The Conquest of Plassans (Les Rougon-Macquart Book 4) (32 page)

And they searched. But the names put forward by friends or interested parties only added to the confusion. In one week Plassans had more than twenty candidates. Madame Rougon was worried and, not understanding the situation and furious with the sub-prefect, went to see Abbé Faujas. Péqueur, she said, was an ass, a fop, a puppet, only good for flaunting himself round the official salons. He had already allowed the government to be defeated, and now would end up compromising it by his stupid apathy.

‘Calm down,’ said the priest, smiling. ‘This time, Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies is happy to obey… Victory is certain.’

‘But you have no candidate!’ she exclaimed. ‘Where is your candidate?’

So he expounded his plan. Being an intelligent woman, she approved of it. But she was astonished when he confided the name to her.

‘What!’ she said. ‘You’ve chosen
him
?… Nobody’s ever thought of him, I assure you.’

‘So I should hope,’ the priest replied, smiling again. ‘We need a candidate nobody has thought of, so that everyone can accept him without feeling compromised.’

Then, with the recklessness of a powerful man who agrees to explain why he has behaved in that way:

‘I have a lot to thank you for,’ he continued. ‘You have prevented
me from making many mistakes. My eyes were fixed on the goal, but I did not see the snares that perhaps would have been enough to cause my downfall… Thank God all this petty, childish war is over. I shall be able to move around more easily… As for my choice, it’s a good one, be assured. The very next day after my arrival in Plassans I looked for a man and I found him. He is adaptable, very capable, very energetic. He’s not quarrelled with anyone up till now, and that’s not the characteristic of a vulgar or ambitious man. I know he is not on especially good terms with you. That’s really the reason I didn’t take you into my confidence. But you are wrong, you will see what progress he makes once he is launched. He will die a senator… Well, what decided me in the end were the stories people told me about his wealth. He’s taken his wife back three times, after having been given one hundred thousand francs by his worthy father-in-law each time after she was discovered in flagrante. If he has really made his fortune like that, he’s a fellow who will be very useful in Paris for certain jobs… Oh, you may search for another, but apart from him there are only fools in Plassans.’

‘So you are making the government a present!’ Félicité said with a laugh.

She allowed herself to be persuaded. And the next day the name of Delangre went flying from one end of town to the other. Friends, they said, had insisted on him accepting the nomination. He had refused for some time, believing himself not good enough for the job, repeating that he wasn’t a politician, that Messieurs Lagrifoul and de Bourdeu on the other hand had long experience of public affairs. Then, as people swore that Plassans needed a representative who didn’t come from inside the parties, he had allowed himself to be swayed, but at the same time expressly saying what he would and wouldn’t do. It was to be quite understood that he would not go to the Chamber of Deputies either to annoy or to uncritically support the government and that he would think of himself only as the representative of the citizens of the town. That, moreover, he would always vote for liberty in order, and for order in liberty. Finally that he would remain mayor of Plassans so that he might make the wholly conciliatory and administrative nature of the role which he was taking on, obvious. These words seemed particularly wise. The shrewd politicians of the Chamber of Commerce vied with one another in repeating that very evening:

‘I told you so, Delangre is the man we need… I am curious to know what the sub-prefect will say when the name of the mayor comes out at the ballot-box. Perhaps they won’t accuse us of voting like sulky schoolchildren any more than they will blame us for crawling to the government… If the Empire was taught a few lessons like that, the world would be a better place.’

This was a trail of gunpowder. The fuse was lit and a spark sufficed. From all parts at once, from the three separate quarters of the town, in each house, in each family, the name of Monsieur Delangre rose amid a chorus of praise. He turned into the long-awaited Messiah, the unknown saviour revealed in the morning and adored in the evening.

From sacristy and confessional the name of Monsieur Delangre was whispered; it echoed through the nave, fell from the pulpits of the surrounding districts, was whispered from ear to ear like a sacrament; it spread as far as the furthermost godly households. Priests carried his name in the folds of their soutanes; Abbé Bourrette bestowed respectability upon it with his large belly; Abbé Surin bestowed the grace of his smile, Monsignor Rousselot the feminine charms of his pastoral blessing. The society ladies never ceased talking about Monsieur Delangre. Such a nice character, such a fine and intelligent face. Madame Rastoil did not stop blushing. Madame Paloque waxed so enthusiastic, she was almost pretty. As for Madame de Condamin, she would have wielded her fan on his behalf. She won hearts by the way she squeezed the hands of the voters who promised to vote for him. Finally Monsieur Delangre enthused the Youth Club. Séverin had made him into his hero, while Guillaume and the Maffre boys had managed to win over the sympathies of the less salubrious quarters of the town. And even the young girls in the Work of the Virgin, who played shove ha’penny with the apprentice tanners of the area at the end of the deserted streets by the ramparts, sang the praises of Monsieur Delangre.

On voting day he had a crushing majority. The whole town played its part. The Marquis of Lagrifoul and then Monsieur de Bourdeu, both of them enraged, said there had been some dirty work, and had withdrawn. Monsieur Delangre remained therefore on his own against the hatmaker Maurin. The latter obtained the vote of fifteen hundred staunch republicans in the town. The mayor won the countryside, the Bonapartist crowd, the bourgeois supporters of the clergy in the new town, the timid little shopkeepers from the old quarter,
and even a few naïve royalists of the Saint-Marc district, where the nobility abstained. In this way he amassed thirty-three thousand votes. The whole affair was conducted with such competence, the success so convincing, that Plassans was taken by surprise on the evening of the election at such a unanimous expression of their will. The town thought it had just dreamed a dream of heroes, that an omnipotent hand must have struck the earth in order to produce thirty-three thousand voters, a rather frightening army of people whose power nobody had suspected until then. The politicians in the Chamber of Commerce looked at each other perplexed, like men dumbfounded by the victory.

In the evening the friends of Monsieur Rastoil joined with the friends of Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies for a quiet celebration in a small salon in the sub-prefecture which looked out on to the gardens. Tea was drunk. The day’s great triumph completed the fusion of the two groups. All the usual suspects were present.

‘I’ve never systematically opposed any government,’ Monsieur Rastoil declared, accepting some petits fours passed round by Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies. ‘The judiciary must not get involved in political wrangling. I readily admit that the Empire has already accomplished great things and is called to realize even greater things if it persists on the path of justice and liberty.’

The sub-prefect assented as if the praise was addressed to him personally. The day before, Monsieur Rastoil had read in the
Moniteur
the order appointing his son Séverin deputy attorney in Faverolles. There was also much talk of a wedding between Lucien Delangre and the oldest of the Rastoil girls.

‘Yes, it’s all arranged,’ whispered Monsieur de Condamin to Madame Paloque, who had just been quizzing him about it. ‘He has chosen Angéline. I think he would have preferred Aurélie, but he’s been made to realize that the younger one couldn’t in all decency marry before the older.’

‘Angéline, are you sure?’ Madame Paloque murmured slyly. ‘I thought Angéline bore some resemblance…’

The forestry commissioner put his finger to his lips, and smiled.

‘Oh well now, it’s the luck of the draw, isn’t it?’ she continued. ‘The bonds between the two families will be even stronger… We are all friends now. Paloque is expecting his honour. I think everything has turned out very satisfactorily.’

Monsieur Delangre didn’t arrive until very late. He was given a veritable ovation. Madame de Condamin had just informed Doctor Porquier that his son Guillaume had been appointed manager of the post office. She delivered good news, said that Abbé Bourrette would be Monsignor’s assistant bishop the following year, gave Abbé Surin a bishopric before he was forty, and announced an honour for Monsieur Maffre.

‘Poor Bourdeu!’ said Monsieur Rastoil with lingering regret.

‘Oh, don’t pity him!’ she cried gaily. ‘I will be responsible for consoling him. The Chamber of Deputies would not have suited him. He needs a prefecture… Tell him that in the end we’ll find him a prefecture.’

The laughter grew louder. The gaiety of beautiful Octavie, her constant concern to please everyone, enchanted the company. She really was doing the honours for the prefecture. She was queen. And it was she who jokingly gave Monsieur Delangre the most practical advice about the position he should occupy on the legislative body. She took him on one side and offered to introduce him to some important people, an offer he gratefully accepted. At around eleven o’clock Monsieur de Condamin talked of illuminating the garden. But she quashed the gentlemen’s enthusiasm, saying that it would not be seemly, that one mustn’t look as if one were making a mockery of the town.

‘And Abbé Fenil?’ she asked Abbé Faujas abruptly, bearing him off into a window recess. ‘I have been thinking about him… Has he not shifted his position then?’

‘Abbé Fenil is a man of sense,’ replied the priest with a thin smile. ‘He has been made to realize that he shouldn’t meddle with politics in future.’

Abbé Faujas, in the midst of this triumph, remained solemn. To him it was no cause for celebration. Madame de Condamin’s incessant prattling wore him out. The satisfaction of these vulgar ambitious people filled him with disdain. He appeared to be in a daze as he stood there leaning against the mantelpiece, a far-off look in his eyes. He was the master now and no longer needed to act contrary to his instincts; he could stretch out his hand, take hold of the town, and make it tremble. His gaunt dark figure filled the drawing room. Gradually the armchairs had been pulled closer together, forming a circle around him. The men expected him to express his satisfaction. The women
implored him with their looks, like subservient slaves. But he, cruelly breaking up the party, was the first to go, taking his leave with a curt word or two.

When he got back to the Mourets through the Impasse des Chevillottes and the garden, he found Marthe alone in the dining room, on a chair against the wall with a faraway look in her eyes; she was very pale and was staring vaguely at the lamp with its charred wick. Upstairs Trouche was receiving visitors and singing bawdy songs, accompanied by Olympe and the rest who were tapping their glasses with the handles of their knives.

CHAPTER 20

A
BBÉ
F
AUJAS
put his hand on Marthe’s shoulder.

‘What are you doing there?’ he asked. ‘Why have you not gone to bed?… I forbade you to wait up for me.’

She came to with a start.

‘I thought you would come back earlier,’ she stammered, ‘and I must have fallen asleep… I think Rose has made some tea.’

But the priest, calling to the cook, scolded her for not sending her mistress to bed. He talked to her in a voice that betokened he was master and would brook no argument.

‘Rose, give Monsieur le Curé some tea,’ said Marthe.

‘I don’t need tea!’ he cried, getting cross. ‘Go to bed straight away. Don’t be silly, I know what I want… Rose, light my way upstairs.’

The cook accompanied him to the foot of the stairs.

‘Monsieur le Curé knows perfectly well it’s not my fault,’ she said. ‘Madame’s behaving very oddly, she can’t rest in her room an hour, though she is so poorly. She has to come out and go back in again, puffing and panting, wandering here, there, and everywhere for no reason… I’m the one who has to bear the brunt, she’s always getting under my feet and in my way… Then when she drops into a chair she just stays there. She stays there, frightened, and stares straight ahead as if she were seeing the most horrible things… This evening I told her a dozen times you would be cross if she didn’t go up. She didn’t even seem to hear what I said.’

The priest took hold of the banisters and did not answer. When he reached the landing outside the Trouches’ bedroom, he raised his fist as though to bang on the door. But the songs had ceased. He realized from the scraping of chairs that the visitors were leaving. He hurriedly went into his room. Trouche did indeed then go down almost at once with two friends that he had picked up in some seedy café; he was shouting from the stairs that he knew how to enjoy himself and was going to take them home. Olympe was leaning over the banisters.

‘You can bolt the door,’ she said to Rose. ‘He won’t be back before tomorrow morning.’

Rose, from whom she had not managed to hide her husband’s behaviour, felt very sorry for her. She shot the bolt, grumbling:

‘Huh, husbands! They either beat you or chase other women… Oh, I’d far rather be as I am.’

When she returned, she found her mistress sitting down once more, having sunk into a kind of melancholy stupor, staring at the lamp. She hustled her off to bed. Marthe had become very nervous. In the night, she said, she saw bright lights on the walls of her room, she heard violent knocking noises next to her bed. Rose now slept near her in an adjoining room, and from there, at the slightest whimper, she rushed to her bedside. That night she was still getting undressed when she heard her moan. She found her surrounded by blankets which she had flung aside, her eyes wide with a wordless terror, her fists stuffed in her mouth to prevent her screaming. She had to talk to her as if she were a child, drawing back the curtains, looking under the furniture, swearing that she was mistaken, there was no one there. These fears ended with her having a cataleptic fit, which put her into a death-like trance, her head on the pillows and her eyelids open.

‘It’s Monsieur who is tormenting her,’ murmured Rose, finally retiring to her bed.

The next day was one of Doctor Porquier’s days for visiting. He came to see Madame Mouret regularly twice a week. He patted her hand and repeated in his kindly, cheerful manner:

‘Come, dear lady. It’s nothing… We still have a little cough, don’t we? It’s just a neglected cold that we can cure with some linctus.’

Then she complained of unbearable pain front and back, with her eyes fixed on him, seeking in his face, in his whole person, the things he did not say aloud.

‘I’m afraid I’m going mad!’ she blurted out with a sob.

He reassured her with a smile. Seeing the doctor always made her very worried. She was terrified of this man, who was so polite and gentle. Often she forbade Rose to let him into the house, saying she wasn’t ill and didn’t need to see a doctor all the time in her home. Rose shrugged, and let him in all the same. In the end he no longer talked to her about her illness but, as it seemed, simply paid her polite visits.

When he left, he met Abbé Faujas on his way to Saint-Saturnin. In answer to the priest’s question about Madame Mouret’s health, he replied gravely:

‘Science is sometimes powerless. But Fate does not cease to shower its blessings upon us… The poor lady has been traumatized. I don’t
say there is absolutely no hope. Her chest is still only slightly affected and the climate is good here.’

He then began a discourse on the treatment of chest infections in the district of Plassans. He was preparing a paper on the subject, not in order to publish it, for he was astute enough not to pretend to be a scientist, but to read it to certain close friends.

‘And these are the reasons’, he ended, ‘which lead me to believe that the moderate temperature, the aromatic flora, the salubrious waters from our hills are of unparalleled excellence for curing chest infections.’

The priest listened to him in silence with his customary gravity.

‘You are wrong,’ he replied slowly. ‘Plassans is a bad place for Madame Mouret… Why don’t you send her to spend the winter in Nice?’

‘In Nice?’ echoed the doctor, discomfited. He looked at the priest for a moment, and then in his cordial tone of voice said:

‘It’s true, she would be fine in Nice. In her state of nervous excitement a change of location might have a good effect. I must advise her to undertake that trip… That’s an excellent idea, Monsieur le Curé.’

He bowed and went to visit Madame de Condamin, whose slightest headache caused her the most extraordinary anxiety. The next day at dinner, Marthe talked about the doctor in words that bordered on the violent. She swore she would not see him again.

‘He’s the one making me ill,’ she declared. ‘Didn’t he come this afternoon to advise me to travel?’

‘And I am all in favour,’ said Abbé Faujas, folding his napkin.

She stared at him, very pale and, in a small voice, whispered:

‘So you are sending me away from Plassans too? But I’d die in a place I don’t know, a long way away from my normal life, and from those I love!’

The priest was on his feet, about to leave the dining room. He drew nearer and continued, with a smile:

‘Your friends only want you to be well. Why are you against it so?’

‘No, I don’t want to, I don’t want to!’ she cried, drawing back.

There was a brief argument. The blood rose in the priest’s cheeks. He folded his arms as though resisting the temptation to strike her. She sat up again, desperate in her weakness. Then, vanquished, she held out her hands and stammered:

‘I beg you to let me stay here… I’ll do whatever you say.’

And, as she started sobbing, he left with a shrug in the manner of a husband dreading a tearful crisis. Madame Faujas, who was calmly finishing her dinner, was present at this scene, her mouth full. She allowed Marthe to weep as much as she liked.

‘You are not being reasonable, my dear,’ she said finally, taking another helping of preserves. ‘You will make Ovide hate you. You don’t know how to manage him… Why refuse to travel if it will do you some good? We would look after the house. You would find everything in order you know!’

Marthe was still sobbing and seemed not to hear her.

‘Ovide has so much on his mind,’ the old lady continued. ‘Do you know that he frequently works until four in the morning?… When you are coughing at night it greatly disturbs him and all his ideas go out of his head. He cannot work, he suffers more than you do… Do it for Ovide’s sake, my dear; go away and come back when you are feeling better.’

But Marthe, raising her tear-stained face, cried out in a voice that vented all her anguish at once:

‘Ah, Heaven is betraying me!’

In the days that followed there was no more talk of a trip to Nice. Madame Mouret became deranged at the least suggestion of it. She refused to leave Plassans with such a despairing energy that even the priest understood the danger of insisting on it. She was becoming a dreadful embarrassment to him now that he had won the day. As Trouche said jeeringly, she was the one they should have sent to Les Tulettes first. Since Mouret had been taken away, she kept herself apart, practising her religion most rigorously; she avoided speaking of her husband, sought through prayer the numbing of her entire being. But she remained anxious, and returned from Saint-Saturnin with an ever more urgent need for oblivion.

‘Our landlady’s always passing out,’ Olympe told her husband one night. ‘I went to church with her this morning. I had to pick her up off the floor… If I told you all the stuff she comes out with about Ovide you would be very amused. She is furious with him, she says he is heartless, that he’s betrayed her by giving her false comfort. And railing against God too! You should hear her! Only the devout could sound off about religion like that. You’d think God had done her out of a huge sum of money… Shall I tell you something? I think her husband comes and scares her in the night.’

Trouche enjoyed all these stories enormously.

‘Serves her right,’ he answered. ‘If that buffoon Mouret is where he is now, she’s the one who wanted him there. If I were Faujas I know how I’d manage things. I’d make her happy and sweet-tempered as a little lamb. But Faujas is a fool. It’ll cost him dear, you’ll see… Listen my girl, your brother has not been so good to us that we need to get him out of this mess. I shall laugh the day our landlady drops him in the deep end. For God’s sake, if you are a fine strong man like he is, you don’t shilly-shally with a woman!’

‘Yes, Ovide is too high-handed with us,’ murmured Olympe.

Trouche lowered his voice.

‘Listen, if our landlady got herself into deep water with our fool of a brother we should still be in charge; the house would be ours. We could make a packet… That would be a very nice outcome for us.’

Since Mouret had gone, the Trouches had in any case taken over the ground floor. At first Olympe had complained that the chimneys were smoking upstairs. Then she had managed to persuade Marthe that the drawing room, abandoned until then, was the healthiest room in the house. Rose had been given orders to light a big fire, and the two women spent their days there endlessly chatting, in front of enormous flaming logs. One of Olympe’s dreams was to live like that, dressed in nice clothes, reclining on a sofa, in the middle of a luxurious apartment. She persuaded Marthe to change the wallpaper in the drawing room, to buy some furniture and a carpet. Then she was a real lady. She came down in slippers and a dressing gown, and talked as though she ran the household.

‘That poor Madame Mouret,’ she said. ‘She has so many worries that she has begged me to give her a hand. I am helping her sort out her problems a bit. Well, of course. It’s an act of kindness.’

And indeed she had been able to gain the confidence of Marthe, who could not be bothered with the trivial responsibilities of the house and delegated them to Olympe. She it was who kept the keys to the cellars and the cupboards. In addition, she paid the tradesmen. For a long time she considered whether she might also manage to take over the dining room. But Trouche dissuaded her. They wouldn’t be free to eat or drink as they wished. They wouldn’t even dare to drink their wine neat or invite friends to coffee. So Olympe made do with a promise to take his share of desserts up to him. She filled her pockets with sugar and even took the stumps of the candles upstairs. She
had sewn great linen pockets into her skirt for this purpose, and spent a good quarter of an hour emptying them each evening.

‘Look, here’s a pear in case we are thirsty,’ she said, piling the provisions pell-mell into a box which she then shoved under the bed. ‘If we were to quarrel with the landlady we should have enough here to keep us going for a while… I must bring up some conserves and some sausage.’

‘It’s very considerate of you to do that secretly,’ replied Trouche. ‘In your shoes I should have it all brought up by Rose, because you are mistress of the house now.’

He himself had appropriated the garden. For a long time he had been jealous of Mouret as he watched him pruning his trees, sanding his paths, watering his lettuces. He dreamed of having a patch of ground to himself, where he would dig and plant as he liked. So when Mouret was no longer there he put his revolutionary plans into action, completely transforming the garden. He began by getting rid of the vegetables. He said he was a gentle soul and loved flowers. But the spade work tired him out by the second day. A gardener was summoned to dig up the squares according to his orders and throw the lettuces on to the compost heap; he made ready the soil to plant peonies in the spring, roses, lilies, larkspur seeds and morning glory, cuttings of carnations and geraniums. Then he had an idea. He took it into his head that the flower beds looked dark and gloomy because of the shade of the tall box hedge round them, and for a long time he thought long and hard about pulling it up.

‘You are quite right,’ Olympe pronounced, when she was consulted. ‘It looks like a cemetery. I’d prefer some iron railings that look like rustic round the edge… I’ll talk to the landlady. Get rid of the box hedge in any case.’

The box hedge was pulled up. A week later the gardener put in the rustic border. Trouche also took down a few fruit trees that were spoiling the view, had the arbour repainted green, placed decorative stones around the fountain. He was sorely tempted by Monsieur Rastoil’s fountain. But he made do with choosing the spot where he would build a similar one ‘if everything went according to plan’.

‘That’ll make the neighbours sit up!’ he said to his wife that night. ‘They can see there’s a man of taste here now!… At least this summer when we sit by the window it will smell nice and we shall have a lovely view.’

Marthe let them have their way, and approved of all the plans they put to her. Before long, in any case, they didn’t so much as ask her opinion. The Trouches were left to wrestle solely with Madame Faujas, who continued to dispute every inch of the house. When Olympe had taken possession of the drawing room, she was obliged to declare war officially on her mother; and she almost triumphed. It was the priest who changed the outcome.