Pot Luck

by Emile Zola

  That evening at half-past six, as he entered the Campardons’ apartment without ringing, he surprised the architect and Gasparine kissing in the anteroom. She had only just arrived home from the shop, and had not even given herself time to shut the door. They both looked very confused. ‘My wife’s combing her hair,’ stammered the architect, simply for the sake of saying something. ‘Do go in and see her.’

  Octave, feeling as embarrassed as they were, knocked immediately at the door of Rose’s room, which he usually entered as if he were a relative. He certainly could not continue to board there any longer, now that he caught them kissing behind doors.

  ‘Come in!’ cried Rose. ‘Oh! it’s you, Octave? That’s all right.’

  She had not yet put on her dressing-gown, and her soft, milk-white arms and shoulders were bare. Studying herself in the mirror, she was twisting her golden hair into tiny curls. Every day she sat for hours, absorbed in minute details of her toilet, thinking of nothing but the pores of her skin, of improving her beauty. Finally, she would recline on a chaise longue, luxurious and lovely, like some sexless idol.

  ‘You’re making yourself look very beautiful again tonight, I see,’ said Octave, smiling.

  ‘Well it’s my only amusement!’ she replied. ‘It’s something to do. I never liked housekeeping, you know; and now that Gasparine is here … These little curls suit me, don’t you think? It’s a sort of consolation to be nicely dressed and to feel I look pretty.’

  As dinner was not ready, he told her how he had left the Ladies’ Paradise. He invented a story about some other situation he had long been waiting for, and this gave him a pretext for explaining his intention to take his meals elsewhere. She was surprised at his leaving a job with such good prospects. But she was far too busy at her mirror to listen carefully.

  ‘Look at that red spot behind my ear! Is it a pimple?’

  He was obliged to examine her neck, which she held out to him with the composure of a woman whose chastity is sacred.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘You probably rubbed yourself too hard.’

  Then, after he had helped her to put on her dressing-gown of blue satin and silver, they went into the dining-room. Before the soup was finished the conversation turned to Octave’s departure from the Ladies’ Paradise. Campardon expressed his surprise, while Gasparine smiled her usual faint smile. Both seemed to be thoroughly at their ease. Octave even felt touched by the tender attentions they lavished on Rose. Campardon poured her wine, while Gasparine chose the best pieces from the dish for her. Did she like the bread? If not, they would go to another baker. Would she like a cushion for her back? Rose, full of gratitude, begged them not to put themselves out in this way. She ate a great deal, throned there between them, with her soft, white neck and queenly dressing-gown, having on the right her husband, always short of breath and apparently losing weight, while on her left sat her thin, desiccated cousin, her shrunken shoulders covered by a black dress, her flesh dissolved by the fires of passion.

  At dessert Gasparine scolded Lisa, who had answered rudely when her mistress had enquired about a piece of cheese that was missing. The maid became very humble. Gasparine had already taken the household arrangements in hand and kept the servants in their place; a word from her was enough to set even Victoire shaking among her saucepans. Rose looked at her gratefully with moist eyes; they respected her now that Gasparine was there, and her great desire was that her cousin would leave the Ladies’ Paradise as well, and take charge of Angèle’s education.

  ‘Come now,’ she murmured coaxingly, ‘there’s quite enough for you to do here. Angèle, ask your cousin to come; tell her how pleased you would be.’

  The child entreated her cousin to come, while Lisa nodded approvingly. But Campardon and Gasparine were unmoved; no, no, it was better to wait, one ought not to take a leap of that sort without having something to hold on to.

  Evenings in the drawing-room had become delightful. The architect never went out now. That evening, as it happened, he was going to hang up some engravings in Gasparine’s bedroom. They had just come back from the framer; one was of Mignon yearning for Heaven,* another offered a view of the Fountain of Vaucluse,* and there were several others. His portly figure shook with merriment, his blond beard was dishevelled, and his cheeks were flushed from excess of food; he was truly in excellent humour, now that he could gratify all his appetites. He called Gasparine to give him a light, and they heard him hammering in the nails as he stood on a chair. Octave, finding himself alone with Rose, proceeded to explain that, at the end of the month, he would be obliged to board elsewhere. She seemed surprised but her head was full of other things, and she began to talk about her husband and Gasparine, who were laughing together in the other room.

  ‘They’re having a good time, hanging those pictures! Well, Achille never stays out now; he hasn’t left me alone for a single evening during the last fortnight. No more going to the café, no more business meetings, no more appointments! You remember how worried I used to be if he wasn’t home by midnight. Oh! it’s such a relief! At least I’ve got him near me now!’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ muttered Octave.

  Then she began to talk about the economy of the new arrangement. Everything in the house worked much better; they were all as happy as the day was long.

  ‘When I see Achille happy,’ she continued, ‘I’m happy too.’

  Then, suddenly reverting to the young man’s affairs, she added:

  ‘So you’re really going to leave us? You really ought to stay, now that we’re all going to be so happy together.’

  He began once more to explain. She understood at last, and looked down; the young fellow, after all, would interfere with their tender outbursts of domestic affection. She herself was quite relieved that he was going, since she no longer needed him to keep her company in the evenings. He had to promise that he would come and see her often.

  ‘There’s your “Mignon” for you!’ cried Campardon, gaily. ‘Wait a minute, cousin, and I’ll help you down.’

  They heard him take her in his arms and deposit her somewhere. Then there was a silence, followed by a suppressed laugh. Suddenly the architect reappeared in the drawing-room, and held out his flushed cheek to his wife.

  ‘We’ve finished, my sweetheart. Give your old darling a kiss for working so hard.’

  Gasparine came in with some embroidery and sat down near the lamp. Campardon, laughing, began cutting out a gilt cross of the Legion of Honour, which he had found on some label. He blushed deeply when Rose tried to pin this paper decoration on his coat. Someone had promised him the cross, but there was a great mystery about it. On the other side of the lamp Angèle, learning her Scripture history, kept looking across with a puzzled air, like a well-brought-up young lady taught to be seen but not heard, and whose real thoughts are unrevealed. It was a peaceful evening indeed, in this homely, patriarchal nook.

  But suddenly, Campardon’s sense of propriety was violently offended. He noticed that, instead of studying her Scripture history, the child was reading the Gazette de France, which was lying on the table.

  ‘Angèle!’ he said sternly. ‘What are you doing? This morning I crossed out that article with red pencil. You know very well that you’re not to read what’s crossed out.’

  ‘I was reading the piece next to it, papa,’ said the girl.

  However, he took the newspaper away, complaining in low tones to Octave of how corrupting the press was becoming. That very day there had been another report of some abominable crime. If the Gazette de France could no longer be allowed into respectable family homes, then what paper could they take? As he was raising his eyes heavenwards, Lisa announced Father Mauduit.

  ‘Ah! yes,’ said Octave. ‘He asked me to tell you he was coming.’

  The priest came in smiling. As Campardon had forgotten to take off the paper cross, the cleric’s smile confused him. Father Mauduit, as it happened, was the very person whose name had to be kept secret,
for it was he who had recommended Campardon for the decoration.

  ‘The ladies did it, silly things!’ muttered Campardon, beginning to take off the cross.

  ‘No, no! Keep it on,’ replied the priest very amiably. ‘It’s in the right place where it is; we’ll find a much better one later on.’

  He enquired after Rose’s health, and warmly approved of Gasparine having made her home among relatives; young unmarried ladies living alone ran such risks in a city like Paris. He said all this in his unctuous, priestly way, though he was perfectly aware of how things really stood. Then he spoke of the restorations, and suggested an important alteration. It seemed as if he had come to bless the sweet unity of this family, and thus regulate a somewhat delicate situation which might easily give rise to local gossip. The architect of the Saint-Roch Calvary must surely command the respect of all righteous persons.

  When the priest appeared Octave had wished the Campardons good evening. As he crossed the anteroom he heard Angèle’s voice in the darkened dining-room, for she, too, had managed to slip away.

  ‘Was she shouting like that because of the butter?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ replied another voice, which Octave recognized as Lisa’s. ‘She’s like poison. You saw how she went on at me during dinner. I don’t care, though! You’ve got to pretend to obey with someone like that; it doesn’t stop us having our little jokes, does it?’

  Then Angèle must have flung her arms round Lisa’s neck, for her voice sounded muffled, as if by the maid’s bosom.

  ‘I don’t care what happens, it’s you, you, I love!’

  Octave was about to go upstairs to bed when a desire to get some fresh air led him out into the street. It was barely ten o’clock; he would take a stroll as far as the Palais Royal. Now he was single again, with no woman whatever in tow. Neither Valérie nor Madame Hédouin had responded to his overtures, and he had been in too great a hurry to return Marie to Jules—she was his only conquest, and he had not even gone out of his way to win her. He tried to laugh at it all, but at heart he felt sad, bitterly recollecting his successes in Marseilles. In the failure of his attempts at seduction he saw an evil omen, an actual blow to his good fortune. The atmosphere seemed so chilly with no petticoats near him. Even Madame Campardon had let him go without a tear. This was a terrible revenge. Was Paris going to deny him her favours, after all?

  No sooner had he stepped into the street than he heard a woman’s voice calling him. He recognized Berthe, standing at the door of the silk shop. A man was just putting up the shutters.

  ‘Monsieur Mouret!’ she asked, ‘is it true that you’ve left the Ladies’ Paradise?’

  He was surprised that people already knew about it in the neighbourhood. Berthe had called her husband. As he had meant to have a talk the following day to Monsieur Mouret, he might just as well do so at once. And there and then Auguste, in his sour way, offered Octave a position in his employ. Taken by surprise, Octave hesitated, and was on the point of refusing, thinking of the insignificance of Auguste’s business. But when he saw Berthe’s pretty face and welcoming smile, the same bright glance that twice had met his, once on the day of his arrival and again on her weddingday, he said resolutely:

  ‘All right. I accept.’

  X

  Octave now found himself brought into closer contact with the Duveyriers. When Madame Duveyrier came through the shop on her way home she would stop and talk to Berthe for a moment; and the first time she saw the young man behind one of the counters, she good-humouredly scolded him for not keeping his promise to come and see her one evening and try his voice. She wanted to put on another performance of the ‘Benediction of the Poniards’ at one of her Saturday receptions of the winter, but with two more tenors this time—an absolutely full cast.

  ‘If it’s not inconvenient,’ said Berthe one day to Octave, ‘could you go upstairs to my sister-in-law after dinner? She’s expecting you.’

  She maintained towards him the attitude of a mistress who wishes to be studiously polite.

  ‘Well, the fact is,’ he said, ‘I was planning to put these shelves in order this evening.’

  ‘Never mind about them,’ she rejoined, ‘there are plenty of people who do that. You can have the evening off.’

  At about nine o’clock Octave found Madame Duveyrier waiting for him in her large white-and-gold drawing-room. Everything was ready, the piano open, the candles lit. A lamp, placed on a small table near the instrument, cast a poor light, leaving half of the room in shadow. Seeing that she was alone, Octave thought it proper to ask after Monsieur Duveyrier. He was extremely well, she said; his colleagues had entrusted him with the drawing up of a report concerning a most serious matter, and he had just gone out to obtain some information for it.

  ‘You know, the affair of the Rue de Provence,’ she said naively.

  ‘Oh! he has to deal with that, has he?’ exclaimed Octave. It was a scandal that had become the talk of Paris—a story of clandestine prostitution, fourteen-year-old girls procured for people in high places. Clotilde continued:

  ‘Yes, it keeps him very busy. For the past two weeks all his evenings have been taken up with it.’

  He looked at her, knowing from Trublot that Bachelard had invited Duveyrier to dinner that evening, and that they were going to go to Clarisse’s afterwards. She seemed quite serious, however, and talked gravely about her husband, relating, in her eminently respectable way, various remarkable stories to explain why the judge was perpetually absent from the conjugal hearth.

