Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola Read Free Book Online

meeting, and returned to the Arcade of
the Pont Neuf.
    From that day forth, Therese entered into his life. He did not yet
accept her, although he bore with her. He had his hours of terror,
his moments of prudence, and, altogether this intrigue caused him
disagreeable agitation. But his discomfort and his fears disappeared.
The meetings continued and multiplied.
    Therese experienced no hesitation. She went straight where her passion
urged her to go. This woman whom circumstances had bowed down, and who
had at length drawn herself up erect, now revealed all her being and
explained her life.
    "Oh! if you only knew," said she, "how I have suffered. I was brought
up in the tepid damp room of an invalid. I slept in the same bed as
Camille. At night I got as far away from him as I could, to avoid the
sickly odour of his body. He was naughty and obstinate. He would not
take his physic unless I shared it with him. To please my aunt I was
obliged to swallow a dose of every drug. I don't know how it is I
have survived. They made me ugly. They robbed me of the only thing I
possessed, and it is impossible for you to love me as I love you."
    She broke off and wept, and after kissing Laurent, continued with bitter
hatred:
    "I do not wish them any harm. They brought me up, they received me,
and shielded me from misery. But I should have preferred abandonment to
their hospitality. I had a burning desire for the open air. When quite
young, my dream was to rove barefooted along the dusty roads, holding
out my hand for charity, living like a gipsy. I have been told that my
mother was a daughter of the chief of a tribe in Africa. I have often
thought of her, and I understood that I belonged to her by blood and
instinct. I should have liked to have never parted from her, and to have
crossed the sand slung at her back.
    "Ah! what a childhood! I still feel disgust and rebellion, when I recall
the long days I passed in the room where Camille was at death's door.
I sat bent over the fire, stupidly watching the infusions simmer, and
feeling my limbs growing stiff. And I could not move. My aunt scolded me
if I made a noise. Later on, I tasted profound joy in the little house
beside the river; but I was already half feeble, I could barely walk,
and when I tried to run I fell down. Then they buried me alive in this
vile shop."
    After a pause, she resumed:
    "You will hardly credit how bad they have made me. They have turned
me into a liar and a hypocrite. They have stifled me with their
middle-class gentleness, and I can hardly understand how it is that
there is still blood in my veins. I have lowered my eyes, and given
myself a mournful, idiotic face like theirs. I have led their deathlike
life. When you saw me I looked like a blockhead, did I not? I was grave,
overwhelmed, brutalised. I no longer had any hope. I thought of flinging
myself into the Seine.
    "But previous to this depression, what nights of anger I had. Down there
at Vernon, in my frigid room, I bit my pillow to stifle my cries. I beat
myself, taxed myself with cowardice. My blood was on the boil, and I
would have lacerated my body. On two occasions, I wanted to run away, to
go straight before me, towards the sun; but my courage failed. They had
turned me into a docile brute with their tame benevolence and sickly
tenderness. Then I lied, I always lied. I remained there quite gentle,
quite silent, dreaming of striking and biting."
    After a silence, she continued:
    "I do not know why I consented to marry Camille. I did not protest, from
a feeling of a sort of disdainful indifference. I pitied the child. When
I played with him, I felt my fingers sink into the flesh of his limbs
as into damp clay. I took him because my aunt offered him to me, and
because I never intended to place any restraint on my actions on his
account.
    "I found my husband just the same little suffering boy whose bed I
had shared when I was six years old. He was just as frail, just as
plaintive, and he still had that insipid