Complete Works of Emile Zola (333 page)

‘I say twenty thousand francs in all,’ Olympe hastily added, disquieted by Marthe’s grave appearance: ‘but we should be quite satisfied if we were able to pay by small installments spread over half a score of years. The creditors would wait for any length of time, if they were only sure of getting their installments regularly. It is a great pity that we can’t find anyone who has sufficient confidence in us to make the small necessary advances.’

This matter became an habitual topic of conversation. Olympe also frequently spoke of Abbé Faujas, whom she seemed almost to worship. She gave Marthe all kinds of private details about the priest: such as, for instance, that he could not bear anything that tickled him, that he could sleep on his left side, and that he had a strawberry-mark on his right shoulder, which turned red in May like the natural fruit. Marthe smiled and never tired of hearing of these little matters; and she questioned the young woman about her childhood and that of her brother. When the subject of the money cropped up she seemed painfully overcome by her inability to do anything, and she even complained bitterly of Mouret, to whom Olympe, emboldened by Marthe’s language, now always referred in her presence as the ‘old miser.’ Sometimes when Trouche returned from his office he found the two women still talking together, but at his appearance they checked themselves and changed the subject. Trouche conducted himself in the most satisfactory way, and the lady patronesses of the Home of the Virgin were highly pleased with him. He was never seen in any of the cafés in the town.

In order to be able to render some assistance to Olympe, who sometimes talked about throwing herself out of the window, Marthe made Rose take all the useless old odds and ends that were lying about the house to a second-hand dealer at the market. At first the two women were a little timid about the matter, and only disposed of broken-down chairs and tables when Mouret was out of the way, but afterwards they began to lay hands upon more important articles, and sold ornaments, pieces of china, and anything else they could remove without its absence appearing too conspicuous. They were slipping down a fatal incline, and would have ended by carting off all the furniture in the house and leaving nothing but the bare walls, if Mouret had not one day charged Rose with thieving and threatened to send for the police.

‘What, sir! A thief! I!’ she cried. ‘Just because you happened to see me selling one of madame’s rings. Be careful of what you are saying! The ring was mine; madame gave it to me. Madame isn’t such a mean wretch as you are. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for leaving your wife without a sou! She hasn’t even a pair of shoes to put on! The other day I had to pay the milkman myself! Yes, I did sell the ring, and what of that? Isn’t madame’s ring her own? She is obliged to turn it into money, since you won’t give her any. If I were she, I would sell the whole house! The whole house, do you hear? It distresses me beyond everything to see her going about as naked as Saint John the Baptist!’

Mouret now began to keep a close watch at all times. He locked up the cupboards and drawers, and kept the keys in his own possession. Whenever Rose went out he would look at her hands distrustfully, and even feel at her pockets if he saw any suspicious swelling beneath her skirt. He brought certain articles back from the second-hand dealer’s and restored them to their places, dusting and wiping them ostentatiously in Marthe’s presence in order to remind her of what he called Rose’s thefts. He never directly accused his wife. There was a cut-glass water-bottle which he turned into a special instrument of torture. Rose, having sold it for twenty sous, had pretended to Mouret that it was broken. But now he made her bring it and put it on the table at every meal. One day, at lunch, she quite lost her temper over it, and purposely let it fall.

‘There, sir, it’s really broken this time, isn’t it?’ she cried, laughing in his face.

As he threatened to dismiss her, she exclaimed:

‘You had better! I’ve been in your service for five-and-twenty years. If I went madame would go with me!’

Marthe, reduced to extremities and egged on by Rose and Olympe, at last rebelled. She was desperately in want of five hundred francs. For the last week Olympe had been crying and sobbing, asserting that if she could not get five hundred francs by the end of the month one of the bills which had been endorsed by Abbé Faujas would be published in one of the Plassans newspapers. The threatened publication of this bill, this terrible threat which she did not quite under­stand, threw Marthe into a state of dreadful alarm, and she resolved to dare everything. In the evening, as they were going to bed, she asked Mouret for the five hundred francs, and when he looked at her in amazement she began to speak of the fifteen years which she had spent behind a counter at Marseilles, with a pen behind her ear like a clerk.

‘We made the money together,’ she said; ‘and it belongs to us both. I want five hundred francs.’

Mouret thereupon broke his long maintained silence in the most violent fashion, and all his old raillery burst forth again.

‘Five hundred francs!’ he cried. ‘Do you want them for your priest? I play the simpleton now and keep my peace for fear I might say too much; but you must not imagine that you can go on for ever making a fool of me! Five hundred francs! Why not say the whole house? The whole house certainly does seem to belong to him! He wants some money, does he? And he has told you to ask me for it? I might be among a lot of robbers in a wood instead of being in my own home! I shall have my very handkerchief stolen out of my pocket before long! I’ll be bound that if I were to go and search his room I should find his drawers full of my property. There are seven pairs of my socks missing, four or five shirts, and three pairs of pants. I was going over the things yesterday. Every­thing I have is disappearing, and I shan’t have anything left very soon! No, not a single sou will I give you, not a single sou!’

‘I want five hundred francs; half of the money belongs to me,’ Marthe tranquilly replied.

For a whole hour Mouret stormed and fumed and repeated the same reproaches. His wife was no longer the same, he said. He did not know her now. Before the priest’s arrival, she had loved him and obeyed him and looked after the house. Those who set her to act in opposition to him must be very wicked persons. Then his voice grew thick, and he let him­self fall into a chair, broken down and as weak as a child.

‘Give me the key of your desk!’ said Marthe.

He got up from his chair and gathered his strength to­gether for a last cry of protest.

‘You want to strip me of everything, eh? to leave your children with nothing but straw for a bed? You won’t even leave us a loaf of bread? Well! well! clear out everything, and send for Rose to fill her apron! There’s the key!’

He threw the key at Marthe and she placed it under her pillow. She was quite pale after this quarrel, the first violent quarrel that she had ever had with her husband. She got into bed, but Mouret passed the night in an easy-chair. To­wards morning Marthe heard him sobbing. She would then have given him back the key, if he had not wildly rushed into the garden, though it was still pitch dark.

Peace again seemed to be re-established between them. The key of the desk remained hanging upon a nail near the mirror. Marthe, who was quite unaccustomed to the sight of large sums, felt a sort of fear of the money. She was very bashful and shamefaced at first whenever she went to open the drawer in which Mouret always kept some ten thousand francs in cash to pay for his purchases of wine. She strictly confined herself to taking only what was necessary. Olympe, too, gave her the most excellent advice, and told her that now she had the key she ought to be careful and economical; and, indeed, seeing the trembling nervousness which she exhibited at the sight of the hoard of money, she ceased for some time to speak to her of the Besançon debts.

Mouret meantime relapsed into his former moody silence. Serge’s admission to the Seminary had been another severe blow to him. His friends of the Cours Sauvaire, the retired traders who promenaded there regularly between four o’clock and six, began to feel very uneasy about him, when they saw him arrive with his arms swaying about and his face wearing a stupefied expression. He hardly made any reply to their remarks and seemed a prey to some incurable disease.

‘He’s breaking up; he’s breaking up,’ they murmured to each other; ‘and he’s only forty-four; it’s scarcely credible. He will end by having softening of the brain.’

Mouret no longer seemed to hear the malicious allusions which were made before him. If he was questioned directly about Abbé Faujas, he coloured slightly as he replied that the priest was an excellent tenant and paid his rent with great punctuality. When his back was turned, the retired shop­keepers grinned as they sat and basked in the sun on one of the seats on the Cours.

‘Well, after all, he is only getting what he deserves,’ said a retired almond-dealer. ‘You remember how hotly he stood up for the priest, how he sang his praises in the four corners of Plassans; but when one talks to him on that subject now rather an odd expression comes over his face.’

These worthy gentlemen then regaled themselves with certain scandalous stories which they whispered into each other’s ears, passing them on in this way from one end of the bench to the other.

‘Well,’ said a master-tanner in a half whisper, ‘there isn’t much pluck about Mouret; if I were in his place I would soon show the priest the door.’

Thereupon they all repeated that Mouret was certainly a very timid fellow, he who had formerly jeered so much at those husbands who allowed their wives to lead them by the nose.

