Books: The Three Cities Trilogy: Paris, Complete

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

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Then, in sudden anguish, he went on: "Ah! it is cruel of you, brother,
cruel of you to poison my delight at dying. I have created all the
happiness I could, I was going off well pleased at leaving you all happy,
and now you poison my death. No, no! question it how I may, my heart does
not ache; if I love Marie, it is simply in the same way as I love you."

Nevertheless, he remained perturbed, as if fearing lest he might be lying
to himself; and by degrees gloomy anger came over him: "Listen, that is
enough, Pierre," he exclaimed, "time is flying. . . . For the last time,
go away! I order you to do so; I will have it!"

"I will not obey you, Guillaume. . . . I will stay, and as all my
reasoning cannot save you from your insanity, fire your mine, and I will
die with you."

"You? Die? But you have no right to do so, you are not free!"

"Free, or not, I swear that I will die with you. And if it merely be a
question of flinging this candle into that hole, tell me so, and I will
take it and fling it there myself."

He made a gesture at which his brother thought that he was about to carry
out his threat. So he caught him by the arm, crying: "Why should you die?
It would be absurd. That others should die may be necessary, but you, no!
Of what use could be this additional monstrosity? You are endeavouring to
soften me, you are torturing my heart!" Then all at once, imagining that
Pierre's offer had concealed another design, Guillaume thundered in a
fury: "You don't want to take the candle in order to throw it there. What
you want to do is to blow it out! And you think I shan't be able
then--ah! you bad brother!"

In his turn Pierre exclaimed: "Oh! certainly, I'll use every means to
prevent you from accomplishing such a frightful and foolish deed!"

"You'll prevent me!"

"Yes, I'll cling to you, I'll fasten my arms to your shoulders, I'll hold
your hands if necessary."

"Ah! you'll prevent me, you bad brother! You think you'll prevent me!"

Choking and trembling with rage, Guillaume had already caught hold of
Pierre, pressing his ribs with his powerful muscular arms. They were
closely linked together, their eyes fixed upon one another, and their
breath mingling in that kind of subterranean dungeon, where their big
dancing shadows looked like ghosts. They seemed to be vanishing into the
night, the candle now showed merely like a little yellow tear in the
midst of the darkness; and at that moment, in those far depths, a quiver
sped through the silence of the earth which weighed so heavily upon them.
Distant but sonorous peals rang out, as if death itself were somewhere
ringing its invisible bell.

"You hear," stammered Guillaume, "it's their bell up there. The time has
come. I have vowed to act, and you want to prevent me!"

"Yes, I'll prevent you as long as I'm here alive."

"As long as you are alive, you'll prevent me!"

Guillaume could hear "La Savoyarde" pealing joyfully up yonder; he could
see the triumphant basilica, overflowing with its ten thousand pilgrims,
and blazing with the splendour of the Host amidst the smoke of incense;
and blind frenzy came over him at finding himself unable to act, at
finding an obstacle suddenly barring the road to his fixed idea.

"As long as you are alive, as long as you are alive!" he repeated, beside
himself. "Well, then, die, you wretched brother!"

A fratricidal gleam had darted from his blurred eyes. He hastily stooped,
picked up a large brick forgotten there, and raised it with both hands as
if it were a club.

"Ah! I'm willing," cried Pierre. "Kill me, then; kill your own brother
before you kill the others!"

The brick was already descending, but Guillaume's arms must have
deviated, for the weapon only grazed one of Pierre's shoulders.
Nevertheless, he sank upon his knees in the gloom. When Guillaume saw him
there he fancied he had dealt him a mortal blow. What was it that had
happened between them, what had he done? For a moment he remained
standing, haggard, his mouth open, his eyes dilating with terror. He
looked at his hands, fancying that blood was streaming from them. Then he
pressed them to his brow, which seemed to be bursting with pain, as if
his fixed idea had been torn from him, leaving his skull open. And he
himself suddenly sank upon the ground with a great sob.

"Oh! brother, little brother, what have I done?" he called. "I am a
monster!"

But Pierre had passionately caught him in his arms again. "It is nothing,
nothing, brother, I assure you," he replied. "Ah! you are weeping now.
How pleased I am! You are saved, I can feel it, since you are weeping.
And what a good thing it is that you flew into such a passion, for your
anger with me has dispelled your evil dream of violence."

"I am horrified with myself," gasped Guillaume, "to think that I wanted
to kill you! Yes, I'm a brute beast that would kill his brother! And the
others, too, all the others up yonder. . . . Oh! I'm cold, I feel so
cold."

His teeth were chattering, and he shivered. It was as if he had awakened,
half stupefied, from some evil dream. And in the new light which his
fratricidal deed cast upon things, the scheme which had haunted him and
goaded him to madness appeared like some act of criminal folly, projected
by another.

"To kill you!" he repeated almost in a whisper. "I shall never forgive
myself. My life is ended, I shall never find courage enough to live."

But Pierre clasped him yet more tightly. "What do you say?" he answered.
"Will there not rather be a fresh and stronger tie of affection between
us? Ah! yes, brother, let me save you as you saved me, and we shall be
yet more closely united! Don't you remember that evening at Neuilly, when
you consoled me and held me to your heart as I am holding you to mine? I
had confessed my torments to you, and you told me that I must live and
love! . . . And you did far more afterwards: you plucked your own love
from your breast and gave it to me. You wished to ensure my happiness at
the price of your own! And how delightful it is that, in my turn, I now
have an opportunity to console you, save you, and bring you back to
life!"

"No, no, the bloodstain is there and it is ineffaceable. I can hope no
more!"

"Yes, yes, you can. Hope in life as you bade me do! Hope in love and hope
in labour!"

Still weeping and clasping one another, the brothers continued speaking
in low voices. The expiring candle suddenly went out unknown to them, and
in the inky night and deep silence their tears of redeeming affection
flowed freely. On the one hand, there was joy at being able to repay a
debt of brotherliness, and on the other, acute emotion at having been led
by a fanatical love of justice and mankind to the very verge of crime.
And there were yet other things in the depths of those tears which
cleansed and purified them; there were protests against suffering in
every form, and ardent wishes that the world might some day be relieved
of all its dreadful woe.

At last, after pushing the flagstone over the cavity near the pillar,
Pierre groped his way out of the vault, leading Guillaume like a child.

Meantime Mere-Grand, still seated near the window of the workroom, had
impassively continued sewing. Now and again, pending the arrival of four
o'clock, she had looked up at the timepiece hanging on the wall on her
left hand, or else had glanced out of the window towards the unfinished
pile of the basilica, which a gigantic framework of scaffoldings
encompassed. Slowly and steadily plying her needle, the old lady remained
very pale and silent, but full of heroic serenity. On the other hand,
Marie, who sat near her, embroidering, shifted her position a score of
times, broke her thread, and grew impatient, feeling strangely nervous, a
prey to unaccountable anxiety, which oppressed her heart. For their part,
the three young men could not keep in place at all; it was as if some
contagious fever disturbed them. Each had gone to his work: Thomas was
filing something at his bench; Francois and Antoine were on either side
of their table, the first trying to solve a mathematical problem, and the
other copying a bunch of poppies in a vase before him. It was in vain,
however, that they strove to be attentive. They quivered at the slightest
sound, raised their heads, and darted questioning glances at one another.
What could be the matter? What could possess them? What did they fear?
Now and again one or the other would rise, stretch himself, and then,
resume his place. However, they did not speak; it was as if they dared
not say anything, and thus the heavy silence grew more and more terrible.

When it was a few minutes to four o'clock Mere-Grand felt weary, or else
desired to collect her thoughts. After another glance at the timepiece,
she let her needlework fall on her lap and turned towards the basilica.
It seemed to her that she had only enough strength left to wait; and she
remained with her eyes fixed on the huge walls and the forest of
scaffolding which rose over yonder with such triumphant pride under the
blue sky. Then all at once, however brave and firm she might be, she
could not restrain a start, for "La Savoyarde" had raised a joyful clang.
The consecration of the Host was now at hand, the ten thousand pilgrims
filled the church, four o'clock was about to strike. And thereupon an
irresistible impulse forced the old lady to her feet; she drew herself
up, quivering, her hands clasped, her eyes ever turned yonder, waiting in
mute dread.

"What is the matter?" cried Thomas, who noticed her. "Why are you
trembling, Mere-Grand?"

Francois and Antoine raised their heads, and in turn sprang forward.

"Are you ill? Why are you turning so pale, you who are so courageous?"

But she did not answer. Ah! might the force of the explosion rend the
earth asunder, reach the house and sweep it into the flaming crater of
the volcano! Might she and the three young men, might they all die with
the father, this was her one ardent wish in order that grief might be
spared them. And she remained waiting and waiting, quivering despite
herself, but with her brave, clear eyes ever gazing yonder.

