Part 11

Then Madame Correur saw an assistant master of the ceremonies advance to the centre of the choir, where he thrice shouted energetically: 'Long live the Prince Imperial! Long live the Prince Imperial! Long live the Prince Imperial!'

And as the lofty arches shook with a mighty acclamation, Madame Correur saw the Emperor standing on the altar steps overlooking the throng. He stood out black and distinct against the background of blazing gold which the bishops formed behind him. He was presenting the Prince Imperial to the people, holding the infant, who seemed a mere bundle of white lace, aloft in his upstretched arms.

But a beadle suddenly motioned to Madame Correur to retire. She took a couple of steps backwards, and the next moment saw nothing but one of the curtains of the porch. The vision had disappeared. The bright daylight made her blink, and for an instant she remained confused, half fancying that she had been gazing upon some old picture like those in the Louvre, some picture baked by age, purpled and gilded, and depicting people of a past-away time, such as one no longer met in the streets.

'Don't stop there,' Du Poizat said to her, as he led her back to the colonel and M. Bouchard.

The latter were now discussing the floods, which had caused terrible destruction in the valleys of the Rhone and the Loire. Thousands of families had been rendered homeless. The subscriptions which had been opened on all sides were insufficient for the relief of such great distress. However, they asserted that the Emperor had exhibited most admirable courage and generosity. At Lyons he had been seen fording the low parts of the inundated city, and at Tours he had spent three hours rowing in a boat through the submerged streets; and everywhere he had lavishly distributed alms.

'Ah, listen!' interrupted the colonel.

The organ was now pealing through the church, and a sonorous chant rolled through the porch, whose curtains swayed as the great gust of sound swept out.

'It is the _Te Deum_!' exclaimed M. Bouchard.

Du Poizat heaved a sigh of relief. They were getting to an end at last! M. Bouchard, however, informed him that the registers had yet to be signed, and, afterwards, the Cardinal-Legate would have to give the pontifical benediction. Some of the congregation were, however, already leaving. Rougon was one of the first to appear, giving his arm to a lady of slight build, who had a sallow complexion, and was very plainly dressed. They were accompanied by a personage who wore the dress of a president of an Appeal Court.

'Who are those?' asked Madame Correur.

Du Poizat told her their names. M. Beulin-d'Orchère, the president, had become acquainted with Rougon some time before the Coup d'État, and had manifested much esteem for him since that period, without, however, attempting to establish any close intimacy. Mademoiselle Véronique, his sister, lived with him in a house in the Rue Garancière, which she seldom left except to attend low mass at Saint Sulpice.

'Ah!' said the colonel, lowering his voice, 'that is the wife for Rougon!'

'Exactly,' assented M. Bouchard. 'She has got a suitable fortune; her family is good, and she is a steady-going woman of experience. He will never find a wife more fitted for him.'

Du Poizat, however, protested. The lady, he said, was as over-ripe as a forgotten medlar. She was at least thirty-six years of age, and looked forty. A nice broom-handle in all truth! A devotee with hair brushed smooth and smug! As faded and as washed-out as though she had been soaking her head in holy water for the last six months!

'You are young,' rejoined the head-clerk, gravely. 'Rougon ought to make a sensible marriage. I myself married for love, but that does not succeed with everyone.'

'Oh! I don't apprehend any danger from the lady herself,' continued Du Poizat; 'it's Beulin-d'Orchère's look that alarms me. He's got a regular dog's jaw. Just look at him with his heavy muzzle and forest of woolly hair, without a single silver thread in it, in spite of his fifty years. What's he thinking about, I wonder? Why does he still drive his sister into Rougon's arms now that our friend is out of favour?'

M. Bouchard and the colonel kept silent, and exchanged uneasy glances. Was 'the dog,' as the ex-sub-prefect called him, going to make Rougon his own prey?

However, Madame Correur slowly opined: 'It is a good thing to have the judicial bench on one's side.'

