The Conquest of Plassans (Classic Reprint)

by Emile Zola

  ‘It’s Monsieur who is tormenting her,’ murmured Rose, finally retiring to her bed.

  The next day was one of Doctor Porquier’s days for visiting. He came to see Madame Mouret regularly twice a week. He patted her hand and repeated in his kindly, cheerful manner:

  ‘Come, dear lady. It’s nothing… We still have a little cough, don’t we? It’s just a neglected cold that we can cure with some linctus.’

  Then she complained of unbearable pain front and back, with her eyes fixed on him, seeking in his face, in his whole person, the things he did not say aloud.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going mad!’ she blurted out with a sob.

  He reassured her with a smile. Seeing the doctor always made her very worried. She was terrified of this man, who was so polite and gentle. Often she forbade Rose to let him into the house, saying she wasn’t ill and didn’t need to see a doctor all the time in her home. Rose shrugged, and let him in all the same. In the end he no longer talked to her about her illness but, as it seemed, simply paid her polite visits.

  When he left, he met Abbé Faujas on his way to Saint-Saturnin. In answer to the priest’s question about Madame Mouret’s health, he replied gravely:

  ‘Science is sometimes powerless. But Fate does not cease to shower its blessings upon us… The poor lady has been traumatized. I don’t say there is absolutely no hope. Her chest is still only slightly affected and the climate is good here.’

  He then began a discourse on the treatment of chest infections in the district of Plassans. He was preparing a paper on the subject, not in order to publish it, for he was astute enough not to pretend to be a scientist, but to read it to certain close friends.

  ‘And these are the reasons’, he ended, ‘which lead me to believe that the moderate temperature, the aromatic flora, the salubrious waters from our hills are of unparalleled excellence for curing chest infections.’

  The priest listened to him in silence with his customary gravity.

  ‘You are wrong,’ he replied slowly. ‘Plassans is a bad place for Madame Mouret… Why don’t you send her to spend the winter in Nice?’

  ‘In Nice?’ echoed the doctor, discomfited. He looked at the priest for a moment, and then in his cordial tone of voice said:

  ‘It’s true, she would be fine in Nice. In her state of nervous excitement a change of location might have a good effect. I must advise her to undertake that trip… That’s an excellent idea, Monsieur le Curé.’

  He bowed and went to visit Madame de Condamin, whose slightest headache caused her the most extraordinary anxiety. The next day at dinner, Marthe talked about the doctor in words that bordered on the violent. She swore she would not see him again.

  ‘He’s the one making me ill,’ she declared. ‘Didn’t he come this afternoon to advise me to travel?’

  ‘And I am all in favour,’ said Abbé Faujas, folding his napkin.

  She stared at him, very pale and, in a small voice, whispered:

  ‘So you are sending me away from Plassans too? But I’d die in a place I don’t know, a long way away from my normal life, and from those I love!’

  The priest was on his feet, about to leave the dining room. He drew nearer and continued, with a smile:

  ‘Your friends only want you to be well. Why are you against it so?’

  ‘No, I don’t want to, I don’t want to!’ she cried, drawing back.

  There was a brief argument. The blood rose in the priest’s cheeks. He folded his arms as though resisting the temptation to strike her. She sat up again, desperate in her weakness. Then, vanquished, she held out her hands and stammered:

  ‘I beg you to let me stay here… I’ll do whatever you say.’

  And, as she started sobbing, he left with a shrug in the manner of a husband dreading a tearful crisis. Madame Faujas, who was calmly finishing her dinner, was present at this scene, her mouth full. She allowed Marthe to weep as much as she liked.

  ‘You are not being reasonable, my dear,’ she said finally, taking another helping of preserves. ‘You will make Ovide hate you. You don’t know how to manage him… Why refuse to travel if it will do you some good? We would look after the house. You would find everything in order you know!’

  Marthe was still sobbing and seemed not to hear her.

  ‘Ovide has so much on his mind,’ the old lady continued. ‘Do you know that he frequently works until four in the morning?… When you are coughing at night it greatly disturbs him and all his ideas go out of his head. He cannot work, he suffers more than you do… Do it for Ovide’s sake, my dear; go away and come back when you are feeling better.’

