His Excellency [Son Exc. Eugène Rougon]

by Émile Zola

However, it was useless to study Rougon's face. It remained blank and unruffled, almost child-like. Perhaps, after all, there was no deception about his appearance. Clorinde, for her part, much preferred that he should remain inactive. She was afraid that if they compelled him to open his eyes he might thwart their plans. They were working for his advancement, in spite of himself, as it were. By some means or other, forcibly if necessary, they meant to thrust him into a position of high authority. Then they would have a settlement.

Still matters seemed to advance very slowly, and the band began to grow impatient. Du Poizat's views gained the mastery. They did not openly reproach Rougon with all that they were doing for him, but they assailed him with allusions and hints. The colonel would sometimes come to the evening receptions with his boots white with dust. He had not had time to go home and change them, he said. He was quite knocked up with running about on foolish errands for which he should probably never get any thanks. On other evenings M. Kahn, with heavy eyes, complained of the late hours he had been compelled to keep for a month past. He was going a great deal into society, he said, not for pleasure, indeed, but because it enabled him to meet certain people upon certain business. Then Madame Correur would relate affecting stories; telling them, for instance, of some poor young woman, a widow of the highest character, whom she visited, but was now unable to assist. If she were the government, she said, she would take good care to prevent injustice. Then the whole coterie would vent its own sorrows; each would lament his or her present situation, and compare it with what it would have been had they not behaved in the foolish, soft-hearted way they had done. And all these endless complaints were accentuated by meaning glances at Rougon. To rouse him they even went so far as to praise M. de Marsy. At first Rougon preserved unruffled tranquillity. He still showed no signs of understanding. But after a few evenings, when the talk was of this kind, slight twitchings would pass over his face at certain remarks made in his presence. He expressed no annoyance, but pressed his lips together as though he were pricked by some invisible needle. And at last he became so restless and uneasy that he gave up his card-tricks. He could no longer accomplish them successfully, and preferred to pace about the room, talking, and suddenly hastening away when his friends began to launch veiled reproaches at him. Every now and then he would turn white with anger, and seem to be forcibly holding his hands behind his back to restrain himself from turning the whole crew out of doors.

'My children,' said the colonel one evening, 'I sha'n't come here again for a fortnight. It will be good for us to sulk for a while and see how he can manage to amuse himself without us.'

Then Rougon, who had been thinking of closing his doors, felt very much hurt at the way in which he was abandoned. The colonel kept his word, and some of the others followed his example. The drawing-room looked very empty; there were always five or six of the circle absent. When one of them reappeared after a prolonged absence, and the great man asked him if he had been unwell, the other merely answered in the negative with an air of surprise, and gave no explanation. One Thursday not a single person came. Rougon spent the whole evening alone, pacing up and down the big room with his hands behind him and his head bent. For the first time he felt the strength of the chain which linked him to his band. He shrugged his shoulders to express his contempt for the stupidity of the Charbonnels, the envious rage of Du Poizat, and the suspicious affection of Madame Correur. Nevertheless, he felt a craving, the jealous craving of a master secretly pained by their slightest infidelities, to see and rule these friends of his, whom he held in such light esteem. Indeed at the bottom of his heart he was touched by their foolish behaviour and loved their faults. They seemed to be part of his being, so that he felt diminished and incomplete when they held aloof from him. As they continued to absent themselves he ended by writing to them, and even called at their residences to make peace with them after serious tiffs. Life at the house in the Rue Marbeuf was now so much chronic quarrelling—a series of constantly recurring ruptures and reconciliations.

Towards the end of December there was a particularly serious defection. One evening, without anyone quite knowing why, one bitter remark led to another, and it all ended by a very angry scene. For nearly three weeks afterwards the meetings ceased. The truth is that the band was beginning to lose hope. Their most earnest efforts seemed to have no appreciable result. It was unlikely that the general situation would change for a long time, and a sudden catastrophe, such as might render Rougon necessary, could hardly be anticipated. They had anxiously awaited the opening of the Corps Législatif, but this had gone off without any other incident than the refusal of two republican deputies to take the oath of allegiance. M. Kahn, who was the shrewd man of the group, no longer hoped for any advantage from the course of general politics.

Rougon, in his weary irritation, was occupying himself more energetically than ever with his Landes scheme, as though to conceal the feverish twitchings of his face, which he could no longer keep placid and sleepy as formerly. 'I don't feel very well,' he sometimes said. 'My hands tremble. My doctor has ordered me to take exercise. I am out-of-doors all day.' He did, indeed, go out a great deal now, and was to be met in the streets with his hands swinging and his head in the air, absorbed in thought. When anyone stopped and questioned him he said he had been tramping about all day.

One morning when he returned home to déjeuner, after a walk in the direction of Chaillot, he found a gilt-edged visiting-card awaiting him, on which was written Gilquin's name. The card was very dirty, and bore the marks of greasy fingers. Rougon rang for his servant. 'Did the person who gave you this card leave any message?' he asked.

The servant, who was new to the house, smiled. 'It was a gentleman in a green overcoat,' he replied. 'He was very pleasant and offered me a cigar. He only said that he was a friend of yours.' However, just as the servant was leaving the room he turned and added: 'I think there's something written on the back of the card.' Rougon turned it over and read these words written in pencil: 'Can't wait. Will call again this evening. Very urgent; a strange business.' Then he threw down the card with a careless air. After déjeuner, however, the expression 'Very urgent; a strange business,' recurred to his mind and haunted him, till it at last rendered him quite impatient. What could this 'strange business' of Gilquin's be? Since Rougon had charged the ex-commercial traveller with sundry obscure and intricate commissions he had seen him regularly once a week in the evening. Never before had Gilquin called in the morning, so that the matter in hand must surely be something out of the common. Rougon, quite at a loss to guess its nature, found himself all aglow with impatience, and although he could not help feeling that it was ridiculous, he resolved to go out and try to discover Gilquin before the evening.

'Some tipsy story, I dare say,' he reflected as he went through the Champs Élysées. 'Well, at any rate I shall satisfy myself.'

He was on foot, as he wished to carry out the directions of his doctor. It was a lovely day; a bright, sunny January noontide. Gilquin appeared to have removed from the Passage Guttin, for his card bore the address Rue Guisarde, Faubourg Saint-Germain.