Complete Works of Emile Zola (680 page)

But nothing could increase the horse’s pace. It was eleven o’clock when they reached the Rue d’Assas. And there they wasted nearly another quarter of an hour, for in spite of Trublot’s boasts, he could not find the door. At first, he allowed the driver to go along the street to the very end without stopping him; then he made him drive up and down three times over. And on his precise indications, Auguste kept entering every tenth house; but the doorkeepers all answered that they knew no one of the name. At length, a greengrocer pointed out the door to him. He went in with Bachelard, leaving Trublot in the cab.

It was the big rascal of a brother who admitted them. He had a cigarette stuck between his lips, and blew the smoke into their faces as he showed them into the drawing-room. When they asked for Monsieur Duveyrier, he stood looking at them in a jocular manner without answering. Then he disappeared, perhaps to fetch him. In the middle of the blue satin drawing-room, all luxuriously new, yet already stained with grease, one of the sisters, the youngest, was seated on the carpet scouring out a saucepan which she had brought from the kitchen; whilst the other, the eldest, was hammering with her clenched fists on a magnificent piano, the key of which she had just found. On seeing the gentlemen enter they had both raised their heads; neither, however, left off her occupation, but continued on the contrary hammering and scouring more energetically than ever. Five minutes passed, yet no one came. The visitors, feeling almost deafened, stood looking at each other, when some yells, issuing from a neighbouring room, completely terrified them;
it was the invalid aunt being washed.

At length, an old woman, Madame Bocquet, Clarisse’s mother, passed her head through a partly opened door, not daring to show any more of her person because of the filthy dress she had on.

“What do you gentlemen desire?” asked she.

“Why, Monsieur Duveyrier!” exclaimed the uncle losing patience. “We have already told the servant. Let him know that Monsieur Auguste Vabre and Monsieur Narcisse Bachelard wish to see him.”

Madame Bocquet shut the door again. The eldest of the sisters was now mounted on the music stool, and was hammering away with her elbows, whilst the youngest was scraping the saucepan with an iron fork, so as to get all she could out of it.

Another five minutes passed by. Then, in the midst of the uproar, which did not seem to disturb her in the least, Clarisse appeared.

“Ah! it’s you!” said she to Bachelard, without even looking at Auguste.

The uncle was quite taken aback. He would not have known her, she had grown so fat. The big devil of a wench, once as skinny as a scarecrow and as curly as a poodle, was becoming quite the little mother, clammy, and her hair all shining with pomatum. She did not give him time to say a word, but at once roughly told him that she did not want in her home such a talebearer as him, who went and told Alphonse all sorts of horrible things; yes, exactly so, he had accused her of sleeping with Alphonse’s friends, of picking them up behind his back by the shovelful;
and he could not deny it, for Alphonse himself had told her.

“You know, my old fellow,” added she, “if you’ve come to tipple, you may as well get out at once. The old life’s done with. I now intend to be respected.”

And she displayed her passion for the genteel, which had grown, and had become her fixed idea. Seized with periodical fits of rigour, she had thus driven away her lover’s friends one by one, forbidding them to smoke, insisting on being addressed as Madame and on receiving morning calls. Her old superficial and borrowed funniness had all departed; and she retained merely the exaggeration of her part of a grand lady, who at times broke out in foul words and obscene gestures. Little by little solitude was again enveloping Duveyrier: there was no longer the pleasant nook, but a ferociously middle-class abode, amidst the filth and uproar of which he met with all the annoyances of his own home. As Trublot said, one did not feel more bored at the Rue de Choiseul, and this was much less dirty.

“We haven’t called on your account,” replied Bachelard recovering himself, used as he was to the lively receptions of such ladies.” We must speak to Duveyrier.”

Then Clarisse looked at the other gentleman. She took him for a bailiff, knowing that Alphonse was already in a mess.

“Oh! after all, I don’t care,” said she. “You can take him and keep him if you like. It’s not so very pleasant to have to dress his pimples!”

She no longer even took the trouble to conceal her disgust, certain, moreover, that all her cruelties only attached him to her the more.

And, opening a door, she added:

“Here! come along, as these gentlemen persist in seeing you.”

Duveyrier, who seemed to have been waiting behind the door, entered and shook their hands, trying to conjure up a smile. He no longer had the youthful air of bygone days, when he used to spend the evening at her rooms in the Rue de la Cerisaie; he looked overcome with weariness, he was mournful and much thinner, starting at every moment, as though he were uneasy about something behind him.

Clarisse remained to listen. Bachelard, who did not intend to speak before her, invited the counsellor to lunch.

“Now, do accept, Monsieur Vabre wants you. Madame will be kind enough to excuse — “

But the latter had at length caught sight of her sister hammering on the piano, and she slapped her and turned her out of the room, taking the same opportunity to cuff and drive away the little one with her saucepan. There was a most infernal uproar. The invalid aunt in the next room again started off yelling, thinking they were coming to beat her.

“Do you hear, my darling?” murmured Duveyrier, “these gentlemen have invited me to lunch.”

But she was not listening to him, she was trying the instrument with frightened tenderness. For a month past, she had been learning to play the piano. It was the secret dream of her whole life, a far away ambition the realization of which could alone stamp her a woman of society. Having satisfied herself that there was nothing broken, she was about to prevent her lover from going, simply to annoy him, when Madame Bocquet once more bobbed her head in at the door, again hiding her skirt.

“Your music-master,” said she.

At this Clarisse changed her mind, and called to Duveyrier:

“That’s it, be off! I’ll lunch with Théodore. We don’t want you.”

The music-master, Théodore, was a Belgian with a large rosy face. She at once sat down before the instrument, and rubbing her fingers to make them less stiff, she placed them on the keys. For a moment Duveyrier, who was visibly greatly annoyed, hesitated. But the gentlemen were waiting for him, so he went to put on his boots. When he returned she was splashing about amongst the scales, emitting a tempest of false notes, which were making Auguste and Bachelard quite ill.

Yet he, who went half mad when his wife played selections from Mozart or Beethoven, stood for a minute behind his mistress, seeming to enjoy the sounds, in spite of the nervous contractions of his face; and, turning towards his two visitors, he murmured:

“She has a most extraordinary taste for music.”

After kissing her on the hair, he discreetly withdrew, leaving her with Théodore. In the anteroom, the big rascal of a brother asked him in his jocular way for a franc for tobacco. Then, as they went downstairs, Bachelard expressed surprise at his conversion to the charms of the piano, and he swore he had never disliked it, he talked of the ideal, saying how much Clarisse’s simple scales stirred his soul, yielding to his continual mania for having a bright side to his coarse masculine appetites.

Down below, Trublot had given the driver a cigar, and was listening to his history with the liveliest interest. The uncle insisted on lunching at Foyot’s; it was the proper time, and they could talk better whilst eating. Then, when the cab had managed to start off again, he told everything to Duveyrier, who became very grave.

Auguste’s uneasiness seemed to have increased at Clarisse’s, where he had not opened his mouth; and now, worn out by this interminable drive, his head entirely a prey to a violent aching, he abandoned himself.

When the counsellor questioned him as to what he intended doing, he opened his eyes, and remained a moment filled with anguish, then he repeated his former phrase:

“Why fight, of course!”

Only, his voice was weaker, and he added as he closed his eyes, as though to ask to be left alone,

“Unless you have anything else to suggest.”

Then the gentlemen held a grand council in the midst of the laborious jolts of the vehicle. Duveyrier, the same as Bachelard, considered the duel indispensable; he was deeply affected by it, on account of the blood likely to be spilt, a long black stream of which he pictured soiling the stairs of his property; but honour demanded it, and one cannot compound with honour. Trublot had broader views: it was too stupid to place one’s honour in what out of decency he termed a woman’s frailty. And Auguste approved what he said by a weary blink of his eyelids, thoroughly incensed at last by the bellicose rage of the two others, whose duty it was on the contrary to have been conciliatory. In spite of his fatigue, he was obliged to relate once more the scene of the night before, the blow he had given and the blow he had received; and soon the fact of the adultery was lost sight of, the discussion bore solely upon these two blows: they were commented upon, and analysed, as a satisfactory solution was sought for.

“What refinement?
”
Trublot ended by contemptuously saying. “If they hit each other, well! they’re quits.”

