The Conquest of Plassans (Classic Reprint) Page 15

  The sky was grey, the twilight slowly pervaded the church. In the already-dark aisles gleamed the starry flicker of a lamp, the gold base of a chandelier, the silver gown of a Virgin. And entering the great nave, a pale ray of light was fading on the polished oak of the pews and the stalls. Marthe had never until then experienced such a sense of deliverance. Her legs felt as if they were broken; her hands were so heavy she had to clasp them together on her lap in order not to feel the pain of their weight on her arms. She allowed herself to drift into a dreamlike state in which she could still see and hear, but all very gently and sweetly. The slight noises which echoed through the vault, a chair falling, the steps of someone arriving late to her devotions, filled her with tenderness, and took on a musical sonority that went straight to her heart. The last reflections of daylight, the shadows, creeping up and covering the pillars like dust sheets, took on for her the delicate and changing nuances of shot silk; her whole being went into a delicious swoon and in those depths she felt her soul melt, and die. Then everything around her was extinguished. She found perfect bliss in something ineffable.

  The sound of a voice drew her out of this ecstasy.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Abbé Faujas, ‘I saw you but I couldn’t leave…’

  Then she appeared to wake with a start. She looked at him. He was standing there in his surplice in the dying light. His last penitent had just left, and the empty church was plunged further into a solemn darkness.

  ‘Did you want to speak to me?’ he asked.

  She made an effort to remember.

  ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘I can’t recall… Oh yes, it’s about the façade that Madame de Condamin thinks is not imposing enough. We need two columns, instead of that flat door that doesn’t do anything to enhance it. They should put in an ogive with stained glass. It would be very pretty… You do understand, don’t you?’

  He looked at her very thoughtfully, his hands clasped over his surplice, towering over her, bending his serious face down towards her. And she, still sitting there, not having the strength to get up, went on incoherently, as if surprised out of a sleep of her own volition which she could not throw off.

  ‘It’s true it would be more expense… We could make do with columns in a soft stone with a simple moulding… We can talk to the head mason about it if you like; he’ll tell us what it costs. Except it would be good to pay his last bill before that. It’s two thousand and something francs, I think. We do have the funds, Madame Paloque told me so this morning… All that can be arranged, Monsieur l’Abbé.’

  She had bowed her head, as if she were oppressed by the eyes she could feel upon her. When she raised her head again and met the eyes of the priest, she put her hands together like a child asking forgiveness and burst into tears. The priest let her weep, still standing there without speaking. Then she fell on her knees in front of him, weeping into his closed hands, covering her face with them.

  ‘Please get up,’ Abbé Faujas said to her gently. ‘It is before God that you must kneel.’

  He helped her to her feet and sat down beside her. Then they talked quietly for a long time. Darkness had fallen completely, the lamps glimmered, little gold stars in the black depths of the church. Only the murmur of their voices made a tremor of sound outside the Sainte-Aurélie chapel. You could hear the abundant words of the priest flowing freely and uninterruptedly after each faint, broken answer by Marthe. When they finally rose, he seemed to be refusing her a grace that she was insistently asking from him, he drew her towards the door and, raising his voice, said:

  ‘No, I assure you, I can’t; it will be better for you to have Abbé Bourrette.’

  ‘But I shall really need your advice,’ begged Marthe softly. ‘I believe that with you everything would be easy.’

  ‘You are wrong,’ the priest went on in a firmer voice. ‘On the contrary, I am afraid my advice would be bad initially. Abbé Bourrette is the priest for you, believe me… Later, perhaps, I shall give you a different answer.’

