‘De Marsy is a man of great intelligence. I consider it an honour to have such an opponent… He has tried his hand at everything. He was an army colonel at twenty-eight. Later, he ran a big factory. Since then he has worked in agriculture, finance, and commerce. I understand that he even paints portraits and writes novels.’
Clorinde, forgetting to eat, remained very pensive.
‘I spoke with him the other evening,’ she said, very softly. ‘He’s very impressive… His mother was a queen!’*
‘In my view,’ Rougon continued, ‘his cleverness tends to spoil him. I understand strength differently. I’ve heard de Marsy make puns on very serious occasions. All the same, he has done very well. He’s almost as powerful as the Emperor. All those upstarts are very lucky… His outstanding quality is his firmness; he governs with an iron hand, he has courage and determination, and yet he’s very subtle.’
Unconsciously, she glanced down at Rougon’s own huge hands. He noticed, and continued with a smile:
‘My hands are just paws, aren’t they? That’s why de Marsy and I have never got on. He wields his sword very gracefully, cutting men in two without ever staining his white gloves. I use more of a bludgeoning technique.’
He had clenched his fists, which were fleshy and had hairy fingers; he held them up, delighting in their size. Clorinde took her other slice of bread and butter and buried her teeth in it, still deep in thought. At last, she looked up at Rougon.
‘And what about you?’ she asked.
‘You want my story now, do you?’ he said. ‘Nothing is simpler. My grandfather was a market gardener. I was an insignificant little lawyer, buried in the provinces, until I was thirty-eight. I was completely unknown. Unlike our friend Kahn, I did not give my undying support to every regime that came along. Nor did I go to the École polytechnique, like Béjuin. I don’t have an impressive name, like little d’Escorailles, or a handsome face, like poor Combelot. I don’t have the excellent connections of La Rouquette, who owes his seat to his sister, General Llorentz’s widow, now a lady-in-waiting. My father did not leave me five million francs, made in the wine trade, like Delestang’s father. I was not born on the steps of a throne, like de Marsy, nor did I grow up hanging onto the skirts of a bluestocking, Talleyrand’s mistress. No, I made myself what I am, all I have are these fists…’
He clapped them together, with a loud laugh, to make light of it all. But he had straightened up and might have been cracking stones in those fists of his. Clorinde watched in admiration.
‘I was nothing, and now I will be what it pleases me to be,’ he said, forgetting himself, as if talking to himself. ‘I have great power. When all the others talk about their devotion to the Empire, I just shrug my shoulders. Do they really love it? Do they really feel it? Would they not accommodate themselves to any regime? I became what I am with the Empire; I made the Empire and the Empire made me… I was made Knight of the Legion of Honour after 10 December, Officer in January 1852, Commander on 15 August 1854, and Grand Officer three months ago. For a short while, when the Emperor was president, I was Minister of Public Works; then the Emperor sent me to Britain on a special mission; after that came the Council of State and the Senate…’
‘And tomorrow, what will that bring?’ Clorinde asked with a laugh, trying to hide her burning curiosity.
He looked at her and stopped short.
‘You’re very inquisitive, Mademoiselle Machiavelli,’ he said.
This made her swing her legs even more. For a while not a word was spoken. Seeing her again lost in thought, Rougon decided that this was a good moment to get something out of her.
‘Women…’, he began.
But she interrupted, her eyes far away, but, smiling faintly at her own thoughts, she murmured:
‘Oh, women have other ways of exercising power.’
This was all he was able to get her to say. She finished her bread and butter, drained a glass of pure water, and then, showing her equestrian skill by leaping up onto the table, she cried:
‘Luigi!’
For the last few moments the painter had been pacing up and down, gnawing impatiently at his moustaches. Now, with a sigh, he went back to his easel and took up his palette. The three minutes’ grace Clorinde had asked for had lasted a quarter of an hour. She had remained standing on the table, still wrapped in her black lace. Finding her pose again, she discarded the lace with a single movement. She had turned back into marble, and had again lost all sense of modesty.
The stream of carriages in the Champs-Élysées had thinned out. The setting sun poured a golden haze down the Avenue, powdering the trees with light, as if the carriage wheels were throwing up a reddish dust. In the light from the tall bay windows, Clorinde’s shoulders shone with a silky golden hue. Slowly, the sky began to pale.
‘Is Count de Marsy’s marriage with that Wallachian princess going ahead?’ Clorinde asked a moment later.*
‘As far as I know,’ Rougon replied. ‘She’s very rich. De Marsy’s always short of money. And they say he’s madly in love with her.’
Nothing else broke the silence. Rougon sat there, quite at home, with no thought of going. He was thinking things over, sifting through his impressions. Clorinde was certainly most attractive. He was dreaming about her as if he had already left; with his eyes on the floor, he sank into thoughts which, though only half formulated, were very pleasurable, and secretly titillated him. He felt as if he was emerging from a warm bath, his limbs overcome with a delicious languor. He could smell a peculiar aroma, strong, almost sweet. He would have been happy to lie down on one of the sofas and doze off, enveloped in that aroma.
He was suddenly awakened from his thoughts by the sound of voices. A tall, elderly man, whom he had not seen enter, was planting a kiss on Clorinde’s forehead. With a smile, she was leaning forward at the edge of the table to receive it.
‘Hello, my darling,’ the visitor said. ‘You’re absolutely lovely! So you’re showing them all everything you’ve got?’
He sniggered slightly, and when Clorinde, suddenly embarrassed, gathered her scrap of black lace round her, he hastened to add:
‘No! It’s fine! Come on, you can show everything… My dear child, you’re not the first naked woman I’ve seen!’
Then, turning towards Rougon, whom he addressed as ‘My dear colleague’ as he shook his hand, he continued:
‘This young thing forgot herself many a time on my lap when she was little! Now she’s got breasts that would poke your eyes out!’
It was old Monsieur de Plouguern. He was seventy. Sent to the Chamber first under Louis-Philippe to represent Finistère, he was one of the Legitimist deputies who had made the pilgrimage to Belgrave Square;* and after the subsequent vote of censure on himself and his companions, he resigned. Later, after the 1848 Revolution, he developed a sudden liking for the Second Republic, which he welcomed very warmly as a deputy in the Constituent Assembly. But now that the Emperor had provided him with a well-deserved retirement in the Senate, he was a Bonapartist. And throughout all this, he remained a perfect gentleman. On occasion his great humility allowed him the pleasure of a touch of opposition. Being ungrateful amused him. A sceptic through and through, he championed religion and the family. He thought he owed this to his name, one of the most illustrious in Brittany. There were days when he thought the Empire immoral and made no bones about saying so. Yet his own life had been full of secret love affairs. He was a libertine with an inventive mind, who delighted in the most refined pleasures of the flesh; stories were told of his activities as an old man that made many a young man quite jealous. It was on a trip to Italy that he had first met Countess Balbi, whose lover he had been for nearly thirty years; after breaks which lasted for years the pair would get together for three nights in whatever town happened to reunite them. According to one account, Clorinde was his daughter, but neither he nor the Countess was really sure; and since Clorinde had grown into a young woman, shapely and desirable, he made out that he had b
een a close friend of her father. He would ogle her endlessly and, as an old family friend, took great liberties with her. Tall, lean, and bony, Monsieur de Plouguern looked like Voltaire, whom indeed he secretly worshipped.
‘Godfather,’ cried Clorinde, ‘don’t you want to look at my portrait?’
She called him thus because he was such an old friend. He stood behind Luigi and squinted like a connoisseur at the canvas.
‘Delightful!’ he murmured.
Rougon too went to have a look, and Clorinde herself jumped down from the table to see. All three were entranced. It was a very fine piece of work. The artist had already covered the whole canvas in a light scumble of pink, white, and yellow, all as luminous as watercolour; and the face, with its cupid’s lips, its arched eyebrows, and the delicate vermilion scumble of its cheeks, had the pretty smile of a doll. She was a chocolate-box Diana.
‘Oh, look at that, the little mole near my eye!’ cried Clorinde, clapping her hands in admiration. ‘Isn’t Luigi amazing, he doesn’t miss a thing!’
