French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – His Excellency Eugène Rougon – Contents
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Chapter V
PASSION AND MATRIMONY
One morning towards eleven o’clock, Clorinde called at Rougon’s house in the Rue Marbeuf. She was on her way back from the Bois, and a groom held her horse at the door. She went straight into the garden, turned to the left, and halted in front of the open window of the study in which the great man sat at work.
‘Ah! I’ve taken you by surprise!’ she exclaimed.
Rougon quickly raised his head. The girl stood laughing in the warm June sunshine. Her riding-habit of heavy blue cloth made her seem taller. She was carrying its long train over her left arm, and its tight-fitting corsage clung to her shoulders and breast and hips like skin. She wore linen wristbands and collar, and a narrow necktie of blue silk, while atop of her rolled-up hair a tall silk hat was jauntily perched with a veil of bluish gauze powdered with the golden dust of the sunlight.
‘What, is it you?’ cried Rougon, hastening to her. ‘Pray come in!’
‘No, no,’ she answered; ‘don’t disturb yourself, I have only a word to say to you. My mother will be expecting me back to lunch.’
This was the third time that she had come in this way to Rougon’s house in defiance of all propriety. She made a point, however, of remaining in the garden; and upon the previous occasions, as upon this one, she had come in her riding-habit, a costume which seemed to confer masculine privileges upon her.
‘I’ve come to beg,’ she said. ‘I want you to buy some lottery tickets. We are getting up a lottery for the benefit of some poor girls.’
‘Oh, indeed; well, come in,’ repeated Rougon, ‘you can tell me all about it.’
She had kept her whip in her hand, a slight delicate whip with a little silver handle. And on hearing him she again began to laugh while gently tapping her skirt with her whip.
‘Oh, I’ve told you all there is to tell,’ said she. ‘You must take some tickets. That’s all I came for. I’ve been looking for you for the last three days without finding you, and the drawing takes place to-morrow.’ Then, as she took a little case out of her pocket, she inquired: ‘How many tickets would you like?’
‘Not one, if you won’t come in!’ cried Rougon. And he continued, playfully: ‘We can’t transact business at the window, you know, and I’m not going to hand you money out as though you were some beggar-woman.’
‘Oh, I don’t object, as long as I get it.’
But Rougon remained firm. She looked at him for a moment in silence, and then resumed: ‘If I come in, will you promise to take ten tickets? They are ten francs each.’
However, she did not make up her mind without some further hesitation, and she even cast a hasty glance round the garden. There was a gardener on his knees planting a bed of geraniums. Then she smiled slightly and stepped towards the little flight of steps upon which the folding-window of the study opened. Rougon held out his hand and drew her into the middle of the room.
‘Are you afraid that I shall eat you?’ he asked her. ‘You know very well that I am the most submissive of your slaves. What are you frightened of?’
‘I! I’m not afraid of anything,’ she replied again, tapping her skirts with her whip, which she then laid upon a couch in order to fumble in her little case once more. ‘You’ll take ten, won’t you?’ she asked.
‘I will take twenty, if you wish it,’ he replied; ‘but do, please, sit down and let us have a little chat. You surely don’t want to be off at once.’
‘Well, then, it shall be a ticket a minute. If I stay a quarter of an hour, you will have to take fifteen tickets, and if I stay twenty minutes, you will have to take twenty tickets, and so on as long as I stay. Is that agreed?’
They laughed merrily over this arrangement, and Clorinde thereupon seated herself in an easy chair in the very embrasure of the window which remained open. Rougon, on his side, resumed his seat at his table in order to put her at her ease. Then they began to talk, taking the house for their first subject. Clorinde glanced out of the window and remarked that the garden was rather small, but very charming, with its central lawn and clumps of evergreens. Then Rougon began to describe the house to her. On the ground-floor, said he, were his study, a large drawing-room, a small one, and a very handsome dining-room. On the first-floor there were seven bedrooms, and as many on the second. Although to some people the house might seem a very small one, it was much too big for him, he declared. At the time when the Emperor had made him a present of it he had been engaged to marry a widow, chosen by his Majesty himself; but the lady had died, and now he intended to remain a bachelor.
‘Why?’ asked Clorinde, looking him straight in the face.
‘Oh! I’ve other things to do than to get married. When a man reaches my age, he no longer thinks about a wife.’
‘Don’t be so affected,’ replied Clorinde, with a shrug of her shoulders.
