Complete Works of Emile Zola (120 page)
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Authors: Émile Zola
On this particular evening, Grivet went and seated himself beside her, and talked for a long time, he, as usual, asking the questions and supplying the answers himself. But he failed to get even a glance from her. When half-past eleven struck, the guests quickly rose to their feet.
“We are so comfortable with you,” said Grivet, “that no one ever thinks of leaving.”
“The fact is,” remarked Michaud by way of supporting the old clerk, “I never feel drowsy here, although I generally go to bed at nine o’clock.”
Olivier thought this a capital opportunity for introducing his little joke.
“You see,” said he, displaying his yellow teeth, “this apartment savours of honest people: that is why we are so comfortable here.”
Grivet, annoyed at being forestalled, began to declaim with an emphatic gesture:
“This room is the Temple of Peace!”
In the meanwhile, Suzanne, who was putting on her hat, remarked to Therese:
“I will come to-morrow morning at nine o’clock.”
“No,” hastened to answer the young woman in a strange, troubled tone, “don’t come until the afternoon I have an engagement in the morning.”
She accompanied the guests into the arcade, and Laurent also went down with a lamp in his hand. As soon as the married couple were alone, both heaved a sigh of relief. They must have been devoured by secret impatience all the evening. Since the previous day they had become more sombre, more anxious in presence of one another. They avoided looking at each other, and returned in silence to the dining-room. Their hands gave slight convulsive twitches, and Laurent was obliged to place the lamp on the table, to avoid letting it fall.
Before putting Madame Raquin to bed they were in the habit of setting the dining-room in order, of preparing a glass of sugar and water for the night, of moving hither and thither about the invalid, until everything was ready.
When they got upstairs on this particular occasion, they sat down an instant with pale lips, and eyes gazing vaguely before them. Laurent was the first to break silence:
“Well! Aren’t we going to bed?” he inquired, as if he had just started from a dream.
“Yes, yes, we are going to bed,” answered Therese, shivering as though she felt a violent chill.
She rose and grasped the water decanter.
“Let it be,” exclaimed her husband, in a voice that he endeavoured to render natural, “I will prepare the sugar and water. You attend to your aunt.”
He took the decanter of water from the hands of his wife and poured out a glassful. Then, turning half round, he emptied the contents of the small stoneware flagon into the glass at the same time as he dropped a lump of sugar into it. In the meanwhile, Therese had bent down before the sideboard, and grasping the kitchen knife sought to slip it into one of the large pockets hanging from her waist.
At the same moment, a strange sensation which comes as a warning note of danger, made the married couple instinctively turn their heads. They looked at one another. Therese perceived the flagon in the hands of Laurent, and the latter caught sight of the flash of the blade in the folds of the skirt of his wife.
For a few seconds they examined each other, mute and frigid, the husband near the table, the wife stooping down before the sideboard. And they understood. Each of them turned icy cold, on perceiving that both had the same thought. And they were overcome with pity and horror at mutually reading the secret design of the other on their agitated countenances.
Madame Raquin, feeling the catastrophe near at hand, watched them with piercing, fixed eyes.
Therese and Laurent, all at once, burst into sobs. A supreme crisis undid them, cast them into the arms of one another, as weak as children. It seemed to them as if something tender and sweet had awakened in their breasts. They wept, without uttering a word, thinking of the vile life they had led, and would still lead, if they were cowardly enough to live.
Then, at the recollection of the past, they felt so fatigued and disgusted with themselves, that they experienced a huge desire for repose, for nothingness. They exchanged a final look, a look of thankfulness, in presence of the knife and glass of poison. Therese took the glass, half emptied it, and handed it to Laurent who drank off the remainder of the contents at one draught. The result was like lightning. The couple fell one atop of the other, struck down, finding consolation, at last, in death. The mouth of the young woman rested on the scar that the teeth of Camille had left on the neck of her husband.
The corpses lay all night, spread out contorted, on the dining-room floor, lit up by the yellow gleams from the lamp, which the shade cast upon them. And for nearly twelve hours, in fact until the following day at about noon, Madame Raquin, rigid and mute, contemplated them at her feet, overwhelming them with her heavy gaze, and unable to sufficiently gorge her eyes with the hideous sight.
AFTERWORD
The idea of the plot of “Therese Raquin,” according to M. Paul Alexis, Zola’s biographer, came from a novel called “La Venus de Gordes” contributed to the “Figaro” by Adolphe Belot and Ernest Daudet — the brother of Alphonse Daudet — in collaboration. In this story the authors dealt with the murder of a man by his wife and her paramour, followed by the trial of the murderers at the assizes. Zola, in noticing the book in the “Figaro,” when it arrived for review, pointed out that a much more powerful story might be written on the same subject by invoking divine instead of human justice. For instance, showing the two murderers safe from earthly consequences, yet separated by the pool of blood between them, haunted by their crime, and detesting one another for the deed done together.
It then occurred to Zola to write the tale on these lines himself. Convinced that the idea was good, he elaborated it with the greatest care and all the skill at his command, the result being that he produced a volume which proved his first genuine success, and which is still considered by many to be his very best book.
EDWARD VIZETELLY
SURBITON, 1 December, 1901.
MADELEINE FERAT
Translated by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
Zola was attracted to the theatre from his youth in Provence. He began experimenting with comedy in 1855 with his friends Baille and the artist Cézanne: His first play,
The Ugly
, received little attention from theatre managers, being never performed or published. Zola’s second attempt,
Madeleine,
roused little more interest than the first. Although offered to the director of the Gymnasium theatre, the play was declined. Still adamant of its merit, Zola turned the play into a novel,
Madeleine Férat,
immediately
finding a willing publisher for the work in 1882.
The novel introduces Madeleine’s father Férat, who after achieving a fortune, loses it all in risky speculation. He decides to rebuild his fortune in America, but then his boat sinks, leaving his daughter an orphan, at the clutches of a dubious guardian.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER IX.
TO EDOUARD MANET.
The day when, with an indignant voice, I undertook the defence of your talent, I did not know you. There were fools who then dared to say that we were two friends in search of scandal. Since these fools placed our hands one in the other, may our hands remain for ever united. The crowd willed that you should have my friendship; this friendship is now complete and durable, and as a public proof of it, I dedicate to you this book.
ÉMILE ZOLA.
CHAPTER I.
William and Madeleine got off at Fontenay station. It was a Monday, and the train was almost empty. Five or six fellow-passengers, inhabitants of the district, who were returning home, presented themselves at the platform-exit with the two young people, and dispersed each in his own direction, without bestowing a glance on the surroundings, like folks in a hurry to get home.
When they were outside the station, the young man offered his arm to the young woman, as though they had not left the streets of Paris. They turned to the left, and went at a leisurely pace up the magnificent avenue of trees which extends from Sceaux to Fontenay. As they ascended, they watched the train at the bottom of the slope start again on its journey with laboured and deep-drawn puffs.
When it was lost to sight among the trees, William turned towards his companion and said to her with a smile:
“I told you I am not acquainted with the neighbourhood, and I hardly know for certain where we are going to.”
“Let us take this path,’’ answered Madeleine, simply, “and then we shall not have to go through the streets of Sceaux.” They took the lane to Champs-Girard. Here, there is a sudden gap in the line of trees bordering the wide avenue which enables one to get a view of the rising ground of Fontenay; down in the bottom, there are gardens and square meadows where huge clumps of poplars rise up straight and full of vigour; then, up the slope, there are cultivated fields, dividing the surface of the country into brown and green tracts, and, right at the top, on the very edge of the horizon, you can catch a glimpse through the trees of the low white houses of the village. Towards the end of September, the sun, as it dips down between four and five o’clock, makes this bit of nature lovely. The young couple, who were alone in the path, stopped instinctively before this nook of landscape, whose dark green — almost black — verdure was hardly yet tinged with the first golden hues of autumn.
They were still arm in arm. There was between them that indefinable constraint — the result of a newly-formed intimacy — which has made too rapid progress. When they came to think that they had only known each other for eight days at the most, they experienced a sort of uneasy feeling at finding themselves thus alone in presence of each other, in the open fields, like happy lovers. Feeling themselves still strangers and compelled to treat one another as comrades, they hardly dared to look at one another; they conversed only in hesitating sentences, as if from fear of giving mutual offence unwittingly. Each was for the other the unknown — the unknown which terrifies and yet attracts. In the lagging walk like that of lovers, in their pleasant and light words, even in the smiles which they exchanged the moment their eyes met, one could read the uneasiness and embarrassment of two beings whom hazard has unceremoniously brought together. Never had William thought he would suffer so much from his first adventure, and he waited its end with real anguish.
They had begun to walk on again, easting glances on the hill-side, their fits of silence only broken by intermittent conversation, in which they gave vent to none of their real thoughts, but simply to pass remarks about the trees, the sky, or the landscape which was spread out before them.
Madeleine was approaching her twentieth year. She had on a very simple dress of grey material set off with a trimming of blue ribbons; and on her head of gorgeous bright red hair, which seemed to emit a golden gleam and was twisted and done up behind in an enormous chignon, she wore a little round straw hat. She was a tall, handsome girl, and her strong, supple limbs gave promise of rare energy. Her face was characteristic. The upper part was firm, almost masculine in its sternness; there were no soft lines in the forehead: the temples, the nose, and cheekbones were angular, and gave to the face the cold, hard appearance of marble; in this severe setting were large eyes, of a dull grey green colour, yet at times a smile would impart to them an intelligent brightness. The lower part of the face, on the contrary, was of exquisite delicacy: there was a voluptuous softness in the cheeks, and in the corners of the mouth, where nestled two light dimples; the chin was double, the upper one small and nervous, the lower one soft and round; the features were here no longer hard and stiff, they were plump, lively, and covered with a silky down; they had an infinite variety of expression and a charming delicacy where the down was wanting: in the centre the lips bright and rosy, though somewhat thick, seemed too red for this fair face, at once stern and childish.
This strange physiognomy was in fact a combination of sternness and childishness. When the upper part was at rest, when the lips were contracted in moments of thought or anger, one could see nothing but the harsh forehead, the nervous outline of the nose, the dull eyes, the firm, strong features. Then, the moment a smile relaxed the mouth, the upper part seemed to soften, leaving nothing visible, but the soft lines of the cheeks and the chin. It might be called the smile of a little girl on the face of a grown woman. The complexion was of soft, transparent whiteness, with just a touch or two of red about the angles of the temples, while the veins gave a soft blue tinge to this satin-like skin.
Often would Madeleine’s ordinary expression, an expression of stem pride, melt suddenly into a look of unspeakable tenderness, the tenderness of a weak and conquered woman. One phase of her being had never developed beyond childhood. As she followed the narrow path leaning on William’s arm, she had serious moods which made the young fellow feel peculiarly dejected, while at times she would be subject to sudden fits of unconstraint and involuntary submissiveness which restored him to hope. By her firm and somewhat measured tread one saw at once that she had ceased to be a young girl.