Books: The Three Cities Trilogy: Paris, Vol. 2

E >> Emile Zola >> The Three Cities Trilogy: Paris, Vol. 2

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Guillaume, with his desire for tidings, was obliged to confide in his two
visitors, tell them of the explosion and Salvat's flight, and how he
himself had been wounded while seeking to extinguish the match. Janzen,
with curly beard and hair, and a thin, fair face such as painters often
attribute to the Christ, listened coldly, as was his wont, and at last
said slowly in a gentle voice: "Ah! so it was Salvat! I thought it might
be little Mathis--I'm surprised that it should be Salvat--for he hadn't
made up his mind." Then, as Guillaume anxiously inquired if he thought
that Salvat would speak out, he began to protest: "Oh! no; oh! no."

However, he corrected himself with a gleam of disdain in his clear, harsh
eyes: "After all, there's no telling. Salvat is a man of sentiment."

Then Bache, who was quite upset by the news of the explosion, tried to
think how his friend Guillaume, to whom he was much attached, might be
extricated from any charge of complicity should he be denounced. And
Guillaume, at sight of Janzen's contemptuous coldness, must have suffered
keenly, for the other evidently believed him to be trembling, tortured by
the one desire to save his own skin. But what could he say, how could he
reveal the deep concern which rendered him so feverish without betraying
the secret which he had hidden even from his brother?

However, at this moment Sophie came to tell her master that M. Theophile
Morin had called with another gentleman. Much astonished by this visit at
so late an hour, Pierre hastened into the next room to receive the new
comers. He had become acquainted with Morin since his return from Rome,
and had helped him to introduce a translation of an excellent scientific
manual, prepared according to the official programmes, into the Italian
schools.* A Franc-Comtois by birth, a compatriot of Proudhon, with whose
poor family he had been intimate at Besancon, Morin, himself the son of a
journeyman clockmaker, had grown up with Proudhonian ideas, full of
affection for the poor and an instinctive hatred of property and wealth.
Later on, having come to Paris as a school teacher, impassioned by study,
he had given his whole mind to Auguste Comte. Beneath the fervent
Positivist, however, one might yet find the old Proudhonian, the pauper
who rebelled and detested want. Moreover, it was scientific Positivism
that he clung to; in his hatred of all mysticism he would have naught to
do with the fantastic religious leanings of Comte in his last years. And
in Morin's brave, consistent, somewhat mournful life, there had been but
one page of romance: the sudden feverish impulse which had carried him
off to fight in Sicily by Garibaldi's side. Afterwards he had again
become a petty professor in Paris, obscurely earning a dismal livelihood.

* See M. Zola's "Rome," Chapters IV. and XVI.

When Pierre returned to the bedroom he said to his brother in a tone of
emotion: "Morin has brought me Barthes, who fancies himself in danger and
asks my hospitality."

At this Guillaume forgot himself and became excited: "Nicholas Barthes, a
hero with a soul worthy of antiquity. Oh! I know him; I admire and love
him. You must set your door open wide for him."

Bache and Janzen, however, had glanced at one another smiling. And the
latter, with his cold ironical air, slowly remarked: "Why does Monsieur
Barthes hide himself? A great many people think he is dead; he is simply
a ghost who no longer frightens anybody."

Four and seventy years of age as he now was, Barthes had spent nearly
half a century in prison. He was the eternal prisoner, the hero of
liberty whom each successive Government had carried from citadel to
fortress. Since his youth he had been marching on amidst his dream of
fraternity, fighting for an ideal Republic based on truth and justice,
and each and every endeavour had led him to a dungeon; he had invariably
finished his humanitarian reverie under bolts and bars. Carbonaro,
Republican, evangelical sectarian, he had conspired at all times and in
all places, incessantly struggling against the Power of the day, whatever
it might be. And when the Republic at last had come, that Republic which
had cost him so many years of gaol, it had, in its own turn, imprisoned
him, adding fresh years of gloom to those which already had lacked
sunlight. And thus he remained the martyr of freedom: freedom which he
still desired in spite of everything; freedom, which, strive as he might,
never came, never existed.

"But you are mistaken," replied Guillaume, wounded by Janzen's raillery.
"There is again a thought of getting rid of Barthes, whose uncompromising
rectitude disturbs our politicians; and he does well to take his
precautions!"

Nicholas Barthes came in, a tall, slim, withered old man, with a nose
like an eagle's beak, and eyes that still burned in their deep sockets,
under white and bushy brows. His mouth, toothless but still refined, was
lost to sight between his moustaches and snowy beard; and his hair,
crowning him whitely like an aureola, fell in curls over his shoulders.
Behind him with all modesty came Theophile Morin, with grey whiskers,
grey, brush-like hair, spectacles, and yellow, weary mien--that of an old
professor exhausted by years of teaching. Neither of them seemed
astonished or awaited an explanation on finding that man in bed with an
injured wrist. And there were no introductions: those who were acquainted
merely smiled at one another.

Barthes, for his part, stooped and kissed Guillaume on both cheeks. "Ah!"
said the latter, almost gaily, "it gives me courage to see you."

However, the new comers had brought a little information. The boulevards
were in an agitated state, the news of the crime had spread from cafe to
cafe, and everybody was anxious to see the late edition which one paper
had published giving a very incorrect account of the affair, full of the
most extraordinary details. Briefly, nothing positive was as yet known.

On seeing Guillaume turn pale Pierre compelled him to lie down again, and
even talked of taking the visitors into the next room. But the injured
man gently replied: "No, no, I promise you that I won't stir again, that
I won't open my mouth. But stay there and chat together. I assure you
that it will do me good to have you near me and hear you."

Then, under the sleepy gleams of the lamp, the others began to talk in
undertones. Old Barthes, who considered that bomb to be both idiotic and
abominable, spoke of it with the stupefaction of one who, after fighting
like a hero through all the legendary struggles for liberty, found
himself belated, out of his element, in a new era, which he could not
understand. Did not the conquest of freedom suffice for everything? he
added. Was there any other problem beyond that of founding the real
Republic? Then, referring to Mege and his speech in the Chamber that
afternoon, he bitterly arraigned Collectivism, which he declared to be
one of the democratic forms of tyranny. Theophile Morin, for his part,
also spoke against the Collectivist enrolling of the social forces, but
he professed yet greater hatred of the odious violence of the Anarchists;
for it was only by evolution that he expected progress, and he felt
somewhat indifferent as to what political means might bring about the
scientific society of to-morrow. And in like way Bache did not seem
particularly fond of the Anarchists, though he was touched by the idyllic
dream, the humanitarian hope, whose germs lay beneath their passion for
destruction. And, like Barthes, he also flew into a passion with Mege,
who since entering the Chamber had become, said he, a mere rhetorician
and theorist, dreaming of dictatorship. Meantime Janzen, still erect, his
face frigid and his lips curling ironically, listened to all three of
them, and vented a few trenchant words to express his own Anarchist
faith; the uselessness of drawing distinctions, and the necessity of
destroying everything in order that everything might be rebuilt on fresh
lines.

Pierre, who had remained near the bed, also listened with passionate
attention. Amidst the downfall of his own beliefs, the utter void which
he felt within him, here were these four men, who represented the
cardinal points of this century's ideas, debating the very same terrible
problem which brought him so much suffering, that of the new belief which
the democracy of the coming century awaits. And, ah! since the days of
the immediate ancestors, since the days of Voltaire and Diderot and
Rousseau how incessantly had billows of ideas followed and jostled one
another, the older ones giving birth to new ones, and all breaking and
bounding in a tempest in which it was becoming so difficult to
distinguish anything clearly! Whence came the wind, and whither was the
ship of salvation going, for what port ought one to embark? Pierre had
already thought that the balance-sheet of the century ought to be drawn
up, and that, after accepting the legacies of Rousseau and the other
precursors, he ought to study the ideas of St. Simon, Fourier and even
Cabet; of Auguste Comte, Proudhon and Karl Marx as well, in order, at any
rate, to form some idea of the distance that had been travelled, and of
the cross-ways which one had now reached. And was not this an
opportunity, since chance had gathered those men together in his house,
living exponents of the conflicting doctrines which he wished to examine?

On turning round, however, he perceived that Guillaume was now very pale
and had closed his eyes. Had even he, with his faith in science, felt the
doubt which is born of contradictory theories, and the despair which
comes when one sees the fight for truth resulting in growth of error?