They had become intimate enough to talk very freely together. Clorinde declared that she believed Rougon to be amorously inclined, but he defended himself, and told her of his early times, of the years he had spent in bare rooms, which never a woman entered. Still, she went on questioning him about his lady-loves with childish curiosity, and he again and again replied with a shrug of the shoulders.
‘No! no wife for me!’ he cried at last, though his eyes were glistening at the sight of Clorinde’s careless attitude.
A peculiar smile played on the girl’s lips as she lay back in her chair. There was an expression of soft languor on her face, and her bosom gently heaved. When she replied, it was with an exaggerated Italian accent, and in a sort of singing voice. ‘Nonsense, my friend; you adore us, I know. Will you bet me that you aren’t married by this time next year?’
She was really provoking, so certain did she seem to be of conquering him. For some time past she had been calmly offering herself to Rougon. She no longer attempted to disguise her snares and the clever way in which she had worked upon him before laying siege to his desires. She considered that he was now sufficiently overcome for her to bring the matter to an issue. It was a real duel that was going on between them, and although the conditions of the combat were not mentioned in actual words, there were unmistakable confessions in their glances. When they looked at each other they could not refrain from smiling. Clorinde had set her eyes upon her goal and went straight towards it, with a haughty boldness; while Rougon, infatuated though he was, resolved to play a wily game in order to prove his superiority. Their pride was engaged in the struggle quite as much as their passions were.
‘With us in Italy,’ resumed Clorinde in a low tone, ‘love is the great business of life. Young girls of twelve already have their lovers. For myself, I have travelled about so much, that I’ve almost become a man. But if you could only have seen mamma when she was young! She was so lovely that people came from long distances to see her, but she seldom if ever left her house. There was a count who stayed at Milan expressly for six months without catching sight of her hair even. The fact is, that Italian women are very different from French women, who are always chattering and gadding about. An Italian woman remains with the man she has chosen. But I have travelled so much, that I really don’t know whether I haven’t lost that instinct or not; still I think that I could love very strongly; ah, yes, with all my heart and soul.’
She had let her eyelids fall, and her face glowed as with a voluptuous ecstasy. While she was speaking, Rougon had left his table as though attracted by some force which he could not withstand, and his hands were trembling. But when he got near to Clorinde, the girl opened her eyes again and gave him a quiet glance. Then, as she looked at the clock, she said with a smile: ‘This makes ten tickets.’
‘Ten tickets! what do you mean?’ asked Rougon, quite confused.
When he had recovered his self-possession, she burst into a laugh. It delighted her to bewitch him and intoxicate him in this way, and when he opened his arms to clasp her, to elude him with a laugh. She seemed in high glee. At this Rougon turned very pale, and cast a furious glance at her, which only served to increase her merriment. ‘Well, I think I’d better be off now,’ she said. ‘You’re not polite enough for ladies’ society. No, really, my mother will be expecting me.’
Rougon, however, had resumed his paternal manner, and told her that she must spare him another five minutes. He had got tired of the work he was doing when she came in, he said; it was a report to be presented to the Senate on certain petitions. Then he began to talk to her about the Empress, for whom she professed enthusiastic devotion. The Empress, said he, had been at Biarritz for the last week. At this the girl again leant back in her arm-chair and began to chatter. She knew Biarritz very well; she had once spent a season there, before it had become such a fashionable watering-place; and she very much regretted that she was unable to revisit it while the Court was there. Then she went on to describe a meeting of the Academy to which M. de Plouguern had taken her on the previous day. An author had been admitted as a member, and she made many jokes at the expense of his baldness. She had a horror of books, she declared. Whenever she tried to read, she had to go off to bed, suffering from terrible nervous attacks. She could not understand what she read. Then, on Rougon telling her that the author received at the Academy on the previous day was an enemy of the Emperor’s, and that his discourse had swarmed with abominable allusions, she seemed quite astounded.
‘Why, he looked such a nice man!’ she exclaimed.
But Rougon also had begun to inveigh against books. A novel had just been published, he said, which had aroused his utmost indignation. It was a work of the most depraved kind, which, while claiming to portray the exact truth, dragged the reader through all the wild fancies of an hysterical woman.[8] The word hysterical seemed to please him, for he repeated it three times; but when Clorinde asked him to explain what he meant by it, he refused to answer, suddenly becoming very prudish.
‘Everything may be said,’ he continued, ‘only there is a fitting way of saying it. In administrative matters, for instance, we are frequently obliged to tackle very delicate subjects. I have read, for example, reports upon certain matters which have been very precise, very detailed; but they have been written in a clear, simple, straightforward style, so that there was nothing unchaste or impure about the document. But our present-day novelists have adopted a style which is full of suggestiveness, a manner of describing things which makes it appear as if they were actually going on before you. They call that art. To me it seems to be simply indecency and bad taste.’
Then he went on to speak of authors, whom he had never read, but whom, like many other people, he accused of the grossest immorality. And yet while he was thus prating of virtue and denouncing vice, he was cleverly manœuvring to get behind Clorinde’s chair without her being aware of it. The girl was gazing at the ceiling with an expression of absent-mindedness. ‘Oh, as for novels,’ she murmured, ‘I have never even opened one. They are all a pack of falsehoods. You don’t know Leonora, the Gipsy, do you? It is a pretty book. I read it in Italian when I was quite little. It is about a young girl who ends by marrying a lord. She is captured by brigands to begin with——’
However, a slight grating sound behind her made her start and turn her head: ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘I am pulling the blind down,’ replied Rougon; ‘I was afraid the sun was inconveniencing you.’
The girl was, indeed, sitting in a flood of sunlight, whose dancing dust gilded her corsage as with luminous down. ‘Please leave the blind alone,’ she cried, ‘I love the sun. I feel as though I were in a warm bath.’
Then she raised herself in her chair and glanced into the garden. But when she saw the gardener still kneeling there, with the back of his blue blouse turned towards them, she reverted to her reclining attitude again, smiling, and easy once more. Rougon, who had followed her glance, left the blind as it was, and the girl began to banter him. He was just like an owl, she said, to be so fond of darkness. However, he showed no resentment, but began to pace the room, swaying about like a bear contemplating some wily act of treachery.
‘Oh, come and look here,’ he said at last, pointing to a large photograph; ‘you haven’t seen my last portrait, have you?’
But she merely smiled, and replied: ‘Oh! I can see it very well from here; and, besides, you’ve shown it to me before.’
Rougon was not yet discouraged. He drew down the blind of the other window, and invented several reasons to induce the girl to go into the shady corner which he had made by doing so. She would be much more comfortable there, he told her. But Clorinde, despising this obvious snare, merely shook her head. Then Rougon came and stood in front of her; and, dropping all attempts at stratagem, said straightforwardly: ‘Oh, by the way, I want to show you my new horse, Monarque. You know that I have been making an exchange. You are fond of horses, and you shall tell me what you think of him.’
But the girl still refused to move. Then Rougon began to press her. The stable was only a few yards away. It wouldn’t take her more than five minutes at the most. She continued to refuse, however, and thereupon Rougon murmured with a touch of scorn in his voice: ‘What! are you afraid?’
At this she started up, as though lashed with a whip. She looked very grave and somewhat pale.
‘Let us go and look at Monarque,’ she said quietly.
As she gathered up the train of her riding-habit she fixed her eyes upon Rougon’s, and for a moment they remained gazing at each other as if to read each other’s thoughts. It was a challenge given and accepted, without any pretence of concealment. Then she led the way down the steps while Rougon, by force of habit, buttoned the house-coat which he was wearing. But the girl had only taken a step or two along the garden-walk when she stopped short. ‘Wait a moment,’ she said.
She went back into the room, and when she returned, she was toying with her riding-whip, which she had left behind the cushion of the couch. Rougon glanced at the whip, and then slowly raised his eyes to Clorinde. She was smiling again, and once more she walked on in front of him.
The stable was at the end of the garden, on the right. When they passed the gardener, the man was gathering up his tools and preparing to go away. Rougon, bareheaded in the blazing sun, followed Clorinde, who went quietly onward, tapping the shrubs with her riding-whip as she passed them. Neither spoke a word. Clorinde did not even turn her head. On reaching the stable, she waited while Rougon opened the door, and then went inside, in front of him. The door, which Rougon swung back, closed noisily, and Clorinde still smiled, her face wearing an open expression, in which pride and confidence were clearly to be read.
The stable was a small and commonplace one, with four oak stalls. Although the slabs had been washed that morning, and the racks and mangers and other wood-work were kept scrupulously clean, there was a strong scent about the place, and the atmosphere was warm and damp, like that of a Turkish bath. From each of the two round dormer-windows there fell but a pale glimmer of light, and the corners remained wrapt in gloom. Clorinde, having just left the bright sunshine of the garden, could at first distinguish nothing; but she kept still, and did not open the door again for fear lest Rougon should think she was alarmed. Only two of the stalls were occupied. The horses snorted and turned their heads.
‘This is the one, isn’t it?’ asked Clorinde, when her eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom. ‘He looks a very nice animal.’
She patted the horse gently, and then slipped inside the stall, stroking the animal as she went without showing the least sign of fear. She wanted to see his head, she said; and when she had made her way to the far end of the stall, Rougon could hear her kissing the horse’s nose. The sound of those kisses exasperated him.
‘Come back, I beg you!’ he cried. ‘If he were to step on one side, you might be crushed to death!’
But the girl only laughed, kissed the horse more affectionately than before, and spoke to him caressingly, while he, at this unexpected fondling, fairly quivered with pleasure. At last she came out of the stall again. She was very fond of horses, she said, they always knew her, and never tried to hurt her, even when she teased them. She knew how to manage them. Some were very skittish, but this one seemed very steady. Then she stooped down behind the horse, and lifted one of its hoofs with both hands as if to examine it. The animal remained quite still.
Rougon gazed at her while she thus stooped before him; but all at once she felt a slight touch under her arm-pits. She did not even start, however; she went on examining the horse’s hoof, till the touch became more pronounced, and then letting the hoof drop, she stood up and inquired: ‘What is the matter with you? What has come over you?’
Then, as Rougon suddenly tried to clasp her round the waist, she rapped his knuckles smartly, and, stationing herself against the wall in front of the stalls, raised the train of her riding-habit, which was thrown over her left arm, as a shield, while in her right hand she held her whip uplifted. Rougon’s lips were trembling, but he did not say a word; Clorinde, however, seeming quite at ease, went on talking freely: ‘You can’t touch me, you’ll see,’ she said. ‘When I was younger, I used to take fencing-lessons. I’m sorry I did not go on with them. Come, look out for your fingers! There! what did I tell you?’
She seemed to be only in fun. She did not strike Rougon severely, but just playfully lashed at him whenever his hands came too near. She was so quick in her defence that he could not even touch her dress. A perfect hail came clattering down upon him on every side. Before long he was tingling all over, and stepped back panting, with his face very red, and drops of perspiration trickling down his brow. Then, however, his manner changed, and still without a word he advanced menacingly; but Clorinde, though smiling and talking as before, at once struck him several smart blows of increasing severity. She looked very beautiful as she stood there with her skirts drawn tightly, and her corsage yielding to every movement of her lissom figure. She was like a sinuous, bluish-black serpent, and whenever she raised her arm to strike, at the same time slightly throwing her head back, her throat and bosom formed a charming curve.
‘Well, now,’ she exclaimed, with a laugh, ‘have you had enough? You’ll be the first to tire, I think, my friend.’
But in her turn she suddenly stopped talking. Rougon’s eyes were glaring fiercely now, and his face was quite crimson. Then a bright light also appeared in Clorinde’s eyes, and she seemed to revel in the whipping she was administering to him. Again and again did she wheel and slash about her. And at last, as he, goaded to fury, made a yet more desperate onslaught, she put forth all her strength and cut him clean across the face from ear to ear.
‘Hussy!’ he cried, and broke into a torrent of coarse language, abominable charges, swearing and sputtering, half-choked by his excitement.
She did not deign to reply. For a moment she stood there motionless and haughtily calm like a statue, with her face very pale.
But he burst into a strain of passionate pleading; and thereupon she looked at him and answered: ‘Well, then, marry me!’
At this, however, Rougon, as if recovering his self-possession, forced a laugh, a sneering, insulting laugh, and shook his head.
Her retort, the only one that womanly pride could dictate, came swift and forcible. Then neither spoke again.
The horses in the stalls had turned their heads and were snorting, disturbed by the contest which they had heard. The sun had just risen high enough to shine through the dormer-windows, and two golden beams sent sparkles dancing through the gloom of the stable. Clorinde, now perfectly calm again, slipped up to Monarque’s head, with her whip under her arm. She gave the horse two kisses on the muzzle and exclaimed: ‘Good-bye, old fellow. You, at any rate, know how to behave yourself.’
Rougon, quite crushed and ashamed, was also now perfectly calm. With his hands still quivering he straightened his cravat, and felt his coat to ascertain if it was properly buttoned. Then they walked quietly back through the garden. Rougon’s left cheek was stinging him, and he dabbed it with his handkerchief. When they reached his study, Clorinde’s first glance was for the timepiece. ‘That makes thirty-two tickets,’ she said with a smile.
As Rougon looked at her in surprise, she once more broke into a laugh, and continued: ‘You had better send me off at once. The hand is moving forward. The thirty-third minute has begun. See, I’m putting the tickets on your desk.’
Rougon gave her three hundred and twenty francs without a moment’s hesitation. Scarcely did his fingers tremble as he counted out the gold. It was a fine which he had inflicted upon himself. Then Clorinde, carried away by the manner in which he put down such a sum of money, stepped up to him with an adorable expression, offering him her cheek. And when he had kissed it in a fatherly fashion, she went off, looking quite delighted, and saying: ‘Thank you for the poor girls. I have only seven tickets left now. My godfather will take those.’
As soon as Rougon was alone again, he sat down at his desk by sheer force of habit. He resumed his work, and for some minutes wrote and consulted the papers that were lying in front of him. Then he held up his pen, and a grave expression came over his face as he gazed blankly through the open window into the garden. He again saw Clorinde’s lithe form swaying before him like some bluish serpent. She glided on and entered the room, and sprang up on the living tail which her habit seemed to form. He saw her quivering as her arms uncoiled towards him; and gradually the room seemed full of her presence. Silently, passionately, it pervaded everything: the carpet, the chairs, the curtains, diffusing over all a penetrating perfume.
Then Rougon violently threw his pen down and rose in anger. Was that girl now going to prevent him from working? Was he going mad that he should see things which had no existence? he whose brain was so strong! He recalled to his mind a woman, nigh whom he had many a time written the whole night long, when he was a student, without even noticing her gentle breathing. Then he drew up the blind, and to establish a draught opened the other window and a door on the opposite side of the room, as though he were stifling. And with angry gestures similar to those with which he would have driven away some dangerous wasp, he tried to drive away the scent of Clorinde by flapping his handkerchief in the air. When he no longer noticed it, he drew a deep breath and again dabbed his face with his handkerchief to assuage the burning heat which Clorinde had brought there.
He could not, however, go on with the work he had commenced, but still slowly paced the room, from one end to the other. As he caught sight of himself in a mirror, he noticed a red mark on his left cheek. Clorinde’s whip had only left a slight scratch behind it, and he could easily ascribe that to some trifling accident. However, although his skin revealed but a slight red line, his flesh still smarted with the slashing, galling cut. So he hastened to a little lavatory, curtained off from the rest of the room, and plunged his head into a basin of water. That afforded him considerable relief. He dreaded lest the whipping he had received from Clorinde should only sharpen his passion. He felt afraid to think about her till the scratch on his cheek should be quite healed; the smarting which he felt seemed to descend and thrill his whole body.
‘No! never! I won’t!’ he said aloud, as he came back into his room. ‘It would be madness!’
He threw himself on the couch and clenched his fists. Then a servant came in and told him that his déjeuner was getting cold, but he still sat there, struggling with himself. His stern, set face distended with the contest that was raging within him; his bull-like neck grew swollen and his muscles strained, as though silently, within his vitals, he were striving to suffocate some animal bent on devouring him. The battle went on for ten long minutes. He could not remember having ever exerted himself like this before; and, when he got up, he was quite pallid and his neck was moist with perspiration.
On the next two days Rougon admitted no one to see him. He shut himself up with a pile of work. He sat up one whole night. Three times again, when his servant came into the room, he found him lying on the couch, exhausted and with an alarming look on his face. On the evening of the second day, however, he dressed to go to Delestang’s, where he was engaged to dine. But, instead of at once crossing the Champs Élysées, he turned up the avenue and entered the Balbis’ house. It was only six o’clock.
‘Mademoiselle isn’t at home,’ said the little servant Antonia, laughing like a black goat, as she stopped him on the staircase.
Rougon raised his voice on the chance of making himself heard, and was hesitating whether he should go down again, when Clorinde appeared up above, leaning over the balusters. ‘Come up!’ she called. ‘What an idiot that girl is! She never understands anything that is told her.’
When Rougon reached the first floor, Clorinde took him into a small room adjoining her bedchamber. It was a dressing-room, with light blue wall-paper of a flowery pattern, but she had furnished it with a big dingy mahogany desk, an arm-chair upholstered in leather, and a nest of pasteboard boxes. Papers were lying about, thickly covered with dust. The place looked like the office of some disreputable process server. To accommodate Rougon the girl was obliged to fetch a chair from her bedroom. ‘I was expecting you,’ she called out as she went there.
When she came back with the chair, she explained to him that she was busy with her correspondence. She showed him on her desk some big sheets of yellowish paper, covered with large round handwriting. Then, as he sat down, she noticed that he was in evening dress.
‘Have you come to ask for my hand?’ she said in a playful way.
‘Exactly,’ he replied. Then he added with a smile: ‘Not for myself, but for one of my friends.’
Clorinde gazed at him doubtfully, unable to tell whether he was joking or not. She was dirty and untidy, and was wearing an ill-fitting dressing-gown; but, nevertheless she looked very beautiful, like some antique statue which is soiled by the dust of a broker’s shop, but whose beauty is beyond the power of dirt to conceal. And while she sucked one of her fingers which she had just smeared with ink, her eyes fell upon the slight scar which was still visible on Rougon’s left cheek. Presently she said, in a low voice and with an air of absent-mindedness: ‘I was sure you would come, but I expected you sooner.’ Then, seeming to wake up, she continued in a louder tone: ‘So it is for one of your friends; your dearest friend, no doubt.’
She laughed sonorously. She now felt sure that Rougon had meant himself. She had a strong desire to touch his scar in order to satisfy herself that she had really put her mark upon him and that henceforth he belonged to her. But he took hold of her wrists and made her sit down in the leather-covered arm-chair.
‘Let us have a little talk,’ he said. ‘We are good friends, aren’t we? I have been thinking a good deal since the day before yesterday. You have been in my mind the whole time. I fancied that we had got married, and that we had been living together for three months. You’ll never guess in what occupation I saw us engaged.’
Clorinde said nothing; she felt a little embarrassed, in spite of all her self-assurance.
‘Well, I saw us standing by the fire-place,’ he continued. ‘You had taken up the shovel and I had seized the tongs, and we were belabouring each other.’
This idea struck Clorinde as so comical that she threw herself back in her chair and burst into ringing laughter.
‘No, don’t laugh,’ said Rougon; ‘I’m quite serious. It isn’t worth while uniting our lives just to beat each other. I swear to you that is what would happen. First there would be blows, and then a separation. Be quite sure of this, that it is useless trying to assimilate two strong wills like ours.’
‘And so?’ she asked, becoming very grave.
‘And so I think that the most sensible thing we can do is to shake hands and make up our minds to be nothing but good friends in the future.’
Clorinde made no reply, but fixed her eyes searchingly and blackly upon Rougon’s. A terrible frown like that of an offended goddess appeared on her Olympian brow. And her lips quivered slightly with a silent expression of scorn.
‘Will you excuse me?’ she said. Then, drawing her chair to her desk, she began to fold her letters. She used large yellow envelopes, such as are employed in French government offices, and fastened them with sealing-wax. She had lighted a taper and was watching the wax blaze. Rougon quietly waited till she had finished.
‘And you came here to tell me that?’ she resumed at last, without desisting from her work.
Rougon in his turn made no immediate reply. He wanted to get a glimpse of the girl’s face. When she at last turned her chair round again, he smiled at her and tried to catch her eye. Then he kissed her hand, as though anxious to soften her; but she still remained cold and haughty.
‘I told you,’ he said, ‘that I have come to ask you in marriage on behalf of one of my friends.’
Then he spoke at length. He loved her, he told her, much more than she imagined. He loved her particularly because she was intelligent and able. It cost him a great deal to give her up, but he was sacrificing his passion for their mutual advantage. He would like to see her ruling her own house. He pictured her married to a wealthy man whom she would mould to her own will. She would rule instead of having to surrender herself. That would be much better—would it not?—than for them to paralyse one another. He and she could speak out openly to each other. He ended by calling her his child. She was his perverse daughter, he said; her diplomatic bent of mind delighted him, and it would distress him very much to see her career end unsatisfactorily.
‘Is that all?’ she said, when he finished. She had listened to him with the greatest attention. And, raising her eyes to his face, she continued: ‘If you want to get me married in the expectation of anything, I warn you that you are mistaken. Never! I told you.’
‘What an idea!’ he exclaimed, slightly blushing. Then he coughed, and took a paper-knife off the desk and began to examine its handle in order to conceal the trouble he was feeling. But the girl was deep in thought again, paying no attention to him.
‘And who is the husband?’ she eventually asked.
‘Can’t you guess?’
Then a faint smile came to her face once more, and she shrugged her shoulders, and began to drum on the desk with her finger tips. She knew very well who it was. ‘He is so stupid,’ she said, in a low voice.
