Work [Travail]

by Émile Zola

She was transported by his words, she threw herself into his arms, and they kissed. An indissoluble bond was being formed between them, a marriage of sentiment, of exquisite purity, in which there was nought but a common passion for the poor and the suffering, an inextinguishable desire to obliterate the misery of the world.

Months went by, and the liquidation of the affairs of the Abyss, which were extremely involved, proved a most laborious matter. Before everything else it was necessary to get rid of the debt of six hundred thousand francs. Arrangements were at last entered into with the creditors, who agreed to accept payment in annuities levied upon the share of profits to which the Abyss would be entitled when it entered the Crêcherie association. Then it was necessary to value the plant and materials saved from the fire. These, with all the land stretching along the Mionne as far as Old Beauclair, formed the share of capital which the Boisgelins brought into the association; and a modest income, levied on the profits before they were divided among the creditors, was ensured them. Old Qurignon's desires were but half fulfilled during that period of transition, when capital still held a position similar to that of work and intelligence, pending the time when, with the victory of sovereign work, it would altogether disappear.

At least, however, La Guerdache and the farm returned completely to the commonalty, the heirs of the toilers, who had formerly paid for them with the sweat of their brows, for as soon as the farm lands—entering the Combettes association in accordance with the long-planned schemes of Feuillat—began to prosper and yield gain, the whole of the money was employed to transform La Guerdache into a convalescent home for weak children and women who had recently become mothers. Free beds were installed there, with gratuitous board, and the park now belonged to the humble ones of the world, forming a huge garden, a paradise as of dreamland, where children played, where mothers recovered their health, where the multitude enjoyed recreation as in some palace of nature which had become the palace of one and all.

Years went by. Luc had ceded one of the little houses of La Crêcherie, near the pavilion which he still occupied, to the Boisgelins. And at first that modest life proved very hard for Boisgelin, who did not become resigned to it without violent fits of revolt. At one moment he even wished to go to Paris to live there chancewise, as he listed. But his innate sloth and the impossibility of earning his own living rendered him as weak as a child, and placed him in the hands of whoever cared to take him. Since his downfall Suzanne, so sensible, so gentle, and yet so firm, had acquired absolute authority over him, and he always ended by doing what she wished, like a poor rudderless creature carried away by the stream of life. Soon, too, among that active world of workers he felt idleness weighing upon him to such a degree that he began to desire some occupation. He felt weary of dragging himself about all day long, he suffered from a secret feeling of shame, a need of action, for he could no longer tire himself with the management and squandering of a large fortune. Shooting remained a resource for him during the winter months, but as soon as the fine weather came there was nothing for him to do except to ride out occasionally, and dismal ennui then crushed him down. And so when Suzanne prevailed on Luc to confide an inspectorship to him, a kind of control over a department of the general stores, which meant employment for three hours of his time every day, he ended by accepting the offer. His health, which had suffered, then improved; still he always displayed anxiety, wearing a lost, unhappy air, such as one might find in a man who had fallen from one planet to another.

And years again went by. Suzanne had become the friend and sister of Josine and Sœurette, in whose work she participated. All three surrounded Luc, sustaining him and completing him, like personifications of kindness, love, and gentleness. He called them with a smile his three virtues. They busied themselves with the crèches, the schools, the infirmaries, and the convalescent homes, they went wherever there might be weakness to protect, pain to assuage, joy to initiate. Sœurette and Suzanne, in particular, took on themselves the most ungrateful tasks, those which require personal abnegation, entire renunciation; whilst Josine, having to attend to her children, her ever-growing home, naturally bestowed less of her time upon others. She, moreover, was the amorosa, the flower of beauty and desire, whilst Sœurette and Suzanne were the friends, the consolers, and the counsellors. At times some very bitter trials still fell on Luc, and often, on quitting his wife's embrace, it was to his two friends that he listened, charging them to dress the wounds they spoke of and devote themselves to the common work of salvation. It was by and for women that the future city had to be founded.

Eight years had already elapsed when Paul Boisgelin, who was seven-and-twenty, married Bonnaire's eldest daughter, then twenty-four years old. As soon as the lands of La Guerdache had entered the Combettes association, Paul, with Feuillat, the former farmer, had begun to take a passionate interest in promoting the fertility of the vast expanse which those fields had enlarged. He had become an agriculturist, and directed one of the sections of the domain, which it had been necessary to divide into several groups. And it was at his parents' little house at La Crêcherie, whither he returned to sleep every night, that he had renewed his acquaintance with Antoinette, who lived with her parents in a neighbouring house. Close intercourse had sprung up between that simple family of workers and the former heiress of the Qurignons, who now lived so modestly and welcomed every one so kindly. And although Madame Bonnaire, the terrible La Toupe, had remained a rather difficult customer to deal with, the simple nobility of character displayed by Bonnaire, that hero of work, one of the founders of the new city, had sufficed to render the intercourse intimate. It was charming to see the children loving one another, and drawing yet closer the links which had thus been formed between the representatives of two classes which had formerly fought one against the other. Antoinette, who resembled her father, being a good-looking, sturdy brunette, possessed of no little natural gracefulness, had passed through Sœurette's schools, and now helped her at the big dairy which was installed at the end of the park beside the ridge of the Bleuse Mountains. As she said with a laugh, she was simply a dairymaid, expert with milk, and cheese, and butter. When the young people married, he, Paul, a bourgeois by birth, who had gone back to the soil, and she, Antoinette, a daughter of the people working with her hands, a great fête was given, for there was a desire to celebrate as gloriously as possible those symbolical nuptials, which proclaimed the reconciliation, the union of repentant capitalism and triumphant work.

During the ensuing year, one warm June day, shortly after the birth of Antoinette's first child, the Boisgelins, accompanied by Luc, once more found themselves together at La Guerdache. Nearly ten years had now elapsed since the death of Monsieur Jérôme and the restitution of the estate to the people in accordance with his desire. Antoinette had for some time been a pensionnaire in the convalescent home which had been installed in the château where the Qurignons had reigned; and, leaning on the arm of her husband, she was now able to stroll under the beautiful foliage of the park, whilst Suzanne, like a good grandmother, carried the baby. A few paces in the rear walked Luc and Boisgelin. And what memories arose at the sight of that princely house, those copses, those lawns, those avenues where the uproar of costly fêtes, the galloping of horses and the baying of hounds no longer resounded, but where the humble of the world at last enjoyed the health-giving open air, and the restful delight that came from the great trees! All the luxury of that magnificent domain was now theirs, the convalescent home opened its bright bed-rooms, its pleasant salons, its well-stocked larders to them, the park reserved for them its shady paths, its crystalline springs, its lawns where for their delight gardeners cultivated beds of perfume-shedding flowers. They found there their long-withheld share of beauty and grace. And it was delightful to see infancy, youth, and motherhood—which for centuries had been condemned to suffering, shut up in sunless hovels, dying of filthy wretchedness—suddenly summoned to partake of the joy of life, the share of happiness belonging by right to every human creature, that luxury of happiness at which innumerable generations of starvelings had gazed from afar without ever being able to touch it!

As the young married couple, followed by the others, at last reached a pool of water glistening with mirror-like limpidity under the blue sky, beyond a row of willows, Luc began to laugh softly.

'Ah, my friends!' said he, 'what a gay and pretty scene this recalls to me! You know nothing about it, eh? Nevertheless it was at the edge of this calm water that Paul and Antoinette were betrothed a score or so of years ago.'

Then he spoke of the delightful scene which he had witnessed beside that pond on the occasion of his first visit to La Guerdache—the invasion of the park by three youngsters of the streets, Nanet bringing his companions, Lucien and Antoinette Bonnaire, through a gap in the hedge in order that they might play beside the pond; then Lucien's ingenious invention, the little boat which travelled all alone over the water; and the arrival of the three little bourgeois, Paul Boisgelin, Nise Delaveau, and Louise Mazelle, who all marvelled at the boat, and immediately made friends with the intruders. And couples had been formed quite naturally, there had been betrothals at once, Paul with Antoinette, Nise with Nanet, Louise with Lucien, amidst the smiling complicity of kind-hearted Nature, the eternal mother.