The Conquest of Plassans (Les Rougon-Macquart Book 4) (9 page)

She stopped, feeling caught out. Finally, when she had kissed Désirée effusively, she took her leave, with a last glance behind her to make sure that Macquart wasn’t returning once more to talk about her behind her back.

‘As you know, I absolutely forbid you to get mixed up in your mother’s affairs,’ said Mouret to his wife as they went back in. ‘She’s always involved in some incomprehensible intrigue or other. What on earth can she want with the priest? She wouldn’t invite him just like that if she didn’t have an ulterior motive. That priest didn’t come from Besançon to Plassans for no reason. There’s some funny business going on.’

Marthe had gone back to the everlasting mending of her family’s linen that occupied whole days. He hovered near her for a little while, muttering:

‘Old Macquart and your mother, they make me laugh. And yet they loathe one another. You saw how agitated she became when she realized he was here. You’d think she’s always scared of hearing him say things that ought not to be said. Not that it would bother me, I’m sure he’s got plenty of amusing tales to tell, but I’m not going to his house. I swore I wouldn’t get embroiled in that mess… My father was right, you know, when he said my mother’s family, the Rougons, the Macquarts, weren’t worth the rope to hang them with.
*
I am of their blood, like you, so you won’t mind me saying that. I say it because it’s
true. They have made their fortune now but it hasn’t shaken the dirt off them, quite the opposite.’

He ended up by going for a walk along the Cours Sauvaire, where he met some friends, chatted about the weather, the harvest, the events of the day before. A large order for almonds, which he took charge of the next day, meant that for more than a week he had to come and go all the time and that almost made him forget Abbé Faujas. In any case the priest was beginning to annoy him. He wasn’t chatty enough; he was secretive. Twice Mouret went out of his way to avoid him, thinking that he was seeking him out only to know how the tales about the sub-prefecture bunch and the Rastoils ended. Rose having told him that Madame Faujas had tried to make her talk, he had promised himself he wouldn’t open his mouth again. It was a different entertainment that now occupied his leisure time. Now when he looked at the curtains on the second floor, that were so tightly closed, he would grumble:

‘Go on, hide, old chap… I know you are spying on me from behind your curtains. Well, you won’t get very far like that, if it’s through me you are hoping to know about the neighbours!’

The thought that Faujas was on the lookout pleased him enormously. He took great pains not to fall into some trap. But one evening when he returned home, he saw Abbé Bourrette and Abbé Faujas fifty paces ahead of him standing in front of Monsieur Rastoil’s door. He hid in a recess in the wall of a house. The two priests stayed there for a good quarter of an hour. They were having an animated conversation, drawing apart and then coming back again. Mouret thought he could hear Abbé Bourrette begging Faujas to go to the president’s with him. Faujas was making excuses, and in the end refused with some impatience. It was for Tuesday, the day they invited people for dinner. Finally Bourrette went into the Rastoils’ house. Faujas glided towards his, in his self-effacing way. Mouret remained thoughtful. For indeed, why didn’t Faujas go to Monsieur Rastoil’s? The whole of Saint-Saturnin went, Abbé Fenil, Abbé Surin, and the rest. There was not one black robe in Plassans that had not taken the evening air in that garden, in front of the fountain. This refusal by the new priest was a truly extraordinary event.

When Mouret reached home, he quickly went to the bottom of his garden to examine the windows on the second floor. After a little while he saw the curtain in the second window twitch on the right
hand side. Faujas was definitely there, spying on what was going on at Monsieur Rastoil’s. Mouret surmised by certain movements of the curtain that his gaze was also directed at the sub-prefecture.

The next day, Wednesday, on his way out, Rose told him that Abbé Bourrette was up with the folk on the second floor, and had been for at least an hour. So he went back in again and poked around in the dining room. As Marthe asked him what he was doing, he became very angry, and said he was searching for a paper he couldn’t leave without. He went up to see if he had left it upstairs, and after standing for some time behind his bedroom door, as soon as he thought he heard the scraping of chairs on the floor above, he went down slowly, stopping for a moment in the hall to give Abbé Bourrette time to get there.

