Complete Works of Emile Zola (320 page)

He was perpetually teasing her, but she never replied, simply fixing upon him the gaze of her eyes, in which a passing brightness glistened when he went too far. By degrees he became more bitter, he was tired of mocking at her; and at the end of a month he quite lost his temper.

‘What sense is there in going and mixing yourself up with a lot of priests?’ he would growl at times when his dinner was not ready when he wanted it. ‘You are always away from home now, there’s no keeping you in the house for an hour at a time! I shouldn’t mind it myself, if everything weren’t going to pieces here. I never get any of my things mended, the table is not even laid by seven o’clock, there’s no making anything out of Rose, and the whole place is left to rack and ruin.’

He picked up a house-cloth that was lying about, locked up a bottle of wine that had been left out, and began to wipe the dust off the furniture with his fingers, working himself up to a higher pitch of anger as he cried: ‘There’ll soon be nothing left for me to do but to take up a broom and put an apron on! You would see me do it without disturbing your­self, I know! I might do all the work of the house without your being any the wiser for it indeed! Do you know that I spent a couple of hours this morning in putting this cupboard in order? No, no, things can’t go on any longer in this way!’

At other times there was a disturbance about the children. Once when Mouret came home he found Désirée ‘wallowing like a young pig’ in the garden, lying on her stomach before an ant-hole, and trying to find out what the ants might be doing in the ground.

‘We may be very thankful, I’m sure, that you don’t sleep away from the house as well!’ he cried as soon as he caught sight of his wife. ‘Come and look at your daughter! I wouldn’t let her change her dress because I wished that you might see what a pretty sight she is.’

The girl cried bitterly while her father kept turning her round.

‘Look at her now! Isn’t she a nice spectacle? This is the way children go on when they are left to themselves! It isn’t her fault, poor little innocent! At one time you couldn’t leave her alone for five minutes: she would be getting into the fire, you said! Well, I expect she will be getting into the fire now, and everything will be burnt up, and then there’ll be an end of it all!’

When Rose had taken Désirée away, he continued:

‘You live now simply for other people’s children. You don’t give a moment to your own! What a goose you must be to go knocking yourself up for a parcel of hussies who only laugh at you! Go and walk about the ramparts any evening and you will see something of the conduct of those impudent creatures whom you talk of putting under the protection of the Virgin!’

He stopped to take breath and then went on again:

‘At all events see that Désirée is properly taken care of before you go picking up girls from the gutter! There are holes as big as my fist in her dress. One of these days we shall be finding her in the garden with a leg or an arm broken. I don’t say anything about Octave or Serge, though I should much prefer your being at home when they come back from college. They are up to all kinds of diabolical tricks. Only yesterday they split a couple of flag-stones on the terrace by letting off crackers. I tell you that if you don’t keep yourself at home we shall find the whole house blown to bits one of these days!’

Marthe said a few words in self-defence. She had been obliged to go out, she urged. There was no doubt that Mouret, who possessed an ample fund of common sense, in spite of his proclivities for teasing and jeering, was right. The house was getting into a most unsatisfactory state. That once quiet spot indeed, where the sun had set so peacefully, was becoming uproarious, left to look after itself, suffering from the children’s noisiness, the father’s bursts of temper, and the mother’s careless, indifferent lassitude. In the evening, at table, they dined badly and quarrelled amongst themselves. Rose did just what she liked, and she, by the way, was of opinion that her mistress was quite in the right.

Matters came to such a pass at last that Mouret, happen­ing to meet his mother-in-law, complained to her bitterly of Marthe’s conduct, although he was quite aware of the pleasure he afforded the old lady by revealing to her the troubles of his home.

‘You astonish me extremely!’ Félicité replied with a smile. ‘Marthe always seemed to me to be afraid of you, and I considered her even too yielding and obedient. A woman ought not to tremble before her husband.’

‘Ah, yes, indeed!’ cried Mouret, with a hopeless look, ‘once upon a time she would have sunk into the ground to avoid a quarrel; a mere glance was sufficient to make her do everything I desired. But that’s all quite altered now. I may remonstrate and shout as much as I like, she still goes her own way. She doesn’t reply, she hasn’t as yet got to flying out at me, but that will come as well, I dare say, by-and-by.’

Félicité then answered with some hypocrisy:

‘I will speak to Marthe if you like. But it might, per­haps, hurt her if I did. Matters of this kind are better kept between husband and wife. I don’t feel very uneasy about them; I’ve no doubt that you’ll soon get back again all the quiet peacefulness which you used to be so proud of.’

Mouret shook his head with downcast eyes.

‘No! no!’ he said; ‘I know myself too well. I can make a noise, but it does no good. In reality I am as weak as a child. People are quite wrong in supposing that I gained my own way with my wife by force. She has generally done what I wanted her to do, because she was quite in­different about everything, and would as soon do one thing as another. Mild as she looks, she is very obstinate, I can tell you. Well, I must try to make the best of it.’

Then, raising his eyes, he added:

‘It would have been better if I had said nothing about all this to you; but you won’t mention it to anyone, will you?’

When Marthe went to see her mother the next day, the latter received her with some show of coldness, and ex­claimed:

‘It is wrong of you, my dear, to show yourself so neglect­ful of your husband. I saw him yesterday and he is quite angry about it. I am well aware that he often behaves in a very ridiculous manner, but that does not justify you in neglecting your home.’

Marthe fixed her eyes upon her mother.

‘Ah! he has been complaining about me!’ she said curtly. ‘The least he could do would be to keep silent, for I never complain about him.’

Then she began to talk of other matters, but Madame Rougon brought her back to the subject of her husband by inquiring after Abbé Faujas.

‘Perhaps Mouret isn’t very fond of the Abbé, and finds fault with you in consequence. Is that the case, do you think?’

Marthe showed great surprise.

‘What an idea!’ she exclaimed. ‘What makes you think that my husband does not like Abbé Faujas? He has certainly never said anything to me which would lead me to imagine such a thing. He hasn’t said anything to you, has he? Oh no! you are quite mistaken. He would go up to their rooms to fetch them if the mother didn’t come down to have her game of cards with him.’

Mouret, indeed, never complained in any way about Abbé Faujas. He joked with him a little bluntly sometimes, and occasionally brought his name into the teasing banter with which he tormented his wife, but that was all.

One morning, as he was shaving, he said to Marthe:

‘I’ll tell you what, my dear; if ever you go to confession, take the Abbé for your director, and then your sins will, at any rate, be kept amongst ourselves.’

Abbé Faujas heard confessions on Tuesdays and Fridays, on which days Marthe used to avoid going to Saint-Saturnin’s. She alleged that she did not want to disturb him; but she was really under the influence of that timid uneasiness which disquieted her whenever she saw him in his surplice redolent of the mysterious odours of the sacristy. One Friday, she went with Madame de Condamin to see how the works at the Home of the Virgin were getting on. The men were just finishing the frontage. Madame de Condamin found fault with the ornamentation, which, said she, was extremely mean and characterless. At the entrance there ought to have been two slender columns with a pointed arch, something at once light and suggestive of religion, something that would be a credit to the committee of lady patronesses. Marthe hesitated for a time, but she gradually admitted that the place looked very mean as it was. Then as the other pressed her, she promised to speak to Monsieur Lieutaud on the subject that very day. In order that she might keep her promise, she went to the cathedral before returning home. It was four o’clock when she got there, and the architect had just left. When she asked for Abbé Faujas, a verger told her that he was con­fessing in the chapel of Saint Aurelia. Then for the first time she recollected what day it was, and replied that she could not wait. But as she passed the chapel of Saint Aurelia on her way out, she thought that the Abbé might, perhaps, have already caught sight of her. The truth was that she felt singularly faint, and so she sat down outside the chapel, near the railing. And there she remained.

The sky was grey, and the church was steeped in twilight. Here and there in the aisles, already shrouded in darkness, gleamed a lamp, or some gilt candelabrum, or some Virgin’s silver robe; and a pale ray filtered through the great nave and died away on the polished oak of the stalls and benches. Marthe had never before felt so completely overcome. Her legs seemed to have lost all their strength, and her hands were so heavy that she clasped them across her knees to save herself from having to support their weight. She allowed herself to drift into drowsiness, in which she still continued to hear and see, but in a very soft subdued fashion. The slight sounds wafted along beneath the vaulted roof, the falling of a chair, the slow step of some worshipper, all filled her with emotion, assumed a musical tone which thrilled her to the heart; while the last glimmers of daylight and the dusky shadows that crept up the pillars like covers of crape, assumed in her eyes all the delicate tints of shot silk. She gradually fell into a state of exquisite languor, in which she seemed to melt away and die. Everything around her then vanished, and she was thrilled with perfect happiness in her strange, trance-like condition.

The sound of a voice awoke her from this state of ecstasy.

‘I am very sorry,’ said Abbé Faujas; ‘I saw you, but I could not get away.’

She then appeared to wake up with a start. She looked at him. He was standing before her in the dying light, in his surplice. His last penitent had just left, and the empty church seemed to be growing still more solemn.

‘You want to speak to me?’ he asked.

Marthe made an effort to recall her thoughts.

‘Yes,’ she murmured; ‘but I can’t remember now. Ah yes! it is about the frontage, which Madame de Condamin thinks too mean. There ought to be two columns instead of that characterless flat door. And up above one might put a pointed arch filled with stained glass. It would look very pretty. You understand what I mean, don’t you?’

He gazed at her very gravely with his hands crossed over his surplice, and his head inclined towards her; and she, still seated, without strength to rise to her feet, went on stammer­ing confusedly, as though she had been taken unawares in a sleep which she could not shake off.

‘It would entail additional expense, of course; but we might have columns of soft stone with a very simple moulding. We might speak about it to the master mason, and he will tell us how much it would cost. But we had better pay him his last account first. It is two thousand one hundred and odd francs, I think. We have the money in hand; Madame Paloque told me so this morning. There will be no difficulty about that, Monsieur l’Abbé.’

She lowered her head, as though she felt oppressed by the gaze that was bent upon her. When she raised it again and met the priest’s eyes, she clasped her hands together, after the manner of a child seeking forgiveness, and she burst into sobs. The priest allowed her to weep, still standing in silence in front of her. Then she fell on her knees before him, weeping behind her hands, with which she covered her face.

‘Get up, I pray you,’ said Abbé Faujas gently. ‘It is before God that you should go and kneel.’

He helped her to rise and he sat down beside her. They talked together for a long time in low tones. The night had now fully fallen, and the lamps set golden specks gleaming through the black depths of the church. The murmur of their voices alone disturbed the silence in front of the chapel of Saint Aurelia. From the priest streamed a flood of words after each of Marthe’s weak broken answers. When at last they rose, he seemed to be refusing her some favour which she was seeking with persistence. And leading her towards the door, he raised his voice as he said:

‘No! I cannot, I assure you I cannot. It would be better for you to take Abbé Bourrette.’

‘I am in great need of your advice,’ Marthe murmured, beseechingly. ‘I think that with your help everything would be easy to me.’

‘You are mistaken,’ he replied, in a sterner voice. ‘On the contrary, I fear that my direction would be prejudicial to you to begin with. Abbé Bourrette is the priest you want, I assure you. Later on, I may perhaps give you a different reply.’

Marthe obeyed the priest’s injunctions, and on the morrow the worshippers at Saint-Saturnin’s were surprised to see Madame Mouret kneel before Abbé Bourrette’s confessional. Two days later nothing but this conversion was spoken of in Plassans. Abbé Faujas’s name was pronounced with subtle smiles by certain people, but on the whole the impression was a good one and in favour of the Abbé. Madame Rastoil com­plimented Madame Mouret in full committee, and Madame Delangre professed to see in the matter a first blessing vouchsafed by God who rewarded the lady patronesses for their good work by touching the heart of the only one amongst them who had not conformed with the requirements of religion. Madame de Condamin, taking Marthe aside, said to her:

‘You have done right, my dear. What you have done is a necessity for a woman; and, besides, as soon as one begins to go about a little, it is necessary to go to church.’

The only matter of astonishment was her choice of Abbé Bourrette. That worthy man almost entirely confined him­self to hearing the confessions of young girls. The ladies found him ‘so very uninteresting.’ On the Thursday at the Rougons’ reception, before Marthe’s arrival, the matter was talked over in a corner of the green drawing-room, and it was Madame Paloque with her waspish tongue who summed up the matter.