Nana - Émile Zola (good books to read for young adults txt) 📗
- Author: Émile Zola
- Performer: -
Book online «Nana - Émile Zola (good books to read for young adults txt) 📗». Author Émile Zola
flamed, flying from right to left, and then with a resistless thrust
it pierced the breast of the captain, who fell like a log without
even a groan.
Laguitte had released his hold upon his sword and stood gazing at
that poor old rascal Burle, who was stretched upon his back with his
fat stomach bulging out.
“Oh, my God! My God!” repeated the major furiously and
despairingly, and then he began to swear.
They led him away, and, both his legs failing him, he had to be
supported on either side, for he could not even use his stick.
Two months later the ex-major was crawling slowly along in the
sunlight down a lonely street of Vauchamp, when he again found
himself face to face with Mme Burle and little Charles. They were
both in deep mourning. He tried to avoid them, but he now only
walked with difficulty, and they advanced straight upon him without
hurrying or slackening their steps. Charles still had the same
gentle, girlish, frightened face, and Mme Burle retained her stern,
rigid demeanor, looking even harsher than ever.
As Laguitte shrank into the corner of a doorway to leave the whole
street to them, she abruptly stopped in front of him and stretched
out her hand. He hesitated and then took it and pressed it, but he
trembled so violently that he made the old lady’s arm shake. They
exchanged glances in silence.
“Charles,” said the boy’s grandmother at last, “shake hands with the
major.” The boy obeyed without understanding. The major, who was
very pale, barely ventured to touch the child’s frail fingers; then,
feeling that he ought to speak, he stammered out: “You still intend
to send him to Saint-Cyr?”
“Of course, when he is old enough,” answered Mme Burle.
But during the following week Charles was carried off by typhoid
fever. One evening his grandmother had again read him the story of
the Vengeur to make him bold, and in the night he had become
delirious. The poor little fellow died of fright.
THE DEATH OF OLIVIER BECAILLE
MY PASSING
It was on a Saturday, at six in the morning, that I died after a
three days’ illness. My wife was searching a trunk for some linen,
and when she rose and turned she saw me rigid, with open eyes and
silent pulses. She ran to me, fancying that I had fainted, touched
my hands and bent over me. Then she suddenly grew alarmed, burst
into tears and stammered:
“My God, my God! He is dead!”
I heard everything, but the sounds seemed to come from a great
distance. My left eye still detected a faint glimmer, a whitish
light in which all objects melted, but my right eye was quite bereft
of sight. It was the coma of my whole being, as if a thunderbolt
had struck me. My will was annihilated; not a fiber of flesh obeyed
my bidding. And yet amid the impotency of my inert limbs my
thoughts subsisted, sluggish and lazy, still perfectly clear.
My poor Marguerite was crying; she had dropped on her knees beside
the bed, repeating in heart-rending tones:
“He is dead! My God, he is dead!”
Was this strange state of torpor, this immobility of the flesh,
really death, although the functions of the intellect were not
arrested? Was my soul only lingering for a brief space before it
soared away forever? From my childhood upward I had been subject to
hysterical attacks, and twice in early youth I had nearly succumbed
to nervous fevers. By degrees all those who surrounded me had got
accustomed to consider me an invalid and to see me sickly. So much
so that I myself had forbidden my wife to call in a doctor when I
had taken to my bed on the day of our arrival at the cheap
lodginghouse of the Rue Dauphine in Paris. A little rest would soon
set me right again; it was only the fatigue of the journey which had
caused my intolerable weariness. And yet I was conscious of having
felt singularly uneasy. We had left our province somewhat abruptly;
we were very poor and had barely enough money to support ourselves
till I drew my first month’s salary in the office where I had
obtained a situation. And now a sudden seizure was carrying me off!
Was it really death? I had pictured to myself a darker night, a
deeper silence. As a little child I had already felt afraid to die.
Being weak and compassionately petted by everyone, I had concluded
that I had not long to live, that I should soon be buried, and the
thought of the cold earth filled me with a dread I could not master—
a dread which haunted me day and night. As I grew older the same
terror pursued me. Sometimes, after long hours spent in reasoning
with myself, I thought that I had conquered my fear. I reflected,
“After all, what does it matter? One dies and all is over. It is
the common fate; nothing could be better or easier.”
I then prided myself on being able to look death boldly in the face,
but suddenly a shiver froze my blood, and my dizzy anguish returned,
as if a giant hand had swung me over a dark abyss. It was some
vision of the earth returning and setting reason at naught. How
often at night did I start up in bed, not knowing what cold breath
had swept over my slumbers but clasping my despairing hands and
moaning, “Must I die?” In those moments an icy horror would stop my
pulses while an appalling vision of dissolution rose before me. It
was with difficulty that I could get to sleep again. Indeed, sleep
alarmed me; it so closely resembled death. If I closed my eyes they
might never open again—I might slumber on forever.
I cannot tell if others have endured the same torture; I only know
that my own life was made a torment by it. Death ever rose between
me and all I loved; I can remember how the thought of it poisoned
the happiest moments I spent with Marguerite. During the first
months of our married life, when she lay sleeping by my side and I
dreamed of a fair future for her and with her, the foreboding of
some fatal separation dashed my hopes aside and embittered my
delights. Perhaps we should be parted on the morrow—nay, perhaps
in an hour’s time. Then utter discouragement assailed me; I
wondered what the bliss of being united availed me if it were to end
in so cruel a disruption.
My morbid imagination reveled in scenes of mourning. I speculated
as to who would be the first to depart, Marguerite or I. Either
alternative caused me harrowing grief, and tears rose to my eyes at
the thought of our shattered lives. At the happiest periods of my
existence I often became a prey to grim dejection such as nobody
could understand but which was caused by the thought of impending
nihility. When I was most successful I was to general wonder most
depressed. The fatal question, “What avails it?” rang like a knell
in my ears. But the sharpest sting of this torment was that it came
with a secret sense of shame, which rendered me unable to confide my
thoughts to another. Husband and wife lying side by side in the
darkened room may quiver with the same shudder and yet remain mute,
for people do not mention death any more than they pronounce certain
obscene words. Fear makes it nameless.
I was musing thus while my dear Marguerite knelt sobbing at my feet.
It grieved me sorely to be unable to comfort her by telling her that
I suffered no pain. If death were merely the annihilation of the
flesh it had been foolish of me to harbor so much dread. I
experienced a selfish kind of restfulness in which all my cares were
forgotten. My memory had become extraordinarily vivid. My whole
life passed before me rapidly like a play in which I no longer acted
a part; it was a curious and enjoyable sensation—I seemed to hear a
far-off voice relating my own history.
I saw in particular a certain spot in the country near Guerande, on
the way to Piriac. The road turns sharply, and some scattered pine
trees carelessly dot a rocky slope. When I was seven years old I
used to pass through those pines with my father as far as a
crumbling old house, where Marguerite’s parents gave me pancakes.
They were salt gatherers and earned a scanty livelihood by working
the adjacent salt marshes. Then I remembered the school at Nantes,
where I had grown up, leading a monotonous life within its ancient
walls and yearning for the broad horizon of Guerande and the salt
marshes stretching to the limitless sea widening under the sky.
Next came a blank—my father was dead. I entered the hospital as
clerk to the managing board and led a dreary life with one solitary
diversion: my Sunday visits to the old house on Piriac road. The
saltworks were doing badly; poverty reigned in the land, and
Marguerite’s parents were nearly penniless. Marguerite, when merely
a child, had been fond of me because I trundled her about in a
wheelbarrow, but on the morning when I asked her in marriage she
shrank from me with a frightened gesture, and I realized that she
thought me hideous. Her parents, however, consented at once; they
looked upon my offer as a godsend, and the daughter submissively
acquiesced. When she became accustomed to the idea of marrying me
she did not seem to dislike it so much. On our wedding day at
Guerande the rain fell in torrents, and when we got home my bride
had to take off her dress, which was soaked through, and sit in her
petticoats.
That was all the youth I ever had. We did not remain long in our
province. One day I found my wife in tears. She was miserable;
life was so dull; she wanted to get away. Six months later I had
saved a little money by taking in extra work after office hours, and
through the influence of a friend of my father’s I obtained a petty
appointment in Paris. I started off to settle there with the dear
little woman so that she might cry no more. During the night, which
we spent in the third-class railway carriage, the seats being very
hard, I took her in my arms in order that she might sleep.
That was the past, and now I had just died on the narrow couch of a
Paris lodginghouse, and my wife was crouching on the floor, crying
bitterly. The white light before my left eye was growing dim, but I
remembered the room perfectly. On the left there was a chest of
drawers, on the right a mantelpiece surmounted by a damaged clock
without a pendulum, the hands of which marked ten minutes past ten.
The window overlooked the Rue Dauphine, a long, dark street. All
Paris seemed to pass below, and the noise was so great that the
window shook.
We knew nobody in the city; we had hurried our departure, but I was
not expected at the office till the following Monday. Since I had
taken to my bed I had wondered at my imprisonment in this narrow
room into which we had tumbled after a railway journey of fifteen
hours, followed by a hurried, confusing transit through the noisy
streets. My wife had nursed me with smiling tenderness, but I knew
that she was
Comments (0)