. What was the good of this marriage
_in extremis_, when everything was falling to pieces?

"Those are very fine sentiments, no doubt," returned Felicite. "You
have settled it all in your own little head. But marriage will not
give you an income; and, meantime, you are a great expense to him; you
are the heaviest of his burdens."

The effect which these words had upon Clotilde was extraordinary. She
turned violently to Pascal, her cheeks crimson, her eyes filled with
tears.

"Master, master! is what grandmother has just said true? Has it come
to this, that you regret the money I cost you here?"

Pascal grew still paler; he remained motionless, in an attitude of
utter dejection. But in a far-away voice, as if he were talking to
himself, he murmured:

"I have so much work to do! I should like to go over my envelopes, my
manuscripts, my notes, and complete the work of my life. If I were
alone perhaps I might be able to arrange everything. I would sell La
Souleiade, oh! for a crust of bread, for it is not worth much. I
should shut myself and my papers in a little room. I should work from
morning till night, and I should try not to be too unhappy."

But he avoided her glance; and, agitated as she was, these painful and
stammering utterances were not calculated to satisfy her. She grew
every moment more and more terrified, for she felt that the
irrevocable word was about to be spoken.

"Look at me, master, look me in the face. And I conjure you, be brave,
choose between your work and me, since you say, it seems, that you
send me away that you may work the better."

The moment for the heroic falsehood had come. He lifted his head and
looked her bravely in the face, and with the smile of a dying man who
desires death, recovering his voice of divine goodness, he said:

"How excited you get! Can you not do your duty quietly, like everybody
else? I have a great deal of work to do, and I need to be alone; and
you, dear, you ought to go to your brother. Go then, everything is
ended."

There was a terrible silence for the space of a few seconds. She
looked at him earnestly, hoping that he would change his mind. Was he
really speaking the truth? was he not sacrificing himself in order
that she might be happy? For a moment she had an intuition that this
was the case, as if some subtle breath, emanating from him, had warned
her of it.

"And you are sending me away forever? You will not permit me to come
back to-morrow?"

But he held out bravely; with another smile he seemed to answer that
when one went away like this it was not to come back again on the
following day. She was now completely bewildered; she knew not what to
think. It might be possible that he had chosen work sincerely; that
the man of science had gained the victory over the lover. She grew
still paler, and she waited a little longer, in the terrible silence;
then, slowly, with her air of tender and absolute submission, she
said:

"Very well, master, I will go away whenever you wish, and I will not
return until you send for me."

The die was cast. The irrevocable was accomplished. Each felt that
neither would attempt to recall the decision that had been made; and,
from this instant, every minute that passed would bring nearer the
separation.

Felicite, surprised at not being obliged to say more, at once desired
to fix the time for Clotilde's departure. She applauded herself for
her tenacity; she thought she had gained the victory by main force. It
was now Friday, and it was settled that Clotilde should leave on the
following Sunday. A despatch was even sent to Maxime.

For the past three days the mistral had been blowing. But on this
evening its fury was redoubled, and Martine declared, in accordance
with the popular belief, that it would last for three days longer. The
winds at the end of September, in the valley of the Viorne, are
terrible. So that the servant took care to go into every room in the
house to assure herself that the shutters were securely fastened. When
the mistral blew it caught La Souleiade slantingly, above the roofs of
the houses of Plassans, on the little plateau on which the house was
built. And now it raged and beat against the house, shaking it from
garret to cellar, day and night, without a moment's cessation. The
tiles were blown off, the fastenings of the windows were torn away,
while the wind, entering the crevices, moaned and sobbed wildly
through the house; and the doors, if they were left open for a moment,
through forgetfulness, slammed to with a noise like the report of a
cannon. They might have fancied they were sustaining a siege, so great
were the noise and the discomfort.

It was in this melancholy house shaken by the storm that Pascal, on
the following day, helped Clotilde to make her preparations for her
departure. Old Mme. Rougon was not to return until Sunday, to say
good-by. When Martine was informed of the approaching separation, she
stood still in dumb amazement, and a flash, quickly extinguished,
lighted her eyes; and as they sent her out of the room, saying that
they would not require her assistance in packing the trunks, she
returned to the kitchen and busied herself in her usual occupations,
seeming to ignore the catastrophe which was about to revolutionize
their household of three. But at Pascal's slightest call she would run
so promptly and with such alacrity, her face so bright and so
cheerful, in her zeal to serve him, that she seemed like a young girl.
Pascal did not leave Clotilde for a moment, helping her, desiring to
assure himself that she was taking with her everything she could need.
Two large trunks stood open in the middle of the disordered room;
bundles and articles of clothing lay about everywhere; twenty times
the drawers and the presses had been visited. And in this work, this
anxiety to forget nothing, the painful sinking of the heart which they
both felt was in some measure lessened. They forgot for an instant--he
watching carefully to see that no space was lost, utilizing the
hat-case for the smaller articles of clothing, slipping boxes in between
the folds of the linen; while she, taking down the gowns, folded them
on the bed, waiting to put them last in the top tray. Then, when a
little tired they stood up and found themselves again face to face,
they would smile at each other at first; then choke back the sudden
tears that started at the recollection of the impending and inevitable
misfortune. But though their hearts bled they remained firm. Good God!
was it then true that they were to be no longer together? And then
they heard the wind, the terrible wind, which threatened to blow down
the house.

How many times during this last day did they not go over to the
window, attracted by the storm, wishing that it would sweep away the
world. During these squalls the sun did not cease to shine, the sky
remained constantly blue, but a livid blue, windswept and dusty, and
the sun was a yellow sun, pale and cold. They saw in the distance the
vast white clouds rising from the roads, the trees bending before the
blast, looking as if they were flying all in the same direction, at
the same rate of speed; the whole country parched and exhausted by the
unvarying violence of the wind that blew ceaselessly, with a roar like
thunder. Branches were snapped and whirled out of sight; roofs were
lifted up and carried so far away that they were never afterward
found. Why could not the mistral take them all up together and carry
them off to some unknown land, where they might be happy? The trunks
were almost packed when Pascal went to open one of the shutters that
the wind had blown to, but so fierce a gust swept in through the half
open window that Clotilde had to go to his assistance. Leaning with
all their weight, they were able at last to turn the catch. The
articles of clothing in the room were blown about, and they gathered
up in fragments a little hand mirror which had fallen from a chair.
Was this a sign of approaching death, as the women of the faubourg
said?

In the evening, after a mournful dinner in the bright dining-room,
with its great bouquets of flowers, Pascal said he would retire early.
Clotilde was to leave on the following morning by the ten o'clock
train, and he feared for her the long journey--twenty hours of railway
traveling. But when he had retired he was unable to sleep. At first he
thought it was the wind that kept him awake. The sleeping house was
full of cries, voices of entreaty and voices of anger, mingled
together, accompanied by endless sobbing. Twice he got up and went to
listen at Clotilde's door, but he heard nothing. He went downstairs to
close a door that banged persistently, like misfortune knocking at the
walls. Gusts blew through the dark rooms, and he went to bed again,
shivering and haunted by lugubrious visions.

At six o'clock Martine, fancying she heard her master knocking for her
on the floor of his room, went upstairs. She entered the room with the
alert and excited expression which she had worn for the past two days;
but she stood still, astonished and uneasy, when she saw him lying,
half-dressed, across his bed, haggard, biting the pillow to stifle his
sobs. He got out of bed and tried to finish dressing himself, but a
fresh attack seized him, and, his head giddy and his heart palpitating
to suffocation, recovering from a momentary faintness, he faltered in
agonized tones:

"No, no, I cannot; I suffer too much. I would rather die, die now--"

He recognized Martine, and abandoning himself to his grief, his
strength totally gone, he made his confession to her:

"My poor girl, I suffer too much, my heart is breaking. She is taking
away my heart with her, she is taking away my whole being. I cannot
live without her. I almost died last night. I would be glad to die
before her departure, not to have the anguish of seeing her go away.
Oh, my God! she is going away, and I shall have her no longer, and I
shall be left alone, alone, alone!"

The servant, who had gone upstairs so gaily, turned as pale as wax,
and a hard and bitter look came into her face. For a moment she
watched him clutching the bedclothes convulsively, uttering hoarse
cries of despair, his face pressed against the coverlet. Then, by a
violent effort, she seemed to make up her mind.

"But, monsieur, there is no sense in making trouble for yourself in
this way. It is ridiculous. Since that is how it is, and you cannot do
without mademoiselle, I shall go and tell her what a state you have
let yourself get into."

At these words he got up hastily, staggering still, and, leaning for
support on the back of a chair, he cried:

"I positively forbid you to do so, Martine!"

"A likely thing that I should listen to you, seeing you like that! To
find you some other time half dead, crying your eyes out! No, no! I
shall go to mademoiselle and tell her the truth, and compel her to
remain with us."

But he caught her angrily by the arm and held her fast.

"I command you to keep quiet, do you hear? Or you shall go with her!
Why did you come in? It was this wind that made me ill. That concerns
no one."

Then, yielding to a good-natured impulse, with his usual kindness of
heart, he smiled.

"My poor girl, see how you vex me? Let me act as I ought, for the
happiness of others. And not another word; you would pain me greatly."

Martine's eyes, too, filled with tears. It was just in time that they
made peace, for Clotilde entered almost immediately. She had risen
early, eager to see Pascal, hoping doubtless, up to the last moment,
that he would keep her. Her own eyelids were heavy from want of sleep,
and she looked at him steadily as she entered, with her inquiring air.
But he was still so discomposed that she began to grow uneasy.

"No, indeed, I assure you, I would even have slept well but for the
mistral. I was just telling you so, Martine, was I not?"

The servant confirmed his words by an affirmative nod. And Clotilde,
too, submitted, saying nothing of the night of anguish and mental
conflict she had spent while he, on his side, had been suffering the
pangs of death. Both of the women now docilely obeyed and aided him,
in his heroic self-abnegation.

"What," he continued, opening his desk, "I have something here for
you. There! there are seven hundred francs in that envelope."

And in spite of her exclamations and protestations he persisted in
rendering her an account. Of the six thousand francs obtained by the
sale of the jewels two hundred only had been spent, and he had kept
one hundred to last till the end of the month, with the strict
economy, the penuriousness, which he now displayed. Afterward he would
no doubt sell La Souleiade, he would work, he would be able to
extricate himself from his difficulties. But he would not touch the
five thousand francs which remained, for they were her property, her
own, and she would find them again in the drawer.

"Master, master, you are giving me a great deal of pain--"

"I wish it," he interrupted, "and it is you who are trying to break my
heart. Come, it is half-past seven, I will go and cord your trunks
since they are locked."

When Martine and Clotilde were alone and face to face they looked at
each other for a moment in silence. Ever since the commencement of the
new situation, they had been fully conscious of their secret
antagonism, the open triumph of the young mistress, the half concealed
jealousy of the old servant about her adored master. Now it seemed
that the victory remained with the servant. But in this final moment
their common emotion drew them together.

"Martine, you must not let him eat like a poor man. You promise me
that he shall have wine and meat every day?"

"Have no fear, mademoiselle."

"And the five thousand francs lying there, you know belong to him. You
are not going to let yourselves starve to death, I suppose, with those
there. I want you to treat him very well."

"I tell you that I will make it my business to do so, mademoiselle,
and that monsieur shall want for nothing."

There was a moment's silence. They were still regarding each other.

"And watch him, to see that he does not overwork himself. I am going
away very uneasy; he has not been well for some time past. Take good
care of him."

"Make your mind easy, mademoiselle, I will take care of him."

"Well, I give him into your charge. He will have only you now; and it
is some consolation to me to know that you love him dearly. Love him
with all your strength. Love him for us both."

"Yes, mademoiselle, as much as I can."

Tears came into their eyes; Clotilde spoke again.

"Will you embrace me, Martine?"

"Oh, mademoiselle, very gladly."

They were in each other's arms when Pascal reentered the room. He
pretended not to see them, doubtless afraid of giving way to his
emotion. In an unnaturally loud voice he spoke of the final
preparations for Clotilde's departure, like a man who had a great deal
on his hands and was afraid that the train might be missed. He had
corded the trunks, a man had taken them away in a little wagon, and
they would find them at the station. But it was only eight o'clock,
and they had still two long hours before them. Two hours of mortal
anguish, spent in unoccupied and weary waiting, during which they
tasted a hundred times over the bitterness of parting. The breakfast
took hardly a quarter of an hour. Then they got up, to sit down again.
Their eyes never left the clock. The minutes seemed long as those of a
death watch, throughout the mournful house.

"How the wind blows!" said Clotilde, as a sudden gust made all the
doors creak.

Pascal went over to the window and watched the wild flight of the
storm-blown trees.

"It has increased since morning," he said. "Presently I must see to
the roof, for some of the tiles have been blown away."

Already they had ceased to be one household. They listened in silence
to the furious wind, sweeping everything before it, carrying with it
their life.

Finally Pascal looked for a last time at the clock, and said simply:

"It is time, Clotilde."

She rose from the chair on which she had been sitting. She had for an
instant forgotten that she was going away, and all at once the
dreadful reality came back to her. Once more she looked at him, but he
did not open his arms to keep her. It was over; her hope was dead. And
from this moment her face was like that of one struck with death.

At first they exchanged the usual commonplaces.

"You will write to me, will you not?"

"Certainly, and you must let me hear from you as often as possible."

"Above all, if you should fall ill, send for me at once."

"I promise you that I will do so. But there is no danger. I am very
strong."

Then, when the moment came in which she was to leave this dear house,
Clotilde looked around with unsteady gaze; then she threw herself on
Pascal's breast, she held him for an instant in her arms, faltering:

"I wish to embrace you here, I wish to thank you. Master, it is you
who have made me what I am. As you have often told me, you have
corrected my heredity. What should I have become amid the surroundings
in which Maxime has grown up? Yes, if I am worth anything, it is to
you alone I owe it, you, who transplanted me into this abode of
kindness and affection, where you have brought me up worthy of you.
Now, after having taken me and overwhelmed me with benefits, you send
me away. Be it as you will, you are my master, and I will obey you. I
love you, in spite of all, and I shall always love you."

He pressed her to his heart, answering:

"I desire only your good, I am completing my work."

When they reached the station, Clotilde vowed to herself that she
would one day come back. Old Mme. Rougon was there, very gay and very
brisk, in spite of her eighty-and-odd years. She was triumphant now;
she thought she would have her son Pascal at her mercy. When she saw
them both stupefied with grief she took charge of everything; got the
ticket, registered the baggage, and installed the traveler in a
compartment in which there were only ladies. Then she spoke for a long
time about Maxime, giving instructions and asking to be kept informed
of everything. But the train did not start; there were still five
cruel minutes during which they remained face to face, without
speaking to each other. Then came the end, there were embraces, a
great noise of wheels, and waving of handkerchiefs.

Suddenly Pascal became aware that he was standing alone upon the
platform, while the train was disappearing around a bend in the road.
Then, without listening to his mother, he ran furiously up the slope,
sprang up the stone steps like a young man, and found himself in three
minutes on the terrace of La Souleiade. The mistral was raging there--
a fierce squall which bent the secular cypresses like straws. In the
colorless sky the sun seemed weary of the violence of the wind, which
for six days had been sweeping over its face. And like the wind-blown
trees Pascal stood firm, his garments flapping like banners, his beard
and hair blown about and lashed by the storm. His breath caught by the
wind, his hands pressed upon his heart to quiet its throbbing, he saw
the train flying in the distance across the bare plain, a little train
which the mistral seemed to sweep before it like a dry branch.

XII.


From the day following Clotilde's departure, Pascal shut himself up in
the great empty house. He did not leave it again, ceasing entirely the
rare professional visits which he had still continued to make, living
there with doors and windows closed, in absolute silence and solitude.
Martine had received formal orders to admit no one under any pretext
whatever.

"But your mother, monsieur, Mme. Felicite?"

"My mother, less than any one else; I have my reasons. Tell her that I
am working, that I require to concentrate my thoughts, and that I
request her to excuse me."

Three times in succession old Mme. Rougon had presented herself. She
would storm at the hall door. He would hear her voice rising in anger
as she tried in vain to force her way in. Then the noise would be
stilled, and there would be only a whisper of complaint and plotting
between her and the servant. But not once did he yield, not once did
he lean over the banisters and call to her to come up.

