The Conquest of Plassans (Les Rougon-Macquart Book 4) (8 page)

But Abbé Faujas was ostentatiously staring down under the chestnut trees. He murmured, after a slight hesitation:

‘These gardens are very lively… There are folk in the one on the left too.’

Mouret raised his eyes.

‘As there are every afternoon,’ he said calmly. ‘They’re friends of Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, our sub-prefect… In the summer they get together in the evenings as well, around the pond that is out of sight on the left… Oh, Monsieur de Condamin is back. That handsome elderly man, young-looking, with a good complexion. He’s our forestry commissioner, a fellow you always meet astride a horse, wearing gloves and tight jodphurs. And he’s a born liar! He’s not from these parts. He recently married a very young woman… Ah well, it’s no concern of mine, I’m glad to say.’

He lowered his head again hearing Désirée, who was playing with Serge, laugh her girlish laugh. But the priest, reddening slightly, drew his attention back to the garden, asking:

‘Is that the sub-prefect, the stout man in the white tie?’

This question tickled Mouret enormously.

‘Oh no,’ he answered with a laugh. ‘I can see you don’t know Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies. He’s not quite forty. He is tall, handsome, very distinguished-looking. The stout man is Doctor Porquier, the doctor who looks after Plassans society. A happy man, I can tell
you. The only worry he has is his son, Guillaume… Now you see the two people sitting on the bench, with their backs to us? That’s Monsieur Paloque, the magistrate, and his wife. The ugliest married couple hereabouts. Nobody can tell which one is uglier, the wife or the husband. Lucky they don’t have any children.’

And Mouret began to laugh more loudly. He worked himself up, gesticulating and thumping on the windowsill.

‘No,’ he went on, nodding first at the Rastoils’ garden and then at the garden of the sub-prefecture, ‘just to look at those two does me a power of good… Politics is not your business, my dear abbé, or you would find it very amusing… Just imagine that, rightly or wrongly, I am held to be a Republican. Because of my job I travel quite a bit in the countryside; the farmers are my friends; I was even spoken of as a future regional councillor; in short, my name is well-known… Well, on my right, I have at the Rastoils’ the flower of the Legitimists, and on my left, at the sub-prefect’s, the bigwigs of the Empire.
*
What do you say to that? Rather amusing, isn’t it? My poor old garden that’s so quiet, my little corner of paradise between these two enemy camps. I’m always afraid they might throw stones at each other over my walls… Their stones could land in my garden, you realize.’

Mouret found this joke utterly delightful. He drew nearer to the priest, with the air of an old gossip about to embark on a lengthy tale.

‘Plassans is most odd, from a political point of view. The
coup d’état
succeeded here because the town is conservative. But above all else, it is Legitimist, and Orléanist, so much so that the very next day after the Empire was declared, it tried to dictate its conditions. As nobody listened, they got angry and went over to the opposing side. Yes, Sir, to the opposition. Last year we elected as our deputy the Marquis of Lagrifoul, an old nobleman of mediocre intelligence, but whose election certainly annoyed the sub-prefecture… And look, there he is, Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies; he’s with the mayor, Monsieur Delangre.’

The priest looked at him with great interest. The sub-prefect, very brown, was smiling, under his waxed moustache. He was irreproachably correct; his aura was that of a fine officer and an amiable diplomat. Next to him the mayor was explaining something, in a frenzy of gestures and words. He was small, square-shouldered, and with a ravaged face that made him look almost puppet-like. He was certainly rather garrulous.

‘The affair nearly made Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies ill,’ Mouret went on. ‘He believed the election of the official candidate was a fait accompli… I thought it was very funny. On the evening of the election the sub-prefecture garden was all dark and sinister, like a cemetery. Whereas at the Rastoils’ there were candles under the trees and laughter and a great noise of victory. From the street side you can’t see anything at all, but in the garden, on the other hand, they do what they like, they unwind… Well, I see some strange things, but I don’t say anything.’

He restrained himself briefly, as though he did not want to say any more. But the burning desire to talk was too much for him.

‘Now,’ he went on, ‘I wonder what they are going to do in the sub-prefecture. Their candidate will never win again. They don’t know the area, they haven’t any clout. I was assured that Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies was to be given a prefecture if the election had gone well. I don’t believe it, not for a minute! He’ll be sub-prefect for some time yet… And what will they dream up to throw the marquis out? For they will dream up something, they’ll try by one means or another to conquer Plassans.’

He had raised his eyes to the abbé, whom he hadn’t been looking at for a while. Seeing the priest avidly listening to him with an attentive expression, and a gleam in his eyes, he was stopped in his tracks. All his bourgeois reserve was reawakened. He felt he had just said too much. So he muttered, rather crossly:

‘Well after all, what do I know about it? People say so many stupid things… All I ask is that they let me alone in my own home.’

He would have left his position by the window, but didn’t dare walk off so abruptly, after such an intimate chat. He was beginning to suspect that if one of them had been getting the better of the other, it certainly wasn’t him. The priest continued with considerable sangfroid to glance to the right and left at the two gardens. He didn’t make the smallest effort to induce Mouret to continue. Mouret, impatiently hoping that his wife or one of his children would take it into their heads to call him down, was relieved to see Rose appear on the steps. She looked up.

‘Well, Monsieur,’ she shouted, ‘aren’t you coming down today?… The soup’s been on the table this quarter of an hour.’

‘All right, Rose, I’m coming,’ he replied.

Making his excuses, he came away from the window. The cold room,
which he had forgotten was still there behind his back, completed his discomfort. It seemed to him like a huge confessional, with its terrifying black Christ;
He
must have heard everything. As Abbé Faujas bade him goodbye with a brief, silent wave, Mouret could not bear this sudden halt in the conversation and came back again, lifting his eyes to the ceiling.

‘So,’ he said, ‘it’s in that corner?’

‘What is?’ asked the priest, very surprised.

‘The stain you told me about.’

The priest could not hide a smile. Once again he made an effort to show Mouret the mark.

‘Oh, I can see it very clearly now,’ said the other. ‘That’s fine. I’ll get the workmen to come tomorrow.’

At last he departed. He was still on the landing when the door silently closed behind him. The silence on the stairs irritated him profoundly. He went down, grumbling:

‘That wretched man! He doesn’t ask any questions yet he gets to know everything!’

CHAPTER 5

T
HE
next day old Madame Rougon, Marthe’s mother, came to pay a visit to the Mourets. It was a great event, for there was a certain amount of hostility between the son-in-law and his wife’s parents, especially since the election of the Marquis of Lagrifoul, as they accused Mouret of using his influence in the countryside to promote him. Marthe visited her parents on her own. Her mother, ‘that black-haired Félicité’, as they called her, had remained, at sixty-six, as slim and energetic as a young girl. She wore nothing but silk dresses now, with many flounces, and had a particular fondness for yellow and maroon.

The day she arrived, Marthe and Mouret were by themselves in the dining room.

‘Good heavens, it’s your mother!’ exclaimed Mouret. ‘Whatever can she want? It’s only a month since she was here… More machinations, I’ll be bound.’

The Rougons,
*
in whose shop in the old quarter he had worked as an assistant before his marriage, when they had been on the verge of bankruptcy, were the object of his ongoing disapproval. Moreover they returned his deep, unyielding resentment, hating their assistant particularly because of his instant success as a salesman. When their son-in-law said: ‘I owe my success entirely to my own hard work,’ they were tight-lipped, perfectly aware that he was accusing them of having achieved
their
success in ways they couldn’t admit to. Despite her fine house on the Place de la Sous-Préfecture, Félicité envied the quiet Mouret abode with the fierce jealousy of a former shop-owner whose fortune has not been made as a result of her commercial expertise.

Félicité kissed Marthe on the forehead as if the latter were still sixteen. She then extended her hand to Mouret. Their usual mode of conversation had a sharp edge of irony.

‘Well,’ she asked with a smile, ‘have the police not been to arrest you yet, you old revolutionary?’

‘Not yet,’ he replied, also with a laugh. ‘They are waiting till your husband gives them the order.’

‘Oh, very funny,’ Félicité replied, her eyes blazing.

Marthe appealed to Mouret with a pleading look; he had certainly gone too far. But he was off and there was no stopping him:

‘Good gracious, what can we be thinking of? Here we are receiving you in the dining room! Let’s go into the drawing room.’

This was one of his usual jokes. When Félicité came calling he assumed her affectations. It was no good Marthe saying they were fine where they were, she and her mother were obliged to follow him into the drawing room. There he took enormous pains opening the shutters, arranging the armchairs. The drawing room was never used and its windows remained closed more often than not; it was a large, unused room, in which stood furniture with white covers yellowed by the damp from the garden.

‘This is terrible,’ Mouret murmured, wiping the dust from an occasional table, ‘Rose leaves everything in such a state.’

And, turning to his mother-in-law, in a voice laced with irony:

‘Please forgive us for receiving you like this in our poor little residence… We can’t all be rich.’

Félicité was choking with rage. For a moment she stared at Mouret, as if about to explode; then, making an effort, she slowly lowered her eyelids; when she raised them again she said, pleasantly:

‘I’ve just been to call on Madame de Condamin, and I came in to see how the family is… I suppose the children are quite well? And you too, my dear Mouret?’

‘Yes, everyone is in the best of health,’ he replied, taken aback by this great show of amiability.

