The Beast Within - Emile Zola [93]
Séverine finished eating her chop. She had been deep in thought and woke up with a start to find herself sitting in a restaurant. There was a bitter taste in her mouth. She couldn’t swallow her food. She didn’t even want any coffee. She had eaten slowly, but it was still barely a quarter past twelve when she left the restaurant. She had another three-quarters of an hour to kill! Usually, when she came to Paris, she loved being in the city and walking around the streets. But today she felt lost and frightened, wishing she had done what she had come to do, and that she could run away and hide. The pavement was by now almost dry. A warm breeze blew away the last of the clouds. She walked down the Rue Tronchet and arrived at the flower market on the Place de la Madeleine. It was a typical March flower market, with primroses and azaleas in full bloom, flaunting their colour in the pale light of a late-winter afternoon. For half an hour Séverine walked round the market, surrounded by this precocious flowering of spring, lost in her thoughts. Jacques was an enemy whom she must disarm. She had spoken with Monsieur Camy-Lamotte, and everything had gone well. All she needed to do was persuade Jacques to remain silent. It would not be easy. She began to imagine all manner of romantic scenarios and discovered that, far from increasing her fatigue and anxiety, it had a pleasantly soothing effect. Suddenly she noticed the time, on a clock in one of the market stalls - ten past one! It brought her back to reality with a jolt. She had achieved nothing. She hurried off towards the Rue du Rocher.
Monsieur Camy-Lamotte’s house stood at the corner of the Rue du Rocher and the Rue de Naples. In order to get to it, Séverine had to walk past Grandmorin’s house, standing silent and empty, with its shutters closed. She glanced up at it and quickened her step. She remembered the last time she had come there. There it still stood, tall and sinister. A little further on, she stopped to look behind her, like someone pursued by an angry mob, and she caught sight of Monsieur Denizet, the examining magistrate from Rouen, walking on the opposite side of the street. His presence startled her. Had he seen her looking at Grandmorin’s house? He seemed quite unconcerned. She allowed him to walk past her, following behind him in a state of trepidation. It came as an even greater shock when she saw him ring the doorbell of Monsieur Camy-Lamotte’s house at the corner of the Rue de Naples.
She fell into a panic. How could she go and see him now? She rushed back down the street, turned into the Rue d‘Edimbourg and came to the Pont de l’Europe. Only then did she feel able to pause for a moment. Not knowing where to go or what to do, she stood, motionless, leaning against the balustrade, looking down through the iron girders at the vast open space of the station below. Trains were continually coming and going; she watched them with fear in her eyes. She was convinced that the magistrate had gone to see Monsieur Camy-Lamotte in order to discuss the inquiry, and that at this very moment the two men were talking about her and deciding her fate. In a fit of despair, she felt she would rather throw herself there and then under a train than return to the Rue du Rocher. A train was emerging from under the roof of the mainline station; she watched it approach and pass beneath her, blowing a warm cloud of steam into her face. She knew that if she didn’t muster the energy to put an end to their uncertainty, her trip would have been a foolish waste of time and she would return home in an unbearable agony of mind. She decided she would wait five minutes more in order to regain her nerve. She could hear locomotives whistling below her. She watched a little shunting engine moving a suburban train out of a siding. She looked up