The Conquest of Plassans (Les Rougon-Macquart Book 4) (7 page)

‘So what did she tell you?’ asked Mouret, in a torment of impatience.

‘I wasn’t so silly as to ask her lots of questions, you understand; she would have run away… In a roundabout way I brought the conversation round to what she might be interested in. As the priest-in-charge of Saint-Saturnin, that nice Monsieur Compan, just went by, I told her that he had been very ill, and hadn’t long to live and that they would find it hard to find a replacement for him in the cathedral. She was all ears, I can tell you. She even asked me what was wrong with him. Then, bit by bit I talked to her about our bishop. Monsignor Rousselot is a very good gentleman. She didn’t know how old he was. I told her he is sixty, that he is rather soft as well, and sometimes lets people tread all over him. They often say that Monsieur Fenil, the assistant bishop, does whatever he wants at the bishopric… The old lady was really interested; she would have been there in the street till tomorrow morning.’

Mouret made a gesture of despair.

‘After all that,’ he cried, ‘I can see that the chatting was done entirely by you… But what did
she
say?’

‘Wait, let me finish,’ Rose went on calmly. ‘I was coming to that… I ended up telling her about us so as to get her to talk. I told her you were Monsieur François Mouret, a former businessman from Marseilles and that in fifteen years you made your fortune in wine, oil, and almonds. And I told her that you chose to come and enjoy the fruits of your earnings in Plassans, a quiet town where your wife’s
relatives live. I even found a way of telling her that Madame is your cousin, that you are forty years old and she is thirty-seven and that you are a very happy family. You weren’t to be seen on the Cours Sauvaire very often. Well, the whole story… She seemed very interested. She kept answering “Yes, yes”, and wasn’t in any hurry to go. When I stopped, she nodded, like this, as if to say that she was listening and I should go on… And we went on chatting like that till it was dark, like good friends, leaning against the wall.’

Mouret had risen, in a rage.

‘What!’ he cried. ‘Is that all!… She made you natter away for an hour and told you nothing!’

‘When it got dark, she said: “It’s getting cooler.” And she took her bucket again and went upstairs.’

‘You are a complete fool! That old woman is worth ten of you! Oh, how they must be laughing now they know everything they wanted to know about us… Rose, you are a complete fool!’

The old cook was not of a patient temperament. She began to stomp around, clattering the pans and saucepans, crumpling cloths and throwing them about.

‘You know, Monsieur,’ she brought out, ‘if you’ve only come into my kitchen to call me names you needn’t bother. You can get out… What I did was only to make you happy. If Madame found us here doing what we are doing she would tell me off, and she’d be right, because it’s not good… After all I couldn’t tear the words out of the lady’s mouth, could I?… I went about it the same as anybody would. I chatted, I told her your business. And it’s too bad for you if she didn’t talk about herself. Go and ask her if it means so much to you. Perhaps you won’t be so foolish as me, Monsieur…’

She had raised her voice. Mouret thought it would be wise to make good his escape, shutting the kitchen door behind him, so that his wife wouldn’t hear. But Rose opened the door again behind his back, shouting to him in the hall:

‘I shan’t do anything else—you can get somebody else to do your dirty work if you want.’

Mouret was beaten. He remained somewhat bitter about his defeat. Resentfully, he consoled himself by saying that the people on the top floor were of no importance. He gradually put about a view amongst all his acquaintances that became current in the town. Abbé Faujas was regarded as a priest without any means or ambition, completely
detached from the goings-on in the diocese. It was thought he was ashamed of his poverty, accepting the chores in the cathedral that no one else wanted, and hiding as much as possible in the shadows, where he seemed to be happy. About one thing only they were curious—the reason why he had come to Plassans from Besançon. Certain tales were going round. But the suggestions seemed to be random. Even Mouret, who had enjoyed spying on his tenants to pass the time, in much the same way as he would have played at cards or bowls, was beginning to forget that a priest was lodging in his house. And then something new occurred to occupy him.

One afternoon as he was coming home he noticed Abbé Faujas going up the Rue Balande ahead of him. He slowed down. He studied him in a leisurely fashion. It was the first time he had seen him in full daylight like that during the month that the priest had been lodging in the house. The priest was still wearing his old cassock; he was walking slowly with his three-cornered hat in his hand, his head bare, in spite of the chilly wind. Not a soul could be seen in the steep street, with its great bare house fronts, their shutters closed. Mouret, hastening, ended up walking on tiptoe in case the priest heard him and eluded him. But as they were both approaching Monsieur Rastoil’s house, a group of people came out of the Place de la Sous-Préfecture and entered it. Abbé Faujas made a slight detour to avoid these gentlemen. He watched the door close. Then, stopping abruptly, he turned round just in front of his proprietor who was directly behind him.

