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THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
A REALISTIC NOVEL.
ZOLA'S POWERFUL REALISTIC NOVELS.
TRANSLATED WITHOUT ABRIDGMENT FROM THE LATEST FRENCH EDITIONS.
' In Crown 8vo, jmce 6s. each.
" After reading Zola's novels it seems as if in all others, even in the truest, there were a veil between the reader and the things described, and there is present to our minds the same difference as exists between the representation of human faces on canvas and the reflection of the same faces in a mirror. It is liiie finding truth for the first time."— Signor de Andcis.
HOW JOLLY LIFE IS!
Illustrated with Eight Page Engravings.
A LOVE EPISODE.
Illustrated with Eight Page Engravings.
ABBE MOUKET'S TRANSGKESSION.
Illustrated with Eight Page Engraviyigs.
THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS.
Illustrated with Eight Page Engravings.
HIS MASTERPIECE?
(L'CEUVRE.) With a Portrait of the Author^ etched by Bocourt.
THE LADIES' PARADISE.
Illustrated loith Eight Page Engravings.
THERESE RAQUm.
Illustrated with Sixteen Page Engravings hy Castelli.
THE RUSH FOR THE SPOIL.
(LA CURtE)
Illustrated with Twelve Page Engravings.
PIPING HOT!
( POT-BOUILLE.)
Illustrated with Sixteen Page Engravings^ hy French Artists.
NANA.
Illustrated with Twenty-four Tinted Page Engravings^ hy French Artists.
THE "ASSOMMOIR;"
(The Prelude to " Nana.") Illustrated with Sixteen Tinted Page Engravings, hy French Artists.
GERMINAL; OR, MASTER AND MAN.
Illustrated with Sixteen Page Engravings, from designs by J. Fe'iat.
MEETING OF REACTIONARIES IN THE ROUGONS' YELLOW DRAWING-ROOM
p. 82.
THE
FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
THE COURTSHIP OF SILvi;RE AND MIETTE.
By EMILE ZOLA.
p. 205.
THE
FORTUNE OP THE ROUGONS:
A REALISTIC NOVEL.
BY
EMILE ZOLA.
TRANSLATED AYITHOUT ABRIDGMENT FROM THE 21iH FRENCH EDITION.
Illustratfb toii^ €x^\t ^^i Cn^rabings.
LONDON:
ViZETELLY ^ Co., 42 CATHERINE StREET, StRAND.
1SS6.
GLASGOW:
C. L. WRIGUT,
PKINTEK.
■*^
Coo. /^
PEEFACE.
,^^
i
I WISH to show how a family, a small group of persons, comports itself amidst the surroundings in which it is placed, expanding and giving birth to ten, twenty individuals who appear at first sight extremely dis- similar, but who, on examination, Avill be found to be intimately^ connected with each other. Heredity, the same as gravity, is governed by certain laws.
By resolving the double question of temperament and surroundings, I shall endeavour to discover and follow out the thread which conducts mathematically from one individual to another. And when I have gathered up all the threads, when I have the Avhole social group in my hands, I shall exhibit the several members of it at work as actois in an epoch of history ; I shall portray them in all the complex diversities of their efforts ; and, at the same time, I shall analyse the sum of each individual's volition, and the general tendency of the whole.*
s, * The present is the first volume of the '* Rougon-Macquart" ^series, "the Natural and Social History of a Family under the ^"Second Empire." A list is appended of all the published volumes ^ of the series in the order in which they were originally issued.
'^ La Fortune des Rougons. La Curee.
^ Le Ventre de Paris.
cLa, Conquete de Plassans. ■^La Faute de I'Abbe' Mouret.
>Son Excellence Eugene RoLgon. . ^L'Assommoir.
Vne Page d'Amour.
Nana.
Pot-Bouille.
Au Bonheur des Dames.
La Joie de Vivre.
Germinal.
L'CEuvre.
4,
vi. TREFACE.
The characteristic of the Rougon-^Iacquart family, the group which 1 propose to study, is their unbridled passions, that great revolutionising element of our age, inciting to excessive self-indulgence. Physiologically speaking, these appetites are the gradual outcome of certain nervous and sanguineous modifications which manifest themselves in a race of beings, as a consequence of some previous organic lesion, and which determine the sentiments, the desires, the passions of each in- dividual of the race according to his surroundings ; in short, all those natural and instinctive manifestations of human nature, which, in their results, assume the con- ventional names of virtues and vices. Historically speaking, these appetites originate with the people, whence they spread to contemporary society, aftecting all stages under the influence of that impulse, essentially modern, which is communicated to the lower classes during the progress of their social development, and they thus tell the story of the Second Empire, by the help of their individual dramas, from the perfidy of the Coup d'fitat to the treason of Sedan.
I had been collecting documents for this vast work for about three years, and the present volume was, indeed, already written, when the fall of the Bonapartes — which was essential to complete my picture, and which, with a kind of fatality, always turned up at the end of the drama — came to my aid, though I had not dared to expect it so near, to supply the terrible and necessary issue of my work. The latter is now complete ; it moves in a finished circle ; it becomes the picture of a defunct reign, of a strange epoch of folly and shame.
This work, which will comprise several episodes, embodies in my mind the natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire. And the first episode, " The Fortune of the Rougons," may, for scientific pur- poses, be very aptly entitled " The Origin."
EMn.E Zola.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE PREFIXED TO THE FIRST EDITION OF "UNE PAGE D'AMOUR."
I HAVE determined on prefixing to this volume the Genealogical Tree of the Kougon-Macquart family, and I have been prompted to this decision by two reasons.
Firstly : The requests to have an adequate sketch of this Tree have been very numerous, in so far as it would allow my readers to thread their way through a maze of details concerning the many members of the family of which I have constituted myself the historian.
My second reason is somewhat more complicated. It is a regret to me that I did not give this Genealogical Tree to the world in the first volume of the series, as its pubHcation would have permitted my plan being grasped at a glance. Were I to withhold it longer, I should be accused in the end of having furbished it up after the event. It is time enough to put on record the fact that it was conceived as it stands in 1868, before I had written a single line, and that it was clearly pictured forth in the first of these fictions, published under the title of " La Fortune des Rougons," in which I could not well depict the original representatives of the family, till I had settled, before everything, its branches and off- shoots. The difficulty was all the greater as the idiosyn- cracies of four generations were to be contrasted, and my characters were to enact their parts within a period of only eighteen years.
The publication of this Tree will be my answer to such as charge me with a persistent leaning to undue realism and vicious detail. Since 1868 I have been em- bodying the conception I then outlined, and in this Genealogical Tree I have laid down the broad lines from which I have swerved neither to right nor to left. To it I must yield my undivided attention ; it is at once my incentive and my guide. Its results are not attained fortuitously ; it contains what I have schemed out and what I am busily realising.
It now remains for me to say that circumstances only
viii. INTRODUCTOKY NOTE.
have forced me to publish the detailed Family Tree with " Une Page d'Amom'," a work which is essentially domestic, and in which I have made no attempt at elaborate portraiture. It should properly have been prefixed to the last volume of the series. Eight have ap- peared, twelve are still on the stocks, and this fcict suffi- ciently explains my impatience. Some day hereafter it will serve as frontispiece to the last of the volumes, where it will have an intimate connection with the pro- gress of the story. In my mind it has taken shape as embodying the observations of Pascal Rougon, a physi- cian, and a member of the family, who in the closing fiction will sum up the scientific results of the complete work. Doctor Pascal will analyse and elucidate the whole, fining in blanks with exact details which I have hitherto necessarily omitted, lest the succeeding volumes should lose in beauty and interest. The natural and social characteristics of each member of the family will be definitely pictured, and the uncouthness of technical phrases will be smoothed away by explanatory details. My perfected scheme can be made intelligible to my readers from other sources of information. I cannot give here a list of all the physiological works Avhich I have consulted, but would only mention " L'Heredite Naturelle," by Dr. Lucas, in wdiich the curious may find information regarding the results obtained by physio- logical science, allowing me to build up the Rougon- Macquart Family Tree.
I have now merely the wish to prove that my novels published during the last nine years are but inter- dependent units in a complete whole, the plan of which was decided on before putting pen to paper, and that consequently, while judging of the merits of each in- dividual story, my readers should pay some regard to its being in harmony with the perfect scheme. Bearing this in mind, they will be enabled to pass on my work a somewhat juster and more liberal opinion than might otherwise be the case.
E:\iiLE Zola.
THE FORTUNE OP THE EOUGONS.
-♦♦♦-
CHAPTER I.
On quitting' Plassans by the Porte de Rome, situated at the southern part of the town, you will find, on the right of the road to Nice, and a little way past the first houses of the Faubourg-, a plot of land known in that part of the country as the Aire Saint-Mittre.
The Aire Saint-Mittre is an oblong- piece of g-round on a level with the footpath of the adjacent road, from which it is separated by a strip of trodden grass. A narrow lane, having no thoroughfare, borders it on the right with a row of hovels ; while on the left, and at the further end, it is closed in by two bits of wall overgrown with moss, and above which can be seen the top branches of the mulberry-trees of the Jas-Meiffren — an extensive property — the entrance to which lies lower down. Enclosed thus on three sides, the Aire Saint-Mittre is like a place which leads nowhere, and is used solely as a pro- menade.
In former times a cemetery existed there under the pro- tection of Saint-Mittre, a Provencal saint, who was greatly honoured in the country. In 1851 the old people of Plassans still remembered having seen the walls of the cemetery stand- ing, although it had been closed for several years. The earth, which had been glutted with corpses for more than a century, literally perspired with death ; and it had been necessary to open a new burial-ground at the other end of the town. The old cemetery, long abandoned, had been gradually purified by the dark, thick-set vegetation which used to sprout over it every spring. This rich soil, in which the gravediggers could no longer delve without turning up some human remains, possessed a most formidable fertility. The tall weeds, which overtopped the walls after the May rains and the June sun-
A
10 THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
shine, were plainly visible from the hig-h road ; while inside, the place presented the appearance of a deep sombre green sea studded with large blossoms of singular brilliancy. Under the shade of the close-set stalks the very sap seemed, as it were, to boil and ooze out from the damp soil.
Among the curiosities of this field were some large pear- trees, with twisted boughs forming huge knots ; none of the housewives of Plassans cared to pluck the large fruit which grew upon them, and which the townspeople used to speak of with grimaces of disgust. No such delicacy, however, re- strained the young urchins of the Faubourg, who were in the habit of assembling at twilight in bands, and climbing the walls to steal the pears, even before they were ripe.
The trees and vegetation, in their vigorous growth, had rapidly assimilated the decomposing matter in the old cemetery of Saint-Mittre ; while the malaria rising from the human re- mains had been greedily absorbed by the flowers and fruits ; so that eventually the only odour one could detect, in passing by this accumulation of putrefaction, was that arising from the strong smell of the wild gillyflowers. It was merely a ques- tion of a few summers.
At about this time the townspeople determined to utilise this common property, which had long been useless. The walls bordering the roadway and the blind-alley were pulled down ; the weeds and the pear-trees were uprooted ; the sepulchral remains were removed; the ground was dug several yards deep, and the bones, which the earth was willing to surrender, were heaped up in a corner. For nearly a month the youngsters, who lamented the loss of the pear-trees, played at bowls with the skulls, and one night some practical jokers suspended femurs and tibias to all the bell-handles of the town. This scandal, which is still remembered at Plassans, did not cease until the authorities decided to have the heaps of bones shot into a hole which had been dug in the new cemetery. All work, however, is usually carried out with a discreet dilatori- ness in the country, and during an entire week the inhabi- tants saw, at distant intervals, a solitary cart occupied in re- moving these human remains, just as one would cart away rubbish. The worst of it was, the cart had to traverse the whole length of Plassans, and, in consequence of the bad condi- tion of the roads, every jolt of the vehicle scattered fragments of bones ^nd handfuls of rich mould. There was not the least "
THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 11
semblance of a religious ceremony, nothing but a slow, brutal cartage. Never before was a town so disgusted.
For several years the old cemetery remained an object of terror. Although it was situated in the main thoroughfare and was open to all comers, it was left quite deserted, a prey to another vegetarian raid. The authorities of the town, who had doubtless counted on selling it and seeing houses built upon it, had evidently been unable to find a purchaser. The recollec- tion of the heap of bones, and the solitary cart jolting through the streets with the oppressive persistence of an incubus, doubtless made the people recoil from the spot; or perhaps this indifference should rather be ascribed to that indolence, to that repugnance to pulling down and setting up again which is so characteristic of country people. As a matter of fact, the authorities still retained possession of this plot of ground, and finally altogether forgot their original desire to dispose of it. They did not even erect a fence round it, but left it open to all comers. As time rolled on, the people grew accustomed to this barren spot ; they used to sit on the grass, walk about, or congregate in groups. When the grass had got worn away and the trodden soil had become grey and hard, the old cemetery resembled a badly-levelled public promenade. As if the more effectually to efface every objectionable record, the inhabitants were slowly and unwittingly led to change the very appellation of the place, contenting themselves with the name of the saint only, which was likewise used to designate the blind alley at one corner of the field. Thus there v/as the Aire Saint-Mittre and the Impasse Saint-Mittre.
These facts date, however, from some considerable time back. For more than thirty years past, the Aire Saint-Mittre has presented a strange picture. The townspeople, much too inert and indifferent to derive any advantage from it, had let it, for a trifling consideration, to some wheelwrights of the Fau- bourg, who had turned it into a woodyard. At the present day it is still encumbered with enormous pieces of timber thirty or forty feet long, lying here and there in piles, and looking like immense overturned columns. These parallel piles of timber, reaching from one end of the yard to the other, are a continual source of delight to the youngsters. In some places the ground is covered with the fallen wood, forming a kind of uneven flooring over which it is impossible to walk, except by balancing one's self in a marvellous way. Troops of children
12 THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS. .
amuse themselves all day long with this exercise. You will see them jumping" over the great planks, walking along the narrow ends one after another, and crawling astride them: various games which generally terminate in blows and bellow- ings. Sometimes a dozen of them will sit, closely packed one against the other, on the thin end of a pole raised a few feet above the ground, balancing themselves for hours together. The Aire Saint-Mittre thus serves as a recreation ground for all the little ragamufSns of the Faubourg, who, for more than a quarter of a century, have been in the habit of resorting there to wear out the seats of their breeches.
The strange associations of the place are enhanced by the circumstance that the wandering gipsies, by a sort of traditional custom, always select this waste land for their encampments. Whenever any of these nomadic establishments, which gene- rally consist of an entire tribe, arrive at Plassans, they take up their quarters in the Aire Saint-Mittre. The place is conse- quently never empty. There is always some strange-looking band there, some troop of wild men and horribly dried-up women, among whom may be seen groups of healthy-looking children rolling about on the grass. These people live in the open air, devoid of all sense of shame, regardless of everybody, boiling their pots, eating nameless things, displaying their tattered garments, sleeping, fighting, kissing, and reeking with filth and misery.
This field, formerly deathlike and deserted, save for the buzzing of the hornets around the rich blossoms in the calm sunshine, has thus become a very rowdy spot, resounding with the noisy quarrels of the gipsies and the shrill cries of the urchins of the Faubourg. In one corner, there is a primitive saw-mill for cutting the timber, the great noise of which forms a dull, continuous bass accompaniment to the sharp-sounding voices. The wood is placed on two high tressels, and a couple of sawyers, one of whom stands aloft on the piece of timber itself, and the other underneath, blinded by the falling saw- dust, work a large saw to and fro, like wire-pulled puppets, for hours together, with the rigid regularity of a machine. The wood sawn by them is stacked, plank by plank, along the wall at the end, in piles six or eight feet high, which often remain there several seasons, overgrown by weeds close to the ground, and constitute one of the charms of the Aire Saint-Mittre. In between these stacks are
ths foetune of the eougons. 13
mysterious, retired little paths leading to the broader alley between the timber and the wall, a wild strip of verdure revealing only small patches of sky. The vigorous vegetation and the shuddering, deathlike stillness of the old cemetery still invade this alley, with its moss-covered walls and velvety turf. One can feel the soft warm vapours of death's voluptuousness wafted from the old graves l^^ing under the sun. In the whole country round Plassans there is not a more entrancing spot, breathing, as it does, the very spirit of languor, solitude, and tenderness. It is a most delightful place for love-making. When the cemetery was being cleared, the bones must have been heaped up in this corner ; for it frequently happens that one's foot comes across some fragments of a skull lying con- cealed in the damp turf.
Nobody, however, thinks of the bodies that have slept under the earth. In the day-time the children play hide-and- seek behind the piles of wood. The green alley is not fre- quented at all ; the only thing to be seen is the wood^^ard crowded with timber and grey with dust. In the morning and afternoon, when the sun is warm, the whole place is astir. Above all the turmoil, above the ragamuffins playing among the timber, and the gipsies kindling the fire under their caul- drons, the figure of the sawyer mounted on his beam stands out in bold relief, moving to and fro with the precision of clockwork, as if to regulate the busy activity that has invaded the former home of death. Only the old people, as they sit on the planks basking in the setting sun, speak at times among themselves of the bones which they had seen conveyed through the streets of Plassans by the legendary cart.
At nightfall the Aire Saint-Mittre becomes quite deserted, and assumes a hollow look, like a great black hole. The dying embers of the gipsies' fires are no longer visible, although at times shadows can be distinguished gliding noiselessly into the dense mass of darkness. The place is especially miser- able in winter time.
One Sunday evening, at about seven o'clock, a 3'oung man stepped lightly from the Impasse Saint-Mittre, and, passing close by the walls, disappeared among the timber in the woodyard. It was in the early part of December, 1851, when the weather was dr}^ and cold. The full moon shone with that sharp brilliancy peculiar to winter moons. The woodyard did not present that deep, sinister
14 THE FOETUNE OF THE KOUGONS.
appearance which it wears on rainy nights ; illuminated with sheets of white light, and wrapped in a deep, chill silence, it wore a soft, melancholy aspect.
The young man paused a few seconds on the edge of the yard and gazed mistrustfully in front of him. He carried a long gun, the butt-end of which was hidden under his coat, while the barrel, pointing towards the ground, glittered in the moonlight. Tightening his grasp of the weapon, he attentively examined the square shadows cast by the piles of timber. The ground looked like a chess-board, on which the black and white squares were clearly defined by the light and shade. The sawyer's tressels stood out in the centre of the plot of land on a strip of bare grey ground, forming a strange-looking, elongated picture, resembling an immense geometrical figure traced on paper. The rest of the yard, with the great beams lying about, formed a huge couch on which the light reposed, sparsely streaked here and there with slender black lines from the shadows which ran along the different pieces of timber. This sea of poles, lying motionless in the chill silence of the wintry moon, stiffened, as it were, with sleep and cold, recalled the corpses of the old, cemetery. The young man cast a rapid glance round the empty space ; there was not a creature, not a sound, no danger of being seen or heard. The black patches at the further end caused him some anxiet}^ at first, but after a brief examination he plucked up courage and hurriedly crossed the woodyard.
As soon as he felt himself under cover he slackened his pace. He was then in the green alley which runs along the wall behind the piles of planks. Here his very footsteps be- came inaudible ; the frozen grass scarcely crackled under his tread. This spot must have possessed some charm for him, for he seemed to experience a feeling of comfort, apprehending no danger, and coming there solely for the pleasure it afforded him. He now no longer concealed his gun. The alley, as it extended itself, looked like a dark trench, while the moon, gliding ever and anon between the piles of timber, streaked the grass with patches of light. The whole place was wrapped in one soft, sad slumber. No words can describe the calm peacefulness of this pathway. The j^oung man traversed its entire length, and stopped at the end where the walls of the Jas-Meiffren form an angle. Here he listened attentively for any sound that might be coming from the adjoining estate.
THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 15
At last, hearing- notbiDg", he stooped down, and removing" one of the planks, hid his gun amongst the timber.
An old tombstone, which had been overlooked in the clearing of the burial ground lay in the corner, resting on its side and forming a kind of slightly-sloping raised seat. The rain had worn its edges, and the moss was slowly eating into it. Nevertheless, the following fragment of an epitaph, engraved on that portion of the surface which was sinking in the ground, was still distinguishable by the moonlight. ^^Here lieth . . . Marie . . . died . . ." The finger of time had effaced the rest.
When he had concealed his gun, the young man again listened attentively, and hearing nothing, resolved to jump up on the stone. The wall being rather low, he was able to rest his elbows on the top of it. He did not perceive anything excepting a flood of light beyond the row of mulberr3^-trees along the w^all. The flat, barren grounds of the Jas-Meiffren spread out under the moon like an immense sheet of unbleached linen ; a hundred yards off the mansion and outhouses formed a still whiter patch. The young man stood gazing anxiously in that direction when, suddenly, one of the clocks of the town struck seven with slow, solemn strokes. He counted the strokes, and then jumped down, apparently surprised and relieved.
