Complete Works of Emile Zola (992 page)

“And can you hope to carry on the struggle,” he continued, “with your twopenny-halfpenny tools? — you who are so ignorant, so entirely without ambition, and who are quite con­tented to go grubbing on in the same old way as your fore­fathers? Ah! you are already sunk up to your bellies in the corn from over the sea, and it is still rising about you, for the ships are ever bringing larger quantities of it over. Wait a little longer and you will find it up to your shoulders; then it will reach your mouths, and then the flood will close over your heads! A flood! aye, a torrent — a wild deluge that will sweep you all away!”

The peasants opened their eyes widely, quite panic-stricken by the thought of this inundation of foreign corn. They were already suffering distress; were they really going to be alto­gether drowned and swept away, as the schoolmaster said? They took his metaphors very literally. Would Rognes, their fields, and the whole of La Beauce be swallowed up?

“No, never!” cried Delhomme, choking with emotion. “The Government will protect us.”

“A pretty protector, indeed, the Government will be!” Lequeu resumed, contemptuously. “It will need all its time to protect itself! You behaved most ridiculously in electing Monsieur Rochefontaine. The master of La Borderie, at any rate, behaved consistently in supporting Monsieur de Chédeville. However, after all, whether you have the one or the other, it is only putting the same plaster on a wooden leg. No Chamber would ever dare to impose a duty high enough. Protection cannot save you; you are doomed beyond all redemption!”

There was now a noisy outbreak, and all the peasants began to speak at once. Couldn’t something be done to stop the disastrous influx of this foreign corn? They would sink the ships in the docks, and shoot the fellows who brought the corn over! Their voices quivered with emotion, and they almost seemed inclined to burst into tears, and stretch out their hands and pray that they might be saved from all this abundance — from this cheap bread which threatened to ruin the country. The schoolmaster grinned with malicious satisfaction, and told them that nobody had ever heard of such ideas as now possessed them. Their previous fears had always been of famine — that they would not have corn enough; and surely it must now be all up with them since they felt afraid of having too much! He was growing quite intoxicated with his own eloquence, and he shouted above the furious cries of protest:

“You are a perishing and worn-out race. Your imbecile love of the soil has eaten you up. Yes, you are each the slave of a patch of ground, which has so narrowed your minds that, for the sake of it, you would murder your fellows! For centuries past you have been wedded to the soil, and it has always be­trayed you! Look at America! There the agriculturist is master of the soil. He isn’t bound to it by any family ties, any sentimental considerations; as soon as one plot is ex­hausted, he goes further on and takes another. If he hears that more fertile plains have been discovered some three hundred leagues away, he moves his tent and goes off there. Thanks to his machines, he has only to will and do. He is free, and he’s growing rich; while you are slaves, and are dying of starvation!”

Buteau’s face had grown pale, for Lequeu had looked at him when speaking of murder. He tried to appear quite un­concerned, however.

“Well, we are as we are,” he said. “What is the good of our troubling ourselves, since you yourself say that it will be all to no purpose?”

Delhomme signified his approval of this, and every one began to laugh: Lengaigne, Clou, Fouan, even Delphin and the conscripts, who derived a certain amount of amusement from what was going on, as they hoped it would lead to blows. Canon and Hyacinthe, annoyed at seeing “inky fingers,” as they called the schoolmaster, shout louder than themselves, also affected to snigger merrily. They were even inclined to side with the peasants.

“It’s folly to quarrel,” said Canon, shrugging his shoulders. “What is wanted is organisation.”

Lequeu made a gesture of hot anger.

“I’ve no patience to hear such folly talked! I am for making a clean sweep of everything!”

His face was quite livid, and he flung these words in their faces as though he wished to knock them down with them.

“You pitiful cowards!” he cried. “Yes, you’re all of you cowards, you peasants! To think you are more numerous and stronger, and yet that you let yourselves be devoured by the middle-class townsfolk and the workmen! I’ve but one regret, and that is that my father and mother were peasants. Perhaps that is the reason why you fill me with such disgust. There is nothing to prevent you becoming the masters. But you won’t combine together. You keep yourselves isolated from each other, full of suspicion and ignorance, and you exhaust all your knavery in preying upon one another. What is it that you are concealing beneath the surface of your stagnant water? for you are like stagnant pools which men believe to be deep, though they would not drown a cat! To think that you should be such a mighty, undeveloped force, a force which might mould the future, and yet you lie about as inert as logs of wood! And what makes it all the more exasperating is that you have ceased to believe in what the priests tell you. If there be no God, what is it that holds you back? As long as you stood in fear of hell, one could understand that you continued to grovel on your bellies; but now, rush forward! pillage everything! burn everything! As a commencement, it will perhaps be simpler for you to go on strike. You have all got some savings, and you could hold out as long as would be necessary. Culti­vate the ground for yourselves, don’t carry anything to market, not a single sack of corn, not a single bushel of potatoes! Let Paris starve! That’s the way to set to work.”

A gust of cold air, wafted from the distant blackness of the night, had rushed in through the open window. The flames of the lamps were shooting up very high. No one now attempted to interrupt the excited speaker, despite the abuse that he lavished upon everybody.

He now banged his book down on a table, making the glasses jingle, and proceeded to finish his oration:

“I have told you all that; but still I am quite easy about the future. Cowards you may be now, but when the proper time comes I know that you will be the fellows to make a clean sweep of everything. It has been so more than once before, and it will be so once again. Wait till misery and hunger send you rushing down upon the towns like so many wolves! Very likely the occasion will arise anent this corn which is being brought from over the sea. When there has been too much of it there won’t be enough of it, and then there will be scarcity and famine again. It is always for the sake of corn that men rise up in rebellion and slay each other! Yes, let the towns be burned down and razed to the ground, the villages deserted, the fields uncultivated, overrun with brambles, and watered with streams of blood; then perhaps they will hereafter bring forth bread for those who are born into the world when we are gone!”

Lequeu now violently tore the door open and disappeared. A yell from the stupefied peasants followed him. The scoun­drel! He wanted bleeding! A man who had always been so pacific and quiet! Surely he must be going mad! Delhomme, who had quite lost his habitual placidity, declared his intention of writing to the prefect, and the others pressed him to do so. However, it was Hyacinthe, with his ‘89 and his humanitarian motto of “Liberty, equality, and fraternity,” and Canon, with his schemes for the compulsory and scientific reorganisation of society, who appeared the most indignant. They sat there with pale faces, exasperated at not having been able to find a word to say in reply, and now expressing themselves in much stronger terms than the peasants did; bellowing out, in fact, that a fellow of that sort ought to be guillotined. Buteau, upon hearing the orator demand so much blood — flowing streams of blood to which he seemed to point with his finger — had risen from his seat in trembling alarm, his head wagging involuntarily from nervous excitement, just as though he were signifying approval of what was being said. Then he glided along the wall, casting furtive glances to make sure that he was not being followed, and on reaching the door, he, too, disappeared.

The conscripts now reverted to their uproarious merriment again. They were bellowing loudly, and insisting upon Flore cooking them some sausages, when Nénesse suddenly hustled them aside and sprang over a bench to reach Delphin, who had just fainted away, with his face lying on the table. The poor fellow was as white as a sheet. His handkerchief, which had slipped off his wounded hand, was covered with crimson stains. The conscripts yelled into Bécu’s ear, for he was still hard asleep; but at last he awoke, and gazed at his son’s muti­lated hand. He knew what it meant, for, seizing hold of a bottle, he brandished it as if anxious to kill the lad. Then, as he led him, tottering, away, he could be heard indulging in noisy oaths, amid which he burst into tears.

Hourdequin, having heard of Françoise’s accident while he was dining, repaired to Rognes that evening, prompted by his kindly feeling for Jean, to inquire how the young woman was getting on. Setting out on foot, he smoked his pipe as he walked along through the black darkness, brooding over his troubles and vexations amid the unbroken silence of the night. Feeling at last somewhat calmer, and wishing to prolong his walk, he went down the hill before calling at his old servant’s house. When he reached the foot of the declivity, the sound of Lequeu’s voice, which streamed forth from the open window of the tavern, penetrating the darkness of the surrounding country, made him halt, and he remained listening for a long time, standing motionless in the gloom. When he at length began to ascend the hill again, the schoolmaster’s voice fol­lowed him, and even when he reached Jean’s house, he could still hear it, sounding weaker, and seemingly shriller in the dis­tance, but still as sharply incisive as the keen edge of a knife.

Jean was standing at his door, leaning against the wall. He had not been able to remain any longer at Françoise’s bed-side. He felt suffocated there, and altogether too miserable.

“Well, my poor fellow,” Hourdequin now asked, “how is your wife?”

The unhappy man broke into a gesture of despair.

“Ah, sir, she’s dying!”

Then neither of them said another word; and the deep silence around them was only broken by the distant sound of Lequeu’s voice, which still persistently rang out.

The farmer could not help listening, despite himself, and presently he angrily exclaimed:

“Do you hear that fellow ranting? How awful such talk as that sounds when one’s in trouble!”

The sound of the schoolmaster’s fulminating voice, com­bined with the proximity of Françoise in her death-agony, again revived the farmer’s anguish of heart. The soil which he loved so dearly, loved with a sentimental passion, nay, almost with an intellectual one, had well nigh completed his ruin this last harvest. His fortune had all been drained away, and soon La Borderie would not even provide him with bare sustenance. Nothing seemed to do any good there — neither hard work, nor new systems, nor manures, nor machines. He habitually ascribed his failure to insufficient capital; but in his own mind he had some doubts about this, for ruin seemed to be general. The Robiquets had just been ejected by the bailiffs from La Chamade, and the Coquarts had been compelled to sell their farm of Saint-Juste. He himself could see no way of break­ing his bonds; he had never more completely felt himself the prisoner of his land, and every day the money he spent and the labour he bestowed seemed to chain him more tightly to it. The final catastrophe, which would put an end to the antagonism of centuries between the small landowners and the large ones by annihilating them both, was now rapidly approaching. This was the advent of the predicted time; corn had fallen below fifty-six francs the quarter, so that it was being sold at a loss; and social transformations, stronger than the will of men, were bringing about the bankruptcy of the soil.

Stung with the consciousness of his ruin, Hourdequin now suddenly expressed approval of what Lequeu was saying.

“Deuce take it all, he’s right! Let everything go to smash and all of us perish, and the whole soil be covered with weeds and brambles, since our race is decayed and the land exhausted!”

Then, referring to Jacqueline, he added:

“However, thank God, there is another complaint that will make an end of me before all that comes off!”

Inside the house La Grande and La Frimat could be heard walking about and muttering to each other. Jean, who was still leaning against the wall, shivered as he heard them. Then he returned into the house, and found that all was over. Fran­çoise was dead; she had probably passed away some time previously. She had never opened her eyes again, and had kept her lips sealed, carrying away with her the secret she was so anxious to conceal. La Grande had only just discovered that she was dead by touching her. With her white shrunken face, on which there rested a resolute expression, she looked as though she were sleeping. Jean stood at the foot of the bed and stared at her, dazed and stupefied with confused thoughts, with the grief he felt at losing her, with the surprise caused him by the fact that she had refused to make a will, and with a vague sensation that a part of his existence was now shivered to pieces, and gone for ever.

Just at that moment, as Hourdequin, still gloomy and down­hearted, took his leave with a silent grasp of the hand, Jean saw a shadowy form flit away from the window and dart hastily along the road into the darkness. He fancied it was some prowling dog; but in reality it was Buteau, who had been spying through the window, to watch for Françoise’s death, and who was now hastening to announce the news to Lise.

CHAPTER V

Early the next day, as Françoise’s body was being placed in the coffin, which was resting upon two chairs in the middle of the bedroom, Jean was overcome with surprise and indigna­tion at seeing Lise and Buteau enter the house, one behind the other. His first impulse was to summarily eject these stony­hearted relatives, who had not come to give Françoise a last kiss ere she died, but who lost no time in coining as soon as the coffin-lid had been screwed down over her, as though they now felt free from all fear of finding themselves face to face with her. However, the other members of the family who were present, Fanny and La Grande, restrained him. It would bring bad luck, they said, to begin quarrelling round a corpse. Besides, what good would it do? Lise could not be prevented from atoning for her previous vindictiveness by keeping watch over her sister’s remains.