Complete Works of Emile Zola (366 page)

Brother Archangias, his mouth full, struck the table violently with his knife, and roared: ‘Jeanbernat is a dog; he ought to die like a dog.’ Then seeing the priest about to protest he cut him short: ‘No, no, for him there is no God, no penitence, no mercy. It would be better to throw the host to the pigs than carry it to that scoundrel.’

Then he helped himself to more potatoes, and with his elbows on the table, his chin in his plate, began chewing furiously. La Teuse, her lips pinched, quite white with anger, contented herself with saying dryly: ‘Let it be, his reverence will have his own way. He has secrets from us now.’

Silence reigned. For a moment one only heard the working of Brother Archangias’s jaws, and the extraordinary rumbling of his gullet. Desiree, with her bare arms round the nest in her plate, smiled to the little ones, talking to them slowly and softly in a chirruping of her own which they seemed to understand.

‘People say what they have done when they have nothing to hide,’ suddenly cried La Teuse.

And then silence reigned again. What exasperated the old servant was the mystery the priest seemed to make about his visit to the Paradou. She deemed herself a woman who had been shamefully deceived. Her curiosity smarted. She again walked round the table, not looking at the Abbe, not addressing anybody, but comforting herself with soliloquy.

‘That’s it; that’s why we have lunch so late! We go gadding about till two o’clock in the afternoon. We go into such disreputable houses that we don’t even dare to tell what we’ve done. And then we tell lies, we deceive everybody.’

‘But nobody,’ gently interrupted Abbe Mouret, who was forcing himself to eat a little more, so as to prevent La Teuse from getting crosser than ever, ‘nobody asked me if I had been to the Paradou. I have not had to tell any lies.’

La Teuse, however, went on as if she had never heard him.

‘Yes, we go ruining our cassock in the dust, we come home rigged up like a thief. And if some kind person takes an interest in us, and questions us for our own good, we push her about and treat her like a good-for-nothing woman, whom we can’t trust. We hide things like a slyboots, we’d rather die than breathe a word; we’re not even considerate enough to enliven our home by relating what we’ve seen.’

She turned to the priest, and looked him full in the face.

‘Yes, you take that to yourself. You are a close one, you’re a bad man!’

Thereupon she fell to crying and the Abbe had to soothe her.

‘Monsieur Caffin used to tell me everything,’ she moaned out.

However, she soon grew calmer. Brother Archangias was finishing a big piece of cheese, apparently quite unruffled by the scene. In his opinion Abbe Mouret really needed being kept straight, and La Teuse was right in making him feel the reins. Having drunk a last glassful of the weak wine, the Brother threw himself back in his chair to digest his meal.

‘Well now,’ finally asked the old servant, ‘what did you see at the Paradou? Tell us, at any rate.’

Abbe Mouret smiled and related in a few words how strangely Jeanbernat had received him. La Teuse, after overwhelming him with questions, broke out into indignant exclamations, while Brother Archangias clenched his fists and brandished them aloft.

‘May Heaven crush him!’ said he, ‘and burn both him and his witch!’

In his turn the Abbe then endeavoured to elicit some fresh particulars about the people at the Paradou, and listened intently to the Brother’s monstrous narrative.

‘Yes, that little she-devil came and sat down in the school. It’s a long time ago now, she might then have been about ten. Of course, I let her come; I thought her uncle was sending her to prepare for her first communion. But for two months she utterly revolutionised the whole class. She made herself worshipped, the minx! She knew all sorts of games, and invented all sorts of finery with leaves and shreds of rags. And how quick and clever she was, too, like all those children of hell! She was the top one at catechism. But one fine morning the old man burst in just in the middle of our lessons. He was going to smash everything, and shouted that the priests had taken his child from him. We had to get the rural policeman to turn him out. As to the little one, she bolted. I could see her through the window, in a field opposite, laughing at her uncle’s frenzy. She had been coming to school for the last two months without his even suspecting it. He had regularly scoured the country after her.’

‘She’s never taken her first communion,’ exclaimed La Teuse below her breath with a slight shudder.

‘No, never,’ rejoined Brother Archangias. ‘She must be sixteen now. She’s growing up like a brute beast. I have seen her running on all fours in a thicket near La Palud.’

‘On all fours,’ muttered the servant, turning towards the window with superstitious anxiety.

