Fruitfulness - Emile Zola
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Then was the true beauty which had its abode in Mathieu and Marianne made
manifest, that beauty of having loved one another for seventy years and
of still worshipping one another now even as on the first day. For
seventy years had they trod life's pathway side by side and arm in arm,
without a quarrel, without ever a deed of unfaithfulness. They could
certainly recall great sorrows, but these had always come from without.
And if they had sometimes sobbed they had consoled one another by
mingling their tears. Under their white locks they had retained the faith
of their early days, their hearts remained blended, merged one into the
other, even as on the morrow of their marriage, each having then been
freely given and never taken back. In them the power of love, the will of
action, the divine desire whose flame creates worlds, had happily met and
united. He, adoring his wife, had known no other joy than the passion of
creation, looking on the work that had to be performed and the work that
was accomplished as the sole why and wherefore of his being, his duty and
his reward. She, adoring her husband, had simply striven to be a true
companion, spouse, mother, and good counsellor, one who was endowed with
delicacy of judgment and helped to overcome all difficulties. Between
them they were reason, and health, and strength. If, too, they had always
triumphed athwart obstacles and tears, it was only by reason of their
long agreement, their common fealty amid an eternal renewal of their
love, whose armor rendered them invincible. They could not be conquered,
they had conquered by the very power of their union without designing it.
And they ended heroically, as conquerors of happiness, hand in hand, pure
as crystal is, very great, very handsome, the more so from their extreme
age, their long, long life, which one love had entirely filled. And the
sole strength of their innumerable offspring now gathered there, the
conquering tribe that had sprung from their loins, was the strength of
union inherited from them: the loyal love transmitted from ancestors to
children, the mutual affection which impelled them to help one another
and ever fight for a better life in all brotherliness.
But mirthful sounds arose, the banquet was at last being served. All the
servants of the farm had gathered to discharge this duty--they would not
allow a single person from without to help them. Nearly all had grown up
on the estate, and belonged, as it were, to the family. By and by they
would have a table for themselves, and in their turn celebrate the
diamond wedding. And it was amid exclamations and merry laughter that
they brought the first dishes.
All at once, however, the serving ceased, silence fell, an unexpected
incident attracted all attention. A young man, whom none apparently could
recognize, was stepping across the lawn, between the arms of the
horse-shoe table. He smiled gayly as he walked on, only stopping when he
was face to face with Mathieu and Marianne. Then in a loud voice he said:
"Good day, grandfather! good day, grandmother! You must have another
cover laid, for I have come to celebrate the day with you."
The onlookers remained silent, in great astonishment. Who was this young
man whom none had ever seen before? Assuredly he could not belong to the
family, for they would have known his name, have recognized his face?
Why, then, did he address the ancestors by the venerated names of
grandfather and grandmother? And the stupefaction was the greater by
reason of his extraordinary resemblance to Mathieu. Assuredly, he was a
Froment, he had the bright eyes and the lofty tower-like forehead of the
race. Mathieu lived again in him, such as he appeared in a
piously-preserved portrait representing him at the age of
seven-and-twenty when he had begun the conquest of Chantebled.
Mathieu, for his part, rose, trembling, while Marianne smiled divinely,
for she understood the truth before all the others.
"Who are you, my child?" asked Mathieu, "you, who call me grandfather,
and who resemble me as if you were my brother?"
"I am Dominique, the eldest son of your son Nicolas, who lives with my
mother, Lisbeth, in the vast free country yonder, the other France!"
"And how old are you?"
"I shall be seven-and-twenty next August, when, yonder, the waters of the
Niger, the good giant, come back to fertilize our spreading fields."
"And tell us, are you married, have you any children?"
"I have taken for my wife a French woman, born in Senegal, and in the
brick house which I have built, four children are already growing up
under the flaming sun of the Soudan."
"And tell us also, have you any brothers, any sisters?"
"My father, Nicolas, and Lisbeth, my mother, have had eighteen children,
two of whom are dead. We are sixteen, nine boys and seven girls."
At this Mathieu laughed gayly, as if to say that his son Nicolas at fifty
years of age had already proved a more valiant artisan of life than
himself.