‘Why, is that you, Monsieur l’Abbé? How fortunate!… Are you going back to Saint-Saturnin? What luck! I’m going in that direction. We’ll walk along together if that’s all right with you?’

Abbé Bourrette replied that he would be delighted. They both slowly made their way up the Rue Balande, towards the Place de la Souspréfecture. The abbé was a large man, with a pleasantly open face and big blue childlike eyes. His wide silk belt, pulled in tight, revealed the soft, smooth curves of his belly, and he walked with his head thrown back a little, his arms too short, his legs already dragging.

‘Well,’ said Mouret, without attempting to connect his remarks to what had gone before, ‘you have just been seeing the excellent Monsieur Faujas… I must thank you, you have found me a lodger in a thousand.’

‘Yes, yes,’ muttered the priest, ‘a fine man.’

‘Yes, we don’t hear a sound from him. We don’t even notice there is a stranger in the house. And very polite, very courteous with it… You know, I was reliably told he was a man of some intellect, a sort of present for the diocese.’

And, as they were standing in the middle of the Place de la Préfecture, Mouret stopped abruptly and stared at Abbé Bourrette.

‘Oh, is that so?’ the latter replied, more than a little surprised.

‘So I’ve been told… Our bishop might have some plan for him later. In the meantime the new priest is to keep himself out of the way so as not to arouse any jealousy.’

Abbé Bourrette had started walking again, turning the corner of the Rue de la Banne. He said calmly:

‘I’d be very surprised about that. Faujas is a simple man, he is even a little too humble. So in church he does all the minor tasks that we usually leave to the clergymen.
*
He’s a very holy but not a clever man, and I’ve hardly ever seen him with Monsignor. Right from the start he didn’t get on with Abbé Fenil. Yet I had made it clear to him that he had to make friends with the assistant bishop if he wanted to be well thought of at the bishop’s palace. He didn’t understand me; I fear his judgement is a little limited… It’s the same with all these visits to Abbé Compan, our poor priest who took to his bed a fortnight ago, and whom we shall surely lose. Well, they are out of order, it will be a black mark against him. Compan has never been able to get on with Fenil; for him to be so ignorant of what the whole diocese knows, he must certainly have come from Besançon.’

He warmed to his subject. It was his turn now to stop at the entrance to the Rue Canquoin, and stand facing Mouret.

‘No, my dear Mouret, you have been deceived. Faujas is as innocent as a newborn babe… I am not an ambitious man, as you will no doubt agree? And God knows I am very fond of Compan, he has a heart of gold! But all the same, when I go and visit him it’s on the quiet. He himself said to me: “Bourrette, I haven’t got much longer, my old friend. If you want to be priest-in-charge after me, make sure nobody sees you ringing my doorbell too often. Come at night and knock three times, my sister will answer the door to you.” Now I wait till it’s dark, you understand… No point making your life even harder. One already has so many things to worry about!’

His voice had softened. He clasped both hands over his paunch, went on walking, moved by a naïve egotism which made him pity his own lot, all the time muttering:

‘Poor Compan, poor Compan…’

Mouret was perplexed. Abbé Faujas was beginning to elude him totally.

‘And yet people gave me very precise information,’ he attempted once again. ‘They said it was a matter of finding him a good situation.’

‘Oh no, I assure you that’s not the case!’ cried the priest. ‘Faujas hasn’t got a career ahead of him… Another thing. You know I have supper every Tuesday at the president’s. Last week he insisted on me bringing Faujas along too. No doubt he wanted to get to know him and form his own opinion of him… Well, you’d never guess what Faujas did. He refused the invitation, my dear sir, he refused
point-blank. I told him he was going to make life intolerable for himself in Plassans, that by being so discourteous to Monsieur Rastoil, he would inevitably quarrel with Fenil, but it was no use; he was obstinate and wouldn’t listen to anything I said. I even think, God forgive me, that he said to me, in a moment of anger, that he didn’t need to get involved with accepting an invitation to that sort of thing.’

Abbé Bourrette began to laugh. He had arrived at Saint-Saturnin; he kept Mouret talking for a while at the side door of the church.

‘He’s a child, just an overgrown child,’ he continued. ‘I ask you, how could you be compromised by having dinner at Monsieur Rastoil’s!… Also your mother-in-law, the good Madame Rougon, yesterday asked me to issue Faujas with an invitation but I didn’t hide the fact that I was very much afraid it wouldn’t be welcome.’

Mouret pricked up his ears.

‘Oh really? My mother-in-law gave you an invitation for him?’

‘Yes, she came to the sacristy yesterday… As I make a point of being pleasant to her I promised to go and see this villain today… I was certain he would refuse.’

‘And did he?’

‘No, I was extremely surprised—he accepted.’

Mouret opened his mouth and then shut it again. The priest winked with an air of great satisfaction.

‘I have to admit that I was pretty clever… I talked to Faujas for an hour about your mother-in-law’s situation. He shook his head, couldn’t make up his mind, spoke of his love of solitude… Well, I was at my wits’ end, when I remembered an injunction from that dear lady. She’d begged me to inform him particularly about the kind of salon she kept, which, as the whole town knows, is neutral territory… At that point he appeared to make an effort and agreed. He promised faithfully he would go tomorrow… I shall write a little note to the excellent Madame Rougon to announce our victory.’

He remained there a little longer, talking to himself, rolling his large blue eyes.

‘Monsieur Rastoil will be very annoyed, but it’s hardly my fault… Goodbye, dear Monsieur Mouret, until we meet again. My compliments to Madame Mouret and the family.’

And he went into the church, letting the padded double doors close softly behind him. Mouret looked at the door and gave a little shrug.

‘There goes another old gossip,’ he grumbled, ‘another of these
people who don’t let you utter ten words and who talk the whole time in order to say nothing at all… Oh, so Faujas goes to see the black-haired Félicité tomorrow. It’s very vexing that I should have quarrelled with that fool of a Rougon.’

He rushed around all afternoon, occupied with his business affairs. In the evening as he went to bed, he casually asked his wife:

‘Are you off to your mother’s tomorrow night then?’

‘No,’ Marthe replied. ‘I’ve too many things to finish. I expect I’ll go next Thursday.’

He did not insist, but before he blew out the candle he said:

‘You ought to go out more often. Why don’t you go to your mother’s tomorrow night; you’ll enjoy it. I’ll look after the children.’

Marthe looked at him in astonishment. Usually he kept her in the house, needing her for a hundred little things, and grumbled when she was away for an hour.

‘I’ll go if you want me to,’ she said.

He blew out the candle, put his head on the pillow, and murmured:

‘That’s right, you can tell us all about the evening. It will amuse the children.’

CHAPTER 6

T
HE
next evening at nine, or thereabouts, Abbé Bourrette came to fetch Abbé Faujas. He had promised to be the one to introduce him, to present him to the Rougon salon. When he found him all ready, and standing in the middle of the great bare room, pulling on his black gloves, which had faded to white at the fingertips, he gave a little grimace.

‘Don’t you have another soutane?’ he enquired.

‘No,’ Abbé Faujas replied, unperturbed; ‘I suppose this one is still wearable.’

‘No doubt, no doubt,’ the old priest stammered. ‘But the cold is biting. Aren’t you going to put something over your shoulders?… Well then, let’s be off.’

