that rate. But I already like him very much. Love will come in time, I
have no doubt.
Love is such an economizer in a household. I bring a million, and we
can reckon on an income of about 230,000 francs. That may at first
sight seem a very large income, but it isn't really so. First of all
we must deduct about 80,000 francs for the keeping up of Simieuse, our
château in Vendée, and for hunting. That will leave only 150,000 francs
for living expenses, which amount will be quite sufficient if we love
each other and pull together _en bon camarade_.
But if, on the contrary, we begin after a short time--and this is the
history of many households--to pull in opposite directions, we shall
only have 75,000 francs each, and that will mean pinching--supposing
that theatres--leaving the opera and the Théâtre Français out of the
reckoning--cost 2,000 or 3,000 francs a year if we go together, it
would at once be double that sum if we went separately. And so with
everything else--the expenditure doubled.
Take, for instance, Caroline and her husband. They have only 100,000
francs per annum, but they live well, and without economizing. Why?
Because they love each other. They have quite a small house, and
naturally don't require a host of servants. They receive little, and
rarely go out. The more they are with each other, the more they see of
each other, the more they are satisfied. Caroline is quite content,
too, with 12,000 francs for her toilet.
Take Adèle as an example of the contrary. Poor girl, she married very
much against her own will and judgment. Her mother was dazzled by the
title. Certainly a title is something--in fact, it is a great deal--but
it is not exactly everything. Well, her marriage with Gontran turned
out badly. Things went wrong from the first week. Consequently they
find themselves pinched in spite of their great income of 250,000
francs. She spends a fortune on clothes, on stupid whims. It costs
her much more to satisfy the whole world than it would to please one
individual. The Duke, in consequence, has taken to play, and has
already squandered half of his fortune.
Caroline said to me recently:
"As soon as you are married try to love your husband. In our set that
means a saving of at least 100,000 per annum, and even if people can't
love each other for love's sake, they ought to for convenience."
"Oh, yes! I'll love him. I'll love him. Besides, it's only the 11th of
December. Between now and the 6th of January I have still twenty-six
days before me."
THE ACCURSED HOUSE
BY ÉMILE GABORIAU
[Illustration]
_Émile Gaboriau, best known for his remarkable detective
stories, was born at Sanson in 1853, and died at Paris in
1873. He was for a time private secretary of Paul Féval,
the novelist, and published a great variety of work. In
1866 appeared in the paper called "Le Pays" his first great
detective story, "L'Affaire Lerouge," which the author
dramatized in collaboration with Hostein in 1872. Like all of
the great series, "L'Affaire Lerouge," "Monsieur Lecoq," "Les
Esclaves de Paris," etc., are written in an easy flowing style,
and are full of exciting moments._
_It is interesting to trace the ancestry of the modern
detective story. The first seeds are said to be found in
Voltaire's "Zadig"; they germinate in Poe's tales, take form
in Gaboriau, and are in full bloom in Conan Doyle's "Sherlock
Holmes."_
[Illustration]
THE ACCURSED HOUSE
BY ÉMILE GABORIAU
Translated by E. C. Waggener.
Copyright, 1891, by The Current Literature Publishing Company.
The Vicomte de B----, an amiable and charming young man, was peacefully
enjoying an income of 30,000 livres yearly, when, unfortunately for
him, his uncle, a miser of the worst species, died, leaving him all his
wealth, amounting to nearly two millions.
In running through the documents of succession, the Vicomte de B----
learned that he was the proprietor of a house in the Rue de la
Victoire. He learned, also, that the unfurnished building, bought
in 1849 for 300,000 francs, now brought in, clear of taxes, rentals
amounting to 82,000 francs a year.
"Too much, too much, entirely," thought the generous vicomte, "my uncle
was too hard; to rent at this price is usury, one can not deny it. When
one bears a great name like mine, one should not lend himself to such
plundering. I will begin to-morrow to lower my rents, and my tenants
will bless me."
With this excellent purpose in view, the Vicomte de B---- sent
immediately for the _concièrge_ of the building, who presented himself
as promptly, with back bent like a bow.
"Bernard, my friend," said the vicomte, "go at once from me and notify
all your tenants that I lower their rents by one-third."
That unheard-of word "lower" fell like a brick on Bernard's head. But
he quickly recovered himself; he had heard badly; he had not understood.
"Low--er the rents!" stammered he. "Monsieur le Vicomte deigns to jest.
Lower! Monsieur, of course means to raise the rents."
"I was never more serious in my life, my friend," the vicomte returned;
"I said, and I repeat it, lower the rents."
This time the _concièrge_ was surprised to the point of
bewilderment--so thrown off his balance that he forgot himself and lost
all restraint.
"Monsieur has not reflected," persisted he. "Monsieur will regret
this evening. Lower the tenants' rents! Never was such a thing known,
monsieur! If the lodgers should learn of it, what would they think of
monsieur? What would people say in the neighborhood? Truly--"
"Monsieur Bernard, my friend," dryly interrupted the vicomte, "I
prefer, when I give an order, to be obeyed without reply. You hear
me--go!"
Staggering like a drunken man, Monsieur Bernard went out from the house
of his proprietor.
All his ideas were upset, overthrown, confounded. Was he, or was he
not, the plaything of a dream, a ridiculous nightmare? Was he himself
Pierre Bernard, or Bernard somebody else?
"Lower his rents! lower his rents!" repeated he. "It is not to be
believed! If indeed the lodgers had complained! But they have not
complained; on the contrary, all are good payers. Ah! if his uncle
could only know this, he would rise from the tomb! His nephew has gone
mad, 'tis certain! Lower the rents! They should have up this young
man before a family council; he will finish badly! Who knows--after
this--what he will do next? He lunched too well, perhaps, this morning."
And the worthy Bernard was so pale with emotion when he reentered
his lodge, so pale and spent, that on seeing him enter, his wife and
daughter Amanda exclaimed as with one voice:
"Goodness! what is it? What has happened to you now?"
"Nothing," responded he, with altered voice, "absolutely nothing."
"You are deceiving me," insisted Madame Bernard, "you are concealing
something from me; do not spare me; speak, I am strong--what did the
new proprietor tell you? Does he think of turning us off?"
"If it were only that! But just think, he told me with his own lips, he
told me to--ah! you will never believe me--"
"Oh, yes; only do go on."
"You will have it, then!--Well, then, he told me, he ordered me to
notify all the tenants that--_he lowered their rents one-third_! Did
you hear what I said?--_lowered_ the rents of the tenants--"
But neither Madame nor Mademoiselle Bernard heard him out--they were
twisting and doubling with convulsive laughter.
"Lower!" repeated they; "ah! what a good joke, what a droll man! Lower
the tenants' rents."
But Bernard, losing his temper and insisting that he must be taken
seriously in his own lodge, his wife lost her temper too, and a quarrel
followed! Madame Bernard declaring that Monsieur Bernard had, beyond a
doubt, taken his fantastic order from the bottom of a litre of wine in
the restaurant at the corner.
But for Mademoiselle Amanda the couple would undoubtedly have come
to blows, and finally Madame Bernard, who did not wish to be thought
demented, threw a shawl over her head and ran to the proprietor's
house. Bernard had spoken truly; with her own two ears, ornamented with
big, gilded hoops, she heard the incredible word. Only, as she was a
wise and prudent woman, she demanded "a bit of writing," to put, as she
said, "her responsibility under cover."
She, too, returned thunderstruck, and all the evening in the lodge,
father, mother, and daughter deliberated.
Should they obey? or should they warn some relative of this mad young
man, whose common sense would oppose itself to such insanity?
They decided to obey.
Next morning, Bernard, buttoning himself into his best frock coat, made
the rounds of the three-and-twenty lodges to announce his great news.
Ten minutes afterward the house in the Rue de la Victoire was in a
state of commotion impossible to describe. People who, for forty years
had lived on the same floor, and never honored each other with so much
as a tip of the hat, now clustered together and chatted eagerly.
"Do you know, monsieur?"
"It is very extraordinary."
"Simply unheard of!"
"The proprietor's lowered my rent!"
"One-third, is it not? Mine also."
"Astounding! It _must_ be a mistake!"