But Rougon began to defend Delestang. He was a very well-bred man, and she would be able to do what she liked with him. And he gave her particulars as to his health and fortune and habits. Moreover, he promised that he would use all his influence in their favour should he ever return to power. Delestang was, perhaps, scarcely a man of lofty intelligence, but he would not be out of place in any position.
‘Oh, yes, he’d scrape on well enough; I’m willing to allow that,’ she said, with a frank laugh. And she continued, after a pause: ‘Well, I don’t say no; perhaps you are right. Monsieur Delestang is not distasteful to me.’
She looked at Rougon as she spoke those last words. She fancied she had noticed upon several occasions that he was jealous of Delestang. But so far as she could see not a muscle of his face now moved. He had found strength enough to destroy his passion in two days. And he seemed quite delighted with the success of his scheme, and again began to expatiate upon the advantages of such a marriage, as though he were some shrewd attorney negotiating an affair from which she would derive especial profit. He took her hands in his own and patted them affectionately, as he went on: ‘It was last night that the idea struck me, and I said to myself, “It’s the very thing!” I shouldn’t like you to remain unmarried. You are the only woman who seems to me to be really deserving of a husband. Delestang settles everything. With him one has elbow-room.’ Then he added gaily: ‘I feel convinced that you will reward me by letting me see some very wonderful things.’
‘Is Monsieur Delestang aware of your plans?’ Clorinde now inquired.
Rougon looked at her in surprise for a moment, as though she had said something which he had not expected from her. Then he calmly replied: ‘No; it was no use saying anything to him. I will tell him all about it later on.’
The girl had just resumed the sealing of her letters. After pressing a large blank seal upon the wax she turned the envelopes over and slowly addressed them in big handwriting. And as she tossed the letters to her right, Rougon tried to read the addresses. The names were mostly those of well-known Italian politicians. She must have noticed what he was doing, however, for, as she rose and collected her letters to send them to the post, she remarked: ‘When my mother has one of her headaches, I have to do the letter-writing.’
When Rougon was left to himself, he began to walk about the little room. The pasteboard boxes in the stand were all labelled ‘Receipts,’ ‘Letters,’ and so on, like those of some man of business. He smiled, however, when among the litter of papers on the desk, he caught sight of a pair of old split stays. There was a piece of soap, too, in the inkstand, and some scraps of blue satin on the floor, clippings which had fallen during the mending of a skirt, and had not been swept away. The door leading to Clorinde’s bedroom was ajar, and Rougon had the curiosity to peep inside; but the shutters were closed and the room was so dark that he could only see the shadowy folds of the bed-curtains. Just then, too, Clorinde came back.
‘I must be off,’ Rougon said to her. ‘I am going to dine with your man this evening. Do you give me full permission to act?’
The girl made no reply. She had turned quite gloomy again, as though she had been reconsidering the matter on the staircase. Rougon had already got his hand upon the balusters, but she brought him back into the room and closed the door. Her dream was being dispelled, the hope of which she had felt so sure that only an hour previously she had regarded it as a certainty. The burning flush that comes from a deadly insult rose to her cheeks. She felt as though she had received a blow.
‘Then you mean it seriously?’ she said, turning her back to the light, so that Rougon might not see how flushed her face was.
When he had repeated his arguments for the third time, she remained silent. She was afraid that if she began to speak on the subject she would be carried away by an impulse of wild anger, which she could feel surging within her, and she feared she might strike Rougon in revenge for this crumbling away of the future which she had planned for herself. But it was only a momentary impulse. She was soon calm again, and then slowly asked, ‘You wish this marriage to take place?’
Rougon did not hesitate, but answered in a full clear tone ‘Yes.’
‘Very well; let it be then.’
With slow steps, they returned to the door and went out on to the landing, both looking extremely calm. The only signs of Rougon’s last victory over himself were a few drops of perspiration on his brow. Clorinde held herself erect, certain of her power. They stood looking at each other in silence for a moment, having nothing further to say, and yet unable to part. At last, as Rougon took the girl’s hand to say good-bye, she detained him for an instant, and said without trace of anger: ‘You think yourself much cleverer than I am, but you are mistaken. You will perhaps be sorry some day.’
Her threats went no further. She leant over the balusters and watched him go down the stairs. When he got to the bottom, he raised his head and they smiled at one another. She had no thought of taking any puerile vengeance upon him; she was already dreaming of punishing him by some splendid future triumph of her own. And as she went back to the dressing-room, she caught herself murmuring, ‘Ah, well! all roads lead to Rome.’
