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

would allow none to assist him. Then, at other times he would go off, and return tired out by some long solitary ramble. He remained very gentle at home, and strove to smile there. But whenever anybody spoke to him he started as if suddenly called back from dreamland.

Pierre imagined his brother had relied too much upon his powers of renunciation, and found the loss of Marie unbearable. Was it not some thought of her that haunted him now that the date fixed for the marriage drew nearer and nearer? One evening, therefore, Pierre ventured to speak out, again offering to leave the house and disappear.

But at the first words he uttered Guillaume stopped him, and affectionately replied: “Marie? Oh! I love her, I love her too well to regret what I have done. No, no! you only bring me happiness, I derive all my strength and courage from you now that I know you are both happy.

… And I assure you that you are mistaken, there is nothing at all the matter with me; my work absorbs me, perhaps, but that is all.”

That same evening he managed to cast his gloom aside, and displayed delightful gaiety. During dinner he inquired if the upholsterer would soon call to arrange the two little rooms which Marie was to occupy with her husband over the workroom. The young woman, who since her marriage with Pierre had been decided had remained waiting with smiling patience, thereupon told Guillaume what it was she desired—first some hangings of red cotton stuff, then some polished pine furniture which would enable her to imagine she was in the country, and finally a carpet on the floor, because a carpet seemed to her the height of luxury. She laughed as she spoke, and Guillaume laughed with her in a gay and fatherly way. His good spirits brought much relief to Pierre, who concluded that he must have been mistaken in his surmises.

On the very morrow, however, Guillaume relapsed into a dreamy state. And so disquietude again came upon Pierre, particularly when he noticed that Mere-Grand also seemed to be unusually grave and silent. Not daring to address her, he tried to extract some information from his nephews, but neither Thomas nor Francois nor Antoine knew anything. Each of them quietly devoted his time to his work, respecting and worshipping his father, but never questioning him about his plans or enterprises.

Whatever he might choose to do could only be right and good; and they, his sons, were ready to do the same and help him at the very first call, without pausing to inquire into his purpose. It was plain, however, that he kept them apart from anything at all perilous, that he retained all responsibility for himself, and that Mere-Grand alone was his confidante, the one whom he consulted and to whom he perhaps listened.

Pierre therefore renounced his hope of learning anything from the sons, and directed his attention to the old lady, whose rigid gravity worried him the more as she and Guillaume frequently had private chats in the room she occupied upstairs. They shut themselves up there all alone, and remained together for hours without the faintest sound coming from the seemingly lifeless chamber.

One day, however, Pierre caught sight of Guillaume as he came out of it, carrying a little valise which appeared to be very heavy. And Pierre thereupon remembered both his brother’s powder, one pound weight of which would have sufficed to destroy a cathedral, and the destructive engine which he had purposed bestowing upon France in order that she might be victorious over all other nations, and become the one great initiatory and liberative power. Pierre remembered too that the only person besides himself who knew his brother’s secret was Mere-Grand, who, at the time when Guillaume was fearing some perquisition on the part of the police, had long slept upon the cartridges of the terrible explosive. But now why was Guillaume removing all the powder which he had been preparing for some time past? As this question occurred to Pierre, a sudden suspicion, a vague dread, came upon him, and gave him strength to ask his brother: “Have you reason to fear anything, since you won’t keep things here? If they embarrass you, they can all be deposited at my house, nobody will make a search there.”

Guillaume, whom these words astonished, gazed at Pierre fixedly, and then replied: “Yes, I have learnt that the arrests and perquisitions have begun afresh since that poor devil was guillotined; for they are in terror at the thought that some despairing fellow may avenge him.

Moreover, it is hardly prudent to keep destructive agents of such great power here. I prefer to deposit them in a safe place. But not at Neuilly—oh! no indeed! they are not a present for you, brother.”

Guillaume spoke with outward calmness; and if he had started with surprise at the first moment, it had been scarcely perceptible.

“So everything is ready?” Pierre resumed. “You will soon be handing your engine of destruction over to the Minister of War, I presume?”

A gleam of hesitation appeared in the depths of Guillaume’s eyes, and he was for a moment about to tell a falsehood. However, he ended by replying “No, I have renounced that intention. I have another idea.”

He spoke these last words with so much energy and decision that Pierre did not dare to question him further, to ask him, for instance, what that other idea might be. From that moment, however, he quivered with anxious expectancy. From hour to hour Mere-Grand’s lofty silence and Guillaume’s rapt, energetic face seemed to tell him that some huge and terrifying scheme had come into being, and was growing and threatening the whole of Paris.

One afternoon, just as Thomas was about to repair to the Grandidier works, some one came to Guillaume’s with the news that old Toussaint, the workman, had been stricken with a fresh attack of paralysis. Thomas thereupon decided that he would call upon the poor fellow on his way, for he held him in esteem and wished to ascertain if he could render him any help. Pierre expressed a desire to accompany his nephew, and they started off together about four o’clock.

On entering the one room which the Toussaints occupied, the room where they ate and slept, the visitors found the mechanician seated on a low chair near the table. He looked half dead, as if struck by lightning. It was a case of hemiplegia, which had paralysed the whole of his right side, his right leg and right arm, and had also spread to his face in such wise that he could no longer speak. The only sound he could raise was an incomprehensible guttural grunt. His mouth was drawn to the right, and his once round, good-natured-looking face, with tanned skin and bright eyes, had been twisted into a frightful mask of anguish. At fifty years of age, the unhappy man was utterly done for. His unkempt beard was as white as that of an octogenarian, and his knotty limbs, preyed upon by toil, were henceforth dead. Only his eyes remained alive, and they travelled around the room, going from one to another. By his side, eager to do what she could for him, was his wife, who remained stout even when she had little to eat, and still showed herself active and clear-headed, however great her misfortunes.

“It’s a friendly visit, Toussaint,” said she. “It’s Monsieur Thomas who has come to see you with Monsieur l’Abbe.” Then quietly correcting herself she added: “With Monsieur Pierre, his uncle. You see that you are not yet forsaken.”

Toussaint wished to speak, but his fruitless efforts only brought two big tears to his eyes. Then he gazed at his visitors with an expression of indescribable woe, his jaws trembling convulsively.

“Don’t put yourself out,” repeated his wife. “The doctor told you that it would do you no good.”

At the moment of entering the room, Pierre had already noticed two persons who had risen from their chairs and drawn somewhat on one side.

And now to his great surprise he recognised that they were Madame Theodore and Celine, who were both decently clad, and looked as if they led a life of comfort. On hearing of Toussaint’s misfortune they had come to see him, like good-hearted creatures, who, on their own side, had experienced the most cruel suffering. Pierre, on noticing that they now seemed to be beyond dire want, remembered what he had heard of the wonderful sympathy lavished on the child after her father’s execution, the many presents and donations offered her, and the generous proposals that had been made to adopt her. These last had ended in her being adopted by a former friend of Salvat, who had sent her to school again, pending the time when she might be apprenticed to some trade, while, on the other hand, Madame Theodore had been placed as a nurse in a convalescent home. In such wise both had been saved.

When Pierre drew near to little Celine in order to kiss her, Madame Theodore told her to thank Monsieur l’Abbe—for so she still respectfully called him—for all that he had previously done for her. “It was you who brought us happiness, Monsieur l’Abbe,” said she. “And that’s a thing one can never forget. I’m always telling Celine to remember you in her prayers.”

“And so, my child, you are now going to school again,” said Pierre.

“Oh yes, Monsieur l’Abbe, and I’m well pleased at it. Besides, we no longer lack anything.” Then, however, sudden emotion came over the girl, and she stammered with a sob: “Ah! if poor papa could only see us!”

Madame Theodore, meanwhile, had begun to take leave of Madame Toussaint.

“Well, good by, we must go,” said she. “What has happened to you is very sad, and we wanted to tell you how much it grieved us. The worry is that when misfortune falls on one, courage isn’t enough to set things right. .

. . Celine, come and kiss your uncle… . My poor brother, I hope you’ll get back the use of your legs as soon as possible.”

They kissed the paralysed man on the cheeks, and then went off. Toussaint had looked at them with his keen and still intelligent eyes, as if he longed to participate in the life and activity into which they were returning. And a jealous thought came to his wife, who usually was so placid and good-natured. “Ah! my poor old man!” said she, after propping him up with a pillow, “those two are luckier than we are. Everything succeeds with them since that madman, Salvat, had his head cut off.

They’re provided for. They’ve plenty of bread on the shelf.”

Then, turning towards Pierre and Thomas, she continued: “We others are done for, you know, we’re down in the mud, with no hope of getting out of it. But what would you have? My poor husband hasn’t been guillotined, he’s done nothing but work his whole life long; and now, you see, that’s the end of him, he’s like some old animal, no longer good for anything.”

Having made her visitors sit down she next answered their compassionate questions. The doctor had called twice already, and had promised to restore the unhappy man’s power of speech, and perhaps enable him to crawl round the room with the help of a stick. But as for ever being able to resume real work that must not be expected. And so what was the use of living on? Toussaint’s eyes plainly declared that he would much rather die at once. When a workman can no longer work and no longer provide for his wife he is ripe for the grave.

“Savings indeed!” Madame Toussaint resumed. “There are folks who ask if we have any savings…