They went up to her, pretending they had not heard.
‘How much a go, Madame?’
‘Twenty sous, Messieurs.’
And they burst out laughing all over again. But Madame Bouchard, in her blue gown, just stared at them innocently, as if she had never seen them before, and a tremendous round of gambling began. For a quarter of an hour, the thing squeaked round and round, as they took it in turns. Monsieur d’Escorailles won two dozen egg cups, three little mirrors, seven terracotta figurines, and five cigarette cases, while Monsieur La Rouquette won two packets of lace, a dressing-table tidy on a gilded tin stand, some glasses, a candlestick, and a box with a mirror. In the end, Madame Bouchard, becoming more and more agitated, cried:
‘That’s enough, you’re having too much luck! I won’t let you have another go… Come on, off with you, take your stuff.’
She had made two big piles on a table. Monsieur La Rouquette pretended to be very surprised, and asked if he could swap his pile for the little bunch of violets she was wearing in her hair, but she said no.
‘Of course not. You won all that, didn’t you? Then please take it away!’
‘Madame is quite right,’ said Monsieur d’Escorailles, gravely. ‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth. I’ll be damned if I’m going to leave a single egg cup behind! I’m becoming a real miser, I am.’
He spread out his handkerchief and knotted everything into a neat bundle. Then there was a new burst of hilarity, for Monsieur La Rouquette’s pretended embarrassment at the size of his pile was very entertaining. Now Madame Correur, who had so far maintained a smiling, matronly dignity at the back of the tent, stepped forward with her big red face. She would be happy to swap, she said.
‘No, no,’ the young deputy hastened to say. ‘You can have it all, it’s a present.’
Still they did not leave, but stayed there making cheeky remarks to Madame Bouchard in low voices. The sight of her, they said, made people’s heads spin more than her turntable did. What was the point of that device? It wasn’t half as good as forfeits. They would love to play forfeits, with such nice things to win. Madame Bouchard giggled like a silly young girl and fluttered her eyelashes. She began to sway her hips, just like a peasant lass being teased; and Madame Correur went into raptures, and kept repeating:
‘She’s so delightful! So delightful!’
In the end, however, Madame Bouchard was obliged to rap Monsieur d’Escorailles over the knuckles. He wanted to know how the tombola turntable worked, claiming trickery was involved. When would they leave her in peace, she asked. And when at last she had got rid of them, she resumed her stall-keeper’s patter:
‘Come on, Messieurs. Twenty sous a go… Try your luck, Messieurs.’
At that moment, standing up to see over the crowd, Monsieur Kahn dropped down onto his chair, and murmured:
‘Here’s Rougon… Let’s pretend we haven’t seen him, eh?’
Rougon was slowly making his way through the main hall. He stopped to have a go at Madame Bouchard’s tombola and he bought a rose from Madame de Combelot for three louis. But when he had done his charitable duty, he seemed about to leave. He turned away from the crowd and was making for a door when, suddenly, he glanced into the refreshment hall and went in, holding his head high. Monsieur d’Escorailles and Monsieur La Rouquette had joined Monsieur Kahn, Monsieur Béjuin, and the Colonel, and now Monsieur Bouchard too had turned up. And when the Minister passed by, they all felt a thrill; with his huge frame, he seemed so solid, so strong. He gave them a friendly but imperious greeting as he passed, and sat down at a nearby table. He gazed round, to left and right, as if to challenge all those whom he felt were staring at him.
Clorinde went up to him, regally trailing her heavy yellow silk gown behind her. Affecting a vulgarity that seemed faintly ironic, she asked what he would like.
‘Well, now, I wonder,’ he replied affably. ‘I never really drink… What have you got?’
She ran through the liqueurs: cognac, rum, curaçao, kirsch, chartreuse, anisette, vespétro, kummel.
‘No, no, just bring me a glass of water with some sugar, please.’
She went across to the bar and brought him his order, still with her regal manner. And she remained standing at his table, watching him stir the lumps of sugar into the water. Still smiling, he began a little small talk.
‘How are you? I haven’t seen you for ages.’
‘I’ve been staying at Fontainebleau,’ she replied, simply.
He looked up and gazed at her. Then it was her turn:
‘And you? Are you happy with things? Is everything going as you want?’
‘Absolutely,’ he replied.
‘That’s good.’
And she busied herself about his table, like a real waitress, a mean look in her eyes, as if at any moment she might burst out in triumph. But at last she decided to leave him, and stretched up to see into the main hall. Her face lit up. Putting her hand on his shoulder, she said:
‘I think somebody is looking for you.’
It was Merle, weaving his way between the tables and chairs. He begged His Excellency’s pardon, but just after His Excellency had left, a letter arrived. It was the letter His Excellency had been waiting for since that morning. So, although he had not been asked, he had thought…
‘Quite right,’ Rougon interrupted, ‘let me have it.’
The commissioner handed him a large envelope, then began to wander round. At a glance, Rougon had recognized the handwriting. The address had been written by the Emperor himself. It was the reply to his letter of resignation. Cold beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. But he did not blanch. Calmly, he slipped the letter into the inside pocket of his frock coat, while continuing to brave the eyes staring at him from Monsieur Kahn’s table, where Clorinde had gone for a moment, to exchange a few words. Now the whole gang was eyeing him, studying his every movement, intensely curious.
Clorinde came back and planted herself in front of Rougon. At last, he drank half of his glass of sugared water, then tried to find a gallant word.
‘You’re looking very lovely today. If queens became waitresses…’
She cut his compliments short and brazenly said:
‘Why don’t you read it?’
He pretended not to understand. Then, as if remembering, he said:
‘Oh, of course, the letter. All right, if it be your pleasure.’
He carefully slit the envelope open with a penknife. He read the few lines at a glance. The Emperor accepted his resignation. For nearly a minute he held the sheet in front of him, as if rereading it. He was afraid of losing control of his facial expression. He felt a tremendous inner convulsion, a refusal of his entire being to accept his fall. He was shaken to the core. If he had not made an enormous effort, he might have cried out or smashed the table with his fists. Still staring at the letter, he again saw the Emperor as he had seen him at Saint-Cloud, with his soft voice and his perpetual smile, repeating that he had confidence in Rougon and confirming his former directives. What incubation of disfavour had there been since then, behind that inscrutable expression, for this to break forth in one night, after he had confirmed him in power a score of times?
At last, by a supreme effort, Rougon regained his self-control. He looked up, his face impassive. With an air of indifference, he put the letter back in his pocket. But Clorinde had bent down and spread her hands on the table. The corners of her lips quivered, and she could not prevent herself from saying:
‘I knew. I was there until this morning… You poor thing.’
She commiserated in such a cruelly mocking tone that he looked up again. They gazed into each other’s eyes. She no longer tried to hide anything. Now she could enjoy the satisfaction for which she had been waiting so many months. She could savour the delight of being able to reveal herself as an implacable enemy who had taken her revenge.
‘There was nothing I could do,’ she continued. ‘You probably don’t know…’
She did not finish her sentence, but said sharply:
‘Guess who will take your place.’
He waved that aside. He did not care. Her eyes bored into him as she spat out:
‘My husband!’
Rougon’s mouth was dry. He took another gulp of the sugared water. Into these two words she put everything, her anger at having once been rejected by him, all her resentment, so artfully directed, and her feminine delight in defeating the man who was thought to be the most powerful of them all. Having conquered, she could indulge in torturing and taunting him with her triumph. She flaunted the hurtful aspects of it. Heavens! Her husband was hardly a superior being. She admitted it, even joked about it. The point she wanted to make was that anyone would do, she would have made Merle a minister, had that been her whim. Yes, commissioner Merle, or any nitwit who happened to be passing, no matter who: Rougon would have had a fitting successor. All this was proof of woman’s supreme power. And then, to rub it in even more, she suddenly became maternal and protective, a dispenser of good advice.
‘You see, my dear, as I often told you, you’re wrong to despise women. Women are nothing like the useless creatures you think they are. It used to make me so angry to hear you describe us as mad creatures, bothersome necessities, and so on, that hold men back… Look at my husband! Have I held him back? I wanted to make you see that. I promised myself that great pleasure, you remember, the day we had a certain conversation. You see now, don’t you? But no hard feelings… You’re very strong, my dear, but do get this into your head: a woman can always get the better of you if she puts her mind to it.’
A trifle pale, Rougon smiled up at her.
‘Well, you may be right,’ he said slowly, thinking back over their relationship. ‘I just had my strength. You had…’
‘I had something else you don’t have!’ she concluded, with a bluntness that was almost grandiloquent, such was her contempt for convention.
He did not complain. She had drawn on his strength to conquer him; she was now turning against him the lessons she had learnt from him, as his docile pupil, during those lovely afternoons in the Rue Marbeuf. It was a combination of ingratitude and betrayal, and he accepted its bitter taste as a man of experience. His only concern now, as their story drew to a close, was to know whether he fully understood her. He recalled his earlier attempts, all those fruitless efforts to grasp the hidden workings of this superb, extraordinary piece of machinery. The stupidity of men was, indeed, enormous.
Twice Clorinde left him, to serve liqueurs. Then, fully satisfied, she resumed her regal progress round the tables, pretending no longer to be interested in him. As he watched her, he saw her go up to a man with a huge beard, a foreign visitor whose prodigal spending was the talk of Paris. The gentleman had just finished a glass of Malaga.
‘How much, Madame?’ he asked, rising from his chair.
‘Five francs, Monsieur. All our drinks are five francs.’
He paid. Then, in the same tone, with his foreign accent, he asked:
‘And how much for a kiss?’
‘A hundred thousand, Monsieur,’ she replied, without a moment’s hesitation.
The man sat down, tore a page out of a small notebook, scribbled something on it, planted a resounding kiss on her cheek, handed her the piece of paper, and phlegmatically withdrew. Everyone smiled in admiration.
‘It’s all a question of price,’ murmured Clorinde, rejoining Rougon.
He saw in this remark another allusion. To him she had said: never. And now this chaste man, who had accepted the calamity of his fall without flinching, felt deeply hurt by the collar she was wearing so brazenly. She bent down, teasing him, turning her neck to make the pearl in the gold bell tinkle. The chain hung down, as if still warm from the hand of the master. The diamonds sparkled on the velvet, allowing him to read the secret everybody knew. Never had he been more eaten up with that secret jealousy, that burning feeling of pride and envy which he had occasionally experienced in the presence of the Emperor. He would have preferred to imagine her in the arms of the stable boy people whispered about. The thought that she was now quite out of reach, at the summit of society, slave of a man whose mere word made men bow their heads, inflamed all his old desire for her.
Clorinde clearly sensed his agony, and added to it by making a cruel gesture: with her eyes she indicated Madame de Combelot, in her florist’s cage, selling roses, and with a malicious laugh she murmured:
‘Look! There’s poor Madame de Combelot, still waiting!’
Rougon drained his sugared water. He was choking. He took out his purse, and stammered:
‘How much?’
‘Five francs.’
Clorinde tossed the coin into her pouch, then held out her hand again and said calmly, as a joke:
‘No tip for the waitress?’
He looked in his purse again, took out two sous, and dropped them into her palm. This was the only form of retaliation his crude, parvenu mind could think of. Despite her sangfroid, she turned bright red, before regaining her goddess-like hauteur. She said goodbye and walked away.
‘Thank you, Your Excellency,’ she said.
