The Conquest of Plassans (Classic Reprint) Page 32

  ‘Supposing they ate each other up, like the two foxes who had nothing left but their tails?’

  The electoral period was about to begin. In Plassans, absolutely untouched by political questions in the normal way of things, the temperature was beginning to rise a little. It was as though an invisible mouth were blowing the winds of war through its quiet streets. The Marquis of Lagrifoul, who lived in La Palud, a large village in the neighbourhood, had come into town two weeks before to visit one of his relatives, the Count of Valqueyras, whose mansion occupied a corner position in the Saint-Marc district. He let himself be seen about town, took walks on the Cours Sauvaire, went to Saint-Saturnin and greeted influential people, always retaining the morose manner characteristic of the nobility. But these efforts at being pleasant, which had sufficed the first time round, did not appear to be having much success. Accusations, each day more exaggerated, were rife, and came from unknown sources: the marquis was lamentably weak. With anyone except the marquis, Plassans would have had a branch railway line long ago, joining the line to Nice. Moreover, when someone from the Plassans area had gone to see the marquis in Paris, he’d had to go three or four times before getting him to provide the least little service. However, although the candidacy of the outgoing deputy was extremely compromised by these accusations, no other candidate had yet definitely put himself forward. Monsieur de Bourdeu’s name was mentioned, but it was said in the same breath that it would be very difficult to reach a majority with him, a former prefect under Louis-Philippe,* with no solid backing anywhere. The truth was that an unknown influence had just turned the expectations of the different candidates in Plassans upside down by rupturing the alliance between the Legitimists and the Republicans. It left people generally perplexed, confused and with a sense of unease, a need to get through the elections as speedily as possible.

  ‘The majority has shifted,’ opined the shrewd politicians of the Cours Sauvaire. ‘The question is, what has it shifted to?’

  With this fever of division affecting the town, the Republicans wanted to nominate their candidate. They chose a hatmaker, a man by the name of Maurin, much loved by the working population. Trouche, in the cafés at night, said he thought Maurin very nondescript. He proposed a man proscribed after the December coup d’état, a wheelwright from Les Tulettes, who had the good sense to refuse. It must be said that Trouche declared that he himself was one of the most ardent Republicans. He would have put himself forward, he said, if he had not had his wife’s brother in the church. To his great regret he felt he had to side with the faux-dévots,* which obliged him to stay out of the limelight. He was one of the first to spread nasty rumours about the Marquis de Lagrifoul; he also advocated the rupture with the Legitimists. The Republicans in Plassans, who were not very numerous, were certainly going to lose. But Trouche’s triumph came when he accused the party from the prefecture and the Rastoils of having put away poor old Mouret, with the aim of depriving the democratic party of one of its most admirable leaders. The night he made this accusation at a liquor seller’s in the Rue Canquoin, the people who were there exchanged strange looks. The gossips in the old quarter, softening their attitude towards the ‘madman who beat his wife’, now that he was safely locked up, were saying that Abbé Faujas had wanted to get rid of a husband who was in his way. So Trouche repeated his tale every evening, bringing his fist down on the café tables with such conviction that he ended up creating a legend in which Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies played the strangest possible role. There was a complete turnaround in favour of Mouret. He became a political victim, a man whose influence had been feared so much that they had put him away in a room in Les Tulettes.

  ‘Let me sort it out,’ said Trouche with a confidential air. ‘I’ll show you what all those damn penitents are like, and I’ll tell you a thing or two about their Work of the Virgin… It’s a fine sort of establishment where the ladies make their assignations!’

  In the meantime Abbé Faujas was here, there, and everywhere. For quite some time he had been seen continually out on the streets. He took more care of himself, and made an effort to keep a pleasant smile on his face. He lowered his eyelids now and then to hide the dark flame in his eyes. Often, at the end of his patience, and tired of these petty daily struggles, he went back into his bare room, clenching his fists, his shoulders swelling with unspent strength, wishing he had a colossus to strangle, to relieve his feelings. Old Madame Rougon, whom he carried on visiting in secret, was his good fairy. She admonished him soundly, kept his tall frame bent before her on a low chair, telling him again and again that he should try to be nice to everyone, that he would ruin everything if he was so silly as to roll up his sleeves for a fight. Later, when he had won the day, he could seize Plassans by the throat, could strangle the place if he pleased. Of course she had no love lost for Plassans; she resented her forty wretched years and since the coup d’état her spitefulness towards it had known no bounds.

  ‘I’m the one wearing the soutane,’ she told him sometimes with a smile. ‘You are more like a gendarme, my dear curé.’

  The priest especially made regular visits to the reading room in the Youth Club. He listened indulgently to the young people discussing politics, nodding his head and saying that honesty was all that was required. His popularity was increasing. He had consented one day to play billiards, and turned out to be remarkably good at it. When he was in a gathering of two or three he accepted a cigarette. So the club took his advice about everything. What crowned his reputation as being a tolerant man, was the good-natured way he pleaded for the admission of Guillaume Porquier, who had renewed his request.

  ‘I have seen this young man,’ he said. ‘He came to make his general confession and I did indeed grant him absolution. For every sin, mercy… He can’t be treated like a leper just for unhooking a few signs in Plassans or running up a few debts in Paris.’

  When Guillaume had been admitted, he said with a chuckle to the Maffre sons:

  ‘Well now, you boys owe me two bottles of champagne… As you see, the curé does whatever I want. I’ve got a little way of tickling him in a sensitive place and then he laughs, my dears, he can’t refuse me anything.’

  ‘But he doesn’t seem very keen on you all the same,’ remarked Alphonse. ‘He gives you some queer looks.’

  ‘Huh, that’s because I tickled him a bit too much… You’ll see we shall soon be the best of friends.’

  And in fact Abbé Faujas seemed to have grown fond of the doctor’s son. He said the poor boy needed a very gentle guiding hand. Guillaume became the life and soul of the club in a very short time; he invented games, told them his recipe for punch with kirsch, led astray the very young lads truanting from school. His attractive vices exercised an enormous influence on them. While the organ thundered away above the billiard room, he was drinking beer, surrounded by the sons of all the polite society of Plassans, telling them dirty stories which made them guffaw with laughter. The club thus went downhill as rascally plots were hatched in corners. But the priest wasn’t aware of them. Guillaume told everyone Faujas was a ‘brainbird’ who had grand ideas running through his head.

  ‘The priest could be bishop whenever he wants,’ he said. ‘He’s already refused a cure* in Paris. He wants to remain in Plassans, he has fallen in love with the town… I would propose him as deputy if it were up to me. He’s the one to represent us in the Chamber! But he wouldn’t have it, he’s too modest… When the elections come, we can ask his opinion. He won’t let us down.’

  Lucien Delangre remained the serious member of the club. He showed great deference towards Abbé Faujas, winning round the support of the group of studious young men for him. He often went to the club with him, chatting eagerly, and falling silent as soon as they went into the club room.

  After leaving the café they had set up in the Minimes cellars, the priest regularly went along to the Work of the Virgin. He arrived in the middle of recreation and appeared smiling on the steps into the yard. Then all the
girls ran up and fought over what was in his pockets—there were always holy icons, beads, sacred medallions. He had made himself into an object of adoration for these girls by giving them pats on their cheeks and exhorting them to be good, which put smirks on their bold-as-brass faces. The nuns often complained to him. The children entrusted to their care were ungovernable, they fought to pull out each other’s hair, and worse. To his mind these were nothing but peccadilloes. He lectured the most unruly amongst them in the chapel, and they came out suitably subdued. Sometimes he used the pretext of a more serious misdemeanour to have the parents in, and sent them away impressed by his approachability. The girls from the Work of the Virgin had in this way won the hearts and minds of the poor families of Plassans. When they went home in the evening they related extraordinary things about Monsieur le Curé. It was not unusual to come across a couple of them in the dark corners of the ramparts fighting over which of them Monsieur le Curé liked best.

  ‘Those little hussies represent two or three thousand votes at least,’ thought Trouche, watching the blandishments of Abbé Faujas from the window of his office.

  He had himself offered to win over these little darlings, as he called the young girls; but the priest, worried at the gleam in his eye, had strictly forbidden him to set foot in the courtyard. He made do with throwing sweets to the little darlings when the nuns’ backs were turned, as if he were throwing crumbs to sparrows. He filled up the pinafore of a big blonde girl in particular, the daughter of a tanner who, at thirteen, had the shoulders of a fully developed woman.

  Abbé Faujas’s day was not over. After that, he went to pay brief visits to the society ladies. Madame Rastoil and Madame Delangre welcomed him with delight. They repeated his every word, and it formed the basis of a whole week’s conversation. But his special friend was Madame de Condamin. She kept up her cheerful familiarity, with the superior air of a pretty woman who is conscious of her omnipotence. She conversed in a low voice, with winks, and special smiles, which bore witness to a secret alliance. When the priest was ushered in, she indicated to her husband with a look that he should leave the room. ‘The government is about to start its session,’ as the forestry commissioner jokingly said, and calmly rode off on his horse. It was Madame Rougon who had pointed out Madame de Condamin to the priest.

  ‘She is not yet totally accepted in Plassans,’ she explained. ‘She’s a very strong woman beneath all that pretty coquettishness. You can open up to her. She will see in your success a way of achieving her place in society here. She will be of the utmost use to you if you have positions and decorations to give away… She still has a good friend in Paris who sends her as much red ribbon* as she wants.’

  As Madame Rougon stayed very cleverly on the sidelines, the beautiful Octavie had become the most active ally of Abbé Faujas. She won over her friends and the friends of friends. She went off campaigning every morning, her electioneering had astonishing results, and all by nothing more than the small salutations she bestowed on everyone from the tips of her gloved fingers. She was especially effective with middle-class women, increasing the feminine influence tenfold, which the priest had felt to be an absolute necessity the very first time he had stepped into the narrow world of Plassans. She it was who squashed the complaints of the Paloques, who were always persecuting the Mouret household. She threw a honeycake to these two monsters.

  ‘Do you have something against us, dear lady?’ she said one day to the justice’s wife when she met her. ‘If so, you are very wrong. Your friends do not forget you, they are thinking of you, and arranging a nice surprise.’

  ‘A nice surprise! Chance would be a fine thing!’ cried Madame Paloque sourly. ‘Come now, they are not going to make fun of us any more. I have sworn to keep myself to myself.’

  Madame de Condamin smiled.

  ‘What would you say’, she demanded, ‘if Monsieur Paloque were to receive an honour?’

  The justice’s wife was struck dumb. She flushed, and her face took on a bluish tint, quite hideous.

  ‘You must be joking,’ she stammered. ‘This is yet another trick they are playing on us. If it’s not true, I shan’t ever forgive you.’

  The beautiful Octavie had to swear to her that nothing was more true. The nomination was assured. But it would only appear in the Moniteur after the elections because the government did not want to seem to be buying the magistrates’ vote. And she let it be understood that Abbé Faujas was not unconnected with this long-awaited reward. He had spoken about it to the sub-prefect.

  ‘So my husband was right,’ said Madame Paloque, in astonishment. ‘For a long time he has been creating the most horrible scenes, trying to make me go and offer my apologies to the abbé. I am obstinate and would rather die… But if the abbé wants to make the first move… We certainly only wish to live in peace and harmony with everybody. We’ll go to the sub-prefecture tomorrow.’

  The next day the Paloques were full of humility. Madame Paloque had no words bad enough for Abbé Fenil. She even unashamedly recounted that she had gone to see him one day. He had spoken in her presence of throwing ‘the whole of the Abbé Faujas clique’ out of Plassans.

  ‘If you like,’ she said to the priest taking him on one side, ‘I’ll give you a note written under the dictation of the assistant bishop. You are the subject of it. I believe there are incriminating stories that he was trying to publish in the Gazette de Plassans.’

  ‘How did that note get into your hands?’ enquired the priest.

  ‘It’s there, and that’s enough,’ she replied, not in the least put out.

  Then, a smile playing around her lips:

  ‘I came across it,’ she said. ‘And now I remember that, above a crossing-out, there are two or three words added by the hand of the assistant bishop himself… I’ll let you have all this in confidence, of course? We are decent people and we don’t wish to be compromised.’

  Before she took along the note, she pretended for three days to be having scruples about it. Madame de Condamin had to swear, in private, that Monsieur Rastoil would be requested to step down immediately, so that Monsieur Paloque could inherit the presidency. Then she handed over the paper. Abbé Faujas did not want to keep it. He took it to Madame Rougon, directing her to make use of it but to keep out of the way herself if the assistant bishop looked like interfering the least little bit in the elections.

  Madame de Condamin also let Monsieur Maffre suppose that the Emperor was thinking of decorating him, and categorically promised Doctor Porquier that a possible position would be found for his delinquent son. She was exquisitely obliging at the cosy afternoon gatherings in the gardens. The summer was coming to an end. She would arrive in her summer dress, shivering a little, risking the cold to show off her arms and conquer the remaining scruples of Rastoil’s friends. It was in reality under the Mourets’ arbour that the election was decided.

  ‘Well, Monsieur le Sous-Préfet,’ said Abbé Faujas with a smile, one day when the two groups of friends were gathered together, ‘the great battle is approaching!’

  Political battles had become something of a joke when they met up in small groups. They shook hands in the gardens behind their houses but devoured each other outside their front doors. Madame de Condamin threw a vivacious glance at Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, who bowed with his accustomed politeness before drawing a deep breath and pronouncing:

  ‘I shall stay in my tents, Monsieur le Curé. I was fortunate enough to be able to intimate to His Excellency that the government should abstain in the immediate interests of Plassans. There won’t be an official candidate.’

  Monsieur de Bourdeu went white. His eyelids flickered and his hands trembled with delight.

  ‘There will not be an official candidate?’ echoed Monsieur Rastoil, very unsettled by this unexpected news, abandoning the reserve he had maintained until that moment.

  ‘No,’ replied Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, ‘the town has enough honourable men and is grown-up enough to choose a repr
esentative for itself.’

  He had inclined towards Monsieur de Bourdeu, who rose, stammering:

  ‘No doubt, no doubt.’

  Meanwhile Abbé Surin had organized a game of ‘burnt rag’. The Rastoil girls, the Maffre boys, and Séverin were at that very moment searching for the rag, actually the priest’s handkerchief, rolled up into a ball, which he had just hidden. All the young people milled round the staid adults, while the priest in his shrill voice shouted:

  ‘It’s burning, it’s burning!’

  It was Angéline who found the ‘rag’, in the gaping pocket of Doctor Porquier where Abbé Surin had adroitly slipped it. There was much laughter and everyone thought the choice of hiding place most ingenious.

  ‘Bourdeu has a chance now,’ said Monsieur Rastoil, taking Abbé Faujas aside. ‘It’s very annoying. I can’t tell him this, but we shan’t vote for him. As an Orléanist* he is too compromised.’

  ‘Just look at your son Séverin,’ cried Madame de Condamin, who came to throw herself into the conversation. ‘What a big baby he is! He put the handkerchief under Abbé Bourrette’s hat.’

  Then, lowering her voice:

  ‘By the way, Monsieur Rastoil, may I offer you my congratulations? I have received a letter from Paris where I am assured your son’s name has been seen on the list of the Ministry of Justice. I think he will be appointed deputy councillor at Faverolles.’

  The president bowed, pink in the face. The ministry had never forgiven him for the election of the Marquis de Lagrifoul. It was since then that, by a sort of fate, he had not been able to place his son in a job nor find a husband for his daughters. He did not complain, but his pinched lips told their own tale.

  ‘I was pointing out to you’, he said, to hide his emotion, ‘that Bourdeu is dangerous; and besides he is not from Plassans, he doesn’t know what our needs are. We might just as well re-elect the marquis.’

  ‘If Monsieur de Bourdeu retains his candidature,’ declared Abbé Faujas, ‘the Republicans will gather an imposing minority, which will have the most detestable effect.’