Truth [Vérité]

by Émile Zola

'Well, papa, I have been turning the matter over in my head all day, and it seems to me that, if you think as I do, I ought to go and live with mamma at grandmother's.'

Marc, thoroughly upset, began by protesting violently: 'What, think as you do! No, no, I won't allow it! I mean to keep you here, I will prevent you from forsaking me.'

'Oh! papa,' she murmured distressfully, 'think it over, only just a little, and you will see that I am right.'

But he did not listen, he had risen and was walking wildly about the dim room. 'I have only you left me, and you think of going away! My wife has been taken from me, and now my daughter is to be taken, and I am to remain alone, stripped, forsaken, without an affection left! Ah! I felt that this coup de grâce was coming, I foresaw that those abominable hands, working in the darkness, would tear away the last shred of my heart.... But no! no! this is too much, never will I consent to such a separation!'

And stopping short before his daughter, he continued roughly: 'Have you also had your mind and heart spoilt that you no longer love me?... At each of your visits to your grandmother's I am put on trial—is it not so?—and infamous things are said about me in order to detach you from me. It is a question—eh?—of saving you from the damned and restoring you to the good friends of those ladies, who will turn you into a hypocrite and a lunatic.... And you listen to my enemies, and yield to their constant obsession by forsaking me.'

Louise, in despair, her eyes full of tears, raised her hands entreatingly. 'Papa, papa, calm yourself!' she cried. 'I assure you that you are mistaken, mamma has never allowed anything evil to be said about you before me. Grandmother, no doubt, does not like you, and she would often do well to keep quiet when I am there. It would be telling a falsehood to say that she does not do all she can to get me to join mamma and live with her. But I swear to you that neither she nor any of the others has anything to do with what I propose.... You know very well that I never tell you stories. It is I myself who have thought it all over, and come to the conclusion that our separation would be a good and sensible thing.'

'A good thing—that you should forsake me! Why, it would kill me!'

'No, you will understand—and you are so brave!... Sit down and listen to me.'

She gently compelled him to seat himself again in front of her. And, taking his hands in hers caressingly, she reasoned with him like a shrewd little woman.