Complete Works of Emile Zola (354 page)

‘Don’t distress yourself, I beg you,’ he continued. ‘I assure you that she has lost all sense of pain. She will con­tinue sleeping as tranquilly as she is doing at present, and will only regain consciousness just before death. I won’t leave you; I will remain here, though my services are quite unavailing. I shall stay, however, as a friend, my dear lady, as a friend.’

He settled himself comfortably for the night in an easy chair. Félicité grew a little calmer. When Doctor Porquier gave her to understand that Marthe had only a few more hours to live, she thought of sending for Serge from the Seminary, which was near at hand. She asked Rose to go there for him, but the cook at first refused.

‘Do you want to kill the poor little fellow as well?’ she exclaimed. ‘It would be too great a shock for him to be called up in the middle of the night to come to see a dead woman. I won’t be his murderer!’

Rose still retained bitter feelings against her mistress. Ever since the latter had been lying there dying she had paced round the bed, angrily knocking about the cups and the hot-water bottles.

‘Was there any sense in doing such a thing as madame did?’ she cried. ‘She has only herself to blame if she has got her death by going to see the master. And now every­thing is turned topsy-turvy and we are all distracted. No no; I don’t approve at all of the little fellow being startled out of his sleep in such a way.’

In the end, however, she consented to go to the Seminary. Doctor Porquier had stretched himself out in front of the fire, and with half-closed eyes continued to address consolatory words to Madame Rougon. A slight rattling sound began to be heard in Marthe’s chest. Uncle Macquart, who had not appeared again since he had gone away two good hours previously, now gently pushed the door open.

‘Where have you been?’ Félicité asked him, taking him into a corner of the room.

He told her that he had been to put his horse and trap up at The Three Pigeons. But his eyes sparkled so vividly, and there was such a look of diabolical cunning about him, that she was filled with a thousand suspicions. She forgot her dying daughter for the moment, for she scented some trickery which it was imperative for her to get to the bottom of.

‘Anyone would imagine that you had been following and playing the spy upon somebody,’ she said, looking at his muddy trousers. ‘You are hiding something from me, Macquart. It is not right of you. We have always treated you very well.’

‘Oh, very well, indeed!’ sniggered Macquart. ‘I’m glad you’ve told me so. Rougon is a skinflint. He treated me like the lowest of the low in the matter of that cornfield. Where is Rougon? Snoozing comfortably in his bed, eh? It’s little he cares for all the trouble one takes about the family.’

The smile which accompanied these last words greatly disquieted Félicité. She looked him keenly in the face.

‘What trouble have you taken for the family?
’
she asked. ‘Do you grudge having brought poor Marthe back from Les Tulettes? I tell you again that all that business has a very suspicious look. I have been questioning Rose, and it seems to me that you wanted to come straight here. It surprises me that you did not knock more loudly in the Rue Balande; they would have come and opened the door. I’m not saying this because I don’t want my dear child to be here; I am glad to think, on the contrary, that she will, at any rate, die among her own people, and will have only loving faces about her.’

Macquart seemed greatly surprised at this speech, and interrupted her by saying with an uneasy manner:

‘I thought that you and Abbé Faujas were the best of friends.’

She made no reply, but stepped up to Marthe, whose breathing was now becoming more difficult. When she left the bedside again, she saw Macquart pulling one of the curtains aside and peering out into the dark night, while rubbing the moist window-pane with his hand.

‘Don’t go away to-morrow without coming and talking to me,’ she said to him. ‘I want to have all this cleared up.’

‘Just as you like,’ he replied. ‘You are very difficult to please. First you like people, and then you don’t like them. I always keep on in the same regular easy-going way.’

He was evidently very much vexed to find that the Rougons no longer made common cause with Abbé Faujas. He tapped the window with the tips of his fingers, and still kept his eyes on the black night. Just at that moment the sky was reddened by a sudden glow.

‘What is that?’ asked Félicité. Macquart opened the window and looked out. ‘It looks like a fire,’ he said unconcernedly. ‘There is something burning behind the Sub-Prefecture.’

There were sounds of commotion on the Place. A servant came into the room with a scared look and told them that the house of madame’s daughter was on fire. It was believed, he continued, that madame’s son-in-law, he whom they had been obliged to shut up, had been seen walking about the garden carrying a burning vine-branch. The most unfortu­nate part of the matter was that there seemed no hope of saving the lodgers. Félicité turned sharply round, and pondered for a minute, keeping her eyes fixed on Macquart. Then she clearly understood everything.

‘You promised me solemnly,’ she said in a low voice, ‘that you would conduct yourself quietly and decently when we set you up in your little house at Les Tulettes. You have everything that you want, and are quite independent. This is abominable, disgraceful, I tell you! How much did Abbé Fenil give you to let François escape?’

Macquart was going to break out angrily, but Madame Rougon made him keep silent. She seemed much more uneasy about the consequences of the matter than indignant at the crime itself.

‘And what a terrible scandal there will be, if it all comes out,’ she continued. ‘Have we ever refused you anything? We will talk together to-morrow, and we will speak again of that cornfield about which you are so bitter against us. If Rougon were to hear of such a thing as this, he would die of grief.’

Macquart could not help smiling. Still he defended him­self energetically, and swore that he knew nothing about the matter, and had had no hand in it. Then, as the sky grew redder, and Doctor Porquier had already gone downstairs he left the room, saying, as if he were anxiously curious about the matter:

‘I am going to see what is happening.’

It was Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies who had given the alarm. There had been an evening party at the Sub-Prefecture, and he was just going to bed at a few minutes before one o’clock when he perceived a strange red reflection upon the ceiling of his bedroom. Going to the window, he was struck with astonishment at seeing a great fire burning in the Mourets’ garden, while a shadowy form, which he did not at first recognise, danced about in the midst of the smoke, brandishing a blazing vine-branch. Almost immediately afterwards flames burst out from all the openings on the ground-floor. The sub-prefect hurriedly put on his trousers again, called his valet, and sent the porter off to summon the fire-brigade and the authorities. Then, before going to the scene of the disaster, he finished dressing himself and con­sulted his mirror to make sure that his moustache was quite as it should be. He was the first to arrive in the Rue Balande. The street was absolutely deserted, save for a couple of cats which were rushing across it.

‘They will let themselves be broiled like cutlets in there!’ thought Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, astonished at the quiet, sleepy appearance of the house on the street side, where as yet there was no sign of the conflagration.

He knocked loudly at the door, but could hear nothing except the roaring of the fire in the well of the staircase. Then he knocked at Monsieur Rastoil’s door. There piercing screams were heard, hurried rustlings to and fro, banging of doors and stifled calls.

‘Aurélie, cover up your shoulders!’ cried the presiding judge, who rushed out on to the pathway, followed by Madame Rastoil and her younger daughter, the one who was still unmarried. In her hurry, Aurélie had thrown over her shoulders a cloak of her father’s, which left her arms bare. She turned very red as she caught sight of Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies.

‘What a terrible disaster!’ stammered the presiding judge. ‘Everything will be burnt down. The wall of my bedroom is quite hot already. The two houses almost join. Ah! my dear sub-prefect, I haven’t even stopped to remove the time­pieces. We must organise assistance. We can’t stand by and let all our belongings be destroyed in an hour or two.’

Madame Rastoil, scantily clothed in a dressing-gown, was bewailing her drawing-room furniture, which she had only just had newly covered. By this time, however, several neighbours had appeared at their windows. The presiding judge summoned them to his assistance, and commenced to remove his effects from his house. He made the time-pieces his own particular charge, and brought them out and deposited them on the pathway opposite. When the easy-chairs from the drawing-room were carried out, he made his wife and daughter sit down in them, and the sub-prefect remained by their side to reassure them.

‘Make yourselves easy, ladies,’ he said. ‘The engine will be here directly, and then a vigorous attack will be made upon the fire. I think I may undertake to promise that your house will be saved.’

All at once the window-panes of the Mourets’ house burst, and the flames broke out from the first floor. The street was illumined by a bright glow; it was as light as at midday. A drummer could be heard passing across the Place of the Sub-Prefecture, some distance off, sounding the alarm. A number of men ran up, and a chain was formed to pass on the buckets of water; but there were no buckets; and still the engine did not arrive. In the midst of the general consternation Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, without leaving the two ladies, shouted out orders in a loud voice.

‘Leave a free passage! The chain is too closely formed down there! Keep yourselves two feet apart!’

Then he turned to Aurélie and said in a low voice:

‘I am very much surprised that the engine has not arrived yet. It is a new engine. This will be the first time it has been used. I sent the porter off immediately, and I told him also to call at the police-station.’

However, the gendarmes arrived before the end. They kept back the inquisitive spectators, whose numbers increased, not­withstanding the lateness of the hour. The sub-prefect himself went to put the chain in a better order, as it was bulging out in the middle, through the pushing of some rough fellows who had run up from the outskirts of the town. The little bell of Saint-Saturnin’s was sounding the alarm with cracked notes, and a second drum beat faintly at the bottom of the street near the Mall. At last the engine arrived with a noisy clatter. The crowd made way for it, and the fifteen panting firemen of Plassans came up at a run. However, in spite of Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies’s intervention, a quarter of an hour elapsed before the engine was in working order.

‘I tell you that it is the piston that won’t work!’ cried the captain angrily to the sub-prefect, who asserted that the nuts were too tightly screwed.

At last a jet of water shot up, and the crowd gave a sigh of satisfaction. The house was now blazing from the ground-floor to the second-floor like a huge torch. The water hissed as it fell into the burning mass, and the flames, separating into yellow tongues, seemed to shoot up still higher than before. Some of the firemen had mounted on to the roof of the presiding judge’s house, and were breaking open the tiles with their picks to limit the progress of the fire.

‘It’s all up with the place!’ muttered Macquart, who stood quietly on the pathway with his hands in his pockets, watching the conflagration with lively interest.

Out in the street a perfect open-air drawing-room had now been established. The easy-chairs were arranged in a semicircle, as though to allow their occupants to view the spectacle at their ease. Madame de Condamin and her husband had just arrived. They had scarcely got back home from the Sub-Prefecture, they said, when they had heard the drum beating the alarm. Monsieur de Bourdeu, Monsieur Maffre, Doctor Porquier, and Monsieur Delangre, accom­panied by several members of the municipal council, had also lost no time in hastening to the scene. They all clustered round poor Madame Rastoil and her daughter, trying to com­fort and console them with sympathetic remarks. After a time most of them sat down in the easy-chairs, and a general conversation took place, while the engine snorted away half a score yards off and the blazing beams crackled.

‘Have you got my watch, my dear?’ Madame Rastoil inquired. ‘It was on the mantelpiece with the chain.’

‘Yes, yes, I have it in my pocket,’ replied the president, trembling with emotion. ‘I have got the silver as well. I wanted to bring everything away, but the firemen wouldn’t let me; they said it was ridiculous.’

Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies still showed the greatest calmness and kindly attention.

‘I assure you that your house is in no danger at all,’ he remarked. ‘The force of the fire is spent now. You may go and put your silver back in your dining-room.’

But Monsieur Rastoil would not consent to part with his plate, which he was carrying under his arm, wrapped up in a newspaper.

‘All the doors are open,’ he stammered, ‘and the house is full of people that I know nothing about. They have made a hole in my roof that will cost me a pretty penny to put right again.’

Madame de Condamin now questioned the sub-prefect.

‘Oh! how terrible!’ she cried. ‘I thought that the lodgers had had time to escape. Has nothing been seen of Abbé Faujas?’

‘I knocked at the door myself,’ said Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, ‘but I couldn’t make anyone hear. When the fire­men arrived I had the door broken open, and I ordered them to place the ladders against the windows. But nothing was of any use. One of our brave gendarmes who ventured into the hall narrowly escaped being suffocated by the smoke.’

‘As Abbé Faujas has been, I suppose! What a horrible death!’ said the fair Octavie, with a shudder.

The ladies and gentlemen looked into one another’s faces, which showed pale in the flickering light of the conflagration. Doctor Porquier explained to them, however, that death by fire was probably not so painful as they imagined.