Complete Works of Emile Zola (653 page)

Trublot, however, found excuses for him: to begin with, it was the fault of his constitution; then, it was impossible to put up with a confounded wife like his. On the very first night, so it was said, she could not bear him, affecting to be disgusted at his red blotches, so that she willingly allowed him to have mistresses, whose complaisances relieved her of him, though at times she accepted the abominable burden, with the resignation of a virtuous woman who makes a point of accomplishing all her duties.

“Then, she is virtuous, is she?
”
asked Octave, interested.

“Virtuous? Oh! yes, my dear fellow! Every good quality; pretty, serious, well brought up, learned, full of taste, chaste, and unbearable!”

A block of vehicles at the bottom of the Rue Montmartre stopped the cab. The young men, who had let down the windows, could hear Bachelard’s voice furiously abusing the coachman. Then, when the cab moved on again, Gueulin gave some information about Clarisse. Her name was Clarisse Bocquet, and she was the daughter of a former toy merchant in a small way, who now attended all the fairs with his wife and quite a troop of dirty children. Duveyrier had come across her one night when it was thawing, just as her lover had chucked her out. No doubt, this strapping wench answered to an ideal long sought after, for as early as the morrow he was hooked, he wept as he kissed her eyelids, all shaken by his need to cultivate the little blue flower of romance in his huge masculine appetites. Clarisse had consented to live in the Rue de la Cerisaie, so as not to expose him; but she led him a fine dance, had made him buy her twenty-five thousand francs’ worth of furniture, and was devouring him heartily, in company with some actors of the Montmartre Theatre.

“I don’t care a hang!” said Trublot, “so long as one amuses oneself at her place. Anyhow, she doesn’t make you sing, and she isn’t forever strumming away on a piano like the other. Oh! that piano! Listen, when one is deafened at home, when one has had the misfortune to marry a mechanical piano which frightens everybody away, one would be precious stupid not to arrange a pleasant little nest elsewhere, where one could receive one’s friends in their slippers.”

“Last Sunday,” related Gueulin, “Clarisse wanted me to lunch alone with her. I declined. After those sort of lunches one always does something foolish; and I was afraid of seeing her take up her quarters with me the day she left Duveyrier for good. You know, she detests him. Oh! her disgust almost makes her ill. Well! the girl doesn’t care much for pimples either. But she hasn’t the resource of sending him elsewhere like his wife has; otherwise, if she could pass him over to her maid, I assure you she’d get rid of the job precious quick.”

The cab stopped. They alighted before a dark and silent house in the Rue de la Cerisaie. But they had to wait for the other cab fully ten minutes, Bachelard having taken his driver with him to drink a grog after the quarrel in the Rue Montmartre. On the staircase, as severe-looking as those of the middle-classes, Monsieur Josserand again asked some questions respecting Duveyrier’s lady friend, but the uncle merely answered:

“A woman of the world, a very decent girl. She won’t eat you.”

It was a little maid, with a rosy complexion, who opened the door to them. She took the gentlemen’s coats with familiar and tender smiles. For a moment, Trublot kept her in a corner of the ante-room, whispering things in her ear which almost made her choke, as though being tickled. But Bachelard had pushed open the drawing-room door, and he at once introduced Monsieur Josserand. The latter stood for a moment embarrassed, finding Clarisse ugly, and not understanding how the counsellor could prefer this sort of creature — black and skinny, and with a head of hair like a poodle — to his wife, one of the most beautiful women of society. Clarisse, however, was charming. She had preserved the Parisian cackle, a superficial and borrowed wit, an itch of drollery caught by rubbing up against men, but was able to put on a grand lady sort of air when she chose.

“Sir, I am charmed. All Alphonse’s friends are mine. Now you are one of us, the house is yours.”

Duveyrier, warned by a note from Bachelard, also greeted Monsieur Josserand very amiably. Octave was surprised at the counsellor’s youthful appearance. He was no longer the severe and ill-at-ease individual, who never seemed to be in his own home in the drawing-room of the Rue de Choiseul. The deep red blotches on his face were turning to a rosy hue, his oblique eyes shone with a childish delight, whilst Clarisse related in the midst of a group, how he sometimes hastened to come and see her during a short adjournment of the court; just time to jump into a cab, to kiss her, and start back again. Then he complained of being overworked. Four sittings a week, from eleven to five; always the same skein of bickerings to unravel, it ended by destroying all feeling in one’s heart.

“It is true,” said he, laughing, “one requires a few roses amongst all that I feel better afterwards.”

However, he did not wear his bit of red ribbon, but always took it off when visiting his mistress; a last scruple, a delicate distinction, which his sense of decency obstinately persisted in. Clarisse, without wishing to say so, felt very much hurt at it.

Octave, who had at once shook hands with the young woman like a comrade, listened and looked about him. The drawing-room, with its big floral-pattern carpet, its garnet satin-covered furniture and hangings, bore a great resemblance to the drawing-room of the Rue de Choiseul; and, as if to complete this likeness, a great many of the counsellor’s friends, whom Octave had seen on the evening of the concert, were met with here likewise, and formed the same groups. But there was smoking, and talking in loud tones, much liveliness flying about in the brilliant light of the candles. Two gentlemen, stretched out beside each other, occupied the whole breadth of a divan;
another, seated astride a chair, was warming his back at the fire. It was a pleasant free-and-easy, a liberty which, however, did not go any farther. Clarisse never received other women, out of decency, she said. When her acquaintances complained that her drawing-room was in want of a few ladies, she would answer with a laugh:

“Well! and I — am I not enough?”

She had arranged a decent home for Alphonse, very middle-class in the main, having a mania for what was proper, all through the ups and downs of her existence. When she received she would not be addressed familiarly. When the guests were gone, however, and the doors closed, all Alphonse’s friends passed in succession, without counting her own, clean-shaven actors and painters with bushy boards. It was an old habit, the need to recruit herself a bit, behind the heels of the man who paid. Of all her acquaintances, two alone had not been willing — Gueulin, dreading what might follow, and Trublot, whose affections were elsewhere.

The little maid handed round some glasses of punch, with her agreeable air. Octave took one; and, leaning towards his friend, whispered in his ear,

“The servant is better than the mistress.”

“Why, of course! always!” said Trublot, with a shrug of the shoulders, full of a disdainful conviction.

Clarisse came and talked with them for a moment. She multiplied herself, going from one to another, casting a word here, a laugh or gesture there. As each new-comer lighted a cigar the drawing-room was soon full of smoke.

“Oh! the horrid men!” exclaimed she prettily, as she went and opened a window.

Without losing any time, Bachelard made Monsieur Josserand comfortable in the recess of this window, to enable him to breathe, said he. Then, thanks to a masterly manœuvre, he brought Duveyrier to an anchor there also, and quickly broached the affair. So the two families were about to be united by a close tie; he felt highly honoured. Then he inquired what day the marriage contract was going to be signed, and that led him up to the matter in hand.

“We intended calling on you tomorrow, Josserand and I, to settle everything, for we are aware that Monsieur Auguste would do nothing without you. It is with respect to the payment of the dowry; and, really, as we are so comfortable here — “

Monsieur Josserand, again suffering the greatest anguish, looked out into the gloomy depths of the Rue de la Cerisaie, with its deserted pavements, and its dark façades. He regretted having come. They were again going to take advantage of his weakness and engage him in some disgraceful affair, which would cause him no end of suffering afterwards. A feeling of revolt made him interrupt his brother-in-law.

“Another time; this is not a fitting place, really.”

“But why, pray?” exclaimed Duveyrier, very graciously. “We are better here than anywhere else. You were saying, sir?”

“We give Berthe fifty thousand francs,” continued the uncle. “Only, these fifty thousand francs are represented by a dotal insurance at twenty years’ date, which Josserand took out for his daughter, when she was four years old. She will therefore only receive the money in three years’ time — “

“Allow me!” again interrupted the cashier with a scared look.

“No, let me finish; Monsieur Duveyrier understands perfectly. We do not wish the young couple to wait three years for money they may need at once, and we engage ourselves to pay the dowry in instalments of ten thousand francs every six months, on the understanding that we repay ourselves later on with the insurance money.”

A pause ensued. Monsieur Josserand, feeling frozen and choking, again looked into the dark street. The counsellor seemed to be thinking the matter over for a moment. Perhaps he scented the affair, and was delighted at letting those Vabres be duped, for he hated them in the person of his wife.

“All that seems to me very reasonable,” said he, at length. “It is for us to thank you. It is very seldom that a dowry is paid at once in full.”

“Never, sir!” affirmed the uncle, energetically. “Such a thing is never done.”

And the three men shook hands as they arranged to meet on the Thursday at the notary’s. When Monsieur Josserand came back into the light, he was so pale that he was asked if he was unwell. As a matter of fact he did not feel very well, and he withdrew, without being willing to wait for his brother-in-law, who had just gone into the dining-room where the classic tea was represented by champagne.

Gueulin, stretched on a sofa near the window, murmured,

“That scoundrel of an uncle!”

He had overheard some words about the insurance, and he chuckled as he confided the truth of the matter to Octave and Trublot. It had been done at his office; there was not a sou to receive, the Vabres were being taken in. Then, as the two others laughed at this good joke, holding their sides meanwhile, he added, with comical earnestness:

“I want a hundred francs. If the uncle doesn’t give me a hundred francs, I’ll split.”

The voices were becoming louder, the champagne was upsetting the good behaviour established by Clarisse. In her drawing-room the conclusion of all the parties was invariably rather lively. She herself would make a mistake sometimes. Trublot drew Octave’s attention to her as she stood behind a door with her arms round the neck of a fellow with the build of a peasant, a stone carver just arrived from the South, and whom his native town wished to make an artist of. But Duveyrier having pushed the door, she quickly removed her arms, and recommended the young man to him: Monsieur Payan, a sculptor with a very graceful talent; and Duveyrier, delighted, promised to obtain some work for him.

“Work, work,” repeated Gueulin, in a low voice; “he has as much here as he can want, the big ninny!”

Towards two o’clock, when the three young men and the uncle left the Rue de la Cerisaie, the latter was completely drunk. They would have liked to have packed him into a cab; but the neighbourhood was asleep in the midst of a solemn silence, without the sound of a wheel, nor even of a belated footstep. Then they decided to support him. The moon had risen, a very bright moon, which whitened the pavements. And in the deserted streets their voices assumed a grave sonorousness.

“Hang it all, uncle! keep yourself up! you’re breaking our arms!”

He, with his throat full of sobs, had become very tenderhearted and very moral.

“Go away, Gueulin,” stuttered he; “go away! I won’t have you see your uncle in such a state. No, my boy, it’s not right; go away!”

And as his nephew called him an old rogue:

“Rogue! that’s nothing. One must make oneself respected. I esteem women — always decent women; and when there’s no feeling it disgusts me. Go away, Gueulin, you’re making your uncle blush. These gentlemen are sufficient.”

“Then,” declared Gueulin, “you must give me a hundred francs. Really, I want them for my rent. They’re going to turn me out.”

At this unexpected demand, Bachelard’s intoxication increased to such an extent that he had to be propped up against the shutters of a warehouse. He stuttered:

“Eh! what! a hundred francs! Don’t search me. I’ve nothing but coppers. You want ‘em to squander in bad places! No, I’ll never encourage you in your vices. I know my duty; your mother confided you to my care on her death-bed. You know, I’ll call out if I’m searched.”

He continued, his indignation increasing against the dissolute life led by youth, and returning to the necessity there was for the display of virtue.

“I say,” Gueulin ended by saying, “I’ve not got to the point of taking families in. Ah, you know what I mean! If I were to talk, you’d soon give me my hundred francs!”

But the uncle at once became deaf to everything. He went grunting and stumbling along. In the narrow street where they then were, behind the church of Saint-Gervaise, a white lantern alone burned with the palish glimmer of a night-light, displaying a gigantic number painted on its roughened glass. A stifled trepidation issued from the house, whilst the closed shutters emitted a few narrow rays of light.

“I’ve had enough of it,” declared Gueulin, abruptly. “Excuse me, uncle, I forgot my umbrella up there.”

And he entered the house. Bachelard was indignant and full of disgust. He demanded at least a little respect for women. With such morals France was done for. On the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville, Octave and Trublot at length found a cab, inside which they shoved him like some bundle.