The two sweethearts from the commencement found their intrigue
necessary, inevitable and quite natural. At their first interview they
conversed familiarly, kissing one another without embarrassment, and
without a blush, as if their intimacy had dated back several years. They
lived quite at ease in their new situation, with a tranquillity and an
independence that were perfect.
They made their appointments. Thérèse being unable to go out, it was
arranged that Laurent should come to see her. In a clear, firm voice the
young woman explained to him the plan she had conceived. The interview
would take place in the nuptial chamber. The sweetheart would pass by
the passage which ran into the arcade, and Thérèse would open the door
on the staircase to him. During this time, Camille would be at his
office, and Madame Raquin below, in the shop. This was a daring
arrangement that ought to succeed.
Laurent accepted. There was a sort of brutal temerity in his prudence,
the temerity of a man with big fists. Choosing a pretext, he obtained
permission from his chief to absent himself for a couple of hours, and
hastened to the Arcade of the Pont Neuf.
The dealer in imitation jewelry was seated just opposite the door of
the passage, and he had to wait until she was busy, until some young
work-girl came to purchase a ring or a brooch made of brass. Then,
rapidly entering the passage, he ascended the narrow, dark staircase,
leaning against the walls which were clammy with damp. He stumbled
against the stone steps, and each time he did so, he felt a red-hot iron
piercing his chest. A door opened, and on the threshold, in the midst of
a gleam of white light he perceived Thérèse, who closing the door after
him, threw her arms about his neck.
Laurent was astonished to find his sweetheart handsome. He had never
seen her before as she appeared to him then. Thérèse, supple and strong,
pressed him in her arms, flinging her head backward, while on her visage
coursed ardent rays of light and passionate smiles. This face seemed as
if transfigured, with its moist lips and sparkling eyes. It now had
a fond caressing look. It radiated. She was beautiful with the strong
beauty born of passionate abandon.
When Laurent parted from her, after his initial visit, he staggered like
a drunken man, and the next day, on recovering his cunning prudent calm,
he asked himself whether he should return to this young woman whose
kisses gave him the fever. First of all he positively decided to keep to
himself. Then he had a cowardly feeling. He sought to forget, to avoid
seeing Thérèse, and yet she always seemed to be there, implacably
extending her arms. The physical suffering that this spectacle caused
him became intolerable.
He gave way. He arranged another meeting, and returned to the Arcade of
the Pont Neuf.
From that day forth, Thérèse entered into his life. He did not yet
accept her, although he bore with her. He had his hours of terror,
his moments of prudence, and, altogether this intrigue caused him
disagreeable agitation. But his discomfort and his fears disappeared.
The meetings continued and multiplied.
Thérèse experienced no hesitation. She went straight where her passion
urged her to go. This woman whom circumstances had bowed down, and who
had at length drawn herself up erect, now revealed all her being and
explained her life.
“Oh! if you only knew,” said she, “how I have suffered. I was brought
up in the tepid damp room of an invalid. I slept in the same bed as
Camille. At night I got as far away from him as I could, to avoid the
sickly odour of his body. He was naughty and obstinate. He would not
take his physic unless I shared it with him. To please my aunt I was
obliged to swallow a dose of every drug. I don’t know how it is I
have survived. They made me ugly. They robbed me of the only thing I
possessed, and it is impossible for you to love me as I love you.”
She broke off and wept, and after kissing Laurent, continued with bitter
hatred:
“I do not wish them any harm. They brought me up, they received me,
and shielded me from misery. But I should have preferred abandonment to
their hospitality. I had a burning desire for the open air. When quite
young, my dream was to rove barefooted along the dusty roads, holding
out my hand for charity, living like a gipsy. I have been told that my
mother was a daughter of the chief of a tribe in Africa. I have often
thought of her, and I understood that I belonged to her by blood and
instinct. I should have liked to have never parted from her, and to have
crossed the sand slung at her back.
“Ah! what a childhood! I still feel disgust and rebellion, when I recall
the long days I passed in the room where Camille was at death’s door.
I sat bent over the fire, stupidly watching the infusions simmer, and
feeling my limbs growing stiff. And I could not move. My aunt scolded me
if I made a noise. Later on, I tasted profound joy in the little house
beside the river; but I was already half feeble, I could barely walk,
and when I tried to run I fell down. Then they buried me alive in this
vile shop.”
After a pause, she resumed:
“You will hardly credit how bad they have made me. They have turned
me into a liar and a hypocrite. They have stifled me with their
middle-class gentleness, and I can hardly understand how it is that
there is still blood in my veins. I have lowered my eyes, and given
myself a mournful, idiotic face like theirs. I have led their deathlike
life. When you saw me I looked like a blockhead, did I not? I was grave,
overwhelmed, brutalised. I no longer had any hope. I thought of flinging
myself into the Seine.
