Theresa Raquin Part 26

"This room is the Temple of Peace!"

In the meanwhile, Suzanne, who was putting on her hat, remarked to Therese:

"I will come to-morrow morning at nine o'clock."

"No," hastened to answer the young woman in a strange, troubled tone, "don't come until the afternoon I have an engagement in the morning."

She accompanied the guests into the arcade, and Laurent also went down with a lamp in his hand. As soon as the married couple were alone, both heaved a sigh of relief. They must have been devoured by secret impatience all the evening. Since the previous day they had become more sombre, more anxious in presence of one another. They avoided looking at each other, and returned in silence to the dining-room. Their hands gave slight convulsive twitches, and Laurent was obliged to place the lamp on the table, to avoid letting it fall.

Before putting Madame Raquin to bed they were in the habit of setting the dining-room in order, of preparing a gla.s.s of sugar and water for the night, of moving hither and thither about the invalid, until everything was ready.

When they got upstairs on this particular occasion, they sat down an instant with pale lips, and eyes gazing vaguely before them. Laurent was the first to break silence:

"Well! Aren't we going to bed?" he inquired, as if he had just started from a dream.

"Yes, yes, we are going to bed," answered Therese, shivering as though she felt a violent chill.

She rose and grasped the water decanter.

"Let it be," exclaimed her husband, in a voice that he endeavoured to render natural, "I will prepare the sugar and water. You attend to your aunt."

He took the decanter of water from the hands of his wife and poured out a gla.s.sful. Then, turning half round, he emptied the contents of the small stoneware flagon into the gla.s.s at the same time as he dropped a lump of sugar into it. In the meanwhile, Therese had bent down before the sideboard, and grasping the kitchen knife sought to slip it into one of the large pockets hanging from her waist.

At the same moment, a strange sensation which comes as a warning note of danger, made the married couple instinctively turn their heads. They looked at one another. Therese perceived the flagon in the hands of Laurent, and the latter caught sight of the flash of the blade in the folds of the skirt of his wife.

For a few seconds they examined each other, mute and frigid, the husband near the table, the wife stooping down before the sideboard. And they understood. Each of them turned icy cold, on perceiving that both had the same thought. And they were overcome with pity and horror at mutually reading the secret design of the other on their agitated countenances.

Madame Raquin, feeling the catastrophe near at hand, watched them with piercing, fixed eyes.

Therese and Laurent, all at once, burst into sobs. A supreme crisis undid them, cast them into the arms of one another, as weak as children.

It seemed to them as if something tender and sweet had awakened in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. They wept, without uttering a word, thinking of the vile life they had led, and would still lead, if they were cowardly enough to live.

Then, at the recollection of the past, they felt so fatigued and disgusted with themselves, that they experienced a huge desire for repose, for nothingness. They exchanged a final look, a look of thankfulness, in presence of the knife and gla.s.s of poison. Therese took the gla.s.s, half emptied it, and handed it to Laurent who drank off the remainder of the contents at one draught. The result was like lightning.

The couple fell one atop of the other, struck down, finding consolation, at last, in death. The mouth of the young woman rested on the scar that the teeth of Camille had left on the neck of her husband.

The corpses lay all night, spread out contorted, on the dining-room floor, lit up by the yellow gleams from the lamp, which the shade cast upon them. And for nearly twelve hours, in fact until the following day at about noon, Madame Raquin, rigid and mute, contemplated them at her feet, overwhelming them with her heavy gaze, and unable to sufficiently gorge her eyes with the hideous sight.

AFTERWORD

The idea of the plot of "Therese Raquin," according to M. Paul Alexis, Zola's biographer, came from a novel called "La Venus de Gordes"

contributed to the "Figaro" by Adolphe Belot and Ernest Daudet--the brother of Alphonse Daudet--in collaboration. In this story the authors dealt with the murder of a man by his wife and her paramour, followed by the trial of the murderers at the a.s.sizes. Zola, in noticing the book in the "Figaro," when it arrived for review, pointed out that a much more powerful story might be written on the same subject by invoking divine instead of human justice. For instance, showing the two murderers safe from earthly consequences, yet separated by the pool of blood between them, haunted by their crime, and detesting one another for the deed done together.

It then occurred to Zola to write the tale on these lines himself.

Convinced that the idea was good, he elaborated it with the greatest care and all the skill at his command, the result being that he produced a volume which proved his first genuine success, and which is still considered by many to be his very best book.

EDWARD VIZETELLY

SURBITON, 1 December, 1901.