  ‘He’s responsible for so many souls,’ said Octave, somewhat perturbed by her frank gaze.

  She seemed to him very beautiful, seated there alone in the empty room. Her reddish hair heightened the pallor of her rather long face, which wore an expression of dogged resignation, the placid look of a woman absorbed in her duties. Dressed in grey silk, her waist and bosom tightly encased in a whalebone corset, she treated him with cold civility, as if separated from him by a triple coat of mail.

  ‘Well, sir, shall we begin?’ she went on. ‘You will excuse my importunity, won’t you? Let yourself go, sing as loud as you like, for Monsieur Duveyrier is not here. You may have heard him boast that he doesn’t like music.’

  She pronounced this last sentence with such contempt that Octave ventured a gentle laugh. It was, in fact, the only sarcasm levelled at her husband which sometimes escaped her before strangers, when exasperated by his endless jokes about her piano, although she had enough force of character to hide the hatred and the physical repulsion he inspired in her.

  ‘How is it possible not to like music?’ said Octave with a passionate air, wishing to make himself agreeable.

  Then she sat down at the piano. A collection of old airs lay open before her. She chose the one from Grétry’s Zémire et Azor* As Octave could barely read his notes, she made him hum it at first. Then she played the prelude, and he began to sing:

  When love lights up the heart,

  Life becomes so sweet!

  ‘Perfect!’ she cried with delight. ‘A tenor, not a doubt about it—a tenor! Please go on, sir!’

  Octave, feeling very flattered, sang the next two lines:

  And I, who feel his dart,

  Lie swooning at your feet!

  She beamed with pleasure. For the last three years she had been looking for a tenor! And she recounted all her disappointments—Monsieur Trublot, for instance. It would be worth studying the causes which led to such a dearth of tenors among young men about town; no doubt, smoking had a lot to do with it.

  ‘Are you ready?’ she continued. ‘We need more expression: put everything into it.’

  Her cold face assumed a languorous expression as her eyes turned towards him with a wistful look. Thinking that she was growing excited, his animation increased, and she seemed to him full of charm. Not a sound could be heard in the adjoining rooms; the strange gloom of the large drawing-room seemed to envelop them in a drowsy voluptuousness. Bending over her to s
ee the music, his chest touched her chignon, and he seemed to sigh with passion as he sang the lines:

  And I, who feel his dart,

  Lie swooning at your feet!

  But having delivered this melodious phrase, she dropped her passionate expression as if it were a mask. The frigid woman lay beneath. He shrank back in alarm, not wishing for a repetition of his experience with Madame Hédouin.

  ‘You’ll soon handle it very nicely,’ she said. ‘But you must mark the time more—like this.’

  And she sang the line for him, twenty times over, bringing out each note with the rigour of a woman who is a stranger to sin, whose passion for music is shallow—a delight in pure form. Slowly her voice grew louder, and filled the room with shrill cries, until they suddenly heard someone shouting out behind them:

  ‘Madam! Madam!’

  Starting up, she saw Clémence, her maid.

  ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘Oh, madam, Monsieur Vabre has fallen forward on his writing-desk, and he’s not moving! We’re all so frightened!’

  Then, without exactly grasping the maid’s meaning, she rose from the piano in astonishment and went out with Clémence. Octave, who did not venture to follow her, paced up and down the room. Then, after a few minutes of awkward hesitation, as he heard the sound of hurrying footsteps and anxious voices he decided to see what was happening. Crossing the next room, which was quite dark, he found himself in Monsieur Vabre’s bedroom. All the servants had hurried there—Julie, in her apron; Clémence and Hippolyte, their minds still full of a game of dominoes they had just left. They all stood in bewilderment round the old man, while Clotilde, bending down, shouted in his ear and implored him to speak. But still he did not move, his face buried in his catalogue-tickets. His forehead had struck the ink-stand. Over his left eye there was a splash of ink, which was trickling slowly down towards his lips.

  ‘He’s in a fit,’ said Octave. ‘He can’t be left there. We must get him on to the bed.’