Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [74]
Before knowing Thérèse, Laurent had the ponderousness, the prudent calm and sanguine outlook of a peasant’s son. He slept, ate and drank like an animal. At every moment, in every circumstance of his daily life, he breathed easily and placidly, content with himself and somewhat dulled by his own bulk. Hardly at all did he feel the occasional stirring in the depths of his stolid flesh. But Thérèse had developed those stirrings into frightful shudders. In this great body, soft and flabby, she had nurtured a nervous system of astonishing sensibility. Laurent had formerly enjoyed life through his blood rather than his nerves; now his senses became less crude. At his mistress’s first kiss, he had suddenly been made aware of a life of the emotions that was quite new and moving for him. This life increased his sensual pleasure tenfold and gave such an intense nature to his joy that at first he was made virtually mad by it, and abandoned himself wildly to extremes of intoxication that his sanguine temperament had never given him. Then, he underwent a strange internal process: his nerves developed and came to dominate the sanguine element in him, this fact by itself changing his character. He lost his calm and his heaviness, no longer living a half-awake existence. A time came when the nerves and the blood balanced each other out, and this was a profoundly pleasurable moment, a time of perfect living.2 Then the nerves dominated and he fell into the paroxysms that rack unbalanced minds and bodies.
That is why Laurent came to shudder at the sight of a dark corner, like a timorous child. This new person, the shivering, haggard being that had just emerged in him out of the thick, brutish peasant, experienced the fears and anxieties of those of nervous temperament. A whole series of events - Therese’s passionate caresses, the feverish drama of the murder and the fearful expectation of sensual pleasure - had driven him more or less insane, keying up his senses and striking his nerves with sudden and repeated blows. Then, inevitably, insomnia had come, bringing with it hallucinations. From then on, Laurent had lapsed into the intolerable existence and endless horror in which he was now entrapped.
His remorse was purely physical.3 Only his body, his tense nerves and his trembling flesh were afraid of the drowned man. His conscience played no part in his terror: he did not in the slightest regret having killed Camille. When he was feeling calm and the ghost was not there, he would have committed the murder all over again, if he had thought that his interests demanded it. In the daytime, he recovered from his terror, promised himself that he would be strong and upbraided Thérèse, accusing her of upsetting him. In his view, Thérèse was the one who was scared and it was Thérèse alone who caused the dreadful scenes at night in the bedroom. As soon as night fell, as soon as he was shut in with his wife, he came out in a cold sweat and childish terrors assailed him. In this way, he went through periodic crises, nervous attacks that returned every evening and deranged his senses by showing him the grotesque green face of his victim. It was like the onset of a terrifying disease, a sort of hysteria4 of murder: the words ‘illness’ and ‘nervous affliction’ were really the only ones that could properly describe Laurent’s fears. His face became contorted and his limbs stiffened: you could see that his nerves were tensing inside. His physical suffering was frightful, but the soul remained absent. The wretch did not feel a shred of remorse. His passion for Thérèse had infected him with a dreadful malady, that’s all.
Thérèse, too, was deeply disturbed, but in her it was simply that her original temperament had been greatly over-stimulated. Since the age of ten, she had suffered from nervous disorders, partly as a result of the manner in which she had grown up in the over-heated, nauseous air of little Camille’s sick room.