Complete Works of Emile Zola (945 page)

“Oh, Jean, don’t! You’re breaking my bones!”

She still laughed, thinking him in play. He, catching sight of Palmyre’s saucer-like eyes, started up shivering, with the wild aspect of a drunkard sobered by the view of a yawning chasm. What was this? It was not Lise he wanted, but this chit! The thought of Lise’s flesh in contact with his own had never so much as quickened his heart; whilst all his blood rose and suffocated him at the mere idea of kissing Françoise. Now he knew why he was so fond of visiting and helping the two sisters. Yet the child was so young that he was ashamed and in despair.

Lise was just then coming back from the Fouans. On the road she had reflected. She would have preferred Buteau, because, after all, he was the father of her baby. The old folks were right; why push things on? The day Buteau said no there would still be Jean to say yes.

She accosted the latter without delay.

“No answer; uncle knows nothing. Let us wait.”

Still distraught and quivering, Jean stared at her without comprehending. Then he remembered: the marriage, the infant, Buteau’s consent, the whole arrangement that, two hours earlier, he had considered advantageous for her and for himself. He hastened to reply:

“Yes, yes, let us wait. That’ll be best.”

Night was drawing in. One star already shone in the violet sky. In the growing twilight, the dim round outlines of the first stacks — protuberances on the smooth expanse of meadow — were all that was distinguishable. But the odours from the warm earth rose in greater strength amid the calm air; sounds were heard more distinctly, more prolonged and more musically limpid. Voices of men and women, faint laughter, mingled with the snort of an animal, the clink of an implement; while some mowers, growing pertinacious over a strip of meadow, went on unremittingly with their task, the broad regular whizz of the scythe still resounding, although the work was no longer visible.

Chapter V

Two years had passed in this active monotonous country life; and, with the fated return of the season, Rognes had lived its eternal round of the same toils, the same slumbers.

There stood on the road, down by the corner where the school was, a fountain of spring water, to which all the women came to get their drinking-water, the houses being furnished with nothing but pools, for the use of cattle and for watering purposes. At six o’clock in the evening the fountain was the head-quarters of the district Gazette. The least events were echoed there; and there the villagers indulged in endless commentaries upon the leg of mutton that some of their neighbours had eaten for dinner, and the daughter of such-a-one who had been in the family-way since Candlemas. For two years the same gossip had run its course with the seasons, ever renewed and never new; always children born too soon, men drunk, women beaten; a great deal of work resulting in a great deal of wretchedness. There had happened so many things, and yet nothing at all.

The Fouans, the distribution of whose property had made a sensation, were vegetating so sleepily as to be forgotten. Things had remained at the same pass: Buteau still stubborn, and still not married to the elder Mouche girl, who was rearing her child. It was the same with Jean, who had been accused of sleeping with Lise. Perhaps he didn’t; but then, why was he always hanging about the house of the two sisters? That seemed suspicious. Then there were days when the fountain-time would have been dull, but for the rivalry of Cœlina Macqueron and Flore Lengaigne, whom La Bécu continually set at each other, while pretending to reconcile them. Then, amid a deep calm, there had just broken upon them two big events — the coming elections, and the celebrated question of the road from Rognes to Châteaudun. These involved a mighty blast of gossip. The full pitchers remained standing in a row; the women could never get away. One Saturday evening, indeed, there had almost been a fight.

Now, the very next day, M. de Chédeville, the late deputy, was breakfasting at Hourdequin’s farm of La Borderie. He was doing his canvassing, and wanted to get on the right side of Hourdequin, who had great influence with the peasantry of the district; albeit that, thanks to his position as official candidate, he, Chédeville, was nearly certain to be re-elected. He had once been to Compiègne, and the whole district spoke of him as “the Emperor’s friend.” That was enough. He was chosen, as if he had spent a night at the Tuileries. This M. de Chédeville was an ex-beau; he had been the pink of fashion under Louis Philippe, retaining Orleanist tendencies in his heart of hearts, and he had ruined himself on women. He now only possessed his farm of La Chamade, near Orgères, where he never set foot save at election time. Not only was he disgusted by the falling value of farm property, but he had been seized late in life with political ambition, with a vague notion of restoring his fortunes by practical statesmanship. Tall, and still elegant, with laced bust and dyed hair, he led a reformed life, though his eyes still sparkled at the glimpse of a petticoat, and he was preparing — so he gave out — some important speeches on agri­cultural questions.

The night before, Hourdequin had had a violent quarrel with Jacqueline, who wanted to be present at the breakfast.

