The Rougon-Macquart: Complete 20 Book Collection. Эмиль Золя
doubtless recollected that poisonous love to which she had heard Ristori lend her sobs. Then, to avoid meeting the young man at home in future, to dig for ever an abyss of shame between the father and son, she forced her husband to take cognizance of the incest, she told him that on the day when he had surprised her with Maxime, the latter, who had long been running after her, was trying to ravish her. Saccard was terribly annoyed by her persistency in her desire to open his eyes. He was compelled to quarrel with his son, to cease to see him. The young widower, rich with his wife’s dowry, took a small house in the Avenue de l’Impératrice, where he lived alone. He gave up the Council of State, he ran racehorses. Renée experienced one of her last satisfactions. She took her revenge, she flung back the infamy these two men had set in her into their faces; she said to herself that now she would never again see them laughing at her, arm in arm, familiarly.
Amid the crumbling of Renée’s affections there came a time when she had none but her maid left to love. She had gradually developed a motherly fondness for Céleste. Perhaps this girl, who was all that remained near her of Maxime’s love, recalled to her hours of enjoyment for ever dead. Perhaps she simply found herself touched by the faithfulness of this servant, of this honest heart whose tranquil solicitude nothing seemed to shake. From the depth of her remorse she thanked her for having witnessed her shame without leaving her in disgust; she pictured self-denials, a whole life of renunciation, before becoming able to understand the calmness of the lady’s maid in the presence of incest, her icy hands, her respectful and serene attentions. And she was all the happier in the girl’s devotion as she knew her to be virtuous and thrifty, with no lovers, no vices.
Sometimes in her sad moments she would say to her:
“Ah, my good girl, it will be your duty to close my eyes.”
Céleste made no reply, gave a curious smile. One morning she quietly told Renée that she was leaving, that she was going back to the country. Renée stood trembling all over, as though some great misfortune had overtaken her. She protested, she plied her with questions. Why was she deserting her when they agreed so well together? And she offered to double her wages.
But the lady’s-maid, to all her kind words, replied no with a gesture, placidly and obstinately.
“Listen, madame,” she ended by replying; “you might offer me all the gold in Peru, and I could not remain a week longer. Lord, you don’t know me…. I have been eight years with you, haven’t I? Well, then, ever since the first day I said to myself, ‘As soon as I have got five thousand francs together, I will go back home; I will buy Lagache’s house, and I shall live very happily.’… It’s a promise I made myself, you see. And I made up the five thousand francs yesterday, when you paid me my wages.”
Renée felt a chill at her heart. She saw Céleste moving behind her and Maxime while they embraced each other, and she saw her with her indifference, her perfect unconcern, thinking of her five thousand francs. She made one more endeavour, for all that, to retain her, frightened at the void that threatened her existence, hoping, in despite of everything, to keep by her this obstinate mule whom she had looked upon as devoted and whom she discovered to be merely egotistical. The girl smiled, still shaking her head, muttering:
“No, no, I can’t do it. I would refuse my own mother…. I shall buy two cows. I may start a little haberdasher’s shop. It’s very nice in our part. Oh, as to that, I don’t mind if you like to come and see me. It is near Caen. I will leave you the address.”
Then Renée ceased insisting. She wept scalding tears when she was alone. The next day, with the capriciousness of a sick person, she decided to accompany Céleste to the Gare de l’Ouest in her own brougham. She gave her one of her travelling-rugs, made her a present of money, fussed around her like a mother whose daughter is about to undertake a long and arduous journey. In the brougham she looked at her with humid eyes. Céleste chatted, said how pleased she was to go away. Then, emboldened, she spoke out and gave her mistress some advice.
“I should never have taken up life as you did, madame. I often said to myself, when I found you with M. Maxime: ‘How is it possible to be so foolish for men!’ It always ends badly…. Well, for my part, I always mistrusted them!”
She laughed, she threw herself back in the corner of the brougham.
“How my money would have danced!” she continued. “And at this moment I might have been crying my eyes out. And that is why, whenever I saw a man, I took up a broomstick…. I never dared tell you all this. Besides, it wasn’t my business. You were free to do as you pleased, and I had only to earn my money honestly.”
At the railway-station Renée said she would pay her fare, and took a first-class ticket for her. As they had arrived before their time, she detained her, pressed her hands, reiterated:
“And mind you take great care of yourself, look after yourself well, my dear Céleste.”
The latter let herself be petted. She stood looking happy, with a fresh, smiling face under her mistress’s eyes, which were swimming in tears. Renée again spoke of the past. And suddenly the other exclaimed:
“I was forgetting: I never told you the story of Baptiste, monsieur’s valet…. I suppose they did not care to tell you….”
Renée owned that as a matter of fact she did not know.
“Well, then, you remember his grand, dignified airs, his scornful look, you yourself spoke to me about them…. All that was play-acting…. He didn’t like women, he never came down to the servants’ hall when we were there: and he even, I can tell you now, pretended that it was disgusting in the drawingroom, because of the low-necked dresses. I well believe it, that he didn’t like women!”
And she leant toward Renée’s ear; she made her blush, the while she herself retained her virtuous composure.
“When the new stable-lad,” she continued, “told everything to monsieur, monsieur preferred to dismiss Baptiste rather than have him prosecuted. It seems that filthy sort of thing had been going on in the stables for years…. And to think that great rascal pretended to be fond of horses! It was the grooms he was after.”
The bell interrupted her. She hurriedly caught up the nine or ten packages from which she had refused to be parted. She allowed herself to be kissed. Then she went off, without looking back.
Renée remained in the station till the engine whistled. And when the train had gone, she did not know what to do in her despair; her days seemed to stretch before her as empty as this great hall where she had been left alone. She stepped back into her brougham, she told the coachman to drive her home. But on the way she changed her mind; she was afraid of her room, of the tediousness awaiting her there; she had not even the spirit to go in and change her dress for her customary drive round the lake. She felt a need of sunlight, a need of crowd.
She ordered the coachman to drive to the Bois.
It was four o’clock. The Bois was awakening from the drowsiness of the warm afternoon. Clouds of dust flew along the Avenue de l’Impératrice, and one could see in the distance the expanse of verdure contained by the slopes of Saint-Cloud and Suresnes, crowned by the gray mass of Mont-Valérien. The sun, high on the horizon, swept down, filling the hollows of the foliage with a golden dust, lighting up the tall branches, changing that sea of leaves into a sea of light. But past the fortifications, in the drive of the Bois leading to the lake, the roads had been watered, the carriages rolled over the brown earth as over the pile of a carpet, amid a freshness, a rising fragrance of moist earth. On either side the trees of the copses reared their crowd of young trunks amid the low bushes, losing themselves in the greenish twilight, which streaks of light pierced here and there with yellow clearings; and as the lake drew nearer, the chairs on the side-paths became more numerous, families sat with quiet, silent faces, watching the endless procession of wheels. Then, on reaching the open space before the lake, there was an effulgence; the slanting sun transformed the round sheet of water into a great mirror of polished silver, reflecting the blazing disk of the luminary. Eyes blinked, one could only distinguish on the left, near the bank, the dark patch of the pleasure-boat. The sunshades in the carriages inclined with a gentle, uniform movement