The Conquest of Plassans (Classic Reprint) Read online

  ‘He probably likes priests even less!’ concluded a jeering voice.

  For a while Madame Rougon appeared not to know about the scandal going round the town. She remained cheerful, and avoided letting the allusions people made in her presence penetrate her consciousness. But one day after a long visit paid to her by Monsieur Delangre, she arrived at her daughter’s house looking frightened and with tears in her eyes.

  ‘Oh, my darling,’ she said, clasping Marthe in her arms, ‘what have they just been telling me? Your husband has gone so far as to hit you?… It’s a lie, isn’t it?… I have issued the most formal denial. I know Mouret. He may be rather vulgar, but he’s not a bad man.’

  Marthe blushed. She was embarrassed and ashamed, as always when the subject was mentioned in her presence.

  ‘Madame won’t ever say anything!’ cried Rose in her usual forthright way. ‘I should have come and warned you about it a long time ago, if I hadn’t been afraid of Madame telling me off.’

  The old lady dropped her hands in profound and pained surprise.

  ‘So is it true?’ she murmured. ‘He beats you?… Oh, the wicked man!’

  She started to weep.

  ‘To think that at my age I must see such things!… A man we were so good to when his father died, when he was just a minor employee of ours!… It was Rougon who wanted your marriage. I told him Mouret had shifty eyes. Besides he has never treated us properly. He only came to retire in Plassans in order to taunt us with the few sous he had managed to scrape together. For heaven’s sake! We didn’t need him, we were richer than him, and that’s what annoyed him. He is mean-spirited. The ignoramus is so jealous that he has always refused to come to my parties. He would have died of envy… But I shan’t leave you with such a monster, my daughter. Luckily there are laws against it.’

  ‘Calm down, Mother; I assure you they exaggerate a great deal,’ Marthe replied softly, getting more and more embarrassed by the minute.

  ‘She will stick up for him, you’ll see!’ said the cook.

  At that moment Abbé Faujas and Trouche who were having a long conversation at the bottom of the garden came up, drawn by the noise.

  ‘Monsieur le Curé, I am a most unfortunate mother,’ complained Madame Rougon, raising her voice. ‘I only have one daughter living near me and now I learn she has been crying her heart out… I beg you who live here with her to console her and look after her.’

  The priest looked at her as if to ascertain the meaning of this sudden concern.

  ‘I have just seen a person I don’t wish to name,’ she continued, staring in her turn at the priest. ‘This person frightened me… God only knows I don’t wish to heap blame upon my son-in-law! But I have a duty, do I not, to look after the interests of my daughter?… Well, my son-in-law is wicked. He ill-treats his wife, scandalizes the whole town, pokes his nose into all kinds of dirty business. He’ll compromise himself more in politics when the elections come along. Last time he was the one appointed to lead the riff-raff in the suburbs… This will be the death of me, Monsieur le Curé.’

  ‘Monsieur Mouret would not allow himself to be criticized for his actions,’ the priest risked.

  ‘But I can’t abandon my daughter to a man like that!’ cried Madame Rougon. ‘I shan’t allow us to be dishonoured… Justice is not made to be thrown to the dogs.’

  Trouche was swinging back and forth. He took advantage of the silence.

  ‘Monsieur Mouret is mad,’ he declared harshly.

  The word fell like an axe blow on the assembled company and they all looked at one another.

  ‘I mean he’s weak in the head,’ continued Trouche. ‘You only have to look at his eyes… I tell you, I’m worried. There was a man in Besançon who adored his daughter, but he murdered her one night without knowing what he was doing.’

  ‘Monsieur has been cracked for a long time,’ muttered Rose.

  ‘But that’s dreadful!’ said Madame Rougon. ‘You are right, he seemed to have an extraordinary expression the last time I saw him. He has never had a very clear mind… Oh, my poor darling, promise me you’ll tell me everything. I shan’t rest in my bed from now on. Do you hear, the first time your husband does anything untoward, don’t hesitate, don’t lay yourself open any more… Madmen must be locked up!’

  And with this she departed. When Trouche was alone with Abbé Faujas he chortled with laughter, showing his black teeth.

