The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [96]
He started to protest, but she cut him off with a hand gesture. “I'm not saying a thing. I'm not starting an argument or even asking for an explanation. If only you had asked my advice, if we had talked about it together. It's wrong to think that women don't understand politics … Do you want to know what I think, what my politics are?”
She stood up and walked from the bed to the window, removing specks of dust with her finger from the polished mahogany armoire and the dressing table. “It's the politics of respectable people. I support the government when my business is going well, when I can earn my living peacefully, and when I can sleep undisturbed by gunshots. That was a fine time in '48, wasn't it? Uncle Gradelle, a good man, showed us his books for that period. He lost more than six thousand francs … Now that we have the empire, everything's going well, business is prospering. You can't say that it's not. So what do you want? What more will you have after you have shot everyone?”
She stood with her hands folded in front of the night table opposite Quenu, who had disappeared under the quilt. He tried to explain what his colleagues wanted, but he stumbled over the political and social systems of Charvet and Florent. He spoke of little-understood principles, the advent of democracy, and the regeneration of societies, jumbling it all up in such a strange way that Lisa shrugged her shoulders without understanding. Finally he extricated himself by attacking the empire as a regime of debauchery, scandal, and armed robbery.
“You see,” he said, remembering a phrase used by Logre, “we're the victims of a gang of pirates who plunder, rape, and murder all of France … They have to go!”
Lisa still only shrugged.
“Is that all you have to say?” Lisa responded in her cold-blooded splendor. “What does that have to do with me, those things you're talking about? And even if they were true, what next? Am I urging you to be dishonest? Do I tell you not to pay your bills or to cheat the customers, and hoard ill-gotten money? You're going to make me mad! We're good people, and we don't plunder or murder anyone. That's enough. I don't care what others do. They can be as bad as they want.”
She was spectacular and triumphant. She started pacing the room again, puffing out her chest. “To please those who have nothing, are we supposed to give up earning a living? Of course I take advantage of every opportunity, and I support a government that's good for business. If they commit acts of evil, I don't want to know. As for me, I know that I don't commit them, and I have nothing to fear from finger-pointing in the neighborhood. It's just too stupid to be charging at windmills. Remember during the elections Gavard said that the emperor's candidate had gone into bankruptcy and was involved in all kinds of unsavory affairs? That might have been true, I'm not saying it wasn't. But still you voted for him, and you were right to do so because that wasn't the point. You weren't being asked to go into business with him or lend him money but to show the government that you were happy to see the charcuterie prospering.”
Meanwhile Quenu remembered another phrase, this time from Charvet, who had declared that “The bloated bourgeoisie, the fattened shopkeepers who support government by gluttony, should be the first to be taken to the wall.” It was thanks to them, thanks to their selfish worship of the belly, that despotism had seized hold of the nation. He was trying to get to the end of the statement when Lisa cut him off, full of indignation.
“Enough of this. My conscience is not troubled. I don't owe one sou, I'm not involved in any swindles, I buy and sell good merchandise, I don't charge any more than my neighbors. What you say may apply to our cousins, the Saccards. They pretend not to even know that I'm in Paris, but I have more pride than they have, and I don't care about all their millions. They say that Saccard is involved in destroying other businesses, that he steals from everyone. That wouldn't surprise