The Conquest of Plassans (Classic Reprint) Read online

  ‘Come and see, come and see this!’

  And she presented her with the doll. She was splendid. She had a stiff skirt, a head made out of a ball of cloth and arms that were sewn on to the shoulders from material from the selvedge. Désirée’s face at once lit up with pleasure. She sat down on the stool again, forgetting all about the bird, planting kisses upon the doll, cradling her in her arms in a childish way.

  Serge had come over and was leaning on the rail next to his brother. Marthe had taken up her stocking once more.

  ‘So,’ she asked, ‘did the band play?’

  ‘They play every Thursday,’ Octave replied. ‘You’re wrong not to come along, Maman. Everyone’s there, the Rastoil girls, Madame de Condamin, Monsieur Paloque, the mayor’s wife and daughter… Why don’t you come?’

  Marthe didn’t look up. She murmured, as she finished darning a hole:

  ‘Boys, you know very well I don’t like going out. I’m fine here. And someone has to stay with Désirée.’

  Octave opened his mouth but then looked at his sister and shut it again. He remained there, whistling softly, looking up at the trees full of chattering sparrows going home to roost in the garden of the sub-prefecture. He gazed for a long time at Monsieur Rastoil’s pear trees with the sun setting behind them. Serge had taken a book out of his pocket and was immersed in his reading. There was an absorbed silence, warm with an unspoken tenderness in the pleasant golden glow of the sun that, little by little, was fading from the terrace. Marthe cast a loving look over all of her three children* in the calm of the evening, and plied her needle with long, regular strokes.

  ‘So everyone is late today then,’ she said after a little while. ‘It’s nearly ten and your father’s not home… I think he’s gone over to Les Tulettes.’*

  ‘Oh well,’ said Octave, ‘then I’m not surprised… The farmers at Les Tulettes don’t let him go once they’ve got him… Has he gone to buy wine?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Marthe. ‘You know he doesn’t care to discuss his business affairs.’

  There was silence once more. In the dining room, its window wide open on to the terrace, old Rose had been laying the table for some little while, with an ill-tempered clatter of plates and silver. She seemed to be in a very bad mood, banging the furniture about, her words disjointed and grumbling. Then she went and stood at the door on to the street, craning her neck to look at the distant Place de la Préfecture. After standing there for a few minutes she came out on to the steps and shouted:

  ‘So is Monsieur Mouret coming home for supper or not?’

  ‘Yes, Rose, he is, just be patient,’ Marthe replied equably.

  ‘It’s all burnt. It’s not right. When Monsieur goes off like that he ought to let me know beforehand… Not that it’s any business of mine, when all’s said and done. But the supper won’t be edible.’

  ‘Is that so, Rose?’ said a quiet voice behind her. ‘All the same, we shall eat your supper.’

  Mouret was home. Rose turned her head and looked straight at her master, as though ready to explode with rage. But faced with his level expression, which displayed just a hint of bourgeois mockery, she could think of nothing to say, and withdrew. Mouret went down on to the terrace, where, instead of sitting down, he walked back and forth. He did no more than lightly touch Désirée’s cheek with his fingertips, and she smiled up at him. Marthe raised her eyes. Then, after a glance at her husband, she started to put her work away in her table.

  ‘Aren’t you tired?’ Octave asked, looking at his father’s shoes, which were white with dust.

  ‘A little,’ Mouret replied, saying no more about the long walk he had just had.

  But then in the middle of the garden he spied a rake and a spade that had no doubt been left out by the children.

  ‘Why have the tools not been put away?’ he shouted. ‘I’ve said it a hundred times. If it were to rain they would all rust.’

  Without another word he went down and tidied the tools away at the back of the small greenhouse. As he came back up the terrace he scanned every corner of the paths to check that everything was in the right place.

  ‘You doing your homework?’ he asked, as he passed Serge who was still reading his book.

  ‘No, father,’ his son answered. ‘It’s a book Abbé Bourrette* lent me, The Missions to China.’*

  Mouret stopped abruptly in front of his wife.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘has anybody called?’

  ‘No, nobody, my dear,’ said Marthe, surprised.

  He was about to say more, but appeared to think better of it. He walked around for another moment or two without saying anything, then, going towards the steps:

  ‘Well, Rose, where’s this supper that was burnt?’

  From the end of the passage came the furious voice of the cook shouting:

  ‘My sakes, nothing’s ready any more now, it’s all gone cold. You’ll have to wait, Sir.’

  Mouret laughed silently; with his left eye he winked at his wife and children. Rose’s anger seemed to amuse him a great deal. Then he became absorbed in his neighbour’s fruit trees.

  ‘It’s astonishing,’ he remarked softly, ‘Monsieur Rastoil has some magnificent pears this year.’

  Marthe, who had suddenly become a little anxious, seemed about to ask him something. Summoning up her courage, she ventured:

  ‘Were you expecting someone today, my dear?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ he replied, beginning to walk up and down.

  ‘Have you perhaps rented out the second floor?’

  ‘I have indeed.’

  And as there followed an embarrassed silence, he went on calmly:

  ‘This morning before I left for Les Tulettes I went up to Abbé Bourrette’s. He was very insistent and I’m afraid I agreed… I know you didn’t want me to. But, if you think about it, you are not being sensible, my dear. This second floor is no use to us. It’s in a state of disrepair. The fruit we’ve been keeping in the bedrooms has made it damp and caused the wallpaper to peel off… And while I think of it, don’t forget to move the fruit tomorrow: our tenant might arrive at any moment.’

  ‘But we were so happy on our own in the house!’ Marthe said in a small voice.

  ‘Nonsense!’ Mouret rejoined. ‘A priest won’t be in our way very much. He will live in his part of the house and we shall live in ours. Those hooded ravens always keep themselves to themselves, even if all they are drinking is a glass of water… You know there’s no love lost between them and me! Most of them are good-for-nothings… Well, what decided me to let it, is that I have indeed found a priest. We shan’t have to worry about the money where they are concerned, and we shan’t even hear him put his key in the lock.’

  But Marthe was still very upset. She looked around at her happy household, the garden bathed in the light of the departing sun, the grey shadows darkening; she looked at her children, her sleepy contentment contained in this small corner of the earth.

  ‘And do you know who this priest is?’ she enquired.

  ‘No, but Abbé Bourrette has rented it in his name and that’s sufficient. Abbé Bourrette is a good fellow… I know that our tenant’s name is Faujas, Abbé Faujas, and that he comes from the diocese of Besançon.* He must have had some difference with his parish priest. They’ll have appointed him priest here in Saint-Saturnin.* Perhaps he knows our bishop, Monsignor Rousselot. Well anyway, that’s none of our business… I trust Abbé Bourrette in all this.’

  Marthe, however, was not reassured. She held her ground against her husband, and that was a rare occurrence.

  ‘You are right,’ she said, after a short silence. ‘The abbé is a worthy man. But I remember that when he came to see the rooms he told me he didn’t know the person in whose name he was charged to find accommodation for rent. It’s one of those commissions that priests give one another, from one town to the next… I think you might have written to Besançon for more details to find out who it is you are intending to have in your
house.’

  Mouret refused to lose his temper; he laughed indulgently.

  ‘Well, I daresay it’s not the devil… Look at you trembling like that! I didn’t realize you were so superstitious. You surely don’t believe priests bring bad luck, as some say. It’s true they don’t bring good luck either. They are just the same as everyone else… Oh well, once the priest is here you’ll see whether I’m scared of his cassock or not!’

  ‘No, you know I’m not superstitious,’ Marthe replied softly. ‘But I’m very uneasy, that’s all.’

  He stood facing her, interrupting her with a brusque gesture.

  ‘That’s enough, don’t you think?’ he said. ‘I’ve rented out the room, and let that be the end of it.’

  And he added jokingly, in the tone of a bourgeois who believes he has clinched a good deal:

  ‘What’s certain is that I’ve let it for a hundred and fifty francs, and that’ll come into the household every year.’

  Marthe had lowered her head, showing her displeasure only by a slight movement of the hands, and shutting her eyes very gently, as though to prevent the unshed tears from spilling over.

