The Kill - Emile Zola [31]
This threat had the effect that Eugène’s promises had failed to achieve. The thought of the fortune that Aristide heard his brother describe rekindled all his fever. At last, he felt, he had been sent into the fray with permission to slit people’s throats, but legally, without provoking too much of an outcry. Eugène gave him 200 francs to last until the end of the month and then lapsed into silent thought.
At length he said, “I’m thinking of changing my name. You ought to do the same. . . . We’d be less in each other’s way.”
“As you wish,” Aristide answered quietly.
“You won’t have to do anything. I’ll take care of all the formalities. . . . Do you want to be known as Sicardot, your wife’s family name?”
Aristide looked up at the ceiling, repeating the syllables, listening to their music: “Sicardot . . . Aristide Sicardot. . . . Heavens, no. It’s imbecilic and reeks of failure.”
“Think of something else,” said Eugène.
“I’d prefer just plain Sicard,” his brother replied after pondering the matter in silence. “Aristide Sicard. . . . Not bad, eh? . . . Perhaps a bit cheery.”
He mused a while longer, then crowed, “I’ve got it. . . . Saccard, Aristide Saccard. . . . With two c’s. . . . Eh? There’s money in a name like that. It sounds like the chink of coins being counted.”
Eugène had a savage sense of humor. As he dismissed his brother, he smiled and said, “Yes, a name like that can either land you in prison or make you millions.”
A few days later, Aristide Saccard went down to city hall. He learned that his brother had had to call in a good many chits to get him the job without the usual examinations.
Thus began, for Saccard and his wife, the monotonous life of the minor bureaucrat. The couple reverted to the routine they had adopted in Plassans, only now they were putting aside their dreams of sudden fortune, and their shabby life seemed more oppressive because they saw it as an ordeal whose duration could not be predicted. To be poor in Paris is to be poor twice over. Angèle accepted misery with the passivity of the anemic woman she was. She spent her days either in the kitchen or lying on the floor playing with her daughter, not feeling sorry for herself until the last franc was gone from the kitty. But Aristide quivered with rage over this poverty, this cramped existence, in which he prowled endlessly like a caged beast. For him it was a time of unspeakable suffering. His pride bled, his unassuaged ardor lashed him furiously. His brother managed to get himself elected to the Corps Législatif 4 as deputy for the Plassans district, and Aristide suffered even more. He was too keenly aware of Eugène’s superiority to feel anything as foolish as jealousy, but he accused his brother of not doing as much for him as he might have done. Need forced him more than once to knock on Eugène’s door in search of a loan. Eugène lent him the money but also berated him roundly for lacking courage and will. This immediately stiffened Aristide’s resolve. He swore that he would never again ask anyone for a cent, and he kept his word. The last week of every month, Angèle ate dry bread and sighed. This apprenticeship completed Saccard’s appalling education. His lips grew thinner. He was no longer so foolish as to dream of his millions out loud. His meager person stood mute, henceforth expressing but a single will, a single idée fixe—one cherished thought that filled every hour. When he hurried from the rue Saint-Jacques to the Hôtel de Ville, his worn heels struck the sidewalk with a sharp sound, and he buttoned himself into his frayed overcoat as into an asylum of hatred, while his weasel’s snout sniffed the air of the streets. The figure he cut was an angular one of envious misery prowling the Paris pavement with