Complete Works of Emile Zola (307 page)

‘The priest’s not at all shamefaced,’ Mouret remarked jestingly, when the mother and son had retired.

‘I don’t think they are very well off,’ Marthe replied.

‘Well, at any rate, he isn’t carrying Peru about with him in that box of his,’ Mouret exclaimed. ‘And it’s light enough! Why, I could have raised it with the tip of my little finger!’

But he was interrupted in his flow of chatter by Rose, who had just come running down the stairs to relate the extra­ordinary things she had witnessed.

‘Well, she is a wonderful creature, indeed!’ she cried, posting herself in front of the table at which the family were eating. ‘She’s sixty-five at least, but she doesn’t show it at all, and she bustles about, and works like a horse!’

‘Did she help you to remove the fruit?’ Mouret asked, with some curiosity.

‘Yes, indeed, she did, sir! She carried it away in her apron, in loads heavy enough to burst it. I kept saying to myself, “The apron will certainly go this time,” but it didn’t. It is made of good strong material, the same kind of material as I wear myself. We made at least ten journeys backwards and forwards, and I felt as though my arms would fall off, but she only grumbled, and complained that we were getting on very slowly. I really believe, begging your pardon for mentioning it, that I heard her swear.’

Mouret appeared to be greatly amused.

‘And the beds?’ he asked.

‘The beds, she made them too. It was quite a sight to see her turn the mattress over. It seemed to weigh nothing, I can tell you; she just took hold of it at one end and tossed it into the air as though it had been a feather. And yet she was very careful and particular with it all. She tucked in the folding-bed as carefully as though she were preparing a baby’s cradle. She couldn’t have laid the sheets with greater devotion if the Infant Jesus Himself had been going to sleep there. She put three out of the four blankets upon the folding-bed. And it was just the same with the pillows; she kept none for herself, but gave both to her son.’

‘She is going to sleep on the floor, then?’

‘In a corner, just like a dog! She threw a mattress on the floor of the other room and said that she’d sleep there more soundly than if she were in paradise. I couldn’t per­suade her to do anything to make herself more comfortable.

She says that she is never cold, and that her head is much too hard to make her at all afraid of lying on the floor. I have taken them some sugar and some water, as madame told me. Oh! they really are the strangest people!’

Then Rose brought in the remainder of the dinner. That evening the Mourets lingered over their meal. They discussed the new tenants at great length. In their life, which went on with all the even regularity of clock-work, the arrival of these two strangers was a very exciting event. They talked about it as they would have done of some catastrophe in the neigh­bourhood, going into all that minuteness of detail which helps one to while away long nights in the country. Mouret was especially fond of the chattering gossip of a little provincial town. During dessert, as he rested his elbows on the table in the cool dining-room, he repeated for the tenth time with the self-satisfied air of a happy man:

‘It certainly isn’t a very handsome present that Besançon has made to Plassans! Did you notice the back of his cassock when he turned round? I shall be very much surprised if he is much run after by the pious folks here. He is too seedy and threadbare; and the pious folks like nice-looking priests.’

‘He has a very gentle voice,’ said Marthe, indulgently.

‘Not when he is angry, at any rate,’ Mouret replied.’Didn’t you hear him when he burst out on finding that the rooms were not furnished? He’s a stern man, I’ll be bound; not one of the sort, I should think, to go lounging in con­fessional-boxes. I shall be very curious to see how he sets about his furnishing to-morrow. But as long as he pays me, I don’t much mind anything else. If he doesn’t, I shall apply to Abbé Bourrette. It was with him that I made the bargain.’

The Mourets were not a devout family. The children themselves made fun of the Abbé and his mother. Octave burlesqued the old lady’s way of craning out her neck to see to the end of the rooms, a performance which made Désirée laugh. After a time, however, Serge, who was of a more serious turn of mind, stood up for ‘those poor people.’

As a rule, precisely at ten o’clock, if he was not playing at piquet, Mouret took up his candlestick and went off to bed, but that evening, when eleven o’clock struck, he was not yet feeling drowsy. Désirée had fallen asleep, with her head lying on Marthe’s knees. The two lads had gone up to their room; and Mouret, left alone with his wife, still went on chattering.

‘How old do you suppose he is?’ he suddenly asked.

‘Who?’ replied Marthe, who was now beginning to feel very sleepy.

‘Who? Why, the Abbé, of course! Between forty and forty-five, eh? He’s a fine strapping fellow. It’s a pity for him to wear a cassock! He would have made a splendid carbineer.’

Then, after an interval of silence, he vented aloud the reflections which were exercising his mind:

‘They, arrived by the quarter to seven train. They can only have just had time to call on Abbé Bourrette before coming here. I’ll wager that they haven’t dined! That is quite clear. We should certainly have seen them if they had gone out to the hotel. Ah, now I should very much like to know where they can have had anything to eat.’

Rose had been lingering about the dining-room for the last few moments, waiting for her master and mistress to go to bed in order that she might be at liberty to fasten the doors and windows.

‘I know where they had something to eat,’ she said. And as Mouret turned briskly towards her, she added: ‘Yes, I had gone upstairs again to see if there was anything they wanted. As I heard no sound, I didn’t venture to knock at the door, but I looked through the keyhole.’

‘Why, that was very improper of you, very improper,’ Marthe interrupted, severely. ‘You know very well, Rose, that I don’t approve of anything of that kind.’

‘Leave her alone and let her go on!’ cried Mouret, who, under other circumstances, would have been very angry with the inquisitive woman. ‘You peeped through the keyhole, did you?’

‘Yes, sir; I thought it was the best plan.’

‘Clearly so. What were they doing?’

‘Well, sir, they were eating. I saw them sitting on one corner of the folding-bedstead and eating. The old lady had spread out a napkin. Every time that they helped them­selves to some wine, they corked the bottle again and laid it down against the pillow.’

‘But what were they eating?’

‘I couldn’t quite tell, sir. It seemed to me like the remains of some pastry wrapped up in a newspaper. They had some apples as well — little apples that looked good for nothing.’

‘They were talking, I suppose? Did you hear what they said?’

‘No, sir, they were not talking. I stayed for a good quarter of an hour watching them, but they never said any­thing. They were much too busy eating!’

Marthe now rose, woke Désirée, and made as though she were going off to bed. Her husband’s curiosity vexed her. He, too, at last made up his mind to go off upstairs, while old Rose, who was a pious creature, went on in a lower tone:

‘The poor, dear man must have been frightfully hungry. His mother handed him the biggest pieces and watched him swallow them with delight. And now he’ll sleep in some nice white sheets; unless, indeed, the smell of the fruit keeps him awake. It isn’t a pleasant smell to have in one’s bedroom, that sour odour of apples and pears. And there isn’t a bit of furniture in the whole room, nothing but the bed in the corner! If I were he, I should feel quite frightened, and I should keep the light burning all night.’

Mouret had taken up his candlestick. He stood for a moment in front of Rose, and summed up the events of the evening like a genuine
bourgeois
who has met with something unusual: ‘It is extraordinary!’

Then he joined his wife at the foot of the staircase. She got into bed and fell asleep, while he still continued listening to the slightest sounds that proceeded from the upper floor. The Abbe’s room was immediately over his own. He heard the window of it being gently opened, and this greatly excited his curiosity. He raised his head from his pillow, and strenuously struggled against his increasing drowsiness in his anxiety to find out how long the Abbé would remain at the window. But sleep was too strong for him, and he was snoring noisily before he had been able to detect the grating sound which the window-fastening made when it was closed.

Up above, Abbé Faujas was gazing, bare-headed, out of his window into the black night. He lingered there for a long time, glad to find himself at last alone, absorbed in those thoughts which gave his brow such an expression of sternness. Underneath him, he was conscious of the tranquil slumber of the family whose home he had been sharing for the last few hours; the calm, easy breathing of the children and their mother Marthe, and the heavy, regular respiration of Mouret.

There was a touch of scorn in the way in which the priest stretched out his muscular neck, as he raised his head to gaze upon the town that lay slumbering in the distance. The tall trees in the garden of the Sub-Prefecture formed a mass of gloomy darkness, and Monsieur Rastoil’s pear-trees thrust up scraggy, twisted branches, while, further away, there was but a sea of black shadow, a blank nothingness, whence not a sound proceeded. The town lay as tranquilly asleep as an infant in its cradle.

Abbé Faujas stretched out his arms with an air of ironic defiance, as though he would have liked to circle them round Plassans, and squeeze the life out of it by crushing it against his brawny chest. And he murmured to himself:

‘Ah! to think that the imbeciles laughed at me this even­ing, as they saw me going through their streets!’

CHAPTER III

Mouret spent the whole of the next morning in playing the spy on his new tenant. This espionage would now enable him to fill up the idle hours which he had hitherto spent in pottering about the house, in putting back into their proper places any articles which he happened to find lying about, and in picking quarrels with his wife and children. Hence­forth he would have an occupation, an amusement which would relieve the monotony of his everyday life. As he had often said, he was not partial to priests, and yet Abbé Faujas, the first one who had entered into his existence, excited in him an extraordinary amount of interest. This priest brought with him a touch of mystery and secresy that was almost disquieting. Although Mouret was a strong-minded man and professed himself to be a follower of Voltaire, yet in the Abbé’s presence he felt the astonishment and uneasiness of a common
bourgeois.

Not a sound came from the second floor. Mouret stood on the staircase and listened eagerly; he even ventured to go to the loft. As he hushed his steps while passing along the passage, a pattering of slippers behind the door filled him with emotion. But he did not succeed in making any new dis­covery, so he went down into the garden and strolled into the arbour at the end of it, there raising his eyes and trying to look through the windows in order to find out what might be going on in the rooms. But he could not see even the Abbe’s shadow. Madame Faujas, in the absence of curtains, had, as a makeshift, fastened some sheets behind the windows.

At lunch Mouret seemed quite vexed.

‘Are they dead upstairs?’ he said, as he cut the children’s bread. ‘Have you heard them move, Marthe?’

‘No, my dear; but I haven’t been listening.’

Rose thereupon cried out from the kitchen: ‘They’ve been gone ever so long. They must be far enough away now if they’ve kept on at the same pace.’

Mouret summoned the cook and questioned her minutely.

‘They went out, sir: first the mother, and then the priest. They walked so softly that I should never have known any­thing about it if their shadows had not fallen across the kitchen floor when they opened the street door. I looked out into the street to see where they were going, but they had vanished. They must have gone off in a fine hurry.’

‘It is very surprising. But where was I at the time?’

‘I think you were in the garden, sir, looking at the grapes in the arbour.’

This put Mouret into a very bad temper. He began to inveigh against priests. They were a set of mystery-mongers, a parcel of underhand schemers, with whom the devil himself would be at a loss. They affected such ridiculous prudery that no one had ever seen a priest wash his face. And then he wound up by expressing his sorrow that he had ever let his rooms to this Abbé, about whom he knew nothing at all.

‘It is all your fault!’ he exclaimed to his wife, as he got up from table.

Marthe was about to protest and remind him of their dis­cussion on the previous day, but she raised her eyes and simply looked at him, saying nothing. Mouret, contrary to his usual custom, resolved to remain at home. He pottered up and down between the dining-room and the garden, poking about everywhere, pretending that nothing was in its place and that the house simply invited thieves. Then he got indignant with Serge and Octave, who had set off for the college, he said, quite half an hour too soon.

‘Isn’t father going out?’ Désirée whispered in her mother’s ear, ‘He will worry us to death if he stays at home.’

Marthe hushed her. At last Mouret began to speak of a piece of business which he declared he must finish off during the day. And then he complained that he had never a moment to himself, and could never get a day’s rest at home when he felt he wanted it. Finally he went away, quite distressed that he could not remain and see what happened.

When he returned in the evening he was all on fire with curiosity.

‘Well, what about the Abbé?’ he asked, without even giving himself time to take off his hat.

Marthe was working in her usual place on the terrace.

‘The Abbé!’ she repeated, with an appearance of surprise. ‘Oh, yes! the Abbé — I’ve really seen nothing of him, but I believe he has got settled down now. Rose told me that some furniture had come.’

‘That’s just what I was afraid of!’ exclaimed Mouret. ‘I wanted to be here when it came; for, you see, the furniture is my security. I knew very well that you would never think of stirring from your chair. You haven’t much of a head, my dear — Rose! Rose!’