With the end of the century there has come in France a great revival of the struggle between religion and free thought which has so long been waged there; and the stupendous effort put forth by the Roman Catholic Church to annihilate the Third Republic has placed the country in a condition of unrest such as it has only known on the eve of its chief Revolutions. Behind the notorious Dreyfus case, behind the shouts of 'Long live the army!' and 'Death to the Jews!' behind all the so-called Nationalism and Militarism, the Church has been steadily, incessantly working, ever fanning the flames of discord, ever promoting and fostering coalitions of malcontents, by whose help it hopes to recover its old-time paramountcy. Time alone can reveal the outcome of this great effort, this 'forlorn hope' assault upon institutions which have hitherto kept Catholicism in check and tended so largely to the diffusion of free thought; but personally I am inclined to think, with all due allowance for partial successes achieved here and there, that this Clerical movement, however skilfully engineered under the cloak of patriotism, and however lavishly financed by the bulk of the money derived from the Lourdes 'miracles,' over which the Assumptionist Fathers preside, and the offerings of zealots throughout the country, will ultimately result in failure, for France is not at heart a religious country, and when faith has departed from a nation can it be restored?
The meaning of the Clerical movement to which I have referred is twofold. In the first place there is the perfectly natural and legitimate desire of the French Catholics to recover lost ascendancy; and in the second place there is the conviction of the Vatican and the French episcopate generally that France is the only country which under favourable circumstances might be in a position to restore the temporal power of the Holy See. In that respect the Pope can hope for nothing from Spain or Austria or the Catholic States of Germany. In France rests the sole hope of the Papacy; and thus on political as well as religious grounds the establishment of a Catholic régime in place of the present-day free-thought Republic is the one great dream of those who direct the fortunes of the Holy Roman and Apostolic Church.
All who know anything of modern history are aware that in 1849 a French army overthrew the Roman Republic and reinstated Pius IX. in possession of the so-called patrimony of St. Peter, and that in after years, until France indeed was vanquished at Sedan, the presence of French forces alone enabled the Pope to continue in the exercise of his territorial sway. Both the Royalist reactionaries who sat in the National Assembly of the Second Republic, and the Prince-President of that time, afterwards Napoleon III., lent support to Pius IX., and in return expected to receive the countenance and help of the French clergy in their various designs upon France. But the clergy always seeks its own ends, and more than once its policy varied, now being in favour of the Royalists and now in favour of Louis Napoleon, according as it seemed likely to secure greater benefits from one or the other.
Even when the contest for supremacy was over, when the Republic had been murdered at the Coup d'état, and the hopes of the Count de Chambord had been destroyed by the triumph of Napoleon the Little, the clergy did not give unqualified support to the new government. True, on the 1st of January, 1852, Monseigneur Sibour, Archbishop of Paris, officiated at a solemn 'Te Deum' at Notre Dame in honour of the triumph of a bribed and drunken soldiery over the defenders of the Constitution; but Louis Napoleon had scarcely become Emperor before a large section of the clergy began to protest that the new régime was by no means sufficiently Clerical. The course adopted in these circumstances was very characteristic and significant. An education law had been passed in 1850, giving many privileges and advantages to the clergy, such indeed as they had not possessed since the downfall of Charles X. But comparative liberty in educational matters was more than the French episcopate, eager for domination as the price of its adhesion to imperialism, could willingly allow, and before long a celebrated and remarkably well written newspaper, 'L'Univers,' initiated a campaign against the Empire, taking as its standpoint that the Pope was the virtual sovereign of the world, and that everything must be subservient to the interests of the Roman Church. Half the French episcopate actively supported the view which followed, i.e. that the education of the young ought to be entirely under priestly control, the priests being the vicars of the Pope, even as he (the Pope) was the vicar of the Deity. There were some curious and even amusing incidents in the course of that now forgotten campaign. For instance, it was actually proposed to abolish the study of the Greek and Latin classics in France, a suggestion which many of the Bishops vigorously upheld, though others of a scholarly turn pleaded plaintively in favour of Horace and a few others, whose writings, if edited in a Christian spirit, might yet, they thought, be allowed among young men of proved morality!
With the educational controversy many political matters soon became blended. The Italian revolutionaries were at that time doing their utmost to frighten Napoleon III. into fulfilment of his early promises respecting the liberation of Italy; and the Vatican, anxious for the maintenance of the old order of things, since any change must help on its own fall, made desperate efforts to prevent the interference of France in Italian affairs, unless indeed it were for the consolidation of the Papal power. Even as in recent times the Assumptionist Fathers have intrigued for the overthrow of the Third Republic, so did the Société de St. Vincent de Paul—which nominally was a mere charitable organisation—seek to turn the Empire into a priestly régime, or in default thereof to overthrow it. The position of Napoleon III. was the more difficult since his own wife, the Empress Eugénie, acted as the Vatican's spy and agent. Matters at last reached such a pass that the Emperor's Minister, Billault, had on the one hand to prohibit political allusions in sermons, under pain of fine and imprisonment, and on the other to break up and scatter the intriguing religious societies. Nevertheless the Empire's position remained a difficult one to the very last, and Napoleon III. was often sorely puzzled how to steer a safe course between the claims of the Pope and the clergy and the aspirations of Italy and its well-wishers; to say nothing of the views of all those who, thinking of France alone, by no means approved of priestly power in politics.
It is on the state of affairs to which I have alluded, the hostility of a part of the French clergy to the Empire in its earlier years, that M. Zola has based his novel, 'The Conquest of Plassans.' The priests, subservient to the Vatican, lead the town into a course of opposition against imperial institutions, and the Government then despatches thither an impecunious and unscrupulous priest, one Abbé Faujas, for the purpose of winning it back again. Such tactics were not infrequently employed at that time. Whilst a part of the clergy simply followed its own inclinations, others venally took pay from the Empire to do its dirty work. As often as not they subsequently betrayed their paymaster, using the positions into which they were thrust for the satisfaction of their personal ambition. Still, for a while these needy hangers-on at the Ministry of Public Worship proved useful allies, and the Empire was only too ready to employ them. It will be seen, then, that the theme chosen by M. Zola rests upon historical fact, and it may be taken that his story embodies incidents which actually occurred under such conditions as those that I have described.
The 'Conquest of Plassans' may well be read in conjunction with 'The Fortune of the Rougons,' M. Zola's earlier work, as the scene in both instances is the same, and certain personages, such as Félicité Rougon and Antoine Macquart, figure largely in both books. In the earlier volume we see the effect of the Coup d'état in the provinces, almost every incident being based upon historical fact. For instance, Miette, the heroine of 'The Fortune of the Rougons,' had a counterpart in Madame Ferrier, that being the real name of the young woman who, carrying the insurgents' blood-red banner, was hailed by them as the 'Goddess of Liberty' on their dramatic march. And in like way the tragic death of Silvère, linked to another hapless prisoner, was founded by M. Zola on an incident that followed the rising, as recorded by an eyewitness. Amidst all the bloodshed, the Rougons, in M. Zola's narrative, rise to fortune and power, and Plassans (really Aix-en-Provence) bows down before them. But time passes, the revolt of the clergy supervenes, by their influence the town chooses a Royalist Marquis as deputy, and it becomes necessary to conquer it once again.
Abbé Faujas, by whom this conquest is achieved on behalf of the Empire, is, I think, a strongly conceived character, perhaps the most real of all the priests that are scattered through M. Zola's books. I do not say this because he happens to be anything but a good man. M. Zola has sketched more than one good priest in his novels, as, for instance, Abbé Rose in 'Paris;' but in this one, Faujas, there is more genuine flesh and blood than in all the others. True, his colleagues, Bourrette and Fenil, are admirably suggested; the Bishop, too, an indolent prelate who surrenders the government of his diocese to his vicar-general, and spends his time in translating Horace (for he is one of the few who favour the classics), leaves on one an impression of reality; yet no other priestly creation of M. Zola's pen can to my thinking vie with the stern, chaste, authoritative, ambitious Faujas, the man who subdues Plassans, and who wrecks the home of the Mouret family, with whom he lives.
Leading parts in the story are assigned to Mouret and his wife Marthe, both of whom are extremely interesting figures. The genesis of the former's career and fate is contained in one of M. Zola's short stories, 'Histoire d'un Fou,' which he contributed to the Paris 'événement' before he took to book writing. The idea, so skilfully worked out, is that of a man who, although perfectly sane, is generally believed to be mad, and who by force of being thus regarded does ultimately lose his wits. In Marthe his wife, the grand-daughter of a mad woman, we find the hereditary flaw turning to hysteria, in a measure of a religious character, such as subsequently becomes manifest in her son Serge, the chief character of 'Abbé Mouret's Transgression,' which work proceeds directly from 'The Conquest of Plassans.'
In the latter book, as in 'The Fortune of the Rougons,' M. Zola skilfully depicts all the life of a French provincial town such as it was half a century or so ago, and in this respect he has simply drawn upon his own recollections of Aix, where he spent so many years of his boyhood. Much that he records might be applied to such towns even nowadays, for electric lighting, and tramcars, and motor-cars, and increased railway facilities, have made little change in provincial society. There are still rival salons and coteries and petty jealousies and vanities all at work; and if new parties have succeeded old ones, their intrigues have remained of much the same description as formerly. The many provincials who in M. Zola's narrative gravitate around the chief characters are pleasantly and skilfully diversified, and seem very life-like with their foibles and 'fads' and rivalries and ambitions. Possibly the most interesting are the Paloques, husband and wife, whom envy, hatred and all uncharitableness incessantly consume. Again, Madame Faujas, the priest's mother, is a finely-drawn character, but perhaps the failings of her daughter Olympe, and of Trouche, Olympe's husband, verge slightly upon caricature. As for old Rose, the Mourets' servant, though her ways are very amusing, and the part she plays in the persecution of her master renders her an indispensable personage in the narrative, it may be pointed out that she is virtually the same woman who has done duty half a dozen times in M. Zola's books—for instance, as Martine in 'Dr. Pascal,' as Véronique in 'The Joy of Life,' and so forth. It is rather curious, indeed, that M. Zola, so skilful in portraying diversity of character and disposition among his other personages, should have clung so pertinaciously to one sole type of an old servant-woman.
It is not my purpose here to analyse in detail the plot of 'The Conquest of Plassans,' but, having dealt at some length with the historical incidents on which the work is based, it is as well that I should point out that politics are not obtruded upon the reader in M. Zola's pages. Indeed, the book largely deals with quite another matter, that of 'the priest in the house,' showing as it does how the Mourets' home was wrecked by the combined action of the Faujases and the Trouches. In this connection the dolorous career of the unhappy Marthe is very vividly pictured. A fairly contented wife and mother at the outset of the story, she is won over to religion by Faujas, whose purpose is to utilise her as an instrument for the furtherance of his political and social schemes. But religion for her becomes a mysticism full of unrealisable yearnings, for she expects to taste the joys of Heaven even upon earth. Carried away by her religious fervour, she soon neglects her home; and her husband, it must be admitted, takes anything but the right course to win her back. She begins to loathe him and to indulge in an insane passion for the priest by whom she is spurned. Then hysteria masters her and consumption sets in; and between them those fell diseases bring her to an early grave. There are some finely conceived scenes between Marthe and Faujas; but the climax only comes towards the end of the volume, when Mouret, the husband who has been driven mad and shut up in a lunatic asylum, returns home and wreaks the most terrible vengeance upon those who have wronged him. The pages which deal with the madman's escape and his horrible revenge are certainly among the most powerful that M. Zola has ever written, and have been commended for their effectiveness by several of his leading critics.
E. A. V.
MERTON, SURREY: Sept. 1900.
Désirée clapped her hands. She was fourteen years old and big and strong for her age, but she laughed like a little girl of five.
'Mother! mother!' she cried, 'look at my doll!'
She showed her mother a strip of rag out of which she had been trying for the last quarter of an hour to manufacture a doll by rolling it and tying it at one end with a piece of string. Marthe raised her eyes from the stockings that she was darning with as much delicacy of work as though she were embroidering, and smiled at Désirée.
'Oh! but that's only a baby,' she said; 'you must make a grown-up doll and it must have a dress, you know, like a lady.'
She gave the child some clippings of print stuff which she found in her work-table, and then again devoted all her attention to her stockings. They were both sitting at one end of the narrow terrace, the girl on a stool at her mother's feet. The setting sun of a still warm September evening cast its calm peaceful rays around them; and the garden below, which was already growing grey and shadowy, was wrapped in perfect silence. Outside, not a sound could be heard in that quiet corner of the town.
They both worked on for ten long minutes without speaking. Désirée was taking immense pains to make a dress for her doll. Every few moments Marthe raised her head and glanced at the child with an expression in which sadness was mingled with affection. Seeing that the girl's task seemed too much for her, she at last said:
'Give it to me. I will put in the sleeves for you.'
As she took up the doll, two big lads of seventeen and eighteen came down the steps. They ran to Marthe and kissed her.
'Don't scold us, mother!' cried Octave gaily. 'I took Serge to listen to the band. There was such a crowd on the Cours Sauvaire!'
'I thought you had been kept in at college,' his mother said, 'or I should have felt very uneasy.'
Désirée, now altogether indifferent to her doll, had thrown her arms round Serge's neck, saying to him:
'One of my birds has flown away! The blue one, the one you gave me!'
She was on the point of crying. Her mother, who had imagined this trouble to be forgotten, vainly tried to divert her thoughts by showing her the doll. The girl still clung to her brother's arm and dragged him away with her, while repeating:
'Come and let us look for it.'
Serge followed her with kindly complaisance and tried to console her. She led him to a little conservatory, in front of which there was a cage placed on a stand; and here she told him how the bird had escaped just as she was opening the door to prevent it from fighting with a companion.
'Well, there's nothing very surprising in that!' cried Octave, who had seated himself on the balustrade of the terrace. 'She is always interfering with them, trying to find out how they are made and what it is they have in their throats that makes them sing. The other day she was carrying them about in her pockets the whole afternoon to keep them warm.'
'Octave!' said Marthe, in a tone of reproach; 'don't tease the poor child.'
But Désirée had not heard him; she was explaining to Serge with much detail how the bird had flown away.
'It just slipped out, you see, like that, and then it flew over yonder and lighted on Monsieur Rastoil's big pear-tree. Next it flew off to the plum-tree at the bottom, came back again and went right over my head into the big trees belonging to the Sub-Prefecture, and I've never seen it since; no, never since.'
Her eyes filled with tears.
'Perhaps it will come back again,' Serge ventured to say.
'Oh! do you think so? I think I will put the others into a box, and leave the door of the cage open all night.'
Octave could not restrain his laughter, but Marthe called to Désirée:
'Come and look here! come and look here!'
Then she gave her the doll. It was a magnificent one now. It had a stiff dress, a head made of a pad of calico, and arms of list sewn on at the shoulders. Désirée's eyes lighted up with sudden joy. She sat down again upon the stool, and, forgetting all about the bird, began to kiss the doll and dandle it in her arms with childish delight.
Serge had gone to lean upon the balustrade near his brother, and Marthe had resumed her darning.
'And so the band has been playing, has it?' she asked.
'It plays every Thursday,' Octave replied. 'You ought to have come to hear it, mother. All the town was there; the Rastoil girls, Madame de Condamin, Monsieur Paloque, the mayor's wife and daughter—why didn't you come too?'
Marthe did not raise her eyes, but softly replied as she finished darning a hole:
'You know very well, my dears, that I don't care about going out. I am quite contented here; and then it is necessary that someone should stay with Désirée.'
Octave opened his lips to reply, but he glanced at his sister and kept silent. He remained where he was, whistling softly and raising his eyes now towards the trees of the Sub-Prefecture, noisy with the twittering of the sparrows which were preparing to retire for the night—and now towards Monsieur Rastoil's pear-trees behind which the sun was setting. Serge had taken a book out of his pocket and was reading it attentively. Soft silence brooded over the terrace as it lay there in the yellow light that was gradually growing fainter. Marthe continued darning, ever and anon glancing at her three children in the peaceful quiet of the evening.
'Everyone seems to be late to-day,' she said after a time. 'It is nearly six o'clock, and your father hasn't come home yet. I think he must have gone to Les Tulettes.'
'Oh! then, no wonder he's late!' exclaimed Octave. 'The peasants at Les Tulettes are never in a hurry to let him go when once they get hold of him. Has he gone there to buy some wine?'
'I don't know,' Marthe replied. 'He isn't fond, you know, of talking to me about his business.'
Then there was another interval of silence. In the dining-room, the window of which opened on to the terrace, old Rose had just begun to lay the table with much angry clattering of crockery and plate. She seemed to be in a very bad temper, and banged the chairs about while breaking into snatches of grumbling and growling. At last she went to the street door, and, craning out her head, reconnoitred the square in front of the Sub-Prefecture. After some minutes' waiting, she came to the terrace-steps and cried:
'Monsieur Mouret isn't coming home to dinner, then?'
'Yes, Rose, wait a little longer,' Marthe replied quietly.
'Everything is getting burned to cinders! There's no sense in it all. When master goes off on those rounds he ought to give us notice! Well, it's all the same to me; but your dinner will be quite uneatable.'
'Ah! do you really think so, Rose?' asked a quiet voice just behind her. 'We will eat it, notwithstanding.'
It was Mouret who had just arrived. Rose turned round, looked her master in the face, and seemed on the point of breaking into some angry exclamation; but at the sight of his unruffled countenance, in which twinkled an expression of merry banter, she could not find a word to say, and so she retired. Mouret made his way to the terrace, where he paced about without sitting down. He just tapped Désirée lightly on the cheek with the tips of his fingers, and the girl greeted him with a responsive smile. Marthe raised her eyes, and when she had glanced at her husband she began to fold up her work.
'Aren't you tired?' asked Octave, looking at his father's boots, which were white with dust.
'Yes, indeed, a little,' Mouret replied, without, however, saying anything more about the long journey which he had just made on foot.
Then in the middle of the garden he caught sight of a spade and a rake, which the children had forgotten there.
'Why are the tools not put away?' he cried. 'I have spoken about it a hundred times. If it should come on to rain they would be completely rusted and spoilt.'
He said no more on the subject, but stepped down into the garden, picked up the spade and rake himself, and put them carefully away inside the little conservatory. As he came up to the terrace again his eyes searched every corner of the walks to see if things were tidy there.
'Are you learning your lessons?' he asked, as he passed Serge, who was still poring over his book.
'No, father,' the boy replied; 'this is a book that Abbé Bourrette has lent me. It is an account of the missions in China.'
Mouret stopped short in front of his wife.
'By the way,' said he, 'has anyone been here?'
'No, no one, my dear,' replied Marthe with an appearance of surprise.
He seemed on the point of saying something further, but appeared to change his mind, and continued pacing up and down in silence. Then, going to the steps, he cried out:
'Well, Rose, what about this dinner of yours which is getting burnt to cinders?'
'Oh, indeed! there is nothing ready for you now!' shouted the cook in an angry voice from the other end of the passage. 'Everything is cold. You will have to wait, sir.'
Mouret smiled in silence and winked with his left eye, as he glanced at his wife and children. He seemed to be very much amused by Rose's anger. Then he occupied himself in examining his neighbour's fruit-trees.
'It is surprising what splendid pears Monsieur Rastoil has got this year,' he remarked.
Marthe, who had appeared a little uneasy for the last few minutes, seemed as though she wanted to say something. At last she made up her mind to speak, and timidly inquired:
'Were you expecting someone to-day, my dear?'
'Yes and no,' he replied, beginning to pace the terrace again.
'Perhaps you have let the second floor?'
'Yes, indeed, I have let it.'
Then, as the silence became a little embarrassing, he added, in his quiet way:
This morning, before starting for Les Tulettes, I went up to see Abbé Bourrette. He was very pressing, and so I agreed to his proposal. I know it won't please you; but, if you will only think the matter over for a little, you will see that you are wrong, my dear. The second floor was of no use to us, and it was only going to ruin. The fruit that we store in the rooms there brings on dampness which makes the paper fall from the walls. By the way, now that I think of it, don't forget to remove the fruit the first thing to-morrow. Our tenant may arrive at any moment.'
'We were so free and comfortable, all alone in our own house,' Marthe ventured to say, in a low tone.
'Oh, well!' replied Mouret, 'we shan't find a priest in our way. He will keep to himself, and we shall keep to ourselves. Those black-gowned gentlemen hide themselves when they want to swallow even a glass of water. You know that I'm not very partial to them myself. A set of lazybones for the most part! And yet what chiefly decided me to let the floor was that I had found a priest for a tenant. One is quite sure of one's money with them, and they are so quiet that one can't even hear them go in and out.'
Marthe still appeared distressed. She looked round her at the happy home basking in the sun's farewell, at the garden which was now growing greyer with shadows, and at her three children. And she thought of all the happiness which this little spot held for her.
'And do you know anything about this priest?'she asked.
'No; but Abbé Bourrette has taken the floor in his own name, and that is quite sufficient. Abbé Bourrette is an honourable man. I know that our tenant is called Faujas, Abbé Faujas, and that he comes from the diocese of Besan?on. He didn't get on very well with his vicar there, and so he has been appointed curate here at Saint-Saturnin's. Perhaps he knows our bishop, Monseigneur Rousselot. But all this is no business of ours, you know; and it is to Abbé Bourrette that I am trusting in the whole matter.'
Marthe, however, did not seem to share her husband's confidence, but continued to stand out against him, a thing which seldom happened.
'You are right,' she said, after a moment's silence, 'Abbé Bourrette is a worthy man. But I recollect that when he came to look at the rooms he told me that he did not know the name of the person on whose behalf he was commissioned to rent them. It was one of those commissions which are undertaken by priests in one town for those in another. I really think that you ought to write to Besan?on and make some inquiries as to what sort of a person it is that you are about to introduce into your house.'
Mouret was anxious to avoid losing his temper; he smiled complacently.
'Well, it isn't the devil, anyhow. Why, you're trembling all over! I didn't think you were so superstitious. You surely don't believe that priests bring ill luck, as folks say. Neither, of course, do they bring good luck. They are just like other men. But, when we get this Abbé here, you'll see if I'm afraid of his cassock!'
'No, I'm not superstitious; you know that quite well,' replied Marthe. 'I only feel unhappy about it, that's all.'
He took his stand in front of her, and interrupted her with a sharp motion of his hand.
'There! there! that will do,' said he. 'I have let the rooms; don't let us say anything more about the matter.'
Then, in the bantering tones of a bourgeois who thinks he has done a good stroke of business, he added:
'At any rate one thing is certain, and that is that I am to get a hundred and fifty francs rent; and we shall have those additional hundred and fifty francs to spend on the house every year.'
Marthe bent her head and made no further protestations except by vaguely swinging her hands and gently closing her eyes as though to prevent the escape of the tears which were already swelling beneath her eyelids. Then she cast a furtive glance at her children, who had not appeared to hear anything of her discussion with their father. They were, indeed, accustomed to scenes of this sort in which Mouret, with his bantering nature, delighted to indulge.
'You can come in now, if you would like something to eat,' said Rose in her crabby voice, as she came to the steps.
'Ah, that's right! Come along, children, to your soup!' cried Mouret gaily, without appearing to retain any trace of temper.
The whole family rose. But Désirée's grief seemed to revive at the sight of everyone stirring. She threw her arms round her father's neck and stammered:
'Oh, papa, one of my birds has flown away!'
'One of your birds, my dear? Well, we'll catch it again.'
Then he began to caress and fondle her, but she insisted that he, also, should go and look at the cage. When he brought her back again Marthe and her two sons were already in the dining-room. The rays of the setting sun, streaming in through the window, lighted up the porcelain plates, the children's plated mugs, and the white cloth. The room was warm and peaceful with its green background of garden.
But just as Marthe, upon whom the tranquillity of the scene had had a soothing effect, was smilingly removing the cover from the soup-tureen, a noise was heard in the passage.
Then Rose rushed into the room with a scared look and stammered:
'Monsieur l'Abbé Faujas has come!'
An expression of annoyance passed over Mouret's face. He had not expected his tenant till the following morning at the earliest. He was just rising hastily from his seat when Abbé Faujas himself appeared at the door. He was a tall big man, with a square face, broad features, and a cadaverous complexion. Behind him, in the shadow, stood an elderly woman, who bore an astonishing resemblance to him, only that she was of smaller build and wore a less refined expression. When they saw the table laid for a meal, they both hesitated and stepped back discreetly, though without going away. The priest's tall black figure contrasted mournfully with the cheerfulness of the whitewashed walls.
'We must ask your pardon for disturbing you,' he said to Mouret. 'We have just left Abbé Bourrette's; he, no doubt, gave you notice of our coming!'
'Not at all!' Mouret exclaimed. 'The Abbé never behaves like other people. He always seems as though he had just come down from paradise. Only this morning, sir, he told me that you would not be here for another couple of days. Well, we must put you in possession of your rooms all the same.'
Abbé Faujas apologised. He spoke in a deep voice which fell very softly at the end of each sentence. He was extremely distressed, said he, to have arrived at such a moment. And when he had expressed his regret in a very few well-chosen words, he turned round to pay the porter who had brought his trunk. His large well-shaped hands drew from the folds of his cassock a purse of which only the steel rings could be seen. Keeping his head bent, he cautiously fumbled in it for a moment. Then, without anyone having seen the piece of money which he had received, the porter went away, and the priest resumed in his refined way:
'I beg you, sir, sit down again. Your servant will show us the rooms, and will help me to carry this.'
As he spoke, he stooped to grasp one of the handles of his trunk. It was a small wooden trunk, bound at the edges with iron bands, and one of its sides seemed to have been repaired with a cross-piece of deal. Mouret looked surprised, and his eyes wandered off in search of other luggage, but he could see nothing excepting a big basket, which the elderly lady carried with both hands, holding it in front of her, and despite her fatigue obstinately determined not to put it down. From underneath the lid, which was a little raised, there peeped, amongst some bundles of linen, the end of a comb wrapped in paper and the neck of a clumsily corked bottle.
'Oh! don't trouble yourself with that,' said Mouret, just touching the trunk with his foot; 'it can't be very heavy, and Rose will be able to carry it up by herself.'
He was quite unconscious of the secret contempt which oozed out from his words. The elderly lady gave him a keen glance with her black eyes, and then let her gaze again fall upon the dining-room and the table, which she had been examining ever since her arrival. She kept her lips tightly compressed, while her eyes strayed from one object to another. She had not uttered a single word. Abbé Faujas consented to leave his trunk where it was. In the yellow rays of the sunlight which streamed in from the garden, his threadbare cassock looked quite ruddy; it was darned at the edges; and, though it was scrupulously clean, it seemed so sadly thin and wretched that Marthe, who had hitherto remained seated with a sort of uneasy reserve, now in her turn rose from her seat. The Abbé, who had merely cast a rapid glance at her, and had then quickly turned his eyes elsewhere, saw her leave her chair, although he did not appear to be watching her.
'I beg you,' he repeated, 'do not disturb yourselves. We should be extremely distressed to interfere with your dinner.'
'Very well,' said Mouret, who was hungry, 'Rose shall show you up. Tell her to get you anything you want, and make yourselves at home.'
Abbé Faujas bowed and was making his way to the staircase, when Marthe stepped up to her husband and whispered:
'But, my dear, you have forgotten——'
'What? what?' he asked, seeing her hesitate.
'There is the fruit, you know.'
'Oh! bother it all, so there is!' he exclaimed with an expression of annoyance.
And as Abbé Faujas stepped back and glanced at him questioningly, he added:
'I am extremely vexed, sir. Father Bourrette is a very worthy man, but it is a little unfortunate that you commissioned him to attend to your business. He hasn't got the least bit of a head. If we had only known of your coming, we should have had everything ready; but, as it is, we shall have to clear the whole place out for you. We have been using the rooms, you see; we have stowed all our crop of fruit, figs, apples and raisins, away on the floors upstairs.'
The priest listened with a surprise which all his politeness did not enable him to hide.
'But it won't take us long,' Mouret continued. 'If you don't mind waiting for ten minutes, Rose will get the rooms cleared for you.'
An anxious expression appeared on the priest's cadaverous face.
'The rooms are furnished, are they not?' he asked.
'Not at all; there isn't a bit of furniture in them. We have never occupied them.'
Thereupon the Abbé lost his self-control, and his grey eyes flashed as he exclaimed with suppressed indignation:
'But I gave distinct instructions in my letter that furnished rooms were to be taken. I could scarcely bring my furniture along with me in my trunk.'
'Well, that just fits in with what I have been saying!' cried Mouret, in a louder voice. 'The way that Bourrette goes on is quite incredible. He certainly saw the apples when he came to look at the rooms, sir, for he took up one of them and remarked that he had rarely seen such fine fruit. He said that everything seemed quite suitable, that the rooms were all that was necessary, and he took them.'
Abbé Faujas was no longer listening to Mouret; his cheeks were flushed with anger. He turned round and stammered in a broken voice:
'Do you hear, mother? There is no furniture.'
The old lady, with her thin black shawl drawn tightly round her, had just been inspecting the ground-floor, stepping furtively hither and thither, but without once putting down her basket. She had gone to the door of the kitchen and had scrutinised the four walls there, and then, standing on the steps that overlooked the terrace, she had taken in all the garden at one long, searching glance. But it was the dining-room that seemed more especially to interest her, and she was now again standing in front of the table laid for dinner, watching the steam of the soup rise, when her son repeated:
'Do you hear, mother? We shall have to go to the hotel.'
She raised her head without making any reply; but the expression of her whole face seemed to indicate a settled determination to remain in that house, with whose every corner she had already made herself acquainted. She shrugged her shoulders almost imperceptibly, and again her wandering eyes strayed from the kitchen to the garden and then from the garden to the dining-room.
Mouret, however, was growing impatient. As he saw that neither the mother nor her son seemed to make up their minds to leave the place, he said:
'We have no beds, unfortunately. True, there is, in the loft, a folding-bedstead, which perhaps, at a pinch, madame might make do until to-morrow. But I really don't know how Monsieur l'Abbé is to manage to sleep.'
Then at last Madame Faujas opened her lips. She spoke in a curt and somewhat hoarse voice:
'My son will take the folding-bedstead. A mattress on the floor, in a corner, will be quite sufficient for me.'
The Abbé signified his approval of this arrangement by a nod. Mouret was going to protest and try to think of some other plan, but, seeing the satisfied appearance of his new tenants, he kept silence and merely exchanged a glance of astonishment with his wife.
'To-morrow it will be light,' he said, with his touch of bourgeois banter, 'and you will be able to furnish as you like. Rose will go up and clear away the fruit and make the beds. Will you wait for a few minutes on the terrace? Come, children, take a couple of chairs out.'
Since the arrival of the priest and his mother, the young people had remained quietly seated at the table, curiously scrutinising the new-comers. The Abbé had not appeared to notice them, but Madame Faujas had stopped for a moment before each of them and stared them keenly in the face as though she were trying to pry into their young heads. As they heard their father, they all three hastily rose and took some chairs out.
The old lady did not sit down; and when Mouret, losing sight of her, turned round to find out what had become of her, he saw her standing before a window of the drawing-room which was ajar. She craned out her neck and completed her inspection with all the calm deliberation of a person who is examining some property for sale. Just as Rose took up the little trunk, however, she went back into the passage, and said quietly:
'I will go up and help you.'
Then she went upstairs after the servant. The priest did not even turn his head; he was smiling at the three young people who still stood in front of him. In spite of the hardness of his brow and the stern lines about his mouth, his face was capable of expressing great gentleness, when such was his desire.
'Is this the whole of your family, madame?' he asked Marthe, who had just come up to him.
'Yes, sir,' she replied, feeling a little confused beneath the clear gaze which he turned upon her.
Looking again at her children, he continued:
'You've got two big lads there, who will soon be men—Have you finished your studies yet, my boy?'
It was to Serge that he addressed this question. Mouret interrupted the lad as he was going to reply.
'Yes, he has finished,' said the father; 'though he is the younger of the two. When I say that he has finished, I mean that he has taken his bachelor's degree, for he is staying on at college for another year to go through a course of philosophy. He is the clever one of the family. His brother, the elder, that great booby there, isn't up to much. He has been plucked twice already, but he still goes on idling his time away and larking about.'
Octave listened to his father's reproaches with a smile, while Serge bent his head beneath his praises. Faujas seemed to be studying them for a moment in silence, and then, going up to Désirée and putting on an expression of gentle tenderness, he said to her:
'Will you allow me, mademoiselle, to be your friend?'
She made no reply but, half afraid, hastened to hide her face against her mother's shoulder. The latter, instead of making her turn round again, pressed her more closely to her, clasping an arm around her waist.
'Excuse her,' she said with a touch of sadness, 'she hasn't a strong head, she has remained quite childish. She is an "innocent," we do not trouble her by attempting to teach her. She is fourteen years old now, and as yet she has only learned to love animals.'
Désirée's confidence returned to her with her mother's caresses, and she lifted up her head and smiled. Then she boldly said to the priest:
'I should like you very much to be my friend; but you must promise me that you will never hurt the flies. Will you?'
And then, as every one about her began to smile, she added gravely:
'Octave crushes them, the poor flies! It is very wicked of him.'
Abbé Faujas sat down. He seemed very much tired. He yielded for a moment or two to the cool quietness of the terrace, glancing slowly over the garden and the neighbouring trees. The perfect calmness and solitude of this quiet corner of the little town seemed somewhat to surprise him.
'It is very pleasant here,' he murmured.
Then he relapsed into silence, and seemed lost in reverie. He started slightly as Mouret said to him with a laugh:
'If you will allow us, sir, we will now go back to our dinner.'
And then, catching a glance from his wife, Mouret added:
'You must sit down with us and have a plate of soup. It will save you the trouble of having to go to the hotel to dine. Don't make any difficulty, I beg.'
'I am extremely obliged to you, but we really don't require anything,' the Abbé replied in tones of extreme politeness, which allowed of no repetition of the invitation.
The Mourets then returned to the dining-room and seated themselves round the table. Marthe served the soup and there was soon a cheerful clatter of spoons. The young people chattered merrily, and Désirée broke into a peal of ringing laughter as she listened to a story which her father, who was now in high glee at having at last got to his dinner, was telling. In the meantime, Abbé Faujas, whom they had quite forgotten, remained motionless upon the terrace, facing the setting sun. He did not even turn his head, he seemed to hear nothing of what was going on behind him. Just as the sun was disappearing he took off his hat as if overcome by the heat. Marthe, who was sitting with her face to the window, could see his big bare head with its short hair that was already silvering about the temples. A last red ray lighting up that stern soldier-like head, on which the tonsure lay like a cicatrised wound from the blow of a club; then the ray faded away and the priest, now wrapped in shadow, seemed nothing more than a black silhouette against the ashy grey of the gloaming.
Not wishing to summon Rose, Marthe herself went to get a lamp and brought in the first dish. As she was returning from the kitchen, she met, at the foot of the staircase, a woman whom she did not at first recognise. It was Madame Faujas. She had put on a cotton cap and looked like a servant in her common print gown, with a yellow kerchief crossed over her breast and knotted behind her waist. Her wrists were bare, she was quite out of breath with the work she had been doing, and her heavy laced boots clattered on the flooring of the passage.
'Ah! you've got all put right now, have you, madame?' Marthe asked with a smile.
'Oh, yes! it was a mere trifle and was done directly,' Madame Faujas replied.
She went down the steps that led to the terrace, and called in a gentler tone:
'Ovide, my child, will you come upstairs now? Everything is quite ready.'
She was obliged to go and lay her hand upon her son's shoulder to awaken him from his reverie. The air was growing cool, and the Abbé shivered as he got up and followed his mother in silence. As he passed before the door of the dining-room which was all bright with the cheerful glow of the lamp and merry with the chatter of the young folks, he peeped in and said in his flexible voice:
'Let me thank you again, and beg you to excuse us for having so disturbed you. We are very sorry——'
'No! no!' cried Mouret, 'it is we who are sorry and distressed at not being able to offer you better accommodation for the night.'
The priest bowed, and Marthe again met that clear gaze of his, that eagle glance which had affected her before. In the depths of his eyes, which were generally of a melancholy grey, flames seemed to gleam at times like lamps carried behind the windows of slumbering houses.
'The priest's not at all shamefaced,' Mouret remarked jestingly, when the mother and son had retired.
'I don't think they are very well off,' Marthe replied.
'Well, at any rate, he isn't carrying Peru about with him in that box of his,' Mouret exclaimed. 'And it's light enough! Why, I could have raised it with the tip of my little finger!'
But he was interrupted in his flow of chatter by Rose, who had just come running down the stairs to relate the extraordinary things she had witnessed.
'Well, she is a wonderful creature, indeed!' she cried, posting herself in front of the table at which the family were eating. 'She's sixty-five at least, but she doesn't show it at all, and she bustles about, and works like a horse!'
'Did she help you to remove the fruit?' Mouret asked, with some curiosity.
'Yes, indeed, she did, sir! She carried it away in her apron, in loads heavy enough to burst it. I kept saying to myself, "The apron will certainly go this time," but it didn't. It is made of good strong material, the same kind of material as I wear myself. We made at least ten journeys backwards and forwards, and I felt as though my arms would fall off, but she only grumbled, and complained that we were getting on very slowly. I really believe, begging your pardon for mentioning it, that I heard her swear.'
Mouret appeared to be greatly amused.
'And the beds?' he asked.
'The beds, she made them too. It was quite a sight to see her turn the mattress over. It seemed to weigh nothing, I can tell you; she just took hold of it at one end and tossed it into the air as though it had been a feather. And yet she was very careful and particular with it all. She tucked in the folding-bed as carefully as though she were preparing a baby's cradle. She couldn't have laid the sheets with greater devotion if the Infant Jesus Himself had been going to sleep there. She put three out of the four blankets upon the folding-bed. And it was just the same with the pillows; she kept none for herself, but gave both to her son.'
'She is going to sleep on the floor, then?'
In a corner, just like a dog! She threw a mattress on the floor of the other room and said that she'd sleep there more soundly than if she were in paradise. I couldn't persuade her to do anything to make herself more comfortable. She says that she is never cold, and that her head is much too hard to make her at all afraid of lying on the floor. I have taken them some sugar and some water, as madame told me. Oh! they really are the strangest people!'
Then Rose brought in the remainder of the dinner. That evening the Mourets lingered over their meal. They discussed the new tenants at great length. In their life, which went on with all the even regularity of clock-work, the arrival of these two strangers was a very exciting event. They talked about it as they would have done of some catastrophe in the neighbourhood, going into all that minuteness of detail which helps one to while away long nights in the country. Mouret was especially fond of the chattering gossip of a little provincial town. During dessert, as he rested his elbows on the table in the cool dining-room, he repeated for the tenth time with the self-satisfied air of a happy man:
'It certainly isn't a very handsome present that Besan?on has made to Plassans! Did you notice the back of his cassock when he turned round? I shall be very much surprised if he is much run after by the pious folks here. He is too seedy and threadbare; and the pious folks like nice-looking priests.'
'He has a very gentle voice,' said Marthe, indulgently.
'Not when he is angry, at any rate,' Mouret replied. 'Didn't you hear him when he burst out on finding that the rooms were not furnished? He's a stern man, I'll be bound; not one of the sort, I should think, to go lounging in confessional-boxes. I shall be very curious to see how he sets about his furnishing to-morrow. But as long as he pays me, I don't much mind anything else. If he doesn't, I shall apply to Abbé Bourrette. It was with him that I made the bargain.'
The Mourets were not a devout family. The children themselves made fun of the Abbé and his mother. Octave burlesqued the old lady's way of craning out her neck to see to the end of the rooms, a performance which made Désirée laugh. After a time, however, Serge, who was of a more serious turn of mind, stood up for 'those poor people.'
As a rule, precisely at ten o'clock, if he was not playing at piquet, Mouret took up his candlestick and went off to bed, but that evening, when eleven o'clock struck, he was not yet feeling drowsy. Désirée had fallen asleep, with her head lying on Marthe's knees. The two lads had gone up to their room; and Mouret, left alone with his wife, still went on chattering.
'How old do you suppose he is?' he suddenly asked.
'Who?' replied Marthe, who was now beginning to feel very sleepy.
'Who? Why, the Abbé, of course! Between forty and forty-five, eh? He's a fine strapping fellow. It's a pity for him to wear a cassock! He would have made a splendid carbineer.'
Then, after an interval of silence, he vented aloud the reflections which were exercising his mind:
'They arrived by the quarter to seven train. They can only have just had time to call on Abbé Bourrette before coming here. I'll wager that they haven't dined! That is quite clear. We should certainly have seen them if they had gone out to the hotel. Ah, now! I should very much like to know where they can have had anything to eat.'
Rose had been lingering about the dining-room for the last few moments, waiting for her master and mistress to go to bed in order that she might be at liberty to fasten the doors and windows.
'I know where they had something to eat,' she said. And as Mouret turned briskly towards her, she added: 'Yes, I had gone upstairs again to see if there was anything they wanted. As I heard no sound, I didn't venture to knock at the door, but I looked through the key-hole.'
'Why, that was very improper of you, very improper,' Marthe interrupted, severely. 'You know very well, Rose, that I don't approve of anything of that kind.'
'Leave her alone and let her go on!' cried Mouret, who, under other circumstances, would have been very angry with the inquisitive woman. 'You peeped through the key-hole, did you?'
'Yes, sir; I thought it was the best plan.'
'Clearly so. What were they doing?'
'Well, sir, they were eating. I saw them sitting on one corner of the folding-bedstead and eating. The old lady had spread out a napkin. Every time that they helped themselves to some wine, they corked the bottle again and laid it down against the pillow.'
'But what were they eating?'
I couldn't quite tell, sir. It seemed to me like the remains of some pastry wrapped up in a newspaper. They had some apples as well—little apples that looked good for nothing.'
'They were talking, I suppose? Did you hear what they said?'
'No, sir, they were not talking. I stayed for a good quarter of an hour watching them, but they never said anything. They were much too busy eating!'
Marthe now rose, woke Désirée, and made as though she were going off to bed. Her husband's curiosity vexed her. He, too, at last made up his mind to go off upstairs, while old Rose, who was a pious creature, went on in a lower tone:
'The poor, dear man must have been frightfully hungry. His mother handed him the biggest pieces and watched him swallow them with delight. And now he'll sleep in some nice white sheets; unless, indeed, the smell of the fruit keeps him awake. It isn't a pleasant smell to have in one's bedroom, that sour odour of apples and pears. And there isn't a bit of furniture in the whole room, nothing but the bed in the corner! If I were he, I should feel quite frightened, and I should keep the light burning all night.'
Mouret had taken up his candlestick. He stood for a moment in front of Rose, and summed up the events of the evening like a genuine bourgeois who has met with something unusual: 'It is extraordinary!'
Then he joined his wife at the foot of the staircase. She got into bed and fell asleep, while he still continued listening to the slightest sounds that proceeded from the upper floor. The Abbé's room was immediately over his own. He heard the window of it being gently opened, and this greatly excited his curiosity. He raised his head from his pillow, and strenuously struggled against his increasing drowsiness in his anxiety to find out how long the Abbé would remain at the window. But sleep was too strong for him, and he was snoring noisily before he had been able to detect the grating sound which the window-fastening made when it was closed.
Up above, Abbé Faujas was gazing, bare-headed, out of his window into the black night. He lingered there for a long time, glad to find himself at last alone, absorbed in those thoughts which gave his brow such an expression of sternness. Underneath him, he was conscious of the tranquil slumber of the family whose home he had been sharing for the last few hours; the calm, easy breathing of the children and their mother Marthe, and the heavy, regular respiration of Mouret. There was a touch of scorn in the way in which the priest stretched out his muscular neck, as he raised his head to gaze upon the town that lay slumbering in the distance. The tall trees in the garden of the Sub-Prefecture formed a mass of gloomy darkness, and Monsieur Rastoil's pear-trees thrust up scraggy, twisted branches, while, further away, there was but a sea of black shadow, a blank nothingness, whence not a sound proceeded. The town lay as tranquilly asleep as an infant in its cradle.
Abbé Faujas stretched out his arms with an air of ironic defiance, as though he would have liked to circle them round Plassans, and squeeze the life out of it by crushing it against his brawny chest. And he murmured to himself:
'Ah! to think that the imbeciles laughed at me this evening, as they saw me going through their streets!'
Mouret spent the whole of the next morning in playing the spy on his new tenant. This espionage would now enable him to fill up the idle hours which he had hitherto spent in pottering about the house, in putting back into their proper places any articles which he happened to find lying about, and in picking quarrels with his wife and children. Henceforth he would have an occupation, an amusement which would relieve the monotony of his everyday life. As he had often said, he was not partial to priests, and yet Abbé Faujas, the first one who had entered into his existence, excited in him an extraordinary amount of interest. This priest brought with him a touch of mystery and secrecy that was almost disquieting. Although Mouret was a strong-minded man and professed himself to be a follower of Voltaire, yet in the Abbé's presence he felt the astonishment and uneasiness of a common bourgeois.
Not a sound came from the second floor. Mouret stood on the staircase and listened eagerly; he even ventured to go to the loft. As he hushed his steps while passing along the passage, a pattering of slippers behind the door filled him with emotion. But he did not succeed in making any new discovery, so he went down into the garden and strolled into the arbour at the end of it, there raising his eyes and trying to look through the windows in order to find out what might be going on in the rooms. But he could not see even the Abbé's shadow. Madame Faujas, in the absence of curtains, had, as a makeshift, fastened some sheets behind the windows.
At lunch Mouret seemed quite vexed.
'Are they dead upstairs?' he said, as he cut the children's bread. 'Have you heard them move, Marthe?'
'No, my dear; but I haven't been listening.'
Rose thereupon cried out from the kitchen: 'They've been gone ever so long. They must be far enough away now if they've kept on at the same pace.'
Mouret summoned the cook and questioned her minutely.
'They went out, sir: first the mother, and then the priest. They walked so softly that I should never have known anything about it if their shadows had not fallen across the kitchen floor when they opened the street door. I looked out into the street to see where they were going, but they had vanished. They must have gone off in a fine hurry.'
'It is very surprising. But where was I at the time?'
'I think you were in the garden, sir, looking at the grapes in the arbour.'
This put Mouret into a very bad temper. He began to inveigh against priests. They were a set of mystery-mongers, a parcel of underhand schemers, with whom the devil himself would be at a loss. They affected such ridiculous prudery that no one had ever seen a priest wash his face. And then he wound up by expressing his sorrow that he had ever let his rooms to this Abbé, about whom he knew nothing at all.
'It is all your fault!' he exclaimed to his wife, as he got up from table.
Marthe was about to protest and remind him of their discussion on the previous day, but she raised her eyes and simply looked at him, saying nothing. Mouret, contrary to his usual custom, resolved to remain at home. He pottered up and down between the dining-room and the garden, poking about everywhere, pretending that nothing was in its place and that the house simply invited thieves. Then he got indignant with Serge and Octave, who had set off for the college, he said, quite half an hour too soon.
'Isn't father going out?' Désirée whispered in her mother's ear. 'He will worry us to death if he stays at home.'
Marthe hushed her. At last Mouret began to speak of a piece of business which he declared he must finish off during the day. And then he complained that he had never a moment to himself, and could never get a day's rest at home when he felt he wanted it. Finally he went away, quite distressed that he could not remain and see what happened.
When he returned in the evening he was all on fire with curiosity.
'Well, what about the Abbé?' he asked, without even giving himself time to take off his hat.
Marthe was working in her usual place on the terrace.
'The Abbé!' she repeated, with an appearance of surprise. 'Oh, yes! the Abbé—I've really seen nothing of him, but I believe he has got settled down now. Rose told me that some furniture had come.'
'That's just what I was afraid of!' exclaimed Mouret. 'I wanted to be here when it came; for, you see, the furniture is my security. I knew very well that you would never think of stirring from your chair. You haven't much of a head, my dear—Rose! Rose!'
The cook appeared in answer to his summons, and he forthwith asked her: 'There's some furniture come for the people on the second floor?'
'Yes, sir; it came in a little covered cart. I recognised it as Bergasse's; the second-hand dealer's. It wasn't a big load. Madame Faujas came on behind it. I dare say she had been giving the man who pushed it along a helping hand up the Rue Balande.'
'At any rate, you saw the furniture, I suppose? Did you notice what there was?'
'Certainly, sir. I had posted myself by the door, and it all went past me, which didn't seem to please Madame Faujas very much. Wait a moment and I'll tell you everything there was. First of all they brought up an iron bedstead, then a chest of drawers, then two tables and four chairs; and that was the whole lot of it. And it wasn't new either. I wouldn't have given thirty crowns for the whole collection.'
'But you should have told madame; we cannot let the rooms under such conditions. I shall go at once to talk to Abbé Bourrette about the matter.'
He was fuming with irritation, and was just setting off, when Marthe brought him to a sudden halt by saying:
'Oh! I had forgotten to tell you. They have paid me six months' rent in advance.'
'What! They have paid you?' he stammered out, almost in a tone of annoyance.
'Yes, the old lady came down and gave me this.'
She put her hand into her work-bag, and gave her husband seventy-five francs in hundred-sou-pieces, neatly wrapt up in a piece of newspaper. Mouret counted the money, and muttered:
'As long as they pay, they are free to stop. But they are strange folks, all the same. Everyone can't be rich, of course, but that is no reason why one should behave in this suspicious manner, when one's poor.'
'There is something else I have to tell you,' Marthe continued, as she saw him calm down. 'The old lady asked me if we were disposed to part with the folding-bed to her. I told her that we made no use of it, and that she was welcome to keep it as long as she liked.'
'You did quite right. We must do what we can to oblige them. As I told you before, what bothers me about these confounded priests is that one never can tell what they are thinking about, or what they are up to. Apart from that, you will often find very honourable men amongst them.'
The money seemed to have consoled him. He joked and teased Serge about his book on the Chinese missions, which the boy happened to be reading just then. During dinner he affected to feel no further curiosity about the tenants of the second floor; but, when Octave mentioned that he had seen Abbé Faujas leaving the Bishop's residence, he could not restrain himself. Directly the dessert was placed on the table he resumed his chatter of the previous evening, though after a time he began to feel a little ashamed of himself. His commercial pursuits had made him stolid and heavy, but he really had a keen mind; he was possessed of no little common sense and accuracy of judgment which often enabled him to pick out the truth from the midst of all the gossip of the neighbourhood.
'After all,' he said, as he went off to bed, 'one has no business to go prying into other people's affairs. The Abbé is quite at liberty to do as he pleases. It is getting wearisome to be always talking about these people, and I, for my part, shall say nothing more about them.'
A week passed away. Mouret had resumed his habitual life. He prowled about the house, lectured his children, and spent his afternoons away from home, amusing himself by transacting various bits of business, of which he never spoke; and he ate and slept like a man for whom life is an easy downhill journey, without any jolts or surprises of any kind. The whole place sank back into all its old monotony. Marthe occupied her accustomed seat on the terrace, with her little work-table in front of her. Désirée played by her side. The two lads came home at the usual time, and were as noisy as ever; and Rose, the cook, grumbled and growled at everyone; while the garden and the dining-room retained all their wonted sleepy calm.
'You see now,' Mouret often repeated to his wife, 'you were quite mistaken in thinking that our comfort would be interfered with, by our letting the second-floor. We are as quiet and happy as ever we were, and the house seems smaller and cosier.'
He occasionally raised his eyes towards the second-floor windows, which Madame Faujas had hung with thick cotton curtains, on the day after her arrival. These curtains were never drawn aside. There was a conventual look about their stern, cold folds, and they seemed to tell of deep, unbroken silence, cloistral stillness lurking behind them. At distant intervals the windows were set ajar, and allowed the high, shadowy ceilings to be seen between the snowy whiteness of the curtains. But it was all to no purpose that Mouret kept on the watch, he could never catch sight of the hand which opened or closed them, and he never even heard the grating of the window fastening. Never did a sound of human life come down from the second floor.
The first week was at an end and Mouret had not yet had another glimpse of Abbé Faujas. That man who was living in his house, without he ever being able to catch sight even of his shadow, began to affect him with a kind of nervous uneasiness. In spite of all the efforts he made to appear indifferent, he relapsed into his old questionings, and started an inquiry.
'Have you seen anything of him?' he asked his wife.
'I fancy I caught a glimpse of him yesterday, as he was coming in, but I am not sure. His mother always wears a black dress, and it might have been she that I saw.'
And as he continued to press her with questions, Marthe told him all she knew.
'Rose says that he goes out every day, and stays away a long time. As for his mother, she is as regular as a clock. She comes down at seven o'clock in the morning to go out and do her marketing. She has a big basket, which is always closed, and in which she must bring everything back with her, coal, bread, wine and provisions, for no tradesman ever calls with anything for them. They are very courteous and polite; and Rose says that they always bow to her when they meet her. But as a rule she does not even hear them come down the stairs.'
'They must go in for a funny sort of cooking up there,' said Mouret, to whom all these details conveyed none of the information he wanted.
On another evening, when Octave mentioned that he had seen Abbé Faujas entering Saint-Saturnin's, his father asked him about the priest's appearance, what effect he had made upon the passers-by, and what he could be going to do in the church.
'Ah! you are really much too curious!' cried the young man, with a laugh. 'He didn't look very fine in the sunshine with his rusty cassock, I can vouch for that much. I noticed, too, that, as he walked along, he kept in the shadow of the houses, which made his cassock look a little blacker. He didn't seem at all proud of himself, but hurried along with his head bent down. Two girls began to laugh as he crossed the Place. The Abbé raised his head and looked at them with an expression of great softness—didn't he, Serge?'
Thereupon Serge related how on several occasions, as he was returning from the college, he had at a distance followed the Abbé, who was on his way back from Saint-Saturnin's. He passed through the streets without speaking to anyone; he seemed to know nobody and to be rather hurt by the suppressed titters and jeers which he heard around him.
'Do they talk of him, then, in the town?' asked Mouret, whose interest was greatly aroused.
'No one has ever spoken to me about him,' Octave replied.
'Yes,' said Serge,' they do talk of him. Abbé Bourrette's nephew told me that he wasn't a favourite at the church. They are not fond of these priests who come from a distance; and besides he has such a miserable appearance. When people get accustomed to him, they will leave the poor man alone, but just at first it is only natural that he should attract notice.'
Marthe thereupon advised the two young fellows not to gratify any outsider's curiosity about the Abbé.
'Oh, yes! they may answer any questions,' Mouret exclaimed. 'Certainly nothing that we know of him could be likely to compromise him in any way.'
From that time forward, with the best faith in the world and without meaning the least harm, Mouret turned his sons into a couple of spies. He told Octave and Serge that they must repeat to him all that was said about the priest in the town, and he even instructed them to follow him whenever they came across him. But the information that was to be derived from such sources was quickly exhausted. The talk occasioned by the arrival of a strange curate in the diocese died away; the town seemed to have extended its pardon to the 'poor fellow,' who glided about in the shade in such a rusty old cassock, and its only apparent feeling for him now was one of disdain. The priest, on the other hand, always went straight to the cathedral and so returned from it, invariably passing through the same streets. Octave said, laughingly, that he was sure he counted the paving-stones.
Then Mouret bethought himself of enlisting the help of Désirée in the task of collecting information. In the evening he took her to the bottom of the garden and listened to her chatter about what she had done and what she had seen during the day, and he always tried to lead her on to the subject of the tenants of the second floor.
'Now, just listen to what I tell you,' he said to her one day. 'To-morrow, when the window is open, just throw your ball into the room, and then go up and ask for it.'
The next day the girl threw her ball into the room, but she had scarcely reached the steps of the house before the ball, returned by an invisible hand, bounced up from the terrace. Her father, who had reckoned on the child's taking ways leading to a renewal of the intercourse which had been interrupted since the day of the priest's arrival, now lost all hope. It was quite clear that the Abbé had made up his mind to keep to himself. This rebuff, however, only made Mouret's curiosity all the keener. He even condescended to go gossiping in corners with the cook, to the great displeasure of Marthe, who reproached him for his want of self-respect; but at this he became angry with her and defended himself by lies. However, as he felt that he was in the wrong, it was only in secret that he henceforth talked to Rose about the Faujases.
One morning she beckoned to him to follow her into the kitchen.
'Oh, sir!' she said, as she shut the door, 'I have been watching for you to come down from your room for more than an hour.'
'Have you found out something then?'
'Well, you shall hear. Yesterday evening I was chatting with Madame Faujas for more than an hour!'
Mouret felt a thrill of joy. He sat down on an old tattered rush-bottom chair, in the midst of the dirty cloths and vegetable parings left from the previous day, and exclaimed:
'Go along! make haste!'
'Well,' continued the cook, 'I was at the street-door saying good-night to Monsieur Rastoil's servant, when Madame Faujas came downstairs to empty a pail of dirty water in the gutter. Instead of immediately going back again, without even turning her head, as she generally does, she stopped there for a moment to look at me. Then it struck me that she wanted to speak to me, and I said to her that it had been a beautiful day, and that it would be good for the grapes. She said, "Yes, yes," in an unconcerned sort of way, just like a woman who has no land and has no interest in such matters. But she put down her pail and made no attempt to go away; she even came and leant against the wall beside me—'
'Well! well! what did she say to you?' cried Mouret, tortured by his impatience.
Well, of course, you understand I wasn't silly enough to begin to question her. She would have gone straight off if I had. Without seeming to intend anything, I suggested things to her which I thought might set her talking. The Curé of Saint-Saturnin's, that worthy Monsieur Compan, happened to pass by, and I told her he was very ill and wasn't long for this world, and that there would be great difficulty in filling his place at the cathedral. She was all ears at once, I can tell you. She even asked me what was the matter with Monsieur Compan. Then, going on from one thing to another, I gradually got talking about our bishop. Monseigneur Rousselot was a most excellent and worthy man, I told her. She did not know his age, so I told her that he was sixty, very delicate also, and that he let himself be led by the nose. There is a good deal of talk about the vicar-general, Monsieur Fenil, who is all powerful with the bishop. The old lady was quite interested in that, and she would have stayed out in the street all night, listening.'
An expression of desperation passed over Mouret's face. 'But what you're telling me is what you said yourself,' he cried. 'What was it that she said? That's what I want to hear.'
'Wait a little and let me finish,' Rose replied very calmly. 'I was gradually gaining my purpose. To win her confidence, I ended by talking to her about ourselves. I told her that you were Monsieur Fran?ois Mouret, a retired merchant from Marseilles, and that you had managed in fifteen years to make a fortune out of wines and oils and almonds. I added that you had preferred to come and settle down and live on your means in Plassans, a quiet town, where your wife's relations lived. I even contrived to let her know, too, that madame was your cousin, that you were forty years old and that she was thirty-seven, and that you lived very happily together; in fact, I told her all about you. She seemed to be very much interested, and kept saying, "Yes, yes," in her deliberate way; and, when I stopped for a moment, she nodded her head as though to tell me she was listening and that I might go on. So we went on talking in this way, with our backs against the wall, like a couple of old friends, till it was quite dark.'
Mouret bounced from his chair in angry indignation.
'What!' he cried, 'is that all? She led you on to gossip to her for an hour, and she herself told you nothing!'
'When it got dark, she said to me: "The air is becoming quite chilly." And then she took up her pail and went back upstairs.'
'You are nothing but an idiot! That old woman up there is more than a match for half a score such as you. Ah! they'll be laughing finely now that they have wormed out of you all that they wanted to know about us. Do you hear me, Rose? I tell you that you are nothing but an idiot!'
The old cook waxed very indignant, and began to bounce excitedly up and down the kitchen, knocking the pots and pans about noisily, and crumpling up the dusters and flinging them down.
It was scarcely worth your while, sir,' she hissed, 'to come into my kitchen to call me insulting names. You had better take yourself off. What I did, I did to please you. If madame finds us here together talking about those people, she will be angry with me, and quite rightly, because it is wrong for us to be doing so. And after all, I couldn't drag words from the old lady's lips if she wasn't willing to talk. I did as any one else would have done under the same circumstances. I talked and told her about your affairs, and it was no fault of mine that she didn't tell me about hers. Go and ask her about them yourself, since you are anxious to know about them. Perhaps you won't make such an idiot of yourself as I have done.'
She had raised her voice, and was talking so loudly that Mouret thought it would be more prudent to retire, and he did so, closing the kitchen door after him, in order to prevent his wife from hearing the servant. But Rose immediately pulled it open again, and cried after him down the passage:
'I shall bother myself about it no longer; do you hear? You may get somebody else to do your underhand business for you!'
Mouret was quite vanquished. He showed some irritation at his defeat, and tried to console himself by saying that those second-floor tenants of his were mere nobodies. Gradually he succeeded in making this opinion of his that of his acquaintances, and then that of the whole town. Abbé Faujas came to be looked upon as a priest without means and without ambition, who was completely outside the pale of the intrigues of the diocese. People imagined that he was ashamed of his poverty, that he was glad to perform any unpleasant duties in connection with the cathedral, and tried to keep himself in obscurity as much as possible. There was only one matter of curiosity left in connection with him, and that was the reason of his having come to Plassans from Besan?on. Queer stories were circulated about him, but they all seemed very improbable. Mouret himself, who had played the spy over his tenants simply for amusement and in order to pass the time, just as he would have played a game at cards or bowls, was even beginning to forget that he had a priest living in his house, when an incident occurred which revived all his curiosity.
One afternoon as he was returning home, he saw Abbé Faujas going up the Rue Balande in front of him. Mouret slackened his pace and examined the priest at his leisure. Although Abbé Faujas had been lodging in his house for a month, this was the first time that he had thus seen him in broad daylight. The Abbé still wore his old cassock, and he walked slowly, with his hat in his hand and his head bare in spite of the chilly air. The street, which was a very steep one, with the shutters of its big, bare houses always closed, was quite deserted. Mouret, who quickened his pace, was at last obliged to walk on tip-toes for fear lest the priest should hear him and make his escape. But as they neared Monsieur Rastoil's house, a group of people turning out of the Place of the Sub-Prefecture entered it. Abbé Faujas made a slight détour to avoid these persons. He watched the door close, and then, suddenly stopping, he turned round towards his landlord, who was now close up to him.
'I am very glad to have met you,' said he, with all his wonted politeness, 'otherwise I should have ventured to disturb you this evening. The last time it rained, the wet came through the ceiling of my room, and I should much like to show it you.'
Mouret remained standing in front of him, and stammered in confusion that he was entirely at the Abbé's service. Then, as they went indoors together, he asked him at what time he should go to look at the ceiling.
'Well, I should like you to come at once,' the Abbé replied, 'if it wouldn't be troubling you too much.'
Mouret went up the stairs after him so excited that he almost choked, while Rose followed them with her eyes from the kitchen doorway quite dazed with astonishment.
When Mouret reached the second floor he was more perturbed than a youth at his first assignation. The unexpected satisfaction of his long thwarted desires, and the hope of seeing something quite extraordinary, almost prevented him from breathing. Abbé Faujas slipped the key which he carried, and which he quite concealed in his big fingers, into the lock without making the faintest noise, and the door opened as silently as if it had been hung upon velvet hinges. Then the Abbé, stepping back, mutely motioned to Mouret to enter.
The cotton curtains at the two windows were so thick that the room lay in a pale, chalky dimness like the half-light of a convent cell. It was a very large room, with a lofty ceiling, and a quiet, neat wall-paper of a faded yellow. Mouret ventured forward, advancing with short steps over the tiled floor, which was as smooth and shiny as a mirror, and so cold that he seemed to feel a chill through the soles of his boots. He glanced furtively around him and examined the curtainless iron bedstead, the sheets of which were so straightly stretched that it looked like a block of white stone lying in the corner. The chest of drawers, stowed away at the other end of the room, a little table in the middle, and two chairs, one before each window, completed the furniture. There was not a single paper on the table, not an article of any kind on the chest of drawers, not a garment hanging against the walls. Everything was perfectly bare except that over the chest of drawers there was suspended a big black wooden crucifix, looking like a dark splotch amidst the bare greyness of the room.
'Come this way, sir, will you?' said the Abbé. 'It is in this corner that the ceiling is stained.'
But Mouret did not hurry, he was enjoying himself. Although he saw none of the extraordinary things that he had vaguely expected to see, there seemed to him to be a peculiar odour about the room. It smelt of a priest, he thought; of a man with different ways from other men. But it vexed him that he could see nothing on which he might base some hypothesis carelessly left on any of the pieces of furniture or in any corner of the apartment. The room was just like its provoking occupant, silent, cold, and inscrutable. He was extremely surprised, too, not to find any appearance of poverty as he had expected. On the contrary, the room produced upon him much the same impression as he had felt when he had once entered the richly furnished drawing-room of the prefect of Marseilles. The big crucifix seemed to fill it with its black arms.
Mouret felt, however, that he must go and look at the corner which Abbé Faujas was inviting him to inspect.
'You see the stain, don't you?' asked the priest. 'It has faded a little since yesterday.'
Mouret rose upon tip-toes and strained his eyes, but at first he could see nothing. When the Abbé had drawn back the curtains, he was able to distinguish a slight damp-stain.
'It's nothing very serious,' he said.
'Oh, no! but I thought it would be better to tell you of it. The wet must have soaked through near the edge of the roof.'
'Yes, you are right; near the edge of the roof.'
Mouret made no further remark; he was again examining the room, now clear and distinct in the full daylight. It looked less solemn than before, but it remained as taciturn as ever. There was not even a speck of dust lying about to tell aught of the Abbé's life.
'Perhaps,' continued the priest, 'we may be able to discover the place from the window. Just wait a moment.'
He proceeded to open the window, but Mouret protested against him troubling himself any further, saying that the workmen would easily be able to find the leak.
'It is no trouble at all, I assure you,' replied the Abbé with polite insistence. 'I know that landlords like to know how matters are going on. Inspect everything, I beg of you. The house is yours.'
As he spoke these last words he smiled, a thing he did but rarely; and then as Mouret and himself leaned over the rail that crossed the window, and turned their eyes towards the guttering, he launched out into various technical details, trying to account for the appearance of the stain.
'I think there has been a slight depression of the tiles, perhaps even a breakage; unless, indeed, that crack which you can see up there in the cornice extends into the retaining-wall.'
'Yes, yes, that is very possible,' Mouret replied; 'but I must confess, Monsieur l'Abbé, that I really don't understand anything about these matters. However, the masons will see to it.'
The priest said nothing further on the subject, but quietly remained where he was, gazing out upon the garden beneath him. Mouret, who was leaning by his side, thought it would be impolite to hurry away. He was quite won over when his tenant, after an interval of silence, said to him in his soft voice:
'You have a very pretty garden, sir.'
'Oh! it's nothing out of the common,' replied Mouret. 'There used to be some fine trees which I was obliged to cut down, for nothing would grow in their shade, and we have to pay attention to utility, you know. This plot is quite large enough for us and keeps us in vegetables all through the season.'
The Abbé seemed surprised, and asked Mouret for details. The garden was an old-fashioned country garden, surrounded with arbours, and divided into four regular square plots by tall borders of box. In the middle was a shallow basin, but there was no fountain. Only one of the squares was devoted to flowers. In the other three, which were planted at their edges with fruit-trees, one saw some magnificent cabbages, lettuces, and other vegetables. The paths of yellow gravel were kept extremely neat.
'It is a little paradise,' said Abbé Faujas.
'There are several disadvantages, all the same,' replied Mouret, who felt extremely delighted at hearing his ground so highly praised. 'You will have noticed, for instance, that we are on a slope, and that the gardens hereabouts are on different levels. Monsieur Rastoil's is lower than mine, which, again, is lower than that of the Sub-Prefecture. The consequence is that the rain often does a great deal of damage. Then, too, a still greater disadvantage is that the people in the Sub-Prefecture overlook me, and the more so now that they have made that terrace which commands my wall. It is true that I overlook Monsieur Rastoil's garden, but that is very poor compensation I can assure you, for a man who never troubles himself about his neighbour's doings.'
The priest seemed to be listening out of mere complaisance, just nodding his head occasionally but making no remarks. He followed with his eyes the motions of his landlord's hand.
'And there is still another inconvenience,' continued Mouret, pointing to a path that skirted the bottom of the garden. 'You see that little lane between the two walls? It is called the Impasse des Chevillottes, and leads to a cart-entrance to the grounds of the Sub-Prefecture. Well, all the neighbouring properties have little doors giving access to the lane, and there are all sorts of mysterious comings and goings. For my part, being a family man with children, I fastened my door up with a couple of stout nails.'
He looked at the Abbé and winked, hoping that the priest would question him about the mysterious comings and goings to which he had just alluded. But Abbé Faujas seemed quite unconcerned; he merely glanced at the alley without showing any curiosity on the subject. Then he again gazed placidly upon the Mourets' garden. Marthe was in her customary place near the edge of the terrace, hemming napkins. She had raised her head on first hearing voices, and then had resumed her work again, full of surprise at seeing her husband at one of the second-floor windows in the company of the priest. She now appeared to be quite unconscious of their presence. Mouret, however, had raised his voice from a sort of instinctive braggartism, proud of being able to show his wife that he had at last made his way into that room which had so persistently been kept private. The Abbé, on his side, every now and then let his calm eyes rest upon the woman, though all that he could see of her was the back of her bent neck and her black coil of hair.
They were both silent again, and Abbé Faujas still seemed disinclined to leave the window. He now appeared to be examining their neighbour's flower beds. Monsieur Rastoil's garden was arranged in the English fashion, with little walks and grass plots broken by small flower-beds. At the bottom there was a circular cluster of trees, underneath which a table and some rustic chairs were set.
'Monsieur Rastoil is very wealthy,' resumed Mouret, who had followed the direction of the Abbé's eyes. 'His garden costs him a large sum of money. The waterfall—you can't see it from here, it is behind those trees—ran away with more than three hundred francs. There isn't a vegetable about the place, nothing but flowers. At one time the ladies even talked of cutting down the fruit-trees; but that would have really been wicked, for the pear-trees are magnificent specimens. Well, I suppose a man has a right to lay out his ground so as to please his own fancy, if he can afford to do so.'
Then, as the Abbé still continued silent, he continued: 'You know Monsieur Rastoil, don't you? Every morning, from eight o'clock till nine, he walks about under his trees. He is a heavy man, rather short, bald, and clean shaven, with a head as round as a ball. He completed his sixtieth year at the beginning of last August, I believe. He has been president of our civil tribunal for nearly twenty years. Folks say he is a very good fellow, but I see very little of him. "Good-morning," and "Good-evening," that's about all that ever passes between us.'
He stopped speaking as he saw several people coming down the steps of the neighbouring house and making their way towards the clump of trees.
'Ah, yes!' he resumed, lowering his voice, 'to-day's Tuesday. There is a dinner party at the Rastoils'.
The Abbé had not been able to restrain a slight start, and had then bent forward to see better. Two priests who were walking beside a couple of tall girls seemed particularly to interest him.
'Do you know who those gentlemen are?' Mouret inquired.
And, when the priest only replied by a vague gesture, he added:
'They were crossing the Rue Balande just as we met each other. The taller and younger one, the one who is walking between Monsieur Rastoil's two daughters, is Abbé Surin, our bishop's secretary. He is said to be a very amiable young man. The old one, who is walking a little behind, is one of our grand-vicars, Abbé Fenil. He is at the head of the seminary. He is a terrible man, flat and sharp, like a sabre. I wish he would turn round so that you might see his eyes. I am quite surprised that you don't know those gentlemen.'
'I go out very little,' said the Abbé, 'and there is no house in the town that I visit.'
'Ah! that isn't right. You must often feel very dull. To do you justice, Monsieur l'Abbé, you are certainly not of an inquisitive disposition. Just fancy! you've been here a month now, and you didn't even know that Monsieur Rastoil had a dinner-party every Tuesday! Why, it's right before your eyes there from this window!'
Mouret laughed slightly. He was forming a rather contemptuous opinion of the Abbé. Then in confidential tones he went on:
'You see that tall old man who is with Madame Rastoil—the thin one I mean, with broad brims to his hat? Well, that is Monsieur de Bourdeu, the former prefect of the Dr?me, a prefect who was turned out of office by the revolution of 1848. He's another one that you don't know, I'll be bound. But Monsieur Maffre there, the justice of the peace, that white-headed old gentleman who is coming last, with Monsieur Rastoil, don't you know him? Well, that is really inexcusable. He is an honorary canon of Saint-Saturnin's! Between ourselves, he is accused of having killed his wife by his harshness and miserliness.'
Mouret stopped short, looked the Abbé in the face and said abruptly, with a smile:
'I beg your pardon, but I am not a very devout person, you know.'
The Abbé again waved his hand with that vague gesture which did duty as an answer and saved him the necessity of making a more explicit reply.
'No, I am not a very devout person,' Mouret repeated smilingly. 'But everyone should be left free, is it not so? The Rastoils, now, are a religious family. You must have seen the mother and daughters at Saint-Saturnin's. They are parishioners of yours. Ah! those poor girls! The elder, Angéline, is fully twenty-six years old, and the other, Aurélie, is getting on for twenty-four. And they're no beauties either, quite yellow and shrewish-looking. The parents won't let the younger one marry before her sister; but I dare say they'll both end by finding husbands somewhere, if only for the sake of their dowries. Their mother there, that fat little woman who looks as innocent and mild as a sheep, has given poor Rastoil some pretty experiences.'
He winked his left eye, a common habit of his whenever he indulged in any pleasantry approaching broadness. The Abbé lowered his eyes, as if waiting for Mouret to go on, but, as the latter remained silent, he raised them again and watched the people in the garden as they seated themselves round the table under the trees.
At last Mouret resumed his explanatory remarks.
'They will stay out there, enjoying the fresh air, till dinner-time,' said he. 'It is just the same every Tuesday. That Abbé Surin is a great favourite. Look how he is laughing there with Mademoiselle Aurélie. Ah! Abbé Fenil has observed us. What eyes he has! He isn't very fond of me, you know, as I've had a dispute with a relation of his. But where has Abbé Bourrette got to? We haven't seen anything of him, have we? It is very extraordinary. He never misses Monsieur Rastoil's Tuesdays. He must be ill. You know him, don't you? What a worthy man he is! A most devoted servant of God!'
Abbé Faujas was no longer listening. His eyes were constantly meeting those of Abbé Fenil, whose scrutiny he bore with perfect calmness, never once diverting his glance. He was even leaning more fully against the iron rail, and his eyes seemed to have grown bigger.
Ah! here come the young people!' resumed Mouret as three young men arrived on the scene. 'The oldest one is Rastoil's son; he has just been called to the Bar. The two others are the sons of Monsieur Maffre; they are still at college. By-the-by, I wonder why those young scamps of mine haven't come back yet.'
At that very moment Octave and Serge made their appearance on the terrace. Leaning against the balustrade they began to tease Désirée, who had just sat down by her mother's side. However, when the young folks caught sight of their father at the second-floor window, they lowered their voices and quietly laughed.
'There you see all my little family!' said Mouret complacently. 'We stay at home, we do; and we have no visitors. Our garden is a closed paradise, which the devil can't enter to tempt us.'
He smiled as he spoke, for he was really amusing himself at the Abbé's expense. The latter had slowly brought his eyes to bear upon the group formed by his landlord's family under the window. He gazed down there for a moment; then looked round upon the old-fashioned garden with its beds of vegetables edged with borders of box; then again turned his eyes towards Monsieur Rastoil's pretentious grounds; and last of all, as though he wanted to get the plan of the whole surroundings into his head, directed his attention to the garden of the Sub-Prefecture. There was nothing to be seen here but a large central lawn, a gently undulating carpet of grass, with clusters of evergreen shrubs, and some tall thickly-foliaged chestnut trees which gave a park-like appearance to this patch of ground hemmed in by the neighbouring houses.
Abbé Faujas glanced under the chestnut-trees, and at last remarked:
'These gardens are quite lively. There are some people, too, in the one on the left.' Mouret raised his eyes.
Oh, yes!' he said unconcernedly, 'it's like that every afternoon. They are the friends of Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, our sub-prefect. In the summer-time they meet in the evenings in the same way round the basin on the left, which you can't see from here. Ah! so Monsieur de Condamin has got back! That fine old man there, who is so well preserved and has such a bright colour; he is our conservator of rivers and forests; a jovial old fellow, who is constantly to be seen, gloved and tightly breeched, on horseback. And the tales he can tell, too! He doesn't belong to this neighbourhood, and he has lately married a very young woman. However, that's fortunately no business of mine!'
He bent his head again as he heard Désirée, who was playing with Serge, break out into one of her childish laughs. But the Abbé, whose face was now slightly flushed, recalled his attention by asking:
'Is that the sub-prefect, that fat gentleman with the white tie?'
This question seemed to amuse Mouret exceedingly.
'Oh, no!' he replied, with a laugh. 'It is very evident that you don't know Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies. He isn't forty yet; he's a tall, handsome, very distinguished-looking young man. That fat gentleman is Doctor Porquier, the fashionable medical man of Plassans. He is a very well-to-do man, I can assure you, and he has only one trouble, his son Guillaume. Do you see those two people sitting on the bench with their backs towards us? They are Monsieur Paloque, the assistant judge, and his wife. They are the ugliest couple in the town. It is difficult to say which is the worse-looking, the husband or the wife. Fortunately they have no children.'
Mouret began to laugh more loudly; he was growing excited, and kept on striking the window-rail.
