Complete Works of Emile Zola (337 page)

Abbé Faujas raised his finger with an arch look. ‘No politics, gentlemen, no politics,’ said he.

Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies was chatting with Mon­sieur Rastoil, and they both pretended that they had not heard what was said. Madame de Condamin smiled as she con­tinued her conversation with Abbé Surin.

‘Aren’t your surplices stiffened with a weak solution of gum?’ she inquired.

‘Yes, madame, with a weak solution of gum,’ replied the young priest. ‘Some laundresses use boiled starch, but it spoils the material and is worthless.’

‘Well,’ rejoined the young woman, ‘I never can get my laundress to use gum for my petticoats.’

Thereupon Abbé Surin politely gave her the name and address of his own laundress upon the back of one of his visiting cards. Then the company chatted about dress and the weather and the crops and the events of the week, spend­ing a delightful hour together; and there were also games of shuttlecock in the alley. Abbé Bourrette frequently made his appearance, and told in his enthusiastic manner divers pious little stories to which Monsieur Maffre listened with the greatest attention. Upon one occasion only had Madame Delangre met Madame Rastoil there; they had treated each other with the most scrupulous politeness, but in their faded eyes still flashed the sparks of their old-time rivalry. Mon­sieur Delangre for his part did not make himself too cheap, and though the Paloques were constantly at the Sub-Prefecture, they contrived to be absent when Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies went to make one of his neighbourly calls upon Abbé Faujas. The judge’s wife had been much perplexed in mind ever since her unfortunate expedition to the oratory at the Home of the Virgin. On the other hand, the person who was oftenest to be seen in the garden was certainly Monsieur de Condamin, who always wore the most perfect fitting gloves, and came thither to make fun of the company, telling fibs and indelicate stories with extraordinary coolness and unconcern, and deriving a perfect fund of amuse­ment for the whole week from the little intrigues which he scented out. This tall old buck, whose coat fitted so closely to his slim figure, was devoted to youth; he scoffed at the ‘old ones,’ went off with the young ladies, and laughed gaily in the snug little corners of the garden.

‘This way, youngsters!’ he would say, with a smile, ‘let us leave the old ones together.’

One day he almost defeated Abbé Surin in a tremendous battle at shuttlecock. He was very fond of plaguing young people, and made a special victim of Monsieur Rastoil’s son, a simple young fellow, to whom he told the most prodigious stories. He ended, indeed, by accusing him of making love to his wife, and rolled his eyes about in such a terrible way, that the wretched Séverin broke out into a perspiration from very fear. The youth did, as it happened, actually fancy that he was in love with Madame de Condamin, in whose presence he behaved in a tender, simpering manner that extremely amused her husband.

The Rastoil girls, for whom the conservator of rivers and forests manifested all the gallantry of a young widower, also supplied subjects of his raillery. Although they were approaching their thirtieth birthdays, he spurred them on to indulge in childish games, and spoke to them as though they were yet schoolgirls. His great amusement was to gaze at them when Lucien Delangre, the mayor’s son, was present. He would then take Doctor Porquier aside, and whisper in his ear, alluding to the former entanglement between Monsieur Delangre and Madame Rastoil:

‘There’s a young man there, Porquier, who is very much embarrassed in his mind — Is it Angéline or is it Aurélie whom he ought to choose? Guess, if you can, and name, if you dare.’

Meantime Abbé Faujas was very polite and amiable to all his visitors, even to the terrible Condamin who caused so much disquietude. He effaced himself as much as possible, spoke but little, and allowed the rival sets of guests to coalesce, seemingly experiencing the quiet satisfaction of a host who is happy to be the means of bringing together a number of distinguished people intended by nature to be on good terms with one another. Marthe had upon two occasions made her appearance, thinking that she would put the visitors more at their ease by doing so; but it distressed her to find the Abbé in the midst of so many people; she much preferred to see him walking slowly and seriously in the quiet of the arbour. The Trouches on their side had resumed their Tuesday watchings behind their curtains, while Madame Faujas and Rose craned their heads from the door-way and admired the graceful manner in which his reverence received the chief people of Plassans.

‘Ah, madame!’ said the cook, ‘it is very easy to see that he is a distinguished man. Look at him bowing to the sub-prefect. I admire his reverence the most; though, indeed, the sub-prefect is a fine man. Why do you never go into the garden to them? If I were you, I would put on a silk dress and join them. You are his mother, you know, after all.’

But the old peasant woman shrugged her shoulders.

‘Oh! he isn’t ashamed of me,’ she said; ‘but I should be afraid of putting him out. I prefer to watch him from here; and I enjoy it more.’

‘Yes, I can understand that. Ah! you must be very proud of him. He isn’t a bit like Monsieur Mouret, who nailed the door up, so that no one might open it. We never had a visitor, there was never a dinner to be prepared for anyone, and the garden was so desolate that it made one feel quite frightened in the evenings. Monsieur Mouret would certainly never have known how to receive visitors. He always pulled a sour face if one ever happened to come by chance. Don’t you think, now, that he ought to take an example from his reverence? If I were he, I should come down and amuse myself in the garden with the others, instead of shutting myself up all alone. I would take my proper place. But there he is, shut up in his room, as though he were afraid they would give him some nasty ill­ness! By the way, shall we go up sometime and try to find out what he does?’

One Tuesday they did go upstairs together. The visitors were very merry that afternoon, and the sound of their laughter floated into the house through the open windows, while a tradesman, who had brought a hamper of wine for the Trouches, made a clatter on the second floor as he collected the empty bottles together. Mouret was securely locked up in his office.

‘The key prevents me from seeing,’ said Rose, who had applied her eye to the key-hole.

‘Wait a moment,’ murmured Madame Faujas, and she carefully turned the end of the key, which protruded slightly through the lock. Mouret was sitting in the middle of the room in front of a big empty table, covered with a thick layer of dust. There was not a single paper nor book upon it. He was lying back in his chair, his arms hanging listlessly beside him while he gazed blankly into space. He sat perfectly still, without the slightest movement.

The two women looked at him in silence, one after the other.

‘He has made me feel cold to the very marrow,’ exclaimed Rose, as they went downstairs again. ‘Did you notice his eyes? And what a filthy state the room is in! He hasn’t laid a pen on that desk for a couple of months past, and to think that I fancied he spent all his time there writing. Fancy him amusing himself like that — shutting himself up all alone like a corpse, when the house is so bright and cheerful!’

CHAPTER XVII

Marthe’s health was causing Doctor Porquier much anxiety. He still smiled in his pleasant way, and talked to her after the manner of a fashionable medical man for whom disease never has any existence, and who grants a consultation just as a dressmaker fits on a new dress; but there was a certain twist on his lips which indicated that ‘dear madame’ had some­thing more seriously wrong with her than a slight cough and spitting of blood, as he tried to persuade her. He advised her, now that the warm weather had come, to get a little change of surroundings and occupation by taking an occasional drive, without, however, over-fatiguing herself. In obedi­ence to the doctor’s directions, Marthe, who was more and more possessed by a vague feeling of anguish, and a need of finding some occupation to assuage her nervous impatience, started on a series of excursions to the neighbouring villages. Twice a week she drove off, after luncheon, in an old refur­bished carriage, hired from a Plassans coachbuilder. She generally drove some six or seven miles out, so as to get back home by six o’clock. Her great desire was to induce Abbé Faujas to go with her, and it was only in the hope of accom­plishing this that she had conformed with the doctor’s directions; but the Abbé, without distinctly refusing, always excused himself on the ground that he was too busy to spare the time, and Marthe was obliged to content herself with the companionship of Olympe or Madame Faujas.

One afternoon as she was driving with Olympe towards the village of Les Tulettes, past the little estate of her uncle Macquart, the latter caught sight of her as he stood upon his terrace, which was ornamented with a couple of mulberry trees.

‘Where is Mouret?’ he cried. ‘Why hasn’t Mouret come as well?’

Marthe was obliged to stop for a moment or two to speak to her uncle, and to explain to him that she was not well, and could not stay to dine with him. He had expressed his determination to kill a fowl for the meal.

‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘I’ll kill it all the same, and you shall take it away with you.’

Then he hurried off to kill the fowl at once. When he came back with it, he laid it on a stone table in front of the house, and exclaimed with an expression of satisfaction:

‘Isn’t it a plump, splendid fellow?’