  ‘The landlady should remember me in her prayers!’ he muttered. ‘Now she can jump around as much as she likes in the night.’

  The priest, his face grey and his eyes looking at the ground, did not answer. Then he shrugged his shoulders and went to read his breviary under the arbour at the bottom of the garden.

  CHAPTER 18

  ON Sundays, Mouret went for a walk round town, as had been his custom when he was working. Except on that day he never emerged from the narrow isolation in which, with a kind of shame, he confined himself. It was routine. In the morning he shaved, put on a white shirt, brushed down his greatcoat and hat; then, after lunch, without knowing quite how, he found himself out in the street, walking slowly and sedately, hands clasped behind his back.

  One Sunday, just as he set foot outside his door, he caught sight of Rose who was chattering away merrily to Monsieur Rastoil’s maid. The two cooks fell silent when they saw him. They looked at him so curiously that he glanced down to see if his handkerchief were protruding from his back pocket. When he reached the Place de la Préfecture, he turned his head and saw they were still there. Rose was mimicking the swaying of a drunkard while the president’s maid was laughing loudly.

  ‘I’m walking too fast, they are making fun of me,’ Mouret thought.

  His pace slowed. In the Rue de la Banne, as he made his way to the market, the shopkeepers ran to their doors and followed his progress with interest. He nodded slightly to the butcher who was dumbstruck and did not return his greeting. The baker to whom he doffed his hat seemed so frightened that she backed away. The fruitseller, grocer, and patissier pointed him out to one another from opposite sides of the pavement. He left behind him a trail of excitement. Groups formed, voices, mingled with laughter, were raised.

  ‘Did you see how stiffly he was walking?’

  ‘Yes… He almost went head over heels when he tried to cross the gutter.’

  ‘People say they are always like that.’

  ‘All the same I was really scared… Why do they let them loose? There ought to be a law against it.’

  Mouret, intimidated, did not dare turn round. He was filled with a vague unease, while not yet fully realizing they were talking about him. He walked more quickly, swinging his arms with a confident air. He was sorry he had put on his old brown coat, which was no longer fashionable. Once he had got to the market he hesitated a moment then resolutely strode through the lines of vegetable stalls. But there the sight of him provoked a real uproar.

  The good housewives of Plassans lined each side as he went past. The stallholders, standing on their benches with arms akimbo, gawped at him. People pushed one another, women climbed on to the tethering stones outside the Corn Hall. He hurried on, trying to get free of them, not really believing he was the reason for all this fuss.

  ‘His arms are flailing around like a windmill,’ said a peasant woman who was selling fruit.

  ‘He walks as if he was crazy, he nearly knocked over my display,’ added a woman selling lettuces.

  ‘Arrest him, arrest him!’ the millers shouted, for a joke.

  Mouret, consumed with curiosity, stopped short and stood naïvely on tiptoe to see what all the fuss was about. He thought someone had just caught a robber. A huge burst of laughter went through the crowd; jeers and whistles and catcalls could be heard.

  ‘He’s doing no harm, don’t hurt him.’

  ‘Huh, I wouldn’t be too sure—he gets up at night to go and strangle people.’

  ‘The fact is, he’s got a nasty look about him.’

  ‘Was it sud
den?’

  ‘Yes, out of the blue… What creatures we are, to be sure! And him such a gentle man!… I have to go, it makes me ill to think about it… Here’s three sous for the turnips.’

  Mouret had just come across Olympe in the midst of a group of women. She had bought some splendid peaches, which she was carrying in a dainty little ladies’ reticule. She must have been telling some moving tale, for the housewives surrounding her were making muffled exclamations and wringing their hands in sympathy.

  ‘So then,’ she concluded, ‘he seized her by the hair and would have cut her throat with the razor that was on the chest of drawers if we hadn’t got there in time to prevent the crime… Don’t speak to him, he might do something bad.’

  ‘Something bad?’ the frightened Mouret asked Olympe. ‘What do you mean?’