Rougon could not face getting up immediately. His legs felt like rubber, he was afraid he might stumble, and he wanted to depart as he had come, massive and impassive. He was especially afraid of walking past his former intimates, whose craning ears and staring eyes had not missed a single detail of his encounter with Clorinde. For several minutes he gazed about him, affecting indifference. He reflected. So another act of his political life was over. He was falling, undermined, gnawed at, devoured by his own gang. His powerful shoulders were giving way under the commitments and follies and shabby deeds for which he had been responsible, out of his characteristic braggadocio, his need to be the generous but feared master. His bull-like strength simply made his fall even harder and the collapse of his support all the greater. The very conditions of power, the need to have at one’s back appetites to satisfy, and to keep one’s position by abusing one’s credit, had inevitably made his fall just a matter of time. He began to think back on his gang, with their sharp teeth taking fresh bites out of him every day. They were all round him. They clambered on to his lap, they reached up to his chest, to his throat, till they were strangling him. They had taken possession of every part of him, using his feet to climb, his hands to steal, his jaws to tear and devour. They lived on his flesh, deriving all their pleasure and health from it, feasting on it without thought of the future. And now, having sucked him dry, and beginning to hear the very foundations cracking, they were scurrying away, like rats who know when a building is about to collapse, after they have gnawed great holes in the walls. The whole gang was healthy and sleek. They were feeding on other flesh now. Monsieur Kahn had just sold his Niort–Angers branch line to Count de Marsy. The Colonel was about to obtain the following week an appointment in one of the Imperial palaces. Monsieur Bouchard had been formally assured that his protégé, the promising Georges Duchesne, would be appointed deputy chief clerk as soon as Delestang was appointed minsister of the interior. Madame Correur was pleased to learn that Madame Martineau was very ill, and could already see herself installed in the family house at Coulonges, and would live on her income, like any good bourgeois lady, doing charitable works in the district. Monsieur Béjuin was confident now that the Emperor would go to see his glassworks, in the early autumn. Finally, severely taken to task by his parents, Monsieur d’Escorailles had knelt at Clorinde’s feet and would be made sub-prefect merely for having so admired the way she poured glasses of liqueur. And Rougon, in comparison with this collection of gorged creatures, was smaller than before, so that it was now he who felt them to be huge, crushing him with their size. He was afraid to get up from his chair in case he stumbled and they laughed.
However, his head gradually cleared, he felt stronger, and rose to his feet. He was just pushing back the little zinc-topped table, to get through, when in came Delestang, on de Marsy’s arm. A very s
trange story was going round about the latter. According to some, he had joined Clorinde at Fontainebleau the previous week with the express purpose of facilitating her secret meetings with the Emperor. His task had been to keep the Empress amused and occupied. Of course, spicy though the story was, it was no more than that. Men always do each other little favours of that kind. But in it, Rougon scented de Marsy’s revenge, working in concert with Clorinde for his fall, turning against his successor at the ministry of the interior the very weapons used some months previously at Compiègne to effect his own fall; it was quite witty, so to speak, and had a touch of lewdness that was almost elegant. Since de Marsy’s return from Fontainebleau, he and Delestang were inseparable.
Monsieur Kahn and Monsieur Béjuin, the Colonel, indeed the whole gang, rushed to meet the new minister. The nomination would not be published till the next day’s Moniteur, underneath the announcement of Rougon’s resignation; but the decree was signed, and they could celebrate. They shook hands vigorously, sniggering, whispering, in a great burst of enthusiasm which they made no attempt to hide from the onlookers around them. It was the beginning of the process whereby the intimates would gradually take possession of their man, kissing his hands and feet before seizing hold of his arms and legs. Indeed, Delestang already belonged to them: one held him by the right arm, another by the left, a third had seized a button on his frock coat, a fourth, behind his back, had reached up to whisper something in his ear. There he stood, his head held high, affable, dignified, wearing the expression, at once so proper and so ridiculous, of a monarch on a state visit, proffered bouquets by the wives of sub-prefects, and as seen in official photographs. This apotheosis of mediocrity left Rougon aghast. All the same, he could not help smiling.
‘I always said Delestang would go far,’ he murmured with an ironic smile, as Count de Marsy, hand outstretched, came to greet him.
The Count responded with a faint curl of his lip. Since he had become friends with Delestang, having aided and abetted his wife, de Marsy was no doubt enjoying himself tremendously. Exquisitely polite, he chatted with Rougon for a few moments. In their never-ending struggle, these two temperamental opposites, each in his own way a strong man, exchanged bows at the end of each duel. They were nicely matched, and invariably reserved the right to fight again. Rougon had drawn de Marsy’s blood, de Marsy had now drawn Rougon’s, and so it would go on, until one of them failed to stand up again. Perhaps, at bottom, neither really wanted to kill the other. The combat kept them amused, their rivalry made life interesting. Besides, each felt somehow that he was a counterweight essential to the stability of the Empire, one the iron fist, the other the gloved hand.