Complete Works of Emile Zola (342 page)

Abbé Faujas had been listening with curiosity, though he had taken no part in the conversation. Then, as soon as there was a pause, he remarked that their talk about mad people had a depressing effect upon the ladies, and suggested that the subject should be changed. Everybody’s curiosity was fully awakened, however, and the two sets of guests began to keep a sharp watch upon Mouret’s behaviour. The latter now came out into the garden for an hour a day, while the Faujases remained at table with his wife. Directly he appeared there, he came under the active surveillance of the Rastoils and the frequenters of the Sub-Prefecture. He could not stand for a moment in front of a bed of vegetables or examine a plant, or even make a gesture of any sort, without exciting in the gardens on his right and left the most un­favourable comments. Everyone was turning against him. Monsieur de Condamin was the only person who still defended him. One day the fair Octavie said to him as they were at luncheon:

‘What difference can it make to you whether Mouret is mad or not?’

‘To me, my dear? Absolutely none,’ he said in astonish­ment.

‘Very well, then, allow that he is mad, since everyone says he is. I don’t know why you always persist in holding a contrary opinion to your wife’s. It won’t prove to your advantage, my dear. Have the intelligence, at Plassans, not to be too intelligent.’

Monsieur de Condamin smiled.

‘You are right, my dear, as you always are,’ he said gallantly; ‘you know that I have put my fortune in your hands — don’t wait dinner for me. I am going to ride to Saint-Eutrope to have a look at some timber they are fell­ing.’

Then he left the room, biting the end off a cigar.

Madame de Condamin was well aware that he had a flame for a young girl in the neighbourhood of Saint-Eutrope; but she was very tolerant and had even saved him twice from the consequences of scandalous intrigues. On his side, he felt very easy about his wife; he knew that she was much too prudent to give cause for scandal at Plassans.

‘You would never guess how Mouret spends his time in that room where he shuts himself up!’ the conservator of rivers and forests said the next morning when he called at the Sub-Prefecture. ‘He is counting all the s’s in the Bible. He is afraid of making any mistake about the matter, and he has already recommenced counting them for the third time. Ah! you were quite right; he is cracked from top to bottom!’

From this time forward Monsieur de Condamin was very hard upon Mouret. He even exaggerated matters and used all his skill to invent absurd stories to scare the Rastoils; but it was Monsieur Maffre whom he made his special victim. He told him one day that he had seen Mouret standing at one of the windows overlooking the street in a state of complete nudity, having only a woman’s cap on his head and bowing to the empty air. Another day he asserted with amazing assurance that he had seen Mouret dancing like a savage in a little wood three leagues away; and when the magistrate seemed to doubt this story, he appeared to be vexed and declared that Mouret might very easily have got down out of his house by the water-spout without being noticed. The frequenters of the Sub-Prefecture smiled, but the next morning the Rastoils’ cook spread these extraordinary stories about the town, where the legend of the man who beat his wife was assuming extraordinary proportions.

One afternoon Aurélie, the elder of Monsieur Rastoil’s two daughters, related with a blushing face how on the previous night, having gone to look out of her window about midnight, she had seen their neighbour promenading about his garden, carrying a big altar candle. Monsieur de Condamin thought the girl was making fun of him, but she gave the most minute details.

‘He held the candle in his left hand; and he knelt down on the ground and dragged himself along on his knees, sobbing as he did so.’

‘Can it be possible that he has committed a murder and has buried the body of his victim in his garden?’ exclaimed Monsieur Maffre, who had turned quite pale.

Then the two sets of guests agreed to watch some even­ing till midnight if necessary, to clear the matter up. The following night, indeed, they kept on the alert, in both gardens, but Mouret did not appear. Three nights were wasted in the same way. The Sub-Prefecture party was going to abandon the watch, and Madame de Condamin declared that she could not stay any longer under the chestnut trees, where it was so dreadfully dark, when all at once a light was seen flickering through the inky blackness of the ground floor of Mouret’s house. When Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies’ attention was drawn to this, he slipped into the Impasse des Chevillottes to invite the Rastoils to come on to his terrace, which overlooked the neighbouring garden. The presiding judge, who was on the watch with his daughters behind the cascade, hesitated for a moment, reflecting whether he might not compromise himself politically by going to the sub-prefect’s in this way, but as the night was very black, and his daughter Aurélie was most anxious to have the truth of her report manifested, he followed Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies with stealthy steps through the darkness. It was in this manner that a representative of Legitimacy at Plassans for the first time entered the grounds of a Bonapartist official.

‘Don’t make a noise,’ whispered the sub-prefect. ‘Lean over the terrace.’

There Monsieur Rastoil and his daughters found Doctor Porquier and Madame de Condamin and her husband. The darkness was so dense that they exchanged salutations without being able to see one another. Then they all held their breath. Mouret had just appeared upon the steps, with a candle, which was stuck in a great kitchen candlestick.

‘You see he has got a candle,’ whispered Aurélie.

No one dissented. The fact was quite incontrovertible; Mouret certainly was carrying a candle. He came slowly down the steps, turned to the left and then stood motionless before a bed of lettuces. Then he raised his candle to throw a light upon the plants. His face looked quite yellow amidst the black night.

‘What a dreadful face!’ exclaimed Madame de Condamin. ‘I shall dream of it, I’m certain. Is he asleep, doctor?’

‘No, no,’ replied Doctor Porquier, ‘he is not a somnam­bulist; he is wide awake. Do you notice how fixed his gaze is? Observe, too, the abruptness of his movements — ‘

‘Hush! hush!’ interrupted Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies; ‘we don’t require a lecture just now.’

The most complete silence then fell. Mouret had stridden over the box-edging and was kneeling in the midst of the lettuces. He held his candle down, and began searching along the trenches underneath the spreading leaves of the plants. Every now and then he made a slight examination and seemed to be crushing something and stamping it into the ground. This went on for nearly half an hour.

‘He is crying; it is just as I told you,’ Aurélie com­placently remarked.

‘It is really very terrifying,’ Madame de Condamin ex­claimed nervously. ‘Pray let us go back into the house.’

Mouret dropped his candle and it went out. They could hear him uttering exclamations of annoyance as he went back up the steps, stumbling against them in the dark. The Rastoil girls broke out into little cries of terror, and did not quite recover from their fright till they were again in the brightly lighted drawing-room, where Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies insisted upon the company refreshing themselves with some tea and biscuits. Madame de Condamin, who was still trembling with alarm, huddled up on a couch, said, with a touching smile, that she had never felt so overcome before, not even on the morning when she had had the reprehensible curiosity to go and see a criminal executed.

‘It is strange,’ remarked Monsieur Rastoil, who had been buried in thought for a moment or two; ‘but Mouret looked as if he were searching for slugs amongst his lettuces. The gardens are quite ravaged by them, and I have been told that they can only be satisfactorily exterminated in the night­time.’

‘Slugs, indeed!’ cried Monsieur de Condamin. ‘Do you suppose he troubles himself about slugs? Do people go hunting for slugs with a candle? No; I agree with Monsieur Maffre in thinking that there is some crime at the bottom of the matter. Did this man Mouret ever have a servant who disappeared mysteriously? There ought to be an inquiry made.’

Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies thought that his friend the conservator of rivers and forests was theorising a little further than the facts warranted. He took a sip at his tea and said:

‘No, no; my dear sir. He is mad and has extraordinary fancies, but that is all. It is quite bad enough as it is.’

He then took a plate of biscuits, handed it to Monsieur Rastoil’s daughter with a gallant bow, and after putting it down again continued:

‘And to think this wretched man has mixed himself up in politics! I don’t want to insinuate anything against your alliance with the Republicans, my dear judge, but you must allow that in Mouret the Marquis de Lagrifoul had a very peculiar supporter.’

Monsieur Rastoil, who had become very grave, made a vague gesture, without saying anything.

‘And he still busies himself with these matters. It is politics, perhaps, which have turned his brain,’ said the fair Octavie, as she delicately wiped her lips. ‘They say he takes the greatest interest in the approaching elections, don’t they, my dear?’

She addressed this question to her husband, casting a glance at him as she spoke.

‘He is quite bursting over the matter!’ cried Monsieur de Condamin. ‘He declares that he can entirely control the election, and can have a shoemaker returned if he chooses.’

‘You are exaggerating,’ said Doctor Porquier. ‘He no longer has the influence he used to have; the whole town jeers at him.’

‘Ah! you are mistaken! If he chooses, he can lead the old quarter of the town and a great number of villages to the poll. He is mad, it is true, but that is a recommendation. I myself consider him still a very sensible person, for a Republican.’

This attempt at wit met with distinct success. Monsieur Rastoil’s daughters broke out into school-girl laughs and the presiding judge himself nodded his head in approval. He threw off his serious expression, and, without looking at the sub-prefect, he said:

‘Lagrifoul has not rendered us, perhaps, the services we had a right to expect, but a shoemaker would be really too disgraceful for Plassans!’

Then, as though he wanted to prevent any further remarks on the subject, he added quickly: ‘Why, it is half-past one o’clock! This is quite an orgie we are having, my dear sub-prefect; we are all very much obliged to you.’

Madame de Condamin wrapped her shawl round her shoulders and contrived to have the last word.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘we really must not let the election be controlled by a man who goes and kneels down in the middle of a bed of lettuces after twelve o’clock at night.’

That night became quite historical, and Monsieur de Con­damin derived much amusement from relating the details of what had occurred to Monsieur de Bourdeu, Monsieur Maffre, and the priests, who had not seen Mouret with his candle. Three days later all the neighbourhood was asserting that the madman who beat his wife had been seen walking about with his head enveloped in a sheet. Meantime, the afternoon assemblies under the arbour were much exercised by the possible candidature of Mouret’s radical shoemaker. They laughed as they studied each other’s demeanour. It was a sort of political pulse-feeling. Certain confidential statements of his friend the presiding judge induced Monsieur de Bourdeu to believe that a tacit understanding might be arrived at between the Sub-Prefecture and the moderate opposition to promote the candidature of himself, and thus inflict a crush­ing defeat upon the Republicans. Possessed by this idea, he waxed more and more sarcastic against the Marquis de Lagrifoul, and made the most of the latter’s blunders in the Chamber. Monsieur Delangre, who only called at long intervals, alleging the pressure of his municipal duties as an excuse for his infrequent appearance, smiled softly at each fresh sally of the ex-prefect.

‘You’ve only got to bury the marquis, now, your reverence,’ he said one day in Abbé Faujas’s ear.

Madame de Condamin, who heard him, turned her head and laid her finger upon her lips with a pretty look of mis­chief.

Abbé Faujas now allowed politics to be mentioned in his presence. He even occasionally expressed an opinion in favour of the union of all honest and religious men. There­upon all present, Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, Monsieur Rastoil, Monsieur de Bourdeu, and even Monsieur Maffre, grew quite warm in their expressions of desire for such an agreement. It would be so very easy, they said, for men with a stake in the country to come to an understanding together to work for the firm establishment of the great principles without which no society could hold together. Then the conversation turned upon property, and family and religion. Sometimes Mouret’s name was mentioned, and Monsieur de Condamin once said:

‘I never let my wife come here without feeling uneasy. I am really getting alarmed. You will see some strange things happen at the next elections if that man is still at liberty.’

Trouche did his best to frighten Abbé Faujas during the interviews which he had with him every morning. He told him the most alarming stories. The working men of the old quarter of the town, said he, were showing too much interest in Mouret; they talked of coming to see him, of judging his condition for themselves, and taking his advice.

As a rule, the priest merely shrugged his shoulders; but one day Trouche came away from him looking quite delighted. He went off to Olympe and kissed her, ex­claiming:

‘This time, my dear, I’ve managed it!’

‘Has he given you leave?’ she asked.

‘Yes, full leave. We shall be delightfully comfortable when we have got rid of the old man.’

Olympe was still in bed. She dived under the bedclothes, and wriggled about and laughed gleefully.

‘We shall have everything to do as we like with, then, shan’t we? I shall take another bedroom, and go out into the garden whenever I like, and do all my cooking in the kitchen. My brother will have to let us do all that. You must have managed to frighten him very much.’

It was not till about ten o’clock that evening that Trouche made his appearance at the low café where he was accustomed to meet Guillaume Porquier and other wild young fellows. They joked him about the lateness of the hour, and playfully accused him of having been out on the ramparts courting one of the girls of the Home of the Virgin. Jests of this kind gene­rally pleased him, but that night he remained very grave. He declared that he had been engaged with business — very serious business. It was only about midnight, when he had emptied the decanters on the counter, that he became more expansive. Then he began to talk familiarly to Guillaume, leaning the while against the wall, stammering, and lighting his pipe afresh between every two sentences.