Read Online For a Night of Love by Émile Zola - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Émile Zola
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haughty in its purity.
* [Zola’s Note]: The first idea for this novella came from Casanova.
Nantas
1
The room Nantas had been living in since his arrival from Marseilles was on the top floor of a house in the rue de Lille, next to the residence of Baron Danvilliers, a member of the Council of State. This house belonged to the Baron, who had had it built over some old outhouses. Nantas, if he leant forward, could see a corner of the Baron’s garden, which was shaded by some superb trees. Beyond that, over the green treetops, a vista opened up across Paris; you could see the gap where the Seine was, the Tuileries, the Louvre, the line of the river-banks, a whole sea of rooftops, as far as the hazy distance of the Père Lachaise cemetery.
It was a narrow attic room, with a window cut into the slate roof. Nantas had furnished it simply with a bed, a table, and a chair. He had settled down here as he was looking for something cheap, having made up his mind to camp out until he had found some sort of job. The dirty wallpaper, the black ceiling, the poverty and bareness of this cramped room in which there wasn’t even a fireplace did not bother him. Ever since he had been able to go to sleep with a view over the Louvre and the Tuileries, he had compared himself to a general, sleeping in some wretched roadside inn, ahead of him the huge and wealthy city that he is to take the following day.
Nantas’ story was a short one. He was the son of a Marseilles mason, and had begun his studies at that city’s lycée , pushed on by the ambitious affection of his mother, who dreamt of making a gentleman of him. His parents had bled themselves dry to get him as far as his baccalaureate. Then, as his mother had died, Nantas was obliged to accept a humble job with a merchant, where for twelve years he led a weary life, the monotony of which drove him to distraction. He would have run away twenty times over if his filial duty had not kepthim stuck in Marseilles, near his father who had fallen off some scaffolding and ended up a cripple. Now he had to make enough for all their needs. But one evening, returning home from work, he found the mason dead, his pipe still warm next to him. Three days later, he sold the few old garments in the house, and set off for Paris, with two hundred francs in his pocket.
Nantas was stubbornly ambitious to make his fortune, a desire he had inherited from his mother. He was a young man who made up his mind quickly, and was coldly determined. While still a boy, he described himself as endowed with great strength. People had often laughed at him when he had forgotten himself so far as to confide in them and to repeat his favourite phrase, ‘I’m really strong,’ a phrase which became comic when you saw him with his slim black frock-coat, coming apart at the shoulders, with his wrists sticking out of the sleeves. Little by little, he had in this way made a religion of strength, seeing it and it alone in the world, convinced that the strong are, after all, the ones who end up the winners. In his opinion, it was enough to want something and to be able to get it. The rest had no importance.
On Sundays, when he went for a solitary stroll through the sun-baked suburbs of Marseilles, he felt he was a genius; in the depths of his being there was as it were an instinctive impulse pushing him onward; and he would return home to eat a mundane plateful of potatoes with his infirm father, telling himself that one day he would surely be able to carve out for himself a share of the goods in that society in which he was still a nobody at thirty years of age. This was no base desire, no craving for vulgar enjoyments; it was the definite feeling of an intelligence and a will-power that, not finding themselves in their right place, intended to rise imperturbably to that place,through a natural and logical necessity.
As soon as he set foot on the streets of Paris, Nantas thought that he would need merely to stretch out
* [Zola’s Note]: The first idea for this novella came from Casanova.
Nantas
1
The room Nantas had been living in since his arrival from Marseilles was on the top floor of a house in the rue de Lille, next to the residence of Baron Danvilliers, a member of the Council of State. This house belonged to the Baron, who had had it built over some old outhouses. Nantas, if he leant forward, could see a corner of the Baron’s garden, which was shaded by some superb trees. Beyond that, over the green treetops, a vista opened up across Paris; you could see the gap where the Seine was, the Tuileries, the Louvre, the line of the river-banks, a whole sea of rooftops, as far as the hazy distance of the Père Lachaise cemetery.
It was a narrow attic room, with a window cut into the slate roof. Nantas had furnished it simply with a bed, a table, and a chair. He had settled down here as he was looking for something cheap, having made up his mind to camp out until he had found some sort of job. The dirty wallpaper, the black ceiling, the poverty and bareness of this cramped room in which there wasn’t even a fireplace did not bother him. Ever since he had been able to go to sleep with a view over the Louvre and the Tuileries, he had compared himself to a general, sleeping in some wretched roadside inn, ahead of him the huge and wealthy city that he is to take the following day.
Nantas’ story was a short one. He was the son of a Marseilles mason, and had begun his studies at that city’s lycée , pushed on by the ambitious affection of his mother, who dreamt of making a gentleman of him. His parents had bled themselves dry to get him as far as his baccalaureate. Then, as his mother had died, Nantas was obliged to accept a humble job with a merchant, where for twelve years he led a weary life, the monotony of which drove him to distraction. He would have run away twenty times over if his filial duty had not kepthim stuck in Marseilles, near his father who had fallen off some scaffolding and ended up a cripple. Now he had to make enough for all their needs. But one evening, returning home from work, he found the mason dead, his pipe still warm next to him. Three days later, he sold the few old garments in the house, and set off for Paris, with two hundred francs in his pocket.
Nantas was stubbornly ambitious to make his fortune, a desire he had inherited from his mother. He was a young man who made up his mind quickly, and was coldly determined. While still a boy, he described himself as endowed with great strength. People had often laughed at him when he had forgotten himself so far as to confide in them and to repeat his favourite phrase, ‘I’m really strong,’ a phrase which became comic when you saw him with his slim black frock-coat, coming apart at the shoulders, with his wrists sticking out of the sleeves. Little by little, he had in this way made a religion of strength, seeing it and it alone in the world, convinced that the strong are, after all, the ones who end up the winners. In his opinion, it was enough to want something and to be able to get it. The rest had no importance.
On Sundays, when he went for a solitary stroll through the sun-baked suburbs of Marseilles, he felt he was a genius; in the depths of his being there was as it were an instinctive impulse pushing him onward; and he would return home to eat a mundane plateful of potatoes with his infirm father, telling himself that one day he would surely be able to carve out for himself a share of the goods in that society in which he was still a nobody at thirty years of age. This was no base desire, no craving for vulgar enjoyments; it was the definite feeling of an intelligence and a will-power that, not finding themselves in their right place, intended to rise imperturbably to that place,through a natural and logical necessity.
As soon as he set foot on the streets of Paris, Nantas thought that he would need merely to stretch out
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