Complete Works of Emile Zola (321 page)

‘Abbé Faujas has done quite right in not keeping her himself,’ said she, with a twist of her mouth that made her still more hideous than usual; ‘Abbé Bourrette is very successful in saving souls and appearances also.’

When Marthe came that evening her mother stepped forward to welcome her, and kissed her affectionately with some ostentation before the company. She herself had made her peace with God on the morrow of the Coup d’Etat. She was of opinion that Abbé Faujas might now venture to return to the green drawing-room; but he ex­cused himself, making a pretext of his work and his love of privacy. Madame Rougon then fancied that he was planning a triumphal return for the following winter. The Abbé’s success was certainly on the increase. For the first few months his only penitents had come from the vege­table-market held behind the cathedral, poor hawkers, to whose dialect he had quietly listened without always being able to understand it; but now, especially since all the talk there had been in connection with the Home of the Virgin, he had a crowd of well-to-do citizens’ wives and daughters dressed in silk kneeling before his confes­sional-box. When Marthe quietly mentioned that he would not receive her amongst his penitents, Madame de Condamin was seized with a sudden whim, and deserted her director, the senior curate of Saint-Saturnin’s, who was greatly dis­tressed thereby, to transfer the guardianship of her soul to Abbé Faujas. Such a distinction as this gave the latter a firm position in Plassans society.

When Mouret learned that his wife now went to confession, he merely said to her:

‘You have been doing something wrong lately, I suppose, since you find it necessary to go and tell all your affairs to a parson?’

In the midst of all this pious excitement he seemed to iso­late himself and shut himself up in his own narrow and monotonous life still further. When his wife reproached him for complaining to her mother, he answered:

‘Yes, you are right; it was wrong of me. It is foolish to give people any pleasure by telling them of one’s troubles. However, I promise you that I won’t give your mother this satisfaction a second time. I have been thinking matters over, and the house may topple down on our heads before I’ll go whimpering to anyone again.
’

From that time he never made any disparaging remarks about the management of the house or scolded his wife in the presence of strangers, but professed himself, as formerly, the happiest of men. This effort of sound sense cost him little, for he saw that it would tend to his comfort, which was the object of his constant thoughts. He even exagge­rated his assumption of the part of a contented methodical citizen who took pleasure in living. Marthe only became aware of his impatience by his restless pacing up and down. For whole weeks he refrained from teasing or fault-finding as far as she was concerned, while upon Rose and his chil­dren he constantly poured forth his jeers, scolding them too from morning till night for the slightest shortcomings.

Previously he had only been economical, now he became miserly.

‘There is no sense in spending money in the way we are doing,’ he grumbled to Marthe. ‘I’ll be bound you are giving it all to those young hussies of yours. But it’s quite sufficient for you to waste your time over them. Listen to me, my dear. I will give you a hundred francs a month for housekeeping, and if you will persist in giving money to girls who don’t deserve it, you must save it out of your dress allowance.’

He kept firmly to his word, and the very next month he refused to let Marthe buy a pair of boots on the pretext that it would disarrange his accounts, and that he had given her full notice and warning. One evening his wife found him weeping bitterly in their bedroom. All her kindness of heart was aroused, and she clasped him in her arms and besought him to tell her what distressed him. But he roughly tore himself away from her and told her that he was not crying at all, but simply had a bad headache. It was that, said he, which made his eyes red.

‘Do you think,’ he exclaimed, ‘that I am such a simpleton as you are to cry?’

She felt much hurt. The next day Mouret affected great gaiety; but some days afterwards, when Abbé Faujas and his mother came downstairs after dinner, he refused to play his usual game of piquet. He did not feel clear-headed enough for it, he said. On the next few nights he made other excuses, and so the games were broken off, and everyone went out on the terrace. Mouret seated himself in front of his wife and the Abbé, doing all he could to speak as much and as fre­quently as possible; while Madame Faujas sat a few yards away in the gloom, quite silent and still, with her hands upon her knees, like one of those legendary figures keeping guard over a treasure with the stern fidelity of a crouching dog.

‘Fine evening!’ Mouret used to say every night. ‘It is much pleasanter here than in the dining-room. It is very wise of you to come out and enjoy the fresh air. Ah! there’s a shooting-star! Did your reverence see it? I’ve heard say that it’s Saint Peter lighting his pipe up yonder.’

He laughed, but Marthe kept quite grave, vexed by his attempts at pleasantry, which spoilt her enjoyment of the expanse of sky that spread between Monsieur Rastoil’s pear-trees and the chestnuts of the Sub-Prefecture. Some­times he would pretend to be unaware that she conformed with the requirements of religion, and he would take the Abbé aside and tell him that he relied on him to effect the salvation of the whole house. At other times he could never begin a sentence without saying in a bantering tone, ‘Now that my wife goes to confession — ‘ Then having grown tired of this subject, he began to listen to what was being said in the neighbouring gardens, trying to catch the faint sounds of voices which rose in the calm night air, as the distant noises of Plassans were hushed.

‘Ah! those are the voices of Monsieur de Condamin and Doctor Porquier!’ he said, straining his ear towards the Sub-Prefecture. ‘They are making fun of the Paloques. Did you hear Monsieur Delangre saying in his falsetto, “Ladies, you had better come in, the air is growing cool”? Don’t you think that little Delangre always talks as though he had swallowed a reed-pipe?’

Then he turned his head towards the Rastoils’ garden.

‘They haven’t anyone there to-night,’ he said; ‘I can’t hear anything. Ah, yes! those big geese the daughters are by the waterfall. The elder one talks just as though she were gobbling pebbles. Every evening they sit there jabber­ing for a good hour. They can’t want all that time to tell each other about the matrimonial offers they have had. Ah! they are all there! There’s Abbé Surin, with a voice like a flute; and Abbé Fenil, who would do for a rattle on Good Friday. There are sometimes a score of them huddled together, without stirring a finger, in that garden. I believe they all go there to listen to what we say.’

While he went chattering on in this manner Abbé Faujas and Marthe merely spoke a few words, chiefly in reply to his questions. Generally they sat apart from him with their faces raised to the sky and their eyes gazing into space. One evening Mouret fell asleep. Then, inclining their heads to-wards each other, they began to talk in subdued tones; while some few yards away, Madame Faujas, with her hands upon her knees, her eyes wide open and her ears on the strain, yet never seeing or hearing anything, seemed to be keeping watch for them.

CHAPTER X

The summer passed away, and Abbé Faujas seemed in no hurry to derive any advantage from his increasing popularity. He still kept himself in seclusion at the Mourets’, delighting in the solitude of the garden, to which he now came down during the day-time. He read his breviary as he slowly walked with bent head up and down the green arbour at the far end. Sometimes he would close his book, still further slacken his steps, and seem to be buried in deep reverie. Mouret, who used to watch him, at last became impatient and irritated at seeing that black figure walking to and fro for hours together behind his fruit-trees.

‘One has no privacy left,’ he muttered. ‘I can’t lift my eyes now without catching sight of that cassock. He is like a crow, that fellow there, with his round eyes that always seem to be on the look-out for something. I don’t believe in his fine disinterested airs.’

It was not till early in September that the Home of the Virgin was completed. In the provinces workmen are pain­fully slow; though it must be stated that the lady patronesses had twice upset Monsieur Lieutaud’s designs in favour of ideas of their own. When the committee took possession of the building they rewarded the architect for the complaisance he had manifested by lavishing the highest praises upon him. Everything seemed to them perfectly satisfactory. The rooms were large, the communications were excellent, and there was a courtyard planted with trees and embellished with two small fountains. Madame de Condamin was par­ticularly charmed with the façade, which was one of her own ideas. Over the door, the words ‘Home of the Virgin’ were carved in gold letters on a slab of black marble.

