Complete Works of Emile Zola (1661 page)

His voice began to tremble like that of a man in deep distress, and tears rolled down his cheeks. It was pitiful to see him; and Luc, who felt him to be an anomaly in his busy city, was moved to the depths of his heart.

“Bah!” said he, “you ought to take a rest for one day. I think your wife is right. If I were you I would not go out to walk now. I would stay at home and see how the roses are growing in my garden.”

Boisgelin, who mistrusted Luc, looked at him steadily. Then, as if feeling that he must give some one his confidence, and moved to do so by the sight of an old acquaintance whom he thought he could trust, he said:

“No, no. I must go out. What troubles me even more than the necessity of looking after my work-people is the safe investment of my fortune. I cannot tell what to do with all my money. Just think! billions! millions upon millions! Such an amount of money is embarrassing; there are no places I know of big enough to stow it. My notion is to go out and see if I cannot find some hole big enough to bury it. But don’t say anything about this. Nobody must know.”

And as Luc, horrified, turned again to Suzanne, who stood by pale and trying to repress her tears, Boisgelin took advantage of the moment to slip between them and make his escape. With rapid steps he passed down the sunny avenue and disappeared. Luc wanted to run after him and to bring him back by force.

“I assure you he frightens me,” he said. “And I think you are wrong to let him go alone wherever he may please. I don’t know why, but I never can meet him roaming about at the schools, or in the stores, or in the workshops without dreading some misfortune, some catastrophe — I could not say of what nature.”

He had felt this uneasiness for a long time, and this was the first opportunity he had had to speak of it to Suzanne. Nothing was more painful to him than the sight of this ghost out of the past, this old man who had lost his reason, who had fallen into second childhood, exhibiting the wreck that mad laziness and luxury had made of him to his people, who were aiming at progress. When he met Boisgelin, like a protest out of the past, he watched him anxiously, and was painfully affected by the restlessness of this man, who had wandered out of the track of his old life and could not acclimatize himself.

But Suzanne tried to reassure him:

“I assure you that he is harmless,” said she. “It is only on his own account that I tremble. There are times when I see him so gloomy, so miserable, so borne down by the weight of all that money that he fancies himself to possess, that I grow afraid that he may make away with himself. But how do you think I could make him stay at home? He is happy only when out-of-doors. It would be useless cruelty. He never speaks to any one when he is abroad; he seems as shy and apprehensive as some poor child who is playing truant.”

The tears she had been trying to restrain began to fall.

“Ah! poor fellow; he has caused me much suffering, but never till now so much anxiety and pain.”

Then, when she found that Luc was going to the schools, she said she would accompany him. She, too, had grown older, and was now sixty-eight, but she was still slender, light on her feet, and very active, loving to interest herself in others, and to spend her time and strength in good works. Since she had been living at La Crêcherie, and her son Paul, who was married and had several children, no longer occupied her, she had created for herself a large family, having become an instructress — a mistress in singing, teaching the rudiments of music at the schools in the primary class of little children. This helped her to live happily. It delighted her to awaken a sense of music in those pure little souls, and hear the children singing with all their hearts. She was a good musician, but her aim was not to give these children science. She wished rather to make them sing as birds do in the woods — like creatures who live free and gay — and she had obtained some marvellous results. Her class seemed like an aviary full of song-birds. All the children when they came out of her hands filled other classes with singing, so that in the school, workshops, and, indeed, in the whole city there was constant happy warbling.

“But you do not have your class to-day?” remarked Luc.

“
No, but I am going to profit by their playtime to make them rehearse a chorus, the little angels! And, besides, there are several matters to be settled with Josine and Sœurette.”

These three had become great friends, and were almost inseparable. Sœurette had never given up the management of the principal nursery, where she watched over a little crowd of children, some in the cradle and some who could not yet walk. As for Josine, she had put herself at the head of the sewing-school and the housekeeping department, that all the girls who left the school might be fitted to make good wives, good mothers, and good housekeepers. Besides this, the three formed a sort of council where all questions were discussed that had reference to women in the new city.

Luc and Suzanne walked together down the avenue, and came out on the large square in which stood the Communal House, in the midst of green lawns bright with flowering shrubs and rustic flower-baskets. It was no longer the modest little edifice of earlier days, but a perfect palace had been built with a large polychrome façade, the decorated tiles of which were inserted into the iron frame-work to the delight of the eye. Great halls used as club-rooms and for games and theatricals were places where all people could take their ease, feel they were at home, and fraternize in frequent
fêtes
which interspersed their days of labor. As much as possible — apart from the family life that each one lived in the privacy of his own little home — it was thought good that public life should be in common, all the inhabitants of the city living in sympathy with others’ lives, that complete harmony and good feeling might flow from this companionship. That was why, though all the little houses were unpretentious, the Communal House was brilliantly luxurious, and was filled with things beautiful and all such conveniences as became the abode of the sovereign people. It seemed likely to become a town within the city, so continually did it grow under the pressure of the public need. Behind it there were other buildings — the libraries, the laboratories, lecture-halls, and halls for meetings — places where every one might receive free instruction, make researches and experiments for himself, and become acquainted with truths already attained. There were also yards and sheds for gymnastic exercises, to say nothing of an admirable arrangement of free baths, with plenty of pure, fresh water — the running water brought from the heights of the Monts Bleuses, which by its abundance insured health, cleanliness, and comfort to the great, growing population of the city. But, above all, the schools had become a little world; they now occupied separate buildings beside the Communal House, for several thousand children attended them. To avoid crowding, which is always prejudicial, they had been made into several divisions, each having its own detached building which opened on the gardens. It was a little town of youth and gladness, with children still in their cradles, up to great boys and girls who were going through their apprenticeship after having passed through the five classes that had given them book learning and other instruction.

“Oh!” said Luc, with his kindly smile, “I always begin at the beginning. I go first to see the little ones who are not yet weaned.”

“Of course,” said Suzanne, growing more cheerful. “So I will go in with you.”

In this pavilion, the first to the right in the midst of the flowers of the garden, Sœurette reigned over about thirty cradles and as many little rolling-chairs. She also supervised other buildings in her neighborhood, but always came back to this one, where was Luc’s little grandson and three of his little granddaughters, whom she adored. Luc and Josine, convinced that this plan of bringing up children in common was a good thing for the city, had set the example by desiring that their children’s children should be brought up from their earliest days with other children.

Josine was now there with Sœurette. Neither was now young. The former was fifty-eight, the other sixty-five. But Josine had kept her natural grace, her delicate complexion, and her beautiful hair, for the gold of her locks had only grown somewhat pale; while Sœurette, as often happens to women plain, dark, and meagre in their youth, seemed hardly to have grown older. She had acquired a kind of charm of persistent youth, and her face beamed with active kindliness. Suzanne was older than these two, being sixty-eight, and carried her weight of years with smiling gayety. She had never been beautiful, but had only had the attraction of affectionate sweetness and intelligence softened by sympathetic kindliness. The three were to Luc three faithful friends — one his beloved wife, the two others devoted to him. When Luc came in, accompanied by Suzanne, Josine was holding on her lap a little boy barely two years old, whose little right hand Sœurette was examining carefully.

“What is the matter with my little Olivier?” asked Luc, anxiously. “Has he hurt himself?”

He was the last arrival in Luc’s family circle — Olivier Froment, his grandson, the child of his eldest son Hilaire and of Colette, the daughter of Nanet and Nise. All the marriages we have recorded had borne fruit, and were filling La Crêcherie and its schools with an ever-increasing crowd of light and dark heads belonging to the little people who were growing up for the future.

“Oh!” said Sœurette, “it is only a slight scratch which he must have got from the little table in front of his chair. There! it is all right now.”

The boy had uttered a little cry; then he began to laugh; but a little girl about four, just set at liberty, ran up to him with open arms, as if she wished to take him up and carry him off with her.

“
Be so good as to leave him alone, Mariette!” cried Josine, who was alarmed. “You must not think your little brother is your doll.”

Mariette protested, and said she would be very good, and Josine, like a kind grandmother, looked up at Luc, who was smiling, and both smiled; both were so happy at having these little folks growing up around them. Suzanne meanwhile brought them two other fair children — Hélène and Berthe — four-year-old twins. They were the children of Pauline, Luc’s second daughter. She had married André, whose paternal grandfather was Judge Gaume, who had brought him up after the death of his father, Captain Jollivet, and the disappearance of his mother. Luc and Josine had already married three of their five children — Hilaire, Thérèse, and Pauline, and two more were as yet only engaged; these were Charles and Jules.

“And these little darlings — are you going to overlook them?” said Suzanne, gayly. “Besides, you have asked nothing yet about Maurice, the son of your Thérèse, that big fellow nine years old, who has the voice of an angel, and who is going to rehearse with me presently.”

The twins, Hélène and Berthe, had clung round Luc’s neck, for they adored him. Mariette also wanted her share of him, and climbed upon his lap, while Olivier, the baby, whose hands were now all right, stretched out his little fists in a frenzy of entreaty that grandpapa would lift him on his shoulder. Luc, half stifled by these caresses, but greatly pleased by them, said, laughing:

“Oh! my dear friend, if you call Maurice there will be five of them all wanting to eat me up. Good heavens! what will become of me when they get to be dozens!”

And setting down the twins and Mariette, lovely children with rosy cheeks and clear bright eyes, he took up Olivier, and, tossing him high in the air, made him utter shouts of rapture. Then, after replacing him in his chair, he said:

“Now let us all be sensible. We cannot play all the time. I must attend to something else.”

Then guided by Sœurette, and followed by Josine and Suzanne, he walked round all the halls. It was a pretty sight to see these houses full of baby life, with white walls, white cradles, and their little population all in white — everything so clean and pure and bright in the gay sunshine which streamed through the tall windows.

There was plenty of running water in the place; its crystalline freshness could be felt. It could be heard flowing, as if a brook were kept on purpose to have everything absolutely clean, for cleanliness was the rule of the place even for the humblest utensils. Everything seemed to smell of soap and water and of health. Though now and then a cry was heard from one of the cradles, there were, in general, no sounds but baby prattle and silvery laughter from the children who were beginning to walk, and who filled the halls like a little flock of birds. Playthings, a little voiceless crowd, were everywhere — dolls, jumping-jacks, and wooden horses and wagons. These toys belonged to all, to the girls as well as to the boys, all members of one family, growing up together, from the time they were in long-clothes, as brothers and sisters, to be eventually husbands and wives; and, until death should part them, lead the same lives in the companionship of each other.

Luc would often stop and exclaim:
“
Oh! what a pretty little girl! What a fine little boy!” And if he mistook the sex of any baby, he would laugh at having called the little girl a boy, or
vice versa
.

“Ha!” said he, stopping before one of the cradles; “have you got another pair of twins? What lovely children — so exactly alike, so delicately beautiful!”

“No, no!” cried Sœurette, much amused. “That’s a little girl whom the little boy in the next cradle has come over to visit They take every chance of being together. We sometimes find three or four in the arms of one another!”

All grew delighted at the thought of this harvest of love and mutual affection which was growing up in these nurseries to ripen hereafter. Suzanne, who at first had shown a good deal of alarm and even repugnance at having training and education imparted to both sexes in common, was now astonished at the good results that had been obtained. Girls and boys had formerly been allowed to be together till they were seven or eight years old, but were then separated, so that they grew up in ignorance of one another, a wall being built up between them, and thus they were too often mere strangers, until marriage threw the woman into the man’s arms. Their brains were hardly those of beings of the same race; mystery exasperated the sensual instinct, and their interests were different. Under the new system Suzanne saw peace established between them, with a closer fusion of intelligence, feeling, and reason, fruit of mutual understanding, and fraternity in love. But she was especially struck by the good results produced in the schools by co-education. It awakened a sort of fresh emulation, made the boys more gentle and the girls more self-reliant, and prepared them, through a thorough understanding and a free and entire knowledge, to blend and thereafter to form but one mind and one heart at the family fireside. None of the evil consequences that had been apprehended came to pass. The standard of morality was, on the contrary, higher than before. It was pleasant to see both boys and girls take up of their own accord such studies as were likely to be most useful to them, thanks to the liberty given to all pupils to choose special branches that might prove serviceable to them in after-life.