THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя

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СКАЧАТЬ on them one could perceive the rigidness of the bodies in the furious agony of death. Patients afflicted with the disease yelled and distorted themselves in this long cold room. Sisters of Mercy — slim, delicate women — moved softly round the beds assisting the doctors in their work.

      M. Martelly had seated himself near the mattress on which Philippe had been placed, face to face with death, and watched the Sisters of Mercy who were quietly and compassionately attending to the dying. He noticed one, a short distance away from him, who was comforting with her tender words, the last moments of an old man. The face of this patient, although contracted in the death agony, did not seem unknown to him. He drew near and recognised with pain, that it was Abbé Chastanier. The priest was dying, a victim to his consummate charity.

      Since the commencement of the epidemic he had not taken an hour’s repose; day and night he ascended to the garrets visiting poor families struck down by the disease; he had parted with all he possessed to give help to the unfortunate, and when he had nothing left but the clothes he wore, he had gone begging to the rich. As he was leaving a house in the old town that morning, he had been struck down with a violent attack of cholera in the street and hurried off to the hospital, where for the last two hours he had been enduring the most atrocious agony with exemplary fortitude.

      When M. Martelly approached him, his eyes were already covered with a film and he was unable to see the ground, but he nevertheless recognised the shipowner. He smiled, but could not utter a single word. Then, raising a hand, he pointed to heaven.

      After he was dead M. Martelly gazed at him for a moment and then returned to seat himself beside Philippe who continued as rigid as a corpse. Just then, the young Sister of Mercy who had knelt for an instant beside Abbé Chastanier’s body came forward to see if she could not render the wounded man some assistance. She had hardly glanced at Philippe’s face when all her features were distorted with emotion. With her eyes fixed on the young man and her breast heaving, she stood there, lost in painful contemplation.

      At that moment Marius entered the room followed by Sauvaire. Seeing his brother extended stiff and livid, he sobbed aloud. The news of the duel and Philippe’s wound had come upon him so abruptly, that he was quite stupid.

      As soon as he was face to face with the wounded man, he asked violently for a physician and insisted on the patient being saved. The doctor who was in the ward, touched by this outburst of grief, consented to sound the wound again. Marius felt a burn in his inside when his brother uttered a plaintive cry on feeling the touch of the instrument. That cry made the young Sister of Mercy shudder. As she came forward Marius caught sight of her.

      “You here!” he murmured angrily, “ah! I ought to have expected you would be present at the last moments of the man whom your love brought to misfortune. You are the worthy niece of your uncle who has just killed my brother.”

      The young Sister of Mercy had joined her hands. She looked humbly and beseechingly at Marius, half choked by anguish, and unable to reply.

      “Pardon me,” continued the young man immediately, “I know not what I do. Do not remain there. Philippe might see you on opening his eyes. We must avoid causing him violent emotion. Is it not so?”

      He spoke as a child wandering in his mind. When he had recognised Blanche in the costume of the Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul, he really thought he saw a phantom rise up before him. She reminded him of a whole past full of suffering.

      At the outbreak of the epidemic, Blanche had begged as a favour to be allowed to work in the hospital at Marseille. Perhaps she hoped to die there. Her devotedness was the admiration of all. She lived in the midst of death with the courage and abnegation of a martyr. To have seen her bending over the frightful features of the dying, no one would have guessed that her childhood had been so weak and delicate and her birth so illustrious. On several occasions they wanted to send her away, telling her she had discharged her tribute, but she had obtained permission to remain, by beseeching the authorities to allow her to do so. For a month she had been defying death, and death had respected her.

      Abbé Chastanier’s last agony, and the sight of Philippe lying inanimate before her, had just given her a shock that broke her courage. She was staggering and all her human feelings had returned to her. She retreated a few steps, obedient to Marius’ gesture, while the doctor completed the dressing of the wound. Philippe at last opened his eyes and looked round about him with an expression of lively astonishment, but on seeing his brother, he remembered all.

      Marius, mastering his tears with a violent effort, bent over him.

      “I don’t see Joseph,” Philippe said to him, in a voice as faint as one’s breath. “Where is he?”

      “He is coming,” answered Marius.

      “Immediately, is it not so? I want to see him, immediately, immediately.”

      He closed his eyes again. Marius had told a falsehood, he had run off without telling Fine and Joseph what had happened, in the desire of delaying their despair for at least a few hours, but now, in face of his brother’s request, he would have given all he possessed in this world, to have brought the child with him.

      “Shall I go and fetch the little one?” asked Sauvaire, who felt extremely uneasy amidst all these cholera patients, and yet dared not run away. Marius accepted the offer at once, and the ex-master-stevedore ran off immediately. Philippe had no doubt heard what had been said for he reopened his eyes and thanked his brother with a look. As he turned his head, his face became overspread with a look of happy ecstasy: he had just perceived Blanche, who had drawn near on hearing the sound of his voice.

      “Am I dead?” he murmured. “Oh! dear, tender vision.”

      And he fainted again.

      CHAPTER XXII

      THE PUNISHMENT

      WHEN the vehicle carrying away Philippe had gone some distance from the scene of the encounter, M. de Cazalis warmly thanked the sergeants who had assisted him as witnesses.

      “Gentlemen,” he said to them, “excuse the trouble I have given you, and kindly allow me to drive you back to Marseille.”

      The sergeants made some difficulty, saying that they could very well return to town alone, but M. de Cazalis insisted, the truth being, that he wanted to know if Philippe was really dead, for he dared not rejoice until his enemy had been nailed down in his coffin.

      As the cab in which the ex-deputy and his two witnesses were seated, was coming out of the Rue d’Aix, it was stopped by the solemn procession conducting the statue of Notre Dame de la Garde back to her church. This Virgin is the guardian saint of Marseille, and when a misfortune overshadows the city, the inhabitants carry it along their streets, prostrating themselves before it and beseeching the Virgin to implore the clemency of the Almighty on their behalf.

      M. de Cazalis was irritated at this obstruction for he was kept waiting for a long quarter of an hour whilst dying of impatience to get news of Philippe, and at the bottom of his heart wished the procession to the deuce. But at the very minute when the statue of the virgin passed before him, he all at once felt a mortal shiver which descended into his very bowels. He leant on the shoulder of one of the sergeants, growing paler and paler, and suddenly sank all of a heap to the bottom of the vehicle, uttering plaintive moans. He had been brought down by a violent attack of the prevalent disease. He had escaped the hand of Philippe, and it was the cholera that had undertaken his punishment. The two sergeants had sprang from the cab, and the crowd, who soon ascertained that they were СКАЧАТЬ