THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя

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      Madeleine, who knew of Madame de Rieu’s amours, always looked at her with a sort of astonishment. How could this woman live peaceably in her sins? When she asked herself this question, she really thought that she had to deal with a monster, with a diseased and exceptional creature. The fact is, Madeleine had one of those sound, cool temperaments which can only accept clearly-defined positions. If her feet had slipped into the mud for a moment, it was by accident, and she had long suffered from the effects of her fall. Her pride could never have become inured to the agitations of mind and the cruel wounds inflicted on the senses by adultery: she must live surrounded by esteem and peace, in an atmosphere where she could walk with her head erect. As she looked on Hélène, she could not help thinking of the fears with which she must be harassed when she was hiding a lover in her bed. As she was not passionate herself, she could not understand the keen charms of passion; she saw only its sufferings, the terror and the shame in the presence of the husband, the kisses, often cruel, of the lover, and the existence troubled at every hour by the affection and anger of these two men. Her open nature would never have accepted such an existence of baseness and falsehood, and she would have revolted against it at the first feeling of anguish. It is feeble characters and weak bodies that submit to blows, and end at last by building themselves a luxurious nest in anxiety itself, where they willingly go to sleep. As she looked at Hélène’s sleek, shining face, Madeleine would think: “If I ever surrender myself to any other man than William, I will kill myself.”

      For four summers, the visitors came to La Noiraude. Tiburce’s father had placed him with a lawyer and unfeelingly kept him at Veteuil, where the young fellow chafed bitterly at not being able to follow his mistress to Paris. Hélène was so touched by his grief, that on two occasions she passed several of the winter months at Véteuil; yet, each spring, she took him again with renewed eagerness, for the woman doted on him and found no other lover who satisfied her. Tiburce was beginning to feel a singular detestation for her. When she turned up, in the middle of December, he felt half disposed to turn a deaf ear to her, for he cared not a straw for her kisses that took his breath away, and was growing desperate at not being able to turn her to advantage. Four summers of useless love-making to this woman, who might have been his mother, had so irritated him, that he would, some day, have eased his feelings by insulting and beating her and then leaving her to chance, if the old cattle-dealer had not had the happy idea of dying from a fit. A fortnight afterwards, young Rouillard was on his way to Paris in the same compartment as Hélène, more respectful, more affectionate than ever, while Monsieur de Rieu carefully surveyed the couple through his half-closed eyes.

      When the De Rieus were away, especially during the long winter nights, William and Madeleine found themselves alone with Geneviève. She lived with them on a footing of equality, sitting down at the same table, and occupying the same rooms. She was then ninety; still perfectly straight, though lanker and more bony, she had relaxed none of the gloomy fervour of her mind; her pointed nose, her sunken lips, and the wrinkles that seamed her face, gave to her appearance the harsh outlines and deep shadows of a sinister mask. At night, when the work of the day was over, she would come and sit in the room where the husband and wife were, she would bring her Bible with its iron clasps, open it wide, and, under the yellow light of the lamp, read through the verses in a singsong undertone. She would read thus for hours together, with a dull continual murmur, broken only by the rustling of the leaves as she turned them over. In the silence, her droning voice seemed as though it were reciting the prayers for the dead; she drawled along in mournful lamentations, like the monotonous murmur of the waves. In the huge room one felt quite shivery at this hum which seemed to proceed from invisible mouths hidden in the gloom of the ceiling.

      Some nights, Madeleine was seized with secret terror, as she caught a few words of Genevieve’s reading. She chose for preference the gloomiest pages of the Old Testament, narratives of blood and horror, which excited her feelings and gave to her accents a sort of restrained fury. She spoke with implacable joy of the anger and of the jealousy of the terrible God, of that God of the Prophets, who was the only Deity she knew of; she would represent him crushing the earth at His will, and chastising with His cruel arm both beings and things. When she came to verses about murder and fire, her voice would proceed more slowly, in order that she might dwell with longer pleasure on the terrors of hell, and the displays of the unrelenting justice of Heaven. Her big Bible always showed her Israel prostrate and trembling at the feet of its Judge, and she would feel in her flesh the sacred shudder that shook the Jews, and in her excitement she would give stifled sobs, fancying that on her shoulders were falling the fiery drops of the rain of Sodom. At times, she would resume her reading in a sinister tone: she would condemn the guilty as Jehovah did; her pitiless fanaticism took a delight in casting sinners into the abyss. To smite the wicked, kill them, burn them, seemed to her a sacred duty, for she looked on God as an executioner, whose mission was to whip the impious world.

      This hardhearted woman filled Madeleine with dejection. She would become quite pale, as she thought of the year of her life that needed absolution. Pardon had come, and she had thought herself absolved by William’s love and esteem, and now in the very midst of her peace she heard these inexorable words of chastisement. Had not God then blotted out her faults? Was she to remain till death crushed beneath the burden of the sin of her youth? Would she have to pay some day her debt of repentance? As these thoughts disturbed her peaceful life she would think of the future with secret disquietude; she grew alarmed at her present tranquillity, at this smooth water which fed her hope; abysses were forming perhaps beneath this clear peaceful surface, a breath would suffice to throw it into a raging storm and to engulf her in its cruel waves. The heaven which Geneviève disclosed to her eyes, this sombre tribunal of judges, this chamber of torture, where there were cries of agony and odours of burnt flesh, seemed to her like a vision of blood. In her early days, when she was at the boarding-school, she had been taught, at her first communion, that paradise was a delightful confectioner’s shop, full of sweetmeats, distributed to the elect by white and pink angels. In after life, she had been amused at her girlish credulity, and she had never afterwards set foot in a church. To-day she saw the confectioner’s shop changed into a court of justice; she could no more believe in the eternal sweetmeats than in the eternal red fires of the fallen angels; but the mournful pictures which the disordered brain of the fanatic evoked, if they did not make her afraid of God, filled her with strange uneasiness as they caused her to think of her past life. She felt that the day Geneviève learnt her sin, she would condemn her to one of the punishments of which she spoke with such delight; strong and proud in her life of purity, the old woman would be implacable. At times, Madeleine would fancy that Geneviève was looking at her in a fierce way; then she would hang her head; she would almost blush, and tremble like a guilty person who can hope for no pardon. While she could not believe in God, she had a belief in powers and fatal necessities. The old woman would stand erect, severe and unrelenting, pitiless and cruel, and declare to her: “You bear in you the anguish of your past existence. Some day this anguish will rise to your throat and strangle you.” It seemed to her that fatality lived at La Noiraude, and surrounded her path, chanting mournful verses of penitence.

      When she was alone with William, in their bedroom, she thought of her secret shudders of the evening, and spoke in spite of herself of the terror which the protestant caused her.

      “I am a child,” she said to her husband, with a forced smile, “Geneviève has frightened me to-day. She was muttering horrible things by the side of us. Could you not tell her to go and read her Bible somewhere else?”

      “Nonsense!” William answered, laughing frankly, “that would vex her perhaps. She thinks she is assuring our salvation in giving us a share in her readings. However, I will ask her tomorrow to read not quite so loud.”

      Madeleine, seated on the edge of the bed, with a far-off look, seemed to see again the visions evoked by the fanatic. Her lips quivered with a slight movement.

      “She spoke of blood and anger,” she went on in a slow voice. “She does not possess the indulgent good nature of old age, she would be inexorable. How can she be so hardhearted, when she lives with us, in СКАЧАТЬ