The Waters of Enval (Part One, opening chapters)

The little spa of Enval lay at the foot of the mountains of Auvergne, in a narrow green valley, where a stream ran down out of a gorge between walls of dark rock towards the great flat plain of the Limagne. There was one hotel, a few houses, a bath establishment with a handful of tubs, and a doctor or two; the springs were warm, and slightly fizzy, and were supposed to be good for the liver, the stomach and the nerves. Every summer a few dozen invalids came, drank their glasses at the spring at fixed hours, took their baths, walked up and down the one avenue under the trees, and were bored.

This summer there had come a party from Paris: the old Marquis de Ravenel, a vain, kindly, idle gentleman, who came every year for his liver; his daughter, Christiane, in her early twenties, who had been married for some time to a very rich man; and Christiane's brother, Gontran, a charming, witty, penniless young man about town, who had come because he had debts and nothing better to do. Christiane's husband, William Andermatt, was to join them. He was a financier — a small, quick, clever man, always busy, always calculating, who had married Christiane for her name, and her father's connections, and also because he liked her; and he had sent her to Enval for one reason: they had no child, and the doctors said the waters might help.

Christiane was fair, and gentle, and a little dreamy; she had been brought up in a convent and married off by her father without much thought, and she was fond of her busy husband in a tepid way, as one is fond of a kind, clever, rather absent relation. She knew nothing of love. She liked the mountains, the little valley, the walks, the sound of the stream; she was happy at Enval in a quiet, vague way, waiting for something without knowing what.

The doctors of Enval quarrelled over her at once, as they quarrelled over every rich patient. There was old Doctor Bonnefille, the inspector of the springs, who had built his whole life around the old establishment; there was Doctor Honorat, a jovial, sensible man who did not believe much in medicine and prescribed whatever the patient liked; and there was Doctor Latonne, young and ambitious, full of new theories. Christiane, who was easygoing, was handed from one to another, and drank whatever water she was told to drink.

The life of the spa was regulated like a convent's. In the morning the bathers went down, one after another, to the little establishment, where an attendant filled the tubs and timed the baths by the clock; at fixed hours they stood in line at the spring with their glasses, and drank, and walked up and down, and drank again; they compared their livers and their stomachs, their doctors and their diets; they gossiped about each other at the long table of the hotel. The Marquis took it all with great seriousness: he discussed his symptoms with every doctor in turn, changed his treatment every week, and was always feeling a little better.

One morning they went with the Marquis to watch an old peasant of the place, Father Oriol — the richest man in the district, a big, silent, cunning farmer who owned half the vineyards round about — blow up a great rock that stood on a little hill of his, to clear the ground for vines. The whole spa came out to see. There was a fuse, and a hush, and a great roar, and the rock flew into pieces; and when the dust cleared, they saw that in the hole where it had stood, water was bubbling up — a hot spring, full of gas, gushing out of the volcanic ground.

There was a moment of astonishment, and then a babel of voices. The doctors ran to taste it; the bathers crowded round; old Oriol stood looking at the bubbling water with his small, sharp eyes, and said nothing at all, but it was plain that he was already calculating. Gontran, laughing, said that the old man had blown up a rock and found a gold mine.