Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

to study it. Moreover,

during the first days of my convalescence he would not allow me to

ask a single question, and later on he never put one to me. For

eight days longer I remained in bed, feeling very weak and not even

trying to remember, for memory was a weariness and a pain. I felt

half ashamed and half afraid. As soon as I could leave the house I

would go and find out whatever I wanted to know. Possibly in the

delirium of fever a name had escaped me; however, the doctor never

alluded to anything I may have said. His charity was not only

generous; it was discreet.

 

The summer had come at last, and one warm June morning I was

permitted to take a short walk. The sun was shining with that

joyous brightness which imparts renewed youth to the streets of old

Paris. I went along slowly, questioning the passers-by at every

crossing I came to and asking the way to Rue Dauphine. When I

reached the street I had some difficulty in recognizing the

lodginghouse where we had alighted on our arrival in the capital. A

childish terror made me hesitate. If I appeared suddenly before

Marguerite the shock might kill her. It might be wiser to begin by

revealing myself to our neighbor Mme Gabin; still I shrank from

taking a third party into confidence. I seemed unable to arrive at

a resolution, and yet in my innermost heart I felt a great void,

like that left by some sacrifice long since consummated.

 

The building looked quite yellow in the sunshine. I had just

recognized it by a shabby eating house on the ground floor, where we

had ordered our meals, having them sent up to us. Then I raised my

eyes to the last window of the third floor on the left-hand side,

and as I looked at it a young woman with tumbled hair, wearing a

loose dressing gown, appeared and leaned her elbows on the sill. A

young man followed and printed a kiss upon her neck. It was not

Marguerite. Still I felt no surprise. It seemed to me that I had

dreamed all this with other things, too, which I was to learn

presently.

 

For a moment I remained in the street, uncertain whether I had

better go upstairs and question the lovers, who were still laughing

in the sunshine. However, I decided to enter the little restaurant

below. When I started on my walk the old doctor had placed a five-franc piece in my hand. No doubt I was changed beyond recognition,

for my beard had grown during the brain fever, and my face was

wrinkled and haggard. As I took a seat at a small table I saw Mme

Gabin come in carrying a cup; she wished to buy a penny-worth of

coffee. Standing in front of the counter, she began to gossip with

the landlady of the establishment.

 

“Well,” asked the latter, “so the poor little woman of the third

floor has made up her mind at last, eh?”

 

“How could she help herself?” answered Mme Gabin. “It was the very

best thing for her to do. Monsieur Simoneau showed her so much

kindness. You see, he had finished his business in Paris to his

satisfaction, for he has inherited a pot of money. Well, he offered

to take her away with him to his own part of the country and place

her with an aunt of his, who wants a housekeeper and companion.

 

The landlady laughed archly. I buried my face in a newspaper which

I picked off the table. My lips were white and my hands shook.

 

“It will end in a marriage, of course,” resumed Mme Gabin. “The

little widow mourned for her husband very properly, and the young

man was extremely well behaved. Well, they left last night—and,

after all, they were free to please themselves.”

 

Just then the side door of the restaurant, communicating with the

passage of the house, opened, and Dede appeared.

 

“Mother, ain’t you coming?” she cried. “I’m waiting, you know; do

be quick.”

 

“Presently,” said the mother testily. “Don’t bother.”

 

The girl stood listening to the two women with the precocious

shrewdness of a child born and reared amid the streets of Paris.

 

“When all is said and done,” explained Mme Gabin, “the dear departed

did not come up to Monsieur Simoneau. I didn’t fancy him overmuch;

he was a puny sort of a man, a poor, fretful fellow, and he hadn’t a

penny to bless himself with. No, candidly, he wasn’t the kind of

husband for a young and healthy wife, whereas Monsieur Simoneau is

rich, you know, and as strong as a Turk.”

 

“Oh yes!” interrupted Dede. “I saw him once when he was washing—

his door was open. His arms are so hairy!”

 

“Get along with you,” screamed the old woman, shoving the girl out

of the restaurant. “You are always poking your nose where it has no

business to be.”

 

Then she concluded with these words: “Look here, to my mind the

other one did quite right to take himself off. It was fine luck for

the little woman!”

 

When I found myself in the street again I walked along slowly with

trembling limbs. And yet I was not suffering much; I think I smiled

once at my shadow in the sun. It was quite true. I WAS very puny.

It had been a queer notion of mine to marry Marguerite. I recalled

her weariness at Guerande, her impatience, her dull, monotonous

life. The dear creature had been very good to me, but I had never

been a real lover; she had mourned for me as a sister for her

brother, not otherwise. Why should I again disturb her life? A

dead man is not jealous.

 

When I lifted my eyelids I saw the garden of the Luxembourg before

me. I entered it and took a seat in the sun, dreaming with a sense

of infinite restfulness. The thought of Marguerite stirred me

softly. I pictured her in the provinces, beloved, petted and very

happy. She had grown handsomer, and she was the mother of three

boys and two girls. It was all right. I had behaved like an honest

man in dying, and I would not commit the cruel folly of coming to

life again.

 

Since then I have traveled a good deal. I have been a little

everywhere. I am an ordinary man who has toiled and eaten like

anybody else. Death no longer frightens me, but it does not seem to

care for me now that I have no motive in living, and I sometimes

fear that I have been forgotten upon earth.

 

End of this Project Gutenberg etext of Works by Emile Zola

 

End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of several works by Emile Zola

Nana, Miller’s Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille