THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя

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СКАЧАТЬ streets of the town, and from that day she became a model wife. Twenty years after, this scandal had not died out at Véteuil.

      William, the child of this singular intimacy, was brought up at La Noiraude. His father, who had had for his mistress only a passing affection, mingled with a little disdain, accepted this child of fortune with perfect indifference. He let him live with him, that he might not be accused of wishing to hide the living testimony of his folly: but, as the memory of the notary’s wife was disagreeable to him, he never troubled his head about him. The poor creature grew up in almost complete solitude. His mother, who had not even felt any reason for getting her husband to leave Véteuil, never tried to see him. This woman saw now how foolish she had been: she trembled as she thought of the consequences her fault might have: age was creeping on her, and she followed the dictates of her plebeian blood and became religious and prudish.

      The woman who proved a real mother to William, was an old servant who had been in the family when Monsieur de Viargue was born. Geneviève and the count’s mother bad been foster-sisters. The latter, who belonged to the nobility of central France, had taken Geneviève with her to Germany, at the time of the emigration, and Monsieur de Viargue, on his return to France, after the death of his mother, had brought her to Véteuil. She was a countrywoman from the Cévennes, belonging to the reformed religion, with a narrow zealous mind, filled with all the fanaticism of the early Calvinists, whose blood she felt flowing in her veins. Tall and lank, with sunken eyes, and a big pointed nose, she reminded one of those old witches who used to be burnt at the stake. She carried everywhere an enormous sombre-looking Bible with its binding strengthened with iron clasps; morning and night, she read a few verses from it in a high shrill voice. Sometimes she would come across some of those awful words of anger which the terrible God of the Jews heaped on his dismayed people. The count put up with what he called her madness: he knew the strict uprightness, the sovereign justice of this overexcited nature. Besides, he looked upon Geneviève as a sacred legacy from his mother. She was more a supreme mistress than a servant in the house.

      At seventy she was still doing heavy work. She had several servants under her, hut she took great pride in setting herself hard tasks. She was humble and yet incredibly vain. She managed everything at La Noiraude, getting up at daybreak, setting each the example of indefatigable activity, and fulfilling her duty with the toughness of a woman who has never felt ill.

      One of the greatest troubles of her life was the passion of her master for science. As she saw him shut himself up during long days in a room littered with strange apparatus, she firmly believed that he had become a wizard. When she passed the door of this room and heard the noise of his bellows, she would clasp her hands in terror, convinced that he was hastening on the fire of hell with his breath. One day, she had the courage to go in and solemnly adjure the count, by the name of his mother, to save his soul by renouncing an accursed work. Monsieur de Viargue gently put her to the door, smiling and promising to reconcile himself to God later on when he died. From that time, she prayed for him morning and night. She would often repeat in a sort of prophetic ecstasy, that she heard the devil prowling about every night, and that great calamities were threatening La Noiraude.

      Geneviève looked upon the scandalous intimacy of the count with the notary’s wife as a first warning of God’s anger. The day this woman came to live in the château, she was seized with righteous indignation. She declared to her master that she could not live in the same house with this creature, and that she gave up her place to her. And she did as she said: she went and took up her quarters in A sort of summer-house that Monsieur de Viargue possessed at the further end of the park. The country people who went along by the side of the park wall used to catch the sound of her shrill voice chanting the verses of her big Bible at all hours of the day. The count did not disturb her, he visited her several times, receiving with an impassive air the fervent sermons which she made him listen to. Once only did he nearly get angry; he had met the old woman in the path where he was taking a walk with his mistress, and Genevieve had taken upon herself to rate the young woman with a violence of language quite biblical. She, who had not the least fault to reproach herself with, would have cast the dirt from the roads in the face of sinning women. The notary’s wife was very much terrified with this scene, and it is quite credible that the disdain and anger of the old protestant had something to do with her hurried departure.

      As soon as Geneviève knew that shame had departed from La Noiraude, she quietly went to take again her position as supreme mistress. She only found there an additional child, little William. The thought of this child, when she was still living in the summer-house, had caused her a sacred horror; he was the child of sin, he might bring with him only misfortune, and perhaps the avenging God had caused him to be born in order to punish his father for his impiety. But when she saw the poor creature, in his pink and white cradle, she felt a sensation of tenderness hitherto unknown to her. This woman, whose feelings and passions had withered in the zealous virginity of a fanatic, experienced a vague sensation that there was awakening in her the yearning of wife and mother which exists in every maiden’s nature. She thought herself tempted by Satan, and wished to resist the tenderness that was taking possession of her being. Then she gave up the struggle, and kissed William with a longing to recommend her soul to God, so as to protect herself against this child of sin on whom Heaven must have laid a curse.

      And she gradually became a mother to him, but she was a strange mother whose caresses were never free from a sort of vague terror. At times, she would repulse him, then she would take him again into her arms with the bitter pleasure of a saint who thinks that he feels the devil’s claw penetrating his flesh. When he was still quite small, she would look earnestly into his eyes, full of uneasiness, and asking herself if she was not about to find the light of hell in the pure clear gaze of the innocent creature. She could never bring herself to believe that he did not belong in a small degree to Satan, but her rough kind affection, though it felt the shock, was only lavished the more.

      As soon as he was weaned, she sent the nurse away. She alone had charge of him. Monsieur de Viargue had handed him over to her, authorising her even, with his ironical philosopher’s smile, to bring him up in whatever religion she pleased. The hope of saving William from the everlasting fire, by making him a zealous protestant, redoubled Genevieve’s devotion. Up to the age of eight, she kept him with her in the room which she occupied on the second floor at La Noiraude.

      William thus grew up in the very midst of nervous excitement. From the cradle he breathed the chilly air, full of religious terror, which the old fanatic shed around her. He saw nothing on awaking but this woman’s face, fervent and speechless bent over him, he heard nothing but the shrill voice of this singer of chants, who would lull him to sleep at night by reciting in a lugubrious fashion one of the seven penitential psalms. The caresses of his foster mother crushed him, her embraces suffocated him, and they were bestowed in shocks and with tears that would send the boy himself into a state of unwholesome tenderness. He acquired, to his hurt, the sensitiveness of a woman, and his nerves became so finely strung that his childish troubles were transformed into real sufferings. Often would his eyes fill with tears, for no apparent reason, and he would weep, not through anger, for hours, like a grown-up person.

      When he was seven, Geneviève taught him his letters out of the big Bible with the iron clasps. This bible, with its paper yellowed with age and its forbidding appearance, used to terrify him. He could not understand the sense of the lines he had to spell, but the sinister tone in which his teacher pronounced the words, froze him to his chair. When he was alone, nothing in the world would have induced him to open the bible. The old protestant spoke to him about it as about God himself with awed respect. The child, whose intelligence was awakening, lived from that time in a sort of eternal dread. Shut up with the fanatic who talked to him incessantly of the devil, of hell, of the anger of Heaven, he passed days in a state of agonising terror: at night, he would sob, as he pictured to himself the flames running under his bed. This poor being who wanted nothing but play and laughter, had his imagination so unhinged that he did not dare to go into the park for fear of being damned. Geneviève would repeat to him every morning, in that shrill voice, the tones of which cut like sharp blades, that the world was an infamous СКАЧАТЬ