Читать книгу The Complete Works of Emile Zola - Emile Zola - Страница 156

Véteuil is a little town of ten thousand inhabitants, situated on the borders of Normandy. The streets are clean and deserted. It is a place that has had its day. People who want to travel by rail have to go fifteen miles by coach, and wait for the trains that pass through Mantes. Round the town, the open country is very fertile; it spreads out in rich grazing-land intersected by rows of poplars: a brook, on its way to the Seine, cuts a course through these broad flat tracts and traverses them with along line of trees and reeds.

It was in this forsaken hole that William was born. His father, Monsieur de Viargue, was one of the last representatives of the old nobility of the district. Born in Germany, during the “emigration,” he came to France with the Bourbons, as into a foreign and hostile country. His mother had been cruelly banished, and was now lying in a cemetery at Berlin: his father had died on the scaffold. He could not pardon the soil which had drunk the blood of his guillotined father, and did not cover the corpse of his poor mother. The restoration gave him back his family possessions, he recovered the title and the position attached to his name, but he preserved a no less bitter hatred against that accursed France which he did not recognise as his country. He went and buried himself at Vétcuil, refusing preferment, turning a deaf ear to the offers of Louis XVIII. and Charles X., and disdaining to live amongst a people who had assassinated his kindred. He would often repeat that he was no Frenchman; he called the Germans his fellow countrymen, and spoke of himself as though he were a, veritable exile.

He was still young when he came to France. Tall, strong, and of fiery activity, he soon grew mortally bored in the inaction which he was imposing on himself. He wished to live alone, far from all public events. But his intelligence was of too high an order, the restlessness of his mind was too great, to be satisfied with the boorish pleasures of field sports. The dull unoccupied life which he was setting himself dismayed him. He looked round for something to do. By a singular inconsistency, he was fond of science, that new spirit of method the breath of which had turned upside down the old world that he regretted. He devoted himself to the study of chemistry, he who would dream of the splendour of the nobility under Louis XIV.

He was a strange scholar, a solitary scholar who studied and made researches for himself only. He turned into a huge laboratory a room in La Noiraude, the name given in the country to the château which he lived in, at five minutes’ walk from Véteuil. In it he would spend whole days, bending over his crucibles, always eager, and yet never succeeding in satisfying his curiosity. He was a member of no learned society, and would shut the door in the face of people who came to talk with him about his researches. He wanted to be considered a gentleman. His servants were never, under pain of dismissal, to make any allusion to him, or to the employment of his time. He looked upon his taste for chemistry as a passion whose secret follies no one had a right to penetrate.

For nearly forty years, he shut himself up every morning in his laboratory. There, his disregard for the bustle of the world became more pronounced. Though he never owned it, he buried his loves and his hatreds in his retorts and alembics. When he had weighed the substance in his powerful hands, he forgot all about France, and his father’s death on the scaffold, and his mother’s in a foreign land: nothing of the gentleman remained but his cold and haughty sceptical nature. The scholar had killed the man.

No one, moreover, could get to the bottom of this strange organization. His own friends were ignorant of the sudden void that had been made in his heart. He kept to himself the secret of the blank, that blank which he thought he had touched with his finger. If he still lived far from the world in exile, as he never ceased to say, it was because he despised his fellowmen both rich and poor, and compared himself to a worm. But he remained solemn and disdainful, icy even in his coldness. He never lowered his mask of pride.

There was, however, one shock in the calm existence of this man. A foolish young woman, the wife of a notary in Véteuil, threw herself into his arms. He was then forty, and still treated his neighbours like serfs. He kept the young woman as his mistress, publicly acknowledged her ten miles round, and even had the audacity to keep her at La Noiraude. This was an unprecedented scandal in the little town. The brusque ways of Monsieur dc Viargue had already caused the finger of dislike to be pointed at him. When he lived openly with the wife of the notary, people were for tearing him to pieces. The husband, a poor fellow who had a mortal dread of losing his place, kept quiet for the two years that the intimacy lasted. He shut his eyes and ears, and seemed to believe that his wife was merely spending a little holiday at Monsieur de Viargue’s. The woman became enciente and was delivered of her child in the château. A few months later, she grew tired of her lover, who was again passing his days in the laboratory. One fine morning, she went back to her husband, taking care to forget her child. The count was not fool enough to run after her. The notary quietly took her back, as if she had returned from a journey. Next day, he went for a walk with her on his arm, through the 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 place of perdition, and that it would be better for him to die without ever seeing the bright sun. She thought that by these lessons she was saving him from Satan.

