THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя
her features in my memory and retired from the mirror.
As I was quitting the booth, I saw my acquaintance, the friend of the people, enter. This grave moralist, who seemed to shun me, hastened to set the bad example of culpable curiosity. His long spine, bent in a semicircle, shook with emotion; then, being unable to get nearer, he kissed the magic glass.
I descended the three plank steps of the platform; I found myself again in the crowd, decided to seek the girl who loved me now that I knew her smile.
The lamps smoked, the tumult was increasing, the people pushed along with such reckless haste that they nearly overturned the booths. The fête was at that hour of ideal joy in which, in order to be happy, one risks being suffocated.
On straightening myself up, I had before me a horizon of linen caps and silk hats. I advanced, pushing the men, cautiously getting around the great skirts of the women. Perhaps the girl who loved me was wrapped in that pink cloak; perhaps her head was beneath that tulle hood ornamented with mauve ribbons; perhaps she wore that delicious straw hat with an ostrich feather in it. Alas! the owner of the cloak was sixty; the hood, which concealed an abominably ugly face, leaned lovingly upon the shoulder of a sapper; she who wore the hat was laughing heartily, opening widely the most beautiful eyes in the world — but I did not recognize those beautiful eyes.
Brothers, above crowds hover I know not what anguish and what sorrow, as if the multitude had sent up a breath of terror and pity. Never do I find myself amid a great assemblage of people without experiencing a vague uneasiness. It seems to me that some frightful misfortune menaces these assembled men, that a single flash of lightning will suffice, amid the excitement of their gestures and voices, to strike them with motionlessness, with eternal silence.
Little by little, I decreased my pace, looking at this joy which wounded me. At the foot of a tree, in the full yellow light of the lamps, an old beggar was standing, his body stiffened, horribly twisted by paralysis. He lifted towards the passersby his pale face, winking his eyes in a lamentable fashion the better to excite pity. He gave to his limbs sudden quivers of fever which shook him like a withered branch. The young girls, fresh and blushing, passed laughingly before this hideous spectacle.
Further away, at the door of an inn, two workmen were fighting. In the struggle, the glasses had been overturned, and to see the wine flowing over the pavement one might have thought it blood from great wounds.
The laughter seemed to me to be changed into sobs, the lights became a vast conflagration, the crowd whirled as if stricken with terror. I walked on, with a feeling of horrible sadness at my heart, staring at the faces of the young girls but never finding the person who loved me.
I saw a man standing before one of the posts which bore the lamps, considering it with a profoundly absorbed air. From his disturbed looks, I thought he was seeking the solution of some grave problem. This man was the friend of the people.
Having turned his head, he noticed me.
“Monsieur,” said he to me, “the oil employed in fêtes like this costs twenty sous a litre. In a litre is enough to fill twenty lamps like those which you see there: hence each lamp consumes a sou’s worth of oil. Now, this post has sixteen rows of eight lamps each: a hundred and twenty-eight lamps in all. Besides — follow my calculations closely — I have counted sixty similar posts in the avenue, which makes seven thousand six hundred and eighty lamps and, consequently, seven thousand six hundred and eighty sous, or, in other words, three hundred and eighty-four francs.” While speaking thus, the friend of the people gesticulated, emphasizing the figures, bending down his tall body as if to bring himself within the reach of my feeble understanding. When he paused, he threw himself back triumphantly; then, he folded his arms, looking me in the face with a penetrating air.
“Three hundred and eighty-four francs’ worth of oil,” cried he, putting a pause between each syllable, “and the poor people are without bread, Monsieur! I ask of you, and I ask it of you with tears in my eyes, if it would not be more honorable for humanity to distribute these three hundred and eighty-four francs among the three thousand indigent people contained in this faubourg? Such a charitable measure would give to each one of them about two sons and a halfs worth of bread. This thought is well calculated to make tender souls reflect, Monsieur.”
Seeing that I stared at him curiously, he continued, in a drawling voice, the while securing his gloves on his hands:
“The poor man should not laugh, Monsieur. He is altogether dishonest if he forgets his poverty for an hour. Who then will weep over the misfortunes of the people, if the government often gives such saturnalias as this?”
He wiped away a tear and left me. I saw him enter the shop of a wine merchant, where he drowned his emotion in five or six glasses of claret, taking one after the other over the counter.
The last light of the fair had just been extinguished; the crowd had dispersed. In the vacillating brightness of the street lamps, I now saw wandering beneath the trees only a few dark forms, couples of belated lovers, drunkards and sergents de ville airing their melancholy. The booths stretched away, gray and silent, on both borders of the avenue, like the tents of a deserted encampment.
Brothers, the morning breeze, damp with dew, imparted a quiver to the leaves of the elm trees. The biting emanations of the evening had given place to a delicious coolness. The softened silence, the transparent gloom of the infinite, fell slowly from the depths of the sky, and the fête of the stars followed the fête of the lamps. Honest people, at last, could amuse themselves a little.
I felt myself thoroughly rejuvenated, brothers, the hour of solitude having arrived. I walked with a firm step, ascending and descending the neighboring streets; then, I saw a gray shadow glide along the houses. This shadow came rapidly towards me, without seeming to see me; from the lightness of the step and the rhythmical rustle of the garments, I recognized a woman. She was about to run against me, when she instinctively raised her eyes. Her visage was revealed to me by the glimmer of a neighboring lantern, and I recognized it immediately as belonging to the girl who loved me: she was not the immortal in the white muslin cloud as I had seen her in the booth, but a poor daughter of this earth clad in faded calico. In her poverty, she seemed to me more charming than before, though pale and fatigued. I could not doubt the evidence of my senses: I saw before me the large eyes, the caressing lips of the vision, and, besides, I distinguished, on inspecting her thus closely, that sweetness of the features imparted by suffering.
As she stopped for a second, brothers, I seized her hand and kissed it, forgetting Laurence. She raised her head and smiled vaguely upon me, without seeking to withdraw her fingers. Seeing me remain silent, emotion having choked the words in my throat, she shrugged her shoulders and resumed her rapid walk.
I ran after her, caught her by the arm, and walked beside her. She laughed almost silently; then, she shivered and said, in a low voice:
“I am cold: let us hasten along.”
Poor child, she was cold! Beneath her thin black shawl, her shoulders trembled in the cool morning breeze. I said to her, gently:
“Do you know me?”
Again she raised her eyes, and, without hesitating, replied: “No.”
I know not what rapid thought shot through my mind. In my turn, I shivered.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders, and said to me, in a childish voice, with a little, careless pout:
“I am going home.”
We walked along down the avenue.
I saw upon a bench two soldiers, one of whom was discoursing gravely, while the other listened with respect. These soldiers were the sergeant and the conscript. The sergeant, who seemed to me greatly moved, made me a mocking salute, murmuring:
“The rich lend, sometimes, Monsieur.”
The conscript, a tender and innocent soul, said to me, in a tone full of grief:
“I had only her, Monsieur: you are stealing from me the girl who loves me!”
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