Complete Works of Emile Zola (933 page)

CHAPTER IV

The following Sunday happened to fall just on All Saints’ Day, the first of November; and, on the stroke of nine, the Abbé Godard, who was priest of Bazoches-le-Doyen, with subordinate charge of the ancient parish of Rognes, reached the top of the slope which led down to the little bridge over the Aigre. Rogues, more important in days of yore, but now reduced to a popula­tion of barely three hundred souls, had had no priest of its own for years, and seemed completely indifferent to the fact, insomuch that the municipal council had lodged the rural constable in the half-ruined parsonage.

So, every Sunday, the Abbé Godard walked the two miles between Bazoches-le-Doyen and Rognes. Being stout and dumpy, with a neck red at the nape and so swollen at the throat as to tilt his head backward, he compelled him­self to this exercise for the sake of his health. On this parti­cular Sunday, finding himself late, he was puffing terribly, with his mouth wide open in his apoplectic face, the fat of which half smothered his small snub nose and tiny grey eyes; and, despite the livid, snow-laden sky, and the premature frost which had followed the storms of the week, he was swinging his hat in his hand, having bared the thick tangles of his grizzled, carroty hair.

The road made an abrupt descent, and on the left bank of the Aigre, before reaching the stone bridge, there were only a few houses, a sort of suburb, through which the Abbé rushed tempestuously. He did not even cast a glance, either up or down stream, on the slow, limpid river winding through the meadows amid clumps of willows and poplars. On the right bank began the village proper, a double row of frontages edging the high road, while others climbed at random up the slope; and just past the bridge one found the municipal offices and the school, an old barn raised a floor higher and white-washed. For an instant the Abbé hesitated, and then craned his neck into the empty entrance-hall of the school. When he turned round, he cast a searching glance into two taverns facing him: the one having a neat shop-front, filled with flasks and surmounted by a little yellow wooden sign bearing the inscription: Macqueron, grocer, in green letters; the other merely having its door decorated with a holly-branch, and dis­playing in black upon a roughly-whitened wall the words: Lengaigne. Tobacco. The priest was making up his mind to enter a steep lane between these two houses, a short ascent leading straight to the front of the church, when he caught sight of an old peasant and stopped.

“Aha! so it’s you, Fouan. I’m in a hurry, but I wanted to see you. Tell me, what’s doing? It’s out of the question for your son, Buteau, to leave Lise in the plight she’s in, with her figure unmistakably on the increase. She is one of the ‘Handmaidens of the Virgin.’ It’s a disgrace, a disgrace!”

The old man listened, with an air of deferential politeness.

“Why, your reverence, what do you expect me to do, if Buteau holds out? And, besides, the lad’s right, so far as that goes; he can’t marry at his age on nothing.”

“But there’s a baby!”

“To be sure there is. Only the baby’s not yet born, and one can never tell. That’s just where it is: a baby’s not an encouraging thing when you can’t afford a shift for its back.”

He made these remarks sagely, as became an old man who knew life. Then he added, in the same measured tone:

“Besides, an arrangement may, perhaps, be made. I am dividing my property. The lots will be drawn for presently, after mass. Then, when Buteau gets his share, he will, I hope, see about marrying his cousin.”

“Good!” said the priest. “That’s enough. Fouan, I rely upon you.”

The pealing of a bell curtailed his speech, and he asked, apprehensively:

“That’s the second bell, isn’t it? “

“No, your reverence, the third.”

“Good gracious! that brute of a Bécu at it again! Ringing without waiting for me! “

He cursed, and ran violently up the pathway. At the top he all but had a fit; he was puffing away like a black­smith’s bellows.

The bell rang on, while the ravens it had disturbed flew cawing round the steeple, a fifteenth-century spire, which bore witness to the ancient importance of Rognes. In front of the wide, open door a group of peasants were waiting, among whom the innkeeper, Lengaigne, a freethinker, was smoking his pipe. Farther on, against the churchyard wall, farmer Hourdequin, the mayor — a well-built man, with strongly-marked features — chatted with his assessor, the grocer Macqueron. When the priest had passed by with a salute, they all followed him, excepting Lengaigne, who ostentatiously turned his back, pulling at his pipe.

Inside the church, to the right of the porch, there was a man hanging on to a rope, which he still went on pulling.

“That’ll do, Bécu!” said the Abbé Godard, beside himself. “I’ve told you twenty times to wait for me before you ring the third time.”

The rural constable, who was also the bell-ringer, fell to his feet, aghast at his own disobedience. He was a little man of fifty, with the square, bronzed physiognomy of an old soldier, grey moustache and goatee, and a rigid neck, seeming as if he were continually choked by a tight collar. Already very tipsy, he stood to attention, without venturing to excuse himself.

Moreover, the priest had already made off, and was crossing the nave, with a glance at the seats. There was a scanty attendance. On the left, he as yet saw only Delhomme, present in his capacity of municipal councillor. On the right, the women’s side, there were at the most a dozen. He recognised Cœlina Macqueron, shrivelled, sinewy, and over­bearing; Flore Lengaigne, buxom, mild, and good-humoured; and Bécu’s good woman, a lanky, very dirty, dark brunette. But what put the finishing touch to his wrath was the behaviour of the “Handmaidens of the Virgin” in the front row. Françoise was there between two of her friends — the Macquerons’ daughter, Berthe, a handsome brunette, brought up as a lady at Cloyes, and the Lengaignes’ daughter, Suzanne, a fair, plain, bold-faced hussy, whom her parents were about to apprentice to a dressmaker at Châteaudun. All the three were indulging in unseemly laughter. And, beside them, poor Lise, plump and cheerful, faced the altar, exposing her scandalous condition to public comment.

Finally, the Abbé Godard was going into the sacristy, when he came across Delphin and Nénesse pushing each other about in play, whereas they were supposed to be getting the wine vases ready for mass. The first-named, Bécu’s son, aged eleven, was a sun-burnt youngster, already well-knit, and just leaving school to become a ploughman; while Ernest, Delhomme’s eldest, of the same age, fair, slim, and given to loafing, always carried a looking-glass in his pocket.

“Now, then, you mischievous imps,” cried the priest, “do you think you’re in a cow-shed?”

And turning towards a tall, thin, young man, whose sallow face bristled with a few light hairs, and who was arranging some books on the shelf of a cupboard, he added:

“Really, Monsieur Lequeu, you might keep them quiet when I am out of the way!”

This was the schoolmaster, a peasant’s son, whose edu­cation had taught him to hate those of his own station. He resorted to violence with his boys, treating them like brute beasts, and cloaked Republican ideas under a scrupulously formal demeanour towards the priest and the mayor. He sang well in the choir, and even looked after the sacred books; but he had refused point-blank to ring the bell, in spite of custom, such a task being unworthy of a free man.

“I am not entrusted with maintaining order in church,” he responded, dryly. “At my place, though, wouldn’t I just box their ears!”

And as the Abbé, without answering, hastily shuffled into his alb and stole, he went on:

“Low mass, isn’t it?”

“Yes, to be sure, and be quick! I’ve got to be at Bazoches by half-past ten for high mass.”

M. Lequeu, who had taken an old missal from the cupboard, closed the latter and went out to place the book on the altar.

“Make haste, make haste,” repeated the priest, hurrying Delphin and Nénesse.

And, still perspiring, still panting, with the chalice in his hand, he went back into the church and began the mass, at which the two urchins officiated with sly, quizzical side-looks. The church had but one aisle, with a vaulted, oak-panelled roof, falling to pieces through the obstinate refusal of the municipal council to allow any funds. The rain dripped through the broken slates of the roofing, deep stains marked the ad­vanced state of decay of the woodwork, and beyond the choir, shut off by a railing, a greenish leakage aloft disfigured the fresco of the apsis, cutting the figure of an Eternal Father, wor­shipped by angels, atwain.

When the priest turned, open armed, towards the congrega­tion, he calmed down a bit on observing that some people had come in — the mayor, his assessor, some municipal councillors, old Fouan, and Clou the farrier, who played the trombone when there was a musical service. Lequeu had remained, with a stately air, in the front row. Bécu, although drunk, stood bolt upright in the background. On the women’s side, especially, the seats had filled up, Fanny, Rose, La Grande, and others had come, so that the “Handmaidens of the Virgin,” now poring over their books in an exemplary way, had had to crowd closer together. What particularly flattered the priest was to perceive Monsieur and Madame Charles, with their grand-daughter Elodie; he in a black frock-coat, she in a green silk dress, both of them solemn and splendiferous, setting a good example.

Nevertheless, he hurried over his mass, mangling the Latin and maiming the rites. In his address, not going into the pulpit, but sitting on a chair in the middle of the choir, he made a miserable exhibition of himself, lost the thread of his discourse, and gave up as hopeless the task of ever finding it again. Eloquence was not his strong point; he stumbled over his words, and hum’d and ha’d without ever being able to finish his sentences, which explained why his lordship the Bishop had overlooked him for twenty-five years in his little
cure
, the parish of Bazoches-le-Doyen. The rest of the service was vamped; the bell-ringing, during the elevation of the Host, sounded like electric signals gone mad, and the priest dismissed the congregation with an “Ite missa est,” as smart as the crack of a whip.

The church was barely empty when the Abbé Godard re­appeared, with his hat hastily put on wrong side foremost. Before the door stood a group of women — Cœlina, Flore, and old mother Bécu — all much annoyed at having been raced along at that pace. It was making very light of them to give them no more on a high holiday.

“I say, your reverence,” asked Cœlina, in her shrill voice, as she stopped him: “You’ve got a spite against us, packing us off just like a bundle of rags.”

“Why, it’s like this,” he replied; “my own people are waiting for me. I can’t be both at Bazoches and at Rognes. Get a priest of your own if you want high masses.”

This was always a sore point between Rognes and the Abbé, the villagers insisting on special attention, and he strictly confining himself to what he was obliged to do for a village which refused to repair its church, and where, moreover, constant scandals discouraged him. Indicating the “Hand­maidens of the Virgin,” who were leaving together, he resumed:

“And, besides, is it decent to go through ceremonies with young folks who have no respect whatever for God’s com­mandments?”

“You don’t mean that for my girl, I hope?” asked Cœlina, between her teeth.

“Nor for mine, I’m sure?” added Flore.

Then he lost all patience and burst out:

“I mean it for those it concerns. It’s as plain as a pike­staff. White dresses, indeed. A pretty thing! I never have a procession here without one of them being in the family way. No, no; you’d tire out God Almighty himself.”

He left them; and Bécu’s wife, who had remained silent, had to make peace between the two mothers, who, in consider­able excitement, were heaping reproaches on each other on their daughters’ account. But her peace-making was of such a bitterly insinuating character that the quarrel rose higher.

Oh yes! They would see how Berthe would turn out, with her velvet bodices and her piano! And Suzanne, what a first-rate idea to send her to the milliner’s at Châteaudun, so that she might go the pace with the best of them!

The Abbé Godard was rushing off, when he came full upon Monsieur and Madame Charles. A broad, beaming smile over­spread his face, and his hat performed a sweeping obeisance. Monsieur bowed majestically. Madame made her best curtsey. It was fated that the priest should never get off, for no sooner had he cleared the square than he was brought up by another chance encounter. This was with a tall woman of thirty, who looked quite fifty, with thin hair and a flat, flabby, bran-yellow face. Broken down and worn out by excessive exertion, she was staggering under the weight of a faggot of brushwood.

“Palmyre,” he asked, “why didn’t you come to mass on All Saints’ Day? It’s disgraceful.”

“No doubt, your reverence,” she groaned, “but what’s to be done? My brother is cold, and we are freezing at home. So I’ve been picking up these along the hedges.”

“La Grande is still as hard as ever, then?”

“Rather! She’d die before she’d chuck us a crust or a log.”

In a dolorous voice she repeated her own and her brother’s story: how their grandmother had turned them out of doors, how she had had to take refuge with her brother in an old deserted stable. Poor Hilarion, bandy and hare-lipped, lacked intelligence; indeed, despite his twenty years of age, he was so idiotic that no one would give him employment. And so she was bringing herself to death’s door in working for him, tending him with the impassioned care and untiring tenderness of a mother.

As the Abbé Godard listened to her, his coarse, perspiring face assumed a look of the purest kindness, his little angry-eyes grew beautiful with charity, his large mouth took a sweetly sad expression. This formidable scold, always being whirled to and fro by gusts of wrath, was passionately devoted to the wretched, and gave them everything — his money, linen, and clothes. To such a point that in all La Beauce you would not find a priest with a rustier or a more extensively darned cassock.