The Monomaniac (La bête humaine)

by Émile Zola

One Thursday night, as Jacques, who had washed himself, was thinking of going off to bed, he met the assistant station-master strolling round the depôt; and, notwithstanding the late hour, the latter, disinclined to walk back alone, persuaded the young man to accompany him to the station. Once there he insisted on taking him to his rooms. Séverine was still up, and reading. They drank a glass or two together, and played cards until after midnight.

Henceforth the luncheons on Monday, and the little evening parties on Thursday and Saturday, became a habit. It was Roubaud, himself, when the comrade once missed a day, who kept a look-out for him, and brought him home, reproaching him with his neglect. But he became more and more gloomy, and it was only in the company of his new friend that he was really in good spirits. This man, who had first of all so cruelly alarmed him, whom he should now have held in execration as the witness—the living vision of things he wished to forget—had, on the contrary, become necessary to him, perhaps for the simple reason that he knew what had occurred, and had not spoken. This position took the form of a powerful bond, a sort of complicity between them. The assistant station-master had often looked at the other in a knowing way, pressing his hand with a sudden burst of feeling, and with a violence that surpassed the simple expression of good fellowship.

But it was particularly at home that Jacques became a source of diversion. There, Séverine also welcomed him with gaiety, uttering an exclamation as soon as he entered, like a woman bestirred by a thrill of pleasure. She put aside everything—her embroidery, her book, escaping from the gloomy somnolence, in which she passed her time, in a torrent of words and laughter.

"Ah! how nice of you to have come! I heard the express, and thought of you," she would say.

When he lunched there, it was a fête. She had already learnt his tastes, and went out herself for fresh eggs. And she did this in a very nice way, like a good housewife who welcomes the friend of the family, without giving him any cause to attribute her actions to aught else than a desire to be agreeable, and divert herself.

"Come again on Monday, you know," said she. "We shall have cream."

Only, when at the end of the month, he had made himself at home there, the separation between the Roubauds became more pronounced. Jacques certainly assisted to bring about this informal divorce by his presence, which drew them from the gloom into which they had fallen. He delivered both of them.

Roubaud had no remorse. He had only been afraid of the consequences, before the case was shelved, and his greatest anxiety had been the dread of losing his place. At present, he felt no regret. Perhaps, though, had he to do the business over again, he would not make his wife take a part in it. Women lose their spirit at once. His wife was escaping from him, because he had placed on her shoulders, a load too heavy to bear. He would have remained the master, had he not descended with her to the terrifying and quarrelsome comradeship of crime.

But this was how things were, and it became imperative to put up with them; the more so, as he had to make a regular effort, to place himself again in the same frame of mind, as when, after the confession, he had considered the murder necessary to his existence. It seemed to him, at that time, that if he had not killed this man, he would not have been able to live. At present, his jealous flame having died out, himself freed from the intolerable burn, assailed by a feeling of torpidity, as if the blood of his heart had become thickened by all the blood he had spilt, the necessity for the murder did not appear to him so evident.

He had come to the pass of inquiring of himself, whether killing was really worth the trouble. This was not repentance; it was at most a disillusion, the idea that people often do things they would not own to, in order to become happy, without being any the more so. He, usually so talkative, fell into prolonged spells of silence, into confused reflections, from which he issued more gloomy than before. Every day, now, to avoid remaining face to face with his wife, after the meals, he went on the roof and seated himself on the gable. There, in the breeze from the offing, soothing himself in vague dreams, he smoked his pipe, gazing beyond the city at the steamers disappearing on the horizon, bound to distant seas.