"Well then, my boy," he said, "since you are the son of my son Nicolas,
come and embrace us to celebrate our wedding. And a cover shall be placed
for you; you are at home here."
In four strides Dominique made the round of the tables, then cast his
strong arms about the old people and embraced them--they the while
feeling faint with happy emotion, so delightful was that surprise, yet
another child falling among them, and on that day, as from some distant
sky, and telling them of the other family, the other nation which had
sprung from them, and which was swarming yonder with increase of
fruitfulness amid the fiery glow of the tropics.
That surprise was due to the sly craft of Ambroise, who merrily explained
how he had prepared it like a masterly coup de theatre. For a week past
he had been lodging and hiding Dominique in his house in Paris; the young
man having been sent from the Soudan by his father to negotiate certain
business matters, and in particular to order of Denis a quantity of
special agricultural machinery adapted to the soil of that far-away
region. Thus Denis alone had been taken into the other's confidence.
When all those seated at the table saw Dominique in the old people's
arms, and learnt the whole story, there came an extraordinary outburst of
delight; deafening acclamations arose once more; and what with their
enthusiastic greetings and embraces they almost stifled the messenger
from the sister family, that prince of the second dynasty of the Froments
which ruled in the land of the future France.
Mathieu gayly gave his orders: "There, place his cover in front of us! He
alone will be in front of us like the ambassador of some powerful empire.
Remember that, apart from his father and mother, he represents nine
brothers and seven sisters, without counting the four children that he
already has himself. There, my boy, sit down; and now let the service
continue."
The feast proved a mirthful one under the big oak tree whose shade was
spangled by the sunbeams. Delicious freshness arose from the grass,
friendly nature seemed to contribute its share of caresses. The laughter
never ceased, old folks became playful children once more in presence of
the ninety and the eighty-seven years of the bridegroom and the bride.
Faces beamed softly under white and dark and sunny hair; the whole
assembly was joyful, beautiful with a healthy rapturous beauty; the
children radiant, the youths superb, the maidens adorable, the married
folk united, side by side. And what good appetites there were! What a gay
tumult greeted the advent of each fresh dish! And how the good wine was
honored to celebrate the goodness of life which had granted the two
patriarchs the supreme grace of assembling them all at their table on
such a glorious occasion! At dessert came toasts and health-drinking and
fresh acclamations. But, amid all the chatter which flew from one to the
other end of the table, the conversation invariably reverted to the
surprise at the outset: that triumphal entry of the brotherly ambassador.
It was he, his unexpected presence, all that he had not yet said, all the
adventurous romance which he surely personated, that fanned the growing
fever, the excitement of the family, intoxicated by that open-air gala.
And as soon as the coffee was served no end of questions arose on every
side, and he had to speak out.
"Well, what can I say?" he replied, laughing, to a question put to him by
Ambroise, who wished to know what he thought of Chantebled, where he had
taken him for a stroll during the morning. "I'm afraid that if I speak in
all frankness, you won't think me very complimentary. Cultivation, no
doubt, is quite an art here, a splendid effort of will and science and
organization, as is needed to draw from this old soil such crops as it
can still produce. You toil a great deal, and you effect prodigies. But,
good heavens! how small your kingdom is! How can you live here without
hurting yourselves by ever rubbing against other people's elbows? You are
all heaped up to such a degree that you no longer have the amount of air
needful for a man's lungs. Your largest stretches of land, what you call
your big estates, are mere clods of soil where the few cattle that one
sees look to me like lost ants. But ah! the immensity of our Niger; the
immensity of the plains it waters; the immensity of our fields, whose
only limit is the distant horizon!"
Benjamin had listened, quivering. Ever since that son of the great river
had arrived, he had continued gazing at him, with passion rising in his
dreamy eyes. And on hearing him speak in this fashion he could no longer
restrain himself, but rose, went round the table, and sat down beside
him.
"The Niger--the immense plains--tell us all about them," he said.
"The Niger, the good giant, the father of us all over yonder!" responded
Dominique. "I was barely eight years old when my parents quitted Senegal,
yielding to an impulse of reckless bravery and wild hope, possessed by a
craving to plunge into the Soudan and conquer as chance might will it.
There are many days' march among rocks and scrub and rivers from St.
