Fruitfulness - Emile Zola
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And Marianne, who had likewise risen, in her turn said: "To the health of
your wives, and your daughters, your spouses and your mothers! To the
health of those who will love and produce the greatest sum of life, in
order that the greatest possible sum of happiness may follow!"
Then, the banquet ended, they quitted the table and spread freely over
the lawn. There was a last ovation around Mathieu and Marianne, who were
encompassed by their eager offspring. At one and the same time a score of
arms were outstretched, carrying children, whose fair or dark heads they
were asked to kiss. Aged as they were, returning to a divine state of
childhood, they did not always recognize those little lads and lasses.
They made mistakes, used wrong names, fancied that one child was another.
Laughter thereupon arose, the mistakes were rectified, and appeals were
made to the old people's memory. They likewise laughed, the errors were
amusing, but it mattered little if they no longer remembered a name, the
child at any rate belonged to the harvest that had sprung from them.
Then there were certain granddaughters and great-granddaughters whom they
themselves summoned and kissed by way of bringing good luck to the babes
that were expected, the children of their children's children, the race
which would ever spread and perpetuate them through the far-off ages. And
there were mothers, also, who were nursing, mothers whose little ones,
after sleeping quietly during the feast, had now awakened, shrieking
their hunger aloud. These had to be fed, and the mothers merrily seated
themselves together under the trees and gave them the breast in all
serenity. Therein lay the royal beauty of woman, wife and mother;
fruitful maternity triumphed over virginity by which life is slain. Ah!
might manners and customs change, might the idea of morality and the idea
of beauty be altered, and the world recast, based on the triumphant
beauty of the mother suckling her babe in all the majesty of her
symbolism! From fresh sowings there ever came fresh harvests, the sun
ever rose anew above the horizon, and milk streamed forth endlessly like
the eternal sap of living humanity. And that river of milk carried life
through the veins of the world, and expanded and overflowed for the
centuries of the future.
The greatest possible sum of life in order that the greatest possible
happiness might result: that was the act of faith in life, the act of
hope in the justice and goodness of life's work. Victorious fruitfulness
remained the one true force, the sovereign power which alone moulded the
future. She was the great revolutionary, the incessant artisan of
progress, the mother of every civilization, ever re-creating her army of
innumerable fighters, throwing through the centuries millions after
millions of poor and hungry and rebellious beings into the fight for
truth and justice. Not a single forward step in history has ever been
taken without numerousness having urged humanity forward. To-morrow, like
yesterday, will be won by the swarming of the multitude whose quest is
happiness. And to-morrow will give the benefits which our age has
awaited; economic equality obtained even as political equality has been
obtained; a just apportionment of wealth rendered easy; and compulsory
work re-established as the one glorious and essential need.
It is not true that labor has been imposed on mankind as punishment for
sin, it is on the contrary an honor, a mark of nobility, the most
precious of boons, the joy, the health, the strength, the very soul of
the world, which itself labors incessantly, ever creating the future. And
misery, the great, abominable social crime, will disappear amid the
glorification of labor, the distribution of the universal task among one
and all, each accepting his legitimate share of duties and rights. And
may children come, they will simply be instruments of wealth, they will
but increase the human capital, the free happiness of a life in which the
children of some will no longer be beasts of burden, or food for
slaughter or for vice, to serve the egotism of the children of others.
And life will then again prove the conqueror; there will come the
renascence of life, honored and worshipped, the religion of life so long
crushed beneath the hateful nightmare of Roman Catholicism, from which on
divers occasions the nations have sought to free themselves by violence,
and which they will drive away at last on the now near day when cult and
power, and sovereign beauty shall be vested in the fruitful earth and the
fruitful spouse.
In that last resplendent hour of eventide, Mathieu and Marianne reigned
by virtue of their numerous race. They ended as heroes of life, because
of the great creative work which they had accomplished amid battle and
toil and grief. Often had they sobbed, but with extreme old age had come
peace, deep smiling peace, made up of the good labor performed and the
certainty of approaching rest while their children and their children's
children resumed the fight, labored and suffered, lived in their own
turn. And a part of Mathieu and Marianne's heroic grandeur sprang from
the divine desire with which they had glowed, the desire which moulds and
regulates the world. They were like a sacred temple in which the god had
fixed his abode, they were animated by the inextinguishable fire with
which the universe ever burns for the work of continual creation. Their
radiant beauty under their white hair came from the light which yet
filled their eyes, the light of love's power, which age had been unable
to extinguish. Doubtless, as they themselves jestingly remarked at times,
they had been prodigals, their family had been such a large one. But,
after all, had they not been right? Their children had diminished no
other's share, each had come with his or her own means of subsistence.
And, besides, 'tis good to garner in excess when the granaries of a
country are empty. Many such improvidents are needed to combat the
egotism of others at times of great dearth. Amid all the frightful loss
and wastage, the race is strengthened, the country is made afresh, a good
civic example is given by such healthy prodigality as Mathieu and
Marianne had shown.
But a last act of heroism was required of them. A month after the
festival, when Dominique was on the point of returning to the Soudan,
Benjamin one evening told them of his passion, of the irresistible
summons from the unknown distant plains, which he could but obey.
