Abbé Faujas laid his hand on Marthe's shoulder. 'What are you doing here?' he asked. 'Why haven't you gone to bed? I told you that you were not to wait for me.'
She started up and stammered:
'I thought you would be back much earlier than this. I fell asleep. I dare say Rose will have got some tea ready.'
The priest called for the cook and rated her for not having made her mistress go to bed. He spoke in authoritative tones that admitted of no reply.
'Bring the tea for his reverence, Rose,' said Marthe.
'No, I don't want any tea,' the priest said with a show of vexation. 'Go to bed immediately. It is absurd. I can scarcely control myself. Show me a light, Rose.'
The cook went with him as far as the foot of the staircase.
'Your reverence knows that I am not to blame,' she said. 'Madame is very strange. Ill as she is, she can't stop for a single hour in her room. She can't keep from coming and going up and down, and fidgetting about merely for the sake of being on the move. She puts me out quite as much as anyone else; she is always in my way, preventing me from getting on with anything. Then she drops down on a chair and sits staring in front of her with a terrified look, as though she could see something horrible. I told her half a score of times at least, to-night, that you would be very angry with her for not going to bed; but she didn't even seem to hear what I said.'
The priest went upstairs without replying. As he passed the Trouches' room he stretched out his arm as though he was going to bang his fist on the door. But the singing had stopped, and he could tell from the sounds within that the visitors were about to take their departure, so he quickly stepped into his own room. Almost immediately afterwards Trouche went downstairs with a couple of men whom he had picked up in some low café, crying out on the staircase that he knew how to behave himself and was going to see them home. Olympe leant over the banisters.
'You can fasten the doors,' she said to Rose. 'He won't be back before to-morrow morning.'
Rose, from whom she had not been able to conceal her husband's misconduct, expressed much pity for her, and growled as she fastened the doors:
'What fools women are to get married! Their husbands either beat them or go off after hussies. For my part, I'd very much rather keep as I am.'
When she went back into the dining-room she found her mistress again in a sort of melancholy stupor, with her eyes fixed upon the lamp. She shook her and made her go upstairs to bed. Marthe had become very timid. She said she saw great patches of light on the walls of her room at night-time, and heard violent blows at the head of her bed. Rose now slept near her, in a little dressing-room whence she hastened to calm her at the slightest uneasiness. That night she had not finished undressing herself before she heard Marthe groaning, and, on rushing into her room, she found her lying amidst the disordered bed-clothes, her eyes staring widely in mute horror, and her clenched fists pressed closely against her mouth to keep herself from shrieking. Rose was obliged to talk to her and soothe her as though she were a mere child, and even had to look behind the curtains and under the furniture, and assure her that she was mistaken, for there was really no one there. These attacks of terror ended in cataleptic seizures, when the unhappy woman lay back on her pillow, with her eyelids rigidly opened as though she were dead.
'It is the thought of the master that torments her,' Rose muttered, as she at last got into bed.
The next day was one of those when Doctor Porquier called. He came regularly twice a week to see Madame Mouret. He patted her hands and said to her with his amiable optimism:
'Oh! nothing serious will come of this, my dear lady. You still cough a little, don't you? Ah! it's a mere cold which has been neglected, but which we will cure with some syrups.'
But Marthe complained to him of intolerable pains in her back and chest, and kept her eyes upon him, as if trying to discover from his face and manner what he would not say in words.
'I am afraid of going mad!' she suddenly cried, breaking into a sob.
The doctor smilingly reassured her. The sight of him always caused her keen anxiety, she felt a sort of alarm of this gentle and agreeable man. She often told Rose not to admit him, saying that she was not ill, and had no need to have a doctor constantly to see her. Rose shrugged her shoulders, however, and ushered the doctor into the room. However, he had almost ceased speaking to Marthe about her ailments, and seemed to be merely making friendly calls upon her.
As he was going away, he met Abbé Faujas, who was returning from Saint-Saturnin's. The priest questioned him respecting Madame Mouret's condition.
'Science is sometimes quite powerless,' said the doctor gravely, 'but the goodness of Providence is inexhaustible. The poor lady has been sorely shaken, but I don't altogether give her up. Her chest is only slightly attacked as yet, and the climate here is favourable.'
Then he started a dissertation upon the treatment of pulmonary diseases in the neighbourhood of Plassans. He was preparing a pamphlet on the subject, not for publication, for he was too shrewd to wish to seem a savant, but for the perusal of a few intimate friends.
'I have weighty reasons,' he said in conclusion, 'for believing that the equable temperature, the aromatic flora, and the salubrious springs of our hills, are extremely effective for the cure of pulmonary complaints.'
The priest had listened to him with his usual stern expression.
'You are mistaken,' he said slowly, 'Plassans does not agree with Madame Mouret. Why not send her to pass the winter at Nice?'
'At Nice?' repeated the doctor, uneasily.
He looked at the priest for a moment, and then continued in his complacent way:
'Nice certainly would be very suitable for her. In her present condition of nervous excitement, a change of surroundings would probably have very beneficial results. I must advise her to make the journey. It is an excellent idea of yours, Monsieur le Curé.'
He bowed, parted from the Abbé, and made his way to Madame de Condamin, whose slightest headaches caused him endless trouble and anxiety. At dinner, the next day, Marthe spoke of the doctor in almost violent terms. She swore that she would never allow him to visit her again.
'It is he who is making me ill,' she exclaimed. 'This very afternoon he has been advising me to go off on a journey.'
'And I entirely agree with him in that,' declared Abbé Faujas, folding his napkin.
She fixed her eyes upon him, and turned very pale as she murmured in a low voice:
'What! Do you also want to send me away from Plassans? Oh! I should die in a strange land far away from all my old associations, and far away from those I love.'
The priest had risen from his seat, and was about to leave the dining-room. He stepped towards her, and said with a smile:
'Your friends only think of what is good for your health. Why are you so rebellious?'
'Oh! I don't want to go! I don't want to go!' she cried, stepping back from him.
There was a short contest between them. The blood rushed to the Abbé's cheeks, and he crossed his arms, as though to withstand a temptation to strike Marthe. She was leaning against the wall, in despair at her weakness. Then, quite vanquished, she stretched out her hands, and stammered:
'I beseech you to allow me to remain here. I will do whatever you tell me.'
Then, as she burst into sobs, the Abbé shrugged his shoulders and left the room, like a husband fearing an outbreak of tears. Madame Faujas, who was tranquilly finishing her dinner, had witnessed the scene and continued eating. She let Marthe cry on undisturbed.
'You are extremely unreasonable, my dear child,' she said after a time, helping herself to some more sweetmeats. 'You will end by making Ovide quite detest you. You don't know how to treat him. Why do you refuse to go away from home, if it is necessary for your health? We should look after the house for you, and you would find everything all right and in its place when you came back.'
Marthe was still sobbing, and did not seem to hear what Madame Faujas said.
Ovide has so much to think about,' the old lady continued. 'Do you know that he often works till four o'clock in the morning? When you cough all through the night, it disturbs him very much, and distracts his thoughts. He can't work any longer, and he suffers more than you do. Do this for Ovide's sake, my dear child; go away, and come back to us in good health.'
Then Marthe raised her face, red with weeping, and throwing all her anguish into one cry, she wailed: 'Oh! Heaven lies!'
During the next few days no further pressure was brought to bear upon Madame Mouret to induce her to make the journey to Nice. She grew terribly excited at the least reference to it. She refused to leave Plassans with such a show of determination that the priest himself recognised the danger of insisting upon the scheme. In the midst of his triumph she was beginning to cause him terrible anxiety and embarrassment. Trouche declared, with his snigger, that it was she who ought to have been sent the first to Les Tulettes. Ever since Mouret had been taken off, she had secluded herself in the practice of the most rigid religious practices, and refrained from ever mentioning her husband's name, praying indeed that she might be rendered altogether oblivious of the past. But she still remained restless, and returned from Saint-Saturnin's with even a keener longing for forgetfulness than she had had when she went thither.
'Our landlady is going it finely,' Olympe said to her husband when she came home one evening. 'I went with her to church to-day, and I had to pick her up from the flag-stones. You would laugh if I told you all the things that she vomited out against Ovide. She is quite furious with him; she says that he has no heart, and that he has deceived her in promising her a heap of consolations. And you should hear her rail, too, against the Divinity. Ah! it's only your pious people who talk so badly of religion! Anyone would think, to hear her, that God had cheated her of a large sum of money. Do you know, I really believe that her husband comes and haunts her at night.'
Trouche was much amused by this gossip.
Well, she has herself to blame for that,' he said. 'If that old joker Mouret was put away, it was her own doing. If I were Faujas, I should know how to arrange matters, and I would make her as gentle and content as a sheep. But Faujas is an ass, and you will see that he will make a mess of the business. Your brother, my dear, hasn't shown himself sufficiently pleasant to us for me to help him out of the bother. I shall have a rare laugh the day our landlady makes him take the plunge.'
'Ovide certainly looks down upon women too much,' declared Olympe.
Then Trouche continued in a lower tone:
'I say, you know, if our landlady were to throw herself down some well with your noodle of a brother, we should be the masters, and the house would be ours. We should be able to feather our nest nicely then. It would be a splendid ending to it all, that!'
Since Mouret's departure, the Trouches also had invaded the ground-floor of the house. Olympe had begun by complaining that the chimneys upstairs smoked, and she had ended by persuading Marthe that the drawing-room, which had hitherto been unoccupied, was the healthiest room in the house. Rose was ordered to light a big fire there, and the two women spent their days in endless talk, before the huge blazing logs. It was one of Olympe's dreams to be able to live like this, handsomely dressed and lolling on a couch in the midst of an elegantly furnished room. She even persuaded Marthe to have the drawing-room re-papered, to buy some new furniture and a fresh carpet for it. Then she felt that she was a lady. She came downstairs in her slippers and dressing-gown, and talked as though she were the mistress of the house.
'That poor Madame Mouret,' she would say, 'has so much worry that she has asked me to help her, and so I devote a little of my time to assisting her. It is really a kindness to do so.'
She had, indeed, quite succeeded in winning the confidence of Marthe, who, from sheer lassitude, handed over to her the petty details of the household management. It was Olympe who kept the keys of the cellar and the cupboards, and paid the tradesmen's bills as well. She had been deliberating for a long time as to how she should manage to make herself equally free in the dining-room. Trouche, however, dissuaded her from attempting to carry out that design. They would no longer be able to eat and drink as they liked, he said; they would not even dare to drink their wine unwatered, or to ask a friend to come and have coffee. Then Olympe declared that at any rate she would bring their share of the dessert upstairs. She crammed her pockets with sugar, and she even carried off candle-ends. For this purpose, she made some big canvas pockets, which she fastened under her skirt, and which it took her a good quarter of an hour to empty every evening.
'There! there's something for a rainy day,' she said, as she bundled a stock of provisions into a box, which she then pushed under the bed. 'If we happen to fall out with our landlady, we shall have something to keep us going for a time. I must bring up some pots of preserves and some salt pork.'
'There is no need to make a secret of it,' said Trouche. 'If I were you, I should make Rose bring them up, as you are the mistress.'
Trouche had made himself master of the garden. For a long time past he had envied Mouret as he had watched him pruning his trees, gravelling his walks, and watering his lettuces; and he had indulged in a dream of one day having a plot of ground of his own, where he might dig and plant as he liked. So, now that Mouret was no longer there, he took possession of the garden, planning all kinds of alterations in it. He began by condemning the vegetables. He had a delicate soul, he said, and he loved flowers. But the labour of digging tired him out on the second day, and a gardener was called in, who dug up the beds under his directions, threw the vegetables on to the dung-heap, and prepared the soil for the reception of p?onies, roses and lilies, larkspurs and convolvuli, and cuttings of geraniums and carnations. Then an idea occurred to Trouche. It struck him that the tall sombre box plants, which bordered the beds, had a mournful appearance, and he meditated for a long time about pulling them up.
'You are quite right,' said Olympe, whom he consulted on the matter. 'They make the place look like a cemetery. For my part, I should much prefer an edging of cast-iron made to resemble rough wood. I will persuade the landlady to have it done. Anyhow, pull up the box.'
The box was accordingly pulled up. A week later the gardener came and laid down the cast-iron edging. Trouche also removed several fruit-trees which interfered with the view, had the arbour painted afresh a bright green, and ornamented the fountain with rock-work. Monsieur Rastoil's cascade greatly excited his envy, but he contented himself for the time by choosing a place where he would construct a similar one, 'if everything should go on all right.'
'This will make our neighbours open their eyes,' he said in the evening to his wife. 'They will see that there is a man of taste here now. In the summer, when we sit at the window, we shall have a delightful view, and the garden will smell deliciously.'
Marthe let him have his own way and gave her consent to all the plans that were submitted to her, and in the end he gave over even consulting her. It was solely Madame Faujas that the Trouches had to contend against, and she continued to dispute possession of the house with them very obstinately. It was only after a battle royal with her mother that Olympe had been able to take possession of the drawing-room. Madame Faujas had all but won the day on that occasion. It was the priest's fault if she had not proved victorious.
'That hussy of a sister of yours says everything that is bad of us to the landlady,' Madame Faujas perpetually complained. 'I can see through her game. She wants to supplant us and to get everything for herself. She is trying to settle herself down in the drawing-room like a fine lady, the slut!'
The priest however paid no attention to what his mother said; he only broke out into sharp gestures of impatience at her complaints. One day he got quite angry and exclaimed:
'I beg of you, mother, do leave me in peace. Don't talk to me any more about Olympe or Trouche. Let them go and hang themselves, if they like.'
'But they are seizing the whole house, Ovide. They are perfect rats. When you want your share, you will find that they have gnawed it all away. You are the only one who can keep them in check.'
He looked at his mother with a faint smile.
'You love me very much, mother,' said he, 'and I forgive you. Make your mind easy; I want something very different from the house. It isn't mine, and I only keep what I gain. You will be very proud when you see my share. Trouche has been useful to me, and we must shut our eyes a little.'
Madame Faujas was then obliged to beat a retreat; but she did so with very bad grace. The absolute disinterestedness of her son made her, with her material baser desires and careful economical nature, quite desperate. She would have liked to lock the house up so that Ovide might find it ready in perfect order for his occupation whenever he might want it. The Trouches, with their grasping ways, caused her all the torment and despair felt by a miser who is being preyed upon by strangers. It was exactly as though they were wasting her own substance, fattening upon her own flesh, and reducing herself and her beloved son to penury and wretchedness. When the Abbé forbade her to oppose the gradual invasion of the Trouches, she made up her mind that she would at any rate save all she could from the hands of the spoilers, and so she began pilfering from the cupboards, just as Olympe did. She also fastened big pockets underneath her skirts, and had a chest which she filled with all the things she collected together—provisions, linen, and miscellaneous articles.
'What is that you are stowing away there, mother?' the Abbé asked one evening as he went into her room, attracted by the noise which she made in moving the chest.
She began to stammer out a reply, but the priest understood it all at a glance, and flew into a violent rage.
'It is too shameful!' he said. 'You have turned yourself into a thief, now! What would the consequences be if you were to be detected? I should be the talk of the whole town!'
'It is all for your sake, Ovide,' she murmured.
'A thief! My mother a thief! Perhaps you think that I thieve, too, that I have come here to plunder, and that my only ambition is to lay my hands upon whatever I can! Good heavens! what sort of an opinion have you formed of me? We shall have to separate, mother, if we do not understand each other better than this.'
This speech quite crushed the old woman. She had remained on her knees in front of the chest, and she sank into a crouching position upon the floor, very pale and almost choking, and stretching out her hands beseechingly. When she was able to speak, she wailed out:
'It is for your benefit, my child, for yours only, I swear. I have told you before that they are taking everything; your sister crams everything into her pockets. There will be nothing left for you, not even a lump of sugar. But I won't take anything more, since it makes you angry, and you will let me stay with you, won't you? You will keep me with you, won't you?'
Abbé Faujas refused to make any promises until she had restored everything she had taken to its place. For nearly a week he himself superintended the secret restoration of the contents of the chest. He watched his mother fill her pockets, and waited till she came back upstairs again to take a fresh load. For prudential reasons he allowed her to make only two journeys backwards and forwards every evening. The old woman felt as though her heart was breaking as she restored each article to its former place. She did not dare to cry, but her eyelids were swollen with tears of regret, and her hands trembled even more than they had done when they were ransacking the cupboards. However, what afflicted her more than anything else was to see that as soon as she had restored each article to its rightful position, Olympe followed in her wake and took possession of it. The linen, the provisions, and the candle-ends, merely passed from one pocket to another.
'I won't take anything more downstairs,' she exclaimed to her son, growing rebellious at this unforeseen result of her restorations. 'It isn't the least good, for your sister only walks off with everything directly I put it back. The hussy! I might just as well give her the chest at once! She must have got a nice little hoard together! I beseech you, Ovide, let me keep what still remains. Our landlady will be none the worse off for it, because she will lose it anyhow.'
'My sister is what she is,' the priest replied tranquilly; 'but I wish my mother to be an honest woman. You will help me much more by not committing such actions.'
She was forced to restore everything, and from that time forward she harboured fierce hatred against the Trouches, Marthe, and the whole establishment. She often said that the day would come when she should have to defend Ovide against everybody.
The Trouches were now reigning in all sovereignty. They completed the conquest of the house, and made their way into every corner of it. The Abbé's own rooms were the only ones they respected. It was only before him that they trembled. But even his presence in the house did not prevent them from inviting their friends, and indulging in debauches till two o'clock in the morning. Guillaume Porquier came with parties of mere youths. Olympe, notwithstanding her thirty-seven years, then simpered and put on girlish airs; and flirted with more than one of the college lads. The house was becoming a perfect paradise to her. Trouche sniggered and joked about it when they were alone together.
'Well,' she said, quite tranquilly, 'you do as you like, don't you? We are both free to do as we please, you know.'
Trouche had, as a matter of fact, all but brought his pleasant life to an abrupt conclusion. There had been an unpleasant affair at the Home of the Virgin in connection with one of the girls there. One of the Sisters of St. Joseph had complained of Trouche to Abbé Faujas. He had thanked her for telling him, and had impressed upon her that the cause of religion would suffer by such a scandal. So the affair was hushed up, and the lady patronesses never had the faintest suspicion of it. Abbé Faujas, however, had a terrible scene with his brother-in-law, whom he assailed in Olympe's presence, so that his wife might have a weapon against him, and be able to keep him in check.
The Trouches had been troubled for a long time past by another matter. Notwithstanding their life of clover, although they were provided with so many things out of Marthe's cupboards, they had got terribly into debt in the neighbourhood. Trouche squandered his salary away in cafés, and Olympe wasted the money which she drew out of Marthe's pockets by indulging in all sorts of silly fancies. As for the necessaries of life, they made a point of getting these upon credit. There was one account which made them particularly uneasy, that of a pastrycook in the Rue de la Banne, which amounted to more than a hundred francs, for the pastrycook was a rough, blunt sort of man, who had threatened to lay the whole matter before Abbé Faujas. The Trouches thus long lived in a state of alarm, but when the bill was actually presented to him Abbé Faujas paid it without a word, and even forgot to address any reproaches to them on the subject. The priest seemed to be above all those sordid little matters, and went on living a gloomy and rigid life in this house that was given up to pillage, without appearing conscious of the gradual ruin which was falling upon it. Everything, indeed, was crumbling away around him, while he continued to advance straight towards the goal of his ambition. He still camped like a soldier in his big bare room, indulging in no comforts, and showing annoyance when any were pressed upon him. Since he had become the master of Plassans, he had dropped back into complete carelessness as to his appearance. His hat became rusty, his stockings muddy; his cassock, which his mother mended every morning, looked just like the pitiful, worn-out rag which he had worn when he first came to Plassans.
'Pooh! it is very good yet,' he used to say, when anyone hazarded a timid remark about it.
He made a display of it, walked about the streets in it, carrying his head loftily, and altogether unheeding the curious glances which were cast at him. There was no bravado in the matter; he was simply following his natural inclinations. Now that he believed that he need no longer lay himself out to please, he fell back into all his old disdain for mere appearance. It was his triumph to sit down just as he was, with his tall, clumsy body, rough, blunt manner and torn clothes, in the midst of conquered Plassans.
Madame de Condamin, distressed by the strong smell which emanated from his cassock, one day gently took him to task about his appearance.
'Do you know,' she said to him, laughing, 'that the ladies are beginning to detest you? They say that you now never take the least trouble over your toilet. Once upon a time, when you took your handkerchief out of your pocket, it was just as though there were a choir-boy swinging a thurible behind you.'
The priest looked greatly astonished. He was quite unaware of any change in himself. Then Madame de Condamin, drawing a little nearer to him, said in a friendly tone:
'Will you let me speak quite frankly to you, my dear Curé? It is really a mistake on your part to be so negligent of your appearance. You scarcely shave, and you never comb your hair; it is as rough and tumbled as though you had been fighting. I can assure you that all this has a very bad effect. Madame Rastoil and Madame Delangre told me yesterday that they could scarcely recognise you. You are really compromising your success.'
The priest gave a laugh of defiance, as he shook his powerful unkempt head.
'Now that the battle is won,' he merely replied, 'they must put up with my hair being uncombed.'
Plassans had, indeed, to put up with him with his hair uncombed. The once seemingly flexible priest was now transformed into a stern, despotic master who bent all wills to his own. His face, which had again become cadaverous in hue, shone with eyes like an eagle's, and he raised his big hands as though they were filled with threats and chastisements. The town was positively terrified on beholding the master it had imposed upon itself, with his shabby, dirty clothing and unkempt hair. The covert alarm of the women only tended, however, to strengthen his power. He was stern and harsh to his penitents, but not one of them dared to leave him. They came to him in fear and trembling, in which they found some touch of painful pleasure.
'I was wrong, my dear,' Madame de Condamin confessed to Marthe, 'in wanting him to perfume himself. I am growing accustomed to him, and even prefer him as he is. He is indeed a man!'
Abbé Faujas was supreme at the Bishop's. Since the elections he had left Monseigneur Rousselot only a show of authority. The Bishop lived amidst his beloved books in his study, where the Abbé, who administered the diocese from an adjoining room, virtually kept him prisoner, only allowing him to see those persons whom he could fully trust. The clergy trembled before this absolute master. The old white-headed priests bent before him with all humility and surrender of personal will. Monseigneur Rousselot, when he was alone with Abbé Surin, often wept silent tears. He regretted the impetuous mastery of Abbé Fenil, who had, at any rate, intervals of affectionate softness, whereas now, under Abbé Faujas's rule, he felt a relentless, ceaseless pressure. However, he would smile again and resign himself, saying with a sort of pleasant self-satisfaction:
'Come, my child, let us get to work. I must not complain, for I am now leading the life which I always dreamed of—a life of perfect solitude amongst my books.'
Then he sighed, and continued in a lower tone:
'I should be quite happy if I were not afraid of losing you, my dear Surin. He will end by not tolerating your presence here any longer. I thought that he looked at you very suspiciously yesterday. Always agree with him, I beseech you; take his side and don't spare me. Ah me! I have only you left now.'
Two months after the elections Abbé Vial, one of the Bishop's grand-vicars, went to settle at Rome. Abbé Faujas stepped into his place as a matter of course, although it had been promised long ago to Abbé Bourrette. He did not even promote the latter to the living of Saint-Saturnin's which he vacated, but preferred to it a young ambitious priest whom he had made a tool of his own.
'His lordship would not hear of you,' he said curtly to Abbé Bourrette when he met him.
When the poor old priest stammered out that he would go and see the Bishop, and ask for an explanation, Abbé Faujas added more gently:
'His lordship is too unwell to see you. Trust yourself in my hands; I will plead your cause for you.'
From his first appearance in the Chamber in Paris Monsieur Delangre had voted with the majority. Plassans was conquered for the Empire. Abbé Faujas almost seemed actuated by a feeling of revenge in the rough way in which he treated the prudent townspeople. He again closed the little doors that led into the Impasse des Chevillottes, and compelled Monsieur Rastoil and his friends to enter the Sub-Prefecture by the official door facing the Place. When he appeared at the sub-prefect's friendly gatherings, the guests showed themselves very humble in his presence. So great was the fascination he exercised, and so great the fear he inspired, that even when he was not present nobody dared to make the slightest equivocal remark concerning him.
'He is a man of the greatest merit,' declared Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, who now counted on being promoted to a prefecture.
'A very remarkable man, indeed,' chimed in Doctor Porquier. All the company nodded their heads approvingly till Monsieur de Condamin, who began to feel irritated by this eulogistic unanimity, amused himself by putting them into embarrassment.
'Well, he hasn't a pleasant temper, anyway,' said he.
This remark had a chilling effect upon the company. Each was afraid that his neighbour might be in the terrible Abbé's pay.
'The grand-vicar has an excellent heart,' Monsieur Rastoil prudently remarked; 'but, like all great minds, he appears at first sight to be a little stern.'
'It is just so with me; I am very easy to get on with, but I have always had the reputation of being a hard, stern man,' exclaimed Monsieur de Bourdeu, who had become reconciled with the party again after a long private interview which he had had with Abbé Faujas.
Then, wishing to put everyone at ease again, the presiding judge exclaimed:
'Have you heard that there is a probability of a bishopric for the grand-vicar?'
At this they brightened up. Monsieur Maffre expressed the opinion that it would be of Plassans itself that Abbé Faujas would become bishop, after the retirement of Monseigneur Rousselot, whose health was very feeble.
'Everyone would gain by it,' said Abbé Bourrette guilelessly. 'Illness has embittered his lordship; I know that our excellent Faujas has made the greatest efforts to persuade him out of certain unjust prejudices which he entertains.'
'He is very fond of you,' asserted Judge Paloque, who had just received his decoration; 'my wife has heard him complain of the way in which you are neglected.'
When Abbé Surin was present, he, too, joined in the general chorus; but, although he had a mitre in his pocket, to use the expression of the priests of the diocese, the success of Abbé Faujas made him uneasy. He looked at him in his pretty way, and, calling to mind the Bishop's prediction, tried to discover the weak point which would bring that colossus toppling in the dust.
The gentlemen of the party, it should be said, had had their desires satisfied; that is, excepting Monsieur de Bourdeu and Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, who were still waiting for the marks of the government's favour. These two were, consequently, the warmest partisans of Abbé Faujas. The others, to tell the truth, would have been glad to rebel, if they had dared. They were growing secretly weary of the continual gratitude which was exacted from them by their master, and they ardently wished that some strong, bold hand would effect their deliverance. One day Madame Paloque, with an affectation of indifference inquired:
'What has become of Abbé Fenil? I haven't seen or heard of him for an age.'
There was profound silence. Monsieur de Condamin was the only one present capable of venturing upon such dangerous ground. They all looked at him.
'Oh!' he said quietly, 'I believe he shuts himself up at his place at Les Tulettes.'
Madame de Condamin added with an ironical smile:
'He can sleep quietly now. His career is over; he will take no part again in the affairs of Plassans.'
There was only Marthe who remained a real obstacle in Abbé Faujas's path. He felt that she was escaping him more and more each day. He stiffened his will and called up all his forces as priest and man to bend her, without succeeding in moderating the flame which he had fanned into life. She was striving to reach the logical end of her passionate longings, and insisted upon forcing her way further and further into the peace and ecstasy and perfect self-forgetfulness of divine happiness. It was bitter pain and anguish to her to be, as it were, walled in and prevented from reaching that threshold of light, of which she fancied she caught a glimpse, though it seemed to be ever receding from her reach. She shivered and trembled now at Saint-Saturnin's in the coldness and the gloom amidst which she had once felt such thrills of delight. The peals of the organ no longer stirred her with a tremor of voluptuous joy; the white clouds of incense no longer lulled her into sweet mystic dreams; the gleaming chapels and the sacred pyxes that flashed like stars, the chasubles with their sheen of gold and silver, all now seemed pale and wan to her eyes that were dull and dim with tears. Like a damned soul yearning after Paradise, she threw up her arms in bitter desperation and besought the love that denied itself to her, sobbing and wailing:
'My God, my God! why hast Thou forsaken me?'
Bowed down with shame, hurt, as it were, by the cold silence of the vaulted roof, Marthe left the church, burning with the anger of a scorned woman. She had wild dreams of pouring out her blood, and she writhed madly at her impotence to do more than to pray, at being unable to spring at a single bound into the arms of God. And when she returned home, she felt that her only hope was in Abbé Faujas. It was he alone that could make her God's. He had revealed to her the initiatory joys; he must now tear aside the whole veil. But the priest fell into a passion with her and treated her roughly, refusing to hear her so long as she was not on her knees before him, humble and unresisting like a corpse. She listened to him, standing upright, sustained by an impulse of revolt that thrilled her whole being, as she vented upon him the bitterness that came of her deceived yearnings, and accused him of the base treachery which was torturing her.
Old Madame Rougon often thought it was her duty to intervene between the Abbé and her daughter, as she had formerly done between the latter and Mouret. Marthe having told her of her troubles, she spoke to the priest like a mother-in-law desiring the happiness of her children and doing her best to restore peace in their home.
'Well,' she said to him with a smile, 'can't you manage to live in peace? Marthe is constantly complaining and you seem to be perpetually grieving her. I know very well that women are exacting, but you must confess that you are a little wanting in consideration. I am extremely distressed by what occurs; it would be so easy for you to arrange matters pleasantly! Do, I beg of you, my dear Abbé, be a little more gentle with her.'
She also scolded him in a friendly fashion for his slovenly appearance. She could see, with her shrewd feminine intelligence, that he was abusing his victory. Then she began to make excuses for her daughter. The dear child, she said, had suffered a great deal, and her nervous sensitiveness required most careful treatment; but she had an excellent disposition and an affectionate nature which a clever man might mould after his own wishes. One day, however, when she was thus showing him how he might make Marthe what he liked, Abbé Faujas grew weary of her perpetual advice.
'No, no!' he cried, 'your daughter is mad; she bores me to death. I won't have anything more to do with her. I would pay the fellow well who would free me of her.'
Madame Rougon looked him keenly in the face and tightly pressed her lips.
'Listen to me, my friend,' she said after a short silence; 'you are wanting in tact, and that will prove your ruin. Overthrow yourself, if you like; I wash my hands of you. I assisted you, not for your own sake, but to please our friends in Paris. They wrote to me and asked me to pilot you, and I did so. But understand this, I will never allow you to come the master over me. It's all very well for little Péqueur, and simple Rastoil, but we are not at all afraid of you, and we mean to remain the masters. My husband conquered Plassans before you did, and I warn you that we shall keep our conquest.'
From that day forward there was great coldness between the Rougons and Abbé Faujas. When Marthe again came to complain to her mother, the latter said to her very plainly:
Your Abbé is only making a fool of you. If I were in your place I shouldn't hesitate to tell him a few plain truths. To begin with, he has been disgustingly dirty for a long time past, and I can't understand how you can bear to take your meals at the same table with him.'
Madame Rougon had, in truth, hinted at a very ingenious plan to her husband, by which the Abbé should be ousted, and they themselves should reap the reward of his success. Now that the town voted properly, Rougon, who had not cared to risk the conduct of the campaign, was quite able to keep it in the proper path. The green drawing-room would become all the more influential, and Félicité began to await developments with that crafty patience to which she owed her fortune.
On the day when her mother told her that the Abbé was only making a fool of her, Marthe again repaired to Saint-Saturnin's resolved upon a last supreme appeal. She remained in the deserted church for two hours, pouring out her soul in prayer, waiting longingly for the ecstasy that came not, and torturing herself with her search for consolation. Impulses of deep humility stretched her prostrate upon the flag-stones, momentary thrills of rebellion made her start up again with her teeth clenched, while her whole being, wildly racked and strained, broke down at not being able to grasp or kiss aught save the aching void of her own passion. When she rose and left the church the sky seemed black to her; she was not conscious of the pavement beneath her feet; the narrow streets left upon her the impression of some immense lonely wilderness. She threw her hat and shawl upon the dining-room table and went straight upstairs to Abbé Faujas's room.
The Abbé sat buried in thought, at his little table. His pen had fallen from his fingers. He opened the door, still full of his thoughts, but when he saw Marthe standing before him, very pale, and with the light of deep resolution burning in her eyes, he made a gesture of anger.
'What do you want?' he asked. 'Why have you come upstairs? Go down again and wait for me, if you have anything to say to me.'
She pushed him aside and entered the room without speaking a word.
The priest hesitated for a moment, struggling against the influence which was prompting him to raise his hand against her. He remained standing in front of her, without closing the door that was wide open.
'What do you want?' he repeated. 'I am busy.'
Then Marthe closed the door, and having done so, drew nearer to the Abbé and said to him:
'I want to speak to you.'
She sat down and looked about the room, at the narrow bed, the shabby chest of drawers, and at the big black wooden crucifix, the sight of which, as it stood out conspicuously on the bare wall, gave her a passing thrill. A freezing silence seemed to fall from the ceiling. The grate was quite empty; there was not even a pinch of ashes in it.
'You will take cold,' said the priest in a calmer voice. 'Let us go downstairs, I beg you.'
'No; I want to speak to you,' said Marthe again.
Then, clasping her hands together like a penitent making her confession, she continued:
'I owe you much. Before you came, I was without a soul. It was you who willed that I should be saved. It is through you that I have known the only joys of my life. You are my saviour and my father. For these last five years I have only lived through you and for you.'
Her voice broke down and she almost slipped upon her knees. The priest stopped her with a gesture.
'And now, to-day,' she cried, 'I am suffering and have need of your help. Listen to me, father. Do not withdraw from me. You cannot abandon me thus. I tell you that God does not listen to me any longer. I do not feel His presence any longer. Have pity upon me, I beseech you. Advise me, lead me to those divine graces whose first joys you made me know; teach me what I should do to cure myself, and ever advance in the love of God.'
'You must pray,' said the priest gravely.
'I have prayed; I have prayed for hours with my head buried in my hands, trying to lose myself in every word of adoration, and yet I have not received consolation. I have not felt the presence of God.'
'You must pray and pray again, pray continually, pray until God is moved by your prayers and descends to you.'
She looked at him in anguish.
'Then there is nothing but prayer?' she asked. 'You cannot give me any help?'
'No; none at all,' he replied roughly.
She threw up her trembling hands in a burst of desperation, her breast heaving with anger. But she restrained herself, and she stammered:
'Your heaven is fast closed. You have led me on so far only to crush me against a wall. I was very peaceful, you will remember, when you came. I was living quietly at home here, without a single desire or curiosity. It was you who awoke me with words that stirred and roused my heart. It was you who made me enter upon a fresh youth. Oh! you cannot tell what joys you brought me at first! It was like sweet soft warmth thrilling my whole being. My heart woke up within me. I was filled with mighty hopes. Sometimes, when I reflected that I was forty years old, it all seemed foolish to me, and I smiled, and then I defended myself, for I felt so happy in it all. Now I want the promised happiness. I am growing weary of the desire for it, a desire that burns me and tortures me. I have no time to lose, now that my health has broken down, and I don't want to find myself deceived and duped. There must be something more; tell me that there is something more.'
Abbé Faujas stood quite impassive, letting this flood of words pass without reply.
'Ah! So there is nothing else! there is nothing else!' she continued, in a burst of indignation; 'then you have deceived me! Down there on the terrace, on those star-lit evenings, you promised me heaven, and I believed your promises. I sold myself, and gave myself up. I was quite mad during those first transports of prayer. To-day the bargain holds no longer. I shall return to my old ways, and resume my old peaceful quiet. I will turn everybody out of the house, and make it as it used to be; I will again sit in my old corner on the terrace, and mend the linen. Needlework never wearies me. And I will have Désirée back to sit beside me on her little stool. She used to sit there, the dear innocent, and laugh and make dolls——'
Then she burst into a fit of sobbing:
I want my children! They were my safeguard. Since they left I have lost my head, I have done things that I ought not to have done. Why did you take them from me? They went away from me one by one, and the house became like a strange house to me. My heart was no longer wrapped up in it, I was glad when I left it for an afternoon; and when I came back in the evening, I seemed to have fallen amongst strangers. The very furniture seemed cold and unfriendly. I quite hated the house. But I will go and fetch them again, the poor darlings. Everything will become as it used to be directly they return. Oh! if I could only sink down again into my old sleepy quiet!'
She was growing more and more excited. The priest tried to calm her by a method which he had often before found efficacious.
'Be calm, my dear lady, be calm,' he said, trying to take her hands, and hold them between his own.
'Don't touch me!' she cried, recoiling from him. 'I don't want you to do so. When you hold me I am as weak as a child. The warmth of your hands takes all my resolution and strength away. The trouble would only begin again to-morrow; for I cannot go on living like this, and you only assuage me for an hour.'
A deep shadow passed over her face as she continued:
'No! I am damned now! I shall never love my home again. And if the children come, they would ask for their father—Oh! it is that which is killing me! I shall never be forgiven till I have confessed my crime to a priest.'
Then she fell upon her knees.
'I am a guilty woman. That is why God turns His face from me.'
Abbé Faujas tried to make her rise from her knees.
'Be silent!' he cried loudly. 'I cannot hear your confession here. Come to Saint-Saturnin's to-morrow.'
'Father,' she said entreatingly, 'have pity upon me. To-morrow I shall not have the strength for it.'
'I forbid you to speak,' he cried more violently than before. 'I won't listen to anything; I shall turn my head away and close my ears.'
He stepped backward and crossed his arms, trying to check the confession that was on Marthe's lips. They looked at each other for a moment in silence, with the lurking anger that came from their conscious complicity.
'It is not a priest who listens to you,' said the Abbé in a huskier voice. 'Here there is only a man to judge and condemn you.'
At this she rose from her knees, and continued feverishly: 'A man! I prefer it, for I am not confessing; I am simply telling you of my wrong-doing. After the children had gone, I allowed their father to be put away too. He had never struck me, the unhappy man. It was I myself who was mad.... Oh, you cannot guess what frightful nightmares overwhelmed me and made me hurl myself upon the floor. All hell seemed to be racking my brain with its torments. He, poor man, with his chattering teeth, excited my pity. It was he who was afraid of me. When you had left the room he dared not venture near me; he passed the night on a chair.'
Again did Abbé Faujas try to stop her.
'You are killing yourself,' he exclaimed. 'Don't stir up these recollections. God will take count of your sufferings.'
'It was I who sent him to Les Tulettes,' she continued, silencing the priest with an energetic gesture. 'You all told me that he was mad. Oh, the unendurable life I have led! I have always been terrified by the thought of madness. When I was quite young, I used to feel as though my skull were being opened and my head were being emptied. I seemed to have a block of ice within my brow. Ah! I felt that awful coldness again, and I was perpetually in fear of going mad. They took my husband away. I let them take him. I didn't know what I was doing. But, ever since that day, I have been unable to close my eyes without seeing him over yonder. It is that which makes me behave so strangely, which roots me for hours to the same spot, with my eyes wide open. I know the place; I can see it. My uncle Macquart showed it to me. It is as gloomy as a prison, with its black windows.'
She seemed to be choking. She raised her handkerchief to her lips, and when she took it away again it was spotted with blood. The priest, with his arms rigidly crossed in front of him, waited till the attack was over.
'You know it all, don't you?' she resumed, in stammering accents. 'I am a miserable guilty woman, I sinned for you. But give me life, give me happiness, I entreat you!'
'You lie,' said the priest slowly. 'I know nothing; I was ignorant that you were guilty of that wickedness.'
She recoiled, clasping her hands, stammering, and gazing at him with a look of terror. And at last, utterly unable to restrain herself, she broke out wildly and recklessly:
Hear me, Ovide, I love you, and you know that I do, do you not? I have loved you, Ovide, since the first day you came here. I refrained from telling you so, for I saw it displeased you; but I knew quite well that you were gaining my whole heart. Then it was that I emptied the house for your sake. I dragged myself on my knees, and became your slave. You surely cannot go on being cruel for ever. Now that I am ill and abandoned, and my heart is broken and my head seems empty, you surely cannot reject me. It is true that we have said nothing openly before; but surely my love spoke to you, and your silence made answer. Oh! I love you, Ovide, I love you, and it is killing me.'
She burst into another fit of sobbing. Abbé Faujas had braced himself up to his full height. He stepped towards Marthe and poured out upon her all his scorn of woman.
'Oh, miserable creature!' he said. 'I hoped that you would be reasonable, and that you would never lower yourself to the shame of uttering all that vileness. Ah! it is the eternal struggle of evil against will. You are the temptation from below that leads men to base back-sliding and final overthrow. The priest has no worse enemy than such as you; you ought to be driven from the churches as impure and accursed!'
'I love you, Ovide,' she again stammered; 'I love you; help me.'
'I have already come too near you,' the priest continued. 'Go away and depart from me; you are Satan! I will beat you if it be necessary to force the evil spirit from your body.'
She sank into a crouching posture against the wall, silent with terror at the priest's threatening fist. Her hair became unloosened, and a long white lock fell over her brow. As she looked about the room for a refuge, she espied the big black crucifix, and she still had strength left to stretch her hands towards it with a passionate gesture.
'Do not implore the Cross!' cried the priest in wild anger. 'Jesus lived chastely, and it was that which enabled Him to die.'
At that same moment Madame Faujas came into the room, carrying on her arm a big provision basket. She put it down at once on seeing her son so wrathful, and threw her arms around him.
'Ovide, my child, calm yourself,' she said, as she caressed him.
Then, turning upon the cowering Marthe an annihilating glance, she cried:
'Can you never leave him at peace? Are you not ashamed of yourself? Go downstairs; it is quite impossible for you to remain here. This is no place for such as you!'
Marthe did not move. Madame Faujas had to lift her up and push her towards the door. The old woman stormed at her, charging her with having waited till she had gone out, and making her promise that she would never again come upstairs to make such scenes. And finally she banged the door violently behind her.
Marthe went on, reeling down the stairs. She had ceased sobbing, and kept repeating to herself:
'Fran?ois will come back again; Fran?ois will turn them all out into the street.'
The Toulon coach, which passed through Les Tulettes, where it changed horses, left Plassans at three o'clock. Marthe, goaded on by a fixed, unswerving resolve, was anxious not to lose a moment. She put on her shawl and hat, and ordered Rose to dress immediately.
'I can't tell what madame's after,' said the cook to Olympe: 'but I fancy we're going away for some days.'
Marthe left the keys in the cupboard doors; she was in a hurry to be off. Olympe, who went with her to the front door, vainly tried to ascertain where she was going and how long she would be away.
'Well, make yourself quite easy,' she said to her in her pleasant way, as they parted; 'I will look after everything, you will find things all right when you come back. Don't hurry yourself, take the time to do all you want. If you go to Marseilles, bring us back some fresh shell-fish.'
Before Marthe had turned the corner of the Rue Taravelle, Olympe had taken possession of the whole house. When Trouche came home he found his wife banging the doors and examining the contents of the drawers and closets, as she hummed and sang and rushed about the rooms.
'She's gone off and taken that beast of a cook with her,' she cried to him as she lolled into an easy-chair. 'What luck it would be if they should both get upset into a ditch and stop there! Well, we must enjoy ourselves for as long as we have the chance. It's very nice being alone, isn't it, Honoré? Come and give me a kiss! We are quite by ourselves now, and we can do just as we like.'
Marthe and Rose reached the Cours Sauvaire only just in time to catch the Toulon coach. The coupé was disengaged. When the cook heard her mistress tell the conductor to set them down at Les Tulettes, she took her place with an expression of vexation, and before the coach had got out of the town she had begun grumbling in her cross-grained fashion.
'Well, I did think that you were at last going to behave sensibly! I felt sure that we were going to Marseilles to see Monsieur Octave. We could have brought back a lobster and some oysters. Ah! I shouldn't have hurried myself so if I had known. But it's just like you. You are always hunting after troubles, and always doing things that upset you.'
Marthe was lying back in her corner in a semi-conscious condition. Now that she was no longer stiffening herself against the pains which oppressed her heart, a death-like faintness was creeping over her. But the cook did not even look towards her.
'Did anyone ever hear of such an absurd idea as going to see the master?' she continued. 'A cheerful sort of sight it will be for us. We sha'n't be able to sleep for a week after it. You may be as frightened as you like at nights, now; you won't get me to come and look under the furniture for you. It isn't as though your going to see him could do the master any good. He's just as likely to fly at your face as not! I hope to goodness that they won't let you see him. It's against the rules, I know. I ought not to have got into the coach when I heard you mention Les Tulettes, for I don't think you would have ventured to go on such a foolish errand all by yourself.'
A deep sigh from Marthe checked her flow of words. She turned round to her mistress, saw her pale and suffocating, and grew still angrier than before as she opened the window to let in some fresh air.
There now, you'll have to come and lie in my arms! Don't you think you'd have been ever so much better in bed, taking care of yourself? To think that you have had the good fortune to be surrounded by pious, holy people without being the least bit grateful to God Almighty for it! You know it's only the truth I'm saying. His reverence the Curé and his mother and sister, and even Monsieur Trouche himself, are all attention towards you. They would throw themselves into the fire for you; they are ready to do anything at any hour of the day or night. I saw Madame Olympe crying—yes, crying—the last time you were ill. And what sort of gratitude do you show them for all their kindness and attention? Why, you do all you can to distress them, and set off on the sly to see the master, although you know quite well that you will grieve them dreadfully by doing so, for it's impossible that they should be fond of the master, who treated you so cruelly. I'll tell you what, madame—marriage has done you no good; you've got infected with all the master's bad nature. There are times when you are every bit as bad as he is.'
All the way to Les Tulettes she continued in this strain, eulogising the Faujases and the Trouches, and accusing her mistress of every kind of wrong-doing. And she concluded by saying:
'Ah, they are the sort of people who would make excellent masters if they could only afford to keep servants. But fortune merely comes in the way of bad-hearted folks!'
Marthe, who was now calmer, made no reply. She gazed out of the window, watching the scraggy trees and the wide-stretching fields which spread out like great lengths of brown cloth. Rose's growlings were lost amidst the noisy jolting of the coach.
When they reached Les Tulettes, Marthe hastened towards the house of her uncle Macquart, followed by the cook, who had now subsided into silence, contenting herself by shrugging her shoulders and biting her lips.
'Hallo! is that you?' cried the uncle in great surprise. 'I thought you were in your bed. I heard that you were very ill. Well, my little dear, you really don't look very strong. Have you come to ask me for some dinner?'
'I should like to see Fran?ois, uncle,' said Marthe.
'Fran?ois?' repeated Macquart, looking her in the face. 'You would like to see Fran?ois? It is a very kind thought of yours. The poor fellow has been crying for you a great deal. I have seen him from the end of my garden knocking his fist against the walls while he called for you to come to him. And so it is to see him that you have come, eh? I really thought that you had forgotten all about him over yonder.'
Big tears welled into Marthe's eyes.
It will not be very easy to see him to-day,' Macquart continued. 'It is getting on for four o'clock, and I'm not at all sure that the manager will give you leave. Mouret hasn't been very quiet lately. He smashes everything that he can lay his hands on, and talks about burning the place down. Those madmen are not in a pleasant humour every day.'
Marthe trembled as she listened to her uncle; she was going to question him, but instead of doing so she merely stretched out her hands supplicatingly.
'I beseech you to help me,' said she. 'I have come on purpose. It is absolutely necessary that I should speak to Fran?ois to-day, at once. You have friends in the asylum, and you can obtain me admission.'
'No doubt, no doubt,' he replied, without committing himself further.
He appeared to be in a state of great perplexity, unable to divine the real cause of Marthe's sudden journey, and revolving the matter in his own mind from a point of view known only to himself. He glanced inquisitively at the cook, who turned her back upon him. At last a slight smile began to play about his lips.
'Well,' he said, 'since you wish it, I will see what I can do for you. Only, remember, that if your mother is displeased about it, you must tell her that I was not able to dissuade you. I am afraid that you may do yourself harm; it isn't a pleasant place to visit.'
Rose absolutely declined to accompany them to the asylum. She had seated herself in front of a fire of vine-stocks, which was blazing on the great hearth.
'I don't want to have my eyes torn out,' she said snappishly. 'The master isn't over fond of me. I would rather stop here and warm myself.'
'It would be very good of you if you were to get us some mulled wine ready,' Macquart whispered in her ear. 'The wine and sugar are in the cupboard yonder. We shall want it when we come back.'
Macquart did not take his niece to the principal gate of the asylum. He went round to the left and inquired at a little door for warder Alexandre, with whom, on his appearance, he exchanged a few words in a low voice. Then they all three silently entered the seemingly interminable corridors. The warder walked in front.
'I will wait for you here,' said Macquart, coming to a halt in a little courtyard. 'Alexandre will remain with you.'
'I would rather be left alone,' said Marthe.
Madame would very quickly have enough of it, if she were,' Alexandre replied, with a tranquil smile. 'I'm running a good deal of risk as it is.'
He took Marthe through another court, and stopped in front of a little door. As he softly turned the key, he said in a low voice:
'Don't be afraid. He has been quieter to-day, and they have been able to take the strait-waistcoat off. If he shows any violence you must step out backwards, and leave me alone with him.'
Marthe trembled as she passed through the narrow doorway. At first she could only see something lying in a heap against the wall in one of the corners. The daylight was waning, and the cell was merely lighted by a pale glimmer which fell from a grated window.
'Well, my fine fellow!' Alexandre exclaimed familiarly, as he stepped up to Mouret and tapped him on the shoulder; 'I am bringing you a visitor. I hope you will behave properly.'
Then he returned and leant against the door, keeping his eyes fixed upon the madman. Mouret slowly rose to his feet. He did not show the slightest sign of surprise.
'Is it you, my dear?' he said in his quiet voice. 'I was expecting you; I was getting uneasy about the children.'
Marthe's knees trembled under her, and she looked at him anxiously, rendered quite speechless by his affectionate reception. He did not appear changed at all. If anything, he looked better than he had done before. He was sleek and plump, and cleanly shaved. His eyes, too, were bright; all his former little mannerisms had reappeared, and he rubbed his hands and winked, and stalked about with his old bantering air.
'I am very well indeed, my dear. We can go back home together. You have come for me, haven't you? I hope the garden has been well looked after. The slugs were dreadfully fond of the lettuces, and the beds were quite eaten up with them, but I know a way of destroying them. I have some splendid ideas in my head that I'll tell you of. We are very comfortably off, and we can afford to pay for our fancies. By the way, have you seen old Gautier of Saint-Eutrope while I've been absent? I bought thirty hogsheads of common wine from him for blending. I must go and see him to-morrow. You never recollect anything.'
He spoke in a jesting way, and shook his finger at her playfully.
'I'll be bound that I shall find everything in dreadful disorder,' he continued. 'You never look after anything. The tools will be all lying about, the cupboard doors will be open, and Rose will be dirtying the rooms with her broom. Why hasn't Rose come with you? Ah, what a strange creature she is! Do you know, she actually wanted to turn me out of the house one day? Really, she seems to think that the whole place belongs to her. She goes on in the most amusing way possible. But you don't tell me anything about the children. Désirée is still with her nurse, I suppose. We will go and kiss her and see if she is tired of staying there. And I want to go to Marseilles as well, for I am a little uneasy about Octave. The last time I was there I found him leading a wild life. As for Serge, I have no anxiety about him; he is almost too quiet and steady. He will sanctify the whole family. Ah! I quite enjoy talking about the house and the children.'
He rattled along at great length, inquiring about every tree in his garden, going into the minutest details of the household arrangements, and showing an extraordinary memory of a host of insignificant matters. Marthe was deeply touched by the gentle affection which he manifested for her. She thought she could detect a loving delicacy in the care which he took to say nothing that savoured of reproach, to make no allusion, however slight, to all that had passed. She felt, indeed, that she was forgiven, and she vowed that she would atone for her crime by becoming the submissive servant of this man who was so sublime in his good nature. Big silent tears rolled down her cheeks, and her knees bent under her in her gratitude.
'Take care!' the warder whispered in her ear. 'I don't like the look of his eyes.'
'But he isn't mad!' she stammered; 'I swear to you that he isn't mad! I must speak to the manager. I want to take him away with me at once.'
'Take care!' the warder repeated sharply, pulling her by her arm.
Mouret had suddenly stopped short in the midst of his chatter, and was now crouching upon the floor. Then, all at once, he began to crawl along beside the wall, on his hands and knees.
'Wow! wow!' he barked in hoarse, prolonged notes.
He gave a spring into the air and fell upon his side. Then a dreadful scene ensued. He began to writhe like a worm, beat his face with his fist, and tore his flesh with his nails. In a short time he was half naked, his clothes in rags, and himself bruised and lacerated and groaning.
'Come away, madame, come away!' cried the warder.
Marthe stood rooted to the floor. She recognised in the scene before her her own writhings at home. It was in that way that she had thrown herself upon the floor of her bedroom; it was in that way that she had beaten and torn herself. She even recognised the very tones of her voice. Mouret vented the same rattling groan. It was she who had brought the poor man into this miserable state.
'He is not mad!' she stammered; 'he cannot be mad, it would be too horrible! I would rather die!'
The warder put his arm round her and pushed her out of the cell, but she remained leaning against the door on the other side. She could hear a terrible struggle going on within, screams like those of a pig being slaughtered; then a dull fall like that of a bundle of damp linen, and afterwards death-like silence. When the warder came out of the cell, the night had nearly fallen. Through the partially open doorway, Marthe could see nothing.
'Well, upon my word, madame,' cried the warder, 'you are a very queer person to say that he is not mad. I nearly left my thumb behind me; he got firmly hold of it between his teeth. However, he's quieted now for a few hours.'
And as he took her back to her uncle, he continued:
'You've no idea how cunning they all are. They are as quiet as can be for hours together, and talk to you in quite a sensible manner; and then, without the least warning, they fly at your throat. I could see very well that he was up to some mischief or other just now when he was talking to you about the children, for there was such a strange look in his eyes.'
When Marthe got back to Macquart, in the small courtyard, she exclaimed feverishly in a weak, broken voice:
'He is mad! he is mad!'
'There's no doubt he's mad,' said her uncle with a snigger. 'Why, what did you expect to find? People are not brought here for nothing. And the place isn't healthy either. If I were to be shut up there for a couple of hours, I should go mad myself.'
He was watching her askance, and he noted her nervous start and shudder. Then, in his good-natured way, he said:
'Perhaps you would like to go and see the grandmother?'
Marthe made a gesture of terror, and hid her face in her hands.
It would be no trouble to anyone,' he said. 'Alexandre would be glad to take us. She is over yonder, on that side, and there is nothing to be afraid of with her. She is perfectly quiet. She never gives any trouble, does she, Alexandre? She always remains seated and gazing in front of her. She hasn't moved for the last dozen years. However, if you'd rather not see her, we won't go.'
As the warder was taking his leave of them, Macquart invited him to come and drink a glass of mulled wine, winking the while in a certain fashion which seemed to induce Alexandre to accept the invitation. They were obliged to support Marthe, whose legs sank beneath her at each step. When they reached the house, they were actually carrying her. Her face was convulsed, her eyes were staring widely, and her whole body was rigidly stiffened by one of those nervous seizures which kept her like a dead woman for hours at a time.
'There! what did I tell you?' cried Rose, when she saw them. 'A nice state she's in! How are we to get home, I should like to know? Good heavens! how can people take such absurd fancies into their heads? The master ought to have given her neck a twist, and it would have taught her a lesson, perhaps.'
'Pooh!' said Macquart; 'I'll lay her down on my bed. It won't kill us if we have to sit up round the fire all night.'
He drew aside a calico curtain which hung in front of a recess. Rose proceeded to undress her mistress, growling as she did so. The only thing they could do, she said, was to put a hot brick at her feet.
'Now that she's all snug, we'll have a drop to drink,' resumed Macquart, with his wolfish snigger. 'That wine of yours smells awfully nice, old lady!'
'I found a lemon on the mantelpiece,' Rose said, 'and I used it.'
You did quite right. There is everything here that is wanted. When I make a brew, there's nothing missing that ought to be in the place, I assure you.'
He pulled the table in front of the fire, and then he sat down between Rose and Alexandre, and poured the hot wine into some big yellow cups. When he had swallowed a couple of mouthfuls with great gusto, he smacked his lips and cried:
'Ah! that's first-rate. You understand how to make it. It's really better than what I make myself. You must leave me your recipe.'
Rose, greatly mollified by these compliments, began to laugh. The vine-wood fire was now a great mass of glowing embers. The cups were filled again.
'And so,' said Macquart, leaning on his elbows and looking Rose in the face, 'it was a sudden whim of my niece to come here?'
'Oh, don't talk about it,' replied the cook; 'it will make me angry again. Madame is getting as mad as the master. She can no longer tell who are her friends and who are not. I believe she had a quarrel with his reverence the Curé before she set off; I heard them shouting.'
Macquart laughed noisily.
'They used, however, to get on very well together,' said he.
'Yes, indeed; but nothing lasts long with such a brain as madame has got. I'll be bound that she's now regretting the thrashings the master used to give her at nights. We found his stick in the garden.'
Macquart looked at her more keenly, and, as he drank his hot wine, he said:
'Perhaps she came to take Fran?ois back with her.'
'Oh, Heaven forbid!' cried Rose, with an expression of horror. 'The master would go on finely in the house; he would kill us all. The idea of his return is one of my greatest dreads; I'm in a constant worry lest he should make his escape and get back some night and murder us all. When I think about it when I'm in bed, I can't go to sleep. I fancy I can see him stealing in through the window with his hair bristling and his eyes flaming like matches.'
This made Macquart very merry, and he rapped his cup on the table.
It would be very unpleasant,' he said, 'very unpleasant. I don't suppose he feels very kindly towards you, least of all towards the Curé who has stepped into his place. The Curé would only make a mouthful for him, big as he is, for madmen, they say, are awfully strong. I say, Alexandre, just imagine poor Fran?ois suddenly making his appearance at home! He would make a pretty clean sweep there, wouldn't he? It would be a fine sight, eh?'
He cast glances at the warder, who went on quietly drinking his mulled wine and made no reply beyond nodding his head assentingly.
'Oh! it's only a fancy; it's all nonsense,' added Macquart, as he observed Rose's terrified looks.
Just at that moment, Marthe began to struggle violently behind the calico curtain; and she had to be held for some minutes in order that she might not fall upon the floor. When she was again stretched out in corpse-like rigidity, her uncle came and warmed his legs before the fire, reflecting and murmuring as if without paying heed to what he said:
'The little woman isn't very easy to manage, indeed.' Then he suddenly exclaimed:
'The Rougons, now, what do they say about all this business? They take the Curé's side, don't they?'
'The master didn't make himself pleasant enough for them to regret him,' replied Rose. 'There was nothing too bad for him to say against them.'
'Well, he wasn't far wrong there,' said Macquart. 'The Rougons are wretched skinflints. Just think that they refused to buy that cornfield over yonder, a magnificent speculation which I undertook to manage. Félicité would pull a queer face if she saw Fran?ois come back!'
He began to snigger again, and took a turn round the table. Then, with an expression of determination, he lighted his pipe.
'We mustn't forget the time, my boy,' he said to Alexandre, with another wink. 'I will go back with you; Marthe seems quiet now. Rose will get the table laid by the time I return. You must be hungry, Rose, eh? As you are obliged to stay the night here, you shall have a mouthful with me.'
He went off with the warder, and fully half an hour elapsed. Rose, who began to tire of being alone, at last opened the door and went out to the terrace, where she stood watching the deserted road in the clear night air. As she was going back into the house, she fancied she could see two dark shadows in the middle of a path behind a hedge.
'It looks just like the uncle,' thought she; 'he seems to be talking to a priest.'
A few minutes later Macquart returned. That blessed Alexandre, said he, had been chattering to him interminably.
'Wasn't it you who were over there just now with a priest?' asked Rose.
'I, with a priest!' he cried. 'Why, you must have been dreaming; there isn't a priest in the neighbourhood.'
He rolled his little glistening eyes. Then, as if rather uneasy about the lie he had told, he added:
'Well, there is Abbé Fenil, but it's just the same as if he wasn't here, for he never goes out.'
'Abbé Fenil isn't up to much,' remarked the cook.
This seemed to annoy Macquart.
'Why do you say that? Not up to much, eh? He does a great deal of good here, and he's a very worthy sort of fellow. He's worth a whole heap of priests who make a lot of fuss.'
His irritation, however, promptly disappeared, and he began to laugh upon observing that Rose was looking at him in surprise.
'I was only joking, you know,' he said. 'You are quite right; he's like all the other priests, they are all a set of hypocrites. I know now who it was that you saw me with. I met our grocer's wife. She was wearing a black dress, and you must have mistaken that for a cassock.'
Rose made an omelet, and Macquart placed some cheese upon the table. They had not finished eating when Marthe sat up in bed with the astonished look of a person awaking in a strange place. When she had brushed aside her hair and recollected where she was, she sprang to the floor and said she must be off at once. Macquart appeared very much vexed at her awaking.
'It's quite impossible,' said he, 'for you to go back to Plassans to-night. You are shivering with fever, and you would fall ill on the road. Rest here, and we will see about it to-morrow. To begin with, there is no conveyance.'
'But you can drive me in your trap,' said Marthe.
'No, no; I can't.'
Marthe, who was dressing with feverish haste, thereupon declared that she would walk to Plassans rather than stay the night at Les Tulettes. Her uncle seemed to be thinking. He had locked the door and slipped the key into his pocket. He entreated his niece, threatened her, and invented all kinds of stories to induce her to remain. But she paid no attention to what he said, and finished by putting on her bonnet.
'You are very much mistaken if you imagine you can persuade her to give in,' exclaimed Rose, who was quietly finishing her cheese. 'She would get out through the window first. You had better put your horse to the trap.'
After a short interval of silence, Macquart, shrugging his shoulders, angrily exclaimed:
'Well, it makes no difference to me! Let her lay herself up if she likes! I was only thinking about her own good. Come along; what will happen will happen. I'll drive you over.'
Marthe had to be carried to the gig; she was trembling violently with fever. Her uncle threw an old cloak over her shoulders. Then he gave a cluck with his tongue and set off.
'It's no trouble to me,' he said, 'to go over to Plassans this evening; on the contrary, indeed, there's always some amusement to be had there.'
It was about ten o'clock. In the sky, heavy with rain clouds, there was a ruddy glimmer that cast a feeble light upon the road. All the way as they drove along Macquart kept bending forward and glancing at the ditches and the hedges. When Rose asked him what he was looking for, he replied that some wolves had come down from the ravines of La Seille. He had quite recovered his good humour. However, when they were between two and three miles from Plassans the rain began to fall. It poured down, cold and pelting. Then Macquart began to swear, and Rose would have liked to beat her mistress, who was moaning underneath the cloak. When at last they reached Plassans the rain had ceased, and the sky was blue again.
'Are you going to the Rue Balande?' asked Macquart.
'Why, of course,' replied Rose in astonishment.
Macquart thereupon began to explain that as Marthe seemed to him to be very ill, he had thought it might perhaps be better to take her to her mother's. After much hesitation, however, he consented to stop his horse at the Mourets' house. Marthe had not even thought of bringing a latchkey with her. Rose, however, fortunately had her own in her pocket, but when she tried to open the door it would not move. The Trouches had shot the bolts inside. She rapped upon it with her fist, but without rousing any other answer than a dull echo in the hall.
'It's of no use your giving yourself any further trouble,' said Macquart with a laugh. 'They won't disturb themselves to come down. Well, here you are shut out of your own home. Don't you think now that my first idea was a good one? We must take the poor child to the Rougons'. She will be better there than in her own room; I assure you she will.'
Félicité was overwhelmed with alarm when she saw her daughter arrive at such a late hour, drenched with rain and apparently half dead. She put her to bed on the second floor, set the house in great commotion, and called up all the servants. When she grew a little calmer, as she sat by Marthe's bedside, she asked for an explanation.
'What has happened? How is it that you have brought her to me in such a state as this?'
Then Macquart, with a great show of kindness, told her about 'the dear child's' expedition. He defended himself, declared that he had done all that he could to dissuade her from going to see Fran?ois, and ended by calling upon Rose to confirm him, for he saw that Félicité was scanning him narrowly with her suspicious eyes. Madame Rougon, however, continued to shake her head.
'It is a very strange story!' she said; 'there is something more in it than I can understand.'
She knew Macquart, and she guessed that there must be some rascality in it all from the expression of delight which she could detect in his eyes.
'You are a strange person,' said he, pretending to get vexed in order to bring Madame Rougon's scrutiny to an end; 'you are always imagining something extraordinary. I can only tell you what I know. I love Marthe more than you do, and I have never done anything that wasn't for her good. Shall I go for the doctor? I will at once, if you like.'
Madame Rougon watched him closely. She even questioned Rose at great length, without succeeding, however, in learning anything further. After all, she seemed glad to have her daughter with her, and spoke with great bitterness of people who would leave you to die on your own doorstep without even taking the trouble to open the door. And meantime Marthe, with her head thrown back upon her pillow, was indeed dying.
It was perfectly dark in the cell at Les Tulettes. A draught of cold air awoke Mouret from the cataleptic stupor into which his violence earlier in the evening had thrown him. He remained lying against the wall in perfect stillness for a few moments, his eyes staring widely; then he began to roll his head gently on the cold stone, wailing like a child just awakened from sleep. But the current of chill damp air swept against his legs, and he rose and looked around him to see whence it came. In front of him he saw the door of his cell wide open.
'She has left the door open,' said he aloud; 'she will be expecting me. I must be off.'
He went out, and then came back and felt his clothes after the manner of a methodical man who is afraid of forgetting something, and finally he carefully closed the door behind him. He passed through the first court with an easy unconcerned gait as though he were merely taking a stroll. As he was entering the second one, he caught sight of a warder who seemed to be on the watch. He stopped and deliberated for a moment. But, the warder having disappeared, he crossed the court and reached another door, which led to the open country. He closed it behind him without any appearance of astonishment or haste.
'She is a good woman all the same,' he murmured. 'She must have heard me calling her. It must be getting late. I will go home at once for fear they should feel uneasy.'
He struck out along a path. It seemed quite natural to him to find himself among the open fields. When he had gone a hundred yards he had altogether forgotten that Les Tulettes was behind him, and imagined that he had just left a vine-grower from whom he had purchased fifty hogsheads of wine. When he reached a spot where five roads met, he recognised where he was, and began to laugh as he said to himself:
'What a goose I am! I was going up the hill towards Saint-Eutrope; it is to the left I must turn. I shall be at Plassans in a good hour and a half.'
Then he went merrily along the high-road, looking at each of the mile-stones as at an old acquaintance. He stopped for a moment before certain fields and country-houses with an air of interest. The sky was of an ashy hue, streaked with broad rosy bands that lighted up the night like dying embers. Heavy drops of rain began to fall; the wind was blowing from the east and was full of moisture.
'Hallo!' said Mouret, looking up at the sky uneasily, 'I mustn't stop loitering. The wind is in the east, and there's going to be a pretty downpour. I shall never be able to reach Plassans before it begins; and I'm not well wrapped up either.'
He gathered round his breast the thick grey woollen waistcoat which he had torn at Les Tulettes. He had a bad bruise on his jaw, to which he raised his hand without heeding the sharp pain which it caused him. The high-road was quite deserted, and he only met a cart going down a hill at a leisurely pace. The driver was dozing, and made no response to his friendly good-night. The rain did not overtake him till he reached the bridge across the Viorne. It distressed him very much, and he went to take shelter under the bridge, grumbling that it was quite impossible to go on through such weather, that nothing ruined clothes so much as rain, and that if he had known what was coming he would have brought an umbrella. He waited patiently for a long half-hour, amusing himself by listening to the streaming of the downpour; then, when it was over, he returned to the high-road, and at last reached Plassans, ever taking the greatest care to keep himself from getting splashed with mud.
It was nearly midnight, though Mouret calculated that it could scarcely yet be eight o'clock. He passed through the deserted streets, feeling quite distressed that he had kept his wife waiting such a long time.
'She won't be able to understand it,' he thought. 'The dinner will be quite cold. Ah! I shall get a nice reception from Rose.'
At last he reached the Rue Balande and stood before his own door.
'Ah!' he said, 'I have not got my latchkey.'
He did not knock at the door, however. The kitchen window was quite dark, and the other windows in the front were equally void of all sign of life. A sense of deep suspicion then took possession of the madman; with an instinct that was quite animal-like, he scented danger. He stepped back into the shadow of the neighbouring houses, and again examined the house-front; then he seemed to come to a decision, and went round into the Impasse des Chevillottes. But the little door that led into the garden was bolted. At this, impelled by sudden rage, he threw himself against it with tremendous force, and the door, rotted by damp, broke into two pieces. For a moment the violence of the shock almost stunned Mouret, and rendered him unconscious of why he had broken down the door, which he tried to mend again by joining the broken pieces.
'That's a nice thing to have done, when I might so easily have knocked,' he said with a sudden pang of regret. 'It will cost me at least thirty francs to get a new door.'
He was now in the garden. As he raised his head and saw the bedroom on the first floor brightly lighted, he came to the conclusion that his wife was going to bed. This caused him great astonishment, and he muttered that he must certainly have dropped off to sleep under the bridge while he was waiting for the rain to stop. It must be very late, he thought. The windows of the neighbouring houses, Monsieur Rastoil's as well as those of the Sub-Prefecture, were in darkness. Then he again fixed his eyes upon his own house as he caught sight of the glow of a lamp on the second floor behind Abbé Faujas's thick curtains. That glow was like a flaming eye, and seemed to scorch him. He pressed his brow with his burning hands, and his head grew dizzy, racked by some horrible recollection like a vague nightmare, in which nothing was clearly defined, but which seemed to apply to some long-standing danger to himself and his family—a danger which grew and increased in horror, and threatened to swallow up the house unless he could do something to save it.
'Marthe, Marthe, where are you?' he stammered in an undertone. 'Come and bring away the children.'
He looked about him for Marthe. He could no longer recognise the garden. It seemed to him to be larger; to be empty and grey and like a cemetery. The big box-plants had vanished, the lettuces were no longer there, the fruit-trees had disappeared. He turned round again, came back, and knelt down to see if the slugs had eaten everything up. The disappearance of the box-plants, the death of their lofty greenery, caused him an especial pang, as though some of the actual life of the house had departed. Who was it that had killed them? What villain had been there uprooting everything and tearing away even the tufts of violets which he had planted at the foot of the terrace? Indignation arose in him as he contemplated all this ruin.
'Marthe, Marthe, where are you?' he called again.
He looked for her in the little conservatory to the right of the terrace. It was littered with the dead dry corpses of the box-plants. They were piled up in bundles amidst the stumps of the fruit-trees. In one corner was Désirée's bird-cage, hanging from a nail, with the door broken off and the wire-work sadly torn. The madman stepped back, overwhelmed with fear as though he had opened the door of a vault. Stammering, his throat on fire, he went back to the terrace and paced up and down before the door and the shuttered windows. His increasing rage gave his limbs the suppleness of a wild beast's. He braced himself up and stepped along noiselessly, trying to find some opening. An air-hole into the cellar was sufficient for him. He squeezed himself together and glided inside with the nimbleness of a cat, scraping the wall with his nails as he went. At last he was in the house.
The cellar door was only latched. He made his way through the darkness of the hall, groping past the walls with his hands, and pushing the kitchen door open. Some matches were on a shelf at the left. He went straight to this shelf, and struck a light to enable him to get a lamp which stood upon the mantelpiece without breaking anything. Then he looked about him. There appeared to have been a big meal there that evening. The kitchen was in a state of festive disorder. The table was strewn with dirty plates and dishes and glasses. There was a litter of pans, still warm, on the sink and the chairs and the very floor. A coffee-pot that had been forgotten was also boiling away beside the stove, slightly tilted like a tipsy man. Mouret put it straight and then tidily arranged the pans. He smelt them, sniffed at the drops of liquor that remained in the glasses, and counted the dishes and plates with growing irritation. This was no longer his quiet orderly kitchen; it seemed as if a hotelful of food had been wasted there. All this guzzling disorder reeked of indigestion.
'Marthe! Marthe!' he again repeated as he returned into the passage, carrying the lamp as he went; 'answer me, tell me where they have shut you up. We must be off, we must be off at once.'
He searched for her in the dining-room. The two cupboards to the right and left of the stove were open. From a burst bag of grey paper on the edge of a shelf some lumps of sugar had fallen upon the floor. Higher up Mouret could see a bottle of brandy with the neck broken and plugged with a piece of rag. Then he got upon a chair to examine the cupboards. They were half empty. The jars of preserved fruits had been attacked, the jam-pots had been opened and the jam tasted, the fruit had been nibbled, the provisions of all kinds had been gnawed and fouled as though a whole army of rats had been there. Not being able to find Marthe in the closets, Mouret searched all over the room, looking behind the curtains and even underneath the furniture. Fragments of bone and pieces of broken bread lay about the floor; there were marks on the table that had been left by sticky glasses. Then he crossed the hall and went to look for Marthe in the drawing-room. But, as soon as he opened the door, he stopped short. This could not really be his own drawing-room. The bright mauve paper, the red-flowered carpet, the new easy-chairs covered with cerise damask, filled him with amazement. He was afraid to enter a room that did not belong to him, and he closed the door.
'Marthe! Marthe!' he stammered again in accents of despair.
He went back to the middle of the hall, unable to quiet the hoarse panting which was swelling in his throat. Where had he got to, that he could not recognise a single spot? Who had been transforming his house in such a way? His recollections were quite confused. He could only recall some shadows gliding along the hall; two shadows, at first poverty-stricken, soft-spoken, self-suppressing, then tipsy and disreputable-looking; two shadows that leered and sniggered. He raised his lamp, the wick of which was burning smokily, and thereupon the shadows grew bigger, lengthened upon the walls, mounted aloft beside the staircase and filled and preyed upon the whole house. Some horrid filth, some fermenting putrescence had found its way into the place and had rotted the woodwork, rusted the iron and split the walls. Then he seemed to hear the house crumbling like a ceiling from dampness, and to see it melting like a handful of salt thrown into a basin of hot water.
But up above there sounded peals of ringing laughter which made his hair stand on end. He put the lamp down and went upstairs to look for Marthe. He crept up noiselessly on his hands and knees with all the nimbleness and stealth of a wolf. When he reached the landing of the first floor, he knelt down in front of the door of the bedroom. A ray of light streamed from underneath it. Marthe must be going to bed.
'What a jolly bed this is of theirs!' Olympe was just exclaiming; 'you can quite bury yourself in it, Honoré; I am right up to my eyes in feathers.'
She laughed and stretched herself and sprang about amidst the bed-clothes.
'Ever since I've been here,' she continued, 'I've been longing to sleep in this bed. It made me almost ill wishing for it. I could never see that lath of a landlady of ours get into it without feeling a furious desire to throw her on to the floor and put myself in her place. One gets quite warm directly. It's just as though I were wrapped in cotton-wool.'
Trouche, who had not yet gone to bed, was examining the bottles on the dressing-table.
'She has got all kinds of scents,' he said.
'Well, as she isn't here, we may just as well treat ourselves to the best room!' continued Olympe. 'There's no danger of her coming back and disturbing us. I have fastened the doors up. You will be getting cold, Honoré.'
But Trouche now opened the drawers and began groping about amongst the linen.
'Put this on, it's smothered with lace,' he said, tossing a night-dress to Olympe. 'I shall wear this red handkerchief myself.'
Then, as Trouche was at last getting into bed, Olympe said to him:
'Put the grog on the night-table. We need not get up and go to the other end of the room for it. There, my dear, we are like real householders now!'
They lay down side by side, with the eider-down quilt drawn up to their chins.
'I ate a deuced lot this evening,' said Trouche after a short pause.
'And drank a lot, too!' added Olympe with a laugh. 'I feel very cosy and snug. But the tiresome part is that my mother is always interfering with us. She has been quite awful to-day. I can't take a single step about the house without her being at me. There's really no advantage in our landlady going off if mother means to play the policeman. She has quite spoilt my day's enjoyment.'
'Hasn't the Abbé some idea of going away?' asked Trouche after another short interval of silence. 'If he is made a bishop, he will be obliged to leave the house to us.'
'One can't be sure of that,' Olympe petulantly replied. 'I dare say mother means to keep it. But how jolly we should be here, all by ourselves! I would make our landlady sleep upstairs in my brother's room; I'd persuade her that it was healthier than this. Pass me the glass, Honoré.'
They both took a drink and then covered themselves up afresh.
'Ah!' said Trouche, 'I'm afraid it won't be so easy to get rid of them, but we can try, at any rate. I believe the Abbé would have changed his quarters before if he had not been afraid that the landlady would have considered herself deserted and have made a rumpus. I think I'll try to talk the landlady over. I'll tell her a lot of tales to persuade her to turn them out.'
He took another drink.
'Oh! leave the matter to me,' replied Olympe; 'I'll get mother and Ovide turned out, as they've treated us so badly.'
'Well, if you don't succeed,' said Trouche, 'I can easily concoct some scandal about the Abbé and Madame Mouret; and then he will be absolutely obliged to shift his quarters.'
Olympe sat up in bed.
'That's a splendid idea,' she said, 'that is! We must set about it to-morrow. Before a month is over, this room will be ours. I must really give you a kiss for the idea.'
They then both grew very merry, and began to plan how they would arrange the room. They would change the place of the chest of drawers, they said; and they would bring up a couple of easy-chairs from the drawing-room. However, their speech was gradually growing huskier, and at last they became silent.
'There! you're off now!' murmured Olympe, after a time. 'You're snoring with your eyes open! Well, let me come to the other side, so that, at any rate, I can finish my novel. I'm not sleepy, if you are.'
She got up and rolled him like a mere lump towards the wall, and then began to read. But, before she had finished a page, she turned her head uneasily towards the door. She fancied she could hear a strange noise on the landing. At this she cried petulantly to her husband, giving him a dig in the ribs with her elbow:
'You know very well that I don't like that sort of joke. Don't play the wolf; anyone would fancy that there was somebody at the door. Well, go on if it pleases you; you are very irritating.'
Then she angrily absorbed herself in her book again, after sucking a slice of lemon left in her glass.
With the same stealthy movements as before, Mouret now quitted the door of the bedroom, where he had remained crouching. He climbed to the second floor and knelt before Abbé Faujas's door, squeezing himself close to the key-hole. He choked down Marthe's name, that again rose in his throat, and examined with glistening eye the corners of the priest's room, to satisfy himself that nobody was shut up there. The big bare room was in deep shadow; a small lamp which stood upon the table cast just a circular patch of light upon the floor, and the Abbé himself, who was writing, seemed like a big black stain in the midst of that yellow glare. After he had scrutinised the curtains and the chest of drawers, Mouret's gaze fell upon the iron bedstead, upon which lay the priest's hat, looking like the locks of a woman's hair. There was no doubt that Marthe was there, thought Mouret. Hadn't the Trouches said that she was to have that room? But as he continued gazing he saw that the bed was undisturbed, and looked, with its cold, white coverings, like a tombstone. His eyes were getting accustomed to the gloom. However, Abbé Faujas appeared to hear some sound, for he glanced at the door. When the maniac saw the priest's calm face his eyes reddened, a slight foam appeared at the corner of his lips, and it was with difficulty that he suppressed a shout. At last he went away on his hands and knees again, down the stairs and along the passages, still repeating in low tones:
'Marthe! Marthe!'
He searched for her through the whole house; in Rose's room, which he found empty; in the Trouches' apartments, which were filled with the spoils of the other rooms; in the children's old rooms, where he burst into tears as his hands came across a pair of worn-out boots which had belonged to Désirée. He went up and down the stairs, clinging on to the banisters, and gliding along the walls, stealthily exploring every apartment with the extraordinary dexterity of a scheming maniac. Soon there was not a single corner of the place from the cellar to the attic which he had not investigated. Marthe was nowhere in the house; nor were the children there, nor Rose. The house was empty; the house might crumble to pieces.
Mouret sat down upon the stairs. He choked down the panting which, in spite of himself, continued to distend his throat. With his back against the banisters, and his eyes wide open in the darkness, he sat waiting, absorbed in a scheme which he was patiently thinking out. His senses became so acute that he could hear the slightest sounds that arose in the house. Down below him snored Trouche, while Olympe turned over the pages of her book with a slight rubbing of her fingers against the paper. On the second floor Abbé Faujas's pen made a scratching sound like the crawling of an insect, while, in the adjoining room, Madame Faujas's heavy breathing seemed like an accompaniment to that shrill music. Mouret sat for an hour with his ears sharply strained. Olympe was the first of the wakeful ones to succumb to sleep. He could hear her novel fall upon the floor. Then Abbé Faujas laid down his pen and undressed himself, quietly gliding about his room in his slippers. He slipped off his clothes in silence, and did not even make the bed creak as he got into it. Ah! the house had gone to rest at last. But the madman could tell from the sound of the Abbé's breathing that he was yet awake. Gradually that breathing grew fuller, and at last the whole house slept.
Mouret waited on for another half-hour. He still listened with strained ears, as though he could hear the four sleepers descending into deeper and deeper slumber. The house lay wrapped in darkness and unconsciousness. Then the maniac rose up and slowly made his way into the passage.
'Marthe isn't here any longer; the house isn't here; nothing is here,' he murmured.
He opened the door that led into the garden, and went down to the little conservatory. When he got there he methodically removed the big dry box-plants, and carried them upstairs in enormous armfuls, piling them in front of the doors of the Trouches and the Faujases. He felt, too, a craving for a bright light, and he went into the kitchen and lighted all the lamps, which he placed upon the tables in the various rooms and on the landings, and along the passages. Then he brought up the rest of the box-plants. They were soon piled higher than the doors. As he was making his last journey with them he raised his eyes and noticed the windows. Next he went out into the garden again, took the trunks of the fruit-trees and stacked them up under the windows, skilfully arranging for little currents of air which should make them blaze freely. The stack seemed to him but a small one, however.
'There is nothing left,' he murmured: 'there must be nothing left.'
Then, as a thought struck him, he went down into the cellar, and recommenced his journeying backwards and forwards. He was now carrying up the supply of fuel for the winter, the coal, the vine-branches, and the wood. The pile under the windows gradually grew bigger. As he carefully arranged each bundle of vine-branches, he was thrilled with livelier satisfaction. He next proceeded to distribute the fuel through the rooms on the ground-floor, and left a heap of it in the entrance-hall, and another heap in the kitchen. Then he piled the furniture atop of the different heaps. An hour sufficed him to get his work finished. He had taken his boots off, and had glided about all over the house, with heavily laden arms, so dexterously that he had not let a single piece of wood fall roughly to the floor. He seemed endowed with new life, with extraordinary nimbleness of motion. As far as this one firmly fixed idea of his went, he was perfectly in possession of his senses.
When all was ready, he lingered for a moment to enjoy the sight of his work. He went from pile to pile, took pleasure in viewing the square-set pyres, and gently rubbed his hands together with an appearance of extreme satisfaction. As a few fragments of coal had fallen on the stairs, he ran off to get a brush, and carefully swept the black dust from the steps. Then he completed his inspection with the careful precision of a man who means to do things as they ought to be done. He gradually became quite excited with satisfaction, and dropped on to his hands and knees again, and began to hop about, panting more heavily in his savage joy.
At last he took a vine-branch and set fire to the heaps. First of all he lighted the pile on the terrace underneath the windows. Then he leapt back into the house and set fire to the heaps in the drawing-room and dining-room, and then to those in the kitchen and the hall. Next he sprang up the stairs and flung the remains of his blazing brand upon the piles that lay against the doors of the Trouches and Faujases. An ever-increasing rage was thrilling him, and the lurid blaze of the fire brought his madness to a climax. He twice came down the stairs with terrific leaps, bounded about through the thick smoke, fanning the flames with his breath, and casting handfuls of coal upon them. At the sight of the flames, already mounting to the ceilings of the rooms, he sat down every now and then and laughed and clapped his hands with all his strength.
The house was now roaring like an over-crammed stove. The flames burst out at all points, at once, with a violence that split the floors. But the maniac made his way upstairs again through the sheets of fire, singeing his hair and blackening his clothes as he went. And he posted himself on the second-floor, crouching down on his hands and knees with his growling, beast-like head thrown forward. He was keeping guard over the landing, and his eyes never quitted the priest's door.
'Ovide! Ovide!' shrieked a panic-stricken voice.
Madame Faujas's door at the end of the landing was suddenly opened and the flames swept into her room with the roar of a tempest. The old woman appeared in the midst of the fire. Stretching out her arms, she hurled aside the blazing brands and sprang on to the landing, pulling and pushing away with her hands and feet the burning heap that blocked up her son's door, and calling all the while to the priest despairingly. The maniac crouched still lower down, his eyes gleaming while he continued to growl.
'Wait for me! Don't get out of the window!' cried Madame Faujas, striking at her son's door.
She threw her weight against it, and the charred door yielded easily. She reappeared holding her son in her arms. He had taken time to put on his cassock, and was choking, half suffocated by the smoke.
'I am going to carry you, Ovide,' she cried, with energetic determination; 'Hold well on to my shoulders, and clutch hold of my hair if you feel you are slipping. Don't trouble, I'll carry you through it all.'
She hoisted him upon her shoulders as though he were a child, and this sublime mother, this old peasant woman, carrying her devotion to death itself, did not so much as totter beneath the crushing weight of that big swooning, unresisting body. She extinguished the burning brands with her naked feet and made a free passage through the flames by brushing them aside with her open hand so that her son might not even be touched by them. But just as she was about to go downstairs, the maniac, whom she had not observed, sprang upon the Abbé Faujas and tore him from off her shoulders. His muttered growl turned into a wild shriek, while he writhed in a fit at the head of the stairs. He belaboured the priest, tore him with his nails and strangled him.
'Marthe! Marthe!' he bellowed.
Then he rolled down the blazing stairs, still with the priest in his grasp; while Madame Faujas, who had driven her teeth into his throat, drained his blood. The Trouches perished in their drunken stupor without a groan; and the house, gutted and undermined, collapsed in the midst of a cloud of sparks.
Macquart did not find Porquier at home, and so the doctor only reached Madame Rougon's at nearly half-past twelve. The whole house was still in commotion. Rougon himself was the only one who had not got out of bed. Emotion had a killing effect upon him, said he. Félicité, who was still seated in the same armchair by Marthe's bedside, rose to meet the doctor.
'Oh, my dear doctor, we are so very anxious!' she murmured. 'The poor child has never stirred since we put her to bed there. Her hands are already quite cold. I have kept them in my own, but it has done no good.'
Doctor Porquier scanned Marthe's face, and then, without making any further examination, he compressed his lips and made a vague gesture with his hands.
'My dear Madame Rougon,' he said, 'you must summon up your courage.'
Félicité burst into sobs.
'The end is at hand,' the doctor continued in a lower voice. 'I have been expecting this sad termination for a long time past; I must confess so much now. Both of poor Madame Mouret's lungs are diseased, and in her case phthisis has been complicated by nervous derangement.'
He took a seat, and a smile played about his lips, the smile of the polished doctor who thinks that even in the presence of death itself suave politeness is demanded of him.
'Don't give way and make yourself ill, my dear lady. The catastrophe was inevitable and any little accident might have hastened it. I should imagine that poor Madame Mouret must have been subject to coughing when she was very young; wasn't she? I should say that the germs of the disease have been spreading within her for a good many years past. Latterly, and especially within the last three years, phthisis has been making frightful strides in her. How pious and devotional she was! I have been quite touched to see her passing away in such sanctity. Well, well, the decrees of Providence are inscrutable; science is very often quite powerless.'
Seeing that Madame Rougon still continued to weep, he poured out upon her the tenderest consolations, and pressed her to take a cup of lime-flower water to calm herself.
'Don't distress yourself, I beg you,' he continued. 'I assure you that she has lost all sense of pain. She will continue sleeping as tranquilly as she is doing at present, and will only regain consciousness just before death. I won't leave you; I will remain here, though my services are quite unavailing. I shall stay, however, as a friend, my dear lady, as a friend.'
He settled himself comfortably for the night in an easy chair. Félicité grew a little calmer. When Doctor Porquier gave her to understand that Marthe had only a few more hours to live, she thought of sending for Serge from the Seminary, which was near at hand. She asked Rose to go there for him, but the cook at first refused.
'Do you want to kill the poor little fellow as well?' she exclaimed. 'It would be too great a shock for him to be called up in the middle of the night to come to see a dead woman. I won't be his murderer!'
Rose still retained bitter feelings against her mistress. Ever since the latter had been lying there dying she had paced round the bed, angrily knocking about the cups and the hot-water bottles.
Was there any sense in doing such a thing as madame did?' she cried. 'She has only herself to blame if she has got her death by going to see the master. And now everything is turned topsy-turvy and we are all distracted. No, no; I don't approve at all of the little fellow being startled out of his sleep in such a way.'
In the end, however, she consented to go to the Seminary. Doctor Porquier had stretched himself out in front of the fire, and with half-closed eyes continued to address consolatory words to Madame Rougon. A slight rattling sound began to be heard in Marthe's chest. Uncle Macquart, who had not appeared again since he had gone away two good hours previously, now gently pushed the door open.
'Where have you been?' Félicité asked him, taking him into a corner of the room.
He told her that he had been to put his horse and trap up at The Three Pigeons. But his eyes sparkled so vividly, and there was such a look of diabolical cunning about him, that she was filled with a thousand suspicions. She forgot her dying daughter for the moment, for she scented some trickery which it was imperative for her to get to the bottom of.
'Anyone would imagine that you had been following and playing the spy upon somebody,' she said, looking at his muddy trousers. 'You are hiding something from me, Macquart. It is not right of you. We have always treated you very well.'
'Oh, very well, indeed!' sniggered Macquart. 'I'm glad you've told me so. Rougon is a skinflint. He treated me like the lowest of the low in the matter of that cornfield. Where is Rougon? Snoozing comfortably in his bed, eh? It's little he cares for all the trouble one takes about the family.'
The smile which accompanied these last words greatly disquieted Félicité. She looked him keenly in the face.
'What trouble have you taken for the family?' she asked. 'Do you grudge having brought poor Marthe back from Les Tulettes? I tell you again that all that business has a very suspicious look. I have been questioning Rose, and it seems to me that you wanted to come straight here. It surprises me that you did not knock more loudly in the Rue Balande; they would have come and opened the door. I'm not saying this because I don't want my dear child to be here; I am glad to think, on the contrary, that she will, at any rate, die among her own people, and will have only loving faces about her.'
Macquart seemed greatly surprised at this speech, and interrupted her by saying with an uneasy manner:
'I thought that you and Abbé Faujas were the best of friends.'
She made no reply, but stepped up to Marthe, whose breathing was now becoming more difficult. When she left the bedside again, she saw Macquart pulling one of the curtains aside and peering out into the dark night, while rubbing the moist window-pane with his hand.
'Don't go away to-morrow without coming and talking to me,' she said to him. 'I want to have all this cleared up.'
'Just as you like,' he replied. 'You are very difficult to please. First you like people, and then you don't like them. I always keep on in the same regular easy-going way.'
He was evidently very much vexed to find that the Rougons no longer made common cause with Abbé Faujas. He tapped the window with the tips of his fingers, and still kept his eyes on the black night. Just at that moment the sky was reddened by a sudden glow.
'What is that?' asked Félicité.
Macquart opened the window and looked out.
'It looks like a fire,' he said unconcernedly. 'There is something burning behind the Sub-Prefecture.'
There were sounds of commotion on the Place. A servant came into the room with a scared look and told them that the house of madame's daughter was on fire. It was believed, he continued, that madame's son-in-law, he whom they had been obliged to shut up, had been seen walking about the garden carrying a burning vine-branch. The most unfortunate part of the matter was that there seemed no hope of saving the lodgers. Félicité turned sharply round, and pondered for a minute, keeping her eyes fixed on Macquart. Then she clearly understood everything.
'You promised me solemnly,' she said in a low voice, 'that you would conduct yourself quietly and decently when we set you up in your little house at Les Tulettes. You have everything that you want, and are quite independent. This is abominable, disgraceful, I tell you! How much did Abbé Fenil give you to let Fran?ois escape?'
Macquart was going to break out angrily, but Madame Rougon made him keep silent. She seemed much more uneasy about the consequences of the matter than indignant at the crime itself.
And what a terrible scandal there will be, if it all comes out,' she continued. 'Have we ever refused you anything? We will talk together to-morrow, and we will speak again of that cornfield about which you are so bitter against us. If Rougon were to hear of such a thing as this, he would die of grief.'
Macquart could not help smiling. Still he defended himself energetically, and swore that he knew nothing about the matter, and had had no hand in it. Then, as the sky grew redder, and Doctor Porquier had already gone downstairs he left the room, saying, as if he were anxiously curious about the matter:
'I am going to see what is happening.'
It was Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies who had given the alarm. There had been an evening party at the Sub-Prefecture, and he was just going to bed at a few minutes before one o'clock when he perceived a strange red reflection upon the ceiling of his bedroom. Going to the window, he was struck with astonishment at seeing a great fire burning in the Mourets' garden, while a shadowy form, which he did not at first recognise, danced about in the midst of the smoke, brandishing a blazing vine-branch. Almost immediately afterwards flames burst out from all the openings on the ground-floor. The sub-prefect hurriedly put on his trousers again, called his valet, and sent the porter off to summon the fire-brigade and the authorities. Then, before going to the scene of the disaster, he finished dressing himself and consulted his mirror to make sure that his moustache was quite as it should be. He was the first to arrive in the Rue Balande. The street was absolutely deserted, save for a couple of cats which were rushing across it.
'They will let themselves be broiled like cutlets in there!' thought Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, astonished at the quiet, sleepy appearance of the house on the street side, where as yet there was no sign of the conflagration.
He knocked loudly at the door, but could hear nothing except the roaring of the fire in the well of the staircase. Then he knocked at Monsieur Rastoil's door. There piercing screams were heard, hurried rustlings to and fro, banging of doors and stifled calls.
'Aurélie, cover up your shoulders!' cried the presiding judge, who rushed out on to the pathway, followed by Madame Rastoil and her younger daughter, the one who was still unmarried. In her hurry, Aurélie had thrown over her shoulders a cloak of her father's, which left her arms bare. She turned very red as she caught sight of Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies.
'What a terrible disaster!' stammered the presiding judge. 'Everything will be burnt down. The wall of my bedroom is quite hot already. The two houses almost join. Ah! my dear sub-prefect, I haven't even stopped to remove the time-pieces. We must organise assistance. We can't stand by and let all our belongings be destroyed in an hour or two.'
Madame Rastoil, scantily clothed in a dressing-gown, was bewailing her drawing-room furniture, which she had only just had newly covered. By this time, however, several neighbours had appeared at their windows. The presiding judge summoned them to his assistance, and commenced to remove his effects from his house. He made the time-pieces his own particular charge, and brought them out and deposited them on the pathway opposite. When the easy-chairs from the drawing-room were carried out, he made his wife and daughter sit down in them, and the sub-prefect remained by their side to reassure them.
'Make yourselves easy, ladies,' he said. 'The engine will be here directly, and then a vigorous attack will be made upon the fire. I think I may undertake to promise that your house will be saved.'
All at once the window-panes of the Mourets' house burst, and the flames broke out from the first floor. The street was illumined by a bright glow; it was as light as at midday. A drummer could be heard passing across the Place of the Sub-Prefecture, some distance off, sounding the alarm. A number of men ran up, and a chain was formed to pass on the buckets of water; but there were no buckets; and still the engine did not arrive. In the midst of the general consternation Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, without leaving the two ladies, shouted out orders in a loud voice.
'Leave a free passage! The chain is too closely formed down there! Keep yourselves two feet apart!'
Then he turned to Aurélie and said in a low voice:
'I am very much surprised that the engine has not arrived yet. It is a new engine. This will be the first time it has been used. I sent the porter off immediately, and I told him also to call at the police-station.'
However, the gendarmes arrived before the end. They kept back the inquisitive spectators, whose numbers increased, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour. The sub-prefect himself went to put the chain in a better order, as it was bulging out in the middle, through the pushing of some rough fellows who had run up from the outskirts of the town. The little bell of Saint-Saturnin's was sounding the alarm with cracked notes, and a second drum beat faintly at the bottom of the street near the Mall. At last the engine arrived with a noisy clatter. The crowd made way for it, and the fifteen panting firemen of Plassans came up at a run. However, in spite of Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies's intervention, a quarter of an hour elapsed before the engine was in working order.
'I tell you that it is the piston that won't work!' cried the captain angrily to the sub-prefect, who asserted that the nuts were too tightly screwed.
At last a jet of water shot up, and the crowd gave a sigh of satisfaction. The house was now blazing from the ground-floor to the second-floor like a huge torch. The water hissed as it fell into the burning mass, and the flames, separating into yellow tongues, seemed to shoot up still higher than before. Some of the firemen had mounted on to the roof of the presiding judge's house, and were breaking open the tiles with their picks to limit the progress of the fire.
'It's all up with the place!' muttered Macquart, who stood quietly on the pathway with his hands in his pockets, watching the conflagration with lively interest.
Out in the street a perfect open-air drawing-room had now been established. The easy-chairs were arranged in a semicircle, as though to allow their occupants to view the spectacle at their ease. Madame de Condamin and her husband had just arrived. They had scarcely got back home from the Sub-Prefecture, they said, when they had heard the drum beating the alarm. Monsieur de Bourdeu, Monsieur Maffre, Doctor Porquier, and Monsieur Delangre, accompanied by several members of the municipal council, had also lost no time in hastening to the scene. They all clustered round poor Madame Rastoil and her daughter, trying to comfort and console them with sympathetic remarks. After a time most of them sat down in the easy-chairs, and a general conversation took place, while the engine snorted away half a score yards off and the blazing beams crackled.
'Have you got my watch, my dear?' Madame Rastoil inquired. 'It was on the mantelpiece with the chain.'
'Yes, yes, I have it in my pocket,' replied the president, trembling with emotion. 'I have got the silver as well. I wanted to bring everything away, but the firemen wouldn't let me; they said it was ridiculous.'
Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies still showed the greatest calmness and kindly attention.
'I assure you that your house is in no danger at all,' he remarked. 'The force of the fire is spent now. You may go and put your silver back in your dining-room.'
But Monsieur Rastoil would not consent to part with his plate, which he was carrying under his arm, wrapped up in a newspaper.
'All the doors are open,' he stammered, 'and the house is full of people that I know nothing about. They have made a hole in my roof that will cost me a pretty penny to put right again.'
Madame de Condamin now questioned the sub-prefect.
'Oh! how terrible!' she cried. 'I thought that the lodgers had had time to escape. Has nothing been seen of Abbé Faujas?'
'I knocked at the door myself,' said Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, 'but I couldn't make anyone hear. When the firemen arrived I had the door broken open, and I ordered them to place the ladders against the windows. But nothing was of any use. One of our brave gendarmes who ventured into the hall narrowly escaped being suffocated by the smoke.'
'As Abbé Faujas has been, I suppose! What a horrible death!' said the fair Octavie, with a shudder.
The ladies and gentlemen looked into one another's faces, which showed pale in the flickering light of the conflagration. Doctor Porquier explained to them, however, that death by fire was probably not so painful as they imagined.
'When the fire once reaches one,' he said in conclusion, 'it can only be a matter of few seconds. Of course, it depends, to some extent, upon the violence of the conflagration.'
Monsieur de Condamin was counting upon his fingers.
'Even if Madame Mouret is with her parents, as is asserted, that still leaves four—Abbé Faujas, his mother, his sister, and his brother-in-law. It's a pretty bad business!'
Just then Madame Rastoil inclined her head towards her husband's ear. 'Give me my watch,' she whispered. 'I don't feel easy about it. You are always fidgetting, and you may sit on it.'
Someone now called out that the wind was carrying the sparks towards the Sub-Prefecture, and Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies immediately sprang up, and, apologising for his departure, hastened off to guard against this new danger. Monsieur Delangre was anxious that a last attempt should be made to rescue the victims. But the captain of the fire brigade roughly told him to go up the ladder himself if he thought such a thing possible; he had never seen such a fire before, he declared. The devil himself must have lighted it, for the house was burning like a bundle of chips, at all points at once. The mayor, followed by some kindly disposed persons, then went round into the Impasse des Chevillottes. Perhaps, he said, it would be possible to get to the windows from the garden side.
'It would be very magnificent if it were not so sad,' remarked Madame de Condamin, who was now calmer.
The fire was certainly becoming a superb spectacle. Showers of sparks rushed up in the midst of huge blue flames; chasms of glowing red showed themselves behind each of the gaping windows, while the smoke rolled gently away in a huge purplish cloud, like the smoke from Bengal lights set burning at some display of fireworks. The ladies and gentlemen were comfortably seated in their chairs, leaning on their elbows and stretching out their legs as they watched the spectacle before them; and whenever there was a more violent burst of flames than usual, there came an interval of silence, broken by exclamations. At some distance off, in the midst of the flickering brilliance which every now and then lighted up masses of serried heads, there rose the murmur of the crowd, the sound of gushing water, a general confused uproar. Ten paces away the engine, with its regular, snorting breath, continued vomiting streams of water from its metal throat.
'Look at the third window on the second floor!' suddenly cried Monsieur Maffre. 'You can see a bed burning quite distinctly on the left hand. It has yellow curtains, and they are blazing like so much paper.'
Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies now returned at a gentle trot to reassure the ladies and gentlemen. It had been a false alarm.
'The sparks,' he said, 'are certainly being carried by the wind towards the Sub-Prefecture, but they are extinguished in the air before they reach it. There is no further danger. They have got the fire well in hand now.'
'But is it known how the fire originated?' asked Madame de Condamin.
Monsieur de Bourdeu asserted that he had first of all seen a dense smoke issuing from the kitchen. Monsieur Maffre alleged, on the other hand, that the flames had first appeared in a room on the first floor. But the sub-prefect shook his head with an air of official prudence, and said in a low voice:
'I am much afraid that malice has had something to do with the disaster. I have ordered an inquiry to be made.'
Then he went on to tell them that he had seen a man lighting the fire with a vine-branch.
'Yes, I saw him too,' interrupted Aurélie Rastoil. 'It was Monsieur Mouret.'
This statement created the greatest astonishment. The thing seemed impossible. Monsieur Mouret escaping and burning down his house—what a frightful story! They overwhelmed Aurélie with questions. She blushed, and her mother looked at her severely. It was scarcely proper for a young girl to be constantly looking out of her window at night-time.
'I assure you that I distinctly recognised Monsieur Mouret,' she continued. 'I had not gone to sleep, and I got up when I saw a bright light. Monsieur Mouret was dancing about in the midst of the fire.'
Then the sub-prefect spoke out:
'Mademoiselle is quite correct. I recognise the unhappy man now. He looked so terrible that I was in doubt as to who it might be, although his face seemed familiar. Excuse me; this is a very serious matter, and I must go and give some orders.'
He went away again, while the company began to discuss this terrible affair of a landlord burning his lodgers to death. Monsieur de Bourdeu inveighed hotly against lunatic asylums. The surveillance exercised in them, he said, was most imperfect. The truth was that Monsieur de Bourdeu was greatly afraid lest the prefecture which Abbé Faujas had promised him should be burnt away in the fire before his eyes.
'Maniacs are extremely revengeful,' said Monsieur de Condamin, in all simplicity.
This remark seemed to embarrass everyone, and the conversation dropped. The ladies shuddered slightly, while the men exchanged peculiar glances. The burning house had become an object of still greater interest now that they knew whose hand had set it on fire. They blinked with a thrill of delicious terror as they gazed upon the glowing pile, and thought of the drama that had been enacted there.
If old Mouret is in there, that makes five,' said Monsieur de Condamin. Then the ladies hushed him and told him that he was a cold-blooded, unfeeling man.
The Paloques, meanwhile, had been watching the fire since its commencement from the window of their dining-room. They were just above the drawing-room that had been improvised upon the pathway. The judge's wife at last went out, and graciously offered shelter and hospitality to the Rastoil ladies and the friends surrounding them.
'We can see very well from our windows, I assure you,' she said.
And, as the ladies declined her invitation, she added:
'You will certainly take cold; it is a very sharp night.'
But Madame de Condamin smiled and stretched out her little feet, which showed from beneath her skirts.
'Oh dear no! we're not at all cold,' she said. 'My feet are quite toasted. I am very comfortable indeed. Are you cold, mademoiselle?'
'I am really too warm,' Aurélie replied. 'One could imagine that it was a summer night. This fire keeps one quite warm and cosy.'
Everyone declared that it was very pleasant, and so Madame Paloque determined to remain there with them and to take a seat in one of the easy-chairs. Monsieur Maffre had just gone off. He had caught sight, in the midst of the crowd, of his two sons, accompanied by Guillaume Porquier, who had all three run up from a house near the ramparts to see the fire. The magistrate, who was certain that he had locked his lads up in their bedroom, dragged Alphonse and Ambroise away by the ears.
'I think we might go off to bed now,' said Monsieur de Bourdeu, who was gradually growing more cross-grained.
However, Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies had reappeared again, and showed himself quite indefatigable, though he never neglected the ladies, in spite of the duties and anxieties of all kinds with which he was overwhelmed. He sprang hastily forward to meet Monsieur Delangre, who was just coming back from the Impasse des Chevillottes. They talked together in low tones. The mayor had apparently witnessed some terrible sight, for he kept passing his hand over his face, as though trying to drive away some awful vision that was pursuing him. The ladies could only hear him murmuring, 'We arrived too late! It was horrible!' He would not answer any questions.
'Only Bourdeu and Delangre will regret Abbé Faujas,' Monsieur de Condamin whispered in Madame Paloque's ear.
'They had business on hand with him,' the latter replied quietly. 'Ah! here is Abbé Bourrette. He is weeping from genuine sorrow.'
Abbé Bourrette, who had formed part of the chain of men who passed the buckets on, was sobbing bitterly. The poor man refused all consolation. He would not sit down, but remained standing, with anxious, troubled eyes, watching the last beams burn away. Abbé Surin had also been seen; but he had disappeared after picking up in the crowd all the information he could.
'Come along; let us be off to bed,' exclaimed Monsieur de Bourdeu. 'It is foolish of us to stop here.'
The whole party rose. It was settled that Monsieur Rastoil and his wife and daughter should spend the night at the Paloques'. Madame de Condamin gently tapped her dress, which had got slightly creased, in order to straighten it. The easy-chairs were pushed out of the way, and the company lingered yet a few more moments while bidding each other good-night. The engine was still snorting, and the fire was dying down amidst dense black smoke. Nothing was to be heard but the tramping of the diminishing crowd and the last blows of a fireman's axe striking down a beam.
'It is all over!' thought Macquart, who still kept his position on the opposite pathway.
He remained there a few moments longer, listening to the last words which Monsieur de Condamin exchanged in low tones with Madame Paloque.
'Bah!' said the judge's wife, 'no one will cry for him, unless it's that big gander Bourrette. He had grown quite unendurable, and we were nothing but his slaves. His lordship the Bishop, I dare say, has got a smiling face just now. Plassans is at last delivered!'
'And the Rougons!' exclaimed Monsieur de Condamin. 'They must be quite delighted.'
'I should think so, indeed. The Rougons must be up in the heavens. They will inherit the Abbé's conquest. Ah! they would have paid anyone well who would have run the risk of setting the house on fire.'
Macquart went away feeling extremely dissatisfied. He was beginning to fear that he had been duped. The joy of the Rougons filled him with consternation. The Rougons were crafty folks who always played a double game, and whose opponents were quite certain to end by getting the worst of the struggle. As Macquart crossed the Place of the Sub-Prefecture he swore to himself that he would never set to work in this blind way again.
As he went up to the room where Marthe lay dying he found Rose sitting on one of the stairs. She was in a fuming rage.
'No, indeed, I will certainly not stop in the room!' she cried. 'I won't look on and see such things. Let her die without me; let her die like a dog! I no longer have any love for her; I have no love for anyone. To send for the poor little fellow to kill him! And I consented to go for him! I shall hate myself for it all my life! He was as white as his nightshirt, the angel! I was obliged to carry him here from the Seminary. I thought he was going to give up the ghost on the way, he cried so. Oh! it's a cruel shame! And there he has gone into the room now to kiss her! It quite makes my flesh creep. I wish the whole house would topple down on our heads and finish us all off at one stroke! I will shut myself up in some hole somewhere, and live quite alone, and never see anyone again—never, never! One's whole life seems made up of things that make one weep and make one angry!'
Macquart entered the room. Madame Rougon was on her knees, burying her face in her hands, and Serge, with tears streaming down his cheeks, was standing by the bedside supporting the head of the dying woman. She had not yet regained consciousness. The last flickering flames of the conflagration cast a ruddy reflection upon the ceiling of the room.
At last a convulsive tremor shook Marthe's body. She opened her eyes with an expression of surprise, and sat up in bed to glance around her. Then she clasped her hands together with a look of unutterable terror, and died even as she caught sight of Serge's cassock in the crimson glow.
THE END.