  But Marthe, raising her tear-stained face, cried out in a voice that vented all her anguish at once:

  ‘Ah, Heaven is betraying me!’

  In the days that followed there was no more talk of a trip to Nice. Madame Mouret became deranged at the least suggestion of it. She refused to leave Plassans with such a despairing energy that even the priest understood the danger of insisting on it. She was becoming a dreadful embarrassment to him now that he had won the day. As Trouche said jeeringly, she was the one they should have sent to Les Tulettes first. Since Mouret had been taken away, she kept herself apart, practising her religion most rigorously; she avoided speaking of her husband, sought through prayer the numbing of her entire being. But she remained anxious, and returned from Saint-Saturnin with an ever more urgent need for oblivion.

  ‘Our landlady’s always passing out,’ Olympe told her husband one night. ‘I went to church with her this morning. I had to pick her up off the floor… If I told you all the stuff she comes out with about Ovide you would be very amused. She is furious with him, she says he is heartless, that he’s betrayed her by giving her false comfort. And railing against God too! You should hear her! Only the devout could sound off about religion like that. You’d think God had done her out of a huge sum of money… Shall I tell you something? I think her husband comes and scares her in the night.’

  Trouche enjoyed all these stories enormously.

  ‘Serves her right,’ he answered. ‘If that buffoon Mouret is where he is now, she’s the one who wanted him there. If I were Faujas I know how I’d manage things. I’d make her happy and sweet-tempered as a little lamb. But Faujas is a fool. It’ll cost him dear, you’ll see… Listen my girl, your brother has not been so good to us that we need to get him out of this mess. I shall laugh the day our landlady drops him in the deep end. For God’s sake, if you are a fine strong man like he is, you don’t shilly-shally with a woman!’

  ‘Yes, Ovide is too high-handed with us,’ murmured Olympe.

  Trouche lowered his voice.

  ‘Listen, if our landlady got herself into deep water with our fool of a brother we should still be in charge; the house would be ours. We could make a packet… That would be a very nice outcome for us.’

  Since Mouret had gone, the Trouches had in any case taken over the ground floor. At first Olympe had complained that the chimneys were smoking upstairs. Then she had managed to persuade Marthe that the drawing room, abandoned until then, was the healthiest room in the house. Rose had been given orders to light a big fire, and the two women spent their days there endlessly chatting, in front of enormous flaming logs. One of Olympe’s dreams was to live like that, dressed in nice clothes, reclining on a sofa, in the middle of a luxurious apartment. She persuaded Marthe to change the wallpaper in the drawing room, to buy some furniture and a carpet. Then she was a real lady. She came down in slippers and a dressing gown, and talked as though she ran the household.

  ‘That poor Madame Mouret,’ she said. ‘She has so many worries that she has begged me to give her a hand. I am helping her sort out her problems a bit. Well, of course. It’s an act of kindness.’

  And indeed she had been able to gain the confidence of Marthe, who could not be bothered with the trivial responsibilities of the house and delegated them to Olympe. She it was who kept the keys to the cellars and the cupboards. In addition, she paid
the tradesmen. For a long time she considered whether she might also manage to take over the dining room. But Trouche dissuaded her. They wouldn’t be free to eat or drink as they wished. They wouldn’t even dare to drink their wine neat or invite friends to coffee. So Olympe made do with a promise to take his share of desserts up to him. She filled her pockets with sugar and even took the stumps of the candles upstairs. She had sewn great linen pockets into her skirt for this purpose, and spent a good quarter of an hour emptying them each evening.

  ‘Look, here’s a pear in case we are thirsty,’ she said, piling the provisions pell-mell into a box which she then shoved under the bed. ‘If we were to quarrel with the landlady we should have enough here to keep us going for a while… I must bring up some conserves and some sausage.’

  ‘It’s very considerate of you to do that secretly,’ replied Trouche. ‘In your shoes I should have it all brought up by Rose, because you are mistress of the house now.’

  He himself had appropriated the garden. For a long time he had been jealous of Mouret as he watched him pruning his trees, sanding his paths, watering his lettuces. He dreamed of having a patch of ground to himself, where he would dig and plant as he liked. So when Mouret was no longer there he put his revolutionary plans into action, completely transforming the garden. He began by getting rid of the vegetables. He said he was a gentle soul and loved flowers. But the spade work tired him out by the second day. A gardener was summoned to dig up the squares according to his orders and throw the lettuces on to the compost heap; he made ready the soil to plant peonies in the spring, roses, lilies, larkspur seeds and morning glory, cuttings of carnations and geraniums. Then he had an idea. He took it into his head that the flower beds looked dark and gloomy because of the shade of the tall box hedge round them, and for a long time he thought long and hard about pulling it up.

  ‘You are quite right,’ Olympe pronounced, when she was consulted. ‘It looks like a cemetery. I’d prefer some iron railings that look like rustic round the edge… I’ll talk to the landlady. Get rid of the box hedge in any case.’

  The box hedge was pulled up. A week later the gardener put in the rustic border. Trouche also took down a few fruit trees that were spoiling the view, had the arbour repainted green, placed decorative stones around the fountain. He was sorely tempted by Monsieur Rastoil’s fountain. But he made do with choosing the spot where he would build a similar one ‘if everything went according to plan’.

  ‘That’ll make the neighbours sit up!’ he said to his wife that night. ‘They can see there’s a man of taste here now!… At least this summer when we sit by the window it will smell nice and we shall have a lovely view.’

  Marthe let them have their way, and approved of all the plans they put to her. Before long, in any case, they didn’t so much as ask her opinion. The Trouches were left to wrestle solely with Madame Faujas, who continued to dispute every inch of the house. When Olympe had taken possession of the drawing room, she was obliged to declare war officially on her mother; and she almost triumphed. It was the priest who changed the outcome.

  ‘Your wretched sister can’t speak ill enough of us to the landlady,’ was Madame Faujas’s constant complaint. ‘I see her little game, she wants to be rid of us and enjoy it all herself… That little madam occupies the drawing room now, like a lady, if you please!’

  The priest wasn’t listening, but gestured impatiently. One day he lost his temper and shouted:

  ‘Mother, please leave me alone. Don’t talk about Olympe or Trouche any more… Let them go hang if they want.’

  ‘They are taking over the house, Ovide, they have teeth like rats. When you want your share they’ll have gnawed through everything… You are the only one who can keep them in order.’

  He looked at his mother and gave a thin smile.

  ‘Mother, you love me,’ he muttered, ‘and I do forgive you… Rest assured, but I want something else, not the house. It’s not mine, and I keep only what I earn. You will be proud as anything when you see what my share is… Trouche has been useful to me. You have to close your eyes a little to what’s going on.’

  Madame Faujas then had to beat a retreat. She did it with a bad grace, grumbling at Olympe’s triumphant laughter. The total indifference of her son made her despair, with her simple appetites and prudent peasant economy. She wanted to keep the house secure, empty, and clean, for Ovide to find it the day he might need it. So the grasping Trouches made her despair, like a miser who is being stripped of goods by strangers. It seemed to her that they were consuming her wealth, that they were eating her flesh, that they were ruining both herself and her favourite son. When the priest had forbidden her to put up any opposition to the Trouches’ gradual invasion, she resolved to save what she could from the pillage. So she took to stealing from the wardrobes, like Olympe. She sewed big pockets into her skirts as well. She had a trunk that she filled with everything she picked up, food, linen, small ornaments.

  ‘Whatever are you hiding there, mother?’ the priest asked one evening as he went into his room, attracted by the noise she was making as she moved the trunk.

  She started to speak, but he realized what she was doing and gave way to a violent burst of anger.

  ‘What a disgrace!’ he shouted. ‘So now you are a thief! And what would happen if you were caught? I should be the talk of the town.’

  ‘I’m only doing it for you, Ovide,’ she muttered.

  ‘A thief! My mother is a thief! Perhaps you think I’m a thief too, that I’ve come here to steal things, that my only ambition is to reach out and pinch things? My God! What must you think of me?… We shall have to go our separate ways if we don’t understand one another better than that.’

  These words terrified the old lady. She had remained on her knees by the trunk but then found herself sitting on the floor; she was very pale and could not speak. She held out her hands to him; then, when she could find the words:

  ‘It’s for you my son, only for you, I swear. I’ve told you, they take everything, she carries it all up in her pockets. You won’t get a thing, not even a sugar lump… No no, I shan’t take anything else, since you don’t want me to; but you will keep me with you, won’t you? You’ll keep me with you…’

  Abbé Faujas wouldn’t promise until she had put everything she had stolen back in its place. For almost a week he personally presided over the emptying of the trunk. He watched her fill her pockets and waited for her to come up again to make another trip. Exercising caution, he only allowed her to make two trips in an evening. The elderly woman was heartbroken every time she took something back. She dared not weep, but tears of regret came and welled up behind her eyelids. Her hands were shaking more than when she had emptied the cupboards. The worst was when she realized on the second day that her daughter Olympe was coming along in her wake and taking everything she put back. The linen, the food, the candle ends were simply moving from one pocket to the other.

  ‘I’m not taking down anything else,’ she told her son, enraged at this unexpected blow. ‘It’s pointless. Your sister is collecting everything behind my back. Oh, what a baggage! It would have been just as well to give her the trunk in the first place. She must have a pile of stuff up there… Please, please, Ovide, let me keep what’s left. It won’t hurt our landlady because she will lose everything in any case.’

  ‘My sister is what she is,’ replied the priest calmly. ‘But I insist that my mother should be an honest woman. You will help me more by not behaving in that way.’

  She was forced to give everything back, and from that day on she lived in a state of fierce hatred of the Trouches, of Marthe, and of the entire house. She vowed the day would come when she would have to protect Ovide against every one of them.

  After that the Trouches ruled the roost. Their conquest was complete; they took over every bit of the house. The only place they kept away from were the priest’s quarters. He was the only person they feared. But that did not prevent them from inviting their friends, a
nd being rowdy until two in the morning. Guillaume Porquier came with groups of very young friends. In spite of her thirty-seven years, Olympe flirted with them, and more than one truanting schoolboy squeezed her really tight and made her laugh happily and excitedly. The house became a paradise for her. Trouche laughed at her and teased her when they were alone. He pretended he had found a school bag hidden beneath her petticoat.

  ‘Well!’ she exclaimed, not in the least put out. ‘Aren’t you enjoying yourself then?… You know we are free to do as we like.’

  The truth was that Trouche had almost compromised this life of indulgence with an escapade that went too far. A nun had discovered him in the company of a tanner’s daughter, the big blonde girl he’d had his wicked eye on for some while. The girl said she wasn’t the only one, that other girls had also been given sweets. The nun, knowing Trouche and the priest of Saint-Saturnin were related, was wise enough not to tell tales about his escapade before she had spoken to the latter. He thanked her and made her realize religion would be the first thing to suffer from a scandal like that. The affair was suppressed, the patron ladies of the Work suspected nothing. But Abbé Faujas had a dreadful showdown with his brother-in-law, raising the matter in front of Olympe, so that she might have a weapon to wield against her husband and keep him under control. So after that affair, Olympe would tell Trouche curtly each time he acted against her wishes:

  ‘Oh, all right, go and give the girls some sweets!’

  For a long time there was something else that caused them to be fearful. In spite of the rich life they were living and although the landlady’s cupboards provided everything they needed, they were badly in debt in the neighbourhood. Trouche’s salary was spent on eating and drinking in the café. Olympe spent the money she was getting out of Marthe’s pockets on trifles, telling her fantastic stories. As to the basics of everyday living, they were taken on credit by the couple as a matter of routine. One bill that worried them inordinately was that of the patissier in the Rue de la Banne—it came to more than a hundred francs—especially since this patissier was a brute who threatened to tell Abbé Faujas everything. The Trouches went through agonies, fearing some terrible scene; but the day the bill came, Abbé Faujas paid without question, and even forgot to scold the pair. The priest seemed to be above all the pettiness. He went on living his life, a dark and sober figure in that house that was being laid waste, not noticing the Trouches’ vicious teeth gnawing at the walls, the gradual deterioration that made cracks in the ceilings. Everything was going to rack and ruin around him, but he headed straight for his ambitious goal. He was camping out still, like a soldier, in his huge bare room, not allowing himself any comforts, getting angry when people wanted to cosset him. Since becoming master of Plassans he had grown unkempt again. His hat was threadbare, his stockings dirty; his soutane, mended every morning by his mother, resembled the pathetic faded rag of a garment that he had worn at the beginning of his time in Plassans.