"Are you in pain?" the priest anxiously inquired.

"Yes, a little. But I will try to sleep."

At this they all went off with silent handshakes. Nicholas Barthes alone
remained in the house and slept in a room on the first floor which Sophie
had got ready for him. Pierre, unwilling to quit his brother, dozed off
upon a sofa. And the little house relapsed into its deep quietude, the
silence of solitude and winter, through which passed the melancholy
quiver of the souvenirs of childhood.

In the morning, as soon as it was seven o'clock, Pierre had to go for the
newspapers. Guillaume had passed a bad night and intense fever had set
in. Nevertheless, his brother was obliged to read him the articles on the
explosion. There was an amazing medley of truths and inventions, of
precise information lost amidst the most unexpected extravagance.
Sagnier's paper, the "Voix du Peuple," distinguished itself by its
sub-titles in huge print and a whole page of particulars jumbled together
chance-wise. It had at once decided to postpone the famous list of the
thirty-two deputies and senators compromised in the African Railways
affair; and there was no end to the details it gave of the aspect of the
entrance to the Duvillard mansion after the explosion the pavement broken
up, the upper floor rent open, the huge doors torn away from their
hinges. Then came the story of the Baron's son and daughter preserved as
by a miracle, the landau escaping the slightest injury, while the banker
and his wife, it was alleged, owed their preservation to the circumstance
that they had lingered at the Madeleine after Monseigneur Martha's
remarkable address there. An entire column was given to the one victim,
the poor, pretty, fair-haired errand girl, whose identity did not seem to
be clearly established, although a flock of reporters had rushed first to
the modiste employing her, in the Avenue de l'Opera, and next to the
upper part of the Faubourg St. Denis, where it was thought her
grandmother resided. Then, in a gravely worded article in "Le Globe,"
evidently inspired by Fonsegue, an appeal was made to the Chamber's
patriotism to avoid giving cause for any ministerial crisis in the
painful circumstances through which the country was passing. Thus the
ministry might last, and live in comparative quietude, for a few weeks
longer.

Guillaume, however, was struck by one point only: the culprit was not
known; Salvat, it appeared certain, was neither arrested nor even
suspected. It seemed, indeed, as if the police were starting on a false
scent--that of a well-dressed gentleman wearing gloves, whom a neighbour
swore he had seen entering the mansion at the moment of the explosion.
Thus Guillaume became a little calmer. But his brother read to him from
another paper some particulars concerning the engine of destruction that
had been employed. It was a preserved-meat can, and the fragments of it
showed that it had been comparatively small. And Guillaume relapsed into
anxiety on learning that people were much astonished at the violent
ravages of such a sorry appliance, and that the presence of some new
explosive of incalculable power was already suspected.

At eight o'clock Bertheroy put in an appearance. Although he was
sixty-eight, he showed as much briskness and sprightliness as any young
sawbones calling in a friendly way to perform a little operation. He had
brought an instrument case, some linen bands and some lint. However, he
became angry on finding the injured man nervous, flushed and hot with
fever.

"Ah! I see that you haven't been reasonable, my dear child," said he.
"You must have talked too much, and have bestirred and excited yourself."
Then, having carefully probed the wound, he added, while dressing it:
"The bone is injured, you know, and I won't answer for anything unless
you behave better. Any complications would make amputation necessary."

Pierre shuddered, but Guillaume shrugged his shoulders, as if to say that
he might just as well be amputated since all was crumbling around him.
Bertheroy, who had sat down, lingering there for another moment,
scrutinised both brothers with his keen eyes. He now knew of the
explosion, and must have thought it over. "My dear child," he resumed in
his brusque way, "I certainly don't think that you committed that
abominable act of folly in the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy. But I fancy that you
were in the neighbourhood--no, no, don't answer me, don't defend
yourself. I know nothing and desire to know nothing, not even the formula
of that devilish powder of which your shirt cuff bore traces, and which
has wrought such terrible havoc."

And then as the brothers remained surprised, turning cold with anxiety,
in spite of his assurances, he added with a sweeping gesture: "Ah! my
friends, I regard such an action as even more useless than criminal! I
only feel contempt for the vain agitation of politics, whether they be
revolutionary or conservative. Does not science suffice? Why hasten the
times when one single step of science brings humanity nearer to the goal
of truth and justice than do a hundred years of politics and social
revolt? Why, it is science alone which sweeps away dogmas, casts down
gods, and creates light and happiness. And I, Member of the Institute as
I am, decorated and possessed of means, I am the only true
Revolutionist."

Then he began to laugh and Guillaume realised all the good-natured irony
of his laugh. While admiring him as a great /savant/, he had hitherto
suffered at seeing him lead such a /bourgeois/ life, accepting whatever
appointments and honours were offered him, a Republican under the
Republic, but quite ready to serve science under no matter what master.
But now, from beneath this opportunist, this hieratical /savant/, this
toiler who accepted wealth and glory from all hands, there appeared a
quiet yet terrible evolutionist, who certainly expected that his own work
would help to ravage and renew the world!

However, Bertheroy rose and took his leave: "I'll come back; behave
sensibly, and love one another as well as you can."

When the brothers again found themselves alone, Pierre seated at
Guillaume's bedside, their hands once more sought each other and met in a
burning clasp instinct with all their anguish. How much threatening
mystery and distress there was both around and within them! The grey
wintry daylight came into the room, and they could see the black trees in
the garden, while the house remained full of quivering silence, save that
overhead a faint sound of footsteps was audible. They were the steps of
Nicholas Barthes, the heroic lover of freedom, who, rising at daybreak,
had, like a caged lion, resumed his wonted promenade, the incessant
coming and going of one who had ever been a prisoner. And as the brothers
ceased listening to him their eyes fell on a newspaper which had remained
open on the bed, a newspaper soiled by a sketch in outline which
pretended to portray the poor dead errand girl, lying, ripped open,
beside the bandbox and the bonnet it had contained. It was so frightful,
so atrociously hideous a scene, that two big tears again fell upon
Pierre's cheeks, whilst Guillaume's blurred, despairing eyes gazed
wistfully far away, seeking for the Future.

II

A HOME OF INDUSTRY

THE little house in which Guillaume had dwelt for so many years, a home
of quietude and hard work, stood in the pale light of winter up yonder at
Montmartre, peacefully awaiting his return. He reflected, however, after
/dejeuner/ that it might not be prudent for him to go back thither for
some three weeks, and so he thought of sending Pierre to explain the
position of affairs. "Listen, brother," he said. "You must render me this
service. Go and tell them the truth--that I am here, slightly injured,
and do not wish them to come to see me, for fear lest somebody should
follow them and discover my retreat. After the note I wrote them last
evening they would end by getting anxious if I did not send them some
news." Then, yielding to the one worry which, since the previous night,
had disturbed his clear, frank glance, he added: "Just feel in the
right-hand pocket of my waistcoat; you will find a little key there.
Good! that's it. Now you must give it to Madame Leroi, my mother-in-law,
and tell her that if any misfortune should happen to me, she is to do
what is understood between us. That will suffice, she will understand
you."

At the first moment Pierre had hesitated; but he saw how even the slight
effort of speaking exhausted his brother, so he silenced him, saying:
"Don't talk, but put your mind at ease. I will go and reassure your
people, since you wish that this commission should be undertaken by me."

Truth to tell, the errand was so distasteful to Pierre that he had at
first thought of sending Sophie in his place. All his old prejudices were
reviving; it was as if he were going to some ogre's den. How many times
had he not heard his mother say "that creature!" in referring to the
woman with whom her elder son cohabited. Never had she been willing to
kiss Guillaume's boys; the whole connection had shocked her, and she was
particularly indignant that Madame Leroi, the woman's mother, should have
joined the household for the purpose of bringing up the little ones.
Pierre retained so strong a recollection of all this that even nowadays,
when he went to the basilica of the Sacred Heart and passed the little
house on his way, he glanced at it distrustfully, and kept as far from it
as he could, as if it were some abode of vice and error. Undoubtedly, for
ten years now, the boys' mother had been dead, but did not another
scandal-inspiring creature dwell there, that young orphan girl to whom
his brother had given shelter, and whom he was going to marry, although a
difference of twenty years lay between them? To Pierre all this was
contrary to propriety, abnormal and revolting, and he pictured a home
given over to social rebellion, where lack of principle led to every kind
of disorder.