The first frosts had arrived. Abbé Bourrette, cosily wrapped in his silk ecclesiastical cloak, puffed along behind Abbé Faujas, who was wearing nothing but his worn and threadbare soutane. They stopped at the corner of the Place de la Souspréfecture and the Rue de la Banne, in front of a house built entirely of white stone, one of the finest houses in the new town, with a carved rosette at each storey. A servant in blue uniform received them in the hall. He smiled at Abbé Bourrette as he took off his cloak, but looked very surprised to see the other priest, a great fellow whose frame appeared to have been hewn with an axe, come out without a coat in such cold weather. The salon was on the first floor.

Abbé Faujas went in, his head held high, and with a dignified ease of manner; while Abbé Bourrette, who was always very excited when he went to the Rougons, though he didn’t miss a single soirée, scuttled away out of trouble into an adjoining room. Faujas crossed the salon at a measured pace to greet the one he guessed to be his hostess, in the middle of a group of six or seven ladies. He had to make his own introduction, but he did it in the briefest possible fashion. Félicité had risen swiftly to her feet. She looked him keenly up and down, and then back up again, looking into his eyes with a ferret-like curiosity, and murmuring with a smile as she did so:

‘Charmed, I’m sure, Monsieur l’Abbé, most charmed I’m sure…’

However when the priest passed through the salon there was
general surprise. One young woman, who had looked up abruptly, visibly suppressed her fright at seeing the huge dark shape in front of her. He made an unfavourable impression: he was too tall, too square of build. His face was too hard, his hands too big. Beneath the harsh light of the chandelier his soutane looked so wretched that the ladies felt a kind of embarrassment at the spectacle of such a badly dressed priest. They lifted their fans, and began whispering again, pretending to turn away from him. The men exchanged glances, and the curl of their lips spoke volumes.

Félicité felt the lack of friendliness in this welcome and looked annoyed. She remained standing in the middle of the salon, speaking louder, forcing her guests to hear the compliments she was addressing to Abbé Faujas.

‘Our dear Bourrette’, she said, winningly, ‘told me all about the difficulty he had persuading you… I hold that against you, my dear sir. You don’t have the right to hide away from society like that.’

The priest bowed but made no reply. The old lady went on laughing and placing an emphasis on certain words.

‘I know you better than you think, in spite of your efforts to hide your qualities from us. I’ve been told about you. You are a saint, and I want us to be friends… We’ll have a chat about all those things, won’t we? Now that you are one of us.’

Abbé Faujas stared at her, as if he had recognized some Masonic sign in the way she was holding her fan. He answered, lowering his voice:

‘Madame, I am entirely at your service.’

‘That’s exactly what I thought,’ she went on, with an even louder laugh. ‘As you see, we want everyone to be happy here… But come along and let me introduce you to Monsieur Rougon.’

She crossed the salon, disturbing several people as she went, to make way for Abbé Faujas, according him an importance which had the effect of putting all those present against him. In the adjoining room the whist tables were laid out. She went straight over to her husband, who was playing cards with the serious expression of a diplomat. He made a gesture of impatience when she leaned over to whisper in his ear; but as soon as she had uttered a few words he leaped up.

‘Very good, very good!’ he said.

And, with an apology to his partners, he came over to shake Faujas
by the hand. Rougon was now a large sallow man of seventy. He had taken on the solemn expression of a millionaire. Generally in Plassans he was considered a good-looking man, white-haired and with the reserved character of a man of politics. After exchanging a few polite remarks with the priest, he sat down again at the card table. Félicité, still smiling, had meanwhile gone back into the salon.

Abbé Faujas, on his own at last, did not seem in the least put out. He stayed to watch the card-players for a moment; but in reality he was studying the curtains, carpet, and furniture. It was a small salon, the colour of wood; three walls were taken up by the dark bookcase made of pearwood decorated with brass beading, which extended over three panels. You could have mistaken it for a study used by a justice of the peace. The priest, no doubt anxious to make a thorough inspection of the premises, crossed the big drawing room again. This was green, also very imposing, but more gilded, possessing both the administrative gravity and the more ostentatious luxury of a large restaurant. On the other side there was also a small room, where Félicité received her guests during the day; this salon was a beige colour and the furniture was upholstered in a violet floral pattern; it was so cluttered with armchairs, pouffes, sofas, you could scarcely move.

Abbé Faujas sat down in the chimney corner, as though to warm his feet. He was placed so as to see a good half of the green drawing room through the open door. The welcome from Madame Rougon, which had been so gracious, gave him food for thought. He half-closed his eyes, as if applying himself to some problem, the solution of which escaped him. After a moment, deep in thought, he heard the sound of voices behind him. His armchair with its enormous back quite concealed him from view and he closed his eyes more tightly. He listened, apparently dozing off in the warmth from the fire.

‘During that time I only went to their house once,’ came a throaty voice. ‘They lived opposite, on the other side of the Rue de la Banne. You must have been in Paris, for the whole of Plassans went to the Rougons’ yellow drawing room back then. It was really ugly, with lemon-coloured wallpaper, fifteen sous a roll, and with furniture that was broken and covered in Utrecht velvet… See that brunette, in maroon satin, over there on that pouffe. Look at her holding out her hand to little Delangre. Oh, my goodness, she’s going to give it to him to kiss!’

A younger voice sniggered, and murmured:

‘They must have robbed a bank to have such a fine green drawing room, for it’s the prettiest salon in town.’

‘The lady of the house has always been very fond of entertaining,’ the other went on. ‘When she didn’t have a penny, she drank water in order to be able to give her guests lemonade in the evening… Oh, I know all those Rougons like the back of my hand. I’ve followed their doings. They are a formidable family. They are bandits and will stop at nothing to satisfy their greed. The
coup d’état
helped them satisfy dreams of luxury that had been torturing them for forty years. And what gluttony, what a surfeit of riches!… Do you know, the house they live in today belonged back then to a Monsieur Peirotte, the tax collector, who was killed in the Sainte-Roure affair during the uprising of ’51. Yes, my word, weren’t they lucky? A stray bullet put paid to the man who was in their way, and they inherited from him… Well, between the house and the tax, Félicité would definitely have chosen the house. She had had her eye on it for nearly ten years, she was consumed with a kind of pregnancy craving, she made herself ill whenever she saw the luxurious curtains that hung at the windows. That was her own “Tuileries”, it was said in Plassans, after 2 December.’
*

‘But where did they get the money to buy the house?’

‘Ah, that’s a fishy business, my friend… Their son Eugène, the one who had such an astonishing career in politics, deputy, minister, family councillor of the Tuileries, secured a good income and an honour for his father, who had been up to a thing or two here. As for the house, it was apparently paid for with the help of a settlement. They borrowed money from some banker… In any case, today they are rolling in money, getting their hands dirty, making up for lost time. I imagine their son has remained in touch with them, for they haven’t done anything silly yet.’

The voice went quiet, only to go on again with a suppressed laugh:

‘No, all the same I have to laugh when I see her with her airs and graces like a duchess, that old toad of a Félicité… I still remember her yellow drawing room,
*
with its worn-out carpet, grimy tables, the muslin on her little lamp covered in fly droppings… And now she’s greeting the Rastoil girls. Look at the way she swishes the hem of her dress… That old lady, you mark my words, will drop dead in triumph one evening in the middle of her green drawing room.’

Abbé Faujas had slowly turned his head, in order to see what was going on in the large salon. He saw Madame Rougon there, truly
splendid, in the middle of her circle; she seemed to have grown taller on her dwarfish feet, and looked like a conquering queen, with all backs bent towards her. From time to time she appeared to swoon and her eyelids fluttered in the golden reflections from the ceiling, in the softness of the imposing hangings.

