Du Poizat, shaking hands with the others.
'What's the matter with you to-day?' asked the colonel, 'you seem very
fractious.'
But the sub-prefect quietly replied, as he went away: 'Well, you can
scarcely expect me to be in very high spirits. I saw in the _Moniteur_
this morning that that ass of a Campenon has been appointed to the
prefecture which was promised to me.'
The others exchanged glances. Du Poizat was quite right. They had no
share in the fête. They were all left out in the cold. Ever since the
birth of the prince, Rougon had promised them a shower of presents
for the day of the christening. M. Kahn was to have had his railway
grant; the colonel was to have had a commander's cross, and Madame
Correur was to have had the five or six tobacco-shops for which she
had asked. And now they were all huddled there in a corner of the
square, empty-handed. At this thought they cast such a distressful and
reproachful look at Rougon, that the latter shrugged his shoulders
furiously. And as his brougham at last drew up, he hastily pushed
Clorinde inside, got in himself, and closed the door with a bang, never
saying a word.
'There's Marsy under the porch,' muttered M. Kahn, dragging M. Béjuin
on one side. 'How arrogant the rascal looks! Don't show him your face;
it would only give him the opportunity of cutting us.'
Delestang had hastily got into his carriage in order to follow Rougon's
brougham. M. Bouchard, however, waited for his wife, and when the
church was empty he was surprised at not seeing her appear; however, he
went off with the colonel, who had grown equally tired of waiting for
his son Auguste. As for Madame Correur, she accepted the escort of a
lieutenant of dragoons, who came from her own part of France, and who
was to some extent indebted to her for his epaulets.
Meanwhile, inside the brougham, Clorinde was prattling enthusiastically
about the ceremony that had just taken place; while Rougon leaned
back with sleepy eyes and listened to her. She had seen the Easter
solemnities at Rome, she told him, but they were not finer than what
she had just beheld. And she added that, for her, religion lay in
a vision of heaven with God the Father seated on His throne like a
glittering sun amidst the glory of His encircling angels, a host of
lovely youths and maidens. But all at once she broke off to inquire:
'Are you going to the banquet which the city is giving to their
majesties to-night? It will be magnificent.'
She had got an invitation herself, and meant to wear a pink dress,
brocaded with forget-me-nots. M. de Plouguern was going to take her,
as her mother would not go out at night on account of the headaches to
which she was so subject. However, she suddenly changed her subject
again, asking abruptly: 'Who was that judge you were with just now?'
Rougon raised his head, and said all in a breath: 'Monsieur
Beulin-d'Orchère, fifty years of age, of a legal family, began as
public prosecutor's assessor at Montbrison, was afterwards public
prosecutor at Orleans, advocate-general at Rouen, a member of a
mixed commission in 1852, and then came to Paris as councillor at the
Appeal Court, of which he is now the president. Oh! I was forgetting;
he approved of the decree of the twenty-second of January, 1852,
confiscating the property of the Orleans family. There, are you
satisfied?'
Clorinde began to laugh. He was making fun of her, she said, just
because she asked for information; but there was nothing foolish--was
there?--in asking about people whom one was liable to meet. She did
not say a word about Mademoiselle Beulin-d'Orchère; but again began
to talk of the banquet at the Hôtel de Ville. The grand gallery would
be decorated with unheard-of magnificence, and a band would play
the whole time the guests were dining. Ah! France was truly a great
country! Nowhere, neither in England, nor in Germany, nor in Spain, nor
in Italy, had she seen such wonderful balls, such prodigious galas.
She had quite made up her mind now, she said, her face beaming with
admiration; she meant to be a Frenchwoman.
'Oh, look!' she cried; 'there are some soldiers there!'
The brougham, after rolling along the Rue de la Cité, had now been
stopped at the end of the Pont Notre Dame by a regiment which was
marching back to its quarters. It was one of the line. The soldiers,
all of them little fellows, were hastening on like sheep, their march
being somewhat irregular by reason of the trees planted along the
roadside. They had been keeping the line for the procession; their
faces were scorched by the hot afternoon sun; their feet were white
with dust; and their backs bent beneath the weight of their knapsacks
and rifles. And they had felt so bored amid the jostling of the crowd
that they still looked dazed and stupid.
