by Emile Zola
It was a narrow attic room, with a window cut into the slate roof. Nantas had furnished it simply with a bed, a table, and a chair. He had settled down here as he was looking for something cheap, having made up his mind to camp out until he had found some sort of job. The dirty wallpaper, the black ceiling, the poverty and bareness of this cramped room in which there wasn’t even a fireplace did not bother him. Ever since he had been able to go to sleep with a view over the Louvre and the Tuileries, he had compared himself to a general, sleeping in some wretched roadside inn, ahead of him the huge and wealthy city that he is to take the following day.
Nantas’ story was a short one. He was the son of a Marseilles mason, and had begun his studies at that city’s lycée, pushed on by the ambitious affection of his mother, who dreamt of making a gentleman of him. His parents had bled themselves dry to get him as far as his baccalaureate. Then, as his mother had died, Nantas was obliged to accept a humble job with a merchant, where for twelve years he led a weary life, the monotony of which drove him to distraction. He would have run away twenty times over if his filial duty had not kept him stuck in Marseilles, near his father who had fallen off some scaffolding and ended up a cripple. Now he had to make enough for all their needs. But one evening, returning home from work, he found the mason dead, his pipe still warm next to him. Three days later, he sold the few old garments in the house, and set off for Paris, with two hundred francs in his pocket.
Nantas was stubbornly ambitious to make his fortune, a desire he had inherited from his mother. He was a young man who made up his mind quickly, and was coldly determined. While still a boy, he described himself as endowed with great strength. People had often laughed at him when he had forgotten himself so far as to confide in them and to repeat his favourite phrase, ‘I’m really strong,’ a phrase which became comic when you saw him with his slim black frock-coat, coming apart at the shoulders, with his wrists sticking out of the sleeves. Little by little, he had in this way made a religion of strength, seeing it and it alone in the world, convinced that the strong are, after all, the ones who end up the winners. In his opinion, it was enough to want something and to be able to get it. The rest had no importance.
On Sundays, when he went for a solitary stroll through the sun-baked suburbs of Marseilles, he felt he was a genius; in the depths of his being there was as it were an instinctive impulse pushing him onward; and he would return home to eat a mundane plateful of potatoes with his infirm father, telling himself that one day he would surely be able to carve out for himself a share of the goods in that society in which he was still a nobody at thirty years of age. This was no base desire, no craving for vulgar enjoyments; it was the definite feeling of an intelligence and a will-power that, not finding themselves in their right place, intended to rise imperturbably to that place, through a natural and logical necessity.
As soon as he set foot on the streets of Paris, Nantas thought that he would need merely to stretch out his hands to find a position worthy of him. That same day, he launched his campaign. He had been given letters of recommendation that he took to the addresses indicated; in addition, he knocked on the doors of several people from his own region, hoping for their support. But, after a month, he had obtained nothing in the way of results; the time wasn’t right, he was told; in other places, people made him promises that they quickly broke. Meanwhile, his meagre purse was getting emptier, he had at most some twenty francs left. And it was off these twenty francs that he had to live for a whole month more, eating nothing other than bread, traipsing round Paris from morning to evening, and coming back to bed, in his room without light, worn-out, always empty-handed. He refused to be discouraged; but a dull anger rose within him. Destiny seemed to him illogical and unjust.
One evening, Nantas returned home without having eaten. The day before, he had finished his last hunk of bread. No money left, and not a friend to lend him twenty sous. Rain had been falling all day long, that grey Paris rain that can be so cold. A river of mud was flowing down the streets. Nantas, soaked to the skin, had been to Bercy, then to Montmartre, where he had been told that jobs were available; but at Bercy the position had been taken, and his handwriting had been considered not neat enough in Montmartre. These were his two last chances. He would have accepted anything at all, certain as he was that he would carve out his fortune once he had landed his first position. All he asked for, to begin with, was bread, enough money to live on in Paris, and a little patch of land on which he could then build stone by stone. From Montmartre to the rue de Lille he walked slowly, his heart full to the brim with bitterness. The rain had stopped falling, a bustling crowd jostled him on the pavements. He halted for several minutes outside a money changer’s: five francs might perhaps have sufficed for him to be one day the master of this whole world; with five francs you can live for a week, and in a week you can do a great many things. As he dreamed on, a carriage splashed him, and he had to wipe his mud-spattered brow. That made him walk more quickly, his teeth clenched, seized by a fierce desire to lash out with his fists at the crowd blocking every street: this would have avenged him for the obtuseness of destiny. An omnibus almost ran over him in the rue Richelieu. Halfway across the Place du Carrousel, he cast an envious glance at the Tuileries. On the Pont des Saints-Pères, a well-dressed little girl obliged him to deviate from the headlong path he was pursuing with all the blind persistence of a boar being hunted by a pack of hounds; and this detour struck him as the ultimate humiliation: even children were getting in his way! Finally, when he had found refuge in his room, like a wounded animal returning to its lair to die, he slumped into his chair, exhausted, examining his trousers stiffened by the dried mud, and his down-at-heel shoes from which a pool of water was leaking out over the tiled floor.
This time it really was the end. Nantas wondered how he would kill himself. His pride was still intact, he reckoned that his suicide would punish Paris. To have such strength, to feel such power within yourself, and not to find a single person who divines your aspirations and can start you off with a few francs! This seemed to him a monstrous absurdity, his entire being rose in anger. Then he was filled with an immense sense of regret, as his eyes fell on his arms hanging at his sides. And yet he was quite undaunted by any task; with the tip of his little finger he could have lifted up a whole world; and there he sat, flung back into his corner, reduced to impotence, like a caged lion gnawing its own paws. But soon he calmed down, deciding that death was more glorious. As a boy, he had been told the story of an inventor who, having constructed a marvellous machine, one day smashed it to pieces with a hammer in response to the indifference of the crowd. Well, he was that man! He harboured within himself an unprecedented strength, a mechanism of rare intelligence and will-power, and he was going to destroy this machine by smashing his skull against the cobbles of the street.
The sun was setting behind the tall trees of the Danvilliers residence, an autumn sun whose golden rays lit up the yellowed leaves. Nantas stood up as if to follow the sun as it bade farewell. He was going to die, he needed light. For a few seconds, he leant out. Often, between the masses of foliage, he had noticed a young blond girl, very tall, walking along as proud as a princess. He was quite unromantic, and had outgrown the age at which young men dream, in their garrets, that the young ladies of the world are heading their way bringing them great passions and great fortunes. And yet it so happened that, at this supreme hour of suicide, he suddenly remembered that beautiful blond girl and her haughty air. What could her name be? But at the same minute he clenched his fists, feeling nothing but hatred for the inhabitants of that great house whose half-open windows partly revealed rooms of a sober elegance, and he murmured in a fit of rage: ‘Oh! I’d sell myself, I’d sell myself if only someone would give me the first hundred sous of my future fortune!’
This idea of selling himself absorbed him for a while. If there had been a pawnshop somewhere, where loans were made on will-power and energy, he would have gone to pledge himself. He imagine
d market-places in which a politician would come and buy him as a useful instrument, or where a banker would pick him up and set his intelligence to work; and he would accept, holding honour in disdain, telling himself he just had to be strong and he would triumph one day. Then, a smile came to his lips. Is it so easy to sell yourself? Rascals on the lookout for every opportunity still die in poverty, without ever being able to lay their hands on a buyer. He was afraid of being a coward, he told himself he was simply inventing distractions. And he sat down again, swearing that he would throw himself out of the window once night had fallen.
However, his fatigue was so great that he went to sleep in his chair. He was abruptly woken by the sound of voices. It was his concierge who was showing a visitor into his room.
‘Monsieur,’ she began, ‘I took the liberty of showing up this lady…’
And, seeing there was no light in the room, she hastily went down to fetch a candle. She seemed to know the person she had brought in, who was both obliging and respectful.
‘There,’ she continued as she withdrew. ‘You can have a chat, no one will bother you.’
Nantas, who had woken with a start, looked at the lady in surprise. She had lifted her veil. She was forty-five, small, very plump, with the chubby white face of a pious old woman. He had never seen her before. When he offered her the sole chair, with an inquisitive glance, she gave her name: ‘Mademoiselle Chuin… I have come, monsieur, to discuss an important matter with you.’
He had had to sit down on the edge of the bed. The name Mlle Chuin meant nothing to him. He decided to wait for her to explain herself. But she was in no hurry; she had taken in the cramped room at a single glance, and seemed to be hesitating as to how to launch into the conversation. Finally, she started to speak, very softly, smiling her way through the more delicate bits.
‘Monsieur, I come as a friend… I have been given the most touching information concerning you. Don’t think for a moment you have been spied on. In all this, there is nothing other than the strong desire to be of some use to you. I know how roughly life has treated you up to now, with what courage you have struggled to find a position, and the disappointing result hitherto of so many efforts… Forgive me again, monsieur, for intruding into your life like this. I swear that sympathy alone…’
Nantas did not interrupt her, overcome by curiosity, thinking that his concierge must have given her all these details. Mlle Chuin was free to continue, and yet she was trying to come up with more and more compliments, seeking flattering ways of conveying her message.
‘You’re a young man with a great future, monsieur. I have taken the liberty of following your attempts and I have been greatly struck by your commendable firmness in the face of misfortune. And it seems to me that you would go far, if someone held out a helping hand to you.’
She stopped once more. She was waiting for some reply. The young man decided this lady had come to offer him a job. He answered that he would accept anything. But now that the ice was broken, she asked him bluntly: ‘Would you have any objection to getting married?’
‘Getting married?’ exclaimed Nantas. ‘Good Lord, who would want me, madame?… Some poor girl I wouldn’t even be able to feed.’
‘No, a beautiful, rich young girl, of magnificent lineage, who at a stroke will place in your hands the means of arriving at the highest position.’
Nantas stopped laughing.
‘So, what’s the deal?’ he asked, instinctively lowering his voice.
‘This girl is pregnant, and the child needs to be acknowledged,’ said Mlle Chuin straightforwardly, forgetting her ingratiating turns of phrase so as to get to the heart of the matter more quickly.
Nantas’ first impulse was to throw the old bawd out.
‘What you’re proposing is shameful,’ he murmured.
‘Oh, shameful is it?’ exclaimed Mlle Chuin, reverting to her honeyed tone, ‘I can’t accept that horrid word… The truth is, monsieur, that you will save a family from despair. The father doesn’t know a thing, the pregnancy is still in its first stages; and I’m the one who conceived the idea of marrying off the poor girl as soon as possible, so as to pass the husband off as the child’s father. I know the girl’s father, it would kill him. My scheme will deaden the blow, he’ll take it as a form of reparation… The problem is that the real seducer is married. Ah, monsieur, there are some men who really have no moral sense…’
She could have gone on in this vein for a long time. Nantas was no longer listening. Why, after all, should he refuse? Hadn’t he been asking to sell himself just now? Well, someone had come along to buy him. It was a fair exchange. He would give his name, he would get a job in return. It was a contract like any other. He looked at his trousers stained with the mud of Paris, he remembered he hadn’t eaten since the day before, all the anger that had been accumulating during those two months of job-seeking and humiliation flooded into his heart. At last! He was going to trample on that world which rejected him and drove him to suicide!
‘I accept,’ he said baldly.
Then, he demanded clearer details from Mlle Chuin. What did she want for playing the go-between? She protested she wanted nothing. However, she finally asked for twenty thousand francs, from the marriage portion the young man would be given. And as he declined to haggle, she became expansive.
‘Listen, I was the one who thought of you. The young woman didn’t say no, when I mentioned your name… Oh, it’s a real bargain! you’ll thank me later. I could have found a titled gentleman, I know one who would have kissed my hands. But I preferred to go for someone outside the social circles of this poor girl. It will seem more romantic… What’s more, I like you. You’re nice, you don’t have your head in the clouds. Oh! you’ll go far. Don’t forget me, I am at your service.’
Until then, no name had been mentioned. At a question from Nantas, the old maid stood up and said, introducing herself once more: ‘Mademoiselle Chuin… I have been in Baron Danvilliers’ household since the death of the Baroness, working as a governess. It is I who brought up Mademoiselle Flavie, the daughter of Monsieur le Baron… Mademoiselle Flavie is the young woman in question.’
And she withdrew, after having discreetly laid on the table an envelope containing a five-hundred-franc note. It was an advance made by her, to meet the first expenses. When he was alone, Nantas went over to the window. The night was very dark; only the clump of trees could be made out by their deeper shade; a window was shining in the dark façade of the Baron’s house. So, it was that tall blond girl, who walked with the gait of a queen and who did not deign to notice him. She or another woman, what did it matter now! Women as such didn’t come into the equation. Then Nantas lifted his gaze, looking over Paris rumbling in the darkness, over the river, the streets, the crossroads of the Left Bank, lit by dancing gas flames; and he addressed Paris in a newly familiar, almost intimate tone of superiority.
‘You’re all mine now!’
2
Baron Danvilliers was in the salon that he used as a study, a high, austere room, fitted with antique furniture, and with leather-covered walls. For two days, he had been quite crushed by the story Mlle Chuin had told him of Flavie’s disgrace. However much she tried to break the news gently and tone down the facts, the old man had sustained a heavy blow, and only the thought that the seducer could offer a supreme reparation still kept him going. That morning, he was waiting for the visit of this man he had never met and who was taking his daughter from him in this way. He rang.
‘Joseph, a young man is coming, you are to show him in… I’m not at home for anyone else.’
And he relapsed into bitter reflections, sitting alone at his fireside. The son of a mason, a starveling who had no job worth the name! Mlle Chuin did, it’s true, make him out to be a young man with a future, but how shameful it all was, in a family which had been quite untarnished until then! Flavie had taken all the blame on herself, in a kind of fury of self-accusation, to spare her governess the slightest reproach. Ever sin
ce that painful confession, she had kept to her room, the Baron had refused to see her again. He wanted, before forgiving her, to settle this dreadful business himself. He had made all the necessary arrangements. But the rest of his hair had turned white, his head was shaking with infirmity.
‘Monsieur Nantas,’ announced Joseph.
The Baron did not get up. He simply turned his head and stared at Nantas as he came in. Nantas had had the good sense not to yield to his desire to dress up in brand-new clothes; he had bought a frock-coat and black trousers, all still clean but very threadbare, and this gave him the appearance of a poor, neatly dressed student, with not the slightest hint of a man on the make. He stopped in the middle of the room, and stood waiting, but without any undue humility.
‘So it’s you, monsieur,’ stuttered the old man.
But he was unable to continue, his voice was choked by emotion; he feared he might give way to violence. After a pause, he said simply, ‘Monsieur, you have committed a grave offence.’
And, as Nantas was about to apologise, he repeated with greater vigour: ‘A grave offence… I just don’t want to know anything about it, I beg you not to try and explain it to me. Even if my daughter had flung herself at you, your crime would still be as great… Only thieves manage to break into families like this.’
Nantas had again bowed his head.
‘It’s a dowry won cheaply, it’s an ambush you laid in the certain knowledge that father and daughter would fall into it…’