  She cast a furtive look at her children who during the altercation she had just had with their father did not seem to be listening, no doubt because they were used to Mouret showing off his sardonic side in scenes like this.

  ‘You can come and eat now if you want to,’ grumbled Rose, going out on to the steps.

  ‘That’s good. Supper, children!’ Mouret cried gaily, apparently no longer in the slightest bad mood.

  The family rose. But when Désirée, who had remained solemn until now, like the poor little innocent she was, saw the whole family get up, it seemed to rekindle her anxiety. She threw herself on her father, stammering:

  ‘Papa, one of my birds has flown away.’

  ‘A bird, my love? We’ll get it back.’

  And he stroked her and became very affectionate with her. But she made him go and look at the cage as well. When he came back with his daughter, Marthe and his two sons were already in the dining room. The setting sun’s rays through the window showed off the pretty china plates, the children’s soup bowls, their tumblers, and the white tablecloth. The room was warm and quiet as the green hues in the garden faded into the darkness.

  Marthe, comforted by this peaceful scene, was smilingly taking the lid off the soup tureen, when there was a noise in the hall. Rose, in a great state of agitation, ran in, stammering:

  ‘Abbé Faujas has arrived.’

  CHAPTER 2

  MOURET made a gesture of annoyance. He really wasn’t expecting his tenant for another two days at the earliest. He got up quickly as Abbé Faujas appeared in the doorway to the passage. He was a tall, strong man with a wide, square face, and a sallow complexion. Behind him, in his shadow, was an elderly woman who bore a surprising resemblance to him, but she was smaller and her appearance was more uncouth. Seeing the table set for supper, they both hesitated: they took a discreet step back, but did not retire completely. The tall black figure of the priest made a sombre mark on the bright whitewashed wall.

  ‘Forgive us for intruding,’ he said to Mouret. ‘We have just come from Abbé Bourrette’s; he must have told you…’

  ‘No, he didn’t!’ Mouret exclaimed. ‘That’s typical of him! He always seems to have descended from another planet. This very morning he told me categorically that you wouldn’t be here for another two days… Well, we’ll have to move you in all the same.’

  Abbé Faujas apologized. He had a deep voice and its cadences were very melodious. He was truly sorry they had arrived at such an inopportune moment. Having conveyed his apologies in a few well-chosen words, he turned to pay the porter who had brought his trunk. With large, muscular hands he pulled from a pocket in his cassock a purse with just the steel rings visible. Head bent, he rummaged round in it tentatively for a minute or two, feeling the coins with the tips of his fingers. Then, without anyone seeing the coin, the porter went away. Faujas said again, politely:

  ‘Do carry on with your meal, Monsieur, I beg you… Your servant will show us the rooms. She will help me carry this upstairs.’

  He was already bending down to take one of the handles of the trunk. It was a small wooden box reinforced with strips of tin round the middle and at the corners. It looked to have been repaired on one of its sides with a pine cross-piece. Mouret was surprised. He glanced around for the rest of the priest’s luggage, but could see nothing except a large basket which the old lady, tired though she was, held on to with both hands placed in front of her skirts, doggedly unwilling to put it down. Amongst the packets of linen, the corner of a comb wrapped in paper and the neck of a badly corked litre bottle protruded from under the raised cover.

  ‘No, no, leave it,’ Mouret said, tapping the trunk lightly with his foot. ‘It can’t be very heavy. Rose will manage on her own.’

  He was no doubt unaware of the covert scorn in his words. The old lady fixed her beady black eyes on him. Then she went back into the dining room, which she had been studying ever since she arrived, with its table laid for supper; tight-lipped, she surveyed one thing after another. Abbé Faujas meanwhile had agreed to leave the trunk there. In the yellow dusty sunlight coming in through the garden door, his shabby cassock looked all red; the edges were adorned with patches; it was extremely clean, but so pathetically worn that Marthe, who had thus far remained in her chair with a kind of worried reserve, also rose. The abbé, who, after only a cursory glance at her, had immediately glanced away, saw her get up, while not appearing to look at her at all.

  ‘I beg you,’ he repeated, ‘do not disturb yourselves. We should be very sorry to interrupt your dinner.’

  ‘Well, all right!’ said Mouret, who was hungry. ‘Rose will take you up. Ask her if you need anything… Make yourselves comfortable.’

  Abbé Faujas, having said goodnight, was on his way to the bottom of the stairs, when Marthe went over to her husband and said softly:

  ‘But you have forgotten, my dear…’

  ‘What?’ he asked, seeing her hesitate.

  ‘You know… the fruit?’

  ‘Oh, you’re right, there’s the wretched fruit!’ he exclaimed in consternation. And as Abbé Faujas came back with a questioning look: ‘I am really very annoyed, Monsieur,’ he said. ‘Father Bourrette is surely a good man, but it is vexing that you entrusted him with this matter… His head is not worth two sous…* If we had known, we should have had everything ready. Instead of that, we have to move things around. We were using the rooms, you see. Our entire harvest of figs, apples, grapes is up there on the floor…’

  The priest was listening with a surprise that his extreme politeness could not conceal.

  ‘Oh, it won’t take us long,’ Mouret went on. ‘In ten minutes if you won’t mind waiting, Rose will clear your rooms.’

  The worried look on the abbé’s pale face became more marked.

  ‘The rooms are furnished, are they not?’ he asked.

  ‘Not at all. There’s not one stick of furniture. We’ve never lived in them.’

  At that the priest became agitated. His grey eyes flashed. He exclaimed, barely suppressing his anger:

  ‘What! But I specifically asked him in my letter if we could rent furnished rooms. Obviously I couldn’t bring any furniture in my trunk.’

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Mouret’s voice grew louder. ‘That Bourrette is unbelievable… He came round here, Monsieur, and for certain he saw the apples, because he even picked one up, declaring that he had rarely seen such a beautiful apple. He said that everything seemed fine and that it was just right and that he would rent the rooms.’

  But Abbé Faujas was no longer listening; his cheeks were flushed with anger. He turned, and in an anxious and stuttering voice he said:

  ‘Mother, do you hear that? There isn’t any furniture.’

  The old lady, her thin black shawl wrapped tightly around her and not letting go of her basket, had just be
en creeping around inspecting the ground floor. She had got as far as the kitchen door and inspected its four corners; then, coming back to the steps, had slowly taken in the view of the garden. But it was the dining room that interested her most. There she stood as before opposite the laden table, her eyes on the steaming soup, when her son again said:

  ‘Do you hear that, Mother? We shall have to go to the hotel.’

  Without answering, she looked up. Her whole face indicated a refusal to leave this house whose every nook and cranny she was already familiar with.

  She gave a small, almost imperceptible shrug, her eyes wandering from the kitchen to the garden and from garden to dining room.

  Mouret meanwhile was becoming impatient. Seeing that neither mother nor son seemed about to go away, he went on:

  ‘Unfortunately we don’t have any beds… Well, in the attic we have a sort of truckle bed which might be all right at a pinch for Madame, but I don’t know what Monsieur l’Abbé could sleep on.’

  Then Madame Faujas finally opened her mouth. She said in a clipped, rather hoarse voice:

  ‘My son can have the truckle bed… I only need a mattress on the floor in a corner.’

  The abbé gave an approving nod to this arrangement. Mouret started to protest, to try and think of some other arrangement. But confronted by the satisfied expression of his new tenants, said nothing, but made do with exchanging a look of astonishment with his wife.

  ‘Tomorrow is another day,’ he said with his bourgeois dryness. ‘You will be able to get what furniture you need. Rose will go up and take away the fruit and make the beds. Would you wait a moment on the terrace?… Come children, get two chairs.’

  Ever since the priest and his mother had arrived, the children had been sitting quietly at the table. They studied the visitors curiously. The priest had seemed not to notice them; but Madame Faujas had stopped for a moment by each of them, as though she wished from the outset to get inside their young heads. At their father’s words all three jumped up from their chairs.

  The old lady did not sit down. As Mouret was turning round to see where she was, he saw her standing in front of one of the half-open windows in the sitting room. She was craning her neck, quietly finishing her inspection, like someone visiting a property for sale. The moment Rose lifted the small trunk she came back into the hall, saying simply: