His Masterpiece, Émile Zola [essential reading txt] 📗

“Certainly, madame, two, if you please. I am very fond of bouillabaisse. Besides, yours is delicious, a marvel!”

In fact, they all went into raptures over it, especially Jory and Mahoudeau, who declared they had never tasted anything better at Marseilles; so much so, that the young wife, delighted and still flushed with the heat of the kitchen, her ladle in her hand, had all she could do to refill the plates held out to her; and, indeed, she rose up and ran in person to the kitchen to fetch the remains of the soup, for the servant-girl was losing her wits.

“Come, eat something,” said Sandoz to her. “We’ll wait well enough till you have done.”

But she was obstinate and remained standing.

“Never mind me. You had better pass the bread⁠—yes, there, behind you on the sideboard. Jory prefers crumb, which he can soak in the soup.”

Sandoz rose in his turn and assisted his wife, while the others chaffed Jory on his love for sops. And Claude, moved by the pleasant cordiality of his hosts, and awaking, as it were, from a long sleep, looked at them all, asking himself whether he had only left them on the previous night, or whether four years had really elapsed since he had dined with them one Thursday. They were different, however; he felt them to be changed: Mahoudeau soured by misery, Jory wrapt up in his own pleasures, Gagnière more distant, with his thoughts elsewhere. And it especially seemed to him that Fagerolles was chilly, in spite of his exaggerated cordiality of manner. No doubt their features had aged somewhat amid the wear and tear of life; but it was not only that which he noticed, it seemed to him also as if there was a void between them; he beheld them isolated and estranged from each other, although they were seated elbow to elbow in close array round the table. Then the surroundings were different; nowadays, a woman brought her charm to bear on them, and calmed them by her presence. Then why did he, face to face with the irrevocable current of things, which die and are renewed, experience that sensation of beginning something over again⁠—why was it that he could have sworn that he had been seated at that same place only last Thursday? At last he thought he understood. It was Sandoz who had not changed, who remained as obstinate as regards his habits of friendship, as regards his habits of work, as radiant at being able to receive his friends at the board of his new home as he had formerly been, when sharing his frugal bachelor fare with them. A dream of eternal friendship made him changeless. Thursdays similar one to another followed and followed on until the furthest stages of their lives. All of them were eternally together, all started at the selfsame hour, and participated in the same triumph!

Sandoz must have guessed the thought that kept Claude mute, for he said to him across the table, with his frank, youthful smile:

“Well, old man, here you are again! Ah, confound it! we missed you sorely. But, you see, nothing is changed; we are all the same⁠—aren’t we, all of you?”

They answered by nodding their heads⁠—no doubt, no doubt!

“With this difference,” he went on, beaming⁠—“with this difference, that the cookery is somewhat better than in the Rue d’Enfer! What a lot of messes I did make you swallow!”

After the bouillabaisse there came a civet of hare; and a roast fowl and salad terminated the dinner. But they sat for a long time at table, and the dessert proved a protracted affair, although the conversation lacked the fever and violence of yore. Everyone spoke of himself and ended by relapsing into silence on perceiving that the others did not listen to him. With the cheese, however, when they had tasted some burgundy, a sharp little growth, of which the young couple had ordered a cask out of the profits of Sandoz’s first novel, their voices rose to a higher key, and they all grew animated.

“So you have made an arrangement with Naudet, eh?” asked Mahoudeau, whose bony cheeks seemed to have grown yet more hollow. “Is it true that he guarantees you fifty thousand francs for the first year?”

Fagerolles replied, with affected carelessness, “Yes, fifty thousand francs. But nothing is settled; I’m thinking it over. It is hard to engage oneself like that. I am not going to do anything precipitately.”

“The deuce!” muttered the sculptor; “you are hard to please. For twenty francs a day I’d sign whatever you like.”

They all now listened to Fagerolles, who posed as being wearied by his budding success. He still had the same good-looking, disturbing hussy-like face, but the fashion in which he wore his hair and the cut of his beard lent him an appearance of gravity. Although he still came at long intervals to Sandoz’s, he was separating from the band; he showed himself on the boulevards, frequented the cafés and newspaper offices⁠—all the places where a man can advertise himself and make useful acquaintances. These were tactics of his own, a determination to carve his own victory apart from the others; the smart idea that if he wished to triumph he ought to have nothing more in common with those revolutionists, neither dealer, nor connections, nor habits. It was even said that he had interested the female element of two or three drawing-rooms in his success, not in Jory’s style, but like a vicious fellow who rises superior to his passions, and is content to adulate superannuated baronesses.

Just then Jory, in view of lending importance to himself, called Fagerolles’ attention to a recently published article; he pretended that he had made Fagerolles just as he pretended that he had made Claude. “I say, have you read that article of Vernier’s about yourself? There’s another fellow who repeats my ideas!”

“Ah, he does get articles, and no mistake!” sighed Mahoudeau.

Fagerolles made a careless gesture, but he smiled with secret contempt