  Marthe obeyed. Next day the pious ladies of Saint-Saturnin were greatly surprised to see Madame Mouret arrive and kneel in front of the confessional of Abbé Bourrette. Two days later this conversion was the sole subject of conversation in Plassans. The name of Abbé Faujas was uttered with knowing smiles by certain people. But all in all, the impression made was excellent and to the great credit of the priest. Madame Rastoil congratulated Madame Mouret during the committee meeting. Madame Delangre saw in it a first blessing from God, rewarding the patron ladies for their good works by touching the heart of the only one amongst them who was not practising. Whereas Madame de Condamin said to Marthe, taking her on one side:

  ‘Well, my dear, you were quite right. A woman must do these things. And then, I have to say, as soon as one goes out a little, one has to go to church.’

  The only thing that astonished them was the choice of Abbé Bourrette. That worthy man only gave confession to young girls. The ladies found him ‘rather boring’! At the Rougons on Thursday, as Marthe hadn’t yet arrived, they talked about it in a corner of the green drawing room, and it was Madame Paloque with her poisonous tongue who had the last word in all the gossip.

  ‘Abbé Faujas did right not to keep her for himself,’ she opined, with a pout that made her face even uglier. ‘Abbé Bourrette saves everyone and shocks no one.’

  When Marthe arrived that day her mother went to meet her, making a point of tenderly embracing her in front of all the company. She herself had made her peace with the Almighty the day after the coup d’état. It seemed to her that Abbé Faujas could henceforth risk venturing into the green drawing room. But he made his excuses, spoke of how busy he was, of his love of solitude. She took it that he was preparing for himself a triumphal re-entry into society for the following winter. Anyway the priest was enjoying an ever-increasing popularity. In the first months the only penitents he had were the churchgoing women from the herb market behind the cathedral, the salad-sellers, whose dialect he listened to patiently without always understanding what they said. Whereas now, especially since the fuss caused by the Work of the Virgin, on Tuesdays and Fridays he saw a whole bevy of bourgeoises in their silk gowns kneeling around his confessional. When Marthe naïvely told everyone he had not wanted to take her on, Madame de Condamin made an impulsive move. She left her mentor, the assistant bishop of Saint-Saturnin, who was devastated at being rejected like that, and let it be widely known she was changing to Abbé Faujas. Such an honour established the latter definitively in the society of Plassans.

  When Mouret learned that his wife was going to confession he said to her simply:

  ‘Are you doing something you shouldn’t at the moment, that you need to go and tell your problems to a man of the cloth?’

  Moreover, in the middle of all this religious fuss, he seemed to be getting more isolated, more set in his ways, in his circumscribed life. His wife had told him off for complaining about her.

  ‘You are right and I’m wrong,’ he had replied. ‘One shouldn’t give pleasure to others by telling them about one’s own problems… I promise you I shan’t give your mother that pleasure a second time. I’ve been thinking about it. The house can fall down around my head for all I care, I swear I shan’t go snivelling to anyone.’

  And from that moment on, in fact, he had gained the respect of his household, not scolding his wife in front of anybody else, calling himself the happiest of men, as he had been wont to do. This effort at common sense cost him little, it was part of a constant calculation of his own well-being. He even overplayed his role as the methodical householder satisfied with his lot. Marthe only felt his impatient moods when his stamping around the house got louder. For weeks at a time he treated her with respect, assailing his children and Rose with his mocking remarks, shouting at them about the least little thing from morning to night. If he hurt her it was more often than not by coming out with little nastinesses that only she could understand.

  He had always been careful with his m
oney, but now he became miserly.

  ‘There’s no sense’, he would grumble, ‘in throwing away money the way we do. I bet you give it all away to your little trollops. They waste your time enough already… Listen, my dear, I’ll give you a hundred francs a month for food. If you absolutely must give money to girls who don’t deserve it, you must take it out of your dress allowance.’

  He kept his word. He refused to buy a pair of little boots for Marthe the following month on the grounds that it would unbalance his accounts and that he had warned her about that. But one evening his wife found him weeping profusely in their bedroom. All her good feelings were stirred. She took him in her arms and begged him to tell her what was the matter. But he thrust her aside, said that he wasn’t crying but had a migraine, and that was what was making his eyes red.

  ‘Think I’m a blubber like you?’ he cried.

  She was hurt. The next day he affected to be extremely jolly. Then, a few days later after dinner, when Abbé Faujas and his mother had come down, he refused to play his game of piquet. He didn’t feel like playing, he said. The following days he found more pretexts, so the games ceased. Everyone would go out on the terrace. Mouret sat opposite his wife and the priest, chatting, making the most of every opportunity to dominate the conversation, while Madame Faujas, a few feet away, stayed in the shadows, not speaking or moving, her hands on her lap, like one of those figures from legend, holding on to a treasure fiercely like a faithful crouching dog.

  ‘What a lovely night!’ Mouret exclaimed every evening. ‘It’s nicer out than in the dining room. You were quite right to come out here in the cool… Oh, look, a shooting star! Did you see, Monsieur l’Abbé? I like to think it’s Saint Peter lighting his pipe up there.’

  He laughed. Marthe remained serious, embarrassed by the jokes which spoiled the vast heavens that stretched above them, between the pear trees of Monsieur Rastoil and the chestnuts of the sub-prefecture. Sometimes he pretended not to know she was now a practising Christian; he took the priest on one side, declaring that he was counting on him to save the whole household. At other times he never began a sentence without saying in a good-humoured tone: ‘Now that my wife goes to confession…’ Then when he was bored with this everlasting subject, he listened to what was being said in the gardens next door; he identified the light, raised voices carried through the calm night air, while the last sounds of Plassans died away in the distance.

  ‘There’s Monsieur de Condamin and Doctor Porquier. They must be having fun at the Paloques’ expense. Did you hear that high falsetto of Monsieur Delangre saying: “Ladies, you ought to go in, it’s getting cooler.” Don’t you think our Delangre always talks as though he’s swallowed a reed pipe?’

  And he turned in the direction of the Rastoils’ garden.

  ‘Nobody home there,’ he went on. ‘I can’t hear a sound… Oh yes there is—those great gawky girls are down by the fountain. You would think the elder one is chewing pebbles every time she opens her mouth. In the evenings they jabber away for a good hour. But if they are telling each other about their young men it can’t last very long… Ah, they are all there. There’s Abbé Surin piping up and Abbé Fenil, his voice would do as a rattle on Good Friday. In that garden sometimes they are up to twenty strong, doing nothing. I think they go there to listen to what we are talking about.’

  Abbé Faujas and Marthe made very brief replies to all these gossipy remarks when he addressed them directly. But for the most part, with upturned faces and glazed eyes, they were together somewhere else, on another, higher, plane. One evening Mouret dozed off. Then slowly they began to talk; they lowered their voices, their heads came closer together. And a few feet away, Madame Faujas, hands on her lap, all eyes and ears, not hearing, not seeing, seemed to be watching over them.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE summer passed. Abbé Faujas seemed in no hurry to take advantage of his budding popularity. He continued to closet himself in the Mourets’ house, happy with the solitude afforded by the garden, going there after a while even in the daytime. He read his breviary in the arbour at the end, walking slowly along the surrounding wall with bowed head. Occasionally he would shut the book, and his steps got slower still, as though he was absorbed in deep reverie. And Mouret, who was spying on him, was filled with a gnawing impatience at seeing this black figure coming and going behind his fruit trees for hours on end.

  ‘It’s not my own home any more,’ he muttered. ‘I can’t look up any more without seeing that surplice… He’s like a crow, that man. He has a beady eye, he looks as if he’s watching and waiting for something. I don’t trust his grand attitude of being above it all.’

  It was getting on for the beginning of September by the time the building for the Work of the Virgin was ready. Such works take a long time in the provinces. It has to be said that the patron ladies had twice upset Monsieur Lieutaud’s plans with their own ideas. When the committee took possession of the establishment they rewarded the architect for his amenability with the kindest acclaim. They thought everything was just right: huge rooms, excellent airy spaces, a courtyard planted out with trees and ornamented with two little fountains. Madame de Condamin was charmed with the façade, one of her ideas. Over the door on a black marble plaque were carved the words ‘Work of the Virgin’ in gold lettering.

