The Three Cities Trilogy: Paris, Émile Zola [best english novels to read txt] 📗

a chaste young man into a real angel. And Camille, who seemed very happy and very excited, from time to time darted a hot glance at her mother, whose anxiety and sadness increased as she found the other more and more aggressive, and apparently resolved upon open and merciless warfare.

At last, just as the dessert was coming to an end, the Baroness heard her daughter exclaim in a piercing, defiant voice: “Oh! don’t talk to me of the old ladies who still seem to be playing with dolls, and paint themselves, and dress as if they were about to be confirmed! All such ogresses ought to retire from the scene! I hold them in horror!”

At this, Eve nervously rose from her seat, and exclaimed apologetically: “You must forgive me for hurrying you like this. But I’m afraid that we shan’t have time to drink our coffee in peace.”

The coffee was served in the little blue and silver sitting-room, where bloomed some lovely yellow roses, testifying to the Baroness’s keen passion for flowers, which made the house an abode of perpetual spring.

Duvillard and Fonsegue, however, carrying their cups of steaming coffee with them, at once went into the former’s private room to smoke a cigar there and chat in freedom. As the door remained wide open, one could hear their gruff voices more or less distinctly. Meantime, General de Bozonnet, delighted to find in Madame Fonsegue a serious, submissive person, who listened without interrupting, began to tell her a very long story of an officer’s wife who had followed her husband through every battle of the war of 1870. Then Hyacinthe, who took no coffee—

contemptuously declaring it to be a beverage only fit for doorkeepers—

managed to rid himself of Rosemonde, who was sipping some kummel, in order to come and whisper to his sister: “I say, it was very stupid of you to taunt mamma in the way you did just now. I don’t care a rap about it myself. But it ends by being noticed, and, I warn you candidly, it shows ill breeding.”

Camille gazed at him fixedly with her black eyes. “Pray don’t you

meddle with my affairs,” said she.

At this he felt frightened, scented a storm, and decided to take Rosemonde into the adjoining red drawing-room in order to show her a picture which his father had just purchased. And the General, on being called by him, likewise conducted Madame Fonsegue thither.

The mother and daughter then suddenly found themselves alone and face to face. Eve was leaning on a pier-table, as if overcome; and indeed, the least sorrow bore her down, so weak at heart she was, ever ready to weep in her naive and perfect egotism. Why was it that her daughter thus hated her, and did her utmost to disturb that last happy spell of love in which her heart lingered? She looked at Camille, grieved rather than irritated; and the unfortunate idea came to her of making a remark about her dress at the very moment when the girl was on the point of following the others into the larger drawing-room.

“It’s quite wrong of you, my dear,” said she, “to persist in dressing like an old woman. It doesn’t improve you a bit.”

As Eve spoke, her soft eyes, those of a courted and worshipped handsome woman, clearly expressed the compassion she felt for that ugly, deformed girl, whom she had never been able to regard as a daughter. Was it possible that she, with her sovereign beauty, that beauty which she herself had ever adored and nursed, making it her one care, her one religion—was it possible that she had given birth to such a graceless creature, with a dark, goatish profile, one shoulder higher than the other, and a pair of endless arms such as hunchbacks often have? All her grief and all her shame at having had such a child became apparent in the quivering of her voice.

Camille, however, had stopped short, as if struck in the face with a whip. Then she came back to her mother and the horrible explanation began with these simple words spoken in an undertone: “You consider that I dress badly? Well, you ought to have paid some attention to me, have seen that my gowns suited your taste, and have taught me your secret of looking beautiful!”

Eve, with her dislike of all painful feeling, all quarrelling and bitter words, was already regretting her attack. So she sought to make a retreat, particularly as time was flying and they would soon be expected downstairs: “Come, be quiet, and don’t show your bad temper when all those people can hear us. I have loved you—”

But with a quiet yet terrible laugh Camille interrupted her. “You’ve loved me! Oh! my poor mamma, what a comical thing to say! Have you ever loved anybody? You want others to love you, but that’s another matter. As for your child, any child, do you even know how it ought to be loved? You have always neglected me, thrust me on one side, deeming me so ugly, so unworthy of you! And besides, you have not had days and nights enough to love yourself! Oh! don’t deny it, my poor mamma; but even now you’re looking at me as if I were some loathsome monster that’s in your way.”

From that moment the abominable scene was bound to continue to the end.

With their teeth set, their faces close together, the two women went on speaking in feverish whispers.

“Be quiet, Camille, I tell you! I will not allow such language!”

“But I won’t be quiet when you do all you can to wound me. If it’s wrong of me to dress like an old woman, perhaps another is rather ridiculous in dressing like a girl, like a bride.”

“Like a bride? I don’t understand you.”

“Oh! yes, you do. However, I would have you know that everybody doesn’t find me so ugly as you try to make them believe.”

“If you look amiss, it is because you don’t dress properly; that is all I said.”

“I dress as I please, and no doubt I do so well enough, since I’m loved as I am.”

“What, really! Does someone love you? Well, let him inform us of it and marry you.”

“Yes—certainly, certainly! It will be a good riddance, won’t it? And you’ll have the pleasure of seeing me as a bride!”

Their voices were rising in spite of their efforts to restrain them.

However, Camille paused and drew breath before hissing out the words: “Gerard is coming here to ask for my hand in a day or two.”

Eve, livid, with wildly staring eyes, did not seem to understand.

“Gerard? why do you tell me that?”

“Why, because it’s Gerard who loves me and who is going to marry me! You drive me to extremities; you’re for ever repeating that I’m ugly; you treat me like a monster whom nobody will ever care for. So I’m forced to defend myself and tell you the truth in order to prove to you that everybody is not of your opinion.”

Silence fell; the frightful thing which had risen between them seemed to have arrested the quarrel. But there was neither mother nor daughter left there. They were simply two suffering, defiant rivals. Eve in her turn drew a long breath and glanced anxiously towards the adjoining room to ascertain if anyone were coming in or listening to them. And then in a tone of resolution she made answer:

“You cannot marry Gerard.”

“Pray, why not?”

“Because I won’t have it; because it’s impossible.”

“That isn’t a reason; give me a reason.”

“The reason is that the marriage is impossible that is all.”

“No, no, I’ll tell you the reason since you force me to it. The reason is that Gerard is your lover! But what does that matter, since I know it and am willing to take him all the same?”

And to this retort Camille’s flaming eyes added the words: “And it is particularly on that account that I want him.” All the long torture born of her infirmities, all her rage at having always seen her mother beautiful, courted and adored, was now stirring her and seeking vengeance in cruel triumph. At last then she was snatching from her rival the lover of whom she had so long been jealous!

“You wretched girl!” stammered Eve, wounded in the heart and almost sinking to the floor. “You don’t know what you say or what you make me suffer.”

However, she again had to pause, draw herself erect and smile; for Rosemonde hastened in from the adjoining room with the news that she was wanted downstairs. The doors were about to be opened, and it was necessary she should be at her stall. Yes, Eve answered, she would be down in another moment. Still, even as she spoke she leant more heavily on the pier-table behind her in order that she might not fall.

Hyacinthe had drawn near to his sister: “You know,” said he, “it’s simply idiotic to quarrel like that. You would do much better to come downstairs.”

But Camille harshly dismissed him: “Just you go off, and take the others with you. It’s quite as well that they shouldn’t be about our ears.”

Hyacinthe glanced at his mother, like one who knew the truth and considered the whole affair ridiculous. And then, vexed at seeing her so deficient in energy in dealing with that little pest, his sister, he shrugged his shoulders, and leaving them to their folly, conducted the others away. One could hear Rosemonde laughing as she went off below, while the General began to tell Madame Fonsegue another story as they descended the stairs together. However, at the moment when the mother and daughter at last fancied themselves alone once more, other voices reached their ears, those of Duvillard and Fonsegue, who were still near at hand.

The Baron from his room might well overhear the dispute.

Eve felt that she ought to have gone off. But she had lacked the strength to do so; it had been a sheer impossibility for her after those words which had smote her like a buffet amidst her distress at the thought of losing her lover.

“Gerard cannot marry you,” she said; “he does not love you.”

“He does.”

“You fancy it because he has good-naturedly shown some kindness to you, on seeing others pay you such little attention. But he does not love you.”

“He does. He loves me first because I’m not such a fool as many others are, and particularly because I’m young.”

This was a fresh wound for the Baroness; one inflicted with mocking cruelty in which rang out all the daughter’s triumphant delight at seeing her mother’s beauty at last ripening and waning. “Ah! my poor mamma, you no longer know what it is to be young. If I’m not beautiful, at all events I’m young; my eyes are clear and my lips are fresh. And my hair’s so long too, and I’ve so much of it that it would suffice to gown me if I chose. You see, one’s never ugly when one’s young. Whereas, my poor mamma, everything is ended when one gets old. It’s all very well for a woman to have been beautiful, and to strive to keep so, but in reality there’s only ruin left, and shame and disgust.”

She spoke these words in such a sharp, ferocious voice that each of them entered her mother’s heart like a knife. Tears rose to the eyes of the wretched woman, again stricken in her bleeding wound. Ah! it was true, she remained without weapons against youth. And all her anguish came from the consciousness that she was growing old, from the feeling that love was departing from her now, that like a fruit she