‘Oh, here’s your father,’ said the throaty voice; ‘here’s our good doctor arriving… It’s very strange that the doctor didn’t tell you all this. He knows more about it than I do.’

‘Huh, my father is afraid he’ll be compromised,’ the other went on gaily. ‘He curses me and swears I’ll make him lose his clients… Excuse me, I’ve just seen the Maffre boys, I’ll go and say hello.’

There was a scraping of chairs, and Abbé Faujas saw a tall young man with a face that already looked weary, walk across the small salon. The other person, the one who had been insulting the Rougons so cheerfully, also rose. A lady who was passing received very pretty compliments from him; she laughed, called him ‘our dear Monsieur de Condamin’. The priest then recognized the handsome sexagenarian that Mouret had pointed out in the garden of the sub-prefecture. Monsieur de Condamin came and sat down on the other side of the hearth. There he was most surprised to see the Abbé Faujas, who had been concealed from him by the back of the armchair. But not in the least disconcerted, he smiled, and with charming aplomb, said:

‘Monsieur l’Abbé, I believe we have just made our inadvertent confession… It’s a heinous sin, is it not, to speak ill of one’s neighbour? Happily you are here to forgive us our sin.’

Though so much in control of his facial expression, the abbé could not refrain from reddening a little. He fully understood that Monsieur de Condamin was chiding him for not speaking out while he listened. But Condamin was not a man to bear a grudge against someone who was curious, quite the contrary. He was delighted at the hint of complicity he had just created between the priest and himself. That gave him the licence to gossip freely, to make the evening pass quickly by relating scandalous stories of the people who were present. It was what he enjoyed most. This priest who had just arrived in Plassans seemed to him an excellent audience. All the more so because he had an unattractive face, that of a man who would listen to anything, and was wearing a soutane that was really too shabby for there to be any lasting consequences from what one permitted oneself to say to him.

After a quarter of an hour, Monsieur de Condamin had got into his
stride. He was expounding the whole of Plassans to Abbé Faujas, with the impeccable manners of a man of the world.

‘You are a stranger in our midst, my dear abbé,’ he said; ‘I should be delighted to be of service to you… Plassans is a small town that one gets used to in the end. I am from near Dijon. Well, you know, when I got my post as forestry commissioner here, I detested the place, I was bored out of my mind. It was just before the Empire. Life in the provinces was not much fun, I can tell you, especially after ’51.
*
People living in this department were scared of their own shadows. The very sight of a gendarme would have them running for cover… They’ve gradually got less fearful, gone back to their usual ways, and in the end I resigned myself. I live out in the open air, I go for long rides on horseback, and I’ve made a few friends.’

He dropped his voice, and went on in a confidential tone:

‘If you want my advice, Monsieur l’Abbé, you’ll be careful. You wouldn’t credit what a hornets’ nest I almost fell into… Plassans is divided into three distinct sections: the old quarter, where you’ll only have to bring them alms and comfort; the Saint-Marc district, where the local nobility live, a place of boredom and backbiting you should be extremely wary of; and the new town, the quarter being built at this very moment around the sub-prefecture, the only possible, respectable district… I was silly enough to take lodgings in the Saint-Marc district, where I felt called to by my station in life. But everyone there is either a stiff and starchy dowager or a penniless marquis; they all hark back to the time when Berthe was at her spinning wheel. Not the whiff of a social occasion, not the sniff of a party. Just a subdued conniving against the blessed peace we live in… I don’t mind telling you, I almost compromised myself. Péqueur teased me about it… Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, our sub-prefect, do you know him? So I moved to the other side of the Cours Sauvaire and took an apartment there on the square. In Plassans, you see, the
people
doesn’t exist and the nobility is beyond hope; the only tolerable, charming folk who go to a lot of trouble for prominent people are a few nouveaux riches. Our little world of civil servants is very happy. We keep ourselves to ourselves, live how we want to, without worrying about the inhabitants, as if we had pitched our tents in a conquered land.’