Books: The Three Cities Trilogy: Paris, Complete

E >> Emile Zola >> The Three Cities Trilogy: Paris, Complete

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46

For a moment he remained motionless on that spot, so agitated by
conflicting thoughts and feelings that he could read neither heart nor
mind clearly. Then, as he turned towards the city, all Paris spread
itself out at his feet, a limpid, lightsome Paris, beneath the pink glow
of that spring-like evening. The endless billows of house-roofs showed
forth with wonderful distinctness, and one could have counted the chimney
stacks and the little black streaks of the windows by the million. The
edifices rising into the calm atmosphere seemed like the anchored vessels
of some fleet arrested in its course, with lofty masting which glittered
at the sun's farewell. And never before had Pierre so distinctly observed
the divisions of that human ocean. Eastward and northward was the city of
manual toil, with the rumbling and the smoke of its factories. Southward,
beyond the river, was the city of study, of intellectual labour, so calm,
so perfectly serene. And on all sides the passion of trade ascended from
the central districts, where the crowds rolled and scrambled amidst an
everlasting uproar of wheels; while westward, the city of the happy and
powerful ones, those who fought for sovereignty and wealth, spread out
its piles of palaces amidst the slowly reddening flare of the declining
planet.

And then, from the depths of his negation, the chaos into which his loss
of faith had plunged him, Pierre felt a delicious freshness pass like the
vague advent of a new faith. So vague it was that he could not have
expressed even his hope of it in words. But already among the rough
factory workers, manual toil had appeared to him necessary and
redemptive, in spite of all the misery and abominable injustice to which
it led. And now the young men of intellect of whom he had despaired, that
generation of the morrow which he had thought spoilt, relapsing into
ancient error and rottenness, had appeared to him full of virile promise,
resolved to prosecute the work of those who had gone before, and effect,
by the aid of Science only, the conquest of absolute truth and absolute
justice.

V

PROBLEMS

A FULL month had already gone by since Guillaume had taken refuge at his
brother's little house at Neuilly. His wrist was now nearly healed. He
had long ceased to keep his bed, and often strolled through the garden.
In spite of his impatience to go back to Montmartre, join his loved ones
and resume his work there, he was each morning prompted to defer his
return by the news he found in the newspapers. The situation was ever the
same. Salvat, whom the police now suspected, had been perceived one
evening near the central markets, and then again lost sight of. Every
day, however, his arrest was said to be imminent. And in that case what
would happen? Would he speak out, and would fresh perquisitions be made?

For a whole week the press had been busy with the bradawl found under the
entrance of the Duvillard mansion. Nearly every reporter in Paris had
called at the Grandidier factory and interviewed both workmen and master.
Some had even started on personal investigations, in the hope of
capturing the culprit themselves. There was no end of jesting about the
incompetence of the police, and the hunt for Salvat was followed all the
more passionately by the general public, as the papers overflowed with
the most ridiculous concoctions, predicting further explosions, and
declaring even that all Paris would some morning be blown into the air.
The "Voix du Peuple" set a fresh shudder circulating every day by its
announcements of threatening letters, incendiary placards and mysterious,
far-reaching plots. And never before had so base and foolish a spirit of
contagion wafted insanity through a civilised city.

Guillaume, for his part, no sooner awoke of a morning than he was all
impatience to see the newspapers, quivering at the idea that he would at
last read of Salvat's arrest. In his state of nervous expectancy, the
wild campaign which the press had started, the idiotic and the ferocious
things which he found in one or another journal, almost drove him crazy.
A number of "suspects" had already been arrested in a kind of chance
razzia, which had swept up the usual Anarchist herd, together with sundry
honest workmen and bandits, /illumines/ and lazy devils, in fact, a most
singular, motley crew, which investigating magistrate Amadieu was
endeavouring to turn into a gigantic association of evil-doers. One
morning, moreover, Guillaume found his own name mentioned in connection
with a perquisition at the residence of a revolutionary journalist, who
was a friend of his. At this his heart bounded with revolt, but he was
forced to the conclusion that it would be prudent for him to remain
patient a little longer, in his peaceful retreat at Neuilly, since the
police might at any moment break into his home at Montmartre, to arrest
him should it find him there.

Amidst all this anxiety the brothers led a most solitary and gentle life.
Pierre himself now spent most of his time at home. The first days of
March had come, and precocious springtide imparted delightful charm and
warmth to the little garden. Guillaume, however, since quitting his bed,
had more particularly installed himself in his father's old laboratory,
now transformed into a spacious study. All the books and papers left by
the illustrious chemist were still there, and among the latter Guillaume
found a number of unfinished essays, the perusal of which greatly excited
his interest, and often absorbed him from morning till night. It was this
which largely enabled him to bear his voluntary seclusion patiently.
Seated on the other side of the big table, Pierre also mostly occupied
himself with reading; but at times his eyes would quit his book and
wander away into gloomy reverie, into all the chaos into which he still
and ever sank. For long hours the brothers would in this wise remain side
by side, without speaking a word. Yet they knew they were together; and
occasionally, when their eyes met, they would exchange a smile. The
strong affection of former days was again springing up within them; their
childhood, their home, their parents, all seemed to live once more in the
quiet atmosphere they breathed. However, the bay window overlooked the
garden in the direction of Paris, and often, when they emerged from their
reading or their reverie, it was with a sudden feeling of anxiety, and in
order to lend ear to the distant rumbling, the increased clamour of the
great city.

On other occasions they paused as if in astonishment at hearing a
continuous footfall overhead. It was that of Nicholas Barthes, who still
lingered in the room above. He seldom came downstairs, and scarcely ever
ventured into the garden, for fear, said he, that he might be perceived
and recognised from a distant house whose windows were concealed by a
clump of trees. One might laugh at the old conspirator's haunting thought
of the police. Nevertheless, the caged-lion restlessness, the ceaseless
promenade of that perpetual prisoner who had spent two thirds of his life
in the dungeons of France in his desire to secure the liberty of others,
imparted to the silence of the little house a touching melancholy, the
very rhythm as it were of all the great good things which one hoped for,
but which would never perhaps come.

Very few visits drew the brothers from their solitude. Bertheroy came
less frequently now that Guillaume's wrist was healing. The most
assiduous caller was certainly Theophile Morin, whose discreet ring was
heard every other day at the same hour. Though he did not share the ideas
of Barthes he worshipped him as a martyr; and would always go upstairs to
spend an hour with him. However, they must have exchanged few words, for
not a sound came from the room. Whenever Morin sat down for a moment in
the laboratory with the brothers, Pierre was struck by his seeming
weariness, his ashen grey hair and beard and dismal countenance, all the
life of which appeared to have been effaced by long years spent in the
teaching profession. Indeed, it was only when the priest mentioned Italy
that he saw his companion's resigned eyes blaze up like live coals. One
day when he spoke of the great patriot Orlando Prada, Morin's companion
of victory in Garibaldi's days, he was amazed by the sudden flare of
enthusiasm which lighted up the other's lifeless features. However, these
were but transient flashes: the old professor soon reappeared, and all
that one found in Morin was the friend of Proudhon and the subsequent
disciple of Auguste Comte. Of his Proudhonian principles he had retained
all a pauper's hatred of wealth, and a desire for a more equitable
partition of fortune. But the new times dismayed him, and neither
principle nor temperament allowed him to follow Revolutionism to its
utmost limits. Comte had imparted unshakable convictions to him in the
sphere of intellectual questions, and he contented himself with the clear
and decisive logic of Positivism, rejecting all metaphysical hypotheses
as useless, persuaded as he was that the whole human question, whether
social or religious, would be solved by science alone. This faith, firm
as it had remained, was, however, coupled with secret bitterness, for
nothing seemed to advance in a sensible manner towards its goal. Comte
himself had ended in the most cloudy mysticism; great /savants/ recoiled
from truth in terror; and now barbarians were threatening the world with
fresh night; all of which made Morin almost a reactionist in politics,
already resigned to the advent of a dictator, who would set things
somewhat in order, so that humanity might be able to complete its
education.

Other visitors who occasionally called to see Guillaume were Bache and
Janzen, who invariably came together and at night-time. Every now and
then they would linger chatting with Guillaume in the spacious study
until two o'clock in the morning. Bache, who was fat and had a fatherly
air, with his little eyes gently beaming amidst all the snowy whiteness
of his hair and beard, would talk on slowly, unctuously and interminably,
as soon as he had begun to explain his views. He would address merely a
polite bow to Saint-Simon, the initiator, the first to lay down the law
that work was a necessity for one and all according to their capacities;
but on coming to Fourier his voice softened and he confessed his whole
religion. To his thinking, Fourier had been the real messiah of modern
times, the saviour of genius, who had sown the good seed of the future
world, by regulating society such as it would certainly be organised
to-morrow. The law of harmony had been promulgated; human passions,
liberated and utilised in healthy fashion, would become the requisite
machinery; and work, rendered pleasant and attractive, would prove the
very function of life. Nothing could discourage Bache; if merely one
parish began by transforming itself into a /phalansterium/, the whole
department would soon follow, then the adjacent departments, and finally
all France. Moreover, Bache even favoured the schemes of Cabet, whose
Icaria, said he, had in no wise been such a foolish idea. Further, he
recalled a motion he had made, when member of the Commune in 1871, to
apply Fourier's ideas to the French Republic; and he was apparently
convinced that the troops of Versailles had delayed the triumph of
Communism for half a century. Whenever people nowadays talked of
table-turning he pretended to laugh, but at bottom he had remained an
impenitent "spiritist." Since he had been a municipal councillor he had
been travelling from one socialist sect to another, according as their
ideas offered points of resemblance to his old faith. And he was fairly
consumed by his need of faith, his perplexity as to the Divine, which he
was now occasionally inclined to find in the legs of some piece of
furniture, after denying its presence in the churches.

Janzen, for his part, was as taciturn as his friend Bache was garrulous.
Such remarks as he made were brief, but they were as galling as lashes,
as cutting as sabre-strokes. At the same time his ideas and theories
remained somewhat obscure, partly by reason of this brevity of his, and
partly on account of the difficulty he experienced in expressing himself
in French. He was from over yonder, from some far-away land--Russia,
Poland, Austria or Germany, nobody exactly knew; and it mattered little,
for he certainly acknowledged no country, but wandered far and wide with
his dream of blood-shedding fraternity. Whenever, with his wonted
frigidity, he gave utterance to one of those terrible remarks of his
which, like a scythe in a meadow, cut away all before him, little less
than the necessity of thus mowing down nations, in order to sow the earth
afresh with a young and better community, became apparent. At each
proposition unfolded by Bache, such as labour rendered agreeable by
police regulations, /phalansteria/ organised like barracks, religion
transformed into pantheist or spiritist deism, he gently shrugged his
shoulders. What could be the use of such childishness, such hypocritical
repairing, when the house was falling and the only honest course was to
throw it to the ground, and build up the substantial edifice of to-morrow
with entirely new materials? On the subject of propaganda by deeds,
bomb-throwing and so forth, he remained silent, though his gestures were
expressive of infinite hope. He evidently approved that course. The
legend which made him one of the perpetrators of the crime of Barcelona
set a gleam of horrible glory in his mysterious past. One day when Bache,
while speaking to him of his friend Bergaz, the shadowy Bourse jobber who
had already been compromised in some piece of thieving, plainly declared
that the aforesaid Bergaz was a bandit, Janzen contented himself with
smiling, and replying quietly that theft was merely forced restitution.
Briefly, in this man of culture and refinement, in whose own mysterious
life one might perhaps have found various crimes but not a single act of
base improbity, one could divine an implacable, obstinate theoretician,
who was resolved to set the world ablaze for the triumph of his ideas.

On certain evenings when a visit from Theophile Morin coincided with one
from Bache and Janzen, and they and Guillaume lingered chatting until far
into the night, Pierre would listen to them in despair from the shadowy
corner where he remained motionless, never once joining in the
discussions. Distracted, by his own unbelief and thirst for truth, he had
at the outset taken a passionate interest in these debates, desirous as
he was of drawing up a balance-sheet of the century's ideas, so as to
form some notion of the distance that had been travelled, and the profits
that had accrued. But he recoiled from all this in fresh despair, on
hearing the others argue, each from his own standpoint and without
possibility of concession and agreement. After the repulses he had
encountered at Lourdes and Rome, he well realised that in this fresh
experiment which he was making with Paris, the whole brain of the century
was in question, the new truths, the expected gospel which was to change
the face of the world. And, burning with inconsiderate zeal, he went from
one belief to another, which other he soon rejected in order to adopt a
third. If he had first felt himself to be a Positivist with Morin, an
Evolutionist and Determinist with Guillaume, he had afterwards been
touched by the fraternal dream of a new golden age which he had found in
Bache's humanitarian Communism. And indeed even Janzen had momentarily
shaken him by his fierce confidence in the theory of liberative
Individualism. But afterwards he had found himself out of his depth; and
each and every theory had seemed to him but part of the chaotic
contradictions and incoherences of humanity on its march. It was all a
continuous piling up of dross, amidst which he lost himself. Although
Fourier had sprung from Saint-Simon he denied him in part; and if
Saint-Simon's doctrine ended in a kind of mystical sensuality, the
other's conducted to an unacceptable regimenting of society. Proudhon,
for his part, demolished without rebuilding anything. Comte, who created
method and declared science to be the one and only sovereign, had not
even suspected the advent of the social crisis which now threatened to
sweep all away, and had finished personally as a mere worshipper of love,
overpowered by woman. Nevertheless, these two, Comte and Proudhon,
entered the lists and fought against the others, Fourier and Saint-Simon;
the combat between them or their disciples becoming so bitter and so
blind that the truths common to them all were obscured and disfigured
beyond recognition. Thence came the extraordinary muddle of the present
hour; Bache with Saint-Simon and Fourier, and Morin with Proudhon and
Comte, utterly failing to understand Mege, the Collectivist deputy, whom
they held up to execration, him and his State Collectivism, in the same
way, moreover, as they thundered against all the other present-time
Socialist sects, without realising that these also, whatever their
nature, had more or less sprung from the same masters as themselves. And
all this seemingly indicated that Janzen was right when he declared that
the house was past repair, fast crumbling amidst rottenness and insanity,
and that it ought to be levelled to the ground.

One night, after the three visitors had gone, Pierre, who had remained
with Guillaume, saw him grow very gloomy as he slowly walked to and fro.
He, in his turn, had doubtless felt that all was crumbling. And though
his brother alone was there to hear him, he went on speaking. He
expressed all his horror of the Collectivist State as imagined by Mege, a
Dictator-State re-establishing ancient servitude on yet closer lines. The
error of all the Socialist sects was their arbitrary organisation of
Labour, which enslaved the individual for the profit of the community.
And, forced to conciliate the two great currents, the rights of society
and the rights of the individual, Guillaume had ended by placing his
whole faith in free Communism, an anarchical state in which he dreamt of
seeing the individual freed, moving and developing without restraint, for
the benefit both of himself and of all others. Was not this, said he, the
one truly scientific theory, unities creating worlds, atoms producing
life by force of attraction, free and ardent love? All oppressive
minorities would disappear; and the faculties and energies of one and all
would by free play arrive at harmony amidst the equilibrium--which
changed according to needs--of the active forces of advancing humanity.
In this wise he pictured a nation, saved from State tutelage, without a
master, almost without laws, a happy nation, each citizen of which,
completely developed by the exercise of liberty, would, of his free will,
come to an understanding with his neighbours with regard to the thousand
necessities of life. And thence would spring society, free association,
hundreds of associations which would regulate social life; though at the
same time they would remain variable, in fact often opposed and hostile
to one another. For progress is but the fruit of conflict and struggle;
the world has only been created by the battle of opposing forces. And
that was all; there would be no more oppressors, no more rich, no more
poor; the domain of the earth with its natural treasures and its
implements of labour would be restored to the people, its legitimate
owners, who would know how to enjoy it with justice and logic, when
nothing abnormal would impede their expansion. And then only would the
law of love make its action felt; then would human solidarity, which,
among mankind, is the living form of universal attraction, acquire all
its power, bringing men closer and closer together, and uniting them in
one sole family. A splendid dream it was--the noble and pure dream of
absolute freedom--free man in free society. And thither a /savant's/
superior mind was fated to come after passing on the road the many
Socialist sects which one and all bore the stigma of tyranny. And,
assuredly, as thus indulged, the Anarchist idea is the loftiest, the
proudest, of all ideas. And how delightful to yield to the hope of
harmony in life--life which restored to the full exercise of its natural
powers would of itself create happiness!

When Guillaume ceased speaking, he seemed to be emerging from a dream;
and he glanced at Pierre with some dismay, for he feared that he might
have said too much and have hurt his feelings. Pierre--moved though he
was, for a moment in fact almost won over--had just seen the terrible
practical objection, which destroyed all hope, arise before his mind's
eye. Why had not harmony asserted itself in the first days of the world's
existence, at the time when societies were formed? How was it that
tyranny had triumphed, delivering nations over to oppressors? And
supposing that the apparently insolvable problem of destroying
everything, and beginning everything afresh, should ever be solved, who
could promise that mankind, obedient to the same laws, would not again
follow the same paths as formerly? After all, mankind, nowadays, is
simply what life has made it; and nothing proves that life would again
make it other than it is. To begin afresh, ah, yes! but to attain another
result! But could that other result really come from man? Was it not
rather man himself who should be changed? To start afresh from where one
was, to continue the evolution that had begun, undoubtedly meant slow
travel and dismal waiting. But how great would be the danger and even the
delay, if one went back without knowing by what road across the whole
chaos of ruins one might regain all the lost time!

"Let us go to bed," at last said Guillaume, smiling. "It's silly of me to
weary you with all these things which don't concern you."

Pierre, in his excitement, was about to reveal his own heart and mind,
and the whole torturing battle within him. But a feeling of shame again
restrained him. His brother only knew him as a believing priest, faithful
to his faith. And so, without answering, he betook himself to his room.

On the following evening, about ten o'clock, while Guillaume and Pierre
sat reading in the study, the old servant entered to announce M. Janzen
and a friend. The friend was Salvat.

"He wished to see you," Janzen explained to Guillaume. "I met him, and
when he heard of your injury and anxiety he implored me to bring him
here. And I've done so, though it was perhaps hardly prudent of me."

Guillaume had risen, full of surprise and emotion at such a visit;
Pierre, however, though equally upset by Salvat's appearance; did not
stir from his chair, but kept his eyes upon the workman.

"Monsieur Froment," Salvat ended by saying, standing there in a timid,
embarrassed way, "I was very sorry indeed when I heard of the worry I'd
put you in; for I shall never forget that you were very kind to me when
everybody else turned me away."

As he spoke he balanced himself alternately on either leg, and
transferred his old felt hat from hand to hand.

"And so I wanted to come and tell you myself that if I took a cartridge
of your powder one evening when you had your back turned, it's the only
thing that I feel any remorse about in the whole business, since it may
compromise you. And I also want to take my oath before you that you've
nothing to fear from me, that I'll let my head be cut off twenty times if
need be, rather than utter your name. That's all that I had in my heart."

He relapsed into silence and embarrassment, but his soft, dreamy eyes,
the eyes of a faithful dog, remained fixed upon Guillaume with an
expression of respectful worship. And Pierre was still gazing at him
athwart the hateful vision which his arrival had conjured up, that of the
poor, dead, errand girl, the fair pretty child lying ripped open under
the entrance of the Duvillard mansion! Was it possible that he was there,
he, that madman, that murderer, and that his eyes were actually moist!

Guillaume, touched by Salvat's words, had drawn near and pressed his
hand. "I am well aware, Salvat," said he, "that you are not wicked at
heart. But what a foolish and abominable thing you did!"

Salvat showed no sign of anger, but gently smiled. "Oh! if it had to be
done again, Monsieur Froment, I'd do it. It's my idea, you know. And,
apart from you, all is well; I am content."

He would not sit down, but for another moment continued talking with
Guillaume, while Janzen, as if he washed his hands of the business,
deeming this visit both useless and dangerous, sat down and turned over
the leaves of a picture book. And Guillaume made Salvat tell him what he
had done on the day of the crime; how like a stray dog he had wandered in
distraction through Paris, carrying his bomb with him, originally in his
tool-bag and then under his jacket; how he had gone a first time to the
Duvillard mansion and found its carriage entrance closed; then how he had
betaken himself first to the Chamber of Deputies which the ushers had
prevented him from entering, and afterwards to the Circus, where the
thought of making a great sacrifice of /bourgeois/ had occurred to him
too late. And finally, how he had at last come back to the Duvillard
mansion, as if drawn thither by the very power of destiny. His tool-bag
was lying in the depths of the Seine, he said; he had thrown it into the
water with sudden hatred of work, since it had even failed to give him
bread. And he next told the story of his flight; the explosion shaking
the whole district behind him, while, with delight and astonishment, he
found himself some distance off, in quiet streets where nothing was as
yet known. And for a month past he had been living in chance fashion, how
or where he could hardly tell, but he had often slept in the open, and
gone for a day without food. One evening little Victor Mathis had given
him five francs. And other comrades had helped him, taken him in for a
night and sent him off at the first sign of peril. A far-spreading, tacit
complicity had hitherto saved him from the police. As for going abroad,
well, he had, at one moment, thought of doing so; but a description of
his person must have been circulated, the gendarmes must be waiting for
him at the frontiers, and so would not flight, instead of retarding,
rather hasten his arrest? Paris, however, was an ocean; it was there that
he incurred the least risk of capture. Moreover, he no longer had
sufficient energy to flee. A fatalist as he was after his own fashion, he
could not find strength to quit the pavements of Paris, but there awaited
arrest, like a social waif carried chancewise through the multitude as in
a dream.