Meantime, Rougon was conducting Mademoiselle Véronique to her carriage, and, before she got into it, he bowed to her. Just at that moment the fair Clorinde came out of the church, leaning upon Delestang's arm. She became quite grave, and cast a fiery glance at that tall sallow creature, the door of whose carriage Rougon was gallantly closing, notwithstanding his senatorial uniform. And as soon as the carriage had gone off, Clorinde dropped Delestang's arm, and stepped straight up to the great man, breaking out into her old gay laugh. All the others followed.

'I have lost my mother!' merrily said the girl to Rougon. 'She has been carried off somewhere in the crowd. Will you give me a little corner in your brougham?'

At this Delestang, who had hoped to take her home, seemed very much annoyed. She was wearing a dress of orange silk, brocaded with such showy flowers that the very footmen stared at her. Rougon had immediately granted her request, but they had to wait for the brougham for another ten minutes. And they all remained standing where they were, even Delestang, though his carriage was in the first row, only a yard or two away. In the meanwhile the congregation continued to leave the church. M. Kahn and M. Béjuin, who were passing, came up and joined the group. And as the great man shook hands in a listless way, and looked somewhat out of sorts, M. Kahn asked with anxious concern: 'Aren't you feeling well?'

'Oh, yes,' he answered, 'but those lights inside there rather dazed me.' He remained silent for a moment, and then continued in a low voice: 'It was a splendid sight. I never saw such an expression of happiness upon a man's face before.'

He was referring to the Emperor, and, as he spoke, he slowly spread out his arms with a sweeping majestic gesture, as though he were recalling the scene in the church. But he added not a word, and the others likewise kept silence. They formed quite a little group in a corner of the square. In front of them the stream of people leaving the church grew larger; there were judges in their robes, officers and functionaries in full uniform, a crowd of belaced and bedizened and decorated personages who trod over the flowers strewing the square, amidst the calls of footmen and sudden rolling of carriage-wheels. The soaring glory of the Empire blazed, as it were, in the crimson of the setting sun; and the towers of Notre Dame, all roseate and musical, seemed to attest the lofty peace and greatness to which the future reign of the child, baptized beneath their shadow, would some day attain. But in Rougon's group, the splendour of the ceremony, the pealing bells, the streaming banners, and the enthusiasm of the city only aroused feelings of envy and desire. For the first time Rougon himself felt the chilly weight of the disfavour into which he had fallen. His face was very pale, and, as he stood there deep in thought, he envied the Emperor.

'Well, good afternoon; I'm off! I can't stand it any longer!' exclaimed Du Poizat, shaking hands with the others.

'What's the matter with you to-day?' asked the colonel, 'you seem very fractious.'

But the sub-prefect quietly replied, as he went away: 'Well, you can scarcely expect me to be in very high spirits. I saw in the _Moniteur_ this morning that that ass of a Campenon has been appointed to the prefecture which was promised to me.'

The others exchanged glances. Du Poizat was quite right. They had no share in the fête. They were all left out in the cold. Ever since the birth of the prince, Rougon had promised them a shower of presents for the day of the christening. M. Kahn was to have had his railway grant; the colonel was to have had a commander's cross, and Madame Correur was to have had the five or six tobacco-shops for which she had asked. And now they were all huddled there in a corner of the square, empty-handed. At this thought they cast such a distressful and reproachful look at Rougon, that the latter shrugged his shoulders furiously. And as his brougham at last drew up, he hastily pushed Clorinde inside, got in himself, and closed the door with a bang, never saying a word.

'There's Marsy under the porch,' muttered M. Kahn, dragging M. Béjuin on one side. 'How arrogant the rascal looks! Don't show him your face; it would only give him the opportunity of cutting us.'

Delestang had hastily got into his carriage in order to follow Rougon's brougham. M. Bouchard, however, waited for his wife, and when the church was empty he was surprised at not seeing her appear; however, he went off with the colonel, who had grown equally tired of waiting for his son Auguste. As for Madame Correur, she accepted the escort of a lieutenant of dragoons, who came from her own part of France, and who was to some extent indebted to her for his epaulets.