Louis to our present farm, far beyond Djenny. And I no longer remember
the first journey. It seems to me as if I sprang from good father Niger
himself, from the wondrous fertility of his waters. He is gentle but
immense, rolling countless waves like the sea, and so broad, so vast,
that no bridge can span him as he flows from horizon to horizon. He
carries archipelagoes on his breast, and stretches out arms covered with
herbage like pasture land. And there are the depths where flotillas of
huge fishes roam at their ease. Father Niger has his tempests, too, and
his days of fire, when his waters beget life in the burning clasp of the
sun. And he has his delightful nights, his soft and rosy nights, when
peace descends on earth from the stars. . . . He is the ancestor, the
founder, the fertilizer of the Western Soudan, which he has dowered with
incalculable wealth, wresting it from the invasion of neighboring
Saharas, building it up of his own fertile ooze. It is he who every year
at regular seasons floods the valley like an ocean and leaves it rich,
pregnant, as it were, with amazing vegetation. Even like the Nile, he has
vanquished the sands; he is the father of untold generations, the
creative deity of a world as yet unknown, which in later times will
enrich old Europe. . . . And the valley of the Niger, the good giant's
colossal daughter. Ah! what pure immensity is hers; what a flight, so to
say, into the infinite! The plain opens and expands, unbroken and
limitless. Ever and ever comes the plain, fields are succeeded by other
fields stretching out of sight, whose end a plough would only reach in
months and months. All the food needed for a great nation will be reaped
there when cultivation is practised with a little courage and a little
science, for it is still a virgin kingdom such as the good river created
it, thousands of years ago. To-morrow this kingdom will belong to the
workers who are bold enough to take it, each carving for himself a domain
as large as his strength of toil can dream of; not an estate of acres,
but leagues and leagues of ploughland wavy with eternal crops. . . . And
what breadth of atmosphere there is in that immensity! What delight it is
to inhale all the air of that space at one breath, and how healthy and
strong the life, for one is no longer piled one upon the other, but one
feels free and powerful, master of that part of the earth which one has
desired under the sun which shines for all."
Benjamin listened and questioned, never satisfied. "How are you installed
there?" he asked. "How do you live? What are your habits? What is your
work?"
Dominique began to laugh again, conscious as he was that he was
astonishing, upsetting all these unknown relatives who pressed so close
to him, aglow with increasing curiosity. Women and old men had in turn
left their places to draw near to him; even children had gathered around,
as if to listen to a fine story.
"Oh! we live in republican fashion," said he; "every member of our
community has to help in the common fraternal task. The family counts
more or less expert artisans of all kinds for the rough work. My father
in particular has revealed himself to be a very skilful mason, for he had
to build a place for us when we arrived. He even made his own bricks,
thanks to some deposits of clayey soil which exist near Djenny. So our
farm is now a little village: each married couple will have its own
house. Then, too, we are not only agriculturists, we are fishermen and
hunters also. We have our boats; the Niger abounds in fish to an
extraordinary degree, and there are wonderful hauls at times. And even
the shooting and hunting would suffice to feed us; game is plentiful,
there are partridges and wild guinea-fowl, not to mention the flamingoes,
the pelicans, the egrets, the thousands of creatures who do not prey on
one another. Black lions visit us at times: eagles fly slowly over our
heads; at dusk hippopotami come in parties of three and four to gambol in
the river with the clumsy grace of negro children bathing. But, after
all, we are more particularly cultivators, kings of the plain, especially
when the waters of the Niger withdraw after fertilizing our fields. Our
estate has no limits; it stretches as far as we can labor. And ah! if you
could only see the natives, who do not even plough, but have few if any
appliances beyond sticks, with which they just scratch the soil before
confiding the seed to it! There is no trouble, no worry; the earth is
rich, the sun ardent, and thus the crop will always be a fine one. When
we ourselves employ the plough, when we bestow a little care on the soil
which teems with life, what prodigious crops there are, an abundance of
grain such as your barns could never hold! As soon as we possess the
agricultural machinery, which I have come to order here in France, we
shall need flotillas of boats in order to send you the overplus of our
granaries. . . . When the river subsides, when its waters fall, the crop
we more particularly grow is rice; there are, indeed, plains of rice,
which occasionally yield two crops. Then come millet and ground-beans,
and by and by will come corn, when we can grow it on a large scale. Vast
cotton fields follow one after the other, and we also grow manioc and
indigo, while in our kitchen gardens we have onions and pimentoes, and
gourds and cucumbers. And I don't mention the natural vegetation, the
precious gum-trees, of which we possess quite a forest; the butter-trees,
the flour-trees, the silk-trees, which grow on our ground like briers
alongside your roads. . . . Finally, we are shepherds; we own
ever-increasing flocks, whose numbers we don't even know. Our goats, our
bearded sheep may be counted by the thousand; our horses scamper freely
through paddocks as large as cities, and when our hunch-backed cattle
come down to the Niger to drink at that hour of serene splendor the
sunset, they cover a league of the river banks. . . . And, above
everything else, we are free men and joyous men, working for the delight
of living without restraint, and our reward is the thought that our work
is very great and good and beautiful, since it is the creation of another
France, the sovereign France of to-morrow."
From that moment Dominique paused no more. There was no longer any need
to question him, he poured forth all the beauty and grandeur in his mind.
He spoke of Djenny, the ancient queen city, whose people and whose
monuments came from Egypt, the city which even yet reigns over the
valley. He spoke of four other centres, Bamakoo, Niamina, Segu, and
Sansandig, big villages which would some day be great towns. And he spoke
particularly of Timbuctoo the glorious, so long unknown, with a veil of
legends cast over it as if it were some forbidden paradise, with its
gold, its ivory, its beautiful women, all rising like a mirage of
inaccessible delight beyond the devouring sands. He spoke of Timbuctoo,
the gate of the Sahara and the Western Soudan, the frontier town where
life ended and met and mingled, whither the camel of the desert brought
the weapons and merchandise of Europe as well as salt, that indispensable
commodity, and where the pirogues of the Niger landed the precious ivory,
the surface gold, the ostrich feathers, the gum, the crops, all the
wealth of the fruitful valley. He spoke of Timbuctoo the store-place, the
metropolis and market of Central Africa, with its piles of ivory, its
piles of virgin gold, its sacks of rice, millet, and ground-nuts, its
cakes of indigo, its tufts of ostrich plumes, its metals, its dates, its
stuffs, its iron-ware, and particularly its slabs of rock salt, brought
on the backs of beasts of burden from Taudeni, the frightful Saharian
city of salt, whose soil is salt for leagues around, an infernal mine of
that salt which is so precious in the Soudan that it serves as a medium
of exchange, as money more precious even than gold. And finally, he spoke
of Timbuctoo impoverished, fallen from its high estate, the opulent and
resplendent city of former times now almost in ruins, hiding remnants of
its treasures behind cracked walls in fear of the robbers of the desert;
but withal apt to become once more a city of glory and fortune, royally
seated as it is between the Soudan, that granary of abundance, and the
Sahara, the road to Europe, as soon as France shall have opened that
road, have connected the provinces of her new empire, and have founded
that huge new France of which the ancient fatherland will be but the
directing mind.
"That is the dream!" cried Dominique, "that is the gigantic work which
the future will achieve! Algeria, connected with Timbuctoo by the Sahara
railway line, over which electric engines will carry the whole of old
Europe through the far expanse of sand! Timbuctoo connected with Senegal
by flotillas of steam vessels and yet other railways, all intersecting
the vast empire on every side! New France connected with mother France,
the old land, by a wondrous development of the means of communication,
and founded, and got ready for the hundred millions of inhabitants who
will some day spring up there! . . . Doubtless these things cannot be
done in a night. The trans-Saharian railway is not yet laid down; there
are two thousand five hundred kilometres* of bare desert to be crossed
which can hardly tempt railway companies; and a certain amount of
prosperity must be developed by starting cultivation, seeking and working
mines, and increasing exportations before a pecuniary effort can be
possible on the part of the motherland. Moreover, there is the question
of the natives, mostly of gentle race, though some are ferocious bandits,
whose savagery is increased by religious fanaticism, thus rendering the
difficulties of our conquest all the greater. Until the terrible problem
of Islamism is solved we shall always be coming in conflict with it. And
only life, long years of life, can create a new nation, adapt it to the
new land, blend diverse elements together, and yield normal existence,
homogeneous strength, and genius proper to the clime. But no matter! From
this day a new France is born yonder, a huge empire; and it needs our
blood--and some must be given it, in order that it may be peopled and be
able to draw its incalculable wealth from the soil, and become the
greatest, the strongest, and the mightiest in the world!"
* About 1,553 English miles.
Transported with enthusiasm, quivering at the thought of the distant
ideal at last revealed to him, Benjamin sat there with tears in his eyes.
Ah! the healthy life! the noble life! the other life! the whole mission
and work of which he had as yet but confusedly dreamt! Again he asked a
question: "And are there many French families there, colonizing like
yours?"
Dominique burst into a loud laugh. "Oh, no," said he, "there are
certainly a few colonists in our old possessions of Senegal, but yonder
in the Niger valley, beyond Djenny, there are, I think, only ourselves.
We are the pioneers, the vanguard, the riskers full of faith and hope.
And there is some merit in it, for to sensible stay-at-home folks it all
seems like defying common sense. Can you picture it? A French family
installed among savages, and unprotected, save for the vicinity of a
little fort, where a French officer commands a dozen native soldiers--a
French family, which is sometimes called upon to fight in person, and
which establishes a farm in a land where the fanaticism of some head
tribesman may any day stir up trouble. It seems so insane that folks get
angry at the mere thought of it, yet it enraptures us and gives us gayety
and health, and the courage to achieve victory. We are opening the road,
we are giving the example, we are carrying our dear old France yonder,
taking to ourselves a huge expanse of virgin land, which will become a
province. We have already founded a village which in a hundred years will
be a great town. In the colonies no race is more fruitful than the
French, though it seems to become barren on its own ancient soil. Thus we
shall swarm and swarm, and fill the world! So come then, come then, all
of you; since here you are set too closely, since you lack air in your
little fields and your overheated, pestilence-breeding towns. There is
room for everybody yonder; there are new lands, there is open air that
none has breathed, and there is a task to be accomplished which will make
all of you heroes, strong, sturdy men, well pleased to live! Come with
me. I will take the men, I will take all the women who are willing, and
you will carve for yourselves other provinces and found other cities for
the future glory and power of the great new France."
He laughed so gayly, he was so handsome, so spirited, so robust, that
once again the whole table acclaimed him. They would certainly not follow
him yonder, for all those married couples already had their own nests;
and all those young folks were already too strongly rooted to the old
land by the ties of their race--a race which after displaying such
adventurous instincts has now fallen asleep, as it were, at its own
fireside. But what a marvellous story it all was--a story to which big
and little alike, had listened in rapture, and which to-morrow would,
doubtless, arouse within them a passion for glorious enterprise far away!
The seed of the unknown was sown, and would grow into a crop of fabulous
magnitude.
For the moment Benjamin was the only one who cried amid the enthusiasm
which drowned his words: "Yes, yes, I want to live. Take me, take me with
you!"
But Dominique resumed, by way of conclusion: "And there is one thing,
grandfather, which I have not yet told you. My father has given the name
of Chantebled to our farm yonder. He often tells us how you founded your
estate here, in an impulse of far-seeing audacity, although everybody
jeered and shrugged their shoulders and declared that you must be mad.
And, yonder, my father has to put up with the same derision, the same
contemptuous pity, for people declare that the good Niger will some day
sweep away our village, even if a band of prowling natives does not kill
and eat us! But I'm easy in mind about all that, we shall conquer as you
conquered, for what seems to be the folly of action is really divine
wisdom. There will be another kingdom of the Froments yonder, another
huge Chantebled, of which you and my grandmother will be the ancestors,
the distant patriarchs, worshipped like deities. . . . And I drink to
your health, grandfather, and I drink to yours, grandmother, on behalf of
your other future people, who will grow up full of spirit under the
burning sun of the tropics!"
Then with great emotion Mathieu, who had risen, replied in a powerful
voice: "To your health! my boy. To the health of my son Nicolas, his
wife, Lisbeth, and all who have been born from them! And to the health of
all who will follow, from generation to generation!"