Pot Luck

by Emile Zola

  ‘Follow me,’ he said, when they got out. ‘It’s close by.’

  He walked along, grave and thoughtful, without saying a word, and stopped before a door in the Rue Saint-Marc. The three young men were about to follow him, when suddenly he seemed to hesitate.

  ‘No, let’s go back. I don’t think I will.’

  But they cried out at this. Why was he trying to make fools of them?

  ‘Well, Gueulin mustn’t come up, or you either, Monsieur Trublot. You don’t behave nicely; you’d only laugh and jeer. Come on, Monsieur Octave, you’re a serious sort of fellow.’

  He made Octave walk up in front of him, while the other two laughed and called up to him from the pavement to be kindly remembered to the ladies. On reaching the fourth floor he knocked, and an old woman opened the door.

  ‘Oh, it’s you is it, Monsieur Narcisse? Fifi didn’t expect you this evening.’

  She was fat, and her face was as white and calm as that of a nun. In the narrow dining-room into which they were ushered, a tall, fair girl, pretty and simple-looking, was embroidering an altar-cloth.

  ‘Good-day, uncle,’ she said, rising to offer her forehead to Bachelard’s thick, tremulous lips.

  As the latter introduced Monsieur Octave Mouret, a distinguished young friend of his, the two women dropped him an old-fashioned curtsey, and then they all sat down at the table, which was lighted by a paraffin lamp. It was like some calm provincial interior; two regular lives lost to the outside world, supported by next to nothing. As the room looked onto an inner courtyard, even the sound of traffic was inaudible.

  While Bachelard paternally questioned the girl about what she had been doing and thinking since the previous evening, her aunt, Mademoiselle Menu, confided their whole history to Octave, with the directness and simplicity of an honest woman who feels she has nothing to conceal.

  ‘Yes, sir, I come from Villeneuve, near Lille. I’m well known at Mardienne Brothers’, in the Rue Saint-Sulpice, where I worked as an embroideress for thirty years. Then, when a cousin of mine left me a house in Villeneuve, I was lucky enough to let it for life, at a thousand francs a year, to some people who thought they would bury me the next day, and who have been nicely punished for their wicked thought, because I’m still alive, in spite of my seventy-five years.’

  She laughed, showing teeth as white as a young girl’s.

  ‘I couldn’t work,’ she went on, ‘because my eyesight was gone, when my niece Fanny needed looking after. Her father, Captain Menu, died without leaving a penny, and not a single relative to help her, sir. So I had to take the girl away from school, and taught her embroidery—it’s not a very good trade, it’s true, but it was either that or nothing; it’s always the women who have to starve to death. Luckily, she met Monsieur Narcisse, so now I can die happy.’

  And with hands across her stomach, like some old seamstress who has sworn never to touch a needle again, she enveloped Bachelard and Fifi with a tearful glance. Just then the old man was saying to the child:

  ‘Did you really think about me? What did you think, then?’

  Fifi raised her limpid eyes, without ceasing her embroidery.

  ‘That you were a good friend, and that I loved you very much.’

  She had hardly looked at Octave, as though indifferent to the charm of such a handsome young man. However, he smiled at her, struck by her grace and not knowing quite what to think; while the spinster aunt, staled by a chastity that had cost her nothing, continued in an undertone:

  ‘I could have married her to somebody, eh? A workman would beat her; a clerk would only make her have a lot of children. It’s better that she should be nice to Monsieur Narcisse, who seems such a kind gentleman.’

  Then, raising her voice, she said:

  ‘Well, Monsieur Narcisse, it isn’t my fault if you’re not satisfied with her. I’m always telling her: “Be pleasant—show your gratitude.” It’s only natural that I should be glad to know she’s well looked after. When you haven’t got any relatives, it’s so difficult to find a home for a young girl.’

  Then Octave gave himself up to the simple pleasures of this little home. The heavy air of the apartment was filled with an odour of ripe fruit. Only Fifi’s needle, as it pricked the silk, made a slight noise at regular intervals, like the ticking of a cuckoo-clock, which might have regulated Bachelard’s cosy domestic amours. The old spinster, however, was probity personified; she lived on her income of a thousand francs and never touched a penny of Fifi’s money, letting her spend it as she pleased. The only things she allowed her to pay for occasionally were roast chestnuts and white wine, when she emptied the moneybox in which she collected the pennies given her as good-conduct medals by her kind friend.

  ‘My little duckie,’ said Bachelard, rising to go, ‘we’ve got some business to attend to. I’ll look in tomorrow. Be a good girl.’

  He kissed her on the forehead. Then, looking affectionately at her, he said to Octave:

  ‘You can give her a kiss too, she’s just a child.’

  The young man’s lips touched her cool skin. She smiled; she was so modest. It seemed as if he were one of the family; he had never met worthier people. Bachelard was walking off, when he suddenly came back and exclaimed:

  ‘I forgot! Here’s a little present for you!’

  Emptying his pocket, he gave Fifi the sugar he had just stolen at the café. She thanked him profusely, and blushed with pleasure as she crunched one of the lumps. Then, growing bolder, she said:

  ‘You haven’t got any four-sou pieces, have you?’

  Bachelard searched his pockets, but in vain. Octave happened to have one, which the girl accepted as a souvenir. She did not go to the door with them, no doubt for propriety’s sake; and they could hear the click of her needle as she at once sat down to her altar-cloth, while Mademoiselle Menu showed them out in her good-natured, old-fashioned way.

  ‘Well, that’s worth seeing, eh?’ said Bachelard, stopping on the stairs. ‘You know, it costs me less than five louis a month. I’ve had enough of those bitches that just take your money. I wanted something with a bit of feeling.’

  Then, as Octave laughed, he became mistrustful.

  ‘You’re a decent chap, you won’t take advantage of me, will you? Not a word to Gueulin; swear it on your honour! I’m waiting till he’s worthy of being shown such an angelic creature. Say what you like, virtue is a good thing; it refreshes one. I’ve always believed in the ideal!’

  His old drunkard’s voice trembled, tears swelled his flabby eyelids. When they were downstairs Trublot began chaffing him, and pretended he would take the number of the house, while Gueulin shrugged his shoulders and asked Octave, to his astonishment, what he thought of the little thing. Whenever he was made maudlin by drink, Bachelard could not resist taking people to see these ladies, caught between his vanity at displaying his treasure and his fear of having it stolen from him. Then, the next day, he would forget all about it, and go back to the Rue Saint-Marc with a secretive air.

  ‘Everybody knows Fifi,’ said Gueulin, quietly.

  Bachelard, meanwhile, was looking for a cab, when Octave exclaimed:

  ‘What about Josserand? He’s waiting for you at the café.’

  The other two had forgotten all about him. Furious at wasting his evening like this, Monsieur Josserand stood impatiently at the door of the café, not going inside, as he never took any refreshment out-of-doors. At last they set off for the Rue de la Cerisaie. But they were obliged to take two cabs, the commission agent and the cashier going in one and the three young men in the other.

  Gueulin, whose voice was drowned by the rattling of the cab, began talking about the insurance company where he worked. Trublot took the opportunity to declare that insurance companies were as great a bore as stocks and shares. Then the conversation turned to Duveyrier. Wasn’t it a pity that a rich man like that—a judge, too—should let himself be fleeced by women in that way! He always wanted them in out-of-the-way neighbourhoods, right at
the end of omnibus routes—modest little ladies who had their own apartments, and played the part of widows; so-called milliners, who kept shops which never had any customers; girls picked out of the gutter, whom he clothed and set up somewhere, visiting them regularly once a week, just as a clerk goes to his office. Trublot defended him, however, saying that, to begin with, he behaved as he did because of his temperament, and also, not everybody had a wife like his. People said that she had loathed him ever since their wedding-night, his red blotches filling her with disgust. And so she willingly let him have mistresses, whose favours rid her of him; although occasionally she herself put up with the awful task, with the resignation of a virtuous wife who fulfils all her duties.

  ‘So she’s a virtuous woman, is she?’ asked Octave, becoming interested.

  ‘Oh, yes! Totally, my dear boy. All the virtues, in fact—pretty, serious, well-bred, clever, lots of taste, chaste, and quite unbearable!’

