The Conquest of Plassans (Les Rougon-Macquart Book 4) (33 page)

‘Your wretched sister can’t speak ill enough of us to the landlady,’ was Madame Faujas’s constant complaint. ‘I see her little game, she wants to be rid of us and enjoy it all herself… That little madam occupies the drawing room now, like a lady, if you please!’

The priest wasn’t listening, but gestured impatiently. One day he lost his temper and shouted:

‘Mother, please leave me alone. Don’t talk about Olympe or Trouche any more… Let them go hang if they want.’

‘They are taking over the house, Ovide, they have teeth like rats. When you want your share they’ll have gnawed through everything… You are the only one who can keep them in order.’

He looked at his mother and gave a thin smile.

‘Mother, you love me,’ he muttered, ‘and I do forgive you… Rest assured, but I want something else, not the house. It’s not mine, and I keep only what I earn. You will be proud as anything when you see what my share is… Trouche has been useful to me. You have to close your eyes a little to what’s going on.’

Madame Faujas then had to beat a retreat. She did it with a bad grace, grumbling at Olympe’s triumphant laughter. The total indifference of her son made her despair, with her simple appetites and prudent peasant economy. She wanted to keep the house secure, empty, and clean, for Ovide to find it the day he might need it. So the grasping Trouches made her despair, like a miser who is being stripped of goods by strangers. It seemed to her that they were consuming her wealth, that they were eating her flesh, that they were ruining both herself and her favourite son. When the priest had forbidden her to put up any opposition to the Trouches’ gradual invasion, she resolved to save what she could from the pillage. So she took to stealing from the wardrobes, like Olympe. She sewed big pockets into her skirts as well. She had a trunk that she filled with everything she picked up, food, linen, small ornaments.

‘Whatever are you hiding there, mother?’ the priest asked one
evening as he went into his room, attracted by the noise she was making as she moved the trunk.

She started to speak, but he realized what she was doing and gave way to a violent burst of anger.

‘What a disgrace!’ he shouted. ‘So now you are a thief! And what would happen if you were caught? I should be the talk of the town.’

‘I’m only doing it for you, Ovide,’ she muttered.

‘A thief! My mother is a thief! Perhaps you think I’m a thief too, that I’ve come here to steal things, that my only ambition is to reach out and pinch things? My God! What must you think of me?… We shall have to go our separate ways if we don’t understand one another better than that.’

These words terrified the old lady. She had remained on her knees by the trunk but then found herself sitting on the floor; she was very pale and could not speak. She held out her hands to him; then, when she could find the words:

‘It’s for you my son, only for you, I swear. I’ve told you, they take everything, she carries it all up in her pockets. You won’t get a thing, not even a sugar lump… No no, I shan’t take anything else, since you don’t want me to; but you will keep me with you, won’t you? You’ll keep me with you…’

Abbé Faujas wouldn’t promise until she had put everything she had stolen back in its place. For almost a week he personally presided over the emptying of the trunk. He watched her fill her pockets and waited for her to come up again to make another trip. Exercising caution, he only allowed her to make two trips in an evening. The elderly woman was heartbroken every time she took something back. She dared not weep, but tears of regret came and welled up behind her eyelids. Her hands were shaking more than when she had emptied the cupboards. The worst was when she realized on the second day that her daughter Olympe was coming along in her wake and taking everything she put back. The linen, the food, the candle ends were simply moving from one pocket to the other.

‘I’m not taking down anything else,’ she told her son, enraged at this unexpected blow. ‘It’s pointless. Your sister is collecting everything behind my back. Oh, what a baggage! It would have been just as well to give her the trunk in the first place. She must have a pile of stuff up there… Please, please, Ovide, let me keep what’s left. It won’t hurt our landlady because she will lose everything in any case.’

‘My sister is what she is,’ replied the priest calmly. ‘But I insist that my mother should be an honest woman. You will help me more by not behaving in that way.’

She was forced to give everything back, and from that day on she lived in a state of fierce hatred of the Trouches, of Marthe, and of the entire house. She vowed the day would come when she would have to protect Ovide against every one of them.

