'Bravo! bravo!' cried Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, stepping up to him.

'Bravo! it was a magnificent stroke!' exclaimed Monsieur Rastoil, who also came up.

The game was interrupted, for the two sets of guests had now invaded the lane, and were mingled with each other, crowding around Abbé Surin, who leant, quite out of breath, against the wall by Abbé Faujas's side. Everybody began talking at once.

'I was afraid that he had split his skull,' said Doctor Porquier to Monsieur Maffre, in a voice full of emotion.

'Yes, these games generally have a bad ending,' remarked Monsieur de Bourdeu, addressing himself to Monsieur Delangre and the Paloques, while he received a shake of the hand from Monsieur de Condamin, whom he always tried to avoid in the streets, so that he might not have to bow to him.

Madame de Condamin went from the sub-prefect to the presiding judge, bringing them face to face, and exclaiming:

'But really, I am more upset than he is! I thought that we were going to fall together. There is a big stone there; did you notice it?'

'Yes, I see it there,' said Monsieur Rastoil; 'it must have caught against his heel.'

'Was it this round stone, do you think?' asked Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, picking up a pebble.

They had never spoken to each other before, except at official ceremonies. Now, however, they began to examine the stone, and passed it from one to the other, remarking that it was very sharp, and must have cut the Abbé's shoe. Madame de Condamin stood smiling between them, and assured them that she was beginning to feel better.

'Oh! the Abbé is feeling ill!' suddenly cried Monsieur Rastoil's daughters.

Abbé Surin had, indeed, turned very pale at hearing of the danger he had run. He was reeling with faintness, when Abbé Faujas, who had kept aloof, took him in his powerful arms, and carried him into Mouret's garden, where he seated him upon a chair. The two sets of guests soon swarmed into the arbour, where the young Abbé completely fainted away.

'Get some water and some vinegar, Rose!' cried Abbé Faujas, running towards the steps.

Mouret, who was in the dining-room, came to the window, but, on seeing all those people in his garden, he recoiled as though he were struck with fear, and kept himself out of sight. Rose soon came up with a collection of drugs, muttering, as she hastened along:

'If only madame were here! But she has gone to the Seminary to see the lad. I am all alone, and I can't do impossibilities, can I? The master won't stir an inch; anybody might die for all he cared. There he is in the dining-room, hiding himself! He would let you die, before he would get you even a glass of water.'

By the time she had got through this grumble, she had reached Abbé Surin, who was lying in a swoon. 'Oh! the cherub!' she exclaimed, overcome with womanly pity.

The young Abbé, with his closed eyes and his pale brow wreathed with long, fair hair, looked like one of the sweet-faced martyrs that one sees expiring in sacred pictures. The elder of the Rastoil girls was supporting his head, which lay back, allowing his delicate, white neck to be seen. They were all in great excitement over him. Madame de Condamin gently dabbed his brow with a rag soaked in vinegar and water, and the others stood anxiously looking at her. At last the young Abbé opened his eyes, but closed them again immediately. He had two more swoons before he recovered.

'You have given me a terrible fright!' at last said Doctor Porquier, who had kept his hand fast in his own.

Abbé Surin, still sitting on the chair, stammered out confused thanks, and assured them all that it was a mere nothing. Then he saw that his cassock had been unbuttoned, and he smiled as he buttoned it and readjusted his bands. To prove that he was all right again, when the company advised him to keep quiet, he went back to the lane with the Rastoil girls in order to finish the game.

'You have a very nice place here,' said Monsieur Rastoil to Abbé Faujas, whose side he had not quitted.

'The air on this slope is delightful,' added Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, in his charming manner.

Then both sets of guests began looking with curiosity at Mouret's house.

'Perhaps the ladies and gentlemen would like to stay in the garden a little while,' exclaimed Rose; 'I will go and get some chairs.'

She made three journeys in quest of them, in spite of the protestations of the company. Then, after glancing at each other for a moment, the two sets of guests felt constrained by courtesy to seat themselves. The sub-prefect installed himself on Abbé Faujas's right hand, while the presiding judge took a chair on his left, and a friendly conversation at once began.

'You are a very quiet neighbour, Monsieur le Curé,' said Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies very graciously; 'you can't imagine what pleasure it gives me to see you every day at the same hour in this little paradise. It seems to bring me a feeling of restfulness, after all the noise and worry I have.'

'A pleasant neighbour is a very rare thing,' observed Monsieur Rastoil.

'Quite true,' said Monsieur de Bourdeu. 'But his reverence seems to have filled this spot with the peaceful tranquillity of a cloister.'

While the Abbé was smiling and acknowledging these complimentary remarks, Monsieur de Condamin, who had not yet seated himself, stooped and whispered in Monsieur Delangre's ear:

'There's Rastoil, hoping to get that lout of a son of his made assessor to the public prosecutor.'

Monsieur Delangre, however, gave him an angry glance, trembling at the thought that this incorrigible chatterer might spoil everything. But this did not prevent the conservator of rivers and forests from adding:

'And Bourdeu, too, is flattering himself that he has already won back his prefecture.'

Meantime, Madame de Condamin had caused a great sensation by saying, in a meaning way:

'What I like about this garden is the tender charm it seems to possess, which makes it a nook apart from all the cares and wretchedness of the world. It is a spot where even Cain and Abel might have become reconciled.'

She emphasized her last words and gave two glances, one to the right and the other to the left, towards the neighbouring gardens. Monsieur Maffre and Doctor Porquier nodded approvingly; while the Paloques looked at each other inquisitively, feeling uneasy and fearing to compromise themselves should they open their mouths.

At the end of a quarter of an hour Monsieur Rastoil rose from his seat.

'My wife will be wondering where we have got to,' said he.

And thereupon the whole company rose, feeling somewhat embarrassed as to the manner of their leave-taking. But Abbé Faujas spread out his hands and said, with the pleasantest possible smile:

'My paradise is always open to you.'

The presiding judge then promised to come and see the Curé every now and then, and the sub-prefect, with more effusiveness, declared that he would do the same. For another five minutes they all lingered there, exchanging compliments, while, out in the lane, the laughter of the Rastoil girls and Abbé Surin was again heard. A fresh game was going on with all the animation of the previous one, and the shuttlecock could be seen passing backwards and forwards in its regular flight above the garden wall.

XV

One Friday, as Madame Paloque was entering Saint-Saturnin's, she was greatly surprised to see Marthe kneeling in front of Saint-Michael's chapel. The Abbé Faujas was hearing confessions.

'Ah!' she muttered, 'has she succeeded in touching the Abbé's heart? I must wait a little while and watch. It would be very fine if Madame de Condamin were to come.'

She took a chair a little in the rear, and, half kneeling, covered her face with her hands as though she was absorbed in earnest prayer; but she held her fingers apart so that she might glance between them. The church was very gloomy. Marthe, with her head bent over her prayer-book, looked as though she were asleep. Her figure snowed blackly against a white pillar. Only her shoulders, heaving with deep-drawn sighs, seemed to be alive. She was, indeed, so profoundly overcome with emotion that she was constantly allowing her turn to be taken by some other of Abbé Faujas's penitents. The Abbé waited for a few moments, and then, seemingly a little impatient, he began tapping the woodwork of the confessional. Thereupon one of the women who were waiting, seeing that Marthe showed no sign of moving, decided to take her place. The chapel gradually grew empty, and Marthe still remained motionless as if in ecstasy.

'She seems in a terrible state,' thought Madame Paloque. 'It is really quite indecent to make such an exhibition of one's self in church. Ah! here comes Madame de Condamin!'

Madame de Condamin was indeed just entering the church. She stopped for a moment before the holy-water basin, removed her glove, and crossed herself with a pretty gesture. Her silk dress made a murmuring sound as she passed along the narrow space between the chairs. As she knelt down, she filled the lofty vault with a rustling of skirts. She had her usual affable expression, and smiled through the gloom. Soon she and Marthe were the only two penitents left. The priest grew more and more impatient, and tapped yet more loudly upon the woodwork of the confessional.

'It is your turn, madame; I am the last,' Madame de Condamin whispered politely, bending towards Marthe, whom she had not recognised.

Marthe raised her face, pinched and pale from her extreme emotion, and did not appear to understand. It was as though she were awakening from some ecstatic trance, and her eyelids trembled.

'Come, ladies, come!' exclaimed Abbé Faujas, who had now half-opened the door of the confessional.

Madame de Condamin smilingly rose to obey the priest's summons; but Marthe, recognising her, hastened into the chapel, to fall again upon her knees, however, a few paces away from the confessional-box.

Madame Paloque felt much amused. She hoped that the two ladies would seize each other by the hair. Marthe could hear all that was said, for Madame de Condamin had a clear flute-like voice. She dallied over the recital of her sins, and quite animated the confessional with her pretty gossiping ways. Once she even vented a little muffled laugh, at the sound of which Marthe raised her pain-racked face. Soon afterwards Madame de Condamin finished her confession, and rose as if to retire, but she quickly stepped back and commenced talking afresh, this time merely bending her head without kneeling down.

'That she-devil is making sport of Madame Mouret and the Abbé,' thought the judge's wife to herself. 'It's all put on, is this.'

At last Madame de Condamin really withdrew. Marthe watched her as if waiting till she disappeared. Then she went forward, leant against the confessional-box, and fell heavily on her knees. Madame Paloque had slipped a little nearer and was craning out her head, but she could only see the penitent's dark dress spread out around her. For nearly half an hour there was not the slightest movement. Now and then she thought she could detect some smothered sobs in the throbbing silence, which was also broken at times by a creak from the confessional-box. She began to feel a little weary of her watching, for all she would be able to do now would be to stare at Marthe as she left the chapel.

Abbé Faujas was the first to leave, closing the door of the confessional-box with an appearance of annoyance. Madame Mouret lingered there for a long time, bent and motionless. When she at last went away, her face covered with her veil, she seemed quite broken down, and even forgot to cross herself.

'There has been a row; the Abbé hasn't made himself pleasant,' thought Madame Paloque. Then she followed Marthe as far as the Place de l'Archevêché, where she stopped and seemed to hesitate for a moment. At last, having glanced cautiously around to make sure that nobody was watching her, she stealthily slipped into the house where Abbé Fenil resided, at one of the corners of the Place.

Marthe now almost lived at Saint-Saturnin's. She carried out her religious duties with the greatest fervour. Even Abbé Faujas often had to remonstrate with her about her excessive zeal. He only allowed her to communicate once a month, fixed the hours which she should devote to pious exercises, and insisted that she should not entirely shut herself up in religious practices. She for a long time requested him to let her attend a low mass every morning before he would accede to her desire. One day, when she told him that she had lain for a whole hour on the cold floor of her room to punish herself for some fault she had committed, he was very angry with her, and declared that her confessor alone had the right to inflict penance. He treated her throughout very sternly, and threatened to send her back to Abbé Bourrette if she did not absolutely follow his directions.

'I was wrong to take you at all,' he often said; 'I do not like disobedient souls.'

She felt a pleasure in his harshness. That iron hand which bent her, and which held her back upon the edge of the adoration in the depths of which she would have liked to annihilate herself, thrilled her with ever-renewed desire. She remained like a neophyte, making but little advance in her journey of love, being constantly pulled up, and vaguely divining some yet greater bliss beyond. The sense of deep restfulness which she had first experienced in the church, that forgetfulness of herself and the outside world, now changed, however, into positive actual happiness. It was the happiness for which she had been vaguely longing since her girlhood, and which she was now, at forty years of age, at last finding; a happiness which sufficed her, which compensated her for all the past-away years, and made her egotistical, absorbed in the new sensations that she felt within her like sweet caresses.

'Be kind to me,' she murmured to Abbé Faujas, 'be kind to me, for I stand in need of great kindness.'

And when he did show her kindness, she could have gone down upon her knees and thanked him. At these times he unbent, spoke to her in a fatherly way, and pointed out to her that her imagination was too excited and feverish. God, said he, did not like to be worshipped in that way, in wild impulses. She smiled, looking quite pretty and young again with her blushing face, and promised to restrain herself in the future. But sometimes she experienced paroxysms of devotion, which cast her upon the flag-stones in some dark corner, where, almost grovelling, she stammered out burning words. Even her power of speech then died away, and she continued her prayers in feeling only, with a yearning of her whole being, an appeal for that divine kiss which seemed ever hovering about her brow without pressing it.

At home Marthe became querulous, she who till now had been indifferent and listless, quite happy so long as her husband left her at peace. Now, however, that he had begun to spend all his time in the house, had lost his old spirit of raillery, and had grown mopish and melancholy, she grew impatient with him.

'He is always hanging about us,' she said to the cook one day.

'Oh, he does it out of pure maliciousness,' replied Rose. 'He isn't a good man at heart. I haven't found that out to-day for the first time. He has only put on that woebegone look, he who is so fond of hearing his tongue wag, in order to try to make us pity him. He's really bursting with anger, but he won't show it, because he thinks that if he looks wretched we shall be sorry for him and do just what he wants. You are quite right, madame, not to let yourself be influenced by all those grimaces and pretences.'

Mouret kept a hold upon the women with his purse. He did not care to wrangle and argue with them, for fear of making his life still less comfortable than it already was; but, though he no longer grumbled and meddled and interfered, he showed his displeasure by refusing a single extra crown piece to either Marthe or Rose. He gave the latter a hundred francs a month for the purchase of provisions; wine, oil, and preserves were in the house. The cook was obliged to make the sum stated last her till the end of the month, even if she had to pay for something out of her own pocket. As for Marthe, she had absolutely nothing; her husband never even gave her a sou, and she was compelled to appeal to Rose, and ask her to try to save ten francs out of the monthly allowance. She often found herself without a pair of boots to put on, and was obliged to borrow from her mother the money she needed to buy either a dress or a hat.

'But Mouret must surely be going mad!' Madame Rougon cried. 'You can't go naked! I will speak to him about it.'

'I beg you to do nothing of the kind, mother,' Marthe said. 'He detests you, and he would treat me even worse than he does already if he knew that I talked of these matters to you.'

She began to cry as she added:

'I have shielded him for a long time, but I really can't keep silent any longer. You remember that he was once most unwilling for me even to set foot in the street; he kept me shut up, and treated me like a mere chattel. Now he behaves so unkindly because he sees that I have escaped from him, and that I won't submit any longer to be a mere servant. He is a man utterly without religion, selfish and bad-hearted.'

'He doesn't strike you, does he?'

'No; but it will come to that. At present he contents himself with refusing me everything. I have not bought any chemises for the last five years, and yesterday I showed him those I have. They are quite worn out, so patched and mended that I am ashamed of wearing them. He looked at them and examined them and said that they would do perfectly well till next year. I haven't a single centime of my own. The other day I had to borrow two sous from Rose to buy some thread to sew up my gloves, which were splitting all over.'

She gave her mother many other details of the straits to which she was reduced—how she had to make laces for her boots out of blackened string, how she had to wash her ribbons in tea to make her hat look a little fresher, and how she had to smear the threadbare folds of her only silk dress with ink to conceal the signs of wear. Madame Rougon expressed great pity for her, and advised her to rebel. Mouret was a monster, said she. Rose asserted that he carried his avarice so far as to count the pears in the store-room and the lumps of sugar in the cupboard, while he also kept a close eye on the preserves, and ate himself all the remnants of the loaves.

It was a source of especial distress to Marthe that she was not able to contribute to the offertories at Saint-Saturnin's. She used to conceal ten-sou pieces in scraps of paper and carefully preserve them for high mass on Sundays. When the lady patronesses of the Home of the Virgin made some offering to the cathedral, such as a pyx, or a silver cross, or a banner, she felt quite ashamed, and kept out of the way, affecting ignorance of their intentions. The ladies felt much pity for her. She would have robbed her husband if she could have found the key of his desk, so keenly was she tortured at being able to do nothing for the honour of the church to which she was so passionately attached. She felt all the jealousy of a deceived woman when Abbé Faujas used a chalice which had been presented by Madame de Condamin; whereas on the days when he said mass in front of the altar cloth which she herself had embroidered she was filled with fervent joy, and said her prayers with ecstatic thrills, as though some part of herself lay beneath the priest's extended hands. She would have liked to have had a whole chapel of her own; and even dreamt of expending a fortune upon one, and of shutting herself up in it and receiving the Deity alone by herself at her own altar.

Rose, of whom she made a confidant, had recourse to all sorts of plans to obtain money for her. That year she secretly gathered the finest fruit in the garden and sold it, and she also disposed of a lot of old furniture that was stowed away in an attic, managing her sales so well that she succeeded in getting together a sum of three hundred francs, which she handed to Marthe with great triumph. The latter kissed the old cook.

'Oh! how good you are!' she said to her, affectionately. 'Are you quite sure that he knows nothing about what you have done? I saw the other day, in the Rue des Orfèvres, two little cruets of chased silver, such dear little things; they are marked two hundred francs. Now, you'll do me a little favour, won't you? I don't want to go and buy them myself, because someone would certainly see me going into the shop. Tell your sister to go and get them. She can bring them here after dark, and can give them to you through the kitchen window.'

This purchase of the cruets seemed like a clandestine intrigue to Marthe, and thrilled her with the sweetest pleasure. For three days she kept the cruets at the bottom of a chest, hidden away beneath layers of linen; and when she gave them to Abbé Faujas in the sacristy of Saint-Saturnin's she trembled so much that she could scarcely speak. The Abbé scolded her in a kindly fashion. He was not fond of presents, and spoke of money with the disdain of a strong-minded man who only cares for power and authority. During his earlier years of poverty, even at times when he and his mother had no food beyond bread and water, he had never thought of borrowing even a ten-franc piece from the Mourets.

Marthe found a safe hiding-place for the hundred francs which were still left her. She also was becoming a little miserly; and she schemed how she should best expend this money, making some fresh plan every morning. While she was still in a state of hesitation, Rose told her that Madame Trouche wished to see her privately. Olympe, who used to spend hours in the kitchen, had become Rose's intimate friend, and often borrowed a couple of francs of her to save herself from going upstairs at times when she said that she had forgotten to bring down her purse.

'Go upstairs and see her there,' said the cook; 'you will be better able to talk there. They are good sort of people, and they are very fond of his reverence. They have had a lot of trouble. Madame Olympe has quite made my heart ache with all the things she has told me.'

When Marthe went upstairs she found Olympe in tears. They, the Trouches, were too soft-hearted, said she, and their kindness was always being abused. Then she entered upon an explanation of their affairs at Besançon, where the rascality of a partner had saddled them with a heavy burden of debt. To make matters worse, their creditors were getting angry, and she had just received an insulting letter, the writer of which threatened to communicate with the Mayor and the Bishop of Plassans.

'I don't mind what happens to me,' she sobbed, 'but I would give my head to save my brother from being compromised. He has already done too much for us, and I don't want to speak to him on the matter, for he is not rich, and he would only distress himself to no purpose. Good heavens! what can I do to keep that man from writing? My brother would die of shame if such a letter were sent to the Mayor and the Bishop. Yes, I know him well; he would die of shame!'

Tears rushed to Marthe's eyes. She was quite pale, and fervently pressed Olympe's hands. Then, without the latter having preferred any request, she offered her the hundred francs she had.

'It is very little, I know; but perhaps it might be sufficient to avert the danger,' she said with an expression of great anxiety.

'A hundred francs, a hundred francs!' exclaimed Olympe. 'Oh, no! he would never be satisfied with a hundred francs.'

Marthe lost all hope. She swore that she had not a centime more. She so far forgot herself as to speak of the cruets. If she had not bought them she would have been able to give three hundred francs. Madame Trouche's eyes sparkled.

'Three hundred francs, that is just what he demands,' she said. 'Ah! you would have rendered my brother a much greater service by not giving him that present, which, by the way, will have to remain in the church. What a number of beautiful things the ladies of Besançon presented to him! But he isn't a bit the better off for them to-day! Don't give him anything more; it is really nothing but robbery! Consult me about what you do; there is so much hidden misery—No! a hundred francs will certainly not be sufficient!'

At the end of half an hour spent in lamentation, however, she accepted the hundred francs when she saw that Marthe really had no more.

'I will send them so as to pacify the man a little,' she said, 'but he won't leave us at peace long. Whatever you do, I beg of you not to mention anything about it to my brother. It would nearly kill him. And I think it would be better, too, if my husband knew nothing of what has passed between us; he is so proud that he would be sure to be doing something rash to be able to acquit himself of our obligation to you. We women can understand each other, you know.'

This loan was a source of much pleasure to Marthe, who henceforth had a fresh care, that of warding off from Abbé Faujas the danger that threatened him without his being aware of it. She frequently went upstairs to the Trouches' rooms and stayed there for hours, discussing with Olympe the best means of discharging the debts. The latter had told her that a good many promissory notes had been endorsed by the priest, and that there would be a terrible scandal if they should ever be sent to any bailiff in Plassans to be protested. The sum total of their liabilities was so great, she said, that for a long time she refused to disclose it, only weeping the more bitterly when Marthe pressed her. One day, however, she mentioned the sum of twenty thousand francs. Marthe was quite frozen upon hearing this. She would never be able to procure anything like twenty thousand francs, and thought that she would certainly have to wait for Mouret's death before she could hope to have any such sum at her disposal.

