His Masterpiece, Émile Zola [essential reading txt] 📗

country police, while, still without hurrying, the lovers went off triumphantly in their glory.

Claude, however, was wondering and searching his memory. Where had he previously seen those heads, so typical of bourgeois degeneracy, those flattened, crabbed faces reeking of millions earned at the expense of the poor? It was assuredly in some important circumstance of his life. And all at once he remembered; they were the Margaillans, the man was that building contractor whom Dubuche had promenaded through the Salon of the Rejected, and who had laughed in front of his picture with the roaring laugh of a fool. A couple of hundred steps further on, as he and Christine emerged from the lane and found themselves in front of a large estate, where a big white building stood, girt with fine trees, they learnt from an old peasant woman that La Richaudière, as it was called, had belonged to the Margaillans for three years past. They had paid fifteen hundred thousand francs for it, and had just spent more than a million in improvements.

“That part of the country won’t see much of us in future,” said Claude, as they returned to Bennecourt. “Those monsters spoil the landscape.”

Towards the end of the summer, an important event changed the current of their lives. Christine was enceinte. At first, both she and Claude felt amazed and worried. Now for the first time they seemed to dread some terrible complications in their life. Later on, however, they gradually grew accustomed to the thought of what lay before them and made all necessary preparations. But the winter proved a terribly inclement one, and Christine was compelled to remain indoors, whilst Claude went walking all alone over the frost-bound, clanking roads. And he, finding himself in solitude during these walks, after months of constant companionship, wondered at the way his life had turned, against his own will, as it were. He had never wished for home life even with her; had he been consulted, he would have expressed his horror of it; it had come about, however, and could not be undone, for⁠—without mentioning the child⁠—he was one of those who lack the courage to break off. This fate had evidently been in store for him, he felt; he had been destined to succumb to the first woman who did not feel ashamed of him. The hard ground resounded beneath his wooden-soled shoes, and the blast froze the current of his reverie, which lingered on vague thoughts, on his luck of having, at any rate, met with a good and honest girl, on how cruelly he would have suffered had it been otherwise. And then his love came back to him; he hurried home to take Christine in his trembling arms as if he had been in danger of losing her.

The child, a boy, was born about the middle of February, and at once began to revolutionise the home, for Christine, who had shown herself such an active housewife, proved to be a very awkward nurse. She failed to become motherly, despite her kind heart and her distress at the sight of the slightest pimple. She soon grew weary, gave in, and called for Mélie, who only made matters worse by her gaping stupidity. The father had to come to the rescue, and proved still more awkward than the two women. The discomfort which needlework had caused Christine of old, her want of aptitude as regards the usual occupations of her sex, revived amid the cares that the baby required. The child was ill-kept, and grew up anyhow in the garden, or in the large rooms left untidy in sheer despair, amidst broken toys, uncleanliness and destruction. And when matters became too bad altogether, Christine could only throw herself upon the neck of the man she loved. She was preeminently an amorosa and would have sacrificed her son for his father twenty times over.

It was at this period, however, that Claude resumed work a little. The winter was drawing to a close; he did not know how to spend the bright sunny mornings, since Christine could no longer go out before midday on account of Jacques, whom they had named thus after his maternal grandfather, though they neglected to have him christened. Claude worked in the garden, at first, in a random way: made a rough sketch of the lines of apricot trees, roughed out the giant rosebushes, composed some bits of “still life” out of four apples, a bottle, and a stoneware jar, disposed on a table-napkin. This was only to pass his time. But afterwards he warmed to his work; the idea of painting a figure in the full sunlight ended by haunting him; and from that moment his wife became his victim, she herself agreeable enough, offering herself, feeling happy at affording him pleasure, without as yet understanding what a terrible rival she was giving herself in art. He painted her a score of times, dressed in white, in red, amidst the verdure, standing, walking, or reclining on the grass, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, or bareheaded, under a parasol, the cherry-tinted silk of which steeped her features in a pinky glow. He never felt wholly satisfied; he scratched out the canvases after two or three sittings, and at once began them afresh, obstinately sticking to the same subject. Only a few studies, incomplete, but charmingly indicated in a vigorous style, were saved from the palette-knife, and hung against the walls of the dining-room.

And after Christine it became Jacques’ turn to pose. They stripped him to the skin, like a little St. John the Baptist, on warm days, and stretched him on a blanket, where he was told not to stir. But devil a bit could they make him keep still. Getting frisky, in the sunlight, he crowed and kicked with his tiny pink feet in the air, rolling about and turning somersaults. The father, after laughing, became angry, and swore at the tiresome mite, who would not keep quiet for