But the old lady did not give him time to reinject a note of hostility into the conversation. She questioned Marthe affectionately about many things of small importance, and pretended to be the perfect grandmother, scolding her son-in-law for not sending ‘the little ones’ to her more often. She was so happy to see them!

‘Well, you know,’ she said finally, in a casual tone of voice, ‘it’s October. I’m going to start my “Thursdays”
*
again, just as I do at this time of the year. Can I count on you, Marthe, my dear?… And you, Mouret, shall we be seeing you occasionally, or will you be cross with us for ever?’

Mouret, who was beginning to be annoyed by the effusions of his mother-in-law, could not immediately find an answer to this. It was an unexpected blow, he couldn’t find anything nasty to say, but made do with:

‘You know very well that I can’t go to your house… You invite a whole lot of people who would take delight in being offensive to me. And I don’t want to meddle in politics.’

‘Oh, but you are quite wrong,’ responded Félicité. ‘You are quite wrong, you know, Mouret! For in that case wouldn’t they say my salon was a kind of club? That I don’t want. Everyone in town knows I try to make mine a welcoming sort of house. If people talk politics there, they do so on the quiet, I assure you. Oh, I’ve had enough trouble with politics in my time. Why do you say that?’

‘You invite the whole crowd from the sub-prefecture,’ grumbled Mouret.

‘The crowd from the sub-prefecture?’ she echoed. ‘The crowd from the sub-prefecture… Well of course, I invite those gentlemen. But I don’t think you will have often come across Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies at my house this winter… My husband told him what he thought of him with regard to the last elections. Like a fool he let himself be duped. As to his friends, they are very respectable men. Monsieur Delangre and Monsieur de Condamin are very nice, our friend Paloque is kindness itself and I imagine you have nothing against Doctor Porquier.’

Mouret shrugged.

‘And what’s more,’ she went on, giving ironic emphasis to her words, ‘I also invite Monsieur Rastoil’s
crowd
, the worthy Monsieur Maffre and our learned friend Monsieur de Bourdeu, the former prefect… So you can see we do not exclude anyone, all shades of opinion are welcome in our house. But surely you can see I’d hardly have anyone if I chose all my guests from one side! After all, we love good conversation wherever it can be found, we flatter ourselves we have the most distinguished society in Plassans at our parties… My salon is neutral ground, bear that in mind, Mouret. Yes, neutral ground—that’s the right word.’

She had become very animated while she was speaking. Every time she started on this subject she ended up getting cross. Her salon was her pride and joy. As she said, she wanted to rule over it, not as party leader, but as society hostess. It is true that her intimates claimed she was following the tactics of conciliation, as advised by her son, Eugène, the minister, who had made her the person in Plassans responsible for exemplifying the moderate and friendly character of the Empire.

‘Say what you like,’ Mouret muttered under his breath, ‘your Maffre is a sanctimonious fool, your Bourdeu is an idiot, and the others are scoundrels, most of them. That’s what I think… I thank you for your invitation, but it’s not at all convenient for me. I go to bed early. I’ll stay in my own house.’

Félicité rose, turned her back on Mouret, saying to her daughter:

‘Can I still count on you, darling?’

‘Of course,’ replied Marthe, who wanted to soften her husband’s brutal refusal.

The old lady was on the point of leaving, when she seemed to change her mind. She asked if she could give Désirée a kiss—she had caught sight of her in the garden. She didn’t even want to call the child in; she went down the terrace, which was still very damp from the shower they had had that morning. There she lavished caresses on her granddaughter who was rather frightened by her; then, raising her head, as though casually, to the curtains on the second floor, she cried:

‘Oh, have you got lodgers?… Oh yes, a priest, I think. I heard about that… What kind of priest is he?’

Mouret stared at her. A suspicion flitted across his mind—that she had only come to see Abbé Faujas.

‘I really don’t know…,’ he said, without taking his eyes off her. ‘But perhaps you have some information?’

‘Me?’ she cried, with a great show of surprise. ‘I haven’t ever clapped eyes on him… Oh, just a minute, I know he’s the priest at Saint-Saturnin; Father Bourrette told me that. And you know that reminds me, I must invite him to my “Thursdays”. I’ve already entertained the director of the Grand Seminary and Monsignor’s secretary.’

Then, turning to Marthe:

‘You know, when you see your lodger you ought to find out if he would like to receive an invitation and let me know.’

‘We hardly see him,’ Mouret replied hastily. ‘He comes and goes without opening his mouth… But then, it’s not my business.’

He went on looking at her suspiciously. She certainly knew more about Abbé Faujas than she was letting on. But she did not flinch beneath the watchful stare of her son-in-law.

‘Anyway I don’t mind,’ she went on, completely unabashed. ‘If he’s an acceptable sort of person I shall always find some way of inviting him… Goodbye, children.’

As she was going back up the steps a tall, elderly man appeared in the entrance to the hall. He wore a waistcoat and trousers in a very clean blue material, with a fur cap pulled down over his eyes. He had a whip in his hand.

‘Oh, it’s Uncle Macquart!’ cried Mouret, casting a quizzical glance at his mother-in-law.

Félicité had shown her strong disapproval. Macquart, Rougon’s illegitimate brother, had, thanks to him, returned to France, after being compromised in the countryside uprisings in 1851.
*
Since his return from Piedmont he had led the life of a well-heeled bourgeois with a regular income. He had bought, by some means or other, a little house situated in the village of Les Tulettes, about seven or eight miles from Plassans. Little by little, he had feathered his nest. He had even ended up buying a horse and carriage, so that you were bound to meet him on the roads, smoking his pipe, drinking in the sunshine, chortling away to himself. The enemies of the Rougons said behind their backs that the two brothers together had done some dastardly deed and that Pierre Rougon was responsible for his brother’s upkeep.

‘Hello, Uncle!’ Mouret said again ostentatiously. ‘Have you come to pay us a little visit then?’

‘Indeed!’ replied Macquart in an innocent tone of voice. ‘Every time I come to Plassans, you know… Oh, Félicité! Fancy finding you here! I came to see Rougon, I had something to tell him…’

‘He was at home, wasn’t he?’ she quickly interrupted, suddenly concerned.

‘Yes, he was there,’ Macquart went on calmly. ‘I saw him and we had a little chat. Rougon’s a good chap.’

He gave a little laugh. And while Félicité shifted uneasily, he continued in the strangely crackly drawl that made him seem as if he were always having fun at your expense:

‘Mouret, my boy, I’ve brought you a couple of rabbits there in the basket. I gave them to Rose… I had two for Rougon as well; you’ll find them in your house, Félicité, and do tell me what you think of them. Oh, the little rascals are well covered—I fattened them up for you… Well, you know, my dears, I do like giving presents.’

Félicité was rather pale and tight-lipped, and Mouret continued to look at her with a smile that was only half-concealed. She would have liked to leave, but was afraid they would gossip about her if she left Macquart there.

‘Thanks, Uncle,’ Mouret said. ‘Last time the plums were delicious… Will you have a drink?’

‘Why not?’

And when Rose had brought a glass of wine, he sat down on the terrace. He drank the glass slowly, smacking his lips and holding the wine up to the light.

‘That wine comes from the Saint-Eutrope vineyard,’ he muttered. ‘You can’t deceive
me
. I know this part of the country too well.’

He shook his head and chuckled.

Then abruptly Mouret asked, in a particularly meaningful tone:

‘How are they over at Les Tulettes then?’

Macquart looked up, and around at everybody. Then, with one last smack of his lips, putting the glass down on the stone at his side, he answered casually:

‘Not too bad. I had news the day before yesterday. She’s just the same.’

Félicité had turned her head. There was a silence. Mouret had just touched on one of the sore points in the family, by alluding to the mother of Rougon and Macquart, who had been shut up like a madwoman for several years, in the asylum in Les Tulettes.
*
Macquart’s house was nearby and it was as if Rougon had deliberately placed the old man there to keep an eye on their mother.

‘Well, it’s getting late,’ said Macquart. ‘I must be home before dark… Mouret, my boy, I’m relying on you to come over sometime soon. You promised.’

‘I shall come, Uncle, I shall come.’

‘I don’t just mean you—I want everyone to come over, do you understand? Everybody… I get bored on my own over there. I’ll cook you a nice meal.’

Then, turning to Félicité:

‘Tell Rougon I’m expecting you both. Don’t be put off coming on account of our old mother next door. After all, we have to enjoy ourselves sometimes… She’s fine, you know, well looked after. You can trust me… You’ll be able to try a little wine from a vineyard on the Seille that I discovered. That wine’ll go to your head, you mark my words!’

As he spoke he was making for the door. Félicité was following so hard on his heels it looked as if she was trying to push him out. They all saw him as far as the street. He untied his horse, whose
reins he had fastened to one of the blinds, just as Abbé Faujas was coming back; he gave them a brief nod as he passed through the middle of the group. You would have thought he was a black shadow, so silently did he glide along. Félicité turned swiftly, following him with her eyes till he got to the stairs, for she had not had time to take a good look at him. Macquart, dumbfounded, shook his head, and muttered:

‘So you are renting your house to priests now are you, my boy? He has a strange look about him, that man. Be careful: priests bring bad luck!’

He sat down on the seat in his trap, whistling softly, and he and his pony trotted off slowly down the Rue Balande. His bent back and his fur cap disappeared round the bend into the Rue Taravelle. When Mouret turned, he heard his mother-in-law say to Marthe:

‘I’d rather you did it, so that the invitation didn’t seem so formal. I should be very glad if you could find a way of inviting him.’