A Love Story

by Emile Zola

  She’d felt like that already in the church perfumed with the flowers of the Month of Mary. The vast horizon of Paris in the twilight affected her like a deep religious experience. The plain seemed to widen, a melancholy rose up out of these two million lives which were being extinguished. Then when the blackness fell and the noise of the city had died away, her heart burst, her tears overflowed as she was confronted by this sovereign peace. She might have put her hands together and stammered out her prayers. A need for faith, love, divine annihilation made her shudder. And it was then that the rising stars overwhelmed her with a holy joy and terror.

  After a long silence Abbé Jouve persisted:

  ‘My child, you must confide in me. Why do you hesitate?’

  She was still weeping, but softly, like a child who is tired and without any strength left.

  ‘You are afraid of the Church,’ he continued. ‘For a moment I thought you were conquered for God. But it was not to be. Heaven has its purpose... Well, since you don’t trust the priest, why would you still refuse to confide in a friend?’

  ‘You are right,’ she stammered. ‘Yes, I am afflicted and I need you. I must confess these things to you. When I was young I hardly ever went into churches. Nowadays I can’t go to a service without being deeply troubled. And what made me sob just now, you see, was this voice of Paris that is like the thundering of organs, it’s this immensity of night, this beautiful sky. Oh, I should like to believe. Help me, teach me.’

  Abbé Jouve calmed her by placing his hand lightly on hers.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ he said to her simply.

  She struggled with herself for a moment, full of anguish.

  ‘It’s nothing, I swear. I am crying for no reason, because I can’t breathe, because my tears just flow of their own accord. You know what my life is like. At present I could not find in it anything sad or wrong, or anything to regret. But I don’t know... I don’t know...’

  Her voice tailed off. Then the priest slowly uttered these words:

  ‘You are in love, my dear.’

  She shivered, not daring to gainsay him. They fell silent again. In the dormant sea of blackness before them, there was a glimmer of light. It was below them, somewhere in the abyss, in a place they could not precisely identify. And one after the other different lights started winking. They came to life at night with a sudden start, all at once, and remained there glittering like stars. It seemed as though there was a new rising of heavenly bodies on the surface of a dark lake. Soon there was a double row of them making a pattern which led from the Trocadéro towards Paris in little leaps of light. Then other lines of luminous dots cut into that line, you could make out curves, a whole constellation that was getting larger, strange and magnificent. Hélène, watching them sparkle, still did not speak; the sky below the horizon flamed and lengthened into infinity, as if the earth had disappeared and the celestial round could be seen from every side. And she experienced again the emotion which had broken her a few minutes before, when the Plough had begun to revolve around the axis of the Pole, its shafts in the air. Paris, which was coming alight, stretched out in all its deep melancholy, bringing with it terrifying thoughts of a whole firmament teeming with worlds.

  Meanwhile the priest, in the unctuous monotone acquired from being constantly in the confessional, kept up a ceaseless murmuring in her ear. He had warned her one evening, had he not, that solitude was no good for her? One could not distance oneself from everyday matters without paying a price. She had shut herself away, opened the door to dangerous dreams.

  ‘I am very old, my child,’ he said. ‘I have often seen women come to us with tears, prayers, a need to believe, and to kneel... So I can hardly be wrong now. These women who seek God so ardently are only poor hearts troubled by passion. It’s a man that they adore in our churches.’

  She was not listening. In a deep agitation, she was struggling to understand finally what was going on inside herself. She admitted it in a low, choked voice.

  ‘Well then, yes, I am in love. And that’s that. What will happen I don’t know, I don’t know...’

  He avoided interrupting her now. She was talking feverishly in short halting phrases. And she took a bittersweet delight in confessing her love, sharing with this old man a secret that had been suffocating her for so long.

  ‘I swear I can’t tell... It happened before I knew anything about it. All of a sudden, I suppose. But I wasn’t happy at first... Anyway, why pretend to be stronger than I am? I didn’t try to escape, I was too happy. Today I am not so brave. You see my daughter was poorly, I almost lost her. Well, my love has been as powerful as my grief, it came back, it was as powerful as ever after those terrible days, it possesses me, I feel carried away by it...’

  She stopped for breath, trembling.

  ‘So I am at the end of my strength. You were right, my friend, it is a comfort to me to confide these things in you. But, I beg you to tell me what is going on in the depths of my heart. I was so calm, so happy. It is a thunderbolt in my life. Why me? Why not someone else? I didn’t do anything to bring it about, I thought I was safe. And if you only knew! I don’t know myself any more. Oh, help me, save me.’

  Seeing she had fallen silent, the priest in his usual manner, that of confessor, mechanically asked a question.

  ‘Tell me, what is his name?’

  She hesitated when a certain sound made her turn her head. It was the doll that between Monsieur Rambaud’s fingers was coming gradually back to life. It had just taken two steps on the side table with the squeaks of the mechanism that was still not working smoothly. Then it had toppled backwards and, but for the worthy fellow, would have bumped back on to the floor. He was following it, with outstretched arms, full of fatherly anxiety, ready to catch it. When he saw Hélène turn her head, he smiled reassuringly at her as though to say she need not worry, the doll would walk again. And he began to fiddle around with the toy with his scissors and his bradawl. Jeanne was asleep.

  Then Hélène, in this peaceful atmosphere, relaxed and murmured a name into the priest’s ear. He did not move. In the shadow you could not see his face. He spoke, after a silence.

  ‘I knew, but I wished to hear you say it. My daughter, you must be suffering dreadfully.’

  And he did not utter one single banality on the subject of her duties. Hélène, exhausted, unutterably sad at the serene pity of the priest, again contemplated the golden sparkling lights in the dark cloak that was Paris. They were multiplying into infinity. It was like those flames that leap across the black ash of burnt paper. First those luminous dots had started from the Trocadéro going towards the heart of the city. Soon another cluster appeared on the left towards Montmartre. Then another on the right behind the Invalides and still another, more to the rear, in the direction of the Panthéon. From all these clusters darted little flames at one and the same time.

  ‘You remember our previous conversation,’ went on the priest slowly. ‘I have not changed my opinion. You must marry, my child.’

  ‘Me!’ she said, completely crushed. ‘But I’ve just told you, you know I can’t...’

  ‘You must get married,’ repeated the priest, more forcefully. ‘You must marry a worthy man.’

  He seemed to have gained in stature in his old soutane. His large comical head which usually leaned to one side, his eyes half-closed, was raised, and his eyes were so wide and clear that she saw them gleaming in the dark.

  ‘You must marry a good man who will be a father for your Jeanne and who will give you back your faithfulness.

  ‘But I don’t love him... Oh God, I don’t love him...’

  ‘You will love him, my child. He loves you and he is a good man.’

  Hélène struggled with herself, lowered her voice when she heard the little sounds that Monsieur Rambaud was making behind them. He was so patient and strong in his hope that for the last six months he had not importuned her once on the subject of his love. He waited with a trusting calm, naturally ready to be
as heroically unselfish as possible. The abbé made as though to turn round.

  ‘Do you want me to tell him everything? He will take your hand and save you. And you will give him immense joy.’

  She stopped him, wildly. Her heart revolted. They both frightened her, these two men who were so quiet and affectionate, who were so cool and reasonable in the face of her own feverish passion. What world did they live in then, to deny like that what made her suffer so much? The priest waved his hand towards the vastness of space.

  ‘My child, see this beautiful night, this supreme peace in the face of your agitation. Why refuse happiness?’

  The whole of Paris was lit up. The little dancing flames had pierced the dark sea from one end of the horizon to the other, and now their millions of stars were burning with a steady brightness in the serenity of the summer’s night. Not a breath of wind, not a quiver alarmed those lights that seemed suspended in space. Paris, which was invisible, had distanced itself from them in the depths of an infinity as vast as the firmament. Meanwhile below the hills of the Trocadéro a rapid flash from the lamps on a cab or an omnibus cut through the darkness like the long tail of a shooting star. And there in the light of the gas lamps which were giving off a sort of yellow fog, you could make out blurry façades, clumps of trees of a bright green colour, like on a stage set. On the Pont des Invalides stars constantly crossed, while below, along a black, thicker band, was a miraculous thing, a group of comets, whose golden tails stretched out into a rain of sparks. These were the reflections of the lamps on the bridge in the waters of the Seine. But beyond that, began the unknown. The long curve of the river was etched out in a double string of gaslights attached to other strings of lights, from place to place, square to square. You would have thought that a ladder of light had been thrown across Paris, resting at the two ends on the edge of the sky, in the stars. To the left, another gap appeared, the Champs-Élysées led a regular procession of stars from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde, where there was a glittering constellation; then the Tuileries, the Louvre, the blocks of houses next to the river, the Hôtel de Ville right at the back formed a dark shape, separated here and there by a large brightly-lit square. And further back, amongst the jumble of roofs, the lights were more scattered and you couldn’t see anything except where a street disappeared, where the corner of a boulevard curved, or a crossroads made a wider space, lit up as though on fire. On the other bank, on the right, only the Esplanade was clearly visible with its rectangle of flames like some Orion of the winter nights who had lost his belt. The long streets in the Quartier Saint-Germain were lit rather despondently at intervals. Beyond them, the populous quartiers scintillated, lit up with little flames packed closely together, glowing in a misty nebula. There was, as far as the faubourgs and all round the horizon, a veritable anthill of gas lamps and lighted windows like a cloud which filled the far reaches of the city with myriads of suns, with planetary atoms undiscoverable by mankind. The buildings were submerged with no lanterns tied to their masts. At times you might have thought it was some gigantic celebration, a cyclopean monument lit up, with its staircases, ramps, windows, pediments, terraces, its world of stone, whose rows of lanterns were tracing the strange, enormous architecture in streaks of phosphorescence. But the abiding sensation was that of a birth of constellations, of a continual spreading of the sky.

  As she followed the priest’s expansive gesture, Hélène had cast a long look at Paris all lit up. She did not know the names of those stars either. She wanted to ask what that bright light was over there on the left that she looked at every evening. Others interested her. Some she liked, while hundreds left her troubled and frustrated.

  ‘Father,’ she said, using this appellation of tenderness and respect for the first time, ‘let me live my life. It’s the beauty of this night that is troubling me. You are wrong, you would not be able at present to offer me any comfort, for you cannot understand.’

  The priest opened his arms then let them fall again slowly, in resignation. And after a silence he spoke in a low voice.

  ‘No doubt it was bound to be thus. You cry for help but you do not accept salvation. How many desperate admissions have I heard and how many tears have I been powerless to prevent! Listen, my child, promise me one thing: if ever life becomes too heavy to bear, remember that a good man loves you and is waiting for you. You will only have to put your hand in his to find peace again.’

  ‘I promise,’ said Hélène gravely.

  And as she made that solemn promise, there was a little laugh in the room. Jeanne had just woken up and was looking at her doll walking on the table. Monsieur Rambaud, who was delighted with his repairs, was still moving his hands forward in case it had some accident. But the doll was solid. It tapped its little heels, turned its head uttering the same words at each step like a parrot.

  ‘Oh, you’re a magician!’ said Jeanne still half asleep. ‘What have you done to her? She was broken and now she’s alive again. Give her to me, let me see... You are so kind...’

  Meanwhile, over a lighted Paris, a luminous cloud had risen. You would have thought it was the red exhalations from a brazier. First it was nothing but a paleness in the night, a scarcely perceptible reflection. Then gradually as the evening wore on, it became bloodied; and suspended in the air, immobile over the city, created from all the flames and all the rumbling life which the city exhaled, it resembled one of those clouds of thunder and fire which crown the summits of volcanoes.

  Part Four

  Chapter 1

  The rinces-bouches* had been served and the ladies were delicately wiping their fingers. There was a moment’s silence around the table. Madame Deberle looked to see if everyone had finished, then rose without a word, while the guests did likewise, amidst a loud scraping of chairs. An old gentleman who was on her right hastened to offer her his arm.

  ‘No no,’ she murmured, steering him towards a door. ‘We shall take coffee in the drawing room.’

