CHAPTER 17

Marthe's health was causing Doctor Porquier much anxiety. He still smiled in his pleasant way, and talked to her after the manner of a fashionable medical man for whom disease never has any existence, and who grants a consultation just as a dressmaker fits on a new dress; but there was a certain twist on his lips which indicated that 'dear madame' had something more seriously wrong with her than a slight cough and spitting of blood, as he tried to persuade her. He advised her, now that the warm weather had come, to get a little change of surroundings and occupation by taking an occasional drive, without, however, over-fatiguing herself. In obedience to the doctor's directions, Marthe, who was more and more possessed by a vague feeling of anguish, and a need of finding some occupation to assuage her nervous impatience, started on a series of excursions to the neighbouring villages. Twice a week she drove off, after luncheon, in an old refurbished carriage, hired from a Plassans coachbuilder. She generally drove some six or seven miles out, so as to get back home by six o'clock. Her great desire was to induce Abbé Faujas to go with her, and it was only in the hope of accomplishing this that she had conformed with the doctor's directions; but the Abbé, without distinctly refusing, always excused himself on the ground that he was too busy to spare the time, and Marthe was obliged to content herself with the companionship of Olympe or Madame Faujas.

[Pg 211]

One afternoon as she was driving with Olympe towards the village of Les Tulettes, past the little estate of her uncle Macquart, the latter caught sight of her as he stood upon his terrace, which was ornamented with a couple of mulberry trees.

'Where is Mouret?' he cried. 'Why hasn't Mouret come as well?'

Marthe was obliged to stop for a moment or two to speak to her uncle, and to explain to him that she was not well, and could not stay to dine with him. He had expressed his determination to kill a fowl for the meal.

'Well,' he said at last, 'I'll kill it all the same, and you shall take it away with you.'

Then he hurried off to kill the fowl at once. When he came back with it, he laid it on a stone table in front of the house, and exclaimed with an expression of satisfaction:

'Isn't it a plump, splendid fellow?'

At the moment of Marthe's arrival Macquart had been on the point of drinking a bottle of wine under the shade of his mulberry trees, in company with a tall thin young fellow, dressed entirely in grey. He persuaded the two women to leave the carriage and sit down beside him for a time, bringing them chairs, and doing the honours of his house with a snigger of satisfaction.

'I have a very nice little place here, haven't I? My mulberries are very fine ones. In the summer I smoke my pipe out here in the fresh air. In the winter I sit down yonder with my back to the wall in the sun. Do you see my vegetables? The fowl-house is at the bottom of the garden. I have another strip of ground as well, behind the house, where I grow potatoes and lucern. I am getting old now, worse luck, and it's quite time that I should enjoy myself a little.'

He rubbed his hands together and gently wagged his head, as he cast an affectionate glance over his little estate. Then some thought seemed to sadden him.

'Have you seen your father lately?' he abruptly asked. 'Rougon isn't very amiable, you know. That cornfield over yonder to the left is for sale. If he had been willing we might have bought it. What would it have been for a man of his means? A paltry three thousand francs is all that is asked, but he refuses to have anything to do with it. The last time I went to see him he even made your mother tell[Pg 212] me that he wasn't at home. But, you'll see, it will be all the worse for them in the end.'

He wagged his head and indulged in his unpleasant laugh, as he repeated:

'Yes, yes; it will be all the worse for them.'

Then he went to fetch some glasses, for he insisted upon making the two women taste his wine. It was some light wine which he had discovered at Saint-Eutrope, and in which he took great pride. Marthe scarcely wetted her lips, but Olympe finished the bottle. And afterwards she even accepted a glass of syrup, saying that the wine was very strong.

'And what have you done with your priest?' Uncle Macquart suddenly asked his niece.

Marthe looked at him in surprise and displeasure without replying.

'I heard that he was sponging on you tremendously,' Macquart loudly continued. 'Those priests are fond of good living. When I heard about him, I said that it served Mouret quite right. I warned him. Well, I shall be glad to help you to turn him out of the house. Mouret has only got to come and ask me, and I'll give him a helping hand. I've never been able to endure those fellows. I know one of them, Abbé Fenil, who has a house on the other side of the road. He is no better than the rest of them, but he is as malicious as an ape, and he amuses me. I fancy that he doesn't get on very well with that priest of yours; isn't that so, eh?'

Marthe had turned very pale.

'Madame here is the sister of his reverence Abbé Faujas,' she said, turning to Olympe, who was listening with much curiosity.

'What I said has no reference to madame,' replied Macquart quite unconcernedly. 'Madame is not offended, I'm sure. She will take another glass of syrup?'

Olympe accepted another glass of the syrup, but Marthe rose from her seat and wished to leave. Her uncle, however, insisted upon taking her over his grounds. At the end of the garden she stopped to look at a large white building that was on the slope of the hill, at a few hundred yards from Les Tulettes. Its inner courts looked like prison-yards, and the narrow symmetrical windows which streaked its front with black lines gave it the cheerless aspect of a hospital.

'That is the Lunatic Asylum,' exclaimed Macquart, who had followed the direction of Marthe's eyes. 'The young man[Pg 213] here is one of the warders. We get on very well together, and he comes every now and then to have a bottle of wine with me.'

Then, turning towards the man in grey, who was finishing his glass beneath the mulberry tree, he called out:

'Here, Alexandre, come and show my niece our poor old woman's window.'

Alexandre came up to them politely.

'Do you see those three trees?' he said, stretching out his forefinger, as though he were drawing a plan in the air. 'Well, a little below the one to the left, you can see a fountain in the corner of a courtyard. Follow the windows on the ground floor to the right; it is the fifth one.'

Marthe stood there in silence, her lips white and her gaze fixed, in spite of herself, on the window pointed out to her. Uncle Macquart was looking at it as well, but with complaisance manifest in his blinking eyes.

'I see her sometimes of a morning,' he said, 'when the sun is on the other side. She keeps very well, doesn't she, Alexandre? I always tell them so when I go to Plassans. I am very well placed here to keep a watch on her. I couldn't be anywhere better.'

He again gave a snigger of satisfaction.

'The Rougons, you know, my dear, haven't got any stronger heads than the Macquarts have, and I often think, as I sit out here in front of that big house, that the whole lot will, perhaps, join the mother there some day. Thank Heaven, I've no fear about myself. My noddle is firmly fixed on. But I know some of them who are a little shaky. Well, I shall be here to receive them, and I shall see them from my den, and recommend them to Alexandre's kind attention, though they haven't all of them always been particularly kind to me.'

Then with that hideous smile of his that was like a captive wolf's, he added:

'It's very lucky for you all that I am here on the spot at Les Tulettes.'

Marthe could not help trembling. Though she was well aware of her uncle's taste for savage pleasantries, and the pleasure he took in torturing the people to whom he presented his rabbits, she could not help fancying that he was perhaps speaking the truth, and that the rest of the family would indeed be quartered eventually in those gloomy cells. She[Pg 214] insisted upon taking her immediate departure in spite of the pressing entreaties of Macquart, who wanted to open another bottle of wine.

'Ah! where is the fowl?' he cried, just as she was getting into the carriage.

He went back for it, and placed it upon her knees.

'It is for Mouret, you understand,' he said, with a malicious expression; 'for Mouret, and for no one else. When I come to see you, I shall ask him how he liked it.'

He winked as he glanced at Olympe. Then, just as the coachman was going to whip his horse forward, he laid hold of the carriage again, and said:

'Go and see your father and talk to him about the cornfield. See, it's that field just in front of us. Rougon is making a mistake. We are too old friends to quarrel about the matter; besides, as he very well knows, it would be worse for him if we did. Let him understand that he is making a mistake.'

The carriage set off, and as Olympe turned round she saw Macquart grinning under his mulberry trees with Alexandre, and uncorking that second bottle of which he had spoken. Marthe gave the coachman strict orders that he was never to take her to Les Tulettes again. She was beginning to feel a little tired of these drives into the country, and she took them less frequently, and at last gave them up altogether, when she found that she could never prevail upon Abbé Faujas to accompany her.

Marthe was now undergoing a complete change; she was becoming quite another woman. She had grown much more refined, through the life of nervous excitement which she had been leading. The stolid heaviness and dull lifelessness which she had acquired from having spent fifteen years behind a counter at Marseilles seemed to melt away in the bright flame of her new-born piety. She dressed better than she had been used to do, and joined in the conversation when she now went to the Rougons' on Thursdays.

'Madame Mouret is becoming quite a young girl again,' exclaimed Madame de Condamin in amazement.

'Yes, indeed,' replied Doctor Porquier, nodding his head; 'she is going through life backwards.'

Marthe, who had now grown much slimmer, with rosy cheeks and magnificent black flashing eyes, burst for some months into singular beauty. Her face beamed with animation,[Pg 215] extraordinary vitality seemed to flood her being and thrill her with warmth. Her forgotten and joyless youth appeared to blaze in her now, at forty years of age. At the same time she was overwhelmed by a perpetual craving for prayer and devotion, and no longer obeyed Abbé Faujas's injunctions. She wore out her knees upon the flag-stones at Saint-Saturnin's, lived in the midst of canticles and offerings of praise and worship, and took comfort in the presence of the gleaming monstrances and the brightly lit chapels, and priests and altars that glittered with starry sheen through the dark gloom of the cathedral nave. She had a sort of physical craving for those glories, a craving which tortured and racked her. She was compelled by her very suffering—she would have died if she had not yielded—to seek sustenance for her passion, to come and prostrate herself in confession, to bow in lowly awe amidst the thrilling peals of the organ, and to faint with melting joy in the ecstasy of communion. Then all consciousness of trouble left her, she was no longer tortured, she bowed herself to the ground in a painless trance, etherealised, as it were, becoming a pure, unsullied flame of self-consuming love.

But Faujas's severity increased, he tried to check her by roughness. He was amazed at this passionate awakening of Marthe's soul, this ardour for love and death. He frequently questioned her on the subject of her childhood; he even went to see Madame Rougon, and remained for a long time in great perplexity and dissatisfaction.

'Our landlady has been complaining of you,' his mother said to him. 'Why won't you allow her to go to church whenever she likes? It is very unkind of you to vex her; she is very kindly to us.'

'She is killing herself,' replied the priest.

Madame Faujas shrugged her shoulders after her usual fashion.

'That is her own business. We all have our ways of finding pleasure. It is better to die of praying than to give one's self indigestion like that hussy Olympe. Don't be so severe with Madame Mouret. You will end by making it impossible for us to live here.'

One day when she was advising him in this way, he exclaimed in a gloomy voice:

'Mother, this woman will be the obstacle!'

'She!' cried the old peasant woman, 'why, she worships[Pg 216] you, Ovide! You may do anything you like with her, if you will only treat her a little more kindly. She would carry you to the cathedral if it rained, to prevent you wetting your feet, if you would only let her!'

Abbé Faujas himself at last came to understand the necessity of no longer treating Marthe so harshly. He began to fear an outburst. So he gradually allowed her greater liberty, permitted her to seclude herself, to tell her beads at length, to offer prayers at each of the Stations of the Cross, and even to come twice a week to his confessional at Saint-Saturnin's. Marthe, no longer hearing the terrible voice which had seemed to impute her piety to her as a vice, believed that God was pouring His grace upon her. Now at last, she thought, she was entering into all the joys of Paradise. She was overcome by trances of sweet emotion, inexhaustible floods of tears, which she shed without being conscious of their flow, and nervous ecstasies from which she emerged weak and faint as though all her life-blood had left her veins. At these times, Rose would take her and lay her upon her bed, where she would lie for hours with pinched lips and half-closed eyes like a dead woman.

One afternoon the cook, alarmed by her stillness, was really afraid that she might be dead. She did not think of knocking at the door of the room in which Mouret had shut himself, but she went straight to the second floor and besought Abbé Faujas to come down to her mistress. When he reached Marthe's room, Rose hastened to fetch some ether, leaving the priest alone with the swooning woman. He merely took her hands within his own. At last Marthe began to move about and talk incoherently. When she at last recognised him at her bedside her blood surged to her face.

'Are you better, my dear child?' he asked her. 'You make me feel very uneasy.'

She felt too much oppressed at first to be able to reply to him, and burst into tears, as she let her head slip between his arms.

'I am not ill,' she murmured at last, in so feeble a voice that it was scarcely more than a breath; 'I am too happy. Let me cry; I feel delight in my tears. How kind of you to have come! I had been expecting you and calling you for a long time.'

Then her voice grew weaker and weaker till it was nothing more than a mere murmur of ardent prayer.

[Pg 217]

'Oh! who will give me wings to fly towards thee? My soul languishes without thee, it longs for thee passionately and sighs for thee, O my God, my only good thing, my consolation, my sweet joy, my treasure, my happiness, my life, my God, my all——'

Her face broke into a smile as she breathed these passionate words, and she clasped her hands fancying that she saw Abbé Faujas's grave face circled by an aureole. The priest, who had hitherto always succeeded in checking anything of this sort, felt alarmed for a moment and hastily withdrew his arms. Then he exclaimed authoritatively:

'Be calm and reasonable; I desire you to be so. God will refuse your homage if you do not offer it to Him in calm reason. What is most urgent now is to restore your strength.'

Rose returned to the room, quite distracted at not having been able to find any ether. The priest told her to remain by the bedside, while he said to Marthe in a more gentle tone:

'Don't distress yourself. God will be touched by your love. When the proper time comes, He will come down to you and fill you with everlasting felicity.'

Then he quitted the room, leaving the ailing woman quite radiant, like one raised from the dead. From that day forward he was able to mould her like soft wax beneath his touch. She became extremely useful to him in certain delicate missions to Madame de Condamin, and she also frequently visited Madame Rastoil when he expressed a desire that she should do so. She rendered him absolute obedience, never seeking the reason of anything he told her to do, but saying just what he instructed her to say and no more. He no longer observed any precautions with her, but bluntly taught her her lessons and made use of her as though she were a machine. She would have begged in the streets if he had ordered her to do so. When she became restless and stretched out her hands to him, with bursting heart and passion-swollen lips, he crushed her with a single word beneath the will of Heaven. She never dared to make any reply. Between her and the priest there was a wall of anger and scorn. When Abbé Faujas left her after one of the short struggles which he occasionally had with her, he shrugged his shoulders with the disdain of a strong wrestler who has been opposed by a child.

[Pg 218]

Though Marthe was so pliant in the hands of the priest, she grew more querulous and sour every day amidst all the little cares of household life. Rose said that she had never before known her to be so fractious. It was towards her husband that she specially manifested increasing bitterness and dislike. The old leaven of the Rougons' rancour was reviving in presence of this son of a Macquart, this man whom she accused of being the torture of her life. When Madame Faujas or Olympe came downstairs to sit with her in the dining-room she no longer observed any reticence, but gave full vent to her feelings against Mouret.

'For twenty years he kept me shut up like a mere clerk, with a pen behind my ear, between his jars of oil and bags of almonds! He never allowed me a pleasure or gave me a present. He has robbed me of my children; and he is quite capable of taking himself off any day to make people believe that I have made his life unendurable. It is very fortunate that you are here and can tell the truth.'

She fell foul of Mouret in this way without any provocation from him. Everything that he did, his looks, his gestures, the few words he spoke, all seemed to infuriate her. She could not even see him without being carried away by an unreasoning anger. It was at the close of their meals, when Mouret, without waiting for dessert, folded his napkin and silently rose from table, that quarrels more especially occurred.

'You might leave the table at the same time as other people,' Marthe would bitterly remark; 'it is not very polite of you to behave in that way.'

'I have finished, and I am going away,' Mouret replied in his drawling voice.

Marthe began to imagine that her husband's daily retreat from table was an intentional slight to Abbé Faujas, and thereupon she lost all control over herself.

'You are a perfect boor, you make me feel quite ashamed!' she cried. 'I should have a nice time of it with you if I had not been fortunate enough to make some friends who console me for your boorish ways! You don't even know how to behave yourself at table, you prevent me from enjoying a single meal. Stay where you are, do you hear? If you don't want to eat any more, you can look at us.'

He finished folding his napkin as calmly as though he had not heard a word of what his wife had said, and then, with[Pg 219] slow and deliberate steps, he left the room. They could hear him go upstairs and lock himself in his office. Thereupon Marthe, choking with anger, burst out:

'Oh, the monster! He is killing me; he is killing me!'

Madame Faujas was obliged to console and soothe her. Rose ran to the foot of the stairs and called out at the top of her voice, so that Mouret might hear her through the closed door:

'You are a monster, sir! Madame is quite right to call you a monster!'

Some of their quarrels were particularly violent. Marthe, whose reason was on the verge of giving way, had got it into her head that her husband wished to beat her. It was a fixed idea of hers. She asserted that he was only waiting and watching for an opportunity. He had not dared to do it yet, she said, because he had never found her alone, and in the night-time he was afraid lest she should cry out for assistance. Rose on her side swore that she had seen her master hiding a thick stick in his office. Madame Faujas and Olympe showed no hesitation in believing these stories, expressed the greatest pity for their landlady, and constituted themselves her protectors. 'That brute,' as they now called Mouret, would not venture, they said, to ill-treat her in their presence; and they told her to come for them at night if he should show the least sign of violence. The house was now in a constant state of alarm.

'He is capable of any wickedness,' exclaimed the cook.

That year Marthe observed all the religious ceremonies of Passion Week with the greatest fervour. On Good Friday she knelt in agony in the black-draped church, while the candles were extinguished, one by one, midst the mournful swell of voices rising through the gloomy nave. It seemed to her as though her own breath were dying away with the light of the candles. When the last one went out, and the darkness in front of her seemed implacable and repelling, she fainted away, remaining for an hour bent in an attitude of prayer without the women around her being aware of her condition. When she came to herself, the church was deserted. She imagined that she was being scourged with rods and that blood was streaming from her limbs; she experienced too such excruciating pains in her head that she raised her hands to it, as if to pull out thorns whose points she seemed to feel piercing her skull. She was in a strange condition at[Pg 220] dinner that evening. She was still suffering from nervous shock; when she closed her eyes, she saw the souls of the expiring candles flitting away through the darkness, and she mechanically examined her hands for the wounds whence her blood had streamed. All the Passion bled within her.

Madame Faujas, seeing her so unwell, persuaded her to go to rest early, accompanied her to her room and put her to bed. Mouret, who had a key of the bedroom, had already retired to his office, where he spent his evenings. When Marthe, covered up to her chin with the blankets, said that she was quite warm and felt better, Madame Faujas went to blow out the candle that she might be better able to sleep; but at this Marthe sprang up in fear and cried out beseechingly:

'No! no! don't put out the light! Put it on the drawers so that I can see it. I should die if I were left in the dark.'

Then, with staring eyes, trembling as though at the recollection of some dreadful tragedy, she murmured in tones of terrified pity: 'Oh, it is horrible! it is horrible!'

She fell back upon the pillow and seemed to drop asleep, and Madame Faujas then silently left the room. That evening the whole house was in bed by ten o'clock. As Rose went upstairs, she noticed that Mouret was still in his office. She peeped through the key-hole and saw him asleep there with his head on the table, and a kitchen-candle smoking dismally by his side.

'Well, I won't wake him,' she said to herself as she continued her journey upstairs. 'Let him get a stiff neck, if he likes.'

About midnight, when the whole house was wrapped in slumber, cries were heard proceeding from the first floor. At first they were but wails, but they soon grew into loud howls, like the hoarse, choking calls of one who is being murdered. Abbé Faujas, awaking with a start, called his mother, who scarcely gave herself time to slip on a petticoat before she went to knock at Rose's door.

'Come down immediately!' she said, 'I'm afraid Madame Mouret is being murdered.'

The screams became louder than ever. The whole house was soon astir. Olympe with her shoulders simply hidden by a kerchief, made her appearance with Trouche, who had only just returned home, slightly intoxicated. Rose hastened downstairs, followed by the lodgers.

[Pg 221]

'Open the door, madame, open the door!' she cried excitedly, hammering with her fist on Madame Mouret's door.

Deep sighs alone answered her; then there was the sound of a body falling, and a terrible struggle seemed to be taking place on the floor in the midst of overturned furniture. The walls shook with repeated heavy blows, and a sound like a death-rattle passed under the door, so terrible that the Faujases and the Trouches turned pale as they looked at each other.

'Her husband is murdering her,' murmured Olympe.

'Yes, you are right; the brute is killing her,' said the cook. 'I saw him pretending to be asleep when I came up to bed. But he was planning it all then.'

She once more thundered on the door with both her fists, repeating:

'Open the door, sir! We shall go for the police if you don't. Oh, the scoundrel! he will end his days on the scaffold!'

Then the groans and cries began again. Trouche declared that the blackguard must be bleeding the poor lady like a fowl.

'We must do something more than knock at the door,' said Abbé Faujas, coming forward. 'Wait a moment.'

He put one of his broad shoulders to the door and with a slow persistent effort forced it open. The women then rushed into the room, where the most extraordinary spectacle met their eyes.

Marthe, her night-dress torn, lay panting on the floor, bruised, scratched, and bleeding. Her dishevelled hair was twined round the leg of a chair, and her hands had so firmly gripped hold of the chest of drawers, that it was pulled from its place and now stood in front of the door. Mouret was standing in a corner, holding the candle and gazing at his wife with an expression of stupefaction.

Abbé Faujas had to push the chest of drawers on one side.

'You are a monster!' cried Rose, rushing up to Mouret and shaking her fist at him. 'To treat a woman like that! He would have killed her, if we hadn't come in time to prevent him.'

Madame Faujas and Olympe bent down over Marthe. 'Poor dear!' said the former. 'She had a presentiment of something this evening. She was quite frightened.'

[Pg 222]

'Where are you hurt?' asked Olympe. 'There is nothing broken, is there? Look at her shoulder, it's quite black; and her knee is dreadfully grazed. Make yourself easy; we are with you, and we will protect you.'

But Marthe was now simply wailing like a child. While the two women were examining her, forgetting that there were men in the room, the Abbé quietly put the furniture in order. Then Rose helped Madame Faujas and Olympe to carry Marthe back to bed, and when they had done so and had knotted up her hair, they lingered for a moment, looking curiously round the room and waiting for explanations. Mouret still stood in the same corner holding the candle, as though petrified by what he had seen.

'I assure you,' he said, 'that I didn't hurt her; I didn't touch her with the tip of my finger even.'

'You've been waiting for your opportunity this month past,' cried Rose in a fury; 'we all know that well enough; we have watched you. The dear lady was quite expecting your brutality. Don't tell lies about it; they put me quite beside myself!'

The other women cast threatening glances at him, though they did not feel at liberty to speak to him in the same way as Rose had done.

'I assure you,' repeated Mouret in a gentle voice, 'that I did not strike her. I was just about to get into bed, but the moment I touched the candle, which was standing on the drawers, she awoke with a start, stretched out her arms with a cry, and then began to beat her forehead with her fists and tear her flesh with her nails.'

The cook shook her head furiously.

'Why didn't you open the door?' she cried; 'we knocked loud enough.'

'I assure you that I have done nothing,' he reiterated still more gently than before. 'I could not tell what was the matter with her. She threw herself upon the floor, bit herself and leapt about so violently as almost to break the furniture. I did not dare to go near her; I was quite overcome. I twice called to you to come in, but she was screaming so loudly that she must have prevented you from hearing me. I was in a terrible fright, but I have done nothing, I assure you.'

'Oh yes! She's been beating herself, hasn't she?' jeered Rose.

[Pg 223]

Then, addressing herself to Madame Faujas, she added:

'He threw his stick out of the window, no doubt, when he heard us coming.'

Mouret at last put the candle back upon the chest of drawers and seated himself on a chair, with his hands upon his knees. He made no further attempt to defend himself, but gazed with stupefaction at the women who were shaking their skinny arms in front of the bed. Trouche had exchanged a glance with Abbé Faujas. That poor fellow, Mouret, certainly had no very ferocious appearance as he sat there in his night-gown, with a yellow handkerchief tied round his bald head. However, the others all closed round the bed and looked at Marthe, who, with distorted face, seemed to be waking from a dream.

'What is the matter, Rose?' she asked. 'What are all these people doing here? I am quite exhausted. Ask them to leave me in peace.'

Rose hesitated for a moment.

'Your husband is in the room, madame,' she said at last. 'Aren't you afraid to remain alone with him?'

Marthe looked at her in astonishment.

'No, no; not at all,' she replied. 'Go away; I am very sleepy.'

Thereupon the five people quitted the room, leaving Mouret seated on the chair, staring blankly towards the bed.

'He won't be able to fasten the door again,' the cook exclaimed as she went back upstairs. 'At the very first sound I shall fly down and be at him. I shall go to bed with my things on. Did you hear what stories the dear lady told to prevent him from appearing such a brute? She would let herself be murdered rather than accuse him. What a hypocritical face he has, hasn't he?'

The three women remained for a few moments on the landing of the second floor, holding their candlesticks the while. No punishment, said they, would be severe enough for such a man. Then they separated. The house fell into its wonted quietness, and the remainder of the night passed off peacefully. The next morning, when the three women eagerly referred to the terrible scene, they found Marthe nervous, shamefaced and confused. She gave them no answer but cut the conversation short. When she was alone she sent for a workman to come and mend the door. Madame[Pg 224] Faujas and Olympe came to the conclusion that Madame Mouret's reticence was caused by a desire to avoid scandal.

The next day, Easter Day, Marthe tasted at Saint-Saturnin's all the sweetness of an awakening of the soul amidst the triumphant joys of the Resurrection. The gloom of Good Friday was swept away by the brightness of Easter; the church was decked in white, and was full of perfume and light, as though for the celebration of some divine nuptials; the voices of the choir-boys sounded flute-like, and Marthe, amidst their songs of joyful praise, felt transported by even more thrilling, overwhelming sensations than during the celebration of the crucifixion. She returned home with glistening eyes and hot dry tongue, and sat up late, talking with a gaiety that was unusual in her. Mouret was already in bed when she at last went upstairs. About midnight, terrible cries again echoed through the house.