He seated himself on the tombstone, as though he was pre- pared to wait some considerable time. He remained there for about half-an-hour, motionless and deep in thought, and apparently quite unconscious of the cold, while his eyes gazed fixedly at a dense mass of shadow. He had seated himself in a dark corner ; but the rising moon gradually gained upon him, and soon shone full over his head.
He was a strong, sturdy-looking lad, whose fine mouth, and soft, delicate skin betrayed his youthfulness. He must have been about seventeen ^-ears of age, and possessed a characteristic kind of beauty.
His thin, long face looked like the work of a skilful sculptor ; the high forehead, prominently arched e^'ebrows, aquiline nose and large flat chin, the cheeks with protruding tapering cheek- bones, gave a singularly bold relief to his head. Such a face would, with advancing age, develop pronounced bony features, as attenuated as those of a knight errant. But at this stage of puberty the angularity of bis face, which was lightly covered
16 THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
with a soft down, was relieved by a certain cbarming effeminacy and childlike indistinctness of outline. His soft black eyes, still g-lowing- with youth, infused a delicacy into his vigorous-looking countenance. The young fellow would probably not have fascinated most women, as he was not what one would call handsome ; but his features, as a whole, were full of such ardent and sympathetic life, such enthusiastic and vigorous beauty, that they must have attracted the gaze and engaged the thoughts of the girls of his country — those sunburnt girls of the South — as he passed their doors in the sultry July evenings.
He remained seated upon the tomb-stone, wrapped in thought, and apparentl}^ quite unconscious of the moonlight which now fell upon his chest and legs. He was of middle stature, rather thickset, with over-developed arms and a labourer's hands, already hardened by toil ; his feet, encased in heavy laced boots, looked strong and square-toed. His general appearance, more particularly the coarseness of his limbs, clearly betrayed his lowly origin. There was, however, something in him, in his upright neck, in the thoughtful glances of his ej'es, which seemed to indicate an inner revolt against the brutifying manual labour which was beginning to bend him to the ground. His was, no doubt, an intelligent nature buried beneath the oppressive burden of race and class ; one of those delicate refined spirits imbedded in a rough exterior, from which they in vain struggle to emancipate themselves. Thus, in spite of his vigour, he seemed timid and restless, feeling a kind of unconscious shame at his imper- fection. An honest lad, whose very ignorance generated enthusiasm, whose manly heart was impelled by a childish intellect, displaying alike the submissiveness of a woman and the courage of a hero. On the evening in question, he was dressed in a coat and trousers of greenish corduroy. A soft felt hat, placed lightly on the back of his head, cast a shadow over his face.
As the neighbouring clock struck the half hour, he started from his reverie with a bound. Perceiving that the moon was shining full upon him, he gazed anxiously in front. Then he abruptly dived back into the shadow, but he was unable to recover the thread of his thoughts. He now perceived that his hands and feet were very cold, and, showing signs of impatience, he jumped up on the stone again, to look into the
THE FORTUNE OP THE ROUGONS. 17
Jas-Meiffren still empty and silent. Finally, at a loss how to kill time, he jumped down, fetched his gun from the pile of planks where he had concealed it, and amused himself by working- the trigger. His weapon was a long, heavy carbine, which had doubtless belonged to some smuggler. The thickness of the butt-end and the heavy breech of the barrel showed it to be an old flintlock which had been altered to take percussion caps by some local gunsmith. Such firearms are frequently found in farm-houses, hung against the wall over the chimney- piece. The young man caressed his gun with affection ; twenty times or more, he pulled the trigger, thrust his little finger into the barrel, and examined the butt-end attentively. Led on gradually by a youthful enthusiasm, combined with a little childish frolicsomeness, he ended by pointing his weapon with- out aiming at anything, like a recruit going through his drill.
It was now very nearly eight o'clock, and he had been holding his gun levelled for over a minute, when a low, panting voice, light as a breeze, came from the direction of the Jas-Meiffren.
" Are you there, Silvere ? " the voice asked.
Silvere dropped his gun and bounded on to the tombstone.
" Yes, yes," he replied, also in a hushed voice. " Wait, I'll help you."
Before he could stretch out his arms the head of a young girl appeared above the wall. The child, with singular agility, had assisted herself by the aid of the trunk of a mulberry-tree, climbing up like a kitten. The ease and certainty with which she moved showed that she was familiar with this strange spot. In another moment she was seated on the top of the wall. Silvere, taking her in his arms, lifted her, not without a struggle on her part, on to the seat.
"Let go," she laughingly cried; "let go, I can get down alone very well."
" Have you been waiting for me long ? " she asked, when she was seated on the stone. " I've been running, and am quite out of breath."
Silvere made no repl3^ He seemed in no laughing humour, as he gazed sorrowfully into the girl's face.
" I wanted to see you, Miette," he said, as he seated him- self beside her. " I should have waited all night for you. I am going away early to-morrow morning."
18 THE FORTUNE OF THE KOUGONS.
Miette had just caught sight of the gun lying on the grass, and, with an air of thoughtfulness, murmured :
" Ah ! so it's decided then ; there's your gun ! "
" Yes," rephed Silvere, after a brief silence, his voice still faltering, " it's my gun. I thought it best to remove it from the house to-night ; to-morrow morning aunt Dide might have seen me take it, and have felt uneasy about it. I am going to hide it, and shall come and fetch it just before leaving."
Seeing that Miette could not remove her eyes from the weapon which he had so foolishly left on the ground, he jumped up and hid it again among the planks of wood.
'' We learnt this morning," he said, as he resumed his seat, " that the insurgents of La Palud and Saint Martin-de-Vauls are on the march, and passed the night yesterday at Alboise. We have decided to join them. Some of the workmen of Plassans have already left the town this afternoon : those who still remain will rejoin their brothers to-morrow."
He pronounced the word brothers with a youthful emphasis.
" The struggle is becoming inevitable," he added ; " but, at any rate, we have right on our side and we shall triumph."
Miette listened to Silvere, her eyes gazing fixedly in front of her, without looking at anything.
" Very well," she said, when he had finished speaking.
After a brief silence she continued :
"You had warned me, yet I still hoped. However, it is decided."
Neither of them knew what else to say. The green alle}'- in the deserted corner of the woodyard resumed its melan- choly stillness, as the moon chased the shadows of the piles of timber over the grass. The figures of the two young people on the tombstone remained still and motionless in the pale light. Silvere had passed his arm round Miette's waist, and she was reclining gently against his shoulder. They did not kiss, but pressed close to each other with a love that was full of the innocent tenderness of fraternal affection.
Miette was enveloped in a long brown hooded cloak reach- ing- down to her feet, and leaving only her head and hands visible. Among the women of the lower classes in Provence — the peasants and the labourers — these ample cloaks, which are there called pelisses, and which have probably been worn for ages, are still to be met with. Miette had thrown her
THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 19
hood back on arriving*. Living in a hot climate, she was not accustomed to wear a cap in the open air, and her bare head stood out in bold relief against the moonlit wall. Although a mere child, she was already ripening into womanhood. She had arrived at that adorable indistinct stage of development where the frolicsome girl gives place to the grown-up young woman. There is in that stage a delicacy of the shooting bud, a hesitating conformation, which lends an exquisite charm to young girls. The full voluptuous outlines of puberty are already indicated in the innocent meagreness of childhood ; the woman shoots forth, preserving, with the unconscious avowal of her sex, the maidenly modesty and embarrassment of the young girl. This period is very unpropitious for some girls, who grow up coarse and ugly, with sickly, sallow complexions like early plants ; but for girls who, like Miette, are healthy and live in the open air, it is especially favourable, and, once passed, cannot be recalled.
Miette was thirteen jea,vs of age, and although strong and vigorous did not look older, owing to the bright childish smile which lit up her countenance. In consequence of the climate and the rude life which she led, she was rapidly ripening into womanhood, and was even now marriageable. She was nearly as tall as Silvere, plump and teeming with life. Like her lover, she possessed an uncommon kind of beauty. She would not have been considered ugly, although she might have appeared peculiar to most handsome young people. Her rich black hair, which rose shaggy and erect above her forehead, fell behind in long tresses like surging billows, and flowed over her head and neck like seething, bubbling waters. It was very thick, and caused her considerable inconvenience, as she did not know how to arrange it. She twisted it as tight as possible, so as to occupy little room, into several plaits as thick as a child's fist, and tied them into a tuft at the back of her head. As she had but little time to devote to her toilette, this immense chignon, hastily contrived without the aid of a mirror, often assumed, under her hands, a powerful grace and beaut}^. Seeing her head covered with this sort of natural casque, with this mass of frizzed hair which hung about her neck and temples like an animal's mane, one could readily comprehend why she was in the habit of going bareheaded, heedless of the rain and frost.
The dark outlines traced by the hair gave the form and
20 THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
colour of a golden lunar crescent to her face. Her big" eyes starting out of her head, her short turned-up nose with dilated nostrils, and her thick ruddy lips, when regarded apart, would have looked very ugly ; viewed, however, in relation to the ex- quisitely rounded contour and the vivacity of her countenance, these details formed an ensemble of strange, ravishing beauty. When Miette laughed, throwing her head back and gently reclining it on her right shoulder, she resembled the ancient Bacchante, her throat swollen with sonorous gaiety, her cheeks rounded like those of a child, her teeth large and white, her twists of woolly hair tossed about by every outburst of merri- ment, and forming', as it were, a crown of vine branches. The maiden youthfulness of the girl of thirteen summers was dis- tinguishable in the innocence of her broad womanly grins, and especially in the child-like delicacy of her chin and the soft transparency of her temples. Miette's face, tanned by the sun, reflected, in certain lights, an amber colour. A soft black down already shaded her upper lip. Toil was commencing to disfigure her small hands, which, if left idle, would have become charmingly plump and delicate.
Miette and Silvere remained silent for a long time. They were reading their own troubled thoughts, and, as they pondered, ever and anon, upon the unknown terrors of the morrow, they tightened their mutual embrace. Their two hearts were communing with each other, feeling the uselessness and bitterness of verbal plaint. The young girl, however, could no longer contain herself, and, choking with emotion, gave expression, in one phrase, to their mutual misgivings.
" You will come back again, won't you ? " she whispered, as she hung on Silvere's neck.
Silvere made no reply, but, half-suffocated, and fearing lest he should give way, as Miette had done, he kissed her on the ^ cheek like a brother, at a loss for any other consolation to offer. Then disengaging themselves they again lapsed into silence.
After a moment Miette shuddered. She was no longer leaning against Silvere's shoulder, and felt herself becoming icy cold. She would not have shuddered thus had she been in this deserted alley the previous evening, seated on this tombstone, where for several seasons they had carried on their flirtations amid the silence of the old corpses.
" I'm very cold," she said, as she pulled her hood over her Jiead.
THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS. ^1
" Would you like to get up and walk ? " the young* man asked her. " It's not yet nine o'clock ; we can take a stroll along" the main road."
Miette reflected that she would probably not have the pleasure of another meeting* for a long* time — another of those evening" chats, the joy of which served to sustain her through- out the day.
" Yes, let us walk a little," she quickly replied. ^' Let us go as far as the mill. I could pass the whole night like this if you wanted to."
They rose from the tombstone, and were soon hidden in the shadows of the piles of planks. Here Miette took off her cloak, which was quilted in the form of little lozenges with a red twill lining, and threw its large warm skirt over Silvere's shoulders, so as to envelop him entirely and draw him close to her under the same garment. They passed their arms round each other's waists, locking themselves together in a close embrace. When they were thus joined, as it were, into a single being, buried in the folds of the pelisse which concealed their human shape, they began to walk slowly in the direction of the high road, passing fearlessly through the vacant parts of the woodyard lighted up by the moon. Miette had thrown the cloak over Silvere, who had submitted to the operation quite naturally, as though it had performed a similar service for them every evening.
The road to Nice, along both sides of which the houses of the Faubourg are built, was, in the year 1851, lined with elm trees a hundred years old, grand old gigantic ruins, still full of vigour, which the fastidious town council have replaced, some years since, by small plane-trees. While Silvere and Miette were under the trees, the immense boughs of which cast shadows on the footpath in the moonlight, they met two or three black groups moving along silently close to the houses. Like them, they were amorous couples, closely wrapped in cloaks, and carrying on their flirtations in the dark.
This stj^le of promenading has been instituted by young lovers in the Southern towns. Those boys and girls among the people, who will marry each other sooner or later, but who do not dislike a kiss a little in advance, have no resort where they can carry on their flirtations at their ease, without ex- posing themselves to scandal and gossip. Although their parents allow them full liberty, they would soon be the talk of
B
22 THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
the town if they were to hire an apartment or meet each other alone ; moreover, they have no time in the evenings to resort to the soHtude of the country. They have, therefore, adopted the middle course, frequenting* the suburbs, the vacant plots, the footpaths of the high roads, in fact all those places where there are few passers-by and numerous shady nooks. And as the inhabitants are all known to each other, they take the further precaution to conceal their identity by wrapping them- selves in these long cloaks, large enough to cover a whole family. The parents tolerate these proceedings carried on in the dark ; the stiff propriety of the country does not appear to entertain any apprehension ; it is understood that the lovers shall not stand still or sit down in any of these retired nooks, and this suffices to calm all chaste susceptibilities. It is thought that they can hardly do more than kiss each other while they are walking; sometimes, however, a girl is led astray — the lovers have sat down.
Nothing is more charming than these lovers' rambles, which give free scope to the Southerner's suasive fanciful imagination. It is a veritable masquerade, fertile in innocent enjoyments within the reach of the most humble. The girl clasps her sweet- heart to her bosom, enveloping him in her warm cloak, just as young ladies sometimes conceal their lovers under couches or in cupboards. This forbidden fruit has a particularly sweet flavour, eaten, as it is, in the open air, along the high roads, amidst persons who are quite indifferent to what is going on. The certainty of being able to kiss each other with impunity before all the world, to remain publicly in each other's embrace for evenings together, without running the danger of being recog- nised or pointed out, must add an exquisite ravishing charm to these flirtations. All the couples, looking like brown masses, resemble each other. The belated pedestrian, seeing these groups gliding about, regards what is going on as nothing more than a little innocent flirtation of no significance whatso- ever. The lovers know they are safely concealed ; they con- verse in undertones and make themselves quite at home ; most frequently they do not converse at all but walk along at ran- dom, enjoying the charm of being enveloped in the same wrap and combining pleasure with propriety. The climate alone is to blame for having in the first instance invited these 3'oung lovers to retire to the secluded spots in the suburbs. On fine summer nights one cannot walk round Plassans without coming
THE FORTUNE OP THE EOUGONS. 23
across a hooded couple ; certain places, the Aire Saint-Mittre for instance, are full of these black-cloaked parties gliding softly past each other amid the warm night breezes ; one would imagine they were guests invited to some mj^sterious ball given by the stars to the lovers among the poorer classes. When it is very warm, and the young girls do not wear cloaks, they turn up their over-skirts. In the winter, the most passionate lovers even make light of the frosts ; and as they descended the Nice road, Miette and Silvere thought but little of the chill Decem- ber night.
They passed along the slumbering Faubourg without ex- changing a word, resuming with mute delight their warm embrace. Their hearts were heavy ; the joy which they felt in pressing close to each other was not unmixed with sad thoughts of an approaching farewell, and it seemed to them that they could never exhaust the mingled sweetness and bit- terness of this silence which slowly lulled their steps. The houses were now becoming more scarce as they reached the end of the Faubourg. There stands the entrance to the Jas-Meiffren, an iron gate fixed to two strong pillars; a long row of mulberry trees is visible through the bars. Silvere and Miette instinctively cast a glance inside as they passed.
From the Jas-Meiffren the main road descends with a gentle slope to the bottom of a valley, which serves as the bed of a little rivulet, the Viorne, a brook in summer, but a torrent in winter. The two rows of elms were still in existence at this time, and lent to the high road the appearance of a mag- nificent avenue intersecting the hill, which was planted with corn and slender vines, with a broad band of gigantic trees. On this December night, under the clear cold moonlight, the newly-ploughed fields, as they extended along both sides of the road, resembled vast beds of greyish wadding which would have deadened all the noises in the air. The dull murmur of the Viorne in the distance alone sent a thrill through the immense silence of the surrounding country.
When the young people had commenced to descend the avenue, Miette's thoughts reverted to the Jas-Meiffren which they had just left behind.
" I had great difficulty in getting away this evening," she said. " My uncle wouldn't let me go. He shut himself up in a cellar, where, I believe, he was hiding his money, for he
24 THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
seemed very frightened this morning at the events that are taking place.''
She clasped Silvere gently to her side.
" Don't be frightened," he replied. " The time will come when we shall be able to see each other freely the whole day long. You must not fret."
"Oh," replied the young girl, shaking her head, "yon are very hopeful. Sometimes I feel very sad. It isn't the hard work which grieves me ; on the contrary, I am often very glad of my uncle's severity, and the tasks he sets me. He was quite right to make me a peasant ; I should perhaps have turned out bad ; for, do you know, Silvere, there are moments when I fancy myself under a curse. I feel, then, that I should like to be dead. I thhik of you know whom."
As she pronounced these last words, her voice broke into a sob. Silvere interrupted her somewhat harshly.
"Be quiet!" he said. "You promised not to think about it. It's no crime of j^ours. We love each other very much, don't we? " he added in a gentler tone. " When we're married you'll have no more unpleasant hours."
"I know," murmured Miette. "You are so kind, you sustain me. But what am I to do ? I cannot shake off these fears and inward revolts which I sometimes feel. I think, at times, that I have been wronged, and should like to do some- thing wicked. You see I pour forth my heart to you. When- ever my father's name is thrown in my face, I feel a burning indignation. When the urchins cry at me, as I pass, ' Eh ! Chantegreil,' I lose all control of myself, and feel that I should like to lay hold of Ihem and whip them."
After a savage silence, she resumed :
"As for you, you're a man; you're going to fight; you're very lucky."
Silvere had let her continue speaking. After a few steps, he observed, sorrowfully :
" You are wrong, Miette, to be angry. You shouldn't rebel against justice. As far as I'm concerned, I'm going to fight in defence of our common rights, not to gratify any personal animosity."
" All the same," the young girl continued, " I should like to be a man to handle a gun. I feel that it would do me good."
She perceived, from Silvere's silence, that she had displeased
THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 25
him. Her ardour collapsed and she whispered in a supplicating tone :
" You are not angry with me, are you ? It's your depar- ture which grieves me and awakens such ideas. I know very well 3''ou are right — that I ought to be humble."
She commenced to cr}^, and Silvere, moved by her tears, grasped her hands and imprinted a kiss upon them.
" See now, how you pass from anger to tears like a child," he said lovingly. " You must be reasonable. I'm not scolding you. I only want to see you happier, and that depends chiefly upon yourself."
The remembrance of this drama, wliich Miette had so sadly evoked, cast a temporary gloom over the lovers. They con- tinued their walk with bowed heads and troubled thoughts.
" Do you think I'm much happier than you ? " Silvere asked, resuming the conversation, after a momentary silence, in spite of himself. '' If my grandmother had not taken care of me and educated me, what would have become of me ? With the exception of my uncle Antoine, who is an artisan like myself, and who taught me to love the Republic, all my other relations seem to fear that I should contaminate them by coming near them."
He was now speaking with considerable animation, and suddenly stopped, holding Miette in the middle of the road.
" God is my witness," he continued, "that I do not envy nor hate anybody. But if we triumph, I shall have to speak my mind to those fine gentlemen. Uncle Antoine knows all about this matter. You'll see when we return.. We shall all live free and happy."
Miette pulled him gently, and they resumed their walk.
" You dearly love the Republic ? " the girl asked, essaying a joke. " Do you love me as much ? "
Her smile was not altogether free from a tinge of bitterness. She was thinking, perhaps, how easily Silvere abandoned her to go and scour the country. The lad gravely replied :
" You are my wife, to whom I have given my heart. I love the Republic on account of my affection for you. When w6 are married we shall want plenty of happiness, and it is to procure a part of this happiness that I'm going away from you to-morrow morning. Would you, then, persuade me to remain at home ? "
*' Oh, no!" cried the young girl eagerly, ^' A man should
26 THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
be brave ; courage is noble ! You must forgive my jealousy. I should like to be as strong as you. You would love me all the more, wouldn't you ? "
After a moment's silence, she added, with charming vivacity and ingenuousness :
" Ah ! how delighted I shall be to kiss you oil your return !"
This outburst of a loving and courageous heart deeply affected Silvere. He clasped Miette in his arms and imprinted several kisses on her cheek, and, as she laughingly struggled to get free, her eyes were bathed in tears of emotion.