'I say twenty thousand francs in all,' Olympe hastily added, disquieted by Marthe's grave appearance: 'but we should be quite satisfied if we were able to pay by small instalments spread over half a score of years. The creditors would wait for any length of time, if they were only sure of getting their instalments regularly. It is a great pity that we can't find anyone who has sufficient confidence in us to make the small necessary advances.'

This matter became an habitual topic of conversation. Olympe also frequently spoke of Abbé Faujas, whom she seemed almost to worship. She gave Marthe all kinds of private details about the priest: such as, for instance, that he could not bear anything that tickled him, that he could sleep on his left side, and that he had a strawberry-mark on his right shoulder, which turned red in May like the natural fruit. Marthe smiled and never tired of hearing of these little matters; and she questioned the young woman about her childhood and that of her brother. When the subject of the money cropped up she seemed painfully overcome by her inability to do anything, and she even complained bitterly of Mouret, to whom Olympe, emboldened by Marthe's language, now always referred in her presence as the 'old miser.' Sometimes when Trouche returned from his office he found the two women still talking together, but at his appearance they checked themselves and changed the subject. Trouche conducted himself in the most satisfactory way, and the lady patronesses of the Home of the Virgin were highly pleased with him. He was never seen in any of the cafés in the town.

In order to be able to render some assistance to Olympe, who sometimes talked about throwing herself out of the window, Marthe made Rose take all the useless old odds and ends that were lying about the house to a second-hand dealer at the market. At first the two women were a little timid about the matter, and only disposed of broken-down chairs and tables when Mouret was out of the way, but afterwards they began to lay hands upon more important articles, and sold ornaments, pieces of china, and anything else they could remove without its absence appearing too conspicuous. They were slipping down a fatal incline, and would have ended by carting off all the furniture in the house and leaving nothing but the bare walls, if Mouret had not one day charged Rose with thieving and threatened to send for the police.

'What, sir! A thief! I!' she cried. 'Just because you happened to see me selling one of madame's rings. Be careful of what you are saying! The ring was mine; madame gave it to me. Madame isn't such a mean wretch as you are. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for leaving your wife without a sou! She hasn't even a pair of shoes to put on! The other day I had to pay the milkman myself! Yes, I did sell the ring, and what of that? Isn't madame's ring her own? She is obliged to turn it into money, since you won't give her any. If I were she, I would sell the whole house! The whole house, do you hear? It distresses me beyond everything to see her going about as naked as Saint John the Baptist!'

Mouret now began to keep a close watch at all times. He locked up the cupboards and drawers, and kept the keys in his own possession. Whenever Rose went out he would look at her hands distrustfully, and even feel at her pockets if he saw any suspicious swelling beneath her skirt. He brought certain articles back from the second-hand dealer's and restored them to their places, dusting and wiping them ostentatiously in Marthe's presence in order to remind her of what he called Rose's thefts. He never directly accused his wife. There was a cut-glass water-bottle which he turned into a special instrument of torture. Rose, having sold it for twenty sous, had pretended to Mouret that it was broken. But now he made her bring it and put it on the table at every meal. One day, at lunch, she quite lost her temper over it, and purposely let it fall.

'There, sir, it's really broken this time, isn't it?' she cried, laughing in his face.

As he threatened to dismiss her, she exclaimed:

'You had better! I've been in your service for five-and-twenty years. If I went madame would go with me!'

Marthe, reduced to extremities and egged on by Rose and Olympe, at last rebelled. She was desperately in want of five hundred francs. For the last week Olympe had been crying and sobbing, asserting that if she could not get five hundred francs by the end of the month one of the bills which had been endorsed by Abbé Faujas would be published in one of the Plassans newspapers. The threatened publication of this bill, this terrible threat which she did not quite understand, threw Marthe into a state of dreadful alarm, and she resolved to dare everything. In the evening, as they were going to bed, she asked Mouret for the five hundred francs, and when he looked at her in amazement she began to speak of the fifteen years which she had spent behind a counter at Marseilles, with a pen behind her ear like a clerk.

'We made the money together,' she said; 'and it belongs to us both. I want five hundred francs.'

Mouret thereupon broke his long maintained silence in the most violent fashion, and all his old raillery burst forth again.

'Five hundred francs!' he cried. 'Do you want them for your priest? I play the simpleton now and keep my peace for fear I might say too much; but you must not imagine that you can go on for ever making a fool of me! Five hundred francs! Why not say the whole house? The whole house certainly does seem to belong to him! He wants some money, does he? And he has told you to ask me for it? I might be among a lot of robbers in a wood instead of being in my own home! I shall have my very handkerchief stolen out of my pocket before long! I'll be bound that if I were to go and search his room I should find his drawers full of my property. There are seven pairs of my socks missing, four or five shirts, and three pairs of pants. I was going over the things yesterday. Everything I have is disappearing, and I shan't have anything left very soon! No, not a single sou will I give you, not a single sou!'

'I want five hundred francs; half of the money belongs to me,' Marthe tranquilly replied.

For a whole hour Mouret stormed and fumed and repeated the same reproaches. His wife was no longer the same, he said. He did not know her now. Before the priest's arrival, she had loved him and obeyed him and looked after the house. Those who set her to act in opposition to him must be very wicked persons. Then his voice grew thick, and he let himself fall into a chair, broken down and as weak as a child.

'Give me the key of your desk!' said Marthe.

He got up from his chair and gathered his strength together for a last cry of protest.

'You want to strip me of everything, eh? to leave your children with nothing but straw for a bed? You won't even leave us a loaf of bread? Well! well! clear out everything, and send for Rose to fill her apron! There's the key!'

He threw the key at Marthe and she placed it under her pillow. She was quite pale after this quarrel, the first violent quarrel that she had ever had with her husband. She got into bed, but Mouret passed the night in an easy-chair. Towards morning Marthe heard him sobbing. She would then have given him back the key, if he had not wildly rushed into the garden, though it was still pitch dark.

Peace again seemed to be re-established between them. The key of the desk remained hanging upon a nail near the mirror. Marthe, who was quite unaccustomed to the sight of large sums, felt a sort of fear of the money. She was very bashful and shamefaced at first whenever she went to open the drawer in which Mouret always kept some ten thousand francs in cash to pay for his purchases of wine. She strictly confined herself to taking only what was necessary. Olympe, too, gave her the most excellent advice, and told her that now she had the key she ought to be careful and economical; and, indeed, seeing the trembling nervousness which she exhibited at the sight of the hoard of money, she ceased for some time to speak to her of the Besançon debts.

Mouret meantime relapsed into his former moody silence. Serge's admission to the Seminary had been another severe blow to him. His friends of the Cours Sauvaire, the retired traders who promenaded there regularly between four o'clock and six, began to feel very uneasy about him, when they saw him arrive with his arms swaying about and his face wearing a stupefied expression. He hardly made any reply to their remarks and seemed a prey to some incurable disease.

'He's breaking up; he's breaking up,' they murmured to each other; 'and he's only forty-four; it's scarcely credible. He will end by having softening of the brain.'

Mouret no longer seemed to hear the malicious allusions which were made before him. If he was questioned directly about Abbé Faujas, he coloured slightly as he replied that the priest was an excellent tenant and paid his rent with great punctuality. When his back was turned, the retired shopkeepers grinned as they sat and basked in the sun on one of the seats on the Cours.

'Well, after all, he is only getting what he deserves,' said a retired almond-dealer. 'You remember how hotly he stood up for the priest, how he sang his praises in the four corners of Plassans; but when one talks to him on that subject now rather an odd expression comes over his face.'

These worthy gentlemen then regaled themselves with certain scandalous stories which they whispered into each other's ears, passing them on in this way from one end of the bench to the other.

'Well,' said a master-tanner in a half whisper, 'there isn't much pluck about Mouret; if I were in his place I would soon show the priest the door.'

Thereupon they all repeated that Mouret was certainly a very timid fellow, he who had formerly jeered so much at those husbands who allowed their wives to lead them by the nose.

These stories, however, in spite of the persistence with which certain persons kept them afloat, never got beyond a particular set of idle gossiping people, and the reason which the Curé himself gave for not taking up his residence at the parsonage, namely, his liking for the Mourets' beautiful garden, where he could read his breviary in such perfect peace, was generally accepted as the true one. His great piety, his ascetic life and his contempt for all the frivolities and coquetries which other priests allowed themselves placed him beyond suspicion. The members of the Young Men's Club accused Abbé Fenil of trying to ruin him. All the new part of the town was on his side, and it was only the Saint-Marc quarter that was against him, its aristocratic inhabitants treating him with great reserve whenever they met him in Monseigneur Rousselot's saloons. However, in spite of his popularity, he shook his head when old Madame Rougon told him that he might now dare everything.

'Nothing is quite safe and solid yet,' he said. 'I am not sure of anyone. The least touch might bring the whole edifice toppling down.'

Marthe had been causing him anxiety for some time past. He felt that he was incapable of calming the fever of devotion which was raging within her. She escaped his control and disobeyed him, and advanced further than he wished her to do. He was afraid lest this woman, this much-respected patroness, who was so useful, might yet bring about his ruin. There was a fire burning within her which seemed to discolour her flesh, and redden her eyes and make them heavy. It was like an ever-growing disease, an infatuation of her whole being, that was gradually weakening her heart and brain. She often seemed to lapse into some ecstatic trance, her hands were shaken by a nervous trembling, and a dry cough occasionally shook her from head to foot without consciousness apparently on her part of how it was rending her. The Curé then showed himself sterner to her than before, tried to crush the passion which was dawning within her, and even forbade her to come to Saint-Saturnin's.

'The church is very cold,' he said, 'and you cough so much there. I don't want you to do anything to make yourself worse.'

She protested that there was nothing the matter with her beyond a slight irritation of the throat, but at last she yielded and accepted his prohibition as a well-deserved punishment which closed the doors of heaven upon her. She wept, believed that she was damned, and dragged herself listlessly through the blank weary days; and then, in spite of herself, like a woman returning to some forbidden love, when Friday came she humbly glided into Saint-Michael's chapel and laid her burning brow against the woodwork of the confessional-box. She did not speak a word, but simply knelt there, completely crushed, quite overwhelmed. At this Abbé Faujas, who was greatly irritated, treated her as harshly as though she was some unworthy woman, and hastily ordered her away. Then she left the church, feeling happy and consoled.

The priest was afraid of the effect of the gloomy darkness of Saint-Michael's chapel. He spoke upon the subject to Doctor Porquier, who persuaded Marthe to go to confession at the little oratory of the Home of the Virgin in the suburb. Abbé Faujas promised to be there to hear her every other Saturday. This oratory, which had been established in a large whitewashed room with four big windows, was bright and cheerful, and would, he thought, have a calming effect upon the excited imagination of his penitent. There, he thought, he would be able to bring her under control, reduce her to obedience, without possible fear of any scandal. As a guard against all calumnious gossip, he asked his mother to accompany Marthe, and while he confessed the latter Madame Faujas remained outside the door. As the old lady did not like to waste her time, she used to take her knitting with her and work away at a stocking.

'My dear child,' she often said to Marthe, as they were returning together to the Rue Balande, 'I could hear very well what Ovide was saying to you to-day. You don't seem to be able to please him. You can't care for him. Ah! I wish I were in your place to be able to kiss his feet! I shall grow to hate you, if you go on causing him nothing but annoyance.'

Marthe bent her head. She felt deep shame in Madame Faujas's presence. She did not like her, she felt jealous of her at finding her always coming between herself and the priest. The old lady's dark eyes, too, troubled her when they constantly bent upon her, full as they seemed of strange and disquieting thoughts.

Marthe's weak state of health sufficed to account for her meetings with Abbé Faujas at the oratory of the Home of the Virgin. Doctor Porquier stated that she went there simply in obedience to his orders, and the promenaders on the Cours were vastly amused by this saying of the doctor's.

'Well, all the same,' remarked Madame Paloque to her husband one day, as she watched Marthe going down to the Rue Balande, accompanied by Madame Faujas, 'I should like to be in some corner and watch the vicar and his sweetheart. It is very amusing to hear her talk of her bad cold! As though a bad cold was any reason why one shouldn't make one's confession in church! I have had colds, but I never made them an excuse for shutting myself up in a little chapel with a priest.'

'It is very wrong of you to interfere in Abbé Faujas's affairs,' the judge replied to his wife. 'I have been spoken to about him. He is a man with whom we must keep on good terms, and you will prevent us from doing so; you are too spiteful.'

'Stuff!' she retorted angrily; 'they have trampled me under foot and I will let them know who I am! Your Abbé Faujas is a big imbecile! Don't you suppose that Abbé Fenil would be very grateful to me if I could catch the vicar and his sweetheart? Ah! he would give a great deal to have a scandal like that! Just you leave me alone; you don't understand anything about such matters.'

A fortnight later, Madame Paloque watched Marthe go out on the Saturday. She was standing ready dressed, hiding her hideous face behind her curtains, but keeping watch over the street through a hole in the muslin. When the two women disappeared round the corner of the Rue Taravelle, she sniggered, and leisurely drawing on her gloves went quietly on to the Place of the Sub-Prefecture, and walked slowly round it. As she passed in front of Madame de Condamin's little house, she thought for a moment of going in and taking her with her, but she reflected that the other might, perhaps, have some scruples. And, all considered, it was better she should be without witnesses, and manage the business by herself.

'I have given them time,' she thought, after a quarter of an hour's promenade. 'I think I may present myself now.'

Thereupon she quickened her pace. She frequently went to the Home of the Virgin to discuss the accounts with Trouche, but that day, instead of repairing to the secretary's office, she went straight along the corridor towards the oratory. Madame Faujas was quietly knitting on a chair in front of the door.

