Complete Works of Emile Zola (767 page)

The next morning he set enthusiastically to work, jingling, strumming on the piano, and covering sheets of paper with black bars. As the instrument was in a more feeble condi­tion than ever, he sang the notes himself in a droning manner. Never had any of his previous fads taken such strong hold of him. He was so completely absorbed that he forgot his meals, and all but deafened poor Pauline, who, in her desire to please him, pretended that she liked it all very much, and neatly recopied portions of the score. This time he was quite sure that he had a masterpiece in hand.

But by-and-by his enthusiasm flagged. He had the whole score written except the introduction, and inspiration for that failed him. He would have to let it wait for a time, he said, and he smoked cigarettes, while his manuscript lay upon the table in front of him. Pauline played little bits from it on the piano, with all a beginner’s clumsiness. It was now that the intimacy between the two young people began to assume a dangerous character. Lazare’s brain was no longer oc­cupied; and, shut up with Pauline in a state of idleness, he began to feel for her a warmer passion than before. She was so light-hearted and merry; so affectionate and devoted. At first he thought that all he felt was a mere impulse of gratitude, an amplification of that fraternal affection with which she had inspired him ever since childhood. But by degrees passion, hitherto dormant, awoke into life. In that younger brother he was at last beginning to recognise a woman; and he flushed as she did when he brushed against her. If their hands happened to meet, they both looked confused and their breath came quickly, while their cheeks crimsoned. And thus all the time they now spent alone together they felt troubled and ill at ease.

Sometimes, to relieve them from embarrassment, Pauline would begin to joke with all the frank boldness of her innocent, though well-read mind.

‘By the way,’ said she, one day, ‘did I tell you that I dreamed that your favourite Schopenhauer had received tidings in the other world of our marriage, and that his ghost came to pay us a visit?’

Lazare laughed uneasily. He understood very well that she was poking fun at his inconsistencies, but his whole being was now thrilled with tenderness, which carried all his distaste for existence away.

‘Don’t be naughty, dear,’ he said. ‘You know that I love you.’

She assumed a chiding look.

‘I am afraid you are inclined to put off the universal deliverance. You are grovelling in egotism and delusions again.’

‘Hold your tongue, you wicked tease!’

He sprang up and chased her round the room, as she continued to hurl at him fragments of pessimistic philosophy with all the solemnity of a doctor of the Sorbonne. But when he caught hold of her, he no longer dared to keep her within his grasp, and pinch her for punishment as in olden time.

One day when he was chasing her round the room, and had succeeded in getting close, he clutched her by the waist. She broke into a ringing laugh, while he, holding her against the wardrobe, quivered with excitement as he felt her struggling.

‘Ah! I have got you this time!’ he cried.

Their faces were touching, and she still laughed, though in an uneasy manner.

‘Please let me go,’ she entreated. ‘I won’t be naughty any more.’

He roughly planted a kiss on her lips. Then the whole room appeared to swim round them and a hot feverish gust seemed to sweep them into space. She staggered, and then, with a sudden effort, released herself from her cousin’s grasp. For a moment they both stood silent and confused, their cheeks crimson as they avoided each other’s glance. At last Pauline dropped upon a chair to get her breath.

‘You have hurt me, Lazare,’ she said, speaking as though she were seriously displeased with him.

From that day he guarded himself from contact with her. His sense of honour rebelled against the thought of any disgraceful lapse; he was quite conscious that in heart and soul she was entirely his own; but he felt that respect and protection were her due, and that in dangerous dallying his would be the guilt alone. However, this very struggle on his part only served to increase his love. Everything lately had tended to fan its flame: the idleness of the first few weeks, his assumed indifference as to what became of him, his disgust with life, through which sprang a fresh passionate desire of life and love and even suffering, as occu­pation for his empty hours. And then music finally trans­ported his mind, carrying him away to a land of dreams on spreading wings of melody. He began to believe that a mighty passion possessed him, and vowed to cultivate it for his genius’ sake. He could no longer doubt it. He would be a great musician, for he need only hearken to the promptings of his heart. Everything then appeared to him purified; he felt content to worship Pauline on his knees, and did not even think of hurrying on their marriage.

‘Come and read this letter I have just received,’ said Chanteau in alarm one day to his wife, who had just come up from the village.

It was another letter from Saccard, and quite a threat­ening one. Ever since November he had been asking for a statement of the accounts of Pauline’s fortune, and, as the Chanteaus had only replied by evasions and subterfuges, he now announced that he meant to lay the matter before the family council. Madame Chanteau, though she would not confess it, was quite as alarmed as her husband.

‘The wretch!’ she growled, when she had read the letter.

They looked at each other, quite pale and without finding a word to say. They already seemed to hear in that lifeless little dining-room the echoes of a disgraceful lawsuit.

‘There must be no more dilly-dallying,’ resumed Chanteau. ‘We must marry the girl at once, since marriage releases her from all control.’

But to his wife this expedient seemed to grow more dis­tasteful every day. She expressed various fears. Who could tell if the two young folks would get on well together? It is quite possible for people to agree as friends, and yet to make each other perfectly miserable as man and wife. Lately, she said, various unpleasant things had struck her.

‘No,’ she added; ‘it would be wrong to sacrifice them for the sake of our own peace. Let us wait a little longer. And, besides, should we gain any advantage by marrying her now? She was eighteen last month, and we can apply for legal emancipation.’

She was beginning to feel quite confident again. She went upstairs to get the Code, and they both pored over it together. Article 478 tranquillised them, but they felt uneasy again as they read Article 480, for there it was enacted that the accounts of a ward’s estate must be submitted to a curator appointed by the family council. It was true that she could easily manage all the members of the council, and make them do what she wanted, but whom could she choose as curator? The difficulty was to find some easy-going man, instead of Saccard, the surrogate-guardian.

Suddenly she had an inspiration.

‘I’ve got it,’ she cried, ‘Doctor Cazenove! He is some­what in our confidence, and he won’t refuse.’

Chanteau nodded approval. He continued, however, to look at his wife, as though revolving some thought in his mind.

‘And so,’ he said at last, ‘you will hand over the money? What is left of it, I mean?’

Madame Chanteau remained silent for a moment. Her eyes sought the Code, whose pages she turned with nervous excitement. Then with an effort she replied:

‘Of course; and it will be a great relief to me to do so, after the accusations that have already been made against us. Upon my word, it is enough to make one suspect oneself! I would give something to see the tiresome papers removed from my secrétaire to-night. And, anyway, we should always have to give them up to her.’

The next day, when Doctor Cazenove made his usual Saturday round in Bonneville, she mentioned the great service they awaited from his friendship. She made an open breast of the situation, and told him how the money had been swallowed up in the sea-weed works, without the family council having been consulted in the matter, Then she dwelt upon the intended marriage and the sad possibility of the bonds of affection which united them all together being torn asunder by the scandal of a law-suit.

Before promising his assistance the doctor desired to have an interview with Pauline. He had long suspected that she was being taken advantage of, and that her fortune was being gradually frittered away; and, though he had hitherto said nothing for fear of causing her pain, he felt that now, as he was being invited to become an accomplice, it was his duty to warn her. The interview took place in the girl’s own room. At the commencement of the conversation her aunt was present. She had accompanied the Doctor to declare that the marriage now depended entirely on Pauline’s eman­cipation from the family council’s control, as Lazare would never consent to marry as long as it was possible for others to accuse him of doing so for the mere purpose of avoiding an examination of the accounts. Then she left the room, saying that she did not wish to do anything to affect the decision of the dear girl whom she already regarded as her darling daughter. Pauline, quite overcome with emotion, immediately begged the Doctor to render them the delicate service the necessity of which had just been made clear to him. It was to no purpose that Cazenove tried to explain the exact position of affairs to her, to show her that she was despoiling herself, reducing herself to a condition of absolute dependence, or that he revealed his own fears for the future — perfect ruin, possible ingratitude and suffering. At every gloomy suggestion she uttered indignant protests, refused to listen further, and showed a feverish haste to complete the sacrifice.

‘No! no! don’t try to make me regret things. I am really very avaricious at heart, though I don’t let it appear. It has given me a world of trouble to conquer myself. Let them have everything. If they will only give me their love, they may have all that belongs to me!’