At the moment of Marthe’s arrival Macquart had been on the point of drinking a bottle of wine under the shade of his mulberry trees, in company with a tall thin young fellow, dressed entirely in grey. He persuaded the two women to leave the carriage and sit down beside him for a time, bringing them chairs, and doing the honours of his house with a snigger of satisfaction.

‘I have a very nice little place here, haven’t I? My mulberries are very fine ones. In the summer I smoke my pipe out here in the fresh air. In the winter I sit down yonder with my back to the wall in the sun. Do you see my vegetables? The fowl-house is at the bottom of the garden. I have another strip of ground as well, behind the house, where I grow potatoes and lucern. I am getting old now, worse luck, and it’s quite time that I should enjoy myself a little.’

He rubbed his hands together and gently wagged his head, as he cast an affectionate glance over his little estate. Then some thought seemed to sadden him.

‘Have you seen your father lately?’ he abruptly asked. ‘Rougon isn’t very amiable, you know. That corn-field over yonder to the left is for sale. If he had been willing we might have bought it. What would it have been for a man of his means? A paltry three thousand francs is all that is asked, but he refuses to have anything to do with it. The last time I went to see him he even made your mother tell me that he wasn’t at home. But, you’ll see, it will be all the worse for them in the end.’

He wagged his head and indulged in his unpleasant laugh, as he repeated:

‘Yes, yes; it will be all the worse for them.’

Then he went to fetch some glasses, for he insisted upon making the two women taste his wine. It was some light wine which he had discovered at Saint-Eutrope, and in which he took great pride. Marthe scarcely wetted her lips, but Olympe finished the bottle. And afterwards she even accepted a glass of syrup, saying that the wine was very strong.

‘And what have you done with your priest?’ Uncle Macquart suddenly asked his niece.

Marthe looked at him in surprise and displeasure without replying.

‘I heard that he was sponging on you tremendously,’ Macquart loudly continued. ‘Those priests are fond of good living. When I heard about him, I said that it served Mouret quite right. I warned him. Well, I shall be glad to help you to turn him out of the house. Mouret has only got to come and ask me, and I’ll give him a helping hand. I’ve never been able to endure those fellows. I know one of them, Abbé Fenil, who has a house on the other side of the road. He is no better than the rest of them, but he is as malicious as an ape, and he amuses me. I fancy that he doesn’t get on very well with that priest of yours; isn’t that so, eh?’

Marthe had turned very pale.

‘Madame here is the sister of his reverence Abbé Faujas,’ she said, turning to Olympe, who was listening with much curiosity.

‘What I said has no reference to madame,’ replied Macquart quite unconcernedly. ‘Madame is not offended, I’m sure. She will take another glass of syrup?’

Olympe accepted another glass of the syrup, but Marthe rose from her seat and wished to leave. Her uncle, however, insisted upon taking her over his grounds. At the end of the garden she stopped to look at a large white building that was on the slope of the hill, at a few hundred yards from Les Tulettes. Its inner courts looked like prison-yards, and the narrow symmetrical windows which streaked its front with black lines gave it the cheerless aspect of a hospital.

‘That is the Lunatic Asylum,’ exclaimed Macquart, who had followed the direction of Marthe’s eyes. ‘The young man here is one of the warders. We get on very well together, and he comes every now and then to have a bottle of wine with me.’

Then, turning towards the man in grey, who was finishing his glass beneath the mulberry tree, he called out:

‘Here, Alexandre, come and show my niece our poor old woman’s window.’

Alexandre came up to them politely. ‘Do you see those three trees?’ he said, stretching out his forefinger, as though he were drawing a plan in the air. ‘Well, a little below the one to the left, you can see a fountain in the corner of a courtyard. Follow the windows on the ground floor to the right; it is the fifth one.’

Marthe stood there in silence, her lips white and her gaze fixed, in spite of herself, on the window pointed out to her. Uncle Macquart was looking at it as well, but with com­plaisance manifest in his blinking eyes.

‘I see her sometimes of a morning,’ he said, ‘when the sun is on the other side. She keeps very well, doesn’t she, Alexandre? I always tell them so when I go to Plassans. I am very well placed here to keep a watch on her. I couldn’t be anywhere better.’