The Beast Within - Emile Zola [158]
On the night that Roubaud had come back to take the three one-hundred-franc coins from under the floor, it was in order to pay Monsieur Cauche, the safety officer, after a succession of losses. Monsieur Cauche was an experienced card player and he knew how to keep his head, which made him a formidable opponent. He said he only played for the fun of it; he was a retired soldier, and his position as magistrate required him to keep up a respectable appearance. He had never married and spent most of his time at the café as a regular customer, which didn’t prevent him from frequently playing cards all evening and pocketing everybody else’s money. People said he was so lackadaisical about his job that he had been told he might be asked to resign. But nothing had come of it, and there was so little work for him to do that it seemed pointless to ask him to work harder. So he simply put in an appearance on the platform for a few minutes, where everyone said hello to him.
Three weeks later, Roubaud owed Monsieur Cauche almost four hundred francs more. He had told him that his wife’s legacy had left them very well off, adding jokingly that it was his wife, however, who held the purse-strings, which was why he was a bit slow in paying off his debts. One morning, when he was at home on his own, having been harassed by Monsieur Cauche, he once again lifted the floorboard and removed a thousand-franc note from its hiding place. He was shaking all over; he hadn’t felt like that when he removed the gold coins. He had probably thought then that he was merely borrowing a bit of loose change. With the thousand-franc note, however, he knew it was theft. A shiver ran through him at the thought of this tainted money that he had sworn he would never touch. He used to say that he would rather die of starvation; and here he was, helping himself. How had it happened? The murder had slowly eaten away at his conscience, day by day, little by little, until he no longer had the will to resist. As he put his hand down into the hole, he thought he felt something wet, something soft and disgusting. It made him feel sick. He quickly replaced the floorboard, telling himself that he would cut his hand off rather than take it up again. His wife hadn’t seen him; he breathed a sigh of relief and drank a large glass of water to steady his nerves. His heart was beating with excitement; he could pay off his debt and he had all this money to wager!1
But when it came to changing the note, Roubaud’s anxiety quickly returned. Before, he had been prepared to brave things out; he might even have given himself up had he not foolishly involved his wife in the murder. Now, however, the mere thought of the police brought him out into a cold sweat. He knew that the police didn’t have the numbers of the missing banknotes and that, in any case, the inquiry had been shelved and filed away indefinitely, yet the minute he went anywhere intending to ask for change, he was overcome with panic. For five days he kept the note on him, moving it from one pocket to another, feeling to see that it was still there and even taking it to bed with him. He devised various complicated strategies, each of which ran into some unforeseen difficulty. At first he had thought of the station; perhaps someone in the accounts department could change it for him. He decided it was too risky. He then thought of going to buy something on the other side of town, not wearing his stationmaster’s cap. But they would think there was something odd about using such a large note to pay for something worth next to nothing. In the end he decided the simplest thing would be to use the note at the tobacconist’s on the Cours Napoléon; he went there every day, they knew he had inherited some money, and it would come as no surprise to the woman behind the counter. He went up to the door, but his nerve failed him. He walked down towards the Vauban dock trying to screw up his courage. Half an hour later he came back, still undecided. That evening at the Café du Commerce, Monsieur Cauche