Complete Works of Emile Zola (328 page)

‘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 Trouches’ 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. Well 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.