'That's right, Rose,' he cried, 'you had better give my dinner to your

priest this evening, and if he hasn't got sufficient blankets of his

own upstairs you can take mine off my bed.'

The cook exchanged a meaning glance with Marthe, who was working by

the window, waiting till the sunshine should leave the terrace. Then,

shrugging her shoulders, she said:

'Ah! sir, you have never had a charitable heart!'

She took herself off, while Marthe continued sewing without raising

her head. For the last few days she had, with feverish energy,

again applied herself to her needlework. She was embroidering an

altar-frontal as a gift for the cathedral. The ladies were desirous of

giving a complete set of altar furniture. Madame Rastoil and Madame

Delangre had undertaken to present the candlesticks, and Madame de

Condamin had ordered a magnificent silver crucifix from Paris.

Meantime, in the drawing-room, Abbé Faujas was gently remonstrating

with Monsieur Maffre, telling him that Doctor Porquier was a religious

man and a person of the highest integrity, and that no one could be

more pained than he by his son's deplorable conduct. The magistrate

listened with a sanctimonious air, and his heavy features and big

prominent eyes assumed quite an ecstatic expression at certain pious

remarks which the priest uttered in a very moving manner. He allowed

that he had been rather too hasty, and declared that he was willing to

make every apology as his reverence thought he had been in the wrong.

'You must send your own sons to me,' said the priest, 'and I will talk

to them.'

Monsieur Maffre shook his head with a slight sneering laugh.

'Oh! you needn't be afraid about them, Monsieur le Curé. The young

scamps won't play any more tricks. They have been locked up in their

rooms for the last three days with nothing but bread and water. If I

had had a stick in my hand when I found out what they had been doing, I

should have broken it across their backs.'

The Abbé looked at him and recollected how Mouret had accused him of

having killed his wife by harshness and avarice; then, with a gesture

of protest, he added:

'No, no; that is not the way to treat young men. Your elder son,

Ambroise, is twenty years old and the younger is nearly eighteen, isn't

he? They are no longer children, remember. You must allow them some

amusements.'

The magistrate remained silent with surprise.

'Then you would let them go on smoking and allow them to frequent

cafés?' he said, presently.

'Well,' replied the priest, with a smile. 'I think that young men

should be allowed to meet together to talk and smoke their cigarettes

and even to play a game of billiards or chess. They will give

themselves every license if you show no tolerance. Only remember that

it is not to every café that I should be willing for them to go. I

should like to see a special one provided for them, a sort of club, as

I have seen done in several towns.'

Then he unfolded a complete scheme for such a club. Monsieur Maffre

gradually seemed to appreciate it. He nodded his head as he said:

'Capital, capital! It would be a worthy pendant to the Home of the

Virgin. Really, Monsieur le Curé, we must put such a splendid idea as

this into execution.'

'Well, then,' the priest concluded, as he accompanied Monsieur Maffre

to the door, 'since you approve of the plan, just advocate it among

your friends. I will see Monsieur Delangre, and speak to him about it.

We might meet in the cathedral on Sunday after vespers and come to some

decision.'

On the Sunday, Monsieur Maffre brought Monsieur Rastoil with him. They

found Abbé Faujas and Monsieur Delangre in a little room adjoining the

sacristy. The gentlemen displayed great enthusiasm in favour of the

priest's idea, and the institution of a young men's club was agreed

upon in principle. There was considerable discussion, however, as to

what it should be called. Monsieur Maffre was strongly desirous that it

should be known as the Guild of Jesus.

'Oh, no! no!' the priest impatiently cried at last. 'You would get

scarcely anyone to join, and the few members would only be jeered at.

There must be no attempt to tack religion on to the business; indeed, I

intend that we should leave religion outside its doors altogether. All

we want to do is to win the young people over to our side by providing

them with some innocent recreation; that is all.'

The justice of the peace gazed at the priest with such an expression of

astonishment and anxiety that Monsieur Delangre was obliged to bend his

head to conceal a smile, while he slyly pulled the Abbé's cassock. Then

the priest went on in a calmer voice:

'I am sure, gentlemen, that you do not feel any distrust of me, and I

ask you to leave the management of the matter in my hands. I propose

to adopt some very simple name, such a one, for instance, as the Young

Men's Club, which fully expresses all that is required.'

Monsieur Rastoil and Monsieur Maffre bowed, although this title seemed

to them a little weak. They next spoke of nominating the Curé as

president of a provisional committee.

'I fancy,' said Monsieur Delangre, glancing at the priest, 'that this

suggestion will scarcely meet with his reverence's approbation.'

'Oh dear, no!' the Abbé exclaimed, slightly shrugging his shoulders.

'My cassock would frighten the timid and lukewarm away. We should only

get the pious young people, and it is not for them that we are going

to found our club. What we want is to gather in the wanderers; to win

converts, in a word; isn't that so?'

'Clearly,' replied the presiding judge.

'Very well, then, it will be better for us to keep ourselves in the

background, myself especially. What I propose is this: your son,

Monsieur Rastoil, and yours, Monsieur Delangre, will alone come

forward. It must appear as if they themselves had formed the idea of

this club. Send them to me in the morning, and I will talk the matter

over at length with them. I already have a suitable building in my mind

and a code of rules quite prepared. Your two sons, Monsieur Maffre,

will naturally be enrolled at the head of the list of members.'

The presiding judge seemed flattered at the part assigned to his

son; and so matters were arranged in this way, notwithstanding the

resistance of the justice of the peace, who had hoped to win some

personal distinction from the founding of the club. The next day

Séverin Rastoil and Lucien Delangre put themselves in communication

with Abbé Faujas. Séverin was a tall young man of five-and-twenty,

with a badly shaped skull and a dull brain, who had just been called

to the bar, thanks to the position which his father held. The latter

was anxiously dreaming of making him a public prosecutor's assessor,

despairing of his ever succeeding in winning any practice for himself.

Lucien, on the other hand, was short and sharp-eyed, had a crafty mind,

and pleaded with all the coolness of an old practitioner, although he

was a year younger than Séverin. The 'Plassans Gazette' spoke of him

as a future light of the bar. It was more particularly to him that the

Abbé gave the minutest instructions as to his scheme. As for young

Rastoil he simply went fussing about, bursting with importance. In

three weeks the Young Men's Club was founded and opened.

There was at that time beneath the church of the Minimes, situated at

the end of the Cours Sauvaire, a number of very large rooms and an

old monastery refectory, which were no longer put to any use. This

was the place that Abbé Faujas had thought of for the club, and the

clergy of the parish very willingly allowed him to use the rooms. One

morning, when the provisional committee of the Young Men's Club had

set workmen going in this cellar-like place, the citizens of Plassans

were quite astounded to see what appeared to be a café being fitted

up under the church. Five days afterwards there was no longer any

room for doubt on the point. The place was certainly going to be a

café. Divans were being brought thither, with marble-topped tables,

chairs, two billiard-tables, and even three crates of crockery and

glass. An entrance was contrived at the end of the building, as far as

possible from the doorway of the church, and great crimson curtains,

genuine restaurant-curtains, were hung behind the glass panes. You

descended five stone steps, and on opening the door found yourself

in a large hall; to the right of which there was a smaller one and a

reading-room, while in a square room at the far end were placed the two

billiard-tables. They were exactly beneath the high altar.

'Well, my poor boys,' said Guillaume Porquier one day to Monsieur

Maffre's two sons, whom he had met on the Cours, 'so they are going to

make you serve at mass between your games at bézique.'

However, Ambroise and Alphonse besought him not to speak to them in

public, as their father had threatened to send them to sea if they

continued to associate with him.

When the first astonishment was over, the Young Men's Club proved a

great success. Monseigneur Rousselot accepted the honorary presidency,

and even visited it in person one evening, attended by his secretary,

Abbé Surin. Each of them drank a glass of currant-syrup in the smaller

room, and the glass which his lordship used was preserved with great

respect upon a sideboard. The Bishop's visit is still talked of with

much emotion at Plassans, and it brought about the adherence of all

the fashionable young men of the town. It was soon considered very bad

style not to belong to the Young Men's Club.

Guillaume Porquier, however, used to prowl about the entrance,

sniggering like a young wolf who dreams of making his way into a

sheep-fold. Notwithstanding all the fear they had of their father,

Monsieur Maffre's sons quite worshipped this shameless young man who

regaled them with stories of Paris, and entertained them at secret

little parties in the suburbs. They had got into the habit of meeting

him regularly every Saturday evening at nine o'clock near a certain

seat on the Mall. They slipped away from the club and sat gossiping

till eleven, concealed beneath the dark shade of the plane-trees. On

these occasions Guillaume always twitted them about the evenings they

spent underneath the church of the Minimes.

'It is very kind of you,' he, would say, 'to let yourselves be led by

the nose. The verger gives you glasses of sugar and water as though he

were administering the communion to you, doesn't he?'

'Nothing of the sort! you are quite mistaken, I assure you,' Ambroise

exclaimed. 'You might fancy you were in the Café du Cours, or the Café

de France, or the Café des Voyageurs. We drink beer, or punch, or

madeira, whatever we like, whatever is drunk in other places.'

Guillaume continued jeering however.

'Well, I shouldn't like to go drinking their dirty stuff,' he said. 'I

should be afraid that they had mixed some drug with it to make me go to

confession. I suppose you amuse yourselves by playing at hot-cockles

and puss-in-the-corner!'

The young Maffres gaily laughed at his pleasantries, but they took care

to undeceive him. They told him that even cards were allowed, and that

there was no flavour of a church about the place at all. The club was

extremely pleasant, there were very comfortable couches, and mirrors

all over.

'Well,' said Guillaume, 'you'll never make me believe that you can't

hear the organ when there is an evening service at the church. It would

make me swallow my coffee the wrong way only to know that there was a

baptism, or a marriage, or a funeral going on over my cup.'

'Well, there's something in that,' Alphonse allowed. 'Only the other

day, while I was playing at billiards with Séverin in the day-time,

we could distinctly hear a funeral going on. It was the funeral of

the butcher's little girl, the butcher at the corner of the Rue de la

Banne. That fellow Séverin is a big jackass, he tried to frighten me by

telling me that the whole funeral would fall through on our heads.'

'Ah well! it must be a very pleasant place, that club of yours!' cried

Guillaume. 'I wouldn't set foot in it for all the money in the world!

I'd as soon go and drink my coffee in a sacristy.'

The truth of the matter was that Guillaume felt very much vexed that he

did not belong to the Young Men's Club. His father had forbidden him to

offer himself for election, fearing that he would be rejected. At last,

however, the young man grew so annoyed about the matter that he sent in

an application to be allowed to join the club, without mentioning what

he had done to his people. The question was a very serious one. The

committee which elected the members then comprised the young Maffres

amongst its number, and Lucien Delangre was its president and Séverin

Rastoil its secretary. These young men felt terribly embarrassed. While

they did not dare to grant Guillaume's application, they were unwilling

to do anything to hurt the feelings of Doctor Porquier, so worthy and

irreproachable a person, one, too, who was so completely trusted by all

the fashionable ladies. At last Ambroise and Alphonse begged Guillaume

not to press his application, giving him to understand that he had no

chance of being admitted.

'You are a couple of pitiful poltroons!' he replied to them. 'Do you

suppose that I care a fig about joining your brotherhood? I was only

amusing myself. I wanted to see if you would have the courage to vote

against me. I shall have a good laugh when those hypocrites bang the

door in my face. As for you, my good little boys, you can go and amuse

yourselves where you like; I shall never speak to you again.'

