Martine one morning obtained from Dr. Pascal, as she did every three
months, his receipt for fifteen hundred francs, to take it to the
notary Grandguillot, to get from him what she called their “income.”
The doctor seemed surprised that the payment should have fallen due
again so soon; he had never been so indifferent as he was now about
money matters, leaving to Martine the care of settling everything. And
he and Clotilde were under the plane trees, absorbed in the joy that
filled their life, lulled by the ceaseless song of the fountain, when
the servant returned with a frightened face, and in a state of
extraordinary agitation. She was so breathless with excitement that for
a moment she could not speak.
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” she cried at last. “M. Grandguillot has gone
away!”
Pascal did not at first comprehend.
“Well, my girl, there is no hurry,” he said; “you can go back another
day.”
“No, no! He has gone away; don’t you hear? He has gone away forever—”
And as the waters rush forth in the bursting of a dam, her emotion
vented itself in a torrent of words.
“I reached the street, and I saw from a distance a crowd gathered
before the door. A chill ran through me; I felt that some misfortune
had happened. The door closed, and not a blind open, as if there was
somebody dead in the house. They told me when I got there that he had
run away; that he had not left a sou behind him; that many families
would be ruined.”
She laid the receipt on the stone table.
“There! There is your paper! It is all over with us, we have not a sou
left, we are going to die of starvation!” And she sobbed aloud in the
anguish of her miserly heart, distracted by this loss of a fortune, and
trembling at the prospect of impending want.
Clotilde sat stunned and speechless, her eyes fixed on Pascal, whose
predominating feeling at first seemed to be one of incredulity. He
endeavored to calm Martine. Why! why! it would not do to give up in
this way. If all she knew of the affair was what she had heard from the
people in the street, it might be only gossip, after all, which always
exaggerates everything. M. Grandguillot a fugitive; M. Grandguillot a
thief; that was monstrous, impossible! A man of such probity, a house
liked and respected by all Plassans for more than a century past. Why
people thought money safer there than in the Bank of France.
“Consider, Martine, this would not have come all of a sudden, like a
thunderclap; there would have been some rumors of it beforehand. The
deuce! an old reputation does not fall to pieces in that way, in a
night.”
At this she made a gesture of despair.
“Ah, monsieur, that is what most afflicts me, because, you see, it
throws some of the responsibility on me. For weeks past I have been
hearing stories on all sides. As for you two, naturally you hear
nothing; you don’t even know whether you are alive or dead.”
Neither Pascal nor Clotilde could refrain from smiling; for it was
indeed true that their love lifted them so far above the earth that
none of the common sounds of existence reached them.
“But the stories I heard were so ugly that I didn’t like to worry you
with them. I thought they were lies.”
She was silent for a moment, and then added that while some people
merely accused M. Grandguillot of having speculated on the Bourse,
there were others who accused him of still worse practises. And she
burst into fresh sobs.
“My God! My God! what is going to become of us? We are all going to die
of starvation!”
Shaken, then, moved by seeing Clotilde’s eyes, too, filled with tears,
Pascal made an effort to remember, to see clearly into the past. Years
ago, when he had been practising in Plassans, he had deposited at
different times, with M. Grandguillot, the twenty thousand francs on
the interest of which he had lived comfortably for the past sixteen
years, and on each occasion the notary had given him a receipt for the
sum deposited. This would no doubt enable him to establish his position
as a personal creditor. Then a vague recollection awoke in his memory;
he remembered, without being able to fix the date, that at the request
of the notary, and in consequence of certain representations made by
him, which Pascal had forgotten, he had given the lawyer a power of
attorney for the purpose of investing the whole or a part of his money,
in mortgages, and he was even certain that in this power the name of
the attorney had been left in blank. But he was ignorant as to whether
this document had ever been used or not; he had never taken the trouble
to inquire how his money had been invested. A fresh pang of miserly
anguish made Martine cry out:
“Ah, monsieur, you are well punished for your sin. Was that a way to
abandon one’s money? For my part, I know almost to a sou how my account
stands every quarter; I have every figure and every document at my
fingers’ ends.”
In the midst of her distress an unconscious smile broke over her face,
lighting it all up. Her long cherished passion had been gratified; her
four hundred francs wages, saved almost intact, put out at interest for
thirty years, at last amounted to the enormous sum of twenty thousand
francs. And this treasure was put away in a safe place which no one
knew. She beamed with delight at the recollection, and she said no
more.
“But who says that our money is lost?” cried Pascal.
“M. Grandguillot had a private fortune; he has not taken away with him
his house and his lands, I suppose. They will look into the affair;
they will make an investigation. I cannot make up my mind to believe
him a common thief. The only trouble is the delay: a liquidation drags
on so long.”
He spoke in this way in order to reassure Clotilde, whose growing
anxiety he observed. She looked at him, and she looked around her at La
Souleiade; her only care his happiness; her most ardent desire to live
here always, as she had lived in the past, to love him always in this
beloved solitude. And he, wishing to tranquilize her, recovered his
fine indifference; never having lived for money, he did not imagine
that one could suffer from the want of it.
