Fruitfulness - Emile Zola
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She went on to speak of her sister Euphrasie, who had fallen into a most
wretched condition, said she, ever since passing through Dr. Gaude's
hands. Her home had virtually been broken up, she had become decrepit, a
mere bundle of rags, unable even to handle a broom. It made one tremble
to see her. Then, after a pause, just as the cab was reaching the Rue
Caroline, the girl continued: "Will you come up to see her? You might say
a few kind words to her. It would please me, for I'm going on a rather
unpleasant errand. I thought that she would have strength enough to make
some little boxes like me, and thus earn a few pence for herself; but she
has kept the work I gave her more than a month now, and if she really
cannot do it I must take it back."
Mathieu consented, and in the room upstairs he beheld one of the most
frightful, poignant spectacles that he had ever witnessed. In the centre
of that one room where the family slept and ate, Euphrasie sat on a
straw-bottomed chair; and although she was barely thirty years of age,
one might have taken her for a little old woman of fifty; so thin and so
withered did she look that she resembled one of those fruits, suddenly
deprived of sap, that dry up on the tree. Her teeth had fallen, and of
her hair she only retained a few white locks. But the more characteristic
mark of this mature senility was a wonderful loss of muscular strength,
an almost complete disappearance of will, energy, and power of action, so
that she now spent whole days, idle, stupefied, without courage even to
raise a finger.
When Cecile told her that her visitor was M. Froment, the former chief
designer at the Beauchene works, she did not even seem to recognize him;
she no longer took interest in anything. And when her sister spoke of the
object of her visit, asking for the work with which she had entrusted
her, she answered with a gesture of utter weariness: "Oh! what can you
expect! It takes me too long to stick all those little bits of cardboard
together. I can't do it; it throws me into a perspiration."
Then a stout woman, who was cutting some bread and butter for the three
children, intervened with an air of quiet authority: "You ought to take
those materials away, Mademoiselle Cecile. She's incapable of doing
anything with them. They will end by getting dirty, and then your people
won't take them back."
This stout woman was a certain Madame Joseph, a widow of forty and a
charwoman by calling, whom Benard, the husband, had at first engaged to
come two hours every morning to attend to the housework, his wife not
having strength enough to put on a child's shoes or to set a pot on the
fire. At first Euphrasie had offered furious resistance to this intrusion
of a stranger, but, her physical decline progressing, she had been
obliged to yield. And then things had gone from bad to worse, till Madame
Joseph became supreme in the household. Between times there had been
terrible scenes over it all; but the wretched Euphrasie, stammering and
shivering, had at last resigned herself to the position, like some little
old woman sunk into second childhood and already cut off from the world.
That Benard and Madame Joseph were not bad-hearted in reality was shown
by the fact that although Euphrasie was now but an useless encumbrance,
they kept her with them, instead of flinging her into the streets as
others would have done.
"Why, there you are again in the middle of the room!" suddenly exclaimed
the fat woman, who each time that she went hither and thither found it
necessary to avoid the other's chair. "How funny it is that you can never
put yourself in a corner! Auguste will be coming in for his four o'clock
snack in a moment, and he won't be at all pleased if he doesn't find his
cheese and his glass of wine on the table."
Without replying, Euphrasie nervously staggered to her feet, and with the
greatest trouble dragged her chair towards the table. Then she sat down
again limp and very weary.
Just as Madame Joseph was bringing the cheese, Benard, whose workshop was
near by, made his appearance. He was still a full-bodied, jovial fellow,
and began to jest with his sister-in-law while showing great politeness
towards Mathieu, whom he thanked for taking interest in his unhappy
wife's condition. "_Mon Dieu_, monsieur," said he, "it isn't her fault;
it is all due to those rascally doctors at the hospital. For a year or so
one might have thought her cured, but you see what has now become of her.
Ah! it ought not to be allowed! You are no doubt aware that they treated
Cecile just the same. And there was another, too, a baroness, whom you
must know. She called here the other day to see Euphrasie, and, upon my
word, I didn't recognize her. She used to be such a fine woman, and now
she looks a hundred years old. Yes, yes, I say that the doctors ought to
be sent to prison."
He was about to sit down to table when he stumbled against Euphrasie's
chair. She sat watching him with an anxious, semi-stupefied expression.
"There you are, in my way as usual!" said he; "one is always tumbling up
against you. Come, make a little room, do."
He did not seem to be a very terrible customer, but at the sound of his
voice she began to tremble, full of childish fear, as if she were
threatened with a thrashing. And this time she found strength enough to
drag her chair as far as a dark closet, the door of which was open. She
there sought refuge, ensconcing herself in the gloom, amid which one
could vaguely espy her shrunken, wrinkled face, which suggested that of
some very old great-grandmother, who was taking years and years to die.
Mathieu's heart contracted as he observed that senile terror, that
shivering obedience on the part of a woman whose harsh, dry, aggressively
quarrelsome disposition he so well remembered. Industrious, self-willed,
full of life as she had once been, she was now but a limp human rag. And
yet her case was recorded in medical annals as one of the renowned
Gaude's great miracles of cure. Ah! how truly had Boutan spoken in saying
that people ought to wait to see the real results of those victorious
operations which were sapping the vitality of France.
Cecile, however, with eager affection, kissed the three children, who
somehow continued to grow up in that wrecked household. Tears came to her
eyes, and directly Madame Joseph had given her back the work-materials
entrusted to Euphrasie she hurried Mathieu away. And, as they reached the
street, she said: "Thank you, Monsieur Froment; I can go home on foot
now--. How frightful, eh? Ah! as I told you, we shall be in Paradise,
Norine and I, in the quiet room which you have so kindly promised to rent
for us."
On reaching Beauchene's establishment Mathieu immediately repaired to the
workshops, but he could obtain no precise information respecting his
threshing-machine, though he had ordered it several months previously. He
was told that the master's son, Monsieur Maurice, had gone out on
business, and that nobody could give him an answer, particularly as the
master himself had not put in an appearance at the works that week. He
learnt, however, that Beauchene had returned from a journey that very
day, and must be indoors with his wife. Accordingly, he resolved to call
at the house, less on account of the threshing-machine than to decide a
matter of great interest to him, that of the entry of one of his twin
sons, Blaise, into the establishment.
This big fellow had lately left college, and although he had only
completed his nineteenth year, he was on the point of marrying a
portionless young girl, Charlotte Desvignes, for whom he had conceived a
romantic attachment ever since childhood. His parents, seeing in this
match a renewal of their own former loving improvidence, had felt moved,
and unwilling to drive the lad to despair. But, if he was to marry, some
employment must first be found for him. Fortunately this could be
managed. While Denis, the other of the twins, entered a technical school,
Beauchene, by way of showing his esteem for the increasing fortune of his
good cousins, as he now called the Froments, cordially offered to give
Blaise a situation at his establishment.
On being ushered into Constance's little yellow salon, Mathieu found her
taking a cup of tea with Madame Angelin, who had come back with her from
the Rue de Miromesnil. Beauchene's unexpected arrival on the scene had
disagreeably interrupted their private converse. He had returned from one
of the debauches in which he so frequently indulged under the pretext of
making a short business journey, and, still slightly intoxicated, with
feverish, sunken eyes and clammy tongue, he was wearying the two women
with his impudent, noisy falsehoods.
"Ah! my dear fellow!" he exclaimed on seeing Mathieu, "I was just telling
the ladies of my return from Amiens--. What wonderful duck pates they
have there!"
Then, on Mathieu speaking to him of Blaise, he launched out into
protestations of friendship. It was understood, the young fellow need
only present himself at the works, and in the first instance he should be
put with Morange, in order that he might learn something of the business
mechanism of the establishment. Thus talking, Beauchene puffed and
coughed and spat, exhaling meantime the odor of tobacco, alcohol, and
musk, which he always brought back from his "sprees," while his wife
smiled affectionately before the others as was her wont, but directed at
him glances full of despair and disgust whenever Madame Angelin turned
her head.
As Beauchene continued talking too much, owning for instance that he did
not know how far the thresher might be from completion, Mathieu noticed
Constance listening anxiously. The idea of Blaise entering the
establishment had already rendered her grave, and now her husband's
apparent ignorance of important business matters distressed her. Besides,
the thought of Norine was reviving in her mind; she remembered the girl's
child, and almost feared some fresh understanding between Beauchene and
Mathieu. All at once, however, she gave a cry of great relief: "Ah! here
is Maurice."
Her son was entering the room--her son, the one and only god on whom she
now set her affection and pride, the crown-prince who to-morrow would
become king, who would save the kingdom from perdition, and who would
exalt her on his right hand in a blaze of glory. She deemed him handsome,
tall, strong, and as invincible in his nineteenth year as all the knights
of the old legends. When he explained that he had just profitably
compromised a worrying transaction in which his father had rashly
embarked, she pictured him repairing disasters and achieving victories.
And she triumphed more than ever on hearing him promise that the
threshing-machine should be ready before the end of that same week.
"You must take a cup of tea, my dear," she exclaimed. "It would do you
good; you worry your mind too much."
Maurice accepted the offer, and gayly replied: "Oh! do you know, an
omnibus almost crushed me just now in the Rue de Rivoli!"
At this his mother turned livid, and the cup which she held escaped from
her hand. Ah! God, was her happiness at the mercy of an accident? Then
once again the fearful threat sped by, that icy gust which came she knew
not whence, but which ever chilled her to her bones.
"Why, you stupid," said Beauchene, laughing, "it was he who crushed the
omnibus, since here he is, telling you the tale. Ah! my poor Maurice,
your mother is really ridiculous. I know how strong you are, and I'm
quite at ease about you."
That day Madame Angelin returned to Janville with Mathieu. They found
themselves alone in the railway carriage, and all at once, without any
apparent cause, tears started from the young woman's eyes. At this she
apologized, and murmured as if in a dream: "To have a child, to rear him,
and then lose him--ah! certainly one's grief must then be poignant. Yet
one has had him with one; he has grown up, and one has known for years
all the joy of having him at one's side. But when one never has a
child--never, never--ah! come rather suffering and mourning than such a
void as that!"
And meantime, at Chantebled, Mathieu and Marianne founded, created,
increased, and multiplied, again proving victorious in the eternal battle
which life wages against death, thanks to that continual increase both of
offspring and of fertile land, which was like their very existence, their
joy and their strength. Desire passed like a gust of flame, desire divine
and fruitful, since they possessed the power of love, of kindliness, and
health. And their energy did the rest--that will of action, that quiet
bravery in the presence of the labor that is necessary, the labor that
has made and that regulates the world. Yet even during those two years it
was not without constant struggling that they achieved victory. True,
victory was becoming more and more certain as the estate expanded. The
petty worries of earlier days had disappeared, and the chief question was
now one of ruling sensibly and equitably. All the land had been purchased
northward on the plateau, from the farm of Mareuil to the farm of
Lillebonne; there was not a copse that did not belong to the Froments,
and thus beside the surging sea of corn there rose a royal park of
centenarian trees. Apart from the question of felling portions of the
wood for timber, Mathieu was not disposed to retain the remainder for
mere beauty's sake; and accordingly avenues were devised connecting the
broad clearings, and cattle were then turned into this part of the
property. The ark of life, increased by hundreds of animals, expanded,
burst through the great trees. There was a fresh growth of fruitfulness:
more and more cattle-sheds had to be built, sheepcotes had to be created,
and manure came in loads and loads to endow the land with wondrous
fertility. And now yet other children might come, for floods of milk
poured forth, and there were herds and flocks to clothe and nourish them.
Beside the ripening crops the woods waved their greenery, quivering with
the eternal seeds that germinated in their shade, under the dazzling sun.
And only one more stretch of land, the sandy slopes on the east, remained
to be conquered in order that the kingdom might be complete. Assuredly
this compensated one for all former tears, for all the bitter anxiety of
the first years of toil.
Then, while Mathieu completed his conquest, there came to Marianne during
those two years the joy of marrying one of her children even while she
was again _enceinte_, for, like our good mother the earth, she also
remained fruitful. 'Twas a delightful fete, full of infinite hope, that
wedding of Blaise and Charlotte; he a strong young fellow of nineteen,
she an adorable girl of eighteen summers, each loving the other with a
love of nosegay freshness that had budded, even in childhood's hour,
along the flowery paths of Chantebled. The eight other children were all
there: first the big brothers, Denis, Ambroise, and Gervais, who were now
finishing their studies; next Rose, the eldest girl, now fourteen, who
promised to become a woman of healthy beauty and happy gayety of
disposition; then Claire, who was still a child, and Gregoire, who was
only just going to college; without counting the very little ones, Louise
and Madeleine.
Folks came out of curiosity from the surrounding villages to see the gay
troop conduct their big brother to the municipal offices. It was a
marvellous cortege, flowery like springtide, full of felicity, which
moved every heart. Often, moreover, on ordinary holidays, when for the
sake of an outing the family repaired in a band to some village market,
there was such a gallop in traps, on horseback, and on bicycles, while
the girls' hair streamed in the wind and loud laughter rang out from one
and all, that people would stop to watch the charming cavalcade. "Here
are the troops passing!" folks would jestingly exclaim, implying that
nothing could resist those Froments, that the whole countryside was
theirs by right of conquest, since every two years their number
increased. And this time, at the expiration of those last two years it
was again to a daughter, Marguerite, that Marianne gave birth. For a
while she remained in a feverish condition, and there were fears, too,
that she might be unable to nurse her infant as she had done all the
others. Thus, when Mathieu saw her erect once more and smiling, with her
dear little Marguerite at her breast, he embraced her passionately, and
triumphed once again over every sorrow and every pang. Yet another child,
yet more wealth and power, yet an additional force born into the world,
another field ready for to-morrow's harvest!
And 'twas ever the great work, the good work, the work of fruitfulness
spreading, thanks to the earth and thanks to woman, both victorious over
destruction, offering fresh means of subsistence each time a fresh child
was born, and loving, willing, battling, toiling, even amid suffering,
and ever tending to increase of life and increase of hope.
XIV
TWO more years went by, and during those two years yet another child,
this time a boy, was born to Mathieu and Marianne. And on this occasion,
at the same time as the family increased, the estate of Chantebled was
increased also by all the heatherland extending to the east as far as the
village of Vieux-Bourg. And this time the last lot was purchased, the
conquest of the estate was complete. The 1250 acres of uncultivated soil
which Seguin's father, the old army contractor, had formerly purchased in
view of erecting a palatial residence there were now, thanks to
unremitting effort, becoming fruitful from end to end. The enclosure
belonging to the Lepailleurs, who stubbornly refused to sell it, alone
set a strip of dry, stony, desolate land amid the broad green plain. And
it was all life's resistless conquest; it was fruitfulness spreading in
the sunlight; it was labor ever incessantly pursuing its work of creation
amid obstacles and suffering, making good all losses, and at each
succeeding hour setting more energy, more health, and more joy in the
veins of the world.
Blaise, now the father of a little girl some ten months old, had been
residing at the Beauchene works since the previous winter. He occupied
the little pavilion where his mother had long previously given birth to
his brother Gervais. His wife Charlotte had conquered the Beauchenes by
her fair grace, her charming, bouquet-like freshness, to such a point,
indeed, that even Constance had desired to have her near her. The truth
was that Madame Desvignes had made adorable creatures of her two
daughters, Charlotte and Marthe. At the death of her husband, a
stockbroker's confidential clerk, who had died, leaving her at thirty
years of age in very indifferent circumstances, she had gathered her
scanty means together and withdrawn to Janville, her native place, where
she had entirely devoted herself to her daughters' education. Knowing
that they would be almost portionless, she had brought them up extremely
well, in the hope that this might help to find them husbands, and it so
chanced that she proved successful.
Affectionate intercourse sprang up between her and the Froments; the
children played together; and it was, indeed, from those first games that
came the love-romance which was to end in the marriage of Blaise and
Charlotte. By the time the latter reached her eighteenth birthday and
married, Marthe her sister, then fourteen years old, had become the
inseparable companion of Rose Froment, who was of the same age and as
pretty as herself, though dark instead of fair. Charlotte, who had a more
delicate, and perhaps a weaker, nature than her gay, sensible sister, had
become passionately fond of drawing and painting, which she had learnt at
first simply by way of accomplishment. She had ended, however, by
painting miniatures very prettily, and, as her mother remarked, her
proficiency might prove a resource to her in the event of misfortune.