The judge's wife had foreseen that obstacle, and went straight on to the door with the hasty manner of a person who has important business on hand. But before she could reach out her hand to turn the handle the old lady had risen from her chair and pushed her aside with extraordinary energy.

'Where are you going?' she asked in her blunt peasant-woman's tones.

'I am going where I have business,' Madame Paloque replied, her arm smarting and her face convulsed with anger. 'You are an insolent, brutish woman! Let me pass! I am the treasurer of the Home of the Virgin, and I have a right to go anywhere here I want.'

Madame Faujas, who stood leaning against the door, straightened her spectacles upon her nose, and with unruffled tranquillity resumed her knitting.

'Well,' she said bluntly, 'you can't go in there.'

'Can't, indeed! And may I ask why?'

'Because I don't wish that you should.'

The judge's wife felt that her plan was frustrated, and she almost choked with spleen and anger. She was positively frightful to look at as she gasped and stammered:

'I don't know who you are, and I don't know what you are doing here. If I were to call out, I could have you arrested, for you have struck me. There must be some great wickedness going on at the other side of that door for you to have been put there to keep people from entering. I belong to the house, I tell you! Let me pass, or I shall call for help.'

'Call for anyone you like,' replied the old lady, shrugging her shoulders. 'I have told you that you shall not go in, that I won't let you. How am I to know that you belong to the house? But it makes no difference whether you do or you don't. No one can go in. I won't let them.'

Thereupon Madame Paloque lost all control of herself, raised her voice, and shrieked out:

'I have no occasion to go in now! I have learnt quite sufficient! You are Abbé Faujas's mother, are you not? This is a very decent and pretty part for you to be playing! I wouldn't enter the room now; I wouldn't mix myself up with all this wickedness!'

Madame Faujas laid her knitting upon the chair, and, bending slightly forward, gazed with glistening eyes through her spectacles at Madame Paloque, holding her hands the while a little in front of her, as though she were about to spring upon the angry woman and silence her. She was, indeed, going to throw herself forward, when the door suddenly opened and Abbé Faujas appeared on the threshold. He was in his surplice and looked very stern.

'Well, mother,' he asked, 'what is going on here?'

The old lady bent her head, and stepped back like a dog that is taking its place at its master's heels.

'Ah! is it you, dear Madame Paloque?' the Curé continued; 'do you want to speak to me?'

By a supreme effort of will, the judge's wife forced her face into a smile. She answered the priest in a tone that was terrible in its amiability and mingled irony.

'Ah! you were inside were you, your reverence? If I had known that, I would not have insisted upon entering. But I want to see the altar-cloth, which must, I think, be getting into a bad condition. I am a careful superintendent here, you know, and I keep an eye upon all these little details. But, of course, if you are engaged in the oratory, I wouldn't think of disturbing you. Pray go on with what you are doing; the house is yours. If madame had only just dropped me a word, I would have left her quietly to continue guarding you from being disturbed.'

Madame Faujas allowed a growl to escape her, but a glance from her son reduced her to silence.

'Come in, I beg you,' he said; 'you won't disturb me in the least. I was confessing Madame Mouret, who is not very well. Come in, by all means. The altar-cloth might very well be changed, I think.'

'Oh, no! I will come some other time,' Madame Paloque replied. 'I am quite distressed to have interrupted you. Pray go on, your reverence, pray go on!'

Notwithstanding her protestations, however, she entered the room. While she was examining the altar-cloth with Marthe, the priest began to chide his mother in a low voice:

'Why did you prevent her coming in, mother? I never told you to allow no one to enter.'

She gazed straight in front of her with her obstinate determined glance. 'She would have had to walk over my body before she got inside,' she muttered.

'But why?'

'Because——. Listen to me, Ovide; don't be angry; you know that it pains me to see you angry. You told me to accompany our landlady here, didn't you? Well, I thought you wanted me to stop inquisitive people's curiosity. So I took my seat out here, and no one should have entered, be sure of that.'

But the priest caught hold of his mother's hands and shook her, exclaiming:

'Why, mother, you couldn't have supposed——'

'I suppose nothing,' she replied, with sublime indifference. 'You are free to do whatever pleases you. You are my child; I would steal for you, I would.'

The priest was no longer listening to her. He had let her hands drop, and, as he gazed at her, he seemed to be lost in reflections, which made his face look sterner and more austere than ever.

'No, never!' he exclaimed with lofty pride. 'You are greatly mistaken, mother. It is only the chaste who are powerful.'

XVI

At seventeen years of age, Désirée still retained the child-like laugh of an 'innocent.' She was now a fine, tall girl, plump and well-developed, with the arms and shoulders of a full-grown woman. She grew like a healthy plant, happy in her growth, and quite untouched by the unhappiness which was wrecking and saddening the house.

'Why do you never laugh?' she cried to her father one day. 'Come and have a game at skipping! It's such fun!'

She had taken possession of one of the garden-beds, which she dug, planted with vegetables, and carefully watered. The hard work delighted her. Then she desired to have some fowls, which devoured her vegetables and which she scolded with motherly tenderness. With these occupations of hers, gardening and fowl-keeping, she made herself dreadfully dirty.

'She's perfectly filthy!' cried Rose. 'I won't have her coming into my kitchen any more; she dirties everything! It is no use your trying to keep her neatly dressed, madame. If I were you I should just let her mess about as she likes.'

Marthe, now ever preoccupied, no longer took care even that Désirée should change her under-linen regularly. The girl sometimes wore the same chemise for three weeks together; her stockings fell over her shoes, which were sadly worn down at the heels, and her tattered skirts hung about her like a beggar's rags. Mouret was one day obliged to take up a needle himself, for the girl's dress was torn behind from top to bottom. She, however, laughed gleefully at her nakedness, at her hair that fell over her shoulders, and at her black hands and dirty face.

Marthe came to feel a sort of disgust of her. When she returned home from mass, still retaining in her hair the vague perfume of the church, she quite shuddered at the strong scent of earth which exhaled from her daughter. She sent her into the garden again immediately lunch was over. She could not bear to have her near her, distressed, disquieted as she was by the girl's robust vigour and clear laugh, which seemed to find amusement in everything.

'Oh, dear! how wearisome the child is!' she murmured sometimes, with an air of nerveless lassitude.

As Mouret heard her complain, he exclaimed in an impulse of anger:

'If she's in your way, we will turn her out of the house, as we have done the other two.'

'Indeed, I should be very glad if she were to go away,' Marthe answered unhesitatingly.

One afternoon, about the end of the summer, Mouret was alarmed at no longer being able to hear Désirée, who, a few minutes previously, had been making a tremendous noise at the bottom of the garden. He ran to see what had happened to her, and found her lying on the ground. She had fallen from a ladder on to which she had climbed to gather some figs: fortunately the box-plants had broken the force of her fall. Mouret, in a great fright, lifted her up in his arms and called for assistance. He thought she was dead; but she quickly came to herself, declared that she was none the worse for the accident, and wanted to climb the ladder again.

Marthe, however, had meantime come into the garden. When she heard Désirée laugh she seemed quite annoyed.

