The summer passed away, and Abbé Faujas seemed in no hurry to derive any advantage from his increasing popularity. He still kept himself in seclusion at the Mourets', delighting in the solitude of the garden, to which he now came down during the day-time. He read his breviary as he slowly walked with bent head up and down the green arbour at the far end. Sometimes he would close his book, still further slacken his steps, and seem to be buried in deep reverie. Mouret, who used to watch him, at last became impatient and irritated at seeing that black figure walking to and fro for hours together behind his fruit-trees.
'One has no privacy left,' he muttered. 'I can't lift my eyes now without catching sight of that cassock. He is like a crow, that fellow there, with his round eyes that always seem to be on the look-out for something. I don't believe in his fine disinterested airs.'
It was not till early in September that the Home of the Virgin was completed. In the provinces workmen are painfully slow; though it must be stated that the lady patronesses had twice upset Monsieur Lieutaud's designs in favour of ideas of their own. When the committee took possession of the building they rewarded the architect for the complaisance he had manifested by lavishing the highest praises upon him. Everything seemed to them perfectly satisfactory. The rooms were large, the communications were excellent, and there was a courtyard planted with trees and embellished with two small fountains. Madame de Condamin was particularly charmed with the fa?ade, which was one of her own ideas. Over the door, the words 'Home of the Virgin' were carved in gold letters on a slab of black marble.
On the occasion of the opening of the Home there was a very affecting ceremony. The Bishop, attended by the Chapter, came in person to install the Sisters of Saint Joseph, who had been authorised to work the institution. A troop of some fifty girls of from eight to fifteen years of age had been collected together from the streets of the old quarter of the town, and all that had been required from the parents to obtain admission for their children had been a declaration that their avocations necessitated their absence from home during the entire day. Monsieur Delangre made a speech which was much applauded. He explained at considerable length, and in a magnificent style, the details and arrangements of this new refuge, which he called 'the school of virtue and labour, where young and interesting creatures would be kept safe from wicked temptations.' A delicate allusion, towards the end of the speech, to the real promoter of the Home, Abbé Faujas, attracted much notice. The Abbé was present amongst the other priests, and his fine, grave face remained perfectly calm and tranquil when all eyes were turned upon him. Marthe blushed on the platform, where she was sitting in the midst of the lady patronesses.
When the ceremony was over, the Bishop expressed a desire to inspect the building in every detail; and, notwithstanding the evident annoyance of Abbé Fenil, he sent for Abbé Faujas, whose big black eyes had never for a moment quitted him, and requested him to be good enough to act as his guide, adding aloud with a smile, that he was sure he could not find a better one. This little speech was circulated amongst the departing spectators, and in the evening all Plassans commented upon the Bishop's favourable demeanour towards Abbé Faujas.
The lady patronesses had reserved for themselves one of the rooms in the Home. Here they provided a collation for the Bishop, who ate a biscuit and drank two sips of Malaga, while saying a polite word or two to each of them. This brought the pious festival to a happy conclusion, for both before and during the ceremony there had been heart-burnings and rivalries among the ladies, whom the delicate praises of Monseigneur Rousselot quite restored to good humour. When they were left to themselves, they declared that everything had gone off exceedingly well, and they profusely praised the Bishop. Madame Paloque alone looked sour. The prelate had somehow forgotten her when he was distributing his compliments.
'You were quite right,' she said in a fury to her husband, when she got home again; 'I have just been made a convenience in that silly nonsense of theirs. It's a fine idea, indeed, to bring all those corrupt hussies together. I have given up all my time to them, and that big simpleton of a Bishop, who trembles before his own clergy, can't even say thank you. Just as if that Madame de Condamin had done anything, indeed. She is far too much occupied in showing off her dresses! Ah! we know quite enough about her, don't we? The world will hear something about her one of these days that will surprise it a little! Thank goodness, we've nothing to conceal. And that Madame Delangre and Madame Rastoil, too—well, it wouldn't be difficult to tell tales about them that would cover them with blushes! And they never stirred out of their drawing-rooms, they haven't taken half the trouble about the matter that I have! Then there's that Madame Mouret, with her pretence of managing the whole business, though she really did nothing but hang on to the cassock of her Abbé Faujas! She's another hypocrite of whom we shall hear some pretty things one of these days! And yet they could all get a polite speech, while there wasn't a word for me! I'm nothing but a mere convenience, they treat me like a dog! But things sha'n't go on like this, Paloque, I tell you. The dog will turn and bite them before long!'
From that time forward Madame Paloque showed herself much less accommodating. She became very irregular in her secretarial work, and declined to perform any duties that she did not fancy, till at last the lady patronesses began to talk of employing a paid secretary. Marthe mentioned these worries to Abbé Faujas and asked him if he could recommend a suitable man.
'Don't trouble yourself to look for anyone,' he said, 'I dare say I can find you a fit person. Give me two or three days.'
For some time past he had been frequently receiving letters bearing the Besan?on postmark, They were all in the same handwriting, a large, ugly hand. Rose, who took them up to him, remarked that he seemed vexed at the mere sight of the envelopes.
'He looks quite put out,' she said. 'You may depend upon it that it's no great favourite of his who writes to him so often.'
Mouret's old curiosity was roused by this correspondence. One day he took up one of the letters himself with a pleasant smile, telling the Abbé, as an excuse for his own appearance, that Rose was not in the house. The Abbé probably saw through Mouret's cunning, for he assumed an expression of great pleasure, as though he had been impatiently expecting the letter. But Mouret did not allow himself to be deceived by this piece of acting, he stayed outside the door on the landing and glued his ear to the key-hole.
'From your sister again, isn't it?' asked Madame Faujas, in her hard voice. 'Why does she worry you in that way?'
There was a short silence, after which came a sound of paper being roughly crumpled, and the Abbé said, with evident displeasure:
'It's always the same old story. She wants to come to us and bring her husband with her, so that we may get him a situation somewhere. She seems to think that we are wallowing in gold. I'm afraid they will be doing something rash—perhaps taking us by surprise some fine morning.'
'No, no! we can't do with them here, Ovide!' his mother replied. 'They have never liked you; they have always been jealous of you. Trouche is a scamp and Olympe is quite heartless. They would want everything for themselves, and they would compromise you and interfere with your work.'
Mouret was too much excited by the meanness of the act he was committing to be able to hear well, and, besides, he thought that one of them was coming to the door, so he hurried away. He took care not to mention what he had done. A few days later Abbé Faujas, in his presence, while they were all out on the terrace, gave Marthe a definite reply respecting the Secretaryship at the Home.
'I think I can recommend you a suitable person,' he said, in his calm way. 'It is a connection of my own, my brother-in-law, who is coming here from Besan?on in a few days.'
Mouret became very attentive, while Marthe appeared delighted.
'Oh, that is excellent!' she exclaimed. 'I was feeling very much bothered about finding a suitable person. You see, with all those young girls, we must have a person of unexceptionable morality, but of course a connection of yours—'
'Yes, yes,' interrupted the priest; 'my sister had a little hosiery business at Besan?on, which she has been obliged to give up on account of her health; and now she is anxious to join us again, as the doctors have ordered her to live in the south. My mother is very much pleased.'
'I'm sure she must be,' said Marthe. 'I dare say it grieved you very much to have to separate, and you will be very glad to be together again. I'll tell you what you must do. There are a couple of rooms upstairs that you don't use; why shouldn't your sister and her husband have them? They have no children, have they?'
'No, there are only their two selves. I had, indeed, thought for a moment of giving them those two rooms; but I was afraid of displeasing you by bringing other people into your house.'
'Not at all, I assure you. You are very quiet people.'
She checked herself suddenly, for her husband was tugging at her dress. He did not want to have the Abbé's relations in the house, for he remembered in what terms Madame Faujas had spoken of her daughter and son-in-law.
'The rooms are very small,' he began; 'and Monsieur l'Abbé would be inconvenienced. It would be better for all parties that his sister should take lodgings somewhere else; there happen to be some rooms vacant just now at the Paloques' house, over the way.'
There was a dead pause in the conversation. The priest said nothing, but gazed up into the sky. Marthe thought he was offended, and she felt much distressed at her husband's bluntness. After a moment she could no longer endure the embarrassing silence. 'Well, it's settled then,' she said, without any attempt at skill in knitting the broken threads of the conversation together again, 'Rose shall help your mother to clean the rooms. My husband was only thinking about your own personal convenience; but, of course, if you wish it, it is not for us to prevent you from disposing of the rooms in any way you like.'
Mouret was quite angry when he again found himself alone with his wife.
'I can't understand you at all!' he cried. 'When first I let the rooms to the Abbé, you were quite displeased, and seemed to hate the thought of having even so much as a cat brought into the house; and now I believe you would be perfectly willing for the Abbé to bring the whole of his relations, down to his third and fourth cousins. Didn't you feel me tugging at your dress? You might have known that I didn't want those people. They are not very respectable folks.'
'How do you know that?' cried Marthe, annoyed by this accusation. 'Who told you so?'
'Who, indeed? It was Abbé Faujas himself. I overheard him one day while he was talking to his mother.'
She looked at him keenly; and he blushed slightly beneath her gaze as he stammered:
'Well, it is sufficient that I do know. The sister is a heartless creature and her husband is a scamp. It's of no use your putting on that air of insulted majesty; those were their own words, and I'm inventing nothing. I don't want to have those people here, do you understand? The old lady herself was the first to object to her daughter coming here. The Abbé now seems to have changed his mind. I don't know what has led him to alter his opinion. It's some fresh mystery of his. He's going to make use of them somehow.'
Marthe shrugged her shoulders and allowed her husband to rail on. He told Rose not to clean the rooms, but Rose now only obeyed her mistress's orders. For five days his anger vented itself in bitter words and furious recriminations. In Abbé Faujas's presence he confined himself to sulking, for he did not dare to attack the priest openly. Then, as usual, he ended by submitting, and ceased to rail at the people who were coming. But he drew his purse-strings still tighter, isolated himself, shut himself up more and more in his own selfish existence. When the Trouches arrived one October evening, he merely exclaimed:
'The deuce! they don't look a nice couple. What faces they have!'
Abbé Faujas did not appear very desirous that his sister and brother-in-law should be seen on that occasion. His mother took up a position by the street-door, and as soon as she caught sight of them turning out of the Place of the Sub-Prefecture, she glanced uneasily behind her into the hall and the kitchen. Luck was, however, against her, for just as the Trouches arrived, Marthe, who was going out, came up from the garden, followed by her children.
'Ah! there you all are!' she said, with a pleasant smile.
Madame Faujas, who was generally so completely mistress of herself, could not suppress a slight show of confusion as she stammered a word or two of reply. For some moments they stood confronting and scrutinising each other in the hall. Mouret had hurriedly mounted the steps and Rose had taken up her position at the kitchen door.
'You must be very glad to be together again,' said Marthe, addressing Madame Faujas.
Then, noticing the feeling of embarrassment which was keeping them all silent, she turned towards Trouche and added:
'You arrived by the five o'clock train, I suppose? How long were you in getting here from Besan?on?'
'Seventeen hours in the train,' Trouche replied, opening a toothless mouth. 'It is no joke that, in a third-class carriage, I can tell you. One gets pretty well shaken up inside.'
Then he laughed with a peculiar clattering of his jaws. Madame Faujas cast a very angry glance at him, and he began to fumble mechanically at his greasy overcoat, trying to fasten a button that was no longer there, and pressing to his thighs (doubtless in order to hide some stains) a couple of cardboard bonnet-boxes which he was carrying, one green and the other yellow. His red throat was perpetually gurgling beneath a twisted, ragged black neckcloth, over which appeared the edge of a dirty shirt. In his wrinkled face, which seemed to reek with vice, there glistened two little black eyes that rolled about incessantly, examining everybody and everything with an expression of astonishment and covetousness. They looked like the eyes of a thief studying a house to which he means to return in order to plunder it some night.
Mouret fancied that Trouche was examining the fastenings.
'That fellow,' he thought to himself, 'looks as though he were getting the patterns of the locks into his head!'
Olympe was conscious that her husband had made a vulgar remark. She was a tall, slight woman, fair and faded, with a flat plain face. She carried a little deal box and a big bundle tied up in a tablecloth.
'We have brought some pillows with us,' she said, glancing at the bundle. 'Pillows come in very usefully in a third-class carriage; they make one quite as comfortable as if one were travelling first-class. It is a great saving, going third, and it is of no use throwing money away, is it?'
'Certainly not,' Marthe replied, somewhat surprised by the appearance and language of the new-comers.
Olympe now came forward and went on talking in an ingratiating way.
'It's the same thing with clothes,' said she; 'when I set off on a journey I put on my shabbiest things. I told Honoré that his old overcoat was quite good enough. And he has got his old work-day trousers on too, trousers that he's quite tired of wearing. You see I selected my worse dress; it is actually in holes, I believe. This shawl was mother's; I used to iron on it at home; and this bonnet I'm wearing is an old one that I only put on when I go to the wash-house; but it's quite good enough to get spoilt with the dust, isn't it, madame?'
'Certainly, certainly,' replied Marthe, trying to force a smile.
Just at this moment a stern voice was heard from the top of the stairs, calling sharply: 'Well! now, mother!'
Mouret raised his head and saw Abbé Faujas leaning against the second-floor banisters, looking very angry, and bending over, at the risk of falling, to get a better view of what was going on in the passage. He had heard a sound of talking and had been waiting there for a moment or two in great impatience.
'Come, mother, come!' he cried again.
'Yes, yes, we are coming up,' answered Madame Faujas, trembling at the sound of her son's angry voice.
Then turning to the Trouches, she said:
'Come along, my children, we must go upstairs. Let us leave madame to attend to her business.'
But the Trouches did not seem to hear; they appeared quite satisfied to remain in the passage, and they looked about them with a well-pleased air, as though the house had just been presented to them.
'It is very nice, very nice indeed, isn't it, Honoré?' Olympe said. 'After what Ovide wrote in his letters we scarcely expected to find it so nice as this, did we? But I told you that we ought to come here, and that we should do better here, and I am right, you see.'
'Yes, yes, we ought to be very comfortable here,' Trouche murmured. 'The garden, too, seems a pretty big one.'
Then addressing Mouret, he inquired:
'Do you allow your lodgers to walk in the garden, sir?'
Before Mouret had time to reply, Abbé Faujas, who had come downstairs, cried out in thundering tones:
'Come, Trouche! Come, Olympe!'
They turned round; and when they saw him standing on the steps looking terribly angry, they fairly quailed and meekly followed him. The Abbé went up the stairs in front of them without saying another word, without even seeming to observe the presence of Mouret, who stood gazing after the singular procession. Madame Faujas smiled at Marthe to take away the awkwardness of the situation as she brought up the rear.
Marthe then went out, and Mouret, left to himself, lingered a moment or two in the passage. Upstairs, on the second floor, doors were being noisily banged. Then loud voices were heard, and presently there came dead silence.
'Has he locked them up separately, I wonder?' said Mouret to himself, with a laugh. 'Well, anyhow, they are not a nice family.'
On the very next day, Trouche, respectably dressed, entirely in black, shaven, and with his scanty hair carefully brushed over his temples, was presented by Abbé Faujas to Marthe and the lady patronesses. He was forty-five years of age, wrote a first-rate hand, and was said to have kept the books of a mercantile house for a long time. The ladies at once installed him as secretary. His duties were to represent the committee, and employ himself in certain routine work from ten till four in an office on the first floor of the Home. His salary was to be fifteen hundred francs.
'Those good people are very quiet, you see,' Marthe remarked to her husband a few days afterwards.
Indeed the Trouches made no more noise than the Faujases. Two or three times Rose asserted that she had heard quarrels between the mother and daughter, but the Abbé's grave voice had immediately restored peace. Trouche went out every morning punctually at a quarter to ten, and came back again at a quarter past four. He never went out in the evening. Olympe occasionally went shopping with Madame Faujas, but she was never seen to come down the stairs by herself.
The window of the room in which the Trouches slept overlooked the garden. It was the last one on the right, in front of the trees of the Sub-Prefecture. Big curtains of red calico, with a yellow border, hung behind the glass panes, making a strong contrast, when seen from outside, with the priest's white ones. The window was invariably kept closed. One evening when Abbé Faujas and his mother were out on the terrace with the Mourets, a slight involuntary cough was heard, and as the priest raised his head with an expression of annoyance, he caught sight of Olympe and her husband leaning out of the window. For a moment or two he kept his eyes turned upwards, thus interrupting his conversation with Marthe. At this the Trouches disappeared; and those below heard the window-catch being fastened.
'You had better go upstairs, I think, mother,' said the priest. 'I am afraid you may be catching cold out here.'
Madame Faujas wished them all good-night; and, when she had retired, Marthe resumed the conversation by asking in her kindly way:
'Is your sister worse? I have not seen her for a week.'
'She has great need of rest,' the priest curtly answered.
However, Marthe's sympathetic interest made her continue the subject.
'She shuts herself up too much,' said she; 'the fresh air would do her good. These October evenings are still quite warm. Why doesn't she ever come out into the garden? She has never set foot in it. You know that it is entirely at your disposal.'
The priest muttered a few vague words of excuse, and then Mouret, to increase his embarrassment, manifested still greater amiability than his wife's.
That's just what I was saying this morning,' he began. 'Monsieur l'Abbé's sister might very well bring her sewing out here in the sun in the afternoons, instead of keeping herself shut in upstairs. Anyone would think that she daren't even show herself at the window. She isn't frightened of us, I hope! We are not such terrible people as all that! And Monsieur Trouche, too, he hurries up the stairs, four steps at a time. Tell them to come and spend an evening with us now and then. They must be frightfully dull up in that room of theirs, all alone.'
The Abbé did not seem to be in the humour that evening to submit to his landlord's pleasantry. He looked him straight in the face, and said very bluntly:
'I am much obliged to you, but there is little probability of their accepting your invitation. They are tired in the evening, and they go to bed. And, besides, that is the best thing they can do.'
'Just as they like, my dear sir,' replied Mouret, vexed by the Abbé's rough manner.
When he was alone again with Marthe, he said to her: 'Does the Abbé, I wonder, think he can persuade us that the moon is made of green cheese? It's quite clear that he is afraid that those scamps he has taken in will play him some bad trick or other. Didn't you see how sharply he kept his eye on them this evening when he caught sight of them at the window? They were spying out at us up there. There will be a bad end to all this!'
Marthe was now living in a state of blessed calm. She no longer felt troubled by Mouret's raillery; the gradual growth of faith within her filled her with exquisite joy, she glided softly and slowly into a life of pious devotion, which seemed to lull her with a sweet restfulness. Abbé Faujas still avoided speaking to her of God. He remained merely a friend, simply exercising influence over her by his grave demeanour and the vague odour of incense exhaled by his cassock. On two or three occasions when she was alone with him she had again broken out into fits of nervous sobbing, without knowing why, but finding a happiness in thus allowing herself to weep. On each of these occasions the Abbé had merely taken her hands in silence, calming her with his serene and authoritative gaze. When she wanted to tell him of her strange attacks of sadness, or her secret joys, or her need of guidance, he smiled and hushed her, telling her that these matters were not his concern, and that she must speak of them to Abbé Bourrette. Then she retired completely within herself and remained trembling; while the priest seemed to assume still colder reserve than before, and strode away from her like some unheeding god at whose feet she wished to pour out her soul in humiliation.
Marthe's chief occupation now was attending the various religious services and works in which she took part. In the vast nave of Saint-Saturnin's she felt perfectly happy; it was there that she experienced the full sweetness of that purely physical restfulness which she sought. She there forgot everything: it was like an immense window open upon another life, a life that was wide and infinite, and full of an emotion which thrilled and satisfied her. But she still felt some fear of the church, and she went there with a feeling of uneasy bashfulness, and a touch of nervous shame, that made her glance behind her as she passed through the doorway, to see if anyone was watching her. Then, once inside, she abandoned herself, everything around her seemed to assume a melting softness, even the unctuous voice of Abbé Bourrette, who, after he had confessed her, sometimes kept her on her knees for a few minutes longer, while he spoke to her about Madame Rastoil's dinners or the Rougons' last reception.
Marthe often returned home in a condition of complete prostration. Religion seemed to break her down. Rose had become all-powerful in the house. She scolded Mouret, found fault with him because he dirtied too much linen, and let him have his dinner at her own hours. She even tried to convert him.
'Madame does quite right to live a Christian life,' said she. 'You will be damned, sir, you will, and it will only be right, for you are not a good man at heart, no, you are not! You ought to go with your wife to mass next Sunday morning.'
Mouret shrugged his shoulders. He let things take their own course, and sometimes even did a bit of house-work himself, taking a turn or two with the broom when he thought that the dining-room looked particularly dusty. The children gave him most trouble. It was vacation-time, and, as their mother was scarcely ever at home, Désirée and Octave—who had again failed in his examination for his degree—turned the place upside down. Serge was poorly, kept his bed, and spent whole days in reading in his room. He had become Abbé Faujas's favourite, and the priest lent him books. Mouret thus spent two dreadful months, at his wits' end how to manage his young folks. Octave was a special trouble to him, and as he did not feel inclined to keep him at home till the end of the vacation, he determined that he should not again return to college, but should be sent to some business-house at Marseilles.
'Since you won't look after them at all,' he said to Marthe, 'I must find some place or other to put them in. I am quite worn out with them all, and I won't have them at home any longer. It's your own fault if it causes you any grief. Octave is quite unbearable. He will never pass his examination, and it will be much better to teach him at once how to gain his own living instead of letting him idle his time away with a lot of good-for-nothings. One meets him roaming all over the town.'
Marthe was very much distressed. She seemed to awake from a dream on hearing that one of her children was about to leave her. She succeeded in getting the departure postponed for a week, during which she remained more at home, and resumed her active life. But she quickly dropped back again into her previous state of listless languor; and on the day that Octave came to kiss her, telling her that he was to leave for Marseilles in the evening, she had lost all strength and energy, and contented herself with giving him some good advice.
Mouret came back from the railway station with a very heavy heart. He looked about him for his wife, and found her in the garden, crying under the arbour. Then he gave vent to his feelings.
'There! that's one the less!' he exclaimed. 'You ought to feel glad of it. You will be able to go prowling about the church now as much as you like. Make your mind easy, the other two won't be here long. I shall keep Serge with me as he is a very quiet lad and is rather young as yet to go and read for the bar; but if he's at all in your way, just let me know, and I will free you of him at once. As for Désirée, I shall send her to her nurse.'
Marthe went on weeping in silence.
'But what would you have?' he continued. 'You can't be both in and out. Since you have taken to keeping away from home, your children have become indifferent to you. That's logic, isn't it? Besides it is necessary to find room for all the people who are now living in our house. It isn't nearly big enough, and we shall be lucky if we don't get turned out of doors ourselves.'
He had raised his eyes as he spoke, and was looking at the windows of the second-floor. Then, lowering his voice, he added:
Don't go on crying in that ridiculous way! They are watching you. Don't you see those eyes peeping between the red curtains? They are the eyes of the Abbé's sister; I know them well enough. You may depend on seeing them there all day long. The Abbé himself may be a decent fellow, but as for those Trouches, I know they are always crouching behind their curtains like wolves waiting to spring on one. I feel quite certain that if the Abbé didn't prevent them, they would come down in the night to steal my pears. Dry your tears, my dear; you may be quite sure that they are enjoying our disagreement. Even though they have been the cause of the boy's going away, that is no reason why we should let them see what a trouble his departure has been to us both.'
His voice broke, and he himself seemed on the point of sobbing. Marthe, quite heart-broken, deeply touched by his last words, was prompted to throw herself into his arms. But they were afraid of being observed; and besides they felt as if there were some obstacle between them that prevented them from coming together. So they separated, while Olympe's eyes still glistened between the red curtains upstairs.
One morning Abbé Bourrette made his appearance, his face betokening the greatest distress. As soon as he caught sight of Marthe on the steps, he hurried up to her and, seizing her hands and pressing them, he stammered:
'Poor Compan! it is all over with him! he is dying! I am going upstairs, I must see Faujas at once.'
When Marthe showed him his fellow priest, who, according to his wont, was walking to and fro at the bottom of the garden, reading his breviary, he ran up to him, tottering on his short legs. He tried to speak and tell the other the sad news, but his grief choked him, and he could only throw his arms round Abbé Faujas's neck, while sobbing bitterly.
'Hullo! what's the matter with the two parsons?' cried Mouret, who had hastily rushed out of the dining-room.
'The Curé of Saint-Saturnin's is dying,' Marthe replied, showing much distress.
Mouret assumed an expression of surprise, and, as he went back into the house, he murmured:
'Pooh! that worthy Bourrette will manage to console himself to-morrow when he is appointed Curé in the other's place. He counts on getting the post; he told me so.'
Abbé Faujas disengaged himself from the old priest's embrace, quietly closed his breviary, and listened to the sad news with a grave face.
'Compan wants to see you,' said Abbé Bourrette in a broken voice; 'he will not last the morning out. Oh! he has been a dear friend to me! We studied together. He is anxious to say good-bye to you. He has been telling me all through the night that you were the only man of courage in the diocese. For more than a year now he has been getting weaker and weaker, and not a single Plassans priest has dared to go and grasp his hand; while you, a stranger, who scarcely knew him, you have spent an afternoon with him every week. The tears came into his eyes just now as he was speaking of you; you must lose no time, my friend.'
Abbé Faujas went up to his room for a moment, while Abbé Bourrette paced impatiently and hopelessly about the passage; and then at last they set off together. The old priest wiped his brow and swayed about on the road as he talked in disconnected fashion:
'He would have died like a dog without a single prayer being said for him if his sister had not come and told me about him at eleven o'clock last night. She did quite right, the dear lady, though he did not want to compromise any of us, and even would have foregone the last sacraments. Yes, my friend, he was dying all alone, abandoned and deserted, he who had so high a mind, and who has only lived to do good!'
Then Bourrette became silent; but after a few moments he resumed again in a different voice:
Do you think that Fenil will ever forgive me for this? Never, I expect! When Compan saw me bringing the viaticum, he was unwilling to let me anoint him and told me to go away. Well, well! it's all over with me now, and I shall never be Curé! But I am glad that I did it, and that I haven't let Compan die like a dog. He has been at war with Fenil for thirty years, you know. When he took to his bed he said to me, "Ah! it's Fenil who is going to carry the day! Now that I am stricken down he will get the better of me!" So think of it! That poor Compan, whom I have seen so high-spirited and energetic at Saint-Saturnin's! Little Eusèbe, the choir-boy, whom I took to ring the viaticum bell, was quite embarrassed when he found where we were going. He kept looking behind him at each tinkle, as if he was afraid that Fenil would hear it.'
Abbé Faujas, who was stepping along quickly with bent head and a preoccupied air, kept perfectly silent, and did not even seem to hear what his companion was saying.
'Has the Bishop been informed?' he suddenly asked.
But Abbé Bourrette in his turn now appeared to be buried in thought and made no reply; however, just as they reached Abbé Compan's door he said to his companion:
'Tell him that we met Fenil and that he bowed to us. It will please him, for he will then think that I shall be appointed Curé.'
They went up the stairs in silence. The Curé's sister came to the landing, and on seeing them burst into tears. Then she stammered between her sobs:
'It is all over! He has just passed away in my arms. I was quite alone with him. As he was dying, he looked round him and murmured, "I must have the plague since they have all deserted me." Ah! gentlemen he died with his eyes full of tears.'
They went into the little room where Abbé Compan, with his head resting on his pillow, seemed to be asleep. His eyes had remained open, and tears yet trickled down his white sad face. Then Abbé Bourrette fell upon his knees, sobbing and praying, with his face pressed to the counterpane. Abbé Faujas at first remained standing, gazing at the dead man; and after having knelt for a moment, he quietly went away. Abbé Bourrette was so absorbed in his grief that he did not even hear his colleague close the door.
Abbé Faujas went straight to the Bishop's. In Monseigneur Rousselot's ante-chamber he met Abbé Surin, carrying a bundle of papers.
'Do you want to speak to his lordship?' asked the secretary, with his never-failing smile. 'You have come at an unfortunate time. His lordship is so busy that he has given orders that no one is to be admitted.'
'But I want to see him on a very urgent matter,' quietly said Abbé Faujas. 'You can at any rate let him know that I am here; and I will wait, if it is necessary.'
'I am afraid that it would be useless for you to wait. His lordship has several people with him. It would be better if you came again to-morrow.'
But the Abbé took a chair, and just as he was doing so the Bishop opened the door of his study. He appeared much vexed on seeing his visitor, whom at first he pretended not to recognise.
'My son,' he said to Surin, 'when you have arranged those papers, come to me immediately; there is a letter I want to dictate to you.'
Then turning to the priest, who remained respectfully standing, he said:
'Ah! is it you, Monsieur Faujas? I am very glad to see you. Perhaps you want to say something to me? Come into my study; you are never in the way.'
Monseigneur Rousselot's study was a very large and rather gloomy room, in which a great wood fire was kept burning in the summer as well as the winter. The heavy carpet and curtains kept out all the air, and the room was like a warm bath. The Bishop, like some dowager shutting herself up from the world, detesting all noise and excitement, lived a chilly life there in his armchair, committing to Abbé Fenil the care of his diocese. He delighted in the classics, and it was said that he was secretly making a translation of Horace. He was equally fond of the little verses of the Anthology, and broad quotations occasionally escaped from his lips, quotations which he enjoyed with the na?veté of a learned man who cares nothing for the modesty of the vulgar.
'There is no one here, you see,' said he, sitting down before the fire; 'but I don't feel very well to-day, and I gave orders that nobody was to be admitted. Now you can tell me what you have to say; I am quite at your service.'
His general expression of amiability was tinged with a kind of vague uneasiness, a sort of resigned submission. When Abbé Faujas had informed him of the death of Abbé Compan, he rose from his chair, apparently both distressed and alarmed.
'What!' he cried, 'my good Compan dead! and I was not able to bid him farewell! No one gave me any warning! Ah, my friend, you were right when you gave me to understand that I was no longer master here. They abuse my kindness.'
'Your lordship knows,' said Abbé Faujas, 'how devoted I am to you. I am only waiting for a sign from you.'
The Bishop shook his head as he murmured:
'Yes, yes; I remember the offer you made to me. You have an excellent heart; but what an uproar there would be, if I were to break with Abbé Fenil! I should have my ears deafened for a whole week! And yet if I could feel quite sure that you could really rid me of him, if I was not afraid that at a week's end he would come back and crush your neck under his heel——'
Abbé Faujas could not repress a smile. Tears were welling from the Bishop's eyes.
'Yes, I am afraid, I am afraid,' the prelate resumed, as he again sank down into his chair. 'I don't feel equal to it yet. It is that miserable man who has killed Compan and has kept his death agony a secret from me so that I might not go and close his eyes. He is capable of the most terrible things. But, you see, I like to live in peace. Fenil is very energetic and he renders me great services in the diocese. When I am no longer here, matters will perhaps be better ordered.'
He grew calmer again and his smile returned.
'Besides, everything is going on satisfactorily at present, and I don't see any immediate difficulty. We can wait.'
Abbé Faujas sat down, and calmly resumed:
'No doubt: but still you will have to appoint a Curé for Saint-Saturnin's in succession to the Abbé Compan.'
Monseigneur Rousselot lifted his hands to his temples with an expression of hopelessness.
'Indeed, you are right!' he ejaculated. 'I had forgotten that. Poor Compan doesn't know in what a hole he has put me, by dying so suddenly without my having had any warning. I promised you that place, didn't I?'
The Abbé bowed.
'Well, my friend, you will save me by letting me take back my word. You know how Fenil detests you. The success of the Home of the Virgin has made him quite furious, and he swears that he will prevent you from making the conquest of Plassans. I am talking to you quite openly, you see. Recently, when reference was made to the appointment of a Curé for Saint-Saturnin's, I let your name fall. But Fenil flew into a frightful rage and I was obliged to promise that I would give the place to a friend of his, Abbé Chardon, whom you know, and who is really a very worthy man. Now, my friend, do this much for me, and give up that idea. I will make you whatever recompense you like to name.'
The priest's face wore a grave expression. After a short interval of silence during which he seemed to be taking counsel of himself, he spoke:
'You know very well, my lord,' he said, 'that I am quite without personal ambition. I should much prefer to lead a life of privacy, and it would be a great relief to me to give up this appointment. But I am not my own master, I feel bound to satisfy those patrons of mine who take an interest in me. I trust that your lordship will reflect very seriously before taking a step which you would probably regret afterwards.'
Although Abbé Faujas spoke very humbly, the Bishop was not unconscious of the menace which his words veiled. He rose from his chair and took a few steps about the room, a prey to the painful perplexity.
'Well, well,' he said, lifting his hands, 'here's trouble and no mistake, for a long time. I should much have preferred to avoid all these explanations, but, since you insist, I must speak frankly. Well, my dear sir, Abbé Fenil brings many charges against you. As I think I told you before, he must have written to Besan?on and learnt all the vexatious stories you know of. You have certainly explained those matters to me, and I am quite aware of your merits and of your life of penitence and solitude; but what can I do? Fenil has weapons against you and he uses them ruthlessly. I often don't know what to say in your defence. When the Minister requested me to receive you into my diocese, I did not conceal from him that your position would be a difficult one; but he continued to press me and said that that was your affair, and so in the end I consented. But you must not come to-day and ask me to do what is impossible.'
Abbé Faujas had not lowered his head during the Bishop's remarks. He now raised it still higher as he looked the prelate straight in the face and said in his sharp voice:
'You have given me your promise, my lord.'
Certainly, certainly,' the Bishop replied. 'That poor Compan was getting weaker every day and you came and confided certain matters to me, and I then made the promise to you. I don't deny it. Listen to me, I will tell you everything, so that you may not accuse me of wheeling round like a weathercock. You asserted that the Minister was extremely desirous for you to be appointed Curé of Saint-Saturnin's. Well, I wrote for information on the subject, and a friend of mine went to the Ministry in Paris. They almost laughed in his face there, and they told him that they didn't even know you. The Minister absolutely denies that he is your supporter, do you hear? If you wish it, I will read you a letter in which he makes some very stern remarks about you.'
He stretched his arm towards a drawer, but Abbé Faujas rose to his feet without taking his eyes off him, and smiled with mingled irony and pity.
'Ah, my lord! my lord!' said he.
Then, after a moment's silence, as though he were unwilling to enter into further explanations, he said:
'I give your lordship back your promise; but believe that in all this I was working more for your own advantage than for mine. By-and-by, when it will be too late, you will call my warnings to mind.'
He stepped towards the door, but the Bishop laid his hand upon him and brought him back, saying with an expression of uneasiness:
'What do you mean? Explain yourself, my dear Monsieur Faujas. I know very well that I have not been in favour at Paris since the election of the Marquis de Lagrifoul. But people know me very little if they suppose that I had any hand in the matter. I don't go out of my study twice a month. Do you imagine that they accuse me of having brought about the marquis's return?'
'Yes, I am afraid so,' the priest curtly replied.
'But it is quite absurd! I have never interfered in politics; I live amongst my beloved books. It was Fenil who did it all. I told him a score of times that he would end by compromising me in Paris.'
He checked himself and blushed slightly at having allowed these last words to escape him. Abbé Faujas sat down again and said in a deep voice:
My lord, by those words you have condemned your vicar-general. I have never said otherwise than you have just said. Do not continue to make common cause with him or he will lead you into serious trouble. I have friends in Paris, whatever you may believe. I know that the Marquis de Lagrifoul's election has strongly predisposed the Government against you. Rightly or wrongly, they believe that you are the sole cause of the opposition movement which has manifested itself in Plassans, where the Minister, for special reasons, is most anxious to have a majority. If the Legitimist candidate should again succeed at the next election, it would be very awkward, and I should be considerably alarmed for your comfort.'
'But this is abominable!' cried the unhappy Bishop, rocking himself in his chair; 'I can't prevent the Legitimist candidate from being returned! I haven't got the least influence, and I never mix myself up in these matters at all. Really, there are times when I feel that I should like to shut myself up in a monastery. I could take my books with me, and lead a quiet, peaceful life there. It is Fenil who ought to be Bishop instead of me. If I were to listen to Fenil, I should get on the very worst terms with the Government. I should hearken only to Rome, and tell Paris to mind its own business. But that is not my nature, and I want to die in peace. The Minister, then, you say, is enraged with me?'
The priest made no reply. Two creases which appeared at the corners of his mouth gave his face an expression of silent scorn.
'Really,' continued the Bishop, 'if I thought it would please him if I were to appoint you Curé of Saint-Saturnin's, I would try to manage it. But I can assure you that you are mistaken. You are but little in the odour of sanctity.'
Abbé Faujas made a hasty movement of his hands, as he broke out impatiently:
'Have you forgotten that calumnies are circulated about me, and that I came to Plassans in a threadbare cassock? When they send a compromised man to a post of danger, they deny all knowledge of him till the day of triumph. Help me to succeed, my lord, and then you will see that I have friends in Paris.'
Then, as the Bishop, surprised to find in a priest such a bold adventurer, continued to gaze at him in silence, Faujas lapsed into a less assertive manner and continued:
'These, however, are suppositions, and what I mean is, that I have much to be pardoned. My friends are waiting to thank you till my position is completely established.'
Monseigneur Rousselot kept silence for a moment longer. He was a man of sharp understanding, and he had gained a knowledge of human failings from books. He was conscious of his own yielding character, and he was even a little ashamed of it; but he consoled himself for it by judging men for what they were worth. In the life of a learned epicurean, which he led, there were times when he felt supreme disdain for the ambitious men about him, who fought amongst themselves for a few stray shreds of his power.
'Well,' he said, with a smile, 'you are a pertinacious man, my dear Monsieur Faujas, and since I have made you a promise I will keep it. Six months ago, I confess, I should have been afraid of stirring up all Plassans against me, but you have succeeded in making yourself liked, and the ladies of the town often speak to me about you in very eulogistic terms. In appointing you Curé of Saint-Saturnin's, I am only paying the debt which we owe you for the Home of the Virgin.'
The Bishop had recovered his usual pleasant amiability and charming manner. Just at this moment Abbé Surin put his handsome head through the doorway.
'No, my child,' said the Bishop to him, 'I shall not dictate that letter to you. I have no further need of you, and you can go.'
'Abbé Fenil is here,' muttered the young priest.
'Oh, very well, let him wait!'
Monseigneur Rousselot winced slightly; but he spoke to his secretary with an almost ludicrous expression of decision, and looked at Abbé Faujas with a glance of intelligence.
'See! go out this way,' he said to him, as he opened a door that was hidden behind a curtain.
He kept the priest standing on the threshold for a moment, and continued to look at him with a smile on his face.
'Fenil will be furious,' said he; 'but you will promise to defend me against him if he is too hard upon me! I am making him your enemy, I warn you of that. I am counting upon you, too, to prevent the re-election of the Marquis de Lagrifoul. Ah! it is upon you that I am leaning now, my dear Monsieur Faujas.'
He waved his white hand to the Abbé, and then returned with an appearance of perfect unconcern to the warmth of his study. The priest had remained bowing, feeling surprised at the quite feminine ease with which the Bishop changed his master and yielded to the stronger side. And only now did he begin to feel that Monseigneur Rousselot had been secretly laughing at him, even as he laughed at Abbé Fenil in that downy armchair of his where he read his Horace.
About ten o'clock on the following Thursday, just when the fashionable folks of Plassans were treading on each other's toes in the Rougons' green drawing-room, Abbé Faujas appeared at the door. He looked tall and majestic, there was a bright colour on his cheeks, and he wore a delicate cassock that glistened like satin. His face was still grave, though there was a slight smile upon it, just the pleasant turn of the lips that was necessary to light up his stern countenance with a ray of cheerfulness.
'Ah! here is the dear Curé!' Madame de Condamin gaily exclaimed.
The mistress of the house eagerly hastened up to him; she grasped one of his hands within both her own, and drew him into the middle of the room, with wheedling glances and a gentle swaying of her head.
'This is a surprise! a very pleasant surprise!' she cried. 'It's an age since we have seen you! Is it only when good fortune visits you that you can remember your friends?'
Abbé Faujas bowed with easy composure. All around him there was a flattering ovation, a buzzing of enthusiastic women. Madame Delangre and Madame Rastoil did not wait till he came up to them, but hastened to congratulate him upon his appointment, which had been officially announced that morning. The mayor, the justice of the peace, and even Monsieur de Bourdeu, all stepped up to him and shook his hand heartily.
'Ah, he's a fine fellow and will go a long way!' Monsieur de Condamin murmured into Doctor Porquier's ear. 'I scented him from the first day I saw him. That grimacing old Madame Rougon and he tell no end of lies. I have seen him slipping in here at dusk half a score of times. They must be mixed up in some queer things together.'
Doctor Porquier was terribly afraid of being compromised by Monsieur de Condamin, so he hurried away from him, and came like the others to grasp Abbé Faujas's hand, although he had never previously spoken to him.
The priest's triumphal entry was the great event of the evening. He had now seated himself and was hemmed in by a triple circle of petticoats. He talked with charming good nature on all sorts of subjects, but avoided replying to any hints or allusions. When Félicité directly questioned him, he merely said that he should not occupy the parsonage, as he preferred remaining in the lodgings where he had found himself so comfortable for nearly three years. Marthe was present among the other ladies, and was, as usual, extremely reserved. She had only just smiled at the Abbé, watching him from a distance, and looking the while a little pale and rather weary and uneasy. When he signified his intention of not quitting the Rue Balande, she blushed and rose to go into the small drawing-room as if she felt incommoded by the heat. Madame Paloque, beside whom Monsieur de Condamin had seated himself, said to him quite loud enough to be heard:
'It's very decorous, isn't it? She certainly might refrain from making assignations with him here, since they have the whole day to themselves!'
Only Monsieur de Condamin laughed; everyone else received the sally very coldly. Then Madame Paloque, recognising that she had made a mistake, tried to turn the matter off as a joke. Meantime in the corners of the room the guests were discussing Abbé Fenil. Great curiosity was manifested as to whether he would put in an appearance. Monsieur de Bourdeu, who was one of his friends, said with an air of authority that he was indisposed—a statement which was received by the company with discreet smiles. Everyone was quite aware of the revolution that had taken place at the Bishop's. Abbé Surin gave the ladies some very interesting details of the terrible scene that had taken place between his lordship and the grand-vicar. The latter, on getting the worst of the struggle, had caused it to be reported that he was confined to his room by an attack of gout. But the fight was not over, and Abbé Surin hinted that a good deal more would happen yet, a remark which was whispered about the room with many little exclamations, shakings of heads and expressions of surprise and doubt. For the moment, at any rate, Abbé Faujas was carrying everything before him and so the fair devotees sunned themselves pleasantly in the rays of the rising luminary.
About the middle of the evening Abbé Bourrette arrived. Conversation ceased and people looked at him with curiosity. They all knew that he had expected to be appointed Curé of Saint-Saturnin's himself. He had taken over the Abbé Compan's duties during the latter's long illness, and he had a lien upon the appointment. He lingered for a moment by the door, a little out of breath and with blinking eyes, without being aware of the interest which his appearance excited. Then, catching sight of Abbé Faujas, he eagerly hastened up to him, and seizing both his hands with a show of much pleasure exclaimed:
'Ah! my dear friend, let me congratulate you! I have just come from your rooms, where your mother told me that you were here. I am delighted to see you.'
Abbé Faujas had risen from his seat, and notwithstanding his great self-control, he seemed annoyed, taken by surprise, as it were, by this unexpected display of affection.
'Yes,' he murmured, 'I felt bound to accept his lordship's offer in spite of my lack of merit. I refused it, indeed, at first, mentioning the names of several more deserving priests than myself. I mentioned your own name.'
Abbé Bourrette blinked, and taking Abbé Faujas aside he said to him in low tones:
'His lordship has told me all about it. Fenil, it seems, would not hear of me. He would have set the whole diocese in a blaze if I had been appointed. Those were his very words. My crime is having closed poor Compan's eyes. He demanded, as you know, the appointment of Abbé Chardon, a pious man, no doubt, but not of sufficient reputation. Fenil counted on reigning at Saint-Saturnin's in his name. It was then that his lordship determined to give you the place and checkmate him. I am quite avenged, and I am delighted, my dear friend. Did you know the full story?'
'No, not in all its details.'
'Well, it is all just as I have told you, I can assure you. I have the facts from his lordship's own lips. Between ourselves, he has hinted to me of a very sufficient recompense. The deputy vicar-general, Abbé Vial, has for a long time been desirous of settling in Rome, and his place will be vacant, you understand. But don't say anything about this. I wouldn't take a big sum of money for my day's work.'
He continued pressing both Abbé Faujas's hands, while his broad face beamed with satisfaction. The ladies around them were smiling and looking at them in surprise. But the worthy man's joy was so frank and unreserved that it communicated itself to all in the green drawing-room, where the ovation in the new Curé's honour took a more familiar and affectionate turn. The ladies grouped themselves together and spoke of the cathedral organ which wanted repairing, and Madame de Condamin promised a magnificent altar for the procession on the approaching festival of Corpus Christi.
Abbé Bourrette was sharing in the general triumph when Madame Paloque, craning out her hideous face, touched him on the shoulder and murmured in his ear:
'Your reverence won't, I suppose, hear confessions to-morrow in Saint-Michael's chapel?'
The priest, while taking Abbé Compan's duty, had occupied the confessional in Saint-Michael's chapel, which was the largest and most convenient in the church and was specially reserved for the Curé. He did not at first understand the force of Madame Paloque's remark, and he looked at her, again blinking his eyes.
'I ask you,' she continued, 'if you will resume your old confessional in the chapel of the Holy Angels, to-morrow.'
He turned rather pale and remained silent for a moment longer. Then he bent his gaze to the floor, and a slight shiver coursed down his neck, as though he had received a blow from behind. And, seeing that Madame Paloque was still there staring at him, he stammered out:
'Certainly; I shall go back to my old confessional. Come to the chapel of the Holy Angels, the last one on the left, on the same side as the cloisters. It is very damp, so wrap yourself up well, dear madame, wrap yourself up well.'
Tears rose to his eyes. He was filled with regretful longing for that handsome confessional in the chapel of Saint-Michael, into which the warm sun streamed in the afternoon just at the time when he heard confessions. Until now he had felt no sorrow at relinquishing the cathedral to Abbé Faujas; but this little matter, this removal from one chapel to another, affected him very painfully; and it seemed to him that he had missed the goal of his life. Madame Paloque told him in her loud voice that he appeared to have grown melancholy all at once, but he protested against this assertion and tried to smile and look cheerful again. However he left the drawing-room early in the evening.
Abbé Faujas was one of the last to go. Rougon came up to him to offer his congratulations and they remained talking earnestly together on a couch. They spoke of the necessity of religious feeling in a wisely ordered state. Each lady, on retiring from the room, made a low bow as she passed in front of them.
'You know, Monsieur le Curé,' said Félicité graciously, 'that you are my daughter's cavalier.'
The priest rose from his seat. Marthe was waiting for him at the door. When they got out into the street, they seemed as if blinded by the darkness, and crossed the Place of the Sub-Prefecture without exchanging a word; but in the Rue Balande, as they stood in front of the house, Marthe touched the priest's arm at the moment when he was about to insert the key in the lock.
'I am so very pleased at your success,' she said to him, in a tone of great emotion. 'Be kind to me to-day, and grant me the favour which you have hitherto refused. I assure you that Abbé Bourrette does not understand me. It is only you who can direct and save me.'
He motioned her away from him, and, when he had opened the door and lighted the little lamp which Rose had left at the foot of the staircase, he went upstairs, saying to her gently as he did so:
'You promised me to be reasonable—well, I will think over what you have asked. We will talk about it.'
Marthe did not retire to her own room until she had heard the priest close his door on the upper floor. While she was undressing and getting into bed she paid no attention whatever to Mouret, who, half asleep, was retailing to her at great length some gossip that was being circulated in the town. He had been to his club, the Commercial Club, a place where he rarely set foot.
'Abbé Faujas has got the better of Abbé Bourrette,' he repeated for the tenth time as he slowly rolled his head upon the pillow. 'Poor Abbé Bourrette! Well, never mind! it's good fun to see those parsons devouring one another. The other day when they were hugging each other in the garden—you remember it, don't you?—anyone would have thought that they were brothers. Ah! they rob each other even of their very penitents. But why don't you say anything, my dear? You don't agree with me, eh? Or is it because you are going to sleep? Well, well, good-night then, my dear.'
He fell asleep, still muttering disjointed words, while Marthe, with widely opened eyes, stared up into the air and followed over the ceiling, faintly illumined by the night-light, the pattering of the Abbé's slippers while he was retiring to rest.
At the return of summer Abbé Faujas and his mother again came downstairs to enjoy the fresh air on the terrace. Mouret had become very cross-grained. He declined the old lady's invitations to play piquet and sat swaying himself about on a chair. Seeing him yawn, without making any attempt to conceal how bored he was feeling, Marthe said to him:
'Why don't you go to your club, my dear?'
He now went there more frequently than he had been used to do. When he returned he found his wife and the Abbé still in the same place on the terrace, while Madame Faujas, a few yards away from them, preserved the demeanour of a blind and dumb guardian.
When anyone in the town spoke to Mouret of the new Curé he still continued to sound his praises. Faujas, said he, was decidedly a superior sort of man, and he himself had never felt any doubt of his great abilities. Madame Paloque could never succeed in drawing a hostile word from him on the subject of the priest, in spite of the malicious way in which she would ask him after his wife in the midst of his remarks about Abbé Faujas. Old Madame Rougon had no better success in her attempts to unveil the secret troubles which she thought she could detect beneath Mouret's outward show of cheerfulness. She laid all sorts of traps for him as she watched his face with her sharp shrewd smile; but that inveterate chatterer, whose tongue was a regular town-crier's bell, now showed the greatest reserve when any reference was made to his household.
'So your husband has become reasonable at last?' Félicité remarked to her daughter one day. 'He leaves you free.'
Marthe looked at her mother with an air of surprise.
'I have always been free,' she said.
'Ah! my dear child, I see that you don't want to say anything against him. You told me once that he looked very unfavourably upon Abbé Faujas.'
'Nothing of the kind, I assure you! You must have imagined it. My husband is upon the best terms with Abbé Faujas. There is nothing whatever to make them otherwise.'
Marthe was much astonished at the persistence with which everybody seemed to imagine that her husband and the Abbé were not good friends. Frequently at the committee-meetings at the Home of the Virgin the ladies put questions to her which made her quite impatient. She was really very happy and contented, and the house in the Rue Balande had never seemed pleasanter to her than it did now. Abbé Faujas had given her to understand that he would undertake her spiritual direction as soon as he should be of opinion that Abbé Bourrette was no longer sufficient, and she lived in this hope, her mind full of simple joy, like a girl who is promised some pretty religious pictures if she keeps good. Every now and then indeed she felt as though she were becoming a child again; she experienced a freshness of feeling and child-like impulses that filled her with gentle emotion. One day, in the spring-time, as Mouret was pruning his tall box plants, he found her sitting at the bottom of the garden beneath the young shoots of the arbour with her eyes streaming with tears.
'What is the matter, my dear?' he asked anxiously.
'Nothing,' she said, with a smile, 'nothing at all, really; I am very happy, very.'
He shrugged his shoulders, and went on delicately cutting the box plants into an even line. He took considerable pride in having the neatest trimmed hedges in the neighbourhood. Marthe had wiped her eyes, but she soon began to weep again, feeling a choking heart-rending sensation at the scent of the severed verdure. She was forty years old now, and it was for her past-away youth that she was weeping.
Since his appointment as Curé of Saint-Saturnin's, Abbé Faujas had shown a dignity which seemed to increase his stature. He carried his breviary and his hat with an air of authority, which he had exhibited at the cathedral in such wise as to ensure himself the respect of the clergy. Abbé Fenil, having sustained another defeat on two or three matters of detail, now seemed to have left his adversary free to do as he pleased. Abbé Faujas, however, was not foolish enough to make any indiscreet use of his triumph, but showed himself extremely supple. He was quite conscious that Plassans was still far from being his; and so, though he stopped every now and then in the street to shake hands with Monsieur Delangre, he merely exchanged passing salutations with Monsieur de Bourdeu, Monsieur Maffre, and the other guests of Monsieur Rastoil. A large section of society in the town still looked upon him with suspicion. They found fault with him for the want of frankness in his political opinions. In their estimation he ought to explain himself, declare himself in favour of one party or another. But the Abbé only smiled and said that he belonged to 'the honest men's party,' a reply which spared him a more explicit declaration. Moreover he showed no haste or anxiety, but continued to keep aloof till the drawing-rooms should open their doors to him of their own accord.
'No, my friend, not now; later on we will see about it,' he said to Abbé Bourrette, who had been pressing him to pay a visit to Monsieur Rastoil.
He was known to have refused two invitations to the Sub-Prefecture, and the Mourets were still the only people with whom he continued intimate. There he was, as it were, occupying a post of observation between two hostile camps. On Tuesdays, when the two sets of guests assembled in the gardens on his right and left, he took up his position at his window and watched the sunset in the distance behind the forests of the Seille, and then, before withdrawing, he lowered his eyes and replied with as much amiability to the bows of Monsieur Rastoil's guests as to those of the Sub-Prefect's. His intercourse with his neighbours as yet went no further than this.
On Tuesday, however, he went down into the garden. He was quite at home now in Mouret's grounds and no longer confined himself to pacing up and down beneath the arbour as he read his breviary. All the walks and beds seemed to belong to him; his cassock glided blackly past all the greenery. On that particular Tuesday, as he made a tour of the garden, he caught sight of Monsieur Maffre and Madame Rastoil below him and bowed to them; and then as he passed below the terrace of the Sub-Prefecture, he saw Monsieur de Condamin leaning there in company with Doctor Porquier. After an exchange of salutations, the priest was turning along the path, when the doctor called to him.
'Just a word, your reverence, I beg.'
Then he asked him at what time he could see him the following day. This was the first occasion on which any one of the two sets of guests had spoken to the priest from one garden to the other. The doctor was in great trouble however. His scamp of a son had been caught in a gambling den behind the gaol in company with other worthless characters. The most distressing part of the matter was that Guillaume was accused of being the leader of the band, and of having led Monsieur Maffre's sons, much younger than himself, astray.
Pooh!' said Monsieur de Condamin with his sceptical laugh; 'young men must sow their wild oats. What a fuss about nothing! Here's the whole town in a state of perturbation because some young fellows have been caught playing baccarat and there happened to be a lady with them!'
The doctor seemed very much shocked at this.
'I want to ask your advice,' he said, addressing himself to the priest. 'Monsieur Maffre came to my house boiling over with anger, and assailed me with the bitterest reproaches, crying out that it was all my fault, as I had brought my son up badly. I am extremely distressed and troubled about it. Monsieur Maffre ought to know me better. I have sixty years of stainless life behind me.'
He went on wailing, dwelling upon the sacrifices that he had made for his son and expressing his fears that he would lose his practice in consequence of the young man's misconduct. Abbé Faujas, standing in the middle of the path, raised his head and gravely listened.
'I shall be only too glad if I can be of any service to you,' he said kindly. 'I will see Monsieur Maffre and will let him understand that his natural indignation has carried him too far. I will go at once and ask him to appoint a meeting with me for to-morrow. He is over there, on the other side.'
The Abbé crossed the garden and went towards Monsieur Maffre, who was still there with Madame Rastoil. When the justice of the peace found that the priest desired an interview with him, he would not hear of his taking any trouble about it, but put himself at his disposition, saying that he would do himself the honour of calling upon him the next day.
'Ah! Monsieur le Curé,' Madame Rastoil then remarked, 'let me compliment you upon your sermon last Sunday. All the ladies were much affected by it, I assure you.'
The Abbé bowed and crossed the garden again in order to reassure Doctor Porquier. Then he continued slowly pacing about the walks till nightfall, without taking part in any further conversations, but ever hearing the merriment of the groups of guests on his right hand and his left.
When Monsieur Maffre appeared the next day, Abbé Faujas was watching a couple of men who were at work repairing the fountain in the garden. He had expressed a desire to see the fountain play again, for the empty basin, said he, had such a melancholy appearance. At first Mouret had not seemed very willing to have anything done, alleging the probability of accidents with Désirée, but Marthe had prevailed upon him to let the repairs be executed upon the understanding that the basin should be protected by a railing.
'Monsieur le Curé,' said Rose, 'the justice of the peace wishes to see you.'
Abbé Faujas hastened indoors. He wanted to take Monsieur Maffre up to his own room on the second floor, but Rose had already opened the drawing-room door.
'Go in,' she said; 'aren't you at home here? It is useless to make the justice go up two flights of stairs. If you had only told me this morning, I would have given the room a dusting.'
As she closed the door upon the Abbé and the magistrate, after opening the shutters, Mouret called her into the dining-room.
'That's right, Rose,' he cried, 'you had better give my dinner to your priest this evening, and if he hasn't got sufficient blankets of his own upstairs you can take mine off my bed.'
The cook exchanged a meaning glance with Marthe, who was working by the window, waiting till the sunshine should leave the terrace. Then, shrugging her shoulders, she said:
'Ah! sir, you have never had a charitable heart!'
She took herself off, while Marthe continued sewing without raising her head. For the last few days she had, with feverish energy, again applied herself to her needlework. She was embroidering an altar-frontal as a gift for the cathedral. The ladies were desirous of giving a complete set of altar furniture. Madame Rastoil and Madame Delangre had undertaken to present the candlesticks, and Madame de Condamin had ordered a magnificent silver crucifix from Paris.
Meantime, in the drawing-room, Abbé Faujas was gently remonstrating with Monsieur Maffre, telling him that Doctor Porquier was a religious man and a person of the highest integrity, and that no one could be more pained than he by his son's deplorable conduct. The magistrate listened with a sanctimonious air, and his heavy features and big prominent eyes assumed quite an ecstatic expression at certain pious remarks which the priest uttered in a very moving manner. He allowed that he had been rather too hasty, and declared that he was willing to make every apology as his reverence thought he had been in the wrong.
'You must send your own sons to me,' said the priest, 'and I will talk to them.'
Monsieur Maffre shook his head with a slight sneering laugh.
'Oh! you needn't be afraid about them, Monsieur le Curé. The young scamps won't play any more tricks. They have been locked up in their rooms for the last three days with nothing but bread and water. If I had had a stick in my hand when I found out what they had been doing, I should have broken it across their backs.'
The Abbé looked at him and recollected how Mouret had accused him of having killed his wife by harshness and avarice; then, with a gesture of protest, he added:
'No, no; that is not the way to treat young men. Your elder son, Ambroise, is twenty years old and the younger is nearly eighteen, isn't he? They are no longer children, remember. You must allow them some amusements.'
The magistrate remained silent with surprise.
'Then you would let them go on smoking and allow them to frequent cafés?' he said, presently.
'Well,' replied the priest, with a smile. 'I think that young men should be allowed to meet together to talk and smoke their cigarettes and even to play a game of billiards or chess. They will give themselves every license if you show no tolerance. Only remember that it is not to every café that I should be willing for them to go. I should like to see a special one provided for them, a sort of club, as I have seen done in several towns.'
Then he unfolded a complete scheme for such a club. Monsieur Maffre gradually seemed to appreciate it. He nodded his head as he said:
'Capital, capital! It would be a worthy pendant to the Home of the Virgin. Really, Monsieur le Curé, we must put such a splendid idea as this into execution.'
'Well, then,' the priest concluded, as he accompanied Monsieur Maffre to the door, 'since you approve of the plan, just advocate it among your friends. I will see Monsieur Delangre, and speak to him about it. We might meet in the cathedral on Sunday after vespers and come to some decision.'
On the Sunday, Monsieur Maffre brought Monsieur Rastoil with him. They found Abbé Faujas and Monsieur Delangre in a little room adjoining the sacristy. The gentlemen displayed great enthusiasm in favour of the priest's idea, and the institution of a young men's club was agreed upon in principle. There was considerable discussion, however, as to what it should be called. Monsieur Maffre was strongly desirous that it should be known as the Guild of Jesus.
'Oh, no! no!' the priest impatiently cried at last. 'You would get scarcely anyone to join, and the few members would only be jeered at. There must be no attempt to tack religion on to the business; indeed, I intend that we should leave religion outside its doors altogether. All we want to do is to win the young people over to our side by providing them with some innocent recreation; that is all.'
The justice of the peace gazed at the priest with such an expression of astonishment and anxiety that Monsieur Delangre was obliged to bend his head to conceal a smile, while he slyly pulled the Abbé's cassock. Then the priest went on in a calmer voice:
'I am sure, gentlemen, that you do not feel any distrust of me, and I ask you to leave the management of the matter in my hands. I propose to adopt some very simple name, such a one, for instance, as the Young Men's Club, which fully expresses all that is required.'
Monsieur Rastoil and Monsieur Maffre bowed, although this title seemed to them a little weak. They next spoke of nominating the Curé as president of a provisional committee.
'I fancy,' said Monsieur Delangre, glancing at the priest, 'that this suggestion will scarcely meet with his reverence's approbation.'
'Oh dear, no!' the Abbé exclaimed, slightly shrugging his shoulders. 'My cassock would frighten the timid and lukewarm away. We should only get the pious young people, and it is not for them that we are going to found our club. What we want is to gather in the wanderers; to win converts, in a word; isn't that so?'
'Clearly,' replied the presiding judge.
'Very well, then, it will be better for us to keep ourselves in the background, myself especially. What I propose is this: your son, Monsieur Rastoil, and yours, Monsieur Delangre, will alone come forward. It must appear as if they themselves had formed the idea of this club. Send them to me in the morning, and I will talk the matter over at length with them. I already have a suitable building in my mind and a code of rules quite prepared. Your two sons, Monsieur Maffre, will naturally be enrolled at the head of the list of members.'
The presiding judge seemed flattered at the part assigned to his son; and so matters were arranged in this way, notwithstanding the resistance of the justice of the peace, who had hoped to win some personal distinction from the founding of the club. The next day Séverin Rastoil and Lucien Delangre put themselves in communication with Abbé Faujas. Séverin was a tall young man of five-and-twenty, with a badly shaped skull and a dull brain, who had just been called to the bar, thanks to the position which his father held. The latter was anxiously dreaming of making him a public prosecutor's assessor, despairing of his ever succeeding in winning any practice for himself. Lucien, on the other hand, was short and sharp-eyed, had a crafty mind, and pleaded with all the coolness of an old practitioner, although he was a year younger than Séverin. The 'Plassans Gazette' spoke of him as a future light of the bar. It was more particularly to him that the Abbé gave the minutest instructions as to his scheme. As for young Rastoil he simply went fussing about, bursting with importance. In three weeks the Young Men's Club was founded and opened.
There was at that time beneath the church of the Minimes, situated at the end of the Cours Sauvaire, a number of very large rooms and an old monastery refectory, which were no longer put to any use. This was the place that Abbé Faujas had thought of for the club, and the clergy of the parish very willingly allowed him to use the rooms. One morning, when the provisional committee of the Young Men's Club had set workmen going in this cellar-like place, the citizens of Plassans were quite astounded to see what appeared to be a café being fitted up under the church. Five days afterwards there was no longer any room for doubt on the point. The place was certainly going to be a café. Divans were being brought thither, with marble-topped tables, chairs, two billiard-tables, and even three crates of crockery and glass. An entrance was contrived at the end of the building, as far as possible from the doorway of the church, and great crimson curtains, genuine restaurant-curtains, were hung behind the glass panes. You descended five stone steps, and on opening the door found yourself in a large hall; to the right of which there was a smaller one and a reading-room, while in a square room at the far end were placed the two billiard-tables. They were exactly beneath the high altar.
'Well, my poor boys,' said Guillaume Porquier one day to Monsieur Maffre's two sons, whom he had met on the Cours, 'so they are going to make you serve at mass between your games at bézique.'
However, Ambroise and Alphonse besought him not to speak to them in public, as their father had threatened to send them to sea if they continued to associate with him.
When the first astonishment was over, the Young Men's Club proved a great success. Monseigneur Rousselot accepted the honorary presidency, and even visited it in person one evening, attended by his secretary, Abbé Surin. Each of them drank a glass of currant-syrup in the smaller room, and the glass which his lordship used was preserved with great respect upon a sideboard. The Bishop's visit is still talked of with much emotion at Plassans, and it brought about the adherence of all the fashionable young men of the town. It was soon considered very bad style not to belong to the Young Men's Club.
Guillaume Porquier, however, used to prowl about the entrance, sniggering like a young wolf who dreams of making his way into a sheep-fold. Notwithstanding all the fear they had of their father, Monsieur Maffre's sons quite worshipped this shameless young man who regaled them with stories of Paris, and entertained them at secret little parties in the suburbs. They had got into the habit of meeting him regularly every Saturday evening at nine o'clock near a certain seat on the Mall. They slipped away from the club and sat gossiping till eleven, concealed beneath the dark shade of the plane-trees. On these occasions Guillaume always twitted them about the evenings they spent underneath the church of the Minimes.
'It is very kind of you,' he, would say, 'to let yourselves be led by the nose. The verger gives you glasses of sugar and water as though he were administering the communion to you, doesn't he?'
'Nothing of the sort! you are quite mistaken, I assure you,' Ambroise exclaimed. 'You might fancy you were in the Café du Cours, or the Café de France, or the Café des Voyageurs. We drink beer, or punch, or madeira, whatever we like, whatever is drunk in other places.'
Guillaume continued jeering however.
'Well, I shouldn't like to go drinking their dirty stuff,' he said. 'I should be afraid that they had mixed some drug with it to make me go to confession. I suppose you amuse yourselves by playing at hot-cockles and puss-in-the-corner!'
The young Maffres gaily laughed at his pleasantries, but they took care to undeceive him. They told him that even cards were allowed, and that there was no flavour of a church about the place at all. The club was extremely pleasant, there were very comfortable couches, and mirrors all over.
'Well,' said Guillaume, 'you'll never make me believe that you can't hear the organ when there is an evening service at the church. It would make me swallow my coffee the wrong way only to know that there was a baptism, or a marriage, or a funeral going on over my cup.'
'Well, there's something in that,' Alphonse allowed. 'Only the other day, while I was playing at billiards with Séverin in the day-time, we could distinctly hear a funeral going on. It was the funeral of the butcher's little girl, the butcher at the corner of the Rue de la Banne. That fellow Séverin is a big jackass, he tried to frighten me by telling me that the whole funeral would fall through on our heads.'
'Ah well! it must be a very pleasant place, that club of yours!' cried Guillaume. 'I wouldn't set foot in it for all the money in the world! I'd as soon go and drink my coffee in a sacristy.'
The truth of the matter was that Guillaume felt very much vexed that he did not belong to the Young Men's Club. His father had forbidden him to offer himself for election, fearing that he would be rejected. At last, however, the young man grew so annoyed about the matter that he sent in an application to be allowed to join the club, without mentioning what he had done to his people. The question was a very serious one. The committee which elected the members then comprised the young Maffres amongst its number, and Lucien Delangre was its president and Séverin Rastoil its secretary. These young men felt terribly embarrassed. While they did not dare to grant Guillaume's application, they were unwilling to do anything to hurt the feelings of Doctor Porquier, so worthy and irreproachable a person, one, too, who was so completely trusted by all the fashionable ladies. At last Ambroise and Alphonse begged Guillaume not to press his application, giving him to understand that he had no chance of being admitted.
You are a couple of pitiful poltroons!' he replied to them. 'Do you suppose that I care a fig about joining your brotherhood? I was only amusing myself. I wanted to see if you would have the courage to vote against me. I shall have a good laugh when those hypocrites bang the door in my face. As for you, my good little boys, you can go and amuse yourselves where you like; I shall never speak to you again.'
The young Maffres, in great consternation, then besought Lucien Delangre to try to arrange matters in such a way as would prevent any unpleasantness. Lucien submitted the difficulty to his usual adviser, Abbé Faujas, for whom he had conceived a genuine disciple's admiration. The Abbé came to the Young Men's Club every afternoon from five o'clock till six. He walked through the big room with a pleasant smile, nodding and sometimes stopping for a few minutes at one of the tables to chat with some of the young men. However, he never accepted anything to drink, not even a glass of water. Afterwards he passed into the reading-room, and, taking a seat at the long table covered with a green cloth, he attentively pored over the newspapers which the club received, the Legitimist organs of Paris and the neighbouring departments. Occasionally he made a rapid note in a little pocket-book. Then he went quietly away, again smiling at the members who were present, and shaking hands with them. On some occasions, however, he remained for a longer time to watch a game at chess, or chat merrily about all kinds of matters. The young men, who were extremely fond of him, used to say that when he talked no one would take him for a priest.
When the mayor's son told him of the embarrassment which Guillaume's application had caused the committee, Abbé Faujas promised to arrange the affair; and next morning he went to see Doctor Porquier, to whom he related everything. The doctor was aghast. His son, he cried, was determined to kill him with distress by dishonouring his grey hairs. What could be done now? Even if the application were withdrawn, the shame and disgrace would be none the less. The priest then advised him to send Guillaume away for two or three months to an estate which he possessed a few leagues from Plassans, and undertook to charge himself with the further conduct of the affair. As soon as Guillaume had left the town, the committee postponed the consideration of his application, saying that there was no occasion for haste in the matter, as the applicant was absent and that a decision could be taken later on.
Doctor Porquier heard of this solution from Lucien Delangre one afternoon when he was in the garden of the Sub-Prefecture. He immediately hastened to the terrace. It was the hour when Abbé Faujas read his breviary. Doctor Porquier caught sight of him under the Mourets' arbour.
'Ah, Monsieur le Curé!' he cried, 'how can I thank you? I should like very much to shake hands with you.'
'The wall is rather high,' said the priest, looking at it with a smile.
But Doctor Porquier was an effusive individual who did not allow himself to be discouraged by obstacles.
'Wait a moment!' he cried. 'If you will allow me, Monsieur le Curé, I will come round.'
Then he disappeared. The Abbé, still smiling, slowly bent his steps towards the little door which opened into the Impasse des Chevillottes. The doctor was already gently knocking at it.
'Ah! this door is nailed up,' said the priest. 'One of the nails is broken though. If I had any sort of a tool, there would be no difficulty in getting the other one out.'
He glanced round him and caught sight of a spade. Then, after he had drawn back the bolts with a slight effort, he opened the door, and stepped out into the alley, where Doctor Porquier overwhelmed him with thanks and compliments. As they walked along, talking, Monsieur Maffre, who happened at the time to be in Monsieur Rastoil's garden, opened a little door that was hidden away behind the presiding judge's waterfall. The gentlemen were much amused to find themselves all three in this deserted little lane.
They remained there for a few moments, and, as they took leave of the Abbé, the magistrate and the doctor poked their heads inside the Mourets' garden, looking about them with curiosity.
Mouret, however, who was putting stakes to his tomatoes, raised his head and caught sight of them. He was fairly lost in astonishment.
'Hallo! so they've made their way in here!' he muttered. 'The Curé now only has to bring in both gangs!'
Serge was now nineteen years of age. He occupied a small room on the second floor, opposite the priest's, and there led an almost cloistered life, spending much time in reading.
'I shall have to throw those old books of yours into the fire,' Mouret said to him angrily. 'You'll end by making yourself ill and having to take to your bed.'
The young man was, indeed, of such a nervous temperament, that the slightest imprudence made him poorly, as though he were a young girl, and thus he was frequently confined to his room for two or three days together. At these times Rose inundated him with herb tea, and whenever Mouret went upstairs to shake him up a little, as he called it, the cook, if she happened to be there, would turn her master out of the room, crying out at him:
'Leave the poor dear alone! Can't you see that you are killing him with your rough ways? It isn't after you that he takes: he is the very image of his mother; and you'll never be able to understand either the one or the other of them.'
Serge smiled. After he had left college his father, seeing him so delicate, had hesitated to send him to Paris to read for the bar there. He would not hear, however, of a provincial faculty; Paris, he felt sure, was necessary for a young man who wanted to climb to a high position. He tried, indeed, to instil ambitious ideas into the lad, telling him that many with much weaker wits than his own, his cousins, the Rougons, for instance, had attained to great distinction. Every time that the young man seemed to grow more robust, his father settled that he should leave home early the following month; but his trunk was never packed, for Serge was always catching a fresh cold, and then his departure would be again postponed.
On each of these occasions Marthe contented herself with saying in her gentle, indifferent way:
'He isn't twenty yet. It's really not prudent to send so young a lad to Paris; and, besides, he isn't wasting his time here; you even think that he studies too much.'
Serge used to accompany his mother to mass. He was very piously minded, very gentle and grave. Doctor Porquier had recommended him to take a good deal of exercise, and he had become enthusiastically fond of botany, going off on long rambles to collect specimens which he spent his afternoons in drying, mounting, classifying and naming. It was about this time that he struck up a great friendship with Abbé Faujas. The Abbé himself had botanised in earlier days, and he gave Serge much practical advice for which the young man was very grateful. They also lent each other books, and one day they went off together to try to discover a certain plant which the priest said he thought would be found in the neighbourhood. When Serge was ill, his neighbour came to see him every morning, and sat and talked for a long while at his bedside. At other times, when the young man was well, it was he who went and knocked at Abbé Faujas's door, as soon as he heard him stirring in his room. They were only separated by a narrow landing, and they ended by almost living together.
In spite of Marthe's unruffled tranquillity and Rose's angry glances, Mouret still often indulged in bursts of anger.
'What can the young scamp be after up there?' he would growl. 'Whole days pass without my catching more than a glimpse of him. He never seems to stir from the Abbé; they are always talking together in some corner or other. He shall be off to Paris at once. He's as strong as a Turk. All those ailments of his are mere shams, excuses to get himself petted and coddled. You needn't both of you look at me in that way; I don't mean to let the priest make a hypocrite of the boy.'
Then he began to keep a watch over his son, and when he thought that he was in Faujas's room he called for him angrily.
'I would rather he went to the bad!' he cried one day in a fit of rage.
'Oh, sir!' said Rose, 'it is abominable to say such things.'
'Well, indeed I would! And I'll put him in the way myself one of these days, if you irritate me much more with these parsons of yours!'
Serge naturally joined the Young Men's Club, though he went there but little, preferring the solitude of his own room. If it had not been for Abbé Faujas, whom he sometimes met there, he would probably never have set foot in the place. The Abbé taught him to play chess in the reading-room. Mouret, on learning that the lad met the priest at the café, swore that he would pack him off by the train on the following Monday. His luggage was indeed got ready, and quite seriously this time, but Serge, who had gone out to spend a last day in the open country, returned home drenched to the skin by a sudden downpour of rain. He was obliged to go to bed, shivering with fever. For three weeks he hung between life and death; and then his convalescence lasted for two long months. At the beginning of it he was so weak that he lay with his head on the pillow and his arms stretched over the sheets, as motionless as if he were simply a wax figure.
'It is your fault, sir!' cried the cook to Mouret. 'You will have it on your conscience if the boy dies.'
While his son continued in danger, Mouret wandered silently about the house, plunged in gloomy melancholy, his eyes red with crying. He seldom went upstairs, but paced up and down the passage to intercept the doctor as he went away. When he was told that Serge was at length out of danger, he glided quietly into the lad's room and offered his help. But Rose turned him away. They had no occasion for him, she said, and the boy was not yet strong enough to bear his roughness. He had much better go and attend to his business instead of getting in the way there. Mouret then remained in complete loneliness downstairs, more melancholy and unoccupied than ever. He felt no inclination for anything, said he. As he went along the passage, he often heard on the second floor the voice of Abbé Faujas, who spent whole afternoons by Serge's bedside, now that he was growing better.
'How is he to-day, Monsieur l'Abbé?' Mouret asked the priest timidly, as he met the latter going down into the garden.
'Oh, fairly well; but it will be a long convalescence, and very great care will be required.'
The priest tranquilly read his breviary, while the father, with a pair of shears in his hand, followed him up and down the garden walks, trying to renew the conversation and to get more detailed information about his boy. As his son's convalescence progressed, he remarked that the priest scarcely ever left Serge's room. He had gone upstairs several times in the women's absence, and he had always found the Abbé at the young man's bedside, talking softly to him, and rendering him all kinds of little services, sweetening his drink, straightening his bed-clothes, or getting him anything he happened to want. There was a hushed murmur throughout the house, a solemn calm which gave quite a conventual character to the second floor. Mouret seemed to smell incense, and could almost fancy sometimes, as he heard a muttering of voices, that they were saying mass upstairs.
'What can they be doing?' he wondered. 'The youngster is out of danger now; they can't be giving him extreme unction.'
Serge himself caused him much disquiet. He looked like a girl as he lay in bed in his white night-dress. His eyes seemed to have grown larger; there was a soft ecstatic smile upon his lips, which still played there even amidst his keenest pangs of suffering. Mouret no longer ventured to say anything about Paris; his dear sick boy seemed too girlish and tender for such a journey.
One afternoon he went upstairs, carefully hushing the sound of his steps. The door was ajar, and he saw Serge sitting in an easy chair in the sunshine. The young fellow was weeping with his eyes turned upward, and his mother stood sobbing in front of him. They both turned as they heard the door open, but they did not wipe away their tears. As soon as Mouret entered the room, the invalid said to him in his feeble voice:
'I have a favour to ask you, father. Mother says that you will be angry and will refuse me permission, though it would fill me with joy—I want to enter the Seminary.'
He clasped his hands together with a sort of feverish devotion.
'You! you!' exclaimed Mouret.
He looked at Marthe, who turned away her head. Then saying nothing further, he walked to the window, returned, and sat down mechanically by the bedside, as though overwhelmed by the blow.
'Father,' resumed Serge, after a long silence, 'in my nearness to death I have seen God, and I have sworn to be His. I assure you that all my happiness is centred in that. Believe me that it is so, and do not cause me grief.'
Mouret, looking very mournful, with his eyes lowered, still kept silence. At last, with an expression of utter hopelessness, he murmured:
'If I had the least particle of courage, I should wrap a couple of shirts in a handkerchief and go away.'
Then he rose from his seat, went to the window and drummed on the panes with his fingers; and when Serge again began to implore him, he said very quietly:
'Very well, my boy; be a priest.'
Immediately afterwards he left the room.
The next day, without the least warning to anyone, he set off for Marseilles, where he spent a week with his son Octave. But he came back looking careworn and aged. Octave had afforded him very little consolation. He had found the young man leading a fast life, overwhelmed with debts and in all sorts of scrapes. However, Mouret did not say a word about these matters. He began to lead a perfectly sedentary existence, and no longer made any of those good strokes of business, those fortunate purchases of standing crops, in which he had formerly taken such pride. Rose noticed that he maintained almost unbroken silence, and that he even avoided saluting Abbé Faujas.
'Do you know that you are not very polite?' she boldly said to him one day. 'His reverence the Curé has just gone past, and you turned your back upon him. If you behave in this way because of the boy, you are under a great mistake. The Curé was quite against his going to the Seminary, and I often heard him talking to him against it. This house is getting a very cheerful place, indeed, now! You never speak a word, even to madame, and when you have your meals, anyone would think that it was a funeral that was going on. For my part, sir, I'm beginning to feel that I've had quite enough of it.'
Mouret went out of the room, but the cook followed him into the garden.
'Haven't you every reason to be happy, now that your son is on his feet again? He ate a cutlet yesterday, the darling, and with such a good appetite too. But you care nothing about that, do you? What you want is to make a pagan of him like yourself. Ah! you stand in great need of some one to pray for you. But God Almighty wishes to save us all. If I were you I should weep with joy, to think that that poor little dear was going to pray for me. But you are made of stone, sir! And how sweet he will look too, the darling, in his cassock!'
Mouret thereupon went up to the first floor, and shut himself up in a room which he called his study, a big bare room, furnished only with a table and a couple of chairs. This room became his refuge whenever the cook worried him. When he grew weary of staying there, he went down again into the garden, upon which he expended greater care than ever. Marthe no longer seemed to be conscious of her husband's displeasure. Sometimes he kept silent for a week, but she was in no way disquieted or distressed by it. Every day she withdrew more and more from her surroundings, and she even began to fancy, now that the house seemed so quiet and peaceable and she had ceased to hear Mouret scolding, that he had grown more reasonable and had discovered for himself, as she had done, some little nook of happiness. This thought tranquillised her and induced her to plunge more deeply into her dreamy life. When her husband looked at her with his blurred eyes, scarcely recognising in her the wife of other days, she only smiled at him and did not notice the tears which were welling beneath his eyelids.
On the day when Serge, now completely restored to health, entered the Seminary, Mouret remained at home alone with Désirée. He now frequently looked after her; for this big 'innocent' girl, who was nearly sixteen, might have fallen into the basin of the fountain or have set the house on fire with matches just like a child of six. When Marthe returned home, she found the doors open and the rooms empty. The house seemed quite deserted. She went on to the terrace, and there, at the end of one of the walks, she saw her husband playing with his daughter. He was sitting on the gravel, and with a little wooden scoop was gravely filling a cart which Désirée was pulling along with a piece of string.
'Gee up! gee up!' cried the girl.
'Wait a little,' said her father patiently, 'it is not full yet. As you are the horse, you must wait till the cart is full.'
Then she stamped her feet like an impatient horse, and, at last, not being able to stand still any longer, she set off with a loud burst of laughter. The cart fell over and lost its load. When she had dragged it round the garden, she came back to her father crying:
'Fill it again! Fill it again!'
Mouret loaded it again with the little scoop. For a moment Marthe remained upon the terrace watching them, full of uneasy emotion. The open doors, the sight of the man playing with the child, the empty deserted house all touched her with sadness, though she was not clearly conscious of the feelings at work in her. She went upstairs to take off her things, on hearing Rose, who also had just returned, exclaim from the terrace steps:
'Good gracious! how silly the master is!'
His friends, the retired traders with whom he took a turn or two every day on the promenade in the Cours Sauvaire, declared that he was a little 'touched.' During the last few months his hair had grizzled, he had begun to get shaky on his legs, and was no longer the biting jeerer, feared by the whole town. For a little time it was thought that he had been venturing upon some risky speculations and had been overcome by a heavy loss of money.
Madame Paloque, as she leaned over the window-rail of her dining-room which overlooked the Rue Balande, said every time she saw him, that he was certainly going to the bad. And if, a few moments later, she happened to catch sight of Abbé Faujas passing along the street, she took a delight in exclaiming—the more especially if she had visitors with her:
'Just look at his reverence the Curé! Isn't he growing sleek? If he eats out of the same dish as Mouret, he can leave him nothing but the bones.'
Then she laughed, as did those who heard her. Abbé Faujas was, indeed, becoming quite an imposing object; he now always wore black gloves and a shimmering cassock. A peculiar smile played about his face, a sort of ironical twist of his lips, when Madame de Condamin complimented him upon his appearance. The ladies liked to see him nicely and comfortably dressed; though the priest himself would probably have preferred fighting his way with bare arms and clenched fists, and never a thought about what he wore. Whenever he appeared to grow neglectful of his appearance, the slightest hint of reproach from old Madame Rougon sufficed to cure him, and he hurried off to buy silk stockings and a new hat and girdle. He was frequently requiring new clothes, for his big frame seemed to wear out his garments very quickly.
Since the foundation of the Home of the Virgin, all the women had been on his side; and defended him against the malicious stories which were still occasionally repeated, though no one was able to get at their origin. Now and then they found him a little blunt, but this roughness of his by no means offended them, least of all in the confessional, where they rather liked to feel his iron hand pressing down their necks.
'He gave me such a scolding yesterday, my dear,' said Madame de Condamin to Marthe one day. 'I believe he would have struck me if there had not been the partition between us. He is not always very easy to get on with!'
She laughed gently and seemed to enjoy the recollection of this scene with her spiritual director. Madame de Condamin had observed Marthe turn pale whenever she made her certain confidences as to Abbé Faujas's manner of hearing confessions; and divining her jealousy, she took a mischievous delight in tormenting her, with which object she gave her many further private details.
When Abbé Faujas had founded the Young Men's Club, he there became quite sociable and gay; in fact he seemed to have undergone a transformation. Thanks to his will power he moulded his stern nature like wax. He allowed the part which he had taken in the founding of the club to be made public, and he became the friend of all the young men in the town, keeping a strict watch over his manners, for he well knew that young men just fresh from college had not the same taste for roughness of speech and demeanour as the women had. He one day narrowly escaped losing his temper with young Rastoil, whose ears he threatened to pull, over a disagreement about the club management; but with surprising command over himself, he put out his hand to him almost immediately afterwards, humbling himself and winning over to his side all who were present by his gracious apologies to 'that big fool Séverin,' as the other was called.
However, although the Abbé had conquered the women and the young men, he still remained on a footing of mere formal politeness with the fathers and husbands. The grave gentlemen continued to distrust him as they saw that he still refrained from identifying himself with any political party. At the Sub-Prefecture Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies discussed him with much animation, while Monsieur Delangre, without definitely defending him, said with a sharp smile that they ought to wait before judging him. At the Rastoils' he had become a source of much tribulation to the Presiding Judge, whom Séverin and his mother never ceased wearying with their constant eulogies of the priest.
'Well! well! let him have every good quality under the sun!' cried the unhappy man. 'I won't dispute one of them, only leave me at peace. I asked him to dinner, but he wouldn't come. I can't go and drag him here by force!'
'No, but, my dear,' said Madame Rastoil, 'when you meet him you scarcely bow to him. It's that, I dare say, that has made him rather cold.'
'Of course it is,' interposed Séverin; 'he sees very well that you are not as polite to him as you ought to be.'
Monsieur Rastoil shrugged his shoulders. When Monsieur de Bourdeu was there, the pair of them accused Abbé Faujas of leanings towards the Sub-Prefecture, though Madame Rastoil directed their attention to the fact that he never dined there, and had never even set foot in the house.
'Oh, don't imagine that I accuse him of being a Bonapartist,' said the president. 'I only remarked that he had leanings that way; that was all. He has had communications with Monsieur Delangre.'
'Well! and so have you!' cried Séverin; 'you have had communications with the mayor! They are absolutely necessary under certain circumstances. Tell the truth and say you detest Abbé Faujas; it would be much more straightforward.'
For whole days at a time the Rastoils sulked with one another. Abbé Fenil came to see them very rarely now, excusing himself upon the ground that he was kept at home by his gout; but twice, when he had been forced to express an opinion on the Curé of Saint-Saturnin's, he had said a few words in his praise. Abbé Surin and Abbé Bourrette, as well as Monsieur Maffre, held the same views as the mistress of the house concerning the Curé, and the opposition to him came only from Monsieur Rastoil, backed up by Monsieur de Bourdeu, both of whom gravely declared that they could not compromise their political positions by receiving a man who concealed his views.
Séverin, however, now began to knock at the door in the Impasse des Chevillottes whenever he wanted to say anything to the priest, and gradually the little lane became a sort of neutral ground. Doctor Porquier, who had been the first to avail himself of it, young Delangre, and the magistrate, all came thither to talk to Abbé Faujas. Sometimes the little doors of both the gardens, as well as the cart-entrance to the Sub-Prefecture, were kept open for a whole afternoon, while the Abbé leant against the wall, smiling and shaking hands with those members of the two groups who wished to have a word with him. Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, however, carefully refrained from leaving the garden of the Sub-Prefecture; and Monsieur Rastoil and Monsieur de Bourdeu, equally persistent, remained seated beneath the trees in front of the former's waterfall. It was very seldom that the priest's little court invaded the Mourets' arbour. Now and then a head just peeped inside, took a hasty glance around, and then quickly disappeared.
Abbé Faujas now seemed to trouble about nothing. At the most he glanced with an expression of disquietude at the Tronches' windows, through which Olympe's eyes were constantly glistening. The Trouches kept themselves in ambush there behind the red curtains, full of an envious desire to come down like the Abbé and eat the fruit, and talk to the fashionable folks. They tapped on the shutters, leant out of the window for a moment, and then withdrew, infuriated by the authoritative glances of the priest. Soon afterwards, however, they would return with stealthy steps, press their pale faces to one of the panes, and keep watch over his every movement, quite tortured to see him enjoying that paradise which was forbidden to them.
'It is really abominable!' Olympe exclaimed one day to her husband. 'He would lock us up in a cupboard, if he could, so as to deprive us of every atom of enjoyment. We'll go down if you like, and we'll see what he says.'
Trouche had just returned from his office. He put on a clean collar and dusted his boots, anxious to make himself as neat as possible. Olympe put on a light dress, and then they both boldly came downstairs into the garden, walking slowly alongside the tall box plants, and stopping in front of the flower-beds.
At that moment Abbé Faujas happened to have his back turned towards them. He was standing at the little door that opened into the lane talking to Monsieur Maffre. When he heard the Trouches' steps grating upon the gravel, they were close behind him under the arbour. He turned round, and stopped short in the middle of a sentence, quite astounded at seeing them there. Monsieur Maffre, who did not know them, was looking at them with curiosity.
'A beautiful day, isn't it, gentlemen?' said Olympe, who had turned pale beneath her brother's gaze.
The Abbé abruptly dragged the justice of the peace into the lane; where he quickly got rid of him.
'He is furious!' murmured Olympe. 'Well, so much the worse; we had better stay where we are now. If we go back upstairs, he will think we are afraid of him. I've had quite enough of this kind of thing, and you will see what I will say to him.'
She made Trouche seat himself on one of the chairs which Rose had brought out a short time previously, and when the Abbé returned he found them tranquilly settled there. He fastened the bolts of the little door, glanced quickly around to assure himself that the trees screened them from observation, and then came up close to the Trouches, saying in a muffled voice:
'You forget our agreement. You undertook to remain in your own rooms.'
'It was too hot up there,' Olympe replied. 'We are not committing any crime by coming down here to get a little fresh air.'
The priest was on the point of exploding, but his sister, still quite pale from the effort she had made in resisting him, added in a peculiar tone:
'Don't make a noise, now! There are some people over there, and you might do yourself harm.'
Then both the Trouches laughed slightly. The Abbé fixed his eyes upon them with a terrible expression, but without speaking.
'Sit down,' said Olympe. 'You want an explanation, don't you? Well, you shall have one. We are tired of imprisoning ourselves. You are living here in clover; the house seems to belong to you, and so does the garden. So much the better, indeed; we are delighted to see how well things appear to be going with you, but you mustn't treat us as dirt beneath your feet. You have never thought of bringing me up a single bunch of grapes; you have given us the most wretched of the rooms; you hide us away and are ashamed of us; you shut us up as though we had the plague. You must understand that it can't go on any longer!'
'I am not the master here,' replied Abbé Faujas. 'You must address yourselves to Monsieur Mouret if you want to strip his garden.'
The Trouches exchanged a fresh smile.
'We don't want to pry into your affairs,' Olympe continued. 'We know what we know, and that is sufficient for us. But all this proves what a bad heart you have. Do you think that if we were in your position we shouldn't invite you to come and take your share in the good things that were going?'
'What is it that you want me to do?' demanded the Abbé. 'Do you suppose that I am rolling in wealth? You know what sort of a room I occupy myself; it is more scantily furnished than your own. The house isn't mine, and I can't give it you.'
Olympe shrugged her shoulders. She silenced her husband who was beginning to speak, and then calmly continued:
'Everyone has his own ideas of life. If you had millions you wouldn't buy a strip of carpet for your bedside; you would spend them all in some foolish scheme or other. We, on the other hand, like to be comfortable. Dare you say that if you had a fancy for the handsomest furniture in the house and for the linen and food and anything else it contains, you couldn't have them this very evening? Well, in such circumstances a good brother would think of his relations, and wouldn't leave them in wretchedness and squalor as you leave us!'
Abbé Faujas looked keenly at the Trouches. They were both swaying backwards and forwards on their chairs.
'You are a pair of ungrateful people,' he said after a moment's silence. 'I have already done a great deal for you. You have me to thank for the food that you eat now. I still have letters of yours, Olympe, letters in which you beseech me to rescue you from your misery by bringing you over to Plassans. Now that you are here and your livelihood is assured, you break out into fresh demands.'
'Stuff!' Trouche impudently interrupted. 'You sent for us here because you wanted us. I have learned to my cost not to believe in anyone's fine talk. I have allowed my wife to speak, but women can never come to the point. In two words, my good friend, you are making a mistake in keeping us cooped up like dogs, who are only brought out in the hour of danger. We are getting weary of it, and we shall perhaps end by doing something foolish. Confound it all! give us a little liberty. Since the house isn't yours and you despise all luxury, what harm can it do you if we make ourselves comfortable? We shan't eat the walls!'
'Of course!' exclaimed Olympe, 'it's only natural that we should rebel against being constantly locked up. We will take care to do nothing to prejudice you. You know that my husband only requires the least sign from you. Go your own way, and you may depend upon us; but let us go ours. Is that understood, eh?'
Abbé Faujas had bent his head; he remained silent for a moment, and then, raising his eyes, and avoiding a direct reply, he said:
'Listen to what I say. If ever you do anything to hamper me, I swear to you that I will send you away to starve in a garret on the straw.'
Then he went back into the house, leaving them under the arbour. From that time the Trouches went down into the garden almost every day, but they conducted themselves with considerable discretion, and refrained from going there at the times when the priest was talking with the guests from the neighbouring gardens.
The following week Olympe complained so much of the room she was occupying that Marthe kindly offered her Serge's, which was now at liberty. The Trouches then kept both rooms. They slept in the young man's old bedchamber, from which not a single article of furniture had been removed, and turned the other apartment into a sort of drawing-room, for which Rose found them some old velvet-covered furniture in the lumber-room. Olympe, in great delight, ordered a rose-coloured dressing-gown from the best maker in Plassans.
Mouret, who had forgotten that Marthe had asked his permission to let the Trouches have Serge's room, was quite surprised to find them there one evening. He had gone up to look for a knife which he thought his son must have left in one of the drawers, and, as he entered the room, he saw Trouche trimming with this very knife a switch which he had just cut from one of the pear-trees in the garden. Thereupon he apologised and went downstairs.
During the public procession on the Feast of Corpus Christi, when Monseigneur Rousselot came down the steps of the magnificent altar, set up through the generosity of Madame de Condamin on the Place of the Sub-Prefecture, close to the very door of the small house she occupied, it was noticed with much surprise by the spectators that the Bishop abruptly turned his back upon Abbé Faujas.
'Ah! has there been some disagreement between them!' exclaimed Madame Rougon, who was looking out of her drawing-room window.
'Didn't you know about it?' asked Madame Paloque, who was leaning over by the old lady's side. 'It has been the talk of the town since yesterday. Abbé Fenil has been restored to favour.'
Monsieur de Condamin, who was standing behind the ladies, began to laugh. He had made his escape from his own house, saying that it smelt like a church.
'Do you attach any importance to such trifles?' said he. 'The Bishop is merely an old weathercock, turning one way or the other according as Faujas or Fenil blows against him; to-day it is one of them, to-morrow it will be the other. They have quarrelled and made it up again half a score times already. Before three days are over, you will see that Faujas will be the pet again.'
'I don't believe it,' exclaimed Madame Paloque; 'it is serious this time. It seems that Abbé Faujas has caused his lordship a great deal of worry. It appears that he formerly preached some sermons which excited great displeasure at Rome. I can't explain the matter quite clearly, but I know that the Bishop has received reproachful letters from Rome, in which he is recommended to be on his guard. It is said that Abbé Faujas is simply a political agent.'
'Who says so?' asked Madame Rougon, blinking her eyes as though to see the procession, which was then passing through the Rue de la Banne, more distinctly.
'I heard it said, but I really don't remember by whom,' the judge's wife replied carelessly.
Then she retired, saying that one would be able to get a better view from the side-window. Monsieur de Condamin, however, took the vacant place by Madame Rougon, and whispered in the old lady's ear:
'I have already twice seen her going to Abbé Fenil's. They have some plot or other in hand, I'm sure. Abbé Faujas must have trodden somehow or other on that viper of a woman, and she's trying to bite him. If she were not so ugly I would do her the service of telling her that her husband will never be presiding judge.'
'Why? I don't understand,' murmured the old lady, with a guileless expression.
Monsieur de Condamin looked at her curiously, and then began to smile.
The last two gendarmes in the procession had just disappeared round the corner of the Cours Sauvaire, and the few guests whom Madame Rougon had invited to witness the blessing of the altar returned into the drawing-room, where they chatted for a moment about the Bishop's graciousness and the new banners of the different congregations, and especially the one belonging to the girls of the Home of the Virgin, which had attracted much attention. The ladies were loud in their praises, and Abbé Faujas's name was mentioned every moment in the most eulogistic terms.
'He is clearly a saint!' sniggered Madame Paloque to Monsieur de Condamin, who had taken a seat near her.
Then, bending forward towards him, she added:
'I could not speak openly before Madame Rougon, you know, but there is a great deal of talk about Abbé Faujas and Madame Mouret. I dare say those unpleasant reports have reached the Bishop's ears.'
'Madame Mouret is a charming woman, and extremely winning notwithstanding her forty years,' was all that Monsieur de Condamin said in reply.
'Oh, yes! she is very charming, very charming, indeed,' murmured Madame Paloque, whose face turned quite green with spleen.
'Extremely charming,' persisted the conservator of rivers and forests. 'She is at the age of genuine passion and great happiness. You ladies are given to judging each other unfavourably.'
Thereupon he left the drawing-room, chuckling over Madame Paloque's suppressed rage.
The town was now indeed taking an absorbing interest in the continual struggle that went on between Abbé Faujas and Abbé Fenil for influence over the Bishop. It was a ceaseless combat, like the struggles of a couple of buxom housekeepers for the affection of an old dotard. The Bishop smiled knowingly; he had discovered how to maintain a kind of equilibrium between these opposing forces which he pitted one against the other, amused at seeing them overthrown in turn, and securing peace for himself by accepting the services of the one who temporarily gained the upper hand. To the dreadful stories which were told him to the detriment of his favourites, he paid but little attention, for he knew that the rival Abbés were capable of accusing each other of murder.
They are getting worse, my child,' the Bishop said, in one of his expansive moments to Abbé Surin. 'I fancy that in the end Paris will carry the day, and Rome will get the worst of it; but I am not quite sure, and I shall leave them to wear each other out. When one has made an end of the other, things will be settled——By the way, just read me the third Ode of Horace; I'm afraid I've translated one of the lines rather badly.'
On the Tuesday after the public procession the weather was lovely. Laughter was heard both in the garden of the Rastoils and in that of the Sub-Prefect, and numerous guests were sitting under the trees. Abbé Faujas read his breviary in the Mourets' garden after his usual custom, while slowly walking up and down beside the tall hedges of box. For some days past he had kept the little door that led to the lane bolted; he was indeed coquetting with his neighbours and keeping aloof, in order that he might make them more anxious to see him. Possibly too he had noticed a slight coldness in their manner after his last misunderstanding with the Bishop, and the abominable reports that his enemies had circulated against him.
About five o'clock, just as the sun was sinking, Abbé Surin proposed a game of shuttlecock to Monsieur Rastoil's daughters. He was very clever at it himself; and, notwithstanding the approach of their thirtieth year, both Angéline and Aurélie were immensely fond of games. When the servant brought the battledores, Abbé Surin, looking about him for a shady spot, for the garden was still bright with the last rays of the sun, was struck with an idea of which the young ladies cordially approved.
'Shall we go and play in the Impasse des Chevillottes?' he asked. 'We shall be shaded by the chestnut-trees there, and have more room.'
They left the garden and started a most delightful game in the lane. The two girls began, and Angéline was the first who failed to keep the shuttlecock going. Abbé Surin, who took her place, handed his battledore with professional skill and ease. Having tucked his cassock between his legs, he sprang backwards and forwards and sideways without cessation. His battledore caught the shuttlecock as it reached the ground and sent it flying, now to a surprising height, and now straight ahead like a bullet; and at times made it describe the most graceful curves. As a rule he preferred to be pitted against poor players, who, as they struck the shuttlecock at random, or, to use his own phrase, without any rhythm, brought all the skilful agility of his own play into exercise. Mademoiselle Aurélie, however, played a fair game. She vented a little cry like a swallow's every time she struck a blow with the battledore, and she laughed distractedly when the shuttlecock alighted on the young Abbé's nose. Gathering up her skirts, she waited for its return, or leaped backward with a great rustling of petticoats when he vengefully gave it a smarter blow than usual. At last the shuttlecock fell into her hair, and she almost toppled over upon her back. This greatly amused them all. Angéline now took her sister's place; and every time that Abbé Faujas raised his eyes from his breviary as he paced the Mourets' garden, he saw the white feathers of the shuttlecock skimming above the wall like a big butterfly.
'Are you there, your reverence?' all at once cried Angéline, at the little door. 'Our shuttlecock has fallen into your garden.'
The Abbé picked up the shuttlecock, which had dropped at his feet, and made up his mind to open the door.
'Oh, thank you! your reverence,' said Aurélie, who had already taken the battledore. 'Only Angéline would ever make such a stroke. The other day when papa was watching us she sent the shuttlecock right against his ear with such a bang that he was quite deaf till the next day.'
There was more laughter at this; and Abbé Surin, as rosy as a girl, delicately dabbed his brow with a handkerchief of fine texture. He pushed his fair hair behind his ears, and stood there with glistening eyes and flexible figure, using his battledore as a fan. In the excitement of the game his bands had got slightly displaced.
'Monsieur le Curé,' said he, as he took up his position again, 'you shall be umpire.'
Abbé Faujas, holding his breviary under his arm and smiling paternally, stood on the threshold of the little doorway. Through the cart-entrance of the Sub-Prefecture, which was half open, he could see Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies seated in front of the cascade amidst his friends. The priest looked straight in front of him, however, and counted the points of the game, while complimenting Abbé Surin and consoling the young ladies.
'I tell you what, Péqueur,' said Monsieur de Condamin, in a whisper, in the sub-prefect's ear, 'you make a mistake in not inviting that little Abbé to your parties. He is a great favourite with the ladies, and he looks as though he could waltz to perfection.'
Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, who was talking to Monsieur Delangre with much animation, did not however appear to hear the other, but went on with his conversation with the mayor.
'Really, my dear sir,' he said, 'I don't know where you see all the merits that you profess to find in him. On the contrary, indeed, Abbé Faujas appears to me to be of very doubtful character. There is considerable suspicion attached to his past career, and strange things are said about him here. I really don't see why I should go down on my knees to this priest, especially as the clergy of Plassans are hostile to us. I should gain no advantage by doing so.'
Monsieur Delangre and Monsieur de Condamin exchanged glances of intelligence, and then, by way of reply, nodded their heads.
'None, whatever,' continued the sub-prefect. 'It is no use pretending to look mysterious; I may tell you that I have myself written to Paris. I was a good deal bothered, and I wanted to be quite certain about this Faujas, whom you seem to look upon as a sort of prince in disguise. Well! do you know what reply I got? They told me that they did not know him and could tell me nothing about him, and that I must carefully avoid mixing myself up with clerical matters. They are grumpy enough in Paris as it is, since the election of that jackass Lagrifoul, and I have to be prudent, you understand.'
The mayor exchanged another glance with the conservator of rivers and forests. He even slightly shrugged his shoulders before the correctly twirled moustaches of Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies.
'Just listen to me,' he said to him after a moment's silence; 'you would like to be a prefect, wouldn't you?'
The sub-prefect smiled as he rocked himself in his chair.
'Well, then, go at once, and shake hands with Abbé Faujas, who is waiting for you down there, while he is watching them play at shuttlecock.'
Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies was silent with astonishment. He seemed quite puzzled, turned towards Monsieur de Condamin, and asked, with some show of uneasiness:
'Is that your advice also?'
'Certainly; go and offer him your hand,' replied the conservator of rivers and forests.
Then, with a slight touch of irony, he added:
'Consult my wife, if you like; I know you have perfect confidence in her.'
Madame de Condamin was just approaching them. She was wearing a lovely pink and pearl-grey dress. When they spoke to her of the Abbé she said graciously to the sub-prefect:
'It is very wrong of you to neglect your religious duties; one never sees you at church except perhaps when there is some official ceremony. It really distresses me very much, and I must try to convert you. What sort of opinion do you expect people will have of the government you represent, if they see you are not on the side of religion?—Leave us, gentlemen; I am going to confess Monsieur Péqueur.'
She took a seat, smiling playfully.
'Octavie,' said the sub-prefect, in an undertone, when they were alone together, 'don't make fun of me. You weren't a very pious person in the Rue du Helder in Paris. It's all I can do to keep from laughing when I see you worshipping in Saint-Saturnin's.'
'You are too flippant, my friend,' she replied, 'and your flippancy will play you a bad turn one of these days. Seriously, you quite distress me. I gave you credit for having more intelligence. Are you so blind that you cannot see that you are tottering in your position? Let me tell you that it is only from fear of alarming the Legitimists at Plassans that you haven't already been recalled. If the Legitimists saw a new sub-prefect arriving here, they would take alarm, whereas so long as you remain here they will continue quietly sleeping, feeling certain of victory at the next election. All this is not very flattering for you; I am aware of that, and the more so as I know positively that the authorities are acting without taking you into their confidence. Listen to me, my friend; I tell you that you are ruined if you don't divine certain things.'
He looked at her with unfeigned alarm.
'Has "the great man" been writing to you?' he asked, referring to a personage whom they thus designated between themselves.
No; he has broken entirely with me. I am not a fool, and I saw, before he did, the necessity of the separation. And I have nothing at all to complain of. He has shown me the greatest kindness. He found me a husband and gave me some excellent advice, which has proved extremely useful to me. But I have retained friends in Paris; and I swear to you that you have only just got time left to cling on to the branches if you don't want to fall. Don't be a pagan any longer, but go and offer your hand to Abbé Faujas. You will understand why later on, even if you can't guess it to-day.'
Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies lowered his eyes and seemed a little humiliated by the lesson he was receiving. He was very conceited, and, showing his white teeth, he tried to re-assert himself by murmuring tenderly:
'Ah! if you had only been willing, Octavie, we might have governed Plassans between us. I asked you to resume that delightful life—'
'Really now, you are a great idiot!' she interrupted in a tone of vexation. 'You annoy me with your "Octavie." I am Madame de Condamin to everyone, my friend. Can't you understand anything? I have an income of thirty thousand francs; I am queen of a whole Sub-Prefecture; I go everywhere; I am respected everywhere, bowed to and liked. What in the world should I do with you? You would only inconvenience me. I am a respectable woman, my friend.'
She rose from her seat and walked towards Doctor Porquier, who, according to his custom, had come to spend an hour in the garden chatting to his fair patients, after a round of visits.
'Oh, doctor!' she exclaimed, with one of her pretty grimaces, 'I have got such a headache. It pains me just here, under the left eyebrow.'
'That is the side of the heart, madame,' said the doctor, gallantly.
Madame de Condamin smiled and did not carry the consultation any further. Madame Paloque, who was present, bent, however, towards her husband, whom she brought with her every time she came, in order that she might recommend him to the sub-prefect's influence, and whispered in his ear:
'That's the only way Porquier has of curing them.'
When Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies had joined Monsieur de Condamin and Monsieur Delangre he man?uvred cleverly in such wise as to draw them towards the gateway. When he was within a few yards of it, he stopped and appeared to be interested in the game of shuttlecock which was still going on in the lane. Abbé Surin, with his hair blown about by the wind, the sleeves of his cassock rolled up, and his slender, white, womanly wrists displayed, had just stepped backwards, putting some twenty yards between himself and Mademoiselle Aurélie. He felt that he was being watched, and he quite surpassed himself. Mademoiselle Aurélie was also playing extremely well, spurred on, as it were, by the skill of her partner. Thus the shuttlecock described long gentle curves with such regularity that it seemed to light of its own accord upon the battledores, going from one to the other player without either of them having to stir from their places. Abbé Surin, inclined slightly backwards, displayed his well-shaped bust to advantage.
'Excellent! excellent!' cried the sub-prefect. 'Ah! Monsieur l'Abbé, I must compliment you upon your skill.'
Then, turning towards Madame de Condamin, Doctor Porquier and the Paloques, he exclaimed:
'I've really never seen anything like it before. You will allow us to admire your play, I hope, Monsieur l'Abbé?'
The whole set of the Sub-Prefecture now formed into a group at the far end of the lane. Abbé Faujas had not moved from the position he had taken up. Having acknowledged with a nod the salutations of Monsieur Delangre and Monsieur de Condamin, he went on counting the points of the game. When Aurélie at last missed the shuttlecock, he said good-naturedly:
'That makes you three hundred and ten points, for the distance was altered; your sister has only forty-seven.'
However, while he appeared to follow the flight of the shuttlecock with all-absorbing interest, he every now and then glanced at the door of the Rastoils' garden, which still remained open. Monsieur Maffre was as yet the only person who had shown himself there; but at last a voice called from inside the garden:
'What is amusing them so much out there?' It was Monsieur Rastoil, who was chatting with Monsieur de Bourdeu beside the rustic table, that asked the question.
'His lordship's secretary is playing at shuttlecock,' Monsieur Maffre replied. 'He is making some wonderful strokes and everybody is watching him. His reverence the Curé is there, and seems quite amazed.'
Monsieur de Bourdeu took a big pinch of snuff as he exclaimed:
'Ah! Monsieur l'Abbé Faujas is there, is he?'
He glanced at Monsieur Rastoil, and they both seemed ill at ease.
'I have heard,' remarked the presiding judge, 'that the Curé has been restored to the Bishop's favour.'
Yes, indeed; this very morning,' said Monsieur Maffre. 'There has been a complete reconciliation, and I have heard some touching particulars about it. His lordship shed tears. Ah, there can be no doubt that Abbé Fenil has cause for self-reproach.'
'I thought that you were the grand-vicar's friend,' observed Monsieur de Bourdeu.
'So I am, but I am also the Curé's friend,' replied the justice of the peace. 'Thank goodness! he is a man of sufficient piety to be able to despise all the calumnies of his enemies. They haven't even hesitated to question his morality! It is disgraceful!'
The ex-prefect again glanced at the presiding judge with a singular expression.
'And they've tried to compromise him in political matters,' continued Monsieur Maffre. 'They said that he had come here to overturn everything, to bestow places right and left and bring about the triumph of the Paris clique. Why, if he had been the chief of a band of brigands folks couldn't have said worse things about him than they have done. A pack of lies, all of them!'
Monsieur de Bourdeu was drawing a face on the gravel of the walk with the tip of his walking-stick.
'Yes,' he said, carelessly, 'I have heard these things mentioned. But it is very unlikely that a minister of religion would allow himself to play such a part; and besides, to the honour of Plassans, I think it may be said that he would have failed completely. There is no one here who could be bought.'
'Oh! it's all stuff and nonsense, that!' cried the presiding judge, shrugging his shoulders. 'A town can't be turned inside out like an old coat. Paris may send us as many spies and agents as she likes, but Plassans will always keep Legitimist. Look at that little Péqueur now! We've only made a single mouthful of him! Folks must be very stupid to believe in mysterious personages running about the provinces offering places and appointments. I should be very curious to see one of those gentlemen.'
He seemed to be getting a little angry, and Monsieur Maffre, with some show of uneasiness, appeared to think it necessary to defend himself.
