Complete Works of Emile Zola (12 page)

Laurence also had grown exceedingly animated. She was almost beautiful amid her unwonted excitement. Her visage had assumed a terrible expression of frankness and abandonment, which imparted to each of her features a look of the utmost insolence; her entire countenance had become lengthened; broad, square sections, crossed by deep lines, divided in a marked manner her cheeks and throat into firm and disdainful masses. She was pale, and several beads of perspiration stood on her forehead at the roots of her hair which was puffed straight up on her low, flat head. Reclining in her arm-chair, her face dead and distorted, her eyes black and glowing, she appeared to me like the frightful image of a woman who has weighed in her hand all the delights of the world and who now refuses them, finding them too light. At times, I fancied that she looked at me, shrugging her shoulders, that she smiled on me in pity, and that I heard her say to me, in a hoarse and horrid whisper: “So you love me, do you? What do you want of me? Physically I am no more than a corpse, and as for a heart, I never had one!”

Pâquerette looked thinner and more wrinkled than I had ever seen her before. Her face, like a dried apple, seemed to be more wasted than usual and had acquired a faint tinge of brick red. Her eyes were no longer anything but two brilliant points. She wagged her head in a mild and amiable way, chattering like a sharp-toned bird organ. She enjoyed, besides, perfect calmness, although she alone had eaten and drunk as much as all the rest of us together.

I stared at all three of them. The confusion of my brain, which exaggerated their dimensions, made them oscillate strangely before me. I said to myself that every species of dissipation was represented at this festival: youthful and careless dissipation, dissipation ripe in its frankness, dissipation which has grown old and lives amid its whitened locks on the remembrance of its follies of other days. For the first time, I saw these women together, side by side. They alone were a whole world in themselves. Pâquerette ruled, as became her old age; she presided; she called the two unfortunates who caressed her “my daughters.” There was, however, intense cordiality between them; they talked to each other like sisters, without thinking of the difference in their ages. My bewildered glances confounded the three heads; I knew no longer above which forehead was the white hair.

Jacques and I were opposite to these women. We were young; we were celebrating a success of intelligence. I was on the point of quitting the apartment, brothers, and running to you. Then, I indulged in a burst of laughter, a very loud one, without doubt, for the women stared at me in astonishment. I said to myself that this was the kind of society amid which I was destined, for the future, to live. I closed my eyes and saw angels, clad in long blue robes, who were ascending in a pale light, full of sparks.

The supper had been exceedingly gay. We had sung and we had talked. It seemed to me that the chamber was filled with a thick smoke, which stopped up my throat and stung my eyes. Then, everything whirled about; I thought that I was going to sleep, when I heard a distant voice, which cried out, with the sound of a cracked bell:

“We must embrace each other! we must embrace each other!”

I half opened my eyes, and saw that the cracked bell was Pâquerette, who had just climbed upon her chair. She was shaking her arms and giggling.

“Jacques! Jacques!” cried she, “embrace Laurence! She is a good girl, and I give her to you to drive away your weariness! And you, Claude, poor sleepy child, embrace Marie, who loves you and offers you her lips! Come, let us embrace each other, let us embrace each other and amuse ourselves a trifle!”

And the little old woman sprang from her arm-chair to the floor.

Jacques leaned over and gave a kiss to Laurence, who immediately returned it. Then, I turned towards Marie, who, with outstretched arms and head thrown back, was waiting for me. I was about to kiss her on the forehead, when she threw her head still further back and offered me her mouth. The light of the candles fell upon her face. My eyes were fixed on her eyes, and I noticed in the depths of her glance a brightness of a pure blue tint which seemed to me to be her soul.

As I bent down, still contemplating Marie’s soul, I felt the touch of cold lips on my neck. I turned instantly; Pâquerette was there, laughing, clapping her dry hands. She had embraced Jacques and had come to embrace me in my turn. I wiped my neck, with a shiver of disgust.

Seven o’clock struck; a wan brightness announced the advent of day. All was over; we had now nothing to do but to separate. As I was leaving the room, Jacques threw across my shoulder a coat and a pair of pantaloons which I did not even think of refusing. Pâquerette ascended the stairs in front of us, bearing a candle in her hand and holding aloft her thin arm that she might the better illuminate our way.

When we had reached our garret, I thought of the embraces we had exchanged. I looked at Laurence; I imagined that I saw her lips red from contact with Jacques’ lips. I had still before me, in the gloom, the blue glimmer which had burned in the depths of Marie’s eyes. I trembled, I knew not why, at the vague thoughts which came to me; then, I fell into a restless and feverish slumber. As I slept, I again felt on my neck the cold and painful sensation produced by Pâquerette’s mouth; I dreamed that I passed my hand over my skin, but that I could not free myself from those frightful lips which were freezing me.

CHAPTER XIX.

A TRIP TO THE COUNTRY.

SUNDAY, on opening the window, I saw that the spring had returned. The air had grown warmer, though it was yet somewhat chilly; I felt amid the last quivers, of winter the first fervid glow of the sun. I breathed my fill of this wave of life rolling in the sky; I was delighted with the warm and somewhat biting perfumes which arose from the earth.

Each spring my heart is rejuvenated, my flesh becomes lighter. There is a purification of my entire being.

At the sight of the pale, clear sky, of a shining whiteness at dawn, my youth awakened. I looked at the tall wall; it was well-defined and neat; tufts of grass were growing between the stones. I glanced into the street: the stones and sidewalks had been washed; the houses, over which the rain storms had dashed, laughed in the sunlight. The young season had imparted its gayety to everything. I folded my arms tightly; then, turning around, I cried out to Laurence:

“Get up! get up! Spring is summoning you!”

Laurence arose, while I went out to borrow a dress and a hat from Marie, and twenty francs from Jacques.

The dress was white, sown with lilac bouquets; the hat was trimmed with broad red ribbons.

I hurried Laurence, dressing her hair myself, so eager was I to get out into the sunlight. In the street, I walked rapidly, without lifting my head, waiting for the trees; I heard with a sort of thoughtful emotion the sound of voices and footsteps. In the Luxembourg Garden, opposite the great clusters of chestnut trees, my legs bent under me and I was compelled to sit down. I had not been out of doors for two months. I remained seated on the bench in the garden for a full quarter of an hour, in an ecstasy over the young verdure and the young sky. I had come out of darkness so thick that the bright spring bewildered and dazzled me.

Then, I said to Laurence that we would walk for a long, long while, straight ahead, until we could walk no longer. We would go thus into the warm but still moist air, into the perfumed grass, into the broad sunlight. Laurence, who had also been aroused by the revivifying influence of the balmy season, arose and drew me along, with hurried steps, like a child.

We took the Rue d’Enfer and the Orleans road. All the windows were open, displaying the furniture within the houses. Upon the thresholds of the street doors stood men in blouses, who engaged in friendly chat with each other while smoking. We heard bursts of hearty laughter coming out from the shops. Everything which surrounded me, streets, houses, trees and sky, seemed to me to have been carefully cleaned. The sky had an unusually enticing and new look, white with cleanliness and light.

At the fortifications, we encountered the first grass, short yet, but spread out like a vast carpet of light green and emitting a perfume intoxicating in its delicious freshness. We went down into the moat, making our way along beside the high gray walls, penetrating with curiosity into their secluded corners. On one side was the pale-hued stretch of wall, on the other the verdant slope. We advanced as if in a deserted and silent street which had no houses. In some of the corners the sun’s rays had massed themselves, and had caused to shoot up tall thistles which were peopled by a whole nation of insects — beetles, butterflies and bees; these corners were full of buzzing sounds and grateful warmth. But, that morning, the slope threw its delightful shadow at our feet; we walked noiselessly upon a fine, thick turf, having before us a narrow band of sky, against which stood out in full light the meagre trees which rose above the wall.

The moats of the fortifications are little deserts, amid which I have very often forgotten myself and my troubles. The narrow horizon, the shade and the silence, which render more audible the hollow murmur of the great city and the bugles of the neighboring soldiers’ barracks, make them peculiarly dear to boys, to little and grown up children. There, one is in an excavation at the gates of the city, feeling it pant and start, but no longer perceiving it. For half an hour, Laurence and I contented ourselves with this ravine which made us forget the houses and the beaten paths; we were a thousand leagues from Paris, far from every habitation, seeing only stones, grass and sky. Then, already suffocating, eager for the plain, we joyously ran up the slope. The broad country stretched out before us.

We found ourselves amid the airy and unconfined lands of Montrouge. These neglected and muddy fields are stricken with eternal desolation, poverty and lugubrious poesy. Here and there, the soil is cleft frightfully, as with a horrible yawn, displaying, like open entrails, old and abandoned stone quarries, wan and deep. Not a tree is to be seen; huge windlasses alone stand out against the low, sad horizon. The lands have I know not what miserable aspect, and are covered with nameless wrecks. The roads twist, plunge into hollows and stretch away in a melancholy fashion. New huts in ruins and heaps of rubbish thrust themselves upon the eye at each turn of the paths. Everything has a raw look — the black lands, the white stones and the blue sky. The entire landscape, with its unhealthy aspect, its roughly cut up sections and its gaping wounds, has the indescribable sadness of countries which the hand of man has torn.

Laurence, who had become thoughtful in the moats of the fortifications, timidly clung to me as we were crossing the desolated plain. We walked on silently, sometimes turning to glance at Paris, which was grumbling in the distance. Then, we brought back our eyes to our feet, avoiding the gaps in the ground, contemplating with saddened souls this plain, the open wounds of which were brutally shown by the sun. Afar off were the churches, the Panthéons and the royal palaces; here were the ruins of an overturned soil, which had been searched and robbed to build these temples to men, to kings and to God. The city explained the plain; Paris had at its threshold the desolation which all grandeur causes. I know of nothing more mournful or more lamentable than those unconfined lands which surround great cities; they are not yet a part of the town and they are no longer the country; they have the dust, the mutilations of man, and have no longer the verdure or the tranquil majesty given them by God.

We were in haste to flee. Laurence had bruised her feet; she was afraid of this disorder, of this melancholy which reminded her of our chamber. As for me, I found in this wretched spot my love, my troubles and my bleeding life. We hurried away.

We descended a hill. The Bièvre river flowed along at the bottom of the valley, bluish and thick. Trees, here and there, bordered the stream; tall houses, sombre, narrow and pierced with immense windows, loomed up lugubriously. The valley was more discouraging than the plain; it was damp, oily and full of disagreeable smells. The tanneries there emitted sharp and suffocating odors; the waters of the Bièvre, that sort of common sewer open to the sky, exhaled a fetid and powerful stench which gave me a choking sensation. It was no longer the sad and gray desolation of Montrouge; it was the disgusting sight of a gutter, black with mud and refuse, bearing away with its waters horrible odors. A few poplar trees had grown vigorously in this reeking soil, and, above, against the clear sky, were pictured the long white lines of the Hôpital de Bicêtre, that frightful abode of madness and death, which worthily towers over the unhealthful and ignoble valley.

Despair seized upon me; I asked myself if I should not stop where I was and pass the day upon the borders of the sewer. I could not, it seemed, quit Paris, I could not escape from the gutter. Filth and infamy followed me even into the fields; the waters were corrupted, the trees had an unhealthy vigor, my eyes encountered only wounds and suffering. This must be the country which God now reserved for me. Each Sunday, I would come, with Laurence on my arm, to promenade upon the banks of the Bièvre, beside the tanneries, and to talk of love in that sink; I would come, at the noontide hour, to seat myself with my sweetheart on the oily ground, yielding to the awful influence of that dead creature and of the wretched valley. I paused in terror, ready to return to Paris on a run, and glanced at Laurence.

Laurence had her weighed down look, her look of want and premature old age. The smile she wore at her departure from the city had vanished. She seemed weary and dull; she looked around her, calmly, without disgust. I thought I saw her in our chamber; I realized that this slumbering soul needed more sunlight and nature of a gentler aspect to restore the innocence of a young girl’s fifteenth year.

Then, I grasped her tightly by the arm; without permitting her to turn her head, I dragged her along, reascending the hill, always pushing straight ahead, following the roads, crossing the meadows, in quest of the young and virgin spring. For two hours we went along thus, in silence, rapidly. We passed two or three villages — Arcueil, Bourg-la-Reine, I believe; we hurried over more than twenty paths, between white walls and green hedges. Then, as we were about to leap across a narrow brook, in a valley full of foliage, Laurence uttered a childish shout, a burst of laughter, and escaped from my arm, running among the grass, all gayety, all innocence.