It was not until Sunday, the day after the massacre at Sainte-Roure,
that the troops passed through Plassans again. The prefect and the
colonel, whom Monsieur Garconnet had invited to dinner, once more
entered the town alone. The soldiers went round the ramparts and
encamped in the Faubourg, on the Nice road. Night was falling; the sky,
overcast since the morning, had a strange yellow tint, and illumined
the town with a murky light, similar to the copper-coloured glimmer of
stormy weather. The reception of the troops by the inhabitants was
timid; the bloodstained soldiers, who passed by weary and silent, in
the yellow twilight, horrified the cleanly citizens promenading on the
Cours. They stepped out of the way whispering terrible stories of
fusillades and revengeful reprisals which still live in the
recollection of the region. The Coup d’État terror was beginning to
make itself felt, an overwhelming terror which kept the South in a
state of tremor for many a long month. Plassans, in its fear and hatred
of the insurgents, had welcomed the troops on their first arrival with
enthusiasm; but now, at the appearance of that gloomy taciturn
regiment, whose men were ready to fire at a word from their officers,
the retired merchants and even the notaries of the new town anxiously
examined their consciences, asking if they had not committed some
political peccadilloes which might be thought deserving of a bullet.
The municipal authorities had returned on the previous evening in a
couple of carts hired at Sainte-Roure. Their unexpected entry was
devoid of all triumphal display. Rougon surrendered the mayor’s
arm-chair without much regret. The game was over; and with feverish
longing he now awaited the recompense for his devotion. On the
Sunday—he had not hoped for it until the following day—he received a
letter from Eugène. Since the previous Thursday Félicité had taken care
to send her son the numbers of the “Gazette” and “Indépendant” which,
in special second editions had narrated the battle of the night and the
arrival of the prefect at Plassans. Eugène now replied by return of
post that the nomination of a receivership would soon be signed; but
added that he wished to give them some good news immediately. He had
obtained the ribbon of the Legion of Honour for his father. Félicité
wept with joy. Her husband decorated! Her proud dream had never gone as
far as that. Rougon, pale with delight, declared they must give a grand
dinner that very evening. He no longer thought of expense; he would
have thrown his last fifty francs out of the drawing-room windows in
order to celebrate that glorious day.
“Listen,” he said to his wife; “you must invite Sicardot: he has
annoyed me with that rosette of his for a long time! Then Granoux and
Roudier; I shouldn’t be at all sorry to make them feel that it isn’t
their purses that will ever win them the cross. Vuillet is a skinflint,
but the triumph ought to be complete: invite him as well as the small
fry. I was forgetting; you must go and call on the marquis in person;
we will seat him on your right; he’ll look very well at our table. You
know that Monsieur Garconnet is entertaining the colonel and the
prefect. That is to make me understand that I am nobody now. But I can
afford to laugh at his mayoralty; it doesn’t bring him in a sou! He has
invited me, but I shall tell him that I also have some people coming.
The others will laugh on the wrong side of their mouths to-morrow. And
let everything be of the best. Have everything sent from the Hôtel de
Provence. We must outdo the mayor’s dinner.”
Félicité set to work. Pierre still felt some vague uneasiness amidst
his rapture. The Coup d’État was going to pay his debts, his son
Aristide had repented of his faults, and he was at last freeing himself
from Macquart; but he feared some folly on Pascal’s part, and was
especially anxious about the lot reserved for Silvère. Not that he felt
the least pity for the lad; he was simply afraid the matter of the
gendarme might come before the Assize Court. Ah! if only some
discriminating bullet had managed to rid him of that young scoundrel!
As his wife had pointed out to him in the morning, all obstacles had
fallen away before him; the family which had dishonoured him had, at
the last moment, worked for his elevation; his sons Eugène and
Aristide, those spend-thrifts, the cost of whose college life he had so
bitterly regretted, were at last paying interest on the capital
expended for their education. And yet the thought of that wretched
Silvère must come to mar his hour of triumph!
While Félicité was running about to prepare the dinner for the evening,
Pierre heard of the arrival of the troops and determined to go and make
inquiries. Sicardot, whom he had questioned on his return, knew
nothing; Pascal must have remained to look after the wounded; as for
Silvère, he had not even been seen by the commander, who scarcely knew
him. Rougon therefore repaired to the Faubourg, intending to make
inquiries there and at the same time pay Macquart the eight hundred
francs which he had just succeeded in raising with great difficulty.
However, when he found himself in the crowded encampment, and from a
distance saw the prisoners sitting in long files on the beams in the
Aire Saint-Mittre, guarded by soldiers gun in hand, he felt afraid of
being compromised, and so slunk off to his mother’s house, with the
intention of sending the old woman out to pick up some information.
When he entered the hovel it was almost night. At first the only person
he saw there was Macquart smoking and drinking brandy.
“Is that you? I’m glad of it,” muttered Antoine. “I’m growing deuced
cold here. Have you got the money?”
But Pierre did not reply. He had just perceived his son Pascal leaning
over the bed. And thereupon he questioned him eagerly. The doctor,
surprised by his uneasiness, which he attributed to paternal affection,
told him that the soldiers had taken him and would have shot him, had
it not been for the intervention of some honest fellow whom he did not
know. Saved by his profession of surgeon, he had returned to Plassans
with the troops. This greatly relieved Rougon. So there was yet another
who would not compromise him. He was evincing his delight by repeated
hand-shakings, when Pascal concluded in a sorrowful voice: “Oh! don’t
make merry. I have just found my poor grandmother in a very dangerous
state. I brought her back this carbine, which she values very much; I
found her lying here, and she has not moved since.”