Around the lovers the country still slumbered, in the vast stillness of the cold. They were now half-way down the hill. On the top of a hillock, to the left, stood the ruins of a windmill, blanched by the moon ; the tower, which had fallen in on one side, alone remained. This was the limit which the young people had assigned to their walk. They had come straight from the Faubourg without casting a single glance at the fields they passed between. When he had kissed Miette's cheeks, Silvere raised his head and observed the mill.
"What a long walk we've had!" he exclaimed. "See — here is the mill. It must be nearly half -past nine. We must go home."
Miette made a wry face.
" Let us walk a httle further," she implored ; " only a few steps, just as far as the little cross road, no farther."
Silvere smiled, as he again took her round the waist. They continued to descend the hill, no longer fearing the glances of the curious, as they had not met a living soul after passing the last houses. They nevertheless remained enveloped in the long pelisse, which constituted, as it were, a natural nest for their love-making. It had concealed them for so many delightful evenings ! Walking side by side, they would have felt small and isolated in the vast country around. This blending together into one form, however, emboldened them — made them feel bigger. Through the folds of the pelisse they gazed upon the fields stretching on the two sides of the road, without experiencing that overwhelming sensation with which vast indifferent horizons usually oppress the human affections. It seemed to them as though they had brought their house with them ; they felt a pleasure in viewing the country around, as one would from a window, delighting in the calm solitude, the sheets of slumbering light, the glimpses of nature
THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 27
through the dark wintry shroud, fascinated with the whole valley, in fact, though the charm was not sufficiently powerful lO efface the pleasure of their mutual embrace.
Their colloquy had ceased ; they spoke no more about other people, nor even about themselves. They were absorbed by the present, pressing each other's hands, uttering exclamations at the sight of a landscape, speaking at rare intervals, and with little attention to each other, as though overwhelmed by the warmth of their bodies. Silvere forgot his republican enthusiasm ; Miette no longer reflected that her lover would be leaving her in an hour, for a long time, perhaps for ever. The transports of their affection lulled them into a feeling of security, as on other days, when no farewell marred the tran- quillity of their meetings.
They continued walking, and soon reached the little cross- road mentioned by Miette — a bit of a lane which led through the fields to a village on the banks of the Viorne. But they passed on, pretending not to notice this path, where they had agreed to stop. A few minutes after, however, Silvere whis- pered :
" It must be very late ; you will get tired."
"No; I assure you I'm not at all tired," the young girl replied ; *' I could walk several leagues like this easily." Then, in a tone of persuasion, she added :
" Let us walk down as far as the meadows of Sainte-Claire. There we will really stop and turn back."
Silvere, who with open eyes was lulled into a gentle slumber by the young girl's rhythmic gait, made no objection, and they returned to their state of rapture. They proceeded rather more slowly, fearing the moment when they would have to retrace their steps. Whilst they walked onward, they felt as though they were advancing to the eternity of their mutual embrace ; the return meant a separation, a bitter leave-taking.
The declivity of the road was gradually becoming less steep. At the bottom of the valley there are meadows ex- tending as far as the Viorne, which runs at the other end, beside a range of low hills. These meadows, separated from the high road by thick-set hedges, are the meadows of Sainte-Claire.
" Bah ! " exclaimed Silvere, this time, as he caught sight of the first patches of grass ; " we'll go as far as the bridge."
Miette burst out laughing, clasping the young man round the neck with exuberant affection.
28 THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
At the spot where the hedges begin, there were in those days two elms forming the end of the long avenue, two cdlossal trees larger than any of the others. The treeless fields stretch out from the high road, like a large band of green wool, as far as the willows and birches of the river. The distance from the last elms to the bridge was scarcely three hundred yards. The lovers took a good quarter of an hour to traverse this space. At last,- in spite of their slow gait, they reached the bridge, where they stopped.
The road to Nice ran up in front of them, along the opposite slope of the valley. They could only see a small portion of it, however, as it takes a sudden turn about half-a-mile from the bridge, and loses itself among the wooded hills. On looking round they caught sight of the other end of the road, that which they had just come along, which leads in a direct line from Plassans to the Yiorne. In the beautiful winter moon- light it looked like a long silver ribbon, skirted with two sombre borders by the rows of elms. On the right and left the tilled lands of the hills formed enormous grey, vague seas, intersected by this ribbon, by this roadway white with frost, and emitting a metallic lustre. Up above, on a level with the horizon, the light shone from several v^indows in the Faubourg, resembling glowing sparks. By degrees Miette and Silvere had left it fully a league behind They gazed at the interven- ing road as though struck with admiration at the vast amphi- theatre, which seemed to rise to the firmament, and over which flowed bluish streams of light, as over the stages of a gigantic waterfall. This strange scenery, this colossal apothe- osis stood out amidst the still and deathly silence which pervaded it. Nothing could have been of more sovereign grandeur.
The young people, who had just been leaning against a parapet of the bridge, were now gazing beneath them. The Viorne, swollen by the rains, flowed on at their feet with a dull, continuous sound. Up the river and below, amidst the darkness which filled the hollows, they perceived the black forms of the trees growing on the banks ; here and there glided the moonbeams, casting a trail of molten tin, as it were, on the water, which glittered and danced about like a ray of light on the scales of some live animal. This glimmer flowed \vith mysterious charm along the greyish course of the torrent, among the vague shadows of the foliage. It might have been
THE FOKTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 29
an enchanted valley, some strange retreat inhabited by a curious race of people composed of lights and shades.
This part of the river was familiar to the lovers ; .they had often gone there in the warm July nights, when they passed hours, hidden among the clusters of willows on the right bank, at the spot where the meadows of Sainte-Claire spread their verdant tapestry up to the waterside. They remembered every bend of the stream, every stone on which they had to step in crossing the Viorne, when it was as narrow as a brook, every little grassy spot where they had indulged in their dreams of love. Miette, therefore, contemplated from the bridge the right bank of the torrent with a longing gaze.
" If it were warmer," she sighed, " we might go down and rest there awhile before going back up the hill."
Then, after a short silence, during which she kept her eyes fixed on the banks of the Viorne, she resumed :
" Look down there, Silvere, at that black mass in front of the dam. Do you remember ? That's the brushwood where we sat last Corpus Christi day."
" Yes, so it is," replied Silvere, softly.
This was the place where they had ventured to kiss each other. The remembrance of it just awakened by the young girl caused them both a delightful sensation, an emotion in which the joys of the day gone by mingled with the hopes of the morrow. They saw, as though by a flash of lightning, the delightful evenings they had passed together, especially that evening of Corpus Christi day, with its most trifling details, the warm sky, the cool willows of the Viorne, and their own loving talk. "Whilst they joyously recalled these past in- cidents, they pictured to themselves the unknown future, their dreams realised, and they marching through life arm in arm — as they had just been doing on the highway — warmly wrapped in the same cloak. They yielded to this transport, and smiled in each other's eyes, lost amidst the silent brilliancy of the scene.
Suddenly Silvere raised his head, and, throwing off the cloak, listened attentively to something. Miette, in her sur- prise, imitated him, not knowing why he started so abruptly from her.
Confused sounds were issuing from behind the hills, in the midst of which the Nice road wends its way. They sounded like the distant jolts of a procession of carts, but were rendered
30 THE FORTUNE OP THE EOUGONS.
more indistinct by the roaring* of the Viorne. Gradually the sounds became stronger, resembling* the stamping of an army on the march. Amidst this continuous and increasing* roll the uproar of a crowd became distinguishable, like strange rhythmical blasts of a hurricane ; one could have fancied they were the thunderclaps of a storm which was rapidly approach- ing and already causing a disturbance in the slumbering atmosphere. Silvere listened attentively, unable to catch the voice of the tempest, the distinct perception of which was obstructed by the hills. Suddenly a dark mass appeared at the turn of the road, and the "Marseillaise," sung with vin- dictive fury, thundered forth.
" Ah, there they are ! " cried Silvere, with a burst of joyous enthusiasm.
He commenced to run up the hill, dragging Miette with him. On the left side of the road lay a slope planted with evergreen oaks, up which he clambered with the young girl, to avoid being carried away by the surging, howling multitude.
When they had reached the top of the slope, in the shadow of the brushwood, the young girl, rather pale, gazed sorrow- fully at those men, whose distant songs had sufficed to steal Silvere from her embrace. It seemed as if the whole band had interposed itself between them. They were so happy a few minutes before, locked in each other's arms, alone and lost amidst the overwhelming silence and discreet brilliancy of the moon ! And now Silvere's eyes, as he looked around, ignoring even her presence, were riveted on those strangers whom he called his brothers.
The band descended with superb, irresistible stride. The irruption of those thousands of men upon the deathly cold silence of the horizon produced a scene of grandeur not un- mixed with terror. The highway became a torrent, rolling with living waves which seemed inexhaustible. At the bend in the road appeared a constant succession of dark masses, whose songs swelled more and more the loud roar of this human tempest. "When the last battalion had made its appear- ance, the shouts became deafening. The "Marseillaise" filled the heavens as if blown through enormous trumpets by giant mouths, which transmitted it, vibrating, into every corner of the valley. The slumbering country awoke with a bound — quivering throughout like a drum beaten by drumsticks, and echoing from its very bowels the formidable sounds of the
THE FOKTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 31
national song". The singing was no longer confined to the men. The distant rocks, the tilled lands, the meadows, the clusters of trees, every bit of brushwood, all seemed to emit human voices. The large amphitheatre, extending from the river to Plassans, the gigantic cascade over which the bluish moonlight flowed, seemed to be filled with countless numbers of invisible people cheering the insurgents; and in the deep pools of the Viorne, along the waters streaked by the mysteri- ous rays of molten tin, every dark nook and corner seemed to conceal human beings, who took up each refrain with ever- increasing ardour. In the commotion of the air and earth the country cried for vengeance and liberty. So long as the little army was descending the slope, the roar of the populace burst forth in sonorous waves mingled with abrupt shouts, and shook the very stones in the roadway.
Silvere, livid with emotion, listened and looked on. The insurgents who led the van, drawing behind them this swarm- ing, roaring trail, vastly indistinct in the darkness, rapidly approached the bridge.
"I thought," murmured Miette, ''that you would not have to pass through Plassans ? "
" They must have altered their plan of operations," Silvere replied ; " we were, in fact, to have marched to the chief town by the Toulon road, passing to the left of Plassans and Orcheres. They must have left Alboise this afternoon and advanced in the evening to Les Tulettes."
The head of the column had already arrived in front of the young people. The little army was more orderly than one would have expected from a band of undisciplined men. The contingents from each town and borough formed separate battalions, marching a few feet distant from each other. These battalions were apparently under the orders of certain chiefs. The pace at which they were at the moment descending the declivity converted them into a compact solid mass of invincible strength. There were probably about three thousand persons, all united and carried away by the same storm of indignation. The strange details of this scene were not discernible amidst the shadows projected along the highway by the lofty slope. Five or six feet from the brushwood, however, where Miette and Silvere were sheltered, the left hand slope sank slightly to give passage to a little pathway which ran alongside of the Viorne; and the moon, gliding along this gap, striped the
32 THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
road with a broad luminous band. On the first insurgents traversing this beam, they suddenly found themselves lit up with a brilliancy, the sharp whiteness of which revealed, with singular distinctness, the slightest ruggedness of visage or costume. As the insurgents defiled, the young people watched them emerge, fiercely and without cessation, from the darkness. ^ At the first sight of the men passing through the light Miette instinctively clung to Silvere, although she knew she was safe even from their gaze. She passed her arm round his neck, reclining her head against his shoulder. She stood upright, her pale face enveloped by the hood of the pelisse, her eyes gazing fixedly at this square patch of light as it was rapidly traversed by these strange faces, transfigured by en- thusiasm, their dark open mouths filled with the vindictive cry of the " Marseillaise." Silvere, whom she felt trembling at her side, bent towards her ear and named the various con- tingents as they passed.
The column marched along, eight abreast. In front there were some big, square-headed fellows, who seemed to possess the Herculean strength and naive confidence of giants. They were blind, intrepid defenders of the Republic. They carried large axes on their shoulders, the edges of which, freshly sharpened, glittered in the moonlight.
" The woodcutters of the forests of the Seille," said Silvere. *' They have been formed into a corps of sappers. At a signal from their chiefs these men would march straight to Paris, battering down the gates of the towns with their axes, as they cut down the old cork-trees on the mountain."
The 3^oung man spoke with pride of the heavy fists of his brethren. He continued, as he watched a band of labourers and rough-bearded men, tanned by the sun, coming along behind the wood-cutters :
" The contingent from La Palud. That is the borough which first broke out into rebellion. The men in blouses are labourers who cut up the cork-trees ; the others in the velvet jackets must be huntsmen and colliers, living in the passes of the Seille. The huntsmen knew your father, Miette. They have some good firearms, which they handle skilfully. Ah! if all were armed in the same manner ! We are short of muskets. See, the labourers have only got cudgels."
Miette, speechless, looked on and listened. As Silvere spoke to her of her father the blood rushed quickly to her
THE FOKTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 33
cheeks. Her face burning-, she scrutinised the huntsmen with an air of mingled indignation and sympathy. From this moment she seemed to become animated by ' the feverish emotions which the insurgents' songs awakened.
The column, which had just recommenced the " Marseil- laise," continued to march down as though lashed by the sharp blasts of the Mistral. The men of La Palud were followed by another troop of workmen, among whom a goodly number of gentlemen in great-coats were to be seen.
" These are the men of Saint-Martin-de-Yaulx," Silvere resumed. " That borough rose almost at the same time as La Palud. The masters joined the workmen. There are some rich men there, Miette ; men whose wealth would enable them to live peacefully at home, but who prefer to risk their lives in defence of liberty. One cannot but admire these men. Weapons are very scarce, they've scarcely got a few fowling- pieces — Do you see those men there, Miette, with a red band round the left elbow ? They are the leaders."
The contingents descended the hills, however, more rapidly than Silvere could speak. While he was naming the men from Saint-Martin-de-Vaulx, two battalions had already traversed the ray of light which blanched the roadway.
" Did you see," he asked, " the insurgents from Alboise and Les Tulettes pass by just now? I recognised Burgat the blacksmith. They must have joined the band to-day. How they do run ! "
Miette now leaned forward, in order to scrutinise more closely the little bands as they were described by the young man. A cold chill assailed her, penetrating her whole bod3% At this moment a battalion, larger and better disciplined than the others, appeared. The insurgents composing it, who were nearly all dressed in blue blouses, wore red sashes round their waists. One would have thought they were arrayed in uni- form. A man on horseback, with a sabre at his side, marched in the midst of them. Most of these improvised soldiers carried guns, probably carbines and old muskets of the National Guard.
" I don't know those," Silvere said. " The man on horse- back must be the chief I've heard speak of. He brought with him the contingents from Faverolles and the neighbouring villages. The whole column ought to be equipped in the same manner."
34 THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
He had no time to take breath.
" Ah ! see, here are the country people ! " he cried.
Small groups, consisting of ten or twenty men at most, were advancing behind the men of Faverolles. They all wore the short jacket of the Southern peasants. As they sang, they brandished pitchforks and scythes. Some of them had only large navvies' shovels. Every hamlet had sent its able-bodied men.
Silvere, who recognised the parties by their leaders, enumerated them with a feverish voice.
*' The contingent from Chavanoz ! " he said. " There are only eight men but they are strong; uncle Antoine knows them. Here's Nazeres ! here's Poujols ! thej'-'re all here, not one has failed to answer the summons. Valqueyras ! Hold, there's the parson amongst them; I've heard about him, he's a staunch republican."
He was becoming intoxicated, and, as each battalion con- sisted only of a few insurgents, the haste and precipitation with which he named them gave him the appearance of one in a frenzy.
"Ah! Miette," he continued, "what a fine march past! Rozan ! Vernoux ! Corbiere ! and there are more still, you'll see. They've only got scythes, but they'll mow down the troops as close as the grass in their meadows — Saint-Eutrope ! Mazet ! Les Gardes ! Marsanne ! the entire north side of the Seille ! Ah ! we shall be victorious ! The whole country is with us. Look at those men's arms, they are brawny and black as iron. There's no end to them. There's Pruinas ! Roches-Noires ! These last are smugglers : they are carrying carbines. Still more scythes and pitchforks, the contingents from the country are still passing. Castel-le-Vieux ! Sainte-Anne ! Graille ! Estourmel ! Murdaran ! "
And, with a voice stifled by emotion, he finished naming these men who seemed to be borne away by a whirlwind as fast as he enumerated them. Stretching forward with burning countenance, he pointed out the several contingents with a nervous gesture. Miette followed his movements. She felt attracted towards the end of the road as by the depths of a precipice. To avoid slipping down the incline, she clung to the young man's neck. A strange intoxication rose from this crowd of men, inebriated with clamour, courage, and confidence. These creatures, seen through a ray of light, growing lads and
THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 35
matured men, these old people brandishing theii' strange weapons and dressed in the most diverse costumes, from the workman's smock-frock to the gentleman's overcoat, this endless file of heads, which the time and circumstances had rendered indelible images of fanatical energy and enthusiasm, gradually assumed, before the young girl's e3"es, the whirling impetuosity of a torrent. At certain moments, she fancied they were not mov- ing, that they were really being carried away by the force of the " Marseillaise " with its hoarse, formidable intonations. She could not distinguish any conversation, hearing only one con- tinuous rumbling, alternating from dull to shrill notes, as sharp as nails stuck into one's flesh by jerks. This roaring of the revolt, this call to combat, to death, with its outbursts of in- dignation, its burning desires for liberty, its remarkable mix- ture of massacres and sublime flights, as it struck her heart unceasingly, and more deeply at every fierce outburst of the rhythm, caused her one of those exquisite pangs of a virgin martyr standing erect and smiling under the lash. And the crowd flowed on, rolling upon the sonorous billow. The march- past, which did not last more than a few minutes, seemed to the young people to be interminable.
Truly, Miette was but a child. She had turned pale at the approach of the band, she had wept for the loss of him who was dear to her ; but she was a brave girl whose ardent nature was easily fired by enthusiasm. She shook off the emotion which had gradually got possession of her, and became as courageous as a boy. - She would willingly have seized a weapon and followed the insurgents. As the muskets and scythes filed past, her white teeth peered forth longer and sharper from between her red lips, like the tusks of a young wolf eager to bite. And, as she listened to Silvere enumera- ting the contingents from the country with ever-increasing haste, the pace of the column seemed to her to accelerate still more with his every word. It soon appeared as though carried away, like a cloud of human dust swept along by a tempest. Everything began to whirl before her. She closed her eyes, from which large warm tears were rolling down her cheeks.
Silvere's eyelashes were also moist.
''• I don't see the men who left Plassans this afternoon," he murmured.
He tried to distinguish the end of the column, which was still in the shade. Suddenly he cried with joyous exultation ;
36 THE FOKTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
** Ah ! here they are ! They've got the banner — the banner has been entrusted to them ! "
He wanted to leap from the slope in order to join his com- panions ; at this moment, however, the insurgents halted. Words of command ran along the column, the "Marseillaise" died out in a final rumbling, and one could only hear the con- fused murmurs of the still surging crowd. Silvere, as he listened, comprehended the orders despatched to the various contingents, and which called the men of Plassans to the van. As each battalion ranged itself along the side of the road to make way for the banner, the 3'oung man began to re-ascend the slope, dragging Miette along with him.
" Come," he said, " we shall get in front of them at the other side of the bridge."
When they were on the top, among the tilled lands, they ran along to the mill, the dam of which bars the river. They crossed the Viorne on a plank, placed there by the millers. They cut aslant through the meadows of Sainte-Claire, running hand-in-hand, without exchanging a word. The column pro- jected a dark line over the highway, which they followed along the hedges. There were some openings amidst the hawthorns. Silvere and Miette jumped on to the main road througQ one of them.
In spite of the circuitous way they had come, they arrived at the same time as the men of Plassans. Silvere shook hands with some of them. They must have thought he had ascer- tained the new route taken by the insurgents, and had come to meet them. Miette, whose face was half-concealed by the hood of her pelisse, was scrutinised rather inquisitively.
" Why, it's Chantegreil," said one of the men from the Faubourg, " the niece of Rebufat, the me'ger * of the Jas- Meiffren."
"Where do 3^ou spring from, gad-about?" cried another voice.
Silvere, intoxicated with enthusiasm, had not thought of the singular figure which his sweetheart would offer to the Certain jeers of the workmen. Miette, confused looked at him, as if to implore his aid. But before he could even open his lips another voice rose from the crowd, exclaiming with brutality:
* A miger is a farmer in Provence, who shares the expenses and profits of his farm with the owner of the land. — Translator's Note.
THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 37
*' Her father's in prison ; we don't want the daughter of a thief and murderer amongst us,"
Miette turned dreadfully pale.
