Читать книгу The Complete Early Novels - Emile Zola - Страница 17

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JACQUES AND MARIE.

TOU remember tall Jacques, that long, pale and quiet lad, do you not? I see him yet, walking in the shade of the plane trees on the college green; he walked with a slow and firm step, kicking away the pebbles with his foot; he laughed tranquilly, was logical in his smiles and lived in supreme indifference. I remember that, on a day of effusion, he confided to me the secret of his strength. I understood nothing of his disclosures, except that he designed to live happily by ripening his heart and mind.

When fifteen, I dreamed only of tall Jacques. I envied his long blond hair, his superb indolence. He was, among us, a type of elegance and aristocratic disdain. I was surprised by his selfish nature, which had nothing either young or generous about it; I admired the dull and cold lad who went among us with the indulgent and superior gravity of a man.

I have seen tall Jacques again. He is my neighbor; he lives in the same house as I, two floors lower down. Yesterday, as I was mounting the stairway, I met a young man and a young woman who were descending. The young man, without hesitation and in the most natural manner in the world, extended me his hand.

“How are you, Claude?” he said to me.

He acted as if he had quitted me only the previous day. He had scarcely looked at my face, but I looked at his in the partial obscurity of the landing, without being able to recognize his features. His hand was cold. I know not by what strange sensation I recognized his calm and indifferent flesh.

“Is it you, Jacques?” I cried. “Good heavens I you are taller than ever!”

“Yes, yes, it is I,” answered he, with a smile. “I lodge there, at the end of the passage, number 17. Come and see me this evening, between seven and eight o’clock.”

And he went downstairs, without turning his head, preceded by the young woman who stared at me with the wide open eyes of a child. I stood still for an instant, leaning over the railing, and looked after this youth who was departing with a calm step, while my heart was leaping violently in my breast.

In the evening, I went down to number 17. The chamber was fitted up with the false and discouraging luxury of the furnished lodginghouses of Paris. You cannot imagine, brothers, the wretched and shameful air of the frayed red hangings, gray with dust, of the dirty and greasy furniture, of the cracked faïences, of the nameless objects, rags and wrecks which were spread out along the damp walls. My mansarde is barer, but not so hideous. Two large and lofty windows, garnished with thin muslin curtains, threw a raw light over all this rubbish. One saw a wardrobe with glass doors, which was tarnished and had one side broken; a bed enveloped by faded curtains; a miserable sofa and deplorable armchairs, yellow from use; besides, the room contained a toilet-bureau, a desk, a table, chairs, odd pieces of furniture — furniture which had served in dining-rooms, bedchambers, parlors and offices. The general effect had I know not what of pretentiousness and filth which disgusted me. At the first glance, one might think he had entered the chamber of the right sort of people; at the second, one saw the dirt on the mahogany and on the damask, and one felt that he was amid vice and slovenliness.

I was saddened by the unhealthful aspect of this chamber; I breathed with disgust the thick and nauseous air, smelling of dust, old varnish and faded stuffs, a biting and stifling odor which is common to all furnished lodginghouses.

Jacques, seated at the desk, was toiling away peacefully, a Code open before him. The young woman I had met on the stairway was lying upon the sofa, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, silent and grave.

Jacques half turned his chair; his face appeared to me in the full light. It was still the same visage of other days, a superb and indifferent visage; one read in it a strong will, made up of selfishness and coldness. The man had become what the boy promised to be. Our former comrade must be what the world calls a practical and serious person; he has an aim: he wishes to be a counselor, a lawyer or a notary, and moves onward towards his goal with all the power of his tranquility. With closed heart and calm flesh, he accepts this world without either thanks or revolt. Jacques has an honest nature, a just mind; he will live honorably, according to duty and custom; he will not weaken, because he will not have to weaken; he will pass on, straight and firm, having nothing either to hate or to love. In his clear and empty eyes, I do not find the soul; upon his pale lips I do not see the blood of the heart.

In the presence of this quiet and smiling young man, bending over his law books and extending to me his cool hand, I thought of myself, brothers, of my poor being incessantly shaken by the fever of wishes and regrets. I advance staggeringly; I have not to protect me Jacques’ imperturbable tranquility, his silence of heart and of soul. I am all flesh, all love; I feel myself profoundly vibrate at the least sensation. Events lead me; I can neither conduct nor surmount them. Tomorrow, in my free life, if I should happen to wound the world, the world will turn from me, because I obeyed my pride and my tenderness. Jacques will be saluted, having followed the common route. I dare not say aloud that virtue is a question of temperament; but, brothers, I think all the same that the Jacqueses upon this earth are basely virtuous, while the Claudes have the frightful misfortune of having in them an eternal tempest, an immense desire for the good, which agitates them and leads them beyond the judgment of the crowd.

The young woman had taken her glance from the ceiling and was looking at me, with partially open lips and curious eyes. Her face had the transparent whiteness of wax, with dull flushes on the cheeks; her pale lips, her soft and brown eyelids gave to her visage the air of a sick and resigned child. She was fifteen, and, at times, when she smiled, one would have thought her scarcely twelve.

While Jacques was talking to me in his slow voice, I could not take my eyes from the young girl’s touching countenance, so youthful and so faded. There were upon her frank forehead profound lassitude and languor; the blood no longer flowed beneath her skin; the shivers of life no longer made her slumbering flesh tremble. Have you ever seen, in her cradle, a little girl whom fever has rendered whiter and more innocent than usual? She sleeps with her eyes wide open; she has the gentle and peaceful visage of an angel; she suffers and she seems to smile. The strange little girl whom I had before me, that woman who had remained a child, resembled her sister in the cradle. Only, in her case, it was more pitiful to see upon a forehead of fifteen so much purity and so much pallor, all the innocent graces of a young girl and all the shameful fatigues of a woman.

She had thrown back her arms and was supporting her languishing head upon her hands. I was ignorant of her history; I knew not who she was or what she was doing in this chamber. But, from her entire being, I saw the innocence of her heart and the disgrace of her life; I recognized the youthfulness of her glances and the premature age of her blood; I said to myself that she was dying of decrepitude at fifteen, with a spotless soul. Emaciated and weakened, she would expire like a fallen creature, but with the smile of an angel upon her lips.

I sat for two full hours between Jacques and Marie, contemplating these two beings, studying their countenances. I could not conjecture what had brought such a man and such a woman together. Then, I thought of Laurence, and comprehended that unions existed which could not be avoided.

Jacques seems to me satisfied with the existence he leads. He toils, he regulates his pleasures and his studies; he lives the life of a student without impatience, even with a certain tranquil satisfaction. I noticed that he showed some pride in receiving me in such a beautiful chamber; he does not see all the ignoble ugliness of the false and wretched luxury which surrounds him. Besides, he is neither vain nor a coxcomb; he is a great deal too practical to have such defects. He spoke to me only of his hopes, of his future position; he is in haste to be no longer young and to live as becomes a grave man. Meanwhile, in order to be like the rest of mankind, he consents to inhabit a chamber at fifty francs per month rent, he wishes to smoke, to drink a little, and even to have a sweetheart. But he considers all this simply as a custom which he cannot refuse; he designs, after having passed his final examination, to disembarrass himself of his cigar, of Marie and of his glass as pieces of furniture thenceforward useless. He has calculated, nearly to the minute, the time when he will have a right to the respect of worthy people.

Marie listened to Jacques’ theories with perfect calmness. She did not appear to comprehend that she was one of those pieces of furniture which a young man would abandon on removing from one circle of society to another. The poor girl, doubtless, cares very little who protects her, provided that she has a sofa upon which she can rest her painful limbs.

Besides, Jacques and Marie talked together with a gentleness which surprised me. They seemed to accept each other, to take care of each other. There is not love, not even friendship in their discourse; it is a polite language which shuns every quarrel and keeps the heart in a state of complete indifference. Jacques must have been the inventor of this language.

After an hour had elapsed, Jacques declared that he could not afford to lose any more time; he resumed his work, begging me to remain, assuring me that my presence would not annoy him in any way whatever. I drew my chair up to the sofa, and chatted in a low voice with Marie. This woman attracted me; I felt for her all the tenderness and pity of a father.

She talked like a child, now in monosyllables, now with volubility, enthusiastically and without pausing. I had formed a correct opinion of her: her intelligence and heart have remained those, of an infant, while, physically, she has grown up and strayed from the path which leads to true happiness. She is exquisitely innocent; horribly so sometimes, when, with a sweet smile upon her lips and large, astonished eyes, she allows rude words to escape from her delicate mouth. She does not blush, being totally ignorant of blushes; she does not seem to realize her condition, and is slowly dying, without knowing either what she is or what are the other young girls who turn away their heads when she passes them on the streets.

Little by little, she told me the story of her life. I was able, phrase by phrase, to reconstruct this lamentable story. A connected narrative would not have satisfied me, for I should have hesitated to believe. I preferred that she should make a confession, without knowing she was doing so, by partial avowals, in the course of conversation.

Marie thinks she is fifteen years old. She does not know where she was born, but vaguely remembers a woman who beat her, her mother without doubt. Her earliest recollections date from the streets; she recalls that she played there and that she slept there. In fact, her life has been a long walk in the thoroughfares. It would be very difficult for her to tell what she did up to the age of eight; when I questioned her in regard to her early years, she replied that she had forgotten all about them, except that she was very hungry and very cold. In her eighth year, like all the little outcasts, she sold flowers. She slept then at the Fontainebleau gate, in a large, gloomy garret which was the refuge of a whole herd of children of the same age as herself, all of whom had been abandoned by their parents to the cold charity of the world. Until she was fourteen, she went to this kennel, choosing her corner every night, sometimes well received by her companions, sometimes beaten by them, growing up amid wretchedness and want, nobody stretching out a hand to save her or uttering a word to awaken her heart. She was in the deepest ignorance, and did not even know that she possessed a mind and a soul. She acquired evil ways, without suspecting that evil existed; at present, though she had become a woman of the world, she still had her childish face and her mind was yet infantile and innocent. She had strayed too early in life for sin to touch her soul.

I now understood the meaning of her strange visage, made up of shamelessness and innocence, of beauty at once youthful and faded. I had the key to the mystery of this cynical girl, this weary woman, who was dying with the calmness and the whiteness of a martyr. She was the daughter of the great city, and the great city had made of her a monstrous creature neither a child nor a woman. In that being, whose soul no one had awakened, that soul still slumbered. The body itself had, doubtless, never been aroused. Marie was a creature simple in mind and flesh, who, while she had trodden muddy paths, had remained pure amid the mud, knowing nothing and accepting everything. I saw her before me, already branded, with her sweet smile, talking to me of herself, in her somewhat hoarse voice, as our little sisters talk to us of their dolls, and I felt a sickening sensation take possession of my heart.

When Marie reached fourteen, an old woman, who had no right whatever to her, sold her. She allowed herself to be bought; she almost offered herself for sale, as she had offered her bouquets of violets. She still had rosy cheeks, and her laughter rang out gayly. She now had silk dresses and jewels; she accepted the silk and the gold as she would have accepted playthings, tearing, wasting everything. But Marie lived thus, because she did not know that one could live in any other way; she could not appreciate the value of luxury, and would have accepted with indifference either a hovel or a hôtel. It pleased her to live in idleness, to look at the walls; suffering, which had already bent her, made her love repose, a sort of vague reverie, on coming out of which she seemed uneasy and agitated. When one interrogated her, asking her what she had seen, she responded in a bewildered tone: “I do not know!”

She lived thus for nearly a year, running about among the furnished lodging houses, sometimes living in one, sometimes in another, without losing anything of her serenity. As I showed some surprise and could not vanquish all the disgust with which such an existence tilled me, she was greatly amazed and did not in the least understand my feelings.

One evening, poverty returned to her, and Marie was on her way back to the garret at the Fontainebleau gate, when she met Jacques. She told me of this meeting in a voice which I shall never forget, with a stony look in her eyes and noisy laughter upon her lips. It was she who spoke to Jacques, asking him for his arm because it was dark and the pavement was slippery. She had no other thought than to obtain his aid for the moment. Jacques questioned her, drew her story from her and took pity on her. He offered her a shelter more suitable for her than that to which she was going, and took her to the house in which he lived. She made no objection, maintaining her usual calmness. She would not, perhaps, have asked any one for a bed, for she had thought only of the straw in the garret at the Fontainebleau gate, but she accepted the feathers and white sheets, which had fallen from the sky, without either joy or repugnance. From that time, she had lived as much as possible on the sofa.

I can easily imagine that Jacques thought he had made a good acquisition, in offering his protection to Marie. She was in every way suited to become his companion. She was of a weak and calm nature, and would not trouble him in his indifference; she was a careless girl of whom he could easily disembarrass himself, a woman charming in her pallor, who had all the grace of youth without having either its caprices or its inconsistency. Besides, Marie, though sometimes suffering, has her days of life and gayety; she is not yet nailed to a mattress, and, when she laughs in the sunshine, among her flaxen curls, she glows with enough beauty to make Jacques himself dream.

It pleased me, brothers, to talk to you of Jacques and Marie.

I remained two or three hours with them, forgetting my sufferings, and I wished to forget them still longer in describing to you my visit. It will give you a glimpse of a world of which you are ignorant. That world is touching; the study of it is biting, full of vertigo. I would penetrate into its hearts and souls; I am attracted by these women and men who live around me. Perhaps, when I analyze them, I shall be discouraged at the result, but I love to analyze, nevertheless. These people live a life so strange, that I believe myself always to be upon the point of discovering in them new truths.