Oxford World’s Classics Page 18

  ‘You think you’re stronger than I am… You’re wrong… One day you may regret this.’

  This was her only threat. She leaned on the banister, to watch him go down. When he reached the bottom, he looked up, and they smiled at each other. She was not thinking of some petty form of vengeance, but was already dreaming of a crushing, supreme victory. As she went back into the dressing room, she was surprised to hear herself murmuring:

  ‘No matter! All roads lead to Rome!’

  That very evening, Rougon began his assault on Delestang’s heart. He recounted some very flattering things he claimed Mademoiselle Balbi had said about him at the banquet on the day of the christening; and from then on he was tireless in his efforts to impress upon the former lawyer her extraordinary beauty. Having often warned Delestang in the past to beware of women, he now did his utmost to deliver the man to her, bound hand and foot. One day it would be Clorinde’s hands that were so exquisite, another day he would praise her figure, speaking of it in quite a crude manner. Very soon, Delestang, who was very impressionable, and already attracted to Clorinde, was aflame with passion. Once Rougon had assured him that he had never dreamt of marrying her himself, Delestang confessed to having been in love with her for the past six months, but had suppressed his feelings because he had not wanted to compete with Rougon. He began to run round to Rougon’s house every evening, just to talk about her. He might well have been the centre of a plot, because now he could not talk to anyone without hearing enthusiastic praise of his beloved. Even the Charbonnels stopped him one morning as he was crossing the Place de la Concorde, to hold forth at considerable length about how they admired ‘that lovely young lady with whom you are always to be seen’.

  Clorinde, for her part, dispensed the sweetest of smiles. She had planned her life anew, and within a few days had become completely accustomed to her new role. With a brilliant sense of tactics, she made no attempt to win the ex-lawyer with the imperious directness she had tried with Rougon. She was a different woman, she assumed a languid manner, with all the shyness of an inexperienced young lady, made herself out to be terribly sensitive, to the point of being overcome even by a particularly warm handshake. When Delestang reported to Rougon that she had fainted into his arms when he made so bold as to kiss her on the wrist, Rougon said he saw this as proof of great purity of soul. Then, one July evening, seeing that it was all proceeding too slowly, Clorinde, suddenly overcome by her emotions, like a schoolgirl, allowed herself to be seduced by Delestang. He was quite dazed by his success, especially as he imagined he had taken advantage of an adolescent fainting fit. Afterwards, she was completely inert and, so it seemed, oblivious of what had happened. When he tried either to offer an apology or to be familiar with her, her eyes had such an innocent expression that, consumed with remorse and desire, he would become quite tongue-tied. But, after this incident, he did begin seriously to think of marriage, seeing it as a way of making amends for his shabby behaviour. Even more, he saw in marriage a means of taking legitimate possession of that stolen bliss, that momentary bliss the memory of which smouldered within him, but which he despaired of experiencing again in any other way.

  Nevertheless, it still took Delestang another week to make up his mind. He went to see Rougon to ask his opinion. And when at last Rougon guessed what had happened, he sat for some time, quite downcast, trying to fathom the enigma of womankind, the stubborn resistance Clorinde had shown towards him, then this sudden collapse into the arms of a fool like Delestang. He did not understand the essential reasons for her behaviour. For a moment, so physical was the hurt, that he felt an urge to tell Delestang the truth. However, when he pressed Delestang with a number of blunt questions, the good fellow was very gentlemanly and denied being in any way intimate with Clorinde. This was enough to pull Rougon together again. After that, it did not take him long to get the ex-lawyer to make up his mind. He did not directly advise Delestang to marry her, he merely nudged him in that direction with a series of reflections that had scarcely anything to do with the matter. Referring to the nasty stories he believed were told about Mademoiselle Balbi, he said he was most surprised to hear them, and gave them no credence at all. He had, in fact, made enquiries, but had heard nothing that did not reflect well on Clorinde. In any case, he added, the woman one loved should be above discussion. That clinched it.

  Six weeks later, on emerging from the Madeleine, where the wedding had just taken place, with great pomp, Rougon remarked, in response to a deputy who expressed his surprise at Delestang’s choice of bride:

  ‘Indeed! I warned him scores of times… But he was bound to get caught by some woman or other.’

  Towards the end of the winter, when Delestang and his wife were returning from a trip to Italy, they learned that Rougon was about to marry Mademoiselle Beulin-d’Orchère. When they went to see him, Clorinde congratulated him most graciously, while he made out offhandedly that he was getting married merely to please his friends. They had been going on at him for the last three months, telling him that a man in his position needed a wife. Laughing, he added that it was true — when he had friends round in the evening he could do with a woman to pour the tea.

  ‘You mean you suddenly took it into your head to get married?’ said Clorinde, with a smile. ‘You hadn’t thought of it before? You should have got married when we did. We could have gone to Italy together.’

  She then asked him all sorts of light-hearted questions. She assumed it was his friend Du Poizat who had thought of it. He assured her she was mistaken. On the contrary, he told her, Du Poizat had been quite opposed to the match. The former sub-prefect could not stand Monsieur Beulin-d’Orchère. All the others, however, Monsieur Kahn, Monsieur Béjuin, Madame Correur, even the Charbonnels, could not speak too highly of Mademoiselle Véronique. To listen to them, she was going to bring unimaginable qualities to his house, enormous elegance and charm. He ended by making a joke of it all:

  ‘It’s obvious she was made for me. How could I possibly say no?’ And he added slyly: ‘Besides, if there’s going to be a war in the autumn, it was high time I made some alliances.’

  Clorinde said she fully agreed with him. She too expressed her warm approval of Mademoiselle Beulin-d’Orchère, though she had only set eyes on her once. This was a signal for Delestang, who up to this point had merely nodded, without taking his eyes off his wife, to launch into further enthusiastic remarks about the union. He then began to talk about his own happiness, whereupon Clorinde suddenly got up and reminded him that they had another call to make. Letting her husband go on ahead, she held Rougon back a moment as he saw them to the door.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you you would be married before the year was out,’ she whispered in his ear.

  Chapter 6

  Summer arrived. Rougon was living a life of absolute peace. In three months his wife had turned the house in the Rue Marbeuf into a very sober place, purging it of its aura of excitement. Now, the rooms — rather chilly and very clean — were redolent of respectability; the furniture was neatly arranged and the curtains drawn so as to admit only chinks of daylight, while the pile carpeting, which silenced all footsteps, produced an almost religious sense of austerity, as if one had walked into a convent. It seemed, indeed, that all this had been established long ago, and that one might be setting foot in a very traditional home, where the patriarchal spirit dominated everything. The tall, plain Madame Rougon, ever watchful, added to this atmosphere of retreat by the discretion of her own silent tread, managing Rougon’s household with such unobtrusive ease that one might have thought she had always been there, with at least twenty years of married life behind her.

  Rougon smiled when people congratulated him on his marriage. He persisted in saying that he had married on the advice, and specific recommendation, of his friends. He was indeed delighted with his wife. For a long time he had hankered after a bourgeois home that would provide material proof, as it were, of his probity. It finally freed him from his shady past and
gave him the stamp of respectability. He had remained very provincial in outlook, and still regarded as an ideal certain well-to-do drawing rooms in Plassans where the armchairs remained covered throughout the year. When he called on Delestang, where Clorinde made a point of extravagant display, he showed his disdain with dismissive little shrugs. Nothing seemed more absurd to him than throwing one’s money out of the window; not that he was miserly, but he was wont to repeat that there were pleasures money could never buy. So he had entrusted the management of the household budget to his wife. Until now he had lived without regard to expense. From now on, however, Véronique Rougon administered the family’s finances with the same rigour with which she ran the house.

  For the first few months, Rougon shut himself away, like a recluse, in preparation for the fresh struggles he saw ahead. He loved power for power’s sake, free from any vain lust for wealth or honours. Crassly ignorant and utterly undistinguished in everything but the management of other men, it was only in his need to dominate others that he achieved any kind of superiority. He loved the effort involved, and worshipped his own capability. Being above the common herd, in which he saw only fools or rogues, and ruling them with a rod of iron, had developed in him a remarkable quick-wittedness, an astonishing mental energy. He believed only in himself; where others had arguments, Rougon had convictions; he subordinated everything to ceaseless self-aggrandizement. Though utterly devoid of personal vices, he indulged in secret orgies of power. To his father he owed his massive, square shoulders and heavy features; from his mother, the fearsome Félicité Rougon, who ruled over Plassans, he had inherited his strength of will, a desire for supremacy that scorned petty concerns and petty pleasures. He was without question the greatest of the Rougons.

  Now finding himself completely alone and unoccupied, after years of involvement in public life, at first he had a delightful feeling of sleepiness. He felt he had not slept since the heady days of 1851. He thus accepted his fall from grace as if it was a holiday well earned by long public service. His idea was to stay away from things for six months, long enough for circumstances to improve, and only then, when it suited him, to plunge back into the fray. But after a few weeks he was already sick of resting. Never before had he been so conscious of his own strength, and now that he was making no use of his head and his limbs, they seemed to be in the way. He spent whole days pacing about in his little garden, giving tremendous yawns, like a caged lion forever stretching. He began to hate this existence, though he was careful to hide the boredom that was weighing him down; he was always good-natured, assuring everyone that he was really quite glad to be away from ‘all that mess’. Only at rare moments did he briefly raise his heavy eyelids and survey public events, but as soon as he noticed anybody looking at him, he would hide the glow in his eyes. What sustained him was his awareness of his unpopularity. His fall had delighted many people. Not a day passed without some newspaper attacking him. They made him the personification of the coup d’état; he was made responsible for the exilings and all the acts of terror of which men spoke under their breath. They even went so far as to congratulate the Emperor on having cut himself free from a servant who had been compromising him. At the Tuileries the hostility was even greater; in his triumph, de Marsy produced one savage witticism after another about Rougon, which the ladies-in-waiting then passed on to their society friends. This hostility, however, was rather a solace to Rougon, for it helped to bolster his contempt for the common herd. He was not forgotten, he was hated, and to him that seemed a good thing. Himself against the world — that was a favourite dream of his; he pictured himself alone, holding a whip, keeping their snapping jaws at bay all around him. The insults intoxicated him; in his proud isolation he seemed to grow in stature.

  Nevertheless, idleness was a terrible burden to his wrestler’s physique. Had he dared, he would have taken a spade and ripped up a corner of the garden. Instead, he began a lengthy piece of writing: a comparative study of the English constitutional system and that introduced by the Empire in 1852. His aim was to examine the history and political culture of the two peoples and show that liberty was at least as great in France as in England. But when he had assembled his documents and the dossier was complete, he had to make a huge effort to pick up his pen. He would happily have put his case to the Chamber in a speech, but to write it, compose an entire text, with due attention to precise expression, seemed to him a very difficult task and without immediate practical use. Matters of style had always bothered him. Indeed, he despised style, and he did not draft more than ten pages. He left the manuscript on his desk, but added barely twenty lines a week. Whenever he was asked what he was working on, he gave a long, detailed exposition of his thesis, implying that his book would be of great importance. But it was no more than an excuse behind which he hid the terrible emptiness of his days.

  Months slipped by, and his good-natured smile grew even more serene. No hint of the heartache he was suppressing showed on his face. Whenever his friends lamented his situation, he had arguments ready to convince them that all was well with him. Was he not happy? He loved research, and he was free to work as he pleased. This was far better than all the feverish agitation of public life. If the Emperor did not need him, he could thank him for leaving him in peace; and any such reference to the Emperor was invariably made with great reverence. At the same time, Rougon often remarked that he was ready, that all he was waiting for was a sign from his master, and he would at once reassume the burdens of office; but he always added that he would do nothing to provoke such a sign. Indeed, he seemed keen to stay away from things. In the silence that reigned in the early years of the Empire, amid the strange stupor produced by a general feeling of fear and exhaustion, he was able to catch the first hints of fresh stirrings of life. His great hope was that there would be some sudden catastrophe that would make him indispensable. He was the man to turn to in a crisis, ‘the man with an iron hand’, as Count de Marsy had once remarked.

  The Rougons were ‘at home’ to friends on Thursdays and Sundays. People came to partake in conversation in the big red drawing room until half past ten, when Rougon ruthlessly sent them all home! Going to bed too late, he maintained, dulled a man’s brain. At ten o’clock sharp, with a good housewifely eye for the last detail, Madame Rougon served tea. There were just two plates of fancy cakes, though nobody ever touched them.

  On the Thursday after the legislative elections, the whole gang was assembled in the Rougons’ drawing room by eight o’clock. The ladies — Madame Bouchard, Madame Charbonnel, and Madame Correur — had installed themselves near an open window, to get the rare breath of air from the little garden. They formed a circle, in the centre of which was Monsieur d’Escorailles, entertaining them with stories about his escapades from his Plassans days, and how he had made a twelve-hour trip to Monaco under the pretext of joining a shooting party. Madame Rougon, wearing a black dress, and half hidden behind a curtain, paid no attention to the talk. From time to time she would slip quietly away, for a quarter of an hour at a time. Also with the ladies was Monsieur Charbonnel, perched on a chair arm; he was staggered to hear a young man of good breeding recount such adventures. Clorinde, meanwhile, stood at the far end of the room, listening distractedly to a conversation about the harvest which her husband had struck up with Monsieur Béjuin. Dressed in an ecru frock decorated with a great deal of straw-coloured ribbon, she was staring at the iridescent globe of a lamp, and tapping her left palm lightly with a fan. At a card table the Colonel and Monsieur Bouchard were playing piquet in the yellowish light, while Rougon was solemnly and methodically playing endless games of patience on the square of green baize of another table. This was his favourite pastime on these Thursdays and Sundays. It kept his fingers and his mind occupied.

  ‘Well, is it ever going to come out?’ asked Clorinde, going up to him and smiling.

  ‘Of course,’ he replied calmly, ‘it always comes out.’

  She stood watching from the other side of th
e table, while he laid out the whole pack in eight piles. When he had picked up all the cards again, two by two, she said:

  ‘You were right, it has come out… But what were you thinking about?’

  He was in no hurry to reply. He looked up slowly, as if her question puzzled him.

  ‘Tomorrow’s weather,’ he said at last.

  He laid the cards out again. Meanwhile Delestang and Monsieur Béjuin had finished their conversation. Peals of laughter from pretty Madame Bouchard rang through the room. Clorinde went to one of the windows and remained there for a few moments, watching the dusk gathering. Then, without turning round, she asked another question:

  ‘Any news of poor Monsieur Kahn?’

  ‘He sent me a letter,’ Rougon replied. ‘I’m expecting him here this evening.’

  The talk now turned to Monsieur Kahn’s bad luck. During the last session of the Chamber, he had been imprudent enough to criticize, quite sharply, a draft government bill which, in a neighbouring department, would have established a strong rival enterprise that might well ruin his Bressuire ironworks. Monsieur Kahn thought he had done no more than engage in a legitimate defence of his own interests; but when he got back to his own department, the Deux-Sèvres, where he was to start electioneering, he was informed, by the Prefect himself, that he was no longer the official candidate! He had lost the confidence of the Minister, who had decided to replace him on the list with a certain lawyer — a very mediocre individual — from Niort. This had been a dreadful blow to Monsieur Kahn.

  Rougon was telling this story when in came the victim himself, followed by Du Poizat. They had come up to Paris by the seven o’clock train, pausing only for a quick dinner.

  ‘Would you believe it!’ cried Monsieur Kahn, standing in the middle of the room with everybody crowding round him. ‘Now they’re turning me into a revolutionary!’