Complete Works of Emile Zola (128 page)

“Your mother is dead,” she added, in her voice of inspiration; “pray for her.”

Geneviève had always loved the child of sin, in spite of the terrors which such affection caused him. Now that this child had become a man, she put more guard on her heart. Yet at bottom, she was absolutely and blindly devoted to him.

On two occasions, James came to spend his student’s holidays at Véteuil. These times were for William months of wild joy. The two friends were always together; they would shoot for whole days, or catch crawfish in the little brook that runs through the country. Often, in some secluded nook, they would sit down and talk about Paris, especially about women. James spoke lightly of them, as a man who had no very great regard for them, but who had the gallantry to look kindly on them, and not to speak all his mind on the subject. And William would then reproach him for his coldness of heart; he set woman on a pedestal, and made her an idol, before which he chanted an eternal song of fidelity and love.

“Oh! do be quiet,” the impatient student would exclaim, “You don’t know what you are saying. You will soon bore your mistresses, if you are always on your knees before them. But you will do as others do, you will deceive and be deceived. Such is life.”

“No, no,” he would answer in his obstinate way, “I shall not do as others do. I shall never love but one woman. I shall love her in such a way that I defy fate to disturb our affection.”

“Rubbish! we shall see.”

And James would laugh at the artlessness of his country friend. He almost scandalised him by the recital of his love adventures of one night. The journeys that he thus, made to Véteuil cemented still more closely the friendship of the two young fellows. Besides, they used to write long letters to one another. Gradually, however, James’s letters became less frequent; the third year, he had ceased to give any sign of life. William was very sad at this silence.

He knew, through the student’s uncle, that his friend was to leave France, and he would have very much liked to bid him good bye before his departure. He was beginning to get mortally tired at La Noiraude. His father learnt the cause of his languid dejected ways, and said to him one night as he left the table:

“I know that you want to go to Paris. I give you leave to live there one year, and I expect that you will do some stupid thing or other. You shall have unlimited credit. You may start to-morrow.”

Next day on his arrival in Paris, William learnt that James had gone away the day before. He had written a farewell letter to him at Véteuil which Geneviève sent on to him. In this letter, which was full of high spirits and very affectionate, his friend informed him that he had been gazetted as surgeon to our expeditionary army to Cochin China, and that he would be doubtless a long time away from France. William returned immediately to La Noiraude, distressed at this hurried departure and terrified at the thought of finding himself alone in an unknown town. He plunged again into his beloved solitude. But, two months later, his father again disturbed his loneliness by ordering him to return to Paris where he intended him to live for a year.

William went and took up his quarters in the Rue de l’Est, at the very hotel where Madeleine was already staying.

CHAPTER IV.

WHEN Madeleine met William, she was thinking of leaving the hotel and looking for a little room which she would furnish herself. In this house, open to all comers, full of students and young women, she did not feel sufficiently at home, and she found herself exposed to having to listen to horrible proposals which put her in mind cruelly of her desertion. After her removal, she intended to work and to utilise her talent for embroidery. Besides, her income of two thousand francs, was sufficient for her needs. The future filled her with an indistinct feeling of anxiety; she foresaw that the solitude, to which she wished to condemn herself, would be full of perils. Although she had sworn to be brave, there were days that were so devoid of interest and so sad, that on certain nights, she would find herself in the midst of her dejection, entertaining thoughts of weakness that were unworthy of herself.

The night of William’s arrival, she saw him on the staircase. He stepped aside against the wall with such a respectful air, that she was in a way confused and astonished at his attitude. Usually, the lodgers in the hotel almost walked over her feet and blew whiffs of tobacco in her face. The young man went into a room that adjoined hers, a thin partition separated the two apartments. Madeleine fell asleep listening, in spite of herself, to the step of. the stranger who was taking possession of his quarters.

William, respectful as he had been, had not failed to notice his Neighbour’s pearly complexion and lovely golden hair. If he walked about a long time in his room that night, it was because the thought of having a woman so near him caused him a sort of feverishness. He could hear her bed creak when she turned over.