" You lie ! " she muttered; "if my father has killed anybody, he has never thieved."
And as Silvere, pale and trembling more than she, was clenching his fists :
'' Stop," she continued, " this is my affair.''
Then turning round to the group, she repeated with a shout:
" You lie ! you lie ! he never stole a copper from anybody. You know it well enough. Why do you insult him when he can't be here ? "
She drew herself up, superb with indignation — her ardent, half- wild nature seemed to accept with resignation the accu- sation of murder, but the charge of theft exasperated her. They knew it, and that is why the crowd, from a stupid viciousness, often thrust the accusation in her face.
The man who had just called her father a thief was merely repeating what he had heard said for many years. The girl's defiant attitude only incited the workmen to jeer all the more. Silvere continued to clench his fists, and matters were becoming serious, when a huntsman from the Seille, who had been sitting on a heap of stones at the roadside awaiting the order to march, came to the young girl's assistance.
" The little one's right," he said, " Cliantegreil was one of us. I knew him. Nobody knows the facts of his little matter. I always believed in the truth of his deposition before the judges. The gendarme whom he brought down at the chase with a ball from his musket was no doubt taking aim at him with his carbine. A man must defend himself I should think ! But Chantegreil was a decent fellow, he committed no robbery."
As often happens in such cases, the testimony of this poacher sufficed to bring other defenders to Miette's aid. Several workmen also professed to have known Chantegreil.
"Yes, yes, it's quite true ! " they all said. "He wasn't a thief. There are some scoundrels at Plassans who ought to be sent to prison in his place. Chantegreil was our brother. Come now, be calm, little one."
Miette had never heard an}^ one speak well of her father. He was generally spoken of before her as a beggar, a villain, and now she found some brave hearts who had foro^iving- words for him, who declared him to be an honest man. She burst
C
38 THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
into tears, feeling an emotion similar to that awakened in her by the " Marseillaise;" and she bethought herself how she could thank these men for their kindness to her in misfortune. For a moment she conceived the idea of shaking them all by the hand like a man. But her heart suggested something better. At her side stood the insurgent who carried the banner. She touched the staff, and, to express her gratitude, said in a suppliant tone :
" Give it to me ; I will carry it."
The simple-minded workmen comprehended the ingenuous sublimity of this expression of thankfulness.
" Yes," they all cried, " Chantegreil shall carry the banner."
A wood-cutter ventured the remark that she would soon get tired, and would not be able to go very far.
" Oh ! yes, I'm quite strong," she said, with pride, tucking up her sleeves and showing a pair of arms as big as those of a grown woman.
" Wait a minute," she resumed, as they handed her the banner.
She pulled off her cloak quickly and put it on again, after turning the red lining outside. In the clear moonlight she appeared to be covered with a large purple cloak reaching down to her feet. The hood hanging on the edge of her chignon formed a kind of Phrygian cap. She took the banner, pressed the staff to her bosom, and stood upright in the folds of the blood-coloured streamer which waved behind her. The elated child's head, with its curly hair, large eyes moist with tears, and lips half opened in a smile, rose with energetic pride as she drew herself up, as it were, towards the sky. At this moment she was the virgin Liberty.
The insurgents burst into tumultuous applause. The vivid imagination of these Southerners was fired with enthusiasm at the sudden apparition of this girl nervously clasping their banner to her bosom. Shouts rose from the crowd :
'^ Bravo, Chantegreil ! Chantegreil for ever ! She shall remain with us ; she'll bring us luck ! "
They would have cheered her for a long time had not the order to resume march arrived. Whilst the column was moving, Miette pressed Silvere's hand as he returned to her side, and whispered in his ear :
" You hear ! I shall remain with you. Are you glad ? "
MIETTE ACCOMPANYING THE INSURGENTS IN THEIR MARCH
ON PLASSANS. p. 3s.
THE FORTUNE OP THE EOUGONS. 39
Silvere, without replying, returned the pressure. He was agreeable. In fact, he was deeply affected and quite unable to resist the enthusiasm which fired his companions. Miette seemed to him so lovely, so grand, so saintly! During the climb up the hill he gazed at her, radiating with purple glory. Now he confused her with his other adored mistress — the Eepublic. He would have liked to be there already, with his gun over his shoulder. The insurgents moved slowlj^ They were ordered to make as little noise as possible. The column advanced between the rows of elms like a gigantic serpent whose every ring was seized with a strange quivering. The frosty December night had recovered its silence, and the Yiorne alone seemed to roar rather louder.
Arrived at the first houses in the Faubourg, Silvere ran on in front to the Aire Saint-Mittre to fetch his gun, which he found lying in the moonlight. When he regained the in- surgents they had reached the Porte de Rome. Miette bent forward, and, with a childish smile, observed :
" I feel as if I were at the procession on Corpus Christi day carrying the banner of the Virgin."
40
CHAPTER II.
Plassans is a sub-prefecture of about ten thousand inhabitants. Built on a plateau overlooking" the Viorne, and resting" on the north side against the Garrigues hills, one of the last branches of the Alps, the town is situated, as it were, at the bottom of a cul-de-sac. In 1851 it communicated with the adjoining- country by two roads only, the Nice road, which runs down to the east, and the Lyons road, which rises to the west, the one continuing the other in almost parallel lines. Since that time, a railway has been constructed w^hich passes to the south of the town, at the foot of the hill which descends with a steep declivity from the old ramparts to the river. At the present day, on coming- out of the station on the right bank of the little torrent, one can see, by raising one's head, the first houses of Plassans, the gardens of which form a terrace. It takes a full quarter of an hour's ascent to reach these houses.
About twenty years ago, owing, no doubt, to the lack of intercommunication, there was no town that had preserved more completely the devout and aristocratic character which distinguishes the old Provencale cities. It had, at that time, and has even now, a whole district of large mansions built in the time of Louis XIV and Louis XV, a dozen churches, houses belonging to the Jesuits and Capuchins, and a con- siderable number of convents. The distinction of class was preserved for a long time by the division of its various districts. li Plassans has three of them, each forming, as it were, a separate f and complete borough, with its own churches, promenades, customs, and horizons.
The district of the nobility, called Saint-Marc, after the name of one of its officiating parish churches, a sort of miniature Versailles with its straight streets overgrown with grass, the large square houses of which conceal extensive gardens behind them, extends to the south along the edge of the plateau. Some of the mansions built on the declivity itself have a double row of terraces from which one can see the whole valley of the
THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 41
Viorne, forming an admirable post of observation much vaunted in the country. The old quarter, formed of the original town, rises on the north-west with its narrow tortuous lanes bordered with tottering- hovels. The Mairie, the Civil Tribunal, the Market, and the Gendarmerie are situated there ; this, the most populous part of Plassans, is inhabited by working-men, shop- keepers, and all the wretched, toiling, common people. The new town forms a sort of long square to the north-east, the well-to-do, those who have slowly amassed a fortune, and those engaged in the liberal professions, occupy houses built beautifully straight and covered with a light yellow coating. This district, which is embellished by the Sub-Prefecture, an ugly plaster building decorated with rosework, numbered scarcely five or six streets in 1851; it is of quite recent forma- tion, and, since the construction of the railway, seems the only part which is growing in extent.
One circumstance which at the present time divides Plassans into three independent and distinct parts, is that the districts are clearly defined by broad thoroughfares. The Cours Sauvaire and the Rue de Rome, which is, as it were, a narrow extension of it, run from w-est to east, from the Grand'-Porte to the Porte de Rome, thus cutting the town into two portions,- and dividing the quarter of th^ iinVnlify frr)|-|-| tjnf^ f^T-rw^the^'^ The latter are themselves bounded by the Rue de la Banne ; this street, the finest one in that part of the country, commences at the extremity of the Cours Sauvaire, and ascends towards the north, leaving on its left the black masses of the old quarter, and on its right the light-yellow houses of the new town. There, about half-way along the street, stands the Sub- Prefecture at the back of a small Place planted with sickly trees ; the people of Plassans are very proud of this monument.
As if to keep more isolated and shut up within itself, the town is surrounded by a belt of old ramparts, which only serve to increase the gloom of the place, and to render it more con- fined. These ridiculous fortifications, eaten into by ivy, and crowned with wild gillyflowers, and which are about as high and as thick as the walls of a convent, could be demolished by gunshot. They are pierced with several openings, the two principal ones of which, the Porte de Rome and the Grand'-Porte, open respectively on to the Nice road and the Lyons road at the other end of the town. Until 1853 these openings were furnished with enormous wooden two-leaved doors, arched at
42 THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGOXS.
the top, and strengthened with bars of iron. These gates were double-locked at eleven o'clock in summer, and ten o'clock in winter. The town, having thus shot the bolts like a timid girl, went quietly to sleep. A guardian, who lived in a little cell placed in one of the interior angles of each gate- way, was authorised to open for any belated persons. But it was necessary to stand parleying a long time. The guardian would not let the people in until he had scrutinised their faces carefully through a peep-hole by the lig'ht of his lantern ; if their looks displeased him they had to sleep outside. This custom of locking the gates every evening is highly charac- teristic of the spirit of the town, a mixture of cowardice, egotism, routine, exclusiveness, and religious longing for a cloistered life. Plassans, Avhen it had well shut itself up would say to itself, " I am at home," with the satisfaction of a devout citizen, who, assured of the safety of his cash-box, and certain not to be roused by any noise, says his prayers and retires gladly to bed. No other town has, I believe, persisted so long in incarcerating itself like a nun.
The population of Plassans Is^divided into three groups, corresponding with the same number of districts. Putting aside the functionaries— the sub-prefect, the receiver of taxes, the mortgage commissioner, and the postmaster, who are all strangers to the countr}^, where they are the objects of envy rather than esteem, and who live after their own fashion — the real inhabitants, those who were born there and have every intention of ending their detjs there, have too much respect for traditional usages and established boundaries not to pen them- selves up in one or other of the groups of the town.
The nobility are hermetically immured. Since the fall of Charles X they scarcely ever go out, and when they do, they hasten back to their large dismal mansions, walking along fur- tively as though they were in a hostile countr}^. They do not visit any one, nor do they even receive each other. Their drawing- rooms are frequented by a few priests oni3\ They spend the summer in the chateaux which they possess in the environs ; in the winter they sit round their firesides. They are, as it were, dead people weary of life. Consequently the gloomy silence of a cemetery hangs over their quarter of the town. The doors and windows are carefully barricaded ; one would think their mansions were so many cony^nts shut off from the tumult without. At rare intervals an abbe, whose measured
THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 43
tread adds to the gloomy silence of these sealed houses, passes by and disappears like a shadow through a half-opened door.
The well-to-do people, the retired tradesmen, the lawyers, notaries, and all the little easy-going ambitious world inhabiting the new town, endeavour to infuse some liveliness into Plassans. They go to the parties given by the sub-prefect, and dream of making a similar return. The}^ eagerly seek popularity, call a workman " my good man," chat with the peasants about the harvest, read the papers, and walk out with their wives on Sunday. They constitute the enlightened minds of the district, the only persons who venture to speak disparagingly'' of the ramparts ; in fact they have several times demanded the demolition, by the " Ediles," of these old walls, relics of a former age. The most sceptical among them, moreover, give way to a violent feeling of delight whenever a marquis or a count deigns to honour them with a stiff salutation. The dream of every citizen of the new town is to be admitted to a drawing-room of the Saint-Marc quarter. They know very well that their ambition is not attainable, and the consciousness of this causes them to proclaim all the louder that they are freethinkers ; but they are freethinkers in words only,- firm friends of the authorities, ready to rush into the arms of the first deliverer on the least indication of popular discontent.
The group which toils and vegetates in the old quarter is not so clearly defined. The labouring classes are in a majority ; but the retail traders and even a few wholesale dealers are to be found among them. As a matter of fact, Plassans is far from being a commercial centre ; there is just sufficient trade done there to dispose of the products of the country — oil, wine, and almonds. As for industrial labour, it is almost entirely represented by three or four tanyards which infest one of the streets of the old quarter, a felt hat manufactory, and some soap- boiling works which are relegated to a corner of the Faubourg. This little commercial and industrial world, though it may on high days and holidays visit the people of the new town, generally takes up its quarters among the operatives of the old. Merchants, retail traders, and artisans have a community of interest which unites them together in one family. On Sunday only the masters wash themselves, and assemble together apart. The labouring classes, on the other band, constituting scarcely a fifth of the population, mingle with the idlers of the country.
/
44 THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
Once a week, only, during- the fine weather, the three dis- tricts of Plassans come together face to face. The whole town repairs to the Cours Sauvaire on Sunday after vespers ; even the nobility venture thither. Three separate and distinct currents move along this sort of boulevard planted with two rows of plane trees. The well-to-do citizens of the new town merely pass along it, quit the town by the Grand'-Porte, and take the Avenue du Mail on the right, where they walk up and down till nightfall. Daring this time, the nobility and the lower classes share the Cours Sauvaire between them. For more than a cen- tury past, the nobility have selected the walk on the south side, which is bordered with a row of large mansions, and is the first to escape the heat of the sun ; the lower classes have to rest content with the other walk on the north side where the cafes, inns, and tobacconists are located. The people and the nobility pro- menade the whole afternoon, walking up and down the Cours without an}^ one of either party thinking of changing sides. They are separated by six or eight yards, and yet they keep a thousand "leagues away from each other, as it were, following scrupulously the two parallel lines, as though they ought not to meet one another here below. Even during the revolutionary epochs, each party kept to its own side. This regulation walk on Sunday and the locking of the gates in the evening are analogous cases which suffice to portray the character of the ten thousand souls inhabiting the town.
Here, in this particular spot, until the year 1848, there vegetated an obscure family who enjoyed little esteem, but whose head, Pierre Rougon, subsequently played an important role owing to certain circumstances.
Pierre Rougon was the son of a peasant. His mother's family, named Fouque, owned, towards the end of the last century, a vast piece of ground in the Faubourg, behind the old cemetery of Saint-Mittre, and which was subse- quently joined to the Jas-Meiffren. The Fouques were the richest market-gardeners in the country ; they used to supply an entire district of Plassans with vegetables. The name of this family died out a few years before the Revolution. Only one girl, Adelaide, remained; she was born in 1768 and became an orphan at the age of eighteen. This girl, whose father died insane, was a long, lank, pale creature, with a scared look and strange gait, which one might have taken for shyness so long as she was a little girl. As she grew up, however,
THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 45
she became still stranger ; she did certain things which were inexplicable even to the cleverest heads of the Faubourg, and from that time it was rumoured that she was cracked like her father,
iSlie had scarcely been an orphan six months, in possession of a fortune which rendered her an eagerly-sought heiress, when it transpired that she had married a young gardener named Rougon, a rough-hewn peasant from the Basses-Alpes. This Rougon, after the death of the last of the male Fouques, who had engaged him for a term, had remained in the service of the deceased's daughter. /From a salaried servant he ascended rapidly to the enviable position of husband. /This marriage was a first shock to public opinion. No one could comprehend why Adelaide preferred this poor devil, coarse, heavy, vulgar, scarcely able to speak French, to those other j^oung men, sons of well-to-do farmers, who had been seen hovering round her for some time. And, as provincial people do not allow anything to remain unexplained, they made sure there was some mystery at the bottom of this affair, alleging even that the marriage of the two young people had become an absolute necessity. But events proved the falsity of the accusation. Adelaide had a son at end of twelve full months. The Faubourg was anno^^ed ; it could not admit that it was wrong, and determined to penetrate the supposed mystery ; therefore all the old gossips kept a watch upon the Rougons. They soon found ample matter for tittle-tattle. Rougon died almost suddenly, fifteen months after his marriage, from a sunstroke received one after- noon as he was weeding a bed of carrots.
Scarcely a year had elapsed before the young widow caused an unheard-of scandal. It became known, as an indisputable fact, that she had a lover. She did not appear to have made any secret of it ; several persons asserted that they had heard her use endearing terms, in public, to poor Rougon's successor. Scarcely a year of widowhood and a lover already ! Such a disregard of propriety seemed monstrous, out of all reason. The scandal was heightened by Adelaide's strange choice. At that time there dwelt at the end of the Impasse Saint-Mittre, in a hovel the back of which abutted on the Fouques* plot of ground, a man of bad repute, who was generally referred to as " that scoundrel Macquart." This man used to vanish for weeks and then turn up one fine evening, sauntering about with empty arms and hands in his pockets, whistling as
46 THE FOKTUNE OF THE EOUGOKS.
though he had just come from a short walk. And the women sittmg" at their doorsteps would remark as he passed : " There's that scoundrel Macquart ! he has hidden his bales and his gun in some hollow of the Viorne." The truth was, Macquart had no means, but he used to eat and drink like a happy drone during his short sojourns in the town. He drank enormously, with fierce obstinacy. Seating himself at a table apart at the furthest end of a tavern, he would lose all consciousness, fixing his eyes stupidly on his glass, neither seeing nor hearing anj- thino: around him. When the landlord closed his establishment, he would retire with a firm step, and keeping his head erect as if held up by inebriation. " Macquart walks pretty straight, he's dead drunk," people used to say, as they saw him going home. Usually when he had had no drink, he walked with a slight curvature, avoiding the gaze of the curious with a kind of savage timidity.
Since the death of his father, a journeyman tanner who had left him as a sole heritage the hovel in the Impasse Saint- Mittre, he was never known to have either relatives or friends. The proximity of the frontiers and the neighbouring forests of the Seille had turned this singular lazy personage into a com- bination of smuggler and poacher, one of those suspicious- looking persons of whom the passers-by observe : " I shouldn't care to meet that fellow at midnight in a dark wood." Tall, with a formidable beard and lean face, Macquart was the terror of the good women of the Faubourg; they used to accuse him of devouring little children raw. Though he was hardly thirty years old, he looked fifty. Under his stubbly beard and locks of hair which covered his face like a poodle, one could only distinguish the gleams of his brown eyes, the furtive sorrowful glance of a man of vagrant instincts, rendered vicious by wine and a pariah life. Although no crimes had actually been brought home to him, the first suspicions always fell upon him whenever a theft or murder had been perpetrated in the country.
And it was this monster, this brigand, this scoundrel Mac- quart whom Adelaide had chosen ! In twenty months she had two children, first a boy and then a girl. There was no ques- tion of marriage between them. Never had the Faubourg seen such audacious impropriety. The stupefaction was so great, the idea of Macquart having found a young and wealthy mistress upset to such a degree the beliefs of the gossips, that
THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 47
they even felt somewhat grieved for Adelaide. '' Poor thing-, she's gone quite mad" they would say: "If she had any relatives she would have been placed in confinement long ago." And as they never knew anything of the history of these strange amours, they accused that rogue Macquart of having taken advantage of Adelaide's weak mind to rob her of her money.
The legitimate son, little Pierre Rougon, grew up with his mother's bastards. Adelaide kept the latter with her, Antoine and Ursule, the young wolves as they were called in the district, treating them as affectionately as her first child. She did not appear to entertain a very clear idea of the position in life reserved for these two poor creatures. To her they were the same, in every respect, as her first-born. She would sometimes go out holding Pierre with one hand and Antoine with the other, not observing the difference with which the two little fellows were regarded.
It was a strange house. For nearly'' twenty years every one lived in it after his own fancy, the children lilve the mother. Everything went on free from control. In growing to woman- hood, Adelaide had remained that strange girl who, at the age of fifteen, was looked upon as a savage ; not that she was insane, as the people of the Faubourg asserted, but there was a want of equilibrium between her nerves and her blood, a disorder of the brain and heart which made her lead a life out of the ordinar}^, different from the rest of the world. .She was certainly very natural, very consistent with herself; to the eyes of the neighbours, however, her consistency sprang from her insanity. She seemed desirous of being conspicuous, wiclvcdly allowing everything at home to go from bad to worse while she obeyed, with great naivete, the impulses of her own nature.
Ever since her first confinement, she had been subject to nervous fits which brought on terrible convulsions. These attacks recurred periodically, every two or three months. The doctors whom she consulted declared they could do nothing for her, that age would weaken the severity of the attacks. They prescribed for her a dietary regimen of underdone meat and quinine. These repeated shocks produced the cerebral disorder. She lived from day to day like a child, like a fawn- ing animal yielding to its instincts. When Macquart was on his round, she passed her days in lazy, pensive idleness, taking
48 THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
no concern for her children, excepting- when she wanted to kiss and play with them. Then as soon as her lover returned she would disappear.
Behind Macquart's hovel there was a little j^ard, separated from the Fouques' property by a wall. One morning" the neighbours were much astonished to find a door placed in this wall which was not there the previous evening-. Before an hour had elapsed, the entire Faubourg* had flocked -to the neighbouring windows. The lovers must have worked the whole night to pierce the opening" and place the door thera They could now go freely from one house to the other. The scandal was revived, every one felt less pity for Adelaide, who was certainly the disgrace of the Faubourg ; this door, this tacit, brutal avowal of their union, was the cause of more reproaches being heaped upon her than even her two children. " People should at least study appearances," the most tolerant women would say. Adelaide did not understand what was meant by studying appearances. She was very happy, very proud of her door ; she had assisted Macquart to knock the stone from the wall and had even mixed the mortar so that the work might proceed the quicker ; she came with childish delight on the morrow to inspect the work by daylight, which circum- stance appeared the consummation of her shamelessness to three gossips who observed her contemplating the masonry. From that time, whenever Macquart reappeared, it was thought, as no one ever saw the j^oung woman, that she had gone to live with him in the hovel of the Impasse Saint-Mi ttre.
The smuggler used to come very irregularly, almost always unexpectedly^ Nobody ever knew what life the lovers led during the two or three days he spent in the town at distant intervals. They used to shut themselves up ; the little dwell- ing seemed uninhabited. The Faubourg having decided that Macquart had seduced Adelaide for the sole purpose of con- suming her money, it was astonished, after a time, to see this man continue his former mode of existence, ever up hill and down dale, as badly equipped as heretofore. * Perhaps the young woman loved him all the more for seeing him at rare intervals, perhaps he had disregarded her entreaties, feeling an irresistible desire for a life of adventure. The Faubourg invented a thousand fables, without succeeding in giving any reasonable explanation of a connection which had been formed and continued in an extraordinary manner. The hovel in
THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 49
the Impasse Saint-Mittre remained hermetically sealed and preserved its secrets. One. merely guessed that in all proba- bility Macquart was in the habit of beating* Adelaide, although the sound of a quarrel never issued from the house. On seve- ral occasions she reappeared with her face black and blue, and her hair torn out in handfuls. However, she did not display the least dejection or grief, nor did she seek in any way to hide her wounds. She smiled, and alwa5's seemed happy. No doubt she allowed herself to be beaten without breathing a word. This existence lasted for more than fifteen years.
"When Adelaide returned home she would find the house upside down, but would not take the least notice of it. She was utterly ignorant of the practical meaning of life, of the proper value of things and the necessity for order.
She let her children grow up like those plum-trees which thrive along the highways at the pleasure of the rain and sun. They bore their natural fruits like wild stock which has never known the grafting or pruning knife. Never was nature allowed so much sway, never did such little mischievous creatures grow. up more freely under the influence of their own natural impulses. Meanwhile they rolled among the vege- tables, passing their days in the open air, -plsiy'mg and fighting like good-for-nothing boys. They would steal the provisions from the house and pillage the few fruit-trees in the enclosure ; they were the demons of the family, the plunderers and squallers of this strange domicile of lucid insanity. '\'\nien their mother was absent for days together, they used to make such an uproar, they hit upon fuch diabolical expedients for annoying people, that the neighbours had to threaten them with the whip. Moreover, Adelaide did not frighten them much ; if they were less obnoxious to other people when she was there, it was because they made her the victim, playing the truant regularly five or six times a week, doing everything they could to receive some punishment which would allow them to squall to their hearts' content. But she never beat them, nor even lost h3r temper ; she lived very well in all the noise, placidl}'', indolently, in a state of mental abstraction.
At last, the frightful uproar of these good-for-nothing urchins became indispensable to her to fill the void in her brain. She smiled complacently when she heard any one say : " Her children will beat her, and it will serve her right." Her utter indifference to everything seemed to reply : " What
50 THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS.
does it matter ? " She troubled even less about her property than about her children. The Fouques' enclosure, during the many years this singular existence lasted, would have become a piece of waste ground, if the young woman had not had the good fortune to entrust the cultivation of her vegetables to the care of a clever market-gardener. This man, who was to share the profits with her, robbed her impudently, though she never noticed it. This circumstance had its advantage, how- ever ; for, in order to steal the more, the gardener had to draw as much as possible from the land, which almost doubled in value in consequence.
Pierre, the legitimate child, either from secret instinct or from his knowledge of the different manner in which they were treated by the neighbours, domineered over his brother and sister from his early childhood. In their quarrels, although he was much weaker than Antoine, he always got the better of him. With regard to Ursule, poor, puny, wan little creature, she was roughly handled by both of them. Indeed, until the age of fifteen or sixteen, the three children fraternally beat each other unmercifully, giving no reason for their vague mutual hatred, and not knowing very clearly how dissimilar they were to each other. It was only at this age that they found themselves face to face with their definite self-conscious personalities.
When seventeen, Antoine was a tall fellow, displaying the blended imperfections of Macquart and Adelaide. Macquart, however, predominated with his love of vagrancy, his tendency to drunkenness, and his brutish passions. But under the ner- vous influence of Adelaide those vices, which in the father assumed a kind of sanguinary frankness, became, in the son, an artfulness full of hypocrisy and cowardice, Antoine re- sembled his mother in his total want of dignified will, in hia effeminate voluptuous egotism, which disposed him to accept any bed of infamy provided*he could lounge upon it at his ease and sleep warmly in it. The people used to say to him : ''Ah ! the brigand! he has not even the courage of his villany like Macquart ; if ever he commits a murder, it will be with pin pricks." Physically, Antoine inherited Adelaide's thick lips only; his other features were those of the smuggler, but softened and rendered tapering and flexible.
Ursule, on the other hand, showed the greatest resemblance to the young woman, both physically and morally. The two
THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 51
prototypes were, however, still closely interwoven, excepting that the poor little thing, who was born the second, at the time when Adelaide's love was warmer than Macquart's consider- ably cooled affections, seemed to have received, with her sex, a deeper impress of her mother's temperament. Moreover, hers was not a fusion of the two natures, but rather a juxta- position, a remarkably close soldering. The whimsical Ursule displayed, at times, the shyness, the melancholy, and the trans- ports of a pariah. She would then generally break out into nervous fits of laughter, musing lazily, like a woman unsound in head and heart. Her eyes, which wore a scared look like those of Adelaide, were as limpid as crj^stal, similar to those of young cats who are doomed to die of consumption.
In the face of these two bastards Pierre seemed a stranger; to one who had not penetrated to the roots of his being he would have appeared profoundly dissimilar. Never was a child so equally balanced between the two persons who had given birth to it. He was the exact medium between the peasant Rougon and the nervous Adelaide. His mother had, as it were, rough-hewn his father in him. That latent evolu- tion of temperaments which ultimate^ determines the ameliora- tion or deterioration of a race seemed to have obtained a first result in Pierre. Although he was still nothing but a peasant, his skin was less coarse, his head less thick, his intellect more capacious and more supple. In him the defects of his father and mother advantageously reacted upon each other. If Ade- laide's nature, rendered exquisitely sensitive by her rebellious nerves, had combated and overcome Rougon's heaviness and ponderous gravity, the latter had successfully resisted, in the child, the young woman's tendency to cerebral disorders. Pierre did not know either the passions or the sickly ravings of Macquart's young wolves. Very badly brought up, unruly and noisy, like all children who are not restrained during their infancy, he nevertheless possessed a reasoning intelligence which would always preserve him from perpetrating any use- less, unproductive folly. His vices, his laziness, his appetite for indulgence, had not that instinctive play about them which characterised Antoine's vices ; he intended to cultivate and gratify them honourably and openly. In his plump person of medium height, in his long pale face, in which his father's features had borrowed a certain refinement from those of his mother, one could already discern the sly, crafty ambition, the
UNIVERSITY OF \am^*^
52 THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
insatiable desire for gratification, the hard heart and envious hatred of a peasant's son, converted by his mother's fortune and nervous temperament into a member of the middle classes. y When, at the ag-e of seventeen, Pierre observed and was able to understand Adelaide's disorders and the singular posi- tion of Antoine and Ursule, he seemed neither sorry nor indignant, but, simply much preoccupied by the steps which his own interests counselled him to take. He was the only one of the three children who had pursued his studies with any industry. A peasant who begins to feel the need of instruction becomes, most frequently', a fierce calculator. At school his playmates roused his first suspicion by their hootings and the insulting manner in which they treated his brother. Later on he came to understand the significance of man}'' looks and words. He clearly recognised, at last, the disordered state of the household. From that time forward, Antoine and Ursule were regarded by him as shameless parasites, as mouths who were devouring his own substance. Like the people of the Faubourg, he thought that his mother was a fit subject for a lunatic asylum, and was afraid that she would in the end squander all his money, if he did not take steps to prevent her. What principally broke his heart was the robbery committed b}'' the gardener. This unruly child was transformed in one day into a thrifty, selfish lad, hurriedly matured, as regards his instincts, bj'' the strange iniprovident life which he could no longer ' bear to see around him without a feeling of grief and anguish. Those vegetables, from the sale of which the market-gardener derived the largest profits, belonged to him ; the wine which his mother's bastards drank, the bread they ate, belonged to him. The whole house, the entire fortune, was his ; according to his boorish logic, he alone, the legitimate son, was the heir. And as his riches were in danger, as everybody was greedily gnawing at his future fortune, he sought a means of turning them all out — mother, brother, sister, servants — and of succeeding immediately to his inheritance.
The conflict was cruel ; the lad knew that, first of all, he would have to. battle with his mother. Step by step, with a patient tenacity, he executed a plan, every detail of which he had matured a long time previously. His tactics were to appear before Adelaide as a living reproach — not. that he flew into a passion, or upbraided her for her misconduct; but he had acquired
THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 63
a certain manner of looking- at her, without saying* a word, which terrified her. "When she returned from a short sojourn in Macquart's hovel she could not look at her son without a shudder. She felt his cold glances, as sharp as steel blades, pierce her deeply and pitilessly. The severe, taciturn attitude of Pierre, of the child of that man whom she had so soon for- gotten, strangely troubled her poor disordered brain. She would fancy that Roug-on had risen from the dead to punish her for her dissoluteness. Every week she became seized with one of those nervous fits which were shattering" her con- stitution. During" these attacks she was left to struggle until she recovered consciousness, after which she would refasten her clothes and creep about more feebly than ever. She would often sob the whole night, holding her head in her hands, accepting Pierre's insults with resignation, as the strokes of an avenging deity. At other times she repudiated him; she would not acknowledge her own flesh and blood in this coarse lad, whose calmness so sadly chilled her feverishness. She would a thousand times rather have been beaten than glared at like that. Those implacable looks, which followed her everywhere, caused her at last such insupportable shocks that on several occasions she determined not to see her lover any more. As soon, however, as Macquart returned she forgot her vows and hastened'to him. The conflict recommenced, more mute, more terrible, when she returned. At the end of a few months she fell completely under her son's sway. She stood before him like a little girl doubtful of her own good behaviour and alwaj^s fearing that she deserves to be whipped. Pierre had skilfully bound her hand and foot, and made a very submissive servant of her, without opening his lips, without entering into diflScult and compromising explanations.
When the 3'oung man felt that his mother was in his power, that he could treat her like a slave, he commenced, in his own interest, to make the most of her cerebral weakness and the foolish terror with which one of his glances inspired her. His first care, as soon as he was master at home, was to dismiss the market-gardener and replace him by one of his own creatures. He took the supreme direction of the household, selling, buying, and holding the cash-box. On the other hand, he made no attempt to regulate Adelaide's actions, nor to correct Antoine and Ursule for their laziness. It mattered little to him, for he counted upon getting rid of thes^ people as soon as an oppor-
D
54 THE FOKTUNE OF THE KOUGONS.
tunity presented itself. He contented himself with portioning- out their bread and water. Then, having already got all the fortune in his own hands, he awaited an event which would permit him to dispose of it as he pleased.
Circumstances proved singularly favourable to him. He escaped the conscription on the ground of being the eldest son of a widow. But two years later Antoine was called out. His bad luck did not affect him much ; he counted on his mother purchasing a substitute for him. Adelaide, in fact, wished to save him from serving ; Pierre, however, who held the money, turned a deaf ear. His brother's compulsory de- parture was a lucky event for him, greatly assisting the accom- plishment of his plans. When his mother mentioned the matter to him he gave her such a look that she did not venture to pursue it. His glare signified : " Do you wish, then, to ruin me for the sake of your bastard ? " She selfishly abandoned Antoine, seeking before everything her own peace and quietness. Pierre, who did not like violent measures, and who rejoiced at being able to eject his brother without a disturbance, then played the part of a man in despair : the year had been a bad one, money was scarce, and he would be compelled to sell a portion of the land, and this would be the commencement of their ruin. Then he pledged his word of honour to Antoine that he would buy him out the following year, though he was fully determined to do nothing of the sort. Antoine departed, duped and half satisfied.
Pierre got rid of Ursule in a still more unexpected manner. A journeyman hatter of the Faubourg, named Mouret, con- ceived an affection for the young girl whom he thought as white and delicate as any young lady from the Saint-Marc quarter. He married her. On his part it was a love match, a sincere affection, free from all sordid motives. As to Ursule, she accepted the marriage to escape from a home where her life was rendered intolerable by her eldest brother. Her mother, absorbed in her own enjoyments, and using her last efforts to defend herself, regarded the matter with absolute indifference. She was even glad of her departure, hoping that Pierre, now that he had no further cause for dissatisfaction, would let her live in peace after her own fashion. No sooner had the young- people been married than Mouret perceived that he would have to quit Plassans, if he did not wish to hear every day dis- paraging remarks about his wife and his mother-in-law. He
THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS. 55
went away, taking Ursule with him, to Marseilles, where he worked at his trade. Moreover, he had not asked for one sou as a dowry. When Pierre, somewhat surprised at this disinter- estedness, commenced to stammer out some explanations, he closed his mouth by saying that he preferred to earn his wife's bread. The worthy son of the peasant Roug-on remained uneasy at this indifference, which seemedvto him to conceal some trap.
Adelaide now remained to be disposed of. • Nothing in the world would induce Pierre to live with her any longer. She was compromising him, it was with her that he had desired to make a start. But he found himself hemmed in by two very embarrasing alternatives : to keep her and expose himself to the stigma of her disgrace, and so bind a fetter round his feet which would arrest him in his ambitious flight ; or to turn her out, with the certainty of being pointed at as a bad son, which would have upset the calculations of this well-intentioned man. Knowing that he would be in want of everybody, he desired to secure an untarnished name throughout Plassans. There was but one method to adopt, namely, to induce Adelaide to leave of her own accord. Pierre neglected nothing to accomplish this end. He considered his mother's misconduct a sufficient excuse for his own hard-heartedness. He punished her as one would chastise a child. The tables were turned. The poor woman cowered under the stick which was constantly held over her. She was scarcely forty-two years old, and already had the stammerings of terror, the vague, pitiful looks of an old woman in her second childhood. Her son continued to stab her with his piercing glances, hoping that she would run away when her courage was exhausted. The unfortunate woman suffered terribly from shame, from restrained desires and injuries inflicted, receiving the blows with passive resignation and returning nevertheless to Macquart with the determination to die on the spot rather than submit. There were nights when she would have got out of bed, and thrown herself into the Viorne, if her weak, nervous, effeminate frame had not had an excruciating fear of death. On several occasions she thought of running away and rejoining her lover on the frontier. It was only because she did not know whither to go that she remained at the house, submitting to her son's contemptuous silence and secret brutality. Pierre perceived that she would have left long ago if she had only had a refuge. He awaited an opportunity to take a little apartment for her somewhere, when
56 THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
a fortuitous circumstance, which he had not ventured to antici- pate, abruptly brought about the realisation of his desires. Information reached the Faubourg that Macquart had just been killed on the frontier by a shot from a custom-house officer, at the moment when he was endeavouring to smuggle a cargo of Geneva watches into France. The story was true. They did not even bring back the smuggler's bod^^, which was interred in the cemetery of a little mountain village. Adelaide's grief was inane. Her son, who watched her curi- ously, did not observe her shed a single tear. Macquart had made her sole legatee. She inherited the hovel in the Impasse Saint-Mittre, and the carbine of the deceased, which a smuggler, braving the balls of the custom-house officers, had loyally brought back to her. On the following day she re- tired to the little house, hung the carbine above the mantel- piece, and lived there estranged from all the world, solitary and silent.
Pierre was at last sole master at the house. The Fouques' plot of ground belonged to him in fact, if not in law. He never thought of establishing himself there. It was too nar- row a field for his ambition. To till the ground and cultivate vegetables seemed to him boorish, unworthy of his faculties. He was in a hurry to divest himself of the peasant. His nature, refined by his mother's nervous temperament, felt an irresistible longing for the pleasures of the middle-classes. In all his calculations, therefore, he had regarded the sale of the Fouques' property as the final consummation. This sale, by placing a round sum of money in his hands, would enable him to marry the daughter of some merchant who would take him into partnership. At this period the wars of the Empire were thinning considerably the ranks of eligible young men. Parents were not so fastidious in the choice of a son-in-law. Pierre persuaded himself that the money would smooth all difficulties, and that the gossip of the Faubourg would be over- looked; he knew well how to pose as a victim, as an honest man suffering from a famil^^ disgrace, which he deplored with- out being tainted by it or excusing it.
For several months he had turned his attentions to the daughter of an oil-dealer, Felicite Puech. The firm of Puech & Lacamp, whose warehouses were in one of the darkest lanes of the old quarter, was far from prosperous. It enjoyed a doubtful credit in the place, and people would talk vaguely
THE FOHTUNE OF THE ROUGONS. 57
of a failure. It was precisely in consequence of these evil reports that Pierre turned his batteries in this direction. No well-to-do trader would have given him his daughter. He reckoned to arrive just at the moment when old Puech was at a loss which way to turn ; he would then purchase Felicite of him, and re-establish the credit of the house by his own energy and intelligence. It was a clever expedient for ascending a rung of the ladder, for raising himself a peg above his station. Above all things, he wished to escape from that frightful Fau- bourg, where everybody reviled his family, to bur}^ in obscurity those foul legends, by effacing even the very name of the Fouques' plot of ground. That is why the filthy streets of the old quarter seemed to him a paradise. There, only, he would change his skin.
The moment which he had been awaiting soon arrived. The firm of Puech & Lacamp was at the last gasp. The young man then negotiated the match with prudence and skill. He was received, if not as a deliverer, at least as a necessary and acceptable expedient. The marriage settled, he turned his attention to the sale of the plot of ground. The owner of the Jas-Meiffreu, desiring to enlarge his estate, had made him repeated offers. A low thin party-wall alone separated the two estates. Pierre speculated on the eagerness of his neigh- bour, a rich man, who, to gratify his caprice, offered as much as fifty thousand francs for the land. It was double its value. Pierre, however, with the craftiness of a peasant, pulled a long face and said that he did not care to sell ; that his mother would never consent to get rid of a property where the Fouques had lived from father to son for nearly two centuries. All the time he appeared to hold back he was making preparations for the sale. Certain doubts arose in his mind. According to his own brutal logic the property belonged to him, he had the right to dispose of it as he chose. Beneath this assurance, however, he entertained vague presentiments of legal complications. He determined to consult indirectly a lawyer of the Faubourg.
He learnt some fine things from him. According to the lawyer his hands were absolutely tied. His mother alone could alienate the property, and he doubted whether she would. But what he did not know, what came as a heavy blow to him, was that Ursule and Antoine, the bastards, the 3'oung wolves, had claims on the estate. What ! those scoundrels would despoil him, rob him, the legitimate child ! The lawyer's ex-
58 THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
planations were clear and precise ; Adelaide had, it is true, married Rougon under the system of communion of goods ; but as all the fortune consisted of landed property, the young- woman, according- to law, came again into possession of the fortune at her husband's death ; on the other hand, Macquart and Adelaide had acknowledged their children, who were ac- cordingly entitled to inherit from their mother. For sole con- solation, Pierre learnt that the law reduced the share of illegitimate children in favour of lawful ones. This, how- ever, did not console him at all. He wanted to have the whole. He would not have . shared ten sous with Ursule and Antoine,
This vista of the complications of the Code opened a new horizon before him, which he scanned with a singularly thoughtful air. He soon recognised that a shrewd man must always keep the law on his side. And this is what he dis- covered without consulting any one, not even the lawyer, whose suspicions he was afraid of arousing. He knew how to turn his mother round his finsi-er. One fine morninsf he took her to a notary and made her sign an act of sale. Provided they left her the hovel in the Impasse Saint- Mittre, Adelaide would have sold Plassans. .; Besides, Pierre assured her an annual income of six hundred francs, and made the most solemn promises to watch over his brother and sister. This oath satisfied the good woman. She recited, before the notary, the lesson which it pleased her son to whisper to her. On the following day the young man made her place her name at the foot of a document, in which she acknowledged having re- ceived fifty thousand francs as the price of the property. This was his stroke of genius, the act of a rogue He contented himself with telling his mother, who was a little surprised at signing such a receipt when she had not seen a centime of the fifty thousand francs, that it was a pure formality of no con- sequence whatever. As he slipped the paper into his pocket, he thought to himself, " Now, let the young wolves ask me to render an account. I will tell them the old woman has squandered everything-. They will never dare to go to law with me about it." A week afterwards, the party-wall no longer existed; the plough had turned up the mould of the vegetable beds ; the Fouques' plot of ground, in accordance with young Rougon's wish, was about to become a thing of the past. A few months later, the owner of the Jas-Meiffren
THE FOETUNE OF THE "ROUGONS. 59
had the old house of the market-gardeners, which was falling to pieces, pulled down.
