About three o'clock the next afternoon, La Teuse and Brother Archangias, who were chatting on the parsonage-steps, saw Doctor Pascal's gig come at full gallop through the village. The whip was being vigorously brandished from beneath the lowered hood.
'Where can he be off to at that rate?' murmured the old servant. 'He will break his neck.'
The gig had just reached the rising ground on which the church was built. Suddenly, the horse reared and stopped, and the doctor's head, with its long white hair all dishevelled appeared from under the hood.
'Is Serge there?' he cried, in a voice full of indignant excitement.
La Teuse had stepped to the edge of the hill. 'Monsieur le Cure is in his room,' she said. 'He must be reading his breviary. Do you want to speak to him? Shall I call him?'
Uncle Pascal, who seemed almost distracted, made an angry gesture with his whip hand. Bending still further forward, at the risk of falling out, he replied:
'Ah! he's reading his breviary, is he? No! no! don't call him. I should strangle him, and that would do no good. I wanted to tell him that Albine was dead. Dead! do you hear me? Tell him, from me, that she is dead!'
And he drove off, lashing his horse so fiercely that it almost bolted. But, twenty paces away, he pulled up again, and once more stretching out his head, cried loudly:
'Tell him, too, from me, that she was _enceinte_! It will please him to know that.'
Then the gig rolled on wildly again, jolting dangerously as it ascended the stony hill that led to the Paradou. La Teuse was quite dumbfounded. But Brother Archangias sniggered and looked at her with savage delight glittering in his eyes. She noticed this at last, and thrust him away from her, almost making him fall down the steps.
'Be off with you!' she stammered, full of anger, seeking to relieve her feelings by abusing him. 'I shall grow to hate you. Is it possible to rejoice at any one's death? I wasn't fond of the girl, myself; but it is very sad to die at her age. Be off with you, and don't go on sniggering like that, or I will throw my scissors in your face!'
It was only about one o'clock that a peasant, who had gone to Plassans to sell vegetables, had told Doctor Pascal of Albine's death, and had added that Jeanbernat wished to see him. The doctor now was feeling a little relieved by what he had just shouted as he passed the parsonage. He had gone out of his way expressly to give himself that satisfaction. He reproached himself for the death of the girl as for a crime in which he had participated. All along the road he had never ceased overwhelming himself with insults, and though he wiped the tears from his eyes that he might see where to guide his horse, he ever angrily drove his gig over heaps of stones, as if hoping that he would overturn himself and break one of his limbs. However, when he reached the long lane that skirted the endless wall of the park, a glimmer of hope broke upon him. Perhaps Albine was only in a dead faint. The peasant had told him that she had suffocated herself with flowers. Ah! if he could only get there in time, if he could only save her! And he lashed his horse ferociously as though he were lashing himself.
It was a lovely day. The pavilion was all bathed in sunlight, just as it had been in the fair spring-time. But the leaves of the ivy which mounted to the roof were spotted and patched with rust, and bees no longer buzzed round the tall gilliflowers. Doctor Pascal hastily tethered his horse and pushed open the gate of the little garden. All around still prevailed that perfect silence amidst which Jeanbernat had been wont to smoke his pipe; but, to-day, the old man was no longer seated on his bench watching his lettuces.
'Jeanbernat!' called the doctor.
No one answered. Then, on entering the vestibule, he saw something that he had never seen before. At the end of the passage, below the dark staircase, was a door opening into the Paradou, and he could see the vast garden spreading there beneath the pale sunlight, with all its autumn melancholy, its sere and yellow foliage. The doctor hurried through the doorway and took a few steps over the damp grass.
'Ah! it is you, doctor!' said Jeanbernat in a calm voice.
The old man was digging a hole at the foot of a mulberry-tree. He had straightened his tall figure on hearing the approach of footsteps. But he promptly betook himself to his task again, throwing out at each effort a huge mass of rich soil.
'What are you doing there?' asked Doctor Pascal.
Jeanbernat straightened himself again and wiped the sweat off his face with the sleeve of his jacket. 'I am digging a hole,' he answered simply. 'She always loved the garden, and it will please her to sleep here.'
The doctor nearly choked with emotion. For a moment he stood by the edge of the grave, incapable of speaking, but watching Jeanbernat as the other sturdily dug on.
'Where is she?' he asked at last.
'Up there, in her room. I left her on the bed. I should like you to go and listen to her heart before she is put away in here. I listened myself, but I couldn't hear anything at all.'
The doctor went upstairs. The room had not been disturbed. Only a window had been opened. There the withered flowers, stifled by their own perfumes, exhaled but the faint odour of dead beauty. Within the alcove, however, there still hung an asphyxiating warmth, which seemed to trickle into the room and gradually disperse in tiny puffs. Albine, snowy-pale, with her hands upon her heart and a smile playing over her face, lay sleeping on her couch of hyacinths and tuberoses. And she was quite happy, since she was quite dead. Standing by the bedside, the doctor gazed at her for a long time, with a keen expression such as comes into the eyes of scientists who attempt to work resurrections. But he did not even disturb her clasped hands. He kissed her brow, on the spot where her latent maternity had already set a slight shadow. Below, in the garden, Jeanbernat was still driving his spade into the ground in heavy, regular fashion.
A quarter of an hour later, however, the old man came upstairs. He had completed his work. He found the doctor seated by the bedside, buried in such a deep reverie that he did not seem conscious of the heavy tears that were trickling down his cheeks.
The two men only glanced at each other. Then, after an interval of silence, Jeanbernat slowly said:
'Well, was I not right? There is nothing, nothing, nothing. It is all mere nonsense.'
He remained standing and began to pick up the roses that had fallen from the bed, throwing them, one by one, upon Albine's skirts.
'The flowers,' he said, 'live only for a day, while the rough nettles, like me, wear out the very stones amidst which they spring. . . . Now it's all over; I can kick the bucket; I am nearly distracted. My last ray of sunlight has been snuffed out. It's all nonsense, as I said before.'
He threw himself upon one of the chairs in his turn. He did not shed a tear; he bore himself with rigid despair, like some automaton whose mechanism is broken. Mechanically he reached out his hand and took a book that lay on the little table strewn with violets. It was one of the books stored away in the loft, an odd volume of Holbach,* which he had been reading since the morning, while watching by Albine's body. As the doctor still remained silent, buried in distressful thought, he began to turn its pages over. But a sadden idea occurred to him.
* Doubtless Holbach's now forgotten _Catechism of Nature_, into which M. Zola himself may well have peeped whilst writing this story.--ED.
'If you will help me,' he said to the doctor, 'we will carry her downstairs, and bury her with all her flowers.'
Uncle Pascal shuddered. Then he explained to the old man that it was not allowed for one to keep the dead in that fashion.
'What! it isn't allowed!' cried Jeanbernat. 'Well, then, I will allow it myself! Doesn't she belong to me? Isn't she mine? Do you think I am going to let the priests walk off with her? Let them try, if they want to get a shot from my gun!'
He sprang to his feet and waved his book about with a terrible gesture. But the doctor caught hold of his hands and clasped them within his own, beseeching him to be calm. And for a long time he talked to him, saying all that he had upon his mind. He blamed himself, made fragmentary confessions of his fault, and vaguely hinted at those who had killed Albine.
'Listen,' he said in conclusion, 'she is yours no longer; you must give her up.'
But Jeanbernat shook his head, and again waved his hand in token of refusal. However, his obstinate resolution was shaken; and at last he said:
'Well, well, let them take her, and may she break their arms for them! I only wish that she could rise up out of the ground and kill them all with fright. . . . By the way. I have a little business to settle over there. I will go to-morrow. . . . Good-bye, then, doctor. The hole will do for me.'
And, when the doctor had left, he again sat down by the dead girl's side, and gravely resumed the perusal of his book.
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