The Kill - Emile Zola [28]
The shrub behind which she stood half-concealed was a deadly plant, a tanghin from Madagascar, with broad, boxy leaves and whitish stems whose smallest veins distilled a milky poison. When Louise and Maxime, bathed in the yellow glow, the sunset, of the small salon, chanced to laugh a little louder than before, Renée, her mind awry, her mouth parched and irritated, took a dangling sprig of tanghin between her lips and bit down on one of its bitter leaves.
2
Aristide Saccard swooped down on Paris immediately after the Second of December1 with the keen instincts of a bird of prey capable of smelling a battlefield from a long way off. He came from Plassans, a small subprefecture in the south, where his father, fishing in the troubled waters of the times, had at last succeeded in landing a long-coveted prize: a nomination as tax collector. The son, still a young man, had foolishly compromised himself without reaping either glory or profit and had to count himself lucky to have come through the ruckus safely. He rushed off to Paris in a rage at having mistaken his true course, cursing the provinces while talking of the capital in terms that called to mind a ravenous wolf, and swearing that “he would never again be so stupid.” The bitter smile that accompanied these words took on a horrible significance on his thin lips.
He arrived in the very first days of 1852. With him he brought his wife Angèle, a drab blonde, whom he set up in a cramped apartment on the rue Saint-Jacques, like a bothersome piece of furniture he was in a hurry to get rid of. The young woman had refused to be separated from her daughter, little Clotilde, a child of four, whom her father would have been happy to leave in the care of his family. He had given in to Angèle’s wishes, however, only on condition that she agree to allow their son Maxime to remain in school in Plassans, where the boy’s grandmother could keep an eye on the troublesome eleven-year-old. Aristide did not want to be tied down. A wife and a daughter were already burden enough for a man out either to take the capital by storm or ruin himself and his reputation trying.
On his very first night in Paris, while Angèle unpacked their trunks, he felt a keen need to explore the city, to be out in his backwoods boots pounding the burning pavement from which he hoped to extract millions of francs. He took possession of the town—nothing less. He walked for the sake of walking, patrolling the sidewalks as if in conquered territory. He had a very clear vision of the battle he had come to wage and did not shrink from comparing himself to a skilled lock picker who is about to help himself to a portion of the common wealth that has hitherto been denied him out of spite. Had he felt the need of an excuse, he would have invoked the desires he had stifled for the past ten years, his miserable provincial existence, and above all his blunders, which he blamed on society at large. At that moment, however, feeling the emotions of a gambler who has at last set ardent hands down on green felt, he was overcome with joy, with a joy all his own in which the satisfactions of envy mingled with the hopes of a rogue who has somehow eluded punishment. The air of Paris intoxicated him, and amid the din of carriage wheels he thought he heard the voices from Macbeth2 shouting to him, “Thou shalt be rich!” For nearly two hours he wandered the streets like this, savoring the pleasures of a man who has given in to his vice. He had not been back to Paris since spending a happy year in the capital as a student. Night was falling; his dream grew prodigiously in the bright light cast upon the sidewalks by cafés and shops. He had no idea where he was.
When he looked up, he found himself in the middle of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré.3 One of his brothers, Eugène Rougon,