by Emile Zola
‘Some drunken nonsense,’ he told himself, as he made his way down the Champs-Élysées. ‘But at least, I’ll put my mind at rest.’
He walked all the way, to fit in with his doctor’s wishes. It was a wonderful day, a clear January sun in a clear sky. Gilquin had moved from the Passage Guttin to the Batignolles district. The address on his card was: Rue Guisarde, Faubourg Saint-Germain.
Rougon had enormous difficulty locating that abominably filthy street behind the Saint-Sulpice church. He found the concierge’s lodge at the far end of a dark passage. The woman was in bed with a temperature, and in a hoarse voice called out:
‘Monsieur Gilquin?… Dunno! Try the fourth floor, up at the top, the door on the left.’
On the fourth floor, he saw the name Gilquin written on one of the doors, in a frame of arabesques representing flaming hearts pierced with arrows. But he knocked in vain. All he could hear behind the door was the ticking of a cuckoo clock and the gentle miaowing of a cat. On setting out, he had wondered whether he was on a wild goose chase, but it eased his mind to have come. He went down again, somewhat calmer, telling himself he could wait till the evening. Outside, he slackened his pace, cut through the Saint-Germain market, wandered aimlessly along the Rue de Seine, already rather tired, but determined to go home on foot. Then, just as he had climbed the slope to the Rue Jacob, he thought of the Charbonnels. They were keeping their distance, and he had not seen them for ten days; so he decided to drop in on them for a moment, just to say hello. It was such a mild afternoon that he was feeling in a good mood.
The Charbonnels’ room at the Hôtel du Périgord overlooked the courtyard, a gloomy well from which rose a smell of dirty drains. It was a big, dingy room with rickety mahogany furniture and faded damask curtains. When Rougon entered, Madame Charbonnel was folding her dresses and putting them into a huge trunk, while Monsieur Charbonnel was sweating and straining as he roped up a smaller trunk.
‘What’s this! Are you going away?’ Rougon asked with a smile.
‘We are, indeed,’ replied Madame Charbonnel with a huge sigh. ‘This time it’s for good.’
All the same, they fussed round him, very flattered that he had called. Every chair was cluttered with clothes, piles of linen, and bulging baskets, so he sat on the edge of the bed. He was his old good-natured self again.
‘No, it’s no trouble, I’m perfectly all right here… You get on with what you’re doing, I don’t want to hold you up… Are you catching the eight o’clock train?’
‘Yes, the eight o’clock,’ said Monsieur Charbonnel. ‘That makes six more hours in this Paris of yours… It will be a long time before we forget it, Monsieur Rougon.’
Usually so taciturn, Monsieur Charbonnel now really spoke his mind, even going so far as to shake his fist at the window. Two o’clock in the afternoon, and you couldn’t even see across your own room! The filthy light filtering in from the inner well of the courtyard, that was Paris. But, thank God, he was going to get back to the sun, to his garden in Plassans. He cast a quick glance round, to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. That morning he had bought a railway timetable. He pointed to the mantelpiece. In a grease-stained parcel was a roast chicken they would eat on the train.
‘My dear,’ he said once again, ‘are you sure you’ve emptied all the drawers? My slippers were under the bedside cabinet… I think some papers fell down behind it…’
From the edge of the bed Rougon watched these old folk’s preparations with a sinking heart. Their hands were shaking as they fastened their parcels. He felt their emotion was a silent reproach. It was he who had kept them in Paris, but it had ended in complete failure, and now in their imminent flight.
‘You’re making a mistake,’ he murmured.
Madame Charbonnel made a pleading gesture, as if to silence him, and hastened to say:
‘Please, Monsieur Rougon, don’t make any more promises! It would only make things worse… When I think we’ve been here for two and a half years… Good heavens! Two and a half years, in this hole! I’ll have these pains in my left leg until my dying day. I had to sleep on the inside, against the wall, just there behind you; and I can tell you it’s wet with damp… No, I can’t describe what it’s been like. It would take too long. We’ve got through so much money. Only yesterday I had to buy this trunk to take back all the things we’ve worn out in Paris, and all the badly made clothes we’ve paid through the nose for, and our linen too, coming back from the laundry in tatters… I won’t be sorry to get away from your Paris laundries, I can tell you. They burn everything with their acids.’
She tossed another pile of rags into the trunk.
‘Yes, we’re going!’ she cried. ‘Another hour would put me in the grave.’
But Rougon stubbornly went back to the question of the legal case. Had they received bad news? Almost in tears, they told him it was clear they were not going to get that legacy of their cousin once removed, Chevassu. The Council of State was about to authorize the Sisters to accept the half-million francs. And what had finally destroyed their hopes was the news that Monseigneur Rochart was in Paris again, for the second time. This meant he had won.
All at once Monsieur Charbonnel had a fit of anger. Breaking off his struggle with the little trunk, he rang his hands, repeating in a voice broken with emotion:
‘Half a million francs! Half a million francs!’
Their courage failed them. Amid the disarray of the room, they slumped down, the husband on the trunk, the wife on a bundle of linen, and launched into a long lamentation. If one fell silent, the other would carry on. They recalled how fond they had been of that cousin. How they had adored him! The truth was that they had not set eyes on him for seventeen years when they learned of his death, but at this moment they were genuinely upset and truly believed they had lavished attention on him during his illness. Next, they charged the Sisters of shamelessly manoeuvring to get their way. They had gained the complete confidence of their cousin, they had kept his true friends away from him, and they had maintained constant pressure on him, weakened as he was by his illness. Madame Charbonnel, though a pious woman, told a frightful tale, according to which their cousin had actually died of fright, after having written a will dictated by a priest, who had told him that the Devil himself was standing at the foot of his bed. As for the Bishop of Faverolles, Monseigneur Rochart, he had played a dastardly part in the whole affair, robbing them of what was rightfully theirs. The whole of Plassans, she said, knew them for the fair dealing by which they had made their little nest-egg in oil.
‘But all may not be lost,’ said Rougon, seeing that they were beginning to waver. ‘Monseigneur Rochart is not the Almighty, you know… I have not been able to take up your case myself, I have so many things to do. But let me see how things now stand. I certainly don’t want you to be robbed.’
The Charbonnels looked at each other, not knowing quite what to say.
‘It’s not worth your trouble, Monsieur Rougon,’ murmured Monsieur Charbonnel.
But when Rougon insisted that it was worth the trouble, and swore he would now do all he possibly could, saying he was not going to let them go without a fight, Madame Charbonnel repeated:
‘Really, it isn’t worth the trouble. You would be putting yourself out for nothing… We mentioned you to our lawyer, but he just laughed and said you didn’t have the authority at present to get the better of Monseigneur Rochart.’
‘If you haven’t got the authority, what can possibly be done? It’s better to give in,’ said Monsieur Charbonnel, in turn.
Rougon’s head had sunk down on his chest. Each word these old folk had said was like a slap across the face. Never before had he suffered so much from his lack of authority.
‘We are going back to Plassans,’ Madame Charbonnel continued. ‘That’s the wisest thing for us to do… But don’t think we’re angry, Monsieur Rougon. When we get back and see Madame Félicité, we’ll tell your dear mother you did everything you could. And if anybody e
lse asks, don’t worry, we’re not the ones to say a bad word about you. Nobody can be expected to do what’s beyond their powers, can they?’
This was the absolute limit. He could just picture the Charbonnels alighting from the train in his little home town. The very same evening, the whole place would be buzzing with it all. It would be a personal setback, a defeat it would take years to overcome.
‘Stay here!’ he said firmly. ‘I want you to stay! We’ll see if Monseigneur Rochart can get the better of me as easily as that.’
He gave a strange laugh, which frightened the Charbonnels. Nevertheless, they resisted for some time, before giving way and agreeing to stay on in Paris a little longer, for another week at most. Laboriously, the husband untied the ropes with which he had fastened the little trunk, while, though it was hardly three o’clock, his wife had already lit a candle, to put the linen and clothes back in the drawers. When he left, Rougon shook their hands warmly and repeated his promises.
Out in the street, he had not gone ten yards before he began to regret what he had done. Why keep the Charbonnels in Paris, when they were so set on leaving? It was an excellent opportunity to get rid of them. Now he would be even more involved in winning their case for them, and he was annoyed with himself when he considered the reasons of vanity that had impelled him. It seemed unworthy. But he had promised, and he would have to see what he could do. He went down the Rue Bonaparte, followed the embankment, and crossed the river by the Saint-Pères bridge.
It was still mild, but a keen wind was blowing off the water. He was halfway across the bridge, buttoning up his coat, when just in front of him he came upon a stout fur-wrapped lady filling the entire pavement. From the voice he recognized Madame Correur.
‘Oh, it’s you!’ she cried rather plaintively. ‘Just my luck to run into you. But I suppose I should shake hands… I wouldn’t have come to see you all this week. You’re really not being of much use to me.’
And she reproached him for failing to pull the strings he had promised to pull months earlier. It still concerned the young lady Herminie Billecoq, former pupil at Saint-Denis, whom her seducer, an army officer, was prepared to marry if some kind person would only produce the usual dowry. And all those other ladies, too, were endlessly pestering her: Madame Leturc, the widow, was still waiting for her tobacco licence, and the others, Madame Chardon, Madame Testanière, and Madame Jalaguier, all came to see her every day to tell her how hard up they were and to remind her of the promises she had once thought she could make them.
‘I was counting on you,’ she concluded. ‘A fine mess you’ve left me in! In fact I’m on my way now to the Ministry of Public Instruction, to see about little Madame Jalaguier’s stipend. You did promise it, you know.’ She heaved a sigh and carried on: ‘So we have to run round all over the place ourselves, now that you won’t be our protector.’
Rougon, bothered by the wind, bent forward and stared down at the Port Saint-Nicolas, a corner of merchant Paris, under the bridge. Though still listening to Madame Correur, he was fascinated by a barge laden with sugar. Stevedores were unloading it, sliding the blocks down a chute formed by a couple of planks. From the embankment some three hundred people were watching.
‘I’m nobody and I can’t do anything,’ he replied. ‘You shouldn’t be angry with me.’
But she would not be appeased:
‘Don’t tell me that! I know you! When you want, you can achieve anything… Don’t try to be clever with me, Eugène!’
He could not help smiling. The familiar tone of Madame Mélanie, as he had once called her, revived memories of the Hôtel Vaneau, when he was virtually barefoot, just beginning to make his way in the world. He had quite forgotten the way he had reproached himself on leaving the Charbonnels.
‘Now, now,’ he said, quite relaxed, ‘what are you saying?… In any case, let’s not stand here. We’ll freeze to death. If you’re heading for the Rue de Grenelle, I’ll see you to the end of the bridge.’
He turned round and strode along next to her, but without offering his arm. Madame Correur poured out her problems.
‘Really,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t care less about the others! Those ladies can wait… I’d never bother you, I’d be as cheerful as I used to be, you know me, if I didn’t have so much to worry about myself. What do you expect? It gets you down in the end… It’s still my brother, of course. Poor Martineau! His wife’s driven him completely mad. He can’t take it any more.’
She gave a detailed account of a fresh attempt she’d made to patch things up, only the week before. To find out exactly how her brother was feeling towards her, she had taken it into her head to send one of her friends down to Coulonges. In fact, it was Herminie Billecoq, the girl whose marriage she had been trying to arrange for the past two years.
‘Her trip cost me a hundred and seventeen francs,’ she continued. ‘And you can’t imagine the sort of reception they gave her. Madame Martineau threw herself between her and my brother in an absolute rage, screaming and foaming at the mouth. She said that if I sent sluts down there to see my brother, she would get the gendarmes to lock them up… My dear Herminie was still in such a state when I met her at the Gare Montparnasse that we had to go straight to a café to have something to drink.’
They had now reached the end of the bridge. Other pedestrians pushed past. Wishing to console her, Rougon said:
‘It’s all very frustrating. But you’ll see, your brother will come back to you. Time is a great healer.’
Then, as she was keeping him there on the edge of the pavement, in all the noise of the traffic, he began to edge his way back towards the bridge again. Following him, Madame Correur said:
‘If Martinon dies, that woman would be capable of burning everything, if he leaves a will… The poor man is nothing but skin and bone now. Herminie thought he looked in a very bad way… So I really am very worried.’
‘There’s nothing to be done,’ said Rougon, gesturing vaguely. ‘We must be patient.’
She halted again in the middle of the bridge and, lowering her voice, said:
‘Herminie told me a very funny thing. Apparently Martineau has got mixed up in politics now. He’s become a Republican. In the last elections he upset a lot of people… That was another blow. He might get into serious trouble. What do you think?’
There was a silence. She stared at him expectantly. He watched a landau as it went past, as if to avoid her gaze. Then, innocently, he said:
‘Calm down. You’ve got friends, haven’t you? Well, you can count on them.’
‘I only count on you, Eugène,’ she said affectionately, in a soft voice.
He seemed quite moved. Now it was he who held her with his gaze. He found her quite touching with her plump neck and the heavily made-up face of a pretty woman refusing to grow old. She reminded him so much of his own younger days.
‘Yes, you can count on me,’ he replied, and squeezed her hands. ‘You know very well that your battles are mine too.’
He accompanied her all the way back to the Quai Voltaire. When at last she continued on her way, he finally crossed the bridge, walking slowly, and once more watched the blocks of sugar being unloaded in the Port Saint-Nicolas. He even stood for a while with his elbows on the parapet. But soon the blocks of sugar sliding down the chute, the green water flowing ceaselessly under the arches of the bridge, the idlers, and the houses all merged together in a daydream that took complete possession of him. His thoughts swirled round and round. His encounter with Madame Correur had plunged him into a state in which all his misgivings disappeared. His dream was to become very great, very powerful, so that he could satisfy, more than was natural or feasible, all who gathered round him.
A shiver startled him out of his trance. He felt the chill. Night was falling, the river was blowing small white clouds up on to the embankments. He suddenly felt he could not get home on foot. But every cab he saw was occupied, and he was about to give up looking when he saw a driver pull up his horse
beside him, and a head emerge from the cab window. It was Monsieur Kahn, shouting:
‘I was coming to see you! Jump in! I’ll take you back, we can talk on the way.’
Rougon got in. He had hardly had time to sit down before the former deputy started talking in a very animated fashion, shouting above the rattling of the cab as the horse ambled along.
‘My friend, I’ve just had an extraordinary proposition put to me… You’d never guess. I need some air!’ He suddenly lowered the window. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
Rougon sank back in his corner, and through the open window watched the grey walls of the Tuileries gardens sweep past as Monsieur Kahn, red in the face, with jerky movements, went on:
‘As you know, I’ve been following your advice… For two years I’ve persisted with my struggle. Three times I’ve seen the Emperor. I’m now writing my fourth memorandum on the question. And if I have not exactly succeeded in getting my railway concession, at least I’ve prevented de Marsy from giving it to the Compagnie de l’Ouest… In a word, I’ve played for time, waiting for us to get the upper hand, exactly as you told me.’
He fell silent for a moment. His voice was lost in the frightful din of a cart loaded with iron. When they had overtaken the cart, he continued:
‘Well, just now, I was in my study, when a man I don’t know at all, a big entrepreneur apparently, called, and, just like that, offered me the concession in the name of de Marsy and the Compagnie de l’Ouest — if I would give them a million francs’ worth of shares… What do you say to that?’