'I can never look at the assemblies in those grounds,' he continued, motioning with his head, first towards Monsieur Rastoil's garden and then towards the sub-prefect's, 'without being highly amused. You don't take any interest in politics, Monsieur l'Abbé, or I could tell you some things which would tickle you immensely. Rightly or wrongly, I myself pass for a republican. Business matters take me a good deal about the country; I am a friend of the peasantry, and people have even talked about proposing me for the Council-General—in short, I am a well-known man. Well, on my right here, at Monsieur Rastoil's, we have the cream of the Legitimists, and on the left, at the Sub-Prefecture, we have the big-wigs of the Empire. And so, you see, my poor old-fashioned garden, my little happy nook, lies between two hostile camps. I am continually afraid lest they should begin throwing stones at each other, for the stones, you see, might very well fall into my garden.'
Mouret appeared to be quite delighted with this witticism and drew closer to the Abbé, like some old gossip who is just going to launch out into a long story.
'Plassans is a very curious place from a political point of view. The Coup d'état succeeded here because the town is conservative. But first of all it is Legitimist and Orleanist; so much so, indeed, that at the outset of the Empire it wanted to dictate conditions. As its claims were disregarded, the town grew annoyed and went over to the opposition; yes, Monsieur l'Abbé, to the opposition. Last year we elected for our deputy the Marquis de Lagrifoul, an old nobleman of mediocre abilities, but one whose election was a very bitter pill for the Sub-Prefecture.—Ah, look! there is Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies! He is with the mayor, Monsieur Delangre.'
The Abbé glanced keenly in the direction indicated by Mouret. The sub-prefect, a very dark man, was smiling beneath his waxed moustaches. He was irreproachably dressed, and preserved a demeanour which suggested both that of a fashionable officer and that of a good-natured diplomatist. The mayor was by his side, talking and gesticulating rapidly. He was a short man, with square shoulders, and a sunken face that was rather Punch-like in appearance. He seemed to be garrulously inclined.
'Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies,' continued Mouret, 'had felt so confident of the return of the official candidate that the result of the election nearly made him ill. It was very amusing. On the evening of the election, the garden of the Sub-Prefecture remained as dark and gloomy as a cemetery, while in the Rastoils' grounds there were lamps and candles burning under the trees, and joyous laughter and a perfect uproar of triumph. Our people don't let things be seen from the street, but they throw off all restraint and give full vent to their feelings in their gardens. Oh, yes! I see singular things sometimes, though I don't say anything about them.'
He checked himself for a moment, as though he was unwilling to say more, but his gossiping propensities were too strong for him.
I wonder what course they will now take at the Sub-Prefecture?' he continued. 'They will never get their candidate elected again. They don't understand the people about here, and besides they are very weak. I was told that Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies was to have had a prefecture if the election had gone off all right. Ah! he will remain a sub-prefect for a long time yet, I imagine! What stratagem will they devise, I wonder, to overthrow the Marquis? They will certainly have recourse to one of some kind or other; they will do their best somehow to effect the conquest of Plassans.'
He turned his eyes upon the Abbé, at whom he had ceased to look for the last few moments, and he suddenly checked himself as he caught sight of the priest's eager face, his glistening eyes, and his ears that seemed to have grown bigger. All Mouret's bourgeois prudence then reasserted itself, and he felt that he had said too much. So he hastily added:
'But, after all, I really know nothing about it. People tell so many ridiculous stories. All I care about is to be allowed to live quietly in my own house.'
He would then have liked to leave the window, but he dared not go away so suddenly after gossiping in such an unrestrained and familiar fashion. He was beginning to think that if one of them had been having his laugh at the other, it certainly was not he.
The Abbé, for his part, was again glancing alternately at the two gardens in a calm, unconcerned manner, and did not make the slightest attempt to induce Mouret to continue talking. Mouret was already wishing, somewhat impatiently, that his wife or one of his children would call to him to come down, when he was greatly relieved by seeing Rose appear on the steps outside the house. She raised her head towards him.
'Well, sir!' she cried, 'aren't you coming at all to-day? The soup has been on the table for the last quarter of an hour!'
'All right, Rose! I'll be down directly,' he replied.
Then he made his apologies to the Abbé, and left the window. The chilly aspect of the room, which he had forgotten while his back had been turned to it, added to the confusion he felt. It seemed to him like a huge confessional-box, with its awful black crucifix, which must have heard everything he had said. When the Abbé took leave of him with a silent bow, this sudden finish of their conversation so disturbed him, that he again stepped back and, raising his eyes to the ceiling, said:
'It is in that corner, then?'
'What is?' asked the Abbé in surprise.
'The damp stain that you spoke to me about.'
The priest could not restrain a smile, but he again pointed out the stain to Mouret.
'Ah! I can see it quite plainly now,' said the latter. 'Well, I'll send the workmen up to-morrow.'
Then he at last left the room, and before he had reached the end of the landing, the door was noiselessly closed behind him. The silence of the staircase irritated him extremely, and as he went down, he muttered:
'The confounded fellow! He gets everything out of one without asking a single question!'
The next morning old Madame Rougon, Marthe's mother, came to pay a visit to the Mourets. It was quite an event, for there was a coolness between Mouret and his wife's relations which had increased since the election of the Marquis de Lagrifoul, whose success the Rougons attributed to Mouret's influence in the rural districts. Marthe used to go alone when she went to see her parents. Her mother, 'that black Félicité,' as she was called, had retained at sixty-six years of age all the slimness and vivacity of a girl. She always wore silk dresses, covered with flounces, and was particularly partial to yellows and browns.
When she arrived, only Marthe and Mouret were in the dining-room.
'Hallo!' cried the latter in great surprise, as he saw her coming, 'here's your mother! I wonder what she wants! She was here less than a month ago. She's scheming after something or other, I know.'
The Rougons, whose assistant Mouret had been prior to his marriage, when their shabby little shop in the old quarter of the town had ever suggested bankruptcy, were the objects of his constant suspicions. They returned the feeling with bitter and deep-seated animosity, their rancour being especially aroused by the speedy success which had attended him in business. When their son-in-law said, 'I simply owe my fortune to my own exertions,' they bit their lips and understood quite well that he was accusing them of having gained theirs by less honourable means. Notwithstanding the fine house she now had on the Place of the Sub-Prefecture, Félicité silently envied the peaceful little home of the Mourets, with all the bitter jealousy of a retired shopkeeper who owed her fortune to something else than the profits of her business.
Félicité kissed Marthe on the forehead and then gave her hand to Mouret. She and her son-in-law generally affected a mocking tone in their conversations together.
'Well,' she said to him with a smile, 'the gendarmes haven't been for you yet then, you revolutionist?'
'No, not yet,' he replied with a responsive smile; 'they are waiting till your husband gives them the order.'
'It's very nice and polite of you to say that!' exclaimed Félicité, whose eyes were beginning to glisten.
Marthe turned a beseeching glance upon Mouret. He had gone too far; but his feelings were roused and he added:
'Good gracious! What are we thinking of to receive you in the dining-room? Let us go into the drawing-room, I beg you.'
This was one of his usual pleasantries. He affected all Félicité's fine airs whenever he received a visit from her. It was to no purpose that Marthe protested that they were very comfortable where they were; her husband insisted that she and her mother should follow him into the drawing-room. When they got there, he bustled about, opening the shutters and drawing out the chairs. The drawing-room, which was seldom entered, and the shutters of which were generally kept closed, was a great wilderness of a room, with furniture swathed in white dust-covers which were turning yellow from the proximity of the damp garden.
'It is really disgraceful!' muttered Mouret, wiping the dust from a small console; 'that wretched Rose neglects everything abominably.'
Then, turning towards his mother-in-law, he said with ill-concealed irony:
'You will excuse us for receiving you in this way in our poor dwelling. We cannot all be wealthy.'
Félicité was choking with rage. She scanned Mouret for a moment, and almost indulged in a burst of anger; but she made an effort to restrain herself and slowly dropped her eyes. When she again raised them she spoke in a pleasant tone.
I have just been calling upon Madame de Condamin,' she said, 'and I thought I would look in here and see how you all were. The children are well, I hope, and you, too, my dear Mouret?'
'Yes, we are all wonderfully well,' he replied, quite astonished by this amiability.
But the old lady gave him no time to import any fresh unpleasantness into the conversation, for she began to question Marthe affectionately about all sorts of trifles, playing the part of a fond grandmother and scolding Mouret for not sending the dear children to see her oftener, for she was always so delighted to have them with her, said she.
'Well, here we are in October again,' she remarked carelessly, after awhile, 'and I shall be having my day again, Thursdays, as in former seasons. I shall count upon seeing you, my dear Marthe, of course; and you too, Mouret, you will look in occasionally, won't you, and not go on sulking with us for ever?'
Mouret, who was growing a little suspicious of all his mother-in-law's affectionate chatter, was at a loss how to reply. He had not expected such a thrust, but there was nothing in it to which he could take exception; so he merely said:
'You know very well that I can't go to your house; you receive a lot of people who would be delighted to have an opportunity of making themselves disagreeable to me. And, besides, I don't want to mix myself up with politics.'
'You are quite mistaken, Mouret, quite mistaken!' Félicité replied. 'My drawing-room is not a club; I would never allow it to become one. All the town knows that I do all I can to make my house as pleasant as possible; and if political matters ever are discussed there, it is only in corners, I assure you. Ah! believe me, I had quite enough of politics long ago. What makes you say such a thing?'
'Why, you receive all the Sub-Prefecture set,' Mouret said shortly.
The Sub-Prefecture set!' she repeated, 'the Sub-Prefecture set! Certainly I receive those gentlemen. But I don't think that Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies will be found very often in my house this winter. My husband has told him pretty plainly what he thought of his conduct in connection with the last elections. He allowed himself to be tricked like a mere nincompoop. But his friends are very pleasant men. Monsieur Delangre and Monsieur de Condamin are extremely amiable, and that worthy Paloque is kindness itself, while I'm sure you can have nothing to say against Doctor Porquier.'
Mouret shrugged his shoulders.
'Besides,' she continued, with ironic emphasis, 'I also receive Monsieur Rastoil's circle, worthy Monsieur Maffre and our clever friend Monsieur de Bourdeu, the former prefect. So you see we are not at all bigoted or exclusive, the representatives of all opinions find a welcome among us. Of course when I am inviting a party of people, I don't ask those to meet each other who would be likely to quarrel. But wit and cleverness are welcome in whomsoever they are found, and we pride ourselves upon having at our gatherings all the most distinguished persons in Plassans. My drawing-room is neutral ground, remember that, Mouret; yes, neutral ground that is the right expression.'
She had grown quite animated whilst talking. Her drawing-room was her great glory, and it was her desire to reign there, not as a chief of a party, but as a queen of society. It is true that her friends said that she was adopting conciliatory tactics merely in conformity with the advice of her son Eugène, the minister, who had charged her to personify at Plassans the gentleness and amiability of the Empire.
'You may say what you like,' Mouret growled, 'but that Maffre of yours is a bigot, and your Bourdeu is a fool, and most of all the others are a pack of rascals. That's my opinion of them. I am much obliged to you for your invitation, but it would disturb my habits too much to accept it. I like to go to bed in good time, and I prefer stopping at home.'
Félicité rose from her seat, and turning her back upon Mouret, she said to her daughter:
'Well, at any rate I may expect you, mayn't I, my dear?'
'Of course you may,' replied Marthe, who wished to soften the bluntness of her husband's blunt refusal.
The old lady was just going to leave, when a thought seemed to strike her, and she asked if she might kiss Désirée, whom she had seen playing in the garden. She would not let them call the girl into the house, but insisted on going herself to the terrace, which was still damp from a slight shower which had fallen in the morning. When she found Désirée, she was profuse in her caresses of the girl, who seemed rather frightened of her. Then she raised her head as if by chance and looked at the curtains at the second-floor windows.
'Ah! you have let the rooms, then? Oh, yes! I remember now; to a priest, isn't it? I've heard it spoken of. What sort of a person is he, this priest of yours?'
Mouret looked at her keenly. A sudden suspicion flashed through his mind, and he began to guess that it was entirely on account of Abbé Faujas that his mother-in-law had favoured them with this visit.
'Upon my word,' he replied, without taking his eyes off her, 'I really know nothing about him. But perhaps you are able to give me some information concerning him yourself?'
'I!' she cried, with an appearance of great surprise. 'Why, I've never even seen him! Stay, though, I know he is one of the curates at Saint-Saturnin; Father Bourrette told me that. By the way, that reminds me that I ought to ask him to my Thursdays. The director of the seminary and the bishop's secretary are already amongst my circle of visitors.'
And, turning to Marthe, she added:
'When you see your lodger you might sound him, so as to be able to tell me whether an invitation from me would be acceptable.'
'We scarcely ever see him,' Mouret hastily interposed. 'He comes in and goes out without ever opening his mouth. And, besides, it is really no business of ours.'
He still kept his eyes fixed suspiciously upon her. He felt quite sure that she knew much more about Abbé Faujas than she was willing to admit. However, she did not once flinch beneath his searching gaze.
'Very well, it's all the same to me,' she said, with an appearance of unconcern. 'I shall be able to find out some other way of inviting him, if he's the right sort of person, I've no doubt. Good-bye, my children.'
As she was mounting the steps again, a tall old man appeared on the hall threshold. He was dressed very neatly in blue cloth, and had a fur cap pressed over his eyes. In his hand he carried a whip.
'Hallo! why there's Uncle Macquart!' cried Mouret, casting a curious glance at his mother-in-law.
An expression of extreme annoyance passed over Félicité's face. Macquart, Rougon's illegitimate brother, had, by the latter's aid, returned to France after he had compromised himself in the rising of 1851. Since arriving from Piedmont he had been leading the life of a sleek and well-to-do citizen. He had purchased, though where the money had come from no one knew, a small house at the village of Les Tulettes, about three leagues from Plassans. And by degrees he had fitted up an establishment there, and had now even become possessed of a horse and trap, and was constantly to be met on the high roads, smoking his pipe, enjoying the sunshine, and sniggering like a tamed wolf. Rougon's enemies whispered that the two brothers had perpetrated some black business together, and that Pierre Rougon was keeping Antoine Macquart.
'Good day, Uncle!' said Mouret affectedly; 'have you come to pay us a little visit?'
'Yes, indeed,' Macquart replied, in a voice as guileless as a child's. 'You know that whenever I come to Plassans——Hallo, Félicité! I didn't expect to find you here! I came over to see Rougon. There was something I wanted to talk to him about.'
'He was at home, wasn't he?' she exclaimed with uneasy haste.
'Yes, he was at home,' Uncle Macquart replied tranquilly. 'I saw him, and we had a talk together. He is a good fellow, is Rougon.'
He laughed slightly, and while Félicité stamped her feet with restless anxiety, he went on talking in his drawling voice, which made it seem as if he was always laughing at those whom he addressed.
'Mouret, my boy, I have brought you a couple of rabbits,' he said. 'They are in a basket over there. I have given them to Rose. I brought another couple with me for Rougon. You will find them at home, Félicité, and you must tell me how they turn out. They are beautifully plump; I fattened them up for you. Ah, my dears! it pleases me very much to be able to make you these little presents.'
Félicité turned quite pale, and pressed her lips tightly, while Mouret continued to look at her with a quiet smile. She would have been glad to get away, if she had not been afraid of Macquart gossiping as soon as her back should be turned.
'Thank you, Uncle,' said Mouret. 'The plums that you brought us the last time you came were very good. Won't you have something to drink?'
'Well, that's an offer I really can't refuse.'
When Rose had brought him out a glass of wine, he sat down on the balustrade of the terrace and slowly sipped the beverage, smacking his tongue and holding up the glass to the light.
'This comes from the district of Saint-Eutrope,' he said. 'I'm not to be deceived in matters of this kind. I know the different districts thoroughly.'
He wagged his head and again sniggered.
Then Mouret, with an intonation that was full of meaning, suddenly asked him:
'And how are things getting on at Les Tulettes?'
Macquart raised his eyes and looked at them all. Then giving a final cluck of his tongue and putting down the glass on the stone-work by his side, he said, quite unconcernedly:
'Oh! very well. I heard of her the day before yesterday. She is still just the same.'
Félicité had turned her head away. For a moment no one spoke. Mouret had just put his finger upon one of the family's sore places, by alluding to old Adelaide, the mother of Rougon and Macquart, who for several years now had been shut up as a mad woman in the asylum at Les Tulettes. Macquart's little property was near the mad-house, and it seemed as though Rougon had posted the old scamp there to keep watch over their mother.
'It is getting late,' Macquart said at last, rising from his seat on the balustrade, 'and I want to get back again before night. I shall expect to see you over at my house one of these days, Mouret, my boy. You have promised me several times to come, you know.'
'Oh, yes! I'll come, Uncle, I'll come.'
'Ah! but that isn't enough. I want you all to come; all of you, do you hear? I am very dull out there all by myself. I will give you some dinner.'
Then, turning to Félicité, he added:
'Tell Rougon that I shall expect him and you, too. You needn't stop from coming just because the old mother happens to be near there. She is going on very well, I tell you, and is properly looked after. You may safely trust yourselves to me, and I will give you some wine from one of the slopes of La Seille, a light wine that will warm you up famously.'
He began to walk towards the gate as he spoke. Félicité followed him so closely that it almost seemed as if she were pushing him out of the garden. They all accompanied him to the street. While he was untethering his horse, which he had fastened by the reins to one of the house shutters, Abbé Faujas, who was just returning home, passed the group with a slight bow. He glided on as noiselessly as a black shadow, but Félicité quickly turned and watched him till he reached the staircase. Unfortunately she had not had time to catch sight of his face. Macquart on perceiving the priest had shaken his head in utter surprise.
'What! my boy,' said he, 'have you really got priests lodging with you now? That man has very strange eyes. Take care! take care! cassocks bring ill luck with them!'
Then he took his seat in his trap and clucked his horse on, going down the Rue Balande at a gentle trot. His round back and fur cap disappeared at the corner of the Rue Taravelle. As Mouret turned round again, he heard his mother-in-law speaking to Marthe.
'I would rather you do it,' she was saying; 'the invitation would seem less formal. I should be very glad if you could find some opportunity of speaking to him.'
She checked herself when she saw that she was overheard; and having kissed Désirée effusively, she went away, giving a last look round to make quite sure that Macquart was not likely to come back to gossip about her.
'I forbid you to mix yourself up in your mother's affairs, you know,' Mouret said to his wife as they returned into the house. 'She has always got some business or other on hand that no body can understand. What in the world can she want with the Abbé? She wouldn't invite him for his own sake, I'm sure. She must have some secret reason for doing so. That priest hasn't come from Besan?on to Plassans for nothing. There is some mystery or other at the bottom of it all!'
Marthe had again set to work at the everlasting repairs of the family-linen which kept her busy for days together. But her husband went on chattering:
Old Macquart and your mother amuse me very much. How they hate each other! Did you notice how angry she was when she saw him come? She always seems to be in a state of fear lest he should make some unpleasant revelation——I dare say that he'd willingly do so. But they'll never catch me in his house. I've sworn to keep clear of all that business. My father was quite right when he said that my mother's family, those Rougons and Macquarts, were not worth a rope to hang them with——They are my relations as well as yours, so you needn't feel hurt at what I am saying. I say it because it is true. They are wealthy people now, but their money hasn't made them any better—rather the contrary.'
Then he set off to take a turn along the Cours Sauvaire, where he met his friends and talked to them about the weather and the crops and the events of the previous day. An extensive transaction in almonds, which he undertook on the morrow, kept him busy for more than a week and made him almost forget all about Abbé Faujas. He was beginning, besides, to feel a little weary of the Abbé, who did not talk enough and was far too secretive. On two separate occasions he purposely avoided him, imagining that the priest only wanted to see him in order to make him relate the stories of the remainder of the Sub-Prefecture circle and Monsieur Rastoil's friends. Rose had informed him that Madame Faujas had tried to get her to talk, and this had made him vow that he would in future keep his mouth shut. This resolve furnished fresh amusement for his idle hours, and now, as he looked up at the closely drawn curtains of the second-floor windows, he would mutter:
'All right, my good fellow! Hide yourself as much as you like! I know very well that you're watching me from behind those curtains, but you won't be much the wiser for your trouble, and you'll find yourself much mistaken if you expect to get any more information out of me about our neighbours!'
He derived great pleasure from the thought that the Abbé Faujas was secretly watching, and he took every precaution to avoid falling into any trap that might be laid for him. One evening as he was coming home he saw Abbé Bourrette and Abbé Faujas standing before Monsieur Rastoil's gate. So he concealed himself behind the corner of a house and spied on them. The two priests kept him waiting there for more than a quarter of an hour. They talked with great animation, parted for a moment, and then joined each other again, and resumed their conversation. Mouret thought he could detect that Abbé Bourrette was trying to persuade Abbé Faujas to accompany him to the judge's; and that Faujas was making excuses for not going, and at last refusing to do so with some show of impatience. It was a Tuesday, the day of the weekly dinner. Finally Bourrette entered Monsieur Rastoil's house, and Faujas went off in his quiet fashion to his own rooms. Mouret stood for awhile thinking. What could be Abbé Faujas's reason for refusing to go to Monsieur Rastoil's? All the clergy of Saint-Saturnin's dined there, Abbé Fenil, Abbé Surin, and all the others. There was not a single priest in Plassans who had not enjoyed the fresh air by the fountain in the garden there. The new curate's refusal to go seemed a very extraordinary thing.
When Mouret got home again, he hurried to the bottom of his own garden to reconnoitre the second-floor windows. And after a moment or two he saw the curtain of the second window move to the right. He felt quite sure that Abbé Faujas was behind it, spying upon what might be going on at Monsieur Rastoil's. Then Mouret thought that he could discover by certain movements of the curtain that the Abbé was in turn inspecting the gardens of the Sub-Prefecture.
The next day, a Wednesday, Rose told him just as he was going out that Abbé Bourrette had been with the second-floor people for at least an hour. Upon this he came back into the house and began to rummage about in the dining-room. When Marthe asked him what he was looking for, he replied sharply that he was trying to find a paper without which he could not go out. He even went upstairs, as if to see whether he had left it there. After waiting for a long time behind his bedroom door, he thought he could hear some chairs moving on the second floor, and thereupon he slowly went downstairs, stopping for a moment or two in the hall to give Abbé Bourrette time to catch him up.
'Ah! is that you, Monsieur l'Abbé? This is a fortunate meeting! You are going to Saint-Saturnin's, I suppose, and I am going that way too. We will keep each other company, if you have no objection.'
Abbé Bourrette replied that he would be delighted, and they both walked slowly up the Rue Balande towards the Place of the Sub-Prefecture. The Abbé was a stout man, with an honest, open face, and big, child-like blue eyes. His wide silk girdle which was drawn tightly round him threw his well-rounded stomach into relief. His arms were unduly short and his legs heavy and clumsy, and he walked with his head thrown slightly back.
'So you've just been to see our good Monsieur Faujas?' said Mouret, going to the point at once. 'I must really thank you for having procured me such a lodger as is rarely to be found.'
'Yes, yes,' said the priest, 'he is a very good and worthy man.'
'He never makes the slightest noise, and we can't really tell that there is anyone in the house. And he is so polite and courteous, too. I've heard it said, do you know, that he is a man of unusual attainments, and that he has been sent here as a sort of compliment to the diocese.'
They had now reached the middle of the Place of the Sub-Prefecture. Mouret stopped short and looked at Abbé Bourrette keenly.
'Ah, indeed!' the priest merely replied, with an air of astonishment.
'So I've been told. The Bishop, it is said, intends to do something for him later on. In the meantime, the new curate has to keep himself in the background for fear of exciting jealousy.'
Abbé Bourrette went on walking again, and turned the corner of the Rue de la Banne.
'You surprise me very much,' he quietly remarked. 'Faujas is a very unassuming man; in fact, he is far too humble. For instance, at the church he has taken upon himself the petty duties which are generally left to the ordinary staff. He is a saint, but he is not very sharp. I scarcely ever see him at the Bishop's, and from the first he has always been very cold with Abbé Fenil, though I strongly impressed upon him that it was necessary he should be on good terms with the Grand-Vicar if he wished to be well received at the Bishop's. But he didn't seem to see it, and I'm afraid that he's deficient in judgment. He shows the same failing, too, by his continual visits to Abbé Compan, who has been confined to his bed for the last fortnight, and whom I'm afraid we are going to lose. Abbé Faujas's visits are most ill-advised, and will do him a deal of harm. Compan has always been on bad terms with Fenil, and it's only a stranger from Besan?on who could be ignorant of a fact that is known to the whole diocese.'
Bourrette was growing animated, and in his turn he stopped short as they reached the Rue Canquoin and took his stand in front of Mouret.
No, no, my dear sir,' he said, 'you have been misinformed: Faujas is as simple as a new-born babe. I'm not an ambitious man myself, and God knows how fond I am of Compan, who has a heart of gold, but, all the same, I keep my visits to him private. He said to me himself: "Bourrette, my old friend, I am not much longer for this world. If you want to succeed me, don't be seen too often knocking at my door. Come after dark and knock three times, and my sister will let you in." So now, you understand, I wait till night before I go to see him. One has plenty of troubles as it is, without incurring unnecessary ones!'
His voice quavered, and he clasped his hands across his stomach as he resumed his walk, moved by a na?ve egotism which made him commiserate himself, while he murmured:
'Poor Compan! poor Compan!'
Mouret was feeling quite perplexed. All his theories about Abbé Faujas were being upset.
'I had such very precise details furnished to me,' he ventured to say. 'I was told that he was to be promoted to some important office.'
'Oh dear, no!' cried the priest. 'I can assure you that there is no truth in anything of the kind. Faujas has no expectations of any sort. I'll tell you something that proves it. You know that I dine at the Presiding Judge's every Tuesday. Well, last week he particularly asked me to bring Faujas with me. He wanted to see him, and find out what sort of a person he was, I suppose. Now, you would scarcely guess what Faujas did. He refused the invitation, my dear sir, bluntly refused it. It was all to no purpose that I told him he would make his life at Plassans quite intolerable, and would certainly embroil himself with Fenil by acting so rudely to Monsieur Rastoil. He persisted in having his own way, and wouldn't be persuaded by anything that I said. I believe that he even exclaimed, in a moment of anger, that he wasn't reduced to accepting dinners of that kind.'
Abbé Bourrette began to smile. They had now reached Saint-Saturnin's, and he detained Mouret for a moment near the little side door of the church.
'He is a child, a big child,' he continued. 'I ask you, now, could a dinner at Monsieur Rastoil's possibly compromise him in any way? When your mother-in-law, that good Madame Rougon, entrusted me yesterday with an invitation for Faujas, I did not conceal from her my fear that it would be badly received.'
Mouret pricked up his ears.
'Ah! my mother-in-law gave you an invitation for him, did she?'
Yes, she came to the sacristy yesterday. As I make a point of doing what I can to oblige her, I promised her that I would go and see the obstinate man this morning. I felt quite certain, however, that he would refuse.'
'And did he?'
'No, indeed; much to my surprise, he accepted.'
Mouret opened his lips and then closed them again without speaking. The priest winked with an appearance of extreme satisfaction.
'I had to manage the matter very skilfully, you know. For more than an hour I went on explaining your mother-in-law's position to him. He kept shaking his head, however; he could not make up his mind to go, and he was ever dwelling upon his desire for privacy. I had exhausted my stock of arguments when I recalled one point of the instructions which the dear lady gave me. She had told me to tell him that her drawing-room was entirely neutral ground, and that this was a fact well known to the whole town. When I pressed this upon his notice he seemed to waver, and at last he consented to accept the invitation, and even promised to go to-morrow. I shall send a few lines to that excellent Madame Rougon to inform her of my success.'
He lingered for a moment longer, rolling his big blue eyes, and saying—more to himself than to Mouret:
'Monsieur Rastoil will be very much vexed, but it's no fault of mine.'
Then he added: 'Good-morning, dear Monsieur Mouret; remember me very kindly to all your family.'
He entered the church, letting the padded doors close softly behind him. Mouret gazed at the doors and lightly shrugged his shoulders.
'There's a fine old chatterbox!' he muttered; 'one of those men who never give one a chance of getting in a word, but go on chattering away for hours without ever telling one anything worth listening to. So Faujas is going to Félicité's to-morrow! It's really very provoking that I am not on good terms with that fool Rougon!'
All the afternoon he was occupied with business matters, but at night, just as he and his wife were going to bed, he said to Marthe carelessly:
'Are you going to your mother's to-morrow evening?'
'No, not to-morrow,' Marthe replied, 'I have too many things to do. But I dare say I shall go next week.'
He made no immediate reply, but just before he blew out the candle, he resumed:
'It is wrong not to go out oftener than you do. Go to your mother's to-morrow evening; it will enliven you a little. I will stay at home and look after the children.'
Marthe looked at him in astonishment. He generally kept her at home with him, requiring all kinds of little services from her, and grumbling if she went out even for an hour.
'Very well,' she replied, 'I will go if you wish me to.'
Then he blew out the candle, laid his head upon the pillow, and muttered:
'That's right; and you can tell us all about it when you come back. It will amuse the children.'
About nine o'clock on the following evening, Abbé Bourrette called for Abbé Faujas. He had promised to go with him to the Rougons' and introduce him there. He found him ready, standing in the middle of his big bare room, and putting on a pair of black gloves that were sadly whitened at the finger-tips. Bourrette could not restrain a slight grimace as he looked at him.
'Haven't you got another cassock?' he asked.
'No,' quietly replied Abbé Faujas. 'This one is still very decent, I think.'
'Oh, certainly! certainly!' stammered the old priest; 'but it's very cold outside. Hadn't you better put something round your shoulders? Well! well! come along then!'
The nights had just commenced to be frosty. Abbé Bourrette, who was warmly wrapped in a padded silk overcoat, got quite out of breath as he panted along after Abbé Faujas, who wore nothing over his shoulders but his thin, threadbare cassock. They stopped at the corner of the Rue de la Banne and the Place of the Sub-Prefecture, in front of a house built entirely of white stone, one of the handsome mansions of the new part of the town. A servant in blue livery received them at the door and ushered them into the hall. He smiled at Abbé Bourrette as he helped him to take off his overcoat, and seemed greatly surprised at the appearance of the other priest, that tall, rough-hewn man, who had ventured out on such a bitter night without a cloak.
The drawing-room was on the first floor, and Abbé Faujas entered it with head erect, and grave, though perfectly easy, demeanour, while Abbé Bourrette, who was always very nervous when he went to the Rougons' house, although he never missed a single one of their receptions, made his escape into an adjoining apartment, thus cowardly leaving his companion in the lurch. Faujas, however, slowly traversed the whole drawing-room in order to pay his respects to the mistress of the house, whom he felt sure he could recognise among a group of five or six ladies. He was obliged to introduce himself, and he did so in two or three words. Félicité had immediately risen from her seat, and she closely if quickly scanned him from head to foot. Then her eyes sought his own, as she smilingly said:
'I am delighted, Monsieur l'Abbé; I am delighted indeed.'
The priest's passage through the drawing-room had created considerable sensation. One young lady who had suddenly raised her head, had quite trembled with alarm at the sight of that great black mass in front of her. The impression created by the Abbé was, indeed, an unfavourable one. He was too tall, too square-shouldered, his face was too hard and his hands were too big. His cassock, moreover, looked so frightfully shabby beneath the bright light of the chandelier that the ladies felt a kind of shame at seeing a priest so shockingly dressed. They spread out their fans, and began to giggle behind them, while pretending to be quite unconscious of the Abbé's presence. The men, meantime, exchanged very significant glances.
Félicité saw what a very churlish welcome the priest was receiving; she seemed annoyed at it, and remained standing, raising her voice in order to force her guests to hear the compliments which she addressed to Faujas.
'That dear Bourrette,' said she, in her most winning tone, 'has told me what difficulty he had in persuading you to come. I am really quite cross with you, sir. You have no right to deprive society of the pleasure of your company.'
The priest bowed without making any reply, and the old lady laughed as she began to speak again, laying a meaning emphasis on certain of her words.
'I know more about you than you imagine, in spite of all the care you have taken to hide your light under a bushel. I have been told about you; you are a very holy man, and I want to be your friend. We shall have an opportunity to talk about this, for I hope that you will now consider yourself as one of our circle.'
Abbé Faujas looked at her fixedly, as though he had recognised some masonic sign in the movements of her fan. He lowered his voice as he replied:
'Madame, I am entirely at your service.'
'I am delighted to hear you say so,' said Madame Rougon with another laugh. 'You will find that we do our best here to make everyone happy. But come with me and let me present you to my husband.'
She crossed the room, disturbing several of her guests in her progress to make way for Abbé Faujas, thus giving him an importance which put the finishing touch to the prejudice against him. In the adjoining room some card-tables were set out. She went straight up to her husband, who was gravely playing whist. He seemed rather impatient as she stooped down to whisper in his ear, but the few words she said to him made him spring briskly from his seat.
'Very good! very good!' he murmured.
Then, having first apologised to those with whom he was playing, he went and shook hands with Abbé Faujas.
At that time Rougon was a stout, pale man of seventy, and had acquired all a millionaire's gravity of expression. He was generally considered by the Plassans people to have a fine head, the white, uncommunicative head of a man of political importance. After he had exchanged a few courtesies with the priest he resumed his seat at the card-table. Félicité had just gone back into the drawing-room, her face still wreathed with smiles.
When Abbé Faujas at last found himself alone he did not manifest the slightest sign of embarrassment. He remained for a moment watching the whist-players, or appearing to do so, for he was, in reality, examining the curtains, and carpet, and furniture. It was a small wainscotted room, and book-cases of dark pear-tree wood, ornamented with brass beadings, occupied three of its sides. It looked like a magistrate's private sanctum. At last the priest, who was apparently desirous of making a complete inspection, returned to the drawing-room and crossed it. It was hung with green, and was in keeping with the smaller salon, but there was more gilding about it, so that it suggested the soberness of a minister's private room combined with the brightness of a great restaurant. On the other side of it was a sort of boudoir where Félicité received her friends during the day. This was hung in straw colour, and was so full of easy-chairs and ottomans and couches, covered with brocade with a pattern of violet scroll-work, that there was scarcely room to move about in it.
Abbé Faujas took a seat near the fireplace and pretended to be warming his feet. He had placed himself in such a position that through the open doorway he could command a view of the greater part of the large drawing-room. He reflected upon Madame Rougon's gracious reception, and half closed his eyes, as though he were thinking out some problem which it was rather difficult to solve. A moment or two afterwards, while he was still absorbed in his reverie, he heard someone speaking behind him. His large-backed easy-chair concealed him from sight, and he kept his eyes still more tightly closed than before, as he remained there listening, looking for all the world as though the warmth of the fire had sent him to sleep.
'I went to their house just once at that time,' an unctuous voice was saying. 'They were then living opposite this place, on the other side of the Rue de la Banne. You were at Paris then; but all Plassans at that period knew of the Rougons' yellow drawing-room. A wretched room it was, hung with lemon-coloured paper at fifteen sous the piece, and containing some rickety furniture covered with cheap velvet. But look at black Félicité now, dressed in plum-coloured satin and seated on yonder couch! Do you see how she gives her hand to little Delangre? Upon my word, she is giving it to him to kiss!'
Then a younger voice said with something of a sneer: 'They must have managed to lay their hands on a pretty big share of plunder to be able to have such a beautiful drawing-room; it is the handsomest, you know, in the whole town.'
The lady,' the other voice resumed, 'has always had a passion for receptions. When she was hard up she drank water herself so that she might be able to provide lemonade for her guests. Oh! I know all about the Rougons. I have watched their whole career. They are very clever people, and the Coup d'état has enabled them to satisfy the dreams of luxury and pleasure which had been tormenting them for forty years. Now you see what a magnificent style they keep up, how lavishly they live! This house which they now occupy formerly belonged to a Monsieur Peirotte, one of the receivers of taxes, who was killed in the affair at Sainte-Roure in the insurrection of '51. Upon my word, they've had the most extraordinary luck: a stray bullet removed the man who was standing in their way, and they stepped into his place and house. If it had been a choice between the receivership and the house, Félicité would certainly have chosen the house. She had been hankering after it for half a score years nearly, making herself quite ill by her covetous glances at the magnificent curtains that hung at the windows. It was her Tuileries, as the Plassans people used to say, after the 2nd of December.'
'But where did they get the money to buy this house?'
'Ah! no one knows that, my dear fellow. Their son Eugène, who has had such amazing political success in Paris, and has become a deputy, a minister and a confidential adviser at the Tuileries, had no difficulty in obtaining the receivership and the cross of the Legion of Honour for his father, who had played his cards very cleverly here. As for the house, they probably paid for it by borrowing the money from some banker. Anyhow, they are wealthy people to-day, and are fast making up for lost time. I fancy their son keeps up a constant correspondence with them, for they have not made a single false step as yet.'
The person who was speaking paused for a moment, then resumed with a low laugh:
'Ah! I really can't help laughing when I see that precious grasshopper of a Félicité putting on all her fine duchess's airs! I always think of the old yellow drawing-room with its threadbare carpet and shabby furniture and little fly-specked chandelier. And now, to-day, she receives the Rastoil young ladies. Just look how she is man?uvring the train of her dress! Some day, my dear fellow, that old woman will burst of sheer triumph in the middle of her green drawing-room!'
Abbé Faujas had gently let his head turn so that he might peep at what was going on in the drawing-room. There he observed Madame Rougon standing in all her majesty in the centre of a group of guests. She seemed to have increased in stature, and every back around bent before her glance, which was like that of some victorious queen.
'Ah! here's your father!' said the person with the unctuous voice; 'the good doctor is just arriving. I'm quite surprised that he has never told you of all these matters. He knows far more about them than I do.'
Oh! my father is always afraid lest I should compromise him,' replied the other gaily. 'You know how he rails at me and swears that I shall make him lose all his patients. Ah! excuse me, please; I see the young Maffres over there, I must go and shake hands with them.'
There was a sound of chairs being moved, and Abbé Faujas saw a tall young man, whose face already bore signs of physical weariness, cross the small room. The other person, the one who had given such a lively account of the Rougons, also rose from his seat. A lady who happened to pass near him allowed him to pay her some pretty compliments; and she smiled at him and called him 'dear Monsieur de Condamin.' Thereupon the priest recognised him as the fine man of sixty whom Mouret had pointed out to him in the garden of the Sub-Prefecture. Monsieur de Condamin came and sat down on the other side of the fireplace. He was startled to see Abbé Faujas, who had been quite concealed by the back of his chair, but he appeared in no way disconcerted. He smiled and, with amicable self-possession, exclaimed:
'I think, Monsieur l'Abbé, that we have just been unintentionally confessing ourselves. It's a great sin, isn't it, to backbite one's neighbour? Fortunately you were there to give us absolution.'
The Abbé, in spite of the control which he usually had over his features, could not restrain a slight blush. He perfectly understood that Monsieur de Condamin was reproaching him for having kept so quiet in order to listen to what was being said. Monsieur de Condamin, however, was not a man to preserve a grudge against anyone for their curiosity, but quite the contrary. He was delighted at the complicity which the matter seemed to have established between himself and the Abbé. It put him at liberty to talk freely and to while away the evening in relating scandalous stories about the persons present. There was nothing that he enjoyed so much, and this Abbé, who had only recently arrived at Plassans, seemed likely to prove a good listener, the more especially as he had an ugly face, the face of a man who would listen to anything, and wore such a shabby cassock that it would be preposterous to think that any confidence to which he might be treated would lead to unpleasantness.
By the end of a quarter of an hour Monsieur de Condamin became quite at his ease, and gave Abbé Faujas a detailed account of Plassans with all the suave politeness of a man of the world.
'You are a stranger amongst us, Monsieur l'Abbé,' said he, 'and I shall be delighted if I can be of any assistance to you. Plassans is a little hole of a place, but one gets reconciled to it in time. I myself come from the neighbourhood of Dijon, and when I was appointed conservator of woods and rivers in this district, I found the place detestable, and thought I should be bored to death here. That was just before the Empire. After '51, the provinces were by no means cheerful places to live in, I assure you. In this department the folks were alarmed if they heard a dog bark, and they were ready to sink into the ground at the sight of a gendarme. But they calmed down by degrees, and resumed their old, monotonous, uneventful existences, and in the end I grew quite resigned to my life here. I live chiefly in the open air, I take long rides on horseback, and I have made a few pleasant friendships.'
He lowered his voice, and continued confidentially:
If you will take my advice, Monsieur l'Abbé, you will be careful what you do. You can't imagine what a scrape I once nearly fell into. Plassans, you know, is divided into three absolutely distinct divisions: the old district, where your duties will be confined to administering consolation and alms; the district of Saint-Marc, where our aristocrats live, a district that is full of boredom and ill-feeling, and where you can't be too much upon your guard; and, lastly, the new town, the district which is now springing up round the Sub-Prefecture, and which is the only one where it is possible to live with any degree of comfort. At first I was foolish enough to take up my quarters in the Saint-Marc district, where I thought that my position required me to reside. There, alack! I found myself surrounded by a lot of withered old dowagers and mummified marquises. There wasn't an atom of sociability, not a scrap of gaiety, nothing but sulky mutiny against the prosperous peace that the country was enjoying. I only just missed compromising myself, upon my word I did. Péqueur used to chaff me, Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, our sub-prefect; you know him, don't you? Well, then I crossed the Cours Sauvaire, and took rooms on the Place. At Plassans, you must know, the people have no existence, and the aristocracy are a dreadful lot that it's quite impossible to get on with; the only tolerable folks are a few parvenus, some delightful persons who are ready to incur any expense in entertaining their official acquaintances. Our little circle of functionaries is a very delightful one. We live amongst ourselves after our own inclinations, without caring a rap about the townspeople, just as if we had pitched our camp in some conquered country.'
He laughed complacently, stretched himself further back in his chair, and turned up his feet to the fire; then he took a glass of punch from a tray which one of the servants handed to him, and sipped it slowly while still watching Abbé Faujas out of the corner of his eye. The latter felt that politeness required him to say something.
'This house seems a very pleasant one,' he remarked, turning slightly towards the green drawing-room, whence the sound of animated conversation was proceeding.
'Yes, yes,' resumed Monsieur de Condamin, who checked his remarks every now and then to take a little sip of punch. 'The Rougons almost make us forget Paris. You would scarcely fancy here that you were in Plassans. It is the only pleasant and amusing drawing-room in the whole place, because it is the only one where all shades of opinion elbow one another. Péqueur, too, has very pleasant assemblies. It must cost the Rougons a lot of money, and they haven't the public purse behind them like Péqueur has; though they have something better still, the pockets of the taxpayers.'
He seemed quite pleased with this witticism of his. He set his empty glass, which he had been holding in his hand, upon the mantelpiece, and then, drawing his chair near to Abbé Faujas and leaning towards him, he began to speak again:
'The most amusing comedies are continually being played here. But you ought to know the actors to appreciate them. You see Madame Rastoil over yonder between her two daughters—that lady of about forty-five with a head like a sheep's? Well, have you noticed how her eyelids trembled and blinked when Delangre came and sat down in front of her? Delangre is the man there on the left, with a likeness to Punch. They were acquainted intimately some ten years ago, and he is said to be the father of one of the girls, but it isn't known which. The funniest part of the business is that Delangre himself didn't get on very well with his wife about the same time; and people say that the father of his daughter is an artist very well known in Plassans.'
Abbé Faujas had considered it his duty to assume a very serious expression on being made the recipient of such confidences as these, and he even closed his eyes and seemed to hear nothing; while Monsieur de Condamin went on, as though in justification of himself:
'I allow myself to speak in this way of Delangre, as I know him so well. He is a wonderfully clever, pushing fellow. His father was a bricklayer, I believe. Fifteen years ago he used to take up the petty suits that other lawyers wouldn't be bothered with. Madame Rastoil extricated him from a condition of absolute penury; she supplied him even with wood in the winter-time to enable him to keep himself warm. It was through her influence that he won his first cases. It's worth mentioning that at that time Delangre had been shrewd enough to manifest no particular political proclivities; and so, in 1852, when people were looking out for a mayor, his name was at once thought of. He was the only man who could have been chosen without alarming one or other of the three divisions of the town. From that time everything has prospered with him, and he has a fine future before him. The only unfortunate part of the matter is that he doesn't get on very well with Péqueur; they are always wrangling about some silly trifles or other.'
He broke off as he saw the tall young man, with whom he had been chatting previously, come up to him again.
'Monsieur Guillaume Porquier,' he said, introducing him to the Abbé, 'the son of Doctor Porquier.'
Then, as Guillaume seated himself, he asked him with a touch of irony:
'Well! what did you see to admire over yonder?'
'Nothing at all, indeed!' replied the young man with a smile. 'I saw the Paloques. Madame Rougon always tries to hide them behind a curtain to prevent anything unpleasant happening. Paloque never takes his eyes off Monsieur Rastoil, hoping, no doubt, to kill him with suppressed terror. You know, of course, that the hideous fellow hopes to die presiding judge.'
They both laughed. The ugliness of the Paloques was a perpetual source of amusement amongst the little circle of officials. Porquier's son lowered his voice as he continued:
I saw Monsieur Bourdeu, too. Doesn't it strike you that he's ever so much thinner since the Marquis de Lagrifoul's election? Bourdeu will never get over the loss of his prefecture; he had put all his Orleanist rancour at the service of the Legitimists in the hope that that course would lead him straight to the Chamber, where he would be able to win back that deeply-deplored prefecture. So he was horribly disgusted and hurt to find that instead of himself they chose the marquis, who is a perfect ass and hasn't the faintest notion of politics, whereas he, Bourdeu, is a very shrewd fellow.'
'That Bourdeu, with his tightly-buttoned frock-coat and broad-brimmed hat, is a most overbearing person,' said Monsieur de Condamin, shrugging his shoulders. 'If such people as he were allowed to have their own way they would turn France into a mere Sorbonne of lawyers and diplomatists, and would bore us all to death——Oh! by the way, Guillaume, I have been hearing about you. You seem to be leading a merry sort of life.'
'I?' exclaimed the young man with a smile.
'Yes, you, my fine fellow! and observe that I get my information from your father. He is much distressed about it: he accuses you of gambling and of staying out all night at the club and other places. Is it true that you have discovered a low café behind the gaol where you go with a company of scamps and play the devil's own game? I have even been told——'
Here Monsieur de Condamin, observing two ladies enter the room, began to whisper in Guillaume's ear, while the young man replied with affirmative signs and shook with suppressed laughter. Then he bent forward in turn and whispered to Monsieur de Condamin, and the pair of them, drawing close together with brightly glistening eyes, seemed to derive a prolonged enjoyment from this private story, which could not be told in the presence of ladies.
Abbé Faujas had remained where he was. He no longer listened to what was being said, but watched the many movements of Monsieur Delangre, who bustled about the green drawing-room trying to make himself extremely agreeable. The priest was so absorbed in his observations that he did not see Abbé Bourrette beckoning to him, so that the other had to come and touch his shoulder and ask him to follow. He then led him into the card-room with all the precaution of a man who has some very delicate communication to make.
'My dear friend,' he whispered, when they were alone in a quiet corner, 'it is excusable in you, as this is the first time you have been here, but I must warn you that you have compromised yourself very considerably by talking so long with the persons you have just left.'
Then, as Abbé Faujas looked at him with great surprise, he added:
'Those persons are not looked upon favourably. I myself am not passing any judgment upon them, and I don't want to repeat any scandal. I am simply warning you out of pure friendship, that's all.'
He was going away, but Abbé Faujas detained him, exclaiming hastily:
'You disquiet me, my dear Monsieur Bourrette; I beg of you to explain yourself. Without speaking any ill of anyone, you can surely be a little clearer.'
'Well then,' replied the old priest, after a momentary hesitation, 'Doctor Porquier's son causes his worthy father the greatest distress, and sets the worst example to all the studious youth of Plassans. He left nothing but debts behind him in Paris, and here he is turning the whole town upside down. As for Monsieur de Condamin——'
Here he hesitated again, feeling embarrassed by the enormity of what he had to relate; then, lowering his eyes, he resumed:
'Monsieur de Condamin is very free in his conversation, and I fear that he is deficient in a sense of morality. He spares no one, and he scandalises every honourable person. Then—I really hardly know how to tell you—but he has contracted, it is said, a scarcely creditable marriage. You see that young woman there, who is not thirty years old, and who has such a crowd around her? Well, he brought her to Plassans one day from no one knows where. From the time of her arrival she has been all-powerful here. It is she who has got her husband and Doctor Porquier decorated. She has influential friends in Paris. But I beg of you not to repeat any of this. Madame de Condamin is very amiable and charitable. I go to her house sometimes, and I should be extremely distressed if I thought that she considered me an enemy of hers. If she has committed faults, it is our duty—is it not?—to help her to return to a better way of life. As for her husband, he is, between ourselves, a perfect scamp. Have as little as possible to do with him.'
Abbé Faujas gazed into the worthy Bourrette's eyes. He had just noticed that Madame Rougon was following their conversation from the distance with a thoughtful air.
'Wasn't it Madame Rougon who told you to come and give me this good advice?' he suddenly asked the old priest.
'How did you know that?' the latter exclaimed in great astonishment. 'She asked me not to mention her name, but since you have guessed it—Ah! she is a good, kind-hearted lady who would be much distressed to see a priest compromising himself in her house. She is unfortunately compelled to receive all sorts of persons.'
Abbé Faujas expressed his thanks, and promised to be more prudent in the future. The card-players had not taken any notice of the two priests, who returned into the big drawing-room, where Faujas was again conscious of hostile surroundings. He even experienced greater coldness and more silent contempt than before. The ladies pulled their dresses out of his way as though his touch would have soiled them, and the men turned away from him with sneering titters. He himself maintained haughty calmness and indifference. Fancying that he heard the word Besan?on meaningly pronounced in a corner of the room where Madame de Condamin was holding her court, he walked straight up to the folks by whom she was surrounded; but, at his approach, there was a dead silence amongst them, and they all stared him in the face with eyes that gleamed with uncharitable curiosity. He felt quite sure that they had been talking about him, and repeating some disgraceful story. While he was still standing there, behind the Rastoil young ladies, who had not observed him, he heard the younger one ask her sister:
'What was it that this priest, of whom everyone is talking, did at Besan?on?'
'I don't quite know,' the elder sister replied. 'I believe he nearly murdered his vicar in a quarrel they had. Papa also said that he had been mixed up in some great business speculation which turned out badly.'
'He's in the small room over there, isn't he? Somebody saw him just now laughing with Monsieur de Condamin.'
'Oh! then people do quite right to distrust him if he laughs with Monsieur de Condamin.'
This gossip of the two girls made perspiration start from Abbé Faujas's brows. He did not frown, but his lips tightened one upon the other, and his cheeks took an ashy tint. He seemed to hear the whole room talking of the priest whom he had tried to murder, and of the shady transactions in which he had been concerned.
Opposite him were Monsieur Delangre and Doctor Porquier, still looking very severe; Monsieur de Bourdeu's mouth pouted scornfully as he said something in a low voice to a lady; Monsieur Maffre, the justice of the peace, was casting furtive glances at him, as if he had piously resolved to examine him from a distance before condemning him; and at the other end of the room the two hideous Paloques craned out their malice-warped faces, in which shone a wicked joy at all the cruel stories that were being whispered about. Abbé Faujas slowly retired as he saw Madame Rastoil, who had been standing a few paces away, come up and seat herself between her two daughters, as though to keep them under the protection of her wing and shield them from his touch. He rested his elbow on the piano which he saw behind him, and there he stood with his head erect and his face as hard and silent as a face of stone. He felt that they were all in a plot to treat him as an outcast.
As he stood thus gazing at the company from under his partially lowered eyelids he suddenly gave a slight start, which he quickly suppressed. He had just caught sight of Abbé Fenil, leaning back in an easy-chair and smiling quietly behind a perfect wall of petticoats. The eyes of the two men met, and they gazed at each other for some moments with the fierce expression of duellists about to engage in mortal combat. Then there was a rustling of silk, and Abbé Fenil was hidden from sight by the ladies' gowns.
However, Félicité had contrived to reach the neighbourhood of the piano, and when she had succeeded in installing at it the elder of the Rastoil girls, who had a pleasant voice, and was able to speak to Abbé Faujas without being heard, she drew him towards one of the windows and asked:
'What have you done to Abbé Fenil?'
They talked together in very low tones. The priest at first feigned surprise, but when Madame Rougon had murmured a few words, accompanied by sundry shruggings of her shoulders, he seemed to become more open with her. They both smiled, and made a pretence of merely exchanging ordinary courtesies, but the glistening of their eyes spoke of something much more serious. The piano was silent for a moment, and then the elder Mademoiselle Rastoil began to sing 'La Colombe du Soldat,' which was a favourite song at that time.
Your début has been most unfortunate,' Félicité continued. 'You have quite set people against you, and I should advise you not to come here again for a considerable time. You must make yourself popular and a favourite, you understand. Any rash act would be fatal.'
Abbé Faujas seemed absorbed in thought.
'You say that it was Abbé Fenil who circulated these abominable stories?' he asked.
'Oh, he is much too wily to commit himself in such a way. He must just have faintly suggested them to his penitents. I don't know whether he has found you out, but he is certainly afraid of you. I am sure of that. And he will attack you in every possible way. The most unfortunate part of the matter is that he confesses the most important people in the town. It was he who secured the election of the Marquis de Lagrifoul.'
'I did wrong to come this evening,' the priest murmured.
Félicité bit her lips, then continued with animation:
'You did wrong to compromise yourself with such a man as that Condamin. I did what I thought was best. When the person whom you know of wrote to me from Paris I thought that I should be doing you a service by inviting you here. I imagined that you would be able to make it an opportunity for gaining friends. But, instead of doing what you could to make yourself popular, you have set everyone against you. Please excuse my freedom, but you really seem to be doing all you can to ensure your failure. You have committed nothing but mistakes: in going to lodge with my son-in-law, in persistently keeping yourself aloof from others, and in walking about in a cassock which makes the street-lads jeer at you.'
Abbé Faujas could not repress a movement of impatience. However, he merely replied:
'I will profit by your kind advice. Only, don't try to assist me; that would mar everything.'
'Yes, what you say is prudent,' replied the old lady. 'Only return here in triumph. One last word, my dear sir. The person in Paris is most anxious for your success, and it is for that reason that I am interesting myself in you. Well, then, don't make people frightened of you—shun you; be pleasant, and make yourself agreeable to the ladies. Remember that particularly. You must make yourself agreeable to the ladies if you want to get Plassans on your side.'
The elder Mademoiselle Rastoil had just finished her song with a final flourish, and the guests were softly applauding her. Madame Rougon left the Abbé to go and congratulate the singer. Then she took up a position in the middle of the room, and shook hands with the visitors who were beginning to retire. It was eleven o'clock. The Abbé was much vexed to find that the worthy Bourrette had taken advantage of the music to effect his escape. He had thought of leaving with him—a course which would have enabled him to make a respectable exit. Now, however, he would have to go away alone, which would be extremely prejudicial to him. It would be reported through the town in the morning that he had been turned out of the house. So he retired into a window-recess, whence he watched for an opportunity to effect an honourable retreat.
The room was emptying fast, however, and there were only a few ladies left. At last he noticed one who was very simply dressed; it was Madame Mouret, whose slightly waved hair made her look younger than usual. He looked with surprise at her tranquil face and her large, peaceful black eyes. He had not noticed her during the evening; she had quietly remained in the same corner without moving, vexed at wasting her time in this way, with her hands in her lap, doing nothing. While he was looking at her she rose to take leave of her mother.
It was one of Félicité's greatest delights to see the high society of Plassans leave her with profuse bows and thanks for her punch, her green drawing-room, and the pleasant evening they had spent there; and she thought how, formerly, these same fine folks had trampled her underfoot, whereas now the richest amongst them could not find sweet enough smiles for 'dear Madame Rougon.'
'Ah, madame!' murmured Maffre, the justice of the peace, 'one quite forgets the passage of time here.'
'You are the only pleasant hostess in all this uncivilised place,' whispered pretty Madame de Condamin.
'We shall expect you to dinner to-morrow,' said Monsieur Delangre; 'but you must take pot-luck, for we don't pretend to do as you do.'
Marthe was obliged to make her way through all this incense-offering crowd in order to reach her mother. She kissed her, and was about to retire, when Félicité detained her and looked around as if to trying to find someone. Then on catching sight of Abbé Faujas, she inquired, with a smile:
'Is your reverence a gallant man?'
The Abbé bowed.
'Well, then, I should be much obliged to you if you would escort my daughter home. You both live in the same house, and so it will not put you to any inconvenience. On the road there is a little bit of dark lane which is not very pleasant for a lady by herself.'
Marthe assured her mother, in her quiet way, that she was not a little girl, and in no wise felt afraid; but as Félicité insisted, saying that she should feel easier if her daughter had someone with her, she at last accepted the Abbé's escort. As the latter retired with her, Félicité, who accompanied them to the landing, whispered in the priest's ear, with a smile:
'Don't forget what I told you. You must make yourself agreeable to the ladies if you want Plassans to belong to you.'
That same night Mouret, who was still awake when his wife returned home, plied her with questions in his desire to find out what had taken place at Madame Rougon's. She told him that everything had gone off as usual, and that she had noticed nothing out of the common. She just added that Abbé Faujas had walked home with her, but had merely spoken of commonplace matters. Mouret was very much vexed at what he called his wife's indolence.
'If anyone had committed suicide at your mother's,' he growled, as he angrily buried his head in his pillow, 'you would know nothing about it!'
When he came home to dinner the next day, he called to Marthe as soon as he caught sight of her:
'I was sure of it! I knew you had never troubled yourself to use your eyes! It's just like you! Sitting the whole evening in a room and never having the faintest notion of what was being said or done around you! Why, the whole town is talking about it! The whole town, do you hear? I couldn't go anywhere without somebody speaking to me about——'
'About what, my dear?' asked Marthe, in astonishment.
'About the fine success of Abbé Faujas, forsooth! He was turned out of the green drawing-room!'
'Indeed he wasn't! I saw nothing of the kind.'
'Haven't I told you that you never see anything? Do you know what the Abbé did at Besan?on? He either murdered a priest or committed forgery! They are not quite certain which it was. However, they seem to have given him a nice reception! He turned quite green. Well, it's all up with him now!'
Marthe bent her head and allowed her husband to revel in the priest's discomfiture. Mouret was delighted.
'I still stick to my first idea,' he said; 'your mother and he have got some underhand plot together. I hear that she showed him the greatest civility. It was she, wasn't it, who asked him to accompany you home? Why didn't you tell me so?'
Marthe shrugged her shoulders without replying.
'You are the most provoking woman in the world!' her husband cried. 'All these little details are of the greatest importance. Madame Paloque, whom I have just met, told me that she and several other ladies had lingered behind to see how the Abbé would effect his departure, and that your mother availed herself of you to cover the parson's retreat. Just try to remember, now, what he said to you as he walked home with you.'
He sat down by his wife's side with his keen, questioning little eyes fixed upon her.
'Really,' said she quietly, 'he only talked to me about the trifling commonplace matters such as anyone might have talked of. He spoke about the cold, which was very sharp, and about the quietness of the town at night-time, and I think he mentioned the pleasant evening he had passed.'
'Ah, the hypocrite! Didn't he ask you any questions about your mother or her guests?'
'No. The Rue de la Banne is only a very short distance, you know, and it didn't take us three minutes. He walked by my side without offering me his arm, and he took such long strides that I was almost obliged to run. I don't know why folks should all be so bitter against him. He doesn't seem very well off, and he was shivering, poor man, in that threadbare old cassock of his.'
Mouret was not without pity and sympathy.
'Ah! he must have done,' he said; 'he can't feel very warm now that the frost has come.'
I'm sure we have nothing to complain of in his conduct,' Marthe continued. 'He is very punctual in his payments, and he makes no noise and gives no trouble. Where could you find a more desirable tenant?'
'Nowhere, I grant you. What I was saying just now was to show you what little attention you pay, wherever you go, to what takes place around you. I know the set your mother receives too well to attach much weight to anything that happens in the green drawing-room: it's a perpetual source of lies and the most ridiculous stories. I don't suppose for a moment that the Abbé ever murdered anyone any more than that he was ever a bankrupt; and I told Madame Paloque that people ought to see that their own linen was clean before they found fault with that of others. I hope she took the hint to herself.'
This was a fib on Mouret's part, for he had said nothing of the kind to Madame Paloque; but Marthe's pity had made him feel rather ashamed of the delight which he had manifested at the Abbé's troubles. On the following days he went entirely over to the priest's side, and whenever he happened to meet any people whom he detested, Monsieur de Bourdeu, Monsieur Delangre, and Doctor Porquier, he launched out into warm praises of the Abbé just for the pleasure of astonishing and annoying them. The Abbé, said he, was a man of great courage and perfect guilelessness, but extremely poor, and some very base-minded person must have originated the calumnies about him. Then he went on to have a rap at the Rougons' guests, whom he called hypocrites, canting humbugs and stuck-up idiots, who were afraid of a man of real virtue. In a short time he had quite made the Abbé's quarrel his own, and availed himself of it to attack both the Rastoil gang and the gang of the Sub-Prefecture as well.
Isn't it pitiable?' he sometimes said to his wife, forgetting that she had heard him tell a very different story, 'isn't it pitiable to see a lot of people who stole their money no one knows where, leaguing so bitterly against a poor man just because he hasn't got twenty francs to spare to buy a cart-load of firewood? Such conduct quite disgusts me! I'm quite willing to be surety for him. I ought to know what he does and what sort of a man he is, since he lives in my house; and so I'm not slack in telling them the truth, I give them all they deserve when I meet them. And I won't content myself with that, either. I want the Abbé to be my friend, and I mean to walk out with him arm-in-arm along the promenade to let people know that I'm not afraid of being seen with him, rich and well thought of as I am! I hope, too, that you will show all the kindness and consideration to these poor people that you can.'
Marthe smiled quietly. She was delighted at the friendly disposition her husband was now manifesting towards their lodgers. Rose was ordered to show them every civility; she was even told that she might volunteer to do Madame Faujas' shopping for her on wet mornings. The latter, however, always declined the cook's services, though she no longer manifested that silent stiffness of demeanour which she had shown during the earlier days of her residence in the house. One morning, as she met Marthe, who was coming down from an attic which was used as a store-room for the fruit, she stopped and talked to her for a moment, and even unbent so far as to accept a couple of magnificent pears. Those pears were the beginning of a closer intimacy between them.
Abbé Faujas, too, did not now glide so hurriedly up and down the stairs as he had been wont to do. Almost every day, when Mouret heard the rustling of the priest's cassock as he came down, he hastened to the foot of the staircase and told the Abbé that it would give him great pleasure to walk part of the way with him. He had also thanked him for the little service he had done his wife, skilfully questioning him at the time to find out if he intended again calling on the Rougons. The Abbé had smiled and freely confessed that he was not fitted for society. This had delighted Mouret, who felt quite certain that he had had some influence in bringing about his lodger's decision. He even began to dream of preventing all future intercourse with the green drawing-room and of keeping him altogether to himself. So, when Marthe told him one evening that Madame Faujas had accepted a couple of pears, he looked upon this as a fortunate circumstance which would facilitate the execution of his designs.
'Haven't they really got a fire on the second floor this bitterly cold weather?' he asked, in Rose's presence.
'No, indeed, sir,' replied the cook, who understood that the question was meant for herself; 'they couldn't very well have one, for I've never seen the least bit of wood taken upstairs, unless indeed they're burning their four chairs or Madame Faujas manages to carry up the wood in her basket.'
'It is not right of you to talk in that way, Rose,' said Marthe. 'The poor things must be shivering with cold in those big rooms.'
'I should think so, indeed,' exclaimed Mouret; 'there were several degrees of frost last night and there was considerable fear felt about the olive-trees. The water in our jug upstairs was frozen. This room of ours here is a small one, however, and very warm.'
The doors and windows of the dining-room were provided with pads, so that no draught could find its way through any crevice, and a big earthenware stove made the place as warm as a bakehouse. During the winter evenings the young people read or played round the table, while Mouret made his wife play piquet till bed-time, which, by the way, was perfect torture to her. For a long time she had refused to touch the cards, saying that she did not know a single game, but at last he had taught her piquet, and she had then been forced to resign herself to her fate.
'Don't you think,' Mouret continued, 'that we really ought to ask the Faujases to come and spend the evenings here? They would at any rate be warm for two or three hours; and they would be company for us, too, and make us feel more lively. Ask them, and I don't think they'll refuse.'
The next day Marthe met Madame Faujas in the hall and gave the invitation, which the old lady at once accepted, both for herself and her son.
'I'm surprised she didn't make some little demur about coming,' said Mouret. 'I fancied that they would have required more pressing. But the Abbé is beginning to understand that he does wrong in living like a wild beast.'
In the evening Mouret took care that the table was cleared in good time, and he set out a bottle of sweet wine and a plateful of little cakes. Although he was not given to being lavish, he was anxious to show that the Rougons were not the only people who knew how things ought to be done. The tenants of the second floor came downstairs about eight o'clock. Abbé Faujas was wearing a new cassock, at the sight of which Mouret was so much surprised that he could only stammer a few words in answer to the priest's courtesies.
'Indeed, Monsieur l'Abbé, all the honour is for us. Come, children, put some chairs here.'
They all took their seats round the table. The room was uncomfortably warm, for Mouret had crammed the stove as full as possible in order to let his guests see that he made no account of a log more or less. Abbé Faujas made himself very pleasant, fondling Désirée and questioning the two lads about their studies. Marthe, who was knitting some stockings, raised her eyes every now and then in surprise at the flexible tones of that strange voice which she was not accustomed to hear sounding in the monotonous quietness of the dining-room. She looked at the priest's powerful face and square-cut features, and then bent her head again, without trying to hide the interest she took in this man who was so strong and kindly and whom she knew to be so poor. As for Mouret, he uncouthly stared at the new cassock, and could not restrain himself from saying, with a sly smile:
'You needn't have troubled to dress to come here, Monsieur l'Abbé. We don't go in for ceremony, as you know very well.'
Marthe blushed, while the priest gaily related that he had bought the cassock that very day. He had kept it on, he said, to please his mother, who thought that he looked finer than a king in it.
'Don't you, mother?' he asked the old lady.
Madame Faujas nodded without taking her eyes off her son. She was sitting opposite to him, gazing at him in the bright lamplight with an air of ecstasy.
They began to talk of various matters, and Abbé Faujas seemed to throw off his gloomy coldness. He still remained grave, but it was with a pleasant, good-natured gravity. He listened attentively to Mouret, replied to his most insignificant remarks, and seemed to take an interest in his gossip. His landlord explained to him the manner in which the family lived, and finished his account by saying:
'We spend our evenings in the way you see, always as quietly as this. We never invite anyone, as we are always more comfortable by ourselves. Every evening I have a game at piquet with my wife. It is a very old habit of ours, and I could scarcely go to sleep without it.'
'Pray don't let us interfere with it!' cried Abbé Faujas. 'I beg that you won't in any way depart from your usual habits on our account.'
'Oh dear no! I am not a monomaniac about it, and it won't kill me to go without it for once.'
The priest insisted for a time, but, when he saw that Marthe declined to play with even greater determination than her husband, he turned towards his mother, who had been sitting silent with her hands folded in front of her, and said:
'Mother, you have a game with Monsieur Mouret.'
She looked keenly into her son's eyes, while Mouret still continued to refuse, and declared that he did not want to break up the party. However, when the priest told him that his mother was a good player he gave way.
'Is she, indeed?' he said. 'Then, if madame really wishes it, and no one objects——'
'Come along, mother, and have a game!' said Abbé Faujas in a more decided tone.
'Certainly,' she replied, 'I shall be delighted; but I shall have to change my place.'
'Oh! there will be no difficulty about that,' said Mouret, who was quite charmed. 'You had better take your son's seat, and perhaps Monsieur l'Abbé will be good enough to sit next to my wife. Madame can sit next to me. There! that will do capitally.'
The priest, who had at first been opposite to Marthe on the other side of the table, was thus placed next to her. They sat quite apart by themselves, the two players having drawn their chairs close together to engage in their struggle. Octave and Serge had just gone up to their room. Désirée was sleeping with her head on the table after her usual custom. When ten o'clock struck, Mouret, who had lost the first game, did not feel inclined to go to bed but asked for his revenge. Madame Faujas consulted her son with a glance, and then in her tranquil fashion began to shuffle the cards. The Abbé had merely exchanged a few words with Marthe. On this the first evening that he spent in the dining-room he only spoke of commonplace topics; the household, the price of victuals at Plassans, and the anxieties which children caused. Marthe replied with a show of interest, looking up every now and then with her bright glance, and importing into the conversation some of her own sedate good sense.
It was nearly eleven o'clock when Mouret threw down the cards with some slight irritation.
'I have lost again!' he said. 'I haven't had a single good card all the evening. Perhaps I shall have better luck to-morrow. We shall see you again, I hope, madame?'
And when Abbé Faujas began to protest that they could not think of abusing the Mourets' kindness by disturbing them in this way every evening, he continued:
'But you are not disturbing us at all, you are giving us pleasure. Besides, I have been defeated, and I'm sure that madame can't refuse me another game.'
When the priest and his mother had accepted the invitation and had gone upstairs again, Mouret showed some ill-temper and began to excuse himself for having lost. He seemed quite annoyed about it.
'The old woman isn't as good a player as I am, I'm sure,' he said to his wife; 'but she has got such eyes! I could really almost fancy she was cheating, upon my word I could! Well! we shall see what happens to-morrow.'
From that time the Faujases came down regularly every day to spend the evening with the Mourets. There were tremendous battles between the old lady and her landlord. She seemed to play with him, to let him win just frequently enough to prevent him from being altogether discouraged, and this made him fume with suppressed anger, for he prided himself on his skill at piquet. He used to indulge in dreams of beating her night after night for weeks in succession without ever letting her win a single game; while she ever preserved wonderful coolness, her square peasant-like face remaining quite expressionless as with her big hands she threw down the cards with all the regularity of a machine. From eight o'clock till bed-time they would remain seated at their end of the table, quite absorbed in their game and never moving.
At the other end, near the stove, Abbé Faujas and Marthe were left entirely to themselves. The Abbé felt a masculine and priestly disdain for woman, and in spite of himself this disdain often made itself manifest in some slightly harsh expression. On these occasions Marthe was affected by a strange feeling of anxiety. She raised her eyes with one of those sudden thrills of alarm which cause people to cast a hurried glance behind them, half expecting to see some concealed enemy raising his hand to strike. At other times, on catching sight of the Abbé's cassock, she would check herself suddenly in the midst of a laugh, and would relapse into silence, quite confused, astonished at finding herself talking so freely to a man who was so different from other men. It was a long time before there was any real intimacy between them.
Abbé Faujas never directly questioned Marthe about her husband, or her children, or her house; but, nevertheless, he gradually made himself acquainted with every detail of their history and manner of life. Every evening, while Mouret and Madame Faujas were contending furiously one against the other, he contrived to learn some new fact. Upon one occasion he remarked that the husband and wife were surprisingly alike.
'Yes,' Marthe answered with a smile, 'when we were twenty years old we used to be taken for brother and sister; and, indeed, it was a little owing to that circumstance that we got married. People used to joke us about it, and were continually making us stand side by side, and saying what a fine couple we should make. The likeness was so striking that worthy Monsieur Compan, though he knew us quite well, hesitated to marry us.'
'But you are cousins, are you not?' the priest asked.
'Yes,' she replied, with a slight blush, 'my husband is a Macquart, and I am a Rougon.'
Then she kept silence for a moment or two, feeling ill at ease, for she was sure that the priest knew the history of her family which was so notorious at Plassans. The Macquarts were an illegitimate branch of the Rougons.
'The most singular part of it,' she resumed, to conceal her embarrassment, 'is, that we both resemble our grandmother. My husband's mother transmitted the likeness to him, while in me it has sprung up again after a break, passing my father by.'
Then the Abbé cited a similar instance in his own family. He had a sister, he said, who was the living image of her mother's grandfather. The likeness in this case had leapt over two generations. His sister, too, closely resembled the old man in her character and habits, even in her gestures and the tone of her voice.
'It was just the same with me when I was a little girl; I often heard people say of me,' remarked Marthe, '"She's Aunt Dide all over again!" The poor woman is now at Les Tulettes. She never had a strong head. For my part, in growing older, I have become less excitable and stronger, but I remember that when I was a child I hadn't good health at all. I used to have attacks of giddiness, and my head was filled with the strangest fancies. I often laugh now when I think of the extraordinary things I used to do.'
'And your husband?'
Oh! he takes after his father, a journeyman hatter, a careful, prudent man. I should say that when we were young, though we were so much alike in face, it was quite a different matter as to our dispositions; however, as time has gone on, we have grown to resemble each other very much. We were so quiet and happy in our business at Marseilles! The fifteen years I spent there taught me to find happiness in my own home, in the midst of my children.'
Abbé Faujas noticed a touch of bitterness in her tone every time that he led her to speak on this subject. She was certainly happy, as she said; but he fancied that he could detect traces of old rebellion in her nervous nature, that was now calmed by the approach of her fortieth year. He imagined a little drama for himself, in which this husband and wife, who were so much alike, were considered by their relations to be made for each other, and were thus forced into marriage, whereas, in reality, they were of different and antagonistic temperaments. Then his mind dwelt upon the fatal outcome of a monotonous life, the wearing away of character by the daily cares of business, the soporific effect of fifteen years' fortune-making upon this couple, who were now living upon that fortune in a sleepy corner of a little town. To-day, though they were both still young, there seemed to be nothing but the ashes left of their former selves. The Abbé cleverly tried to discover whether Marthe was resigned to her existence, and he found her full of common sense.
'I am quite contented with my home,' she said; 'my children are all that I want. I was never much given to gaiety; I only felt a little dull at times. I dare say I should have been better if I had had some mental occupation, but I was never able to find one. And perhaps, after all, it's as well I didn't, for I should very likely have split my head. I could never even read a novel without giving myself a frightful headache, and for nights afterwards all the characters would dance about in my brain. Needlework is the only thing which never fatigues me, so I stay at home and keep out of the way of noise and chatter, and all the frivolous follies which weary me.'
She paused every now and then to glance at Désirée, who was still sleeping with her head upon the table, and smiling in her innocent way.
'Poor child!' she murmured. 'She can't even do any needlework. She gets dizzy directly. She is fond of animals, and that's all she's capable of. When she goes to stay with her nurse, as she does every now and then, she spends all her time in the poultry-yard, and she comes back to me with rosy cheeks and as strong and well as possible.'
Marthe often spoke of Les Tulettes, manifesting as she did so a lurking fear of insanity, and Abbé Faujas thus became aware of a strange dread haunting this peaceful home. Marthe loved her husband with a sober, unimpassioned love, but there was mingled with her affection for him considerable fear of his jokes and pleasantries, his perpetual teasing. She was hurt, too, by his selfishness, and the loneliness in which he left her; she felt a vague grudge against him for the quietude in which she lived—that very manner of life which she said made her happy. When she spoke of him, she said:
'He is very good to us. You've heard him, I dare say, get angry sometimes, but that arises from his passion for seeing everything in order, which he often carries to an almost ridiculous extent. He gets quite vexed if he sees a flower-pot a little out of place in the garden, or a plaything lying about on the floor; but in other matters he does quite right in pleasing himself. I know he is not very popular, because he has managed to accumulate some money, and still continues to do a good stroke of business every now and then; but he only laughs at what people say about him. They say nasty things, too, of him in connexion with me. They say that he is a miser, and won't let me go out anywhere, and even deprives me of boots. But all that is quite untrue. I am entirely free. He certainly prefers to see me here when he comes home, instead of finding that I am always off somewhere, paying calls and walking on the promenade. But he knows quite well what my tastes are. What, indeed, should I go out for?'
As she defended Mouret against the gossip of Plassans, Marthe's voice assumed a sudden animation, as though she felt the need of defending him quite as much from the secret accusations which arose within her own mind; and she kept reverting with nervous uneasiness to the subject of society life. She seemed to seek a refuge within the little dining-room and the old-fashioned garden with its box borders, as if everything else filled her with vague alarm, and made her doubtful of her strength, apprehensive of some possible catastrophe. Then she would smile at her fears, and shrug her shoulders as she resumed her knitting or the mending of some old skirt; and Abbé Faujas would see before him only a cold, reserved housewife, with listless face and inanimate eyes, who filled the house with a scent as of clean linen, and of blossoms gathered in the shade.
Two months passed away in this manner. Abbé Faujas and his mother had become quite a part of the Mourets' family life. They all had their recognised places every evening at the table, just as the lamp had its place; and the same intervals of silence were broken night after night by the same remarks from the card-players and the same subdued converse of the priest and Marthe. When Madame Faujas had not given him too tremendous a beating Mouret found his lodgers 'extremely nice people.'
All that curiosity of his, born of idleness, waned before the interest and occupation that the nightly parties afforded him, and he no longer played the spy upon the Abbé, whom he declared to be a very good fellow, now that he knew him better.
'Oh, don't bother me with your stories!' he used to exclaim to those who attacked Abbé Faujas. 'You get hold of a pack of nonsense and put absurd interpretations upon facts that admit of the simplest explanation. I know all about him. He very kindly comes and spends his evenings with us; but he's not a man to make himself cheap, and I can quite understand that people don't like him for it and accuse him of pride.'
Mouret greatly enjoyed being the only person in Plassans who could boast of knowing Abbé Faujas, and he even somewhat abused this advantage. Every time he met Madame Rougon he put on an air of triumph and made her understand that he had stolen her guest from her, while the old lady contented herself with smiling quietly. With his intimate acquaintances Mouret extended his confidences further, and remarked that those blessed priests could do nothing like other people. Then he gave them a string of little details, and told them in what manner the Abbé drank, how he talked to women, and how he always kept his knees apart without ever crossing his legs, and other trifling matters which the vague alarm that his free-thinking mind experienced in the presence of his guest's long, mystic-looking cassock made him notice.
The evenings passed away one after another, and at last the first days of February came round. In all the conversations between himself and Marthe Abbé Faujas had to all appearance carefully avoided the subject of religion. She had once remarked to him, almost lightly:
No, Monsieur l'Abbé, I am not a very religious woman, and I seldom go to church. At Marseilles I was always too busy, and now I am too indolent to go out. And then I must confess to you that I wasn't brought up with religious ideas. My mother used to tell me that God would come to us quite as well at home.'
The priest bowed his head without making any reply, and seemed to signify that he would rather not discuss religious matters under such circumstances. One evening, however, he drew a picture of the unexpected comfort which suffering souls find in religion. They were talking of a poor woman whom troubles of every sort had driven to suicide.
'She did wrong to despair,' said the priest in his deep voice. 'She was ignorant of the comfort and consolation to be found in prayer. I have often seen heart-broken, weeping women come to us, and they have gone away again filled with a resignation that they had vainly sought elsewhere, and glad to live; and this had come from their falling upon their knees and tasting the blessedness of humiliating themselves before God in some quiet corner of the church. They came back there, they forgot their troubles, and became God's entirely.'
Marthe listened with a thoughtful expression to these remarks of the priest, whose last words fell in a gradually softening voice that seemed to breathe of superhuman felicity.
'Yes, it must be a blessed thing,' she murmured, as though she were speaking to herself. 'I have thought about it sometimes, but I have always felt afraid.'
If the Abbé seldom referred to such matters as this, he frequently spoke on the subject of charity. Marthe was very tender-hearted, and tears rose to her eyes at the slightest tale of trouble. It seemed to please the priest to see her so moved to pity; and every evening he told her some fresh story of sorrow, and kept her constantly excited with compassion. She would let her work fall, and clasp her hands as, with a sad, pitying face, she gazed into his eyes and listened to him as he recounted heart-rending details of how some poor persons had died of starvation, or how others had been goaded by misery into committing base crimes. At these times she fell completely under his influence, and he might have done what he willed with her.
About the middle of February a deplorable occurrence threw Plassans into dismay. It was discovered that a number of young girls, scarcely more than children, had fallen into evil courses while loafing about the streets, and it was even rumoured that some persons of high position in the town would be compromised. For a week Marthe was very painfully affected by this discovery, which caused the greatest sensation. She was acquainted with one of the unfortunate girls, who was the niece of her cook, Rose; and she could not think of the poor little creature without shuddering.
'It is a great pity,' said Abbé Faujas to her one evening, 'that there isn't a Home at Plassans on the model of the one at Besan?on.'
Then, in reply to Marthe's pressing questions, the Abbé explained to her the constitution of this Home. It was a sort of refuge for girls from eight to fifteen years of age, the daughters of working men, whose parents were obliged to leave them alone during the day while they themselves went to their employment. During the day-time these girls were set to do needlework, and in the evening they were sent back to their parents, the latter having then returned home from their work. By this system the children were brought up out of the reach of vice and in the midst of good examples. Marthe thought the idea an admirable one, and she gradually became so prepossessed in its favour that she could talk of nothing else than the necessity of founding a similar institution at Plassans.
'We might put it under the patronage of the Virgin,' Abbé Faujas suggested. 'But there are such difficulties in the way! You have no idea of the trouble there is in effecting the least good work! What is quite essential to the success of such a scheme as this is some woman with a motherly heart, full of zeal and absolutely devoted to the work.'
Marthe lowered her head and looked at Désirée, who was asleep by her side, and she felt tears welling from beneath her eyelids. She made inquiries as to the steps that it would be necessary to take for founding such a Home, the cost of erecting it, and the annual expenses.
'Will you help me?' she suddenly asked the priest one evening.
Abbé Faujas gravely took her hand and held it within his own for a moment, telling her that she had one of the fairest souls he had ever known. He would willingly do what he could, he assured her, but he should rely altogether upon her, for the assistance that he himself would be able to give would be small. It would be for her to form a committee of the ladies of the town, to collect subscriptions, and to take upon herself, in a word, all the delicate and onerous duties which are connected with an appeal to the charity of the public. He appointed a meeting with her for the following day at Saint-Saturnin's to introduce her to the diocesan architect, who would be able to tell her much better than he himself could do about the expenses that would have to be incurred.
Mouret was very gay that evening when they went to bed. He had not allowed Madame Faujas to win a single game.
'You seem quite pleased about something to-night, my dear,' he said to his wife. 'Did you see what a beating I gave the old lady downstairs?'
Then as he observed Marthe taking a silk dress out of her wardrobe, he asked her with some surprise if she intended to go out in the morning. He had not heard anything of the conversation in the dining-room between his wife and the priest.
'Yes,' she replied, 'I have to go out. I have to meet Abbé Faujas at the church about a matter which I will tell you of.'
He stood motionless in front of her, and gazed at her with an expression of stupefaction, wondering if she were not really jesting with him. Then, without any appearance of displeasure, he said in his bantering fashion:
'Hallo! hallo! well I never expected that! So you've gone over to the priests now!'
The next morning Marthe began by calling on her mother, to whom she explained the pious undertaking which she was contemplating. She became almost angry when the old lady smilingly shook her head, and she gave her to understand that she considered her lacking in charity.
'It is one of Abbé Faujas's ideas, isn't it?' Félicité suddenly inquired.
'Yes,' Marthe replied in surprise: 'we have talked a good deal about it together. But how did you know?'
Madame Rougon shrugged her shoulders without vouchsafing any definite reply. Then she continued with a show of animation:
'Well, my dear, I think you are quite right. You ought to have some kind of occupation, and you have found a very good one. It has always distressed me very much to see you perpetually shut up in that lonely, death-like house of yours. But you mustn't count upon my assistance. I would rather not appear in the matter, for people would say that it was I who was really doing everything, and that we had come to an understanding together to try to force our ideas upon the town. I should prefer that you yourself should have all the credit of your charitable inspiration. I will help you with my advice, if you will let me, but with nothing more.'
'I was hoping that you would join the committee,' said Marthe, who felt a little alarmed at the thought of finding herself alone in such an onerous undertaking.
'No! no! my presence on it would only do harm, I can assure you. Make it well known, on the contrary, that I am not going to be on the committee, that I have been asked, and have refused, excusing myself on the ground that I am too much occupied. Let it be understood, even, that I have no faith in your scheme; and that, you will see, will influence the ladies at once. They will be delighted to take part in charitable work in which I have no share. Go and see Madame Rastoil, Madame de Condamin, Madame Delangre, and Madame Paloque. Be sure to see Madame Paloque; she will feel flattered, and will help you more than all the others. If you find any difficulty about anything, come here again and tell me.'
She accompanied her daughter to the head of the stairs; then she stopped and looked her in the face, saying with her sharp smile:
'I hope the dear Abbé keeps well.'
'Yes, he is quite well,' replied Marthe. 'I am going to Saint-Saturnin's, where I am to meet the diocesan architect.'
Marthe and the priest had considered that matters were still in too indefinite a stage for them to disturb the architect, and so they had planned just to meet him at Saint-Saturnin's, where he came every day to inspect a chapel that happened to be under repair at the time. It would seem like a chance meeting. When Marthe walked up the church, she caught sight of Abbé Faujas and Monsieur Lieutaud—the architect—talking together on some scaffolding, from which they descended as soon as they saw her. One of the Abbé's shoulders was quite white with plaster, and he seemed to be taking a great interest in the operations.
At this hour of the afternoon, there were no worshippers or penitents in the church, and the nave and aisles were quite deserted, encumbered only by a litter of chairs, which two vergers were noisily setting in order. Workmen were calling to each other from the tops of ladders, and trowels were scraping against the walls. There was so little appearance of devotion about Saint-Saturnin's that Marthe had not even crossed herself on entering. She took a seat opposite to the chapel that was being repaired, between Abbé Faujas and Monsieur Lieutaud, just as she would have done if she had gone to consult the latter in his office.
The conversation lasted for a good half-hour. The architect showed much kindly interest in the scheme. But he advised them not to erect a special building for the Home of the Virgin, as the Abbé called the projected refuge. It would cost too much money, he thought; and it would be better to buy some building already in existence, and adapt it to suit the requirements of their scheme. He suggested a house in the Faubourg which, after being used as a boarding-school, had passed into the hands of a forage dealer, and was now for sale. A few thousand francs would enable one to entirely transform the place and restore it from its present ruinous condition; and he promised them all kinds of wonderful things: a handsome entrance, spacious rooms, and a court planted with trees. By degrees, Marthe and the priest raised their voices, and they discussed details beneath the echoing vaults of the nave, while Monsieur Lieutaud scratched the flag-stones with the tip of his stick to give them an idea of the fa?ade he suggested.
'It is settled, then,' said Marthe, as she took leave of the architect. 'You will make a little estimate, won't you, so that we may know what we are about? And please keep our secret, will you?'
Abbé Faujas wished to escort her as far as the door of the church. As they passed together before the high-altar, however, while she was still briskly talking to him, she was suddenly surprised to miss him from her side. She turned round and saw him bent almost double before the great cross, veiled with muslin. The sight of him, covered as he was with plaster, bent in this way before the cross, gave her a singular feeling. She recollected where she was, glanced round her with an uneasy expression and trod as silently as she could. When they reached the door, the Abbé, who had become very grave and serious, silently reached out his finger, which he had dipped in the holy water, and she crossed herself in great disquietude of mind. Then the muffled doors softly fell back behind her with a sound like a sigh.
From the church Marthe repaired to Madame de Condamin's. She felt quite happy as she walked through the streets in the fresh air; the few visits that she had now to make seemed to her almost like pleasure-parties. Madame de Condamin welcomed her with an air of friendly surprise. That dear Madame Mouret came so seldom! When she learned the business on hand, she declared herself charmed with it, and was quite ready to further it in every possible way. She was wearing a lovely mauve dress, with knots of pearl-grey ribbon, in that pretty boudoir of hers where she played the part of an exiled Parisienne.
'You did quite right to count upon me,' she exclaimed as she pressed Marthe's hands. 'Who ought to help those poor girls if it isn't we whom people accuse of setting them a bad example by our luxury? It is frightful to think of those children being exposed to all those horrible dangers. It has made me feel quite ill. I am entirely at your service.'
When Marthe told her that her mother could not join the committee she displayed still greater enthusiasm for the scheme.
'It is a pity Madame Rougon has so many things to do,' she said with a touch of irony; 'she would have been of great assistance to us. But it can't be helped. No one can do more than they are able. I have plenty of friends. I will go and see the Bishop; and move heaven and earth if it's necessary. I'll promise you that we shall succeed.'
She would not listen to any of the particulars about the expenses. She was quite sure, she said, that whatever money was wanted would be found, and she meant the Home to be a credit to the committee, as handsome and as comfortable as possible. She added with a laugh that she quite lost her head when she began to dabble in figures; but she undertook to charge herself with the preliminary steps and the general furtherance of the scheme. Dear Madame Mouret, said she, was not accustomed to begging, and she would accompany her on her visits and would even take several of them off her hands altogether. By the end of a quarter of an hour she had made the business entirely her own, and it was now she who gave instructions to Marthe. The latter was just about to take her leave when Monsieur de Condamin came into the room; so she lingered on, feeling very ill at ease, however, and not daring to say any more on the subject of her visit in the presence of a man who was rumoured to be compromised in that matter of the poor girls with whose shameful story the town was ringing.
But Madame de Condamin explained the great scheme to her husband, who listened with an appearance of perfect ease, and gave utterance to the most moral sentiments. He considered the scheme an extremely proper one.
'It is an idea which could only have occurred to a mother,' he said gravely, in a tone which made it impossible to tell whether he was serious or not. 'Plassans will be indebted to you, madame, for a purer morality.'
'But I must tell you that the idea is not my own! I have merely adopted it,' replied Marthe, made uneasy by these praises. 'It was suggested to me by a person whom I esteem very highly.'
'Who was that?' asked Madame de Condamin, with a show of curiosity.
'Abbé Faujas.'
Then Marthe, with great frankness, told them what a high opinion she had of the priest. She made no allusion to the unpleasant stories that had been circulated about him, but she represented him as a man worthy of the highest respect, whom she was very happy to receive in her home. Madame de Condamin nodded approvingly as she listened.
'I always said so!' she exclaimed. 'Abbé Faujas is a very distinguished priest. But there are such a lot of malicious people about! Now, however, that you receive him in your home, they don't venture to say anything more against him; all that calumnious talk has been cut short. The idea, you say, is his. We shall have to persuade him, then, to take a prominent part in putting it into execution. For the present we will keep the matter very quiet. I can assure you that I always liked and defended the Abbé.'
'I recollect talking with him, and I thought him a very good fellow,' remarked the conservator of rivers and forests.
His wife silenced him with a gesture. She occasionally treated him in a very cavalier style. Truth to tell, Monsieur de Condamin alone bore the shame attaching to the equivocal marriage which he was charged with having made; the young woman, whom he had brought from no one knew where, had got herself forgiven and liked by the whole town, thanks to her pleasant ways and taking looks, to which provincial folks are more susceptible than might be imagined.
Monsieur de Condamin understood that he was in the way in this virtuous consultation.
'I will leave you to your good designs,' he said with a slight touch of irony. 'I am going to smoke a cigar. Octavie, don't forget to be dressed in good time. We are going to the Sub-Prefecture this evening, you know.'
When he had left the room, the two women resumed their conversation for a few moments longer, returning to what they had previously been saying, expressing pity for the poor girls who yielded to temptation, and manifesting much anxiety to shelter them from danger. Madame de Condamin inveighed eloquently against vice.
'Well, then!' she said, as she pressed Marthe's hand for the last time, 'it is all settled, and I shall be entirely at your service as soon as you call for my help. If you go to see Madame Rastoil and Madame Delangre, tell them that I will undertake to do everything, and that all we want from them is their names. My idea is a good one, don't you think? We won't depart a hair's breadth from it. Give my compliments to Abbé Faujas.'
Marthe at once proceeded to call upon Madame Delangre, and then upon Madame Rastoil. She found them very polite, but less enthusiastic than Madame de Condamin. They discussed the pecuniary side of the scheme. A large sum of money would be required, they said; the charity of the public would certainly never provide it, and there was a great risk of the whole business coming to a ridiculous termination. Marthe tried to reassure them, and plied them with figures. Then they asked her what ladies had consented to join the committee. The mention of Madame de Condamin's name left them silent, but when they learned that Madame Rougon had excused herself from joining, they became more amiable.
Madame Delangre had received Marthe in her husband's private room. She was a pale little woman whose dissoluteness had remained a matter of legend in Plassans.
Indeed,' she ended by saying, 'there is nothing I should like to see better. It would be a school of virtue for the youth of the working-classes, and it would be the means of saving many weak souls. I cannot refuse my assistance, for I feel that I could be of much use to you through my husband, who as mayor of the town is brought into continual contact with all the influential people. But I must ask you to allow me till to-morrow before I give a definite reply. Our position requires us to exercise circumspection, and I should like to consult Monsieur Delangre.'
In Madame Rastoil Marthe encountered a woman who was equally listless but more prudish, and who sought for irreproachable words when referring to the unfortunate girls who had fallen. She was a sleek, plump person, and Marthe found her embroidering a very gorgeous alb, between her two daughters, whom she sent away at her visitor's first words.
'I am much obliged to you for having thought of me,' she said; 'but really I am very much occupied. I am already on several committees and I don't know whether I should have the time. I have had some such idea as your own myself, but my scheme was a larger one and, perhaps, more complete and comprehensive. For a whole month I have been intending to talk to the Bishop about it, but I have never been able to find the time. Well! we will unite our efforts, and I will tell you my own views, for I think you are making a mistake in some points. Since it seems necessary, I will surrender still more of my time. But it was only yesterday that my husband said to me: "Really, you never attend to your own affairs; you are always looking after other people's."'
Marthe glanced at her curiously, thinking of her old entanglement with Monsieur Delangre, which folks still chuckled over in the cafés of the Cours Sauvaire. The wives of the mayor and the presiding judge had received the mention of Abbé Faujas's name very suspiciously, the latter especially so. Marthe was a little vexed at this distrust of a person for whom she vouched; so she made a point of dwelling upon the Abbé's good qualities, and eventually forced the two women to acknowledge the merit of this priest, who lived a life of retirement and supported his mother.
On leaving Madame Rastoil's Marthe merely had to cross the road to reach Madame Paloque's, which was on the other side of the Rue Balande. It was seven o'clock, but she was anxious to make this last call, even if she were to keep Mouret waiting for dinner and get herself scolded in consequence. The Paloques were just about to sit down to table in a chilly dining-room, whose prim coldness spoke of provincial penury. Madame Paloque hastened to cover up the soup-tureen, vexed at being thus found at table. She was very polite, humble almost, anxious as she really felt about this visit which she had not expected. Her husband, the judge, sat before his empty plate with his hands upon his knees.
'The hussies!' he exclaimed, when Marthe spoke of the girls of the old quarter of the town. 'I heard some nice accounts of them to-day at court. It was they who led some of our most respectable townspeople astray. You do wrong, madame, to interest yourself about such vermin.'
'I am very much afraid,' said Madame Paloque in her turn, 'that I cannot be of much assistance to you. I know no one, and my husband would cut his hand off rather than beg for the smallest trifle. We have held ourselves quite aloof from everyone, disgusted as we are with all the injustices we have witnessed. We live here very quietly and modestly, happy in being forgotten and let alone. Even if promotion were offered to my husband now, he would refuse it. Wouldn't you, my dear?'
The judge nodded his head in assent and they exchanged a slight smile, while Marthe sat ill at ease in the presence of that hideous wrinkled couple, livid with gall and bitterness, who played so well the little comedy of feigned resignation. Fortunately she recalled her mother's counsels.
'I had quite counted upon you,' she said, making herself very pleasant. 'We shall have Madame Delangre, Madame Rastoil, and Madame de Condamin; but, between ourselves, those ladies will only give us their names. I should have liked to find some lady of good status and kindly, charitable disposition, who would have taken a stronger interest and shown more energy in the matter, and I thought that you would be the very person. Think what gratitude Plassans would owe us if we could only bring such an undertaking to a successful issue!'
'Of course, of course!' Madame Paloque murmured, quite delighted at Marthe's insinuating words.
I am sure you are wrong in fancying that you are without power to assist us. It is very well known that Monsieur Paloque is a favourite at the Sub-Prefecture; and between ourselves I may say that he is intended to succeed Monsieur Rastoil. Ah, now! don't try to depreciate yourselves; your merits are known, and it is no use your trying to hide them. This would be a very good opportunity for Madame Paloque to emerge a little from the obscurity and privacy in which she keeps herself, and to let the world see what a head and what a heart she has!'
The judge seemed very restless. He looked at his wife with blinking eyes.
'Madame Paloque has not refused,' said he.
'No, certainly not,' interposed the latter. 'If you really stand in need of me, that settles the matter. I dare say I am only committing another piece of folly, and shall give myself a lot of trouble without ever getting a word of thanks for it. Monsieur Paloque can tell you of all the good works we've done without ever saying a word about them; and you can see for yourself what they've brought us to. Well, well, we can't change our natures, and I suppose we shall continue being dupes to the end! You may count upon me, dear madame.'
The Paloques rose and Marthe took leave of them, thanking them for their kindly interest. As she stopped for a moment on the landing to liberate a flounce of her dress which had caught between the banisters and the steps, she heard them talking with animation on the other side of the door.
'They want to enlist you because they want to make use of you!' the judge was saying in a bitter voice. 'You will be their beast of burden.'
'Of course!' replied his wife, 'but you may be sure that I'll make them pay for it with the rest!'
When Marthe at last got back home, it was nearly eight o'clock. Mouret had been waiting a whole half-hour for his dinner, and she was afraid that there would be a terrible scene. But, when she had undressed and come downstairs, she found her husband seated astride an overturned chair, tranquilly beating a tattoo on the tablecloth with his fingers. He was in a very teasing, bantering mood.
'Well,' said he, 'I had quite made up my mind that you were going to spend the night in a confessional-box. Now that you have taken to going to church, you had better give me notice when the priests invite you, so that I can dine out.'
All through the dinner he indulged in witticisms of this kind, and Marthe was more distressed by them than if he had openly stormed at her. Two or three times she cast a glance at him as if beseeching him to leave her in peace. But her looks only appeared to stimulate his wit. Octave and Désirée laughed at it all, but Serge remained silent and mentally took his mother's side. During dessert Rose came into the room, looking quite scared, with the news that Monsieur Delangre had called and wished to see madame.
'Hallo! have you begun to associate with the authorities as well?' exclaimed Mouret in his sneering fashion.
Marthe went into the drawing-room to receive the mayor. With much politeness the latter told her that he had felt unwilling to wait until the morrow to congratulate her upon her charitable idea. Madame Delangre was a little timid; she had done wrong in not immediately promising her co-operation, and he had now come to say in her name that she would be delighted to serve on the committee of lady patronesses of the Home of the Virgin. As for himself, he would do all he could to further the success of a scheme that would be so useful, so conducive to morality.
Marthe accompanied him to the street-door; and there, as Rose held up the lamp to light the footpath, the mayor added:
'Will you tell Abbé Faujas that I shall be glad to have a little conversation with him, if he will kindly call on me? As he has had experience of an establishment of this kind at Besan?on, he will be able to give me valuable information. I mean the town to pay for the building, at any rate. Good-bye, dear madame. Give my best compliments to Monsieur Mouret, whom I won't disturb.'
When Abbé Faujas came down with his mother at eight o'clock Mouret merely said to him, with a laugh:
'So you walked my wife off to-day, eh? Well, don't spoil her for me too much, and don't make a saint of her.'
Then he turned to his card-play. He was anxious to revenge himself on Madame Faujas, who had defeated him three evenings in succession; and so Marthe was left free to tell the Abbé of all she had done during the day. She seemed full of child-like pleasure, and was still quite excited with her afternoon. The priest made her repeat certain details, and then promised to call on Monsieur Delangre, although he would have preferred remaining altogether in the background.
'You did wrong to mention my name at all,' he said, when he saw her so moved and yielding. 'But you are like all other women; the best causes would be spoilt in your hands.'
She looked at him in surprise at this harsh exclamation, recoiling and feeling that thrill of fear which she still occasionally experienced in the presence of his cassock. It was as though iron hands were being laid upon her shoulders and were forcing her into compliance with their will. Every priest looks upon woman as an enemy; but when the Abbé saw that she was hurt by his stern reproof he softened his voice and said:
'I think only of the success of your noble design. I am afraid that I should compromise it if I myself were to appear in it. You know very well that I am not a favourite in the town.'
Marthe, seeing him so humble, assured him that he was mistaken, and that all the ladies had spoken of him in the highest terms. They knew that he was supporting his mother, and that he led a quiet, retired life worthy of the greatest praise. Then they talked over the great scheme, dwelling on the smallest details of it, till eleven o'clock struck. It was a delightful evening.
Mouret had caught a word or two of the talk every now and then between the deals.
'And so,' he said, as they were going to bed, 'so you two are going to stamp out vice? It's a fine invention.'
Three days later the committee of patronesses was formally constituted. The ladies having elected Marthe as president, she, upon her mother's advice which she had privately sought, immediately named Madame Paloque treasurer. They both gave themselves a great deal of trouble in directing circulars and looking after a host of other petty details. In the meantime Madame de Condamin went from the Sub-Prefecture to the Bishop's, and from the Bishop's to the houses of various other influential persons, exhibiting some lovely toilettes, explaining in her pretty fashion 'the happy idea that had occurred to her,' and carrying off subscriptions and promises of assistance. Madame Rastoil, on the other hand, told the priests who came to her house on the Tuesday how she had formed a plan for rescuing unfortunate girls from vice, and then contented herself with charging Abbé Bourrette to inquire of the Sisters of Saint-Joseph if they would come and serve in the projected refuge; while Madame Delangre confided to a little company of functionaries that the town was indebted for the Home to her husband, who had also kindly given the committee the use of a room at the town-hall, where they could meet and deliberate at their ease. Plassans was speedily excited by this pious turmoil, and soon nothing but the Home of the Virgin was spoken of. A chorus of praise went up, and the friends of each lady patroness made up little parties and worked strenuously for the success of the undertaking. Within a week subscriptions were opened in all three quarters of the town, and as the 'Plassans Gazette' published lists of the subscriptions, a feeling of pride was awakened, and the most notable families vied as to which should be the most generous.
Amidst all the talk on the subject Abbé Faujas's name frequently cropped up. Although each of the lady patronesses claimed the idea of the refuge as her own, there was a prevailing belief that it was the Abbé who had brought it with him from Besan?on. Monsieur Delangre, indeed, made an express statement to that effect at the meeting of the municipal council when it was decided to purchase the building which the diocesan architect had suggested as being best suited to the requirements of the Home. On the previous evening the mayor had had a lengthy conversation with the priest. They had shaken hands most cordially on parting, and the mayor's secretary had even heard them call each other 'my dear sir.' This brought about quite a revolution in the Abbé's favour. From that time he had a group of partisans who defended him against the attacks of his enemies.
