Oxford World’s Classics Read online

  ‘Antonia! Please bring a lamp! And give me my grey frock!’

  When Rougon found himself outside in the Champs-Élysées, he stood there for a while, quite dazed, drinking in the fresh air wafting down from the Arc-de-Triomphe. Clear of traffic now, the gas lamps in the avenue were beginning to light up, one by one, their sudden glow appearing like a series of bright sparks in the shadows. He felt as if he might have had a stroke, and passed his hands over his face.

  ‘Surely not!’ he said out loud. ‘What a mad idea!’

  Chapter 4

  The christening procession was due to start from the Pavillon de l’Horloge at five o’clock. The route ran along the main avenue of the Tuileries gardens, across the Place de la Concorde, down the Rue de Rivoli, across the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville, over the Pont d’Arcole, down the Rue d’Arcole, and across the Place du Parvis.

  Already by four o’clock there was a huge crowd at the Pont d’Arcole. Here, where the river made a broad opening in the heart of Paris, there was room for thousands. The horizon widened suddenly beyond the tip of the Île Saint-Louis, showing in the distance, cut across by the black line of the Pont Saint-Louis. To the left, upstream, the lesser reach disappeared into a huddle of low buildings; but to the right the main arm opened up extensive views covered in a bluish haze, in which one could make out the green patch of the trees at the Port-aux-Vins. Downstream, on both sides, from the Quai Saint-Paul to the Quai de la Mégisserie, from the Quai Napoléon to the Quai de l’Horloge, the pavements stretched out alongside wide streets; while the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville, opposite the bridge, formed a flat open space. Above this vast expanse, the June sky, hot and clear, formed a great roof of infinite blue.

  When the half-hour struck, there were people everywhere. Along the pavements stood endless lines of onlookers, squeezed against the embankment walls. A sea of human heads, constantly swollen by fresh incoming waves, filled the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville. Opposite, the old houses along the Quai Napoléon presented a further mass of faces, standing out against the blackness of wide-open windows; and even in the dark little streets that abutted onto the embankment—the Rue Colombe, the Rue Saint-Landry, the Rue Glatigny—women’s bonnets could be seen leaning out, their ribbons fluttering in the wind. Serried ranks of spectators stood on the Pont Notre-Dame, pressed elbow to elbow against the stones of the enclosing wall, as if leaning on the plush arms of seats in some enormous grandstand. At the far end, downstream, the Pont Louis-Philippe was swarming with black dots; while the most distant windows, those little gaps marking at regular intervals the yellow and grey façades of the tall houses at the tip of the island, were lit up from time to time by the movement of colourful frocks. There were men standing on the rooftops, among the chimneys. Others, who remained invisible, were peering through field glasses from their high balconies on the Quai de la Tournelle. The slanting sun, suffusing the whole scene, seemed to radiate from the crowd itself; gales of laughter rose from the surging tide of heads; gaudy sunshades, gleaming like mirrors, formed rings of starry light among the colourful medley of women’s dresses and men’s coats.

  But what could be seen from all sides, from the embankments, the bridges, and the windows, on the blank wall of a six-storey building in the distance, on the Île Saint-Louis, was a gigantic grey frock coat painted in profile. The left sleeve was folded at the elbow, as if the garment had kept the shape and stance of a body which had disappeared. In the sunlight, above the swarm of onlookers, this monumental advertisement seemed to take on extraordinary significance.

  Meanwhile, a double row of men was parting the crowd, taking up positions to ensure a clear passage for the procession. To the right were members of the National Guard; to the left, regular soldiers. One end of this double row disappeared down the Rue d’Arcole, which was festooned with flags, and with rich material hung from the windows, flapping limply along the length of the dark houses. The Pont d’Arcole itself, kept free of people, was the only empty space in this great invasion of every nook and cranny; it now made a strange impression, a deserted, airy construction, with its single, gently curving iron arch. Beneath it, on the riverbanks, the crush began again. Middle-class men in their Sunday best had spread out their handkerchiefs and were sitting beside their wives, waiting expectantly, having a rest after an afternoon spent strolling through the streets. Upstream from the bridge, in the middle of the river, just where it widens and the deep blue takes on a greenish hue where the two arms meet, a team of rowers in red jerseys were pulling on their oars to keep their boat level with the Port-aux-Fruits. And on the Quai de Gesvres, there was a large public laundry, its timbers turned green by the water; from here came the sound of laughter and the beating of clothes. This great mass of humanity, three to four hundred thousand people* in all, gazed up at the towers of Notre-Dame, their rectangular blocks sloping skywards high above the buildings on the Quai Napoléon. Gilded by the setting sun, turning rust-red against the clear sky, they seemed to quiver in the air with the reverberation of a tremendous pealing of bells.