Duveyrier and Bachelard looked at one another, evidently shaken in their opinions. But just then they arrived at the restaurant, and the uncle declared that they would first of all have a good lunch. It would help to clear their ideas. He stood treat, ordering a copious meal, with costly dishes and wines, which kept them three hours in a private room. The duel was not even once mentioned. From the very beginning, the conversation had necessarily turned on the question of women, Fifi and Clarisse were during the whole time explained, turned inside out, and pulled to pieces. Bachelard now admitted himself to have been in the wrong, so as not to appear to the counsellor as having been vilely chucked over;
whilst the latter, taking his revenge for the evening when the uncle had seen him weep in the middle of the empty rooms in the Rue de la Cerisaie, lied about his happiness, to the point of believing in it and being affected by it himself. Seated before them, Auguste, prevented by his neuralgia both from eating and drinking, appeared to be listening, an elbow on the table, and a confused look in his eyes. At dessert, Trublot recollected the driver, who had been forgotten outside; and full of sympathy he sent him the remnants of the dishes and what was left in the bottles; for, said he, from certain things he had let drop, he had a suspicion the man was an ex-priest. Three o’clock struck. Duveyrier complained of being assessor at the next sitting of the assizes; Bachelard, who was now very drunk, spat sideways on to Trublot’s trousers, without the latter noticing it; and the day would have been finished there, amidst the liqueurs, if Auguste had not suddenly roused himself with a start.

“Well, what’s going to be done?” asked he.

“Well! young ‘un,” replied the uncle, speaking most familiarly, “if you like, we’ll settle matters nicely for you. It’s stupid to fight.”

No one appeared surprised at this conclusion. Duveyrier signified his approval with a nod of the head. The uncle continued:

“I’ll go with Monsieur Duveyrier and see the fellow, and he shall apologise, or my name isn’t Bachelard. The mere sight of me will make him cave in, just because I shall have no business there. I don’t care a hang for anyone!”

Auguste shook him by the hand; but he did not seem to feel relieved, the pains in his head had become so unbearable. At length, they left the private room. Down in the street, the driver was still at lunch, inside the cab; and, completely intoxicated, he had to shake the crumbs out, digging Trublot fraternally in the stomach. Only, the horse, which had had nothing at all, refused to walk, with a despairing wag of the head. They pushed him, and he ended by going down the Rue de Tournon, as though he were rolling along. Four o’clock had struck, when the animal at length stopped in the Rue de Choiseul. Auguste had had the cab seven hours. Trublot, who remained inside, engaged it for himself, and declared that he would wait there for Bachelard, whom he wished to invite to dinner.

“Well! you have been a time,” said Théophile to his brother, as he hastened to meet him.” I thought you were dead.”

And directly the gentlemen had entered the warehouse, he related how the day had passed. He had been watching the house ever since nine o’clock. But nothing particular had occurred. At two o’clock, Valérie had gone to the Tuileries gardens with their son Camille. Then, towards half past three, he had seen Octave go out. And that was all. Nothing moved, not even at the Josserands’. Saturnin, who had been seeking his sister under the furniture, having gone up to ask for her, Madame Josserand had shut the door in his face, doubtless to get rid of him, saying that Berthe was not there. Since then, the madman had been prowling about with clenched teeth.

“Very well,” said Bachelard, “we’ll wait for the gentleman. We shall see him come in from here.”

Auguste, whose head was in a whirl, was making great efforts to keep on his legs. Then, Duveyrier advised him to go to bed. There was no other cure for headache.

“Go up now, we no longer require you. We will inform you of the result. My dear fellow, you know you should avoid all emotions.”

And the husband went up to lie down.

At five o’clock, the two others were still waiting for Octave. The latter, without any definite object, simply desirous of having some fresh air and of forgetting the events of the night, had at first passed before “The Ladies’ Paradise,” where he had stopped to wish Madame Hédouin good-day, as she stood in the doorway, dressed in deep mourning; and as he informed her of his having left the Vabres’, she had quietly asked him why he did not return to her. It had all been settled in a moment, without a previous thought upon the subject. When he had again wished her good-day, after promising to come on the morrow, he continued his stroll, his mind filled with a vague regret. Chance was for ever upsetting his calculations. Various projects absorbed his thoughts, and he had been wandering about in the neighbourhood for an hour or more, when, on raising his head, he found himself in the obscure turning of the Passage Saint-Roch. Opposite to him, Valérie was taking leave of a bearded gentleman, at the door of a low lodging-house in the darkest corner. She blushed and hastened away, pushing open the padded door of the church; then, seeing that the young man was following her and smiling, she preferred to await him under the porch, where they conversed together very cordially.