Complete Works of Emile Zola (157 page)

Besides, they had now got over the effect of the surprise, and they could estimate the true characters of the people whose honeyed words had at first relieved them. The nothingness and the silliness of society bored them. They lost all hope of finding a remedy for their troubles in the company of such puppets. They seemed to have been at a play, where in the first act, they had allowed themselves to be carried away by the glitter of the lights, the richness of the dresses, the exquisite politeness and the pure language of the characters; then, the illusion had passed away, and they saw in the following acts, that everything was sacrificed for the sake of scenery, and that the characters had empty heads and were only repeating ready-made sentences. It was this deception which made them fall back on their own thoughts. They began to suffer again with a sort of pride, for they preferred their anguish and their life of passion to this emptiness of head and heart. Soon they were quite familiar with all the little scandals of the corner of Paris which they frequented. They knew that such and such a lady was admired by such and such a gentleman, and that the husband knew of and winked at the intimacy; they learnt that another husband was living with his mistress at his wife’s house, which gave this latter a license to bestow her favours wherever she thought. These stories astounded them. How could these people live peacefully in such infamy? They themselves had almost been driven out of their minds by a single memory of the past, and they had nearly died of anguish at the mere thought that they had not grown up in each other’s arms. They must be of a more delicate nature, their hearts must be prouder and nobler than those of other couples whose egotistic peace nothing troubled, not even shame. From this time they avenged themselves for their suffering, by feeling a sovereign disdain for this society, which was more guilty than they were, and yet showed a smiling face in its infamy.

One day, in a moment of anger, the same thought occurred to both William and Madeleine. They each told themselves that they ought to bestow their love elsewhere, in order the better to forget each other. But at the very first attempts of this nature, their whole beings revolted. Madeleine was at this time in the full bloom of her beauty, and wherever she went she had a host of admirers. Young fellows, with dainty gloves and irreproachable collars, were most assiduous in their attentions, yet they were for her but so many ridiculous puppets. As for William, he had allowed himself to be carried off to a supper where his new friends had laid a scheme to make him choose a mistress, but he came away disgusted at the sight of young minxes who dipped their fingers into the sauce and treated their lovers like lackeys. The bond of sorrow between the young couple was too close for them to be able to break it; if the rebellion of their nerves did not permit them to be affectionate towards each other, their very sorrows permitted no mutual forgetfulness; they felt themselves inseparably united as man and wife, but with no heart for close intimacy. The efforts that they were making to bring about a violent separation were only rendering their wretchedness more unbearable.

At the end of a month, they gave up all further struggle. As their divided life, the going out during the day, and the hours that they spent at night surrounded by the crowd, brought them no respite, they gradually broke off these new habits of existence and shut themselves up in the little house in the Rue de Boulogne. Here the certainty of their inability to live without each other overwhelmed them. William felt at this time how closely his life was bound up with Madeleine’s. From the very first few days of their intimacy, she had exerted a sway over him by her stronger and more vigorous temperament. As he used to say smilingly, it was he who was the wife in the house, the feeble being who obeyed and whose mind and body were influenced by his partner’s. The same phenomenon which had filled Madeleine with James, was filling William with Madeleine, for he was becoming fashioned after her model, and imitating her voice and gestures. Sometimes he would say to himself in terror that he was filled both with his wife and her lover, for he fancied that he could feel their influence throughout his whole being. He was a slave, and belonged to this woman who herself belonged to another. It was this double possession which plunged them both in hopeless anguish.

William’s existence was necessarily one of passive obedience, and he was subject to all Madeleine’s moods. He was influenced by her excitement and felt the effects of each shock to her nerves. Calmer at the moments when she was calm, he fell back again into his grief and pain directly she became agitated. She would have made his life tranquil and serene, just as she was now troubling it. Thrown towards her by fate, absorbed in her by the force of circumstances, with no other courage, no other wish than hers, his heart beat responsive to each pang, each throb of his wife’s. At times, Madeleine would look at him with a strange expression.

“Ah!” she would think, “if his nature were more energetic, we should perhaps find a remedy for our wretchedness. I wish he would domineer over me, and even get so angry as to beat me, for I feel that a thrashing would do me good. If I were lying helpless on the floor, I think I should suffer less, if he had made me feel his power. He ought to drive James’s memory out of me with his fist, and he would, if he were strong.”

William could read these thoughts in Madeleine’s eyes. He saw how he would doubtless have been able to save her from her memories, if he had had the energy to treat her as a master and to clasp her in his arms until she forgot James. Instead of shivering at her shivers, he ought to have remained calm, to have lived superior to the troubles of his wife, and filled her with the serenity of his mind. When these thoughts occurred to him, he accused himself of all the mischief, and gave way to despair all the more, treating himself as a coward and yet helpless to battle with his cowardice. Then, the young couple would sit gloomily silent for hours, Madeleine with a faint curl of suffering and disdain on her lips, and William shrinking into that nervous pride, that certainty of the nobleness and affection of his heart, which was his last refuge.

A few days after their resolve to pay no more useless visits to other people’s houses, they felt such a sensation of wretchedness in the solitude of the Rue de Boulogne, that they determined to set out for La Noiraude. Yet they were returning without the least prospect of solace, for such a hope would have seemed ridiculous. Since the night they had run away from James’s presence, they had been driven as it were by a wind of mad terror which gave them no chance to stop and take breath. Their repugnance to come to a decision and their continual delays had plunged them into a heavy stupor in which their wills felt a great reluctance to be disturbed. They had gradually become accustomed to this state of anxious suspense, and they no longer felt the strength to escape from it. Apparently indifferent and torpid, they allowed the days to pass by in blank and gloomy silence. They did not fail to tell themselves that James might return any day, they were even uneasy at not hearing from him, for they fancied he was already back in Paris. But they so far forgot themselves in their stupor that they sought no remedy, and this would have gone on for years, without their ever thinking of freeing themselves from their wretchedness by some violent effort. A fresh calamity would have to befall them before they could rouse themselves. Meantime, they were living in a sort of pain, and going wherever their instinct led them. They were returning to La Noiraude more with the intention of changing their residence than of running away from James. The troubles of their minds were making this cloistered life unbearable which had formerly lulled them so pleasantly. The thoughts of a journey and of a hurried removal had some charm for them. Besides, it was now the middle of April; the mornings were getting warm, and people were beginning to think of leaving Paris for the country. Since they were not cut out for society, they preferred to go back and suffer in the silence and peace of La Noiraude.

The evening before their departure they paid a farewell visit to the De Rieus whom they had not seen for some time. On reaching the house, they learnt that Monsieur de Rieu was very ill, and they were just on the point of going away when a servant came to tell them that the old gentleman requested them to go upstairs. They found him in bed in a big gloomy room. The liver complaint from which he suffered had suddenly taken a serious turn, which left him no doubt about his approaching end. Besides, he had asked his doctor to tell him the whole truth, in order, he said, that he might put certain affairs in order before his death.

When William and Madeleine entered the huge room, they saw Tiburce standing, with a troubled expression on his face, at the foot of the bed. Hélène, seated in au arm-chair at the bed-head, seemed also under the effect of some unforeseen calamity. The glances of the dying man, as sharp as steel blades, were passing from one to the other; his yellow face, terribly wrinkled by his suffering, had its usual smile of supreme irony, and his lips were contracted with that peculiar curl which made them so conspicuous when he was enjoying the anguish of his wife. He held out his hand to the new comers and said, when he had learnt of their departure for La Noiraude:

“lam very pleased to be able to bid you good-bye — I shall never see Véteuil again — “

Yet there was no tone of regret in his voice. Then there was a silence, that mournful silence which adds so much to the painful scene of a death-bed. William and Madeleine knew not how to withdraw, for Tiburce and Hélène sat mute and motionless, a prey to the anxiety which they did not even attempt to conceal. After a moment’s pause, Monsieur de Rieu, who seemed to be delighting in the sight of the young fellow and his wife, suddenly continued, still addressing himself to his visitors:

“I was just arranging my little family affairs. Your presence will make no difference, and I am going to take the liberty of proceeding — I was telling our friend Tiburce the contents of my will, in which I have made him my sole legatee, on the condition that he marries my poor Hélène.’’ There was a chuckling sneer of tenderness in his voice as he uttered these words. He was dying as he had lived, ironical and implacable. In his last moments he was casting, with bitter pleasure, one parting shaft at this world of misery and shame. All his dying energies had been spent in inventing and maturing a scheme of torture to which he would condemn Hélène and Tiburce after his death. He had succeeded in so exasperating the latter, by preventing him from getting the smallest preferment, that the young fellow had at last broken with Hélène, after a scene, during which he had shamefully beaten her. This positive rupture drove Monsieur de Rieu to despair, as he saw his vengeance escaping. He had gone too far, and now he must reconcile the lovers, and unite them so closely to each other that they would be unable to break their bonds. It was then that the diabolical thought occurred to him of making young Rouillard marry his widow. The young fellow, he was sure, would never let the opportunity of becoming heir to a fortune slip, even at the price of continual disgust, and Hélène would never be possessed of enough sense to refuse her consent to the man to whom she was a trembling and submissive slave. They should get married, he said to himself, and live a life of ceaseless annoyance to each other. The dying man could see Tiburce chained to a woman twice his own age, whose shame and ugliness he would drag after him like a weight, and he could see Hélène, worn out with debauch, begging for kisses with the humility of a servant, and beaten morning and night by a husband who was avenging himself at home on his wife, for the scornful smiles that she brought on him out of doors. The life of such a couple would be a hell, a torture, an hourly punishment. And Monsieur de Rieu, as he pictured to himself this existence of degradation and beatings, could not refrain from jeering, though his body was racked with terrible pains.

He turned towards Tiburce, and continued, in a tone of the most bitter mockery:

“My dear fellow, I have been accustomed to regard you as my son, and l have your welfare at heart. I simply ask you, in return for my fortune, to be tender and affectionate towards my dear wife. She may be older than you are, but you will find in her a helpmate and support. Simply look on my determination as an earnest wish to leave behind me two happy souls. You shall thank me afterwards,”

Then, turning towards Hélène, he proceeded:

“You will always be a mother to him, will you not? You have always been fond of young men. Enable this child to become a man, shield him from going astray in the shame of Paris, and incite him to noble actions.”

Hélène listened with veritable terror. His voice had such an insulting ring, that she asked herself if he had not been aware all the time of her life of debauch. She remembered his smiles and his scornful serenity; and she told herself that her deaf husband had, no doubt, heard and understood everything, and that it was she herself who was turning out to be the dupe. The strangeness of his will explained his life of disdainful silence. Since he was throwing her into Tiburce’s arms, he must know of their intimacy, and be seeking to punish her for it. This marriage terrified her now. The young fellow had shown himself so cruel, and he had ill-treated her with such fury on the day of their rupture, that the dread of fresh blows silenced her carnal appetites, and she thought with a shudder on this union, which would expose her to his brutality for a life-time. But her base and enervated body did not even dare to dream for a moment of escaping from the will of her lover. He should do what he liked with her. Passive and gloomy, she listened to the dying man, nodding her head in approval from time to time. To console herself, she thought: “No matter if Tiburce does beat me, there will always be a few horns when I shall have him in my arms.” Then she reflected that the young fellow might run after girls with her first husband’s money, and that he would doubtless refuse to bestow on her even the dregs of his affection. This thought quite overwhelmed her.

As for Tiburce, he was gradually recovering from the shock. He had succeeded in dismissing all thoughts of Hélène from his mind, and was making a mental calculation of the sum Monsieur de Rieu’s fortune would produce when added to the income which his father, the cattle-dealer, had already bequeathed him. The total spoke with an eloquence that proved to him very clearly in a few seconds that he must marry the old woman, under any circumstances. But here was the rub. What was he to do with the hag? He could not tell, and his feeling of alarm came over him again, though his determination was not in the least shaken. If it were necessary, he would shut himself up with her in a cellar, in order to kill her by inches. The money he would have, even if he had to live in continual torture.