  At the bottom of the Rue Montmartre a traffic jam stopped the cab. The young men, having let down the windows, could hear Bachelard abusing the drivers in a furious voice. Then, as they moved on again, Gueulin gave his listeners certain details about Clarisse. Her name was Clarisse Bocquet, the daughter of a man who once kept a small toyshop but now went about to fairs with his wife and a troop of brats dressed in rags. One evening, when it was thawing, Duveyrier had met her just as one of her lovers had kicked her out. Probably this buxom wench corresponded to the long-sought ideal, for the very next day he was hooked, weeping as he kissed her on the eyelids, overcome by a tender yearning to cultivate just one little blue flower of romance, apart from all his grosser sexual desires. Clarisse had consented to live in the Rue de la Cerisaie, so as not to expose him; but she led him a fine dance, had made him buy her twenty-five thousand francs’ worth of furniture, gobbling up his money to her heart’s content, together with several artists from the Montmartre Theatre.

  ‘I don’t care a damn,’ said Trublot, ‘as long as she gives us a good time. At least she doesn’t make us sing, and she isn’t always banging away at her piano, like that other woman. Oh, that piano! I must say, if you’re deafened at home because you’re unlucky enough to have as a wife a player-piano that drives everybody away, you’d be a fool not to set up some nice little nest for yourself where you can receive your friends quite informally.’

  ‘Last Sunday,’ said Gueulin, ‘Clarisse wanted me to have lunch with her alone. I said no. After lunches of that sort you’re likely to do something foolish, and I was afraid she might come and land on me if she left Duveyrier. She hates him, you know. She’s so disgusted with him that it almost makes her ill. She doesn’t care for pimples, either, it seems, poor girl! But she can’t send him elsewhere, as his wife does; otherwise, if she could hand him over to her maid I’m sure she’d get rid of him in a flash.’

  The cab stopped. They alighted in front of a dark, silent house in the Rue de la Cerisaie. But they had to wait a good ten minutes for the other cab, Bachelard having taken his driver to have some grog after their quarrel in the Rue Montmartre. On the stairs, assuming his serious and respectable air, Bachelard, when questioned once more by Josserand as to this friend of Duveyrier’s, merely said:

  ‘A woman of the world, a very nice girl. She won’t eat you.’

  The door was opened by a little maid with a rosy complexion who, smiling in a friendly, indulgent way, helped the men off with their coats. Trublot stopped behind in the anteroom with her for a moment, whispering something in her ear which set her giggling as if she were being tickled. Bachelard had already pushed open the drawing-room door, and he at once introduced Monsieur Josserand. The latter felt momentarily ill at ease, for he found Clarisse quite plain and could not imagine why Duveyrier preferred her to his wife, one of the most beautiful women in society; she was rather girlish, very dark and thin, and with a fluffy head like a poodle’s. However, she had charm. She chattered like a true Parisienne, with her superficial, borrowed wit and her droll manner, acquired by constant contact with men; but she could put on the airs of a grand lady when it suited her.

  ‘Sir, I’m delighted to meet you. All of Alphonse’s friends are mine too. Please make yourself at home.’

  Duveyrier, warned by a note from Bachelard, greeted Monsieur Josserand most cordially. Octave was surprised at his youthful appearance. He was no longer the severe, ill-at-ease individual of the Rue de Choiseul, who never seemed at home in his own drawing-room. The red blotches on his face had taken on a rosy hue, and his squinting eyes shone with childish delight as Clarisse told a group of guests that he sometimes paid her a flying visit during a short adjournment of the Court, having just enough time to leap into a cab, kiss her, and drive back again. Then he complained of being overworked—four sittings a week, from eleven to five; always the same tangled mass of disputes to sort out; it really destroyed all feeling in one’s heart.

  He was not wearing his red ribbon,* however, which he always took off when visiting his mistress. This was a last scruple, a delicate distinction which, from a sense of decency, he obstinately observed. Though she would not tell him so, it greatly offended Clarisse.

