The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [85]
Muche, meanwhile, had finished his page of writing. Florent, who had good penmanship, wrote large, round letters on pieces of paper. He chose long words that took an entire line, with a notable preference for such words as “tyrannically,” “liberticide,” “unconstitutional,” and “revolutionary.” He sometimes had the boy copy such sentences as “The day of justice will come” or “The suffering of the just man is the condemnation of the oppressor” or “When the hour strikes, the guilty will fall.” In preparing these writing samples, he was simply following the ideas that were swirling in his mind. He forgot about Muche, the Beautiful Norman, everything around him. Muche would have copied The Social Contract12 had he been told to copy it. He filled pages, line after line, with “tyrannically” and “unconstitutional,” carefully tracing each letter.
The whole time Florent was there, old Madame Méhudin would circle the table, fidgeting. She continued to nurse a fearsome grudge against him. According to her, it was ridiculous to make a child work at night at an hour when he should be in bed. She almost certainly would have thrown the big beanpole out the door if the Beautiful Norman, after a tempestuous fight, had not threatened to move to another home if she were not allowed to choose her guests. After that, the same fight started up every night.
“Say what you want,” said the old woman, “he has shifty eyes. Besides, you can't trust skinny people. A skinny man will do just about anything. I've never met a good one yet. His stomach looks like it slipped into his butt, that's for sure, because he's flat as a board. And he's ugly. I may be past sixty-five, but I still wouldn't want him by my night table.”
She said all this because she could see what was happening. Then she started praising Monsieur Lebigre, who in fact showed a great interest in the Beautiful Norman. Aside from the huge dowry that he imagined she would bring, he thought the young woman would be fantastic for his business. The old woman never missed a chance to praise him. At least he wasn't skinny as a rail. He was strong as a Turk. She even praised his calves, which, actually, were a bit fat.
But the Norman only shrugged and said sourly, “I don't care about his calves. I don't need anybody's calves. I do as I like.”
If the old woman pushed too hard, her daughter would say, “It's none of your business, and besides, it isn't true. And if it were true, I wouldn't need your permission, so just leave me alone.” With that she would go to her room and slam the door. In the household she had achieved a certain measure of power that she was now abusing. At night, if the old woman imagined she heard an odd noise, she would get up and walk barefoot to her daughter's door and listen, trying to hear if Florent was in there with her.
But Florent had an even more vehement enemy in the Méhudin household. As soon as he arrived, Claire would get up without saying a word, take a candle, and go to her room on the other side of the landing. She could be heard locking her door in a fit of icy anger. One evening when her sister invited the teacher to dinner, Claire fixed her own food on the landing and ate it in her room. Often she closed herself in so adroitly that she wasn't seen for a week. She usually remained soft and easygoing in appearance, but sometimes she turned to iron, her eyes glaring under her pale, wild locks like the stare of a distrustful animal. Mère Méhudin, thinking she would be free to express her feelings about Florent in Claire's presence, only enraged her when she talked about him. So the exasperated old woman would tell people how she would have liked to have gone off by herself but was afraid that her daughters would devour each other without her supervision.
One evening as he was leaving, Florent