One day Martine ventured to say to him:

"It is very hard, all the same, monsieur, to refuse admittance to
one's mother. The more so, as Mme. Felicite comes with good
intentions, for she knows the straits that monsieur is in, and she
insists only in order to offer her services."

"Money!" he cried, exasperated. "I want no money, do you hear? And
from her less than anybody. I will work, I will earn my own living;
why should I not?"

The question of money, however, began to grow pressing. He obstinately
refused to take another sou from the five thousand francs locked up in
the desk. Now that he was alone, he was completely indifferent to
material things; he would have been satisfied to live on bread and
water; and every time the servant asked him for money to buy wine,
meat, or sweets, he shrugged his shoulders--what was the use? there
remained a crust from the day before, was not that sufficient? But in
her affection for her master, whom she felt to be suffering, the old
servant was heart-broken at this miserliness which exceeded her own;
this utter destitution to which he abandoned himself and the whole
house. The workmen of the faubourgs lived better. Thus it was that for
a whole day a terrible conflict went on within her. Her doglike love
struggled with her love for her money, amassed sou by sou, hidden
away, "making more," as she said. She would rather have parted with a
piece of her flesh. So long as her master had not suffered alone the
idea of touching her treasure had not even occurred to her. And she
displayed extraordinary heroism the morning when, driven to extremity,
seeing her stove cold and the larder empty, she disappeared for an
hour and then returned with provisions and the change of a hundred-
franc note.

Pascal, who just then chanced to come downstairs, asked her in
astonishment where the money had come from, furious already, and
prepared to throw it all into the street, imagining she had applied to
his mother.

"Why, no; why, no, monsieur!" she stammered, "it is not that at all."

And she told him the story that she had prepared.

"Imagine, M. Grandguillot's affairs are going to be settled--or at
least I think so. It occurred to me this morning to go to the
assignee's to inquire, and he told me that you would undoubtedly
recover something, and that I might have a hundred francs now. Yes, he
was even satisfied with a receipt from me. He knows me, and you can
make it all right afterward."

Pascal seemed scarcely surprised. She had calculated correctly that he
would not go out to verify her account. She was relieved, however, to
see with what easy indifference he accepted her story.

"Ah, so much the better!" he said. "You see now that one must never
despair. That will give me time to settle my affairs."

His "affairs" was the sale of La Souleiade, about which he had been
thinking vaguely. But what a grief to leave this house in which
Clotilde had grown up, where they had lived together for nearly
eighteen years! He had taken two or three weeks already to reflect
over the matter. Now that he had the hope of getting back a little of
the money he had lost through the notary's failure, he ceased to think
any more about it. He relapsed into his former indifference, eating
whatever Martine served him, not even noticing the comforts with which
she once more surrounded him, in humble adoration, heart-broken at
giving her money, but very happy to support him now, without his
suspecting that his sustenance came from her.

But Pascal rewarded her very ill. Afterward he would be sorry, and
regret his outbursts. But in the state of feverish desperation in
which he lived this did not prevent him from again flying into a
passion with her, at the slightest cause of dissatisfaction. One
evening, after he had been listening to his mother talking for an
interminable time with her in the kitchen, he cried in sudden fury:

"Martine, I do not wish her to enter La Souleiade again, do you hear?
If you ever let her into the house again I will turn you out!"

She listened to him in surprise. Never, during the thirty-two years in
which she had been in his service, had he threatened to dismiss her in
this way. Big tears came to her eyes.

"Oh, monsieur! you would not have the courage to do it! And I would
not go. I would lie down across the threshold first."

He already regretted his anger, and he said more gently:

"The thing is that I know perfectly well what is going on. She comes
to indoctrinate you, to put you against me, is it not so? Yes, she is
watching my papers; she wishes to steal and destroy everything up
there in the press. I know her; when she wants anything, she never
gives up until she gets it. Well, you can tell her that I am on my
guard; that while I am alive she shall never even come near the press.
And the key is here in my pocket."

In effect, all his former terror--the terror of the scientist who
feels himself surrounded by secret enemies, had returned. Ever since
he had been living alone in the deserted house he had had a feeling of
returning danger, of being constantly watched in secret. The circle
had narrowed, and if he showed such anger at these attempts at
invasion, if he repulsed his mother's assaults, it was because he did
not deceive himself as to her real plans, and he was afraid that he
might yield. If she were there she would gradually take possession of
him, until she had subjugated him completely. Therefore his former
tortures returned, and he passed the days watching; he shut up the
house himself in the evening, and he would often rise during the
night, to assure himself that the locks were not being forced. What he
feared was that the servant, won over by his mother, and believing she
was securing his eternal welfare, would open the door to Mme.
Felicite. In fancy he saw the papers blazing in the fireplace; he kept
constant guard over them, seized again by a morbid love, a torturing
affection for this icy heap of papers, these cold pages of manuscript,
to which he had sacrificed the love of woman, and which he tried to
love sufficiently to be able to forget everything else for them.

Pascal, now that Clotilde was no longer there, threw himself eagerly
into work, trying to submerge himself in it, to lose himself in it. If
he secluded himself, if he did not set foot even in the garden, if he
had had the strength, one day when Martine came up to announce Dr.
Ramond, to answer that he would not receive him, he had, in this
bitter desire for solitude, no other aim than to kill thought by
incessant labor. That poor Ramond, how gladly he would have embraced
him! for he divined clearly the delicacy of feeling that had made him
hasten to console his old master. But why lose an hour? Why risk
emotions and tears which would leave him so weak? From daylight he was
at his table, he spent at it his mornings and his afternoons, extended
often into the evening after the lamp was lighted, and far into the
night. He wished to put his old project into execution--to revise his
whole theory of heredity, employing the documents furnished by his own
family to establish the laws according to which, in a certain group of
human beings, life is distributed and conducted with mathematical
precision from one to another, taking into account the environment--a
vast bible, the genesis of families, of societies, of all humanity. He
hoped that the vastness of such a plan, the effort necessary to
develop so colossal an idea, would take complete possession of him,
restoring to him his health, his faith, his pride in the supreme joy
of the accomplished work. But it was in vain that he threw himself
passionately, persistently, without reserve, into his work; he
succeeded only in fatiguing his body and his mind, without even being
able to fix his thoughts or to put his heart into his work, every day
sicker and more despairing. Had work, then, finally lost its power? He
whose life had been spent in work, who had regarded it as the sole
motor, the benefactor, and the consoler, must he then conclude that to
love and to be loved is beyond all else in the world? Occasionally he
would have great thoughts, he continued to sketch out his new theory
of the equilibrium of forces, demonstrating that what man receives in
sensation he should return in action. How natural, full, and happy
would life be if it could be lived entire, performing its functions
like a well-ordered machine, giving back in power what was consumed in
fuel, maintaining itself in vigor and in beauty by the simultaneous
and logical play of all its organs. He believed physical and
intellectual labor, feeling and reasoning should be in equal
proportions, and never excessive, for excess meant disturbance of the
equilibrium and, consequently, disease. Yes, yes, to begin life over
again and to know how to live it, to dig the earth, to study man, to
love woman, to attain to human perfection, the future city of
universal happiness, through the harmonious working of the entire
being, what a beautiful legacy for a philosophical physician to leave
behind him would this be! And this dream of the future, this theory,
confusedly perceived, filled him with bitterness at the thought that
now his life was a force wasted and lost.

At the very bottom of his grief Pascal had the dominating feeling that
for him life was ended. Regret for Clotilde, sorrow at having her no
longer beside him, the certainty that he would never see her again,
filled him with overwhelming grief. Work had lost its power, and he
would sometimes let his head drop on the page he was writing, and weep
for hours together, unable to summon courage to take up the pen again.
His passion for work, his days of voluntary fatigue, led to terrible
nights, nights of feverish sleeplessness, in which he would stuff the
bedclothes into his mouth to keep from crying out Clotilde's name. She
was everywhere in this mournful house in which he secluded himself. He
saw her again, walking through the rooms, sitting on the chairs,
standing behind the doors. Downstairs, in the dining-room, he could
not sit at table, without seeing her opposite him. In the workroom
upstairs she was still his constant companion, for she, too, had lived
so long secluded in it that her image seemed reflected from
everything; he felt her constantly beside him, he could fancy he saw
her standing before her desk, straight and slender--her delicate face
bent over a pastel. And if he did not leave the house to escape from
the dear and torturing memory it was because he had the certainty that
he should find her everywhere in the garden, too: dreaming on the
terrace; walking with slow steps through the alleys in the pine grove;
sitting under the shade of the plane trees; lulled by the eternal song
of the fountain; lying in the threshing yard at twilight, her gaze
fixed on space, waiting for the stars to come out. But above all,
there existed for him a sacred sanctuary which he could not enter
without trembling--the chamber where she had confessed her love. He
kept the key of it; he had not moved a single object from its place
since the sorrowful morning of her departure; and a skirt which she
had forgotten lay still upon her armchair. He opened his arms wildly
to clasp her shade floating in the soft half light of the room, with
its closed shutters and its walls hung with the old faded pink calico,
of a dawnlike tint.

In the midst of his unremitting toil Pascal had another melancholy
pleasure--Clotilde's letters. She wrote to him regularly twice a week,
long letters of eight or ten pages, in which she described to him all
her daily life. She did not seem to lead a very happy life in Paris.
Maxime, who did not now leave his sick chair, evidently tortured her
with the exactions of a spoiled child and an invalid. She spoke as if
she lived in complete retirement, always waiting on him, so that she
could not even go over to the window to look out on the avenue, along
which rolled the fashionable stream of the promenaders of the Bois;
and from certain of her expressions it could be divined that her
brother, after having entreated her so urgently to go to him,
suspected her already, and had begun to regard her with hatred and
distrust, as he did every one who approached him, in his continual
fear of being made use of and robbed. He did not give her the keys,
treating her like a servant to whom he found it difficult to accustom
himself. Twice she had seen her father, who was, as always, very gay,
and overwhelmed with business; he had been converted to the Republic,
and was at the height of political and financial success. Saccard had
even taken her aside, to sympathize with her, saying that poor Maxime
was really insupportable, and that she would be truly courageous if
she consented to be made his victim. As she could not do everything,
he had even had the kindness to send her, on the following day, the
niece of his hairdresser, a fair-haired, innocent-looking girl of
eighteen, named Rose, who was assisting her now to take care of the
invalid. But Clotilde made no complaint; she affected, on the
contrary, to be perfectly tranquil, contented, and resigned to
everything. Her letters were full of courage, showing neither anger
nor sorrow at the cruel separation, making no desperate appeal to
Pascal's affection to recall her. But between the lines, he could
perceive that she trembled with rebellious anger, that her whole being
yearned for him, that she was ready to commit the folly of returning
to him immediately, at his lightest word.

And this was the one word that Pascal would not write. Everything
would be arranged in time. Maxime would become accustomed to his
sister; the sacrifice must be completed now that it had been begun. A
single line written by him in a moment of weakness, and all the
advantage of the effort he had made would be lost, and their misery
would begin again. Never had Pascal had greater need of courage than
when he was answering Clotilde's letters. At night, burning with
fever, he would toss about, calling on her wildly; then he would get
up and write to her to come back at once. But when day came, and he
had exhausted himself with weeping, his fever abated, and his answer
was always very short, almost cold. He studied every sentence,
beginning the letter over again when he thought he had forgotten
himself. But what a torture, these dreadful letters, so short, so icy,
in which he went against his heart, solely in order to wean her from
him gradually, to take upon himself all the blame, and to make her
believe that she could forget him, since he forgot her. They left him
covered with perspiration, and as exhausted as if he had just
performed some great act of heroism.

One morning toward the end of October, a month after Clotilde's
departure, Pascal had a sudden attack of suffocation. He had had,
several times already, slight attacks, which he attributed to
overwork. But this time the symptoms were so plain that he could not
mistake them--a sharp pain in the region of the heart, extending over
the whole chest and along the left arm, and a dreadful sensation of
oppression and distress, while cold perspiration broke out upon him.
It was an attack of angina pectoris. It lasted hardly more than a
minute, and he was at first more surprised than frightened. With that
blindness which physicians often show where their own health is
concerned, he never suspected that his heart might be affected.

As he was recovering his breath Martine came up to say that Dr. Ramond
was downstairs, and again begged the doctor to see him. And Pascal,
yielding perhaps to an unconscious desire to know the truth, cried:

"Well, let him come up, since he insists upon it. I will be glad to
see him."

The two men embraced each other, and no other allusion was made to the
absent one, to her whose departure had left the house empty, than an
energetic and sad hand clasp.

"You don't know why I have come?" cried Ramond immediately. "It is
about a question of money. Yes, my father-in-law, M. Leveque, the
advocate, whom you know, spoke to me yesterday again about the funds
which you had with the notary Grandguillot. And he advises you
strongly to take some action in the matter, for some persons have
succeeded, he says, in recovering something."

"Yes, I know that that business is being settled," said Pascal.
"Martine has already got two hundred francs out of it, I believe."

"Martine?" said Ramond, looking greatly surprised, "how could she do
that without your intervention? However, will you authorize my
father-in-law to undertake your case? He will see the assignee, and
sift the whole affair, since you have neither the time nor the
inclination to attend to it."

"Certainly, I authorize M. Leveque to do so, and tell him that I thank
him a thousand times."

Then this matter being settled, the young man, remarking the doctor's
pallor, and questioning him as to its cause, Pascal answered with a
smile:

"Imagine, my friend, I have just had an attack of angina pectoris. Oh,
it is not imagination, all the symptoms were there. And stay! since
you are here you shall sound me."

At first Ramond refused, affecting to turn the consultation into a
jest. Could a raw recruit like him venture to pronounce judgment on
his general? But he examined him, notwithstanding, seeing that his
face looked drawn and pained, with a singular look of fright in the
eyes. He ended by auscultating him carefully, keeping his ear pressed
closely to his chest for a considerable time. Several minutes passed
in profound silence.

"Well?" asked Pascal, when the young physician stood up.

The latter did not answer at once. He felt the doctor's eyes looking
straight into his; and as the question had been put to him with quiet
courage, he answered in the same way:

"Well, it is true, I think there is some sclerosis."

"Ah! it was kind of you not to attempt to deceive me," returned the
doctor, smiling. "I feared for an instant that you would tell me an
untruth, and that would have hurt me."

Ramond, listening again, said in an undertone:

"Yes, the beat is strong, the first sound is dull, while the second,
on the contrary, is sharp. It is evident that the apex has descended
and is turned toward the armpit. There is some sclerosis, at least it
is very probable. One may live twenty years with that," he ended,
straightening himself.

"No doubt, sometimes," said Pascal. "At least, unless one chances to
die of a sudden attack."

They talked for some time longer, discussed a remarkable case of
sclerosis of the heart, which they had seen at the hospital at
Plassans. And when the young physician went away, he said that he
would return as soon as he should have news of the Grandguillot
liquidation.

But when he was alone Pascal felt that he was lost. Everything was now
explained: his palpitations for some weeks past, his attacks of
vertigo and suffocation; above all that weakness of the organ, of his
poor heart, overtasked by feeling and by work, that sense of intense
fatigue and impending death, regarding which he could no longer
deceive himself. It was not as yet fear that he experienced, however.
His first thought was that he, too, would have to pay for his
heredity, that sclerosis was the species of degeneration which was to
be his share of the physiological misery, the inevitable inheritance
bequeathed him by his terrible ancestry. In others the neurosis, the
original lesion, had turned to vice or virtue, genius, crime,
drunkenness, sanctity; others again had died of consumption, of
epilepsy, of ataxia; he had lived in his feelings and he would die of
an affection of the heart. And he trembled no longer, he rebelled no
longer against this manifest heredity, fated and inevitable, no doubt.
On the contrary, a feeling of humility took possession of him; the
idea that all revolt against natural laws is bad, that wisdom does not
consist in holding one's self apart, but in resigning one's self to be
only a member of the whole great body. Why, then, was he so unwilling
to belong to his family that it filled him with triumph, that his
heart beat with joy, when he believed himself different from them,
without any community with them? Nothing could be less philosophical.
Only monsters grew apart. And to belong to his family seemed to him in
the end as good and as fine as to belong to any other family, for did
not all families, in the main, resemble one another, was not humanity
everywhere identical with the same amount of good and evil? He came at
last, humbly and gently, even in the face of impending suffering and
death, to accept everything life had to give him.

