The Fortune of the Rougons Part 26

Felicite who, when gazing on the previous evening at the ruins of the yellow drawing-room, had thought of the plains of Austerlitz, now recalled the accursed field of Waterloo as she observed how mournful and deserted the place was. Then, as her husband said nothing, she mechanically went to the window--that window where she had inhaled with delight the incense of the entire town. She perceived numerous groups below on the square, but she closed the blinds upon seeing some heads turn towards their house, for she feared that she might be hooted. She felt quite sure that those people were speaking about them.

Indeed, voices rose through the twilight. A lawyer was clamouring in the tone of a triumphant pleader. "That's just what I said; the insurgents left of their own accord, and they won't ask the permission of the forty-one to come back. The forty-one indeed! a fine farce! Why, I believe there were at least two hundred."

"No, indeed," said a burly trader, an oil-dealer and a great politician, "there were probably not even ten. There was no fighting or else we should have seen some blood in the morning. I went to the town-hall myself to look; the courtyard was as clean as my hand."

Then a workman, who stepped timidly up to the group, added: "There was no need of any violence to seize the building; the door wasn't even shut."

This remark was received with laughter, and the workman, thus encouraged, continued: "As for those Rougons, everybody knows that they are a bad lot."

This insult pierced Felicite to the heart. The ingrat.i.tude of the people was heartrending to her, for she herself was at last beginning to believe in the mission of the Rougons. She called for her husband. She wanted him to learn how fickle was the mult.i.tude.

"It's all a piece with their mirror," continued the lawyer. "What a fuss they made about that broken gla.s.s! You know that Rougon is quite capable of having fired his gun at it just to make believe there had been a battle."

Pierre restrained a cry of pain. What! they did not even believe in his mirror now! They would soon a.s.sert that he had not heard a bullet whiz past his ear. The legend of the Rougons would be blotted out; nothing would remain of their glory. But his torture was not at an end yet.

The groups manifested their hostility as heartily as they had displayed their approval on the previous evening. A retired hatter, an old man seventy years of age, whose factory had formerly been in the Faubourg, ferreted out the Rougons' past history. He spoke vaguely, with the hesitation of a wandering memory, about the Fouques' property, and Adelaide, and her amours with a smuggler. He said just enough to give a fresh start to the gossip. The tattlers drew closer together and such words as "rogues," "thieves," and "shameless intriguers," ascended to the shutter behind which Pierre and Felicite were perspiring with fear and indignation. The people on the square even went so far as to pity Macquart. This was the final blow. On the previous day Rougon had been a Brutus, a stoic soul sacrificing his own affections to his country; now he was nothing but an ambitious villain, who felled his brother to the ground and made use of him as a stepping-stone to fortune.

"You hear, you hear them?" Pierre murmured in a stifled voice. "Ah! the scoundrels, they are killing us; we shall never retrieve ourselves."

Felicite, enraged, was beating a tattoo on the shutter with her impatient fingers.

"Let them talk," she answered. "If we get the upper hand again they shall see what stuff I'm made of. I know where the blow comes from. The new town hates us."

She guessed rightly. The sudden unpopularity of the Rougons was the work of a group of lawyers who were very much annoyed at the importance acquired by an old illiterate oil-dealer, whose house had been on the verge of bankruptcy. The Saint-Marc quarter had shown no sign of life for the last two days. The inhabitants of the old quarter and the new town alone remained in presence, and the latter had taken advantage of the panic to injure the yellow drawing-room in the minds of the tradespeople and working-cla.s.ses. Roudier and Granoux were said to be excellent men, honourable citizens, who had been led away by the Rougons' intrigues. Their eyes ought to be opened to it. Ought not Monsieur Isidore Granoux to be seated in the mayor's arm-chair, in the place of that big portly beggar who had not a copper to bless himself with? Thus launched, the envious folks began to reproach Rougon for all the acts of his administration, which only dated from the previous evening. He had no right to retain the services of the former Munic.i.p.al Council; he had been guilty of grave folly in ordering the gates to be closed; it was through his stupidity that five members of the Commission had contracted inflammation of the lungs on the terrace of the Valqueyras mansion. There was no end to his faults. The Republicans likewise raised their heads. They talked of the possibility of a sudden attack upon the town-hall by the workmen of the Faubourg. The reaction was at its last gasp.

Pierre, at this overthrow of all his hopes, began to wonder what support he might still rely on if occasion should require any.

"Wasn't Aristide to come here this evening," he asked, "to make it up with us?"

"Yes," answered Felicite. "He promised me a good article. The 'Independant' has not appeared yet--"

But her husband interrupted her, crying: "See! isn't that he who is just coming out of the Sub-Prefecture?"

The old woman glanced in that direction. "He's got his arm in a sling again!" she cried.

Aristide's hand was indeed wrapped in the silk handkerchief once more.

The Empire was breaking up, but the Republic was not yet triumphant, and he had judged it prudent to resume the part of a disabled man. He crossed the square stealthily, without raising his head. Then doubtless hearing some dangerous and compromising remarks among the groups of bystanders, he made all haste to turn the corner of the Rue de la Banne.

"Bah! he won't come here," said Felicite bitterly. "It's all up with us.

Even our children forsake us!"

She shut the window violently, in order that she might not see or hear anything more. When she had lit the lamp, she and her husband sat down to dinner, disheartened and without appet.i.te, leaving most of their food on their plates. They only had a few hours left them to take a decisive step. It was absolutely indispensable that before daybreak Pla.s.sans should be at their feet beseeching forgiveness, or else they must entirely renounce the fortune which they had dreamed of. The total absence of any reliable news was the sole cause of their anxious indecision. Felicite, with her clear intellect, had quickly perceived this. If they had been able to learn the result of the Coup d'Etat, they would either have faced it out and have still pursued their role of deliverers, or else have done what they could to efface all recollection of their unlucky campaign. But they had no precise information; they were losing their heads; the thought that they were thus risking their fortune on a throw, in complete ignorance of what was happening, brought a cold perspiration to their brows.

"And why the devil doesn't Eugene write to me?" Rougon suddenly cried, in an outburst of despair, forgetting that he was betraying the secret of his correspondence to his wife.

But Felicite pretended not to have heard. Her husband's exclamation had profoundly affected her. Why, indeed, did not Eugene write to his father? After keeping him so accurately informed of the progress of the Bonapartist cause, he ought at least to have announced the triumph or defeat of Prince Louis. Mere prudence would have counselled the despatch of such information. If he remained silent, it must be that the victorious Republic had sent him to join the pretender in the dungeons of Vincennes. At this thought Felicite felt chilled to the marrow; her son's silence destroyed her last hopes.

At that moment somebody brought up the "Gazette," which had only just appeared.

"Ah!" said Pierre, with surprise. "Vuillet has issued his paper!"

Thereupon he tore off the wrapper, read the leading article, and finished it looking as white as a sheet, and swaying on his chair.

"Here, read," he resumed, handing the paper to Felicite.

It was a magnificent article, attacking the insurgents with unheard of violence. Never had so much stinging bitterness, so many falsehoods, such bigoted abuse flowed from pen before. Vuillet commenced by narrating the entry of the insurgents into Pla.s.sans. The description was a perfect masterpiece. He spoke of "those bandits, those villainous-looking countenances, that sc.u.m of the galleys," invading the town, "intoxicated with brandy, l.u.s.t, and pillage." Then he exhibited them "parading their cynicism in the streets, terrifying the inhabitants with their savage cries and seeking only violence and murder." Further on, the scene at the town-hall and the arrest of the authorities became a most horrible drama. "Then they seized the most respectable people by the throat; and the mayor, the brave commander of the national guard, the postmaster, that kindly functionary, were--even like the Divinity--crowned with thorns by those wretches, who spat in their faces." The pa.s.sage devoted to Miette and her red pelisse was quite a flight of imagination. Vuillet had seen ten, twenty girls steeped in blood: "and who," he wrote, "did not behold among those monsters some infamous creatures clothed in red, who must have bathed themselves in the blood of the martyrs murdered by the brigands along the high roads?

They were brandishing banners, and openly receiving the vile caresses of the entire horde." And Vuillet added, with Biblical magniloquence, "The Republic ever marches on amidst debauchery and murder."

That, however, was only the first part of the article; the narrative being ended, the editor asked if the country would any longer tolerate "the shamelessness of those wild beasts, who respected neither property nor persons." He made an appeal to all valorous citizens, declaring that to tolerate such things any longer would be to encourage them, and that the insurgents would then come and s.n.a.t.c.h "the daughter from her mother's arms, the wife from her husband's embraces." And at last, after a pious sentence in which he declared that Heaven willed the extermination of the wicked, he concluded with this trumpet blast: "It is a.s.serted that these wretches are once more at our gates; well then let each one of us take a gun and shoot them down like dogs. I for my part shall be seen in the front rank, happy to rid the earth of such vermin."

This article, in which periphrastic abuse was strung together with all the heaviness of touch which characterises French provincial journalism, quite terrified Rougon, who muttered, as Felicite replaced the "Gazette"

on the table: "Ah! the wretch! he is giving us the last blow; people will believe that I inspired this diatribe."