The scene that had taken place two days previously was repeated: only on this occasion, at the first knock, Mouret came in his night-gown and with distracted face to open the door. Marthe, still dressed, was lying on her stomach, sobbing violently and beating her head against the foot of the bed. The bodice of her dress looked as though it had been torn open, and there were two big scratches on her throat.

'He has tried to strangle her this time!' exclaimed Rose.

The women undressed her. Mouret, after opening the door, had got back into bed, trembling all over and as pale as a sheet. He made no attempt to defend himself; he did not even appear to hear the indignant remarks that were made about him, but simply covered himself up and lay close to the wall. Similar scenes now took place at irregular intervals. The house lived in a state of fear lest a crime should be committed; and, at the slightest noise, the occupants of the second floor were astir. Marthe, however, still avoided all allusions to the matter, and absolutely forbade Rose to prepare a folding bed for Mouret in his office. When the morning came, it seemed to take away from her the very recollection of the scene of the night.

However, it was gradually reported about the neighbourhood that strange things happened at the Mourets'. It was said that the husband belaboured his wife every night with a bludgeon. Rose had made Madame Faujas and Olympe swear that they would say nothing on the subject, as her mistress seemingly wished to keep silence upon[Pg 225] it; but she herself, by her expressions of pity and her allusions and her reservations, materially contributed to set afloat amongst the tradesmen the stories that became current. The butcher, who was a great jester, asserted that Mouret had thrashed his wife on account of the priest, but the greengrocer's wife defended 'the poor lady,' who was, she declared, an innocent lamb quite incapable of doing any wrong. The baker's spouse, on the other hand, considered that Mouret was one of those men who ill-treat their wives for mere pleasure and amusement. In the market-place people raised their eyes to heaven when they spoke of the matter, and referred to Marthe in the same terms of caressing endearment that they would have used in speaking of a sick child. Whenever Olympe went to buy a pound of cherries or a basket of strawberries, the conversation inevitably turned upon the Mourets, and for a quarter of an hour there was a stream of sympathetic remarks.

'Well, and how are things getting on in your house?'

'Oh, don't speak of it! She is weeping her life away. It is most pitiable. One could almost wish to see her die.'

'She came to buy some anchovies the other day, and I noticed that one of her cheeks was scratched.'

'Oh, yes! he nearly kills her! If you could only see her body as I have seen it! It is nothing but one big sore. When she is down on the ground he kicks her with his heels. I am in constant fear of finding in the morning that he has split her head open during the night.'

'It must be very unpleasant for you, living in such a house. I should go somewhere else, if I were in your place. It would make me quite ill to be mixed up with such horrors every night.'

'But what would become of the poor woman? She is so refined and gentle! We stay on for her sake—five sous, isn't it, this pound of cherries?'

'Yes; five sous. Well, it's very good of you; you show a kind heart.'

This story of a husband who waited till midnight to fall upon his wife with a bludgeon excited the greatest interest amongst the gossips of the market-place. There were further terrible details every day. One pious woman asserted that Mouret was possessed by an evil spirit, and that he seized his wife by the neck with his teeth with such violence that Abbé Faujas was obliged to make the sign of the cross three[Pg 226] times in the air with his left thumb before the monster could be made to let go his hold. Then, she added, Mouret fell to the ground like a great lump, and a huge black rat leapt out of his mouth and vanished, though not the slightest hole could be discovered in the flooring. The tripe-seller at the corner of the Rue Taravelle terrified the neighbourhood by promulgating the theory that 'the scoundrel had perhaps been bitten by a mad dog.'

The story, however, was not credited among the higher classes of the inhabitants of Plassans. When it was mooted about the Cours Sauvaire it afforded the retired traders much amusement, as they sat on the benches there, basking in the warm May sun.

'Mouret is quite incapable of beating his wife,' said the retired almond-dealers; 'he looks as though he had had a whipping himself, and he no longer even comes out for a turn on the promenade. His wife must be keeping him on dry bread.'

'One can never tell,' said a retired captain. 'I knew an officer in my regiment whose wife used to box his ears for a mere yes or no. That went on for ten years. Then one day she took it into her head to kick him; but that made him quite furious and he nearly strangled her. Perhaps Mouret has the same dislike to being kicked as my friend had.'

