Complete Works of Emile Zola (136 page)

There had been between this ironical nature and the disordered mind of Monsieur de Viargue, a sort of sympathy which explained the previous friendship of the two old men. Both had reached the same degree of disdain and denial; the philosopher, as he thought he had put his finger on nothingness; the deaf man, as he fancied he had discovered, beneath the human mask, the mouth of a lewd beast. During the count’s lifetime, Monsieur de Rieu was the only person who entered his laboratory, and they often spent a whole day there together. The suicide of the chemist did not appear to surprise his old friend. He came back the following year to La Noiraude, as unmoved as ever; only, he took the liberty of introducing his wife, accompanied by her young gentlemen.

William and Madeleine had been married a few months, when Hélène brought them her last conquest, a young fellow from Véteuil, whom she had taken into her house to wile away the leisures of her residence in the country. This youth’s name was Tiburce Rouillard: he was rather ashamed of the Rouillard, and very proud of the Tiburce. The son of a man who had been a cattle-dealer, and who was to leave him a pretty round sum, Monsieur Tiburce had an unbounded ambition: he was vegetating at Véteuil, and intended to go and push his way in Paris. Boorish, crafty, and capable of any act of cowardice likely to prove useful to him, he was already beginning to feel his strength. He was of those scamps who say to themselves, “I am a millionaire ten times over,” and who always end by getting their ten millions. Madame de Rieu, when she took him in his youth, had thought, as usual, that she was taking a child in hand. The truth was, the child was already steeped in vice; if he pretended ignorance and timidity, it was because he had an interest in showing himself ignorant and timid. Hélène had at last found a master. Tiburce, who had seemed to throw himself thoughtlessly in her way, had long calculated his thoughtlessness. He told himself that an intimacy with such a woman, carefully worked, would take him to Paris, where she would open every door to him; he made himself indispensable to the debauched appetites of his mistress; whether she would or not he would make her the instrument of his fortune the day he had her under his thumb as a submissive slave. If this scheme had not been the motive of his actions, he would have burst out laughing in Hélène’s face at their first meeting. This old woman, who had filthy tastes, and yet talked about the ideal, seemed to him a grotesque creature; her embraces took his breath away, but he was a youth with courage, who would have wallowed in a gutter, in order to pick up a twenty-franc-piece.

Madame de Rieu appeared delighted with her young friend. He charmed her as yet with his most delicate flattery and was remarkably docile. She had never found a candour more spiced with budding vice. She adored the rascal to such a degree that her husband had to take a thousand precautions so as not to catch them every minute with their arms round each other’s necks. She trotted Tiburce out like a young dog, calling for him, and coaxing him with look and voice. When she introduced him to La Noiraude, he looked upon that as a first service that she was rendering him. He had been at the school at the same time as William, and had shown himself one of his most cruel tormentors: younger than William by two or three years, he took advantage of the latter’s terrors as an outcast to enjoy the malicious delight of beating a boy bigger than himself. To-day, he was sorry for this error of his youth: for he had laid it down as a maxim that people ought to beat the poor only, those whose services they are not likely to want in after life. Before becoming acquainted with Hélène, he had schemed in vain to get into La Noiraude. William hardly returned his salute. When his mistress had brought him in the folds of her skirt, he humbled himself to the dust in the presence of his former victim; he called him “De Viargue” without the Monsieur, laying stress on the aristocratic “de,” just as formerly he had laid stress on the name Bastard which he had been so ready to cast in his face. His plan was to set up at Véteuil as a person living on familiar terras with the rich and noble in the country. He would not have objected besides to utilise William and Madeleine for his future career. He even tried to make love to the young wife: he knew, in an indistinct way, the history of her secret intimacy with William, which made him think her of easy virtue. If he had been able to seduce her, he would have had two women instead of one in his service. He dreamed already of turning their rivalry skilfully to account so as to stimulate their zeal and make them bid against each for his love. But Madeleine received his proposals with such disdain that he had to abandon his project.

