The Conquest of Plassans (Classic Reprint)

by Emile Zola

  Since the Faujas had started eating on the ground floor, the floor above had been taken over by the Trouches. It was getting noisier up there. Bumping furniture, thumping feet, and shouting could be heard; doors were opened and slammed shut again. Madame Faujas, deep in conversation in the kitchen, would look up with a worried expression on her face. To pour oil on troubled waters, Rose remarked that poor Madame Trouche had a lot of problems. One night the priest, not yet in bed, heard a strange racket on the stairs. He went out with his candle and saw Trouche, blind drunk, crawling upstairs on hands and knees. He lifted him up in his strong arms and threw him into his room. Olympe was in bed quietly reading her novel, occasionally sipping a grog that was on her bedside table.

  The priest, pale with fury, said: ‘Tomorrow you pack your bags and leave, do you hear?’

  ‘Why ever should we?’ Olympe queried, unconcerned. ‘We are fine where we are.’

  But the priest interrupted rudely.

  ‘Shut up! You are a nuisance. All you’ve ever wanted is to do me harm. Mother was right. I shouldn’t have dragged you out of poverty… Now I’m having to pick your husband up off the stairs! It’s shameful. Just think of the scandal if people could see him in that state!… You will leave tomorrow.’

  Olympe had sat up, to take another mouthful of grog.

  ‘Oh no!’ she murmured.

  Trouche was laughing. He was merry. He had collapsed into an armchair, completely relaxed and extremely pleased with himself.

  ‘Don’t let’s fall out,’ he spluttered. ‘It’s nothing, just a little turn, must be the air, very keen you know. Besides, the streets in this damn town are… odd… I tell you, Faujas, they’re very decent boys and girls. Doctor Porquier’s son, he’s there. You a good friend of Doctor Porquier?… Well, we meet in a café behind the prison. It’s run by a woman from Arles, nice-looking, a brunette…’

  But the priest, his arms folded, was looking thunderously at him.

  ‘No, honest to God, Faujas, you’re wrong to hold this against me… I was brought up properly you know… I’m a respectable man, I am. I don’t even take a glass of fruit cordial in the daylight hours in case I landed you in trouble… But anyway, since I’ve been living here I have been going to my office every day, just like a schoolboy, with my jam sandwiches in my bag; and my word, what a stupid job that is; I am stupid to do it, and if it weren’t for the fact that I’m doing you a favour… But maybe no one sees me by night. I can go out at night. It does me good, I’d die if I stayed shut up indoors. In any case there’s nobody around in the streets, they are so… odd!’

  ‘Drunkard!’ spat the priest between clenched teeth.

  ‘Don’t you want to make peace?… Then that’s too bad, my dear Faujas. I’m a cheerful sort of fellow. I don’t like black looks. And if you can’t be doing with it, I’ll leave you to your penitent women. There’s scarcely one, only that little Condamin, who is nice, and the Arlésienne’s better-looking than her… You can roll your eyes as much as you like, but I don’t need you. Here, do you want me to lend you a hundred francs?’

  And he pulled some banknotes out of his pocket and spread them on his knees, laughing uproariously. Then he flapped them around under the priest’s nose and tossed them up in the air. Olympe jumped out of bed, half-naked. Much annoyed, she picked up the notes and hid them under the bolster. Meanwhile Abbé Faujas looked around in some surprise. He saw liqueur bottles lined up along the chest of drawers, an almost untouched pâté on the mantelpiece, some boiled sweets in an old battered tin. The bedroom was full of recent purchases: dresses were thrown over the chairs; a packet of lace was undone; a smart new coat hung on the catch on the window; a bearskin was spread out on the bed. Next to the grog on the bedside table a small gold ladies’ watch gleamed in a porcelain dish.

  ‘So who have they been stealing from?’ the priest wondered.

  And then he remembered seeing Olympe kiss Marthe’s hand.

  ‘You wretch!’ he cried. ‘You thief!’

  Trouche got up. His wife pushed him on to the couch.

  ‘Keep quiet,’ she told him. ‘Go to sleep, you need to.’

  And, turning to her brother:

  ‘It’s one o’clock in the morning, so if you are only intending to say vile things to us, you can leave us to sleep… It’s true my husband has no right to get drunk like that, but that’s no reason to treat him badly… We’ve already had words on more than one occasion and this must be the last, do you hear? Ovide… aren’t we brother and sister? Well, as I said, we have to share and share alike… You gorge yourself downstairs, they cook special dishes for you and between the cook and her mistress, you are in clover. That’s your business. We certainly aren’t going to poke our nose into what you eat, or take the food out of your mouth. We let you steer whatever course you please. So don’t torment us, just allow us to enjoy the same freedom you have… I think we are being very reasonable…’

  And as the priest raised his hands in exasperation, she continued:

  ‘I understand. You are still worried we might spoil your plans… Well, the best way to prevent us spoiling them is not to torment us. When you keep saying: “Oh, if only I’d known, I should have left you where you were…” You are not so powerful in spite of your hoity-toity airs. We are in this as much as you are; we are one family, we must all make our little nest together. If you were willing to do that, it could be really nice… Go to bed. I’ll give Trouche a piece of my mind in the morning: I’ll send him along to you and you can give him your orders.’

  ‘That’s right,’ murmured Trouche, falling into a drunken sleep. ‘Faujas is a strange cove… I don’t want the lady of the house, I’d rather have her money.’

  At this Olympe gave an indiscreet laugh, looking her brother in the eye. She had got back into bed, arranging herself comfortably, propped up on the pillow. The priest, somewhat pale now, was thinking hard. Then he left, without a word, while she went back to her novel and Trouche snored on the sofa.

  The next day Trouche had sobered up and had a long conversation with Abbé Faujas. When he returned to his wife, he explained the conditions on which peace had been established.

  ‘Listen, darling,’ she said. ‘Be good and do as he asks. Try and make yourself useful to him, since he is giving you the means… I pretend to stand my ground when he’s there, but deep down I know he would throw us out on the street like dogs if we pushed him to the limit. And I don’t want to go… Are you sure he’ll let us stay?’

  ‘Yes, don’t be afraid,’ replied the employee. ‘He needs me, he’ll let us get on with feathering our nest.’

  Thenceforth, Trouche went out every evening towards nine, when there was no one in the streets. He told his wife he went to the old quarter to put in a good word for the priest whenever he could. But whatever the real reason, Olympe wasn’t jealous; she giggled at the risqué tales he brought back. She preferred to curl up on her own with a glass or two of something, gorge on cakes in secret, and spend the long evenings in a cosy bed devouring the old stock of a library she had discovered in the Rue Canquoin. Trouche came back drunk but not incapable. He took off his shoes in the hall and climbed the stairs without making a noise. If he had drunk too much and stank of tobacco and brandy, his wife did not want him in bed next to her. She made him sleep on the sofa. Then it was a silent, wordless struggle between them. He came back to bed with the obstinacy of the drunkard and clutched at the blankets. But he overbalanced, slipped, fell on his hands, and she ended up rolling him into a heap. If he began to shout, she caught him by the throat and looking into his eyes, said:

  ‘Ovide can hear you. Ovide’s coming.’

  So then he was fearful as a child when the wolf is mentioned and would fall asleep mumbling excuses. But as soon as the sun rose he would get washed and dressed soberly, wipe the shameful goings-on of the night before from his blotchy face, and don a tie that, according to him, made him look ‘churchy’. He lowered his eyes when he passed the cafés. In the Work
of the Virgin he was held in respect. But it did happen that when the girls were playing out in the yard he would lift a corner of the curtain and look at them with a paternal air, flames briefly dancing under his half-closed eyelids.

  The Trouches were still obliged to show some respect for Madame Faujas. Daughter and mother remained constantly at odds, the one complaining about always having been sacrificed to her brother, the other treating her like some lower form of life she should have suffocated at birth. Their teeth sank into the same prey, and they surveyed one another, both refusing to let go, worrying about which of them would manage to hack out the bigger piece of meat. Madame Faujas wanted the whole house; she guarded it, even the sweepings, against the talons of Olympe. When she noticed the large sums of money that the latter was managing to extract from Marthe, she got into a terrible temper. Since her son shrugged his shoulders and acted like a man who was above all this sordid business and thought himself obliged to close his eyes to it, she in her turn had a dreadful row with her daughter, whom she called a thief, as though she had taken money out of her own pocket.

  ‘I think that’s enough, don’t you, Maman?’ said Olympe losing patience. ‘After all it’s not your purse that’s rattling… At least I only borrow money from her, I don’t get fed by her.’

  ‘You are a nasty piece of work. What do you mean?’ said Madame Faujas, exasperated beyond endurance. ‘Do we not pay for our meals? Ask the cook, she will show you our account book.’

  Olympe laughed out loud.

  ‘Oh, that’s very funny!’ she went on. ‘I know all about the account book. You pay for the radishes and the butter, don’t you?… Listen, Maman, you stay on the ground floor; I shan’t be disturbing you. But don’t come up tormenting me again or I shall shout at you. You know Ovide has forbidden us to make any noise.’

  Madame Faujas went down again, grumbling. That threat of making a noise forced her to beat a retreat. Olympe began to hum a little tune behind her back, to make fun of her. But when she went out into the garden her mother took her revenge, constantly at her heels, looking at her hands, watching her every movement. She would put up with her neither in the kitchen nor the dining room. She had set Rose against her because of a saucepan that had been borrowed and not returned. However, she did not dare attack her in the matter of her friendship with Marthe in case she created a scandal which might have repercussions for the priest.

  ‘Because you are so unconcerned about your interests,’ she told her son one day, ‘I shall look after them properly on your behalf. Don’t be afraid, I shall be careful… If I weren’t there, you know, your sister would take the bread out of your mouth.’

  Marthe didn’t realize what drama was going on around her. The house simply struck her as being more alive, since the hall, the stairs, and the passages were full of people. You would have said it was a guest house, with the sound of suppressed quarrels, doors opening and closing, the casual, personal life of everyone who lived there, the hot and busy kitchen where Rose seemed to be catering for large numbers of people. And then there was the constant stream of suppliers. Olympe, who looked after her hands and did not want to do any more washing-up, ordered everything to be delivered, from a patissier in the Rue de la Banne, who prepared meals for the town. And Marthe smiled and declared herself happy with this transformation throughout the house. She no longer liked to be on her own; she needed occupations for the fever that blazed within her.

  Mouret, meanwhile, as if to escape all the commotion, shut himself away in the room upstairs that he called his study. He had got over his dislike of solitude, and hardly ever went down into the garden now, disappearing from morning till night.

  ‘I’d love to know what he does in there,’ said Rose to Madame Faujas. ‘You don’t hear a sound. You’d think he was dead. If he hides away like that, it’s because he’s up to no good.’

  When summer arrived, the house became still more lively. Abbé Faujas entertained guests from both the sub-prefect’s and the president’s clan, in the arbour. On Marthe’s orders Rose had bought a dozen garden chairs so that they could sit in the fresh air without moving the seats from the dining room. The habit became established. Each Tuesday afternoon the gates of the Impasse remained open; the ladies and gentlemen came to greet Monsieur le Curé in neighbourly fashion wearing straw hats and summer shoes on feet, their coats unbuttoned and their skirts pinned up. The visitors arrived one by one, eventually mingling, talking and laughing together, chatting most intimately to one another.

  ‘Aren’t you afraid’, Monsieur de Bourdeu asked Monsieur Rastoil one day, ‘that these meetings with the clique from the sub-prefecture might be rather unwise?… The general elections take place soon.’

  ‘Why unwise?’ replied Monsieur Rastoil. ‘We are not going to the sub-prefecture. We are on neutral territory… And then, my friend, there is nothing official about it. I keep on my linen jacket. It’s a private occasion. No one has the right to judge what I do at the back of my house… In front, that’s another matter, we belong to the public… Monsieur Péqueur and I don’t even greet each other when we meet out in the street.’

  ‘Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies is a man worth getting to know,’ the former prefect risked after a silence.

  ‘I’ve no doubt,’ the president replied. ‘I’m delighted to have made his acquaintance… And what an excellent fellow Abbé Faujas is! No, I don’t fear people’s critical comments when I say hello to our good neighbour.’

  After that mention of the general elections, Monsieur de Bourdeu became anxious. He said he found the first warmth of the summer extremely tiring. Often he had scruples, made known his reservations to Monsieur Rastoil, in order that the latter might reassure him. Anyway, they never touched on politics when in the Mourets’ garden. One afternoon, Monsieur de Bourdeu, vainly casting around for something to say, cried to Doctor Porquier:

  ‘Tell me, Doctor, have you seen this morning’s Moniteur?* The marquis has finally spoken. He has uttered thirteen words, I’ve counted… Poor Lagrifoul! What a laughing stock that man is.’

  Abbé Faujas wagged a friendly finger at him.

  ‘No politics, gentlemen, no politics!’ he murmured.

  Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies was chatting to Monsieur Rastoil; they both pretended they hadn’t heard. Madame de Condamin smiled. She went on, addressing Abbé Surin:

  ‘Is it not the case, Monsieur l’Abbé, that your surplices are stiffened with a weak solution of glue and water?’

  ‘Indeed so, Madame, with glue and water,’ answered the young priest. ‘Some laundresses use starch, but it is not good because it tears the cloth.’

  ‘Well,’ went on the young woman, ‘I can’t get my laundress to use glue solution for my petticoats.’

  So then Abbé Surin kindly gave her the name and address of his laundress on the back of one of his visiting cards. They talked in this manner about clothes, the weather, the harvest, the doings of the week. An hour went by very agreeably. Games of shuttlecock in the Impasse interrupted the conversations. Abbé Bourrette turned up very frequently, and in his delighted fashion, recounted stories from church that Monsieur Maffre heard right through to the end. Madame Delangre met Madame Rastoil only once, and both of them were very polite, very formal, their dull eyes suddenly gleaming with their former rivalry. Monsieur Delangre did not put himself out much. As for the Paloques, though they still frequented the sub-prefecture, they avoided being there when Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies was about to pay a neighbourly call on Abbé Faujas. The justice’s wife didn’t know what to think since her unfortunate visit to the oratory of the Work of the Virgin. But the person who showed himself to be the most assiduous was certainly Monsieur de Condamin, still wearing the smartest gloves, who came in order to make fun of everybody, telling lies, risking obscenities with extraordinary aplomb, and savouring for a good week afterwards the intrigues he had sniffed. This tall man, getting on in years and so dapper in his tight coat caught in at the waist, was very keen on t
he young. He made fun of the old, got the young girls in the company on one side, and laughed aloud in a corner with them.

  ‘Come over here, girls!’ he would say with a smile. ‘Let’s leave the oldies together.’

  One day he very nearly beat Abbé Surin in a remarkable game of shuttlecock. The truth was that he made mock of all this provincial society. He had picked on the Rastoils’ son as his particular victim, an innocent boy to whom he said the most atrocious things. He went so far as to accuse him of making up to his wife, and he rolled his eyes fearsomely, which made poor Séverin sweat with anxiety. The worst thing was that the latter believed he really was in love with Madame de Condamin, and kept gazing at her in a shy, lovelorn way, which her husband found extremely amusing.

  The Rastoil girls, towards whom the forestry commissioner was as gallant as a young widower, were also the butt of his most cruel jokes. Although they were nearing thirty, he encouraged them to play children’s games, and talked to them as if they were schoolgirls. It amused him greatly to study them when the mayor’s son, Lucien Delangre, was present. He would take Doctor Porquier to one side, a man used to hearing all sorts, and allude sotto voce to Monsieur Delangre’s former affair with Madame Rastoil:

  ‘Tell me, Porquier, this old boy has a problem… Is it Angéline or Aurélie who is Delangre’s daughter…?

  ‘Divine if you can, but decide if you dare!’

  Meanwhile, Abbé Faujas was pleasant to all the visitors, even to the terrible Condamin, disquieting though he was. He kept in the background as much as he could, spoke rarely and left the two clans to mingle; he appeared simply to be enjoying the role of the tactful host, happy to be a means of bringing together two distinguished groups of people who were just made to understand one another. Marthe had twice thought she should put the visitors at their ease by appearing herself. But she could not bear to see the priest surrounded by all these people. She waited until he was on his own; she had rather see him when he was his usual serious self, walking slowly under their peaceful arbour. The Trouches for their part on Tuesdays took up their jealous spying activities again behind their curtains; while Madame Faujas and Rose, at the back of the hall, craned their necks, and were loud in their admiration of the graceful way Monsieur le Curé received the most respected people in Plassans.