Meanwhile, inside the brougham, Clorinde was prattling enthusiastically about the ceremony that had just taken place; while Rougon leaned back with sleepy eyes and listened to her. She had seen the Easter solemnities at Rome, she told him, but they were not finer than what she had just beheld. And she added that, for her, religion lay in a vision of heaven with God the Father seated on His throne like a glittering sun amidst the glory of His encircling angels, a host of lovely youths and maidens. But all at once she broke off to inquire: 'Are you going to the banquet which the city is giving to their majesties to-night? It will be magnificent.'

She had got an invitation herself, and meant to wear a pink dress, brocaded with forget-me-nots. M. de Plouguern was going to take her, as her mother would not go out at night on account of the headaches to which she was so subject. However, she suddenly changed her subject again, asking abruptly: 'Who was that judge you were with just now?'

Rougon raised his head, and said all in a breath: 'Monsieur Beulin-d'Orchère, fifty years of age, of a legal family, began as public prosecutor's assessor at Montbrison, was afterwards public prosecutor at Orleans, advocate-general at Rouen, a member of a mixed commission in 1852, and then came to Paris as councillor at the Appeal Court, of which he is now the president. Oh! I was forgetting; he approved of the decree of the twenty-second of January, 1852, confiscating the property of the Orleans family. There, are you satisfied?'

Clorinde began to laugh. He was making fun of her, she said, just because she asked for information; but there was nothing foolish--was there?--in asking about people whom one was liable to meet. She did not say a word about Mademoiselle Beulin-d'Orchère; but again began to talk of the banquet at the Hôtel de Ville. The grand gallery would be decorated with unheard-of magnificence, and a band would play the whole time the guests were dining. Ah! France was truly a great country! Nowhere, neither in England, nor in Germany, nor in Spain, nor in Italy, had she seen such wonderful balls, such prodigious galas. She had quite made up her mind now, she said, her face beaming with admiration; she meant to be a Frenchwoman.

'Oh, look!' she cried; 'there are some soldiers there!'

The brougham, after rolling along the Rue de la Cité, had now been stopped at the end of the Pont Notre Dame by a regiment which was marching back to its quarters. It was one of the line. The soldiers, all of them little fellows, were hastening on like sheep, their march being somewhat irregular by reason of the trees planted along the roadside. They had been keeping the line for the procession; their faces were scorched by the hot afternoon sun; their feet were white with dust; and their backs bent beneath the weight of their knapsacks and rifles. And they had felt so bored amid the jostling of the crowd that they still looked dazed and stupid.

'I adore the French army,' said Clorinde enthusiastically, as she leant forward to get a better view.

Rougon roused himself, and in his turn looked out of the window. It was the power of the Empire that was passing through the dust. A great many carriages had now gathered together on the bridge, but the coachmen respectfully waited for the soldiers to pass, and distinguished personages in gala costumes smiled sympathisingly at the little fellows who were so stupefied by their long day's work.

'Do you see those in the rear?' exclaimed Clorinde. 'There's a whole row of them without a hair on their faces. How nice they look!'

Then, in her enthusiasm, she began to kiss her hands to the little soldiers from the depths of the brougham. She lay back a little so that she might not be seen. Rougon smiled in a paternal manner. He, too, had just felt a thrill of pleasure, the first he had known during the whole day.

'What's going on here?' he exclaimed, when the brougham was at last able to turn the corner of the quay.

A considerable crowd had formed on the footway and in the road, and the brougham had to stop again. A voice in the throng was heard saying: 'It's a drunken man who has insulted the soldiers. The police have just taken him into custody.'

Then, as the crowd parted, Rougon caught sight of Gilquin, dead-drunk, and held by a couple of policemen. His yellow duck clothes were torn, and his naked flesh showed through the rents. But he still retained his garrulous joviality and scarlet face. He addressed the policemen in the most familiar fashion, calling them his little lambs. He told them that he had been quietly spending the afternoon in a neighbouring café with some very rich people, and referred them for inquiries to the Palais Royal theatre, where M. and Madame Charbonnel, who had gone to see _Les Dragées du Baptême_, would readily confirm his statement.