These stories, however, in spite of the persistence with which certain persons kept them afloat, never got beyond a particular set of idle gossiping people, and the reason which the Curé himself gave for not taking up his residence at the parsonage, namely, his liking for the Mourets’ beautiful gar­den, where he could read his breviary in such perfect peace, was generally accepted as the true one. His great piety, his ascetic life and his contempt for all the frivolities and coquet­ries which other priests allowed themselves placed him beyond suspicion. The members of the Young Men’s Club accused Abbé Fenil of trying to ruin him. All the new part of the town was on his side, and it was only the Saint-Marc quarter that was against him, its aristocratic inhabitants treating him with great reserve whenever they met him in Monseigneur Rousselot’s saloons. However, in spite of his popularity, he shook his head when old Madame Rougon told him that he might now dare everything.

‘Nothing is quite safe and solid yet,’ he said. ‘I am not sure of anyone. The least touch might bring the whole edifice toppling down.’

Marthe had been causing him anxiety for some time past. He felt that he was incapable of calming the fever of devotion which was raging within her. She escaped his control and disobeyed him, and advanced further than he wished her to do. He was afraid lest this woman, this much-respected patroness, who was so useful, might yet bring about his ruin. There was a fire burning within her which seemed to discolour her flesh, and redden her eyes and make them heavy. It was like an ever-growing disease, an infatuation of her whole being, that was gradually weakening her heart and brain. She often seemed to lapse into some ecstatic trance, her hands were shaken by a nervous trembling, and a dry cough occasionally shook her from head to foot without consciousness apparently on her part of how it was rending her. The Curé then showed himself sterner to her than before, tried to crush the passion which was dawning within her, and even forbade her to come to Saint-Saturnin’s.

‘The church is very cold,’ he said, ‘and you cough so much there. I don’t want you to do anything to make your­self worse.’

She protested that there was nothing the matter with her beyond a slight irritation of the throat, but at last she yielded and accepted his prohibition as a well-deserved punishment which closed the doors of heaven upon her. She wept, believed that she was damned, and dragged herself listlessly through the blank weary days; and then, in spite of herself, like a woman returning to some forbidden love, when Friday came she humbly glided into Saint-Michael’s chapel and laid her burning brow against the woodwork of the confessional-box. She did not speak a word, but simply knelt there, com­pletely crushed, quite overwhelmed. At this Abbé Faujas, who was greatly irritated, treated her as harshly as though she was some unworthy woman, and hastily ordered her away. Then she left the church, feeling happy and consoled.

The priest was afraid of the effect of the gloomy darkness of Saint-Michael’s chapel. He spoke upon the subject to Doctor Porquier, who persuaded Marthe to go to confession at the little oratory of the Home of the Virgin in the suburb. Abbé Faujas promised to be there to hear her every other Saturday. This oratory, which had been established in a large whitewashed room with four big windows, was bright and cheerful, and would, he thought, have a calming effect upon the excited imagination of his penitent. There, he thought, he would be able to bring her under control, reduce her to obedience, without possible fear of any scandal. As a guard against all calumnious gossip, he asked his mother to accompany Marthe, and while he confessed the latter Madame Faujas remained outside the door. As the old lady did not like to waste her time, she used to take her knitting with her and work away at a stocking.

‘My dear child,’ she often said to Marthe, as they were re­turning together to the Rue Balande, ‘I could hear very well what Ovide was saying to you to-day. You don’t seem to be able to please him. You can’t care for him. Ah! I wish I were in your place to be able to kiss his feet! I shall grow to hate you, if you go on causing him nothing but annoy­ance.’

Marthe bent her head. She felt deep shame in Madame Faujas’s presence. She did not like her, she felt jealous of her at finding her always coming between herself and the priest. The old lady’s dark eyes, too, troubled her when they constantly bent upon her, full as they seemed of strange and disquieting thoughts.

Marthe’s weak state of health sufficed to account for her meetings with Abbé Faujas at the oratory of the Home of the Virgin. Doctor Porquier stated that she went there simply in obedience to his orders, and the promenaders on the Cours were vastly amused by this saying of the doctor’s.