The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [145]
“Don't worry about it,” he said, patting Clémence on the arm. “You're a real man.”
Clémence had found a new way of mixing grog. First she filled the glass with hot water. Then, after adding sugar, she poured in the rum, one drop at a time, on a floating slice of lemon, so that the rum did not mix with the water. Then she lit it and watched it burn with great earnestness, slowly smoking, her face lit green by the licks of the flame. But it was an expensive drink, and she'd had to drop it when she lost her job. Charvet would comment with biting laughter that she wasn't rich anymore.
She earned a little money giving French lessons to a young woman at the head of rue Miromesnil who was secretly polishing her education and hiding it from her maid. So this evening Clémence ordered nothing more than a beer, which she drank, accepting her fate philosophically.
Evenings in the glassed-in room were not as tumultuous as they once had been. Charvet, pale and in an icy rage, had fits of silence when they ignored him to listen to his rival. The thought that he had once ruled there, that before the other man came he had been a despot lording over the group, had planted in his heart the cancer of a deposed king. If he continued going there, it was only his nostalgia for this crowded little corner where he recalled lovely hours of tyranny over Robine and Gavard. It was a time when he owned not only Logre's hunchback but the meaty arms of Alexandre and the somber face of Lacaille. With one word he could bend them, stuff his opinion down their throats, and hold his scepter above their shoulders. But nowadays it was too painful, and he stopped talking entirely, stiffening his back, whistling a casual tune, and considering it beneath him to bother refuting the stupidities he was hearing. What most upset him was the way he had been pushed away little by little, so gradually that he had failed to notice. He could not understand how Florent had dominated. He would often say, after listening to his soft voice and seeing his sad demeanor during the endless hours he was speaking, “Why, that boy is a priest. He's only lacking the skullcap.”
But the others seemed to drink up his every word. Charvet, faced with Florent's clothes hanging from every hook, would pretend not to know where he could hang his hat without getting it dirty. He shoved back the papers that were scattered around and said that they could no longer feel at home there since “this ‘monsieur’ has taken over everything here.” He even complained to the wine merchant, asking him if the room was for everyone or just one customer. This invasion of his domain was the final blow. Men were just dumb animals, after all. It gave him tremendous contempt for the human race to watch Logre and Monsieur Lebigre with their eyes fixed on Florent. Gavard exasperated him with his revolver. Robine, who remained silent behind his mug of beer, seemed to him the most solid one of the group. No doubt he judged men by their true value and not their words. As for Lacaille and Alexandre, they confirmed his belief that people are too stupid and need to live under a revolutionary dictatorship for at least ten years to learn how to act.
Logre confirmed that all the sections would soon be completely organized. Florent began to give out assignments. Then one night, after a final discussion in which he again came out the loser, Charvet got up, grabbed his hat, and said, “Good night to you all. Go get your heads beaten in, if that's what you want. But I won't be there, you understand? I have never worked for anyone's personal ambition.”
Clémence, who was putting on her scarf, added coldly, “The plan is inept.”
And since Robine was watching