functionaries attended. For the ball which followed he had issued five
hundred invitations. It was a splendid affair. The great drawing-room
was decorated with evergreens; and in each corner a small chandelier
had been fixed, making with the central one five chandeliers in all,
whose tapers flooded the room with brilliant light. Niort could
remember no such scene of magnificence. The light that streamed
from the six windows quite illuminated the Place de la Préfecture,
where more than two thousand inquisitive sight-seers had gathered
together, straining their eyes in their eagerness to catch a glimpse
of the dancers. The orchestra also could be so distinctly heard that
children got up galops on the footways. From nine o'clock the ladies
were fanning themselves, refreshments were being carried round, and
quadrilles were following upon waltzes and polkas. In ceremonious
fashion Du Poizat stood by the door, smilingly receiving the late
arrivals.
'Doesn't your excellency dance?' the head-master's wife boldly asked
of Rougon. She had just arrived, and was wearing a dress of tarlatan,
spangled with gold stars.
Rougon excused himself, with a smile. He was standing in front of one
of the windows, surrounded by a group of guests, and, while joining in
a conversation on the desirability of a new land survey, he kept on
glancing outside. In the bright light which the candles cast upon the
houses on the opposite side of the square, he had just caught sight
of Madame Correur and Mademoiselle Herminie Billecoq at one of the
windows of the Hôtel de Paris. They were standing there, leaning and
watching the ball, as though they were in a box at a theatre. Their
faces glistened, and every now and then their bare throats rippled with
laughter as some amusing incident attracted their notice.
However, the head-master's wife had gone all round the drawing-room,
looking somewhat disconsolate, and never heeding the admiration which
her sweeping train excited among the younger men. She was evidently
looking for some one, as she thus stepped smilingly and languidly along.
'Hasn't Monsieur le Commissaire central arrived?' she at last asked Du
Poizat, who was inquiring after her husband's health. 'I promised him a
waltz.'
'Oh, he's sure to come,' the prefect answered. 'I am surprised that he
is not here already. He had to go away on official business to-day; but
he told me that he would be back by six o'clock.'
After the _déjeuner_ at the prefecture, about noon, Gilquin had set out
from Niort on horseback to go and arrest notary Martineau. Coulonges
was some twelve miles away. He calculated upon arriving there at two
o'clock, and upon being able to get away by four, or perhaps a little
later, which would leave him plenty of time to attend the banquet, to
which he had been invited. Consequently, he did not hurry his horse,
but jogged along, while reflecting that he would make the running at
the ball in the evening with that pretty blonde, the head-master's
wife, whose only fault in his eyes was that she was rather too slim.
When he reached Coulonges, he dismounted at the Golden Lion, where
a corporal and two gendarmes ought to have been waiting for him. By
arranging matters in this way, he had anticipated that his arrival
would not be noticed; and he could hire a carriage, he thought, and
carry the notary off without any of the neighbours being any the wiser.
The gendarmes, however, were not there. Gilquin waited for them till
five o'clock, swearing, and drinking grog, and looking at his watch
every quarter of an hour. He should never be able to get back to Niort
in time for the banquet, he muttered. He was just having his horse
saddled, when the corporal at last made his appearance, followed by his
two men. There had been some misunderstanding.
'Well, well, don't waste time in apologising!' cried the commissary
angrily. 'We've got no time for that! It's already a quarter-past five.
Let us get hold of our man as quickly as possible. We must be on our
way back in another ten minutes.'
Generally speaking, Gilquin was a good-natured individual. He prided
himself upon the urbanity with which he discharged his official
duties. That day he had even arranged an elaborate scheme, by which he
hoped to spare Madame Correur's brother any violent emotion. It had
been his intention to enter the house alone, while the gendarmes waited
with the carriage near the garden-gate, in a little lane which looked
on to the open country. But his three hours' waiting at the Golden Lion
had so exasperated him that he forgot all these fine precautions. He
walked through the village, and rang loudly at the street-door of the
notary's house. One of the gendarmes was posted at this door, and the
other was directed to go round and keep a watch on the garden-wall. The
corporal went in with the commissary. Ten or a dozen scared villagers
watched them from a distance.
The servant who opened the door was seized with childish terror at the
sight of the uniforms, and rushed away, crying at the top of her voice:
'Madame! Madame! Madame!'
A short plump woman, whose face maintained an expression of perfect
calm, came slowly down the staircase.
'Madame Martineau, I presume?' said Gilquin rapidly. 'I have a painful
duty to perform, madame. I have come to arrest your husband.'
Madame Martineau clasped her short hands, while her pale lips began to
quiver. But she uttered no cry. She remained standing on the bottom
step, blocking the way with her skirts. Then she asked Gilquin to show
her his warrant, and required explanations, doing all she could to
cause a delay.
'Be careful! He'll slip through our fingers if we don't mind,' the
corporal murmured in the commissary's ear.
Madame Martineau probably heard this remark, for she looked at the two
men with her calm eyes, and said: 'Come upstairs, gentlemen.'
She went up in front of them and took them into a room, in the middle
of which stood M. Martineau in his dressing gown. Upon hearing the
servant's cries of alarm he had risen from the arm-chair in which he
spent most of his time. He was very tall; his hands seemed quite dead;
his face was as pale as wax; and only his eyes--dark, soft, and yet
determined eyes--appeared to retain any life. Madame Martineau pointed
to him in silence.
'I regret to say, sir,' began Gilquin, 'that I have a painful duty to
perform.'
When he had explained his errand, the notary nodded but did not speak.
A slight quiver, however, shook the dressing-gown which covered his
attenuated limbs. At last, with great politeness, he replied: 'Very
well, gentlemen, I will follow you.'
Then he began to walk about the room, putting in order several
articles, which were lying on different pieces of furniture. For
instance, he moved a parcel of books to another place. Then he asked
his wife for a clean shirt. The trembling which was affecting him had
now become more pronounced. Madeline Martineau, seeing him totter,
followed him with outstretched arms, ready to catch him should he fall,
just as one follows a little child.
'Come, sir, make haste!' repeated Gilquin.
The notary took another couple of turns round the room, and then
suddenly snatched at the air with his hands, and let himself fall into
an arm-chair, distorted and stiffened by a paralytic seizure. At this
his wife shed big silent tears.
Gilquin took out his watch. 'Confound it all!' he cried. It was
half-past five, and he felt that he must now relinquish all hope of
being back at Niort in time for the dinner at the prefecture. It would
take at least another half hour to get this man into a carriage. He
tried to console himself with the thought that at any rate he would not
miss the ball, and just then he recollected that the head-master's wife
had promised him the first waltz.
'He's shamming,' the corporal now whispered to Gilquin. 'Shall I lift
him on to his feet?' And without waiting for a reply, he stepped up
to the notary and advised him not to attempt to deceive justice.
Martineau, however, was as rigid as a corpse; his eyes were closed and
his lips pinched. Thereupon the corporal lost his temper, and indulged
in strong language, till at last he laid his heavy hand on the collar
of the notary's dressing-gown. But at this Madame Martineau, who had
hitherto remained passive, energetically pushed him aside, and planted
herself in front of her husband, clenching her fists with an air of
devoted resolution.
'He's shamming, I tell you!' the corporal repeated.
Gilquin shrugged his shoulders. He had made up his mind to carry the
notary off whether he were dead or alive. 'Send one of your men to get
the carriage from the Golden Lion,' he said to the corporal. 'I have
spoken to the landlord about one.'
When the corporal had left the room, Gilquin stepped up to the window,
and looked complacently at the apricot trees which were blossoming in
the garden. He was growing quite absorbed in his thoughts, when he
felt a touch upon his shoulder. Madame Martineau stood behind him. Her
cheeks were quite dry now, and she spoke in a calm steady voice. 'You
mean a carriage for yourself, don't you?' she asked. 'You surely can't
think of dragging my husband to Niort, in his present state.'
'I have a painful duty to perform, madame--' Gilquin began for the
third time.
'But it is a crime! You will kill him!' Madame Martineau interrupted.
'You have not been ordered to kill him, have you?'
'I am acting under orders,' Gilquin replied in a rougher tone, for he
wished to curtail the entreaties which he thought were coming.
But a gleam of desperate anger flashed across Madame Martineau's plump
face, and her eyes glanced round the room, as though she were trying to
discover some possible means of saving her husband. However, she calmed
herself by an effort, and reverted to her previous demeanour, like a
strong-minded woman who realises that tears can be of no service.
'God will punish you, sir,' she quietly said, after a short pause,
during which she had kept her eyes fixed on Gilquin.
Then, without a tear or entreaty she turned to lean over the chair in
which her husband lay dying. Gilquin had merely smiled.
Just at this moment the corporal, who had gone in person to the Golden
Lion, came back to say that the landlord asserted he had not got a
vehicle of any sort. The arrest of the notary, who was extremely
popular in the neighbourhood, must have been noised abroad, and the
landlord was doubtless concealing his conveyances; for two hours
previously, when the commissary had questioned him on the subject,
he had promised to let him have an old brougham which he let out for
drives in the neighbourhood.
'Go and search the inn!' cried Gilquin, enraged by this fresh obstacle.
'Search every house in the village! Do they think they will have a game
with us? And be quick, I have an engagement to keep, and have no time
to spare. I give you a quarter of an hour.'
The corporal hurried off again, taking his men with him; and each went
in a different direction. Three-quarters of an hour passed, however,
and then another quarter, and then another. At the end of an hour and
a half one of the gendarmes returned with a very long face. All his
searching had been futile. Gilquin, who had grown feverishly excited,
kept rushing about and looking out of the window into the twilight.
The ball would certainly begin without him, he reflected, and the
head-master's wife would consider him guilty of great discourtesy. Each
time that he went past the notary's chair he almost choked with anger.
Never had any criminal caused him so much trouble as that man who lay
there perfectly motionless, becoming ever paler and colder.
It was past seven o'clock when the corporal returned with a beaming
countenance. He had at last discovered the landlord's old brougham,
concealed in a shed half a mile from the village. The horse was
harnessed and between the shafts, and it was the animal's snorting
which had enabled him to discover it. However, when the vehicle was at
the door, it became necessary to dress M. Martineau, and this took a
very long time. His wife very slowly and deliberately put him on some
clean white stockings and a clean white shirt. Then she dressed him in
black from head to foot; black trousers, frock-coat and waistcoat. She
would not allow the gendarmes to render her the slightest assistance.
The notary quietly yielded to her touch. A lamp had been lighted,
and Gilquin stood tapping his hands together impatiently, while the
corporal remained perfectly still, his three-cornered hat casting a
huge shadow upon the ceiling.
'Come, come, haven't you done now?' Gilquin repeated.
For the last five minutes Madame Martineau had been searching in a
drawer. At last she produced a pair of black gloves which she put into
her husband's pocket. 'I hope, sir,' she said, 'that you will allow me
to come in the carriage. I should much like to go with my husband.'
'That is impossible,' replied Gilquin roughly.
She restrained herself instead of pressing her request. 'At any rate,'
she said, 'you will allow me to follow him?'
'The roads are free to every one,' answered the commissary, 'but you
won't be able to get a vehicle, as there are none in the neighbourhood.'
At this Madame Martineau shrugged her shoulders slightly, and left the
room to give an order. Ten minutes afterwards a gig drew up in front of
the door, behind the brougham. It was now necessary to get the notary
downstairs. The two gendarmes carried him, while his wife supported
his head. Whenever the dying man uttered the slightest groan, Madame
Martineau imperiously ordered the gendarmes to stop, which they did,
notwithstanding the angry glances of the commissary. In this way they
halted for a moment on each successive step. The notary looked like a
corpse in their arms, and he was quite unconscious when they seated him
in the carriage.
'Half-past eight!' exclaimed Gilquin angrily, looking at his watch for
the last time. 'Confound it all! I shall never get there!'
There was no doubt about that. He would be fortunate if he arrived
before the ball was half over. However, he sprang on his horse with
an oath and ordered the coachman to drive as fast as he could. The
brougham led the way, the gendarmes riding at each side of it; then,
a few yards behind, followed the commissary, and the corporal, and
last of all came the gig with Madame Martineau. The night air was very
sharp. The little _cortège_ passed over the long grey road through
all the sleeping country, accompanied by a rumbling of wheels and the
monotonous footfalls of the horses. Not a word was spoken during the
journey. Gilquin was thinking of what he should say when he met the
head-master's wife. Every now and then, however, Madame Martineau
sprang to her feet in the gig, fancying that she heard a death-rattle,
but she could scarcely distinguish the brougham as it rolled on before
her through the black night.
It was half-past ten when they reached Niort. The commissary, to avoid
passing through the town, directed the driver of the brougham to go
round by the ramparts. When they reached the gaol, they had to ring
loudly. As soon as the gatekeeper saw the white, stiffened prisoner
they were bringing him, he went off to rouse the governor. The latter,
who was not very well, soon made his appearance in his slippers. And
when he saw Martineau, he became quite angry, and absolutely refused
to receive a man in such a condition. Did they take the gaol for an
hospital? he asked them.
'The man has been arrested, and what do you expect us to do with him?'
cried Gilquin, losing his temper at this fresh impediment.
'Whatever you like, monsieur le commissaire, except bring him here,'
replied the governor. 'I again tell you that I refuse to receive him.
I won't take such a responsibility upon myself.'
Madame Martineau had profited by this discussion to get into the
brougham with her husband. And she now proposed that he should be taken
to the hotel.
'Very well, to the hotel or the devil, or wherever you like!' cried
Gilquin. 'I've had quite enough of him! Take him along!'
He conformed sufficiently to his duty, however, to accompany the notary
to the Hôtel de Paris, which Madame Martineau herself fixed upon. The
Place de la Préfecture was now becoming empty, and only some children
were left playing on the footways; while the middle-class couples
slowly disappeared into the darkness of the neighbouring streets.
However, the bright glow from the six windows of the prefecture still
made the square almost as light as day. The band's brass instruments
were blaring, and the ladies' bare shoulders and curled chignons could
be seen between the open curtains, circling round the room. As the
notary was being carried to the first floor, Gilquin raised his head
and caught sight of Madame Correur and Mademoiselle Billecoq, who were
still gazing at the festivities. The elder lady, however, must have
noticed her brother, for, leaning out so far as to risk a fall, she
made an energetic sign to Gilquin to come upstairs. He did so.
Towards midnight the ball at the prefecture reached its zenith. The
doors of the dining-room, where a cold supper had been laid, had
just been thrown open. The ladies, with hot, flushed faces, fanned
themselves as they stood up and ate, amidst a deal of gay laughter.
Others were still dancing, unwilling to lose a single quadrille, and
contenting themselves with glasses of syrup and water, which gentlemen
brought to them. The room was full of a hazy glitter of women's hair
and skirts and braceleted arms. There seemed to be too much gold, too
much music, and too much heat; and Rougon, who felt half suffocated,
was glad indeed to make his escape on being discreetly summoned by Du
Poizat.
Madame Correur and Mademoiselle Herminie Billecoq were waiting for him
in the small adjoining salon where he had seen them on the previous
evening. They were both crying bitterly.
'My poor brother! my poor Martineau!' stammered Madame Correur, while
wiping her tears away with her handkerchief. 'Ah! I felt sure that you
could do nothing for him. Oh, why couldn't you have saved him?'
Rougon was going to say something, but she would not give him time.
'He has been arrested to-day,' she continued. 'I have just seen him. Oh
dear! oh dear!'
'Don't distress yourself,' replied Rougon, at last. 'The matter shall
be looked into, and I hope that we shall be able to obtain his release.'
Thereupon Madame Correur ceased dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief.
She looked at Rougon and exclaimed in her natural voice: 'But he is
dead!' Then again she relapsed into a disconsolate tone and buried her
face in her handkerchief. 'Oh dear! Oh dear! my poor, poor Martineau!'
Dead! A sudden tremor passed through Rougon's body. He could not find
a word to say. For the first time he became conscious of a pit before
him, a dark gloomy pit into which he was being gradually driven. To
think that the man was dead! He had never intended that anything of
that kind should happen. Things had gone too far.
'Alas! yes, the poor dear man is dead,' said Mademoiselle Herminie
Billecoq, with a deep, long-drawn sigh. 'It seems that they refused to
receive him at the gaol. Then, when we saw him arriving at the hotel
in such a pitiable condition, madame went down and insisted upon being
admitted, saying that she was his sister. A sister may surely claim to
receive her brother's last breath. That is what I said to that hussy
of a Madame Martineau, who threatened to turn us out of the room. But
we forced her to let us remain by the bedside. _Mon Dieu_! it was
soon all over. The death agony only lasted an hour. The poor man was
lying on the bed dressed all in black. Anyone would have thought that
he was a notary just going to a marriage. And he died out just like a
candle-flame, with a little twist of his face. He couldn't have had
much pain.'
'And then--would you believe it?--Madame Martineau actually tried to
pick a quarrel with me,' cried Madame Correur. 'I don't know what she
was driving at, but she spoke about my brother's property, and accused
me of having given him the last stroke. I said to her, "If I had been
there, madame, I would never have allowed him to be taken away, I would
have let the gendarmes hew me in pieces sooner!" And they _should_
have hewn me in pieces sooner! I told you so, didn't I, Herminie?'
'Yes, yes, indeed,' said the tall girl.
'Well, I know my tears won't bring him to life again,' continued
Madame Correur; 'but I'm crying because I can't help it. Oh, my poor
Martineau!'
Rougon felt very ill at ease. He drew back his hands which Madame
Correur had grasped. Still he could not think of anything to say,
shocked as he was by the story of this death which seemed so abominable
to him.
'Look!' exclaimed Herminie, who was standing in front of the window,
'you can see the room from here in this bright light. It is the third
window to the left, on the first floor. There is a light behind the
curtains.'
However, Rougon dismissed them, while Madame Correur in return
apologised for having troubled him, calling him her friend, and saying
that her first impulse had been to come and tell him the fatal news.
'It is a very annoying business,' Rougon whispered to Du Poizat, when
he returned to the ball-room, with his face still pale.
'It is all that idiot Gilquin's doing!' replied the prefect, shrugging
his shoulders.
The ball was still going on merrily. In the dining-room, a part of
which could be seen through the open door, the mayor's assessor was
stuffing the three daughters of the conservator of rivers and forests
with sweetmeats; while the colonel of the seventy-eighth was drinking
punch and listening attentively to the cutting remarks of the chief
surveyor of bridges and highways, who was munching sugared almonds.
M. Kahn, near the door, was repeating to the President of the Civil
Tribunal the speech which he had delivered in the afternoon on the
advantages of the new railway line; and round them stood a group of
grave-faced men, the comptroller of taxes, the two justices of the
peace, and the delegates from the consultative Chamber of Agriculture
and the Statistical Society, all with gaping mouths. Then around the
ball-room, in the glow of the chandeliers, the dancers revolved to
the music of a waltz, which the band blared forth. The son of the
receiver-general was dancing with the mayor's sister; one of the public
prosecutor's assessors was with a girl in blue; and the other with
a girl in pink. But one couple excited particular admiration, that
composed of the commissary of police and the head-master's wife, who
slowly revolved in a close embrace. Gilquin had hurried off to array
himself irreproachably in black dress-coat, patent-leather boots and
white gloves, and the beautiful blonde, having forgiven him for his
tardy arrival, was now nestling against his shoulder, with languishing
eyes. Gilquin threw his chest forward, and brought the motion of his
hips into strong prominence, a vulgarism which seemed to delight the
spectators as if it had been something very tasteful. And as the pair
revolved round the room they all but came into collision with Rougon,
who had to step back to the very wall to let them pass him in a
whirling cloud of tarlatan, spangled with golden stars.
XI
IN COUNCIL AT ST. CLOUD
Rougon had at last succeeded in obtaining the portfolio of Agriculture
and Commerce for Delestang. One morning, early in May, he went to
the Rue du Colisée to fetch his new colleague, for there was to be a
ministerial council at Saint Cloud, where the Court had just gone to
reside.
'What! are you coming with us?' Rougon exclaimed in surprise, as he saw
Clorinde taking her place in the landau which was standing in front of
the steps.
'Yes,' she answered, with a laugh; 'yes, I'm going to the council,
too.' Then, when she had arranged the flounces of her long gown of pale
cherry-coloured silk, she added, more seriously: 'I have an appointment
with the Empress. I am treasurer of a society for assisting young
work-girls in which she is interested.'