The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [62]
Augustine carried the sleeping Pauline upstairs in her arms. Quenu, who preferred to close the kitchen himself, sent Léon and Auguste off to bed, saying that he would put the boudin away himself. The apprentice went off very red-faced, having managed to hide in his shirt almost a yard of boudin, which was doubtless scalding him. Then Quenu and Florent were alone, saying nothing. Lisa, standing up, tasted the boudin, but it was very hot and she took little nibbles, careful not to burn her pretty lips, and the piece vanished bit by bit into her rosy mouth.
“Oh, well,” she said, “the Norman was rude and wrong. The boudin is very good today.”
There was a knock at the back door. Gavard, who spent the evenings until about midnight at Monsieur Lebigre's, had come for a final answer about the job of fish inspector.
“You have to understand that Monsieur Verlaque cannot wait any longer, he's really too sick … Florent has to make up his mind. I promised to give my answer first thing in the morning.”
“But Florent accepts,” Lisa calmly answered, taking one more nibble at her boudin.
Florent, who had still not gotten out of his chair as he felt oddly dejected, tried in vain to raise a hand in protest.
“No, no,” insisted Lisa, “it's settled … You see, my dear Florent, you have already suffered enough. What you have just been telling us makes a person shudder. It's time for you to settle down. You come from a respectable family, you've had a good education, and it is really inappropriate for you to be wandering like a vagrant. You're too old for childishness. You've been foolish, but all that is forgotten and forgiven now. You can return to your social class, the class of respectable people, and finally live the way everyone else does.”
Florent listened, astounded, unable to find words to speak. No doubt she was right. She looked so healthy and serene that she could not possibly want anything but what was good. He was the one, the skinny man with the dark and undependable face, who must be in the wrong, indulging in unworthy dreams. He no longer knew why he had been resisting up until now.
But she was not through with her flood of words, speaking to him as though he were a little boy who had been bad and was being threatened by the police. She was very maternal and found very persuasive arguments.
And the final argument:
“Do it for us, Florent,” she said. “We have a certain standing in the neighborhood that requires us to act appropriately. To be honest, just between us, I'm afraid that people will begin to talk. This job fixes everything. You'll be someone. You'll even improve our standing.”
She became tender, and Florent felt surrounded by prosperity. It was as though he were permeated by the smell of the kitchen, the nourishment of all the food that had been loaded into the air. He slid into the happy lethargy that is brought on by eating well and living in fat, as he had for the past fifteen days. He felt a tingling on his skin, the seduction of fat slowly invading his entire being, rendering him soft and easy like a contented shopkeeper. At this late hour of night, in this overheated room, all his bitterness and determination melted away. He felt so indolent in the calm of the night, adrift in the scent of boudin and lard, by the chubby Pauline asleep in his lap, that he found himself wishing for more, for an endless succession of such evenings, slowly fattening him.
But more than anything, the sight of Mouton made up his mind. Mouton was in a deep sleep, belly up, one paw on his nose, his tail wrapped around his side as though it were a quilt, and he slept with that feline sense of well-being. Florent looked at him and said,