Complete Works of Emile Zola (1816 page)

She is, I believe, of medium height, rather plump, and slow in her movements. She has the hands and feet of a little girl. All her body expresses a lazy voluptuousness. One of her bare arms, rounded and dazzlingly white, is, alone, enough to turn any one’s head. She is the queen of May, the queen of hearts, whose love lasts but for a day.

II

SHE is sleeping on her left arm, which is slightly curved. Presently she will be wide awake. Meanwhile she half raises her eyelids, fixing them on the sky-blue curtains of her bed, in order to accustom them to the daylight.

There she lies, lost among the lace of her pillows. She seems plunged in the perspiration and delicious lassitude which comes on awaking; her body is stretched out, white and inert, her bosom barely palpitating with her gentle breathing. In the places where the cambric night-dress is open you can catch sight of the rosy, white flesh. Nothing more luxurious than this bed and this woman can be imagined. The sacred swan has a nest worthy of it. The bedroom is a marvel of soft blue; the colours and the perfumes are alike refreshing; the air is enervating, stirred only at intervals by a faint breeze. The curtains hang down in lazy folds; the carpets lie indolently stretched on the floor, neither hearing nor seeing anything. The silence of this temple, the softness of the lights, the discreetness of the shadows, the simplicity of the furniture, supremely stylish as it is, makes one think of a goddess who combines in herself every kind of grace and elegance with the soul of an artist, as with that of a duchess.

Undoubtedly she must have been brought up on milk baths. Her delicate limbs bear witness to the noble idleness of her life. One could almost imagine in fancy that her soul has all the purity and whiteness of her body.

The Count finishes his cigar without turning round; he is deeply interested in a horse which has just fallen down in the Champs Elysées, and many men are vainly endeavouring to set it on its legs again. The poor beast has fallen on its left side, and the shafts must be breaking its ribs.

III

AT the end of the room, on her perfumed bed, the beautiful creature slowly awakes. Now she has her eyes wide open, and she remains supine and motionless. Her spirit is awake, her body is asleep. She is dreaming. To what luminous space has she just ascended? What angelic legions are passing before her and setting a smile on her lips? What project, what undertaking, stirs her soul? What original idea has come, like daybreak, in her mind and surprised her awaking?

Her wide-open eyes are fixed on the curtain. She has not yet stirred. She is absorbed in her dreams. For some time she remains thus, nursing her fancy. Then suddenly, as if obeying an irresistible call, she stretches out her feet and jumps on to the carpet. The statue has come to life. She throws back her hair from her forehead, the flaming tresses falling like ropes on her snowy shoulders. She gathers her laces together, slips on her slippers of blue velvet, and crosses her arms with charming grace; then, slightly stooping, with raised shoulders, making a pout like a sullen, greedy child, she trots off hurriedly and noiselessly opens a door and disappears.

The Count throws away his cigar with a sigh of satisfaction.

The horse in the avenue has just been happily raised. A cut of the whip has set the poor beast on its legs again.

The Count turns round and sees the bed empty. He looks at it a moment; then, advancing slowly, sits down on a corner of the mattress, and he also in turn begins contemplating the sky-blue curtain.

IV

THE woman’s face is a mask of bronze; the man’s face is like a clear fountain, which gives up all the secrets of its limpidity.

The Count looks at the curtain, and asks himself, mechanically, how much a yard the stuff can cost. He adds up, multiplies, purely to while away the time, and arrives at a very high figure. Then, without any particular wish to do so, but merely carried along by his chain of ideas, he goes on to value the whole bedroom, and he finds it comes to an enormous sum.

His hand rests on the bed just below the pillow. The place is warm. The Count loses sight of the temple, and begins to think of the idol. He looks at the bed, at the voluptuous disorder which every beautiful sleeper leaves behind her; and at the sight of a golden thread of hair shining on the whiteness of the linen, he grows absorbed in the thought of the sweet but terrible woman to whom the golden thread belongs.

Then two ideas are drawn together and combine in his mind; he thinks of the woman and the room both together. He finds that the one is worthy of the other. His fancy takes delight in making a long comparison between the woman and the furniture, the hangings and carpets. Everything is in harmony, necessary, and fatal.

At this point the Count’s reverie wanders away, and by one of those unfathomable mysteries of human thought, he arrives at a given point and thinks of his boots.

This idea, which nothing seems to lead up to, suddenly invades his mind. He remembers that for about three months, every morning on going outside the door of this room he finds his boots splendidly cleaned and polished. He softly lulls himself in this recollection.

The room is magnificent; the woman is divine. The Count looks again at the sky-blue curtains and the golden thread on the white sheet. He is quite satisfied with himself. He declares that he has repaired an error of Providence in putting into satins this queen of grace whom fate caused to be born in the gutter: the daughter of a doorkeeper of a dismal lodge at the barrière Fontainbleau. He congratulates himself exceedingly upon having given a spotless nest to this wonder for the bagatelle of five or six hundred thousand francs.

The Count rises and makes a few steps forward. He is alone, and he remembers that every morning he has thus to spend a good quarter of an hour by himself. So without any curiosity, merely to be moving, he opens the door and in turn disappears in a trice to seek his sweet pet.

V

THE Count passes through several rooms without coming across any one.

As he is retracing his steps he hears in a closet a sound as of violent and continued brushing. Thinking that the servant is there and wishing to question her on her mistress’s absence, he pushes the door open and puts his head in. Then he stops in the doorway, stupefied and open-mouthed.

The closet is a small one, painted yellow with a brown basis, as far as the height of a man. There in one corner lie a pail and a big sponge; in another lie a broom and a duster. A narrow slit in the wall covered with glass throws an imperfect light on the bareness of this species of high, narrow cupboard. The air in it is damp and chilly. In the centre on a doormat, with her feet tucked under her, is seated the fair one with the golden locks.

On her right is a pot of polish, with a brush blackened from constant use, still sticky and wet. On her left is a boot, shining like a mirror, a masterpiece of the delicate art of the boot-cleaner. Around her are scattered big dabs of mud and a fine gray dust. Further on lies the knife which was used in scraping the mud off the soles.

She has the second boot in her hand. One of her arms is entirely lost in the interior of the boot; her little hand is holding an enormous brush with long, silky bristles, and she is furiously trying to polish the heel, which obstinately refuses to shine.

She has wrapped her laces round her legs, which she keeps wide apart. Drops of perspiration roll down her cheeks and shoulders; and at moments she is obliged to stop a second to impatiently thrust aside the locks of hair which fall over her eyes. Her alabaster bosom and arms are covered with flies, some as tiny as pin pricks, others as large as lentils; the blacking driven upwards by the bristles of the brush has dotted that dazzling whiteness with black stars. Her lips are tightly pressed together, her eyes moist and smiling. She bends lovingly over the boot, seeming more to caress it than brush it; she is absorbed in her task, and is lost in an infinite joy, shaken by her rapid movements, and intent on her work even to ecstasy.

A cold glimmer of light shines on her through the narrow slit. A big white ray falls straight on her, inflaming her hair, giving a rosy tint to her skin, making her laces of a delicate blue, and revealing this wonder of grace and elegance right in the middle of the mud.

There she is, eager and happy. She is the true child of her father, the true child of her mother. Every morning on awaking she thinks of her young days — that happy youth spent on the sticky staircase in the midst of all the tenants’ boots. She dreams of them, and a ferocious longing seizes her to clean something, were it only one poor little pair of shoes. She has a passion for polishing, like others have a passion for flowers; that is her shameful taste; she finds a strange delight in it. Then, in all her luxuriousness, she gets up and goes, immaculate beauty as she is, and scrapes the mud off the soles of the boots With her white hands, and bedraggling her grand lady’s delicacy in a lackey’s dirty work.

The Count gives a slight cough, and when she raises her head in astonishment, he takes the boots out of her hands, puts them on, gives her five sous, and quietly retires.

VI

THE next day the boot-polishing virgin grows angry and writes to the Count. She demands an indemnity of a hundred thousand francs.

The Count answers that he does indeed acknowledge owing her something. For boot-cleaning, at twenty-five centimes per day, adds up to twenty-three francs at the end of three months. So he sends her twenty-three francs by his valet-de-chambre!

THE OLD WOMEN WITH BLUE EYES

I

Surely at one time or another you must have met certain old women with blue eyes, who walk along the pavements with short steps, close to the shops? Here and there, among the hurrying passers-by, you see them dragging themselves slowly forward.

They wear very wide, black straw hats, with no ribbons, but tied under their chins with pieces of string. They are dressed in dark clothes, clapped on to their lean limbs, while greenish shawls hang over their pointed shoulders as if they were hooked on to two nails. Their feet, engulfed in huge boots, slide along the ground with a kind of blubbering noise; their withered hands are hidden under the corners of the shawl, and one of their arms carries a meagrely-filled basket. They walk along with their heads down, and their lips moving like a child who is saying its prayers. Underneath the black hat are faces wrinkled and faded like dried fruit. The flesh is all dissolved; the skin alone remains, like a damp piece of parchment; and swimming, as it were in a mist, are their blue eyes, looking watery and dead.

The old women with blue eyes have certainly grown smaller than they were; they have become children again. To see them passing by, when the black hat hides their lowered faces, one would take them for little girls going to school. They have their slender waists, their delicate arms, and their youthful outlines. Then, when they raise their heads, one is thunderstruck to see, on the body of a child, that cadaverous, sunken-in face, wrecked by a whole life of passion or misery.

II

Many are captivated by the apparent youthfulness of these old women, and, personally, I like to follow the old women with the blue eyes who walk straight ahead without turning their heads to the right or left, with the measured step of a somnambulist.

They are always alone. They do not walk along like beauties of sixteen, in troops, who take up the entire width of the pavement, with shouts of laughter.

They are seen singly, modest, and discreet, gliding through the crowds which never notices them.

I know them all: those of the heights of the Pantheon and those of the heights of Montmartre. In bright sunny weather, when there is a dry cold air, the moment I see one I regulate my pace by hers; I take a delight in accompanying the pretty little creature who is so old and so slight looking. In former times, when I was quite simple, and did not know what kind of mysterious creatures I had to do with, I set myself the task of finding out where the old women with blue eyes live. They excited my curiosity, with their deadened looks. I had a desire to know the story of their life, and to go up and see them, every one of them, as one goes up to see beautiful girls who are always very willing to tell you their histories.

I followed them for three years, but I was never once able to find out where they came from or where they went to. Suddenly, I saw one in some street or other. She seemed to spring out of the pavement. I began walking patiently behind her, dogging her heels; in sullen silence she advanced as if driven by clock-work. Then, all of a sudden, as I began to slumber, rocked into it by the slow measured pace of the old woman, she disappeared and escaped me. I conceived that, without doubt, she had sunk into the pavement again.

Every one of them slipped through my hands in this way, and not once could I satisfy my curiosity. When I think of the wild-goose chase I had after them, I am ready to believe that the old women with blue eyes are the ghosts of those who have died of love, and who come to revisit their old haunts, the pavements where they loved so much. So, when wisdom came to me, I made a vow never more to seek to know where they lived; I prefer to believe that they have no home, but that they wake from death every morning, to die once more every evening.

III

DURING the passing of nearly ten years I have been faithful to my belief. Whenever I meet them they seem just as young as ever, not a single new wrinkle being discovered on their faces. One might think that they were immortal in their silence. What romantic histories I have dreamt of with regard to them as I followed them on those sweet May mornings with anxious heart! They always kept in the sun, and sometimes even waking up a bit under the caressing softness of the air; occasionally they positively stopped to take breath and look in front of them.

What memories of youth then filled those poor minds and bodies shrivelled with age? What recollections of far-off springs brought a sigh to those tightly-closed lips?

And after that I ruminated as to what sort of young girls these old women with the blue eyes were in days long ago. Terrible and tender stories they must have hidden away in their hearts. Whence came they all, exactly alike in their black straw hats and their green shawls? Who had planted them thus on the Paris pavements, isolated, all sisters in face and clothing?