As soon as Pierre had secured the fifty thousand francs he married Felicite Puech without any delay beyond what was absolutely necessary. Felicite was a little dark woman, such as one meets with in Provence. She looked like one of those brown, lean, noisy grasshoppers, which strike their heads against the almond-trees with their sudden hops. Skinny, fiat-breasted, with pointed shoulders and a face like the snout of a pole-cat with singularly sunken and accentuated features, it ^vas not easy to tell her age ; she looked just as much fifteen as thirty, although she was in reality only nineteen, four years j^ounger than her husband. The slyness of a cat was visible under her narrow black eyes, as small as gimlet holes. The low convex forehead, the nose slightly depressed at the root, with dilated nostrils, delicate and quivering, as if the better to scent odours, the thin red line of her lips, the prominent chin, united to her cheeks by strange looking dimples, all this physiognomy of a cunning dwarf w^as a living mask of intrigue, of active, envious ambition. With all her ugliness, Felicite had a sort of grace- fulness about her which rendered her seductive. People said of her that she could be pretty or ugly as she pleased. It would depend on the fashion in which she tied her magnificent hair ; but it depended still more on the triumphant smile which illumined her golden complexion when she thought to get the better of somebody. Born under an evil star, and believing herself ill-used by fortune, she was generally content to appear an ugly creature. She did not, however, intend to abandon the strjiggle, but promised herself the pleasure of making the whole town burst with envy by the display of an insolent hap- piness and luxury. Had she been able to act her part on a more extensive scale where her untrammelled spirit could have developed itself at its ease, she would certainly have quickly realised her dream. Her intelligence was far superior to that of the girls of her own station and education. Evil tongues asserted that her mother, who died a few years after she was born, had, during the early period of her married life, been over familiar with the Marquis de Carnavant, a young nobleman of the Saint-Marc quarter. In fact, FeKcite had the hands and feet of a marchioness, and, in this respect, did not appear to belong to that class of -workers from which she was descended.
60 THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS.
Her marriage Vs^ith. Pierre Rongon, that rongh-hewn peasant, that man of the Faubourg, whose family was certainly not in very good odour there, kept the old quarter in a state of astonishment for more than a month. She let people gossip, receiving the stiff congratulations of her friends with strange smiles. Her calculations had been made ; she chose Rougon for a husband as one would choose an accomplice. Her father, in accepting the young man, looked only to the advent of the fifty thousand francs which were going to save him from bankruptcy. Felicite, however, was more keen-sighted. She penetrated a long way into the future, and felt that she would be in want of a man of robust health, even if a little rustic, behind whom she could conceal herself, and whom she could move at her own will. She entertained a deliberate hatred for those insignificant little persons of the country, for that lean herd of notaries' clerks and prospective barristers, who stand shivering with cold while they are waiting for clients. Having no dowry, and despairing of ever marrying a rich merchant's son, she preferred a thousand times a peasant whom she could jfj use as a passive tool to some meagre graduate who would o"v»er- whelm her with his academic supe^^iority, and drag her all her life in search of hollow vanities. / She .B:as-43£_apinion that the woman oughiAomak^Jh^JJiaja/ She believed herself capable of carving a mmister out of a cow-herd. She had regarded Eougon with favour on account of his broad chest and stubby body, which was not altogether wanting in a certain elegance. A youth of such a build would bear with ease and sprightliness the world of intrigues which she dreamed of placing on his shoulders. She appreciated her husband's strength and.vigour because she clearly perceived that he was far from being a fool ; under his coarse flesh she had scented the cunning tricks of his spirit ; she was, however, a long way from really knowing her Rougon, she thought him much more stupid than he was. A few dajs after her marriage, as she was by chance fumbling in the drawer of a secretaire, she came across the receipt for the fifty thousand francs signed by Adelaide. She understood, and was rather frightened ; her own natural mediocre honesty rendered her averse to such expedients. Her terror, however, Avas not unmixed with admiration; Rougon became, in her eyes, a very smart man.
This young couple set to work bravely to conquer fortune. The firm of Puech & Lacamp was not so embarrassed as Pierre
THE FORTUNE OF THE EOITGONS. 61
thought. Their liabilities were small, they were- merely in want of read^'-money.. In the provinces, traders adopt measures of prudence which save them from serious disasters. Puech & Lacamp were prudent to an excessive degree ; they would not risk a thousand crowns without fear, so that their house, a veritable hole, was an unimportant one. The fifty thousand francs that Pierre brought sufficed to pay the debts and extend the business. Their commencement was good. For three consecutive years the harvest from their olive-trees was an abundant one. Felicite, by a bold stroke which fright- ened even Pierre and old Puech, made them purchase a con- siderable quantity of oil, which they stored in their warehouse. During the two following years, as the young woman had foreseen, the harvest failed, and a considerable rise in price occurred, which enabled them to realise large profits by selling out their stock.
A short time after this haul Puech & Lacamp retired from the firm, content with the few sous they had just secured, and gnawed by the ambition to die men of indepen- dent means.
The young couple, now sole masters of the business, thought that they had at last laid the foundation of their fortune.
" You have vanquished my ill-luck," Felicite would some- times say to her husband.
One of the rare weaknesses of her energetic nature was to believe herself stricken by misfortune. Hitherto, she main- tained, nothing had been successful with either herself or her father, in spite of all their efforts. Assisted by her southern superstition, she prepared to struggle with fate as one struggles with a creature of flesh and blood who is endeavouring to strangle you.
Circumstances very soon justified her apprehensions in a singular manner. The ill-luck returned, inexorable. Every year some fresh disaster shook Rougon's business. A bank- ruptcy involved them in the loss of a few thousand francs ; his estimates of the abundant harvests were falsified by the most incredible circumstances ; the safest speculations ran aground miserably. It was a truceless, merciless combat.
" You see I was born under an unlucky star," Felicite would say with bitterness.
And yet she would continue to struggle furiously, not understanding why she, who had shown such a keen scent in
62 THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
his first speculations, now only succeeded in giving her hus- band the most deplorable advice.
Pierre, dejected and less tenacious, would have liquidated his affairs a score of times had it not been for his wife's firm and obstinate attitude. She longed to be rich. She perceived that her ambition could only be built up by fortune. As soon as they possessed a few hundred thousand francs they would be masters of the town. She would get her husband appointed to an important post, and she would govern. It was not the attainment of 'these honours which troubled her ; she felt her- self marvellously well armed for that combat. But she was powerless in th^ face of the first bags of money, which had yet to be gained. ^/ If the ruling- of men caused her no apprehen- sion, she at least felt a sort of impotent rage before those five- franc pieces, mert, white and cold, over which her intriguing spirit had no power, and which obstinately resisted her.
The battle lasted for more than thirty years. The death of Puech was another heavy blow. Felicite, who counted upon an inheritance of about forty thousand francs, found that the selfish old man, in order to indulge himself in his old age, had sunk all his money in a life annuity. It made her quite ill. She was gradually becoming soured, she was growing more lean and harsh. To see her, from morning to night, whirling round the jars of oil, one would have said that she thought to stimulate the sale by continually flitting about like a restless fly. Her husband, on the contrary, became heavier ; misfor- tune fattened him, making him duller and more indolent. These thirty years of struggle did not, however, bring him to ruin. At each annual stock-taking they managed to make both ends meet fairly well; if they suffered any loss during one season, they recouped themselves the next. It was this living from hand to mouth which exasperated Felicite. She would, by far, have preferred a big failure. They would then, perhaps, have been able to commence life over again, instead of obsti- nately persisting in their small way of business, working them- selves to death to gain the bare necessaries of life. During a third part of a century they had not saved fifty thousand francs.
It should be mentioned that, from the very first years of their married life, they had a numerous family which became in the long run a heavy burden to them. Felicite, like many little women, had a fecundity which one would not have ex- pected from a person of her meagre frame. In five years, from
/
THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 63
1811 to 1815, she gave birth to three boys, one every two years. During the four following years she was delivered of two girls. Nothing is more conducive to procreative fertility than the placid, animal life of the country. The two last comers had but an indifferent welcome ; daughters are a terrible em- barrassment when one has no dowry to give them. Rougon declared, to whomsoever, would listen, that he had enough, that the devil would have to be pretty sharp to send him a sixth child. It fact, Felicite did not go any further. It is doubtful at what figure she would herself have stopped.
The young woman, however, did not regard this troop of brats as the cause of their ruin. On the contrary, she recon- structed on her sons' heads the fortune which was crumbling in her own hands. They were hardly ten years old before she discounted in her dreams their future careers. Doubting whether she w^ould ever succeed herself, she centred in them all her hopes of overcoming the animosity of fate. They would satisfy her disappointed vanities, they would give her that wealthy, honourable position which she had hitherto pursued in vain. From that time forward, without abandoning the struggle sustained by the business, she conceived a second plan to obtain the gratification of her domineering instincts. It seemed to her impossible that, amongst her three sons, there should not be a man of superior intellect, who would enrich them all. She felt it, she said. Accordingly, she nursed the brats with a fervour in which the severity of a mother was blended with the solicitude of a usurer. She amused herself by fattening them lovingly, as though they constituted a capital which would later on return a large interest.
" Enough ! " Pierre would sometimes exclaim, " all children are ungrateful. You are spoiling them, you are ruining us."
When Felicite spoke of sending them to college, he got angry. Latin was a useless luxury, it would be quite sufiicient if they went through the classes of a little neighbouring school. The young woman, however, persisted. She possessed certain •elevated instincts which made her take a great pride in sur- ^ rounding herself with accomplished children ; moreover, she felt that she could never allow her sons to remain as illiterate as her husband, if she wished to see them one day prominent men. She fancied them all three at Paris in high positions, which, however, she did not clearly define. When Rougon consented and the three youngsters had entered the eighth class, Felicite
/
64 THE POETUNE OF THE ROUGONS.
felt the most lively satisfaction she had ever experienced. She listened with delight as they talked of their professors and their studies. When she heard her eldest son make one of his brothers decline JRosa^ it sounded like the most delicious music to her. It is only fair to add that her joy was unmixed ■witt any sordid calculations. Even Rougon felt the satisfac- tion of an illiterate man perceiving" his sons growing wiser than himself. The fellowship which naturally grew up between their sons and those of the big-wigs of the town completed the parents' gratification. The youngsters were on familiar terms with the sons of the mayor and the sub-prefect, and even with two or three young gentlemen whom the Saint-Marc quarter had deigned to send to the Plassans college. Felicite was at a loss how to repay such an honour. The education of the three lads seriously encumbered the budget of the Rougon household.
Until the boj^s had taken their degrees, their parents, who kept them at college at enormous sacrifices, lived in hopes of their success ; and even when they had obtained their diplomas Felicite wished to continue her work, and persuaded her hus- band to send the three to Paris. Two of them devoted them- selves to the study of law, and the third passed through the course of the School of Medicine. Then, when they were men, w^ien they had exhausted the resources of the Rougon family and were obliged to return and establish themselves in the pro- vinces, the disenchantment of the poor parents commenced. The country seemed to reconquer its prey. The three young men idled about and grew fat. The bitterness of her ill-luck again assailed Felicite. Her sons were making her a bankrupt. They had ruined her, they did not return any interest on the capital which they represented. This last blow of fate was the heaviest, as it struck at the same time her ambitions and her maternal vanity. Rougon repeated to her from morning till night " I told 3^ou so ! " which only exasperated her all the more.
One day, as she was bitterly reproaching her eldest son with the large amount of money expended on his education, he said to her with equal bitterness : '^ I will repay you later on if I can. But as you had no means, you should have brought us up to a trade. We are out of our element, we are suffering more than you."
Felicite understood the wisdom of these words. From that time she ceased to accuse her children, and turned her anger
THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 65
against fate, which never wearied of striking her. She re- opened her grievances, and commenced to bemoan more and more the want of means which made her strand, as it were, in port When Kougon used to say to her, " Your sons are lazy fellows, they will eat up all we have," she would sourly reply, "Would to God I had more money to give them; if they do vegetate, poor fellows, it's because they haven't got a sou to bless themselves with."
At the beginning of the year 1848, on the eve of the Revolution of February, the three young Rougons held very precarious positions at Plassans. They presented most curious types, profoundly dissimilar, although they were descended parallelly from the same stock. They were in reality superior to their parents. The race of the Rougons was destined to become refined through its female side. Adelaide had made Pierre a man of moderate enterprise, disposed to low ambitions ; Felicite had inspired her sons with a higher intelligence, with a capacity for greater vices and greater virtues.
By this time the eldest, Eugene, was nearly forty years old. He was a man of middle height, slightly bald, and already dis- posed to obesit3^ He had his father's face, a long face with broad features ; beneath his skin one could perceive that fat- ness which produced the soft roundness of his features, and gave to his face the yellowish whiteness of wax. Though his massive square head betokened the peasant, his physiognomy was transfigured, lit up from within as U were, when, raising his drooping eyelids, he darted a glance from his eyes. In the son's case, the father's ponderousness had turned to gravity. This big fellow usually exhibited a formidable, sleepy attitude. From his heavy, languid movements one would have thought he was a giant stretching his limbs for action. By one of those alleged freaks of nature, of which, however, science is now commencing to discover the laws, the physical resemblance to Pierre was complete in Eugene, while Felicite seemed to have furnished him with the thinking substance. Eugene offered a curious case of certain moral and intellectual qualities inherited from the mother being imbedded in the coarse flesh of the father. He cherished lofty ambitions, possessed domineering instincts, and showed a singular contempt for trifling expedients and small fortunes.
He was a proof that Plassans perhaps was not mistaken in suspecting that Felicite had some blue blood in her veins. The
66 THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
passion for indulgence, which received a formidable develop- ment in the Rougons, and which was, in fact, the family characteristic, attained in his case its highest pitch ; he longed for self-indulgence, but through the pleasures of the mind which would gratify his burning desire for domination. A man such as this was never intended to succeed in a provincial town. He vegetated there for fifteen years, his eyes turned towards Paris, watching his opportunities. On his return to his little town, he had caused his name to be entered on the rolls, in order to be independent of his parents. He pleaded from time to time, earning a bare livelihood, without appearing to raise himself above an honest mediocrity. At Plassans his voice was considered thick, his movements heavy. He seldom succeeded in gaining a case for a client. He generally wan- dered from the question at issue, rambled, as the learned people of the place expressed it.
On one occasion particularly, when he was pleading in a case for damages, he forgot himself and strayed into apolitical disquisition. So much so that the President had to cut him short; whereupon he sat down immediately with a strange smile. His client was condemned to pay a considerable sum of money, a circumstance which did not, however, seem to cause Eugene the least regret for his irrelevant digression. He appeared to regard his speeches as mere exercises which would be of use to him later on. It was this that puzzled and disheartened Felicite. She would have liked to see her son dictating the law to the Civil Tribunal of Plassans. At last she came to entertain a very unfavourable opinion of her first- born. To her mind this lazy fellow could not be he who would shed a lustre on the family. Pierre, on the contrary, had ab- solute confidence in him, not that he was more penetrating than his wife, but because external appearances were sufficient for him, and he was flattering himself, as it were, by confidently believing in the genius of a son who was his living image. A month prior to the events of February, Eugene became rest- less ; a special inspiration made him anticipate the crisis. From that time he seemed to feel out of his element at Plassans. He would wander about the streets like an oppressed soul. At last he formed a sudden resolution and left for Paris, with scarcely five hundred francs in his pocket.
Aristide, the youngest son, was, so to speak, diametrically opposed to Eugene. He had his mother's face, and a covetous-
THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 67
ness and slyness of character adapted to trivial intrigues, in which his father's instincts predominated. Nature often feels the want of symmetry Short, with a pitiful countenance like the knob of a stick curiously carved into a Punch's head, Aristide ferreted and fumbled everywhere, without any scruples, eager only to gratify himself He loved money as his eldest brother loved power. While Eugene dreamed of bending a people to his will, and inebriated himself with visions of his future omnipotence, the other fancied himself ten times a millionaire, domiciled in a princely abode, eating and drink- ing to his heart's content, and gratifying the cravings of all his sensual and organic appetites. Above all things, he longed to make a rapid fortune. AVhen he was constructing his castles in the air, they would rise in his mind as if by magic ; he would become possessed of tons of gold in one night. These visions consorted best with his indolence, as he never troubled himself about the means, considering those the best which were the most expeditious. The race of the Rougons, of those coarse, greedy peasants with brute appetites, had matured too rapidly ; all the desires for material indulgence were centred in Aristide, augmented threefold by a precocious education, and rendered more insatiable and dangerous by their deliberateness. In spite of her delicate, effeminate intui- tion, Felicite preferred this son ; she did not perceive the greater affinity subsisting between herself and Eugene ; she excused the follies and indolence of her youngest son under the pretext that he would some day be the superior genius of the family, and that such a man is entitled to live a disordered life until the time comes when his intellectual forces reveal themselves.
Aristide subjected his powers of self-indulgence to a rude test. At Paris he led a low, idle life ; he was one of those students who enter their names for the terms at the taverns of the Quartier Latin. He did not remain there, however, more than two years ; his father, growing apprehensive, and seeing that he had not yet passed a single examination, kept him at Plassans and spoke of finding a wife for him, hoping that domestic cares would make him more steady. Aristide sub- mitted to be married.
He had not a very clear idea of his own ambitions at this time ; life in the country did not displease him ; he was batten- ing in his little town — eating, sleeping, and sauntering about.
G8 THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
Felicite pleaded his cause so earnestly that Pierre consented to board and lodge the newly-married couple, on condition that the young man should turn his attention to business. From this time he led a life of ease and idleness. He spent his days and the best part of his nights at the club, slipping out of his father's office like a schoolboy to go and gamble away the few louis that his mother gave him clandestinely.
It is necessary to have lived in the heart of a department to form a conception of the four years of sottishness which the fellow spent in this fashion. In every little town there is a group of individuals w^ho thus live upon their parents, pre- tending sometimes to work, but really cultivating idleness with a sort of religious zeal. Aristide was the type of these incorrigible drones, w^ho may be seen slouching about with that lazy inanity which is so characteristic of country life. For four 3^ears he did nothing but play ecarte. While he passed his time at the club, his wife, a fair-complexioned, inanimate- looking w^oman, helped to ruin the firm of Rougon by her in- ordinate love of showy dressing and her formidable appetite, a rather remarkable peculiarity in such a frail creature. Angele adored sky-blue ribbons and roast beef. She was the daughter of a retired captain, called Commander Sicardot, a good-hearted old gentleman, who had given her a dowry of ten thousand francs — all his savings. Pierre, in selecting Angele for his son, considered that he had made an unexpected bargain, so little did he esteem Aristide. This dowry of ten thousand francs, which determined his choice, ultimately became a millstone round his neck. His son was already a cunning rogue, and deposited the ten thousand francs with his father, with w^hom he entered into partnership. He refused, with the most sincere professions of devotion, to keep a single sou.
" We have no need of anything," he said ; " 3'ou will keep my wife and myself, and we will reckon up later on."
Pierre was in straitened circumstances, and accepted, not, however, without some uneasiness at Aristide's disinterested- nesa The latter calculated that it would be years before his father would have ten thousand francs ready money to repay him, so that he and his wife w^ould live largely at his father's expense so long as the partnership could not be dissolved. It was an admirable investment for his few bank-notes. When the oil-dealer recognised what a foolish bargain he had made
THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. G9
he was not in a position to rid himself of Aristide ; Ang-ele's dowry was involved in speculations which were turning- out unfavourably. He was exasperated, stung" to the heart, at having to feed his daughter-in-law's enormous appetite and keep his son in idleness. Had he been able to buy out their interest in the business he would twenty times over have turned out this vermin that was sucking his blood, as he em- phatically expressed it. Felicite secretly defended them ; the young" man, who had penetrated her dreams of ambition, used to describe to her every evening the most elaborate plans by which he would very shortly realise a fortune. By a rare chance she remained on excellent terms with her daughter-in- law. It must be confessed that Angele had no will of her own — she could be moved like a piece of furniture, Pierre fell into a rage when his wife spoke to him of the success their youngest son would ultimately achieve ; he declared that he would really bring their house to ruin.
