Dr. Pascal then resumed his professional visits in the town and the
surrounding country. And he was generally accompanied by Clotilde, who
went with him into the houses of the poor, where she, too, brought
health and cheerfulness.
But, as he had one night confessed to her in secret, his visits were
now only visits of relief and consolation. If he had before practised
with repugnance it was because he had felt how vain was medical
science. Empiricism disheartened him. From the moment that medicine
ceased to be an experimental science and became an art, he was filled
with disquiet at the thought of the infinite variety of diseases and of
their remedies, according to the constitution of the patient. Treatment
changed with every new hypothesis; how many people, then, must the
methods now abandoned have killed! The perspicacity of the physician
became everything, the healer was only a happily endowed diviner,
himself groping in the dark and effecting cures through his fortunate
endowment. And this explained why he had given up his patients almost
altogether, after a dozen years of practise, to devote himself entirely
to study. Then, when his great labors on heredity had restored to him
for a time the hope of intervening and curing disease by his hypodermic
injections, he had become again enthusiastic, until the day when his
faith in life, after having impelled him, to aid its action in this
way, by restoring the vital forces, became still broader and gave him
the higher conviction that life was self-sufficing, that it was the
only giver of health and strength, in spite of everything. And he
continued to visit, with his tranquil smile, only those of his patients
who clamored for him loudly, and who found themselves miraculously
relieved when he injected into them only pure water.
Clotilde now sometimes allowed herself to jest about these hypodermic
injections. She was still at heart, however, a fervent worshiper of his
skill; and she said jestingly that if he performed miracles as he did
it was because he had in himself the godlike power to do so. Then he
would reply jestingly, attributing to her the efficacy of their common
visits, saying that he cured no one now when she was absent, that it
was she who brought the breath of life, the unknown and necessary force
from the Beyond. So that the rich people, the _bourgeois_, whose houses
she did not enter, continued to groan without his being able to relieve
them. And this affectionate dispute diverted them; they set out each
time as if for new discoveries, they exchanged glances of kindly
intelligence with the sick. Ah, this wretched suffering which revolted
them, and which was now all they went to combat; how happy they were
when they thought it vanquished! They were divinely recompensed when
they saw the cold sweats disappear, the moaning lips become stilled,
the deathlike faces recover animation. It was assuredly the love which
they brought to this humble, suffering humanity that produced the
alleviation.
“To die is nothing; that is in the natural order of things,” Pascal
would often say. “But why suffer? It is cruel and unnecessary!”
One afternoon the doctor was going with the young girl to the little
village of Sainte-Marthe to see a patient, and at the station, for they
were going by train, so as to spare Bonhomme, they had a reencounter.
The train which they were waiting for was from the Tulettes.
Sainte-Marthe was the first station in the opposite direction, going to
Marseilles. When the train arrived, they hurried on board and, opening
the door of a compartment which they thought empty, they saw old Mme.
Rougon about to leave it. She did not speak to them, but passing them
by, sprang down quickly in spite of her age, and walked away with a
stiff and haughty air.
“It is the 1st of July,” said Clotilde when the train had started.
“Grandmother is returning from the Tulettes, after making her monthly
visit to Aunt Dide. Did you see the glance she cast at me?”
Pascal was at heart glad of the quarrel with his mother, which freed
him from the continual annoyance of her visits.
“Bah!” he said simply, “when people cannot agree it is better for them
not to see each other.”
But the young girl remained troubled and thoughtful. After a few
moments she said in an undertone:
“I thought her changed—looking paler. And did you notice? she who is
usually so carefully dressed had only one glove on—a yellow glove, on
the right hand. I don’t know why it was, but she made me feel sick at
heart.”
Pascal, who was also disturbed, made a vague gesture. His mother would
no doubt grow old at last, like everybody else. But she was very
active, very full of fire still. She was thinking, he said, of
bequeathing her fortune to the town of Plassans, to build a house of
refuge, which should bear the name of Rougon. Both had recovered their
gaiety when he cried suddenly:
“Why, it is to-morrow that you and I are to go to the Tulettes to see
our patients. And you know that I promised to take Charles to Uncle
Macquart’s.”
Félicité was in fact returning from the Tulettes, where she went
regularly on the first of every month to inquire after Aunt Dide. For
many years past she had taken a keen interest in the madwoman’s health,
amazed to see her lasting so long, and furious with her for persisting
in living so far beyond the common term of life, until she had become a
very prodigy of longevity. What a relief, the fine morning on which
they should put under ground this troublesome witness of the past, this
specter of expiation and of waiting, who brought living before her the
abominations of the family! When so many others had been taken she, who
was demented and who had only a spark of life left in her eyes, seemed
forgotten. On this day she had found her as usual, skeleton-like, stiff
and erect in her armchair. As the keeper said, there was now no reason
why she should ever die. She was a hundred and five years old.