  The inauguration was a very touching occasion. The bishop himself, with the chapter, came to instate the Sisters of Saint-Joseph who were authorized to serve the establishment. They had got together fifty or so girls of between eight and fifteen from off the streets in the old quarter of the town. The parents, to get them admitted, had simply been required to assert that their jobs obliged them to be away from home for the whole day. Monsieur Delangre gave a speech which drew much applause. He explained at length and in a noble diction what this new kind of school would be like. He called it the ‘school of good behaviour and work, in which young and lively creatures would be preserved from temptation’. Everyone noticed, towards the end of the speech, the delicate allusion to the creator of the Work, Abbé Faujas. He was there, surrounded by the other priests. When all heads turned in his direction, his fine, serious face remained impassive. Seated on the platform in the midst of the patron ladies, Marthe blushed.

  When the ceremony was over, the bishop wished to visit every inch of the establishment. Disregarding Abbé Fenil’s obvious ill humour, he beckoned to Abbé Faujas, whose big black eyes had not for a moment left the bishop’s face, and asked if he would be so good as to accompany him, adding aloud with a smile, that he should certainly not have a more informed guide. The word went round amongst those present, who made way for them; and that evening the talk in Plassans was all of the bishop’s attitude.

  The committee of patron ladies had reserved a room for themselves in the house. They asked the bishop if he would take a little something, and he accepted a biscuit and a small glass of sherry, finding a way to be amiable to everyone. And thus the pious celebration ended happily. For among the ladies there had been a few feathers ruffled before and during the ceremony, but Monsignor Rousselot’s praise had restored their good humour. When they found themselves on their own they declared that everything had gone very well; they couldn’t stop talking about how gracious the prelate had been. Madame Paloque was the only one who still looked sickly. The bishop had forgotten her in handing out his compliments.

  ‘You were right,’ she said in a rage to her husband, when she got home, ‘I was the dogsbody in all of this nonsense! What a silly idea to put all these debauched girls together!… Well, I gave them all my time and that great booby of a bishop who’s scared of his clergy didn’t even say thank you to me!… As though Madame de Condamin did anything! She’s far too busy showing off her clothes, that woman… We know what we know, don’t we? They’ll end up making us tell stories that not everybody will like. We haven’t got anything to hide, we haven’t. And what about Madame Delangre and Madame Rastoil! It would be easy to make them blush to the roots of their ha
ir. Did they ever even move from their drawing rooms? Did they take half the trouble I took? And that Madame Mouret, pretending to be at the helm, who was only busy hanging on to the soutane of her precious Abbé Faujas! She’s another hypocrite, who’s going to land in the mire… Well, all of them, every one of them had a kind word from him; I had nothing at all. I’m their dogsbody… Well, it can’t go on, Paloque, I tell you. The dog will come and bite them in the end.’

  From that day on, Madame Paloque became much less amiable. She only very rarely did the accounts, refused the chores she didn’t like, to such an extent that the patron ladies talked about taking on an employee. Marthe recounted these problems to Abbé Faujas and asked if he did not have someone he could recommend.

  ‘Don’t look for anybody else,’ he replied. ‘I might know someone… Give me two or three days.’

  For some time past he had frequently been receiving letters postmarked Besançon. They were all in the same hand—a thick, ugly writing. Rose who took them up to him asserted that he got cross at the very sight of the envelopes.

  ‘His face changes,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t care for whoever it is writes to him so often, I’ll be bound.’

  Mouret’s old curiosity was reignited for a moment, about this correspondence. One day he took up one of the letters himself with an apologetic smile, saying Rose wasn’t there. The priest was undoubtedly a bit suspicious for he pretended to be delighted, as though he had been waiting impatiently for the letter. But Mouret didn’t let himself be taken in by this play-acting. He remained on the landing, with his ear to the keyhole.