The Conquest of Plassans (Classic Reprint) Read online

  He continued to tease her, threatening her with his finger in a jocular way:

  ‘I bet I find everything upside down. You don’t take care of anything. The tools are left lying about, the cupboards are all open, Rose dirties the rooms with her sweeping brush… And what about Rose, why hasn’t she come? Oh, what a woman! There’s one we shall never be able to do anything with. Do you know she wanted to kick me out one day. Yes, she did… The house belongs to her, it’s quite ridiculous. But why don’t you tell me about the children? Désirée is still at her nurse’s, isn’t she? We’ll go and give her a hug and ask if she’s all right. I want to take a trip to Marseilles too because Octave is a worry to me. Last time I saw him, I found him living a very dissolute life. And let’s not mention Serge. He’s too good, he’ll sanctify the whole family… Oh, it does me good to talk about home.’

  And he talked and talked, asking for news of each tree in his garden, dwelling on the smallest details concerning the house. He demonstrated extraordinary powers of memory about a host of small details. Marthe was deeply touched by this display of zealous affection and felt he showed great tact in the care he took not to blame her at all, not even making the slightest allusion to what he had suffered. She was forgiven. She swore she would redeem her crime by becoming the submissive servant of this man who was so nobly disposed towards her. Her cheeks were wet with huge, silent tears, and she almost went down on her knees to cry out her thanks to him.

  ‘Be careful,’ said the warder in her ear. ‘The look in his eyes is worrying.’

  ‘But he’s not mad!’ she stammered. ‘I swear he’s not mad! I have to talk to the director. I want to take him away immediately.’

  ‘Be careful,’ repeated the warder roughly, pulling her away.

  Mouret, in the middle of chatting, had just turned in on himself, like an animal that has been beaten. He fell to the floor. Then he walked nimbly on all fours around the wall.

  ‘Oo-hoo!’ he howled.

  With a bound he got up and then fell again on his side. There followed a terrible scene. He twisted and turned like a worm, bruised his face with his fists, tore at his flesh with his nails. Soon he was half naked, his clothes in tatters, crushed, bruised, and moaning.*

  ‘Get out, Madame!’ cried the warder.

  Marthe was rooted to the spot. It was her own self she could see on that floor. That was how she had thrown herself on to the tiled floor of her bedroom, how she scratched, how she beat herself. And she even recognized her own voice. Mouret moaned just like her. She was the one who was responsible for this wretched creature.

  ‘He’s not mad!’ she stammered. ‘He can’t be mad!… That would be too dreadful. I’d rather die.’

  The warder, seizing her bodily, pushed her outside the door, but she remained there, her ear pressed to the wood.

  She could hear the noise of a fight in the hut as if someone was killing a pig. Then a dull thud, like a parcel of wet laundry being dropped. A deathly silence ensued. When the warder came out again, it was almost night. She could see nothing but a black hole through the half-open door.

  ‘Goddammit, you are a strange one, saying he’s not mad! He nearly had my thumb off, he had it between his teeth… Now we shan’t hear anything from him for several hours.’

  As he took her back, he went on:

  ‘You don’t know how cunning they are in here. They act nice for hours at a time, tell you stories that seem sensible, and then, without any warning, out of the blue, they leap at your throat… I could see that just now he was working up to something when he was talking about his children; his eyes were rolling round.’

  When Marthe met Uncle Macquart again in the small yard, she repeated feverishly in a slow, broken voice:

  ‘He’s mad, he’s mad!’

  ‘He’s mad, no doubt about that,’ laughed her uncle. ‘Did you expect to find him young and strong? Obviously they haven’t put him in here for no reason… Anyway it’s not a healthy place to be. A couple of hours and I’d go mad too.’

  He studied her out of the corner of his eye, watching her for the slightest nervous tremor. Then in his affable manner:

  ‘Would you like to go and see your grandmother?’

  Marthe looked terrified, and hid her head in her hands.