"Mere-Grand, Mere-Grand!" cried Marie in dismay; "you frighten us by
refusing to answer us, by looking over there as if some misfortune were
coming up at a gallop!"

Then, prompted by the same anguish, the same cry suddenly came from
Thomas, Francois and Antoine: "Father is in peril--father is going to
die!"

What did they know? Nothing precise, certainly. Thomas no doubt had been
astonished to see what a large quantity of the explosive his father had
recently prepared, and both Francois and Antoine were aware of the ideas
of revolt which he harboured in his mind. But, full of filial deference,
they never sought to know anything beyond what he might choose to confide
to them. They never questioned him; they bowed to whatever he might do.
And yet now a foreboding came to them, a conviction that their father was
going to die, that some most frightful catastrophe was impending. It must
have been that which had already sent such a quiver through the
atmosphere ever since the morning, making them shiver with fever, feel
ill at ease, and unable to work.

"Father is going to die, father is going to die!"

The three big fellows had drawn close together, distracted by one and the
same anguish, and furiously longing to know what the danger was, in order
that they might rush upon it and die with their father if they could not
save him. And amidst Mere-Grand's stubborn silence death once more
flitted through the room: there came a cold gust such as they had already
felt brushing past them during /dejeuner/.

At last four o'clock began to strike, and Mere-Grand raised her white
hands with a gesture of supreme entreaty. It was then that she at last
spoke: "Father is going to die. Nothing but the duty of living can save
him."

At this the three young men again wished to rush yonder, whither they
knew not; but they felt that they must throw down all obstacles and
conquer. Their powerlessness rent their hearts, they were both so frantic
and so woeful that their grandmother strove to calm them. "Father's own
wish was to die," said she, "and he is resolved to die alone."

They shuddered as they heard her, and then, on their side, strove to be
heroic. But the minutes crept by, and it seemed as if the cold gust had
slowly passed away. Sometimes, at the twilight hour, a night-bird will
come in by the window like some messenger of misfortune, flit round the
darkened room, and then fly off again, carrying its sadness with it. And
it was much like that; the gust passed, the basilica remained standing,
the earth did not open to swallow it. Little by little the atrocious
anguish which wrung their hearts gave place to hope. And when at last
Guillaume appeared, followed by Pierre, a great cry of resurrection came
from one and all: "Father!"

Their kisses, their tears, deprived him of his little remaining strength.
He was obliged to sit down. He had glanced round him as if he were
returning to life perforce. Mere-Grand, who understood what bitter
feelings must have followed the subjugation of his will, approached him
smiling, and took hold of both his hands as if to tell him that she was
well pleased at seeing him again, and at finding that he accepted his
task and was unwilling to desert the cause of life. For his part he
suffered dreadfully, the shock had been so great. The others spared him
any narrative of their feelings; and he, himself, related nothing. With a
gesture, a loving word, he simply indicated that it was Pierre who had
saved him.

Thereupon, in a corner of the room, Marie flung her arms round the young
man's neck. "Ah! my good Pierre, I have never yet kissed you," said she;
"I want it to be for something serious the first time. . . . I love you,
my good Pierre, I love you with all my heart."

Later that same evening, after night had fallen, Guillaume and Pierre
remained for a moment alone in the big workroom. The young men had gone
out, and Mere-Grand and Marie were upstairs sorting some house linen,
while Madame Mathis, who had brought some work back, sat patiently in a
dim corner waiting for another bundle of things which might require
mending. The brothers, steeped in the soft melancholy of the twilight
hour, and chatting in low tones, had quite forgotten her.

But all at once the arrival of a visitor upset them. It was Janzen with
the fair, Christ-like face. He called very seldom nowadays; and one never
knew from what gloomy spot he had come or into what darkness he would
return when he took his departure. He disappeared, indeed, for months
together, and was then suddenly to be seen like some momentary passer-by
whose past and present life were alike unknown.

"I am leaving to-night," he said in a voice sharp like a knife.

"Are you going back to your home in Russia?" asked Guillaume.

A faint, disdainful smile appeared on the Anarchist's lips. "Home!" said
he, "I am at home everywhere. To begin with, I am not a Russian, and then
I recognise no other country than the world."