After that the Trouches ruled the roost. Their conquest was complete; they took over every bit of the house. The only place they kept away from were the priest’s quarters. He was the only person they feared. But that did not prevent them from inviting their friends, and being rowdy until two in the morning. Guillaume Porquier came with groups of very young friends. In spite of her thirty-seven years, Olympe flirted with them, and more than one truanting schoolboy squeezed her really tight and made her laugh happily and excitedly. The house became a paradise for her. Trouche laughed at her and teased her when they were alone. He pretended he had found a school bag hidden beneath her petticoat.

‘Well!’ she exclaimed, not in the least put out. ‘Aren’t you enjoying yourself then?… You know we are free to do as we like.’

The truth was that Trouche had almost compromised this life of indulgence with an escapade that went too far. A nun had discovered him in the company of a tanner’s daughter, the big blonde girl he’d had his wicked eye on for some while. The girl said she wasn’t the only one, that other girls had also been given sweets. The nun, knowing Trouche and the priest of Saint-Saturnin were related, was wise enough not to tell tales about his escapade before she had spoken to the latter. He thanked her and made her realize religion would be the first thing to suffer from a scandal like that. The affair was suppressed, the patron ladies of the Work suspected nothing. But Abbé Faujas had a dreadful showdown with his brother-in-law, raising the matter in front of Olympe, so that she might have a weapon to wield against her husband and keep him under control. So after that affair, Olympe would tell Trouche curtly each time he acted against her wishes:

‘Oh, all right, go and give the girls some sweets!’

For a long time there was something else that caused them to be fearful. In spite of the rich life they were living and although the landlady’s cupboards provided everything they needed, they were
badly in debt in the neighbourhood. Trouche’s salary was spent on eating and drinking in the café. Olympe spent the money she was getting out of Marthe’s pockets on trifles, telling her fantastic stories. As to the basics of everyday living, they were taken on credit by the couple as a matter of routine. One bill that worried them inordinately was that of the patissier in the Rue de la Banne—it came to more than a hundred francs—especially since this patissier was a brute who threatened to tell Abbé Faujas everything. The Trouches went through agonies, fearing some terrible scene; but the day the bill came, Abbé Faujas paid without question, and even forgot to scold the pair. The priest seemed to be above all the pettiness. He went on living his life, a dark and sober figure in that house that was being laid waste, not noticing the Trouches’ vicious teeth gnawing at the walls, the gradual deterioration that made cracks in the ceilings. Everything was going to rack and ruin around him, but he headed straight for his ambitious goal. He was camping out still, like a soldier, in his huge bare room, not allowing himself any comforts, getting angry when people wanted to cosset him. Since becoming master of Plassans he had grown unkempt again. His hat was threadbare, his stockings dirty; his soutane, mended every morning by his mother, resembled the pathetic faded rag of a garment that he had worn at the beginning of his time in Plassans.

‘Oh, it’s still perfectly all right!’ he would reply when people around him risked a few timid observations.

And he flaunted it in the street, with his head held high, not caring about the curious looks people gave him. There was no sense of bravado in his case. It was his natural inclination. Now that he did not need to be pleasant to people, or so he thought, he scorned to take care of his person once more. His triumph was in presiding, such as he was, with his large untidy frame, his brusqueness, his clothes in rags, over a conquered Plassans.

Madame de Condamin, offended by the pungent male odour given off by his soutane, scolded him in a maternal tone of voice:

‘Do you realize that these ladies are beginning to detest you?’ she said with a laugh. ‘They say you are paying no attention whatsoever to your person… Before, when you took out your handkerchief, it seemed as if a choirboy was wafting incense behind you.’

He looked astonished. He had not changed, he thought. But she drew nearer and in amicable tones said:

‘My dear curé, if you will allow me to speak frankly… Well, you are wrong to neglect yourself. Your beard is scarcely trimmed, you no longer comb your hair, and it is dishevelled, as though you have just emerged from a fist fight. That creates a very bad impression, I can tell you. Madame Rastoil and Madame Delangre were only saying yesterday they wouldn’t know it was the same man. You are compromising your success.’

He laughed defiantly, shaking his powerful, unkempt head.

‘But now it is over,’ was all he said in reply, ‘they must take me as I am, uncombed or not.’