  Two or three false alerts had already caused much jostling in the crowd.

  ‘As I keep saying, they won’t be along before half past five,’ asserted a lanky fellow seated outside a café on the Quai de Gesvres with Monsieur and Madame Charbonnel.

  It was Gilquin, Théodore Gilquin, a former tenant of Madame Mélanie Correur, and a disreputable friend of Rougon. On this special occasion he was wearing a twenty-nine-franc outfit of yellow twill; it was threadbare, stained, and bursting at the seams, and he had cracked boots, bright tan gloves, and a big straw boater without a ribbon. When he wore gloves, Gilquin felt quite dressed up. Since midday he had been acting as guide to the Charbonnels, whose acquaintance he had made one evening in Rougon’s kitchen.

  ‘You’ll see everything, my friends,’ he kept repeating as he wiped the straggly moustache that seemed to form a dark scar across his face. ‘Did you ask me to be in charge or not? Well then, leave the arrangements for our little outing to me.’

  Gilquin had already dispatched three glasses of brandy and five glasses of beer. For the past two hours he had insisted that the Charbonnels should sit there with him, on the pretext that they would thus have a front-row seat. He knew the little café well, and they would be just right there, he said. He addressed the waiter in familiar terms. The Charbonnels, resigned to the situation, were as surprised by the volubility of his conversation as by its variety. Madame Charbonnel had limited herself to a glass of sugared water, while Monsieur Charbonnel had ordered an anisette, as he sometimes did in the company of fellow businessmen at the Chamber of Commerce in Plassans. All the while, Gilquin regaled them with talk about the christening, as if he had spent the whole morning at the Tuileries, collecting information.

  ‘The Empress is very happy,’ he said. ‘It was a beautiful birth. What a woman she is! You’ll see what a regal bearing she has… The Emperor, you know, only got back from Nantes the day before yesterday. He went because of the floods…* What a terrible business that was!’

  Madame Charbonnel moved her chair back a little. She was slightly afraid of the crowd streaming past her in ever-growing numbers.

  ‘What a lot of people!’ she murmured.

  ‘Quite!’ cried Gilquin. ‘There are more than three hundred thousand strangers in Paris today. For the past week special excursion trains have been bringing them in from all over the country… Look, those people over there are from Normandy! And over there is a crowd from Gascony! And look, a group from Franche-Comté! I can spot them all straightaway! I’ve been around a bit, you know!’

  He then proceeded to inform them that the law courts were not in session that day, the Bourse was closed, and all government offices had given their staff the day off. The whole capital was celebrating the christening. He went on to provide figures, reckoning up what the ceremony and all the festivities were costing. The National Assembly had voted four hundred thousand francs; but that was a paltry amount, he said, for a g
room at the Tuileries had told him only the day before that the procession alone was going to cost about two hundred thousand. If the Emperor managed to get away with making up only a million from his Civil List, he would be able to count himself lucky. The layette alone had gobbled up a hundred thousand.

  ‘A hundred thousand francs!’ repeated Madame Charbonnel, dumbfounded. ‘But what is it made of? And whatever has been done to it to make it cost that much?’

  Gilquin gave a condescending laugh. Some kinds of lace, he said, were very expensive. He had once been a commercial traveller in lace. He went on with his calculations. There was to be a gift of fifty thousand francs to the parents of all babies born in wedlock on the same day as the little prince, and the Emperor and Empress had insisted on being godfather and godmother to them all. A further eighty-five thousand francs were going on the purchase of medallions for the composers of special cantatas to be sung in the theatres. He wound up with details of the one hundred and twenty thousand commemorative medallions to be presented to all the pupils in secondary schools and to children in primary schools and care homes, and also to non-commissioned officers and soldiers of the Paris garrison. He had one himself, he said, and showed it to them. The medallion was the size of a two-franc piece. On one side were the profiles of the Emperor and Empress, on the other that of the Prince Imperial, with the date of the christening: 14 June 1856.

  ‘Would you be willing to let me have that?’ asked Monsieur Charbonnel.

  Gilquin said he would, but when Charbonnel, worried about the cost, offered him a twenty-sou piece, he magnanimously declined, saying the thing was not worth more than half that sum. In the meantime, Madame Charbonnel had been studying the profiles of the Imperial couple. She was becoming quite sentimental.

  ‘They look so kind,’ she murmured. ‘There they are, close to each other, they seem such good people… Look!’ she said to her husband, ‘you’d think their two heads were lying on the same pillow when you look at it from this side.’

  Gilquin steered the conversation back to the Empress, praising her charity work. When she was nearly nine months gone, she still devoted whole afternoons to the establishment of an orphanage for girls, at the top of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. And she had just declined a gift of twenty-four thousand francs, collected in tiny amounts from ordinary people, for the young prince. At her request, the money was going to pay for a hundred apprenticeships for orphans. Gilquin, already a little the worse for wear, pulled all sorts of faces as he tried to find the right tone and turn of phrase to express his respect for the Empress as a loyal subject and his passionate feelings for her as a man. He would gladly give his life, he declared, for so noble a lady. However, nobody near him seemed in the least interested. The distant murmur of the crowd, growing now into a continuous roar, seemed to echo his praises, while the bells of Notre-Dame pealed their tremendous delight over the rooftops.

  ‘Perhaps we should go and take up our positions,’ ventured Monsieur Charbonnel, who was tired of sitting.

  Madame Charbonnel was already on her feet, gathering her yellow shawl round her neck.

  ‘I’m sure it’s time,’ she murmured. ‘You wanted us to be among the first, but here we are, letting everybody go on ahead.’

  This only served to annoy Gilquin. He brought his fist down with a curse on the little zinc table. Did they think he didn’t know his Paris? Madame Charbonnel, quite intimidated, sank back onto her chair, as Gilquin called across to the waiter:

  ‘Jules, an absinthe and some cigars!’

  Then, having wetted his thick moustache in the absinthe, he called the man back angrily.

  ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’ he said. ‘Take this rubbish back and serve me from the other bottle! The one I had on Friday!… I used to travel in liqueurs, old boy! You can’t put anything past Théodore Gilquin!’

  He calmed down again when the waiter, who seemed afraid of him, brought the bottle he wanted. Giving the Charbonnels a few friendly pats on the shoulder, he began to address them as Papa and Maman.

  ‘What are you sayin’, Maman? You’re gettin’ itchy feet? Don’t you worry, you’ll have time to tire ’em out before tonight… What d’you reckon, Papa? We’re all right here, aren’t we? What’s wrong with this café? We’re sittin’ down, we can watch the people goin’ past… We’ve got bags of time… Order something for y’selves.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Monsieur Charbonnel assured him. ‘We’ve had enough, I think.’

  Gilquin had now lit a cigar. Leaning back in his chair, he tucked his thumbs in his waistcoat, puffed out his chest, and began to rock backwards and forwards. His eyes had a look of glazed contentment. Suddenly, he remembered something.

  ‘I haven’t told you!’ he cried. ‘Tomorrow morning I’ll be round at your place at seven, and take you off and show you the whole caboodle. Isn’t that a grand idea?’

  Alarmed, the Charbonnels looked at each other. But Gilquin just ran on with the details of the programme he had prepared. He sounded like a bearkeeper doing his spiel. In the morning, they would stroll about town and have lunch at the Palais-Royal. In the afternoon, the esplanade at the Invalides—military tattoo, the greasy pole, three hundred toy balloons complete with bags of sweets, and a big balloon raining down sugared almonds. In the evening, dinner at a wine merchant’s he knew, on the Quai Debilly, a fireworks display climaxing with a representation of a baptistery, then another stroll, to see the illuminations. And he told them about the cross of fire that would be hoisted over the Legion of Honour headquarters, the fairy palace on the Place de la Concorde which had required no less than nine hundred and fifty thousand pieces of coloured glass, and the Tour Saint-Jacques, whose statue, on the top, would look like a lighted torch. Seeing that the Charbonnels were still hesitant, Gilquin leaned forward and whispered:

  ‘Then, on the way home, we’ll drop in at a place in the Rue de Seine where they have fabulous cheese soup.’

  After that, the Charbonnels could not possibly refuse. Their wide eyes showed both curiosity and childlike dread. They felt they were becoming the plaything of this dreadful person. But Madame Charbonnel could do no more than murmur:

  ‘Oh, Paris, Paris! Now we’re here, we ought to see it all. If only you knew, Monsieur Gilquin, how peaceful our life in Plassans was! And my jams will all be going bad, along with the conserves, the brandied cherries, and the gherkins.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, Maman,’ cried Gilquin, now so full of liquor that he had begun to address her in familiar terms, using the tu form. ‘You just win your lawsuit, Maman, then ask me down, eh? We’ll all go together and we’ll soon get through that jam!’

  He poured himself another glass of absinthe. He was quite drunk now. For a moment he eyed the Charbonnels with great benevolence. He liked it when people showed their feelings. Then, suddenly, he was on his feet, waving his long arms, calling out, whistling, and beckoning. He had seen Madame Mélanie Correur, in a dove-grey silk dress, walking along on the opposite pavement. She looked round, but the sight of Gilquin seemed to annoy her. Nevertheless, she crossed the road, her hips swaying in queenly fashion. She stood at their table for some time before she could be persuaded to have something.

  ‘Just a little glass of cassis,’ said Gilquin. ‘You’re so fond of it… Don’t you remember, in the Rue Vaneau! Wasn’t that a funny time, eh? Correur was such an asshole!’

  She finally sat down, just as a great burst of cheering swept through the crowd. As if caught in a gale, they were all carried away, surging forward like a flock of sheep out of control. Instinctively, the Charbonnels stood up to join them, but Gilquin’s heavy hand forced them back onto their chairs. He was crimson with anger.

  ‘Stay where you are, damn it! Wait for the order… Can’t you see those fools are all getting their noses broken! It’s only five o’clock! That was the papal legate arriving. Who cares about him! If you ask me, it’s an insult that the Pope isn’t coming in person. Is he the godfather or isn’t he? I can gu
arantee the kid won’t be along for another half an hour.’

  Gradually, his drunken state was depriving him of any sense of decency. He had turned his chair round, and was blowing smoke in everybody’s face, winking at the ladies and shooting defiant looks at the men. Suddenly there was a pile-up of carriages on the Notre-Dame bridge, a few paces away. Horses began to paw the ground, and the gold-braided, decoration-bespattered uniforms of high dignitaries and senior officers appeared at the carriage windows.

  ‘There’s a lot of metal over there!’ muttered Gilquin, with a supercilious smile. But, a moment later, as a brougham bowled up on the Quai de la Mégisserie, he nearly knocked the table over in excitement.

  ‘My God! It’s Rougon!’ he cried.

  He stood waving with his gloved hand. Then, afraid he would not be noticed, picked up his boater and waved that. Rougon, whose senator’s uniform was attracting much attention, shrank back in the brougham. Whereupon Gilquin cupped his hands and yelled to him. People on the opposite pavement pressed forward, turning their heads in an effort to make out whom this lanky devil in yellow twill was shouting at. At last the coachman was able to whip his horse, and the brougham sped away over the Notre-Dame bridge.

  ‘Don’t be so loud!’ hissed Madame Charbonnel, plucking at Gilquin’s arm.

  But he did not want to sit down. Standing on tiptoe, he watched the brougham disappear. Then he hurled a final comment after it as it disappeared from view:

  ‘The rotten skunk! All because he’s got a bit of gilt on his coat now! Well, old boy, that didn’t prevent you, more than once, from going out in Théodore’s boots!’

  Respectable bourgeois with their ladies at the seven or eight tables around him opened their eyes wide. The family at the next table, father, mother, and three children, seemed especially interested in what he was saying. Gilquin swelled with delight now that he had an audience. Looking round slowly at the various patrons, table by table, he at last sat down, and declared, at the top of his voice: