CHAPTER 13

Serge was now nineteen years of age. He occupied a small room on the second floor, opposite the priest's, and there led an almost cloistered life, spending much time in reading.

[Pg 146]

'I shall have to throw those old books of yours into the fire,' Mouret said to him angrily. 'You'll end by making yourself ill and having to take to your bed.'

The young man was, indeed, of such a nervous temperament, that the slightest imprudence made him poorly, as though he were a young girl, and thus he was frequently confined to his room for two or three days together. At these times Rose inundated him with herb tea, and whenever Mouret went upstairs to shake him up a little, as he called it, the cook, if she happened to be there, would turn her master out of the room, crying out at him:

'Leave the poor dear alone! Can't you see that you are killing him with your rough ways? It isn't after you that he takes: he is the very image of his mother; and you'll never be able to understand either the one or the other of them.'

Serge smiled. After he had left college his father, seeing him so delicate, had hesitated to send him to Paris to read for the bar there. He would not hear, however, of a provincial faculty; Paris, he felt sure, was necessary for a young man who wanted to climb to a high position. He tried, indeed, to instil ambitious ideas into the lad, telling him that many with much weaker wits than his own, his cousins, the Rougons, for instance, had attained to great distinction. Every time that the young man seemed to grow more robust, his father settled that he should leave home early the following month; but his trunk was never packed, for Serge was always catching a fresh cold, and then his departure would be again postponed.

On each of these occasions Marthe contented herself with saying in her gentle, indifferent way:

'He isn't twenty yet. It's really not prudent to send so young a lad to Paris; and, besides, he isn't wasting his time here; you even think that he studies too much.'

Serge used to accompany his mother to mass. He was very piously minded, very gentle and grave. Doctor Porquier had recommended him to take a good deal of exercise, and he had become enthusiastically fond of botany, going off on long rambles to collect specimens which he spent his afternoons in drying, mounting, classifying and naming. It was about this time that he struck up a great friendship with Abbé Faujas. The Abbé himself had botanised in earlier days, and he gave Serge much practical advice for which the young man was very grateful. They also lent each other books, and one day[Pg 147] they went off together to try to discover a certain plant which the priest said he thought would be found in the neighbourhood. When Serge was ill, his neighbour came to see him every morning, and sat and talked for a long while at his bedside. At other times, when the young man was well, it was he who went and knocked at Abbé Faujas's door, as soon as he heard him stirring in his room. They were only separated by a narrow landing, and they ended by almost living together.

In spite of Marthe's unruffled tranquillity and Rose's angry glances, Mouret still often indulged in bursts of anger.

'What can the young scamp be after up there?' he would growl. 'Whole days pass without my catching more than a glimpse of him. He never seems to stir from the Abbé; they are always talking together in some corner or other. He shall be off to Paris at once. He's as strong as a Turk. All those ailments of his are mere shams, excuses to get himself petted and coddled. You needn't both of you look at me in that way; I don't mean to let the priest make a hypocrite of the boy.'

Then he began to keep a watch over his son, and when he thought that he was in Faujas's room he called for him angrily.

'I would rather he went to the bad!' he cried one day in a fit of rage.

'Oh, sir!' said Rose, 'it is abominable to say such things.'

'Well, indeed I would! And I'll put him in the way myself one of these days, if you irritate me much more with these parsons of yours!'

Serge naturally joined the Young Men's Club, though he went there but little, preferring the solitude of his own room. If it had not been for Abbé Faujas, whom he sometimes met there, he would probably never have set foot in the place. The Abbé taught him to play chess in the reading-room. Mouret, on learning that the lad met the priest at the café, swore that he would pack him off by the train on the following Monday. His luggage was indeed got ready, and quite seriously this time, but Serge, who had gone out to spend a last day in the open country, returned home drenched to the skin by a sudden downpour of rain. He was obliged to go to bed, shivering with fever. For three weeks he hung between life and death; and then his convalescence lasted for two[Pg 148] long months. At the beginning of it he was so weak that he lay with his head on the pillow and his arms stretched over the sheets, as motionless as if he were simply a wax figure.

'It is your fault, sir!' cried the cook to Mouret. 'You will have it on your conscience if the boy dies.'

While his son continued in danger, Mouret wandered silently about the house, plunged in gloomy melancholy, his eyes red with crying. He seldom went upstairs, but paced up and down the passage to intercept the doctor as he went away. When he was told that Serge was at length out of danger, he glided quietly into the lad's room and offered his help. But Rose turned him away. They had no occasion for him, she said, and the boy was not yet strong enough to bear his roughness. He had much better go and attend to his business instead of getting in the way there. Mouret then remained in complete loneliness downstairs, more melancholy and unoccupied than ever. He felt no inclination for anything, said he. As he went along the passage, he often heard on the second floor the voice of Abbé Faujas, who spent whole afternoons by Serge's bedside, now that he was growing better.

'How is he to-day, Monsieur l'Abbé?' Mouret asked the priest timidly, as he met the latter going down into the garden.

'Oh, fairly well; but it will be a long convalescence, and very great care will be required.'

The priest tranquilly read his breviary, while the father, with a pair of shears in his hand, followed him up and down the garden walks, trying to renew the conversation and to get more detailed information about his boy. As his son's convalescence progressed, he remarked that the priest scarcely ever left Serge's room. He had gone upstairs several times in the women's absence, and he had always found the Abbé at the young man's bedside, talking softly to him, and rendering him all kinds of little services, sweetening his drink, straightening his bed-clothes, or getting him anything he happened to want. There was a hushed murmur throughout the house, a solemn calm which gave quite a conventual character to the second floor. Mouret seemed to smell incense, and could almost fancy sometimes, as he heard a muttering of voices, that they were saying mass upstairs.

'What can they be doing?' he wondered. 'The youngster is out of danger now; they can't be giving him extreme unction.'

[Pg 149]

Serge himself caused him much disquiet. He looked like a girl as he lay in bed in his white night-dress. His eyes seemed to have grown larger; there was a soft ecstatic smile upon his lips, which still played there even amidst his keenest pangs of suffering. Mouret no longer ventured to say anything about Paris; his dear sick boy seemed too girlish and tender for such a journey.

One afternoon he went upstairs, carefully hushing the sound of his steps. The door was ajar, and he saw Serge sitting in an easy chair in the sunshine. The young fellow was weeping with his eyes turned upward, and his mother stood sobbing in front of him. They both turned as they heard the door open, but they did not wipe away their tears. As soon as Mouret entered the room, the invalid said to him in his feeble voice:

'I have a favour to ask you, father. Mother says that you will be angry and will refuse me permission, though it would fill me with joy—I want to enter the Seminary.'

He clasped his hands together with a sort of feverish devotion.

'You! you!' exclaimed Mouret.

He looked at Marthe, who turned away her head. Then saying nothing further, he walked to the window, returned, and sat down mechanically by the bedside, as though overwhelmed by the blow.

'Father,' resumed Serge, after a long silence, 'in my nearness to death I have seen God, and I have sworn to be His. I assure you that all my happiness is centred in that. Believe me that it is so, and do not cause me grief.'

Mouret, looking very mournful, with his eyes lowered, still kept silence. At last, with an expression of utter hopelessness, he murmured:

'If I had the least particle of courage, I should wrap a couple of shirts in a handkerchief and go away.'

Then he rose from his seat, went to the window and drummed on the panes with his fingers; and when Serge again began to implore him, he said very quietly:

'Very well, my boy; be a priest.'

Immediately afterwards he left the room.

The next day, without the least warning to anyone, he set off for Marseilles, where he spent a week with his son Octave. But he came back looking careworn and aged. Octave had afforded him very little consolation. He had[Pg 150] found the young man leading a fast life, overwhelmed with debts and in all sorts of scrapes. However, Mouret did not say a word about these matters. He began to lead a perfectly sedentary existence, and no longer made any of those good strokes of business, those fortunate purchases of standing crops, in which he had formerly taken such pride. Rose noticed that he maintained almost unbroken silence, and that he even avoided saluting Abbé Faujas.

