Читать книгу The Complete Works of Emile Zola - Emile Zola - Страница 66

IN WHICH IT IS PROVED THAT IT IS POSSIBLE TO SPEND THIRTY THOUSAND FRANCS A YEAR WHEN ONLY EARNING EIGHTEEN HUNDRED

MARIUS went mechanically down to the port. He walked straight on without noticing whither he was going. He was, so to say, in a state of stupefaction. One sole thought occupied his otherwise empty brain, and kept repeating in a singsong way that he needed fifteen thousand francs without a moment’s loss of time. He cast about him the vague glance of persons in despair, as though he were looking on the ground to see if he could not find the money he required in the interstices of the paving-stones. Down at the port he felt a longing to be rich. The merchandise piled up along the quays, the ships bringing fortunes in their holds, the noise, the motion of that moneymaking crowd, irritated him. Never before had he felt his poverty so strongly. For a moment he was filled with envy, revolt, and bitter jealousy. He asked himself why he was poor whilst others were rich.

And still that ever-recurring thought kept ringing in his head, fit to break it. Fifteen thousand francs! fifteen thousand francs! His brother was awaiting him, and he could not go back empty-handed. He had only a few hours in which to save him from infamy. But he could form no plan, his bewildered senses did not furnish him with a single practical idea. He turned about in his powerlessness, exerted every effort of his mind in vain, he struggled, almost choking with rage and anguish. He could never ask his employer, M. Martelly, to lend him fifteen thousand francs. His earnings were too small to warrant such a loan. Moreover, he knew the shipowner’s upright principles, and dreaded his reproaches if he admitted to him that he wished to purchase another’s conscience. M. Martelly would at once have refused the money.

Marius suddenly had an idea. He would not stay to discuss it in his mind, but hurried off to his lodging in the Rue Sainte. On the same floor as himself there resided a young clerk, named Charles Blétry, who was employed as collector at the soap-works of Messrs. Date and Deans. A kind of intimacy had sprung up between these two young fellows living side by side. Marius had been won over by Charles’s gentleness; for the latter went regularly to church, led an exemplary life, and appeared to be of the strictest honesty. Yet during the past two years he had been spending money pretty freely. He had refurnished his lodging in a luxurious style, buying carpets, hangings, mirrors, and rich furniture. Besides this, he came home later, lived more expensively; but still remained gentle and honest, quiet and pious.

At first, his neighbour’s outlay rather astonished Marius, who could not understand how a clerk earning eighteen hundred francs a year could afford to purchase such expensive things. But Charles told him that he had inherited some money, and that he intended shortly to resign his position and live on his means. He even placed himself and his purse at his disposal; but Marius declined. Today, he recalled this offer, and was about to knock at the young man’s door and ask him for the means to save his brother. A loan of fifteen thousand francs would not perhaps inconvenience him, seeing how lavishly he was spending his money. He proposed to himself to repay the amount in instalments, persuaded that his neighbour would grant him all the time necessary.

The clerk, however, was not at home in the Rue Sainte, and as Marius was pressed for time he went off to Messrs. Date and Deans’ soap-works, situated on the Boulevard des Dames. When he arrived there and asked for Charles Blétry, it seemed to him that he was eyed in a strange manner. The workmen told him to address himself to M. Date, who was in his office. Surprised at this reception, Marius decided to do so, and found the manufacturer engaged in conversation with three gentlemen, who stopped talking directly he showed himself.

“Can you tell me, sir,” inquired the young man, “if M. Charles Blétry is at the factory?”

Daste exchanged a rapid glance with one of the persons present, a stout, pale, and severe-looking man.

“M. Charles Blétry will return presently,” he replied. “Please wait for him. Are you a friend of his?”

“Yes,” replied Marius, simply. “He resides in the same house as I do. I have known him for about three years.”

There was a pause. The young man, thinking he was in the way, added, with a bow, and walking towards the door:

“I am much obliged to you. I will wait for him outside.”

Then the stout gentleman leant forward and said a few words to the manufacturer in a low voice. M. Daste signed to Marius to stay.

“Have the goodness to wait here,” he exclaimed. “Your presence may be useful to us. You must know something of M. Blétry’s mode of living, and can no doubt give us some information about him.”

Marius, greatly astonished, and not understanding, hesitated.

“Excuse me,” resumed M. Daste with great politeness, “I see that my words surprise you.” And indicating the stout man, he went on: “That gentleman is the police commissary of the district, and I have sent for him to arrest Charles Blétry who has robbed us of sixty thousand francs in two years.”

On hearing Charles accused of theft, Marius understood everything. He accounted for the young fellow’s lavish expenditure, and shuddered at the thought that he had been on the point of accepting his offers of service. He would never have believed that his neighbour could have been guilty of a mean action. He knew very well that there existed at Marseille, as in all great centres of industry, clerks who robbed their employers in order to satisfy their vices and their love of luxury; he had often heard of clerks earning a hundred or a hundred and fifty francs a month, and who managed to lose immense sums in gambling in the clubs, to throw gold to loose women, and to idle away their time in restaurants and cafés. But Charles seemed so pious, so modest, so honest, he had played the hypocrite so artfully, that Marius had been taken in by these appearances of probity, and he even now entertained doubts despite M. Daste’s formal accusation.

He seated himself and awaited the development of the drama. As a matter of fact he could not very well have done otherwise. During half-an-hour a mournful silence reigned in the office. The manufacturer was writing, whilst the police commissary and the two officers, mute and looking half asleep, gazed vaguely before them with terrible patience. Such a sight was calculated to make Marius honest had he been disposed to be otherwise. A step was heard outside, and the door slowly opened.

“Here’s our man,” said M. Daste, rising from his seat.