Sometimes, however, in the afternoon, he would run about in the long passages at La Noiraude, and venture under the trees in the park.

The mansion, which was called La Noiraude at Véteuil, was a big square building, three stories high, and all dark and ugly, very much like a house of correction. Monsieur de Viargue disdainfully allowed it to fall into ruins. He occupied a very small portion of it: one room on the first floor and another at the top of the house, which he had made into his laboratory: on the ground floor, he had reserved himself a dining-room and a sitting-room. The other apartments in the spacious mansion, except those occupied by Geneviève and the servants, were completely deserted. They were never even opened.

When William went along the gloomy silent passages which traversed La Noiraude in every direction, he felt seized with secret terror. He hurried past the doors of the empty rooms. Filled with the horrible ideas which Geneviève put into his head, he fancied he could hear moanings and stifled sobs from these rooms; he would ask himself fearfully who could inhabit these apartments whose doors were always fastened. He preferred the walks in the park, and yet he did not dare to go far, such a timorous, cowardly mortal had the old protestant made him.

Occasionally, he met his father, but the sight of him made him tremble. Up to the age of five, he had hardly seen him. The count was forgetting that he had a sou. He had not even troubled his head about the formalities he would have to go through some day if he wished to adopt him. The child had been necessarily declared as born of parents unknown. Monsieur de Viargue was aware the notary always pretended to be ignorant of the existence of his wife’s bastard, and he promised himself some day to put William’s position straight. As he had no other heir, he intended to bequeath his fortune to him. These thoughts, however, did not trouble him very much; he was absorbed in his experiments, more ironical and more haughty than ever: he listened impassively to the accounts that Geneviève gave him from time to time about the child.

One day, as he was going down to the park, he met him with the old woman, who was leading him by the hand. He was quite astonished to find him so big. William, who was entering on his fifth year, had on one of those delightful dresses of light bright-coloured material that children wear. The father, somewhat struck, stopped for the first time; he took hold of his son, and raising him up to his face, looked at him attentively. William, by a mysterious phenomenon of blood, was like the count’s mother. The resemblance struck the father, and moved him. He kissed the poor little trembling fellow’s brow.

From that day, he never met his son without kissing him. After his fashion, he loved him as much as he could love. But his embrace was cold, and the hasty kiss which he gave him at times was not enough to win the child’s heart. When William could avoid the count, without the latter noticing it, he was nearly always delighted to escape his embrace. This stern man who haunted La Noiraude like a cold silent shadow, caused him more fear than affection. Geneviève, to whom Monsieur de Viargue had given orders to bring him up openly as his son, always represented his father to him as a terrible and absolute master, and this word father only awoke in his mind an idea of reverential dread.

Such was William’s existence during the first eight years of his life. The strange teaching of the old protestant, and the terror with which his father inspired him, all contributed to make him feeble. He was doomed to keep with him through life the shudders and the unwholesome sensitiveness of his infancy. At eight years of age, Monsieur de Viargue sent him as a boarder to the communal school at Véteuil. He had, no doubt, noticed the cruel way in which Geneviève was bringing him up, and wished to remove him entirely from the influence of this disordered brain. At the school, William began in sorrow the apprenticeship of life: he was fatally doomed to be hurt at every turn.

The years that he spent as a boarder were one long martyrdom, one long ordeal that a neglected and deserted child has to pass through, trodden on by everybody and never knowing what he has done wrong. The inhabitants of Véteuil nursed towards Monsieur de Viargue a secret hatred, which was the result of their jealousy and prudery: they never forgave him for being rich and doing as he liked, while the scandal of William’s birth was an endless theme for their slanderous talk. Though they continued to bow humbly to the father, they avenged themselves for his disdainful indifference on the weakness of the son, whose heart they could break without danger. The boys of the town, those of twelve and sixteen, all knew William’s history through having heard it told a hundred times in their families; at home their relatives would talk with such indignation of this adulterous child, that they looked upon it as their duty, now that he was their playfellow, to torture the poor being who was cried out upon by the whole of Véteuil. Their very parents encouraged them in their cowardice, smiling slyly at the persecutions which they inflicted on him.

From the very first play-hour, William felt, from the jeering attitude of his new companions, that he was in a hostile country. Two big fellows, fifteen year old louts, came up and asked him his name. When he replied, in a timid voice, that it was William, the whole band jeered.

“Your name is Bastard, you mean!” cried a schoolboy, amid the hoots and low jokes of these young scamps, who already had the vices of grown-up men.

The child did not understand the insult, but he began to weep with anguish and terror in the centre of this pitiless circle which surrounded him. He got a few shoves, begged pardon, which highly amused these gentlemen, and brought him a few more knocks.

The bent was followed, the school victim was found. During every play-hour, he caught a few thumps on the head, he heard himself saluted by the name of Bastard, which made the blood mount to his cheeks, he knew not why. The dread of blows made him cowardly; he spent his time in the comers, not daring to stir, like a pariah who finds a whole nation up against him and no longer dares to revolt. His masters banded secretly with his comrades; they saw that it would be a clever stroke of policy to make common cause with the sons of the big wigs at Véteuil, and they overwhelmed the child with punishments, themselves enjoying a wicked pleasure in torturing a feeble creature. William gave himself up to despair; he was a detestable pupil, brutalized with blows, hard words and punishments. Slow, sickly, stupid, he would weep in the dormitory for a whole night: this was his only protest.

His sufferings were all the keener for the poignant need that he felt of having somebody to love and only finding objects to hate. His nervous sensitiveness made him cry out with anguish at each fresh insult. “Good God,” he would often murmur, “what crime have I committed?” And, with his childish sense of justice, he would try to find out what it was that could bring down on him such cruel punishments; when he could find nothing, he would be filled with strange dread, he would remember Geneviève’s menacing lessons and think himself tormented by demons for unknown sins. On two occasions, he seriously thought of drowning himself in the school-well. He was then twelve years old.

On holidays he seemed to get out of a grave. The street children would often stone him to the gates of the town. He was now fond of the deserted park at La Noiraude where no one beat him. He never dared to speak to his father about the persecutions he had to endure. He complained only to Geneviève and asked her what was the meaning of that name Bastard which produced in him the burning sensation of a box on the ears. The old woman listened to him gloomily. She was annoyed that her pupil had been taken away from her. She knew that the school chaplain had induced M. de Viargue to let the child be baptised, and she looked upon him as positively doomed to the flames of hell. When William had confided to her his troubles, she exclaimed, without speaking directly to him: “You are the son of sin, you are expiating the crime of the guilty.” He could not understand, but the fanatic’s tone seemed to him so full of anger, that he never after made her his confidante.

His despair increased as he grew up. He at last arrived at an age when he knew what his fault was. His comrades, with their vile insults, had educated him in vice. Then, he wept tears of blood. They hit him through his parents, by telling him the shameful story of his birth. He knew of the existence of his mother by the coarse names which they gave to this woman all around him. The youngsters, once they set foot in the filth, wallowed in it with a sort of vanity; and the little dandies never spared the Bastard any of the vileness which they could invent out of the intimacy between the notary’s wife and Monsieur de Viargue. William was seized at times with an outburst of wild rage; beneath the blows of his executioners, the martyr revolted at last, fell on the first he could lay hands on and tore him like a wild beast; but, as a rule, he remained passive under the insult and simply wept in silence.

As he was entering on his fifteenth year, an event happened, the memory of which he kept all his life. One day, as the school was walking out and passing along one of the streets of the town, he heard his comrades sneering round him and murmuring in their malicious tone:

“Eh! Bastard, look; there’s your mother.”

He raised his head and looked.

A woman was passing along the causeway, leaning on the arm of a man with a weak placid face. This woman surveyed William with a curious look. Her clothes almost rubbed against him as she passed. But she had no smile, and screwed up her mouth with a sort of sanctified and crabbed grimace. The placid expression of the man who was with her never changed.

William, who was nearly fainting, did not hear the banter of his comrades who were bursting with laughter, as if this little adventure had been the greatest joke in the world. He stood savage and speechless. This hurried vision had frozen his life-blood, and he felt himself more miserable than an orphan. For the rest of his life, when he thought of his mother, he would see before him the image of this woman passing by with a sanctimonious scowl, leaning on the arm of her cuckolded and happy husband.

His great grief, during these wretched years, was to be loved by no one. The savage tenderness of Geneviève frightened him almost, and he found his father’s silent affection very cold. He would say to himself that he was alone, and that there was not a single being who had any pity for him. Crushed beneath the persecutions that he endured, he shut himself up with his inexpressible thoughts of kindness; his gentle nature carefully concealed, as a foolish secret at which people would have laughed, the treasures of love which it could not bestow at large. He would lose himself in the endless dream of an imaginary passion into which he would throw himself heart and soul for ever. And he would dream then of a blissful solitude, of a nook where there were trees and streams, where he would be all alone in company with a cherished passion; lover or comrade, he hardly knew which; he simply felt a longing desire for peace. When he had been beaten, and when still all bruised, he would summon up his dream, his hands clasped in a sort of religious frenzy, and he would ask Heaven when he would be able to hide himself and take his rest in a supreme affection.

Had his pride not sustained him, he would perhaps have become habituated to cowardice. But, fortunately, he had in him the blood of the De Viargues; the helpless weakness, to which he was a victim through his chance birth and the plebeian foolishness of his mother, would at times derive an accession of vigour from the pride which he had from his father. He would feel himself better, worthier and nobler than his tormentors; if he feared them, he had a calm disdain for them; under their blows his strength of pride did not desert him, and this exasperated the young brutes who did not fail to notice the contempt of their victim.

William, however, had one friend in the school. Just as he was promoted into the second form, a new pupil came into the same class as himself. He was a tall young fellow, vigorous and strongly built, and older than William by two or three years. His name was James Berthier. An orphan, with no other relatives than an uncle who was a lawyer at Véteuil, he had come to the school at this town to finish the studies which he had begun at Paris. His uncle wanted to have him near him, as he bad learnt that his dear nephew was rather precocious and was already, at seventeen, running after the young ladies of the Latin quarter.

James bore his exile in excellent spirits. He had the happiest disposition in the world. Without any remarkable qualities, he was what yon call a fine fellow. The frivolity of his nature was atoned for by a rough-and-ready sort of devotion. His entry into the school was an event; he came straight from Paris, and spoke of life like a youth who has already tasted the forbidden fruit. The pupils had a sudden respect for him when they learnt that he had slept with women. His easy manners, his strength, and his good fortune made him the king of the school. He would laugh aloud, he would gladly exhibit his powerful arms and protect the weak with the goodnature of a prince.

The very day of his arrival, he saw a big lout of a scholar hustling William. He marched up, and gave the fellow a good shaking, telling him at the same time that he would hear further from him if he bullied the youngsters like that. Then he took the victim’s arm and walked about with him during the whole of playtime to the scandal of the scholars who could not conceive how the Parisian could choose such a friend.

William was deeply touched with the assistance and friendship which James offered him. The latter had been seized with a sudden feeling of sympathy for the pained face of his new comrade. When he had asked him a few questions, he saw that he was going to have to exercise an active protection and this decided him.

“Will you be my friend?” he asked as he held out his hand to William.

The poor fellow almost wept as he grasped this hand, the first which had been offered him.

“I will love you deeply,” he replied in the timid tone of a wooer confessing his love.

The following playtime, a group of pupils came round the Parisian to tell him William’s history. They counted on making him thrash the Bastard by informing him of the scandal of his birth. James listened quietly to the dirty jokes of his comrades. When they had finished, he shrugged his shoulders and said:

“You’re a pack of idiots. If I catch one of you repeating what you have just said, I’ll box his ears.”

He only felt more sympathy for the pariah as he perceived the depths of his wounds. He had already had as a friend, at the Charlemagne college, a love-begot, a boy of rare and charming intelligence, who carried off all his form prizes and was beloved by his comrades and by his masters. This made him accept, as quite a natural thing, the story of the scandal which so raised the indignation of the young brutes of Véteuil.

“What geese those fellows are!” he said to William.

“They are ill-natured blockheads. I know all; but come now, don’t be afraid; if one of them touches you, tell me, and you’ll see.”

From that day, everybody felt a respect for the Bastard. One of the fellows having ventured to salute him with this name, he got such a smack that the whole school saw that there was to be no more joking and sought another victim. William passed through the second class and the rhetoric class in profound peace. He became ardently devoted to his protector. He loved him with the love one has for a first mistress, with absolute faith and blind devotion. His gentle nature had at length found an outlet, his long pent-up tenderness was bestowed in its entirety on the deity whose hand and heart had befriended him. His friendship was mingled with a feeling of gratitude so warm that he almost looked upon James as a superior being. He knew not how to pay his debt, and his attitude towards him was humble and respectful. He admired his slightest movements; this big energetic noisy fellow filled him with a sort of respect, when he compared him to his own timid and piteous nature. His easy manners, the stories which he told of his life in Paris convinced him that he had for a friend an extraordinary man who was destined for the highest career. And there was thus, in his affection, a singular mixture of admiration, humility and love, which always left him a feeling at once tender and respectful for James.

The latter accepted, like the good fellow that he was, his protégée’s adoration. He loved to show his strength and to be flattered. Besides, he was seduced by the devoted endearments of this weak proud nature who crushed the other pupils with his contempts. For the two years that they were at school together, they were inseparable.

When they bad got through the rhetoric class, James set out for Paris, where he was to attend the lectures at the School of Medicine. William, left alone at Véteuil, remained for a long time inconsolable at the departure of his friend. He had lost all aptitude for work, living at La Noiraude as in the heart of a desert. He was then eighteen. His father sent for him one day into his laboratory. It was the first time that he had passed the threshold of this room. He found the count standing in the middle of the huge sanctum, his breast covered with a long blue workman’s apron. He seemed to him terribly aged; his temples were bare, and his sunken eyes shone with a strange brilliancy in his thin face all seamed with wrinkles. He had always felt a deep respect for him; this day, he almost felt a dread of him.

“Sir,” said the count, “I have sent for you in order to tell you my plans with regard to yourself. Be kind enough to tell me if, by chance, you feel an inclination for any occupation.”

As William stood embarrassed and hesitating he went on: “That is well, my orders will be the more easy for you to carry out. I wish you, sir, to follow no profession whatever, neither doctor, lawyer, nor anything else.’’

And as the young man looked at him, with an air of surprise, he continued in a slightly bitter tone:

“You will be rich, you will have it in your power to be a fool and a happy man, if you are fortunate enough to understand life. I regret already that I have had you taught something. Hunt, eat, sleep, these are my orders. Still, if you have a taste for farming, I will allow you to dig.” The count was not joking. He spoke in a peremptory tone, in the certainty of being obeyed. He noticed that his son was casting a glance over the laboratory as if to protest against the life of idleness which he was imposing on him. His voice became threatening.

“Above all,” he said “swear to me that you will never spend your time on science. After my death, you will shut, this door and never open it again. It is enough that one De Viargue has buried himself here for a whole lifetime. I rely on your word, sir; you will do nothing, and you will try to be happy.”

William was going to withdraw, when his father, as if touched with sudden grief and emotion, took him by the hands and murmured as he drew him towards him:

“You understand, my child, obey me; be a simpleminded man, if it is possible.”

He kissed him hurriedly and dismissed him. This scene had a strange effect on William; he saw that the count must be suffering from a secret grief; in the few dealings that they had with one another, he showed him, from that day, a more affectionate respect. Besides, he conformed strictly to his orders. He stayed for three years at La Noiraude hunting, shooting, roving about the country, and taking an interest in trees and hills. These three years, during which he lived in companionship with nature, finished the work of predestination for the joys and sorrows which the future had in store for him. Lost in the green solitudes of the park, invigorated by the all-pervading thrill of nature beneath the foliage, he purified himself of his school-life, he increased in tenderness and pity. He took up the dream of his youth, he hoped again to find, on the brink of some fountain, a being who would take him in her arms and carry him away, kissing him like a child. Ah! what long reveries, and how sweetly the shadow and silence of the oaks fell on his brow.

But for the vague restlessness with which his unsatisfied desires filled him, he would have been perfectly happy. Nobody was persecuting him now: when he happened to pass through Véteuil, he saw his old comrades salute him with more cowardice than they had beaten him; it was known in the town that he would be the count’s heir. His only dread, a strange dread mingled with painful hope, was of finding himself face to face with his mother. He did not see her again, and he was sad; the thought of this woman would recur to him every day; her complete forgetfulness of him, was for him an inexplicable monstrosity the cause of which he would have liked to discover. He even asked Geneviève if he ought not to try to see her. The old protestant answered him rudely that he was mad.

“Your mother is dead,” she added, in her voice of inspiration; “pray for her.”

Geneviève had always loved the child of sin, in spite of the terrors which such affection caused him. Now that this child had become a man, she put more guard on her heart. Yet at bottom, she was absolutely and blindly devoted to him.

On two occasions, James came to spend his student’s holidays at Véteuil. These times were for William months of wild joy. The two friends were always together; they would shoot for whole days, or catch crawfish in the little brook that runs through the country. Often, in some secluded nook, they would sit down and talk about Paris, especially about women. James spoke lightly of them, as a man who had no very great regard for them, but who had the gallantry to look kindly on them, and not to speak all his mind on the subject. And William would then reproach him for his coldness of heart; he set woman on a pedestal, and made her an idol, before which he chanted an eternal song of fidelity and love.

“Oh! do be quiet,” the impatient student would exclaim, “You don’t know what you are saying. You will soon bore your mistresses, if you are always on your knees before them. But you will do as others do, you will deceive and be deceived. Such is life.”

“No, no,” he would answer in his obstinate way, “I shall not do as others do. I shall never love but one woman. I shall love her in such a way that I defy fate to disturb our affection.”

“Rubbish! we shall see.”

And James would laugh at the artlessness of his country friend. He almost scandalised him by the recital of his love adventures of one night. The journeys that he thus, made to Véteuil cemented still more closely the friendship of the two young fellows. Besides, they used to write long letters to one another. Gradually, however, James’s letters became less frequent; the third year, he had ceased to give any sign of life. William was very sad at this silence.

He knew, through the student’s uncle, that his friend was to leave France, and he would have very much liked to bid him good bye before his departure. He was beginning to get mortally tired at La Noiraude. His father learnt the cause of his languid dejected ways, and said to him one night as he left the table:

“I know that you want to go to Paris. I give you leave to live there one year, and I expect that you will do some stupid thing or other. You shall have unlimited credit. You may start tomorrow.”

Next day on his arrival in Paris, William learnt that James had gone away the day before. He had written a farewell letter to him at Véteuil which Geneviève sent on to him. In this letter, which was full of high spirits and very affectionate, his friend informed him that he had been gazetted as surgeon to our expeditionary army to Cochin China, and that he would be doubtless a long time away from France. William returned immediately to La Noiraude, distressed at this hurried departure and terrified at the thought of finding himself alone in an unknown town. He plunged again into his beloved solitude. But, two months later, his father again disturbed his loneliness by ordering him to return to Paris where he intended him to live for a year.

William went and took up his quarters in the Rue de l’Est, at the very hotel where Madeleine was already staying.