Abbe Mouret attempted to express some doubt, but the Brother burst out: ‘Yes, on all fours! And she jumped like a wild cat. If I had only had a gun I could have put a bullet in her. We kill creatures that are far more pleasing to God than she is. Besides, every one knows she comes caterwauling every night round Les Artaud. She howls like a beast. If ever a man should fall into her clutches, she wouldn’t leave him a scrap of skin on his bones, I know.’

The Brother’s hatred of womankind was boiling over. He banged the table with his fist, and poured forth all his wonted abuse.

‘The devil’s in them. They reek of the devil! And that’s what bewitches fools.’

The priest nodded approvingly. Brother Archangias’s outrageous violence and La Teuse’s loquacious tyranny were like castigation with thongs, which it often rejoiced him to find lashing his shoulders. He took a pious delight in sinking into abasement beneath their coarse speech. He seemed to see the peace of heaven behind contempt of the world and degradation of his whole being. It was delicious to inflict mortification upon his body, to drag his susceptible nature through a gutter.

‘There is nought but filth,’ he muttered as he folded up his napkin.

La Teuse began to clear the table and wished to remove the plate on which Desiree had laid the blackbird’s nest. You are not going to bed here, I suppose, mademoiselle,’ she said. ‘Do leave those nasty things.’

Desiree, however, defended her plate. She covered the nest with her bare arms, no longer gay, but cross at being disturbed.

‘I hope those birds are not going to be kept,’ exclaimed Brother Archangias. ‘It would bring bad luck. You must wring their necks.’

And he already stretched out his big hands; but the girl rose and stepped back quivering, hugging the nest to her bosom. She stared fixedly at the Brother, her lips curling upwards, like those of a wolf about to bite.

‘Don’t touch the little things,’ she stammered. ‘You are ugly.’

With such singular contempt did she emphasise that last word that Abbe Mouret started as if the Brother’s ugliness had just struck him for the first time. The latter contented himself with growling. He had always felt a covert hatred for Desiree, whose lusty physical development offended him. When she had left the room, still walking backwards, and never taking her eyes from him, he shrugged his shoulders and muttered between his teeth some coarse abuse which no one heard.

‘She had better go to bed,’ said La Teuse. ‘She would only bore us by-and-by in church.’

‘Has any one come yet?’ asked Abbe Mouret.

‘Oh, the girls have been outside a long time with armfuls of boughs. I am just going to light the lamps. We can begin whenever you like.’

A few seconds later she could be heard swearing in the sacristy because the matches were damp. Brother Archangias, who remained alone with the priest, sourly inquired: ‘For the month of Mary, eh?’

‘Yes,’ replied Abbe Mouret. ‘The last few days the girls about here were hard at work and couldn’t come as usual to decorate the Lady Chapel. So the ceremony was postponed till to-night.’

‘A nice custom,’ muttered the Brother. ‘When I see them all putting up their boughs I feel inclined to knock them down and make them confess their misdeeds before touching the altar. It’s a shame to allow women to rustle their dresses so near the holy relics.’

The Abbe made an apologetic gesture. He had only been at Les Artaud a little while, he must follow the customs.

‘Whenever you like, Monsieur le Cure, we’re ready!’ now called out La Teuse.

But Brother Archangias detained him a minute. ‘I am off,’ he said. ‘Religion isn’t a prostitute that it should be decorated with flowers and laces.’

He walked slowly to the door. Then once more he stopped, and lifting one of his hairy fingers added: ‘Beware of your devotion to the Virgin.’

XIII

On entering the church Abbe Mouret found nine or ten big girls awaiting him with boughs of ivy, laurel, and rosemary. Few garden flowers grew on the rocks of Les Artaud, so the custom was to decorate the Lady altar with a greenery which might last throughout the month of May. Thereto La Teuse would add a few wallflowers whose stems were thrust into old decanters.

‘Will you let me do it, Monsieur le Cure?’ she asked. ‘You are not used to it —  — Come, stand there in front of the altar. You can tell me if the decorations please you.’

He consented, and it was she who really directed the arrangements. Having climbed upon a pair of steps she bullied the girls as they came up to her in turn with their leafy contributions.

‘Not so fast, now! You must give me time to fix the boughs. We can’t have all these bundles coming down on his reverence’s head —  — Come on, Babet, it’s your turn. What’s the good of staring at me like that with your big eyes? Fine rosemary yours is, my word! as yellow as a thistle. You next, La Rousse. Ah, well, that is splendid laurel! You got that out of your field at Croix-Verte, I know.’

The big girls laid their branches on the altar, which they kissed; and there they lingered for a while, handing up the greenery to La Teuse. The sly look of devotion they had assumed on stepping on to the altar steps was quickly set aside, and soon they were laughing, digging each other with their knees, swaying their hips against the altar’s edge, and thrusting their bosoms against the tabernacle itself. Over them the tall Virgin in gilded plaster bent her tinted face, and smiled with her rosy lips upon the naked Jesus she bore upon her left arm.

‘That’s it, Lisa!’ cried La Teuse; ‘why don’t you sit on the altar while you’re about it? Just pull your petticoats straight, will you? Aren’t you ashamed of behaving like that? — If any one of you lolls about I’ll lay her boughs across her face. — Can’t you hand me the things quietly?’

Then turning round, she asked:

‘Do you like it, sir? Do you think it will do?’

She had converted the space behind the Virgin’s statue into a verdant niche, whence leafy sprays projected on either side, forming a bower, and drooping over in front like palm leaves. The priest expressed his approval, but ventured to remark: ‘I think there ought to be a cluster of more delicate foliage up above.’

‘No doubt,’ grumbled La Teuse. ‘But they only bring me laurel and rosemary — I should like to know who has brought an olive branch. Not one, you bet! They are afraid of losing a single olive, the heathens!’

At this, however, Catherine came up laden with an enormous olive bough which completely hid her.

‘Oh, you’ve got some, you minx!’ continued the old servant.

‘Of course,’ one of the other girls exclaimed, ‘she stole it. I saw Vincent breaking it off while she kept a look-out.’

But Catherine flew into a rage and swore it was not true. She turned, and thrusting her auburn head through the greenery, which she still tightly held, she started lying with marvellous assurance, inventing quite a long story to prove that the olive bough was really hers.

‘Besides,’ she added, ‘all the trees belong to the Blessed Virgin.’

Abbe Mouret was about to intervene, but La Teuse sharply inquired if they wanted to make game of her and keep her arms up there all night. At last she proceeded to fasten the olive bough firmly, while Catherine, holding on to the steps behind her, mimicked the clumsy manner in which she turned her huge person about with the help of her sound leg. Even the priest could not forbear to smile.

‘There,’ said La Teuse, as she came down and stood beside him to get a good view of her work, ‘there’s the top done. Now we will put some clumps between the candlesticks, unless you would prefer a garland all along the altar shelf.’

The priest decided in favour of some big clumps.

‘Very good; come on, then,’ continued the old servant, once more clambering up the steps. ‘We can’t go to bed here. Just kiss the altar, will you, Miette? Do you fancy you are in your stable? Monsieur le Cure, do just see what they are up to over there! I can hear them laughing like lunatics.’

On raising one of the two lamps the dark end of the church was lit up and three of the girls were discovered romping about under the gallery; one of them had stumbled and pitched head foremost into the holy water stoup, which mishap had so tickled the others that they were rolling on the ground to laugh at their ease. They all came back, however, looking at the priest sheepishly, with lowered eyelids, but with their hands swinging against their hips as if a scolding rather pleased them than otherwise.

However, the measure of La Teuse’s wrath was filled when she suddenly perceived Rosalie coming up to the altar like the others with a bundle of boughs in her arms.

‘Get down, will you?’ she cried to her. ‘You are a cool one, and no mistake, my lass! — Hurry up, off you go with your bundle.’

‘What for, I’d like to know?’ said Rosalie boldly. ‘You can’t say I have stolen it.’

The other girls drew closer, feigning innocence and exchanging sparkling glances.

‘Clear out,’ repeated La Teuse, ‘you have no business here, do you hear?’

Then, quite losing her scanty patience, she gave vent to a very coarse epithet, which provoked a titter of delight among the peasant girls.

‘Well, what next?’ said Rosalie. ‘Mind your own business. Is it any concern of yours?’

Then she burst into a fit of sobbing and threw down her boughs, but let the Abbe lead her aside and give her a severe lecture. He had already tried to silence La Teuse; for he was beginning to feel uneasy amidst the big shameless hussies who filled the church with their armfuls of foliage. They were pushing right up to the altar step, enclosing him with a belt of woodland, wafting in his face a rank perfume of aromatic shoots.