“You and your deputy, indeed! D’ye think I should eat your deputy? So you’re ashamed of me?” said she.

But he held out. Only two places were laid, and she was sulking, despite the gallant air of M. de Chédeville, who, perceiving her, had drawn his own conclusions, and couldn’t keep his eyes off the kitchen, whither she had retired in injured dignity.

The breakfast was drawing to a close. An Aigre trout after an omelette, and some roast pigeons.

“The fatal thing,” said M. de Chédeville, “is that com­mercial freedom which the Emperor had gone crazy about. No doubt things went on well after the treaties of 1867, and every one marvelled. But to-day the real effects are being felt. See how prices have fallen everywhere. I am for Pro­tection; we must defend ourselves against the foreigner.”

Hourdequin, lolling back in his chair and ceasing to eat, spoke slowly and dreamily:

“Wheat, which is at fifty-two francs a quarter, costs forty-six to produce. If it falls any lower it means ruin. And every year, folks say, America is increasing her exportation of cereals. We are threatened with a regular glut of the market. What will become of us, then? See here! I’ve always been in favour of progress, science, and liberty. Well, I’m shaken in my creed, upon my word. Yes, indeed. We can’t starve to death; let’s have Protection.”

He returned to the wing of his pigeon, and went on:

“You’re aware that your antagonist, Monsieur Rochefontaine, the owner of the building works at Châteaudun, is a violent Free-trader?”

They chatted for a moment about this candidate, who employed from a thousand to twelve hundred workmen: a tall, intelligent, energetic fellow, opulent to boot, and greatly inclined to serve the Empire, but so hurt at not having secured the prefect’s support, that he insisted on standing as an in­dependent candidate. He had no chance, however; the country electors treating him as a public foe the moment he ceased to be on the strongest side.

“Lord!” resumed M. de Chédeville: “there’s only one thing he wants: bread to be low, so that he may pay his hands more cheaply.”

The farmer who had been about to pour himself out a glass of claret set the bottle on the table again.

“That’s the dreadful part of it!” cried he. “On the one hand, there are ourselves, the peasants, who want to sell our grain at a remunerative price; and, on the other, there’s the manufacturer, who drives prices down to lessen wages. It’s war to the knife; and how’s it to end? Come!”

In truth, here was the burning question of the hour: the antagonism that strains the framework of society. This question was far beyond the ex-beau, who contented himself with nodding his head, and making an evasive gesture.

Hourdequin, having filled his glass to the brim, emptied it at a draught.

“It can’t end. If the peasant makes a profit out of his corn, the artisan starves; if the artisan feeds well, the peasant dies. What then? I don’t know. Let’s feed on one another!”

With both his elbows on the table, fairly launched, he re­lieved his feelings in a violent way. His secret disdain for this absentee landlord, who knew nothing of the land he lived by, betrayed itself by a certain ironical tremor in his voice.

“You’ve asked me for facts for your speeches. Well, to begin with: it’s your own fault if La Chamade doesn’t pay. The farmer you’ve got there is taking things easy, because his lease is expiring, and he suspects your intention of raising the rent. You’re never seen; so people snap their fingers at you and rob you. Nothing more natural. Then there’s a simpler reason for your ruin: we’re all being ruined. La Beauce — fertile La Beauce, our nurse and mother — is worked out!”

So he went on. For instance, in his young days, Le Perche, on the other side of the Loir, was a poor ill-cultivated country, almost grainless, the inhabitants of which used to come to Cloyes, Châteaudun, and Bonneval, and hire themselves out at harvest-time. Now-a-days, thanks to the continued rise in price of manual labour, it was Le Perche that prospered, and would soon outstrip La Beauce; without taking into account that it was growing rich on live stock. For the markets of Mondoubleau, Saint-Calais, and Courtalain supplied the open districts with horses, oxen, and swine. La Beauce only lived thanks to her sheep. Two years earlier, when congestion of the spleen had decimated the flocks, she had gone through a terrible crisis, so much so, that if the plague had continued, she would never have survived.

