of fierce rage, a sudden desire to live. It was the last revolt of his blood — a momentary mutiny. He again sank down on his knees, gazing straight before him. A last vision passed before his eyes in the melancholy twilight. At the end of the path, at the entrance of the Impasse Saint-Mittre, he fancied he could see aunt Dide standing erect, white and rigid like the statue of a saint, while she witnessed his agony from a distance.
At that moment he felt the cold pistol on his temple. There was a smile on Justin’s pale face. Closing his eyes, Silvere heard the long-departed dead wildly summoning him. In the darkness, he now saw nothing save Miette, wrapped in the banner, under the trees, with her eyes turned towards heaven. Then the one-eyed man fired, and all was over; the lad’s skull burst open like a ripe pomegranate; his face fell upon the stone, with his lips pressed to the spot which Miette’s feet had worn — that warm spot which still retained a trace of his dead love.
And in the evening at dessert, at the Rougons’ abode, bursts of laughter arose with the fumes from the table, which was still warm with the remains of the dinner. At last the Rougons were nibbling at the pleasures of the wealthy! Their appetites, sharpened by thirty years of restrained desire, now fell to with wolfish teeth. These fierce, insatiate wild beasts, scarcely entering upon indulgence, exulted at the birth of the Empire — the dawn of the Rush for the Spoils. The Coup d’Etat, which retrieved the fortune of the Bonapartes, also laid the foundation for that of the Rougons.
Pierre stood up, held out his glass, and exclaimed: “I drink to Prince Louis — to the Emperor!”
The gentlemen, who had drowned their jealousies in champagne, rose in a body and clinked glasses with deafening shouts. It was a fine spectacle. The bourgeois of Plassans, Roudier, Granoux, Vuillet, and all the others, wept and embraced each other over the corpse of the Republic, which as yet was scarcely cold. But a splendid idea occurred to Sicardot. He took from Felicite’s hair a pink satin bow, which she had placed over her right ear in honour of the occasion, cut off a strip of the satin with his dessert knife, and then solemnly fastened it to Rougon’s buttonhole. The latter feigned modesty, and pretended to resist. But his face beamed with joy, as he murmured: “No, I beg you, it is too soon. We must wait until the decree is published.”
“Zounds!” Sicardot exclaimed, “will you please keep that! It’s an old soldier of Napoleon who decorates you!”
The whole company burst into applause. Felicite almost swooned with delight. Silent Granoux jumped up on a chair in his enthusiasm, waving his napkin and making a speech which was lost amid the uproar. The yellow drawingroom was wild with triumph.
But the strip of pink satin fastened to Pierre’s buttonhole was not the only red spot in that triumph of the Rougons. A shoe, with a bloodstained heel, still lay forgotten under the bedstead in the adjoining room. The taper burning at Monsieur Peirotte’s bedside, over the way, gleamed too with the lurid redness of a gaping wound amidst the dark night. And yonder, far away, in the depths of the Aire Saint-Mittre, a pool of blood was congealing upon a tombstone.
THE KILL
Translated by Alexander Texeira de Mattos
Contents
CHAPTER I
On the drive home, the calash could make but little way against the obstruction of carriages returning by the edge of the lake. At one moment the block became such that it was even necessary to pull up.
The sun was setting in a pale gray October sky, streaked on the horizon with thin clouds. One last ray, falling from the distant shrubberies of the cascade, pierced the roadway, and flooded the long array of stationary carriages with pale red light. The golden glints, the bright flashes thrown by the wheels, seemed to have settled along the straw-coloured edges of the calash, while the dark-blue panels reflected bits of the surrounding landscape. And higher up, full in the red light that lit them up from behind, and gave effulgence to the brass buttons of their capes half-folded across the back of the box, sat the coachman and footman, in their dark-blue liveries, their drab breeches, and their yellow-and-black striped waistcoats, erect, solemn and patient, after the manner of well-bred servants who are in no way put out by a block of carriages. Their hats, adorned with black cockades, looked very dignified. The horses alone, a pair of splendid bays, snorted with impatience.
“Look,” said Maxime, “Laure d’Aurigny, over there, in that brougham…. Do look, Renée.”
Renée raised herself slightly, and blinked her eyes with the exquisite grimace caused by the shortness of her sight.
“I thought she had vanished from the scene,” said Renée…. “She has changed the colour of her hair, has she not?”
“Yes,” replied Maxime, laughing; “her new lover hates red.”
Awakened from the melancholy dream that for an hour had kept her silent, stretched out in the back seat of the carriage as in an invalid’s long-chair, Renée leaned forward and looked, resting her hand on the low door of the calash. Over a gown consisting of a mauve silk polonaise and tunic, trimmed with wide plaited flounces, she wore a little coat of white cloth with mauve velvet lapels, which gave her a look of great smartness. Her strange, pale, fawn-coloured hair, whose shade recalled the colour of good butter, was barely concealed by a tiny bonnet adorned with a cluster of Bengal roses. She continued to screw up her eyes with her look of an impertinent boy, her pure forehead furrowed by one long wrinkle, her upper lip protruding like a sulky child’s. Then, finding that she could not see, she took her eyeglass, a man’s double eyeglass framed in tortoiseshell, and, holding it in her hand without placing it on her nose, at her ease examined the fat Laure d’Aurigny, with an air of absolute calmness.
The carriages were still blocked. Among the massed dark patches made by the long line of broughams, of which numbers that autumn afternoon had crowded to the Bois, gleamed the glass of a carriage-window, the bit of a bridle, the plated socket of a lamp, the braid on the livery of a lackey perched on his box. Here and there a bit of stuff, a bit of a woman’s dress, silk or velvet, flashed from an open landau. Little by little a deep silence had taken the place of all the bustle that now stood dead and motionless. The occupants of the carriages could distinguish the conversation of the people on foot.
