His Masterpiece, Émile Zola [essential reading txt] 📗

dates of their accessions; a famous musician too, who had never got further than that elementary pianoforte exercise, “The Little Boats”; a prodigy in watercolour painting, who scamped her trees because foliage was too difficult to imitate. Then she skipped, without any transition, to the fifteen months she had spent at the Convent of the Visitation after her mother’s death⁠—a large convent, outside the town, with magnificent gardens. There was no end to her stories about the good sisters, their jealousies, their foolish doings, their simplicity, that made one start. She was to have taken the veil, but she felt stifled the moment she entered a church. It had seemed to be all over with her, when the Superior, by whom she was treated with great affection, diverted her from the cloister by procuring her that situation at Madame Vanzade’s. She had not yet got over the surprise. How had Mother des Saints Anges been able to read her mind so clearly? For, in fact, since she had been living in Paris she had dropped into complete indifference about religion.

When all the reminiscences of Clermont were exhausted, Claude wanted to hear about her life at Madame Vanzade’s, and each week she gave him fresh particulars. The life led in the little house at Passy, silent and shut off from the outer world, was a very regular one, with no more noise about it than the faint tic-tac of an old-fashioned timepiece. Two antiquated domestics, a cook and a manservant, who had been with the family for forty years, alone glided in their slippers about the deserted rooms, like a couple of ghosts. Now and then, at very long intervals, there came a visitor: some octogenarian general, so desiccated, so slight of build that he scarcely pressed on the carpet. The house was also the home of shadows; the sun filtered with the mere gleam of a night light through the Venetian blinds. Since madame had become paralysed in the knees and stone blind, so that she no longer left her room, she had had no other recreation than that of listening to the reading of religious books. Ah! those endless readings, how they weighed upon the girl at times! If she had only known a trade, how gladly she would have cut out dresses, concocted bonnets, or goffered the petals of artificial flowers. And to think that she was capable of nothing, when she had been taught everything, and that there was only enough stuff in her to make a salaried drudge, a semi-domestic! She suffered horribly, too, in that stiff, lonely dwelling which smelt of the tomb. She was seized once more with the vertigo of her childhood, as when she had striven to compel herself to work, in order to please her mother; her blood rebelled; she would have liked to shout and jump about, in her desire for life. But madame treated her so gently, sending her away from her room, and ordering her to take long walks, that she felt full of remorse when, on her return to the Quai de Bourbon, she was obliged to tell a falsehood; to talk of the Bois de Boulogne or invent some ceremony at church where she now never set foot. Madame seemed to take to her more and more every day; there were constant presents, now a silk dress, now a tiny gold watch, even some underlinen. She herself was very fond of Madame Vanzade; she had wept one day when the latter had called her daughter; she had sworn never to leave her, such was her heartfelt pity at seeing her so old and helpless.

“Well,” said Claude one morning, “you’ll be rewarded; she’ll leave you her money.”

Christine looked astonished. “Do you think so? It is said that she is worth three millions of francs. No, no, I have never dreamt of such a thing, and I won’t. What would become of me?”

Claude had averted his head, and hastily replied, “Well, you’d become rich, that’s all. But no doubt she’ll first of all marry you off⁠—”

On hearing this, Christine could hold out no longer, but burst into laughter. “To one of her old friends, eh? perhaps the general who has a silver chin. What a good joke!”

So far they had gone no further than chumming like old friends. He was almost as new to life as she, having had nothing but chance adventures, and living in an ideal world of his own, fanciful amid romantic amours. To see each other in secret like this, from pure friendship, without anything more tender passing between them than a cordial shake of the hand at her arrival, and another one when she left, seemed to them quite natural. Still for her part she scented that he was shy, and at times she looked at him fixedly, with the wondering perturbation of unconscious passion. But as yet nothing ardent or agitating spoilt the pleasure they felt in being together. Their hands remained cool; they spoke cheerfully on all subjects; they sometimes argued like friends, who feel sure they will not fall out. Only, this friendship grew so keen that they could no longer live without seeing one another.

The moment Christine came, Claude took the key from outside the door. She herself insisted upon this, lest somebody might disturb them. After a few visits she had taken absolute possession of the studio. She seemed to be at home there. She was tormented by a desire to make the place a little more tidy, for such disorder worried her and made her uncomfortable. But it was not an easy matter. The painter had strictly forbidden Madame Joseph to sweep up things, lest the dust should get on the fresh paint. So, on the first occasions when his companion attempted to clean up a bit, he watched her with anxious entreating eyes. What was the good of changing the place of things? Didn’t it suffice to have them at hand? However, she exhibited such gay