Complete Works of Emile Zola (1656 page)

One evening there was a stormy discussion on the subject between La Toupe, Bonnaire, and their son Lucien, in the presence of father Linot, who was still living, though he was now seventy. It was at the close of dinner, in the little dining-room, so clean and cheerful, the window of which opened on the little garden. There were flowers on the table, where the meals were always abundant; and father Linot, who now had as much tobacco as he liked, had just lighted his pipe, when La Toupe, at dessert, got into a passion about nothing, for the mere pleasure of getting angry, as had always been her custom. “So,” she said to Lucien, “is it settled? Do you insist on marrying that young lady? I saw you with her today coming out of Boisgelin’s. If you had any regard for us, it seems to me you would have given up seeing her, for you know that your father and I are by no means enchanted at the idea of such a marriage.”

Lucien, like a good son, declined to discuss the subject, for he knew that arguments were of no avail. He turned to Bonnaire, and said, simply:

“But my father is ready to give his consent, I think.” This to La Toupe was like the cut of a whip, and she fell at once upon her husband.

“What! Do you think of giving your consent without consulting me? It is not two weeks since you said to me that such a marriage did not seem to you advisable, and that you were not without fears, if it took place, for the happiness of our son. You turn about like a weathercock.” Bonnaire quietly attempted to explain. “I would rather the boy had made another choice; but he is nearly twenty-four, and I shall not, in a matter on which he has set his heart, insist on his being governed by my will. He knows what I think, and he will act for the best.”

“Well!” cried La Toupe, raising her voice, “you always were weak and easy; you think yourself a free man, but you always end by thinking the same as other people. You have now been twenty years with Monsieur Luc, and have always been saying that his ideas are not yours, and that reform should begin by giving all workmen their tools and taking no capital from the
bourgeoisie,
but in spite of that you give in to Monsieur Luc, and I dare say at this very moment you are quite satisfied with what you have done together.”

Thus she went on, trying to wound him in his faith and in his pride, knowing on what points he was most sensitive. She had often exasperated him by forcing him to contradict himself, but this time he only said:

“No doubt what we have done together has turned out well; but still I may regret that it was not according to my ideas. Only you ought to be the last person to complain of things as they are here, for we no longer know what poverty is and are happy. Not one of those people with fixed incomes from investments are so well off as we are.”

She did not give in, but grew more angry.

“What is going on here I should be much obliged to you if you would explain to me, for I have never understood anything about it. If you are so happy, I am glad of it; I am not happy. Happiness consists, I consider, in having plenty of money, in giving up work, and doing nothing. With all the things you brag about, your division of profits, your shops where you buy things at cost price, your orders for pay, and your sinking-fund, I’d rather have a hundred thousand francs in my pocket to spend as I chose on what I fancy. I am unhappy — very unhappy!” She was exaggerating, wishing to make herself as disagreeable as she could to her husband; but she was telling the truth. She was not acclimated in La Crêcherie, and suffered from inherited instincts. She was a woman who loved coquetry and expenditure, and communist association wounded such instincts. She was an active and efficient housewife, with an execrable temper, obstinate, narrow-minded, and stupid, especially when she did not choose to understand. She went on making her home like the infernal regions, notwithstanding her better qualities, and the great ease and comfort in which she and her family might have lived.

Bonnaire was roused at last, and said to her:

“You are mad. It is you who make yourself and us unhappy.”

Then she began to sob. Lucien, always much concerned when one of these disputes took place between his parents, ceased to be silent. He got up and kissed her, and told her that he loved and respected her. But she was not mollified; she screamed at her husband:

“Just ask my father what he thinks of your new Works and your new doings, of all this famous justice and good fortune that is to regenerate the world! He is an old workman; you won’t accuse
him
of talking nonsense, as you would if he were a woman; and he has lived for seventy years, so you can believe in his wisdom.”

Then, turning to father Linot, who was sucking the stem of his pipe with the look of a satisfied child:

“Father, are not those people idiots with their machinery and their talk of getting rid of masters and managers; and won’t the time come when they will gnaw their own fingers?”

The old man, in bewilderment, looked at her fixedly, without speaking, and then answered, in a thick voice:

“Of course they are. Ah! the Ragus and the Qurignons were fellow-workmen once upon a time. There was Monsieur Michel, who was five years older than I. I went into the works under Monsieur Jérôme, his father. But before those two there had been a Monsieur Blaise, whom my father, Jean Ragu, and my grandfather, Pierre Ragu, worked under. Pierre Ragu and Blaise Qurignon were two workmen, two men who drew crucibles out of the same furnace. And now the Qurignons are millionaires and masters, and the Ragus are poor creatures still. Things come round. They begin over again. They never change. It is best to think that they are as well as they are.”

He was wandering a little, half asleep, like some old animal turned out to die, which by some miracle has escaped the slaughter-house. Very often he could not remember the next day the events of the day before.

“But, father Linot,” said Bonnaire, “things have been changing very much for some time past. Monsieur Jérôme, whom you were speaking of, is dead, and he gave back all that remained to him of his fortune.”

“What do you mean? Gave it back? How?”

“Yes, he gave his workmen all the wealth that their labor and their long sufferings had won for him. You remember how it was a long time ago.”

The old man seemed to search his darkened memory.

“Ah! ah! now I recollect. It was a queer story. Ah! well, if he gave back all he had he was a fool!”

These words were uttered with extraordinary emphasis, for the dream of father Linot’s life had been to make a large fortune like the Qurignons, and to enjoy life after that as a triumphant employer, a gentleman of leisure, taking his pleasure from morning to night. That was his point of view, and that also of all the old worn - out employees of the Pit, resigned to slavery, who never ceased to regret that they had not been born to thrive on the toil of others.

La Toupe burst out with an insulting laugh.

“There, you see! father is not such a fool as all of you are. He’s not looking for what everybody knows is impossible. Money is money; and when one has money one has the upper hand. So!”

Bonnaire shrugged his broad shoulders, while Lucien sat silent, looking out of the window at the rose-bushes blooming in the garden. What was the use of talking? She was utterly obstinate. Some day she would die in that communist paradise, surrounded by fraternal care and comfort, denying everything and regretting her old dark days of poverty, when she had been trying to accumulate ten sous that she might buy a bit of ribbon.

Babette Bourron entered at that moment. She was always cheerful, and continually delighted with her new surroundings. She had happily succeeded by her cheerful optimism in saving her husband, poor, simple Bourron, from falling into the gulf which had swallowed up Ragu. She had always been hopeful of the future, sure that things would come out all right, and sometimes when bread was scarce cheering herself with stories of extraordinary good luck sent down from Heaven. And as she said, laughingly, La Crêcherie, where labor had become clean, kindly, and remunerative, where people lived in the midst of plenty, and all the little luxuries which up to that time it had been in the power of the middle classes only to procure; was it not what she had dreamed about as paradise? So her plump little face, still fresh and fair, beneath her hair, tied up in a great bunch always askew, shone with happiness whenever she thought how her husband had been weaned from drink, and how she had two promising children for whom she would soon be looking out for suitable marriages; then how she would have them living with her in a beautiful house of her own, pretty and cheerful, like the houses of rich people.

“So — it is decided at last,” she cried, “that Lucien is to marry his Louise Mazelle, that charming little
bourgeoise
who is not ashamed of us?”

“Who told you so?” cried La Toupe, sharply.

“Why, Madame Luc did — Josine — whom I met this morning.”

La Toupe grew pale with unexploded anger. In her persistent irritation against La Crêcherie there was always a connection with the hatred she felt for Josine. She had never pardoned “that woman” for her marriage with Luc, her promotion by a stroke of luck to be the wife of a man of consequence, beloved by everybody, and the mother of handsome children who were growing up to good fortune. And to think that she could remember the time when that wretched creature was starving, cast out upon the streets by her brother! Nowadays she felt herself crushed under her foot when she saw her in the street wearing a hat, like a lady. That good fortune should have fallen to Josine and not to herself was what she could not put up with!

“Josine,” she answered, brutally, “instead of talking about marriages in which she has no concern, had better let other people forget all about her own. Just let me alone, all of you; you do nothing but worry me.”

She went out of the room, slamming the door after her, while the others remained silent and uncomfortable. Babette was the first to laugh. She was quite used to the ways of her old friend, who, with serene indulgence, she always maintained was a good woman in spite of her bad temper. Tears were in Lucien’s eyes, for it was the happiness of his future life that was under discussion in the midst of such bitter words and bursts of angry feeling. But his father kindly pressed his hand, as if to promise that he would undertake to arrange his affair. But Bonnaire himself had been made very sad. He could not bear to see happiness, even in the midst of peace and justice, at the mercy of family quarrels. Would it always be thus? Would one execrable temper spoil the fruits of fraternity? Father Linot alone was blessedly unconscious of the disturbance. He sat half asleep with his pipe in his mouth.

Meantime, if Lucien felt certain that his parents would consent in the end, Louise felt that hers would make a still stronger resistance, and the struggle grew greater every day. The Mazelles adored their daughter, and it was because they thus adored her that they were resolved not to give in. There were no violent scenes in that household, but they thought that by a sort of kindly inertia, a kind of vague somnolency, they might wear out her fancy. In vain she ran restlessly up and down the house; in vain she strummed feverishly upon the piano, flung bouquets, still fresh, out of the windows, and gave signs of the most passionate distress. They smiled at her peacefully, pretended that they did not understand her, stuffed her with dainties, and loaded her with gifts. She grew more and more exasperated at being overwhelmed with kindness while refused the only thing she longed for. At last it seemed to her parents that she must be ill. She took to her bed, turned her face to the wall, and would not answer when spoken to. They called in Dr. Novarre, who said that such maladies were not in his department of science, that the only cure for girls in love was to leave them at liberty to go on loving. Then, greatly distressed, since they now believed the case to be serious, the Mazelles discussed the matter in bed during a sleepless night, and asked each other whether or not they ought to give way. The matter seemed to them so grave, so fraught with possible ill consequences that they dared not trust themselves to come to a decision, and so resolved to call together their best friends and submit the case to them. Would it not be like deserting their own order to give their daughter to a working-man while Beauclair was in a ferment of revolution? They felt that such action on their part would be decisive, that it would be an underhand abandonment of the cause of the
bourgeoisie
— of the cause of trade and of the cause of government bondholders. It was natural and proper that
in
such a case leaders in their own class should be consulted. One fine afternoon they invited for this purpose Sub-prefect Châtelard, Mayor Gourier, Judge Gaume, and Abbé Marie, to take a cup of tea in their pretty garden, where they had passed so many idle days stretched out opposite each other in their great easy-chairs, watching the blooming of their roses, without giving themselves the trouble to converse.

“You agree,” said Mazelle to his wife, “that we will do whatever these gentlemen shall advise. They know more than we do, and no one can blame us if we follow their counsel. I am beginning to feel as if I had lost my reason, for all this fills my brain from morning till night.”

“I feel so, too,” said Madame Mazelle. “Life was not made to be always thinking. Nothing can be worse for my complaint. I feel it already.”

Tea was served in the garden, in an arbor, at the close of a beautiful sunny afternoon. Sub-prefect Châtelard and Mayor Gourier were the first to arrive. They had remained inseparable since Leonore’s death. A strong tie seemed still to unite them after they lost Madame Gourier, the ever-beautiful Leonore. For five years they had watched over her, a helpless invalid, unable to rise from her couch because her lower limbs were paralyzed. They surrounded her with every care; her friend assisted her husband to take charge of her, and read to her at times when he had to be away. It was in Châtelard’s arms that Leonore suddenly died one evening, when he was trying to help her to swallow a cup of herb tea, while Gourier was outside the house smoking a cigar. When he came in both men wept together. Since then they were almost inseparable, always being together, for municipal business now gave them plenty of leisure. Their administration of affairs was now strictly theoretical, after long consultations, in the course of which the sub-prefect had persuaded the mayor to follow his example, to shut his eyes, and to let things go on in their own way, rather than ruin his own life by opposing the progress of an evolution that no man upon earth could retard or prevent. Still Gourier, who had occasional moments of apprehension, when he found himself confronted by cruel ideas, found it hard to adopt such amiable philosophy. He had been reconciled to his son Achille, who had had by Ma Bleue, in the tiny home they shared together, a charming little daughter called Léonie, with eyes as blue as the great lake, or the vault of heaven — eyes like her beautiful mother’s. She was now a tall girl, nearly twenty, of an age to be married. She had conquered the heart of her grandfather, and this influenced him to open his doors at last to the son who had cast off his authority, and to Ma Bleue, whom he had always looked upon as a sort of savage. He said it was hard for him, as a mayor, the magistrate who was authorized to make legal marriages, to receive under his roof a revolutionary couple, married without the formalities of the law, under the stars on some warm evening. But times were so strange! Wonderful things were taking place, and so charming a little granddaughter was an acceptable present. Châtelard had recommended reconciliation, and Gourier, after his son had brought him Léonie, became better acquainted with La Crêcherie, though it always seemed to him the very place to produce catastrophes, in spite of his having been obliged to put his shoemaking establishment into the association, which had drawn into its syndicate all the other clothing factories.