Complete Works of Emile Zola (348 page)

‘I won’t take anything more downstairs,’ she exclaimed to her son, growing rebellious at this unforeseen result of her restorations. ‘It isn’t the least good, for your sister only walks off with everything directly I put it back. The hussy! I might just as well give her the chest at once! She must have got a nice little hoard together! I beseech you, Ovide, let me keep what still remains. Our landlady will be none the worse off for it, because she will lose it anyhow.’

‘My sister is what she is,’ the priest replied tranquilly; ‘but I wish my mother to be an honest woman. You will help me much more by not committing such actions.’

She was forced to restore everything, and from that time forward she harboured fierce hatred against the Trouches, Marthe, and the whole establishment. She often said that the day would come when she should have to defend Ovide against everybody.

The Trouches were now reigning in all sovereignty. They completed the conquest of the house, and made their way into every corner of it. The Abbé’s own rooms were the only ones they respected. It was only before him that they trembled. But even his presence in the house did not prevent them from inviting their friends, and indulging in debauches till two o’clock in the morning. Guillaume Porquier came with parties of mere youths. Olympe, not­withstanding her thirty-seven years, then simpered and put on girlish airs; and flirted with more than one of the college lads. The house was becoming a perfect paradise to her. Trouche sniggered and joked about it when they were alone together.

‘Well,’ she said, quite tranquilly, ‘you do as you like, don’t you? We are both free to do as we please, you know.’

Trouche had, as a matter of fact, all but brought his pleasant life to an abrupt conclusion. There had been an unpleasant affair at the Home of the Virgin in connection with one of the girls there. One of the Sisters of St. Joseph had com­plained of Trouche to Abbé Faujas. He had thanked her for telling him, and had impressed upon her that the cause of religion would suffer by such a scandal. So the affair was hushed up, and the lady patronesses never had the faintest suspicion of it. Abbé Faujas, however, had a terrible scene with his brother-in-law, whom he assailed in Olympe’s presence, so that his wife might have a weapon against him, and be able to keep him in check.

The Trouches had been troubled for a long time past by another matter. Notwithstanding their life of clover, although they were provided with so many things out of Marthe’s cupboards, they had got terribly into debt in the neighbour­hood. Trouche squandered his salary away in cafés, and Olympe wasted the money which she drew out of Marthe’s pockets by indulging in all sorts of silly fancies. As for the necessaries of life, they made a point of getting these upon credit. There was one account which made them particularly uneasy, that of a pastrycook in the Rue de la Banne, which amounted to more than a hundred francs, for the pastrycook was a rough, blunt sort of man, who had threatened to lay the whole matter before Abbé Faujas. The Trouches thus long lived in a state of alarm, but when the bill was actually presented to him Abbé Faujas paid it without a word, and even forgot to address any reproaches to them on the subject. The priest seemed to be above all those sordid little matters, and went on living a gloomy and rigid life in this house that was given up to pillage, without appearing conscious of the gradual ruin which was falling upon it. Everything, indeed, was crumbling away around him, while he continued to advance straight towards the goal of his ambition. He still camped like a soldier in his big bare room, indulging in no comforts, and showing annoyance when any were pressed upon him. Since he had become the master of Plassans, he had dropped back into complete carelessness as to his appearance. His hat became rusty, his stockings muddy; his cassock, which his mother mended every morning, looked just like the pitiful, worn-out rag which he had worn when he first came to Plassans.

‘Pooh! it is very good yet,’ he used to say, when anyone hazarded a timid remark about it.

He made a display of it, walked about the streets in it, carrying his head loftily, and altogether unheeding the curious glances which were cast at him. There was no bravado in the matter; he was simply following his natural inclinations. Now that he believed that he need no longer lay himself out to please, he fell back into all his old disdain for mere appear­ance. It was his triumph to sit down just as he was, with his tall, clumsy body, rough, blunt manner and torn clothes, in the midst of conquered Plassans.

Madame de Condamin, distressed by the strong smell which emanated from his cassock, one day gently took him to task about his appearance.

‘Do you know,’ she said to him, laughing, ‘that the ladies are beginning to detest you? They say that you now never take the least trouble over your toilet. Once upon a time, when you took your handkerchief out of your pocket, it was just as though there were a choir-boy swinging a thurible behind you.’

The priest looked greatly astonished. He was quite unaware of any change in himself. Then Madame de Condamin, drawing a little nearer to him, said in a friendly tone:

‘Will you let me speak quite frankly to you, my dear Curé? It is really a mistake on your part to be so negligent of your appearance. You scarcely shave, and you never comb your hair; it is as rough and tumbled as though you had been fighting. I can assure you that all this has a very bad effect. Madame Rastoil and Madame Delangre told me yesterday that they could scarcely recognise you. You are really com­promising your success.’

The priest gave a laugh of defiance, as he shook his powerful unkempt head.

‘Now that the battle is won,’ he merely replied, ‘they must put up with my hair being uncombed.’

Plassans had, indeed, to put up with him with his hair uncombed. The once seemingly flexible priest was now transformed into a stern, despotic master who bent all wills to his own. His face, which had again become cadaverous in hue, shone with eyes like an eagle’s, and he raised his big hands as though they were filled with threats and chastise­ments. The town was positively terrified on beholding the master it had imposed upon itself, with his shabby, dirty clothing and unkempt hair. The covert alarm of the women only tended, however, to strengthen his power. He was stern and harsh to his penitents, but not one of them dared to leave him. They came to him in fear and trembling, in which they found some touch of painful pleasure.

‘I was wrong, my dear,’ Madame de Condamin confessed to Marthe, ‘in wanting him to perfume himself. I am growing accustomed to him, and even prefer him as he is. He is indeed a man!’

Abbé Faujas was supreme at the Bishop’s. Since the elections he had left Monseigneur Rousselot only a show of authority. The Bishop lived amidst his beloved books in his study, where the Abbé, who administered the diocese from an adjoining room, virtually kept him prisoner, only allowing him to see those persons whom he could fully trust. The clergy trembled before this absolute master. The old white-headed priests bent before him with all humility and surrender of personal will. Monseigneur Rousselot, when he was alone with Abbé Surin, often wept silent tears. He regretted the impetuous mastery of Abbé Fenil, who had, at any rate, intervals of affectionate softness, whereas now, under Abbé Faujas’s rule, he felt a relentless, ceaseless pressure. How­ever, he would smile again and resign himself, saying with a sort of pleasant self-satisfaction:

‘Come, my child, let us get to work. I must not com­plain, for I am now leading the life which I always dreamed of — a life of perfect solitude amongst my books.’

Then he sighed, and continued in a lower tone:

‘I should be quite happy if I were not afraid of losing you, my dear Surin. He will end by not tolerating your presence here any longer. I thought that he looked at you very suspiciously yesterday. Always agree with him, I beseech you; take his side and don’t spare me. Ah me! I have only you left now.’

Two months after the elections Abbé Vial, one of the Bishop’s grand-vicars, went to settle at Rome. Abbé Faujas stepped into his place as a matter of course, although it had been promised long ago to Abbé Bourrette. He did not even promote the latter to the living of Saint-Saturnin’s which he vacated, but preferred to it a young ambitious priest whom he had made a tool of his own.

‘His lordship would not hear of you,’ he said curtly to Abbé Bourrette when he met him.

When the poor old priest stammered out that he would go and see the Bishop, and ask for an explanation, Abbé Faujas added more gently:

‘His lordship is too unwell to see you. Trust yourself in my hands; I will plead your cause for you.’

From his first appearance in the Chamber in Paris Monsieur Delangre had voted with the majority. Plassans was conquered for the Empire. Abbé Faujas almost seemed actuated by a feeling of revenge in the rough way in which he treated the prudent townspeople. He again closed the little doors that led into the Impasse des Chevillottes, and compelled Monsieur Rastoil and his friends to enter the Sub-Prefecture by the official door facing the Place. When he appeared at the sub-prefect’s friendly gatherings, the guests showed themselves very humble in his presence. So great was the fascination he exercised, and so great the fear he inspired, that even when he was not present nobody dared to make the slightest equivocal remark concerning him.

‘He is a man of the greatest merit,’ declared Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, who now counted on being promoted to a prefecture.

‘A very remarkable man, indeed,’ chimed in Doctor Porquier.

All the company nodded their heads approvingly till Monsieur de Condamin, who began to feel irritated by this eulogistic unanimity, amused himself by putting them into embarrassment.

‘Well, he hasn’t a pleasant temper, anyway,’ said he.

This remark had a chilling effect upon the company. Each was afraid that his neighbour might be in the terrible Abbé’s pay.

‘The grand vicar has an excellent heart,’ Monsieur Rastoil prudently remarked; ‘but, like all great minds, he appears at first sight to be a little stern.’

‘It is just so with me; I am very easy to get on with, but I have always had the reputation of being a hard, stern man,’ exclaimed Monsieur de Bourdeu, who had become reconciled with the party again after a long private interview which he had had with Abbé Faujas.

Then, wishing to put everyone at ease again, the presiding judge exclaimed:

‘Have you heard that there is a probability of a bishopric for the grand vicar?’

At this they brightened up. Monsieur Maffre expressed the opinion that it would be of Plassans itself that Abbé Faujas would become bishop, after the retirement of Mon­seigneur Rousselot, whose health was very feeble.

‘Everyone would gain by it,’ said Abbé Bourrette guile­lessly. ‘Illness has embittered his lordship; I know that our excellent Faujas has made the greatest efforts to persuade him out of certain unjust prejudices which he entertains.’

‘He is very fond of you,’ asserted Judge Paloque, who had just received his decoration; ‘my wife has heard him complain of the way in which you are neglected.’

When Abbé Surin was present, he, too, joined in the general chorus; but, although he had a mitre in his pocket, to use the expression of the priests of the diocese, the success of Abbé Faujas made him uneasy. He looked at him in his pretty way, and, calling to mind the Bishop’s prediction, tried to discover the weak point which would bring that colossus toppling in the dust.

The gentlemen of the party, it should be said, had had their desires satisfied; that is, excepting Monsieur de Bourdeu and Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, who were still waiting for the marks of the government’s favour. These two were, consequently, the warmest partisans of Abbé Faujas. The others, to tell the truth, would have been glad to rebel, if they had dared. They were growing secretly weary of the con­tinual gratitude which was exacted from them by their master, and they ardently wished that some strong, bold hand would effect their deliverance. One day Madame Paloque, with an affectation of indifference inquired:

‘What has become of Abbé Fenil? I haven’t seen or heard of him for an age.’

There was profound silence. Monsieur de Condamin was the only one present capable of venturing upon such dangerous ground. They all looked at him.

‘Oh!’ he said quietly, ‘I believe he shuts himself up at his place at Les Tulettes.’

Madame de Condamin added with an ironical smile:

‘He can sleep quietly now. His career is over; he will take no part again in the affairs of Plassans.’

There was only Marthe who remained a real obstacle in Abbé Faujas’s path. He felt that she was escaping him more and more each day. He stiffened his will and called up all his forces as priest and man to bend her, without succeed­ing in moderating the flame which he had fanned into life. She was striving to reach the logical end of her passionate longings, and insisted upon forcing her way further and further into the peace and ecstasy and perfect self-forgetful­ness of divine happiness. It was bitter pain and anguish to her to be, as it were, walled in and prevented from reaching that threshold of light, of which she fancied she caught a glimpse, though it seemed to be ever receding from her reach. She shivered and trembled now at Saint-Saturnin’s in the coldness and the gloom amidst which she had once felt such thrills of delight. The peals of the organ no longer stirred her with a tremor of voluptuous joy; the white clouds of incense no longer lulled her into sweet mystic dreams; the gleaming chapels and the sacred pyxes that flashed like stars, the chasubles with their sheen of gold and silver, all now seemed pale and wan to her eyes that were dull and dim with tears. Like a damned soul yearning after Paradise, she threw up her arms in bitter desperation and besought the love that denied itself to her, sobbing and wailing:

‘My God, my God! why hast Thou forsaken me?’

Bowed down with shame, hurt, as it were, by the cold silence of the vaulted roof, Marthe left the church, burning with the anger of a scorned woman. She had wild dreams of pouring out her blood, and she writhed madly at her impotence to do more than to pray, at being unable to spring at a single bound into the arms of God. And when she returned home, she felt that her only hope was in Abbé Faujas. It was he alone that could make her God’s. He had revealed to her the initiatory joys; he must now tear aside the whole veil. But the priest fell into a passion with her and treated her roughly, refusing to hear her so long as she was not on her knees before him, humble and unresisting like a corpse. She listened to him, standing upright, sustained by an impulse of revolt that thrilled her whole being, as she vented upon him the bitterness that came of her deceived yearnings, and accused him of the base treachery which was torturing her.