The Conquest of Plassans (Les Rougon-Macquart Book 4) (29 page)

Mouret dropped his candle and it went out. They could hear him getting cross and going up the steps again, stumbling against them as he went. The Rastoil girls uttered a little cry of fright. They only regained their composure in the lighted drawing room, where Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies insisted that all of the gathering accept a cup of tea and some biscuits. Madame de Condamin was still trembling. She curled up in the corner of a chaise longue. She told everyone with a melting smile that nothing had ever made such an impression on her, not even the time when she had ill-advisedly taken it into her head one morning to go and watch an execution.

‘It’s strange,’ said Monsieur Rastoil, who had been deep in thought for some time. ‘Mouret seemed to be looking for slugs under his lettuces. The gardens are crawling with the wretches and they say you can only get rid of them properly at night.’

‘Slugs!’ cried Monsieur de Condamin. ‘Come now, he’s not worried about slugs! Does one go and look for slugs with a candle? I’d rather hold to Monsieur Maffre’s view that there is some crime involved… Has Mouret never had a maidservant disappear? We should make enquiries.’

Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies realized that his friend, the
forestry commissioner, was going a bit far. He muttered as he drank a mouthful of tea:

‘No no, dear boy. He’s mad, he imagines the most bizarre things, that’s all… That’s quite terrifying enough.’

He took the plate of biscuits and, throwing back his shoulders like the fine officer he was, offered it to the Rastoil girls. Then, putting the plate down, he went on:

‘When you think that this creature was involved in politics! I don’t wish to blame you for your alliance with the Republicans, Monsieur le Président, but you must admit that the Marquis of Lagrifoul had the strangest of supporters in him.’

Monsieur Rastoil had grown very serious. He made a vague gesture, but did not reply.

‘And he is still involved. Maybe it’s politics that has driven him mad,’ said the beautiful Octavie, wiping her lips delicately. ‘They say he is very eager for the next elections, don’t they, my love?’

She addressed herself to her husband, glancing in his direction.

‘It’ll be the death of him!’ cried Monsieur de Condamin. ‘He tells everyone he’s in charge of the list, that he will appoint a shoemaker if he feels like it.’

‘You exaggerate,’ said Doctor Porquier. ‘He hasn’t got so much influence nowadays; the whole town is laughing at him.’

‘And that’s just where you are wrong! If he wants, he can get all the old quarter and a great number of the villages out to vote… He’s mad, it’s true, but that’s a recommendation… Given that he’s a Republican, I find him still very reasonable.’

This not very good joke was a great success. Even the Rastoil girls giggled like little schoolgirls. The president nodded approvingly and stopped being so serious. Avoiding the eyes of the sub-prefect, he said:

‘Lagrifoul has perhaps not served us in the way we had a right to expect. But it would bring shame on us to have a shoemaker in Plassans!’

And he added briskly, as though to wind things up with the declaration he had just made:

‘But it’s one-thirty; this won’t do at all. Thank you so much, Monsieur le Président.’

It was Madame de Condamin who, throwing a shawl around her shoulders, managed to have the last word.

‘Well, we can’t have the elections run by a man who goes and kneels down in the middle of his lettuces after midnight.’

That night became legendary. Monsieur de Condamin had a fine time recounting the adventure to Monsieur de Bourdeu, Monsieur Maffre, and the priests, who had not been witness to their neighbour and his candle. Three days later the whole district swore they had seen the madman who beat his wife walking around with his head covered in a bedsheet. Under the arbour at the afternoon get-togethers the talk was mostly about the possible candidature of Mouret’s shoemaker. They laughed, but at the same time eyed one another warily. It was a way of checking out each other’s politics. Through certain confidences of his friend the president, Monsieur de Bourdeu believed he was to understand that a tacit agreement could be reached in his name between the sub-prefecture and the moderate opposition, which would cause an embarrassing defeat for the Republicans. So he became more and more sarcastic about the Marquis de Lagrifoul, scrupulously going through every little gaffe he had made in the Chamber of Deputies. Monsieur Delangre, who only attended now and then, giving as the reason his worries about the municipal administration, smiled shrewdly at each new cutting remark about the former prefect.

‘Now all you have to do is bury the marquis, Monsieur le Curé,’ he said one day in Abbé Faujas’s ear.

Madame de Condamin, who overheard him, turned her head, putting her finger to her lips with a pout that was exquisitely mischievous.

Abbé Faujas these days allowed them to talk politics in his presence. He even offered an opinion sometimes, was in favour of the union of honest and religious souls. So they all went one better, Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, Monsieur Rastoil, Monsieur de Bourdeu, even Monsieur Maffre. It ought to be so easy to come to a consensus among such decent people, to work together for the consolidation of great principles, without which no society can exist! And the conversation turned on property, family, religion. Sometimes Mouret’s name would come up and Monsieur de Condamin would murmur:

‘I am frightened to let my wife come here. Scared, don’t you know! You’ll see some strange things going on at the polls if he’s still on the loose!’

Meanwhile every morning, Trouche tried to instil fear into Abbé Faujas during his regular conversation with him. He gave him the
most alarming news; the working people in the old quarter were overly concerned with Mouret’s household. They talked about going to see the fellow, to decide for themselves what state he was in, to ask his advice.

The priest usually shrugged it off. But one day Trouche emerged from his apartment with a delighted expression on his face. He came and threw his arms around Olympe crying:

‘This time, my girl, we’ve done it!’

‘Is he letting you do what you like?’ she asked.

‘Yes, free to do what we want… We shall be in clover when
he
isn’t here.’

She was still in bed. She dived under the covers and reappeared, laughing like a little girl.

‘Oh, all of it will be for us, won’t it?… I shall move to another bedroom. And I want to use the garden. I want to do the cooking downstairs… Well, my brother owes us that at least. You’ve given him a real helping hand!’

It was ten o’clock in the evening before Trouche arrived at the seedy café where he met up with Guillaume Porquier and other middle-class young men in the town. They joked about his lateness and accused him of going off to the ramparts with one of the girls from the Work of the Virgin. This teasing normally flattered him. But he was serious. He said he’d had matters to attend to, important matters. It was not till midnight when he had emptied the jugs of wine on the counter that he bent a little and became more voluble. He addressed Guillaume in a familiar fashion; he spoke haltingly, leaning against the wall, lighting his pipe again at each phrase:

‘I saw your father this evening. He’s a good man… I needed a certificate. He was nice, very nice to me. He gave it to me… It’s here in my pocket… Well, he didn’t want to at first. He said that it was for the family to see to.
*
I said to him: “I am family. I have orders from Mother.” You know my mother. A worthy woman. She seemed very happy when I went to discuss it with her before… So he gave me the certificate. You can touch it, you can feel it in my pocket…’

Guillaume stared at him, hiding his acute curiosity beneath a doubtful smile.

‘I’m not telling lies,’ said the drunkard. ‘The document is in my pocket… Can you feel it?’

‘It’s a newspaper,’ said the young man.

Trouche, grinning, pulled a large envelope from his pocket and put it on the table in the middle of the cups and glasses. He withheld it for a moment from Guillaume who had stretched out his hand. Then he let him take it, laughing even louder, as if he were being tickled. It was a very detailed declaration from Doctor Porquier on the mental state of Monsieur François Mouret, householder of Plassans.

‘So are they going to put him away?’ Guillaume asked as he gave back the certificate.

‘None of your business, my lad,’ Trouche answered, growing mistrustful once more. ‘This certificate is for his wife. I am only a friend who is pleased to perform a service. She must do as she likes. But the poor lady can’t allow herself to be butchered.’

He was so drunk that when they were thrown out of the café, Guillaume had to go with him back to the Rue Balande. He wanted to lie down on all the benches in the Cours Sauvaire. Once he had reached the Place de la Préfecture he was sobbing, and repeating:

‘I don’t have friends any more. It’s because I’m poor that they look down on me… You’re a good boy. You must come and have coffee with us when we are in charge. If the priest bothers us we’ll send him away like the other one… He’s not very strong, our priest, in spite of his lordly airs; I can easily pull the wool over his eyes… You’re a real friend, aren’t you? Mouret is done for, we’ll drink his wine.’

When he had taken Trouche to his door, Guillaume crossed the sleeping town and went to whistle softly outside the justice’s house. It was a signal. The Maffre boys, locked in their room by their father’s own hand, opened a casement on the first floor, and descended with the help of the bars barricading the windows on the ground floor. Every night they went off in this way to spend the night in debauchery along with the Porquiers’ son.

‘Oh, by the way,’ the latter said, when they were silently walking along the narrow dark streets by the ramparts, ‘no reason to hold back now… If my father talks any more of sending me off into the sticks to repent of my sins, I’ve got an answer for him… Want to bet that I can gain entry to the Youth Club when I feel like it?’

The Maffre boys took him up on it and all three sneaked into a yellow house with green blinds built into a corner of the ramparts at the bottom of a cul-de-sac.

The following night, Marthe had a dreadful crisis. That morning she had attended a long religious ceremony which Olympe had
wanted to see right through to the end. When lacerating cries pierced the air, Rose and the lodgers rushed down and found her stretched out across the end of the bed with a cut across her forehead. Mouret was on his knees in the middle of the blankets, shivering.

‘He’s killed her this time!’ cried the cook.

She took hold of him, although he was in his nightshirt, and pushed him across the bedroom into his study whose door was the other side of the landing; she came back to throw him a mattress and some blankets. Trouche had run off to fetch Doctor Porquier. The doctor dressed Marthe’s wound. An inch lower and it would have killed her, he said. Downstairs in the hall in front of everyone he declared that they had to act, they could no longer leave Madame Mouret to the mercy of a raving madman.

Marthe had to stay in bed the next day. She was still a little delirious. She had a vision of an iron hand opening up her head with a flaming sword. Rose absolutely refused to let Mouret go in. She gave him his dinner in the study, on the dusty table. He ate nothing. He was looking stupidly at his plate, when Rose brought in three gentlemen dressed in black.

‘Are you the doctors?’ he asked. ‘How is she?’

‘She’s getting better,’ replied one of the gentlemen.

Mouret cut some bread mechanically as if he were going to start eating.

‘I wish the children were here,’ he mumbled. ‘They would look after her… We’d not be on our own so much… It’s since the children left that she’s fallen ill… I’m not very well either.’

He had taken a mouthful of bread and big tears were falling down his cheeks. The person who had already spoken said then, with a glance at his two colleagues:

‘Would you like us to go and get the children?’

‘Yes please!’ cried Mouret, rising. ‘Let’s go straight away.’

On the staircase he did not see Trouche and his wife leaning over the banisters on the second floor, following his every step, with gleaming eyes. Olympe followed him swiftly downstairs and rushed into the kitchen, where Rose, very upset, was keeping watch by the window. And when a carriage waiting at the front door had carried Mouret off, she bounded up to the second floor again, caught hold of Trouche by his shoulders and pirouetted around the landing with him, bursting with joy.

‘They’ve got him!’ she cried.

Marthe remained in bed for a week. Her mother came to visit every afternoon, showing amazing devotion. The Faujas and the Trouches took turns at her bedside. Madame de Condamin herself visited several times. No one mentioned Mouret any more. Rose told her mistress that Monsieur had had to go to Marseilles. But when Marthe was able to go down for the first time and sit at the table in the dining room, she was surprised, and, beginning to grow anxious, asked for her husband.

‘Look, my dear lady, don’t harm yourself,’ said Madame Faujas. ‘You will make yourself ill again. We had to make a decision. Your friends were obliged to consult each other and act in your best interest.’

‘You don’t want him back,’ Rose cried brusquely, ‘after the way he hit you on the head. The whole district can breathe again now he’s not here any longer. We were constantly afraid he would set us on fire or that he might go out with a knife. I hid all the knives in my kitchen; Monsieur Rastoil’s maid did the same… And your poor mother who was at her wits’ end!… There now, the people who came to see you while you were ill, all those ladies, all the gentlemen said when I saw them out: “Plassans is well rid of him. A town is always uneasy when a man like that is free to come and go as he likes.” ’

Marthe listened to this torrent of words with big eyes, dreadfully pale. She let her spoon drop; as if terrified by some vision rising up behind the fruit trees in the garden, she looked straight ahead through the open window.

‘Les Tulettes, Les Tulettes!’ she stammered, hiding her eyes in her trembling hands.