him excellent advice. However, as he still sportively tried to pinch
her arms, she seemed to grow vexed and declared that it was impossible
to talk to him seriously for a couple of minutes together. Ah! if she
were a man, she said, she would know how to mount high. But men were so
light-headed. 'Come now and tell me about your friends,' she continued,
seating herself on the edge of the table, while Rougon remained
standing in front of her.
Just then, however, Luigi, who had kept his eyes on them, violently
closed his paint-box and exclaimed: 'I'm going!'
At this Clorinde ran up to him, and brought him back, after promising
to resume her pose. Probably, however, her only motive in asking him
to remain was that she felt afraid of being left alone with Rougon,
for when Luigi had assented to her request, she began to make further
excuses for the purpose of gaining time. 'Just let me get something to
eat,' she said; 'I am dreadfully hungry. Just a couple of mouthfuls.'
And then opening the door, she called out: 'Antonia! Antonia!'
She gave an order in Italian, and had just seated herself again on the
edge of the table when Antonia came into the room, holding on each of
her outspread hands, a slice of bread and butter. She held her hands
out to Clorinde as though they had been plates, breaking into a giggle
as she did so, a laugh which made her mouth look like a red gash across
her dusky face. Then she went off, wiping her hands on her skirt.
Clorinde, however, called her back and told her to get a glass of water.
'Will you have some?' she said to Rougon, 'I'm very fond of bread and
butter. Sometimes I put sugar on it; but it doesn't always do to be so
extravagant.'
She was certainly not given to extravagance, and Rougon remembered that
he had found her one morning breakfasting off a fragment of cold omelet
which had been left over from the previous day. He rather suspected her
of avarice, which is an Italian vice.
'Three minutes, eh, Luigi?' she said, as she began her first slice
of bread and butter. Then turning once more to Rougon, who was still
standing in front of her, she exclaimed: 'Now there's Monsieur Kahn,
for instance: tell me about him. How did he get to be a deputy?'
Rougon yielded to this fresh request, hoping that he would somehow be
able to worm some information out of the girl. He knew that she was
very curious about everyone, ever on the alert to gather information
concerning the intrigues in the midst of which her life was passed.
She always seemed particularly anxious to know the origin of any great
fortune.
'Oh!' he replied, with a laugh, 'Kahn was born a deputy. He cut his
teeth on the benches of the Chamber. As early as Louis Philippe's time
he sat in the Right centre and supported the constitutional monarchy
with youthful enthusiasm. After 1848 he went over to the Left centre,
still keeping very enthusiastic. He made a confession of republican
principles in magnificent style. Now, however, he has gone back to
the Right centre and is a passionate supporter of the Empire. As for
the rest, he's the son of a Jewish banker at Bordeaux. He has some
blast furnaces at Bressuire, has made a specialty of financial and
industrial questions, lives in a quiet way until he comes into the
large fortune which he will one day secure, and was promoted to the
rank of officer in the Legion of Honour on the fifteenth of last
August----'
Rougon hesitated for a moment and seemed to be thinking. 'No,' he
resumed, 'I don't think I have omitted anything. He has no children.'
'What! is he married?' exclaimed Clorinde, indicating by a gesture
that she took no further interest in M. Kahn. He was an impostor: he
had never let them know that he had a wife. Rougon thereupon explained
to her that Madame Kahn led a very retired life in Paris; and without
waiting to be questioned further, he continued: 'Would you like to hear
Béjuin's biography?'
'No, no,' replied the girl.
All the same, however, he went on with it. 'He comes from the
Polytechnical School. He has written pamphlets which nobody has read.
He is head of the Saint-Florent cut-glass works, about seven or eight
miles from Bourges. It was the prefect of the Cher who discovered
him----'
'Oh, give over!' cried Clorinde.
'He is a very worthy fellow, votes straight, never speaks, is very
patient and waits contentedly till you think of him, but he is always
on the spot to take care that you sha'n't forget him. I got him named
chevalier----'
Thereupon Clorinde impatiently placed her hand over Rougon's mouth, and
exclaimed: 'Oh, he is married too! He isn't a bit interesting. I saw
his wife at your house. She's a perfect bundle! She invited me to visit
the works at Bourges.'
She now swallowed the last mouthful of her first slice of bread and
butter, and then gulped down some water. 'And Monsieur Du Poizat?' she
asked, after a pause.
'Du Poizat has been a sub-prefect,' was all that Rougon replied.
She glanced at him, surprised by the brevity of this account. 'I know
that,' she said. 'What else?'
'Well, by-and-bye he will be a prefect, and then he will be decorated.'
She saw that he did not want to say anything further about Du Poizat;
whose name, moreover, she herself had merely mentioned at random.
However, she now began to mention other men, counting their names on
her fingers. Touching her thumb, she began: 'Monsieur d'Escorailles;
he's flippant and in love with every woman--Monsieur La Rouquette; he's
no good, I know him only too well--Monsieur de Combelot; he's another
married man----'
Then, as she stopped short at the ring-finger, unable to think of
another name, Rougon, keeping his eyes on her, remarked: 'You are
forgetting Delestang.'
'So I am!' she exclaimed. 'Tell me about him!'
'He's a handsome fellow,' said Rougon, still watching her attentively.
'He is very rich, and I have always prophesied a great future for him.'
He went on in this strain, exaggerating his praises and doubling his
figures. The model-farm of La Chamade, said he, was worth a couple
of million francs. Delestang would certainly be a minister some day.
Clorinde, however, curled her lips disdainfully. 'He is a big booby,'
she said at last.
'What?' cried Rougon with a subtle smile. He seemed quite charmed by
her remark.
But with one of those sudden transitions which were habitual with her,
she asked him a fresh question, keenly scrutinising him in her turn:
'You must know Monsieur de Marsy very well?'
'Oh yes, we know each other,' he replied unconcernedly, amused that the
girl should have asked him such a question. Then he became serious,
and showed himself very dignified and impartial. 'Marsy is a man of
extraordinary intelligence,' he continued. 'I am honoured by having
such a man for my enemy. He has filled every position. At twenty-eight
years of age, he was a colonel. Later on, he was at the head of a
great business. And since then, he has successively occupied himself
with agriculture, finance and commerce. I hear, too, that he paints
portraits and writes novels.'
Clorinde had grown thoughtful, and was forgetting her bread and butter.
'I was talking to him the other day,' she said in a low tone. 'He's
perfect--a genuine queen's son.'
'In my estimation,' continued Rougon, 'it is his wit that spoils
him. My idea of ability is quite different. I have heard him making
puns under the gravest circumstances. Well, anyhow, he has been very
successful, and is as much the sovereign as the Emperor himself. All
these natural children[3] are lucky fellows. However, his greatest
characteristic is his grip of iron; he has firm and resolute hands,
though they are light and slender.'
Clorinde unconsciously let her eyes wander to Rougon's hands, so large
and powerful. He noticed it, and with a smile continued: 'Ah, mine are
mere paws, aren't they? That's why Marsy and I have never been able to
get on well together. He gallantly sabres his foes without soiling his
white gloves, while I knock mine down.'
Thereupon he clenched his heavy hairy fists and shook them, seemingly
proud of their enormous size. Clorinde took up her second slice of
bread and butter and dug her teeth into it, still absorbed in thought.
At length she raised her eyes to Rougon's face. 'And now about
yourself?' she asked.
'Ah, you want to hear my history, do you?' said he. 'Well, it's very
easily told. My grandfather sold vegetables. I myself, till I was
thirty-eight years of age, kicked up my heels as a country lawyer in
the depths of the provinces. Yesterday I was unknown, for I haven't,
like our friend Kahn, helped to back up every Government in turn, and
I haven't come, like Béjuin, from the Polytechnical School. I can't
boast of little Escorailles' fine name or poor Combelot's handsome
face. I haven't even as good family connections as La Rouquette, who
is indebted for his seat in the Chamber to his sister, the widow of
General de Llorentz and now a lady-in-waiting. My father did not leave
me five million francs gained in the wine trade, as Delestang's left
him. I wasn't born on the steps of a throne, like Count de Marsy was,
nor have I grown up tied to the apron-strings of a clever woman, under
the favour of Talleyrand. No, I'm a self-made man; I've only my own
hands----'
Then he clapped his hands together, laughing loudly, and turning what
he had said into a joke. Finally he braced himself to his full height
and looked as though he were crushing stones with his clenched fists.
Clorinde gazed at him admiringly.
'I was nothing; I shall now be whatever I like,' he continued, as
though he were speaking to himself and had forgotten the presence of
others. 'I am a power. Those other fellows make me shrug my shoulders
when they prate of their devotion to the Empire! Do they really care
for it? Do they appreciate it? Wouldn't they conform to all kinds of
governments? For my own part, I have grown up with the Empire! I have
made it, and it has made me! I was named a Chevalier of the Legion
of Honour after the tenth of December, an officer in January 1851, a
commander on the fifteenth of August 1854, and a grand officer three
months ago. Under the Presidency, I was entrusted for a short time with
the portfolio of Public Works; later on the Emperor gave me a mission
to England, and since then I have entered the Council of State and the
Senate----'
'And, to-morrow, what will you enter?' Clorinde interrupted with a
laugh, by which she tried to conceal her ardent curiosity.
He stopped short and looked at her. 'You are very inquisitive,
Mademoiselle Machiavelli,' he said.
Then Clorinde began to swing her legs more briskly, and there was an
interval of silence. Rougon, seeing her absorbed in a fresh reverie,
thought that a favourable moment had come for extorting a confession
from her. 'Women----' he began.
But in a low tone she interrupted him, smiling at her own thoughts,
with a vague expression in her eyes: 'Oh, women are quite different!'
This was all the confession she made. She finished her bread and butter
and drained her glass of water. Then she leapt to her feet on the
table, with a spring that testified to her adroitness as a horsewoman.
'Now, Luigi!' she cried.
For the last few minutes the artist, who had left his seat, had been
impatiently gnawing his moustache while irritably walking up and down
in front of Rougon and Clorinde. With a sigh, he now sat down again and
took up his palette. The three minutes' grace which Clorinde had asked
for had expanded into a quarter of an hour. Now, however, she was again
standing on the table, still enveloped in her black lace. When she had
set herself in the proper attitude, she uncovered herself with a light
movement of the hand, and became a marble statue once more.
Fewer carriages were now rolling along the Champs Élysées, over which
the declining sun cast a stream of hazy light, enveloping the trees in
a ruddy haze that might almost have been taken for a coating of dust
stirred up by the passing vehicles. Clorinde's shoulders gleamed as
with sheeny gold in the light that fell through the lofty windows. The
sky gradually became greyer.
'Is Monsieur de Marsy's intended marriage with the Wallachian princess
settled yet?' asked the girl.
'Yes, I think so,' Rougon replied. 'She is very rich, and Marsy is
always short of money. And they say, too, that he is madly in love with
her.'
A spell of silence followed. Rougon stayed on, perfectly at his
ease, without any further thought of going away. He was absorbed in
meditation, and began to pace the room again. That Clorinde, he said to
himself, was certainly a remarkably fascinating creature. He thought
of her as though he had left her some time ago; and, as he walked up
and down, with his eyes turned to the floor, his mind dwelt on dimly
formulated, but very alluring thoughts, from which he derived a tender
pleasure. He seemed, moreover, to be breathing some strangely perfumed
atmosphere, and would have liked to throw himself upon one of the
couches and drop off to sleep amidst that odorous air.
A sound of words suddenly recalled him to himself. A tall old man,
whose entrance he had not observed, was kissing Clorinde on the brow,
while the girl smilingly stooped over the edge of the table.
'Good-morning, my dear,' said the old gentleman. 'How pretty you look!
You are exhibiting your charms, I see.' Then he gave a little snigger,
and as Clorinde in confusion picked up her lace wrapper, he quickly
added: 'No, no! You are very nice as you are! You needn't be afraid of
us.'
Then he turned towards Rougon, whom he addressed as 'dear colleague,'
as he shook his hand. 'I dandled her many a time on my knees, when she
was a little thing,' he added. 'Ah! what a dazzling creature she is
now!'
The new-comer was M. de Plouguern. He was seventy years of age. A
representative of Finistère in the Chamber during the reign of Louis
Philippe, he had been one of those Legitimist deputies who made the
pilgrimage to Belgrave Square,[4] and he had resigned in consequence of
the vote of censure then passed upon himself and his companions. Later
on, after the Revolution of February 1848, he had manifested a sudden
affection for the Republic, which he vigorously applauded from the
benches of the Constituent Assembly. Now that the Emperor had granted
him the well-earned refuge of the Senate, he was a Bonapartist. But he
knew how to be a Bonapartist and a man of high birth and breeding at
the same time. With all his great humility he occasionally indulged
in a spice of opposition. Ingratitude amused him, and, though he was
a sceptic to the backbone, he defended religion and family-life. He
thought that he owed that much to his name, one of the most illustrious
in Brittany. Accordingly every now and then he found the Empire
immoral, and said so openly. He himself had lived a life of dissolute
intrigue and elaborate pleasure-seeking, and stories were told even of
his old age which set young men dreaming. It was during a journey in
Italy that he had first met Countess Balbi, whose lover he had remained
for nearly thirty years. After separations, which lasted sometimes for
years, they would come together for a short time in some town where
they happened to meet. According to some, Clorinde was his daughter;
however, since the girl had grown up and had become a plump and pretty
young woman, he asserted, while gazing at her with his still glistening
eyes, that he had known her father well in former days. At the same
time he treated her with considerable freedom as being an old friend.
This tall, withered, scraggy old Plouguern bore some resemblance to
Voltaire; and the likeness was the source of much secret pleasure to
him.
'You don't look at my portrait, godfather,' Clorinde said to him all at
once.
She called him godfather by reason of their intimacy. The old man
stepped behind Luigi, and screwed up his eyes with the air of a
connoisseur. 'Splendid!' he exclaimed.
Rougon also came up, and Clorinde herself jumped off the table to
get a better view. All three of them were delighted. The picture was
excellent, they said. The artist had already covered the entire canvas
with a thin coating of pink and white and yellow, as pale as though
it were a mere water-colour wash. The face was wreathed into a pretty
dollish smile, the lips were curved into a bow, and the eyebrows
symmetrically arched, while the cheeks glowed with soft vermilion. It
was a Diana, fit for the lid of some box of sweetmeats.
'Oh, just look at that little freckle close to the eye!' cried
Clorinde, clapping her hands in admiration: 'Luigi forgets nothing!'
Rougon, whom pictures generally wearied, was charmed. Just then he
appreciated art, and in a tone of earnest conviction he pronounced this
judgment: 'It is admirably drawn.'
'And the colouring is excellent,' added M. de Plouguern. 'Those
shoulders look like real flesh. And what arms! But the dear child has
really got the most wonderful arms! I admire that full roundness below
the bend of the arm immensely; it is perfect.' Then, turning to the
artist, he added: 'Pray accept my compliments, Monsieur Pozzo. I have
already seen a picture of a woman bathing by you. But this portrait
will certainly excel it. Why don't you exhibit? I knew a diplomatist
who played marvellously well upon the violin, and yet it didn't prevent
him from attaining great success in his profession.'
Luigi bowed, feeling highly flattered. The daylight was now fast
waning, and so, saying that he wished to finish an ear, he begged
Clorinde to resume her position for another ten minutes. Meantime, M.
de Plouguern and Rougon went on discussing art. The latter confessed
that his special studies had prevented him from following the artistic
movement of recent years, but he expressed great admiration for fine
productions. He went on to say that he was not much affected by colour,
but preferred good drawing--drawing which was capable of elevating
the soul and inspiring it with great thoughts. M. de Plouguern, on
his side, only cared about the old masters. He had visited all the
galleries in Europe, and could not understand, said he, how the moderns
had the hardihood to go on painting. All the same, he confessed that
only the previous month he had had a little room of his decorated by an
artist who was quite unknown, but who certainly possessed great genius.
'He has painted me some little cupids and flowers and foliage with
extraordinary skill. You might positively think you could pluck the
flowers. And there are some insects on them, butterflies, cockchafers,
and flies, which you could almost swear were alive. It is very amusing.
I like amusing pictures.'
'Art should not weary one,' retorted Rougon.
Just at this moment, as they were slowly pacing the room side by side,
one of M. de Plouguern's boot-heels crushed something which gave out a
sharp sound.
'Hallo! What's that?' he cried.
Then he picked up a chaplet, which had slipped off an arm-chair into
which Clorinde had doubtless emptied her pockets. One of the glass
beads near the cross had been shivered to atoms, and an arm of the
cross itself, a very small silver one, was bent and flattened. The old
man dangled the chaplet in his hand, and said with a slight snigger:
'My dear, why do you leave these playthings of yours lying about?'
Clorinde, however, had turned quite crimson. She sprang off the table,
with swollen lips, and tears of anger welling into her eyes, and, as
she rapidly covered up her shoulders, she stammered: 'Oh, the wretch!
the wretch! he has broken my chaplet!'
She snatched it from him, and then burst into sobs like a child.
'There! there!' said M. de Plouguern, still laughing. 'Just look at
my little devotee! The other day she nearly tore my eyes out because
I noticed a branch of palm over her bed and asked her what she used
that little besom for. There now, don't cry, you great goose! I haven't
broken your Divinity.'
'Yes, yes,' she cried, 'you have injured it.' With trembling hands she
removed the fragments of the bead, and then, with a fresh outburst of
sobs, she tried to put the cross right again. She wiped it with her
finger tips, as though she saw drops of blood oozing through the metal.
'It was the Pope who gave me this,' she sobbed, 'the first time I went
with mother to see him. He knows me very well, and he calls me his
"fair apostle," because I told him one day that I should be glad to die
for him. It was a chaplet that brought me good luck. But now it has
lost its virtue, and it will attract the devil----'
'Here, give it to me!' interrupted M. de Plouguern, 'you will only
break your nails by trying to straighten it. Silver is hard, my dear.'
He took the chaplet from her and tried to straighten the arm of the
cross, using great care so as not to break it. Clorinde had ceased
crying, and watched him attentively. Rougon, too, smilingly craned
his head forward. He was deplorably irreligious; so much so, indeed,
that the girl had twice all but broken with him on account of his
ill-considered pleasantries.
'The deuce!' muttered M. de Plouguern, 'this divinity of yours isn't
very tender! I'm afraid of snapping it in two, and then you would have
to get another one.'
He made a fresh attempt and this time the arm of the cross broke off.
'Oh! so much the worse!' he cried; 'it is broken this time.'
At this Rougon began to laugh again. But Clorinde, with angry eyes and
convulsed face, sprang back glaring at them, and then fell upon them
furiously with her fists, as though she wished to drive them out of the
room. She railed at them in Italian, quite beside herself.
'She's giving it us! she's giving it us!' cried M. de Plouguern gaily.
'Such are the fruits of superstition,' muttered Rougon between his
teeth.
The old man ceased his jesting and suddenly assumed a grave expression;
and then as Rougon continued to declaim in conventional phraseology
against the detestable influence of the priesthood, the shocking
training of Catholic women, and the degradation of priest-ridden Italy,
the other drily exclaimed: 'Religion makes the greatness of states.'
'When it doesn't eat them away like an ulcer,' replied Rougon. 'It's
matter of history. If the Emperor doesn't keep the Bishops in check, he
will soon have them all on his back.'
Thereupon M. de Plouguern in his turn grew angry. He defended Rome,
and talked of what had been the convictions of his whole life. Without
religion, he protested, men would return to the condition of brutes.
Then he went on to plead the great cause of family ties. The times were
becoming full of abomination. Never before had vice been so impudently
paraded; never before had impiety worked such woe in men's consciences.
'Don't talk to me of your Empire!' he ended by crying; 'it is the
bastard son of the Revolution. Oh! we are quite aware that your Empire
dreams of humiliating the Church. But we are wide awake, and we shall
not allow ourselves to be slaughtered like mere sheep. Just try to
ventilate those doctrines of yours in the Senate, my dear Monsieur
Rougon.'
'Oh, don't talk to him any more,' retorted Clorinde. 'If you push him
too far, he will spit on the crucifix. He is doomed.'
Rougon bowed, quite overcome by this onset. Then there was a fresh
pause, while the girl searched on the floor for the arm that had fallen
from the cross. When she had found it, she carefully wrapt it with the
chaplet in a piece of newspaper. She was growing calmer.
'Ah now, my dear!' M. de Plouguern suddenly exclaimed, 'I haven't told
you why I came to see you. I have got a box at the Palais Royal for
this evening, and I'm going to take you and your mother with me.'
'Oh, you dear godfather!' cried Clorinde, turning quite rosy again with
pleasure. 'I'll send to have mother awakened.'
Then she gave the old man a kiss, by way of reward, she said; and
afterwards turning to Rougon with a smile, and offering her hand, she
said with the sweetest little pout: 'You don't bear me a grudge, do
you? Please don't make me angry again with your pagan talk. I lose my
head when anyone makes fun of religion: I should quarrel with my best
friends over it.'
Luigi had by this time pushed his easel into a corner, having lost all
hope of getting the ear finished that day. He took up his hat, and
tapped the girl on the shoulder to apprize her of his departure. She
accompanied him on to the landing, closing the door behind her as she
left the room. However, they took leave of one another very noisily,
for a slight scream of Clorinde's rang out, drowned in a burst of
smothered laughter. When she returned to the room, she said: 'I'll go
to dress now, unless my godfather would like to take me to the Palais
Royal as I am.'