Part 39 (1/2)
”At last!” cried Felicite, beside herself.
Then she remained motionless for a moment, her ear turned uneasily toward the bedroom, fearing that she had wakened Clotilde. But silence reigned throughout the dark and sleeping house. There came from the bedroom only the august peace of death; she heard nothing but the clear vibration of the clock; Clotilde fell asleep near one. And the press yawned wide open, displaying the papers with which it overflowed, heaped up on its three shelves. Then she threw herself upon it, and the work of destruction began, in the midst of the sacred obscurity of the infinite repose of this funereal vigil.
”At last!” she repeated, in a low voice, ”after thirty years of waiting.
Let us hurry--let us hurry. Martine, help me!”
She had already drawn forward the high chair of the desk, and mounted on it at a bound, to take down, first of all, the papers on the top shelf, for she remembered that the envelopes were there. But she was surprised not to see the thick blue paper wrappers; there was nothing there but bulky ma.n.u.scripts, the doctor's completed but unpublished works, works of inestimable value, all his researches, all his discoveries, the monument of his future fame, which he had left in Ramond's charge.
Doubtless, some days before his death, thinking that only the envelopes were in danger, and that no one in the world would be so daring as to destroy his other works, he had begun to cla.s.sify and arrange the papers anew, and removed the envelopes out of sight.
”Ah, so much the worse!” murmured Felicite; ”let us begin anywhere; there are so many of them that if we wish to get through we must hurry. While I am up here, let us clear these away forever. Here, catch Martine!”
And she emptied the shelf, throwing the ma.n.u.scripts, one by one, into the arms of the servant, who laid them on the table with as little noise as possible. Soon the whole heap was on it, and Felicite sprang down from the chair.
”To the fire! to the fire! We shall lay our hands on the others, and too, by and by, on those I am looking for. These can go into it, meantime. It will be a good riddance, at any rate, a fine clearance, yes, indeed! To the fire, to the fire with them all, even to the smallest sc.r.a.p of paper, even to the most illegible scrawl, if we wish to be certain of destroying the contamination of evil.”
She herself, fanatical and fierce, in her hatred of the truth, in her eagerness to destroy the testimony of science, tore off the first page of one of the ma.n.u.scripts, lighted it at the lamp, and then threw this burning brand into the great fireplace, in which there had not been a fire for perhaps twenty years, and she fed the fire, continuing to throw on it the rest of the ma.n.u.script, piece by piece. The servant, as determined as herself, came to her a.s.sistance, taking another enormous notebook, which she tore up leaf by leaf. From this forth the fire did not cease to burn, filling the wide fireplace with a bright blaze, with tongues of flame that seemed to die away from time to time, only to burn up more brightly than ever when fresh fuel fed them. The fire grew larger, the heap of ashes rose higher and higher--a thick bed of blackened leaves among which ran millions of sparks. But it was a long, a never-ending task; for when several pages were thrown on at a time, they would not burn; it was necessary to move them and turn them over with the tongs; the best way was to stir them up and then wait until they were in a blaze, before adding more. The women soon grew skilful at their task, and the work progressed at a rapid rate.
In her haste to get a fresh armful of papers Felicite stumbled against a chair.
”Oh, madame, take care,” said Martine. ”Some one might come!”
”Come? who should come? Clotilde? She is too sound asleep, poor girl.
And even if any one should come, once it is finished, I don't care; I won't hide myself, you may be sure; I shall leave the empty press standing wide open; I shall say aloud that it is I who have purified the house. When there is not a line of writing left, ah, good heavens! I shall laugh at everything else!”
For almost two hours the fireplace blazed. They went back to the press and emptied the two other shelves, and now there remained only the bottom, which was heaped with a confusion of papers. Little by little, intoxicated by the heat of the bonfire, out of breath and perspiring, they gave themselves up to the savage joy of destruction. They stooped down, they blackened their hands, pus.h.i.+ng in the partially consumed fragments, with gestures so violent, so feverishly excited, that their gray locks fell in disorder over their shoulders. It was like a dance of witches, feeding a h.e.l.lish fire for some abominable act--the martyrdom of a saint, the burning of written thought in the public square; a whole world of truth and hope destroyed. And the blaze of this fire, which at moments made the flame of the lamp grow pale, lighted up the vast apartment, and made the gigantic shadows of the two women dance upon the ceiling.
But as she was emptying the bottom of the press, after having burned, handful by handful, the papers with which it had been filled, Felicite uttered a stifled cry of triumph.
”Ah, here they are! To the fire! to the fire!”
She had at last come upon the envelopes. Far back, behind the rampart formed by the notes, the doctor had hidden the blue paper wrappers. And then began a mad work of havoc, a fury of destruction; the envelopes were gathered up in handfuls and thrown into the flames, filling the fireplace with a roar like that of a conflagration.
”They are burning, they are burning! They are burning at last! Here is another, Martine, here is another. Ah, what a fire, what a glorious fire!”
But the servant was becoming uneasy.
”Take care, madame, you are going to set the house on fire. Don't you hear that roar?”
”Ah! what does that matter? Let it all burn. They are burning, they are burning; what a fine sight! Three more, two more, and, see, now the last is burning!”
She laughed with delight, beside herself, terrible to see, when some fragment of lighted soot fell down. The roar was becoming more and more fierce; the chimney, which was never swept, had caught fire. This seemed to excite her still more, while the servant, losing her head, began to scream and run about the room.
Clotilde slept beside the dead Pascal, in the supreme calm of the bedroom, unbroken save by the light vibration of the clock striking the hours. The tapers burned with a tall, still flame, the air was motionless. And yet, in the midst of her heavy, dreamless sleep, she heard, as in a nightmare, a tumult, an ever-increasing rush and roar.
And when she opened her eyes she could not at first understand. Where was she? Why this enormous weight that crushed her heart? She came back to reality with a start of terror--she saw Pascal, she heard Martine's cries in the adjoining room, and she rushed out, in alarm, to learn their cause.
But at the threshold Clotilde took in the whole scene with cruel distinctness--the press wide open and completely empty; Martine maddened by her fear of fire; Felicite radiant, pus.h.i.+ng into the flames with her foot the last fragments of the envelopes. Smoke and flying soot filled the study, where the roaring of the fire sounded like the hoa.r.s.e gasping of a murdered man--the fierce roar which she had just heard in her sleep.
And the cry which sprang from her lips was the same cry that Pascal himself had uttered on the night of the storm, when he surprised her in the act of stealing his papers.