“But previous to this depression, what nights of anger I had. Down there
at Vernon, in my frigid room, I bit my pillow to stifle my cries. I beat
myself, taxed myself with cowardice. My blood was on the boil, and I
would have lacerated my body. On two occasions, I wanted to run away, to
go straight before me, towards the sun; but my courage failed. They had
turned me into a docile brute with their tame benevolence and sickly
tenderness. Then I lied, I always lied. I remained there quite gentle,
quite silent, dreaming of striking and biting.”
After a silence, she continued:
“I do not know why I consented to marry Camille. I did not protest, from
a feeling of a sort of disdainful indifference. I pitied the child. When
I played with him, I felt my fingers sink into the flesh of his limbs
as into damp clay. I took him because my aunt offered him to me, and
because I never intended to place any restraint on my actions on his
account.
“I found my husband just the same little suffering boy whose bed I
had shared when I was six years old. He was just as frail, just as
plaintive, and he still had that insipid odour of a sick child that had
been so repugnant to me previously. I am relating all this so that you
may not be jealous. I was seized with a sort of disgust. I remembered
the physic I had drank. I got as far away from him as the bed would
allow, and I passed terrible nights. But you, you----”
Thérèse drew herself up, bending backward, her fingers imprisoned in the
massive hands of Laurent, gazing at his broad shoulders, and enormous
neck.
“You, I love you,” she continued. “I loved you from the day Camille
pushed you into the shop. You have perhaps no esteem for me, because I
gave way at once. Truly, I know not how it happened. I am proud. I am
passionate. I would have liked to have beaten you, the first day, when
you kissed me. I do not know how it was I loved you; I hated you rather.
The sight of you irritated me, and made me suffer. When you were there,
my nerves were strained fit to snap. My head became quite empty. I was
ready to commit a crime.
“Oh! how I suffered! And I sought this suffering. I waited for you to
arrive. I loitered round your chair, so as to move in your breath, to
drag my clothes over yours. It seemed as though your blood cast puffs of
heat on me as I passed, and it was this sort of burning cloud in which
you were enveloped, that attracted me, and detained me beside you in
spite of my secret revolt. You remember when you were painting here:
a fatal power attracted me to your side, and I breathed your air with
cruel delight. I know I seemed to be begging for kisses, I felt ashamed
of my bondage, I felt I should fall, if you were to touch me. But I gave
way to my cowardice, I shivered with cold, waiting until you chose to
take me in your arms.”
When Thérèse ceased speaking, she was quivering, as though proud at
being avenged. In this bare and chilly room were enacted scenes of
burning lust, sinister in their brutality.
On her part Thérèse seemed to revel in daring. The only precaution she
would take when expecting her lover was to tell her aunt she was going
upstairs to rest. But then, when he was there she never bothered about
avoiding noise, walking about and talking. At first this terrified
Laurent.
“For God’s sake,” he whispered, “don’t make so much noise. Madame Raquin
will hear.”
Thérèse would laugh. “Who cares, you are always so worried. She is at
her counter and won’t leave. She is too afraid of being robbed. Besides,
you can hide.”
Laurent’s passion had not yet stifled his native peasant caution, but
soon he grew used to the risks of these meetings, only a few yards from
the old woman.
One day, fearing her niece was ill, Madame Raquin climbed the stairs.
Thérèse never bothered to bolt the bedroom door.
At the sound of the woman’s heavy step on the wooden stairs, Laurent
became frantic. Thérèse laughed as she saw him searching for his
waistcoat and hat. She grabbed his arm and pushed him down at the foot
of the bed. With perfect self-possession she whispered:
“Stay there. Don’t move.”
She threw all his clothes that were lying about over him and covered
them with a white petticoat she had taken off. Without losing her calm,
she lay down, half-naked, with her hair loose.
When Madame Raquin quietly opened the door and tiptoed to the bed the
younger woman pretended to be asleep. Laurent, under all the clothes was
in a panic.
“Thérèse,” asked the old lady with some concern, “are you all right, my
dear?”
Thérèse, opening her eyes and yawning, answered that she had a terrible
migraine. She begged her aunt to let her sleep some more. The old lady
left the room as quietly as she had entered it.
“So you see,” Thérèse said triumphantly, “there is no reason to worry.
These people are not in love. They are blind.”
At other times Thérèse seemed quite mad, wandering in her mind. She
would see the cat, sitting motionless and dignified, looking at them.
“Look at François,” she said to Laurent. “You’d think he understands and
is planning to tell Camille everything to-night. He knows a thing or two
about us. Wouldn’t it be funny if one day, in the shop, he just started
talking.”
This idea was delightful to Thérèse but Laurent felt a shudder run
through him as he looked at the cat’s big green eyes. Thérèse’s hold on
him was not total and he was scared. He got up and put the cat out of
the room.