'I adore the French army,' said Clorinde enthusiastically, as she leant
forward to get a better view.
Rougon roused himself, and in his turn looked out of the window. It was
the power of the Empire that was passing through the dust. A great many
carriages had now gathered together on the bridge, but the coachmen
respectfully waited for the soldiers to pass, and distinguished
personages in gala costumes smiled sympathisingly at the little fellows
who were so stupefied by their long day's work.
'Do you see those in the rear?' exclaimed Clorinde. 'There's a whole
row of them without a hair on their faces. How nice they look!'
Then, in her enthusiasm, she began to kiss her hands to the little
soldiers from the depths of the brougham. She lay back a little so that
she might not be seen. Rougon smiled in a paternal manner. He, too, had
just felt a thrill of pleasure, the first he had known during the whole
day.
'What's going on here?' he exclaimed, when the brougham was at last
able to turn the corner of the quay.
A considerable crowd had formed on the footway and in the road, and the
brougham had to stop again. A voice in the throng was heard saying:
'It's a drunken man who has insulted the soldiers. The police have just
taken him into custody.'
Then, as the crowd parted, Rougon caught sight of Gilquin, dead-drunk,
and held by a couple of policemen. His yellow duck clothes were torn,
and his naked flesh showed through the rents. But he still retained his
garrulous joviality and scarlet face. He addressed the policemen in the
most familiar fashion, calling them his little lambs. He told them that
he had been quietly spending the afternoon in a neighbouring café with
some very rich people, and referred them for inquiries to the Palais
Royal theatre, where M. and Madame Charbonnel, who had gone to see _Les
Dragées du Baptême_, would readily confirm his statement.
'Come, let me go, you jokers!' he cried, suddenly stiffening himself.
'Confound it all, the café's close at hand; come with me there, if you
don't believe me. The soldiers insulted me. There was a little scamp
who laughed at me, and I shut him up. But for me to insult the French
army! Never! Just you mention the name of Théodore to the Emperor and
hear what he says. Ah! you're a nice set, you are!'
The crowd roared with amusement, while the imperturbable policemen
slowly dragged Gilquin towards the Rue Saint Martin, where the red lamp
of a police-station could be seen. Rougon had hastily thrown himself
back in his brougham, but Gilquin, raising his head, caught sight
of him. Then, drunk though he was, he again became good-natured and
prudent, and casting a glance at Rougon, exclaimed, so that the latter
might hear him: 'Well, well, my friends: I might get up a scandal if I
liked, but I've too much self-respect. Ah, you wouldn't lay your hands
on Théodore in this way if he drove about with princesses as a citizen
of my acquaintance does. All the same, however, I've worked with great
people, and cleverly, too, though I don't want to boast about it,
and never asked for a big reward. But I know my own worth, and that
consoles me for other people's meanness. Ah, confound it, are friends
no longer friends, then?'
He spoke with growing emotion, his speech impeded by hiccoughs, while
Rougon quietly beckoned to a man wearing a closely buttoned coat, whom
he saw standing near his brougham, and, after whispering a few words
to him, gave him Gilquin's address, 17 Rue Virginie, Grenelle. And
thereupon the man--a detective--stepped up to the officers as though he
were about to help them with the drunkard who had begun to struggle.
However, the crowd was greatly surprised to see the policemen turn to
the left and bundle Gilquin into a cab, whose driver, after receiving
an order, drove away along the Quai de la Mégisserie. Gilquin, however,
thrust his huge unkempt head from the window, and, with a burst of
triumphant laughter, shouted: 'Long live the Republic!'
When the crowd had dispersed, the quays resumed their wonted
tranquillity. Paris, weary of enthusiasm, had gone off to dinner. The
three hundred thousand sight-seers, who had struggled and crowded
there, were now invading the restaurants by the water-side and those of
the district of the Temple. None but country cousins paced the deserted
pavements, quite knocked up and at a loss where to dine. Down below,
in the floating laundry the washerwomen were finishing their work with
vigorous blows. A last ray of sunlight still gilded the towers of Notre
Dame, which now rose quite silent above the houses already dark with
shadow. And through the slight mist ascending from the Seine, nothing
could be distinguished among the grey mass of buildings, on the Ile
Saint Louis, save the giant great-coat, that colossal advertisement
hanging seemingly from some nail on the horizon, and looking like the
garment of a Titan, whose body had been pulverised by the thunderbolts
of Jove.
V
PASSION AND MATRIMONY
One morning towards eleven o'clock, Clorinde called at Rougon's house
in the Rue Marbeuf. She was on her way back from the Bois, and a groom
held her horse at the door. She went straight into the garden, turned
to the left, and halted in front of the open window of the study in
which the great man sat at work.
'Ah! I've taken you by surprise!' she exclaimed.
Rougon quickly raised his head. The girl stood laughing in the warm
June sunshine. Her riding-habit of heavy blue cloth made her seem
taller. She was carrying its long train over her left arm, and its
tight-fitting corsage clung to her shoulders and breast and hips like
skin. She wore linen wristbands and collar, and a narrow necktie
of blue silk, while atop of her rolled-up hair a tall silk hat was
jauntily perched with a veil of bluish gauze powdered with the golden
dust of the sunlight.
'What, is it you?' cried Rougon, hastening to her. 'Pray come in!'
'No, no,' she answered; 'don't disturb yourself, I have only a word to
say to you. My mother will be expecting me back to lunch.'
This was the third time that she had come in this way to Rougon's house
in defiance of all propriety. She made a point, however, of remaining
in the garden; and upon the previous occasions, as upon this one,
she had come in her riding-habit, a costume which seemed to confer
masculine privileges upon her.
'I've come to beg,' she said. 'I want you to buy some lottery tickets.
We are getting up a lottery for the benefit of some poor girls.'
'Oh, indeed; well, come in,' repeated Rougon, 'you can tell me all
about it.'
She had kept her whip in her hand, a slight delicate whip with a little
silver handle. And on hearing him she again began to laugh while gently
tapping her skirt with her whip.
'Oh, I've told you all there is to tell,' said she. 'You must take some
tickets. That's all I came for. I've been looking for you for the last
three days without finding you, and the drawing takes place to-morrow.'
Then, as she took a little case out of her pocket, she inquired: 'How
many tickets would you like?'
'Not one, if you won't come in!' cried Rougon. And he continued,
playfully: 'We can't transact business at the window, you know, and I'm
not going to hand you money out as though you were some beggar-woman.'
'Oh, I don't object, as long as I get it.'
But Rougon remained firm. She looked at him for a moment in silence,
and then resumed: 'If I come in, will you promise to take ten tickets?
They are ten francs each.'
However, she did not make up her mind without some further hesitation,
and she even cast a hasty glance round the garden. There was a
gardener on his knees planting a bed of geraniums. Then she smiled
slightly and stepped towards the little flight of steps upon which the
folding-window of the study opened. Rougon held out his hand and drew
her into the middle of the room.
'Are you afraid that I shall eat you?' he asked her. 'You know very
well that I am the most submissive of your slaves. What are you
frightened of?'
'I! I'm not afraid of anything,' she replied again, tapping her skirts
with her whip, which she then laid upon a couch in order to fumble in
her little case once more. 'You'll take ten, won't you?' she asked.
'I will take twenty, if you wish it,' he replied; 'but do, please, sit
down and let us have a little chat. You surely don't want to be off at
once.'
'Well, then, it shall be a ticket a minute. If I stay a quarter of
an hour, you will have to take fifteen tickets, and if I stay twenty
minutes, you will have to take twenty tickets, and so on as long as I
stay. Is that agreed?'
They laughed merrily over this arrangement, and Clorinde thereupon
seated herself in an easy chair in the very embrasure of the window
which remained open. Rougon, on his side, resumed his seat at his table
in order to put her at her ease. Then they began to talk, taking the
house for their first subject. Clorinde glanced out of the window and
remarked that the garden was rather small, but very charming, with its
central lawn and clumps of evergreens. Then Rougon began to describe
the house to her. On the ground-floor, said he, were his study, a
large drawing-room, a small one, and a very handsome dining-room. On
the first-floor there were seven bedrooms, and as many on the second.
Although to some people the house might seem a very small one, it was
much too big for him, he declared. At the time when the Emperor had
made him a present of it he had been engaged to marry a widow, chosen
by his Majesty himself; but the lady had died, and now he intended to
remain a bachelor.
'Why?' asked Clorinde, looking him straight in the face.
'Oh! I've other things to do than to get married. When a man reaches my
age, he no longer thinks about a wife.'
'Don't be so affected,' replied Clorinde, with a shrug of her shoulders.
They had become intimate enough to talk very freely together. Clorinde
declared that she believed Rougon to be amorously inclined, but he
defended himself, and told her of his early times, of the years he had
spent in bare rooms, which never a woman entered. Still, she went on
questioning him about his lady-loves with childish curiosity, and he
again and again replied with a shrug of the shoulders.
'No! no wife for me!' he cried at last, though his eyes were glistening
at the sight of Clorinde's careless attitude.
A peculiar smile played on the girl's lips as she lay back in her
chair. There was an expression of soft languor on her face, and her
bosom gently heaved. When she replied, it was with an exaggerated
Italian accent, and in a sort of singing voice. 'Nonsense, my friend;
you adore us, I know. Will you bet me that you aren't married by this
time next year?'
She was really provoking, so certain did she seem to be of conquering
him. For some time past she had been calmly offering herself to Rougon.
She no longer attempted to disguise her snares and the clever way in
which she had worked upon him before laying siege to his desires. She
considered that he was now sufficiently overcome for her to bring the
matter to an issue. It was a real duel that was going on between them,
and although the conditions of the combat were not mentioned in actual
words, there were unmistakable confessions in their glances. When they
looked at each other they could not refrain from smiling. Clorinde had
set her eyes upon her goal and went straight towards it, with a haughty
boldness; while Rougon, infatuated though he was, resolved to play a
wily game in order to prove his superiority. Their pride was engaged
in the struggle quite as much as their passions were.
'With us in Italy,' resumed Clorinde in a low tone, 'love is the great
business of life. Young girls of twelve already have their lovers. For
myself, I have travelled about so much, that I've almost become a man.
But if you could only have seen mamma when she was young! She was so
lovely that people came from long distances to see her, but she seldom
if ever left her house. There was a count who stayed at Milan expressly
for six months without catching sight of her hair even. The fact is,
that Italian women are very different from French women, who are always
chattering and gadding about. An Italian woman remains with the man
she has chosen. But I have travelled so much, that I really don't know
whether I haven't lost that instinct or not; still I think that I could
love very strongly; ah, yes, with all my heart and soul.'
She had let her eyelids fall, and her face glowed as with a voluptuous
ecstasy. While she was speaking, Rougon had left his table as though
attracted by some force which he could not withstand, and his hands
were trembling. But when he got near to Clorinde, the girl opened her
eyes again and gave him a quiet glance. Then, as she looked at the
clock, she said with a smile: 'This makes ten tickets.'
'Ten tickets! what do you mean?' asked Rougon, quite confused.
When he had recovered his self-possession, she burst into a laugh. It
delighted her to bewitch him and intoxicate him in this way, and when
he opened his arms to clasp her, to elude him with a laugh. She seemed
in high glee. At this Rougon turned very pale, and cast a furious
glance at her, which only served to increase her merriment. 'Well, I
think I'd better be off now,' she said. 'You're not polite enough for
ladies' society. No, really, my mother will be expecting me.'
Rougon, however, had resumed his paternal manner, and told her that she
must spare him another five minutes. He had got tired of the work he
was doing when she came in, he said; it was a report to be presented
to the Senate on certain petitions. Then he began to talk to her about
the Empress, for whom she professed enthusiastic devotion. The Empress,
said he, had been at Biarritz for the last week. At this the girl again
leant back in her arm-chair and began to chatter. She knew Biarritz
very well; she had once spent a season there, before it had become such
a fashionable watering-place; and she very much regretted that she was
unable to revisit it while the Court was there. Then she went on to
describe a meeting of the Academy to which M. de Plouguern had taken
her on the previous day. An author had been admitted as a member, and
she made many jokes at the expense of his baldness. She had a horror of
books, she declared. Whenever she tried to read, she had to go off to
bed, suffering from terrible nervous attacks. She could not understand
what she read. Then, on Rougon telling her that the author received at
the Academy on the previous day was an enemy of the Emperor's, and that
his discourse had swarmed with abominable allusions, she seemed quite
astounded.
'Why, he looked such a nice man!' she exclaimed.
But Rougon also had begun to inveigh against books. A novel had just
been published, he said, which had aroused his utmost indignation. It
was a work of the most depraved kind, which, while claiming to portray
the exact truth, dragged the reader through all the wild fancies of an
hysterical woman.[8] The word hysterical seemed to please him, for he
repeated it three times; but when Clorinde asked him to explain what he
meant by it, he refused to answer, suddenly becoming very prudish.
'Everything may be said,' he continued, 'only there is a fitting
way of saying it. In administrative matters, for instance, we are
frequently obliged to tackle very delicate subjects. I have read,
for example, reports upon certain matters which have been very
precise, very detailed; but they have been written in a clear, simple,
straightforward style, so that there was nothing unchaste or impure
about the document. But our present-day novelists have adopted a style
which is full of suggestiveness, a manner of describing things which
makes it appear as if they were actually going on before you. They call
that art. To me it seems to be simply indecency and bad taste.'
Then he went on to speak of authors, whom he had never read, but whom,
like many other people, he accused of the grossest immorality. And
yet while he was thus prating of virtue and denouncing vice, he was
cleverly manœuvring to get behind Clorinde's chair without her being
aware of it. The girl was gazing at the ceiling with an expression of
absent-mindedness. 'Oh, as for novels,' she murmured, 'I have never
even opened one. They are all a pack of falsehoods. You don't know
_Leonora, the Gipsy_, do you? It is a pretty book. I read it in Italian
when I was quite little. It is about a young girl who ends by marrying
a lord. She is captured by brigands to begin with----'
However, a slight grating sound behind her made her start and turn her
head: 'What are you doing?' she asked.
'I am pulling the blind down,' replied Rougon; 'I was afraid the sun
was inconveniencing you.'
The girl was, indeed, sitting in a flood of sunlight, whose dancing
dust gilded her corsage as with luminous down. 'Please leave the blind
alone,' she cried, 'I love the sun. I feel as though I were in a warm
bath.'
Then she raised herself in her chair and glanced into the garden. But
when she saw the gardener still kneeling there, with the back of his
blue blouse turned towards them, she reverted to her reclining attitude
again, smiling, and easy once more. Rougon, who had followed her
glance, left the blind as it was, and the girl began to banter him. He
was just like an owl, she said, to be so fond of darkness. However, he
showed no resentment, but began to pace the room, swaying about like a
bear contemplating some wily act of treachery.
'Oh, come and look here,' he said at last, pointing to a large
photograph; 'you haven't seen my last portrait, have you?'
But she merely smiled, and replied: 'Oh! I can see it very well from
here; and, besides, you've shown it to me before.'
Rougon was not yet discouraged. He drew down the blind of the other
window, and invented several reasons to induce the girl to go into the
shady corner which he had made by doing so. She would be much more
comfortable there, he told her. But Clorinde, despising this obvious
snare, merely shook her head. Then Rougon came and stood in front of
her; and, dropping all attempts at stratagem, said straightforwardly:
'Oh, by the way, I want to show you my new horse, Monarque. You know
that I have been making an exchange. You are fond of horses, and you
shall tell me what you think of him.'
But the girl still refused to move. Then Rougon began to press her. The
stable was only a few yards away. It wouldn't take her more than five
minutes at the most. She continued to refuse, however, and thereupon
Rougon murmured with a touch of scorn in his voice: 'What! are you
afraid?'
At this she started up, as though lashed with a whip. She looked very
grave and somewhat pale.
'Let us go and look at Monarque,' she said quietly.
As she gathered up the train of her riding-habit she fixed her eyes
upon Rougon's, and for a moment they remained gazing at each other
as if to read each other's thoughts. It was a challenge given and
accepted, without any pretence of concealment. Then she led the way
down the steps while Rougon, by force of habit, buttoned the house-coat
which he was wearing. But the girl had only taken a step or two along
the garden-walk when she stopped short. 'Wait a moment,' she said.
She went back into the room, and when she returned, she was toying
with her riding-whip, which she had left behind the cushion of the
couch. Rougon glanced at the whip, and then slowly raised his eyes to
Clorinde. She was smiling again, and once more she walked on in front
of him.