Pierre’s eyes were becoming accustomed to the dimness. In the fast
fading light he saw aunt Dide stretched, rigid and seemingly lifeless,
upon her bed. Her wretched frame, attacked by neurosis from the hour of
birth, was at length laid prostrate by a supreme shock. Her nerves had
so to say consumed her blood. Moreover some cruel grief seemed to have
suddenly accelerated her slow wasting-away. Her pale nun-like face,
drawn and pinched by a life of gloom and cloister-like self-denial, was
now stained with red blotches. With convulsed features, eyes that
glared terribly, and hands twisted and clenched, she lay at full length
in her skirts, which failed to hide the sharp outlines of her scrawny
limbs. Extended there with lips closely pressed she imparted to the dim
room all the horror of a mute death-agony.
Rougon made a gesture of vexation. This heart-rending spectacle was
very distasteful to him. He had company coming to dinner in the
evening, and it would be extremely inconvenient for him to have to
appear mournful. His mother was always doing something to bother him.
She might just as well have chosen another day. However, he put on an
appearance of perfect ease, as he said: “Bah! it’s nothing. I’ve seen
her like that a hundred times. You must let her lie still; it’s the
only thing that does her any good.”
Pascal shook his head. “No, this fit isn’t like the others,” he
whispered. “I have often studied her, and have never observed such
symptoms before. Just look at her eyes: there is a peculiar fluidity, a
pale brightness about them which causes me considerable uneasiness. And
her face, how frightfully every muscle of it is distorted!”
Then bending over to observe her features more closely, he continued in
a whisper, as though speaking to himself: “I have never seen such a
face, excepting among people who have been murdered or have died from
fright. She must have experienced some terrible shock.”
“But how did the attack begin?” Rougon impatiently inquired, at a loss
for an excuse to leave the room.
Pascal did not know. Macquart, as he poured himself out another glass
of brandy, explained that he had felt an inclination to drink a little
Cognac, and had sent her to fetch a bottle. She had not been long
absent, and at the very moment when she returned she had fallen rigid
on the floor without uttering a word. Macquart himself had carried her
to the bed.
“What surprises me,” he said, by way of conclusion, “is, that she did
not break the bottle.”
The young doctor reflected. After a short pause he resumed: “I heard
two shots fired as I came here. Perhaps those ruffians have been
shooting some more prisoners. If she passed through the ranks of the
soldiers at that moment, the sight of blood may have thrown her into
this fit. She must have had some dreadful shock.”
Fortunately he had with him the little medicine-case which he had been
carrying about ever since the departure of the insurgents. He tried to
pour a few drops of reddish liquid between aunt Dide’s closely-set
teeth, while Macquart again asked his brother: “Have you got the
money?”
“Yes, I’ve brought it; we’ll settle now,” Rougon replied, glad of this
diversion.
Thereupon Macquart, seeing that he was about to be paid, began to moan.
He had only learnt the consequence of his treachery when it was too
late; otherwise he would have demanded twice or thrice as much. And he
complained bitterly. Really now a thousand francs was not enough. His
children had forsaken him, he was all alone in the world, and obliged
to quit France. He almost wept as he spoke of his coming exile.
“Come now, will you take the eight hundred francs?” said Rougon, who
was in haste to be off.
“No, certainly not; double the sum. Your wife cheated me. If she had
told me distinctly what it was she expected of me, I would never have
compromised myself for such a trifle.”
Rougon laid the eight hundred francs upon the table.
“I swear I haven’t got any more,” he resumed. “I will think of you
later. But do, for mercy’s sake, get away this evening.”
Macquart, cursing and muttering protests, thereupon carried the table
to the window, and began to count the gold in the fading twilight. The
coins tickled the tips of his fingers very pleasantly as he let them
fall, and jingled musically in the darkness. At last he paused for a
moment to say: “You promised to get me a berth, remember. I want to
return to France. The post of rural guard in some pleasant
neighbourhood which I could mention, would just suit me.”
“Very well, I’ll see about it,” Rougon replied. “Have you got the eight
hundred francs?”
Macquart resumed his counting. The last coins were just clinking when a
burst of laughter made them turn their heads. Aunt Dide was standing up
in front of the bed, with her bodice unfastened, her white hair hanging
loose, and her face stained with red blotches. Pascal had in vain
endeavoured to hold her down. Trembling all over, and with her arms
outstretched, she shook her head deliriously.
“The blood-money! the blood-money!” she again and again repeated. “I
heard the gold. And it is they, they who sold him. Ah! the murderers!
They are a pack of wolves.”
Then she pushed her hair aback, and passed her hand over her brow, as
though seeking to collect her thoughts. And she continued: “Ah! I have
long seen him with a bullet-hole in his forehead. There were always
people lying in wait for him with guns. They used to sign to me that
they were going to fire. . . . It’s terrible! I feel some one breaking
my bones and battering out my brains. Oh! Mercy! Mercy! I beseech you;
he shall not see her any more—never, never! I will shut him up. I will
prevent him from walking out with her. Mercy! Mercy! Don’t fire. It is
not my fault. If you knew——”
She had almost fallen on her knees, and was weeping and entreating
while she stretched her poor trembling hands towards some horrible
vision which she saw in the darkness. Then she suddenly rose upright,
and her eyes opened still more widely as a terrible cry came from her
convulsed throat, as though some awful sight, visible to her alone, had
filled her with mad terror.