During the four years the young couple lived with him he stormed in this manner, wasting his impotent rage in quar- rels, without in the least disturbing the smiling equanimity of Aristide and Angele. They were located there, and there they intended to remain like blocks of wood. At last Pierre had a stroke of luck which enabled him to return the ten thousand francs to his son. When he wanted to reckon up accounts with him Aristide interposed so much chicanery that he had to let them go without deducting a sou for their board and lodging. They went and lived a little way off, in a part of the old quarter called the Place Saint-Louis. The ten thousand francs were soon consumed. They had everything to get for their new home. Aristide, moreover, did not change his mode of living as long as there was any monej^ in the house. When he had reached his last hundred-franc note he felt rather ner- vous. He was seen prowling about the town in a suspicious manner. He no longer took his customary cup of coffee at the club ; he watched feverishly whilst play was going on, with- out touching a card. Poverty made him more wretched than he really was. He bore the blow for a long time, obstinately refusing to do anything to avert the calamity.
In 1840 he had a son, little Maxime, whom his grand- mother Felicite fortunately sent to college, paying his fees clandestinely. That made one mouth less at home ; but poor Angele was dying of hunger; her husband was at last com-
70 THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS.
pelled to seek a situation. He procured a place at the Sub- Prefecture. He remained there nearly ten years, and only reached a salary of eighteen hundred francs. From that time forward, he longed, with ever increasing malevolence and rancour, for those enjoyments of which he was deprived. His lowly position exasperated him ; the miserable hundred and fifty francs which he received every month seemed to him an irony of fate. Never did man burn with such desire for sensual gratification. Felicite, to whom he imparted his suffer- ings, was by no means grieved to see him so eager. She thought his misery would stimulate his energies. Lying in wait, with his ears open, he commenced to look about like a thief seeking a job. In the beginning of 1848, when his brother left for Paris, he had a faint idea of following him. But Eugene was a bachelor, whilst he could not take his wife so far with him without any money in his pocket. He waited, scenting a catastrophe, and prepared to strangle the fii^st prey that fell in his way.
The other son, Pascal, who came between Eugene and Aristide, did not appear to belong to the family. His was one of those frequent cases which contradict the laws of heredity. Nature often produces, in the middle of a race, one being in whom she amalgamates all the elements of her procreative forces. Nothing in the moral or phj^sical constitution of Pascal recalled the Pougons. Tall, with a smooth, stern- looking face, he had an uprightness of spirit, a love of study, a retiring modesty which contrasted strangely with the feverish ambitions and unscrupulous intrigues of his family. After having acquitted himself admirably in his medical studies at Paris, he retired, by preference, to Plassans, notwithstanding the offers he received from his professors. He loved a quiet country life ; he maintained that for a studious man such a life was preferable to the excitement of Paris. Even at Plassans he did not exert himself to extend his practice. Very steady, and despising fortune, he contented himself with the few patients sent to him by chance. All his pleasures were concentrated in a pretty little house in the new town, where he kept himself religiously shut up, devoting his time with a real love to the study of natural history. He was particularly fond of physiology. It was known in the town that he frequently purchased dead bodies from the grave- digger of the hospital, a circumstance which rendered him an
THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 71
object of horror to delicate ladies and certain timid gentlemen. Fortunately they did not actually look upon him as a sorcerer ; but his practice diminished, he was regarded as an original character, to whom people of good society ought not to entrust even the tip of their finger, for fear of being compromised. The mayor's wife was one day heard to say :
" I would sooner die than be attended by that gentleman. He smells of death."
From that time, Pascal was condemned. He seemed to re- joice at this mute terror which he inspired. The fewer patients he had, the more time he could devote to his favourite sciences. As his fees were very moderate, the poorer people remained faithful to him ; he earned just enough to live, and lived contentedly, a thousand leagues away from the rest of the country, ab- sorbed in the pure delight of his researches and discoveries. From time to time he sent a memoir to the Academic des Sciences at Paris. Plassans did not know that this original character, this gentleman who smelt of death, was well-known and highly-esteemed in the world of learning. When people saw him starting, on Sunday, for an excursion among the Garrigues hills, with a botanist's bag hung round his neck and a geologist's hammer in his hand, they would shrug their shoulders, institut- ing a comparison between him and some other doctor of the town who was noted for his smart cravat, his affability to the ladies, and his splendid clothes, ever emitting a delicious odour of violet. Pascal's parents did not understand him any better than other people. AYhen Felicite saw him adopting such a strange, unpretentious mode of life she was stupe- fied, and reproached him for disappointing her hopes. She, who tolerated Aristide's idleness because she thought it would prove fertile, could not view without regret the slow progress of Pascal, his love of obscurity and contempt for riches, his determined resolve to lead a life of retirement. He was certainly not the child who would ever gratify her vanities.
"But where do you spring from?" she would sometimes say to him. " You are not one of us. Look at your brothers, how they keep their eyes open, striving to profit by the educa- tion we have given them, while you waste your time on follies and trifles. You make a very poor return to us who have ruined ourselves for your education. No, you are certainly not one of us."
72 THE FOBTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
Pascal, who preferred to laugh whenever he had to feel annoyed, replied cheerfully, but not without a sting- of irony :
" Oh, you need not be frightened, I shall never drive you to the verge of bankruptcy ; when any of you are ill, I will attend you for nothing."
Moreover, though he never displayed any repugnance to his family, he very rarely saw them, following his instincts as against his natural inclinations. Before Aristide obtained a situation at the Sub-Prefecture, Pascal frequently came to his assistance. He had remained a bachelor. He had not the least suspicion of the grave events that were preparing. For two or three years he had been devoting himself to the study of the grand problem of heredity, comparing the human and animal races together, and was deeply absorbed in the strange results which he obtained. The observations which he had made in respect of himself and his family had been, as it were, the point of departure for his studies. The common people recognised so well, with a sort of unconscious intuition, that he was something quite different to the other Rougons, that they used to call him Monsieur Pascal, without ever adding his family name.
Three years prior to the revolution of 1848 Pierre and Felicite retired from business. Old age was coming on apace ; they were both past fifty and were weary of the struggle. In the face of their ill fortune, they were afraid of being ultimately ruined if they obstinately persisted. Their sons, by disap- pointing their expectations, had struck the final blow. Now that they despaired of ever being enriched by them, they were anxious to make some provision at least for old age. They retired with forty thousand francs at the very most. This sum provided an annual income of two thousand francs, just sufficient to live in a small way in the provinces. Fortunately they were alone, having succeeded in marrying their daughters Marthe and Sidonie, the former residing at Marseilles and the latter at Paris.
They would have liked very much, after liquidating their affairs, to take up their abode in the new town, the quarter of the retired traders, but they could not risk it. Their income was too small ; they were afraid that they would cut but a poor figure there. As a sort of compromise, they took apart- ments in the Rue de la Banne, the street which separates the old quarter from the new one. As their abode was in that row
THE FORTUNE OP THE EOUGONS. 73
of houses which borders the old quarter, they still lived among* the common people ; nevertheless they could ' see from their windows the town of the richer classes, so that they were just on the threshold of the promised land.
Their apartments, situated on the second floor, consisted of three larg-e rooms, a dining"-room, a drawing-room, and a bed- room. The first floor was occupied by the owner, a stick and umbrella manufacturer, who had a shop on the ground floor. The house, which was narrow and not very deep, had only two storeys. Felicite moved in with a bitter pang" of regret. In the countr}^, to live in another person's house is an avowal of poverty. Every family of position at Plassans has a house of its own, landed property being very cheap there. Pierre kept the purse-strings tied ; he would not hear of any embellish- ments. The old furniture, faded, worn-out, and damaged, had to do without even being repaired. Felicite, however, who keenly felt the necessity for this parsimony, exerted herself to give a fresh polish to all these wrecks ; she herself knocked nails into some of the furniture which was more dilapidated than the rest, and darned the frayed velvet of the arm-chairs.
The dining-room, which, like the kitchen, was at the back, was nearly bare ; a table and a dozen chairs were lost in the darkness of this large apartment, the window of which opened on to the grey wall of a neighbouring house. As nobody ever went into the bed-room, Felicite had stowed all the useless furniture there; besides a bedstead, a wardrobe, a secretaire, and a wash-stand, there were two cradles put one on top of the other, a sideboard the doors of which were missing, and a book-case quite empty, venerable ruins which the old woman could. not make up her mind to part with. But all her cares were bestowed upon the drawing-room. She almost succeeded in making it comfortable and decent. The furniture was covered with yellowish velvet with satin flowers; in the middle stood a round table with a marble top, while console-tables, surmounted with mirrors, were placed at the two ends of the room. There was even a carpet, which only covered the middle of the floor, and a lustre adorned with a covering of white muslin, which the flies had spotted with black specks. . On the walls were hung six lithographs representing the great battles of Napoleon. This furniture dated from the first years of the Empire. The only embellishment Felicite could obtain was to have the walls hung with an orange-
74 THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
coloured paper figured with large flowers. The drawing-room thus wore a strange, yellow hue, which filled it with an artificial dazzling light. The furniture, the paper, and the window curtains were yellow ; the carpet and even the marble tops of the round table and of the consoles had a touch of yellow. When the curtains were drawn, the colours harmonised fairly well and the drawing-room looked decent.
But Felicite had dreamed of quite a different kind of luxury. She regarded with mute despair this ill-concealed misery. She usually sat in the drawing-room, the best apartment in the house. One of her distractions, at the same time the sweetest and the bitterest, was to sit at one of the windows of this room, which looked upon the Rue de la Banne and from which she obtained a side view of the Place in front of the Sub-Prefecture. That was the paradise of her dreams. This little, neat, and tidy spot, with its bright houses, seemed to her a Garden of Eden. She would have given ten j^ears of her life to possess one of those habitations. The house forming the left-hand corner, in which the receiver of taxes resided, was a particu- larly strong temptation to her. She contemplated it with the eager longing of a pregnant woman. Sometimes, when the windows of this abode were open, she could catch a glimpse of richly furnished recesses, and other little views of tasteful elegance which made her burn with envy.
At this period the Rougons were passing through a curious crisis of vanity and unsatiated appetites. The few proper feelings which they did once entertain were becoming ex- hausted. They posed as victims of evil fortune, not with resignation, but with the bitter determination not to die until they had satisfied their ambitions. In reality, they did not abandon any of their hopes, notwithstanding their advanced age. Felicite professed to feel a presentiment that she would die rich. But each day of poverty weighed them down the more. When they recapitulated their vain attempts — when they recalled their thirty years' struggle, and the defections of their children — when they saw their airy castles converted into this yellow drawing-room, the shabbiness of which had to be concealed behind the drawn curtains, they were consumed with bitter rage. Then, as a consolation, they would devise plans for making a colossal fortune, seeking all sorts of com- binations. Felicite would fancy herself the winner of the grand prize of a hundred thousand francs in a lottery, while
THE FOETUKE OF THE EOUGONS. 75
Pierre saw himself alighting upon some wonderful speculation. They lived in one sole thought — to make a fortune immediately, in a few hours — to be rich and enjoy themselves, if only for a year. Their whole existence aimed at this end, with the stubbornness of an animal. They still cherished some faint hopes with regard to their sons, with that peculiar egotism of parents who cannot bear to think that they have sent their children to college without deriving some personal advantage from it.
Felicite did not appear to have aged, she was still the same little dark woman, restless and buzzing about like a grass- hopper. Any person walking behind her on the pavement would have thought her a young girl of fifteen summers from the lightness of her step and the angularity of her shoulders and waist Her face had scarcely undergone any change, it was simply a little more sunken, assuming more and more a resemblance to the snout of a pole-cat. One would have said it was the head of a little girl, which had become dry and sallow without any alteration of features.
As for Pierre Rougon, he had grown corpulent, and had become a highly respectable citizen who only lacked a decent income to make him a very dignified individual. His pale, clammy complexion, his heaviness, his languid manner, seemed to savour of wealth. He had one day heard a peasant, who did not know him, say : " Ah ! he's some rich fellow, that fat old gentleman there. He's no cause to worry about his dinner ! " A reflection which stung him to the heart, for he considered it a cruel mockery to be a poor devil while possess- ing the corpulence and weight of a millionaire. When he shaved on Sunday in front of a small five-sou looking-glass hanging from the fastening of a window, he would think to himself how much better he would look at the Sub-Prefecture, in a dress-coat and white necktie, than such or such a function- ary of Plassans. This peasant's son, grown sallow from business worries, and corpulent from a sedentary life, whose hateful passions were hidden under the natural placidity of his features, really had that air of solemn inanity and imbecility which gives a man an official appearance. People imagined that his wife held a rod over him, but they were mistaken. He was as self-willed as a brute. Any determined expression of extraneous will would drive him into a violent ragfe. Felicite was too docile to thwart him ;
76 THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
the fluttering, lively nature of that dwarf had no intention of running her head against a post. When she wished to obtain something from her husband, or drive him the way she thought best, she would buzz round him in her grasshopper fashion, stinging him on all sides, and returning to the charge a hundred times until he yielded almost unconsciously. He felt, moreover, that she was wiser than he, and tolerated her advice with moderate patience. ,. Felicite, more useful than the coachman's fly, would sometimes do all the work while she was buzzing round Pierre's ears. Strange to say, the husband and viUe never accused each other of their ill-success. The only bone of contention was the education lavished on their children.
The revolution of 1848 found all the Rougons on the look- out, exasperated by their bad luck, and disposed to lay violent hands on fortune if ever they should meet her in a by-way. They were a family of bandits lying in wait, ready to rifle and plunder events. Eugene kept an eye on Paris; Aristide dreamed of strangling Plassans ; the mother and father, probably the most eager of the lot, reckoned to work on their own account, and to derive some additional advantage from their sons' doings. Pascal alone, that discreet wooer of science, led the happy, indifferent life of a lover in his little bright house in the new town.
77
CHAPTER III.
At Plassans, that immured town in which the distinction of classes was so clearly marked in 1848, the commotion caused by the political events was very slig-ht. Even at the present day the popular voice is* stifled there ; the middle classes bring- their prudence to bear, the nobility their mute despair, and the clerg-y their shrewd cunning-. Kings may usurp thrones, or republics be established, with scarcely causing a slight commotion in the town. Plassans is asleep while Paris is fighting-. But though on the surface the town ma}' appear calm and indifferent, there is a hidden work going on under- neath affording matter for strange reflection. Though shots are rare in the streets, intrigues are filling the drawing-rooms of the new town and the Saint-Marc quarter. Until the year 1830, the people were reckoned of no account. Even at the present day they are similarly ignored. Everything is settled between the clergy, the nobility, and the gentry. The priests, who are very numerous, prescribe the political colours of the place ; they constitute, as it were, the subterranean mines and the blows in the dark, adopting a prudent, timorous system, which hardly effects a single step in advance or retreat in the space of ten years. These secret intrigues of men who desire above all things to avoid a disturbance require a special shrewdness, an aptitude for small matters, and the endurance of persons callous to all passions. It is thus that the provincial dilatoriness, which is so freely ridiculed at Paris, is full of treachery, of secret butcher}^ of hidden victories and defeats. These worthy men, particularly when their interests are at stake, kill at home with a snap of the finger, as we kill with a cannon in the public thoroughfare.
The political history of Plassans, like that of all little towns in Provence, is singularly characteristic. Until 1830, the inhabitants remained observant Catholics and fervent roj^alists ; even the lower classes would swear only by God and their legitimate sovereigns. Then there came a sudden change ;
78 THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS.
faith departed, the working- and middle classes deserted the cause of legitimacy, and gradually espoused the great demo- cratic movement of our time. When the revolution of 1848 broke out, the nobility and the clergy were left alone to labour for the triumph of Henri V. For a long time they regarded the accession of the Orleanists as a ridiculous experiment, which sooner or later would bring back the Bourbons ; although their hopes were singularly shaken, they nevertheless continued the struggle, scandalised by the defection of their former allies, whom they strove to win back to their cause. The Saint- Marc quarter, assisted by all the parish priests, set to work. Among the middle classes, and especially among the people, the enthusiasm was very great on the morrow of the events of February ; these republican apprentices were in haste to ex- pend their revolutionary fever. For the gentry of the new town, however, this conflagration had the brilliancy and dura- tion of a straw fire. The small landlords and the retired tradespeople who had had their good days, or had made a round little fortune under the monarchy, were soon seized with panic ; the Republic, with its constant shocks and con- vulsions, made them tremble for their money and their own selfish existence.
Consequently, when the clerical reaction of 1849 was pro- claimed, nearly all the middle classes passed over to the Con- servative party. They were received with open arms. The new town had never had such close relations with the Saint- Marc quarter : some of the nobility even went so far as to shake hands with the lawyers and retired oil-dealers. This unexpected familiarity kindled the enthusiasm of the new quarter, which henceforward waged a bitter warfare against the republican government. To bring about such a coalition, the clergy had to display marvellous skill and endurance. The nobility of Plassans were for the most part plunged, like a moribund, into an invincible prostration. They remained faithful, but they were seized by the lethargy of earth, and preferred to remain inactive, allowing the heavens to work their will. They would gladly have had their solitary silence interpreted as a protest, feeling, perhaps, a vague presentiment that their divinities were dead, and that there was nothing for them to do but go and rejoin them. Even at this period of confusion, when the catastrophe of 1848 gave them a momentary hope of the return of the Bourbons, they manifested a torpid
THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 79
indifference, speaking of rushing" into the melee, althoug-h they could never leave their hearths without a pang of regret.
The clergy combated indefatigably this feeling of impotence and resignation. They infused a kind of passion into their work : a priest, when he is in despair, struggles all the more fiercely. The fundamental policy of the Church is to march straight forward, even though she may have to postpone the accomplishment of her projects for several centuries ; she never wastes a single hour, but is always pushing forward with increasing energy. It was the clergy, therefore, who led the reaction of Plassans ; the nobility only lent them their name, nothing more. They concealed themselves behind the nobility, restrained them, directed them, and even succeeded in makino- them lead a factious life. When they had induced them to overcome their repugnance so far as to make common cause with the middle classes, they believed themselves certain of victory. The country w^as marvellously well prepared. This ancient royalist town, this population of peaceful householders and timorous tradespeople, were destined to range, sooner or later, on the side of law and order. The clergy, by their tactics, hastened the conversion. After gaining the landlords of the new town to their side, they succeeded in conquering the little retail- dealers of the old quarter. From that time the reac- tionary movement obtained complete possession of the town. All opinions were represented in this reaction ; such a mixture of embittered Liberals, Legitimists, Orleanists, Bonapartists, and Clericals was never seen before. It mattered little, how- ever, at this time. The sole object was to kill the Republic ; and the Republic was at the point of death. A fraction of the people — a thousand workmen at most, out of the ten thousand souls in the town — still saluted the tree of liberty planted in the middle of the Place in front of the Sub-Prefecture.
The shrewdest politicians of Plassans, who led the reac- tionary movement, did not scent the Empire until very much later. The prince himself only inspired them with a moderate admiration. They reckoned him a nonentity, a dreamer, in- capable of laying hands on France, and especially of maintain- ing his authority. To them he was only a tool whom they could make use of, who would clear their way, and whom they would turn out as soon as the hour arrived for the rightful claimant to show himself. In the meantime, months elapsed and they became uneas}*. It was only then that they vaguely
80 THE FOETUNE OF THE ROUGONS.
perceived they were being- duped : they had no time, however, to take any steps ; the Coup d'Etat burst over their heads, and they were compelled to applaud. That great abomination, the Republic, had been assassinated ; that, at least, was some sort of triumph. The clerg-y and the nobility accepted accomplished facts with resignation ; postponing, until later, the realisation of their hopes, and making amends for their miscalculations by uniting with the Bonapartists for the purpose of crushing the last Republicans.
These events laid the foundation of the Rougons' fortune. Mixed up with the various phases of the crisis, they rose on the ruins of liberty. These bandits had been lying in wait to rob the Republic ; as soon as it had been strangled, they assisted in plundering it.
After the events of February, Felicite, who had the keenest scent of the family, perceived that they w^ere at last on the right track. She commenced to flutter round her husband, goading him on to bestir himself. The first rumours of the revolution had terrified Pierre. When his wife, however, had made him understand that they had little to lose and much to gain from a convulsion, he soon came round to her way c' thinking.
" I don't know what you can do," Felicite repeatedly said, " but it seems to me there's plisnty to be done. Did not Monsieur de Carnavant say to us one day that he would be rich if ever Henri V should return, and that this sovereign would magnificently recompense those who had worked for his return? Perhaps our fortune lies there. We may yet be lucky."
The Marquis de Carnavant, that nobleman who, according to the scandalous talk of the town, had had intimate relations with Felicite's mother, used to visit the married couple occasionally. Evil tongues asserted that Madame Rougon resembled him. He was a little, lean, active man, seventy-five years old at that time, and she certainly appeared to be taking his features and manner as she grew older. It was said that the wreck of his fortune, from which a big slice had already been cut by his father at the time of his emigration, had been squandered on women. Indeed, he cheerfully acknowledged his poverty. Brought up by one of his relations, the Count de Yalqueyras, he lived the life of a parasite, eating at the count's table and occupying a small apartment under his roof.
" Little one," he would often say to Felicite, as he patted
THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 81
her on the cheek, "if ever Henri V gives me a fortune, I will make you my heiress ! "
He still called Felicite "little one," even when she was fifty years old. It was of these friendly pats, of these repeated promises of an inheritance, that Madame Rougon was thinking when she endeavoured to drive her husband into politics. Mon- sieur de Carnavant had often bitterly lamented his inability to render her any assistance. No doubt he would treat her like a father if ever he should acquire some influence. Pierre, to whom his wife half explained the situation in veiled terms, declared his readiness to move in any direction indicated.
The marquis's peculiar position qualified him for an ener- getic agent of the reactionary movement at Plassans from the first days of the Republic. This busy little man, who had everything to gain from the return of his legitimate sovereigns, worked assiduously for their cause. AVhile the wealthy nobility of the Saint-Marc quarter were slumbering in mute despair, fearing perhaps to compromise themselves and again be condemned to exile, he multiplied himself, as it were, spread the propaganda and rallied the faithful. He was a weapon whose handle was held by an invisible hand. From that time forward he paid daily visits to the Rougons. He required a centre of operations. His relative, Monsieur de Valqueyras, having prohibited him from bringing any of his associates into his house, he had chosen Felicite's yellow drawing-room. Moreover, he very soon found Pierre a valuable aid. He could not go himself and preach the cause of Legitimacy to the petty traders and workmen of the old quarter ; the}'' would have hooted him. Pierre, on the other hand, who had lived amongst these people, spoke their language and knew their wants, was able to catechise them in a friendly way. He thus became an indispensable man. In less than a fortnight the Rougons were more determined royalists than the king himself. The marquis, perceiving Pierre's zeal, had shrewdly sheltered himself behind him. What was the use of making himself conspicuous, when a man with broad shoulders was willing to bear upon them the burden of all the follies of a party.? He allovred Pierre to reigu, to swell himself with importance, to speak with authority, content to restrain him or urge him on, according to the necessities of the cause. Accordingly, the old oil-dealer soon became an important personage. In the evening, when they were alone, Felicite used to say to him ;
82 THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
<' Go on, don't be frightened. We're on the right track. If this continues we shall be rich ; we shall have a drawing- room like the tax-receiver's, and we can give parties."
A nucleus of conservatives had been formed at the Rougons' house, where meetings were held every evening in the yellow drawing-room to declaim against the Republic.
There were three or four retired merchants who trembled for their money, and clamoured with all their might for a wise and strong government. An old almond-dealer, a member of the Municipal Council, Monsieur Isidore Granoux, was the head of this group. His hare-like mouth, cloven a little way from the nose, his round eyes, his air of mingled satisfaction and astonishment, made him resemble a fat goose whose digestion is attended by a wholesome terror of the cook. He spoke little, having but little command of words; he only pricked up his ears when any one accused the republicans of wishing to pillage the houses of the rich ; then he would colour up to such a degree as to give rise to apprehensions of an approaching apoplectic fit, muttering at the same time low imprecations, in which the words "idlers," "scoundrels,*' *' thieves," " assassins," frequently recurred.
All those who frequented the yellow drawing-room were not, however, as cross as this fat goose. A rich landlord. Monsieur Roudier, with a plump, insinuating face, used to dis- course there for hours together, with the passionateness of an Orleanist whose calculations had been upset by the fall of Louis Philippe. He was formerly a hosier at Paris, where he had been purveyor to the Court, but had now retired to Plassans. He had made his son a magistrate, relying on the Orleanist party to promote him to the highest dignities. The revolution having ruined all his hopes, he rushed wildly into the reaction. His fortune, his early commercial relations with the Tuileries, which he represented as extremely cordial, that prestige which is enjoyed by every man in the provinces who has made his money in Paris and deigns to come and spend it in the heart of a department, gave him a very powerful influence in the coun- try ; some persons listened to him as though he were an oracle. • But the strongest intellect of the 3^ellow drawing-room was certainly Commander Sicardot, Aristide's father-in-law. Of Herculean frame, with a brick-red face, scarred and planted with clusters of grey hair, he was reckoned amongst the most pompous old dolts of the Grande Armee. Durmg the days of
THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 83
February, he was exasperated at the street warfare ; he never wearied of mentioning the subject, proclaiming with indigna- tion that this kind of fighting was shameful, and he recalled with pride the grand reign of Napoleon.
There also frequented the Rougons' house an individual with moist hands and equivocal look, the worthy Monsieur Vuillet, a bookseller, who supplied all the devout ladies of the town with holy images and rosaries. Vuillet kept a library of classical and religious works ; he was a strict Catholic, a cir- cumstance which insured him the custom of the numerous convents and parish churches. '. By a stroke of genius he had combined with his business the publication of a little bi-weekly journal, the "Gazette de Plassans," which was devoted exclu- sively to the interests of the clergy. This paper involved an annual loss to him of a thousand francs, but it constituted him the champion of the Church, and enabled him to dispose of his sacred unsaleable stock. This illiterate man, whose ortho- graphy was faulty, himself wrote the articles of the " Gazette" with a humility and rancour that compensated for his lack of talent. The marquis, in entering on the campaign, perceived immediately the advantage that might be derived from the co-operation of this insipid sacristan, this coarse, mercenary pen. After February the articles in the "Gazette" contained fewer mistakes ; the marquis revised them.
One can now imagine what a singular spectacle the Rougons' yellow drawing-room presented every evening. All opinions jostled each other, barking at the same time at the Republic. They were all agreed in their hatred. The marquis, who, indeed, never missed a meeting, appeased b}'- his presence the little squabbles which arose between the commander and the other adherents. These plebeians were inwardly flattered at the handshakings which he distributed on his arrival and departure. Roudier, however, like a freethinker of the Rue Saint-Honore, asserted that the marquis had not a sou to bless himself with, and was disposed to make light of him. The latter preserved the amiable smile of a nobleman lowering himself to the level of these middle-class people, without any of those contemptuous grimaces which any other resident of the Saint-Marc quarter would have thought it right to display. The parasite life he had led had rendered him flexible. He was the life and soul of the group, commanding in the name of unknown personages whom he never revealed. *' They want
84 THE FOBTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
this, they don't want that," he would say. These concealed divinities, watching over the destinies of Plassans from behind their cloud, without appearing" to interfere directly with public matters, must have been certain priests, the great political agents of the country. When the marquis pronounced this mysterious " they," which inspired the assembly with a mar- vellous respect, Vuillet confessed, with a gesture of devotion, that he knew them very well.
The happiest person of all was Felicite. At last she had people coming to her drawing-room. It was true she felt a little ashamed of her old yellow velvet furniture. She consoled herself, however, by thinking of the rich things she would purchase when the good cause should have triumphed. The Kougons had, in the end, regarded their royalism as very serious. Felicitc went as far as to say, when Koudier was not there, that if they had not made a fortune in the oil business the fault lay in the monarchy of July. It was her mode of giving a political colour to their poverty. She had a friendly word for everybody, even for Granoux, inventing every evening some new polite mode of waking him up when it was time to depart.
The drawing-room, that nucleus of conservatives belonging to all parties, which daily augmented its numbers, soon wielded a powerful influence. Owing to the diversified characters of its members, and especially to the secret impulse which each one received from the clergy, it became the centre of the reactionary movement, spreading its influence throughout Plassans. The policy of the marquis, by submerging his own individuality, constituted Kougon the chief of the party. The meetings were held at his house, and this circumstance sufficed to stamp him, in the shortsighted view of the majority'', as the head of this group, and to point him out for public observation. The whole work was attributed to him ; he was believed to be the ringleader of the movement which was gradually bringing over to the conservative party those who were previously enthusiastic republicans. There are some situations which benefit only persons of bad repute. They lay the foundations of their fortune where men who are better situated and more influential would never dare to risk theirs. Surely Roudier, Granoux, and the others, all men of means and respectability, should have been preferred a thousand times to Pierre as the acting leaders of the conservative party ! But none of them would have consented to turn their drawing-room into a centre
THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS. 85
of political agitation ; their convictions did not go so far as to induce them to compromise themselves openly; in fact they were only brawling' provincial babblers, who liked to inveigh against the Republic at a neighbour's house as long as the neighbour was willing to bear the responsibility of their denunciations. The game was too risky. There was no one among the middle-classes of Plassans who would play it except the Rougons, whose insatiate longings urged them on to extreme measures.
In the month of April, 1849, Eugene suddenly left Paris, and came to stay with his father for a fortnight. Nobody ever knew the purpose of this journey. It is very probable that Eugene wanted to sound his native town, to ascertain whether he could successfully stand as a candidate for the Legislative Assembly, which was about to replace the Constituent Assembly. He was too shrewd to risk a failure. No doubt public opinion appeared to him little in his favour, for he abstained from any attempt. It was not known at Plassans, moreover, what had become of him, what he was doing at Paris. They found him on his arrival less heavy and lethargic. They surrounded him, endeavouring to make him speak. He feigned ignorance, and, persisting in this attitude, he compelled them to talk ; a little perspicacity would have discovered under his apparent uncon- cern a great anxiety with regard to the political opinions of the town. He seemed to be sounding the ground more on behalf of a party than on his own account.
Although he had renounced all hope for himself, he never- theless remained at Plassans until the end of the month, attending assiduously the meetings in the yellow drawing- room. As soon as the bell rang, he used to take up his position in the window recess, as far as possible from the lamp. He remained there the whole evening, resting his chin in the palm of his right hand, and listening religiously. The grossest absurdities did not disturb his equanimity. He signified his approval of everything by a shake of the head, even to the wild growls of Granoux. When any one asked him his opinion, he politely repeated the opinion of the majority. Nothing seemed to tire his patience, neither the empty dreams of the marquis, who would speak of the Bourbons as if it were the day after 1815, nor the effusions of citizen Roudier, who got- quite pathetic when he recounted the number of pairs of socks which he had supplied to the citizen king. On the contrary, ho
F
86 THE FOETUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
seemed quite at his ease amidst this Tower of Babel. Sometimes when these grotesque personages were storming with might and main against the Republic, his eyes were seen to smile without his lips losing their air of gravity. His meditative manner of listening, his invariable complacency, had earned for him the sympathy of every one. lie was considered a nonentity, though a very decent fellow. Whenever an old oil or almond dealer could not get a hearing, amidst the clamour, for a plan by which he could save France if he were master, he would take himself off to Eugene and shout his marvellous suggestions in his ear. Eugene would gently nod his head, as though delighted with the grand projects he was listening to. Vuillet, alone, regarded him with a suspicious eye. This book- seller, half sacristan and half journalist, spoke less than the others, but was more observant. He had noticed that the lawyer conversed at times in a corner with Commander Sicardot. He determined to watch them, but he never succeeded in overhearing a single word. Eugene silenced the commander by a wink whenever Vuillet approached them. From that time, Sicardot never spoke of the Napoleons without a mysterious smile.
Two days before his return to Paris, Eugene met his brother, Aristide, on the Cours Sauvaire, and the latter accompanied him for a short distance with the importunity of a man in search of advice. Aristide was in great perplexity. From the day of the proclamation of the Republic, he had manifested the most lively enthusiasm for the new government. His intelligence, sharpened by his two years' stay at Paris, enabled him to see farther than the thick heads of Plassans. He foresaw the impotence of the Legitimists and Orleanists, without distin- guishing clearly who was the third thief that would come and rob the Republic. He had ranged himself on the side of the victors at all hazard. He had severed all connection with his father, whom he publicly denounced as an old fool, an old imbecile inveigled by the nobility.
" Yet mother is an intelHgent woman," he would add. " I should never have thought her capable of inducing her husband to join a party whose hopes are chimerical. They are going the way to end their lives in poverty. But women know nothing about politics."
He wanted to sell himself as dearly as possible. His great anxiety, from that time, was to go with the stream, to range
THE FOKTUNE OF THE KOUGOXS. 87
himself on the side of that party which, in the hour of triumph, would be able to reward him munificently. Unfortunately he was groping in the dark. Shut up in his province, without a guide, without any precise information, he felt quite lost. Whilst waiting till the course of events traced out a sure path for him, he preserved the attitude of an enthusiastic republican, which he had assumed from the very first daj^ Thanks to this attitude, he remained at the Sub-Prefecture ; his salary was even raised. Burning with desire to play a part, however, he persuaded a bookseller, a rival of Yuillet, to establish a demo- cratic journal, of which he became one of the most energetic contributors. Under his impulse the " Independant" w^aged a merciless w^arfare against the reactionaries. But the current gradually carried him farther than he w^ished to go ; he ended by writing inflammatory articles, which made him shudder when he re-read them. It was remarked at Plassans that a series of attacks w^ere directed b}'' the son against all those persons whom his father was in the habit of receiving of an evening in his famous j^ellow drawing-room. The wealth of Roudier and Granoux exasperated Aristide to such a degree as to make him forget all prudence. Urged on by his jealous, insatiate bitter- ness, he had made the middle classes his irreconcilable enemy, when Eugene's arrival and demeanour at Plassans caused him great consternation. He confessed to himself that his brother was a very able man. According to him, that big, drowsy fellow always slept with one eye open, like cats lying in wait in front of a mouse-hole. And here was Eugene spending entire evenings in the yellow drawnng-room, devoting himself religiously to those grotesque personages whom he, Aristide, had so merci- lessly ridiculed. When he discovered from the gossip of the town that his brother shook hands with Granoux and the marquis, he asked himself, with considerable anxiet}^, what was the meaning of it ? Could he have been deceived to such a degree as that ? Had the Legitimists or the Orleanists really any chance of success ? This thought terrified him. He lost his equilibrium, and, as frequently happens, he fell upon the conservatives with more rancour to avenge his own blindness. On the evening prior to the day when he stopped Eugene on the Cours Sauvaire, he had published, in the " Independant," a terrible article on the intrigues of the clergy, in response to a short paragraph from Yuillet, who accused the republicans of desiring to demolish the churches. Vuillet was Aristide's
88 THE FOETUNE OF THE ROUGONS.
bug-bear. Never a week passed but these two journalists exchanged the coarsest insults. In the country, where a peri- phrastic style is still cultivated, polemics are clothed in hig-h- sounding phrases instead of coarse abuse. Aristide called his adversary "brother Judas," or "slave of Saint-Anthony." Yuillet g-allantly retorted by terming" the republican "a monster gutted with blood supplied by the ig-noble guillotine."
In order to sound his brother, Aristide, who did not dare to appear openly uneasy, contented himself with asking: " Did you read my article yesterday ? What do you think of it? "
Eugene slightly shrugged his shoulders.
" You're a simpleton, brother," was his sole reply.
" Then j^ou think Yuillet right?" cried the journalist, turning pale ; " you believe in Yuillet's triumph ? "
"I!— Yuillet "
He was certainly about to add, " Yuillet is as big a fool as you." But, observing his brother's distorted face stretching anxiously towards him, he appeared to be seized with a sudden mistrust.
"Yuillet has his good points," he calmly replied.
When he parted from his brother, Aristide felt himself more perplexed than before. Eugene must certainly have been making game of him, for Yuillet.was really the most abominable person imaginable. He determined to be prudent, not to tie himself down any more, so that he might have his hands free in case he should one day be called upon to help any party in strangling the Republic.
On the morning of his departure, an hour before mounting the diligence, Eugene took his father into the bedroom and had a long conversation with him. Felicite, who remained in the drawing-room, tried in vain to catch what they were saying. The two men spoke low, as if they feared to allow a single word to be heard outside. When at last they quitted the bed- room they seemed in high spirits. After kissing his father and mother, Eugene, who usually spoke in a drawling tone, said with affected vivacity :
" You have understood me, father ? There lies our fortune. We must work with all our energies in that direction. Trust to me."
" I'll follow your instructions faithfully," Rougon replied. " Only don't forget what I asked you as the price of my co- operation."
THE FOP.TUNE OF THE EOUGONS. 89
" If we succeed your demands shall be satisfied, I give j'ou my word. Moreover, I will write to j^ou and guide you, according to the direction which events take. Mind, no panic or excitement. You must obey me implicitl3\"
" What have you been plotting in there ? " Felicite asked inquisitivel3\
*' My dear mother," Eugene replied with a smile," you have had too little faith in me hitherto to induce me to confide my hopes to j-ou to-da}^ as they only rest on probable calcula- tions at present. You must be trustful in order to comprehend me. Moreover, father will inform you when the time comes."
And as Felicite assumed the attitude of a woman who feels somewhat piqued, he added in her ear, as he kissed her once more :
'• I take after you, although you disowned me. Too much intelligence would be dangerous at the present moment. AVhen the crisis comes, it is you who will have to manage the business."
He then left, but came back again and, opening the door, said in an imperious tone :
"Above all things, do not trust Aristide ; he is a mar-all, who will spoil everything. I have studied him sufficiently to feel certain that he will always fall on his feet. Don't have any pity; if we make a fortune, he'll know how to rob us of his share."
AVhen Eugene had gone, Felicite endeavoured to ferret out the secret they were hiding from her. She knew her husband too well to interrogate him openly. He would have replied angrily that it was no business of hers. In spite of the clever tactics she pursued, however, she learnt absolutely nothing. Eugene had chosen a good confidant for these troubled times, when the greatest discretion was necessary. Pierre, flattered by his son's confidence, exaggerated that passive heaviness which made him a grave, impenetrable mass. When Felicite saw she would not find out anything from him, she ceased to flutter round him. Only one curiosity remained, and that the most intense. The two men had mentioned a price stipulated by Pierre himself. "What could that price be? That was the point of interest for Felicite, who did not care a rap for political matters. She knew that her husband must have sold himself dearly, but she was burning to know the nature of the bargain. One evening, when they had gone to bed, seeing Pierre in a
90 THE FORTUNE OF THE EOUGONS.
good humour, she brought the conversation round to the dis- comforts of their poverty.
"It's quite time to put an end to this," she said. "We have been ruining ourselves in oil and fuel since these gentle- men have been coming here. And who will pay the reckoning ? Nobody, perhaps."
Her husband fell into the trap, and smiled with complacent superiority.
" Patience," he said. Then he added, with an air of shrewd- ness, as he looked into his wife's eyes: "Would you be glad to be the wife of a receiver of taxes ? "
Felicite's face turned crimson with joyous warmth. She sat up and clapped her old withered little hands like a child.
" Really ? " she stammered. " At Plassans ? "
Pierre, without replying, gave a long affirmative nod. He enjoyed his consort's astonishment.
"But," she at last resumed, stifling with emotion, "you must deposit an enormous sum as security. I have heard that our neighbour, Monsieur Peirotte, had to deposit eighty thou- sand francs in the treasury."
"Eh!" said the retired oil-dealer, "that's nothing to do with me ; Eugene will see to that. He will get the money advanced by a banker in Paris. You see, I selected an appointment with a good salary. Eugene at first made a wry face, sajnng one must be rich to occupy such posts, for which influential men were usually nominated. I persisted, however, and he yielded. To be a receiver of taxes one requires to know neither Greek nor Latin. I shall have a representative, like Monsieur Peirotte, and he will do all the work."
Felicite listened to him with rapture.
" I guessed, however/' he continued, " what it was that perplexed our dear son. We're not much lils:ed here. People know we have no means, and will make themselves obnoxious. But all sorts of things occur in a time of crisis. Eugene wished to get me an appointment in another town. I objected; I want to remain at Plassans."
" Yes, yes, we must remain here," the old woman quickly replied. " We have suffered here, and here we must triumph. Ah! I'll crush them all, those fine ladies on the Mail, who scorn- fully eye my woollen dresses ! I didn't think of the appoint- ment of receiver of taxes at all, I thought you wanted to become mayor."
THE FORTUNE OP THE EOUGONS. 91
"Mayor! nonsense. The appointment is honorary. Eugene also mentioned the mayoralty to me. I replied : ' I accept, if you give me an income of fifteen thousand francs.' "
This conversation, in which high figures flew about like rockets, excited Felicite. She frisked about, feeling a kind of internal itching. At last she assumed a pious attitude, and collecting herself :
** Come, let us reckon it out," she said ; '• how much will you earn ? "
" Well," said Pierre," " the fixed salary, I believe, is three thousand francs."
" Three thousand," Felicite counted.
*' Then there is so much per cent, on the receipts, which, at Plassans, may produce the sum of twelve thousand francs."
" That makes fifteen thousand."
*' Yes, about fifteen thousand francs. That's what Peirotte earns. That's not all. Peirotte does a little banking business on his own account. It's allowed. Perhaps I shall