by Émile Zola
‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Take me out, Pierre, will you? I can’t stand any more.’
Down in the buffet they had the greatest difficulty in finding a table. The place was stifling, packed with people, like a great gloomy cave made of brown serge hung between the girders that supported the metal floor above. At the far end, half-hidden in the darkness, three sideboards were set out with dishes of fruit, all symmetrically arranged, while to right and left were two counters, each presided over by a lady, one dark, the other fair, who kept an eagle eye on the jostling crowd beyond. Out of the murky depths of the great dark cavern there rose a stream of little marble tables and a boiling tide of chairs, all tightly packed and hopelessly entangled, which filled the cave itself and flooded into the garden and the daylight provided by the thick glass roof.
Noticing some people preparing to leave, Sandoz pounced upon their table and took it by force.
‘Got it, thank God!’ he said, gasping. ‘Now, what are you going to eat?’
Claude indicated that he had no preference, and it was perhaps fortunate, for the lunch was anything but good; the trout was soggy, the roast beef over-cooked, the asparagus tasted of wet rag. They had to fight for service, too, as the waiters, over-worked and flustered, kept finding themselves held up and unable to reach their tables because chairs were being pushed farther and farther back until the gangways, which were too narrow in any circumstances, were completely blocked. From behind the draperies on the left came a deafening clatter of pots, pans, and crockery, for that was where the kitchens had been rigged up, on sand, like the open-air kitchens on a fairground.
Sandoz and Claude had to sit sideways to eat, squashed between two parties of people whose elbows practically met over their plates, while every time a waiter came by he gave their chairs a violent jerk with his hip. But everyone took the discomfort and the abominable food as part of a huge joke, and a free and easy atmosphere was soon established among the company as it made an otherwise unhappy situation into a pleasure party. Strangers rapidly struck up acquaintance; people carried on loud conversations with friends three tables away, talking over their shoulders, and making gestures over their neighbours’ heads. The women were specially animated. The throng had intimidated them at first, but now they were taking off their gloves and turning up their veils and laughing gaily after their first glass of wine. It was this promiscuity, this rubbing of shoulders between people of all classes, good women, bad women, great artists, and obvious failures that gave ‘varnishing day’ an added spice, a chance assembly, a mixing-together of people that was at once unpredictable and faintly improper, and which brought a glint even to the most respectable eye.
Sandoz, meanwhile, had decided he could not finish his meat, so he shouted to Claude through the general hubbub:
‘Like a bit of cheese? … And how about some coffee?’
But Claude did not hear. He was gazing dreamily down the garden. From where he was sitting he could see the central group of tall palms against a background of brown draperies, surrounded by a wide circle of statues. He could see the back and shapely rump of a female faun; the dainty profile of a young girl, the curve of her cheek, the tip of her firm little breast; a full-face view of a Gallic warrior in bronze, a colossal piece of sentimentality and mindless patriotism; the milk-white body of a woman suspended by her wrists, some Andromeda or other from the Place Pigalle; and beyond all those, statues and still more statues, rows and rows of shoulders and hips lining every pathway, flights of white forms among the luscious greenery, heads and bosoms, legs and arms all irrevocably mingled in the receding perspective. To the left, stretching far away into the distance, was a row of bosoms, a ravishing sight; while nothing could have been more amusing than one extraordinary series of noses, starting with a priest’s enormous pointed nose and followed by a maidservant with a little turned-up nose, a Quattrocento Italian lady with a magnificent Roman nose, a sailor with a nose that was sheer fantasy, and a host of other noses, the judge’s nose, the magnate’s nose, the gentleman-with-a-decoration’s nose, an endless row of noses, not one of them moving.
