The Soil (La terre): A Realistic Novel

by Émile Zola

Quarrels, however, had broken out since old Fouan had seen them among the potatoes. He had bluntly told Lise everything that he had seen, so that she might prevent her husband from making any further attempt upon his sister-in-law. Then Lise, after shouting to her father to mind his own business, angrily attacked her younger sister. She had only herself to blame, she cried, for enticing the men on, and what had happened to her was only what was to be expected; all the men were swine. In the evening, however, Lise made such a scene with Buteau that she came out of her room the next morning with her eye bunged up and blackened by a heavy blow which he had dealt her with his fist during the discussion. After that there was constant quarrelling going on. There were always two of the inmates of the house trying to bite each other's heads off, the husband and wife, or the husband and his sister-in-law, or else the two sisters, even if they were not all three engaged in devouring one another.

Then it was that the slowly and unconsciously-developed hatred between Lise and Françoise became truly bitter. Their whilom tender affection for each other gave place to a savage feeling, which kept them irritated with one another from morning till night. The real and only cause of it all was this man, Buteau, who was like some poisonous leaven. Françoise, quite upset by his perpetual onslaughts, would have succumbed long previously if her will had not shielded her against desire each time he touched her. Her obstinate notions of abstract justice, her resolute determination neither to give up what was her own nor to take what was another's, brought her no little trouble. She was angry with herself for feeling jealous and execrating her sister for possessing this man, rather than have shared whom she herself would have died. When he pursued her, she angrily retaliated by spitting upon him, and sent him back, befouled with her saliva, to his wife. To do this seemed in some way to soothe her struggling desires: it was as though she had spat in her sister's face in her envious contempt, for the pleasure in which she had no share. Lise, on the other hand, was free from jealousy, feeling quite certain that Buteau had merely bragged in asserting that he enjoyed both of them—not that she believed him incapable of such a thing, but she was convinced that her sister was too proud to yield. The only grudge she felt against Françoise was that, owing to her persistent rejection of Buteau's advances, the whole house was becoming a hell upon earth. The fatter she grew, the more complacent she seemed to become, taking a lively delight in existence, and egotistically craving for pleasant, easy surroundings. It seemed to her the height of folly that her husband and sister should go on quarrelling like that, marring the sweetness of life, when they really had everything that was necessary for their happiness. The girl's perverse disposition was the sole cause of all the trouble.

Every night when she went to bed she exclaimed to Buteau:

"It's all my sister! But if she causes me any more annoyance, I'll have her turned out of the house!"

This course, however, would by no means have suited Buteau.

"A fine notion, indeed! Why, we should have all the country-side crying shame on us! What a plague you women are! I shall have to duck you both in the pond till you can live together in harmony."

Two months more passed away, and Lise, who was so upset, might have sugared her coffee twice, as she said, without finding it to her palate. She divined whenever her sister had repelled some fresh onslaught of her husband's, for she then had a further experience of his angry ill-temper, and she now lived in constant dread of these repeated repulses, feeling anxious whenever she caught sight of him creeping up slily behind Françoise's skirts, and making sure that when he came back again he would be in a violent temper, breaking everything that came in his way, and making the whole house wretched. These were hateful days to her, and she could not forgive the obstinate wench for not restoring tranquillity.

One day matters reached a terrible pitch. Buteau, who had gone down into the cellar with Françoise to draw some cider, came up again so harshly repulsed, and in a state of such raging anger, that for the merest trifle, just because his soup was too hot, he hurled his plate against the wall, and then rushed out of the room, after knocking Lise down with a blow that would almost have killed an ox.

Crying and bleeding, she struggled on to her feet again, with her cheek sadly swollen, and at once fell foul of her sister.

"You dirty drab!" she cried, "go to bed with him, and have done with it! I'm sick to death of it all; and if you persist in being obstinate, simply to make him beat me, I'll run away!"