Émile Zola - His Masterpiece

‘Pray be seated, mademoiselle. This is really a surprise. You are too kind.’

Once seated, Christine recovered her equanimity. He looked so droll with his wild sweeping gestures, and she felt so conscious of his shyness that she began to smile, and bravely held out the bunch of roses.

‘Look here; I wished to show you that I am not ungrateful.’

At first he said nothing, but stood staring at her, thunderstruck. When he saw, though, that she was not making fun of him, he shook both her hands, with almost sufficient energy to dislocate them. Then he at once put the flowers in his water-jug, repeating:

‘Ah! now you are a good fellow, you really are. This is the first time I pay that compliment to a woman, honour bright.’

He came back to her, and, looking straight into her eyes, he asked:

‘Then you have not altogether forgotten me?’

‘You see that I have not,’ she replied, laughing.

‘Why, then, did you wait two months before coming to see me?’

Again she blushed. The falsehood she was about to tell revived her embarrassment for a moment.

‘But you know that I am not my own mistress,’ she said. ‘Oh, Madame Vanzade is very kind to me, only she is a great invalid, and never leaves the house. But she grew anxious as to my health and compelled me to go out to breathe a little fresh air.’

She did not allude to the shame which she had felt during the first few days after her adventure on the Quai de Bourbon. Finding herself in safety, beneath the old lady’s roof, the recollection of the night she had spent in Claude’s room had filled her with remorse; but she fancied at last that she had succeeded in dismissing the matter from her mind. It was no longer anything but a bad dream, which grew more indistinct each day. Then, how it was she could not tell, but amidst the profound quietude of her existence, the image of that young man who had befriended her had returned to her once more, becoming more and more precise, till at last it occupied her daily thoughts. Why should she forget him? She had nothing to reproach him with; on the contrary, she felt she was his debtor. The thought of seeing him again, dismissed at first, struggled against later on, at last became an all-absorbing craving. Each evening the temptation to go and see him came strong upon her in the solitude of her own room. She experienced an uncomfortable irritating feeling, a vague desire which she could not define, and only calmed down somewhat on ascribing this troubled state of mind to a wish to evince her gratitude. She was so utterly alone, she felt so stifled in that sleepy abode, the exuberance of youth seethed so strongly within her, her heart craved so desperately for friendship!

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Some of the articles will be found in the volume of his miscellaneous writings entitled Mes Haines .

So far as Manet is concerned, the curious reader may consult M. Antonin Proust’s interesting ‘Souvenirs,’ published in the Revue Blanche , early in 1897.

The street of the Headless woman. – ED.

Gervaise of ‘The Dram Shop’(L’Assommoir). – ED.

This aunt is Lisa of ‘The Fat and the Thin’ (Le Ventre de Paris) in a few chapters of which Claude figures. – ED.

In familiar conversation, French artists, playwrights, and novelists invariably call their productions by the slang term ‘machines.’ – ED.

The allusion is to the French Art School at Rome, and the competitions into which students enter to obtain admission to it, or to secure the prizes offered for the best exhibits which, during their term of residence, they send to Paris. – ED.

The reader will bear in mind that all these complaints made by Claude and his friends apply to the old Salons, as organized under Government control, at the time of the Second Empire. – ED.