Four Short Stories By Emile Zola Part 65

"It's that thief of a Steiner," said Caroline. "How is it they haven't sent him back to Cologne yet? I want to see how he looks when he comes in."

They turned round, but when after the lapse of ten minutes Maria Blond appeared, she was alone. She had twice mistaken the staircase. And when Lucy, in some astonishment, questioned her:

"What, he?" she said. "My dear, don't you go fancying that he'll come upstairs! It's a great wonder he's escorted me as far as the door. There are nearly a dozen of them smoking cigars."

As a matter of fact, all the gentlemen were meeting downstairs. They had come strolling thither in order to have a look at the boulevards, and they hailed one another and commented loudly on that poor girl's death.

Then they began discussing politics and strategy. Bordenave, Daguenet, Labordette, Prulliere and others, besides, had swollen the group, and now they were all listening to Fontan, who was explaining his plan for taking Berlin within a week.

Meanwhile Maria Blond was touched as she stood by the bedside and murmured, as the others had done before her:

"Poor pet! The last time I saw her was in the grotto at the Gaite."

"Ah, she's changed; she's changed!" Rose Mignon repeated with a smile of gloomiest dejection.

Two more women arrived. These were Tatan Nene and Louise Violaine.

They had been wandering about the Grand Hotel for twenty minutes past, bandied from waiter to waiter, and had ascended and descended more than thirty flights of stairs amid a perfect stampede of travelers who were hurrying to leave Paris amid the panic caused by the war and the excitement on the boulevards. Accordingly they just dropped down on chairs when they came in, for they were too tired to think about the dead. At that moment a loud noise came from the room next door, where people were pus.h.i.+ng trunks about and striking against furniture to an accompaniment of strident, outlandish syllables. It was a young Austrian couple, and Gaga told how during her agony the neighbors had played a game of catch as catch can and how, as only an unused door divided the two rooms, they had heard them laughing and kissing when one or the other was caught.

"Come, it's time we were off," said Clarisse. "We shan't bring her to life again. Are you coming, Simonne?"

They all looked at the bed out of the corners of their eyes, but they did not budge an inch. Nevertheless, they began getting ready and gave their skirts various little pats. Lucy was again leaning out of window.

She was alone now, and a sorrowful feeling began little by little to overpower her, as though an intense wave of melancholy had mounted up from the howling mob. Torches still kept pa.s.sing, shaking out clouds of sparks, and far away in the distance the various bands stretched into the shadows, surging unquietly to and fro like flocks being driven to the slaughterhouse at night. A dizzy feeling emanated from these confused ma.s.ses as the human flood rolled them along--a dizzy feeling, a sense of terror and all the pity of the ma.s.sacres to come. The people were going wild; their voices broke; they were drunk with a fever of excitement which sent them rus.h.i.+ng toward the unknown "out there" beyond the dark wall of the horizon.

"A BERLIN! A BERLIN! A BERLIN!"

Lucy turned round. She leaned her back against the window, and her face was very pale.

"Good G.o.d! What's to become of us?"

The ladies shook their heads. They were serious and very anxious about the turn events were taking.

"For my part," said Caroline Hequet in her decisive way, "I start for London the day after tomorrow. Mamma's already over there getting a house ready for me. I'm certainly not going to let myself be ma.s.sacred in Paris."

Her mother, as became a prudent woman, had invested all her daughters'

money in foreign lands. One never knows how a war may end! But Maria Blond grew vexed at this. She was a patriot and spoke of following the army.

"There's a coward for you! Yes, if they wanted me I should put on man's clothes just to have a good shot at those pigs of Prussians! And if we all die after? What of that? Our wretched skins aren't so valuable!"

Blanche de Sivry was exasperated.

"Please don't speak ill of the Prussians! They are just like other men, and they're not always running after the women, like your Frenchmen.

They've just expelled the little Prussian who was with me. He was an awfully rich fellow and so gentle: he couldn't have hurt a soul. It's disgraceful; I'm ruined by it. And, you know, you mustn't say a word or I go and find him out in Germany!"

After that, while the two were at loggerheads, Gaga began murmuring in dolorous tones:

"It's all over with me; my luck's always bad. It's only a week ago that I finished paying for my little house at Juvisy. Ah, G.o.d knows what trouble it cost me! I had to go to Lili for help! And now here's the war declared, and the Prussians'll come and they'll burn everything. How am I to begin again at my time of life, I should like to know?"

"Bah!" said Clarisse. "I don't care a d.a.m.n about it. I shall always find what I want."

"Certainly you will," added Simonne. "It'll be a joke. Perhaps, after all, it'll be good biz."

And her smile hinted what she thought. Tatan Nene and Louise Violaine were of her opinion. The former told them that she had enjoyed the most roaring jolly good times with soldiers. Oh, they were good fellows and would have done any mortal thing for the girls. But as the ladies had raised their voices unduly Rose Mignon, still sitting on the chest by the bed, silenced them with a softly whispered "Hus.h.!.+" They stood quite still at this and glanced obliquely toward the dead woman, as though this request for silence had emanated from the very shadows of the curtains. In the heavy, peaceful stillness which ensued, a void, deathly stillness which made them conscious of the stiff dead body lying stretched close by them, the cries of the mob burst forth:

"A BERLIN! A BERLIN! A BERLIN!"

But soon they forgot. Lea de Horn, who had a political salon where former ministers of Louis Philippe were wont to indulge in delicate epigrams, shrugged her shoulders and continued the conversation in a low tone:

"What a mistake this war is! What a bloodthirsty piece of stupidity!"

At this Lucy forthwith took up the cudgels for the empire. She had been the mistress of a prince of the imperial house, and its defense became a point of family honor with her.

"Do leave them alone, my dear. We couldn't let ourselves be further insulted! Why, this war concerns the honor of France. Oh, you know I don't say that because of the prince. He WAS just mean! Just imagine, at night when he was going to bed he hid his gold in his boots, and when we played at bezique he used beans, because one day I pounced down on the stakes for fun. But that doesn't prevent my being fair. The emperor was right."

Lea shook her head with an air of superiority, as became a woman who was repeating the opinions of important personages. Then raising her voice:

"This is the end of all things. They're out of their minds at the Tuileries. France ought to have driven them out yesterday. Don't you see?"

They all violently interrupted her. What was up with her? Was she mad about the emperor? Were people not happy? Was business doing badly?

Paris would never enjoy itself so thoroughly again.

Gaga was beside herself; she woke up and was very indignant.

"Be quiet! It's idiotic! You don't know what you're saying. I--I've seen Louis Philippe's reign: it was full of beggars and misers, my dear.

And then came '48! Oh, it was a pretty disgusting business was their republic! After February I was simply dying of starvation--yes, I, Gaga.

Oh, if only you'd been through it all you would go down on your knees before the emperor, for he's been a father to us; yes, a father to us."

She had to be soothed but continued with pious fervor:

"O my G.o.d, do Thy best to give the emperor the victory. Preserve the empire to us!"

They all repeated this aspiration, and Blanche confessed that she burned candles for the emperor. Caroline had been smitten by him and for two whole months had walked where he was likely to pa.s.s but had failed to attract his attention. And with that the others burst forth into furious denunciations of the Republicans and talked of exterminating them on the frontiers so that Napoleon III, after having beaten the enemy, might reign peacefully amid universal enjoyment.

"That dirty Bismarck--there's another cad for you!" Maria Blond remarked.

"To think that I should have known him!" cried Simonne. "If only I could have foreseen, I'm the one that would have put some poison in his gla.s.s."

But Blanche, on whose heart the expulsion of her Prussian still weighed, ventured to defend Bismarck. Perhaps he wasn't such a bad sort. To every man his trade!

"You know," she added, "he adores women."

"What the h.e.l.l has that got to do with us?" said Clarisse. "We don't want to cuddle him, eh?"

"There's always too many men of that sort!" declared Louise Violaine gravely. "It's better to do without 'em than to mix oneself up with such monsters!"

And the discussion continued, and they stripped Bismarck, and, in her Bonapartist zeal, each of them gave him a sounding kick, while Tatan Nene kept saying:

"Bismarck! Why, they've simply driven me crazy with the chap! Oh, I hate him! I didn't know that there Bismarck! One can't know everybody."

"Never mind," said Lea de Horn by way of conclusion, "that Bismarck will give us a jolly good thres.h.i.+ng."