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By Root 916 0

a good cry, when she was tired out from grief, she thought despite herself about what Michaud had said and got used to the idea of purchasing a little happiness at the cost of a marriage that, according to the fine scruples of her memory, would kill her son a second time. She lost her nerve when she found herself confronted with Thérèse, weighed down with misery, in the icy silence of the shop. She was not one of those stiff, dry creatures who take a bitter joy at living in eternal despair. She was demonstrative, capable of flexibility and devotion, with her chubby, affable, good woman’s temperament which impelled her to express her affection. Since her niece had stopped speaking and remained there, pale and weak, life had become intolerable for her and the shop seemed like a tomb. She wanted warm feelings about her, life, caresses, something soft and merry that would help her to await death with equanimity. These unconscious desires made her accept the idea of remarrying Thérèse and she even forgot about her son a little. She experienced something like a rebirth in the dead existence that she led, with a new will to act and new things to occupy her mind. She was looking for a husband for her niece and could think of nothing else. This choice of a husband was an important matter and the poor old woman was considering herself rather than Thérèse: she wanted to marry her off in a way that would ensure her own happiness and was desperately afraid that the young woman’s new husband would upset the last moments of her old age. She was terrified by the idea that she was going to bring a stranger into her everyday life. The thought itself gave her pause and prevented her from speaking openly about marriage to her niece.

While Thérèse, with the perfect hypocrisy that she owed to her upbringing, was playing at boredom and depression, Laurent took the part of the sensitive and obliging man. He catered to the little needs of the two women, especially Mme Raquin, on whom he showered delicate little marks of his consideration. Little by little, he became indispensable around the shop and he was the only one to bring a touch of merriment to this dark hole. When he was not there, in the evenings, the old lady would look around her uneasily, as though something was missing, almost afraid to find herself alone with Thérèse and her misery. In fact, Laurent would stay away for the occasional evening only in order to reinforce his power. He came to the shop every day after leaving work and stayed until the arcade closed. He ran errands and he would fetch any little thing that Mme Raquin needed, as she could not walk very easily. Then he would sit down and chat. He had found an actor’s voice, soft and penetrating, which he used to soothe the good old woman’s ears and heart. Most of all, he seemed very concerned about Thérèse’s health, as a friend and as a sympathetic man whose own soul suffers because of the sufferings of others. Several times, he took Mme Raquin aside and terrified her, by pretending to be himself very worried at the changes and the effects of depression that he claimed to see on the young woman’s face.

‘We’re going to lose her soon,’ he would mutter with tears in his voice. ‘We can’t hide from ourselves the fact that she is very ill. Oh, dear! What will happen to our little bit of happiness, our nice, quiet evenings!’

Mme Raquin listened to him in dismay. Laurent even went as far as to risk talking about Camille.

‘You see,’ he would also tell the old woman, ‘my poor friend’s death was a dreadful blow for her. She has been dying for the past two years, ever since the fateful day when she lost Camille. Nothing will console her, nothing will heal her. We must be resigned to it.’

These brazen lies made her weep bitterly. She was upset and blinded by the memory of her son. Every time that Camille’s name was spoken, she burst into tears, she let herself go, and she wanted to embrace the person who mentioned her poor child. Laurent had noticed the way that the name made her upset and softened her heart. He could get her to cry