'He probably has a yet greater dislike to priests,' said another of the company with a sneer.

For some time Madame Rougon appeared quite unconscious of the scandal which was occupying the attention of the town. She preserved a smiling face and ignored the allusions which were made before her. One day, however, after a long visit from Monsieur Delangre, she arrived at her daughter's house looking greatly distressed, her eyes filled with tears.

'Ah, my dear!' she cried, clasping Marthe in her arms, 'what is this that I have just heard? Can your husband really have so far forgotten himself so as to have raised his hand against you? It is all a pack of falsehoods, isn't it? I have given it the strongest denial. I know Mouret. He has been badly brought up, but he is not a wicked man.'

Marthe blushed. She was overcome by that embarrassment and shame which she experienced every time this subject was alluded to in her presence.

'Ah! madame will never complain!' cried Rose with her customary boldness. 'I should have come and informed you[Pg 227] a long time ago if I had not been afraid of madame being angry with me.'

The old lady let her hands fall with an expression of extreme grief and surprise.

'It is really true, then,' she exclaimed, 'that he beats you! Oh, the wretch! the wretch!'

Thereupon she began to weep.

'For me to have lived to my age to see such things! A man whom we have overwhelmed with kindnesses ever since his father's death, when he was only a little clerk with us! It was Rougon who desired your marriage. I told him more than once that Mouret looked like a scoundrel. He has never treated us well; and he only came to live at Plassans for the sake of setting us at defiance with the few sous he has got together. Thank heaven, we stand in no need of him; we are richer than he is, and it is that which annoys him. He is very mean-spirited, and so jealous that he has always refused to set foot in my drawing-room. He knows he would burst with envy there. But I won't leave you in the power of such a monster, my dear. There are laws, happily.'

'Oh don't be uneasy! There has been much exaggeration, I assure you,' said Marthe, who was growing more and more ill at ease.

'You see that she is trying to defend him!' cried the cook.

At this moment, Abbé Faujas and Trouche, who had been conferring together at the bottom of the garden, came up, attracted by the sound of the conversation.

'I am a most unhappy mother, your reverence,' said Madame Rougon piteously. 'I have only one daughter near me now, and I hear she is weeping her eyes out from ill-treatment. But you live in the same house, and I beg you to protect and console her.'

The Abbé fixed his eyes upon the old woman, as though he were trying to guess the real meaning of this sudden manifestation of distress.

'I have just seen some one whom I would rather not name,' she continued, returning the Abbé's glance. 'This person has quite alarmed me. God knows that I don't want to do anything to injure my son-in-law! But it is my duty—is it not?—to defend my daughter's interests. Well, my son-in-law is a wretch; he ill-treats his wife, he scandalises the whole town, and mixes himself up in all sorts of dirty[Pg 228] affairs. You will see that he will also compromise himself in political matters when the elections come on. The last time it was he who put himself at the head of the riff-raff of the suburbs. It will kill me, your reverence!'

'Monsieur Mouret would not allow anybody to make remarks to him about his conduct,' the Abbé at last ventured to say.

'But I can't abandon my daughter to such a man!' cried Madame Rougon. 'I will not allow it that we should be dishonoured. Justice is not made for dogs.'

Trouche, who was swaying himself about, took advantage of a momentary pause to exclaim:

'Monsieur Mouret is mad!'

The words seemed to fall with all the force of a blow from a club, and everybody looked at the speaker.

'I mean that he has a weak head,' continued Trouche. 'You've only got to look at his eyes. I may tell you that I don't feel particularly easy myself. There was a man at Besan?on who adored his daughter, but he murdered her one night without knowing what he was doing.'

'The master has been cracked for a long time past,' said Rose.

'But this is frightful!' cried Madame Rougon. 'Really, I fear you may be right. The last time I saw him he had a most extraordinary expression on his face. He never had very sharp wits. Ah! my poor dear, promise to confide everything to me. I shall not be able to sleep quietly after this. Listen to me now; at the first sign of any extravagant conduct on your husband's part, don't hesitate, don't run any further risk—madmen must be placed in confinement.'

After this speech, she went off. When Trouche was again alone with Abbé Faujas, he gave one of those unpleasant grins that exposed his black teeth to view.

'Our landlady will owe me a big taper,' he said. 'She will be able to kick about at nights as much as she likes.'

The priest, with his face quite ashy and his eyes turned to the ground, made no reply. Then he shrugged his shoulders and went off to read his breviary under the arbour at the bottom of the garden.