THE COMPLETE ROUGON-MACQUART SERIES (All 20 Books in One Edition). Ðмиль ЗолÑ
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as a protest, and at bottom as brutal and indifferent as a broker’s man.
Saccard, fresh up from the country, was unable at first to fathom the subtle depths of Madame Sidonie’s numerous trades. As he had read law for twelve months, she spoke to him one day of the three milliards with an air of seriousness that gave him a poor opinion of her intellect. She came and rummaged in the corners of the lodgings in the Rue Saint-Jacques, weighed Angèle with a glance, and did not return except when her errands brought her to the neighbourhood, and she felt a want to discuss the question of the three milliards. Angèle had nibbled at the story of the English debt. The agent mounted her hobby, and made the gold rain down for an hour. It was the crack in this quick intelligence, the sweet mad lullaby of a life wasted in squalid dealings, the magical charm with which she ensorcelled not only herself but the more credulous among her clients. Firm in her conviction moreover, she ended by speaking of the three milliards as of a personal fortune which the judges were bound sooner or later to restore to her; and this threw a wondrous halo about her poor black bonnet upon which a few faded violets curtsied on brass wires that showed the metal. Angèle opened wide her eyes. She spoke repeatedly of her sister-in-law to her husband with respectfulness, saying that perhaps Madame Sidonie would make them rich one day. Saccard shrugged his shoulders; he had been to see the shop and entresol in the Faubourg-Poissonnière, and had read nothing there but approaching bankruptcy. He tried to learn Eugène’s opinion of their sister; but his brother became grave, and merely replied that he never saw her, that he knew her to be a very intelligent woman, a little compromising, perhaps. Nevertheless, as Saccard was returning to the Rue Penthièvre some time afterwards, he thought he saw Mme. Sidonie’s black dress leave his brother’s and glide rapidly along the houses. He ran after it, but was unable again to catch sight of the black dress. The she-agent had one of those spare figures that get lost in a crowd. He stood pondering, and from this moment he began to study his sister more attentively. It was not long before he grasped the immensity of the toil performed by this pale, nebulous, little creature, whose whole face seemed to melt away into shapelessness. He respected her. She was a true Rougon. He recognized this hunger for money, this longing for intrigue, which was the characteristic of the family; only in her case, thanks to the surroundings amid which she had matured, thanks to that Paris where each morning she had to seek to make her evening black bread, the common temperament had deviated from its course, producing this extraordinary hermaphrodism of the woman grown sexless, man of business and procuress in one.
When Saccard, after having drawn up his schemes, set out in search of his preliminary capital, his thoughts naturally turned towards his sister. She shook her head, and sighed, talked of her three milliards. But the clerk would not humour her madness, he pulled her up roughly each time she got back to the Stuart debt; this myth seemed to him to disgrace so practical an intellect. Mme. Sidonie, who quietly accepted the most cutting satire without allowing her convictions to be shaken, next explained to him with great lucidity that he would not raise a sou, having no security to offer. This conversation took place in front of the Bourse, where she was about to speculate with her savings. One was certain to find her at about three o’clock leaning against the rail, on the left, at the post-office side; it was there that she gave audience to individuals as sinister and shady as herself. As her brother was on the point of leaving her, she murmured regretfully, “Ah! if only you were unmarried!…” This reservation, of which he scrupled to enquire the exact and complete meaning, made Saccard singularly reflective.
Months passed, war was declared in the Crimea. Paris, unmoved by a war so distant, threw itself with growing ardour into speculation and the commerce of harlots. Saccard stood by, gnawing his fists, as he watched this increasing mania which he had foreseen. The hammers beating the gold on the anvils of this gigantic forge gave him shocks of fury and impatience. So tense were his intellect and his will that he lived in a dream, like a sleep-walker stepping along the edge of a roof under the influence of a fixed idea. He was surprised, therefore, and irritated, one evening to find Angèle ill in bed. His home life, regular as clockwork, was upset, and this exasperated him like a thought-out spitefulness of Fate. Poor Angèle complained gently; she had caught a chill. When the doctor came, he appeared very anxious; he told the husband on the landing that his wife had inflammation of the lungs, and that he could not answer for her recovery. From that moment the clerk nursed the sick woman without any feeling of anger; he no longer went to his office, he stayed by her side, watching her with an indescribable look on his face, whenever she lay asleep, flushed and panting with fever. Mme. Sidonie found time, notwithstanding the overwhelming nature of her work, to call every evening and make decoctions which she maintained to be sovereign in their effects. To all her other professions she added that of a heaven-born sick-nurse, taking an interest in sufferings, in remedies, in the brokenhearted conversations that linger round deathbeds. She seemed to have taken a tender liking for Angèle; she had a way of loving women, with a thousand caresses, doubtless because of the pleasure they gave to men; she treated them with the delicate attention that merchants bestow upon the more precious of their wares, calling them “Pretty one, sweetheart,” cooing to them, and behaving with the transports of a lover in the presence of his mistress. And though Angèle was one of those out of whom there was nothing to be made, yet she cajoled her like the others, on principle. When the young wife took to her bed, Mme. Sidonie’s effusions became tearful, she filled the silent chamber with her devotedness. Her brother watched her moving about, his lips tight, as though crushed with silent grief.
The illness grew worse. One evening the doctor informed them that the patient would not live through the night. Mme. Sidonie had come early, preoccupied, watching Aristide and Angèle with her watery eyes, illumined by momentary flashes of fire. When the doctor was gone, she lowered the lamp, and there was a great hush. Death entered slowly into the hot, moist room, where the uneven breathing of the dying woman sounded like the spasmodic ticking of a clock that is running down. Mme. Sidonie desisted from her potions, letting the illness take its course. She sat down before the fireplace, near her brother, who was poking the fire with a feverish hand, throwing involuntary glances the while towards the bed. Then, as though unnerved by the closeness of the atmosphere, he withdrew into the adjoining room; little Clotilde, who had been shut in there, was playing with her doll, very quietly, on a fragment of carpet. His daughter was smiling to him, when Mme. Sidonie, gliding up behind, drew him to a corner, speaking low. The door remained standing open. They could hear the faint rattle in Angèle’s throat.
“Your poor wife….” the agent sobbed out. “I fear it will soon be over. You heard what the doctor said?”
Saccard made no answer, but dismally bowed his head.
“She was a good soul,” continued the other, speaking as though Angèle were already dead. “You may find many richer women, and more fashionable women; but you will never find another heart like hers.”
Seeing her stop, wipe her eyes, and seek an excuse for changing the subject, Saccard asked her, simply:
“Have you anything to tell me?”
“Yes, I have been working for you, in the matter you know of, and I think I have found…. But at such a moment…. Believe me, my heart is broken.”
She went on wiping her eyes. Saccard let her have her way quietly, without opening his mouth. Then she came to the point.
“There is a young girl whom her people want to see married at once. The sweet child has had a misfortune. She has an aunt who would be prepared to make a sacrifice….”
She interrupted herself, she had never ceased lamenting, weeping out her words, as though still bewailing poor Angèle. Her object was to make her brother lose patience, and to compel him to question her, so that she should not have all the responsibility of the offer which she had come to make to him. And in fact the clerk was seized with an unreasoning irritation.
“Come, out with it!” he said. “Why do they want to marry this girl?”
“She had just left school,” continued the agent, in a dismal voice, “and a man seduced her, in the country, where she was staying with the relations of one of her schoolfellows. The father has just discovered her condition. He wanted to kill her. The aunt, in order to save the dear child, became her accomplice, and between