Thérèse Raquin

by Emile Zola

  Thérèse wanted to get married solely because she was afraid and her organism demanded Laurent’s violent embrace.1 She was suffering from a nervous crisis that made her almost mad. In truth, she was not thinking reasonably, but flinging herself into passion, her mind distracted by the romances that she had been reading and her flesh aroused by the cruel nights of insomnia that had been keeping her awake for several weeks now.

  Laurent, whose temperament was more stolid, tried to rationalize his decision, even as he was giving way to his terrors and his desires. To prove that his marriage really was necessary and that he would finally be quite happy, and to dispel the vague fears that were getting a grip on him, he reworked all his earlier arguments. His father, the peasant in Jeufosse, obstinately refused to die, so he told himself that the inheritance could be a long time in coming. He was even afraid that this inheritance might escape him altogether and end up in the pockets of one of his cousins, a large lad who farmed the land, much to the satisfaction of Old Laurent. In which case, he would remain poor and live without a wife, in a garret, sleeping badly and eating worse still. In any case, he was counting on not having to work all his life. He was starting to get singularly bored with his office, where even the light duties assigned to him became a heavy burden on his laziness. Whenever he thought about it, he came to the conclusion that the supreme happiness was to do nothing. Then he recalled that he had drowned Camille in order to marry Thérèse and then do nothing afterwards. Certainly, the desire to have his mistress to himself alone had played a large part in the idea of his crime, but he had perhaps been led to murder still more by the hope of putting himself in Camille’s place, of being looked after as he was and enjoying unending bliss. If he had been driven by passion alone, he would not have shown such cowardice and caution. The truth was that, through this killing, he had sought to guarantee a tranquil and idle life for himself and the satisfaction of all his appetites. All these ideas, whether he was conscious of them or not, came back into his mind. To encourage himself, he kept thinking that it was now time to profit from Camille’s death as he had planned. He set out in his mind the advantages and pleasures of his future life: he would leave his office, and live in a state of delightful idleness; he would eat, drink and sleep to his heart’s content; he would have constantly at hand a passionate woman who would restore the balance of his blood and his nerves; he would soon inherit Mme Raquin’s forty or so thousand francs, because the poor old soul was dying a little day by day; and finally, he would create for himself the life of a contented animal and forget all the rest. Constantly, once Thérèse and he had decided to get married, Laurent told himself these things. He expected still further benefits and he was happy as anything when he thought he had found a new argument, based on his own selfish interests, that would oblige him to marry the drowned man’s widow. But much as he forced himself to hope and much as he dreamed of a future oozing with idleness and the pleasures of the flesh, he still felt a sudden icy shudder chill his flesh and still, from time to time, was seized with a feeling of anxiety that seemed to stifle the joy in his throat.

  XIX

  Meanwhile, Thérèse and Laurent’s secret campaign was bringing results. Thérèse had adopted an attitude of despair and melancholy, which started, after a few days, to disturb Mme Raquin. The old haberdasher wanted to know what was making her niece so sad. At this, the young woman played to perfection her part as the inconsolable widow; she spoke vaguely of boredom, listlessness and nervous pain, without mentioning anything specific. When her aunt pressed her on it, she replied that she was well, that she did not know what was making her so depressed, but that she kept crying without knowing why. Then there was her constant sighing, her pale, pathetic smiles, and those silences, oppressive in their emptiness and despondency. Eventually, faced with this young woman who had retreated into herself and seemed to be dying slowly of some unknown sickness, Mme Raquin became seriously alarmed. She had no one left in the world except her niece and she prayed God every night to preserve this child so that there would be someone to close her eyes. There was a bit of egotism in this last love of her old age. She felt she would be deprived of the few meagre consolations that still helped her to live when it occurred to her that she might lose Thérèse and die alone at the back of the damp shop in the arcade. From then on, she kept her eyes constantly on her niece and was appalled to observe the young woman’s sorrows, wondering what she could do to cure her of these silent feelings of despair.

  The situation being so grave, she thought she should consult her old friend Michaud. One Thursday evening, she kept him behind in the shop and confided her fears in him.

  ‘Good heavens, don’t you see?’ the old man said, with the brutal frankness that came from his former occupation. ‘It’s been clear to me for a long time that Thérèse was in a sulk and I know very well why her face is all yellow and downcast like that.’

  ‘You know why?’ said Mme Raquin. ‘Tell me quickly. If only we could make her better.’

  ‘Pooh! The treatment’s easy,’ Michaud went on, with a laugh. ‘Your niece is unhappy because she’s been alone every night in her room for almost two years now. She needs a husband. You can see it in her eyes.’

  The old police chief’s straight talking hurt Mme Raquin deeply. She thought that the wound which had been constantly bleeding in her since the frightful accident at Saint-Ouen burned as sharply and as cruelly in the heart of the young widow. With her son dead, she thought that there could not possibly be another man for her niece. And now Michaud, with his coarse laugh, was saying that Thérèse was sick because she needed a husband.

  ‘Marry her off as quick as you can,’ he said as he left. ‘Unless you want to see her dry up altogether. That’s my opinion, dear lady, and believe me, I’m right.’

  Mme Raquin could not at first get used to the idea that her son had been forgotten already. Old Michaud had not even spoken Camille’s name and he had started to joke when talking about Thérèse’s supposed illness. The poor mother realized that she alone kept the memory of her dear child alive in the depths of her being. She wept and felt as though Camille had just died a second time. Then, when she had had a good cry, when she was tired out from grief, she thought despite herself about what Michaud had said and got used to the idea of purchasing a little happiness at the cost of a marriage that, according to the fine scruples of her memory, would kill her son a second time. She lost her nerve when she found herself confronted with Thérèse, weighed down with misery, in the icy silence of the shop. She was not one of those stiff, dry creatures who take a bitter joy at living in eternal despair. She was demonstrative, capable of flexibility and devotion, with her chubby, affable, good woman’s temperament which impelled her to express her affection. Since her niece had stopped speaking and remained there, pale and weak, life had become intolerable for her and the shop seemed like a tomb. She wanted warm feelings about her, life, caresses, something soft and merry that would help her to await death with equanimity. These unconscious desires made her accept the idea of remarrying Thérèse and she even forgot about her son a little. She experienced something like a rebirth in the dead existence that she led, with a new will to act and new things to occupy her mind. She was looking for a husband for her niece and could think of nothing else. This choice of a husband was an important matter and the poor old woman was considering herself rather than Thérèse: she wanted to marry her off in a way that would ensure her own happiness and was desperately afraid that the young woman’s new husband would upset the last moments of her old age. She was terrified by the idea that she was going to bring a stranger into her everyday life. The thought itself gave her pause and prevented her from speaking openly about marriage to her niece.

  While Thérèse, with the perfect hypocrisy that she owed to her upbringing, was playing at boredom and depression, Laurent took the part of the sensitive and obliging man. He catered to the little needs of the two women, especially Mme Raquin, on whom he showered delicate litt
le marks of his consideration. Little by little, he became indispensable around the shop and he was the only one to bring a touch of merriment to this dark hole. When he was not there, in the evenings, the old lady would look around her uneasily, as though something was missing, almost afraid to find herself alone with Thérèse and her misery. In fact, Laurent would stay away for the occasional evening only in order to reinforce his power. He came to the shop every day after leaving work and stayed until the arcade closed. He ran errands and he would fetch any little thing that Mme Raquin needed, as she could not walk very easily. Then he would sit down and chat. He had found an actor’s voice, soft and penetrating, which he used to soothe the good old woman’s ears and heart. Most of all, he seemed very concerned about Thérèse’s health, as a friend and as a sympathetic man whose own soul suffers because of the sufferings of others. Several times, he took Mme Raquin aside and terrified her, by pretending to be himself very worried at the changes and the effects of depression that he claimed to see on the young woman’s face.

  ‘We’re going to lose her soon,’ he would mutter with tears in his voice. ‘We can’t hide from ourselves the fact that she is very ill. Oh, dear! What will happen to our little bit of happiness, our nice, quiet evenings!’

  Mme Raquin listened to him in dismay. Laurent even went as far as to risk talking about Camille.

  ‘You see,’ he would also tell the old woman, ‘my poor friend’s death was a dreadful blow for her. She has been dying for the past two years, ever since the fateful day when she lost Camille. Nothing will console her, nothing will heal her. We must be resigned to it.’

  These brazen lies made her weep bitterly. She was upset and blinded by the memory of her son. Every time that Camille’s name was spoken, she burst into tears, she let herself go, and she wanted to embrace the person who mentioned her poor child. Laurent had noticed the way that the name made her upset and softened her heart. He could get her to cry at will, subjecting her to an emotion that took away her clear perception of things, and he misused this power in order to keep her constantly grieving and pliable in his hands. Every evening, even though it gave him a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, he would bring the conversation round to Camille, to his exceptional qualities, warm heart and sharp wit, extolling his victim with perfect cynicism. Occasionally, when he caught Thérèse giving him a strange look, he shuddered and eventually himself came to believe all the good things he was saying about the drowned man. At that, he would fall silent, suddenly gripped with a frightful feeling of jealousy because he feared that the widow might be in love with the man whom he had thrown in the water and whom he was now praising with the conviction of a person in the grip of some hallucination. Throughout the conversation, Mme Raquin was in tears and saw nothing around her. Even as she wept, she felt that Laurent had a loving and generous heart; he alone remembered her son, he alone still spoke of him in a voice trembling with emotion. She wiped her tears and looked at the young man with infinite tenderness, loving him like her own child.

