Complete Works of Emile Zola (344 page)

Abbé Faujas shrugged his shoulders. ‘He has made no sign at all,’ he said.

‘It is precisely that quietness of his that makes me un­easy,’ rejoined the prelate. ‘I know Fenil well. He is the most vindictive priest in my diocese. He may possibly have abandoned the ambition of beating you in the political arena, but you may be sure he will wreak personal vengeance upon you. I have no doubt that he is keeping a watch on you in his retirement.’

‘Pooh!’ said Abbé Faujas, showing his white teeth. ‘I’ll take care that he doesn’t eat me up.’

Abbé Surin had just returned into the room, and when the vicar of Saint-Saturnin’s had gone he made the Bishop laugh by exclaiming:

‘Ah! if they could only devour each other like a couple of foxes, and leave nothing but their tails!’

The electoral campaign was on the point of commencing. Plassans, which generally remained quite calm, unexcited by political questions, was growing a little feverish and per­turbed. From some invisible mouth a breath of war seemed to sweep through its quiet streets. The Marquis de Lagri­foul, who lived at La Palud, a large straggling village in the neighbourhood, had been in Plassans for the last fortnight, staying at the house of a relative of his, the Count de Valqueyras, whose mansion was one of the largest in the Saint-Marc district. The Marquis showed himself about the town, promenaded on the Cours Sauvaire, attended Saint-Saturnin’s, and bowed to sundry influential townspeople, but without succeeding in throwing aside his haughty ways. His attempts to acquire popularity seemed to fail. Fresh charges against him, originating from some unknown source, were bandied about every day. It was asserted that he was a miserably incompetent man. With any other representative Plassans would long ago have had a branch line of railway connecting it with Nice. It was said, too, that if anyone from the district went to see him in Paris he had to call three or four times before he could obtain the slightest service. However, al­though the candidature of the Marquis was much damaged by gossip of this kind, no other candidate had openly entered the lists. There was some talk of Monsieur de Bourdeu coming forward, though it was considered that it would be extremely difficult to obtain a majority for an ex-prefect of Louis-Philippe, who had no strong connection with the place. There seemed also to be some unknown influence at work in Plassans upsetting all the previous prospects of the election by breaking the alliance between the Legitimists and the Re­publicans. The prevailing feeling was one of general per­plexity and confusion, mingled with weariness and a desire to get the affair over as quickly as possible.

‘The majority is shifting,’ said the politicians of the Cours Sauvaire. ‘The question is which way will it finally incline?’

Amid the excitement and restlessness which this doubtful state of things was causing in the town, the Republicans be­came anxious to run a candidate of their own. Their choice fell upon a master-hatter, one Maurin, a plain simple man, who was very much liked by the working-classes. In the cafés, in the evenings, Trouche expressed an opinion that Maurin was by no means sufficiently advanced in his views, and proposed in his stead a wheelwright of Les Tulettes, whose name had appeared in the list of the December proscripts.
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This man, however, had the good sense to decline the nomi­nation. It should be said that Trouche now gave himself out as an extreme Republican. He would have come forward himself, he said, if his wife’s brother had not been a parson, but as he was — to his great regret, he declared — forced to eat the bread of the hypocrites, he felt bound to remain in the background. He was one of the first to circulate reports to the detriment of the Marquis de Lagrifoul, and he also favoured the rupture of the Republicans and the Legitimists. Trouche’s greatest success was obtained by accusing the Sub-Prefecture party and the adherents of Monsieur Rastoil of having brought about the confinement of poor Mouret, with the view of depriving the democratic party of one of its worthiest chiefs. On the evening when he first launched this accusation at a spirit-dealer’s in the Rue Canquoin, the company assembled there looked at one other with a peculiar expression. The gossips of the old quarter of the town spoke quite feelingly about ‘the madman who beat his wife,’ now that he was shut up at Les Tulettes, and told one another that Abbé Faujas had simply wanted to get an inconvenient husband out of his way. Trouche repeated his charge every evening, banging his fists upon the tables of the cafés with such an air of conviction that he succeeded in persuading his listeners of the truth of his story, in which, by the way, Mon­sieur Péqueur des Saulaies was made to play the most extra­ordinary part imaginable. There was a complete reaction in Mouret’s favour. He was considered to be a political victim, a man whose influence had been feared so much that he had been put out of the way in a cell at a madhouse.

‘Just leave it all to me,’ Trouche said with a confidential air. ‘I’ll expose all these precious pious folks, and I’ll tell some fine stories about their Home of the Virgin. It’s a nice place is that Home — a place where the ladies make assigna­tions!’

Meanwhile Abbé Faujas almost seemed to have the power of multiplying himself. For some time past he was to be seen everywhere. He bestowed much attention upon his appearance, and was careful always to have a pleasant smile upon his face; though now and then his eyelids dropped for an instant to hide the stern fire kindling in his glance. Often with his patience quite worn out, weary of his wretched strug­gles, he returned to his bare room with clenched fists. Old Madame Rougon, whom he continued to see in secret, proved his good genius. She lectured him soundly whenever he felt despondent, and kept him bent before her while she told him that he must strive to please, and that he would ruin every­thing if he let the iron hand appear from under the velvet glove. Afterwards, when he had made himself master, he might seize Plassans by the throat and strangle it, if he liked. She herself certainly had no great affection for Plassans, against which she owed a grudge for forty years’ wretchedness, and which had been bursting with jealousy of her ever since the Coup d’Etat.

‘It is I who wear the cassock,’ she said sometimes, with a smile; ‘you carry yourself like a gendarme, my dear Curé.’

The priest showed himself particularly assiduous in his attendance at the Young Men’s Club. He listened with an indulgent air to the young men talking politics, and told them, with a shake of his head, that honesty was all that was neces­sary. His popularity at the Club was still increasing. One evening he consented to play at billiards, and showed himself extremely skilful at the game, and sometimes, when they formed a quiet little party, he would even accept a cigarette. The club took his advice on every question that arose. His reputation for tolerance was completely established by the kind, good-natured way in which he advocated the admission of Guillaume Porquier, who had now renewed his application.

‘I have seen the young man,’ he said; ‘he came to me to make a general confession, and I ended by giving him absolution. There is forgiveness for every sin. We must not treat him as a leper just because he pulled down a few signboards in Plassans, and ran into debt at Paris.’

When Guillaume was elected, he said to the young Maffres, with a grin:

‘Well, you owe me a couple of bottles of champagne now. You see that the Curé does all that I want. I have a little machine to tickle him with in a sensitive place, and then he begins to laugh, my boys, and he can’t refuse me anything.’

‘Well, it doesn’t seem as though he were very fond of you, anyhow,’ said Alphonse; ‘he looks very sourly at you.’

‘Pooh! that’s because I tickled him too hard. You will see that we shall soon be the best friends in the world.’

Abbé Faujas did, indeed, seem to have an affection for the doctor’s son. He declared that this young man wanted guiding with a very gentle hand. In a short time Guillaume became the moving spirit of the club. He invented amuse­ments, showed them how to make kirsch-water punch, and led young fellows fresh from college into all sorts of dissipa­tion. His pleasant vices gave him enormous influence. While the organ was pealing above the billiard-room, he drank away, and gathered round him the sons of the most respectable people in Plassans, making them almost choke with laughter at his broad stories. The club now got into a very fast way, indulging in doubtful topics of conversation in all the corners. Abbé Faujas, however, appeared quite uncon­scious of it. Guillaume said that he had a splendid noddle, teeming with the greatest thoughts.

‘The Abbé may be a bishop whenever he likes,’ he remarked. ‘He has already refused a living in Paris. He wants to stay at Plassans; he has taken a liking to the place. I should like to nominate him as deputy. He’s the sort of man we want in the Chamber! But he would never consent; he is too modest. Still it would be a good thing to take his advice when the elections are at hand. We may trust any­thing that he tells us. He wouldn’t deceive anybody.’

Meantime, Lucien Delangre remained the serious man of the club. He showed great deference to Abbé Faujas, and won the group of studious young men over to the priest’s side. He frequently walked with him to the club, talking to him with much animation, but subsiding into silence as soon as they entered the general room.

On leaving the café established beneath the Church of the Minims, the Abbé regularly went to the Home of the Virgin. He arrived there during play-time, and made his appearance with a smiling face upon the steps of the playground.

Thereupon the girls surrounded him, and disputed with each other for the possession of his pockets, in which some sacred pictures or chaplets or medals that had been blessed were always to be found. Those big girls quite worshipped him as he tapped them gently on their cheeks and told them to be good, at which they broke into sly smiles. The Sisters often complained to him that the children confided to their care were utterly unmanageable, that they fought, tore each other’s hair, and did even worse things. The Abbé, how­ever, regarded their offences as mere peccadilloes, and as a rule simply reproved the more turbulent girls in the chapel, whence they emerged in a more submissive frame of mind. Occasionally he made some rather graver piece of misconduct a pretext for sending for the parents, whom he sent away again quite touched by his kindness and good-nature. In this wise the young scapegraces of the Home of the Virgin gained him the hearts of the poor families of Plassans. When they went home in the evening, they told the most wonderful things about his reverence the Curé. It was no uncommon occurrence to find a couple of them in some secluded corner of the ramparts on the point of coming to blows to decide which of them his reverence liked the better.

‘Those young hussies represent from two to three thousand votes,’ Trouche thought to himself, as from the window he watched Abbé Faujas showing himself so amiable.

Trouche himself had tried to win over ‘the little dears,’ as he called the girls; but the priest, distrusting him, had forbidden him to set foot in the playground; and so he now confined himself to throwing sugar-plums there, when the Sisters’ backs were turned.

The Abbé’s day’s work did not end at the Home of the Virgin. From there he started on a series of short visits to the fashionable ladies of Plassans. Madame Rastoil and Madame Delangre welcomed him with delight, and repeated his slightest words everywhere. But his great friend was Madame de Condamin. She maintained an air of easy familiarity towards him betokening the superiority of a beautiful woman who is conscious that she is all-powerful. She spoke now and again in low tones, and with meaning smiles and glances, which seemed to indicate that there was some secret understanding between them. When the priest came to see her, she dismissed her husband. ‘The govern­ment was going to hold a cabinet-council,’ so the conservator of rivers and forests playfully said, as he philosophically went off to mount his horse.

It was Madame Rougon who had brought Madame de Condamin to the priest’s notice.

‘She has not yet absolutely established her position here,’ the old lady explained to Abbé Faujas. ‘But there is a good deal of cleverness under those pretty, coquettish airs of hers. You can take her into your confidence, and she will see in your triumph a means of making her own success and power more complete. She will be of great use to you if you should find it necessary to give away places or crosses. She has retained an influential friend in Paris, who sends her as many red ribbons as she asks for.’

As Madame Rougon kept herself aloof from reasons of diplomacy, the fair Octavie thus became Abbé Faujas’s most active ally. She won over to his side both her friends and her friends’ friends. She resumed her campaign afresh every morning and exerted an astonishing amount of influence merely by the pleasant little waves of her delicately gloved fingers. She had particular success with the
bourgeoises,
and increased tenfold that feminine influence of which the priest had felt the absolute necessity as soon as he began to thread the narrow world of Plassans. She succeeded, too, in closing the mouths of the Paloques — who were growing very rabid about the state of affairs at the Mourets’ house — by throwing a honied cake to the two monsters.

‘What! do you still bear us a grudge, my dear lady?’ she said one day, as she met the judge’s wife. ‘It is very wrong of you. Your friends have not forgotten you; they are thinking about you and are preparing a surprise for you.’

‘A fine surprise, I’ll be bound!’ cried Madame Paloque, bitterly. ‘No, we are not going to allow ourselves to be laughed at again. I have firmly made up my mind to keep to my own affairs.’

Madame de Condamin smiled.

‘What would you say,’ she asked, ‘if Monsieur Paloque were to be decorated?’

The judge’s wife stared in silence. A rush of blood to her face turned it quite blue, and made her terrible to behold.

‘You are joking,’ she stammered. ‘This is only another plot against us — if it isn’t true, I’ll never forgive you.’

The fair Octavie swore that she had spoken nothing but the truth. The distinction would certainly be conferred upon Monsieur Paloque, but it would not be officially notified in the ‘Moniteur’ until after the elections, as the government did not wish it to appear as if it were buying the support of the magistracy. She also hinted that Abbé Faujas was not unconcerned in the bestowal of this long-desired reward, and said that he had talked about it to the sub-prefect.