The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de Maupassant
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mad — I’m going to fall!”
They knocked against the blocks of lava, and remained standing up, both breathless. Then they walked round the crater staring at the big gaps which formed below a kind of cavern, with a double outlet.
When at the end of its life, the volcano had cast out this last mouthful of foam, unable to shoot it up to the sky as in former times, he had spat it forth, so that, thick and half-cooled, it fixed itself upon his dying lips.
“We must enter under there,” said Gontran. And he pushed the young girl before him. Then, when they were in the grotto, he said: “Well, Mademoiselle, this is the moment to make a declaration to you.” She was stupefied: “A declaration — to me!”
“Why, yes, in four words — l find you charming!’: “It is to my sister you should say that!”
“Oh! you know well that I am not making a declaration to your sister.”
“Come, now!”
“Look here! you would not be a woman if you did not understand that I have paid attentions to her to see what you would think of it! — and what looks you gave me on account of it. Why, you looked daggers at me! Oh! I’m quite satisfied. So then I have tried to prove to you, by all the consideration in my power, how much I thought about you.” Nobody had ever before talked to her in this way. She felt confused and delighted, her heart full of joy and pride. He went on: “I know well that I have been nasty toward your little sister. So much the worse. She is not deceived by it, never fear. You see how she remained on the hillside, how she was not inclined to follow us. Oh! she understands! she understands!”
He had caught hold of one of Louise Oriol’s hands, and he kissed the ends of her fingers softly, gallantly, murmuring: “How nice you are! How nice you are!”
She, leaning against the wall of lava, heard his heart beating with emotion without uttering a word. The thought, the sole thought, which floated in her agitated mind, was one of triumph; she had got the better of her sister! But a shadow appeared at the entrance to the grotto. Paul Bretigny was looking at them. Gontran, in a natural fashion, let fall the little hand which he had been raising to his lips, and said: “Hallo! you here? Are you alone?”
“Yes. We were surprised to see you disappearing down here.”
“Oh! well, let us go back. We were looking at this. Isn’t it rather curious?”
Louise, flushed up to her temples, went out first, and began to reascend the slope, followed by the two young men, who were talking behind in a low tone.
Christiane and Charlotte saw them approaching, and awaited them with clasped hands.
They went back to the carriage in which the Marquis had remained, and the Noah’s Ark set out again for Enval.
Suddenly, in the midst of a little forest of pine-trees the landau stopped, and the coachman began to swear. An old dead ass blocked the way.
Everyone wanted to look at it, and they got down off the carriage. He lay stretched on the blackened dust, himself discolored, and so lean that his worn skin at the places where the bones projected seemed as if it would have been burst through if the animal had not breathed forth his last sigh. The entire carcass outlined itself under the gnawed hair of his sides, and his head looked enormous — a poor-looking head, with the eyes closed, tranquil now on its bed of broken stones, so tranquil, so calm in death, that it appeared happy and surprised at this new-found rest. His big ears, now relaxed, lay like rags. Two raw wounds on his knees told how often he had fallen that very day before sinking down for the last time; and another wound on the side showed the place where his master, for years and years, had been pricking him with an iron spike attached to the end of a stick, to hasten his slow pace.
The coachman, having caught its hind legs, dragged it toward a ditch, and the neck was strained as if the dead brute were going to bray once more, to give vent to a last complaint. When this was done, the man, in a rage, muttered: “What brutes, to leave this in the middle of the road!”
No other person had said a word; they again stepped into the carriage. Christiane, heartbroken, crushed, saw all the miserable life of this animal ended thus at the side of the road: the merry little donkey with his big head, in which glittered-a pair of big eyes, comical and good-tempered, with his rough hair and his long ears, gamboling about, still free, close to his mother’s legs; then the first cart; the first uphill journey; the first blows; and, after that, the ceaseless and terrible walking along interminable roads, the overpowering heat of the sun, and nothing for food save a little straw, a little hay, or some branches, while all along the hard roads there was the temptation of the green meadows.
And then, again, as age came upon him, the iron spike replacing the pliant switch; and the frightful martyrdom of the animal, worn out, bereft of breath, bruised, always dragging after it excessive loads, and suffering in all its limbs, in all its old body, shabby as a beggar’s cart. And then the death, the beneficent death, three paces away from the grass of the ditch, to which a man, passing by, drags it with oaths, in order to clear the road.
Christiane, for the first time, understood the wretchedness of enslaved creatures; and death appeared to her also a very good thing at times.
Suddenly they passed by a little cart, which a man nearly naked, a woman in tatters, and a lean dog were dragging along, exhausted by fatigue. The occupants of the carriage noticed that they were sweating and panting. The dog, with his tongue out, fleshless and mangy, was fastened between the wheels. There were in this cart pieces of wood picked up everywhere, stolen, no doubt, roots, stumps, broken branches, which seemed to hide other things; then over these branches rags, and on these rags a child, nothing but a head starting out through gray old scraps of cloth, a round ball with two eyes, a nose, and a mouth!
This was a family, a human family! The ass had succumbed to fatigue, and the man, without pity for his dead servant, without pushing it even into the rut, had left it in the open road, in front of any vehicles which might be coming up. Then, yoking himself in his turn with his wife in the empty shafts, they proceeded to drag it along as the beast had dragged it a short time before. They were going on. Where? To do what? Had they even a few sous? That cart — would they be dragging it forever, not being in a position to buy another animal? What would they live on? Where would they stop? They would probably die as their donkey had died.
Were they married, these beggars, or merely living together? And their child would do the same as they did, this little brute as yet unformed, concealed under sordid wrappings. Christiane was thinking on all these things; and new sensations rose up in the depths of her pitying soul. She had a glimpse of the misery of the poor.
Gontran said, all of a sudden: “I don’t know why, but I would think it a delicious thing if we were all to dine together this evening at the Café Anglais. It would give me pleasure to have a look at the boulevard.”
And the Marquis muttered: “Bah! we are well enough here. The new hotel is much better than the old one.”
They passed in front of Tournoel. A recollection of the spot made Christiane’s heart palpitate, as she recognized a certain chestnut-tree. She glanced toward Paul, who had closed his eyes, so that he did not see her meek, appealing face.
Soon they perceived two men before the carriage, two vinedressers returning from work carrying their rakes on their shoulders, and walking with the long, weary steps of laborers. The Oriol girls reddened to their very temples. It was their father and their brother, who had gone back to their vinelands as in former times, and passed their days sweating over the soil which they had enriched, and bent double, with their buttocks in the air, kept toiling at it from morning until evening, while the fine frock-coats, carefully folded up, were at rest in the chest of drawers, and the tall hats in a press.
The two peasants bowed with a friendly smile, while everyone in the landau waved a hand in response to their “Good evening.”
When they got back, just as Gontran was stepping out of the Ark to go up to the Casino, Bretigny accompanied him, and stopping on the first steps, said: