The Rougon-Macquart: Complete 20 Book Collection. Эмиль Золя
allowing her convictions to be shaken, next explained to him with great lucidity that he would not raise a sou, having no security to offer. This conversation took place in front of the Bourse, where she was about to speculate with her savings. One was certain to find her at about three o’clock leaning against the rail, on the left, at the post-office side; it was there that she gave audience to individuals as sinister and shady as herself. As her brother was on the point of leaving her, she murmured regretfully, “Ah! if only you were unmarried!…” This reservation, of which he scrupled to enquire the exact and complete meaning, made Saccard singularly reflective.
Months passed, war was declared in the Crimea. Paris, unmoved by a war so distant, threw itself with growing ardour into speculation and the commerce of harlots. Saccard stood by, gnawing his fists, as he watched this increasing mania which he had foreseen. The hammers beating the gold on the anvils of this gigantic forge gave him shocks of fury and impatience. So tense were his intellect and his will that he lived in a dream, like a sleep-walker stepping along the edge of a roof under the influence of a fixed idea. He was surprised, therefore, and irritated, one evening to find Angèle ill in bed. His home life, regular as clockwork, was upset, and this exasperated him like a thought-out spitefulness of Fate. Poor Angèle complained gently; she had caught a chill. When the doctor came, he appeared very anxious; he told the husband on the landing that his wife had inflammation of the lungs, and that he could not answer for her recovery. From that moment the clerk nursed the sick woman without any feeling of anger; he no longer went to his office, he stayed by her side, watching her with an indescribable look on his face, whenever she lay asleep, flushed and panting with fever. Mme. Sidonie found time, notwithstanding the overwhelming nature of her work, to call every evening and make decoctions which she maintained to be sovereign in their effects. To all her other professions she added that of a heaven-born sick-nurse, taking an interest in sufferings, in remedies, in the brokenhearted conversations that linger round deathbeds. She seemed to have taken a tender liking for Angèle; she had a way of loving women, with a thousand caresses, doubtless because of the pleasure they gave to men; she treated them with the delicate attention that merchants bestow upon the more precious of their wares, calling them “Pretty one, sweetheart,” cooing to them, and behaving with the transports of a lover in the presence of his mistress. And though Angèle was one of those out of whom there was nothing to be made, yet she cajoled her like the others, on principle. When the young wife took to her bed, Mme. Sidonie’s effusions became tearful, she filled the silent chamber with her devotedness. Her brother watched her moving about, his lips tight, as though crushed with silent grief.
The illness grew worse. One evening the doctor informed them that the patient would not live through the night. Mme. Sidonie had come early, preoccupied, watching Aristide and Angèle with her watery eyes, illumined by momentary flashes of fire. When the doctor was gone, she lowered the lamp, and there was a great hush. Death entered slowly into the hot, moist room, where the uneven breathing of the dying woman sounded like the spasmodic ticking of a clock that is running down. Mme. Sidonie desisted from her potions, letting the illness take its course. She sat down before the fireplace, near her brother, who was poking the fire with a feverish hand, throwing involuntary glances the while towards the bed. Then, as though unnerved by the closeness of the atmosphere, he withdrew into the adjoining room; little Clotilde, who had been shut in there, was playing with her doll, very quietly, on a fragment of carpet. His daughter was smiling to him, when Mme. Sidonie, gliding up behind, drew him to a corner, speaking low. The door remained standing open. They could hear the faint rattle in Angèle’s throat.
“Your poor wife….” the agent sobbed out. “I fear it will soon be over. You heard what the doctor said?”
Saccard made no answer, but dismally bowed his head.
“She was a good soul,” continued the other, speaking as though Angèle were already dead. “You may find many richer women, and more fashionable women; but you will never find another heart like hers.”
Seeing her stop, wipe her eyes, and seek an excuse for changing the subject, Saccard asked her, simply:
“Have you anything to tell me?”
“Yes, I have been working for you, in the matter you know of, and I think I have found…. But at such a moment…. Believe me, my heart is broken.”
She went on wiping her eyes. Saccard let her have her way quietly, without opening his mouth. Then she came to the point.
“There is a young girl whom her people want to see married at once. The sweet child has had a misfortune. She has an aunt who would be prepared to make a sacrifice….”
She interrupted herself, she had never ceased lamenting, weeping out her words, as though still bewailing poor Angèle. Her object was to make her brother lose patience, and to compel him to question her, so that she should not have all the responsibility of the offer which she had come to make to him. And in fact the clerk was seized with an unreasoning irritation.
“Come, out with it!” he said. “Why do they want to marry this girl?”
“She had just left school,” continued the agent, in a dismal voice, “and a man seduced her, in the country, where she was staying with the relations of one of her schoolfellows. The father has just discovered her condition. He wanted to kill her. The aunt, in order to save the dear child, became her accomplice, and between the two of them they made up a story and told the father that the guilty one was a man of honour whose one desire was to atone for his momentary offence.”
“In that case,” said Saccard, in a tone of surprise and seeming annoyance, “the man in the country is going to marry the girl?”
“No, he can’t, he is a married man.”
A pause ensued. The rattle in Angèle’s throat sounded more painfully in the quivering atmosphere. Little Clotilde had ceased playing; she looked up at Madame Sidonie and her father, with her great pensive child-eyes, as though she had understood their conversation. Saccard began to put brief questions:
“How old is this young girl?”
“Nineteen.”
“How long has she been in the family way?”
“Three months. It is sure to be a miscarriage.”
“And is the family rich and respectable?”
“They belong to the old-fashioned middle-class. The father used to be a magistrate. They are very well-to-do.”
“What would this sacrifice of the aunt’s amount to?”
“A hundred thousand francs.”
There was another pause. Mme. Sidonie had ceased snivelling; she was doing business now, her voice assumed the metallic tones of a secondhand clothes-woman haggling over a bargain. Her brother took a sidelong glance at her, and added, with some hesitation:
“And you, what do you want out of it?”
“We shall see later on,” she replied. “You can do something for me in your turn.”
She waited a few seconds; and as he did not speak, she asked him straight out:
“Well, have you made up your mind? Those poor women are at their wit’s end. They want to prevent an outburst. They have promised to give up the culprit’s name to the father tomorrow…. If you accept, I will send them your card by a messenger.”
Saccard seemed to wake from a dream; he started, and turned timorously towards the next room, where he thought he had heard a slight noise.
“But I can’t,” he said, with anguish in his voice, “you well know I can’t….”
Mme. Sidonie looked at him fixedly, with a cold and scornful gaze. All his Rougon blood, all his eager covetousness, rushed to his throat. He took a visiting-card from his pocketbook, and gave it to his sister, who put it in an envelope, after carefully scratching out the address. Then she went down the stairs. It was barely nine o’clock.
Left alone, Saccard went to the window