With a sweeping gesture he gave them to understand what manner of man he
was, one who had no fatherland of his own, but carried his gory dream of
fraternity hither and thither regardless of frontiers. From some words he
spoke the brothers fancied he was returning to Spain, where some
fellow-Anarchists awaited him. There was a deal of work to be done there,
it appeared. He had quietly seated himself, chatting on in his cold way,
when all at once he serenely added: "By the by, a bomb had just been
thrown into the Cafe de l'Univers on the Boulevard. Three /bourgeois/
were killed."

Pierre and Guillaume shuddered, and asked for particulars. Thereupon
Janzen related that he had happened to be there, had heard the explosion,
and seen the windows of the cafe shivered to atoms. Three customers were
lying on the floor blown to pieces. Two of them were gentlemen, who had
entered the place by chance and whose names were not known, while the
third was a regular customer, a petty cit of the neighbourhood, who came
every day to play a game at dominoes. And the whole place was wrecked;
the marble tables were broken, the chandeliers twisted out of shape, the
mirrors studded with projectiles. And how great the terror and the
indignation, and how frantic the rush of the crowd! The perpetrator of
the deed had been arrested immediately--in fact, just as he was turning
the corner of the Rue Caumartin.

"I thought I would come and tell you of it," concluded Janzen; "it is
well you should know it."

Then as Pierre, shuddering and already suspecting the truth, asked him if
he knew who the man was that had been arrested, he slowly replied: "The
worry is that you happen to know him--it was little Victor Mathis."

Pierre tried to silence Janzen too late. He had suddenly remembered that
Victor's mother had been sitting in a dark corner behind them a short
time previously. Was she still there? Then he again pictured Victor,
slight and almost beardless, with a straight, stubborn brow, grey eyes
glittering with intelligence, a pointed nose and thin lips expressive of
stern will and unforgiving hatred. He was no simple and lowly one from
the ranks of the disinherited. He was an educated scion of the
/bourgeoisie/, and but for circumstances would have entered the Ecole
Normale. There was no excuse for his abominable deed, there was no
political passion, no humanitarian insanity, in it. He was the destroyer
pure and simple, the theoretician of destruction, the cold energetic man
of intellect who gave his cultivated mind to arguing the cause of murder,
in his desire to make murder an instrument of the social evolution. True,
he was also a poet, a visionary, but the most frightful of all
visionaries: a monster whose nature could only be explained by mad pride,
and who craved for the most awful immortality, dreaming that the coming
dawn would rise from the arms of the guillotine. Only one thing could
surpass him: the scythe of death which blindly mows the world.

For a few seconds, amidst the growing darkness, cold horror reigned in
the workroom. "Ah!" muttered Guillaume, "he had the daring to do it, he
had."

Pierre, however, lovingly pressed his arm. And he felt that he was as
distracted, as upset, as himself. Perhaps this last abomination had been
needed to ravage and cure him.

Janzen no doubt had been an accomplice in the deed. He was relating that
Victor's purpose had been to avenge Salvat, when all at once a great sigh
of pain was heard in the darkness, followed by a heavy thud upon the
floor. It was Madame Mathis falling like a bundle, overwhelmed by the
news which chance had brought her. At that moment it so happened that
Mere-Grand came down with a lamp, which lighted up the room, and
thereupon they hurried to the help of the wretched woman, who lay there
as pale as a corpse in her flimsy black gown.

And this again brought Pierre an indescribable heart-pang. Ah! the poor,
sad, suffering creature! He remembered her at Abbe Rose's, so discreet,
so shamefaced, in her poverty, scarce able to live upon the slender
resources which persistent misfortunes had left her. Hers had indeed been
a cruel lot: first, a home with wealthy parents in the provinces, a love
story and elopement with the man of her choice; next, ill-luck steadily
pursuing her, all sorts of home troubles, and at last her husband's
death. Then, in the retirement of her widowhood, after losing the best
part of the little income which had enabled her to bring up her son,
naught but this son had been left to her. He had been her Victor, her
sole affection, the only one in whom she had faith. She had ever striven
to believe that he was very busy, absorbed in work, and on the eve of
attaining to some superb position worthy of his merits. And now, all at
once, she had learnt that this fondly loved son was simply the most
odious of assassins, that he had flung a bomb into a cafe, and had there
killed three men.

When Madame Mathis had recovered her senses, thanks to the careful
tending of Mere-Grand, she sobbed on without cessation, raising such a
continuous doleful wail, that Pierre's hand again sought Guillaume's, and
grasped it, whilst their hearts, distracted but healed, mingled lovingly
one with the other.

V

LIFE'S WORK AND PROMISE

FIFTEEN months later, one fine golden day in September, Bache and
Theophile Morin were taking /dejeuner/ at Guillaume's, in the big
workroom overlooking the immensity of Paris.

Near the table was a cradle with its little curtains drawn. Behind them
slept Jean, a fine boy four months old, the son of Pierre and Marie. The
latter, simply in order to protect the child's social rights, had been
married civilly at the town-hall of Montmartre. Then, by way of pleasing
Guillaume, who wished to keep them with him, and thus enlarge the family
circle, they had continued living in the little lodging over the
work-shop, leaving the sleepy house at Neuilly in the charge of Sophie,
Pierre's old servant. And life had been flowing on happily for the
fourteen months or so that they had now belonged to one another.

There was simply peace, affection and work around the young couple.
Francois, who had left the Ecole Normale provided with every degree,
every diploma, was now about to start for a college in the west of
France, so as to serve his term of probation as a professor, intending to
resign his post afterwards and devote himself, if he pleased, to science
pure and simple. Then Antoine had lately achieved great success with a
series of engravings he had executed--some views and scenes of Paris
life; and it was settled that he was to marry Lise Jahan in the ensuing
spring, when she would have completed her seventeenth year. Of the three
sons, however, Thomas was the most triumphant, for he had at last devised
and constructed his little motor, thanks to a happy idea of his father's.
One morning, after the downfall of all his huge chimerical schemes,
Guillaume, remembering the terrible explosive which he had discovered and
hitherto failed to utilise, had suddenly thought of employing it as a
motive force, in the place of petroleum, in the motor which his eldest
son had so long been trying to construct for the Grandidier works. So he
had set to work with Thomas, devising a new mechanism, encountering
endless difficulties, and labouring for a whole year before reaching
success. But now the father and son had accomplished their task; the
marvel was created, and stood there riveted to an oak stand, and ready to
work as soon as its final toilet should have been performed.

Amidst all the changes which had occurred, Mere-Grand, in spite of her
great age, continued exercising her active, silent sway over the
household, which was now again so gay and peaceful. Though she seldom
seemed to leave her chair in front of her work-table, she was really
here, there and everywhere. Since the birth of Jean, she had talked of
rearing the child in the same way as she had formerly reared Thomas,
Francois and Antoine. She was indeed full of the bravery of devotion, and
seemed to think that she was not at all likely to die so long as she
might have others to guide, love and save. Marie marvelled at it all. She
herself, though she was always gay and in good health, felt tired at
times now that she was suckling her infant. Little Jean indeed had two
vigilant mothers near his cradle; whilst his father, Pierre, who had
become Thomas's assistant, pulled the bellows, roughened out pieces of
metal, and generally completed his apprenticeship as a working
mechanician.

On the particular day when Bache and Theophile Morin came to Montmartre,
the /dejeuner/ proved even gayer than usual, thanks perhaps to their
presence. The meal was over, the table had been cleared, and the coffee
was being served, when a little boy, the son of a doorkeeper in the Rue
Cortot, came to ask for Monsieur Pierre Froment. When they inquired his
business, he answered in a hesitating way that Monsieur l'Abbe Rose was
very ill, indeed dying, and that he had sent him to fetch Monsieur Pierre
Froment at once.

Pierre followed the lad, feeling much affected; and on reaching the Rue
Cortot he there found Abbe Rose in a little damp ground-floor room
overlooking a strip of garden. The old priest was in bed, dying as the
boy had said, but he still retained the use of his faculties, and could
speak in his wonted slow and gentle voice. A Sister of Charity was
watching beside him, and she seemed so surprised and anxious at the
arrival of a visitor whom she did not know, that Pierre understood she
was there to guard the dying man and prevent him from having intercourse
with others. The old priest must have employed some stratagem in order to
send the doorkeeper's boy to fetch him. However, when Abbe Rose in his
grave and kindly way begged the Sister to leave them alone for a moment,
she dared not refuse this supreme request, but immediately left the room.

"Ah! my dear child," said the old man, "how much I wanted to speak to
you! Sit down there, close to the bed, so that you may be able to hear
me, for this is the end; I shall no longer be here to-night. And I have
such a great service to ask of you."