The young Maffres, in great consternation, then besought Lucien

Delangre to try to arrange matters in such a way as would prevent

any unpleasantness. Lucien submitted the difficulty to his usual

adviser, Abbé Faujas, for whom he had conceived a genuine disciple's

admiration. The Abbé came to the Young Men's Club every afternoon from

five o'clock till six. He walked through the big room with a pleasant

smile, nodding and sometimes stopping for a few minutes at one of the

tables to chat with some of the young men. However, he never accepted

anything to drink, not even a glass of water. Afterwards he passed

into the reading-room, and, taking a seat at the long table covered

with a green cloth, he attentively pored over the newspapers which the

club received, the Legitimist organs of Paris and the neighbouring

departments. Occasionally he made a rapid note in a little pocket-book.

Then he went quietly away, again smiling at the members who were

present, and shaking hands with them. On some occasions, however, he

remained for a longer time to watch a game at chess, or chat merrily

about all kinds of matters. The young men, who were extremely fond of

him, used to say that when he talked no one would take him for a priest.

When the mayor's son told him of the embarrassment which Guillaume's

application had caused the committee, Abbé Faujas promised to arrange

the affair; and next morning he went to see Doctor Porquier, to whom

he related everything. The doctor was aghast. His son, he cried, was

determined to kill him with distress by dishonouring his grey hairs.

What could be done now? Even if the application were withdrawn, the

shame and disgrace would be none the less. The priest then advised him

to send Guillaume away for two or three months to an estate which he

possessed a few leagues from Plassans, and undertook to charge himself

with the further conduct of the affair. As soon as Guillaume had left

the town, the committee postponed the consideration of his application,

saying that there was no occasion for haste in the matter, as the

applicant was absent and that a decision could be taken later on.

Doctor Porquier heard of this solution from Lucien Delangre one

afternoon when he was in the garden of the Sub-Prefecture. He

immediately hastened to the terrace. It was the hour when Abbé Faujas

read his breviary. Doctor Porquier caught sight of him under the

Mourets' arbour.

'Ah, Monsieur le Curé!' he cried, 'how can I thank you? I should like

very much to shake hands with you.'

'The wall is rather high,' said the priest, looking at it with a smile.

But Doctor Porquier was an effusive individual who did not allow

himself to be discouraged by obstacles.

'Wait a moment!' he cried. 'If you will allow me, Monsieur le Curé, I

will come round.'

Then he disappeared. The Abbé, still smiling, slowly bent his steps

towards the little door which opened into the Impasse des Chevillottes.

The doctor was already gently knocking at it.

'Ah! this door is nailed up,' said the priest. 'One of the nails

is broken though. If I had any sort of a tool, there would be no

difficulty in getting the other one out.'

He glanced round him and caught sight of a spade. Then, after he had

drawn back the bolts with a slight effort, he opened the door, and

stepped out into the alley, where Doctor Porquier overwhelmed him

with thanks and compliments. As they walked along, talking, Monsieur

Maffre, who happened at the time to be in Monsieur Rastoil's garden,

opened a little door that was hidden away behind the presiding judge's

waterfall. The gentlemen were much amused to find themselves all three

in this deserted little lane.

They remained there for a few moments, and, as they took leave of

the Abbé, the magistrate and the doctor poked their heads inside the

Mourets' garden, looking about them with curiosity.

Mouret, however, who was putting stakes to his tomatoes, raised his

head and caught sight of them. He was fairly lost in astonishment.

'Hallo! so they've made their way in here!' he muttered. 'The Curé now

only has to bring in both gangs!'

XIII

Serge was now nineteen years of age. He occupied a small room on the

second floor, opposite the priest's, and there led an almost cloistered

life, spending much time in reading.

'I shall have to throw those old books of yours into the fire,' Mouret

said to him angrily. 'You'll end by making yourself ill and having to

take to your bed.'

The young man was, indeed, of such a nervous temperament, that the

slightest imprudence made him poorly, as though he were a young girl,

and thus he was frequently confined to his room for two or three days

together. At these times Rose inundated him with herb tea, and whenever

Mouret went upstairs to shake him up a little, as he called it, the

cook, if she happened to be there, would turn her master out of the

room, crying out at him:

'Leave the poor dear alone! Can't you see that you are killing him with

your rough ways? It isn't after you that he takes: he is the very image

of his mother; and you'll never be able to understand either the one or

the other of them.'

Serge smiled. After he had left college his father, seeing him so

delicate, had hesitated to send him to Paris to read for the bar there.

He would not hear, however, of a provincial faculty; Paris, he felt

sure, was necessary for a young man who wanted to climb to a high

position. He tried, indeed, to instil ambitious ideas into the lad,

telling him that many with much weaker wits than his own, his cousins,

the Rougons, for instance, had attained to great distinction. Every

time that the young man seemed to grow more robust, his father settled

that he should leave home early the following month; but his trunk was

never packed, for Serge was always catching a fresh cold, and then his

departure would be again postponed.

On each of these occasions Marthe contented herself with saying in her

gentle, indifferent way:

'He isn't twenty yet. It's really not prudent to send so young a lad

to Paris; and, besides, he isn't wasting his time here; you even think

that he studies too much.'

Serge used to accompany his mother to mass. He was very piously

minded, very gentle and grave. Doctor Porquier had recommended him

to take a good deal of exercise, and he had become enthusiastically

fond of botany, going off on long rambles to collect specimens which

he spent his afternoons in drying, mounting, classifying and naming.

It was about this time that he struck up a great friendship with Abbé

Faujas. The Abbé himself had botanised in earlier days, and he gave

Serge much practical advice for which the young man was very grateful.

They also lent each other books, and one day they went off together

to try to discover a certain plant which the priest said he thought

would be found in the neighbourhood. When Serge was ill, his neighbour

came to see him every morning, and sat and talked for a long while at

his bedside. At other times, when the young man was well, it was he

who went and knocked at Abbé Faujas's door, as soon as he heard him

stirring in his room. They were only separated by a narrow landing, and

they ended by almost living together.

In spite of Marthe's unruffled tranquillity and Rose's angry glances,

Mouret still often indulged in bursts of anger.

'What can the young scamp be after up there?' he would growl. 'Whole

days pass without my catching more than a glimpse of him. He never

seems to stir from the Abbé; they are always talking together in some

corner or other. He shall be off to Paris at once. He's as strong as a

Turk. All those ailments of his are mere shams, excuses to get himself

petted and coddled. You needn't both of you look at me in that way; I

don't mean to let the priest make a hypocrite of the boy.'

Then he began to keep a watch over his son, and when he thought that he

was in Faujas's room he called for him angrily.

'I would rather he went to the bad!' he cried one day in a fit of rage.

'Oh, sir!' said Rose, 'it is abominable to say such things.'

'Well, indeed I would! And I'll put him in the way myself one of these

days, if you irritate me much more with these parsons of yours!'

Serge naturally joined the Young Men's Club, though he went there but

little, preferring the solitude of his own room. If it had not been

for Abbé Faujas, whom he sometimes met there, he would probably never

have set foot in the place. The Abbé taught him to play chess in the

reading-room. Mouret, on learning that the lad met the priest at the

café, swore that he would pack him off by the train on the following

Monday. His luggage was indeed got ready, and quite seriously this

time, but Serge, who had gone out to spend a last day in the open

country, returned home drenched to the skin by a sudden downpour of

rain. He was obliged to go to bed, shivering with fever. For three

weeks he hung between life and death; and then his convalescence lasted

for two long months. At the beginning of it he was so weak that he lay

with his head on the pillow and his arms stretched over the sheets, as

motionless as if he were simply a wax figure.

'It is your fault, sir!' cried the cook to Mouret. 'You will have it on

your conscience if the boy dies.'

While his son continued in danger, Mouret wandered silently about the

house, plunged in gloomy melancholy, his eyes red with crying. He

seldom went upstairs, but paced up and down the passage to intercept

the doctor as he went away. When he was told that Serge was at length

out of danger, he glided quietly into the lad's room and offered his

help. But Rose turned him away. They had no occasion for him, she said,

and the boy was not yet strong enough to bear his roughness. He had

much better go and attend to his business instead of getting in the

way there. Mouret then remained in complete loneliness downstairs,

more melancholy and unoccupied than ever. He felt no inclination for

anything, said he. As he went along the passage, he often heard on the

second floor the voice of Abbé Faujas, who spent whole afternoons by

Serge's bedside, now that he was growing better.

'How is he to-day, Monsieur l'Abbé?' Mouret asked the priest timidly,

as he met the latter going down into the garden.

'Oh, fairly well; but it will be a long convalescence, and very great

care will be required.'

The priest tranquilly read his breviary, while the father, with a pair

of shears in his hand, followed him up and down the garden walks,

trying to renew the conversation and to get more detailed information

about his boy. As his son's convalescence progressed, he remarked

that the priest scarcely ever left Serge's room. He had gone upstairs

several times in the women's absence, and he had always found the Abbé

at the young man's bedside, talking softly to him, and rendering him

all kinds of little services, sweetening his drink, straightening his

bed-clothes, or getting him anything he happened to want. There was

a hushed murmur throughout the house, a solemn calm which gave quite

a conventual character to the second floor. Mouret seemed to smell

incense, and could almost fancy sometimes, as he heard a muttering of

voices, that they were saying mass upstairs.

'What can they be doing?' he wondered. 'The youngster is out of danger

now; they can't be giving him extreme unction.'

Serge himself caused him much disquiet. He looked like a girl as he lay

in bed in his white night-dress. His eyes seemed to have grown larger;

there was a soft ecstatic smile upon his lips, which still played there

even amidst his keenest pangs of suffering. Mouret no longer ventured

to say anything about Paris; his dear sick boy seemed too girlish and

tender for such a journey.

One afternoon he went upstairs, carefully hushing the sound of his

steps. The door was ajar, and he saw Serge sitting in an easy chair in

the sunshine. The young fellow was weeping with his eyes turned upward,

and his mother stood sobbing in front of him. They both turned as they

heard the door open, but they did not wipe away their tears. As soon as

Mouret entered the room, the invalid said to him in his feeble voice:

'I have a favour to ask you, father. Mother says that you will be angry

and will refuse me permission, though it would fill me with joy--I want

to enter the Seminary.'

He clasped his hands together with a sort of feverish devotion.

'You! you!' exclaimed Mouret.

He looked at Marthe, who turned away her head. Then saying nothing

further, he walked to the window, returned, and sat down mechanically

by the bedside, as though overwhelmed by the blow.

'Father,' resumed Serge, after a long silence, 'in my nearness to death

I have seen God, and I have sworn to be His. I assure you that all my

happiness is centred in that. Believe me that it is so, and do not

cause me grief.'

Mouret, looking very mournful, with his eyes lowered, still kept

silence. At last, with an expression of utter hopelessness, he murmured:

'If I had the least particle of courage, I should wrap a couple of

shirts in a handkerchief and go away.'

Then he rose from his seat, went to the window and drummed on the panes

with his fingers; and when Serge again began to implore him, he said

very quietly:

'Very well, my boy; be a priest.'

Immediately afterwards he left the room.

The next day, without the least warning to anyone, he set off for

Marseilles, where he spent a week with his son Octave. But he came

back looking careworn and aged. Octave had afforded him very little

consolation. He had found the young man leading a fast life,

overwhelmed with debts and in all sorts of scrapes. However, Mouret

did not say a word about these matters. He began to lead a perfectly

sedentary existence, and no longer made any of those good strokes of

business, those fortunate purchases of standing crops, in which he

had formerly taken such pride. Rose noticed that he maintained almost

unbroken silence, and that he even avoided saluting Abbé Faujas.

'Do you know that you are not very polite?' she boldly said to him one

day. 'His reverence the Curé has just gone past, and you turned your

back upon him. If you behave in this way because of the boy, you are

under a great mistake. The Curé was quite against his going to the

Seminary, and I often heard him talking to him against it. This house

is getting a very cheerful place, indeed, now! You never speak a word,

even to madame, and when you have your meals, anyone would think that

it was a funeral that was going on. For my part, sir, I'm beginning to

feel that I've had quite enough of it.'