When she left the asylum Félicité was furious. She thought of Uncle
Macquart. Another who troubled her, who persisted in living with
exasperating obstinacy! Although he was only eighty-four years old,
three years older than herself, she thought him ridiculously aged, past
the allotted term of life. And a man who led so dissipated a life, who
had gone to bed dead drunk every night for the last sixty years! The
good and the sober were taken away; he flourished in spite of
everything, blooming with health and gaiety. In days past, just after
he had settled at the Tulettes, she had made him presents of wines,
liqueurs and brandy, in the unavowed hope of ridding the family of a
fellow who was really disreputable, and from whom they had nothing to
expect but annoyance and shame. But she had soon perceived that all
this liquor served, on the contrary, to keep up his health and spirits
and his sarcastic humor, and she had left off making him presents,
seeing that he throve on what she had hoped would prove a poison to
him. She had cherished a deadly hatred toward him since then. She would
have killed him if she had dared, every time she saw him, standing
firmly on his drunken legs, and laughing at her to her face, knowing
well that she was watching for his death, and triumphant because he did
not give her the pleasure of burying with him all the old dirty linen
of the family, the blood and mud of the two conquests of Plassans.
“You see, Félicité,” he would often say to her with his air of wicked
mockery, “I am here to take care of the old mother, and the day on
which we both make up our minds to die it would be through compliment
to you—yes, simply to spare you the trouble of running to see us so
good-naturedly, in this way, every month.”
Generally she did not now give herself the disappointment of going to
Macquart’s, but inquired for him at the asylum. But on this occasion,
having learned there that he was passing through an extraordinary
attack of drunkenness, not having drawn a sober breath for a fortnight,
and so intoxicated that he was probably unable to leave the house, she
was seized with the curiosity to learn for herself what his condition
really was. And as she was going back to the station, she went out of
her way in order to stop at Macquart’s house.
The day was superb—a warm and brilliant summer day. On either side of
the path which she had taken, she saw the fields that she had given him
in former days—all this fertile land, the price of his secrecy and his
good behavior. Before her appeared the house, with its pink tiles and
its bright yellow walls, looking gay in the sunshine. Under the ancient
mulberry trees on the terrace she enjoyed the delightful coolness and
the beautiful view. What a pleasant and safe retreat, what a happy
solitude was this for an old man to end in joy and peace a long and
well-spent life!
But she did not see him, she did not hear him. The silence was
profound. The only sound to be heard was the humming of the bees
circling around the tall marshmallows. And on the terrace there was
nothing to be seen but a little yellow dog, stretched at full length on
the bare ground, seeking the coolness of the shade. He raised his head
growling, about to bark, but, recognizing the visitor, he lay down
again quietly.
Then, in this peaceful and sunny solitude she was seized with a strange
chill, and she called:
“Macquart! Macquart!”
The door of the house under the mulberry trees stood wide open. But she
did not dare to go in; this empty house with its wide open door gave
her a vague uneasiness. And she called again:
“Macquart! Macquart!”
Not a sound, not a breath. Profound silence reigned again, but the
humming of the bees circling around the tall marshmallows sounded
louder than before.
At last Félicité, ashamed of her fears, summoned courage to enter. The
door on the left of the hall, opening into the kitchen, where Uncle
Macquart generally sat, was closed. She pushed it open, but she could
distinguish nothing at first, as the blinds had been closed, probably
in order to shut out the heat. Her first sensation was one of choking,
caused by an overpowering odor of alcohol which filled the room; every
article of furniture seemed to exude this odor, the whole house was
impregnated with it. At last, when her eyes had become accustomed to
the semi-obscurity, she perceived Macquart. He was seated at the table,
on which were a glass and a bottle of spirits of thirty-six degrees,
completely empty. Settled in his chair, he was sleeping profoundly,
dead drunk. This spectacle revived her anger and contempt.
“Come, Macquart,” she cried, “is it not vile and senseless to put one’s
self in such a state! Wake up, I say, this is shameful!”
His sleep was so profound that she could not even hear him breathing.
In vain she raised her voice, and slapped him smartly on the hands.
“Macquart! Macquart! Macquart! Ah, faugh! You are disgusting, my dear!”
Then she left him, troubling herself no further about him, and walked
around the room, evidently seeking something. Coming down the dusky
road from the asylum she had been seized with a consuming thirst, and
she wished to get a glass of water. Her gloves embarrassed her, and she
took them off and put them on a corner of the table. Then she succeeded
in finding the jug, and she washed a glass and filled it to the brim,
and was about to empty it when she saw an extraordinary sight—a sight
which agitated her so greatly that she set the glass down again beside
her gloves, without drinking.
By degrees she had begun to see objects more clearly in the room, which
was lighted dimly by a few stray sunbeams that filtered through the
cracks of the old shutters. She now saw Uncle Macquart distinctly,
neatly dressed in a blue cloth suit, as usual, and on his head the
eternal fur cap which he wore from one year’s end to the other. He had
grown stout during the last five or six years, and he looked like a
veritable mountain of flesh overlaid with rolls of fat. And she noticed
that he must have fallen asleep while smoking, for his pipe—a short
black pipe—had fallen into his lap. Then she stood still, stupefied
with amazement—the burning tobacco had been scattered in the fall, and
the cloth of the trousers had caught fire, and through a hole in the
stuff, as large already as a hundred-sous piece, she saw the bare
thigh, whence issued a little blue flame.
At first Félicité had thought that it was linen—the drawers or the
shirt—that was burning. But soon doubt was no longer possible, she saw
distinctly the bare flesh and the little blue flame issuing from it,
lightly dancing, like a flame wandering over the surface of a vessel of
lighted alcohol. It was as yet scarcely higher than the flame of a
night light, pale and soft, and so unstable that the slightest breath
of air caused it to change its place. But it increased and spread
rapidly, and the skin cracked and the fat began to melt.
An involuntary cry escaped from Félicité’s throat.
“Macquart! Macquart!”
But still he did not stir. His insensibility must have been complete;
intoxication must have produced a sort of coma, in which there was an
absolute paralysis of sensation, for he was living, his breast could be
seen rising and falling, in slow and even respiration.
“Macquart! Macquart!”
Now the fat was running through the cracks of the skin, feeding the
flame, which was invading the abdomen. And Félicité comprehended
vaguely that Uncle Macquart was burning before her like a sponge soaked
with brandy. He had, indeed, been saturated with it for years past, and
of the strongest and most inflammable kind. He would no doubt soon be
blazing from head to foot, like a bowl of punch.
Then she ceased to try to awaken him, since he was sleeping so soundly.
For a full minute she had the courage to look at him, awe-stricken, but
gradually coming to a determination. Her hands, however, began to
tremble, with a little shiver which she could not control. She was
choking, and taking up the glass of water again with both hands, she
emptied it at a draught. And she was going away on tiptoe, when she
remembered her gloves. She went back, groped for them anxiously on the
table and, as she thought, picked them both up. Then she left the room,
closing the door behind her carefully, and as gently as if she were
afraid of disturbing some one.
When she found herself once more on the terrace, in the cheerful
sunshine and the pure air, in face of the vast horizon bathed in light,
she heaved a sigh of relief. The country was deserted; no one could
have seen her entering or leaving the house. Only the yellow dog was
still stretched there, and he did not even deign to look up. And she
went away with her quick, short step, her youthful figure lightly
swaying. A hundred steps away, an irresistible impulse compelled her to
turn round to give a last look at the house, so tranquil and so
cheerful on the hillside, in the declining light of the beautiful day.
Only when she was in the train and went to put on her gloves did she
perceive that one of them was missing. But she supposed that it had
fallen on the platform at the station as she was getting into the car.
She believed herself to be quite calm, but she remained with one hand
gloved and one hand bare, which, with her, could only be the result of
great agitation.
On the following day Pascal and Clotilde took the three o’clock train
to go to the Tulettes. The mother of Charles, the harness-maker’s wife,
had brought the boy to them, as they had offered to take him to Uncle
Macquart’s, where he was to remain for the rest of the week. Fresh
quarrels had disturbed the peace of the household, the husband having
resolved to tolerate no longer in his house another man’s child, that
do-nothing, imbecile prince’s son. As it was Grandmother Rougon who had
dressed him, he was, indeed, dressed on this day, again, in black
velvet trimmed with gold braid, like a young lord, a page of former
times going to court. And during the quarter of an hour which the
journey lasted, Clotilde amused herself in the compartment, in which
they were alone, by taking off his cap and smoothing his beautiful
blond locks, his royal hair that fell in curls over his shoulders. She
had a ring on her finger, and as she passed her hand over his neck she
was startled to perceive that her caress had left behind it a trace of
blood. One could not touch the boy’s skin without the red dew exuding
from it; the tissues had become so lax through extreme degeneration
that the slightest scratch brought on a hemorrhage. The doctor became
at once uneasy, and asked him if he still bled at the nose as
frequently as formerly. Charles hardly knew what to answer; first
saying no, then, recollecting himself, he said that he had bled a great
deal the other day. He seemed, indeed, weaker; he grew more childish as
he grew older; his intelligence, which had never developed, had become
clouded. This tall boy of fifteen, so beautiful, so girlish-looking,
with the color of a flower that had grown in the shade, did not look
ten.
At the Tulettes Pascal decided that they would first take the boy to
Uncle Macquart’s. They ascended the steep road. In the distance the
little house looked gay in the sunshine, as it had looked on the day
before, with its yellow walls and its green mulberry trees extending
their twisted branches and covering the terrace with a thick, leafy
roof. A delightful sense of peace pervaded this solitary spot, this
sage’s retreat, where the only sound to be heard was the humming of the
bees, circling round the tall marshmallows.
“Ah, that rascal of an uncle!” said Pascal, smiling, “how I envy him!”
But he was surprised not to have already seen him standing at the edge
of the terrace. And as Charles had run off dragging Clotilde with him
to see the rabbits, as he said, the doctor continued the ascent alone,
and was astonished when he reached the top to see no one. The blinds
were closed, the hill door yawned wide open. Only the yellow dog was at
the threshold, his legs stiff, his hair bristling, howling with a low
and continuous moan. When he saw the visitor, whom he no doubt
recognized, approaching, he stopped howling for an instant and went and
stood further off, then he began again to whine softly.
Pascal, filled with apprehension, could not keep back the uneasy cry
that rose to his lips:
“Macquart! Macquart!”
No one answered; a deathlike silence reigned over the house, with its
door yawning wide open, like the mouth of a cavern. The dog continued
to howl.
Then Pascal grew impatient, and cried more loudly.
“Macquart! Macquart!”
There was not a stir; the bees hummed, the sky looked down serenely on
the peaceful scene. Then he hesitated no longer. Perhaps Macquart was
asleep. But the instant he pushed open the door of the kitchen on the
left of the hall, a horrible odor escaped from it, an odor of burned
flesh and bones. When he entered the room he could hardly breathe, so
filled was it by a thick vapor, a stagnant and nauseous cloud, which
choked and blinded him. The sunbeams that filtered through the cracks
made only a dim light. He hurried to the fireplace, thinking that
perhaps there had been a fire, but the fireplace was empty, and the
articles of furniture around appeared to be uninjured. Bewildered, and
feeling himself growing faint in the poisoned atmosphere, he ran to the
window and threw the shutters wide open. A flood of light entered.
Then the scene presented to the doctor’s view filled him with
amazement. Everything was in its place; the glass and the empty bottle
of spirits were on the table; only the chair in which Uncle Macquart
must have been sitting bore traces of fire, the front legs were
blackened and the straw was partially consumed. What had become of
Macquart? Where could he have disappeared? In front of the chair, on
the brick floor, which was saturated with grease, there was a little
heap of ashes, beside which lay the pipe—a black pipe, which had not
even broken in falling. All of Uncle Macquart was there, in this
handful of fine ashes; and he was in the red cloud, also, which floated
through the open window; in the layer of soot which carpeted the entire
kitchen; the horrible grease of burnt flesh, enveloping everything,
sticky and foul to the touch.
It was the finest case of spontaneous combustion physician had ever
seen. The doctor had, indeed, read in medical papers of surprising
cases, among others that of a shoemaker’s wife, a drunken woman who had
fallen asleep over her foot warmer, and of whom they had found only a
hand and foot. He had, until now, put little faith in these cases,
unwilling to admit, like the ancients, that a body impregnated with
alcohol could disengage an unknown gas, capable of taking fire
spontaneously and consuming the flesh and the bones. But he denied the
truth of them no longer; besides, everything became clear to him as he
reconstructed the scene—the coma of drunkenness producing absolute
insensibility; the pipe falling on the clothes, which had taken fire;
the flesh, saturated with liquor, burning and cracking; the fat
melting, part of it running over the ground and part of it aiding the
combustion, and all, at last—muscles, organs, and bones—consumed in a
general blaze. Uncle Macquart was all there, with his blue cloth suit,
and his fur cap, which he wore from one year’s end to the other.
Doubtless, as soon as he had begun to burn like a bonfire he had fallen
forward, which would account for the chair being only blackened; and
nothing of him was left, not a bone, not a tooth, not a nail, nothing
but this little heap of gray dust which the draught of air from the
door threatened at every moment to sweep away.
Clotilde had meanwhile entered, Charles remaining outside, his
attention attracted by the continued howling of the dog.
“Good Heavens, what a smell!” she cried. “What is the matter?”
When Pascal explained to her the extraordinary catastrophe that had
taken place, she shuddered. She took up the bottle to examine it, but
she put it down again with horror, feeling it moist and sticky with
Uncle Macquart’s flesh. Nothing could be touched, the smallest objects
were coated, as it were, with this yellowish grease which stuck to the
hands.
A shudder of mingled awe and disgust passed through her, and she burst
into tears, faltering:
“What a sad death! What a horrible death!”
Pascal had recovered from his first shock, and he was almost smiling.
“Why horrible? He was eighty-four years old; he did not suffer. As for
me, I think it a superb death for that old rascal of an uncle, who, it
may be now said, did not lead a very exemplary life. You remember his
envelope; he had some very terrible and vile things upon his
conscience, which did not prevent him, however, from settling down
later and growing old, surrounded by every comfort, like an old humbug,
receiving the recompense of virtues which he did not possess. And here
he lies like the prince of drunkards, burning up of himself, consumed
on the burning funeral pile of his own body!”
And the doctor waved his hand in admiration.
“Just think of it. To be drunk to the point of not feeling that one is
on fire; to set one’s self aflame, like a bonfire on St. John’s day; to
disappear in smoke to the last bone. Think of Uncle Macquart starting
on his journey through space; first diffused through the four corners
of the room, dissolved in air and floating about, bathing all that
belonged to him; then escaping in a cloud of dust through the window,
when I opened it for him, soaring up into the sky, filling the horizon.
Why, that is an admirable death! To disappear, to leave nothing of
himself behind but a little heap of ashes and a pipe beside it!”
And he picked up the pipe to keep it, as he said, as a relic of Uncle
Macquart; while Clotilde, who thought she perceived a touch of bitter
mockery in his eulogistic rhapsody, shuddered anew with horror and
disgust. But suddenly she perceived something under the table—part of
the remains, perhaps.
“Look at that fragment there.”
He stooped down and picked up with surprise a woman’s glove, a yellow
glove.
“Why!” she cried, “it is grandmother’s glove; the glove that was
missing last evening.”
They looked at each other; by a common impulse the same explanation
rose to their lips, Félicité was certainly there yesterday; and a
sudden conviction forced itself on the doctor’s mind—the conviction
that his mother had seen Uncle Macquart burning and that she had not
quenched him. Various indications pointed to this—the state of complete
coolness in which he found the room, the number of hours which he
calculated to have been necessary for the combustion of the body. He
saw clearly the same thought dawning in the terrified eyes of his
companion. But as it seemed impossible that they should ever know the
truth, he fabricated aloud the simplest explanation:
“No doubt your grandmother came in yesterday on her way back from the
asylum, to say good day to Uncle Macquart, before he had begun
drinking.”
“Let us go away! let us go away!” cried Clotilde. “I am stifling here;
I cannot remain here!”
Pascal, too, wished to go and give information of the death. He went
out after her, shut up the house, and put the key in his pocket.
Outside, they heard the little yellow dog still howling. He had taken
refuge between Charles’ legs, and the boy amused himself pushing him
with his foot and listening to him whining, without comprehending.
The doctor went at once to the house of M. Maurin, the notary at the
Tulettes, who was also mayor of the commune. A widower for ten years
past, and living with his daughter, who was a childless widow, he had
maintained neighborly relations with old Macquart, and had occasionally
kept little Charles with him for several days at a time, his daughter
having become interested in the boy who was so handsome and so much to
be pitied. M. Maurin, horrified at the news, went at once with the
doctor to draw up a statement of the accident, and promised to make out
the death certificate in due form. As for religious ceremonies, funeral
obsequies, they seemed scarcely possible. When they entered the kitchen
the draught from the door scattered the ashes about, and when they
piously attempted to collect them again they succeeded only in
gathering together the scrapings of the flags, a collection of
accumulated dirt, in which there could be but little of Uncle Macquart.
What, then, could they bury? It was better to give up the idea. So they
gave it up. Besides, Uncle Macquart had been hardly a devout Catholic,
and the family contented themselves with causing masses to be said
later on for the repose of his soul.
The notary, meantime, had immediately declared that there existed a
will, which had been deposited with him, and he asked Pascal to meet
him at his house on the next day but one for the reading; for he
thought he might tell the doctor at once that Uncle Macquart had chosen
him as his executor. And he ended by offering, like a kindhearted man,
to keep Charles with him until then, comprehending how greatly the boy,
who was so unwelcome at his mother’s, would be in the way in the midst
of all these occurrences. Charles seemed enchanted, and he remained at
the Tulettes.
It was not until very late, until seven o’clock, that Clotilde and
Pascal were able to take the train to return to Plassans, after the
doctor had at last visited the two patients whom he had to see. But
when they returned together to the notary’s on the day appointed for
the meeting, they had the disagreeable surprise of finding old Mme.
Rougon installed there. She had naturally learned of Macquart’s death,
and had hurried there on the following day, full of excitement, and
making a great show of grief; and she had just made her appearance
again to-day, having heard the famous testament spoken of. The reading
of the will, however, was a simple matter, unmarked by any incident.
Macquart had left all the fortune that he could dispose of for the
purpose of erecting a superb marble monument to himself, with two
angels with folded wings, weeping. It was his own idea, a reminiscence
of a similar tomb which he had seen abroad—in Germany, perhaps—when he
was a soldier. And he had charged his nephew Pascal to superintend the
erection of the monument, as he was the only one of the family, he
said, who had any taste.
During the reading of the will Clotilde had remained in the notary’s
garden, sitting on a bench under the shade of an ancient chestnut tree.
When Pascal and Félicité again appeared, there was a moment of great
embarrassment, for they had not spoken to one another for some months
past. The old lady, however, affected to be perfectly at her ease,
making no allusion whatever to the new situation, and giving it to be
understood that they might very well meet and appear united before the
world, without for that reason entering into an explanation or becoming
reconciled. But she committed the mistake of laying too much stress on
the great grief which Macquart’s death had caused her. Pascal, who
suspected the overflowing joy, the unbounded delight which it gave her
to think that this family ulcer was to be at last healed, that this
abominable uncle was at last out of the way, became gradually possessed
by an impatience, an indignation, which he could not control. His eyes
fastened themselves involuntarily on his mother’s gloves, which were
black.
Just then she was expressing her grief in lowered tones:
“But how imprudent it was, at his age, to persist in living alone—like
a wolf in his lair! If he had only had a servant in the house with
him!”
Then the doctor, hardly conscious of what he was saying, terrified at
hearing himself say the words, but impelled by an irresistible force,
said:
“But, mother, since you were there, why did you not quench him?”
Old Mme. Rougon turned frightfully pale. How could her son have known?
She looked at him for an instant in open-mouthed amazement; while
Clotilde grew as pale as she, in the certainty of the crime, which was
now evident. It was an avowal, this terrified silence which had fallen
between the mother, the son, and the granddaughter—the shuddering
silence in which families bury their domestic tragedies. The doctor, in
despair at having spoken, he who avoided so carefully all disagreeable
and useless explanations, was trying desperately to retract his words,
when a new catastrophe extricated him from his terrible embarrassment.
Félicité desired to take Charles away with her, in order not to
trespass on the notary’s kind hospitality; and as the latter had sent
the boy after breakfast to spend an hour or two with Aunt Dide, he had
sent the maid servant to the asylum with orders to bring him back
immediately. It was at this juncture that the servant, whom they were
waiting for in the garden, made her appearance, covered with
perspiration, out of breath, and greatly excited, crying from a
distance:
“My God! My God! come quickly. Master Charles is bathed in blood.”
Filled with consternation, all three set off for the asylum. This day
chanced to be one of Aunt Dide’s good days; very calm and gentle she
sat erect in the armchair in which she had spent the hours, the long
hours for twenty-two years past, looking straight before her into
vacancy. She seemed to have grown still thinner, all the flesh had
disappeared, her limbs were now only bones covered with parchment-like
skin; and her keeper, the stout fair-haired girl, carried her, fed her,
took her up and laid her down as if she had been a bundle. The
ancestress, the forgotten one, tall, bony, ghastly, remained
motionless, her eyes, only seeming to have life, her eyes shining clear
as spring water in her thin withered face. But on this morning, again a
sudden rush of tears had streamed down her cheeks, and she had begun to
stammer words without any connection; which seemed to prove that in the
midst of her senile exhaustion and the incurable torpor of madness, the
slow induration of the brain and the limbs was not yet complete; there
still were memories stored away, gleams of intelligence still were
possible. Then her face had resumed its vacant expression. She seemed
indifferent to every one and everything, laughing, sometimes, at an
accident, at a fall, but most often seeing nothing and hearing nothing,
gazing fixedly into vacancy.
When Charles had been brought to her the keeper had immediately
installed him before the little table, in front of his
great-great-grandmother. The girl kept a package of pictures for
him—soldiers, captains, kings clad in purple and gold, and she gave
them to him with a pair of scissors, saying:
“There, amuse yourself quietly, and behave well. You see that to-day
grandmother is very good. You must be good, too.”
The boy raised his eyes to the madwoman’s face, and both looked at each
other. At this moment the resemblance between them was extraordinary.
Their eyes, especially, their vacant and limpid eyes, seemed to lose
themselves in one another, to be identical. Then it was the
physiognomy, the whole face, the worn features of the centenarian, that
passed over three generations to this delicate child’s face, it, too,
worn already, as it were, and aged by the wear of the race. Neither
smiled, they regarded each other intently, with an air of grave
imbecility.
“Well!” continued the keeper, who had acquired the habit of talking to
herself to cheer herself when with her mad charge, “you cannot deny
each other. The same hand made you both. You are the very spit-down of
each other. Come, laugh a bit, amuse yourselves, since you like to be
together.”
But to fix his attention for any length of time fatigued Charles, and
he was the first to lower his eyes; he seemed to be interested in his
pictures, while Aunt Dide, who had an astonishing power of fixing her
attention, as if she had been turned into stone, continued to look at
him fixedly, without even winking an eyelid.
The keeper busied herself for a few moments in the little sunny room,
made gay by its light, blue-flowered paper. She made the bed which she
had been airing, she arranged the linen on the shelves of the press.
But she generally profited by the presence of the boy to take a little
relaxation. She had orders never to leave her charge alone, and now
that he was here she ventured to trust her with him.
“Listen to me well,” she went on, “I have to go out for a little, and
if she stirs, if she should need me, ring for me, call me at once; do
you hear? You understand, you are a big enough boy to be able to call
one.”
He had looked up again, and made a sign that he had understood and that
he would call her. And when he found himself alone with Aunt Dide he
returned to his pictures quietly. This lasted for a quarter of an hour
amid the profound silence of the asylum, broken only at intervals by
some prison sound—a stealthy step, the jingling of a bunch of keys, and
occasionally a loud cry, immediately silenced. But the boy must have
been tired by the excessive heat of the day, for sleep gradually stole
over him. Soon his head, fair as a lily, drooped, and as if weighed
down by the too heavy casque of his royal locks, he let it sink gently
on the pictures and fell asleep, with his cheek resting on the gold and
purple kings. The lashes of his closed eyelids cast a shadow on his
delicate skin, with its small blue veins, through which life pulsed
feebly. He was beautiful as an angel, but with the indefinable
corruption of a whole race spread over his countenance. And Aunt Dide
looked at him with her vacant stare in which there was neither pleasure
nor pain, the stare of eternity contemplating things earthly.
At the end of a few moments, however, an expression of interest seemed
to dawn in the clear eyes. Something had just happened, a drop of blood
was forming on the edge of the left nostril of the boy. This drop fell
and another formed and followed it. It was the blood, the dew of blood,
exuding this time, without a scratch, without a bruise, which issued
and flowed of itself in the laxity of the degenerate tissues. The drops
became a slender thread which flowed over the gold of the pictures. A
little pool covered them, and made its way to a corner of the table;
then the drops began again, splashing dully one by one upon the floor.
And he still slept, with the divinely calm look of a cherub, not even
conscious of the life that was escaping from him; and the madwoman
continued to look at him, with an air of increasing interest, but
without terror, amused, rather, her attention engaged by this, as by
the flight of the big flies, which her gaze often followed for hours.
Several minutes more passed, the slender thread had grown larger, the
drops followed one another more rapidly, falling on the floor with a
monotonous and persistent drip. And Charles, at one moment, stirred,
opened his eyes, and perceived that he was covered with blood. But he
was not frightened; he was accustomed to this bloody spring, which
issued from him at the slightest cause. He merely gave a sigh of
weariness. Instinct, however, must have warned him, for he moaned more
loudly than before, and called confusedly in stammering accents:
“Mamma! mamma!”
His weakness was no doubt already excessive, for an irresistible stupor
once more took possession of him, his head dropped, his eyes closed,
and he seemed to fall asleep again, continuing his plaint, as if in a
dream, moaning in fainter and fainter accents:
“Mamma! mamma!”
Now the pictures were inundated; the black velvet jacket and trousers,
braided with gold, were stained with long streaks of blood, and the
little red stream began again to flow persistently from his left
nostril, without stopping, crossed the red pool on the table and fell
upon the ground, where it at last formed a veritable lake. A loud cry
from the madwoman, a terrified call would have sufficed. But she did
not cry, she did not call; motionless, rigid, emaciated, sitting there
forgotten of the world, she gazed with the fixed look of the ancestress
who sees the destinies of her race being accomplished. She sat there as
if dried up, bound; her limbs and her tongue tied by her hundred years,
her brain ossified by madness, incapable of willing or of acting. And
yet the sight of the little red stream began to stir some feeling in
her. A tremor passed over her deathlike countenance, a flush mounted to
her cheeks. Finally, a last plaint roused her completely:
“Mamma! mamma!”
Then it was evident that a terrible struggle was taking place in Aunt
Dide. She carried her skeleton-like hand to her forehead as if she felt
her brain bursting. Her mouth was wide open, but no sound issued from
it; the dreadful tumult that had arisen within her had no doubt
paralyzed her tongue. She tried to rise, to run, but she had no longer
any muscles; she remained fastened to her seat. All her poor body
trembled in the superhuman effort which she was making to cry for help,
without being able to break the bonds of old age and madness which held
her prisoner. Her face was distorted with terror; memory gradually
awakening, she must have comprehended everything.
And it was a slow and gentle agony, of which the spectacle lasted for
several minutes more. Charles, silent now, as if he had again fallen
asleep, was losing the last drops of blood that had remained in his
veins, which were emptying themselves softly. His lily-like whiteness
increased until it became a deathlike pallor. His lips lost their rosy
color, became a pale pink, then white. And, as he was about to expire,
he opened his large eyes and fixed them on his great-great-grandmother,
who watched the light dying in them. All the waxen face was already
dead, the eyes only were still living. They still kept their limpidity,
their brightness. All at once they became vacant, the light in them was
extinguished. This was the end—the death of the eyes, and Charles had
died, without a struggle, exhausted, like a fountain from which all the
water has run out. Life no longer pulsed through the veins of his
delicate skin, there was now only the shadow of its wings on his white
face. But he remained divinely beautiful, his face lying in blood,
surrounded by his royal blond locks, like one of those little bloodless
dauphins who, unable to bear the execrable heritage of their race, die
of decrepitude and imbecility at sixteen.
The boy exhaled his latest breath as Dr. Pascal entered the room,
followed by Félicité and Clotilde. And when he saw the quantity of
blood that inundated the floor, he cried:
“Ah, my God! it is as I feared, a hemorrhage from the nose! The poor
darling, no one was with him, and it is all over!”
But all three were struck with terror at the extraordinary spectacle
that now met their gaze. Aunt Dide, who seemed to have grown taller, in
the superhuman effort she was making, had almost succeeded in raising
herself up, and her eyes, fixed on the dead boy, so fair and so gentle,
and on the red sea of blood, beginning to congeal, that was lying
around him, kindled with a thought, after a long sleep of twenty-two
years. This final lesion of madness, this irremediable darkness of the
mind, was evidently not so complete but that some memory of the past,
lying hidden there, might awaken suddenly under the terrible blow which
had struck her. And the ancestress, the forgotten one, lived again,
emerged from her oblivion, rigid and wasted, like a specter of terror
and grief.
For an instant she remained panting. Then with a shudder, which made
her teeth chatter, she stammered a single phrase:
“The _gendarme_! the _gendarme_!”
Pascal and Félicité and Clotilde understood. They looked at one another
involuntarily, turning very pale. The whole dreadful history of the old
mother—of the mother of them all—rose before them, the ardent love of
her youth, the long suffering of her mature age. Already two moral
shocks had shaken her terribly—the first, when she was in her ardent
prime, when a _gendarme_ shot down her lover Macquart, the smuggler,
like a dog; the second, years ago, when another _gendarme_ shattered
with a pistol shot the skull of her grandson Silvère, the insurgent,
the victim of the hatred and the sanguinary strife of the family. Blood
had always bespattered her. And a third moral shock finished her; blood
bespattered her again, the impoverished blood of her race, which she
had just beheld flowing slowly, and which lay upon the ground, while
the fair royal child, his veins and his heart empty, slept.
Three times—face to face with her past life, her life red with passion
and suffering, haunted by the image of expiation—she stammered:
“The _gendarme_! the _gendarme_! the _gendarme_!”
Then she sank back into her armchair. They thought she was dead, killed
by the shock.
But the keeper at this moment at last appeared, endeavoring to excuse
herself, fearing that she would be dismissed. When, aided by her, Dr.
Pascal had placed Aunt Dide on the bed, he found that the old mother
was still alive. She was not to die until the following day, at the age
of one hundred and five years, three months, and seven days, of
congestion of the brain, caused by the last shock she had received.
Pascal, turning to his mother, said:
“She will not live twenty-four hours; to-morrow she will be dead. Ah!
Uncle Macquart, then she, and this poor boy, one after another. How
much misery and grief!”
He paused and added in a lower tone:
“The family is thinning out; the old trees fall and the young die
standing.”
Félicité must have thought this another allusion. She was sincerely
shocked by the tragic death of little Charles. But, notwithstanding,
above the horror which she felt there arose a sense of immense relief.
Next week, when they should have ceased to weep, what a rest to be able
to say to herself that all this abomination of the Tulettes was at an
end, that the family might at last rise, and shine in history!
Then she remembered that she had not answered the involuntary
accusation made against her by her son at the notary’s; and she spoke
again of Macquart, through bravado:
“You see now that servants are of no use. There was one here, and yet
she prevented nothing; it would have been useless for Uncle Macquart to
have had one to take care of him; he would be in ashes now, all the
same.”
She sighed, and then continued in a broken voice:
“Well, well, neither our own fate nor that of others is in our hands;
things happen as they will. These are great blows that have fallen upon
us. We must only trust to God for the preservation and the prosperity
of our family.”
Dr. Pascal bowed with his habitual air of deference and said:
“You are right, mother.”
Clotilde knelt down. Her former fervent Catholic faith had revived in
this chamber of blood, of madness, and of death. Tears streamed down
her cheeks, and with clasped hands she was praying fervently for the
dear ones who were no more. She prayed that God would grant that their
sufferings might indeed be ended, their faults pardoned, and that they
might live again in another life, a life of unending happiness. And she
prayed with the utmost fervor, in her terror of a hell, which after
this miserable life would make suffering eternal.
From this day Pascal and Clotilde went to visit their sick side by
side, filled with greater pity than ever. Perhaps, with Pascal, the
feeling of his powerlessness against inevitable disease was even
stronger than before. The only wisdom was to let nature take its
course, to eliminate dangerous elements, and to labor only in the
supreme work of giving health and strength. But the suffering and the
death of those who are dear to us awaken in us a hatred of disease, an
irresistible desire to combat and to vanquish it. And the doctor never
tasted so great a joy as when he succeeded, with his hypodermic
injections, in soothing a paroxysm of pain, in seeing the groaning
patient grow tranquil and fall asleep. Clotilde, in return, adored him,
proud of their love, as if it were a consolation which they carried,
like the viaticum, to the poor.