Interpreted by Dan Ruisi

Comment on meurt is a collection of five short stories by Émile Zola. It means “how we die.” Zola explores the manner of death of five people, all occupying a different place on the socio-economic ladder. The general theme is that poor people, or people who are in true love, have less painful deaths. This is the first story, featuring a count and countess. I did this translation in preparation for my trip to France.

At 55 years old, the Count of Verteuil possessed a great fortune and belonged to one of the most illustrious families of France. Not having anything to do with the government, he occupied himself as he could; he submitted scholarly articles to some prestigious reviews that got him into the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences; he threw himself into his work, becoming fascinated with agriculture, husbandry and the fine arts, respectively.

The Countess, Mathilde de Verteuil, was 46. She was still considered the most beautiful blonde in Paris. Age seemed to have whitened her skin, she was thin and now, her shoulders, in maturing, took the curve of a silky fruit. Never was she so beautiful. Whenever she entered a room with her golden hair and her satin voice, she seemed to be a rising star. All the 20-something girls were jealous of her beauty.

The union of the Count and Countess was a silent one. They lived, married, six years together very well. During that time, they had a son, Roger, who was a lieutenant, and a daughter, Blanche, whom they had married off to M. de Bussac, master of requests, the previous year. Several years later, the lustre faded from their marriage and they moved into separate apartments. They remained good friends, cast against a grand background of selfishness. They consulted each other, were perfect for each other in front of the world, but still closed themselves into their own apartments.

While this was happening, one night, Mathilde returned from a ball at two in the morning. Her chambermaid undressed her, then at the moment the Countess retired, said:

“The Count finds himself under the weather tonight.”

The Countess, half asleep, lazily turned her head.

“Oh?” the Countess murmured.

She stretched herself out and added: “Wake me tomorrow at 10 o’clock, I’ll be waiting for the dressmaker.”

The next day, at lunch, when the Count did not appear, the Countess inquired about his health for the first time. She decided to go upstairs and check in on him. She found him very pale in his bed, yet very proper. Three doctors had already come, whispered some things and left some instructions; they would return in the evening. The patient was cared for by two servants, serious and silent, smothering the sound of their heels on the carpet. The large sleeping chamber rested in a cold severity; not a sheet was tussled, no piece of furniture out of place. It was a proper maladie, a ceremonious sickness.

“Are you suffering much, my friend?” the Countess asked upon entering.

The Count made an effort to smile.

“Oh! A little tired,” he said, “All I need is a little rest. Thank you for coming to see me.”

Two more days passed. The room remained orderly; each object in its place, the various potions disappearing as they were used. Meanwhile, the Count knew that he was in mortal danger; he had demanded the truth from the doctors, after which he let them do their work without interruption. Most of the Count’s time was spent with his eyes closed, or else he fixed his gaze in front of him, as if he was reflecting on his solitude

Out and about, the Countess lamented that her husband was suffering – though she didn’t change a thing about her existence, eating, sleeping and promenading as always. Each morning and each evening, she came to ask the Count how he was feeling.

“Well? Do you feel better, my friend?”

“Of course, much better, I thank you my dear Mathilde.”

“If you would like, I will stay close to you.”

“No, it’s pointless. Julien and François suffice. Why tire you out?”

Between them, they understood, they lived separately and were going to die separately. The Count’s last wish was to disappear properly, as a man du monde who means to neither bother nor revolt  anyone.

Yet, one night, he became breathless in the knowledge that he would not live through the night. When the Countess made her customary visit, he told her, in finding a last sigh:

“Don’t leave…I do not feel well.”

The Countess moved in to the room. The doctors were were now permanent fixtures. The two servants performed their duties with silent readiness. The children, Roger and Blanche, were summoned and stayed at the bedside, next to their mother. Some other relatives occupied a neighboring room. The night passed, a tense waiting period. In the morning, the last rites were brought, the Count took Communion in front of everyone, in order to give a last endorsement of religion. The ceremony fulfilled, he could now die.

But he wasn’t hurrying himself, seeming to muster some vitality in order to avoid a loud and painful death. His breath, in the vast and severe room, emitted only the sound interrupted by a clock that was going haywire. This was a well-heeled man who was leaving. And, after he embraced his wife and his children, he pushed them away, fell back into bed, pressed his face against the wall, and died alone.

One of the doctors leaned in and closed the eyes of the decedent, and said in a half-voice:

“It’s over.”

Some sighs and tears swelled in the silence. The Countess, Roger and Blanche kneeled. They cried with their hands joined over their faces; one could not see their faces. Then, the two children drove away the mother, who, at the door, wanting to mark her hopelessness, swung her weight into one last sob. And, from this moment on, the deceased belonged to the pomp of his funeral rites.

The doctors left after rounding their shoulders in a vague sadness. The others had asked for a priest from the parish in order to guard the corpse. The two servants stayed with the priest, seated in some chairs, rigid and dignified; it was the expected end of their service. One of them saw a forgotten spoon on a cabinet; he got up and quickly slipped it in his pocket, so that the orderliness of the room would not be troubled.

The next day, one heard below, in the grand salon, a noise of hammers: these were the upholsterers who laid down the trappings of a serious chapel. All day was taken up by the embalming; the doors were closed and the embalmer was alone with his aides. Upon looking at the Count the next day, he was dressed and had the freshness of youth.

From nine o’clock, the morning of the funeral, the house was filled with a murmur of voices. The boys and sons of the deceased, in a salon on the ground floor, received the crowd; they bowed and kept up the muted politeness of the bereaved. A cross-section of society was there; the nobility, the army, the judiciary, up to senators and members of the Institute.

At 10 o’clock, the procession started its journey to the church. The hearse and a first-class car, stuffed with feathers, were draped with hangings with silver fringes. The ropes of the funeral shroud were held by a Marshall of France, a duke, an old friend of the deceased, an old minister and an academician. Roger de Vertueil and M. de Bussac led the mourning. Then came the cortège, filled with the crème de la crème of society, who breathed in the dust and walked with the unvoiced piety of a disbanded army troop.

The neighborhood stirred at the windows of the passing houses; people trimming hedges on the sidewalks, discovered the triumphant hearse and respectfully nodded at it. Regular, everyday traffic was interrupted by the unending line of mourning carts, almost all empty. Carriages amassed at an intersection; one could hear the swear words of coachmen and the crack of whips. While this was taking place, the Countess of Verteuil, who stayed home, locked herself in her apartment, saying she was too devastated to go. Stretched on a long chaise playing with the tassel of her belt and looking at the ceiling, she was relieved and starry-eyed.

At the church, the ceremony lasted almost two hours. All of the clergy had been up since early morning, when one could only see the priests running around busily in their surplices, giving orders, mopping the façade and blowing their noses with resounding noise. In the middle of the nave, draped in black, was a blazing pedestal for the casket. Finally thecortège settled in, the women to the left, the men to right; the organs rolled their lamentations, the singers dutifully moaning, the children of the choir with their treble sobs. Blazing high flames from candles added their funeral pallor to the pomp of the ceremony.

“Shouldn’t Faure sing?” asked a deputy to his neighboring mourner.

“Yes, I believe,“ responded the neighbor, an old prefect, a superb man who smiled from afar at the women.

And, as the voice of the singer rose in the freezing nave:

“Hein! What method, what richness!” the prefect exclaimed, swaying his head in ecstasy.

The ladies, a vague smile across their lips, thought of their soirées at the Opéra. This Faure really had some talent! A friend of the deceased went so far as to say:

“Never has he sang better! It’s unfortunate that poor Verteuil cannot hear, he would have loved it so much!”

Outside the daylight blinded the crowd who had gathered for this funeral of such a grand homme.

After all, it was a beautiful June day. In the hot air, the sun soared majestically over some dilapidated houses adjacent to the church. The procession left the church and took a long time to reorganize itself. Those who did not want to go any further, disappeared. At two hundred meters, at the end of a road, one could see the plumes of the hearse, which swayed and lost itself when the space was encumbered with cars. On the hearse, one could hear the clicking of the doors and the swift trot of horses on the pavement. The coachmen took the line, and the convoy directed itself towards the cemetery.

In the carriages, one could be at ease. The mourners could believe that when the time comes, one offers one’s self to the earth slowly, in the middle of spring. As they could not see the hearse anymore, they quickly forgot the burial; and conversations started up, the women speaking about summer, the men chatting about their business.

“Do tell, my dear, are you still going to Dieppe this year?”

“Yes, maybe. But it would have to be in August, we leave Saturday for our property in the Loire Valley.”

“My dear…they got into a fight. Very genteel, just a few nicks and scratches. That night, I dined with him at the event. He even won me 25 Louis.”

“Isn’t that it? The reunion of some shareholders for the day after tomorrow…They want to nominate me to the committee. I am so busy, I don’t know if I can.”

The train of mourning suddenly followed an avenue. A freshly-fallen shadow from the trees, and the gaiety of the sun sang in the greens. All of the sudden a dizzy woman, leaning against the entrance, let slip:

“But it’s so charming here!”

With precision, the convoy entered into Montparnasse Cemetery. Their voices quieting, one couldn’t hear anything but the grinding on the wheels on the dirt of the alleys. They had to go all the way to the end of the cemetery, the mausoleum of the Verteuils was off in the background, to the left: A big tomb of white marble, a chapel, intricately carved sculptures. The coffin was placed in front of the door to the chapel, and the speaking began.

There were four of them. The old minister retraced the political life of the deceased, who would have saved France if he didn’t have such a distaste for intrigue. Next, a friend spoke of the virtues of Verteuil which made everyone shed a tear. Then, an unknown gentleman addressed the mourners as a delegate of an industrial society of which the Count Verteuil was honorary president. And finally, a small, frowning man professed the regrets of the Académie des sciences morales.

While this was happening, the assistants interested themselves reading the inscriptions of neighboring tombs. An old man, through pinched lips, after having seized this end of phrase  “…the qualities of the heart, the generosity and the bounty of grand characters…” shaking their chins, one of them murmuring:

“Ah bien! Yes, I knew him, he was a dog!”

The last goodbye hurled to the heavens, the priests blessed the body and there was nothing more to do – save for the ditch diggers who descended on the coffin and lowered it into the ground. The Count was finally home.

And the Countess, on her long chaise, did not move a muscle, except to play with the tassel on her belt. Staring at the ceiling, lost in a dream, little by little her cheeks began to rouge.