From this time Pascal lived with the thought that he might die at any
moment. And this helped to perfect his character, to elevate him to a
complete forgetfulness of self. He did not cease to work, but he had
never understood so well how much effort must seek its reward in
itself, the work being always transitory, and remaining of necessity
incomplete. One evening at dinner Martine informed him that Sarteur,
the journeyman hatter, the former inmate of the asylum at the
Tulettes, had just hanged himself. All the evening he thought of this
strange case, of this man whom he had believed he had cured of
homicidal mania by his treatment of hypodermic injections, and who,
seized by a fresh attack, had evidently had sufficient lucidity to
hang himself, instead of springing at the throat of some passer-by. He
again saw him, so gentle, so reasonable, kissing his hands, while he
was advising him to return to his life of healthful labor. What then
was this destructive and transforming force, the desire to murder,
changing to suicide, death performing its task in spite of everything?
With the death of this man his last vestige of pride as a healer
disappeared; and each day when he returned to his work he felt as if
he were only a learner, spelling out his task, constantly seeking the
truth, which as constantly receded from him, assuming ever more
formidable proportions.

But in the midst of his resignation one thought still troubled him--
what would become of Bonhomme, his old horse, if he himself should die
before him? The poor brute, completely blind and his limbs paralyzed,
did not now leave his litter. When his master went to see him,
however, he turned his head, he could feel the two hearty kisses which
were pressed on his nose. All the neighbors shrugged their shoulders
and joked about this old relation whom the doctor would not allow to
be slaughtered. Was he then to be the first to go, with the thought
that the knacker would be called in on the following day. But one
morning, when he entered the stable, Bonhomme did not hear him, did
not raise his head. He was dead; he lay there, with a peaceful
expression, as if relieved that death had come to him so gently. His
master knelt beside him and kissed him again and bade him farewell,
while two big tears rolled down his cheeks.

It was on this day that Pascal saw his neighbor, M. Bellombre, for the
last time. Going over to the window he perceived him in his garden, in
the pale sunshine of early November, taking his accustomed walk; and
the sight of the old professor, living so completely happy in his
solitude, filled him at first with astonishment. He could never have
imagined such a thing possible, as that a man of sixty-nine should
live thus, without wife or child, or even a dog, deriving his selfish
happiness from the joy of living outside of life. Then he recalled his
fits of anger against this man, his sarcasms about his fear of life,
the catastrophes which he had wished might happen to him, the hope
that punishment would come to him, in the shape of some housekeeper,
or some female relation dropping down on him unexpectedly. But no, he
was still as fresh as ever, and Pascal was sure that for a long time
to come he would continue to grow old like this, hard, avaricious,
useless, and happy. And yet he no longer execrated him; he could even
have found it in his heart to pity him, so ridiculous and miserable
did he think him for not being loved. Pascal, who suffered the pangs
of death because he was alone! He whose heart was breaking because he
was too full of others. Rather suffering, suffering only, than this
selfishness, this death of all there is in us of living and human!

In the night which followed Pascal had another attack of angina
pectoris. It lasted for five minutes, and he thought that he would
suffocate without having the strength to call Martine. Then when he
recovered his breath, he did not disturb himself, preferring to speak
to no one of this aggravation of his malady; but he had the certainty
that it was all over with him, that he might not perhaps live a month
longer. His first thought was Clotilde. Should he then never see her
again? and so sharp a pang seized him that he believed another attack
was coming on. Why should he not write to her to come to him? He had
received a letter from her the day before; he would answer it this
morning. Then the thought of the envelopes occurred to him. If he
should die suddenly, his mother would be the mistress and she would
destroy them; and not only the envelopes, but his manuscripts, all his
papers, thirty years of his intelligence and his labor. Thus the crime
which he had so greatly dreaded would be consummated, the crime of
which the fear alone, during his nights of fever, had made him get up
out of bed trembling, his ear on the stretch, listening to hear if
they were forcing open the press. The perspiration broke out upon him,
he saw himself dispossessed, outraged, the ashes of his work thrown to
the four winds. And when his thoughts reverted to Clotilde, he told
himself that everything would be satisfactorily arranged, that he had
only to call her back--she would be here, she would close his eyes,
she would defend his memory. And he sat down to write at once to her,
so that the letter might go by the morning mail.

But when Pascal was seated before the white paper, with the pen
between his fingers, a growing doubt, a feeling of dissatisfaction
with himself, took possession of him. Was not this idea of his papers,
this fine project of providing a guardian for them and saving them, a
suggestion of his weakness, an excuse which he gave himself to bring
back Clotilde, and see her again? Selfishness was at the bottom of it.
He was thinking of himself, not of her. He saw her returning to this
poor house, condemned to nurse a sick old man; and he saw her, above
all, in her grief, in her awful agony, when he should terrify her some
day by dropping down dead at her side. No, no! this was the dreadful
moment which he must spare her, those days of cruel adieus and want
afterward, a sad legacy which he could not leave her without thinking
himself a criminal. Her tranquillity, her happiness only, were of any
consequence, the rest did not matter. He would die in his hole, then,
abandoned, happy to think her happy, to spare her the cruel blow of
his death. As for saving his manuscripts he would perhaps find a means
of doing so, he would try to have the strength to part from them and
give them to Ramond. But even if all his papers were to perish, this
was less of a sacrifice than to resign himself not to see her again,
and he accepted it, and he was willing that nothing of him should
survive, not even his thoughts, provided only that nothing of him
should henceforth trouble her dear existence.

Pascal accordingly proceeded to write one of his usual answers, which,
by a great effort, he purposely made colorless and almost cold.
Clotilde, in her last letter, without complaining of Maxime, had given
it to be understood that her brother had lost his interest in her,
preferring the society of Rose, the niece of Saccard's hairdresser,
the fair-haired young girl with the innocent look. And he suspected
strongly some maneuver of the father: a cunning plan to obtain
possession of the inheritance of the sick man, whose vices, so
precocious formerly, gained new force as his last hour approached. But
in spite of his uneasiness he gave Clotilde very good advice, telling
her that she must make allowance for Maxime's sufferings, that he had
undoubtedly a great deal of affection and gratitude for her, in short
that it was her duty to devote herself to him to the end. When he
signed the letter tears dimmed his sight. It was his death warrant--a
death like that of an old and solitary brute, a death without a kiss,
without the touch of a friendly hand--that he was signing. Never again
would he embrace her. Then doubts assailed him; was he doing right in
leaving her amid such evil surroundings, where he felt that she was in
continual contact with every species of wickedness?

The postman brought the letters and newspapers to La Souleiade every
morning at about nine o'clock; and Pascal, when he wrote to Clotilde,
was accustomed to watch for him, to give him his letter, so as to be
certain that his correspondence was not intercepted. But on this
morning, when he went downstairs to give him the letter he had just
written, he was surprised to receive one from him from Clotilde,
although it was not the usual day for her letters. He allowed his own
to go, however. Then he went upstairs, resumed his seat at his table,
and tore open the envelope.

The letter was short, but its contents filled Pascal with a great joy.

                  *       *       *       *       *

But the sound of footsteps made him control himself. He turned round
and saw Martine, who was saying:

"Dr. Ramond is downstairs."

"Ah! let him come up, let him come up," he said.

It was another piece of good fortune that had come to him. Ramond
cried gaily from the door:

"Victory, master! I have brought you your money--not all, but a good
sum."

And he told the story--an unexpected piece of good luck which his
father-in-law, M. Leveque, had brought to light. The receipts for the
hundred and twenty thousand francs, which constituted Pascal the
personal creditor of Grandguillot, were valueless, since the latter
was insolvent. Salvation was to come from the power of attorney which
the doctor had sent him years before, at his request, that he might
invest all or part of his money in mortgages. As the name of the proxy
was in blank in the document, the notary, as is sometimes done, had
made use of the name of one of his clerks, and eighty thousand francs,
which had been invested in good mortgages, had thus been recovered
through the agency of a worthy man who was not in the secrets of his
employer. If Pascal had taken action in the matter, if he had gone to
the public prosecutor's office and the chamber of notaries, he would
have disentangled the matter long before. However, he had recovered a
sure income of four thousand francs.

He seized the young man's hands and pressed them, smiling, his eyes
still moist with tears.

"Ah! my friend, if you knew how happy I am! This letter of Clotilde's
has brought me a great happiness. Yes, I was going to send for her;
but the thought of my poverty, of the privations she would have to
endure here, spoiled for me the joy of her return. And now fortune has
come back, at least enough to set up my little establishment again!"

In the expansion of his feelings he held out the letter to Ramond, and
forced him to read it. Then when the young man gave it back to him,
smiling, comprehending the doctor's emotion, and profoundly touched by
it, yielding to an overpowering need of affection, he caught him in
his arms, like a comrade, a brother. The two men kissed each other
vigorously on either cheek.

"Come, since good fortune has sent you, I am going to ask another
service from you. You know I distrust every one around me, even my old
housekeeper. Will you take my despatch to the telegraph office!"

He sat down again at the table, and wrote simply, "I await you; start
to-night."

"Let me see," he said, "to-day is the 6th of November, is it not? It
is now near ten o'clock; she will have my despatch at noon. That will
give her time enough to pack her trunks and to take the eight o'clock
express this evening, which will bring her to Marseilles in time for
breakfast. But as there is no train which connects with it, she cannot
be here until to-morrow, the 7th, at five o'clock."

After folding the despatch he rose:

"My God, at five o'clock to-morrow! How long to wait still! What shall
I do with myself until then?"

Then a sudden recollection filled him with anxiety, and he became
grave.

"Ramond, my comrade, will you give me a great proof of your friendship
by being perfectly frank with me?"

"How so, master?"

"Ah, you understand me very well. The other day you examined me. Do
you think I can live another year?"

He fixed his eyes on the young man as he spoke, compelling him to look
at him. Ramond evaded a direct answer, however, with a jest--was it
really a physician who put such a question?

"Let us be serious, Ramond, I beg of you."

Then Ramond answered in all sincerity that, in his opinion, the doctor
might very justly entertain the hope of living another year. He gave
his reasons--the comparatively slight progress which the sclerosis had
made, and the absolute soundness of the other organs. Of course they
must make allowance for what they did not and could not know, for a
sudden accident was always possible. And the two men discussed the
case as if they been in consultation at the bedside of a patient,
weighing the pros and cons, each stating his views and prognosticating
a fatal termination, in accordance with the symptoms as defined by the
best authorities.

Pascal, as if it were some one else who was in question, had recovered
all his composure and his heroic self-forgetfulness.

"Yes," he murmured at last, "you are right; a year of life is still
possible. Ah, my friend, how I wish I might live two years; a mad
wish, no doubt, an eternity of joy. And yet, two years, that would not
be impossible. I had a very curious case once, a wheelwright of the
faubourg, who lived for four years, giving the lie to all my
prognostications. Two years, two years, I will live two years! I must
live two years!"

Ramond sat with bent head, without answering. He was beginning to be
uneasy, fearing that he had shown himself too optimistic; and the
doctor's joy disquieted and grieved him, as if this very exaltation,
this disturbance of a once strong brain, warned him of a secret and
imminent danger.

"Did you not wish to send that despatch at once?" he said.

"Yes, yes, go quickly, my good Ramond, and come back again to see us
the day after to-morrow. She will be here then, and I want you to come
and embrace us."

The day was long, and the following morning, at about four o'clock,
shortly after Pascal had fallen asleep, after a happy vigil filled
with hopes and dreams, he was wakened by a dreadful attack. He felt as
if an enormous weight, as if the whole house, had fallen down upon his
chest, so that the thorax, flattened down, touched the back. He could
not breathe; the pain reached the shoulders, then the neck, and
paralyzed the left arm. But he was perfectly conscious; he had the
feeling that his heart was about to stop, that life was about to leave
him, in the dreadful oppression, like that of a vise, which was
suffocating him. Before the attack reached its height he had the
strength to rise and to knock on the floor with a stick for Martine.
Then he fell back on his bed, unable to speak or to move, and covered
with a cold sweat.

Martine, fortunately, in the profound silence of the empty house,
heard the knock. She dressed herself, wrapped a shawl about her, and
went upstairs, carrying her candle. The darkness was still profound;
dawn was about to break. And when she perceived her master, whose eyes
alone seemed living, looking at her with locked jaws, speechless, his
face distorted by pain, she was awed and terrified, and she could only
rush toward the bed crying:

"My God! My God! what is the matter, monsieur? Answer me, monsieur,
you frighten me!"

For a full minute Pascal struggled in vain to recover his breath.
Then, the viselike pressure on his chest relaxing slowly, he murmured
in a faint voice:

"The five thousand francs in the desk are Clotilde's. Tell her that
the affair of the notary is settled, that she will recover from it
enough to live upon."

Then Martine, who had listened to him in open-mouthed wonder,
confessed the falsehood she had told him, ignorant of the good news
that had been brought by Ramond.

"Monsieur, you must forgive me; I told you an untruth. But it would be
wrong to deceive you longer. When I saw you alone and so unhappy, I
took some of my own money."

"My poor girl, you did that!"

"Oh, I had some hope that monsieur would return it to me one day."

By this time the attack had passed off, and he was able to turn his
head and look at her. He was amazed and moved. What was passing in the
heart of this avaricious old maid, who for thirty years had been
saving up her treasure painfully, who had never taken a sou from it,
either for herself or for any one else? He did not yet comprehend, but
he wished to show himself kind and grateful.

"You are a good woman, Martine. All that will be returned to you. I
truly think I am going to die--"

She did not allow him to finish, her whole being rose up in rebellious
protest.

"Die; you, monsieur! Die before me! I do not wish it. I will not let
you die!"

She threw herself on her knees beside the bed; she caught him wildly
in her arms, feeling him, to see if he suffered, holding him as if she
thought that death would not dare to take him from her.

"You must tell me what is the matter with you. I will take care of
you. I will save you. If it were necessary to give my life for you, I
would give it, monsieur. I will sit up day and night with you. I am
strong still; I will be stronger than the disease, you shall see. To
die! to die! oh, no, it cannot be! The good God cannot wish so great
an injustice. I have prayed so much in my life that he ought to listen
to me a little now, and he will grant my prayer, monsieur; he will
save you."

Pascal looked at her, listened to her, and a sudden light broke in
upon his mind. She loved him, this miserable woman; she had always
loved him. He thought of her thirty years of blind devotion, her mute
adoration, when she had waited upon him, on her knees, as it were,
when she was young; her secret jealousy of Clotilde later; what she
must have secretly suffered all that time! And she was here on her
knees now again, beside his deathbed; her hair gray; her eyes the
color of ashes in her pale nun-like face, dulled by her solitary life.
And he felt that she was unconscious of it all; that she did not even
know with what sort of love she loved him, loving him only for the
happiness of loving him: of being with him, and of waiting on him.

Tears rose to Pascal's eyes; a dolorous pity and an infinite human
tenderness flowed from his poor, half-broken heart.

"My poor girl," he said, "you are the best of girls. Come, embrace me,
as you love me, with all your strength."

She, too, sobbed. She let her gray head, her face worn by her long
servitude, fall on her master's breast. Wildly she kissed him, putting
all her life into the kiss.

"There, let us not give way to emotion, for you see we can do nothing;
this will be the end, just the same. If you wish me to love you, obey
me. Now that I am better, that I can breathe easier, do me the favor
to run to Dr. Ramond's. Waken him and bring him back with you."

She was leaving the room when he called to her, seized by a sudden
fear.

"And remember, I forbid you to go to inform my mother."

She turned back, embarrassed, and in a voice of entreaty, said:

"Oh, monsieur, Mme. Felicite has made me promise so often--"

But he was inflexible. All his life he had treated his mother with
deference, and he thought he had acquired the right to defend himself
against her in the hour of his death. He would not let the servant go
until she had promised him that she would be silent. Then he smiled
once more.

"Go quickly. Oh, you will see me again; it will not be yet."

Day broke at last, the melancholy dawn of the pale November day.
Pascal had had the shutters opened, and when he was left alone he
watched the brightening dawn, doubtless that of his last day of life.
It had rained the night before, and the mild sun was still veiled by
clouds. From the plane trees came the morning carols of the birds,
while far away in the sleeping country a locomotive whistled with a
prolonged moan. And he was alone; alone in the great melancholy house,
whose emptiness he felt around him, whose silence he heard. The light
slowly increased, and he watched the patches it made on the
window-panes broadening and brightening. Then the candle paled in the
growing light, and the whole room became visible. And with the dawn, as
he had anticipated, came relief. The sight of the familiar objects
around him brought him consolation.