That very evening Rougon began to lay siege to Delestang’s heart. He told him of some very flattering imaginary remarks which Mademoiselle Balbi had made of him at the banquet at the Hôtel de Ville; and afterwards he never wearied of discoursing to him about the young girl’s extraordinary beauty. He, who had formerly warned him so strongly to be on his guard against women, now did his best to deliver him over to Clorinde bound hand and foot. One day he would dwell upon the rare beauty of her hands; on another, he would glorify her figure, describing it in the most alluring language. Delestang, whose inflammable heart was already full of Clorinde’s image, was soon stirred by hot passion. When Rougon told him that he himself had never thought about her, he confessed that he had been in love with her for the last six months, but had kept silent on the subject from fear of being too late. He now began to go to the Rue Marbeuf every evening to talk about her. There seemed to be a general conspiracy against him. He never spoke to anyone without hearing enthusiastic praises of the girl he loved. Even the Charbonnels stopped him one morning on the Place de la Concorde to express their admiration of the ‘beautiful young lady whom they saw about with him everywhere.’
Clorinde, on her side, wore a smiling face. She had planned out her life afresh, and in a few days had grown accustomed to the new part she was to play. She did not attempt to win Delestang by the same bold tactics with which she had tried to subjugate Rougon. She quite changed her manner, affected soft languor, guileless innocence, and such a nervous disposition, that too tender a squeeze of the hand would upset her. When Delestang told Rougon that she had fainted in his arms just because he had kissed her wrist, the latter pretended to consider this as a convincing proof of her purity of mind. So at last Delestang began to think seriously about marrying her, and went to consult Rougon on the subject. But when the latter found his plans so near realisation he, just for a moment, felt so hurt and angry that he almost told Delestang then and there of all that had passed between himself and Clorinde. However, he refrained, and proceeded very cleverly to work upon the other’s feelings. He did not actually advise him to marry Clorinde, but led him on to this determination by remarks that seemed almost irrelevant to the subject. He had been much surprised, he said, to hear the unpleasant stories which had been circulated about Mademoiselle Balbi, but he did not believe them, for he had made searching inquiries without discovering anything to her disadvantage. Moreover, a man ought not to doubt the woman he loved. Those were his last words.
Six weeks later, as Rougon came out of the Madeleine, where the marriage had just been celebrated with great magnificence, he said to a deputy who was expressing his astonishment at Delestang’s choice: ‘Well, what could you expect of him? I warned him a hundred times. But he was sure to be taken in by a woman some day.’
Towards the end of the winter, when Delestang and his wife returned from travelling in Italy, they learnt that Rougon was on the point of marrying Mademoiselle Beulin-d’Orchère. When they went to see him, Clorinde congratulated him very gracefully. He pretended that he was really taking the step to please his friends. For the last three months, he said, they had let him have no peace, but had constantly repeated that a man in his position ought to be married. He added with a laugh that when his friends came to see him in the evenings, there wasn’t even a woman in the house to pour out the tea.
‘Oh! so it’s a sudden decision of yours; you never thought of it before, I suppose,’ remarked Clorinde with a smile. ‘You ought to have got married at the same time as we did, so that we could all have gone to Italy together.’
Then she began to question him playfully. No doubt it was his friend, Du Poizat, who had suggested this pretty idea. But this was denied by Rougon, who asserted that Du Poizat was strongly opposed to the marriage, as he personally abominated M. Beulin-d’Orchère. All the rest, however, M. Kahn, M. Béjuin, Madame Correur, and even the Charbonnels, had never wearied of singing the praises of Mademoiselle Véronique. According to them, she would bring every imaginable virtue, prosperity and charm into his home. Then he concluded jocosely: ‘She seems to have been made on purpose for me, and so I really couldn’t refuse to take her.’ And he added with a subtle smile: ‘Besides, if we are going to have war in the autumn, it is necessary to think about making alliances.’
Clorinde expressed her perfect approval; and she, too, began to sing Mademoiselle Beulin-d’Orchère’s praises, though she had only seen her once. Delestang, who had hitherto confined himself to nodding, without ever taking his eyes off his wife, now commenced an enthusiastic disquisition upon the advantages of marriage. And he was starting on a detailed account of his own happiness, when his wife rose and said they had another visit to make. As Rougon escorted them to the door, she held him back for a moment, letting her husband go on in front.
‘Didn’t I tell you that you would be married within the twelvemonth?’ she whispered softly in his ear.
< < < Chapter IV
Chapter VI > > >
French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – His Excellency Eugène Rougon – Contents
Copyright holders – Public Domain Book
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