“Oh, the gendarme!” she said, choking and falling backwards on the bed,
where she rolled about, breaking into long bursts of furious, insane
laughter.
Pascal was studying the attack attentively. The two brothers, who felt
very frightened, and only detected snatches of what their mother said,
had taken refuge in a corner of the room. When Rougon heard the word
gendarme, he thought he understood her. Ever since the murder of her
lover, the elder Macquart, on the frontier, aunt Dide had cherished a
bitter hatred against all gendarmes and custom-house officers, whom she
mingled together in one common longing for vengeance.
“Why, it’s the story of the poacher that she’s telling us,” he
whispered.
But Pascal made a sign to him to keep quiet. The stricken woman had
raised herself with difficulty, and was looking round her, with a
stupefied air. She remained silent for a moment, endeavouring to
recognise the various objects in the room, as though she were in some
strange place. Then, with a sudden expression of anxiety, she asked:
“Where is the gun?”
The doctor put the carbine into her hands. At this she raised a light
cry of joy, and gazed at the weapon, saying in a soft, sing-song,
girlish whisper: “That is it. Oh! I recognise it! It is all stained
with blood. The stains are quite fresh to-day. His red hands have left
marks of blood on the butt. Ah! poor, poor aunt Dide!”
Then she became dizzy once more, and lapsed into silent thought.
“The gendarme was dead,” she murmured at last, “but I have seen him
again; he has come back. They never die, those blackguards!”
Again did gloomy passion come over her, and, shaking the carbine, she
advanced towards her two sons who, speechless with fright, retreated to
the very wall. Her loosened skirts trailed along the ground, as she
drew up her twisted frame, which age had reduced to mere bones.
“It’s you who fired!” she cried. “I heard the gold. . . . Wretched
woman that I am! . . . I brought nothing but wolves into the world—a
whole family—a whole litter of wolves! . . . There was only one poor
lad, and him they have devoured; each had a bite at him, and their lips
are covered with blood. . . . Ah! the accursed villains! They have
robbed, they have murdered. . . . And they live like gentlemen.
Villains! Accursed villains!”
She sang, laughed, cried, and repeated “accursed villains!” in
strangely sonorous tones, which suggested a crackling of a fusillade.
Pascal, with tears in his eyes, took her in his arms and laid her on
the bed again. She submitted like a child, but persisted in her wailing
cries, accelerating their rhythm, and beating time on the sheet with
her withered hands.
“That’s just what I was afraid of,” the doctor said; “she is mad. The
blow has been too heavy for a poor creature already subject, as she is,
to acute neurosis. She will die in a lunatic asylum like her father.”
“But what could she have seen?” asked Rougon, at last venturing to quit
the corner where he had hidden himself.
“I have a terrible suspicion,” Pascal replied. “I was going to speak to
you about Silvère when you came in. He is a prisoner. You must
endeavour to obtain his release from the prefect, if there is still
time.”
The old oil-dealer turned pale as he looked at his son. Then, rapidly,
he responded: “Listen to me; you stay here and watch her. I’m too busy
this evening. We will see to-morrow about conveying her to the lunatic
asylum at Les Tulettes. As for you, Macquart, you must leave this very
night. Swear to me that you will! I’m going to find Monsieur de
Bleriot.”
He stammered as he spoke, and felt more eager than ever to get out into
the fresh air of the streets. Pascal fixed a penetrating look on the
madwoman, and then on his father and uncle. His professional instinct
was getting the better of him, and he studied the mother and the sons,
with all the keenness of a naturalist observing the metamorphosis of
some insect. He pondered over the growth of that family to which he
belonged, over the different branches growing from one parent stock,
whose sap carried identical germs to the farthest twigs, which bent in
divers ways according to the sunshine or shade in which they lived. And
for a moment, as by the glow of a lightning flash, he thought he could
espy the future of the Rougon-Macquart family, a pack of unbridled,
insatiate appetites amidst a blaze of gold and blood.
Aunt Dide, however, had ceased her wailing chant at the mention of
Silvère’s name. For a moment she listened anxiously. Then she broke out
into terrible shrieks. Night had now completely fallen, and the black
room seemed void and horrible. The shrieks of the madwoman, who was no
longer visible, rang out from the darkness as from a grave. Rougon,
losing his head, took to flight, pursued by those taunting cries, whose
bitterness seemed to increase amidst the gloom.
As he was emerging from the Impasse Saint-Mittre with hesitating steps,
wondering whether it would not be dangerous to solicit Silvère’s pardon
from the prefect, he saw Aristide prowling about the timber-yard. The
latter, recognising his father, ran up to him with an expression of
anxiety and whispered a few words in his ear. Pierre turned pale, and
cast a look of alarm towards the end of the yard, where the darkness
was only relieved by the ruddy glow of a little gipsy fire. Then they
both disappeared down the Rue de Rome, quickening their steps as though
they had committed a murder, and turning up their coat-collars in order
that they might not be recognised.
“That saves me an errand,” Rougon whispered. “Let us go to dinner. They
are waiting for us.”
When they arrived, the yellow drawing-room was resplendent. Félicité
was all over the place. Everybody was there; Sicardot, Granoux,
Roudier, Vuillet, the oil-dealers, the almond-dealers, the whole set.
The marquis, however, had excused himself on the plea of rheumatism;
and, besides, he was about to leave Plassans on a short trip. Those
bloodstained bourgeois offended his feelings of delicacy, and moreover
his relative, the Count de Valqueyras, had begged him to withdraw from
public notice for a little time. Monsieur de Carnavant’s refusal vexed
the Rougons; but Félicité consoled herself by resolving to make a more
profuse display. She hired a pair of candelabra and ordered several
additional dishes as a kind of substitute for the marquis. The table
was laid in the yellow drawing-room, in order to impart more solemnity
to the occasion. The Hôtel de Provence had supplied the silver, the
china, and the glass. The cloth had been laid ever since five o’clock
in order that the guests on arriving might feast their eyes upon it. At
either end of the table, on the white cloth, were bouquets of
artificial roses, in porcelain vases gilded and painted with flowers.
When the habitual guests of the yellow drawing-room were assembled
there they could not conceal their admiration of the spectacle. Several
gentlemen smiled with an air of embarrassment while they exchanged
furtive glances, which clearly signified, “These Rougons are mad, they
are throwing their money out of the window.” The truth was that
Félicité, on going round to invite her guests, had been unable to hold
her tongue. So everybody knew that Pierre had been decorated, and that
he was about to be nominated to some post; at which, of course, they
pulled wry faces. Roudier indeed observed that “the little black woman
was puffing herself out too much.” Now that “prize-day” had come this
band of bourgeois, who had rushed upon the expiring Republic—each one
keeping an eye on the other, and glorying in giving a deeper bite than
his neighbour—did not think it fair that their hosts should have all
the laurels of the battle. Even those who had merely howled by
instinct, asking no recompense of the rising Empire, were greatly
annoyed to see that, thanks to them, the poorest and least reputable of
them all should be decorated with the red ribbon. The whole yellow
drawing-room ought to have been decorated!
“Not that I value the decoration,” Roudier said to Granoux, whom he had
dragged into the embrasure of a window. “I refused it in the time of
Louis-Philippe, when I was purveyor to the court. Ah! Louis-Philippe
was a good king. France will never find his equal!”
Roudier was becoming an Orleanist once more. And he added, with the
crafty hypocrisy of an old hosier from the Rue Saint-Honoré: “But you,
my dear Granoux; don’t you think the ribbon would look well in your
button-hole? After all, you did as much to save the town as Rougon did.
Yesterday, when I was calling upon some very distinguished persons,
they could scarcely believe it possible that you had made so much noise
with a mere hammer.”
Granoux stammered his thanks, and, blushing like a maiden at her first
confession of love, whispered in Roudier’s ear: “Don’t say anything
about it, but I have reason to believe that Rougon will ask the ribbon
for me. He’s a good fellow at heart, you know.”
The old hosier thereupon became grave, and assumed a very affable
manner. When Vuillet came and spoke to him of the well-deserved reward
that their friend had just received, he replied in a loud voice, so as
to be heard by Félicité, who was sitting a little way off, that “men
like Rougon were an ornament to the Legion of Honour.” The bookseller
joined in the chorus; he had that morning received a formal assurance
that the custom of the college would be restored to him. As for
Sicardot, he at first felt somewhat annoyed to find himself no longer
the only one of the set who was decorated. According to him, none but
soldiers had a right to the ribbon. Pierre’s valour surprised him.
However, being in reality a good-natured fellow, he at last grew
warmer, and ended by saying that the Napoleons always knew how to
distinguish men of spirit and energy.
Rougon and Aristide consequently had an enthusiastic reception; on
their arrival all hands were held out to them. Some of the guests went
so far as to embrace them. Angèle sat on the sofa, by the side of her
mother-in-law, feeling very happy, and gazing at the table with the
astonishment of a gourmand who has never seen so many dishes at once.
When Aristide approached, Sicardot complimented his son-in-law upon his
superb article in the “Indépendant.” He restored his friendship to him.
The young man, in answer to the fatherly questions which Sicardot
addressed to him, replied that he was anxious to take his little family
with him to Paris, where his brother Eugène would push him forward; but
he was in want of five hundred francs. Sicardot thereupon promised him
the money, already foreseeing the day when his daughter would be
received at the Tuileries by Napoleon III.
In the meantime, Félicité had made a sign to her husband. Pierre,
surrounded by everybody and anxiously questioned about his pallor,
could only escape for a minute. He was just able to whisper in his
wife’s ear that he had found Pascal and that Macquart would leave that
night. Then lowering his voice still more he told her of his mother’s
insanity, and placed his finger on his lips, as if to say: “Not a word;
that would spoil the whole evening.” Félicité bit her lips. They
exchanged a look in which they read their common thoughts: so now the
old woman would not trouble them any more: the poacher’s hovel would be
razed to the ground, as the walls of the Fouques’ enclosure had been
demolished; and they would for ever enjoy the respect and esteem of
Plassans.
But the guests were looking at the table. Félicité showed the gentlemen
their seats. It was perfect bliss. As each one took his spoon, Sicardot
made a gesture to solicit a moment’s delay. Then he rose and gravely
said: “Gentlemen, on behalf of the company present, I wish to express
to our host how pleased we are at the rewards which his courage and
patriotism have procured for him. I now see that he must have acted
upon a heaven-sent inspiration in remaining here, while those beggars
were dragging myself and others along the high roads. Therefore, I
heartily applaud the decision of the government. . . . Let me finish,
you can then congratulate our friend. . . . Know, then, that our
friend, besides being made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour, is also
to be appointed to a receiver of taxes.”
There was a cry of surprise. They had expected a small post. Some of
them tried to force a smile; but, aided by the sight of the table, the
compliments again poured forth profusely.
Sicardot once more begged for silence. “Wait one moment,” he resumed;
“I have not finished. Just one word. It is probable that our friend
will remain among us, owing to the death of Monsieur Peirotte.”
Whilst the guests burst out into exclamations, Félicité felt a keen
pain in her heart. Sicardot had already told her that the receiver had
been shot; but at the mention of that sudden and shocking death, just
as they were starting on that triumphal dinner, it seemed as if a
chilling gust swept past her face. She remembered her wish; it was she
who had killed that man. However, amidst the tinkling music of the
silver, the company began to do honour to the banquet. In the
provinces, people eat very much and very noisily. By the time the
_relevé_ was served, the gentlemen were all talking together; they
showered kicks upon the vanquished, flattered one another, and made
disparaging remarks about the absence of the marquis. It was
impossible, they said, to maintain intercourse with the nobility.
Roudier even gave out that the marquis had begged to be excused because
his fear of the insurgents had given him jaundice. At the second course
they all scrambled like hounds at the quarry. The oil-dealers and
almond-dealers were the men who saved France. They clinked glasses to
the glory of the Rougons. Granoux, who was very red, began to stammer,
while Vuillet, very pale, was quite drunk. Nevertheless Sicardot
continued filling his glass. For her part Angèle, who had already eaten
too much, prepared herself some sugar and water. The gentlemen were so
delighted at being freed from panic, and finding themselves together
again in that yellow drawing-room, round a good table, in the bright
light radiating from the candelabra and the chandelier—which they now
saw for the first time without its fly-specked cover—that they gave way
to most exuberant folly and indulged in the coarsest enjoyment. Their
voices rose in the warm atmosphere more huskily and eulogistically at
each successive dish till they could scarcely invent fresh compliments.
However, one of them, an old retired master-tanner, hit upon this fine
phrase—that the dinner was a “perfect feast worthy of Lucullus.”
Pierre was radiant, and his big pale face perspired with triumph.
Félicité, already accustoming herself to her new station in life, said
that they would probably rent poor Monsieur Peirotte’s flat until they
could purchase a house of their own in the new town. She was already
planning how she would place her future furniture in the receiver’s
rooms. She was entering into possession of her Tuileries. At one
moment, however, as the uproar of voices became deafening, she seemed
to recollect something, and quitting her seat she whispered in
Aristide’s ear: “And Silvère?”
The young man started with surprise at the question.
“He is dead,” he replied, likewise in a whisper. “I was there when the
gendarme blew his brains out with a pistol.”
Félicité in her turn shuddered. She opened her mouth to ask her son why
he had not prevented this murder by claiming the lad; but abruptly
hesitating she remained there speechless. Then Aristide, who had read
her question on her quivering lips, whispered: “You understand, I said
nothing—so much the worse for him! I did quite right. It’s a good
riddance.”
This brutal frankness displeased Félicité. So Aristide had his
skeleton, like his father and mother. He would certainly not have
confessed so openly that he had been strolling about the Faubourg and
had allowed his cousin to be shot, had not the wine from the Hôtel de
Provence and the dreams he was building upon his approaching arrival in
Paris, made him depart from his habitual cunning. The words once
spoken, he swung himself to and fro on his chair. Pierre, who had
watched the conversation between his wife and son from a distance,
understood what had passed and glanced at them like an accomplice
imploring silence. It was the last blast of terror, as it were, which
blew over the Rougons, amidst the splendour and enthusiastic merriment
of the dinner. True, Félicité, on returning to her seat, espied a taper
burning behind a window on the other side of the road. Some one sat
watching Monsieur Peirotte’s corpse, which had been brought back from
Sainte-Roure that morning. She sat down, feeling as if that taper were
heating her back. But the gaiety was now increasing, and exclamations
of rapture rang through the yellow drawing-room when the dessert
appeared.
At that same hour, the Faubourg was still shuddering at the tragedy
which had just stained the Aire Saint-Mittre with blood. The return of
the troops, after the carnage on the Nores plain, had been marked by
the most cruel reprisals. Men were beaten to death behind bits of wall,
with the butt-ends of muskets, others had their brains blown out in
ravines by the pistols of gendarmes. In order that terror might impose
silence, the soldiers strewed their road with corpses. One might have
followed them by the red trail which they left behind.[*] It was a long
butchery. At every halting-place, a few insurgents were massacred. Two
were killed at Sainte-Roure, three at Ocheres, one at Beage. When the
troops were encamped at Plassans, on the Nice road, it was decided that
one more prisoner, the most guilty, should be shot. The victors judged
it wise to leave this fresh corpse behind them in order to inspire the
town with respect for the new-born Empire. But the soldiers were now
weary of killing; none offered himself for the fatal task. The
prisoners, thrown on the beams in the timber-yard as though on a camp
bed, and bound together in pairs by the hands, listened and waited in a
state of weary, resigned stupor.
[*] Though M. Zola has changed his place in his account of the
insurrection, that account is strictly accurate in all its chief
particulars. What he says of the savagery both of the soldiers and of
their officers is confirmed by all impartial historical
writers.—EDITOR.
At that moment the gendarme Rengade roughly opened a way for himself
through the crowd of inquisitive idlers. As soon as he heard that the
troops had returned with several hundred insurgents, he had risen from
bed, shivering with fever, and risking his life in the cold, dark
December air. Scarcely was he out of doors when his wound reopened, the
bandage which covered his eyeless socket became stained with blood, and
a red streamlet trickled over his cheek and moustache. He looked
frightful in his dumb fury with his pale face and blood-stained
bandage, as he ran along closely scrutinising each of the prisoners. He
followed the beams, bending down and going to and fro, making the
bravest shudder by his abrupt appearance. And, all of a sudden: “Ah!
the bandit, I’ve got him!” he cried.
He had just laid his hand on Silvère’s shoulder. Silvère, crouching
down on a beam, with lifeless and expressionless face, was looking
straight before him into the pale twilight, with a calm, stupefied air.
Ever since his departure from Sainte-Roure, he had retained that vacant
stare. Along the high road, for many a league, whenever the soldiers
urged on the march of their captives with the butt-ends of their
rifles, he had shown himself as gentle as a child. Covered with dust,
thirsty and weary, he trudged onward without saying a word, like one of
those docile animals that herdsmen drive along. He was thinking of
Miette. He ever saw her lying on the banner, under the trees with her
eyes turned upwards. For three days he had seen none but her; and at
this very moment, amidst the growing darkness, he still saw her.
Rengade turned towards the officer, who had failed to find among the
soldiers the requisite men for an execution.
“This villain put my eye out,” he said, pointing to Silvère. “Hand him
over to me. It’s as good as done for you.”
The officer did not reply in words, but withdrew with an air of
indifference, making a vague gesture. The gendarme understood that the
man was surrendered to him.
“Come, get up!” he resumed, as he shook him.
Silvère, like all the other prisoners, had a companion attached to him.
He was fastened by the arm to a peasant of Poujols named Mourgue, a man
about fifty, who had been brutified by the scorching sun and the hard
labour of tilling the ground. Crooked-backed already, his hands
hardened, his face coarse and heavy, he blinked his eyes in a stupid
manner, with the stubborn, distrustful expression of an animal subject
to the lash. He had set out armed with a pitchfork, because his fellow
villagers had done so; but he could not have explained what had thus
set him adrift on the high roads. Since he had been made a prisoner he
understood it still less. He had some vague idea that he was being
conveyed home. His amazement at finding himself bound, the sight of all
the people staring at him, stupefied him still more. As he only spoke
and understood the dialect of the region, he could not imagine what the
gendarme wanted. He raised his coarse, heavy face towards him with an
effort; then, fancying he was being asked the name of his village, he
said in his hoarse voice:
“I come from Poujols.”
A burst of laughter ran through the crowd, and some voices cried:
“Release the peasant.”
“Bah!” Rengade replied; “the more of this vermin that’s crushed the
better. As they’re together, they can both go.”
There was a murmur.
But the gendarme turned his terrible blood-stained face upon the
onlookers, and they slunk off. One cleanly little citizen went away
declaring that if he remained any longer it would spoil his appetite
for dinner. However some boys who recognised Silvère, began to speak of
“the red girl.” Thereupon the little citizen retraced his steps, in
order to see the lover of the female standard-bearer, that depraved
creature who had been mentioned in the “Gazette.”
Silvère, for his part, neither saw nor heard anything; Rengade had to
seize him by the collar. Thereupon he got up, forcing Mourgue to rise
also.
“Come,” said the gendarme. “It won’t take long.”
Silvère then recognised the one-eyed man. He smiled. He must have
understood. But he turned his head away. The sight of the one-eyed man,
of his moustaches which congealed blood stiffened as with sinister
rime, caused him profound grief. He would have liked to die in perfect
peace. So he avoided the gaze of Rengade’s one eye, which glared from
beneath the white bandage. And of his own accord he proceeded to the
end of the Aire Saint-Mittre, to the narrow lane hidden by the timber
stacks. Mourgue followed him thither.
The Aire stretched out, with an aspect of desolation under the sallow
sky. A murky light fell here and there from the copper-coloured clouds.
Never had a sadder and more lingering twilight cast its melancholy over
this bare expanse—this wood-yard with its slumbering timber, so stiff
and rigid in the cold. The prisoners, the soldiers, and the mob along
the high road disappeared amid the darkness of the trees. The expanse,
the beams, the piles of planks alone grew pale under the fading light,
assuming a muddy tint that vaguely suggested the bed of a dried-up
torrent. The sawyers’ trestles, rearing their meagre framework in a
corner, seemed to form gallows, or the uprights of a guillotine. And
there was no living soul there excepting three gipsies who showed their
frightened faces at the door of their van—an old man and woman, and a
big girl with woolly hair, whose eyes gleamed like those of a wolf.
Before reaching the secluded path, Silvère looked round him. He
bethought himself of a far away Sunday when he had crossed the
wood-yard in the bright moonlight. How calm and soft it had been!—how
slowly had the pale rays passed over the beams! Supreme silence had
fallen from the frozen sky. And amidst this silence, the woolly-haired
gipsy girl had sung in a low key and an unknown tongue. Then Silvère
remembered that the seemingly far-off Sunday was only a week old. But a
week ago he had come to bid Miette farewell! How long past it seemed!
He felt as though he had not set foot in the wood-yard for years. But
when he reached the narrow path his heart failed him. He recognised the
odour of the grass, the shadows of the planks, the holes in the wall. A
woeful voice rose from all those things. The path stretched out sad and
lonely; it seemed longer to him than usual, and he felt a cold wind
blowing down it. The spot had aged cruelly. He saw that the wall was
moss-eaten, that the verdant carpet was dried up by frost, that the
piles of timber had been rotted by rain. It was perfect devastation.
The yellow twilight fell like fine dust upon the ruins of all that had
been most dear to him. He was obliged to close his eyes that he might
again behold the lane green, and live his happy hours afresh. It was
warm weather; and he was racing with Miette in the balmy air. Then the
cruel December rains fell unceasingly, yet they still came there,
sheltering themselves beneath the planks and listening with rapture to
the heavy plashing of the shower. His whole life—all his
happiness—passed before him like a flash of lightning. Miette was
climbing over the wall, running to him, shaking with sonorous laughter.
She was there; he could see her, gleaming white through the darkness,
with her living helm of ink-black hair. She was talking about the
magpies’ nests, which are so difficult to steal, and she dragged him
along with her. Then he heard the gentle murmur of the Viorne in the
distance, the chirping of the belated grasshoppers, and the blowing of
the breeze among the poplars in the meadows of Sainte-Claire. Ah, how
they used to run! How well he remembered it! She had learnt to swim in
a fortnight. She was a plucky girl. She had only had one great fault:
she was inclined to pilfering. But he would have cured her of that.
Then the thought of their first embraces brought him back to the narrow
path. They had always ended by returning to that nook. He fancied he
could hear the gipsy girl’s song dying away, the creaking of the last
shutters, the solemn striking of the clocks. Then the hour of
separation came, and Miette climbed the wall again and threw him a
kiss. And he saw her no more. Emotion choked him at the thought: he
would never see her again—never!
“When you’re ready,” jeered the one-eyed man; “come, choose your
place.”
Silvère took a few more steps. He was approaching the end of the path,
and could see nothing but a strip of sky in which the rust-coloured
light was fading away. Here had he spent his life for two years past.
The slow approach of death added an ineffable charm to this pathway
which had so long served as a lovers’ walk. He loitered, bidding a long
and lingering farewell to all he loved; the grass, the timber, the
stone of the old wall, all those things into which Miette had breathed
life. And again his thoughts wandered. They were waiting till they
should be old enough to marry: Aunt Dide would remain with them. Ah! if
they had fled far away, very far away, to some unknown village, where
the scamps of the Faubourg would no longer have been able to come and
cast Chantegreil’s crime in his daughter’s face. What peaceful bliss!
They would have opened a wheelwright’s workshop beside some high road.
No doubt, he cared little for his ambitions now; he no longer thought
of coachmaking, of carriages with broad varnished panels as shiny as
mirrors. In the stupor of his despair he could not remember why his
dream of bliss would never come to pass. Why did he not go away with
Miette and aunt Dide? Then as he racked his memory, he heard the sharp
crackling of a fusillade; he saw a standard fall before him, its staff
broken and its folds drooping like the wings of a bird brought down by
a shot. It was the Republic falling asleep with Miette under the red
flag. Ah, what wretchedness! They were both dead, both had bleeding
wounds in their breasts. And it was they—the corpses of his two
loves—that now barred his path of life. He had nothing left him and
might well die himself. These were the thoughts that had made him so
gentle, so listless, so childlike all the way from Sainte-Roure. The
soldiers might have struck him, he would not have felt it. His spirit
no longer inhabited his body. It was far away, prostrate beside the
loved ones who were dead under the trees amidst the pungent smoke of
the gunpowder.
But the one-eyed man was growing impatient; giving a push to Mourgue,
who was lagging behind, he growled: “Get along, do; I don’t want to be
here all night.”
Silvère stumbled. He looked at his feet. A fragment of a skull lay
whitening in the grass. He thought he heard a murmur of voices filling
the pathway. The dead were calling him, those long departed ones, whose
warm breath had so strangely perturbed him and his sweetheart during
the sultry July evenings. He recognised their low whispers. They were
rejoicing, they were telling him to come, and promising to restore
Miette to him beneath the earth, in some retreat which would prove
still more sequestered than this old trysting-place. The cemetery,
whose oppressive odours and dark vegetation had breathed eager desire
into the children’s hearts, while alluringly spreading out its couches
of rank grass, without succeeding however in throwing them into one
another’s arms, now longed to imbibe Silvère’s warm blood. For two
summers past it had been expecting the young lovers.
“Is it here?” asked the one-eyed man.
Silvère looked in front of him. He had reached the end of the path. His
eyes fell on the tombstone, and he started. Miette was right, that
stone was for her. _“Here lieth . . . Marie . . . died . . . “_ She was
dead, that slab had fallen over her. His strength failing him, he leant
against the frozen stone. How warm it had been when they sat in that
nook, chatting for many a long evening! She had always come that way,
and the pressure of her foot, as she alighted from the wall, had worn
away the stone’s surface in one corner. The mark seemed instinct with
something of her lissom figure. And to Silvère it appeared as if some
fatalism attached to all these objects—as if the stone were there
precisely in order that he might come to die beside it, there where he
had loved.
The one-eyed man cocked his pistols.
Death! death! the thought fascinated Silvère. It was to this spot,
then, that they had led him, by the long white road which descends from
Sainte-Roure to Plassans. If he had known it, he would have hastened on
yet more quickly in order to die on that stone, at the end of the
narrow path, in the atmosphere where he could still detect the scent of
Miette’s breath! Never had he hoped for such consolation in his grief.
Heaven was merciful. He waited, a vague smile playing on is face.
Mourgue, meantime, had caught sight of the pistols. Hitherto he had
allowed himself to be dragged along stupidly. But fear now overcame
him, and he repeated, in a tone of despair: “I come from Poujols—I come
from Poujols!”
Then he threw himself on the ground, rolling at the gendarme’s feet,
breaking out into prayers for mercy, and imagining that he was being
mistaken for some one else.
“What does it matter to me that you come from Poujols?” Rengade
muttered.
And as the wretched man, shivering and crying with terror, and quite
unable to understand why he was going to die, held out his trembling
hands—his deformed, hard, labourer’s hands—exclaiming in his patois
that he had done nothing and ought to be pardoned, the one-eyed man
grew quite exasperated at being unable to put the pistol to his temple,
owing to his constant movements.
“Will you hold your tongue?” he shouted.
Thereupon Mourgue, mad with fright and unwilling to die, began to howl
like a beast—like a pig that is being slaughtered.
“Hold your tongue, you scoundrel!” the gendarme repeated.
And he blew his brains out. The peasant fell with a thud. His body
rolled to the foot of a timber-stack, where it remained doubled up. The
violence of the shock had severed the rope which fastened him to his
companion. Silvère fell on his knees before the tombstone.
It was to make his vengeance the more terrible that Rengade had killed
Mourgue first. He played with his second pistol, raising it slowly in
order to relish Silvère’s agony. But the latter looked at him quietly.
Then again the sight of this man, with the one fierce, scorching eye,
made him feel uneasy. He averted his glance, fearing that he might die
cowardly if he continued to look at that feverishly quivering gendarme,
with blood-stained bandage and bleeding moustache. However, as he
raised his eyes to avoid him, he perceived Justin’s head just above the
wall, at the very spot where Miette had been wont to leap over.
Justin had been at the Porte de Rome, among the crowd, when the
gendarme had led the prisoners away. He had set off as fast as he could
by way of the Jas-Meiffren, in his eagerness to witness the execution.
The thought that he alone, of all the Faubourg scamps, would view the
tragedy at his ease, as from a balcony, made him run so quickly that he
twice fell down. And in spite of his wild chase, he arrived too late to
witness the first shot. He climbed the mulberry tree in despair; but he
smiled when he saw that Silvère still remained. The soldiers had
informed him of his cousin’s death, and now the murder of the
wheelwright brought his happiness to a climax. He awaited the shot with
that delight which the sufferings of others always afforded him—a
delight increased tenfold by the horror of the scene, and a feeling of
exquisite fear.
Silvère, on recognising that vile scamp’s head all by itself above the
wall—that pale grinning face, with hair standing on end—experienced a
feeling of fierce rage, a sudden desire to live. It was the last revolt
of his blood—a momentary mutiny. He again sank down on his knees,
gazing straight before him. A last vision passed before his eyes in the
melancholy twilight. At the end of the path, at the entrance of the
Impasse Saint-Mittre, he fancied he could see aunt Dide standing erect,
white and rigid like the statue of a saint, while she witnessed his
agony from a distance.
At that moment he felt the cold pistol on his temple. There was a smile
on Justin’s pale face. Closing his eyes, Silvère heard the
long-departed dead wildly summoning him. In the darkness, he now saw
nothing save Miette, wrapped in the banner, under the trees, with her
eyes turned towards heaven. Then the one-eyed man fired, and all was
over; the lad’s skull burst open like a ripe pomegranate; his face fell
upon the stone, with his lips pressed to the spot which Miette’s feet
had worn—that warm spot which still retained a trace of his dead love.
And in the evening at dessert, at the Rougons’ abode, bursts of
laughter arose with the fumes from the table, which was still warm with
the remains of the dinner. At last the Rougons were nibbling at the
pleasures of the wealthy! Their appetites, sharpened by thirty years of
restrained desire, now fell to with wolfish teeth. These fierce,
insatiate wild beasts, scarcely entering upon indulgence, exulted at
the birth of the Empire—the dawn of the Rush for the Spoils. The Coup
d’État, which retrieved the fortune of the Bonapartes, also laid the
foundation for that of the Rougons.
Pierre stood up, held out his glass, and exclaimed: “I drink to Prince
Louis—to the Emperor!”
The gentlemen, who had drowned their jealousies in champagne, rose in a
body and clinked glasses with deafening shouts. It was a fine
spectacle. The bourgeois of Plassans, Roudier, Granoux, Vuillet, and
all the others, wept and embraced each other over the corpse of the
Republic, which as yet was scarcely cold. But a splendid idea occurred
to Sicardot. He took from Félicité’s hair a pink satin bow, which she
had placed over her right ear in honour of the occasion, cut off a
strip of the satin with his dessert knife, and then solemnly fastened
it to Rougon’s button-hole. The latter feigned modesty, and pretended
to resist. But his face beamed with joy, as he murmured: “No, I beg
you, it is too soon. We must wait until the decree is published.”
“Zounds!” Sicardot exclaimed, “will you please keep that! It’s an old
soldier of Napoleon who decorates you!”
The whole company burst into applause. Félicité almost swooned with
delight. Silent Granoux jumped up on a chair in his enthusiasm, waving
his napkin and making a speech which was lost amid the uproar. The
yellow drawing-room was wild with triumph.
But the strip of pink satin fastened to Pierre’s button-hole was not
the only red spot in that triumph of the Rougons. A shoe, with a
blood-stained heel, still lay forgotten under the bedstead in the
adjoining room. The taper burning at Monsieur Peirotte’s bedside, over
the way, gleamed too with the lurid redness of a gaping wound amidst
the dark night. And yonder, far away, in the depths of the Aire
Saint-Mittre, a pool of blood was congealing upon a tombstone.