Rougon, usually bored by paintings, was charmed. At this moment, he felt that he understood art. He pronounced judgement with absolute conviction:
‘Very well drawn indeed!’
‘And excellent colour, too,’ said Monsieur de Plouguern. ‘The shoulders look like real flesh… And the breasts! The left one, especially, looks as fresh as a rosebud… And what arms! This delightful creature has got the most amazing arms! I find that curve just above the crook of the arm excellent! Perfect modelling!’
He turned to the artist:
‘Monsieur Pozzo,’ he said, ‘I congratulate you. I’ve already seen your Woman Bathing. But this portrait is far better… Why don’t you have an exhibition? I once knew a diplomat who played the violin superbly, but that didn’t prevent him from pursuing his career in the diplomatic service.’
Most flattered, Luigi bowed. But by now the light was beginning to fade, and as he wanted to finish an ear, he begged Clorinde to resume her pose for just ten more minutes. Monsieur de Plouguern and Rougon went on talking about painting. Rougon said that special studies had prevented him from following developments in art during the last few years; but he declared that he greatly appreciated fine work. He ventured to say that colour left him rather cold; a fine drawing gave him full satisfaction, a drawing, that is, which was capable of edifying him and inspiring him with great thoughts. For his part, Monsieur de Plouguern only liked the old masters. He had visited all the galleries of Europe and really could not understand how men dared to paint any more. All the same, the previous month he had had a small sitting room decorated by a completely unknown artist who really had great talent.
‘He painted some little cupids, with flowers and foliage, all quite remarkable,’ he said. ‘You could almost pick the flowers. And he put in insects too—butterflies, ordinary flies, and maybugs. You’d think they were real. It’s all very cheering… I do like paintings like that.’*
‘The purpose of art is not to make us sad,’ concluded Rougon.
At this point, as they slowly paced the room together, Monsieur de Plouguern trod on something which broke with a little crack like a pea splitting.
‘What on earth was that?’ he cried.
He picked up a rosary which had slipped from an armchair onto which Clorinde must have emptied her pockets. A glass bead close to the cross was smashed; and the crucifix too, a little piece of silver, had had one of its arms bent back and crushed flat. Cupping the rosary in his hand, the old man sniggered, and said:
‘My darling, why do you leave these little toys of yours all over the place?’
Clorinde, however, had turned bright red. She leapt down from the table, her lips trembling, her eyes clouded with anger. Quickly drawing the lace round her, she stuttered:
‘You wicked, wicked man! You’ve broken my rosary!’
Weeping like a child, she snatched it from him.
‘Come, come,’ said Monsieur de Plouguern, still laughing. ‘Just look at the pious little thing! The other morning she nearly scratched my eyes out because when I saw she had a branch of box over her bed, I asked her what she swept with her little broom… Do stop crying, you silly child! God’s fine, I haven’t broken him in any way!’
‘Yes, you have!’ she cried. ‘You’ve hurt him.’
She no longer addressed him with the intimate tu.* With trembling fingers, she managed to get the broken bead off the cord; then, sobbing more desperately than ever, she tried to straighten the crucifix, wiping it with her fingertips as if she saw drops of blood forming on the metal.
‘The Pope gave me this,’ she muttered, ‘the first time I went to see him with Maman. The Pope knows me very well, he calls me his “pretty apostle”, because I once said I’d be prepared to die for him… It was my lucky rosary. Now it’s broken, it will attract the Devil…’
‘Come on, give it to me,’ Monsieur de Plouguern said, interrupting her. ‘You’ll break your nails if you try to straighten it… Silver is very hard, my dear.’
He took the rosary and gently tried to bend the arm of the crucifix back, without breaking it off. Clorinde had stopped crying and was following his every movement. Rougon too leaned forward, still smiling. He was shockingly irreligious, so much so that on two occasions Clorinde had nearly quarrelled with him because of his ill-judged witticisms.
‘Blast!’ muttered Monsieur de Plouguern. ‘God is made of tough stuff. I’m afraid of snapping it right off… Then you would have a different kind of God, wouldn’t you?’
