The Beast Within by Émile Zola Read Free Book Online Page A

you. The dirty sod! That’s why he had you brought up out there at Doinville. Just so he could have his way with you, the bastard! Tell me, damn you, or I’ll start again!’
    Tears were streaming down her face. She couldn’t speak. He raised his hand and struck her again, making her head spin. Still she did not answer him. Three times he struck her, each time repeating the same question.
    ‘How old were you, you bitch? Tell me! How old were you?’
    She was too weak to resist. She felt as if the life were draining from her. He could have clawed her heart out with his clumsy, workman’s fingers. And still the questions came. She told him everything, so overcome with shame and terror that she spoke in a barely audible whisper. Roubaud, inflamed with jealousy, grew angrier and angrier as each painful chapter in the story unfolded. He wanted to know everything. He made her repeatedly go back over what she had already said, down to the last detail, in order to make sure he had got all the facts. He knelt in front of her with his ear pressed to the poor girl’s lips, listening in horror as the confession continued. All the time he held his fist raised above her, ready to strike her again at the least thing she refused to tell him.
    Once again he heard the story of the years at Doinville — when she had first gone there as a child, and later when she was a young girl. Where had it happened? In the woods in the great park? In a corner of some dark passageway in the château? The President had obviously already had his eyes on her when he asked her to stay there after his gardener died and had her brought up with his own daughter. It must have started when the children used to run away in the middle of a game if they saw him coming, while she waited behind, with her pretty little face looking up at him and smiling, so that he could give her a pat on the cheek as he walked past. And later on, if she wasn’t frightened to go and ask him favours and always managed to get what she wanted, perhaps it was because she knew she could twist him round her little finger, whilst he, who was so strict and formal with other people, fed her the same blandishments he used to seduce all his servants. It was revolting. An old lecher, getting her to give him kisses as if he were her grand-father, watching her grow out of childhood, placing his hand on her, getting bolder every time he touched her, not able to wait until she had grown up!
    Roubaud was breathless.
    ‘How old were you? Tell me! How old were you?’
    ‘Sixteen and a half.’
    ‘You’re a liar!’
    Why should she lie, for goodness’ sake? She shrugged her shoulders. She was beyond caring and she was sick with fatigue.
    ‘Where were you, the first time it happened?’
    ‘At La Croix-de-Maufras.’
    For a moment he said nothing. A sickly look crept into his eyes as he next began to speak.
    ‘Tell me what he did to you.’
    She remained silent. He raised his fist.
    ‘You wouldn’t believe me,’ she said.
    ‘Tell me even so,’ he said. ‘He couldn’t manage it, could he?’ She nodded. He was right; he couldn’t manage it.
    Then came an endless stream of questions. He wanted to know everything, down to the very last detail. He used words that sank below the level of decency and he asked her things that broke the bounds of all modesty. She kept her mouth tightly closed, answering him with a mere nod or shake of the head, thinking that perhaps it might make it easier for both of them once the story was out. But for him every new revelation intensified his suffering. If she had taken a lover and had a normal affair, the images that now came to torment him would have disturbed him less. But this was something unnatural; it curdled his mind and drove the poisoned blade of jealousy twisting and turning deep inside him. Life was no longer possible; the awful truth would be with him for ever.
    A loud sob came from his throat: ‘Good God! It can’t be true! No! It’s not