Then he entered on his own struggles, his own story; his twenty years’ battle with the land, which had left him poorer than before. He had always lacked capital. He had not been able to improve certain fields as he would have wished. Marling, alone, was inexpensive, yet no one but him had given any attention to it. It was the same with the manures. No one used aught but farm manure, which was insufficient. All his neighbours scoffed at his trying chemical manures, the inferior quality of which, however, often justified the mockers. As for the rotation of crops, he had been bound to conform to the custom of the country, and use the triennial system without fallows, now that the plan of artificial meadows and the culture of hoed plants was extending. Only one machine, the threshing machine, was beginning to find acceptance. Such was the deadly, inevitable, numbing influence of routine; and if he, progressive and intelligent, felt that influence, what must it be for the hard-headed peasantry hostile to all improvement? A peasant would starve sooner than take a handful of earth from his field and carry it for analysis to a chemist, who could tell him what it contained in excess and in what it was deficient; the manure it required, and the crops best adapted to it. No; the peasant was always receiving from the soil, and never dreaming of restoring anything; acquainted with no manure but that of his two cows and his horse, of which he was very thrifty. The rest was left to chance; the seed thrown into any kind of soil, and left to germinate at random; and heaven was blasphemed if it never germinated at all. Whenever the peasant’s eyes became opened, and he decided to devote himself to a rational and scientific system, the produce would be doubled. Till then, ignorant and headstrong, without a ha’porth of progress in him, he would go on murdering the soil. And thus it was that La Beauce — the ancient granary of France, flat and arid, with nothing but her corn — was gradually wasting away through exhaustion; weary of being bled at every vein, and of nurturing a race of blockheads.

“Ah! Every blasted thing is failing!” he cried, brutally. “Our sons will see the bankruptcy of the soil. Are you aware that our peasants, who once used to save up their coppers to buy a bit of land they had hungered after for years, are now buying stocks and shares — Spanish, Portuguese, even Mexican? And they wouldn’t risk fifty francs to im­prove an acre. They have lost confidence. The parents go round and round in a circle of routine like foundered animals; the sons and daughters think of nothing but letting the cows run loose, and sprucing themselves up to gad off into town. And the worst of it is that education — that famous education, don’t you know? that was going to put everything straight — favours this exodus, this depopulation of the country, by inspiring the children, with silly vanity and false ideas of comfort. See here, now. At Rognes they’ve a schoolmaster, that Lequeu, a fellow broken loose from the plough and eaten up with spite against the land he just missed cultivating. Well, how can you expect him to reconcile his boys to their lot, when he treats them every day like savages, like brute beasts, and sends them back to the paternal dung-heap with a scholar’s contempt. The remedy, good heavens! The as­sured remedy would be to have other schools — a practical system of teaching, graduated courses of agriculture. There’s a fact for you. I insist upon that. It is there, in those schools perhaps, that salvation lies, if there’s yet time.”

M. de Chédeville, pre-occupied, and feeling thoroughly un­comfortable under this mighty avalanche of facts, hastened to reply:

“No doubt, no doubt.”

Then as the servant brought in the dessert — a cream cheese and some fruit — leaving the kitchen door wide open, he caught sight of Jacqueline’s pretty profile. He bent forward, winked, and fidgeted, to attract that amiable personage’s attention; and then resumed, in the mellow tones of his old lady-killing days:

“You don’t tell me anything about the small holdings.”

He set forth the current notions — the small proprietorships created in ‘89, favoured by the law, destined to regenerate agriculture; in short, everybody a landowner, and each man devoting his intellect and energies to the cultivation of his scrap of land.

“Stuff and nonsense!” declared Hourdequin. “To begin with, the petty landowners existed before ‘89, and in almost as large a proportion. And in the next place, there’s a good deal to be said on both sides about cutting up the soil.”

With his elbows again on the table, eating some cherries and spitting out the stones, he now entered into details. In La Beauce the petty landowners, those who inherited less than fifty acres, were in the proportion of eighty per cent. For some time almost all the day labourers — those who worked on the farms — had been buying bits of land, fragments of large demesnes, and cultivating them at odd moments. That was certainly an excellent plan, for the labourer was thus at once bound to the soil. It might be added in favour of the system of petty holdings that it developed worthier, more self-reliant, and better educated men. Finally, it conduced to a com­paratively larger yield, the produce also being of better quality; for the owner exerted himself to the utmost, and tended his crop minutely. But how many inconveniences there were on the other hand! First, this superiority in yield and quality was due to excessive work. The parents and children toiled to death in order to live. Indeed, it was this exhausting, ungrateful labour that was finally depopulating the rural districts. Next, with the subdivision of the soil there was increased transport, which spoilt the roads and augmented the cost of production, besides leading to waste of time. It was impossible to employ machinery on the smaller holdings, on which, moreover, the triennial rotation was necessary. This was certainly unscientific, for it was unreasonable to demand two successive crops of cereals, oats, and wheat. In short, extreme subdivision of the soil seemed so surely to por­tend danger, that, after having encouraged it by law just after the Revolution — for fear of seeing the large domains formed again — the State had now begun to facilitate transfers by diminishing the charges thereon.