The Conquest of Plassans (La Conquête de Plassans). Emile Zola
he resumed his chatter of the previous evening, though after a time he began to feel a little ashamed of himself. His commercial pursuits had made him stolid and heavy, but he really had a keen mind; he was possessed of no little common sense and accuracy of judgment which often enabled him to pick out the truth from the midst of all the gossip of the neighbourhood.
'After all,' he said, as he went off to bed, 'one has no business to go prying into other people's affairs. The Abbé is quite at liberty to do as he pleases. It is getting wearisome to be always talking about these people, and I, for my part, shall say nothing more about them.'
A week passed away. Mouret had resumed his habitual life. He prowled about the house, lectured his children, and spent his afternoons away from home, amusing himself by transacting various bits of business, of which he never spoke; and he ate and slept like a man for whom life is an easy downhill journey, without any jolts or surprises of any kind. The whole place sank back into all its old monotony. Marthe occupied her accustomed seat on the terrace, with her little work-table in front of her. Désirée played by her side. The two lads came home at the usual time, and were as noisy as ever; and Rose, the cook, grumbled and growled at everyone; while the garden and the dining-room retained all their wonted sleepy calm.
'You see now,' Mouret often repeated to his wife, 'you were quite mistaken in thinking that our comfort would be interfered with, by our letting the second-floor. We are as quiet and happy as ever we were, and the house seems smaller and cosier.'
He occasionally raised his eyes towards the second-floor windows, which Madame Faujas had hung with thick cotton curtains, on the day after her arrival. These curtains were never drawn aside. There was a conventual look about their stern, cold folds, and they seemed to tell of deep, unbroken silence, cloistral stillness lurking behind them. At distant intervals the windows were set ajar, and allowed the high, shadowy ceilings to be seen between the snowy whiteness of the curtains. But it was all to no purpose that Mouret kept on the watch, he could never catch sight of the hand which opened or closed them, and he never even heard the grating of the window fastening. Never did a sound of human life come down from the second floor.
The first week was at an end and Mouret had not yet had another glimpse of Abbé Faujas. That man who was living in his house, without he ever being able to catch sight even of his shadow, began to affect him with a kind of nervous uneasiness. In spite of all the efforts he made to appear indifferent, he relapsed into his old questionings, and started an inquiry.
'Have you seen anything of him?' he asked his wife.
'I fancy I caught a glimpse of him yesterday, as he was coming in, but I am not sure. His mother always wears a black dress, and it might have been she that I saw.'
And as he continued to press her with questions, Marthe told him all she knew.
'Rose says that he goes out every day, and stays away a long time. As for his mother, she is as regular as a clock. She comes down at seven o'clock in the morning to go out and do her marketing. She has a big basket, which is always closed, and in which she must bring everything back with her, coal, bread, wine and provisions, for no tradesman ever calls with anything for them. They are very courteous and polite; and Rose says that they always bow to her when they meet her. But as a rule she does not even hear them come down the stairs.'
'They must go in for a funny sort of cooking up there,' said Mouret, to whom all these details conveyed none of the information he wanted.
On another evening, when Octave mentioned that he had seen Abbé Faujas entering Saint-Saturnin's, his father asked him about the priest's appearance, what effect he had made upon the passers-by, and what he could be going to do in the church.
'Ah! you are really much too curious!' cried the young man, with a laugh. 'He didn't look very fine in the sunshine with his rusty cassock, I can vouch for that much. I noticed, too, that, as he walked along, he kept in the shadow of the houses, which made his cassock look a little blacker. He didn't seem at all proud of himself, but hurried along with his head bent down. Two girls began to laugh as he crossed the Place. The Abbé raised his head and looked at them with an expression of great softness—didn't he, Serge?'
Thereupon Serge related how on several occasions, as he was returning from the college, he had at a distance followed the Abbé, who was on his way back from Saint-Saturnin's. He passed through the streets without speaking to anyone; he seemed to know nobody and to be rather hurt by the suppressed titters and jeers which he heard around him.
'Do they talk of him, then, in the town?' asked Mouret, whose interest was greatly aroused.
'No one has ever spoken to me about him,' Octave replied.
'Yes,' said Serge,' they do talk of him. Abbé Bourrette's nephew told me that he wasn't a favourite at the church. They are not fond of these priests who come from a distance; and besides he has such a miserable appearance. When people get accustomed to him, they will leave the poor man alone, but just at first it is only natural that he should attract notice.'
Marthe thereupon advised the two young fellows not to gratify any outsider's curiosity about the Abbé.
'Oh, yes! they may answer any questions,' Mouret exclaimed. 'Certainly nothing that we know of him could be likely to compromise him in any way.'
From that time forward, with the best faith in the world and without meaning the least harm, Mouret turned his sons into a couple of spies. He told Octave and Serge that they must repeat to him all that was said about the priest in the town, and he even instructed them to follow him whenever they came across him. But the information that was to be derived from such sources was quickly exhausted. The talk occasioned by the arrival of a strange curate in the diocese died away; the town seemed to have extended its pardon to the 'poor fellow,' who glided about in the shade in such a rusty old cassock, and its only apparent feeling for him now was one of disdain. The priest, on the other hand, always went straight to the cathedral and so returned from it, invariably passing through the same streets. Octave said, laughingly, that he was sure he counted the paving-stones.
Then Mouret bethought himself of enlisting the help of Désirée in the task of collecting information. In the evening he took her to the bottom of the garden and listened to her chatter about what she had done and what she had seen during the day, and he always tried to lead her on to the subject of the tenants of the second floor.
'Now, just listen to what I tell you,' he said to her one day. 'To-morrow, when the window is open, just throw your ball into the room, and then go up and ask for it.'
The next day the girl threw her ball into the room, but she had scarcely reached the steps of the house before the ball, returned by an invisible hand, bounced up from the terrace. Her father, who had reckoned on the child's taking ways leading to a renewal of the intercourse which had been interrupted since the day of the priest's arrival, now lost all hope. It was quite clear that the Abbé had made up his mind to keep to himself. This rebuff, however, only made Mouret's curiosity all the keener. He even condescended to go gossiping in corners with the cook, to the great displeasure of Marthe, who reproached him for his want of self-respect; but at this he became angry with her and defended himself by lies. However, as he felt that he was in the wrong, it was only in secret that he henceforth talked to Rose about the Faujases.
One morning she beckoned to him to follow her into the kitchen.
'Oh, sir!' she said, as she shut the door, 'I have been watching for you to come down from your room for more than an hour.'
'Have you found out something then?'
'Well, you shall hear. Yesterday evening I was chatting with Madame Faujas for more than an hour!'
Mouret felt a thrill of joy. He sat down on an old tattered rush-bottom chair, in the midst of the dirty cloths and vegetable parings left from the previous day, and exclaimed:
'Go along! make haste!'
'Well,' continued the cook, 'I was at the street-door saying good-night to Monsieur Rastoil's servant, when Madame Faujas came downstairs to empty a pail of dirty water in the gutter. Instead of immediately