'Pardon me,' he exclaimed. 'I have never asserted that Abbé Faujas was a Bonapartist agent; on the contrary, I have always considered the accusation a most absurd one.'
Oh! it's not a question of Abbé Faujas. My remarks are quite general. People don't sell themselves in that way! Abbé Faujas is above all suspicion.'
There was an interval of silence. Monsieur de Bourdeu finished the face he was drawing on the gravel by adding a long pointed beard to it.
'Abbé Faujas has no political views,' he at last said in his dry voice.
'Evidently,' replied Monsieur Rastoil; 'we found fault with him for his indifference, but now I approve of it. With all this gossip in the air, it would have had a prejudicial effect upon religion. You know as well as I do, Bourdeu, that he can't be accused of the slightest suspicious step. He has never been seen at the Sub-Prefecture, has he? He kept with great propriety in his fitting place. If he were a Bonapartist, he wouldn't be likely to conceal it, would he?'
'Certainly not.'
'Then, too, he leads a most exemplary life. My wife and my son have told me things about him which have affected me very much.'
The merriment in the little lane was now louder than ever. Abbé Faujas could be heard complimenting Mademoiselle Aurélie on some wonderful stroke of her battledore. Monsieur Rastoil, who had checked himself for a moment, continued, with a smile:
'Just listen to them! What can they find in it to amuse them so much? It makes one quite long to be young again!'
Then, in a more serious tone, he added:
'Yes, my wife and my son have made me feel a strong liking for Abbé Faujas; and we are very sorry that his discreet reserve keeps him from joining our circle.'
As Monsieur Bourdeu nodded his head approvingly, shouts of applause were heard in the alley. There was a perfect uproar of hand-clapping, laughter and shouts, as though some troop of school-boys had just rushed out to play. Monsieur Rastoil rose from his rustic chair.
'Good gracious!' he said, with a smile; 'let us go and see what they are up to. My legs are beginning to feel a little cramped.'
The others followed him, and they all three went and stood by the little door. It was the first time that the presiding judge and the ex-prefect had ventured so far. When they saw the group formed by the sub-prefect's guests at the end of the lane, their faces assumed a serious expression. Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, for his part, drew himself up and put on an official attitude. Madame de Condamin went flitting to and fro along the lane laughing and smiling and filling the place with the rustle of her pink and grey dress. The two sets of guests kept glancing at one another, neither being willing to retire, while Abbé Faujas still maintained his position between them at Mouret's door, quietly enjoying himself without seeming in the least degree conscious of the delicacy of the situation.
All the spectators held their breath; for Abbé Surin, seeing that their number had increased, was desirous of winning their applause by a last exhibition of skill. He brought all his science into play, created difficulties for himself on purpose to overcome them, turned round and struck at the shuttlecock without looking at it, but seemingly divining its position, and thus sending it back over his head to Mademoiselle Aurélie with mathematical precision. He was very much flushed and was perspiring freely. He had thrown his hat off, and his bands were now hanging over his right shoulder. But he was the victor, and he looked as he always did, amiable and charming. The two groups of guests lingered there admiring him, and Madame de Condamin had to repress the applause, which burst out prematurely and inopportunely, by shaking her lace handkerchief. Then the young Abbé, introducing still further refinements into his play, began to skip about first to right and then to left, each time receiving the shuttlecock in a fresh position. This was the grand final flourish. He accelerated the rapidity of his play, and at last, just as he was jumping aside, his foot slipped and he nearly fell upon the bosom of Madame de Condamin, who had stretched out her arms with a little cry. The spectators, thinking he was hurt, rushed up, but the Abbé, who was pressing the ground with his hands and knees, sprang up again by a strong effort, and sent the shuttlecock, which had not yet fallen, spinning back to Mademoiselle Aurélie. Then, flourishing his battledore, he triumphed.
'Bravo! bravo!' cried Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, stepping up to him.
'Bravo! it was a magnificent stroke!' exclaimed Monsieur Rastoil, who also came up.
The game was interrupted, for the two sets of guests had now invaded the lane, and were mingled with each other, crowding around Abbé Surin, who leant, quite out of breath, against the wall by Abbé Faujas's side. Everybody began talking at once.
'I was afraid that he had split his skull,' said Doctor Porquier to Monsieur Maffre, in a voice full of emotion.
'Yes, these games generally have a bad ending,' remarked Monsieur de Bourdeu, addressing himself to Monsieur Delangre and the Paloques, while he received a shake of the hand from Monsieur de Condamin, whom he always tried to avoid in the streets, so that he might not have to bow to him.
Madame de Condamin went from the sub-prefect to the presiding judge, bringing them face to face, and exclaiming:
'But really, I am more upset than he is! I thought that we were going to fall together. There is a big stone there; did you notice it?'
'Yes, I see it there,' said Monsieur Rastoil; 'it must have caught against his heel.'
'Was it this round stone, do you think?' asked Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, picking up a pebble.
They had never spoken to each other before, except at official ceremonies. Now, however, they began to examine the stone, and passed it from one to the other, remarking that it was very sharp, and must have cut the Abbé's shoe. Madame de Condamin stood smiling between them, and assured them that she was beginning to feel better.
'Oh! the Abbé is feeling ill!' suddenly cried Monsieur Rastoil's daughters.
Abbé Surin had, indeed, turned very pale at hearing of the danger he had run. He was reeling with faintness, when Abbé Faujas, who had kept aloof, took him in his powerful arms, and carried him into Mouret's garden, where he seated him upon a chair. The two sets of guests soon swarmed into the arbour, where the young Abbé completely fainted away.
'Get some water and some vinegar, Rose!' cried Abbé Faujas, running towards the steps.
Mouret, who was in the dining-room, came to the window, but, on seeing all those people in his garden, he recoiled as though he were struck with fear, and kept himself out of sight. Rose soon came up with a collection of drugs, muttering, as she hastened along:
If only madame were here! But she has gone to the Seminary to see the lad. I am all alone, and I can't do impossibilities, can I? The master won't stir an inch; anybody might die for all he cared. There he is in the dining-room, hiding himself! He would let you die, before he would get you even a glass of water.'
By the time she had got through this grumble, she had reached Abbé Surin, who was lying in a swoon. 'Oh! the cherub!' she exclaimed, overcome with womanly pity.
The young Abbé, with his closed eyes and his pale brow wreathed with long, fair hair, looked like one of the sweet-faced martyrs that one sees expiring in sacred pictures. The elder of the Rastoil girls was supporting his head, which lay back, allowing his delicate, white neck to be seen. They were all in great excitement over him. Madame de Condamin gently dabbed his brow with a rag soaked in vinegar and water, and the others stood anxiously looking at her. At last the young Abbé opened his eyes, but closed them again immediately. He had two more swoons before he recovered.
'You have given me a terrible fright!' at last said Doctor Porquier, who had kept his hand fast in his own.
Abbé Surin, still sitting on the chair, stammered out confused thanks, and assured them all that it was a mere nothing. Then he saw that his cassock had been unbuttoned, and he smiled as he buttoned it and readjusted his bands. To prove that he was all right again, when the company advised him to keep quiet, he went back to the lane with the Rastoil girls in order to finish the game.
'You have a very nice place here,' said Monsieur Rastoil to Abbé Faujas, whose side he had not quitted.
'The air on this slope is delightful,' added Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, in his charming manner.
Then both sets of guests began looking with curiosity at Mouret's house.
'Perhaps the ladies and gentlemen would like to stay in the garden a little while,' exclaimed Rose; 'I will go and get some chairs.'
She made three journeys in quest of them, in spite of the protestations of the company. Then, after glancing at each other for a moment, the two sets of guests felt constrained by courtesy to seat themselves. The sub-prefect installed himself on Abbé Faujas's right hand, while the presiding judge took a chair on his left, and a friendly conversation at once began.
You are a very quiet neighbour, Monsieur le Curé,' said Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies very graciously; 'you can't imagine what pleasure it gives me to see you every day at the same hour in this little paradise. It seems to bring me a feeling of restfulness, after all the noise and worry I have.'
'A pleasant neighbour is a very rare thing,' observed Monsieur Rastoil.
'Quite true,' said Monsieur de Bourdeu. 'But his reverence seems to have filled this spot with the peaceful tranquillity of a cloister.'
While the Abbé was smiling and acknowledging these complimentary remarks, Monsieur de Condamin, who had not yet seated himself, stooped and whispered in Monsieur Delangre's ear:
'There's Rastoil, hoping to get that lout of a son of his made assessor to the public prosecutor.'
Monsieur Delangre, however, gave him an angry glance, trembling at the thought that this incorrigible chatterer might spoil everything. But this did not prevent the conservator of rivers and forests from adding:
'And Bourdeu, too, is flattering himself that he has already won back his prefecture.'
Meantime, Madame de Condamin had caused a great sensation by saying, in a meaning way:
'What I like about this garden is the tender charm it seems to possess, which makes it a nook apart from all the cares and wretchedness of the world. It is a spot where even Cain and Abel might have become reconciled.'
She emphasized her last words and gave two glances, one to the right and the other to the left, towards the neighbouring gardens. Monsieur Maffre and Doctor Porquier nodded approvingly; while the Paloques looked at each other inquisitively, feeling uneasy and fearing to compromise themselves should they open their mouths.
At the end of a quarter of an hour Monsieur Rastoil rose from his seat.
'My wife will be wondering where we have got to,' said he.
And thereupon the whole company rose, feeling somewhat embarrassed as to the manner of their leave-taking. But Abbé Faujas spread out his hands and said, with the pleasantest possible smile:
'My paradise is always open to you.'
The presiding judge then promised to come and see the Curé every now and then, and the sub-prefect, with more effusiveness, declared that he would do the same. For another five minutes they all lingered there, exchanging compliments, while, out in the lane, the laughter of the Rastoil girls and Abbé Surin was again heard. A fresh game was going on with all the animation of the previous one, and the shuttlecock could be seen passing backwards and forwards in its regular flight above the garden wall.
One Friday, as Madame Paloque was entering Saint-Saturnin's, she was greatly surprised to see Marthe kneeling in front of Saint-Michael's chapel. The Abbé Faujas was hearing confessions.
'Ah!' she muttered, 'has she succeeded in touching the Abbé's heart? I must wait a little while and watch. It would be very fine if Madame de Condamin were to come.'
She took a chair a little in the rear, and, half kneeling, covered her face with her hands as though she was absorbed in earnest prayer; but she held her fingers apart so that she might glance between them. The church was very gloomy. Marthe, with her head bent over her prayer-book, looked as though she were asleep. Her figure snowed blackly against a white pillar. Only her shoulders, heaving with deep-drawn sighs, seemed to be alive. She was, indeed, so profoundly overcome with emotion that she was constantly allowing her turn to be taken by some other of Abbé Faujas's penitents. The Abbé waited for a few moments, and then, seemingly a little impatient, he began tapping the woodwork of the confessional. Thereupon one of the women who were waiting, seeing that Marthe showed no sign of moving, decided to take her place. The chapel gradually grew empty, and Marthe still remained motionless as if in ecstasy.
'She seems in a terrible state,' thought Madame Paloque. 'It is really quite indecent to make such an exhibition of one's self in church. Ah! here comes Madame de Condamin!'
Madame de Condamin was indeed just entering the church. She stopped for a moment before the holy-water basin, removed her glove, and crossed herself with a pretty gesture. Her silk dress made a murmuring sound as she passed along the narrow space between the chairs. As she knelt down, she filled the lofty vault with a rustling of skirts. She had her usual affable expression, and smiled through the gloom. Soon she and Marthe were the only two penitents left. The priest grew more and more impatient, and tapped yet more loudly upon the woodwork of the confessional.
'It is your turn, madame; I am the last,' Madame de Condamin whispered politely, bending towards Marthe, whom she had not recognised.
Marthe raised her face, pinched and pale from her extreme emotion, and did not appear to understand. It was as though she were awakening from some ecstatic trance, and her eyelids trembled.
'Come, ladies, come!' exclaimed Abbé Faujas, who had now half-opened the door of the confessional.
Madame de Condamin smilingly rose to obey the priest's summons; but Marthe, recognising her, hastened into the chapel, to fall again upon her knees, however, a few paces away from the confessional-box.
Madame Paloque felt much amused. She hoped that the two ladies would seize each other by the hair. Marthe could hear all that was said, for Madame de Condamin had a clear flute-like voice. She dallied over the recital of her sins, and quite animated the confessional with her pretty gossiping ways. Once she even vented a little muffled laugh, at the sound of which Marthe raised her pain-racked face. Soon afterwards Madame de Condamin finished her confession, and rose as if to retire, but she quickly stepped back and commenced talking afresh, this time merely bending her head without kneeling down.
'That she-devil is making sport of Madame Mouret and the Abbé,' thought the judge's wife to herself. 'It's all put on, is this.'
At last Madame de Condamin really withdrew. Marthe watched her as if waiting till she disappeared. Then she went forward, leant against the confessional-box, and fell heavily on her knees. Madame Paloque had slipped a little nearer and was craning out her head, but she could only see the penitent's dark dress spread out around her. For nearly half an hour there was not the slightest movement. Now and then she thought she could detect some smothered sobs in the throbbing silence, which was also broken at times by a creak from the confessional-box. She began to feel a little weary of her watching, for all she would be able to do now would be to stare at Marthe as she left the chapel.
Abbé Faujas was the first to leave, closing the door of the confessional-box with an appearance of annoyance. Madame Mouret lingered there for a long time, bent and motionless. When she at last went away, her face covered with her veil, she seemed quite broken down, and even forgot to cross herself.
'There has been a row; the Abbé hasn't made himself pleasant,' thought Madame Paloque. Then she followed Marthe as far as the Place de l'Archevêché, where she stopped and seemed to hesitate for a moment. At last, having glanced cautiously around to make sure that nobody was watching her, she stealthily slipped into the house where Abbé Fenil resided, at one of the corners of the Place.
Marthe now almost lived at Saint-Saturnin's. She carried out her religious duties with the greatest fervour. Even Abbé Faujas often had to remonstrate with her about her excessive zeal. He only allowed her to communicate once a month, fixed the hours which she should devote to pious exercises, and insisted that she should not entirely shut herself up in religious practices. She for a long time requested him to let her attend a low mass every morning before he would accede to her desire. One day, when she told him that she had lain for a whole hour on the cold floor of her room to punish herself for some fault she had committed, he was very angry with her, and declared that her confessor alone had the right to inflict penance. He treated her throughout very sternly, and threatened to send her back to Abbé Bourrette if she did not absolutely follow his directions.
'I was wrong to take you at all,' he often said; 'I do not like disobedient souls.'
She felt a pleasure in his harshness. That iron hand which bent her, and which held her back upon the edge of the adoration in the depths of which she would have liked to annihilate herself, thrilled her with ever-renewed desire. She remained like a neophyte, making but little advance in her journey of love, being constantly pulled up, and vaguely divining some yet greater bliss beyond. The sense of deep restfulness which she had first experienced in the church, that forgetfulness of herself and the outside world, now changed, however, into positive actual happiness. It was the happiness for which she had been vaguely longing since her girlhood, and which she was now, at forty years of age, at last finding; a happiness which sufficed her, which compensated her for all the past-away years, and made her egotistical, absorbed in the new sensations that she felt within her like sweet caresses.
'Be kind to me,' she murmured to Abbé Faujas, 'be kind to me, for I stand in need of great kindness.'
And when he did show her kindness, she could have gone down upon her knees and thanked him. At these times he unbent, spoke to her in a fatherly way, and pointed out to her that her imagination was too excited and feverish. God, said he, did not like to be worshipped in that way, in wild impulses. She smiled, looking quite pretty and young again with her blushing face, and promised to restrain herself in the future. But sometimes she experienced paroxysms of devotion, which cast her upon the flag-stones in some dark corner, where, almost grovelling, she stammered out burning words. Even her power of speech then died away, and she continued her prayers in feeling only, with a yearning of her whole being, an appeal for that divine kiss which seemed ever hovering about her brow without pressing it.
At home Marthe became querulous, she who till now had been indifferent and listless, quite happy so long as her husband left her at peace. Now, however, that he had begun to spend all his time in the house, had lost his old spirit of raillery, and had grown mopish and melancholy, she grew impatient with him.
'He is always hanging about us,' she said to the cook one day.
'Oh, he does it out of pure maliciousness,' replied Rose. 'He isn't a good man at heart. I haven't found that out to-day for the first time. He has only put on that woebegone look, he who is so fond of hearing his tongue wag, in order to try to make us pity him. He's really bursting with anger, but he won't show it, because he thinks that if he looks wretched we shall be sorry for him and do just what he wants. You are quite right, madame, not to let yourself be influenced by all those grimaces and pretences.'
Mouret kept a hold upon the women with his purse. He did not care to wrangle and argue with them, for fear of making his life still less comfortable than it already was; but, though he no longer grumbled and meddled and interfered, he showed his displeasure by refusing a single extra crown piece to either Marthe or Rose. He gave the latter a hundred francs a month for the purchase of provisions; wine, oil, and preserves were in the house. The cook was obliged to make the sum stated last her till the end of the month, even if she had to pay for something out of her own pocket. As for Marthe, she had absolutely nothing; her husband never even gave her a sou, and she was compelled to appeal to Rose, and ask her to try to save ten francs out of the monthly allowance. She often found herself without a pair of boots to put on, and was obliged to borrow from her mother the money she needed to buy either a dress or a hat.
'But Mouret must surely be going mad!' Madame Rougon cried. 'You can't go naked! I will speak to him about it.'
'I beg you to do nothing of the kind, mother,' Marthe said. 'He detests you, and he would treat me even worse than he does already if he knew that I talked of these matters to you.'
She began to cry as she added:
'I have shielded him for a long time, but I really can't keep silent any longer. You remember that he was once most unwilling for me even to set foot in the street; he kept me shut up, and treated me like a mere chattel. Now he behaves so unkindly because he sees that I have escaped from him, and that I won't submit any longer to be a mere servant. He is a man utterly without religion, selfish and bad-hearted.'
'He doesn't strike you, does he?'
'No; but it will come to that. At present he contents himself with refusing me everything. I have not bought any chemises for the last five years, and yesterday I showed him those I have. They are quite worn out, so patched and mended that I am ashamed of wearing them. He looked at them and examined them and said that they would do perfectly well till next year. I haven't a single centime of my own. The other day I had to borrow two sous from Rose to buy some thread to sew up my gloves, which were splitting all over.'
She gave her mother many other details of the straits to which she was reduced—how she had to make laces for her boots out of blackened string, how she had to wash her ribbons in tea to make her hat look a little fresher, and how she had to smear the threadbare folds of her only silk dress with ink to conceal the signs of wear. Madame Rougon expressed great pity for her, and advised her to rebel. Mouret was a monster, said she. Rose asserted that he carried his avarice so far as to count the pears in the store-room and the lumps of sugar in the cupboard, while he also kept a close eye on the preserves, and ate himself all the remnants of the loaves.
It was a source of especial distress to Marthe that she was not able to contribute to the offertories at Saint-Saturnin's. She used to conceal ten-sou pieces in scraps of paper and carefully preserve them for high mass on Sundays. When the lady patronesses of the Home of the Virgin made some offering to the cathedral, such as a pyx, or a silver cross, or a banner, she felt quite ashamed, and kept out of the way, affecting ignorance of their intentions. The ladies felt much pity for her. She would have robbed her husband if she could have found the key of his desk, so keenly was she tortured at being able to do nothing for the honour of the church to which she was so passionately attached. She felt all the jealousy of a deceived woman when Abbé Faujas used a chalice which had been presented by Madame de Condamin; whereas on the days when he said mass in front of the altar cloth which she herself had embroidered she was filled with fervent joy, and said her prayers with ecstatic thrills, as though some part of herself lay beneath the priest's extended hands. She would have liked to have had a whole chapel of her own; and even dreamt of expending a fortune upon one, and of shutting herself up in it and receiving the Deity alone by herself at her own altar.
Rose, of whom she made a confidant, had recourse to all sorts of plans to obtain money for her. That year she secretly gathered the finest fruit in the garden and sold it, and she also disposed of a lot of old furniture that was stowed away in an attic, managing her sales so well that she succeeded in getting together a sum of three hundred francs, which she handed to Marthe with great triumph. The latter kissed the old cook.
Oh! how good you are!' she said to her, affectionately. 'Are you quite sure that he knows nothing about what you have done? I saw the other day, in the Rue des Orfèvres, two little cruets of chased silver, such dear little things; they are marked two hundred francs. Now, you'll do me a little favour, won't you? I don't want to go and buy them myself, because someone would certainly see me going into the shop. Tell your sister to go and get them. She can bring them here after dark, and can give them to you through the kitchen window.'
This purchase of the cruets seemed like a clandestine intrigue to Marthe, and thrilled her with the sweetest pleasure. For three days she kept the cruets at the bottom of a chest, hidden away beneath layers of linen; and when she gave them to Abbé Faujas in the sacristy of Saint-Saturnin's she trembled so much that she could scarcely speak. The Abbé scolded her in a kindly fashion. He was not fond of presents, and spoke of money with the disdain of a strong-minded man who only cares for power and authority. During his earlier years of poverty, even at times when he and his mother had no food beyond bread and water, he had never thought of borrowing even a ten-franc piece from the Mourets.
Marthe found a safe hiding-place for the hundred francs which were still left her. She also was becoming a little miserly; and she schemed how she should best expend this money, making some fresh plan every morning. While she was still in a state of hesitation, Rose told her that Madame Trouche wished to see her privately. Olympe, who used to spend hours in the kitchen, had become Rose's intimate friend, and often borrowed a couple of francs of her to save herself from going upstairs at times when she said that she had forgotten to bring down her purse.
'Go upstairs and see her there,' said the cook; 'you will be better able to talk there. They are good sort of people, and they are very fond of his reverence. They have had a lot of trouble. Madame Olympe has quite made my heart ache with all the things she has told me.'
When Marthe went upstairs she found Olympe in tears. They, the Trouches, were too soft-hearted, said she, and their kindness was always being abused. Then she entered upon an explanation of their affairs at Besan?on, where the rascality of a partner had saddled them with a heavy burden of debt. To make matters worse, their creditors were getting angry, and she had just received an insulting letter, the writer of which threatened to communicate with the Mayor and the Bishop of Plassans.
'I don't mind what happens to me,' she sobbed, 'but I would give my head to save my brother from being compromised. He has already done too much for us, and I don't want to speak to him on the matter, for he is not rich, and he would only distress himself to no purpose. Good heavens! what can I do to keep that man from writing? My brother would die of shame if such a letter were sent to the Mayor and the Bishop. Yes, I know him well; he would die of shame!'
Tears rushed to Marthe's eyes. She was quite pale, and fervently pressed Olympe's hands. Then, without the latter having preferred any request, she offered her the hundred francs she had.
'It is very little, I know; but perhaps it might be sufficient to avert the danger,' she said with an expression of great anxiety.
'A hundred francs, a hundred francs!' exclaimed Olympe. 'Oh, no! he would never be satisfied with a hundred francs.'
Marthe lost all hope. She swore that she had not a centime more. She so far forgot herself as to speak of the cruets. If she had not bought them she would have been able to give three hundred francs. Madame Trouche's eyes sparkled.
'Three hundred francs, that is just what he demands,' she said. 'Ah! you would have rendered my brother a much greater service by not giving him that present, which, by the way, will have to remain in the church. What a number of beautiful things the ladies of Besan?on presented to him! But he isn't a bit the better off for them to-day! Don't give him anything more; it is really nothing but robbery! Consult me about what you do; there is so much hidden misery—No! a hundred francs will certainly not be sufficient!'
At the end of half an hour spent in lamentation, however, she accepted the hundred francs when she saw that Marthe really had no more.
I will send them so as to pacify the man a little,' she said, 'but he won't leave us at peace long. Whatever you do, I beg of you not to mention anything about it to my brother. It would nearly kill him. And I think it would be better, too, if my husband knew nothing of what has passed between us; he is so proud that he would be sure to be doing something rash to be able to acquit himself of our obligation to you. We women can understand each other, you know.'
This loan was a source of much pleasure to Marthe, who henceforth had a fresh care, that of warding off from Abbé Faujas the danger that threatened him without his being aware of it. She frequently went upstairs to the Trouches' rooms and stayed there for hours, discussing with Olympe the best means of discharging the debts. The latter had told her that a good many promissory notes had been endorsed by the priest, and that there would be a terrible scandal if they should ever be sent to any bailiff in Plassans to be protested. The sum total of their liabilities was so great, she said, that for a long time she refused to disclose it, only weeping the more bitterly when Marthe pressed her. One day, however, she mentioned the sum of twenty thousand francs. Marthe was quite frozen upon hearing this. She would never be able to procure anything like twenty thousand francs, and thought that she would certainly have to wait for Mouret's death before she could hope to have any such sum at her disposal.
'I say twenty thousand francs in all,' Olympe hastily added, disquieted by Marthe's grave appearance: 'but we should be quite satisfied if we were able to pay by small instalments spread over half a score of years. The creditors would wait for any length of time, if they were only sure of getting their instalments regularly. It is a great pity that we can't find anyone who has sufficient confidence in us to make the small necessary advances.'
This matter became an habitual topic of conversation. Olympe also frequently spoke of Abbé Faujas, whom she seemed almost to worship. She gave Marthe all kinds of private details about the priest: such as, for instance, that he could not bear anything that tickled him, that he could sleep on his left side, and that he had a strawberry-mark on his right shoulder, which turned red in May like the natural fruit. Marthe smiled and never tired of hearing of these little matters; and she questioned the young woman about her childhood and that of her brother. When the subject of the money cropped up she seemed painfully overcome by her inability to do anything, and she even complained bitterly of Mouret, to whom Olympe, emboldened by Marthe's language, now always referred in her presence as the 'old miser.' Sometimes when Trouche returned from his office he found the two women still talking together, but at his appearance they checked themselves and changed the subject. Trouche conducted himself in the most satisfactory way, and the lady patronesses of the Home of the Virgin were highly pleased with him. He was never seen in any of the cafés in the town.
In order to be able to render some assistance to Olympe, who sometimes talked about throwing herself out of the window, Marthe made Rose take all the useless old odds and ends that were lying about the house to a second-hand dealer at the market. At first the two women were a little timid about the matter, and only disposed of broken-down chairs and tables when Mouret was out of the way, but afterwards they began to lay hands upon more important articles, and sold ornaments, pieces of china, and anything else they could remove without its absence appearing too conspicuous. They were slipping down a fatal incline, and would have ended by carting off all the furniture in the house and leaving nothing but the bare walls, if Mouret had not one day charged Rose with thieving and threatened to send for the police.
'What, sir! A thief! I!' she cried. 'Just because you happened to see me selling one of madame's rings. Be careful of what you are saying! The ring was mine; madame gave it to me. Madame isn't such a mean wretch as you are. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for leaving your wife without a sou! She hasn't even a pair of shoes to put on! The other day I had to pay the milkman myself! Yes, I did sell the ring, and what of that? Isn't madame's ring her own? She is obliged to turn it into money, since you won't give her any. If I were she, I would sell the whole house! The whole house, do you hear? It distresses me beyond everything to see her going about as naked as Saint John the Baptist!'
Mouret now began to keep a close watch at all times. He locked up the cupboards and drawers, and kept the keys in his own possession. Whenever Rose went out he would look at her hands distrustfully, and even feel at her pockets if he saw any suspicious swelling beneath her skirt. He brought certain articles back from the second-hand dealer's and restored them to their places, dusting and wiping them ostentatiously in Marthe's presence in order to remind her of what he called Rose's thefts. He never directly accused his wife. There was a cut-glass water-bottle which he turned into a special instrument of torture. Rose, having sold it for twenty sous, had pretended to Mouret that it was broken. But now he made her bring it and put it on the table at every meal. One day, at lunch, she quite lost her temper over it, and purposely let it fall.
'There, sir, it's really broken this time, isn't it?' she cried, laughing in his face.
As he threatened to dismiss her, she exclaimed:
'You had better! I've been in your service for five-and-twenty years. If I went madame would go with me!'
Marthe, reduced to extremities and egged on by Rose and Olympe, at last rebelled. She was desperately in want of five hundred francs. For the last week Olympe had been crying and sobbing, asserting that if she could not get five hundred francs by the end of the month one of the bills which had been endorsed by Abbé Faujas would be published in one of the Plassans newspapers. The threatened publication of this bill, this terrible threat which she did not quite understand, threw Marthe into a state of dreadful alarm, and she resolved to dare everything. In the evening, as they were going to bed, she asked Mouret for the five hundred francs, and when he looked at her in amazement she began to speak of the fifteen years which she had spent behind a counter at Marseilles, with a pen behind her ear like a clerk.
'We made the money together,' she said; 'and it belongs to us both. I want five hundred francs.'
Mouret thereupon broke his long maintained silence in the most violent fashion, and all his old raillery burst forth again.
Five hundred francs!' he cried. 'Do you want them for your priest? I play the simpleton now and keep my peace for fear I might say too much; but you must not imagine that you can go on for ever making a fool of me! Five hundred francs! Why not say the whole house? The whole house certainly does seem to belong to him! He wants some money, does he? And he has told you to ask me for it? I might be among a lot of robbers in a wood instead of being in my own home! I shall have my very handkerchief stolen out of my pocket before long! I'll be bound that if I were to go and search his room I should find his drawers full of my property. There are seven pairs of my socks missing, four or five shirts, and three pairs of pants. I was going over the things yesterday. Everything I have is disappearing, and I shan't have anything left very soon! No, not a single sou will I give you, not a single sou!'
'I want five hundred francs; half of the money belongs to me,' Marthe tranquilly replied.
For a whole hour Mouret stormed and fumed and repeated the same reproaches. His wife was no longer the same, he said. He did not know her now. Before the priest's arrival, she had loved him and obeyed him and looked after the house. Those who set her to act in opposition to him must be very wicked persons. Then his voice grew thick, and he let himself fall into a chair, broken down and as weak as a child.
'Give me the key of your desk!' said Marthe.
He got up from his chair and gathered his strength together for a last cry of protest.
'You want to strip me of everything, eh? to leave your children with nothing but straw for a bed? You won't even leave us a loaf of bread? Well! well! clear out everything, and send for Rose to fill her apron! There's the key!'
He threw the key at Marthe and she placed it under her pillow. She was quite pale after this quarrel, the first violent quarrel that she had ever had with her husband. She got into bed, but Mouret passed the night in an easy-chair. Towards morning Marthe heard him sobbing. She would then have given him back the key, if he had not wildly rushed into the garden, though it was still pitch dark.
Peace again seemed to be re-established between them. The key of the desk remained hanging upon a nail near the mirror. Marthe, who was quite unaccustomed to the sight of large sums, felt a sort of fear of the money. She was very bashful and shamefaced at first whenever she went to open the drawer in which Mouret always kept some ten thousand francs in cash to pay for his purchases of wine. She strictly confined herself to taking only what was necessary. Olympe, too, gave her the most excellent advice, and told her that now she had the key she ought to be careful and economical; and, indeed, seeing the trembling nervousness which she exhibited at the sight of the hoard of money, she ceased for some time to speak to her of the Besan?on debts.
Mouret meantime relapsed into his former moody silence. Serge's admission to the Seminary had been another severe blow to him. His friends of the Cours Sauvaire, the retired traders who promenaded there regularly between four o'clock and six, began to feel very uneasy about him, when they saw him arrive with his arms swaying about and his face wearing a stupefied expression. He hardly made any reply to their remarks and seemed a prey to some incurable disease.
'He's breaking up; he's breaking up,' they murmured to each other; 'and he's only forty-four; it's scarcely credible. He will end by having softening of the brain.'
Mouret no longer seemed to hear the malicious allusions which were made before him. If he was questioned directly about Abbé Faujas, he coloured slightly as he replied that the priest was an excellent tenant and paid his rent with great punctuality. When his back was turned, the retired shopkeepers grinned as they sat and basked in the sun on one of the seats on the Cours.
'Well, after all, he is only getting what he deserves,' said a retired almond-dealer. 'You remember how hotly he stood up for the priest, how he sang his praises in the four corners of Plassans; but when one talks to him on that subject now rather an odd expression comes over his face.'
These worthy gentlemen then regaled themselves with certain scandalous stories which they whispered into each other's ears, passing them on in this way from one end of the bench to the other.
'Well,' said a master-tanner in a half whisper, 'there isn't much pluck about Mouret; if I were in his place I would soon show the priest the door.'
Thereupon they all repeated that Mouret was certainly a very timid fellow, he who had formerly jeered so much at those husbands who allowed their wives to lead them by the nose.
These stories, however, in spite of the persistence with which certain persons kept them afloat, never got beyond a particular set of idle gossiping people, and the reason which the Curé himself gave for not taking up his residence at the parsonage, namely, his liking for the Mourets' beautiful garden, where he could read his breviary in such perfect peace, was generally accepted as the true one. His great piety, his ascetic life and his contempt for all the frivolities and coquetries which other priests allowed themselves placed him beyond suspicion. The members of the Young Men's Club accused Abbé Fenil of trying to ruin him. All the new part of the town was on his side, and it was only the Saint-Marc quarter that was against him, its aristocratic inhabitants treating him with great reserve whenever they met him in Monseigneur Rousselot's saloons. However, in spite of his popularity, he shook his head when old Madame Rougon told him that he might now dare everything.
'Nothing is quite safe and solid yet,' he said. 'I am not sure of anyone. The least touch might bring the whole edifice toppling down.'
Marthe had been causing him anxiety for some time past. He felt that he was incapable of calming the fever of devotion which was raging within her. She escaped his control and disobeyed him, and advanced further than he wished her to do. He was afraid lest this woman, this much-respected patroness, who was so useful, might yet bring about his ruin. There was a fire burning within her which seemed to discolour her flesh, and redden her eyes and make them heavy. It was like an ever-growing disease, an infatuation of her whole being, that was gradually weakening her heart and brain. She often seemed to lapse into some ecstatic trance, her hands were shaken by a nervous trembling, and a dry cough occasionally shook her from head to foot without consciousness apparently on her part of how it was rending her. The Curé then showed himself sterner to her than before, tried to crush the passion which was dawning within her, and even forbade her to come to Saint-Saturnin's.
'The church is very cold,' he said, 'and you cough so much there. I don't want you to do anything to make yourself worse.'
She protested that there was nothing the matter with her beyond a slight irritation of the throat, but at last she yielded and accepted his prohibition as a well-deserved punishment which closed the doors of heaven upon her. She wept, believed that she was damned, and dragged herself listlessly through the blank weary days; and then, in spite of herself, like a woman returning to some forbidden love, when Friday came she humbly glided into Saint-Michael's chapel and laid her burning brow against the woodwork of the confessional-box. She did not speak a word, but simply knelt there, completely crushed, quite overwhelmed. At this Abbé Faujas, who was greatly irritated, treated her as harshly as though she was some unworthy woman, and hastily ordered her away. Then she left the church, feeling happy and consoled.
The priest was afraid of the effect of the gloomy darkness of Saint-Michael's chapel. He spoke upon the subject to Doctor Porquier, who persuaded Marthe to go to confession at the little oratory of the Home of the Virgin in the suburb. Abbé Faujas promised to be there to hear her every other Saturday. This oratory, which had been established in a large whitewashed room with four big windows, was bright and cheerful, and would, he thought, have a calming effect upon the excited imagination of his penitent. There, he thought, he would be able to bring her under control, reduce her to obedience, without possible fear of any scandal. As a guard against all calumnious gossip, he asked his mother to accompany Marthe, and while he confessed the latter Madame Faujas remained outside the door. As the old lady did not like to waste her time, she used to take her knitting with her and work away at a stocking.
'My dear child,' she often said to Marthe, as they were returning together to the Rue Balande, 'I could hear very well what Ovide was saying to you to-day. You don't seem to be able to please him. You can't care for him. Ah! I wish I were in your place to be able to kiss his feet! I shall grow to hate you, if you go on causing him nothing but annoyance.'
Marthe bent her head. She felt deep shame in Madame Faujas's presence. She did not like her, she felt jealous of her at finding her always coming between herself and the priest. The old lady's dark eyes, too, troubled her when they constantly bent upon her, full as they seemed of strange and disquieting thoughts.
Marthe's weak state of health sufficed to account for her meetings with Abbé Faujas at the oratory of the Home of the Virgin. Doctor Porquier stated that she went there simply in obedience to his orders, and the promenaders on the Cours were vastly amused by this saying of the doctor's.
'Well, all the same,' remarked Madame Paloque to her husband one day, as she watched Marthe going down to the Rue Balande, accompanied by Madame Faujas, 'I should like to be in some corner and watch the vicar and his sweetheart. It is very amusing to hear her talk of her bad cold! As though a bad cold was any reason why one shouldn't make one's confession in church! I have had colds, but I never made them an excuse for shutting myself up in a little chapel with a priest.'
It is very wrong of you to interfere in Abbé Faujas's affairs,' the judge replied to his wife. 'I have been spoken to about him. He is a man with whom we must keep on good terms, and you will prevent us from doing so; you are too spiteful.'
'Stuff!' she retorted angrily; 'they have trampled me under foot and I will let them know who I am! Your Abbé Faujas is a big imbecile! Don't you suppose that Abbé Fenil would be very grateful to me if I could catch the vicar and his sweetheart? Ah! he would give a great deal to have a scandal like that! Just you leave me alone; you don't understand anything about such matters.'
A fortnight later, Madame Paloque watched Marthe go out on the Saturday. She was standing ready dressed, hiding her hideous face behind her curtains, but keeping watch over the street through a hole in the muslin. When the two women disappeared round the corner of the Rue Taravelle, she sniggered, and leisurely drawing on her gloves went quietly on to the Place of the Sub-Prefecture, and walked slowly round it. As she passed in front of Madame de Condamin's little house, she thought for a moment of going in and taking her with her, but she reflected that the other might, perhaps, have some scruples. And, all considered, it was better she should be without witnesses, and manage the business by herself.
'I have given them time,' she thought, after a quarter of an hour's promenade. 'I think I may present myself now.'
Thereupon she quickened her pace. She frequently went to the Home of the Virgin to discuss the accounts with Trouche, but that day, instead of repairing to the secretary's office, she went straight along the corridor towards the oratory. Madame Faujas was quietly knitting on a chair in front of the door.
The judge's wife had foreseen that obstacle, and went straight on to the door with the hasty manner of a person who has important business on hand. But before she could reach out her hand to turn the handle the old lady had risen from her chair and pushed her aside with extraordinary energy.
'Where are you going?' she asked in her blunt peasant-woman's tones.
I am going where I have business,' Madame Paloque replied, her arm smarting and her face convulsed with anger. 'You are an insolent, brutish woman! Let me pass! I am the treasurer of the Home of the Virgin, and I have a right to go anywhere here I want.'
Madame Faujas, who stood leaning against the door, straightened her spectacles upon her nose, and with unruffled tranquillity resumed her knitting.
'Well,' she said bluntly, 'you can't go in there.'
'Can't, indeed! And may I ask why?'
'Because I don't wish that you should.'
The judge's wife felt that her plan was frustrated, and she almost choked with spleen and anger. She was positively frightful to look at as she gasped and stammered:
'I don't know who you are, and I don't know what you are doing here. If I were to call out, I could have you arrested, for you have struck me. There must be some great wickedness going on at the other side of that door for you to have been put there to keep people from entering. I belong to the house, I tell you! Let me pass, or I shall call for help.'
'Call for anyone you like,' replied the old lady, shrugging her shoulders. 'I have told you that you shall not go in, that I won't let you. How am I to know that you belong to the house? But it makes no difference whether you do or you don't. No one can go in. I won't let them.'
Thereupon Madame Paloque lost all control of herself, raised her voice, and shrieked out:
'I have no occasion to go in now! I have learnt quite sufficient! You are Abbé Faujas's mother, are you not? This is a very decent and pretty part for you to be playing! I wouldn't enter the room now; I wouldn't mix myself up with all this wickedness!'
Madame Faujas laid her knitting upon the chair, and, bending slightly forward, gazed with glistening eyes through her spectacles at Madame Paloque, holding her hands the while a little in front of her, as though she were about to spring upon the angry woman and silence her. She was, indeed, going to throw herself forward, when the door suddenly opened and Abbé Faujas appeared on the threshold. He was in his surplice and looked very stern.
'Well, mother,' he asked, 'what is going on here?'
The old lady bent her head, and stepped back like a dog that is taking its place at its master's heels.
'Ah! is it you, dear Madame Paloque?' the Curé continued; 'do you want to speak to me?'
By a supreme effort of will, the judge's wife forced her face into a smile. She answered the priest in a tone that was terrible in its amiability and mingled irony.
'Ah! you were inside were you, your reverence? If I had known that, I would not have insisted upon entering. But I want to see the altar-cloth, which must, I think, be getting into a bad condition. I am a careful superintendent here, you know, and I keep an eye upon all these little details. But, of course, if you are engaged in the oratory, I wouldn't think of disturbing you. Pray go on with what you are doing; the house is yours. If madame had only just dropped me a word, I would have left her quietly to continue guarding you from being disturbed.'
Madame Faujas allowed a growl to escape her, but a glance from her son reduced her to silence.
'Come in, I beg you,' he said; 'you won't disturb me in the least. I was confessing Madame Mouret, who is not very well. Come in, by all means. The altar-cloth might very well be changed, I think.'
'Oh, no! I will come some other time,' Madame Paloque replied. 'I am quite distressed to have interrupted you. Pray go on, your reverence, pray go on!'
Notwithstanding her protestations, however, she entered the room. While she was examining the altar-cloth with Marthe, the priest began to chide his mother in a low voice:
'Why did you prevent her coming in, mother? I never told you to allow no one to enter.'
She gazed straight in front of her with her obstinate determined glance. 'She would have had to walk over my body before she got inside,' she muttered.
'But why?'
'Because——. Listen to me, Ovide; don't be angry; you know that it pains me to see you angry. You told me to accompany our landlady here, didn't you? Well, I thought you wanted me to stop inquisitive people's curiosity. So I took my seat out here, and no one should have entered, be sure of that.'
But the priest caught hold of his mother's hands and shook her, exclaiming:
'Why, mother, you couldn't have supposed——'
'I suppose nothing,' she replied, with sublime indifference. 'You are free to do whatever pleases you. You are my child; I would steal for you, I would.'
The priest was no longer listening to her. He had let her hands drop, and, as he gazed at her, he seemed to be lost in reflections, which made his face look sterner and more austere than ever.
'No, never!' he exclaimed with lofty pride. 'You are greatly mistaken, mother. It is only the chaste who are powerful.'
At seventeen years of age, Désirée still retained the child-like laugh of an 'innocent.' She was now a fine, tall girl, plump and well-developed, with the arms and shoulders of a full-grown woman. She grew like a healthy plant, happy in her growth, and quite untouched by the unhappiness which was wrecking and saddening the house.
'Why do you never laugh?' she cried to her father one day. 'Come and have a game at skipping! It's such fun!'
She had taken possession of one of the garden-beds, which she dug, planted with vegetables, and carefully watered. The hard work delighted her. Then she desired to have some fowls, which devoured her vegetables and which she scolded with motherly tenderness. With these occupations of hers, gardening and fowl-keeping, she made herself dreadfully dirty.
'She's perfectly filthy!' cried Rose. 'I won't have her coming into my kitchen any more; she dirties everything! It is no use your trying to keep her neatly dressed, madame. If I were you I should just let her mess about as she likes.'
Marthe, now ever preoccupied, no longer took care even that Désirée should change her under-linen regularly. The girl sometimes wore the same chemise for three weeks together; her stockings fell over her shoes, which were sadly worn down at the heels, and her tattered skirts hung about her like a beggar's rags. Mouret was one day obliged to take up a needle himself, for the girl's dress was torn behind from top to bottom. She, however, laughed gleefully at her nakedness, at her hair that fell over her shoulders, and at her black hands and dirty face.
Marthe came to feel a sort of disgust of her. When she returned home from mass, still retaining in her hair the vague perfume of the church, she quite shuddered at the strong scent of earth which exhaled from her daughter. She sent her into the garden again immediately lunch was over. She could not bear to have her near her, distressed, disquieted as she was by the girl's robust vigour and clear laugh, which seemed to find amusement in everything.
'Oh, dear! how wearisome the child is!' she murmured sometimes, with an air of nerveless lassitude.
As Mouret heard her complain, he exclaimed in an impulse of anger:
'If she's in your way, we will turn her out of the house, as we have done the other two.'
'Indeed, I should be very glad if she were to go away,' Marthe answered unhesitatingly.
One afternoon, about the end of the summer, Mouret was alarmed at no longer being able to hear Désirée, who, a few minutes previously, had been making a tremendous noise at the bottom of the garden. He ran to see what had happened to her, and found her lying on the ground. She had fallen from a ladder on to which she had climbed to gather some figs: fortunately the box-plants had broken the force of her fall. Mouret, in a great fright, lifted her up in his arms and called for assistance. He thought she was dead; but she quickly came to herself, declared that she was none the worse for the accident, and wanted to climb the ladder again.
Marthe, however, had meantime come into the garden. When she heard Désirée laugh she seemed quite annoyed.
'That child will kill me one of these days,' she exclaimed. 'She doesn't know what to invent to alarm me. I'm sure that she threw herself down on purpose. I can't endure it any longer. I shall shut myself up in my own room, or go out in the morning and not return till evening. Yes, you may laugh, you great goose! To think that I am the mother of such a ninny! You are making me pay for it very dearly!'
'Yes, that she is!' cried Rose, who had run down from the kitchen; 'she's a great burden, and, unfortunately, there's no chance of our ever being able to get her married.'
Mouret looked at them and listened with a pang at the heart. He said nothing, but stayed with the girl at the bottom of the garden, and there they remained chatting affectionately till nightfall. The next day, Marthe and Rose were away from the house the whole morning. They went to hear mass at a chapel, a league from Plassans, dedicated to Saint-Januarius, whither all the pious folks of the town made a pilgrimage on that particular day. When they returned, the cook hastily served up a cold lunch. Marthe went on eating for a few minutes before she noticed that her daughter was not at table.
'Isn't Désirée hungry?' she asked. 'Why hasn't she come to lunch?'
'Désirée is no longer here,' answered Mouret, who left his food almost untouched upon his plate; 'I took her this morning to her nurse at Saint-Eutrope.'
Marthe laid down her fork, and turned a little pale, seeming both surprised and hurt.
'You might have consulted me,' she said.
Her husband, without making any direct reply, continued:
'She is all right with her nurse. The good woman is very fond of her, and will look well after her, and the child will no longer be in your way, and everyone will be happy.'
Then, as his wife said nothing, he added:
'If the house is not yet sufficiently quiet for you, just tell me, and I will go away myself.'
She half rose from her seat, and a light glistened in her eyes. Mouret had wounded her so cruelly that she stretched out her hand as though she were going to throw the water-bottle at his head. In her long-submissive nature angry promptings were now being fanned into life, and she was growing to hate this man who was ever prowling round her. She made a show of eating again, but she said nothing further about her daughter. Mouret had folded his napkin, and remained sitting in front of her, listening to the sound of her fork, and casting lingering glances round the dining-room, which had once been so merry with the chatter of the children, but was now so empty and mournful. The room seemed to him to be quite chilly, and tears were mounting to his eyes when Marthe called to Rose to bring in the dessert.
'You must be very hungry, I should think, madame,' said the cook, as she put a plateful of fruit upon the table. 'We had quite a long walk; and if the master, instead of playing the pagan, had come with us, he would not have left you to eat the mutton all by yourself.'
Then she changed the plates, without pausing in her chatter.
'It is very pretty is that chapel of Saint-Januarius, but it is too small. Did you see that the ladies who came late were obliged to kneel down outside on the grass, in the open air? I can't understand why Madame de Condamin came in a carriage. There's no merit in making the pilgrimage if you come like that. We spent a delightful morning, didn't we, madame?'
'Yes, a very delightful morning,' Marthe replied. 'Abbé Mousseau, who preached, was very affecting.'
When Rose in her turn noticed Désirée's absence and learnt of the girl's departure, she exclaimed:
'Well, really, it was a very good idea of the master's! She was always walking off with my saucepans to water her plants. We shall be able to have a little peace now.'
'Yes, indeed,' said Marthe, who was cutting a pear.
Mouret was almost choking. He rose and left the dining-room without paying any attention to Rose, who cried out to him that the coffee would be ready directly. Marthe, now left alone in the room, quietly finished her pear.
Just as the cook was bringing the coffee, Madame Faujas came downstairs.
'Go in,' Rose said to her; 'you will be company for madame, and you can have the master's coffee, for he has just rushed off like a madman.'
The old lady sat down in Mouret's place.
'I thought you did not take coffee,' she remarked as she put some sugar into her cup.
'No, indeed, she didn't do so when the master kept the purse,' interposed Rose. 'But madame would be very silly now to deny herself what she likes.'
They talked for a good hour together, and Marthe ended by relating all her troubles to Madame Faujas, telling her how her husband had just inflicted a most painful scene upon her on account of her daughter, whom he had removed to her nurse's in a sudden pet. She defended herself, and told Madame Faujas that she was really very fond of the girl, and should go to fetch her back before long.
'Well, she was rather noisy,' Madame Faujas remarked. 'I have often pitied you. My son was thinking about giving up going into the garden to read his breviary. She almost distracted him with the noise she made.'
From that day forward Marthe and Mouret took their meals in silence. The autumn was very damp, and the dining-room looked intensely melancholy with only two covers laid, one at each end of the big table. The corners were dark, and a chill seemed to fall from the ceiling. As Rose would say, it looked as though a funeral were going on.
'Well, indeed,' she often exclaimed, as she brought the plates into the room, 'you couldn't make much less noise, sir, however you tried! There isn't much danger of your wearing the skin of your tongue off! Do try to be a little livelier, sir! You look as though you were following a corpse to the grave!—You will end by making madame quite ill. It is bad for the health to eat without speaking.'
When the first frosts came, Rose, who sought in every way to oblige Madame Faujas, offered her the use of her cooking-stove. The old lady had begun by bringing down kettles to get her water boiled, as she had no fire, she said, and the Abbé was in a hurry to shave. Then she borrowed some flat-irons, begged the use of some saucepans, asked for the loan of the dutch-oven to cook some mutton, and finally, in the end, as she had no conveniently arranged fireplace upstairs, she accepted Rose's repeated offers, and the cook lighted her a fire of vine branches, big enough to roast a whole sheep, in the kitchen.
'Don't show any diffidence about it,' she said, as she herself turned the leg of mutton round; 'the kitchener is a large one, isn't it? and big enough for us both. I don't know how you've been able to do your cooking upstairs as long as you have, with only that wretched iron stove there. I should have been afraid of falling down in an apoplectic fit myself. Monsieur Mouret ought to know better than to let a set of rooms without any kitchen. You must be very enduring kind of people, and very easily satisfied.'
Thus Madame Faujas gradually began to cook her lunch and dinner in the Mourets' kitchen. On the first few occasions she provided her own coal and oil and spices. But afterwards, when she forgot to bring any article with her, Rose would not allow her to go upstairs for it, but insisted upon supplying the deficiency from the house stores.
'Oh, there's some butter there! The little bit which you will take with the tip of your knife won't ruin us. You know very well that everything here is at your service. Madame would be quite angry with me if I didn't make you at home here.'
A close intimacy now sprang up between Rose and Madame Faujas. The cook was delighted to have some one always at hand who was willing to listen to her while she stirred her sauces. She got on extremely well with the priest's mother, whose print dresses and rough face and unpolished demeanour put her almost on a footing of equality. They sat chatting together for hours before the fireplace, and Madame Faujas soon gained complete sway in the kitchen, though she still maintained her impenetrable attitude, and only said what she chose to say, while contriving to worm out all that she wanted to know. She settled the Mourets' dinner, tasted the dishes which she had arranged they should have, and Rose herself often made savoury little luxuries for the Abbé's delectation, such as sugared apples or rice-cakes or fritters. The provisions of the two establishments often got mixed together, mistakes were made with the different pans, the two dinners being so intermingled that Rose would cry out with a laugh:
'Tell me, madame, are these poached eggs yours? Really, I don't know. Upon my word, it would be much better if you were all to dine together!'
It was on All Saints Day that Abbé Faujas lunched for the first time in the Mourets' dining-room. He was in a great hurry, as he had to return to Saint-Saturnin's at once, and so, to give him as much time as possible, Marthe asked him to sit down at their table, saying that it would save his mother from climbing a couple of flights of stairs. A week later it had become a regular thing; the Faujases came downstairs at every meal and took their seats at table, just as if they were entering a restaurant. For the first few days their provisions were cooked and served separately, but Rose declared this was a very silly arrangement, that she could easily cook for four persons, and that she would arrange it all with Madame Faujas.
'Pray don't thank me,' she said to the Abbé and his mother; 'it is a kindness on your part to come down and keep madame company. You will cheer her up a little. I scarcely dare go into the dining-room now; it is just like going into the chamber of death. It quite frightens me, it feels so desolate. If the master chooses to go on sulking, he will have to do so all by himself.'
They kept up a roaring fire, the room was very warm, and the winter proved a delightful one. Rose had never before taken such pains to lay the tablecloth nicely. She placed his reverence's chair near the stove, so that he might have his back to the fire. She paid particular attention to his glass and his knife and fork, she took care that whenever the slightest stain made its appearance upon the cloth it should not be put on his side, and she paid him numberless other delicate little attentions.
When she had prepared any dish of which he was particularly fond, she gave him notice so that he might reserve himself for it; though sometimes, on the other hand, she made a surprise of it for him, and brought it into the room under a cover, smiling at the inquisitive glances directed towards it, and exclaiming with an air of triumph:
'This is for his reverence! It is a wild-duck stuffed with olives, just what he is so fond of. Give his reverence the breast, madame. I cooked it specially for him.'
Marthe carved the duck, and with beseeching looks pressed the choicest morsels upon the Abbé. She always helped him the first, and searched the dish for him, while Rose bent over her and pointed out what she thought the best parts. They occasionally even had little disputes as to the superiority of this or that part of a fowl or rabbit. Then, too, Rose used to push an embroidered hassock under the priest's feet, while Marthe insisted that he should always have his bottle of Bordeaux and his roll, specially ordering one of the latter for him from the baker every day.
'We can never do too much for you,' said Rose, when the Abbé expressed his thanks. 'Who should be well looked after, if it isn't good kind hearts like yours? Don't you trouble about it, the Lord will pay your debt for you.'
Madame Faujas smiled at all these flattering civilities as she sat at table opposite her son. She was beginning to feel quite fond of Marthe and Rose. She considered their adoration only natural, and thought it a great happiness for them to be allowed to cast themselves in this way at the feet of her idol. It was really she with her square head and peasant manner who presided over the table, eating slowly but plentifully, noticing everything that happened without once setting down her fork, and taking care that Marthe should play the part of servant to her son, at whom she was constantly gazing with an expression of content. She never opened her lips except to make known in as few words as possible the Abbé's various tastes or to over-rule the polite refusals in which he still occasionally indulged. Sometimes she shrugged her shoulders and pushed him with her foot. Wasn't everything on the table at his service? He might eat the whole contents of the dish, if he liked, and the others would be quite happy to nibble their dry bread and look at him.
Abbé Faujas himself, however, seemed quite indifferent to all the tender care which was lavished upon him. Of a very frugal disposition and a quick eater, his mind always occupied with other matters, he was frequently quite unconscious of the dainties which were specially reserved for him. He had yielded to his mother's entreaties in consenting to join the Mourets, but the only satisfaction he experienced in the dining-room on the ground-floor was the pleasure of being set entirely free from the everyday cares of life. He manifested unruffled serenity, gradually grew accustomed to seeing his least wish anticipated and fulfilled, and ceased to manifest any surprise or express any thanks, lording it haughtily between the mistress of the house and the cook, who kept anxious watch over the slightest motions of his stern face.
Mouret sat opposite his wife, quite forgotten and unnoticed. He let his hands rest upon the edge of the table, and waited, like a child, till Marthe should be willing to attend to him. She helped him the last, scantily, and to whatever might happen to be left. Rose stood behind her and warned her whenever by mistake she was going to give her husband some of the more delicate morsels in the dish.
'No, no; not that. The master likes the head, you know. He enjoys sucking the little bones.'
Mouret, snubbed and slighted, ate his food with a sort of shame, as though he was subsisting unworthily on other people's bounty. He could see Madame Faujas watching him keenly as he cut his bread. He kept his eyes fixed on the bottle for a whole minute, full of doubtful hesitation, before he dare venture to help himself to wine. Once he made a mistake and took a little of the priest's choice Bordeaux. There was a tremendous fuss made about it, and for a whole month afterwards Rose reproached him for those few drops of wine. Whenever she made any sweet dish, she would say:
'I don't want the master to have any of that. He never thinks anything I make nice. He once told me that an omelet I had made was burnt, and then I said, "They shall be burnt altogether for you." Don't give any of it to the master, I beg you, madame.'
She also did all she could to worry and upset him. She gave him cracked plates, contrived that one of the table legs should come between his own, left shreds of the glass-cloth clinging to his glass, and placed the bread and wine and salt as far from him as possible. Mouret was the only one in the family who liked mustard, and he used to go himself to the grocers and buy canisters of it, which the cook promptly caused to disappear, saying that they 'stank so.' The deprivation of mustard spoilt his enjoyment of his meals. But what made him still more miserable, and robbed him of all appetite, was his expulsion from his own seat, which he had always previously occupied, in front of the window, which was now given to the priest, as being the pleasantest in the room. Mouret had to sit with his face towards the door, and he felt as though he were eating amongst strangers, now that he could not at each mouthful cast a glance at his fruit-trees.
Marthe was not so bitter against him as Rose was. She treated him at first like a poor relation, whose presence is just tolerated, and then gradually grew to ignore him, scarcely ever addressing a remark to him, and acting as though Abbé Faujas alone had the right to give orders in the house. Mouret, however, showed no inclination to rebel. He occasionally exchanged a few polite phrases with the priest, though he generally ate in perfect silence, and only replied to the cook's attacks by looking at her. He always finished before any of the others, folded up his napkin tidily, and then left the room, frequently before the dessert was placed upon the table.
Rose alleged that he was bursting with anger, and when she gossiped in the kitchen with Madame Faujas she discussed his conduct freely.
I know him very well; I've never been afraid of him. Before you came madame used to tremble before him, for he was always scolding and blustering and trying to appear very terrible. He used to worry our lives out of us, always poking about, never finding anything right, and trying to show us that he was master. Now he is as docile as a lamb, isn't he? It's just because madame has asserted herself. Ah! if he weren't a coward, and weren't afraid of what might happen, you would hear a pretty row. But he is afraid of your son; yes, he is afraid of his reverence the Curé. Anyone would say, to look at him, that he lost his senses every now and then. But after all, as long as he doesn't bother us any longer, he is welcome to act as he pleases; isn't he, madame?'
Madame Faujas replied that Monsieur Mouret seemed to her to be a very worthy man, and that his only fault was his lack of religion. But he would certainly adopt a better mode of life in time, she said. The old lady was gradually making herself mistress of the whole of the ground floor, going from kitchen to dining-room as she pleased, and ever bustling about in the hall and passages. When Mouret met her he used to recall the day when the Faujases first arrived; when, wearing that shabby black dress of hers, she had tenaciously clung to her basket with both hands and poked her head inquisitively into each room, with all the unruffled serenity of a person inspecting some property for sale.
Since the Faujases had begun to take their meals downstairs the Trouches were left in possession of the second floor. They made a great deal of noise, and the constant moving of furniture, the stamping of feet and the violent banging of doors, were heard by those downstairs. Madame Faujas would then uneasily raise her head in the midst of her gossiping in the kitchen. Rose, for the sake of putting her at her ease, used to say that poor Madame Trouche suffered a great deal of pain. One night the Abbé, who had not yet gone to bed, heard a strange commotion on the stairs. He left his room with his candle in his hand, and saw Trouche, disgracefully drunk, climbing up the stairs on his knees. He seized the sot in his strong arms and threw him into his room. Olympe was in bed there, quietly reading a novel and sipping a glass of spirits and water that stood on a little table at the bedside.
'Listen to me,' said Abbé Faujas, livid with rage; 'you will pack up your things in the morning and take yourselves off!'
'Why? What for?' asked Olympe, quite calmly; 'we are very comfortable here.'
The priest sternly interrupted her.
'Hold your tongue! You are a wretched woman! You have never tried to do anything but injure me. Our mother was right; I ought never to have rescued you from your state of wretchedness. I've just had to pick your husband up on the stairs. It is disgraceful. Think of the scandal there would be if he were to be seen in this state. You will go away in the morning.'
Olympe sat up to sip her grog.
'No, no, indeed!' she said.
Trouche laughed. He was drunkenly merry, and fell back into an armchair in a state of happy self-satisfaction.
'Don't let us quarrel,' he stammered. 'It is a mere nothing; only a little giddiness. The air, which is very cold, made me dizzy, that's all. And your streets in this confounded town are so very confusing. I say, Faujas, there are some very nice young fellows about here. There's Doctor Porquier's son. You know Doctor Porquier, don't you? Well, I meet the son at a café behind the gaol. It is kept by a woman from Arles, a fine handsome woman with a dark complexion.'
The priest crossed his arms and looked at him with a terrible expression.
'No, really, Faujas, I assure you that it is quite wrong of you to be angry with me. You know that I have been well brought up, and that I know how to behave myself. Why, in the day-time I wouldn't touch a drop of syrup for fear of compromising you. Since I have been here I have gone to my office just like a boy going to school, with slices of bread and jam in a little basket. It's a very stupid sort of life, I can assure you, and I only do it to be of service to you. But at night, I'm not likely to be seen, and I can go about a little. It does me good, and, in fact, I should die if I always kept myself locked up here. There is no one in the streets, you know. What funny streets they are, eh?'
'Sot!' growled the priest between his clenched teeth.
'You won't be friends, then? Well, that's very wrong of you, old chap. I'm a jolly fellow myself, and I don't like sour looks, and if what I do doesn't please you, I'll leave you to get on with your pious ladies by yourself. That little Condamin is the only decent one amongst them, and even she doesn't come up to the café-keeper from Arles. Oh, yes! you may roll your eyes about as much as you like. I can get on quite well without you. See! would you like me to lend you a hundred francs?'
He drew out a bundle of bank-notes and spread them on his knees, laughing loudly as he did so. Then he swept them under the Abbé's nose and threw them up in the air. Olympe sprang out of bed, half naked, picked up the notes and placed them under the bolster with an expression of vexation. Abbé Faujas glanced around him with great surprise. He saw bottles of liqueurs ranged all along the top of the chest of drawers, a scarcely touched patty was on the mantelpiece, and there were some sweetmeats in an old box. The room was, indeed, full of recent purchases; dresses thrown over the chairs, an open parcel of lace, a magnificent new overcoat hanging from the window-catch, and a bearskin rug spread out in front of the bed. By the side of Olympe's glass of grog on the little table there also lay a small gold lady's watch glittering in a porcelain tray.
'Whom have they been plundering, I wonder?' thought the priest.
Then he recollected having seen Olympe kissing Marthe's hands.
'You wretched people!' he cried; 'you have been thieving!'
Trouche sprang up, but his wife pushed him down upon the sofa. 'Keep quiet!' she said to him, 'go to sleep, you need it.'
Then, turning to her brother, she continued:
'It is one o'clock, and you might let us go to sleep if you have only disagreeable things to say. It is certainly wrong of my husband to intoxicate himself, but that's no reason why you should abuse him. We have already had several explanations; this one must be the last, do you understand, Ovide? We are brother and sister, are we not? Well, then, as I have told you before, we must go halves. You gorge yourself downstairs, you have all kinds of dainty dishes provided for you, and you live a fat life between the landlady and the cook. Well, you please yourself about that. We don't go and look into your plate or try to pull the dainty morsels out of your mouth. We let you manage your affairs as you like. Very well then, just you leave us alone and allow us the same liberty. I don't think I am asking anything unreasonable.'
The priest made a gesture of impatience.
Oh yes, I understand,' she continued; 'you are afraid lest we should compromise you in your schemes. The best way to ensure our not doing so is to leave us in peace and cease from worrying us. Ah! in spite of all your grand airs, you are not so very clever. We have the same interests as you have, we are all of the same family, and we might very well hunt together. It would be much the best plan, if you would only see it. But there, go to bed, now! I'll scold Trouche in the morning, and I'll send him to you and you can give him your instructions.'
For a moment the priest, who was a little pale, remained thinking; then, without another word, he left the room, and Olympe resumed the perusal of her novel, while Trouche lay snoring on the sofa.
The next morning, Trouche, who had recovered his wits, had a long interview with Abbé Faujas. When he returned to his wife, he informed her of the conditions upon which peace had again been patched up.
'Listen to me, my dear,' Olympe replied. 'Give way to him and do what he asks. Above all try to be useful to him, since he gives you the chance of being so. I put a bold face on the matter when he is here, but in my own heart I know very well that he would turn us out into the street like dogs if we pushed him too far, and I don't want to have to go away. Are you sure that he will let us stay?'
'Oh yes; don't be afraid,' replied the secretary. 'He has need of me, and he will leave us to feather our nest.'
From this time forward Trouche used to go out every evening about nine o'clock, when the streets were quiet. He told his wife that he went into the old quarter of the town to further the Abbé's cause. Olympe was not at all jealous of his nightly absences, and laughed heartily whenever he brought her back some broad story. She preferred being left quietly to herself, to sip her glass and nibble her cakes in privacy, or to spend her long evenings snugly in bed, devouring the old novels of a circulating-library which she had discovered in the Rue Canquoin. Trouche used to come back slightly under the influence of liquor, but he took off his boots in the hall so as to make no noise as he went upstairs. When he had drunk too much, and reeked of tobacco and brandy, his wife would not let him get into bed, but made him sleep on the sofa. If he became annoying, she caught hold of him, looked him sternly in the face, and said:
'Ovide will hear you. Ovide is coming.'
At this he was as frightened as a child that is threatened with a wolf, and went off to sleep, muttering excuses. In the morning he dressed himself in serious, sedate fashion, wiped from his face all the marks of the previous night's dissipation, and put on a certain cravat, which gave him, he said, quite the air of a parson. As he passed the cafés he bent his head to the ground. At the Home of the Virgin he was held in great respect. Now and then, when the girls were playing in the courtyard, he raised a corner of his curtain and glanced at them with an affectation of fatherliness, though his eyes glistened beneath their lowered lids.
The Trouches were still kept in check by Madame Faujas. The mother and the daughter were perpetually quarrelling, Olympe complaining that she was sacrificed to her brother, and Madame Faujas treating her like a viper whom she ought to have crushed to death in her cradle. Both grasping after the same prey, they kept a close watch on one another, anxious to know which would secure the larger share. Madame Faujas wanted to obtain everything in the house, and she tried to keep the very sweepings from Olympe's clutching fingers. On seeing what large sums her daughter drew from Marthe, she quite burst with anger. When her son shrugged his shoulders at it like a man who despises such matters, and is forced to close his eyes to them, she, on her side, had a stormy explanation with her daughter, whom she branded as a thief, as though the money had been taken from her own pocket.
'There, mother, that will do!' cried Olympe impatiently. 'It isn't your purse, you know, that I have been lightening. Besides, I have only been borrowing a little money; I don't make other people keep me.'
'What do you mean, you wicked hussy?' gasped Madame Faujas with indignation. 'Do you suppose that we don't pay for our food? Ask the cook, and she will show you our account book.'
Olympe broke out into a loud laugh.
'Oh, yes, that's very nice!' she cried; 'I know that account book of yours! You pay for the radishes and butter, don't you? Stay downstairs by all means, mother; stay downstairs on the ground floor. I don't want to interfere with your arrangements. But don't come up here and worry me any more, or I shall make a row, and you know that Ovide has forbidden any noise up here.'
At this Madame Faujas went downstairs muttering and growling. The threat of making a disturbance always compelled her to beat a retreat. Olympe began to sing jeeringly as soon as her mother's back was turned. But whenever she went down into the garden the other took her revenge, keeping everlastingly at her heels, watching her hands, never ceasing to play the spy upon her. She would not allow her in the kitchen or dining-room for a moment. She embroiled her with Rose about a saucepan that had been borrowed and never returned; but she did not dare to attempt to undermine Marthe's friendship for her for fear of causing some scandal which might prove prejudicial to the priest.
'Since you are so regardless of your own interests,' she said to her son one day, 'I must look after them for you. Make yourself easy. I shan't do anything foolish; but if I were not here, your sister would snatch the very bread out of your hands.'
Marthe had no notion of the drama that was being played around her. To her the house simply seemed more lively and cheerful, now that all these people thronged the hall and the stairs and the passages. The place was as noisy as an hotel, what with all the echoes of quarrelling, the banging of doors, the free and independent life of each of the tenants, and the flaming fire in the kitchen, where Rose seemed to have a whole table d'h?te to provide for. There was a continual procession of tradesmen to the house. Olympe, who became very particular about her hands and refused to risk spoiling them by washing plates and dishes, had everything sent from a confectioner's in the Rue de la Banne, who catered for the townspeople. Marthe smiled and said she enjoyed the present bustle of the house. She now greatly disliked being left alone, and felt the necessity of occupation of some sort to allay the fever that was consuming her.
Mouret, however, to escape from all the racket, used to shut himself up in a room on the first floor, which he called his office. He had overcome his distaste for solitude; he now scarcely ever went down into the garden, but kept himself locked up from morning till night.
'I should very much like to know what he finds to do in there,' said Rose to Madame Faujas. 'One can't hear him move, and you might almost fancy he was dead. If he wants to hide himself in that way, it must be because he is doing something that's neither right nor proper; don't you think so, eh?'
When the summer came round once more, the house grew still livelier. Abbé Faujas received the guests of both the sub-prefect and the presiding judge beneath the arbour at the bottom of the garden. Rose, by Marthe's orders, purchased a dozen rustic chairs, so that the visitors might enjoy the fresh air without it being necessary to carry the dining-room chairs hither and thither. It was now the regular thing for the doors communicating with the little lane to remain open every Tuesday afternoon, and the ladies and gentlemen came to salute Abbé Faujas like friendly neighbours, the men often in their slippers and with their coats carelessly unbuttoned, and the ladies in straw hats and with skirts looped up with pins. The visitors arrived one by one, and gradually the two sets of guests found themselves mixing together, gossiping and amusing themselves with perfect familiarity.
'Aren't you afraid,' said Monsieur Bourdeu to Monsieur Rastoil one day, 'that these meetings with the sub-prefect's friends may be ill advised? The general elections are getting near.'
'Why should they be ill advised?' asked Monsieur Rastoil. 'We don't go to the Sub-Prefecture; we keep on neutral ground. Besides, my good friend, there is no ceremony about the matter. I keep my linen jacket on, and it's a mere private friendly visit. No one has any right to pass judgment upon what I do at the back of my house. In the front it's another matter. In the front we belong to the public. When Monsieur Péqueur and I meet each other in the streets we merely bow.'
'Monsieur Péqueur de Saulaies improves much on acquaintance,' the ex-prefect ventured to remark after a short pause.
'Certainly, certainly,' replied the presiding judge; 'I am delighted to have made his acquaintance. And what a worthy man Abbé Faujas is! No, no; I have no fear of any slander arising from our going to pay our respects to our excellent neighbour.'
Since the general election had begun to be the subject of conversation, Monsieur de Bourdeu had felt very uneasy. He declared that it was the increasing warmth of the weather that affected him; but he was frequently assailed with doubts and scruples, which he confided to Monsieur Rastoil in order that the latter might reassure him. However, politics were never mentioned in the Mourets' garden. One afternoon, Monsieur de Bourdeu, after vainly trying to devise some means of bringing political matters forward, exclaimed abruptly, addressing himself to Doctor Porquier:
'I say, doctor, have you seen the "Moniteur" this morning? I see that the marquis has at last spoken! He uttered just thirteen words; I counted them. Poor Lagrifoul! He has made himself very ridiculous!'
Abbé Faujas raised his finger with an arch look. 'No politics, gentlemen, no politics,' said he.
Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies was chatting with Monsieur Rastoil, and they both pretended that they had not heard what was said. Madame de Condamin smiled as she continued her conversation with Abbé Surin.
'Aren't your surplices stiffened with a weak solution of gum?' she inquired.
'Yes, madame, with a weak solution of gum,' replied the young priest. 'Some laundresses use boiled starch, but it spoils the material and is worthless.'
'Well,' rejoined the young woman, 'I never can get my laundress to use gum for my petticoats.'
Thereupon Abbé Surin politely gave her the name and address of his own laundress upon the back of one of his visiting cards. Then the company chatted about dress and the weather and the crops and the events of the week, spending a delightful hour together; and there were also games of shuttlecock in the alley. Abbé Bourrette frequently made his appearance, and told in his enthusiastic manner divers pious little stories to which Monsieur Maffre listened with the greatest attention. Upon one occasion only had Madame Delangre met Madame Rastoil there; they had treated each other with the most scrupulous politeness, but in their faded eyes still flashed the sparks of their old-time rivalry. Monsieur Delangre for his part did not make himself too cheap, and though the Paloques were constantly at the Sub-Prefecture, they contrived to be absent when Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies went to make one of his neighbourly calls upon Abbé Faujas. The judge's wife had been much perplexed in mind ever since her unfortunate expedition to the oratory at the Home of the Virgin. On the other hand, the person who was oftenest to be seen in the garden was certainly Monsieur de Condamin, who always wore the most perfect fitting gloves, and came thither to make fun of the company, telling fibs and indelicate stories with extraordinary coolness and unconcern, and deriving a perfect fund of amusement for the whole week from the little intrigues which he scented out. This tall old buck, whose coat fitted so closely to his slim figure, was devoted to youth; he scoffed at the 'old ones,' went off with the young ladies, and laughed gaily in the snug little corners of the garden.
'This way, youngsters!' he would say, with a smile, 'let us leave the old ones together.'
One day he almost defeated Abbé Surin in a tremendous battle at shuttlecock. He was very fond of plaguing young people, and made a special victim of Monsieur Rastoil's son, a simple young fellow, to whom he told the most prodigious stories. He ended, indeed, by accusing him of making love to his wife, and rolled his eyes about in such a terrible way, that the wretched Séverin broke out into a perspiration from very fear. The youth did, as it happened, actually fancy that he was in love with Madame de Condamin, in whose presence he behaved in a tender, simpering manner that extremely amused her husband.
The Rastoil girls, for whom the conservator of rivers and forests manifested all the gallantry of a young widower, also supplied subjects of his raillery. Although they were approaching their thirtieth birthdays, he spurred them on to indulge in childish games, and spoke to them as though they were yet schoolgirls. His great amusement was to gaze at them when Lucien Delangre, the mayor's son, was present. He would then take Doctor Porquier aside, and whisper in his ear, alluding to the former entanglement between Monsieur Delangre and Madame Rastoil:
'There's a young man there, Porquier, who is very much embarrassed in his mind——Is it Angéline or is it Aurélie whom he ought to choose? Guess, if you can, and name, if you dare.'
Meantime Abbé Faujas was very polite and amiable to all his visitors, even to the terrible Condamin who caused so much disquietude. He effaced himself as much as possible, spoke but little, and allowed the rival sets of guests to coalesce, seemingly experiencing the quiet satisfaction of a host who is happy to be the means of bringing together a number of distinguished people intended by nature to be on good terms with one another. Marthe had upon two occasions made her appearance, thinking that she would put the visitors more at their ease by doing so; but it distressed her to find the Abbé in the midst of so many people; she much preferred to see him walking slowly and seriously in the quiet of the arbour. The Trouches on their side had resumed their Tuesday watchings behind their curtains, while Madame Faujas and Rose craned their heads from the doorway and admired the graceful manner in which his reverence received the chief people of Plassans.
'Ah, madame!' said the cook, 'it is very easy to see that he is a distinguished man. Look at him bowing to the sub-prefect. I admire his reverence the most; though, indeed, the sub-prefect is a fine man. Why do you never go into the garden to them? If I were you, I would put on a silk dress and join them. You are his mother, you know, after all.'
But the old peasant woman shrugged her shoulders.
'Oh! he isn't ashamed of me,' she said; 'but I should be afraid of putting him out. I prefer to watch him from here; and I enjoy it more.'
'Yes, I can understand that. Ah! you must be very proud of him. He isn't a bit like Monsieur Mouret, who nailed the door up, so that no one might open it. We never had a visitor, there was never a dinner to be prepared for anyone, and the garden was so desolate that it made one feel quite frightened in the evenings. Monsieur Mouret would certainly never have known how to receive visitors. He always pulled a sour face if one ever happened to come by chance. Don't you think, now, that he ought to take an example from his reverence? If I were he, I should come down and amuse myself in the garden with the others, instead of shutting myself up all alone. I would take my proper place. But there he is, shut up in his room, as though he were afraid they would give him some nasty illness! By the way, shall we go up sometime and try to find out what he does?'
One Tuesday they did go upstairs together. The visitors were very merry that afternoon, and the sound of their laughter floated into the house through the open windows, while a tradesman, who had brought a hamper of wine for the Trouches, made a clatter on the second floor as he collected the empty bottles together. Mouret was securely locked up in his office.
'The key prevents me from seeing,' said Rose, who had applied her eye to the key-hole.
Wait a moment,' murmured Madame Faujas, and she carefully turned the end of the key, which protruded slightly through the lock. Mouret was sitting in the middle of the room in front of a big empty table, covered with a thick layer of dust. There was not a single paper nor book upon it. He was lying back in his chair, his arms hanging listlessly beside him while he gazed blankly into space. He sat perfectly still, without the slightest movement.
The two women looked at him in silence, one after the other.
'He has made me feel cold to the very marrow,' exclaimed Rose, as they went downstairs again. 'Did you notice his eyes? And what a filthy state the room is in! He hasn't laid a pen on that desk for a couple of months past, and to think that I fancied he spent all his time there writing. Fancy him amusing himself like that—shutting himself up all alone like a corpse, when the house is so bright and cheerful!'
Marthe's health was causing Doctor Porquier much anxiety. He still smiled in his pleasant way, and talked to her after the manner of a fashionable medical man for whom disease never has any existence, and who grants a consultation just as a dressmaker fits on a new dress; but there was a certain twist on his lips which indicated that 'dear madame' had something more seriously wrong with her than a slight cough and spitting of blood, as he tried to persuade her. He advised her, now that the warm weather had come, to get a little change of surroundings and occupation by taking an occasional drive, without, however, over-fatiguing herself. In obedience to the doctor's directions, Marthe, who was more and more possessed by a vague feeling of anguish, and a need of finding some occupation to assuage her nervous impatience, started on a series of excursions to the neighbouring villages. Twice a week she drove off, after luncheon, in an old refurbished carriage, hired from a Plassans coachbuilder. She generally drove some six or seven miles out, so as to get back home by six o'clock. Her great desire was to induce Abbé Faujas to go with her, and it was only in the hope of accomplishing this that she had conformed with the doctor's directions; but the Abbé, without distinctly refusing, always excused himself on the ground that he was too busy to spare the time, and Marthe was obliged to content herself with the companionship of Olympe or Madame Faujas.
One afternoon as she was driving with Olympe towards the village of Les Tulettes, past the little estate of her uncle Macquart, the latter caught sight of her as he stood upon his terrace, which was ornamented with a couple of mulberry trees.
'Where is Mouret?' he cried. 'Why hasn't Mouret come as well?'
Marthe was obliged to stop for a moment or two to speak to her uncle, and to explain to him that she was not well, and could not stay to dine with him. He had expressed his determination to kill a fowl for the meal.
'Well,' he said at last, 'I'll kill it all the same, and you shall take it away with you.'
Then he hurried off to kill the fowl at once. When he came back with it, he laid it on a stone table in front of the house, and exclaimed with an expression of satisfaction:
'Isn't it a plump, splendid fellow?'
At the moment of Marthe's arrival Macquart had been on the point of drinking a bottle of wine under the shade of his mulberry trees, in company with a tall thin young fellow, dressed entirely in grey. He persuaded the two women to leave the carriage and sit down beside him for a time, bringing them chairs, and doing the honours of his house with a snigger of satisfaction.
'I have a very nice little place here, haven't I? My mulberries are very fine ones. In the summer I smoke my pipe out here in the fresh air. In the winter I sit down yonder with my back to the wall in the sun. Do you see my vegetables? The fowl-house is at the bottom of the garden. I have another strip of ground as well, behind the house, where I grow potatoes and lucern. I am getting old now, worse luck, and it's quite time that I should enjoy myself a little.'
He rubbed his hands together and gently wagged his head, as he cast an affectionate glance over his little estate. Then some thought seemed to sadden him.
Have you seen your father lately?' he abruptly asked. 'Rougon isn't very amiable, you know. That cornfield over yonder to the left is for sale. If he had been willing we might have bought it. What would it have been for a man of his means? A paltry three thousand francs is all that is asked, but he refuses to have anything to do with it. The last time I went to see him he even made your mother tell me that he wasn't at home. But, you'll see, it will be all the worse for them in the end.'
He wagged his head and indulged in his unpleasant laugh, as he repeated:
'Yes, yes; it will be all the worse for them.'
Then he went to fetch some glasses, for he insisted upon making the two women taste his wine. It was some light wine which he had discovered at Saint-Eutrope, and in which he took great pride. Marthe scarcely wetted her lips, but Olympe finished the bottle. And afterwards she even accepted a glass of syrup, saying that the wine was very strong.
'And what have you done with your priest?' Uncle Macquart suddenly asked his niece.
Marthe looked at him in surprise and displeasure without replying.
'I heard that he was sponging on you tremendously,' Macquart loudly continued. 'Those priests are fond of good living. When I heard about him, I said that it served Mouret quite right. I warned him. Well, I shall be glad to help you to turn him out of the house. Mouret has only got to come and ask me, and I'll give him a helping hand. I've never been able to endure those fellows. I know one of them, Abbé Fenil, who has a house on the other side of the road. He is no better than the rest of them, but he is as malicious as an ape, and he amuses me. I fancy that he doesn't get on very well with that priest of yours; isn't that so, eh?'
Marthe had turned very pale.
'Madame here is the sister of his reverence Abbé Faujas,' she said, turning to Olympe, who was listening with much curiosity.
'What I said has no reference to madame,' replied Macquart quite unconcernedly. 'Madame is not offended, I'm sure. She will take another glass of syrup?'
Olympe accepted another glass of the syrup, but Marthe rose from her seat and wished to leave. Her uncle, however, insisted upon taking her over his grounds. At the end of the garden she stopped to look at a large white building that was on the slope of the hill, at a few hundred yards from Les Tulettes. Its inner courts looked like prison-yards, and the narrow symmetrical windows which streaked its front with black lines gave it the cheerless aspect of a hospital.
That is the Lunatic Asylum,' exclaimed Macquart, who had followed the direction of Marthe's eyes. 'The young man here is one of the warders. We get on very well together, and he comes every now and then to have a bottle of wine with me.'
Then, turning towards the man in grey, who was finishing his glass beneath the mulberry tree, he called out:
'Here, Alexandre, come and show my niece our poor old woman's window.'
Alexandre came up to them politely.
'Do you see those three trees?' he said, stretching out his forefinger, as though he were drawing a plan in the air. 'Well, a little below the one to the left, you can see a fountain in the corner of a courtyard. Follow the windows on the ground floor to the right; it is the fifth one.'
Marthe stood there in silence, her lips white and her gaze fixed, in spite of herself, on the window pointed out to her. Uncle Macquart was looking at it as well, but with complaisance manifest in his blinking eyes.
'I see her sometimes of a morning,' he said, 'when the sun is on the other side. She keeps very well, doesn't she, Alexandre? I always tell them so when I go to Plassans. I am very well placed here to keep a watch on her. I couldn't be anywhere better.'
He again gave a snigger of satisfaction.
'The Rougons, you know, my dear, haven't got any stronger heads than the Macquarts have, and I often think, as I sit out here in front of that big house, that the whole lot will, perhaps, join the mother there some day. Thank Heaven, I've no fear about myself. My noddle is firmly fixed on. But I know some of them who are a little shaky. Well, I shall be here to receive them, and I shall see them from my den, and recommend them to Alexandre's kind attention, though they haven't all of them always been particularly kind to me.'
Then with that hideous smile of his that was like a captive wolf's, he added:
'It's very lucky for you all that I am here on the spot at Les Tulettes.'
Marthe could not help trembling. Though she was well aware of her uncle's taste for savage pleasantries, and the pleasure he took in torturing the people to whom he presented his rabbits, she could not help fancying that he was perhaps speaking the truth, and that the rest of the family would indeed be quartered eventually in those gloomy cells. She insisted upon taking her immediate departure in spite of the pressing entreaties of Macquart, who wanted to open another bottle of wine.
'Ah! where is the fowl?' he cried, just as she was getting into the carriage.
He went back for it, and placed it upon her knees.
'It is for Mouret, you understand,' he said, with a malicious expression; 'for Mouret, and for no one else. When I come to see you, I shall ask him how he liked it.'
He winked as he glanced at Olympe. Then, just as the coachman was going to whip his horse forward, he laid hold of the carriage again, and said:
'Go and see your father and talk to him about the cornfield. See, it's that field just in front of us. Rougon is making a mistake. We are too old friends to quarrel about the matter; besides, as he very well knows, it would be worse for him if we did. Let him understand that he is making a mistake.'
The carriage set off, and as Olympe turned round she saw Macquart grinning under his mulberry trees with Alexandre, and uncorking that second bottle of which he had spoken. Marthe gave the coachman strict orders that he was never to take her to Les Tulettes again. She was beginning to feel a little tired of these drives into the country, and she took them less frequently, and at last gave them up altogether, when she found that she could never prevail upon Abbé Faujas to accompany her.
Marthe was now undergoing a complete change; she was becoming quite another woman. She had grown much more refined, through the life of nervous excitement which she had been leading. The stolid heaviness and dull lifelessness which she had acquired from having spent fifteen years behind a counter at Marseilles seemed to melt away in the bright flame of her new-born piety. She dressed better than she had been used to do, and joined in the conversation when she now went to the Rougons' on Thursdays.
'Madame Mouret is becoming quite a young girl again,' exclaimed Madame de Condamin in amazement.
'Yes, indeed,' replied Doctor Porquier, nodding his head; 'she is going through life backwards.'
Marthe, who had now grown much slimmer, with rosy cheeks and magnificent black flashing eyes, burst for some months into singular beauty. Her face beamed with animation, extraordinary vitality seemed to flood her being and thrill her with warmth. Her forgotten and joyless youth appeared to blaze in her now, at forty years of age. At the same time she was overwhelmed by a perpetual craving for prayer and devotion, and no longer obeyed Abbé Faujas's injunctions. She wore out her knees upon the flag-stones at Saint-Saturnin's, lived in the midst of canticles and offerings of praise and worship, and took comfort in the presence of the gleaming monstrances and the brightly lit chapels, and priests and altars that glittered with starry sheen through the dark gloom of the cathedral nave. She had a sort of physical craving for those glories, a craving which tortured and racked her. She was compelled by her very suffering—she would have died if she had not yielded—to seek sustenance for her passion, to come and prostrate herself in confession, to bow in lowly awe amidst the thrilling peals of the organ, and to faint with melting joy in the ecstasy of communion. Then all consciousness of trouble left her, she was no longer tortured, she bowed herself to the ground in a painless trance, etherealised, as it were, becoming a pure, unsullied flame of self-consuming love.
But Faujas's severity increased, he tried to check her by roughness. He was amazed at this passionate awakening of Marthe's soul, this ardour for love and death. He frequently questioned her on the subject of her childhood; he even went to see Madame Rougon, and remained for a long time in great perplexity and dissatisfaction.
'Our landlady has been complaining of you,' his mother said to him. 'Why won't you allow her to go to church whenever she likes? It is very unkind of you to vex her; she is very kindly to us.'
'She is killing herself,' replied the priest.
Madame Faujas shrugged her shoulders after her usual fashion.
'That is her own business. We all have our ways of finding pleasure. It is better to die of praying than to give one's self indigestion like that hussy Olympe. Don't be so severe with Madame Mouret. You will end by making it impossible for us to live here.'
One day when she was advising him in this way, he exclaimed in a gloomy voice:
'Mother, this woman will be the obstacle!'
She!' cried the old peasant woman, 'why, she worships you, Ovide! You may do anything you like with her, if you will only treat her a little more kindly. She would carry you to the cathedral if it rained, to prevent you wetting your feet, if you would only let her!'
Abbé Faujas himself at last came to understand the necessity of no longer treating Marthe so harshly. He began to fear an outburst. So he gradually allowed her greater liberty, permitted her to seclude herself, to tell her beads at length, to offer prayers at each of the Stations of the Cross, and even to come twice a week to his confessional at Saint-Saturnin's. Marthe, no longer hearing the terrible voice which had seemed to impute her piety to her as a vice, believed that God was pouring His grace upon her. Now at last, she thought, she was entering into all the joys of Paradise. She was overcome by trances of sweet emotion, inexhaustible floods of tears, which she shed without being conscious of their flow, and nervous ecstasies from which she emerged weak and faint as though all her life-blood had left her veins. At these times, Rose would take her and lay her upon her bed, where she would lie for hours with pinched lips and half-closed eyes like a dead woman.
One afternoon the cook, alarmed by her stillness, was really afraid that she might be dead. She did not think of knocking at the door of the room in which Mouret had shut himself, but she went straight to the second floor and besought Abbé Faujas to come down to her mistress. When he reached Marthe's room, Rose hastened to fetch some ether, leaving the priest alone with the swooning woman. He merely took her hands within his own. At last Marthe began to move about and talk incoherently. When she at last recognised him at her bedside her blood surged to her face.
'Are you better, my dear child?' he asked her. 'You make me feel very uneasy.'
She felt too much oppressed at first to be able to reply to him, and burst into tears, as she let her head slip between his arms.
'I am not ill,' she murmured at last, in so feeble a voice that it was scarcely more than a breath; 'I am too happy. Let me cry; I feel delight in my tears. How kind of you to have come! I had been expecting you and calling you for a long time.'
Then her voice grew weaker and weaker till it was nothing more than a mere murmur of ardent prayer.
'Oh! who will give me wings to fly towards thee? My soul languishes without thee, it longs for thee passionately and sighs for thee, O my God, my only good thing, my consolation, my sweet joy, my treasure, my happiness, my life, my God, my all——'
Her face broke into a smile as she breathed these passionate words, and she clasped her hands fancying that she saw Abbé Faujas's grave face circled by an aureole. The priest, who had hitherto always succeeded in checking anything of this sort, felt alarmed for a moment and hastily withdrew his arms. Then he exclaimed authoritatively:
'Be calm and reasonable; I desire you to be so. God will refuse your homage if you do not offer it to Him in calm reason. What is most urgent now is to restore your strength.'
Rose returned to the room, quite distracted at not having been able to find any ether. The priest told her to remain by the bedside, while he said to Marthe in a more gentle tone:
'Don't distress yourself. God will be touched by your love. When the proper time comes, He will come down to you and fill you with everlasting felicity.'
Then he quitted the room, leaving the ailing woman quite radiant, like one raised from the dead. From that day forward he was able to mould her like soft wax beneath his touch. She became extremely useful to him in certain delicate missions to Madame de Condamin, and she also frequently visited Madame Rastoil when he expressed a desire that she should do so. She rendered him absolute obedience, never seeking the reason of anything he told her to do, but saying just what he instructed her to say and no more. He no longer observed any precautions with her, but bluntly taught her her lessons and made use of her as though she were a machine. She would have begged in the streets if he had ordered her to do so. When she became restless and stretched out her hands to him, with bursting heart and passion-swollen lips, he crushed her with a single word beneath the will of Heaven. She never dared to make any reply. Between her and the priest there was a wall of anger and scorn. When Abbé Faujas left her after one of the short struggles which he occasionally had with her, he shrugged his shoulders with the disdain of a strong wrestler who has been opposed by a child.
Though Marthe was so pliant in the hands of the priest, she grew more querulous and sour every day amidst all the little cares of household life. Rose said that she had never before known her to be so fractious. It was towards her husband that she specially manifested increasing bitterness and dislike. The old leaven of the Rougons' rancour was reviving in presence of this son of a Macquart, this man whom she accused of being the torture of her life. When Madame Faujas or Olympe came downstairs to sit with her in the dining-room she no longer observed any reticence, but gave full vent to her feelings against Mouret.
'For twenty years he kept me shut up like a mere clerk, with a pen behind my ear, between his jars of oil and bags of almonds! He never allowed me a pleasure or gave me a present. He has robbed me of my children; and he is quite capable of taking himself off any day to make people believe that I have made his life unendurable. It is very fortunate that you are here and can tell the truth.'
She fell foul of Mouret in this way without any provocation from him. Everything that he did, his looks, his gestures, the few words he spoke, all seemed to infuriate her. She could not even see him without being carried away by an unreasoning anger. It was at the close of their meals, when Mouret, without waiting for dessert, folded his napkin and silently rose from table, that quarrels more especially occurred.
'You might leave the table at the same time as other people,' Marthe would bitterly remark; 'it is not very polite of you to behave in that way.'
'I have finished, and I am going away,' Mouret replied in his drawling voice.
Marthe began to imagine that her husband's daily retreat from table was an intentional slight to Abbé Faujas, and thereupon she lost all control over herself.
'You are a perfect boor, you make me feel quite ashamed!' she cried. 'I should have a nice time of it with you if I had not been fortunate enough to make some friends who console me for your boorish ways! You don't even know how to behave yourself at table, you prevent me from enjoying a single meal. Stay where you are, do you hear? If you don't want to eat any more, you can look at us.'
He finished folding his napkin as calmly as though he had not heard a word of what his wife had said, and then, with slow and deliberate steps, he left the room. They could hear him go upstairs and lock himself in his office. Thereupon Marthe, choking with anger, burst out:
'Oh, the monster! He is killing me; he is killing me!'
Madame Faujas was obliged to console and soothe her. Rose ran to the foot of the stairs and called out at the top of her voice, so that Mouret might hear her through the closed door:
'You are a monster, sir! Madame is quite right to call you a monster!'
Some of their quarrels were particularly violent. Marthe, whose reason was on the verge of giving way, had got it into her head that her husband wished to beat her. It was a fixed idea of hers. She asserted that he was only waiting and watching for an opportunity. He had not dared to do it yet, she said, because he had never found her alone, and in the night-time he was afraid lest she should cry out for assistance. Rose on her side swore that she had seen her master hiding a thick stick in his office. Madame Faujas and Olympe showed no hesitation in believing these stories, expressed the greatest pity for their landlady, and constituted themselves her protectors. 'That brute,' as they now called Mouret, would not venture, they said, to ill-treat her in their presence; and they told her to come for them at night if he should show the least sign of violence. The house was now in a constant state of alarm.
'He is capable of any wickedness,' exclaimed the cook.
That year Marthe observed all the religious ceremonies of Passion Week with the greatest fervour. On Good Friday she knelt in agony in the black-draped church, while the candles were extinguished, one by one, midst the mournful swell of voices rising through the gloomy nave. It seemed to her as though her own breath were dying away with the light of the candles. When the last one went out, and the darkness in front of her seemed implacable and repelling, she fainted away, remaining for an hour bent in an attitude of prayer without the women around her being aware of her condition. When she came to herself, the church was deserted. She imagined that she was being scourged with rods and that blood was streaming from her limbs; she experienced too such excruciating pains in her head that she raised her hands to it, as if to pull out thorns whose points she seemed to feel piercing her skull. She was in a strange condition at dinner that evening. She was still suffering from nervous shock; when she closed her eyes, she saw the souls of the expiring candles flitting away through the darkness, and she mechanically examined her hands for the wounds whence her blood had streamed. All the Passion bled within her.
Madame Faujas, seeing her so unwell, persuaded her to go to rest early, accompanied her to her room and put her to bed. Mouret, who had a key of the bedroom, had already retired to his office, where he spent his evenings. When Marthe, covered up to her chin with the blankets, said that she was quite warm and felt better, Madame Faujas went to blow out the candle that she might be better able to sleep; but at this Marthe sprang up in fear and cried out beseechingly:
'No! no! don't put out the light! Put it on the drawers so that I can see it. I should die if I were left in the dark.'
Then, with staring eyes, trembling as though at the recollection of some dreadful tragedy, she murmured in tones of terrified pity: 'Oh, it is horrible! it is horrible!'
She fell back upon the pillow and seemed to drop asleep, and Madame Faujas then silently left the room. That evening the whole house was in bed by ten o'clock. As Rose went upstairs, she noticed that Mouret was still in his office. She peeped through the key-hole and saw him asleep there with his head on the table, and a kitchen-candle smoking dismally by his side.
'Well, I won't wake him,' she said to herself as she continued her journey upstairs. 'Let him get a stiff neck, if he likes.'
About midnight, when the whole house was wrapped in slumber, cries were heard proceeding from the first floor. At first they were but wails, but they soon grew into loud howls, like the hoarse, choking calls of one who is being murdered. Abbé Faujas, awaking with a start, called his mother, who scarcely gave herself time to slip on a petticoat before she went to knock at Rose's door.
'Come down immediately!' she said, 'I'm afraid Madame Mouret is being murdered.'
The screams became louder than ever. The whole house was soon astir. Olympe with her shoulders simply hidden by a kerchief, made her appearance with Trouche, who had only just returned home, slightly intoxicated. Rose hastened downstairs, followed by the lodgers.
'Open the door, madame, open the door!' she cried excitedly, hammering with her fist on Madame Mouret's door.
Deep sighs alone answered her; then there was the sound of a body falling, and a terrible struggle seemed to be taking place on the floor in the midst of overturned furniture. The walls shook with repeated heavy blows, and a sound like a death-rattle passed under the door, so terrible that the Faujases and the Trouches turned pale as they looked at each other.
'Her husband is murdering her,' murmured Olympe.
'Yes, you are right; the brute is killing her,' said the cook. 'I saw him pretending to be asleep when I came up to bed. But he was planning it all then.'
She once more thundered on the door with both her fists, repeating:
'Open the door, sir! We shall go for the police if you don't. Oh, the scoundrel! he will end his days on the scaffold!'
Then the groans and cries began again. Trouche declared that the blackguard must be bleeding the poor lady like a fowl.
'We must do something more than knock at the door,' said Abbé Faujas, coming forward. 'Wait a moment.'
He put one of his broad shoulders to the door and with a slow persistent effort forced it open. The women then rushed into the room, where the most extraordinary spectacle met their eyes.
Marthe, her night-dress torn, lay panting on the floor, bruised, scratched, and bleeding. Her dishevelled hair was twined round the leg of a chair, and her hands had so firmly gripped hold of the chest of drawers, that it was pulled from its place and now stood in front of the door. Mouret was standing in a corner, holding the candle and gazing at his wife with an expression of stupefaction.
Abbé Faujas had to push the chest of drawers on one side.
'You are a monster!' cried Rose, rushing up to Mouret and shaking her fist at him. 'To treat a woman like that! He would have killed her, if we hadn't come in time to prevent him.'
Madame Faujas and Olympe bent down over Marthe. 'Poor dear!' said the former. 'She had a presentiment of something this evening. She was quite frightened.'
'Where are you hurt?' asked Olympe. 'There is nothing broken, is there? Look at her shoulder, it's quite black; and her knee is dreadfully grazed. Make yourself easy; we are with you, and we will protect you.'
But Marthe was now simply wailing like a child. While the two women were examining her, forgetting that there were men in the room, the Abbé quietly put the furniture in order. Then Rose helped Madame Faujas and Olympe to carry Marthe back to bed, and when they had done so and had knotted up her hair, they lingered for a moment, looking curiously round the room and waiting for explanations. Mouret still stood in the same corner holding the candle, as though petrified by what he had seen.
'I assure you,' he said, 'that I didn't hurt her; I didn't touch her with the tip of my finger even.'
'You've been waiting for your opportunity this month past,' cried Rose in a fury; 'we all know that well enough; we have watched you. The dear lady was quite expecting your brutality. Don't tell lies about it; they put me quite beside myself!'
The other women cast threatening glances at him, though they did not feel at liberty to speak to him in the same way as Rose had done.
'I assure you,' repeated Mouret in a gentle voice, 'that I did not strike her. I was just about to get into bed, but the moment I touched the candle, which was standing on the drawers, she awoke with a start, stretched out her arms with a cry, and then began to beat her forehead with her fists and tear her flesh with her nails.'
The cook shook her head furiously.
'Why didn't you open the door?' she cried; 'we knocked loud enough.'
'I assure you that I have done nothing,' he reiterated still more gently than before. 'I could not tell what was the matter with her. She threw herself upon the floor, bit herself and leapt about so violently as almost to break the furniture. I did not dare to go near her; I was quite overcome. I twice called to you to come in, but she was screaming so loudly that she must have prevented you from hearing me. I was in a terrible fright, but I have done nothing, I assure you.'
'Oh yes! She's been beating herself, hasn't she?' jeered Rose.
Then, addressing herself to Madame Faujas, she added:
'He threw his stick out of the window, no doubt, when he heard us coming.'
Mouret at last put the candle back upon the chest of drawers and seated himself on a chair, with his hands upon his knees. He made no further attempt to defend himself, but gazed with stupefaction at the women who were shaking their skinny arms in front of the bed. Trouche had exchanged a glance with Abbé Faujas. That poor fellow, Mouret, certainly had no very ferocious appearance as he sat there in his night-gown, with a yellow handkerchief tied round his bald head. However, the others all closed round the bed and looked at Marthe, who, with distorted face, seemed to be waking from a dream.
'What is the matter, Rose?' she asked. 'What are all these people doing here? I am quite exhausted. Ask them to leave me in peace.'
Rose hesitated for a moment.
'Your husband is in the room, madame,' she said at last. 'Aren't you afraid to remain alone with him?'
Marthe looked at her in astonishment.
'No, no; not at all,' she replied. 'Go away; I am very sleepy.'
Thereupon the five people quitted the room, leaving Mouret seated on the chair, staring blankly towards the bed.
'He won't be able to fasten the door again,' the cook exclaimed as she went back upstairs. 'At the very first sound I shall fly down and be at him. I shall go to bed with my things on. Did you hear what stories the dear lady told to prevent him from appearing such a brute? She would let herself be murdered rather than accuse him. What a hypocritical face he has, hasn't he?'
The three women remained for a few moments on the landing of the second floor, holding their candlesticks the while. No punishment, said they, would be severe enough for such a man. Then they separated. The house fell into its wonted quietness, and the remainder of the night passed off peacefully. The next morning, when the three women eagerly referred to the terrible scene, they found Marthe nervous, shamefaced and confused. She gave them no answer but cut the conversation short. When she was alone she sent for a workman to come and mend the door. Madame Faujas and Olympe came to the conclusion that Madame Mouret's reticence was caused by a desire to avoid scandal.
The next day, Easter Day, Marthe tasted at Saint-Saturnin's all the sweetness of an awakening of the soul amidst the triumphant joys of the Resurrection. The gloom of Good Friday was swept away by the brightness of Easter; the church was decked in white, and was full of perfume and light, as though for the celebration of some divine nuptials; the voices of the choir-boys sounded flute-like, and Marthe, amidst their songs of joyful praise, felt transported by even more thrilling, overwhelming sensations than during the celebration of the crucifixion. She returned home with glistening eyes and hot dry tongue, and sat up late, talking with a gaiety that was unusual in her. Mouret was already in bed when she at last went upstairs. About midnight, terrible cries again echoed through the house.
The scene that had taken place two days previously was repeated: only on this occasion, at the first knock, Mouret came in his night-gown and with distracted face to open the door. Marthe, still dressed, was lying on her stomach, sobbing violently and beating her head against the foot of the bed. The bodice of her dress looked as though it had been torn open, and there were two big scratches on her throat.
'He has tried to strangle her this time!' exclaimed Rose.
The women undressed her. Mouret, after opening the door, had got back into bed, trembling all over and as pale as a sheet. He made no attempt to defend himself; he did not even appear to hear the indignant remarks that were made about him, but simply covered himself up and lay close to the wall. Similar scenes now took place at irregular intervals. The house lived in a state of fear lest a crime should be committed; and, at the slightest noise, the occupants of the second floor were astir. Marthe, however, still avoided all allusions to the matter, and absolutely forbade Rose to prepare a folding bed for Mouret in his office. When the morning came, it seemed to take away from her the very recollection of the scene of the night.
However, it was gradually reported about the neighbourhood that strange things happened at the Mourets'. It was said that the husband belaboured his wife every night with a bludgeon. Rose had made Madame Faujas and Olympe swear that they would say nothing on the subject, as her mistress seemingly wished to keep silence upon it; but she herself, by her expressions of pity and her allusions and her reservations, materially contributed to set afloat amongst the tradesmen the stories that became current. The butcher, who was a great jester, asserted that Mouret had thrashed his wife on account of the priest, but the greengrocer's wife defended 'the poor lady,' who was, she declared, an innocent lamb quite incapable of doing any wrong. The baker's spouse, on the other hand, considered that Mouret was one of those men who ill-treat their wives for mere pleasure and amusement. In the market-place people raised their eyes to heaven when they spoke of the matter, and referred to Marthe in the same terms of caressing endearment that they would have used in speaking of a sick child. Whenever Olympe went to buy a pound of cherries or a basket of strawberries, the conversation inevitably turned upon the Mourets, and for a quarter of an hour there was a stream of sympathetic remarks.
'Well, and how are things getting on in your house?'
'Oh, don't speak of it! She is weeping her life away. It is most pitiable. One could almost wish to see her die.'
'She came to buy some anchovies the other day, and I noticed that one of her cheeks was scratched.'
'Oh, yes! he nearly kills her! If you could only see her body as I have seen it! It is nothing but one big sore. When she is down on the ground he kicks her with his heels. I am in constant fear of finding in the morning that he has split her head open during the night.'
'It must be very unpleasant for you, living in such a house. I should go somewhere else, if I were in your place. It would make me quite ill to be mixed up with such horrors every night.'
'But what would become of the poor woman? She is so refined and gentle! We stay on for her sake—five sous, isn't it, this pound of cherries?'
'Yes; five sous. Well, it's very good of you; you show a kind heart.'
This story of a husband who waited till midnight to fall upon his wife with a bludgeon excited the greatest interest amongst the gossips of the market-place. There were further terrible details every day. One pious woman asserted that Mouret was possessed by an evil spirit, and that he seized his wife by the neck with his teeth with such violence that Abbé Faujas was obliged to make the sign of the cross three times in the air with his left thumb before the monster could be made to let go his hold. Then, she added, Mouret fell to the ground like a great lump, and a huge black rat leapt out of his mouth and vanished, though not the slightest hole could be discovered in the flooring. The tripe-seller at the corner of the Rue Taravelle terrified the neighbourhood by promulgating the theory that 'the scoundrel had perhaps been bitten by a mad dog.'
The story, however, was not credited among the higher classes of the inhabitants of Plassans. When it was mooted about the Cours Sauvaire it afforded the retired traders much amusement, as they sat on the benches there, basking in the warm May sun.
'Mouret is quite incapable of beating his wife,' said the retired almond-dealers; 'he looks as though he had had a whipping himself, and he no longer even comes out for a turn on the promenade. His wife must be keeping him on dry bread.'
'One can never tell,' said a retired captain. 'I knew an officer in my regiment whose wife used to box his ears for a mere yes or no. That went on for ten years. Then one day she took it into her head to kick him; but that made him quite furious and he nearly strangled her. Perhaps Mouret has the same dislike to being kicked as my friend had.'
'He probably has a yet greater dislike to priests,' said another of the company with a sneer.
For some time Madame Rougon appeared quite unconscious of the scandal which was occupying the attention of the town. She preserved a smiling face and ignored the allusions which were made before her. One day, however, after a long visit from Monsieur Delangre, she arrived at her daughter's house looking greatly distressed, her eyes filled with tears.
'Ah, my dear!' she cried, clasping Marthe in her arms, 'what is this that I have just heard? Can your husband really have so far forgotten himself so as to have raised his hand against you? It is all a pack of falsehoods, isn't it? I have given it the strongest denial. I know Mouret. He has been badly brought up, but he is not a wicked man.'
Marthe blushed. She was overcome by that embarrassment and shame which she experienced every time this subject was alluded to in her presence.
Ah! madame will never complain!' cried Rose with her customary boldness. 'I should have come and informed you a long time ago if I had not been afraid of madame being angry with me.'
The old lady let her hands fall with an expression of extreme grief and surprise.
'It is really true, then,' she exclaimed, 'that he beats you! Oh, the wretch! the wretch!'
Thereupon she began to weep.
'For me to have lived to my age to see such things! A man whom we have overwhelmed with kindnesses ever since his father's death, when he was only a little clerk with us! It was Rougon who desired your marriage. I told him more than once that Mouret looked like a scoundrel. He has never treated us well; and he only came to live at Plassans for the sake of setting us at defiance with the few sous he has got together. Thank heaven, we stand in no need of him; we are richer than he is, and it is that which annoys him. He is very mean-spirited, and so jealous that he has always refused to set foot in my drawing-room. He knows he would burst with envy there. But I won't leave you in the power of such a monster, my dear. There are laws, happily.'
'Oh don't be uneasy! There has been much exaggeration, I assure you,' said Marthe, who was growing more and more ill at ease.
'You see that she is trying to defend him!' cried the cook.
At this moment, Abbé Faujas and Trouche, who had been conferring together at the bottom of the garden, came up, attracted by the sound of the conversation.
'I am a most unhappy mother, your reverence,' said Madame Rougon piteously. 'I have only one daughter near me now, and I hear she is weeping her eyes out from ill-treatment. But you live in the same house, and I beg you to protect and console her.'
The Abbé fixed his eyes upon the old woman, as though he were trying to guess the real meaning of this sudden manifestation of distress.
I have just seen some one whom I would rather not name,' she continued, returning the Abbé's glance. 'This person has quite alarmed me. God knows that I don't want to do anything to injure my son-in-law! But it is my duty—is it not?—to defend my daughter's interests. Well, my son-in-law is a wretch; he ill-treats his wife, he scandalises the whole town, and mixes himself up in all sorts of dirty affairs. You will see that he will also compromise himself in political matters when the elections come on. The last time it was he who put himself at the head of the riff-raff of the suburbs. It will kill me, your reverence!'
'Monsieur Mouret would not allow anybody to make remarks to him about his conduct,' the Abbé at last ventured to say.
'But I can't abandon my daughter to such a man!' cried Madame Rougon. 'I will not allow it that we should be dishonoured. Justice is not made for dogs.'
Trouche, who was swaying himself about, took advantage of a momentary pause to exclaim:
'Monsieur Mouret is mad!'
The words seemed to fall with all the force of a blow from a club, and everybody looked at the speaker.
'I mean that he has a weak head,' continued Trouche. 'You've only got to look at his eyes. I may tell you that I don't feel particularly easy myself. There was a man at Besan?on who adored his daughter, but he murdered her one night without knowing what he was doing.'
'The master has been cracked for a long time past,' said Rose.
'But this is frightful!' cried Madame Rougon. 'Really, I fear you may be right. The last time I saw him he had a most extraordinary expression on his face. He never had very sharp wits. Ah! my poor dear, promise to confide everything to me. I shall not be able to sleep quietly after this. Listen to me now; at the first sign of any extravagant conduct on your husband's part, don't hesitate, don't run any further risk—madmen must be placed in confinement.'
After this speech, she went off. When Trouche was again alone with Abbé Faujas, he gave one of those unpleasant grins that exposed his black teeth to view.
'Our landlady will owe me a big taper,' he said. 'She will be able to kick about at nights as much as she likes.'
The priest, with his face quite ashy and his eyes turned to the ground, made no reply. Then he shrugged his shoulders and went off to read his breviary under the arbour at the bottom of the garden.
On Sundays Mouret, like many of the other retired traders of Plassans, used to take a stroll about the town. It was on Sundays only that he now emerged from that lonely seclusion in which he buried himself, overcome by a sort of shame. And his Sunday outing was gone through quite mechanically. In the morning he shaved himself, put on a clean shirt, and brushed his coat and hat; then, after breakfast, without quite knowing how, he found himself in the street, walking along slowly, with his hands behind his back and looking very sedate and neat.
As he was leaving his house one Sunday, he saw Rose talking with much animation to Monsieur Rastoil's cook on the pathway of the Rue Balande. The two servants became silent when they caught sight of him. They looked at him with such a peculiar expression that he felt behind him to ascertain whether his handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket. When he reached the Place of the Sub-Prefecture he turned his head, looked back, and saw them still standing in the same place. Rose was imitating the reeling of a drunken man, while the president's cook was laughing loudly.
'I am walking too quickly and they are making fun of me,' thought Mouret.
He thereupon slackened his pace. As he passed through the Rue de la Banne towards the market, the shopkeepers ran to their doors and watched him curiously. He gave a little nod to the butcher, who looked confused and did not return the salutation. The baker's wife, to whom he raised his hat, seemed quite alarmed and hastily stepped backwards. The greengrocer, the pastrycook and the grocer pointed him out to each other from opposite sides of the street. As he went along there was ever excitement behind him, people clustered together in groups, and a great deal of talking, mingled with laughs and grins, ensued.
'Did you notice how quickly he was walking?'
'Yes, indeed, when he wanted to stride across the gutter he almost jumped.'
'It is said that they are all like that.'
'I felt quite frightened. Why is he allowed to come out? It oughtn't to be permitted.'
Mouret was beginning to feel timid, and dared not venture to look round again. He experienced a vague uneasiness, though he could not feel quite sure that it was about himself that the people were all talking. He quickened his steps and began to swing his arms about. He regretted that he had put on his old overcoat, a hazel-coloured one and no longer of a fashionable cut. When he reached the market-place, he hesitated for a moment, and then boldly strode into the midst of the greengrocers' stalls. The mere sight of him caused quite a commotion there.
All the housewives of Plassans formed in a line about his path, the market-women stood up by their stalls, with their hands on their hips, and stared hard at him. People even pushed one another to get a sight of him, and some of the women mounted on to the benches in the corn-market. Mouret still further quickened his steps and tried to disengage himself from the crowd, not as yet able to believe that it was he who was causing all this excitement.
'Well, anyone would think that his arms were windmill sails,' said a peasant-woman who was selling fruit.
'He flies on like a shot; he nearly upset my stall,' exclaimed another woman, a greengrocer.
'Stop him! stop him!' the millers cried facetiously. Then Mouret, overcome by curiosity, halted and rose on tip-toes to see what was the matter. He imagined that someone had just been detected thieving. But a loud burst of laughter broke out from the crowd, and there were shouts and hisses, all sorts of calls and cries.
'There's no harm in him; don't hurt him.'
'Ah! I'm not so sure of that. I shouldn't like to trust myself too near him. He gets up in the night and strangles people.'
'He certainly looks a bad one.'
'Has it come upon him suddenly?'
'Yes, indeed, all at once. And he used to be so kind and gentle! I'm going away; all this distresses me. Here are the three sous for the turnips.'
Mouret had just recognised Olympe in the midst of a group of women, and he went towards her. She had been buying some magnificent peaches, which she carried in a very fashionable-looking handbag. And she was evidently relating some very moving story, for all the gossips around her were breaking out into exclamations and clasping their hands with expressions of pity.
'Then,' said she, 'he caught her by the hair, and he would have cut her throat with a razor which was lying on the chest of drawers if we hadn't arrived just in time to prevent the murder. But don't say anything to her about it; it would only bring her more trouble.'
'What trouble?' asked Mouret in amazement. The listeners hurried away, and Olympe assumed an expression of careful watchfulness as, in her turn, she warily slipped off, saying:
'Don't excite yourself, Monsieur Mouret. You had better go back home.'
Mouret took refuge in a little lane that led to the Cours Sauvaire. Thereupon the shouts increased in violence, and for a few moments he was pursued by the angry uproar of the market-folk.
'What is the matter with them to-day?' he wondered. 'Could it be me that they were jeering at? But I never heard my name mentioned. Something out of the common must have happened.'
He then took off his hat and examined it, imagining that perhaps some street lad had thrown a handful of mud at it. It was all right, however, and there was nothing fastened on to his coat-tails. This examination soothed him a little, and he resumed his sedate walk through the silent lane, and quietly turned on to the Cours Sauvaire.
The usual groups of friends were sitting on the benches there.
'Hallo! here's Mouret!' cried the retired captain, with an expression of great astonishment.
The liveliest curiosity became manifest on the sleepy faces of the others. They stretched out their necks without rising from their seats, while Mouret stood in front of them. They examined him minutely from head to foot.
'Ah! you are taking a little stroll?' said the captain, who seemed the boldest.
'Yes, just a short stroll,' replied Mouret, in a listless fashion. 'It's a very fine day.'
The company exchanged meaning smiles. They were feeling chilly and the sky had just become overcast.
Very fine,' said a retired tanner; 'you are easily pleased. It is true, however, that you are already wearing winter clothes. What a funny overcoat that is of yours!'
The smiles now grew into grins and titters. A sudden idea seemed to strike Mouret.
'Just look and tell me,' said he, suddenly turning round, 'have I got a sun on my back?'
The retired almond-dealers could no longer keep serious, but burst into loud laughter. The captain, who was the jester of the company, winked.
'A sun?' he asked, 'where? I can only see a moon.'
The others shook with laughter. They thought the captain excessively witty.
'A moon?' said Mouret; 'be kind enough to remove it. It has caused me much inconvenience.'
The captain gave him three or four taps on the back, and then exclaimed:
'There, you are rid of it now. But it must, indeed, be extremely inconvenient to have a moon on one's back. You are not looking very well.'
'I am not very well,' Mouret replied in his listless indifferent way.
Then, imagining that he heard a titter, he added:
'But I am very well taken care of at home. My wife is very kind and attentive, and quite spoils me. But I need rest, and that is the reason why I don't come out now as I used to do. Directly I am better, I shall look after business again.'
'But they say it is your wife who is not very well,' interrupted the retired tanner bluntly.
'My wife! There is nothing the matter with her! It is a pack of falsehoods! There is nothing the matter with her—nothing at all. People say things against us because—because we keep quietly at home. Ill, indeed! my wife! She is very strong, and never even has so much the matter with her as—as a headache.'
He went on speaking in short sentences, stammering and hesitating in the uneasy way of a man who is telling falsehoods; full too of the embarrassment of a whilom gossip who has become tongue-tied. The retired traders shook their heads with pitying looks, and the captain tapped his forehead with his finger. A former hatter of the suburbs who had scrutinised Mouret from his cravat to the bottom button of his overcoat, was now absorbed in the examination of his boots. The lace of the one on the left foot had come undone, and this seemed to the hatter a most extraordinary circumstance. He nudged his neighbours' elbows, and winked as he called their attention to the loosened lace. Soon the whole bench had eyes for nothing else but the lace. It was the last proof. The men shrugged their shoulders in a way that seemed to imply that they had lost their last spark of hope.
'Mouret,' said the captain, in a paternal fashion, 'fasten up your boot-lace.'
Mouret glanced at his feet, but did not seem to understand; and he went on talking. Then, as no one replied, he became silent, and after standing there for a moment or two longer he quietly continued his walk.
'He will fall, I'm sure,' exclaimed the master-tanner, who had risen from his seat that he might keep Mouret longer in view.
When Mouret got to the end of the Cours Sauvaire, and passed in front of the Young Men's Club, he was again greeted with the low laughs which had followed him since he had set foot out of doors. He could distinctly see Séverin Rastoil, who was standing at the door of the club, pointing him out to a group of young men. Clearly, he thought, it was himself who was thus providing sport for the town. He bent his head and was seized with a kind of fear, which he could not explain to himself, as he hastily stepped past the houses. Just as he was about to turn into the Rue Canquoin, he heard a noise behind him, and, turning his head, he saw three lads following him; two of them were big, impudent-looking boys, while the third was a very little one, with a serious face. The latter was holding in his hand a dirty orange which he had picked out of the gutter. Mouret made his way along the Rue Canquoin, and then, crossing the Place des Récollets, he reached the Rue de la Banne. The lads were still following him.
'Do you want your ears pulled?' he called out, suddenly stepping up to them.
They dashed on one side, shouting and laughing, and made their escape on their hands and knees. Mouret turned very red, realising that he was an object of ridicule. He felt a perfect fear of crossing the Place of the Sub-Prefecture, and passing in front of the Rougons' windows with a following of street-arabs, whom he could hear, increasing in numbers and boldness, behind him. As he went on, he was obliged to step out of his way to avoid his mother-in-law, who was returning from vespers with Madame de Condamin.
'Wolf! wolf!' cried the lads.
Mouret, with perspiration breaking out on his brow, and his feet stumbling against the flag-stones, overheard old Madame Rougon say to the wife of the conservator of rivers and forests:
'See! there he is, the scoundrel! It is disgraceful; we can't tolerate it much longer.'
Thereupon Mouret could no longer restrain himself from setting off at a run. With swinging arms and a look of distraction upon his face, he rushed into the Rue Balande while some ten or a dozen street-arabs dashed after him. It seemed to him as though all the shopkeepers of the Rue de la Banne, the market-women, the promenaders of the Cours, the young men from the club, the Rougons, the Condamins—all the people of Plassans, in fact—were surging onwards behind his back, breaking out into laughs and jeers, as he sped up the hilly street. The lads stamped and slid over the pavement, making indeed as much noise in that usually quiet neighbourhood as a pack of hounds might have made.
'Catch him!' they screamed.
'Hie! What a scarecrow he looks in that overcoat of his!'
'Some of you go round by the Rue Taravelle, and then you'll nab him!'
'Cut along! cut along as hard as you can go!'
Mouret, now quite frantic, made a desperate rush towards his door, but his foot slipped and he tumbled upon the foot-pavement, where he lay for a few moments, utterly overcome. The lads, afraid lest he should kick out at them, formed a circle around and vented screams of triumph, while the smallest of them, gravely stepping forward, threw the rotten orange at Mouret. It flattened itself against his left eye. He rose up with difficulty, and went in to his house without attempting to wipe himself. Rose was forced to come out with a broom and drive the young ragamuffins away.
From that Sunday forward all Plassans was convinced that Mouret was a lunatic who ought to be placed under restraint. The most surprising statements were made in support of this belief. It was said, for instance, that he shut himself up for days together in a perfectly empty room which had not been touched with a broom for a whole year; and those who circulated this story vouched for its truth, as they had it, they said, from Mouret's own cook. The accounts differed as to what he did in that empty room. The cook said that he pretended to be dead, a statement which thrilled the whole neighbourhood with horror. The market-people firmly believed that he kept a coffin concealed in the room, laid himself at full length in it, with his eyes open and his hands upon his breast, and remained like that from morning till night.
'The attack had been threatening him for a long time past,' Olympe remarked in every shop she entered. 'It was brooding in him; he had for a long time been very melancholy and low-spirited, hiding in out-of-the-way corners, just like an animal, you know, that feels ill. The very first day I set foot in the house I said to my husband, "The landlord seems to be in a bad way." His eyes were quite yellow and he had such a queer look about him. Afterwards he went on in the strangest way; he had all sorts of extraordinary whims and crotchets. He used to count every lump of sugar, and lock everything up, even the bread. He was so dreadfully miserly that his poor wife hadn't even a pair of boots to put on. Ah! poor thing, she has a dreadful time of it, and I pity her from the bottom of my heart. Imagine the life she leads with a madman who can't even behave decently at table! He throws his napkin away in the middle of dinner, and stalks off, looking stupefied, after having made a horrible mess in his plate. And such a temper he has, too! He used to make the most terrible scenes just because the mustard pot wasn't in its right place. But now he doesn't speak at all, though he glares like a wild beast, and springs at people's throats without uttering a word. Ah! I could tell you some strange stories, if I liked.'
When she had thus excited her listeners' curiosity, and they began to press her with questions, she added:
'No, no; it is no business of mine. Madame Mouret is a perfect saint, and bears her suffering like a true Christian. She has her own ideas on the matter, and one must respect them. But, would you believe it, he tried to cut her throat with a razor!'
The story she told was always the same, but it never failed to produce a great effect. Fists were clenched, and women talked of strangling Mouret. If any incredulous person shook his head, he was put to confusion by a summons to explain the dreadful scenes which took place every night. Only a madman, people said, was capable of flying in that way at his wife's throat the moment she went to bed. There was a spice of mystery in the affair which helped materially to spread the story about the town. For nearly a month the rumours went on gaining strength. Yet, in spite of Olympe's tragical gossipings, peace had been restored at the Mourets' and the nights now passed in quietness. Marthe exhibited much nervous impatience when her friends, without openly speaking on the subject, advised her to be very careful.
'You will only go your own way, I suppose,' said Rose. 'Well, you'll see, he will begin again, and we shall find you murdered one of these fine mornings.'
Madame Rougon now ostentatiously called at the house every other day. She entered it with an air of extreme uneasiness, and, as soon as the door was opened, she asked Rose:
'Well! has anything happened to-day?'
Then, as soon as she caught sight of her daughter, she kissed her, and threw her arms round her with a great show of affection, as though she had been afraid that she might not find her alive. She passed the most dreadful nights, she said; she trembled at every ring of the bell, imagining that it was the signal of the tidings of some dreadful calamity; and she no longer had any pleasure in living. When Marthe told her that she was in no danger whatever she looked at her with an expression of admiration, and exclaimed:
'You are a perfect angel! If I were not here to look after you, you would allow yourself to be murdered without raising even a sigh. But make yourself easy; I am watching over you, and am taking all precautions. The first time your husband raises his little finger against you, he will hear from me.'
She did not explain herself any further. The truth of the matter was that she had visited every official in Plassans, and had in this way confidentially related her daughter's troubles to the mayor, the sub-prefect, and the presiding judge of the tribunal, making them promise to observe absolute secrecy about the matter.
It is a mother in despair who tells you this,' she said with tears in her eyes. 'I am giving the honour and reputation of my poor child into your keeping. My husband would take to his bed if there were to be a public scandal, but I can't wait till there is some fatal catastrophe. Advise me, and tell me what I ought to do.'
The officials showed her the greatest sympathy and kindness. They did their best to reassure her, they promised to keep a careful watch over Madame Mouret without in any way letting it be known, and to take some active step at the slightest sign of danger. In her interviews with Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies and Monsieur Rastoil, she drew their especial attention to the fact that, as they were her son-in-law's immediate neighbours, they would be able to interfere at once in the event of anything going wrong.
This story of a lunatic in his senses, who awaited the stroke of midnight to become mad, imparted much interest to the meetings of the guests in Mouret's garden. They showed great alacrity in going to greet Abbé Faujas. The priest came downstairs at four o'clock, and did the honours of the arbour with much urbanity, but in talking he persisted in keeping in the background, merely nodding in answer to what was said to him. For the first few days, only indirect allusions were made to the drama which was being acted in the house, but one Tuesday Monsieur Maffre, who was gazing at it with an uneasy expression, fixing his eyes upon one of the windows of the first floor, ventured to ask:
'That is the room, isn't it?'
Then, in low tones, the two parties began to discuss the strange story which was exciting the neighbourhood. The priest made some vague remarks: it was very sad, and much to be regretted, said he, and then he pitied everybody, without venturing to say anything more explicit.
'But you, Doctor,' asked Madame de Condamin of Doctor Porquier, 'you who are the family doctor, what do you think about it all?'
Doctor Porquier shook his head for some time before making any reply. He at first affected a discreet reserve.
'It is a very delicate matter,' he muttered. 'Madame Mouret is not robust, and as for Monsieur Mouret——'
'I have seen Madame Rougon,' said the sub-prefect. 'She is very uneasy.'
'Her son-in-law has always been obnoxious to her,' Monsieur de Condamin exclaimed bluntly. 'I met Mouret myself at the club the other day, and he gave me a beating at piquet. He seemed to me to be as sensible as ever. The good man was never a Solomon, you know.'
'I have not said that he is mad, in the common interpretation of the word,' said the doctor, thinking that he was being attacked: 'but neither will I say that I think it prudent to allow him to remain at large.'
This statement caused considerable emotion, and Monsieur Rastoil instinctively glanced at the wall which separated the two gardens. Every face was turned towards the doctor.
'I once knew,' he continued, 'a charming lady, who kept up a large establishment, giving dinner-parties, receiving the most distinguished members of society, and showing much sense and wit in her conversation. Well, when that lady retired to her bedroom, she locked herself in, and spent a part of the night in crawling round the room on her hands and knees, barking like a dog. The people in the house long imagined that she really had a dog in the room with her. This lady was an example of what we doctors call lucid madness.'
Abbé Surin's face was wreathed with twinkling smiles as he glanced at Monsieur Rastoil's daughters, who appeared much amused by this story of a fashionable lady turning herself into a dog. Doctor Porquier blew his nose very gravely.
'I could give you a score of other similar instances,' he continued, 'of people who appeared to be in full possession of their senses, and who yet committed the most extravagant actions as soon as they found themselves alone.'
'For my part,' said Abbé Bourrette, 'I once had a very strange penitent. She had a mania for killing flies, and could never see one without feeling an irresistible desire to capture it. She used to keep them at home strung upon knitting needles. When she came to confess, she would weep bitterly and accuse herself of the death of the poor creatures, and believe that she was damned. But I could never correct her of the habit.'
This story was very well received, and even Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies and Monsieur Rastoil themselves condescended to smile.
There is no great harm done,' said the doctor, 'so long as one confines one's self to killing flies. But the conduct of all lucid madmen is not so innocent as that. Some of them torture their families by some concealed vice, which has reached the degree of a mania; there are other wretched ones who drink and give themselves up to secret debauchery, or who steal because they can't help stealing, or who are mad with pride or jealousy or ambition. They are able to control themselves in public, to carry out the most complicated schemes and projects, to converse rationally and without giving any one any reason to suspect their mental weakness, but as soon as they get back to their own private life, and are alone with their victims, they surrender themselves to their delirious ideas and become brutal savages. If they don't murder straight out, they do it gradually.'
'Well, now, what about Monsieur Mouret?' asked Madame de Condamin.
'Monsieur Mouret has always been a teasing, restless, despotic sort of man. His cerebral derangement has increased with his years. I should not hesitate now to class him amongst dangerous madmen. I had a patient who used to shut herself up, just as he does, in an unoccupied room, and spend the whole day in contriving the most abominable actions.'
'But, doctor, if that is your opinion, you ought to proffer your advice,' exclaimed Monsieur Rastoil; 'you ought to warn those who are concerned.'
Doctor Porquier seemed slightly embarrassed.
'Well, we will see about it,' he said, smiling again with his fashionable doctor's smile. 'If it should be necessary and matters should become serious, I will do my duty.'
'Pooh!' cried Monsieur de Condamin satirically; 'the greatest lunatics are not those who have the reputation of being so. No brain is sound for a mad-doctor. The doctor here has just been reciting to us a page out of a book on lucid madness, which I have read, and which is as interesting as a novel.'
Abbé Faujas had been listening with curiosity, though he had taken no part in the conversation. Then, as soon as there was a pause, he remarked that their talk about mad people had a depressing effect upon the ladies, and suggested that the subject should be changed. Everybody's curiosity was fully awakened, however, and the two sets of guests began to keep a sharp watch upon Mouret's behaviour. The latter now came out into the garden for an hour a day, while the Faujases remained at table with his wife. Directly he appeared there, he came under the active surveillance of the Rastoils and the frequenters of the Sub-Prefecture. He could not stand for a moment in front of a bed of vegetables or examine a plant, or even make a gesture of any sort, without exciting in the gardens on his right and left the most unfavourable comments. Everyone was turning against him. Monsieur de Condamin was the only person who still defended him. One day the fair Octavie said to him as they were at luncheon:
'What difference can it make to you whether Mouret is mad or not?'
'To me, my dear? Absolutely none,' he said in astonishment.
'Very well, then, allow that he is mad, since everyone says he is. I don't know why you always persist in holding a contrary opinion to your wife's. It won't prove to your advantage, my dear. Have the intelligence, at Plassans, not to be too intelligent.'
Monsieur de Condamin smiled.
'You are right, my dear, as you always are,' he said gallantly; 'you know that I have put my fortune in your hands—don't wait dinner for me. I am going to ride to Saint-Eutrope to have a look at some timber they are felling.'
Then he left the room, biting the end off a cigar.
Madame de Condamin was well aware that he had a flame for a young girl in the neighbourhood of Saint-Eutrope; but she was very tolerant and had even saved him twice from the consequences of scandalous intrigues. On his side, he felt very easy about his wife; he knew that she was much too prudent to give cause for scandal at Plassans.
'You would never guess how Mouret spends his time in that room where he shuts himself up!' the conservator of rivers and forests said the next morning when he called at the Sub-Prefecture. 'He is counting all the s's in the Bible. He is afraid of making any mistake about the matter, and he has already recommenced counting them for the third time. Ah! you were quite right; he is cracked from top to bottom!'
From this time forward Monsieur de Condamin was very hard upon Mouret. He even exaggerated matters and used all his skill to invent absurd stories to scare the Rastoils; but it was Monsieur Maffre whom he made his special victim. He told him one day that he had seen Mouret standing at one of the windows overlooking the street in a state of complete nudity, having only a woman's cap on his head and bowing to the empty air. Another day he asserted with amazing assurance that he had seen Mouret dancing like a savage in a little wood three leagues away; and when the magistrate seemed to doubt this story, he appeared to be vexed and declared that Mouret might very easily have got down out of his house by the water-spout without being noticed. The frequenters of the Sub-Prefecture smiled, but the next morning the Rastoils' cook spread these extraordinary stories about the town, where the legend of the man who beat his wife was assuming extraordinary proportions.
One afternoon Aurélie, the elder of Monsieur Rastoil's two daughters, related with a blushing face how on the previous night, having gone to look out of her window about midnight, she had seen their neighbour promenading about his garden, carrying a big altar candle. Monsieur de Condamin thought the girl was making fun of him, but she gave the most minute details.
'He held the candle in his left hand; and he knelt down on the ground and dragged himself along on his knees, sobbing as he did so.'
'Can it be possible that he has committed a murder and has buried the body of his victim in his garden?' exclaimed Monsieur Maffre, who had turned quite pale.
Then the two sets of guests agreed to watch some evening till midnight if necessary, to clear the matter up. The following night, indeed, they kept on the alert, in both gardens, but Mouret did not appear. Three nights were wasted in the same way. The Sub-Prefecture party was going to abandon the watch, and Madame de Condamin declared that she could not stay any longer under the chestnut trees, where it was so dreadfully dark, when all at once a light was seen flickering through the inky blackness of the ground floor of Mouret's house. When Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies' attention was drawn to this, he slipped into the Impasse des Chevillottes to invite the Rastoils to come on to his terrace, which overlooked the neighbouring garden. The presiding judge, who was on the watch with his daughters behind the cascade, hesitated for a moment, reflecting whether he might not compromise himself politically by going to the sub-prefect's in this way, but as the night was very black, and his daughter Aurélie was most anxious to have the truth of her report manifested, he followed Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies with stealthy steps through the darkness. It was in this manner that a representative of Legitimacy at Plassans for the first time entered the grounds of a Bonapartist official.
'Don't make a noise,' whispered the sub-prefect. 'Lean over the terrace.'
There Monsieur Rastoil and his daughters found Doctor Porquier and Madame de Condamin and her husband. The darkness was so dense that they exchanged salutations without being able to see one another. Then they all held their breath. Mouret had just appeared upon the steps, with a candle, which was stuck in a great kitchen candlestick.
'You see he has got a candle,' whispered Aurélie.
No one dissented. The fact was quite incontrovertible; Mouret certainly was carrying a candle. He came slowly down the steps, turned to the left and then stood motionless before a bed of lettuces. Then he raised his candle to throw a light upon the plants. His face looked quite yellow amidst the black night.
'What a dreadful face!' exclaimed Madame de Condamin. 'I shall dream of it, I'm certain. Is he asleep, doctor?'
'No, no,' replied Doctor Porquier, 'he is not a somnambulist; he is wide awake. Do you notice how fixed his gaze is? Observe, too, the abruptness of his movements——'
'Hush! hush!' interrupted Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies; 'we don't require a lecture just now.'
The most complete silence then fell. Mouret had stridden over the box-edging and was kneeling in the midst of the lettuces. He held his candle down, and began searching along the trenches underneath the spreading leaves of the plants. Every now and then he made a slight examination and seemed to be crushing something and stamping it into the ground. This went on for nearly half an hour.
'He is crying; it is just as I told you,' Aurélie complacently remarked.
'It is really very terrifying,' Madame de Condamin exclaimed nervously. 'Pray let us go back into the house.'
Mouret dropped his candle and it went out. They could hear him uttering exclamations of annoyance as he went back up the steps, stumbling against them in the dark. The Rastoil girls broke out into little cries of terror, and did not quite recover from their fright till they were again in the brightly lighted drawing-room, where Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies insisted upon the company refreshing themselves with some tea and biscuits. Madame de Condamin, who was still trembling with alarm, huddled up on a couch, said, with a touching smile, that she had never felt so overcome before, not even on the morning when she had had the reprehensible curiosity to go and see a criminal executed.
'It is strange,' remarked Monsieur Rastoil, who had been buried in thought for a moment or two; 'but Mouret looked as if he were searching for slugs amongst his lettuces. The gardens are quite ravaged by them, and I have been told that they can only be satisfactorily exterminated in the night-time.'
'Slugs, indeed!' cried Monsieur de Condamin. 'Do you suppose he troubles himself about slugs? Do people go hunting for slugs with a candle? No; I agree with Monsieur Maffre in thinking that there is some crime at the bottom of the matter. Did this man Mouret ever have a servant who disappeared mysteriously? There ought to be an inquiry made.'
Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies thought that his friend the conservator of rivers and forests was theorising a little further than the facts warranted. He took a sip at his tea and said:
'No, no; my dear sir. He is mad and has extraordinary fancies, but that is all. It is quite bad enough as it is.'
He then took a plate of biscuits, handed it to Monsieur Rastoil's daughter with a gallant bow, and after putting it down again continued:
'And to think this wretched man has mixed himself up in politics! I don't want to insinuate anything against your alliance with the Republicans, my dear judge, but you must allow that in Mouret the Marquis de Lagrifoul had a very peculiar supporter.'
Monsieur Rastoil, who had become very grave, made a vague gesture, without saying anything.
'And he still busies himself with these matters. It is politics, perhaps, which have turned his brain,' said the fair Octavie, as she delicately wiped her lips. 'They say he takes the greatest interest in the approaching elections, don't they, my dear?'
She addressed this question to her husband, casting a glance at him as she spoke.
'He is quite bursting over the matter!' cried Monsieur de Condamin. 'He declares that he can entirely control the election, and can have a shoemaker returned if he chooses.'
You are exaggerating,' said Doctor Porquier. 'He no longer has the influence he used to have; the whole town jeers at him.'
'Ah! you are mistaken! If he chooses, he can lead the old quarter of the town and a great number of villages to the poll. He is mad, it is true, but that is a recommendation. I myself consider him still a very sensible person, for a Republican.'
This attempt at wit met with distinct success. Monsieur Rastoil's daughters broke out into school-girl laughs and the presiding judge himself nodded his head in approval. He threw off his serious expression, and, without looking at the sub-prefect, he said:
'Lagrifoul has not rendered us, perhaps, the services we had a right to expect, but a shoemaker would be really too disgraceful for Plassans!'
Then, as though he wanted to prevent any further remarks on the subject, he added quickly: 'Why, it is half-past one o'clock! This is quite an orgie we are having, my dear sub-prefect; we are all very much obliged to you.'
Madame de Condamin wrapped her shawl round her shoulders and contrived to have the last word.
'Well,' she said, 'we really must not let the election be controlled by a man who goes and kneels down in the middle of a bed of lettuces after twelve o'clock at night.'
That night became quite historical, and Monsieur de Condamin derived much amusement from relating the details of what had occurred to Monsieur de Bourdeu, Monsieur Maffre, and the priests, who had not seen Mouret with his candle. Three days later all the neighbourhood was asserting that the madman who beat his wife had been seen walking about with his head enveloped in a sheet. Meantime, the afternoon assemblies under the arbour were much exercised by the possible candidature of Mouret's radical shoemaker. They laughed as they studied each other's demeanour. It was a sort of political pulse-feeling. Certain confidential statements of his friend the presiding judge induced Monsieur de Bourdeu to believe that a tacit understanding might be arrived at between the Sub-Prefecture and the moderate opposition to promote the candidature of himself, and thus inflict a crushing defeat upon the Republicans. Possessed by this idea, he waxed more and more sarcastic against the Marquis de Lagrifoul, and made the most of the latter's blunders in the Chamber. Monsieur Delangre, who only called at long intervals, alleging the pressure of his municipal duties as an excuse for his infrequent appearance, smiled softly at each fresh sally of the ex-prefect.
'You've only got to bury the marquis, now, your reverence,' he said one day in Abbé Faujas's ear.
Madame de Condamin, who heard him, turned her head and laid her finger upon her lips with a pretty look of mischief.
Abbé Faujas now allowed politics to be mentioned in his presence. He even occasionally expressed an opinion in favour of the union of all honest and religious men. Thereupon all present, Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, Monsieur Rastoil, Monsieur de Bourdeu, and even Monsieur Maffre, grew quite warm in their expressions of desire for such an agreement. It would be so very easy, they said, for men with a stake in the country to come to an understanding together to work for the firm establishment of the great principles without which no society could hold together. Then the conversation turned upon property, and family and religion. Sometimes Mouret's name was mentioned, and Monsieur de Condamin once said:
'I never let my wife come here without feeling uneasy. I am really getting alarmed. You will see some strange things happen at the next elections if that man is still at liberty.'
Trouche did his best to frighten Abbé Faujas during the interviews which he had with him every morning. He told him the most alarming stories. The working men of the old quarter of the town, said he, were showing too much interest in Mouret; they talked of coming to see him, of judging his condition for themselves, and taking his advice.
As a rule, the priest merely shrugged his shoulders; but one day Trouche came away from him looking quite delighted. He went off to Olympe and kissed her, exclaiming:
'This time, my dear, I've managed it!'
'Has he given you leave?' she asked.
'Yes, full leave. We shall be delightfully comfortable when we have got rid of the old man.'
Olympe was still in bed. She dived under the bed-clothes, and wriggled about and laughed gleefully.
We shall have everything to do as we like with, then, sha'n't we? I shall take another bedroom, and go out into the garden whenever I like, and do all my cooking in the kitchen. My brother will have to let us do all that. You must have managed to frighten him very much.'
It was not till about ten o'clock that evening that Trouche made his appearance at the low café where he was accustomed to meet Guillaume Porquier and other wild young fellows. They joked him about the lateness of the hour, and playfully accused him of having been out on the ramparts courting one of the girls of the Home of the Virgin. Jests of this kind generally pleased him, but that night he remained very grave. He declared that he had been engaged with business—very serious business. It was only about midnight, when he had emptied the decanters on the counter, that he became more expansive. Then he began to talk familiarly to Guillaume, leaning the while against the wall, stammering, and lighting his pipe afresh between every two sentences.
'I saw your father this evening. He is a very good fellow. I wanted a paper from him. He was very kind, very kind indeed. He gave it to me. I have it here in my pocket. He didn't want to give it me at first, though. He said it was only the family's business. But I told him, "I am the family; I have got the wife's orders." You know her, don't you? a dear little woman. She seemed quite pleased when I went to talk the matter over with her beforehand. Then he gave me the paper. You can feel it here in my pocket.'
Guillaume looked at him, concealing his extreme curiosity with an incredulous laugh.
'I'm telling you the truth,' continued the drunkard. 'The paper's here in my pocket. Can't you feel it?'
'Oh, it's only a newspaper!' said Guillaume.
At this, Trouche sniggered, and drew a large envelope from the pocket of his overcoat, and laid it on the table amidst the cups and glasses. For a moment, though Guillaume had reached out his hand, he prevented him from taking it, but then he allowed him to have it, laughing loudly the while. The paper proved to be a most detailed statement by Doctor Porquier with respect to the mental condition of Fran?ois Mouret, householder, of Plassans.
'Are they going to shut him up, then?' asked Guillaume, handing back the paper.
That's no business of yours, my boy,' replied Trouche, who had now become distrustful again. 'This paper here is for his wife. I am merely a friend who is glad to do a service. She will act as she pleases. However, she can't go on letting herself be half murdered, poor lady!'
By the time they were turned out of the café he was so drunk that Guillaume had to accompany him to the Rue Balande. He wanted to lie down and go to sleep on every seat on the Cours Sauvaire. When they reached the Place of the Sub-Prefecture, he began to shed tears and stutter:
'I've no friends now; everyone despises me just because I'm poor. But you are a good-hearted young fellow, and you shall come and have coffee with us when we get into possession. If the Abbé interferes with us, we'll send him to keep the other one company. He isn't very sharp, the Abbé, in spite of all his grand airs. I can persuade him into believing anything. But you are a real friend, aren't you? Mouret is done for, old chap; we'll drink his wine together.'
When Guillaume had seen Trouche to his door, he walked back through the sleeping town and went and whistled softly before Monsieur Maffre's house. It was a signal he was making. The young Maffres, whom their father locked up in their bedroom, opened a window on the first floor and descended to the ground by the help of the bars with which the ground-floor windows were protected. Every night they thus went off to the haunts of vice in the company of Guillaume Porquier.
'Well,' he said to them, when they had reached the dark paths near the ramparts, 'we needn't trouble ourselves now. If my father talks any more about sending me off anywhere, I shall have something serious to say to him. I'll bet you that I can get elected into the Young Men's Club whenever I like now.'
The following night Marthe had a dreadful attack. She had been present in the morning at a long religious ceremony, the whole of which Olympe had insisted upon seeing. When Rose and the lodgers ran into the room upon hearing her piercing screams, they found her lying at the foot of the bed with her forehead gashed open. Mouret was kneeling in the midst of the bed-clothes, trembling all over.
'He has killed her this time!' cried the cook.
She seized Mouret in her arms, although he was in his night-dress, pushed him out of the room and into his office—the door of which was on the other side of the landing—then she went back to get a mattress and some blankets, which she threw to him. Trouche had set off at a run for Doctor Porquier. When the doctor arrived he dressed Marthe's wound. If the cut had been a trifle lower down, he said, it would have been fatal. Downstairs in the hall, he declared in the presence of them all that it was necessary to take some active steps, and that Madame Mouret's life could no longer be left at the mercy of a violent madman.
The next morning Marthe was obliged to keep her bed. She was still slightly delirious, and fancied that she saw an iron hand driving a flaming sword into her skull. Rose absolutely declined to allow Mouret to enter the room. She served him his lunch on a dusty table in his own office. He was still gazing at his plate with a look of stupefaction when Rose ushered into the room three men dressed in black.
'Are you the doctors?' he asked. 'How is she getting on?'
'She is better than she was,' replied one of the men.
Mouret began to cut his bread mechanically as though he were going to eat it.
'I wish the children were here,' he said. 'They would look after her, and we should be more lively. It is since the children went away that she has been ill. I am no longer good for anything.'
He raised a piece of bread to his mouth, and heavy tears trickled down his face. The man who had already spoken to him now said, casting at the same time a glance at his companions:
'Shall we go and fetch your children?'
'I should like it very much,' replied Mouret, rising from his seat. 'Let us start at once.'
As he went downstairs he saw no one except Trouche and his wife, who were leaning over the balustrade on the second floor, following each step he took with gleaming eyes. Olympe hurried down behind him and rushed into the kitchen, where Rose, in a state of great emotion, was watching out of the window. When a carriage, which was waiting at the door, had driven off with Mouret, she sprang up the staircase again, four steps at a time, and seizing Trouche by his shoulders, made him dance round the landing in a paroxysm of delight.
'He's packed off!' she cried.
Marthe kept her bed for a week. Her mother came to see her every afternoon and manifested the greatest affection. The Faujases and the Trouches succeeded each other in attendance at her bedside; and even Madame de Condamin called to see her several times. Nothing was said about Mouret, and Rose told her mistress that she thought he had gone to Marseilles. When Marthe, however, was able to come downstairs again, and took her place at table in the dining-room, she began to manifest some astonishment, and inquired uneasily where her husband was.
'Now, my dear lady, don't distress yourself,' said Madame Faujas, 'or you will make yourself ill again. It was absolutely necessary that something should be done, and your friends felt bound to consult together and take steps for your protection.'
'You've no reason to regret him, I'm sure,' cried Rose harshly. 'The whole neighbourhood breathes more freely now that he's no longer here. One was always afraid of him setting the place on fire or rushing out into the street with a knife. I used to hide all the knives in my kitchen and Monsieur Rastoil's cook did the same. And your poor mother nearly died of fright. Everybody who has been here while you have been ill, those ladies and gentlemen, they all said to me as I let them out, "It is a good riddance for Plassans." A place is always on the alert when a man like that is free to go about as he likes.'
Marthe listened to this stream of words with dilated eyes and pale face. She had let her spoon fall from her hand, and she gazed out of the window in front of her as though some dreadful vision rising from behind the fruit-trees in the garden was filling her with terror.
'Les Tulettes! Les Tulettes!' she gasped, as she buried her face in her trembling hands.
She fell backwards and was fainting away, when Abbé Faujas, who had finished his soup, grasped her hands, pressing them tightly, and saying in his softest tone:
'Show yourself strong before this trial which God is sending you. He will afford you consolation if you do not prove rebellious—He will grant you the happiness you deserve.'
At the pressure of the priest's hands and the tender tone of his voice, Marthe revived and sat up again with flushing cheeks.
'Oh, yes!' she cried, as she burst into sobs, 'I have great need of happiness; promise me great happiness, I beg you.'
The general elections were to take place in October. About the middle of September, Monseigneur Rousselot suddenly set off to Paris, after having a long interview with Abbé Faujas. It was said that one of his sisters, who lived at Versailles, was seriously ill. Five days later he was back in Plassans again, and he called Abbé Surin into his study to read to him. Lying back in his easy chair, closely enveloped in a padded robe of violet silk, although the weather was still quite warm, he smilingly listened to the young Abbé's womanish voice as he softly lisped the strophes of Anacreon.
'Good, very good,' he said; 'you express the music of that beautiful tongue excellently.'
Then, glancing at the timepiece with an expression of uneasiness, he added:
'Has Abbé Faujas been here yet this morning? Ah, my child, what a dreadful time I've had! My ears are still buzzing with the abominable uproar of the railway. It was raining the whole time I was in Paris. I had to rush all over the place, and saw nothing but mud everywhere.'
Abbé Surin laid his book on the corner of a small table.
'Is your lordship satisfied with the results of your journey?' he asked, with the familiarity of a petted favourite.
'I have learnt what I wanted to know,' the Bishop replied with his subtle smile. 'I ought to have taken you with me. You would have learnt a good many things that it would be useful for you to know at your age, destined as you are by your birth and connections for the episcopate.'
'I am listening, my lord,' said the young priest with a beseeching expression.
But the prelate shook his head.
'No, no; these matters are not to be spoken of. Make a friend of Abbé Faujas. He maybe able to do much for you some day. I have received full information about him.'
Abbé Surin, however, clasped his hands with such a wheedling look of curiosity that Monseigneur Rousselot went on to say:
He had some bother or other at Besan?on. Afterwards he was living in great poverty in furnished apartments in Paris. He went and offered himself. Just at that time the minister was on the look-out for some priests devoted to the government. I was told that Faujas at first quite frightened him with his fierce looks and his old cassock. It was quite by chance that he was sent here. The minister was most pleasant and courteous to me.'
The Bishop finished his sentences with a slight wave of his hand, as he sought for fitting words, fearing, as it were, to say too much. But at last the affection which he felt for his secretary got the better of his caution, and he continued with more animation:
'Take my advice and try to be useful to the vicar of Saint-Saturnin's. He will want all the assistance he can get, and he seems to me to be a man who never forgets either an injury or a kindness. But don't ally yourself with him. He will end badly. That is my impression.'
'End badly?' exclaimed the young priest in surprise.
'Oh! just now he is in the full swing of triumph. But his face disquiets me, my child. He has a terrible face. That man will never die in his bed. Don't you do anything to compromise me. All I ask is to be allowed to live tranquilly—quietness is all I want.'
Abbé Surin was just taking up his book again, when Abbé Faujas was announced. Monseigneur Rousselot advanced to meet him with outstretched hands and a smiling face, addressing him as his 'dear Curé.'
'Leave us, my child,' he said to his secretary, who thereupon retired.
He spoke of his journey. His sister was better than she had been, he said, and he had been able to shake hands with some old friends.
'And did you see the minister?' asked Abbé Faujas, fixing his eyes upon him.
'Yes; I thought it my duty to call upon him,' replied the Bishop, who felt that he was blushing. 'He spoke to me very favourably indeed of you.'
'Then you no longer have any doubts—you trust me absolutely?'
'Absolutely, my dear Curé. Besides, I know nothing about politics myself, and I leave everything in your hands.'
They remained talking together the whole morning. Abbé Faujas persuaded the Bishop to undertake a visitation of his diocese, and said he would go with him and prompt him as to what he should say. It would be necessary to summon all the rural deans so that the priests of the smallest villages might receive their instructions. There would be no difficulty in all this, for the clergy would act as they were told. The most delicate task would be in Plassans itself, in the district of Saint-Marc. The aristocrats there, shutting themselves up in the privacy of their houses, were entirely beyond the reach of Abbé Faujas's influence, and he had so far only been able to work upon certain ambitious royalists, such men as Rastoil and Maffre and Bourdeu. The Bishop, however, undertook to sound the feelings of various drawing-rooms in the district of Saint-Marc where he visited. But even allowing that the aristocracy should vote adversely, they would be in a ridiculous minority if they were deserted by those electors of the middle classes who were amenable to clerical influence.
'Now,' said Monseigneur Rousselot as he rose from his seat, 'it would perhaps be as well if you told me the name of your candidate, so that I may recommend him in my letters.'
Abbé Faujas smiled.
'It is dangerous to mention names,' he said. 'There wouldn't be a scrap of our candidate left in a week's time if we made his name known now. The Marquis de Lagrifoul has become quite out of the question. Monsieur de Bourdeu, who reckons upon being a candidate, is still more so. We shall leave them to destroy each other, and then, at the last moment, we shall come forward. Just say that an election on purely political grounds would be very regrettable, and that what is needed for the interests of Plassans is somebody who is not a party man, but has an intimate knowledge of the requirements of the town and the department. And you may let it be understood that such a man has been found; but don't go any further.'
The Bishop now in his turn smiled. He detained the priest for a moment as he was about to take leave.
'And Abbé Fenil?' he said, lowering his voice. 'Are you not afraid that he will do all he can to thwart your plans?'
Abbé Faujas shrugged his shoulders.
'He has made no sign at all,' he said.
It is precisely that quietness of his that makes me uneasy,' rejoined the prelate. 'I know Fenil well. He is the most vindictive priest in my diocese. He may possibly have abandoned the ambition of beating you in the political arena, but you may be sure he will wreak personal vengeance upon you. I have no doubt that he is keeping a watch on you in his retirement.'
'Pooh!' said Abbé Faujas, showing his white teeth. 'I'll take care that he doesn't eat me up.'
Abbé Surin had just returned into the room, and when the vicar of Saint-Saturnin's had gone he made the Bishop laugh by exclaiming:
'Ah! if they could only devour each other like a couple of foxes, and leave nothing but their tails!'
The electoral campaign was on the point of commencing. Plassans, which generally remained quite calm, unexcited by political questions, was growing a little feverish and perturbed. From some invisible mouth a breath of war seemed to sweep through its quiet streets. The Marquis de Lagrifoul, who lived at La Palud, a large straggling village in the neighbourhood, had been in Plassans for the last fortnight, staying at the house of a relative of his, the Count de Valqueyras, whose mansion was one of the largest in the Saint-Marc district. The Marquis showed himself about the town, promenaded on the Cours Sauvaire, attended Saint-Saturnin's, and bowed to sundry influential townspeople, but without succeeding in throwing aside his haughty ways. His attempts to acquire popularity seemed to fail. Fresh charges against him, originating from some unknown source, were bandied about every day. It was asserted that he was a miserably incompetent man. With any other representative Plassans would long ago have had a branch line of railway connecting it with Nice. It was said, too, that if anyone from the district went to see him in Paris he had to call three or four times before he could obtain the slightest service. However, although the candidature of the Marquis was much damaged by gossip of this kind, no other candidate had openly entered the lists. There was some talk of Monsieur de Bourdeu coming forward, though it was considered that it would be extremely difficult to obtain a majority for an ex-prefect of Louis-Philippe, who had no strong connection with the place. There seemed also to be some unknown influence at work in Plassans upsetting all the previous prospects of the election by breaking the alliance between the Legitimists and the Republicans. The prevailing feeling was one of general perplexity and confusion, mingled with weariness and a desire to get the affair over as quickly as possible.
'The majority is shifting,' said the politicians of the Cours Sauvaire. 'The question is which way will it finally incline?'
Amid the excitement and restlessness which this doubtful state of things was causing in the town, the Republicans became anxious to run a candidate of their own. Their choice fell upon a master-hatter, one Maurin, a plain simple man, who was very much liked by the working-classes. In the cafés, in the evenings, Trouche expressed an opinion that Maurin was by no means sufficiently advanced in his views, and proposed in his stead a wheelwright of Les Tulettes, whose name had appeared in the list of the December proscripts. This man, however, had the good sense to decline the nomination. It should be said that Trouche now gave himself out as an extreme Republican. He would have come forward himself, he said, if his wife's brother had not been a parson, but as he was—to his great regret, he declared—forced to eat the bread of the hypocrites, he felt bound to remain in the background. He was one of the first to circulate reports to the detriment of the Marquis de Lagrifoul, and he also favoured the rupture of the Republicans and the Legitimists. Trouche's greatest success was obtained by accusing the Sub-Prefecture party and the adherents of Monsieur Rastoil of having brought about the confinement of poor Mouret, with the view of depriving the democratic party of one of its worthiest chiefs. On the evening when he first launched this accusation at a spirit-dealer's in the Rue Canquoin, the company assembled there looked at one other with a peculiar expression. The gossips of the old quarter of the town spoke quite feelingly about 'the madman who beat his wife,' now that he was shut up at Les Tulettes, and told one another that Abbé Faujas had simply wanted to get an inconvenient husband out of his way. Trouche repeated his charge every evening, banging his fists upon the tables of the cafés with such an air of conviction that he succeeded in persuading his listeners of the truth of his story, in which, by the way, Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies was made to play the most extraordinary part imaginable. There was a complete reaction in Mouret's favour. He was considered to be a political victim, a man whose influence had been feared so much that he had been put out of the way in a cell at a mad-house.
'Just leave it all to me,' Trouche said with a confidential air. 'I'll expose all these precious pious folks, and I'll tell some fine stories about their Home of the Virgin. It's a nice place is that Home—a place where the ladies make assignations!'
Meanwhile Abbé Faujas almost seemed to have the power of multiplying himself. For some time past he was to be seen everywhere. He bestowed much attention upon his appearance, and was careful always to have a pleasant smile upon his face; though now and then his eyelids dropped for an instant to hide the stern fire kindling in his glance. Often with his patience quite worn out, weary of his wretched struggles, he returned to his bare room with clenched fists. Old Madame Rougon, whom he continued to see in secret, proved his good genius. She lectured him soundly whenever he felt despondent, and kept him bent before her while she told him that he must strive to please, and that he would ruin everything if he let the iron hand appear from under the velvet glove. Afterwards, when he had made himself master, he might seize Plassans by the throat and strangle it, if he liked. She herself certainly had no great affection for Plassans, against which she owed a grudge for forty years' wretchedness, and which had been bursting with jealousy of her ever since the Coup d'état.
'It is I who wear the cassock,' she said sometimes, with a smile; 'you carry yourself like a gendarme, my dear Curé.'
The priest showed himself particularly assiduous in his attendance at the Young Men's Club. He listened with an indulgent air to the young men talking politics, and told them, with a shake of his head, that honesty was all that was necessary. His popularity at the Club was still increasing. One evening he consented to play at billiards, and showed himself extremely skilful at the game, and sometimes, when they formed a quiet little party, he would even accept a cigarette. The club took his advice on every question that arose. His reputation for tolerance was completely established by the kind, good-natured way in which he advocated the admission of Guillaume Porquier, who had now renewed his application.
'I have seen the young man,' he said; 'he came to me to make a general confession, and I ended by giving him absolution. There is forgiveness for every sin. We must not treat him as a leper just because he pulled down a few signboards in Plassans, and ran into debt at Paris.'
When Guillaume was elected, he said to the young Maffres, with a grin:
'Well, you owe me a couple of bottles of champagne now. You see that the Curé does all that I want. I have a little machine to tickle him with in a sensitive place, and then he begins to laugh, my boys, and he can't refuse me anything.'
'Well, it doesn't seem as though he were very fond of you, anyhow,' said Alphonse; 'he looks very sourly at you.'
'Pooh! that's because I tickled him too hard. You will see that we shall soon be the best friends in the world.'
Abbé Faujas did, indeed, seem to have an affection for the doctor's son. He declared that this young man wanted guiding with a very gentle hand. In a short time Guillaume became the moving spirit of the club. He invented amusements, showed them how to make kirsch-water punch, and led young fellows fresh from college into all sorts of dissipation. His pleasant vices gave him enormous influence. While the organ was pealing above the billiard-room, he drank away, and gathered round him the sons of the most respectable people in Plassans, making them almost choke with laughter at his broad stories. The club now got into a very fast way, indulging in doubtful topics of conversation in all the corners. Abbé Faujas, however, appeared quite unconscious of it. Guillaume said that he had a splendid noddle, teeming with the greatest thoughts.
'The Abbé may be a bishop whenever he likes,' he remarked. 'He has already refused a living in Paris. He wants to stay at Plassans; he has taken a liking to the place. I should like to nominate him as deputy. He's the sort of man we want in the Chamber! But he would never consent; he is too modest. Still it would be a good thing to take his advice when the elections are at hand. We may trust anything that he tells us. He wouldn't deceive anybody.'
Meantime, Lucien Delangre remained the serious man of the club. He showed great deference to Abbé Faujas, and won the group of studious young men over to the priest's side. He frequently walked with him to the club, talking to him with much animation, but subsiding into silence as soon as they entered the general room.
On leaving the café established beneath the Church of the Minimes, the Abbé regularly went to the Home of the Virgin. He arrived there during play-time, and made his appearance with a smiling face upon the steps of the playground. Thereupon the girls surrounded him, and disputed with each other for the possession of his pockets, in which some sacred pictures or chaplets or medals that had been blessed were always to be found. Those big girls quite worshipped him as he tapped them gently on their cheeks and told them to be good, at which they broke into sly smiles. The Sisters often complained to him that the children confided to their care were utterly unmanageable, that they fought, tore each other's hair, and did even worse things. The Abbé, however, regarded their offences as mere peccadilloes, and as a rule simply reproved the more turbulent girls in the chapel, whence they emerged in a more submissive frame of mind. Occasionally he made some rather graver piece of misconduct a pretext for sending for the parents, whom he sent away again quite touched by his kindness and good-nature. In this wise the young scapegraces of the Home of the Virgin gained him the hearts of the poor families of Plassans. When they went home in the evening, they told the most wonderful things about his reverence the Curé. It was no uncommon occurrence to find a couple of them in some secluded corner of the ramparts on the point of coming to blows to decide which of them his reverence liked the better.
'Those young hussies represent from two to three thousand votes,' Trouche thought to himself, as from the window he watched Abbé Faujas showing himself so amiable.
Trouche himself had tried to win over 'the little dears,' as he called the girls; but the priest, distrusting him, had forbidden him to set foot in the playground; and so he now confined himself to throwing sugar-plums there, when the Sisters' backs were turned.
The Abbé's day's work did not end at the Home of the Virgin. From there he started on a series of short visits to the fashionable ladies of Plassans. Madame Rastoil and Madame Delangre welcomed him with delight, and repeated his slightest words everywhere. But his great friend was Madame de Condamin. She maintained an air of easy familiarity towards him betokening the superiority of a beautiful woman who is conscious that she is all-powerful. She spoke now and again in low tones, and with meaning smiles and glances, which seemed to indicate that there was some secret understanding between them. When the priest came to see her, she dismissed her husband. 'The government was going to hold a cabinet-council,' so the conservator of rivers and forests playfully said, as he philosophically went off to mount his horse.
It was Madame Rougon who had brought Madame de Condamin to the priest's notice.
'She has not yet absolutely established her position here,' the old lady explained to Abbé Faujas. 'But there is a good deal of cleverness under those pretty, coquettish airs of hers. You can take her into your confidence, and she will see in your triumph a means of making her own success and power more complete. She will be of great use to you if you should find it necessary to give away places or crosses. She has retained an influential friend in Paris, who sends her as many red ribbons as she asks for.'
As Madame Rougon kept herself aloof from reasons of diplomacy, the fair Octavie thus became Abbé Faujas's most active ally. She won over to his side both her friends and her friends' friends. She resumed her campaign afresh every morning and exerted an astonishing amount of influence merely by the pleasant little waves of her delicately gloved fingers. She had particular success with the bourgeoises, and increased tenfold that feminine influence of which the priest had felt the absolute necessity as soon as he began to thread the narrow world of Plassans. She succeeded, too, in closing the mouths of the Paloques—who were growing very rabid about the state of affairs at the Mourets' house—by throwing a honied cake to the two monsters.
'What! do you still bear us a grudge, my dear lady?' she said one day, as she met the judge's wife. 'It is very wrong of you. Your friends have not forgotten you; they are thinking about you and are preparing a surprise for you.'
'A fine surprise, I'll be bound!' cried Madame Paloque, bitterly. 'No, we are not going to allow ourselves to be laughed at again. I have firmly made up my mind to keep to my own affairs.'
Madame de Condamin smiled.
'What would you say,' she asked, 'if Monsieur Paloque were to be decorated?'
The judge's wife stared in silence. A rush of blood to her face turned it quite blue, and made her terrible to behold.
'You are joking,' she stammered. 'This is only another plot against us—if it isn't true, I'll never forgive you.'
The fair Octavie swore that she had spoken nothing but the truth. The distinction would certainly be conferred upon Monsieur Paloque, but it would not be officially notified in the 'Moniteur' until after the elections, as the government did not wish it to appear as if it were buying the support of the magistracy. She also hinted that Abbé Faujas was not unconcerned in the bestowal of this long-desired reward, and said that he had talked about it to the sub-prefect.
'My husband was right, then,' exclaimed Madame Paloque, in great surprise. 'For a long time past he has been worrying me dreadfully to go and apologise to the Abbé. But I am very obstinate, and I would have let myself be killed sooner. But since the Abbé makes the first move—well, we ask nothing more than to live at peace with everyone. We will go to the Sub-Prefecture to-morrow.'
The next day the Paloques were very humble. Madame Paloque accused Abbé Fenil of the blackest conduct; and related with consummate impudence how she had gone to see him one day, and how he had spoken in her presence of turning 'the whole of Abbé Faujas's clique' neck-and-crop out of Plassans.
'If you like,' she said to the priest, taking him aside, 'I will give you a note written at the vicar-general's dictation. It concerns you. He tried, I believe, to get several discreditable stories inserted in the "Plassans Gazette."'
'How did this note come into your hands?' asked Faujas.
'Well, it's sufficient that it is there,' she replied, without any sign of embarrassment.
And, with a smile, she continued:
'I found it. I recollect, by the way, that there are two or three words written in the vicar-general's own hand. I may trust to your honour in all this, may I not? We are upright, honest people, and we don't want to compromise ourselves.'
She pretended to be affected by scruples for three days before bringing him the note; and Madame de Condamin was obliged to assure her privately that an application to have Monsieur Rastoil pensioned off would shortly be made, so that her husband could succeed to his post. Then she gave up the paper. Abbé Faujas did not wish to keep it himself, but took it to Madame Rougon, and charged her to make use of it—keeping herself, however, strictly in the background—if the vicar-general showed the slightest sign of interfering in the elections.
Madame de Condamin also dropped a hint to Monsieur Maffre that the Emperor was thinking about decorating him, and she made a formal promise to Doctor Porquier to find a suitable post for his good-for-nothing son. She showed the most obliging kindliness at the friendly afternoon meetings in the gardens. The summer was now drawing to a close, but she still arrived in light toilettes, shivering slightly and risking a cold, in order to show her arms and overcome the last scruples of the Rastoil party. It was really under the Mourets' arbour that the election was decided.
'Well, my dear sub-prefect,' said Abbé Faujas one day with a smile, when the two sets of guests were mingling together; 'the great battle is drawing near.'
They had now arrived at discussing the political struggle in a quiet friendly way. In the gardens at the back of the houses they cordially grasped each other's hands, while in front of them they still feigned an appearance of hostility. On hearing Abbé Faujas, Madame de Condamin cast a quick glance at Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, who bent forward with his habitual elegance and said all in a breath:
'I shall remain in my tent, Monsieur le Curé. I have been fortunate enough to make his excellency understand that it is the duty of the government, in the immediate interests of Plassans, to hold itself aloof. There will be no official candidate.'
Monsieur de Bourdeu turned pale. His eyelids quivered and his hands trembled with delight.
'There will be no official candidate?' cried Monsieur Rastoil, greatly moved by this unexpected news, and departing from the reserve which he generally maintained.
'No,' replied Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies: 'the town contains a sufficient number of honourable men to make its own choice of a representative.'
He bowed slightly towards Monsieur de Bourdeu, who rose from his seat; and stammered:
'Undoubtedly, undoubtedly.'
While these remarks were being exchanged Abbé Surin had got up a game of 'hot and cold;' and Monsieur Rastoil's daughters and Monsieur Maffre's sons and Séverin were busy hunting for the Abbé's handkerchief, which he had rolled into a ball and hidden. All the young people were flitting about their elders, while the priest called in his falsetto voice:
'Hot! Hot!'
Angéline at length found the handkerchief in Doctor Porquier's gaping pocket, where Abbé Surin had adroitly slipped it. They all laughed and considered the selection of the hiding-place a very ingenious joke.
'Bourdeu has a chance now,' said Monsieur Rastoil, taking Abbé Faujas aside. 'It is very annoying. I can't tell him so, but we sha'n't vote for him: he has compromised himself too much as an Orleanist.'
'Just look at your son Séverin!' cried Madame de Condamin, interrupting the conversation. 'What a big baby he is! He put the handkerchief under Abbé Bourrette's hat.'
Then she lowered her voice as she continued:
'By the way, I have to congratulate you, Monsieur Rastoil. I have received a letter from Paris, from a correspondent who tells me that he has seen your son's name on an official list. He will be nominated assessor to the public prosecutor at Faverolles, I believe.'
The presiding judge bowed with a flushed face. The minister had never forgiven the election of the Marquis de Lagrifoul. Since then a kind of fatality had seemed to prevent him from finding either a place for his son or husbands for his daughters. He had never uttered any complaints, but his compressed lips had often borne witness to his feelings on the matter.
'I was remarking to you,' he resumed, to conceal his emotion, 'that Bourdeu is dangerous. But he isn't a Plassans man, and he doesn't know our requirements. We might just as well re-elect the Marquis.'
'If Monsieur de Bourdeu persists in his candidature,' rejoined Abbé Faujas, 'the Republicans will poll an imposing minority, which will have a very bad effect.'
Madame de Condamin smiled. She pretended to understand nothing about politics, and slipped away while the Abbé drew the presiding judge aside to the end of the arbour, where they continued the conversation in subdued tones. As they slowly strolled back again, Monsieur Rastoil remarked:
'You are quite right. He would be a very suitable candidate. He belongs to no party, and we could all unite in supporting him. I am no fonder of the Empire than you are, but it would be childish to go on sending deputies to the Chamber for no other purpose than to obstruct and rail at the government. Plassans is suffering from such tactics. What we want is a man with a good head for business, a local man who can look after the interests of the place.'
'Hot! Hot!' now cried Aurélie in her fluty voice.
Abbé Surin passed through the arbour at the head of the searchers, hunting for the handkerchief.
'Cold! Cold!' exclaimed the girl, laughing at their lack of success. One of the young Maffres, however, lifted up a flower-pot and there discovered the handkerchief folded in four.
'That big stick Aurélie might have very well crammed it into her mouth,' said Madame Paloque. 'There is plenty of room for it, and no one would ever have thought of looking for it there.'
Her husband reduced her to silence with an angry look. He would no longer allow her to indulge in bitter language. Fearing that Monsieur de Condamin might have overheard her, he exclaimed:
'What a handsome lot of young people!'
'Your success is certain, my dear sir,' the conservator of rivers and forests was saying to Monsieur de Bourdeu. 'But be careful what you do when you get to Paris. I hear from a very trustworthy source that the government has resolved upon taking strong measures if the opposition shows itself too provoking.'
The ex-prefect looked at Monsieur de Condamin very uneasily, wondering if he was making fun of him. Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies merely smiled, and stroked his moustaches. Then the conversation became general again, and Monsieur de Bourdeu thought he could detect that everyone was congratulating him upon his approaching triumph, with a discretion that was full of tact. He enjoyed the sweets of an hour's imaginary popularity.
'It is surprising how much more quickly the grapes ripen in the sun,' remarked Abbé Bourrette, who had never moved from his chair, but now raised his eyes to the arbour.
'In the north,' Doctor Porquier explained, 'grapes can often only be got to ripen by freeing them from the surrounding leaves.'
They were beginning to discuss this point, when Séverin in his turn cried out: 'Hot! Hot!'
But he had hung the handkerchief with such little concealment upon the garden door that Abbé Surin found it at once. When the Abbé hid it again, the whole troop vainly scoured the garden for nearly half an hour, and at last gave it up. Then the Abbé showed it to them lying in the centre of a flowerbed, rolled up so artistically that it looked like a white stone. This was the most effective stratagem of the afternoon.
The news that the government had determined to run no candidate of its own quickly spread through the town, where it gave rise to great excitement. This abstention had the natural effect of disquieting the various political sections, who had each counted upon the diversion of a certain number of votes in favour of the official candidate to enable their own man to win. The Marquis de Lagrifoul, Monsieur de Bourdeu and hatter Maurin appeared to divide the support of the voters pretty equally amongst them. There would certainly be a second ballot, and heaven only could tell what name would then appear at the top of the list. However, there was certainly some talk of a fourth candidate, whose name nobody quite knew, some moderate equable man who would possibly bring the different parties into concord and harmony. The Plassans electors, who had grown a little alarmed since they had felt the imperial bridle about their necks, would have been only too glad to come to an understanding, and choose one of their fellow-citizens who would be acceptable to all parties.
'The government is wrong to treat us like refractory children,' said the politicians of the Commercial Club, in tones of annoyance. 'Anybody would suppose that the town was a hot-bed of revolution. If the authorities had been tactful enough to bring forward the right sort of candidate, we should all have voted for him. The sub-prefect has talked about a lesson. Well, we sha'n't receive the lesson. We shall be able to find a candidate for ourselves, and we will show that Plassans is a town of sound sense and true liberty.'
They then began to look about for a candidate. But the names which were proposed by friends or interested parties only served to increase the confusion. In a week's time there were twenty candidates before Plassans. Madame Rougon, who had become very uneasy, and quite unable to understand the position, went to see Abbé Faujas, full of indignation with the sub-prefect. That Péqueur was an ass, she cried, a fop, a dummy, of no use except as a pretty ornament to the official drawing-room. He had already allowed the government to be defeated, and now he was going to compromise it by an attitude of ridiculous indifference.
'Make yourself easy,' said the priest, with a smile; 'this time Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies is confining himself to obeying orders. Victory is certain.'
'But you've got no candidate!' cried Madame Rougon. 'Where is your candidate?'
Then the priest unfolded his plans to her. She expressed her approval of them; but she received the name which he confided to her with the greatest surprise.
'What!' she exclaimed, 'you have chosen him! No one has ever thought of him, I assure you.'
'I trust that they haven't,' replied the priest, again smiling. 'We want a candidate of whom nobody has ever thought, so that all parties may accept him without fancying that they are compromising themselves.'
Then with the perfect frankness of a shrewd man who has made up his mind to explain his designs, he continued:
'I have very much to thank you for. You have prevented me from making many mistakes. I was looking straight towards the goal, and I did not see the strings that were stretched across the path, and which might, perhaps, have tripped me up and brought me to grief. Thank heaven! all this petty childish struggle is over, and I shall soon be able to move at my ease. As for the choice I have made, it is a good one; you may feel quite assured of that. Ever since my arrival at Plassans, I have been looking about for a man, and he is the only one I have found. He is flexible, very capable, and very energetic. He has been clever enough not to embroil himself with a single person in the place, which is no common accomplishment. I know that you are not a very great friend of his, and that is the reason that I did not confide my plan to you sooner. But you will see that you are mistaken, and that he will make his way rapidly as soon as he gets his foot into the stirrup. What finally determined me in his favour is what I heard about his means. It is said that he has taken his wife back again three separate times, after she had been detected in actual unfaithfulness, and after he had made his good-natured father-in-law pay him a hundred thousand francs on each occasion. If he has really coined money in that way, he will be very useful in Paris in certain matters. You may look about as much as you like; but, putting him aside, there is only a pack of imbeciles in Plassans.'
'Then it is a present you are making to the government?' said Félicité, with a laugh.
She allowed herself to be convinced. The next day the name of Delangre was in everybody's mouth. His friends declared that it was only after the strongest pressure had been brought to bear upon him that he had accepted the nomination. He had refused it for a long time, considering himself unworthy of the position, insisting that he was not a politician, and that the Marquis de Lagrifoul and Monsieur de Bourdeu had, on the other hand, had long experience of public affairs. Then, when it had been impressed upon him that what Plassans urgently needed was a representative who was unconnected with the political parties, he had allowed himself to be prevailed upon. He explicitly declared the principles upon which he should act if he were returned. It must be thoroughly understood, he said, that he would not go to the Chamber either to oppose or support the government under all circumstances; he should look upon himself solely as the representative of the interests of the town; he would always vote for liberty with order, and order with liberty, and would still remain mayor of Plassans, so that he might show what a conciliatory and purely administrative task he had charged himself with. These views struck people as being singularly sensible. The knowing politicians of the Commercial Club vied with each other that same evening in lauding Delangre.
'I told you so; he is the very man we want. I shall be curious to see what the sub-prefect will say when the mayor's name heads the list. The authorities can scarcely accuse us of having voted like a lot of sulking school-boys, any more than they can reproach us with having gone down on our knees before the government. If the Empire could only receive a few lessons like this, things would go much better.'
The whole thing was like a train of gunpowder. The mine was laid, and a spark was sufficient to set it off. In every part of Plassans simultaneously, in all the three quarters of the town, in every house, and in every family, Monsieur Delangre's name was pronounced amidst unanimous eulogies. He had become the expected Messiah, the saviour, unknown the previous day, revealed in the morning, and worshipped ere night.
Even in the sacristies and confessionals of Plassans, his name was buzzed about; it mingled with the echoes in the naves, sounded from pulpits in the suburbs, was passed on from ear to ear like a sacrament, and made its way into the most distant homes of the pious. The priests carried it about with them in the folds of their cassocks; Abbé Bourrette bestowed on it the respectable cheeriness of his corporation, Abbé Surin the grace of his smile, and Monseigneur Rousselot the charm of his pastoral blessing. The fashionable ladies were never tired of talking of Monsieur Delangre. He had such a kind disposition, they said, and such a fine sensible face. Madame Rastoil learned to blush again at mention of him; Madame Paloque grew almost pretty in her enthusiasm, while as for Madame de Condamin, she was ready to fight for him, and won all hearts to his side by the tender way in which she pressed the hands of the electors who promised to vote for him. The Young Men's Club, too, grew passionately enthusiastic on his behalf. Séverin made quite a hero of him, and Guillaume and the young Maffres went canvassing for him through all the disreputable parts of the town.
On the day of the election his majority was overwhelming. The whole town seemed to have conspired together to return him. The Marquis de Lagrifoul and Monsieur de Bourdeu, bursting with indignation and crying that they had been betrayed, had retired from the contest, and thus Monsieur Delangre's only opponent was the hatter Maurin. The latter received the votes of some fifteen hundred intractable Republicans of the outskirts of the town; while the mayor had the support of the country districts, the fervent Bonapartists, the townsmen of the new quarter who were amenable to clerical influence, the timid shopkeepers of the old town, and even certain simple-minded Royalists of the district of Saint-Marc, whose aristocratic denizens chiefly abstained from voting. Monsieur Delangre thus obtained thirty-three thousand votes. The business was managed so promptly, the victory was won with such a dash, that Plassans felt quite amazed, on the evening of the election, to find itself so unanimous. The town half fancied that it had just had a wonderful dream, that some powerful hand must have struck the soil and drawn from it those thirty-three thousand electors, that army, almost alarming in its numbers, whose strength no one had ever before suspected. The politicians of the Commercial Club looked at one another in perplexity, like men dazed with victory.
In the evening, Monsieur Rastoil's friends joined those of Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, to congratulate each other, in a little drawing-room at the Sub-Prefecture, overlooking the gardens. Tea was served to them. The great victory of the day ended by a coalition of the two parties. All the usual guests were present.
'I have never systematically opposed any government,' said Monsieur Rastoil, after a time, as he accepted some little cakes which Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies offered him. 'The judicial bench ought to take no part in political struggles. I willingly admit that the Empire has already accomplished some great things, and that it has a still nobler future before it, if it continues to advance in the paths of justice and liberty.'
The sub-prefect bowed, as though this eulogy was addressed to himself personally. The previous evening, Monsieur Rastoil had read in the 'Moniteur' a decree appointing his son assistant public prosecutor at Faverolles. There was also a good deal of talk about a marriage between his eldest daughter and Lucien Delangre.
'Oh, yes! it is quite settled,' Monsieur de Condamin said in low tones to Madame Paloque, who had just been questioning him upon the subject. 'He has chosen Angéline. I believe that he would rather have had Aurélie, but it has probably been hinted to him that it would not be seemly for the younger sister to be married before the elder one.'
'Angéline! Are you quite sure?' Madame Paloque murmured maliciously. 'I fancy that Angéline has a likeness—'
The conservator of rivers and forests put his finger to his lips, with a smile.
'Well, it's just a toss-up, isn't it?' she continued. 'It will strengthen the ties between the two families. We are all good friends now. Paloque is expecting his cross, and I am quite satisfied with everything.'
Monsieur Delangre did not arrive till late. He received, as newspaper writers say, a perfect ovation. Madame de Condamin had just informed Doctor Porquier that his son Guillaume had been nominated chief clerk at the post-office. She was circulating good news through the room, declaring that Abbé Bourrette would be vicar-general the following year; that Abbé Surin would be a bishop before he was forty, and that Monsieur Maffre was to have a cross.
'Poor Bourdeu!' exclaimed Monsieur Rastoil, with a last sigh of regret.
Oh, there's no occasion to pity him!' cried Madame de Condamin, gaily. 'I will undertake to console him. He is not cut out for the Chamber. What he wants is a prefecture. Tell him that he shall have one before long.'
The merriment increased. The fair Octavie's high spirits, and the desire which she showed to please everybody, delighted the company. It was really she who was doing the honours of the Sub-Prefecture. She was the queen of the place. And, while she seemed to be speaking quite playfully, she gave Monsieur Delangre the most practical advice in the world about the part he ought to play in the Corps Législatif. She took him aside and offered to introduce him to several influential people, an offer which he gratefully accepted. About eleven o'clock, Monsieur de Condamin suggested that the garden should be illuminated, but his wife calmed the enthusiasm of the gentlemen, and said that such a course would be inadvisable, for it would not do to appear to be exulting over the town.
'Well, what about Abbé Fenil?' she suddenly asked Abbé Faujas, as she took him aside into one of the window recesses. 'He has not made any movement, has he?'
'Abbé Fenil is a man of sense,' the priest replied. 'It has been hinted to him that he would do well not to interfere in political matters for the future.'
In the midst of all the triumphant joy, Abbé Faujas remained grave. He had won after a hard fight. Madame de Condamin's chatter wearied him; and the satisfaction of these people, with their poor vulgar ambitions, filled him with disdain. As he stood leaning against the mantelpiece, with a far-off look in his eyes, he seemed to be buried in thought. He was master now, and no longer compelled to veil and suppress his real feelings. He could reach out his hand and seize the town, and make it tremble in his grasp. His tall, black figure seemed to fill the room. The guests gradually drew their chairs closer to him, and formed a circle round him. The men awaited some expression of satisfaction from his lips, the women besought him with their eyes, like submissive slaves. But he bluntly broke through the circle and went away the first, saying but a brief word or two as he took his leave.
When he returned to the Mourets' house, going thither by way of the Impasse des Chevillottes and the garden, he found Marthe alone in the dining-room, sitting listlessly on a chair against the wall, looking very pale, and gazing with a blank expression at the lamp, the wick of which was beginning to char. Upstairs, Trouche was having a party, and could be heard singing a broad comic song, which Olympe and his guests accompanied by striking their glasses with the handles of their knives.