THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя

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      CHAPTER III

      WHICH TELLS OF THE EFFECTS PRODUCED BY A PIECE OF WHITE RAG

      To understand the events that are about to follow, it is necessary to give a short description of the cottage on the seashore. It was built in a rather peculiar way: it had two doors, one in the front which gave access to the rooms below, and the other at the back which led straight from the ground to the rooms upstairs. The cottage was built against the rock, so that the first floor, seen from the country, appeared to be only a ground floor.

      The room occupied by Blanche was upstairs to the left of the staircase and had windows facing the sea. Following on to this room was a smaller one which served as a dressing-room, and into this opened the door at the back. This door had a rusty lock and had perhaps not turned on its hinges for twenty years. The key to it being lost, it was never used.

      When M. de Cazalis took the house, he had not thought of troubling about this exit, which seemed closed for good.

      Blanche, some days before being laid up, while looking for a pin she had dropped, was very much surprised to come across a key hidden between the floor and the wall, and her first thought was that it must belong to the door in question. She was not mistaken: it turned in the lock, and pulling the door towards her she was able to gaze out on the country. She placed her discovery in safety, and spoke to no one about it, being forewarned by a sort of instinct, that she would in future have a means of safety in her hands.

      On the day she was taken ill she fastened a piece of white rag to the window shutter, and then, after taking the key from the bottom of a drawer where she had hidden it, went back to bed and slipped it under the bolster.

      As soon as M. de Cazalis heard that the baby would be born that evening he resolved to stay in the house, and not leave it until the child was in his possession. He retained a doctor, sent for the midwife, and despatched a messenger to Marseille to fetch a wet-nurse whom he had engaged some time previous, and who was a creature of his own, on whose fidelity he could rely.

      When these precautions had been taken he awaited events. To pass the time, he went for a walk beside the sea, feeling very anxious notwithstanding his busy frame of mind, and thinking he would be lost if the infant escaped him. He calmed himself, a little, by reflecting that such a thing was impossible, as he would not leave Blanche’s door until the newborn babe had been taken away by the wet-nurse. He walked for several hours along the beach casting, from time to time, a glance at the windows of his niece’s room. Madame Lambert was to come and call him as soon as all was over. Night closed in, and he ended by seating himself among the boulders, watching the shadows flitting across the cottage windows.

      In the meanwhile poor Blanche was in agony, and at one time doctor and midwife despaired of her life. She had been so weakened by sorrow, that she was hardly able to bear up against the present physical trial. She had a son, but she did not hear the poor little thing’s first cry: pale, insensible, and with the appearance of a corpse, she was lying on her couch of pain. The infant was placed beside her, the wet-nurse not having yet arrived, and Madame Lambert ran to inform M. de Cazalis that everything had ended well, and his niece was dying.

      The deputy came in all haste, very much annoyed to find that the wet-nurse was not there. He, however, restrained himself, so as not to show his anxiety before the doctor and midwife. At heart he cared very little about his niece’s sufferings, but in presence of her pale exhausted form extended on the bed, he had to assume a concerned and affectionate manner. Turning to the doctor he inquired if there was still danger.

      “Not at present,” was the answer, “and I think I can withdraw.”

      Then pointing to the midwife:

      “Madame’s presence will be sufficient, only I must impress on you that the patient must be spared all worry and excitement. Her life depends on it. I will come again tomorrow.”

      The wet-nurse arrived just as M. de Cazalis was seeing the doctor out. He returned with her into the house, and severely upbraided her as they went upstairs to Blanche’s room. The wet-nurse excused herself as best she could and the deputy gave her his final instructions. She was to take away the newborn child and watch over him from hour to hour, with the greatest vigilance. The following morning she was to leave for the village where she resided, and which was situated in an out-of-the-way corner in the department of the Basses-Alpes. He hoped they would not go and ferret out his great nephew at the bottom of such a hole as that.

      He found Madame Lambert and the midwife silently bending over the patient’s bed, but when he approached to take the child, so as to give him to the nurse, he met Blanche’s eyes. They had just opened wide, and were fixed upon him. He had the courage, however, to stretch out his arm.

      Then the young woman making a great effort succeeded in sitting up in bed and pressed the child to her bosom.