THE FOUR GOSPELS (Les Quatre Évangiles). Эмиль Золя
would take place to prove him in the right. He would not confess that he had made a mistake; he repeated that he knew the truth, and that folks would some day see plainly enough that a peasant’s calling was the very worst calling there could be, since the dirty land had gone bankrupt and would yield nothing more. Besides, he held his revenge — that enclosure which he left barren, uncultivated, by way of protest against the adjoining estate which it intersected. The thought of this made him ironical.
“Well,” he resumed in his ridiculously vain, scoffing way, “we are going to Paris too. Yes, we are going to install this young gentleman there.”
He pointed as he spoke to his son Antonin, now a tall, carroty fellow of eighteen, with an elongated head. A few light-colored bristles were already sprouting on his chin and cheeks, and he wore town attire, with a silk hat and gloves, and a bright blue necktie. After astonishing Janville by his success at school, he had displayed so much repugnance to manual work that his father had decided to make “a Parisian” of him.
“So it is decided; you have quite made up your mind?” asked Mathieu in a friendly way.
“Why, yes; why should I force him to toil and moil without the least hope of ever enriching himself? Neither my father nor I ever managed to put a copper by with that wretched old mill of ours. Why, the millstones wear away with rot more than with grinding corn. And the wretched fields, too, yield far more pebbles than crowns. And so, as he’s now a scholar, he may as well try his fortune in Paris. There’s nothing like city life to sharpen a man’s wits.”
Madame Lepailleur, who never took her eyes from her son, but remained in admiration before him as formerly before her husband, now exclaimed with an air of rapture: “Yes, yes, he has a place as a clerk with Maitre Rousselet, the attorney. We have rented a little room for him; I have seen about the furniture and the linen, and to-day’s the great day; he will sleep there tonight, after we have dined, all three, at a good restaurant. Ah! yes, I’m very pleased; he’s making a start now.”
“And he will perhaps end by being a minister of state,” said Mathieu, with a smile; “who knows? Everything is possible nowadays.”
It all typified the exodus from the country districts towards the towns, the feverish impatience to make a fortune, which was becoming general. Even the parents nowadays celebrated their child’s departure, and accompanied the adventurer on his way, anxious and proud to climb the social ladder with him. And that which brought a smile to the lips of the farmer of Chantebled, the bourgeois who had become a peasant, was the thought of the double change: the miller’s son going to Paris, whereas he had gone to the earth, the mother of all strength and regeneration.
Antonin, however, had also begun to laugh with the air of an artful idler who was more particularly attracted by the free dissipation of Paris life. “Oh! minister?” said he, “I haven’t much taste for that. I would much sooner win a million at once so as to rest afterwards.”
Delighted with this display of wit, the Lepailleurs burst into noisy merriment. Oh! their boy would do great things, that was quite certain!
Marianne, her heart oppressed by thought of the mourning which awaited her, had hitherto kept silent. She now asked, however, why little Therese did not form one of the party. Lepailleur dryly replied that he did not choose to embarrass himself with a child but six years old, who did not know how to behave. Her arrival had upset everything in the house; things would have been much better if she had never been born. Then, as Marianne began to protest, saying that she had seldom seen a more intelligent and prettier little girl, Madame Lepailleur answered more gently: “Oh! she’s sharp; that’s true enough; but one can’t send girls to Paris. She’ll have to be put somewhere, and it will mean a lot of trouble, a lot of money. However, we mustn’t talk about all that this morning, since we want to enjoy ourselves.”
At last the train reached Paris, and the Lepailleurs, leaving the Northern terminus, were caught and carried off by the impetuously streaming crowd.
When Mathieu and Marianne alighted from their cab on the Quai d’Orsay, in front of the Beauchenes’ residence, they recognized the Seguins’ brougham drawn up beside the foot pavement. And within it they perceived the two girls, Lucie and Andree, waiting mute and motionless in their light-colored dresses. Then, as they approached the door, they saw Valentine come out, in a very great hurry as usual. On recognizing them, however, she assumed an expression of deep pity, and spoke the words required by the situation:
“What a frightful misfortune, is it not? an only son!”
Then she burst out into a flood of words: “You have hastened here, I see, as I did; it is only natural. I heard of the catastrophe only by chance less than an hour ago. And you see my luck! My daughters were dressed, and I myself was dressing to take them to a wedding — a cousin of our friend Santerre is marrying a diplomatist. And, in addition, I am engaged for the whole afternoon. Well, although the wedding is fixed for a quarter-past eleven, I did not hesitate, but drove here before going to the church. And naturally I went upstairs alone. My daughters have been waiting in the carriage. We shall no doubt be a little late for the wedding. But no matter! You will see the poor parents in their empty house, near the body, which, I must say, they have laid out very nicely on the bed. Oh! it is heartrending.”
Mathieu was looking at her, surprised to see that she did not age. The fiery flame of her wild life seemed to scorch and preserve her. He knew that her home was now completely wrecked. Seguin openly lived with Nora, the governess, for whom he had furnished a little house. It was there even that he had given Mathieu an appointment to sign the final transfer of the Chantebled property. And since Gaston had entered the military college of St. Cyr, Valentine had only her two daughters with her in the spacious, luxurious mansion of the Avenue d’Antin, which ruin was slowly destroying.
“I think,” resumed Madame Seguin, “that I shall tell Gaston to obtain permission to attend the funeral. For I am not sure whether his father is in Paris. It’s just the same with our friend Santerre; he’s starting on a tour tomorrow. Ah! not only do the dead leave us, but it is astonishing what a number of the living go off and disappear! Life is very sad, is it not, dear madame?”
As she spoke a little quiver passed over her face; the dread of the coming rupture, which she had felt approaching for several months past, amid all the skilful preparations of Santerre, who had been long maturing some secret plan, which she did not as yet divine. However, she made a devout ecstatic gesture, and added: “Well, we are in the hands of God.”
Marianne, who was still smiling at the ever-motionless girls in the closed brougham, changed the subject. “How tall they have grown, how pretty they have become! Your Andree looks adorable. How old is your Lucie now? She will soon be of an age to marry.”
“Oh! don’t let her hear you,” retorted Valentine; “you would make her burst into tears! She is seventeen, but for sense she isn’t twelve. Would you believe it, she began sobbing this morning and refusing to go to the wedding, under the pretence that it would make her ill? She is always talking of convents; we shall have to come to a decision about her. Andree, though she is only thirteen, is already much more womanly. But she is a little stupid, just like a sheep. Her gentleness quite upsets me at times; it jars on my nerves.”
Then Valentine, on the point of getting into her carriage, turned to shake hands with Marianne, and thought of inquiring after her health. “Really,” said she, “I lose my head at times. I was quite forgetting. And the baby you’re expecting will be your eleventh child, will it now? How terrible! Still it succeeds with you. And, ah! those poor people whom you are going to see, their house will be quite empty now.”
When the brougham had rolled away it occurred to Mathieu and Marianne that before seeing the Beauchenes it might be advisable for them to call at the little pavilion, where their son or their daughter-in-law might be able to give them some useful information. But neither Blaise nor Charlotte was there. They found only a servant who was watching over the little girl, Berthe. This servant declared that she had not seen Monsieur Blaise since the previous day, for he had remained at the Beauchenes’ near the body. And as for Madame, she also had gone there early that morning, and had left instructions that Berthe was to be brought