But all Claude really saw was just a series of light grey patches in a vague green light, for his stupor persisted. He was aware of one thing, however, and that was the richness of the dresses. He had misjudged them in the rush and bustle of the picture galleries. Here in the garden they could be seen to as great advantage as if they were in some spacious conservatory. All the elegance in Paris was there, the women had come to show off their clothes and the clothes had been carefully chosen with one eye on tomorrow’s newspaper reports. One well-known actress attracted a great deal of attention as she swept round the garden like a queen, on the arm of a gentleman friend whose obliging air made him the perfect prince consort, while Society women, got up like ladies of the town, deliberately undressed each other with a look, totting up the cost of the silks, measuring up the lace, taking stock of everything from the toes of each other’s dainty boots to the tips of the feathers in their hats. Some of them had drawn their chairs together and settled down as if they were in the Tuileries watching the fashion parade. Two friends went hurrying by, talking and laughing, while one woman kept walking to and fro in silent, solitary gloom. Others, who had been separated in the crowd, were overjoyed to find each other again. The less vividly clad masculine element moved around in a succession of stops and starts, congregating around a marble statue, dispersing in front of a bronze; and, although there was a faint sprinkling of nonentities, the crowd was made up largely of men with some claim to Parisian celebrity. Famous names were on everyone’s lips; a particularly illustrious one heralded the approach of a large, badly-dressed gentleman, and the name of a fashionable poet marked the passage through the crowd of a man with a face as pale and expressionless as a door-keeper’s.
Lively though it was, there was a certain sameness about this stream of fashion and celebrity imparted by the carefully filtered daylight. But suddenly, as the sun came out from behind the clouds, flamed on the skylights, lighted up the splendour of the stained-glass and filled the air with a shower of golden light, everything seemed warmer, the snow-white statues, the bright green of the freshly-cut lawns, the yellow-sanded pathways, the dresses with their highlights of satin and pearls, and even the voices seemed to change from a vast self-conscious murmur to the brisk, spontaneous crackle of burning twigs. The gardeners, who were finishing laying out the flower-beds, turned on the sprinklers and busied themselves with watering-cans, and a faint steam rose from the turf as they passed. Meanwhile one solitary sparrow, bolder than the rest, came down from the forest of girders in the roof, in spite of the crowd, to forage in the sand around the buffet, and kept one young lady amused for a long time by picking up the crumbs she scattered for it.
All that reached Claude’s ear was still the roar like an ocean overhead made by the public milling through the picture-galleries, and he remembered a similar occasion, and the gusts of laughter, like a mighty hurricane, that swept round a picture of his. This time, however, there was no laughter, but all Paris breathing aloud its approval of a picture by Fagerolles.
Sandoz, who had been looking round at the latest arrivals, suddenly turned to Claude and announced: ‘There’s Fagerolles.’
Fagerolles and Jory, without noticing the other two, had just settled down at a nearby table. Jory was just saying in his usual loud voice:
‘Yes, I’ve seen that dead kid of his. The poor bugger. What a way to end up!’
Fagerolles replied with a violent dig in the ribs, whereupon Jory, as soon as he saw the others, carried straight on with:
‘Well, if it isn’t old Claude! … How’s things? … I haven’t seen that picture of yours yet, but they tell me it’s a marvel.’
‘An absolute marvel!’ put in Fagerolles, before expressing his surprise at finding them at the buffet.
‘You haven’t really lunched here, have you?’ he said. ‘It’s so notoriously bad. We’ve just been to Ledoyen’s … a bit of
a crush, but very good fun! … Why not push up your table and let’s get together.’
So the two tables were pushed together, though Fagerolles in his triumph was already besieged by flatterers and petitioners. Three young men several tables away stood up and gave him a noisy reception. A woman stopped and gazed at him in smiling contemplation after her husband had whispered his name in her ear, while the long lanky artist who was badly placed and had been dogging his footsteps ever since he arrived, left his table to come over and continue his request to be put ‘on the line’ immediately.
‘Oh, for God’s sake leave me alone!’ snapped Fagerolles, who by this time had come to the end of both amiability and patience. Then, when his tormentor had retreated muttering veiled threats, he added:
‘It’s hopeless trying to be kind-hearted all the time; they’d drive you crazy in the end. … They all want to be “on the line”, as if the whole place could be “line”. … It’s a thankless job being on the Committee, you can take my word for that. You can’t please everybody, so all you get out of it is a lot of enemies!’
Claude stared at him blankly, then, though apparently still half asleep, he mumbled:
‘I did write to you, and I intended to call and thank you. … Bongrand told me what a hard time you’d had… It was good of you, and I’m grateful. …’
‘Grateful! Don’t mention it,’ Fagerolles broke in. ‘It was for old times’ sake. I’m the one who ought to be grateful for the pleasure of doing something for you.’
His old embarrassment returned, as it always did now in the presence of the unacknowledged master of his youth, and he was overcome by an irrepressible feeling of humility as he talked to the one man whose silent disdain at this particular moment was enough to take the pleasure out of his success.
‘First-rate, that picture of yours,’ added Claude slowly, determined to let himself be neither jealous nor discouraged.
That simple word of praise released in the heart of Fagerolles an emotion so keen and so inexplicable in one so hardened and self-centred that his voice trembled as he answered:
‘Thanks, old chap. It’s nice of you to say that, it really is.’
Sandoz by this time had acquired two cups of coffee, but as the waiter had forgotten the sugar he had to be satisfied with the odd lumps left by a party on a neighbouring table. There were fewer people now, but the atmosphere was all the more relaxed in consequence. One woman laughed out so loud that everybody turned to look at her. Most of the men were smoking and a fine blue haze hung over the crumpled, wine-stained tablecloths cluttered with dirty crockery. After Fagerolles had managed to obtain a couple of Chartreuses, he settled down to talk with Sandoz, whom he regarded as a person to be reckoned with and handled carefully in consequence. Jory meanwhile turned to Claude, who had sunk back into his gloomy silence.
‘By the way, I never wrote to tell you I was married, did I?’ he said. ‘We kept it very quiet—just the two of us—on account of circumstances. … Still, I did intend to let you know. … Forgive me for not doing it.’
Jory proved very expansive and gave a detailed account of his doings largely because it satisfied his egoism to feel himself well fed and successful in front of a wretched failure. He had given up his newspaper work when he realized it was time to take life seriously and had raised himself to the status of editor of a big art review, a post which, it was said, brought him in some thirty thousand francs a year, plus what he made by some obscure traffic in connection with the sale of art collections. The middle-class acquisitiveness, inherited from his father, which had urged him to speculate in secret and on a very modest scale as soon as he was earning his own living, he now indulged to the full, with the result that he was becoming notorious for bleeding white any artist or collector who fell into his hands.
Seeing his financial position fully assured, the all-powerful Mathilde, after proudly refusing him for six whole months, had now brought him to the point of begging her, with tears in his eyes, to be his wife.
‘When you’ve got to live together,’ he went on, ‘it’s best to regularize the situation, isn’t it? You ought to know, since you’ve gone through it yourself. … And, do you know, she didn’t want to do it, really! She was scared people might misinterpret her motives and that she might in some way injure my career. … Oh, she’s a fine, sensible woman, Mathilde! … You’ve no idea what a splendid woman she is; very devoted to me she is, a wonderful housekeeper, very canny, and her advice is always worth listening to. Oh, I was a lucky man the day I met Mathilde! I never do a thing now without asking her advice; she has a completely free hand, and, believe me, she makes good use of it!’
The truth was that Mathilde had reduced him to the state of a small boy who is too afraid to be disobedient and is kept on his best behaviour simply by the threat to deprive him of jam. A domineering, grasping, ambitious wife, determined to command respect at all costs, had evolved from the lascivious ghoul of the old days. She was even faithful to him and, apart from some of the old practices which she now reserved for him alone and through which she had firmly established her power in the household, as sour and straight-laced as any genuinely virtuous woman. They were even said to have been seen at Communion together at Notre-Dame de Lorette. They kissed each other in public and called each other all kinds of pet names, but every evening he had to account for both his time and his money. If one single hour looked dubious or if he did not produce the last centime of the day’s takings, she took care that he spent such an appalling night, threatening him with all kinds of dread diseases, religiously repelling all his advances, that he paid for her forgiveness more dearly every time he transgressed.
‘So we waited till my father died,’ said Jory, thoroughly enjoying his own story, ‘and then I married her.’
All the time Jory had been talking Claude’s mind had been far away, though he had kept nodding assent as if he was listening. The only words he really heard were the last ones.
‘What!’ he said. ‘You’ve married her? … Mathilde?’
His last exclamation was full, not only of amazement, but of memories of Mahoudeau’s studio. He recalled the revolting epithets Jory used to apply to Mathilde and the things he had told him one morning, in the street somewhere, about the disgusting orgies in the room behind the little shop that reeked of herbs and spices. The whole gang had had her at some time or other, and Jory had always referred to her in fouler language than any of the others. Now he’d married her! Obviously, thought Claude, a man must be a fool to speak ill of any mistress, however much she deserved it, for he never knew whether he might not marry her one day after all.
‘Yes, Mathilde,’ Jory answered with a smile. ‘Nobody makes a better wife than an old mistress, they say. I think they’re right, don’t you?’
His mind was clearly at peace, his memory stone dead, for he showed not the slightest sign of embarrassment in front of his friends. She might have been a total stranger he was introducing to them for the first time, and not a woman they had all known as intimately as he. When the conversation dropped, Sandoz, who had been following it with one ear, since he was particularly interested in their remarkable case, exclaimed:
‘What about a move? … I’m stiff with sitting.’
As he was speaking Irma Bécot appeared. She was looking radiantly beautiful, with her hair freshly tinted to make the most of the tawny-haired Renaissance courtesan effect she always cultivated. Her dress was a tunic of pale blue brocade over a satin skirt covered with Alençon lace of such priceless beauty that she was escorted by a kind of bodyguard of admirers.
When she caught sight of Claude she hesitated, feeling ashamed and even rather afraid to claim acquaintance with such an ill-clad, ugly, dejected-looking wretch. Then, with the courage of her old caprice, she went up and, to the round-eyed amazement of her punctilious escort, shook hands with him first. Laughing, though not unkindly, but with just a hint of friendly mockery tightening the corners of her mouth, she said to him gaily: ‘No
ill feelings,’ then laughed again to think that he and she were the only ones who understood the full import of her words. It was their whole history in brief, the story of the young man she had had to take by force and who had not liked it!
Fagerolles was already paying for the two Chartreuses and preparing to join forces with Irma when Jory decided to do the same, so Claude was left watching the three of them—Irma with a man on either side—move away through the crowd, admired and greeted like royalty.
‘Mathilde’s restraining influence seems to have slipped,’ said Sandoz quietly. ‘But think of the clip on the ear he’ll find waiting for him when he gets home!’
He asked for the bill, for by this time all the tables were being cleared and there was little left on them but the littered remains of bones and bread-crusts. Two waiters were already washing down the marble table-tops, while a third, armed with a rake, was engaged in scratching up the surface of the sand into which scraps of food and globs of spittle had been trodden. From behind the brown serge draperies where the staff were now at lunch came sounds as of hearty chewing, laughter from mouths stuffed with food, and appreciative smacking of lips, all suggestive of a camp of gypsies mopping up the remains of a feast.
As Claude and Sandoz were on their way round the garden they came across a statue by Mahoudeau, very badly placed, in a corner near the East vestibule. It was his upright figure of a woman bathing, but scaled down to the proportions of a girl of ten or so: a charming, elegant little thing with slender thighs and tiny breasts and a gesture of hesitation which gave her all the exquisite delicacy of a ripening bud. It had atmosphere and that peculiar hardy and tenacious grace which is not acquired, but which springs up and flourishes where it will, in this case in the clumsy fingers of a workman so ignorant of his capabilities that for years he had remained unaware of its existence.
Sandoz could not repress a smile.
‘To think,’ he said, ‘that a chap like that has done so much to spoil his own talent. … If his work weren’t so badly placed, he’d be a roaring success.’