The Conquest of Plassans (La Conquête de Plassans). Emile Zola
The tall trees in the garden of the Sub-Prefecture formed a mass of gloomy darkness, and Monsieur Rastoil's pear-trees thrust up scraggy, twisted branches, while, further away, there was but a sea of black shadow, a blank nothingness, whence not a sound proceeded. The town lay as tranquilly asleep as an infant in its cradle.
Abbé Faujas stretched out his arms with an air of ironic defiance, as though he would have liked to circle them round Plassans, and squeeze the life out of it by crushing it against his brawny chest. And he murmured to himself:
'Ah! to think that the imbeciles laughed at me this evening, as they saw me going through their streets!'
III
Mouret spent the whole of the next morning in playing the spy on his new tenant. This espionage would now enable him to fill up the idle hours which he had hitherto spent in pottering about the house, in putting back into their proper places any articles which he happened to find lying about, and in picking quarrels with his wife and children. Henceforth he would have an occupation, an amusement which would relieve the monotony of his everyday life. As he had often said, he was not partial to priests, and yet Abbé Faujas, the first one who had entered into his existence, excited in him an extraordinary amount of interest. This priest brought with him a touch of mystery and secrecy that was almost disquieting. Although Mouret was a strong-minded man and professed himself to be a follower of Voltaire, yet in the Abbé's presence he felt the astonishment and uneasiness of a common bourgeois.
Not a sound came from the second floor. Mouret stood on the staircase and listened eagerly; he even ventured to go to the loft. As he hushed his steps while passing along the passage, a pattering of slippers behind the door filled him with emotion. But he did not succeed in making any new discovery, so he went down into the garden and strolled into the arbour at the end of it, there raising his eyes and trying to look through the windows in order to find out what might be going on in the rooms. But he could not see even the Abbé's shadow. Madame Faujas, in the absence of curtains, had, as a makeshift, fastened some sheets behind the windows.
At lunch Mouret seemed quite vexed.
'Are they dead upstairs?' he said, as he cut the children's bread. 'Have you heard them move, Marthe?'
'No, my dear; but I haven't been listening.'
Rose thereupon cried out from the kitchen: 'They've been gone ever so long. They must be far enough away now if they've kept on at the same pace.'
Mouret summoned the cook and questioned her minutely.
'They went out, sir: first the mother, and then the priest. They walked so softly that I should never have known anything about it if their shadows had not fallen across the kitchen floor when they opened the street door. I looked out into the street to see where they were going, but they had vanished. They must have gone off in a fine hurry.'
'It is very surprising. But where was I at the time?'
'I think you were in the garden, sir, looking at the grapes in the arbour.'
This put Mouret into a very bad temper. He began to inveigh against priests. They were a set of mystery-mongers, a parcel of underhand schemers, with whom the devil himself would be at a loss. They affected such ridiculous prudery that no one had ever seen a priest wash his face. And then he wound up by expressing his sorrow that he had ever let his rooms to this Abbé, about whom he knew nothing at all.
'It is all your fault!' he exclaimed to his wife, as he got up from table.
Marthe was about to protest and remind him of their discussion on the previous day, but she raised her eyes and simply looked at him, saying nothing. Mouret, contrary to his usual custom, resolved to remain at home. He pottered up and down between the dining-room and the garden, poking about everywhere, pretending that nothing was in its place and that the house simply invited thieves. Then he got indignant with Serge and Octave, who had set off for the college, he said, quite half an hour too soon.
'Isn't father going out?' Désirée whispered in her mother's ear. 'He will worry us to death if he stays at home.'
Marthe hushed her. At last Mouret began to speak of a piece of business which he declared he must finish off during the day. And then he complained that he had never a moment to himself, and could never get a day's rest at home when he felt he wanted it. Finally he went away, quite distressed that he could not remain and see what happened.
When he returned in the evening he was all on fire with curiosity.
'Well, what about the Abbé?' he asked, without even giving himself time to take off his hat.
Marthe was working in her usual place on the terrace.
'The Abbé!' she repeated, with an appearance of surprise. 'Oh, yes! the Abbé—I've really seen nothing of him, but I believe he has got settled down now. Rose told me that some furniture had come.'
'That's just what I was afraid of!' exclaimed Mouret. 'I wanted to be here when it came; for, you see, the furniture is my security. I knew very well that you would never think of stirring from your chair. You haven't much of a head, my dear—Rose! Rose!'
The cook appeared in answer to his summons, and he forthwith asked her: 'There's some furniture come for the people on the second floor?'
'Yes, sir; it came in a little covered cart. I recognised it as Bergasse's; the second-hand dealer's. It wasn't a big load. Madame Faujas came on behind it. I dare say she had been giving the man who pushed it along a helping hand up the Rue Balande.'
'At any rate, you saw the furniture, I suppose? Did you notice what there was?'
'Certainly, sir. I had posted myself by the door, and it all went past me, which didn't seem to please Madame Faujas very much. Wait a moment and I'll tell you everything there was. First of all they brought up an iron bedstead, then a chest of drawers, then two tables and four chairs; and that was the whole lot of it. And it wasn't new either. I wouldn't have given thirty crowns for the whole collection.'
'But you should have told madame; we cannot let the rooms under such conditions. I shall go at once to talk to Abbé Bourrette about the matter.'
He was fuming with irritation, and was just setting off, when Marthe brought him to a sudden halt by saying:
'Oh! I had forgotten to tell you. They have paid me six months' rent in advance.'
'What! They have paid you?' he stammered out, almost in a tone of annoyance.
'Yes, the old lady came down and gave me this.'
She put her hand into her work-bag, and gave her husband seventy-five francs in hundred-sou-pieces, neatly wrapt up in a piece of newspaper. Mouret counted the money, and muttered:
'As long as they pay, they are free to stop. But they are strange folks, all the same. Everyone can't be rich, of course, but that is no reason why one should behave in this suspicious manner, when one's poor.'
'There is something else I have to tell you,' Marthe continued, as she saw him calm down. 'The old lady asked me if we were disposed to part with the folding-bed to her. I told her that we made no use of it, and that she was welcome to keep it as long as she liked.'
'You did quite right. We must do what we can to oblige them. As I told you before, what bothers me about these confounded priests is that one never can tell what they are thinking about, or what they are up to. Apart from that, you will often find very honourable men amongst them.'
The money seemed to have consoled him. He joked and teased Serge about his book on the Chinese missions, which the boy happened to be reading just then. During dinner he affected to feel no further curiosity about the tenants of the second floor; but, when Octave mentioned that he had seen Abbé Faujas leaving the Bishop's residence, he could not restrain himself. Directly the dessert was placed