And despite the affirmations of the Bernard family, despite even the
"bit of writing," "under cover," there were found among the tenants
doubting Thomases, who doubted still in the face of everything.
Three of them actually wrote to the proprietor to tell him what had
passed, and to charitably warn him that his _concièrge_ had wholly lost
his mind. The proprietor responded to these skeptics, confirming what
Bernard had said. Doubt, thereafter, was out of the question.
Then began reflections and commentaries.
"_Why_ had the proprietor lowered his rents?"
"Yes, _why_?"
"What motives," said they all, "actuate this strange man? For certainly
he must have grave reasons for a step like this! An intelligent man, a
man of good sense, would never deprive himself of good fat revenues,
well secured, for the simple pleasure of depriving himself. One would
not conduct himself thus without being forced, constrained by powerful
or terrible circumstances."
And each said to himself:
"_There is something under all this!_"
"But what?"
And from the first floor to the sixth they sought and conjectured and
delved in their brains. Every lodger had the preoccupied air of a man
that strives with all his wits to solve an impossible cipher, and
everywhere there began to be a vague disquiet, as it happens when one
finds himself in the presence of a sinister mystery.
Some one went so far as to hazard:
"This man must have committed a great and still hidden crime; remorse
pushes him to philanthropy."
"It was not a pleasant idea, either, the thought of living thus side
by side with a rascal; no, by no means; he might be repentant, and all
that, but suppose he yielded to temptation once more!"
"The house, perhaps, was badly built?" questioned another, anxiously.
"Hum-m, so-so! no one could tell; but all knew one thing--it was very,
very old!"
"True! and it had been necessary to prop it when they dug the drain
last year in the month of March."
"Maybe it was the roof, then, and the house is top-heavy?" suggested a
tenant on the fifth floor.
"Or perhaps," said a lodger in the garret, "there is a press for
coining counterfeit money in the cellar; I have often heard at night a
sound like the dull, muffled thud of a coin-stamper."
The opinion of another was that Russian, maybe Prussian, spies had
gained a lodgment in the house, while the gentleman of the first story
was inclined to believe that the proprietor purposed to set fire to
his house and furniture with the sole object of drawing great sums from
the insurance companies.
Then began to happen, as they all declared, extraordinary and even
frightful things. On the sixth and mansard floors it appeared that
strange and absolutely inexplicable noises were heard. Then the nurse
of the old lady on the fourth story, going one night to steal wine from
the cellar, encountered the ghost of the defunct proprietor--he even
held in his hand a receipt for rent--by which she knew him!
And the refrain from loft to cellar was:
"There is something under all this!"
From disquietude it had come to fright; from fright it quickly passed
to terror. So that the gentleman of the first floor, who had valuables
in his rooms, made up his mind to go, and sent in notice by his clerk.
Bernard went to inform the proprietor, who responded:
"All right, let the fool go!"
But next day the chiropodist of the second floor, though he had naught
to fear for his valuables, imitated the gentleman beneath him. Then the
bachelors and the little households of the fifth story quickly followed
this example.
From that moment it was a general rout. By the end of the week,
everybody had given notice. Every one awaited some frightful
catastrophe. They slept no more. They organized patrols. The terrified
domestics swore that they too would quit the accursed house and
remained temporarily only on tripled wages.
Bernard was no more than the ghost of himself; the fever of fear had
worn him to a shadow.
"No," repeated his wife mournfully at each fresh notification, "no, it
is _not_ natural."
Meanwhile three-and-twenty "For Rent" placards swung against the façade
of the house, drawing an occasional applicant for lodgings.
Bernard--never grumbling now--climbed the staircase and ushered the
visitor from apartment to apartment.
"You can have your choice," said he to the people that presented
themselves, "the house is entirely vacant; all the tenants have
given notice as one man. They do not know why, exactly, but things
have happened, oh! yes, _things_! a mystery such as was never before
known--_the proprietor has lowered his rents!_"
And the would-be lodgers fled away affrighted.
The term ended, three-and-twenty vans carried away the furniture of
the three-and-twenty tenants. Everybody left. From top to bottom, from
foundations to garret, the house lay empty of lodgers.
The rats themselves, finding nothing to live on, abandoned it also.
Only the _concièrge_ remained, gray green with fear in his lodge.
Frightful visions haunted his sleep. He seemed to hear lugubrious
howlings and sinister murmurs at night that made his teeth chatter
with terror and his hair erect itself under his cotton nightcap.
Madame Bernard no more closed an eye than he. And Amanda in her frenzy
renounced all thought of the operatic stage and married--for nothing
in the world but to quit the paternal lodge--a young barber and
hair-dresser whom she had never before been able to abide.
At last, one morning, after a more frightful nightmare than usual,
Bernard, too, took a great resolution. He went to the proprietor, gave
up his keys, and scampered away.
* * * * *
And now on the Rue de la Victoria stands the abandoned house, "The
Accursed House," whose history I have told you. Dust thickens upon the
closed slats, grass grows in the court. No tenant ever presents himself
now; and in the quarter, where stands this Accursed House, so funereal
is its reputation that even the neighboring houses on either side of it
have also depreciated in value.
Lower one's rents!! Who would think of such a thing!!!
THE FÊTE AT COQUEVILLE
BY ÉMILE ZOLA
[Illustration]
_"Jacques Damour" is the greatest of Zola's short stories, but
its length precludes its use here._
_"Zola," says Edmund Gosse, "has rarely displayed the quality
of humor, but it is present in the story called 'The Fête at
Coqueville.'"_
_This scientific collector of "human documents" is probably the
most widely read of modern French authors. He was born at Paris
in 1840, the son of an Italian engineer. In 1871 he began that
long series for which he has been so much censured, the twenty
volumes of "Rougon-Macquart," the natural and social history of
a family under the Second Empire. Zola died by asphyxiation in
1902._
_Though Zola has a predilection for the ugly side of life,
he offends only against taste and not against morals. It
was a splendid act of heroism, that manifesto of his called
"J'Accuse" in which he defended Dreyfus in 1898, and for which
he was imprisoned and fined._
[Illustration]
THE FÊTE AT COQUEVILLE
BY ÉMILE ZOLA
Translated by L. G. Meyer. Copyright, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son.
I
Coqueville is a little village planted in a cleft in the rocks, two
leagues from Grandport. A fine sandy beach stretches in front of the
huts lodged half-way up in the side of the cliff like shells left there
by the tide. As one climbs to the heights of Grandport, on the left
the yellow sheet of sand can be very clearly seen to the west like a
river of gold dust streaming from the gaping cleft in the rock; and
with good eyes one can even distinguish the houses, whose tones of
rust spot the rock and whose chimneys send up their bluish trails to
the very crest of the great slope, streaking the sky. It is a deserted
hole. Coqueville has never been able to attain to the figure of two
hundred inhabitants. The gorge which opens into the sea, and on the
threshold of which the village is planted, burrows into the earth by
turns so abrupt and by descents so steep that it is almost impossible
to pass there with wagons. It cuts off all communication and isolates
the country so that one seems to be a hundred leagues from the
neighboring hamlets. Moreover, the inhabitants have communication with
Grandport only by water. Nearly all of them fishermen, living by the
ocean, they carry their fish there every day in their barks. A great
commission house, the firm of Dufeu, buys their fish on contract.
The father Dufeu has been dead some years, but the widow Dufeu has
continued the business; she has simply engaged a clerk, M. Mouchel, a
big blond devil, charged with beating up the coast and dealing with the
fishermen. This M. Mouchel is the sole link between Coqueville and the
civilized world.
Coqueville merits a historian. It seems certain that the village, in
the night of time, was founded by the Mahés; a family which happened
to establish itself there and which grew vigorous at the foot of the
cliff. These Mahés continued to prosper at first, marrying continually
among themselves, for during centuries one finds none but Mahés there.
Then under Louis XIII appeared one Floche. No one knew too much of
where he came from. He married a Mahé, and from that time a phenomenon
was brought forth; the Floches in their turn prospered and multiplied
exceedingly, so that they ended little by little in absorbing the Mahés
whose numbers diminished until their fortune passed entirely into the
hands of the newcomers. Without doubt, the Floches brought new blood,
more vigorous physical organs, a temperament which adapted itself
better to that hard condition of high wind and of high sea. At any
rate, they are to-day masters of Coqueville.