On the occasion of the opening of the Home there was a very affecting ceremony. The Bishop, attended by the Chapter, came in person to install the Sisters of Saint Joseph, who had been authorised to work the institution. A troop of some fifty girls of from eight to fifteen years of age had been collected together from the streets of the old quarter of the town, and all that had been required from the parents to obtain admission for their children had been a declaration that their avocations necessitated their absence from home during the entire day. Monsieur Delangre made a speech which was much applauded. He explained at considerable length, and in a magnificent style, the details and arrange­ments of this new refuge, which he called ‘the school of virtue and labour, where young and interesting creatures would be kept safe from wicked temptations.’ A delicate allusion, towards the end of the speech, to the real promoter of the Home, Abbé Faujas, attracted much notice. The Abbé was present amongst the other priests, and his fine, grave face remained perfectly calm and tranquil when all eyes were turned upon him. Marthe blushed on the platform, where she was sitting in the midst of the lady patronesses.

When the ceremony was over, the Bishop expressed a desire to inspect the building in every detail; and, notwith­standing the evident annoyance of Abbé Fenil, he sent for Abbé Faujas, whose big black eyes had never for a moment quitted him, and requested him to be good enough to act as his guide, adding aloud with a smile, that he was sure he could not find a better one. This little speech was circulated amongst the departing spectators, and in the evening all Plassans commented upon the Bishop’s favourable demeanour towards Abbé Faujas.

The lady patronesses had reserved for themselves one of the rooms in the Home. Here they provided a collation for the Bishop, who ate a biscuit and drank two sips of Malaga, while saying a polite word or two to each of them. This brought the pious festival to a happy conclusion, for both before and during the ceremony there had been heart­burnings and rivalries among the ladies, whom the delicate praises of Monseigneur Rousselot quite restored to good humour. When they were left to themselves, they declared that everything had gone off exceedingly well, and they profusely praised the Bishop. Madame Paloque alone looked sour. The prelate had somehow forgotten her when he was distributing his compliments.

‘You were quite right,’ she said in a fury to her husband, when she got home again; ‘I have just been made a con­venience in that silly nonsense of theirs. It’s a fine idea, indeed, to bring all those corrupt hussies together. I have given up all my time to them, and that big simpleton of a Bishop, who trembles before his own clergy, can’t even say thank you. Just as if that Madame de Condamin had done anything, indeed. She is far too much occupied in showing off her dresses! Ah! we know quite enough about her, don’t we? The world will hear something about her one of these days that will surprise it a little! Thank goodness, we’ve nothing to conceal. And that Madame Delangre and Madame Rastoil, too — well, it wouldn’t be difficult to tell tales about them that would cover them with blushes! And they never stirred out of their drawing-rooms, they haven’t taken half the trouble about the matter that I have! Then there’s that Madame Mou­ret, with her pretence of managing the whole business, though she really did nothing but hang on to the cassock of her Abbé Faujas! She’s another hypocrite of whom we shall hear some pretty things one of these days! And yet they could all get a polite speech, while there wasn’t a word for me! I’m nothing but a mere convenience, they treat me like a dog! But things shan’t go on like this, Paloque, I tell you. The dog will turn and bite them before long!’

From that time forward Madame Paloque showed herself much less accommodating. She became very irregular in her secretarial work, and declined to perform any duties that she did not fancy, till at last the lady patronesses began to talk of employing a paid secretary. Marthe mentioned these worries to Abbé Faujas and asked him if he could recommend a suitable man.

‘Don’t trouble yourself to look for anyone,’ he said, ‘I dare say I can find you a fit person. Give me two or three days.’

For some time past he had been frequently receiving letters bearing the Besançon postmark, They were all in the same handwriting, a large, ugly hand. Rose, who took them up to him, remarked that he seemed vexed at the mere sight of the envelopes.

‘He looks quite put out,’ she said. ‘You may depend upon it that it’s no great favourite of his who writes to him so often.’

Mouret’s old curiosity was roused by this correspondence. One day he took up one of the letters himself with a pleasant smile, telling the Abbé, as an excuse for his own appearance, that Rose was not in the house. The Abbé probably saw through Mouret’s cunning, for he assumed an expression of great pleasure, as though he had been impatiently expecting the letter. But Mouret did not allow himself to be deceived by this piece of acting, he stayed outside the door on the landing and glued his ear to the keyhole.

‘From your sister again, isn’t it?’ asked Madame Faujas, in her hard voice. ‘Why does she worry you in that way?’