  One Thursday evening, Michaud and Grivet were already in the dining room when Laurent came in and went over to Thérèse, asking her about her health in a voice of gentle concern. For a moment, he sat down beside her, playing his role of affectionate and worried friend, for the benefit of the onlookers. As the young people were next to one another, exchanging a few words, Michaud, who was looking at them, leaned over, pointed at Laurent and said very quietly to the old haberdasher:

  ‘There you are! That’s the husband your niece wants. Quickly arrange for them to marry. We’ll help you if necessary.’

  He smiled in a suggestive way: in his view Thérèse must be in need of a good, lusty husband. The idea struck Mme Raquin like a shaft of light and she suddenly noticed all the benefits that would accrue to her personally from a marriage between Thérèse and Laurent. Such a marriage would only strengthen the ties that already bound her and her niece to her son’s friend, that kind-hearted being who came to cheer them up in the evenings. In that way, she would not be bringing a stranger into the family or risking her own happiness; on the contrary, while providing support for Thérèse, she would introduce a new joy into her own old age, finding a second son in this young man who had been showing her such filial love for the past three years. And then, she felt that Thérèse would be less unfaithful to Camille’s memory if she were to marry Laurent. Religions of the heart make these strangely nice distinctions. Mme Raquin, who would have wept at the sight of a stranger kissing the young widow, felt no inner revulsion at the idea of delivering Thérèse to the embraces of her son’s former colleague. She thought, as they say, that this would keep it in the family.

  Throughout the evening, while her guests were playing dominoes, Mme Raquin gave the couple looks of such tenderness that the young man and the young woman guessed that their play-acting had succeeded and that the end was in sight. Before leaving, Michaud had a short, whispered conversation with the old haberdasher and then ostentatiously took Laurent by the arm and announced that he would accompany him for part of the way. As Laurent left, he exchanged a brief glance with Thérèse; it was a look full of urgent admonitions.

  Michaud had taken it on himself to find out the lie of the land. He found the young man very devoted to the ladies, but very surprised by the plan for marriage between himself and Thérèse. Laurent added, in a broken voice, that he loved the widow of his poor friend like a sister and that he would feel he was committing a veritable sacrilege if he were to marry her. The retired police commissioner insisted. He gave a hundred good reasons for him to agree, even speaking of devotion, and went so far as to tell the young man that his duty obliged him to give Mme Raquin back a son and Thérèse a husband. Little by little, Laurent allowed himself to be won over. He pretended to give in to his feelings, to accept the idea of marriage as one that had fallen out of the sky, and was required by devotion and duty, as Old Michaud was telling him. When the latter had extracted a formal ‘yes’, he left his companion, rubbing his hands and thinking he had just won a great victory. He congratulated himself on being the first to have the idea of this marriage which would bring all the former enjoyment back to their Thursday evenings.

  While Michaud was talking with Laurent as they slowly walked along beside the river, Mme Raquin was having a quite similar conversation with Thérèse. Just as her niece was going to bed, pale and uneasy on her feet as usual, the old woman kept her back for a moment. She questioned her in a gentle voice, begging her to be frank and to tell her the reason for the dark mood that was oppressing her. Then, getting only vague answers, she talked about the void left by widowhood and gradually worked her way round towards the possibility of a remarriage and finally asked Thérèse straight out if she did not secretly long to get married again. Thérèse protested, saying that this was not on her mind and that she would remain faithful to Camille. Mme Raquin began to cry. She argued against her own belief, suggesting that despair need not be eternal; and finally, in answer to an exclamation by the young woman that she would not replace Camille, Mme Raquin named Laurent. After that, she expounded at length, with a flood of words, upon the suitability and advantages of such a match. She bared her soul and repeated aloud what she had been thinking during the evening. With unselfconscious egotism, she painted a picture of her last happy days surrounded by her two dear children. Thérèse listened with bowed head, resigned and docile, ready to satisfy her aunt’s least desire.

  ‘I love Laurent like a brother,’ she said, in a pained voice, when her aunt had finished. ‘Since that is what you want, I shall try to love him as a husband. I want to make you happy ... I had hoped that you would let me mourn in peace, but I shall dry my tears, since your happiness is involved.’

  She embraced the old lady, who was surprised and anxious at having been the first to forget her son. As she got into bed, Mme Raquin wept bitterly, accusing herself of being weaker than Thérèse and wanting a match out of egotism that the young widow herself would accept for reas
ons of simple self-denial.

  The following morning, Michaud and his old friend had a brief conversation in the arcade in front of the shop. They told each other the results of their manoeuvres and agreed to go right ahead, obliging the young people to get engaged that very evening.

  In the evening, at five o’clock, Michaud was already in the shop when Laurent arrived. As soon as the young man was seated, the retired police commissioner whispered in his ear:

  ‘She accepts.’

  This bald statement was overheard by Thérèse, who went pale, staring shamelessly at Laurent. The two lovers looked at one another for a few seconds, as though discussing the matter. Both of them realized that they had to accept the position without further ado and get it all over with. Laurent got up and went over to take the hand of Mme Raquin, who was making every effort to hold back her tears.