"Dear father, darling mother, let me go with Dominique! I have struggled,
I feel horrified with myself at quitting you thus, at your great age. But
I suffer too dreadfully; my soul is full of yearnings, and seems ready to
burst; and I shall die of shameful sloth, if I do not go."
They listened with breaking hearts. Their son's words did not surprise
them; they had heard them coming ever since their diamond wedding. And
they trembled, and felt that they could not refuse; for they knew that
they were guilty in having kept their last-born in the family nest after
surrendering to life all the others. Ah! how insatiable life was--it
would not so much as suffer that tardy avarice of theirs; it demanded
even the precious, discreetly hidden treasure from which, with jealous
egotism, they had dreamt of parting only when they might find themselves
upon the threshold of the grave.
Deep silence reigned; but at last Mathieu slowly answered: "I cannot keep
you back, my son; go whither life calls you. . . . If I knew, however,
that I should die to-night, I would ask you to wait till to-morrow."
In her turn Marianne gently said: "Why cannot we die at once? We should
then escape this last great pang, and you would only carry our memory
away with you."
Once again did the cemetery of Janville appear, the field of peace, where
dear ones already slept, and where they would soon join them. No sadness
tinged that thought, however; they hoped that they would lie down there
together on the same day, for they could not imagine life, one without
the other. And, besides, would they not forever live in their children;
forever be united, immortal, in their race?
"Dear father, darling mother," Benjamin repeated; "it is I who will be
dead to-morrow if I do not go. To wait for your death--good God! would
not that be to desire it? You must still live long years, and I wish to
live like you."
There came another pause, then Mathieu and Marianne replied together: "Go
then, my boy. You are right, one must live."
But on the day of farewell, what a wrench, what a final pang there was
when they had to tear themselves from that flesh of their flesh, all that
remained to them, in order to hand over to life the supreme gift it
demanded! The departure of Nicolas seemed to begin afresh; again came the
"never more" of the migratory child taking wing, given to the passing
wind for the sowing of unknown distant lands, far beyond the frontiers.
"Never more!" cried Mathieu in tears.
And Marianne repeated in a great sob which rose from the very depths of
her being: "Never more! Never more!"
There was now no longer any mere question of increasing a family, of
building up the country afresh, of re-peopling France for the struggles
of the future, the question was one of the expansion of humanity, of the
reclaiming of deserts, of the peopling of the entire earth. After one's
country came the earth; after one's family, one's nation, and then
mankind. And what an invading flight, what a sudden outlook upon the
world's immensity! All the freshness of the oceans, all the perfumes of
virgin continents, blended in a mighty gust like a breeze from the
offing. Scarcely fifteen hundred million souls are to-day scattered
through the few cultivated patches of the globe, and is that not indeed
paltry, when the globe, ploughed from end to end, might nourish ten times
that number? What narrowness of mind there is in seeking to limit mankind
to its present figure, in admitting simply the continuance of exchanges
among nations, and of capitals dying where they stand--as Babylon,
Nineveh, and Memphis died--while other queens of the earth arise,
inherit, and flourish amid fresh forms of civilization, and this without
population ever more increasing! Such a theory is deadly, for nothing
remains stationary: whatever ceases to increase decreases and disappears.
Life is the rising tide whose waves daily continue the work of creation,
and perfect the work of awaited happiness, which shall come when the
times are accomplished. The flux and reflux of nations are but periods of
the forward march: the great centuries of light, which dark ages at times
replace, simply mark the phases of that march. Another step forward is
ever taken, a little more of the earth is conquered, a little more life
is brought into play. The law seems to lie in a double phenomenon;
fruitfulness creating civilization, and civilization restraining
fruitfulness. And equilibrium will come from it all on the day when the
earth, being entirely inhabited, cleared, and utilized, shall at last
have accomplished its destiny. And the divine dream, the generous utopian
thought soars into the heavens; families blended into nations, nations
blended into mankind, one sole brotherly people making of the world one
sole city of peace and truth and justice! Ah! may eternal fruitfulness
ever expand, may the seed of humanity be carried over the frontiers,
peopling the untilled deserts afar, and increasing mankind through the
coming centuries until dawns the reign of sovereign life, mistress at
last both of time and of space!
And after the departure of Benjamin, whom Dominique took with him,
Mathieu and Marianne recovered the joyful serenity and peace born of the
work which they had so prodigally accomplished. Nothing more was theirs;
nothing save the happiness of having given all to life. The "Never more"
of separation became the "Still more" of life--life incessantly
increasing, expanding beyond the limitless horizon. Candid and smiling,
those all but centenarian heroes triumphed in the overflowing florescence
of their race. The milk had streamed even athwart the seas--from the old
land of France to the immensity of virgin Africa, the young and giant
France of to-morrow. After the foundation of Chantebled, on a disdained,
neglected spot of the national patrimony, another Chantebled was rising
and becoming a kingdom in the vast deserted tracts which life yet had to
fertilize. And this was the exodus, human expansion throughout the world,
mankind upon the march towards the Infinite.
England.--August 1898 - May 1899.