Complete Works of Emile Zola (327 page)

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 fi
g
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!’

CHAPTER 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 instill 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: