For an instant Pascal looked at the papers, the heap of which seemed
enormous, lying thus in disorder on the long table that stood in the
middle of the room. In the confusion several of the blue paper
envelopes had burst open, and their contents had fallen out—letters,
newspaper clippings, documents on stamped paper, and manuscript notes.
He was already mechanically beginning to seek out the names written on
the envelopes in large characters, to classify the packages again,
when, with an abrupt gesture, he emerged from the somber meditation
into which he had fallen. And turning to Clotilde who stood waiting,
pale, silent, and erect, he said:
“Listen to me; I have always forbidden you to read these papers, and I
know that you have obeyed me. Yes, I had scruples of delicacy. It is
not that you are an ignorant girl, like so many others, for I have
allowed you to learn everything concerning man and woman, which is
assuredly bad only for bad natures. But to what end disclose to you too
early these terrible truths of human life? I have therefore spared you
the history of our family, which is the history of every family, of all
humanity; a great deal of evil and a great deal of good.”
He paused as if to confirm himself in his resolution and then resumed
quite calmly and with supreme energy:
“You are twenty-five years old; you ought to know. And then the life we
are leading is no longer possible. You live and you make me live in a
constant nightmare, with your ecstatic dreams. I prefer to show you the
reality, however execrable it may be. Perhaps the blow which it will
inflict upon you will make of you the woman you ought to be. We will
classify these papers again together, and read them, and learn from
them a terrible lesson of life!”
Then, as she still continued motionless, he resumed:
“Come, we must be able to see well. Light those other two candles
there.”
He was seized by a desire for light, a flood of light; he would have
desired the blinding light of the sun; and thinking that the light of
the three candles was not sufficient, he went into his room for a pair
of three-branched candelabra which were there. The nine candles were
blazing, yet neither of them, in their disorder—he with his chest bare,
she with her left shoulder stained with blood, her throat and arms
bare—saw the other. It was past two o’clock, but neither of them had
any consciousness of the hour; they were going to spend the night in
this eager desire for knowledge, without feeling the need of sleep,
outside time and space. The mutterings of the storm, which, through the
open window, they could see gathering, grew louder and louder.
Clotilde had never before seen in Pascal’s eyes the feverish light
which burned in them now. He had been overworking himself for some time
past, and his mental sufferings made him at times abrupt, in spite of
his good-natured complacency. But it seemed as if an infinite
tenderness, trembling with fraternal pity, awoke within him, now that
he was about to plunge into the painful truths of existence; and it was
something emanating from himself, something very great and very good
which was to render innocuous the terrible avalanche of facts which was
impending. He was determined that he would reveal everything, since it
was necessary that he should do so in order to remedy everything. Was
not this an unanswerable, a final argument for evolution, the story of
these beings who were so near to them? Such was life, and it must be
lived. Doubtless she would emerge from it like the steel tempered by
the fire, full of tolerance and courage.
“They are setting you against me,” he resumed; “they are making you
commit abominable acts, and I wish to restore your conscience to you.
When you know, you will judge and you will act. Come here, and read
with me.”
She obeyed. But these papers, about which her grandmother had spoken so
angrily, frightened her a little; while a curiosity that grew with
every moment awoke within her. And then, dominated though she was by
the virile authority which had just constrained and subjugated her, she
did not yet yield. But might she not listen to him, read with him? Did
she not retain the right to refuse or to give herself afterward? He
spoke at last.
“Will you come?”
“Yes, master, I will.”
He showed her first the genealogical tree of the Rougon-Macquarts. He
did not usually lock it in the press, but kept it in the desk in his
room, from which he had taken it when he went there for the candelabra.
For more than twenty years past he had kept it up to date, inscribing
the births, deaths, marriages, and other important events that had
taken place in the family, making brief notes in each case, in
accordance with his theory of heredity.
It was a large sheet of paper, yellow with age, with folds cut by wear,
on which was drawn boldly a symbolical tree, whose branches spread and
subdivided into five rows of broad leaves; and each leaf bore a name,
and contained, in minute handwriting, a biography, a hereditary case.
A scientist’s joy took possession of the doctor at sight of this labor
of twenty years, in which the laws of heredity established by him were
so clearly and so completely applied.
“Look, child! You know enough about the matter, you have copied enough
of my notes to understand. Is it not beautiful? A document so complete,
so conclusive, in which there is not a gap? It is like an experiment
made in the laboratory, a problem stated and solved on the blackboard.
You see below, the trunk, the common stock, Aunt Dide; then the three
branches issuing from it, the legitimate branch, Pierre Rougon, and the
two illegitimate branches, Ursule Macquart and Antoine Macquart; then,
new branches arise, and ramify, on one side, Maxime, Clotilde, and
Victor, the three children of Saccard, and Angelique, the daughter of
Sidonie Rougon; on the other, Pauline, the daughter of Lisa Macquart,
and Claude, Jacques, Étienne, and Anna, the four children of Gervaise,
her sister; there, at the extremity, is Jean, their brother, and here
in the middle, you see what I call the knot, the legitimate issue and
the illegitimate issue, uniting in Marthe Rougon and her cousin
François Mouret, to give rise to three new branches, Octave, Serge, and
Désirée Mouret; while there is also the issue of Ursule and the hatter
Mouret; Silvère, whose tragic death you know; Hélène and her daughter
Jean; finally, at the top are the latest offshoots, our poor Charles,
your brother Maxime’s son, and two other children, who are dead,
Jacques Louis, the son of Claude Lantier, and Louiset, the son of Anna
Coupeau. In all five generations, a human tree which, for five springs
already, five springtides of humanity, has sent forth shoots, at the
impulse of the sap of eternal life.”
He became more and more animated, pointing out each case on the sheet
of old yellow paper, as if it were an anatomical chart.
“And as I have already said, everything is here. You see in direct
heredity, the differentiations, that of the mother, Silvère, Lisa,
Désirée, Jacques, Louiset, yourself; that of the father, Sidonie,
François, Gervaise, Octave, Jacques, Louis. Then there are the three
cases of crossing: by conjugation, Ursule, Aristide, Anna, Victor; by
dissemination, Maxime, Serge, Étienne; by fusion, Antoine, Eugène,
Claude. I even noted a fourth case, a very remarkable one, an even
cross, Pierre and Pauline; and varieties are established, the
differentiation of the mother, for example, often accords with the
physical resemblance of the father; or, it is the contrary which takes
place, so that, in the crossing, the physical and mental predominance
remains with one parent or the other, according to circumstances. Then
here is indirect heredity, that of the collateral branches. I have but
one well established example of this, the striking personal resemblance
of Octave Mouret to his uncle Eugène Rougon. I have also but one
example of transmission by influence, Anna, the daughter of Gervaise
and Coupeau, who bore a striking resemblance, especially in her
childhood, to Lantier, her mother’s first lover. But what I am very
rich in is in examples of reversion to the original stock—the three
finest cases, Marthe, Jeanne, and Charles, resembling Aunt Dide; the
resemblance thus passing over one, two, and three generations. This is
certainly exceptional, for I scarcely believe in atavism; it seems to
me that the new elements brought by the partners, accidents, and the
infinite variety of crossings must rapidly efface particular
characteristics, so as to bring back the individual to the general
type. And there remains variation—Hélène, Jean, Angelique. This is the
combination, the chemical mixture in which the physical and mental
characteristics of the parents are blended, without any of their traits
seeming to reappear in the new being.”
There was silence for a moment. Clotilde had listened to him with
profound attention, wishing to understand. And he remained absorbed in
thought, his eyes still fixed on the tree, in the desire to judge his
work impartially. He then continued in a low tone, as if speaking to
himself:
“Yes, that is as scientific as possible. I have placed there only the
members of the family, and I had to give an equal part to the partners,
to the fathers and mothers come from outside, whose blood has mingled
with ours, and therefore modified it. I had indeed made a
mathematically exact tree, the father and the mother bequeathing
themselves, by halves, to the child, from generation to generation, so
that in Charles, for example, Aunt Dide’s part would have been only a
twelfth—which would be absurd, since the physical resemblance is there
complete. I have therefore thought it sufficient to indicate the
elements come from elsewhere, taking into account marriages and the new
factor which each introduced. Ah! these sciences that are yet in their
infancy, in which hypothesis speaks stammeringly, and imagination
rules, these are the domain of the poet as much as of the scientist.
Poets go as pioneers in the advance guard, and they often discover new
countries, suggesting solutions. There is there a borderland which
belongs to them, between the conquered, the definitive truth, and the
unknown, whence the truth of to-morrow will be torn. What an immense
fresco there is to be painted, what a stupendous human tragedy, what a
comedy there is to be written with heredity, which is the very genesis
of families, of societies, and of the world!”
His eyes fixed on vacancy, he remained for a time lost in thought.
Then, with an abrupt movement, he came back to the envelopes and,
pushing the tree aside, said:
“We will take it up again presently; for, in order that you may
understand now, it is necessary that events should pass in review
before you, and that you should see in action all these actors ticketed
here, each one summed up in a brief note. I will call for the
envelopes, you will hand them to me one by one, and I will show you the
papers in each, and tell you their contents, before putting it away
again up there on the shelf. I will not follow the alphabetical order,
but the order of events themselves. I have long wished to make this
classification. Come, look for the names on the envelopes; Aunt Dide
first.”
At this moment the edge of the storm which lighted up the sky caught La
Souleiade slantingly, and burst over the house in a deluge of rain. But
they did not even close the window. They heard neither the peals of
thunder nor the ceaseless beating of the rain upon the roof. She handed
him the envelope bearing the name of Aunt Dide in large characters; and
he took from it papers of all sorts, notes taken by him long ago, which
he proceeded to read.
“Hand me Pierre Rougon. Hand me Ursule Macquart. Hand me Antoine
Macquart.”
Silently she obeyed him, her heart oppressed by a dreadful anguish at
all she was hearing. And the envelopes were passed on, displayed their
contents, and were piled up again in the press.
First was the foundress of the family, Adelaïde Fouqué, the tall, crazy
girl, the first nervous lesion giving rise to the legitimate branch,
Pierre Rougon, and to the two illegitimate branches, Ursule and Antoine
Macquart, all that _bourgeois_ and sanguinary tragedy, with the _coup
d’etat_ of December, 1854, for a background, the Rougons, Pierre and
Félicité, preserving order at Plassans, bespattering with the blood of
Silvère their rising fortunes, while Adelaïde, grown old, the miserable
Aunt Dide, was shut up in the Tulettes, like a specter of expiation and
of waiting.
Then like a pack of hounds, the appetites were let loose. The supreme
appetite of power in Eugène Rougon, the great man, the disdainful
genius of the family, free from base interests, loving power for its
own sake, conquering Paris in old boots with the adventurers of the
coming Empire, rising from the legislative body to the senate, passing
from the presidency of the council of state to the portfolio of
minister; made by his party, a hungry crowd of followers, who at the
same time supported and devoured him; conquered for an instant by a
woman, the beautiful Clorinde, with whom he had been imbecile enough to
fall in love, but having so strong a will, and burning with so vehement
a desire to rule, that he won back power by giving the lie to his whole
life, marching to his triumphal sovereignty of vice emperor.
With Aristide Saccard, appetite ran to low pleasures, the whole hot
quarry of money, luxury, women—a devouring hunger which left him
homeless, at the time when millions were changing hands, when the
whirlwind of wild speculation was blowing through the city, tearing
down everywhere to construct anew, when princely fortunes were made,
squandered, and remade in six months; a greed of gold whose ever
increasing fury carried him away, causing him, almost before the body
of his wife Angèle was cold in death, to sell his name, in order to
have the first indispensable thousand francs, by marrying Renée. And it
was Saccard, too, who, a few years later, put in motion the immense
money-press of the Banque Universelle. Saccard, the never vanquished;
Saccard, grown more powerful, risen to be the clever and daring grand
financier, comprehending the fierce and civilizing role that money
plays, fighting, winning, and losing battles on the Bourse, like
Napoleon at Austerlitz and Waterloo; engulfing in disaster a world of
miserable people; sending forth into the unknown realms of crime his
natural son Victor, who disappeared, fleeing through the dark night,
while he himself, under the impassable protection of unjust nature, was
loved by the adorable Mme. Caroline, no doubt in recompense of all the
evil he had done.
Here a tall, spotless lily had bloomed in this compost, Sidonie Rougon,
the sycophant of her brother, the go-between in a hundred suspicious
affairs, giving birth to the pure and divine Angelique, the little
embroiderer with fairylike fingers who worked into the gold of the
chasubles the dream of her Prince Charming, so happy among her
companions the saints, so little made for the hard realities of life,
that she obtained the grace of dying of love, on the day of her
marriage, at the first kiss of Félicien de Hautecœur, in the triumphant
peal of bells ringing for her splendid nuptials.
The union of the two branches, the legitimate and the illegitimate,
took place then, Marthe Rougon espousing her cousin François Mouret, a
peaceful household slowly disunited, ending in the direst
catastrophes—a sad and gentle woman taken, made use of, and crushed in
the vast machine of war erected for the conquest of a city; her three
children torn from her, she herself leaving her heart in the rude grasp
of the Abbé Faujas. And the Rougons saved Plassans a second time, while
she was dying in the glare of the conflagration in which her husband
was being consumed, mad with long pent-up rage and the desire for
revenge.
Of the three children, Octave Mouret was the audacious conqueror, the
clear intellect, resolved to demand from the women the sovereignty of
Paris, fallen at his _début_ into the midst of a corrupt _bourgeois_
society, acquiring there a terrible sentimental education, passing from
the capricious refusal of one woman to the unresisting abandonment of
another, remaining, fortunately, active, laborious, and combative,
gradually emerging, and improved even, from the low plotting, the
ceaseless ferment of a rotten society that could be heard already
cracking to its foundations. And Octave Mouret, victorious,
revolutionized commerce; swallowed up the cautious little shops that
carried on business in the old-fashioned way; established in the midst
of feverish Paris the colossal palace of temptation, blazing with
lights, overflowing with velvets, silks, and laces; won fortunes
exploiting woman; lived in smiling scorn of woman until the day when a
little girl, the avenger of her sex, the innocent and wise Denise,
vanquished him and held him captive at her feet, groaning with anguish,
until she did him the favor, she who was so poor, to marry him in the
midst of the apotheosis of his Louvre, under the golden shower of his
receipts.
There remained the two other children, Serge Mouret and Désirée Mouret,
the latter innocent and healthy, like some happy young animal; the
former refined and mystical, who was thrown into the priesthood by a
nervous malady hereditary in his family, and who lived again the story
of Adam, in the Eden of Le Paradou. He was born again to love Albine,
and to lose her, in the bosom of sublime nature, their accomplice; to
be recovered, afterward by the Church, to war eternally with life,
striving to kill his manhood, throwing on the body of the dead Albine
the handful of earth, as officiating priest, at the very time when
Désirée, the sister and friend of animals, was rejoicing in the midst
of the swarming life of her poultry yard.
Further on there opened a calm glimpse of gentle and tragic life,
Hélène Mouret living peacefully with her little girl, Jeanne, on the
heights of Passy, overlooking Paris, the bottomless, boundless human
sea, in face of which was unrolled this page of love: the sudden
passion of Hélène for a stranger, a physician, brought one night by
chance to the bedside of her daughter; the morbid jealousy of
Jeanne—the instinctive jealousy of a loving girl—disputing her mother
with love, her mother already so wasted by her unhappy passion that the
daughter died because of her fault; terrible price of one hour of
desire in the entire cold and discreet life of a woman, poor dead
child, lying alone in the silent cemetery, in face of eternal Paris.