"But," his wife remarked, pensively, "did you not this morning tell me that he absolutely refused to write against the Republicans? The news that circulated had terrified him, and he was as pale as death, you said."

"Yes! yes! I can't understand it at all. When I insisted, he went so far as to reproach me for not having killed all the insurgents. It was yesterday that he ought to have written that article; to-day he'll get us all butchered!"

Felicite was lost in amazement. What could have prompted Vuillet's change of front? The idea of that wretched semi-sacristan carrying a musket and firing on the ramparts of Pla.s.sans seemed to her one of the most ridiculous things imaginable. There was certainly some determining cause underlying all this which escaped her. Only one thing seemed certain. Vuillet was too impudent in his abuse and too ready with his valour, for the insurrectionary band to be really so near the town as some people a.s.serted.

"He's a spiteful fellow, I always said so," Rougon resumed, after reading the article again. "He has only been waiting for an opportunity to do us this injury. What a fool I was to leave him in charge of the post-office!"

This last sentence proved a flash of light. Felicite started up quickly, as though at some sudden thought. Then she put on a cap and threw a shawl over her shoulders.

"Where are you going, pray?" her husband asked her with surprise. "It's past nine o'clock."

"You go to bed," she replied rather brusquely, "you're not well; go and rest yourself. Sleep on till I come back; I'll wake you if necessary, and then we can talk the matter over."

She went out with her usual nimble gait, ran to the post-office, and abruptly entered the room where Vuillet was still at work. On seeing her he made a hasty gesture of vexation.

Never in his life had Vuillet felt so happy. Since he had been able to slip his little fingers into the mail-bag he had enjoyed the most exquisite pleasure, the pleasure of an inquisitive priest about to relish the confessions of his penitents. All the sly blabbing, all the vague chatter of sacristies resounded in his ears. He poked his long, pale nose into the letters, gazed amorously at the superscriptions with his suspicious eyes, sounded the envelopes just like little abbes sound the souls of maidens. He experienced endless enjoyment, was t.i.tillated by the most enticing temptation. The thousand secrets of Pla.s.sans lay there. He held in his hand the honour of women, the fortunes of men, and had only to break a seal to know as much as the grand vicar at the cathedral who was the confidant of all the better people of the town.

Vuillet was one of those terribly bitter, frigid gossips, who worm out everything, but never repeat what they hear, except by way of dealing somebody a mortal blow. He had, consequently, often longed to dip his arms into the public letter-box. Since the previous evening the private room at the post-office had become a big confessional full of darkness and mystery, in which he tasted exquisite rapture while sniffing at the letters which exhaled veiled longings and quivering avowals. Moreover, he carried on his work with consummate impudence. The crisis through which the country was pa.s.sing secured him perfect impunity. If some letters should be delayed, or others should miscarry altogether, it would be the fault of those villainous Republicans who were scouring the country and interrupting all communication. The closing of the town gates had for a moment vexed him, but he had come to an understanding with Roudier, whereby the couriers were allowed to enter and bring the mails direct to him without pa.s.sing by the town-hall.

As a matter of fact he had only opened a few letters, the important ones, those in which his keen scent divined some information which it would be useful for him to know before anybody else. Then he contented himself by locking up in a drawer, for delivery subsequently, such letters as might give information and rob him of the merit of his valour at a time when the whole town was trembling with fear. This pious personage, in selecting the management of the post-office as his own share of the spoils, had given proof of singular insight into the situation.

When Madame Rougon entered, he was taking his choice of a heap of letters and papers, under the pretext, no doubt, of cla.s.sifying them.

He rose, with his humble smile, and offered her a seat; his reddened eyelids blinking rather uneasily. But Felicite did not sit down; she roughly exclaimed: "I want the letter."

At this Vuillet's eyes opened widely, with an expression of perfect innocence.

"What letter, madame?" he asked.

"The letter you received this morning for my husband. Come, Monsieur Vuillet, I'm in a hurry."

And as he stammered that he did not know, that he had not seen anything, that it was very strange, Felicite continued in a covertly threatening voice: "A letter from Paris, from my son, Eugene; you know what I mean, don't you? I'll look for it myself."

Thereupon she stepped forward as if intending to examine the various packets which littered the writing table. But he at once bestirred himself, and said he would go and see. The service was necessarily in great confusion! Perhaps, indeed, there might be a letter. In that case they would find it. But, as far as he was concerned, he swore he had not seen any. While he was speaking he moved about the office turning over all the papers. Then he opened the drawers and the portfolios. Felicite waited, quite calm and collected.

"Yes, indeed, you're right, here's a letter for you," he cried at last, as he took a few papers from a portfolio. "Ah! those confounded clerks, they take advantage of the situation to do nothing in the proper way."