  Couples followed her. Two ladies and two gentlemen, oblivious to what was happening, deep in conversation, finally joined the procession. But in the little drawing room people did not stand on ceremony and their gaiety at dessert resumed. The coffee was already served on a huge lacquer tray set on a small table. Madame Deberle went around with the graciousness of a hostess who is concerned about the different tastes of her guests. In fact it was Pauline who bestirred herself the most, and made it her business to serve the gentlemen. There were a dozen people, roughly the regular number invited by the Deberles each Wednesday from December onwards. A crowd arrived at about ten o’clock in the evening.

  ‘Monsieur de Giraud, a cup of coffee?’ enquired Pauline, stopping by a bald-headed little man. ‘Oh no, I forgot, you don’t drink it. So, a glass of chartreuse?’

  But she got into a muddle and brought him a glass of cognac. And smilingly, confidently, she did the rounds looking the guests in the eye, circulating at ease with her long train. She wore a splendid white dress of Indian cashmere, trimmed with swansdown, with a square opening at the front. When all the men were standing, cup in hand, averting their chins as they sipped, she pounced on a tall young man, the Tissot boy, whom she thought very handsome.

  Hélène did not want coffee. She sat to one side, looking somewhat weary, dressed in a rather austere black velvet dress without any jewellery. They were smoking in the salon, the boxes of cigars were next to her on a console. The doctor approached, selected a cigar and asked:

  ‘Is Jeanne well?’

  ‘Very well,’ she replied. ‘We went to the Bois today, she played and played... Oh, she must be asleep by now.’

  They chatted amicably, with the happy familiarity of people who see each other every day. But Madame Deberle had raised her voice:

  ‘Well, Madame Grandjean will tell you... I came back from Trouville about the tenth of September, didn’t I? It was raining, the beach was awful.’ Three or four ladies were around her while she was recounting her holiday at the seaside.
Hélène had to stand up and join the group.

  ‘We spent a month at Dinard,’ Madame de Chermette said. ‘Oh, a delightful part of the country, and such lovely people!’

  ‘There was a garden behind the chalet and a balcony facing the sea,’ Madame Deberle went on. ‘You know I had decided to take my landau and my driver — it’s much more convenient for trips. But Madame Levasseur came to visit...’

  ‘Yes, one Sunday,’ said the latter. ‘We were staying in Cabourg. Oh, you had a very nice place there, though a bit expensive perhaps.’

  ‘By the way,’ interrupted Madame Berthier, addressing Juliette, ‘didn’t Monsieur Malignon teach you to swim?’

  Hélène noticed an expression of embarrassment, a sudden irritation, flicker over Madame Deberle’s face. She had already several times thought she could detect that Malignon’s name suddenly uttered in front of her caused her some discomfiture. But the young woman had recovered her poise.

  ‘Such a good swimmer!’ she cried. ‘If someone like him gives you a lesson... Do you know I’m scared of cold water! I shiver at the very sight of people bathing.’ And she gave a charming little shudder, raising her dimpled shoulders, like a damp bird shaking its feathers.

  ‘So is that story made up?’ Madame de Guiraud asked.

  ‘Of course. I bet he invented it. Ever since he spent a month with us there he has had it in for me.’

  People began to arrive. The ladies with sprigs of flowers in their hair and arms extended, smiled and inclined their heads slightly. The men in suits, hats in hands, bowed and tried to think of something to say. Madame Deberle, chatting the while, held out her fingers to close friends, and many did not speak, but bowed before passing on. Meanwhile Mademoiselle Aurélie had just come in. She immediately went into raptures over Juliette’s dress, a crushed velvet navy gown with a crosswise rib trim. At that point the ladies present appeared to notice only the gown. Oh, charming, really charming! It was from the Worms collection.* They discussed it for five minutes. The coffee had been drunk, the guests put back their empty cups anywhere, on the tray, on the small tables. Only the elderly gentleman, stopping at every mouthful to chat to a lady, had not finished his. There rose a warm smell of coffee mingled with the delicate fragrances of the women’s toilettes.