Money (Oxford World’s Classics) by Émile Zola

Author:Émile Zola
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford Unversity Press
Published: 2014-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII

TWO months later, on a mild, grey November day, Madame Caroline went up to the workroom straight after lunch to get to work. Her brother, now in Constantinople, and busy with his grand Oriental railways project, had asked her to look up the notes he had made on their first trip, and then to draw up a sort of report, to serve as a historical record; and for a good two weeks now, she had been trying to get totally absorbed in this task. It was so warm that day that she let the fire go out and opened the window, and before sitting down again, she gazed for a moment at the tall, bare trees in the garden of the hotel Beauvilliers, purplish against the pale sky.

She had been writing for almost half-an-hour when the need for a particular document took her off on a long search among the files piled up on the table. She got up and rummaged among some other papers, then went back with her hands full, and sat down again. And as she sorted through a few loose pages, she came upon some religious pictures, an illustrated view of the Holy Sepulchre* and a prayer framed by the instruments of the Passion,* a sovereign guarantee of salvation in those moments of distress when the soul is in peril. Then she remembered that her brother, like the pious grown-up child that he was, had bought these images in Jerusalem. Her feelings suddenly overcame her, and her cheeks became wet with tears. Ah, that brother of hers, so intelligent, so unappreciated for so long, how lucky he was to have his faith, and not want to smile at this naive, chocolate-box picture of the Holy Sepulchre, how fortunate to be able to find serene strength in his belief in the efficacy of this prayer with its sugary verses. She could see him now, too trusting, too easily taken in perhaps, but so upright, so steady, so free from rebellion or conflict. She, on the other hand, no longer a believer, had endured two months of suffering and struggle, her mind burned by reading and battered by arguments, and how passionately she had wished in her hours of weakness, that she had remained simple and ingenuous like him, able to soothe her bleeding heart by repeating three times, morning and evening, that childish prayer framed by the nails, the lance, the crown, and the sponge of the Passion!

In the days that followed the brutal accident through which she had learned of Saccard’s affair with Baroness Sandorff, she had steeled herself, by a great effort of will, to resist the urge to keep watch on them and find out more. She was not the wife of this man, nor did she wish to be the passionate mistress, jealous enough to provoke a scandal; and the worst of it was that she still could not bring herself to refuse him, in the intimacy of their everyday life. This

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