'That child will kill me one of these days,' she exclaimed. 'She doesn't know what to invent to alarm me. I'm sure that she threw herself down on purpose. I can't endure it any longer. I shall shut myself up in my own room, or go out in the morning and not return till evening. Yes, you may laugh, you great goose! To think that I am the mother of such a ninny! You are making me pay for it very dearly!'

'Yes, that she is!' cried Rose, who had run down from the kitchen; 'she's a great burden, and, unfortunately, there's no chance of our ever being able to get her married.'

Mouret looked at them and listened with a pang at the heart. He said nothing, but stayed with the girl at the bottom of the garden, and there they remained chatting affectionately till nightfall. The next day, Marthe and Rose were away from the house the whole morning. They went to hear mass at a chapel, a league from Plassans, dedicated to Saint-Januarius, whither all the pious folks of the town made a pilgrimage on that particular day. When they returned, the cook hastily served up a cold lunch. Marthe went on eating for a few minutes before she noticed that her daughter was not at table.

'Isn't Désirée hungry?' she asked. 'Why hasn't she come to lunch?'

'Désirée is no longer here,' answered Mouret, who left his food almost untouched upon his plate; 'I took her this morning to her nurse at Saint-Eutrope.'

Marthe laid down her fork, and turned a little pale, seeming both surprised and hurt.

'You might have consulted me,' she said.

Her husband, without making any direct reply, continued:

'She is all right with her nurse. The good woman is very fond of her, and will look well after her, and the child will no longer be in your way, and everyone will be happy.'

Then, as his wife said nothing, he added:

'If the house is not yet sufficiently quiet for you, just tell me, and I will go away myself.'

She half rose from her seat, and a light glistened in her eyes. Mouret had wounded her so cruelly that she stretched out her hand as though she were going to throw the water-bottle at his head. In her long-submissive nature angry promptings were now being fanned into life, and she was growing to hate this man who was ever prowling round her. She made a show of eating again, but she said nothing further about her daughter. Mouret had folded his napkin, and remained sitting in front of her, listening to the sound of her fork, and casting lingering glances round the dining-room, which had once been so merry with the chatter of the children, but was now so empty and mournful. The room seemed to him to be quite chilly, and tears were mounting to his eyes when Marthe called to Rose to bring in the dessert.

'You must be very hungry, I should think, madame,' said the cook, as she put a plateful of fruit upon the table. 'We had quite a long walk; and if the master, instead of playing the pagan, had come with us, he would not have left you to eat the mutton all by yourself.'

Then she changed the plates, without pausing in her chatter.

'It is very pretty is that chapel of Saint-Januarius, but it is too small. Did you see that the ladies who came late were obliged to kneel down outside on the grass, in the open air? I can't understand why Madame de Condamin came in a carriage. There's no merit in making the pilgrimage if you come like that. We spent a delightful morning, didn't we, madame?'

'Yes, a very delightful morning,' Marthe replied. 'Abbé Mousseau, who preached, was very affecting.'

When Rose in her turn noticed Désirée's absence and learnt of the girl's departure, she exclaimed:

'Well, really, it was a very good idea of the master's! She was always walking off with my saucepans to water her plants. We shall be able to have a little peace now.'

'Yes, indeed,' said Marthe, who was cutting a pear.

Mouret was almost choking. He rose and left the dining-room without paying any attention to Rose, who cried out to him that the coffee would be ready directly. Marthe, now left alone in the room, quietly finished her pear.

Just as the cook was bringing the coffee, Madame Faujas came downstairs.

'Go in,' Rose said to her; 'you will be company for madame, and you can have the master's coffee, for he has just rushed off like a madman.'

The old lady sat down in Mouret's place.

'I thought you did not take coffee,' she remarked as she put some sugar into her cup.

'No, indeed, she didn't do so when the master kept the purse,' interposed Rose. 'But madame would be very silly now to deny herself what she likes.'

They talked for a good hour together, and Marthe ended by relating all her troubles to Madame Faujas, telling her how her husband had just inflicted a most painful scene upon her on account of her daughter, whom he had removed to her nurse's in a sudden pet. She defended herself, and told Madame Faujas that she was really very fond of the girl, and should go to fetch her back before long.

'Well, she was rather noisy,' Madame Faujas remarked. 'I have often pitied you. My son was thinking about giving up going into the garden to read his breviary. She almost distracted him with the noise she made.'

From that day forward Marthe and Mouret took their meals in silence. The autumn was very damp, and the dining-room looked intensely melancholy with only two covers laid, one at each end of the big table. The corners were dark, and a chill seemed to fall from the ceiling. As Rose would say, it looked as though a funeral were going on.

'Well, indeed,' she often exclaimed, as she brought the plates into the room, 'you couldn't make much less noise, sir, however you tried! There isn't much danger of your wearing the skin of your tongue off! Do try to be a little livelier, sir! You look as though you were following a corpse to the grave!—You will end by making madame quite ill. It is bad for the health to eat without speaking.'

When the first frosts came, Rose, who sought in every way to oblige Madame Faujas, offered her the use of her cooking-stove. The old lady had begun by bringing down kettles to get her water boiled, as she had no fire, she said, and the Abbé was in a hurry to shave. Then she borrowed some flat-irons, begged the use of some saucepans, asked for the loan of the dutch-oven to cook some mutton, and finally, in the end, as she had no conveniently arranged fireplace upstairs, she accepted Rose's repeated offers, and the cook lighted her a fire of vine branches, big enough to roast a whole sheep, in the kitchen.

'Don't show any diffidence about it,' she said, as she herself turned the leg of mutton round; 'the kitchener is a large one, isn't it? and big enough for us both. I don't know how you've been able to do your cooking upstairs as long as you have, with only that wretched iron stove there. I should have been afraid of falling down in an apoplectic fit myself. Monsieur Mouret ought to know better than to let a set of rooms without any kitchen. You must be very enduring kind of people, and very easily satisfied.'

Thus Madame Faujas gradually began to cook her lunch and dinner in the Mourets' kitchen. On the first few occasions she provided her own coal and oil and spices. But afterwards, when she forgot to bring any article with her, Rose would not allow her to go upstairs for it, but insisted upon supplying the deficiency from the house stores.

'Oh, there's some butter there! The little bit which you will take with the tip of your knife won't ruin us. You know very well that everything here is at your service. Madame would be quite angry with me if I didn't make you at home here.'

A close intimacy now sprang up between Rose and Madame Faujas. The cook was delighted to have some one always at hand who was willing to listen to her while she stirred her sauces. She got on extremely well with the priest's mother, whose print dresses and rough face and unpolished demeanour put her almost on a footing of equality. They sat chatting together for hours before the fireplace, and Madame Faujas soon gained complete sway in the kitchen, though she still maintained her impenetrable attitude, and only said what she chose to say, while contriving to worm out all that she wanted to know. She settled the Mourets' dinner, tasted the dishes which she had arranged they should have, and Rose herself often made savoury little luxuries for the Abbé's delectation, such as sugared apples or rice-cakes or fritters. The provisions of the two establishments often got mixed together, mistakes were made with the different pans, the two dinners being so intermingled that Rose would cry out with a laugh:

'Tell me, madame, are these poached eggs yours? Really, I don't know. Upon my word, it would be much better if you were all to dine together!'

It was on All Saints Day that Abbé Faujas lunched for the first time in the Mourets' dining-room. He was in a great hurry, as he had to return to Saint-Saturnin's at once, and so, to give him as much time as possible, Marthe asked him to sit down at their table, saying that it would save his mother from climbing a couple of flights of stairs. A week later it had become a regular thing; the Faujases came downstairs at every meal and took their seats at table, just as if they were entering a restaurant. For the first few days their provisions were cooked and served separately, but Rose declared this was a very silly arrangement, that she could easily cook for four persons, and that she would arrange it all with Madame Faujas.

'Pray don't thank me,' she said to the Abbé and his mother; 'it is a kindness on your part to come down and keep madame company. You will cheer her up a little. I scarcely dare go into the dining-room now; it is just like going into the chamber of death. It quite frightens me, it feels so desolate. If the master chooses to go on sulking, he will have to do so all by himself.'

They kept up a roaring fire, the room was very warm, and the winter proved a delightful one. Rose had never before taken such pains to lay the tablecloth nicely. She placed his reverence's chair near the stove, so that he might have his back to the fire. She paid particular attention to his glass and his knife and fork, she took care that whenever the slightest stain made its appearance upon the cloth it should not be put on his side, and she paid him numberless other delicate little attentions.

When she had prepared any dish of which he was particularly fond, she gave him notice so that he might reserve himself for it; though sometimes, on the other hand, she made a surprise of it for him, and brought it into the room under a cover, smiling at the inquisitive glances directed towards it, and exclaiming with an air of triumph:

'This is for his reverence! It is a wild-duck stuffed with olives, just what he is so fond of. Give his reverence the breast, madame. I cooked it specially for him.'

Marthe carved the duck, and with beseeching looks pressed the choicest morsels upon the Abbé. She always helped him the first, and searched the dish for him, while Rose bent over her and pointed out what she thought the best parts. They occasionally even had little disputes as to the superiority of this or that part of a fowl or rabbit. Then, too, Rose used to push an embroidered hassock under the priest's feet, while Marthe insisted that he should always have his bottle of Bordeaux and his roll, specially ordering one of the latter for him from the baker every day.

'We can never do too much for you,' said Rose, when the Abbé expressed his thanks. 'Who should be well looked after, if it isn't good kind hearts like yours? Don't you trouble about it, the Lord will pay your debt for you.'

Madame Faujas smiled at all these flattering civilities as she sat at table opposite her son. She was beginning to feel quite fond of Marthe and Rose. She considered their adoration only natural, and thought it a great happiness for them to be allowed to cast themselves in this way at the feet of her idol. It was really she with her square head and peasant manner who presided over the table, eating slowly but plentifully, noticing everything that happened without once setting down her fork, and taking care that Marthe should play the part of servant to her son, at whom she was constantly gazing with an expression of content. She never opened her lips except to make known in as few words as possible the Abbé's various tastes or to over-rule the polite refusals in which he still occasionally indulged. Sometimes she shrugged her shoulders and pushed him with her foot. Wasn't everything on the table at his service? He might eat the whole contents of the dish, if he liked, and the others would be quite happy to nibble their dry bread and look at him.

Abbé Faujas himself, however, seemed quite indifferent to all the tender care which was lavished upon him. Of a very frugal disposition and a quick eater, his mind always occupied with other matters, he was frequently quite unconscious of the dainties which were specially reserved for him. He had yielded to his mother's entreaties in consenting to join the Mourets, but the only satisfaction he experienced in the dining-room on the ground-floor was the pleasure of being set entirely free from the everyday cares of life. He manifested unruffled serenity, gradually grew accustomed to seeing his least wish anticipated and fulfilled, and ceased to manifest any surprise or express any thanks, lording it haughtily between the mistress of the house and the cook, who kept anxious watch over the slightest motions of his stern face.

Mouret sat opposite his wife, quite forgotten and unnoticed. He let his hands rest upon the edge of the table, and waited, like a child, till Marthe should be willing to attend to him. She helped him the last, scantily, and to whatever might happen to be left. Rose stood behind her and warned her whenever by mistake she was going to give her husband some of the more delicate morsels in the dish.

'No, no; not that. The master likes the head, you know. He enjoys sucking the little bones.'

Mouret, snubbed and slighted, ate his food with a sort of shame, as though he was subsisting unworthily on other people's bounty. He could see Madame Faujas watching him keenly as he cut his bread. He kept his eyes fixed on the bottle for a whole minute, full of doubtful hesitation, before he dare venture to help himself to wine. Once he made a mistake and took a little of the priest's choice Bordeaux. There was a tremendous fuss made about it, and for a whole month afterwards Rose reproached him for those few drops of wine. Whenever she made any sweet dish, she would say:

'I don't want the master to have any of that. He never thinks anything I make nice. He once told me that an omelet I had made was burnt, and then I said, "They shall be burnt altogether for you." Don't give any of it to the master, I beg you, madame.'

She also did all she could to worry and upset him. She gave him cracked plates, contrived that one of the table legs should come between his own, left shreds of the glass-cloth clinging to his glass, and placed the bread and wine and salt as far from him as possible. Mouret was the only one in the family who liked mustard, and he used to go himself to the grocers and buy canisters of it, which the cook promptly caused to disappear, saying that they 'stank so.' The deprivation of mustard spoilt his enjoyment of his meals. But what made him still more miserable, and robbed him of all appetite, was his expulsion from his own seat, which he had always previously occupied, in front of the window, which was now given to the priest, as being the pleasantest in the room. Mouret had to sit with his face towards the door, and he felt as though he were eating amongst strangers, now that he could not at each mouthful cast a glance at his fruit-trees.

Marthe was not so bitter against him as Rose was. She treated him at first like a poor relation, whose presence is just tolerated, and then gradually grew to ignore him, scarcely ever addressing a remark to him, and acting as though Abbé Faujas alone had the right to give orders in the house. Mouret, however, showed no inclination to rebel. He occasionally exchanged a few polite phrases with the priest, though he generally ate in perfect silence, and only replied to the cook's attacks by looking at her. He always finished before any of the others, folded up his napkin tidily, and then left the room, frequently before the dessert was placed upon the table.

Rose alleged that he was bursting with anger, and when she gossiped in the kitchen with Madame Faujas she discussed his conduct freely.

'I know him very well; I've never been afraid of him. Before you came madame used to tremble before him, for he was always scolding and blustering and trying to appear very terrible. He used to worry our lives out of us, always poking about, never finding anything right, and trying to show us that he was master. Now he is as docile as a lamb, isn't he? It's just because madame has asserted herself. Ah! if he weren't a coward, and weren't afraid of what might happen, you would hear a pretty row. But he is afraid of your son; yes, he is afraid of his reverence the Curé. Anyone would say, to look at him, that he lost his senses every now and then. But after all, as long as he doesn't bother us any longer, he is welcome to act as he pleases; isn't he, madame?'