‘I am delighted to meet like this,’ he said with impeccable politeness. ‘I would have permitted myself to intrude on your privacy this evening… On the day we last had any rain, some wet came through the ceiling in my room that I should like to point out to you.’

Mouret stood before him, and said in an embarrassed way that he was at his disposal. And as they went in together he asked him what time would be convenient for him to come up and see the ceiling.

‘At once, if you please,’ the priest replied. ‘If it’s not too inconvenient.’

Mouret, stunned, followed him upstairs, while Rose watched them climb each step, as she stood in amazement at the kitchen door.

CHAPTER 4

W
HEN
Mouret got up to the top floor, he was more excited than a schoolboy about to enter a woman’s bedroom for the first time. The unexpected satisfying of a long pent-up desire, the hope of seeing something completely extraordinary, made him quite breathless. In the meantime Abbé Faujas, hiding the key in his large fingers, had inserted it into the keyhole, the iron making no sound at all. The door slid open as if on velvet hinges. The priest stood aside and ushered Mouret in without a word.

The cotton curtains hanging at the two windows were so thick that the room was a pale chalky colour, like the half-light in a walled cell. This room was huge, with a high ceiling and clean, if faded, wallpaper of a washed-out yellow hue. Mouret ventured in, and, stepping gingerly over the tiles, as polished as ice, he seemed to feel the cold beneath the soles of his shoes. He risked a covert look at the iron curtainless bedstead, whose sheets were so tightly tucked in that you would have supposed it to be a white stone bench placed in a corner. A chest of drawers, which looked lost at the other side of the room, and a small table placed in the middle, with two chairs, one in front of each window, completed the furnishings. Not a piece of paper on the table, not an object on the chest of drawers, not a piece of clothing on the walls: bare wood, bare marble, bare walls. Above the chest, a large black wooden Christ cut through this grey bareness with his dark cross.

‘Come in, Monsieur,’ the priest said. ‘Come over here. It’s in this corner that a mark on the ceiling has appeared.’

But Mouret was in no hurry; he was enjoying himself. Although he didn’t see the strange objects that he had vaguely anticipated, the room held a particular smell for this man of reason. To him it smelled of the priesthood, of a man who was not as other men are, a man who blows out the candle before he changes his shirt, a man who doesn’t leave his underclothes or his razor lying around. What he found irritating was that he couldn’t see anything left on the furniture or in the corners which might possibly give him some hypothesis to work on. The room resembled the fellow himself—silent, cold, polished, and impenetrable. To his great surprise he
did not, as he had expected, get the impression of poverty. On the contrary, it made him feel as he had felt once before, one day when he had gone into the very richly furnished drawing-room of a prefect in Marseilles. The large Christ seemed to occupy it entirely with its black arms.

But he had to attend to Abbé Faujas, who was summoning him to the recess.

‘Can you see the stain?’ the abbé asked. ‘It’s not quite as clear as it was yesterday.’

Mouret stood on tiptoe and screwed up his eyes but could not see anything. When the priest drew back the curtains, he could just about make out a slight rusty discolouration.

‘Nothing very serious,’ he murmured.

‘Of course. But I thought I should let you know… It must have come in through the roof.’

‘Yes, that’s right. Through the roof.’

Mouret made no further remark. He was looking at the room illuminated in the harsh light of day. It looked less solemn, but it still revealed nothing. In fact, not one speck of dust betrayed anything of the abbé’s life.

‘In any case,’ the latter continued, ‘we might perhaps have a look out of the window… Wait a moment.’

And he opened the window. But Mouret cried that he would not hear of disturbing him any more, that it was a trivial matter and that the workmen would soon be able to find the hole.

‘You are not disturbing me in the least, I assure you,’ insisted the abbé kindly. ‘I know owners like to see for themselves… Look at it all carefully, I do beg you… It is your house.’

As he uttered this last sentence, he actually smiled, which was a rare occurrence; then when he and Mouret had leaned over the rail and looked up at the guttering, he started to hold forth like an architect about how the stain could have got there.

‘I think there is a slight sinking of the tiles, you know, perhaps there is even a broken one among them; unless it is that crack you can see along the cornice up there, which goes right through into the retaining wall.’

‘Quite possibly,’ Mouret answered. ‘I don’t mind telling you, Monsieur, that I don’t know anything about that. The builder will see to it.’

The priest stopped talking about repairs then. He stood there quietly looking at the gardens down below. Mouret, leaning on his elbows next to him, did not dare to withdraw in case it seemed impolite. And he was completely won over when his tenant said quietly, after a pause:

‘You have a lovely garden, Monsieur.’

‘Oh, nothing out of the ordinary,’ he replied. ‘There were some very fine trees that I had to have taken down, you couldn’t grow anything in the shade beneath them. Well, what can you do? You have to think of what’s useful. This bit of land is enough for us—we have enough vegetables for the whole season.’

The abbé, surprised, asked him to elaborate. The garden was one of those old provincial gardens, enclosed by arbours and neatly quartered by large box hedges. In the middle was a narrow pond with no water in it. One quarter only was for flowers. In the other three, which had fruit trees planted at each corner, grew some magnificent cabbages and splendid lettuces. The paths were maintained in the conventional fashion with yellow sand.

‘It’s a little paradise,’ repeated Abbé Faujas.

‘Well, of course there are disadvantages,’ said Mouret, pretending he didn’t have enormous satisfaction at hearing such praise for his house and garden. ‘For example, you must have noticed that we are on a slope here. The gardens are in terraces. So Monsieur Rastoil’s is lower than mine, and mine is also lower than the garden at the sub-prefecture. The rain causes a great deal of damage. Then—and this is even more disagreeable—the people from the sub-prefecture can see into my place, the more so because they have built that terrace overlooking my wall. It’s true that I can see into Monsieur Rastoil’s garden, but that’s poor compensation, I assure you, since I never concern myself with what anyone else is doing.’

The priest seemed to be listening sympathetically, nodding, not asking any questions. He watched his landlord gesturing with his hands as he explained.

‘Now there is one more thing that annoys me,’ continued the latter, pointing to an alley that ran along the bottom of the garden. ‘Do you see that little lane in between two high walls? It’s the Impasse des Chevillottes, leading to the tradesman’s gate which opens on to the property belonging to the sub-prefecture. All the neighbouring houses have a gate giving on to the Impasse and there are strange
comings and goings all the time… I’ve got children so I’ve had a couple of nails put in and had mine properly blocked up.’

He winked at the priest, perhaps hoping he might enquire as to the nature of these strange comings and goings. But the priest didn’t flinch; he examined the Impasse des Chevillottes without manifesting any further curiosity, before shifting his quiet gaze back to the Mourets’ garden. Down below in her usual place Marthe was hemming table napkins. At first she had looked up abruptly on hearing the voices. Then, astonished to see her husband at the second-floor window keeping company with the priest, she had gone back to her work. She seemed no longer aware of their presence. Yet Mouret had raised his voice, as though unconsciously showing off, delighted at managing at last to get into this apartment, which had up until now remained so obstinately shut. From time to time the priest let his unruffled gaze fall upon the woman, whose slanting nape and abundant black hair tied in a chignon were all that was visible to him.

There was a silence. Abbé Faujas still did not seem inclined to come away from the window. Now he appeared to be studying the neighbour’s flower beds. Monsieur Rastoil’s garden was set out in the English style, with little paths and small lawns, intersected by small
corbeilles
of flowers. At the bottom was a rotunda with trees and beneath them a table and some rustic chairs.

‘Monsieur Rastoil is very rich,’ Mouret went on, following the direction of the priest’s gaze. ‘His garden costs him a fortune. The waterfall, out of view over there behind the trees, cost more than three hundred francs. And not a single vegetable, nothing but flowers. At one time the ladies even talked of cutting down the fruit trees; that would be nothing short of murder, for the pear trees are superb. Bah! He’s right to organize his garden to suit himself, if he’s got the wherewithal!’

And as the priest was still silent, he continued, turning to him: ‘You know Monsieur Rastoil, don’t you? He takes a walk every morning under the trees from eight till nine. A stout man, rather short and bald, clean-shaven and with a head as round as a ball! It was his sixtieth birthday at the beginning of August, I think. He’s been president of our civil tribunal for nearly twenty years. They say he’s a good sort of fellow. We don’t have much to do with each other. Good morning, good evening, and that’s it.’

He stopped, seeing several people go down the steps of the house next door and make their way to the trees at the bottom.

‘Oh, that’s right,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘It’s Tuesday today… They are having dinner at the Rastoils’.’

Faujas had not been able to restrain a slight movement. He had leaned out for a better view. Two priests walking beside two tall girls seemed to be of particular interest to him.

‘Do you know who those gentlemen are?’ Mouret asked.

And when Faujas made a vague gesture:

‘They were crossing the Rue Balande just when we met… The tall young man who is between the young Rastoil girls is Abbé Surin, our bishop’s secretary. They say he’s a very nice lad. I see him playing shuttlecock with these two girls in the summer… The elderly man you see just behind them is one of our assistant bishops, Abbé Fenil. He’s the director of the seminary. A formidable man, sharp and thrusting. I’m sorry he’s not turning round. You would see his eyes… I’m surprised you don’t know these gentlemen.’

‘I don’t go out very much,’ the priest replied; ‘I don’t have much to do with anyone in the town.’

‘Oh, but you should! You must often be bored… Well, Monsieur, one couldn’t in all fairness accuse you of being nosey. Good heavens, you’ve been here a month and you don’t even know that Monsieur Rastoil entertains people to dinner every Tuesday! How could you not notice that from this window!’

Mouret chuckled. He was making fun of the priest. Then, in confidential tones:

‘See that tall old gentleman accompanying Madame Rastoil? Yes, that thin one, the man with the wide-brimmed hat. That’s Monsieur de Bourdeu, the former prefect of the Drôme, made redundant by the 1848 Revolution.
*
I bet you didn’t know him either?… And Monsieur Maffre, the justice of the peace? That man all in white, with his eyes popping out of his head, bringing up the rear with Monsieur Rastoil. Well, there’s no excuse not to know about him. He’s the honorary canon of Saint-Saturnin… Between you and me, people accuse him of killing his wife with his cruelty and greed.’

He stopped, looked the priest straight in the eyes and said abruptly in his jocular tone:

‘You must forgive me, Monsieur, but I am not a religious man.’

The priest again made a vague gesture with his hand, the gesture
that was his answer to everything, and dispensed him from any further clarification.

‘No, I’m not a religious man,’ Mouret went on in the same jocular tone. ‘We must allow everybody their freedoms, mustn’t we?… The Rastoils go to church. You must have seen the mother and daughters at Saint-Saturnin. They are your parishioners… Those poor girls! Angéline, the eldest, is well over twenty-six; the other one, Aurélie, will soon be twenty-four. And they’re no beauties, with their sallow faces and sulky looks. The worst thing is that the elder of the two has to be married off first. They will find someone in the end, because of the dowry… As for the mother, that fat little woman who walks along as docilely as a sheep, she gives poor old Rastoil a hard time.’

He winked his left eye, a habitual tic of his when he made one of his somewhat risqué jokes. The priest’s eyes had been cast downward, in the expectation he would continue; but then, as the other man did not speak, he looked up again and observed the guests in the next door garden as they sat down under the trees at the round table.

Mouret continued his explanations.

‘They’ll stay there where it’s cool till dinner time. It’s the same every Tuesday… That Surin fellow is quite a success. Look at him, laughing out loud with Mademoiselle Aurélie… Oh, the assistant bishop has seen us. I say, see the look he gives me! He doesn’t like me, because I had a disagreement with one of his relatives… But wherever is Abbé Bourrette? We haven’t seen him, have we? That’s very odd. He never misses one of Monsieur Rastoil’s Tuesdays. He must be ill… You do know him. What a good man he is! God’s workhorse.’

But Abbé Faujas was no longer listening. His eyes met those of Abbé Fenil again and again. He didn’t look away, but went on contemplating the assistant bishop with perfect sangfroid. He had settled himself more conspicuously next to the window, and his eyes seemed to have got wider.

‘Here come the youngsters,’ Mouret continued, seeing three young people arrive. ‘The oldest is the Rastoils’ son; he has just passed his law exams. The other two are the magistrate’s children, they are still at school… By the way, why haven’t my two scamps come in yet?’

At that precise moment Octave and Serge appeared on the terrace. They leaned against the ramp, teasing Désirée who came to sit beside her mother. The children, seeing their father on the top floor, lowered their voices and suppressed their laughter.

‘All my little family,’ said Mouret with some satisfaction. ‘Our family stays at home and we don’t have people round. Our garden is a little paradise all to itself and I defy Satan to come and tempt us here.’

He laughed as he said this, because deep down he was enjoying himself at the expense of the priest. The latter had brought his gaze slowly back to the group formed by his landlord’s family just below his window. He dwelt upon them for a minute or two and took in the old garden with its square vegetable patches surrounded by high box hedges; he looked again at Monsieur Rastoil’s pretentious garden paths; and then, as if attempting to draw up a plan of the whole terrain, he went on to consider the garden of the sub-prefecture. They had only a wide lawn in the middle, a carpet of grass rolling gently away; shrubs with leaves still clinging to them filled the beds; tall chestnuts with dense foliage made this patch of land squashed in between its neighbours more park than garden.