It can easily be understood that this displacement of numbers and
of riches was not accomplished without terrible disturbances. The
Mahés and the Floches detest each other. Between them is a hatred of
centuries. The Mahés in spite of their decline retain the pride of
ancient conquerors. After all they are the founders, the ancestors.
They speak with contempt of the first Floche, a beggar, a vagabond
picked up by them from feelings of pity, and to have given away one
of their daughters to whom was their eternal regret. This Floche, to
hear them speak, had engendered nothing but a descent of libertines
and thieves, who pass their nights in raising children and their days
in coveting legacies. And there is not an insult they do not heap upon
the powerful tribe of Floche, seized with that bitter rage of nobles,
decimated, ruined, who see the spawn of the bourgeoisie master of their
rents and of their châteaux. The Floches, on their side, naturally have
the insolence of those who triumph. They are in full possession, a
thing to make them insolent. Full of contempt for the ancient race of
the Mahés, they threaten to drive them from the village if they do not
bow their heads. To them they are starvelings, who instead of draping
themselves in their rags would do much better to mend them.
So Coqueville finds itself a prey to two fierce factions--something
like one hundred and thirty inhabitants bent upon devouring the other
fifty for the simple reason that they are the stronger.
The struggle between two great empires has no other history.
Among the quarrels which have lately upset Coqueville, they cite the
famous enmity of the brothers, Fouasse and Tupain, and the ringing
battles of the Rouget ménage. You must know that every inhabitant in
former days received a surname, which has become to-day the regular
name of the family; for it was difficult to distinguish one's self
among the cross-breedings of the Mahés and the Floches. Rouget
assuredly had an ancestor of fiery blood. As for Fouasse and Tupain,
they were called thus without knowing why, many surnames having lost
all rational meaning in course of time. Well, old Françoise, a wanton
of eighty years who lived forever, had had Fouasse by a Mahé, then
becoming a widow, she remarried with a Floche and brought forth Tupain.
Hence the hatred of the two brothers, made specially lively by the
question of inheritance. At the Rouget's they beat each other to a
jelly because Rouget accused his wife, Marie, of being unfaithful to
him for a Floche, the tall Brisemotte, a strong, dark man, on whom he
had already twice thrown himself with a knife, yelling that he would
rip open his belly. Rouget, a small, nervous man, was a great spitfire.
But that which interested Coqueville most deeply was neither the
tantrums of Rouget nor the differences between Tupain and Fouasse. A
great rumor circulated: Delphin, a Mahé, a rascal of twenty years,
dared to love the beautiful Margot, the daughter of La Queue, the
richest of the Floches and chief man of the country. This La Queue was,
in truth, a considerable personage. They called him La Queue because
his father in the days of Louis Philippe, had been the last to tie up
his hair, with the obstinacy of old age that clings to the fashions
of its youth. Well, then, La Queue owned one of the two large fishing
smacks of Coqueville, the "Zéphir," by far the best, still quite new
and seaworthy. The other big boat, the "Baleine," a rotten old
patache,[1] belonged to Rouget, whose sailors were Delphin and Fouasse,
while La Queue took with him Tupain and Brisemotte. These last had
grown weary of laughing contemptuously at the "Baleine"; a sabot,
they said, which would disappear some fine day under the billows like
a handful of mud. So when La Queue learned that that ragamuffin of a
Delphin, the froth of the "Baleine," allowed himself to go prowling
around his daughter, he delivered two sound whacks at Margot, a trifle
merely to warn her that she should never be the wife of a Mahé. As a
result, Margot, furious, declared that she would pass that pair of
slaps on to Delphin if he ever ventured to rub against her skirts. It
was vexing to be boxed on the ears for a boy whom she had never looked
in the face! Margot, at sixteen years strong as a man and handsome as
a lady, had the reputation of being a scornful person, very hard on
lovers. And from that, added to the trifle of the two slaps, of the
presumptuousness of Delphin, and of the wrath of Margot, one ought
easily to comprehend the endless gossip of Coqueville.
[Illustration: =Émile Zola=]