Next day, the young people smiled at one another as a matter of course. Their intimacy made rapid progress. Madeleine gave way the more easily to her sympathy for this calm gentle young fellow, because she felt herself perfectly safe with him. She looked upon him somewhat as a child. She thought that if he should ever commit the folly of speaking to her about love, she would give him a lecture and easily get to know the motive of his desires. She felt confidence in her strength, and meant to keep her oath of widowhood. The following days, she accepted William’s arm, and consented to take a little walk in his company. On their return, she went into the young man’s room, and he went into hers. But there was not the least tender word, not the least smile to cause uneasiness. They treated one another as friends of a day’s standing, with a reserve full of charming delicacy.

At bottom, their existence was disturbed in an indistinct kind of way. At night when they were alone in their rooms, they would listen to each other’s step, and they would dream, without being able to read clearly the feelings that were disturbing them. Madeleine felt that she was loved, and she indulged the sweet thought, saying to herself all the while that she herself would not fall in love. To tell the truth, she did not know what real love was; her first intimacy had been so devoid of tenderness that she enjoyed William’s attentions with infinite pleasure; her heart went out to him, in spite of herself, touched by a sympathy which was gradually ripening into affection. If she still happened to think of her wounds, she drove away the cruel memories by musing on her new friend; the passion of a sanguine temperament had dismayed her, the endearing affection of a nervous nature was filling her with a softening languor, and toning down her caprices one by one. As for William, he was living in a dream, he was worshipping the first woman he had met, and this was fatal. In the beginning he did not even ask himself where this woman came from, she was the first to smile on him, and that smile was sufficient to make him kneel down and offer her his life. He was joyously astonished at having found a sweetheart at once, he was in haste to open his heart so long closed, so full of restrained passion; if he did not embrace Madeleine, it was because he did not dare to, but he thought already that she was his.

Things went on like this for a week. William hardly went out; Paris terrified him, and he had taken good care not to go to one of the big hotels of which his father had given him the addresses. He congratulated himself now on having buried himself behind the Luxembourg in the heart of that peaceful neighbourhood where love was awaiting him. He would have liked to carry Madeleine off to the fields, far far away, not from a design of making her fall into his arms the sooner, but because he loved the trees, and wished to walk with her in their shade. She resisted, with a sort of presentiment. At last, she consented to go and dine with him at a little inn on the outskirts of Paris. There, at the restaurant in the Verrières wood, she surrendered herself.

Next day, when they returned to Paris, the two lovers were so astonished at their adventure, that they would at times speak to each other with a certain amount of ceremony. They even experienced a feeling of restraint, an uncomfortable sensation which they had not felt when they were simply comrades. By a singular sentiment of shame, they did not wish to sleep both of them in the hotel where, the day before, they had been almost strangers to each other. William saw that Madeleine would be pained by the smiles of the waiters, if she came to live in his room. He went at night to sleep in a neighbouring hotel. Besides, now that she was his, he wanted to have the young woman entirely to himself, in some retreat unknown to the world.

He acted as if he were on the point of getting married. The banker, on whom his father had given him unlimited credit, told him, when he made inquiries, of a quiet little house, which was for sale in the Rue de Boulogne. William hurried off to look at the place, and bought it at once. He put the workmen in immediately, and furnished it in a few days. The whole thing was the affair of a week at most. One night, he took Madeleine by the hand and asked her if she would be his wife Since the night they had spent in the restaurant in the Verrières wood, he came to see her every afternoon, like a betrothed young man paying his addresses to his lady-love; then he went away discreetly. His request touched Madeleine’s heart, and she replied by throwing her arms round his neck. They went into the house in the Rue de Boulogne like two new married people, on the evening of their wedding day. It was there really that their nuptial night was spent. They seemed to have forgotten the chance circumstance which had thrown them suddenly, one night, into one another’s arms: they seemed to think that this was the first time that they had been allowed to exchange kisses. Sweet and happy night when the lovers could picture to themselves that the past was dead for ever, and that their union had the purity and strength of au eternal bond.

They lived there for six months, severed from the world and seldom going out. It was a veritable vision of happiness. Lulled by their affection, they no longer reminded one another of what had preceded their love, nor were they uneasy about the events that the future might have in store for them. They were remote from the past and careless of the future, in a complete contentment of mind, in the peace of a happiness which nothing disturbed. The house, with its little rooms, carpeted and upholstered with bright material, offered them a lovely retreat, secluded, quiet, and cheerful. And then there was the garden, a little patch not much bigger than your hand, where they would forget themselves, in spite of the cold, chatting during the fine winter afternoons.

Madeleine used to think that her life only dated from the previous day. She did not know if she loved William; she only knew that this man brought happiness to her being, and that it was pleasant to repose in this happiness. All her wounds had been healed; she no longer felt those shocks and burning pangs which had torn her breast; she was filled with warmth, a genial unfluctuating warmth which gave rest to her heart. She never asked herself any questions. Like a patient recovering with reduced strength from a sharp attack of fever, she abandoned herself to the voluptuous languor of her convalescence, thanking him from the bottom of her heart, who had extricated her from her anguish. It was not the fond embraces of the young man which touched her the most; her senses were usually quiescent, and there was more maternity than passion in her kisses: it was the profound esteem which he showed for her, the dignity with which he treated her, like a lawful wife. This raised herself in her own esteem, and she could fancy that she had passed from the arms of her mother to the arms of a husband. This picture which her shame would draw, flattered her pride, and hampered all the modesty of her nature. She could thus hold up her head, and, above all, she enjoyed to the full her new affection, her peacefulness and smiling hopes, in the complete oblivion of the wounds which bled in her no longer.

William was in the seventh heaven. At last, the cherished dream of his youth and childhood was being realised. When he was at school, crushed by the blows of his comrades, he had dreamt of a happy solitude, a hidden secluded nook where he would pass long days of idleness, never beaten, but caressed by some kind and gentle fairy who would always stay by his side; and later on, at eighteen, when vague desires were beginning to throb in his veins, he had taken up again this dream beneath the trees in the park, on the banks of clear streams, replacing the fairy by a sweetheart, traversing the thicket in the hope of meeting the object of his affection, at every turn in the path. Today Madeleine was the kind and gentle fairy, the sweetheart that he had sought. She was his in the solitude that he had dreamt of, far from the crowd, in a retreat where not a soul could come to disturb his ecstasy. This, for him, was the highest bliss: to know that he was out of the world, to be no longer afraid of being hurt by anyone, to surrender himself to all the softened peace of his heart, to have by his side one being only, and to live on the beauty and love of this being. Such an existence consoled him for his youth of sorrow: a youth devoid of affection, with a proud ironical father, an old fanatic whose caresses frightened him, and a friend who was not enough to calm his feverish adoration. It consoled him for crushing persecutions, for a childhood of martyrdom and a youth of exile, and for a long series of sorrows which had made him ardently long for the shade and complete silence, for a total annihilation of his sorrowful existence in an endless happiness. Thus ho reposed, and took refuge in Madeleine’s arms, like a man weary and frightened. All his joys were joys of tranquillity. Such a peace seemed to him as never to end. He pictured to himself that the eternity of the last sleep was opening before him and that he was sleeping in the arms of his Madeleine.

It was with both of them a feeling more of repose than of love. You might have said that chance had drawn them together that each might staunch the blood of the other’s wounds. They both felt a like need of repose, and their words of affection were a sort of thanks which they addressed to one another for the peaceful happy hours which they were enjoying together. They revelled in the present with the egoism of hungry souls. It seemed to them that they had only existed since their meeting; a memory of the past never entered their long lovers’ talks. William was no longer uneasy about the years of Madeleine’s life before she knew him, and the young woman never thought of questioning him, as women in love do, about his previous existence. It was enough for them to be by each other’s side, to laugh, to be happy, like children who have neither regret for the past nor anxiety for the future.