He tried again; and the crucifix broke clean in two.
‘Damnation!’ cried Monsieur de Plouguern. ‘That’s done it!’
Rougon had begun to laugh openly. But Clorinde, glaring at them, her face convulsed with anger, clenched her fists and suddenly pushed them backwards, as if to turn them out of the house. Completely losing control of herself now, she began to hurl curses at them in Italian.
‘Oh, she’s going to beat us, she’s going to beat us,’ Monsieur de Plouguern said, very amused.
‘You see what superstition does to people,’ Rougon muttered under his breath.
But the older man suddenly became serious; and when the great man carried on regardless with his stock phrases about the hateful influence of the clergy, the lamentable education received by Catholic girls, and the degradation of an Italy run by priests, he suddenly declared:
‘Religion is what makes states great!’
‘When it doesn’t rot them like an ulcer,’ retorted Rougon. ‘Look at history. If the Emperor failed to keep the bishops under control, they’d soon be at his throat.’
Now it was the turn of Monsieur de Plouguern to lose his temper. He defended Rome. He spoke of his lifelong convictions. Without religion, men became animals again. He proceeded to plead the great cause of the family. The present age was an age of abomination. Never before had vice been so blatant, never had lack of faith sewn such confusion in men’s hearts.
‘I don’t want to hear about your Empire!’ he ended up shouting. ‘It’s the bastard child of the Revolution… We all know your Empire dreams of humiliating the Church. But we’re ready, we’ll not go like lambs to the slaughter… Just try, my dear Monsieur Rougon, to air your beliefs in the Senate.’
‘Don’t try to argue with him,’ Clorinde interjected. ‘If you provoke him, he’ll only end up spitting on Jesus. He’s a follower of the Devil.’
Rougon, stunned by this outburst, gave in, and silence ensued. Clorinde looked on the floor for the broken fragment of her crucifix; when she found it, she painstakingly wrapped the pieces in a scrap of newspaper. By now she had calmed down.
‘By the way, my darling,’ said Monsieur de Plouguern suddenly, ‘I didn’t tell you why I called. I’ve got a box at the Palais-Royal this evening, and I’m taking you with me.’
‘What a godfather!’ cried Clorinde, once more pink with delight. ‘We’ll go and wake Maman!’
She gave him a kiss—‘for his trouble’,
she said. She turned to Rougon with a smile, held out her hand, and with a delightful pout, said:
‘You’re not cross, are you? You shouldn’t annoy me with your nasty pagan ideas… I can’t help it, when people tease me about my religion. I could break with my closest friends.’
Luigi had now pushed his easel into a corner, seeing that he would not have time to finish the ear that afternoon. Taking his hat, he tapped Clorinde on the shoulder, to tell her he was going. She saw him out onto the landing, and closed the door behind them; but they bade farewell so noisily that a little squeal from Clorinde, ending in a stifled laugh, was quite audible. When she reappeared, she said:
‘I’ll go and change, unless godfather would like to take me to the theatre like this.’
All three found this idea most amusing. Dusk had fallen. When Rougon left, Clorinde went downstairs with him, leaving Monsieur de Plouguern alone for a little while, just long enough, she said, to allow her to slip on a frock. It was already quite dark on the stairs. Without a word, she led the way, so slowly that he felt her gauze tunic brush against his knees. Then, reaching the door to her bedroom, she entered; she took a couple of steps before she turned round. He had followed her. The two windows shed a whitish haze on the unmade bed, the forgotten washbowl, the cat still sleeping on the pile of clothes.
‘You really aren’t cross with me?’ she asked again, almost whispering, and holding out her hands.
He swore he was not. He took her hands in his, then slid his fingers up her arms, to the elbows, gently feeling his way under the black lace, lest his thick fingers tore the wrap. She had raised her arms slightly, as if to make it easier for him. They were standing in the shadow of the screen and could not see each other’s faces clearly. Here, in her bedroom, he found the close air rather suffocating, and was again overcome by the strong, almost sugary smell that had intoxicated him earlier. But, once past the elbows, he became less gentle, he felt Clorinde move away from him, and heard her cry through the open door: