THE COMPLETE ROUGON-MACQUART SERIES (All 20 Books in One Edition). Эмиль Золя

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ opened his pocketbook, and added:

      “Here are the two hundred thousand francs’ worth of bills accepted by my wife; you must give her those in payment, and add one hundred thousand francs, which I will bring you tomorrow in the course of the morning…. I am ruining myself, my dear friend. This business will cost me a fortune.”

      “But that,” observed the expropriation-agent, “will only make three hundred thousand francs…. Will the receipt be made out for that sum?”

      “A receipt for three hundred thousand francs!” rejoined Saccard, laughing. “I should think so! We should be in a nice fix later on. According to our inventories, the property must now be estimated at two million five hundred thousand francs. The receipt will be for half that, of course.”

      “Your wife will never sign it.”

      “Yes, she will. I tell you it’s all right…. Why, I told her it was your first condition. You hold a pistol to our heads, don’t you see, with your bankruptcy? And it is in that matter that I pretended to doubt your honesty and accused you of wishing to cheat your creditors…. Do you think my wife understands a word of all that?”

      Larsonneau shook his head and murmured:

      “No matter, you ought to have thought of something simpler.”

      “But my story is simplicity itself!” said Saccard, in great astonishment. “Where the devil do you find it complicated?”

      He was quite unconscious of the incredible number of threads with which he interwove the most ordinary piece of business. He derived a real joy from the cock-and-bull story he had just told Renée; and what enraptured him was the impudence of the lie, the heaping up of impossibilities, the astonishing complication of the plot. He could have had the building-land long ago had he not worked out all this drama; but he would have found less enjoyment in obtaining it easily. He set to work, on the contrary, with the utmost naïveté to make a whole financial melodrama out of the Charonne speculation.

      He rose, and taking Larsonneau’s arm, walked towards the drawingroom.

      “You have quite understood me, have you not? Be content to follow my instructions, and later on you’ll applaud me…. I say, my dear fellow, you ought not to wear yellow gloves, they spoil the look of your hands.”

      The expropriation-agent only smiled and murmured:

      “Oh, gloves have their advantages, my dear master: you can touch anything without being defiled.”

      As they entered the drawingroom, Saccard was surprised and somewhat alarmed to find Maxime on the other side of the hangings. The young man was seated on a couch beside a blonde lady who was telling him, in a monotonous voice, a long story, her own no doubt. He had, in point of fact, overheard his father’s conversation with Larsonneau. The two accomplices seemed to him a pair of cunning dogs. Still annoyed by Renée’s betrayal, he felt a cowardly pleasure in learning of the theft of which she was to be the victim. It avenged him a little. His father came and shook hands with him with a suspicious look, but Maxime whispered to him, motioning to the blonde lady:

      “She’s not bad, is she? I’m going to ‘bag’ her for tonight.”

      Then Saccard began to pose and play the gallant. Laure d’Aurigny joined them for a moment; she complained that Maxime barely called on her once a month. But he professed to have been very busy, whereat everyone laughed. He added that in future they would see him wherever they went.

      “I have been writing a tragedy,” he said, “and I only hit upon the fifth act yesterday…. I now mean to seek repose in the bosoms of all the pretty women in Paris.”

      He laughed. He relished his allusions, which only he could understand. Meantime there was no one left in the drawingroom except Rozan and Larsonneau, at either side of the chimney. The Saccards rose to go, as did the blonde lady, who lived in the same house. Then the d’Aurigny went and spoke to the duc in a low voice. He seemed surprised and annoyed. Seeing that he could not make up his mind to leave his chair:

      “No, really, not tonight,” she said in an undertone. “I have a headache!… Tomorrow, I promise you.”

      Rozan could not but obey. Laure waited till he was on the landing, and then said quickly in Larsonneau’s ear:

      “See, big Lar? I keep my word…. Stuff him into his carriage.”

      When the blonde lady took leave of the gentlemen to go up to her apartment, which was on the floor above, Saccard was astonished not to see Maxime follow her.

      “Well?” he asked.

      “Well, no,” replied the young man. “I’ve thought better of it….”

      Then he had an idea that struck him as very funny:

      “I’ll resign in your favour if you like. Hurry up, she hasn’t shut her door yet.”

      But the father shrugged his shoulders, and said:

      “Thanks, I have something better than that at present.”

      The four men went downstairs. Outside the duc insisted on taking Larsonneau in his carriage; his mother lived in the Marais, he could drop the expropriation-agent at his door in the Rue de Rivoli. The latter refused, closed the door himself, and told the coachman to drive on. And he remained on the pavement of the Boulevard Haussmann with the two others, talking, staying where he was.

      “Ah! poor Rozan!” said Saccard, who suddenly understood.

      Larsonneau swore that it was not so, that he didn’t care a rush for that, that he was a practical man. And as the two others continued to joke, and as the cold was very sharp, he ended by exclaiming:

      “Upon my word, I don’t care, I’m going to ring…. You are two busybodies, messieurs.”

      “Good night!” cried Maxime, as the door closed to.

      And taking his father’s arm, he walked up the boulevard with him. It was one of those clear, frosty nights when it is so pleasant to walk on the hard ground through the icy atmosphere. Saccard said that Larsonneau made a mistake, that he ought merely to be the d’Aurigny’s friend. From there he went on to declare that the love of those women was really a bad thing. He assumed an air of morality, gave utterance to maxims and precepts of astonishing propriety.

      “You see,” he said to his son, “that only lasts for a time, my boy…. You lose your health at it, and you don’t taste real happiness. You know I’m not a Puritan. Well, I tell you, I’ve had enough of it; I’m going to settle down.”

      Maxime chuckled; he stopped his father, looked at him in the moonlight, and told him he was “an old fat-head.” But Saccard became still more serious:

      “Joke as much as you like. I tell you again, there is nothing like marriage to keep a man in good condition and make him happy.”

      Then he spoke to him of Louise. And he walked more slowly, to finish the business, he said, as they were once on the subject. The thing was completely arranged. He even informed him that he and M. de Mareuil had fixed the date for signing the contract for the Sunday following the Thursday in midLent. On that Thursday there was to be a great entertainment at the house in the Parc Monceau, and he would then take the opportunity publicly СКАЧАТЬ