Free Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola Page A

previously, feigning
slumber.
    Laurent, who felt wide awake, and was tired of his recumbent position,
crept up behind her and kissed her shoe and ankle. For a month his life
had been chaste and this walk in the sun had set him on fire. Here he
was, in a hidden retreat, and unable to hold to his breast the woman
who was really his. Her husband might wake up and all his prudent
calculations would be ruined by this obstacle of a man. So he lay, flat
on the ground, hidden by his lover's skirts, trembling with exasperation
as he pressed kiss after kiss upon the shoe and white stocking. Therese
made no movement. Laurent thought she was asleep.
    He rose to his feet and stood with his back to a tree. Then he perceived
that the young woman was gazing into space with her great, sparkling
eyes wide open. Her face, lying between her arms, with her hands clasped
above her head, was deadly pale, and wore an expression of frigid
rigidity. Therese was musing. Her fixed eyes resembled dark,
unfathomable depths, where naught was visible save night. She did not
move, she did not cast a glance at Laurent, who stood erect behind her.
    Her sweetheart contemplated her, and was almost affrighted to see her
so motionless and mute. He would have liked to have bent forward, and
closed those great open eyes with a kiss. But Camille lay asleep
close at hand. This poor creature, with his body twisted out of shape,
displaying his lean proportions, was gently snoring. Under the hat,
half concealing his face, could be seen his mouth contorted into a silly
grimace in his slumber. A few short reddish hairs on a bony chin sullied
his livid skin, and his head being thrown backward, his thin wrinkled
neck appeared, with Adam's apple standing out prominently in brick red
in the centre, and rising at each snore. Camille, spread out on the
ground in this fashion, looked contemptible and vile.
    Laurent who looked at him, abruptly raised his heel. He was going to
crush his face at one blow.
    Therese restrained a cry. She went a shade paler than before, closed
her eyes and turned her head away as if to avoid being bespattered with
blood.
    Laurent, for a few seconds, remained with his heel in the air, above the
face of the slumbering Camille. Then slowly, straightening his leg, he
moved a few paces away. He reflected that this would be a form of murder
such as an idiot would choose. This pounded head would have set all the
police on him. If he wanted to get rid of Camille, it was solely for the
purpose of marrying Therese. It was his intention to bask in the sun,
after the crime, like the murderer of the wagoner, in the story related
by old Michaud.
    He went as far as the edge of the water, and watched the running river
in a stupid manner. Then, he abruptly turned into the underwood again.
He had just arranged a plan. He had thought of a mode of murder that
would be convenient, and without danger to himself.
    He awoke the sleeper by tickling his nose with a straw. Camille sneezed,
got up, and pronounced the joke a capital one. He liked Laurent on
account of his tomfoolery, which made him laugh. He now roused his wife,
who kept her eyes closed. When she had risen to her feet, and shaken her
skirt, which was all crumpled, and covered with dry leaves, the party
quitted the clearing, breaking the small branches they found in their
way.
    They left the island, and walked along the roads, along the byways
crowded with groups in Sunday finery. Between the hedges ran girls
in light frocks; a number of boating men passed by singing; files of
middle-class couples, of elderly persons, of clerks and shopmen with
their wives, walked the short steps, besides the ditches. Each roadway
seemed like a populous, noisy street. The sun alone maintained its
great tranquility. It was descending towards the horizon, casting on
the reddened trees and white thoroughfares immense sheets of pale light.
Penetrating freshness began to fall from the quivering sky.
    Camille had ceased giving his arm to