  The women had drawn back, Olympe looked as if she were on her guard. She wisely slipped away, saying in an undertone to Mouret:

  ‘Don’t upset yourself, Monsieur Mouret. It would be best if you went home.’

  Mouret fled into a little street which led to the Cours Sauvaire. The shouts got louder; for a short while the rumblings of the market came after him.

  ‘What’s the matter with them today?’ he thought. ‘Perhaps they were making fun of me, but I didn’t hear my name mentioned… There must have been some accident.’

  He took his hat off, looked at it, fearing an urchin might have thrown a handful of plaster at him. There was no sign of a paper face or goosegrass stuck to his back. Reassured by this inspection, he went on with his afternoon stroll down the quiet little street. Calmer now, he emerged into the Cours Sauvaire. The retired merchants were in their usual place on a bench in the sun.

  ‘Well, well, if it isn’t Mouret,’ exclaimed the retired captain, in amazement.

  The liveliest curiosity showed on the sleepy faces of these gentlemen. They craned their necks, but did not get up, and left Mouret standing there in front of them. They studied him thoroughly from his head to his toes.

  ‘So you are having a little walk round?’ went on the captain who seemed to be the most forthright.

  ‘Yes, a little walk round,’ repeated Mouret, vaguely. ‘It’s nice weather.’

  These gentlemen exchanged knowing smiles. They were chilly and a cloud had just passed overhead.

  ‘Very nice,’ muttered the former tanner. ‘But you are easy to please… It’s true you are wearing your winter clothes already. That’s a fine coat you have on.’

  The smiles turned into chuckles. Mouret suddenly appeared to have thought of something.

  ‘Could you have a look at my back?’ he said, turning round abruptly. ‘And tell me if there is a sun on it?’

  The retired almond merchants could no longer hold back their merriment and they broke into laughter. The group wag, the captain, winked.

  ‘Whereabouts is the sun then?’ he asked. ‘I can only see a moon.’

  ‘A moon?’ said Mouret. ‘Then please rub it off. It’s been bothering me.’

  The captain clapped him on the shoulders three or four times, and added:

  ‘There, old chap. That’s got rid of it. It can’t be easy having a moon on your back… Are you feeling poorly?’

  ‘I’m not very well,’ he replied in an indifferent tone.

  And, believing he heard them whispering on the bench:

  ‘Oh, they look after me a treat at home. My wife is very good to me—she spoils me… But I need a lot of rest. That’s why I don’t go out any more, and I’m not seen around like I used to be. When I’m better I’ll go back to work.’

  ‘Really?’ interrupted the former master-tanner, cruelly. ‘They say it’s your wife who isn’t very well.’

  ‘My wife!… She’s not ill, that’s a lie!’ he cried, getting worked up. ‘There’s nothing wrong with her, nothing at all… People resent us because we live at home quietly… Huh, ill, my wife? She’s very strong, never has so much as a headache.’

  And, wild-eyed, he went on uttering short sentences, like a man telling lies, and stammering like someone who has been talkative in the past but has grown used to silence. The rentiers shook their heads sadly while the captain tapped his head with his forefinger. One former hatmaker in the town, who had studied Mouret from the knot in his tie to the bottom-most button on his greatcoat, had finally become absorbed by the spectacle of his shoes. The lace in his left shoe was undone, and that was too much for the hatmaker. He nudged his neighbours, indicating by his wink the lace with the ends hanging loose. Soon the whole bench was staring at the lace. It was the last straw. These gentlemen shrugged their shoulders in a way that showed they no longer held out any hope for him.

  ‘Mouret,’ said the captain in a fatherly way, ‘tie your shoelaces.’

  Mouret looked at his feet. But he seemed not to understand; he started to speak again. Then, as nobody said anything, he fell silent, waited a moment longer, and then continued on his way unperturbed.

  ‘He’s going to fall over, sure as anything,’ declared the master-tanner standing up to have a better view of the retreating Mouret. ‘Isn’t he a card? Has he totally lost his mind?’

  At the end of the Cours Sauvaire when Mouret walked past the Youth Club he once more met with the stifled laughs that had dogged him ever since he set foot outside his house. He could clearly see Séverin Rastoil in the doorway of the Youth Club, pointing him out to a group of young men. It was definitely him the town was making fun of. He bowed his head in something approaching terror, unable to explain why they were tormenting him like that as he walked past the houses. As he was about to go down the Rue Canquoin he heard a noise behind him. He looked round and saw three boys following, two of them large and insolent-looking and one small and very earnest, holding in his hand an old orange plucked out of the gutter. Then he went along the Rue Canquoin, cut through the Place des Récollets, and found himself in the Rue de la Banne. The boys were still coming along behind him.

  ‘Do you want me to come and box your ears?’ he shouted, turning on them abruptly.

  They sprang to one side, laughing, screaming, scampering away. Mouret, very red in the face, felt ridiculous. He made an effort to calm down, and returned to his walking pace. What terrified him was crossing the Place de la Préfecture and walking underneath the windows of the Rougons with this band of good-for-nothings on his tail and getting more numerous and bolder all the time. Further along his route he was in fact obliged to make a detour to avoid his mother-in-law who was coming back from vespers in the company of Madame de Condamin.

  ‘After him!’ shouted the urchins.

  Mouret, the sweat pouring off his forehead and his feet stumbling against the paving stones, could hear old Madame Rougon saying to the wife of the forestry commissioner:

  ‘Oh, look at the wretch! It’s a disgrace. We can’t put up with that any longer.’

  So Mouret could do nothing but make a run for it. With his arms outstretched and his head in a whirl, he ran into the Rue Balande with the band of urchins at his heels, ten or twelve of them. It seemed to him that the shopkeepers in the Rue de la Banne, the women from the market, the people walking along the Cours, the youngsters from the Youth Club, the Rougons, the Condamins, all of Plassans, laughing behind his back, were tailing him up the steep slope. The children’s tapping feet as they glanced off the sharp cobbles were like the noise of a mob let loose in that calm quarter of the town.

  ‘Catch him!’ they yelled.

  ‘What an idiot he looks in his greatcoat!’

  ‘Hey, you lot, go through the Rue Taravelle, you’ll cut him off.’

  ‘Quick, quick, after him!’

  Mouret, out of his mind, made a desperate effort to reach his door. But his foot slipped and he fell on to the pavement and remained prostrate on the ground for several seconds. The children, fearing he might lash out at them with his feet, formed a circle round him, uttering triumphant shouts, while the little one came forward and solemnly threw the rotten orange at him,
which squashed in his left eye. He got up again with difficulty and went into his house without stopping to wipe his shoes. Rose had to take a broom to chase the urchins away.

  From that Sunday on, the whole of Plassans was persuaded that Mouret ought to be locked up. Astonishing assertions were made: for instance that he shut himself up for days at a time in a bare room, which hadn’t been swept for twelve months. And this wasn’t the product of idle imaginations, because those who recounted it had it from the servant of the house. What could he be doing in that bare room? Versions differed. The servant said he was acting dead, and this inspired fear in the whole district. On the market they firmly believed that a coffin was concealed there, and that he stretched out in it with his eyes open and his hands on his chest. And he did that from morning till night, for his own amusement.

  ‘The crisis has been threatening for a long time,’ Olympe repeated in every shop. ‘It was there waiting to pounce. He was getting depressed, looking for corners to hide away in, you know, like animals when they get sick. The day I set foot in that house I said to my husband: “The landlord is going to the dogs rapidly…” He had yellow eyes and a sly expression then. And ever since the house has been in a complete mess… There have been all kinds of fads. He has counted the sugar lumps, locked everything away, even the bread. His miserliness was so crass his poor wife didn’t have any shoes to put on… And there’s a poor soul I am heartily sorry for! She’s been put through the mill. Imagine her life with that maniac who can’t even behave himself properly at meals. He throws aside his napkin in the middle of dinner, goes off like someone in a daze, after he has poked around in his plate… And so nasty with it! He made a fuss about a pot of mustard that wasn’t in the right place. Now he doesn’t say a word. He looks like a wild animal, sets upon people at the drop of a hat… I see some strange things. I could tell you some tales…’