Complete Works of Emile Zola (1619 page)

Standing on the threshold of the hut, which was closed by a grated door, Barefoot waited the arrival of the gentlemen, and Luc could examine her dark face with its regular but sunburned features, her hair as black as ink, her large, wild eyes, which would sometimes show wonderful sweetness when they looked at Lange. He noticed, too, her bare feet, a child’s feet, in color a light brown, for they were constantly treading in damp clay. She stood there in her working clothes, scantily covered with some gray stuff, displaying her shapely legs, her muscular arms, and her little muscular throat. Then, when she felt sure that the gentleman who was walking with the proprietor of their domain must be a friend, she quitted her post of observation and went back to the kiln that she was superintending, after having given notice of a visit to her master. —

“Ah! Is it you, Monsieur Jordan?” cried Lange, coming forward in his turn. “Just imagine that after my adventure the other evening Barefoot has taken it into her head that somebody must be coming to arrest me. And I do think that if any police fellow should make his appearance he would not find it easy to get out of her claws.... I suppose you have come to see my new refractory bricks. Look — here they are, and I will tell you what they are made of.”

Luc perfectly recognized the little man, knotty and stained, whom he had seen in the half-light of the Rue de Brias, announcing the inevitable final destruction of Beauclair, hurling at it his anathema, and condemning it for its crimes. Only, as he looked at him more closely, he was surprised by the height of his forehead, half hidden under his black, bushy hair, and at his keen eyes, shining with intelligence, that might easily be provoked to shoot out angry gleams. And yet, under this rough exterior, and this apparent violence of disposition, Luc was surprised that he felt himself in the presence of a thinker, a dreamer, a rustic poet, who, absorbed in his narrow idea of justice, had come to desire to blow up the whole old guilty world.

Jordan, after having introduced Luc as a young engineer and one of his own friends, asked Lange, with a laugh, to show him what he called his museum.

“If monsieur can take any interest in it.... They are only things that amuse me, things that I bake to please myself; see, all this earthenware in this shed.... You can look at it while I explain my bricks to Monsieur Jordan.”

Luc grew more and more astonished. Under this shed stood little figures of peasants in glazed pottery, vases, pots, and dishes of singular forms and colors, which, while denoting great ignorance, were deliciously original. The chance colors produced by firing were superb; there were enamels that had wonderful richness of tone. But what struck Luc most in the collection of the things Lange made for his usual customers at fairs and markets — the plates and dishes, saucepans, pitchers, and pots — was the elegance of their shapes, the charm of their pure coloring, all of it a sort of happy development of the taste of the people. It seemed as if the potter had drawn this art from the genius of his ancestors; that into his works had passed the very soul of workmen of past ages; that their skill had found its way into his fingers, for, as if by instinct, he had found primitive shapes, of admirable beauty, adapted to daily use. And each
chef-d’œuvre
was adapted to daily use, and had a living grace as a reason for its existence.

When Lange came back with Jordan, who had given him an order for several hundred bricks, to be experimented with in a new electrical furnace, he received Luc’s felicitations with apparent pleasure. Luc marvelled at the beauty and brightness of his works, so light, so brilliant with blue and purple, as if they had been conceived in sunshine.

“Yes, yes. These things put corn-flowers and bluebells in the houses. I have always thought that people ought to decorate their roofs and their façades with them. It would not cost much, either; if tradesmen would not steal, and you would see how nice a town would look; just like flowers in green grass. But there is nothing to be done with our wretched
bourgeoisie
nowadays.”

And all of a sudden he fell back into a fit of party passion. He broke forth with his ideas of ultra-anarchy, which he had acquired from reading certain pamphlets that had come into his hands he could not tell by what chance. First of all, he said, everything that now is must be destroyed; everything must be taken possession of by the revolution. Salvation cannot be attained without the destruction of all authority, for if one power remains — no matter what — it will lead to the reconstruction of the whole edifice of tyranny and iniquity. Then the free commune might be established, without any kind of government — none would be necessary, thanks to the good understanding among groups constantly changing, constantly modified according to every one’s needs and wishes. And Luc was struck by recognizing in all this the ideas of Fourier; for the final dream of both of them was the same. There was the same appeal to the passion for creation, for the same free expansion of the individual in one harmonious society, in which the good of each citizen required the good of all; only the way they were to set about these things was different. The anarchist was a Fourierist, a man who upheld association, but a Fourierist who had become exasperated, who had lost faith in political amelioration, and had resolved to conquer social happiness by force and by extermination, since centuries of slow evolution had not seemed likely to accelerate the catastrophe — the eruption of the volcano.

So when Luc mentioned Bonnaire, Lange became ferocious in his irony. He spoke of the latter with as much bitter disdain as if he had been a
bourgeois
. “Ah! yes! Bonnaire’s barracks!” he said; “that scheme of association by which men would be numbered, disciplined, and imprisoned like convicts at the galleys.” And, shaking his fist towards Beauclair, the roofs and chimneys of which he could see below him, he once more uttered his prophetical malediction on the corrupt city which fire was to destroy, which should be utterly razed to the ground; and from its ashes should come forth the city of truth and righteousness.

Astonished at his violence, Jordan looked at him with curiosity.

“But, Lange, my good fellow, you yourself are not badly off.”

“No, Monsieur Jordan; I am fortunate — I am as lucky as a man can be. I am living here like a free man; it is almost like a realization of the aims of anarchy. You have let me occupy this little bit of ground — ground which is the birthright of us all. I am my own master. I pay no rent to any man. I work here as I please. I have no master to interfere with me; no workmen I can oppress. I sell my own pots and pans to good people who have need of them. I am not robbed by wholesale dealers, nor do I let retail dealers rob their customers. And I find time to amuse myself, when I want amusement, by baking these little figures in my kiln; for their bright colors please me.... Ah! no; we make no complaints; we enjoy life when the sun shines — don’t we, Barefoot?”

She had drawn near them, half clad, that she might better do her work, her hands reddened by having just taken a pot out of the fire. She smiled divinely as she looked up at the man — the god whose servant she had made herself, and to whom she had given herself body and soul.

“But, nevertheless,” said Lange,
“
there are too many poor creatures who are suffering, and we must blow up Beauclair some fine morning, so that it may be rebuilt properly. The only propaganda must be one of action; bombs will be the only things that will arouse the people.... What would you say should I tell you that I have in this hut all that is necessary to make three dozen bombs — bombs of extraordinary power? Some fine day I shall set out with my cart, which I draw and Barefoot pushes. It is pretty heavy when it is full of pottery, and has to be dragged over bad country roads, from market to market in the villages. It’s all right when we can rest under trees or near springs and fountains. .. But when that day comes we shall not go beyond Beauclair; we shall go up and down its streets, and we shall have a bomb hidden in every one of our cooking-pots. We shall put one under the Sub-Prefecture, another under the Mayoralty-House, another under the Court-House, another under the church — in short, wherever authority can be destroyed. Our slow matches will burn just the necessary time. Then all of a sudden Beauclair will be blown into the air; a horrible volcanic eruption will make an end of it.... Hah! what do you think of my little journey, my cart, my little distribution of bombs concealed in pots — bombs that I have manufactured to promote human happiness?”

He spoke with an air of ecstasy; his face seemed illuminated, and as the swarthy girl beside him laughed when he laughed, he said:

“Is not that so, Barefoot? I shall pull, and you’ll push; it will be better than when we went by the bank of the Mionne all the way to the fair at Magnolles.”

Jordan did not answer. He only made a gesture to the effect that as a learned man he considered that all this was nonsense. But when they had taken leave of Lange and were walking back to La Crêcherie, Luc still shivered at the thought of such a direful poetic dream — a dream of happiness promoted by destruction, such as haunted the brains of a few uneducated poets in the crowd of those who have lost their birthright. And the two men reached home in silence, each absorbed in his own thoughts.

They went at once into the laboratory, where they found Sœurette, who, seated quietly at a little table, was copying one of her brother’s manuscripts. She often put on a long blue apron and helped him to make certain delicate experiments. Now she raised her head, smiled at him and his companion, and went on with her work.

“Ah!” said Jordan, stretching himself at full length in an easy-chair. “I have no such happy hours as I find here, in the midst of all my things and all my papers.... As soon as I come back to them, hope and peace return.”

On entering the large room he had walked round it with a sort of affectionate interest, as if he wanted to resume possession of it — to be sure he was in it; to bask in the calm and comfort of his hopes. The sides of the large bay-window were open, and the setting sun shone in as if with a soft caress; while in the distance, through the trees, could be seen the roofs and windows of Beauclair.

“
What useless misery there is in these disputes,” said Jordan, while Luc, who had not sat down, was walking about the room. “After breakfast I was listening to the abbé and the school-master, astonished that such people could waste their time in trying to convince each other, when each of them was placed at different ends of the questions in dispute, and neither could understand the other. And did you notice that every time they came back exactly to the same point?... What a useless thing it is to shut one’s self up in that way to defend what one considers to be absolute truth, outside of experience, and to fight each other with contradictory arguments. I was entirely on the side of the doctor, who took delight in nullifying the arguments of both, just by setting one against the other! It is just the same with Lange. It is pitiful to see a good fellow dream such stuff, and go astray in an error more obvious and more dangerous than their errors, because he trusts to chance, and despises certainty.... No! political disturbances are not in my line. The things that these people say seem to me devoid of all reason. The great questions that they raise are, in my eyes, conundrums fit only to amuse us on the road of progress, and I cannot understand why fierce battles should be fought over such small matters, when the discovery of one of the smallest scientific truths does more for human progress than can be accomplished by half a century of social strife.”

Luc began to laugh, and he said:

“Then you are yourself falling into the idea of abstract truth. Man has to struggle. Politics are the necessary means by which man defends his rights and acquires for himself the greatest happiness possible.”

“You are right,” replied Jordan, with his simple frankness, “and possibly my contempt for politics arises from some internal remorse that I have taken so little interest in the politics of my country.... But, really, I think that, for all that, I am a good citizen when I shut myself up in my laboratory, for I believe that each of us should aid the nation with such ability as he can put into his work. True revolutionists, believe me, the real men of action, who are promoting truth and justice for the morrow, are scientists. Governments fall and pass away; nations grow, shine with splendor, and decay. But what matter! The discoveries of science will go on, will increase, will give mankind more and more light and certainty. The close of a century is a small matter; the march of human progress will always be resumed; human nature will insist on having knowledge, whatever may be the obstacles. It is foolish to object that we can never know everything; we have got to know all we can, that we may attain the greatest happiness. And, therefore, I say, how useless are all the political disputes that excite nations! While the salvation of progress is supposed to be involved in the fate of a ministry, it is really the scientist — the man of learning — who will be master of the future whenever he shall be able to enlighten men with a new spark of truth. All injustice will cease when truth shall reign.” There was silence. Sœurette laid down her pen, and was now listening. After reflecting a few moments, Jordan continued:

“Work, ah! work. I owe my life to work. You see what a poor, frail creature I am. I remember how my mother used to wrap me up in flannel when there was a high wind; and yet she set me to work as something that might give me better health. She did not crush life out of me by study, nor send me to schools which are positive galleys for intelligence in its earliest stages. She infused into me the habit of regular work, work that was never monotonous, work that I loved. That was how I learned to work, just as I learned to breathe or walk. Work became necessary to my very being — the necessary, natural exertion of my limbs and all my organs; even the means and the end of my life itself. I have lived because I have worked. A balance was struck between the world and me. I gave back in work what life gave me in sensations; and I think that is the secret of all health — a well-regulated reciprocity — perfect adaptation of the human organism to its surroundings.... Frail as I am, I may live to be very old. I became sure of it the moment I felt that I was a little machine carefully constructed and made to work on system.”