  Octave, who had at once shaken her by the hand like an old friend, listened and looked about him. The room, with its floral carpet and red-satin furniture and hangings, was very much like the drawing-room in the Rue de Choiseul, and, as if to complete the resemblance, several of the judge’s friends whom Octave had seen on the night of the concert were also there, in the same groups. But here they were smoking and talking loudly; everybody seemed bright and merry in the brilliant candlelight. Two gentlemen, with outstretched legs, took up the whole of a divan; another, seated cross-wise on a chair, was warming his back in front of the fire. There was a pleasant, relaxed atmosphere—a sense of freedom, which, however, did not go any further. Clarisse never invited other women to these parties—for propriety’s sake, she said. When her guests complained that ladies were missing from her drawing-room, she would laughingly rejoin:

  ‘Well, and what about me? Don’t you think I’m enough?’

  She had made a decent home for Alphonse; it was thoroughly bourgeois, for she had a passion for what was respectable and proper, despite the ups and downs of her existence. When she received guests she declined to be addressed in the familiar ‘tu’ form; but when her guests had gone and the doors were closed, all of Alphonse’s friends—not to mention her own: clean-shaven actors, painters with bushy beards—enjoyed her favours in succession. It was an ingrained habit, the need to enjoy herself a little behind her keeper’s back. Only two out of all her friends had not been willing to comply—Gueulin, who dreaded the consequences, and Trublot, whose heart lay elsewhere.

  The little maid was just then handing round some glasses of punch in her pleasant way. Octave took one, and whispered in Trublot’s ear:

  ‘The maid is better-looking than the mistress.’

  ‘Of course! She always is!’ replied Trublot, shrugging his shoulders with an air of disdainful conviction.

  Clarisse came up and talked to them for a moment. She was constantly circulating from one group to another, joking, laughing, gesticulating. As each newcomer lit a cigar, the room soon became filled with smoke.

  ‘Oh, you horrid men!’ she playfully exclaimed, as she went to open a window.

  Bachelard lost no time in making Monsieur Josserand take a seat in the window-recess, so that, as he said, they might get a breath of air. Then, by a masterly manoeuvre, he installed Duveyrier there and at once started talking about the marriage. The two families were about to be united by a close tie; he felt highly honoured. Then he asked what day had been fixed for signing the contract, and this gave him the chance to broach the crucial subject.

  ‘We had meant to call on you tomorrow, Josserand and I, to settle everything, because we’re well aware that Monsieur Auguste can do nothing without you. It’s about the payment of the dowry, and really, as we seem so comfortable here …’

  Seized by fresh q
ualms of conscience, Monsieur Josserand looked out into the gloomy depths of the Rue de la Cerisaie, with its deserted pavements and sombre façades. He was sorry that he had come. They were again going to take advantage of his weakness to involve him in some disgraceful affair which he would live to regret. A sudden feeling of revolt made him interrupt Bachelard.

  ‘Some other time; this is hardly the place.’

  ‘Why not?’ exclaimed Duveyrier, most courteously. ‘We’re more comfortable here than anywhere else. You were saying, sir, that …’

  ‘We’re going to give Berthe fifty thousand francs. But these fifty thousand francs are represented by a twenty-year dotal insurance, which Josserand took out for his daughter when she was four. So she won’t be able to draw the money for another three years.’

  ‘Allow me!’ interrupted Josserand, amazed.

  ‘No, just let me finish; Monsieur Duveyrier understands perfectly. We don’t want the young couple to wait three years for money they may need at once, and so we’re prepared to pay the dowry in instalments of ten thousand francs every six months, on condition that we repay ourselves later with the insurance money.’

  There was a silence. Monsieur Josserand, chilled and confused, looked out again into the dark street. The magistrate seemed to be thinking the matter over for a moment. Perhaps he scented something fishy about it, and felt delighted at letting the Vabres be tricked, for he hated them in the person of his wife.

  ‘It all seems very reasonable to me,’ he said eventually. ‘We ought to thank you. A dowry is rarely paid in full.’

  ‘Indeed not!’ affirmed Bachelard, energetically. ‘Such a thing is never done!’

  The three shook hands, after arranging to meet at the notary’s the following Thursday. When Monsieur Josserand came back into the light, he looked so pale that they asked him if he felt unwell. This was, in fact, the case, and he withdrew, not caring to wait for Bachelard, who had just gone into the dining-room where the traditional tea had been replaced by champagne.