THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя

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СКАЧАТЬ for death must have risen to his powerful mind, during the long hours that he spent in idleness musing on the self-made ruins of his labour!

      Nothing remained. As William went round the room, he noticed at last, however, an object which his father’s hand had spared; it was a sort of cupboard fastened in the wall, a little bookcase with glass doors containing small bottles full of liquids of different colours. The count, who had taken great interest in toxicology, had kept there certain violent poisons still unknown, and discovered by himself. The little bookshelf had come from a sitting-room on the ground-floor where William remembered to have seen it in his childhood; it was of foreign wood, ornamented at the corners with brass, and very chastely inlaid at the sides. This costly bit of furniture, of rich and wonderful workmanship, would not have disfigured a pretty woman’s boudoir. The count had dipped his finger in the ink and written the word “Poisons” on each pane, in big black letters.

      William was deeply touched at his father’s cruel irony in preserving from all harm this cupboard and its contents. The whole life, the whole range of knowledge of the count was concentrated there, in a few phials of new poisons. He had destroyed his other discoveries, those which might have been useful, and out of his vast researches, out of the labours of his powerful mind, had bequeathed to humanity merely a few agents of suffering and death. This hit at learning, this sinister mockery, this disdain for mankind, this last avowal of sorrow, showed clearly what the death-agony of this man must have been, who after fifty years of study seemed to have found in his retorts nothing but the few drops of the drug with which he had poisoned himself.

      William fell back to the door. Fright and disgust were driving him out. This filthy room, full of nameless rubbish, with its spider webs and its thick dust, exhaled a fetid odour which almost made him sick. The dirty heaps of broken bottles and old papers lying in the corners, seemed to him the filth of that science from which the count had estranged him, and which he seemed to have scornfully swept aside before dying, as one puts to the door a vile creature that one loves, with a contempt still full of longing desires. And as he opened the door of this poison cupboard, he fancied he could hear the pained laugh of the old chemist as he meditated for months on his suicide. Then, in the middle of the laboratory, he shuddered as he saw the narrow streak of blood which had come from his father’s skull and trickled right under the stove. He could see too that this blood was beginning to clot.

      Meantime the doctor was rummaging about. The moment he had crossed the threshold, he had understood all, and he had become really angry.

      “What a man! what a man,” he murmured. “He has destroyed everything, broken everything — Oh! if I had been there, I would have chained him up as a furious madman.” —

      And turning towards William he went on:

      “Your father was a very clever man. He must have made some wonderful discoveries. And see what he has left. It is madness, sheer madness — Can you understand it? A scholar who might have been a member of the Institute and yet preferred to keep to himself the result of his labours! Still, if I unearth one of his manuscripts, I will publish it, and it will be an honour both to him and myself.”

      He went and groped about among the heap of papers, regardless of the dust; but he soon began to moan:

      “Nothing, not a single whole page. I never saw such a madman.”

      When he had visited the pile of papers, he passed on to the heap of broken bottles, and there continued to moan and cry out. He put his nose to the broken necks of the phials, sniffing, trying to discover the chemist’s secrets.

      At last he came back to the middle of the room, furious at not having been able to learn anything. It was then that he noticed the cupboard containing the poisons. He rushed towards it with a shout of joy. But the key was not in the lock, and he had to be content with examining the phials through the panes.

      “Sir,” he said seriously, addressing himself to William, “I beg you as a favour to allow me to analyse these substances.

      I address this request to you in the name of science, in the name too of the memory of Monsieur de Viargue.”

      The young man shook his head, and pointing to the rubbish which strewed the floor, he replied:

      “You see, my father has wished to leave no trace of his labours. Those phials shall remain there.”

      The doctor insisted, but he could not break his resolution. He began to walk round the laboratory again, more exasperated than ever. When he came to the streak of blood, he stopped and asked if this blood was Monsieur de Viargue’s.

      When William replied in the affirmative, his face seemed to brighten. He bent down by the pool which had formed under the stove; then, with the tips of his nails, he tried, with delicate care, to detach a clot already almost dry. He hoped to be able, by submitting this blood to a minute analysis, to discover what poisonous agent the count had used.

      When William understood for what object he was doing this, he advanced towards him with quivering lips, and, taking him by the arm, said to him in a peremptory tone:

      “Come, sir, you can see very well that the place is stifling me — We must not disturb the peace of the dead. Let that blood alone. I insist on it.”

      The doctor left the clot with very bad grace. Urged on by the young man, he went out under protest. William, who had waited for him a moment with feverish impatience, breathed at last when he was in the passage. He shut the door of the laboratory, quite disposed to keep the oath which he had taken to his father never to set foot in it.

      When he got downstairs, he found in the drawingroom on the ground-floor a magistrate from Véteuil. This gentleman explained to him, in a courteous tone, however, that he had come to put the seals on the deceased’s papers, in case a legal will could not be shown him. He even had the delicacy to give the young man to understand that he was aware of the bond of relationship between him and the deceased, of his title of adoptive son, and to say that he did not doubt the existence of a will entirely in his favour. He ended his little speech with a gracious smile: this will would certainly be found in some drawer, but law was law, it might contain legacies of a private nature, and everybody must wait and see. William put a stop to his talk by showing him a will which left him sole legatee. The count had had to wait for his son’s majority in order to be able to. adopt him and transmit to him his name; and as the adoption entailed the necessity of making his will, he had been allowed to treat his natural son as a legitimate child. The magistrate was full of excuses; he repeated that law was law, and withdrew, giving, with many bows, the name of Monsieur de Viargue to him whom a few minutes before he had addressed thoughtlessly as Monsieur William, though he must have known of the right which he had to assume the title of his adoptive father.

      During the next few days, William was overwhelmed with duties. Not an hour was his own to think of his new position. On all sides, he was pestered with condolences, applications, and offers of service. At last he shut himself up in his room, requesting Geneviève to reply to the host of people who were importuning him. He left the management of his affairs entirely to her. The count, in his will, had left the old woman an income which would have permitted her to end her days in peace. But she was almost angry, refusing the money, saying that she would die on her legs and that she did not intend to give up her work. Really, the young man was very pleased to find some one who would relieve him of the material cares of life. His indolent and feeble disposition detested activity: the smallest annoyances of existence were for him big obstacles of vexation and disgust.

      When at last he could find solitude, he was seized with sadness. His feverishness no longer buoyed him up, and he felt himself crushed by gloomy dejection. He had been able to forget for a few days the suicide of his father; now he thought of it СКАЧАТЬ