The Dream (Oxford World's Classics) by Émile Zola

Author:Émile Zola [Zola, Émile]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780191063060
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2018-09-19T20:30:00+00:00

Chapter 7

That same evening, just as she was leaving the table, Angélique said she was feeling very unwell, and went up to her bedroom. The emotional turmoil of the morning and the struggle with her own feelings had left her exhausted. She went straight to bed, and burst once more into tears, pulling the sheet over her head in a desperate longing to vanish, to fade out of existence.

The hours passed, and night fell, a sweltering July night, whose leaden calm seeped in through the open window. Vast multitudes of stars glittered in the black sky. It must have been nearly eleven o’clock, and the moon, now in its last quarter, and already quite slender, was set to rise only around midnight.

In the dark room, Angélique was still weeping, her tears falling in an inexhaustible stream, when a creak at the door made her look up.

There was silence, and then a gentle voice called to her:

‘Angélique… Angélique… my darling…’

She recognized the voice of Hubertine, who had doubtless been making ready for bed, with her husband, when she had heard the faint sound of crying and, greatly concerned, had come upstairs, half-dressed, to see what the matter was.

‘Angélique, are you feeling unwell?’

Holding her breath, the young girl made no answer. She felt an overwhelming desire to be alone; it was the only thing that soothed her pain. A word of consolation, a caressing hand, even from her mother, would be torture to her. She pictured her standing on the other side of the door, in bare feet, she guessed, from the soft sound her steps had made over the tiles. Two minutes passed, and she sensed that she was still there, bending forward with her ear to the door, pulling her unfastened nightgown around her with her lovely arms.

Hearing nothing further, not even a breath, Hubertine dared not call out again. She was sure that she had heard sobbing, but if the child had at last fallen asleep, what was the point in waking her? She waited for another minute, perturbed by her daughter’s hidden sorrows, half-guessing their origin, and full of tender solicitude for her. And she made up her mind to go back down, just as she had come up, her hands feeling familiarly for each curve of the staircase, the soft pat of her bare feet the only sound through the dark house.

Then it was Angélique, sitting up in her bed, who listened. The silence was so complete that she could hear the light pressure of her mother’s heels on the edge of every step. The door of the downstairs bedroom opened and closed, and then she heard a faint murmuring, whispers, compassionate and sad, as her parents no doubt conferred about her, discussing their fears and hopes for her, and it carried on interminably, long after they must have put out the light and gone to bed. The nocturnal sounds of the old building had never risen up to her so clearly before. Normally she slept the

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