Charles Blétry entered quite unsuspiciously, without even noticing the persons who were there.

“You wish to see me, sir?” he asked, in that drawling voice peculiar to clerks when addressing their employers.

As M. Daste was looking him straight in the face, he turned round and beheld the police commissary, whom he knew by sight. He became ghastly pale, understanding that he was lost, and his whole body trembled. He had just walked into the meshes of the law with his eyes shut. Seeing that his frightened looks were accusing him, he tried to pull himself together and to recover a little coolness and audacity.

“Yes, I wish to see you!” M. Daste exclaimed, violently. “And you know why, don’t you? Ah! scoundrel, you’ll never rob me again!”

“I don’t know what you mean,” stammered Blétry. “I’ve never robbed you. What is it you accuse me of?”

The police commissary had seated himself at the manufacturer’s desk, ready to draw up his report, whilst the two officers were guarding the door.

“Kindly tell me, sir,” said the police commissary to M. Daste, “how you discovered that M. Blétry had been guilty of embezzling your money.”

Then M. Daste told the story of the crime. He noticed that occasionally his collector was an extremely long time in getting in certain monies. But as he had unlimited confidence in the young man, he attributed these delays to the dilatoriness of his customers. The first embezzlement must have occurred quite eighteen months back. Anyhow, the day before, one of his customers being on the verge of bankruptcy, he had gone personally to demand payment of an account amounting to five thousand francs, and had thereupon learnt that Blétry had collected it some weeks previously. Much alarmed, he had hurried back to the factory, and, by going through the cashier’s books, had convinced himself that about sixty thousand francs were missing.

The police commissary then proceeded to question Blétry. The latter, taken unawares and unable to deny the facts, concocted a ridiculous story.

“One day,” he said, “I lost my pocketbook containing forty thousand francs. I had not the courage to tell M. Daste of this great misfortune, so I embezzled some money to gamble on the stock exchange, hoping to win and so reimburse the firm.”

The police commissary asked him for particulars, confused him by his questions, and forced him to contradict himself. Blétry then tried another falsehood.

“You are right,” he resumed, “I did not lose the pocketbook. I prefer to tell you everything. The truth is I was robbed myself. I gave shelter to a young man who was hard-up. One night he went off with my collector’s bag, and it contained a considerable sum of money.”

“Come, don’t make your crime worse by lying,” said the commissary, with that terrifying patience of police officials. “You know very well that we can’t believe you. It’s no use inventing such rigmaroles.” He then turned to Marius and continued: “I asked M. Daste to detain you, sir, thinking you might be useful to us in our inquiry. The accused is, you said, your neighbour. Do you know anything about his mode of life. Will you not beseech him with us to tell the truth?”

Marius felt dreadfully embarrassed. He pitied Blétry, who was reeling like a drunken man and looking at him imploringly. The man was not a hardened scoundrel; no doubt he had given way to temptation, to a weak mind and heart. But Marius’s conscience would not be stilled, and commanded him to say what he knew. He did not reply to the police commissary directly, but preferred to address himself to Blétry.

“Listen, Charles,” he said, “I do not know whether you are guilty. I have always found you good and quiet. I am aware that you support your mother and that you are beloved by all who know you. If you have been guilty of wrong, admit your folly: you will cause less suffering to those who love and esteem you by frankly owning your guilt and showing sincere repentance.”

Marius spoke in a gentle and convincing voice. Blétry, whom the curt words of the police commissary had left dumb and inwardly irritated, gave way before his friend’s kindness. He thought of his mother, he thought of the esteem and the friendships he was about to lose, and his emotion nearly choked him. He burst into sobs, weeping hot tears in his closed hands; and for some minutes no sound was heard but the heartrending cry of his despair. It was a complete avowal. The spectators of the scene remained silent.

“Well! yes,” Blétry exclaimed at last, amidst his tears. “I have robbed, I’m a scoundrel — I didn’t know what I was about — I commenced by taking a few hundred francs, then I required a thousand, two thousand, five thousand, ten thousand francs at a time — It seemed as if someone was behind me, urging me on — And my needs, my appetites were ever increasing.”

“But what did you do with all that money?” asked the police commissary.

“I don’t know — I gave it away, lost it at play, devoured it somehow — You don’t know the life — I was happy enough in my poverty and troubled with nothing, I loved to go to church and to live worthily like an honest man. But then I had a taste of luxury and vice, I got to know women, I bought expensive things — I was mad.”

“Can you give me the names of the women with whom you squandered the money you were embezzling?”

“As if I knew their names! I met them here, there, everywhere, in the streets and at public balls. They came because I had my pockets full of gold, and they went off when they were empty — Then I lost a lot playing baccarat at the clubs — What turned me into a thief was seeing certain wellborn young men throwing their money out of window and revelling in wealth and idleness. I wanted to know women as they did, to have noisy joys, nights spent in gambling and debauchery — I required thirty thousand francs a year, and I was only earning eighteen hundred — so I ended by stealing.”

The poor wretch, suffocating, overcome by grief, dropped on to a chair. Marius went up to M. Daste who was also much affected, and beseeched him to be merciful. He then hastened to withdraw from a scene which made his heart bleed. He left Blétry quite prostrated by a kind of nervous stupor.

Some months later he learnt that the young man had been condemned to five years’ imprisonment.

Once outside, Marius experienced a great feeling of relief. He understood that by assisting at Charles’s arrest he had received a lesson. A few hours before, when down at the port, he had indulged in some evil ideas of fortune. He had just seen where such thoughts might lead him. And suddenly he remembered why he had gone to the soap-works. He had only another hour left in which to find the fifteen thousand francs which were to save his brother.