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!’