THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя

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СКАЧАТЬ young man had a room in an hotel in the Rue Soufflot. He told his companion to lie down on the bed; as for himself, he would sleep very well on the sofa. Madeleine pondered; she looked round the room which was littered with swords and pipes; she surveyed her protector, who treated her as a comrade with cordial familiarity. She noticed a pair of lady’s gloves on the table. Her companion smilingly reassured her; he told her that no lady would come to disturb them, and that, besides, if he had been married, he would not have run after her in the street. Madeleine blushed.

      Next morning, she woke up in the young man’s arms. She had thrown herself into them of her own accord, impelled by a sudden surrender of herself for which she could not account. What she had refused to Lobrichon with savage revolt, she had actually granted two hours later to a stranger. She felt no regret. She was simply astonished.

      When her lover learned that the story she had given the night before was no idle tale, he seemed very much surprised. He thought he had met a wily woman who was inventing falsehoods to make him run after her all the more. All the little scene she had acted before getting into the bed had seemed to him got up beforehand. Otherwise, he would have acted more discreetly, he would above all have reflected on the serious consequences of such an intimacy. He was a decent fellow who did not object to amuse himself, but he had a wholesome dread of serious love affairs. He had calculated that he was simply showing hospitality to Madeleine for a night and that he would see her go off next morning. He was very much cast down at his mistake.

      “My poor child,” he said to Madeleine in a voice of emotion, “we have been guilty of a serious error. Forgive me and forget — me. I have to leave France in a few weeks and I don’t know if I shall ever come back.”

      The young girl listened to this confession pretty calmly. In short, she was not at all in love with this young fellow. For him their intimacy was an adventure, for her an accident from which her ignorance had not been able to protect her. The thought of the coming departure of her lover could not yet break her heart, but the idea of an immediate separation was peculiarly distressing. In an indistinct way she said to herself that this man was her husband and that she could not leave him like that. She took one turn round the room, lost in thought, looking for her clothes; then she came back, sat down on the edge of the bed, and said hesitatingly; “Listen, keep me with yon as long as you stay in Paris. It will be more seemly.”

      This last phrase, so touchingly naive, deeply affected the young fellow. He became aware of the lifelong misery be had just given to the life of this big child who had confided herself to him with the calmness of a little girl. He drew her to his breast, and answered that his home was hers.

      During the day, Madeleine went to fetch her belongings. She had an interview with her guardian, and made him submit to everything she wished. The old man, fearing a scandal, and still all shaken with the struggle of the night, stood trembling before her. She made him promise never to try to see her again. She carried off the title-deeds of her income of two thousand francs. This money was a great source of pride to her; it enabled her to stay with her lover without selling herself.

      That very night, she was peacefully embroidering in the room in the Rue Soufflot as she had been the night before at her guardian’s. Her life did not seem to her too much changed. She did not think she had anything to blush for. None of her feelings of independence and frankness had been wounded in the fault she had committed. She had surrendered herself freely, and she could not yet understand the terrible consequences of this surrender. The future did not concern her.

      The esteem which her lover had for women was only that which young men feel who have to do with creatures of an inferior class; but he had the boisterous goodnature of a strong man who lives a happy life. To tell the truth, he speedily forgot his remorse and ceased to pity Madeleine’s fate. He was soon in love with her after his fashion; he thought her very handsome and took a pleasure in showing her to his friends. He treated her as his mistress, taking her on Sundays to Verrières or somewhere else, and to supper with his comrades’ mistresses during the week. These people now simply called her Madeleine.

      She would perhaps have rebelled if she had not been charmed with her lover; he had a happy disposition, and made her laugh like a child even at the things that hurt her. She gradually accepted her position. Unknown to herself, her mind was becoming sullied, and she was growing accustomed to shame.

      The student, who had just been appointed army-surgeon the day before they met, expected his orders to start every day. But they did not come, and Madeleine saw the months pass by, saying to herself that she would perhaps be a widow next day. She had only expected to stay a few weeks in the Rue Soufflot. She stayed there a year. At first she simply felt a kind of affection for the man she was living with. When at the end of two months she began to live in anxious expectation of his departure, her existence was a series of shocks which gradually bound her to him. Had he set off at once, she would perhaps have seen him go away without too much despair. But to be always fearing to lose him and yet have him always with her, this succeeded finally in uniting her to him in a close bond. She never loved him passionately; she rather received his impression, she felt herself becoming a part of him, and she saw that he was taking entire possession of her body and mind. Now she found that she could not forget him.

      One day, she went with one of her new lady friends on a little journey. This friend, a law-student’s mistress, was called Louise, and she was going to see a child that she had put to nurse some sixty miles from Paris. The young women were not to return till the third day, but bad weather came on and they hastened back a day sooner than they had arranged. In a corner of the compartment of the train in which they were returning, Madeleine pondered with a feeling of sadness on the scene which she had just witnessed; the caresses of the mother and the prattle of the child had revealed to her a world of unknown emotions. She was seized with a sudden feeling of anguish at the idea that she too might have become a mother. Then the thought of the near departure of the man she was living with filled her with dismay, like an irreparable calamity of which she had never dreamed. She saw her fall, she saw her false and painful position; she was eager to get home to put her arms round her lover, to beseech him earnestly to marry her and never leave her.

      She arrived in the Rue Soufflot in a state of feverish excitement. She had forgotten the slender tie, ready to be snapped at any moment, which she had accepted; she wished in her turn to take entire possession of the man whose memory would possess her for life. When she opened the door of the room in the hotel, she suddenly stopped stupefied on the threshold.

      Her lover was bending down in front of the window, fastening the buckles of his trunk; by his side lay a travelling bag and another trunk already fastened up. Madeleine’s clothes and belongings were spread out in disorder on the bed. The young fellow had received his orders to set off that very morning, and he had hastened to make his preparations, emptying the drawers, separating his own things from Madeleine’s. He wanted to get away before his mistress came back, really believing himself to be acting under an impulse of kindness. He thought a letter of explanation would have been quite sufficient.

      When he turned round and saw Madeleine on the threshold, he could not suppress a movement of vexation. He got up and went towards her with a somewhat forced smile.

      “My dear girl,” he said as he kissed her, “the time for goodbye has come. I wanted to go away without seeing you again. That would have avoided a painful scene for both of us. You see, I was leaving your things on the bed.”

      Madeleine felt as if she would faint. She sat down on a chair, without thinking of taking off her hat. She was very pale and could not find what to say. Her tearless burning eyes kept looking first at the trunks and then at the heap of her clothes; it was this unfeeling division of property which put the separation in such a harsh and odious light. Their linen no longer lay side by side in the same drawer; she was henceforth nothing to her lover.

      The young fellow was just СКАЧАТЬ