Mouret went out of the room, but the cook followed him into the garden.

'Haven't you every reason to be happy, now that your son is on his feet

again? He ate a cutlet yesterday, the darling, and with such a good

appetite too. But you care nothing about that, do you? What you want is

to make a pagan of him like yourself. Ah! you stand in great need of

some one to pray for you. But God Almighty wishes to save us all. If I

were you I should weep with joy, to think that that poor little dear

was going to pray for me. But you are made of stone, sir! And how sweet

he will look too, the darling, in his cassock!'

Mouret thereupon went up to the first floor, and shut himself up in a

room which he called his study, a big bare room, furnished only with a

table and a couple of chairs. This room became his refuge whenever the

cook worried him. When he grew weary of staying there, he went down

again into the garden, upon which he expended greater care than ever.

Marthe no longer seemed to be conscious of her husband's displeasure.

Sometimes he kept silent for a week, but she was in no way disquieted

or distressed by it. Every day she withdrew more and more from her

surroundings, and she even began to fancy, now that the house seemed so

quiet and peaceable and she had ceased to hear Mouret scolding, that

he had grown more reasonable and had discovered for himself, as she had

done, some little nook of happiness. This thought tranquillised her

and induced her to plunge more deeply into her dreamy life. When her

husband looked at her with his blurred eyes, scarcely recognising in

her the wife of other days, she only smiled at him and did not notice

the tears which were welling beneath his eyelids.

On the day when Serge, now completely restored to health, entered the

Seminary, Mouret remained at home alone with Désirée. He now frequently

looked after her; for this big 'innocent' girl, who was nearly sixteen,

might have fallen into the basin of the fountain or have set the house

on fire with matches just like a child of six. When Marthe returned

home, she found the doors open and the rooms empty. The house seemed

quite deserted. She went on to the terrace, and there, at the end of

one of the walks, she saw her husband playing with his daughter. He

was sitting on the gravel, and with a little wooden scoop was gravely

filling a cart which Désirée was pulling along with a piece of string.

'Gee up! gee up!' cried the girl.

'Wait a little,' said her father patiently, 'it is not full yet. As you

are the horse, you must wait till the cart is full.'

Then she stamped her feet like an impatient horse, and, at last, not

being able to stand still any longer, she set off with a loud burst of

laughter. The cart fell over and lost its load. When she had dragged it

round the garden, she came back to her father crying:

'Fill it again! Fill it again!'

Mouret loaded it again with the little scoop. For a moment Marthe

remained upon the terrace watching them, full of uneasy emotion. The

open doors, the sight of the man playing with the child, the empty

deserted house all touched her with sadness, though she was not clearly

conscious of the feelings at work in her. She went upstairs to take off

her things, on hearing Rose, who also had just returned, exclaim from

the terrace steps:

'Good gracious! how silly the master is!'

His friends, the retired traders with whom he took a turn or two every

day on the promenade in the Cours Sauvaire, declared that he was a

little 'touched.' During the last few months his hair had grizzled,

he had begun to get shaky on his legs, and was no longer the biting

jeerer, feared by the whole town. For a little time it was thought

that he had been venturing upon some risky speculations and had been

overcome by a heavy loss of money.

Madame Paloque, as she leaned over the window-rail of her dining-room

which overlooked the Rue Balande, said every time she saw him, that

he was certainly going to the bad. And if, a few moments later, she

happened to catch sight of Abbé Faujas passing along the street, she

took a delight in exclaiming--the more especially if she had visitors

with her:

'Just look at his reverence the Curé! Isn't he growing sleek? If he

eats out of the same dish as Mouret, he can leave him nothing but the

bones.'

Then she laughed, as did those who heard her. Abbé Faujas was, indeed,

becoming quite an imposing object; he now always wore black gloves and

a shimmering cassock. A peculiar smile played about his face, a sort of

ironical twist of his lips, when Madame de Condamin complimented him

upon his appearance. The ladies liked to see him nicely and comfortably

dressed; though the priest himself would probably have preferred

fighting his way with bare arms and clenched fists, and never a thought

about what he wore. Whenever he appeared to grow neglectful of his

appearance, the slightest hint of reproach from old Madame Rougon

sufficed to cure him, and he hurried off to buy silk stockings and a

new hat and girdle. He was frequently requiring new clothes, for his

big frame seemed to wear out his garments very quickly.

Since the foundation of the Home of the Virgin, all the women had been

on his side; and defended him against the malicious stories which were

still occasionally repeated, though no one was able to get at their

origin. Now and then they found him a little blunt, but this roughness

of his by no means offended them, least of all in the confessional,

where they rather liked to feel his iron hand pressing down their necks.

'He gave me such a scolding yesterday, my dear,' said Madame de

Condamin to Marthe one day. 'I believe he would have struck me if there

had not been the partition between us. He is not always very easy to

get on with!'

She laughed gently and seemed to enjoy the recollection of this scene

with her spiritual director. Madame de Condamin had observed Marthe

turn pale whenever she made her certain confidences as to Abbé

Faujas's manner of hearing confessions; and divining her jealousy, she

took a mischievous delight in tormenting her, with which object she

gave her many further private details.

When Abbé Faujas had founded the Young Men's Club, he there became

quite sociable and gay; in fact he seemed to have undergone a

transformation. Thanks to his will power he moulded his stern nature

like wax. He allowed the part which he had taken in the founding of

the club to be made public, and he became the friend of all the young

men in the town, keeping a strict watch over his manners, for he well

knew that young men just fresh from college had not the same taste

for roughness of speech and demeanour as the women had. He one day

narrowly escaped losing his temper with young Rastoil, whose ears he

threatened to pull, over a disagreement about the club management;

but with surprising command over himself, he put out his hand to him

almost immediately afterwards, humbling himself and winning over to his

side all who were present by his gracious apologies to 'that big fool

Séverin,' as the other was called.

However, although the Abbé had conquered the women and the young men,

he still remained on a footing of mere formal politeness with the

fathers and husbands. The grave gentlemen continued to distrust him

as they saw that he still refrained from identifying himself with any

political party. At the Sub-Prefecture Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies

discussed him with much animation, while Monsieur Delangre, without

definitely defending him, said with a sharp smile that they ought to

wait before judging him. At the Rastoils' he had become a source of

much tribulation to the Presiding Judge, whom Séverin and his mother

never ceased wearying with their constant eulogies of the priest.

'Well! well! let him have every good quality under the sun!' cried the

unhappy man. 'I won't dispute one of them, only leave me at peace. I

asked him to dinner, but he wouldn't come. I can't go and drag him here

by force!'

'No, but, my dear,' said Madame Rastoil, 'when you meet him you

scarcely bow to him. It's that, I dare say, that has made him rather

cold.'

'Of course it is,' interposed Séverin; 'he sees very well that you are

not as polite to him as you ought to be.'

Monsieur Rastoil shrugged his shoulders. When Monsieur de Bourdeu was

there, the pair of them accused Abbé Faujas of leanings towards the

Sub-Prefecture, though Madame Rastoil directed their attention to the

fact that he never dined there, and had never even set foot in the

house.

'Oh, don't imagine that I accuse him of being a Bonapartist,' said the

president. 'I only remarked that he had leanings that way; that was

all. He has had communications with Monsieur Delangre.'

'Well! and so have you!' cried Séverin; 'you have had communications

with the mayor! They are absolutely necessary under certain

circumstances. Tell the truth and say you detest Abbé Faujas; it would

be much more straightforward.'

For whole days at a time the Rastoils sulked with one another. Abbé

Fenil came to see them very rarely now, excusing himself upon the

ground that he was kept at home by his gout; but twice, when he had

been forced to express an opinion on the Curé of Saint-Saturnin's, he

had said a few words in his praise. Abbé Surin and Abbé Bourrette,

as well as Monsieur Maffre, held the same views as the mistress of

the house concerning the Curé, and the opposition to him came only

from Monsieur Rastoil, backed up by Monsieur de Bourdeu, both of

whom gravely declared that they could not compromise their political

positions by receiving a man who concealed his views.

Séverin, however, now began to knock at the door in the Impasse des

Chevillottes whenever he wanted to say anything to the priest, and

gradually the little lane became a sort of neutral ground. Doctor

Porquier, who had been the first to avail himself of it, young

Delangre, and the magistrate, all came thither to talk to Abbé

Faujas. Sometimes the little doors of both the gardens, as well as

the cart-entrance to the Sub-Prefecture, were kept open for a whole

afternoon, while the Abbé leant against the wall, smiling and shaking

hands with those members of the two groups who wished to have a word

with him. Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, however, carefully refrained

from leaving the garden of the Sub-Prefecture; and Monsieur Rastoil

and Monsieur de Bourdeu, equally persistent, remained seated beneath

the trees in front of the former's waterfall. It was very seldom that

the priest's little court invaded the Mourets' arbour. Now and then a

head just peeped inside, took a hasty glance around, and then quickly

disappeared.

Abbé Faujas now seemed to trouble about nothing. At the most he

glanced with an expression of disquietude at the Tronches' windows,

through which Olympe's eyes were constantly glistening. The Trouches

kept themselves in ambush there behind the red curtains, full of an

envious desire to come down like the Abbé and eat the fruit, and talk

to the fashionable folks. They tapped on the shutters, leant out of the

window for a moment, and then withdrew, infuriated by the authoritative

glances of the priest. Soon afterwards, however, they would return with

stealthy steps, press their pale faces to one of the panes, and keep

watch over his every movement, quite tortured to see him enjoying that

paradise which was forbidden to them.

'It is really abominable!' Olympe exclaimed one day to her husband. 'He

would lock us up in a cupboard, if he could, so as to deprive us of

every atom of enjoyment. We'll go down if you like, and we'll see what

he says.'

Trouche had just returned from his office. He put on a clean collar and

dusted his boots, anxious to make himself as neat as possible. Olympe

put on a light dress, and then they both boldly came downstairs into

the garden, walking slowly alongside the tall box plants, and stopping

in front of the flower-beds.

At that moment Abbé Faujas happened to have his back turned towards

them. He was standing at the little door that opened into the lane

talking to Monsieur Maffre. When he heard the Trouches' steps grating

upon the gravel, they were close behind him under the arbour. He turned

round, and stopped short in the middle of a sentence, quite astounded

at seeing them there. Monsieur Maffre, who did not know them, was

looking at them with curiosity.

'A beautiful day, isn't it, gentlemen?' said Olympe, who had turned

pale beneath her brother's gaze.

The Abbé abruptly dragged the justice of the peace into the lane; where

he quickly got rid of him.

'He is furious!' murmured Olympe. 'Well, so much the worse; we had

better stay where we are now. If we go back upstairs, he will think we

are afraid of him. I've had quite enough of this kind of thing, and you

will see what I will say to him.'

She made Trouche seat himself on one of the chairs which Rose had

brought out a short time previously, and when the Abbé returned

he found them tranquilly settled there. He fastened the bolts of

the little door, glanced quickly around to assure himself that the

trees screened them from observation, and then came up close to the

Trouches, saying in a muffled voice:

'You forget our agreement. You undertook to remain in your own rooms.'

'It was too hot up there,' Olympe replied. 'We are not committing any

crime by coming down here to get a little fresh air.'

The priest was on the point of exploding, but his sister, still quite

pale from the effort she had made in resisting him, added in a peculiar

tone:

'Don't make a noise, now! There are some people over there, and you

might do yourself harm.'

Then both the Trouches laughed slightly. The Abbé fixed his eyes upon

them with a terrible expression, but without speaking.

'Sit down,' said Olympe. 'You want an explanation, don't you? Well, you

shall have one. We are tired of imprisoning ourselves. You are living

here in clover; the house seems to belong to you, and so does the

garden. So much the better, indeed; we are delighted to see how well

things appear to be going with you, but you mustn't treat us as dirt

beneath your feet. You have never thought of bringing me up a single

bunch of grapes; you have given us the most wretched of the rooms; you

hide us away and are ashamed of us; you shut us up as though we had the

plague. You must understand that it can't go on any longer!'

'I am not the master here,' replied Abbé Faujas. 'You must address

yourselves to Monsieur Mouret if you want to strip his garden.'

The Trouches exchanged a fresh smile.

'We don't want to pry into your affairs,' Olympe continued. 'We know

what we know, and that is sufficient for us. But all this proves what

a bad heart you have. Do you think that if we were in your position we

shouldn't invite you to come and take your share in the good things

that were going?'

'What is it that you want me to do?' demanded the Abbé. 'Do you suppose

that I am rolling in wealth? You know what sort of a room I occupy

myself; it is more scantily furnished than your own. The house isn't

mine, and I can't give it you.'

Olympe shrugged her shoulders. She silenced her husband who was

beginning to speak, and then calmly continued:

'Everyone has his own ideas of life. If you had millions you wouldn't

buy a strip of carpet for your bedside; you would spend them all

in some foolish scheme or other. We, on the other hand, like to be

comfortable. Dare you say that if you had a fancy for the handsomest

furniture in the house and for the linen and food and anything else

it contains, you couldn't have them this very evening? Well, in such

circumstances a good brother would think of his relations, and wouldn't

leave them in wretchedness and squalor as you leave us!'

Abbé Faujas looked keenly at the Trouches. They were both swaying

backwards and forwards on their chairs.

'You are a pair of ungrateful people,' he said after a moment's

silence. 'I have already done a great deal for you. You have me to

thank for the food that you eat now. I still have letters of yours,

Olympe, letters in which you beseech me to rescue you from your misery

by bringing you over to Plassans. Now that you are here and your

livelihood is assured, you break out into fresh demands.'

'Stuff!' Trouche impudently interrupted. 'You sent for us here because

you wanted us. I have learned to my cost not to believe in anyone's

fine talk. I have allowed my wife to speak, but women can never come to

the point. In two words, my good friend, you are making a mistake in

keeping us cooped up like dogs, who are only brought out in the hour of

danger. We are getting weary of it, and we shall perhaps end by doing

something foolish. Confound it all! give us a little liberty. Since the

house isn't yours and you despise all luxury, what harm can it do you

if we make ourselves comfortable? We shan't eat the walls!'

'Of course!' exclaimed Olympe, 'it's only natural that we should rebel

against being constantly locked up. We will take care to do nothing to

prejudice you. You know that my husband only requires the least sign

from you. Go your own way, and you may depend upon us; but let us go

ours. Is that understood, eh?'

Abbé Faujas had bent his head; he remained silent for a moment, and

then, raising his eyes, and avoiding a direct reply, he said:

'Listen to what I say. If ever you do anything to hamper me, I swear to

you that I will send you away to starve in a garret on the straw.'

Then he went back into the house, leaving them under the arbour. From

that time the Trouches went down into the garden almost every day, but

they conducted themselves with considerable discretion, and refrained

from going there at the times when the priest was talking with the

guests from the neighbouring gardens.

The following week Olympe complained so much of the room she was

occupying that Marthe kindly offered her Serge's, which was now at

liberty. The Trouches then kept both rooms. They slept in the young

man's old bedchamber, from which not a single article of furniture

had been removed, and turned the other apartment into a sort of

drawing-room, for which Rose found them some old velvet-covered

furniture in the lumber-room. Olympe, in great delight, ordered a

rose-coloured dressing-gown from the best maker in Plassans.

Mouret, who had forgotten that Marthe had asked his permission to let

the Trouches have Serge's room, was quite surprised to find them there

one evening. He had gone up to look for a knife which he thought his

son must have left in one of the drawers, and, as he entered the room,

he saw Trouche trimming with this very knife a switch which he had just

cut from one of the pear-trees in the garden. Thereupon he apologised

and went downstairs.

XIV

During the public procession on the Feast of Corpus Christi, when

Monseigneur Rousselot came down the steps of the magnificent altar, set

up through the generosity of Madame de Condamin on the Place of the

Sub-Prefecture, close to the very door of the small house she occupied,

it was noticed with much surprise by the spectators that the Bishop

abruptly turned his back upon Abbé Faujas.

'Ah! has there been some disagreement between them!' exclaimed Madame

Rougon, who was looking out of her drawing-room window.

'Didn't you know about it?' asked Madame Paloque, who was leaning

over by the old lady's side. 'It has been the talk of the town since

yesterday. Abbé Fenil has been restored to favour.'

Monsieur de Condamin, who was standing behind the ladies, began to

laugh. He had made his escape from his own house, saying that it smelt

like a church.

'Do you attach any importance to such trifles?' said he. 'The Bishop is

merely an old weathercock, turning one way or the other according as

Faujas or Fenil blows against him; to-day it is one of them, to-morrow

it will be the other. They have quarrelled and made it up again half

a score times already. Before three days are over, you will see that

Faujas will be the pet again.'

'I don't believe it,' exclaimed Madame Paloque; 'it is serious this

time. It seems that Abbé Faujas has caused his lordship a great deal of

worry. It appears that he formerly preached some sermons which excited

great displeasure at Rome. I can't explain the matter quite clearly,

but I know that the Bishop has received reproachful letters from Rome,

in which he is recommended to be on his guard. It is said that Abbé

Faujas is simply a political agent.'

'Who says so?' asked Madame Rougon, blinking her eyes as though to see

the procession, which was then passing through the Rue de la Banne,

more distinctly.

'I heard it said, but I really don't remember by whom,' the judge's

wife replied carelessly.

Then she retired, saying that one would be able to get a better view

from the side-window. Monsieur de Condamin, however, took the vacant

place by Madame Rougon, and whispered in the old lady's ear:

'I have already twice seen her going to Abbé Fenil's. They have some

plot or other in hand, I'm sure. Abbé Faujas must have trodden somehow

or other on that viper of a woman, and she's trying to bite him. If she

were not so ugly I would do her the service of telling her that her

husband will never be presiding judge.'

'Why? I don't understand,' murmured the old lady, with a guileless

expression.

Monsieur de Condamin looked at her curiously, and then began to smile.

The last two gendarmes in the procession had just disappeared round

the corner of the Cours Sauvaire, and the few guests whom Madame

Rougon had invited to witness the blessing of the altar returned into

the drawing-room, where they chatted for a moment about the Bishop's

graciousness and the new banners of the different congregations, and

especially the one belonging to the girls of the Home of the Virgin,

which had attracted much attention. The ladies were loud in their

praises, and Abbé Faujas's name was mentioned every moment in the most

eulogistic terms.

'He is clearly a saint!' sniggered Madame Paloque to Monsieur de

Condamin, who had taken a seat near her.

Then, bending forward towards him, she added:

'I could not speak openly before Madame Rougon, you know, but there is

a great deal of talk about Abbé Faujas and Madame Mouret. I dare say

those unpleasant reports have reached the Bishop's ears.'

'Madame Mouret is a charming woman, and extremely winning

notwithstanding her forty years,' was all that Monsieur de Condamin

said in reply.

'Oh, yes! she is very charming, very charming, indeed,' murmured Madame

Paloque, whose face turned quite green with spleen.

'Extremely charming,' persisted the conservator of rivers and forests.

'She is at the age of genuine passion and great happiness. You ladies

are given to judging each other unfavourably.'

Thereupon he left the drawing-room, chuckling over Madame Paloque's

suppressed rage.

The town was now indeed taking an absorbing interest in the continual

struggle that went on between Abbé Faujas and Abbé Fenil for influence

over the Bishop. It was a ceaseless combat, like the struggles of a

couple of buxom housekeepers for the affection of an old dotard. The

Bishop smiled knowingly; he had discovered how to maintain a kind of

equilibrium between these opposing forces which he pitted one against

the other, amused at seeing them overthrown in turn, and securing peace

for himself by accepting the services of the one who temporarily gained

the upper hand. To the dreadful stories which were told him to the

detriment of his favourites, he paid but little attention, for he knew

that the rival Abbés were capable of accusing each other of murder.

'They are getting worse, my child,' the Bishop said, in one of his

expansive moments to Abbé Surin. 'I fancy that in the end Paris will

carry the day, and Rome will get the worst of it; but I am not quite

sure, and I shall leave them to wear each other out. When one has made

an end of the other, things will be settled----By the way, just read

me the third Ode of Horace; I'm afraid I've translated one of the

lines rather badly.'

On the Tuesday after the public procession the weather was lovely.

Laughter was heard both in the garden of the Rastoils and in that of

the Sub-Prefect, and numerous guests were sitting under the trees.

Abbé Faujas read his breviary in the Mourets' garden after his usual

custom, while slowly walking up and down beside the tall hedges of box.

For some days past he had kept the little door that led to the lane

bolted; he was indeed coquetting with his neighbours and keeping aloof,

in order that he might make them more anxious to see him. Possibly

too he had noticed a slight coldness in their manner after his last

misunderstanding with the Bishop, and the abominable reports that his

enemies had circulated against him.

About five o'clock, just as the sun was sinking, Abbé Surin proposed a

game of shuttlecock to Monsieur Rastoil's daughters. He was very clever

at it himself; and, notwithstanding the approach of their thirtieth

year, both Angéline and Aurélie were immensely fond of games. When the

servant brought the battledores, Abbé Surin, looking about him for

a shady spot, for the garden was still bright with the last rays of

the sun, was struck with an idea of which the young ladies cordially

approved.

'Shall we go and play in the Impasse des Chevillottes?' he asked. 'We

shall be shaded by the chestnut-trees there, and have more room.'

They left the garden and started a most delightful game in the lane.

The two girls began, and Angéline was the first who failed to keep

the shuttlecock going. Abbé Surin, who took her place, handed his

battledore with professional skill and ease. Having tucked his cassock

between his legs, he sprang backwards and forwards and sideways without

cessation. His battledore caught the shuttlecock as it reached the

ground and sent it flying, now to a surprising height, and now straight

ahead like a bullet; and at times made it describe the most graceful

curves. As a rule he preferred to be pitted against poor players, who,

as they struck the shuttlecock at random, or, to use his own phrase,

without any rhythm, brought all the skilful agility of his own play

into exercise. Mademoiselle Aurélie, however, played a fair game. She

vented a little cry like a swallow's every time she struck a blow with

the battledore, and she laughed distractedly when the shuttlecock

alighted on the young Abbé's nose. Gathering up her skirts, she waited

for its return, or leaped backward with a great rustling of petticoats

when he vengefully gave it a smarter blow than usual. At last the

shuttlecock fell into her hair, and she almost toppled over upon her

back. This greatly amused them all. Angéline now took her sister's

place; and every time that Abbé Faujas raised his eyes from his

breviary as he paced the Mourets' garden, he saw the white feathers of

the shuttlecock skimming above the wall like a big butterfly.

'Are you there, your reverence?' all at once cried Angéline, at the

little door. 'Our shuttlecock has fallen into your garden.'

The Abbé picked up the shuttlecock, which had dropped at his feet, and

made up his mind to open the door.

'Oh, thank you! your reverence,' said Aurélie, who had already taken

the battledore. 'Only Angéline would ever make such a stroke. The other

day when papa was watching us she sent the shuttlecock right against

his ear with such a bang that he was quite deaf till the next day.'

There was more laughter at this; and Abbé Surin, as rosy as a girl,

delicately dabbed his brow with a handkerchief of fine texture. He

pushed his fair hair behind his ears, and stood there with glistening

eyes and flexible figure, using his battledore as a fan. In the

excitement of the game his bands had got slightly displaced.

'Monsieur le Curé,' said he, as he took up his position again, 'you

shall be umpire.'

Abbé Faujas, holding his breviary under his arm and smiling paternally,

stood on the threshold of the little doorway. Through the cart-entrance

of the Sub-Prefecture, which was half open, he could see Monsieur

Péqueur des Saulaies seated in front of the cascade amidst his friends.

The priest looked straight in front of him, however, and counted the

points of the game, while complimenting Abbé Surin and consoling the

young ladies.

'I tell you what, Péqueur,' said Monsieur de Condamin, in a whisper, in

the sub-prefect's ear, 'you make a mistake in not inviting that little

Abbé to your parties. He is a great favourite with the ladies, and he

looks as though he could waltz to perfection.'

Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, who was talking to Monsieur Delangre

with much animation, did not however appear to hear the other, but

went on with his conversation with the mayor.

'Really, my dear sir,' he said, 'I don't know where you see all the

merits that you profess to find in him. On the contrary, indeed,

Abbé Faujas appears to me to be of very doubtful character. There is

considerable suspicion attached to his past career, and strange things

are said about him here. I really don't see why I should go down on my

knees to this priest, especially as the clergy of Plassans are hostile

to us. I should gain no advantage by doing so.'

Monsieur Delangre and Monsieur de Condamin exchanged glances of

intelligence, and then, by way of reply, nodded their heads.

'None, whatever,' continued the sub-prefect. 'It is no use pretending

to look mysterious; I may tell you that I have myself written to Paris.

I was a good deal bothered, and I wanted to be quite certain about this

Faujas, whom you seem to look upon as a sort of prince in disguise.

Well! do you know what reply I got? They told me that they did not know

him and could tell me nothing about him, and that I must carefully

avoid mixing myself up with clerical matters. They are grumpy enough

in Paris as it is, since the election of that jackass Lagrifoul, and I

have to be prudent, you understand.'

The mayor exchanged another glance with the conservator of rivers and

forests. He even slightly shrugged his shoulders before the correctly

twirled moustaches of Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies.

'Just listen to me,' he said to him after a moment's silence; 'you

would like to be a prefect, wouldn't you?'

The sub-prefect smiled as he rocked himself in his chair.

'Well, then, go at once, and shake hands with Abbé Faujas, who

is waiting for you down there, while he is watching them play at

shuttlecock.'

Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies was silent with astonishment. He seemed

quite puzzled, turned towards Monsieur de Condamin, and asked, with

some show of uneasiness:

'Is that your advice also?'

'Certainly; go and offer him your hand,' replied the conservator of

rivers and forests.

Then, with a slight touch of irony, he added:

'Consult my wife, if you like; I know you have perfect confidence in

her.'

Madame de Condamin was just approaching them. She was wearing a lovely

pink and pearl-grey dress. When they spoke to her of the Abbé she said

graciously to the sub-prefect:

'It is very wrong of you to neglect your religious duties; one never

sees you at church except perhaps when there is some official ceremony.

It really distresses me very much, and I must try to convert you. What

sort of opinion do you expect people will have of the government you

represent, if they see you are not on the side of religion?--Leave us,

gentlemen; I am going to confess Monsieur Péqueur.'

She took a seat, smiling playfully.

'Octavie,' said the sub-prefect, in an undertone, when they were alone

together, 'don't make fun of me. You weren't a very pious person in the

Rue du Helder in Paris. It's all I can do to keep from laughing when I

see you worshipping in Saint-Saturnin's.'

'You are too flippant, my friend,' she replied, 'and your flippancy

will play you a bad turn one of these days. Seriously, you quite

distress me. I gave you credit for having more intelligence. Are you so

blind that you cannot see that you are tottering in your position? Let

me tell you that it is only from fear of alarming the Legitimists at

Plassans that you haven't already been recalled. If the Legitimists saw

a new sub-prefect arriving here, they would take alarm, whereas so long

as you remain here they will continue quietly sleeping, feeling certain

of victory at the next election. All this is not very flattering for

you; I am aware of that, and the more so as I know positively that the

authorities are acting without taking you into their confidence. Listen

to me, my friend; I tell you that you are ruined if you don't divine

certain things.'

He looked at her with unfeigned alarm.

'Has "the great man" been writing to you?' he asked, referring to a

personage whom they thus designated between themselves.

'No; he has broken entirely with me. I am not a fool, and I saw, before

he did, the necessity of the separation. And I have nothing at all

to complain of. He has shown me the greatest kindness. He found me a

husband and gave me some excellent advice, which has proved extremely

useful to me. But I have retained friends in Paris; and I swear to you

that you have only just got time left to cling on to the branches if

you don't want to fall. Don't be a pagan any longer, but go and offer

your hand to Abbé Faujas. You will understand why later on, even if you

can't guess it to-day.'

Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies lowered his eyes and seemed a little

humiliated by the lesson he was receiving. He was very conceited, and,

showing his white teeth, he tried to re-assert himself by murmuring

tenderly:

'Ah! if you had only been willing, Octavie, we might have governed

Plassans between us. I asked you to resume that delightful life--'

'Really now, you are a great idiot!' she interrupted in a tone of

vexation. 'You annoy me with your "Octavie." I am Madame de Condamin to

everyone, my friend. Can't you understand anything? I have an income

of thirty thousand francs; I am queen of a whole Sub-Prefecture; I go

everywhere; I am respected everywhere, bowed to and liked. What in the

world should I do with you? You would only inconvenience me. I am a

respectable woman, my friend.'

She rose from her seat and walked towards Doctor Porquier, who,

according to his custom, had come to spend an hour in the garden

chatting to his fair patients, after a round of visits.

'Oh, doctor!' she exclaimed, with one of her pretty grimaces, 'I have

got such a headache. It pains me just here, under the left eyebrow.'

'That is the side of the heart, madame,' said the doctor, gallantly.

Madame de Condamin smiled and did not carry the consultation any

further. Madame Paloque, who was present, bent, however, towards her

husband, whom she brought with her every time she came, in order that

she might recommend him to the sub-prefect's influence, and whispered

in his ear:

'That's the only way Porquier has of curing them.'

When Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies had joined Monsieur de Condamin and

Monsieur Delangre he manœuvred cleverly in such wise as to draw them

towards the gateway. When he was within a few yards of it, he stopped

and appeared to be interested in the game of shuttlecock which was

still going on in the lane. Abbé Surin, with his hair blown about by

the wind, the sleeves of his cassock rolled up, and his slender, white,

womanly wrists displayed, had just stepped backwards, putting some

twenty yards between himself and Mademoiselle Aurélie. He felt that

he was being watched, and he quite surpassed himself. Mademoiselle

Aurélie was also playing extremely well, spurred on, as it were, by the

skill of her partner. Thus the shuttlecock described long gentle curves

with such regularity that it seemed to light of its own accord upon

the battledores, going from one to the other player without either of

them having to stir from their places. Abbé Surin, inclined slightly

backwards, displayed his well-shaped bust to advantage.

'Excellent! excellent!' cried the sub-prefect. 'Ah! Monsieur l'Abbé, I

must compliment you upon your skill.'

Then, turning towards Madame de Condamin, Doctor Porquier and the

Paloques, he exclaimed:

'I've really never seen anything like it before. You will allow us to

admire your play, I hope, Monsieur l'Abbé?'

The whole set of the Sub-Prefecture now formed into a group at the far

end of the lane. Abbé Faujas had not moved from the position he had

taken up. Having acknowledged with a nod the salutations of Monsieur

Delangre and Monsieur de Condamin, he went on counting the points

of the game. When Aurélie at last missed the shuttlecock, he said

good-naturedly:

'That makes you three hundred and ten points, for the distance was

altered; your sister has only forty-seven.'

However, while he appeared to follow the flight of the shuttlecock with

all-absorbing interest, he every now and then glanced at the door of

the Rastoils' garden, which still remained open. Monsieur Maffre was as

yet the only person who had shown himself there; but at last a voice

called from inside the garden:

'What is amusing them so much out there?' It was Monsieur Rastoil, who

was chatting with Monsieur de Bourdeu beside the rustic table, that

asked the question.

'His lordship's secretary is playing at shuttlecock,' Monsieur Maffre

replied. 'He is making some wonderful strokes and everybody is watching

him. His reverence the Curé is there, and seems quite amazed.'

Monsieur de Bourdeu took a big pinch of snuff as he exclaimed:

'Ah! Monsieur l'Abbé Faujas is there, is he?'

He glanced at Monsieur Rastoil, and they both seemed ill at ease.

'I have heard,' remarked the presiding judge, 'that the Curé has been

restored to the Bishop's favour.'

'Yes, indeed; this very morning,' said Monsieur Maffre. 'There

has been a complete reconciliation, and I have heard some touching

particulars about it. His lordship shed tears. Ah, there can be no

doubt that Abbé Fenil has cause for self-reproach.'

'I thought that you were the grand-vicar's friend,' observed Monsieur

de Bourdeu.

'So I am, but I am also the Curé's friend,' replied the justice of the

peace. 'Thank goodness! he is a man of sufficient piety to be able to

despise all the calumnies of his enemies. They haven't even hesitated

to question his morality! It is disgraceful!'

The ex-prefect again glanced at the presiding judge with a singular

expression.

'And they've tried to compromise him in political matters,' continued

Monsieur Maffre. 'They said that he had come here to overturn

everything, to bestow places right and left and bring about the triumph

of the Paris clique. Why, if he had been the chief of a band of

brigands folks couldn't have said worse things about him than they have

done. A pack of lies, all of them!'

Monsieur de Bourdeu was drawing a face on the gravel of the walk with

the tip of his walking-stick.

'Yes,' he said, carelessly, 'I have heard these things mentioned. But

it is very unlikely that a minister of religion would allow himself to

play such a part; and besides, to the honour of Plassans, I think it

may be said that he would have failed completely. There is no one here

who could be bought.'

'Oh! it's all stuff and nonsense, that!' cried the presiding judge,

shrugging his shoulders. 'A town can't be turned inside out like an

old coat. Paris may send us as many spies and agents as she likes, but

Plassans will always keep Legitimist. Look at that little Péqueur now!

We've only made a single mouthful of him! Folks must be very stupid to

believe in mysterious personages running about the provinces offering

places and appointments. I should be very curious to see one of those

gentlemen.'

He seemed to be getting a little angry, and Monsieur Maffre, with some

show of uneasiness, appeared to think it necessary to defend himself.

'Pardon me,' he exclaimed. 'I have never asserted that Abbé Faujas was

a Bonapartist agent; on the contrary, I have always considered the

accusation a most absurd one.'

'Oh! it's not a question of Abbé Faujas. My remarks are quite general.

People don't sell themselves in that way! Abbé Faujas is above all

suspicion.'

There was an interval of silence. Monsieur de Bourdeu finished the face

he was drawing on the gravel by adding a long pointed beard to it.

'Abbé Faujas has no political views,' he at last said in his dry voice.

'Evidently,' replied Monsieur Rastoil; 'we found fault with him for his

indifference, but now I approve of it. With all this gossip in the air,

it would have had a prejudicial effect upon religion. You know as well

as I do, Bourdeu, that he can't be accused of the slightest suspicious

step. He has never been seen at the Sub-Prefecture, has he? He kept

with great propriety in his fitting place. If he were a Bonapartist, he

wouldn't be likely to conceal it, would he?'

'Certainly not.'

'Then, too, he leads a most exemplary life. My wife and my son have

told me things about him which have affected me very much.'

The merriment in the little lane was now louder than ever. Abbé Faujas

could be heard complimenting Mademoiselle Aurélie on some wonderful

stroke of her battledore. Monsieur Rastoil, who had checked himself for

a moment, continued, with a smile:

'Just listen to them! What can they find in it to amuse them so much?

It makes one quite long to be young again!'

Then, in a more serious tone, he added:

'Yes, my wife and my son have made me feel a strong liking for Abbé

Faujas; and we are very sorry that his discreet reserve keeps him from

joining our circle.'

As Monsieur Bourdeu nodded his head approvingly, shouts of applause

were heard in the alley. There was a perfect uproar of hand-clapping,

laughter and shouts, as though some troop of school-boys had just

rushed out to play. Monsieur Rastoil rose from his rustic chair.

'Good gracious!' he said, with a smile; 'let us go and see what they

are up to. My legs are beginning to feel a little cramped.'

The others followed him, and they all three went and stood by the

little door. It was the first time that the presiding judge and the

ex-prefect had ventured so far. When they saw the group formed by the

sub-prefect's guests at the end of the lane, their faces assumed a

serious expression. Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, for his part, drew

himself up and put on an official attitude. Madame de Condamin went

flitting to and fro along the lane laughing and smiling and filling

the place with the rustle of her pink and grey dress. The two sets of

guests kept glancing at one another, neither being willing to retire,

while Abbé Faujas still maintained his position between them at

Mouret's door, quietly enjoying himself without seeming in the least

degree conscious of the delicacy of the situation.

All the spectators held their breath; for Abbé Surin, seeing that their

number had increased, was desirous of winning their applause by a last

exhibition of skill. He brought all his science into play, created

difficulties for himself on purpose to overcome them, turned round and

struck at the shuttlecock without looking at it, but seemingly divining

its position, and thus sending it back over his head to Mademoiselle

Aurélie with mathematical precision. He was very much flushed and was

perspiring freely. He had thrown his hat off, and his bands were now

hanging over his right shoulder. But he was the victor, and he looked

as he always did, amiable and charming. The two groups of guests

lingered there admiring him, and Madame de Condamin had to repress the

applause, which burst out prematurely and inopportunely, by shaking

her lace handkerchief. Then the young Abbé, introducing still further

refinements into his play, began to skip about first to right and then

to left, each time receiving the shuttlecock in a fresh position. This

was the grand final flourish. He accelerated the rapidity of his play,

and at last, just as he was jumping aside, his foot slipped and he

nearly fell upon the bosom of Madame de Condamin, who had stretched

out her arms with a little cry. The spectators, thinking he was hurt,

rushed up, but the Abbé, who was pressing the ground with his hands and

knees, sprang up again by a strong effort, and sent the shuttlecock,

which had not yet fallen, spinning back to Mademoiselle Aurélie. Then,

flourishing his battledore, he triumphed.

'Bravo! bravo!' cried Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, stepping up to him.

'Bravo! it was a magnificent stroke!' exclaimed Monsieur Rastoil, who

also came up.

The game was interrupted, for the two sets of guests had now invaded

the lane, and were mingled with each other, crowding around Abbé Surin,

who leant, quite out of breath, against the wall by Abbé Faujas's

side. Everybody began talking at once.

'I was afraid that he had split his skull,' said Doctor Porquier to

Monsieur Maffre, in a voice full of emotion.

'Yes, these games generally have a bad ending,' remarked Monsieur de

Bourdeu, addressing himself to Monsieur Delangre and the Paloques,

while he received a shake of the hand from Monsieur de Condamin, whom

he always tried to avoid in the streets, so that he might not have to

bow to him.

Madame de Condamin went from the sub-prefect to the presiding judge,

bringing them face to face, and exclaiming:

'But really, I am more upset than he is! I thought that we were going

to fall together. There is a big stone there; did you notice it?'

'Yes, I see it there,' said Monsieur Rastoil; 'it must have caught

against his heel.'

'Was it this round stone, do you think?' asked Monsieur Péqueur des

Saulaies, picking up a pebble.

They had never spoken to each other before, except at official

ceremonies. Now, however, they began to examine the stone, and passed

it from one to the other, remarking that it was very sharp, and must

have cut the Abbé's shoe. Madame de Condamin stood smiling between

them, and assured them that she was beginning to feel better.

'Oh! the Abbé is feeling ill!' suddenly cried Monsieur Rastoil's

daughters.

Abbé Surin had, indeed, turned very pale at hearing of the danger he

had run. He was reeling with faintness, when Abbé Faujas, who had kept

aloof, took him in his powerful arms, and carried him into Mouret's

garden, where he seated him upon a chair. The two sets of guests soon

swarmed into the arbour, where the young Abbé completely fainted away.

'Get some water and some vinegar, Rose!' cried Abbé Faujas, running

towards the steps.

Mouret, who was in the dining-room, came to the window, but, on seeing

all those people in his garden, he recoiled as though he were struck

with fear, and kept himself out of sight. Rose soon came up with a

collection of drugs, muttering, as she hastened along:

'If only madame were here! But she has gone to the Seminary to see the

lad. I am all alone, and I can't do impossibilities, can I? The master

won't stir an inch; anybody might die for all he cared. There he is in

the dining-room, hiding himself! He would let you die, before he would

get you even a glass of water.'

By the time she had got through this grumble, she had reached Abbé

Surin, who was lying in a swoon. 'Oh! the cherub!' she exclaimed,

overcome with womanly pity.

The young Abbé, with his closed eyes and his pale brow wreathed with

long, fair hair, looked like one of the sweet-faced martyrs that one

sees expiring in sacred pictures. The elder of the Rastoil girls was

supporting his head, which lay back, allowing his delicate, white neck

to be seen. They were all in great excitement over him. Madame de

Condamin gently dabbed his brow with a rag soaked in vinegar and water,

and the others stood anxiously looking at her. At last the young Abbé

opened his eyes, but closed them again immediately. He had two more

swoons before he recovered.

'You have given me a terrible fright!' at last said Doctor Porquier,

who had kept his hand fast in his own.

Abbé Surin, still sitting on the chair, stammered out confused thanks,

and assured them all that it was a mere nothing. Then he saw that

his cassock had been unbuttoned, and he smiled as he buttoned it and

readjusted his bands. To prove that he was all right again, when the

company advised him to keep quiet, he went back to the lane with the

Rastoil girls in order to finish the game.

'You have a very nice place here,' said Monsieur Rastoil to Abbé

Faujas, whose side he had not quitted.

'The air on this slope is delightful,' added Monsieur Péqueur des

Saulaies, in his charming manner.

Then both sets of guests began looking with curiosity at Mouret's house.

'Perhaps the ladies and gentlemen would like to stay in the garden a

little while,' exclaimed Rose; 'I will go and get some chairs.'

She made three journeys in quest of them, in spite of the protestations

of the company. Then, after glancing at each other for a moment, the

two sets of guests felt constrained by courtesy to seat themselves. The

sub-prefect installed himself on Abbé Faujas's right hand, while the

presiding judge took a chair on his left, and a friendly conversation

at once began.

'You are a very quiet neighbour, Monsieur le Curé,' said Monsieur

Péqueur des Saulaies very graciously; 'you can't imagine what pleasure

it gives me to see you every day at the same hour in this little

paradise. It seems to bring me a feeling of restfulness, after all the

noise and worry I have.'

'A pleasant neighbour is a very rare thing,' observed Monsieur Rastoil.

'Quite true,' said Monsieur de Bourdeu. 'But his reverence seems to

have filled this spot with the peaceful tranquillity of a cloister.'

While the Abbé was smiling and acknowledging these complimentary

remarks, Monsieur de Condamin, who had not yet seated himself, stooped

and whispered in Monsieur Delangre's ear:

'There's Rastoil, hoping to get that lout of a son of his made assessor

to the public prosecutor.'

Monsieur Delangre, however, gave him an angry glance, trembling at the

thought that this incorrigible chatterer might spoil everything. But

this did not prevent the conservator of rivers and forests from adding:

'And Bourdeu, too, is flattering himself that he has already won back

his prefecture.'

Meantime, Madame de Condamin had caused a great sensation by saying, in

a meaning way:

'What I like about this garden is the tender charm it seems to possess,

which makes it a nook apart from all the cares and wretchedness of

the world. It is a spot where even Cain and Abel might have become

reconciled.'

She emphasized her last words and gave two glances, one to the right

and the other to the left, towards the neighbouring gardens. Monsieur

Maffre and Doctor Porquier nodded approvingly; while the Paloques

looked at each other inquisitively, feeling uneasy and fearing to

compromise themselves should they open their mouths.

At the end of a quarter of an hour Monsieur Rastoil rose from his seat.

'My wife will be wondering where we have got to,' said he.

And thereupon the whole company rose, feeling somewhat embarrassed as

to the manner of their leave-taking. But Abbé Faujas spread out his

hands and said, with the pleasantest possible smile:

'My paradise is always open to you.'

The presiding judge then promised to come and see the Curé every now

and then, and the sub-prefect, with more effusiveness, declared that he

would do the same. For another five minutes they all lingered there,

exchanging compliments, while, out in the lane, the laughter of the

Rastoil girls and Abbé Surin was again heard. A fresh game was going on

with all the animation of the previous one, and the shuttlecock could

be seen passing backwards and forwards in its regular flight above the

garden wall.

XV

One Friday, as Madame Paloque was entering Saint-Saturnin's, she was

greatly surprised to see Marthe kneeling in front of Saint-Michael's

chapel. The Abbé Faujas was hearing confessions.

'Ah!' she muttered, 'has she succeeded in touching the Abbé's heart? I

must wait a little while and watch. It would be very fine if Madame de

Condamin were to come.'

She took a chair a little in the rear, and, half kneeling, covered

her face with her hands as though she was absorbed in earnest prayer;

but she held her fingers apart so that she might glance between

them. The church was very gloomy. Marthe, with her head bent over

her prayer-book, looked as though she were asleep. Her figure snowed

blackly against a white pillar. Only her shoulders, heaving with

deep-drawn sighs, seemed to be alive. She was, indeed, so profoundly

overcome with emotion that she was constantly allowing her turn to be

taken by some other of Abbé Faujas's penitents. The Abbé waited for a

few moments, and then, seemingly a little impatient, he began tapping

the woodwork of the confessional. Thereupon one of the women who were

waiting, seeing that Marthe showed no sign of moving, decided to take

her place. The chapel gradually grew empty, and Marthe still remained

motionless as if in ecstasy.

'She seems in a terrible state,' thought Madame Paloque. 'It is really

quite indecent to make such an exhibition of one's self in church. Ah!

here comes Madame de Condamin!'

Madame de Condamin was indeed just entering the church. She stopped for

a moment before the holy-water basin, removed her glove, and crossed

herself with a pretty gesture. Her silk dress made a murmuring sound

as she passed along the narrow space between the chairs. As she knelt

down, she filled the lofty vault with a rustling of skirts. She had

her usual affable expression, and smiled through the gloom. Soon she

and Marthe were the only two penitents left. The priest grew more and

more impatient, and tapped yet more loudly upon the woodwork of the

confessional.

'It is your turn, madame; I am the last,' Madame de Condamin whispered

politely, bending towards Marthe, whom she had not recognised.

Marthe raised her face, pinched and pale from her extreme emotion, and

did not appear to understand. It was as though she were awakening from

some ecstatic trance, and her eyelids trembled.

'Come, ladies, come!' exclaimed Abbé Faujas, who had now half-opened

the door of the confessional.

Madame de Condamin smilingly rose to obey the priest's summons; but

Marthe, recognising her, hastened into the chapel, to fall again upon

her knees, however, a few paces away from the confessional-box.

Madame Paloque felt much amused. She hoped that the two ladies would

seize each other by the hair. Marthe could hear all that was said,

for Madame de Condamin had a clear flute-like voice. She dallied over

the recital of her sins, and quite animated the confessional with her

pretty gossiping ways. Once she even vented a little muffled laugh, at

the sound of which Marthe raised her pain-racked face. Soon afterwards

Madame de Condamin finished her confession, and rose as if to retire,

but she quickly stepped back and commenced talking afresh, this time

merely bending her head without kneeling down.

'That she-devil is making sport of Madame Mouret and the Abbé,' thought

the judge's wife to herself. 'It's all put on, is this.'

At last Madame de Condamin really withdrew. Marthe watched her as if

waiting till she disappeared. Then she went forward, leant against the

confessional-box, and fell heavily on her knees. Madame Paloque had

slipped a little nearer and was craning out her head, but she could

only see the penitent's dark dress spread out around her. For nearly

half an hour there was not the slightest movement. Now and then she

thought she could detect some smothered sobs in the throbbing silence,

which was also broken at times by a creak from the confessional-box.

She began to feel a little weary of her watching, for all she would be

able to do now would be to stare at Marthe as she left the chapel.

Abbé Faujas was the first to leave, closing the door of the

confessional-box with an appearance of annoyance. Madame Mouret

lingered there for a long time, bent and motionless. When she at last

went away, her face covered with her veil, she seemed quite broken

down, and even forgot to cross herself.

'There has been a row; the Abbé hasn't made himself pleasant,' thought

Madame Paloque. Then she followed Marthe as far as the Place de

l'Archevêché, where she stopped and seemed to hesitate for a moment.

At last, having glanced cautiously around to make sure that nobody was

watching her, she stealthily slipped into the house where Abbé Fenil

resided, at one of the corners of the Place.

Marthe now almost lived at Saint-Saturnin's. She carried out her

religious duties with the greatest fervour. Even Abbé Faujas often had

to remonstrate with her about her excessive zeal. He only allowed her

to communicate once a month, fixed the hours which she should devote

to pious exercises, and insisted that she should not entirely shut

herself up in religious practices. She for a long time requested him to

let her attend a low mass every morning before he would accede to her

desire. One day, when she told him that she had lain for a whole hour

on the cold floor of her room to punish herself for some fault she had

committed, he was very angry with her, and declared that her confessor

alone had the right to inflict penance. He treated her throughout very

sternly, and threatened to send her back to Abbé Bourrette if she did

not absolutely follow his directions.

'I was wrong to take you at all,' he often said; 'I do not like

disobedient souls.'

She felt a pleasure in his harshness. That iron hand which bent her,

and which held her back upon the edge of the adoration in the depths

of which she would have liked to annihilate herself, thrilled her with

ever-renewed desire. She remained like a neophyte, making but little

advance in her journey of love, being constantly pulled up, and vaguely

divining some yet greater bliss beyond. The sense of deep restfulness

which she had first experienced in the church, that forgetfulness of

herself and the outside world, now changed, however, into positive

actual happiness. It was the happiness for which she had been vaguely

longing since her girlhood, and which she was now, at forty years of

age, at last finding; a happiness which sufficed her, which compensated

her for all the past-away years, and made her egotistical, absorbed in

the new sensations that she felt within her like sweet caresses.

'Be kind to me,' she murmured to Abbé Faujas, 'be kind to me, for I

stand in need of great kindness.'

And when he did show her kindness, she could have gone down upon her

knees and thanked him. At these times he unbent, spoke to her in a

fatherly way, and pointed out to her that her imagination was too

excited and feverish. God, said he, did not like to be worshipped in

that way, in wild impulses. She smiled, looking quite pretty and young

again with her blushing face, and promised to restrain herself in the

future. But sometimes she experienced paroxysms of devotion, which cast

her upon the flag-stones in some dark corner, where, almost grovelling,

she stammered out burning words. Even her power of speech then died

away, and she continued her prayers in feeling only, with a yearning

of her whole being, an appeal for that divine kiss which seemed ever

hovering about her brow without pressing it.

At home Marthe became querulous, she who till now had been indifferent

and listless, quite happy so long as her husband left her at peace.

Now, however, that he had begun to spend all his time in the house, had

lost his old spirit of raillery, and had grown mopish and melancholy,

she grew impatient with him.

'He is always hanging about us,' she said to the cook one day.

'Oh, he does it out of pure maliciousness,' replied Rose. 'He isn't a

good man at heart. I haven't found that out to-day for the first time.

He has only put on that woebegone look, he who is so fond of hearing

his tongue wag, in order to try to make us pity him. He's really

bursting with anger, but he won't show it, because he thinks that if he

looks wretched we shall be sorry for him and do just what he wants. You

are quite right, madame, not to let yourself be influenced by all those

grimaces and pretences.'

Mouret kept a hold upon the women with his purse. He did not care to

wrangle and argue with them, for fear of making his life still less

comfortable than it already was; but, though he no longer grumbled

and meddled and interfered, he showed his displeasure by refusing a

single extra crown piece to either Marthe or Rose. He gave the latter

a hundred francs a month for the purchase of provisions; wine, oil,

and preserves were in the house. The cook was obliged to make the sum

stated last her till the end of the month, even if she had to pay for

something out of her own pocket. As for Marthe, she had absolutely

nothing; her husband never even gave her a sou, and she was compelled

to appeal to Rose, and ask her to try to save ten francs out of the

monthly allowance. She often found herself without a pair of boots to

put on, and was obliged to borrow from her mother the money she needed

to buy either a dress or a hat.

'But Mouret must surely be going mad!' Madame Rougon cried. 'You can't

go naked! I will speak to him about it.'

'I beg you to do nothing of the kind, mother,' Marthe said. 'He detests

you, and he would treat me even worse than he does already if he knew

that I talked of these matters to you.'

She began to cry as she added:

'I have shielded him for a long time, but I really can't keep silent

any longer. You remember that he was once most unwilling for me even to

set foot in the street; he kept me shut up, and treated me like a mere

chattel. Now he behaves so unkindly because he sees that I have escaped

from him, and that I won't submit any longer to be a mere servant. He

is a man utterly without religion, selfish and bad-hearted.'

'He doesn't strike you, does he?'

'No; but it will come to that. At present he contents himself with

refusing me everything. I have not bought any chemises for the last

five years, and yesterday I showed him those I have. They are quite

worn out, so patched and mended that I am ashamed of wearing them. He

looked at them and examined them and said that they would do perfectly

well till next year. I haven't a single centime of my own. The other

day I had to borrow two sous from Rose to buy some thread to sew up my

gloves, which were splitting all over.'

She gave her mother many other details of the straits to which she

was reduced--how she had to make laces for her boots out of blackened

string, how she had to wash her ribbons in tea to make her hat look a

little fresher, and how she had to smear the threadbare folds of her

only silk dress with ink to conceal the signs of wear. Madame Rougon

expressed great pity for her, and advised her to rebel. Mouret was a

monster, said she. Rose asserted that he carried his avarice so far

as to count the pears in the store-room and the lumps of sugar in the

cupboard, while he also kept a close eye on the preserves, and ate

himself all the remnants of the loaves.

It was a source of especial distress to Marthe that she was not able

to contribute to the offertories at Saint-Saturnin's. She used to

conceal ten-sou pieces in scraps of paper and carefully preserve them

for high mass on Sundays. When the lady patronesses of the Home of the

Virgin made some offering to the cathedral, such as a pyx, or a silver

cross, or a banner, she felt quite ashamed, and kept out of the way,

affecting ignorance of their intentions. The ladies felt much pity for

her. She would have robbed her husband if she could have found the key

of his desk, so keenly was she tortured at being able to do nothing for

the honour of the church to which she was so passionately attached.

She felt all the jealousy of a deceived woman when Abbé Faujas used a

chalice which had been presented by Madame de Condamin; whereas on the

days when he said mass in front of the altar cloth which she herself

had embroidered she was filled with fervent joy, and said her prayers

with ecstatic thrills, as though some part of herself lay beneath the

priest's extended hands. She would have liked to have had a whole

chapel of her own; and even dreamt of expending a fortune upon one, and

of shutting herself up in it and receiving the Deity alone by herself

at her own altar.

Rose, of whom she made a confidant, had recourse to all sorts of plans

to obtain money for her. That year she secretly gathered the finest

fruit in the garden and sold it, and she also disposed of a lot of old

furniture that was stowed away in an attic, managing her sales so well

that she succeeded in getting together a sum of three hundred francs,

which she handed to Marthe with great triumph. The latter kissed the

old cook.

'Oh! how good you are!' she said to her, affectionately. 'Are you quite

sure that he knows nothing about what you have done? I saw the other

day, in the Rue des Orfèvres, two little cruets of chased silver, such

dear little things; they are marked two hundred francs. Now, you'll do

me a little favour, won't you? I don't want to go and buy them myself,

because someone would certainly see me going into the shop. Tell your

sister to go and get them. She can bring them here after dark, and can

give them to you through the kitchen window.'

This purchase of the cruets seemed like a clandestine intrigue to

Marthe, and thrilled her with the sweetest pleasure. For three days she

kept the cruets at the bottom of a chest, hidden away beneath layers

of linen; and when she gave them to Abbé Faujas in the sacristy of

Saint-Saturnin's she trembled so much that she could scarcely speak.

The Abbé scolded her in a kindly fashion. He was not fond of presents,

and spoke of money with the disdain of a strong-minded man who only

cares for power and authority. During his earlier years of poverty,

even at times when he and his mother had no food beyond bread and

water, he had never thought of borrowing even a ten-franc piece from

the Mourets.

Marthe found a safe hiding-place for the hundred francs which were

still left her. She also was becoming a little miserly; and she schemed

how she should best expend this money, making some fresh plan every

morning. While she was still in a state of hesitation, Rose told her

that Madame Trouche wished to see her privately. Olympe, who used to

spend hours in the kitchen, had become Rose's intimate friend, and

often borrowed a couple of francs of her to save herself from going

upstairs at times when she said that she had forgotten to bring down

her purse.

'Go upstairs and see her there,' said the cook; 'you will be better

able to talk there. They are good sort of people, and they are very

fond of his reverence. They have had a lot of trouble. Madame Olympe

has quite made my heart ache with all the things she has told me.'

When Marthe went upstairs she found Olympe in tears. They, the

Trouches, were too soft-hearted, said she, and their kindness was

always being abused. Then she entered upon an explanation of their

affairs at Besançon, where the rascality of a partner had saddled them

with a heavy burden of debt. To make matters worse, their creditors

were getting angry, and she had just received an insulting letter, the

writer of which threatened to communicate with the Mayor and the Bishop

of Plassans.

'I don't mind what happens to me,' she sobbed, 'but I would give my

head to save my brother from being compromised. He has already done

too much for us, and I don't want to speak to him on the matter, for

he is not rich, and he would only distress himself to no purpose. Good

heavens! what can I do to keep that man from writing? My brother would

die of shame if such a letter were sent to the Mayor and the Bishop.

Yes, I know him well; he would die of shame!'

Tears rushed to Marthe's eyes. She was quite pale, and fervently

pressed Olympe's hands. Then, without the latter having preferred any

request, she offered her the hundred francs she had.

'It is very little, I know; but perhaps it might be sufficient to avert

the danger,' she said with an expression of great anxiety.

'A hundred francs, a hundred francs!' exclaimed Olympe. 'Oh, no! he

would never be satisfied with a hundred francs.'

Marthe lost all hope. She swore that she had not a centime more. She

so far forgot herself as to speak of the cruets. If she had not bought

them she would have been able to give three hundred francs. Madame

Trouche's eyes sparkled.

'Three hundred francs, that is just what he demands,' she said. 'Ah!

you would have rendered my brother a much greater service by not giving

him that present, which, by the way, will have to remain in the church.

What a number of beautiful things the ladies of Besançon presented to

him! But he isn't a bit the better off for them to-day! Don't give

him anything more; it is really nothing but robbery! Consult me about

what you do; there is so much hidden misery--No! a hundred francs will

certainly not be sufficient!'

At the end of half an hour spent in lamentation, however, she accepted

the hundred francs when she saw that Marthe really had no more.

'I will send them so as to pacify the man a little,' she said, 'but

he won't leave us at peace long. Whatever you do, I beg of you not to

mention anything about it to my brother. It would nearly kill him. And

I think it would be better, too, if my husband knew nothing of what has

passed between us; he is so proud that he would be sure to be doing

something rash to be able to acquit himself of our obligation to you.

We women can understand each other, you know.'

This loan was a source of much pleasure to Marthe, who henceforth had

a fresh care, that of warding off from Abbé Faujas the danger that

threatened him without his being aware of it. She frequently went

upstairs to the Trouches' rooms and stayed there for hours, discussing

with Olympe the best means of discharging the debts. The latter had

told her that a good many promissory notes had been endorsed by the

priest, and that there would be a terrible scandal if they should ever

be sent to any bailiff in Plassans to be protested. The sum total of

their liabilities was so great, she said, that for a long time she

refused to disclose it, only weeping the more bitterly when Marthe

pressed her. One day, however, she mentioned the sum of twenty thousand

francs. Marthe was quite frozen upon hearing this. She would never be

able to procure anything like twenty thousand francs, and thought that

she would certainly have to wait for Mouret's death before she could

hope to have any such sum at her disposal.

'I say twenty thousand francs in all,' Olympe hastily added, disquieted

by Marthe's grave appearance: 'but we should be quite satisfied if

we were able to pay by small instalments spread over half a score of

years. The creditors would wait for any length of time, if they were

only sure of getting their instalments regularly. It is a great pity

that we can't find anyone who has sufficient confidence in us to make

the small necessary advances.'

This matter became an habitual topic of conversation. Olympe also

frequently spoke of Abbé Faujas, whom she seemed almost to worship. She

gave Marthe all kinds of private details about the priest: such as,

for instance, that he could not bear anything that tickled him, that

he could sleep on his left side, and that he had a strawberry-mark on

his right shoulder, which turned red in May like the natural fruit.

Marthe smiled and never tired of hearing of these little matters; and

she questioned the young woman about her childhood and that of her

brother. When the subject of the money cropped up she seemed painfully

overcome by her inability to do anything, and she even complained

bitterly of Mouret, to whom Olympe, emboldened by Marthe's language,

now always referred in her presence as the 'old miser.' Sometimes when

Trouche returned from his office he found the two women still talking

together, but at his appearance they checked themselves and changed the

subject. Trouche conducted himself in the most satisfactory way, and

the lady patronesses of the Home of the Virgin were highly pleased with

him. He was never seen in any of the cafés in the town.

In order to be able to render some assistance to Olympe, who sometimes

talked about throwing herself out of the window, Marthe made Rose take

all the useless old odds and ends that were lying about the house to a

second-hand dealer at the market. At first the two women were a little

timid about the matter, and only disposed of broken-down chairs and

tables when Mouret was out of the way, but afterwards they began to

lay hands upon more important articles, and sold ornaments, pieces

of china, and anything else they could remove without its absence

appearing too conspicuous. They were slipping down a fatal incline,

and would have ended by carting off all the furniture in the house and

leaving nothing but the bare walls, if Mouret had not one day charged

Rose with thieving and threatened to send for the police.

'What, sir! A thief! I!' she cried. 'Just because you happened to see

me selling one of madame's rings. Be careful of what you are saying!

The ring was mine; madame gave it to me. Madame isn't such a mean

wretch as you are. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for leaving your

wife without a sou! She hasn't even a pair of shoes to put on! The

other day I had to pay the milkman myself! Yes, I did sell the ring,

and what of that? Isn't madame's ring her own? She is obliged to turn

it into money, since you won't give her any. If I were she, I would

sell the whole house! The whole house, do you hear? It distresses me

beyond everything to see her going about as naked as Saint John the

Baptist!'

Mouret now began to keep a close watch at all times. He locked up

the cupboards and drawers, and kept the keys in his own possession.

Whenever Rose went out he would look at her hands distrustfully, and

even feel at her pockets if he saw any suspicious swelling beneath

her skirt. He brought certain articles back from the second-hand

dealer's and restored them to their places, dusting and wiping them

ostentatiously in Marthe's presence in order to remind her of what he

called Rose's thefts. He never directly accused his wife. There was

a cut-glass water-bottle which he turned into a special instrument of

torture. Rose, having sold it for twenty sous, had pretended to Mouret

that it was broken. But now he made her bring it and put it on the

table at every meal. One day, at lunch, she quite lost her temper over

it, and purposely let it fall.

'There, sir, it's really broken this time, isn't it?' she cried,

laughing in his face.

As he threatened to dismiss her, she exclaimed:

'You had better! I've been in your service for five-and-twenty years.

If I went madame would go with me!'

Marthe, reduced to extremities and egged on by Rose and Olympe, at last

rebelled. She was desperately in want of five hundred francs. For the

last week Olympe had been crying and sobbing, asserting that if she

could not get five hundred francs by the end of the month one of the

bills which had been endorsed by Abbé Faujas would be published in one

of the Plassans newspapers. The threatened publication of this bill,

this terrible threat which she did not quite understand, threw Marthe

into a state of dreadful alarm, and she resolved to dare everything.

In the evening, as they were going to bed, she asked Mouret for the

five hundred francs, and when he looked at her in amazement she began

to speak of the fifteen years which she had spent behind a counter at

Marseilles, with a pen behind her ear like a clerk.

'We made the money together,' she said; 'and it belongs to us both. I

want five hundred francs.'

Mouret thereupon broke his long maintained silence in the most violent

fashion, and all his old raillery burst forth again.

'Five hundred francs!' he cried. 'Do you want them for your priest?

I play the simpleton now and keep my peace for fear I might say too

much; but you must not imagine that you can go on for ever making a

fool of me! Five hundred francs! Why not say the whole house? The

whole house certainly does seem to belong to him! He wants some money,

does he? And he has told you to ask me for it? I might be among a

lot of robbers in a wood instead of being in my own home! I shall

have my very handkerchief stolen out of my pocket before long! I'll

be bound that if I were to go and search his room I should find his

drawers full of my property. There are seven pairs of my socks missing,

four or five shirts, and three pairs of pants. I was going over the

things yesterday. Everything I have is disappearing, and I shan't have

anything left very soon! No, not a single sou will I give you, not a

single sou!'

'I want five hundred francs; half of the money belongs to me,' Marthe

tranquilly replied.

For a whole hour Mouret stormed and fumed and repeated the same

reproaches. His wife was no longer the same, he said. He did not know

her now. Before the priest's arrival, she had loved him and obeyed him

and looked after the house. Those who set her to act in opposition to

him must be very wicked persons. Then his voice grew thick, and he let

himself fall into a chair, broken down and as weak as a child.

'Give me the key of your desk!' said Marthe.

He got up from his chair and gathered his strength together for a last

cry of protest.

'You want to strip me of everything, eh? to leave your children with

nothing but straw for a bed? You won't even leave us a loaf of bread?

Well! well! clear out everything, and send for Rose to fill her apron!

There's the key!'

He threw the key at Marthe and she placed it under her pillow. She was

quite pale after this quarrel, the first violent quarrel that she had

ever had with her husband. She got into bed, but Mouret passed the

night in an easy-chair. Towards morning Marthe heard him sobbing. She

would then have given him back the key, if he had not wildly rushed

into the garden, though it was still pitch dark.

Peace again seemed to be re-established between them. The key of the

desk remained hanging upon a nail near the mirror. Marthe, who was

quite unaccustomed to the sight of large sums, felt a sort of fear of

the money. She was very bashful and shamefaced at first whenever she

went to open the drawer in which Mouret always kept some ten thousand

francs in cash to pay for his purchases of wine. She strictly confined

herself to taking only what was necessary. Olympe, too, gave her the

most excellent advice, and told her that now she had the key she

ought to be careful and economical; and, indeed, seeing the trembling

nervousness which she exhibited at the sight of the hoard of money, she

ceased for some time to speak to her of the Besançon debts.

Mouret meantime relapsed into his former moody silence. Serge's

admission to the Seminary had been another severe blow to him. His

friends of the Cours Sauvaire, the retired traders who promenaded

there regularly between four o'clock and six, began to feel very uneasy

about him, when they saw him arrive with his arms swaying about and his

face wearing a stupefied expression. He hardly made any reply to their

remarks and seemed a prey to some incurable disease.

'He's breaking up; he's breaking up,' they murmured to each other; 'and

he's only forty-four; it's scarcely credible. He will end by having

softening of the brain.'

Mouret no longer seemed to hear the malicious allusions which were

made before him. If he was questioned directly about Abbé Faujas, he

coloured slightly as he replied that the priest was an excellent tenant

and paid his rent with great punctuality. When his back was turned, the

retired shopkeepers grinned as they sat and basked in the sun on one of

the seats on the Cours.

'Well, after all, he is only getting what he deserves,' said a retired

almond-dealer. 'You remember how hotly he stood up for the priest, how

he sang his praises in the four corners of Plassans; but when one talks

to him on that subject now rather an odd expression comes over his

face.'

These worthy gentlemen then regaled themselves with certain scandalous

stories which they whispered into each other's ears, passing them on in

this way from one end of the bench to the other.

'Well,' said a master-tanner in a half whisper, 'there isn't much pluck

about Mouret; if I were in his place I would soon show the priest the

door.'

Thereupon they all repeated that Mouret was certainly a very timid

fellow, he who had formerly jeered so much at those husbands who

allowed their wives to lead them by the nose.

These stories, however, in spite of the persistence with which certain

persons kept them afloat, never got beyond a particular set of idle

gossiping people, and the reason which the Curé himself gave for not

taking up his residence at the parsonage, namely, his liking for the

Mourets' beautiful garden, where he could read his breviary in such

perfect peace, was generally accepted as the true one. His great

piety, his ascetic life and his contempt for all the frivolities and

coquetries which other priests allowed themselves placed him beyond

suspicion. The members of the Young Men's Club accused Abbé Fenil of

trying to ruin him. All the new part of the town was on his side,

and it was only the Saint-Marc quarter that was against him, its

aristocratic inhabitants treating him with great reserve whenever they

met him in Monseigneur Rousselot's saloons. However, in spite of his

popularity, he shook his head when old Madame Rougon told him that he

might now dare everything.

'Nothing is quite safe and solid yet,' he said. 'I am not sure of

anyone. The least touch might bring the whole edifice toppling down.'

Marthe had been causing him anxiety for some time past. He felt that

he was incapable of calming the fever of devotion which was raging

within her. She escaped his control and disobeyed him, and advanced

further than he wished her to do. He was afraid lest this woman, this

much-respected patroness, who was so useful, might yet bring about his

ruin. There was a fire burning within her which seemed to discolour

her flesh, and redden her eyes and make them heavy. It was like an

ever-growing disease, an infatuation of her whole being, that was

gradually weakening her heart and brain. She often seemed to lapse into

some ecstatic trance, her hands were shaken by a nervous trembling,

and a dry cough occasionally shook her from head to foot without

consciousness apparently on her part of how it was rending her. The

Curé then showed himself sterner to her than before, tried to crush the

passion which was dawning within her, and even forbade her to come to

Saint-Saturnin's.

'The church is very cold,' he said, 'and you cough so much there. I

don't want you to do anything to make yourself worse.'