With Lisa Macquart began the illegitimate branch; appearing fresh and
strong in her, as she displayed her portly, prosperous figure, sitting
at the door of her pork shop in a light colored apron, watching the
central market, where the hunger of a people muttered, the age-long
battle of the Fat and the Lean, the lean Florent, her brother-in-law,
execrated, and set upon by the fat fishwomen and the fat shopwomen, and
whom even the fat pork-seller herself, honest, but unforgiving, caused
to be arrested as a republican who had broken his ban, convinced that
she was laboring for the good digestion of all honest people.
From this mother sprang the sanest, the most human of girls, Pauline
Quenu, the well-balanced, the reasonable, the virgin; who, knowing
everything, accepted the joy of living in so ardent a love for others
that, in spite of the revolt of her youthful heart, she resigned to her
friend her cousin and betrothed, Lazare, and afterward saved the child
of the disunited household, becoming its true mother; always
triumphant, always gay, notwithstanding her sacrificed and ruined life,
in her monotonous solitude, facing the great sea, in the midst of a
little world of sufferers groaning with pain, but who did not wish to
die.
Then came Gervaise Macquart with her four children: bandy-legged,
pretty, and industrious Gervaise, whom her lover Lantier turned into
the street in the faubourg, where she met the zinc worker Coupeau, the
skilful, steady workman whom she married, and with whom she lived so
happily at first, having three women working in her laundry, but
afterward sinking with her husband, as was inevitable, to the
degradation of her surroundings. He, gradually conquered by alcohol,
brought by it to madness and death; she herself perverted, become a
slattern, her moral ruin completed by the return of Lantier, living in
the tranquil ignominy of a household of three, thenceforward the
wretched victim of want, her accomplice, to which she at last
succumbed, dying one night of starvation.
Her eldest son, Claude, had the unhappy genius of a great painter
struck with madness, the impotent madness of feeling within him the
masterpiece to which his fingers refused to give shape; a giant
wrestler always defeated, a crucified martyr to his work, adoring
woman, sacrificing his wife Christine, so loving and for a time so
beloved, to the increate, divine woman of his visions, but whom his
pencil was unable to delineate in her nude perfection, possessed by a
devouring passion for producing, an insatiable longing to create, a
longing so torturing when it could not be satisfied, that he ended it
by hanging himself.
Jacques brought crime, the hereditary taint being transmuted in him
into an instinctive appetite for blood, the young and fresh blood from
the gashed throat of a woman, the first comer, the passer-by in the
street: a horrible malady against which he struggled, but which took
possession of him again in the course of his _amour_ with the
submissive and sensual Severine, whom a tragic story of assassination
caused to live in constant terror, and whom he stabbed one evening in
an excess of frenzy, maddened by the sight of her white throat. Then
this savage human beast rushed among the trains filing past swiftly,
and mounted the snorting engine of which he was the engineer, the
beloved engine which was one day to crush him to atoms, and then, left
without a guide, to rush furiously off into space braving unknown
disasters.
Étienne, in his turn driven out, arrived in the black country on a
freezing night in March, descended into the voracious pit, fell in love
with the melancholy Catherine, of whom a ruffian robbed him; lived with
the miners their gloomy life of misery and base promiscuousness, until
one day when hunger, prompting rebellion, sent across the barren plain
a howling mob of wretches who demanded bread, tearing down and burning
as they went, under the menace of the guns of the band that went off of
themselves, a terrible convulsion announcing the end of the world. The
avenging blood of the Maheus was to rise up later; of Alzire dead of
starvation, Maheu killed by a bullet, Zacharie killed by an explosion
of fire-damp, Catherine under the ground. La Maheude alone survived to
weep her dead, descending again into the mine to earn her thirty sons,
while Étienne, the beaten chief of the band, haunted by the dread of
future demands, went away on a warm April morning, listening to the
secret growth of the new world whose germination was soon to dazzle the
earth.
Nana then became the avenger; the girl born among the social filth of
the faubourgs; the golden fly sprung from the rottenness below, that
was tolerated and concealed, carrying in the fluttering of its wings
the ferment of destruction, rising and contaminating the aristocracy,
poisoning men only by alighting upon them, in the palaces through whose
windows it entered; the unconscious instrument of ruin and death—fierce
flame of Vandeuvres, the melancholy fate of Foucarmont, lost in the
Chinese waters, the disaster of Steiner, reduced to live as an honest
man, the imbecility of La Faloise and the tragic ruin of the Muffats,
and the white corpse of Georges, watched by Philippe, come out of
prison the day before, when the air of the epoch was so contaminated
that she herself was infected, and died of malignant smallpox, caught
at the death-bed of her son Louiset, while Paris passed beneath her
windows, intoxicated, possessed by the frenzy of war, rushing to
general ruin.
Lastly comes Jean Macquart, the workman and soldier become again a
peasant, fighting with the hard earth, which exacts that every grain of
corn shall be purchased with a drop of sweat, fighting, above all, with
the country people, whom covetousness and the long and difficult battle
with the soil cause to burn with the desire, incessantly stimulated, of
possession. Witness the Fouans, grown old, parting with their fields as
if they were parting with their flesh; the Buteaus in their eager greed
committing parricide, to hasten the inheritance of a field of lucern;
the stubborn Françoise dying from the stroke of a scythe, without
speaking, rather than that a sod should go out of the family—all this
drama of simple natures governed by instinct, scarcely emerged from
primitive barbarism—all this human filth on the great earth, which
alone remains immortal, the mother from whom they issue and to whom
they return again, she whom they love even to crime, who continually
remakes life, for its unknown end, even with the misery and the
abomination of the beings she nourishes. And it was Jean, too, who,
become a widower and having enlisted again at the first rumor of war,
brought the inexhaustible reserve, the stock of eternal rejuvenation
which the earth keeps; Jean, the humblest, the staunchest soldier at
the final downfall, swept along in the terrible and fatal storm which,
from the frontier to Sedan, in sweeping away the Empire, threatened to
sweep away the country; always wise, circumspect, firm in his hope,
loving with fraternal affection his comrade Maurice, the demented child
of the people, the holocaust doomed to expiation, weeping tears of
blood when inexorable destiny chose himself to hew off this rotten
limb, and after all had ended—the continual defeats, the frightful
civil war, the lost provinces, the thousands of millions of francs to
pay—taking up the march again, notwithstanding, returning to the land
which awaited him, to the great and difficult task of making a new
France.
Pascal paused; Clotilde had handed him all the packages, one by one,
and he had gone over them all, laid bare the contents of all,
classified them anew, and placed them again on the top shelf of the
press. He was out of breath, exhausted by his swift course through all
this humanity, while, without voice, without movement, the young girl,
stunned by this overflowing torrent of life, waited still, incapable of
thought or judgment. The rain still beat furiously upon the dark
fields. The lightning had just struck a tree in the neighborhood, that
had split with a terrible crash. The candles flared up in the wind that
came in from the open window.
“Ah!” he resumed, pointing to the papers again, “there is a world in
itself, a society, a civilization, the whole of life is there, with its
manifestations, good and bad, in the heat and labor of the forge which
shapes everything. Yes, our family of itself would suffice as an
example to science, which will perhaps one day establish with
mathematical exactness the laws governing the diseases of the blood and
nerves that show themselves in a race, after a first organic lesion,
and that determine, according to environment, the sentiments, desires,
and passions of each individual of that race, all the human, natural
and instinctive manifestations which take the names of virtues and
vices. And it is also a historical document, it relates the story of
the Second Empire, from the _coup d’etat_ to Sedan; for our family
spring from the people, they spread themselves through the whole of
contemporary society, invaded every place, impelled by their unbridled
appetites, by that impulse, essentially modern, that eager desire that
urges the lower classes to enjoyment, in their ascent through the
social strata. We started, as I have said, from Plassans, and here we
are now arrived once more at Plassans.”
He paused again, and then resumed in a low, dreamy voice:
“What an appalling mass stirred up! how many passions, how many joys,
how many sufferings crammed into this colossal heap of facts! There is
pure history: the Empire founded in blood, at first pleasure-loving and
despotic, conquering rebellious cities, then gliding to a slow
disintegration, dissolving in blood—in such a sea of blood that the
entire nation came near being swamped in it. There are social studies:
wholesale and retail trade, prostitution, crime, land, money, the
_bourgeoisie_, the people—that people who rot in the sewer of the
faubourgs, who rebel in the great industrial centers, all that
ever-increasing growth of mighty socialism, big with the new century.
There are simple human studies: domestic pages, love stories, the
struggle of minds and hearts against unjust nature, the destruction of
those who cry out under their too difficult task, the cry of virtue
immolating itself, victorious over pain, There are fancies, flights of
the imagination beyond the real: vast gardens always in bloom,
cathedrals with slender, exquisitely wrought spires, marvelous tales
come down from paradise, ideal affections remounting to heaven in a
kiss. There is everything: the good and the bad, the vulgar and the
sublime, flowers, mud, blood, laughter, the torrent of life itself,
bearing humanity endlessly on!”
He took up again the genealogical tree which had remained neglected on
the table, spread it out and began to go over it once more with his
finger, enumerating now the members of the family who were still
living: Eugène Rougon, a fallen majesty, who remained in the Chamber,
the witness, the impassible defender of the old world swept away at the
downfall of the Empire. Aristide Saccard, who, after having changed his
principles, had fallen upon his feet a republican, the editor of a
great journal, on the way to make new millions, while his natural son
Victor, who had never reappeared, was living still in the shade, since
he was not in the galleys, cast forth by the world into the future,
into the unknown, like a human beast foaming with the hereditary virus,
who must communicate his malady with every bite he gives. Sidonie
Rougon, who had for a time disappeared, weary of disreputable affairs,
had lately retired to a sort of religious house, where she was living
in monastic austerity, the treasurer of the Marriage Fund, for aiding
in the marriage of girls who were mothers. Octave Mouret, proprietor of
the great establishment _Au Bonheur des Dames_, whose colossal fortune
still continued increasing, had had, toward the end of the winter, a
third child by his wife Denise Baudu, whom he adored, although his mind
was beginning to be deranged again. The Abbé Mouret, curé at St.
Eutrope, in the heart of a marshy gorge, lived there in great
retirement, and very modestly, with his sister Désirée, refusing all
advancement from his bishop, and waiting for death like a holy man,
rejecting all medicines, although he was already suffering from
consumption in its first stage. Hélène Mouret was living very happily
in seclusion with her second husband, M. Rambaud, on the little estate
which they owned near Marseilles, on the seashore; she had had no child
by her second husband. Pauline Quenu was still at Bonneville at the
other extremity of France, in face of the vast ocean, alone with little
Paul, since the death of Uncle Chanteau, having resolved never to
marry, in order to devote herself entirely to the son of her cousin
Lazare, who had become a widower and had gone to America to make a
fortune. Étienne Lantier, returning to Paris after the strike at
Montsou, had compromised himself later in the insurrection of the
Commune, whose principles he had defended with ardor; he had been
condemned to death, but his sentence being commuted was transported and
was now at Nouméa. It was even said that he had married immediately on
his arrival there, and that he had had a child, the sex of which,
however, was not known with certainty. Finally, Jean Macquart, who had
received his discharge after the Bloody Week, had settled at
Valqueyras, near Plassans, where he had had the good fortune to marry a
healthy girl, Mélanie Vial, the daughter of a well-to-do peasant, whose
lands he farmed, and his wife had borne him a son in May.
“Yes, it is true,” he resumed, in a low voice; “races degenerate. There
is here a veritable exhaustion, rapid deterioration, as if our family,
in their fury of enjoyment, in the gluttonous satisfaction of their
appetites, had consumed themselves too quickly. Louiset, dead in
infancy; Jacques Louis, a half imbecile, carried off by a nervous
disease; Victor returned to the savage state, wandering about in who
knows what dark places; our poor Charles, so beautiful and so frail;
these are the latest branches of the tree, the last pale offshoots into
which the puissant sap of the larger branches seems to have been unable
to mount. The worm was in the trunk, it has ascended into the fruit,
and is devouring it. But one must never despair; families are a
continual growth. They go back beyond the common ancestor, into the
unfathomable strata of the races that have lived, to the first being;
and they will put forth new shoots without end, they will spread and
ramify to infinity, through future ages. Look at our tree; it counts
only five generations. It has not so much importance as a blade of
grass, even, in the human forest, vast and dark, of which the peoples
are the great secular oaks. Think only of the immense roots which
spread through the soil; think of the continual putting forth of new
leaves above, which mingle with other leaves of the ever-rolling sea of
treetops, at the fructifying, eternal breath of life. Well, hope lies
there, in the daily reconstruction of the race by the new blood which
comes from without. Each marriage brings other elements, good or bad,
of which the effect is, however, to prevent certain and progressive
regeneration. Breaches are repaired, faults effaced, an equilibrium is
inevitably re-established at the end of a few generations, and it is
the average man that always results; vague humanity, obstinately
pursuing its mysterious labor, marching toward its unknown end.”
He paused, and heaved a deep sigh.
“Ah! our family, what is it going to become; in what being will it
finally end?”
He continued, not now taking into account the survivors whom he had
just named; having classified these, he knew what they were capable of,
but he was full of keen curiosity regarding the children who were still
infants. He had written to a _confrère_ in Nouméa for precise
information regarding the wife whom Étienne had lately married there,
and the child which she had had, but he had heard nothing, and he
feared greatly that on that side the tree would remain incomplete. He
was more fully furnished with documents regarding the two children of
Octave Mouret, with whom he continued to correspond; the little girl
was growing up puny and delicate, while the little boy, who strongly
resembled his mother, had developed superbly, and was perfectly
healthy. His strongest hope, besides these, was in Jean’s children, the
eldest of whom was a magnificent boy, full of the youthful vigor of the
races that go back to the soil to regenerate themselves. Pascal
occasionally went to Valqueyras, and he returned happy from that
fertile spot, where the father, quiet and rational, was always at his
plow, the mother cheerful and simple, with her vigorous frame, capable
of bearing a world. Who knew what sound branch was to spring from that
side? Perhaps the wise and puissant of the future were to germinate
there. The worst of it, for the beauty of his tree, was that all these
little boys and girls were still so young that he could not classify
them. And his voice grew tender as he spoke of this hope of the future,
these fair-haired children, in the unavowed regret for his celibacy.
Still contemplating the tree spread out before him, he cried:
“And yet it is complete, it is decisive. Look! I repeat to you that all
hereditary cases are to be found there. To establish my theory, I had
only to base it on the collection of these facts. And indeed, the
marvelous thing is that there you can put your finger on the cause why
creatures born of the same stock can appear radically different,
although they are only logical modifications of common ancestors. The
trunk explains the branches, and these explain the leaves. In your
father Saccard and your Uncle Eugène Rougon, so different in their
temperaments and their lives, it is the same impulse which made the
inordinate appetites of the one and the towering ambition of the other.
Angelique, that pure lily, is born from the disreputable Sidonie, in
the rapture which makes mystics or lovers, according to the
environment. The three children of the Mourets are born of the same
breath which makes of the clever Octave the dry goods merchant, a
millionaire; of the devout Serge, a poor country priest; of the
imbecile Désirée, a beautiful and happy girl. But the example is still
more striking in the children of Gervaise; the neurosis passes down,
and Nana sells herself; Étienne is a rebel; Jacques, a murderer;
Claude, a genius; while Pauline, their cousin german, near by, is
victorious virtue—virtue which struggles and immolates itself. It is
heredity, life itself which makes imbeciles, madmen, criminals and
great men. Cells abort, others take their place, and we have a
scoundrel or a madman instead of a man of genius, or simply an honest
man. And humanity rolls on, bearing everything on its tide.”
Then in a new shifting of his thought, growing still more animated, he
continued:
“And animals—the beast that suffers and that loves, which is the rough
sketch, as it were, of man—all the animals our brothers, that live our
life, yes, I would have put them in the ark, I would give them a place
among our family, show them continually mingling with us, completing
our existence. I have known cats whose presence was the mysterious
charm of the household; dogs that were adored, whose death was mourned,
and left in the heart an inconsolable grief. I have known goats, cows,
and asses of very great importance, and whose personality played such a
part that their history ought to be written. And there is our Bonhomme,
our poor old horse, that has served us for a quarter of a century. Do
you not think that he has mingled his life with ours, and that
henceforth he is one of the family? We have modified him, as he has
influenced us a little; we shall end by being made in the same image,
and this is so true that now, when I see him, half blind, with
wandering gaze, his legs stiff with rheumatism, I kiss him on both
cheeks as if he were a poor old relation who had fallen to my charge.
Ah, animals, all creeping and crawling things, all creatures that
lament, below man, how large a place in our sympathies it would be
necessary to give them in a history of life!”
This was a last cry in which Pascal gave utterance to his passionate
tenderness for all created beings. He had gradually become more and
more excited, and had so come to make this confession of his faith in
the continuous and victorious work of animated nature. And Clotilde,
who thus far had not spoken, pale from the catastrophe in which her
plans had ended, at last opened her lips to ask:
“Well, master, and what am I here?”
She placed one of her slender fingers on the leaf of the tree on which
she saw her name written. He had always passed this leaf by. She
insisted.
“Yes, I; what am I? Why have you not read me my envelope?”
For a moment he remained silent, as if surprised at the question.
“Why? For no reason. It is true, I have nothing to conceal from you.
You see what is written here? ‘Clotilde, born in 1847. Selection of the
mother. Reversional heredity, with moral and physical predominance of
the maternal grandfather.’ Nothing can be clearer. Your mother has
predominated in you; you have her fine intelligence, and you have also
something of her coquetry, at times of her indolence and of her
submissiveness. Yes, you are very feminine, like her. Without your
being aware of it, I would say that you love to be loved. Besides, your
mother was a great novel reader, an imaginative being who loved to
spend whole days dreaming over a book; she doted on nursery tales, had
her fortune told by cards, consulted clairvoyants; and I have always
thought that your concern about spiritual matters, your anxiety about
the unknown, came from that source. But what completed your character
by giving you a dual nature, was the influence of your grandfather,
Commandant Sicardot. I knew him; he was not a genius, but he had at
least a great deal of uprightness and energy. Frankly, if it were not
for him, I do not believe that you would be worth much, for the other
influences are hardly good. He has given you the best part of your
nature, combativeness, pride, and frankness.”
She had listened to him with attention. She nodded slightly, to signify
that it was indeed so, that she was not offended, although her lips
trembled visibly at these new details regarding her people and her
mother.
“Well,” she resumed, “and you, master?”
This time he did not hesitate.
“Oh, I!” he cried, “what is the use of speaking of me? I do not belong
to the family. You see what is written here. ‘Pascal, born in 1813.
Individual variation. Combination in which the physical and moral
characters of the parents are blended, without any of their traits
seeming to appear in the new being.’ My mother has told me often enough
that I did not belong to it, that in truth she did not know where I
could have come from.”
Those words came from him like a cry of relief, of involuntary joy.
“And the people make no mistake in the matter. Have you ever heard me
called Pascal Rougon in the town? No; people always say simply Dr.
Pascal. It is because I stand apart. And it may not be very
affectionate to feel so, but I am delighted at it, for there are in
truth inheritances too heavy to bear. It is of no use that I love them
all. My heart beats none the less joyously when I feel myself another
being, different from them, without any community with them. Not to be
of them, my God! not to be of them! It is a breath of pure air; it is
what gives me the courage to have them all here, to put them, in all
their nakedness, in their envelopes, and still to find the courage to
live!”
He stopped, and there was silence for a time. The rain had ceased, the
storm was passing away, the thunderclaps sounded more and more distant,
while from the refreshed fields, still dark, there came in through the
open window a delicious odor of moist earth. In the calm air the
candles were burning out with a tall, tranquil flame.
“Ah!” said Clotilde simply, with a gesture of discouragement, “what are
we to become finally?”
She had declared it to herself one night, in the threshing yard; life
was horrible, how could one live peaceful and happy? It was a terrible
light that science threw on the world. Analysis searched every wound of
humanity, in order to expose its horror. And now he had spoken still
more bluntly; he had increased the disgust which she had for persons
and things, pitilessly dissecting her family. The muddy torrent had
rolled on before her for nearly three hours, and she had heard the most
dreadful revelations, the harsh and terrible truth about her people,
her people who were so dear to her, whom it was her duty to love; her
father grown powerful through pecuniary crimes; her brother dissolute;
her grandmother unscrupulous, covered with the blood of the just; the
others almost all tainted, drunkards, ruffians, murderers, the
monstrous blossoming of the human tree.
The blow had been so rude that she could not yet recover from it,
stunned as she was by the revelation of her whole family history, made
to her in this way at a stroke. And yet the lesson was rendered
innocuous, so to say, by something great and good, a breath of profound
humanity which had borne her through it. Nothing bad had come to her
from it. She felt herself beaten by a sharp sea wind, the storm wind
which strengthens and expands the lungs. He had revealed everything,
speaking freely even of his mother, without judging her, continuing to
preserve toward her his deferential attitude, as a scientist who does
not judge events. To tell everything in order to know everything, in
order to remedy everything, was not this the cry which he had uttered
on that beautiful summer night?
