THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя
smiled at the count’s rough and eccentric ways.
“Well,” the latter went on, “you don’t ask me to help you, to defend you against Cazalis? Come, you’re sensible. You understand that I can do nothing against that vain and obstinate nobility to which I belong. Ah! your brother has done a fine thing!”
M. de Girousse was striding about the drawingroom. He pulled himself up abruptly before Marius, and said to him in a loud voice:
“Listen well to what I am about to tell you. There are some fifty of us in this good town, all old fellows like myself, living by ourselves, buried in a past for ever dead. We profess to be the cream of the cream of Provence, and there we stick, doing nothing but twirling our thumbs. For, see you! we are noblemen, chivalrous hearts, awaiting devoutly the return of their legitimate princes. And, the deuce take it! we shall wait a long time, so long that we shall all have died of solitude and idleness, before the least legitimate prince shows himself. If we were gifted with good eyes we should observe the march of events. We cry out to facts: ‘You shall go no farther!’ and yet the facts pass quietly over our bodies and crush us.
“It maddens me to see how we are shut up in an obstinacy as ridiculous as it is heroic. To think that we are most of us wealthy, that we might nearly all become intelligent manufacturers, working for the prosperity of the country, and that we prefer to grow mouldy in the recesses of our mansions, like the rubbish of a bygone age!”
He stopped to take breath, and then went on still more energetically:
“And we take a pride in our empty existence. We don’t work because we disdain labour. We have a holy horror of the people because their hands are soiled. Ah! your brother dared to touch one of our daughters! We’ll show him whether his blood is the same as ours. We shall league ourselves together and give the rascallions a lesson, we’ll cure them of seeking to find favour in our children’s eyes. Some powerful ecclesiastics will second us; they are fatally bound to our cause. It will be a splendid campaign for our vanity.”
After a pause, M. de Girousse resumed sarcastically: “Our vanity, it has at times received some nasty knocks. A few years prior to my birth, a terrible tragedy was enacted in the mansion adjoining this. M. d’Entrecasteaux, the president of the parliament, murdered his wife in her bed; he cut her throat with a razor, which was not found till twenty-five days afterwards at the bottom of the garden. The victim’s jewels were discovered down the well, where the murderer had thrown them to lead the authorities to believe that robbery was the reason of the murder. President d’Entrecasteaux took to flight and went, I believe, to Portugal, where he died in poverty. The parliament condemned him, in default, to be broken alive on the wheel.
“So you see we have also our scoundrels, and that the lower classes have nothing to envy us. That cowardly crime, committed by one of ourselves, dealt a sad blow in those days to our authority. A novelist might write a heartrending book with the materials furnished by this doleful and tragic story.”
Resuming his walk, M. de Girousse continued: “And we also know how to humble ourselves. For instance, when Fouché, the regicide, then Duke of Otranto, was, somewhere about 1810, exiled for a short time to our town, all the nobles dragged themselves before him.
“I remember an anecdote which will show you to what abject servility we lowered ourselves. On New Year’s Day 1811, there was a long file of persons waiting to pay their respects to the ex-member of the Convention. In the reception-room there was some talk of the severity of the weather, and one of the callers was expressing his fears as to the fate of the olivetrees. ‘What do we care for the olivetrees!’ exclaimed one of the noble personages, ‘providing his Grace the Duke keeps well!’
“That’s how we are now-a-days, my friend, humble with the mighty, haughty with the weak. There are no doubt some exceptions, but they are rare. You must see, therefore, that your brother will be convicted. Our pride, which bent the knee before a Fouché, cannot do so before a Cayol. That’s logical. Goodnight!”
And the count abruptly dismissed Marius. His own words had exasperated him, and he feared that his anger might end by making him say something foolish.
The next day, the young man met him again and M. de Girousse took him home as on the previous evening. He held in his hand a newspaper containing a list of the jury who were to decide Philippe’s case and struck the paper forcibly with his finger, exclaiming:
“Those are the men who will condemn your brother! Shall I tell you some stories about them? They are curious and instructive.”
M. de Girousse seated himself, and glanced through the paper, shrugging his shoulders as he did so.
“It’s a packed jury,” he said at last, “an assembly of rich men who have every interest to serve the cause of M. de Cazalis. They are all more or less mixed up with the clergy or on intimate terms with the nobility. They are almost all friends of men who spend their mornings in the churches and cheat their customers the rest of the day.”
Then he named them one by one, and spoke of the set they frequented with increasing indignation.
“Humbert,” he said, “is the brother of a Marseille merchant, a dealer in oil, an honest man who holds his head erect and whom every poor devil salutes. Twenty years ago their father was but a struggling clerk. Today his sons are millionaires, thanks to his skilful speculations. One year he sold a large quantity of oil beforehand, at the market rate. A few weeks afterwards the cold destroyed the olivetrees, the crop was lost, and he was a ruined man if he did not deceive his customers. But he preferred deceit to poverty.
“Whilst his brother-merchants were delivering the genuine article at a loss, our man bought up all the spoilt and rancid oils he could find, and then made the promised deliveries. His customers complained and grew angry, but the speculator coolly replied that he was strictly keeping to his agreements and that they could claim nothing further of him. And the trick was played. All Marseille, which knows the story, is never tired of taking its hat off to this skilful man.
“Gautier is another Marseille merchant. He has a nephew, Paul Bertrand, who swindled in style. This Bertrand was in partnership with a person named Aubert, living in New York, who used to send him consignments of goods to be disposed of in Marseille. They shared the profits. Our man made immense sums in this business, the more especially as he was careful to cheat his partner at each division of profits.
“One day, a crisis broke out and losses were incurred. Bertrand continued to receive the goods which the ships still brought, but he refused to honour the drafts Aubert drew upon him, saying that business was bad and he was in difficulties. The returned bills come back again with enormous expenses attached to them. Then Bertrand calmly says that he won’t pay, that he is not obliged to be Aubert’s partner for ever, and that he owes nothing. There’s a fresh return of the bills, fresh expenses incurred, and the New York merchant, surprised and indignant, has to take them up at great loss. The latter, who had to plead through a power of attorney, lost the action for damages he brought against Bertrand; I was assured that two thirds of his fortune, twelve hundred thousand francs, were swallowed up in this catastrophe.
“Bertrand remains the most honest man in the world; he is received everywhere and belongs to several congregations, he is envied and honoured.
“Dutailly is a dealer in corn. Some time ago, one of his sons-in-law, George Fouque, met with a misadventure which caused a scandal that his friends hastened to hush up. Fouque always arranged matters so that it should appear that the cargoes the ships brought him had suffered in transport. The insurance offices paid on the report of an expert. But tired of continually paying, the offices appointed as expert an honest baker, who soon received a visit from Fouque. The latter, whilst conversing on indifferent matters, slipped a few gold pieces into his hand. The baker dropped the coins and kicked them into the middle of the room. There were several persons present, yet Fouque’s reputation has in no way suffered.
“Delorme lives in a town not far from Marseille. He retired from business long ago. Listen to the disgraceful action his cousin Mille was guilty of. Thirty years back, Mille’s mother kept a draper’s shop. When the old lady