The Soil (La terre): A Realistic Novel

by Émile Zola

"You drab!" she screamed, "it is you who lead him on! If you weren't always leering at him he wouldn't be for ever running after you. You nasty slut!"

Françoise turned quite pale. This slander was more than she could bear. And quietly, but with deliberate animosity, she replied:

"We've had quite enough of this. It is time there was an end of it. Wait another fortnight, and I'll no longer annoy you with my presence. Yes, in another fortnight I shall be twenty-one, and then I'll take myself off."

"Ah, you're longing to be of age, are you, so that you can worry us, eh? Well, you hussy, there's no fortnight about the matter; off you go this very moment."

"Very well, I'm quite agreeable. Macqueron wants a girl, and I'm sure he'll take me. Good day."

Thereupon Françoise went off without another word. Buteau then threw down the bill-hook which he had been sharpening, and rushed forward in the hope of restoring peace between the two women by the administration of a couple of whacking cuffs. But he was too late, and he could only vent his angry exasperation by dealing a blow at his wife, from whose nose the blood began to stream. The devil take all the women! What he had feared and struggled against so long had come to pass. The girl had taken flight, and now there was a heap of dirty troubles in store for him. He saw in his mind's eye both the girl and the land scampering away from him.

"I'll go to Macqueron's this afternoon," he roared. "She'll have to come back, even if I have to kick her here all the way."

Macqueron's house was in a state of great excitement that Sunday, for one of the candidates, Monsieur Rochefontaine, the proprietor of the building works at Châteaudun, was expected there. Since the last election Monsieur de Chédeville had fallen into disfavour on account, some people said, of his ostentatious friendship with certain members of the Orleanist party; while others asserted that it was owing to his having offended the Tuileries by a scandalous intrigue with the wife of one of the ushers of the Chamber of Deputies, who was quite infatuated about him, despite his age. However this might be, the patronage of the prefect had certainly been withdrawn from the retiring deputy and conferred upon Monsieur Rochefontaine, the former candidate of the Opposition, whose establishment had just been visited by one of the ministers. Monsieur Rochefontaine had also written a pamphlet on Free Trade, which had been very favourably noticed by the Emperor. As for Monsieur de Chédeville, annoyed at being discarded in this way, he persisted in his candidature, being particularly desirous of retaining his position as deputy, since it enabled him to dabble in financial jobbery. The rental of La Chamade was no longer sufficient for his needs, the place being mortgaged, and in a half-ruined condition. Thus, by a singular chance, the situation of affairs had been reversed—the landowner had become the independent candidate, while the contractor enjoyed the patronage of the Government.

Although Hourdequin was mayor of Rognes he still remained faithful to Monsieur de Chédeville, and had made up his mind not only to ignore any instructions he might receive from official sources, but even to work openly for his candidate's cause, should that be necessary. At first he felt that it was not a manly or honourable thing to veer round like a weather-cock at the slightest breath from the prefect's lips; and then, as this was a struggle between a Protectionist and a Free-trader, he became convinced that, in the present crisis of agricultural affairs, his interests would be better forwarded by the former. The annoyance which Jacqueline caused him, added to the cares and anxieties of his farm, had prevented him for some time past from devoting himself to the duties of his mayoralty. Being always engaged in watching the lascivious wench who, with the luck that so often attaches to wrongdoing, managed to satisfy with impunity her lustful hankering after Tron's brawny manhood, the mayor left his assessor, Macqueron, to attend to current affairs. Consequently, when he again returned to preside over the council, instigated thereto by the personal interest he took in the election, he was astonished to find it rebellious, in fact stiffly hostile.

This was the outcome of Macqueron's underhand intriguing, which, prosecuted with all a copper-skin's craft and wiliness, was at last approaching an issue. Ambition had come to this enriched peasant, who had relapsed into a state of complete idleness, and who dragged himself about dirty and slovenly amid all his gentlemanly leisure, which really bored him to death. And this ambition now formed the one pleasure of his existence. Why should not he himself be mayor? Since that idea had first dawned upon his mind, he had striven to undermine Hourdequin's position, working upon the ingrained, deep-rooted, though perhaps unconscious hatred that all the natives of Rognes in former times had entertained for their lords, and that they now felt for the son of the townsman who to-day possessed the land. Of course he had got it for nothing! It had been nothing more nor less than a robbery at the time of the Revolution. Poor peasants never had such luck. It was only your scamps and scoundrels who managed to fill their pockets in this way. And there were pretty goings-on, too, at La Borderie with the master's infatuation for that hussy La Cognette, in spite of her amours with all the farm-hands.