The young couple saw with repugnance Tiburce Rouillard come to La Noiraude. There was, besides, at the bottom of this crafty nature, a provincial foolishness, and an obtrusive stupid pride which William could hardly tolerate. When the coxcomb called him his friend, with a sort of personal satisfaction, he could hardly resist his longing to show him the door. It would certainly have come to this, had he not been afraid of causing a scandal which would have affected Monsieur de Rieu. Madeleine and he then put up with the intrusion as patiently as they could. Besides, they scarcely had a thought for anything but the tranquillity of their affection, and they troubled their heads very little about their visitors and forgot them immediately the door was shut behind them.

Once a week, every Sunday, they were certain to see the three coming to spend the evening with them at La Noiraude. Hélène, leaning on Tiburce’s arm, would come first; while Monsieur de Rieu followed with a serious, uninterested look. Then they all went down to the park; and it was a sight to see, under the arbour of foliage where they sat, the languishing looks of the lady and the respectful attentions of the young man. The husband, in front of them, watched them with half-closed eyes. By certain despicable and cruel smiles, which curled Tiburce’s beardless lips, ho had guessed the vile character and evil designs of this youth. His science, as an observer, told him that his wife had fallen into the hands of a master who would beat her some day. The drama promised to be a curious one, and he enjoyed beforehand the rupture that was to take place between these two puppets; he fancied he could see the claws on the yet caressing fingers of the lover, and he awaited the hour when Hélène would raise a cry of anguish as she felt these claws enter her neck. She would be punished by vice; she would tremble and humiliate herself at the feet of a child, she who had revelled so much in young flesh. Monsieur de Rieu, in his silent, sneering fashion, pondered over this vengeance which fate was sending him. At times, Tiburce’s cold face with its aped affection almost frightened him too. He treated him with great cordiality and seemed to take care of him like a bull-dog that he was training to bite people.

Madeleine, who knew of Madame de Rieu’s amours, always looked at her with a sort of astonishment. How could this woman live peaceably in her sins?  When she asked herself this question, she really thought that she had to deal with a monster, with a diseased and exceptional creature. The fact is, Madeleine had one of those sound, cool temperaments which can only accept clearly-defined positions. If her feet had slipped into the mud for a moment, it was by accident, and she had long suffered from the effects of her fall. Her pride could never have become inured to the agitations of mind and the cruel wounds inflicted on the senses by adultery: she must live surrounded by esteem and peace, in an atmosphere where she could walk with her head erect. As she looked on Hélène, she could not help thinking of the fears with which she must be harassed when she was hiding a lover in her bed. As she was not passionate herself, she could not understand the keen charms of passion; she saw only its sufferings, the terror and the shame in the presence of the husband, the kisses, often cruel, of the lover, and the existence troubled at every hour by the affection and anger of these two men. Her open nature would never have accepted such an existence of baseness and falsehood, and she would have revolted against it at the first feeling of anguish. It is feeble characters and weak bodies that submit to blows, and end at last by building themselves a luxurious nest in anxiety itself, where they willingly go to sleep. As she looked at Hélène’s sleek, shining face, Madeleine would think: “If I ever surrender myself to any other man than William, I will kill myself.”

For four summers, the visitors came to La Noiraude. Tiburce’s father had placed him with a lawyer and unfeelingly kept him at Veteuil, where the young fellow chafed bitterly at not being able to follow his mistress to Paris. Hélène was so touched by his grief, that on two occasions she passed several of the winter months at Véteuil; yet, each spring, she took him again with renewed eagerness, for the woman doted on him and found no other lover who satisfied her. Tiburce was beginning to feel a singular detestation for her. When she turned up, in the middle of December, he felt half disposed to turn a deaf ear to her, for he cared not a straw for her kisses that took his breath away, and was growing desperate at not being able to turn her to advantage. Four summers of useless love-making to this woman, who might have been his mother, had so irritated him, that he would, some day, have eased his feelings by insulting and beating her and then leaving her to chance, if the old cattle-dealer had not had the happy idea of dying from a fit. A fortnight afterwards, young Rouillard was on his way to Paris in the same compartment as Hélène, more respectful, more affectionate than ever, while Monsieur de Rieu carefully surveyed the couple through his half-closed eyes.

When the De Rieus were away, especially during the long winter nights, William and Madeleine found themselves alone with Geneviève. She lived with them on a footing of equality, sitting down at the same table, and occupying the same rooms. She was then ninety; still perfectly straight, though lanker and more bony, she had relaxed none of the gloomy fervour of her mind; her pointed nose, her sunken lips, and the wrinkles that seamed her face, gave to her appearance the harsh outlines and deep shadows of a sinister mask. At night, when the work of the day was over, she would come and sit in the room where the husband and wife were, she would bring her Bible with its iron clasps, open it wide, and, under the yellow light of the lamp, read through the verses in a sing-song undertone. She would read thus for hours together, with a dull continual murmur, broken only by the rustling of the leaves as she turned them over. In the silence, her droning voice seemed as though it were reciting the prayers for the dead; she drawled along in mournful lamentations, like the monotonous murmur of the waves. In the huge room one felt quite shivery at this hum which seemed to proceed from invisible mouths hidden in the gloom of the ceiling.

Some nights, Madeleine was seized with secret terror, as she caught a few words of Genevieve’s reading. She chose for preference the gloomiest pages of the Old Testament, narratives of blood and horror, which excited her feelings and gave to her accents a sort of restrained fury. She spoke with implacable joy of the anger and of the jealousy of the terrible God, of that God of the Prophets, who was the only Deity she knew of; she would represent him crushing the earth at His will, and chastising with His cruel arm both beings and things. When she came to verses about murder and fire, her voice would proceed more slowly, in order that she might dwell with longer pleasure on the terrors of hell, and the displays of the unrelenting justice of Heaven. Her big Bible always showed her Israel prostrate and trembling at the feet of its Judge, and she would feel in her flesh the sacred shudder that shook the Jews, and in her excitement she would give stifled sobs, fancying that on her shoulders were falling the fiery drops of the rain of Sodom. At times, she would resume her reading in a sinister tone: she would condemn the guilty as Jehovah did; her pitiless fanaticism took a delight in casting sinners into the abyss. To smite the wicked, kill them, burn them, seemed to her a sacred duty, for she looked on God as an executioner, whose mission was to whip the impious world.

This hard-hearted woman filled Madeleine with dejection. She would become quite pale, as she thought of the year of her life that needed absolution. Pardon had come, and she had thought herself absolved by William’s love and esteem, and now in the very midst of her peace she heard these inexorable words of chastisement. Had not God then blotted out her faults? Was she to remain till death crushed beneath the burden of the sin of her youth? Would she have to pay some day her debt of repentance? As these thoughts disturbed her peaceful life she would think of the future with secret disquietude; she grew alarmed at her present tranquillity, at this smooth water which fed her hope; abysses were forming perhaps beneath this clear peaceful surface, a breath would suffice to throw it into a raging storm and to engulf her in its cruel waves. The heaven which Geneviève disclosed to her eyes, this sombre tribunal of judges, this chamber of torture, where there were cries of agony and odours of burnt flesh, seemed to her like a vision of blood. In her early days, when she was at the boarding-school, she had been taught, at her first communion, that paradise was a delightful confectioner’s shop, full of sweetmeats, distributed to the elect by white and pink angels. In after life, she had been amused at her girlish credulity, and she had never afterwards set foot in a church. To-day she saw the confectioner’s shop changed into a court of justice; she could no more believe in the eternal sweetmeats than in the eternal red fires of the fallen angels; but the mournful pictures which the disordered brain of the fanatic evoked, if they did not make her afraid of God, filled her with strange uneasiness as they caused her to think of her past life. She felt that the day Geneviève learnt her sin, she would condemn her to one of the punishments of which she spoke with such delight; strong and proud in her life of purity, the old woman would be implacable. At times, Madeleine would fancy that Geneviève was looking at her in a fierce way; then she would hang her head; she would almost blush, and tremble like a guilty person who can hope for no pardon. While she could not believe in God, she had a belief in powers and fatal necessities. The old woman would stand erect, severe and unrelenting, pitiless and cruel, and declare to her: “You bear in you the anguish of your past existence. Some day this anguish will rise to your throat and strangle you.” It seemed to her that fatality lived at La Noiraude, and surrounded her path, chanting mournful verses of penitence.