'Do you know that you are not very polite?' she boldly said to him one day. 'His reverence the Curé has just gone past, and you turned your back upon him. If you behave in this way because of the boy, you are under a great mistake. The Curé was quite against his going to the Seminary, and I often heard him talking to him against it. This house is getting a very cheerful place, indeed, now! You never speak a word, even to madame, and when you have your meals, anyone would think that it was a funeral that was going on. For my part, sir, I'm beginning to feel that I've had quite enough of it.'

Mouret went out of the room, but the cook followed him into the garden.

'Haven't you every reason to be happy, now that your son is on his feet again? He ate a cutlet yesterday, the darling, and with such a good appetite too. But you care nothing about that, do you? What you want is to make a pagan of him like yourself. Ah! you stand in great need of some one to pray for you. But God Almighty wishes to save us all. If I were you I should weep with joy, to think that that poor little dear was going to pray for me. But you are made of stone, sir! And how sweet he will look too, the darling, in his cassock!'

Mouret thereupon went up to the first floor, and shut himself up in a room which he called his study, a big bare room, furnished only with a table and a couple of chairs. This room became his refuge whenever the cook worried him. When he grew weary of staying there, he went down again into the garden, upon which he expended greater care than ever. Marthe no longer seemed to be conscious of her husband's displeasure. Sometimes he kept silent for a week, but she was in no way disquieted or distressed by it. Every day she withdrew more and more from her surroundings, and she even began to fancy, now that the house seemed so quiet and peaceable and she had ceased to hear Mouret scolding,[Pg 151] that he had grown more reasonable and had discovered for himself, as she had done, some little nook of happiness. This thought tranquillised her and induced her to plunge more deeply into her dreamy life. When her husband looked at her with his blurred eyes, scarcely recognising in her the wife of other days, she only smiled at him and did not notice the tears which were welling beneath his eyelids.

On the day when Serge, now completely restored to health, entered the Seminary, Mouret remained at home alone with Désirée. He now frequently looked after her; for this big 'innocent' girl, who was nearly sixteen, might have fallen into the basin of the fountain or have set the house on fire with matches just like a child of six. When Marthe returned home, she found the doors open and the rooms empty. The house seemed quite deserted. She went on to the terrace, and there, at the end of one of the walks, she saw her husband playing with his daughter. He was sitting on the gravel, and with a little wooden scoop was gravely filling a cart which Désirée was pulling along with a piece of string.

'Gee up! gee up!' cried the girl.

'Wait a little,' said her father patiently, 'it is not full yet. As you are the horse, you must wait till the cart is full.'

Then she stamped her feet like an impatient horse, and, at last, not being able to stand still any longer, she set off with a loud burst of laughter. The cart fell over and lost its load. When she had dragged it round the garden, she came back to her father crying:

'Fill it again! Fill it again!'

Mouret loaded it again with the little scoop. For a moment Marthe remained upon the terrace watching them, full of uneasy emotion. The open doors, the sight of the man playing with the child, the empty deserted house all touched her with sadness, though she was not clearly conscious of the feelings at work in her. She went upstairs to take off her things, on hearing Rose, who also had just returned, exclaim from the terrace steps:

'Good gracious! how silly the master is!'

His friends, the retired traders with whom he took a turn or two every day on the promenade in the Cours Sauvaire, declared that he was a little 'touched.' During the last few months his hair had grizzled, he had begun to get shaky on his legs, and was no longer the biting jeerer, feared by the[Pg 152] whole town. For a little time it was thought that he had been venturing upon some risky speculations and had been overcome by a heavy loss of money.

Madame Paloque, as she leaned over the window-rail of her dining-room which overlooked the Rue Balande, said every time she saw him, that he was certainly going to the bad. And if, a few moments later, she happened to catch sight of Abbé Faujas passing along the street, she took a delight in exclaiming—the more especially if she had visitors with her:

'Just look at his reverence the Curé! Isn't he growing sleek? If he eats out of the same dish as Mouret, he can leave him nothing but the bones.'

Then she laughed, as did those who heard her. Abbé Faujas was, indeed, becoming quite an imposing object; he now always wore black gloves and a shimmering cassock. A peculiar smile played about his face, a sort of ironical twist of his lips, when Madame de Condamin complimented him upon his appearance. The ladies liked to see him nicely and comfortably dressed; though the priest himself would probably have preferred fighting his way with bare arms and clenched fists, and never a thought about what he wore. Whenever he appeared to grow neglectful of his appearance, the slightest hint of reproach from old Madame Rougon sufficed to cure him, and he hurried off to buy silk stockings and a new hat and girdle. He was frequently requiring new clothes, for his big frame seemed to wear out his garments very quickly.

Since the foundation of the Home of the Virgin, all the women had been on his side; and defended him against the malicious stories which were still occasionally repeated, though no one was able to get at their origin. Now and then they found him a little blunt, but this roughness of his by no means offended them, least of all in the confessional, where they rather liked to feel his iron hand pressing down their necks.

'He gave me such a scolding yesterday, my dear,' said Madame de Condamin to Marthe one day. 'I believe he would have struck me if there had not been the partition between us. He is not always very easy to get on with!'

She laughed gently and seemed to enjoy the recollection of this scene with her spiritual director. Madame de Condamin had observed Marthe turn pale whenever she made her[Pg 153] certain confidences as to Abbé Faujas's manner of hearing confessions; and divining her jealousy, she took a mischievous delight in tormenting her, with which object she gave her many further private details.

When Abbé Faujas had founded the Young Men's Club, he there became quite sociable and gay; in fact he seemed to have undergone a transformation. Thanks to his will power he moulded his stern nature like wax. He allowed the part which he had taken in the founding of the club to be made public, and he became the friend of all the young men in the town, keeping a strict watch over his manners, for he well knew that young men just fresh from college had not the same taste for roughness of speech and demeanour as the women had. He one day narrowly escaped losing his temper with young Rastoil, whose ears he threatened to pull, over a disagreement about the club management; but with surprising command over himself, he put out his hand to him almost immediately afterwards, humbling himself and winning over to his side all who were present by his gracious apologies to 'that big fool Séverin,' as the other was called.

However, although the Abbé had conquered the women and the young men, he still remained on a footing of mere formal politeness with the fathers and husbands. The grave gentlemen continued to distrust him as they saw that he still refrained from identifying himself with any political party. At the Sub-Prefecture Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies discussed him with much animation, while Monsieur Delangre, without definitely defending him, said with a sharp smile that they ought to wait before judging him. At the Rastoils' he had become a source of much tribulation to the Presiding Judge, whom Séverin and his mother never ceased wearying with their constant eulogies of the priest.

'Well! well! let him have every good quality under the sun!' cried the unhappy man. 'I won't dispute one of them, only leave me at peace. I asked him to dinner, but he wouldn't come. I can't go and drag him here by force!'

'No, but, my dear,' said Madame Rastoil, 'when you meet him you scarcely bow to him. It's that, I dare say, that has made him rather cold.'

'Of course it is,' interposed Séverin; 'he sees very well that you are not as polite to him as you ought to be.'

Monsieur Rastoil shrugged his shoulders. When Monsieur de Bourdeu was there, the pair of them accused Abbé Faujas[Pg 154] of leanings towards the Sub-Prefecture, though Madame Rastoil directed their attention to the fact that he never dined there, and had never even set foot in the house.

'Oh, don't imagine that I accuse him of being a Bonapartist,' said the president. 'I only remarked that he had leanings that way; that was all. He has had communications with Monsieur Delangre.'

'Well! and so have you!' cried Séverin; 'you have had communications with the mayor! They are absolutely necessary under certain circumstances. Tell the truth and say you detest Abbé Faujas; it would be much more straightforward.'

For whole days at a time the Rastoils sulked with one another. Abbé Fenil came to see them very rarely now, excusing himself upon the ground that he was kept at home by his gout; but twice, when he had been forced to express an opinion on the Curé of Saint-Saturnin's, he had said a few words in his praise. Abbé Surin and Abbé Bourrette, as well as Monsieur Maffre, held the same views as the mistress of the house concerning the Curé, and the opposition to him came only from Monsieur Rastoil, backed up by Monsieur de Bourdeu, both of whom gravely declared that they could not compromise their political positions by receiving a man who concealed his views.

Séverin, however, now began to knock at the door in the Impasse des Chevillottes whenever he wanted to say anything to the priest, and gradually the little lane became a sort of neutral ground. Doctor Porquier, who had been the first to avail himself of it, young Delangre, and the magistrate, all came thither to talk to Abbé Faujas. Sometimes the little doors of both the gardens, as well as the cart-entrance to the Sub-Prefecture, were kept open for a whole afternoon, while the Abbé leant against the wall, smiling and shaking hands with those members of the two groups who wished to have a word with him. Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, however, carefully refrained from leaving the garden of the Sub-Prefecture; and Monsieur Rastoil and Monsieur de Bourdeu, equally persistent, remained seated beneath the trees in front of the former's waterfall. It was very seldom that the priest's little court invaded the Mourets' arbour. Now and then a head just peeped inside, took a hasty glance around, and then quickly disappeared.

Abbé Faujas now seemed to trouble about nothing. At the most he glanced with an expression of disquietude at the[Pg 155] Tronches' windows, through which Olympe's eyes were constantly glistening. The Trouches kept themselves in ambush there behind the red curtains, full of an envious desire to come down like the Abbé and eat the fruit, and talk to the fashionable folks. They tapped on the shutters, leant out of the window for a moment, and then withdrew, infuriated by the authoritative glances of the priest. Soon afterwards, however, they would return with stealthy steps, press their pale faces to one of the panes, and keep watch over his every movement, quite tortured to see him enjoying that paradise which was forbidden to them.

'It is really abominable!' Olympe exclaimed one day to her husband. 'He would lock us up in a cupboard, if he could, so as to deprive us of every atom of enjoyment. We'll go down if you like, and we'll see what he says.'

Trouche had just returned from his office. He put on a clean collar and dusted his boots, anxious to make himself as neat as possible. Olympe put on a light dress, and then they both boldly came downstairs into the garden, walking slowly alongside the tall box plants, and stopping in front of the flower-beds.

At that moment Abbé Faujas happened to have his back turned towards them. He was standing at the little door that opened into the lane talking to Monsieur Maffre. When he heard the Trouches' steps grating upon the gravel, they were close behind him under the arbour. He turned round, and stopped short in the middle of a sentence, quite astounded at seeing them there. Monsieur Maffre, who did not know them, was looking at them with curiosity.

'A beautiful day, isn't it, gentlemen?' said Olympe, who had turned pale beneath her brother's gaze.

The Abbé abruptly dragged the justice of the peace into the lane; where he quickly got rid of him.

'He is furious!' murmured Olympe. 'Well, so much the worse; we had better stay where we are now. If we go back upstairs, he will think we are afraid of him. I've had quite enough of this kind of thing, and you will see what I will say to him.'

She made Trouche seat himself on one of the chairs which Rose had brought out a short time previously, and when the Abbé returned he found them tranquilly settled there. He fastened the bolts of the little door, glanced quickly around to assure himself that the trees screened them from observation,[Pg 156] and then came up close to the Trouches, saying in a muffled voice:

'You forget our agreement. You undertook to remain in your own rooms.'

'It was too hot up there,' Olympe replied. 'We are not committing any crime by coming down here to get a little fresh air.'

The priest was on the point of exploding, but his sister, still quite pale from the effort she had made in resisting him, added in a peculiar tone:

'Don't make a noise, now! There are some people over there, and you might do yourself harm.'

Then both the Trouches laughed slightly. The Abbé fixed his eyes upon them with a terrible expression, but without speaking.

'Sit down,' said Olympe. 'You want an explanation, don't you? Well, you shall have one. We are tired of imprisoning ourselves. You are living here in clover; the house seems to belong to you, and so does the garden. So much the better, indeed; we are delighted to see how well things appear to be going with you, but you mustn't treat us as dirt beneath your feet. You have never thought of bringing me up a single bunch of grapes; you have given us the most wretched of the rooms; you hide us away and are ashamed of us; you shut us up as though we had the plague. You must understand that it can't go on any longer!'

'I am not the master here,' replied Abbé Faujas. 'You must address yourselves to Monsieur Mouret if you want to strip his garden.'

The Trouches exchanged a fresh smile.

'We don't want to pry into your affairs,' Olympe continued. 'We know what we know, and that is sufficient for us. But all this proves what a bad heart you have. Do you think that if we were in your position we shouldn't invite you to come and take your share in the good things that were going?'

'What is it that you want me to do?' demanded the Abbé. 'Do you suppose that I am rolling in wealth? You know what sort of a room I occupy myself; it is more scantily furnished than your own. The house isn't mine, and I can't give it you.'

Olympe shrugged her shoulders. She silenced her husband who was beginning to speak, and then calmly continued:

[Pg 157]

'Everyone has his own ideas of life. If you had millions you wouldn't buy a strip of carpet for your bedside; you would spend them all in some foolish scheme or other. We, on the other hand, like to be comfortable. Dare you say that if you had a fancy for the handsomest furniture in the house and for the linen and food and anything else it contains, you couldn't have them this very evening? Well, in such circumstances a good brother would think of his relations, and wouldn't leave them in wretchedness and squalor as you leave us!'

Abbé Faujas looked keenly at the Trouches. They were both swaying backwards and forwards on their chairs.

'You are a pair of ungrateful people,' he said after a moment's silence. 'I have already done a great deal for you. You have me to thank for the food that you eat now. I still have letters of yours, Olympe, letters in which you beseech me to rescue you from your misery by bringing you over to Plassans. Now that you are here and your livelihood is assured, you break out into fresh demands.'

'Stuff!' Trouche impudently interrupted. 'You sent for us here because you wanted us. I have learned to my cost not to believe in anyone's fine talk. I have allowed my wife to speak, but women can never come to the point. In two words, my good friend, you are making a mistake in keeping us cooped up like dogs, who are only brought out in the hour of danger. We are getting weary of it, and we shall perhaps end by doing something foolish. Confound it all! give us a little liberty. Since the house isn't yours and you despise all luxury, what harm can it do you if we make ourselves comfortable? We shan't eat the walls!'

'Of course!' exclaimed Olympe, 'it's only natural that we should rebel against being constantly locked up. We will take care to do nothing to prejudice you. You know that my husband only requires the least sign from you. Go your own way, and you may depend upon us; but let us go ours. Is that understood, eh?'

Abbé Faujas had bent his head; he remained silent for a moment, and then, raising his eyes, and avoiding a direct reply, he said:

'Listen to what I say. If ever you do anything to hamper me, I swear to you that I will send you away to starve in a garret on the straw.'

Then he went back into the house, leaving them under[Pg 158] the arbour. From that time the Trouches went down into the garden almost every day, but they conducted themselves with considerable discretion, and refrained from going there at the times when the priest was talking with the guests from the neighbouring gardens.

The following week Olympe complained so much of the room she was occupying that Marthe kindly offered her Serge's, which was now at liberty. The Trouches then kept both rooms. They slept in the young man's old bedchamber, from which not a single article of furniture had been removed, and turned the other apartment into a sort of drawing-room, for which Rose found them some old velvet-covered furniture in the lumber-room. Olympe, in great delight, ordered a rose-coloured dressing-gown from the best maker in Plassans.

Mouret, who had forgotten that Marthe had asked his permission to let the Trouches have Serge's room, was quite surprised to find them there one evening. He had gone up to look for a knife which he thought his son must have left in one of the drawers, and, as he entered the room, he saw Trouche trimming with this very knife a switch which he had just cut from one of the pear-trees in the garden. Thereupon he apologised and went downstairs.