'Come, let me go, you jokers!' he cried, suddenly stiffening himself. 'Confound it all, the café's close at hand; come with me there, if you don't believe me. The soldiers insulted me. There was a little scamp who laughed at me, and I shut him up. But for me to insult the French army! Never! Just you mention the name of Théodore to the Emperor and hear what he says. Ah! you're a nice set, you are!'

The crowd roared with amusement, while the imperturbable policemen slowly dragged Gilquin towards the Rue Saint Martin, where the red lamp of a police-station could be seen. Rougon had hastily thrown himself back in his brougham, but Gilquin, raising his head, caught sight of him. Then, drunk though he was, he again became good-natured and prudent, and casting a glance at Rougon, exclaimed, so that the latter might hear him: 'Well, well, my friends: I might get up a scandal if I liked, but I've too much self-respect. Ah, you wouldn't lay your hands on Théodore in this way if he drove about with princesses as a citizen of my acquaintance does. All the same, however, I've worked with great people, and cleverly, too, though I don't want to boast about it, and never asked for a big reward. But I know my own worth, and that consoles me for other people's meanness. Ah, confound it, are friends no longer friends, then?'

He spoke with growing emotion, his speech impeded by hiccoughs, while Rougon quietly beckoned to a man wearing a closely buttoned coat, whom he saw standing near his brougham, and, after whispering a few words to him, gave him Gilquin's address, 17 Rue Virginie, Grenelle. And thereupon the man--a detective--stepped up to the officers as though he were about to help them with the drunkard who had begun to struggle. However, the crowd was greatly surprised to see the policemen turn to the left and bundle Gilquin into a cab, whose driver, after receiving an order, drove away along the Quai de la Mégisserie. Gilquin, however, thrust his huge unkempt head from the window, and, with a burst of triumphant laughter, shouted: 'Long live the Republic!'

When the crowd had dispersed, the quays resumed their wonted tranquillity. Paris, weary of enthusiasm, had gone off to dinner. The three hundred thousand sight-seers, who had struggled and crowded there, were now invading the restaurants by the water-side and those of the district of the Temple. None but country cousins paced the deserted pavements, quite knocked up and at a loss where to dine. Down below, in the floating laundry the washerwomen were finishing their work with vigorous blows. A last ray of sunlight still gilded the towers of Notre Dame, which now rose quite silent above the houses already dark with shadow. And through the slight mist ascending from the Seine, nothing could be distinguished among the grey mass of buildings, on the Ile Saint Louis, save the giant great-coat, that colossal advertisement hanging seemingly from some nail on the horizon, and looking like the garment of a Titan, whose body had been pulverised by the thunderbolts of Jove.

V

PASSION AND MATRIMONY

One morning towards eleven o'clock, Clorinde called at Rougon's house in the Rue Marbeuf. She was on her way back from the Bois, and a groom held her horse at the door. She went straight into the garden, turned to the left, and halted in front of the open window of the study in which the great man sat at work.

'Ah! I've taken you by surprise!' she exclaimed.

Rougon quickly raised his head. The girl stood laughing in the warm June sunshine. Her riding-habit of heavy blue cloth made her seem taller. She was carrying its long train over her left arm, and its tight-fitting corsage clung to her shoulders and breast and hips like skin. She wore linen wristbands and collar, and a narrow necktie of blue silk, while atop of her rolled-up hair a tall silk hat was jauntily perched with a veil of bluish gauze powdered with the golden dust of the sunlight.

'What, is it you?' cried Rougon, hastening to her. 'Pray come in!'

'No, no,' she answered; 'don't disturb yourself, I have only a word to say to you. My mother will be expecting me back to lunch.'

This was the third time that she had come in this way to Rougon's house in defiance of all propriety. She made a point, however, of remaining in the garden; and upon the previous occasions, as upon this one, she had come in her riding-habit, a costume which seemed to confer masculine privileges upon her.

'I've come to beg,' she said. 'I want you to buy some lottery tickets. We are getting up a lottery for the benefit of some poor girls.'

'Oh, indeed; well, come in,' repeated Rougon, 'you can tell me all about it.'

She had kept her whip in her hand, a slight delicate whip with a little silver handle. And on hearing him she again began to laugh while gently tapping her skirt with her whip.

'Oh, I've told you all there is to tell,' said she. 'You must take some tickets. That's all I came for. I've been looking for you for the last three days without finding you, and the drawing takes place to-morrow.' Then, as she took a little case out of her pocket, she inquired: 'How many tickets would you like?'

'Not one, if you won't come in!' cried Rougon. And he continued, playfully: 'We can't transact business at the window, you know, and I'm not going to hand you money out as though you were some beggar-woman.'

'Oh, I don't object, as long as I get it.'

But Rougon remained firm. She looked at him for a moment in silence, and then resumed: 'If I come in, will you promise to take ten tickets? They are ten francs each.'

However, she did not make up her mind without some further hesitation, and she even cast a hasty glance round the garden. There was a gardener on his knees planting a bed of geraniums. Then she smiled slightly and stepped towards the little flight of steps upon which the folding-window of the study opened. Rougon held out his hand and drew her into the middle of the room.

'Are you afraid that I shall eat you?' he asked her. 'You know very well that I am the most submissive of your slaves. What are you frightened of?'

'I! I'm not afraid of anything,' she replied again, tapping her skirts with her whip, which she then laid upon a couch in order to fumble in her little case once more. 'You'll take ten, won't you?' she asked.

'I will take twenty, if you wish it,' he replied; 'but do, please, sit down and let us have a little chat. You surely don't want to be off at once.'

'Well, then, it shall be a ticket a minute. If I stay a quarter of an hour, you will have to take fifteen tickets, and if I stay twenty minutes, you will have to take twenty tickets, and so on as long as I stay. Is that agreed?'

They laughed merrily over this arrangement, and Clorinde thereupon seated herself in an easy chair in the very embrasure of the window which remained open. Rougon, on his side, resumed his seat at his table in order to put her at her ease. Then they began to talk, taking the house for their first subject. Clorinde glanced out of the window and remarked that the garden was rather small, but very charming, with its central lawn and clumps of evergreens. Then Rougon began to describe the house to her. On the ground-floor, said he, were his study, a large drawing-room, a small one, and a very handsome dining-room. On the first-floor there were seven bedrooms, and as many on the second. Although to some people the house might seem a very small one, it was much too big for him, he declared. At the time when the Emperor had made him a present of it he had been engaged to marry a widow, chosen by his Majesty himself; but the lady had died, and now he intended to remain a bachelor.

'Why?' asked Clorinde, looking him straight in the face.

'Oh! I've other things to do than to get married. When a man reaches my age, he no longer thinks about a wife.'

'Don't be so affected,' replied Clorinde, with a shrug of her shoulders.

They had become intimate enough to talk very freely together. Clorinde declared that she believed Rougon to be amorously inclined, but he defended himself, and told her of his early times, of the years he had spent in bare rooms, which never a woman entered. Still, she went on questioning him about his lady-loves with childish curiosity, and he again and again replied with a shrug of the shoulders.

'No! no wife for me!' he cried at last, though his eyes were glistening at the sight of Clorinde's careless attitude.

A peculiar smile played on the girl's lips as she lay back in her chair. There was an expression of soft languor on her face, and her bosom gently heaved. When she replied, it was with an exaggerated Italian accent, and in a sort of singing voice. 'Nonsense, my friend; you adore us, I know. Will you bet me that you aren't married by this time next year?'

She was really provoking, so certain did she seem to be of conquering him. For some time past she had been calmly offering herself to Rougon. She no longer attempted to disguise her snares and the clever way in which she had worked upon him before laying siege to his desires. She considered that he was now sufficiently overcome for her to bring the matter to an issue. It was a real duel that was going on between them, and although the conditions of the combat were not mentioned in actual words, there were unmistakable confessions in their glances. When they looked at each other they could not refrain from smiling. Clorinde had set her eyes upon her goal and went straight towards it, with a haughty boldness; while Rougon, infatuated though he was, resolved to play a wily game in order to prove his superiority. Their pride was engaged in the struggle quite as much as their passions were.