  ‘That wouldn’t be any trouble,’ he said. ‘Alexandre would have been glad to… She’s there next door; she’s very gentle. Isn’t that right, Alexandre? She’s never given anyone in the house any bother? She sits there looking straight in front of her the whole time. She hasn’t moved for twelve years… Anyway, since you don’t want to see her…’

  As the warden took his leave, he invited him to come and have a glass of mulled wine, giving him a conspicuous wink, which seemed to persuade Alexandre to accept. They had to hold Marthe up, her legs giving way at each step. When they arrived, they were carrying her, her face convulsed, eyes open, stiffened in one of these nervous crises which held her for several hours as though she were dead.

  ‘There, what did I tell you?’ cried Rose when she saw them. ‘What a state she’s in! And how are we going to get back? My God, can you believe anyone has a head put together so queer as that? Monsieur should have strangled her, that would have taught her a lesson!’

  ‘Too bad,’ said Uncle Macquart, ‘I’ll put her in my bed. It won’t hurt us to spend the night beside the fire.’

  He pulled back a curtain made of cotton fabric to reveal an alcove with a bed. Rose, grumbling, went to help her mistress get undressed. ‘All we can do is put a warm brick in for her feet,’ she said.

  ‘Now she’s asleep, we can have a drink,’ laughed her uncle with his great wolfish laugh. ‘It smells devilish good, your mulled wine, Mother!’

  ‘I put in a lemon I found on the mantelpiece,’ said Rose.

  ‘Quite right! I’ve got everything here. When I cook a rabbit, I do it properly, you may rely upon it.’

  He had pulled the table over to the fire. He sat down between the cook and Alexandre, pouring the hot wine into large yellow mugs.

  ‘Goddammit!’ he cried, having appreciatively swallowed two mouthfuls. He smacked his lips. ‘That’s a fine mulled wine! Ha! You know how to make it. It’s better than mine. You must give me your recipe.’

  Rose, calm now, tickled by these compliments, started to laugh. The fire of vine-stubs blazed red and threw out great heat. The mugs were refilled.

  ‘So,’ said Macquart leaning on his elbows to look straight at the cook, ‘did my niece come here just like that, on an impulse?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about it,’ she replied. ‘It’ll make me angry… Madame is going mad, just like Monsieur. She doesn’t know who she likes or doesn’t like… I think she quarrelled with Monsieur le Curé before she left. I heard them shouting at one another.’

  The uncle gave a coarse laugh.

  ‘They used to get on pretty well,’ he muttered.

  ‘No doubt, but nothing lasts if you’ve got a brain like Madame’s… I bet she’s missing the beatings Monsieur used to give her in the night. We found the stick in the garden.’

  He studied her more carefully, saying between two mouthfuls of mulled wine:

  ‘Perhaps she was coming to fetch François.’

  ‘Heaven preserve us!’ cried Rose, looking terrified. ‘Monsieur would go berserk in the house. He’d kill us all… That’s my biggest fear, you know. I am always scared he’ll come back one of these nights and murder the lot of us. When I think of that I can’t sleep easy in my bed. I imagine I am seeing him come in through the window with his hair standing up on end and his eyes blazing like matches.’

  Macquart was delighted; he banged his mug noisily on the table.

  ‘That would be funny, that would be funny,’ he repeated. ‘He must hate you all, especially the curé, who has taken his place. He’d gobble him up, that curé, although he’s such a big chap, for madmen are terribly strong, they say… What do you say, Alexandre, can’t you just see poor old François jumping
on him? He would clean the place up—what a treat that would be!’

  And he winked at the warder, who was calmly drinking his mulled wine, and nodding agreement.

  ‘I’m only saying that for a joke,’ Macquart said, seeing the terrified looks that Rose was sending in his direction.

  At that moment, Marthe was twisting and turning furiously behind the curtain. They had to hold her still for several minutes so that she didn’t fall. When she had stretched out again in her corpse-like stiffness, her uncle went back to warm his backside in front of the brazier, thinking aloud, and not thinking what he was saying:

  ‘She’s not a very easy woman.’

  Then suddenly he enquired:

  ‘What do the Rougons say about all these goings-on? They are on the priest’s side, aren’t they?’

  ‘Monsieur was not so nice to them that they’re sorry he’s gone,’ replied Rose. ‘He didn’t know what to do next to annoy them.’

  ‘He was quite right about that,’ Uncle Macquart said. ‘They are skinflints. When you think they wouldn’t ever buy that cornfield opposite. That would have been a marvellous deal and I would have overseen it… Félicité’s the one whose nose would be put out if she saw François back again!’

  He gave another laugh and took a turn around the table. And relighting his pipe as if to wind up the conversation, he winked at Alexandre once more:

  ‘We mustn’t forget the time, my boy. I’ll come back with you… Marthe seems to have settled down now. Rose can lay the table while she’s waiting… You must be hungry, aren’t you, Rose? Since you have to spend the night here you’ll have something to eat with me.’

  He went off with the warder. After half an hour he had not returned. The cook, bored with waiting there on her own, opened the door, and leaned over the terrace, looking at the empty road in the clear night. As she went back in she thought she could see on the other side of the road two black forms standing in the middle of a path behind a hedge.

  ‘It looks like her uncle,’ she thought. ‘He seems to be talking to a priest.’

  A few minutes later Macquart arrived. That rascal of an Alexandre had been telling him tales the whole time, he said.

  ‘Wasn’t it you just now with a priest?’ asked Rose.

  ‘Me, with a priest!’ he cried. ‘Oh, where the devil did you dream up that? There is no priest round here.’

  He rolled his small bright eyes. Then, apparently unhappy with this lie, he went on:

  ‘Well, there’s Abbé Fenil, but he might as well not be here. He never goes out.’

  ‘Abbé Fenil’s not up to much,’ said the cook.

  Then Uncle Macquart got cross.

  ‘Why not up to much? He does a lot of good here. He’s a good chap… Very good. He’s worth a heap more than a whole lot of priests who cause trouble.’

  But his anger suddenly subsided. He started to laugh seeing that Rose was looking at him in surprise.

  ‘What’s it to me, after all?’ he muttered. ‘You are right, all priests are tarred with the same brush. Hypocrites, the lot of ’em… I know now who you must have seen me with. I met the woman from the grocery; she was wearing a black dress, you must have thought it was a soutane.’

  Rose made an omelette and Macquart put a slab of cheese on the table. They had not finished eating when Marthe sat up with the astonished look of a person who has awoken in an unknown bed. When she pushed back her hair and remembered where she was, she jumped up, saying she wanted to leave straight away. Macquart seemed very cross at her waking.

  ‘Impossible, you can’t go back to Plassans this evening,’ he said. ‘You are shivery and you have a fever, you will fall ill on the way. Get some rest. Tomorrow we’ll see. Anyway, there’s no coach.’

  ‘You can take me in your cart,’ she answered.

  ‘No, I don’t want to do that, I can’t.’

  Marthe, who was dressing in feverish haste, declared that she’d walk to Plassans rather than spend the night at Les Tulettes. Her uncle turned it over in his mind. He had locked the door and slipped the key into his pocket. He begged his niece, threatened her, made up fibs while she finished putting on her hat, without listening to him.

  ‘If you think you will make her give in!’ said Rose, calmly eating up her piece of cheese. ‘She’d rather get through the window. Harness your horse, you may as well.’

  Macquart after a short silence, shrugged, shouting angrily:

  ‘I couldn’t care less anyway! Let her be ill, if she insists! I wanted to avoid an accident… Oh well, what’s it to me? Whatever will be, will be. I’ll drive you.’

  They had to carry Marthe to the cart; she was trembling, in the throes of a terrible fever. Her uncle threw an old coat over her shoulders. He clacked his tongue gently and off they went.

  ‘I don’t mind a bit going to Plassans tonight,’ he said. ‘Quite the contrary!… You can have a good time in Plassans.’

  It was about ten o’clock. The sky was full of rain with an orange light that lit up the road. All along the way, Macquart leaned out, peering into the ditch and behind the hedges. Rose asked him what he was looking for and he replied he had descended from the wolves of La Seille. He had recovered his good humour. A few miles from Plassans it started to rain, a cold, hard rain. Macquart swore. Rose almost came to blows with her mistress who was in agonies under the coat. When they finally arrived the sky had turned blue again.

  ‘Are you going to the Rue Balande?’ asked Macquart.

  ‘Of course,’ said Rose, surprised by the question.

  He explained then that Marthe seemed to him very ill and perhaps it would be better to take her to her mother’s. However, after some hesitation, he agreed to stop his horse outside the Mourets’ house. Marthe had not even taken her key, but Rose luckily found hers in her pocket. However, when she tried to open the door, it did not give. The Trouches must have bolted it. She banged on it with her fist without eliciting any sound except a faint echo in the large hall.

  ‘No point carrying on like that,’ said Macquart, with a wide grin. ‘They won’t come downstairs, it’d be too much trouble… Well, there you are stuck outside the door of your own house, children. My first idea was best, you see. We must take the dear girl to the Rougons. She will be better off there than in her own bedroom, I’m certain of it.’

  Félicité uttered a shriek of despair when she saw her daughter at that time of night, soaked to the skin and half-dead. She put her to bed on the second floor, disturbed the entire house, got all the servants up. When she had calmed down a little and was sitting by Marthe’s bedside she asked them to explain what had happened.

  ‘How has this come about? How is it that you have brought her back in this state?’

  Macquart, in his most genial voice, told her all about the ‘dear child’s’ journey. He protested that he had done all he could to prevent her from going anywhere near François. He ended up appealing to Rose for corroboration, as he could see Félicité studying him carefully and suspiciously. The latter continued to shake her head.

  ‘It’s a very peculiar story,’ she muttered. ‘There’s something I don’t understand.’

  She knew Macquart of old and could tell by the secret delight which made the corners of his eyelids crinkle that he was up to something fishy.

  ‘You’re an odd woman,’ he said, working up his anger in order to escape this cross-examination. ‘You always think the most fantastic things are going on. I can’t tell you what I don’t know… I love Marthe more than you do, I’ve never acted against her interests. I’ll go and fetch the doctor if you like.’

  Madame Rougon stared at him. She interrogated Rose at length but learned nothing. Whatever the case, she seemed very happy to have her daughter there with her. She made acid remarks about people who let you die of hunger outside your own door and did not bother to open it. Marthe, her head thrown back on the pillow, was dying.

  CHAPTER 22

  IN the hut at Les Tulettes it was blackest night. An
icy draught brought Mouret out of the cataleptic stupor he had been thrown into by the crisis that evening. Crouched against the wall, he remained motionless for a moment, his eyes open, rolling his head gently on the cold stone, moaning like a child who is waking up from his sleep. But such a damp draught cut across his legs that he got up and looked around. Facing him he could see the door of the hut wide open.

  ‘She’s left the door open,’ said the madman aloud. ‘I expect she’s waiting for me. I must go.’

  He went out and came back in again, patting his clothes in the manner of a level-headed man who is afraid he has forgotten something. Then he shut the door carefully behind him. He strolled across the first courtyard in a leisurely way, like any honest citizen out for a walk. As he went into the second courtyard, he saw a guard who seemed to be watching. He stopped and took stock a moment. But when the guard disappeared he crossed the yard to another gate which was open and led out into the country. He shut it again behind him, without surprise and without hurrying.

  ‘But she’s a good wife to me, I must say,’ he murmured. ‘She must have heard me calling her… It’s getting late. I’m going home, then they won’t be worried back there.’

  He started down a path. It seemed to him quite natural to be out in the fields. After a hundred yards he forgot all about Les Tulettes, which he had left behind him. He thought he was coming back from a vine-grower from whom he had bought fifty barrels of wine. As he reached a crossroads where five roads met, he recognized where he was. He began to chuckle to himself, saying:

  ‘How silly I am. I was going to go up the hill in the direction of Saint-Eutrope. But it’s the road to the left I need… A good hour and a half and I’ll be in Plassans.’

  Then, in cheerful mood, he followed the main road, looking at each milestone as if it were an old friend. He stopped to look with interest at fields, country houses. The sky was the colour of ash, lit by large rosy streaks, like the pale reflections of a dying furnace. Heavy drops of rain began to fall. The wind was blowing from the east, and it was full of rain.