THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя
cart, and the wind nearly blinded their horse. Blanche was shivering in her thin cotton dress. To complete their wretchedness, they thought they could see from a distance, at one of the gates of the town, some gendarmes examining the faces of the passersby. Thoroughly frightened, they retraced their steps, and returned to Lambesc through which they only passed.
Arrived at Aix, they did not dare stay there, and resolved to reach the frontier at no matter what cost.
There they would procure themselves a passport, and be in safety. Philippe, who knew a chemist at Toulon, decided to pay a visit to that town. He expected that his friend would be able to assist him in his flight. The chemist, a big, merry fellow named Jourdan, received them very well. He hid them in his own room and promised to at once try and obtain them a passport.
Jourdan was gone out, when two gendarmes called. Blanche nearly fainted away. White as a ghost and seated in a corner, she was stifling her sobs. Philippe, in a choking voice, asked the gendarmes what they wanted.
“Are you M. Jourdan?” one of them inquired, with a roughness which forbode nothing good.
“No,” replied the young man. “M. Jourdan is out, but will soon be back.”
“Very well,” said the gendarme curtly; and he seated himself heavily.
The poor lovers scarcely dared look at each other; they felt fit to faint away in the presence of these men who had, no doubt, come after them. Their anguish lasted a good half hour. At length, Jourdan returned. He paled at the sight of the gendarmes, and answered their questions with the greatest confusion.
“You must come with us,” said one of the men.
“What for?” he asked. “What am I accused of?”
“You are charged with having cheated at cards last night in a club. You will be able to give your explanations when before the magistrate.”
A shudder passed through Jourdan’s frame. He was quite dazed, and accompanied the gendarmes with the docility of a child. They went off without even perceiving the terror of the lovers. Jourdan’s affair made a great sensation at Toulon at the time. But no one knew of the painful drama which had been enacted at the chemist’s, the day of his arrest.
This event took all the courage out of Philippe. He understood that he was not strong enough to evade the police who were on his track. Besides, he had now no longer any hope of obtaining a passport, and would therefore be unable to cross the frontier. Moreover, he saw that Blanche’s strength was giving way. He therefore determined to return towards Marseille, and wait, in the neighbourhood of the city, until M. de Cazalis’ anger was partly appeased. Like all those who have no longer any ground for hope, he had at times ridiculous visions of pardon and happiness.
Philippe had a relation at Aix named Isnard, who kept a draper’s shop. Not knowing where to obtain hospitality, the fugitives returned to Aix, to ask Isnard for the key of one of his cottages. A fatality pursued them: the draper was away, and they were obliged to hide themselves in an old house on the Cours Sextius, belonging to a cousin of M. de Girousse’s farmer. This woman would not at first receive them, fearing she might be called to account, later on, for her hospitality; she only yielded before Philippe’s promises to procure her son’s exemption from military service. The young man was no doubt in a hopeful frame of mind; he could already see himself a deputy’s nephew, and was disposing freely of his uncle’s great influence.
That evening, Isnard came to the lovers and handed them the key of a cottage he owned in the Puyricard plain. He had two others, one at Tholonet and the other in the district of the Trois-bons-Dieux. The keys of these were hidden under certain great stones which he described to them. He advised them not to remain two nights running beneath the same roof, and promised to do his best to put the police off their track.
They started off and took the road which passes beside the hospital. Isnard’s cottage was situated to the right of Puyricard, between the village and the road leading to Venelles. It was one of those ugly little buildings formed of lime-washed stones without mortar, and enlivened by a roof of red tiles; it contained but one room, little better than a dirty stable; straw refuse littered the ground and great cobwebs hung from the ceiling. They had fortunately brought a rug with them. They gathered the litter into a corner and spread the rug over the heap. This formed their couch amid the acrid exhalations of the dampness surrounding them.
On the morrow, they passed the day in a hole in a dried-up watercourse called the Touloubre. Then, towards evening, they gained the Venelles road, and reached Tholonet by a roundabout way in order to avoid passing through Aix. It was eleven o’clock when they arrived at the draper’s cottage situated below the Jesuit oratory.
This cottage was rather better. It had two rooms, a kitchen and a parlour, which latter contained a fold-up bedstead; the walls were covered with caricatures cut out of the Charivari, and strings of onions hung from the whitewashed beams. The lovers could almost fancy themselves in a palace.
In the morning their fright returned; they climbed the hill and remained till nighttime in the recesses of the Infernets. In those days, the precipices of Jaumegarde still possessed all their sinister horror; the Zola canal had not then pierced the mountain, and strollers did not often venture into that dismal abyss of reddish rocks. Blanche and Philippe enjoyed profound peacefulness in the midst of this desert; they rested long beside a clear and murmuring spring, which trickled from a gigantic mass of rock.
At nightfall returned the cruel question of shelter. Blanche could now scarcely walk; her wounded feet bled upon the sharp and pointed stones. Philippe understood he could not take her much farther. He supported her, and they slowly ascended to the level ground overlooking the Infernets. It is an extensive uncultivated plain, vast fields of pebbles, waste land broken up here and there by disused quarries. Nothing looks so strangely wild as this broad landscape with its bare horizon dotted here and there with a dark and stunted vegetation; the rocks, looking like distorted limbs, pierce above the barren earth; the plain, having the appearance of a humpback, seems to have been stricken with death in the midst of the convulsions of a terrible agony.
Philippe hoped to find some hole, some cavern. He had the good luck to discover a shanty, one of those shelters in which sportsmen hide themselves while awaiting the flight of birds of passage. He did not hesitate to force in the door, and seated Blanche upon a little bench he felt beneath his hand. Then he went and gathered a quantity of thyme; the plain is covered with this humble grey plant the strong perfume of which rises from every hill of Provence. He carried the thyme into the shelter, and spread it in the form of a mattress over which he laid the rug. The bed was ready, and the fugitives kissed each other good night upon this miserable couch.
Philippe was unable to sleep, the strong smell of the thyme upon which he was lying affected his brain. He dreamt in spite of his wakefulness, that M. de Cazalis had received him affectionately and that he had been elected deputy in his uncle’s stead. Now and again he could hear Blanche’s mournful sighs, as she slumbered beside him, agitated and feverish. The young girl had come to consider her flight some nightmare full of bitter pleasures. During the day she was rendered stupid by fatigue; she smiled sadly and never complained. Her inexperience had caused her to agree to the flight, and her weak character prevented her proposing to return. She belonged body and soul to this man who carried her along; all she wished was to have to walk less, she continued to believe that her uncle would consent to her marriage, when his temper had cooled.
The fugitives left their bed of thyme at sunrise. Their clothes were becoming terribly torn, and their shoes were nearly worn out. In the coolness of the morning, amid the wild perfumes of this solitude, they forgot their wretchedness for a time, and declared laughingly that they were frightfully hungry. So Philippe told Blanche to go back to the hut and hurried off to Tholonet in search of food. It took him a good half-hour.
When he returned he found the young girl in a state of terror: she assured him she had seen some wolves prowling about. The table was laid on a large flat stone, and they were like a couple of gipsy lovers breakfasting in the open air. After breakfast, they made for the centre of the plain, and remained there all day. These were some of their happiest hours.
But