THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя
visit to Paris. The memories which they had left in their little house in the Rue de Boulogne, filled them with uneasiness. Shut up in their beloved solitude, they thought themselves protected against the miseries of this world and defied sorrow.
William’s existence was one of unmixed bliss. Marriage was realising the dream of his youth. He lived an unchequered life, free from all agitation, a round of peace and affection. Since Madeleine had come to live at La Noiraude, he was full of hope, and thought of the future without a fear. It would be what the present was, a long sleep of affection, a succession of days like these and equally happy. His restless mind must have this assurance of uninterrupted tranquillity: his dearest wish was to arrive at the hour of death like this, after a stagnant existence, an existence free from events, an existence of one unbroken sentiment. He was at rest, and he felt an aversion to quit this state of repose.
Madeleine’s heart too was at rest. She was enjoying a delicious repose from the troubles of her past in the calm of her present life. There was nothing now to hurt her. She could respect herself, and forget the shame of the past. Now she shared her husband’s fortune without scruple, and reigned in the house as legitimate wife. The solitude of La Noiraude, of this huge building, all black and ruinous, pleased her. She would not allow William to have the old house done up in modern fashion. She simply permitted him to repair an apartment on the first floor, and the dining and drawingrooms down stairs. The other rooms remained closed. In four years they never once climbed the staircase to the attics. Madeleine liked to feel all this empty space round her; it seemed to isolate her all the more, and protect her against harm from without. She took a pleasure in forgetting everything in the spacious room on the ground floor: a silence which calmed her seemed to fall from the lofty ceiling, and the dark corners of the room made her dream of immensities of peaceful shade. At night, when the lamp was lit, she was deeply soothed at the thought of being alone, and so small in the midst of this infinity. Not a sound came from the country: the secluded sanctity of a cloister, that seclusion one finds in a sleepy province, seemed to have settled on La Noiraude. Then Madeleine’s thoughts would recur at times to one of the noisy evenings she had passed in the Rue Soufflot with James; she would hear the deafening rumble of the carriages on the pavement in Paris, she would see the harsh glare of the gaslamps, and she would live again, for a second, in the little hotel-apartment full of the fumes of tobacco, chinking of glasses, bursts of laughter and kisses. It was only a flash, like a whiff of warm and nauseous air coming right into her face, but she would look round, terrified, stifling already. And then she would breathe freely again as she found herself in the sombre and deserted big room: she would awake from her bad dream, trustful and comforted, to bury herself once more with greater pleasure, in the silence and shade around her.
How sweet this placid life was for her straightforward and cold nature, after the agitations of the flesh to which fate had exposed her! She would thank the cold ceiling, the dumb walls and all this building which enveloped her in a winding-sheet: she would stretch out her hands to William, as if to return thanks to him: he had brought her true joy by restoring to her her lost dignity, he was her beloved deliverer.
They thus passed their winters in almost complete solitude. They never left the drawingroom on the ground-floor, a big fire of logs of wood blazed in the huge fireplace, and they stayed there the whole day long, spending each hour alike. They led a clockwork life, clinging to their habits with the obstinacy of people who are perfectly happy and fear the least agitation. They hardly did anything, they never grew weary, or at least the feeling of gloomy weariness in which they indulged seemed to them bliss itself. Yet, there were no passionate caresses, no pleasures to make them forget the slow march of time. Two lovers will shut themselves up sometimes, and live for a season in each other’s arms, satisfying their desires and turning days into nights of love. William and Madeleine simply smiled on each other, their solitude was chaste; if they shut themselves up, it was not because they had kisses to conceal, it was because they loved the still silence of the winter, the tranquillity of the cold. It was enough for them to live alone, side by side, and to bestow on each other the calm of their presence.
Then, directly the fine days came, they opened their windows and went down to the park. Instead of isolating themselves in the huge room, they would hide in some thicket. There was no change. In this way they lived in the fine weather, wild and retired, shunning the noise.
William preferred winter, and the warm moist atmosphere of the hearth, but Madeleine was always passionately fond of the sunshine, the blazing sunshine which scorched her neck and made her pulse beat steady and strong. She would often take her husband into the country, they would go and revisit the spring, or follow the open space by the brook reminding each other of their walks in the days gone by, or they would visit the farms again, rambling about, striking into the fields, far away from the villages. But the pilgrimage they loved best was to go and spend the afternoon in the little house where Madeleine had lived. A few months after their marriage, they had bought this house, for they could not bear the idea of its not belonging to them, and they felt an unconquerable desire to go in, whenever they passed by it. When it was theirs, their minds were at rest, and they said to themselves that no one could enter and drive away the memories of their affection. And when the air was mild, they used to go there nearly every day, for a few hours. It was like their country-house, although it was only ten minutes’ walk from La Noiraude. Their life there was even more solitary than at La Noiraude, for they had given orders that they were never to be disturbed. They sometimes even slept there, and on these nights they forgot the whole world. Often would William say:
“If any calamity ever overtakes us, we will come here and forget it; here we shall be proof against suffering.”
In this way the months glided by, in this way season succeeded season. The first year after their marriage, a joyful event had happened — Madeleine had given birth to a daughter. William welcomed with profound gratitude this child which his lawful wife, and not his mistress, as might have happened, had presented to him. He saw in this retardation of maternity a kind design on the part of Heaven. Little Lucy peopled their solitude herself. Her mother, strong as she was, could not suckle her herself, and she chose for her nurse a young woman who had been in her service before her marriage. This woman, whose father managed the farm by the little house, thus suckled the child quite close to La Noiraude. The parents used to go to inquire about her every day, and later on, when Lucy had grown, they would leave her for weeks at the farm, where she used to like to stay and lived a healthy life. There they would see her every afternoon, when they went to seclude themselves in their little house. They would take her with them, enjoying an exquisite pleasure in surrounding this little fair head with their happy memories. The dear girl gave a perfume of childhood to the little rooms where they had loved each other, and they would listen to her prattle with melting affection, in their meditation on the past. When they were all three together in their retreat, William would take Lucy with her laughing rosy lips and blue eyes on his knees and say gently:
“Madeleine, here we have the present and the future.” Then the fond mother would smile serenely on them both. Maternity had given the finishing touch to the equilibrium of Madeleine’s temperament. Up to that time, she had retained her girlish impulsiveness, and her young woman’s amorous gestures; her golden hair fell down her back in wanton freedom; her hips were too obtrusive in their movements, and in her grey eyes, or on her red lips would play bold expressions of desire. Now, her whole being had toned down, and marriage had imparted to her a sort of precocious maturity; there was a slight rotundity in her figure, her movements were more gentle and dignified; her golden-hair, carefully tied up, was now merely a charming token of strength, a vigorous setting for the picture of her now calm face. The girl was giving place to the mother, to the fruitful woman, settled in the plenitude of her beauty. What especially gave to Madeleine her dignified bearing, her noble expression of peace and health, her complexion clear and smooth as tranquil water, was the internal contentedness of her being. She felt herself free, she lived proud and satisfied with herself; her new existence was a suitable atmosphere in which her better part was rapidly developing. Before this, during the first few months that she had spent in the country, she had expanded in joy and strength; but then she had not been free from a something that seemed coarse, and this coarseness was now being transformed into serenity.
Madeleine’s smiling vigour was a great solace for William. When he pressed her