But Pascal, although the attack had passed away, still suffered
horribly. A sharp pain remained in the hollow of his chest, and his
left arm, benumbed, hung from his shoulder like lead. In his long
waiting for the help that Martine had gone to bring, he had reflected
on the suffering which made the flesh cry out. And he found that he
was resigned; he no longer felt the rebelliousness which the mere
sight of physical pain had formerly awakened in him. It had
exasperated him, as if it had been a monstrous and useless cruelty of
nature. In his doubts as a physician, he had attended his patients
only to combat it, and to relieve it. If he ended by accepting it, now
that he himself suffered its horrible torture, was it that he had
risen one degree higher in his faith of life, to that serene height
whence life appeared altogether good, even with the fatal condition of
suffering attached to it; suffering which is perhaps its spring? Yes,
to live all of life, to live it and to suffer it all without
rebellion, without believing that it is made better by being made
painless, this presented itself clearly to his dying eyes, as the
greatest courage and the greatest wisdom. And to cheat pain while he
waited, he reviewed his latest theories; he dreamed of a means of
utilizing suffering by transforming it into action, into work. If it
be true that man feels pain more acutely according as he rises in the
scale of civilization, it is also certain that he becomes stronger
through it, better armed against it, more capable of resisting it. The
organ, the brain which works, develops and grows stronger, provided
the equilibrium between the sensations which it receives and the work
which it gives back be not broken. Might not one hope, then, for a
humanity in which the amount of work accomplished would so exactly
equal the sum of sensations received, that suffering would be utilized
and, as it were, abolished?

The sun had risen, and Pascal was confusedly revolving these distant
hopes in his mind, in the drowsiness produced by his disease, when he
felt a new attack coming on. He had a moment of cruel anxiety--was
this the end? Was he going to die alone? But at this instant hurried
footsteps mounted the stairs, and a moment later Ramond entered,
followed by Martine. And the patient had time to say before the attack
began:

"Quick! quick! a hypodermic injection of pure water."

Unfortunately the doctor had to look for the little syringe and then
to prepare everything. This occupied some minutes, and the attack was
terrible. He followed its progress with anxiety--the face becoming
distorted, the lips growing livid. Then when he had given the
injection, he observed that the phenomena, for a moment stationary,
slowly diminished in intensity. Once more the catastrophe was averted.

As soon as he recovered his breath Pascal, glancing at the clock, said
in his calm, faint voice:

"My friend, it is seven o'clock--in twelve hours, at seven o'clock
to-night, I shall be dead."

And as the young man was about to protest, to argue the question,
"No," he resumed, "do not try to deceive me. You have witnessed the
attack. You know what it means as well as I do. Everything will now
proceed with mathematical exactness; and, hour by hour, I could
describe to you the phases of the disease."

He stopped, gasped for breath, and then added:

"And then, all is well; I am content. Clotilde will be here at five;
all I ask is to see her and to die in her arms."

A few moments later, however, he experienced a sensible improvement.
The effect of the injection seemed truly miraculous; and he was able
to sit up in bed, his back resting against the pillows. He spoke
clearly, and with more ease, and never had the lucidity of his mind
appeared greater.

"You know, master," said, Ramond, "that I will not leave you. I have
told my wife, and we will spend the day together; and, whatever you
may say to the contrary, I am very confident that it will not be the
last. You will let me make myself at home, here, will you not?"

Pascal smiled, and gave orders to Martine to go and prepare breakfast
for Ramond, saying that if they needed her they would call her. And
the two men remained alone, conversing with friendly intimacy; the one
with his white hair and long white beard, lying down, discoursing like
a sage, the other sitting at his bedside, listening with the respect
of a disciple.

"In truth," murmured the master, as if he were speaking to himself,
"the effect of those injections is extraordinary."

Then in a stronger voice, he said almost gaily:

"My friend Ramond, it may not be a very great present that I am giving
you, but I am going to leave you my manuscripts. Yes, Clotilde has
orders to send them to you when I shall be no more. Look through them,
and you will perhaps find among them things that are not so very bad.
If you get a good idea from them some day--well, that will be so much
the better for the world."

And then he made his scientific testament. He was clearly conscious
that he had been himself only a solitary pioneer, a precursor,
planning theories which he tried to put in practise, but which failed
because of the imperfection of his method. He recalled his enthusiasm
when he believed he had discovered, in his injections of nerve
substance, the universal panacea, then his disappointments, his fits
of despair, the shocking death of Lafouasse, consumption carrying off
Valentin in spite of all his efforts, madness again conquering Sarteur
and causing him to hang himself. So that he would depart full of
doubt, having no longer the confidence necessary to the physician, and
so enamored of life that he had ended by putting all his faith in it,
certain that it must draw from itself alone its health and strength.
But he did not wish to close up the future; he was glad, on the
contrary, to bequeath his hypotheses to the younger generation. Every
twenty years theories changed; established truths only, on which
science continued to build, remained unshaken. Even if he had only the
merit of giving to science a momentary hypothesis, his work would not
be lost, for progress consisted assuredly in the effort, in the onward
march of the intellect.

And then who could say that he had died in vain, troubled and weary,
his hopes concerning the injections unrealized--other workers would
come, young, ardent, confident, who would take up the idea, elucidate
it, expand it. And perhaps a new epoch, a new world would date from
this.

"Ah, my dear Ramond," he continued, "if one could only live life over
again. Yes, I would take up my idea again, for I have been struck
lately by the singular efficacy of injections even of pure water. It
is not the liquid, then, that matters, but simply the mechanical
action. During the last month I have written a great deal on that
subject. You will find some curious notes and observations there. In
short, I should be inclined to put all my faith in work, to place
health in the harmonious working of all the organs, a sort of dynamic
therapeutics, if I may venture to use the expression."

He had gradually grown excited, forgetting his approaching death in
his ardent curiosity about life. And he sketched, with broad strokes,
his last theory. Man was surrounded by a medium--nature--which
irritated by perpetual contact the sensitive extremities of the
nerves. Hence the action, not only of the senses, but of the entire
surface of the body, external and internal. For it was these
sensations which, reverberating in the brain, in the marrow, and in
the nervous centers, were there converted into tonicity, movements,
and thoughts; and he was convinced that health consisted in the
natural progress of this work, in receiving sensations, and in giving
them back in thoughts and in actions, the human machine being thus fed
by the regular play of the organs. Work thus became the great law, the
regulator of the living universe. Hence it became necessary if the
equilibrium were broken, if the external excitations ceased to be
sufficient, for therapeutics to create artificial excitations, in
order to reestablish the tonicity which is the state of perfect
health. And he dreamed of a whole new system of treatment--suggestion,
the all-powerful authority of the physician, for the senses;
electricity, friction, massage for the skin and for the tendons; diet
for the stomach; air cures on high plateaus for the lungs, and,
finally, transfusion, injections of distilled water, for the
circulatory system. It was the undeniable and purely mechanical action
of these latter that had put him on the track; all he did now was to
extend the hypothesis, impelled by his generalizing spirit; he saw the
world saved anew in this perfect equilibrium, as much work given as
sensation received, the balance of the world restored by unceasing
labor.

Here he burst into a frank laugh.

"There! I have started off again. I, who was firmly convinced that the
only wisdom was not to interfere, to let nature take its course. Ah,
what an incorrigible old fool I am!"

Ramond caught his hands in an outburst of admiration and affection.

"Master, master! it is of enthusiasm, of folly like yours that genius
is made. Have no fear, I have listened to you, I will endeavor to be
worthy of the heritage you leave; and I think, with you, that perhaps
the great future lies entirely there."

In the sad and quiet room Pascal began to speak again, with the
courageous tranquillity of a dying philosopher giving his last lesson.
He now reviewed his personal observations; he said that he had often
cured himself by work, regular and methodical work, not carried to
excess. Eleven o'clock struck; he urged Ramond to take his breakfast,
and he continued the conversation, soaring to lofty and distant
heights, while Martine served the meal. The sun had at last burst
through the morning mists, a sun still half-veiled in clouds, and
mild, whose golden light warmed the room. Presently, after taking a
few sips of milk, Pascal remained silent.

At this moment the young physician was eating a pear.

"Are you in pain again?" he asked.

"No, no; finish."

But he could not deceive Ramond. It was an attack, and a terrible one.
The suffocation came with the swiftness of a thunderbolt, and he fell
back on the pillow, his face already blue. He clutched at the
bedclothes to support himself, to raise the dreadful weight which
oppressed his chest. Terrified, livid, he kept his wide open eyes
fixed upon the clock, with a dreadful expression of despair and grief;
and for ten minutes it seemed as if every moment must be his last.

Ramond had immediately given him a hypodermic injection. The relief
was slow to come, the efficacy less than before.

When Pascal revived, large tears stood in his eyes. He did not speak
now, he wept. Presently, looking at the clock with his darkening
vision, he said:

"My friend, I shall die at four o'clock; I shall not see her."

And as his young colleague, in order to divert his thoughts, declared,
in spite of appearances, that the end was not so near, Pascal, again
becoming enthusiastic, wished to give him a last lesson, based on
direct observation. He had, as it happened, attended several cases
similar to his own, and he remembered especially to have dissected at
the hospital the heart of a poor old man affected with sclerosis.

"I can see it--my heart. It is the color of a dead leaf; its fibers
are brittle, wasted, one would say, although it has augmented slightly
in volume. The inflammatory process has hardened it; it would be
difficult to cut--"

He continued in a lower voice. A little before, he had felt his heart
growing weaker, its contractions becoming feebler and slower. Instead
of the normal jet of blood there now issued from the aorta only a red
froth. Back of it all the veins were engorged with black blood; the
suffocation increased, according as the lift and force pump, the
regulator of the whole machine, moved more slowly. And after the
injection he had been able to follow in spite of his suffering the
gradual reviving of the organ as the stimulus set it beating again,
removing the black venous blood, and sending life into it anew, with
the red arterial blood. But the attack would return as soon as the
mechanical effect of the injection should cease. He could predict it
almost within a few minutes. Thanks to the injections he would have
three attacks more. The third would carry him off; he would die at
four o'clock.

Then, while his voice grew gradually weaker, in a last outburst of
enthusiasm, he apostrophized the courage of the heart, that persistent
life maker, working ceaselessly, even during sleep, when the other
organs rested.

"Ah, brave heart! how heroically you struggle! What faithful, what
generous muscles, never wearied! You have loved too much, you have
beat too fast in the past months, and that is why you are breaking
now, brave heart, who do not wish to die, and who strive rebelliously
to beat still!"

But now the first of the attacks which had been announced came on.
Pascal came out of this panting, haggard, his speech sibilant and
painful. Low moans escaped him, in spite of his courage. Good God!
would this torture never end? And yet his most ardent desire was to
prolong his agony, to live long enough to embrace Clotilde a last
time. If he might only be deceiving himself, as Ramond persisted in
declaring. If he might only live until five o'clock. His eyes again
turned to the clock, they never now left the hands, every minute
seeming an eternity. They marked three o'clock. Then half-past three.
Ah, God! only two hours of life, two hours more of life. The sun was
already sinking toward the horizon; a great calm descended from the
pale winter sky, and he heard at intervals the whistles of the distant
locomotives crossing the bare plain. The train that was passing now
was the one going to the Tulettes; the other, the one coming from
Marseilles, would it never arrive, then!

At twenty minutes to four Pascal signed to Ramond to approach. He
could no longer speak loud enough to be heard.

"You see, in order that I might live until six o'clock, the pulse
should be stronger. I have still some hope, however, but the second
movement is almost imperceptible, the heart will soon cease to beat."

And in faint, despairing accents he called on Clotilde again and
again. The immeasurable grief which he felt at not being able to see
her again broke forth in this faltering and agonized appeal. Then his
anxiety about his manuscripts returned, an ardent entreaty shone in
his eyes, until at last he found the strength to falter again:

"Do not leave me; the key is under my pillow; tell Clotilde to take
it; she has my directions."

At ten minutes to four another hypodermic injection was given, but
without effect. And just as four o'clock was striking, the second
attack declared itself. Suddenly, after a fit of suffocation, he threw
himself out of bed; he desired to rise, to walk, in a last revival of
his strength. A need of space, of light, of air, urged him toward the
skies. Then there came to him an irresistible appeal from life, his
whole life, from the adjoining workroom, where he had spent his days.
And he went there, staggering, suffocating, bending to the left side,
supporting himself by the furniture.

Dr. Ramond precipitated himself quickly toward him to stop him,
crying:

"Master, master! lie down again, I entreat you!"

But Pascal paid no heed to him, obstinately determined to die on his
feet. The desire to live, the heroic idea of work, alone survived in
him, carrying him onward bodily. He faltered hoarsely:

"No, no--out there, out there--"

His friend was obliged to support him, and he walked thus, stumbling
and haggard, to the end of the workroom, and dropped into his chair
beside his table, on which an unfinished page still lay among a
confusion of papers and books.

Here he gasped for breath and his eyes closed. After a moment he
opened them again, while his hands groped about, seeking his work, no
doubt. They encountered the genealogical tree in the midst of other
papers scattered about. Only two days before he had corrected some
dates in it. He recognized it, and drawing it toward him, spread it
out.

"Master, master! you will kill yourself!" cried Ramond, overcome with
pity and admiration at this extraordinary spectacle.

Pascal did not listen, did not hear. He felt a pencil under his
fingers. He took it and bent over the tree, as if his dying eyes no
longer saw. The name of Maxime arrested his attention, and he wrote:
"Died of ataxia in 1873," in the certainty that his nephew would not
live through the year. Then Clotilde's name, beside it, struck him and
he completed the note thus: "Has a son, by her Uncle Pascal, in 1874."
But it was his own name that he sought wearily and confusedly. When he
at last found it his hand grew firmer, and he fini

XIII.


It was not until after breakfast, at about one o'clock, that Clotilde
received the despatch. On this day it had chanced that she had
quarreled with her brother Maxime, who, taking advantage of his
privileges as an invalid, had tormented her more and more every day by
his unreasonable caprices and his outbursts of ill temper. In short,
her visit to him had not proved a success. He found that she was too
simple and too serious to cheer him; and he had preferred, of late,
the society of Rose, the fair-haired young girl, with the innocent
look, who amused him. So that when his sister told him that their
uncle had sent for her, and that she was going away, he gave his
approval at once, and although he asked her to return as soon as she
should have settled her affairs at home, he did so only with the
desire of showing himself amiable, and he did not press the
invitation.

Clotilde spent the afternoon in packing her trunks. In the feverish
excitement of so sudden a decision she had thought of nothing but the
joy of her return. But after the hurry of dinner was over, after she
had said good-by to her brother, after the interminable drive in a
hackney coach along the avenue of the Bois de Boulogne to the Lyons
railway station, when she found herself in the ladies' compartment,
starting on the long journey on a cold and rainy November night,
already rolling away from Paris, her excitement began to abate, and
reflections forced their way into her mind and began to trouble her.
Why this brief and urgent despatch: "I await you; start this evening."
Doubtless it was the answer to her letter; but she knew how greatly
Pascal had desired that she should remain in Paris, where he thought
she was happy, and she was astonished at his hasty summons. She had
not expected a despatch, but a letter, arranging for her return a few
weeks later. There must be something else, then; perhaps he was ill
and felt a desire, a longing to see her again at once. And from this
time forward this fear seized her with the force of a presentiment,
and grew stronger and stronger, until it soon took complete possession
of her.

All night long the rain beat furiously against the windows of the
train while they were crossing the plains of Burgundy, and did not
cease until they reached Macon. When they had passed Lyons the day
broke. Clotilde had Pascal's letters with her, and she had waited
impatiently for the daylight that she might read again carefully these
letters, the writing of which had seemed changed to her. And noticing
the unsteady characters, the breaks in the words, she felt a chill at
her heart. He was ill, very ill--she had become certain of this now,
by a divination in which there was less of reasoning than of subtle
prescience. And the rest of the journey seemed terribly long, for her
anguish increased in proportion as she approached its termination. And
worse than all, arriving at Marseilles at half-past twelve, there was
no train for Plassans until twenty minutes past three. Three long
hours of waiting! She breakfasted at the buffet in the railway
station, eating hurriedly, as if she was afraid of missing this train;
then she dragged herself into the dusty garden, going from bench to
bench in the pale, mild sunshine, among omnibuses and hackney coaches.
At last she was once more in the train, which stopped at every little
way station. When they were approaching Plassans she put her head out
of the window eagerly, longing to see the town again after her short
absence of two months. It seemed to her as if she had been away for
twenty years, and that everything must be changed. When the train was
leaving the little station of Sainte-Marthe her emotion reached its
height when, leaning out, she saw in the distance La Souleiade with
the two secular cypresses on the terrace, which could be seen three
leagues off.

It was five o'clock, and twilight was already falling. The train
stopped, and Clotilde descended. But it was a surprise and a keen
grief to her not to see Pascal waiting for her on the platform. She
had been saying to herself since they had left Lyons: "If I do not see
him at once, on the arrival of the train, it will be because he is
ill." He might be in the waiting-room, however, or with a carriage
outside. She hurried forward, but she saw no one but Father Durieu, a
driver whom the doctor was in the habit of employing. She questioned
him eagerly. The old man, a taciturn Provencal, was in no haste to
answer. His wagon was there, and he asked her for the checks for her
luggage, wishing to see about the trunks before anything else. In a
trembling voice she repeated her question:

"Is everybody well, Father Durieu?"

"Yes, mademoiselle."

And she was obliged to put question after question to him before she
succeeded in eliciting the information that it was Martine who had
told him, at about six o'clock the day before, to be at the station
with his wagon, in time to meet the train. He had not seen the doctor,
no one had seen him, for two months past. It might very well be since
he was not here that he had been obliged to take to his bed, for there
was a report in the town that he was not very well.

"Wait until I get the luggage, mademoiselle," he ended, "there is room
for you on the seat."

"No, Father Durieu, it would be too long to wait. I will walk."

She ascended the slope rapidly. Her heart was so tightened that she
could scarcely breathe. The sun had sunk behind the hills of
Sainte-Marthe, and a fine mist was falling from the chill gray November
sky, and as she took the road to Les Fenouilleres she caught another
glimpse of La Souleiade, which struck a chill to her heart--the front of
the house, with all its shutters closed, and wearing a look of
abandonment and desolation in the melancholy twilight.

But Clotilde received the final and terrible blow when she saw Ramond
standing at the hall door, apparently waiting for her. He had indeed
been watching for her, and had come downstairs to break the dreadful
news gently to her. She arrived out of breath; she had crossed the
quincunx of plane trees near the fountain to shorten the way, and on
seeing the young man there instead of Pascal, whom she had in spite of
everything expected to see, she had a presentiment of overwhelming
ruin, of irreparable misfortune. Ramond was pale and agitated,
notwithstanding the effort he made to control his feelings. At the
first moment he could not find a word to say, but waited to be
questioned. Clotilde, who was herself suffocating, said nothing. And
they entered the house thus; he led her to the dining-room, where they
remained for a few seconds, face to face, in mute anguish.

"He is ill, is he not?" she at last faltered.

"Yes," he said, "he is ill."

"I knew it at once when I saw you," she replied. "I knew when he was
not here that he must be ill. He is very ill, is he not?" she
persisted.

As he did not answer but grew still paler, she looked at him fixedly.
And on the instant she saw the shadow of death upon him; on his hands
that still trembled, that had assisted the dying man; on his sad face;
in his troubled eyes, which still retained the reflection of the death
agony; in the neglected and disordered appearance of the physician
who, for twelve hours, had maintained an unavailing struggle against
death.

She gave a loud cry:

"He is dead!"

She tottered, and fell fainting into the arms of Ramond, who with a
great sob pressed her in a brotherly embrace. And thus they wept on
each other's neck.

When he had seated her in a chair, and she was able to speak, he said:

"It was I who took the despatch you received to the telegraph office
yesterday, at half-past ten o'clock. He was so happy, so full of hope!
He was forming plans for the future--a year, two years of life. And
this morning, at four o'clock, he had the first attack, and he sent
for me. He saw at once that he was doomed, but he expected to last
until six o'clock, to live long enough to see you again. But the
disease progressed too rapidly. He described its progress to me,
minute by minute, like a professor in the dissecting room. He died
with your name upon his lips, calm, but full of anguish, like a hero."

Clotilde listened, her eyes drowned in tears which flowed endlessly.
Every word of the relation of this piteous and stoical death
penetrated her heart and stamped itself there. She reconstructed every
hour of the dreadful day. She followed to its close its grand and
mournful drama. She would live it over in her thoughts forever.

But her despairing grief overflowed when Martine, who had entered the
room a moment before, said in a harsh voice:

"Ah, mademoiselle has good reason to cry! for if monsieur is dead,
mademoiselle is to blame for it."

The old servant stood apart, near the door of her kitchen, in such a
passion of angry grief, because they had taken her master from her,
because they had killed him, that she did not even try to find a word
of welcome or consolation for this child whom she had brought up. And
without calculating the consequences of her indiscretion, the grief or
the joy which she might cause, she relieved herself by telling all she
knew.

"Yes, if monsieur has died, it is because mademoiselle went away."

From the depths of her overpowering grief Clotilde protested. She had
expected to see Martine weeping with her, like Ramond, and she was
surprised to feel that she was an enemy.

"Why, it was he who would not let me stay, who insisted upon my going
away," she said.

"Oh, well! mademoiselle must have been willing to go or she would have
been more clear-sighted. The night before your departure I found
monsieur half-suffocated with grief; and when I wished to inform
mademoiselle, he himself prevented me; he had such courage. Then I
could see it all, after mademoiselle had gone. Every night it was the
same thing over again, and he could hardly keep from writing to you to
come back. In short, he died of it, that is the pure truth."

A great light broke in on Clotilde's mind, making her at the same time
very happy and very wretched. Good God! what she had suspected for a
moment, was then true. Afterward she had been convinced, seeing
Pascal's angry persistence, that he was speaking the truth; that
between her and work he had chosen work sincerely, like a man of
science with whom love of work has gained the victory over the love of
woman. And yet he had not spoken the truth; he had carried his
devotion, his self-forgetfulness to the point of immolating himself to
what he believed to be her happiness. And the misery of things willed
that he should have been mistaken, that he should have thus
consummated the unhappiness of both.

Clotilde again protested wildly:

"But how could I have known? I obeyed; I put all my love in my
obedience."

"Ah," cried Martine again, "it seems to me that I should have
guessed."

Ramond interposed gently. He took Clotilde's hands once more in his,
and explained to her that grief might indeed have hastened the fatal
issue, but that the master had unhappily been doomed for some time
past. The affection of the heart from which he had suffered must have
been of long standing--a great deal of overwork, a certain part of
heredity, and, finally, his late absorbing love, and the poor heart
had broken.

"Let us go upstairs," said Clotilde simply. "I wish to see him."

Upstairs in the death-chamber the blinds were closed, shutting out
even the melancholy twilight. On a little table at the foot of the bed
burned two tapers in two candlesticks. And they cast a pale yellow
light on Pascal's form extended on the bed, the feet close together,
the hands folded on the breast. The eyes had been piously closed. The
face, of a bluish hue still, but already looking calm and peaceful,
framed by the flowing white hair and beard, seemed asleep. He had been
dead scarcely an hour and a half, yet already infinite serenity,
eternal silence, eternal repose, had begun.

Seeing him thus, at the thought that he no longer heard her, that he
no longer saw her, that she was alone now, that she was to kiss him
for the last time, and then lose him forever, Clotilde, in an outburst
of grief, threw herself upon the bed, and in broken accents of
passionate tenderness cried:

"Oh, master, master, master--"

She pressed her lips to the dead man's forehead, and, feeling it still
warm with life, she had a momentary illusion: she fancied that he felt
this last caress, so cruelly awaited. Did he not smile in his
immobility, happy at last, and able to die, now that he felt her here
beside him? Then, overcome by the dreadful reality, she burst again
into wild sobs.

Martine entered, bringing a lamp, which she placed on a corner of the
chimney-piece, and she heard Ramond, who was watching Clotilde,
disquieted at seeing her passionate grief, say:

"I shall take you away from the room if you give way like this.
Consider that you have some one else to think of now."

The servant had been surprised at certain words which she had
overheard by chance during the day. Suddenly she understood, and she
turned paler even than before, and on her way out of the room, she
stopped at the door to hear more.

"The key of the press is under his pillow," said Ramond, lowering his
voice; "he told me repeatedly to tell you so. You know what you have
to do?"

Clotilde made an effort to remember and to answer.

"What I have to do? About the papers, is it not? Yes, yes, I remember;
I am to keep the envelopes and to give you the other manuscripts. Have
no fear, I am quite calm, I will be very reasonable. But I will not
leave him; I will spend the night here very quietly, I promise you."

She was so unhappy, she seemed so resolved to watch by him, to remain
with him, until he should be taken away, that the young physician
allowed her to have her way.

"Well, I will leave you now. They will be expecting me at home. Then
there are all sorts of formalities to be gone through--to give notice
at the mayor's office, the funeral, of which I wish to spare you the
details. Trouble yourself about nothing. Everything will be arranged
to-morrow when I return."

He embraced her once more and then went away. And it was only then
that Martine left the room, behind him, and locking the hall door she
ran out into the darkness.

Clotilde was now alone in the chamber; and all around and about her,
in the unbroken silence, she felt the emptiness of the house. Clotilde
was alone with the dead Pascal. She placed a chair at the head of the
bed and sat there motionless, alone. On arriving, she had merely
removed her hat: now, perceiving that she still had on her gloves, she
took them off also. But she kept on her traveling dress, crumpled and
dusty, after twenty hours of railway travel. No doubt Father Durieu
had brought the trunks long ago, and left them downstairs. But it did
not occur to her, nor had she the strength to wash herself and change
her clothes, but remained sitting, overwhelmed with grief, on the
chair into which she had dropped. One regret, a great remorse, filled
her to the exclusion of all else. Why had she obeyed him? Why had she
consented to leave him? If she had remained she had the ardent
conviction that he would not have died. She would have lavished so
much love, so many caresses upon him, that she would have cured him.
If one was anxious to keep a beloved being from dying one should
remain with him and, if necessary, give one's heart's blood to keep
him alive. It was her own fault if she had lost him, if she could not
now with a caress awaken him from his eternal sleep. And she thought
herself imbecile not to have understood; cowardly, not to have devoted
herself to him; culpable, and to be forever punished for having gone
away when plain common sense, in default of feeling, ought to have
kept her here, bound, as a submissive and affectionate subject, to the
task of watching over her king.

The silence had become so complete, so profound, that Clotilde lifted
her eyes for a moment from Pascal's face to look around the room. She
saw only vague shadows--the two tapers threw two yellow patches on the
high ceiling. At this moment she remembered the letters he had written
to her, so short, so cold; and she comprehended his heroic sacrifice,
the torture it had been to him to silence his heart, desiring to
immolate himself to the end. What strength must he not have required
for the accomplishment of the plan of happiness, sublime and
disastrous, which he had formed for her. He had resolved to pass out
of her life in order to save her from his old age and his poverty; he
wished her to be rich and free, to enjoy her youth, far away from him;
this indeed was utter self-effacement, complete absorption in the love
of another. And she felt a profound gratitude, a sweet solace in the
thought, mingled with a sort of angry bitterness against evil fortune.
Then, suddenly, the happy years of her childhood and her long youth
spent beside him who had always been so kind and so good-humored, rose
before her--how he had gradually won her affection, how she had felt
that she was his, after the quarrels which had separated them for a
time, and with what a transport of joy she had at last given herself
to him.

Seven o'clock struck. Clotilde started as the clear tones broke the
profound silence. Who was it that had spoken? Then she remembered, and
she looked at the clock. And when the last sound of the seven strokes,
each of which had fallen like a knell upon her heart, had died away,
she turned her eyes again on the motionless face of Pascal, and once
more she abandoned herself to her grief.

It was in the midst of this ever-increasing prostration that Clotilde,
a few minutes later, heard a sudden sound of sobbing. Some one had
rushed into the room; she looked round and saw her Grandmother
Felicite. But she did not stir, she did not speak, so benumbed was she
with grief. Martine, anticipating the orders which Clotilde would
undoubtedly have given her, had hurried to old Mme. Rougon's, to give
her the dreadful news; and the latter, dazed at first by the
suddenness of the catastrophe, and afterward greatly agitated, had
hurried to the house, overflowing with noisy grief. She burst into
tears at sight of her son, and then embraced Clotilde, who returned
her kiss, as in a dream. And from this instant the latter, without
emerging from the overwhelming grief in which she isolated herself,
felt that she was no longer alone, hearing a continual stir and bustle
going on around her. It was Felicite crying, coming in and going out
on tiptoe, setting things in order, spying about, whispering, dropping
into a chair, to get up again a moment afterward, after saying that
she was going to die in it. At nine o'clock she made a last effort to
persuade her granddaughter to eat something. Twice already she had
lectured her in a low voice; she came now again to whisper to her:

"Clotilde, my dear, I assure you you are wrong. You must keep up your
strength or you will never be able to hold out."

But the young woman, with a shake of her head, again refused.

"Come, you breakfasted at the buffet at Marseilles, I suppose, but you
have eaten nothing since. Is that reasonable? I do not wish you to
fall ill also. Martine has some broth. I have told her to make a light
soup and to roast a chicken. Go down and eat a mouthful, only a
mouthful, and I will remain here."

With the same patient gesture Clotilde again refused. At last she
faltered:

"Do not ask me, grandmother, I entreat you. I could not; it would
choke me."

She did not speak again, falling back into her former state of apathy.
She did not sleep, however, her wide open eyes were fixed persistently
on Pascal's face. For hours she sat there, motionless, erect, rigid,
as if her spirit were far away with the dead. At ten o'clock she heard
a noise; it was Martine bringing up the lamp. Toward eleven Felicite,
who was sitting watching in an armchair, seemed to grow restless, got
up and went out of the room, and came back again. From this forth
there was a continual coming and going as of impatient footsteps
prowling around the young woman, who was still awake, her large eyes
fixed motionless on Pascal. Twelve o'clock struck, and one persistent
thought alone pierced her weary brain, like a nail, and prevented
sleep--why had she obeyed him? If she had remained she would have
revived him with her youth, and he would not have died. And it was not
until a little before one that she felt this thought, too, grow
confused and lose itself in a nightmare. And she fell into a heavy
sleep, worn out with grief and fatigue.

When Martine had announced to Mme. Rougon the unexpected death of her
son Pascal, in the shock which she received there was as much of anger
as of grief. What! her dying son had not wished to see her; he had
made this servant swear not to inform her of his illness! This thought
sent the blood coursing swiftly through her veins, as if the struggle
between them, which had lasted during his whole life, was to be
continued beyond the grave. Then, when after hastily dressing herself
she had hurried to La Souleiade, the thought of the terrible
envelopes, of all the manuscripts piled up in the press, had filled
her with trembling rage. Now that Uncle Macquart and Aunt Dide were
dead, she no longer feared what she called the abomination of the
Tulettes; and even poor little Charles, in dying, had carried with him
one of the most humiliating of the blots on the family. There remained
only the envelopes, the abominable envelopes, to menace the glorious
Rougon legend which she had spent her whole life in creating, which
was the sole thought of her old age, the work to the triumph of which
she had persistently devoted the last efforts of her wily and active
brain. For long years she had watched these envelopes, never wearying,
beginning the struggle over again, when he had thought her beaten,
always alert and persistent. Ah! if she could only succeed in
obtaining possession of them and destroying them! It would be the
execrable past destroyed, effaced; it would be the glory of her
family, so hardly won, at last freed from all fear, at last shining
untarnished, imposing its lie upon history. And she saw herself
traversing the three quarters of Plassans, saluted by every one,
bearing herself as proudly as a queen, mourning nobly for the fallen
Empire. So that when Martine informed her that Clotilde had come, she
quickened her steps as she approached La Souleiade, spurred by the
fear of arriving too late.

But as soon as she was installed in the house, Felicite at once
regained her composure. There was no hurry, they had the whole night
before them. She wished, however, to win over Martine without delay,
and she knew well how to influence this simple creature, bound up in
the doctrines of a narrow religion. Going down to the kitchen, then,
to see the chicken roasting, she began by affecting to be heartbroken
at the thought of her son dying without having made his peace with the
Church. She questioned the servant, pressing her for particulars. But
the latter shook her head disconsolately--no, no priest had come,
monsieur had not even made the sign of the cross. She, only, had knelt
down to say the prayers for the dying, which certainly could not be
enough for the salvation of a soul. And yet with what fervor she had
prayed to the good God that monsieur might go straight to Paradise!

With her eyes fixed on the chicken turning on the spit, before a
bright fire, Felicite resumed in a lower voice, with an absorbed air:

"Ah, my poor girl, what will most prevent him from going to Paradise
are the abominable papers which the unhappy man has left behind him up
there in the press. I cannot understand why it is that lightning from
heaven has not struck those papers before this and reduced them to
ashes. If they are allowed to leave this house it will be ruin and
disgrace and eternal perdition!"

Martine listened, very pale.

"Then madame thinks it would be a good work to destroy them, a work
that would assure the repose of monsieur's soul?"

"Great God! Do I believe it! Why, if I had those dreadful papers in my
hands, I would throw every one of them into the fire. Oh, you would
not need then to put on any more sticks; with the manuscripts upstairs
alone you would have fuel enough to roast three chickens like that."

The servant took a long spoon and began to baste the fowl. She, too,
seemed now to reflect.

"Only we haven't got them. I even overheard some words on the subject,
which I may repeat to madame. It was when mademoiselle went upstairs.
Dr. Raymond spoke to her about the papers, asking her if she
remembered some orders which she had received, before she went away,
no doubt; and she answered that she remembered, that she was to keep
the envelopes and to give him all the other manuscripts."

Felicite trembled; she could not restrain a terrified movement.
Already she saw the papers slipping out of her reach; and it was not
the envelopes only which she desired, but all the manuscripts, all
that unknown, suspicious, and secret work, from which nothing but
scandal could come, according to the obtuse and excitable mind of the
proud old _bourgeoise_.

"But we must act!" she cried, "act immediately, this very night!
To-morrow it may be too late."

"I know where the key of the press is," answered Martine in a low
voice. "The doctor told mademoiselle."

Felicite immediately pricked up her ears.

"The key; where is it?"

"Under the pillow, under monsieur's head."

In spite of the bright blaze of the fire of vine branches the air
seemed to grow suddenly chill, and the two old women were silent. The
only sound to be heard was the drip of the chicken juice falling into
the pan.

But after Mme. Rougon had eaten a hasty and solitary dinner she went
upstairs again with Martine. Without another word being spoken they
understood each other, it was decided that they would use all possible
means to obtain possession of the papers before daybreak. The simplest
was to take the key from under the pillow. Clotilde would no doubt at
last fall asleep--she seemed too exhausted not to succumb to fatigue.
All they had to do was to wait. They set themselves to watch, then,
going back and forth on tiptoe between the study and the bedroom,
waiting for the moment when the young woman's large motionless eyes
should close in sleep. One of them would go to see, while the other
waited impatiently in the study, where a lamp burned dully on the
table. This was repeated every fifteen minutes until midnight. The
fathomless eyes, full of gloom and of an immense despair, did not
close. A little before midnight Felicite installed herself in an
armchair at the foot of the bed, resolved not to leave the spot until
her granddaughter should have fallen asleep. From this forth she did
not take her eyes off Clotilde, and it filled her with a sort of fear
to remark that the girl scarcely moved her eyelids, looking with that
inconsolable fixity which defies sleep. Then she herself began to feel
sleep stealing over her. Exasperated, trembling with nervous
impatience, she could remain where she was no longer. And she went to
rejoin the servant, who was watching in the study.

"It is useless; she will not sleep," she said in a stifled and
trembling voice. "We must find some other way."

It had indeed occurred to her to break open the press.

But the old oaken boards were strong, the old iron held firmly. How
could they break the lock--not to speak of the noise they would make
and which would certainly be heard in the adjoining room?

She stood before the thick doors, however, and felt them with her
fingers, seeking some weak spot.

"If I only had an instrument," she said.

Martine, less eager, interrupted her, objecting: "Oh, no, no, madame!
We might be surprised! Wait, I will go again and see if mademoiselle
is asleep now."

She went to the bedroom on tiptoe and returned immediately, saying:

"Yes, she is asleep. Her eyes are closed, and she does not stir."

Then both went to look at her, holding their breath and walking with
the utmost caution, so that the boards might not creak. Clotilde had
indeed just fallen asleep: and her stupor seemed so profound that the
two old women grew bold. They feared, however, that they might touch
and waken her, for her chair stood close beside the bed. And then, to
put one's hand under a dead man's pillow to rob him was a terrible and
sacrilegious act, the thought of which filled them with terror. Might
it not disturb his repose? Might he not move at the shock? The thought
made them turn pale.

Felicite had advanced with outstretched hand, but she drew back,
stammering:

"I am too short. You try, Martine."

The servant in her turn approached the bed. But she was seized with
such a fit of trembling that she was obliged to retreat lest she
should fall.

"No, no, I cannot!" she said. "It seems to me that monsieur is going
to open his eyes."

And trembling and awe-struck they remained an instant longer in the
lugubrious chamber full of the silence and the majesty of death,
facing Pascal, motionless forever, and Clotilde, overwhelmed by the
grief of her widowhood. Perhaps they saw, glorifying that mute head,
guarding its work with all its weight, the nobility of a life spent in
honorable labor. The flame of the tapers burned palely. A sacred awe
filled the air, driving them from the chamber.

Felicite, who was so brave, who had never in her life flinched from
anything, not even from bloodshed, fled as if she was pursued, saying:

"Come, come, Martine, we will find some other way; we will go look for
an instrument."

In the study they drew a breath of relief. Felicite looked in vain
among the papers on Pascal's work-table for the genealogical tree,
which she knew was usually there. She would so gladly have begun her
work of destruction with this. It was there, but in her feverish
excitement she did not perceive it.

Her desire drew her back again to the press, and she stood before it,
measuring it and examining it with eager and covetous look. In spite
of her short stature, in spite of her eighty-odd years, she displayed
an activity and an energy that were truly extraordinary.

"Ah!" she repeated, "if I only had an instrument!"

And she again sought the crevice in the colossus, the crack into which
she might introduce her fingers, to break it open. She imagined plans
of assault, she thought of using force, and then she fell back on
stratagem, on some piece of treachery which would open to her the
doors, merely by breathing upon them.

Suddenly her glance kindled; she had discovered the means.

"Tell me, Martine; there is a hook fastening one of the doors, is
there not?"

"Yes, madame; it catches in a ring above the middle shelf. See, it is
about the height of this molding."

Felicite made a triumphant gesture.

"Have you a gimlet--a large gimlet? Give me a gimlet!"

Martine went down into her kitchen and brought back the tool that had
been asked.

"In that way, you see, we shall make no noise," resumed the old woman,
setting herself to her task.

With a strength which one would not have suspected in her little
hands, withered by age, she inserted the gimlet, and made a hole at
the height indicated by the servant. But it was too low; she felt the
point, after a time, entering the shelf. A second attempt brought the
instrument in direct contact with the iron hook. This time the hole
was too near. And she multiplied the holes to right and left, until
finally she succeeded in pushing the hook out of the ring. The bolt of
the lock slipped, and both doors opened.

"At last!" cried Felicite, beside herself.

Then she remained motionless for a moment, her ear turned uneasily
toward the bedroom, fearing that she had wakened Clotilde. But silence
reigned throughout the dark and sleeping house. There came from the
bedroom only the august peace of death; she heard nothing but the
clear vibration of the clock; Clotilde fell asleep near one. And the
press yawned wide open, displaying the papers with which it
overflowed, heaped up on its three shelves. Then she threw herself
upon it, and the work of destruction began, in the midst of the sacred
obscurity of the infinite repose of this funereal vigil.

"At last!" she repeated, in a low voice, "after thirty years of
waiting. Let us hurry--let us hurry. Martine, help me!"

She had already drawn forward the high chair of the desk, and mounted
on it at a bound, to take down, first of all, the papers on the top
shelf, for she remembered that the envelopes were there. But she was
surprised not to see the thick blue paper wrappers; there was nothing
there but bulky manuscripts, the doctor's completed but unpublished
works, works of inestimable value, all his researches, all his
discoveries, the monument of his future fame, which he had left in
Ramond's charge. Doubtless, some days before his death, thinking that
only the envelopes were in danger, and that no one in the world would
be so daring as to destroy his other works, he had begun to classify
and arrange the papers anew, and removed the envelopes out of sight.

"Ah, so much the worse!" murmured Felicite; "let us begin anywhere;
there are so many of them that if we wish to get through we must
hurry. While I am up here, let us clear these away forever. Here,
catch Martine!"

And she emptied the shelf, throwing the manuscripts, one by one, into
the arms of the servant, who laid them on the table with as little
noise as possible. Soon the whole heap was on it, and Felicite sprang
down from the chair.

"To the fire! to the fire! We shall lay our hands on the others, and
too, by and by, on those I am looking for. These can go into it,
meantime. It will be a good riddance, at any rate, a fine clearance,
yes, indeed! To the fire, to the fire with them all, even to the
smallest scrap of paper, even to the most illegible scrawl, if we wish
to be certain of destroying the contamination of evil."

She herself, fanatical and fierce, in her hatred of the truth, in her
eagerness to destroy the testimony of science, tore off the first page
of one of the manuscripts, lighted it at the lamp, and then threw this
burning brand into the great fireplace, in which there had not been a
fire for perhaps twenty years, and she fed the fire, continuing to
throw on it the rest of the manuscript, piece by piece. The servant,
as determined as herself, came to her assistance, taking another
enormous notebook, which she tore up leaf by leaf. From this forth the
fire did not cease to burn, filling the wide fireplace with a bright
blaze, with tongues of flame that seemed to die away from time to
time, only to burn up more brightly than ever when fresh fuel fed
them. The fire grew larger, the heap of ashes rose higher and higher--
a thick bed of blackened leaves among which ran millions of sparks.
But it was a long, a never-ending task; for when several pages were
thrown on at a time, they would not burn; it was necessary to move
them and turn them over with the tongs; the best way was to stir them
up and then wait until they were in a blaze, before adding more. The
women soon grew skilful at their task, and the work progressed at a
rapid rate.

In her haste to get a fresh armful of papers Felicite stumbled against
a chair.

"Oh, madame, take care," said Martine. "Some one might come!"

"Come? who should come? Clotilde? She is too sound asleep, poor girl.
And even if any one should come, once it is finished, I don't care; I
won't hide myself, you may be sure; I shall leave the empty press
standing wide open; I shall say aloud that it is I who have purified
the house. When there is not a line of writing left, ah, good heavens!
I shall laugh at everything else!"

For almost two hours the fireplace blazed. They went back to the press
and emptied the two other shelves, and now there remained only the
bottom, which was heaped with a confusion of papers. Little by little,
intoxicated by the heat of the bonfire, out of breath and perspiring,
they gave themselves up to the savage joy of destruction. They stooped
down, they blackened their hands, pushing in the partially consumed
fragments, with gestures so violent, so feverishly excited, that their
gray locks fell in disorder over their shoulders. It was like a dance
of witches, feeding a hellish fire for some abominable act--the
martyrdom of a saint, the burning of written thought in the public
square; a whole world of truth and hope destroyed. And the blaze of
this fire, which at moments made the flame of the lamp grow pale,
lighted up the vast apartment, and made the gigantic shadows of the
two women dance upon the ceiling.

But as she was emptying the bottom of the press, after having burned,
handful by handful, the papers with which it had been filled, Felicite
uttered a stifled cry of triumph.

"Ah, here they are! To the fire! to the fire!"

She had at last come upon the envelopes. Far back, behind the rampart
formed by the notes, the doctor had hidden the blue paper wrappers.
And then began a mad work of havoc, a fury of destruction; the
envelopes were gathered up in handfuls and thrown into the flames,
filling the fireplace with a roar like that of a conflagration.

"They are burning, they are burning! They are burning at last! Here is
another, Martine, here is another. Ah, what a fire, what a glorious
fire!"

But the servant was becoming uneasy.

"Take care, madame, you are going to set the house on fire. Don't you
hear that roar?"

"Ah! what does that matter? Let it all burn. They are burning, they
are burning; what a fine sight! Three more, two more, and, see, now
the last is burning!"

She laughed with delight, beside herself, terrible to see, when some
fragment of lighted soot fell down. The roar was becoming more and
more fierce; the chimney, which was never swept, had caught fire. This
seemed to excite her still more, while the servant, losing her head,
began to scream and run about the room.

Clotilde slept beside the dead Pascal, in the supreme calm of the
bedroom, unbroken save by the light vibration of the clock striking
the hours. The tapers burned with a tall, still flame, the air was
motionless. And yet, in the midst of her heavy, dreamless sleep, she
heard, as in a nightmare, a tumult, an ever-increasing rush and roar.
And when she opened her eyes she could not at first understand. Where
was she? Why this enormous weight that crushed her heart? She came
back to reality with a start of terror--she saw Pascal, she heard
Martine's cries in the adjoining room, and she rushed out, in alarm,
to learn their cause.

But at the threshold Clotilde took in the whole scene with cruel
distinctness--the press wide open and completely empty; Martine
maddened by her fear of fire; Felicite radiant, pushing into the
flames with her foot the last fragments of the envelopes. Smoke and
flying soot filled the study, where the roaring of the fire sounded
like the hoarse gasping of a murdered man--the fierce roar which she
had just heard in her sleep.

And the cry which sprang from her lips was the same cry that Pascal
himself had uttered on the night of the storm, when he surprised her
in the act of stealing his papers.

"Thieves! assassins!"

She precipitated herself toward the fireplace, and, in spite of the
dreadful roaring of the flames, in spite of the falling pieces of
soot, at the risk of setting her hair on fire, and of burning her
hands, she gathered up the leaves which remained yet unconsumed and
bravely extinguished them, pressing them against her. But all this was
very little, only some _debris_; not a complete page remained, not
even a few fragments of the colossal labor, of the vast and patient
work of a lifetime, which the fire had destroyed there in two hours.
And with growing anger, in a burst of furious indignation, she cried:

"You are thieves, assassins! It is a wicked murder which you have just
committed. You have profaned death, you have slain the mind, you have
slain genius."

Old Mme. Rougon did not quail. She advanced, on the contrary, feeling
no remorse, her head erect, defending the sentence of destruction
pronounced and executed by her.

"It is to me you are speaking, to your grandmother. Is there nothing,
then, that you respect? I have done what I ought to have done, what
you yourself wished to do with us before."

"Before, you had made me mad; but since then I have lived, I have
loved, I have understood, and it is life that I defend. Even if it be
terrible and cruel, the truth ought to be respected. Besides, it was a
sacred legacy bequeathed to my protection, the last thoughts of a dead
man, all that remained of a great mind, and which I should have
obliged every one to respect. Yes, you are my grandmother; I am well
aware of it, and it is as if you had just burned your son!"

"Burn Pascal because I have burned his papers!" cried Felicite. "Do
you not know that I would have burned the town to save the honor of
our family!"

She continued to advance, belligerent and victorious; and Clotilde,
who had laid on the table the blackened fragments rescued by her from
the burning flames, protected them with her body, fearing that her
grandmother would throw them back again into the fire. She regarded
the two women scornfully; she did not even trouble herself about the
fire in the fireplace, which fortunately went out of itself, while
Martine extinguished with the shovel the burning soot and the last
flames of the smoldering ashes.

"You know very well, however," continued the old woman, whose little
figure seemed to grow taller, "that I have had only one ambition, one
passion in life--to see our family rich and powerful. I have fought, I
have watched all my life, I have lived as long as I have done, only to
put down ugly stories and to leave our name a glorious one. Yes, I
have never despaired; I have never laid down my arms; I have been
continually on the alert, ready to profit by the slightest
circumstance. And all I desired to do I have done, because I have
known how to wait."

And she waved her hand toward the empty press and the fireplace, where
the last sparks were dying out.

"Now it is ended, our honor is safe; those abominable papers will no
longer accuse us, and I shall leave behind me nothing to be feared.
The Rougons have triumphed."

Clotilde, in a frenzy of grief, raised her arm, as if to drive her out
of the room. But she left it of her own accord, and went down to the
kitchen to wash her blackened hands and to fasten up her hair. The
servant was about to follow her when, turning her head, she saw her
young mistress' gesture, and she returned.

"Oh! as for me, mademoiselle, I will go away the day after to-morrow,
when monsieur shall be in the cemetery."

There was a moment's silence.

"But I am not sending you away, Martine. I know well that it is not
you who are most to blame. You have lived in this house for thirty
years. Remain, remain with me."

The old maid shook her gray head, looking very pale and tired.

"No, I have served monsieur; I will serve no one after monsieur."

"But I!"

"You, no!"

Clotilde looked embarrassed, hesitated a moment, and remained silent.
But Martine understood; she too seemed to reflect for an instant, and
then she said distinctly:

"I know what you would say, but--no!"

And she went on to settle her account, arranging the affair like a
practical woman who knew the value of money.

"Since I have the means, I will go and live quietly on my income
somewhere. As for you, mademoiselle, I can leave you, for you are not
poor. M. Ramond will explain to you to-morrow how an income of four
thousand francs was saved for you out of the money at the notary's.
Meantime, here is the key of the desk, where you will find the five
thousand francs which monsieur left there. Oh? I know that there will
be no trouble between us. Monsieur did not pay me for the last three
months; I have papers from him which prove it. In addition, I advanced
lately almost two hundred francs out of my own pocket, without his
knowing where the money came from. It is all written down; I am not at
all uneasy; mademoiselle will not wrong me by a centime. The day after
to-morrow, when monsieur is no longer here, I will go away."

Then she went down to the kitchen, and Clotilde, in spite of the
fanaticism of this woman, which had made her take part in a crime,
felt inexpressibly sad at this desertion. When she was gathering up
the fragments of the papers, however, before returning to the bedroom,
she had a thrill of joy, on suddenly seeing the genealogical tree,
which the two women had not perceived, lying unharmed on the table. It
was the only entire document saved from the wreck. She took it and
locked it, with the half-consumed fragments, in the bureau in the
bedroom.

But when she found herself again in this august chamber a great
emotion took possession of her. What supreme calm, what immortal
peace, reigned here, beside the savage destruction that had filled the
adjoining room with smoke and ashes. A sacred serenity pervaded the
obscurity; the two tapers burned with a pure, still, unwavering flame.
Then she saw that Pascal's face, framed in his flowing white hair and
beard, had become very white. He slept with the light falling upon
him, surrounded by a halo, supremely beautiful. She bent down, kissed
him again, felt on her lips the cold of the marble face, with its
closed eyelids, dreaming its dream of eternity. Her grief at not being
able to save the work which he had left to her care was so
overpowering that she fell on her knees and burst into a passion of
sobs. Genius had been violated; it seemed to her as if the world was
about to be destroyed in this savage destruction of a whole life of
labor.

XIV.


In the study Clotilde was buttoning her dress, holding her child, whom
she had been nursing, still in her lap. It was after lunch, about
three o'clock on a hot sunny day at the end of August, and through the
crevices of the carefully closed shutters only a few scattered
sunbeams entered, piercing the drowsy and warm obscurity of the vast
apartment. The rest and peace of the Sunday seemed to enter and
diffuse itself in the room with the last sounds of the distant vesper
bell. Profound silence reigned in the empty house in which the mother
and child were to remain alone until dinner time, the servant having
asked permission to go see a cousin in the faubourg.

For an instant Clotilde looked at her child, now a big boy of three
months. She had been wearing mourning for Pascal for almost ten months
--a long and simple black gown, in which she looked divinely
beautiful, with her tall, slender figure and her sad, youthful face
surrounded by its aureole of fair hair. And although she could not
smile, it filled her with sweet emotion to see the beautiful child, so
plump and rosy, with his mouth still wet with milk, whose gaze had
been arrested by the sunbeam full of dancing motes. His eyes were
fixed wonderingly on the golden brightness, the dazzling miracle of
light. Then sleep came over him, and he let his little, round, bare
head, covered thinly with fair hair, fall back on his mother's arm.

Clotilde rose softly and laid him in the cradle, which stood beside
the table. She remained leaning over him for an instant to assure
herself that he was asleep; then she let down the curtain in the
already darkened room. Then she busied herself with supple and
noiseless movements, walking with so light a step that she scarcely
touched the floor, in putting away some linen which was on the table.
Twice she crossed the room in search of a little missing sock. She was
very silent, very gentle, and very active. And now, in the solitude of
the house, she fell into a reverie and all the past year arose before
her.

First, after the dreadful shock of the funeral, came the departure of
Martine, who had obstinately kept to her determination of going away
at once, not even remaining for the customary week, bringing to
replace her the young cousin of a baker in the neighborhood--a stout
brunette, who fortunately proved very neat and faithful. Martine
herself lived at Sainte-Marthe, in a retired corner, so penuriously
that she must be still saving even out of her small income. She was
not known to have any heir. Who, then, would profit by this
miserliness? In ten months she had not once set foot in La Souleiade--
monsieur was not there, and she had not even the desire to see
monsieur's son.

Then in Clotilde's reverie rose the figure of her grandmother
Felicite. The latter came to see her from time to time with the
condescension of a powerful relation who is liberal-minded enough to
pardon all faults when they have been cruelly expiated. She would come
unexpectedly, kiss the child, moralize, and give advice, and the young
mother had adopted toward her the respectful attitude which Pascal had
always maintained. Felicite was now wholly absorbed in her triumph.
She was at last about to realize a plan that she had long cherished
and maturely deliberated, which would perpetuate by an imperishable
monument the untarnished glory of the family. The plan was to devote
her fortune, which had become considerable, to the construction and
endowment of an asylum for the aged, to be called Rougon Asylum. She
had already bought the ground, a part of the old mall outside the
town, near the railway station; and precisely on this Sunday, at five
o'clock, when the heat should have abated a little, the first stone
was to be laid, a really solemn ceremony, to be honored by the
presence of all the authorities, and of which she was to be the
acknowledged queen, before a vast concourse of people.

Clotilde felt, besides, some gratitude toward her grandmother, who had
shown perfect disinterestedness on the occasion of the opening of
Pascal's will. The latter had constituted the young woman his sole
legatee; and the mother, who had a right to a fourth part, after
declaring her intention to respect her son's wishes, had simply
renounced her right to the succession. She wished, indeed, to
disinherit all her family, bequeathing to them glory only, by
employing her large fortune in the erection of this asylum, which was
to carry down to future ages the revered and glorious name of the
Rougons; and after having, for more than half a century, so eagerly
striven to acquire money, she now disdained it, moved by a higher and
purer ambition. And Clotilde, thanks to this liberality, had no
uneasiness regarding the future--the four thousand francs income would
be sufficient for her and her child. She would bring him up to be a
man. She had sunk the five thousand francs that she had found in the
desk in an annuity for him; and she owned, besides, La Souleiade,
which everybody advised her to sell. True, it cost but little to keep
it up, but what a sad and solitary life she would lead in that great
deserted house, much too large for her, where she would be lost. Thus
far, however, she had not been able to make up her mind to leave it.
Perhaps she would never be able to do so.

Ah, this La Souleiade! all her love, all her life, all her memories
were centered in it. It seemed to her at times as if Pascal were
living here still, for she had changed nothing of their former manner
of living. The furniture remained in the same places, the hours were
the same, the habits the same. The only change she had made was to
lock his room, into which only she went, as into a sanctuary, to weep
when she felt her heart too heavy. And although indeed she felt very
lonely, very lost, at each meal in the bright dining-room downstairs,
in fancy she heard there the echoes of their laughter, she recalled
the healthy appetite of her youth; when they two had eaten and drank
so gaily, rejoicing in their existence. And the garden, too, the whole
place was bound up with the most intimate fibers of her being, for she
could not take a step in it that their united images did not appear
before her--on the terrace; in the slender shadow of the great secular
cypresses, where they had so often contemplated the valley of the
Viorne, closed in by the ridges of the Seille and the parched hills of
Sainte-Marthe; the stone steps among the puny olive and almond trees,
which they had so often challenged each other to run up in a trial of
speed, like boys just let loose from school; and there was the pine
grove, too, the warm, embalsamed shade, where the needles crackled
under their feet; the vast threshing yard, carpeted with soft grass,
where they could see the whole sky at night, when the stars were
coming out; and above all there were the giant plane trees, whose
delightful shade they had enjoyed every day in summer, listening to
the soothing song of the fountain, the crystal clear song which it had
sung for centuries. Even to the old stones of the house, even to the
earth of the grounds, there was not an atom at La Souleiade in which
she did not feel a little of their blood warmly throbbing, with which
she did not feel a little of their life diffused and mingled.

But she preferred to spend her days in the workroom, and here it was
that she lived over again her best hours. There was nothing new in it
but the cradle. The doctor's table was in its place before the window
to the left--she could fancy him coming in and sitting down at it, for
his chair had not even been moved. On the long table in the center,
among the old heap of books and papers, there was nothing new but the
cheerful note of the little baby linen, which she was looking over.
The bookcases displayed the same rows of volumes; the large oaken
press seemed to guard within its sides the same treasure, securely
shut in. Under the smoky ceiling the room was still redolent of work,
with its confusion of chairs, the pleasant disorder of this common
workroom, filled with the caprices of the girl and the researches of
the scientist. But what most moved her to-day was the sight of her old
pastels hanging against the wall, the copies which she had made of
living flowers, scrupulously exact copies, and of dream flowers of an
imaginary world, whither her wild fancy sometimes carried her.

Clotilde had just finished arranging the little garments on the table
when, lifting her eyes, she perceived before her the pastel of old
King David, with his hand resting on the shoulder of Abishag the young
Shunammite. And she, who now never smiled, felt her face flush with a
thrill of tender and pleasing emotion. How they had loved each other,
how they had dreamed of an eternity of love the day on which she had
amused herself painting this proud and loving allegory! The old king,
sumptuously clad in a robe hanging in straight folds, heavy with
precious stones, wore the royal bandeau on his snowy locks; but she
was more sumptuous still, with only her tall slender figure, her
delicate round throat, and her supple arms, divinely graceful. Now he
was gone, he was sleeping under the ground, while she, her pure and
triumphant beauty concealed by her black robes, had only her child to
express the love she had given him before the assembled people, in the
full light of day.

Then Clotilde sat down beside the cradle. The slender sunbeams
lengthened, crossing the room from end to end, the heat of the warm
afternoon grew oppressive in the drowsy obscurity made by the closed
shutters, and the silence of the house seemed more profound than
before. She set apart some little waists, she sewed on some tapes with
slow-moving needle, and gradually she fell into a reverie in the warm
deep peacefulness of the room, in the midst of the glowing heat
outside. Her thoughts first turned to her pastels, the exact copies
and the fantastic dream flowers; she said to herself now that all her
dual nature was to be found in that passion for truth, which had at
times kept her a whole day before a flower in order to copy it with
exactness, and in her need of the spiritual, which at other times took
her outside the real, and carried her in wild dreams to the paradise
of flowers such as had never grown on earth. She had always been thus.
She felt that she was in reality the same to-day as she had been
yesterday, in the midst of the flow of new life which ceaselessly
transformed her. And then she thought of Pascal, full of gratitude
that he had made her what she was. In days past when, a little girl,
he had removed her from her execrable surroundings and taken her home
with him, he had undoubtedly followed the impulses of his good heart,
but he had also undoubtedly desired to try an experiment with her, to
see how she would grow up in the different environment, in an
atmosphere of truthfulness and affection. This had always been an idea
of his. It was an old theory of his which he would have liked to test
on a large scale: culture through environment, complete regeneration
even, the improvement, the salvation of the individual, physically as
well as morally. She owed to him undoubtedly the best part of her
nature; she guessed how fanciful and violent she might have become,
while he had made her only enthusiastic and courageous.

In this retrospection she was clearly conscious of the gradual change
that had taken place within her. Pascal had corrected her heredity,
and she lived over again the slow evolution, the struggle between the
fantastic and the real in her. It had begun with her outbursts of
anger as a child, a ferment of rebellion, a want of mental balance
that had caused her to indulge in most hurtful reveries. Then came her
fits of extreme devotion, the need of illusion and falsehood, of
immediate happiness in the thought that the inequalities and
injustices of this wicked world would he compensated by the eternal
joys of a future paradise. This was the epoch of her struggles with
Pascal, of the torture which she had caused him, planning to destroy
the work of his genius. And at this point her nature had changed; she
had acknowledged him for her master. He had conquered her by the
terrible lesson of life which he had given her on the night of the
storm. Then, environment had acted upon her, evolution had proceeded
rapidly, and she had ended by becoming a well-balanced and rational
woman, willing to live life as it ought to be lived, satisfied with
doing her work in the hope that the sum of the common labor would one
day free the world from evil and pain. She had loved, she was a mother
now, and she understood.

Suddenly she remembered the night which they had spent in the
threshing yard. She could still hear her lamentation under the stars--
the cruelty of nature, the inefficacy of science, the wickedness of
humanity, and the need she felt of losing herself in God, in the
Unknown. Happiness consisted in self-renunciation. Then she heard him
repeat his creed--the progress of reason through science, truths
acquired slowly and forever the only possible good, the belief that
the sum of these truths, always augmenting, would finally confer upon
man incalculable power and peace, if not happiness. All was summed up
in his ardent faith in life. As he expressed it, it was necessary to
march with life, which marched always. No halt was to be expected, no
peace in immobility and renunciation, no consolation in turning back.
One must keep a steadfast soul, the only ambition to perform one's
work, modestly looking for no other reward of life than to have lived
it bravely, accomplishing the task which it imposes. Evil was only an
accident not yet explained, humanity appearing from a great height
like an immense wheel in action, working ceaselessly for the future.
Why should the workman who disappeared, having finished his day's
work, abuse the work because he could neither see nor know its end?
Even if it were to have no end why should he not enjoy the delight of
action, the exhilarating air of the march, the sweetness of sleep
after the fatigue of a long and busy day? The children would carry on
the task of the parents; they were born and cherished only for this,
for the task of life which is transmitted to them, which they in their
turn will transmit to others. All that remained, then, was to be
courageously resigned to the grand common labor, without the rebellion
of the ego, which demands personal happiness, perfect and complete.

She questioned herself, and she found that she did not experience that
anguish which had filled her formerly at the thought of what was to
follow death. This anxiety about the Beyond no longer haunted her
until it became a torture. Formerly she would have liked to wrest by
force from heaven the secrets of destiny. It had been a source of
infinite grief to her not to know why she existed. Why are we born?
What do we come on earth to do? What is the meaning of this execrable
existence, without equality, without justice, which seemed to her like
a fevered dream? Now her terror was calmed; she could think of these
things courageously. Perhaps it was her child, the continuation of
herself, which now concealed from her the horror of her end. But her
regular life contributed also to this, the thought that it was
necessary to live for the effort of living, and that the only peace
possible in this world was in the joy of the accomplishment of this
effort. She repeated to herself a remark of the doctor, who would
often say when he saw a peasant returning home with a contented look
after his day's work: "There is a man whom anxiety about the Beyond
will not prevent from sleeping." He meant to say that this anxiety
troubles and perverts only excitable and idle brains. If all performed
their healthful task, all would sleep peacefully at night. She herself
had felt the beneficent power of work in the midst of her sufferings
and her grief. Since he had taught her to employ every one of her
hours; since she had been a mother, especially, occupied constantly
with her child, she no longer felt a chill of horror when she thought
of the Unknown. She put aside without an effort disquieting reveries;
and if she still felt an occasional fear, if some of her daily griefs
made her sick at heart, she found comfort and unfailing strength in
the thought that her child was this day a day older, that he would be
another day older on the morrow, that day by day, page by page, his
work of life was being accomplished. This consoled her delightfully
for all her miseries. She had a duty, an object, and she felt in her
happy serenity that she was doing surely what she had been sent here
to do.

Yet, even at this very moment she knew that the mystic was not
entirely dead within her. In the midst of the profound silence she
heard a slight noise, and she raised her head. Who was the divine
mediator that had passed? Perhaps the beloved dead for whom she
mourned, and whose presence near her she fancied she could divine.
There must always be in her something of the childlike believer she
had always been, curious about the Unknown, having an instinctive
longing for the mysterious. She accounted to herself for this longing,
she even explained it scientifically. However far science may extend
the limits of human knowledge, there is undoubtedly a point which it
cannot pass; and it was here precisely that Pascal placed the only
interest in life--in the effort which we ceaselessly make to know more
--there was only one reasonable meaning in life, this continual
conquest of the unknown. Therefore, she admitted the existence of
undiscovered forces surrounding the world, an immense and obscure
domain, ten times larger than the domain already won, an infinite and
unexplored realm through which future humanity would endlessly ascend.
Here, indeed, was a field vast enough for the imagination to lose
itself in. In her hours of reverie she satisfied in it the imperious
need which man seems to have for the spiritual, a need of escaping
from the visible world, of interrogating the Unknown, of satisfying in
it the dream of absolute justice and of future happiness. All that
remained of her former torture, her last mystic transports, were there
appeased. She satisfied there that hunger for consoling illusions
which suffering humanity must satisfy in order to live. But in her all
was happily balanced. At this crisis, in an epoch overburdened with
science, disquieted at the ruins it has made, and seized with fright
in the face of the new century, wildly desiring to stop and to return
to the past, Clotilde kept the happy mean; in her the passion for
truth was broadened by her eagerness to penetrate the Unknown. If
sectarian scientists shut out the horizon to keep strictly to the
phenomenon, it was permitted to her, a good, simple creature, to
reserve the part that she did not know, that she would never know. And
if Pascal's creed was the logical deduction from the whole work, the
eternal question of the Beyond, which she still continued to put to
heaven, reopened the door of the infinite to humanity marching ever
onward. Since we must always learn, while resigning ourselves never to
know all, was it not to will action, life itself, to reserve the
Unknown--an eternal doubt and an eternal hope?

Another sound, as of a wing passing, the light touch of a kiss upon
her hair, this time made her smile. He was surely here; and her whole
being went out toward him, in the great flood of tenderness with which
her heart overflowed. How kind and cheerful he was, and what a love
for others underlay his passionate love of life! Perhaps he, too, had
been only a dreamer, for he had dreamed the most beautiful of dreams,
the final belief in a better world, when science should have bestowed
incalculable power upon man--to accept everything, to turn everything
to our happiness, to know everything and to foresee everything, to
make nature our servant, to live in the tranquillity of intelligence
satisfied. Meantime faith in life, voluntary and regular labor, would
suffice for health. Evil was only the unexplained side of things;
suffering would one day be assuredly utilized. And regarding from
above the enormous labor of the world, seeing the sum total of
humanity, good and bad--admirable, in spite of everything, for their
courage and their industry--she now regarded all mankind as united in
a common brotherhood, she now felt only boundless indulgence, an
infinite pity, and an ardent charity. Love, like the sun, bathes the
earth, and goodness is the great river at which all hearts drink.

Clotilde had been plying her needle for two hours, with the same
regular movement, while her thoughts wandered away in the profound
silence. But the tapes were sewed on the little waists, she had even
marked some new wrappers, which she had bought the day before. And,
her sewing finished, she rose to put the linen away. Outside the sun
was declining, and only slender and oblique sunbeams entered through
the crevices of the shutters. She could not see clearly, and she
opened one of the shutters, then she forgot herself for a moment, at
the sight of the vast horizon suddenly unrolled before her. The
intense heat had abated, a delicious breeze was blowing, and the sky
was of a cloudless blue. To the left could be distinguished even the
smallest clumps of pines, among the blood-colored ravines of the rocks
of the Seille, while to the right, beyond the hills of Sainte-Marthe,
the valley of the Viorne stretched away in the golden dust of the
setting sun. She looked for a moment at the tower of St. Saturnin, all
golden also, dominating the rose-colored town; and she was about to
leave the window when she saw a sight that drew her back and kept her
there, leaning on her elbow for a long time still.

Beyond the railroad a multitude of people were crowded together on the
old mall. Clotilde at once remembered the ceremony. She knew that her
Grandmother Felicite was going to lay the first stone of the Rougon
Asylum, the triumphant monument destined to carry down to future ages
the glory of the family. Vast preparations had been going on for a
week past. There was talk of a silver hod and trowel, which the old
lady was to use herself, determined to figure to triumph, with her
eighty-two years. What swelled her heart with regal pride was that on
this occasion she made the conquest of Plassans for the third time,
for she compelled the whole town, all the three quarters, to range
themselves around her, to form an escort for her, and to applaud her
as a benefactress. For, of course, there had to be present lady
patronesses, chosen from among the noblest ladies of the Quartier St.
Marc; a delegation from the societies of working-women of the old
quarter, and, finally, the most distinguished residents of the new
town, advocates, notaries, physicians, without counting the common
people, a stream of people dressed in their Sunday clothes, crowding
there eagerly, as to a festival. And in the midst of this supreme
triumph she was perhaps most proud--she, one of the queens of the
Second Empire, the widow who mourned with so much dignity the fallen
government--in having conquered the young republic itself, obliging
it, in the person of the sub-prefect, to come and salute her and thank
her. At first there had been question only of a discourse of the
mayor; but it was known with certainty, since the previous day, that
the sub-prefect also would speak. From so great a distance Clotilde
could distinguish only a moving crowd of black coats and light
dresses, under the scorching sun. Then there was a distant sound of
music, the music of the amateur band of the town, the sonorous strains
of whose brass instruments were borne to her at intervals on the
breeze.

She left the window and went and opened the large oaken press to put
away in it the linen that had remained on the table. It was in this
press, formerly so full of the doctor's manuscripts, and now empty,
that she kept the baby's wardrobe. It yawned open, vast, seemingly
bottomless, and on the large bare shelves there was nothing but the
baby linen, the little waists, the little caps, the little socks, all
the fine clothing, the down of the bird still in the nest. Where so
many thoughts had been stored up, where a man's unremitting labor for
thirty years had accumulated in an overflowing heap of papers, there
was now only a baby's clothing, only the first garments which would
protect it for an hour, as it were, and which very soon it could no
longer use. The vastness of the antique press seemed brightened and
all refreshed by them.

When Clotilde had arranged the wrappers and the waists upon a shelf,
she perceived a large envelope containing the fragments of the
documents which she had placed there after she had rescued them from
the fire. And she remembered a request which Dr. Ramond had come only
the day before to make her--that she would see if there remained among
this _debris_ any fragment of importance having a scientific interest.
He was inconsolable for the loss of the precious manuscripts which the
master had bequeathed to him. Immediately after the doctor's death he
had made an attempt to write from memory his last talk, that summary
of vast theories expounded by the dying man with so heroic a serenity;
but he could recall only parts of it. He would have needed complete
notes, observations made from day to day, the results obtained, and
the laws formulated. The loss was irreparable, the task was to be
begun over again, and he lamented having only indications; he said
that it would be at least twenty years before science could make up
the loss, and take up and utilize the ideas of the solitary pioneer
whose labors a wicked and imbecile catastrophe had destroyed.

The genealogical tree, the only document that had remained intact, was
attached to the envelope, and Clotilde carried the whole to the table
beside the cradle. After she had taken out the fragments, one by one,
she found, what she had been already almost certain of, that not a
single entire page of manuscript remained, not a single complete note
having any meaning. There were only fragments of documents, scraps of
half-burned and blackened paper, without sequence or connection. But
as she examined them, these incomplete phrases, these words half
consumed by fire, assumed for her an interest which no one else could
have understood. She remembered the night of the storm, and the
phrases completed themselves, the beginning of a word evoked before
her persons and histories. Thus her eye fell on Maxime's name, and she
reviewed the life of this brother who had remained a stranger to her,
and whose death, two months before, had left her almost indifferent.
Then, a half-burned scrap containing her father's name gave her an
uneasy feeling, for she believed that her father had obtained
possession of the fortune and the house on the avenue of Bois de
Boulogne through the good offices of his hairdresser's niece, the
innocent Rose, repaid, no doubt, by a generous percentage. Then she
met with other names, that of her uncle Eugene, the former vice
emperor, now dead, the cure of Saint-Eutrope, who, she had been told
yesterday, was dying of consumption. And each fragment became animated
in this way; the execrable family lived again in these scraps, these
black ashes, where were now only disconnected words.

Then Clotilde had the curiosity to unfold the genealogical tree and
spread it out upon the table. A strong emotion gained on her; she was
deeply affected by these relics; and when she read once more the notes
added in pencil by Pascal, a few moments before his death, tears rose
to her eyes. With what courage he had written down the date of his
death! And what despairing regret for life one divined in the
trembling words announcing the birth of the child! The tree ascended,
spread out its branches, unfolded its leaves, and she remained for a
long time contemplating it, saying to herself that all the work of the
master was to be found here in the classified records of this family
tree. She could still hear certain of his words commenting on each
hereditary case, she recalled his lessons. But the children, above
all, interested her; she read again and again the notes on the leaves
which bore their names. The doctor's colleague in Noumea, to whom he
had written for information about the child born of the marriage of
the convict Etienne, had at last made up his mind to answer; but the
only information he gave was in regard to the sex--it was a girl, he
said, and she seemed to be healthy. Octave Mouret had come near losing
his daughter, who had always been very frail, while his little boy
continued to enjoy superb health. But the chosen abode of vigorous
health and of extraordinary fecundity was still the house of Jean, at
Valqueyras, whose wife had had two children in three years and was
about to have a third. The nestlings throve in the sunshine, in the
heart of a fertile country, while the father sang as he guided his
plow, and the mother at home cleverly made the soup and kept the
children in order. There was enough new vitality and industry there to
make another family, a whole race. Clotilde fancied at this moment
that she could hear Pascal's cry: "Ah, our family! what is it going to
be, in what kind of being will it end?" And she fell again into a
reverie, looking at the tree sending its latest branches into the
future. Who could tell whence the healthy branch would spring? Perhaps
the great and good man so long awaited was germinating there.

A slight cry drew Clotilde from her reflections. The muslin curtain of
the cradle seemed to become animate. It was the child who had wakened
up and was moving about and calling to her. She at once took him out
of the cradle and held him up gaily, that he might bathe in the golden
light of the setting sun. But he was insensible to the beauty of the
closing day; his little vacant eyes, still full of sleep, turned away
from the vast sky, while he opened wide his rosy and ever hungry
mouth, like a bird opening its beak. And he cried so loud, he had
wakened up so ravenous, that she decided to nurse him again. Besides,
it was his hour; it would soon be three hours since she had last
nursed him.

Clotilde sat down again beside the table. She took him on her lap, but
he was not very good, crying louder and louder, growing more and more
impatient; and she looked at him with a smile while she unfastened her
dress, showing her round, slender throat. Already the child knew, and
raising himself he felt with his lips for the breast. When she placed
it in his mouth he gave a little grunt of satisfaction; he threw
himself upon her with the fine, voracious appetite of a young
gentleman who was determined to live. At first he had clutched the
breast with his little free hand, as if to show that it was his, to
defend it and to guard it. Then, in the joy of the warm stream that
filled his throat he raised his little arm straight up, like a flag.
And Clotilde kept her unconscious smile, seeing him so healthy, so
rosy, and so plump, thriving so well on the nourishment he drew from
her. During the first few weeks she had suffered from a fissure, and
even now her breast was sensitive; but she smiled, notwithstanding,
with that peaceful look which mothers wear, happy in giving their milk
as they would give their blood.

When she had unfastened her dress, showing her bare throat and breast,
in the solitude and silence of the study, another of her mysteries,
one of her sweetest and most hidden secrets, was revealed at the same
time--the slender necklace with the seven pearls, the seven fine,
milky stars which the master had put around her neck on a day of
misery, in his mania for giving. Since it had been there no one else
had seen it. It seemed as if she guarded it with as much modesty as if
it were a part of her flesh, so simple, so pure, so childlike. And all
the time the child was nursing she alone looked at it in a dreamy
reverie, moved by the tender memory of the kisses whose warm perfume
it still seemed to keep.

A burst of distant music seemed to surprise Clotilde. She turned her
head and looked across the fields gilded by the oblique rays of the
sun. Ah, yes! the ceremony, the laying of the corner stone yonder!
Then she turned her eyes again on the child, and she gave herself up
to the delight of seeing him with so fine an appetite. She had drawn
forward a little bench, to raise one of her knees, resting her foot
upon it, and she leaned one shoulder against the table, beside the
tree and the blackened fragments of the envelopes. Her thoughts
wandered away in an infinitely sweet reverie, while she felt the best
part of herself, the pure milk, flowing softly, making more and more
her own the dear being she had borne. The child had come, the
redeemer, perhaps. The bells rang, the three wise men had set out,
followed by the people, by rejoicing nature, smiling on the infant in
its swaddling clothes. She, the mother, while he drank life in long
draughts, was dreaming already of his future. What would he be when
she should have made him tall and strong, giving herself to him
entirely? A scientist, perhaps, who would reveal to the world
something of the eternal truth; or a great captain, who would confer
glory on his country; or, still better, one of those shepherds of the
people who appease the passions and bring about the reign of justice.
She saw him, in fancy, beautiful, good and powerful. Hers was the
dream of every mother--the conviction that she had brought the
expected Messiah into the world; and there was in this hope, in this
obstinate belief, which every mother has in the certain triumph of her
child, the hope which itself makes life, the belief which gives
humanity the ever renewed strength to live still.

What would the child be? She looked at him, trying to discover whom he
resembled. He had certainly his father's brow and eyes, there was
something noble and strong in the breadth of the head. She saw a
resemblance to herself, too, in his fine mouth and his delicate chin.
Then, with secret uneasiness, she sought a resemblance to the others,
the terrible ancestors, all those whose names were there inscribed on
the tree, unfolding its growth of hereditary leaves. Was it this one,
or this, or yet this other, whom he would resemble? She grew calm,
however, she could not but hope, her heart swelled with eternal hope.
The faith in life which the master had implanted in her kept her brave
and steadfast. What did misery, suffering and wickedness matter!
Health was in universal labor, in the effort made, in the power which
fecundates and which produces. The work was good when the child
blessed love. Then hope bloomed anew, in spite of the open wounds, the
dark picture of human shame. It was life perpetuated, tried anew, life
which we can never weary of believing good, since we live it so
eagerly, with all its injustice and suffering.

Clotilde had glanced involuntarily at the ancestral tree spread out
beside her. Yes, the menace was there--so many crimes, so much filth,
side by side with so many tears, and so much patient goodness; so
extraordinary a mixture of the best and the most vile, a humanity in
little, with all its defects and all its struggles. It was a question
whether it would not be better that a thunderbolt should come and
destroy all this corrupt and miserable ant-hill. And after so many
terrible Rougons, so many vile Macquarts, still another had been born.
Life did not fear to create another of them, in the brave defiance of
its eternity. It continued its work, propagated itself according to
its laws, indifferent to theories, marching on in its endless labor.
Even at the risk of making monsters, it must of necessity create,
since, in spite of all it creates, it never wearies of creating in the
hope, no doubt, that the healthy and the good will one day come. Life,
life, which flows like a torrent, which continues its work, beginning
it over and over again, without pause, to the unknown end! life in
which we bathe, life with its infinity of contrary currents, always in
motion, and vast as a boundless sea!

A transport of maternal fervor thrilled Clotilde's heart, and she
smiled, seeing the little voracious mouth drinking her life. It was a
prayer, an invocation, to the unknown child, as to the unknown God! To
the child of the future, to the genius, perhaps, that was to be, to
the Messiah that the coming century awaited, who would deliver the
people from their doubt and their suffering! Since the nation was to
be regenerated, had he not come for this work? He would make the
experiment anew, he would raise up walls, give certainty to those who
were in doubt, he would build the city of justice, where the sole law
of labor would insure happiness. In troublous times prophets were to
be expected--at least let him not be the Antichrist, the destroyer,
the beast foretold in the Apocalypse--who would purge the earth of its
wickedness, when this should become too great. And life would go on in
spite of everything, only it would be necessary to wait for other
myriads of years before the other unknown child, the benefactor,
should appear.

But the child had drained her right breast, and, as he was growing
angry, Clotilde turned him round and gave him the left. Then she began
to smile, feeling the caress of his greedy little lips. At all events
she herself was hope. A mother nursing, was she not the image of the
world continued and saved? She bent over, she looked into his limpid
eyes, which opened joyously, eager for the light. What did the child
say to her that she felt her heart beat more quickly under the breast
which he was draining? To what cause would he give his blood when he
should be a man, strong with all the milk which he would have drunk?
Perhaps he said nothing to her, perhaps he already deceived her, and
yet she was so happy, so full of perfect confidence in him.

Again there was a distant burst of music. This must be the apotheosis,
the moment when Grandmother Felicite, with her silver trowel, laid the
first stone of the monument to the glory of the Rougons. The vast blue
sky, gladdened by the Sunday festivities, rejoiced. And in the warm
silence, in the solitary peace of the workroom, Clotilde smiled at the
child, who was still nursing, his little arm held straight up in the
air, like a signal flag of life.