• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1379 0

take their course; he didn’t even seem to notice that he now lived in a different apartment. He often went to the wrong door and only discovered his mistake when his new key wouldn’t fit the lock. He hardly ever came home now, and his general decline continued. He did show brief signs of a recovery when his political sympathies were rekindled. His ideas had always been rather vague and somewhat lukewarm; but he hadn’t forgotten his argument with the Sub-Prefect, which had nearly cost him his job. The government had been badly shaken by the general elections6 and was going through a terrible crisis. Roubaud was cock-a-hoop and went round telling everyone that Napoleon’s lot wouldn’t be in charge for much longer. His revolutionary comments were overheard by Mademoiselle Guichon, who informed Monsieur Dabadie. Monsieur Dabadie gave Roubaud a friendly warning, and this sufficed to calm him down. Now that the squabbles over accommodation had been settled and people on the corridor were being more friendly towards each other, with Madame Lebleu pining away from distress, why stir things up again over the government and its difficulties? Roubaud simply raised his hands, as much as to say that he couldn’t care less about politics, or anything else for that matter. He grew fatter by the day, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He plodded about his business and turned his back on the world.

Jacques and Séverine were now free to meet as they wished, but their relationship had become more strained. Nothing stood in the way of their happiness; he could come and see her whenever he liked, using the back staircase so that no one would notice him. The apartment was theirs; he could have slept there if he’d had the effrontery to do so. What caused them to feel so ill at ease with each other and created an insuperable barrier between them was the thought of his failure to accomplish the one thing they both wanted, the thing they had agreed upon and which remained undone. Jacques chided himself for his timidity. Each time he came to see Séverine she was more depressed; she had grown sick of this futile waiting. They no longer attempted to kiss; there was no more to be gained from only half belonging to each other. The happiness they sought lay elsewhere — in another world across the sea, where they could marry and lead a new life.

One evening Jacques found Séverine in tears. When she saw him at the door she wept more bitterly and put her head on his shoulder. She had sometimes cried like this before, but he had always managed to take her in his arms and comfort her. Now, however, the closer he held her to him, the more he felt her succumb to a mounting despair. He was distraught. After a while he took her head in his hands, put his face close to hers and, looking into her tear-filled eyes, he pledged himself to do her will. He knew that the reason for her despair was that she was a woman whose sweet, gentle nature prevented her from doing the deed herself.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Wait a little longer. I swear that I will do it. Soon. As soon as I can.’

She fastened her lips on his as if to seal his oath. They came together in a profound kiss, uniting their two bodies as one.

X

Aunt Phasie had suffered a final seizure and had died at nine o‘clock on the Thursday evening. Misard had been waiting at her bedside and had tried to close her eyes, but they remained obstinately open. Her neck had stiffened, with her head tilted slightly over one shoulder as if she were looking round the room, and her lips were drawn back in what appeared to be a sardonic grin. On the corner of a table near her bed there burned a single candle. The trains that had been rushing past the house since nine o’clock, totally unaware of the dead woman who was lying there not yet even cold, made the body momentarily shake in the flickering light of the candle as they went by.

In order to get Flore out of the way, Misard had immediately sent her to Doinville to report the death. She wouldn’t be back before eleven; he had two hours in front of him. First of all, he