His Masterpiece, Émile Zola [essential reading txt] 📗

my task, should I be able to remain erect amid all the jeering around me if I hadn’t the consoling illusion that I shall some day be appreciated?”

Claude had listened with his dolorous expression, and he now made a gesture of indifference tinged with bitterness.

“Bah! what does it matter? Well, there’s nothing hereafter. We are even madder than the fools who kill themselves for a woman. When the Earth splits to pieces in space like a dry walnut, our works won’t add one atom to its dust.”

“That’s quite true,” summed up Sandoz, who was very pale. “What’s the use of trying to fill up the void of space? And to think that we know it, and that our pride still battles all the same!”

They left the restaurant, roamed about the streets, and foundered again in the depths of a café, where they philosophised. They had come by degrees to raking up the memories of their childhood, and this ended by filling their hearts with sadness. One o’clock in the morning struck when they decided to go home.

However, Sandoz talked of seeing Claude as far as the Rue Tourlaque. That August night was a superb one, the air was warm, the sky studded with stars. And as they went the round by way of the Quartier de l’Europe, they passed before the old Café Baudequin on the Boulevard des Batignolles. It had changed hands three times. It was no longer arranged inside in the same manner as formerly; there were now a couple of billiard tables on the right hand; and several strata of customers had followed each other thither, one covering the other, so that the old frequenters had disappeared like buried nations. However, curiosity, the emotion they had derived from all the past things they had been raking up together, induced them to cross the boulevard and to glance into the café through the open doorway. They wanted to see their table of yore, on the left hand, right at the back of the room.

“Oh, look!” said Sandoz, stupefied.

“Gagnière!” muttered Claude.

It was indeed Gagnière, seated all alone at that table at the end of the empty café. He must have come from Melun for one of the Sunday concerts to which he treated himself; and then, in the evening, while astray in Paris, an old habit of his legs had led him to the Café Baudequin. Not one of the comrades ever set foot there now, and he, who had beheld another age, obstinately remained there alone. He had not yet touched his glass of beer; he was looking at it, so absorbed in thought that he did not even stir when the waiters began piling the chairs on the tables, in order that everything might be ready for the morrow’s sweeping.

The two friends hurried off, upset by the sight of that dim figure, seized as it were with a childish fear of ghosts. They parted in the Rue Tourlaque.

“Ah! that poor devil Dubuche!” said Sandoz as he pressed Claude’s hand, “he spoilt our day for us.”

As soon as November had come round, and when all the old friends were back in Paris again, Sandoz thought of gathering them together at one of those Thursday dinners which had remained a habit with him. They were always his greatest delight. The sale of his books was increasing, and he was growing rich; the flat in the Rue de Londres was becoming quite luxurious compared with the little house at Batignolles; but he himself remained immutable. On this occasion, he was anxious, in his good nature, to procure real enjoyment for Claude by organising one of the dear evenings of their youth. So he saw to the invitations; Claude and Christine naturally must come; next Jory and his wife, the latter of whom it had been necessary to receive since her marriage, then Dubuche, who always came alone, with Fagerolles, Mahoudeau, and finally Gagnière. There would be ten of them⁠—all the men comrades of the old band, without a single outsider, in order that the good understanding and jollity might be complete.

Henriette, who was more mistrustful than her husband, hesitated when this list of guests was decided upon.

“Oh! Fagerolles? You believe in having Fagerolles with the others? They hardly like him⁠—nor Claude either; I fancied I noticed a coolness⁠—”

But he interrupted her, bent on not admitting it.

“What! a coolness? It’s really funny, but women can’t understand that fellows chaff each other. All that doesn’t prevent them from having their hearts in the right place.”

Henriette took especial care in preparing the menu for that Thursday dinner. She now had quite a little staff to overlook, a cook, a manservant, and so on; and if she no longer prepared any of the dishes herself, she still saw that very delicate fare was provided, out of affection for her husband, whose sole vice was gluttony. She went to market with the cook, and called in person on the tradespeople. She and her husband had a taste for gastronomical curiosities from the four corners of the world. On this occasion they decided to have some oxtail soup, grilled mullet, undercut of beef with mushrooms, raviolis in the Italian fashion, hazel-hens from Russia, and a salad of truffles, without counting caviar and kilkis as side-dishes, a glace praliné, and a little emerald-coloured Hungarian cheese, with fruit and pastry. As wine, some old Bordeaux claret in decanters, chambertin with the roast, and sparkling moselle at dessert, in lieu of champagne, which was voted commonplace.

At seven o’clock Sandoz and Henriette were waiting for their guests, he simply wearing a jacket, and she looking very elegant in a plain dress of black satin. People dined at their house in frock-coats, without any fuss. The drawing-room, the arrangements of which they were now completing, was becoming crowded with old furniture, old tapestry, knicknacks of all countries and all times⁠—a rising and now overflowing stream of things which had taken source at Batignolles with an old pot of Rouen