His Masterpiece by Émile Zola (classic novels for teens .TXT) 📕

elegantly slim that they seemed to quiver in the breeze, as if they had been the proud topmasts of the ancient vessel rising into the brightness of the open sky.

“Are you coming, dear?” asked Christine, gently.

Claude did not listen to her; this, the heart of Paris, had taken full possession of him. The splendid evening seemed to widen the horizon. There were patches of vivid light, and of clearly defined shadow; there was a brightness in the precision of each detail, a transparency in the air, which throbbed with gladness. And the river life, the turmoil of the quays, all the people, streaming along the streets, rolling over the bridges, arriving from every side of that huge cauldron, Paris, steamed there in visible billows, with a quiver that was apparent in the sunlight. There was a light breeze, high aloft a flight of small cloudlets crossed the paling azure sky, and one could hear a slow but mighty palpitation, as if the soul of Paris here dwelt around its cradle.

But Christine, frightened at seeing Claude so absorbed, and seized herself with a kind of religious awe, took hold of his arm and dragged him away, as if she had felt that some great danger was threatening him.

“Let us go home. You are doing yourself harm. I want to get back.”

At her touch he started like a man disturbed in sleep. Then, turning his head to take a last look, he muttered: “Ah! heavens! Ah! heavens, how beautiful!”

He allowed himself to be led away. But throughout the evening, first at dinner, afterwards beside the stove, and until he went to bed, he remained like one dazed, so deep in his cogitations that he did not utter half a dozen sentences. And Christine, failing to draw from him any answer to her questions, at last became silent also. She looked at him anxiously; was it the approach of some serious illness, had he inhaled some bad air whilst standing midway across the bridge yonder? His eyes stared vaguely into space, his face flushed as if with some inner straining. One would have thought it the mute travail of germination, as if something were springing into life within him.

The next morning, immediately after breakfast, he set off, and Christine spent a very sorrowful day, for although she had become more easy in mind on hearing him whistle some of his old southern tunes as he got up, she was worried by another matter, which she had not mentioned to him for fear of damping his spirits again. That day they would for the first time lack everything; a whole week separated them from the date when their little income would fall due, and she had spent her last copper that morning. She had nothing left for the evening, not even the wherewithal to buy a loaf. To whom could she apply? How could she manage to hide the truth any longer from him when he came home hungry? She made up her mind to pledge the black silk dress which Madame Vanzade had formerly given her, but it was with a heavy heart; she trembled with fear and shame at the idea of the pawnshop, that familiar resort of the poor which she had never as yet entered. And she was tortured by such apprehension about the future, that from the ten francs which were lent her she only took enough to make a sorrel soup and a stew of potatoes. On coming out of the pawn-office, a meeting with somebody she knew had given her the finishing stroke.

As it happened, Claude came home very late, gesticulating merrily, and his eyes very bright, as if he were excited by some secret joy; he was very hungry, and grumbled because the cloth was not laid. Then, having sat down between Christine and little Jacques, he swallowed his soup and devoured a plateful of potatoes.

“Is that all?” he asked, when he had finished. “You might as well have added a scrap of meat. Did you have to buy some boots again?”

She stammered, not daring to tell him the truth, but hurt at heart by this injustice. He, however, went on chaffing her about the coppers she juggled away to buy herself things with; and getting more and more excited, amid the egotism of feelings which he seemingly wished to keep to himself, he suddenly flew out at Jacques.

“Hold your noise, you brat!⁠—you drive one mad.”

The child, forgetting all about his dinner, had been tapping the edge of his plate with his spoon, his eyes full of mirthful delight at this music.

“Jacques, be quiet,” scoldingly said his mother, in her turn. “Let your father have his dinner in peace.”

Then the little one, abashed, at once became very quiet, and relapsed into gloomy stillness, with his lustreless eyes fixed on his potatoes, which, however, he did not eat.

Claude made a show of stuffing himself with cheese, while Christine, quite grieved, offered to fetch some cold meat from a ham and beef shop; but he declined, and prevented her going by words that pained her still more. Then, the table having been cleared, they all sat round the lamp for the evening, she sewing, the little one turning over a picture-book in silence, and Claude drumming on the table with his fingers, his mind the while wandering back to the spot whence he had come. Suddenly he rose, sat down again with a sheet of paper and a pencil, and began sketching rapidly, in the vivid circle of light that fell from under the lampshade. And such was his longing to give outward expression to the tumultuous ideas beating in his skull, that soon this sketch did not suffice for his relief. On the contrary, it goaded him on, and he finished by unburdening his mind in a flood of words. He would have shouted to the walls; and if he addressed himself to his wife it was because she happened to be there.

“Look, that’s what we saw