Certainly there was some of the bourgeois respect and esteem for a good
education in the fairly cordial greeting which Constance extended to
Charlotte, who had painted a miniature portrait of her, a good though a
flattering likeness.
On the other hand, Blaise, who was endowed with the creative fire of the
Froments, ever striving, ever hard at work, became a valuable assistant
to Maurice as soon as a brief stay in Morange's office had made him
familiar with the business of the firm. Indeed it was Maurice who,
finding that his father seconded him less and less, had insisted on
Blaise and Charlotte installing themselves in the little pavilion, in
order that the former's services might at all times be available. And
Constance, ever on her knees before her son, could in this matter only
obey respectfully. She evinced boundless faith in the vastness of
Maurice's intellect. His studies had proved fairly satisfactory; if he
was somewhat slow and heavy, and had frequently been delayed by youthful
illnesses, he had, nevertheless, diligently plodded on. As he was far
from talkative, his mother gave out that he was a reflective,
concentrated genius, who would astonish the world by actions, not by
speech. Before he was even fifteen she said of him, in her adoring way:
"Oh! he has a great mind." And, naturally enough, she only acknowledged
Blaise to be a necessary lieutenant, a humble assistant, one whose hand
would execute the sapient young master's orders. The latter, to her
thinking, was now so strong and so handsome, and he was so quickly
reviving the business compromised by the father's slow collapse, that
surely he must be on the high-road to prodigious wealth, to that final
great triumph, indeed, of which she had been dreaming so proudly, so
egotistically, for so many years.
But all at once the thunderbolt fell. It was not without some hesitation
that Blaise had agreed to make the little pavilion his home, for he knew
that there was an idea of reducing him to the status of a mere piece of
machinery. But at the birth of his little girl he bravely decided to
accept the proposal, and to engage in the battle of life even as his
father had engaged in it, mindful of the fact that he also might in time
have a large family. But it so happened that one morning, when he went up
to the house to ask Maurice for some instructions, he heard from
Constance herself that the young man had spent a very bad night, and that
she had therefore prevailed on him to remain in bed. She did not evince
any great anxiety on the subject; the indisposition could only be due to
a little fatigue. Indeed, for a week past the two cousins had been tiring
themselves out over the delivery of a very important order, which had set
the entire works in motion. Besides, on the previous day Maurice,
bareheaded and in perspiration, had imprudently lingered in a draught in
one of the sheds while a machine was being tested.
That evening he was seized with intense fever, and Boutan was hastily
summoned. On the morrow, alarmed, though he scarcely dared to say it, by
the lightning-like progress of the illness, the doctor insisted on a
consultation, and two of his colleagues being summoned, they soon agreed
together. The malady was an extremely infectious form of galloping
consumption, the more violent since it had found in the patient a field
where there was little to resist its onslaught. Beauchene was away from
home, travelling as usual. Constance, for her part, in spite of the grave
mien of the doctors, who could not bring themselves to tell her the
brutal truth, remained, in spite of growing anxiety, full of a stubborn
hope that her son, the hero, the demi-god necessary for her own life,
could not be seriously ill and likely to die. But only three days
elapsed, and during the very night that Beauchene returned home, summoned
by a telegram, the young fellow expired in her arms.
In reality his death was simply the final decomposition of impoverished,
tainted, bourgeois blood, the sudden disappearance of a poor, mediocre
being who, despite a facade of seeming health, had been ailing since
childhood. But what an overwhelming blow it was both for the mother and
for the father, all whose dreams and calculations it swept away! The only
son, the one and only heir, the prince of industry, whom they had desired
with such obstinate, scheming egotism, had passed away like a shadow;
their arms clasped but a void, and the frightful reality arose before
them; a moment had sufficed, and they were childless.
Blaise was with the parents at the bedside at the moment when Maurice
expired. It was then about two in the morning, and as soon as possible he
telegraphed the news of the death to Chantebled. Nine o'clock was
striking when Marianne, very pale, quite upset, came into the yard to
call Mathieu.
"Maurice is dead! . . . _Mon Dieu_! an only son; poor people!"
They stood there thunderstruck, chilled and trembling. They had simply
heard that the young man was poorly; they had not imagined him to be
seriously ill.