And by the very excess of what he had just revealed to her, she
remained shaken, blinded by this too strong light, but understanding
him at last, and confessing to herself that he was attempting in this
an immense work. In spite of everything, it was a cry of health, of
hope in the future. He spoke as a benefactor who, since heredity made
the world, wished to fix its laws, in order to control it, and to make
a new and happy world. Was there then only mud in this overflowing
stream, whose sluices he had opened? How much gold had passed, mingled
with the grass and the flowers on its borders? Hundreds of beings were
still flying swiftly before her, and she was haunted by good and
charming faces, delicate girlish profiles, by the serene beauty of
women. All passion bled there, hearts swelled with every tender
rapture. They were numerous, the Jeannes, the Angeliques, the Paulines,
the Marthes, the Gervaises, the Hélènes. They and others, even those
who were least good, even terrible men, the worst of the band, showed a
brotherhood with humanity.
And it was precisely this breath which she had felt pass, this broad
current of sympathy, that he had introduced naturally into his exact
scientific lesson. He did not seem to be moved; he preserved the
impersonal and correct attitude of the demonstrator, but within him
what tender suffering, what a fever of devotion, what a giving up of
his whole being to the happiness of others? His entire work,
constructed with such mathematical precision, was steeped in this
fraternal suffering, even in its most cruel ironies. Had he not just
spoken of the animals, like an elder brother of the wretched living
beings that suffer? Suffering exasperated him; his wrath was because of
his too lofty dream, and he had become harsh only in his hatred of the
factitious and the transitory; dreaming of working, not for the polite
society of a time, but for all humanity in the gravest hours of its
history. Perhaps, even, it was this revolt against the vulgarity of the
time which had made him throw himself, in bold defiance, into theories
and their application. And the work remained human, overflowing as it
was with an infinite pity for beings and things.
Besides, was it not life? There is no absolute evil. Most often a
virtue presents itself side by side with a defect. No man is bad to
every one, each man makes the happiness of some one; so that, when one
does not view things from a single standpoint only, one recognizes in
the end the utility of every human being. Those who believe in God
should say to themselves that if their God does not strike the wicked
dead, it is because he sees his work in its totality, and that he
cannot descend to the individual. Labor ends to begin anew; the living,
as a whole, continue, in spite of everything, admirable in their
courage and their industry; and love of life prevails over all.
This giant labor of men, this obstinacy in living, is their excuse, is
redemption. And then, from a great height the eye saw only this
continual struggle, and a great deal of good, in spite of everything,
even though there might be a great deal of evil. One shared the general
indulgence, one pardoned, one had only an infinite pity and an ardent
charity. The haven was surely there, waiting those who have lost faith
in dogmas, who wish to understand the meaning of their lives, in the
midst of the apparent iniquity of the world. One must live for the
effort of living, for the stone to be carried to the distant and
unknown work, and the only possible peace in the world is in the joy of
making this effort.
Another hour passed; the entire night had flown by in this terrible
lesson of life, without either Pascal or Clotilde being conscious of
where they were, or of the flight of time. And he, overworked for some
time past, and worn out by the life of suspicion and sadness which he
had been leading, started nervously, as if he had suddenly awakened.
“Come, you know all; do you feel your heart strong, tempered by the
truth, full of pardon and of hope? Are you with me?”
But, still stunned by the frightful moral shock which she had received,
she too, started, bewildered. Her old beliefs had been so completely
overthrown, so many new ideas were awakening within her, that she did
not dare to question herself, in order to find an answer. She felt
herself seized and carried away by the omnipotence of truth. She
endured it without being convinced.
“Master,” she stammered, “master—”
And they remained for a moment face to face, looking at each other. Day
was breaking, a dawn of exquisite purity, far off in the vast, clear
sky, washed by the storm. Not a cloud now stained the pale azure tinged
with rose color. All the cheerful sounds of awakening life in the
rain-drenched fields came in through the window, while the candles,
burned down to the socket, paled in the growing light.
“Answer; are you with me, altogether with me?”
For a moment he thought she was going to throw herself on his neck and
burst into tears. A sudden impulse seemed to impel her. But they saw
each other in their semi-nudity. She, who had not noticed it before,
was now conscious that she was only half dressed, that her arms were
bare, her shoulders bare, covered only by the scattered locks of her
unbound hair, and on her right shoulder, near the armpit, on lowering
her eyes, she perceived again the few drops of blood of the bruise
which he had given her, when he had grasped her roughly, in struggling
to master her. Then an extraordinary confusion took possession of her,
a certainty that she was going to be vanquished, as if by this grasp he
had become her master, and forever. This sensation was prolonged; she
was seized and drawn on, without the consent of her will, by an
irresistible impulse to submit.
Abruptly Clotilde straightened herself, struggling with herself,
wishing to reflect and to recover herself. She pressed her bare arms
against her naked throat. All the blood in her body rushed to her skin
in a rosy blush of shame. Then, in her divine and slender grace, she
turned to flee.
“Master, master, let me go—I will see—”
With the swiftness of alarmed maidenhood, she took refuge in her
chamber, as she had done once before. He heard her lock the door
hastily, with a double turn of the key. He remained alone, and he asked
himself suddenly, seized by infinite discouragement and sadness, if he
had done right in speaking, if the truth would germinate in this dear
and adored creature, and bear one day a harvest of happiness.