“But I have some money!” he cried, at last. “What does Martine mean by
saying that we have not a sou left, and that we are going to die of
starvation!”
And he rose gaily, and made them both follow him saying:
“Come, come, I am going to show you some money. And I will give some of
it to Martine that she may make us a good dinner this evening.”
Upstairs in his room he triumphantly opened his desk before them. It
was in a drawer of this desk that for years past he had thrown the
money which his later patients had brought him of their own accord, for
he had never sent them an account. Nor had he ever known the exact
amount of his little treasure, of the gold and bank bills mingled
together in confusion, from which he took the sums he required for his
pocket money, his experiments, his presents, and his alms. During the
last few months he had made frequent visits to his desk, making deep
inroads into its contents. But he had been so accustomed to find there
the sums he required, after years of economy during which he had spent
scarcely anything, that he had come to believe his savings
inexhaustible.
He gave a satisfied laugh, then, as he opened the drawer, crying:
“Now you shall see! Now you shall see!”
And he was confounded, when, after searching among the heap of notes
and bills, he succeeded in collecting only a sum of 615 francs—two
notes of 100 francs each, 400 francs in gold, and 15 francs in change.
He shook out the papers, he felt in every corner of the drawer, crying:
“But it cannot be! There was always money here before, there was a heap
of money here a few days ago. It must have been all those old bills
that misled me. I assure you that last week I saw a great deal of
money. I had it in my hand.”
He spoke with such amusing good faith, his childlike surprise was so
sincere, that Clotilde could not keep from smiling. Ah, the poor
master, what a wretched business man he was! Then, as she observed
Martine’s look of anguish, her utter despair at sight of this
insignificant sum, which was now all there was for the maintenance of
all three, she was seized with a feeling of despair; her eyes filled
with tears, and she murmured:
“My God, it is for me that you have spent everything; if we have
nothing now, if we are ruined, it is I who am the cause of it!”
Pascal had already forgotten the money he had taken for the presents.
Evidently that was where it had gone. The explanation tranquilized him.
And as she began to speak in her grief of returning everything to the
dealers, he grew angry.
“Give back what I have given you! You would give a piece of my heart
with it, then! No, I would rather die of hunger, I tell you!”
Then his confidence already restored, seeing a future of unlimited
possibilities opening out before him, he said:
“Besides, we are not going to die of hunger to-night, are we, Martine?
There is enough here to keep us for a long time.”
Martine shook her head. She would undertake to manage with it for two
months, for two and a half, perhaps, if people had sense, but not
longer. Formerly the drawer was replenished; there was always some
money coming in; but now that monsieur had given up his patients, they
had absolutely no income. They must not count on any help from outside,
then. And she ended by saying:
“Give me the two one-hundred-franc bills. I’ll try and make them last
for a month. Then we shall see. But be very prudent; don’t touch the
four hundred francs in gold; lock the drawer and don’t open it again.”
“Oh, as to that,” cried the doctor, “you may make your mind easy. I
would rather cut off my right hand.”
And thus it was settled. Martine was to have entire control of this
last purse; and they might trust to her economy, they were sure that
she would save the centimes. As for Clotilde, who had never had a
private purse, she would not even feel the want of money. Pascal only
would suffer from no longer having his inexhaustible treasure to draw
upon, but he had given his promise to allow the servant to buy
everything.
“There! That is a good piece of work!” he said, relieved, as happy as
if he had just settled some important affair which would assure them a
living for a long time to come.
A week passed during which nothing seemed to have changed at La
Souleiade. In the midst of their tender raptures neither Pascal nor
Clotilde thought any more of the want which was impending. And one
morning during the absence of the latter, who had gone with Martine to
market, the doctor received a visit which filled him at first with a
sort of terror. It was from the woman who had sold him the beautiful
corsage of old point d’Alençon, his first present to Clotilde. He felt
himself so weak against a possible temptation that he trembled. Even
before the woman had uttered a word he had already begun to defend
himself—no, no, he neither could nor would buy anything. And with
outstretched hands he prevented her from taking anything out of her
little bag, declaring to himself that he would look at nothing. The
dealer, however, a fat, amiable woman, smiled, certain of victory. In
an insinuating voice she began to tell him a long story of how a lady,
whom she was not at liberty to name, one of the most distinguished
ladies in Plassans, who had suddenly met with a reverse of fortune, had
been obliged to part with one of her jewels; and she then enlarged on
the splendid chance—a piece of jewelry that had cost twelve hundred
francs, and she was willing to let it go for five hundred. She opened
her bag slowly, in spite of the terrified and ever-louder protestations
of the doctor, and took from it a slender gold necklace set simply with
seven pearls in front; but the pearls were of wonderful
brilliancy—flawless, and perfect in shape. The ornament was simple,
chaste, and of exquisite delicacy. And instantly he saw in fancy the
necklace on Clotilde’s beautiful neck, as its natural adornment. Any
other jewel would have been a useless ornament, these pearls would be
the fitting symbol of her youth. And he took the necklace in his
trembling fingers, experiencing a mortal anguish at the idea of
returning it. He defended himself still, however; he declared that he
had not five hundred francs, while the dealer continued, in her smooth
voice, to push the advantage she had gained. After another quarter an
hour, when she thought she had him secure, she suddenly offered him the
necklace for three hundred francs, and he yielded; his mania for
giving, his desire to please his idol, to adorn her, conquered. When he
went to the desk to take the fifteen gold pieces to count them out to
the dealer, he felt convinced that the notary’s affairs would be
arranged, and that they would soon have plenty of money.
When Pascal found himself once more alone, with the ornament in his
pocket, he was seized with a childish delight, and he planned his
little surprise, while waiting, excited and impatient, for Clotilde’s
return. The moment she made her appearance his heart began to beat
violently. She was very warm, for an August sun was blazing in the sky,
and she laid aside her things quickly, pleased with her walk, telling
him, laughing, of the good bargain Martine had made—two pigeons for
eighteen sous. While she was speaking he pretended to notice something
on her neck.
“Why, what have you on your neck? Let me see.”
He had the necklace in his hand, and he succeeded in putting it around
her neck, while feigning to pass his fingers over it, to assure himself
that there was nothing there. But she resisted, saying gaily:
“Don’t! There is nothing on my neck. Here, what are you doing? What
have you in your hand that is tickling me?”
He caught hold of her, and drew her before the long mirror, in which
she had a full view of herself. On her neck the slender chain showed
like a thread of gold, and the seven pearls, like seven milky stars,
shone with soft luster against her satin skin. She looked charmingly
childlike. Suddenly she gave a delighted laugh, like the cooing of a
dove swelling out its throat proudly.
“Oh, master, master, how good you are! Do you think of nothing but me,
then? How happy you make me!”
And the joy which shone in her eyes, the joy of the woman and the
lover, happy to be beautiful and to be adored, recompensed him divinely
for his folly.
She drew back her head, radiant, and held up her mouth to him. He bent
over and kissed her.
“Are you happy?”
“Oh, yes, master, happy, happy! Pearls are so sweet, so pure! And these
are so becoming to me!”
For an instant longer she admired herself in the glass, innocently vain
of her fair flower-like skin, under the nacre drops of the pearls.
Then, yielding to a desire to show herself, hearing the servant moving
about outside, she ran out, crying:
“Martine, Martine! See what master has just given me! Say, am I not
beautiful!”
But all at once, seeing the old maid’s severe face, that had suddenly
turned an ashen hue, she became confused, and all her pleasure was
spoiled. Perhaps she had a consciousness of the jealous pang which her
brilliant youth caused this poor creature, worn out in the dumb
resignation of her servitude, in adoration of her master. This,
however, was only a momentary feeling, unconscious in the one, hardly
suspected by the other, and what remained was the evident
disapprobation of the economical servant, condemning the present with
her sidelong glance.
Clotilde was seized with a little chill.
“Only,” she murmured, “master has rummaged his desk again. Pearls are
very dear, are they not?”
Pascal, embarrassed, too, protested volubly, telling them of the
splendid opportunity presented by the dealer’s visit. An incredibly
good stroke of business—it was impossible to avoid buying the necklace.
“How much?” asked the young girl with real anxiety.
“Three hundred francs.”
Martine, who had not yet opened her lips, but who looked terrible in
her silence, could not restrain a cry.
“Good God! enough to live upon for six weeks, and we have not bread!”
Large tears welled from Clotilde’s eyes. She would have torn the
necklace from her neck if Pascal had not prevented her. She wished to
give it to him on the instant, and she faltered in heart-broken tones:
“It is true, Martine is right. Master is mad, and I am mad, too, to
keep this for an instant, in the situation in which we are. It would
burn my flesh. Let me take it back, I beg of you.”
Never would he consent to this, he said. Now his eyes, too, were moist,
he joined in their grief, crying that he was incorrigible, that they
ought to have taken all the money away from him. And running to the
desk he took the hundred francs that were left, and forced Martine to
take them, saying:
“I tell you that I will not keep another sou. I should spend this, too.
Take it, Martine; you are the only one of us who has any sense. You
will make the money last, I am very certain, until our affairs are
settled. And you, dear, keep that; do not grieve me.”
Nothing more was said about this incident. But Clotilde kept the
necklace, wearing it under her gown; and there was a sort of delightful
mystery in feeling on her neck, unknown to every one, this simple,
pretty ornament. Sometimes, when they were alone, she would smile at
Pascal and draw the pearls from her dress quickly, and show them to him
without a word; and as quickly she would replace them again on her warm
neck, filled with delightful emotion. It was their fond folly which she
thus recalled to him, with a confused gratitude, a vivid and radiant
joy—a joy which nevermore left her.
A straitened existence, sweet in spite of everything, now began for
them. Martine made an exact inventory of the resources of the house,
and it was not reassuring. The provision of potatoes only promised to
be of any importance. As ill luck would have it, the jar of oil was
almost out, and the last cask of wine was also nearly empty. La
Souleiade, having neither vines nor olive trees, produced only a few
vegetables and some fruits—pears, not yet ripe, and trellis grapes,
which were to be their only delicacies. And meat and bread had to be
bought every day. So that from the first day the servant put Pascal and
Clotilde on rations, suppressing the former sweets, creams, and pastry,
and reducing the food to the quantity barely necessary to sustain life.
She resumed all her former authority, treating them like children who
were not to be consulted, even with regard to their wishes or their
tastes. It was she who arranged the menus, who knew better than
themselves what they wanted; but all this like a mother, surrounding
them with unceasing care, performing the miracle of enabling them to
live still with comfort on their scanty resources; occasionally severe
with them, for their own good, as one is severe with a child when it
refuses to eat its food. And it seemed as if this maternal care, this
last immolation, the illusory peace with which she surrounded their
love, gave her, too, a little happiness, and drew her out of the dumb
despair into which she had fallen. Since she had thus watched over them
she had begun to look like her old self, with her little white face,
the face of a nun vowed to chastity; her calm ash-colored eyes, which
expressed the resignation of her thirty years of servitude. When, after
the eternal potatoes and the little cutlet at four sous,
undistinguishable among the vegetables, she was able, on certain days,
without compromising her budget, to give them pancakes, she was
triumphant, she laughed to see them laugh.
Pascal and Clotilde thought everything she did was right, which did not
prevent them, however, from jesting about her when she was not present.
The old jests about her avarice were repeated over and over again. They
said that she counted the grains of pepper, so many grains for each
dish, in her passion for economy. When the potatoes had too little oil,
when the cutlets were reduced to a mouthful, they would exchange a
quick glance, stifling their laughter in their napkins, until she had
left the room. Everything was a source of amusement to them, and they
laughed innocently at their misery.
At the end of the first month Pascal thought of Martine’s wages.
Usually she took her forty francs herself from the common purse which
she kept.
“My poor girl,” he said to her one evening, “what are you going to do
for your wages, now that we have no more money?”
She remained for a moment with her eyes fixed on the ground, with an
air of consternation, then she said:
“Well, monsieur, I must only wait.”
But he saw that she had not said all that was in her mind, that she had
thought of some arrangement which she did not know how to propose to
him, so he encouraged her.
“Well, then, if monsieur would consent to it, I should like monsieur to
sign me a paper.”
“How, a paper?”
“Yes, a paper, in which monsieur should say, every month, that he owes
me forty francs.”
Pascal at once made out the paper for her, and this made her quite
happy. She put it away as carefully as if it had been real money. This
evidently tranquilized her. But the paper became a new subject of
wondering amusement to the doctor and his companion. In what did the
extraordinary power consist which money has on certain natures? This
old maid, who would serve him on bended knees, who adored him above
everything, to the extent of having devoted to him her whole life, to
ask for this silly guarantee, this scrap of paper which was of no
value, if he should be unable to pay her.
So far neither Pascal nor Clotilde had any great merit in preserving
their serenity in misfortune, for they did not feel it. They lived high
above it, in the rich and happy realm of their love. At table they did
not know what they were eating; they might fancy they were partaking of
a princely banquet, served on silver dishes. They were unconscious of
the increasing destitution around them, of the hunger of the servant
who lived upon the crumbs from their table; and they walked through the
empty house as through a palace hung with silk and filled with riches.
This was undoubtedly the happiest period of their love. The workroom
had pleasant memories of the past, and they spent whole days there,
wrapped luxuriously in the joy of having lived so long in it together.
Then, out of doors, in every corner of La Souleiade, royal summer had
set up his blue tent, dazzling with gold. In the morning, in the
embalsamed walks on the pine grove; at noon under the dark shadow of
the plane trees, lulled by the murmur of the fountain; in the evening
on the cool terrace, or in the still warm threshing yard bathed in the
faint blue radiance of the first stars, they lived with rapture their
straitened life, their only ambition to live always together,
indifferent to all else. The earth was theirs, with all its riches, its
pomps, and its dominions, since they loved each other.
Toward the end of August however, matters grew bad again. At times they
had rude awakenings, in the midst of this life without ties, without
duties, without work; this life which was so sweet, but which it would
be impossible, hurtful, they knew, to lead always. One evening Martine
told them that she had only fifty francs left, and that they would have
difficulty in managing for two weeks longer, even giving up wine. In
addition to this the news was very serious; the notary Grandguillot was
beyond a doubt insolvent, so that not even the personal creditors would
receive anything. In the beginning they had relied on the house and the
two farms which the fugitive notary had left perforce behind him, but
it was now certain that this property was in his wife’s name and, while
he was enjoying in Switzerland, as it was said, the beauty of the
mountains, she lived on one of the farms, which she cultivated quietly,
away from the annoyances of the liquidation. In short, it was
infamous—a hundred families ruined; left without bread. An assignee had
indeed been appointed, but he had served only to confirm the disaster,
since not a centime of assets had been discovered. And Pascal, with his
usual indifference, neglected even to go and see him to speak to him
about his own case, thinking that he already knew all that there was to
be known about it, and that it was useless to stir up this ugly
business, since there was neither honor nor profit to be derived from
it.
Then, indeed, the future looked threatening at La Souleiade. Black want
stared them in the face. And Clotilde, who, in reality, had a great
deal of good sense, was the first to take alarm. She maintained her
cheerfulness while Pascal was present, but, more prescient than he, in
her womanly tenderness, she fell into a state of absolute terror if he
left her for an instant, asking herself what was to become of him at
his age with so heavy a burden upon his shoulders. For several days she
cherished in secret a project—to work and earn money, a great deal of
money, with her pastels. People had so often praised her extraordinary
and original talent that, taking Martine into her confidence, she sent
her one fine morning to offer some of her fantastic bouquets to the
color dealer of the Cours Sauvaire, who was a relation, it was said, of
a Parisian artist. It was with the express condition that nothing was
to be exhibited in Plassans, that everything was to be sent to a
distance. But the result was disastrous; the merchant was frightened by
the strangeness of the design, and by the fantastic boldness of the
execution, and he declared that they would never sell. This threw her
into despair; great tears welled her eyes. Of what use was she? It was
a grief and a humiliation to be good for nothing. And the servant was
obliged to console her, saying that no doubt all women were not born
for work; that some grew like the flowers in the gardens, for the sake
of their fragrance; while others were the wheat of the fields that is
ground up and used for food.
Martine, meantime, cherished another project; it was to urge the doctor
to resume his practise. At last she mentioned it to Clotilde, who at
once pointed out to her the difficulty, the impossibility almost, of
such an attempt. She and Pascal had been talking about his doing so
only the day before. He, too, was anxious, and had thought of work as
the only chance of salvation. The idea of opening an office again was
naturally the first that had presented itself to him. But he had been
for so long a time the physician of the poor! How could he venture now
to ask payment when it was so many years since he had left off doing
so? Besides, was it not too late, at his age, to recommence a career?
not to speak of the absurd rumors that had been circulating about him,
the name which they had given him of a crack-brained genius. He would
not find a single patient now, it would be a useless cruelty to force
him to make an attempt which would assuredly result only in a lacerated
heart and empty hands. Clotilde, on the contrary, had used all her
influence to turn him from the idea. Martine comprehended the
reasonableness of these objections, and she too declared that he must
be prevented from running the risk of so great a chagrin. But while she
was speaking a new idea occurred to her, as she suddenly remembered an
old register, which she had met with in a press, and in which she had
in former times entered the doctor’s visits. For a long time it was she
who had kept the accounts. There were so many patients who had never
paid that a list of them filled three of the large pages of the
register. Why, then, now that they had fallen into misfortune, should
they not ask from these people the money which they justly owed? It
might be done without saying anything to monsieur, who had never been
willing to appeal to the law. And this time Clotilde approved of her
idea. It was a perfect conspiracy. Clotilde consulted the register, and
made out the bills, and the servant presented them. But nowhere did she
receive a sou; they told her at every door that they would look over
the account; that they would stop in and see the doctor himself. Ten
days passed, no one came, and there were now only six francs in the
house, barely enough to live upon for two or three days longer.
Martine, when she returned with empty hands on the following day from a
new application to an old patient, took Clotilde aside and told her
that she had just been talking with Mme. Félicité at the corner of the
Rue de la Banne. The latter had undoubtedly been watching for her. She
had not again set foot in La Souleiade. Not even the misfortune which
had befallen her son—the sudden loss of his money, of which the whole
town was talking—had brought her to him; she still continued stern and
indignant. But she waited in trembling excitement, she maintained her
attitude as an offended mother only in the certainty that she would at
last have Pascal at her feet, shrewdly calculating that he would sooner
or later be compelled to appeal to her for assistance. When he had not
a sou left, when he knocked at her door, then she would dictate her
terms; he should marry Clotilde, or, better still, she would demand the
departure of the latter. But the days passed, and he did not come. And
this was why she had stopped Martine, assuming a pitying air, asking
what news there was, and seeming to be surprised that they had not had
recourse to her purse, while giving it to be understood that her
dignity forbade her to take the first step.
“You should speak to monsieur, and persuade him,” ended the servant.
And indeed, why should he not appeal to his mother? That would be
entirely natural.
“Oh! never would I undertake such a commission,” cried Clotilde.
“Master would be angry, and with reason. I truly believe he would die
of starvation before he would eat grandmother’s bread.”
But on the evening of the second day after this, at dinner, as Martine
was putting on the table a piece of boiled beef left over from the day
before, she gave them notice.
“I have no more money, monsieur, and to-morrow there will be only
potatoes, without oil or butter. It is three weeks now that you have
had only water to drink; now you will have to do without meat.”
They were still cheerful, they could still jest.
“Have you salt, my good girl?”
“Oh, that; yes, monsieur, there is still a little left.”
“Well, potatoes and salt are very good when one is hungry.”
That night, however, Pascal noticed that Clotilde was feverish; this
was the hour in which they exchanged confidences, and she ventured to
tell him of her anxiety on his account, on her own, on that of the
whole house. What was going to become of them when all their resources
should be exhausted? For a moment she thought of speaking to him of his
mother. But she was afraid, and she contented herself with confessing
to him what she and Martine had done—the old register examined, the
bills made out and sent, the money asked everywhere in vain. In other
circumstances he would have been greatly annoyed and very angry at this
confession; offended that they should have acted without his knowledge,
and contrary to the attitude he had maintained during his whole
professional life. He remained for a long tine silent, strongly
agitated, and this would have sufficed to prove how great must be his
secret anguish at times, under his apparent indifference to poverty.
Then he forgave Clotilde, clasping her wildly to his breast, and
finally he said that she had done right, that they could not continue
to live much longer as they were living, in a destitution which
increased every day. Then they fell into silence, each trying to think
of a means of procuring the money necessary for their daily wants, each
suffering keenly; she, desperate at the thought of the tortures that
awaited him; he unable to accustom himself to the idea of seeing her
wanting bread. Was their happiness forever ended, then? Was poverty
going to blight their spring with its chill breath?
At breakfast, on the following day, they ate only fruit. The doctor was
very silent during the morning, a prey to a visible struggle. And it
was not until three o’clock that he took a resolution.
“Come, we must stir ourselves,” he said to his companion. “I do not
wish you to fast this evening again; so put on your hat, we will go out
together.”
She looked at him, waiting for an explanation.
“Yes, since they owe us money, and have refused to give it to you, I
will see whether they will also refuse to give it to me.”
His hands trembled; the thought of demanding payment in this way, after
so many years, evidently made him suffer terribly; but he forced a
smile, he affected to be very brave. And she, who knew from the
trembling of his voice the extent of his sacrifice, had tears in her
eyes.
“No, no, master; don’t go if it makes you suffer so much. Martine can
go again.”
But the servant, who was present, approved highly of monsieur’s
intention.
“And why should not monsieur go? There’s no shame in asking what is
owed to one, is there? Every one should have his own; for my part, I
think it quite right that monsieur should show at last that he is a
man.”
Then, as before, in their hours of happiness, old King David, as Pascal
jestingly called himself, left the house, leaning on Abishag’s arm.
Neither of them was yet in rags; he still wore his tightly buttoned
overcoat; she had on her pretty linen gown with red spots, but
doubtless the consciousness of their poverty lowered them in their own
estimation, making them feel that they were now only two poor people
who occupied a very insignificant place in the world, for they walked
along by the houses, shunning observation. The sunny streets were
almost deserted. A few curious glances embarrassed them. They did not
hasten their steps, however; only their hearts were oppressed at the
thought of the visits they were about to make.
Pascal resolved to begin with an old magistrate whom he had treated for
an affection of the liver. He entered the house, leaving Clotilde
sitting on the bench in the Cours Sauvaire. But he was greatly relieved
when the magistrate, anticipating his demand, told him that he did not
receive his rents until October, and that he would pay him then. At the
house of an old lady of seventy, a paralytic, the rebuff was of a
different kind. She was offended because her account had been sent to
her through a servant who had been impolite; so that he hastened to
offer her his excuses, giving her all the time she desired. Then he
climbed up three flights of stairs to the apartment of a clerk in the
tax collector’s office, whom he found still ill, and so poor that he
did not even venture to make his demand. Then followed a mercer, a
lawyer’s wife, an oil merchant, a baker—all well-to-do people; and all
turned him away, some with excuses, others by denying him admittance; a
few even pretended not to know what he meant. There remained the
Marquise de Valqueyras, the sole representative of a very ancient
family, a widow with a girl of ten, who was very rich, and whose
avarice was notorious. He had left her for the last, for he was greatly
afraid of her. Finally he knocked at the door of her ancient mansion,
at the foot of the Cours Sauvaire, a massive structure of the time of
Mazarin. He remained so long in the house that Clotilde, who was
walking under the trees, at last became uneasy.
When he finally made his appearance, at the end of a full half hour,
she said jestingly, greatly relieved:
“Why, what was the matter? Had she no money?”
But here, too, he had been unsuccessful; she complained that her
tenants did not pay her.
“Imagine,” he continued, in explanation of his long absence, “the
little girl is ill. I am afraid that it is the beginning of a gastric
fever. So she wished me to see the child, and I examined her.”
A smile which she could not suppress came to Clotilde’s lips.
“And you prescribed for her?”
“Of course; could I do otherwise?”
She took his arm again, deeply affected, and he felt her press it
against her heart. For a time they walked on aimlessly. It was all
over; they had knocked at every debtor’s door, and nothing now remained
for them to do but to return home with empty hands. But this Pascal
refused to do, determined that Clotilde should have something more than
the potatoes and water which awaited them. When they ascended the Cours
Sauvaire, they turned to the left, to the new town; drifting now
whither cruel fate led them.
“Listen,” said Pascal at last; “I have an idea. If I were to speak to
Ramond he would willingly lend us a thousand francs, which we could
return to him when our affairs are arranged.”
She did not answer at once. Ramond, whom she had rejected, who was now
married and settled in a house in the new town, in a fair way to become
the fashionable physician of the place, and to make a fortune! She
knew, indeed, that he had a magnanimous soul and a kind heart. If he
had not visited them again it had been undoubtedly through delicacy.
Whenever they chanced to meet, he saluted them with so admiring an air,
he seemed so pleased to see their happiness.
“Would that be disagreeable to you?” asked Pascal ingenuously. For his
part, he would have thrown open to the young physician his house, his
purse, and his heart.
“No, no,” she answered quickly. “There has never been anything between
us but affection and frankness. I think I gave him a great deal of
pain, but he has forgiven me. You are right; we have no other friend.
It is to Ramond that we must apply.”
Ill luck pursued them, however. Ramond was absent from home, attending
a consultation at Marseilles, and he would not be back until the
following evening. And it young Mme. Ramond, an old friend of
Clotilde’s, some three years her junior, who received them. She seemed
a little embarrassed, but she was very amiable, notwithstanding. But
the doctor, naturally, did not prefer his request, and contented
himself with saying, in explanation of his visit, that he had missed
Ramond. When they were in the street again, Pascal and Clotilde felt
themselves once more abandoned and alone. Where now should they turn?
What new effort should they make? And they walked on again aimlessly.
“I did not tell you, master,” Clotilde at last ventured to murmur, “but
it seems that Martine met grandmother the other day. Yes, grandmother
has been uneasy about us. She asked Martine why we did not go to her,
if we were in want. And see, here is her house.”
They were in fact, in the Rue de la Banne. They could see the corner of
the Place de la Sous-Préfecture. But he at once silenced her.
“Never, do you hear! Nor shall you go either. You say that because it
grieves you to see me in this poverty. My heart, too, is heavy, to
think that you also are in want, that you also suffer. But it is better
to suffer than to do a thing that would leave one an eternal remorse. I
will not. I cannot.”
They emerged from the Rue de la Banne, and entered the old quarter.
“I would a thousand times rather apply to a stranger. Perhaps we still
have friends, even if they are only among the poor.”
And resolved to beg, David continued his walk, leaning on the arm of
Abishag; the old mendicant king went from door to door, leaning on the
shoulder of the loving subject whose youth was now his only support. It
was almost six o’clock; the heat had abated; the narrow streets were
filling with people; and in this populous quarter where they were
loved, they were everywhere greeted with smiles. Something of pity was
mingled with the admiration they awakened, for every one knew of their
ruin. But they seemed of a nobler beauty than before, he all white, she
all blond, pressing close to each other in their misfortune. They
seemed more united, more one with each other than ever; holding their
heads erect, proud of their glorious love, though touched by
misfortune; he shaken, while she, with a courageous heart, sustained
him. And in spite of the poverty that had so suddenly overtaken them
they walked without shame, very poor and very great, with the sorrowful
smile under which they concealed the desolation of their souls. Workmen
in dirty blouses passed them by, who had more money in their pockets
than they. No one ventured to offer them the sou which is not refused
to those who are hungry. At the Rue Canoquin they stopped at the house
of Gulraude. She had died the week before. Two other attempts which
they made failed. They were reduced now to consider where they could
borrow ten francs. They had been walking about the town for three
hours, but they could not resolve to go home empty-handed.
Ah, this Plassans, with its Cours Sauvaire, its Rue de Rome, and its
Rue de la Banne, dividing it into three quarters; this Plassans; with
its windows always closed, this sun-baked town, dead in appearance, but
which concealed under this sleeping surface a whole nocturnal life of
the clubhouse and the gaming table. They walked through it three times
more with slackened pace, on this clear, calm close of a glowing August
day. In the yard of the coach office a few old stage-coaches, which
still plied between the town and the mountain villages, were standing
unharnessed; and under the thick shade of the plane trees at the doors
of the cafes, the customers, who were to be seen from seven o’clock in
the morning, looked after them smiling. In the new town, too, the
servants came and stood at the doors of the wealthy houses; they met
with less sympathy here than in the deserted streets of the Quartier
St. Marc, whose antique houses maintained a friendly silence. They
returned to the heart of the old quarter where they were most liked;
they went as far as St. Saturnin, the cathedral, whose apse was shaded
by the garden of the chapter, a sweet and peaceful solitude, from which
a beggar drove them by himself asking an alms from them. They were
building rapidly in the neighborhood of the railway station; a new
quarter was growing up there, and they bent their steps in that
direction. Then they returned a last time to the Place de la
Sous-Préfecture, with a sudden reawakening of hope, thinking that they
might meet some one who would offer them money. But they were followed
only by the indulgent smile of the town, at seeing them so united and
so beautiful. Only one woman had tears in her eyes, foreseeing,
perhaps, the sufferings that awaited them. The stones of the Viorne,
the little sharp paving stones, wounded their feet. And they had at
last to return to La Souleiade, without having succeeded in obtaining
anything, the old mendicant king and his submissive subject; Abishag,
in the flower of her youth, leading back David, old and despoiled of
his wealth, and weary from having walked the streets in vain.
It was eight o’clock, and Martine, who was waiting for them,
comprehended that she would have no cooking to do this evening. She
pretended that she had dined, and as she looked ill Pascal sent her at
once to bed.
“We do not need you,” said Clotilde. “As the potatoes are on the fire
we can take them up very well ourselves.”
The servant, who was feverish and out of humor, yielded. She muttered
some indistinct words—when people had eaten up everything what was the
use of sitting down to table? Then, before shutting herself into her
room, she added:
“Monsieur, there is no more hay for Bonhomme. I thought he was looking
badly a little while ago; monsieur ought to go and see him.”
Pascal and Clotilde, filled with uneasiness, went to the stable. The
old horse was, in fact, lying on the straw in the somnolence of
expiring old age. They had not taken him out for six months past, for
his legs, stiff with rheumatism, refused to support him, and he had
become completely blind. No one could understand why the doctor kept
the old beast. Even Martine had at last said that he ought to be
slaughtered, if only through pity. But Pascal and Clotilde cried out at
this, as much excited as if it had been proposed to them to put an end
to some aged relative who was not dying fast enough. No, no, he had
served them for more than a quarter of a century; he should die
comfortably with them, like the worthy fellow he had always been. And
to-night the doctor did not scorn to examine him, as if he had never
attended any other patients than animals. He lifted up his hoofs,
looked at his gums, and listened to the beating of his heart.
“No, there is nothing the matter with him,” he said at last. “It is
simply old age. Ah, my poor old fellow, I think, indeed, we shall never
again travel the roads together.”
The idea that there was no more hay distressed Clotilde. But Pascal
reassured her—an animal of that age, that no longer moved about, needed
so little. She stooped down and took a few handfuls of grass from a
heap which the servant had left there, and both were rejoiced when
Bonhomme deigned, solely and simply through friendship, as it seemed,
to eat the grass out of her hand.
“Oh,” she said, laughing, “so you still have an appetite! You cannot be
very sick, then; you must not try to work upon our feelings. Good
night, and sleep well.”
And they left him to his slumbers after having each given him, as
usual, a hearty kiss on either side of his nose.
Night fell, and an idea occurred to them, in order not to remain
downstairs in the empty house—to close up everything and eat their
dinner upstairs. Clotilde quickly took up the dish of potatoes, the
salt-cellar, and a fine decanter of water; while Pascal took charge of
a basket of grapes, the first which they had yet gathered from an early
vine at the foot of the terrace. They closed the door, and laid the
cloth on a little table, putting the potatoes in the middle between the
salt-cellar and the decanter, and the basket of grapes on a chair
beside them. And it was a wonderful feast, which reminded them of the
delicious breakfast they had made on the morning on which Martine had
obstinately shut herself up in her room, and refused to answer them.
They experienced the same delight as then at being alone, at waiting
upon themselves, at eating from the same plate, sitting close beside
each other. This evening, which they had anticipated with so much
dread, had in store for them the most delightful hours of their
existence. As soon as they found themselves at home in the large
friendly room, as far removed from the town which they had just been
scouring as if they had been a hundred leagues away from it, all
uneasiness and all sadness vanished—even to the recollection of the
wretched afternoon wasted in useless wanderings. They were once more
indifferent to all that was not their affection; they no longer
remembered that they had lost their fortune; that they might have to
hunt up a friend on the morrow in order to be able to dine in the
evening. Why torture themselves with fears of coming want, when all
they required to enjoy the greatest possible happiness was to be
together?
But Pascal felt a sudden terror.
“My God! and we dreaded this evening so greatly! Is it wise to be happy
in this way? Who knows what to-morrow may have in store for us?”
But she put her little hand over his mouth; she desired that he should
have one more evening of perfect happiness.
“No, no; to-morrow we shall love each other as we love each other
to-day. Love me with all your strength, as I love you.”
And never had they eaten with more relish. She displayed the appetite
of a healthy young girl with a good digestion; she ate the potatoes
with a hearty appetite, laughing, thinking them delicious, better than
the most vaunted delicacies. He, too, recovered the appetite of his
youthful days. They drank with delight deep draughts of pure water.
Then the grapes for dessert filled them with admiration; these grapes
so fresh, this blood of the earth which the sun had touched with gold.
They ate to excess; they became drunk on water and fruit, and more than
all on gaiety. They did not remember ever before to have enjoyed such a
feast together; even the famous breakfast they had made, with its
luxuries of cutlets and bread and wine, had not given them this
intoxication, this joy in living, when to be together was happiness
enough, changing the china to dishes of gold, and the miserable food to
celestial fare such as not even the gods enjoyed.
It was now quite dark, but they did not light the lamp. Through the
wide open windows they could see the vast summer sky. The night breeze
entered, still warm and laden with a faint odor of lavender. The moon
had just risen above the horizon, large and round, flooding the room
with a silvery light, in which they saw each other as in a dream light
infinitely bright and sweet.