THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя

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СКАЧАТЬ of the atmosphere. And they did not cease until exhausted with fatigue; then only could they go and enjoy a few hours’ rest. Their quarrels became, in a measure, necessary to them — a means of procuring a few hours’ rest by stupefying their nerves.

      Madame Raquin listened. She never ceased to be there, in her armchair, her hands dangling on her knees, her head straight, her face mute. She heard everything, and not a shudder ran through her lifeless frame. Her eyes rested on the murderers with the most acute fixedness. Her martyrdom must have been atrocious. She thus learned, detail by detail, all the events that had preceded and followed the murder of Camille. Little by little her ears became polluted with an account of the filth and crimes of those whom she had called her children.

      These quarrels of the married couple placed her in possession of the most minute circumstances connected with the murder, and spread out, one by one, before her terrified mind, all the episodes of the horrible adventure. As she went deeper into this sanguinary filth, she pleaded in her mind for mercy, at times, she fancied she was touching the bottom of the infamy, and still she had to descend lower. Each night, she learnt some new detail. The frightful story continued to expand before her. It seemed like being lost in an interminable dream of horror. The first avowal had been brutal and crushing, but she suffered more from these repeated blows, from these small facts which the husband and wife allowed to escape them in their fits of anger, and which lit up the crime with sinister rays. Once a day, this mother heard the account of the murder of her son; and, each day this account became more horrifying, more replete with detail, and was shouted into her ears with greater cruelty and uproar.

      On one occasion, Therese, taken aback with remorse, at the sight of this wan countenance, with great tears slowly coursing down its cheeks, pointed out her aunt to Laurent, beseeching him with a look to hold his tongue.

      “Well, what of it? Leave me alone!” exclaimed the latter in a brutal tone, “you know very well that she cannot give us up. Am I more happy than she is? We have her cash, I have no need to constrain myself.”

      The quarrel continued, bitter and piercing, and Camille was killed over again. Neither Therese nor Laurent dared give way to the thoughts of pity that sometimes came over them, and shut the paralysed woman in her bedroom, when they quarrelled, so as to spare her the story of the crime. They were afraid of beating one another to death, if they failed to have this semi-corpse between them. Their pity yielded to cowardice. They imposed ineffable sufferings on Madame Raquin because they required her presence to protect them against their hallucinations.

      All their disputes were alike, and led to the same accusations. As soon as one of them accused the other of having killed this man, there came a frightful shock.

      One night, at dinner, Laurent who sought a pretext for becoming irritable, found that the water in the decanter was lukewarm. He declared that tepid water made him feel sick, and that he wanted it fresh.

      “I was unable to procure any ice,” Therese answered dryly.

      “Very well, I will deprive myself of drinking,” retorted Laurent.

      “This water is excellent,” said she.

      “It is warm, and has a muddy taste,” he answered. “It’s like water from the river.”

      “Water from the river?” repeated Therese.

      And she burst out sobbing. A juncture of ideas had just occurred in her mind.

      “Why do you cry?” asked Laurent, who foresaw the answer, and turned pale.

      “I cry,” sobbed the young woman, “I cry because — you know why — Oh! Great God! Great God! It was you who killed him.”

      “You lie!” shouted the murderer vehemently, “confess that you lie. If I threw him into the Seine, it was you who urged me to commit the murder.”

      “I! I!” she exclaimed.

      “Yes, you! Don’t act the ignorant,” he replied, “don’t compel me to force you to tell the truth. I want you to confess your crime, to take your share in the murder. It will tranquillise and relieve me.”

      “But I did not drown Camille,” she pleaded.

      “Yes, you did, a thousand times yes!” he shouted. “Oh! You feign astonishment and want of memory. Wait a moment, I will recall your recollections.”

      Rising from table, he bent over the young woman, and with crimson countenance, yelled in her face:

      “You were on the river bank, you remember, and I said to you in an undertone: ‘I am going to pitch him into the water.’ Then you agreed to it, you got into the boat. You see that we murdered him together.”

      “It is not true,” she answered. “I was crazy, I don’t know what I did, but I never wanted to kill him. You alone committed the crime.”

      These denials tortured Laurent. As he had said, the idea of having an accomplice relieved him. Had he dared, he would have attempted to prove to himself that all the horror of the murder fell upon Therese. He more than once felt inclined to beat the young woman, so as to make her confess that she was the more guilty of the two.

      He began striding up and down, shouting and raving, followed by the piercing eyes of Madame Raquin.

      “Ah! The wretch! The wretch!” he stammered in a choking voice, “she wants to drive me mad. Look, did you not come up to my room one evening, did you not intoxicate me with your caresses to persuade me to rid you of your husband? You told me, when I visited you here, that he displeased you, that he had the odour of a sickly child. Did I think of all this three years ago? Was I a rascal? I was leading the peaceful existence of an upright man, doing no harm to anybody. I would not have killed a fly.”

      “It was you who killed Camille,” repeated Therese with such desperate obstinacy that she made Laurent lose his head.

      “No, it was you, I say it was you,” he retorted with a terrible burst of rage. “Look here, don’t exasperate me, or if you do you’ll suffer for it. What, you wretch, have you forgotten everything? You who maddened me with your caresses! Confess that it was all a calculation in your mind, that you hated Camille, and that you had wanted to kill him for a long time. No doubt you took me as a sweetheart, so as to drive me to put an end to him.”

      “It is not true,” said she. “What you relate is monstrous. You have no right to reproach me with my weakness towards you. I can speak in regard to you, as you speak of me. Before I knew you, I was a good woman, who never wronged a soul. If I drove you mad, it was you made me madder still. Listen Laurent, don’t let us quarrel. I have too much to reproach you with.”

      “What can you reproach me with?” he inquired.

      “No, nothing,” she answered. “You did not save me from myself, you took advantage of my surrender, you chose to spoil my life. I forgive you all that. But, in mercy, do not accuse me of killing Camille. Keep your crime for yourself. Do not seek to make me more terrified than I am already.”

      Laurent raised his hand to strike her in the face.

      “Beat me, I prefer that,” said she, “I shall suffer less.”

      And she advanced her head. But he restrained himself, and taking a chair, sat down beside her.

      “Listen,” he began in a voice that he endeavoured to render СКАЧАТЬ