‘And so,’ asked the Doctor, ‘it is affection for your cousin that leads you to strip yourself of your fortune?’

She blushed and did not reply.

‘But suppose that after a time your cousin should cease to love you?’

She stared at him with a frightened look. Her eyes filled with big tears, and a cry of protesting love burst from her heart. ‘No! no! Why do you torture me like this?’

Then Doctor Cazenove consented to do as she wished.

He could not summon up the courage to amputate that generous heart of the illusions of love. Trouble would come to her soon enough.

Madame Chanteau conducted the campaign with astonish­ing brilliancy of intrigue. That struggle made her feel quite young again. She set off to Paris once more, taking along with her all the necessary powers and authorisations. She quickly won the members of the family council over to her own way of thinking. Those good people, indeed, had never troubled about their duties; they showed the indifference usual in such matters. The members of the council who came from Quenu’s side of the family, cousins Naudet, Liardin, and Delorme, agreed with her at once; and as for the three on Lisa’s side, it was only upon Octave Mouret that she had to expend any argument; the others, Claude Lantier and Rambaud, who were both then living at Marseilles, contented themselves with forwarding her their written consent. To all of them she poured out a moving, if somewhat confused, story, and spoke of the old Arromanches surgeon’s affection for Pauline, and his manifest intention to leave her all his money should he be permitted to take her under his care. As for Saccard, he, too, acquiesced, as the others had done, after Madame Chanteau had paid him three visits and suggested a brilliant new idea to him, the forma­tion of a ring in Normandy butter. Pauline’s emancipation was formally pronounced by the family council, and the ex-naval surgeon Cazenove, of whom the Justice of the Peace had received the most satisfactory account, was nominated trustee.

A fortnight after Madame Chanteau’s return to Bonneville the auditing of the guardianship accounts took place in the simplest manner. The Doctor had lunched with them, and they sat lingering round the table, discussing the latest news from Caen, whence Lazare had just returned after a two days’ visit, taken thither by the threat of an action on the part of ‘that scamp Boutigny.’

‘By the way,’ added the young man, ‘Louise will give you all a surprise when you see her next week. When I saw her, I positively didn’t recognise her. She is living with her father now, and has grown into quite a fashionable young lady. We had a very merry laugh over it.’

Pauline looked at him, feeling some surprise at the warmth of his tone.

‘Talking of Louise,’ interrupted Madame Chanteau, ‘re­minds me that I travelled with a lady from Caen who knew the Thibaudiers. I was quite thunderstruck when she told me that Thibaudier would give his daughter a dowry of a hundred thousand francs. With the other hundred thousand which she had from her mother the girl will have two hundred thousand. Two hundred thousand francs! She will be quite wealthy!’

‘She could do very well without all that,’ said Lazare, ‘for she’s quite charming. And so kittenish in her ways!’

A gloomy expression thereupon came into Pauline’s eyes, and her lips twitched nervously. However, the Doctor, who had never ceased watching her, lifted up his little glass of rum, saying:

‘Ah, we haven’t clinked glasses yet! Here’s to your health, my young friends! Get married quickly and have plenty of children.’

Without a smile Madame Chanteau slowly raised her glass; while her husband, to whom liqueurs were forbidden, contented himself with nodding his head approvingly. Lazare, however, had just caught hold of Pauline’s hand with such an expression of affection that all the blood in her heart had come pulsing to her cheeks. Was she not, indeed, his good angel, whose love for him he would adorn with the brilliance of genius? She returned the pressure of his grasp. Then they all clinked glasses.

‘To your hundredth birthday!’ continued the Doctor, who considered that a hundred years was a good and proper age for a man to reach.

Lazare turned pale. The mention of those hundred years sent a painful thrill through him, reminding him of the time when he would have ceased to exist, the dread of which everlastingly lurked within his mind. In a hundred years where would he be, indeed? And what would he be? What stranger would be seated drinking wine at that table where he now sat? He raised his little glass with a trembling hand; while Pauline, who had grasped hold of the other, pressed it with a kind of maternal encouragement, as though she had seen the icy quiver of ‘Nevermore!’ passing over his pallid face. After a short interval of silence Madame Chanteau said very seriously, ‘And now suppose we get our business over?’