THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя
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at their adventure, that they would at times speak to each other with a certain amount of ceremony. They even experienced a feeling of restraint, an uncomfortable sensation which they had not felt when they were simply comrades. By a singular sentiment of shame, they did not wish to sleep both of them in the hotel where, the day before, they had been almost strangers to each other. William saw that Madeleine would be pained by the smiles of the waiters, if she came to live in his room. He went at night to sleep in a neighbouring hotel. Besides, now that she was his, he wanted to have the young woman entirely to himself, in some retreat unknown to the world.
He acted as if he were on the point of getting married. The banker, on whom his father had given him unlimited credit, told him, when he made inquiries, of a quiet little house, which was for sale in the Rue de Boulogne. William hurried off to look at the place, and bought it at once. He put the workmen in immediately, and furnished it in a few days. The whole thing was the affair of a week at most. One night, he took Madeleine by the hand and asked her if she would be his wife Since the night they had spent in the restaurant in the Verrières wood, he came to see her every afternoon, like a betrothed young man paying his addresses to his ladylove; then he went away discreetly. His request touched Madeleine’s heart, and she replied by throwing her arms round his neck. They went into the house in the Rue de Boulogne like two new married people, on the evening of their wedding day. It was there really that their nuptial night was spent. They seemed to have forgotten the chance circumstance which had thrown them suddenly, one night, into one another’s arms: they seemed to think that this was the first time that they had been allowed to exchange kisses. Sweet and happy night when the lovers could picture to themselves that the past was dead for ever, and that their union had the purity and strength of au eternal bond.
They lived there for six months, severed from the world and seldom going out. It was a veritable vision of happiness. Lulled by their affection, they no longer reminded one another of what had preceded their love, nor were they uneasy about the events that the future might have in store for them. They were remote from the past and careless of the future, in a complete contentment of mind, in the peace of a happiness which nothing disturbed. The house, with its little rooms, carpeted and upholstered with bright material, offered them a lovely retreat, secluded, quiet, and cheerful. And then there was the garden, a little patch not much bigger than your hand, where they would forget themselves, in spite of the cold, chatting during the fine winter afternoons.
Madeleine used to think that her life only dated from the previous day. She did not know if she loved William; she only knew that this man brought happiness to her being, and that it was pleasant to repose in this happiness. All her wounds had been healed; she no longer felt those shocks and burning pangs which had torn her breast; she was filled with warmth, a genial unfluctuating warmth which gave rest to her heart. She never asked herself any questions. Like a patient recovering with reduced strength from a sharp attack of fever, she abandoned herself to the voluptuous languor of her convalescence, thanking him from the bottom of her heart, who had extricated her from her anguish. It was not the fond embraces of the young man which touched her the most; her senses were usually quiescent, and there was more maternity than passion in her kisses: it was the profound esteem which he showed for her, the dignity with which he treated her, like a lawful wife. This raised herself in her own esteem, and she could fancy that she had passed from the arms of her mother to the arms of a husband. This picture which her shame would draw, flattered her pride, and hampered all the modesty of her nature. She could thus hold up her head, and, above all, she enjoyed to the full her new affection, her peacefulness and smiling hopes, in the complete oblivion of the wounds which bled in her no longer.
William was in the seventh heaven. At last, the cherished dream of his youth and childhood was being realised. When he was at school, crushed by the blows of his comrades, he had dreamt of a happy solitude, a hidden secluded nook where he would pass long days of idleness, never beaten, but caressed by some kind and gentle fairy who would always stay by his side; and later on, at eighteen, when vague desires were beginning to throb in his veins, he had taken up again this dream beneath the trees in the park, on the banks of clear streams, replacing the fairy by a sweetheart, traversing the thicket in the hope of meeting the object of his affection, at every turn in the path. Today Madeleine was the kind and gentle fairy, the sweetheart that he had sought. She was his in the solitude that he had dreamt of, far from the crowd, in a retreat where not a soul could come to disturb his ecstasy. This, for him, was the highest bliss: to know that he was out of the world, to be no longer afraid of being hurt by anyone, to surrender himself to all the softened peace of his heart, to have by his side one being only, and to live on the beauty and love of this being. Such an existence consoled him for his youth of sorrow: a youth devoid of affection, with a proud ironical father, an old fanatic whose caresses frightened him, and a friend who was not enough to calm his feverish adoration. It consoled him for crushing persecutions, for a childhood of martyrdom and a youth of exile, and for a long series of sorrows which had made him ardently long for the shade and complete silence, for a total annihilation of his sorrowful existence in an endless happiness. Thus ho reposed, and took refuge in Madeleine’s arms, like a man weary and frightened. All his joys were joys of tranquillity. Such a peace seemed to him as never to end. He pictured to himself that the eternity of the last sleep was opening before him and that he was sleeping in the arms of his Madeleine.
It was with both of them a feeling more of repose than of love. You might have said that chance had drawn them together that each might staunch the blood of the other’s wounds. They both felt a like need of repose, and their words of affection were a sort of thanks which they addressed to one another for the peaceful happy hours which they were enjoying together. They revelled in the present with the egoism of hungry souls. It seemed to them that they had only existed since their meeting; a memory of the past never entered their long lovers’ talks. William was no longer uneasy about the years of Madeleine’s life before she knew him, and the young woman never thought of questioning him, as women in love do, about his previous existence. It was enough for them to be by each other’s side, to laugh, to be happy, like children who have neither regret for the past nor anxiety for the future.
Madeleine heard one day of Lobrichon’s death. She merely remarked:
“He was a bad man.”
She appeared quite unconcerned, and William seemed to take no interest in this news. When he received letters from Véteuil, be threw them into a drawer after reading them; his mistress never asked him what these letters contained. At the end of six months of this life, they knew as little of each other’s history as they did the first day; their love had been bestowed without inquiries.
This dream came to a sudden end.
One morning, when William had gone to his banker’s, Madeleine, not knowing what to do, began to turn over the leaves of an album which was lying in the room, and which had hitherto escaped her notice. Her lover had come across it the night before, at the bottom of a trunk. It only contained three portraits, one of his father, one of Genevieve, and one of his friend James.
When the young woman saw the latter, she uttered a cry of pain. With her hands resting on the open leaves of the album, erect and trembling she gazed at James’s smiling face as if a phantom had risen before her. It was he, the lover of a night that had become the lover of a year, the man whose memory, long dormant in her breast, was awakening and hurting her cruelly, by this sudden apparition.
It was a thunderbolt in her peaceful sky. She had forgotten this young fellow, she considered herself William’s faithful wife. Why was James coming between them? Why was he here, in the very room where but a minute before her lover was holding her in his arms? Who had brought him to her to disturb her peace for ever? These questions set her distracted head reeling.
James was looking at her with a slightly mocking air. He seemed to be joking her on her softened heart; he was saying to her: “Good gracious! my poor girl, how you must be bored here! Come, let us go to Chatou, let us go to Robinson, let us go, quick! to where there is life and excitement — “ She could fancy that she heard the sound of his voice and his burst of laughter; she thought that he was going to stretch out his arms to her in the old familiar way. Like a flash, she saw the past, the room in the Rue Soufflot, all that life which she thought so far off, and from which a few months only separated her. She