Complete Works of Emile Zola (325 page)

‘It’s very decorous, isn’t it? She certainly might refrain from making assignations with him here, since they have the whole day to themselves!’

Only Monsieur de Condamin laughed; everyone else received the sally very coldly. Then Madame Paloque, recognising that she had made a mistake, tried to turn the matter off as a joke. Meantime in the corners of the room the guests were discussing Abbé Fenil. Great curiosity was manifested as to whether he would put in an appearance. Monsieur de Bourdeu, who was one of his friends, said with an air of authority that he was indisposed — a statement which was received by the company with discreet smiles. Everyone was quite aware of the revolution that had taken place at the Bishop’s. Abbé Surin gave the ladies some very interesting details of the terrible scene that had taken place between his lordship and the grand-vicar. The latter, on getting the worst of the struggle, had caused it to be reported that he was confined to his room by an attack of gout. But the fight was not over, and Abbé Surin hinted that a good deal more would happen yet, a remark which was whispered about the room with many little exclamations, shakings of heads and expressions of surprise and doubt. For the moment, at any rate, Abbé Faujas was carrying everything before him: and so the fair devotees sunned themselves pleasantly in the rays of the rising luminary.

About the middle of the evening Abbé Bourrette arrived. Conversation ceased and people looked at him with curiosity. They all knew that he had expected to be appointed Curé of Saint-Saturnin’s himself. He had taken over the Abbé Compan’s duties during the latter’s long illness, and he had a lien upon the appointment. He lingered for a moment by the door, a little out of breath and with blinking eyes, without being aware of the interest which his appearance excited. Then, catching sight of Abbé Faujas, he eagerly hastened up to him, and seizing both his hands with a show of much pleasure exclaimed:

‘Ah I my dear friend, let me congratulate you! I have just come from your rooms, where your mother told me that you were here. I am delighted to see you.’

Abbé Faujas had risen from his seat, and notwithstanding his great self-control, he seemed annoyed, taken by surprise, as it were, by this unexpected display of affection.

‘Yes,’ he murmured, ‘I felt bound to accept his lordship’s offer in spite of my lack of merit. I refused it, indeed, at first, mentioning the names of several more deserving priests than myself. I mentioned your own name.’

Abbé Bourrette blinked, and taking Abbé Faujas aside he said to him in low tones:

‘His lordship has told me all about it. Fenil, it seems, would not hear of me. He would have set the whole diocese in a blaze if I had been appointed. Those were his very words. My crime is having closed poor Compan’s eyes. He demanded, as you know, the appointment of Abbé Chardon, a pious man, no doubt, but not of sufficient reputation. Fenil counted on reigning at Saint-Saturnin’s in his name. It was then that his lordship determined to give you the place and checkmate him. I am quite avenged, and I am delighted, my dear friend. Did you know the full story?’

‘No, not in all its details.’

‘Well, it is all just as I have told you, I can assure you. I have the facts from his lordship’s own lips. Between our­selves, he has hinted to me of a very sufficient recompense. The deputy vicar-general, Abbé Vial, has for a long time been desirous of settling in Borne, and his place will be vacant, you understand. But don’t say anything about this. I wouldn’t take a big sum of money for my day’s work.’

He continued pressing both Abbé Faujas’s hands, while his broad face beamed with satisfaction. The ladies around them were smiling and looking at them in surprise. But the worthy man’s joy was so frank and unreserved that it communicated itself to all in the green drawing-room, where the ovation in the new Curé’s honour took a more familiar and affectionate turn. The ladies grouped themselves together and spoke of the cathedral organ which wanted repairing, and Madame de Condamin promised a magnificent altar for the procession on the approaching festival of Corpus Christi. Abbé Bourrette was sharing in the general triumph when Madame Paloque, craning out her hideous face, touched him on the shoulder and murmured in his ear:

‘Your reverence won’t, I suppose, hear confessions to­morrow in Saint-Michael’s chapel?’

The priest, while taking Abbé Compan’s duty, had occupied the confessional in Saint-Michael’s chapel, which was the largest and most convenient in the church and was specially reserved for the Curé. He did not at first understand the force of Madame Paloque’s remark, and he looked at her, again blinking his eyes.

‘I ask you,’ she continued, ‘if you will resume your old confessional in the chapel of the Holy Angels, to-morrow.’

He turned rather pale and remained silent for a moment longer. Then he bent his gaze to the floor, and a slight shiver coursed down his neck, as though he had received a blow from behind. And, seeing that Madame Paloque was still there staring at him, he stammered out:

‘Certainly; I shall go back to my old confessional. Come to the chapel of the Holy Angels, the last one on the left, on the same side as the cloisters. It is very damp, so wrap yourself up well, dear madame, wrap yourself up well.’

Tears rose to his eyes. He was filled with regretful longing for that handsome confessional in the chapel of Saint-Michael, into which the warm sun streamed in the afternoon just at the time when he heard confessions. Until now he had felt no sorrow at relinquishing the cathedral to Abbé Faujas; but this little matter, this removal from one chapel to another, affected him very painfully; and it seemed to him that he had missed the goal of his life. Madame Paloque told him in her loud voice that he appeared to have grown melancholy all at once, but he protested against this assertion and tried to smile and look cheerful again. However he left the drawing-room early in the evening.

Abbé Faujas was one of the last to go. Rougon came up to him to offer his congratulations and they remained talking earnestly together on a couch. They spoke of the necessity of religious feeling in a wisely ordered state. Each lady, on retiring from the room, made a low bow as she passed in front of them.

‘You know, Monsieur le Curé,’ said Félicité graciously, ‘that you are my daughter’s cavalier.’

The priest rose from his seat. Marthe was waiting for him at the door. When they got out into the street, they seemed as if blinded by the darkness, and crossed the Place of the Sub-Prefecture without exchanging a word; but in the Rue Balande, as they stood in front of the house, Marthe touched the priest’s arm at the moment when he was about to insert the key in the lock.

‘I am so very pleased at your success,’ she said to him, in a tone of great emotion. ‘Be kind to me to-day, and grant me the favour which you have hitherto refused. I assure you that Abbé Bourrette does not understand me. It is only you who can direct and save me.’

He motioned her away from him, and, when he had opened the door and lighted the little lamp which Rose had left at the foot of the staircase, he went upstairs, saying to her gently as he did so:

‘You promised me to be reasonable — well, I will think over what you have asked. We will talk about it.’

Marthe did not retire to her own room until she had heard the priest close his door on the upper floor. While she was undressing and getting into bed she paid no attention whatever to Mouret, who, half asleep, was retailing to her at great length some gossip that was being circulated in the town. He had been to his club, the Commercial Club, a place where he rarely set foot.

‘Abbé Faujas has got the better of Abbé Bourrette,’ he repeated for the tenth time as he slowly rolled his head upon the pillow. ‘Poor Abbé Bourrette! Well, never mind! it’s good fun to see those parsons devouring one another. The other day when they were hugging each other in the garden — you remember it, don’t you? — anyone would have thought that they were brothers. Ah! they rob each other even of their very penitents. But why don’t you say anything, my dear? You don’t agree with me, eh? Or is it because you are going to sleep? Well, well, good-night then, my dear.’

He fell asleep, still muttering disjointed words, while Marthe, with widely opened eyes, stared up into the air and followed over the ceiling, faintly illumined by the night-light, the pattering of the Abbé’s slippers while he was retiring to rest.

CHAPTER XII

At the return of summer Abbé Faujas and his mother again came downstairs to enjoy the fresh air on the terrace. Mouret had become very cross-grained. He declined the old lady’s invitations to play piquet and sat swaying himself about on a chair. Seeing him yawn, without making any attempt to conceal how bored he was feeling, Marthe said to him:

‘Why don’t you go to your club, my dear?’

He now went there more frequently than he had been used to do. When he returned he found his wife and the Abbé still in the same place on the terrace, while Madame Faujas, a few yards away from them, preserved the demeanour of a blind and dumb guardian.

When anyone in the town spoke to Mouret of the new Curé he still continued to sound his praises. Faujas, said he, was decidedly a superior sort of man, and he himself had never felt any doubt of his great abilities. Madame Paloque could never succeed in drawing a hostile word from him on the subject of the priest, in spite of the malicious way in which she would ask him after his wife in the midst of his remarks about Abbé Faujas. Old Madame Rougon had no better success in her attempts to unveil the secret troubles which she thought she could detect beneath Mouret’s outward show of cheerfulness. She laid all sorts of traps for him as she watched his face with her sharp shrewd smile; but that inveterate chatterer, whose tongue was a regular town-crier’s bell, now showed the greatest reserve when any reference was made to his household.

‘So your husband has become reasonable at last?’ Félicité remarked to her daughter one day. ‘He leaves you free.’

Marthe looked at her mother with an air of surprise.

‘I have always been free,’ she said.

‘Ah! my dear child, I see that you don’t want to say anything against him. You told me once that he looked very unfavourably upon Abbé Faujas.’

‘Nothing of the kind, I assure you! You must have imagined it. My husband is upon the best terms with Abbé Faujas. There is nothing whatever to make them other­wise.’

Marthe was much astonished at the persistence with which everybody seemed to imagine that her husband and the Abbé were not good friends. Frequently at the committee-meet­ings at the Home of the Virgin the ladies put questions to her which made her quite impatient. She was really very happy and contented, and the house in the Rue Balande had never seemed pleasanter to her than it did now. Abbé Faujas had given her to understand that he would undertake her spiritual direction as soon as he should be of opinion that Abbé Bourrette was no longer sufficient, and she lived in this hope, her mind full of simple joy, like a girl who is promised some pretty religious pictures if she keeps good. Every now and then indeed she felt as though she were becoming a child again; she experienced a freshness of feeling and child-like impulses that filled her with gentle emotion. One day, in the spring-time, as Mouret was pruning his tall box plants, he found her sitting at the bottom of the garden beneath the young shoots of the arbour with her eyes streaming with tears.

‘What is the matter, my dear?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Nothing,’ she said, with a smile, ‘nothing at all, really; I am very happy, very.’

He shrugged his shoulders, and went on delicately cutting the box plants into an even line. He took considerable pride in having the neatest trimmed hedges in the neighbourhood. Marthe had wiped her eyes, but she soon began to weep again, feeling a choking heart-rending sensation at the scent of the severed verdure. She was forty years old now, and it was for her past-away youth that she was weeping.

Since his appointment as Curé of Saint-Saturnin’s, Abbé Faujas had shown a dignity which seemed to increase his stature. He carried his breviary and his hat with an air of authority, which he had exhibited at the cathedral in such wise as to ensure himself the respect of the clergy. Abbé Fenil, having sustained another defeat on two or three matters of detail, now seemed to have left his adversary free to do as he pleased. Abbé Faujas, however, was not foolish enough to make any indiscreet use of his triumph, but showed himself extremely supple. He was quite conscious that Plassans was still far from being his; and so, though he stopped every now and then in the street to shake hands with Monsieur Delangre, he merely exchanged passing salutations with Monsieur de Bourdeu, Monsieur Maffre, and the other guests of Monsieur Rastoil. A large section of society in the town still looked upon him with suspicion. They found fault with him for the want of frankness in his political opinions. In their estimation he ought to explain himself, declare himself in favour of one party or another. But the Abbé only smiled and said that he belonged to ‘the honest men’s party,’ a reply which spared him a more explicit declaration. More­over he showed no haste or anxiety, but continued to keep aloof till the drawing-rooms should open their doors to him of their own accord.

‘No, my friend, not now; later on we will see about it,’ he said to Abbé Bourrette, who had been pressing him to pay a visit to Monsieur Rastoil.

He was known to have refused two invitations to the Sub-Prefecture, and the Mourets were still the only people with whom he continued intimate. There he was, as it were, occu­pying a post of observation between two hostile camps. On Tuesdays, when the two sets of guests assembled in the gardens on his right and left, he took up his position at his window and watched the sunset in the distance behind the forests of the Seille, and then, before withdrawing, he lowered his eyes and replied with as much amiability to the bows of Monsieur Rastoil’s guests as to those of the Sub-Prefect’s. His intercourse with his neighbours as yet went no further than this.

On Tuesday, however, he went down into the garden. He was quite at home now in Mouret’s grounds and no longer confined himself to pacing up and down beneath the arbour as he read his breviary. All the walks and beds seemed to belong to him; his cassock glided blackly past all the greenery. On that particular Tuesday, as he made a tour of the garden, he caught sight of Monsieur Maffre and Madame Rastoil below him and bowed to them; and then as he passed below the terrace of the Sub-Prefecture, he saw Monsieur de Con­damin leaning there in company with Doctor Porquier. After an exchange of salutations, the priest was turning along the path, when the doctor called to him.