Plassans in fact had to take him with his hair uncombed. The suave priest had turned into a dark, despotic figure, bending everyone to his will. His face had become sallow once more and his eyes were sharp as an eagle’s. His large hands were raised, menacingly, ready to punish. The town was positively terrified when they saw this conqueror of their own making grow into a monster; the squalid clothes, his pungent smell, and scorched-looking hair lent him the allure of a devil. The unspoken fear of the women gave more strength still to his authority. He treated his penitents harshly but not one dared leave him. And they came to him with a certain thrill of excitement.

‘My dear,’ Madame de Condamin confessed to Marthe, ‘I was wrong to wish that he perfumed himself; I’m getting used to it now, I find even that I much prefer it… He’s a real man!’

Abbé Faujas reigned supreme, especially at the bishopric. Since the election he had ensured Monsignor Rousselot led the life of an idle prelate. The bishop lived with his beloved books, in his study, where the priest, who was managing the diocese in a neighbouring room, actually kept him under lock and key, letting him see only people he trusted. The clergy trembled before this despot. Old priests with white hair bowed to him with ecclesiastical humility, abandoning all will of their own. Often Monsignor Rousselot, closeted with Abbé Surin, wept big silent tears. He missed the brief handshake of Abbé Fenil, who had at times shown him some affection; now he felt crushed beneath an implacable pressure that showed no signs of lifting. Then he smiled, resigned himself, murmuring with his amiable egotism:

‘Come, my boy, to work… I ought not to complain, I have a life that I always dreamed of: absolute solitude and books.’

He sighed and added quietly:

‘I should be happy, if I weren’t afraid of losing you, my dear Surin… In the end he will not tolerate you being here. I thought yesterday he was looking at you suspiciously. I beseech you, make sure you always agree with him and are on his side, don’t worry about me. Alas, you are my only friend.’

Two months after the election, Abbé Vial, one of Monsignor’s assistant bishops, moved to Rome. Abbé Faujas quite naturally took his place, although it had long been promised to Abbé Bourrette. He did not even appoint the latter to be priest-in-charge of Saint-Saturnin, which he was vacating. Instead he appointed a young and ambitious priest he had been cultivating.

‘Monsignor did not wish you to be considered,’ he said quickly to Abbé Bourrette when he met him.

And as the old priest faltered that he would see Monsignor and ask him for an explanation, he added more gently:

‘Monsignor is too ill to receive you. Rely on me, I will plead your case.’

As soon as he entered the Chamber, Monsieur Delangre voted with the majority. Plassans was clearly a win for the Empire. It even seemed that the priest was taking his revenge on these prudent bourgeois, in his harsh treatment of them; he nailed up the little gate of the Impasse des Chevillottes again and forced Monsieur Rastoil and his friends to enter the sub-prefecture by the official door. When he appeared at small social gatherings these gentlemen remained very deferential to him. And such was the fascination, the dumb terror inspired by his large, untidy figure that, even when he wasn’t there, no one risked the least equivocal remark about him.

‘He’s a man of enormous merit,’ declared Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, who was counting on a prefecture.

‘A most remarkable man,’ echoed Doctor Porquier.

They all nodded. Monsieur de Condamin, who eventually became tired of this paeon of praise, took delight in causing them embarrassment from time to time.

‘Well, he’s not a nice character, it must be said,’ he muttered.

This sentence made everyone go cold. All the gentlemen suspected their neighbours of being in the pay of the terrible priest.

‘The assistant bishop has a heart of gold,’ ventured Monsieur Rastoil prudently. ‘Only, like all great minds, he is perhaps rather forbidding until you get to know him.’

‘Exactly like me,’ cried Monsieur de Bourdeu. ‘I am very easy to get along with but people always say I am difficult.’ He had been reconciled with his friends ever since having a long and private conversation with Abbé Faujas.

And, wanting to put everyone at their ease, the president went on:

‘Do you know that they are talking about a bishopric for the assistant bishop?’

Then the conversation ignited. Monsieur Maffre very much hoped it would be in Plassans itself that Abbé Faujas became bishop, after the departure of Monsignor Rousselot, whose health was precarious.