However, he was leaving the room to start upon his journey, when
Guillaume called him back. "Tell Madame Leroi," said he, "that if I
should die you will let her know of it, so that she may immediately do
what is necessary."

"Yes, yes," answered Pierre. "But calm yourself, and don't move about.
I'll say everything. And in my absence Sophie will stop here with you in
case you should need her."

Having given full instructions to the servant, Pierre set out to take a
tramcar, intending to alight from it on the Boulevard de Rochechouart,
and then climb the height on foot. And on the road, lulled by the gliding
motion of the heavy vehicle, he began to think of his brother's past life
and connections, with which he was but vaguely, imperfectly, acquainted.
It was only at a later date that details of everything came to his
knowledge. In 1850 a young professor named Leroi, who had come from Paris
to the college of Montauban with the most ardent republican ideas, had
there married Agathe Dagnan, the youngest of the five girls of an old
Protestant family from the Cevennes. Young Madame Leroi was /enceinte/
when her husband, threatened with arrest for contributing some violent
articles to a local newspaper, immediately after the "Coup d'Etat," found
himself obliged to seek refuge at Geneva. It was there that the young
couple's daughter, Marguerite, a very delicate child, was born in 1852.
For seven years, that is until the Amnesty of 1859, the household
struggled with poverty, the husband giving but a few ill-paid lessons,
and the wife absorbed in the constant care which the child required.
Then, after their return to Paris, their ill-luck became even greater.
For a long time the ex-professor vainly sought regular employment; it was
denied him on account of his opinions, and he had to run about giving
lessons in private houses. When he was at last on the point of being
received back into the University a supreme blow, an attack of paralysis,
fell upon him. He lost the use of both legs. And then came utter misery,
every kind of sordid drudgery, the writing of articles for dictionaries,
the copying of manuscripts, and even the addressing of newspaper
wrappers, on the fruits of which the household barely contrived to live,
in a little lodging in the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince.

It was there that Marguerite grew up. Leroi, embittered by injustice and
suffering, predicted the advent of a Republic which would avenge the
follies of the Empire, and a reign of science which would sweep away the
deceptive and cruel divinity of religious dogmas. On the other hand,
Agathe's religious faith had collapsed at Geneva, at sight of the narrow
and imbecile practices of Calvinism, and all that she retained of it was
the old Protestant leaven of rebellion. She had become at once the head
and the arm of the house; she went for her husband's work, took it back
when completed, and even did much of it herself, whilst, at the same
time, performing her house duties, and rearing and educating her
daughter. The latter, who attended no school, was indebted for all she
learnt to her father and mother, on whose part there was never any
question of religious instruction. Through contact with her husband,
Madame Leroi had lost all belief, and her Protestant heredity inclining
her to free inquiry and examination, she had arranged for herself a kind
of peaceful atheism, based on paramount principles of human duty and
justice, which she applied courageously, irrespective of all social
conventionalities. The long iniquity of her husband's fate, the
undeserved misfortunes which struck her through him and her daughter,
ended by endowing her with wonderful fortitude and devotion, which made
her, whether as a judge, a manager, or a consoler, a woman of
incomparable energy and nobleness of character.

It was in the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince that Guillaume became acquainted
with the Leroi family, after the war of 1870. On the same floor as their
little lodging he occupied a large room, where he devoted himself
passionately to his studies. At the outset there was only an occasional
bow, for Guillaume's neighbours were very proud and very grave, leading
their life of poverty in fierce silence and retirement. Then intercourse
began with the rendering of little services, such as when the young man
procured the ex-professor a commission to write a few articles for a new
encyclopaedia. But all at once came the catastrophe: Leroi died in his
armchair one evening while his daughter was wheeling him from his table
to his bed. The two distracted women had not even the money to bury him.
The whole secret of their bitter want flowed forth with their tears, and
they were obliged to accept the help of Guillaume, who, from that moment,
became the necessary confidant and friend. And the thing which was bound
to happen did happen, in the most simple and loving manner, permitted by
the mother herself, who, full of contempt for a social system which
allowed those of good hearts to die of hunger, refused to admit the
necessity of any social tie. Thus there was no question of a regular
marriage. One day Guillaume, who was twenty-three years old, found
himself mated to Marguerite, who was twenty; both of them handsome,
healthy, and strong, adoring one another, loving work, and full of hope
in the future.

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