Complete Works of Emile Zola (332 page)

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 flagstones 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 to­day 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.