Besides, the Mourets vouched for Abbé Faujas's respectability. Supported by Marthe's friendship, recognised as the originator of a good work, which he modestly refused to acknowledge as his own, he no longer manifested in the streets that appearance of humility which had led him to withdraw as much as possible from observation by keeping in the shadow of the houses. He bravely showed his new cassock in the sun and walked in the middle of the road. On his way from the Rue Balande to Saint-Saturnin's he now had to return a great number of bows. One Sunday Madame de Condamin stopped him after Vespers on the Place in front of the Bishop's house and kept him talking with her there for a good half-hour.
Well, your reverence,' Mouret said to him with a laugh, 'you are quite in the odour of sanctity now. One would scarcely have anticipated that six months ago when I was the only one to say a good word for you! But if I were you I shouldn't trust too much to it all; you still have the Bishop's set against you.'
The priest lightly shrugged his shoulders. He knew quite well that what hostility he still met with came from the clergy. Abbé Fenil kept Monseigneur Rousselot trembling beneath his rough, hard will. However, when the grand-vicar, about the end of March, left Plassans on a short holiday, Abbé Faujas profited by his absence to make several calls upon the Bishop. Abbé Surin, the prelate's private secretary, reported that the 'wretched man' had been closeted for hours with his lordship, who had manifested an atrocious temper after each interview. When Abbé Fenil returned, Abbé Faujas discontinued his visits, and again drew into the background. But the Bishop still showed himself very much disturbed, and it was quite evident that something had occurred to upset his careless mind. At a dinner which he gave to his clergy he showed himself particularly friendly to Abbé Faujas, who was still only a humble curate at Saint-Saturnin's. Abbé Fenil then kept his thin lips more tightly closed than ever, but inwardly cursed his penitents when they politely asked him how he was in health.
And now at last Abbé Faujas manifested complete serenity. He still led a self-denying life, but he seemed permeated by a pleasant ease of mind. One Tuesday evening he triumphed definitively. He was looking out of the window of his room, enjoying the early warmth of springtide, when Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies's guests came into the garden of the Sub-Prefecture and bowed to him from a distance. Madame de Condamin was there, and carried her familiarity so far as to wave her handkerchief to him. Just at the same time, on the other side, some guests came to sit on the rustic seats in front of the waterfall in Monsieur Rastoil's grounds. Monsieur Delangre, who was leaning over the terrace of the Sub-Prefecture, could see across Mouret's garden into the judge's place, owing to the sloping character of the ground.
'You will see,' he said, 'they won't deign even to notice him.'
But he was wrong. For Abbé Fenil, having turned his head as though by chance, took off his hat, whereupon all the other priests who happened to be present did the same, and Abbé Faujas returned their salute. Then, after slowly glancing over the two sets of guests on his right and his left, he quitted his window, carefully drawing his white and conventual-looking curtains.
The month of April was very mild and warm, and in the evenings, after dinner, the young Mourets went to amuse themselves in the garden. Marthe and the priest, too, as they found the dining-room become very close, also went out on to the terrace. They sat a few steps from the open window, just outside the stream of light which the lamp cast upon the tall box hedges. Hid there in the deepening dusk, they discussed all the little details connected with the Home of the Virgin. This constant discussion of charitable matters seemed to give a tone of additional softness to their conversation. In front of them, between Monsieur Rastoil's huge pear-trees and the dusky chestnuts of the Sub-Prefecture, there was a large patch of open sky. The young people sported about under the arbours, while every now and then the voices of Mouret and Madame Faujas, who remained alone in the dining-room, deeply absorbed in their game, could be heard raised in passing altercations.
Sometimes Marthe, full of tender emotion, a gentle languor that made her words fall slowly from her lips, would check her speech as she caught sight of the golden train of some shooting star, and smile as she threw back her head a little and looked up at the heavens.
'There's another soul leaving purgatory and entering paradise!' she murmured, while, as the priest kept silent, she added: 'How pretty they are, those little beliefs! One ought to be able to remain a little girl, your reverence.'
She no longer now mended the family linen in the evening. She would have had to light a lamp on the terrace to see to do it, and she preferred the gloom of the warm night, which seemed to thrill her with peaceful happiness. Besides, she now went out every day, which fatigued her, and when dinner was over she had not energy enough to take up her needle. Rose had been obliged to undertake the mending, as Mouret was beginning to complain that his socks were all in holes.
To tell the truth Marthe was really very much occupied. Besides the committee meetings over which she presided, she had numerous other things to attend to, visits to make, and superintendence duties to exercise. She deputed much necessary writing and other little matters to Madame Paloque; but she was so eager to see the Home actually established, that she went off to the Faubourg, where the building stood, three times a week, to make sure that the workmen were not wasting their time. Whenever she thought that satisfactory progress was not being made, she hurried to Saint-Saturnin's to find the architect, and grumbled to him and begged him not to leave the men without his supervision, growing quite jealous, indeed, of the work which was being executed in the church, and saying that the chapel repairs were being much too quickly pushed forward. Monsieur Lieutaud smiled at all this, and assured her that everything would be completed within the stipulated time. But Abbé Faujas likewise protested that sufficient progress was not being made, and urged Marthe to give the architect no peace, so she ended by going to Saint-Saturnin's every day.
She went thither with her brain full of figures, or absorbed in thinking of walls that had to be pulled down and rebuilt. The chilliness of the church cooled her excitement a little. She dipped her fingers in the holy water and crossed herself, by way of doing as others did. The vergers grew to know her and bow to her, and she herself became quite familiar with the different chapels and the sacristy, whither she sometimes had to go in search of Abbé Faujas, and the wide corridor and low cloisters through which she had to pass. At the end of a month there was not a corner in Saint-Saturnin's which she did not know. Sometimes she had to wait for the architect, and then she would sit down in some retired chapel and rest after her hurried walk, recapitulating in her mind the host of things which she wanted to impress upon Monsieur Lieutaud. The deep, palpitating silence which surrounded her, and the dim religious light falling from the stained-glass windows, gradually plunged her into a vague, soft reverie. She began to love the lofty arches and the solemn bareness of the walls, the altars draped in protecting covers, and the chairs all arranged in order. As soon, indeed, as the padded doors swung to behind her, she began to experience a feeling of supreme restfulness, she forgot all the weary cares of the world, and perfect peace permeated her being.
'Saint-Saturnin's is such a pleasant place,' she said in an unguarded moment one evening before her husband, after a close, sultry day.
'Would you like us to go and sleep there?' Mouret asked, with a laugh.
Marthe felt hurt. The feeling of purely physical happiness which she experienced in the church began to distress her as being something wrong; and it was with a slight feeling of trouble that she thenceforward entered Saint-Saturnin's, trying to force herself to remain indifferent and uninfluenced by her surroundings, just as she would have been in the big rooms at the town hall. But in spite of herself she was deeply, distressfully affected. It was, however, a distress to which she willingly returned.
Abbé Faujas manifested no consciousness of the slow awakening which every day went on within her. He still retained with her the demeanour of a busy, obliging man, putting heaven on one side. He never showed anything of the priest. Sometimes, however, she would disturb him as he was going to read the burial office; and he would then speak to her for a moment between a couple of pillars in his surplice which exhaled a vague odour of incense and wax tapers. It was frequently a mere bricklayer's bill or some carpenter's claim that they spoke about, and the priest would just tell her the exact figures and then hurry away to attend to the funeral; she remaining there, lingering in the empty nave, while one of the vergers was extinguishing the candles. As Faujas, when he crossed the church with her, bowed before the high altar, she had acquired the habit of doing likewise, at first out of a feeling of mere propriety. But afterwards the action had become mechanical, and she now bowed when she was quite alone. Hitherto this act of reverence had been her only sign of devotion. Two or three times she had come to the church on days of high ceremonial of which she had not previously been aware: but when she saw the church was full of worshippers and heard the pealing of the organ, she hurried off, thrilled with sudden fear and not daring to cross the threshold.
'Well!' Mouret would frequently ask her with his sniggering laugh, 'when do you mean to take your first communion?'
He was perpetually teasing her, but she never replied, simply fixing upon him the gaze of her eyes, in which a passing brightness glistened when he went too far. By degrees he became more bitter, he was tired of mocking at her; and at the end of a month he quite lost his temper.
'What sense is there in going and mixing yourself up with a lot of priests?' he would growl at times when his dinner was not ready when he wanted it. 'You are always away from home now, there's no keeping you in the house for an hour at a time! I shouldn't mind it myself, if everything weren't going to pieces here. I never get any of my things mended, the table is not even laid by seven o'clock, there's no making anything out of Rose, and the whole place is left to rack and ruin.'
He picked up a house-cloth that was lying about, locked up a bottle of wine that had been left out, and began to wipe the dust off the furniture with his fingers, working himself up to a higher pitch of anger as he cried: 'There'll soon be nothing left for me to do but to take up a broom and put an apron on! You would see me do it without disturbing yourself, I know! I might do all the work of the house without your being any the wiser for it indeed! Do you know that I spent a couple of hours this morning in putting this cupboard in order? No, no, things can't go on any longer in this way!'
At other times there was a disturbance about the children. Once when Mouret came home he found Désirée 'wallowing like a young pig' in the garden, lying on her stomach before an ant-hole, and trying to find out what the ants might be doing in the ground.
'We may be very thankful, I'm sure, that you don't sleep away from the house as well!' he cried as soon as he caught sight of his wife. 'Come and look at your daughter! I wouldn't let her change her dress because I wished that you might see what a pretty sight she is.'
The girl cried bitterly while her father kept turning her round.
'Look at her now! Isn't she a nice spectacle? This is the way children go on when they are left to themselves! It isn't her fault, poor little innocent! At one time you couldn't leave her alone for five minutes: she would be getting into the fire, you said! Well, I expect she will be getting into the fire now, and everything will be burnt up, and then there'll be an end of it all!'
When Rose had taken Désirée away, he continued: 'You live now simply for other people's children. You don't give a moment to your own! What a goose you must be to go knocking yourself up for a parcel of hussies who only laugh at you! Go and walk about the ramparts any evening and you will see something of the conduct of those impudent creatures whom you talk of putting under the protection of the Virgin!'
He stopped to take breath and then went on again:
'At all events see that Désirée is properly taken care of before you go picking up girls from the gutter! There are holes as big as my fist in her dress. One of these days we shall be finding her in the garden with a leg or an arm broken. I don't say anything about Octave or Serge, though I should much prefer your being at home when they come back from college. They are up to all kinds of diabolical tricks. Only yesterday they split a couple of flag-stones on the terrace by letting off crackers. I tell you that if you don't keep yourself at home we shall find the whole house blown to bits one of these days!'
Marthe said a few words in self-defence. She had been obliged to go out, she urged. There was no doubt that Mouret, who possessed an ample fund of common sense, in spite of his proclivities for teasing and jeering, was right. The house was getting into a most unsatisfactory state. That once quiet spot indeed, where the sun had set so peacefully, was becoming uproarious, left to look after itself, suffering from the children's noisiness, the father's bursts of temper, and the mother's careless, indifferent lassitude. In the evening, at table, they dined badly and quarrelled amongst themselves. Rose did just what she liked, and she, by the way, was of opinion that her mistress was quite in the right.
Matters came to such a pass at last that Mouret, happening to meet his mother-in-law, complained to her bitterly of Marthe's conduct, although he was quite aware of the pleasure he afforded the old lady by revealing to her the troubles of his home.
'You astonish me extremely!' Félicité replied with a smile. 'Marthe always seemed to me to be afraid of you, and I considered her even too yielding and obedient. A woman ought not to tremble before her husband.'
Ah, yes, indeed!' cried Mouret, with a hopeless look, 'once upon a time she would have sunk into the ground to avoid a quarrel; a mere glance was sufficient to make her do everything I desired. But that's all quite altered now. I may remonstrate and shout as much as I like, she still goes her own way. She doesn't reply, she hasn't as yet got to flying out at me, but that will come as well, I dare say, by-and-by.'
Félicité then answered with some hypocrisy:
'I will speak to Marthe if you like. But it might, perhaps, hurt her if I did. Matters of this kind are better kept between husband and wife. I don't feel very uneasy about them; I've no doubt that you'll soon get back again all the quiet peacefulness which you used to be so proud of.'
Mouret shook his head with downcast eyes.
'No! no!' he said; 'I know myself too well. I can make a noise, but it does no good. In reality I am as weak as a child. People are quite wrong in supposing that I gained my own way with my wife by force. She has generally done what I wanted her to do, because she was quite indifferent about everything, and would as soon do one thing as another. Mild as she looks, she is very obstinate, I can tell you. Well, I must try to make the best of it.'
Then, raising his eyes, he added:
'It would have been better if I had said nothing about all this to you; but you won't mention it to anyone, will you?'
When Marthe went to see her mother the next day, the latter received her with some show of coldness, and exclaimed:
'It is wrong of you, my dear, to show yourself so neglectful of your husband. I saw him yesterday and he is quite angry about it. I am well aware that he often behaves in a very ridiculous manner, but that does not justify you in neglecting your home.'
Marthe fixed her eyes upon her mother.
'Ah! he has been complaining about me!' she said curtly. 'The least he could do would be to keep silent, for I never complain about him.'
Then she began to talk of other matters, but Madame Rougon brought her back to the subject of her husband by inquiring after Abbé Faujas.
'Perhaps Mouret isn't very fond of the Abbé, and finds fault with you in consequence. Is that the case, do you think?'
Marthe showed great surprise.
What an idea!' she exclaimed. 'What makes you think that my husband does not like Abbé Faujas? He has certainly never said anything to me which would lead me to imagine such a thing. He hasn't said anything to you, has he? Oh no! you are quite mistaken. He would go up to their rooms to fetch them if the mother didn't come down to have her game of cards with him.'
Mouret, indeed, never complained in any way about Abbé Faujas. He joked with him a little bluntly sometimes, and occasionally brought his name into the teasing banter with which he tormented his wife, but that was all.
One morning, as he was shaving, he said to Marthe:
'I'll tell you what, my dear; if ever you go to confession, take the Abbé for your director, and then your sins will, at any rate, be kept amongst ourselves.'
Abbé Faujas heard confessions on Tuesdays and Fridays, on which days Marthe used to avoid going to Saint-Saturnin's. She alleged that she did not want to disturb him; but she was really under the influence of that timid uneasiness which disquieted her whenever she saw him in his surplice redolent of the mysterious odours of the sacristy. One Friday, she went with Madame de Condamin to see how the works at the Home of the Virgin were getting on. The men were just finishing the frontage. Madame de Condamin found fault with the ornamentation, which, said she, was extremely mean and characterless. At the entrance there ought to have been two slender columns with a pointed arch, something at once light and suggestive of religion, something that would be a credit to the committee of lady patronesses. Marthe hesitated for a time, but she gradually admitted that the place looked very mean as it was. Then as the other pressed her, she promised to speak to Monsieur Lieutaud on the subject that very day. In order that she might keep her promise, she went to the cathedral before returning home. It was four o'clock when she got there, and the architect had just left. When she asked for Abbé Faujas, a verger told her that he was confessing in the chapel of Saint Aurelia. Then for the first time she recollected what day it was, and replied that she could not wait. But as she passed the chapel of Saint Aurelia on her way out, she thought that the Abbé might, perhaps, have already caught sight of her. The truth was that she felt singularly faint, and so she sat down outside the chapel, near the railing. And there she remained.
The sky was grey, and the church was steeped in twilight. Here and there in the aisles, already shrouded in darkness, gleamed a lamp, or some gilt candelabrum, or some Virgin's silver robe; and a pale ray filtered through the great nave and died away on the polished oak of the stalls and benches. Marthe had never before felt so completely overcome. Her legs seemed to have lost all their strength, and her hands were so heavy that she clasped them across her knees to save herself from having to support their weight. She allowed herself to drift into drowsiness, in which she still continued to hear and see, but in a very soft subdued fashion. The slight sounds wafted along beneath the vaulted roof, the falling of a chair, the slow step of some worshipper, all filled her with emotion, assumed a musical tone which thrilled her to the heart; while the last glimmers of daylight and the dusky shadows that crept up the pillars like covers of crape, assumed in her eyes all the delicate tints of shot silk. She gradually fell into a state of exquisite languor, in which she seemed to melt away and die. Everything around her then vanished, and she was thrilled with perfect happiness in her strange, trance-like condition.
The sound of a voice awoke her from this state of ecstasy.
'I am very sorry,' said Abbé Faujas; 'I saw you, but I could not get away.'
She then appeared to wake up with a start. She looked at him. He was standing before her in the dying light, in his surplice. His last penitent had just left, and the empty church seemed to be growing still more solemn.
'You want to speak to me?' he asked.
Marthe made an effort to recall her thoughts.
'Yes,' she murmured; 'but I can't remember now. Ah yes! it is about the frontage, which Madame de Condamin thinks too mean. There ought to be two columns instead of that characterless flat door. And up above one might put a pointed arch filled with stained glass. It would look very pretty. You understand what I mean, don't you?'
He gazed at her very gravely with his hands crossed over his surplice, and his head inclined towards her; and she, still seated, without strength to rise to her feet, went on stammering confusedly, as though she had been taken unawares in a sleep which she could not shake off.
It would entail additional expense, of course; but we might have columns of soft stone with a very simple moulding. We might speak about it to the master mason, and he will tell us how much it would cost. But we had better pay him his last account first. It is two thousand one hundred and odd francs, I think. We have the money in hand; Madame Paloque told me so this morning. There will be no difficulty about that, Monsieur l'Abbé.'
She lowered her head, as though she felt oppressed by the gaze that was bent upon her. When she raised it again and met the priest's eyes, she clasped her hands together, after the manner of a child seeking forgiveness, and she burst into sobs. The priest allowed her to weep, still standing in silence in front of her. Then she fell on her knees before him, weeping behind her hands, with which she covered her face.
'Get up, I pray you,' said Abbé Faujas gently. 'It is before God that you should go and kneel.'
He helped her to rise and he sat down beside her. They talked together for a long time in low tones. The night had now fully fallen, and the lamps set golden specks gleaming through the black depths of the church. The murmur of their voices alone disturbed the silence in front of the chapel of Saint Aurelia. From the priest streamed a flood of words after each of Marthe's weak broken answers. When at last they rose, he seemed to be refusing her some favour which she was seeking with persistence. And leading her towards the door, he raised his voice as he said:
'No! I cannot, I assure you I cannot. It would be better for you to take Abbé Bourrette.'
'I am in great need of your advice,' Marthe murmured, beseechingly. 'I think that with your help everything would be easy to me.'
'You are mistaken,' he replied, in a sterner voice. 'On the contrary, I fear that my direction would be prejudicial to you to begin with. Abbé Bourrette is the priest you want, I assure you. Later on, I may perhaps give you a different reply.'
Marthe obeyed the priest's injunctions, and on the morrow the worshippers at Saint-Saturnin's were surprised to see Madame Mouret kneel before Abbé Bourrette's confessional. Two days later nothing but this conversion was spoken of in Plassans. Abbé Faujas's name was pronounced with subtle smiles by certain people, but on the whole the impression was a good one and in favour of the Abbé. Madame Rastoil complimented Madame Mouret in full committee, and Madame Delangre professed to see in the matter a first blessing vouchsafed by God who rewarded the lady patronesses for their good work by touching the heart of the only one amongst them who had not conformed with the requirements of religion. Madame de Condamin, taking Marthe aside, said to her:
'You have done right, my dear. What you have done is a necessity for a woman; and, besides, as soon as one begins to go about a little, it is necessary to go to church.'
The only matter of astonishment was her choice of Abbé Bourrette. That worthy man almost entirely confined himself to hearing the confessions of young girls. The ladies found him 'so very uninteresting.' On the Thursday at the Rougons' reception, before Marthe's arrival, the matter was talked over in a corner of the green drawing-room, and it was Madame Paloque with her waspish tongue who summed up the matter.
'Abbé Faujas has done quite right in not keeping her himself,' said she, with a twist of her mouth that made her still more hideous than usual; 'Abbé Bourrette is very successful in saving souls and appearances also.'
When Marthe came that evening her mother stepped forward to welcome her, and kissed her affectionately with some ostentation before the company. She herself had made her peace with God on the morrow of the Coup d'état. She was of opinion that Abbé Faujas might now venture to return to the green drawing-room; but he excused himself, making a pretext of his work and his love of privacy. Madame Rougon then fancied that he was planning a triumphal return for the following winter. The Abbé's success was certainly on the increase. For the first few months his only penitents had come from the vegetable-market held behind the cathedral, poor hawkers, to whose dialect he had quietly listened without always being able to understand it; but now, especially since all the talk there had been in connection with the Home of the Virgin, he had a crowd of well-to-do citizens' wives and daughters dressed in silk kneeling before his confessional-box. When Marthe quietly mentioned that he would not receive her amongst his penitents, Madame de Condamin was seized with a sudden whim, and deserted her director, the senior curate of Saint-Saturnin's, who was greatly distressed thereby, to transfer the guardianship of her soul to Abbé Faujas. Such a distinction as this gave the latter a firm position in Plassans society.
When Mouret learned that his wife now went to confession, he merely said to her:
'You have been doing something wrong lately, I suppose, since you find it necessary to go and tell all your affairs to a parson?'
In the midst of all this pious excitement he seemed to isolate himself and shut himself up in his own narrow and monotonous life still further. When his wife reproached him for complaining to her mother, he answered:
'Yes, you are right; it was wrong of me. It is foolish to give people any pleasure by telling them of one's troubles. However, I promise you that I won't give your mother this satisfaction a second time. I have been thinking matters over, and the house may topple down on our heads before I'll go whimpering to anyone again.'
From that time he never made any disparaging remarks about the management of the house or scolded his wife in the presence of strangers, but professed himself, as formerly, the happiest of men. This effort of sound sense cost him little, for he saw that it would tend to his comfort, which was the object of his constant thoughts. He even exaggerated his assumption of the part of a contented methodical citizen who took pleasure in living. Marthe only became aware of his impatience by his restless pacing up and down. For whole weeks he refrained from teasing or fault-finding as far as she was concerned, while upon Rose and his children he constantly poured forth his jeers, scolding them too from morning till night for the slightest shortcomings.
Previously he had only been economical, now he became miserly.
'There is no sense in spending money in the way we are doing,' he grumbled to Marthe. 'I'll be bound you are giving it all to those young hussies of yours. But it's quite sufficient for you to waste your time over them. Listen to me, my dear. I will give you a hundred francs a month for housekeeping, and if you will persist in giving money to girls who don't deserve it, you must save it out of your dress allowance.'
He kept firmly to his word, and the very next month he refused to let Marthe buy a pair of boots on the pretext that it would disarrange his accounts, and that he had given her full notice and warning. One evening his wife found him weeping bitterly in their bedroom. All her kindness of heart was aroused, and she clasped him in her arms and besought him to tell her what distressed him. But he roughly tore himself away from her and told her that he was not crying at all, but simply had a bad headache. It was that, said he, which made his eyes red.
'Do you think,' he exclaimed, 'that I am such a simpleton as you are to cry?'
She felt much hurt. The next day Mouret affected great gaiety; but some days afterwards, when Abbé Faujas and his mother came downstairs after dinner, he refused to play his usual game of piquet. He did not feel clear-headed enough for it, he said. On the next few nights he made other excuses, and so the games were broken off, and everyone went out on the terrace. Mouret seated himself in front of his wife and the Abbé, doing all he could to speak as much and as frequently as possible; while Madame Faujas sat a few yards away in the gloom, quite silent and still, with her hands upon her knees, like one of those legendary figures keeping guard over a treasure with the stern fidelity of a crouching dog.
'Fine evening!' Mouret used to say every night. 'It is much pleasanter here than in the dining-room. It is very wise of you to come out and enjoy the fresh air. Ah! there's a shooting-star! Did your reverence see it? I've heard say that it's Saint Peter lighting his pipe up yonder.'
He laughed, but Marthe kept quite grave, vexed by his attempts at pleasantry, which spoilt her enjoyment of the expanse of sky that spread between Monsieur Rastoil's pear-trees and the chestnuts of the Sub-Prefecture. Sometimes he would pretend to be unaware that she conformed with the requirements of religion, and he would take the Abbé aside and tell him that he relied on him to effect the salvation of the whole house. At other times he could never begin a sentence without saying in a bantering tone, 'Now that my wife goes to confession—' Then having grown tired of this subject, he began to listen to what was being said in the neighbouring gardens, trying to catch the faint sounds of voices which rose in the calm night air, as the distant noises of Plassans were hushed.
'Ah! those are the voices of Monsieur de Condamin and Doctor Porquier!' he said, straining his ear towards the Sub-Prefecture. 'They are making fun of the Paloques. Did you hear Monsieur Delangre saying in his falsetto, "Ladies, you had better come in, the air is growing cool"? Don't you think that little Delangre always talks as though he had swallowed a reed-pipe?'
Then he turned his head towards the Rastoils' garden.
'They haven't anyone there to-night,' he said; 'I can't hear anything. Ah, yes! those big geese the daughters are by the waterfall. The elder one talks just as though she were gobbling pebbles. Every evening they sit there jabbering for a good hour. They can't want all that time to tell each other about the matrimonial offers they have had. Ah! they are all there! There's Abbé Surin, with a voice like a flute; and Abbé Fenil, who would do for a rattle on Good Friday. There are sometimes a score of them huddled together, without stirring a finger, in that garden. I believe they all go there to listen to what we say.'
While he went chattering on in this manner Abbé Faujas and Marthe merely spoke a few words, chiefly in reply to his questions. Generally they sat apart from him with their faces raised to the sky and their eyes gazing into space. One evening Mouret fell asleep. Then, inclining their heads towards each other, they began to talk in subdued tones; while some few yards away, Madame Faujas, with her hands upon her knees, her eyes wide open and her ears on the strain, yet never seeing or hearing anything, seemed to be keeping watch for them.